He would get swords for him and David, for one, and if any guards were drugged, so much the better. “But we shall need to be fast. Surprise must do most of it. Can you still run?”
“I am not yet in my dotage,” David replied. “What of the girl and her father?”
“Use her name, David.” Hugh stalked about the chamber between the arrow slits. He was unused to being confined within one room and by now felt like a capon in a pot. “Are you going to introduce me? I wish at the very least to exchange names and good wishes with the man, before we break out of here together.”
They were speaking in their local dialect for the sake of privacy, and Hugh was careful not to look at Solomon as he spoke, but the older man stepped away from the torchlight and tucked the roll of parchment he had been reading into his tunic.
“I know the speech of the West Country,” he said. “Your words hold no mystery to me. Yet you”—he nodded to Hugh—“you speak as if you know my daughter well. How is this? And do I know you? I cannot recall having seen you before, but you seem familiar to me.”
Hugh walked over to Solomon. He saw Joanna’s bright, compassionate eyes and her small determined chin, translated into a masculine form. He had expected to be tongued-tied before the man from whom he wanted so much, but the words came easily, perhaps because he already felt he knew the father through his daughter.
“You know me as David’s younger brother, Hugh Manhill. I know I am much changed, thanks largely to your Joanna. Yes, I am the thief who stole away your daughter, who kept her hostage, but now she and I have joined forces to free you. My being here, in this prison, is proof of my intent. My words to you now are proof of my good fellowship, for, if it pleases you, should you wish it, you can denounce me to the bishop.”
Behind him he heard David’s hissed intake of breath and knew his brother despised him for a heart-ransomed fool. But for all his former easy ways, David was ever more careful and grudging than himself in matters of the heart.
“I have a place of safety where we may go,” he went on. “A place of quiet, where you can continue your red work.”
I sound like an anxious house steward with an angry prince. Solomon is not my father—be not so desperate.
He could heard David tutting in disapproval as the silence drew on.
Then Solomon said, “Raise your hands.”
Puzzled, Hugh did so.
“I always make a study of hands.” Solomon circled him, giving his arms and hands quick, darting looks. Hugh felt he was being pricked all over, tested in some way.
“Faces can be trained to lie. Even the eyes can be made to look wide and guileless.” Solomon stopped his stroll directly in front of him. “A man’s hands are true.”
Solomon leaned forward, closer to his upraised palms. “Square-tipped fingers, big thumbs, calluses everywhere. A scar on the left palm. I have seen these hands before, Hugh Manhill.” He snapped his own hands on his thighs and looked directly into Hugh’s eyes. “You have a gentle touch for choice. Your dog has no fear of you. How does your good beast?”
“Beowulf is well,” Hugh replied, thinking the man quite as exotic as his daughter. He breathed out slowly, finding himself relieved to have been accepted. “Joanna helped me change this, and this.” He tugged at his red hair and tapped his raised boots.
“Quite so. Does my daughter know you are here now? Is that what she was trying to tell me, with her message?”
David cleared his throat. “I acknowledge I was mistaken in her intent.”
“It is for mankind to make mistakes. Do you not agree, Hugh?”
Hugh snorted, not yet ready to kiss and make peace with his brother. “Have you seen her? She is well, unharmed, un-troubled?”
Solomon nodded, his narrow face calm, without expression.
“Do you know when she may come here again?” Hugh went on. “Or has my fool brother frightened her off?”
“Joanna will come.”
He longed for such confidence. “Soon, you think?” The question escaped before he could stop it.
Solomon was unrolling his scroll of parchment but now he raised his head. “Ah.”
What did he mean by that?
Unwilling to know the answer, Hugh tried to focus on the practical. “Can you leave your things?”
“Things can always be replaced.”
“So are you ready to leave? Willing to leave?”
“Most gladly.” Solomon touched the nearest stone wall with the tips of his fingers. “I believe my daughter and I have long outstayed the welcome of the bishop. I doubt if he will even chase us, or not so far. We were a fancy for him, which I think he will not miss. Alchemists grow more common every year, even in West Sarum.” He smiled and Hugh saw Joanna again, a sight that threatened to melt his heart.
“Your brother on the other hand, with his promise of relics…”
“I have none nor know of any,” David said hurriedly.
“Can you run, if need be?” Hugh asked, still thinking on Joanna, remembering how she ran.
“For my life and freedom? Assuredly.” Solomon held out his hand.
Hugh took it and as they shook hands and he sensed Solomon’s easy goodwill, he felt a fine beginning had been made.
Now if only Joanna would come to deliver them—
You are to be rescued by a girl, a dark, unyielding scrap of his mind mocked. By a woman!
“So be it,” Hugh said aloud, his words a promise and a hope.
Chapter 35
Within the vast, high-ceilinged, smoke-filled palace kitchen, Joanna avoided the steward by stepping behind a burly spit boy. When Parvus strutted into the buttery to bully the cellar man, she hurried to a kitchen maid she knew well. Madge was slicing stale bread into trenchers, ready to use as plates for the midday meal. Her formerly acne-ridden skin glowed with health, thanks to Joanna’s unguents and suggestion of more daily fruit in her diet.
Plucking a wrinkled water pourer from its peg on one of the kitchen beams, Joanna shook it beside Madge.
“I need your help.”
“Anna!” Madge was the only one who called her that. Instants later, Joanna was enfolded into a close hug, the maid exclaiming at how well she looked. “And see the pastry cook over at that far bench? We are betrothed!”
Joanna congratulated the pair and genuinely wished them well, aware at the same time that if Parvus spotted her in the kitchens he would send her back to her chamber. “Please, Madge.” She was sorry to interrupt the maid’s wedding chatter but this next step was vital. “Can you bring me some of the best wine? I know the cellar man likes you.”
“Likes me! Tries to grope me each time we meet in the kitchen corridor, if truth be told. My Gregory says that will stop now, or he will bake Master Fletcher in a pie.”
Joanna feared to interrupt or remind her again but Madge, enlivened by this contest between admirers, thrust her knife into the rest of the loaf and said, “The best wine, you say? I may have to let him kiss me for that.”
Joanna blushed, recalling the kissing games between Hugh and herself. “Do you know who the latest prisoner is, in the donjon?”
“That creepy Frenchman who has lost his memory?”
“I thought it was another.”
“There may be, you know how these hostages change.” Madge glanced across the kitchen, flounced her skirts at Gregory the baker, and bustled round the table, mouthing, “Need the midden.”
As soon as she disappeared into the clouds of smoke that wreathed the kitchen close to the buttery doorway, Joanna realized she was still gripping the wrinkled water bag. She had forgotten to hand it over.
She leaned against the table, feeling light-headed with shame and anxiety. If she had missed such a simple thing, what else might go wrong?
Madge was already coming back. Had she been unable to kiss the cellar man with sufficient zeal? No, she was carrying a good-sized jug in both hands.
“Madge, you are a wonder!” Joanna felt herself sag with sheer rel
ief but Madge took her by the shoulder and whipped her about like a spinning top.
“Go, that evil Parvus is shuffling over. We do not want his pestering questions. Go!”
Desperate not to drop the jug, Joanna fled from the kitchen, worrying with every hasty step that she would be called back, hauled off to make an account with the bishop himself. Instead she emerged blinking, with smoke-filled lungs and eyes, into the bailey yard.
She would have to pass the man-cages again. Was Hugh perhaps languishing in there, with the other common criminals? It was against her every instinct to walk slowly by the cages but she made herself do it, enduring the taunts and the lewd gestures.
“Hey, sweetheart, let me give you something!”
“Whore-bait!”
“Help me—”
She hurried past that section of cage, away from the blind, ruined eyes and clawing fingers. The sight of the filthy, pale prisoners shamed her, as it always did. Dared she use the aqua fortis on the locks to the cages? Their breakout would keep the guards busy, but what if she was caught by those reaching hands?
I cannot be a hostage again. I will not be.
She backed farther away from the cages and sped on, almost colliding with a monk carrying a book with golden clasps in her keenness to be away. His angry shouts followed her as she stepped into the black shadow of the donjon and braced herself for a possible encounter with guards.
The wine was very fine. Back in her chamber, Joanna was sorry to have to adulterate it but knew she must.
Meanwhile the mystery of the new prisoner remained. There had been no guards within the donjon when she had entered, but two had appeared as if summoned by a charm and then followed her up the stairs. She had longed to call out or sing as she reached the first-floor landing, but one guard was the man who had burned her note and he was already suspicious. She climbed the stairs in silence.
Still she did not know if the third prisoner was Hugh. What if he languished in the open-air cages, too stunned to call out? What if he, like Mercury, had lost his memory or wits in his capture?
Joanna gave the wine one last stir and tasted it. The sleeping draught had tempered its sweetness, but only slightly. “If Mercury has no memory, then I am the Queen of Sheba,” she said aloud, tapping her spoon on the jug.
“Is that why none of your potions to recover his wits would work?” asked a neat, cloaked figure from the threshold. “I had assumed as such. I passed him on because I want no blame, whenever our Mercury decides his memory is whole again. Whoever he is, when he chooses to reveal it, I think we shall all hold our breaths and bow our knees. I had not the men to guard him, else I would have kept him, but I want no earl’s army appearing outside my palace, demanding his release and determined to have vengeance.”
He pursed his lips. “A pity no one could say who he was, but sometimes a hostage is too dangerous to keep.”
“My lord.” Joanna hurriedly lifted some books off a stool and polished the stool with her skirts for Bishop Thomas to be seated. Inside her guts were churning as a prickle of wild terror swept over her body. “My lord, you grant me abundant honor by coming here.”
“The abbot and his party are at prayer. Tomorrow I am for Oxford again, so it must be today.”
Joanna dared not ask what must be today: she knew it would be nothing good. She allowed the spoon to slide back into the jug, wondering if she should give an account of why she had such fine wine in her chamber.
“This works better than ale at hiding the taste of other things,” she said quickly, deciding on a version of the truth.
He had not seen her sleight of hand with the wine but what was he doing, scanning her chamber, picking any bottles within reach off the workbench and shaking them? Swiftly she palmed the glass flask of the dangerous aqua fortis, spreading her fingers to hide as much of it as she could. Why was he visiting now? He had not stepped foot in the donjon for months.
Thomas pointed a ringed, gloved hand at the jug. He was robed in scarlet and blue silk again, and his ermine cloak was bright in the room. “You have the means in there to get that stubborn wretch downstairs to tell where he has hidden my relics?”
The elixir for truth—she had done nothing to make it, but now she knew there was only once answer to give. “Yes, my lord.”
“And it will work?”
“Within the half hour, or less.” The sleeping draught would certainly take hold by then. “It needs but one addition to make it complete: it is but ordinary wine without it. I chose to make it in this way so the Templar would drink with us. If he thinks we are all drinking the same.” She stopped, nervous of her tongue saying too much, and hid the aqua fortis behind an earthenware crock.
Her lies were met in silence. Bishop Thomas held out a hand and she placed the jug before him, praying he would not smell or recognize the sleeping draught.
“Do I smell Malmsey? That is good wine indeed. You were going to use this without telling me?”
Did he mean the wine or the potion? Joanna chose to believe he meant the latter. “I thought that if I drank with David Manhill and the guards today, and asked him one or two questions to which I know the true answers, I may establish trust with him, and know for certain that the potion is effective, my lord. Then, the next time, with your leave, I may ask more.”
“A plan of sorts.” Bishop Thomas appeared mollified. He tasted the wine and smacked his lips. “Will this also work on that new fellow in my prison, a gangling redheaded fool who claims kinship with the lords of Exeter? I have sent messengers hence to verify his claims, but though his clothes are fine, I like him not for a lord. He has no retinue and kept no state. He does not have a good horse, much less a splendid horse. A jumped-up merchant, perhaps, whose family I can squeeze for coins, but no noble.”
“Yes, my lord.” Joanna fought to cling to her composure as this blessing of news fell on her like a shower of gold.
He does not recognize Hugh. He has his enemy in his grasp and he does not know it.
Unless the bishop was deceiving her? Joanna became clammy at the thought. She dared not look too closely at Thomas, lest he sense her concern.
But why should he suspect? Who would expect a knight of the realm to submit to changes in his appearance even so far as the color of his hair and wads of padding in the cheeks of his face; to allow himself to be made a figure of ridicule?
Thomas would never do such an act, so he cannot conceive of it. Pray good nature I am right in this. Please let me not be dazzled by my own relief, and hope.
“Let us go down, then. My guards will join us there presently.”
Within the chamber? That will be too many to drug or dupe.
“My lord, if the guards remain outside and you enter to speak with my father and take wine with him, will that not be more natural? Will David Manhill not then partake of the wine more easily, he and the stranger together? Then you shall know the truth of both.”
“You are right,” said Thomas at once. “Bring the wine and cups.”
“Yes, my lord.” On her way around the workbench to collect more cups, Joanna saw the bishop distracted by her star charts and astrolabe. While he peered at both, she seized the chance to slip the flask of aqua fortis and the smaller bottles of her sleeping potion and its antidote into the inner pockets of her work robe. She tried to tell herself to be ready, in case the new hostage was not Hugh, but inside she already felt to be floating, light-headed with anticipation. Soon she and Hugh would be reunited.
Unless Hugh had changed toward her, like David?
She took a deep breath and tried to steady herself. “I am ready.”
Bishop Thomas surprised her then by going to the door and opening it himself. “I shall summon the guards and my dogs.” He smiled broadly at the alarm he must have spotted in her face. “My alaunts also have a nose for the truth, Joanna; they can come in with us. Now I will lead the way.”
Still smiling, he did so.
Chapter 36
Hugh heard th
e bishop speaking to a guard on the first-floor landing. He could not hear the words, but a few moments later he heard the barking of dogs and the rushing of heavy bodies up the spiral staircase.
“They are coming here,” he said, wondering for an instant if Thomas would try to set the dogs on them, then dismissed the idea. Those rowdy alaunts would obey him as before, as all dogs and good beasts heeded him, so Thomas’s ploy, if ploy it was, would be in vain.
David, who had not yet left his bed, groaned and pulled the covers over his head.
“He dislikes my lord bishop and so would feign sleep,” said Solomon. “He has done so before, especially since his return from the prison pit.”
He spoke as if David was a substance, Hugh thought, rather than a man. Indeed, since David had accused Joanna of betraying the Manhills, her father had not uttered one direct word to his brother. Such a habit was good kinship, perhaps, but Hugh was frustrated by the silence between them. “You are worse than women!” he had roared at both yesterday, but it had made no difference.
“Will you not meet the fellow on your feet, man to man?” He appealed to the lump that was his brother and to Solomon, who, though sitting up, was also still abed. For what would they rise? Their food was not due for another hour.
Hugh, not yet resigned to imprisonment, had been up and pacing for hours. Resuming what he done every day, he had tried the locked door and rattled the lock and kicked at the doorjamb until his feet, even in their stacked boots, were sore. He had tried to thread his bedding through a window slit before admitting it was folly. He had peered at his jowls in his washing water, wondering if the dark stubble was showing yet through the reddened skin. He was weary of his disguise, of pretense.
Give me a sword and I will clear this place from top to bottom!
“You should rise,” he said, irritated with his despairing companions. “I have told you—we need to be ready to leave at a finger-snap’s notice.”
David rolled down his bedding to show his scowling face beneath his fair hair. “No one is coming for us. She is not coming.”
A Knight's Enchantment Page 25
