And the farmers, excited at having driven squires and shield bearers into the acres of tall, grape-laden vines, were keen at the prospect of running down an even more distinguished warrior. No knight liked to be forced to retreat, and Edmund felt a further degree of sympathy for the man.
Hubert pounded Edmund on the back, as Wowen helped free his head from the confines of the helmet. How refreshing the air was! And how sweet the sounds of crow-calls and horses sneezing. For a moment Edmund hoped he would never have to wear a helmet again.
“Another few strokes,” said Hubert, his voice hoarse with relief, “and you’d have had him begging for quarter.”
Edmund felt weak in every limb. He shook his head, thankful to be alive. “Another few blows, Hubert,” said Edmund with a laugh, “and I would have fainted dead away.”
Edmund was grateful at the light in Ester’s eyes as she set the end of her pike—that was unmistakably what it was—on the ground, leaned on it like a castle guard, and asked, “Are you certain, Edmund, that you are not hurt?”
Edmund’s response died on his lips.
He hurried to Ester, reaching out, but afraid to touch her and cause her further pain.
There was gore on her hand. And on her mantle, dark stains.
“This blood,” she said, “is not my own.”
“Ester, I thank God!” gasped Edmund, forgetting to call her my lady or good Ester, as courtesy decreed.
If Ester was in the least offended, she gave no sign.
The clash of steel against wood came from far across the vineyard, in the direction of Sir Jean’s pursuers. The sound of cries of encouragement and pain, too, drifted through the dark green rows of vines.
At last the peasants limped back into the clearing, their homespun tunics sweat-darkened and torn.
One of the peasants fell to his knees, calling out in his dialect that the big knight had eluded them.
Nigel called for Rannulf, and gave a clipped command to Edmund.
They came across Sir Jean’s mount dead at the far edge of the vineyard.
A crude flint-blade hatchet was buried in the animal’s head. Both Surefoot and Strikefire bridled at the sight of the stricken animal, and it was not the first time Edmund felt as much pity for a horse as for a man.
They found Sir Jean up to his waist in the slow-moving current of a river. He was challenging his enemies through his helmet, but had not bothered to draw his sword again—a knight reserved his weapon for opponents he respected.
Peasants stood on the bank and showered the big knight with missiles, sling stones, and smooth river stones, the projectiles dashing the slow current all around the knight. Archers took careful aim and loosed their shafts, and while the arrows glanced off the armor, they left punctures in the knight’s coat.
“You are weak puppy dogs,” bellowed the Chartrian. “You are little strengthless piglets,” he called, his voice growing hoarse. An arrow had found its way under his mail coif, the armor protecting his throat, and protruded there, a yellow shaft.
Edmund called for the attack to cease, spurring his mount among the taunting, stone-throwing farmworkers. His English imperatives, stoppe, ceese, and do way, were lost among the howls and jeers of the attackers. No knight wanted to lose his life in a battle against a foe like this. Edmund worked to put his mount and his own body between the big Chartrian and his enemy peasants. The laboring folk simply scampered to new positions on the bank, singing out taunts.
Rannulf, after a long moment of looking on, shaking his helmeted head, used his lance to part the peasants, knocking them to the ground.
But it was too late.
Edmund’s offered hand was lost on Sir Jean, the knight reeling, hands to his helmet as he staggered, struck by yet another arrow, and another jagged rock, missiles that glanced away but punished him nonetheless.
With a muffled sigh, the knight fell back and sank into the water.
By the time Edmund hauled the big man out of the current—his former enemy’s mail shirt catching on river reeds, his helmet dragging like an anvil—the knight was no longer breathing.
Edmund had once seen a priest shake an infant awake, a child who had toddled into a duck pond. Edmund tried to work the same miracle, but the Chartrian would not respond, his lips blue, his eyes unseeing.
Edmund managed a prayer for his soul, and Rannulf knelt to make the sign of the cross. It was considered prudent to express some kind remark about the departing spirit, to avoid bad luck, but all Edmund could manage was a thick-voiced, “Sir Jean was afraid of no man.”
A burly peasant, his hands sticky with sap, stepped close, making a suggestive motion with a wood ax, asking for the slain knight’s head. Rannulf pushed him away with one hand, but as he did, his fingers left red marks on the woodsman’s tunic.
Blood streamed down from the knight’s sword arm.
Sir Rannulf was hurt.
29
THE LADY OF THE CASTLE WAS ISOLDA DES Roches, a woman whose conversation Ester understood well enough, as long as they both spoke the stiff, courtly Frankish of envoys and noble travelers.
“My husband is off fighting to capture the Holy Sepulcher,” said Isolda, in the tone of someone recounting a timeworn grief. “Every night I pray for his return.” Although some Crusaders have already begun to find their way home, she did not have to add, mine has not.
The lady of the estate had managed the farmland, with the aid of a steward. All over Christendom such women were carrying on the responsibilities of harvest and repair, lifting prayers every evening for the safe return of husbands and fathers.
“And you are all,” added the lady of the castle, arousing herself from her sadness, “bound for Rome?”
“By the grace of God,” said Ester, “and with the merciful help of my lady Queen Eleanor.”
This was far from the first time Ester had mentioned the queen in Isolda’s presence. She was reminding the good Lady Isolda that she had nearly allowed a party of pilgrims endowed by a royal lady to be killed or captured by the merest riffraff of knighthood.
Ester spared many long glances toward Rannulf. The legendary knight wore a white linen bandage around his right arm. An accidental cut from a halberd borne by an elderly sheepshearer had hurt the seasoned knight far worse, Ester believed, than Rannulf would admit. Even now, blood peppered the weave of the bandage.
The four English knights were enjoying various kinds of cheese pie—dishes unfamiliar to both Ester and her companions—accompanied by flore frittours—fried flowers, another unfamiliar delicacy. The pitchers of red and white wine were plentiful, but Ester detected that the wine had been heavily watered. Thick red wine was highly regarded medicine. This weak stuff, Ester knew, would do Rannulf little good.
Weak wine and a bit of pie crust were all Ester was able to swallow—food and drink held no pleasure for her just now. Edmund and Hubert, too, ate more sparingly than she would have expected. In addition to the demise of Sir Jean de Chartres, three other combatants had died that day. Hamo Peche was dead of his wounds, and two men had been slain by Rannulf: one Apollinaris de Quincy, and a highly honored warrior fallen on hard times, William Shortbeard. A local priest had promised that these knights would receive appropriate burial.
The remaining group of very much alive but sword-hacked squires and badly bruised shield bearers had been rounded up and locked in a granary by a limping Clydog and a gang of farmhands. The sturdy retainer had recovered from the blow to his head, but at the same time seemed diminished by it, slow of speech and weary.
The traditional ransom sought for these captured men would be a welcome source of income for the des Roches estate, and the captives accepted their lot as temporary prisoners with some grace. In all likelihood some needy baron would offer full price for the entire group.
The acts of violence Ester had witnessed that day were enough to make her uncomfortable with her companions. She had heard the queen herself say that when a man was killed before your eyes, you prayed
for the peace of his soul, and put it all out of your mind with a song about the turtledove.
It was a philosophy Ester was trying to live up to, with only partial success. When she closed her eyes, she pictured blood-greasy swords, and she was amazed that she herself had been able to prick an enemy’s flesh.
Amazed—and sickened.
“Is it true,” Lady Isolda was inquiring, “that you will attempt to brave the Great Saint Bernard Pass?”
“It is the route pilgrim travelers usually take,” said Ester, grateful to be distracted by conversation.
“It is,” agreed Isolda, with troubling simplicity.
Guides from Savoy, the country near the great mountains of the Alps, usually brought travelers through the pass, aided by inns run by an order of monks dedicated to assisting wayfarers. The two-week trek was famous as a harrowing experience, and yet over the years merchants and government agents came and went, enduring the legendary hardships—and surviving.
“We will depart for the foothills tomorrow,” said Ester, “if it please God.”
“As challenging as the mountain trek has always been,” said Isolda, dipping a fried blossom into olive oil, “it is all the more desperate now.”
Rannulf made no effort to hide his indifference. He yawned.
“No combat is too challenging for Edmund Strongarm here,” offered Hubert encouragingly.
Isolda responded with a pitying smile.
Ester decided that she was developing a particularly intense dislike for the lady of this castle. “Pray tell us,” said Ester, keeping her tone sweet, “what you mean.”
“The route is far too dangerous now for your small party,” said Isolda with the air of someone with superior knowledge. “Bandit warriors hold the mountain pass. Many travelers have died up there on the ice.”
“Do we appear weak?” responded Ester.
Isolda adopted a tone both more familiar and more respectful when she added, “The journey—it is too difficult, my lady, I fear.”
“What foolish brigand-knights are these, my lady?” asked Nigel, lamplight in his eyes.
“I am warned that a young man of good name,” answered Isolda, adopting a more formal tone in addressing the knight, “collects a toll from travelers. From those who cannot pay he collects their heads. He is the younger son of a landed family, and unlikely to inherit much.” The plight of younger sons—who rarely inherited wealth—and their relative penury, was famous throughout Christendom.
“Who is this man-eating nobleman?” asked Nigel.
“He is called Conrad of Saxe,” answered Isolda smoothly. “I understand he has a greedy army of iron-hats,” she added, using the common phrase for hired soldiers.
Watching Isolda meet Nigel’s lively gaze gave Ester an insight into her. It had been too long since the lord of Castle de Roches had sat at this table. Ester knew that, even in a noble soul, solitude breeds lust.
“You are gracious to warn us,” said Ester.
Before they all retired for the night, the three wide-eyed children of the castle were led in by a timid house servant.
The children spoke well, made every show of high manners, and Ester was touched at the tenderness in the eyes of the knights as they tousled hair and bid the young ones sleep well.
Was this the same Sir Rannulf who had killed two men that very day, now wishing God’s peace on the awestruck children?
And was this Edmund, who had cut off an arm, now laughing so sweetly?
It was a blessing, Ester felt, to sleep in a castle again, even a small bastille like this.
“Our knights fight well, and with good heart,” Ida was saying, mending a hem in her skirt by the quaking light of a candle stub. “But what will they do when frostbite seizes us in the mountain waste?”
“Heaven will defend us,” said Ester, for a moment too tired to worry.
The welcome rustle of her bedding, a blanket stuffed with sweet straw, whispered at Ester’s ear. When she closed her eyes she saw the bawling profile of a horse, and the flash of steel.
“The Alps,” Ida was saying, expressing common knowledge, “harbor leagues of devils.”
“Do you think, Ida,” asked Ester sleepily, “that you yourself could use a sword?”
“No, by my faith. Never, dear Ester.” Ida hesitated. “Except, I do believe, to save your life.”
III
The Devil’s Pathway
30
THE BAND OF PILGRIMS FIRST SAW THE Alpine peaks a few days later.
Edmund had been riding in advance of the others, upward along the increasingly sloping foothills, with the three Savoyard guides immediately behind, each one taking turns telling endless anecdotes, to the disbelief and mocking jollity of his mates. The guides disdained horseback and preferred to show their mettle by leaping from one mossy rock to another.
Moss of every color and lichen of every hue splashed rock and pebble, hairy, scabby, warty outgrowths of every breed of furry vegetation, but the mountaineers never slipped. Edmund envied them their sense of balance, and hoped that Ester would not think less of him for not trying to equal their ability.
No traveler loved mountains, or any other wasteland, and the tales of pilgrims losing toes to frostbite and eyesight to snow blindness were the stuff of legend. For some days now the unmistakable lift of the land had promised thinner and thinner air. The horses had labored at times, and the streams were fierce, rushing water nearly too cold to drink.
The villages they had passed had been tiny hamlets, peaked roofs cloaked with grasses, and the nanny goats were long-haired, a breed apparently suited to the increasing slopes of the hills all around, green fields that rose up toward the noon sun, scored by generations of nimble-footed herds. Innkeepers of wood-clad, high-timbered inns had hosted them with special deference, recognizing them as pilgrims, and more than one had offered them each an extra birchwood cup of beer at no additional cost, as a gesture of condolence—or even pity—for folk about to endure the hardships of the Great Saint Bernard Pass.
But for all the turns and switchbacks of the ever-climbing trail, Edmund had not seen the peaks themselves. Every viewpoint was a mass of cloud, towering curds of weather. Even when the time came, when they looked down into a valley veiled with a rainbow, and the increasing altitude ached in the lungs, Edmund had not seen the mountains plain, naked, and white as he had heard them to be.
In truth, Edmund had gradually reassured his uneasy mind that when he saw the famous Alps, he would feel a rush of relief at how gentle and wind-rounded they turned out to be.
Hubert had agreed. “There won’t be any mountains at all,” he said with a wink. “They are the stuff of stories.”
And then the time came.
A frog splashed in a flower-choked pond—it was strange how frogs endured the chilly, late summer nights only to sport in the bright sun. A fly—one of those that attack the eyes of horses—descended on Edmund and he swatted it away. The bell of a goat or sheep sounded somewhere.
Surefoot rounded a hillside.
And Edmund was confronted by the high, snow-scarred mountains.
The air was cold.
A waterfall stitched downward across the shadows, too far away to make a sound, and a bird of prey circled, fighting for altitude, in a vale far downslope from where Edmund found himself gripping the reins.
The young knight climbed down from Surefoot, half falling, and leaned against the horse for support.
“Yes, those intimidating peaks are your first glimpse of the Alps, Sir Edmund, what did you expect?” said the Savoyard guide—or some such remark.
“We’re climbing into those?” Edmund allowed himself to ask, breathless with more than altitude.
“Until you walk on bleeding stumps,” said the guide with a laugh, indicating Edmund’s feet.
The guide may not have expressed quite that message. No one could really understand their dialect. They conversed in a patois so individual to each village that the mountaineers themselves cou
ld very nearly not understand one another. Hubert and Edmund had made a game of mock translations of the Savoyard tongue, and Edmund had the feeling that their half-comic translations were inadvertently close to accurate.
The guides wore tasseled woven wool caps and high wool leggings, all the way above their knees. “Come along, poor fools,” laughed one of the guides, in Edmund’s mental, half-serious translation. “We’re marching you to your deaths.”
“There must be a way around those peaks,” protested Hubert, likewise climbing from his mount.
The guides laughed and whistled in response, three of the merriest men Edmund had ever known. “Freeze your bones on the ice, pilgrims!” the lead guide seemed to say, cracking a leather strap he used as a whip. He waved them all forward with a laugh, and added something like, “Die, travelers, up there where no one will find you.”
The truth was that these hearty climbers often stretched out a supporting hand, and found the sweetest springs of water and thickest patches of grass for the horses. Edmund had a high regard for them, and was grateful for their rough cheerfulness.
“I fear these happy mountaineers, Ester,” joked Edmund when the young woman joined them, letting her horse feed on the fine yellow flowers of the trailside. In truth, despite his apprehensions, Edmund would rather be nowhere else right then.
“I believe they must be the sons of mountain goats,” offered Ester.
“Or their fathers.”
The young lady laughed.
When Rannulf and Nigel came up the trail, however, Edmund felt a renewed stab of concern.
Rannulf’s features were shadowy, and he did not use his right arm, employing his left hand to hold the reins. Nigel rode close behind his old friend, and several times during the trip up the foothills the two knights had conferred privately.
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