Casting Samson

by Melinda Hammond

  “How goes it, my lord?” he cried, shouting above the din of the battle.

  Raymond paused. “Very ill, brother. I see no way out of this.”

  A rider galloped up, his mantle so torn and encrusted with blood that it was unrecognisable.

  “Acre has fallen—the Bishop of Acre is dead and the True Cross captured! The king is with the Master of the Temple now and orders you to find a way out, Lord Tripoli. Take a trusted group and make sure this day is chronicled for Christian records.”

  Hugo rubbed his eyes. The noise was overwhelming, screams and battle cries numbing the brain while the stomach was sickened with the stench of the dead and the dying. Already the flies were gorging on the bloody remains. Raymond of Tripoli touched his arm.

  “We must force a route. Hugo—are you with me?”

  Hugo shook his head. “No! We fight on to defend the king!”

  Raymond put a hand on his bridle. “Don’t be foolish, man! Your master has ordered it. Come with me.”

  Confident that Hugo would follow, Raymond turned his steed, shouting to those of his knights he could see to join him, then with a wild cry he led the little party in a deadly charge. Hugo followed, urging his horse on towards the enemy. The speed of their charge carried all before them in the confined space, trampling Christians and Saracens alike until their bodies formed a level path through the battle lines.

  Hugo gritted his teeth, tried not to think of the flesh beneath his horse’s hooves, and dug his heels into the stallion’s sweating flanks. The knights rode on as one, bursting through the Muslim lines, past flashing scimitars and screaming faces. Hugo glimpsed a flash of steel, felt a searing pain in his left arm, but he held on, and after a terrible, life-spanning moment the crowd was gone. They had broken free.

  “Ride!” Raymond cried. “Ride for your lives! Don’t look back. We live to avenge this day!”

  They rode on, the enemy too intent on their imminent victory to follow, for despite the desperate charges of the Christians, the Saracens were closing in, the encircled army growing smaller until at last the king’s red tent fell, trampled in the dust.

  ***

  “…You think you can beat me, shepherd boy?” Goliath cried, adding sotto voce, “Not in a million years, scrawny Shaun!”

  His opponent was bright red with fury but, obedient to the microphone waving before him, he said, “You come at me wiv a spear an’ a sword an’ a shield—but I’m ’ere in the name of the Lord. You just wait, bigmouth,” he muttered, loading ammunition into his slingshot. He whirled the sling around his head and let it go, and Goliath, expecting to feel the soft thump of a paper ball against his bare chest, let out a yell as a small missile crashed into him.

  “Ow! What the f—” He looked around to see what had hit him. There on the floor of the trailer was a small black-and-white sweet. One of Mr. Mullett’s humbugs. He glared at Shaun. “You little bastard!”

  Forgetting the audience, he launched himself at the smaller boy. It only took the Philistines on the float a second to decide where their loyalties lie. Eager to pay off old scores, they fell upon Goliath.

  “Boys, boys!” Aubrey Bodicote hopped helplessly from one foot to the other. Godfrey Mullett ran over and scrambled onto the float, trying to prise the combatants apart, but no sooner had he driven back the Philistines than Goliath threw himself once again upon young Tring.

  In front of the floats, members of the Mothers’ Union were handing out pieces of the Ten Commandments to the crowds. Rita Tring, realising her youngest was involved in a brawl, dropped her tray and raced towards the float.

  “Here, Sam Stansfield, you get off my Shaun! Get off, I tell you!”

  Josh and Yvonne had already descended from their float, and Josh ran over to help Godfrey Mullett restore order. Deborah and Anne stood and watched, their hands over their mouths as the scene degenerated before them.

  “Oh, no—more trouble!” Anne pointed to Graham Tring, who’d walked over and was now standing beside Yvonne, their heads very close together as they talked.

  Deborah grabbed Anne’s arm. “Oh, no—look!”

  Rita Tring was striding across the green, fresh from her triumph in rescuing little Shaun from a mauling. She was carrying a slab of the chocolate cake, which she was holding out before her like a peace offering as she came up to her husband and Yvonne.

  “Just thought you two might like some of this,” she called, her voice carrying all too clearly on the breeze. “I saved it for you special. It’s the part that says Thou shalt not commit adultery!”

  She slammed the cake into Yvonne’s face, and splodges of brown sticky sponge dripped onto Yvonne’s décolletage. Her howl of fury brought a momentary hush over the proceedings.

  “You jealous bitch! Just ’cos you can’t keep ’im happy in bed—” Yvonne launched herself at Rita, and the two women fell to the floor, scratching and kicking. Having secured a temporary peace amongst the Scouts, Josh hurried back to help Graham Tring, who was trying to separate the two furies.

  “Vicar, carry on with the last piece,” he hissed, “we need to distract everybody.”

  “Yes, yes, of course!” Reverend Bodicote almost ran on to the last float, and soon the band was playing a rousing march, drowning out the discordant voices beside them.

  From his vantage point at the western end of the green, Bernard watched the proceedings with contemptuous amusement. This would be something to tell them at the office next week. Life in the country. Well, it was certainly Nature, red in tooth and claw!

  At that moment the band reached its rousing climax, which was the cue to bring down the cardboard walls of Jericho. Unfortunately, in their hurry to change lorries, the wall had been erected backwards, so that when the band leader tugged on the rope, instead of falling away from the trailer and onto the green, the boxes collapsed on the band, with one or two rolling away onto the road behind them.

  By a cruel twist of fate, this happened at the very moment that Bertram Oldfield was passing by with Annabelle. The donkey very naturally took exception to being bombarded with boxes, even empty ones, and jumped away, braying indignantly. Murphy had been behaving impeccably, standing perfectly still and providing Bernard with a high and not uncomfortable seat from which to view the proceedings. However, Annabelle’s untimely intrusion caused the grey to prick up his ears. Swinging his big head around, he saw not only a hated donkey, but also the patterned cloth that was flapping in the breeze around his hindquarters.

  With a snort Murphy started to move.

  “Whoa there!” Bernard pulled on the reins, but it had no effect. Worse, Murphy began to canter. Bernard tried desperately to find the stirrups, which he’d kicked off earlier in order to stretch his cramped legs, but the irons had slipped back beneath the saddlecloth. “Whoa, you brute!”

  He dropped the lance and pulled hard on the reins again, but Murphy was a seasoned riding-school campaigner and he had the bit firmly between his teeth. He cantered on, and all his hapless rider could do was hold on.

  To the spectators, the sight of the knight in armour galloping across the green was a fitting end to the spectacle, and they clapped and cheered as Bernard charged by. Only the members of the committee knew that this was not part of the plan. Murphy was heading for the High Street, but he drew level with the last float just as Daniel and the lion were leaving to join the mayhem. Murphy didn’t object to a human dressed in long robes scrambling down the side of a lorry, but in the moth-eaten and partially threadbare lion’s costume he recognised a hitherto unknown species of mule and he stopped, rearing dramatically. Bernard clung on, and Deborah heard the murmurs of appreciation from the crowd around her.

  “Better than the telly!” declared one young spectator.

  “Yeah.” His friend grinned. “That blood on Goliath looks almost real.”

  “Oh, my God!” Anne turned to Deborah. “Come on, we’d better do something. Which way to go first? Look, I’ll try and help stop World War III over there, and you
had better go after your friend!”

  Deborah nodded and ran forward as Murphy set off again, heading away from the High Street now and towards the narrow lane that led to the riverbank. She would have preferred to help Josh, who she could see was still trying to calm Yvonne and Rita Tring, but she knew Anne was right. Someone had to follow Bernard.

  The crowd was enjoying every minute, and the band, after the initial shock of being battered with cardboard boxes, had risen to the occasion and struck up with a spirited rendition of “The Dambusters March.” As Deborah sprinted from the green, the sun broke through the clouds and she heard Aubrey Bodicote marshalling his crack troops, the members of his Bible class who’d volunteered to sell ice creams.

  Deborah ran down the narrow lane to River Walk. After the noise of the green, it was strangely silent, cut off from the main village by the terrace of houses that backed on to the river. She stopped. Looking towards the bridge at Eastgate she had a clear view of the path. It was empty. She set off in the opposite direction—Bernard must have gone this way.

  As she rounded the bend in the path, she saw Murphy, riderless, standing at the water’s edge. It took her a moment to realise that Bernard was in the river. After her initial shock she was relieved to see he was in no danger, for he was in the shallow water near the bank, trying to scramble to his feet while a family of ducks paddled around him, quacking indignantly at his intrusion into their territory.

  Deborah clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. “Are—are you all right?”

  “Of course I’m not fucking all right!” He struggled towards the bank. The river here was only knee-deep, and there was little current, but his knitted chain mail was sodden and sagged heavily around his limbs. “Catch that bloody horse, will you? The bastard just took off.”

  “I know. There was a donkey.”

  “Yeah, well, the woman had no right letting us have an animal that couldn’t be trusted. I could have been killed.”

  Murphy snorted and swung his big head, looking as untrustworthy as an old sofa. Deborah picked up the reins and tied them to a nearby bench, then she went back to help Bernard onto the bank.

  “Let’s get that armour off you.” She pulled at the sodden cardboard. “It must weigh a ton. You were lucky he threw you into the shallows. The river is quite deep in places.”

  “How many people saw me come off?”

  She shook her head. “None. Most people thought your exit was part of the scene. It looked very good.”

  “The hell it did.”

  “Anyway, everyone wanted to stay on the green to watch the fighting.”

  “Fucking shambles. Should have known how it would end. Bloody amateurs.”

  “Well, why did you offer to help out then?” Deborah retorted, stung.

  “Because I thought you’d be pleased!” He stepped out of the knitted costume and stood before her, looking extremely vulnerable in his dripping boxer shorts. “I wanted you to come back to London with me, and I thought if I did this for you—”

  “Oh, Bernard.”

  He put his hands on her shoulders, sensing his advantage. “I miss you, Debs. Doesn’t this prove that I’d do anything to get you to come back with me?”

  His eyes were pleading. She felt herself weakening in the face of such devotion.

  “Bernard—” Deborah looked at him helplessly. “Bernard, I—” She broke off when she saw Josh approaching.

  “I just came down to see if you needed a hand…”

  “Yes, I mean, Bernard came off…”

  “Everything’s fine, mate. Thanks.” Bernard’s arm snaked possessively around her shoulders.

  Seeing the move, Josh shrugged. “Oh. Okay. I’ll get back then. See you later, Debs.”

  He turned and began walking away, the muscles of his bare back gleaming as he moved. Graceful, Deborah thought. Gorgeous. Perhaps if they could talk, if she gave him a chance to explain why he’d given Alan that information about her parents—maybe things could be worked out. She drew a breath to call after him but even as she did so, Bernard leaned heavily on her shoulder.

  “Aah!”

  “What is it?”

  “My ankle. I think I must have sprained it.”

  “Oh. Perhaps you’d better ride back—”

  “No! No, it’ll be okay, I think, as long as I can lean on you, Debs.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  By the time Deborah and Bernard reached the green, dragging Murphy behind them, there was a definite carnival atmosphere. The band was playing merrily, and a number of street vendors had appeared as if by magic. A group of Guides came up to make a fuss of Murphy, and Deborah persuaded them to take the horse back to the Happy Landings while she helped Bernard to his room at the Dog and Sardine.

  They arrived just as Kylie came out of the front door of the pub with Spike. Debs knew he’d recognised her, and she was sure Kylie would lose no time in telling him that she and Bernard had been drinking together last night, and once he’d passed that little snippet on to Josh…

  A sense of hopelessness settled over her. “Oh, what does it matter, it’s too late now anyway.”

  “Did you say something?”

  Stifling her unhappiness, Deborah shook her head. “No, Bernard. Let’s get you up to your room.”

  They struggled up the stairs, Bernard clenching his teeth and wincing occasionally, but finally they reached his room. As he fell back on the bed, his arm tightened about Deborah and he pulled her down on top of him.

  She struggled to avoid his kiss, pushing herself out of his embrace.

  “I thought you were in pain!” she snapped, smoothing down her tangled hair.

  “I am, but I just got carried away.”

  “Huh! I’d better go and find out what’s happening. Do you want me to ring for a doctor first?”

  Bernard gave her a brave smile. “Thanks, but I think I’ll be okay if I rest for a bit.”

  “Okay. See you later then—”

  “Debs?”

  She paused in the doorway.

  “I meant what I said. I really do want you to come back with me. It would be different this time, love, I promise.”

  She backed away. “I—um—I’ve got to go!”

  She whisked herself down the stairs and out into the sunshine, where she took a moment to sit on the low stone wall of the pub garden, trying to bring some order to the chaos in her brain.

  ***

  Lord Andrew flung himself from his horse and strode into the manor house, regardless of the mud still clinging to his boots. His steward was waiting for him in the great hall.

  “Edwin—how is my wife?” He spoke gruffly, pulling off his gloves.

  The servant bowed. “Lady Maude lives, sir. She has been asking for you.” He glanced quickly at his lord, then looked away. “She is in the west chamber—it was her wish.”

  Without a word Andrew hurried to the bedchamber, where the air was sickly sweet with the smell of juniper branches burning in the hearth. Maude lay pale and still in the great bed, but as her husband opened the door she turned her face towards him, summoning a weak smile.

  “You are back, my lord.”

  He crossed the room in two strides and clasped her cold hand in his huge paw. “Of course. When I heard you were ill, I came immediately.”

  “You are very good.” She sighed. “You have always been very good to me.”

  She began to cough, wincing as spasms of pain tore at her weakened frame.

  “Hush, Maude. You must not tire yourself. Save your strength.”

  A sudden shaft of evening sunlight filled the room, lighting up the glowing colours of the embroidered bedcover and turning to silver the fine streaks of grey in her thick dark hair. Maude turned her head away, narrowing her eyes against the light, but when Andrew ordered the window to be covered, she stopped him.

  “No, please.” Her thin, clawlike fingers gripped his hand. “I asked them to carry me here. I can see the road from the window. You do
not mind?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “I want to be ready, when he comes home.” She glanced shyly at her husband. “He will come, you know.”

  Andrew bit his lip. He signed for the servants to leave the room.

  “Maude,” he said gently, when they were alone, “we have heard nothing of Hugo for night on thirty years—”

  “He will come,” she repeated. “But I may not be here to greet him.” She struggled to sit up. “Andrew? Andrew, promise me—swear to me that when—when Hugo returns you will not shun him. He has done nothing wrong. He did not betray you, my lord.”

  Andrew eased her back against the soft cushions, blinking away tears from his own eyes.

  “I know it, my love. Rest now.”

  Maude gazed at him, her hazel eyes straining to focus.

  “Pray don’t be sad, Andrew. We have had a good life. God has blessed us with four healthy children. Be merciful to your brother when he comes.” She gave a sudden, sweet smile. “He will come back. You would tell me there has been no word, but I know, here.” She pushed her fist against her heart. “He is coming back.” She raised herself up, saying urgently, “I love you both, Andrew. You know that. There must be no quarrel between you. Promise me.”

  “By my faith, madam, I swear it,” exclaimed Andrew, alarmed at her agitation.

  For a full minute she stared at him. Then, as understanding dawned, she smiled and relaxed. She closed her eyes, the grip on his hand weakening.

  “Thank you. I am tired now. Stay with me, love. I think I shall sleep now.”

  ***

  When Deborah emerged from the garden of the Dog and Sardine, the green seemed full of strangers. Crowds were bad enough in London, but it was much worse that they were here, invading her usually quiet village.