The Sterkarm Handshake

by Susan Price

  “You got no candle?” one of the men said. “Here, have one of our candles.” They were studying her closely, but with kindness.

  “Give her lantern,” said the other and, coming forward, took the lantern down from the hook.

  Andrea thanked him and started down the ladder with the lantern in one hand. Watching her go, the man who had unhooked the lantern said, “You get your head down in dark and quiet, my love—you’ll soon feel better.”

  “Thanks shall you have,” Andrea said. She stood at the bottom of the ladder long enough to see that they were following her down, and then called, “Good night,” and went off with her lantern into the dark alleys.

  She turned a corner and waited there, hiding the lantern light and peering back the way she’d come. She glimpsed the dark, moving shapes of the men coming down the ladder before she ducked back out of sight. To her disappointment, they lifted the ladder down and set it along the side of the building. She heard them talking as they moved away. One said to the other, “Poor lass, Elf though she be. May’ll lead her a hound’s life.”

  Andrea winced, but it was probably that pity that had saved her from closer questioning.

  When the men were out of hearing, she went back to the lockup as quickly as she could without making too much noise in the mud. Setting the lantern down, she lifted the ladder, relieved to find that it wasn’t as difficult to manage as she had feared, being neither very long nor very heavy. But as she put it in place, she was keenly aware of danger. “Yes, the guards had believed her—probably because they were bored and cold and wanted to—but what if, when they reached the hall, they were asked why they’d left their post?

  She hurried to climb the ladder, the lantern in her hand. A gang of Sterkarms, angry and vengeful, could arrive at any moment, gathering around the foot of the ladder, shaking it, yelling … She put her finger into the hole in the door and lifted the iron latch. The door swung inward and let her into the storeroom.

  She set the lantern down on the chest, beside the snuffed candles, and didn’t bother about being quiet. The bolt on the trapdoor was a little stiff, but she wrenched it back, skinning one finger, and heaved up the trapdoor. From below came a scuffling sound of movement, and then stillness and silence.

  She took the lantern from the chest and held it over the darkness of the trap. A little of its light filtered down, showing her nothing much but rafters. “Mr. Windsor?”

  The men in the stone room below started to their feet, their hearts beating faster. The light above them was the first they’d seen for hours. But a woman’s voice asking for Windsor was not what they’d been either hoping for or fearing.

  “Andrea?” Bryce said.

  The woman’s voice said, in English, “Hang on, I’ll get the other ladder.” From above came the sound of footsteps and something being banged and dragged on the wooden floor. The light went on shining at the edge of the trap, so she must have set the lantern down there. The end of the ladder appeared in the light, and slid down, racketing on the trap’s edge.

  Bryce caught the ladder by one of its rungs and took its weight, helping to lower it down. But even when it rested on the earth floor, they hesitated. Bryce called, “Are you alone?”

  “Oh, hurry up!” Andrea’s face appeared above them, framed in the trap. “I sent the guards away, but I don’t know how long we’ve got.”

  “Well done, girl!” Windsor called. “I didn’t think you had it in you!”

  Bryce swarmed up the ladder. At its foot the men crowded to follow. Windsor pushed in among them, and succeeded in being the third to climb.

  “We heard gunfire,” Bryce said. They had a few seconds while the rest of the men climbed the ladder. “We thought the men with the Land Rovers—”

  “They were all killed,” Andrea said, as more and more of the men clambered out of the trapdoor. “They”—she tried to keep her voice steady—“hacked them to pieces. It was the Sterkarms letting off guns, but they’re all locked up now, the guns I mean. And the Land Rovers. They rolled them down the hill. One exploded. The other’s upside down and wrecked.”

  All the men had climbed out of the room below and were standing around her. They were struck into stillness and silence by her news.

  “No Land Rovers?” Bryce said. “Do you know where the guns are?”

  She shook her head. “We’ve got to hurry up—I don’t know where the guns are!” she added, as she saw him about to repeat his question. “There are dozens of storerooms—I don’t know which one they were put in.”

  Bryce was thinking: Was it worth trying to escape across this country, barefoot, in the dark? How long did they have before the Sterkarms, coming to feed them, discovered they’d gone and came after them? When the Sterkarms came after them, armed and on horseback, they would catch them barefoot, unarmed, exhausted and half frozen. Better to take their chances of ransom here.

  “They’re going to hang you,” Andrea said.

  “Hang us!”

  “The men by the Land Rovers killed one of them—”

  “One?”

  “So they want to hang you—there’s no time for this—”

  “We need boots,” Bryce said.

  “We haven’t time!” Andrea said. “I don’t know where to look for boots—there are too many storerooms, and they might be coming after us now! Come on!”

  Bryce nodded, and then kicked the ladder down into the storeroom below. Crouching, he closed and bolted the trap. No one, to Andrea’s relief, argued anymore, or asked questions, not even Windsor. She caught up the lantern and went, as fast as she could, down the ladder to the alley. There was no sight of the Sterkarms. Even the sound of them was distant, muffled by the tower’s stone walls.

  “Bring the ladder with us,” Bryce said, when they were all standing in the alley’s mud, and a couple of the men picked it up.

  “Why?” Windsor asked. “It’ll only slow us down.”

  Bryce drew a breath. “To make it harder for them to check out the lockup. Move!”

  The men carrying the ladder bumped its end into a wall. Andrea spun round. “Ssh! Quiet!” She pointed upward. “There’s a man on the watchtower.” They were probably hidden from his view in the dark, narrow alleys, overhung with thatch, but strange sounds might alert him.

  “Put the ladder over there,” Bryce said. They’d turned a corner from the lockup, and the ladder, laid along another wall, wouldn’t be found immediately.

  “This way!” The tower’s narrow streets wound in and out of the crowded outbuildings. Andrea led them toward the gate, not by the most direct way, but by the way that offered the most shadows and shelter. She wished that she could feel certain she was doing the right thing.

  Coming up close behind her, Bryce whispered, “Will the gate be open?”

  Windsor’s voice chimed in from her other side. “It’ll be locked and guarded. How are we going to get past?”

  Andrea was shaking her head. The tower wasn’t a castle under military discipline. “The gate’ll probably be barred. I don’t know about guards. With the feast, there probably won’t be any.”

  “If there are,” Bryce said, “we can deal with ’em.”

  That made Andrea feel twice as miserable. More than enough people had been hurt and killed—and what if the Sterkarms caught up with them just as they “dealt with” the guards? Why, she wondered, did I ever take this job?

  Huddled at the end of a lane, they looked across a small open space, where stones had been trod into the mud to make a kind of paving. On its other side was the gate. A lantern hanging above it showed them that there were no guards. It also showed them the heavy bar set in place.

  The guards Andrea had dismissed, entering the hall, found everyone gathered around the family table, some standing on benches to see over the heads of others. Several people were shouting above the babble of talk. The guar
ds filled cups from jugs of ale left on abandoned tables, and joined the edges of the crowd. No one took any notice of them, or asked them why they were there.

  Joe wasn’t making much sense of it all. He could tell that Gobby was pretty much embattled, with even his sons seeming angry with him, but everyone was speaking too fast and shouting too much for him to be able to understand anything being said. He’d almost stopped worrying about it when Per jumped up from his father’s chair, shoving Cuddy aside, and started shouting too. Joe’s anxiety increased. He felt that the row must be escalating to some higher level, especially as Per was ranging himself alongside his uncle and shouting at his father. Both Gobby and Toorkild looked astounded.

  Per had been roused by Sim’s announcement that Per’s wounding had been all Gobby’s fault in the first place. This was an unexpected doubling back to an earlier squabble, and an accusation so shocking that it produced a few eye’s blinks of silence, even from Isobel.

  Sim, finding everyone staring at him, hurried to explain how Gobby had taken the leadership of the tower’s men from Per and had then taunted and snubbed the lad until he’d been driven to do something reckless. All Gobby’s fault.

  A second silence fell. Sweet Milk, hearing his private opinion so aired, had turned his back on them all. Toorkild had glowered at Gobby, who looked stunned. Sim regretted having spoken.

  Per, jumping up, shouted at Sim, “Thine empty head rattles like a pebble in a pot!” His uncle was a brave and a good man, and to hear him accused of such disloyalty was more than Per could stand.

  Besides, his actions were his own, and not attributable to Gobby’s taunts. “It was Gobby got me home!”

  Sweet Milk, who flattered himself that he had got Per home, turned around again.

  Gobby, deserted by his own sons, and with tears in his eyes, put his arm around Per’s shoulders. “Toorkild! Isobel, we’ve often not been best of friends—but tha can no believe I’d wish any harm to my brother’s-son! I love him like one of my own. I was never so glad as to see him come back to us whole and well.”

  Isobel looked as if she would have liked to deny it but hadn’t the nerve. She turned away.

  Toorkild looked confused and tired. He had no idea how things had come to his brother being accused of harming his son. He could think of nothing to say, and shook his head. Moving to his chair, he sat heavily and waved his hand in dismissal. “Into hell with lot of you!”

  The quarrel had worn itself out, leaving behind a listlessness. People went back to the benches and poured ale.

  Gobby still had one arm draped across Per’s shoulders. “Father’s-brother, may I ask a favor?”

  Gobby sighed. “What?”

  “Daddy’s-brother, be so kind, do no kill Elven.”

  Gobby dimly remembered that, what seemed days ago, at the beginning of this exhausting row, a similar favor had been asked. His eye glinted; he was about to refuse.

  “If you kill them, my Elf-May’ll be angry with me.”

  Gobby relaxed and grinned. “Be that it? That be whole of it?” His arm pulled Per closer. “I’m to rile my folk, and let a man’s death gan by, just so thee—”

  “Daddy’s-brother, be so kind. We can ransom them, and thou canst have it all, to make up for thy man.”

  Gobby laughed, hugged Per and thumped him on the back. “I can see thy daddy agreeing to that!”

  Per went over to his father, pulling Gobby with him by the hand. “Daddy, Gobby can have all of ransom, can he no?”

  Toorkild, who had been leaning his head in his hand, started up. “What?”

  Per knelt beside his chair, leaning on its arm, and explained it to him. “Our prisoners,” Toorkild said, “held in our lockup, at our cost, and I’m to ransom ’em and give all to Gobby?” He cuffed Per’s head. “I’ll send thee to deal for me at market.”

  “But Daddy—”

  “It be to please Elf-May,” Gobby said.

  “Be that it?” Toorkild and Gobby both laughed, and Per’s face reddened. He thumped his head against his father’s shoulder. “Daddy!”

  “My folk’ll no settle for ransom anyway,” Gobby said. “They want Elven’s lives for their friend’s life. If I took ransom, they’d still give me trouble.”

  Toorkild was hankering after little white pills. “What if we hang half Elven and ransom others?”

  Gobby nodded slowly. “Aye. And we divide ransom? Aye. I could make my folk happy with that.”

  Toorkild turned to Per, kneeling at his side, and pulled at a tuft of his hair. “Will that do for thee, tup?”

  Per nodded, smiling. He thought it an excellent deal, the best that could be made, and Andrea would have to be pleased. “Aye! A thousand—ten thousand thanks, Daddy!” He kissed his father’s cheek, got to his feet and kissed his uncle before going down the hall toward the stairs. Halfway there, he turned and came back, to bend over his father’s chair. “Daddy, hast thou any wee white pills left?”

  His father pressed a thick, hot hand over his brow. “Art sick?”

  “Nay! It be for Entraya—she has head pain.”

  Toorkild heaved at his belt, groping for the pouch he wore under his robe. “And tha wants to cure her head pain, aye.”

  Gobby laughed again. Toorkild found, in his pouch, a strip of white paper with aspirins sealed into it. Carefully he tore off two and gave them to Per. He gripped Per’s wrist as he started away, holding him. “If she uses only one, bring me other back.” Per kissed him again and ran across the hall to the stairs. He didn’t bother to take a candle or lantern. Cuddy, under the table, roused with a yap, got up, shook herself and ran after him.

  She overtook him on the steps and reached the basement before him, making the horses shift and stamp. Together they crossed the yard toward the bower where Andrea slept. It was dark, but Per knew his way.

  Cuddy growled faintly. Looking at her, Per saw her ears cocked and a faint glimmer of teeth as her lip lifted. “What dost hear?” He stopped and listened but couldn’t hear anything but the murmur of talk and laughter from the hall above. The quiet and darkness, even the chill, of the yard seemed to increase. If an armed force were approaching the tower, the dogs who guarded the cattle would holler from the valley. Maybe Cuddy growled at the ghosts of the dead Elven. Did Elven have ghosts? Better to get close to a living Elf than stand in the dark wondering about that. Per ran on into the alleys, and Cuddy hurried after him.

  The ladder was in place at Andrea’s bower, left for him to climb. He did so, and knocked at the door. Cuddy reared up, her forepaws resting on the same rung as his feet. “Entraya?” No answer. No light shone through the latch hole: She had blown out her candle and gone to bed. Maybe she really had a head pain. He knocked again and called her name. No answer.

  He put his finger through the latch hole and lifted the latch, half expecting the door to be bolted, but the door swung inward. His heart began to beat faster as he stepped inside.

  Oh pleasant thoughts come to my mind,

  As I turn back smooth sheets so fine,

  And her two white breasts are standing so,

  Like sweet pink roses that bloom in snow.

  The room was in deep darkness, but smelled of wood and straw, and of Andrea—there was an Elvish perfume that clung to her things. He stumbled against the bed and felt over it with his hands, raising a thicker scent of hay from the mattress, mixed with a stronger whiff of Andrea. The bed was empty.

  He straightened. “Entraya?” But the room was empty. The way his voice sounded told him so.

  Where was she? Crouching, he felt under the bed and touched the cold earthenware of a chamber pot. So she had no need to go to the privy. Still crouching, he leaned his chin in his hand and said to Cuddy, “Where be Entraya? Entraya!”

  In the dim light from the open door he could see Cuddy sitting on her haunches. When he spoke, she cocked her ea
rs and her eyes brightened. Stretching out her neck, she gave his face a couple of gentle licks.

  Andrea could only have gone to another bower. At the thought, he seemed to breathe in anger—but she wouldn’t, not Andrea. The Elves! She’d gone to see if the guards would let her talk to the Elves, to let them know they might not be hanged. That was like her. She was kind.

  He could go to meet her, and give her the pills, offer to see her safely back to her bower …

  “Entraya! Find Entraya!” Cuddy bounded to the door, and he rose and followed her. Cuddy was a gaze-hound, hunting by sight rather than scent, but like all hounds, she had keen senses of smell and hearing. She would hear a footstep or a whisper when a man wouldn’t. Per had taught her to know Andrea by name, and she knew her step and her voice as well as her smell. Leaping to the ground, Cuddy raced away into the darkness.

  Per slid down the ladder and whistled for her, and she came cantering back from the dark and jumped at him, knocking him back against the wall, her paws heavy on his shoulders. “Entraya!” he said, and she bounded away again. He ran after her, his boots sticking in mud, trying to keep her dark, moving shape in sight.

  Andrea went forward alone, out of the alleyway, across the little open space in front of the gatehouse, into the lantern’s light. There’d been some whispered argument about whether this area would be visible to the watchman at the top of the tower. One opinion was that of course it would, another was that the buildings between the tower and the gate would block the view.

  “We have to assume it is visible,” Bryce said. Assuming that, the only one among them with a chance of crossing it without arousing suspicion was Andrea. If she could take down the lantern, so the space was unlit, the rest of them might be able to unbar the gate.