“The masons,” said Hob, in so quiet a voice that one might mistake it for calm.
“Turn about, Hob, and lead on, quick but steady,” said Molly coolly. Once they had the wagons hauled around and facing back, they moved as quickly as prudence dictated, and as silently as thudding hoof and rumbling axle permitted.
It was as if the act of retracing their steps had released the snow. They had scarce gone ten of Hob’s paces back toward Dickon’s Ford, when movement at the boy’s right hand caught his eye: a snowflake, swooping in irregular arcs, slid down the air. A moment later another followed, then two together; then the air was sprinkled with flakes, dark against the sky, white against the somber mass of trees. This continued for the space of twenty or thirty breaths, while Hob plodded as fast as he might back along the trail, encouraging Milo with clucks and little tugs on the lead rope. The wagons rumbled up the forest road, over root and stone and hard-packed old snow increasingly covered with slick new snow. After a while they bartered silence for speed. Molly called encouragement to the little troupe, and Hob could hear Jack’s sharp whistle, as the dark man sought to spur the mare to greater effort.
Then a squalling wind filled the air with whirling whiteness, and vision was effectively foiled. Hob came to a stop, adjusted his hood, and began to walk again. He walked bent over a little, looking at the ground to his left. He had the lead rope in his right hand and his right arm straight out, so Milo would walk in the center of the track, but he walked on the left margin of the road, so that he could see the boundary between road and the brush-filled verge of the forest.
He trudged along for some little time like this, and then the wind dropped sharply and the snow all but ceased. There was a layer of new snow through which he tramped, but he could see about him once more. They were passing the ambush site again. The bodies now were covered with a light blanket of snow, and the trees about were dark with crows and the occasional raven, all of them fluffed into balls for warmth. They had taken refuge from the snow squall amid the tangle of branches, where at least some of the wind’s force was broken.
The bodies covered in white brought Hob back again to the memory of the courtyard at Osbert’s Inn and the two sisters’ bodies, side by side in their shrouds. Because the walking was difficult and uncomfortable and above all monotonous, he gradually sank again into a dull gray sorrow, in which the constant need for movement was not enough to distract him from his grief.
When the bandit slain had receded out of sight, but well before they had come to the ford again, Molly called out to the boy, breaking him free of his ceaseless gnawing at the past: her voice was welcome to him for that relief.
“Hob, cease a moment.”
She set the brake and dismounted the wagon. She gestured to the others. Jack and Nemain once more fastened their respective beasts to the wagons ahead and came up to the lead wagon. Hob came trailing back, the lead rope slack in his hand.
Molly slumped back against the wagon, leaning against the front wheel. There was a little splintery gouge in the wheel’s wood, right by her elbow, where, after the battle, Jack had dug out the first arrow of the ambush with the point of his knife. Molly looked around the little group. Hob thought she had never seemed so weary.
“A fear there is to me,” she said, beginning to lose her English as she thought hard in Irish, “that it’s being herded we are.” She made a visible effort to grip the foreign idiom once more. “I cannot tell at all. Those masons, surely they are all dead, if the inn is any guide to us; and they being dead, Lady Svajone with whom they traveled is dead, and her doctor is dead, and her esquires, and her grooms and drivers. This thing kills before us and behind us, and we not knowing what happens beyond the next bush. I have a sense of being toyed with.”
She straightened, and looked at Nemain. She spoke formally. “Nemain, are we being herded?”
Nemain considered, and then said slowly and carefully, “Nor can I tell, seanmháthair, but I can tell that there is some misdirection makes it difficult to know.”
Molly said, very low, “Yet the Crow-Mother led me in this direction, from the inn, and I asking Her the road to safety.”
“I was watching you the while, seanmháthair, and your face, and by the look of your eyes I did not think it was of safety you spoke. It was revenge entirely that I saw there.”
Molly thought for a moment. “You have the right of it. There was a hunger for safety in my thoughts; but in my mouth, in my mouth, there was a bitter thirst for revenge. I know not which it is that Crow Babd has sent us.” She looked away into the west, where a pearl-bright gleam in the roof of cloud showed where the sun had begun to sink toward the tree line, making for Ireland and making for its nest beyond Ireland, down in the Western Ocean. “It is a bitter, bitter thirst, and not my first taste either,” she said, so low that Hob could barely make out her words.
After a moment she brushed her hands together in a dusting-off motion, and said, “Enough. We cannot return to the inn. We can take the eastern path and see what comes of it. Herded or not, it is back toward the ford we must go in any case. Away on.”
As he took his place at Milo’s head, Hob wondered why Molly and her granddaughter had been so careful to deliberate in English, rather than in their native speech. They had done it also outside the walls of Osbert’s Inn, when Molly asked the younger woman whether to go forward or to return. It was as though Molly and Nemain felt that he and Jack ought to be included, perhaps because the course of the future now ran so quickly into shadow and uncertainty. He felt proud for a minute or two, but then, as he turned it this way and that in his mind, pride fell off and apprehension rose to take its place.
THE RESPITE FROM THE SNOW did not last, as all had known it would not. Snowfall began again gently, and again progressed to thick veils of white that fell straight down like river water falling over a cliff; then the wind awoke once more, and the snow came at them, stinging their cheeks, clustering on their eyelashes. With equal suddenness the wind changed, veering across their path, and eyes could again open wider than slits.
The snow’s accumulation was startling in its rapidity. Hob was now trudging through ankle-deep snow and it was increasing with every twenty steps he took. Walking grew difficult, and driving the animals as well. Even Milo began to labor and snort, and the wheels of the wagon sometimes slid rather than rolled.
The wind was piling the snow into drifts when Molly called another halt, had the wagons all roped together, and sent Hob up to take her place while she took the lead rope herself. She tightened her cloak a bit and hoisted her skirt somewhat, tucking it into her belt. She had Hob reach back through the hatch and hand her down a staff. Then she set off once more. Now Hob in the first and Nemain in the second wagon had little to do but be ready with the brakes; Jack was needed back by the mare, who became difficult when she was frightened, as she was now by the increasing storm, and he walked beside her with a rope run back to the brake lever.
They moved off again through the forest, and for a time made better progress, although Milo, obediently following Molly as she led the way into whistling white emptiness, looked around every few minutes to see that Hob was still there; then, reassured, the ox turned back to the path.
Hob was hunkered down in his sheepskin coat on the wagon seat. The reins were held loosely in his gloved hands, more as a precaution against the unexpected than as a guide to the ox; Hob’s foot was braced against the footboard near the brake, ready to stamp it shut. So they proceeded for a time, moving through a largely featureless world of tumbling snow and the barely glimpsed backdrop of the forest.
Hob became aware that Molly had stopped, and Milo as well. He kicked at the brake to prevent the wagon from running up into the ox’s rump. He shielded his eyes with a glove, peering forward past Milo’s blunted horns. Through the curtains of snow, blowing now nearly sideways, Hob glimpsed a group of riders, sitting motionless, blocking the trail.
There seemed to be perhaps a score of horses, altho
ugh many behind the front ranks seemed riderless. Four riders in front ranged across the nearly obscured path. He could not make out the faces of the riders, muffled as they were in cloak and cowl against the weather, but the ominous stillness with which they sat exuded menace.
Suddenly the rider on Hob’s right charged off the trail at an angle, the horse floundering through the drifts, in a headlong flight toward a nearby broad-trunked oak. They skidded to a halt just before a disastrous collision, the flung snow from the braking hooves leaping ahead in a little wave.
The mysterious rider sawed at the reins, hauling the horse’s head around and kneeing it back toward the trail. From deep within the shadows of the cowl came a familiar voice: “Jesus wither you like that fucking fig tree in Bethany, you whore, you traitress! You near killed us both, you smoking pile of goat dung, she-devil, she-fiend!”
“Roger!” shouted Hob.
The unmoving rider in the center now lifted a hand, shaded his eyes from the whipping snow. “Who’s that, then?” he called.
“Ranulf, sir, it’s Mistress Molly’s folk! It’s Hob!”
Ranulf spurred up close to Molly; he touched his forehead.
“God and His saints protect you, Mistress,” said Ranulf, almost shouting to make himself heard above the gale.
Molly had not met Ranulf at the monastery, but she had listened to Hob’s account, and had considered the soldiers’ invitation before deciding otherwise. Now the world had changed around her, and any haven was welcome; she greeted the man-at-arms cordially.
“And you, sergeant,” she said in a voice that by some means carried bell-clear above the wind. “Well met at this stormy crossroads.”
When he heard this last Hob looked about in some surprise. At first there was nothing to see but the shifting veils of snow, behind which he could dimly perceive the black walls of the woods, the white folds and hollows of the ground beneath its steadily increasing blanket. Then he became aware of three irregular patches near the road, somewhat darker than the surrounding land. From the central patch protruded the charred end of a log: this was their campsite when first they crossed the Dawlish. At this spot crossed the southern road they had just returned on, the eastern road to Blanchefontaine Castle, and the short western spur that ended at Dickon’s Ford. The Dawlish was very near, then—hidden from the eye by the blowing snow, hidden from the ear by the moaning wind.
There followed a period of some confusion, as the riders advanced and clustered about the lead wagon, the horses restless and frightened in the storm. The riderless horses now proved to be those mounts sold to the castle that Ranulf had awaited at the monastery.
Nemain and Jack Brown once more set brakes and trudged forward, to see what was toward. Nemain was hunched inside an enormous sheepskin cloak of her grandmother’s, the fleece inward, yet she shivered somewhat; Jack’s coat was crusted white across his broad shoulders, yet he seemed not to notice, and had only drawn up his hood as a concession to the weather.
“We make our way to Blanchefontaine, Sir Jehan’s hold. We passed by Osbert’s Inn at midday, and hope to come nigh the castle before dark, or mayhap soon after.”
“And what was it you saw at Osbert’s Inn, sergeant, and you passing by?”
“Slaughter, Mistress—we had hoped to stay a day there, but . . . I spoke with the reeve’s man there, and he said you had left that morning, and he commended you to me. Come you with us to the castle, Mistress. This storm will only wax the stronger. You will be well received, and you are not safe out here: if the cold does not kill you, this terrible creature will.”
“Indeed I had some such thought myself, the southern way being blocked, and the animals tired and hungry, and we looking to take refuge somewhere.”
After some consultation about the order of march, Molly sent Hob back to help Nemain with the little wagon, while she mounted to the lead wagon’s seat. Ranulf assigned one of his horsemen—Goscelin or Joscelin, Hob was never sure of the man’s name—to ride beside Mavourneen, with a line to her bridle, as an aid to the two young ones in controlling the donkey, whose sweet temperament was somewhat offset by the fear and disorientation that the weather engendered.
Ranulf and the body of his men went forward, that the trampling of so many hooves might ease the passage of the wagons. Roger and another man rode immediately in front of Molly’s wagon, each with two unsaddled horses trailing behind, lead ropes tied to the soldiers’ saddles, and Olivier was off to the side.
Olivier slowed his horse till he fetched up level with Molly’s seat on the big wagon. He rode alongside for a bit, a rangy, strongly made man. His rough tenor came clear through the moaning of the wind. He spoke loudly enough for Roger riding in front, and even Hob in the wagon behind, to hear.
“Mistress, I’ll wager Roger would trade you his mare for that sweet little donkey.”
Roger did not turn his head. His voice drifted back to them.
“Shut up, Olivier,” he said.
RANULF WAS CLEARLY a leader of some experience. He set a pace that was brisk but not sufficient to stretch out the column, and every so often would walk his horse to the side and let the column proceed past him, counting his men and his horses: he wanted no one wandering off into the snowstorm. When Jack came past with the last wagon, Ranulf would turn his horse’s head and nudge it into a trot up the line to resume his place at the head of his troop.
But after a while the brisk pace slowed to a plod, and then became a gritted-teeth struggle against the weight of the cold, the snow, the increasingly obscure path through the forest. Twice Ranulf halted the column to send out scouts to either side. He had them secure long lines to their saddles, the other ends held by their comrades, as they walked their mounts at right angles to the path to find landmarks that could not be seen through the whipping veils of white; after a bit they would come back and confirm the party’s position, having ridden up close to this rock or that broken tree that normally could be spotted from the trail.
A dimming of the light behind the ceiling of cloud had signaled the close of day when the riders ahead of the wagons slowed and began to bunch up, and finally halted altogether. Molly set the brake and went forward through the snow to see what was amiss. When Nemain, leaning sideways to peer ahead, saw her grandmother dismount, she did so as well. Hob, cramped and uncomfortable on the chilly wagon seat, climbed down and followed her, thinking to bring some blood and hence warmth to his legs.
The two made their way up the column, past Roger and the riders ahead—Nemain had to skip aside as one of the riderless horses, restless, danced about on the trail, pulling at its lead—till they came to where Molly stood with Ranulf and a couple of his men, dismounted. They were staring down at a body at the side of the road. The experienced warhorses stood quietly, but some of the riderless horses, not yet trained, had backed to the ends of their lead ropes, nostrils flared at the scent of blood.
The corpse, plainly visible, lay on a patch of ground bare of snow, sheltered as it was under the thick lower branches of a mountain pine. It was a man in ragged green hose, grimy-handed, with a golden beard and a gash that ripped him from crutch to ribs. Parts of him, too big to be the work of birds, had been eaten. Hob gaped at him. Gold-Beard.
Behind the pine was a tiny clear space before the next rank of trees began, and there were snow-covered mounds there; beside one was a small dead animal of some sort. Hob squinted at it. It was a brown leather shoe, and part of an ankle clad in brown hose, that protruded from the snowdrift. Gold-Beard was not the only bandit to have been caught here by the nameless terror.
Molly stood from her examination. She turned in a circle, looking into the white whirl of the storm that was uncommunicative as the grave.
“Does it range these forests everywhere, and it scouring the woodland for meat the while?”
“The castle is not far, Mistress. Let us get behind its walls,” said Ranulf. Then he turned to his men. “Mount!”
The column re-formed as Molly and the t
wo young folk tramped back to the wagons.
BUT, AS THOUGH TO MOCK Ranulf’s eagerness for refuge, the storm redoubled in intensity. Drifts lay across the trail, ice spicules stung the face, and the wind through the harp of the trees rose from moans and wails to a shrieking roar.
The light began to fail, and Ranulf had tallow-coated torches of pinewood broken out from one of the packhorses. He ducked inside Molly’s big wagon and plied flint and steel. After some difficulty, a torch was ignited and he came out and lit the others from it. The resin and tallow warred with the snow and it was uncertain whether they would stay lit. Some went out; others held a spitting, wavering flame.
Halts to send scouts to the side, secured by lines, became more frequent. Finally they stopped. Ranulf could no longer tell where they were, save that the castle must be very near. Snow began to accumulate on the roofs and the left side of the wagons, on the horses’ rumps and the riders’ shoulders. Heads were bowed and hoods held close to foil the worst of the biting winds. Ranulf sent a man back to Goscelin where he rode at Mavourneen’s head; after a moment’s consultation, Goscelin undid leather lashings and handed over a curving shape swathed in goatskin: a hunting horn. The first rider took it and rode back up the line.
A moment later they heard the braying call of the horn from the head of the column. Nemain, on the seat at Hob’s right, cocked her head to hear a reply. The horn wound again. She pulled her hood back; beneath her hood she wore a coif, a helmet-close cap of linen that covered her ears. She undid the laces under her chin and pulled up the flaps over her ears, the better to hear. She leaned across Hob, bracing an elbow on his thigh, and gazed into the darkening forest.
Suddenly the wind fell off sharply; the warm salt scent of her body rose to Hob from beneath the sheepskin cloak. She leaned, listening for an answer from the night. The ruddy fluttering light from Goscelin’s torch played over her as she cocked her head to hear, and Hob found himself marveling, despite the aching cold tormenting him, at the translucent perfection of her ear, red-tipped in the frosty air, set close to the skull and delicately back-slanted—he wondered dreamily how he had never noticed this before. To Hob they two seemed sheltered in a circle of wavering red-gold torchlight, and the whole world left outside in the darkness, and before him flitted a brief, incoherent memory of last summer: warm sunlight filtering through the treetops, green leaves, green eyes.
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