‘I’m the sheriff of this shire. We are on the trail of some felons and we need to cross now,’ said the tall knight.
Without saying a word, the ferryman put the gangplank down and waited for the unwanted cargo to board.
When the ferry moored at the other shore after a tense, wordless passage, Sir Richard deemed it safe enough to question the silent, surly ferryman, as there was now no risk of him refusing to take them across.
‘Tell us about your last passengers!’ he demanded roughly.
The heavily cloaked figure shrugged. ‘They paid their fare and didn’t cause any bother.’
‘How many were there? Did they have a young lady with them?’
‘No, there were just two men—’
Sir Richard’s heart jumped into his mouth. ‘What! No woman?’
‘No. But there was a big, sacking-bound bundle with them. It seemed quite heavy. Its length would have been a foot or two less than yours, and it was sort of lumpy and uneven.’
Sir Richard took a menacing step towards the ferryman. ‘Did it seem like there was anything alive inside this bundle?’
A shifty, evasive look came over the ferryman. ‘I couldn’t really say. It was dark, and it’s not my job to be going around prodding at passengers’ baggage.’
‘Were you not suspicious?’ growled the sheriff.
The ferryman coughed uneasily. ‘I don’t get paid for being suspicious.’
A well-filled purse was dangled tantalizingly in front of the ferryman. ‘Oh really…?’
Small, greedy eyes followed the purse’s movement. ‘I do remember now. It definitely looked the shape and size a woman could be,’ he replied, clutching out for the money.
But the purse was snatched away before the covetous hand could close around it. ‘No, not good enough, I’m afraid. But if you had been a good citizen and done something about the poor maid bundled up like a sack of rags, it would be a different story.’ He brought his face right up to the other man’s. ‘Now, you leech, tell me where these men went!’
Blinking his hard little eyes, the ferryman took a step back. ‘They slung the bundle—’
‘You mean the maiden.’
‘Yes, that—and they rode off along the road going south.’
* * * *
The road leading south was much wider and more frequently used than the forest tracks they had travelled at the beginning of the pursuit. Sir Richard and Sergeant Gallagher were relieved that the road led past open meadows, and only occasionally passed into shade where a lone forest giant had been left standing at the side of the road, unclaimed by the axe that had felled the rest of its kind to make way for pastures long ago.
Although the country they were passing through was not very familiar to him, Sir Richard knew it was the southern edge of the Heathcote Downs, where his shire would soon end and become Lothbury, the shire between Chaucy and the South Coast.
With the full moon lighting up the country bright as day, they were able to ride at a brisk trot. But after a while, Gallagher turned to Sir Richard. ‘It must be well past midnight by now. I think we should stop and rest until dawn.’
Sir Richard kept riding determinedly onwards. ‘No. The villains will get further ahead of us.’ The thought of doing anything that might widen the distance between him and Rowena was unbearable.
‘Surely they will be forced to stop awhile somewhere too,’ said the sergeant. ‘In the dark, we might miss signs of their passing or roads they may have turned down. If we don’t catch up with the villains very soon, we will be forced to stop during daylight hours to rest the horses. Why travel at night when you can travel in daylight?’
Although stopping was the last thing Sir Richard felt like doing, he could see the sense of his sergeant’s suggestion. They were passing a hay meadow which had been recently cut, and the hay was heaped into a few large haystacks by the road. ‘Yes, you’re right, we ought to stop. This field seems as good a place as any.’
The horses were soon tethered near one of the haystacks and their bridles, saddles and saddlebags removed. After giving the hardworking horses a rub down with a handful of hay to dry them off, the two men sat down beside the haystack.
After a meal of bread, cheese and apples, the weary soldiers sunk onto their hay pillows and wrapped their blankets tightly around themselves. The cool wind blowing from the north had a bite that heralded the coming of autumn.
Judging by the gentle, rhythmic snores coming from his direction, Sir Richard could tell his ever-relaxed sergeant had fallen asleep almost as soon as his head hit the hay. He himself, however, was not so fortunate. Tired as his limbs were, his fear-filled mind would give him no rest. If he drifted off into drowsy near-sleep, his tortured thoughts would jumble together in a whirling, twisted mass that was part dream, part memory and part thought.
* * * *
The inside of the room was dark. Every inch had been searched with groping, frantic hands. But no door could be found. A pale, eerie blue light began to fill the cell. Standing an arm’s length away was a white-faced young woman. Her dishevelled hair cascaded over her thin, trembling shoulders and down to her waist. Her white slip was smeared with dark stains. Blood covered her nose and hands. Tears had washed thin rivers down her dusty cheeks. The ghostly, waif-like damsel fell to her knees.
She threw back her head and screamed, ‘Help me, save me!’ The wrenching, half-crazed cry grew louder and louder until it was not just coming from her throat, but from all sides. Sharp, clawing talons suddenly bit into living flesh with searing agony.
Sir Richard woke from his nightmare with a start.
The first rosy blush of the fresh-faced dawn coloured the eastern sky. The setting moon and the last of the stars still shone faintly from the translucent, pale blue heavens, and down the valley, a crowing cock heralded the new day.
The knight shivered in the chill, damp morning air and shook the dewdrops from his hair. Pulling himself to a sitting position, he leaned back against the haystack and quickly wiped the sleep from his eyes.
Why did that nightmare keep haunting him? It had visited him on many a lonely, tortured night, reviving the memory of Morgana de Wintore as she had been when he visited her on the morning of her execution. A memory he was desperate to forget but that refused to leave him.
Sir Richard splashed bracingly cold water from a nearby goblet over his face, calling in wakefulness to banish the night time demons. He then pulled himself to his feet and stretched his stiff limbs. At nearly thirty-six, and with the brutal abuse of a warrior’s hard life behind him, his body was starting to complain about spending a cold night on hard ground out in the open.
He stirred the still-snoring Gallagher with his foot. ‘Rise and shine, comrade!’
It was almost indecent of the man to be sleeping next to a tormented dreamer with such a peaceful smile on his face…
Gallagher rolled onto his back and slowly opened his eyes. ‘Ah, morning…and I was having such a nice sleep…’
The men soon had their saddlebags packed and their horses ready, and were out on the road again. As the fertile farmland of the rolling downs gave way to steeper, stonier hills and wooded gorges, the road became narrower. The prosperous farms they had passed at regular intervals in the darkness thinned to the odd cottage or shepherd’s hut.
The fear that the felons might be hiding at a farm or have doubled back on themselves in the night weighed heavily on both men’s minds, but remained unsaid. Neither of them wanted to encourage such dark thoughts.
* * * *
It was nearly noon, and they had yet to pass another traveller on the lonely road. They were trotting towards the base of a mountain range that reared steeply up in front of them, when Sir Richard thought he could see someone amongst the trees the path passed into.
He urged Lucifer into a faster trot. His mood had been getting blacker and bleaker all morning as the empty miles had passed. But now he felt a sudden, joyous surge of hope, for standing in the road bef
ore him was a barefooted young country maid surrounded by a flock of geese, which she was driving along the path towards him.
He halted sharply in front of her. ‘Have you seen any travellers on horseback pass this way lately?’
The raven-haired girl rested her hands atop the long staff she carried and glared up at him. She might have been barefoot and dressed in the simple garb of a peasant, but she eyed him with the regal air of a royal princess. ‘Look what you’ve done to me geese; they be all scattered now!’ The black-eyed goose-girl pointed an indigent finger at her squawking flock, most of which had run into the roadside trees in alarm at the fast-approaching horseman. ‘You just think you can do whatever you wish, Sir High-and-Mighty! Coming here on your great beast, scattering me geese like it don’t matter and setting about interrogating me without so much as bidding me good day!’
The excitement of at last finding someone who might have seen Rowena had still not worn off. He hardly heard her complaints. ‘Have you seen—’
But the scornful goose-girl quickly interrupted him. ‘I ain’t talking to you no more, for you be rude.’ And with that the pouting girl, filled with the sort of indigent anger only a maid of her years could wear, turned away from him and flounced off in a huff.
‘No—I’m sorry!’ he called after her desperately.
The unimpressed goose-girl turned her black eyes back on him and gave her head a disdainful toss. ‘Sorry ain’t no use to me! Sorry can’t herd them geese back together!’
His joyous new mood was now well and truly gone. He gave a deflated sigh as he watched the indignant girl storm off. There went a young lady who took herself very seriously…
He jumped off Lucifer. It was time he took her just as seriously. ‘Let me help you,’ he called to the goose-girl, hurrying after her.
The only reply he received was a sullen glare from the glittering black eyes.
He ignored this less than enthusiastic response and started trying to herd the honking geese back together.
Gallagher just looked on in quiet amusement from a safe distance. When Sir Richard crossed paths with someone as difficult as he was himself, it was best to just stand clear and avoid the wreckage…
The knight threw himself at the task with great energy. His feet slipped from under him on the wet, mossy ground beneath the trees more than once, but he did not let that stop him. After a quick dust-down, he would be back at the geese.
And he took great care not to let a single expletive, curse or complaint slip from his lips, however much he felt like ringing the honking, flapping damn birds’ necks. There was no way there was going to be a repeat of an incident like the one in the marketplace. Comforting that young stallholder had been harder than fighting two armed men at once—though if badly upset, this maid looked more likely to kill than cry.
When all the fowls were shepherded back into a flock again, Sir Richard turned his attention back to the raven-haired maid. ‘Now madam, perhaps I can start again. God give you good day, damsel.’ He bowed low. ‘Have you seen anyone pass here?’
Although she did not look actively impressed, the maid did not actually look unimpressed now. ‘When I was getting me geese sorted for taking to market at sun-up, two men and a maiden rode past in haste. They were going the same way as you.’
His heart leapt for joy within him. ‘You did! And what did they look like?’
‘The two men were wearing black cloaks, and quickly put their hoods down when they spotted me, and the maiden was dressed in a black robe a bit like a nun’s habit, though without the head bit. The horse she rode was being led by one of them men.’
A wave of hope and relief surged over him. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’
‘It’s no bother,’ she replied aloofly, as though helping knight-errands was an everyday occurrence for her.
Sir Richard flung his arms around her in a big hug that lifted her clean off the ground, and kissed her. ‘I bloody love you!’
And with that he leapt onto Lucifer and cantered off down the road, leaving the goose-girl staring speechlessly at the receding back of the tall dark stranger.
.16.
Men of Iron
ALL AFTERNOON Sir Richard and Sergeant Gallagher had steadily climbed the mountain range that formed the southern boundary of Chaucy Shire, dividing it from its neighbour, Lothbury.
The mountains were steep and rocky, in many places rising as sheer cliff faces. White veils of water cascaded over several of these precipices and plunged down into misty gorges below. The path was exceedingly narrow. Often, there was only enough space for travellers to move in single file, and in many places the track had a sheer rock face on one side and a plunging precipice on the other. Eagles glided on the warm air currents rising from the sun-warmed rocks below, and cawing ravens circled the cliff tops which towered into the sky like castles. It took only a little imagination to see lords and ladies walking high up on their battlements or gazing out from arched windows.
As the sun sunk lower in the western sky, the menacing, inky storm clouds that had been rolling in from the north finally caught up with the two travellers. Keen to get off the mountaintop before nightfall, they moved as fast as they dared on the dizzyingly high trail. Already over the highest point of the narrow mountain pass, they were relieved when the path ahead snaked down into a gorge with a flat grassy bank along its river. There they could stop for the night.
By the time they reached the bottom of the gorge, storm clouds smothered the mountaintop in a thick, dark shroud. All the birds had fallen silent. The only sound to be heard was the eerie moaning of the wind whistling around the lonely peaks.
Gallagher pointed at a large overhang of rock at the bottom of the cliff face. ‘That will do nicely.’
The two men quickly made for the place. There were signs that many travellers before them had camped under the rock’s protection. Its roof was black with the soot of their camp fires.
With the first heavy drops of rain beginning to fall, Sir Richard and Gallagher hurried to get the horses unsaddled and tethered, and to gather enough of the dead wood lying on the riverbank before it became soaked.
With the help of some dry moss and a flint stone, a cheerful blaze was soon burning in the rock alcove, keeping the rapidly falling darkness at bay. A short while later, the two wayfarers were hungrily tucking into a trout which had been caught in a well-stocked pool during a short early afternoon stop, and washing it down with hot rosehip and elderflower tea.
Outside, the storm began to rage. The boom of thunder crashed forth from the sky and rolled through the gorge, amplified as it echoed off the rocks. Occasionally a bolt of lightning struck the mountaintop and briefly lit the black night bright as day with its strange blue-white light.
Then the wind got up. It howled and moaned and raged around the high, desolate pass all night long, sounding at times like the cries of revelling demons and evil spirits shrieking in the stormy darkness, and at other moments like the cries of the damned. Rain poured down in torrents. Blown savagely by the wind, it swirled first one way, then another.
The travellers were very grateful for their simple but solid shelter. Too low for a man to stand upright in but long enough to lie down in, it kept out most of the storm. What little rain did blow in was kept off by the oilcloth Sir Richard and Sergeant Gallagher had put over their legs.
The noise of the raging storm was such that Sir Richard held little hope of getting any sleep that night. He pulled his blanket tightly around himself and settled his head down on the saddle blanket he was using as a pillow.
Lying next to him, it was a different matter for Sergeant Gallagher. After only a short while, calm snores came from his direction. Was there any limit to that man’s ability to sleep?
Sir Richard was determined to get as much rest as he could before the hard miles ahead of them the following day. He tried to block out the sounds coming from outside, but kept hearing Rowena’s voice in the moaning wind, seeing her face in the swi
rling rain when it was lit up the lightning, and hearing her light, quick footfalls coming towards him in the drumming rain beating down on the rock.
Eventually he fell into a fitful sleep. And this time, he dreamt that Rowena came to him as he lay sleeping. Holding a burning candle, she glided into the room dressed all in white and hovered over him. Watching, just silently, peacefully watching.
A few hours later, Sir Richard crawled blinkingly out into the dawn light. The only clouds to be seen in the sky were a benign scattering of light, fluffy ones tinted brilliant gold by the rising sun. The lone sign left behind by the night’s storm was a change in the tune of the river. The bright, lively chatter of the previous day had turned into an angry roar as the grey-brown floodwaters jostled for space, racing through the narrow gorge in their headlong dash for the ocean.
He took a deep breath of the sweet, damp air and stretched his arms up. It was a relief to be out of the cramped cave and able to stand fully upright, without hitting his head like he had done when he first got up.
But then he turned to look at the grassy patch by the cliff face, where he had tethered the horses to a rowan tree the evening before. They were gone.
‘Gallagher, Gallagher, wake up!’ he shouted.
In an instant the sergeant was sitting bolt upright with a drawn sword in his hand, looking around frantically for the villains who were trying to murder him in his sleep. ‘What, what?’
‘The horses—they’re gone!’
The sword was tossed aside. ‘No!’ Gallagher quickly crawled out.
Sir Richard ran towards the place, filled with sickening dread. He found the rope he had tied the horses to. It had snapped.
He held the broken end up. ‘It looks like the horses got spooked by the thunder and bolted in the night!’
The only place the horses could have gone apart from back up the narrow track they had come down the previous evening was downstream along the riverbank. There was a path leading down through trees, with clearings in many places where the forest had been heavily grazed by deer.
The Heart of Darkness Page 24