by Ellis Peters
She waited, but nobody came. Probably the time she waited was not as long as she supposed, by no means as long as it felt to her, but it seemed an age, a year of her life.
In the end, she thought she might not be offending by wandering along the gallery into the chapel. She might at least hear if there was any activity below. Ivo had bought Flemish tapestries for his new Cheshire manor, he might well be unbaling them and delighting in their fresh colours. She could forgive a degree of neglect in such circumstances.
She set her hand to the latch of the door, and trustingly lifted it. The door did not give. She tried it again, more strongly, but the barrier remained immovable. No doubt of it, the door was locked.
What she felt first was sheer incredulity, even amusement, as if some foolish accident had dropped a latch and shut her in by mistake. Then came the instinctive wish of every creature locked in, to get out; and only after that the flare of alarm and the startled and furious reappraisal, in search of understanding. No mistake, no! Ivo’s own hand had turned the key on her.
She was not the girl to fall into a frenzy and batter on the door. What good would that do? She stood quite still with the latch in her hand, while her wits ran after truth as fiercely as the hound in the tapestry after the hart. She was here in an upstairs room, with no other door, and windows not only narrow for even her slender body to pass through, but high above ground, by reason of the slope. There was no way out until someone unlocked the door.
She had come with him guilelessly, in good faith, and he turned into her gaoler. What did he want of her? She knew she had beauty, but suddenly was certain he would not go to such trouble on that account. Not her person, then, and there was only one thing in her possession for which someone had been willing to go to extremes. Deaths had followed it wherever it passed. One of those deaths a servant of his had helped to bring about, and he had dealt out summary justice. A sordid attack for gain, a theft that accidentally ended in murder, and the stolen property found to prove it! She had accepted that as everyone had accepted it. To doubt it was to see beyond into a pit too black to be credited, but she was peering into that darkness now. It was Ivo, and no other, who had caged her.
If she could not pass through the windows, the letter she carried could, though that would be to risk others finding it. Its weight was light, it would not carry far. All the same, she crossed to the windows and peered out through the slits at the slope of grass and the fringe of trees below; and there, sprawled at ease against the bole of a beech with his arbalest beside him, was Turstan Fowler, looking up idly at these very windows. When he caught sight of her face between the timbers of the frame, he grinned broadly. No help there.
She withdrew from the window, trembling. Quickly she drew up, from its resting-place between her breasts, the small, tightly-rolled vellum bag she had carried ever since Master Thomas had hung it about her neck, before they reached Shrewsbury. It measured almost the length of her hand, but was thin as two fingers of that same hand, and the thread on which it hung was of silk, cobweb-fine. It did not need a very large hiding-place. She coiled the silk thread about it, and rolled it carefully into the great swathe of blue-black tresses coiled within her coif of silken net, until its shape was utterly shrouded and lost. When she had adjusted the net to hold it secure, and every strand of hair lay to all appearances undisturbed, she stood with hands clasped tightly to steady them, and drew in long breaths until the racing of her heart was calmed. Then she put the brazier between herself and the door, and looking up across the room, felt the heart she had just steeled to composure leap frantically in her breast.
Once again she had failed to hear the key turn in the lock. He kept his defences well oiled and silent. He was there in the doorway, smiling with easy confidence, closing the door behind him without taking his eyes from her. She knew by the motion of his arm and shoulder that he had transferred the key to the inner side, and again turned it. Even in his own manor, with his household about him, he took no risks. Even with no more formidable opponent than Emma Vernold! It was, in its way, a compliment, but one she could have done without.
Since he could not know whether she had or had not tried the door, she chose to behave as if nothing had happened to disturb her. She acknowledged his entrance with an expectant smile, and opened her lips to force out some harmless enquiry, but he was before her.
“Where is it? Give it to me freely, and come to no harm. I would advise it.”
He was in no hurry, and he was still smiling. She saw now that his smile was a deliberate gloss, as cold, smooth and decorative as a coat of gilt. She gazed at him wide-eyed, the blank, bewildered stare of one suddenly addressed in an unknown tongue. “I don’t understand you! What is it I’m to give you?”
“Dear girl, you know only too well. I want the letter your uncle was carrying to Earl Ranulf of Chester, the same he should have delivered at the fair, by prior agreement, to Euan of Shotwick, my noble kinsman’s eyes and ears.” He was willing to go softly with her, since time was now no object, he even found the prospect amusing, and was prepared to admire her playing of the game, provided he got his own way in the end. “Never tell me, sweet, that you have not even heard of any such letter. I doubt if you make as good a liar as I do.”
“Truly,” she said, shaking her head helplessly, “I understand you not at all. There is nothing else I could say to you, for I know nothing of a letter. If my uncle carried one, as you claim, he never confided in me. Do you suppose a man of business takes his womenfolk into his confidence over important matters? You’re mistaken in him if you believe that.”
Corbière came forward an idle pace or two into the room, and she saw that no trace of his limp remained. The brazier had burned into a steady, scarlet glow, the light from it reflected like the burnish of sunset along the waving gold of his hair. “So I thought,” he agreed, and laughed at the memory. “It took me a long time, too long, to arrive at you, my lady. I would not have trusted a woman, no… But Master Thomas, it seems, had other ideas. And I grant you, he had an unusual young woman to deal with. For what it’s worth, I admire you. But I shall not let that stand in my way, believe me. What you hold is too precious to leave me any scruples, even if I were given to such weaknesses.”
“But I don’t hold it! I can’t give you what I have not in my possession. How can I convince you?” she demanded, with the first spurt of impatience and indignation, though she knew in advance that she was wasting all pretences. He knew.
He shook his head at her, smiling. “It is not in your baggage. We’ve taken apart even the seams of your saddlebags. Therefore it is here, on your person. There is no other possibility. It was not on your uncle, it was neither in his barge nor in his booth. Who was left but you? You, and Euan of Shotwick, if I had somehow let a messenger slip through my guard. You, I knew, would keep, and come tamed to my hand—but for a sudden qualm I had, that you might have sent it back in Thomas’s coffin for safe-keeping, but that was to overrate you, my dear, clever as you are. And Euan never received it. Who was then left, but you? Not his crew—all of them far too simple, even if he had not had orders to keep strict secrecy, as I know he had. I doubt if he told even you what was in the letter.”
It was true, she had no idea of its contents. She had simply been given it to wear and guard, as the obvious innocent who would never come under suspicion of being anyone’s courier, but its importance had been impressed upon her most powerfully. Lives, her uncle had said, hung upon its safe delivery, or, failing that, its safe return to the sender. Or, in the last resort, its total destruction.
“I am tired of telling you,” she said forcefully, “that you are wrong in supposing that I know anything about it, or believe it ever existed but in your imagination. You brought me here, my lord, on the pretext of providing me the companionship of your sister, and conducting us both to Bristol. Do you intend to do as you promised?”
He threw his head back and laughed aloud, the red glow dancing on his fine cheekbones. “Y
ou would not have come with me if there had not been a woman in the story. If you behave sensibly now you may yet meet, some day, the only sister I have. She’s married to one of Ranulf’s knights, and keeps me informed of what goes on in Ranulf’s court. But devil a nun she’d ever have made, even if she were not already a wife. But send you safe home to Bristol—yes, that I’ll do, when you’ve given me what I want from you. And what I will have!” he added with a snap, and his shapely, smiling lips thinned and tightened into a sword-blade.
There was a moment, then, when she almost considered obeying him, and giving up what she had kept so obstinately through so many shocks. Fear was a reality by this time, but so was anger, all the more fierce because she was so resolutely suppressing it. He came a step towards her, his smile as narrow as a cat’s bearing down on a bird, and she moved just as steadily to keep the brazier between them; that also amused him, but he had ample patience.
“I don’t understand,” she said, frowning as if she had begun to feel genuine curiosity, “why you should set such store on a letter. If I had it, do you think I should refuse it to you, when I’m in your power? But why does it matter to you so much? What can there be in a mere letter?”
“Fool girl, there can be life and death in a letter,” he said condescending to her simplicity, “wealth, power, even land to be won or lost. Do you know what that single packet could be worth? To King Stephen, his kingdom entire! To me, maybe an earldom. And to a number of others, their necks! For I think you must know, for all your innocence, that Robert of Gloucester has his plans made to bring the Empress Maud to England, and make a fight of it for her claim to the throne, and has been touting through his agents here to get Earl Ranulf’s support for her cause when they do land. My noble kinsman has a hard heart, and has demanded proof of the strength of that cause before he lifts a hand or stirs a foot to commit himself. Names, numbers, every detail, if I know my Ranulf, they’ve been forced to set down in writing for him. All the tale of the king’s enemies, the names of all those who pay him lip service now but are preparing to betray him. There could be as many as fifty names on the list, and it will serve, believe me, for Ranulf s ruin no less, since if his name is not there, he had reached the point of considering adding it. What will not King Stephen give, to have that delivered into his hand? All committed to writing, it may be even the date they plan to sail, and the port where they hope to land. All his enemies cut off before they can forgather, a prison prepared for Maud before ever she gets foot ashore. That, my child, is what I propose to offer to the king, and never doubt but I shall get my price for it.”
She stood staring at him with drawn brows and shocked eyes across the brazier, and felt her blood chill in her veins and all her body grow cold. And he was not even a partisan! He had killed, or procured others to kill for him, three times already, not for a cause, but coldly and methodically for his own gain and advancement. He cared nothing at all for which of them wore the crown, Stephen or Maud. If he could have got his hands rather on information of value to Maud, and felt that she was likely to prevail and reward him well, he would have betrayed Stephen and all his supporters just as blithely.
For the first time she was terrified, the weight of all those imperilled lives lay upon her heart like a great stone. She had no doubt that this estimate of what would be in the letter must be very close to the truth, close enough to destroy a great many men who adhered to the same side her uncle had served with devotion. He had been a passionate partisan, and it had cost him his life. Now, unless she could bring about a miracle, the message he had carried would cost many more lives, bloodshed, bereavement, ruin. And all for the enrichment and advancement of Ivo Corbière! She had followed and supported Master Thomas as a matter of family loyalty. Now that meant nothing any longer, and all she felt was a desperate desire to avoid more killing, not to betray any man on either side of the quarrel to his enemies on the other. To help every fugitive, to hide every hunted man, to keep the wives unwidowed and the children still fathered, was better by far than to fight and kill either for Stephen or for Maud.
And she would not let him have them! Whatever the cost, he should not tread his way unscathed to his earldom over other men’s faces.
“I have nothing against you,” Corbière was saying, confident and at ease. “Give me the letter, and you shall reach Bristol in safety, and not be the loser. But don’t think I’ll scruple to pay you in full, either, if you thwart me.”
She stood fixed and still, her hands cupping her face, as though pressing hard to contain fear. The tips of her fingers worked unseen under the edge of her tissue net into the coils of her hair, feeling for the little cylinder of vellum, but face to face with her he saw no movement at all.
“Come, you are not so attractive to me that you need fear rape,” he said, disdainfully smiling, “provided you are sensible, but for all that, it would be no hardship to me to strip you with my own hands, if you are obstinate. It might even give me pleasure, if the act proves stimulating. Give, or have it taken from you by force. You should know by now that I let no man stand in my way, much less a little shopkeeper’s girl of no account.”
Of no account! No, she had never been of any account to him, never for a moment, only of use in his ruthless pursuit of his own ambitious interests. Still she stood as if frozen, except that when he advanced upon her at leisure, his smile now wolfish and hungry, she circled inch by inch to keep the brazier between them. Its heart was a red glow. She stood close, as if only that core of warmth gave her some comfort and protection; and suddenly she tore down the coil of her hair and clawed out the letter, tearing off her silken net with it in her haste. She dared not simply cast it into the fire, it might roll clear or be too easily retrieved. She made a desperate lunge, and thrusting it deep into the heart of the glow, held it there for an agonised moment, snatching back burned fingers with a faint cry that sounded half of pain and half of triumph.
He uttered a bellow of rage, and lunged as quickly to snatch it out again, but the net had flared at a touch, tiny worms of fire climbed to lick his hand, and all he touched of the precious letter, before he recoiled, was the wax of the seal, which had melted at once, and clung searingly to his fingers as he wrung them and whined with pain. She heard herself laughing, and could not believe she was the source of the sound. She heard him frantically cursing her, but he was too intent on recovering his prize to turn upon her then. He tore off his cotte, wrapped a corner of the skirt about his hand, and leaned to grasp again at the glowing cylinder thrust upright in the fire-basket. And he would get it, defaced and incomplete, perhaps, but enough for his purpose. The outer covering was not yet burned through everywhere. He should not have it, she would not bear it! She stooped as he snatched at it, clutched with her good hand at the leg of the brazier, and overturned it over his ankles and feet.
He screamed aloud and leaped back. Glowing coals flew, cascading over the floor, starting a brown furrow, a flurry of smoke and a stink of burning wood across the nearest rug, and reached the tinder-dry skirts of the tapestries on the wall between the two windows. There was a strange sound like a great indrawn breath, and an instant serpent of flame climbed the wall, and after it a tree of fire grew, thickened, put out lightning branches on all sides, enveloped all the space between the windows, and coursed both ways like hounds at fault, to reach the dusty hangings on the neighbouring walls. A brittle shell of fire encased the room before Emma could even stir from her horrified stillness. She saw the huntsmen and huntresses in the tapestries blaze for an instant into quivering life, the hounds leap, the forest trees shimmer in fierce light, before they disintegrated into glittering dust. Smoke rose from a dozen burning fragments over half the floor, and vision dimmed rapidly.
Somewhere in that abrupt hell beyond the hearth, Ivo Corbière, shirt and hair aflame, a length of blazing tapestry fallen upon him, rolled and shrieked in agony, the sounds he made tearing her senses. Behind her one wall of the room was still clean, but the circling flames were
licking round both ways towards it.
There was a rug untouched at her back, she dragged it up and tried to reach the burning man with it, but smoke thickened quickly, stinging and blinding her eyes, and flashing tongues of fire jetted out of the smoke and drove her back. She flung the rug, in case he could still clutch at it and roll himself in its smothering folds, but she knew then that it was too late for anyone to help him. The room was already thick with smoke, she clutched her wide sleeve over mouth and nostrils, and drew back from the awful screaming that shrilled in her ears. And he had the key of the room on him! No hope of reaching him now, no hope of recovering the key. The room was ablaze, timber at window and wall and floor began to cry out in loud cracks and splitting groans, spurting strange jets of flame.
Emma drew back, shielding her face, and hammered at the door, shrieking for help against the furious sounds of the fire. She thought she heard cries somewhere below, but distantly. She knotted her hands in the tapestries on either side the door, where the flames had not yet reached, tore the rotting fabric down, rolled it up tightly to resist sparks, and hurled it into the furnace on the other side of the room. Let the door at least remain passable. All the hangings that were not yet burning she dragged down. Her seared hand she had forgotten, she used it as freely as the other. All those other lives, surely, were safe enough, no one was ever going to read the letter that had failed to reach Ranulf of Chester. Even that fearful life shut in this room with her must be all but over, the sounds were almost lost in the voice of the fire. A busy, preoccupied voice, not unlike the obsessed hum of the fairground. She had a life to lose, too. She was young, angry, resolute, she would not lose it tamely. She hammered at the door, and called again. No one came. She heard no voices, no hasty footsteps on the stairs to the gallery, nothing but the singing of the fire, mounting steadily from a hum to a roar, like a rioting crowd, but better harmonised, the triumphant utterance of a single will.