Squire's Honor

by Peter Telep

  “Who said anything about an attack?” Montague asked.

  Orvin rose from the bed. “I’ve heard enough of this.” He faced Christopher. “Has it occurred to you that this northerner might want the ship for himself?”

  It hadn’t occurred to him; but it seemed unlikely. He shook his head.

  The old knight turned toward the door.

  “Orvin, please, let him finish,” Christopher said, stop­ ping the old knight with a hand on the other’s arm.

  “Yes, I too would like to hear how he proposes we snatch that ship out from under all of those sailors,” Doyle said.

  Orvin regarded Montague. “If you’re not taking the ship for yourself—and you really do want to help these boys, then what is your plan?”

  “My plan is to get the sailors away from the ship,” the fat man answered.

  After considering that, Orvin shook his head. “How?” Montague looked to Jennifer, and raised his brow.

  8

  Tania lay in bed, listening to Hayes as he chopped carrots and turnips on the table in the main room. She wished she could get up and pre­pare the evening meal for herself and her husband, but the illness’s grip was too strong. She knew that sloth and idleness lef t her vulnerable to evil, but there was little choice when the pain came. She hoped Hayes had found the right kind of eel at the market, one that was sparkling and large, with a white belly. She’d reminded him that the reddish trout were better in summer, and had asked him to purchase a half dozen for salting. He’d bought goat’s milk before; at least she hadn’t had to worry about that. She wanted to ask him about his shop­ ping trip, but he’d been silent all day, and the same upon returning from the market. She knew her breath would be wasted.

  She reached over to a stool beside the bed and drew from it a clay mug. She brought the mug to her lips and sipped a bit of the steaming, sweet barley water. Hayes had prepared it with just the right combination of barley, licorice, and figs. The liquid seemed to dull the knives that tore into her chest and arms. She returned the mug to the stool, then looked down to the child bundled and nestled between her arm and shoulder.

  The tiny boy slept quietly now. He had cried a lot this afternoon; he must have worn himself out. That was good. Hayes had little tolerance for the child’s weeping. Gently, she patted his head, then let a finger run over the fine hair on his small scalp. He was lovely. Pure and full of life.

  She heard a banging sound and realized it was not her husband’s chopping. There it was again. Someone was knocking on the front door of their tofthouse, and the raps were loud enough to drown out her husband’s work on the vegetables. She heard Hayes stop his chop­ ping, then cross to the door.

  “Good day, sir.”

  “Yes, good day,” Hayes answered in the depressed tone he’d developed since she’d first brought the child home, a tone that had fallen away into reticence.

  “Sorry to bother you, but Brother Pater and I are looking for a lost infant. Have you found or heard of anyone who has found one?”

  Tania trembled as she slid her blanket down, then brought it back up to cover the child. Somehow the monks had learned about the lost baby. Perhaps they had saved its mother.

  It wasn’t fair! It wasn’t fair to take the child away from her now. She desperately needed this newborn.

  She would not survive without him.

  “No, I’m afraid I cannot help you, brothers,” Hayes said.

  Tania shuddered through her sigh.

  “Please keep an eye and an ear out for us then, if you will. Apologies for the intrusion.”

  “Good day, gentlemen.” “Good day.”

  The door squeaked closed. Tania heard Hayes move from the adjoining room, then saw him arrive in the doorway of their sleeping quarters. “I regret that,” he said, tipping his head back toward the door, “and I will henceforth put my boot down. The child is going to the monastery.” His face, which had grown more sun-browned and wrinkled over the years, was set.

  But she knew she’d win the fight. If she could finally make him understand. “Please,” she began, not realizing how hoarse the illness had made her voice this time, “don’t take him there.”

  Hayes stepped into the room, and with the wave of a callused hand said, “Look at you, Tania. How can you raise a child from a sickbed”?

  She pressed farther back into her pillow, but there was no escaping him. “Don’t you see—”

  “All I see is my sick wife who is dreaming of some­ thing that can never—and shouldn’t—be.” His tone was cruel, unlike him.

  “It’s this little one, Hayes. Don’t you see?” She pushed the blanket down, revealing the child. “Without him I won’t get better.”

  He made a crooked grin. “How is a child going to help you?”

  “I need him—and he needs me. Without me he has no one. And because of that I have to live. Don’t you see? I have to get better.”

  Hayes lowered his head, then pulled at his beard with his thumb and forefinger. She knew he did that only when he was nervous. “We’re old, Tania,” he began.

  “I knew you would say that,” she spat back, “I’ve been waiting for you to say that. It doesn’t matter. We were good parents to our children and we can be the same for this little one.”

  “No.” His tone was now almost too steady, too soft, his apparent resolve unnerving Tania. “We’ve done our work. Lived our lives. The Lord has blessed us.”

  “Blessed us with this child,” she qualified, only now realizing she’d been hugging the infant tighter and tighter as they’d talked. She relaxed her arm around the boy.

  He regarded her as he drew himself up to his full height. “I’ll have no part in this—and neither will you.” He started toward her and dropped his gaze to the boy. “Release the child.”

  She saw him now not as her husband, but as a crea­ture bent on inflicting pain. She lifted and cradled the baby, then kicked out in order to drive herself toward the side of the bed.

  But the tightness came too suddenly, a paralyzing flash of heat and locked muscles that was the illness rearing its ugly head. She could not leave the bed, but was able to fight through the seizure and keep her grip on the child.

  Hayes hovered over her, searching with his hands for a way to wrest the child from her arms. “You’ll kill me if you take him, do you know that? Do you know that you won’t have a wife? Do you want me to rot away, is that it? Don’t you love me anymore?”

  “It’s because I love you,” he said, his voice weighted with the exertion of his prying hands, “that I’m doing this. What you want to do … it’s not of God.”

  “How can it not be of God? I’m helping a poor child and myself,” she cried, feeling her tears stream across her cheeks.

  The baby started to cry as Hayes tore it away from her. He lifted the boy to his chest, then slid his forearm under the child’s rump. For a moment lightning flashed in Tania’s memory, and she was back to the days when Hayes would hold their own Stral under his arm the very same way. Her husband looked younger now, perfectly natural with the baby. It could be that way for a long time, she knew. If he wasn’t so stubborn. They weren’t stealing the child but blessing it with a good home.

  “Come on, little one,” Hayes said, turning away from her.

  “Hayes … don’t …”

  He froze, then turned back to her. “It’s God’s will.” Sniffling, Tania backhanded the tears from an eye.

  “You’re dooming him to the life of an orphan.” “How can you know that”? Hayes asked.

  Tania bit her lower lip and felt the arm she’d used to hold the child tremble as the last threads that con­nected her to the boy began to fray. “I know,” she started, closing her eyes, “that you cannot do this. Please. Oh, Lord above, give him the wisdom. Let him see that I am his wife, and have and will continue to honor him every day of his life. And that he is my hus­band, and has honored me every day of my life. I need the child. The child needs me. He needs us. What is wrong with tha
t”?

  When she opened her eyes, she found that the baby lay on the bed before her. Hayes was gone. She heard him exit through the front door and slam it shut after him.

  The boy still whimpered, but grew calm as she lifted him into, her arms—where he belonged. She studied the small, tear-stained face. The points of the illness’s knives felt dull. There was a glow that Tania knew was in her eyes, a glow that likewise haloed her heart. The child was a barley water for her soul.

  9

  Alone in his quarters, Doyle set the quill Merlin had loaned him down on the trunk, then studied the map he’d been drawing on a ragged half yard of hemp. Though crude, it did depict each and every storefront along Pier Street, and it also included the Chancellor’s and Customs Houses, as well as a few neighboring tofts.

  Montague entered the room, turned back to make a last cautionary glance into the hall, then stepped fully inside. He closed the door and threw the latch. “Finished yet, laddie?”

  Doyle nodded, uncrossed his legs, and rose from the floor. He picked up the map and handed it to Montague.

  The fat man eyed the hemp, then nodded. “Good, this is good. Fetch me the quill and I’ll mark them off for you.”

  He dipped the quill in the clay inkwell before handing it to Montague. The brigand looked around, then frowned at the trunk near Doyle’s bed. “That won’t do.” He looked at Doyle. “Lend me your back.”

  Doyle leaned over, and Montague spread the hemp across the former archer’s shoulders. The quill tickled a bit as Montague scribbled, then he blew on his markings to dry them.

  Doyle wished Montague hadn’t done that. The air was suddenly foul with the fat man’s bitter breath. “Can I stand up yet?” he asked, breathing only through his mouth now.

  “Wait, let me just … all right then.”

  He straightened and turned to face Montague, who held up the map for inspection. Several storefronts which Doyle had chosen to identify as boxes with anchors drawn inside them now had circles around those anchors. “So those are the ones,” Doyle remarked. “It’s not going to be easy. They all share common walls, and those roofs—”

  “Aye, the roofs will go, but the walls are made of stone. The damage should not be that extensive. Moma doesn’t exactly approve of this part, but at least she sees the common benefit of it,” Montague said, hinting at something Doyle didn’t quite catch. The brigand crossed to the window, waving the map in the breeze of his momentum. He stared down into the street, which was now huddled in twilight. “I just wish we had more time.”

  Doyle thought what their plan would be like had they a quarter moon to prepare it. Surely it would be far more complex, at least a notch less dangerous, and he would not be as nervous.

  But they had conceived the plan to render the Pict cog as vulnerable as possible only a few hours ago, and would now carry it out unrehearsed. They had one chance to make it all happen. The whole affair was akin to having a single arrow left in one’s quiver to drop an advancing enemy soldier. The arrow comes out of its sheath; it locks into the bowstring and falls back into ninety pounds of draw. The enemy comes into sight and the time comes for the arrow to be fired.

  And if the shot misses, his won’t.

  “Were you down at the back house just now?” Doyle asked, breaking himself free of his worries.

  Montague winked as he nodded. “Moma and Jennifer have rounded up at least a score of lasses. She says she has fifteen of the crew in there so far. There is still no way to tell how many are left, unless …”

  As Montague lapsed into a thought, Doyle’s mind suddenly flooded with the image of a Pict sailor pound­ ing into a wincing Jennifer. He shuddered the thought away, ground his teeth and balled his bad hand into a three-fingered fist. “Do you think—”

  “Yes, I do,” Montague answered before he could finish. “How did you know what I was going—”

  Montague turned away from the window. “Because I’ve come to know you, laddie. And I warned you about her.” He took a few steps toward Doyle and locked gazes with him. “I reminded you of what she is. And now I wager you know who she is. Don’t be a dolt and depend on her for anything—including love. She’ll tum on you, trust me.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” Doyle said grimly, “but I won’t be needing it.”

  The fat man took a moment to yawn, then said, “I’m not telling you this because your relationship with her might damage the one we want to have with the abbot. If you think about it, laddie, if we get that cog, the abbot’s going to hold Robert and the old man responsible. They went to him and asked him to order the Pict captain to take us. And the abbot might very well link them to us. So, as you now see, our future here in Blytheheart doesn’t look all that bright any­ more.”

  “I’m sorry,” Doyle said, “but I have to help my friend.”

  “I know that, laddie, and we are. And who knows, it might all work out for the better.” Montague’s smile was small, but there.

  “I hope so. But I keep getting the feeling that some­ thing is going to go wrong.”

  Montague crossed to the trunk and set the map down on it. He moved between the two trestle beds, sat on his own, then fell onto his back with another yawn. “What I need now is a brief nap, and then a heaping of mashed potatoes to warm my belly before we set sail.” The old whimsy was back in his voice.

  But this was the wrong time for it; or at least Doyle thought so. “I believe Caesar spoke as you do the day he died,” Doyle said, trying to evoke a little fear in the brig­ and as he crossed to the window and sat on its ledge.

  “I didn’t know Caesar liked mashed potatoes,” Montague remarked with feigned seriousness.

  Doyle sighed, shook his head at the sprawled out, impromptu jester. “How much longer until the Vespers bell?”

  “It should not be too long now. Everyone else had better be ready,” Montague answered.

  “I’m sure they are.” Doyle thought of his blood brother. “I hope Christopher is still not arguing with Brenna.”

  “Uh-huh,” Montague said, sounding as if he was already drifting off into the realm of dreams.

  And the snores that followed only seconds after veri­fied that fact.

  Doyle absently picked at the warped wood of the sill. He rolled splinters between his fingers, then released them to the growing shadows that fettered the cobble­ stone below.

  He thought it would be great if he could just get down to Pier Street and do his part. Now. This moment. Not later. Not at the toll of Vespers. Everything always had to happen in the future. Never now. Always then. He picked more furiously at the wood, tore off larger and larger splinters, and threw them down to the street. He thought about Jennifer again, of her sex with the Pict sailor. He had the faint hope that she had somehow managed to avoid having to go through with it, and though he didn’t want to douse that feeling, he still knew in the deepest comer of his heart that she was, in fact, practicing her “craft,” as she had called it, and helping their cause. He’d known what he was getting himself into; it was, however, too easy to shove reality aside. When he was with Jennifer he existed in a new and different world, one that had a lot less pain in it.

  The present world, the world of the windowsill and the snoring brigand, was the reality in which Jennifer was a harlot and he was a maimed and banished archer.

  “Ah, there it is. So simple. The dream brought it on,” Montague said, interrupting his own snoring and then rocking himself abruptly to a sitting position. “And it may ease your mind a bit, laddie.” He stood and swiped the backs of his hands across his eyes. “I’ll meet you down there. I’ve a slight change to make and I won’t be long.” He started for the loot.

  “What are you talking about? What change? Are you changing your clothes or the plan?” Doyle asked, a nerve suddenly jumping in his shoulder.

  “Behind the Customs House. After the last bell. Do not be tardy,” Montague said as he opened the door, then promptly left.

  Doyle·swore aloud. He bit his
lip as he tore himself away from the window and crossed the room for no par­ticular reason. Then he spun around, went back to the window, stared off into the darkness, then spun away. The feeling was back. Something was going to go wrong. And that something had to do with Montague’s sudden dream-induced idea. That fat man had said something about the idea easing his mind a bit. He con­sidered that … and then he realized the idea must have something to do with Jennifer. But what? Would this idea take her away from the back house? More impor­tantly, would it jeopardize her life? Doyle remembered something that Montague had said: She says she has fifteen of the crew in there so far. There is still no way to tell how many are left, unless …

  He stepped to the trunk, dropped to his knees before it and threw aside the latch with a trembling hand. He lifted the lid.

  Hidden within the chest was his crossbow with wind­ lass attached, and along with it, his hard leather quiver,which now contained a dozen precious bolts tipped with phials of expensive quicklime. Where and how Montague had obtained the bolts was still a mystery; certainly Moma had something to do with it. Doyle lifted the quiver and slung its strap over his shoulder. He grabbed the bow with his good hand, placed it between his knees, and then locked the windlass’s cranks into a downward position to streamline the weapon. He wished he had a leather breastplate rein­ forced with iron discs to protect him, or even a simple cerveliere helmet to wear. The only thing Montague had made sure he’d be protecting was his identity, and that would be accomplished by an old cloak the fat man had given him. He took the cloak from the trunk and tied it clumsily under his chin. He pulled the hood up and tugged its edges as far forward as possible, hoping that his face was now cast in deep shadow. He crossed to the nightstand and blew out the candle. He turned to the light pooling at the base of the door and started for­ ward. He tripped once before finding the latch.

  Out in the hall, he held his crossbow under his cloak and moved as quickly and as silently as he could, though the occasional creak of a floorboard made him pause and flinch.