Stephen jumped. Heart skittering, he looked around. The crying continued and there was a note of exhaustion and desperation in the sound that bit into his conscience.
“Why does someone not attend the child?” he muttered as they passed the village well and reached the other side of the square.
As the crying went on and on, Stephen became even more uneasy. “Does no one care?” he asked aloud.
Elen shook her head. “Do not speak too loudly,” she murmured. “We cannot afford to draw attention to ourselves.” Her step quickened.
Perversely, Stephen felt anger build in him. The wailing seemed to eat into his mind, leaving no room for clear thought. “What kind of people would leave a child so?” he demanded in a harsh whisper.
“People who must work,” Elen said softly, hurrying down a narrow, muddy alley between two buildings.
Stephen followed Elen for another few steps and then stopped and brought his hand down on her shoulder. Beneath his fingers he felt the straps of her pack dig deep into the soft flesh of her shoulder. “Enough,” he said firmly. “We cannot leave a babe to cry so piteously.”
He turned to go back but was halted by Elen’s hand on his elbow. She exerted an astonishing power for a woman. “No!” she whispered furiously. “Turn around and follow me. We cannot afford to be drawn from our task by anything.” She shook him. “We must go. Now. Do you understand?”
Stephen stared at her, anger pushed aside by astonishment. It seemed there was more to this place of Ferndale than appearances told and Elen understood all of it while he struggled with hints and whispers only.
His astonishment made him biddable. Stephen found himself turning yet again, following Elen down the alley. The child still cried and his forehead puckered as he fought his need to help. As they emerged from the sodden byway, the wails trailed off into a silence that seemed dense and uneasy. The ending of the cry was not the relief Stephen had thought it would be.
Elen skirted the corner of a tiny cottage and walked to the door. The walls were blackened and charred, the window frames warped. From heat?
Elen knocked softly on the door but she did not wait for an answer. She pushed the door open and held it aside for Stephen to enter, while glancing around the area in front of the cottage.
He ducked under the low lintel and entered.
It was dark inside and cold despite a small fire flickering at the end of the room. Elen closed the door behind them. Despite the barrier a small, chilling wind whistled around Stephen’s legs.
Elen placed her pack on the dirt floor with a sigh of relief and moved to the fire. In the dim corner next to it sat a man. The chair he sat on was made of roughly dressed timber, twine and cane. It had a short back and high arms. The man appeared as coarsely put together as his seat. He had very fine hair, long enough to touch his shoulders. The skin of his head showed clearly through the thinning silver locks. The chin had been roughly shaved at least two days before and the emerging beard was a prickly sprinkle of gray. His face was a battlefield of scars and creases. He was desperately thin, bones draped in flesh and every bone visible.
The man was asleep.
Elen crouched in front of him and laid her hand gently on his forearm where it rested on the high arm of the chair. He jerked awake with a startled snort and bright blue eyes pinned them with a sharp gaze that lacked not one wit he was born with.
“Elen, so you have come back.” The man’s voice was rough, gravelly, with no old man’s wavering. He spoke French with a mild English accent.
“At last, I am here,” she agreed, with a smile. “Warren, I bring you food. Enough to share among all of you.”
He patted her hand. “You are a good child to think of us this way. A good child.” He looked up at Stephen, his gaze stripping him, assessing him. “I know you,” he said slowly, his eyes narrowed. “Yes. You have the look of your sire. Dinan, yes?”
Stephen nodded. “Yes. How do you know my father?”
“I fought with him, boy. Yes, fought the French.”
“You were in his army?”
Warren spluttered. “Damn your impudence!” he growled. “I fought beside him with my own men.”
“Warren was one of King Henry’s favorite knights,” Elen said in a soft aside.
Stephen looked around the decrepit cottage, the sparse furniture, the wretched odor that seemed to ooze from the walls themselves. This man was a knight? Impossible. What could have happened to bring Warren to this pass?
Warren fumbled at the tattered rug that covered his lap. He pulled it aside, revealing an empty space where his legs should have been. Then he dropped the rug back over the chair. “Horse fell on me. Drove my chain mail into my legs. Smashed them. The man who attended me tried his best but after two days…” Warren waved his hand in front of his nose and Stephen nodded. He knew from direct observation what Warren would not speak aloud in front of Elen. The putrid rot that sometimes spread from a wound could kill a man in three days if it was not halted. Obviously, Warren’s had been halted but it had cost him his legs.
“You are in my lady’s service?” Warren asked.
Stephen smiled. “In a way.”
Warren nodded, satisfied.
“I brought Stephen here to listen to you. To learn.” Elen touched his arm again. “Do you mind?”
Warren considered her request for a long moment and then sighed. “There is no shame in it. Not anymore.”
“There was never shame in it,” Elen said firmly. She looked at Stephen. “Come and listen,” she said.
Stephen moved closer and felt Elen’s hand in his, pulling him gently down to her level. He found a roughly chopped log nearby, pushed it onto its end and sat down. “I am listening.”
Warren looked him over again. “One like you would have no allegiance save to the king. You know what the mulct is, boy?”
“The fine raised against a village when a Norman is killed within that village’s borders and the murderer cannot be found.”
“Aye, it sounds simple enough, does it not?”
“As it should be,” Stephen agreed. “The precedence for the establishment of the fine was well documented, I believe. But it is an old system, established during the Anarchy.”
“No one has yet seen fit to disable the fine,” Elen commented.
Stephen looked around the cottage, suspicion growing. “Surely you do not suggest this village is so poor because of it?”
Both Warren and Elen stayed silent, their gazes steady.
An anger he did not understand began to grow. “That is utterly ridiculous. A simple fine could not reduce a village to this. Not even the most excessive fine.”
“There is a latitude in its application that the Sheriff and his men have used to the fullest extent,” Elen said. “I will let Warren tell you.”
Stephen looked at Warren again, feeling his irritation build. “How much was this…fine?” he demanded.
“For both harvests we are to hand over ten times the victim’s weight in seed and his weight in coin.”
Some of his anger chilled. “In coin?” Stephen had not seen more than a good handful of coin from any one of the villages under his control in years. He knew full well the strain it placed on the village to produce that much. A peasant rarely saw money at all. His trading was mostly barter.
“Aye, in blood-dipped coin,” Warren confirmed with a growl. “Plus normal taxes are still payable in the meantime. If we don’t make the weight, the amount we lack is added to the next harvest.”
“What do you mean, ‘the next harvest’?”
“This is not a one-time fine,” Warren said. “We are liable to pay the full fine, every harvest, twice a year, until we produce evidence of the murderer, or the murderer himself. Of course, we have not yet made the full fine even once.”
“Twice a year!” Stephen was appalled. He would be hard put to raise such an amount using the combined resources of every village on his lands. Ferndale was a single small village. “N
o wonder your folk plough the fields without beasts to help you.”
“Aye. Most were sold long ago to raise money for the first fine.” Warren’s mouth turned down. “You must understand that everyone who was free to leave here left long ago. The peasants and serfs are bound here and must stay. Nottingham and his men constantly watch us, to ensure we do not try to escape during the night. They arrive unexpectedly and do a head count. Newcomers are ruthlessly questioned and if they can be bound to the village they are forced to stay. To work. If anyone dares to leave, they will take out their ire on the rest of us.” Warren waved his hand at the four walls around them. “They tried to burn down this place for one such infraction.”
Stephen remembered the charred walls outside. “I see,” he said woodenly. His horror built and along with it an associated guilt. Nottingham was a Norman overlord. How many others took this much liberty with their assigned duties?
If Nottingham was likely to appear at any time without warning and exercise such inquisitions that Warren spoke of, no wonder Elen had hurried through the village with such fear that she was able to ignore a wailing child.
A hungry child, Stephen realized. Hungry and possibly alone, for its parents were out working in the fields.
“Tell him about Mary,” Elen said quietly.
Warren nodded. “Mary, my niece, took me in when no one else would. It was an extra burden on the family, you understand?”
Stephen nodded.
“She found she was with child. She wanted to travel to the next village to stay with her sister, for better food. She knew if she did not eat more than us, the child would be born dead or dying. She appealed to Nottingham but he said if she was so keen to leave Ferndale, she could work for Nottingham himself in his bloody castle. So he took her there and worked her to the bone. That’s where she died, she and her unborn babe. She never came home.” He turned his head to stare at the pitiful fire and Stephen saw his throat working.
“Mary was Warren’s only living relative. Without her, he was left to fend for himself.”
Stephen glanced at the robe over Warren’s lap again. “What about Mary’s husband?”
“Mary was not married.”
Stephen’s horror mounted. He swallowed convulsively. “Then who…”
“Nottingham,” Elen said softly.
“Nottingham or one of his lieutenants,” Warren added, voice harsh. “They took her against her will.”
“I’m sorry,” Stephen whispered.
Warren shrugged. “Every woman here is at their mercy. The thing has lost its stigma now, through constant repetition.”
“How do you care for yourself, then, if Mary has gone?”
“The others. They come when they can, leave what they can spare.” Warren turned to face them again and Stephen saw anew his thinness and frailty.
“Aye, look at me well,” Warren said quietly.
“Why did you not appeal to your overlord for relief?” Stephen asked. “I’m sure whoever applied the fine did not intend its collection be so zealous.”
Warren spat. “The king applied the fine,” he said. “In a momentary fit of madness. You know how Richard can get. He ordered the fine be raised no matter what it took.”
“He was angry,” Elen commented. “Upset.”
“Why?” Stephen demanded. “I do not understand.” He found himself on his feet, unable to remain calmly seated. “What could possibly enrage Richard so? Who was killed here that brought so much misery upon you?”
“The Earl of Wessex,” Warren answered.
Stephen’s shock wiped away all his anger. He sat back down, knees giving way easily. He looked at Elen.
The Earl of Wessex! Her father had died in these fields they had just crossed. No wonder she searched so diligently for his murderer. It was not a simple matter of revenge at all. For as long as the murderer remained unknown, these people would continue to pay the price for Wessex’s death.
“I tried to explain, once,” Elen said softly.
Stephen nodded. “Yes, you did. But I did not understand then.” He frowned, mind beginning to work again. “How did it happen? Why would the king take your father’s death so badly? He was outlawed, was he not?”
“My father had always been a favorite with Henry and Richard. Both kings worked hard to keep it that way, as they knew my father’s loyalty was the only way they could hold Yorkshire and the northern lands. But with Richard, it was a genuine friendship.” Elen sighed. “Richard looked upon my father as a son might.”
“Yet he had Wessex outlawed and you along with him.”
“He had no choice. The letter presented to him was too damning to ignore.” Elen grimaced. “My father could have submitted to his punishment but he wanted to clear his name. He wanted to find the person who invented the letter. So he escaped to the forest and took me with him.”
“Straight to the other lord in exile,” Stephen murmured.
“We would not have survived by ourselves. We knew nothing of living off the land. Joining Robert was a practical decision. And too, Robert had innumerable contacts we could use to find out who had wanted my father out of the way.”
“How did your father die?” Stephen asked.
A shadow crossed her face. “We lived with Robert for just over a year. My father, at Robert’s request, led a small party on a tour of the villages around Nottingham, to distribute some of the bounty Robert had accumulated over the summer.”
“Ferndale was one of those villages,” he guessed.
Elen nodded. “I don’t know what happened when he came here. All I know, all I have been able to discover so far, is that he was found dead in the fields, his throat cut. The Sheriff investigated but nothing was found. No one had seen anything, heard anything. The King…” She frowned. “I heard he delivered such a blow to the head of the man who brought him the news of my father’s death that the man fell down and never got up again. Richard’s fury produced the fine that Ferndale now suffers.”
“But wait, Wessex was a Saxon. English. The mulct is for Normans who are found dead.”
Elen nodded. “I think Richard forgot. Or he did not care. No one has dared point out his error. Nottingham will not, for he grows rich on the proceeds. No lord will interfere with another’s administration.” She shrugged. “So I search for my father’s killer.”
Warren shook his head. “She spends her time making up for her father’s error in dying here. Always she brings food, money.”
Stephen glanced at Elen and was oddly pleased to see her face flushed with hectic color. She stood and went to the heavy pack she had left by the door.
“I have food here and firewood. Stephen’s pack has—” She broke off, listening with her head cocked, frowning.
Stephen listened too. He heard it in the distance—the rumble of approaching horses. Many of them.
“They’re not far away,” Warren said sharply.
Elen rushed back to him. “The villager called Peter, who just returned. Where can I find him?”
“Peter? That young whelp got a beating for his desertion.” Warren frowned. “He be out in the field.”
“Which one is his?”
“You came from Tippany?”
“From that direction, yes.”
“The path you took goes along his strip. He’s a big fellow. Red hair and a temper to match.”
“Thank you.” Elen patted Warren’s wrist and turned back to the door. The sound of the approaching horses was loud now. They could only be moments away.
“Take the packs!” Warren called. “If it’s Nottingham, he’ll just take it for himself. We’ll find you later.”
Stephen picked up Elen’s pack, anxious to leave. He held it out to her while she threaded her arms through the straps and then picked up his own. “Hurry,” he murmured, feeling the need to run for the forest hammer along with the beat of his heart.
They stepped outside and Elen carefully shut the door behind her. Stephen took her arm and headed for th
e field directly across from Warren’s hut. There were a few workers there but the forest was barely a stone’s throw from where they were. The forest was sanctuary.
“No, this way,” Elen said and pulled at Stephen’s grip. She was trying to go back the way they had come.
“Across the field is quicker.” They heard the chatter of men over the sound of the horses now, coming from the other direction. Stephen glanced that way, expecting to see the ranks of cavalry descending upon him but all he saw were the walls of cottages.
The field workers too, had stopped their labors and looked in that direction, their tools slack in their hands.
“No, Peter is this way, Warren said.” Elen tugged on his arm.
“Elen, armed men are about to go through this village like a desert storm. We have no time to question Peter. Later. After. Then we will seek him out.”
“We can warn him, take him back to the forest.”
“No, Elen.” Her single-mindedness astonished him.
Elen cursed softly and kicked him. Her shoes were heavy winter ones and Stephen wore no mail. The sharp little pain made him draw a quick breath. She yanked her arm out of his loosened grip and turned and ran for the village square.
Stephen clenched his jaw. “God’s teeth!” he muttered and followed.
As he ran after her he cursed too, the unfortunate timing of Nottingham’s visit. Of course, it would be while they were there in the village, where their presence would be as good as a condemnation.
Then he remembered Robert’s caution in making sure very few people in his camp knew the exact nature of their excursion. “I fear those who are not my people but move among us. Secrecy is one of my only defenses against the king’s men, who seem to anticipate my movements more often than I like.”
It was not anticipation, Stephen realized, but exact knowledge. Despite Robert’s caution, Nottingham must have learned of their visit to Ferndale.
Stephen leapt after Elen, fear giving him speed.
Nottingham had come for them.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Heart of Vengeance Page 24
