Madness was no strange occurrence to the residents of Corfe. The garrison was stocked with the dregs of the king’s army—misfits and brutes who sucked suet and ale all day long, who kept whores naked and crouched between their thighs from dusk till dawn, who thought nothing of heaving their filthy, sweaty bodies over the screams of the women prisoners —and there were many—whenever the mood or the itch took them. Men and women alike screamed from the confines of their small, dank cells.
It was Bedlam and it was hell.
It was where King John had sent his niece, Eleanor, the Pearl of Brittany, to await his pleasure.
Marienne FitzWilliam crept on silent feet into the tower room, wary of disturbing the solemn figure who knelt over her evening prayers, her golden head bowed, her fingers smoothing comfortingly over the worn beads of a rosary. The candle burning in the prayer niche added its soot to the tall black stains already marking the stones from the countless candles that had burned there before. Marienne glanced at the tray of food she had brought into the room over an hour ago, knowing she would see only a crumb or two missing. Her poor princess barely ate enough to keep a bird alive. In the long months of her captivity, she had become thin and fragile, seeming to waste away before Marienne’s eyes. Her skin had lost its pearl-like lustre, even her hair—a gossamer cascade of silvery blonde sunlight—was dulled to a flat yellow. So much of it came away each morning in the bristles of the horsehair brush, it was a wonder there was enough to braid and twine at Eleanor’s nape.
Crossing the Channel had nearly accomplished what months of deprivation, heartbreak, and fear could not. The sea had been rough and the weather brutally cold. Marienne had suffered her own stomach to visit her throat several times during the voyage, and between bouts, had cradled Eleanor’s fevered head in her lap.
In Corfe, Eleanor had recovered some of her strength, but she was still so thin! Tears welled in Marienne’s eyes each time she saw her lovely mistress, head bowed, hands clasped in prayer, lips moving silently over pleas for forgiveness and understanding for those who would do their utmost to harm her.
Marienne would gladly have taken a dagger and plunged it into King John’s heart with a dearth of forgiveness and understanding. She would have plunged and plunged and plunged and taken the greatest pleasure in seeing the blood spurt from the gaping holes she would make in his chest! He had laughed. He had laughed, shrilly and maniacally when he had told Eleanor of her exile to Corfe, and Marienne had been the one to hold her and weep with her and comfort her as best she could. She was only fourteen, but felt one hundred and fourteen, forced too young to witness so much pain, deceit, and treachery. Forced to hurt so badly each time she saw a tremulous, brave smile cross her dear mistress’s face.
Eleanor offered one now as she detected Marienne’s presence behind her. She did not interrupt her prayers or stop her fingers from smoothing over the ebony beads. She was in the last prayer of the last station and Marienne waited patiently until the small gold cross was raised and pressed reverently to her lips to seal the final amen.
She hastened over and offered her assistance as the princess rose stiffly from her knees and moved to the bed.
“If you are going to scold me again, do not trouble yourself,” Eleanor said with a sigh. “I ate one whole round of bread and most of the poached fish. Any more and I would be belching like a wag.”
Marienne could have pointed out the bread was the size of a coin and the fish barely dented, but she held her tongue. It was more than her mistress had eaten the previous evening … and tomorrow was Wednesday. Wednesdays the cook mixed up a special treat of quenelles, one of the few things that seemed to tempt Eleanor’s appetite.
When Marienne told her this, hoping to rouse a little interest, the princess looked surprised. “Another sennight has passed already? It feels as though only yesterday we feasted on capons and dumplings.”
“Captain Brevant has promised to try to send us a flagon of real wine as well, not the soured vinegar they serve to the other … guests.”
Eleanor’s smile faltered somewhat and she reached out to stroke pale, slender fingers down Marienne’s unruly mop of crisp brown curls. “My poor Mouse. How dreadful this must all be for you. Forced to serve me in this … this dark and gloomy pesthole.”
“I am not forced, my lady,” Marienne protested, clutching the princess’s hand and holding it to her lips. “I am come willingly, of my own choice, and I stay willingly, knowing that one day soon we will both be able to walk out in the sunlight again.”
“Sunlight,” Eleanor whispered ruefully. “I have almost forgotten what it feels like on my face.”
There were no windows in the tower room, only candles to provide light. The air was close and smelled so strongly of damp mortar not even a blazing fire could relieve the stench. Not that they ever had enough wood to build a fire that did more than smoke and hiss and spit off the odd red cinder.
The bedding was always musty, the curtains that hung from the bed were rotted through in places and rarely failed to offer up the droppings of some small inhabitant when they were let down for the night. The king had promised to keep her in comfort. He had promised their stay at Corfe would be a short one, but they had heard nothing from Normandy since their departure and Marienne could only wonder if by “short” he meant “not long of this world.” He had evidently not instructed any special favours be accorded his niece. Day and night were the same, marked only by the arrival of fresh tallow candles each morning—two per day, to be used sparingly—and the emptying of the cracked slops jar each night. She was given a basin of water three times a week for washing, and once each week, for an hour, she was permitted to walk the ramparts between her tower and the next.
Almost since their arrival in Corfe, however, the weather had been bleak and rainy, the wind too fearsome on the rooftops for Eleanor to bear more than a few minutes’ exposure even though it was her only chance for a clean breath. Her one solace was in prayer; her only pleasure was gained through communion with God. And because not even a king could deprive a soul from seeking salvation, each morning at Prime and each evening before Vespers, Eleanor was allowed to descend the long, twisting spiral staircase and share her prayers with Father Wilfred, a ritual closely supervised by at least two of the castle guards and more often than not, their captain, Jean de Brevant. The captain was a tall, gruff man with a face like hewn rock and a voice that sounded like a mountain avalanche. The top of Marienne’s head barely reached his armpit and her entire body could have fit into one leg of his chausses —with room to spare—but now and then there was a sad look in his eye; a look only she, perforce, could see. And now and then, when the priest and the armoured roaches had slouched away, and the princess had begun the long, laborious climb back up into her tower, Marienne would linger behind a moment and share a word or two with the formidable Captain Brevant.
On this particular morning, the captain had whispered something in her ear that had kept Marienne staring down the long, vaulted corridor long after he had ambled away. He had told her, so casually she had almost not paid heed, of a party of knights returning from pilgrimage who were staying in the village of Corfe. One of them had required the services of an herb woman to tend an injury to his arm, other else they might have kept travelling. And since Brevant made it his business to always know when there were strangers in the area, he had been told of their arrival almost before the dust had been shaken from their clothes.
One of them, he also mentioned offhandedly, bore a scar on his cheek.
Marienne had all but forgotten to breathe. She could not remember climbing the stairs afterward, nor could she recall choking down the stale crust of bread and wedge of moldy cheese that broke their fast. She had debated telling her mistress … but what would she tell her? A knight with a scar on his face had taken temporary lodgings in the village? There were a thousand knights with scars on their faces; it did not follow it had to be him. Nor would it accomplish anything to raise her poor princes
s’s hopes if it were just another wounded soldier returning home.
Brevant had promised to try to find out more, if he could, and to bring her word the following morning. Until then, she would have to hold her tongue and try not to betray her excitement to Eleanor of Brittany.
Eduard FitzRandwulf d’Amboise rubbed his eyes, feeling the grit of a thousand sleepless nights scratching beneath the lids. He rubbed and looked again, but the view remained the same as it had for the past few hours he had spent staring at Corfe Castle, save that the gloomy gray sky had given way to a wind-tossed black one. He had watched lights wink on in the village, but the castle walls remained dark and oppressive. No sign of torchlight or candlelight showed along the walls, and only the faintest hint of a dull glow rising above the baileys suggested there was any life at all within.
It had not been a day of blessings thus far. Why should he have expected Corfe to be anything less than an unassailable stronghold? Henry de Clare had warned him. He had, in the past two days since their arrival in England, sketched pictures in the sand, built replicas with stones and twigs, given a detailed accounting of the number of times armies had tried and failed to breach the castle walls. Armies, he had said, equipped with mangonels and battering rams, and catapults capable of throwing huge stones into and over the walls. King John had not chosen this castle by whim or fancy to house the prisoners he wanted least to escape. He had chosen it because no one ever had escaped. The guards were handpicked and had no use for bribes. The townspeople were too terrified of shadows in the windows at night to even speak to strangers who were just passing through.
Eduard had studied the land and the castle. He had observed the battlements from every conceivable angle and approach, and he had watched for traffic at the main gates, hoping to learn who was admitted and how frequently.
No one had crossed the draw all day.
The towers, walls, and baileys formed a roughly triangular configuration on the dome of a bald hill that overlooked the sea. The main entrance was through two sets of gates, each with their own drawbridges and flanking barbican towers. A man could possibly make it uninvited through the first set of outer gates, only to be trapped between the outer and inner portcullises. It was the sole entrance wide enough to admit horse-drawn wagons or carts and Eduard could envision the process of checks and double checks, watched all the while by crossbowmen and guards standing on sentry walks above.
Another tower guarded the north and west corner of the inner bailey and was protected by a portcullis and forebuilding. Here was where any foot traffic passed between the inner and outer walls, but of that too, there was very little. To judge by the speed at which the door opened and the departing visitor was ejected, and the slowness by which anyone was admitted, the castle guard was under a strict rule of no unnecessary admissions.
No surprise, since their walls imprisoned the only person who could threaten the king’s possession of the crown.
There had to be other ways in and out of the castle, of course. Eduard just hadn’t found them. He judged it possible to raise a ladder to a section of the wall and clamber over it between patrols of the guards on sentry, but a sixty-foot ladder took time to build and would be difficult to conceal when there was not a tree or bush within a mile radius of the barren dome on which the castle stood.
A rope and hook could afford a man an alternative means of gaining the top of the wall, but again, there was sixty feet of height at the lowest point and he had not met an arm yet with enough accuracy to toss a grapple over a stone lip on the first throw. More than one attempt, ringing off the stone, would be sure to attract attention and again, there was nowhere to hide.
He had once heard of a man loading himself on a catapult and, in desperation, hurling himself up and over the walls of an impregnable castle. It was when Eduard also remembered the man had had his brains crushed to berry juice when he impacted on a stone cistern that he left the perch he had been occupying for the hours he had sat staring at the solid dark mass on the horizon.
The road to the village ran straight through the market square and climbed toward the main gates. The village church faced the outer war towers as if it had been deliberately placed there to ward off evil. The solitary inn was at the eastern corner of the square and even though it was still relatively early—only an hour or two past Vespers—the streets were deserted, and most windows were shuttered against the dread mysteries of the night. There was no sound to be heard anywhere save for the dull crunch of his own boot heels over the hard-packed earth.
Eduard slowed and tilted his head slightly to one side. His hand went to the hilt of his sword and his eyes searched the shadows on either side of him. He heard it again, a breath like a mountain might make the instant before all air is expelled from its catacombs.
“Put your hand away from your sword and stand fast.”
Eduard was a split second too slow in reacting and before he could pull his blade more than an inch from its sheath, he felt a cold sliver of steel slide up beneath his chin. An arm the size of a haunch of venison circled his chest and pulled him back against something solid and armoured. His head was forced back at a critical angle, by a knife that nicked the skin, sending a warm trickle of blood down to his collar.
“Away from the sword,” the voice hissed in his ear, “or our conversation ends here.”
“Brevant?”
The knife sliced deeper. “Godstrewth! You do not know me and I do not know you, yet one of us stands bellowing a name for all the world of sin-eaters to hear!”
Since the “bellow” had comprised of little more than a pained gasp of breath, Eduard held his tongue between his teeth and waited for the knife to be taken away.
It lingered for effect then was removed on a grunted curse. Eduard relaxed the arch in his neck and ran a hand across the stinging cut as he turned to face his attacker.
The man was a mountain. Taller than Eduard by half a head and twice as broad from neck to waist to calf. The armour Eduard had felt had been the man’s chest. He wore the leather buckler of a captain and the cloak of a man who did not want to be readily identified … although how there could be two of similar size and bulk was a question Eduard did not want answered.
“You are come from the Old Lion?” Brevant asked huskily.
“You will think I am come from hell if you lift a knife to me again.”
Brevant grinned, baring two crooked teeth, like fangs, to the gloomy light. “Look about you, whelp. We are in hell already. Do I get an answer to my question?”
“Do I get an answer to mine?”
The mountain shifted in a general glint of buckles, studs, and metal clasps that adorned his surcoat. “I am Brevant, and because you could learn that much from any villager with eyes come morning, I give away no secrets.”
“I am told you do not give away much of anything.”
“The price of knowledge is not cheap,” he agreed on a deep rumble of mirth. “And since I am not the one expected to pay, I do not want to know your name, or who you are, or where you are from. If you are come from the Old Lion, that is dangerous enough to know.”
“The Old Lion recommended me to you,” Eduard acknowledged. “But how did you know I was here?”
“I know when a dog strays into this village; I know where it pisses, what it eats, how many fleas it has on its body. I know because it is my business to know and because it is healthier not to be taken by surprise.”
Eduard felt the blood oozing down his neck and saw no argument. “Do you also know why I am here?”
“I know full bloody well why you are here,” Brevant growled. “And after I tell you what you are up against, mayhap you will tuck your tail between your legs like all the others and scurry off back to where you have come from.”
“There have been others?”
“There have been others since the Devil took the throne of England and began to use this place as a means of removing faces he never wanted to see again. They have all come—the f
athers, the brothers, the valiant friends, even the wives, and they have all paced the hills and walked the shores. They have hunched for hours on the Eagle’s Chair, just as you have undoubtedly done, and they have stared at the walls as if their eyes could put them through the mortar. They stay a sennight, sometimes two, then leave again, no better off than when they came, no closer to seeing who they came to see than they were when they arrived all full of fire and righteous brimstone. You would do best to take my advice—and this I give free of cost— and leave now before you find yourself with hymns being sung over your head and dirt being thrown over your feet.”
“Are you saying you cannot help me get into the castle?”
Brevant looked astonished, and more than a little horrified. “Help you get in? Was that what the Lion thought I would do? Help you get in? A louse needs help to get in; a man would need aid from God. My skin is no safer than any others because there happens to be more of it. My actions are governed by Old Swill, and he answers only to the king. If he takes a notion in his head to question me on this or that, I am as good as dead—and not pleasantly so. No, no, my good man. My intention was not to spread my gizzards on the rack for this. If that was what you thought, keep your money and your ideas to yourself; I’ll have no more to do with you.”
Eduard reached out and caught his sleeve as Brevant started to walk away. “Can you at least carry a message for me?”
“A message?” The shadowed visage peered around, this way and that. “If I hear words and am expected to repeat them, I could be asked at the point of a red hot pincer to repeat them again, and would be forced to do so. If I carry these words on a piece of paper, I could be searched and the paper found and the words read, and the pincers heated again. Do you see my problem, friend?”
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