The Stone Rose

by Carol Townend

  ‘Mistress?’ Johanna’s dark eyes were watchful.

  The wet nurse was commendably cool. Gwenn found this surprising, but had no time to ponder on the vagaries of Johanna’s character. Directing her mind to the seemingly impossible task of keeping her candle steady, Gwenn went to rouse her sister. ‘Come on, Katarin,’ she said brightly. It was a miracle her tongue worked at all, for her throat was dry as dust. ‘We’re rising early today.’

  Katarin had her thumb in her mouth. She removed it long enough to ask, ‘Why?’

  Gwenn wrenched her lips into a smile. ‘We are going to pray.’ The thumb came out again and Gwenn’s heart lurched. Please God, she prayed, don’t let Katarin start asking questions, not now.

  ‘What’s all that crashing, Gwenn?’

  ‘The men are practising,’ Gwenn answered briskly. It was a feeble answer, for Katarin was no idiot child and she knew well enough that the men never practised in the small hours. But it was the only explanation her beleaguered mind tossed up, and if Gwenn answered her firmly enough, perhaps Katarin might believe her. ‘Come along, Katarin. Prayers.’

  The thumb went in, and obediently Katarin climbed from the bed. Blood-curdling noises were being channelled up the stairwell. Gwenn shut her ears and found her sister’s clothes. The child was old enough to dress unaided, so, having handed her sister her dress, she rooted in the coffer for the dagger. Digging it out, she looked disparagingly at it. It wasn’t much of a dagger. The blade was dull, the whalebone haft yellow and cracked with age. It couldn’t have seen a whetstone in years. She ran a finger down one edge, and grimaced, it was blunt. However, it looked stronger than her eating knife...

  She shook her head. What use was one dagger when it appeared they’d been invaded by an army?

  The solar brightened. Mary was holding a couple of reed dips to the cressets. Klara whimpered. Bella the dairymaid began to sob. Gwenn clenched her teeth. Like frightened sheep, the other women clustered round Bella, making sympathetic noises. Gwenn stalked to the centre of the chamber. ‘Think of the child, Bella,’ she said, sternly.

  ‘But, mistress–’

  ‘Will someone lead us in prayer?’ Gwenn asked. She noticed that Mary wore a calmer face than the rest of them. ‘Mary?’

  ‘Aye, mistress. As you will.’

  As Gwenn waved the women into place round the Virgin, the flaring cresset light fell on a mason’s hammer and chisel that had been kicked into a cobwebby corner. A week ago her father had set a mason to work on a new privy, and the man must have left his tools out, handy for finishing his work.

  ‘Hail Mary,’ Mary began to intone.

  Gwenn shivered, and was for an instant whirled back to Lady Day two years earlier. She was in St Peter’s Cathedral, listening to the Black Monk preaching. She could see two mercenaries leaning against the cathedral porch. She was fleeing them, running, running...

  ‘...Full of grace. Blessed art thou amongst women...’

  Gwenn took a grip on herself. It was Mary taking the prayers, not Father Jerome. And the two mercenaries were no longer callous strangers, but Ned Fletcher, her friend, and Alan le Bret, who, while he was no friend, had saved her life. Dragging her mind to the present, she marched to the corner where the mason’s tools lay. They might make weapons.

  ‘...Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus...’ Mary dropped to her knees and the other women followed her lead.

  The hammer was old, its handle worn, but it was solid. The chisel needed sharpening, but – Gwenn’s mouth twisted – it was no blunter than her dagger. She’d hate to have to use them, but if she must... She flexed her shoulders. They had three possible weapons between them. Three weapons, seven women, and two children. She shot a furtive glance at the door. Exactly what were they up against? Women and children would be safe, wouldn’t they?

  A chilling screech rang in their ears. Klara moaned. ‘Enough of that,’ Gwenn said, tightly. Klara ignored her, rocking to and fro as she knelt. Her moaning rose, became a wail.

  Mary chanted more loudly. ‘Save us now and at the hour of our death.’

  Katarin had emerged from their sleeping alcove and looked at them with a child’s wide-eyed curiosity. Gwenn dredged up a smile and held out her hand. ‘Good girl, you’re dressed. Come here, sweetheart.’ Wrapping her sister’s cold hand securely in hers, she knelt to pray.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Waldin St Clair, champion-at-arms, was in his element. Glad to be in harness again after his recent life of ease, his sword whirled before him, clearing a route directly to the centre of the maelstrom in the hall. Surrounded by his brother’s enemies and cutting them down as though they were no more than stalks of corn and his sword was a reaper’s scythe, he was outnumbered, but undaunted. He bared his teeth in a fierce grin and welcomed the frantic pounding of his heart. The blood rushed invigoratingly through his veins. He felt alive as he hadn’t for weeks.

  The clamour was deafening. It was like the mêlée in a tournament, with one notable difference. In the mêlée, Waldin’s inbuilt sense of chivalry made him temper the blows he had delivered. Chivalry did not shackle his hands today. There was no need for him to take care to avoid giving a death-dealing blow or a crippling strike. These lousy assassins had crept up on Kermaria like thieves in the night, they deserved as bad a death as he could give them. They were allied with a lord whose quarrel with Jean ranked them lower than the meanest outlaw. In Waldin’s eyes, they had signed their own death warrants.

  François de Roncier was fighting by the great fire, and though well mailed and helmeted so his shock of copper hair was concealed, his round, ruddy visage was plain for anyone to see. He had stepped outside the law in loosing his cutthroats on Kermaria. Barely a month ago, Waldin’s brother had taken his claim to the de Wirce lands to court. The judgement had not been given, and it might well be made in the Count’s favour, for his family had held the land for years and possession was nine tenths of the law. If the court found in favour of de Roncier, this slaughter would be for nothing.

  And it was slaughter. One keen, professional glance told Waldin that the couple of dozen men who guarded his brother’s manor were outnumbered four to one. Though Waldin’s own dexterity and the tactics he had passed on to Jean’s guard tipped the scales a little in Kermaria’s favour, his brother’s men would probably meet their maker before the sun rose. Against so large a force, they did not have a chance. Waldin was not afraid to die – not this way. For this would be a glorious death. He would go with his sword in his hand. He would go cleanly, fighting a just cause.

  The last winter had brought him the odd twinge of rheumatism, his first. It had been a depressing warning of what was in store. Reluctantly, Waldin had resigned himself to a slow diminishing of that vitality by which he had lived. If his fate was to grow old slowly and painfully, growing less mobile and more feeble with each passing season, then so be it. He had managed to convince himself that he was resigned to his fate. But now, with his blood running hot and fierce, he acknowledged he had been deluding himself. He had not wanted to die a slow, lingering death with his faculties diminishing year by year. And all at once he was presented with the opportunity to go the way he would have chosen – the warrior’s way. And for his brother’s sake, Waldin vowed to give a good account of himself before his soul was hewn from his body.

  Waldin saw Jean’s squire, young Roger de Herion, go down squealing, a spear through his belly, and winced. He repaid the man who’d skewered Roger with a clean thrust. ‘More than you deserve,’ he muttered, pulling his sword clear. There was no time to wipe his sword clean on his victim’s leather breeches before another of the Count’s men stood before him. Buoyed up, exhilarated, Waldin parried thrust after thrust. Another de Roncier heathen threw down the gage. Waldin ran him through with cold efficiency, but instantly another sprang up to take his place. The odds were stacked against them, and knowing that his end must come soon, Waldin’s mind worked feverishly, as though it could squeeze several years’ thinkin
g into one minute. Jean, Waldin recalled, scorned his own love of glory. Jean would not appreciate the honour in dying outnumbered. Jean would not want his lifeblood to drain to away on the floor of his hall. He scanned the room for his brother. Jean had engaged de Roncier himself and, like most of the St Clair men, he had not had time to don his hauberk.

  ‘You won’t get away with this,’ Jean gasped, making a pass at the Count.

  De Roncier side-stepped nimbly and lifted his lips in a snarl. ‘You think not?’

  Jean made another stroke. ‘They’ll know who did this.’ François lunged, aiming for the knight’s heart. Jean turned his opponent’s blade aside with a grace that brought a smile to Waldin’s lips.

  ‘Neatly done, brother,’ Waldin breathed approvingly, and started clearing a path towards them.

  ‘The Duke will suspect,’ Jean ground out, ‘when it comes to light that we’re at odds in his lawcourt.’

  François shook his head.

  ‘Who else would dare break the Duke’s peace? This land is his, and his writ is absolute here.’

  François held up a mailed hand. ‘If you’ll hold off a moment?’

  Jean nodded and shifted his sword to one side, eyes wary, but listening.

  A wolfish gleam fired in the ruined hazel eyes. ‘You must know that a band of pirates have taken to mooring their ships in the Small Sea,’ François said. ‘They’ve been working their way up the estuaries, of which yours is but one. They take cover in the forest. I think you’ll find it’s the pirates who shoulder the blame for this, not I.’

  A blond hulk blocked Waldin’s view, and made a pass. Waldin turned it aside without conscious thought, and tried to forge towards his brother and the Count, but the hulk had a long reach and barred his way. Waldin swore, for his mind was set on purging the world of the parasite that was de Roncier.

  His brother and the Count re-engaged. Little by little, de Roncier was driving Jean back to the gaily tiled hearth. Waldin frowned. Another step and Jean would be dancing on hot ashes. He saw his brother’s sword sweep wide of the mark, and his frown deepened. That was not his brother’s style, a four year-old could have done better. What was he up to?

  But almost before that question had finished forming, Waldin’s febrile mind threw up an answer. Jean was not even trying. Staring at his brother, it dawned on Waldin that for months they’d been gazing at the face of a man who had already suffered a mortal blow and was scarcely keeping body and soul together. Behind the front, his brother had crumbled to dust. Jean had relinquished responsibility for military matters, and he had not merely been providing a bored brother with something to stop him twiddling his thumbs. The delegation had been total. Jean had had the stuffing knocked out of him. He had lost interest in life, he had given up. He remembered the moves – witness that brilliant warding pass he had made a few moments ago – but he was not choosing to use them. Since the day his wife had died, Jean had been a shell of a man.

  Waldin flicked his wrist, and severed an artery in the neck of a de Roncier trooper. Petrified, the soldier stared at Waldin with the eyes of a man who knew that he had been dealt a mortal blow. He toppled slowly, soundlessly, his blood pumping into the rushes. Jean was practically in the fireplace. Stepping over the fallen man and forcing his way through the scrimmage, Waldin went to give him aid. It was far better to go on your own home ground, he thought grimly. Far better to go fighting for a brother you loved than to die on a stranger’s land for a cause you had no share in. He would have his warrior’s death, and it would be a burning, glorious, defiant death. He’d fight to the bitter end, and if he couldn’t take François de Roncier with him, he’d have to trust in God to see that that swine’s felonies did not go unrewarded.

  Crouching in the doorway, Gwenn stared at a scene from the mouth of Hell.

  Gone was the well-ordered hall she had sat and sewed in with her mother. Pallets still strewed the floor, mute testimony to the unexpectedness of the attack. Lying across the bedrolls were bodies; but the bodies were broken, bloodied bodies, and the sleep those men were sleeping was not one from which they would ever awaken. Men were screaming. Men were groaning. Men were chillingly silent. Transfixed with horror, Gwenn was unaware that her sister had left the women and was climbing down the winding stairs after her.

  Catching sight of Roger, her father’s squire, for one moment Gwenn fancied him festooned with red silk ribbons. Then she realised the lad was beribboned with his own guts. Her gorge rose and she reeled back. She forced her gaze back to the conflict. She was rigid with fear for her father. She had to see for herself that he was numbered among the quick. And where were Waldin and Raymond? Were all the men she loved dead already? What of Ned? At first she could not mark any of them among the seething mass of fighting, living men. Her eyes were skimming the lifeless forms sprawled over pallets and rushes, when the fray cleared in front of her and she was granted a clear view of her father.

  Jean and Waldin were standing hip to hip, measuring swords with a man whom Gwenn did not recognise. She had picked up enough knowledge of arms from her menfolk to know at a glance that the man’s hauberk and helm were out of the ordinary. This must be the detested Count de Roncier. He shouted hoarsely, and in an instant four soldiers were at their lord’s side, their swords directed at the St Clair brothers.

  Her breath was coming in fast, uneven gasps. She tried to swallow, couldn’t. Though it was unnecessary, for the brothers had seen de Roncier, she tried to shout a warning. The words lodged in her throat. Her legs were unable to support her, and she sank to her knees.

  A shadow fell over her. A blood-smeared face stared wildly into hers and her heart dropped and thumped about in her stomach. Under the red streaks, the face was pale, and one that she knew. ‘Ned!’ she blurted, giddy with relief, for she had feared that her last moment had come.

  ‘Get upstairs!’ Ned gasped, pointing with his sword.

  Without his gambeson he looked alarmingly vulnerable. He had a helmet, but it was dented. His tunic was torn and hanging off one shoulder. His knuckles were scraped raw.

  ‘Ned...’ Sick with fear, Gwenn pinned her eyes on his face, for bloody and changed as her father’s captain was, he was at least recognisable. Nothing else in that hell of a hall was the least bit familiar.

  ‘Move, Gwenn.’ He was so concerned for Gwenn’s safety, that not only did he forget the title that was her due, he reinforced his command by giving her a bruising kick on the thigh. ‘Get upstairs,’ he said, and groaned in frustration when she didn’t obey him.

  ‘Papa!’ White as bone, Gwenn looked past Ned at the figures grouped round the fireplace. Ned’s fist clenched. ‘Papa!’ she repeated, on a rising note. She shot Ned a look of agony. ‘Where’s the glory in this?’

  ‘Gwenn, you must–’

  ‘This is butchery, not glory. Look! Five against two!’ Ned whirled round ‘Give them aid, Ned. Please.’

  It was then that Katarin reached the comfort of her sister’s skirts.

  ‘Katarin!’ Gwenn exclaimed, and her hands came up to shield Katarin’s eyes.

  ‘I’ll help them,’ Ned said. ‘But you must go up. For your sister, if not for yourself.’

  Gwenn nodded and, sword up, Ned dived back into the mêlée.

  If Gwenn was rigid with fear, Katarin had slipped into another world altogether. The little girl’s sixth sense had informed her that today was going to be worse than the day her mother had died. Afraid that Gwenn might be stolen from her too, she had crept after her. The women upstairs had tried to restrain her, but Katarin had wanted Gwenn, no other would do. Katarin wound her arms tight as bindweed about her sister’s narrow waist.

  Ned fought his way to the fire. ‘Sir Jean! I’m with you!’

  Jean grunted acknowledgement. Both he and his brother had a crimson-tipped sword in one hand and a dagger in the other. They were fighting like Saracens, but it was only a matter of time before one of them went down.

  ‘Get out, Ned!’ Jean gasped between s
trokes.

  ‘Sir?’ Ned shouldered an iron candlestand onto one of de Roncier’s company, and found himself smiling when the man backed onto Denis the Red’s blade.

  Jean jerked his head at the stairwell. ‘Gwenn...’

  Ned’s heart missed a beat, for Gwenn had not gone up as she had promised. She and her sister were kneeling, and Gwenn was staring straight at them, watching them like a frightened rabbit watches the hound that is about to tear it limb from limb.

  ‘Get her out!’ Jean yelled. Sweat poured down his forehead and into his brown eyes. ‘Get them upstairs!’

  De Roncier lunged, and a thin ruby line sprang across St Clair’s lean cheek. The blood mingled with his perspiration.

  Clashing swords with a de Roncier henchman, Ned saw another drop to his knees. Waldin was giving a good account of himself.

  ‘To me!’ François de Roncier bellowed. ‘To me!’ And two more of his company sprang out of nowhere like dragon’s teeth in the ancient fable. Both these men were confident enough to be grinning, and one of them had been causing havoc with an axe. He was no stranger to Ned.

  Ned gulped. ‘Malait!’

  Recognition flared in the cool Nordic eyes and, astonishingly, the flailing axe paused. ‘Greetings – Fletcher, isn’t it? You switched horses once. I take it you’re not of a mind to do it again?’

  The only response was a deft twist of Ned’s wrist, a trick Waldin had taught him. It sent Ned’s blade slicing through the air and wiped the smirk from the Viking’s lips. To save his nose, Otto leapt backwards and, slipping in some blood, went sprawling.

  ‘Fletcher!’ Jean roared. ‘Run, damn you!’ Breathing hard, he punctuated his words with wide, sweeping sword strokes. ‘God curse you...I’m commanding you... Run! Take Gwenn, and run.’

  ‘Wh...where?’

  ‘The woods. Christ’s wounds, anywhere but here! Do what you have to, but keep Gwenn and the children safe.’ Never had Ned received an order more to his liking, but he hesitated, and a razor-sharp blade whistled past his ear. ‘Well? Do you obey me?’