She knew some people, in fact most people, suffered from this false perception. It was why so many people would fall from a high place—as if the fall itself beckoned them.
She settled her breathing once more, pressing against the stone, feeling the security of her position until the sudden fear passed. She could hear the sentry, pacing slowly along his beat. He had almost reached the end of this pattern. She listened for the slight scuff of his boots as he turned, and when she heard them she began to climb again.
Left hand, right foot, right hand, left foot. She moved smoothly out and up, the only break in her rhythm coming when she didn’t immediately locate a new foot- or handhold and was forced to search for one. She glanced back again. She had moved out around the curve of the tower wall now and the sentry behind her was obscured from her sight. If she moved farther around the wall, she would become exposed to the view of the sentry on the next section. Now was the time to simply move up.
She looked up. There was a window a few meters above her, the stone window ledge standing out from the wall. There was no sign of a light behind the window. Either the room behind it was in darkness or there were curtains drawn across it. She came closer, peering over the rough stone windowsill, and saw that it was the former. There were no curtains but the room behind the thick, uneven glazing was dark and still.
“Which is not to say there’s not someone sleeping in there,” she muttered to herself. She decided she was still too close to the guards’ ready room—just one floor above it. She would go higher before attempting to enter the tower itself.
She looked up, leaning out slightly. It was a movement that would have sent another person toppling backward off the window ledge, but after that brief moment of vertigo, she had recovered her equanimity completely and was totally at home on her precarious perch.
There was another window, with a similar window ledge, four meters above her. As far as she could see, it too was unlit. She felt for handholds on the rough wall of the tower, found purchase for her right foot and pushed off once more, climbing steadily upward.
As she came closer, she saw that she had been mistaken. There was a glimmer of light showing through the window. She pursed her lips in a moue of disappointment and continued up to the next window, a floor above it.
This time, there was no light showing. The interior of the room was in darkness. She perched on the windowsill, framing her hands around her eyes and trying to pierce the interior darkness.
After several seconds, she gave up.
“Only one way to find out,” she told herself. She shifted her position slightly and studied the window. It was in two halves, each one hinged and with a latch at the center. It was a simple tongue and socket lock. She could clearly see the handle that moved the tongue up and down into the socket. The gap between the two halves of the window was a narrow one—too narrow for the heavy blade of the saxe she wore at her belt. She reached behind her neck and felt for the hilt of her throwing knife. Its blade was thinner than the saxe’s.
She carefully worked it into the gap between the two window halves. It was a tight fit but the more she waggled it and jiggled it, the more its movement freed. She placed the blade under the lock’s tongue and levered upward.
For a moment, nothing moved. Then the tongue flew up with a loud click! and the lock was free. She put pressure on the blade, forcing the right-hand window—the one farthest from her—to open outward, catching hold of it before it could bang against the stone window frame.
She heard movement inside the room and the breath stopped in her throat as she listened. Then she relaxed. It was something moving with the wind, which was now coming through the open window—a wall hanging or a curtain. She waited a half minute to see if there was any further noise—any sound of breathing or the stirring of a body under bedcovers.
Nothing.
She slipped the knife back into its sheath behind her neck. Since the window opened outward, she couldn’t open the half nearest her as she was blocking its movement. She took the simplest way through the open half, jackknifing her body over the sill so that she went through headfirst, reaching down with her hands to find the floor. She lowered herself to the floor, bringing her legs and feet smoothly through the open window after her, and rolled forward in a slow somersault, coming to her feet in the same movement.
She stood, waiting for her eyes to become accustomed to the darkness, poised and ready with her hand on the hilt of the saxe at her side.
The room was empty.
37
Will finished his planned set of songs with a ringing chord on the mandola. He bowed deeply from the waist as the room burst into loud applause, and the knights and their ladies seated at the lower tables began to shower coins toward him.
As has been noted, he was a good performer—a skilled musician and a singer with a pleasant voice and a good range. Moreover, he had learned many years ago from Berrigan how to structure a set of songs for an audience.
Don’t give away your best songs too early, the older jongleur had told him. You have to build an audience’s interest, so your early songs must be good—rousing and entertaining—but not your best. They follow when the audience is captured and ready to participate.
Added to the fact that he was a good performer, the audience here in Chateau des Falaises was somewhat starved for entertainment. The chateau was not on any of the main highways through the country. It was something of a backwater and traveling entertainers were rare here.
Baron Lassigny’s reputation was another factor that kept travelers away. He was known to have an unpredictable temper and a sadistic mind if someone got on the wrong side of him. That was enough to deter the majority of traveling entertainers from making the trip to this relatively out-of-the-way spot.
More fool them, Will thought as he bent and scooped the coins into his hat. There was a sizable weight of money in there when he finished. And he noted that few of the coins were copper. Most were silver, with a smattering of gold coins as well. There was something to be said for traveling to a chateau where entertainers were few and far between.
He bowed deeply to the room again, then transferred the contents of his hat to the purse hanging from his belt.
“Jongleur.”
The word cut across the low hubbub of conversation in the vast room. Will turned to meet Lassigny’s hawklike gaze. Once more, he bowed from the waist.
The Baron was seated at the top table, set crosswise to the long room on a raised dais. His seneschal sat on his left side and his wife on his right. The Baroness Lassigny was a tall, slim woman, with long, raven-black hair hanging down almost to her waist. She was quite beautiful, Will thought, but that was no surprise. A man with Lassigny’s reputation would make sure his consort looked the part. Beautiful as she was, she had a disdainful attitude, looking down on Will, literally and figuratively, and the others in the dining hall, with a supercilious twist to her mouth. It was all too obvious that she considered herself to be superior to them all.
Two knights and the baroness’s lady-in-waiting made up the rest of the table.
“My lord?” Will said, in response to the one-word summons.
Lassigny raised a hand and beckoned to him. “You may approach,” he said. There was no warmth or welcome in the voice. No sense of praise for a job well done. Will set his mandola down on the nearest table and stepped forward to the base of the dais, looking up into those impenetrable eyes.
He stood, waiting. There was nothing for him to say and Lassigny looked him up and down, assessing, evaluating. Eventually, the Baron spoke again.
“Where is your daughter tonight?” he asked.
Will wasn’t expecting the question, but he showed no sign of surprise or uncertainty. You don’t miss much, he thought.
“She has a slight chill, my lord,” he said. “She took to her bed early.”
It was unlikely
that the Baron would check the veracity of this reply, Will thought. He had more important matters to consider than the health of a young girl traveling with a lowly jongleur. In any event, Will and Maddie had placed a pair of pillows under her blanket and pulled the curtain shut across her sleeping niche. Any casual inspection would see a huddled figure beneath the blankets. If there was a more-than-casual inspection, questions might be asked. But if such were the case, Will’s and Maddie’s movements would have already aroused suspicion.
Perhaps, Will thought suddenly, Lassigny had heard about the young girl caught wandering in the upper floors of the keep. Lassigny’s next statement seemed to discount this concern.
“So she missed your performance,” he said. It was difficult to tell if this was intended as a statement or a question.
Will shrugged and assumed a self-effacing grin. “She has heard me sing before, my lord,” he said.
Lassigny didn’t return the smile. He simply nodded. “Of course. How long have you been in this country?” he asked suddenly.
Will was beginning to see a technique in his questioning: ask a series of questions and then suddenly switch tack to a new, unrelated topic.
“A few weeks, my lord. Nearly a month,” he replied.
Lassigny considered the answer for several seconds. “Yet you have several Gallican songs in your repertoire,” he commented.
Will nodded. “A good jongleur always prepares for a new audience, my lord. I’ve encountered several Gallican jongleurs traveling through Araluen. It’s a close community and we tend to learn songs from one another.”
Although we don’t teach each other our best songs, Will thought with a wry smile. Those ones, we have to steal while our foreign colleagues aren’t watching.
“A pity about your execrable accent, of course. It rather ruins the effect.”
The hall was silent. The people at the tables had enjoyed Will’s rendering of the Gallic folk songs he had included in his bracket. None of them had objected to his accent—although nobody was about to disagree with Lassigny’s opinion. Once again, Will bowed his head in apology.
“I do my best, my lord,” he said humbly.
Lassigny sniffed derisively. “If you plan to perform in my country, you should do us all the courtesy of pronouncing our language accurately,” he said coldly.
There was no answer Will could think of that might not be seen as argumentative. He remained silent, meeting Lassigny’s black, impenetrable stare.
Eventually, the Baron gave a small, derogatory snort and broke eye contact with Will, turning to look at the seneschal. “Still,” he said, “your performance was reasonable in spite of that shortcoming. Pay him, Gaston.”
The seneschal produced a small leather sack and tossed it down to the lower level. Will caught it and glanced briefly at it while he weighed it in his hands. It wasn’t very heavy. If the contents were gold, it wasn’t an overly generous payment for his work. But then, he thought, generous was not a word one would associate with Baron Lassigny. He slipped the small sack inside his jerkin and touched his forehead with his right forefinger in salute.
“Your lordship is too kind,” he said, making sure there was no trace of the sarcasm he felt in his voice. Lassigny stared at him, still unblinking. Will found himself wondering if he had actually seen the Gallic baron blink at any time. He couldn’t remember doing so.
“Yes. I am.” Lassigny turned to his wife, who had watched the conversation with a sneer twisting her full lips. “What do you say, my dear? Shall we have the jongleur perform for us again?”
She shrugged. “Why not? His singing is tolerable. And lord knows, there’s little else to listen to of an evening.”
That’s a ringing endorsement if ever I heard one, Will thought.
“That’s settled then,” Lassigny said. “You’ll sing for us again on the sixth day.”
Will shifted his feet uncomfortably. “I had planned to leave on the sixth-day morning, my lord,” he said. There was no harm in letting the Baron know that he wasn’t planning on staying around indefinitely.
Lassigny’s expression didn’t alter. “You will perform for us here on the sixth day,” he repeated, his tone unvarying. “Am I making myself clear?”
“Abundantly, my lord,” Will replied, and bowed once more.
“And next time, make sure your daughter is with you,” Lassigny told him.
38
Maddie crossed to the door and placed her ear against it, holding her breath as she listened.
There was no sound of anyone moving outside in the corridor. No sound of voices. She rested her hand on the door handle and slowly eased it down. There was a large key in the door, but as there was nobody in the room, she assumed that the door wouldn’t be locked. She was right. As the door latch slid back—thankfully making very little sound—she let the door open a crack and listened again.
Again, nothing. That wasn’t to say there weren’t a dozen armed men in the corridor outside, waiting for her to emerge. She placed her eye against the narrow gap and tried to see out. Her view was restricted, but so far as she could see, there was nobody in sight.
“Here goes,” she muttered, and eased the door fully open, moving as smoothly as she could, without rushing and making undue noise. She stepped out into the corridor, her hand on the hilt of her saxe, and quickly looked to either side.
The dimly lit space, illuminated by a row of oil lamps set on the wall, was empty. The staircase was in the center of the tower, with rooms running round the outside wall. Quickly, she moved to the stairs and glanced upward. These stairs didn’t spiral like the ones in the keep. They were constructed in a series of switchbacks, with two flights leading from one floor to another, reversing direction halfway up.
The stairwell itself was square in shape, and as she peered upward, it disappeared in darkness. Looking down, she could see faint traces of light below her. There was no sound. She estimated she was on the sixth floor of the tower, high enough not to hear the murmur of voices on the third floor, which was at the height of the walkway around the curtain wall.
She stepped carefully onto the stairway, aware that such stairs were often constructed so they moved when someone put their weight on them, the resultant noise alerting people above that someone was coming. Accordingly, she kept to the side of the stairs, where any such movement would be minimal. There was a faint squeak and she moved up another step, then progressed slowly, testing each step as she placed her foot on it. At the fifth step, she felt excessive movement and an incipient squeak of loose timbers rubbing together. She took her foot off the step and placed it on the next highest.
There was no noise this time, so she continued upward, testing each step as she went. She reached the landing that marked the switchback. It was likely that there would be more loose boards here and she trod carefully, locating one and stepping over it. Then she was on the second flight of the switchback, leading to the seventh floor.
She reached the top with a minimum of noise and crouched on hands and knees, listening. This floor seemed to be more brightly lit than the lower floors, she noticed.
A sudden burst of laughter startled her, setting her heart racing. Two or three men, she estimated, farther along the corridor and suddenly laughing at a joke. The laughter died away and now she could make out the sound of voices talking. But they were muffled and she couldn’t make out the words. Crouching low, she peered round the edge of the stairway, keeping her face as close to the floor as possible.
Five meters away, she saw four armed soldiers outside one of the doors. As she had noted, there was more light on this floor. In addition to the oil lamps, there were two large candelabra set on a table. Four canvas-and-wood chairs were ranged in a semicircle facing the door. There were a flagon and four goblets on the table. As she watched, one of the men took the flagon and filled the goblets. His companions took one each and they al
l drank deeply. One of them said something and there was another burst of laughter.
Seizing the opportunity, and realizing that the men’s attention would be distracted momentarily, she slipped around the banister pole to the next flight of steps, and went up again. By now, she was accustomed to feeling her way and testing each step before she placed her full weight on it, and she moved more quickly. She reached the landing and the switchback and continued upward. As she did, the voices faded to a murmur once more as the stairway blocked the sound.
Four steps from the top, she slowed down. The light was dim above her and there was no sound of voices, other than the faint murmur from below, punctuated occasionally by bursts of laughter.
The eighth floor, the top floor of the tower, was a different arrangement from the lower floors. Instead of rooms set around the outer curve of the tower, it was an open space. There were no lamps here, and the only light came from the moon striking through the windows. She rose to her feet, moving into the space, and studied the room.
On one side was a large rack of crossbows and quivers, each full of quarrels. A ladder led to a trapdoor in the ceiling. She climbed quickly to the top, pushing the trapdoor open and peering out. The trapdoor gave access to a flat roof, surrounded by a crenelated wall, forming a fighting position from which crossbowmen could shoot down on enemies attacking the castle and trying to scale the curtain wall. Against the outer wall, there was a lifting beam, with several large cauldrons set beside it.
“Boiling oil or water,” she muttered, glancing around and seeing a fireplace in the center of the space, where such liquids could be heated, then transferred to the lifting beam, hoisted up and poured on those below.
She lowered the trapdoor and climbed back down the ladder, studying the eighth floor once more. In addition to the rack of crossbows, there were spears in racks, a dozen bunks and several tables with benches. Obviously, in times of danger, soldiers would be stationed here to defend the castle. It was similar to the higher floors of the towers at Castle Araluen.
The Royal Ranger: The Missing Prince Page 21
