Toorkild thudded down on his knees beside the corpse. “Eyesobel.” He felt at the throat, twisted his head and set his ear to the chest.
A woman standing near the corpse’s head spoke. “Our lady be dead, Toorkild.” Andrea remembered her from when she’d lived at the tower before. Yanet: Isobel’s housekeeper and friend. “Touch her hand. Cold as clay.”
“Not Isobel,” Toorkild said. “Not my little Bel.”
Per was shaking his head. His body, within Andrea’s arms, was stiffly resistant. She hugged him harder.
In sudden anger, Toorkild shouted, “Who did this?”
All the little whisperings died away, and disturbed cattle could be heard ripping and crunching grass. The silence from the people was so deep that Andrea raised her head, as if at a shout. Everyone looked at Per.
Toorkild looked to see where they stared, saw his son, and lost interest. “Tell me who did it. Elven? Grannams? Who?”
Yanet replied by lifting her arm and pointing. She pointed straight at Per.
5
16th-Side A:
The Grannam Tower at Brackenhill
Joan Grannam
It was quiet in the stillroom, and it smelled sweetly of honey and herbs. Joan reached up to the shelf, so aware of her aunt watching her, waiting to find fault, that her every movement was hampered as if by tight clothes.
Taking down the turned wooden box, she carried it to the table and prized off its lid. From inside, from the rustling dried leaves it contained, rose a musty, sour smell that made her wrinkle her nose. It smelled like damp places where mice go.
“Now,” said Mistress Crosar, from her stool nearby. “Art sure what has there?”
“Dried foxglove, Aunt. I smell it is. And you labeled it.” A small paper was stuck to the wooden lid, with Mistress Crosar’s thick black writing—‘foxglove.’
“Bring it here and let me smell.”
Suppressing her annoyance, Joan carried the box to her aunt, who leaned over it as Joan held it, and sniffed. “Aye, that be foxglove. But tha mun take care,” she added as Joan returned the box to the table. “When tha’rt using foxglove and henbane and dead-man’s cherries, tha mun always be sure.”
“Aye, madam.”
“These things be poison. At least, they would make one who eats them sick indeed. Always sniff, always be sure. Labels fall off and are put back on wrong pot. Pots are put back in wrong place.”
It sounded as if she was accusing Joan of doing these things. “Aye, madam.” While she answered meekly, inside her head, her own voice cried out, I ken! I ken! A thousand times you’ve told me—I ken!
“Tell me all tha ken about foxglove,” Mistress Crosar said.
With the smallest of sighs, Joan straightened, and stared at the tall cupboard across the table from her, each shelf filled with crock and wooden pots. Bunches of drying leaves hung from hooks set into the shelves’ edges. “Foxglove grows in woods and shady places. Its leaves be hairy and grow in a rosette. Its flowers grow in a tall spike, and be pink, with spots inside their mouths. Like a foxglove, Aunt. Anybody’d ken a foxglove.”
“Then tell me something that not anybody kens.”
“Whole plant be powerful: flowers, seeds, stalk, root, and leaf. It be as strong fresh or dried. And it be poisonous to animals as well.”
Mistress Crosar nodded.
“Its most powerful part be leaves picked from top of stalk in spring,” Joan recited. “One alone of those leaves can kill a body. This be no true of every plant. Some store their worst poison in other places.”
“Good, good. And how ken we poisoning by foxglove?”
“Pains in belly, vomiting, flux, and bad head pain. It may be they see things.”
“Good. And what else?”
Hands clasped before her, back straight, Joan said, “If dose be larger, then their heart may lose its beat, and go too slow or too fast. They may shake or go into fits.”
“I be well pleased,” Mistress Crosar said.
Joan felt a brief flush of pleasure, before thinking: Why care I whether you be pleased or no?
“And what use we foxglove for?”
To kill you, you old witch, Joan thought. Aloud, she said, “To help folk like Nanny, whose hearts skip and jump. A small dose calms a heart, and makes it beat slow and true.”
“And how make we it?”
“First—” Joan hesitated, going over what she was about to say in her mind, searching for mistakes. Her aunt was sure to rebuke her if she made any, and tell her she wasn’t fit to be her father’s daughter. Then Joan would be even more nervous, would spill and forget things, and would probably be punished for carelessness. “First, we … weigh leaves?”
“Aye, good. Tha mun be careful with foxglove. How much?”
Joan leaned to study the battered old notebook propped against shelves at the back of the workbench. “A dram.” She used the delicate little scales to weigh the correct amount, added it to the three-legged pot, and ladled ale over it. Liquid should always be poured over dried leaves, she knew, because then the leaves soaked in the liquid instead of floating on it.
“Remember to wash those things!” her aunt said. “Be fire hot enough?”
If it weren’t for her aunt’s nagging, Joan could have enjoyed working in the stillroom. She tried to pretend she was alone as she added honey to the pot and then took it to the stove: a brazier set into a stone bench. The pot’s legs enabled it to stand among the burning, crumbling peats.
She watched the pot carefully, moving it from hotter peats to cooler ones, so that it simmered but did not boil. At least the heat meant that her aunt didn’t come to stand by her and she had a few peaceful moments to herself. She drifted into a dream as she stirred and studied the colors of the peat and watched the bubbles rising. The warmth and honey scent made her almost dozy and the sudden yell from outside made her own heart leap and her head jerk up.
The first yell was followed by others as people called friends. Buckets clanged against walls, disturbed chickens and pigs screeched, footsteps sounded, doors banged, people cried aloud in alarm or astonishment.
Mistress Crosar rose, walked to the small glazed window beside the sink, and opened it, letting a sweet, cool draught cut through the herbal stuffiness of the stillroom. Leaning out, she called, “What be all this din?”
That made an instant silence, except for one cry that faded and died in embarrassment.
Joan, at the stove, listened, but kept her head lowered and her hand stirring.
A muddle of noise blew in through the window: the thatch rustling in a breeze, chickens, footsteps, a dog barking, the ringing of hammers—and among it all, voices replying to her aunt. She heard the word lady and the meek, apologetic tone, but not what was said.
Her aunt had her head stuck out of the window, and she heard. “What?” Her aunt’s sharp tone brought Joan’s head up. “Be this true or some tale?”
Joan kept her eyes on the pan she stirred, but her heart picked up its pace. From outside, a gabble of voices rose in reply, and Mistress Crosar shut the window on them with a clang of its frame. That meant she was out of temper, or she would not have been so rough with the expensive glass panes. Joan continued to stir, eyes lowered, as she listened to her aunt’s tread on the floorboards. “Leave that aside,” Mistress Crosar said. “Cover pan. We’ll finish it later.”
Joan took the pan from the fire, set it on the stone bench, and covered it with a lid, balancing the wooden spoon on top. She turned to cover the brazier with its iron lid and found that her aunt had done that for her—which meant that her aunt was unusually keen to leave the stillroom. Some intriguing message had been brought to the tower that her aunt was eager to learn more about. Joan’s mind flitted among all the possibilities. A wedding? A riding?
Mistress Crosar glanced back from the stil
lroom’s door to be sure that Joan was following. Joan kept her head lowered and her hands clasped before her. The steps she took were so small that they hardly disturbed the hang of her skirt, making her appear to glide across the floor. There was nothing to find fault with.
The entrance to the stillroom, as with all of the tower’s buildings, was not at ground level. A ladder leaned in the doorway. Mistress Crosar turned and neatly descended, backward, to the paved yard below, then stood guard while Joan climbed down.
Mistress Crosar led the way to the door of the tower. She had an easier walk than most since everyone who saw her square, black-clad figure hastily gave way, even the fighting men.
Joan, following behind, kept her head lowered, but peeked to right and left from under her brows. People were gathering at the entries of all the alleys opening into the yard. They all knew the news before she did! That wasn’t fair.
The Sterkarms! It must be the Sterkarms. Joan’s blood flowed a little more warmly. The Sterkarms had driven off cattle again. Or they’d killed someone—or carried off some girl. It was the Sterkarms up to something, for sure. It always was—and it meant there would be a ride.
Joan and her aunt reached the tower and entered the darkness of its warm, dung-scented lower room, where horses and cattle snuffed and stamped. As the walls closed around her, Joan’s excitement turned a little sick. Rides were exciting, rides gave everyone much to talk about for months, even years, but it meant her father would ride out to fight. He might be hurt, or worse. And if he was killed, what would happen to her?
Mistress Crosar
The iron gate that closed off the tower’s stairs stood open, and Mistress Crosar led the way up the narrow steps, around and around. Her hip hurt, as it always did these days, but she was able to lean on the plastered wall until they reached the landing.
It was a narrow space, and the guards who stood on either side of the door into the hall took up much of it. Both came to attention as soon as Mistress Crosar appeared, which gave her some satisfaction. Things were being done as they should be. As she passed by them, Joan following, the men fixed their eyes on the plaster of the opposite wall. Which, again, was as it should be.
In the hall, the long trestle tables were in place for the evening meal, and a maid was carrying the necessary knives and serving spoons from the cupboard and laying them on the board. All as it should be.
Richie Grannam, Laird Brackenhill and brother of Mistress Crosar, was seated in a settle on the hearth. Beside him was the great fireplace with its stone hood carved and painted with the Grannam emblem: a red bull on a green field. Richie’s dogs rose from his feet and came rustling and padding through the rushes to greet the women, tails lolloping against flanks. Mistress Crosar cuffed them away.
A man standing close to the fire turned from it, and Mistress Crosar knew him at once for a hind, a farmworker. His clothes of black and gray wool, stained and sagging from much wear, the dark tan of his weathered skin, his roughly chopped hair, all proclaimed him as such. Mistress Crosar noted the cup in the man’s hand. There was a small wooden tub on the edge of the table, too, with a crumpled cloth and a wooden dish of bread beside it. So, even though the man was of the lower sort, he had been given water to wash in and food and drink. She nodded with satisfaction.
“Be short, man!” Richie Grannam said to the hind. “I want word of their doings, not tittle-tattle!”
“Elven be back,” the man said.
At those words, Mistress Crosar heard a slight snatch of breath from Joan. She looked over her shoulder and saw the girl standing with meekly lowered head and hands clasped in front of her, just as a girl should stand. It was, Mistress Crosar suspected, nothing but a show of good behavior to disguise wilfullness. She remembered her own girlhood well.
“Sterkarms ride with them,” the man continued. “That be no tattle—that’s been seen.”
“Joan,” Mistress Crosar said, looking over her shoulder. “Upstairs with thee.”
At least the girl did not argue. Slowly, slowly, she passed them—pretending that she was being obedient and walking as she had been told to walk, with tiny steps. Tinier and tinier steps as she sought to linger and hear more.
Mistress Crosar snapped, “Above stairs, miss!”
Joan moved a little faster, disappearing from view behind her father’s settle. Mistress Crosar, with a little amusement, felt sure that she would stay there, or within the stair door, listening as hard as she could—but at least she was no longer to be seen drinking in gossip that should not concern her.
It did concern Mistress Crosar. Moving to stand beside the settle, she said, “Might Sterkarms be Elven’s prisoners?”
Richie sent her a quick, approving glance. He was often glad of her advice.
“Beg your pardon, Mistress—Master,” said the cowherd. “They were no prisoners. They rode as they pleased—with Elven, and then leaving ’em and coming back.”
“Elven burn Sterkarm country,” Richie said. “That was word brought me last evening. … That they’d burned bastle housen at Grenkirk. Tha ken fine well that be Gobby Sterkarm’s place. Why should Sterkarms ride with them when they burn Sterkarm housen?”
“That I can no tell you,” the cowherd said. “But this I ken fine well—Sterkarms ride with Elven, they come our way, and they mean us no good!”
“With that I agree,” Richie said. “Do any ride for us?”
“That I was sent to tell you,” said the cowherd. “Long Drew, he’s twenty men—he’s gan to wait for them at Lugsford.”
“God keep him and them with him,” Richie Grannam said. “We’ll make ready here. Gan to kitchens now; they’ll feed thee.”
“Thanks shall you have, Master.” The cowherd touched his head, and bowed to Mistress Crosar, before leaving the room with relief.
Mistress Crosar’s mind was already moving through all that would have to be done, even before Richie gave her a meaning look. She said, “I’ll fetch thine jakke and boots,” and turned to the stairs. She heard the tiny noises—the lift of a rush in the draught from a skirt, the light touch of a shoe on a stone step—that Joan made as she scurried to be in the upper chamber before her aunt reached it.
Well, she had no need to be in such a rush. Climbing the steep narrow steps of the tower was a slow business these days, and Joan had plenty of time to gain the upper chamber. As Mistress Crosar gathered herself for the effort, she heard Richie running down the steps to the yard with his scampering dogs. He had orders to give. The beacon must be lit to warn other towers; the bell must be rung to warn his own people. Horses must be readied, men assembled, weapons found.
Step by step, Mistress Crosar made her way up, leaning on the wall with one hand to favor her painful hip. At the top, as she emerged from the gloom of the staircase into the brighter light of the room, she paused to catch her breath and let the pain subside.
The room was brighter than the hall below, lit by a square window of small glass frames whose light fell on a long, polished table with an armed chair at its head. On the hearth, beneath the stone hood carved with the family’s emblem, was a big settle.
Two beds occupied most of the rest of the space. One, high and curtained, was Richard Grannam’s. The other, a small wall bed with doors, was shared by Mistress Crosar and her niece. Joan sat on the bed’s edge, her head bent over the sewing hoop in her hand, the image of dutiful girlhood. Mistress Crosar admired the agility that had enabled the girl to put on such a show.
But she had no time to spend on Joan’s games. The big chest in the corner held her brother’s riding gear. Mistress Crosar lifted the heavy lid, carefully resting it against the wall so it wouldn’t damage the expensive painting of orchards and unicorns. She lifted out the long riding boots and the heavy jakke. From above came a great tuneless crash. Mistress Crosar’s hands flew apart with shock, letting the things fall to the floor with thum
p.
She felt foolish. The noise was simply the ringing of the warning bell on the tower’s roof, its tuneless clangor unsoftened even by the thick stone walls.
Joan came to help her pick up the things. “Is it a raid?” She had to raise her voice to be heard.
“Run down to the kitchens and tell them to make food ready.” She watched Joan vanish into the stairwell. As soon as she was out of sight, no doubt, she would run like a hoyden.
Joan Grannam
Joan was demure all the way down the stairs into the hall. Then she ran across the room, scattering rushes; passed the startled guards at the door; and spun down the stairs before bursting out into the yard at the bottom.
The din of the bell began again, making her think of axes and swords crashing on helmets—on her father’s helmet. A scalding mixture of fear and excitement bubbled as fiercely within her as any of her aunt’s potions bubbled in their pans.
As she crossed the yard, the bell was louder, its crashing and jangling raw, blotting out most other sound, making her flinch with every painfully loud clang. The narrow space between the walls of the tower and the outbuildings was crowded with the bulk of shifting, stamping, head-tossing horses and hurrying men carrying harness and lances, and the air was crowded with stinks of dung, sweat, leather oil. She pressed herself against the tower’s wall and watched and waited for a chance to dodge through it all and into the alleys between the close buildings.
The kitchen was the nearest, and the largest: dark, full of smoke, crowded with busy people and food smells. When Joan ducked through the low door, she was recognized, and people made way for her, but they were both busy and excited, and often she had to squeeze past people who jostled her against tables and cupboards.
The cook was at the stove, his red face dripping, his beard damp. When Joan shouted her aunt’s message at him, he yelled back, “We ken! We be at it already—tell mistress so!” As Joan turned to leave, she heard the man say, “Ride’s away, does woman think we no ken what that means? She thinks us all fools!”
A Sterkarm Tryst Page 5