Chapter 28
Still she clung to him. He could feel
her tears soaking into his tunic.
“Listen!”
He heard it, too: the silence. It hung
over the churchyard, desolate as a soaring raven.
“Not good,” he muttered. “We cannot
wait for sunset, it seems. We should move on from here
now.”
Edith chewed anxiously on her lower
lip, the first time he had seen that sign. “Maria will be able to
walk, but she will be slow. She will not be able to dive and
hide.”
“I or Teodwin could go ahead.” He
disliked that plan, for it would mean them separating, in his
experience always a fatal course in enemy country.
Enemy country. God’s
breath! This is what we have come to, in
England!
“Can we not go together?” She knelt up,
glancing about. “Is there a donkey or mule hereabouts we can have
Maria ride?”
A freckled, bearded face peeped out of
the door of the priest’s house. “Edith? Should we not be going?”
hissed Teodwin. “I worry for our youngsters and Many. She will be
wondering where I am.”
“Is the baby quiet?” Edith whispered
back.
Teodwin nodded and pushed open the
door, to show Maria standing beside him with her baby in her arms.
She was wincing as she shifted from side to side, clearly
uncomfortable with standing, but she was dressed and ready to
go.
Ranulf took charge. This was rather
like being in Normandy or France: he had moved camps there,
including womenfolk. Of course, he had soldiers in France, but he
would have soldiers again, once he had slipped Edith and the others
out of this settlement.
“Cover yourself,” he told her, his
woman, his prize. He gave her his cloak to do so, making a jest of
it. “Another cloak you have cost me, eh?”
She blushed but took the garment meekly
enough, wrapping it snugly around her distinctive, eye-catching
costume, tucking her long hair out of sight and leaving the hood
low over her head so it hid her face.
He pointed at the steward. “Is that
tunic as bright turned inside out? ’Tis that, or smearing it with
dung: the color blazes too much.”
Grumbling, Teodwin ducked back inside
the hut.
“We make for the woods,” Ranulf said.
He nodded to Maria. “Can you carry your child?”
Maria glanced at her sleeping baby and
brushed a fallen wisp of thatch from the infant’s head—a yes, so
far as Ranulf was concerned.
He beckoned to the two women, relieved
when they began to walk to him. The steward could catch up to them
but he wanted no freezing fits or hysterics. That ominous silence
in the churchyard might not last too much longer.
A narrow strip of a path wove away from
the village to the nearby woods. Looking over Edith’s head, he
measured the distance to the cover of the limes and hazels to be
the length of a bow-shot. It was too far, really, for comfort, but
they had no choice.
“Edith.” He jerked his head to the
trees, relieved when she did not ask again about a donkey—which
would take too long to find—and set off at once. Maria waddled
after her and he brought up the rear, his wits and nerves on edge
with every step.
What was happening in that churchyard?
What was going on in the castle, or the camp? Where the devil were
his men? They should be searching for him. Or had they, like Sir
Henry and his friends, been overwhelmed?
They passed a well, Edith giving a
discernable shudder as she glanced down into the dark water. Did
she remember the well at the pestilence-stricken village? A shadow
flitted across the path ahead of her and she started forward,
running toward the possible danger, the mad girl. Sprinting, he
overtook Maria and her, almost colliding with a wandering pig that
squealed a loud, ear-splitting indignation at being disturbed. He
shooed the pig off, into a hut with an open door, and braced
himself for running men and a hue and cry.
There was nothing—it was a false scare.
Edith picked up the pace anew, striding by the entrance to another
hut. At a third, she shook her head and put a finger to her lips.
Ranulf spotted an elderly man sitting in the doorway of the hut,
his toothless mouth wide in surprise. He copied Edith and put a
finger to his mouth and the old man beamed happily.
Maria stumbled, catching her skirts
against a discarded rake left in the middle of the track. Ranulf
seized and steadied her, picked up the rake to fling it aside, then
kept it; it might make a handy weapon.
Behind him he heard a slight wheeze.
Teodwin, his purple tunic turned inside out, had caught up with
them.
One more to worry over.
. . .
Five paces ahead, Edith stopped and
made a downward motion with her hands. As she crouched amidst old
winter bracken and brambles, Teodwin strode neatly off the track
behind a holly bush, but Maria remained standing in the middle of
the path, sturdy as a stone pillar and as conspicuous. Ranulf
shepherded the maid to a nearby wooden rack, possibly used for
drying clothes or for drying fish, and urged her to remain still.
If she did not move and her babe did not cry, her outline might not
be spotted by whoever was coming.
A troop of darting, running men broke
cover onto the track.
“Stay!” Ranulf warned the maid as he
hurtled into the trees. The troop had not seen Edith, crouched
small by a bramble, or Maria, blended with the drying rack, or even
the elderly steward, squirming tight against the holly, his dulled
purple tunic looking like patches of early berries. Sprinting away
from all three, he began to make a massive tumult amidst the hazels
and elders, desperate to draw the men into pursuing
him.
“Get him!” two yelled and crashed into
the undergrowth, slashing wildly with ladles and spits—they were
cook boys, he realized.
“The North!” He bawled his battle cry,
snatching up a fallen crab apple from the dry, dusty grass and
hurling it at the crashing youngsters.
The crab hit the lead youth in the face
who had not had the wit to avoid it: these were no warriors, they
were beardless lads, probably servants from Castle
Fitneyclare.
A mob all the
same, his instinct warned. He fixed on the small,
quick-footed redhead in the midst of the pack who was roaring
orders and slung a windfall at him. Sharper than the rest, the
redhead ducked and it smacked against his shielding
arm.
The troop did not charge all at once,
as they should have done if they were to have any chance against
him. Instead, in a collision of arms and legs, they stopped,
yowling insults.
Ranulf tossed the rake from hand to
hand. His back prickled at the thought of more of these truant lads
doubling back onto the track and finding Edith or her maid, but
that was his only concern.
“Go back.” He spoke between the
insults, without adding any of his own. “I have no quarrel with
you.”
The two spit boys gripped their spits
harder and brandished them, glancing at the others for support. The
wiry redhead, who had more sense, scowled but looked
thoughtful.
Ranulf took a step back. The troop did
not follow. He began to turn altogether, intending to walk west,
away from the village and the track. A white dog bounded through
grass and saplings, showing its teeth but whisking its tail. When
he stood his ground the dog flopped panting into the leaf litter.
Ignoring the beast, he listened hard, catching the distinctive
drumbeat of cantering horses.
Warhorses, he guessed, as the ground
began to shake. Already the lads were tossing aside their branches
and fleeing. Jinking from tree to tree to make a chase harder and
an arrow in the back less likely, Ranulf pounded toward the track
and Edith.
“The North!”
“Rothencey!”
Giles, resplendent in shining mail and
plate armor, with his helmet graced by new favors and trailing
ribbons, rode down the wooded hillside in a burst of glowing color.
Behind him were his men, almost as shining and
well-horsed.
Full arms against
boys? The thought, which before Edith would not have been
his, swept over him in a wave of cold, hard anger. As he sped to
Edith, raised her, and shielded her with his body, he knew what
Giles would claim.
Sure enough, he did.
“Well met, Ran!” he hollered in a
cheery fashion, standing on his stirrups as he churned down the
slope of hazel saplings. “I have saved your skin today from these
misbegotten miscreants!”
Tormenting scullery
lads, he finds us by accident and claims a
victory!
“I thank you,” Ranulf said coolly,
sensing Edith’s twist of her head, turning her face away from
Giles. Part of his anger was for her, too. Still, it seemed, she
did not trust him enough to say how and why and when she knew
Giles—as it was obvious she did. “I am in your debt, man,” he
ground out.
“I know.” Giles was as sweet as honey.
He settled back into his saddle and extended his foot. “My Lady of
Lilies? Pray come up upon my horse. Allow me to escort you to your
tent.”
Ranulf cupped Giles’s foot: the mail
scraped his hand but he was too furious to care. “She is with
me.”
“We should leave, my lord,” Edith said
quickly, her head down, still averting her face from Giles. “We are
both most anxious, I know, to return to our people. If those
gathered in the churchyard choose to move against the
camp—”
“They are not with you now? You have
been unchaperoned with him, my lady?”
“My steward is with us, and my
maid—”
Ranulf felt as if his brains were
beginning to boil. “Peace, Giles,” he growled, relieving a little
of his feelings by tossing the rake out into the woodland beyond
the closing ranks of horses and men. “I wager you are worse than a
terrier on a rat with these pinpoints of courtesy.”
Giles smirked, his eyes wide with
malicious pleasure. “You wanted to be sure of your prize,
Ran?”
“Damn you!” He grabbed for the
stallion’s reins, determined to pitch Giles off his horse. The bay
snorted and tossed its head and Edith, hiding her face with the
flaps of her hood, cried urgently, “We should all go, at once! What
is the news from the castle, Sir Giles? And what is happening in
the village now? ’Tis most vital we know.”
“I know nothing of Fitneyclare, my
lady. I was concerned for you.”
Ranulf, with lights of rage flashing
before his eyes, tried to curb his temper. “As I said before, she
is with me. You will be satisfied with that, Giles, or ’fore God, I
will know the reason why.”
Without waiting for a reply, he held
out his hand. Edith took it, giving his fingers a reassuring
squeeze, although she also gave him a curious look, part
puzzlement, part defiance, he thought.
He did not consider long. Giles’s men
encircled about them were closing in. He did not want to stay in
this shrinking trap.
“Come, girl,” he called to Maria.
“Come, sir steward, before that holly tree claims more threads from
you.”
Taking great care not to crush Edith’s
hand, he pushed past Giles’s great brown nag and set off for the
path.
He dare not strike me
down, not with his men and Teodwin and Maria and who knows else in
this wood as witnesses.
Part of him was amazed that matters
stood in this poor way between him and Giles. Mostly he was glad to
be off.
Edith hurried to keep up with Ranulf.
She wanted to stop, to ask Maria if she was all right, if she
wanted her to carry the baby. She glanced at Teodwin, relieved the
high color was creeping back into his face. She sensed Ranulf
clutching her fingers as tenderly as if she was an infant while his
face was as dark as storm clouds.
Why, then, did he not
tell Giles that we are betrothed? Will he always be ashamed of me?
Have I shared so much for nothing?
“You there!” Giles de Rothencey
thundered from his horse.
“I have a name,” said the spy, looking
up from his game of chess with himself. His neck was sunburned
after a long day in the fields and woodlands. He had only just
returned to the jousting camp, weary and thirsty and with only a
grudging page to bring him an indifferent wine. He had been paid by
Sir Giles earlier that month, but not much. He certainly did not
owe the knight manners.
“Mark of Sealand,” said Sir Giles, with
leaden irony. “A pestilence-ridden place we burned to the
rafters.”
Mark shrugged. “Should that not be
burned to the ground? No matter, Sir Giles.
The tourney camp has been quiet. Half of Ranulf of Fredenwyke’s men
are off hunting, including his squire. The rest have been playing
dice, polishing arms, gawking at the Lady of Lilies’s tent, and
flirting with the women there: the usual things. Some of your men
visited the village to hear the preacher. They came away before Sir
Henry and his men were set upon by the peasants.”
“Fools,” said Sir Giles, without heat.
Mark knew he cared nothing for Henry, or even his own
men.
“If you want me to go on watching, I
need more coin,” he said before the knight could make more demands.
He had his own ruffians to pay, and many were growing impatient. In
these days of pestilence, where death stalked without rhyme or
reason, men were more testy.
“What of Fitneyclare?”
He had not been told to spy on the
castle, but Mark knew anyway; he found it good business to
know.
“Lady Blanche has a summer fever. It
was not given out as such lest people panic and flee. Her lord
still wants more pageants—rumor is, he has not won as many prizes
as he hoped.”
“We are leaving, anyway.”
“My lord?”
Sir Giles laughed. “Surprised you, for
once? Yes, I think it time we shifted. I want to attend to my lands
here in the county.”
Bully peasants for
their produce, Mark translated in his mind. He dropped the
wooden chess queen and bowed over the board to hide his
face.
“Where was that village where they were
all in the church?”
Mark waited until Sir Giles flipped him
a silver penny. It was clipped, but he gave a little something in
return. “Warren Hemlet, my lord, some twenty leagues from here. A
place of pigs and good tillage.”
“We must bring more serfs there, get
them farming.”
After you ensured the
others were killed off ? “Even serfs talk, my lord. That may
not be easy.”
Sir Giles’s dark blue eyes bulged, as
they always did when he was crossed. “They are serfs, man! Mine to
do with as I please! A few examples will see the rest fall into
place.”
“As they did before,” said
Mark.
“What was that?”
“Nothing, my lord. I was merely
thinking aloud.”
Sir Giles pointed his riding whip at
Mark. “I have not forgotten the other matter, and nor should you.
Our leaving is only a putting-off. This is not a retreat, merely a
regrouping.”
“I have eyes and sense, my lord.” He
already knew that Giles had escorted Ranulf and his lady back to
the camp and received only grudging praise and no invitations to
stay for the evening. “I know you aim to gull the black knight into
thinking that his damsel prize is safe.” He shrugged. “A similar
scheme half worked before, did it not?”
Without deigning to reply, Sir Giles
galloped away. When the dust had settled, Mark made a play of
studying the chessboard again.
He had not thought of Warren Hemlet for
months. They had killed the priest there, as well as the
villagers.
Or had they?
He remembered the priest—calm, a good
shepherd, a natural leader. None of the villagers had fought and
all had given up their tools before entering the church, seemingly
resigned to their fate. Sir Giles had scoffed at their cowardice,
but had it been more than that? Had the priest planned
more?
It was time for him to ride alone to
Warren Hemlet to find out.