by Jack Whyte
He huddled miserably over the clay pot and retched dryly long after there was nothing left in him to expel. Eventually the spasms passed and some degree of calm returned to him, though his whole body quaked still like a man with the ague. Raising himself cautiously on extended arms, he spat a few more times to clear his mouth of sourness, then pushed the chamber pot cautiously back beneath the bed and allowed himself to topple sideways to the floor, where he lay curled like an infant, uncoiling only slowly as his body gradually accepted that the agony had ended.
He slept then, or dozed for a time, until the chill of the stone floor woke him in pitch-blackness. The single candle that had lit the room was burned out, and his entire body ached from lying on the stones, though the muscles of his belly still felt strained from the effort of retching. Grunting, he forced himself to kneel and then to stand, and then he lowered himself slowly and gratefully to the softness of the straw-filled mattress and pulled the bedclothes over him.
Yet still he could not sleep. The faceless woman remained there at the edge of his awareness, and he found himself reviewing his recent life and wondering, belatedly, what might have happened if the Earl of Pembroke had discovered that his precious granddaughter, whose marriage he had personally arranged, had been within miles of him that day and bent upon an adulterous night in the arms of the Scottish Earl of Carrick, whose position as a spoilt favourite of the King was an offence to the old Frenchman’s sensibilities. And then, from the unfocused contemplation of one old aristocrat, his chaotic thoughts swung without logic towards another, even older one, his own grandsire Lord Robert, patriarch of the House of Bruce. He saw and heard Sir James Jardine speaking of the old man and then he saw and heard the old man speaking for himself, and all of it was infuriatingly dreamlike, a flowing stream of disconnected thoughts without cohesion that left him more and more frustrated because he could make no sense of it.
* * *
He fell asleep eventually, for when he opened his eyes light was streaming past the edges of the shutters and he could hear people outside his room, but he felt as though he had not slept in days, and where he would normally have leapt from his bed to meet the new day he chose instead to shun this one, flinging himself away from the insistent light and holding his eyes tight-shut as he drew the covers over his head. The movement outside persisted, and once a raised female voice penetrated the darkness of the covers, causing him to sit upright, listening intently. The sound was not repeated, though, and soon the passageway outside his room was silent. His guests, he knew, were preparing to leave, and he threw back the covers and swung himself out of bed, crossing to the room’s single small window and cracking one of the shutters open far enough to enable him to look down into the outer yard, filled with horses and wagons and a bustling throng of people.
There were servants everywhere he looked, busily piling crates and chests of clothing and provisions into baggage carts and helping heavily muffled, well-dressed ladies into two large wagons with strong sides that supported thickly padded benches. Each wagon was harnessed to a team of four horses, and both vehicles were covered with a high canopy of tightly stretched leather panels mounted on a box-shaped frame, with tightly rolled side flaps that could be lowered against inclement weather. He watched as one of the ladies, a black-haired woman whose name he did not know, was helped up and into her seat. Just before she bent her head and disappeared beneath the canopy, she looked up at the sky then said something to one of the attendants. Bruce heard him shouting to some of his fellows, and in the yard beneath him, men began swarming over the women’s wagons, pulling down the weather flaps and securing them tightly.
The knights and other mounted men of the party were moving into formation, preparing to ride out towards the road, and Bruce remained there watching as the cavalcade slowly creaked into motion, with much shouting and cracking of whips until the entire train began to wend uniformly through the outer gates like a giant caterpillar. He saw no trace of Gwendolyn de Ferrers before he lost sight of the cavalcade as it passed through the gates, but he remembered the feeling that had swept over him the previous evening when he stood looking up at her above him on the stairs. He had felt oafish, he recalled; smelly and sweaty and dishevelled.
He pushed the shutter closed and stepped back towards his bed, still thinking about that feeling, then crossed to the door and threw it open, leaning out to see if anyone was nearby. One man was, cleaning something at the end of the passageway, and Bruce sent him to fetch Thomas Beg immediately.
He was standing at the foot of his bed, lost in thought, when Thomas Beg’s voice sounded from the doorway.
“I’m here. What d’ye need?”
“A bath.” He waited for a response and then turned to find the other man watching him, his left eyebrow riding high on his forehead. A raised eyebrow from Tam was the equivalent of a roar of surprise from another.
Tam nodded. “A bath. Aye … That’ll be a hot bath, I jalouse?”
“Aye, it will. It came to me last night that I need one … Something in the way the lady looked at me.”
“Was she close enough to smell ye?”
“No, I don’t think so. A good ten paces distant. But she was above me, looking down.”
“Ye had a bath at Eastertide. So did I.”
“That was in April, before Gransser died. This is June. There’s a tub in the kitchens. I saw it a while ago at the back of the pantry. Have it brought up here and then send some people to heat water and fill it for me. And I’ll need soap and towels.”
“Towels … Up here … A bath. Aye. I’ll do that. But what for? Ye’ll pardon me for wonderin’, I hope.”
“Don’t wonder. I’ll tell you why, since you’ve obviously forgotten. I have a bride arriving here today. She may be as ugly as a mountain hag or as smelly as a farrowing sow—and it’s possible she might be both—but I am determined that one of us, at least, will have no trace of stink about us when we meet. Will you fetch my bath now?”
Thomas Beg shrugged his enormous shoulders and nodded. “I’ll see to it,” he said, and left.
The bath made him feel whole again, though he could not have said how or why, and when Thomas Beg approached him afterwards, brandishing a pair of hand shears as Bruce was pulling on a clean shirt, he looked askance at the big man.
“You think that necessary?”
“If ye want the lass to see your face, aye.”
“I’m not sure I do … Not until I’ve seen hers, at least.” But he sat down obediently, none the less, and sat patiently as Tam trimmed his hair and beard. For all his great size, Thomas Beg could be surprisingly deft and gentle.
Eventually Tam took a step back, cleaning the gleaming edges of the sharpened shears abstractedly with an extended finger as he squinted at the results of his ministrations. He nodded once. “That’ll do,” he growled. “Now ye’ll no’ frighten her. An’ don’t you be expectin’ sympathy frae me about how sad it is that ye’ve been saddled wi’ a sow. Sir James Jardine telt me she’s a fine-looking lass. Too skinny for his taste, he says, but he’s a man wha thinks every woman should hae an arse like a horse.”
He delivered one final flick of his towel end and stepped back again, dropping his arm to his side. “There! Is there anythin’ else ye’d need? I’ve ither things to see to. Ye ken where I’ll be gin ye hae need o’ me again.”
“I do. What hour is it? I’ve no idea.”
That earned him yet another raised eyebrow, but the answer was mild enough. “It lacks about an hour to mid-mornin’ an’ it’s been pishin’ rain since daybreak … Ye havena eaten yet?” At Bruce’s headshake he quirked his mouth. “Well, ye’d better see if Allie has anythin’ left on the fire. It’s no’ like you to go hungry an’ it winna do ye any good to meet your new countess on an empty stomach. I’ll see ye later.”
A half-hour later, having eaten a bowl of thick, honey-sweetened porridge with cream by the kitchen fireplace, Bruce trudged back to the house through smashing rain that had turn
ed from a mere downpour into a deluge. He made his way directly to the tower roof, to stare at the bleak prospect of the waterlogged countryside without a single thought for the train of departed guests from the night before, who had long since disappeared into the sullen mists.
The Essex house was no castle, but it was fortified none the less, sufficiently so to withstand any casual raiding party that might come its way, and from the top of the tower, thirty feet above the ground, he could hear the noise of the torrents of water from the roof drains crashing into the puddles below the walls. From up there, on any other day, he could have seen for more than a mile in the direction from which his father would approach. Thanks to the downpour, though, and the lowering clouds that shed it, the road to the northeast was invisible, and he was cursing himself for a fool for being out there in the storm at all, knowing that there was no possibility of the Annandale party arriving for hours, if they came at all.
The road they followed was an ancient one, strongly made and almost arrow-straight, built by the Romans a thousand years earlier and running all the way southwest from Colchester to London. Even so, had they left Sir Roger Fitz Allen’s place at dawn and made good speed on the road, Bruce knew it would take them six hours to cover the thirty-mile distance. He knew, too, that the ferocity of the storm around him was too great for this to be any more than a local phenomenon. He told himself that it was far more likely that his father, with women in his train, would have enjoyed a leisurely breakfast with their host and then set out once the morning sun had dried the chill dew from the grass. By now, with less than two hours remaining before their projected arrival, they would most certainly have ridden into the fringes of the storm and perhaps might even have taken shelter in a roadside tavern, waiting for it to pass. Wherever they were, sheltered or not, he doubted that they would reach their destination much before mid-afternoon, and when they did they would be battered and travel worn.
* * *
The storm had passed when, an hour and more after noon, Bruce looked out again from the top of the tower, but it had lasted for more than six hours, a drenching downpour the like of which not even the eldest in the Bruce household could remember, and the entire countryside was flooded. He could see the north road this time, stretching arrow-straight to where the forest swallowed it a mile away, but it showed no sign of life, coming or going.
He walked around the perimeter of the square roof, staring out. As far as he could see in every direction, the new spring crops were drowning in vast, lake-like pools of water, and on the northeastern side, wide channels of brown, glistening mud reflected from the deeply rutted roads that met beyond the gates. Within the outer walls, the yard was a quagmire, churned into a glutinous morass that had sucked the boots off more than a few feet once people started to move around again. It was still raining heavily, but no more than was normal for a June day, and the clouds had retreated into the sky where they belonged, allowing the cheerless daylight to expose the devastation.
He had returned to his starting point, looking out to the northeast again, when he heard nailed boots scraping the steps in the tower behind him, and he turned to see who was coming just as a low, distant thunderclap rolled and rumbled somewhere to the eastward. Stooped in the narrow doorway of the entrance to the stairs, Sir James Jardine had heard it, too, and he paused with one hand on the door frame, looking up in wide-eyed surprise.
“What in God’s name was that?”
“Thunder,” Bruce answered, wondering what Sir James could want up here. “I’m surprised we haven’t had more of it.” He waved a hand to indicate the distant fields as Jardine straightened and stepped outside. “Look at this. Have you ever seen the like?”
The two men stood side by side for a while, gazing out at the scene and directing each other’s attention to various sights that caught their eye. Neither man doubted that the damage they were looking at was catastrophic and neither wanted to be the first to acknowledge the probable cost of it. The crops, mainly oats and barley, were resilient, but even so their survival was in question. It was Jardine, a landowner all his life, who put the thoughts into words.
“You have good drainage here?”
“As far as I’m aware. We’ve never had a problem in the past. But I doubt we’ve ever been hit by anything like this, either.”
“What’s underneath? Sand or clay?”
Bruce shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never needed to know.”
“Well, ye’ll find out now. If it’s sand, this will sink an’ settle quick enough. If it’s clay, ye’ll hae to ditch it to drain it, an’ ye’ll lose the crops.” He straightened suddenly, lifting a hand to point. “What’s yon?”
Beside him, Bruce drew himself up and looked to the northeast, along the line of Jardine’s pointing finger. “Light on metal. My father’s here, I think.”
A few minutes later the approaching movement had resolved itself into a party of travellers accompanying several wheeled conveyances.
“Aye, it’s Annandale right enough,” Jardine murmured, hitching his cloak about him. “I should ride out to meet them.”
Bruce turned to him in genuine surprise. “Why would you do that? Why would you want to plouter through all that, up to your arse in mud, when there’s no need? They’ll arrive when they arrive, whether you ride out to them or not. Better you stay here to welcome them with me and greet them civilly in clean, dry clothes, don’t you agree?”
Jardine was about to speak when they heard a commotion swelling up behind and below them, on the eastern side of the tower. Voices were shouting in a chorus that grew rapidly louder, and then the metallic sound of an alarm as someone pounded frantically on the steel triangle that hung from a cross-post in the yard below. Bruce strode quickly to the side of the tower and leaned over. Below, men and women ran from everywhere, converging on the alarm post with its clanging summons.
“Tam!” he roared, seeing the man’s giant form immediately. “Tam! Up here!”
The big man heard him and looked up, craning his neck to see Bruce high on the battlements and then cupping his hands around his mouth. “The stables, sir!” he bellowed. “They’re collapsed wi’ the rain, and they’re on fire!”
That thunder. The thought was instantaneous. It was the building coming down. He cupped his hands around his own mouth. “Is anybody hurt?”
“Aye, it looks like it. Horses and folk. Ye’d better come.”
Bruce swung back to where Sir James stood watching him. “You heard that? A building came down. The thunder we heard. It was the stables. There’s a fire and folk are hurt.”
Jardine was already heading towards the stairs. “A fire, in this? I’ll come wi’ ye.”
“No! I’ll see to it.” Bruce gestured sharply towards the approaching cavalcade. “My father’s nearly here. Meet them at the gates for me, if you will, and welcome them. Tell them what’s happened and take them inside, then see to their comfort for me. I’ll be indebted to you. Tell my father I’ll return as soon as I am able. Will you do that?”
Jardine merely nodded, his usual scowl firmly in place, and Bruce ran for the stairs.
* * *
The building that housed the stables was ancient, older than the house itself and built of heavy river stones, some of them man-sized, that had been mortared together in a time long past. It was two storeys high and windowless above the ground floor, its second level a hayloft and the roof space above that, accessed by a sturdy wooden ladder, used for various other kinds of storage, including extra harness and surplus or seldom-used farm implements. Men seethed around it, scrambling over piles of debris and coughing in dense, yellow-roiling smoke, but Bruce saw at first glance what had happened. A torrent of filthy water had come spewing down from what had been the little stream on the gentle hillside beyond, destroying the small pond by the stable wall and surging over its banks to batter at the stonework of the old building’s corner where the mortaring between the stones had rotted. The pressure of the pounding water
must have quickly found the weaknesses in the ancient walls, and over the course of hours it had destroyed the entire corner. The walls above had given way, too, pulling the entire structure down into crashing ruin. The floors of the upper levels, and all their stores, had crashed down upon the horses inside, and the screams of the trapped and injured animals—and perhaps of the people caught inside with them—were hellish. A lantern had smashed in the collapse, and smoke was already pouring from the piles of hay among the debris.
The farm manager had a bucket chain established within minutes, a string of sweating, cursing men battling to keep a supply of water flowing up from the still-raging stream. Bruce nodded to him grimly. He knew, though, that despite the tremendous rainfall that day, the tons of hay now feeding the fire had been warm and bone dry when they tumbled from the floor above, and that it was only a matter of time, perhaps mere moments, before the fire would erupt into an inferno.
He shrugged out of his heavy cloak and pulled off his shirt, crumpling it into a ball and then soaking it in the rushing water at his feet before wrapping it around his lower face against the thickening smoke. Scrambling to keep his balance on the treacherous stones that threatened to roll under his feet, he fought his way up to the top of the pile and stood looking down into the chaos of the interior. The fire was on his far right, a dense pall of yellow and black smoke that showed no hint of flame, though the fuel beneath the surface must have been burning like a charcoal burner’s kiln. Directly below where he stood, the well of the floor was a mass of bales, hay and straw, most of them intact. In one spot, though, loose hay heaved alarmingly, and he realized that there must be a horse beneath it, struggling to free itself. Beyond that a section of the collapsed floor of the hayloft hung loosely, sagging from one corner and forming a sloping wooden wall that concealed the rear of the stables on that side. He could hear the panicked screams of horses coming from behind the rough partition, and he swung around, looking for someone he could trust.