Siren Song

by Roberta Gellis

  “No, no,” Henry assured his brother, “you are mostly wise, Richard, but you are a little hasty sometimes.”

  He was glowing with pride and satisfaction, pleased with Richard, with Raymond, even with Sir William. In a sense he was pleased with Mauger, too, for proving to be a villain who deserved punishment. Everything was working out perfectly. Although Henry suffered a little prick of anxiety when Richard mentioned gathering an army to enforce his brother’s writ, he was able to smile and approve the move after Richard mentioned it would take about a week. By then, Henry knew, Marlowe would be clean of Mauger and his mercenary troops.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  To go from Marlowe to London, a man can ride cross-country and save many miles, even if he does not know the way. From London to Marlowe is not so simple. Thus, when Philip d’Arcy left with his troop at dawn he knew it would be necessary to follow the river Thames all the way. He had never been to Marlowe in his life and took the surest road, knowing it would waste more time if he missed the keep and lost himself.

  His group rode with haste but not with dire urgency. Philip d’Arcy knew they could not come to Marlowe by an exertion before nightfall, and he had no intention of approaching an armed camp after sunset. Thus, when a horse cast a shoe, Philip did not go on, leaving that man behind. He allowed the whole troop to rest while they found a smith and had the animal reshod. It was not in his opinion a serious matter.

  It was just about the time the shoe was cast that William blew the mort. Inside the keep, they heard, for they had been warned and were listening. Alys and Elizabeth stopped what they were doing and looked at each other.

  Both had been very busy, Elizabeth preparing for the treatment of the wounded and Alys for the last-ditch defense of the keep itself. Both had feared it would come to this, but it was a shock that the defense of the walls had failed so quickly. Still, both were calm. Alys knew there was nothing to fear for herself. Her plans were made. Elizabeth also had little fear. She would live or die with William. She wished to live, but she did not fear to die with him.

  The horn was a signal for a furious spurt of activity. The great wooden shutters that closed the windows of the keep were braced with heavy bars. Pails of water were poured over the iron-bound foot-thick wooden door that closed the hall off from the outside stairs. The tops were knocked from several barrels of oil that stood just outside on the landing of the stairs that rose into the keep in the forebuilding. These stairs, unlike those of stone that connected the floors of the keep inside one tower, were made of wood. Torches were thrust into the fire and carried to holders on each side of the doorway, others were laid ready. All this was work for the ablebodied. The old men and women clustered together, pounding herbs and preparing medicinal draughts and ointments according to Elizabeth’s instructions. Those too feeble for this work prayed. Martin had been among the latter group. He was not so feeble as to be unable to prepare for the wounded, but he never did such tasks because of his deep fear that he was an unclean thing whose evil would somehow contaminate the healing materials and make them ineffective or even deadly. Although Martin fought the feeling, telling himself that God was good, it always lay in him, ready to rise and choke him. At the sound of the horn, Martin’s prayer faltered and he fell silent.

  For a few minutes he remained kneeling, then looked blankly around at the seeming chaos that was swiftly readying Marlowe for its final stand. It was his fault, Martin thought dully. Abbot Martin and Abbot Anselm had been wrong. They had tried to believe and to teach him that the outward form does not reflect the inner soul. He had struggled all his life to believe that, struggled to root out all evil from his soul so that it should be straight and beautiful in God’s eyes even if his body was ugly and crooked.

  Until a few weeks ago, Martin had continued to hope that the abbots who saved him and were kind to him were right. When Abbot Paul had cast him out, he had said that the soul in so warped a body could not be saved except by death immediately after baptism.

  It was a soul created by the devil and oozed evil. It was the evil in Martin that had corrupted the abbey, Abbot Paul claimed, not his own laxness.

  When he lay dying in the road, Martin had wondered if that could be true. But then Sir William had found him and his life had been filled with richness and kindness and love. He had thought little of Abbot Paul’s cruel words, preferring to believe that God had afflicted him, found him worthy, and brought him in His own mysterious ways to a place where he could perfect his goodness and die in peace. Now, standing and watching everyone make ready to die—although they did not yet know it—Martin wondered if his rescue and years of happiness had been another snare and delusion of the devil.

  Had evil oozed from him and little by little rotted Marlowe? It seemed so, indeed. After long years of resistance, Sir William, his greatest benefactor, had yielded to sin and committed adultery with the woman he had loved purely for so long. Little Alys, as pure and stainless as gold, had overthrown the meekness and obedience required of women and said in a voice of adamant and with eyes glittering with the flame of hatred that she would commit the mortal sin of murder. And now Marlowe itself and all in it were about to be destroyed. Had all this corruption come from him?

  Was there no way, Martin wondered, to redeem the evil he had wrought? He knew God was stronger than the devil. He knew He did not will evil, not even to those He hated, much less to those He loved. Surely there must be a reason that God had permitted him to be born, even if the devil planned it. God was the stronger. If there was no reason, there was no God. Yet man had free will, and it was his duty to find his own way, to find the reason that made sense of life. So, Martin thought, retreating instinctively to a dark corner where he would not be in the way, he must discover the reason for himself, since surely God did exist.

  Only it was very hard to think when his own guilt and his hatred for Mauger, who was surely more evil than he because evil clothed in fair form was more deadly than naked evil… That was the answer! The evil that was nakedly foul—himself—was put in this place to rid the world of the evil that was outwardly fair. How right! How just! How good was God!

  Suddenly all was clear. Martin began to inch his way along the wall, sliding into Sir William’s chamber to pick up a long-bladed, razor-sharp hunting knife which he tucked into the bosom of his tunic. Then he sidled along the wall again, closer and closer to the stairs, unnoticed, waiting until he could slip out. He felt strong and light as he never had before, sure at last, if not of redemption, that he understood the reason for his damnation.

  If he did not stop the fair-seeming evil that was Mauger, it would spread corruption far and wide. Martin realized now that he had not corrupted Marlowe, nonetheless, he was still at fault. He should have seen his duty sooner and done it, but the evil was so fair-looking, Mauger being tall and blond and handsome with a ready smile that he had been blind. Thus Mauger had corrupted Marlowe. Lady Elizabeth, being good, had sensed the evil under the fair looks and had been unable to love her husband. That fact had called to Sir William like a siren song over the years. Mauger had threatened to force marriage on Alys, and that had turned her from womanly thoughts of love and devotion to hatred and murder.

  So all was clear. Since he had been so blind, Mauger had at last openly committed evil. God did not ask the impossible of any but the saints, so God had made it possible for him to understand and to deal with the evil that endangered man and to keep clean the sweet, pure souls of those in Marlowe.

  Then all was ready at the stairs and Alys called the servants away so that none would block the passage where those men who could, fled the walls and began to retreat into the keep itself. As swiftly as he could, Martin made his way down the stairs. He was only just in time and slid aside into the darkest part of the forebuilding as the groaning wounded stumbled in through the door to the bailey.

  They were the first to come, let through by Hugo to crawl down the stairs by the side of the southwest tower. Others, Martin knew, mus
t be coming down the gate tower, which Sir William had been defending. All the men of Marlowe keep were drawing together, trying to fight their way through their enemies to one stair or the other. Although he could not see it, Martin could imagine the attackers pouring over the wall as the defenders yielded or retreated, trying to overwhelm them before they could escape into the great keep itself.

  Through the relatively flimsy wooden structure of the forebuilding which was a shelter against the weather and not meant to be defensible, Martin could hear the tempo of the battle increase. He could not understand this. It seemed to him that as men left the fighting, it should grow less. He was not worried, however. He knew that Sir William would come last, shepherding his men. Then there would be time for him to get out. He knew just where to hide.

  There was nothing mysterious about the increasing noise of battle. The defenders were bunching together, coalescing into larger and larger groups—those who could. This permitted them to dispose of any attackers between their groups as each group strove to reach the tower or the stairs. They could overthrow the ladders that intervened because a few fought on the periphery of the group while the others had time to denude the ladders of climbers by pouring hot oil or sand or dropping rocks on them and then pushing the ladders over.

  As the groups grew, however, more and more of the wall was left completely undefended. The attackers poured into these areas without resistance, and they did not stand idle. They charged with desperate ferocity, doing their best to break up the defenders, to get to the stairs and into the tower before the defenders could. These men were nearly all experienced mercenaries. They knew that taking a keep was both the most dangerous and most profitable of the various types of war. But to gain the real profit, the women, the rich drinking and eating vessels, the jewels and money and cloth, one had to get into the heart of the keep itself. If William and his men could get off the wall and inside first, it would take another desperate and even more dangerous assault to win.

  In a very short time, there were many more of Mauger’s men on the walls than William’s, and many groups were broken. The only reason that all the defenders were not immediately overwhelmed was that the battlements were only wide enough for four men to stand abreast, and if they did they could hardly move. Thus no more than three of the invaders could confront three of the defenders at any one time or place. Still, the numbers told heavily against William’s men as did the need to carry with them as many of their wounded as they could. Mauger’s force could replace those who were wearied or only a little hurt with fresh men. There was no relief for William’s people.

  The mercenary troop leaders knew their business. As soon as it was clear that the intention of the defenders was to escape, they began to bellow for the archers to come up. Protected by the heavily armed men-at-arms, the archers could shoot at those defending the tower and stairs with little danger of hitting their own comrades. For William’s men there was also the danger of watching for the shafts. Many fell to sword strokes because their eyes were elsewhere at the wrong moment.

  William, himself, who knew better, had to fight the temptation to watch for arrows. The memory of being struck was still green. He fought with the strength of desperation, panting for breath as fatigue and loss of blood seemed to deprive him of air. He struggled, too, to call encouragement to those who still strove to reach him. Many did not. Caught between terror and terror, many of the recruits threw down their arms and cried for quarter.

  At last it seemed to William that he and the few veterans who fought beside him were all the resistance left on his side of the tower. He shouted, “Down! Down!” and began to back toward the door. He would have been last in, but his men saw his weakness and closed up before him, thrusting him back. A flash of pride was drowned in reason. William stepped back into shelter and stood leaning on his sword, fighting off the desire to let everything go and drop.

  He had little time to gather strength. The last of the men who had won their way around the walls were coming through the other door. Close behind them pressed the attackers. William stopped the last of his men, shouting that one should grab the door bar, the others should pull the closest opponents through to them, then slam and bar the door. Briefly William was engaged again in killing one of the too-eager attackers. Then the bars were fast. Blows battered at the heavy wooden door, shaking the thick bars, but it would take more than men’s bodies to burst through that obstruction. A ram would be necessary.

  His energy restored a little by this success, William turned to the side he had been defending and shouted at the men to come through. One, then another came. William braced himself to fight again, and found Diccon beside him, yelling about the stairs at the other end.

  “Can you hold and bar this door?” William asked.

  Diccon was so spattered with blood that William could not tell whether it came from the master-at-arm’s body or from other men. There was no hesitation, however, in Diccon’s assurance that he could nor any lack of energy in the way he sprang toward the still-open portal. If the defense of the stairs near the keep failed, they would have to fight their way across the bailey and might find the forebuilding held against them. Worse, Alys and Elizabeth would never close the keep while he was outside, and the attackers might get in.

  William ran down the stairs of the tower, only just catching himself before he toppled over in his haste. He managed to stay upright, but he was sweating and grinding his teeth with fear before he came out into the bailey and saw there was no fighting there yet. He bellowed to the men running toward the forebuilding to go to the stairs. Most of them paid no heed, being blind and deaf with fear and fixed on reaching safety. Two or three understood, and those who were following him down the tower steps were all veterans and came with him.

  They were in time, although barely—but barely was enough. The tide of attackers gathering to pour down the stairs as the plug that had defended it so long failed, met a new, firm resistance. The last of the wounded hobbled, staggered, crawled, or were dragged into the forebuilding. For a minute, two, William and the men with him, who now included Diccon, held on, not realizing those left in the bailey were already dead or too far gone to move. In those two minutes, Martin sidled through the door, flattened himself against the wall of the forebuilding, and slipped around the side toward the northeast.

  No one noticed the single bent figure in dark clothes hobbling along. If a man or two did see him, they dismissed him from their minds as another of the wounded. The scuttling form paused a moment in the dark angle between the forebuilding and the northwest tower, rounded that, and made a wavering dash for a low stone shelter built out from the wall itself. He might have been seen then, except that shouts of fury burst from the men fighting on the stairs as William’s party suddenly broke contact and ran, with every bit of strength left in them, for the forebuilding.

  All attention was fixed on the race between William’s bloody, weary group and the attackers who bounded after them, still hoping to catch the master of the keep who would then be used to force those inside to yield. They had no doubt who was their quarry. William was the only man in mail, and the device on his shield identified him even more surely. There were fresh men in the bailey also, let down on ropes from the walls when they found the tower doors barred to them.

  The efforts were vain. The last of the defenders leapt up the stairs with the inhuman energy of finality, toppling into the hall to be dragged aside out of the way by those waiting. William fell forward, aware of little beyond the bursting pain in his chest, and Diccon, one step behind him—the last of all—was in little better case. Fortunately the women of Marlowe keep were in no need of instructions from anyone.

  “Now!” Alys shrieked, grabbing a torch from a wall holder.

  Men and women ran forward, shoved hard on the two barrels of oil so that they toppled forward, spilling their contents down the steps and rolling down themselves, splashing the walls as they bounded and emptied completely. As the barrels went o
ver, Alys cast her torch down to the bottom of the steps, seized another from Elizabeth just behind her, and threw that after it, and then still another. The stairwell burst into a roaring inferno. One last torch Alys dropped right on the landing just in front of her feet and leapt backward barely before her dress caught fire.

  As she came in, the heavy door was slammed shut behind her and its massive bars were set into the broad iron slots to hold it closed. Still, shrieks of agony could be heard from the stair and forebuilding. Alys closed her eyes and prayed the cries came from unwary enemies, who had been close on her father’s heels, and not from their own wounded, who had been too weak to climb the stairs. The sound died, swallowed by the hungry roar of the fire. Alys sighed. It was too late to worry, too late to do more than pray for them, whoever they were.

  Martin had gained the safety he sought. He burrowed far back into a bin of musty last-year grain, heaping it up in front of him as well as he could. Then he lay still. For a time he heard excited shouts and calls, then the groans and clanks as the portcullis went up and the drawbridge came down. After that, the sounds were harder to interpret. He had never been in a similar situation, but he had heard Sir William talk and guessed that the invaders were searching for concealed enemies and examining the animals and stores in the bailey. He ground his few remaining teeth in futile rage, knowing himself helpless to prevent the despoiling.

  Mauger was almost as angry as Martin, although not at the despoiling of the cattle and other stored foodstuffs of Marlowe. He was furious because the men had failed to penetrate the keep. A few harsh words were exchanged with the captains under his orders, particularly because they had not been quick enough to quench the flames that were now avidly destroying the forebuilding as well as the stairs, which was the only way into Marlowe keep.