“Should the dogs not be leashed, sir?” asked Joanna outside the chamber, proving David’s assertion a lie. Solomon turned his back on David and began feeling beside his rough heap of bedding for his shoes.
Good, old man. Do it for your daughter, if not for yourself.
Hugh heard the great key clank in the lock. He stood back, too wily to make a rush and be battered afresh by the cluster of guards. Yipping with excitement, the alaunts launched into the chamber and instantly rushed to David’s bed to worry at his bedding, and David yelled.
“Stop that!” Hugh snapped his fingers and the alaunts fell back, coming to sniff his fingers and receive a friendly pat. And now Joanna was in the room beside three guards. She carried a jug and cups and stared at him as if she would know all of him afresh.
Their eyes met. How open and sultry and yearning she was: his harem girl in another master’s drab garb. He longed to strip her there and then on the spot, tear off the bishop’s proofs of ownership, and make her truly his.
Bishop Thomas, sleek as a weasel, was also staring. “You are the second man to charm my dogs. Are you a warlock, redhead?”
“Eh?” Hugh strove to think straight. What did the fellow mean? Had he seen through the disguise, or remembered Hugh Manhill’s skill with beasts? He had made a stupid mistake, there, quelling the alaunts.
“It is written that witches have red hair,” Solomon remarked, coming to his rescue. He rose and bowed to the bishop. “My lord.”
“A word.” Thomas beckoned Solomon as casually as if he were the least page, but his ill grace gave Hugh the chance to give David’s bed another kick, further rouse the despairing idiot. As Solomon stepped warily past the dogs, Hugh nodded to Joanna.
“Is that our breakfast wine, girl?”
“Yes, sir.” Her voice was as pretty, and as dry, as the substance of mercury. It gave him no clue to her feelings.
“Will you serve me, then?” He sat on a stool beside the chess table. Off to one side, Thomas was hissing in Solomon’s ear, while David aped slumber. He was tempted to fling his brother out of bed, but then heard the loud click in the lock.
Joanna, having placed the cups on the chessboard and now pouring something—is that wine drugged?—glanced at the door. “My lord, we are locked in!”
Is her panic real or false?
“As I instructed, I would have no interruptions.” Bishop Thomas waved off her alarm. “Do you doubt these sturdy fellows?” He glanced at the alaunts, haunting meekly by Hugh’s heels, and said nothing of them. “Pour the wine for us, girl. You.” He pointed at the shorter of the three guards. “Rouse that prisoner. I would have us all drink a toast to our good king, John.”
David wallowed half-upright on his pallet and Thomas was on him, snatching a goblet from the chessboard and thrusting it toward him.
“Drink, man, drink! Even Templars pledge allegiance to kings! Drink!” Thomas swung round, spilling part of a second cup. “You drink, too, Red-face!”
Do I trust Joanna now?
Hugh did not hesitate. He took the cup and gulped it down.
“Drink, drink!” Thomas instructed his own men in a frenzy of excitement. “I would know all, so drink!”
David had not taken the cup, so Thomas flung the contents in his face while the guards hastily swallowed and drank.
“More!” Thomas snapped his fingers at Joanna. “More for the Templar, and you hold his head and you make him drink!”
“Please, my lord—”
“Silence!” Thomas bawled, overriding Joanna’s protest. “I will have those relics now! They are mine, for the Almighty brought the Templar to me! What are they, man? A part of the true cross? A lock of our savior’s hair? Tell me now, while you still have a tongue!”
David, the lees of wine dripping from his face, shook his head. The guards put down their empty cups and nodded to each other.
“Seize him! Hold him! I would know.”
Two guards stepped closer to David and then one rubbed at his eyes while the other clutched at his belly. They tottered another pace and then sank to the floor, the third guard slumping down with them but falling across Hugh’s pallet.
Thomas opened his mouth to scream and Hugh punched him hard in the face. The bishop of West Sarum crumpled in a gaudy heap on the floor and lay as still as his guards.
“Fine wine, that,” said Hugh. “What was in theirs?”
“Treble-strength sleeping potion in the bottom of their cups. I had no means to stir it properly, but I knew it would work. I have the antidote here, but had no means to give it you, so I had to know which goblet to give you, without the sleeping draught.”
Answering, Joanna was already hurrying for the door.
“That was risky,” David said, wiping his face on a bedsheet. “What if Thomas had seen the potion in the goblets?”
“I walked behind Thomas on the stairs and added it then,” Joanna said, kneeling by the lock and pulling a flask out of her baggy work gown. “We must hurry, David, or are you still in doubt of me?”
“I never doubted.” Hugh was eager to establish this point, even at the expense of some exaggeration.
“Never?” Her voice was very soft. “Had it been me, in your place—” She stopped, looking down at the flask in her hand as if she did not know what it was, and then glancing everywhere but at him.
“Come, David, let us tie up these guards and the bishop.” Solomon dragged at the Templar, compelling him to stir.
Hugh stepped over the prone figure of Bishop Thomas and knelt beside Joanna. Padding beside him, the alaunts whined.
“What must I do to help?” he asked, making his voice and manner gentle. “I know we have little time here.”
She stared despairingly at her hands. “I must feed this into the lock and let it burn, little by little. There will be foul smoke, so you must cover your nose and mouth, and I must be steady.”
She lifted her hands to him and he could seem them trembling. “Hugo, I do not know if I can do this.”
He lifted the flask from her, set it on the flags, and gathered her close. “Easy, there.” He trailed his thumb across her dark brows and lashes, feeling the cheekbone beneath her pale skin, feeling how she had lost weight in the time she had been back here. He stroked her hair, his wish to comfort warring with his desire. “I will be your surgeon here. Tell me what to do.”
“Make haste, Hugh, before more guards come.” David was changing his clothes with those of the taller guard. “A pity none of these have keys.”
That was the first comment of sense his brother had made, Hugh thought, and now he answered, “Search them in case they have something we can use. No rough stuff,” he added. For himself, he might have dispatched all three, but he knew Joanna would disapprove.
He tore a sleeve from the bishop’s robe and wrapped it about his head, picking up the flask again. Reunions were sweet and Joanna his girl with wide and dreaming eyes, but they could not woo like lord and lady in a French romance: they must get out of the donjon first. “Tell me what to do,” he said again, shaking the flask before her eyes.
“Do not do that, Hugo!”
His ploy worked: Joanna’s attention snapped back into focus and her face blazed with concentration. “Never shake or tip aqua fortis, ’tis too dangerous! Here, give it to me!”
She shoved him aside and took the flask, tipping it to allow the liquid to slip into the door lock. A loud hissing and sizzling broke from the metal and a cloud of acrid smoke bloomed from the lock. Joanna leaned sideways, coughing, her eyes streaming, and Hugh tore a length from David’s bedsheet and wound it across her mouth and nose.
She tipped the flask a second time and more sizzling ensued. Hugh saw a trickle of something—waste metal?—weep from the lock.
“It works, keep going!” He gagged on the foul acid smoke but ignored it, pressing his shoulder to the door and pushing with all his strength. “David, help me!”
It was Solomon who came, pounding at the door with na
rrow fists while he shoved and Joanna poured.
With a final groan and sizzle the lock broke and their way was open. Hugh snatched the sword David had taken from the taller guard and whistled to the alaunts. “I go first,” he said. “Upend those pallets and get behind them now. There may be archers coming. I go out first and you follow only when I say. Agreed?”
David and Solomon grunted something. Joanna said only, “I have never seen a man wear a veil before. You look well in it.”
Behind his “veil” Hugh grinned, and grabbed a stool as a shield, ready for the next.
Chapter 37
I am a lovesick fool, Joanna thought as she crouched behind the pallet. Is that the wittiest thing I could say, after we have been apart so long?
Hugh rushed out onto the landing like a dark storm cloud, the alaunts flashing round him like bolts of lightning. After a few moments he returned, plucking the flask containing the aqua fortis from the floor.
“Hurry!” he said, throwing a second sword to David.
Joanna rose and sped to the door. She must make an effort. “I would have a blade, too,” she said, running round in front of him like one of the dogs. David slipped past to scour the stairs: she would not speak to him.
Hugh stared down at her from his huge, extended height, strapping as an oak tree and twice as dark in his rich borrowed clothes, only his keen, bright eyes showing behind his rough “turban.” Again, her heart raced at the sight: he looked so mysterious, so full of vigor and pith. She wanted to fling her arms about him and have him carry her off, as in those stories she had heard of Saladin.
Tales she had heard from David.
That woke her from her daydream as nothing else could have done. She seized Hugh’s wrist and shook it. “Give me a blade.”
“Take this instead.” He thrust the flask at her, dragged the cloth away from his lips, and before she knew what he was about, dragged his “turban” off his head and smacked a kiss on her mouth. “Haste, wretch, we have scant time.”
Her father—where was he? Joanna scanned the chamber and then heard the unbelievable: Solomon padding upstairs.
“He wants some stuff. I told him to go.” Hugh grabbed her arm and scooped her along, half dragging her over the floor.
“Are you mad? He will be there for an age, choosing, selecting…”
“I told him to take no longer than he can run a hundred paces.”
“Have you seen my father run?”
Hugh laughed—by good nature, she had missed his hearty laugh!—and smacked her lightly on her rump. “Off with you.”
She was not supposed to be speeding onto the landing with her loins tingling, thinking of lovemaking. As her eyes grew accustomed to the shadowy tower and the narrow stair, she knew this was the moment. If they were spotted now, it would go hard for them. The bishop had not yet been missed, but he must be soon, and though David now wore the chain mail of one guard, there was no disguising Hugh.
“I go first,” Hugh said again. “Then you, David, then you, Joanna. Solomon—” He broke off and bawled up the stairs, “Solomon! Come now!”
“That will bring the guards, little brother,” said David, ever joyful these days.
“They will be busy enough, soon,” replied Hugh, and he set off for the stairs, hurling the stool down first and saying to the dogs, “Fly, lads, go down, go on!”
Barking a frenzy, the great white hounds barged forward to do his bidding and in a swirl of teeth and tails careered down the steps. Joanna, gripping the flask, desperate not to drop it or shake it too violently, found herself half tumbling down the narrow stair, striking her shoulders against the wall and central pillar. Conscious of her father coming down slowly behind her, one step at a time, she found herself pressed at one point against David as he stopped suddenly on the stairs.
“Get on!” she hissed, disliking having to touch him.
“Do not order me.”
“Peace, both of you,” called Hugh. “Solomon, are you with us yet?”
“I have quite caught up,” replied her father, as serene as if he was strolling by the river.
“A wonder this, but no one in the bailey has yet noticed,” Hugh whispered back up the stairs.
“The folk here are used to screams from the donjon,” Solomon remarked.
Joanna shivered, thinking again of the oubliette. She studied the flask in her hand: was there enough?
“Our luck may yet hold and we come through sweetly. Maybe we simply walk through the gate. No grief to me to fight, but I’d rather go easy.”
“There is a small postern on the eastern side of the bailey,” Joanna reminded him, feeling her face glow as Hugh said, “Good, good!”
“Can you two not keep silent till we are through this?” grumbled David. He squawked as Joanna moved past him, elbowing him in the ribs.
“What are you about?” Hugh barred her progress with an arm.
“The trapdoor. If I can break the lock there, those poor creatures may have a chance, too.”
She expected Hugh to object but he was already shifting the heavy weights on top of the door. “You pour and I’ll pull,” he said. “Just be sure you have sufficient left for those outside cages. It will make a fine distraction if those prisoners break loose.”
Joanna nodded. “We are of the same thought, Hugo.”
“Hugo! God in heaven!” David sneered, but he subsided when Hugh glared at him.
“You can work, too, brother. Watch by the outer door.”
David stepped across the trapdoor to do as he was bid, muttering to Joanna as he strode by, “You will not last.”
His spite, though startling, did not touch her. Speed, she knew, was vital: she had no moments to waste on the Templar’s change of heart toward her.
Calling out a warning, she poured more of the “strong water” onto the trapdoor lock, ducking her head out of the way of the stifling, acrid fumes. It was best not to think about those trapped in the oubliette, what it would be like to have that scalding, choking liquid cast about head and face….
Hugh was laboring, too, dragging at the huge iron ring on top of the trapdoor, cursing as he struggled. “Solomon, get a ladder! There will be one somewhere close!” he bawled at one point, gulping in a massive breath and straining again, wrestling with the ring as if it was alive.
“Keep back!” he warned as Joanna tried to also seize the ring. The whole door shivered like a dog shaking itself and came free. It groaned open, Hugh red-faced and sweating as he hauled on a door designed to be lifted by two men, and then swung back onto its hinges as he jammed it open with the stool.
He took the short ladder Solomon had found in the debris of tools and fetters by the door and slid it down into the dark. Dropping his water flask into the hole, he called down, “You are free, come out!” and shooed the dogs back.
Joanna tried to see into the tar-black chamber, coughing on the acid fumes and the fouler, older stench of human filth and ordure. Hugh caught her round the waist and lifted her, wriggling, away from the open trapdoor.
“They have their chance.”
“But they may be fettered!”
“A guard,” David said, and they froze, Joanna then gathering her wits and singing a chorus of “King John went a-hunting,” as if she had no cares in the world.
“Gone off to the kitchen,” David reported, and they all sagged a little, in relief.
Hugh clasped Joanna by the shoulders. “We must leave now, sweeting,” he said gently. “Let us free the prisoners in the yard and get out while we may. My men are waiting for us in the city with horses. They will be here by now.”
This was the plan as they had agreed and all she need do was walk out of the donjon to the cages and stop as if to stare at the prisoners while she broke the locks. She picked up the flask again but Hugh took it from her. “I will do that. I will not have you taken hostage again. Go to the eastern postern and wait for me there.”
What he said made sense, but it was hard to leave the to
wer and leave behind the open, gaping oubliette. As she looked back a final time before slipping through the outer door, Hugh murmured, “Some things we cannot know. Trust to God, girl, and leave it to him.”
Even his provoking use of “girl” could not shift her sense of shame, but at least it made her move. She took one of her father’s rough bundles and slung it over her shoulder, picking up her skirts and preparing to run.
Chapter 38
Hugh strode into the yard, dogs trailing him, ears pricked for his orders. Strolling like a prince in his kingdom, he made for the cage closest to the main gate. Two monks, carrying a chest between them, paused on their way to a cart in order to let him pass. A guard hailed him and Hugh waved in return but kept on walking. In a moment of inspiration, he took the sword and ran it along the bars of the cage, hearing the guard who had previously stepped over to the kitchen laugh and call out, “Good jest!”
Few of these men know each other, he thought, but that did not surprise him. Bishop Thomas commanded by fear: there would be little loyalty at the palace and much changing of guards, many new faces amidst those who through age or family ties must stay on here.
Yet even guards as slack as these would eventually wonder where their lord was, so he must hurry. He poured the rest of the flask over the lock. A hand grabbed at him. He grabbed back and smashed it to the bars.
“I am helping, friend, so do not interrupt.” A whimper told him he had been understood.
He turned, leaving the cage smoking gently, a yellow vapor issuing from its lock, and paid no heed to the gasps and curses from the prisoners.
“Go, lads!” he encouraged the dogs, and the great hounds, gladdened by his voice and sweeping finger, shot off in the direction he pointed to and crashed into the approaching guards.
“Hey!”
“Down! Down, I say!”
“You, soldier! Wait!”
He ignored the turmoil and the command and turned his back. Listening to his heart, hearing his boots striking the cobbles like a ram at a castle wall, he stalked to the postern gate. A swirl of midden and cooking smells hit him, then another whiff of acid. Surely the lock must soon break on the cage? He walked on.
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