Death and the Maiden
Page 30
“Hawise,” she said, forcing herself into her line of vision, which was otherwise fixed on a point somewhere behind her. “Hawise, it’s me,” she said, glancing back over her shoulder, trying to see whatever or whoever it was she was so transfixed by.
When Hawise still didn’t respond, she took her by the shoulders and shook her gently. “In God’s name, what is it, Hawise? Tell me!”
She saw her blink, the spell, whatever it was, broken for a moment, but her gaze, when it turned on her, was so cold that she recoiled.
“He’s here, Allie,” she said, pushing her to one side. “Here in this room. I heard him.”
For a moment Allie stood rooted to the spot, helpless to do anything but watch as Hawise made her way toward the dais, turning every head she passed, forcing unsuspecting congregations of people to part skittishly as though a wild animal had been let loose among them.
When she reached the foot of the dais, she stopped, craning her neck, listening with renewed intensity for something; only this time, when she heard it again, Allie was beside her, standing close enough to feel a sharp spasm course through her body.
“Which one?” she whispered, starting to tremble herself.
Hawise didn’t reply but, instead, raised her arm, pointing into the small crowd gathered around Penda, among whom was Sir William.
Chapter 67
He turned when Allie called him, his expression of mild surprise changing the moment he saw the smelting fury of hers . . . but not the way she had expected . . . Instead of looking guilty, he looked . . . confused.
In her own confusion, she turned to Hawise.
“It’s not him, Allie,” she said quietly, raising her arm again, only this time to point at the man beside him.
“Him,” she said.
Lord Peverell’s expression also changed when he turned and saw Hawise.
Allie watched his smile fade, his eyes widening in alarm, and for a moment wondered whether the shock of it might bring her to her knees, or even stop her heart. When it didn’t, an extraordinary sense of calm washed over her, as though time itself were standing still, recalibrating the enormity of the revelation within her.
The room went quiet around them as the other guests sensed the peculiar charge in the atmosphere: those who were already aware of Hawise fixed on her; those who weren’t yet cast around for the focus of this new, invisible dynamic.
The ripple of alarm spread quickly but hadn’t yet reached the dais, where they were still chatting happily, oblivious to Hawise, until she suddenly launched herself onto the platform, but because their first instinct was to rush to defend their queen, nobody noticed Lord Peverell slipping out of the hall.
Or almost nobody . . . Allie noticed him, as did Penda, who, having tired of the fuss and hearty congratulation heaped on her, had, only moments before, taken up her vantage point at the back of the stage, where she had observed everything.
When the pandemonium broke out, she quietly picked up her bow and quarrel and followed him out.
For an elderly woman she moved fast but was no match for a young man’s pace, so that by the time she reached the courtyard, with Allie at her heels, he was already halfway across it, heading for the gatehouse.
“It’s hopeless, Pen,” Allie gasped, grabbing hold of her sleeve to pull her back to the safety of the house. “We’ll never catch him . . . We can’t . . . Let’s go back, please, we’ll tell the others and let the hue and cry take him.”
But Penda shrugged her off and carried on running. “You go back if you want to,” she called over her shoulder. “But I wouldn’t trust them buggers to catch a three-legged dog.”
With no choice but to follow her, Allie did, haring behind her through the gatehouse, catching her up on the drawbridge to run beside her. When they got to the snow-hummocked rushes marking the outskirts of the marsh, Penda slowed down briefly and motioned for her to get behind.
“I know the paths through here,” she told her breathlessly. “Don’t want to lose you in one o’ them bogs.”
By the time they were running along the cambered lip of the causeway, Lord Peverell was nowhere to be seen, only his footprints in the freshly fallen snow, but still they ran, the wind-whipped snow scouring Allie’s face and Penda’s increasingly ragged breath whistling in her ears like a lament.
“It’s hopeless, Pen,” she called out, terrified that, at any moment now, she would see her drop to the ground as her heart gave out. “He can’t escape . . . He can’t, not now that we know.” But Penda either hadn’t heard her or was ignoring her, and she plowed on into the night.
As Allie ran her mind raced as fast as her legs, churning over the recent past in a chaotic sequence of memory and emotion, great waves of horror and revulsion breaking against the shores of her heart, battering her conscience with the same unanswerable questions: How could she have been so blind? How could she not have known? How could she not have seen him for the monster that he was? And then, halfway along the causeway, confusion and incredulity gave way to anger, refreshing her legs and spurring her on so that she was running effortlessly and painlessly when, from somewhere up ahead, she heard a muffled thud, a curse and a peal of bitter laughter.
Penda glanced back at her and stepped up the pace, driving them on faster and faster through the deepening snow until they could just make out a dark shape crouched by the side of the track and she stopped.
“Stay where you are, there’s a good lad,” she said, clouds of warm breath etched in the frigid air like a veil around her face. “I think that’s probably enough now, ain’t it?”
Allie watched as he struggled to stand up and limp away, shrugging when he realized he couldn’t, before turning around to them, arms raised in mock surrender.
“That bloody ankle of mine again,” he said, small white teeth glistening in the moonlight. “Or perhaps I should say my Achilles’ heel.”
“Sounds about right,” Penda said, grinning. “Although, on the other hand, mebbe not; some might say perhaps it’s the wages of sin.”
When they started to laugh Allie was incredulous, looking from one to the other thinking they were both insane; under the circumstances the levity seemed to her grotesque, a diabolical inversion of the innocent day when they had gone to his rescue.
They were still grinning at one another like conspirators in a private joke when, from the corner of her eye, she saw Penda’s right arm reach up and back, bringing her bow over her head and down in the same motion.
Lord Peverell saw it, too.
“Come now, Lady Penda,” he said, his grin broadening as he cupped his hands to his chest. “You wouldn’t shoot me in the heart, now, would you?”
The glint of the vicious little teeth again as he started walking toward them sent a shiver down her spine. Now that she knew him for what he was, he was no longer human but a contagion that, unless somebody did something soon, would be upon them. She turned anxiously to Penda, horrified to see that she was faltering, staring at him like a bird mesmerized by a gyrating weasel, oblivious to the treachery in every step that diminished the range of her bow; any moment now and it would be useless.
“Stay where you are,” Allie screamed, panic rising, preparing to hurl herself into the no-man’s-land between them, to tear him apart with her bare hands if necessary, but just as she was about to do so a flicker of movement beside her, the sharp flap of a cloak’s edge, alerted her to Penda placing her foot into the stirrup of her bow . . .
“Nah,” Penda said, an almost imperceptible movement of her head signaling for Allie to get out of her way. “You don’t need to worry about that, my lord, course I ain’t going to shoot you in the heart.”
She was still grinning at him when she loaded her arrow on the bow.
“The trouble with shootin’ you in the heart is . . . ,” she said, closing her left eye, “between you an’ me, I don’t reckon as you’ve got one.” Then she changed trajectory, loosed her arrow and sent it straight through the middle of his foreh
ead instead.
Later, when it was all over, Allie remembered looking at his body on the ground, mesmerized by the beautiful crimson halo that formed around his head as his blood seeped into the snow.
“Ain’t goin’ to cry, are you, bor?” Penda had asked her. “Ain’t worth a single one of your tears . . . not the likes of ’im.”
Funnily enough, she didn’t think she would. In fact, she felt strangely peaceful.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said absently, staring at the perfectly fletched arrow poking out of his forehead.
How long they were standing there, she didn’t know, but at some point, from somewhere down the causeway, she became vaguely aware of the belling of hounds, snow-muffled hooves pounding the ground and anxious voices calling her name and felt, at that moment, that it would be rather nice if she could just unscrew her head for a little while . . .
After that, all she remembered was Penda’s arm around her and everything becoming terribly quiet and still, as though she had just woken up or fallen asleep, although she couldn’t decide which.
Epilogue
Eleanor was as good as her word. Only days after her return to France she sent word to Penda informing her that the interdict had been lifted and thanking her for her hospitality and, of course, her wolf-skin mantle. At the same time she wrote to Allie, inviting her to France, where a more suitable match might be found for her—if, that is, Allie was still interested in suitable matches, but, if not, where she would always be welcome.
“Over my dead body,” Adelia said when Allie read it out to her. “You’re not considering it, are you?”
Allie glanced at Rowley, who looked away sheepishly.
“Probably not,” she said.
They were in the solar, packing their things preparatory to leaving Elsford.
Allie had been reluctant at first, but when Hawise had agreed to go with her and Adelia had agreed that it would only be temporary, she consented, and in fact, when the time came, was rather looking forward to the peace and routine of Wolvercote, if only for the time being, to clear her head and contemplate her future.
It had been two weeks since Lord Peverell’s murder, and although his assailant had never been found, rumors abounded, chief among them that a highway robber—who was also quite obviously a very fine arbalist—had seen him leave Elsford on foot and followed him. It was simply unfortunate and most unlike his lordship that he had forgotten his horse that night, but, on the other hand, he had been at Lady Penda’s; she was a renowned and indulgent host, and he did like his wine, and, well, strange things happened in the Fens.
There was one small mercy though: at least his body was spared the predation of the foxes, if not the thief, because, by some miracle, Sir William found it that very night, even though it was half-buried in the snow.
In the glut of funerals that followed the revoking of the interdict, Lord Peverell’s was to be the last, although by quite some distance the most elaborate, but, by another strange quirk of fate, he was even deprived of that.
The night before his burial was due, a fire razed Dunstan Castle to the ground, destroying every last vestige of his lordship and his line but, by the grace of God, no one else. It was also strange, in this extraordinary glut of peculiar events, that, around that time, the Wadlow boy had been seen in the area again.
On the night of the fire, a disturbance in the inner bailey roused the Dunstan servants from their beds, and lucky for them that it did, but when they went outside to investigate, they saw only a young man, who looked very much like Danny Wadlow, running away.
And there was something else: when Allie woke up the next morning, although news of the fire hadn’t reached Elsford yet, she was surprised by a summons to the stables. During the night somebody had abandoned at the entrance to the drawbridge, carefully tethering her to a post beside a bale of hay, and because abandoned animals were known to be Allie’s forte, the grooms were wondering what she thought they ought to do with her.
“Fine-looking animal, Mistress Allie,” one of them remarked as he led her to the stall where they were keeping her for the time being. “She’s got a beautiful coat, look, a very unusual color for round here, too. Where do you suppose it come from?”
Allie shook her head and by some act of mercy was able to suppress her squeal of delight.
“I have no idea,” she said gravely. “But leave the matter with me, if you don’t mind. I’ll make inquiries, of course, but I think we will probably have to keep her.”
Acknowledgments
The dedication is short. This is for my mum.
The acknowledgements, however, are infinite:
First, a big thank you to Rachel Kahan, my editor, whose phenomenal talent and gentle persuasion have enabled me to turn some ragged early drafts into a manuscript I’m proud of.
Ditto Helen Heller, my agent, whose tough love and no-nonsense approach to the writing process, over several tortuous years, have bashed me—almost literally at times—into shape. Then there’s Emma, my sister, without whom I don’t know where I’d be and, of course, all my friends, particularly Caroline and Geraldine, whose tireless support and encouragement have sustained me more than they’ll ever know. A special mention too, to my sons, Harry and Charlie, who make life so joyful; and lastly, Spider, without whom this book would have been finished much, much earlier, but who is forgiven, for making me laugh even when I haven’t felt like it.
About the Author
SAMANTHA NORMAN is Ariana Franklin’s daughter. A successful feature writer, columnist, and film critic, she finished The Siege Winter, her late mother’s final novel. She lives in London.
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Also by Samantha Norman
The Siege Winter
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
death and the maiden. Copyright © 2020 by Samantha Norman. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
first edition
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover photograph © World History Archive/Alamy Stock Photo
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.
Digital Edition OCTOBER 2020 ISBN: 978-0-06-256237-1
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-256238-8
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