The gentleman prisoners were silent, their eyes shifting left and right, never lighting on the boy bound on the floor of the keep.
“Please, sirs!” called the captive. “Please save me!”
He was answered only with silence. “I’ll work for you!” the boy cried. “I’ll work for you all my life!”
I clenched my fists. “You could each pay a little,” I said.
“Too late!” Sir Basil said. “Goodman Quillifer has shown himself free with others’ money, and these fine gentlemen have shown all the fine compassion of a North Country jury—which was all that I expected.” He turned to the two apprentice outlaws, Anthony and Little Dickon.
“Kill him,” he said. “And do it quickly, or you’ll join him in a shallow grave.”
“Mercy!” the boy screamed. “Mercy!”
I turned away, unable to bear the sight any longer, and found myself facing the prisoner Higgs, who looked at me with sad, meaningful resignation. I understood that Higgs had watched this scene play out more than once, that such savage theatrical displays were common in Sir Basil’s camp.
After brief hesitation, the two apprentice bandits began the execution. Neither were practiced at killing, and the business went on for some time, the thuds of the striking knives alternating with the shrieks of the victim. I pressed my hands over my ears but failed to seal out the sounds of the slaughter. But finally the boy fell silent, and I heard the thud of a body falling to the ground, soon followed by the noise of Little Dickon being sick.
Higgs approached. “I told you that it was not so easy to join Sir Basil’s company.” He murmured for my ear alone. “New recruits are made to commit murder as soon as a victim can be found. It is to prevent betrayal—if any of them inform on the robbers, the others can denounce them and see them hanged.”
“I shall try to win free somehow,” I said.
I could not admit that Sir Basil had promised my release in exchange for the capture of Stayne’s party. It would have to be managed as some kind of daring escape.
For now I, too, was complicit in the youth’s slaughter. The boy would not have been taken prisoner if I had not turned informer, and the likelihood that those I had betrayed were themselves traitors was little comfort.
Blindly I walked to the rear of the court, and collapsed against the wall. The screams of the murdered boy still echoed in my ears.
It seemed my fate to blunder from one massacre to the next. I lay back against the cold stones, looked up at the brilliant blue sky, and surrendered to misery.
At least I would soon receive my traitor’s bounty, and be free.
* * *
Sir Basil read the new captives’ ransom letters while a lieutenant conducted the auction of captured goods, including all the finery, weapons, and armor. By the end of the distribution, I thought that Sir Basil probably led the best-armed outlaw band in Duisland’s history.
After the auction, Sir Basil divided the letters and handed them to the two monks, who rode off on a pair of horses. Now I understood why the monks were in the camp—it was the monks who contacted the prisoners’ families and carried the ransom—or, more likely, deposited the ransom in a local monastery, and withdrew it from another monastery closer to the Toppings. The monasteries, as well as temples to the old gods, were often used as repositories of gold and silver, kept under the gods’ protection; and the monasteries of the Compassionate Pilgrim often accepted money in one place, and issued a bill allowing the money to be drawn elsewhere. In this they acted as banks, but only for deposits, for they were forbidden by law, as well as their own doctrine, to make loans or charge interest.
Sir Basil ordered some of the fine gentlemen to bury the body of their servant, and there was a moment or two of resistance before the outlaw imperiously brandished his dirk, and the captives quietly carried the victim away. All the other prisoners were marched out into the corrie and given work, for the most part that of preparing supper for the large company. Dorinda, the Aekoi cook, thumped me on the back with a wooden ladle, and in a harsh voice assigned me to bring water from the lake. I was given a yoke with leather buckets dangling at either end.
Near the shore of the lake I found some watercress, nibbled some, and picked the rest before I dipped the buckets and returned to the kitchen, where I found gentlemen cutting vegetables, building a wood fire, and leading a calf to be slaughtered, all under the supervision of bandits dressed in their captives’ brilliant silks and satins, and engaged in vigorous barter over clothing, weapons, and armor.
Dorinda was standing in the kitchen compound, barking out orders, her strange, furious, white-circled eyes starting out of her head, her lashing ladle as effective as a whip in making her victims skip to their duty. “Salvio, domina,” I said.
She turned on me, her ladle brandished under my nose like a sword. “What do you mean with that jabber?” she barked. “I was born in this country and I speak your language as well as you!”
“I brought cress,” I offered. She took the cress, sniffed it suspiciously, and ate a piece. Then she pointed with her ladle. “Put the water in the kettle.”
I did, and brought more water, and with it more cress. As I returned with my third delivery, I encountered Sir Basil of the Heugh, who was riding one of the captured horses along the shore of the lake. It was a lovely bay courser, with black feet and a sable splash on its forehead, and its bridle and saddle glittered with wrought silver. He drew the horse to a slow walk beside me. I saw that he was still wearing Lord Utterback’s slinkskin gloves, along with a vivid green doublet slashed to reveal a yellow silk shirt. He had put away his long overcoat for a cloak lined with scarlet satin and edged with gold brocade.
“Like you my new charger?” said the outlaw. “Does the harness not shine in the sun?”
“Truly you have chosen the best,” I flattered. “And perhaps with these dashing new steeds on which to mount your troop, you will not need my venerable gelding. May I have it for my brave escape?”
Sir Basil looked down with amusement. “If you evade my men, and their shot, and the dogs that will be set on you, you may take all you like. That is the rule of our free company—any man is free to take what he likes, so he bear the consequences. But for now”—he pointed with his silver-tipped whip—“you must bear the yoke.”
I shifted beneath the pole that crossed my shoulders. Smoke from the wood fire scented the air. “Bear it I will,” I said, “confident in the promise you made of impending freedom.”
The outlaw’s black eyes sparkled. “And when did I make such a promise?”
“You said I would be set free if my information regarding Lord Stayne proved true.”
“Pah.” Sir Basil’s lip curled with disdain. “Your recollection is imperfect. I promised nothing.”
Only the knowledge of Sir Basil’s celerity with his dirk prevented me from swinging a bucket of water at the outlaw’s head. “But, Sir Basil,” I said, “I’ve brought you the greatest ransom you will ever collect, a marquess along with his whole affinity. Surely, that is worth such a paltry thing as my liberty.”
Sir Basil was indignant. “Do you ask me to cheat my company? They are all due their share of your five royals’ ransom, and I shall see it collected.” Again he pointed the whip. “Now carry the water, or I may be forced to tell the other prisoners the part you played in their capture.”
My heart turned cold. I straightened under my burden, and looked Sir Basil in the face. “As you command,” I said, and made my way to the kitchen.
I could not trust Sir Basil at all, I thought, not even if the five royals arrived from Kevin. The outlaw was a murderous brigand, arbitrary in his will and his whims, and plumped up with his little massacres. He’d kill me as easily as he’d killed Gribbins, and for less reason.
It seemed best to apply my mind to escape.
A monotonous chop-chop-chop sounded in the air as I delivered my load, took the yoke from my shoulders, and shrugged away the soreness. The wood fire burned
briskly, and Dorinda shifted the kettle over the flames. The chopping grew irregular, and was then followed by curses and loud argument. I ventured toward the sound and found two of the gentlemen cavaliers squatting beneath a beech tree and trying to butcher the calf.
They’d succeeded in killing and bleeding the animal, and were now trying to hack up its joints. They hadn’t skinned it—apparently, they planned to skin the joints after they’d cut them free.
“Have you never watched your own huntsmen butcher a deer?” I said. “Or do you retire after the kill to play at dice and drink the wines of Loretto?”
One of the gentlemen, a dark man with a forked beard, rose raging from the animal. He was splashed with blood from his boots to his crown, and his well-dressed hair was somewhat less than perfectly in order.
“You are welcome to try!” Fork-Beard snarled, and held out his heavy knife. “Try and be damned to the nethermost pit of hell!”
“I will perform this infernal task for you if you fetch the water in my stead,” I said. “You look as if you need washing, in any case.”
The cavalier and his slope-shouldered companion threw their butchering implements on the ground and stamped away, the less furious of them dragging the yoke and buckets. I viewed the tools, found them adequate, then examined the calf. I decided it wasn’t completely ruined and rolled the animal onto its back, its legs splayed toward the autumn sun. I paused a moment to remove my overcoat, doublet, and shirt, then skinned the calf’s ventral half. I collected the brisket, then looked up at the beech tree overhead. Any number of its strong limbs would serve for hoisting the animal, but as I saw a block already hanging from one bough, I assumed this marked Dorinda’s butcher shop. I threaded the rope provided through the block and hoisted the calf into the air.
Within ten minutes I had cut the calf into quarters, and took so long only because I had to keep kicking the dogs away from the offal, and because the saw provided was inadequate for cutting through the chine. I hesitated only once, as I thought of the boy being butchered up in the keep, and for a moment the world swam before my eyes. After which I deliberately suppressed all thought and memory, and worked on the calf like a mere machine, my hands and arms making the well-practiced movements without mindful calculation. At the finish, I looked up from the work to see Dorinda standing by, her strange eyes slitted in thought.
“Do you wish to hang any of it for later?” I asked.
“That would bring bears down from the hills,” Dorinda said. “It all goes into the stewpot to feed this crew of rogues and fustilarian bellygods.”
“A waste of good chops,” I said. “But I will volunteer to stay up tonight and shoot any bear who come to molest us, and we may dine on bear steaks tomorrow.”
Dorinda barked a laugh and thwacked me on the elbow with her ladle. A bolt of pain shot up my arm all the way to my teeth, and then the arm went numb.
When I recovered, I finished butchering the calf, and put the cuts up on the thatch roof of the cookhouse to keep the dogs off them. I knew the trick of cracking the skull to preserve the brains entire, and these with the sweetbreads I put in a bowl.
After I finished, I let the dogs have what remained, and taking my clothes walked out to the lake to wash. I made a half circuit of the water, and kept an eye on the cliffs that surrounded the corrie in hopes of finding a path to escape. I saw several routes that led to the upper rim of the vale, but none were easy, and they were all in plain sight of the well-armed bandits. It would be suicide to make the attempt in daylight. At night I would be locked into the dungeon, and nothing but a clever ruse would serve to keep me free.
Of course, at night the climb would be far more hazardous, and once I topped the corrie I would still be in the dark, and lost in a part of the Toppings that the bandits knew and that I did not. I was not a woodsman, and I knew little of how to evade the pursuit that would follow.
My wanderings brought me to the stream that fed the lake, and there I stripped off my remaining clothes and dove into the chill, clear water. Like rats from a drowning ship my fleas leapt for safety, and I cracked them between my fingernails as they struggled in the water.
The lice, unfortunately, would survive a bath, so I would have to be satisfied with eradicating only a single species of tormenter.
After my bath, I dried myself with tufts of grass, put on my clothes, and followed the stream through a grove of osiers toward the cliffs. A fresh, cool scent filled the grove, and the leaves were turning gold with autumn. At the foot of the cliff I found an ancient structure, a half circle of dressed yellow-brown sandstone overgrown with bushes and vines, and in front a deep, broad, weed-filled marble trough filled with water gushing from a spring at the base of the cliff, a trough that overspilled to form the stream. I saw fallen pillars and broken arches and realized that I was viewing a nymphaeum, a monument to the divine spirit of the spring.
I knew that such things had been built in the ancient Empire of the Aekoi. The Aekoi had never conquered Fornland, but nevertheless someone had built this imitation here.
Curious, I looked through the rubble, and found the broken remains of old marble urns and bits of shattered, elaborate carving, wreaths and flowers and vines with pendulous grapes.
The melancholy ruins set amid the drooping osiers suited my dark mood. I jumped up on the edge of the trough, then stepped over the water to what had been the central arch. The natural spring rose just behind, in a small grotto, and was brought into the nymphaeum by a thick-walled lead pipe that might have survived a thousand years. Atop the pipe were the remains of the fallen arch, the rubble overgrown with brooklime and creeping jenny. Water dripped from the walls of the grotto into the spring, the sounds echoing in the confined space.
I squatted by the bank of the spring, and stirred the cold liquid with a hand. A frog leaped from the bank into the safety of the water. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the grotto, I saw something pale amid the rubble, and as I leaned closer, I saw that it was a human hand.
For a moment my blood ran cold, and then I saw the hand belonged not to a corpse, but was made of rose-colored marble. Gently I pulled rubble and water plants away from the remains of the broken arch, and laid bare the statue of a woman clad in ancient drapery. She was about four feet tall, and lay on her side, her cheek reposed on her hand as if in slumber.
I freed the statue from the rubble and picked her up as if it were a child. I carried her out of the grotto and laid her in the trough to clean the marble, and afterward propped her up amid the ruin of the arch. She was posed prettily with one hand lifted to her cheek, and the other holding a bunch of water lilies. The draperies exposed one breast. Her hair waved gently down to her shoulders, and her features were so worn by time that there was only the suggestion of a face, the nose worn down, the merest outline of brow and lips. On the lips there was a trace of an impish smile.
Despite its age and condition, there was still a spirit in the old statue, a sense of coquettish mischief that lifted my mood.
“Well, mistress,” said I aloud. “It seems we have both met with misfortune.”
I filled a cupped hand with water and washed away a smudge of dirt that clung to the nymph’s neck. Then I heard a horn blow from down in the bandits’ camp, and knew it for the call to supper.
I rose and bowed courteously to the statue. “I hope to pay you court tomorrow,” I said, “if the ruffians will permit it.”
I made my way out of the grove feeling strangely lighthearted. The westering sun had left the corrie in shadow, with only the trees atop the cliffs still in bright sunshine. For a moment I saw a human figure outlined against the sky, and the sun winked scarlet against a red cap, or perhaps red hair, before the figure turned away and vanished. Though the figure had only been visible for a few seconds, its appearance was enough to darken my mood.
There were sentries on the cliffs, I thought. I could climb the cliffs and be shot down as soon as I set foot on the corrie’s rim.
Roast meat
scented the air as I approached the camp. I saw a pair of bandits carrying plates to the Oak House, where it seemed the two noblemen would sup on spit-roasted calf shank. Other bandits, mixed promiscuously with their captives, sat on the grassy sward around the lake with their plates and cups. I thought for a moment that this might be a good time to escape, with the bandits relaxed, but I looked up at the old fort and saw the gleaming helmets of a pair of sentries.
I was the last to arrive, and I found the kitchen deserted. Dorinda I saw quite alone, squatted down by the lake, and bent over her plate.
Trestle tables had been set up with bread, plates, and wooden spoons. There was little left of the veal stew, and the remains of the cooked vegetables were unappetizing, so I looked up on the thatch for any parts of the calf that the cooks had left unused. I saw the calf’s brains in their bowl and fetched them down. I cleaned away the membranes and blood vessels, then blanched the brains in a pot of water that had been set boiling to clean the dishes. Once the brain was cooked, I cut it up, dusted the pieces with flour, and fried them in an iron skillet with butter, parsley, garlic, and a sprig of rosemary, and then ate while congratulating myself on enjoying the best meal in the camp.
I looked up from my bowl to see Dorinda glaring at me from across the table, her ladle poised in her fist. I put on my attentive-courtier face. “No one else was using the brains,” I said.
She fetched me a stunning blow to the skull, one that set stars blazing before my vision. “No one in this camp uses their brains!” she cried, and then she burst out into coarse laughter and hit me again.
Under Dorinda’s ferocious gaze I hastened to wash the skillet along with my bowl, and then took a brief stroll along the stream that ran from the lake past the fort. I was gazing down into a tree-shrouded vale and trying to make sense of my location when I heard a meaningful click, and looked up to see that the two guards were looking down at me from the walls of the fort, and that one of them had ostentatiously cocked his firelock. I doffed my cap to him, and returned to the corrie until the horn sounded to tell the prisoners to march to their dungeon.
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