[Sir Richard Straccan 02] - Pendragon Banner

by Sylvian Hamilton

  She released the silently shrieking demon from his agony. ‘Show me Mahaut de Breos.’

  The stone showed a wild landscape, mountains rising beyond mountains, rain falling in sheets, and a man and woman in a cart. On either side of the cart rode a file of armed men. The cart lurched and bounced — there was no road at all — and its occupants were thrown against each other or to the floor, scrambling up with difficulty, clinging to the cart’s sides. They wore the common brown wadmal of pilgrims, torn and sodden; the woman’s long grey hair hung wet around her shoulders and both were heavily shackled.

  These were no pilgrims. Bruised, bloody, defeated, afraid, these were Lord William’s wife and eldest son.

  Julitta bit her lip. How long could this be kept from Lord William? How long before his wife’s capture became common knowledge? And yet… It might be she could use this to advantage, for if Breos loved anyone, he loved his wife; he would do anything to save her.

  The demon’s squamous face reappeared, sneering. She slashed the pain rune in the air again, and Agarel twisted. In her mind she could feel the strange soundless pressure of his howls. ‘Worm!’ Furiously she slammed the stone back into the iron and silver case, leaving the demon in torment until she called him again.

  As he fell, Straccan’s head struck the shaft wall, stunning him. Some tiny part of his mind clung to consciousness; he fought against the tide of darkness that threatened to swamp him, but to no avail. He was going to die in this horrid hole.

  Faint, far away he seemed to hear a woman’s voice repeating, ‘Tell him, tell him, Guinevere,’ and then, strangely, he heard children laughing: the small boys by the river, the little girls in the pleasance at Ludlow, high sweet voices crying, ‘Give it to me!’

  He could smell smoke. Was this Hell? His cheek and nose throbbed with pain. He opened his eyes and found himself, to his astonishment, alive.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  When they had bread or meat to be baked, Shawl folk must use the lord’s ovens. For this compulsory privilege they had to pay, so of course they made do instead with flat griddle-bread, soups and stews, or anything that could be cooked in pot or frying pan at home. This morning, though, the communal ovens offered the only meeting place where neither the chaplain nor any other man was likely to come poking his nose in, and at Sybilla’s urging a group of village women had gathered, ostensibly to enjoy a good grumble.

  The manor’s baker counted loaves, three, counted heads, eight, and raised a sceptical eyebrow; but it was nothing to do with him and he promptly came down with a diplomatic bellyache and took himself to bed. If there was Something Going On he wanted no part of it.

  As soon as he’d gone Sybilla got down to business; she had picked her team carefully. When she had explained her plan she waited for them to start arguing. They didn’t.

  Hawkan Bane had promised to help, had gone to fetch his master, but the knight had not come. In times of trouble, she thought with grim satisfaction, you had to know who you could rely on. In times of trouble, you couldn’t rely on men.

  The rats were hard to bear. Janiva could hear them scratching and scrabbling somewhere behind the bales and involuntarily drew her feet up off the floor, hugging her knees and shivering. The scratching went on. Odd; there was a strange regularity to it. She listened.

  Scratch-scratch, scratch-scratch. A pause. Scratch-scratch, scratch-scratch. That wasn’t a rat.

  The noise came from the wall opposite the door. Janiva clambered over the stacked bales to get closer. The undercroft was used nowadays to store the wool-clip because it was too small and inconveniently old-fashioned to house the manor’s provisions and stores. Dame Alienor had had a new storeroom built backing on to the kitchen.

  There were two doors in the undercroft.

  The bulging bales were too big to get her arms round and tied so tightly that Janiva couldn’t work her fingers between the cord and the sackcloth wrappings to get a grip. Her fingernails tore to the quick as she struggled to move the great rough hairy bundles, lugging them aside to make a passage to the back wall, to the door. With desperate eagerness she toiled on.

  After what seemed a long time, was a long time, her palms first blistered then flayed raw, the soft skin of her forearms sandpapered by the coarse sacking, she had managed to shift enough to get at the top half of the low door. Crawling over the bales she knelt and leaned her hot face against the thick oak.

  Scratch-scratch. Scratch-scratch.

  She made a fist, wincing, and banged on the door. The scratching stopped and she heard a voice, muffled by more than two inches of solid oak. She thumped again. The voice said something else. It was no good, she couldn’t make it out.

  Eagerly she resumed shifting bales. At last there was a space in front of the door. She thumped it again. Clearer now, the voice — a woman’s — seemed to be coming from somewhere down by her waist. Of course, the keyhole. She felt down the door until she found it and crouched.

  ‘Janiva! It’s me, Sybilla. Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes! Can you let me out?’

  ‘There’s no key! This door ain’t been used in years.’

  Janiva’s hopes plunged. But Sybilla was still talking.

  ‘Old Vinegar won’t let anyone in to see you and there’s always a guard at the main door, but listen, tonight, when you hear the supper horn, be ready! We’ll get you out then.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Never mind. Just you be ready; we’ll have to move quick. You sure you’re all right?’

  ‘Sybilla…’

  ‘What? I got to go.’

  ‘Don’t risk yourself to help me.’

  ‘Just do your bit. We’ll be fine!’

  Sybilla hurried back to her waiting troops. There was risk, but with any luck, if their plan worked, no blame could be pinned to any one person, certainly not to any man or woman of Shawl.

  When the supper horn sounded and Father Finacre stood to say grace in the hall, Joan gave her daughter Ellen a leg-up through one of the stable windows. Ellen nipped up the ladder into the hayloft and crouched, striking steel on flint and nursing the sparks until a wisp of smoke rose from the loose hay. She blew gently and a small yellow flame licked up towards her face. She then ran to the far end of the loft where she slipped out through the hoist-hole, lowering herself by her hands until it was safe to let go and drop.

  Flames were roaring already, the stable boys shouting, leading out the horses then running to and from the rain-butts with leather buckets and flinging water over the flames and one another.

  In the hall a serving-woman stumbled over a dog and fell, dropping her tray of roasted eggs. Catching at the high table’s great linen cloth she dragged it with her, bringing a cascade of trenchers, knives, spoons, roasted ducks and pigeons, baked fish, beakers of ale and wine, sauces, napkins, finger bowls and curses down around herself. The steward, red with shame and spouting apologies, pulled the grizzling woman to her feet and gave her a ringing slap, while the dog seized the opportunity and a pigeon and slunk under the table.

  Diners leapt up, swearing and mopping at their laps. Servers got in one another’s way as they retrieved napkins and dabbed at the diners’ soiled clothes, picked up utensils, cleared away the debris, fetched clean tablecloths and salvaged what was still edible: a quick wipe and most of it went back on the board.

  At the undercroft door Janiva’s guard heard the distant rumpus, smelled the smoke from the stable and wondered what was going on. His belly gurgled; his dinner was late coming tonight and he wondered who’d bring it. That juicy little tease Ellen, maybe. Or the one with the tits, what was her name, Clara. He fancied her something rotten. She was playing hard to get but he knew what she needed, and he’d bloody well give it to her first chance he got.

  And by God it looked like this was his chance for here came Clara with his dinner.

  He took it. ‘Ta. What’s goin on?’

  ‘Hayloft took fire.’

  But he wasn’t interested in th
e fire. A fire within him had begun to take hold and he wasn’t even interested in his dinner any more either, for Clara’s admirable bosom was within reach. He leered and reached. She slapped his hand but he wasn’t put off; that was only Step One.

  His forgotten dinner steamed on the doorstep as he carefully took Step Two.

  ‘Not ere,’ said Clara breathlessly, in the middle of Step Three.

  It was his lucky day. Night. ‘Where, then?’

  She jerked a thumb towards Father Osric’s garden shed, clinging like a wart to the side of his hovel. Entwined, they lurched towards it. Inside was a spade, a heap of trugs and — oddly — a straw pallet. By now his brains were entirely below his belt and the curiously convenient mattress rang no warning bells. They fell on it. Step Three progressed to Four.

  Perhaps he heard the door creak behind them but Sybilla had grabbed the spade and brought it down on his thick skull with a reassuringly solid thump that laid him out before he could look round.

  Clara wriggled out from under. ‘Ere, that was a bit close!’

  Sybilla dropped the spade. ‘You’d’ve managed.’

  The two women rolled the heavy body over.

  ‘You’ve killed iml’

  ‘No such luck; his head’s too thick. Get the key.’

  Clara rummaged at his belt and unlatched the key.

  ‘You sure that’s it?’

  ‘It’s the only one e’s got.’

  ‘Come on, then.’

  When Janiva had slipped through the half open door Sybilla shut and locked it again and gave the key to Clara.

  ‘Put it back, quick. Then go help in the kitchen.’

  The guard would come round and dash back to the undercroft door, relieved to find the key still on his belt, the door still locked. He’d curse himself for a fool and Clara for a slut, but when Janiva’s escape was discovered he would never admit to leaving his post. Finacre believed she was a witch; let him think she got out by spellcraft.

  Sybilla handed Janiva a packed satchel. ‘Food. Come on.’

  They crept behind the storehouses and kitchen, round behind the mew, where the ground sloped to a stream. On the other side of the water was the apple orchard and beyond that the forest. In the orchard a dark figure bulked, moving forward with a practised silence that had caught many a poacher napping.

  ‘Tostig! What are you doing here?’

  Janiva grasped the forester’s hands, wincing as he squeezed hers. He took the satchel and slung it over his shoulder.

  ‘That boy Peter came to fetch me; Sybilla sent him. And your knight’s man, Bane, he had a word wi me before he left. Come on. We must hurry!’

  Janiva turned to Sybilla. ‘Bane was here?’

  ‘He said he’d bring his master but we dint dare wait. God go with you, Janiva!’ They clung together for a moment, and Sybilla felt Janiva’s tears against her cheek. ‘Don’t cry, love. You’ll be well out of Vinegar’s reach. He’ll come to a sticky end, mark my words.’ And to Tostig, ‘Look after her.’

  ‘Didn’t she save my life when I was bad hurt? I’d give mine for her. I’ll see her safe.’

  ‘Where you taking her?’

  ‘Better you don’t know. When they find she’s gone there’ll be questions. If they ask, you can swear you don’t know. I’ll tell her knight when he comes.’ He led Janiva into the trees. ‘It’s on foot for a while. Stick close to me. I’ve a horse waiting at Willowford.’

  'Where are we going?’

  ‘To the anchoress at Pouncey. No one’ll look for you there, lass. It ain’t Sir Roger’s domain.’

  The great granite ridge of Pouncey Edge ran from east to west for nearly five miles, and above Pouncey village it shelved in three great steps — the lower two well wooded — and was watered by narrow falls that leaped from step to step to the river below. In the cliff face near the top weathering had exposed a broad vein of milky quartz, visible from afar. Pouncey folk held it to be lucky and believed their cattle did well under its guardianship, and who can say they were not right?

  It was an easy climb from the village to the first level, but after that it became more difficult; only the agile or the desperate could make it to the third level where Osyth, the anchoress, had lived for seventeen years in her chosen solitude.

  A cleft in the rock had provided her shelter when she first came; the previous anchoress had dwelt in a sod hut, now much decayed, but the folk of Pouncey had with great labour carried wood and stones up and built a chamber around the fissure for the new lady and a low stone wall enclosing the tiny house and its garth. They provided her with food and necessities, and in return she prayed for them and did such doctoring as she could. If her prayers were not always orthodox so much the better. The villagers reckoned they had the best of the bargain.

  No one knew where she had come from or how old she was, but her hair had been white when she came to Pouncey. In the early years she used to roam the woods that clothed the lower levels of the Edge, gathering herbs and mushrooms, berries and nuts — she never ate meat — but seventeen winters had bitten into her bones and now she hobbled with a stick and never left her anchor-hold.

  Since the house had been built no one else had stepped across its threshold and now, with two guests — greeted as if she knew of their coming as mayhap she did — the little chamber was crowded.

  They had come a long way these two, four days’ journey, and Osyth made them welcome, fetching water for them to wash and setting bread, cheese and little sweet wrinkled apples from her store before them. She built up her fire — the fissure made a natural chimney — for it was cold here in the stone heart of the Edge, and although Osyth was used to it she saw the young woman, Janiva, shiver. Not entirely from the cold, the anchoress realised; that pallor and the haunted eyes indicated shock, or grief, or both, and there was the ghost of a great bruise on one side of her face.

  ‘Go warily,’ Osyth told the forester as he prepared to leave.

  ‘I’ll be all right.’

  ‘There’s danger in the forest.’

  ‘Wolves?’

  ‘Two-legged wolves.’

  ‘You take care of my lady,’ Tostig said. ‘I’ll take care of myself.’ After the forester had gone Osyth put Janiva to bed and when night came lay down beside her. She was aware of the shadow shrouding the girl and knew it for something other than grief. Something dark, old and evil had this good child in thrall.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The well had been dry for a century and a long succession of saints had chucked their rubbish down it rather than plod up the bank to consign it to the river. So instead of drowning Straccan had landed on a deep mass of fishbones, feathers, rotting skins and other smelly debris. A long way above, impossibly remote, was a small lunette of murky daylight where the cover rested slightly askew.

  Time still passed at its normal rate, but the violent events of the day seemed to have occurred with extraordinary rapidity, in moments, not hours. He had experienced the same distortion in battle. Straccan swayed as he got first to his hands and knees, and then gingerly to his feet. The debris shifted under his weight, foul water surged over his feet and he lurched against the wall, feeling nauseous. His nose and cheek had stopped bleeding but burned like fresh brands, and his head throbbed sickeningly.

  Nothing seemed to be broken but his mind wasn’t working properly. The details of the raid and the fight were a blur, but Stigan and Wace and the saint were dead, that much he remembered. He couldn’t have saved them, he knew that, yet felt he should have. As he muttered a prayer for their souls, dizziness and nausea overwhelmed him and he fell to his knees and vomited.

  After that he felt a bit better, and gingerly got to his feet again. High up beneath the cover, hanging like cobwebs, was a thin smoky haze, but if the saint’s den above was burning he was at least safe from the flames down here. He reached out to feel the shaft wall. It seemed to be made of thin rough bricks. Groping upwards, his hand encountered a brick jutting out a bit and clos
ed on it. He felt around with his other hand for another hold.

  Yes! There!

  Now, if he could pull up on this one and get a foot on that one, it would be a start. Grunting as pain lanced through his head, he began.

  As he put his weight on it the brick crumbled, precipitating him back into the refuse. He throttled back despair. If he didn’t get out of here he’d never see Gilla again, nor Janiva. Lord Christ, help me now!

  As he got to one knee, then up again, something pressed hard against his calf. His sword and dagger were gone but they hadn’t bothered to search him, and sheathed inside his boot was what Bane called ‘insurance’, a short broad-bladed knife for use in emergencies.

  This certainly qualified.

  Thank you, Lord!

  His jerkin would only hamper his efforts; he stripped it off with his shirt. Then he tackled the crumbly brick with his knife, gouging a shallow hole and feeling around the wall for other rotten bricks. After a while, he had hand- and foot-holds to start his ascent, and began creeping slowly and painfully up the shaft.

  When he couldn’t find any more decaying bricks, he clenched the knife between his teeth and stretched his body across the well shaft. With his feet pushing against the wall at one side and his back and elbows scraped raw against the other, he slowly inched his way up, stopping often to prod around with the knife for soft bricks.

  The tremendous effort and the strain on the muscles of his shoulders and chest soon exhausted him, weakened as he was by the blow to his head.

  Christ, in your mercy, don't let me lose my senses and fall.

  Clawing his way up inch by painful inch, he thought of his daughter and prayed that he might hold her in his arms again; and of Janiva, that he would return to her. And then it seemed to him, hanging spreadeagled halfway up the well shaft, that he could hear again the voices of the boys he had seen by the riverside that morning and the litde girls at Ludlow, laughing, crying, ‘Give it to me!’