“Mistress!” cried Hob, coming to an abrupt halt, snubbing up Milo with the lead rope, pointing into the ditch. “Mistress, there’s a, a—” He was pointing to a body, half-submerged, horribly wizened.
The corpse lolled in the rhine, wallowing in the sluggish current of outflowing water. Molly took her hazel stick and clambered down the steep little bank to the water’s edge. Without hesitating she reached out and seized the corpse by the back of its smock, and, with a heave, dragged the loathsome thing up till it lay half on solid land, face up. The horrid countenance seemed to gaze into the sky. Its skin was brown and harsh as bark—even the water had not softened its appearance—and its eyes, sunken back into its head, seemed almost lidless; the teeth grinned from a near-lipless mouth. Deep grooves in its cheeks, the meat of its forearms, the backs of its hands, seemed not to have been made so much by exterior insult as by interior collapse along fault lines deep in the flesh.
Molly squatted there beside the body for a long time. She put her staff aside, went to hands and knees, and sniffed it from head to thighs like a dog; she took the hand in hers and sat awhile with eyes closed, as though visiting a sick friend; she leaned over the ghastly face, which Hob could scarce look upon, and she peered into its deep-sunk eyes. All the while the corpse’s lower legs in tattered hose, its unshod feet, swayed this way and that in the rhine’s slow stream.
Where Hob stood on the bank above, an eddy of the wind brought the odor of corruption up to him from the cadaver. He paled and stepped back a pace. Nemain put a hand over her mouth, but she stayed where she was. Jack, on his several campaigns as man-at-arms, mercenary, Crusader, had had occasion to loot the dead after a battle, as was common practice, sometimes as much as three or four days later, when the battlefield had become a buzzing world of flies. Now he merely moved aside a pace or two, squatted and pulled up a handful of grasses, crushed and rolled them between his hard palms, and breathed from his cupped hands, fragrant with the broken leaves.
Molly stood at last, went upcurrent from the body, and rinsed her hands. She retrieved her staff and dug it into the soft earth of the rhine bank, and so climbed once again to the road. She looked back at the pitiful thing below. She said to Nemain, “Whatever other fragrance there is to that body, ’tis thick with the scent of sorcery as well. I’m after feeling it—’tis like a great footprint on that poor wretch, not seen but sensed. Sure and there’s a fell being that haunts this coast: something dire, something vast.”
THEY SET OFF EAST AGAIN. Soon, as expected, they struck the first north—south road. They did not see the village, though: these were Sir Odinell’s lands, but his castle and the attendant village lay a bit to the north and closer to the coast, along the coast road. Molly had Hob turn to the right, or south, and after no great while they came to a crossroads, and, on the northeastern corner, Adelard’s Inn.
Like many inns, it had begun as a house willing to feed and bed down the occasional traveler. Profiting from its location, the inn grew with the addition of a stable, an innyard, stouter doors, and the like. Beside the inn itself was a strong wall, perhaps ten feet high, enclosing the innyard and the stable buildings; in this wall were double doors, very wide.
Hob stopped before these doors, Molly set the brake, and behind them the other two wagons drew to a halt, Jack and Nemain kicking the brakes on, dismounting, stretching. The inn door opened and a skinny boy of about twelve, thin-limbed, narrow-waisted, with a mop of brown hair, ran out and up to them. After a quick stuttering glance between Hob and Molly, the latter still up on the wagon seat, he settled on Molly, and asked her if they were seeking accommodation at the inn.
“It’s perhaps a sennight we’ll be staying, and our beasts are hungry, and ourselves as well,” said Molly.
“Gie us a bit moment, Mistress,” said the boy, and ran back into the inn.
Almost immediately they heard bolts being drawn on the other side of the innyard doors, and the boy hauled back first one leaf, then the other. At the same time a man stepped out of the inn itself, wiping his hands on a cloth: this proved to be the innkeeper. He came up to them, tugged an imaginary forelock, a forelock that had departed his scalp some years before. He made a bob that might have been meant to suggest a bow.
The innkeeper was a balding, hollow-chested man; he might have appeared sickly but for his sinewy arms—long arms that seemed longer because of his stooped posture—and his vigorous manner. He was brisk, he was energetic, yet there was a shadow over him: in the midst of saying something he would look quickly down the road, or over the nearby fields; a look of fear would flicker over his features, and then he would resume his speech, with a hint of a little furtiveness, as though afraid he had been seen looking for danger.
“God be wi’ ye, Mistress,” he said to Molly. Nodding toward the boy, he said, “Timothy—yon spelk is Timothy—says ye’re tae stay a sennight, and welcome tae ye. He’ll stable yer nout beast”—here he patted Milo’s neck—“and t’others as weel; bring em wi’in.” And between gestures of welcome and pattings of the air and pointing, he got Hob to bring Milo around and through the gates, where Timothy waited to show them where to place the wagons, helped them to unhitch the animals, and ushered them into a ramshackle stable that was yet surprisingly clean and comfortable within.
Hob, as always, saw to Milo’s comfort. The ox had been his particular responsibility since he had joined Molly’s little family, and a bond had grown between them: the great beast, gentle and even timid, had come, somewhat incongruously, to regard Hob as its protector, and Hob had responded with an affection almost paternal. Nemain and Jack tended to the ass and the mare, while Timothy bustled about, showing them where to find feed and water, and assigning appropriate stalls.
Afterward they tramped in a group across the innyard, an expanse of hard-packed dirt within the high walls, to the back door of the inn. Inside, Hob was blind for a moment, but as his eyes adjusted to the gloom after the yard’s sunlight, he began to make out some detail. They had come in at the back of the long common room, beside the large stone hearth that took up most of the eastern wall, with its heavy cookpots hung to iron hooks. Here most of the cooking was done, the cauldrons swiveled on iron dogs over the fire to seethe the stews and pottages prepared in the kitchen. In the autumn there would be a pig, or perhaps a sheep, roasted on a sturdy spit. To Hob’s left, along part of the south wall, was a counter used to set out food and drink. On pegs set in the wall behind this counter were mugs made of birch or cow horn or tar-jacked leather, for barley beer or honey beer or whatever the alewives of the neighborhood who sold to the inn had in season.
Beside the serving counter were two narrow doorways, one that opened onto the kitchen with its small side rooms that served as pantry and buttery, the other that led to a creaking stairway that went to the upper floor, where there were the sleeping accommodations. The common room was empty, and indeed there was an air of desertion about the inn: there was no bustle from outside or upstairs, no murmur of voices, as there would have been in an inn with guests.
Adelard showed them upstairs. Here a quarter of the space had been set off for the family’s use, with an internal mud-and-wattle wall. The rest was divided into sleeping booths walled by hanging cloth. The cots were crude wood-and-leather strap affairs, the accommodations spare to the point of severity, but orderly and well-kept.
Molly looked around briefly, then said, “ ’Tis with you we’ll be eating, friend Adelard, but ’tis our wagons we’ll be sleeping in, and you having the more room for other guests.”
The innkeeper sighed. “It’s few enow the folk who stop here the noo.”
“But it’s that you were having more in days past?” asked Molly.
“Och, aye. We’d a fair bit from travelers tae Durham, them as didna tak’ the coast road, but nae sae mickle any mair.” He looked as though he would say more, but then turned suddenly and led the way back down. They trooped down behind him, the stairs protesting a bit as Molly passed and groaning ala
rmingly under Jack’s weight.
Here they met Adelard’s wife and daughter, just come in from the kitchen; Timothy had been telling them of the new guests. Joan was a stout woman with a face that might have been formed in a flowing stream, all angles smoothed and blunted by the rushing water: a short wide nose, rounded at the tip, full cheeks, a soft round chin. Yet it was a pleasant face, if not bonny, framed in brown hair shot with gray, beneath a linen veil. Her habitual good-natured expression, welcoming to the tired traveler, yet had a hint of vexing worry, expressed in the way her brows tilted up in the middle, even when she smiled, and the vertical lines that persisted between those brows.
Her daughter, Hawis, was a young woman of perhaps sixteen years, hanging back shyly behind her mother. She had a certain plainness of feature that was redeemed by large hazel eyes, full lips, and the appeal of healthy youth. However, she seemed unaware that she might be attractive: she was diffident, almost timid, and completely without any hint of affectation, much less flirtatiousness. The sleeves of her kirtle were pushed back to her elbows, and she was wiping her hands with a cloth; evidently she and her mother had been in the midst of cooking when Timothy had run in. They gave a little half curtsey to Molly, whose large stature, heavy silver mane barely concealed beneath her veil, and regal bearing projected an imposing, if kindly, nobility. Molly greeted them with her usual casual warm courtesy, and Hob, standing some paces behind with Nemain and the ever-silent Jack, thought to see the wariness drain from the two women.
There were tables and benches through the room. Closest to the fire was a sort of approximation of a lord’s high table: a larger table set crosswise, with crude chairs instead of benches. Adelard gestured toward the chairs at the table, an invitation to sit, and himself sat down at one side of the table. Molly sat nearest to him, with the others taking chairs down the other side.
“Daughter,” said Adelard, “bring us honey beer, and a bit scran as weel, fer Ah’m sure thae guid folk are yawp, what wi’ not eatin’ a’ the day.”
Hawis turned without a word and quickly disappeared into the kitchen.
“Yon’s a guid lassie,” Adelard said, looking at no one in particular. His fingers drummed a bit on the table, and Hob thought he looked ill at ease, as one who gnaws at some inner trouble while speaking of other things.
Molly undid a soft leather pouch from her belt, and spilled out a number of coins onto the tabletop—the short-cross silver pennies still being minted with the legend Henricus Rex, for long-dead King Henry, and a few of the larger silver coins from Florence known as grossi. She selected two of the smaller pennies and pushed them over to Adelard, and swept the others back into her pouch, thus establishing her credit in the innkeeper’s eyes while paying for stabling and board at the same time.
“I’m after being directed to your inn by a godbrother of my cousin,” said Molly, lying blithely. “He’s a cook up to the grand castle they’re calling Chantemerle, and hasn’t he got the ear of the seneschal, and he telling him of our skill at the harp, and the symphonia, and we’ve hope of being invited to the castle, there to play, and perhaps to acquire a patron the while. It’s here we’ll stay for a sennight or so, in hope that the castle will pay us heed. We’ll be playing for your custom the while, and perhaps that custom will be increasing, what with ourselves playing so gaily here, and then it is you’ll be seeing whether we owe you more, or less: ’twill be your decision and none else’s.”
The innkeeper was not a stupid man, but things go slowly in the countryside, and he sat and looked from the coins to Molly’s face, as one who is thinking and thinking. He was also an honest man, and finally he sighed and said, “Mistress, Ah mun tell ee summat. Theer’s been a mort of unco trouble o’ late, and folk that used tae meet and craic here stay at yem the night, be theer fireside. An thae what come tae this inn are hard men, bound tae the south tae—”
“Whisht,” said his wife, hovering by the counter. Now she came and sat down next to her husband. “Dinna mention—”
“Ah mun tell her a bit mair,” he said to her. The innkeeper looked about as though there were spies in every corner, and dropped his voice till, between his hushed tone and his thick dialect, Hob could hardly understand him. “Theer’s anither castle tae the sooth o’ Chantemerle, a few miles tae t’ sooth, sithee, an there’s talk, terrible talk, of thae folk in’t, and thae hard men comin’ sooth and gaein’ north frae Duncarlin, that’s t’ castle, an’ some unco new folk in’t. Theer’s been quarrelin’ and fightin’ and siccerlike, even a man kilt ootside yon threshold”—here he nodded toward the inn’s front door. “T’ villagers are afeared an’ sae are we afeared. Sithee, Ah tell ee this sae theer’s nae talk that Ah didna warn ee.”
Then Molly did an odd thing: she put a hand on his wrist, and squeezed it a bit, and patted his forearm as one might pat a dog, looking into his face the while, and then said, “Let us but stay a sennight, and see what may be. ’Tis often that your cloudy morning brings in a sunny day.”
The innkeeper sat back and sighed; he looked both uncertain and happy, as though he were happy, but unsure why he was happy. Hob thought: He can tell. She is here now, come to help him, and he feels safer; everyone feels it from her, that they are safe now. Dogs, horses, people. Myself.
Hawis came from the kitchen with a large bowl of cruppy-dows, cakes made of oatmeal and fish, and trenchers on which to serve them. She disappeared and reappeared with a big pitcher of honey beer, and began to place birchwood mugs before the company. Her mother served out the cruppy-dows, which Hob ate with relish. Of course, since he had entered manhood, beginning to grow precipitously, everything tasted good to him, a source of some humor to Nemain.
There was a silence while the troupe ate and drank, but soon Molly spoke again, her tone carefully neutral. “We’re after hearing of folk being killed, there by the castles of the coast road, Chantemerle and Duncarlin, and their bodies found, and they strange to look upon. Is it this that’s keeping your custom away?”
“Weel, Ah dinna ken, Mistress. ’Tis two or mair miles awa’, ye ken”—this said as though it were on the moon—“but rumors come tae us, sithee, an’ make t’ folk hereabout afeared, as Ah hae told ye. But we’ve mair fear o’ t’ hard men that gang aboot, passin’ through tae and fro yon castle.”
“If ’tis only men we’ve to deal with,” said Molly, “we’ll not be fretting overmuch. I’ll set my granddaughter on them,” and she nodded at Nemain.
The innkeeper smiled a small sad smile, as at a poor joke, and said nothing. Hob himself wondered at it, and only later understood.
CHAPTER 8
THE SUN SLANTED TOWARD AFTERNOON, and two men from the tiny village of Oldham, just to the west, on the way home from their fields, had stopped in to drink ale, and bide a moment before continuing to their cottages. A country inn is a center of the surrounding community; the innkeeper knows more than anyone what transpires in the scattered dwellings, and despite the anxious times, or perhaps because of them, these two were eager for any word of doings among their neighbors.
Molly and her family were sitting at a table in the corner by the back door to the innyard. When she saw the farmers come in she had Jack and Hob fetch the musical instruments: Molly’s cláirseach and the somewhat smaller one that Nemain used; the goatskin drum; the symphonia.
“For ’tis time to let them know we’re here,” as she put it in a low voice, nodding toward the pair of drinkers but meaning the country folk in general. The men, lanky, towheaded—they might have been brothers, or cousins—and more than a little smirched from a day working the soil, had already been eyeing the newcomers: this was a change from dull routine, this was fascinating! When the musical instruments were brought in, their interest doubled, and they took their ale to a table.
Hob took his place by Molly and Nemain, and Jack sat to the other side. Hob kept as quiet as possible while the women, each with a cláirseach set upon a knee and leaned upon a shoulder, tuned the willow-wood harps. The harps we
re decorated with endless-knot ribbonwork, ending in hounds’ heads; the gold wires and silver wires with which they were strung were fastened to brass pegs.
Then Hob put the symphonia on his lap and tuned to Nemain’s harp, the two young people trading notes back and forth. The three pairs of strings sang under the resined wooden wheel that Hob cranked, while his other hand danced over the keys. The strings stretched a bit and he retuned.
Soon the troupe began a lively reel, Hob for once providing the main melody, the two harps accompanying him, and Jack, deftly wielding his knuckle-bone striker, keeping time with a rattling, bouncing succession of raps on the drum frame, and booming blows on the goatskin. The two peasants looked at each other; one pounded his mate on the back a few times in celebration of their good fortune. They clapped along; they had more ale; they shouted encouragement. Beneath the table their feet were tapping to Jack’s rhythm, and for a moment Hob thought they would spring to their feet and dance. The reel came to its abrupt end, and Molly signaled to Jack and Hob to be silent.
Molly and Nemain next played together, the harps inter-weaving in a complex counterpoint. Echoes woke in the corners of the near-empty space; the showers of tinkling notes filled the long room. This was music of a quality never heard in a little backcountry inn. Folk made their own dance music, and sang old traditional songs, keeping more or less to the melody, singing more or less well. To the few listeners here in the inn’s common room—the two farmers, the innkeeper and his wife—Molly and Nemain’s playing seemed the work of angels.
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