Winter Song

by Roberta Gellis

  Meanwhile, Aelfric had managed to shove away his wife, who had clutched at him in her fear and further impeded his movement, and stand up. He then slammed the door shut and roared at Edith to find and bring him his sword or he would murder her quicker than any enemy would. This threat and the blow he struck her when she tried to cast herself into his arms instead of doing as he told her finally accomplished his purpose—although it was mainly because she fell on the weapon when Aelfric knocked her down. Armed, he began to shout for someone to light torches.

  It was a pity that in his excitement Aelfric did not call on any particular man by name. Each of Alys’s men, busy with pursuing one of the shadows who were running about seeking weapons or a place to hide, assumed that one of the other men would set the torches alight. Eventually two swords clanged together and a fight began. Fortunately, one of the men instinctively shouted his old battle cry, “Marlowe!” The other, almost at the same moment, had the presence of mind to cry, “d’Aix.” Both leapt back from contact, realizing they had attacked a friend in the dark. Others took the hint, and the hall began to ring with battle shouts as well as screams.

  To add to the hopeless confusion, the menservants had also wakened. Some of them began to scream and cry for mercy in their terror. A few were sensible enough to creep to the walls and crouch there out of the way, but others, frightened out of the little wits they had, began to run about. No one, of course, had thought of pushing the pallets out of the way. Some of these were accidentally kicked out toward the center of the room, and men began to trip over them, shouting in alarm.

  To Raymond’s pleased surprise, there was an almost immediate reply to his men’s shouts for admittance. Although he was annoyed when the guard demanded identification, Raymond recognized the wisdom and necessity. After all, he had not been expected, and it was a credit to the man’s training that he would not open the keep to an unseen stranger who called out a name that might not be his.

  After a moment’s thought, Raymond called out in English, “Sir William is the holder of Marlowe keep, and Lady Elizabeth of Hurley is his new-wed wife.”

  That was sufficient. The likelihood of another English speaker in the neighborhood of Bordeaux was not great, and one who would know those facts made the chance of imposture exceedingly small.

  “Welcome home, my lord,” the guard cried instantly, and scurried down from the tower, calling to the man below to let down the drawbridge while he unbarred the smaller gates.

  This took a little time, and then the man ran forward to beg Raymond’s pardon for delaying him. He had been alarmed by the large party, he explained, since his lord had left with only five men.

  Raymond stopped to assure him that he was more pleased by his caution than displeased by the delay. Meanwhile, Arnald, having heard the gate guard’s shouts, had pulled on his clothing and come running out of the hut where the guards who were not on duty warmed themselves or slept. He asked if Raymond would come in and sit by the fire while he sent a man to rouse the keep.

  “Rouse them? What need to rouse them?” Raymond asked. “All I wish is to go to bed.”

  “The inner door of the forebuilding will be barred, my lord,” Arnald explained.

  “Against what?” Raymond asked. “Have you had some alarm?”

  “No, my lord, but while you were absent from the keep I thought it better to be overcautious rather than careless.” Arnald looked worried. “Lady Alys is too used to being among longtime devoted servants to think of such a thing, and I did not want to make her fearful, so I gave the order myself.”

  Raymond swallowed his irritation at the further delay and smiled. “It was well done not to frighten your mistress. Never mind. Give me a torch, and I will go pound on the door myself. When the new men have seen to their horses, you can bed them down in the old quarters of the men-at-arms. For this night, they will have to make do with their blankets and straw. We can get pallets stuffed and move them to the hall tomorrow.”

  As he walked to the forebuilding, however, the small irritation he had felt disappeared. Arnald’s remark about not frightening Alys rang pleasantly in his mind. For all that she did, she was only a woman, and the master-at-arms, although he obeyed her, recognized that fact. Somehow the tacit acknowledgment of Alys’s weakness made Raymond even more eager to be with her. He hurried up the outer stair and through the passage, drawing his knife from its sheath so that he could knock on the door with its hilt. As he raised it, he heard faint cries, but the faintness did not deceive him. On the other side of the door, men were shouting and screaming. No normal level of voices could penetrate those planks. Frantically, Raymond pounded on the door, shouted his name, and called on the men to let him in.

  Chapter Eleven

  The men who had run to the outer door to prevent attack had taken little part in the fighting beyond slashing at a frightened servant or a released prisoner who hoped to find the place unguarded and escape. There were just enough of these to keep the men-at-arms at their post, but they knew, even if the fact was not yet clear to some of the others, that whoever was attacking them did not come from outside the keep. Therefore, when a pounding started at the door and a voice identified itself as their master, as well as calling the names of their companions, they did not hesitate to unbar the door at once.

  Raymond took one look at the chaos of yelling, dodging, running forms and knew that any orders shouted into the dark would be useless. He thrust his torch into the hand of one of the men and told him to go round the hall lighting the torches in the brackets. By coincidence, Aelfric had just managed to seize one of his fellow men-at-arms, who was pursuing a screaming, weeping servant who had not wits enough to identify himself.

  “Let him go,” Aelfric roared in his companion’s ear. “Go thrust a torch into the fire and light all the others. We will go on like this all night if we cannot see.”

  Since the “enemy” had already disappeared into the dark and it was useless to pursue farther, the man-at-arms felt Aelfric’s suggestion was reasonable. He had almost been wounded already by one of his own companions and had stopped himself by a hair from cutting down his own best friend when that friend bellowed his name to still another man who was ready to swing at him. In fact, it had already entered this man’s mind that the only people he had found with weapons were men of his own troop.

  As he began to light torches on his side of the hall, light began to blossom from others at the far end. Soon it was clear that the only armed men were those of Alys’s troop, and the confusion subsided rapidly. Any servant was easily recognized by his new and relatively clean garments. These were sternly bidden to stop shrieking and were thrust away to huddle together while the filthy prisoners were surrounded, searched for, and dragged from hiding places. The man cut down near the door was dead. Several others and a few servants had been slightly wounded or bruised by falling, but there were no other bodies.

  “Eight!” Raymond exclaimed. “Where are the other four?” But before anyone could answer, he realized the prisoners had come up the stairs from the lower floor. “Alys!” he roared, and ran for the stair.

  Since the noise of the falling distaffs had already attracted the men in her direction, Alys did not need to worry about being quiet in freeing the one she held. She wrenched at it fiercely, stepping backward and then sideways. At the third pull, the foot came free. Meanwhile, she had been screaming for Bertha to get the other women to attack the men. It seemed to her that her voice was lost among the general shouting and crying, and she dared not move her eyes from the advancing men to see whether Bertha had heard her or had retained enough courage in the midst of the hysteria to come to her assistance.

  She could not fight them both, however. Alys began to sob with panic, but it did not prevent her from lifting the distaff, foot upward, over her head. The man with the candle was foremost, and Alys fixed her eyes on him. She knew she would have only one chance. If she struck him when he was at just the right distance, the foot of the distaff would hit
him. That was the only part heavy enough to fell him. If she missed and only the upright made contact, it would hardly hurt him enough to delay him.

  As if she were two people inside one body, one Alys could hear her own voice screaming amid hysterical sobs. That Alys looked at the advancing candle and tried to judge its distance, but the other Alys, the one who was screaming and sobbing, could not wait.

  Nearer? Let him come nearer? No! Alys struck—and missed! Now nearly mad with fear, she stepped back to raise her weapon again. With abnormal strength born of terror, Alys lifted the distaff, the man lunged forward, hand outstretched, and the distaff foot came down again, hitting true. The man dropped like a log, the candle falling from his hand, the flame dying. This was what Alys had prayed for, hoping that in the dark she would be able to run away quickly enough to escape the second man—but he was too close. Just as she let go of the distaff and turned to escape, he seized her left arm. Alys began to shriek again with fear, but instinct brought her right hand to her knife hilt and she drew the weapon. She had half raised it to strike, utterly without thought. If she had been able to think, she would have known the gesture was hopeless, that the man’s other hand must be already stretched to seize her wrist and wrench the weapon from her hand. Fear hunched her together and saved her again, for she held the knife unthinkingly close to her own body where his groping hand missed it and brushed her side. Still unthinking, Alys thrust directly forward with her one free hand to push him away as he groped at her side in the dark.

  As Alys was straightening her arm, she heard a meaty thud, and her attacker pitched forward right onto the knife. He screamed. Alys staggered backward under his weight, twisting aside desperately as he released her arm to clutch at the knife in his chest. Since the attacker’s fall against her knife had driven her own elbow into her midsection and knocked the breath out of her, Alys’s screams had been cut off abruptly. This permitted her to hear Bertha’s voice crying her name.

  Although Alys could not answer, she realized the blow that had felled her attacker had been delivered by her maid. The knowledge that help was near restored her to sanity. In the next moment she found enough breath to squawk Bertha’s name, and they fell into each other’s arms.

  Both men were stirring. The one Alys had struck was groaning and making scrabbling noises against the floor, seemingly trying to get to his feet. The other was bending double around his agony but screaming more weakly. Half-stunned by Bertha’s blow, he had fallen forward onto the knife, shoving it far deeper into his body than Alys could have thrust it herself without his dead-weight momentum. But Alys and Bertha did not know how badly injured he was. They could see nothing, and the sounds of movement frightened them. Neither was willing to approach to strike again, fearing to be caught. They backed away, clinging to each other for comfort.

  With the cessation of active pursuit, the maidservants had also run together. Huddled in a tight knot, their hysteria diminished. The violent shrieks died away to whimpers and sobs. Then, suddenly, the door burst inward, knocking the man standing by it flat.

  “Alys!” Raymond shouted. “Alys, where are you!”

  “Here. Raymond, I am here,” Alys cried, letting go of Bertha and whirling around, now carelessly turning her back on the men she had feared so much.

  Swift and joyful as her answer was, it was drowned in the renewed cacophony of shrieks that rose from the maids. At first the cries were merely the result of surprise on already terrified women. In the next moment, however, the man Raymond had knocked down when he opened the door started to rise. Casually, with a sidelong flick of the sword, without even turning his head and still bellowing for Alys, Raymond took off the prisoner’s head. Then the maids began to scream in earnest.

  Raymond turned toward them to bid them be quiet and ask for his wife, but his expression was not conducive to confidence. As one, they shrank away, emitting even louder shrieks. Fortunately, before he did more than take a few steps in their direction, a flicker of movement disturbed the darkness ahead of him. He lifted the bloody sword, but Alys was not afraid of that and ran right under it into his breast. Raymond, who had barely checked the striking movement of his weapon, gasped with shock and clutched his wife so hard she squealed with pain.

  There were a few moments more of confusion while Raymond kept asking whether Alys was all right and she could not answer for lack of breath. At last, frightened by her silence, he relaxed his grip enough for her to speak. Between tears and laughter, she assured him she was no more than frightened and in the next breath warned him of the two other men.

  Meanwhile, Bertha had heard Alys’s initial response to her husband, even if he could not. Assured of safety and protection by the presence of the lord, she had recognized that their immediate need was to be able to see their enemies. Dropping the small table to which she had been clinging, she followed on Alys’s heels, but not into Raymond’s arms. As soon as she could see a little, she ran quickly to the wall and found a torch, which she thrust into the fireplace. When it blazed, she went to light others.

  The light and the fact that they finally recognized the master who had never done them any harm quieted the maidservants. Raymond took a torch from a holder and started toward the back of the chamber. When Alys began to accompany him, he shook his head.

  “Stay you here, love. You will get in my way. They are unarmed and can do me no harm, but if one should seize you as a shield, I would be undone.”

  “They might not be completely unarmed,” Alys warned. “The distaffs might be used as clubs, and one might have my knife.”

  “Neither can do any good against a sword,” Raymond assured her. “Now do as I bid you.”

  The voice made the words an order that Alys did not dare disobey. She watched the halo of light surrounding Raymond, saw the glitter as his sword blade rose and fell, and uttered a small sigh of relief. One was dead. But where was the other? Could he be hiding outside the range of the torchlight? Raymond was not wearing his helmet. The mail hood would be little protection against a smashing blow to the head.

  Alys almost cried a warning as she saw Raymond stoop and then go down on one knee. Common sense brought her hands up to stifle the cry. If one of the men was missing, Raymond would be watching for him, not examining the results of his own sword stroke. Then the horrible notion came to her that she had forgotten to tell Raymond there were two men. She started forward when that came into her mind, but just then Raymond rose to his feet and came back toward her.

  “One did, indeed, have your knife,” he said, holding it out to her. “It was firmly planted in him. That was quite a stroke. The hilt itself was buried. I must remember, my love, not to make you too angry.”

  His expression was an odd mingling of pride, humor, and distaste, but Alys was too shaken to notice. She shuddered.

  “That was not my doing. I was holding the knife when Bertha struck him from behind. He fell onto it.”

  “Oh. Did Bertha brain the other one, also? I finished him, but I think he would have died, anyway.”

  “No,” Alys said with a satisfaction that showed in her voice, “that was my doing. I hit him with the foot of a distaff.”

  “No wonder you warned me.” Raymond could not help laughing. “I had no idea that spinning was so dangerous an activity.”

  Alys laughed shakily, too. “Only when the spinner is desperate,” she said.

  By then all the wall torches were ablaze, and Alys could see the bloody shambles. She was no longer afraid, but her mind was still numb with shock. She could not really take in the meaning of what she saw, but it offended her. She turned on the maids, silent now but still huddled together.

  “I never saw such useless creatures in my life,” she exclaimed, “running about like silly hens and squawking instead of defending yourselves. Now get to work, and clear up this mess. Carry the bodies down to the men below, and scrub the blood off the floor and quickly, or whatever you feared those men would do to you will be a pleasure compared with wh
at I will do.”

  “Is it not natural they should be afraid?” Raymond asked.

  “Of course it is natural,” Alys replied sharply. “I was frightened out of my wits myself, but that did not make me run about screaming. There were only four of them. If two women—”

  “Four!” Raymond exclaimed. “Where is the fourth?”

  “I do not know,” Alys replied, looking about nervously. “Bertha threw her candle at him in the antechamber. Perhaps he is hiding there or—”

  “Stay!” Raymond interrupted again, lifting the torch he was holding and going forward.

  Fear gripped Alys once more. She knew that there were many things in the fully furnished antechamber and bedchamber that could be used as weapons. However, before she had a chance to think further, she heard Raymond exclaim in horror or disgust. She ran in and gasped with shock. The fourth man was there, just beyond the door, but he was no danger to anyone. His body was a blackened ruin. The burning hair had set the filthy, grease-laden tunic afire while the man lay unconscious.

  Possibly the pain had roused him and he had tried to crawl for help, but all he had accomplished was to allow the flames to envelop him completely. Whether he was dead or again unconscious neither Alys nor Raymond knew, but it was not worth considering. Raymond made sure with one sword stroke. Alys shrank back, shuddering.

  The gesture soothed her husband, who knew he should be glad she had managed to protect herself. If she had not had the courage to fight back, he might have come too late to save her from rape or death. Nonetheless, he found himself uneasy. Alys had said she was frightened out of her wits, but it was clearly not true. She had wits enough left to fell one man and plan to repulse another with her knife. And she was calm enough, the emergency being over, to castigate her maids for lack of courage and order them to clean up the mess, sounding as if dead bodies and blood were no more than a heap of garbage spilled on the floor.