‘The king heard what happened, even though Sir Henry tried to keep it secret,’ Van explained. ‘He started making fun of Sir Henry. That’s what they like doing. There’s something between the king and Henry, they keep trying to score points off each other.’
‘Does the king need Sir Henry?’ I said. ‘Like what’s his name told us.’
‘Henry has an army somewhere in France, or that’s what I heard between the crazy laughing and before they threw me back in here. His army is helping the king.’
‘So what are they doing with Kan? Tell us.’ Jack sounded too impatient to wait.
‘The king said a lad like Kan could out-hunt Sir Henry,’ Van started. ‘That got to him. I knew there’d be real trouble. But Henry pulled out a bag of gold or something and threw it down on the floor and shouted: “That says he can’t”. Then they drank some more and the king shouted: “Tomorrow we’ll find out”, and they all started shouting and cheering again.’
Van walked over to the cauldron and took several drinks of water. We waited. I could see he had something else to say, and felt reluctant to say it.
But I couldn’t wait. ‘Then what?’
‘The man who came in here. He’s called John something, didn’t catch all of it.’
‘Must be Sir John,’ Jack interrupted. ‘All the important ones are Sir-something.’
‘Could be,’ Van went on. ‘Anyway John whatever and his guard of men led us away. ‘He asked … Kan … if he could ride.’ Van did laugh again. ‘We’ve done a bit of scrambling and for one weird moment we thought John was talking about motorbikes.’
‘He wasn’t?’ Sometimes Jack, for a bright guy, could really miss the point, or maybe waiting to be burnt to death had slowed his brain.
‘No. I chipped in and said Kan had never actually been near a horse,’ Van said. ‘So John decided he’d better teach him. I asked him about the bet that Sir Henry had made and I could see that he was worried. Probably thought Kan could win.’
Van took another drink.
‘Er …Van,’ said Jenna.
‘Er …Yes,’ Van replied.
‘Which one are you? I don’t believe you’re Van at all.’
The Peta brother smiled. ‘You won’t tell Posy?’
Jenna and I both laughed. I guess Jenna had known for some time. Kan’s chopped accent was the only way to tell them apart. They had started to change around for a joke. Sometimes Kan had the accent, sometimes Van. It had confused most of us, probably never confused Jenna. I think it was their way of dealing with our awful situation. We had Kan, not his brother.
‘Why did he do it?’ asked Mary after we’d had the explanation.
‘He didn’t want me to have had all the fun,’ answered the real Kan.
I didn’t believe him. The two of them watched out for each other – sharing out the dangers. It did make me wonder if Posy had any idea about this. ‘Did you ever …’
That got me a hard poke from Jenna who obviously thought it was none of my business. Kan looked as though he found it hard to keep a straight face.
We heard noises out on the field. Going to the window I could see that the soldiers had taken some of the wood and were making a separate pile. I wanted to hear if Kan had more to say, but before I left the window four men struggled over to the fire with a cow or something on a long pole.
‘Ox roast,’ Kan said. ‘They’re having roast ox tomorrow night after the hunt. I heard them say it takes two days to cook.’
‘If Van goes off on this hunt, perhaps he can escape?’ I turned away from the scene outside. ‘What about us?’
‘I don’t know. John’s different from all the others. He’s some sort of fixer for the king.’
That was more like the Petas’ sort of world. They understood fixers; perhaps that was at least one good sign.
‘But John would only help us if he got something out of it.’ Kan looked at me as though he knew I’d understand.
‘We haven’t anything, have we?’ I turned to Mary who shook her head and showed me the charm bracelet with its one remaining charm. Some sort of cat.
‘We have to see if they bring Van back here or keep him riding all night,’ Kan stopped, and sniffed. ‘The smell of that thing is going to drive me wild.’
Kan was right. We might have all gone off our food, sick with worry about dying, but the smell of the cooking ox was irresistible.
Until Mary said, ‘We’ll smell like that.’
Early the next night we heard soldiers marching towards the barn. Silence except for the beat of their feet on the ground, growing louder as they neared the door. We moved closer together, this wasn’t good. I felt Jenna’s hand in mine, squeezing tightly.
The door banged open. Four soldiers with raised swords stood in front of us.
‘Back,’ ordered one of them, jabbing his sword towards us.
We shuffled deeper into the shadows. The soldiers separated, three more stepped forward, carrying something, somebody. They dropped Van onto the ground, stepped back and the door slammed shut.
We rushed to him. Stood over him. He didn’t move and even in that dim light his pale face told the terrible truth.
Kan knelt beside him, shaking him, calling his name – again and again. He screamed at Mary to do something. Suddenly Kan pulled away. His hands were red with blood. We saw the sword wound in his brother’s chest. His cold lifeless brother’s chest.
They’d found a way to kill him. It didn’t matter about the rules. Sir Henry had taken his revenge. They didn’t know they had killed the wrong brother. Did they care?
‘Nooooo.’ Kan jumped up and hammered at the door.
Nothing happened. Kan went berserk, running backwards and forwards, smashing the walls with his fists. Looking for something or someone to hit. Screaming, shouting, wailing.
Then the door flung open. Kan charged at the soldiers. They were waiting for him. Swords ready to slice him into pieces, if he gave them a chance. I dived and grabbed his legs. He fell, still trying desperately to crawl away from me. I held on, he started kicking.
‘Let me go,’ he yelled and kicked again. ‘I’ll kill them.’
The soldiers jeered. Kan struggled even more. I couldn’t hold him much longer. Jenna jumped on him, Jack and Mary followed.
‘LET ME GO,’ Kan’s voice broke.
We dragged him into the barn, still fighting against us. The soldiers were still jeering as they shut the door.
‘Kan,’ Jenna tried. ‘They just want to kill you. Don’t let them.’
‘I want to die,’ Kan sobbed. ‘My brother, my brother.’ Kan reached out his arm towards Van’s body.
Kan finally gave up. We let him go and he moved to the wall, sitting with his head in his hands staring at his dead brother.
No one else came to the barn that night. When Mary tried to cover the body, Kan pushed her away and squatted down on the floor and held on to the lifeless form. His groans and howls kept on until deep into the night. We tried, but nothing we could do or say could make this better. He screamed if we went near to him.
As dawn broke Jenna tried again. ‘Kan.’ He didn’t reply, appearing too exhausted to shout anymore. Jenna reached out to him. He made a weak move to brush her away but Jenna didn’t let him go and Kan shook as she held him.
The door opened once more. Jack and I rushed to it, in case Kan tried to throw himself at the soldiers again, but Jenna held him.
Posy ran in. ‘I knew it wasn’t Kan,’ she sobbed as she took over from Jenna.
I wanted to ask more questions but Jenna stopped me and we moved away, leaving Kan and Posy holding each other. I had to wait until much later before we talked to them.
Posy knew a little more because all the villagers had gone out to watch the hunt.
&nb
sp; ‘I knew they changed,’ she said. ‘I knew when Van pretended to be you.’
Posy said there had been a lot of arguments at the start of the hunt. Sir Henry had become really angry. They’d charged off, half dragging Van on his horse.
‘That was the last I saw of him,’ said Posy, turning to Kan. ‘But …’ she stopped to make sure we were all listening. ‘He must have got hold of a sword or dagger because there were two dead soldiers brought back with him. Nobody will say what happened.’
‘Should have killed them all,’ Kan’s voice broke again. ‘All, killed them all.’ He tried to stand but his legs gave way and he collapsed on to the ground.
‘So they forgot about jousting rules?’ I knew we didn’t understand this.
‘Yes,’ said Posy. ‘Why did you ever think they would keep them?’
I didn’t understand. ‘Don’t the rules count for anything?’ I asked.
‘Yes, if you’re a knight or someone important,’ Posy replied. ‘Otherwise they don’t really count. Sir Henry wanted him dead.’
‘But he killed the wrong one,’ moaned Kan.
Posy said, ‘That’s not what I told John. I made sure he believed they’d killed the one I loved.’
I saw Kan’s face. He was in a mess, but he looked a bit scared by what she said as well. Posy leant into him and kissed him. Posy might be the only one to get him through this, but he was in very deep.
How could we ever believe that the king would intervene and save us? We didn’t count for anything. The king might be too sensitive to have us screaming in the flames while he was still here, but he didn’t care what happened to us. We were just property, like the villagers.
The king or Sir Henry could do what they liked with us. Sir Henry couldn’t be bothered to wait to see us all burn to death.
Jenna drew me to one side. ‘What are we going to do about Van’s body?’
We had finally covered him during the night. But we couldn’t leave him lying on the barn floor. The soldiers obviously didn’t care what we did.
I banged on the door. We didn’t want to let them know we still had a key. Eventually the door opened a fraction. I suppose they thought Kan might jump out. Posy had locked him in her arms, he didn’t move.
Jenna pushed past me. ‘We need to bury our dead. And you …’ She pointed at the lead soldier. ‘You need to make sure this happens.’
‘We were told to burn him,’ said the soldier nervously.
‘Bury.’ She leant forward and poked him.
The man startled and looked anxiously at Jenna’s finger. The door half closed again and I could hear them talking. Soon one of them stamped away up the mud track towards the bailiff’s house. The door was locked again.
We waited. Kan started to become restless and agitated. He left Posy and kept walking towards the body, stopping and walking back to where he had been sitting. Jenna tried to talk to him. I didn’t think he heard.
Then we heard voices and the door swung open again. John stood with a group of soldiers.
‘Bring him,’ ordered one of them.
I tried to pick up the body, but Kan pushed me aside and took over. He lifted his brother’s dead body and led us out. We all followed. One of the soldiers stayed in front, the rest were behind us with John. Did they really think we’d run off in the middle of burying Van?
John wanted us to dump the body somewhere in the field opposite our barn. Jenna turned and stopped. They all stopped.
‘Not this way,’ she shouted. ‘With the other graves. We saw the crosses up there.’ She turned and pointed.
John thought for a second and then nodded his head. We headed up the track. Eventually we came to the graveyard, beside another barn. The king’s priest had moved into it and it doubled as a church. The priest didn’t appear.
John sent one of the soldiers to get some tools. We were then left to dig the hard stony ground while the soldiers sat and jeered. We let Kan decide when the grave was deep enough. Then we lowered Van’s body into the earth and covered him with soil.
Kan stood with tears streaming down his face. This was my fault. They’d come to help me, now Van had died. Their family caused as much trouble as mine, but at least they had each other. I couldn’t see how Kan would ever recover from this, even if we did get home.
Jenna had seen a large lump of stone outside the graveyard; she wanted to use it as a marker. Jenna shouted at the soldiers. They didn’t move.
Wild muddy Jenna wasn’t going to accept that. She stood over them and pointed at the stone. And after a few more of her shouts they moved and we rolled the stone together.
Van scratched his brother’s name and we stood over the grave. It reminded me of the other graves we’d made since setting out on the moor. I thought about Mum. I didn’t have much time because the soldiers made us leave and we were soon back in the barn. Posy stayed with Kan as he slumped in a corner. I rather think he had wanted to be alone.
I wondered about Posy’s words. It only mattered if you were someone important. If the king did give us a royal pardon, he might forget that by the next day. Whatever ever happened we were never going to count enough for the king to save us. Nothing was going to stop us from dying in this village.
Black Marks
-15-
‘When’s this saint’s day?’ I asked Posy.
Posy had no idea about the saint or his day.
‘You in a hurry?’ Jenna shouted.
For the last few days the village had been a noisy day and night party zone. The roasting ox outside the barn was replaced by deer, sheep, and more deer as the days went on. They continued to take wood from the witch-burning pile. Wasn’t that good? Harder to burn us. Jenna said it would just take longer.
Drunken soldiers rampaged round the village at night and with the absence of husbands they took any of the women they fancied. The king had joined in.
Kan provided poor competition even for a drunken monarch. He almost never said anything, seeming to be in an endless deep dark mood. He and his brother had been through so much together. Kan was lost without Van.
But Posy didn’t join the other village women trying to get the king into their houses. She had moved in with us, having become very unpopular. After the death of Rosie and her daughter – and then Hazel a few days later – everyone believed we were to blame and Posy with us.
Then there was the problem with the tithe. The priest had started collecting it. He had moved into the barn with its small chapel at one end. It was the tithe barn and it was empty. With no priest in the village, no one had collected the tithe, the ten percent of everything harvested. This priest made sure he took all that was expected for the church, even if he wasn’t going to stay. And being the king’s priest he had the authority to make it happen.
The villagers blamed Posy for saying they needed a priest before they burnt us. So she moved into the barn, only slipping out to get food. Being unpopular in this village was dangerous and I wondered what had happened to Oakes. He’d agreed with Posy about the priest. Maybe Elsa had decided to swap him for one of the soldiers. Oakes hadn’t been seen on the hunt, nor in the fields – Sir Henry had sent his own men to clear the harvest and get the ground ready for planting.
I still wanted to know how long we had before the saint’s day. I asked Posy to try the priest when she went out to bargain for any food the village would give her.
‘Friday,’ she said when she returned.
Posy told us that the priest had a table of saints’ days, but he’d still been a bit vague.
‘What day is it today?’ I turned to Mary hoping she might be able to work it out. I could see her counting but she gave up.
‘But it must be Sunday tomorrow, I think,’ said Posy. ‘The priest is getting the church barn ready for a service.’
&nbs
p; ‘So it’s six days until ...’ Jenna stopped.
‘I’ll mark each day off on the wall,’ said Mary, almost cheerful at having something to do. Mary drew six strokes on the wall. That wasn’t cheerful – it felt very final.
The other news that Posy brought back was that the king had stopped doing his own rampaging round the streets at night. She sounded rather disappointed and Kan gave her a difficult look. There was talk of the king leaving rather sooner than expected. We might have less than six days. Would anyone even care about saints’ days if the king left?
‘The soldiers are saying there’s bad news from the war. They need the king to rejoin his army,’ said Posy. Then she stopped and whispered, ‘But I overheard Smith talking to the king’s man – John. There’s something else wrong. Something about marks, black marks.’
Jack and Mary exchanged a glance. I saw Mary check for something in her backpack.
Two more scratched-off days passed. Posy found it harder to get food for us. Mary’s bracelet and all the charms had gone. The villagers probably thought we were fat enough and didn’t need more food.
But even stuck in the barn we could tell there was a different mood in the village. No more drunken parties. I asked one of the soldiers, who came to stand near the window, what was happening. He didn’t answer but he looked scared and walked away.
Standing back from the window I heard Mary and Jen talking, whispering together. What was there to say? Talking about escape plans was useless. There were four more scratches to mark off on the wall. Four days left, was that even right?
The whispering stopped and Jenna came over to me. She had something to say. I nearly said, ‘Don’t bother,’ but she poked me, which meant I had to listen.
‘We need to get …’ she stopped as the barn door opened.
Tregarthur's Revenge: Book 2 (The Tregarthur's Series) Page 14