by Grace Ingram
The woman lagged, weighted down by her wet skirts, exhausted by abuse and fear and grief. Again and again he had to stop to let her rest, falling in the lee of some rock or thicket. She was sunk in apathy, silent as a foundered beast, and he soon gave up trying to comfort or reassure her in the face of her mistrust. Even when he lent her his strength over the roughest ground he could feel her flinch and stiffen, and his shame and remorse grew rather than diminished, like the aid she needed.
The eastern sky was greying as they came down the waste’s long slope to Thorgastone, and in the hamlet a cock crowed. Guy led the woman, stumbling with exhaustion, to the edge of the ploughland. Already lights were flickering in window-slits as the briskest villagers stirred from sleep.
‘You’ll find help there,’ he told the woman. He had not asked, and never learned her name. ‘God keep you and deliver you safely of a fair babe.’ He hesitated, and then tried for the last time to reach her understanding. ‘Believe me, it was mercy I gave Alfgar—’
She jerked free. ‘Mary Mother curse you into Hell, butcher!’ she choked, and blundered away down the track to the houses.
Guy watched her to the first door, the blacksmith’s, heard her knocking and saw her taken in. He sighed, and the Slut pressed against him. He smoothed her head. Dawn was grey over the waste behind him, over the dark ploughland, the huddled huts of the hamlet, the naked woods beyond, all drenched and desolate as he was. He should return to Warby; his head ached, his limbs were weighted with weariness, and his belly heaved queasily. Instead he plodded over the fields, using the baulks dividing the ploughed strips for paths, until he reached the woods and in their concealment worked back to the road.
He should go back to Warby; eat, rest, recover and prepare his escape, but he could not. The memory of that night’s horrors drove his failing feet further and further, he neither knew nor cared where. Over and over he beat at his wits for some way he could have prevented all that had resulted from a few hasty words. He had his knighthood, and wished with all his heart that he was back in Bristol working at Kenric’s forge in the security of lost innocence. He had done Alfgar the only service possible, but he felt that killing would haunt him for the rest of his days and nights.
Guy slouched slower and yet more slowly under the bare branches that spattered heavy drops as the wind stirred them. The mud and leaf-mould sucked at his soft ankle-boots that had never been intended for such use and were fast disintegrating. Once he surprised a fox stepping delicately along the track; it bounded away with a flick of white-tipped brush. The wet woods stretched before him black as his misery. He had no eyes for the first green cracks in hawthorn-buds, the black elder-shoots brightening to green, the first green spears thrusting to the light in sheltered places. He was tired to his bones, but he tramped on as though he could leave himself behind.
At last he came to a fallen tree sprawled by the way, and all at once knew how weary he was. He sat down to rest. The Slut laid her head on his knee, and he fondled her absently. He shrank from the thought of returning to Lord Reynald’s hold, eating his food, sleeping under his roof, accepting his gifts, when he loathed and feared the man who had begotten him, hated the blood that ran in his own veins. Return he must. He buried his face in the Slut’s ruff, his arms about her solid body, and she, sensing his distress, licked his face.
A throbbing faster than her heart-beats brought his head up. A horse was approaching at a run. He climbed to his feet slowly as an aged man rigid with rheumatism and looked back the way he had come, his hand automatically lifting to his dagger. The rider came into sight round the bend, and he recognized Helvie, the person he wished most and dreaded most to see.
‘Mistress Helvie—’
For a moment he thought that she would ride him down, but she hauled the mare back on her haunches so close that foam spattered his tunic.
‘You!’
He stared up at her face, her eyes that accused and condemned together, and chilled. His tongue would not frame words. ‘M-my lady—’
‘Out of the way, monster!’
He stood fast because he could not move. ‘Please hear me—’
‘What can you say? Oh God in Heaven, I thought you were an honest man—gentle and kind—shouldn’t I have known that devil could only get his own likeness? You’ve proved yourself his true son!’
‘You cannot blame me more than I blame myself.’
‘God’s mercy, wasn’t it filthy vengeance enough to drown your leman and her lover, but you had to destroy Summerford for helping them?’
‘I tried—I could not prevent—’
‘You were there! You shared—how could you? How could you? And after— after—to murder—’
‘Of that I’m not ashamed. It was the only—’
‘Will you say you were drunk, as if that were excuse for anything, even to cutting your mother’s throat?’
He put out his hand to her bridle as she gathered the reins. ‘Mistress Helvie, I beg—’
‘No!’
Her whip streaked fire from brow to chin, and he stood dumbly as she danced her mare sideways. ‘Mary Mother, how could you?’ she cried. ‘I liked you—God help me, I was beginning to love you!’
She was gone in a spatter of mud and a flurry of skirts, and Guy stood unmoving as long as he could hear her horse’s hooves. Then he sank back on the log again, his arms about the Slut for comfort and his desolation blacker than before. The weal on his cheek stung sharply, and he realized that tears were oozing from under his shut lids. He too, he acknowledged, had begun to love. He sat there until all feeling was numb, and he slid from the tree-trunk to huddle against the Slut’s warm body, sleep at last mastering him.
He roused when the bitch shifted under him, growling warning, and lifted his head from her coat. Normally he woke all of a piece, but this time his brain was sodden with sleep, and he blinked stupidly at a face he knew.
‘Botched it proper, haven’t you?’ Wulfric spat. ‘Not got the sense you was born wi’!’
Guy sat up slowly, his head spinning, and blinked again. ‘What?’ he mumbled.
‘There I was reckoning as you’d match fine wi’ Helvie, both o’ you bastards so’s you couldn’t neither o’ you cast it at t’other, and you one as’ll make his way once you’re quit o’ Warby.’
‘You’re mad,’ Guy muttered. ‘Her father’d never—’
‘You expect he’ll live forever? Who’s to care for her when he’s gone? Likeliest man me and Elswyth seen since she come man-high, and you throws your chance—what possessed you to ride wi’ them devils?’
‘I couldn’t—prevent it,’ Guy told him, propping his head on both hands. It felt fit to cleave apart. Wulfric’s voice sounded oddly, one moment booming in his ears, the next receding to a whisper.
‘Get you back to Warby. What are you loitering for? Helvie’s gone to rouse her father to help Summerford, and if they finds you here hanging’s the least they’ll do.’
Guy struggled to his feet, dizzy and stiff. He coughed, and a sharp pain stabbed through his chest and took his breath. The Slut whined. Hands gripped his arms, and his sight cleared to show Wulfric’s face suddenly alive with concern.
‘You’re sick! God in Heaven, didn’t I warn you never to bed down in a heap o’ wet leaves, you young fool? Come, move while you can and get to your bed.’
‘You’ll—help me?’
‘Didn’t you let me go when any other man would ha’ killed me?’ He drew Guy’s arm over his shoulder and steered him along the path. The Slut bared her teeth in a snarl and then, as her master accepted him, did likewise and trotted along at his other side, nuzzling the hand that no longer responded. Guy’s mind achieved a sluggish functioning.
‘You attacked—tried to kill—’
‘Reckon you’re to blame for that!’
‘I?’
‘What you said about burgess freedom stuck in my head, but beggary’s worse’n bearing the wolf’s head. So I puts it to Godwin and Burnt Siward as
one o’ them barrels o’ silver pennies’d set us all up for life, and they comes in wi’ me. Money and naught else, I tells ’em over and over; draw off the knights and at that cart for the silver. But as soon’s they seen the women they goes mad.’
‘So—you won nothing?’ Guy, steadied by the smaller man’s shoulder, concentrated his wandering wits to understand.
Wulfric spat. ‘Not a penny. Two o’ my fools got theirselves killed, and the rest blames me and goes off wi’ Burnt Siward. No sense. You tell anyone you knowed me?’
‘No.’ Another spasm of coughing shook him, and he realized in dull dismay that he was very sick.
‘Thanks for that. Steady, lad. Easy does it. You’re mortal bad—lung fever I reckons.’
Guy obeyed his guidance, plodding along the track with no will of his own. He was vaguely aware that they left the road for some dim trail that brought them round Thorgastone to the waste. The long climb took almost the last strength out of him. He was burning with heat, yet seized at shortening intervals by fits of shivering. His breathing rasped painfully in his chest, and he coughed more and more often. His head was inclined to drift from his shoulders, his limbs did not belong to his body. Half-way down the long slope beyond the Devil’s Ring an appalling rigor took him and he collapsed, shivering uncontrollably. When it was over Wulfric hauled him up, scarcely able to put one foot before the other. The outlaw exhorted, encouraged, cursed, at the end almost dragged him; without his aid he would have lain down to die. He supported Guy across the ford, that all but took him from his feet, and steered him to the castle path. Guy, roused by the shock of cold water, understood that he dared venture no further.
‘God aid you,’ Wulfric growled in valediction, and he mumbled some sort of thanks. The Slut tugged at his tunic, whining distress at his state, and he went like a sleep-walker through the village, where folk gaped and pointed but made no move to help or hinder, up the hill to the castle.
The gate-guard spoke to him, but he heard no word. Somehow his feet carried him up the steps to the keep door. There another rigor halted him, and he leaned against the wall inside, fighting to stay upright. His chest was locked in bands of hot iron that would not let him draw breath, and a fit of agonized coughing racked him. He wiped his hand across his mouth, and saw it streaked with rusty phlegm. The Slut whimpered. Someone grabbed his arms. Conan’s face filled his darkening vision. Then the world dissolved, and he pitched into a black void.
Chapter 14
The ceiling had receded. After rousing morning by morning to whitewashed barrel-vaulting close above his head, Guy stared bewildered at distant rafters. Neither was it morning; the light was that of full day. He tried to look about him, but was too feeble to turn his head, buttressed by the soft upswell of pillow on either side. It did not matter. He shut his eyes and slid back into sleep.
Full day was there when he woke again, but whether the same or another he could not tell. The rafters were still dark overhead, a dusty spiderweb linking one to the wall. Below it a hanging covered the whitewashed plaster, linen embroidered with stiff little figures riding stiff little horses after improbably antlered deer. It was vaguely familiar. He wondered where he was and how he came here, and why he was so weak that he could scarcely move his hand. He tried to shift his head. His beard clung and rasped on the linen. At his other side there was a stir, a soft thump, an eager whine; a broad grey head, prick-eared and open-mouthed, grinned at him as the Slut stood reared with her forepaws on the bedcover. A warm tongue wiped his cheek.
‘Oh lass—good lass —’
His voice was a faint croak; he tried and failed to bring up a hand to caress her. Behind her a white kerchief moved, and he blinked up at Lady Mabel’s face and tried to move his head away from the Slut’s enthusiastic tongue.
‘All’s well, lad.’
‘Down, lass—enough—down!’ he gasped, and she subsided. His stepmother laughed and pushed past the bitch, and the Slut, whining joyfully, made way for her. ‘My lady—’
‘Gently, Guy. You’ve been very sick, but now you’ll mend.’ She touched his cheek with the back of her hand, smiled and announced, ‘The fever’s gone.’ She turned away, and he managed to move his head enough to watch her. A brazier glowed by a window, and on it sat a pot reeking herbal steam. She filled a wooden cup and advanced to put a horn spoon to his lips. The draught was bitter as wormwood, but the viler the potion the more efficacious its action, and Guy meekly swallowed all. Even so slight an effort exhausted him, so he shut his eyes and drowsed again.
Guy dozed and woke through the rest of the day and the night. Every time he opened his eyes Lady Mabel and the Slut were there, sharing vigil. She saw to his needs, dosed him with her herbal brew or with mulled wine to renew his strength, and discouraged any attempt to talk. Too weak to worry about past or future, he was content to lie in comfort, warm and quiet, and surrender control to his stepmother. He realized that he lay, astonishingly, in the great bed in the bower that was normally shared by Lord Reynald and his lady, and supposed hazily that he had been laid there for peace and privacy.
In the first dawn, sated with sleep, Guy woke and watched the grey light strengthen in the slit of sky he could see through the window, on the plaster, and at last reach the rafters. It drowned the flickering candle-flame, and the figures in the hanging that had jumped and galloped through the night moved no more except as the draught stirred them. Memory returned to torment him, as it had done in fevered dreams he vaguely recalled, along with a nightmare of choking in a darker flood than the river that had borne away Agnes and Oswin.
He stirred, and at the movement the Slut’s head appeared. Behind her came Lady Mabel, as trim as though she had just come from her tirewoman’s hands instead of having watched all night in her clothes. She administered more of the bitter potion, smiling at his grimace, and considered him.
‘Yes, you’re mending.’
‘How long—?’
‘This is the ninth day.’
Startled, he gaped at her. ‘You had the lung-fever.’
Few enough recovered from that. ‘Then—I came near—’
‘For a week we thought you would die.’
He looked quickly at the Slut. ‘My bitch—she’ll be starving—’
She smiled. ‘Because she will take food from no other? Don’t fret yourself; the children cheated her. They put food in your hand and gave it to her so.’
‘The children—’
‘You presented them to her as friends, and she accepts them.’
‘Down, good lass. She gave—no trouble?’
‘She accepted me, and Conan. He carried you up. I meant to have another bed set up, but she wouldn’t let my lord through the door, so we laid you here and he sleeps in your place.’
‘God’s Grace!’ said Guy devoutly.
‘Oh, after his first fury he was willing enough. You—we all feared you would die. But you’re young and hardy.’
‘And well-tended,’ he supplemented. Daylight showed her face strained and weary, blue-shadowed about her eyes, and he knew whose devotion had cheated the grave. But others, more innocent, had died. Misery engulfed him. ‘Was it worth—so much trouble—to keep breath in my carcase?’
‘Yes,’ she answered firmly, smiling at him. ‘Now you are feeling sorry for yourself.’
He opened his mouth to expostulate, and then recognized how much more reason for self-pity Lord Reynald’s wife must have, but he had never known her indulge it. He slackened against his pillow, and shut his eyes. ‘I did—so very ill,’ he muttered.
‘So you said, when you rambled in the fever. But the blame was not yours. What more could you have done?’
‘For Agnes and Oswin, very little,’ he admitted. Weakness was overwhelming him, every word a separate effort, yet he could not rest until he had told her. ‘But I should have ridden—to Summerford—by the shortest way—if I had not been drunk—and afraid for myself.’
‘That’s your share of blame, then.’
>
‘They died—because I was a coward. And the consequences—could hardly have been worse.’
‘You’re alive.’
‘But—’
‘Don’t wish otherwise. You have the chance to amend matters.’
‘Helvie—Helvie hates and despises me.’
‘If she did not hate you now she would not be worth loving.’
He gasped, and then nodded. ‘She is—worth loving.’
‘And since she was angry enough to strike you, she had thought well of you.’
‘Then you think—I may hope—’
‘Don’t despair. Though I see no future for this love, your father and hers being at feud.’ She sighed. ‘Yet, even though it be fruitless, I believe love is never wasted. The Lord God knows there’s little enough in this world.’ She blew up the coals in the brazier and set a pan to heat. ‘I’ve wearied you, but it needed saying.’
‘You’ve—heartened me,’ he murmured, watching her stir the pan.
‘Sickness makes men humble,’ she mocked gently, and came to his side with bowl and spoon. It was milk gruel, sweetened with honey; infants’ food, but he was dependent as an infant. Then Lady Mabel left him for a time, and he listened to the castle rousing for the day’s work and thought how wise her advice had been. Remorse was one matter, despair another, and a sin.
The curtain-rings rattled softly, and the Slut roused up and thumped her tail. Two pairs of owl-eyes peered at Guy, and then the children came in, Matilda carrying a bowl of water that had slopped its contents liberally down her skirt, and Roger bearing a beef blade-bone with a fair amount of flesh and gristle on it.
‘Wuff!’ said the Slut in pleased anticipation as they set down these offerings, and looked up at her master with pricked ears and jaws a-grin. He smiled and bade her fall to. Matilda climbed on to the high bed with a scramble and a heave, sprawled upon him and gave him a juicy kiss and a throttling embrace.