Red Adam's Lady

by Grace Ingram

  Arnisby opened its doors, finding shelter and beds for all. By the time the sun had dropped behind the hills and their shadow was running eastwards over the steel-bright sea, all was ordered. Adam and Julitta at last could find leisure for their own needs, eagerly provided; hot water, clean clothing, and food. While the weavers vied with each other to assemble a meal worthy of their lord and his heroic followers, he took counsel by the harbor with Baldwin and Wulfstan. Against the horizon’s brightness a black water bird drifted with the tide.

  “The outlander?” Wulfstan blinked in some bewilderment. “Aye, he’s been hanging offshore since he sailed. You wants him, m’ lord?”

  “Will one of you put out and invite him to the reckoning, as I promised? Take this as a token.” He held out the dagger Erling had lent him.

  Wulfstan jerked a thumb at his eldest son, regarded his lord with swift comprehension and fumbled for French. “It was him got you away? You wasn’t aboard—”

  “We were buried in the shingle under the sail,” Julitta explained.

  He slapped his thigh and roared. “God save him for t’ thought!” Then he reverted to his own tongue to admonish his offspring. “Ye slummocky lumps, get to t’ outlander afore I skelps t’lugs off’n your gormless heads!”

  They sloshed to the nearest boat and piled aboard; whatsoever Lord Adam desired in Arnisby must be his as fast as feet could run and hands engage in providing it. Before the last of the twilight had faded from sea and sky Erling and Hakon had joined the conference at Martin the weaver’s table, horns of ale in hand and the meal’s bones before them.

  “They didn’t throw my men outside the gate; we’ll have support within,” Adam was saying.

  “They’ll be disarmed,” Baldwin pointed out.

  “Soon remedied.”

  “Lord Adam,” Martin expostulated, “do you plan to take Brentborough with eight men?”

  “Seventeen,” Erling amended quietly.

  “And Wulfstan’s fishermen to land us under the cliff. We walk in from behind, surprise the guards and enter the keep.”

  “The hour before dawn?” Baldwin asked professionally.

  “That’s the usual choice, and expected. We’ll go at curfew.”

  “But—but folk’ll be about—”

  “After curfew, when they’re settled abed, the duty sergeant makes the rounds with his squad, sees all’s in order and posts the guards. We’ll wait in the alley between the stables and kennels to smother them peacably, and then we make the rounds in their mail, gather up the guards in turn, and enter the keep. If Lord William and Tusky Gerald aren’t abed they’ll be addled-drunk, probably both, so we sit on them before they know it.”

  “You want them alive?”

  “There’s been killing enough,” Adam answered, his weary mouth contracting. “I want no more blood.” He glanced down at his hands as if surprised to see them unstained.

  Wulfstan cleared his throat and scowled at his sons. “Do we sit in t’boats like shags on a rock and leave outlanders to stand up alongside Lord Adam?” he demanded belligerently. They blinked at him, considered it dubiously, and one by one nodded agreement, “You’ll find us handy-like wi’ ropes, m’ lord, and handier wi’ gutting knives.”

  “It will be remembered.” Adam drained his ale-horn and stood up. He met Julitta’s grave regard, and smiled at her. “You’ll come with me, and wait in the boat.” He looked directly at Hakon, who suddenly flushed to his hair roots. “If this venture miscarry and you survive it, I entrust my lady to you.”

  “My life for hers,” Hakon accepted the charge.

  “I could devise no better provision for her.” He turned to the whole company, now standing. “Good friends all, I thank you. To arms, then; we must be across the river by moonrise.”

  Julitta sat in the fishing boat’s bows and listened to the shuffling of cautious feet dwindling up the hillside. A lop-sided moon squinted over the point, heaved itself clear and floated out into the cloud-streaked sky. Straining, she discerned movement and a faint glimmer of helmets; then that was gone, and there was nothing but the hill face on one hand and the silver estuary on the other. Waves slapped the planking and sucked at the rock. The lame seaman left as anchor-watch muttered curses under his breath. She addressed herself to the Holy Virgin, who had already showed her so much favor, and listened tensely to the wind sighing through grass and bracken.

  She had lost count of her prayers, and the moon was shining over the cliffs of Lykewake Bay, when a stone rattled down the hill, and bracken rustled sharply as legs brushed through it. Soft shoes padded and slithered. The seaman silently picked up an oar, no mean weapon in accustomed hands, and her own fingers closed on her dagger’s haft. Peering, she sensed movement against the black hillside. Someone stumbled, grunted breathlessly, came scrambling down.

  “Sheathe steel!” a familiar voice called softly. “It’s Ivar.”

  Two heads suddenly loomed into the sky. For a heart’s beat one shape’s resemblance jolted her; then she knew the boy Geoffrey. They came out on the flat rock to which the boat was moored; he stood irresolute a moment, and then at Ivar’s gesture climbed aboard the boat rocking as he moved. He uttered a faint yelp and lurched dangerously as his footing shifted under him, then collapsed on to the nearest thwart.

  “We ran upon the woeful gosling roaming without his nurse,” Ivar was explaining in English, “and Lord Adam bids me bring him down to you safe from harm. Reckon the poor fledgling’s had his bellyful o’ lordship, by t’ way he chucked it thankful-like to Lord Adam and come wi’ me meek as a mouse.”

  “You’re not courteous,” she rebuked him, but could not refrain from smiling in the dark.

  “No word of English in him, m’ lady.”

  The lad lifted his head. “He’s calling me a fool,” he said petulantly.

  “What else?”

  “It wasn’t my fault! They told me I was rightfully lord—”

  “There’s proof! Hell’s Teeth, did you never ask yourself why such men should trouble to right your wrongs? Do you claim to be so witless an innocent you never guessed you were a pretext for villainy?”

  “I didn’t know—not until too late—it wasn’t my fault!” His voice wavered as though he would weep, and he hunched on the thwart. “I thought it would be so wonderful,” he complained, “to be a great lord in the world. To wear fine clothes—feast on rare food and spiced wine—enjoy lovely women—ride out on a tall warhorse—command and be obeyed. All my dreams made real! So—so I looked no further—”

  “Bedazzled senseless,” Julitta pronounced crisply, and Ivar snorted.

  “But it wasn’t wonderful at all! Whatever I ordered they overruled. And no feasting or riding out, and all they’d do was drink and quarrel and fornicate with serving wenches. They cheated me!”

  There was more asperity than sympathy in Julitta’s retort, “You mean they cheated Lord Adam!”

  “Then I’m not—are you sure I’m not rightfully—”

  “Be honest! You’re sure yourself, in your own heart.”

  He nodded wretchedly. The moonlight touched his brows and nose, cheekbones and chin; he was old Maurice again, weighted with guilt and misery. “And that evil woman—she’s never uttered a word of sorrow for her husband, she took your chair, and seized the silks your husband gave you as bride gifts, and ruled like the queen of Hell—and you’ll tell me she’s my mother? I—I cannot endure—I’ll not believe—unless you can prove what befell my father’s wife.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “When? Where?”

  Julitta looked up the slope of the headland, and the truth hit her like a club. She knew. “There’s only one place she can be,” she said slowly, and wondered how anything so obvious could have gone unguessed for eighteen years.

  Ivar caught his breath in a little grunt. “M’ lady?”

  “She never left Brentborough, Ivar. She’s still there.”

  “I suppose you’ll find her,” Geoffrey said drea
rily. “The Abbot was right. He said only bastards were hidden away in monasteries, not rightful heirs, and—and I was a fool cozened by scoundrels. I wouldn’t believe him. I wanted all they offered, but it’s all gone awry.”

  That was his mother in him, and Julitta did not belittle the force of such envious dreams. Much of this coil had been spun by a woman who wanted more than God had given her.

  She had been watching the moon float higher over the cliffs, listening automatically for the curfew before she realized that it would not ring that night; the church bells must be cracked wreckage in the tower’s ruins. She listened yet more intently for some yell of discovery or clash of weapons, but heard only uneasy water lipping stone and plank, a scuffle of clothing as someone shifted, the wind whispering and the distant breakers crashing on the headland. Ordinary sounds did not descend so far from the castle, but she comforted herself that battle-clangor must. Yet nightmare visions of Adam empty-eyed and still in the moonlight filled her mind. If he died, her own life would be over too.

  “Never fret you, m’ lady,” Ivar grunted roughly. “About now he’ll be kicking your uncle out o’ bed.”

  “God grant it!”

  “Don’t you doubt it, m’ lady. Deadliest thing in a fight ever I seen; fast as a whiplash.” He must have recognized the approbation in his own voice, for he added, “I’m your man, m’ lady, but there’ll be no shame in serving young Fire-in-the-thatch—Lord Adam, I mean.”

  “You’ll find it pride,” said Julitta.

  He looked sharply at her in the moonlight, and nodded. “It’s that way, m’ lady?” he murmured.

  “Yes.”

  Not long after, a stone skipped high on the hill, and the slither and scrape of feet descended. At last a voice hailed her. “M’ lady! T’ castle’s took! Will you come up?”

  At the first word Julitta was on her feet, the boat lurching crazily at her unguarded movement; then she was on the steady rock, hitching her skirts for the climb. The newcomer was hurrying down to meet her, Ivar, Geoffrey and the seaman scrambling up. A pungent odor of fish preceding him proclaimed the messenger’s status.

  “T’ castle’s yourn, m’ lady: walked in, we did, wi’ nowt but a few heads clouted.”

  A thankful sigh emptied Julitta of dread. Adam had his own again. Only she, who had also known the rootless life of the roads, could guess how much his inheritance meant to him. They were all climbing now; a little further, and their feet found a grassy path and could trot. The fisherman jerked out details as he found breath.

  “Took t’ sergeant like Lord Adam planned—t’ guards on t’ gate was his men and joined us joyful—walked into t’ guardroom and caught ’em either abed or dicing—sighted t’ points at their gizzards and stayed mum as mice. Not a squeak! So we trusses ’em up all on a row, and Lord Adam bids me fetch you.”

  Torches flared in the bailey, spears and helmets gleamed, and servants gaped outside their huts. Someone raised a cheer at sight of her, and the torchflames lighted welcoming faces everywhere. She was neither surprised nor flattered; they had had two days of her uncle’s governance. Adam was not an easy master, but his very defects were more endearing than all Lord William’s merits.

  Erling waited at the head of the stair to greet and escort her. In the guardroom she received grins from everyone but sulky prisoners. The hall was all confusion in half-light, though someone was lighting torches in wall cressets. Serving men and wenches, roused up from sleep in the floor rushes and huddling disordered garments about them, clustered like sheep. Erling’s bulk thrust a way through them for her.

  Adam stood on the dais, his helmet under one arm and the mail coif thrust back from his disordered hair. At sight of her his grim face changed; he sprang down impetuously. It still astonished Julitta that she could so affect him. He kissed her on the mouth and set an arm about her, leading her on to the dais. Gerald of Flackness and her uncle, blear-eyed, half-dressed and incredulously surly, scowled at them. Baldwin lounged alongside, and chuckled maliciously.

  “Aye, now comes the reckoning. What’s the price, d’ you think, of treacherously seizing a neighbor’s demense?”

  Men erupted from the stairhead in the corner behind them, in their midst Giles and Sweyn the sergeant. They blinked at the torchlight, their state proclaiming to all eyes and noses that they had sojourned two unsavory days in the cells. Adam caught his breath and turned aside to them. Baldwin glanced over his shoulder at him and moved nearer the captives.

  “Fit to make even my belly spew, tricking that purblind fool with his own wife’s bastard. And a gallows-example—your own necks itch?” Gerald snarled at him, but Lord William gazed in heavy despair. He grinned evilly at the younger man. “Remembering that you struck Lord Adam in the face, and kicked him, and he with his hands bound? What’s the payment for that, or will you grovel on your belly for mercy?”

  He slouched his weight on to his left leg, and the swordhilt on that hip jutted temptation. Gerald uttered a strangled sound in his throat and grabbed at it. The metal’s rasp startled the hall. The blade swung clear and back. Baldwin turned on his heel, steel ready in his right hand. It drove inside the stroke, under the ribs’ arch and up. Gerald’s face twisted in a vast astonishment as his blood burst from him. He was dead when he thudded upon the rushes.

  “Hell’s Teeth! You baited him for that end!”

  “Out of a disinterested regard for you, Adam.” Baldwin wiped his blade on the dead man’s clothing, and grinned jauntily.

  “You murdered him unshriven! I ought to hang you out of hand.”

  Baldwin came closer, bowed to Julitta, and murmured in the undertone all successful scoundrels early cultivate, so that none but she and Adam could hear, “Consider, what more acceptable service could I do my son-in-law?”

  Adam’s teeth caught his lip. He met his wife’s appalled yet appreciative eye, and a reluctant humor tugged the corners of his mouth. “You cutthroat, you’ve vilely embarrassed me—”

  “Better vilely embarrassed now than stabbed in the back six months hence,” Baldwin retorted. “He injured you past pardon, so he’d coddle his grudge until death—yours or his.”

  “Sooner his,” Adam candidly admitted, and signaled the nearest men to remove the corpse.

  “Call it my step-daughter’s dowry,” Baldwin muttered in Julitta’s ear. “Service comes cheaper than cash, and this has proved a most profitless venture.” He patted her unpaternally on the behind, winked into Adam’s face of kindling wrath, and mocked them both with his shark’s grin. Struggling to suppress laughter in the presence of death, Julitta nipped her husband’s arm and felt him suddenly quiver with mirth. He looked down into her eyes, and she recognized the bond of humor and understanding that united them more surely than joy of the flesh.

  The dead man had been laid in the wall-chamber that had thrice within a week served this purpose. The hall was bright with torchlight, its confusion brought to order. The servants were herded to its further end, mercenaries and Brentborough men were ranged on guard, and already it took on the aspect of a judicial court. Sweyn at the dais’s foot stood to arraign the prisoners, and at his nod William of Chivingham was thrust forward.

  He said painfully, “There’s a long reckoning.” He was beaten, his face sagging into flabby folds and pockets, an old man. “He betrayed us!” he cried, in a kind of anguished croak. “He sold us to the Scots, and my son died!”

  “And what was your price? Brentborough?”

  “No, no, we’re not thieves! You could have kept it if you’d joined us, but we had to have it one way or another. And there was the boy—your seneschal would open for him—but we meant you no wrong—”

  “Only murder? And my faithful servant hanged?”

  “All this outcry over a churl!”

  “Hell’s Teeth, is loyalty so cheap to you?” He looked past him at Constance, standing alone beyond Sweyn as though all had withdrawn from the very touch of her garments.

  Defeat had not lessened her.
It had released her. She was envy and hate incarnate, staring at Adam and Julitta malevolently for their possession of youth and love and lordship, she who had thrown away all she had to reach for what was not hers. Her face twisted with spite, and she struck recklessly to smirch and hurt.

  “Yes, you’re well matched, lecher and whore! You’ll never know who sires your brats, and she’ll never tally your bastards!”

  “Speak, and we’ll hear you. Spit poison, and it’s the cells,” Adam replied quietly.

  “What’s to be said?” she answered, casting her contemptuous gaze on Lord William, sunk in grief and despair, and on Geoffrey hesitating by the dais steps. “We should have killed you as you rode in that night.”

  “That’s monstrous!” Geoffrey exclaimed.

  “A good plan, but poor tools I had to trust it to, and a green girl tricked them!” Her composure broke. “All plans go awry!” She struck one fist into the other palm. “You’ve to depend on others, and always they fail you. Bertram was a fool, and Maurice squeamish, and these gutless knaves blathered about their Young King’s rights as if seizing Brentborough were a Holy Crusade.”

  “What was your desire?” Adam asked in the hush.

  “To be Lady of Brentborough! All I fought for, schemed for, all I had—and that whey-faced whore’s get robbed me of it!”

  “Tell the truth!” Geoffrey cried shrilly. “Are you my mother?”

  She looked at him and shrugged. “It’s truth enough that you’re Maurice’s own son, and that hound his second cousin once removed.”

  “If you’re my mother—” He turned desperately to Julitta. “My father’s wife—you said she was dead and you knew where she lay. Prove it! Rightful heir or monster’s bastard, in God’s Name let me know!”