Hob, in the midst of knotting the heavy pouch to his belt, looked a question at Jack. The burly man-at-arms shrugged, folded his arms, and leaned back against the inn wall, waiting to see what would occur.
A bit more of this savage interrogation elicited the information Sinibaldo sought: the ruffians were watching the priory on Bennett’s orders, suspecting da Panzano’s presence; they saw Molly and her party leave; they hastened to the inn where Molly’s troupe was known to be playing music on most nights, and they were lurking, intending to seize someone of Molly’s party and haul them to Bennett for questioning.
Sinibaldo stood, turned; the desperado lay gasping. Sinibaldo took a pace toward Hob and Jack, and then, as if remembering something left undone, stopped dead. As swift as a snapping dog, his right hand darted in and out of his coat; he twisted from the waist; he threw something backhand at the supine man. It was a little dart, perhaps four inches long, and it stuck quivering in the rough’s thigh.
A moment later the man convulsed, his body arching up from the ground, a faint wheezing attempt at a scream escaping his lungs. Almost immediately his body collapsed its arch and he lay still, his last breath bringing yellow froth to his lips.
“Better he is dead, non è vero? Now no one runs to Bennett and says, ‘Da Panzano has met with the musicistas who play at Godric’s Inn and they are plotting something.’ No, is better this way.”
He bent and plucked the dart from the dead man’s thigh. He held it up so Jack and Hob could see: a graceful wooden cylinder, tapered, with pigeon feathers set at one end and a slim steel spike like a needle at the other. Sinibaldo indicated the point: “The dardo—I don’t know how you say; we say dardo—he is envenomed.” He held open his coat, and carefully replaced the dart into a leather loop in his baldric; Hob could just see that the loops were plugged at one end with what looked like cork. Into this cork the assassin thrust the point of the dart.
“What—uh, what is the poison?” asked Hob, not because he wanted to know but because he was certain that Molly would.
Sinibaldo smiled and put a finger across his lips. “Roma is old, and all things, even the most segreto of them, may be found there, and the Church knows all hidden things, and uses them for her power.”
He looked around at the corpses. Away at the alley mouth, a small procession of three pony-drawn carts rattled by, each led by a lad with a rope to the pony’s bridle. None of the boys even glanced into the gloom of the alley.
“Better you should leave soon; that cartapecora—the parzme’—” He shook his head; he leaned forward, tapped the pouch that Hob held, tried again: “That parshmen’ Monsignore ’as sen’ you, will tell you where is the inn to meet. Monsignore waits for a third man; he does not know just when this man comes to him. Go down to York; one will come to you where you stay.” He tapped the pouch again: “He will tell you when to come to that place on the parshmen’.”
Sinibaldo began to back away toward the alley mouth.
“But only Mistress Molly knows where we’ll stay in York,” said Hob.
“We will find you wheresoever you are lodge’,” said the Italian.
“York is a very big place,” Hob said in exasperation.
“Not so big as ’oly Mother Church, eh?” said Sinibaldo. He turned and stepped into the street, and was gone.
• • •
MOLLY AND NEMAIN looked in dismay at the mud-stained, bloodstreaked pair as they came from the alley into the innyard, Sweetlove streaking across the grass to greet Jack. “By She Whom I swear by,” said Molly, with the Celts’ reluctance to name their deities in an oath, “can you never step in for a wee drop without starting a war?”
“Let me explain,” said Hob, Jack being excused from this duty by virtue of his difficulty in speaking.
“I’m afire to hear it,” said Nemain, her eyebrows raised high. “How I loved, back in Erin, to sit of an evening and hear a good storyteller, one that could spin tales from Samhain to Beltane, and each one more fanciful than the last.” She leaned back against the wagon wheel and folded her arms, waiting.
“Well . . .” Hob began.
• • •
EVERYONE WAS CROWDED into the big wagon, shutters closed against observation and against the evening rain that had begun to fall more and more heavily. Hob and Nemain sat on the edge of Molly’s bed, lowered down from its wall mount to its nighttime position.
Molly carefully unfolded the square of parchment and smoothed it out against the top of a tiring chest. Hob bent forward and peered at the fragment, trying to see the crude map drawn there. Molly placed a candle next to it; the wavering light struck silver highlights in her gray mane, and drew forth rich saffron tones from the sheepskin, though it had been whitened somewhat with staunchgrain. Jack stood on the other side of the chest, Sweetlove tucked under his arm.
That little dog, a fell-terrier bitch with her left bottom fang growing outside her upper lip, had been in the wagon with Molly and Nemain, the door open to the late-afternoon air, when she heard Hob’s voice and Jack’s grunts, and had immediately erupted in a paroxysm of barking, leaped out the door to the grassy ground, dashed across the innyard, and hurled herself into Jack’s arms. One of Sir Odinell’s ratters, she had adopted Jack, for reasons only she understood, and was happy only when near him. Sir Odinell had given her to the silent man, and except when expressly forbidden to follow, she was always at his heels. Now she was quiet and content, leaning out over his forearm to see what Molly was up to, her expression intent, serious—for all the world as if she wanted to read what Molly was reading—so that Hob could barely keep from laughing.
“ ’Tis clear enough,” said Molly, tracing a route with her forefinger, pausing to make out the traveler’s notes da Panzano had jotted beside his simple drawing. Molly could read Latin; she could write it, with difficulty; and she could stumble through a conversation in it with a learned stranger, the old speech of Rome and the current speech of the Church serving as a common tongue among scholars and clerics in a foreign land. “South from York, then we turn west . . . here . . . and then on along this . . . and here is marked ‘Crossed Roads Inn.’ But first we’re away to York. We must set out just before first light tomorrow, before that spying spalpeen Bennett is aware we’re gone. We’ll leave as soon as the city gates open.”
Just then a sudden increase in the rain caused a swelling roar overhead; Nemain looked up at the wagon roof and said, “Sure the roads will be rivers of mud tomorrow, seanmháthair; and the wagons will be mired just outside the city walls.”
“Nay, child, there’s a road down to York was made by the old Roman folk; ’tis raised and shod with stone, and we’ll bide quiet in York till that churchman’s finding us.”
She began to study the map more closely, committing it to memory; occasionally she would mention something that Jack or Hob should do before they left, or something for Nemain to remember when they had gotten settled in York; half murmuring to herself. She planned for everything and the others followed her directions. Hob lolled back on his elbows and watched his family through lids that were growing heavy. The quiet fragmentary conversations, the dear familiar faces, the candlelight, the din of the rain on the wagon roof: all conveyed a sense of peace and safety. Tomorrow they might journey toward strange and deadly perils, but tonight Hob was content, here in the snug center of his world.
CHAPTER 7
THEY ENTERED YORK AT MIDDAY by the Munecagate. At once they plunged into the bustle of city life, the constriction of the streets reinforcing the impression of multitudes. Hob, by virtue of his travels with Molly, was no longer as amazed at crowds as when she had first plucked him from the tiny hamlet where he had been raised, but York was an unending clamor for one’s attention.
The wagons rumbled over paving blocks, down streets shadowed by the overhanging upper storeys of the shops. A stream of folk slid down each side of the street: builders, cordwainers, saddlers, men-at-arms, the masons and glaziers who worked on the cathedral a
nd the parish churches, wastrels, cutlers, spicers, priests, housewives and their children, Jews under the king’s protection in exchange for exorbitant taxation of their financial houses, Dutch traders, tanners, beggars, the men of the watch with their pole arms. In the roads knights rode single file, slowly cleaving the throng; carters led their oxen-drawn wains. From both sides of the street came the calls of shopkeepers who had opened their horizontal shutters, propping them into counters: woolens, saddles, beakers of ale, hot pies, sacks of salt from the salterns, those drying fields established all along the coast of the German Sea.
Cordwainers displayed the leather, made from the supple skin of Spanish goats and kids, from which they made fine shoes. Urchins, barefoot in this city famed for its footwear, ran across Milo’s path from the little walkways, too narrow for cart or beast, that led off between two houses, or between house and garden wall, or between two outside walls. Snickets, the city folk called them, or ginnels. Here and there the troupe passed a smithy, sparks showering within the darker interior, some bouncing out into the road, winking almost at once into extinction.
Hob led Milo, wonderfully stolid Milo, through this confusion, while Molly called directions—down this street, turn onto that—for there were inns where she was welcome and the troupe would be safe, and less visible to any possible agents of King John. One of these was Bywater Inn, one street away from the staithes where vessels making their way upriver on the Ouse discharged their cargo, ensuring a plentiful supply of saltwater fish for the inn’s kitchens.
In a short while they had settled into their usual arrangement, the wagons, where they would continue to sleep, chocked against the innyard wall; the animals snug in the stables; an agreement to provide music for the inn in exchange for board and a small sum of coin per sennight. Here they would stay for a few days, unnoticed in the bustle of the great city, awaiting Monsignor da Panzano’s messenger.
• • •
HOB EASED HIMSELF into Milo’s stall, third from the end of the inn’s long stable. The ox looked around, snorted, bumped Hob gently with his forehead, a greeting, as the young man slipped a rope bridle over his head. Hob pushed at the wide breast, and Milo, grasping after a tiny delay what was expected of him, backed out of the stall. They had been in York for three days, and Hob got him out of the stall every day, to alleviate the ills of being idle all the time. Hob led him out into the sunshine of the innyard, and the two walked several times around the perimeter. Even Milo, that most stationary of beasts, seemed to enjoy his period of exercise, plodding along with Hob, who had particular charge of the ox, as Jack tended to Tapaigh, the mare, and Nemain to the little ass Mavourneen.
Milo exhibited every sign of a devotion to Hob that was more canine than bovine, coming to him across a pasture on the rare occasions that they were guests on a farm, snuffling with pleasure when Hob came to his stall. Perhaps because as soon as Hob, then a boy eleven years of age, had joined Molly’s troupe, the lad had fed and cared for him, and had walked beside him when they were on the road, and had shown him affection, the ox regarded Hob almost as a parent or other protector.
Away in the north of Britain lived a race of wild white cattle, too fierce to be domesticated. They were hunted as other wild animals were hunted, and the bulls fought among themselves for supremacy, and the king bulls mated with their harems, while the bachelor bulls circled and waited their time. Some years ago, Molly’s troupe had had to wait while a small herd had crossed their road, the king bull standing guard and glaring at the wagons, Hob and Milo in the lead, while the cows and bachelor bulls trotted by behind the monarch.
As with most oxen, Milo tended toward the timid, and on that occasion had actually lowered his head till it was behind Hob’s back, perhaps on the theory that if he could not see the king bull, it could not see him, or that if the king bull attacked, skinny young Hob would protect him. This ludicrous attachment, this dependence, on Milo’s part, had over the years engendered an affection in Hob, a sense of tenderness toward the great brute that was, unknown to himself, the boy’s first taste of paternal love.
At last the young man led him from the warm spring sunlight into the cool darkness of the stable. Hob filled his manger, drew water for the trough, and patted the ox’s vast warm side. This brought back memories of Sir Odinell’s huge steel-gray destrier. Hob was intended for knighthood by Sir Jehan, and had had dreams of a destrier such as Sir Odinell’s.
But Hob’s path to knighthood was blocked for now by the barons’ rebellion: Sir Odinell and Sir Jehan and Sir Balthasar were among those rising against the king, and were unable to continue Hob’s instruction, and Molly had decided that the best way to weather the extreme uncertainty of the times was to revert to their roles of humble entertainers and wandering healers, a concealment even more urgent now that Monsignor da Panzano had ensnared them into this errand of his.
He propped an elbow against the ox. “You are my destrier, Lambkin, at least for the moment. Sir Robert and his magnificent warhorse, Milo!” He began to snicker at himself, and at that moment Milo looked around, put a large soft nose to his hair, and gave a mighty sneeze. At this Hob burst into a bellow of laughter: Could his condition become any more ridiculous?
The stall door opened, and here was his young wife, a thin bar of bright sunlight through the loose board walls of the stable lighting her hair to red flame. She slipped into the stall and stood against the wall, arms folded, green eyes glittering with mischief.
“ ’Tis often I’ve thought what a wit yon ox was—” she began.
“Nemain, sweeting—”
“—but he’s only making me smile, or mayhap a wee giggle, now. But yourself—”
He took a step to her and swept her up in his arms and stopped her teasing completely for a long moment. When the kiss ended, she drew breath as though to continue, her eyes laughing up at him, but then said nothing. He kissed her again, and began to explore beneath her shift, not entirely serious, but becoming more and more engaged.
She pushed at him, laughing. “Nay, can you not wait till the night, and our wagon about us; ’tis nigh as busy as the street in here, the grooms coming and the grooms going as they are.”
“But look you, sweeting,” he said—he had his hand laced in hers, and he raised her arm so that it transected the shaft of sun, the warm golden radiance catching the pale down on her forearm and setting it alight.
“Look you, the light is from the west, that afternoon light, and what is it Herself says of the late sun, that it’s ‘falling into the Western Ocean, out past Erin’? The grooms are at their table, and Milo always keeps my secrets. What—what is it?” he said, for she had grown still, and the mirth had gone out of her face like the flame from a snuffed candle.
“ ’Tis the hour,” she said in a muffled voice. “ ’Tis the very hour!” Her small square hand bunched in his shirt and she turned, dragging at the cloth, forcing him to follow her from the stall.
A quick glance down the aisle between the two rows of stalls: hard-packed earth with stray wisps of straw, and away down the far end, the door to the stable yard, the daylight glowing outside, the corridor shaded. There was a strong sweet smell of hay from the stores of fodder on the upper tier. Somewhere down the row of stalls a hoof thudded into a wooden door. There was not a groom in sight.
She pulled him farther toward the back, into one of the two deserted stalls on Milo’s other side, and began to pull his garments from him, almost in a frenzy. Puzzled but happy, he set in to help, and then they were down in clean hay. Underneath her cool smooth skin, a surprising heat rose to meet his hands, and her legs locked behind his hips, and she made small ferocious noises deep in her throat, and was urgent, and thrashed beneath him, and cried out as her moment came upon her. Later he could never decide if, after her cry, it had been a very long time or a very short time till he felt a stroke of pleasure that was like a buffet from Jacob’s wrestler angel—powerful, disorienting, poignant—and another, and yet another, and then the sweet
slow rolling echoes, gradually fading to quiet contentment.
They lay panting for a while, and then he rolled on his back and pulled her atop him, and contrived to cover her with his shirt, and held her for a while. He lay, utterly happy, looking up at the underside of the boards that were the floor of the hayloft: bits of hay poking down into the spaces between the planks; the square heads of hand-forged nails driven into a beam; a spider in its web, hanging motionless with a terrible stony patience.
Nemain seemed to doze for a little while, then she stirred. She raised her head from his chest and looked into his face. “Robert the Englishman,” she said, so somberly that he had no slightest impulse to laugh. She kissed him, almost formally, and sat up.
Her back glimmered palely in the gloom of the stall, save where it was lit to a blaze by the last shafts of the sun threading through the chinks in the stable wall. He reached up, brushed off a few wisps of straw that clung to one shoulder blade. She stretched, arms up and out to the side, small round bunches of muscle forming at her shoulders.
She slumped again, and sat looking at the stall door. She spoke, very low, perhaps to herself. “ ’Twas as Herself said, the late sun, the words coming from your mouth—’twas the very hour!”
He was completely confused now. “Nemain, culver, what is it you say?”
She turned, leaned back, put a small hand to his mouth. “Nay, I should have said nothing atall, nothing atall. I’ll be telling you in time, but not this night.”
She began to dress.
CHAPTER 8
A ROUGHLY ATTIRED YOUNG MAN came into the common room of the Bywater Inn; his hose were patched and his tunic was of undyed linen. On a broad leather belt, a heavy dagger was sheathed on a slant at his left side, the hilt convenient to a cross draw; a canvas purse was slung by its cords, kept to the front of his body to foil thieves. He looked around for a moment, blinking in the murk of the inn; then he headed for Molly.
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