by Karen Myers
The knock wakened him. He blinked at Rhys who opened the door and stuck his head in. “Breakfast in fifteen minutes.”
The room was dark and George turned his lamp up before leaving the warm bed. He put on the hunting clothes he had laid out the night before, and added his usual pocket contents, including the gun at the small of his back. After liberating Myfanwy, who was waiting patiently at the door, he headed quietly down the dark hall.
Lights were hung and lit in the back hall, so he returned his lamp to the night table there and sought out the voices he could hear in the hunting room.
A crackling fire gave a warm glow to the handful of people clustered around the small tables. He joined Idris and Rhys at one table, and saw others dressed and ready to go about their business in other small groups.
Servants brought in trays of cold food: bread and sweet rolls, ham slices, hard-boiled eggs, cheeses, and fruit. Besides water, there were steaming pots of tea. George asked Rhys, “Any hope of coffee?”
“I’ve never had it. What’s it like?”
“Dark, bitter, and eye-opening.”
Idris smiled. “I’ve had your coffee before. This tea’s harsh enough for me.” They fell to in silence.
Rhian joined them, in breeches and a long-sleeved jerkin, and then a dark, weatherbeaten man came in through the outside door. Idris introduced him to George as Thomas Kethin. He remembered him speaking in Gwyn’s chamber last night, and then realized where he’d heard the name before. This was the fellow Eurig named as the son of Thomas, Lord Fairfax. He looked competent and hard. Wasn’t he the fellow who took charge of Iolo’s body on the ground, George thought.
As each finished their hasty meal, they took a cloth from the tray and wrapped some food into a packet to take with them. George followed their example, making something small enough to put in his sandwich case. They rose as a group and walked out to the nearby stable.
Grooms stood there with their horses, tacked and ready. George looked Mosby over, checked the fit of the bridle and the set of the saddle, and tightened the girth. All of the small gear from his chest in the tack room had been reattached, in the right places.
Rhys rode over to the kennels while the rest of them assembled at the gate in the southern curtain wall. In a few minutes Rhys rejoined them, accompanied by a two-wheeled pony cart driven by a middle-aged and taciturn lutin. Two white hounds looked out from their crates in the cart. “This is Orry. He’ll help handle the hounds,” he told George.
The sky was beginning to lighten as they headed out the gates of the curtain wall and down alongside the great front lawn. There was a pause at the palisade while the main gates were opened, and then they were on the road just as the sun rose.
Idris led the party at a brisk trot down to the bridge and across. George spotted a few lights in the village as most people were just rising, but they found no one outside yet as they passed though. Once they reached the eastern fields, Idris slowed to a walk to give the horses a breather. They went slowly up the slope, keeping to smooth ground for the sake of the pony cart.
Once up on the plateau, it didn’t take long to reach the scene of yesterday’s chaos. Rhian rode over to the blood-stained spot, her eyes searching the ground. She dismounted and picked up two bits of dirty cloth. Holding them out to George, she said, “See, I thought we might find these. The cuts that took the hands also clipped the ends of the sleeves.” She tucked them into a pocket of her jerkin and remounted.
They couldn’t see anything else of interest at the spot where so many feet had already walked. Idris turned to Thomas Kethin, “Where was it you heard the sound and saw the whirlwind first?”
Thomas led them to the woods on the right, about a hundred yards away. As they left the trampled part of the field where the riders had milled around the day before and came to smooth tall grass, they found a clear trail, leading from the woods, made of broken grass stems and small crushed plants. The slant of the early morning light picked it out plainly. The party rode to one side so as not to damage it.
Thomas halted them at the edge of the woods. He dismounted, handing his reins to Idris, and entered the woods on foot, careful not to disturb the traces that remained. He didn’t go far. Just a few yards in he stopped and bent over.
George called out, “Don’t touch whatever it is. We want the hounds to get a clean scent.”
Thomas returned. “There’s a broken spell-stick in plain sight, and footprints behind it, though none in front.”
“What’s a spell-stick?” George asked Idris.
“It holds a spell, which is released when it breaks. The user doesn’t need any powers of his own.” Idris turned to Thomas. “Did you recognize the style?”
“I need to pick it up,” he said.
George had seen bloodhounds at work before and had some idea about how to proceed. “The hounds also need to smell it. We can do both. Orry,” he called, “do you have some sort of clean cloth we can use to hold something?”
Orry climbed down from the seat of the pony cart and reached behind it into a leather bag. He brought a clean rag over to the riders. “We use these for bandages. It should be clean.” He went back to the cart and began to prepare the hounds for work.
George shook the rag in the air with his gloved hand to dislodge as much as possible of whatever scent clung to it, then gave it to Thomas, with instructions to pick up the spell-stick carefully.
When Thomas returned, they all bent over the pieces as he turned them around, held by the rag. It was a natural stick cut cleanly at each end and about a foot long in its intact form. The bark had been removed, and it was now broken into two pieces. Red characters had been painted on it, but not in any alphabet George was familiar with. “Can anyone read this?”
Rhian said, “I’ve seen this before but I can’t read it. Ceridwen should look at it.”
Idris asked Thomas, “How’s the trail?”
“Clear prints and traces. I can work it backward while the hounds try to work it forward.”
“We’ll do that then. Wait until we’re sure the hounds can find a scent trail, then track it back as far as possible.”
Orry brought the two hounds forward, on leashes. They were white all over with pendulous ears and wrinkled faces, heavily built, a bit longer than tall. Except for the color they looked like bloodhounds to George. Why, these are Talbot hounds. His delighted grin brought an inquisitive look from Idris.
George leaned forward and pointed out the emblem on his hunt coat buttons. “We call these Talbot hounds, the old English Southern hound, said to descend from the hounds of St. Hubert. No one knows what relationship the name has to the name of my family, but the name’s very old. I never thought to see one.”
They planned the course of action. The hounds needed to be handled from the ground, on leashes. Idris and George remained mounted. Thomas declared he would lead his horse behind him as he tracked through the woods. “Not the first time we’ve done this,” he said.
Rhian joined Orry on the ground and took one of the hounds. Rhys tied his own horse and Rhian’s to the back of the cart, and mounted the seat to drive along behind them.
Both the hounds sat quietly by Rhian. She introduced them to George. “This is Arthur, and that one Roland. Give me the spell-stick.”
Thomas handed it to her, holding it in its rag. She held the rag in her open hands and bent over the hounds, urging them to smell the broken stick it held. They obediently buried their muzzles and inhaled deeply. She stood, wrapped the rag around the pieces, and thrust them into a deep pocket on her jerkin.
Orry and Rhian walked the hounds to the visible trail in the grass and gave them a long line. Heads down, they immediately struck out at a trot, away from the covert. Thomas turned in the opposite direction, leading his horse, and re-entered the woods.
The hounds pulled strongly toward the trampled grass with its stains and paused at the spot. George watched how they concentrated several yards to the east and commented to Idris, “Watching blood
hounds, you can see how scent moves, flowing with the ground or moving in a breeze. Looks like there was just a little air movement from the west since the attack. We’re lucky we had calm weather last night.”
At Rhian’s quiet urging, the hounds moved on, to the east and south. Idris confirmed this was the direction the whirlwind had taken after the kill. Together, the party followed the hounds over the fold in the ground that had hidden the whirlwind’s escape. The grass was both shorter and sparser here, as the soil changed character, and the physical trail was harder to see, though still visible in the slanted morning light. The hounds followed a scent trail that was parallel to the visible one, but off to its left by a few yards. As they approached another covert, the visible trail and the hounds tracking scent converged.
Rhys and the pony cart couldn’t enter the woods here, and went around to the far side to wait for them. Orry took a few steps, then called out, “Footprints, here.”
Idris looked down. “Man-sized, with a heel like a boot. There might be a cut on the inner right heel, though it’s hard to be sure.”
George took a look. There hadn’t been much left of the scuff mark on Iolo’s boot, but at least this was consistent with it. He ventured, “So, however the whirlwind was created, this was a man before and after, yes?”
“Looks that way,” Idris said.
The hounds took them through the woods, following a strong trail that had been sheltered from the wind. They met Rhys on the other side waiting with the cart. From here, they could see across and north to the manor, though most of the village was tucked into the river fold between and largely hidden.
Eagerly pulling at their long leashes, the hounds brought them by a footpath down to the river, striking it south of the village at a ford. Orry and Rhian let them drink, then led them through where they struck the line again, crossing the road and the western fields toward a wood.
Idris called a temporary halt. “This trail has been turning in a curve, and now it’s headed back to the manor. Rhys, take the cart up the road and look for us at the main gate. If that turns out not to be right, we’ll send someone to tell you.”
Rhys turned back to the road and the tracking party followed the hounds into the woods on a clear path that began climbing the slope toward the manor. It didn’t take long to follow that back and come out, as Idris had predicted, at the back of the palisade.
George got his first clear look at the structure. Trees of several types and all ages stood packed so tightly together that even a hound couldn’t get through. For as far as he could see, there was bare grass in front of it, but no foliage ventured into the open space, down to the height of a man. Above that, there was something… wrong about the branches. He wouldn’t have wanted to climb into these trees.
“They feel dangerous,” he said to Idris.
“They’re part of our defenses. Enemies don’t pass through them.”
“How thick are they?”
“Ten yards in most places.”
The hounds had led them upslope along the bare space and stopped. The densely packed trees of the palisade were disrupted here. Two trees had decayed, and the undergrowth around them had been penetrated by a low tunnel. It contrasted sharply with the vigorous growth on either side.
“This isn’t natural,” Idris said, “nor has it been here long. We patrol this regularly.”
“It’s not easy to see if you’re not looking for it. It could’ve been here a while,” George said.
The hounds indicated clearly that the scent led them here, but they whined and wouldn’t cross the open space to the palisade.
George sympathized. He didn’t want to get any closer himself, and Mosby was also restive. He noticed that the others were also staying as far away as the open perimeter would permit, Orry and Rhian comforting the hounds.
The sound of a rider coming up from the right drew their attention. Thomas Kethin appeared and joined them. “I came out of the woods on the back trail but close to one of the footpaths, and I lost the track there. I could see you headed down to the ford below me, so I crossed over at the bridge to join you and met Rhys coming up the road. I’ve left him down by the gate.”
“Where are we, do you think?” Idris asked him.
“By the shape of the slope, I’d say we’re roughly behind the balineum. The west branch can’t be far from here, where it enters under the ground.”
They could faintly hear the busy yard on the other side of the palisade.
Idris decided. “We’ll go around and find the exit point. You stay here, in case it isn’t obvious and we need the sound of your voice as a guide.” Thomas nodded.
“George, ride down and send Rhys up here. The way’s smooth enough for the cart, and we can move the hounds with least disruption that way. You can wait for us below.”
George turned downslope and trotted down to find Rhys at the gate. He told him of their discovery so far and sent him up to Idris.
While he waited, he thought about the hole in the palisade. Not just a murderer, but apparently within the grounds, one of their own. That should get everyone’s attention.
The whole party rejoined George at the gates, with Orry driving and the hounds in their crates. Idris led them up the grounds and back through the curtain wall where they’d started. He continued back to the palisade, passing the kennel buildings and yards on the left.
When they reached the palisade, George saw that it was smooth and dense on this side, too, and a space of about twenty feet was kept clear in front of it. Idris took them at a walk along the inner edge of the gap, upslope away from the kennels.
George got his first good overview of the entire yard, which he estimated at about two hundred acres. As they moved along, he saw straight lanes leading down to the manor, with buildings on either side and many people occupied with their mid-morning tasks. How would they find one person in this huge establishment?
The kennels were clustered behind him, with the stables and other buildings laid out in ranks on his right on one side of the lane as they walked up the slope, facing them. Nearer to the palisade wall were workshops, warehouses, and a blacksmith.
The next lane brought more workshops on either side. George recognized the low infirmary building and its morgue from the night before on the north side of the lane, near the manor, and some small dwellings on the south side.
Idris called a halt as the infirmary line of buildings came into view. George saw a cluster of buildings at the edge of their path up at the top of the next lane. Since the land cleared for the yard was on the slope of the hill, the west palisade marked the local highest point, and these buildings were sited on the highest ground within the palisade.
Large windowless stone buildings stood upslope in the group, and then what were clearly laundry and public bath buildings were placed downslope, with steam rising in the crisp air.
Rhys turned to George as they stopped. “We’re famous for our balineum, the baths. It’s truly miraculous what Ceridwen was able to accomplish. We’ll never want for water, between the west branch and the underground streams, and buried pipes carry water to all the buildings.”
Rhian joined in. “Ceridwen’s always telling me how much we learned from the Romans.”
George looked over at the manor below them. The third floor roof was just even with the highest of these buildings, so pressure and gravity must be adequate to convey water to that height.
Idris said, “I was here when Creiddylad set this rear palisade. The lower one for the front grounds came much later. All in one spring we planted it, from seeds and seedlings rescued as the land was cleared. We worked from the end of one rising curtain wall to the other, while others raised the first buildings. Then, in a single night of the full moon, she sent us all indoors and walked the length of it. Come morning, it was a deep line of well-grown saplings thickly sprung.”
“How do you maintain it?” George asked.
“It maintains itself. Don’t ask me how. The trees don’t
seem to age past maturity.”
He turned his face to the palisade and shouted, “Thomas!”
A voice responded from the other side, just a bit in front of them.
“I thought this was about the right place.”
They dismounted and led their horses, trying to look carefully at the palisade without getting too close. Mosby was skittish, eying the trees nervously.
Idris said, “This won’t do. Rhian, will you hold them for us?”
Rhian retreated a few steps and the others handed her their reins.
“From here we can’t see the postern gate and, more importantly, its guards can’t see us. The balineum shelters this spot from view in most other directions. Ah—here it is.”
He called back over, “Thomas, come in at the postern gate.”
He pointed to a slight unevenness where one trunk stood a little further into the path. On the other side of that tree, George saw a low decayed area, free of vegetation. His skin crawled this close to the palisade, as if it broadcast a subsonic hum. No wonder the animals kept away from it.
Idris called over to Orry who waited at the cart. “Hitch those horses and bring the hounds back, with Rhian.”
He leaned his full body a little toward the wall, as if bracing himself against a strong wind. He smiled at George’s expression. “I like to test myself against it, see how close I can get. I don’t know anyone who can touch it.”
George wondered about its defensive properties. “Can it be burnt? Could you blast a hole through with cannon?”
“It doesn’t burn. I’ve traveled with Gwyn and I know what your cannons can do, but gunpowder isn’t the same here. The first time I encountered it, I brought some back. It would hardly burn, much less explode. When I asked Ceridwen about it, she told me it wouldn’t work.”
George thought ruefully of the revolver he was carrying under his coat. Good thing I didn’t rely on that.
Orry and Rhian brought the hounds to the inner edge of the path. Rhian unwrapped the bundle from her pocket and let them smell the broken stick again as a reminder. After a bit of casting about they settled on a trail leading directly to the balineum and ended at a back entrance to one of them.
