Behind them, someone moved, breaking the spell. Ariel stayed at the window but Eduard turned away at once, his boots striding deliberately through the silence, winning the desired chorus of groans, yawns, and shifting bodies.
Henry rolled himself upright and rubbed his fists into his eyes. “God love me, it cannot be morning already. I vow I barely closed my eyes an hour ago.”
“Aye, well, mine eyes as well as mine nostrils have opened and shut like a fishmonger’s mouth the whole night long,” Sparrow grumbled. He slanted a meaningful glance at Sedrick, who proceeded to break wind with a satisfying grunt of pleasure. “Hark! The Toothless Wonder speaks again. A moment yet and we will all swear something died in yon breeks.”
“Bah! ’Tis better than a belch for cleaning the pipes,” Sedrick declared, blowing again for emphasis.
Sparrow screwed his eyes down to slits and hefted his arblaster. “If it be thine pipes that need cleaning, messire, I have a keener way to drill them through.”
Henry, caught between the pair of antagonists, eyed the quiver of bolts Sparrow was reaching for and moved prudently out of the way. He saw Ariel standing by the window and joined her, hesitating half a moment before he ran his hand through his hair and ventured to speak.
“You know, no one will think any the less of you if you—”
“—find I have come to my senses during the night and changed my mind?” she finished with a wry smile. “Will you also act sensibly and remain behind with me?”
Henry frowned and scratched thoughtfully at his scalp. “I believe I had a sensible day … once. It is not entirely out of the realm of the possible to think I might be inspired to have another some day.”
“Be sure to come and find me when you do. I will want to bear witness.”
“Aye, Cardigan is only a day’s ride from Pembroke; at least I will not have to look far to find you.”
Her smile slipped a little at the corners, but she took his hand and gave it a squeeze. “You are far more sensible than you will ever admit. That is why I had no fear in going to Normandy with you, and why I have no fear riding into Corfe with you now. Between you and”—she almost said FitzRandwulf, but caught her tongue at the last possible instant—“and the others, I know we will be riding out again … probably with more haste than what we ride in with, but intact all the same.”
He tucked a finger under her chin and tilted her face up. “Good God, I believe you really mean it.”
“I do, buffoon. And your doubting me does you little credit. You know I love you and trust you and value your opinion above all others. It may not always appear so,” she added softly. “Nor do I always welcome your advice with grace and gratitude, but I always listen to it and trust it comes from the heart. As you say, we only have each other to watch out for.”
A retort that normally would have been glib and dismissive was stalled in Henry’s throat. She was being sincere and honest with her emotions, something that occurred all too infrequently, and he could not help but wonder at the cause. He was neither blind nor deaf, and he had been the one to scrape a boot on the floor and interrupt the conversation between his sister and Eduard FitzRandwulf … something that was beginning to occur all too frequently. He preferred to see Ariel’s eyes hot green and flaring with contempt when she spoke with the Wolf’s cub, not soft and questioning and afraid to make contact.
He would have to redouble his efforts to keep them apart, although, in light of where they were going and what they would be doing, he could not, in all honesty, wish a better man to be watching his sister’s back.
Jean de Brevant and a small escort of men-at-arms rode out of the main gates of Corfe a little before noon. Having never seen the man in daylight before, Eduard was as surprised as the others by the captain’s appearance. The mountainous silhouette of ominous shadows became a barrel-chested pillar of brawn and muscle with a face that put a carved grotesque to shame. He was younger than the harshness of his voice had suggested—twenty-two or three, perhaps—and wore his authority with as much assurance as he wore his impressive hauberk of jazerant work. Glittering rows of round steel plates were attached to an underlying suit of canvas, with each plate overlapping slightly like the scales of a fish. Even more daunting to the eyes of the beholder was the weapon he carried—no ordinary sword, this, but a glaive, long-handled and curved like a scimitar, boasting a sharply barbed hook on the concave edge. He made an impressive and intimidating sight riding down the street toward the inn. Villagers stopped what they were doing to stare. Even the dogs and kites that usually chased after horses’ heels, yapping their imitation of Bedlam, cringed mutely by the roadside.
Sedrick of Grantham, who was accustomed to owning the advantage of size in most company was clearly lacking in this instance. And Eduard, who rarely felt slight by comparison to any man, allowed a moment for his ingrained fighter’s instincts to reflect back over his years of training and combat and wonder what tactics would be effective against such a foe … if, indeed, there were any.
Hopefully he would have no reason to draw upon them.
Brevant’s mount, a behemoth of horseflesh in its own right, drew to a halt outside the inn. Lord Henry de Glare, assuming the guise of leader, walked out under the leaden sky to offer greetings.
“My lord Gisbourne finds himself at a loss how to apologize for this oversight,” Brevant announced without preamble. “When he was informed there were members of the Pembroke household”—his wary black eyes slid to the marshal’s device, now boldly displayed on the front of Henry’s surcoat—“staying within sight of the castle, he immediately bade me—Captain Jean de Brevant—extend an invitation to you and your party to share more suitable lodgings.”
“My thanks to you, Captain Brevant,” Henry responded. “We would naturally be pleased and honoured to accept.”
Brevant smirked and glanced at the inn. “I am also informed there is a wounded man in your group? Does he require a litter?”
“An unfortunate accident,” Henry allowed. “Serious enough to waylay us a few days while he attempts to recover his strength. A litter is unnecessary, but would be most appreciated, I am sure.”
While Brevant signalled two of his men forward with a chair, Henry turned and raised his hand. The door to the inn opened at once and Lord Dafydd ap Iorwerth, supported on one side by Sedrick and on the other by Eduard, was helped out into the street and lifted onto the chair. He groaned audibly as his arm took a small jolt before the sling was adjusted, whereupon he slumped forward in the seat as if he was only able to maintain his balance with the utmost effort. Two more of Brevant’s men stepped out of line and joined their comrades as they prepared to lift the carrying poles. Eduard, who was trying to remain as unobtrusive as possible, met the captain’s eye over the top of the litter as it was hoisted, and acknowledged him with a slight nod of his head before taking up a position beside Lucifer.
Ariel and Robin were the last to emerge, and the only ones who wrought a noticeable change to the blank expression on Brevant’s face. Ariel wore a deep green velvet tunic she had carried folded in her saddle pouch. The cuffs and hem were banded with gold braid, the collar of miniver fur was turned down in a deep vee to display the pure white delicacy of her throat. Her hair had been parted in the middle and plaited into two thick coils behind each ear, held in place by jeweled barbettes. Over all she wore a hooded cloak in a matching green velvet, lined with fur and trimmed with bands of embroidery. Her face was as pale as her breath as she said a few words to Robin, who instantly darted forward as if to obey a command from his mistress.
Oddly enough, it was Robin whose further actions were followed by the jet black eyes, followed and frowned upon with a look of distinct unease. The reason for this was made clear when Henry was mounted alongside Brevant and the latter was able to whisper a low warning.
“You might want to keep your squire close by your side and not leave him alone in Gisbourne’s company. The governor has a fondness for pretty boys and has not
seen one quite so comely in some time. Unless, of course,” he added consideringly, “the boy has no objections himself. It would be the one sure way to keep Gisbourne’s attentions occupied elsewhere.”
Henry glanced over, startled. “I can promise you the lad would not be inclined to bend over for anyone, for any reason. Nor would it behoove you to suggest it in a voice loud enough for his brother to overhear.”
The emphasis on brother was supplemented by a pointed nod in Eduard’s direction.
“Godstrewth!” Brevant scoffed. “Brothers, sisters … happens did you bring a granny or two along to tuck you to bed at night?”
“Nay, friend,” Henry answered blithely. “But we do have a faery dwarf who serves just as well.”
“Eh? A dwarf?”
“Aye, a poxy little gnome who probably has your nose aligned along the shaft of one of his arrows as we speak. He has chosen not to accept the governor’s invitation, preferring to remain here and keep a firm eye on who goes and comes from the castle once we are inside. He is the vindictive sort too; an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. With the patience of Job when it comes to avenging himself on someone foolish enough to double-cross his master.”
Brevant merely snorted aside the implied threat and turned his steed, calling to the others to follow his lead up the steep incline toward the castle. The porters lifted the chair and the men-at-arms fell into step behind the captain, the lady, and the three mounted knights.
Despite having had the walls and towers of Corfe Castle under constant scrutiny for the past two days, and despite having studied it from every angle and view conceivable, nothing quite prepared them for the effect of the king’s stronghold once they had ridden close enough for the walls to grow and blot out the sky. The block and mortar showed the wear of heavy weather and sea air. With no moat to carry away the ordure and refuse dumped from the high battlements, there was a stench that lingered about the walls, as thick as the mists that dampened them. A blanket of lichen grew up from the base, greenest and richest where the dung heaps were mounded. There was another shallow gully, naturally carved in the land, where the rotting carcasses and entrails of animals won the screaming attention of gulls and other carrion.
From a distance, Corfe seemed bleak and forbidding. Up close, the walls were higher, darker, more unwholesome than any Ariel had ever seen. Knowledge of the cruelty and terror that awaited most visitors inside prompted a deeper chill than the weather, and, had either FitzRandwulf or Henry repeated the offer they had made earlier that morning, she would gladly have swung her palfrey around and bolted for cleaner air.
But even before the creaking portcullis was lowered behind them and the enormous inner gates were closed and barred, she knew there could be no turning back. She could not begin to imagine anyone—noble or common—being condemned to imprisonment in a place such as this. From the filthy, leering faces of the guards who sullenly watched them pass, to the steaming grates cut into the cobbles where air was vented from the maze of donjons carved below ground, the sights and smells of Corfe sickened her. If she could help to remove even one desperate soul from this place of insidious evil, she would not turn away now.
Brevant drew to a halt outside the largest tower—the King’s Tower, he informed them, rising fully a hundred feet into the murky sky. The keep was surrounded by a dry moat, crossed by means of a footbridge wide enough to walk but three or four abreast. Long, mucky streaks of offal spilled from the bottom of dung sluices and clung to the mortar like slimy icicles. Ariel had not thought the stench could get any worse, but here it made her eyes water and caused a lump to rise up the back of her throat.
A balding toad of a man shuffled out onto the footbridge to greet them. A hunchback, he grinned over teeth as slimy as the walls and bade them welcome. A flurry of stable boys appeared to hold the reins of the horses and the toad assured Lord Henry they would be well fed and groomed for the duration of their stay. Lord Dafydd was helped out of the litter, groaning in genuine agony over the stench of the seneschal’s breath as he was offered more assurances of expert medical attention.
Gallworm, as the seneschal was addressed by Brevant, was ordered to escort their honoured guests to the great hall, where the governor was waiting to greet them. The hunchback bobbed and nodded, crabbing backward with a shuffling gait, beckoning the others to follow.
Henry took Ariel’s arm and gave it a squeeze for courage, then followed Brevant’s lead across the footbridge, careful to place their steps where the captain’s weight proved the warped and pitted boards could best bear the strain. Entrance to the tower itself was gained through climbing a steep flight of covered stairs. The paved platform at the top was perhaps ten paces square and fell directly under the eyes of a dozen sentries posed on catwalks above. Three doors opened off this platform, the one on the left led to the adjoining towers and barracks, the one on the right to the cookhouse and laundry. The middle was the largest and opened onto a second stone platform that overlooked the great hall.
Half—nay, a third the size of either Amboise or Pembroke, the audience chamber was smoke-filled and poorly lit, stinking of mouldy rushes and unwashed bodies. Descending onto the floor was like walking down the ridges of a spine into a whale’s belly, with the arched beams closing like ribs overhead and a narrow, rectangular shape that made the walls seem to crowd in on both sides.
At the far end was a raised dais, and on it, a single high-backed chair, large enough and ornate enough in carvings and design to resemble a throne. Seated there, clad in his capacious black robes of authority, was the governor of Corfe Castle, Guy of Gisbourne. Thin and ferret-like in appearance, he sat perfectly still as his guests approached; only his eyes flicked from one face to the next, from one cut of tunic to the next, satisfied to see his own finery would not suffer by comparison. His hands, with every one of his ten fingers bejeweled with rings, rested on the broad arms of the chair. One foot was stretched slightly forward of the other, the sharply pointed, exquisitely tooled leather of his shoe extending from beneath the hem of his robe. He wore a plaited sallet on his head, black with gold fancywork, crowning hair that was long and smooth and ended in a perfect curl just above the collar. His face was as narrow and pointed as his shoes, with a long hooked nose and eyes that were so slitted against the effects of the smoke and gloom, they could have been any colour from brown to black to palest blue.
“Ah. Lord Henry and Lady Ariel de Clare, I presume? What a pleasant and unexpected surprise to learn you were in the vicinity. But why did you not come instantly to the castle instead of taking up lodgings in that squalid little inn? I confess, I am somewhat puzzled … and offended … that you did not.”
“The slight was not deliberate, I assure you,” said Henry. “In truth, we had expected to spend no more than a single night in the village, as haste is our most pressing concern. But then our man was taken by a fever and—” He shrugged and smiled dismissively. “Such go the way of all good intentions, I suppose.”
The hooded eyes slid past Henry’s shoulder to where Lord Dafydd stood between Sedrick and Eduard. “We have an excellent physician here at Corfe. If your men would care to follow Captain Brevant, I am sure his wounds can be tended at once.”
“My thanks,” Henry said. “The fever has broken and the arm appears to have set without mortification, but I am sure he could benefit greatly from a leeching, if your man has the facilities …?”
Gisbourne smiled. “I assure you, we have the finest facilities for prolonging … or expediting life. Now please—” He clapped his jeweled hands and called forth a pair of varlets waiting nearby with chairs. “Come and sit by the brazier where it is warmer and tell me all the news of your uncle, William the Marshal. God abide me, I met the man not two summers ago when he came to oversee some communication or other with the two Scottish brats the king had trusted to our care. In truth, they were not so much trouble as they seemed in the beginning. Once I tossed their bagpipes and the skirted fiend who played them over the wall
s … they were reconciled quite nicely to their habitats. Gallworm! Fetch ale and wine for our guests.”
Gallworm relayed the order to a wench who hastened forward with the refreshments. Having been dismissed already, Eduard and Sedrick showed no reluctance in following Brevant out of the great hall. FitzRandwulf paused before he exited the room, aware of eyes burning into the back of his neck and when he looked back, he was not surprised to see Ariel staring after him. She was standing on the dais, waiting while the varlet fussed with her chair, and was caught in a spill of hazed light that streamed down from the single window overhead. Swathed in lustrous green velvet, with the gold barbettes trapping the fire of her hair, she looked as regal as any queen who might have stood there. As regal as any queen accusing one of her avowed champions of abandoning her.
Eduard ducked through the low doorway behind Sedrick and Dafydd. Brevant was leading them down a long stone corridor that connected the great hall to the barracks. The passage was confining in width and height, forcing the tallest to walk stooped over.
“The physic has been told to look beneath the bandages on your man’s arm,” Brevant warned under his breath. “If the bones are not genuinely broken, they had better be before the linens are unbound.”
“He will find what he is looking for,” Eduard said. “The question now is, will we?”
Brevant deigned not to acknowledge or answer the question until the barracks had been left behind along with Sedrick and Dafydd. They did not return to the great hall at once, but took a more circuitous route by way of the tower rooms where Henry and Ariel would be housed for the night.
“I suggested to Lord Gisbourne, what with the marshal’s niece probably being accustomed to somewhat different ser vices than what our castle sluts are skilled at supplying, some other arrangements might be made.”
Eduard glanced sharply at Brevant. “He has given permission for Marienne to serve Lady de Clare?”
The Robin Hood Trilogy Page 75