by Falcons Fire
“Thank you, Albin,” said Thorne.
The squire replied with a resigned “Sir” and remounted his packhorse. Thorne gave the garment a few good shakes, then brought his steed close to Martine’s. Ignoring her outstretched hand, he draped the mantle carefully over her head and shoulders, smoothing down and adjusting the cloth as he did so. His movements were economical, his touch firm but gentle. Martine, nonplussed, looked down at her hands on the reins. She rarely blushed, but this Saxon had made her blush twice in one day!
Men rarely touched her. The code of chivalry frowned upon physical contact with a lady. Although Sir Thorne disregarded the code, he did so without apparent disrespect to her. It surprised her that he would want to make this thoughtful gesture after their testy exchange in Weald Forest. He had a bit of trouble securing the mantle with the brooch, his long fingers fumbling a bit as he patiently worked the pin through the black wool. His hand as it brushed her throat was warm, his scent earthy but clean, like the forest after a rainfall.
When he had finished, she knew she should thank him, but feared that her voice would catch in her throat. At any rate, he didn’t seem to expect it of her. He merely nudged his horse and continued ahead of her down the road.
Not long afterward, as the sky deepened from peach to violet, she spotted Harford Castle in the distance, crowning the top of the only hill for miles around. Its size impressed her, dwarfing the humble structures on its south side. She could make out about a dozen cottages and the steeple of a church, which Thorne identified as the barony chapel.
As they neared it, however, she felt a pang of disappointment at the simplicity of its construction. Even in silhouette against the evening sky, she could see that the keep was but an enormous stone box with a rectangular turret at each corner, surrounded by massive curtain walls. There were no fancy towers, no ornamentation, no interesting bits of architectural detail at all.
The road led them past the cottages and church, curving west around the hill on which the castle stood, a river curving to the east. The party followed Thorne along a side path up the hill, past a palisade of sharpened poles, and over the drawbridge leading to the gateway. A small door in one of the metal-faced oaken gates, just big enough for one person on horseback, stood open, and they rode through it into the outer bailey.
It was too dark now to make out more than an expanse of flat lawn and the shadows of structures built up against the insides of the curtain walls, some of which were dimly lit from within. People milled about; she could hear their voices and sense their watchful eyes. The air smelled of cooking, but also of the farmyard; animals, manure, and hay.
Martine regretted not being able to see everything right away. She had an enormous curiosity about castles, having read about them in books and heard about them in the tales of jongleurs. If she were to tell Sir Thorne that she had never set foot in one before, he would find it hard to believe. He must assume that she had been brought up amid such luxury. Well, she would have almost two months within it, for she and Rainulf were to remain at Harford Castle as guests until the wedding on the first of October.
They crossed a second drawbridge to the inner bailey. Aside from the keep, the only building Martine could see appeared to be a thatched stone shed set against the south wall, from which she heard strangled screams.
“What on earth?”
The knight named Peter said, “Surely you know the scream of a falcon, my lady.” Peter had a Nordic look to him, even more so than Rainulf. He was clean-shaven, and his eyebrows and eyelashes were the same pale color as his long, kinky hair—the longest hair she had ever seen on a man, falling halfway to his waist.
Falcons. “Oh, of course.”
“‘Tis Sir Thorne’s hawk house.”
Thorne corrected him. “Lord Godfrey’s hawk house.”
“Aye,” Peter conceded. “and Sir Thorne’s birds—that is, my lord’s birds—have missed their master, and sense his return.”
The group dismounted on the flagstone court in front of the keep, handing their reins to the waiting stable hands. A young red-haired man emerged from the hawk house and ran to Thorne.
“Sir! Azura’s broken a tail feather, the new merlin is sneezing, and Madness won’t eat!”
Thorne said, “These problems can wait until morning, Kipp. There’s a young gyrfalcon in that basket over there. Take her into the hawk house and see that she’s made comfortable. She needs complete darkness. Light no candles or lanterns and speak gently to her. Wrap the perch with linen.”
“Shall I fit her with jesses and bells?”
“Nay. Handle her as little as possible. I’ll be waking her tonight, and I’ll take care of that myself.”
“Yes, sir.”
Thorne turned to his squire. “Albin, go up and tell Lord Godfrey and Edmond that our guests are here.”
“Yes, sir!” Albin ran up the front steps of the keep, disappearing in the dark, looming stone box.
Martine’s stomach felt tight, her mouth dry. What would Edmond be like? Was he anything like Sir Thorne? Where was Loki? Loki would be afraid in this new place. Loki would need her.
A hand closed over her shoulder. When she turned around, Rainulf gently placed the cat in her arms. “I thought he looked a bit nervous,” he said, and smiled.
“He is,” Martine agreed. “A bit.”
A wavering light appeared in the entrance to the keep. Albin stood there, holding a torch in one hand while his other arm supported a heavy, unsteady old man carrying a tankard. Martine heard Thorne hiss some angry English words under his breath. Albin caught his eye and shrugged helplessly.
The man looked old, indeed, at least sixty. Martine knew immediately from the fur trim on his green overtunic that he must be a man of noble blood, obviously Lord Godfrey. He was a large man, thickly built, but with a belly that swelled beneath his tunic out of proportion to the rest of his frame. His chin-length hair and forked beard shone like polished silver in the light of Albin’s torch, and a network of broken veins reddened his nose and cheeks. He clutched at Albin and howled with glee when he saw Rainulf.
“My little friend is a priest!” he bellowed as he lumbered down the stairs, assisted by Albin. His voice was slurred from drink. “When I saw you in Paris, you were but... twenty?”
“Seventeen, my lord,” Rainulf corrected.
“Well, you looked older. Acted older. Come here!” Rainulf and Godfrey embraced, exchanging kisses on both cheeks.
Rainulf led the older man to Martine and made introductions. The baron swayed slightly despite Rainulf’s and Albin’s efforts to hold him upright, and his eyes seemed to have trouble focusing. He squinted at Loki, bringing his face precariously close to the tense animal in order to get a better look.
“A cat? Is it yours?” he asked Martine.
“Aye, my lord.”
“Hunh. Well... perhaps it’ll provide some sport for the dogs.” Now he peered as closely at Martine as he had at Loki. He had a stale, beery smell, as if he had been sweating some dank brew for years. “So this is the Lady Martine. You look just like the Mother of God herself.”
Sir Thorne met Martine’s eyes briefly. She sensed rueful amusement, and something else, harder to define. To the baron he said, “Where is Edmond this evening, sire?”
“Hunting with Bernard and his men.” Martine knew that Bernard was Edmond’s older brother.
“Still?”
Godfrey shrugged. “They often go for a week at a time. You know them.”
“The betrothal will be formalized the day after tomorrow,” Thorne said.
“I’m sure they’ll be back by then. In the meantime, I’m still master of Harford, and I know how to treat my guests. You must be hungry.”
With some help from Albin and Rainulf, he turned and led his guests and knights into the keep and up the circular stairs within a corner turret. The stairwell was a narrow, winding passage of carefully worked masonry, lit by torches that filled the spiraling passage with their resinous
fumes. Godfrey exited on the second level, and Martine and the rest followed.
She heard it even before she stepped out of the stairwell: low, menacing growls that caused Loki to hiss and unsheathe his claws. Martine tightened her grip on the cat and backed up, taking in the great hall and its inhabitants, human and canine.
It was a cavernous room, larger even than Rainulf’s lecture hall at the university, but with less majesty, an enormous stone box, tall and long and wide. The few windows were small, barrel-vaulted openings in walls as thick as the height of three men, and the only furniture consisted of rows of long tables littered with the remains of a just-eaten supper, which a crew of servants busily cleared away.
At the opposite end of the room a low fire crackled in a pit against the wall. There was a hood over the pit, but most of the smoke escaped it, rising to linger below the soot-blackened ceiling as an acrid cloud of haze. On the wall over the fire pit hung an enormous battle-ax flanked by boar tusks, and at intervals along the walls were torches and the stuffed heads of stags with racks as big as trees.
A gallery—the castle’s third level—ran all around the room about halfway between ceiling and floor. In one of its arched openings stood a woman looking down at Martine as if she were examining a small and peculiar animal. She looked quite peculiar herself, Martine thought, a spectacular little bird of bright plumage trapped in a henhouse.
She appeared about thirty, very thin and quite pretty, but in a strained way. Her skin seemed too pale, her coloring a bit too vivid, probably from face paint. She was heavily bejeweled and wore a tunic of purple silk, very snug through the bodice and hips. Martine knew that it must be laced tightly up the back in the new style just catching on in Paris. She was probably married, since her hair was covered. In apparent imitation of Eleanor of Aquitaine, she wore with her fillet and veil one of those chin straps that they called a barbette. A plain-faced young woman stood behind her, similarly attired, but in pink, and without the veil.
The growling came from near the fire pit. A thin, balding priest stood at one of the tables cutting fist-sized chunks off a half-eaten haunch of venison and tossing them to a pack of dogs at his heels. They were hunting dogs—wolfhounds, spaniels, and a mastiff—and although the mastiff still greedily snapped meat out of the air, the dogs had obviously caught Loki’s scent. They stood staring at the cat with hackles raised, quivering.
Lord Godfrey grinned and said, “Here it comes.” As if at his command, all the dogs, the mastiff included, came bounding with fierce howls across the enormous room, leaping benches and tables. They knocked one tabletop clean off its trestle, dumping a tureen of soup into the rushes covering the floor. The servants tackled three or four before they had gone very far, but one—a huge wolfhound—eluded capture and raced toward Martine fangs bared.
Thorne immediately grabbed Martine and shoved her back against the wall, shielding her with his body. The wolfhound leaped onto him, but he sent it flying with a well-placed kick. He looked back over his shoulder as the rest of dogs were subdued, but didn’t back away from Martine or loosen his iron grip on her arms.
Being as tall as most men, Martine didn’t often feel physically dominated by one, but Sir Thorne’s sheer size overwhelmed her. He was long of limb and powerfully built, his shoulders massive, his chest hard as rock beneath his tunics. As he pressed her to the wall, she could feel the solid muscles of his thighs flex against hers, causing a peculiar, shivery warmth to course through her. She had the most disconcerting instinct to put her arms around him, and she knew with appalling certainty that were she not holding Loki against her chest, she might have done just that.
She squirmed, trying to make space between them. He looked down at her for a moment, and then smiled slightly and slowly eased himself away, his big hands sliding down her arms before he released her. She quickly stepped away from him. The dogs, she saw, had all been rounded up. Lord Godfrey lay sprawled in the rushes, laughing uproariously at the spectacle.
The woman in purple had descended to the main floor of the hall and now strolled toward Martine, an odd silver-handled wooden stick swinging from her wrist by a leather loop. She was short, Martine now saw, and indeed skinny, but had about her the presence of a larger person.
Most of the dogs congregated near the fire pit, where they sat watching Martine and Loki with frustrated intensity. One of the wolfhounds stood just several yards away, however, right in this woman’s path. She regarded him with a wary revulsion, carrying the stick in a threatening posture as she passed. He responded with a snarl that made her jump and shake the stick menacingly over her head. He calmly turned and trotted away.
“Lady Martine,” Thorne said, “may I present Lady Estrude of Flanders, soon to be your sister by marriage. She’s the wife of Bernard, the brother of your betrothed.”
“My lady,” Martine said, as Estrude inspected her with unconcealed amusement.
Finally Estrude turned and announced to the assembled company, “She can’t very well be Edmond’s bride. From all appearances, she’s already the bride of Christ!” Lord Godfrey, the priest, and the young woman in pink all got a good chuckle from this, but Sir Thorne looked grim.
Estrude pouted. “What a sour face, Sir Thorne! Don’t worry. Didn’t I promise I’d be nice to her? I’ll treat her just like a real sister.” She extended her spindly arms, smiled with her too-pink mouth, and said, “Welcome to Harford Castle, Sister Martine!”
* * *
“Let their limbs be stretched till they pop from their sockets!” Godfrey bellowed down the length of the dinner table, his voice thick with drink. Thorne wondered how he could still be conscious. “Let their eyes be gouged from their heads!”
Shortly before their arrival at the castle, a messenger had stopped by with important news: The three bandits who had murdered Anseau and Aiglentine had been caught that morning, sleeping in an abandoned mill. They were now being held in a cell at the castle of Olivier, Godfrey’s earl and overlord. They would hang, of course, but not before preparatory torture to extract confessions and uncover accomplices.
“Let them be dunked in boiling water! Let their flesh be torn with red-hot pincers! Let their feet be soaked in salt water and goats lick them down to the bone!” Thorne had never heard that last one before. From the puzzled look Rainulf exchanged with him, neither had he.
Thorne watched Martine, who was directly across the table, staring at the slabs of meat on her trencher—untouched except for the bits she had sliced off for her cat. The animal that had spawned so much mayhem just a short time ago now lay curled contentedly on his mistress’s lap, licking his paws and wiping his greasy face with them. The dogs sat gathered around Martine’s bench, watching this feline ritual with rapt fascination.
The spilled food and drink had been quickly cleared away. All but one trestle table, perpendicular to the rest and located next to the fire pit, had been disassembled and removed, and a second supper laid for the latecomers. Godfrey, Estrude, and the baron’s parish chaplain, Father Simon, had already eaten, but remained to keep their guests and knights company at table. The other members of the household were either hunting with Bernard or had retired early.
“Let hot pitch be—”
“Sire,” Thorne interrupted, nodding toward Martine. “Perhaps the lady would prefer a different subject of—”
“The Franks have the most ingenious methods,” said Godfrey. “Father Simon here traveled throughout France till just two years ago. He was describing some of the damnedest things in fascinating detail last night. Simon, tell them what you saw them do in Autun, with the leather boots and the molten lead.”
The priest pressed his thin lips together. “Sire, surely what I saw in Toulouse was more interesting.”
Godfrey frowned.
“Those two heretics who were tied to stakes and burned alive?” said Father Simon. “And then there was Arnold of Brescia four years ago. I saw him burned.”
“Alive?” Estrude exclaimed.
Father Simon shrugged. “They were guilty of heresy. The flames of the pyre were naught to what they’ll feel for eternity.”
The baron waved his tankard, spilling ale into the rushes. “Aye, but the stake is a form of execution, not torture.”
“That’s arguable,” Rainulf mumbled.
“Rainulf!” Godfrey exclaimed. “You’ve just come from Paris. Have you come across any new methods of... coaxing confessions?”
Rainulf took a slow sip of wine. “My lord, I’m afraid I’ve little interest in such things, except inasmuch as they may be eliminated.” Ignoring Simon’s smirk, he continued directing his comments toward the baron. “I agree with the first Pope Nicholas that a confession must be voluntary and not forced.”
“Father Rainulf is a very learned man,” Simon said, “renowned in Paris, Tours, and Laon for the breadth of his knowledge of logic and theology. ‘Tis an honor to sit at the same table as he.” The priest half bowed toward Rainulf. “But is it not true that in the three hundred years since Pope Nicholas wrote those words, the Church herself has come to accept and encourage such righteous torture in her own ecclesiastical courts?”
“The Church’s ways aren’t always what God would wish,” Rainulf said, reaching for his goblet.
Father Simon pounced eagerly. “It would seem a university education is all it takes to make one privy to the wishes of God.”
“Nay, but it does make one less susceptible to the baser wishes of man, such as the wish to inflict pain.”
Lacking a retort, Simon faked a yawn, and Thorne noticed Martine smile as she stroked her cat. Hers wasn’t such an awkward face after all, he decided. The features he had at first thought out of balance did, upon reflection, have a certain undeniable charm, a charm all the more compelling when she smiled. It seemed to give her pleasure to listen to her brother engage in this supper-table debate. She must have heard many such exchanges during the year she spent with him in Paris.