Sir Balthasar stood a moment contemplating the Fox. Its half-open eyes held a sheen from reflected torchlight; fangs still gleamed from under the partially retracted lips. But the limbs held stiffly out to the side, the utter immobility, spoke only of death. After a moment the knight turned away, motioned his remaining soldiers back.
Sir Balthasar returned along the corridor to where the litter was almost ready. Molly stood up from her ministrations. The grim knight stood looking down at her a moment, then sank to one knee, took her right hand, and kissed it gravely. He stood up and stepped back, and at once Roger came forward and did the same, and then all the men present, one by one. Molly accepted all this calmly.
Behind her the four bearers had finished their improvised field litter. A man-at-arms reached to take Jack’s arm, to move him onto the curtain preparatory to lifting, but Jack tensed and turned swiftly toward the man. Jack’s face was turned away from Hob but something in it made the soldier shrink back. Nemain put a soothing hand to the side of Jack’s neck, and he subsided; Molly came up and coaxed the dark man to slide onto the litter himself.
Just as the four bearers were about to stoop and lift Jack, a settling or exhalation from the far end of the corridor brought everyone whipping around, palms slapping against hilts. “God’s wounds!” said Sir Balthasar.
The Fox was no longer there: in its place was a short and slender young woman, naked and broken-bodied. Nemain stayed with Jack, but Molly and Hob and the men of the castle went up to the corpse and gathered in a silent ring, looking down. Despite the splintered bone protruding here and there, the terrible gashes that Jack the Beast had inflicted, Hob recognized the strong nose, the tilted gray eyes, of Lady Svajone. But this was a woman of perhaps twenty, with long fine white-butter–blond hair and the suave skin of youth, and even now possessed of an eerie beauty.
“She was young for a time each night, or each night that she killed,” said Molly. “It is a way they have, and they live long, long. Herself wandering the land over with these three men as her husbands, and this body one more strand of her mastery over them. That itself is another form of sorcery, and not the youngest in the world.”
Hob tried to speak, but at first could accomplish only a croak. He swallowed and tried again. “Will she stay this way now, Mistress?”
Molly made a dusting-off gesture with her hands. “When the sun rises, she’ll be an old woman again, and a dead old woman at that, and soon thereafter ’twill be the usual road of the flesh.”
“We will burn them all before that, and throw their ashes into the river,” said the mareschal savagely.
IN SHORT ORDER they had conveyed Jack back down to Molly’s quarters and settled him in the great bed in the inner chamber, Molly and Nemain bustling to and fro. Jack was already half-asleep; he lay very still on his back.
Hob looked down at him: despite his burly limbs, Jack seemed somehow frail, for the first time since Hob had known him. His skin held an underlying pallor that Hob had not seen before. He lay on a pillow with a pattern of chevrons, but there was a linen head sheet, a white cloth draped over the pillow, and he was almost as pale as the linen.
Sir Balthasar and his four litter-bearers stood about awkwardly, filling the room, looking at Jack. One of the men-at-arms, after a private assessment of Jack’s chances, asked, “Shall I run now for the priest, my lord?”
“No priest!” said Molly sharply.
The soldier looked dubiously at Jack. “But, my la—”
At that Sir Balthasar turned and fixed his basilisk glare on the wretched man. The castellan spoke in a quiet poisonous tone. “No summoning of priests, and no carrying of tales.” He swept his glance around the four men-at-arms, and they nodded almost as one.
“There will be guards and runners outside your door, madam,” he said to Molly. “Summon me if you need aught, be it day or night.” He bowed, and left with his retinue, and Molly was not troubled by priests thereafter.
THERE FOLLOWED A PERIOD of administering various potions to the barely conscious Jack, Molly feeding him with a spoon. She bound up those wounds that the Fox had inflicted and rubbed embrocation into Jack’s powerful limbs, while Nemain wiped his brow with a wet cloth redolent of the uisce beatha. After a while she sent Nemain to sit with Hob while she continued to work on her lover.
At last Molly turned from Jack’s bedside. She stretched, her hands to her lower back. She rubbed her eyes, looked around wearily. Hob and Nemain were sitting side by side on a bench, exhausted, slumped back against the wall. She considered the two young ones briefly.
“One more thing,” she said to them. “You must take Sir Jehan a draft I shall give you; it’s in pain that he’ll wake tonight, and this will provide some succor.”
She went into the other room and busied herself at the chest. Presently she returned with a small earthenware crock, with a little stopper wrapped in thin leather to tighten the seal. She handed it to Nemain.
“Go down to the hall by the stairwell just down this corridor,” she said, “cross the hall, and ask for directions. Sir Jehan’s solar is the other side of the hall and up, but I know no more than that. Ask of those you meet in the hall where to find Sir Jehan. Leave it for him; say he is to take a mouthful when the pain becomes too dire. Hob, go with her. I would take it myself, but I may not leave Jack’s side tonight, and I fear to trust it to these pages.”
Nemain stood and took her cloak from its peg, threw it about her thin shoulders, and concealed the pot in some pocket within the cloak. Hob opened the door and they ventured into the corridor. Three guards and two lean youths Hob took to be runners straightened as they came out and greeted the two youngsters with respect that contained no trace of mockery: the whole castle had heard by now of their deliverance at the hands of Molly’s little clan.
The castle was filled with a diffuse low hum: there was a great deal to do to set right the chaos the Fox had wrought, and everyone was too frightened to sleep, and everyone wanted to speak of what had transpired there, and how they had felt. There was a good deal of praying, and some cursing. Hob and Nemain could hear snatches down the corridor and drifting up the stairwell from the hall.
They descended the turret stairwell and emerged beneath the musicians’ gallery. Immediately before them a dozen or so bodies hung lifeless, swinging gently. Hob and Nemain gingerly made their way around the dangling feet and into the hall. Ranulf and a couple of squads of men-at-arms stood looking grimly up at their handiwork.
Castle servants were already changing the blood-drenched rushes, sweeping them into piles. Boys were strewing new rushes as each section of flooring was exposed. Against the north wall bodies lay under cloths.
Hob turned and looked up at the line of Lietuvan grooms, swinging from stout ropes that were fastened to the gallery above. A little bit away from their feet a table lay on its side where it had been kicked from under the condemned men’s feet. The grooms’ faces were horrible: swollen, purplish-brown, with protruding tongues. Hob could recognize Azuolas among them only because of his clothing and his golden mane.
As he watched, Ranulf gave orders. The table on which the grooms had stood was righted and moved under the swaying bodies. One of the men-at-arms ran up the turret stair, reappeared behind the musicians’ screen. He reached an arm out through the carving and cut the ropes one by one, and the bodies crashed down onto the table. They were seized by arm and leg, carried to an open window, heaved out into the snow of the bailey for later disposal.
“Hob,” said Nemain, tugging at his arm. He turned and they went out and, after asking here and there, were directed to a stairwell that led up to Sir Jehan’s solar. Hob thought that they would have some difficulty with the three soldiers lounging outside Sir Jehan’s door, but the hard-handed scarred men greeted them with something between affection and respect, with a tinge of fear. One went in and returned directly with Lady Isabeau herself. She took Molly’s potion from Nemain with a hand that trembled slightly, but her face was as impas
sive as ever. She kissed Nemain and thanked her, and the two young people set off back to Molly’s solar.
It was at this point that they took the wrong stairwell; they descended one long flight of sharply winding stairs, and found themselves not in the passage between the kitchen and the great hall, but rather a dim back hallway. On the outer wall were shuttered openings into a hen coop: the two could hear the rustling and clucking within, and there was a basket filled with straw and a few eggs set at the base of the wall.
Nemain indicated the floor, which was of fitted stone flags. “We’re after coming all the way to the bottom,” she said, showing off a bit for Hob, she with her greater experience of castles. “Up there, except inside the walls, they’re using plank-and-beam entirely.”
“But how do we return?” Hob asked.
They looked this way and that. Down the hall was another turret stair. After a moment, they decided that this was the base of their original stairwell, and began to climb. A few steps up from the hen-coop hallway, a tapestry closed off the stairway, so placed to ward off drafts from one level to another. Hob held this aside and Nemain led the way up.
But the stairwell did not have an opening onto the floor at the level of the great hall. They wound up and up, each with a hand against the chill curving stone wall for balance. Here and there a stone set in the wall had a part that projected outward in a rectangular block; in this block a cup-shaped hollow had been carved. The hollow was filled with oil in which was set a wick; this provided a dim flickering light. The low wedge-shaped treads required concentration to avoid a misstep.
Hob became aware that he had been hearing something other than the general background noise of a still-awake castle. Something more urgent: a scuffling, thuds, muted cursing. The strange echoes in the twisting space made it difficult to tell if the sounds came from above or below them.
Here was another tapestry at a landing. Nemain hesitated suddenly, but Hob stepped past her, swept the cloth aside, and strode through. They were in a passage within the outer wall of the keep; the floor was of dressed stone. The passage was lit by torches in iron brackets, and here, by torchlight, was the last battle of this long night being fought in front of them.
Gintaras and one of the castle’s men-at-arms circled one another like fighting dogs, broadswords in hand. The soldier’s white-on-murrey livery showed two or three slashes; he was bleeding lightly. Gintaras was unscathed.
Past them Hob could see another man-at-arms, sitting in a dark and widening pool, with his back propped against the corridor wall, his staring eyes as blind as the lead-ball orbs in the dagger, Gintaras’s bird-head dagger, that sprouted from his middle: merry Olivier, come at last to silence.
Gintaras and the castle guard stamped and shuffled, advanced and retreated, their blades flickering between them as they sought an opening. Their shadows shivered on the far wall in the wavering torchlight; their breath came in harsh gasps. As they watched, the soldier hacked at Gintaras’s neck. Gintaras’s blade clashed against his opponent’s, slid with a screech along the metal, and by some trick Gintaras had the man-at-arm’s sword trapped in the angle between the Lietuvan’s quillon and his blade.
In the next moment the esquire had whipped his blade back and stabbed forward again, shoving his point in at the crease between belly and leg, a hand’s breadth from the guard’s groin.
The man gave a soft grunt and stumbled back, blood pulsing from the wound, coursing eagerly down his leg. At once Gintaras stepped back. The Lietuvan fended off a cut aimed at his side, but did not attack. He waited quietly, watching, maintaining a loose defensive stance. After two short passes at Gintaras, easily parried, the soldier began to stagger. The leg of his hose was soaked and he left ruddy footprints as he moved. His sword arm drooped; Gintaras moved in on him but he collapsed, dying, before the Lietuvan could strike again.
All this had taken perhaps thirty heartbeats, while Hob and Nemain stood transfixed. Suddenly Hob awoke to their danger.
He snatched at where his belt knife should have been. An empty scabbard. A glancing vision came to him, the knife embedded in the floorboard, quivering. He spun about and pushed Nemain back, urging her toward the turret stairs: perhaps the Lietuvan had not seen them.
“He comes,” said Nemain in a low voice, looking past him. Hob turned. Gintaras was walking toward them, stiff-legged, head lowered, eyes fixed on their faces.
Hob glanced frantically from side to side of the corridor: no door, no escape, no weapon. His mind, jumping about, came up with only a yearning memory of Jack, the old Jack, and his crow-beaked war hammer, a waste of time and no help at all and Gintaras a pace nearer.
Hob reached blindly behind him till he felt Nemain’s cloak. Without taking his eyes from the Lietuvan, he turned his head a bit and hissed over his shoulder: “Run!” He gave Nemain a little shove backward toward the stair.
Hob trotted two steps to the side, crouched, and sprang up the flank of the wall. He caught hold of a sconce and, hanging by one hand, wrested the torch from its bracket. He dropped lightly to the floor and ran with the courage of his despair toward the esquire, swinging the blazing torch high and down again like a comet toward that blond head. Gintaras, his face set in a mask of rage and grief, contemptuously flicked his sword up and out in a circular darting motion, and the torch sped down the corridor, showering sparks on the stone.
Hob slid to a stop and staggered back from the blade’s menace. Off-balance and breathless, he watched with sick dismay as Gintaras advanced, swinging up his sword again. Time slowed. The blade halted like one of the hawks high in the air by Monastery Mount, folding its wings to fall on a field mouse; Gintaras’s weight began to come onto his leading foot; Hob’s bane began its downward plunge.
It was at that moment when he realized that he was doomed, that as Molly would say his bread was baked, it was at that moment that there was a scuttling at his back, a frenzied clutching at his arm, and here with her narrow face white as a cleaned skull, her flying hair red as spilled blood, her glittering eyes green and cold as an old serpent’s, came Nemain with a small antler-hilted dagger in her bony hand, leaning sideways to stab around Hob with reptile speed, her long slim pallid forearm ruling a straight line to Gintaras’s heart.
The handsome esquire stopped as though he had run into the castle wall; the sword flew from his grasp, to skid along the floor with a ringing clatter. Nemain ripped the dagger out, and Gintaras dropped to his knees before Hob as though to say the Angelus, and then, after a little pause, went over backward in an ungainly sprawl of limbs. He gave a deep, liquid, rasping sigh, and then he moved no more.
Hob stood rooted, his breathing fast and heavy, as his life once more unrolled before him, a road that again led into the distant haze of the future. Nemain straightened, releasing his arm, and stepped daintily past Hob to the recumbent corpse. She bent swiftly and, seizing a hank of the long blond mane, calmly wiped her dagger-blade on it once, twice; the steel, scarce as long as Hob’s young hand, left red streaks on the gold. Then she stood up and with a flirt of reflected light the dagger was concealed again beneath her cloak. “Away on,” she said to him, for all the world like Molly, and paced away down the corridor.
Hob gave one glance at the wreck of Lady Svajone’s faithful guard, and followed that slim form down the passageway, past poor Olivier and his comrade, past the torch guttering out on the stone where it had fallen. Hob did not hurry to reach her side, though, as once he might have done.
“. . . AND SHE WIPED IT on his hair!” said Hob, alone with Molly in the outer room. They had left Nemain to watch over Jack while the silent man slept the sleep of exhaustion.
But Molly was complacent. “The lynx is growing into her paws,” was all that she said.
CHAPTER 23
FOR THREE WEEKS JACK LAY pale and nearly immobile, so weak he must be fed on broth, and dosed with Molly’s remedies; some of these latter were to prevent him from slipping into the Beast state again. Molly and Nemain took turns
on watch, with Hob assisting one or the other as need dictated. Molly would allow no one else to nurse Jack. Food was brought to the solar, but no one except Sir Balthasar came within, and he only to assure himself that they lacked for nothing. So they three watched long hours over Jack, and talked in low tones of this and that, and Molly sipped from her little ceramic jugs, and spooned strange decoctions into Jack’s mouth, and dried him when he burst into a sweat in the middle of the night.
In the first few days Molly barely slept; she was wholly occupied in tending to both Jack and Sir Jehan. There were other wounded, casualties of the battles with the Lietuvan grooms, or with one or the other of the two esquires. These injuries were treated with the usual rough-hewn care of a working castle, but only Sir Jehan had been bitten by the Fox and lived. Molly spent long hours talking with him, and brewing things for him to drink, and eventually he had a little leather bag like Jack’s, and like Jack he wore it about his neck always, save for bathing.
The Sieur de Blanchefontaine was incapable of affairs for nearly a month—indeed, he burned with fever for at least two weeks—and Sir Balthasar as castellan and mareschal was effectively in charge of the military functioning of the castle, while Lady Isabeau commanded the domestic functions, as always.
There were at least two men-at-arms who had been killed by Doctor Vytautas before he encountered Molly: according to their comrades, “by a touch of his hand.” Sir Balthasar was for burning the two bodies, along with all of the Fox’s casualties, almost precipitating a mutiny among the castle folk, who demanded Christian burials. Only when Molly assured him it was unnecessary did he relent.
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