Gifts of the Queen (33 page)

'Save you, good sirs,' he shouted cheerily on seeing us.

'We did not expect you back so soon. And Godspeed to you too. Squire Walter. Your companion Matt asks for you. When return the Lady Ann and her lord?'

Walter jerked his thumb to indicate where I sat, the water swirling green and cool about my horse's feet.

'Why, by the blessed Saint Purnace,' he now cried, 'greeting then to you, Lady Ann. We thought you returned with Count Raoul at a later date.'

His words were pleasant, homely, kind. Why did a trickle of fear begin to creep, a hint, a twinge?

'Why?' I said.

He stared at me as if I were daft. 'Do I speak out of turn?' he said. 'I cry you mercy. I thought she said . . .'

'What she?' Walter shouted. He seized the mason by the arm, 'What one?'

But I knew. I knew at once what she had done and how and why, and I had given her the weapon to do it with.

Master Edward and his men were already dismounting, crowding round. They all spoke at once, but I already knew what they said. A lady from the queen's court, they said, came yesterday, a scant twelve hours ahead, bringing greetings and good cheer from me, bringing messages from me to my child. And I knew, I almost said the words aloud, carrying my ring as sign of faith, to use it as entrance among my womenfolk, to talk to the villagers as a great lady of the court, to give them orders for my son.

One of the French troopers, already mounted, pounded off to sound the warning, but he would be too late. I knew why she had come and how she had achieved it.
Long will you rue your tongue.
Many times had I flaunted that prophecy, and this the last, that Alyse de Vergay and her mistress, Isobelle de Boissert should fulfill it.

Walter questioned the masons over and over again; they too were bemused, uncertain, grasped at straws. She was a friend, they thought, not knowing her, a neighbor's wife, they had seen no harm. She said I sent her in my name to play with my son whom I sorely missed—even Matt, who would remember her, had shrugged on seeing, her—her reappearance in such friendly guise put down to women's ways. If they saw no wrong, how could the village women expect it, suspect treachery when I myself had shown my enemies how to trick them treacherously. Yet even when all hope is lost, you look for it; even then, you think it may not be so; even then, there still is hope.

A second trooper, moving downstream, brought back the confirmation we both sought and feared. A group of men, he said, a score perhaps, had made a crossing below the ford a day ago. They had swum the river, out of sight, away from the well-traveled path, a difficult crossing, for the banks on either side were churned to mud. And on the further, northern bank, they had paused, then turned back, away from any known place, certainly not east toward Sieux, nor west toward Saint Purnace. Walter and the second man now scouted the northern bank, the masons joined in the search. I heard them beating in the bushes, their cries, then their silence that discovery makes.

The evidence they brought back was grimmer still; Walter came up to me, his boyish smile wiped away, his face a mask. Beneath the cloak, across his saddle bow, he bore a dreadful thing, stiff and still. A village lad hung there, face down, an arrow through the shoulder blades. I knew who he was before they lowered him carefully to the ground, one of those urchins who, when Robert was born, used to guard us against the hens and goats, now promoted to man's watch at the outer region of our lands . . . Not much more than a child himself, some mother's son, set to guard the river bank, not my son, but someone's . . .

A second cry, a second thing, this, Robert's hound, dead too, stabbed many times, its golden fur stiff with blood, killed not more than an hour or so ago. It would never have come so far from Sieux unless there was someone to track; they would never have had need to kill unless it came after them to give them away.

'Lady Ann,' it was Master Edward, his face creased with lines, heavily he spoke as a man loaded with care, 'have heart. He still lives, else his dog would never have followed him. They would not have brought him here unless alive.'

Walter said, 'They must have waited for her to return, then moved on again. We can find their tracks, go after them. It is a two-hour ride to Sieux, two hours back, the men to arm and mount, we cannot wait for the guard at Sieux.' He did not add what was obvious: We are but three.

Master Edward seized his shoulder and held it tight. 'Courage, lad, they leave a trail like an army's path, but if you ride headlong upon them, they'll cut you down, or, hearing you, ambush you with the same result. I guess where they go, will come with you to show you a side road. We'll take them from the rear where they'll not look for pursuit.'

He said, beckoning to his men, his nephew, last male child of his house, feeling for his knife to test its blade, 'When I was an apprentice boy, my father sent me to the forest west of Saint Purnace to learn what a builder needs to know of timber and trees, the quality of wood, its grain, its age. Once, many years ago, a village stood beyond Saint Purnace, but empty, and empty has been for a hundred years or more since death struck down its inhabitants. The woodcutters used to go there in the summer; they claimed that heat dries off the fogs that breed up plague. But since my time, even they no longer use the place.' He paused for breath. I had never heard him speak so fast or think so quick. He said, 'That's where they'll go, I'll stake my life. Nowhere else is open to them. De Boissert lands are forfeit to the crown and the castle is barred. They will hide there until night before they move on, but we'll have gained on them before then. We'll leave word at the ford where we go and how, but we must ride without delay.' Nor did he add the obvious: Otherwise we will be too late.

I took my place with them, reached for a dagger from Walter's belt, having lost my own. 'I come with you,' I said in answer to Walter's look, 'he is my son.'

We pushed our way through the brush, thick and matted, whatever path swallowed by neglect. There were many horsemen, those elusive horsemen we had been trailing all week, and suddenly I saw what the French men had claimed—no woman, shut into a nunnery, her father dead, his lands attainted for treason, could have mounted a troop that size without some help; and no troop that size without someone to back and shield it could have ridden so fast and left no clue. And that thought too was one to chill, but I beat it back. I would remember no smile, no cruel laugh. But sometimes when an iron hoof mark showed itself clearly in the mud, sometimes when we saw how bushes had been cut and slashed to make a track, the sense of evil began to take on substance, concentrate. And when once, silently, one of the stonecutters brought us something hidden in his hand, a scrap of silk, pale blue, found hanging from a bramble thorn, I had a sense, a feeling, that soon would come a reckoning.

The last few miles, we turned aside. Master Edward, riding in front, showed us the way, a longer route but secret. At his suggestion, we pulled tufts of grass to muffle clink of bridle or saddle iron, and those who wore mail, Walter, his two men, they hid it beneath their cloaks and rode bareheaded for fear, even in this underbrush, a flash of light should reveal us. I saw how Walter and his men turned to Master Edward willingly for advice, although he wore no spurs, carried only his sharp paring knife.
I live to serve you
,
I and my men.
So a third time for my sake they served. Praise God. At each turning Master Edward stopped, took note of tree or rock, ponderous and slow like a tree himself, yet his memory never failed; even after all these years he drew us on unerringly and led us ever deeper into this tangled wilderness.

The last hundred yards or so we came on foot, the horses left out of earshot with some apprentices to watch, three men having gone ahead to test the path. I would have thought us lost, nothing in front of us but a wall of trees, until suddenly we came out into what must have once been an orchard and, beyond it, a ruined clump of huts and a rutted village street. We crept forward then to the edge of the orchard grove. I noticed, in that strange way one has to notice unrelated things, how underneath the gnarled and mossy trees yellow' apples lay rotting in the grass, covered with swarms of small wasps and flies, and I remember thinking how strange to see sweetness gone to waste and fruitfulness rotted away.

The village would have been a dismal place at best, now it was overgrown with vines and nettles rank and thick, its street or what had served as one, knee-deep in leaves. On one side of it, the remaining huts leaned together like a circle of stones, a blank wall facing out, no door or window well, the walls themselves almost overgrown. Once there would have been hives in the orchards here, and pigs and noise, children sitting in the dust, all the sounds of village life that we know at Sieux. And for a moment, I had a thought of how Sieux would be if transplanted here, and of how a little boy would have played with his friends. Today all was emptiness, only wind and bees, nothing else. But Master Edward had sent some of his men slithering round, they were good at that, used perhaps to burrowing underground or crawling into attic space. Walter went with them, all of them with weapons drawn, while we waited in the long grass. I noted how, for big men and broad, the masons moved most cleverly; and since talking was now impossible, they used hand signals among themselves, usual for them when the noise of their trade made communication otherwise impossible.

We watched the huts. The first two were almost caved in, the frame of wood sticking up like bones through the ruin of their mud walls, but the rest seemed sturdy enough. Then Master Edward tugged at my sleeve. From the central hut, a sort of gateway led to an inner court, built like that perhaps, or more like caused naturally now with the passing of years, a rough sort of passageway. A shadow moved against the wall, something stirred, and as we listened, we caught the strike of hoof against stone. The shadow crept back.

Master Edward sighed, wiped his forehead and smiled. 'We have them,' was all he said, but I noticed how he sat more comfortably and began to sharpen his knife.

Presently, there was a scuffle in the grass; it was Walter creeping on all fours. He had shed his mail coat and his spurs, and in shirtsleeves crept, his face darkened with dirt, his hair damp with heat.

'All of them,' he reported, spitting out mouthfuls of sand', 'their horses saddled in the yard, one a woman's. Ten men there on guard but drinking. Three more to watch the way they came, three on the other side, the rest within the biggest hut.'

But to Master Edward's questioning look, the question I forced myself not to ask, he shook his head. No sight, no sound then of my son. But if he had been alive at the ford, he still must be alive. They would not carry him all the way if dead; they would not carry him this way to kill him here.

Master Edward had bent down, ungainly in his holiday robes. He and his men began to strip them off, their workaday tunics worn beneath. 'Thrift,' I heard him say, 'our wives wash both at one time.'

One of his companions wiped his lips. 'Stonecutting is thirsty work,' he said, 'but soldiering is worse.' He gave a grin on catching my eye. I felt a wave, not of relief, but of hope perhaps.

They were not soldiers, but they spoke and jested as soldiers do; they planned their attack efficiently; their knives were sharp. I thought, Thank God, that guildsmen are so quarrelsome. And for the first time since the ford, felt we had some chance.

Master Edward had already thought out the detail of what he would do, drew it in his precise way with his knife, as if planning a layer of stone. The six outer guards were to be removed silently, not difficult, needing younger men with knives (although knives against mail coats is hard, until two others hastily showed their bows, yew bows these, meant of hunting, yet good enough at close quarters). I thought of the archers at Boissert, who had misfired and died for it, but buried the thought. The guards dead first; next, one man alone at a signal prearranged was to burst into the yard where the horses were penned, to stampede them while the rest of us stormed past against the inside doors, such as they were, makeshift too, easily broken through. But that first charge must be a knightly one; Walter's then, with sword and shield, on horseback to give him speed and weight. And I must stand with the apprentices in the orchard here, to guard the path so no one might escape and to watch that our own horses did not stray.

'Take care, my lady,' Walter said, his attention already fixed, assessing the best place to break through and take them unaware. His west country voice sounded suddenly very calm compared with all these French ones. 'We'll have the little one soon,' he said. I remember how he had held Robert in his arms and wished him joy.
I saw the day of your birth,
he had said. Pray God, I thought, not the day of his death. I tried to wish Walter luck in turn, but he had already gone, no time to strap his mail coat on; and by and by, I saw him and his horse disappear to the edge of the orchard behind us. Three other masons had already crept with our young French guard, left and right they went, to where, if they did their work well, the outposts would lie on the bloodstained earth.

Then we crept closer too, as close as we dared to the narrow road and, one by one, the men crossed, a handful of them, flitting over among the noonday shadows against the crumbling walls. Had there been door or window slits on that wall, our plan would have been nigh impossible, but those crafty peasants long ago had kept the outer walls blank so no one could look in and spy, so now no one could look out. The wait seemed long, almost as long as the whole ride back. Then suddenly there was a great cry.

Walter broke out from the bushes on the far side from us, charged his horse right into the yard, swinging with his sword. Master Edward and his men rose from their crouch, their cloaks and aprons wrapped about their arms as shields, and followed him. The de Boissert men were resting in the sun, their coats unbraced, their sword belts off. Some snatched for them, were cut down; others, fleeing from Walter's horse, ran upon the masons' knives. But already Master Edward was hammering at the door, two of his men tearing at the rotting frame. And I, unable to stand aside, had run across the road, last of all but my knife drawn, too. I saw how the terrified horses, cut free, went galloping off, reins dangling, saw the last of the de Boissert men fall back with three of our men to pen them in, but they were armed, these last of the de Boissert guard, and they were desperate. And I saw how the door to the inner room had splintered but had not given way.