Dead Man's Ransom bc-9

by Ellis Peters

  ‘The Welsh of Powys, a war, party not two hours away! Do the women know of it? We could still get them away towards the town, they’re surely mustering there, but late…’ ‘Easy, easy!’ said the miller, letting his weapon fall, and scooping up his pile of murderous, pointed poles. ‘You’ve found your tongue in a hurry, seemingly! And whose side may you be on this time, and who let you loose? Here, carry these, if you’re come to make yourself useful.’ ‘The women must be got away,’ persisted Elis feverishly. ‘It’s not too late, if they go at once… Get me leave to speak to them, surely they’ll listen. If they were safe, we could stand off even a war, band, I came to warn them…’ ‘Ah, but they know. We’ve kept good watch since the last time. And the women won’t budge, so you may spare your breath to make one man more, and welcome,’ said the miller, ‘if you’re so minded. Mother Mariana holds it would be want of faith to shift an ell, and Sister Magdalen reckons she can be more use where she is, and most of the folks hereabouts would say that’s no more than truth. Come on, let’s get these planted, the ford’s pitted already.’ Elis found himself running beside the big man, his arms full. The smoothest stretch of the brook flanked the chapel wall of the grange, and he realised as he fed out stakes at the miller’s command that there was a certain amount of activity among the bushes and coppice, woods on both sides of the water. The men of the forest were well aware of the threat, and had made their own preparations, and by her previous showing, Sister Magdalen must also be making ready for battle. To have Mother Mariana’s faith in divine protection is good, but even better if backed by the practical assistance heaven has a right to expect from sensible mortals. But a war, party of a hundred or more, and with one ignominious rout to avenge! Did they understand what they were facing?

  ‘I need a weapon,’ said Elis, standing aloft on the bank with feet solidly spread and black head reared towards the north, west, from which the menace must come. ‘I can use sword, lance, bow, whatever’s to spare… That hatchet of yours, on a long haft…’ He had another chance weapon of his own, he had just realised it. If only he could get wind in time, and be the first to face them when they came, he had a loud Welsh tongue where they would be looking only for terrified English, he had the fluency of bardic stock, all the barbs of surprise, vituperation and scarifying mockery, to loose in a flood against the cowardly paladins who came preying on holy women. A tongue like a whip, lash! Better still drunk, perhaps, to reach the true heights of scalding invective, but even in this state of desperate sobriety, it might still serve to unnerve and delay.

  Elis waded into the water, and selected a place for one of his stakes, hidden among the water, weed with its point sharply inclined to impale anyone crossing in unwary haste. By the careful way John Miller was moving, the ford had been pitted well out in midstream. If the attackers were horsed, a step astray into one of those holes might at once lame the horse and toss the rider forward on to the pales. If they came afoot, at least some might fall foul of the pits, and bring down their fellows with them, in a tangle very vulnerable to archery.

  The miller, knee, deep in midstream, stood to look on critically as Elis drove in his murderous stake, and bedded it firmly through the tenacious mattress of weed into the soil under the bank. ‘Good lad!’ he said with mild approval. ‘We’ll find you a pikel, or the foresters may have an axe to spare among them. You shan’t go weaponless if your will’s good.’ Sister Magdalen, like the rest of the household, had been up since dawn, marshalling all the linens, scissors, knives, lotions, ointments and stunning draughts that might be needed within a matter of hours, and speculating how many beds could be made available with decorum and where, if any of the men of her forest army should be too gravely hurt to be moved. Magdalen had given serious thought to sending away the two young postulants eastward to Beistan, but decided against it, convinced in the end that they were safer where they were. The attack might never come. If it did, at least here there was readiness, and enough stout, hearted forest folk to put up a good defence. But if the raiders moved instead towards Shrewsbury, and encountered a force they could not match, then they would double back and scatter to make their way home, and two girls hurrying through the woods eastward might fall foul of them at any moment on the way. No, better hold together here. In any case, one look at Melicent’s roused and indignant face had given her due warning that that one, at any rate, would not go even if she was ordered.

  ‘I am not afraid,’ said Melicent disdainfully.

  ‘The more fool you,’ said Sister Magdalen simply. ‘Unless you’re lying, of course. Which of us doesn’t, once challenged with being afraid! Yet it’s generations of being afraid, with good reason, that have caused us to think out these defences.’ She had already made all her dispositions within. She climbed the wooden steps into the tiny bell, turret and looked out over the exposed length of the brook and the rising bank beyond, thickly lined with bushes, and climbing into a slope once coppiced but now run to neglected growth. Countrymen who have to labour all the hours of daylight to get their living cannot, in addition, keep up a day, and, night vigil for long. Let them come today, if they’re coming at all, thought Sister Magdalen, now that we’re at the peak of resolution and readiness, can do no more, and can only grow stale if we must wait too long.

  From the opposite bank she drew in her gaze to the brook itself, the deep, cut and rocky bed smoothing out under her walls to the broad stretch of the ford. And there John Miller was just wading warily ashore, the water turgid after his passage and someone else, a young fellow with a thatch of black curls, was bending over the last stake, vigorous arms and shoulders driving it home, low under the bank and screened by reeds. When he straightened up and showed a flushed face, she knew him.

  She descended to the chapel very thoughtfully. Melicent was busy putting away, in a coffer clamped to the wall and strongly banded, the few valuable ornaments of the altar and the house. At least it should be made as difficult as possible to pillage this modest church.

  ‘You have not looked out to see how the men progress?’ said Sister Magdalen mildly. ‘It seems we have one ally more than we knew. There’s a young Welshman of your acquaintance and mine hard at work out there with John Miller. A change of allegiance for him, but by the look of him he relishes this cause more than when he came the last time.’ Melicent turned to stare, her eyes very wide and solemn. ‘He?’ she said, in a voice brittle and low. ‘He was prisoner in the castle. How can he be here?’ ‘Plainly he has slipped his collar. And been through a bog or two on his way here,’ said Sister Magdalen placidly, ‘by the state of his boots and hose, and I fancy fallen in at least one by his dirty face.’ ‘But why make this way? If he broke loose… what is he doing here?’ demanded Melicent feverishly.

  ‘By all the signs he’s making ready to do battle with his own countrymen. And since I doubt if he remembers me warmly enough to break out of prison in order to fight for me,’ said Sister Magdalen with a small, reminiscent smile, ‘I take it he’s concerned with your safety. But you may ask him by leaning over the fence.’ ‘No!’ said Melicent in sharp recoil, and closed down the lid of the coffer with a clash. ‘I have nothing to say to him.’ And she folded her arms and hugged herself tightly as if cold, as if some traitor part of her might break away and scuttle furtively into the garden.

  ‘Then if you’ll give me leave,’ said Sister Magdalen serenely, ‘I think I have.’ And out she went, between newly, dug beds and first salad sowings in the enclosed garden, to mount the stone block that made her tall enough to look over the fence. And suddenly there was Elis ap Cynan almost nose to nose with her, stretching up to peer anxiously within. Soiled and strung and desperately in earnest, he looked so young that she, who had never borne children, felt herself grandmotherly rather than merely maternal. The boy recoiled, startled, and blinked as he recognised her. He flushed beneath the greenish smear the marsh had left across his cheek and brow, and reached a pleading hand to the crest of the fence between them.

  ‘S
ister, is she, is Melicent within there?’ ‘She is, safe and well,’ said Sister Magdalen, ‘and with God’s help and yours, and the help of all the other stout souls busy on our account like you, safe she’ll remain. How you got here I won’t enquire, boy, but whether let out or broken out you’re very welcome.’ ‘I wish to God,’ said Elis fervently,’that she was back in Shrewsbury this minute.’ ‘So do I, but better here than astray in between. And besides, she won’t go.’ ‘Does she know,’ he asked humbly,’that I am here?’ ‘She does, and what you’re about, too.’ ‘Would she not, could you not persuade her?, to speak to me?’ ‘That she refuses to do. But she may think the more,’ said Sister Magdalen encouragingly. ‘If I were you, I’d let her alone to think the while. She knows you’re here to fight for us, there’s matter for thought there. Now you’d best go to ground soon and keep in cover. Go and sharpen whatever blade they’ve found for you and keep yourself whole. These flurries never take long,’ she said, resigned and tolerant, ‘but what comes after lasts a lifetime, yours and hers. You take care of Elis ap Cynan, and I’ll take care of Melicent.’ Hugh and his twenty men had skirted the Breidden hills before the hour of Prime, and left those great, hunched outcrops on the right as they drove on towards Westbury. A few remounts they got there, not enough to relieve all the tired beasts. Hugh had held back to a bearable pace for that very reason, and allowed a halt to give men and horses time to breathe. It was the first opportunity there had been even to speak a word, and now that it came no man had much to say. Not until the business on which they rode was tackled and done would tongues move freely again. Even Hugh, lying flat on his back for ease beside Cadfael under the budding trees, did not question him concerning his business in Wales.

  ‘I’ll ride with you, if I can finish my business here,’ Cadfael had said. Hugh had asked him nothing then, and did not ask him now. Perhaps because his mind was wholly engrossed in what had to be done to drive the Welsh of Powys back into Caus and beyond. Perhaps because he considered this other matter to be very much Cadfael’s business, and was willing to wait for enlightenment until it was offered, as at the right time it would be.

  Cadfael braced his aching back against the bole of an oak just forming its tight leaf, buds, eased his chafed feet in his boots, and felt his sixty, one years. He felt all the older because all these troubled creatures pulled here and there through this tangle of love and guilt and anguish were so young and vulnerable. All but the victim, Gilbert Prestcote, dead in his helpless weakness, for whom Hugh would, because he must, take vengeance. There could be no clemency, there was no room for it. Hugh’s lord had been done to death, and Hugh would exact payment. In iron duty, he had no choice.

  ‘Up!’ said Hugh, standing over him, smiling the abstracted but affectionate smile that flashed like a reflection from the surface of his mind when his entire concern was elsewhere. ‘Get your eyes open! We’re off again.’ And he reached a hand to grip Cadfael’s wrist and hoist him to his feet, so smoothly and carefully that Cadfael was minded to take offence. He was not so old as all that, nor so stiff! But he forgot his mild grievance when Hugh said: !A shepherd from Pontesbury brought word. They’re up from their night camp and making ready to move.’ Cadfael was wide awake instantly. ‘What will you do?’ ‘Hit the road between them and Shrewsbury and turn them back. Alan will be up and alert, we may meet him along the way.’ ‘Dare they attempt the town?’ wondered Cadfael, astonished.

  ‘Who knows? They’re blown up with success, and I’m thought to be far off. And our man says they’ve avoided Minsterley but brought men round it by night. It seems they may mean a foray into the suburbs, at least, even if they draw off after. Town pickings would please them. But we’ll be faster, we’ll make for Hanwood or thereabouts and be between.’ Hugh made a gentle joke of hoisting Cadfael into the saddle, but for all that, Cadfael set the pace for the next mile, ruffled at being humoured and considered like an old man. Sixty, one was not old, only perhaps a little past a man’s prime. He had, after all, done a great deal of hard riding these last few days, he had a right to be stiff and sore.

  They came over a hillock into view of the Shrewsbury road, and beheld, thin and languid in the air above the distant trees beyond, a faint column of smoke rising. ‘From their douted fires,’ said Hugh, reining in to gaze. ‘And I smell older burning than that. Somewhere near the rim of the forest, someone’s barns have gone up in flames.’ ‘More than a day old and the smoke gone,’ said Cadfael, sniffing the air. ‘Better make straight for them, while we know where they are, for there’s no telling which way they’ll strike next.’ Hugh led his party down to the road and across it, where they could deploy in the fringes of woodland, going fast but quietly in thick turf. For a while they kept within view of the road, but saw no sign of the Welsh raiders. It began to seem that their present thrust was not aimed at the town after all, or even the suburbs, and Hugh led his force deeper into the woodland, striking straight at the deserted night camp. Beyond that trampled spot there were traces enough for eyes accustomed to reading the bushes and grass. A considerable number of men had passed through here on foot, and not so long ago, with a few ponies among them to leave droppings and brush off budding twigs from the tender branches. The ashen, blackened ruin of a cottage and its clustering sheds showed where their last victim had lost home, living and all, if not his life, and there was blood dried into the soil where a pig had been slaughtered. They spurred fast along the trail the Welsh had left, sure now where they were bound, for the way led deeper into the northern uplands of the Long Forest, and it could not be two miles now to the cell at Godric’s Ford.

  That ignominious rout at the hands of Sister Magdalen and her rustic army had indeed rankled. The men of Caus were not averse to driving off a few cattle and burning a farm or two by the way, but what they wanted above all, what they had come out to get, was revenge.

  Hugh set spurs to his horse and began to thread the open woodland at a gallop, and after him his company spurred in haste. They had gone perhaps a mile more when they heard before them, distant and elusive, a voice raised high and bellowing defiance.

  It was almost the hour of High Mass when Alan Herbard got his muster moving out of the castle wards. He was hampered by having no clear lead as to which way the raiders planned to move, and there was small gain in careering aimlessly about the western border hunting for them. For want of knowledge he had to stake on his reasoning. When the company rode out of the town they aimed towards Pontesbury itself, prepared to swerve either northward, to cut across between the raiders and Shrewsbury, or south, west towards Godric’s Ford, according as they got word on the way from scouts sent out before daylight. And this first mile they took at speed, until a breathless countryman started out of the bushes to arrest their passage, when they were scarcely past the hamlet of Beistan.

  ‘My lord, they’ve turned away from the road. From Pontesbury they’re making eastward into the forest towards the high commons. They’ve turned their backs on the town for other game. Bear south at the fork.’ ‘How many?’ demanded Herbard, already wheeling his horse in haste.

  ‘A hundred at least. They’re holding all together, no rogue stragglers left loose behind. They expect a fight.’ ‘They shall have one!’ promised Herbard and led his men south down the track, at a gallop wherever the going was fairly open.

  Eliud rode among the foremost, and found even that pace too slow. He had in full all the marks of suspicion and shame he had invited, the rope to hang him coiled about his neck for all to see, the archer to shoot him down if he attempted escape close at his back, but also he had a borrowed sword at his hip, a horse under him and was on the move. He fretted and burned, even in the chill of the March morning. Here Elis had at least the advantage of having ridden these paths and penetrated these woodlands once before. Eliud had never been south of Shrewsbury, and though the speed they were making seemed to his anxious heart miserably inadequate, he could gain nothing by breaking away, for he did not know exactly where Godric
’s Ford lay. The archer who followed him, however good a shot he might be, was no very great horseman, it might be possible to put on speed, make a dash for it and elude him, but what good would it do? Whatever time he saved he would inevitably waste by losing himself in these woods. He had no choice but to let them bring him there, or at least near enough to the place to judge his direction by ear or eye. There would be signs. He strained for any betraying sound as he rode, but there was nothing but the swaying and cracking of brushed branches, and the thudding rumble of their hooves in the deep turf, and now and again the call of a bird, undisturbed by this rough invasion, and startlingly clear.

  The distance could not be far now. They were threading rolling uplands of heath, to drop lower again into thick woodland and moist glades. All this way Elis must have run afoot in the night hours, splashing through these hollows of stagnant green and breasting the sudden rises of heather and scrub and outcrop rock.

  Herbard checked abruptly in open heath, waving them all to stillness. ‘Listen! Ahead on our right, men on the move.’ They sat straining their ears and holding their breath. Only the softest and most continuous whisper of sounds, compounded of the swishing and brushing of twigs, the rustle of last autumn’s leaves under many feet, the snap of a dead stick, the brief and soft exchange of voices, a startled bird rising from underfoot in shrill alarm and indignation. Signs enough of a large body of men moving through woods almost stealthily, without noise or haste.

  ‘Across the brook and very near the ford,’ said Herbard sharply. And he shook his bridle, spurred and was away, his men hard on his heels. Before them a narrow ride opened between well, grown trees, a long vista with a glimpse of low timber buildings, weathered dark brown, distant at the end of it, and a sudden lacework of daylight beyond, between the trees, where the channel of the brook crossed.