Joris of the Rock [The Neustrian Cycle, Book II] (Forgotten Fantasy Library)

by Leslie Barringer

  For the Sieur de Ath was engaged in that noble task of which the outlaw Gandulf spoke beside the fire of Joris of the Rock; that is to say, the claiming as serfs of a handful of freemen who at stated times must leave their holdings to work on their lord's land; and many were the black looks lately cast from cot and furrow and ditch at the five turreted tower above the confines of the forest.

  "Death of my life!" snarled the nobleman, when upon that same night a kitchen boy was haled before him by the steward. "You laugh to hear what beggar women mutter in the woods? See now, a whip shall move your hinder end to glee, and then you may chew acorns for your keep. Give him a dozen lashes, swiftly."

  So the howls of the kitchen boy went up as incense for the wounded dignity of Ath; and when next she rode abroad Tiphaine sought out the miller's wife and gave her one crown for the outcast serving lad and another for herself. Tiphaine's was a life of fury and compunction, of suspicions which she thought were mean and of generosities which she felt were foolish.

  * * * *

  Throughout November of that year the Saultes and Barberghes harried each other's fiefs' across and across the deep Nordenne went flame and sword and lamentation. But when autumn turned to winter Lorin de Campscapel, the Butcher Count of Alanal, swept out of his hill fastnesses and fell upon the flank of the Duchy of Saulte. With such assistance the Fox of Bargerghe brought his foe to terms; but the gains of four years past, the hopes of gain for another year to come, were ashes and corruption in the wintry fields.

  And then the Fox of Barberghe, blinded by his greed, levied a first tallage in the land wrested from his rival. His tax collectors, having ridden down an idiot boy who cursed them on the bridge of Roray, were found next day as a trio of corpses, stuck head downward in the thinly frozen river. Barberghe himself spurred out to punish that impudence, and barely escaped with his life; a blacksmith of the hamlet headed the sudden wild uprising. In three days thirty thousand peasants were afield; in a week eleven lesser holds were taken, and by the midmost depth of winter the great revolt had run from end to end of Honoy and Nordanay.

  In Nordanay were few towns to complicate the shock of sword and scythe; but in Honoy the communes had their say in the quick strife. Some stood by the great lords, with hope of chartered gains to follow; some fed the Jacques and marched with them against the castles; some sat aloof with lifted bridges and manned parapets, whence men cast stones and stirred with scaffold poles that the moats might never freeze. Among these last were Tostain and Hastain, whose caution the Duke of Saulte mocked in a couplet destined to endure beyond the Jacquerie and the reprisal that came after.

  Hastain by the river, Tostain on the hill,

  Shut gate and shiver when the war horns thrill.

  Thus the great duke, when Tostain men refused him aid. Some days later a force of peasants was similarly baffled of assistance; turning their backs upon Tostain ramparts, the hardy Jacques bound boards beneath their feet, and, crossing woodland snowdrifts that would have whelmed a charger to his girths, came swiftly and before the dawn about the Tower of Ath.

  * * * *

  Fast being broken, Tiphaine sat in her chamber, watching her baby encourage his first teeth upon the great gold thumb ring that had been her father's. She had given him an ivory bangle clasped with silver, but new-weaned Gilles preferred the taste and glitter of the gold; so that Tiphaine laughed – amused yet that he should abide by the device not lawfully his own – and hung the thumb ring on the bangle that he might not try to swallow it, and tied the bangle on a silken cord to lie around his neck.

  Outside her window snowpacks, loosened and sliding from a slope of roof, fell thump and flump upon the wooden lean-to sheds in the little courtyard. Somewhere below, a kitchen wench was singing; horses snorted and stamped in the dark stables, where the grooms tended them by lantern light. Presently came the steward's squeak and an obedient sound of brooms; rattle of well chain, rasp of grindstone, hungry yawn of a sentinel just relieved – Tiphaine took little heed of them, for in the muted wintry days she had heard them all so many times.

  "Imp, we are risen in favour," she said, twitching the cover of black velvet from her mirror of polished steel. "Cousin Leu, having nothing better to do, has promised us a game of chess. Indeed, he thaws inversely with the weather; but that is because we broidered a saddlebag to carry his fine new help. Miserrime, another grey hair! How many before you put on hose? And imp, our noses are too flat … but hour hands hare prettier than Aveline's … your hands are rosebuds, imp, bout only a duke, or maybe a prince of the blood, may dribble as mightily as do you…"

  "Now it is time to go spinning in the solar. Where are my tweezers? So. And if we are good, Aunt Aveline will play upon her lute. Oh, hearken, imp, the silly men-at-arms are quarrelling again … small blame to them, cooped up this week or more … but my lord uncle will be angry…

  "Now, who comes running here? Briot, what ails you? What is that shouting below?"

  The white-faced page leaned gasping against the door, shaking a sword too big for him as he summoned desperate speech.

  "It is the Jacques, the bloody Jacques," he sobbed. "They are in at the postern … someone has let them in … come, for your dear life, come!"

  Fiercely Tiphaine swept Gilles from his cradle; dreadful tumult shocked on her ears as she fled in Briot's wake. It was a flight nowhither; twice they recoiled from eddies of furious combat, and the girl's breath was whooping in her throat when at length she broke into the gloom of the little chapel.

  "Stay there!" hissed Briot. "Someone holds them beside the solar door. We are not yet spent!"

  Then he was gone; and Tiphaine laid her little whimpering son on the floor beside the alter and hung aghast by a window that gave on the courtyard.

  There below, in an angle of stable and curtain walls, her cousin Leu had found a wilder game than chess; hemmed in by baying serfs, he fought until he was hewn in pieces. And when she saw the bleeding head of the Sieur de Ath borne proudly on a pike by his one-time kitchen boy, Tiphaine turned moaning to the alter; hardly conscious of her craft, she swept away the table clear of crucifix and candlesticks, rifled the chest thereby of thruible and pyx, of patens and chalices; binding the clashing heap in the alter cloth, she staggered to the door and hurled her load into the passage. A candlestick rang on the opposite wall and rolled back to her feet; stooping, she gripped it as once she had gripped a hatchet in the forest of Honoy.

  Out of her sight, a score of yards away, a fight was raging on a narrow stair; but as she paused irresolute, with fingers on the latch of the chapel door, the din died down to a receding yelling and stamp of feet. Silence hovered again above the Tower of Ath, a silence grim as any uproar of assault; and Tiphaine wheeled about and gnawed her hand in terror.

  "Jesu in heaven," she wailed, "what comes next?"

  Briot the page came next, dragging himself round the corner on hands and knees. As the girl started forward he collapsed, twisting a gray face upward when she knelt by him.

  "All sped save me," he whispered. "They run to sack the priory. Flee if you may … I am cone … see, take my dagger … oh God!"

  His stricken gaze went past her harm; Tiphaine rose dumbly, and from the far end of the passage came a fiendish whistling cackle.

  "Lo, here is love's last greeting! Here is she who would rear bastards to rule over you!"

  Side by side in the vaulted way stood mad Yvonne and a burly serf who carried a great ax. The man eyed tumbled silver, but the beggar woman peered as if for something else. Tiphaine's heart turned to stone within her, and as the pair stole forward she moved to meet them.

  "Now play the man," urged Yvonne, as she paused by the door of the chapel. "Wipe out another score or two in sight of broken Cupid yonder … for me, I think to find in here … whoa, hell-cat!"

  But the heavy candlestick flew true as if outlaw Herbrand had flung it. Full in the face of Yvonne it crashed, ending the ruin begun by the Barberghe headsman. Back reeled the beggar woman, ba
ttering her skull upon the limestone mouldings of the doorway. Tiphaine's last earthly glimpse was of her happiest handiwork; for then the growling peasant brought his ax blade whirling down upon her head.

  Sated with slaughter, heedless of dim-eyed Briot who watched him, the murderer snatched his plunder and made off by the way he had come. Presently the page stirred and began to drag himself forward, groaning the Ave Maria between clenched teeth. At length he sank his face between the breasts of Tiphaine, that yet were round and warm; and then he, too, lay still.

  * * * *

  The first to pass thereafter along that corridor of death were the black-a-vised miller of Ath and his gaunt wife. Trembling and crossing themselves – for they had no part in the killing – they crept into the tower to see if anything was left worth picking up; and in the chapel they leaped back upon each other at a low wail from the alter side.

  "God save us!" cried the woman. "A child … living … unhurt."

  "It is the little bastard," muttered her husband. "See, the ring is gold. Now, it were best perhaps to–"

  "Nicholas, you are a fool, How long, think you, before this rabble is broken? Just so long as the foul weather lasts. What then? Great trampling men-at-arms, and hangings by the hundred. But if we have hidden away and preserved the heir of Ath–"

  "I tell you it is the other. You saw the little Sieur Juhel – what was left of him."

  The miller's wife set a gnarled finger on her lip, and winked a wink not altogether ghastly. The miller stared, and grinned, and nodded.

  "If any hear him wail within the mill, we say it is our Dodart," whispered the woman. "Praise God our Dodart is a quiet baby."

  "Ay, if they yell together we must drop this lording in the meal bin. See, wrap him in your cloak – and come, before they have done with the wretched monks. And when you praise God, praise him also in that Jacques need bread as well as noblemen. Else were we sped ourselves. I tell you, wife, I shall sweat through all this bitter weather until the day when we can hand him on."

  "Take heart, Nichol; I will save our heads."

  So, for the last six weeks of the terrible winter, little Gilles-Juhel lay by baby Dodart in the mill across the fields from the gutted Tower of Ath. At the end of that time he was Gilles no more, for events befell as the miller's wife foretold them; the grim Prior of Saint-Eloy-over-Hardonek rode in with a troop of men-at-arms to learn the fate of his friend the Prior of Ath. Having buried what noble and clerkly bones he could find, and having hung what serfs were taken skulking in the woods, he gave ear to the cringing miller and to the miller's sturdy wife. Their horse and half their goods he confiscated at their own prayer, secretly giving them gold in payment and reward; and no scared eye from the forest margin saw the bundle borne away upon the saddlebow of the prior's chaplain.

  In this way the child thereafter known as Juhel passed from desolate Ath to Hardonek beside the northern sea.

  * * * *

  "Ploughing again, my friend," said the fair-haired peddler, leaning upon his iron-shod staff and staring from under heavy eyelids along the path which fringed the thickets near the mill.

  "Ay," growled the serf. "They left enough of us to plough."

  "This is Barberghe land, then?" said the second peddler, glancing across the tilth to where a banner bearing counter-changed chevrons of red and black flapped from the top of a turret.

  "No, but the Fox – the count – has it in ward these days, and he has sent a rascally chevalier to keep the tower. He says the little Sieur de Ath escaped; I know not how. But look you, wayfarers – if your packs hold aught that came from castle or convent, go not near that gateway. One of your kind swings yonder, with crows to kiss and admire him. This cursed Chevalier de Medrincourt deals hard."

  "De Medrincourt?" repeated the tall stranger, thumbing his bare chin thoughtfully. "Hum … I am glad of that admonition, brother; we will not tarry here. Ploughman, I wish you well."

  The peasant grunted, raising his ox goad with the air of one who knew the value of well-wishing; and the lanky peddler moved away with his slim haggard comrade.

  "Was it he pronounced your outlawry?" demanded the latter presently, with a jerk of his head toward the Tower of Ath.

  "Eh? No, his father. But some there might remember me, even without my beard. Nevertheless, I will look at that scutcheon over the gate."

  "Praise God the bride is up," muttered Gandulf a few minutes later.

  Joris chuckled and glanced aside.

  "Never saw I one so scared of danger until danger came," he said. "Yet that is why I brought you, and not Madoc, to spy out this wasted land. See … a dagger bendwise between stars … ay, ay, it is the same."

  "As how?"

  "You mind the friar and his plump pigeon whom we took from Gaston de Volsberghe on the road from the Olencourt Fair?"

  "Ha, yes, that prosy half-wit. I had clean forgotten about him."

  "So had I not," breathed Joris. "This was their journey's aim. Now come away; that pikeman grows inquisitive."

  Gandulf gave a reminiscent snigger, but neither he nor his chief found more to say of Tiphaine.

  Yet the girl's curse was fast in the mind of Joris; and that was not for any mischance thereafter befallen him, but because Tiphaine alone of all his ill-wishers had flung the witchhood of Red Anne in his face without immediately suffering death or injury.

  "Last word to the woman that time," he mused. "Well, she is dead, and the breath with her; or so I had it from that fled serf of Ath a month ago."

  That there had been a child meant nothing to Joris; animals knew his kindlier moments, but children stood in awe of him. Nor was Tiphaine the first to make him a father.

  "Why, now," he said aloud, coming out of his reverie at a hail from a swineherd's hut. "What has this scarecrow for such as we are?"

  Thrusting aside a press of lean gray pigs, the serf came hobbling toward them, pausing to go look behind him before he spoke his business.

  "Give you good-morrow, masters," he whined. "Do you buy as well as sell?"

  "Ay, if the gear be of worth," replied Joris.

  "And honestly come by," added Gandulf, salting his words with a wink.

  "Ah, you are traders such as poor men look for in these latter days," the other croaked. "No, it is not in the hut; it is up in the woods. I have a mirror of steel in a velvet case, and a pair of silver tweezers; ay, and a lady's shoes of good soft leather, and other things besides. But I must be paid in silver – you swear to do me right?"

  "Too small for Anne," thought Joris when he beheld the shoes. "She is no mincing chatelaine."

  "A little stained," the serf confessed, with a harsh chuckle. "Yet come by this time as honestly as before. My sweat went to their first purchase; that I know."

  "I will take the mirror," said Joris aloud.

  And in the polished surface he saw sunlight of the cold March afternoon break over the forest edges and gild the bannered summit of the Tower of Ath.

  CHAPTER III. HEROTIAS AT HASTAIN

  Ta-rat, ta-rat, ta-rattle-ta-plat – ta-rattle-ta-plat, ta-rat, ta-rat! ta-rat…

  The kettledrum held its own beneath market converse and loud bellowing of cattle; across the windy square the red-and-yellow canvas of a tall booth promised mirth – for townsmen still had money for a show, however desolate lay the land beyond their ramparts. Joris and Gandulf, hard-bitten though they were, lined up to pay market dues with ease they had not felt for days.

  "What is the drumming yonder?" asked the man in front of them of another beyond him.

  "Puppets," came the reply. "Herod and Saint Jehan Baptist, better than a Michaelmas. It is Guelf Reinager, that daft apothecary. They say he fled from Dunsberghe, suspect of violating graves.

  "What is he, with that name?"

  "His father was Easterling, his mother a Dunsberghe woman. He was accounted a great wrestler; deadly quick, too, with his dagger. Wenches flocked to him for salves and potions, but now he is turned showman and brews no more, unles
s in secret. The warden was not for his setting up in ordinary market, but that Guelf pled such hardship in the winter."

  "Truly enough, belike. Small audience for puppets this late Christmas. Too many have dance puppet-wise themselves."

  "Ay, on the never-green tree. But touching those hides of which we spoke at the gate–"

  Gandulf nudged Joris in the ribs and nodded toward a side street, where the rising curve of rain-wet cobbles took on, beneath widening patches of clear sky, a blue reflected gleam; in the midst of the gleam stood a crone with one hand cupped behind an ear. She, too, was listening to the drum; and presently, all alone as she was, she cackled and plucked up her ragged skirts. Skinny gray shanks and worn wooden shoes essayed the ghost of a jig; Joris roared out approval, and abruptly the antic ceased. The old dame showed her empty gums and wagged a reproving forefinger; then she sidled into an alley and disappeared.

  "Granny has danced in her time," said Gandulf approvingly; but Joris was watching a younger woman's face, which gleamed half hidden by the shutter of an upper window near them. That face stared out toward the puppet show with a strange half-haggard glee; and Joris chuckled in derision.

  "Poor shrew," he thought, "who gleans on market day the topics for a week of senseless chatter. Blood of the Pope, she takes her pleasures hard! But softly, my turn next…"

  Ten minutes later Gandulf and he stood almost alone by the puppet show; it was already near noon, and all the eloquence of dark Guelf Reinager could not compete with ale and puddings of the Hastain inns. Nevertheless the showman plied his drumsticks valiantly, shaking his cockscomb crest that was of stiff red leather sown with tiny bells; and as tight of Guelf's stature, at hint of the muscles which harlequin's gear could not mask, Joris instinctively straightened his own shoulders.

  Guelf had a blue-black jowl, stern features, brown commanding eyes set too close for beauty; he drummed and wheeled as though a thousand watched him, and above, in the red maw of the puppet stage, little Salome swayed her hips and pouted scarlet mouth and nipples toward the market cross. From within the booth rose the mellow monotone of a gong, that was suddenly cleft and whelmed by a torrent of words in Guelf's sonorous voice.