A Tapestry of Dreams

by Roberta Gellis

  Hugh watched thoughtfully while several more fires were set, but he saw that mostly smaller, isolated places were burning. The most distinctive building in the village, the two-storied house of the alewife, was well away from any threat of fire. They would not burn that—at least, not until all the drink was gone. Hugh glanced anxiously at the sky. The morning had been bright, but it was clouding up now and would be dark enough for him to go quite soon. A flicker of movement to his left drew a sidelong glance, and Hugh saw that several men-at-arms were converging on that section of the wall, drawn by the signs of fire in the village. Hugh moved west quickly. Fortunately, the men’s interest in the action to the southeast was intense enough to make insignificant the oddity of Hugh’s hooded form, but when one of the men called the news down into the bailey and the master-at-arms ran off toward the keep to report to the castellan, Hugh felt his period of grace might be over.

  He moved more quickly, dividing his attention between the area outside the walls and the stairway to the motte, and it was not long before men began to emerge from the keep. Someone in that group was shouting; it was too far for Hugh to recognize the face or voice, but he thought he heard his name. He ducked down so that his head and shoulders would not be outlined against the sky above the wall and made his way, crouching, to one of the ladders that connected the walkway with the ground. Just as he turned to descend, he caught sight of a man running from the base of the motte drawbridge toward the stables. It could be that a horse was to be readied to bring the castellan’s submission to Summerville and prevent further attacks on the village, but Hugh had the feeling that the castellan wanted to know whether his horse was still in the stables. Another man running toward the guards at the bailey drawbridge convinced Hugh that the castellan had become aware of his absence and was seeking him.

  Hugh came down from the walkway at once and slipped behind the supports close to the wall. Here he paused to turn his cloak inside out to expose the dark fur that lined it rather than the emerald-green cloth. The footing was terrible, since no one ordinarily walked in that area, and refuse was often dropped from the wall or tossed under the walkway by anyone passing. Hugh stumbled and grimaced with disgust when his foot came down on something that squished and gave off a sickening odor of putrefaction, but eventually he reached his goal, a place about midway on the westerly side of the palisade where one of the storage sheds was built right against the walkway braces.

  Here Hugh moved away from the palisade, setting his back against the rear wall of the shed just alongside an upright brace. Now, unless the search for him grew so frantic that every inch of ground was to be examined with torches, Hugh felt he would be safe. He leaned on the wall, crossed himself, and offered up a prayer for help to the Mother of God and to Saint Jude, the champion of lost causes. Although Hugh had not found in himself any vocation for the religious life, Archbishop Thurstan’s influence had had a powerful effect on him. His faith was strong, and it had been encouraged by Walter Espec, who was himself deeply religious. Comforted, Hugh relaxed. He continued to listen intently both for sounds of anyone approaching and for any hint of whether the search for him was intensifying or diminishing, but Hugh’s mind was now busy with what he had seen from the wall.

  By the time it was dark enough for Hugh to move from his shelter, it was also very quiet there. Hugh had begun to think his original assumption was wrong and the castellan had never been searching for him. If so, the rushing to the stables and the gate guards was preliminary to negotiating the submission of Wark. The thought made Hugh angry, but the situation was advantageous to him because both the guards of Wark and those of Summerville’s army would be relaxed rather than alert for an attack.

  Hugh moved quietly to one end of the shed and peered out. Nothing. Slipping back, he worked his way to the other end and still saw no one moving in the area. Not once since dusk had he heard footsteps on the walkway above him. There was a mounting ladder not far away, and Hugh came out of concealment and climbed it. He paused with his head just above the walkway to look right and left. As far as he could see in the dark, the walkway was empty. If there were guards, presumably they watched where the army was camped. Hugh climbed the rest of the way up, bending to keep below the line of the palisade. Still crouched, he pulled the coil of rope from his shoulder and fastened one end around the sharpened top of one log of the wall—and froze as a shout of warning rang out and a torch, plunged into a firepot, burst into flame.

  The paralysis of surprise was very brief. Tightening his grip on the rope, Hugh flung himself over the wall and let himself slide down a good deal faster than he had intended. He bit his lips against the pain as friction burned his hands and pieces of hemp found soft spots in his callused palms and were driven into the flesh, but he was not tempted to slow his pace. The rope jerked as a sword was brought against it, but swords are not efficient chopping weapons, and the rope held for two more blows. When the last strand parted and dumped Hugh, his legs were bent to absorb the shock and he was near enough to the ground to land without injury. The slope of the ditch below the rampart was steep, however, and he rolled helplessly down, bumping and scrabbling for a hold on the rocky, fire-scored earth.

  Hugh did not mind the bruises, although each time he rolled over, his sword, dagger, and pouch dug painfully into various parts of his anatomy. What he objected to was the noise he was making. One of his gyrations gave him a flashing sight of the wall, but it was enough to show several more torches. Then fire blossomed just below him, and he twisted wildly to avoid rolling onto the torch that had been thrown down to light the area. His body would not extinguish the flame; most likely the soft, burning pitch would stick to him and set his cloak afire. Other torches followed, but none so close, as Hugh finally hit the bottom of the ditch in a shower of earth and stones.

  In the quiet that followed his impact with the far side of the ditch, Hugh heard the whirr and thunk of arrows behind him. The men on the wall had expected him to be stunned and lie quiet or to waste time trying to climb to his feet, and that first concentrated flight had missed because Hugh had crawled forward immediately, straight ahead for a few feet, and then irregularly from side to side. Still, the only thing that saved him was that the excited men began to shoot separately instead of blanketing the area with a series of flights.

  A moment later, Hugh was out of the lighted area, and he stopped abruptly, swept up a handful of earth and pebbles, and threw them a short distance ahead. As he levered himself painfully to his knees, he grabbed for more with both hands, letting fly first with his left hand and then, harder, with his right.

  To Hugh, the spattering did not sound much like a man running or crawling, but the noises must have been very faint by the time they reached the palisade, and for a few minutes arrows whirred off into the dark, well ahead of Hugh’s position. The brief respite gave him a chance to stretch himself face down, not along the bottom of the ditch but vertically against the rise of the slope toward the palisade, and he lay immobile, trying to quiet his gasping breaths.

  More torches began to rain down at last as the archers realized they had lost their target, but the dirt-encrusted fur of Hugh’s cloak was an adequate disguise in the flickering, uncertain light they gave. Lying flat and still, he seemed no more than another irregularity of the rain-carved side of the mound. Finally the chase moved on around the palisade. By then the torches that had been thrown first were guttering out, the soft pitch having picked up enough dirt to leave little surface to burn as they, too, rolled down the slope. Quietly, Hugh turned over, eased himself upright, and returned, as near as he could estimate, to where the rope still hung from the wall. Of all the places they would look for him, the last, he hoped, would be where the symbol of his escape marked his route.

  Slowly and carefully Hugh began to climb the other side of the ditch, feeling for handholds and footholds that would not set loose stones rolling. Fortunately, this side was not so carefully burned over to elim
inate brush to make it difficult to climb. The purposes of the ditch and rampart were first to discourage attackers and second to make it hard for them to get into the keep. As a result, the mound rising to the palisade was denuded of anything that might assist climbers or shelter them.

  No one cared how fast invaders ran away, though, so only brush large enough to divert the aim of archers was cleared from the far side of the ditch. Hugh found well-rooted plants to set his feet against and to steady his hands. True, most of them were brambles, and a variety of thorns were added to the splinters of hemp in Hugh’s abused hands, but speed and security were more essential than comfort, and he did not complain at the pricks.

  Over the edge of the rise, Hugh went forward about twenty strides and then stood still, listening. A winter quiet lay over the land; no birds sang or chattered, no insects hummed, no frogs or toads peeped and croaked. Yet, at the edge of hearing there was faint sound, a low grumble comprised of the noise of many fires, many snores, many animals moving and breathing, a few voices. What was significant to Hugh was that there was no sharper level to the grumble to indicate a group of guards watching without a fire in the dark. Had there been any near, they would have been moving and talking, for they would have been witnesses to the excitement caused by his escape.

  Satisfied, Hugh began to walk rapidly toward the Scottish encampment. As he went, he removed his cloak and shook the dirt out of it as carefully as he could. Then he raised the mail hood of his hauberk and fastened it so that it hid his hair. Pushing up his mail sleeve, he used the cloth beneath to clean what little of his face showed and to rub what dirt he could off his hands. Actually he was more concerned about his own comfort than afraid that dirt would betray him; men in an army on the march were not known for their cleanliness.

  When he saw the first campfires, Hugh slowed his pace and tried to estimate their distance from the edge of the ditch. After a moment, he smiled grimly and walked on. He was almost certain he could pass the outermost groups without being noticed. If that were true, when he did have to pass through the encampment it would seem as if he had walked down to look at the rampart rather than that he was coming from outside the camp.

  This expectation was fulfilled; at least, no one challenged him. Hugh guessed that those who did see him clearly enough to know he was not a fellow man-at-arms going to the latrine or seeking a friend assumed from the richness of his fur-lined cloak that he was one of Summerville’s Norman companions. To further this deception, Hugh strode along boldly, looking neither left nor right, as if he knew exactly where he was going.

  That much was true, although Hugh would gladly have diverted his goal had he seen a saddled horse he could seize. There had been no horses on the outskirts of the camp, for most of those men were peasant levies who were foot soldiers; as he penetrated more deeply into the encampment, he did see some tethered animals, but there was no hope of obtaining one of those and escaping.

  When Hugh saw that the campfires ahead seemed to form a line, he began to wonder whether he had angled his path too sharply and was approaching the southern edge of the camp. Nonetheless, he dared not ask any questions or seem to hesitate. If challenged, he had a haughty reply ready that might save his skin, but there were no looks of surprise or questions as he passed the last line of fires, and soon a large, solid block of shadow loomed ahead: a house.

  Breathing a soft prayer of thanksgiving and another fervent one for continued help, Hugh turned sharply right to walk well behind the cultivated patch usual at the back of each house, and then left when a second solid shadow appeared to pass between the two dwellings. There was an ugly stench of burning as he drew closer; Hugh’s generous mouth tightened with anger and pity, but he was already doing what he could to help. If he got to Sir Walter, he would mention the villagers who had been sacrificed—and sacrifice it was, not the ordinary chances of war. Since the castellan had already decided to yield, he should have told Summerville at once instead of idling away the morning and waiting until he had eaten; then, likely no burning would have been ordered or permitted.

  Those angry thoughts did not divert Hugh from necessary caution. He slowed his pace, watching for fallen beams or rubbish. Even so, he tripped on something soft and almost cried out when the hand he extended to break his fall struck a cold and rigid face. At least it was a man, Hugh thought, recognizing gender and age from the short hair and bristled chin. A dead woman or child would have made him sick and so angry that he might have lost his sense of priorities. Even so, he dropped to his knees beside the body for a moment, closed the eyes, and murmured the prayer of absolution and then another to Mary, begging her infinite mercy for this poor soul who had died with his sins upon him and no chance to confess them.

  Hugh knew he had no right to give absolution and knew it was probably too late anyway, but he thought it could not hurt. And Hugh’s trust in the mercy of Christ’s mother was infinite. He had adored the Virgin since he was a little boy. Hugh had come to believe that his early interest was probably owing to the fact that he himself had no mother. As an adult, however, he felt just as strongly about the Virgin because, unlike many other saints, Mary was not at all rigid and unbending. Not only was she tender and merciful, but she had a quixotic sense of humor, and many legends concerning her described her defense of downright sinful behavior when it was self-defeating and naughty rather than cruel and hurtful to others.

  Having done everything he could for the dead man, Hugh edged around the body and continued on even more cautiously. He found no other corpses, and soon recognized his goal, the house of the alewife. There Hugh hoped to find the horse of some leader of the Scottish army who was making free with the alewife’s brew, but no animals were tethered in front of the building. Hugh hesitated, then came ahead anyway. He thought he remembered a shed at the back of the house. There was a chance the family owned a horse, and it might still be there.

  A structure did protrude from the back of the building, as he remembered. Hugh advanced cautiously, sniffing to determine whether the place smelled of animals or cooking, for such an extension could as easily be a kitchen as a shelter for the family’s animals—or both. The attempt was defeated by an overwhelming smell of woodsmoke and an underlying mixture of stenches from manure, animal and human, vomit, stale beer, and other assorted refuse.

  A crash and a scream from inside the house behind him froze Hugh for a moment. He realized then that there were Scots in the house, and he hurried around the corner, where he would not be in sight if a window or door opened. He was feeling for the opening into the shed when he was brought up short by treading on a chain. Hugh froze again, expecting the dog to leap at him barking wildly, but knew, even as he stiffened, that the animal would have given the alarm already if it had been able. To make sure that the beast was not inside the shed, trained to give voice and attack only if someone entered, Hugh crouched and felt for the end of the chain. His hand touched another stiff body, this one covered in fur. Hugh stroked the still form automatically, apologetically. He was very fond of animals, and it saddened him when a beast was killed in a quarrel among men.

  The brief pause saved him. As he drew his hand back from the dog’s body, Hugh heard the crunch of a pebble grinding underfoot and a faint clink of metal against metal. He had his knife out as the man came around the side of the building, and he rose and thrust the knife against the throat in one swift motion, grasping for the back of the man’s head with his other hand so that his victim could not jerk away. But the blade did not come to rest against leather or mail as Hugh had expected. To his surprise, it slid in right to the hilt. The body convulsed against his, but Hugh had been prepared for resistance and automatically clutched it against him. In the next instant it sagged bonelessly, and Hugh eased down with the weight.

  Only when the man lay alongside the dog did Hugh quickly draw his knife free of the wound it had made, for he did not want to be covered in blood—blood made horses nervous. As he
wiped his knife blade and the edge of his hand, where a trickle from the wound had run, on his victim’s tunic, Hugh again muttered absolution and a prayer for the sped soul. He was sorry about having killed when he did not intend to, but the man was an enemy, after all, and it was his own fault for being careless about his armor. Hugh had killed men before, and another death did not trouble him.

  Paramount in his mind was the question of whether the man had been a guard sent to watch the shed, and, if so, whether another guard waited inside to be relieved. He did not think so, because no glow of light showed and there was no reason for the guard to wait in the dark. Still, he carried his knife bare in his hand, hidden by the edge of his cloak. Now, however, he walked boldly toward the open side of the shed, as if he were expected. At the entry he stopped, but the only sounds were the breathing and low snorting of resting animals and the stamp of a horse’s shod hoof.

  Hugh’s eyes were adjusted to the dark, so he was able to make out the forms of several horses crowded together in the small shed by the very faint light coming through a crack here and there. But none of the horses wore a saddle. Hugh bit back an exclamation of disappointment. Even as he did so, his hopes rose strongly again. He knew that even the alewife could not afford so many horses and would have no use for them. It was cold, and there was a nasty wind. Likely some of the captains had chosen to lodge in the alewife’s house rather than in tents. As the thoughts passed through his mind, Hugh’s eyes roved around the shed and at once caught a faint gleam of metal from a dark heap near the rear wall. There were the saddles!

  Relief made him incautious, and his foot again struck a soft body as he hurried toward his goal. The form jerked, proving it was alive, but made no sound other than a faint grunt. Hugh was down beside the man in a moment, his knife pricking the throat. This time he was more careful, and there was no accident. There was no need, either. An intense odor of beer and vomit assaulted Hugh’s nose as he leaned over to command silence, so he saved his warning. It took no more than a moment to cut the man’s crossgarters and tie his hands and feet. Another minute sufficed to use a strip of his tunic to gag him.