by Alys Clare
I do not believe, Josse thought, that the fever came entirely from the rain.
But he was not yet ready to tell Brice about the macabre visitor who had come out of the darkness. Perhaps he never would be.
Brice had brought abundant provisions and they ate well. Then, with a moon rising over the marsh and making flashes of silver on the flat land as its beams shone down and sought out stretches of water, they settled in their covers and slept.
In the morning Brice led the way down the slope and out on to the marsh. They rode here and there across the soggy ground for some time, Brice going ahead, Josse following. After a while, Josse realised that they were covering ground that they had already ridden over and he said, ‘Brice, let us return to the high ridge. It is difficult, surely, to pick out any landmarks that will help you find your way when we are down here on the levels. Do you not think you would find the task easier from a vantage point up there?’ He waved an arm in the direction of the inland cliff, rising steeply behind them.
Brice frowned. ‘I do not know, Josse. I thought – I believed, from what I was told, that I would find the place without difficulty.’ He stared out across the featureless marshland where, as far as Josse could discern, there was little to be seen but some trees and a long line of hedge in the distance and some sheep dotted around like pale flowers fallen from a basket.
Making up his mind, Brice spurred his horse and set off towards the cliff. ‘Let us try out your suggestion,’ he called back to Josse. ‘It can hardly be of less use than the sum of my efforts so far!’
Following him, Josse had to agree.
They rode up the track that Josse had ridden down the previous day. This time the heron must either have been absent about its business or else had decided to stay safely hidden in the undergrowth. At the top, Brice turned to his right and rode a few yards down the road to where a gap in the trees allowed a view down over the marsh.
They sat side by side for a long time. Josse was aware of the sound of hooves on the track away to the west; it was clearly a well-used route, however, and he paid the approaching rider, whoever he might be, little heed.
Then Brice said, ‘I think I may have spotted something, Josse. I remember being told of a long hall, before which there is a corral for the animals, and behind that ought to be a long line of ancient willows that run along beside a little stream.’ He stared out over the lands below them, frowning. ‘Oh, but I am not sure. If I am right and it is the place we seek, then it is not where I expected it to be. I thought it would be simple,’ he added again. Then, with a rueful laugh, said, ‘You would have done better, Josse, to seek further and find someone who knew what they were talking about instead of a man such as I, who has more confidence in his own ability than is justified.’
About to deny the self-deprecating comment, Josse heard the rider approaching and, turning, saw him come into view; he had just emerged from an overshadowed stretch of the track out into the sunlight.
Brice had turned too.
Neither of them spoke; they both sat on their horses watching the rider. He was of slim build, he was dressed simply in a long tunic and he wore a soft, wide-brimmed hat that shaded and concealed his face. His horse was a pretty bay mare and on his left wrist, which wore a heavy gauntlet, sat a hooded hawk.
The man, clearly, had been hunting.
But there was a new element in the air; Brice, Josse realised, was sitting quite still and the tension in him seemed to sing through the air.
‘Who are you?’ Josse called, preparing to ride to meet the newcomer, but, swift as light, Brice shot out a hand to detain him.
‘It’s all right,’ he said quietly. ‘I know who it is.’ Then, turning to Josse – who was beginning to feel distinctly apprehensive – he added, ‘I was only just now wishing for someone who knew their way, my friend. Well, now we have our wish.’
And, in the midst of tension and anxiety, Brice let out a laugh. It was so unexpected and, in that moment, so alarming that Josse, thrown on to the defensive, reacted instinctively.
I have been betrayed, he thought, feeling for the sword at his side. I have admitted to Brice that I know his secret and he is desperate that I keep my silence. He has brought me here with the sole purpose of joining forces with some ally of his, some man of this secretive, dangerous family from which Galiena came. This huntsman, who even now is approaching. And, fool that I am, I fell right into his trap.
They will not take me without a fight!
Not pausing to think further, not even asking himself why he was so sure that Brice meant him harm, he drew his sword and, kicking Horace, shot forward to meet the hunter.
15
But Josse had reckoned without Brice’s swift reactions. Just as Horace lunged forward towards the slim man on the bay mare, Brice spurred his horse and, coming in hard from Josse’s right, leapt towards him, his right hand waving what Josse thought was a short sword in the air above him.
Horace took an instinctive avoiding step to the left.
It was not Horace’s fault.
He had been trained for war. He recognised an armed man advancing on him and he knew what to do so as to avoid the killing blow to his rider’s body. And in that moment of drama, he had not the time to look down and check on the ground beneath his large feathered feet. Why, indeed, should he? He was on a track, and tracks did not normally fall away to empty space under him.
Except that this one did.
Although the three people up on the road could not have known, the place from which Brice had elected to gaze out over the marsh was very dangerous. There were some stunted bramble bushes along its outer edge and they hid a spot right at the edge of the cliff where, in the spring rains, fast-flowing rainwater had eroded the chalk from around a huge boulder, which had tumbled away down the escarpment to the flat land below.
In dodging the threat from his right, Horace had put his forefeet right in the place where the boulder used to be.
Pitched forward alarmingly, the big horse tried to gather himself. But the momentum of the fall was too great for him to step back and his hind feet were borne over the edge of the cliff. Frantically scrabbling for purchase, Horace lurched forward down the steep slope and Josse, his left hand firmly grasping a hank of the horse’s mane, clung on as tight as a burr on a hound’s back and tried to throw his weight backward in a desperate attempt to help arrest their downhill flight.
He quite thought that it was the end of both of them and he spared a brief pitying thought that this wonderful animal who had served him so well for so long should be brought to his death by Josse’s mistake; he who should have paid more attention to that well-used, well-worn track up there!
But the slope was steepest right at the top of the cliff; after perhaps twenty paces – which felt to Josse as if he were falling totally out of control – the gradient eased. Horace, still travelling far too fast for a big, heavy horse going over treacherous ground, began to slow down.
And, as he took a final leap from the lowest slopes of the escarpment on to the flat ground below, Josse began to think that he wasn’t going to die after all.
There was a shout from above and Josse, turning, saw Brice at the top of the slope. The huntsman was beside him and both men were waving; Josse thought they were calling out to summon their companions down on the marsh. Hurriedly looking around him, he realised that he could still be surrounded if a party of riders approached from out on the marsh; making a swift decision, he turned Horace to the left and, spurring him on to a gallop, thundered off eastwards along the base of the cliff. He reasoned that in that direction lay the sea, and the sea meant ports and people. It might, he sincerely hoped, also mean safety.
After about a mile, he slowed down and stopped. As Horace’s fast breathing gradually calmed, Josse sat listening.
Other than the peaceful, natural sounds of a marsh in early summer, there was nothing to be heard.
And, now that the surging alarm of the flight down the cliff and th
e fear of armed men hunting him had abated, he wondered if he had judged the situation correctly.
Brice drew his sword! he reminded himself. He rode right at me.
But another interpretation had occurred to him. Brice had said, hadn’t he, that he knew who the newcomer was? And then Josse had drawn his own sword and ridden straight at the man on the bay. Well, if Brice did indeed know the man, then was it not perfectly reasonable to have defended him from Josse’s sudden onslaught?
‘I think, old friend,’ Josse said aloud, patting Horace’s sweaty neck, ‘that I have been a fool.’
And the worst folly of it all, he thought glumly as slowly he began to ride back the way he had come, is that I cannot now recall why it was that I should be so certain the newcomer meant me harm …
By the time he had returned to the place where he had slipped down the escarpment, there was no sign of either Brice or the huntsman. I am on my own again, Josse thought, and, thanks to my own recklessness, no further forward in my search than I was yesterday or the day before.
But there had been something, hadn’t there? Standing up above the marsh, Brice had said he thought he might have found the place they were looking for, only – what had he said? – it wasn’t where he expected it to be.
Well, Josse thought, if he could only picture in which direction Brice had been looking when he spoke, then that might provide a pointer. Staring up at the cliff top, he tried to remember.
And all at once an image slid into his mind. Just before Brice had raised his head to look along the track at the approaching huntsman, he had been staring straight down at the base of the escarpment beneath his feet.
He had mentioned a line of willows that ran along beside a stream. Slowly turning his head, Josse thought in amazement; and there they are! And the stream is there too; I have been jumping to and fro across it for two days.
Could it be? Was Brice right?
No, he couldn’t be because he had mentioned a corral and a long hall. There was no corral, unless that line of old, worn stumps had once supported a barricade. But, even if it had, where was the hall?
He was looking straight at the escarpment when he saw it. Half concealed by a copse of willows – they grew on the cliff side of the stream as well as on the marsh side – he thought he had seen something that did not belong there. It was the edge of a thick, reed-thatched roof.
Going stealthily nearer, he realised that he had been right. It was a roof, some fifteen or twenty paces long, and it covered a building so worn by wind and weather and so stained by the camouflaging lichen that he was quite certain he would never have made it out unless he knew exactly where to look. It had, he thought in wonder, so thoroughly taken on the aspect of its surroundings that it blended in completely.
The building was made of wood. And, Josse had to admit, it looked as if it were a long hall. Beside it he could just make out the outlines of a handful of small outbuildings.
Ignoring the prickle of apprehension that flew up his spine, he nudged Horace with his knees and walked slowly forward. This was the place where Galiena’s kin dwelt, the place from which she had been taken as a baby to be given to Raelf and his barren first wife. Well, then it was to here that Josse’s mission must lead him, whether he was apprehensive or not.
As he rode steadily over the springy ground, something strange happened. The day was fine, with strong sunshine beating down from a deep blue sky and neither a cloud to be seen nor any hint of moisture on the slight, warm breeze. Yet, as if from nowhere, strands of mist seemed to curl up out of the marsh as if some invisible being had set fire to the sparse, dry grass and it was sending a soft smoke up into the air.
But it could not be smoke, because Josse could detect no smell of burning. Checking Horace, he watched. And the tentative first tendrils of vapour quickly grew until the scene ahead of him – all around him, he realised, looking round with a start of alarm – was concealed behind a shifting, flowing, nebulous film of white.
He could no longer see the hall beneath the cliff. Neither could he see the willows or the stream alongside which they grew. In the sudden sea fret that had floated across the marsh – as it not infrequently did, although Josse was not to know it – he was as a blind man on unfamiliar territory.
It seemed unwise to ride on. Speaking reassuringly to Horace, who did not appear to like the mist any more than Josse did, he sat and waited for it to clear.
The silence was total. It was as if the fog were muffling all the normal small, everyday sounds that are taken for granted until they are no longer there.
First blind, now deaf, Josse thought grimly. Then: if they’re out there and they are familiar with this ground, then I’ll never be an easier target than I am now.
So closely did the sound follow on the thought that he thought for an optimistic moment that he had imagined it. But then it came again: the clear ring of metal.
It sounded like a horseman, approaching unseen through the brume. The sound came from Josse’s right … but then it came again from his left. Not one but two of them.
Putting his hand on his sword hilt, Josse strained to see them. And presently they materialised out of the mist: four men, all armed, on short, sturdy ponies.
They were pale, as if they lived their lives in the shadows, and light-eyed. Three were hooded; the fourth wore some sort of round helm on his blond hair. Forming themselves into a semicircle facing in towards Josse, they stared at him in intent silence.
Then the man in the helm said, his words carrying a peculiar accent, ‘What do you want here?’
Josse had been staring, half hypnotised, at the brooch that fastened the man’s cloak. It was round and bore a design of a running wolf chasing its own tail. It shone in the opaque light with the unmistakable brilliance of gold. Looking the man in the face, he replied, ‘I am searching for a place called Deadfall.’
There was a murmur from one of the other men and what sounded like a brief, humourless laugh. The man in the helm said, ‘This is Saltwych, or so it is known to us. Men do call it Deadfall, or so I am told.’
Again, one of the other riders made some comment. Josse heard it, quite clearly, but he did not understand it; the man had spoken in an alien tongue.
The helmed man said, a hint of menace in his voice, ‘What is your mission at Deadfall?’
I am here on an honest quest, Josse told himself. I have done no wrong, have not even trespassed on private land, as far as I am aware. I will not be intimidated.
‘I have come from Hawkenlye Abbey with news of a death,’ he said quietly.
‘Hawkenlye Abbey?’ The man frowned. ‘I know it not. Why should a death in that place be news that you have to bring to us here?’
Josse was reluctant to explain. He did not know whom he was addressing; the man might be an important figure in the community who dwelt in this penumbral place, and therefore entitled to hear first of what had happened to the daughter whom they had given away. He might equally well be nothing more than a guard whose job it was to give the alarm when strangers came too close. ‘It is a delicate matter,’ he said. ‘I would tell of it first to—’ To whom? And how could he express himself without causing offence? But the four men were close upon him now and he realised he had no option but to speak his mind. ‘I wish to speak first to whoever leads your community,’ he said firmly.
There was more muttering but the man in the helm gave a curt nod, as if he understood the etiquette that demanded grave tidings be given first to the head of the group.
‘Wait here,’ he commanded. ‘I will announce you and ask if they will receive you.’
Putting spurs to his horse, he trotted off into the mist.
The remaining three riders were now very close to Josse and Horace was uneasy. Murmuring to him, Josse put a calming hand on the horse’s neck. Then suddenly the man on his right said haltingly, ‘You are – fit to go to hall?’ One of the others laughed as if at a private joke. ‘It is great honour,’ the man went on. Reaching ou
t, he brushed at Josse’s tunic, which was showing all too many signs of nights spent in the open. ‘Must not go inside in dirty clothes!’ the man said. ‘Must tidy hair, clean mud from boots!’
Now all three men were laughing, but quietly, as if they did not want to be overheard. Glancing swiftly at the man on his left – he was young, little more than a boy – Josse was quite sure he saw fear in the pale eyes.
Dear God, Josse prayed silently, what sort of a place have I stumbled into?
There came a sound from the midst of the white fog before him; it was faint and, again, suppressed by the mist, but it sounded as if someone had blown on a horn. The three men leapt to attention, all amusement wiped from their faces, and formed a line beside Josse, one man on his right, two on his left.
The man who had spoken to him gave him a nod and said, ‘We go.’
Then, moving as one, Josse included, all four of them began to go forward into the blind whiteness.
As they went, it seemed to grow thinner until it was no more than a thin veil that confused sight. Then, through its silvery sheen, Josse could once more see the hall and the huddle of outbuildings.
His attendants – he hoped that was what they were, although in fact they seemed more like guards – pressed close on either side of him. As they neared the collection of buildings, he saw, dismayed, that there were more men standing on either side of the hall and all of them were armed.
His guards rode with him right up to the wooden hall. Then they fell away, the man who had spoken to him making a gesture that said plainly, go on!
Feeling very vulnerable in the open space between the horsemen at his back and the swordsmen in front of him, Josse rode on alone. When he was only a few paces from the hall, he spied what he thought must be the door, although its presence was only indicated by a small gap in the wooden planking of the wall, as if it had been opened just a little to admit fresh air.
One of the men standing by the door approached and indicated that Josse should dismount. He did so, putting Horace’s reins into the man’s outstretched hand. Then, eyes holding the other man’s, he straightened his tunic and put his right hand on his sword hilt. With a faint smile, the man said, ‘Nobody carries arms when he is admitted into the company in the great hall. Your weapons, please.’
