by Jason Vail
He found lodgings at an inn just below the castle’s main gate. The charge made a significant dent in his funds since he had left most of Harry’s money with Gilbert, who would need it more. But Stephen was not enthusiastic about sleeping in the cold and wet if he did not absolutely have to.
After Stephen had stabled, groomed, and fed the horse, he went up the hill to the castle. The gate warden asked his business and admitted him when he said he was an archer looking for work.
“The deputy constable’s name is Martin Picot,” the warden said. “You’ll find him in the hall. We’re full up, though, so I don’t think there’s a place for you.”
“Well, perhaps he knows of someone else who’s hiring.”
“I doubt it, though it’ll be better in the spring. I hear that Prince Edward’s been given command of a force to punish the Welsh for the harm they’ve done.”
“I’ve heard that rumor as well. It’s a long time ’til spring, though.”
The warden grinned. “True. You could starve to death before then.”
“I’ve no intention of starving. There’s always folk on the highway who are ready to be charitable with the proper persuasion.”
The warden looked stern. “I’ll take that as an attempt at humor. We’ve no patience for criminality around here.”
“I meant nothing by it.”
“You’d better not, if you don’t want to end up decorating an oak tree. Now, don’t flap your jaws and waste my time, and hand over that sword of yours, if you’re going in. I’m a busy man.”
“And an important one,” Stephen said.
In many castles, the hall was in a great square stone tower that dominated the bailey, but not so with Bishop’s Castle. There was no great tower; the biggest eminence in the fortress was the main gate tower. The hall was a timber building on the far side of the bailey beyond the well. Except for the high table, the other tables in the hall had been stacked away, and Picot sat on a cushioned chair watching some of the garrison wrestling dangerously close to the hearth in the center of the floor. He was spare man with black hair and a weak chin, a member of one of the many lesser branches of the powerful and rich Pico family.
He eyed Stephen with a bored expression. “What do you want?”
“I’m looking for work, sir.”
“What kind of work?”
“I’m a good archer and decent with a sword and shield.”
“What’s your name?”
“Orm.”
“Orm? What kind of name is that?”
“Danish. My mum was from Yorkshire and they had lots of Danes in the family.”
“Well, we’re full up. We won’t be taking on anybody ’til the spring, when there will be more than enough work for anybody who can pull a bow.”
“So the gate ward said, sir.”
“Then what are you bothering me for?”
“Well, sir, I thought that even if you aren’t hiring, you might know somebody who was. I heard that Eudo Walcot might be in the market.”
Picot laughed. “Walcot! If he’s in the market for anything it’s a new house.”
“Sir?”
“The Welsh burnt his village and manor last November. He’s gone off. No one’s seen him in months, though since the trouble we’ve had more than our usual share of traffic from Lydbury.”
“Lydbury?”
“His village,” Picot said impatiently. “A wide spot in the road with a church and a few hovels about four miles off. They come here now to market because Clun has burned.”
“The whole town?” Stephen asked innocently, although he already knew the answer, having seen the smoldering heap that the Welsh had left behind them.
“Every stick. Part of FitzAllan’s castle, too,” Picot said with a hint of malicious satisfaction.
“You don’t get along with FitzAllan?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“So I don’t step on anyone’s toes.”
“If you must know, our sympathies lie with the barons. FitzAllan would put his head up the king’s ass, if our sovereign would let him, though that’s not all our trouble. He’s always pissing over where his boundary lies with us, hunting on our land, clearing our forests. That bastard.”
“I’ve heard he was difficult.”
“Difficult! That’s a tender word for a son-of-a-bitch.”
“So, sir, you can’t help me?”
“Not now. Come back in March when the weather breaks and the campaign season starts.”
“I’ll keep that in mind if I find nothing else.”
“Just keep out of Clun honor. It’s a den of snakes down there.”
While Stephen had no doubt that Picot told the truth as he knew it, he still had to see Lydbury for himself, so he rode out there early the next morning. The village lay to the east and south of Bishop’s Castle on a muddy, churned-up road that gave evidence it had been traveled rather heavily, but he did not meet a soul or see anyone in the fields until he reached the village, which was identified by its little stone church and a dozen timber-and-wattle houses which were in various stages of construction. It did not take people long to throw up a house if they had the time and access to the materials.
The church lay on the north side of the road behind a wicker fence and a graveyard, which held a half dozen recently dug graves. Stephen turned up the side road across the western front of the church to a large, new house that lay across the street. An elderly fellow in a peasant’s long tunic but sporting a tonsured head was cutting wood in the yard. Three other men were painting the timbers of the house a dignified black and a fourth was mixing plaster to cover some wattled fillings between the timbers.
All the men stopped what they were doing when Stephen entered the yard. They regarded him with suspicion, eyes wandering over his sword, bundle of arrows, and bow, which hung in its canvas bag from his shoulder.
“And what will you be wanting, my good fellow?” the tonsured man asked. “You’re quite a bit off the beaten path.”
“Nice house,” Stephen said.
“It will serve,” the tonsured man replied.
“Hey,” one of the other men said, “you said it was better than the old one, Bertie.”
“It will be when it’s finished,” Bertie said. He redirected his attention to Stephen. “I asked your business, fellow.”
“Looking for your lord.”
“Walcot? What do you want with him?”
“That’s our business. Where can I find him?” Stephen had a good view of the village, and there was no structure grand enough to pass for a decent manor house among the hovels under construction, nor even what looked to be remains.
Bertie smiled. “You’ll find his place back toward Bishop’s Castle. First left after you leave the village, then across the bridge. Can’t miss it.”
“Thanks,” Stephen said, turning the gelding.
“Say hello to him for us, will you?” shouted one of the men working on the house at Stephen’s back.
The others got a good laugh out of that.
Walcot Manor lay across a small river. What had been the house sat at the foot of a wooded hill separated from the river by a sloping field. It must have been a rather grand house once, tall, broad, and long, with elaborate carvings around the doorway, but now it was a burned out stone shell, roofless, windows vacant, and one wall collapsed. Even the stairway leading up to the first floor was gone, leaving behind a cinder smear on the stone wall. The remains of a sizeable timber barn sat at an angle to the house, and an intact kitchen, smithy, chicken coop, pig sty, and laundry that no one apparently thought worth burning clustered opposite the barn. A small house had been newly built by the kitchen, but no one answered Stephen’s knock. He called out, but there was no reply. It was very quiet; not even the cackle of chickens or the rooting of pigs disturbed the gloom.
It was an unlikely haunt of outlaws, and certainly not Margaret’s barn-burners.
Stephen remounted the gelding and pulled h
is head around toward the bridge to the village. He had to pass close by the ruined barn and a flash of white caught his eye. It could have been mistaken for snow, but it was not on top of the burned timbers as snow should be, but beneath a layer of cinders at a disturbed place where it looked as though someone had been digging. He slipped off the horse and clambered across a burnt section of wall to the white spot. It was not snow. He licked a finger, pressed it into the white pile, and tasted the residue on the finger: salt. The charred slats of a barrel lay mingled with the pile of salt. Some of the slats were burned so badly that they fell apart in his hands, but he dug deeper and came upon several slats that gave little sign of the fire. He turned over one of those and found the Saltehus dandelion mark staring up at him.
“Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?” an angry voice said behind him.
Stephen stood up and turned around. A gray-haired man of about forty faced him beyond the wall. Several hares dangled from his belt, and he held a bow with a nocked arrow. “Looking for a thief,” Stephen said.
“You’re trespassing.”
This was true, of course. Trespassing was a serious matter.
“Send for the sheriff, then, and you can explain how you came by this.” Stephen held up the slat bearing the dandelion.
The fellow’s brows curled in a dismissive expression as Stephen clambered across the wall and fallen timbers to come within arms reach. The fellow said, “How we came by it is none of your business.”
“I have made it my business,” Stephen said, gauging the distance between them and wondering if the man could draw and shoot in the time it would take him to cover it.
The bowman turned his head to shout to someone out of sight. This was Stephen’s only chance. He launched himself to the left, kicking at the fellow’s groin. The blow struck on the thigh, but generated enough of a distraction that Stephen was able to grasp the bow and punch him on the chin. The man let go of the bow and fell on his back. He tried drawing his dagger, but Stephen stepped on his elbow, pinning the arm to the ground.
“I’ll ask once more, politely. Where did you get the salt?”
“We bought it. In Clun.”
“From whom?”
“I have no idea. I’m the steward here. I send people to do my buying, and if they get a good price, I don’t ask questions.”
“Who bought, then, for you?”
“Wouldn’t do you any good if I told you. He’s dead.”
“Killed when the Welsh came?”
The steward nodded.
“And he didn’t give you a name?”
“What name would that be?”
“Of the person he bought it from.”
“Of course not. Why would he?”
Stephen took his foot off the steward’s arm. He picked up the discarded bow and mounted the gelding.
“Hey,” the steward said. “Give that back.”
Spurring the gelding toward the wooden hill behind the wreck of the manor house, Stephen called back, “You’ll find it just ahead!”
Chapter 19
Stephen leaned the stolen bow against a beech tree at the edge of the wood where it could be seen by the steward and two of his fellows, who were following on foot. He waved at them, but doubted they appreciated the friendly gesture from the indignant noises they threw his way. Reflecting on how people were often so impolite these days, he continued uphill into the forest.
He swerved northwest as the forest obscured the pursuit’s view, riding at an easy trot. It was a young forest with most trees no bigger round than his thigh, so there were lots of branches, which meant he spent a great deal of time bobbing in the saddle like some lovesick bird or waving his arms about to avoid a constant whipping.
Presently, he broke out of the forest. Ahead was a broad valley, empty pasture from the look of it, with gentle rising ground in the distance. He kept to the edge of the forest, heading southwestward. Only a few yards on, he passed a shepherd’s stone hut; the trash piled outside the door smelled fresh, and it had not yet achieved that gagging aroma it acquired in warm weather. It was unusual it should be occupied this time of year, but he smelled no smoke and no one emerged to wonder what he was doing so far from any road.
Once he was away and the possibility of capture diminished, Stephen had plenty of time to contemplate his stupidity at Walcot Manor. He had not handled it well, blurting out the truth in his shock at being surprised. The venture depended on secrecy, stealth, and lies, and at the first test he had failed. Only luck had enabled him to get away. He was always blundering from one thing to another, especially in this finding business. He wished he had another way to make a living. Maybe with the war coming in the spring his prospects would change. Someone had to stay and guard the castles while everyone else was away winning glory and plunder. He could do that with a bum foot. But the thought did not make him feel any better.
The pasture gave way to cultivated fields a bit farther on, where winter wheat poked above the crust of snow. These fields must have belonged to the village he could see to the north, a handful of gray thatched rooms wreathed in smoke from the fires that people were at pains to keep burning in all weather.
Stephen skirted the fields — to ride across a cultivated field was a great crime not far beneath robbery or assault — by keeping to the edge of the wooded hills to the south, hoping that he would attract no attention.
He came around the shoulder of another hill where before him lay a pasture of flattened grass. Hoping that he was not under the eyes of any watcher who might call out at his trespass, he rode across the field to the hedge that was its far boundary. It was a hedge so tall that he could not tell even from the back of the gelding what lay beyond it, and was so thick that he could not see a way through. But by riding along its length for a short way, he found a break where carts came and went, and crossed through to what proved to be a wide and well traveled road.
All the villages in England were connected with their neighbors by a spider’s web of footpaths and cart tracks that were often so narrow that even a cart might find them a challenge. It was possible to travel from Chester to Dover upon them if you were fortunate enough to know the way, not that anyone might, of course. But your better chance of getting about was on the king’s roads which by royal edict were maintained along their length by the lords whose lands they passed through, and this had to be such a road: wide enough for two carts side-by-side and even with ditches to carry off the rain, although here they were shallow and weed filled. It could only be the road from Bishop’s Castle to Clun.
A pack train was plodding north a short distance away when Stephen burst onto the road. The man in the lead pulled up and shouted an alarm, causing consternation and confusion along the length of the train, which was quite long, as many as thirty horses so laden that it was a wonder they could stand up beneath their packs.
A couple of hefty fellows clad in brigantines and wearing swords jogged forwards at the call of the leader. They drew their swords at the sight of Stephen, for it was not polite to go bursting out in front of people from the shrubbery and usually meant no good.
Stephen showed his hands as he ambled the gelding toward the pack train. “Good day!” he called when he had got close enough to speak to them.
“What are you up to?” the leader called back, apparently not convinced it was a good day.
“Taking a shit is all,” Stephen replied, which was a reasonably plausible explanation as, while it was permissible to pee in the road even if there were women about, it was bad form to crap there like a dog where anyone could step in it. “You coming from Clun?”
“We might be. What’s your business?”
“Everybody seems to want to know that today, for some reason. People are so touchy hereabout.”
“We’ve got good reason to wonder about people who jump out of bushes.”
“I didn’t jump. As you can see, I am on a horse and we are moving slow.”
“Well, keep on, then,
and make no trouble.”
“Trouble is not my intention. How is Clun these days? It has been a while since I’ve been there.”
“It’s still there, barely.”
“I heard it was roughly handled.”
“Yeah, Welsh burnt the town, but they’re rebuilding. You’re looking for work?”
“I am, but not of that sort. Is FitzAllan in residence?”
“No, he’s gone off south. Westminster, I heard, to suck up to the King and Prince Edward.”
“That’s how his kind make their money.”
“His kind would die if they had to make their way by honest labor,” the leader spat into the road.
“Give him his due. Sucking up can be hard work,” Stephen said. “Not that I mean to defend the earl.”
“You would know. You don’t look like a working man yourself.”
“I just labor in a different field. Sometimes we are useful.” Stephen inclined his head toward the two men with swords, who had begun to relax when the only threat appeared to be bad conversation rather than sudden assault.
The leader smiled. “I’ll give you that, though your kind didn’t do much good at Clun.”
“Had I been there, the Welsh would have been too frightened to show their faces.”
That was so absurd a boast that everyone laughed.
“I think they’d have been more afraid if you showed your ass,” one of the soldiers said.
“I doubt that,” Stephen said, accepting the jibe with good grace. “Say, you wouldn’t know a fellow in Clun by the name of Blasingame, would you?”
“I’ve heard of him,” the pack leader said. “Wool merchant. Why?”
“Thought he might be good for a few pence, to tide me over ’til I get employment.”
“You’re that friendly?”
“He’s a cousin.”
“He’s doing all right, I suppose. Got his house burnt like everybody else, but now he’s got a new one. Pretty grand one, too. How close a cousin?”