by Susan King
“Ho! Gateman!” Nicholas called heartily.
The gateman answered with a suspicious query, and Nicholas gestured broadly to his cart. “Thomas Miller, with the fresh loaves my lord Whitehawke did order from the village for this even’s feast.”
“Yer late to be bringing it,” the gateman growled. “Who’s that with ye?”
“Me wife,” he called back. “She and the village women baked as quick as they could on short notice. Mayhap we’re late, but we’re here and expecting payment from the steward. And I have two kegs of double ale.”
“Double ale, is it?”
“Aye, Kentish, too. Sent by the innkeeper.”
Permission was quickly given, and the drawbridge groaned and thumped into place. Guiding the cart across the bridge, Nicholas was stopped beneath the portcullis vault. The gateman, stepping out, stated that any weapons were to be left with him. Nicholas shrugged and lifted his cloak to show he had no sword or knife at his belt. Beneath the long cloak, he wore a dark wool tunic, with thick hosen and sturdy boots wrapped to the knees. His hair straggled in his eyes, and with his grimy hands and stubbly beard, he could only be taken for a villein. Beside him, Peter clutched a blue cloak over the gown and his armor beneath it, and simpered as best he could. The gateman nodded and waved them into the bailey.
Once inside, Nicholas jumped down and came around to assist Peter, whose red-gold curls peeked out from under a plain veil. A soldier winked, smiling in the torchlight. Peter scowled and turned away.
Servants came forward to help unload several large, deep, reed-woven baskets piled high with round loaves of bread, carrying them toward the chamber hall. As other servants struggled to unload the clumsy wooden ale kegs, Nicholas took up the last basket himself.
He and Peter set off across the bailey toward the chamber hall, their boots shuffling through gathering drifts. Torches flickering on tall spikes gave the bailey an unnatural light and threw giant halos out into the swirling, flurrying snow.
“Witless,” muttered Peter.
“Quiet, you cretin,” Nicholas growled. “Once inside, we will find Emlyn and the children, get them out, and then judge our next move, whether to summon my garrison or leave as we came in.”
“A noddy-headed plan. Attack and rescue, there’s a scheme.”
“A pity you never took to the forest life,” Nicholas murmured. “Outwitting my father is much preferable to an attack in certain circumstances.” He tilted his head meaningfully, and Peter glanced across the courtyard.
The far end of the bailey looked like a horse fair. More than two hundred horses stood inside a makeshift enclosure. Dozens of armed guards milled about, while grooms darted back and forth with feed bags, blankets and currying brushes. The armorer’s building, and next to it the blacksmith’s, were both alight with stoked firepits and blazing torches, and full of noise and bustle as stacks of swords and lances were greased and repaired, broken harnesses were reinforced, and horseshoes were shaped on the anvil.
Outside the armory stood two huge war machines, a wooden catapult and a rolling battering ram suspended by massive chains on a framework, their giant superstructures powdered and piled with fresh snow.
Peter whistled low. “Jacky Softsword and his traveling players,” he said.
“Aye, a bloody army, and best avoided.”
They ducked their heads deeper into their cloaks and hurried toward the hall at the back of the bailey complex.
“Since we must deliver the bread,” Nicholas murmured, “we shall search the chamber hall first. If they are there, our plan has a good chance of success.” He shifted the heavy basket and shot a cautious glance around the bailey. Thank God, no soldiers cared to bother a tradesman and his wife.
They easily gained admittance to the hall by handing fresh loaves to the watchmen. Inside, warmth and light and noise assailed them from every angle. Candles and torches gave off golden light and a thin, pervasive smoke filled the air, stinging Nicholas’s eyes. He inhaled the tantalizing aroma of roasted meat and savory spiced dishes, and though his mouth watered, he felt no hunger, only cold vengeance.
The long, high-ceilinged hall teemed with men, most of them drunk, all of them eating or drinking or talking loudly. The humming din of hundreds of deep voices nearly drowned the lilting music played by a troupe of musicians at one end of the room. Nicholas noted that no one, beyond the king’s personal guard, wore weapons. Such could not be allowed during a feast, especially when the feasters were primarily soldiers on respite from battle.
Nicholas saw the king at the table on a raised dais, a dark head and bejeweled fingers waving and gesturing in animated boisterous conversation. He saw Whitehawke there, too, and turned quickly away.
Moving toward the stairs with Peter in his wake, he thought the upper chambers a likely place to search. If he had to upturn every stick in the castle, he would find them.
A group of soldiers spotted them and reached for the bread that was piled up in the basket. Nicholas complied, careful to keep his head down, though with his hair mussed and hanging in a tangle in his eyes and his face unshaven, he doubted anyone would look closely at him and see Nicholas de Hawkwood.
Behind him, Peter slapped away a lusty hand. Nicholas turned to the soldier who persistently pulled on Peter’s cloak.
“My wife, sir, if you please,” he said, filling the man’s hand with a crusty loaf and nudging Peter toward the stairs.
Edging their way to the gallery, they rounded the broad stone pillar and slipped up the steps.
“By all that’s holy,” Peter hissed, “to be caught like this before the king and hundreds of soldiers would be hell’s own punishment!” He tore off the veil, cloak, and gown, and stuffed them in the basket. “I will take my chances in armor,” he muttered, adjusting the lay of his mesh hauberk and pulling up the heavy hood to cover his hair.
“There are enough mercenaries here, with different surcoats and armor, that you can pass for a routier,” Nicholas said, “but for God’s sake put your sword away.”
Sliding the sword from his scabbard, Peter slipped it into the long, deep basket, pulling a fold of the cloak up to cover it. “Now, my lord, where are they kept?” he asked.
“A question for the saints, I trow,” Nicholas replied. “Mayhap we should search the upper floors and work down.” Reaching the gallery level, he hesitated, and then started up the steps again.
“Hold!” Peter whispered. “Look there—at the end of the gallery. A guard stands by that door.”
Nicholas edged around the curve of the central stair pillar. “Aye,” he murmured low. “Shall we ask him how he fares?”
“Ho, serjeant,” Peter called, striding down the corridor. “I am sent to relieve you. Have you eaten at the feast, or had any of the double ale that has just arrived?”
The soldier blinked at him in surprise. “Nay, I have only had some wine.” He frowned. “Lord Whitehawke sent you here?”
Peter leaned forward. “Aye, and me a king’s man. But we are under orders to cooperate with Whitehawke while we are here. And he is drunker than the devil on Lammas night. Astonishing that he even remembered what is up here,” he said, and jerked his head toward the door.
“They’re all asleep, quiet as a tomb,” the serjeant said.
“Good, good. Less work for us, eh? Ah, here is the miller, newly come with fresh bread,” Peter said heartily. The guard looked toward Nicholas, who came down the hall carrying the basket. Peter grabbed the serjeant around the neck, pulling tight, while Nicholas yanked the sword out of the basket and struck the hilt against the man’s head. With a low groan, the guard slumped over. Peter bent to arrange him in a seated position by the door, then picked up the guard’s wine cup and tossed the contents in his face.
“Cupshot,” he said distastefully.
Nicholas put his mouth to the fine crack between the oak door and the stone jamb. “Emlyn!” he called in a loud whisper. He tilted his head, waiting for a response. He did not relish breaki
ng into the wrong room. “Christien!”
Soft footsteps padded on the other side. “Christien is sleeping, sir,” a small voice replied.
“Isobel! Are you well? Are the others with you?”
“We’re fine, my lord. Have you brought food? I’m hungry,” she said plaintively.
“Stand back, my girl.” He lifted the heavy drawbar from its stone rests and slid it into the storage place beside the door. Pushing the door open, he and Peter slipped inside.
Isobel stood by the bed, shaking Betrys awake. Christien bobbed up, blinking sleepily, and the nursemaid shrieked and grabbed Isobel to her.
“Hush, girl,” Peter said to the maid. “We are taking all of you out of here. Quietly now, ready the little ones.” Betrys nodded and began to gather the children’s cloaks and shoes.
Nicholas stood by the door, his brow creased into a deep frown as he watched them. A muscle in his jaw worked rapidly. “Where is Lady Emlyn?” he asked in a quiet, severe voice.
Christien looked up. “She was here, but Lord Whitehawke took her, my lord.”
“Took her where?” he demanded, crossing the room.
Betrys knelt before Christien, pulling a cloak around his shoulders. “We know not, my lord. ’Twas hours ago he took my lady.”
“My lord,” Christien said, jumping nervously while Betrys fastened his cloak snug under his throat, “I know where she is. In the dungeon.”
“Dungeon?” Nicholas asked sharply. He knelt, eye level with the boy. “Tell me what you know.”
“I was awake, but they thought me asleep. He asked her to give him something, a thorn, I think he said, and she said him nay. He hit her, and she said nay again, and then he said she would not like his dungeon. And he took her away.”
Nicholas closed his eyes for a moment, drawing in a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “Thank you, Christien.” He stood and turned to Peter. “If she is hurt, he will not last a day, father or no.”
“Well enough. But we have a task here first.”
Nodding brusquely, Nicholas went to the window and opened the shutter. He scanned the walls below and to each side, striving to see through the swirling snowstorm. Sweeping at his wildly blowing hair, he turned around.
“We can only try. Give the signal.”
Peter gathered a few of the floor rushes, went to the hearth, and lit them into a spitting, blazing torch. At the window, he thrust out his arm and waved the flame, then released the burning rushes to fall and flutter with the snowflakes.
Nicholas turned to Betrys, who had tied the silken strings of Isobel’s cloak and now leaned over the bed to wake Harry.
“Hold,” he said softly. Betrys looked up. “Go gently. Keep the babe well asleep, if you can.”
Betrys understood. “He is a noisy mite,” she said.
“Remember the apple tree?” Nicholas asked Christien. “This will be easier by far, you need only stay still. You are a brave lad, and we shall keep you safe.” Christien sat curled in the deep basket like a babe in a womb, blinking his eyes rapidly and nodding. Nicholas tugged at the net of hempen ropes he had woven about the bottom of the basket, and pulled firmly on the longer ropes that would lower it. “Ready, Peter. Are they there?”
Peter peered out the window. “Aye, I think. The snow is very thick.”
Dragging the basket toward the window, Nicholas leaned his head out. Wind whipped his hair and icy flakes of snow bit at his face. “By God’s teeth,” he said, “this approaches a blizzard!” He looked down. “Look there. On the moat.”
Below them, a, cluster of snowdrifts seemed to move along the moat’s frozen surface, near the brink of the cliff. Through the feathering snow, because he knew what to look for, Nicholas could discern the shapes of several of his men, hunched over, covered with white tablecloths. They scuttled along and stopped beneath the window, where Peter waved a lit candle.
“Picnic, indeed,” Peter said, and blew out the little flame. “Interesting use of table linen, my lord.”
“Queen Matilda once escaped from a tower this way, I have heard,” Nicholas said. “Seemed a good idea, I thought, with snow in the air.” He looked down again. “Eustace and the others would not be on the ice if ’twere not solid through. They can go back along the moat, and the ravine will be no threat. If they can see where they go, in that storm,” he added.
“The ropes we smuggled in the basket should be long enough to lower them,” Peter said. “The drop looks about thirty or forty feet. But the wind is strong, and this boy weighs no more than a goose feather.”
Nicholas nodded, glancing around the room. Then he looked back at Peter. “Give me your hauberk.”
Peter frowned. “Warming stones, or a few books—”
“There are none in here. The mesh weighs a bit more than the child, yet takes up little space. ’Twill help fight the winds.”
“Aye, so.” Peter sighed, and began to untie the laces between his mesh hood and his short-sleeved hauberk, wriggling out of it with quick assistance from Nicholas.
Clad in his quilted linen gambois and mesh leggings, Peter squatted down and settled the springy, jingling mass of steel rings around the boy’s feet. “Pray ask Eustace to send this back up,” he said. “Your sister will have need of it.”
Christien nodded. Nicholas picked up a folded white tablecloth, also smuggled in the basket, and tossed it over Christien, lifting the corner for a moment.
“Saint Michael be with you, boy,” he whispered, smiling. “You are about to feel like you have angel’s wings.”
Christien smiled tremulously, with a wide, trusting gaze that wrenched at Nicholas’s heart. Working together, Nicholas and Peter hoisted the basket to the edge of the window, then squeezed and compressed it through the aperture. Slowly, they began to pulley it downward, tugging the ropes taut as they fed them out the window.
“Jesu,” Peter grunted as he pulled, “ ’tis a mickle dangerous thing to do, with a child.”
“By the rood, Perkin, well I know it.” While his muscles contracted with the effort to keep the movement of the basket slow and steady, his gut contracted with a dread that near overwhelmed him. He would have done this any other way if he had seen a choice. The danger in which he had placed these children terrified him; yet it was, he knew, a fear based on love.
Half a year earlier, these children had been like pups underfoot to be stepped over or around, not requiring his attention. But gradually, somehow, each one had gained a personhood. He wanted them safe, as much as he wanted their golden-haired sister safe.
He shook his head against his distracting thoughts, and concentrated on his task. While Peter held the rope steady, he pulled hand over hand toward the window to peer out.
“Nearly down,” he said, his hair tearing back away from his brow in the wind. “Without the hauberk, that basket would have swung like an oak leaf.”
They felt a stiff yank on the rope. Nicholas peered down again. “They have him,” he said, his throat closing over the words. “He is safe. Ho, here comes the basket.”
Within a few minutes, they had Isobel curled in the nest of mesh armor. Harry, awake but by some miracle silent, watched them with wide eyes as he was placed in Isobel’s lap and covered with Peter’s cloak.
Whispering words of encouragement, Nicholas bent down to the little girl, who wrapped her arms fiercely around his neck. He kissed her glossy dark head, touched Harry’s back gently, then covered the basket with the white cloth. Betrys, her eyes glazed with nervous tears, bit on her fist as Nicholas and Peter lowered the basket again to the ground.
When it returned, Peter grumbled that they had neglected to send back his hauberk. Next they fixed a rope sling for Betrys’ plump bottom, draped the last white cloth over her as she gripped the rope, and shoved and pushed until she was through the window.
When she had been lowered, Nicholas hauled the rope back up, and spoke without looking at Peter. “You go next.”
“Nay. I’ll not leave you.”
“Know you where the dungeon is?”
“I shall find it. Go, before the storm worsens.”
Peter stared hard at Nicholas, then sighed, and scratched his head, standing armorless but for his leggings, in his long padded undertunic and boots. “Without my hauberk, I feel strangely naked. Ah well, I came in looking like a mummer’s churl. I may as well leave in a similar condition,” he said, shrugging.
Nicholas laughed. “Take my cloak,” he said, handing it to him, “and your weapon as you depart the castle.” He reached for the sword hilt, which stuck up out of the basket.
“Nay, my lord,” Peter said. “You may have need of a good blade.” Nicholas nodded, and jammed the sword into his belt.
“Tie the rope to that pillar and toss it out. I can climb down, I think,” Peter said. The rope was soon fixed around a freestanding pillar that supported the low ceiling arch. With one of the pale linen bed sheets wrapped around him like a concealing cocoon, Peter was soon ready. He clapped Nicholas’s shoulder.
“We will watch for your signal,” Peter said, and leaped up to wriggle through the window. A few minutes later he had joined the others on the ground. Nicholas leaned at the window and watched as the white-clad group, obscured by swirling snowflakes, scurried off toward safety in the direction of the forest edge.
Shoving the empty basket and remaining rope into a corner, he opened the door and peered out into the darkened corridor.
A cacaphony of snores reverberated around the great hall and echoed into the open gallery level. The earlier blazing torchlight from the hall had reduced to a coppery glow; the feast was over and the castle was bedded. Closing the door softly behind him, Nicholas rested one hand on his sword hilt, stepped over the collapsed guard, and set off in search of the dungeon.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Tiny flakes of snow fluttered and fell in the darkness as Nicholas emerged from a door on the lower level of the chamber hall. Glancing warily around, he moved like a wraith along the shadowed base of the curtain wall, his steps muffled by feathery drifts of snow.
