A ring of tents lay struck next to the post-and-rope corral, far to the eastern edge of the camp. Edmund took a careful look around him as he approached and found much less activity on that side. The men had started bunching toward the west, eager for the signal to march, but leaving the trailing eastern side poorly guarded.
Katherine drew her hood down over her face, then crept to the edge of one of the two rope corrals. She leaned against a post and looked about her. Edmund did the same—no one seemed to be paying them any notice. They leapt the rope together.
“Here, girl.” Katherine got a cart horse in hand without trouble, then found another for Edmund and Geoffrey to share. She slipped the rope on the far side of the corral and led them east, aiming for a gap in the sentry fires. Prickles ran up Edmund’s neck, one after the next.
“Once we’re free of the camp, we’ll loop around cross-country and head for the bridge.” Katherine held the leads of both horses. “It will be a dangerous run, but if we can get ahead of the army, we’ll have time to prepare.”
“You there—you three!” A voice shouted. “Get over here. We want some help with these tents!”
Katherine glanced at Edmund, who nearly panicked before he found a reply: “Er . . . got to help with grooming. Lord Overstoke wants us.”
The man peered at them—Edmund felt Katherine tensing up at his side—but then he pointed. “Lord Overstoke’s tent’s over that way.”
“Is it? Thanks. Lost my bearings in all the excitement.” Edmund swung around, leading Katherine and Geoffrey off in the direction the man had shown, but then ducked behind a half-struck tent and resumed his original course. The hollow rose and roughened ahead; the shadowed horses thinned out around them as they walked, and so did the voices of men making their preparations. They held their breaths as they passed the remains of a sentry fire, but nothing happened. They walked on into the utter dark of the moors without a challenge.
“You must wake the village, when we reach it.” Katherine helped Edmund onto one of the horses, and then raised Geoffrey up to sit behind him. “Wake everyone, get them armed and ready, but whatever you do, don’t let anyone ring the village bell.”
“What are we going to do?” Geoffrey looked ready to cry. “They’re an army, hundreds of knights—what are we going to do?”
Katherine grabbed her horse’s mane and leapt astride. “We are going to war.”
Chapter 33
I’m glad you’re back.” Harry still looked pale, but stronger than he had the last time Katherine had seen him. “I’d heard you’d left the castle, and I feared for you.” The chamber bore reminders of his dead father everywhere Katherine looked: Lord Aelfric’s store of books on the shelf; Aelfric’s carved and cushioned chair at the round oak table; Aelfric’s furred robe on the peg and his slippers by the hearth.
“Your people call for your aid.” Katherine shut the door behind her. “My lord—Harry, I beg you please to help us.”
The fire lit along the curve of Harry’s chin and found gold in his sandy hair. “You must not leave the castle again, not until I tell you that it’s safe.”
“Is it safe for my neighbors?” said Katherine. “Is it safe for Edmund, for Geoffrey and all the folk of Moorvale? I know what armies on the march do to the villages they pass. I know what they do when they are hungry, when they are bitter from the cold and lusting after the spoils of war.”
Harry threw up his hands and let them drop. “We are overmatched, Katherine. The one thing I can do is to resist Wolland no further, and trust him to keep his promised word.”
Katherine crossed the room, ignoring Harry’s offer of a chair. “He will not keep his word. He killed your father and he will betray you.” She knelt at his side. “Harry, listen to me. We must fight, and we can win.”
Harry ran a fingertip down the polished surfaces of the rings that had once adorned his father’s hands. “I am not strong enough. I cannot be the man my father was.”
“You can be better,” said Katherine. “Stand with us, my lord. Save us. It can be done.”
Harry sat up in his father’s chair—then grabbed his side where the lance had wounded him. He bit his lip. “What is it that you ask of me?”
“I ask you to hear me,” said Katherine. “Lord Wolland marches with three hundred knights, but no footsoldiers, no archers, no engines of siege. Once across the river, he can do just as he pleases, but if he is challenged at the bridge, he can be beaten. The power of knights lies in the massed charge, but over a bridge they will not be able to bring that power to bear. At Moorvale bridge we can stop them, but if we allow them to cross, we are all at their mercy. They will be masters of the north, my lord, to the woe of your people, and all your hopes for survival lie in a promise made by the man who had your father murdered.”
Harry threw up his hands. “But what can we do? Wolland’s army is twice our size, and he’s got half the lords of the north at his back. He is invincible!”
“He is exposed and endangered,” said Katherine. “He moves in deception, without supplies, depending on your submission to allow him to make his move. All he ever wanted out of your father was safe passage on the Moorvale bridge—if we can hold the crossing, his plans will fall apart. He is vulnerable, Harry, but only for a moment. You can do this. You can save the north.”
Harry looked away, toward the fire. His eyes took its glow.
“Put yourself in Moorvale, in my village,” said Katherine. “Stand by the statue in the square. Face east, across the bridge.”
Harry let his eyes fall shut.
“They will come over the moors,” said Katherine. “Knights by the hundred upon their chargers.”
A grimace crossed Harry’s face.
“Now think of where you are,” said Katherine. “You stand at the foot of a bridge over a wide, deep river, on the higher and steeper of the banks. Do not fear those knights, my lord—cavalry cannot charge on such a bridge; it’s barely wide enough to let two carts pass each other. We have archers and the high ground. We can hold the bridge, and we will make them pay dearly for every step they take toward us. We will wear them down, grind at their numbers and break their will. It can be done, my lord. At the bridge it can be done.”
Harry stared at Katherine. “Are you sure about this?”
Katherine smiled. “Other families talk about the weather over dinner, or gossip about their neighbors. Me and Papa, we talked military tactics.”
Harry looked nowhere. He looked at Katherine, then put a hand to the table before him. His face contorted, he grabbed for his wound, but he gained his feet.
There came a knock at the door.
“Go away!” Harry brought Katherine’s hand to his lips.
“Harry, I know it will be hard.” Katherine tried to keep down the rising thrill. “I know what we risk, but—”
He kissed her, long and deep. All was song.
The door opened. “Harold.”
Katherine felt her blood stand and curdle.
Harry let go. He turned. “Mother.”
The lady Isabeau stood at the threshold. The gray light did her face no favors, nor did the double-corned headpiece that tied beneath her chin. Her ladies-in-waiting peeked into the room behind her. They jabbed each other’s sides and whispered loud.
Isabeau folded her hands into the sleeves of her gown. “My lord, I wish to speak with you.” She stepped beside the door, leaving a clear path out.
Harry twitched his fingers, but stopped short of taking Katherine’s hand. “What you say to me, Mother, you may say in her hearing.”
His mother set her lips. “Your will be done, my lord.” She waved her ladies off down the hall, came to the table and stood waiting. Harry stepped around it to pull out her chair, then shut the door.
Isabeau drew up the hem of her gown and sat. “The light is poor.”
Katherine
found herself curtsying and kneeling to the fire. She took a handful of kindling and laid it piece by piece over the embers. A flush ran up her neck—joy aborted.
“Mother.” Harry cleared his throat. “Mother, we should fight. We should stand and fight. We should avenge Father’s murder, we should honor him, choose honor and duty to his grace the king. Katherine is right, we can win!”
“Sit, my son. It is seemly for a lord.”
Harry paused. “Yes, Mother.” He crossed behind Katherine’s back and took his place in his father’s chair.
“Number your forces,” said Isabeau. “What strength have you?”
Harry’s voice rose in pitch and dropped in age. “Mother, I am lord here!”
“Lord.” Isabeau echoed it flat. “Yes, my son, you are. You bear the weight of this land and the burden of a line that joins the centuries. Your father, your grandfather and all your sires before them strove and fought to keep Elverain one, to pass it on safe when all the world around them looked about to fail. Now they wait, all in a row in their barrows. They wait in their crypts, in their rotting shrouds, their rusting swords upon their breasts. They wait, your father waits, to hear whether it was all for nothing.”
“It can be done.” Katherine put her hands to the table. “It must be done. My lord, there comes a moment when the wise man knows that there is no safety in surrender.”
“We should have had this talk long ago, my son.” Isabeau spoke across Katherine’s words. “There are girls who form a hazard for men of your station. Beware such girls, Harold, for they have nothing to lose and all to gain. They will seek to trap you in their hair, to snare you in their willing arms and be granted in the madness of a moment what they could never have by right. Such a girl can afford to risk all, my son, for all that she seeks to risk is yours.”
Katherine kept her gaze averted. “My lady, I seek only the defense of our people.”
Isabeau looked at Katherine for the first time since she entered the room. “I see through you, Katherine Marshal. How long was it before you decided that your dear, missing father was never coming back? How long before you came aware of where your best chance in life truly lay, and what you need do to seize it?”
Her words knocked Katherine reeling. “That’s not true.” She looked at Harry. “You know it’s not.”
“See her, my son, for what she truly is.” Lady Isabeau held a hand palm up at Katherine. “Faithless. Adrift. A motherless, fatherless girl with no future in this world save this one great chance. She comes to you, Harold, because she wants to rise at your side.”
Katherine waited for Harry to say something—anything. He looked at Katherine, then his mother, his sandy brows drawn low.
“She is a fickle and inconstant girl, for all her strutting in the garb of a man—but she cannot help what she is.” Isabeau favored Katherine with a chilly smile. “What daughter needs a father when she has a lord within her grasp?”
Katherine put her hands to the table to keep them from curling into fists. “Who was it, my lady, that you loved as a girl, and how did you come to lose him?”
Isabeau gaped—then hissed. “You will be silent! I will not match words with a lowborn, common—”
“Mother, that is enough!” Harry rose from his chair and smacked the table. “I am lord!”
“You are a boy.” His mother glared him down into his seat. “You play at love and you play at war. There are consequences for the things that you do—I grieve that your father and I have failed to teach you this in time. Your father did all he could to keep the peace with Wolland, to give him a reason to spare this land.”
“And they killed him anyway.” Harry ground his teeth. “They killed my father because they asked for what he would not give, because he would not let Wolland use our lands to stage a massacre. And now you ask me to be a lesser man, to stoop and grovel before the men who killed him, to help them trample all the north just to preserve myself.”
“Will your anger put all to rights in this world? Will Wolland lay his head upon the block because he wronged you?” Isabeau let her hands fall together in her lap. “Son, you do not know him as I know him. He is not the ordinary sort of man, and he does not mean to wage the ordinary sort of war. If you stand against him, he will butcher every man in this barony and give over their widows into the hands of his followers. I know him, Harold, I know him as you cannot. I know what he will do to anyone who turns against him. Your legacy will be the end of Elverain—the last barrow by the hill, if indeed anyone takes thought to bury you.”
Harry put his head in his hands, boy and man, frightened and enraged by turns at every breath.
“My lord, forget me,” said Katherine. “Forget what you think of me, think only on what I have said. We can beat Wolland at the bridge. We can.”
“Then Lord Wolland will find another way,” said Isabeau. “If you thwart him at Moorvale, you will do nothing but earn his hate—hate that will rebound on you, Harold, you and all your people. I ask you to heed your father’s final lesson—turn against Wolland and die.”
Katherine raised her voice. “If we do not stop him—”
“—he will ride roughshod through your lands, he will put Umberslade and Quentara to the sword and he will crown himself king of the north.” Isabeau checked her again. “I am not blind, I know what is to come. What remains, Harold, all that remains, is to know what will become of our family.”
Katherine held Harry’s gaze. “Wolland wants one thing from you, one thing only—safe passage across the Tamber. Give him that and you have nothing left to bargain. Once across, he can turn on you and deal with you whenever he likes, just like he dealt with your father.”
“She bluffs, my son. She guesses.” Isabeau pursed her lips. “She will have you risk your land, your birthright, just to keep you within her reach.”
“I’m not doing this for myself!” Katherine came just short of screaming.
“Enough!” Harry raised his hands. “Please. Enough.” He turned to the fire. Katherine watched him, rose and fell on every twitch. She felt Isabeau’s glare but did not meet it.
Harry sat up. He breathed in long, then pushed back his father’s chair. Katherine read the decision on his face and sank.
“Katherine.” He took her hands. He ran his thumbs on the backs of her fingers. “I wish I could have been what you wanted.”
Chapter 34
Edmund leapt from back of his horse and lost not a stride in reaching the door of the Overbournes’ cottage, one of the straggle of dwellings wedged between the western bank of the Tamber and the Dorham road. Telbert Overbourne had time only to fumble open the door and utter “What in all—?” before Edmund cut him off.
“An army,” said Edmund. “Get everyone up. You have to go, right now.”
Telbert blinked. There was a trail of sleepy drool in his beard.
“Dear, who is it?” spoke his wife, Elsie, from the darkness behind him.
“There is an army coming.” Edmund raised his voice. “Wake everyone up and get them to assemble in the square, as fast as you can.”
Telbert stepped outside. He looked about him—at the moonlit bridge downstream, then across the road at the silent doorstep of his neighbors. “But . . . what’s all this about?”
“Lord Wolland.” Edmund hurried back to his horse and leapt astride. “He’s invading; he’s bringing an army in off the moors.”
Telbert woke up at last. He turned white and peered over the river at the dim gray rises to the east.
“Can you knock everyone around here awake and get them moving without raising a shout?” Edmund turned his horse to face south again. “Master Overbourne, please listen—you’ve got precious little time.”
Elsie leaned out behind her husband. “Edmund? Is it true what they’re saying? Is Lord Aelfric really dead?”
“He is.” Edmund nudged his horse to
a walk. “Everyone, Master Overbourne—to the square, as fast as you can go.”
He rode back down the Dorham road into the square and turned at the bridge. He cast a look along the arc of stone, to the silhouette of Geoffrey standing watch on the rise and to the grim width of the moors beyond. He felt a grip of fear for his brother, then his parents and his home.
“I’ll never be what you want.” He spoke to the blank night sky. “I love them all too much.” He half expected an answer, but none came.
The mill stood first on the left past the bridge. Edmund leapt the millrace and thundered on the door. “An army comes. Meet in the square!” He had said it and moved on before Jarvis Miller had a chance to open his mouth.
Bella Cooper was already awake next door. “Edmund? What’s all this? Did you hear about—”
“There’s an army coming.” Edmund dashed across the street and pounded on Gerald Baker’s door. He did not wait to explain, for by then Jarvis and Bella were out in the street. He slapped his horse’s rump to get him walking. “Everyone meet in the square.”
Bella Cooper, and then Gerald Baker, ran from house to house, waking their neighbors and spreading the alarm. By the time Edmund reached the statue in the middle of the square, he had passed Jordan Dyer, his sister Missa, and Anna Maybell shuffling past in their nightclothes. He turned and raced for home, his parents’ inn just south on the Longsettle road.
Sarra Bale leapt out the front door of the inn at the sound of Edmund’s knocking. “Edmund! Oh, son!” She seized him in her arms.
“Mum—Mum, let go!” Edmund wriggled free. “We’ve got to hurry, we’ve got to get everyone together.”
“Where’s your brother?” Harman Bale lurched out behind Sarra, still in his cloak and boots, one hand held pressed under his shirt. “Where’s Geoffrey? He went off looking for you yesterday, and no one’s seen him since.”
“He’s safe, Father, he’s keeping watch just past the bridge.” Edmund spied Miles Twintree peering through his window and waved him out onto the road. “Miles, bring your parents. Bring everyone.”
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