[Sir Richard Straccan 02] - Pendragon Banner

by Sylvian Hamilton

  She could see the undercroft door, shut and locked and one of the Shaxoe men leaning against it picking his nose. He called out and made a rude gesture as Joan passed on her way to Father Osric’s sagging hovel. Sir Guy had built a good sound little house for the old priest some years ago — hall and chamber, reed-thatched and snug — but Father Osric was used to his hut, it fitted him like a shell and the neat house still stood empty. Finacre would have his eye on that, Sybilla reckoned. Bad cess to him.

  Joan was carrying clean blankets for the old priest’s bed. To everyone’s astonishment, after the stroke that had felled him last week, Father Osric was still alive. Well, still breathing. That was about all. But as long as his chest rose and fell they couldn’t bury him.

  Sir Guy and Lady Alienor couldn’t be buried either, of course. Lapped in lead, the old lord’s body lay beside his wife, but Dame Alienor was still in the temporary coffin awaiting the fashioning of a lead one. Both had been parked in the mew until they could be properly entombed in the church, when either the king or the Pope gave in. God knew when that would be! The Interdict, meant to bring King John to his knees in six months, had now been in force two years and folk had got used to it.

  Alfred the falconer had draped sacks over the coffins but he knew they were there. He didn’t like it; it wasn’t proper and he reckoned it would bring bad luck. The birds weren’t happy either, they were off their feed and starting to look poor, ruffled and dull of eye and feather. Alfred usually slept in the mew with his beloved hawks, but not since the coffins had been there. Not bloody likely. Sybilla saw him heading for the mew now, dragging his feet, hesitating before he opened the door and lingering in the doorway, reluctant to go inside.

  There was Robert, coming out of the stable. She could tell by the way he walked, head down and thrust forward as if he was about to charge something like a bull, that he was angry and worried, and no wonder.

  The manor’s business carried on as usual, but sluggishly. Folk worked sullenly. There was a lot of muttering which didn’t entirely die down when the steward came within earshot. They wanted him to know they were unhappy. He was unhappy too, smarting from the belt-end of his wife’s temper. She kept nagging him. Robert thought it most unfair. It wasn’t his fault that Janiva was locked up, the door guarded day and night. What the hell could he do about it? The chaplain had Sir Roger’s seal, he was in charge, but Sybilla didn’t seem to understand.

  ‘Somebody’s got to do something,,’ she had said last night in bed, pummelling his shoulders with her hard fists. It hurt. ‘What will happen when Sir Roger comes home? D’you think for a moment he’d let that bloody chaplain hurt Janiva?’

  ‘There’s bugger all I can do,’ Robert had muttered.

  ‘There is!’ Send word to Sir Roger. Go to the sheriff. It ain’t lawful, what he’s doing! Manor courts can’t do ordeals any more, Father Osric said so afore he was struck down. Sheriff’d put a stop to it.’

  ‘I can’t! Orders is orders.’

  ‘Orders!’ She grabbed his hands, staring into his worried face. ‘Shame on you! When Edric stuck his hayfork through your foot and it went bad, Janiva poulticed it. You coulda lost that foot.’

  ‘I know!’ He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

  ‘When me and our Alice had the spotted fever and you thought we’d die, Janiva nursed us, day and night.’

  ‘Sybbie, shut up!’

  ‘We must help her! Get her away, before Old Vinegar sets up the ordeal.’

  ‘We can’t! We daren't!’ He was trembling. ‘If she’s innocent she’ll take no harm from it! The chaplain says God will be her witness.’

  ‘Rob, please! Just send to the sheriff!’

  ‘No man’s to leave the manor,’ Robert said, and seeing the mutinous set of his wife’s mouth he added, ‘nor woman neither! Them’s his orders. You hear me? Don’t you dare! You do, and we’ll be right in the shit!’

  His panic was ugly and understandable. Watching him now from above as he crossed the yard and disappeared below her into the house, his wife felt pity for his dilemma, but it didn’t lessen her wrath.

  A small boy ran from the kitchen door, nipping smartly out of sight between mews and stable as his mother followed, calling after him angrily. Peter, Clara’s boy. He’d been tongue-tied, unable to speak properly and the butt of other brats’ teasing until Janiva had cut the membrane that trapped his tongue.

  Clara had given up on her son and gone back inside. Sybilla couldn’t see Peter but she did see a gobbet of wet horse-dung whizz through the air and smack the Shaxoe guard on the ear. Peter at least was doing his bit to show solidarity with the prisoner.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The priory had been utterly destroyed. Blackened sections of wall reared up starkly and pallid tongues of flame, almost invisible in the sunlight, still flickered along calcined roof-beams. Occasionally heaps of collapsed stone would shift and subside as fires still burning underneath ate through shattered timbers.

  Every building — many had been built entirely of wood — had been systematically ransacked and then torched. The storehouse was gutted: bales of woollen cloth ripped and shredded, barrels of nails split open, hides and fleeces smoking and stinking. Even the kitchen had not been spared. Tubs of lard and oil had burned fiercely; spilled meal and oats, dried peas and beans were trodden underfoot, and there was an eye-watering reek of burnt vinegar.

  The warden had come too late, to find the priory razed to the ground and the prioress dying. There was nothing he could do, so having sent to the nearest village for help he and his men went after the brigands. By the time Straccan got there, Heloise de St Valery had died.

  She lay on the bare ground, her head cradled in Sister Eglantine’s lap, a mute pieta. Her face was the colour of wax and her lips ash grey but her pale eyes, reflecting the sky, looked warmer now than Straccan had seen them in life.

  Straccan barely recognised the other nun, filthy with soot and ash, her face smeared with blood and tears. With shaking fingers Eglantine shut the dead woman’s eyes and dashed the tears from her own.

  ‘Where are the other nuns?’ Straccan asked.

  ‘They took them. They said if anyone followed, they would c-cut their throats. But the lord warden has gone after them all the same.’

  Wace nudged Straccan and pointed to the convent priest, picking jackdaw-like through the cindered debris of his house, rescuing an odd collection of objects — a blackened candlestick, spoon, frying pan — carrying them in the lap of his gown. His blistered hands were wrapped in strips torn from his shirt. When Wace spoke to him and touched his shoulder, the priest took no notice, deep in shock.

  All day, as word of the outrage spread, folk from the riverside and inland villages came trickling in to see if it was true and stayed when they found it was, although there was nothing they could do. Some of the women had brought food, and one tried to coax Sister Eglantine to eat.

  ‘Got to keep your strength up, sister. There’s things to be done. Mother Elweez wouldn’t want you to give in, now would she?’

  Straccan sent two men back to their village for a litter to carry the prioress’s body to the castle.

  ‘Havloc, get the cloak from my saddlebag; we’ll wrap her in that. Sister, we’ll take you to Trevel. You’ll be safe there.’ His eye caught sight of Father Petroc, distractedly clutching his lapful of salvage. ‘Where’s your mother house? You must send your priest to tell them what’s happened.’

  ‘Bristol,’ the nun said. She fumbled with the pins that held her thick woollen oversleeves in place, pulling them off and folding them into a pad which she laid on the ground. Carefully she lifted the prioress’s head from her lap and rested it on the makeshift pillow. Her skirt and the prioress’s veil were dark with blood and the sleeves of her shift, falling back from her wrists, showed bruises on her arms.

  ‘Are you wounded, sister?’

  ‘No. It is her blood.’

  Straccan reached to help her to her feet, but she struc
k his hand aside furiously.

  ‘Don’t touch me! You’re to blame for this!’

  ‘Me? How?’

  ‘Mother was right. She said your coming here would bring harm to us. King’s men, she said, no friends to our house! She sent word to Lord William.’

  ‘To Breos? In God’s name, why?’

  For a moment Sister Eglantine’s mouth worked uncontrollably, and she clenched her teeth to still it. Fresh tears tracked down her dirty face.

  ‘He’s her cousin. He has ever been good lord to us. She thought he should know. She thought he would help us, tell us what to do. God have mercy, she welcomed him! He pushed me out of her chamber and slammed the door. I tried to go back in but two of his brutes held me.’ She rubbed her bruised arms. ‘I could hear him shouting; there was a relic here, he said, something of great value. She told him we had nothing left of value, that if we had she would give it to him gladly, but he didn’t believe her. He told his men to search. We tried to stop them but they brushed us off like flies.’

  Her haunted eyes stared through Straccan, seeing all again in hideous memory: Lord William’s dark face, swollen with anger, the prioress on her knees, begging him to stop the damage, clutching at his surcoat then at his legs, clinging to him as he strode about. Lord William setting his booted foot on her breast and thrusting her away brutally. His men grinning at that, laughing as they tore down hangings, broke open chests and cupboards, hacked at panelling and ripped up floorboards.

  ‘Did they find anything?’ Straccan asked.

  ‘What could they find? What could we be hiding? We hadn’t as much as a silver candlestick left! What did he want, what do you want? Oh, dear God in heaven, why did you have to come here? If you hadn’t come…’

  Havloc spread the cloak on the ground, and he and Straccan lifted the body onto it. With horror Straccan realised that only the prioress’s coif held her shattered skull together.

  ‘How did she die?’ Wace asked.

  ‘Those devils set fire to the stable with the horses still inside. We got them out but the roof fell; a beam struck her.’ Eglantine hid her face in her hands. ‘How could he do this? He must be mad!’

  ‘No,’ said Wace. ‘This was always his way, raiding, burning. It wasn’t very long ago he burned the town of Leominster to the ground. Runs in the family, his father was the same.’

  ‘The warden was away,’ the nun said dully. ‘He came too late.’

  ‘I think there was a false alarm to get him out of the way,’ Straccan said.

  The men had returned with the litter and the prioress was lifted onto it, wrapped in Straccan’s cloak.

  ‘Shall us go, then, sister?’ said one.

  ‘Yes.’ She scrambled up and stumbled to the side of the litter. ‘Wait, sister,’ said Straccan urgently. ‘Tell me who took those girls from the wreck! Who brought them here?’

  ‘That again? What does it matter? It was ten years ago!’

  ‘Breos asked about it too, didn’t he? Sister, for God’s sake and for the sake of your people, tell me who brought the maidens here! Who took them from the wreck?’

  She shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘If you had told me before, none of this would have happened.’ That wasn’t fair and he knew it, but he was past caring.

  With a cry of despair she turned her back to him, her thin shoulders shaking with sobs.

  ‘You know who they were. Take me to them!’

  ‘I can’t, I won’t leave Mother Heloise! I’m going with her.’

  ‘Sister, whoever they are they won’t talk to me. You know that! Mother Heloise warned your villagers, didn’t she, that I’d been sent by the king. She told them to keep their mouths shut.’

  ‘She had no reason to love the king.’

  ‘Neither have I,’ said Straccan grimly. Let Wace put that in his fucking report if he wanted to, he didn’t care. ‘Neither has Lord William, and he won’t stop here. Do you want the villages burned, too? He’ll not stop until he finds what he’s looking for, the relic, Ragnhild’s flag. I have to find it before he does. Help me!’

  ‘I must keep the dead-watch. There’s no one else.’

  Half a dozen village women were standing a little way off in respectful silence. Now they shifted and muttered together, and moved forward as one.

  ‘We’ll look after her, sister. Looked after all of us, Mother Elweez did.’

  There were nods and murmurs of assent.

  ‘Fed our kids and went hungry herself, dint she?’

  ‘Found work for us…’

  ‘Birthed our babbies…’

  ‘Laid out our dead…’

  ‘We’ll take care of her, don’t you fret. You go with him. We’ll stay with her ’til you come back.’

  Sister Eglantine looked at their dirty determined faces, took a shuddering breath and let it out again. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Thank you!’

  She leaned over the prioress’s body, tenderly turned the cloth back and touched the dead face with a gentle fingertip, a gesture poignant with love and sorrow.

  Straccan nodded at the bearers. The litter moved slowly forward with the women walking alongside. He stared after it a moment, then cried, ‘Wait!’ Turning to the nun he said, ‘He will pay for this, sister. I promise you. Will you let me take her ring?’

  ‘“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. I will repay,”’ murmured Eglantine. And who was she to say how He would do it? Might He not make use of this man’s hands? She came of a martial family; her whole being resonated to the concept of vengeance. Let the knight have his gage. She bowed her head in assent and Straccan drew the plain silver band from the prioress’s finger and cut a thin edge from her veil, knotting it through the ring.

  Sister Eglantine watched the litter go. Then, with her chin up — just like the prioress — she said, ‘Very well, Sir Richard. I’ll do as you ask.’

  Straccan sighed with relief. ‘Thank you. Where are we going?’

  ‘Less Pinchel.’

  She rode Havloc’s horse, he leading it, with Straecan and Wace on either side, and as they rode Sister Eglantine told them all she remembered about the Danish girls.

  Ragnhild and her maidservant had been plucked from the wreck of their ship by two brothers, Stigan and Peter, who brought them to the priory. The porteress, called to the gate by the clamour of the bell, summoned help and the two girls — and a locked chest rescued with them — were carried straight to the infirmary.

  Prioress Heloise sent word at once to the castle and Maurice de Lacy himself came to take charge of the chest. It was his duty to send it and all it contained to the king, but he’d have his locksmith at it first to see if he couldn’t abstract a little something for his trouble.

  Stigan and his brother got a silver penny each and life went on as before, until a year later in another gale Peter drowned, while Stigan was washed overboard and crushed between two hulls, one of his legs so fearfully mangled that a mere flap of skin held it in place.

  The nuns couldn’t save Stigan’s leg but their careful nursing saved his life. That made him their responsibility, so he became the convent’s odd-job man. He was no asset. He was surly and resentful, and incompetent as well, but he was a cross to be borne and they bore him with fortitude.

  It was evening by the time they reached Less Pinchel, which Straecan had visited the previous day to no avail. This time however, seeing the nun, the inhabitants emerged from their hovels and surrounded the riders, each man casually holding some sort of implement — eel-fork, boathook, sailmaker’s needle — which might come in handy; the women, Straecan saw, had furnished themselves with domestic items that could be put to similar lethal use.

  ‘Oh, don’t be silly,’ Sister Eglantine said. ‘It’s all right! You can put those things down, all of you, and get back to work. Where’s Stigan?’

  ‘Greasin boats.’ The headman prodded his small son and the child ran to a cluster of coracles lying upside down like huge black beetles. His excited piping was fol
lowed by an answering growl, and a man got up from behind one of the odd little boats and scowled at them.

  ‘That’s him.’ Sister Eglantine beckoned. ‘You, Stigan! Come here!’

  The man hoisted himself along awkwardly on one good leg and one wooden. He was dark and burly, darted with grease, and smelled overpoweringly of sheep. Wace’s violets couldn’t get a look-in.

  ‘Where are your manners?’ the nun snapped. ‘Take your cap off! Sir Richard has questions to ask you. You’re to answer him properly, understand? None of your cheek, mind.’ She swung round on the villagers who clustered, agog, at her back. ‘I thought I told you to get back to work.’

  Reluctantly they shuffled back to their tasks, leaving hut doors propped open and snatching hide shutters from windows in case they should miss anything interesting.

  ‘What’s this about then?’ Stigan demanded truculently.

  Straecan dismounted, handing his reins to Havloc. ‘Let’s talk over there.’ He pointed at the coracles, out of earshot of Stigan’s wondering neighbours. Wace slid from the saddle and followed. For a moment Stigan looked about to bolt, but a glance back at the erect figure of Sister Eglantine changed his mind.

  ‘Is it true bout Mother Elweez?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m afraid so.’

  Stigan spat and crossed himself. ‘Cess to em, the buggers,’ he muttered.

  Straecan said, ‘Stigan, a ship was wrecked here ten years ago. You and your brother brought two women to safety. Do you remember them?’

  Stigan grunted in surprise. That wreck? Those girls? The memory reeled through his mind in those few moments after Straecan spoke: a series of images, brighter and more vivid than they had been in reality. The stranger, the knight, what was his name? Sir Something, was watching him, waiting.