“Christ-money!” cried the innkeeper, swearing by the thirty pieces of silver. He stood in the kitchen doorway. “What’s toward?”
“We will need one of your wagons, friend Adelard,” said Molly calmly.
He came into the room, looking at the carnage. “Did thae men fight amang theirsels?” Behind him, Timothy crept near, wide-eyed, and Joan and Hawis crowded in the kitchen doorway.
Molly explained what had happened. Adelard, though terrified at first, thinking of reprisals, grew enraged when Molly explained the cause of the mayhem.
“Christ save us! How can such men be?” said the innkeeper, hoarse with fear and disgust, and spat toward the corpses. He looked around; he beckoned to Timothy.
“Our Tim,” he croaked, “hitch up t’ team tae t’ wain and bring un tae t’ back door.”
Jack squatted, got one of the Scots under the arms, and dragged him toward the back door of the inn, which opened onto the closed innyard, safe from prying eyes. Adelard, seeing what was to be done, beckoned to Hob.
“Gie us a hand, young maister,” he said, bending and taking hold as Jack had under the man’s arms. Hob went over and gripped the Scot by the ankles, and between them they managed to drag the second body up the room to the hearth. Jack was already picking up another corpse, and all four were by the back door when Timothy came in to tell them the wagon was just outside.
Adelard and Hob dragged the dead men outside, while Jack heaved them up into the wagon bed, the bodies sprawling awkwardly this way and that. When all four were up, Jack jumped up on the wagon, straightened limbs, and covered the corpses with horse blankets Timothy produced from the stable. Molly mounted the seat and Jack moved up beside her.
She called to Timothy, “Open the gate, lad.” To Hob and Nemain she said, “We will return shortly; see that Adelard and the rest say nothing to anyone else about this.”
THEY RETURNED not long afterward. When Hob finally got a chance to ask, Molly told him that they had driven the wain some little way into the woods, and there in the dark, Jack Brown had thrown body after body to the side of the road, then dismounted and dragged them in—“not far, not far atall”—to the woods, where it was unlikely anyone would find them for a while. “And then who’s to say what came to pass, and they with hardly a mark upon them?”
Hob had no compunction about the killing of such vile men, but he was subdued for the rest of the evening: it had been made plain to him how swiftly four men could be removed from this life, and from the part they had played in it, and with none ever to know what had befallen them.
THE NEXT DAY WAS QUIET, although Joan and Hawis were noticeably anxious, and Adelard was tense and withdrawn. The day after that he was sitting down with Molly at the big table by the hearth, when Timothy came in from the roadside door and began making his way toward them with a well-dressed stranger.
“God’s hooks!” said Adelard. “What new trouble’s this?”
The stranger was a tall lean man, dressed simply in a dark-blue tunic and hose with a dark-green surcoat: the effect was of somber simplicity. Timothy brought him up to Molly.
“Mistress, here’s Daniel, says he’s fra Chantemerle—’tis a castle not far fra here—wi’ a message.”
Daniel bowed politely. Hob had an impression of restless intelligence held in check under a sober manner. Keen dark eyes under black brows, a long narrow face, a closed expression undermined somewhat by a humorous set to the eyebrows.
“Madam,” he said to Molly, “my master, Sir Odinell, has heard of your virtue as musicians; he requests that you come to Castle Chantemerle, there to play before himself and his guests. You will be well provided while there—perhaps a day or two—and Sir Odinell is quite openhanded to his musicians.”
“ ’Tis a welcome invitation, and we pleased to accept it, poor as we are,” said Molly, who was nothing of the sort. She was playing her part. “We will be there on the morrow.”
“I will so . . .” At this point Hawis came from the kitchen, and stopped just inside the common room. A south-facing window poured sunlight through the kitchen archway, and cast a nimbus about the girl’s graceful figure, and struck highlights from her hair where it escaped from the simple linen coif she wore. She looked at Daniel—dark-clad Daniel, elegant Daniel—and stood very still.
For his part, Daniel became aware of her, glanced past Molly, past Adelard and Timothy, and fell silent. He seemed as one turned to a pillar of salt for a long moment; then he started, and returned his attention to Molly. He had gone very pale. “I will so inform Sir Odinell. If it please you, I must return at once.” He gave simple directions to the castle, but in any event Adelard had been to Chantemerle, and could advise Molly further.
Daniel cast another glance past the hearth, to where Hawis stood just inside the room, absently kneading a kitchen cloth in her hands, gazing on Daniel with an abstracted air. Adelard looked quickly back and forth between them. Innkeepers tend to be close students of human nature, and Adelard was no exception. He let Daniel get a few paces toward the door, and then he called, “Coom tae see us again, guid sir, duties permittin’, and try our fare. Our Hawis, there, is a great one for making your cruppy-dows, and t’ ale is of t’ finest.”
Daniel stopped; he turned partway around; he addressed Adelard, though his eyes flickered once to Hawis, still standing as a statue stands, away by the kitchen.
“Yes,” he said. “I—yes, I shall.” And with that, he was out the door.
CHAPTER 11
THE NEXT DAY FOUND THEM traveling east from the inn. Molly had roused them all before dawn, prepared the wagons, assured Adelard that they would return within a sennight, for so she planned to do, to avoid attracting unwanted notice by dwelling at the castle overlong. Timothy had thrown open the gates as the sky paled, and the three wagons rolled out of the innyard, turned south a few paces to the crossroads, and east again onto the transverse road. After some traveling, long enough for the sun to clear the horizon, the east-trending road ended at a north—south way, broad enough to indicate that it was heavily traveled. Hob led the ox in a wide leftward turn and they headed north up the coast.
The road here was still somewhat inland. Hob could smell the tang of the unseen sea, bracing, salty, a scent that aroused an obscure exhilaration in his heart. It was as though he remembered it from somewhere, but he could not imagine where, and as though it meant to tell him something, but he could not imagine what.
As they moved along, the coast road gradually trended eastward, closer and closer to the sea, so that he heard a rhythmic grumble, as of a giant in his sleep. They trundled along for a while with a long low outcrop on their right, shielding the view to the east from sight. Abruptly this outcrop slanted down, down, and disappeared, and the road ran into the clear, and revealed the sea.
Just beside the road the land now slanted down in a steep slope to the low humped shapes of rolling sand dunes, crowned with coarse marram grass; the dunes bordered a wide semicircular bay of dark wet sand, studded with flat upthrusting stones. Beyond stretched the leaden sheet of the German Sea, endlessly assailing the shore in waves of no great height. Hob, enthralled by the salt smell, the crash and hiss of the waves on sand and gravel, slowed to a halt, and Milo, after a few steps, stopped also, puzzled.
The rocks embedded in the sand trapped pools of water when the tides went out. Hob could see purple sandpipers, birds of modest size, plump bodies, narrow bills, teetering about the pools on thin legs, industriously foraging. In among them were sturdy little birds, turnstones, tipping small rocks to find their prey beneath; their rapid sharp tuck-tuck-tuck came clearly to Hob over the swash of the retreating tide.
Molly set the brake and called, “Well, look a bit, a chuisle, ’tis not every day one sees such a sight.”
Hob leaned his folded arms on Milo’s broad back and gazed across the ox at the water, running unobstructed to the end of sight, and breathed deeply: the chill damp air was like cold water on a thirsty day, and he felt he
could never get enough of it. There were some islands, not very far offshore, but beyond that the water looked as though it might reach to the edge of the world.
“Is it pleasing to you, a rún?” asked Molly.
“Oh, yes, Mistress; it’s . . . it’s . . .”
“Wait till we’re in Erin, and you seeing the Western Ocean from the great cliffs. It’s then you’ll be thinking that what you saw this day was a puddle.”
Hob set off again, tugging at the ox’s rope; Molly kicked loose the brake, and the little caravan of wagons creaked into motion. Slowly the crescent bay was put behind them, Hob enjoying the constant breezes, the hypnotic pleasure of watching the waves break and break again on the sands until the bay gave way to a stony promontory, waves dashing spume up the face of the rock. Past this: another scoop of bay, and then another headland, but on this one crouched the great bulk of Sir Odinell’s castle, Chantemerle.
The road split, the main branch continuing north to Sandham Bycastle, the little village that served the castle’s needs. The smaller branch turned seaward and mounted a natural ramp of stone outcropping, clothed in grassy soil. Hob swung onto the upward way, leaning a little against the slope. Behind him the ox began to snort as it took up the strain of hauling Molly’s main wagon up the grade. The road gradually leveled off. There was a bare patch, and then the massive gatehouse of the castle’s outer wall. The gates were closed, but figures watched them from the wall-walks, and even as they approached the gate the heavy valves began to swing inward.
There was a deep dry moat, filled with living thorn hedge, over which a drawbridge gave access to the gatehouse. The wagons rumbled over the planks and into the dim-lit tunnel, laden with traps and slow-downs, that pierced the gatehouse, and so out into daylight once more.
They rolled into the outer ward, and here came Daniel Clerk, who bowed gracefully, and introduced a page, Guiscard, who was to be their guide. Daniel, attentive, polite, cast a quick burning glance down the little line of wagons; an expression of disappointment flickered across his face; then, once more the suave castle functionary, he bowed again to Molly, and excused himself, citing his duties.
Guiscard was about Hob’s age, perhaps a bit younger, well turned out with his new hose of scarlet and his gilt buckles; he was polite, bowing first to Molly and then taking the lead rope from Hob with a murmured “If it please you, allow me to . . . ,” his voice trailing off as though hesitant to be too obvious. But he was friendly as well: he grinned conspiratorially at Hob and said, as he led the ox—and so the caravan—around in a turn to the right, heading toward the wide stone stables set against the south wall, “We’ll put the wagons on the lower level, and lead the beasts to the upper floor. Have you seen such a stable? There’s a ramp!”
Hob admitted that he had not, smiling back—the page’s enthusiasm was infectious. Through the broad doorway with the two doors, closed in inclement weather, but today opened flat to the outside stable wall, and immediately they were in an echoing dimness, in which was a bustle of grooms and water boys and muckers. They were enveloped in the perfume of hay, the sharp ammoniacal tang of urine, and the rich pungent smell of animal bodies; from the upper level, there was the clop and boom of hooves on the broad planks of the floor. Men descended upon them, and there was a flurry of activity as the ox, the ass, and the mare were unhitched and the wagons were muscled into place against the walls.
Everything that Molly owned was in the three wagons, including some hidden caches of coins she’d acquired: English silver pennies, and gold coins brought by Crusaders from the Holy Land. She had keys that hung from her girdle, the belt on which her pouch and her dagger were slung; now she caught Nemain’s eye, and tapped the keys at her waist, and pointed to the wagons. Nemain disappeared into the large wagon and reappeared with a small sturdy sack. From this she drew one of the iron barrel locks that Molly possessed, a mark of Molly’s wealth, and secured the back door of the wagon with it, turning the disk-handled key in the lock, and replacing the key in the sack. She went on to place locks on all the back doors, the front hatches, and the side shutters of the three wagons, and when all were secure, to string all the keys on a thong and fasten that to her own girdle. The sack she tucked up on the wagon seat.
Jack and Hob now went with Guiscard and two of the grooms to stable the three beasts. The stables were so long that the ramp, which began at one end of the building, had a gentle grade for the animals to walk up. Hob brought Milo around to the beginning of the ramp, and Milo decided that it was too dangerous, and that he would much rather go back over by the wagons, and there were a few moments spent in earnest discussion.
Finally Jack handed the mare’s reins to one of the grooms, came up and leaned against Milo’s neck, turning his head around toward the slope. Hob pulled again, speaking soothing words about how comfortable it was up there, and how he could rest and eat to his heart’s content, and finally Milo put a hoof to the ramp, and then all at once the ox went up, the wood rumbling under his weight, at what was for Milo a rapid pace.
All the shutters on the upper level were open to the warm weather. The space was airy and clean; the stalls were ample; troughs held water and feed. Hob and Jack satisfied themselves as to the three animals’ safety and comfort, and went with Guiscard to rejoin Molly and Nemain. There was a bit of delay at the top of the ramp as two muckers wheeled barrows full of manure onto the ramp and down, destined for the castle gardens, then Guiscard led the way as they half walked, half trotted down the long slope.
Guiscard led the party through the expansive outer ward, where sheep moved placidly about, heads down, cropping the new grass, to another gatehouse set in the inner wall. This was reached across a moat, dry but very deep, the bridge across it set on a pivot, so that it could be turned sideways, thus removing access. The gatehouse, a square building flanked by two hexagonal towers in the French style, had an archway that ran right through to the inner ward, and the archway had a yett, an iron latticework gate, at either end. Both these yetts stood open, and parties of guards, five or six at a gate, stood at deceptive ease—all were well armed.
They passed through the cool stone archway, smelling faintly of horse and of horse urine, walking to one side as six mounted men-at-arms clattered through from the inner ward, off on some patrol or other errand. Hob looked after them. They rode in two neat columns, and seemed alert; there was no jesting, no chatter. He thought that Sir Odinell must be a bit of a stern master, maintaining a high standard of order among his men.
Hob looked up at about the midpoint of this short tunnel, to see several of the holes that they called meurtrières, murderesses. Through these holes, from an upper storey in this gatehouse, stones, arrows, hot oil, could be dropped down upon attackers who had breached the outer yett, but not the inner one, and who for the moment were trapped in the gatehouse.
Into the sunlight again, across the inner bailey with its smithy and other wooden outbuildings leaning against the curtain wall, and then they were at the keep with its attached halls and chapel. Hob looked up. The central tower of the keep soared up and up, the battlements studded with machicolations, outcroppings projecting from the walls, with openings here and there near the bottom, again so that hot oil and other unwelcoming stuff might be dropped on attackers. Set in the center of this tower was yet another gatehouse, and with it of course more guards, who—recognizing Guiscard and having been told to expect entertainers—passed them through swiftly.
They followed their guide up a dogleg staircase and at last were in Chantemerle’s great hall. This was quite a bit larger than Sir Jehan’s hall, as Chantemerle itself was much larger than Blanchefontaine, and there seemed to be tables set up even though it was between meals, and the hall relatively empty. The castle folk had two rows of trestle tables, running lengthwise down the hall, and at the far end of the long room was a dais, with a table set crosswise, and two smaller tables to right and left, just off the dais.
There were three fireplaces: the larger on
e was to the left of the main table; two others were spaced along the lower reaches of the hall. As at Blanchefontaine, the walls were covered with tapestries and collections of weapons, among which was a particularly fine row of battle-axes, including Danish and sparth axes, and another of pole arms—voulges, fauchards, glaives—used by Sir Odinell’s ancestors, or looted from their victims. Behind the dais was a bloodstained banner with the three blackbirds of Chantemerle, borne to the Holy Land by an ancestor of Sir Odinell, one Sir Fulk; the blood was that knight’s own.
Sir Odinell awaited them in an alcove; with him was Daniel, hovering discreetly to one side.
“Thank you, Guiscard, that will be all,” said Sir Odinell. “Do you wait upon Lady Maysaunt.”
“My lord.”
When the page had gone the knight turned to Daniel. “Wait outside; see that no one comes near enough to overhear.”
“My lord,” said Daniel, stepping out and drawing a heavy tapestry across the opening to the hall; this would at least muffle some of what was said.
“He is clever and he is closemouthed, our Daniel Clerk,” said Sir Odinell. “He has trained for the priesthood, but— Well. ’Twas not something that suited him, but he can read and write, and even do sums, and has proved an able administrator. He will be my seneschal someday. You may trust him; he is privy to all my affairs. I have told everyone else that you are musicians, excellent musicians, but no more than that. We will seat you to one side of the dais, that you may observe Sir Tarquin the more closely.
“I sent this same Daniel to Sir Tarquin, to renew his invitation to a banquet, and with instructions to mention you—mention you by description: most excellent musicians, and so forth—and Daniel has reported to me that he felt that his offer was not proceeding well, till you were described to Sir Tarquin.
The Wicked Page 9
