The Wild Hunt tor-1

by Elizabeth Chadwick

  'Look and have done and come away!' she said brutally.

  He flinched and his complexion turned the colour of ashes. Despite the work of Judith and the priest, Rhosyn's body was still not a sight for the squeamish. She had fought hard for her life and her beauty was marred by the livid bruises and distortions of strangulation. Her body beneath the shift was mauled and mutilated and her braids hacked off. Judith covered her up again.

  Guyon swallowed jerkily. 'Where's Eluned?' he asked, fighting his gorge.

  'De Lacey took her with him.' Judith compressed her lips. Guyon whitened further at the implications.

  'My lord ...' said Father Jerome and was barged aside before he could say more by a wild-eyed, travel-stained young man.

  'Where is she?' the newcomer asked hoarsely, his French so thickly accented with Welsh and filled with raw emotion that at first Judith stared at him without comprehension. His gaze flickered over the row of bodies and the vigilance candles.

  'My Rhosyn, where is she?'

  ' Your Rhosyn?' Judith's expression sharpened. 'Then you must be Prys--'

  'I went to fetch her father for burial and now I am told that I must bury her too, and the lad ...' The wild eyes fixed on Guyon with bleak loathing.

  'Couldn't you leave her alone? If not for you, she'd still be alive and my wife!'

  Guyon flinched. 'I did not know that she was coming to Ravenstow,' he defended himself. 'If I had, I would have stopped her. Christ knows, I tried to warn her.'

  'You should have tried harder!'

  'How much harder?' Guyon spat. 'How much would you have tolerated? Short of locking her up, there was nothing I could ever have done to hold her.'

  'Then what in Christ's name was she doing here at Ravenstow?'

  'She came to invite us to your wedding,' Judith said, trying to calm the sparks between the men that were threatening to flare into violence and violate God's altar and the dead who sought sanctuary there, 'and to talk of Heulwen's future.' It was not the whole truth, but she felt no remorse at withholding what could not safely be said.

  'Neither matter was so pressing as to warrant this!' Prys gestured towards the row of corpses, and it came to Guyon that the young Welshman was as filled with guilt as himself, for he too had not been there to prevent this dreadful crime and rage was a bolt hole to be dived into rather than face the unfaceable.

  Prys pushed past him and Judith. 'Which one?' he demanded. Judith opened her mouth to say that he should not look, but Guyon forestalled her by pointing to the nearest shroud.

  'Walter de Lacey was the man responsible,'

  Guyon said softly. 'I'm going to tear Thornford down stone by stone and make of that keep a burial mound.'

  The young man drew back the sheet and fell to his knees at the side of the bier. 'Ah Rhosyn, cariad, no!'

  Father Jerome set a comforting arm around Prys's shoulders, although there was nothing that could comfort the sight laid out before their eyes.

  Guyon gently drew the cover over Rhosyn again. Prys shuddered and crossed himself.

  Trembling, he rose to his feet and stared at Guyon.

  'I'm a merchant,' he said, voice unsteady with unshed grief, and savage. 'I wear a sword for my protection, but I'm clumsy using it ...'

  Judith drew a frightened breath, thinking for a mad instant that the Welshman was going to challenge Guyon to a trial by combat in order to assuage his grief. Guyon must have thought so too, for she felt him tense beside her.

  'I want you to teach me to wield it properly. If you are going to march on Thornford, I am coming with you. They told me outside ... about Eluned. No worse can be done to Rhosyn, she's beyond it now ... but God alone knows what he will do to the child ...' He choked and compressed his lips.

  'Be welcome,' Guyon said, his own voice constricted. 'I'll lend you a hauberk from the armoury.'

  The chapel was cold and almost entirely dark.

  The candles on the altar and around the biers made splashes of light in the pre-dawn blackness. Guyon stared at the flames until his vision blurred and repeated the prayers he had known by rote since childhood. Rote without meaning. The reality was the flagged church floor pressing cold and hard against his numb knees, the smell of incense cloying his nostrils and Rhosyn's desecrated body stretched out before him.

  He had tried time and again to believe it was a dream, nothing more than a nightmare from which he would wake up sweating with relief. Ave Maria, gratia plena ... He had only to lift the linen sheet to know it was not.

  The candles flickered in a draught and light rippled over the bier, giving Rhosyn's shroud the momentary illusion of movement. His hair rose along his spine and he stopped breathing. A gentle hand squeezed his shoulder and he jumped and stared round.

  'Guyon, come away,' Judith entreated. 'It is all but dawn now and if you are to lead the men, you need to be rested. Prys sought his pall et an hour ago.' She held out his cloak and he saw that she was wearing her own over the gold wool gown of yesterday. She had been kneeling in vigil with him most of the night, but he had not marked her leaving, or indeed Prys's.

  'There is a tub prepared above. You must be frozen stiff.'

  The words ' sensible Judith' floated amongst the disjointed flotsam of the upper layers of his mind. He was suddenly aware of exhaustion seeping through his body just as the iciness of the flagged floor was seeping into his knees. 'To the soul,' he muttered, genuflecting to the altar and rising stiffly to his feet. 'To the pit of my soul.'

  Staggering with weariness, he let her lead him up the stairs to the main bedchamber. She dismissed the maids with a swift gesture and, as the curtain dropped behind the last one, began unbuckling his swordbelt.

  As the belt slipped into her hands, he took her by the shoulders and tipped up her chin to examine her face. The dim light concealed some of the ravages, but not all . Mauve shadows marred the clarity of her eyes and the bones of her face were sharp, suddenly reminding him of the first time he had seen her.

  He was a sleepwalker, jolted awake. 'Ah God, Judith,' he said on a broken whisper and pulled her tight and close.

  'I met her on the day before it happened,' she said into his breast, her voice cracking. 'God's love, Guy, I was so jealous, I wanted to scratch out her eyes, but I couldn't. She was so ... so honest, and she did not deserve what they did to her!'

  She burst into tears, digging her fingers so hard into Guyon's hauberk that the rivets cut deep semicircles against her knuckles.

  'Judith, love, don't!' Guyon pleaded, kissing her wet face while tears spilled down his own. 'Do you want to break me?'

  'I can't help it!' she sobbed. 'Since that night in Southwark, we have not had a moment to ourselves that has not been marred by fear and strain and war!' She struck his hauberk with her clenched fist.

  Guyon seized her hand in one of his and clamped the other around her waist, holding her tightly, aware through his own shuddering of hers.

  At length, sniffing and tear-drenched, she pulled away to look at him. 'I meant to be calm and strong when you came home,' she whispered,

  'and instead I shriek like a harpy. The tub is growing cold and you are still in your mail.'

  'Never mind the tub,' he said, his whole body shaking with cold and the delayed reaction of shock and fatigue. 'I have lived without creature comforts for so long that another night and day does not matter. Just help me unarm and come to bed.'

  Judith wondered whether she should persuade him to eat some food and decided that, for now, she just did not possess the energy. The battle could be taken up again once they had both slept.

  'Judith.' He stretched out his hand to her in supplication. With a soft cry she returned to his embrace, stood tightly enclosed within it for a brief moment, then set about helping him remove his mail.

  CHAPTER 27

  The dawn sky on the horizon was barred grey and cream and oyster shell , striated like marble.

  Smoke from cooking fires hazed the immediate air. Fatty bacon sizzled. A loaded
wain of new bread from Ravenstow creaked into the camp.

  Men were hearing mass, their bellies rumbling.

  Guyon watched the mangonel launch another boulder at Thornford's curtain wall . There came the crash of stone splintering on stone and a high-pitched scream from within.

  'It is a great pity to see such fine new defences reduced to rubble before we take them,' Eric murmured at his side.

  'Do you have a better suggestion?' Guyon growled. 'If not, go and find out what's taking those miners so long and get me a cup of wine before my throat closes!'

  Eric lifted long-suffering eyes towards heaven and fetched the latter first accompanied by a mutton pasty. Then, face studiedly impassive, he went in search of the sapper's foreman. Lord Guyon had been the very devil to please of late, the knowledge of what lay behind those wall s goading him to frustrated rage like a baited bear.

  Unable to come to grips with de Lacey, he was venting his spleen on those around him instead. It was understandable, of course. All of them were sickened at what had happened to Rhosyn and her escort. Casualties of war were one thing; wanton destruction and rapine of a child were another, especially when the victims were people with whom one had shared companionship and hospitality and had always complaisantly assumed one would see many times again.

  Having found the foreman of the sappers who had paused in his endeavours in order to eat his breakfast, Eric asked him Guyon's question.

  The small man wiped his earth-smeared hand across his mouth and grimaced. 'We been working all night fast as we can, see. What does he expect, miracles?'

  These men were a law unto themselves, their invaluable skill setting them above the conventions of rank. Mainly Welshmen and brought up to the craft since birth, working open-cast coal seams, they were digging a tunnel underground to a point directly beneath the wall , supporting their work with wooden props. Once completed, the tunnel would be filled with pitch-soaked furze and dry wood and bladders of pork fat, then set ablaze. As the props burned away, the tunnel would cave in, bringing down the wall above, in this case a section of the eastern rampart. It was dirty, difficult work and the rate of pay reflected it. Dai ap Owain and the men literally beneath him earned a shilling a day, which was as much as a fully accoutred knight could expect to command.

  'What do I tell him, Dai?'

  'Tell him we'll be done by prime and that we need more oil and brushwood.'

  Eric looked doubtful. 'No sooner?' he mistakenly asked, envisaging Guyon's displeasure.

  'If my lord desires such a thing, let him come down and dig himself. A fo ben, bid bont!'

  Eric retreated. 'Prime,' he said to Guyon, 'and they need tinder and oil. I'll go and see to it,' and he disappeared before Guyon could flay him alive with the edge of his tongue.

  By mid-morning, the grey light of dawn had brightened into a strong blue heat and the arrows that swished between besieger and besieged were hard black shafts raining down from a cloudless sky. Guyon shot a glance at his archers.

  Half of them had set aside their bows and had begun preparing their short swords and round shields for the imminent assault. This was the lull , the still before the storm. Guyon's fingers twitched on Arian's reins. He made a conscious effort to relax as the stall ion side-stepped, soothing him with soft words and a smoothing hand on the sleek, silk neck.

  It had taken three weeks to come this far, and not without trials. Walter de Lacey might be a fool in the political sense, might be a child-molesting murdering pervert, but it did not prevent him from being a skilled soldier and tactician. Their siege machines had been sabotaged by a daring night raid and a couple of attempts to take the keep with scaling ladders had been repelled. The enmity was intense, each foothold gained paid for in blood.

  Guyon rubbed his sweating palms on his chausses. He had never wanted a thing so much in his life as to take Thornford and tear its occupant apart piece by little piece. He did not think of Eluned. To have done so now would have overset his balance and thus far he had kept it well on the level.

  Over by the water butts two sappers were swilling water down, their bodies lithe, hard and small . He had never met a man of the trade much above five feet in height. Indeed Dai, their foreman, frequently stood on a mounting block or a keg so that he could address Guyon at eye level. Fiercely independent and forthright, Dai saw no reason to back down from a point of view just because he lacked stature, and the men who knew him had long since ceased to make the mistake of patronising him.

  He was at the mine now, supervising the blaze which had been kindled an hour since. Guyon switched his hungry gaze again to Thornford's defences, a muscle bunching and releasing in his jaw. The stone curtain wall had replaced a wooden palisade about ten years ago when Welsh raids had been particularly savage. The original wooden keep had been rebuilt in stone and now stood three levels high. It did not approach the impregnable grandeur of Ravenstow - few strongholds did - but it was certainly stout enough to repel the Welsh and several weeks of determined, conventional siege.

  'It's going to go,' Dai ap Owain lilted, appearing out of nowhere to stand at Guyon's stirrup.

  'Thank Christ for that,' Guyon said and signalled his captains to take up their places and make ready their men. They knew what was to be done.

  Plans had been discussed last night and in more detail this morning while they waited for the miners to complete their work. If any man bungled it now, it was his own fault, but Guyon did not anticipate problems. Eric and de Bec were experienced, dependable men, quite capable of extricating themselves and those beneath their command if a crisis arose.

  He looked over his shoulder. Godric was guarding his back, his sorrel fretting and dancing, as anxious as his rider for the action to be upon them. Beside Godric, astride one of the remounts, sat Prys ap Adda, sword drawn, shield held in tight to his body. For all his declaration that he was a clumsy swordsman, Guyon had found little lacking. The Welshman might not have the bulk of the men he would be facing, but he was as fast in motion and ferocious as summer lightning and he, too, had a personal cause to lend vehemence to his sword arm. Had the man been trained to war from birth, Guyon doubted that he could have bested him.

  A dull rumbling sound like the roll of summer thunder grew gradually louder and the ground shook. Horses started and shied. The bailey wall collapsed, crashing down into the tunnel, sending loose stones and mortar bounding across the courtyard floor. Smoke and thick dust mingled upwards, in an obscuring cloud.

  'There's pretty for you!' Dai breathed exultantly.

  Guyon was not listening. 'Forward!' he roared, flinging all his pent-up tension into the cry as, clapping spurs to Arian's flanks, he bolted for the gap.

  He, Godric and Prys erupted simultaneously through the gaping hole, Guyon driving straight ahead, his companions to right and left. Eyes streaming, lungs choking on the boiling fog, Guyon rode down three of the defenders who were not swift enough to scatter before his rage.

  Arian barged past them, felling two among the debris. Guyon cut down the third. The stall ion killed one man before he could rise. Guyon brained the other with his shield, dealt with another on a vicious backswing and swung the horse towards the inner bailey, the entrance to which was defended by two iron-bound gates, four fingers thick and secured on the inside by a massive bar which took the strivings of at least four stout men to lift from its slots.

  'Ravenstow a moi!' Guyon bellowed and the men of his group disengaged so they could to run or ride with him, leaving the soldiers under Eric's command to take care of the outer ward. From the direction of the western wall walk, the wind fed them the yell s of de Bec's group on the scaling ladders and the deadly whiz of arbalest quarrels.

  'The ram!' Guyon shouted and the order was passed swiftly down the line. The huge oak trunk with its reinforced pointed iron head was run forward by fifteen men-at-arms, coughing and sneezing in the clogged air. One of them screeched and fell , an arrow in his leg. Guyon leaped down from the stall ion and took his place, the
exhilaration of battle coursing through him.

  'Heave!' he cried and the ram thrust forward and smacked against the gate, boomed and rebounded. 'Back ... heave ... back ... heave ...'

  And the rhythm was taken up and echoed down the line. Much to the appreciation of the men, Guyon began a crude song in English about the broaching of a difficult virgin.

  A sword clanged on a nearby shield as Prys felled a defender. An arbalest bolt crashed into the ram hard by Guyon's thrusting shoulder. A moment later another one swished past his ear.

  'Get that sniper!' he broke off singing to bellow furiously. 'Before he gets me! No dolts, don't stop!

  God's death, you weren't as hesitant as this when you hit the London stews last summer!'

  Bawdy guffaws, capping remarks and renewed efforts greeted his outburst. The dinted head of the huge oak log pounded against the solid planks. Guyon began to sweat with effort. His breath grew harsh in his throat; his mouth was dust-dry. With salt-stung eyes he glanced around, assessing the ward. Behind and around them many of the lesser combatants had begun to cry quarter rather than die and Eric's men were effectively dealing with those who preferred to fight on.

  'Lord Guyon!' rasped the soldier beside him.

  Sunlight glinted from his helmet as he jerked his head energetically at the gates. Guyon squinted at him and then at their target, and abruptly stood up and raised his hand. The singing raggedly ceased. The men rested the ram and stared with their lord towards the scuffed, surface-splintered but otherwise intact gates. Guyon hefted his shield, wiped his hand across his upper lip and commanded forward his two most accurate archers to train their sights upon the gap as the great, thick planks began to swing inwards.

  A dour soldier wearing a leather gambeson filled the entrance, grey-streaked hair falling to his shoulders. He was weaponless, not even an eating knife about his person and behind him, like the contents of a stoppered wineskin, cowered what seemed to be all the inhabitants of the inner ward.

  'My lord, we yield ourselves and this keep to your mercy,' he said formally, eyes betraying all the fear that his deliberate deep voice did not.