The silence ahead crawled on his skin, the cold breath of a deserted battlefield. He shortened and slowed his steps, although here the path had broadened to take two, and through the trees he could spot thatched roofs, light in the evening gloom. Every step took him closer to an unseen killer.
There was no deliverance from the pestilence, no charm or words or posy that would hold it off. He could not fight for Edith or the children.
Helplessness made him peevish. "You are my prize, so do not die on me," he snapped at the small, slight figure gliding beside him, now jumping smoothly over an abandoned wheelbarrow.
"If you heed me, none of us will be ill. If you do not like it, stay here."
Her cool response irked and shamed him, but also was as bracing as a slap. He glanced at her, knowing they had reached a change between them. The maid of the riverbank and the princess were one and the same and they both knew it. And Edith had been ready to unveil for him.
He stopped on the track. "Tell me what to do."
Her large eyes considered him, then she sat down in the middle of the path and tugged at his leggings for him to do the same.
"I need so much telling?"
"Hush, you," she said, but she was smiling; he could tell as much from her voice. She placed the little girl on her lap and he did the same with the boy. The lad snuggled and squirmed like a puppy and again he wondered where the parents of these lost youngsters were.
His companion’s thought were clearly with them, too, but her mind ran on more practical measures. "Please, Ranulf, have you ought else for these children? They will be famished."
Ranulf felt in his tunic and discovered some sweets he had filched from the castle and had intended to torment her with. Over the children's heads he showed off the candied fruit, feeling ridiculously pleased with himself when she nodded in approval. "I know you will not do so, but please, do not give them too much," she added, in a whisper.
"Never fear." As an ever-hungry page he had once stolen and stuffed down a massive venison pie, still piping hot from the ovens. He had burned his mouth and been copiously sick. Mindful of that rough lesson and knowing the youngsters with them might not have eaten for days, he gave each a tiny piece of candied fruit. The boy sniffed his and ate with surprising delicacy, clearly enjoying each morsel of sugared orange, a treat he would never have tasted before. The little girl gobbled hers in a single swallow, went very red in the face and began to cry.
"Have some apple, sweetheart." Ranulf swiftly offered a coil of dried apple. This at least the child devoured a little more slowly, chewing noisily with an open mouth.
"Thank you," Edith said quietly, "Though I think she has gulled you."
"Not the first female to do so," he admitted, amused to see Edith look away. If she had shown her face he wagered he would see her blushing, but such play was not for now. "We should start with finding the church. People will have gone there to pray."
He was surprised to see her flinch and added, with some heat, "Not all feel as you do on matters of the soul. Some of us know there is more than what we see and touch."
He thought she coloured up more.
"You misunderstand," she said in a low voice, "But it may be you are right. And I am very sorry you are disappointed in me."
Was she truly so afraid of losing his good opinion? Without thought, he caught her hand and squeezed it. "If not the church, then where, good mistress? The reeve's house? It will be the largest." He handed the children another sweet and more coils of dried apple. "Whatever house we choose, we should stay together."
"I agree." This said in a rush, as if she was relieved to do so. "Can we find the well first? I think we shall need water."
"For thirsty people—yes, I wager that is a good plan." If we find any alive. They were sitting on the main track above the village, in plain view of a scatter of thatched houses, and no one, not even a dog, pig or hen, had ventured out to them. Even Hector was uneasy, standing quietly close with his ears laid back.
Edith sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose, running her fingers across the dark brows as if they pained her. "Have you ever been in a village where there is great sickness?"
He shook his head. He had lived through harsh winters, where every man had a cough, dry summers, where folk burned with fevers and the hunger of summer before harvest, but he had not witnessed the pestilence as near as this before.
"The villagers in my lands have been spared," he said. "I had a mighty relic from a pardoner last winter and that has kept us safe."
He heard her take a quick breath and knew she had bitten down on a less believing answer.
"It is not the same, here in the south. I have seen the pestilence."
They were beyond pretence now and he did not ask if she had seen it in Cathay.
She gave him another long, considering look. "We could take the horse and the children and pass by."
"As those other travellers did before the good Samaritan came? That is not my way, so let me know what to do."
She hugged her knees. "What we should both do, Ranulf."
He disliked it but knew he would not stop her so said gruffly, "Agreed."
Lifting the child in her arms, she went up on her knees, pointing this way and that with her head. "After we find the well and fill what vessels we can, we should call out first."
Ranulf drummed his fingers on his knees. "Do not waste time with the obvious, woman."
That earned him a glare and a fast, "Very well! If we find any that live, keep back if they are coughing blood. Nothing can be done for them and their foul breath will infect you. Those with boils and pustules, if such boils have broken open they may survive so you may take them water."
"That is all? Water?"
"It is a start."
She was not sure, either, and it was for him to take charge, he was the man, the warrior.
"I will lead Hector. We should carry the children always. They seem to welcome the contact and we do not want them wandering in sickness."
She nodded, deferential again, and now she waited as he rose, and fell into step behind him as he took his first swift steps into the unknown.
Chapter 16
Leading Hector, Ranulf boosted the lad onto his own back and checked his dagger. He did not expect trouble, or lurking thieves, but these were strange days and it was wise to be prepared. He strode into silence and the lengthening shadows of evening, listening for the slightest cry and feeling his mouth growing drier than old hay—with hunger, he told himself. Yet it was puzzling and disconcerting to realize that this whole village was here and yet marooned. None had ventured forth from here to the castle. Was that because they feared they would get no aid? Or had the sickness worked so swiftly that all had been overcome?
Beside him, matching him step by steadfast step, Edith sang a soft lullaby that he thought seemed familiar to him, rocking the younger child on her hip. The little girl sucked her thumb but her eyes were wide open and she said something.
Edith nodded, kissing the infant's dirty fingers, answering her and then repeating in the English he understood. "Yes, we shall see your mamma soon. Is she sleeping?"
The boy replied and Edith translated. "Mary thinks she is tired, but I think she is dead."
Ranulf felt him shiver and could only pity the lad as Edith added, "Simon wishes his mother would awaken."
"We must take them away from here." Again, Ranulf blocked this small, determined woman's way. "Do you want them to see horrors?"
Edith said, in an urgent whisper, "Can we leave now, without knowing if others are alive? I have some manchet bread and some cheese. I will keep giving Mary and Simon bits of each when we reach inside the village. That should keep them intent on food."
"You planned this?" He was not sure if he was revolted or respectful at her cool-headedness.
He saw the rim of a blush around her veiled eyes. "I bought it for us. I thought you might be hungry."
He chuckled, indulgent afresh, until he s
potted a flicker of movement from a pile of rags farther along the track.
"I will take him." Edith held out her other arm for the child on his back.
Later he would marvel at her strength but at this moment he silently swung the boy into her waiting embrace, knowing she would do her utmost to spare the children what she must know awaited them. With the dark creeping up his thoughts ran to wolves and feral dogs and he did not ask again that she remain outside the village or apart from him.
"Stay back if they cough blood," she said, in bad French.
Her hands gripping the children were white-knuckled—and now he saw the network of scars on her fingers, and understood that her hands were not red with the setting sun but red due to old burns and injuries. Due to some kind of hard, manual work, he guessed.
No wonder as the princess she wears gloves. No wonder she is strong.
"Be very careful," she entreated, returning him to their present danger.
"Scold, scold," he replied, saying a prayer under his breath as he dropped his charger's reins, allowing Hector to graze on a tiny patch of hawthorn saplings, and forced his stone-like limbs into action.
Still she kept with him. Taking an unmanly comfort from her presence, he approached the heap of rags.
Something exploded, squealing, from the bloody pile. Beside him Edith sobbed once, then was deathly quiet, whirling round and round with the children, making a game of horror.
"A rat man." He had seen them before on battlefields. "The rats go in and chew and sometimes they shift the corpse so that it seems to live again." But he should remember this was no sight for a woman. "Not pretty, but the fellow is at peace, so let us move on."
He touched her shoulder as she whirled and she leaned into him briefly before breaking and heading for the largest group of houses.
"What madness has come here?" Every step and he saw more heaps of decaying corpses and around them, signs of wildness or despair. Bodies sprawled half out of doors clutching jugs of wine or ale that had shattered as they fell in their final death-throes. Bodies he could see in barns where the pigs had been slaughtered and folk had cooked the parts then and there and then died in the midst of their feasting.
"An eating frenzy," Edith murmured. "These poor folk knew they were dying and wished to take what pleasure they could."
"You have seen this before?"
"I have heard of it." She sighed. "We cannot all be noble knights, playing at jousts."
You are part of that world, too, he almost said, but he was robbed of words. From every hut issued the sweet, cloying stench of decay. His calls brought no answer save the cawing of crows. A crow walked from a barn with a gobbet of meat in its beak and he took care not to look at it too closely. Outside another hut, a dog lay on its side with a knife thrust through its heart.
He walked on, seeing scattered chicken bones and feathers, a broken quern stone, a plough smashed to pieces against the body of a man who in life must have been a giant.
"These folk were mad with anger."
"Or despair."
"It is a sin to despair," he said, but who would not despair in a scene such as this?
Edith called out a few times, her voice seeming to be swallowed in this dim, closed-in valley. The children laid their heads on her bosom and chewed on the bread she fed them. Glancing at their peaceful, almost bored expressions, Ranulf did not want to consider how long they might have called and cried and received no answers.
"I see the well!" Edith started forward.
"So do I." Ranulf wished they had not found it. "Stay back."
He picked his way through more bodies, some bloodied, many contorted, their eyeless faces warped into unending expressions of terror and pain. The reek of pus and sickness rose in a foul miasma and he covered his mouth with his hand. Had these sad souls crawled here seeking relief from thirst?
"I hope they got a drink." Edith spoke his wish.
Ranulf looked about, turning on the spot. Close to the well, the church was a stone box of a building with a crucifix in a yard full of half-finished coffins. The carved wooden crucifix had been burned and the painted Christ on it was dark and charred.
"These people were abandoned by God." Ranulf crossed himself, wondering what dreadful sins they had committed to be smitten by such terrible retribution.
"Instead of trying to make coffins, or praying, they should have fled," Edith said harshly.
"Would you leave a loved-one unburied?"
She made a choking sound and he instantly drew his arm about her and the infants. "There is nothing we can do here," he said softly, looking directly into her eyes. "We should take these innocents and leave."
"There are other children here, dead children. Do you think they deserved this? Is this the work of a loving God?"
Ranulf shook his head. "I have no answers. Let us recover the horse and go."
"Amen to that," Edith said bitterly, turning her back on the dead.
Edith marched in a blaze of rage, ranting afresh at Gregory, who had died, and the villagers here, who had died, and the knights, who did not care and did not come and who lived. No doubt Sir Giles would be loitering about her tent tonight or tomorrow, convinced she could not resist him.
And Ranulf was that arrogant pig's friend....
She choked and spat, an action that was not lady-like but which Ranulf, patting his horse and checking the children were secure on Hector's back, politely ignored.
Ranulf was a surprise. He had not fled the village. He had not called her evil for surviving. He had listened to her. He had brought two peasant youngsters with them when Sir Giles would certainly have abandoned them.
She looked at him. His face was hidden by the neck of the horse as they toiled back up the wooded track to the main road, but she could see his powerful long legs and his supple, shapely hands and she could hear him.
"What is that you sing?" Curiosity won over her temper.
"A song Olwen taught me." He resumed, his voice deep and mellow, soothing as dark honey.
A pretty song, with a lilting refrain. No doubt a bed-song, Edith thought sourly, before the images of what they had just seen struck her anew.
"Your wife?" she asked to keep the darkness at bay. Being with Ranulf helped, kept her old memories of the pestilence and now these terrible fresh ones just a little away from her.
"Edith, you know Olwen was my wife." Ranulf slapped Hector's flank and encouraged the charger forward, then closed the gap between them.
"Now," he said, taking her into his arms. "What do you really mean to ask? Did I love Olwen? Yes, I did. Do I blame myself for her death? Yes I do. Are you satisfied?"
She was not, but having his warm, strong arms wound round her made it hard for her to recall her objections. "What happened? Why do you blame yourself?"
She was shocked when his mouth came down on hers, kissing her through the cloak-veil.
"Children!" she gasped, twisting her face away, her lips seeming to burn on the rough cloth.
He paused, then drew away from her. To her horror, Edith felt her eyes fill with tears.
"Children, indeed, and you have endured enough. I must get you back to your people. " He plucked her into his arms and placed her on the horse before the children. He patted her trembling arm. "Tomorrow you will join me at the castle, as my prize and my lady, and these young ones will stay with me. They will be companions for my page."
"But they may be wild, strange —” And you are a knight who will not understand. These poor things do not even speak your language!
"I know they have witnessed appalling things, but pray God they will forget swiftly," he said, confident and yes, a little pompous. Edith was startled to discover she was too weary to care, but she had to try.
"Let them stay with me, lord."
"Time with you, then time with me. Agreed?"
She knew she would have no peace until she nodded and so she did. "Time with me first," she persisted.
He started to chuckle,
then stopped, perhaps as the terrors of the evening returned to him. "Let us go back," he said. "I would have us in the camp before full nightfall." He clicked his tongue to encourage Hector into a brisk walk, striding beside the horse, singing again to the children.
Somewhere on the journey, Edith fell asleep.
Chapter 17
Edith stirred late the next day, close to sunset. Scrambling up, realizing with relief that she was fully clothed on her own bed, she found the tent full of steam.
Maria was bathing herself and the two children, Mary and Simon, in the biggest cauldron they had. Mary was wailing as Maria poured a jug of warmed water over her head, but Simon was splashing in the water and eating a pie.
"All these two have done is eat and cry. We shall be days before we gain sense from them, if we ever do." Teodwin sat down on the pallet beside her. "Sir Giles is outside, begging an audience."
That knocked the sleep from her. "Did he recognize you?" Edith glanced longingly at the water: she craved a bath herself.
"Our old lord know his pig-man? No! But I am most glad that your new lord's men are on guard."
Edith clenched her teeth on her automatic denial that Ranulf was her lord.
"They allow no disrespect. When the pie-man asked if the eastern lady wanted any pies, the captain told him he must call you princess or take his pies and go." Teodwin smoothed the front of his purple robe. "The whole camp knows that any who insult you will answer to the Black Knight. He has jousted earlier today, wearing your favours."
The ones he took from me and still keeps. Edith sighed and boosted herself off the bed. "The yellow silk today," she said. She needed the cheerful colour to give her heart, especially as Giles was prowling outside, convinced of his own suit.
"What?" she almost snapped, for her steward was shaking his head.
"The Black Knight has send you a new gown, with veiling."
"Most gorgeous, too," Maria piped up from the tub. "Silk as fine as yours and with long flowing sleeves, as fine as mist." She laughed and pointed at the rippling water in the tub. "See how my babe within kicks!"
Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances Page 95