[Stephen Attebrook 11] - Missing

by Jason Vail

  He pulled himself erect and shuffled inside. It was pitch dark, and Stephen had to feel his way about like a blind man. He found the winch by working his way around the walls to the slot through which the chain passed, and then up the chain to the center of the room. His fingers felt like sausages and when he removed the saw from about his neck, his hands shook so much that he had trouble starting a groove in the last link. The saw blade jumped about so that he cut himself twice.

  At last, though, the saw’s teeth bit into the link, and to Stephen’s amazement — he really hadn’t believed a saw could cut iron — it gradually sank into the link as he drew the blade back and forth. The work went slowly as much from the relative ineffectiveness of the saw against iron as from the shaking of his hands, indeed his whole body. He had thought that the cold wouldn’t be so hard to endure once he was out of the water, but it seemed worse now.

  At one point, he heard footsteps crackling on the grass outside the chain house. Stephen sheltered behind the winch, petrified that he’d forgotten to close the door. He wasn’t in much shape to fight someone if he was discovered. Stephen heard the pattering of a stream of water, and realized whoever was making the footsteps had taken a piss against the side of the house. The footsteps crackled again and faded away.

  Finally, he finished the first cut. He had to rest before starting the second, trying to warm his hands in his armpits. It didn’t do much good.

  The second cut was harder to make than the first. He was able only to make short draws on the saw, which wobbled so much that it jumped about before settling into a groove. Then it took forever.

  When the link broke apart, the chain clanked as it fell to the ground. Stephen tried to catch it but was not quick enough. He crouched by the winch, his breath coming jerkily, the fear at the sound produced by the chain extinguishing any satisfaction he felt at having severed the link.

  The saw slipped from his numb fingers. Stephen hung the loop around his neck.

  He stumbled to the door and looked out. If there were watchers on the bank above, Stephen did not see them. But the time for caution had passed now that he had freed the chain.

  Stephen gulped, trying to steady his breathing, and went around to the river side of the house. He pulled the chain through the slot and laid it in the river where it would be out of sight if he was discovered now.

  He removed a white cloth from inside his underdrawers which was the signal that the chain had been cut and to haul away, waved it at the opposite bank, and plunged into the frigid river.

  The tide had turned during the time he was in the boom chain house. It was running in and the current pushed Stephen northward toward the bridge. He banged against a stone support and clung to it, hoping for a moment of rest. But his grip was weak and the current dragged him away. He stroked toward the west bank which seemed impossibly far away, as if the river had grown wider somehow. He didn’t seem to get any closer no matter how strongly he swam. His arms and legs felt leaden, the water like mud.

  Stephen’s face went under. He came up, sputtering water, as his arms and legs just gave up.

  He realized that he wasn’t going to reach the west bank. He was going to drown. His head slipped under the surface and he lost consciousness.

  Chapter 14

  “Well, wish me luck,” Stephen had said before he set out for the river.

  “Luck,” Harry and Gilbert replied together.

  They watched Stephen disappear into the dark followed by four archers who would provide immediate cover for the crossing. The soldiers tasked with pulling in the chain once it was freed hung back. There were twenty of them so that the work would go quickly. Guy Mortimer and Stephen had worried that so many showing up before he went in the river would attract attention.

  After some time, Guy said, “Let’s go. We’ve given him long enough.”

  Guy and the soldiers left for the river, their feet rustling the dry grass.

  “That water’s cold,” Gilbert said. He poked the embers of the fire with a stick.

  “I said I was sorry,” Harry said sharply.

  “I heard you. I didn’t mean anything by it. Just an observation.”

  “It is cold,” Harry said, his voice more conciliatory. He looked toward the river. “Are we just going to sit here?”

  “You are always sitting these days,” Gilbert said, still smarting from Harry’s sharp tone.

  “We’re just going to stay by the fire and do nothing?”

  “What can we do?”

  “I don’t know. Provide moral support? Cheer him on as he swims back?”

  “That will attract unwanted attention. Stealth is Stephen’s friend tonight.”

  Harry turned from the fire and began levering himself toward the river. “If something bad happens to him, I don’t want to hear about it afterward.”

  Gilbert caught up to Harry and walked beside him. “It’s a long way to the river.”

  “Not as far as it is from the Broken Shield to Broad Gate,” Harry said, grunting at the effort to go as fast as he could. He was referring to what had been his daily trek from his former home within the inn’s stables to his licensed begging place at the main southern gate of Ludlow. Now that he was a woodcarver with a growing business, he didn’t need to make that journey every day.

  “I don’t know about that,” Gilbert said.

  He hurried ahead of Harry and squatted down.

  “Come on, I’ll make an exception,” Gilbert said. “The grass is wet with dew and you’ll catch your death. I’ll be your mule one more time.”

  Harry patted Gilbert’s shoulder. “A mule is better looking. But you’ll do in a pinch.”

  It was quiet by the river apart from the lapping of the current, the hooting of an owl, and the breathing of the archers hiding in the tall grass along the west bank. Gilbert carried Harry around a knot of archers to a spot short of the lip of the bank and put him down with a muffled “Oof!”

  Harry pulled himself forward until he could see the river. He was at the foot of the bridge. The chain house was visible across the water as a light square in the dark. Nothing moved on the opposite bank at first until something stirred and a man’s figure became visible in the murk. The figure clambered down to the chain house and paused by its side. Several archers raised their bows in case of trouble, but the sound of pattering could be heard from across the water. Then the figure climbed the bank to the top and disappeared from view. The archers relaxed.

  Presently, another figure came around the corner of the house. It bent and pulled something at the side of the house, which it deposited in the river. The figure waved a white handkerchief before slipping into the water. Harry sighed with relief. Stephen had done what he intended and was getting away.

  However, it soon became clear Stephen was in trouble. The current, with the tide coming in, was strong and swept him beneath the bridge. Stephen bumped against one of the stone supports. He clung for a moment, then the current pulled him away and carried him upriver. Before he passed out of sight, Harry was convinced Stephen was making no progress and might not gain the west bank. He had done enough swimming in frigid water himself to know how it could sap the strength right out of you in a surprisingly short time.

  No one seemed concerned, or they hadn’t realized the danger, for none of the archers moved to aid Stephen. Instead, Guy had them up and hauling in the chain.

  Yet something had to be done.

  Harry swung toward the lip of the bank, vaulted the chain, then rolled to the water. He hit the surface with a splash, but since stealth was no longer important, he gave no heed to the commotion he created — the archers were doing well enough now in generating noise on their own.

  The icy water took Harry’s breath away, but he was expecting that. He reached out his powerful arms and stroked in the direction Stephen had disappeared, sucking air as well as he could between the gasps that threatened to snap some of his ribs. He spared a moment to feel more guilt at the partial dunking he had
inflicted on poor Gilbert. But only a moment. He was too busy swimming and keeping an eye out for Stephen for more than that.

  Stephen was nowhere to be seen.

  Then Harry spotted a rounded object on the surface, like a floating ball. There was some thrashing around the ball. The thrashing stopped and the ball sank from sight.

  Harry redoubled his efforts and reached the spot where he thought the ball had been; there was no way to be certain, though, since things looked different in the dark than they did in the light.

  He felt around under the water.

  Nothing.

  He felt some more, then dove. He stroked downward and felt around.

  Nothing.

  He had to resurface for air.

  Then he tried again.

  His fingers bumped something hard, something covered with wavy hair.

  There was no time to be gentle. Harry grasped a handful of hair with one hand and pulled for the surface with the other.

  Harry broke the surface, sucked in a lungful of air, and stroked for the bank, holding Stephen’s head above water with one hand. The bank seemed terribly, impossibly far away, although sunrise no doubt would reveal the distance to be only a few yards.

  At last, his flailing hand struck grass at the edge of the river. Harry’s fingers clutched the grass and he yanked Stephen up beside him. He lay beside Stephen for a moment, then settled his head over Stephen’s nose to see if he was still breathing. A warm trickle caressed Harry’s cheek, and he experienced a surge of relief.

  But Harry wasn’t finished. He had to get Stephen up the bank, since Stephen was unconscious and did not seem interested in providing any assistance.

  Harry dragged Stephen out as far as his waist, using his grip on Stephen’s hair since it was the most convenient and efficient handle. But that was as far as Harry could get.

  Then there were footfalls above, and Gilbert slipped down to him with two archers.

  “Is he … is he?” Gilbert asked with anguish.

  “No,” Harry said. “Not yet.”

  The archers pulled Stephen up and carried him toward the camp, while Gilbert, unaided, lifted Harry in his arms like a sack of grain and set him in the grass.

  “That water’s cold, isn’t it,” Gilbert panted from his exertions.

  “It is. I hope I never have to do anything like that again.”

  Stephen awoke, wrapped in two woolen blankets. He lay by a towering campfire. The back of his head was ghastly sore. He felt the injured place and his fingers came away bloody. It seemed someone had pulled out a patch of his hair.

  Harry sat a few feet away, as close as one could get to the fire without being set ablaze or turned into a roast, also wrapped in a blanket. He was next to a wooden rack. Harry’s clothes hung from the rack. Harry prodded the shirt with a stick and then reached over and felt the hem to see how wet it remained. Harry squeezed a finger and thumb together and water dribbled from between them. So, not dry yet. Stephen experienced the urge to urinate. He did not relish throwing off his blankets and arising in the cold to take care of this morning chore.

  Gilbert was sitting on a stump on the other side of the fire.

  “The conquering hero is back at last,” Gilbert said. “I thought you might sleep until noon.”

  “He is a lazy bum,” Harry said, without turning from his examination of the hanging laundry.

  Guy Mortimer, who had just come up behind Gilbert, walked around the fire and bent over Stephen now that he was awake. “You were damned lucky, you know,” he said. He straightened up and regarded Harry. “If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I would never have believed it!”

  “Believed what?” Stephen croaked.

  “Your savior, here,” Guy said, indicating Harry. “He went in after you. I never imagined anyone in Harry’s condition could move so quickly — or swim so well.”

  Stephen fingered the injured patch on his head again. “You pulled me out?” he asked Harry. “I think you damned near pulled out all my hair in the process.”

  “Only that one bit,” Harry said. “You’re a heavier bastard than you look. It was hard to get a grip on you, and then pulling you out — that took a bit of effort.”

  Harry produced a long clump of black hair from beneath his blanket. “Would you like it back?”

  “You can keep it,” Stephen said. “A memento of your heroism.”

  “The memory will be enough,” Harry said. He tossed the strand in the fire.

  Chapter 15

  The boom chain was re-erected upriver from the castle bridge by an hour after dawn so that the chain stretched across the river from one wooden butt to another. This did not escape the attention of the enemy, who watched from the walls along the quay. Enemy archers shot from the quay wall to impede the work, but they did little harm, wounding only one knight in the leg.

  When the boom was up, large forces of men-at-arms and archers defended each butt so there would be a big fight if the enemy attacked one or the other.

  Shortly after work on the boom finished, scouts rode in with word that two ferries laden with bundles of wood had passed into the east branch of the Severn. Not long after the scouts reported in, a hundred enemy men-at-arms and knights gathered on the quay beyond the castle ditch while archers covered them from behind and from the town wall.

  The tide was running out now, and it wasn’t long before the ferries appeared. The crews rowed the ferries to the town quay where the river curved south toward the castle bridge. They leaped to the bank while soldiers threw torches on the bundles of wood and pushed the ferries into the current, to drift down to the castle bridge. The wood smoked briefly then blazed up as if oil had been added.

  At the same time, the enemy infantry on the quay pushed forward to the ditch under cover of a hail of arrows.

  The ditch was filled with water and thick with weeds and water grass that should have been cleared away and the sides were not steep — it had not been dug with an assault from the town side in mind.

  A body of royalist knights and men-at-arms packed shield-to-shield faced the attackers at the top while royalist archers on the west bank showered the enemy with arrows of their own.

  The ditch did deadly enough work, however, by disrupting the attack as the enemy knights slipped and stumbled to the higher ground in ones, twos and threes rather than in the collective impact of a proper mass, but the fight was still fierce. The leading edge of the warbands seethed together while those behind awaited his turn in the front rank when the man before him was killed or wounded. Swords clattered on shields, clacked on helmets, or tinged against each other; spears flicked out like the tongues of deadly snakes; men shouted in encouragement, defiance or fear — it was hard to tell the difference in the confusion. Here and there, a man clouted on the helmet went down from the impact, dazed though not killed, except for a few struck with axes which burst helms and spattered brains and blood on those nearby. Several more died when stabbed in the face over their shields, for it was hard to see the death blow coming in the chaos.

  The sharpest fighting occurred around the butt securing the chain — the rebels’ obvious intention was to push the royalists back from the butt and release the chain so the fire boats could do their work against the bridge.

  Four times the enemy attacked across the ditch, and four times the royalist defenders threw them back with heavy losses suffered by the rebels, leaving bodies strewn on the slopes of the ditch and sinking into the swamp at its bottom; here and there a shield floated over where a man had disappeared.

  Only once did the rebels come close to success. A group of five enemy knights backed by ten men-at-arms hacked and pressed their way to the butt. Yet a desperate counterattack pushed them back, several knights and soldiers from both sides struck down to tumble into the ditch.

  The rebels would have tried again, but by now the fire boats were hung up on the chain. It was stretched at an angle across the river with the butt on the west bank upriver from the butt on the east.
The current took advantage of this incline by shoving the boats along the chain toward the east bank. They burned so furiously by then that it was too hot to approach the eastern butt, which began to smolder. Two brave lads fetched buckets, and darted close to douse the butt and in this way kept it wet enough that it did not catch fire.

  The proximity of the boats to the east butt and the height of the flames cut short another enemy attack and the rebels withdrew to the quay. The enemy soldiers watched the fires until the boats burned to the waterline, which sent clouds of ash and steam drifting over the castle wall, and then filed into the town.

  Stephen watched from the west bank, where Guy Mortimer placed him out of concern that he wasn’t up to a fight after his ordeal in the river.

  The man-at-arms at his shoulder spat into the river, and said, “Well, that was easy enough, weren’t it, sir.”

  “You can say that,” Stephen said. “You weren’t in the line.”

  “That’s true! Oh, look! Lord Edward has come out!”

  Edward emerged from the water gate and walked among the men on the castle quay who had repulsed the attack. He was in armor, but his head was unhelmeted and uncoifed so no one could mistake him for someone else; or perhaps it was a display meant for the enemy, to show his contempt for the archers still on the town quay no more than a hundred yards away. That majestic head, his blond hair in disarray about his long face, reared above those around him because of his great height and provided a fine target for the enemy, but they just watched the proceedings. Edward’s men smiled as he spoke, and Stephen guessed he was praising what they had done, a good thing for a commander to do since it boosted morale.

  Stephen expected Edward to return to the castle, but he and Roger Mortimer crossed the bridge.

  “My lord,” Guy Mortimer said when Lord Edward passed to the gate.