[Sir Richard Straccan 01] - The Bone-Pedlar

by Sylvian Hamilton

  But he had plans for Hoplaw. He had discovered in himself a managing mind and an eye for potential. It was a small place, as she said, and run down, with neglected woodland and a mismanaged farm. The bailiff was too old, half-blind and cheated left right and centre by the estate’s people. But it was more valuable than it appeared and could be greatly improved. He had some money now, would certainly get more and could afford to put the place in order. He intended to do something for Julitta, of course, one day. It wasn’t all that important. There was plenty of time. She was young, beautiful. Time enough to think about her dowry when he could arrange a marriage for her which would bring him some advantage.

  ‘I won’t part with Hoplaw,’ he said. ‘I’m having it put to rights, a lot of work’s being done—’

  ‘Then borrow on it, Rob!’

  ‘I’ll not go into debt for—’

  ‘The?’

  ‘For anything, I was going to say. It’s foolish and ruinous, and something I’ll not consider. Be patient, Julitta. And tell me, why are you here?’

  ‘I came to say goodbye, Rob. I’m for England. Lord Rainard spoke of me to people he knows there, and one of them found me a place in the service of Queen Isabelle.’

  A glorified chambermaid and body servant, but nevertheless a place of some honour with plenty of other ladies pushing to get in if there should be a vacancy. ‘Though you might wonder,’ she said discontentedly, ‘why any noblewoman would jostle for the privilege of emptying the royal stool-pot, or combing lice from the royal hair, or kneeling to latch the royal shoes.’

  ‘Why do it, then?’ he asked. ‘You can always go home.’

  To Skelrig? The back of beyond? She’d had enough of it. What chance of finding a husband there? She’d be better placed at the English court, even if she had no dowry. She smiled at her brother, a smile as false as the cheap pearl trimming on her mantle. From that moment she hated him entirely.

  Linking her arm through his she said gaily, ‘It doesn’t matter, Brother. Don’t worry about me. I may surprise you.’

  And surprise him she did, and a good many others, when a few months later the Earl of Arlen, one of King John’s close circle of trusted lords, demanded to marry her.

  ‘She has no dowry, you know,’ said Robert, when Arlen made his formal approaches.

  ‘Oh, that,’ said the Earl. ‘I know. It doesn’t matter.’

  He could hear her two great bandogs howling outside in the bailey as if they sensed the approach of something detestable.

  The birdsong faltered and died, and the birds flew off in sudden startled flight. Ducks and coots on the lake panicked across the water and out of the reeds, labouring into the air. A vixen and her cubs ran, heedless of cover. The dogs had stopped howling and after a few minutes of soft whining were quiet.

  The master had come.

  Chapter 27

  He had bolted the door from the inside, and Julitta called for help: two of her own men and Robert’s dirty dumb serving boy. But when they broke the door down it was too late. He had looped his girdle over the shutter and kicked away the stool beneath him. His body hung against the wall, the bare blue feet scarcely clear of the floor.

  Julitta entered the foul-smelling room, holding her skirts up away from the clotted rushes. ‘Get him down.’

  They laid him on his soiled pallet in the broken circle.

  ‘Carry that chest to my chamber.’ She pointed to the money box. One of the men picked it up and stumped off down the steps. Take those things off him,’ she said, pointing at the string of crosses and relics round his neck. The other man looked uneasy and shuffled his feet but did not move, and the boy, Hob, began to cry.

  ‘Get out of here!’ She bent over the body and tugged at the string. It broke and the amulets fell with a clatter to the floor. She heard a gasp and, looking up, saw the dumb boy cross himself, his shocked gaze fixed on the dead man’s engorged face. Blood trickled from the corpse’s nose and mouth. Blood crying for justice, the infallible sign of murder.

  The girl was proving difficult. Her food was drugged but now she refused to eat, refused to talk, refused to obey in any way. Faced with the mutinous child, Julitta’s anger surged.

  ‘You sullen brat,’ she said, and gave the little face a stinging slap. The dumb boy, bringing in peats, jumped at the sound and dropped them. ‘Clear that up,’ the lady snarled. ‘Get out and take the peats with you. The child needs no fire.’

  Gilla’s hands and bare feet were cold; she had only her shift and an old blanket. The lady had taken her shoes and clothes when she shut her in this cold bare little chamber.

  ‘You’ll do as you’re bid, or I’ll let Red Cap get you!’ Julitta said. ‘You don’t know about Red Cap. He lives beneath the tower, down there in the rocks, in tunnels. He comes up at night, for he can’t abide the daylight. He is old, so old! A filthy creature, teeth like a boar and long twisted claws on his hands and feet. The claws have grown right through his shoes! He wears rags stolen from the dead in their graves. You will do as you’re told, or I’ll let him in to you this night.’

  The mark of her fingers was scarlet on Gilla’s pale cheek. The boy swept up the broken peats, packed them back in the basket and scuttled out of the room trembling, not daring to look back at the little girl.

  As the late evening light shone through the slit window of the garderobe chamber, Gilla watched the shadow on the wall cast by an iron boss in the middle of the window bars. She had looked at it for a long time and now, she thought, it began to seem like a tunnel. After a while she got up out of her body and went into the tunnel. It felt warm and familiar as if she had done this many times before. It was dark in there, but the walls and floor shone faintly and she could see quite well. She walked steadily down the tunnel, knowing it would lead to daylight.

  It opened on to a small garden, green and fragrant with meadowsweet and roses. Birds sang there. A stone bench was set on a little rise amid beds of herbs. The bench had carved arms: one a dragon the other a unicorn. A lady was sitting there. She held out her arms and Gilla went into them. The lady smelled of flowers.

  ‘There now, sweeting,’ she said. ‘It’s all right now. This is your safe place.’ She took the child on her lap and Gilla rested her head against the lady’s breast. ‘Sleep, little one,’ the lady said.

  In the morning, Lord Rainard stood on the donjon roof beside the iron beacon-basket which was always kept full and ready to fire. He looked north, south, east and west, and for as far as he could see there was no habitation, though faint smoke from the village half a mile away hung over the hill. Below, at the gate, half a dozen ragged barefoot children waited hopefully for bread. Lord Rainard sniffed at his gold pomander. His pale lipless face was severe and would not have looked out of place under a cowl or mitre. His clothes were of the costliest fabrics, but dark and plain.

  The watchman kept as far away as he could. Never at ease near great folk, he was more than usually uncomfortable in the proximity of this lot. The self-murder of poor Lord Robert had set any number of nasty rumours afloat, and the watchman, conscious of the contemptuous stares of the two infidel archers, was seriously thinking of taking to his heels as soon as he got the chance.

  The Lady Julitta was talking about the child.

  ‘She must have some sort of protection,’ she said, her perfect brow creased by an angry frown. ‘Something happened when she was scrying. I could do no more with her. I keep her quiet with valerian, but to be useful her mind must be free. Even drugged, she resists me. She resists me! A child! Beating has no effect, nor hunger. Where does she get such strength?’

  ‘Fetch her,’ said Soulis.

  When Julitta returned with the child, he picked her up and set her on the waist-high wall with the sheer drop below. She sat with her hands in her lap, her expression calm and dreamy.

  ‘What is this?’ Julitta demanded. ‘She doesn’t seem to see or hear.’ She waved a hand in front of the child’s eyes. Gilla did not blink.

 
Lord Rainard put a finger under the small chin, tilting her face up and turning it towards the morning sun. The pupils did not contract. The faraway look never wavered. She simply did not see him.

  ‘I’ve seen this before,’ he said. ‘You overplayed your hand, my Julitta. You terrified her so badly that, somehow, she found a place to hide. Remarkable! I could bring her out but there is no time; we have much to do. It’s a pity. She is rarely gifted. But there it is, if we can’t use her one way, we can in another.’

  He stared at the rapt face. Bending close, he whispered, ‘If you do hear me, maid, listen well and think on this. Whether you will or no, you shall serve me. I will write my spells on your body with sharp pens and bloody ink. It would be better to obey me and live.’ And, to Julitta, ‘Lock her up again. We’ve work to do.’

  Chapter 28

  Now they were a company of four; and with four to talk, joke and share the chores of the journey, to argue and to laugh, the journey seemed less slow. But they could not ride fast enough for Straccan who fretted with impatience over every mile of the road, such as it was. It got rougher and rockier, with mud holes that could swallow a donkey, until eventually it was no more than a track which they followed from hint to hint—a dislodged stone, the scrape of a cartwheel, the blackened remains of someone’s cookfire—all there was to show that other travellers had come this way. They passed through clumps of birch and alder, bright hazel woods and denser tracts of oak and ash. They crossed deep quarrelsome streams in sinister gorges. The travellers’ way led up, day after day, into hills where storms and mists closed in, soaking and chilling them, only to speed away to the south and east to let the hot sun dry and warm them all too briefly. They camped by small streams full of trout, and slept uneasily with the crashing roar of waterfalls never far.

  Great bulwarks of hills rose around them, the way grew steep and wild and they led their beasts beside tremendous precipices, over raging river gullies and through pools aboil with foam. They grew used to the screaming eagles circling overhead, and to long silences among themselves.

  When at last they came down out of the hills, they hit upon the remains of an ancient stone road, running from the west to the north-east coast. Broken in places, it was still a miracle of easy going after the way they had come, and they were able to follow it for several miles before their way took them north of it, and into forest.

  They passed the ruins of deserted farms and villages swallowed by the forest, crumbling walls and roofless ivied chapels. This was Northumberland, torn to pieces over centuries by raids and warfare, stuck together with the blood of martyrs and slaughtered innocents.

  They met no one but a tinker with his donkey, whistling his way south; they passed none nor did any catch up with them. For a day the forest track was wide and dry, but then it steepened and worsened, rough and rocky for a mile or two, then boggy and foul. They forded streams, circled deadfalls, and led their beasts round swampy places. Once, far away, they heard a hunting horn, but it came no nearer and they heard it no more. That night it rained, and though they made a shelter of branches, they slept little and lay cold. Next day, the forest started to thin. Then there was a sudden smell of woodsmoke, their rough track crossed another wider, clearer, and they met their first souls since the tinker: a family of charcoal burners, with their low snug huts and wagon. Straccan asked about the road ahead but they gaped at him, the women giggling and whispering to each other, the men unable to understand him or he them. Bane fared no better, their dialect was as foreign a tongue as Greek to him.

  They rode on, their footing muddy and slippery after the night’s rain, leading the horses for long stretches and plagued by mosquitoes and vicious tiny midges.

  There were great hills again, climbing to the east, west and ahead of them. Once, from a hilltop, they saw the distant sea to the east, blue as the sky, and on it a ship with striped sail bellied, scudding south.

  At last a will, a poor place but they could buy black bread and ewes’ milk, and pay for a night’s lodging on fairly clean straw in a farmer’s brew house reeking of old ale, but dry. Soon after dawn they were on their way again, given knowledge of the road ahead by their host. ‘Two vills, Lords, Muchanger and Haccledun, and then a hard way through the forest for three leagues or so, but after that the road’s level and easy and meets other roads, and you will cross into the Scots’ country soon after you pass through Crantoun.’

  They made good time, stopping in Crantoun at noon for ale and pottage at a hovel reckoned an inn. The house was poor and so was the pottage, but the ale was potent and yes, they were on the road for Crawgard, the innkeeper said sullenly. Go another mile to the ford, then turn west and follow the river road.

  They could hear the man cursing long before the path brought them upon him and the reason for his profanity became plain. A loaded cart had overturned spilling sacks of oatmeal, peas and salt, sides of bacon and other goods into the reeds. One of the shafts had snapped, and a knock-kneed horse, freed of its burden, stood in the cool of the river, head down smugly sucking up water. The driver’s curses died on his lips as the riders came in view, and he looked no whit reassured by Straccan’s amiable greeting. ‘Who’ve you?’ he demanded.

  ‘Travellers,’ said Straccan. ‘Is this the road for Crawgard?’

  ‘Crawgard? Aye.’

  Straccan slid from his horse. The carter snatched up a piece of the broken shaft and clutched it competently, like a quarterstaff. ‘Keep off,’ he snarled.

  ‘We mean no harm,’ said Straccan. ‘Truly, we are just travellers. Have you an axe?’

  ‘Axe? No. Why?’

  ‘To cut another shaft.’ He unstrapped his own axe from the saddle bow. ‘Well, do you want a hand or not?’

  The new shaft was cut and fitted, the cart righted and reloaded and the melancholy horse harnessed. The driver was friendly now and full of thanks. ‘Crawgard’s about two miles,’ he said. ‘I’m going there myself; this lot’s for them. It’s a rough path—crosses the water three times before it gets there.’ He took a leather bottle from under his seat and passed it round.

  Miles drank and coughed. ‘Sweet Jesus,’ he croaked, ‘what’s that?’ He handed it delicately to Straccan. ‘Be careful. I think it’s poison.’

  ‘It’s whisky,’ said the carter indignantly, ‘and wasted on Southrons! Give it back if you don’t want any.’

  The bottle had gone from Straccan, who was wiping his eyes, to Bane, whose startled expression didn’t worry Larktwist at all. He tilted the bottle and took three swallows before the carter wrenched it away, shoved the stopper in and poked it back under his seat. ‘My brother makes it,’ he said. ‘Mild as milk. Bairns are raised on it.’

  ‘God help us all if we meet any of your bairns,’ said Straccan hoarsely. ‘I’m afraid we’ve drunk most of your bottle.’

  ‘That’s all right. I’ve got another.’

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Magnus.’

  ‘Magnus, how would you like to earn some money?’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Funny,’ said Bane. ‘I’d’ve thought “what for?” would come to mind first.’

  ‘Sixpence,’ said Straccan, holding the thin silver coins out on his palm. ‘And sixpence more when the job’s over.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘My friend here,’ said Straccan, clapping Bane’s shoulder, ‘has a fancy to ride in your cart.’

  ‘Have I?’ Bane said, surprised. ‘Oh. Yes. Lucky me!’

  Coming up from the leaf-shadowed water into the sunlight, they saw the donjon of Crawgard, the loneliest fastness of the border, stark against the sky. Crowning a low hill, it was an ancient tower, small by English standards, the lower storey built of stone, the two upper floors of wood thickly plastered. A few small thatched buildings leaned against the outer walls. Sunlight gleamed on the helm and pike of the guard on the roof. The great gate stood half open, and two sloppy-looking men-at-arms watched the wagon as it crawled up the road. A coup
le of hobbled cows and a few newly shorn stunted sheep grazed. There was a powerful sheepy smell and constant bleating as they neared the gate. The guards pushed the gate wider open to let the familiar cart roll through.

  Inside the yard, penned shaggy sheep were packed tightly and two bent ragged figures were busy with shears. A steady trickle of shorn beasts dashed out through the gate to join the rest on the slopes below. Within the rough circle of the outer wall, the donjon rose tall and grim. An outside stair of stone led up to the first floor where the door to the great hall stood open and a thin haze of smoke leaked out. The ground floor storeroom at the base of the donjon was entered by a broad doorway at the foot of the stair. Smaller timber buildings clustered round the base, rather like the hovels outside: brewery, wash-house, dovecote, stable and byre. Only the kitchen was stone-built. The cart stopped at the kitchen door which also stood open.

  Bane followed Magnus inside. In the impenetrable darkness of the farther corners, rats squeaked and scampered over piles of stinking kitchen refuse. A huge sullen fire cast a lurid hellish glow. The cook, a fat dirty man with a pustulant nose, lay on a heap of smelly fleeces behind the door, hiccuping and clutching a leather bottle very like the carter’s. A scullion with a black eye and split lip applied himself drearily to the turning of two spits. Mutton smoked on one and a row of plump little ducks blistered on the other. Under the great table, a small boy, soot-streaked and snotty, dabbled wooden platters in a bucket of unspeakable water.

  ‘You’re late,’ said the cook, waving his bottle at Magnus.

  ‘Had an accident. Broke a shaft. This fellow gave me a hand.’

  ‘Well, bring it all in,’ said the cook. ‘I’d give you a hand, but you know what my back’s like.’

  Magnus nudged Bane and winked.

  It took an hour or so to unload the waggon, stowing the sacks and tubs in the dark storeroom, which smelled of cheese and onions and had its own population of rats. When they’d finished, the cook offered his leather bottle. Bane declined with a shudder but Magnus took several swallows before handing the bottle back. ‘Where’s Marget?’ he asked.