Outside the stables they found Molly and Jack, with Sweetlove slumped against his ankle, listening to Jourdain and one of the farriers.
“There’s a mort of Englishmen can swing a hammer, and there’s many of us skilled at the forge,” said the farrier, who like most of them also did other forms of blacksmithing. He was a burly man of perhaps thirty-five with thinning blond hair. He crossed his arms over the long leather apron that shielded him from neck to knee. “Yon wights be devil-worshippers or such, and ’tis a curse they’ll bring on us all, living in our very house as ’twere. Mark me, we’ll suffer for it later as we’re sufferin’ for it now, with all the work we could be doing.”
“Sure it’s a shame,” said Molly, to encourage the flow of any information, never knowing when something useful might be said. Jack just made what were meant to be sympathetic noises, although with his broken throat the sounds he produced tended to be more frightening than soothing.
“It is as I ’ave said, they are ver’ strange,” said Jourdain, “an’ here is come the most strange of all.” He indicated, by a small lift of his chin, the figure now stepping out of the inner gatehouse.
Hob was instantly alert. He saw a very tall, very thin man, clad in a voluminous night-blue robe that the wind caused to flap behind him. This, then, was Yattuy, the sorcerer. His lean wrists and long hands, his ax-blade face, were the color of the Cousins’, a light brown, as dark as Jack’s hands after a long summer’s tanning. The hood of the robe was pushed back, disclosing a hairline that, by nature or artifice, began a little distance behind the break of his forehead, giving a masklike appearance to his narrow face. He took long strides across the bailey, his head turning from side to side; with his prominent nose and his long thin legs, and with his robes flapping behind him, he gave the impression of a striding, predatory bird.
Men and women alike appeared to be frightened of him; men-at-arms crossed themselves surreptitiously and kissed medals of St. Martin; stepping out of the washing sheds that were wreathed in steam, a pair of laundresses with their heavy baskets managed to drift out of his path, seemingly by accident.
“You see, ever’one is avoid him,” said the Poitevin. “He is un’oly fellow, but the king, he like him. He is take his advice; he is consult him as a soothsayer. The king, he want to know what will ’appen, an’ Yattuy he tell him. Who knows what he say? They are like two gossips at market, heads together.”
The farrier spat on the grass. “Jesus with us!” he said. “Good English smiths put out of their work and yon devil inside the walls! The pope will put England under the ban again—he’s done it once, he can do it again. ’Twill end in blood, mark my words.”
“They say he is ver’ smart fellow, him,” said Jourdain. “He is speak seven, eight languages; ver’ smooth, too.”
“ ’Tis not everyone who dislikes him,” said Molly, watching the sorcerer stride up to the tents. The Cousins came toward him, bowing, kissing his garment; some prostrated themselves. He moved among them, placing a hand on a shoulder here and atop a kneeling man’s head. He appeared to be speaking to each one, smiling, patting them: the very picture of encouragement and comfort, the eerie followers crowding about. He is like a malevolent Christ, thought Hob, with malevolent disciples.
After a while Yattuy sat at one of the campfires, and was handed a cup of something, which he sipped, and all the while talking, instructing, the Cousins around him attending every word.
Molly said, “Och, well, we’ve some practice to do if we’re to play again tonight.” They had traveled together and played together for so long that no practice was really needed, but as she told them later, “ ’Tis not the cleverest strategy to stand and gawp at your enemy, so that he knows that you are aware of him.”
They began to move away toward the wagons, and Jourdain called, “Come an’ visit us: we are quartered in the inner bailey. Ask the gatehouse guards. Jacques, we ’ave good wine, from Poitou!”
CHAPTER 15
ON THE FOLLOWING MORNING Molly decided it was time that she and Nemain observed the Cousins more closely. To this end the four began to stroll about the outer bailey, skirting the perimeter. They started from the stables, which ran along the west wall, and ambled along, pausing to engage in lively conversation now and then, to dissemble any appearance of purposeful observation. Hob and Nemain walked hand in hand, but Jack, whose social status was obviously not equal to Molly’s, was careful to walk a bit behind her and to the side, giving the impression of a servant, and thereby attracting no unwanted interest.
On the whole Jack, a man of action rather than intellect, was content to leave the making of decisions to Molly, as was Hob—Hob had often thought that Molly was always the wisest person in any gathering. In a sense Jack Brown, in relation to Molly, was as a soldier is to his general, or a subject to his queen, except when she summoned him to her bed; for, as Molly remarked one night when she’d had a goodly amount of the uisce beatha, “There are times when ’tis better to drop the reins and see where the horse may take you.”
At the northeast corner of the outer bailey they turned and proceeded to pace along the eastern wall, outside which there was a strip of land, and then the river Dee, the haunt of salmon and otters, sliding past the castle, curling over its weir with a rushing hiss. Toward the northeast corner a breeze shifted, bringing over the wall the reek of Tanners’ Row, where the tanneries for which Chester was famed clustered in a foul-smelling line along the river.
From that corner they wandered idly about the bailey, observing the farriers at work in their forges by the stables, the duck pond with its boy herders and their long flexible poles with which they drove the ducks, and the saddlers’ workshops; gradually they wended their way over to the little tent village of the Cousins.
This began just to one side of the duck pond, and the tents stretched away along the east curtain wall to the wall that separated the outer bailey from the inner. It seemed to Hob entirely possible that there were tenscore of them. These men were also at work, perhaps thirty of them at a time at as many makeshift forges, voluminous sleeves rolled up over muscular arms, their hammers swinging overhead and down, ringing upon their portable anvils, the many hammers making a kind of music.
The Cousins made no horseshoes, only weapons, and they kept their attention on their work, and made no attempt to speak to anyone outside the group. According to Jourdain, they lived together and worked together and kept apart from castle life. Their chieftains arranged for the delivery of foodstuffs. In the evenings the Cousins sat around small fires and ate together, boiling wheat flavored with bits of roasted lamb and drinking hot beverages brewed from herbs they had brought from their homeland.
The party walked along, still talking and laughing among themselves, and feigned an interest in the Cousins’ work. Molly and Nemain pretended to listen as Hob chattered of this and that, but all the while they were strolling by the tents they were feeling with their fey senses for the power hidden in the Berber blacksmiths.
For a time they stood and watched one of the craftsmen at his anvil as he pounded a glowing length of metal, destined to become a sword-blade. He threw down the hammer he was using beside his anvil, picked up the shimmering steel with tongs, and stepped into the open-faced tent, to plunge the blade into a barrel of cold water, producing a sharp shush and a burst of steam.
Molly picked up the hammer that he’d thrown down; she exuded idle curiosity, remarking in Irish to Nemain, but all the while turning the wooden handle in her palm, rubbing it, absorbing some sort of knowledge from the wood itself, so lately under the Cousin’s palm. She handed it to Nemain with a laughing remark, and Nemain pretended to be struggling with the weight of it, giggling a bit, but she, too, was rubbing and squeezing the handle.
A moment later the bouda came from the tent, saw what was toward, and marched over to Nemain. His face was not precisely hostile, but it was grave, and he held out his palm in an unmistakable gesture. Nemain placed it in his hand, contriving to to
uch his fingers as she did so. She bowed slightly to the smith, who stood looking stonily at her, and then Molly sauntered on, and the others followed.
When they had completed their circuit of the outer bailey, strolling along the wall that separated inner from outer bailey, crossing before the gatehouse, and so coming again to their wagons standing against the west wall, Hob turned as if casually surveying the open expanse. To his unease he saw that the Cousin whose hammer the women had handled was still watching them. He stood at his anvil, and struck a few blows now and then, but mostly he gazed across the field at Molly’s little group.
“Mistress . . .” began Hob, trying to keep the bouda in view without being too transparent, but Molly forestalled him.
“Aye, I’m seeing him. ’Twas a chance that needed taking; when you observe a person of Art, you risk discovery of yourself as an adept. There was some tinge of force that I’m feeling in that hammer handle. Nemain, you touched his hand itself; what is it you can say of that?”
“I’m not sensing a great man of Art—there’s a flavor of power, but it’s more a feeling of the Beast than of spellcraft.”
Jack looked away at this; he was uncomfortable when the subject of the Beast within, of shapeshifters, arose. He walked away to the small wagon, reached up, and opened the door. There was an eruption of small dog, and Sweetlove leaped into his arms, licking his face and emitting high-pitched whimpers of happiness at the reunion. Jack sat down cross-legged on the grass and began to pet and stroke her; Hob suspected that he found Sweetlove distracting and comforting. He knew that Jack, normally stoic and even phlegmatic, became troubled at the thought of what he had been, and the things, terrible things, that he half remembered doing when he was in his altered state.
“You can sense he can change like Ja—that he can change to a Beast?” asked Hob, keeping his voice low.
“Aye, and there’s malice as well—he’s a man of ill will, and there’s little love in him, and a mort of strength,” said Nemain.
“And there are two hundred of them,” said Molly bleakly.
CHAPTER 16
THE NEXT DAY THEY WERE again in the outer bailey. Sweetlove was dashing after the stick Jack was throwing, trotting back to him and, with a flirt of her neck, tossing it at his feet. Then she’d retreat perhaps three yards, hunker down facing him in a tense crouch, eyes fixed on his face, tail wagging, her whole aspect one of coiled expectation. Jack would pick up the stick, wait, pretend to lose interest, then suddenly throw it toward her, but high. She would spring out of her crouch and race in a tight circle, heading out to intercept it, somehow running and looking back over her shoulder. Much of the time she’d pluck it out of the air, and deliver it again to Jack with a smug look. Then they’d repeat the process.
Hob sat with Nemain on a bench set in the sunlit grass of the bailey. She was in the position she favored, leaning back against his chest with his arm around her; they were both watching Jack and Sweetlove playing. Hob was thinking that Jack had an expression of pure unthinking pleasure; he seemed to take as much delight in it as Sweetlove. A peaceful scene: Nemain slumped a little more against him as she slipped toward a doze.
From one of the two towers atop the outer gatehouse a trumpet sounded, a long complicated call. The call was echoed from the top of the inner gatehouse. Nemain sat up a bit, rubbing a small white hand over her face. There was a bustle from the inner bailey, where the garrison had its quarters, and a gang of men-at-arms trotted through the inner gatehouse and along the grass of the outer bailey. Sergeants blew wooden whistles in a series of staccato notes: signals that had the effect of chivvying the men into two lines, facing one another, each right fist held across each chest in salute.
Now they could hear a fanfare of trumpets from outside the main gate, and the portcullis began to rise. There was the clank of iron and the groan of wood, and then the sound of hooves thundering on the drawbridge outside, the hollow sounds of horses clopping through the gatehouse passageway, and here came a party of knights with the various banners of John, King of England and, at least in name, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Count of Anjou, and Lord of Ireland. Next came two squads of archers, bows strung but slung over their shoulders.
After that came a cluster of the king’s immediate household knights, bodyguards, courtiers, and in the center, on a handsome roan mare, King John himself, a man in his late forties, a man of middling stature but athletically made. His red-brown hair was now touched with iron, but he sat his horse well and seemed keenly interested in his surroundings, particularly in the tents of the Cousins.
Behind came three companies of men-at-arms with pole arms slanted back on their shoulders, supply wagons, more knights, and a swarm of lightly armed mounted scouts.
At the entrance to the inner gatehouse, Sir Ranulf, his family, and his senior knights and advisors awaited the king. King John dismounted nearby, and the Earl of Chester came to him and went down on one knee; John extended his hand and Ranulf kissed the king’s ring. John raised him up and embraced him, and then amid a flurry of greetings and introductions they strolled through the gatehouse toward the inner bailey. A small army of grooms descended on the king’s entourage and began the process of stabling the mounts and securing the wagons.
• • •
THAT EVENING, Guillaume the page came to the wagons. The four were in Molly’s big wagon, the women discussing possible strategies against the Cousins and making almost no progress, Hob and Jack sitting and listening, Sweetlove mock-chewing Jack’s big fingers.
Without warning Sweetlove flew off Jack’s lap and threw herself at the door, unleashing a storm of barking, surprisingly deep for such a little dog, but with here and there a yelp of soprano hysteria. A moment later came the page’s knock. “I am from Magister Percival,” he called.
Jack picked up a loaded stick—a wooden club with the head hollowed out and filled with lead—that he kept behind the door. He opened the door and there was Guillaume, who bowed smoothly and then, looking up at an angle at Jack in the raised doorway, said, “Magister Percival requires that you come play for the great hall; I will return in but a little while. If it please you, sir, have Mistress Molly and her folk ready with their instruments.”
He bowed again and Jack just smiled and bowed awkwardly himself. The page disappeared into the gloom of the outer bailey, and then there was a rush to change to their best garments and to tune the instruments. Hob then had to submit to an inspection by his young wife, tsking and pulling his collar this way and that, and smoothing his hair.
Jack was an old campaigner, and could have himself ready in a moment, but he would never make a courtier, and Molly made a few adjustments and tucks to his garments, as Nemain had done for Hob.
The women inspected each other, turning in place, but neither could find any fault, and so they stepped out into the night bailey and waited for Hob to hand the instruments down to Jack. Sweetlove had jumped down to be beside Jack, and now had to be swept up and deposited inside the wagon and the door locked, and here came Guillaume, ready to conduct them to the keep.
They came to the gatehouse that connected outer with inner bailey. The outer yett was closed, and a torch burned in a socket set in the gatehouse wall beside the archway. A guard stepped up, peered through the yett at Guillaume, and nodded to someone off to the side. Guillaume led Molly’s party to a smaller door beside the yett. This door, of thick oak braced with iron straps, was set in the stone of the gatehouse; it opened ponderously, and two guards stood back to let them enter. The men-at-arms immediately closed the door behind them, sliding heavy bolts in place to lock it.
In theory everyone in the outer bailey should be a friend; Hob wondered if there was some lingering distrust of the Cousins that caused the earl to be so cautious, or if it was the king’s presence itself, for power engenders enemies, and the greater the power, the more widespread the enmity.
Once again they followed Guillaume to Magister Percival’s outbuilding, and thence along th
e corridor to the iron door to the keep, with its wary guards, and so by interior passage and stairwell to the musicians’ gallery.
They withdrew their instruments from their leather sheathing, tuned, retuned, and composed themselves to play. As had been the case for the past few days, when they had played for Earl Ranulf, Magister Percival stayed below in the hall, with Guillaume by his side. As need arose, the magister would dispatch the page to the gallery, to require the musicians to play a lively dance, or a soft accompaniment to conversation, or to hold themselves silent for a space, the quiet serving the same purpose for the ear as a sherbet served between courses, cleansing for the tongue—a Saracen custom brought back from the Holy Land.
For the moment, they were ready, but no instruction had come. Hob looked around; there were still two guards, sitting quietly in the corners at the rear of the little room. He bent toward the wooden screen and peered down at the great hall. The pattern of carved leaves in the gallery screen left, by chance, a somewhat larger opening right by Hob’s chair, and he had a clear view of the dais. In the center sat King John, with Earl Ranulf at his right hand, and Lady Clemence, the earl’s wife, at his left. The view to Hob’s left was limited, but there appeared to be no common folk present—the high table and side tables had been arranged to form a horseshoe shape, and entertainers would perform in the central space, or diners would arise for a period of dancing.
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