Molly and Nemain circled the room, and so did Sweetlove. The women and the dog could detect no evidence of rats, haunted or otherwise. Guiscard led them out again, locked the storeroom, and took them to another, larger room that occupied the whole back half of the keep. Hob held the torch while Guiscard struggled again with the lock, and then they were in the large, echoing space, where tools of various types were stored, including a wall against which a score or so of spare wagon wheels leaned. Sweetlove began to growl the moment her feet touched the floor, and she faced the northeast corner, where shadows were deepest. Hob employed himself in lighting some of the oil lamps in brackets around the walls. Molly arranged the archers in a slant line facing the corner, so that no one was in their line of fire. The men bent the six-foot Welsh longbows against the stone floor, leaning on them and pulling the bowstrings taut to the upper limbs so to nock them securely. Each archer drew an arrow from his quiver and fitted it to the string. They set their feet and looked to Molly for orders.
Molly and Nemain walked close to the corner; they half closed their eyes and became still. Then they looked at each other and shook their heads: Nothing, or at least nothing redolent of witchcraft.
The terrier charged into the corner, and there was squeaking and the occasional shriek, and scuffling that went on for a long time, and then she came out with a corpse in her mouth, that of a quite ordinary rat, and dropped it at Jack’s feet, and went back into darkness and came out with another rat, and so on, like a mother cat transporting kittens. She brought out six killed rats, and then sat on her haunches, looking quite pleased with herself.
The women had completed a circuit of the walls, and detected nothing, and Sweetlove herself lay down at Jack’s feet and seemed about to doze off.
“Away on,” said Molly, and they trooped out again and upstairs to the first level.
Here were the more readily accessed storerooms: grains, dried apples, and the like. Molly immediately turned toward the south wall—the usual sacks and boxes cast shadows against the plaster, and the spaces between them were like small dark alleys.
Sweetlove approached one of these alleys. On one side was a barrel, as high as Jack’s head. On the other were three wooden boxes, stacked atop one another. The little terrier growled into the shadows, but would not enter the alley. She sat down and looked around at Jack.
“Jack,” said Molly, “would you ever clear us a space to see?”
The silent man handed his cudgel to Hob and stepped forward, careful not to come between the archers and the dark cleft between the boxes and the barrel. He seized the bottom box, and with a powerful wrench pulled it away from the barrel. Deep in the gloom near the wall, Hob could see faint blue gleams, perhaps twelve or fourteen. Hard to tell: the rats were shifting about restlessly.
Suddenly a wave of the very big rats, with glaucous eyes and lips drawn back from shining ridges of teeth, came boiling out of the darkness. One turned left and leaped, knee-high, at Jack. An eyeblink later Molly’s dagger pinned it against the side of the box her man stood near. The rest fanned out. There was an almost simultaneous humming snap of a half-dozen bowstrings. Four of the rats were impaled by arrows and another by Nemain’s hurled dagger. Two arrows thudded uselessly into the barrel, and the fastest archer managed to nock another arrow and kill yet another rat.
The remaining one came straight at Hob. Its speed was disconcerting, and it jinked and feinted at the last moment, for all the world as though it had planned the maneuver—another sign of more intelligence than was natural in such a rodent. Even as the lad swung at it, it curved toward his ankle and he was forced to skip aside; the white fangs flashed and closed with a tiny but perceptible click. Hob swung, but he had been thrown off balance enough that his cudgel dealt only a glancing blow. The rodent skidded a foot or two, but was stunned enough by the stroke that Hob was able to leap forward and strike again, and then once more, and then the rat lay still.
Hob looked at the corpse. There was something, even in death, disturbing about its appearance—its size, certainly, but also something about the set of its features suggested a face, with its final expression one of anger or hostility, rather than the simple blank beast visage of the rats Sweetlove had killed. The thought of being bitten by this malignant little demon sent a shiver of repugnance through him.
Suddenly both Molly and Nemain whirled toward the door. Molly’s hand shot out, pointing, and she cried, “Archers! Out there, now!” Godfrey cried, “With me!” and ran toward the corridor. The archers were a picked group, and spun without hesitation and ran after their squad leader to the doorway, hands plucking arrows from their back-slung quivers even as they went. They were scarcely outside the storeroom when cries of discovery went up. Hob, running full tilt toward the door, could see them already loosing arrows in the direction of the stairs. When he skidded into the corridor, he could see one of the large rats dead near the foot of the stairs and another actually pinned to a riser.
Molly and the rest came out, and Godfrey said, touching his forehead, “There’s one on ’em as made it up yon stairs, Mistress. Maybe two.”
“Up you go after them, lad,” said Molly. “We’re right behind you.” She turned to Nemain. “Go with them, a rún, and help them find those vile things. Hob, Jack, stay with me a bit.”
Nemain set off, and Molly quickly swept through the rest of the first level, the terrier questing into corners and Molly turning slowly in the center of each room, seeking the traces of Sir Tarquin’s sorcery. As she tried to explain to Hob later, “ ’Tis like the scent one of these high-born ladies, that perfume themselves, leaves behind when she goes out of a room: ’tis faint, but ’tis there, and it’s telling you who was in that room.”
Sweetlove started and killed two more rats, but that was all, and Molly led them all up swiftly to the second floor, where was the great hall. Here Nemain had completed a sweep of the walls, and was walking up and down the center of the room. She looked at Molly and shook her head.
Molly in turn walked about the large room, but could detect no trace of the “scent” of Sir Tarquin’s wizardry. Jack put Sweetlove down, and the little dog ran about the walls, eventually flushing out a pair of very ordinary rats, both of which she killed.
So it went through the rest of the very large keep, a search that consumed most of the day. At last they were on a landing at the top of winding stairs, the archers, bows slung to their backs, strung out on the first dozen steps below them. A heavy oaken door, banded with iron hinges, led to one of the tower rooftops, but this was bolted shut, and they were about to descend again, when Hob said, “Mistress!”
He pointed to the lower corner of the door, where a small bit of daylight showed. He stooped and looked closer. The corner had been gnawed just enough to allow a rodent in or out. Godfrey threw the bolts and they trooped out onto the roof of the tower. There was nothing: a flagpole from which Sir Odinell’s banner flew when he was in residence; tar-covered wooden bins with spare arrows and bowstrings; jars of oil to be heated and poured on attackers; stones, large and small, to be hurled or dropped. Otherwise, the space was bare. They were about to reenter the tower doorway when Molly stopped, cocked her head as though listening, and then turned to Nemain with a questioning look. Nemain said, “No.” Then, a moment later, “It may be. I cannot tell.” Molly said to the small party of men, Hob and Jack included, “I’m feeling a sense of those cursed rats. They’re not here, but they were here, or so it feels to me.”
Godfrey told off men to search the bins, but in vain. He himself stood in the middle of the tower rooftop and turned slowly in place. All at once he ran to the parapet on the outer side of the tower and sprang up into the crenel, the space between two merlons. He put a hand on each merlon and leaned perilously over. He turned and called, “Dickon! Steady me by my belt!” even as he slipped the strung bow from his back and reached for an arrow.
Dickon was the burliest of the archers, and ran to seize the back of Godfrey’s belt. He brace
d a foot against the inner edge of the crenel, while Godfrey leaned out, holding his bow horizontally across his thighs, and from this awkward position nocked an arrow to the string and drew it back up toward his face.
Hob stepped into the next crenel and, holding fast to the adjacent merlon, leaned out cautiously, and looked down the dizzying expanse of rough stone wall, to the rock of the headland Castle Chantemerle stood on. Halfway down the tower, two rats, head down, were creeping groundward, claws gripping irregularities in the surface of the stone blocks that composed the tower wall.
Godfrey loosed an arrow at the rats. It struck near them—the steel arrowhead sparked against the rough rock surface—and skittered away earthward. The head archer drew and loosed again. This time he pierced one of his targets; the rat was plucked off the tower and fell, missing the edge of the headland and tumbling, tumbling all the way to the sea that surged about the feet of Chantemerle.
Godfrey sped three more shafts downward with astonishing rapidity, but the final rat had reached the bottom of the castle wall, scampered to the headland’s edge, and disappeared over it. A few breaths later, Hob thought he saw movement at the water’s edge, a dark form scuttling up the sandy foreshore and vanishing into a clump of marram grass, heading southward. South, where lay Sir Tarquin’s castle.
“Sure, and he’ll be reporting to that wretched draíodóir,” Molly said. She clapped Godfrey on the shoulder. “Well done, though, lad,” she said. “It’s a fine day’s work you’ve done.” She stepped down from the crenel. “Well, it’s time to tell Sir Odinell that he’ll be the talk of Sir Tarquin’s supper table tonight.”
CHAPTER 17
THE SHUTTERS WERE LATCHED back in this tower room, and the warm breeze brought with it the salt scent of the German Sea, the iodine scent of the seaweed drying on the sandy beaches north and south of the headland on which stood Castle Chantemerle. Hob could just hear the swash of the breakers far below, the mewing of the cloud of gulls that haunted the castle middens.
Molly and her family sat at a table with Sir Odinell and Daniel Clerk. Molly was reporting on the state of Sir Tarquin’s spies. “ ’Tis fairly certain I am that there are no more of these unnatural things within these walls, and your little friend there”—she gestured toward Sweetlove, now asleep in a curl between Jack’s feet—“has cleansed a mort of ordinary vermin as well from your rooms. But there’s one that has escaped us, and that one last seen heading south, and it’s sure to be reporting on us in some way.”
“Christ save us,” muttered Sir Odinell.
“ ’Tis of no great moment,” said Molly. “It’s yourself who was telling us that ’twas not till Daniel mentioned that we were to play within your hall that Sir Tarquin accepted your invitation. I’m fearing that I had aroused his suspicion before ever he came, and it’s a look of hatred and loathing he gave me, the while I was playing, and my lad here”—she indicated Hob—“telling me that his hag-wife looked on me and on himself the very same way. They’re coming here to make sure of us, and, being sure of us as enemies, they’re sure of you as an enemy, no matter how blithely himself jested at table. And to poison the lassie’s dog, and that in front of us all—’twas an act of sudden spite on her part, but also that she felt it time to drop all pretense. ’Tis war between your houses—you cannot avoid it now, nor delay it. ’Tis no longer a matter of should you move against him, or should you wait. He will come for you, and that when you’re not expecting him.”
“Should I prepare the castle for siege?” asked the knight.
She thought a moment. “Be said by me: you must send for Sir Jehan and Sir Balthasar, and what knights and men-at-arms they can spare, without delay. There is no telling how or when Sir Tarquin will move against us, but ’twill be soon; ’twill be soon enough. It’s back to the inn for ourselves: it may delay the attack if we are seen to leave Chantemerle, and we play now for time, till Sir Jehan and Sir Balthasar can come to us—Balthasar alone is more demon than man, and a great comfort it is to have him fighting on your behalf.
“But the very moment Blanchefontaine arrives, send us Daniel with word of it and we will come to you. As for that buidseach and his wife, it’s a closer look I’m to have at them, and I cannot do that within the walls of this castle. Nor must you ask me how, but only trust me.”
The knight looked at her for a moment, and then said, “I trust you utterly, madam. Between the word of Jehan, and what I saw last night with my daughter’s dog, I trust you utterly, nor will I question you in anything you seek to do. I place myself and my people in your hands.”
“It’s four horses, and they with saddles, that we’ll be needing from you, that we may move the more freely, and we may come up to his castle, not to be noticed the while we’re having our closer look. I’ll be putting watchers on him as well.”
“Watchers? Who will you—” He broke off as she put a hand on his arm.
“Is it questions you’re asking, and you just after promising the reverse?” she said, but she was smiling. “And if that gesadóir has rats to do his bidding, do you think I am friendless among the creatures of the earth?”
“Your pardon, madam, I withdraw all questions,” he said, shaking his head at what sounded too near to witchcraft for his liking. But Molly was hard to refuse, or to take offense at, when she smiled.
“Four horses,” she said again.
AND SO IT WAS that when the wagons rolled out through the gatehouse of Chantemerle there were four mounts tied behind, their tack stowed inside the main wagon. Two were fastened to the rear of the large wagon and two behind the small one, with Jack in the midsized wagon coming last and making sure no horse broke loose. Beside Jack on the wagon seat, nose lifted to the new scents outside the castle walls, was Sweetlove. The dog had been haunting Jack’s side since the rat hunt, sleeping at the foot of his cot in the solar, and following him downstairs to the hall, and up again to the solar, trotting behind him when Jack’s duties took him across the inner ward and out to the wagons for something Molly wanted.
The little dog would have nothing to do with Herluin, hobbling about with his rat-bitten heel tendon bandaged and a yew crutch under one arm, nor with his fellow dog-groom, Luc.
At last Sir Odinell had asked Molly if she would like to take the terrier with her. She looked at Jack, with the dog curled up on the bench next to him. The silent man, seeing her looking, put a very large hand on the dozing terrier. Molly sighed.
“It’s after being decided for us, I’m thinking,” she said. Jack broke into a grin.
Now the troupe came down the slope from the castle, the brakes being plied constantly, on and off again, and swung in a wide curve to the left, heading south along the coast road. Behind them Chantemerle, with its thicknesses of stone, its complex defenses, its armed men, its safety, dwindled into the distance, and was gone.
CHAPTER 18
SOME MILES BEFORE THEY CAME to the inn Molly had them pull off the road, down into a gentle swale. They proceeded for a short while, then swung around behind a heavy stand of beech trees, the lower branches trailing to the ground, making a kind of veil. Purple heart’s-ease, blue forget-me-nots, dotted the grass; dog-rose shrubs climbed outcroppings of rock; and a deep stream ran chuckling through the dip between two hillsides. Here they were in an open space, but protected from sight on three sides by trees and on the fourth by the rise of the land to their west.
They drew the wagons up into a crude semicircle. The three draft animals and Sir Odinell’s four horses were picketed on long tethers where they had access to the brook, and good grazing as well. Jack and Hob went about gathering firewood, and soon they had a rough camp set up. They made a simple meal from cheese and bread packed for them at the castle, and cool water from the stream, Jack feeding Sweetlove—sitting as she always did now, close beside him—morsels of cheese and bread as he ate. After a bit Molly sighed, clapped her hands together once, and came to her feet.
“Let’s be about it,” she said. “We peering at thi
s vile do-dhuine, ’tis like playing in filth, or playing in fire, easy to be smirched or burnt, and the sooner we’re at it the sooner we’re done.”
Jack scooped the terrier up under one arm, opened the back door to the midsized wagon, and deposited her within. She was a well-behaved little dog: when the door shut on her she gave a little whine of protest, but then she could be heard settling with a thump against the door, and she was silent thereafter.
Once again the women placed the large black-iron basin in the shadow of the large wagon, on the far side from the fire. The moon lit everything with a deceptive light: things could be seen, but dimly, so one saw while yet struggling to see.
This time the preparations were far simpler, yet the mood was far more grim: Nemain filled the basin at the brook and returned in silence, while Molly went about assembling a few things—a stone, some wool thread, the little ivory box with Sir Tarquin’s button inside, and the like—that would be needed for the planned ceremony. She placed them on one side of the iron vessel. When they were ready, she turned to Hob.
“Hob, a chuisle, you are to stand near, and gaze into this water, and see what you may see, as Jack and Nemain and I will strain to see what we may. The more there are to see, the more that will be seen. But ’tis a dangerous, dangerous man we’re to spy upon: you must say naught”—here she took him by the shoulders, and rocked him back and forth a little for emphasis—“not a word, nor yet make any sound at all, no matter what meets your eye. ’Tis death to do so.”
He nodded, his eyes wide.
“Say you understand me,” she insisted.
“Death if I make a sound,” he said, very low.
“Death, and worse,” said Molly, and turned away.
She placed Jack to the north of the basin, and Hob to the south. She stood to the west, and Nemain stood to the east, and for a long time the women stood and said nothing, Molly with her eyes closed, Nemain watching Molly’s closed eyes.
The Wicked Page 13