by Alys Clare
He always paid his people well. So far, it had always ensured their efficiency and their silence. He prayed that this time, when he needed help so desperately, it would be no different.
‘The latest knowledge I have of the king,’ said Eleanor de Lacey, ‘is that he turns his thoughts to the problem of Malcolm of Scotland.’
‘I think,’ Rollo replied, ‘you’ll have to explain.’ He gave her a graceful bow. ‘I have been away, and news has been hard to come by.’
Eleanor smiled thinly. She was a handsome woman, slim, quite tall, her smooth grey hair tidy under a sparkling white headdress, her gown costly and beautifully cut to flatter. She sat on a padded seat beneath a window overlooking the river, and the house – small but well built, expensively furnished and immaculate – reflected the fine taste of its mistress. ‘King Malcolm wishes to arrange the marriage of his daughter Edith, but it seems the girl has shut herself away in an abbey and was veiled when her father burst in on her. King William, I believe, claims it is his right as Malcolm’s overlord to arrange this match, and this has enraged King Malcolm. He – Malcolm – has reportedly raced back to Scotland to drum up an army, and William prepares for the expected border raid.’
‘So if I wished to seek out the king, I should proceed north?’ Rollo demanded.
Eleanor shrugged. ‘It is possible that he will attend to the business in person, but equally possible that other matters will persuade him to remain in the south.’
Rollo frowned. He knew there was no point in pressing Eleanor de Lacey for more. She’d told him what she knew, and now it was up to him to decide how to proceed. Go north, and hope to find the king and his party, make himself known to William and quietly merge with that large, powerful, well-equipped army and thus acquire protection from the agents hunting him? Stay where he was, and wait until he had uncovered more about William’s movements?
An image of his lodgings flowed into his mind.
He didn’t think he could bear to stay there any longer.
He thought about the practicalities: about getting out of Cambridge and onto the road north, and about how to avoid the sharp eyes of the men who sought to kill him.
As he always did, he thought about what was available to be used.
And he came up with an idea.
Reaching for the purse at his belt, he said, ‘I shall need to commission some purchases.’
Eleanor de Lacey nodded. ‘Very well.’
‘I have a good horse, but I need to exchange it for another. Also, I require a second horse.’ He counted out the necessary coins. Eleanor raised her eyebrows, but she didn’t ask why he needed a new horse: without doubt, he reflected, she already understood.
A man on the run was identified by the horse he rode more readily than by almost anything else.
‘Also,’ Rollo continued, ‘I require clothing for a gentlewoman. A gown, underlinen, leather boots and a warm travelling cloak of fine wool lined with fur.’
Eleanor nodded. ‘And what size of person are these items of apparel to fit?’
Rollo hesitated. ‘Would you mind standing up, please?’ Eleanor did so. ‘She is of a similar build to you, although perhaps not quite as tall.’
‘Good,’ Eleanor said. ‘When I make the purchases, the assumption will be that they are for me. It is the time, after all, for the acquisition of warm winter clothing.’
Rollo counted out more money. ‘Finally, two last things. I require food and drink for several days.’
Eleanor nodded again. ‘That is easily achieved. I will furnish what you need from my own larders, and replenish the goods afterwards.’ Once you’ve gone, hung unspoken in the elegant room. ‘The other?’
‘I would be most grateful if everything could be ready as soon as possible. Two days from now, if that can be managed.’
‘It can.’
Rollo looked up from his counting and grinned. Eleanor de Lacey, he thought, was one of his better contacts.
With extreme care, keeping himself concealed at every corner and junction until he had checked that the way was clear, he made his way back to his lodgings. The dilapidated house and his own dark space within it seemed even worse after the luxury of Eleanor de Lacey, and the stink – unwashed flesh, filthy clothes, rotting food, vomit, faeces, urine, dead vermin – almost made him heave. Not for much longer, he told himself.
For he was going north, and, if all went well, he would go without attracting the eyes of the men who were hunting for him. They were looking for a man on his own, but when he left, he wasn’t going to be alone.
He would go with the best disguise he could think of.
Lassair would be with him.
Jack Chevestrier made his slow, gasping and painful way along the track that weaved through the deserted village. When he reached the opening of the narrow little passage that curved round the base of the castle mound, he had to pause to catch his breath. He stood leaning against the high stone wall that formed its outer boundary, staring blankly up at the great earth rampart rising up on the opposite side of the alley. His legs were trembling and he was sweating heavily, and he’d walked no more than a few hundred paces.
When he felt better – not much better – he walked on, keeping his left hand on the stone wall for support. As the alley emerged onto the wide track that led up to the entrance to the castle, he stopped again, staring up at the great edifice on top of its mound. The king’s father, he reflected, had known exactly what he was about when he’d commanded the construction of these monstrous wooden fortifications at strategic points in his new kingdom. In a land where hitherto men had lived in long, low halls, the castles high up on their man-made earth hills had inspired awe and fear even before the Conqueror had uttered his first oppressive orders.
Jack moved on, round to where the castle entrance glowered down onto the main road north out of the town. A flight of wooden steps led up to a small platform, across which a barrier controlled access. Two guards stood on it. Trying not to show how much the exertion was costing him, Jack climbed up to the platform.
The guards had recognized him. One of them gave a sort of bow – not much more than a dip of the head – and opened the barrier. The other reached out a hand as if to clap Jack on the back but, perhaps observing his frail state, thought better of it. He muttered, ‘Good to see you here, chief.’
Jack would have liked to make a suitable reply, but, aware that he needed his breath for the far more challenging climb still to come, merely nodded.
The second flight of steps demanded almost more than he had to offer. When after an eternity he reached the top, his head was spinning, he felt very sick and it was all he could do to stay on his feet. Knowing that many pairs of eyes would be on him and quite a lot would be unfriendly, he forced himself to move on, after the briefest of pauses, and cross the narrow walkway that led from the top of the steps to the castle’s huge oak doors.
Stepping into the chill of the interior, he felt the sweat cool on his skin and a huge shiver ran through him. But he couldn’t weaken now, when he’d come so far. He forced his feet to move and, temporarily barely able to see, stumbled into the anteroom where he and his fellow lawmen habitually congregated.
There were four men within, two deep in conversation, one peering out of the high, narrow window, one lying along a bench and apparently dozing. All four turned to stare at Jack and, to a man, they came hurrying across the room to greet him.
He waved aside their expressions of dismay at how pale he was, but when they drew the bench forward and encouraged him to sit down, he all but collapsed onto it. One of the men thrust a mug of beer into his hands. He drank it, resisting the temptation to gulp it down. Even a few mouthfuls of weak alcohol tended to make his head spin, although he hoped it was only a temporary state.
He waved aside the anxious enquiries about his health and said with a grin, ‘I haven’t struggled all the way up here to tell you lot how I’m feeling.’ He turned to the eldest of the four, a serious-faced man
called Ned. ‘I’ve been kept informed by Walter and the lads, but they’ve no way of knowing what’s happening in there.’ He waved a hand in the direction of the low arch on the far side of the room, where a closed door marked the entrance to the sheriff’s private quarters. ‘Is he present?’ he asked in a low voice.
‘No, we’ve not seen him today,’ Ned said.
‘Didn’t see him yesterday, come to that, and only briefly the day before,’ offered the youth who had been dozing on the bench. ‘He’s realized he’s not the popular figure he always thought he was,’ he added with a chuckle.
‘It was the way the town turned out to tell him he couldn’t possibly arrest you for murder since his precious nephew struck first,’ said a large man who went by the accurate but unoriginal name of Lard. ‘Reckon that until then he was planning on getting you strung up as soon as you could stand on your own two feet, and out of his hair at last.’
‘Yes, Walter told me about that,’ Jack said. Walter had in fact told him more than once, the tale growing with each repetition, although in fairness to Walter, the first couple of times he’d tried to impart the very welcome news, Jack had been delirious and lost in a world of frightening dreams and visions.
‘Are you joining us again?’ Ned asked. ‘We need you and that’s a fact. You know about these two murders? The young man found out on the road to the fens, and, night before last, the corpse we had to fish out from under the Great Bridge?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Jack replied. Walter was keeping him well informed. ‘And I want to be back here with you, believe me,’ he went on. ‘But I am as you see me. Simply climbing up here has all but knocked me out.’
‘Nothing wrong with your head, though, is there?’ Lard said shrewdly. ‘If we were to report to you, let’s say, saving you the necessity of exerting yourself overmuch till you’re fit again, you could still be in charge of things.’
Jack looked at each of them in turn. His group of supporters led by Walter had said much the same thing. ‘Is that what you want? All of you who answer to the sheriff, here in the castle?’
And all four men said, ‘Yes.’
Jack waited while the wave of emotion ran its course. It was, he’d observed, another symptom of his deep wound and its aftermath, this tendency to be unmanned by sentiment that when he was in his right mind he wouldn’t even have noticed.
‘I need to know what’s been happening within Sheriff Picot’s inner circle,’ he said. ‘Gaspard Picot must have left family. I believe he was married, and he may have had children, although I don’t know. What will become of them now that he’s dead?’
‘Why d’you want to know that?’ the youth – Iver, Jack recalled now – demanded.
Jack turned to him. ‘Because I killed their father and widowed their mother,’ he said.
Something in the way he spoke seemed to stop further questions, although it was plain from the others’ expressions that they too wondered why he was wasting his sympathy on the relations of a man as despicable as the sheriff’s late nephew.
‘I also want to know,’ Jack went on, ‘what Sheriff Picot plans to do. As you just said, Lard, he’s had to endure a humiliation, and it’s surely possible that he may retaliate in the form of far stricter and tighter control. He—’
‘He may also bugger off and leave us alone,’ Iver interrupted.
Jack smiled. ‘Wishful thinking, I would say.’
‘I can tell you about his family.’ It was the fourth man, short, narrow-shouldered and with a dark aspect, who now spoke, breaking his silence. Jack turned to him, trying to recall who he was. ‘Ranald, chief,’ the man supplied.
‘Yes. I’m sorry, I couldn’t bring your name to mind.’
‘No offence taken,’ Ranald said. ‘Like I say, I know a bit about Gaspard Picot, since a year or so back I was sent as part of the guard detailed to watch over the grand new house he was building for himself.’ He grinned briefly. ‘Seems that people in the neighbourhood didn’t take to him, or, more particularly, to the way he was rubbing their faces in their poverty by putting up such a costly and luxurious dwelling cheek by jowl with their hovels. Building materials were disappearing from the site almost as fast as the merchants could deliver them, and we were set as Gaspard Picot’s private watch.’
How typical of the man, Jack thought. ‘And what of his household?’
‘Servants by the handful, indoor and outdoor,’ Ranald said. ‘His wife is called Elwytha. Short, skinny, white-faced, self-absorbed, nervy sort of a woman, with that pop-eyed, lashless look that puts you in mind of a rabbit. We all reckoned she went in awe of her lord, although that didn’t stop her ruling her servants and those of us sent to guard the new building with a tough hand. She used the threat of a beating for even a small misdemeanour, and it was no idle threat, I can tell you.’
‘And what of children?’ Jack asked.
Ranald shook his head. ‘None.’ He hesitated,
‘Go on,’ Jack said.
‘Well, I was going to say she didn’t look capable,’ Ranald said. ‘Narrow hips, figure like an undeveloped girl, if you take my meaning.’
‘No tits?’ Lard put in helpfully.
Ranald grinned, aiming a cuff at Lard’s head. ‘I wasn’t going to be so crude,’ he said. ‘But if I’d wanted a wife with a view to raising a home full of sons and daughters, I’d have looked elsewhere.’
‘So why did Gaspard Picot pick her?’ Iver demanded.
Ranald rubbed the tips of his fingers against his thumb. ‘Work it out, lad,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘Why does a man ever marry a poorly favoured woman?’
‘The lady Elwytha had wealth?’ Jack asked.
‘Her family has,’ Ranald replied. ‘She gives off the smell of money, too. Rich jewels, beautiful gowns, furs, haughty manner and nose in the air like she’s avoiding a foul stench. And they say she clings on to what she has with a very tight fist. The family hold big estates up towards the Wash, and her grandfather and his sons were among the first to welcome the Conqueror and his Normans when they—’ Abruptly he stopped. He knew, as they all did, that Jack’s father had been a Norman; a carpenter by trade, who had been recruited by the present King William’s father into the vast army which was dispatched to England to build the new castles designed to remind his new subjects to behave themselves.
‘I see,’ Jack said diplomatically. ‘And presumably marrying a daughter of the house to a man they perceived as powerful and important in the new regime was useful to them.’
‘Won’t do them much good in the long term if she’s not a breeder,’ Lard observed.
Jack nodded, the small movement making him suddenly dizzy. Time I left, he thought. Before I pass out and they have to carry me home.
Slowly he got to his feet. ‘Come to me whenever you have something to tell me,’ he said. ‘Any time. You know where I’ll be.’ He made his way carefully to the door. He sensed the four men’s eyes on him.
‘Want a hand, chief?’ one of them – Lard, he thought – asked quietly.
‘No,’ he snapped. Then, as a wave of vertigo hit, he said, ‘Maybe.’
And, with Ned behind him and Lard in front in case he stumbled, Jack made his way with as much dignity as he could muster down the two flights of steps. He dismissed his attendants at the foot of the second flight. When he reached the place where the narrow alley led off around the base of the castle mound towards the deserted village and home, he turned. Lard and Ned were still standing where he’d left them. He gave them a wave and stumbled off down the alley.
Rollo’s preparations were complete. In the space of only a couple of days he had acquired, thanks to Eleanor de Lacey, everything he needed. She had excelled herself, and he had silently handed her a bonus for her efficiency. The new garments and the leather boots were precisely what he would have chosen himself. While the quality of the wool, linen and fur was excellent and the cut expensive, the styles were subtle and understated, the beautiful colours muted: typical of the apparel of a we
ll-to-do woman who did not feel the least need to flaunt her wealth. The horses, at present hidden away in stables on the northern fringe of the town, were good but not exceptional. The supplies of food and drink, neatly packed in two sturdy leather bags, were of the best.
Rollo was ready to set out. Now all that remained was to locate Lassair and persuade her to go with him. It was still early – he had been awake since dawn – and, once he had done his final checks, he could be on his way.
He went first to the deserted village behind the castle hill, concealing himself behind a half-ruined wall and peering out along the track. He had little hope of finding her there for he had already checked the house where he had previously seen her and there had been no sign of her. Nor of anybody else, for that matter. Had she nursed the big man back to health and then gone? Rollo squashed the brief, worrying thought that perhaps she and the big man had left together. For sure, he told himself, the man had been far too unwell to travel.
Had she, then, lost her battle to save him?
Rollo felt a sudden, guilty lift of the heart.
Abandoning the quiet, lonely paths of the little settlement, he returned to the town. Keeping to the back lanes, pausing to watch at every corner and junction, he made his careful way to the narrow alley behind the market place where Lassair’s mentor lived. As with the big man’s house, Rollo had little hope of finding her here, for he had been watching this place too and, although the rotund figure of the old magician had appeared once or twice, hurrying off up the alley on some commission and returning to shut himself away once more, Lassair had not emerged.
There was only one other place where she might be; only one that Rollo knew, at any rate, and if she wasn’t there he’d have to think it out again.
He returned to his lodging house behind the quay. Now that he was leaving, he could finally admit to himself just what it had cost him to put up there. For the last time he went back to the tiny room where he’d been living through these interminable days, collecting his bags and closing the door behind him. He’d put a new lock onto it on taking the room – a length of chain secured by a portable lock he’d acquired from a merchant in Troyes – and he removed it and stowed it in his pack. He gave the door a savage kick and it shuddered on its hinges.