Rhiannon

by Vicki Grove

  “I see you’ve worn my colors, lady, so now I claim them back as your champion for this night of revelry!”

  With that, he reached under her arm to lift her to his horse. Rhia looked frantically around the circle and saw Maddy run eagerly to Frederique. Meanwhile Roderick, smirking, walked his horse to Beornia.

  “Well? Climb aboard, then, wench,” he told her. “Can you do else than talk? If so, let’s see it, for your blather proves tiresome, and yet you are comely when silent.”

  Rhia hung suspended against the side of Leo’s panting horse, kicking at the air beneath her feet and slapping at Leonard’s arm where he still clutched her beneath the arm. “Let me go!” she howled.

  Then suddenly, as though summoned from the netherworld by her distress, there issued from the ground an unearthly wail of agony, a yelping screech of such unutterable horror that it might only have been made by demons, and those hundreds in number.

  The seven horses whinnied and reared and staggered against each other in fear, their eyes widened and rolling. For through their hooves they indeed felt the ground quiver with the roil of that heathenish sound.

  The riders struggled to control their mounts. Leonard released Rhia and she fell to the ground, off-footed. Maddy, too, had only partly completed her mount behind Frederique, and she found herself tumbled so she sat down hard upon the mossy earth.

  “ ’Tis the end of the world!” Maddy screamed, though it’s doubtful she could have been heard, for the racket of all those offended demons still shook the black night as though the whole of Wythicopse Ring would indeed open up and collapse into hell itself.

  “We ride for home!” one of the younger squires yelled, and he with three others turned their horses and jumped the tumbled part of the wall, as all the mounts had strained to do.

  Leonard, Frederique, and Roderick were left, and they three tried their best to gain control of their steeds, though hard reins and threat of whips would not settle them in the least. Indeed, such efforts only served to make them rear all the higher, so as to throw off their masters and rid themselves of encumbrance.

  “Dismount!” Leonard finally yelled, and following his lead, Frederique and Roderick swung off their horses. The steeds immediately jumped the wall and galloped into the night, so that now six stood inside that ancient ring of brambly stone, the three young maids and the three haughty sires, with none sitting high and mighty upon a horse.

  The heathen shriek from below stopped so suddenly that the new silence made a ringing in all their ears. They stood frozen, awaiting what might come next.

  “No leaky Roman pipe ever gave such a blasting,” Roderick murmured after a while. “Our mounts will have reached the stables, and I suppose we’ll needs go home afoot,” he further grumbled.

  Leonard laughed and slapped him on the back. “Buck up, friend Roderick. Don’t you see that these frightened girls need the comfort of our strong arms?” He gave him a wink and a sideways nod of his head, then he strode toward Rhia.

  She stepped backward from him until she was pressed against the dampish stone of the wall. “We’d best hurry home our separate ways, afore that demon’s riled again!” she protested in a rush. “If it be but one, and in truth it sounds like more.”

  She was too harried to remember the rest of the plan, what it was she was to do or say. It took all her attention to dodge Leonard’s clutches!

  “Wait! I know that sound!” Beornia suddenly exclaimed.

  All looked at her. Even Leonard, holding fast Rhia’s arms, looked over his shoulder.

  “Yes!” Beornia continued eagerly. “I’ve heard it not so loud but just as mawkish, not this shrill but shrill enough. It’s the sound of an instrument played by one of the monks here resident at the church! The others send him to the outside courtyard when he feels he must play, and I’ve languished there of late and marveled at the, well, the bawl of it.”

  Rhia bit her lip and shook her head with all her might, hoping to signal Beornia to just stop in her description before she doomed Thaddeus and Silas to whatever dire consequences would await their unfortunate discovery!

  But it was no use. Beornia herself was certainly playing for time with this, hoping to delay the night’s progression with a bit of small talk, as smarmy Roderick had his arm draped across her slim shoulders and stroked her cheek with his porcine hand.

  Leonard released Rhia and drew his sword. “Come, Fred, it won’t take long to poke some lost monk. We’ll rout him from the pipes and send him squealing home to the vicar, then be left without further threat of interruption.”

  “No!” Rhia grabbed Leonard’s sleeve.

  He turned back to her, blinked, then smiled. “I’m surprised and well pleased by your complaint at the delay, lady. Don’t fret, we’ll make this fast.”

  But she would not release his sleeve. “Let me go with you,” she pleaded.

  He frowned. “To stab a monk? The hole that contains him is dark, and it may be a bloody business. Stay here, I say, and I’ll return momentarily.”

  “If we’re going, let’s go, Leo,” Frederique groused, leaning upon the hilt of his sword and adjusting his mustache with the thumb and finger of the other hand. His heavy-lidded eyes and pouted mouth showed that he had not the reckless ambition Leo did.

  Leonard tried to pry Rhia’s fingers from his arm, but Rhia would not unhinge them.

  “But . . . but . . . !” She shook her head fiercely. But, but, but . . . what? “But, sir, I fear this monk is one who . . . who is idiot resident of our hospice upon the bluff! Yes, yes, I’m sure that’s him! He escapes sometimes, makes foray down to the town and steals the robes of a monk! Dressed in this way, he plays his irksome instrument until he’s taken into custody and brought up the trail to us again! He has . . . he has a friend, also a simpleton, who goes missing as well. They were last seen by us some days ago, and I have no doubt he, also, hunkers in this hole you speak of. They mean no harm, and I would be so much in your debt if you would let me call them out and escort them home.”

  Leonard stared at her with his brows knit, flummoxed. Then he assumed a grin that showed his deep dimple and flipped back his light hair, murmuring, “In my debt, you say, fair Rhiannon? And how do you propose to repay this debt, then, hmmm?”

  She released his sleeve and forced a coy smile. “If you three will come as escorts up our trail, sir, you will not be disappointed. The trail itself is bound to be enchanted upon this night, and an old church stands atop the bluff and would afford romantic shelter. It’s haunted, you see, and so can only add to the excitement of this moonlit night.” She looked down and took a breath, then raised her eyes. “Besides, sir, my mother and her mother will be gone to Roodmas. The blufftop will be completely our own, with none other upon it but the sleeping invalids and these two heedless idiots.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “Yes, Maddy’s spoke to us of the place!” He spun round to the others, sheathing his sword. “Roderick? Fred? Let’s away to this blufftop, as we’ve a willing guide to the secrets of the place. Now, this promises to be an adventure!”

  Frederique tilted his head and shrugged. Roderick raised one eyebrow.

  “It’s a long hike,” the earl’s son stated. Then he sighed. “But I suppose anything’s better than going back to the house and dancing all night with those ugly, goose-necked cousins of mine who have arrived this day from Francia.”

  Thaddeus and Silas were so covered with ancient slime from the Roman pipes that they seemed more glutinous, miry reptiles than men. Silas’s bagpipes, too, were slimed, so that his instrument was a third preposterous clammy thing drifting between the two of them. They were ordered by Roderick to walk the distance of one hundred paces behind as Rhiannon led their troop on a shortcut skirt around the town and toward the bluff trail.

  When they all traipsed on a straight course across a patch of stubblefield, though, Rhia managed to drop back to join the two slimed monks for a few moments upon the ruse of giving them a good scold for their escape.r />
  “You smell awful,” she whispered to Thaddeus, though it’s surprising she wasted time on this observation, given how little chance for talk they’d have.

  “Rhia, they made a full confession!” Thaddeus whispered eagerly back. “When they spoke French, they joked of the murder in full detail!”

  She gasped. “Was Roderick the killer?”

  “No, Leonard. He knocked Aleron from his horse purposely, just for sport. They saw he breathed no longer, and also discovered from his possessions that he was Norman. As all Norman murders are by law thoroughly investigated, these others then assisted in disrobing Aleron so his aristocratic background would not be evident from his boots or papers or horse. I suppose they left his money pouch in hopes someone would pick it up and thereby bring guilt upon himself. They added stab wounds so it would look like a murder for loot done by a local peasant or some vagabond. They joked of all this!”

  “Rhiannon!” Leonard turned to call harshly across the distance and the darkness. “Leave those halfwits to stumble along as they may and come back to us up here, I say!”

  The three squires held torches, and by that light Rhia could see their shapes far ahead, and also the shapes of the close-held girls they hiked with.

  “I come,” she called back, then swallowed. To Thaddeus, she whispered, “I like this not. They will never fear Jonah’s disguise. They easily and quickly take whatever they want. Did you not hear them say they would poke the monk that played beneath our feet? They’ll easily kill him if they think he comes in the way of their . . . their lewd intentions!”

  Thaddeus whispered back, “When you’ve escorted me to my simpleton cot, I’ll double back and hide just under the window of the church that’s nearest the hermit’s tomb!”

  Wiping tears from her eyes, she whispered, “But Thaddeus, you can’t do that! Almund himself only dares watch from our cot, as there’s no hiding spot outside the church and Gramp sounds the alarm when anyone’s about! We were fools to attempt this! How did we ever expect to get them to repeat their confession within hearing of the reeve to begin with? It will be your word against theirs, and so yours will count for nothing, and all this approaching mayhem will have been for naught.”

  “Rhiannon, I said come!”

  She squeezed Thaddeus’s arm and ran to join the group ahead. She would not have hurt Thaddeus’s feelings for the world, but she wondered at his innocent saintliness sometimes. Oh, he would jump through that window and give his life gladly in defense of his friends, she had no doubt of that. But truthfully, it would be such a waste, for against three ruthless and well-trained swordsmen such as these, Thaddeus could be no help at all. Why, he didn’t so much as own a weapon!

  What would he do, flail at the squires with his paint box? This while Jonah batted at them with the false headpiece he wore? What had they all been thinking last night?

  And now Holt was given the slip, and no one respected the monks’ robes, certainly, as they were slimed and the monks thought to be idiots. Besides which, this lot poked monks and thought it good fun when they squealed!

  This was no plan whatsoever, but sure catastrophe.

  Chapter 27

  Rhia’s shortcut kept them at a distance from the town, which from their vantage resembled a garish painting daubed with a rough brush upon the black canvas of the night. The fires burned high and the revelers shouted and shrieked, each sound reaching the ears of the eight walkers a moment or two after it had been let forth. Each giddy laugh was over before their group so much as heard it, then, Rhia mused. A shriek of pain was not perceived by her ears until the throb that had caused it was ended. In fact, the one who’d laughed might well be crying by now—who knew? Laughter and tears, pleasure and pain—, each of the four was but a passing and phantom thing, yet who did not desire the first of each couple and tremble at its linked second?

  Such were Rhia’s fevered thoughts as they trudged, for she’d never felt such turmoil in her life, traveling beside these unpredictable squires, forcing laughter at their crude jokes, though her stomach turned and her head pounded. This false laughter was surely twinned with real pain to follow, yet they had no choice but to walk straight toward it!

  The earl’s paunchy son began to pant and blow by the time they’d gone halfway through the barley field. On the bank of the river (in fact, quite near where doomed Aleron had been tumbled from his horse), he dropped to a sudden sit upon the ground.

  “My knees dislike the pounding they take!” he fumed, fanning his face, which streamed with sweat. “How much more of this?”

  “We near the trail,” Rhiannon said meekly, afraid to tell how grueling it would be.

  “And what adventure going up it!” Leonard quipped, surely seeking to lighten Roderick’s foul mood. He sat down near his friend and yanked Rhia down beside him.

  “How extraordinarily savage these locals indeed are,” Roderick stated after a bit, looking toward bright Woethersly with his elbows upon his knees. He seemed completely fascinated by the sight of the merry, drunken town.

  The others had now stopped and seated themselves upon the mossy ground as well, and all watched the fires and the fire-leapers, awaiting Roderick’s signal that he was rested and ready to proceed. Rhia stole a glance over her shoulder and saw Silas and Thaddeus standing in the far shadows, trying not to draw notice.

  “Indeed, what debauchery,” Frederique murmured. “These pagan ways!”

  “Beltane Eve is a holdover, is all,” Beornia said tartly. “We are most of us Christian here, as you yourselves claim to be.”

  “Claim to be, you say?” Roderick drew back and glared at her as if she were some speaking rodent.

  Beornia shrugged and sighed. “Sir, excuse my ignorance, as I have never known the exact beliefs of nobility and was some surprised that your friends would plan to poke a monk with a sword and never fear God’s displeasure with that.”

  Rhia felt herself go rigid with nerves as she looked over at fearless Beornia. Did this bodacious girl indeed have some plan in opening this box of snakes?

  Beornia looked back at her, all innocence. “Rhiannon, I’ve meant to ask you. Are there presently hospice beds unoccupied upon your bluff? A young girl in town—just a babe, really—was injured at market this week. Her arm grows putrified where it was caught by the whip of some careless rider. Anyhow, it’s clear she will soon die. It would be a mercy if the girl could be brought within your mother’s care, as her pain’s a dreadful thing to behold and her mother grows insane with the horror of the child’s constant cries.”

  Beornia’s speech was met by deep silence, black silence it was, as dark as the night.

  Rhia finally found breath to whisper, “Yes, we have room.”

  As though adding its own brooding comment, the sky grumbled with muted thunder in that empty moment, and Rhia saw the flick of a bright skeletal finger of lightning in the eastern sky. She felt she should point out the coming storm and urge some haste upon them, but she could not find the nerve to do it.

  Leonard, meanwhile, had turned to Beornia, his face grown tight with anger.

  “Lady Chatter, as I shall call you,” he addressed her, “you might better look for God’s displeasure in the idle disobedience of peasants who gaggle about the streets and yield not to their betters as they ride by. King Henry rules by God’s will, and we who are his knights display the king’s will—that is, God’s will—for all in the realm to see. The mother might have moved this child from our route. As she didn’t, I had to.”

  “One less peasant to grow up and breed,” Frederique added with a yawn.

  To Rhia’s surprise, this comment drew Leo’s ire as well.

  “And what would you know about it, Fred, as I am the one who has to assume the follow-through for all such things?” he snapped. “Your mind is on the trysts you plan or your next wager at the games table, whilst I am generally left to be champion for us all!”

  They all sat without talk for a bit longer, then Roderick, with a sigh t
hat was more a groan, got to his feet, which signaled the others to stand as well.

  Beornia’s bold move and Leo’s anger in response had stifled conversation, and they proceeded to cross the river and take the trail in uneasy silence. Maddy led, having been up the path before, so that Rhiannon could bring up the rear with Silas and Thaddeus following.

  Rhia’d worried a little that she would be expected to lead, and thereby would not see Thaddeus and Silas at all. But no one wanted the job of traveling so near those two, because of the unpredictable nature of the witless, and because of their smell. Besides, with all the hazards of the woods, those last in line were quickest to be picked off, just as those who led were most likely to come upon any treacherous land-shifts in the trail. The squires obviously preferred to travel in the middle with their lessers taking the chances.

  “This Leonard has shown murderous disregard not once but twice,” Thaddeus hissed to Rhia from close behind her. “He’s caused one death and will soon cause a second, and that’s just what we know of.”

  Rhiannon could make no reply, and she wished Thaddeus would not speak of it, as her heart seized so she could barely breathe when she thought of a child suffering so. The fire that had caused such awful misery to Primrose was bad enough, but this seemed worse, as a fire has no power to reason out its actions, and a man does, or should have.

  “Say, can’t you stop that idiot’s blathering?” Roderick complained. “It lowers my vigilance as I pick my way.”

  “Doodle doodle doooo!” Thaddeus crowed in response.

  In spite of the feeling of black foreboding that dogged her, Rhia had to smile, then she turned to shush Thaddeus sternly enough for the others to hear.

  Constant lightning flickered the darkness by then and thunder boomed close and closer, so that all the walkers looked up at the sky whenever they might take their eyes from their feet for a step. Phosphorescence leapt upon the swirling waters of the bay as the wind grew blustery, pushing waves that crashed against the beachfront with some force. A moaning wail set up as well, the sound of mermaids keening, Granna might have said, though more likely the rising wind howled through the many crevasses and small caves that pocked the bluff’s rough limestone skin.