The Lode Stone

by Jane Ann McLachlan

  “We do not need to go slowly,” Guarin complained. A single look from Jean had him checking his reins and squeezing his legs against the pony’s sides.

  We strolled through town like a little procession, Lucien in front, Alys and I next, and Jean beside Guarin calling out instructions now and again. When Guarin objected Jean reminded him that this was still his lesson, only today he was learning to ride his pony on a road with other riders.

  I had become accustomed to the slur in Jean’s speech and barely noticed it. But it was there and I could not imagine why I had thought he sounded like Simon. A trick of weariness, perhaps, or loneliness. I felt foolish for thinking it was Simon speaking to me from the grave and was determined not to let either fear or fancy fool me again.

  When we reached the road leading to my woods Jean called ahead to Lucien that we might trot a little while, now the road was clear ahead. I turned to look back at the sound of Guarin’s infectious belly chuckle to see him bouncing on his trotting pony, clutching the reins and the saddle together with his dimpled fists. I caught Jean’s eyes. He was trying to suppress his laughter as was I. A warm affection spread through me. He was much younger than I had first judged. His eyes had lost their wariness and shone now with kindness and humor. If he shaved his beard he would still be a handsome man despite the scar. I turned ahead again quickly.

  The road wound into the forest. I had always liked woodlands and loved these all the more because they were mine. I glanced down at Alys. She rode her mare with confidence, smiling and relaxed.

  “These woods will be yours someday, Alys.’ I told her. “They are deeded as your dowry when you marry.” She looked up at me, her eyes shining with delight. Why had I never brought her here before?

  “Thank you, Maman,” she said in a thrilled whisper.

  “You must thank Lord Charles. When we marry they return to him, but he has agreed to give them to you when you marry. Someday I will take you, just us, to ride the borders of your woods.”

  For some reason I glanced back at Jean, expecting him to share my pleasure at Alys’s happiness as we had shared Guarin’s chuckle. His face was turned away, closed and bleak.

  I knew nothing of his past. Had he once had family lands and lost them? Or perhaps he knew of Lord Charles’ animosity toward him and hearing the name spoiled his good humor. I faced front again, leaving him to his private moodiness.

  The narrow trail leading to the river lay just ahead. I had never shown my sunlit clearing to anyone, but I could think of no better place for our meal. The children could run in the little meadow and wade in the shallow lee of the river. They would love it as I did. Jean had already seen the place anyway, and Lucien might as well. It would be foolish to think no one else had ever discovered it. I called ahead to Lucien to turn down the trail.

  My voice sounded suddenly loud in the quiet woods. A partridge exploded up into the air in the woods beside us, squawking her alarm, and a buck leaped out of the trees and dashed into our midst, shaking his heavy antlers.

  My gelding reared and leaped sideways requiring all my concentration to bring it under control. Something bolted past me. I looked at once to Guarin, in time to see him tumble from his startled pony. Jean’s horse wheeled and raced into the woods.

  I leaped down from my horse and ran to Guarin, thinking, fine time to learn my son’s riding master cannot control his horse!

  Guarin was not breathing. I fell to my knees beside him, afraid to touch him, crying, “Guarin! Guarin!”

  With a gasp he opened his eyes. Seeing me above him he reached up his arms and burst into tears.

  “Are you hurt, Guarin?” I grabbed his shoulders, holding him still. “Where are you hurt?”

  “Maman!” he sobbed, struggling to reach me. “Maman, I fell!”

  I pulled him to me and held him tight, my arms roaming over his body searching for broken bones.

  “Are you unharmed, Madame?” Lucien’s urgent cry made me look up. He sat his prancing horse looking anxiously from me and Guarin to the woods.

  I looked at the empty road between us.

  “Where is Alys?” I screamed.

  “Her horse bolted. Jean de Lyon went after her.”

  “Go!” I tried to extract myself from Guarin but he clung to me terrified. “We are not harmed, go!”

  He spurred his horse straight into the trees where broken branches and trampled saplings showed the route Alys’s mare had taken.

  “Mary, Mother Mary, protect my child,” I moaned, holding Guarin to me and rocking as I prayed.

  “Where is Alys, Maman?” Guarin sobbed against my breast.

  “She will be well,” I stammered, praying it was the truth. “Lucien will find her.”

  “Jean will save her, Maman,” Guarin assured me. “Jean will never let us be hurt.”

  His words unsettled me but I did not correct him for I had no better reassurance to offer. I held him to me, praying frantically as the tears coursed down my cheeks.

  ***

  Jean emerged first, carrying Alys in his arms, her left hand locked around his neck, her right arm cradled in her lap. Her eyes were open, her face as pale as a cloud. She had caught her bottom lip in her teeth but she did not cry, looking steadily at him as he murmured soothingly to her. “...a fine horsewoman, none better,” he was saying when they were close enough for me to hear. “...And very brave. I have never seen a braver girl, except perhaps your mother.”

  He looked up at me with a strained smile, but underneath it his face was nearly as pale as Alys’s. Behind them his horse followed obediently, its reins dangling, and behind it came Lucien, leading his stallion and Alys’s mare.

  Jean knelt and lay Alys on the ground beside me. I gasped when I saw her right arm twisted at an unnatural angle below the elbow. Jean glanced at me sharply. I bit my tongue and reached out to stroke her hair from her forehead. “Lie still darling,” I said. “You must be brave a little longer.” She nodded and blinked back a single tear, nearly breaking my heart.

  “I need a long strip of cloth,” Jean said.

  I released Guarin and began to tear the bottom of my undershift as Jean rose and went into the trees.

  “Are you all right, Alys?” Guarin’s voice trembled.

  “Yes, Guarin,” Alys said in a small voice.

  “I knew Jean would save you, Alys,” Guarin whispered.

  Jean returned with two straight, sturdy tree limbs, each as wide as my thumbs together and two hand lengths long. He had stripped off the bark to make them smooth. I handed him the length of cloth I had torn from my shift.

  “This will hurt, Alys,” he said gravely. “But only for a few moments, and it is necessary so your arm will heal straight. Do you understand?”

  Alys nodded. She closed her eyes as he reached for her arm. This time she could not hold back her tears and gave an anguished cry as Jean pulled her forearm straight. I held it as he bound the two tree limbs on either side with the length of cloth, winding it round and round until no part of her forearm showed before he tied it firmly.

  “Is there a woman in your household who knows which herbs will make a tea to ease pain and reduce the swelling?”

  I nodded. Elise had made healing teas for Maman in her final days. “And I will send for a physic to have her bled.”

  “Do not dare!” Jean leaned over Alys fiercely.

  Lucien stepped closer.

  “I have seen men die after being bled, who should not have died,” Jean said in a more restrained voice. “It is a barbaric Christian practice.”

  What kind of medicine did he practice? I wondered, but I looked down at Alys, resting her head on my lap. Already some rose was returning to her cheeks and her eyes looked less strained, the lids drooping wearily.

  “Listen to him, Madame,” Lucien said quietly. “I too have never seen a wounded man improved by the leeches.”

  I looked up at Jean. He met my eyes calmly.

  Eastern medicine. He had been on crusade. The things h
e had told the villagers were true.

  And Charles knew it.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Thieves

  Guarin’s pony was limping, favoring its left leg. Simon ran his hands gently down the patient little creature’s leg, annoyed with himself for missing this earlier. He had been distracted by the children’s injuries, and then focused on keeping his horse to an even gait as he carried Alys in his arm. They had made a sad procession home, Melisende holding Guarin in front of her in her saddle, then him with Alys, and Lucien riding last, leading the children’s mounts behind them. People stopped to watch them when they reached town, a few calling out questions. Melisende replied simply that Guarin was tired and Alys had taken a tumble, no harm done. Jean shielded Alys’s bound arm from sight. No sense asking for an argument over her care.

  The bone in the pony’s leg felt straight and strong. He lifted the hoof and examined it. He could not find a stone or a cut but the problem was here. He would have to remove the shoe. He went into the stable to see if they had any tools for shoeing.

  “I will take it to the blacksmith tomorrow,” the stable master said.

  Good advice on several counts, Simon knew. Melisende had already looked at him oddly a couple of times when he had mentioned things a stranger would not know. Demonstrating his ability as a farrier was sure to make her wonder why he had not applied for work as such. Not that a man with only one good leg would be able to do all the tasks involved. Still, he could not risk revealing his identity. In a month and a half she would be a wealthy woman with her future secure, and their children’s, also. He would leave then, a vagabond drifting out of her life as he had drifted in. He should leave now, but he had to see her safely wed, and this short time with his children was the last he would have. He gritted his teeth, feeling a moment of utter despair before he pulled his thoughts back to the present.

  “Take it, then,” he said, but when he returned to the courtyard the pony limped toward him pitifully. It hurt him to see an animal in pain and this one would suffer being led to the blacksmith’s. Was it not enough, the damage men did to themselves, without inflicting pain on the creatures that served them? He returned to the stable.

  “I will take the shoe off now. Surely you have pincers and a hoof pick, and a rasp to file the nail clinchers away.”

  “I have no forge to make a shoe!”

  “It can go unshod until you take it to the farrier, but the shoe is hurting it.”

  With a sour look the stable master went to the back of the stable and returned with the tools.

  Jean rasped the nail heads, gently removing the hooks that kept them in the hoof. He was not surprised when the pony tried to remove its hoof from his grasp as he filed the front left nail. When he rocked the shoe off with the pincers he saw that that nail had been pulled at an angle so it rubbed against the tender inner part of the hoof. He frowned as he picked debris from the exposed hoof. It was careless shoeing, made worse when the pony had skittered sideways, alarmed by the buck.

  He looked up to see Melisende standing across the courtyard, watching him. He let the hoof fall and straightened as she walked toward him.

  “You are a handy man, Jean de Lyon.”

  “I know what any man who rides a horse should know,” he replied. “You will have to have the blacksmith make a new shoe and fit it on, but the pony is no longer in pain.”

  “You felt his pain, did you?” She had teased him with that question once, in another life.

  Looking into her eyes, he could think of no better answer than he had given then. “He does as he’s told and asks little enough in return.” As soon as he said it he realized his mistake.

  She caught her breath and stepped back, but did not take her eyes off him. “Who are you?” she whispered.

  He stared down into her eyes, so close to telling her his throat hurt.

  “Madame Melisende,” Elise called from the door of the house. “Alys is asking for you.”

  Melisende blinked. She turned and took a few steps toward Elise, then stopped and looked back over her shoulder. “I...I came to tell you that Lucien will be away tomorrow. I need someone...I need you to ride with me when I go to my quarry.”

  He nodded, unable to speak.

  ***

  “Do you always take the same route?”

  “To the quarry? Yes. Why?”

  “If anyone wished to waylay you, you make it easy.”

  Melisende shrugged. “I grew up here, I know nearly everyone in the village. I employ someone from almost every family, and let their friends hunt in my woods. And I am to be married to the most powerful man in the region. I am not afraid of thieves.” She bit her lower lip, a habit he remembered when she was nervous. “But as we saw yesterday, accidents happen, so I decided not to ride alone.”

  Simon looked around the quarry with interest. It was larger than he remembered, or perhaps she was just mining more rocks from it. There did not seem to be any end to the supply. He waited with the horses while she went inside to talk to Jean-Louis, a good lad from what he remembered and from an honest family; a good choice as overseer.

  They rode side-by-side on the way home. She seemed pleased after seeing her overseer, willing to talk. Yesterday’s awkward moment was behind them; all he wanted was to ride beside her on this pleasant late-summer day in the relative privacy of the woods.

  “When I first saw you,” Melisende said quietly, “you were saying something, a prayer I thought, in a foreign language...”

  “Hebrew,” Simon said. “The Jewish language. Yes, it was a prayer. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words shall be in your heart and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and you shall speak of them when you sit at home, and when you walk along the way, and when you lie down and when you rise up.” He paused, glancing at her sideways. “I lived with the Jews in Acre. They took me in and healed me when I would have died.”

  “And you became a Jew?”

  “No, but I studied under one.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged, looking embarrassed. “I suppose I am trying to become a good man.”

  “By learning Jewish prayers?”

  “The man I studied under, Rabbi David—he was a good man.”

  “That is not what I have heard of Jews,” she said. “But then, we seldom hear the truth about others, do we?”

  He looked at her again. If her words were pointed she gave no sign of it.

  “They are good people,” he said, seeing Reb David’s face bent over him as he lay close to death. Other images came to him then, of the Templars sheltering Jews in their church, of Luc who did not know how to fight, running off his attackers, of Tomas offering him a home. “There are good men of every faith.”

  “What makes a good man?” Her voice was still quiet but there was a tension in it that made him glance up. He thought of all he had seen these six years.

  “Charity,” he said.

  “Love in action. Love in general.” She looked disappointed.

  “Expressed in the specific,” he said, smiling.

  “When I was poor, when I was afraid, my neighbors gave what they could to my mother, to keep us fed.”

  He nodded, his throat so tight he could not speak.

  They rode awhile in silence, accompanied by the rustle of leaves in the breeze and birdsong in the trees.

  A branch snapped in the woods ahead. Simon looked up. “Stop—!”

  His words were cut off as two masked men burst from the woods ahead of them. A third man galloped from the woods behind them.

  Simon drew his sword and charged the two in front as they were turning their horses. The first man was impaled on Simon’s sword while he was still bringing his weapon to bear. Simon pulled his sword free and twisted sideways to block the second man’s sword, aimed at his horse’s flank. The attack on his horse, intended to unseat him and put him at their mercy, infuriated Simon. He drove toward the un
fortunate man, sword raised.

  At the corner of his eyes he saw Melisende’s horse rearing. She was sawing the reins, making him wheel in a circle as the man at their rear strove in vain to grab her reins. He had no time to see more. Clearly the outlaws had not expected a battle-hardened opponent; in short time Simon had driven the second man back to the edge of the woods. The third joined their struggle, but neither had counted on the strength of Simon’s arms. He sliced open the third man’s hand, taking two fingers off and sending his sword flying. They both turned their horses and ran.

  Simon wheeled his horse to find Melisende breathless but unharmed, staring at the dead man lying on the road between them.

  “Let us see this scoundrel!” He dismounted and ripped off the dead man’s mask. His face was frozen in a grimace of death, showing a missing front tooth and a chipped lower one. Simon looked up to see Melisende staring down, her face drained of color.

  “Put it back,” she whispered. “The mask, put it back!” She looked around as though to make sure they were alone.

  He dropped the mask over the face. How stupid of him! Melisende had never seen a dead man’s face, certainly not one who had died violently. She was not inured to it as he was. She must be terrified. “They are gone,” he assured her.

  “Put it back on his head as it was,” she insisted.

  “Melisende—”

  “Put it back!” Her voice was high with terror. He bent down and did as she asked.

  “You saved me,” she said. “They would have killed me! I owe you my life.” She looked around again. “We must get out of here!”

  “One of them is wounded. They will not return—”

  “Now!” she cried. Her hands shook on the reins as she turned her horse and kicked it into a gallop.

  Simon ran to mount and spurred his mare after her. What was she so afraid of? Surely she could see the danger was over.

  She did not slow down even when they reached town, but cried out to the townspeople they galloped past, “Thieves! There are thieves in the woods! They tried to kill me!”