Red Adam's Lady

by Grace Ingram

  Bows twanged and shafts leaped along the wall. Yellow shirts tumbled and rolled under spurning feet, slackening the assault’s impetus a little. Baldwin’s men were shooting and reloading in pairs, keeping up a steady execution; Adam’s head dodged back and forth by the gate, and the peasant archers, steadying to it, sowed feathered death. Then the Scots were leaping into the ditch and clawing up the scarp; the first heads bobbed along the wall. Down went bows; swinging steel glittered under the rolling smoke and wild clamor filled the garth. Julitta lowered her bow, holding her next shaft nocked but undrawn; she dared not shoot into that confusion. Shaggy heads, round shields and thrusting spears lifted and jerked along the wall, and the defenders jabbed and hacked.

  The knight came running with ram and siege-shields and raged at his wolves’ backs; the scrimmage was so thick that he could not bring it against the gate, and all his commands went unheeded. Julitta wasted a couple of shafts against his mail, but at that range her light weapon could not pierce it and she had to stand useless. Two defenders were down, and a Scot swung himself howling astride the wall and over it, heaving up a long-handled axe to cleave Adam’s head. Three spearmen waiting by the hall sprinted for him, but Adam had already lunged under the axe’s sweep and his sword was through the man’s belly. They went down in one tangle, but it was the red head that bounced up again and Julitta drew a gasping breath. Another saffron shirt heaved on to the wall top; Baldwin Dogsmeat hewed down, and it vanished in a spout of scarlet. All at once the attack recoiled and the Scots scurried beyond range. The knight barked at their heels like a sheepdog, and the untried ram was borne back by its crew. A few belated arrows brought down a couple of laggards. Yellow bodies strewed the approaches. Julitta heard Baldwin admonish a peasant who put an arrow into a crawling Scot.

  “Don’t waste arrows! He’ll be there for you to cut his throat when the fight’s won.”

  Adam had the servants frantically barricading the gateway with benches, doors, a spiked harrow and building timber, anything to withstand the ram. He found a moment to wave, and she, assured that he was whole, scuttled down the stair as a serving man hobbled to the hall on a comrade’s arm. She was not needed; half a dozen women seized on him with commiserating cries and drew him to the nearest fire. The Abbess sat on the dais with her nuns about her, telling her beads; children had been herded into the furthest corner in the care of the older women, and it seemed that every pot in the manor was bubbling, filling the long room with drifts of steam.

  “Boiling water,” said Adela’s amused voice in her ear. “A bucketful in the snout should discourage even a Scot.”

  “We need more buckets,” snapped Lady Matilda. “You wenches, fetch them from the laundry and dairy while there’s quiet!” She had a carving knife thrust under her belt, and Julitta saw without surprise that every woman had armed herself, even if it were with but a roasting-spit or flesh-hook. She regarded Julitta without favor. “I never thought to be obliged to receive you under my roof again, shaming your breeding by flaunting your bare ankles like a strumpet, though what else should I expect of a whore’s daughter—”

  “You show commendable gratitude,” Adela observed drily, “to Lord Adam and his lady.”

  “And he’s a traitor escaped from my lord’s justice—”

  “Who is saving all here from the Scots.”

  “Am I to be rated like a kitchen wench in my own hall, where I’ve ruled these eight-and-thirty years, by an insolent whore out of an army’s tail! As if it were not enough to have to accept such a one into my decent household, and any mother of a virgin daughter must feel for me—”

  Adela snorted. “She’ll be a raped corpse if the Scots burst this door!” she retorted brutally, and caught Julitta’s arm. A quick glance at her child, sleeping safely in a corner, and she thrust the girl out. They climbed the stair together. “God’s Head, let the fool fume! Is this any moment for her hen’s squawking?”

  It came to Julitta that Lady Matilda clung to her habit of spiteful complaint as a barrier against horror too vile for contemplation. She soberly checked her bowstring for fraying, untied a sheaf of arrows and stood them against the wall on her right hand. A movement on the opposite side of the garth brought her head round; a brace of sturdy lasses had climbed into the hayloft over the stables and were standing in the wide hay-door with bows ready, above the shifting backs of cattle lowing with distress. Several boys were moving along the stretched ropes that penned them, trying to soothe the beasts. Adam was still ordering his barricades. The Scottish knight had prodded his wolves into some sort of formation around and behind the ram. It started forward at a quickening trot, its bearers covered by the mantlets.

  “Wait for the gaps,” Baldwin’s placid voice commanded, “and bring down the fellows with the ram!”

  The mantlet-bearers had small notion of keeping rank and holding to one pace, and the nearer they came the wider opened the spaces in their erratic line. Most of the archers had mastered their nervousness, and waited for Adam’s “Loose!” Crossbows thrummed, bowstrings twanged, and shafts and square-headed quarrels probed between the shifting shields. Julitta tried a couple of dropping shots, more for the moral effect of steel hailing from the sky than because she expected to do hurt, and the girls in the hayloft copied her. The ram lurched and wavered. Over the din she heard the Scottish knight’s yelps as he beat at the mantlet-bearers with his swordblade’s flat to close their lines. She was dimly aware that Adela had gone from her side; then she was back, and another bow harped beside her.

  The ram was down in a sprawl of naked limbs, saffron shirts and makeshift shields. The Scots broke order and swarmed at the wall again. Combat clanged along it. Julitta lowered her bow, blinked smoke tears from her eyes, and sought out her dear redhead. Adela spoke in her ear, but no word reached her; all her being was concentrated on one anxious desire. The attackers suddenly broke away, and she drew free breath again when Adam hurried back to his barricade. Adela yelled to a lad below to fetch more arrows.

  “If they’d sense to keep rank and guard their ram they’d have won in,” Adela commented professionally. “A troop of mercenaries—”

  Julitta was in no mood for technical discussion. Adam turned briefly from his laboring men to salute her with uplifted hand, and then moved along the wall, with an encouraging slap on shoulder for some and a nod and smile for others, to confer with Baldwin. She prayed earnestly to Our Lord and His Mother and the holy Saints to guard her love who fought unmailed in the thickest of the combat. The Scots were massing again, the indefatigable knight reordering the mantlets about the ram. This time they would have learned to maintain that order. If the gate went down, Adam would die and she would follow him.

  “Ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis—”

  “God’s Life, but we’ve thinned them!” said Adela, reckoning scattered yellow bodies. “There’s no more than one try left in them. And if we beat them off, it’s your red lad’s doing.”

  “If only they’d heeded him before!” Julitta burst out, turning her tormented face to the older woman’s calm one, all her love and fear exposed naked.

  Adela grinned sardonically. “You confounded all their plots, my girl. Everyone was sure you were so mad for love of Humphrey of Crossthwaite you’d do whatever he asked.”

  “Conniving at my husband’s murder included? You reckoned me a cringing spaniel as well as a strumpet?”

  Her venom made Adela regard her narrowly. “Maybe I unwittingly misled them, but I witnessed your hatred for your husband.”

  “You discussed my marriage with those traitorous swine?” Julitta flared. “How should it concern you or them?”

  “Believe me, I’d no concern but for your happiness. If you reckoned it depended on Humphrey—”

  “You meddled to help me to that vain lout? I’d not have had him if every hair of his head hung with rubies!”

  Adela shrugged, smiling grimly. “My girl—”

  “Go back to the hall. You�
��ve no place here.”

  “I’m here,” she said flatly, “to kill you at need.”

  The stark words struck Julitta’s wrath cold. As she stared, the Scots started forward again, their cries joining in one ululation that lifted the hairs on her nape. She drew and loosed.

  Their losses had disciplined the enemy. The ram reached the gate, some of the shield-bearers holding hurdles high to roof its wielders against showering arrows; the rhythmic crashing beat through all the uproar. Heads bobbed along the wall, spears and axes sparked under the sun, the defenders dodged and hacked. Smoke gusted from the village, now a bright ruin. A few saffron-shirted demons capered with blazing brands.

  The gate was breaking in jagged fragments, over the beam that barred it; one sidepost was yielding, slanting inward as it slowly broke away near the ground. The smoke thickened. The barn roof was afire where hooting Scots had tossed torches. A boy scrambled along the ridge with a rake, beating and tearing at the thatch in the haze of smoke and sparks. Beasts bellowed, heaving wild-eyed against the flimsy barrier, barrier.

  A great groan of anguished timber, and the gate slewed sideways as the post snapped. Howling Scots clawed through the gap. Adam’s barricade, thrust inward, yet held breast-high. The ram had jammed in the ruin; crawling under or scrambling over it, they were vulnerable to spears, axes and pitchforks, and beyond it tripped and tangled, wedged by their comrades thrusting behind. Murderous steel reinforced the barricade with bodies. Baldwin’s mercenaries held the wall, waiting coolly for heads to lift above it before bouncing up to strike. Half a dozen women lumbered out of the hall with steaming buckets. As the barrier began to waver they swung arcs of glittering water into the press of hairy faces and bare arms. Inhuman squalling ripped through the din, and they ran back for more.

  The knight stood in the gap, shield aslant and sword flashing. Adam’s vivid head made for him as he straddled the broken gatepost and withstood all blows. Julitta’s heart jumped as the blades met. Vaguely she was conscious of screeching and weapon-clangor beyond the hall; then a triumphant yell below jerked her head round. A dozen Scots erupted past the building’s corner and into the garth. Half of them raced for the gate; others scattered for the penned cattle and undefended doorways. Julitta, shrieking at her lungs’ full pitch for warning, shot her last two arrows as fast as she could draw and loose, Adela’s bow sounding in her ear. Three went down before they reached the barricade, where men faced about to meet the others. Adela screamed.

  The deaf-mute child stood in the garth, his back to the doorway through which he had strayed, his fair head turning, his hands lifting to ward off soundless nightmare all about him. Voices cried futile warning; round the hall’s corner pounded a Scot. His red mouth roared laughter in the beard’s black tangle as his spearhead dipped. Adela, her shafts also spent, threw herself down the stair. The spear drove in and swung up, heaving the child high. For an instant his limbs flung abroad, and then hung limp. Adela leaped upon the Scot’s shoulders; one hand in his hair jerked back his head for her knife to slash. She sprang clear as he went down in a scarlet welter, and caught up her son.

  The cattle were loose, blood and fire in their nostrils, plunging about the garth to hook and trample. Herd-boys yipped at their heels, dogs barked and scurried. Julitta saw a Scot gored and tossed aside, roused from her palsy and darted down to Adela, kneeling in the dirt with her child. She hauled her to the stair, almost knocked off her feet by a bellowing cow that spattered her skirt with foam. At the stairhead Adela sank down with the boy across her knees.

  He was dead. Surprise had already gone from his face. Julitta knelt, her arm about the mother’s shoulders, and leaned to close his half-open eyes with gentle fingers. Adela shuddered, and raised her own, dry and stricken, to the girl’s appalled face.

  “He was your half-brother, you know,” she said.

  Stunned witless, Julitta gaped at her. “You… you are…?”

  “I bore you,” said Eleanor de Scoray bleakly, and gathered close her dead. “Little Charles—my last son—God takes my sons for my sins.”

  “Ah, no!” Julitta exclaimed quickly, tightening her hold. It was her firm faith that God was more merciful than men; without that trust no one could endure this world. “In pity for his affliction He has taken His innocent home.”

  “He is gone from me,” she answered. The flesh of her face seemed to have sunken on its bones, but she had no tears. She bowed over the dead boy, rocking him in her arms, and Julitta stayed helplessly on her knees beside her with no comfort to offer. A strange quietude enfolded them. It touched her to awareness, and she lifted her head.

  The fighting was finished. Even as she looked, the last foe died against the barn with a pitchfork in his vitals. The Scottish knight sprawled across the broken gatepost; boys and dogs were rounding up the scared beasts; wisps of smoke drifted from a black gap in the barn’s thatch, but the fire was out. Over the stubble and the waste the Scots were streaming away, beyond bowshot; some of the peasants and mercenaries were already over the wall and briskly cutting throats. One comprehensive glance she gave all that, and then fixed her gaze on Adam’s flaming head beside the barricade.

  “Go to him,” said Adela, shrugging away her arm. Julitta hesitated; this stranger was her mother. The hard eyes read her mind unerringly. “You’re not mine,” she said with wintry honesty. “I abandoned you. You’re his.”

  Silently she stood up. From the stairfoot she looked back once at the mother embracing her dead, hers in blood but nothing else; then she caught up her skirts and fled straight into Adam’s extended arms. She gripped him, pressed to his body, gasped his name until he stopped her mouth with his, holding her so that she could scarcely draw breath. His heart hammered at his ribs, his body shuddered to racking gasps as hers did, but when she drew back her head he was whole; filthy with smoke and sweat, spattered with other men’s blood, but unhurt.

  “Julitta! What’s amiss, dear love?”

  “The little boy—Adela’s son—a Scot killed him! And—and—Adam, she’s my mother!”

  He looked sharply down at her, less surprised than she had expected, and freed his hand to cross himself. “God rest the child’s soul.”

  “Adam, did you—did you know?”

  He shook his head. “I wondered, that day she rebuked you. There’s a likeness, and you have her eyes. A suspicion, no more. God pity her, but the child’s best out of this world.” He gazed across the lessening turmoil at the hunched shape on the stair; from here they could not see the small corpse she held.

  Baldwin suddenly dodged under an ox’s muzzle and presented himself, his aggravating grin wider than ever. “Adam, you’ve talents I’d not guessed at.” He swiveled an appreciative eye at Julitta. “There’s nothing worth looting on their car casses, but if you’d fancy a Scot’s hide to nail up on your gate, my knaves’ll pick you a fine hairy trophy and flay it for you.”

  “Baldwin, go to your wife.” Adam nodded at the stair. “They killed her child.”

  All the color drained from his face to leave it the hue of tallow. “God’s Head,” he muttered. “The poor little bastard!”

  “What had life for him? It’s better so.”

  “Better?” he snarled. “You fool, what d’you know of it? She only married me for his sake; I’ve naught now to hold her by.”

  “She needs you—” Julitta began, but he turned on her savagely.

  “She’ll leave me—she’s no reason to stay. Christ in Heaven, she’s never pretended to care for me, and she’s all the world to me!”

  Adam took him by the shoulders and shook him. “Baldwin, there’s no greater comfort in grief than love. Go to her!” He thrust him towards the stair. He looked back at Adam, two tears streaking down his cheeks; then he broke into a shambling run. They watched him scramble to his wife’s side and take her in his arms; saw her recoil, then suddenly drop her proud head to his shoulder. Together they drew one thankful sigh and turned their backs. Adam pulled Julitta roughly t
o his side and held her close.

  “Adam,” she said in a small voice, “I—I cannot feel—I’ve respect for her, but no love—I cannot feel she’s my mother.”

  “By her own choice she orphaned you. She has no rights in you,” he answered grimly. “Did any other hear this avowal?”

  “No.”

  “God send we keep it so. She has brought disrepute on your name these many years. I’ll not have it a flagrant scandal.”

  From a Lorismond’s lips that was not without humor, and an unwilling grin tugged her mouth. She reckoned Adela would keep silence, and if Baldwin knew of the kinship he also had maintained commendable discretion. The aftermath of battle was all about them. Serving men were dismantling the barricade, tumbling aside entangled bodies in saffron shirts. When one groaned and lifted a hand, an axe chopped down. Two mercenaries had hauled out the Scottish knight by the heels and were stripping off his hauberk. Peasants ran and shouted beyond the walls, salvaging what they could from their burned homes or gleaning whatever scanty pickings the enemy dead provided. Adam grimaced.

  “If they’d had archers or any notion of discipline we’d have been overrun,” he commented, and streaked sweat, grime and blood across his filthy brow with a filthier hand. He braced his weary shoulders. “We’ve this shambles to clear. Get to the hall, Julitta. This is no place for you.”

  “There’ll be work for me,” she agreed, and ran. The stairhead was deserted. Only a blotch on the trodden earth showed where the Scot had died. Inside the hall a curious stillness spread outward from a hurdle on the dais. Lady Matilda, Sibylla and the village priest were on their knees beside it. Julitta peered across intervening shoulders, crossed herself and began murmuring prayers. Lady Matilda’s wail interrupted before she had finished the first sentence. Gautier had died.

  Her uncle’s wife saw her and turned on her like a wolf-bitch. “It’s your red knave’s fault!” she shrieked. “If he’d not set my boy at the post of greatest danger to keep his own traitorous hide safe he’d be alive now!”