by Ellis Peters
They were almost at the doorway when a ripple of flame flowed suddenly along the surface of a roofbeam, peeling off the unplaned surface in a flurry of sparks, and caught the coarse homespun curtain that served to shut out the cold wind when the doors were closed and the household home at night. The dry, hairy cloth went up in a gush of flame, and fell in their path, a great folded cushion of fire. Olivier kicked it furiously aside, and swung Yves before him round the billowing bonfire towards the doorway.
“Out! Get to the open, and hide!”
If Yves had obeyed him to the letter, he might well have escaped notice, but having reached clear air, with the sweep of the steps and the loud turmoil of the bailey before him, he turned to look back anxiously, for fear the fire, blaming now to a man’s height, had trapped Olivier within. The pause cost him and his friends all that they had gained together, for more than half the bailey was then in Beringar’s hands, and the remnant of the garrison driven back into a tight knot of fighting round the hall, and while Yves’ back was turned upon his enemies, and he hung hesitating whether to rush back to stretch a hand to his friend, Alain le Gaucher, hard-pressed at the foot of the steps to his own hall, cut a wide swathe before him to clear his ground, and leaped backwards up the wide timber stairway. They all but collided, back to back. Yves turned to run, too late. A great hand shot out and gripped him by the hair, and a roar of triumph and defiance rose even above the clamor of arms and the thunderous crackling of bursting beams. In a moment le Gaucher had his back against the pillar of his doorway, secure from attack from the rear, and the boy clamped to his body before him, with a naked sword, already red, braced across his throat.
“Stand, every man! Down arms and draw off!” bellowed the lion, his tawny man bristling and glaring in the flickering light of the fires. “Back! Further, I say! Let me see a clear space before me. If any man so much as draw bow, this imp dies first. I have got my warranty again! Now, king’s man, where are you? What will you pay for his life? A fresh horse, free passage out, and no pursuit, on your oath, or I slit his throat, and his blood be on your head!”
Hugh Beringar thrust through to the fore and stood, eyes levelled upon le Gaucher. “Draw back,” he said without turning his head. “Do as he says.”
The entire circle, king’s men and outlaw’s men together, drew back inch by inch and left a great space of trampled and stained snow before the steps of the hall. Hugh moved back with them, though keeping his place in front. What else could he do? The boy’s head was strained back against his captor’s body, the steel touching his stretched neck. A false move and he would be dead. A few of the garrison began to edge out of the press, backwards towards the stockade and the gate, in the hope of finding a way out while all eyes were on the pair isolated at the top of the steps. The guard on the gate would deal with them, but who would deal with this ruthless and desperate creature? Everyone retreated before him.
Not everyone! Through the press, unnoticed by any until he reached the open space, came lurching a strange and solitary figure, limping and wavering, but marching ahead out of the crowd without pause, straight towards the steps. The red light of the fires trembled over him. A tall, emaciated man in a black habit, the cowl dropped back on his shoulders. Two puckered scars crossed his tonsured head. There was blood on his sandalled feethe left stains on the snow as he trod and blood on his brow from a fall in the rocky ground. Great, hollow eyes in a livid face stared upon Alain le Gaucher. A pointing hand accused him. A loud, imperious voice cried out at him:
“Leave go of the boy! I have come for him, he is mine.”
Intent upon Hugh Beringar, le Gaucher had not seen the newcomer until then. His head jerked round, astonished that anyone should break the silence he had imposed, or dare to cross the neutral ground he had exacted.
The shock was brief, but shattering while it lasted, and it lasted long enough. For one moment Alain le Gaucher saw his dead man advancing on him, terrible, invulnerable and fearless, saw the wounds he himself had inflicted still bloody, and the face he had murdered corpse-pale. He forgot the hostage. His hands sank nervelessly, and the sword with them. The next instant he knew past doubt that the dead do not rise, and recovered himself with a scream of rage and scorn, but too late to recover his ascendancy. Yves had slid from between his hands like an eel, dived under his arm and darted away down the steps.
Running blindly, he collided with a welcome solidity and warmth, and clung panting and spent, his eyes closed. Brother Cadfael’s voice said in his ear: “Softly, now, you’re safe enough. Come and help me with Brother Elyas, for he’ll go nowhere without you, now he’s found you. Come, let’s get him out of this, you and I together, and do what we can for him.”
Yves opened his eyes, still panting and trembling, and turned to stare back at the doorway of the hall. “My friend is in there … my friend who helped me!”
He broke off there, drawing in breath to heave a huge, hopeful, fearful sigh. For Hugh Beringar, the instant the hostage was free, had darted forward to do battle, but another was before him. Out of the smoke and fire-shot blackness of the doorway surged Olivier, soiled and singed and sword in hand, sprang past le Gaucher to find elbow-room, and in passing struck him on the cheek with the flat of the blade, by way of notice of intent. The tawny mane flew as le Gaucher sprang round to face him. The silence that had exploded in shudderings of wonder at the apparition of Brother Elyas fell again like a stone. Everyone heard clearly the voice that trumpeted disdainfully: “Now have ado with a man!”
There would be no moving Yves now, not until this last duel was resolved. Cadfael kept hold of him thankfully, though he need not have troubled, for the boy’s small fists were clenched in his sleeve for mortal reassurance. Brother Elyas, his bearings lost, looked about him for his boy, and came limping painfully to touch, to comfort and be comforted, and Yves, without for an instant taking his worshipping eyes from Olivier, detached one hand from his hold on Cadfael to accept Elyas’ clasp just as fiercely. For him everything now depended on this man to man encounter, from head to foot he was quivering with partisan passion. Both Cadfael and Elyas felt it and were infected by it, and stared as he stared upon this tall, agile, slender person poised with spread feet at the top of the steps. For all his smoke-soiled visage and common country garments, Cadfael knew him again.
And no one meddled, not even Hugh, who might have intervened by virtue of his office. Between his men and these thieves and murderers there would be no more fighting until this fight was over. There was that about the challenge that forbade interference.
It did not appear a very even combat, le Gaucher double his opponent in age and weight and experience, if not in reach and agility. And it did not last long. Le Gaucher, once he had viewed his challenger, came on confidently in a steady, battering onslaught, bent on driving the young man from his stance and backwards down the steps. Yet after long, increasingly furious attacks the boya mere half-trained peasant, at that!had scarcely shifted his balance, not given back a pace, and everywhere the hacking blade crashed in, his sword was there to turn it aside. He stood and seemed at ease, while his adversary flailed at him and wasted energy. Yves gazed with huge, praying eyes, rigid from crown to toe. Elyas clung mutely to the hand he clasped, and quivered to its tension. Brother Cadfael watched the young man Olivier, and recalled disciplines he had almost forgotten, a manner of sword-play bred from the clash of east and west, and borrowing from both.
There was no moving this swordsman, if he gave an inch one moment he regained it the next, added to it the next. It was le Gaucher who was being edged back by degrees to the rim of the steps, while he wasted his strength to no avail.
The lion lunged once more, with all his weight. His heel was too near the edge of the icy stir, his lunge too reckless, the forward pressure slid his rearward foot from under him, and he hung out of balance, struggling for recovery. Olivier sprang forward like a hunting leopard, and drove down with all his weight, clean through the disrupted guard a
nd into the exposed breast. The sword went in halfway to the hilt, and he braced both feet and leaned back on his heel to hoist his blade clear.
The lion’s carcase dropped from the withdrawing point, arms spread, flew outwards on its back, landed three steps lower, and rolled ponderously, with an awful dignity, from stair to stair, to come to rest on its face at Hugh Beringar’s feet, and bled what was left of its life away into the defiled snow.
Chapter Fourteen
It was over, once their leader was dead, and seen to be dead. They broke in all directions, some running to try and find a way of escape, some fighting to the death, some bargaining vainly, some having the sense to surrender and hope to make a passable case for themselves thereafter. There were over sixty prisoners to be rounded up, besides the dead, any amount of plunder to drag out from hall and stores before all went up in fire, a passable flock of stolen sheep and herd of cattle to feed and water until they could be driven down to better lodging. Dinan undertook the custody of the prisoners, captured within his lordship. No need to doubt his adherence to law where his own writ was challenged.
The fire spread, and when all that was savable was brought out, they spread the flames of intent. The castle stood solitary, clear of the trees, on solid rock, it could burn to the bone and threaten nothing else. It had been a stain upon the countryside in its short and ignoble life, it might well be a passing blemish in its death.
The strangest thing, though unremarked by most in the general turmoil, was the disappearance of the unknown champion only minutes after he had felled the castellan. Every eye had followed that prodigious fall, and by the time they had stirred out of their daze and looked about, the chaos of flight and capture had broken out all around, and no one had seen the young countryman make off silently into the night.
“Gone like a shadow,” said Hugh, “when I should have liked to know him better. And never a word as to where he may be found, when the king’s Grace owes him a debt any sane man would be eager to collect. You are the only one who has spoken with him, Yves. Who is this paladin?”
Half-drunk with the lassitude of relief after stress, and the exhaustion of safety after terror, Yves said what he had been taught to say, and fronted Hugh with a clear stare and guileless face as he did so. “That was the forester’s son who sheltered Ermina, and brought her to Bromfield. It was he told me she’s there. I knew nothing of that until then. She is really there?”
“She is, safe enough. And what is the name of this forester’s son? And more to the purpose,” said Hugh thoughtfully, “where did he learn his swordcraft?”
“His name is Robert. He told me he was searching for me, as he promised Ermina he would, and he saw the raiders coming back here, and followed their tracks. I know no more about him,” said Yves stoutly, and if he blushed as he said it, the night covered the blush.
“Certainly we seem to breed redoutable foresters in these parts,” said Hugh drily. But he did not press it further.
“And now,” said Cadfael, intent on his own business, “if you’ll lend me four good men, and let us have the use of all these fresh horses, they’ll be better on the move to the Bromfield stables, now they’ve no roof over their heads here, and I can get these two home to their beds. I can leave you my scrip. We’ll rig a litter for Brother Elyas, and purloin whatever blankets and brychans are still unburned to wrap him up on the way.”
“Take what you need,” said Hugh. There were seven horses fresh from the stable, besides the common hill-ponies Yves had seen used to bring home plunder. “Stolen, all or most of them,” said Hugh, looking them over. “I’ll have Dinan give it out wherever they’ve had losses, they can come to Bromfield and claim their own. The cattle and sheep we’ll bring into Ludlow later, after the fellow at Cleeton has picked out his. But best get Brother Elyas away as fast as you can, if he’s to live. The marvel is he’s survived even this far.”
Cadfael marshalled his helpers to good effect, and took his pick of the furnishings dragged out of the burning hall, to swaddle Brother Elyas in a cocoon of blankets, and fashion a secure cradle for him between two horses. He took thought to load, also, two sacks of fodder from the ransacked stores, in case the sudden arrival of seven horses should tax the resources of Bromfield. The spurt of energy and authority that had animated Elyas when there was most need of him had deserted him as soon as his work was done, and his boy delivered. He yielded himself into their hands docilely, and let them do what they would with him, astray between apathy and exhaustion, and half dead with cold. Cadfael eyed him with much concern. Unless some new fire could be kindled in him, to make life an imperative as it had been when he saw Yves threatened, Elyas would die.
Cadfael took Yves on his own saddle-bow, as once before, for the child was now so weary that he could not walk without stumbling, and if allowed to ride would probably fall asleep in the saddle. A good Welsh brychan wrapped him for warmth, and before they had wound their way down the spiral path and into easier country, as briskly as was safe in the dark, his chin was on his chest, and his breathing had eased and lengthened into deep sleep. Cadfael shifted him gently to rest in the hollow of his shoulder, and Yves stretched a little, turned his face warmly into the breast of Cadfael’s habit, and slept all the way back to Bromfield.
Once well away into the fields, Cadfael looked back. The sheer bulk of the hill rose blackly, crested with a coronal of fire. It would take Beringar and Dinan the rest of the night to round up all their prisoners, and shift the beasts down to Cleeton, where John Druel might know bis own, and thence on to Ludlow. The terror was over, and more economically than might have been expected. Over for this time, thought Cadfael. Over, perhaps, for this shire, if Prestcote and Hugh can keep their grip as firm in the future. But where royal kinsfolk are tearing each other for a crown, lesser men will ride the time for their own gain, without scruple or mercy.
And where they did so, he reflected, every villainy for miles around would be laid at their door, and some of the crimes might well be laid there unjustly. Even villains should bear only the guilt that belongs to them. And never, now, could Alain le Gaucher speak up in his own defense, and say: “This, and this, and this I have donebut this, this despoiling and murder of a young nun, this deed is none of mine.”
They came to Bromfield about Prime, and rode in at the gatehouse into a court swept clear. No new snow had fallen in the night. The change was coming, by noon there might even be the brief promise of a thaw. Yves awoke, yawned, stretched and remembered. He was wide awake in a moment, unwinding himself from his wrappings and scrambling down to help carry Brother Elyas back to his forsaken bed. Hugh’s men-at-arms took the horses to stable. And Brother Cadfael, glancing up towards the guest-hall, saw the door flung open, and Ermina peering out across the twilit court.
The torch above the door lit up a face utterly vulnerable in its wild mingling of hope and dread. She had heard the horses, and rushed out just as she was, barefoot, her hair loose about her shoulders. Her eyes lit upon Yves, busy unloosing the bindings of Brother Elyas’ litter, and suddenly her face softened and glowed into so dazzling a radiance of joy and gratitude that Cadfael stood and stared from pure pleasure. The worst shadow soared from her like a bird rising, and was gone. She still had a brother.
Yves, perhaps fortunately, was so busy with his sick protégé and protector that he never glanced in her direction. And Cadfael was not in any way surprised when she did not rush to welcome and embrace, but withdrew softly and stealthily into the guest-hall, and closed the door.
Accordingly, he did not hurry the boy away too hastily from the small infirmary room where they had brought Brother Elyas, and Yves did not run to be embraced, either. He knew, he had been assured over and over, that she was here waiting for him. Both of them required a little time to prepare for the reunion. Only when he had dressed Brother Elyas’ wounded and frost-pinched feet, packed them round with soft wool and warmed tiles, bathed his face and hands and fed him spiced and honeyed wine, and heaped h
im with the lightest covering he had to hand, did Cadfael take Yves firmly by the shoulder, and steer him towards the guest-hall.
She was sitting by the fire, sewing at a gown brought for her from Ludlow, to alter it to her own measure, and none too willingly to judge by her scowl, when Yves entered with Brother Cadfael ‘s hand on his shoulder. She put her work aside, and rose. Perhaps she saw attack in her brother’s jutting lip and levelled eye, for she stepped forward briskly, and kissed him in a chill, admonishing, female manner.
“And a fine dance you have led everyone,” she said severely, “running off into the night like that, without a word to a soul.”
“That you should be the one to say so, who have caused all this pother!” Yves retorted loftily. “I have brought my affair to success, madam. You ran off into the night without a word to a soul, and come back profitless and as arrogant as ever, but you had better sing a lower tune if you want to be listened to here. We have had more urgent matters to think about.”
“You’ll have plenty to say to each other,” said Brother Cadfael, benignly blind and deaf to bickering, “and plenty of time hereafter to say it. But now Yves should be in his bed, for he’s had a couple of nights that could wear out any man. He needs a long day’s sleep, and if I have a physician’s authority, I order it.”
She rose to it with alacrity, though still scowling. She had his bed ready, probably smoothed with her own hands, she would shoo him into it like a hen-wife harrying her chicks, and when he was in it, and fast asleep, she would probably hang over him possessively, and have food ready for him when he stirred. But never, never would she admit that she had grieved and fretted over him, even wept, or that she had bitterly repented her rash departure. And surely that was well, for the boy would be dismayed and embarrassed if ever she bent her neck to him and begged forgiveness.