by Prue Batten
‘Damn them, Ulric. I haven’t come this far in my life to have them stop me. I will prevail, I assure you. No matter what.’ Inside my head, that faint epiphany began to rise like a phoenix. ‘We will be travelling for some days then?’
‘Oh indeed, Ysabel. Perhaps longer depending on what problems we confront.’
Travelling.
Through forest and by stream, sneaking past villages and where Ulric would surprise me. Leaving me with the horse I had named Dominic after our perjuring priest, he would sneak off into the dark shadows of night or the stripey shades of dusk and he would always return with food of some sort. We made a practice of filling our bellies with fresh clean water when we came across streams far from settlements and I learned to forage like wild boar to keep hunger at bay.
I became dirty, the rigours of travel embedded in the wrinkles of palms and under fingernails. When I slapped at insects, a cloud of dust would rise from my jerkin, and even though we washed in streams the filth became ingrained – a second skin. We neither of us looked the same. Ulric no longer resembled Ulric of Camden, the pleasant-faced young man from Moncrieff and he told me that his Lady Ysabel had vanished long since.
I wondered if he realized how ironic was his choice of words – Lady Ysabel had indeed vanished, quite literally, yet her spirit soared higher and stronger than ever as each league we travelled brought her closer to Chester and closer too to Mont Hault.
Summer days lulled us – the warmth, the blue skies, the abundance of fodder found in the thick forest and rolling hills of the countryside. Our feet need only be cautious of occasional bogs and reed patches, and once a thunderstorm lit the night, Dominic laying back his ears and swishing his tail, but we were dry ‘neath a rocky overhang, aware the gates and bridge of Chester waited not far off.
Perhaps summer was too kind, a somnolence born of sun without cloud. Dominic plodded along, me in the saddle, Ulric alongside. A whining shape sped past my ear, my cheek grazed by feathers that burned. I dropped to the horse’s neck, the sound of another arrow soaring past my other cheek as I felt for my blade and heard Ulric’s sword being drawn – like the sighing of an ill wind.
The two thieves came at us from separate sides of the track, the one on my side reaching for Dominic’s reins. But the horse sensed danger, smelled strangers, and threw his head high, dragging the reins free, shying away and stepping down on the man’s foot with an iron-shod hoof.
The fellow’s anguished howl set up birds and I slashed at his shoulder with the misericorde as Ulric grunted with his own sweep and parry. He leaped for the horse, swinging onto its rump and clamping his heels hard against Dominic’s flank and we jumped the fallen and bleeding villains, galloping far away until we pulled up on the fringed edges of the Dee hard by Chester, horse’s sides heaving, our own matching his breath for breath.
I slipped from the horse, my knees folding so that I almost fell. In a heartbeat I was back amongst the carnage of the Angevin forest with Gisborne. My heart pounded even harder than Dominic’s galloping hooves had when we left our erstwhile companions days before. They talk of the cold sweat of fear and that is precisely what coated my filthy palms. Panic horrified and annoyed me all at once. I took a breath, remembering Gisborne holding me, wrapped around me that night and my breath slowing to match his.
As I took command again, I knew the violence of Wilf’s and Harry’s deaths would haunt me forever and the haunting was entirely dependent on my reaction to it. At that moment, all I wanted was to find quiet and peace with my son and I vowed and declared that I would do everything necessary to make it so.
‘Alright?’ Ulric whispered, looking at Chester’s walls.
‘Yes. Yes, I am.’
My hand smoothed Dominic’s neck and I wondered if we would have to leave him behind and secure fresh horses. Ulric said no if we rested for a day hidden in the forest. He would buy an extra mount for us and yes, he had coin and then we could make haste to Mont Hault perhaps three or four leagues away if we kept to the byways.
So close!
I waited whilst he walked to the town gates, feeding into a little group of people loaded with goods for the market. The brooding shape of the castle stared across the Dee at me, and I shrank into the trees, wondering how many eyes could see me as the soldiers walked the parapets. Would they have been warned to watch for a woman who had tried to kill one of the King’s favourites? One of Prince John’s favourites?
I wondered how Ulric would convince anyone that he wasn’t merely a filthy villein on the run with stolen pennies in his purse. I daren’t think of him being anything other than successful and I daren’t think of Gisborne. Not yet. I wanted to, to be sure. I wanted to try and sift through all the information that countered my own experience, but I wouldn’t. I dipped further back into the woods, holding Dominic’s reins as he grazed on the forest grasses. Eventually he rested, his head hanging, bottom lip dangling, his hoof tilted so that his hip angled like an old man’s. I sat against a tree, reins hooked over my arm, tired and hungry.
‘Ysabel! Ysabel!’
Ulric’s voice woke me and my head jerked up. He threw a small bag in my lap.
‘Fine mess you’d be in if it weren’t me,’ he said from the back of a thickset chestnut mare to which Dominic stretched his neck and whickered. ‘I’ve got bread and two pies. And some cherries which I stole from a handsome tree near the church.’ He grinned. ‘They’re very sweet.’
And so we began a day’s rest, secreted deep in the woods around Chester. We ate and chatted about Moncrieff, about Cecilia and Brother John. Of Camden and De Courcey. Oh yes, we talked long about him. I avoided nothing in my discourse on my late marriage. How could I? Ulric and I were almost as intimate as an old married couple. I say ‘almost’ because of course we were not a couple. Would never be.
But he was my friend.
The shade of his current lord and my former lover sat beside us all the while. Despite its presence, we never mentioned Gisborne. I never asked and Ulric never revealed – too much of truth and untruth that would need days to unravel. Besides I had another to think on – a reason to concentrate and stay alive.
William was at Mont Hault and needed his mother at least.
If not his father.
Ulric decided to move us on in the middle of that night. We left as quietly as two horses can and Ulric found his way along tracks with unerring skill. Whatever he had done for De Courcey and Gisborne had given him innate knowledge of hidden ways round the towns and settlements of the country. I remembered him as an apparently callow youth guarding me, and it seemed odd to reconcile that with the sharply attuned man who now rode in front. I realised I may have completely misjudged him. Perhaps I misjudged many.
Even Gisborne.
We didn’t talk, just moved doggedly on as far from Chester’s walls as we could get before light. Finally dawn lit the pathways and the birds began and I heaved a big sigh.
‘Safe now, Ysabel. Far enough away and off the beaten track. I’ll wager no one will find us.’
I could hear water chuckling and the chestnut, obviously thirsty, dragged at Ulric’s grip to turn toward the sound.
‘It’s the confluence of the Dee and Afon Alyn. If we follow the tracks along the smaller river, we shall reach Mont Hault in no time.’
‘And what is ‘no time’, Ulric?’
‘Oh a bell here, a bell there. You know. Suffice to say, Ysabel, that we are almost there but we must be beyond cautious. I have learned that when the end is in sight is when the worst mistakes are made. Wits, Ysabel, wits.’
He tapped the side of his head.
The rivers joined with a small tussle, a spat of white water as they ran together. The riverbanks fell easily to the water in some parts where shallows were lined with pebbles, steeper banks in others where the water swirled away in a muddy swathe, no sign of clarity. We urged the horses down the decline to the stones and they gratefully drank their fill and we dismounted and washed faces and hands.
Ulric offered me wine from our rapidly depleting bladder, worried the water may not be wholesome.
‘Ulric, I am so tired of all of this,’ I handed him the bladder back. ‘Mont Hault and the priory won’t come soon enough. I just want to seek peace, sanctuary. De Courcey and Halsham can’t touch me if I am under the church’s protection.’
‘True to a point, Ysabel. But the priory mayn’t be one of those that offer asylum in law. Methinks the best way for you to be safe is to be secret. Once William is with you again, we shall find a way of spiriting you and he far into the Welsh deeps where you will never be found.’
‘What is the name of this priory?’
‘The Priory of Linn. So named because close by, the Alyn runs over a small waterfall. In fact one can hear the water in the chapel. It’s a charming place. Only small. A dozen or so Benedictine nuns. But they have an intensive garden and grow for the sister house in Mont Hault.’
It reminded me of Saint Eadgyth’s and I said so and then asked how far. Ulric said not far, a day, maybe a little more and for me to be patient.
Patient!
We had a little food left – a bit of stale bread and the crusts of the pies. In the far distance we could see hills that grew to form a barrier between the sky and the land. I liked the look of it, as if nature offered its own protection: a defensive wall. We chewed the food, drank the last of the wine and looked at each other.
‘That’s it then, Ulric, we have to move on … let’s go now and use the daylight and travel through the night as well. Please?’
You do not know what it is to be a mother who has lost her son. Who has run for a twelve month. Whose heartbeat is perpetually startled.
He gave me a long look, mouth in an unhappy line.
‘Please!’
‘This is ill-advised, Ysabel. Slow and steady.’
‘I cannot, I’m close to breaking madness, Ulric. Please!’
Horrified, I felt tears prick my eyes and I blinked.
He stood and tightened the chestnut’s girth.
‘Alright. But we must be careful. Keep your knife close.’
I thought he stretched the danger, but touched the misericorde for assurance after I had mounted.
He led off into the dappled woods that grew beside the Alyn and I allowed the bird and river sounds to calm my nerves. Each time my mind started to race toward imagined disaster, I pulled it back and tried to envisage my little boy. I could feel his hair under my chin, silky and soft. I could smell him… like puppies there is a smell about infants, as if life hasn’t polluted their souls yet. And when I looked on him, he grinned. A toothless smile of little relevance really, but a smile none the less.
And that’s when I missed the arrow flying past. All I heard was a sharp cry from Ulric as he fell onto the chestnut’s neck, an arrow embedded in his shoulder. I spurred Dominic up by his side, grabbing the reins, shouting hyar and kicking both horses at a shambling canter toward a dense thicket.
‘Ysabel,’ Ulric whispered. ‘Go … get you gone. Follow the river. Fly!’
‘No. Ulric, it is a mere wounding in your shoulder, let me pull it out…’ I could hear a crashing through the forest behind and my heart leaped as I grabbed the shaft.
‘No! Do not! I order you, go!’
His face had a sheen of sweat atop an awful pallour and I wondered if the arrow was barbed. I grabbed the shaft and broke it as close to his shoulder as I could, throwing the rest away.
‘There,’ I said. You can ride with one hand.’
I noticed a small bow tied to the front of the chestnut’s saddle, slashing at the lash with my blade.
‘Ulric! The arrows, where?’
‘Underneath, in the quiver.’
He was close to fainting.
I grabbed one, nocked it and prepared to take on the ambushers as the noise of shouts grew closer. I loosed the arrow away in panic and heard a yell but the shouts came on so I nocked another. My hands shook, the arrow slipping.
‘God!’ I yelled, drawing back the string, straining it as hard as I could.
Two men burst through the scrub, the horses starting, Ulric dangling over the chestnut’s neck. I loosed again, so close it was impossible to miss and found a mark, one man screaming and falling with an arrow embedded in his chest. His companion snarled and leaped forward and I reached for another arrow but the chestnut shied away with Ulric’s arms hanging down.
No!
The bow was useless and I threw it at the face in front of me. His hair was long and greasy, his beard tangled, clothing filthy and torn, he had a tattooed mark on his arm and I watched the tendons slip and slide as he reached for Dominic’s bridle to throw his whole weight on it.
He spoke in the Welsh tongue and his eyes flamed with hatred. I slid down the other side of Dominic, glad of my male clothes and grabbing the misericorde, ran for the edge of the thicket. But the outlaw followed, longer legs, faster. He grabbed my surcoat and yanked, flinging me down hard, my knife grip almost loosening as he reached for my purse.
I lifted my arm to thrust the misericorde into his side with every ounce of strength I possessed and it slid through the thin scraps of leather. The felon snarled, his breath foetid, pulling at the blade with one giant maw whilst the tattooed arm reached back and clouted the side of my head brutally, right on the eyebrow. My teeth rattled as I stared at a face that had death carved into every line and I knew my moment had come.
No William.
No freedom.
No life.
And so I closed my eyes, best not to see it coming, as my ears rang with all the bells of an horarium and my head ached with ferocious pain. There was an odd gurgling sound and then a crashing weight fell against my shoulder as I was dragged sideways.
I opened my eyes and stared at the face of death again, his eyes meeting mine. Wide, fixed, the blood from a slit in his neck pooling, some trickling from his mouth and all the while that hideous bubble. Somehow I managed to get to my knees and scramble backward until arms pulled me up and placed me hard against a tree.
‘Ysabel,’ the voice I would never forget dragged my eyes from the felon.
Chapter Seventeen
I looked at Gisborne, seeing but not.
His hand brought a wad to my eyebrow. ‘Your scar has opened.’
Nothing to say, no words, just trembles coursing through my body.
But then,
‘Ulric!’ I pushed from the tree, starting across the glade but his hand held me back.
‘By the river with the horses.’
‘Alive?’
He nodded.
‘Mary Mother!’
I ran then, thrusting him away, afraid of my feelings, of pain and of confrontation – pushing through the thicket away from my dearest dream, my worst nightmare.
‘Ulric!’
I found him lying propped against the riverbank, the horses wide-eyed and half-in half-out of the water. His face had paled and he whispered, ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘For what?’
I knelt and looked at the remains of the arrow still obscenely pricked into his shoulder.
‘For not protecting you.’
‘You were…’
‘He sustained an arrow wound and assumed he would die. Fainted at the sight of blood!’
‘As I almost did once.’
‘Almost.’
Gisborne knelt by Ulric’s side with a broken piece of wood wrapped in a torn strip.
‘Bite this,’ he shoved it into Ulric’s mouth. ‘You can be glad the arrow’s not barbed or you’d be in a lot more pain. When I pull, don’t bring the Welsh down on us, man.’
Ulric’s eyes widened to show the whites but he bit anyway. Gisborne grasped what was left of the shaft and pulled, Ulric’s moan wretched to hear. Without waiting, Gisborne poured wine in the wound and placed a folded pad of linen over it, blood immediately soaking through.
‘We haven’t time for more. You need to mount, both of you, and we must move fast. De Courcey
and Halsham are on their way to Mont Hault.’
My head throbbed but I managed to speak without slurring.
‘Sir Guy, thank you. Now you’ve discharged your life-debt to me from Anjou, take Ulric and leave. I wish to continue alone to the priory without risking anyone’s life but my own.’
As I finished, I took up Dominic’s reins, mounted and looked down on them both. Little spots of blood ran down my cheek and dropped onto the hood. ‘Ulric, you will ever be my friend, I am grateful beyond belief for your loyalty but please go with your lord now.’
I kicked Dominic and we leaped up the riverbank, cantering along the track by the Alyn, increasing our pace as the track widened.
I could not think. My head was filled with fluffy cloud and the pain with each jolting stride was like hot pincers near my eye. Every now and then, a dizzy blackness would block vision and then clear, enough to see a horse gaining on my near side and a hand reach out to pull steadily on the reins until both horses had jerked to a halt. I shook my head, turning as vision blurred and cleared, blurred and cleared.
Eyes met mine glance for glance, the air solid and tempestuous, but I recognized something in the expression. This man felt compassion for me…
‘Guy,’ I whispered and slumped onto Dominic’s neck.
Bells.
Every now and then.
Bells that made me feel safe – as if I belonged.
I opened my eyes and a nun smiled at me. ‘Ah, awake. Pain?’
‘No…’
In truth my head ached, throbbing like a tabor by my temple. I swung my eyes around, a move least like to discommode. A cell, whitewashed walls, monastic simplicity – nothing new then. But the noise, a rushing sound, tumbling, perhaps even roaring if the breeze should change. I turned my head to the window – horn-covered, the strips of flattened animal horn allowing a vaguely translucent light to enter.
‘You can hear the waterfall, the linn after which our priory is named.’ The nun was like an apple, rotund and with red cheeks.
