In the Ruins (59 page)

TO walk from Osna village to Lavas Holding was normally a journey of five or six days. Years ago, when Alain had walked with Chatelaine Dhuoda’s company, the trip had taken fifteen days because she had stopped in every village and steading along the way to accept taxes and rents or the service of some of the young people in the village. Now, although they stopped only at night for shelter, the roads had taken so much damage in last autumn’s storm that they were ten days traveling. Tangles of fallen trees barred the track. In two places streams had changed course and cut a channel right through the beaten path where wagons once rolled.

“God help us,” said the chatelaine in the late afternoon on the seventh day. She was the only one mounted. The rest walked. “What’s that?”

Alain went forward with five of the men at arms to discover a wagon toppled onto its side. The remains of several people lay scattered across the roadway and into the woodland on either side, disturbed by animals.

“How long have they lain here, are you thinking?” asked one of the lads, a fellow called “Fetch” by his comrades.

Mostly bone was all that was left of them, with bits of hair and patches of woven tunic ground into the earth and
a leather vest half buried beneath dirt and leaf litter. It was impossible to tell how many had died here or how far wolves and foxes had dragged pieces of corpse.

“Months.” Alain wrenched loose an arrow fixed into the spokes of one of the wheels. “Bandits. Look at this fletching.”

The soldiers were young men, no one he knew from his time as Lavastine’s heir, although it seemed strange to him that so many new milites would have come into service in such a short time. They were all lads from villages owing allegiance to Lady Aldegund’s family, and had a lilting curl to their “r’s” when they spoke. They looked nervous as they scanned the trees and open clearings.

One shrieked. “What’s that? What’s that?”

It was only a white skull, caught in brambles, staring out at them.

“Go get it, Fetch,” said the eldest.

“I won’t. It might be cursed!”

“Have we a shovel or anything to dig with?” asked Alain. “Best we dig what grave we can and let these poor dead rest. It’s all we can do.” He looked at each of his companions in turn and shook his head. “Come now. Their souls have ascended to the Chamber of Light. They can’t hurt you. If it were your own brother lying here, wouldn’t you want him laid to rest so that animals would stop chewing on his bones?”

They had in their party only one shovel, but another man had an antler horn he used as a pick and the rest sharpened stout sticks and by this means and some with their bare hands they dug swiftly and deep. Blanche watched silently, sucking her thumb, and it was she who was first to help pick up bones that had been dragged away into the bushes and she who brought the skull and laid it on the heap collected in the pit. She wiped her hand on her skirt and sighed.

“Will I be just bones like that one day?” she asked.

“The part of you which is flesh will die, it’s true, and rot away to bone, but see how white and strong bone is. It’s to remind us of the strength of our souls, which lie hidden beneath flesh as well.”

She frowned at him but said nothing more. The chatelaine’s cleric said a prayer over the dead, and they filled in the hole. One of the lads shook out the leather vest and rolled it up; the leather only needed a bit of cleaning and oiling to restore it and there was no sense in letting such good leather go to waste.

“It’s getting late,” said Alain to the chatelaine. “We’d best think of camping for the night.”

“I don’t like to camp in a place of death,” she said. “We’ll go on a way.”

“Think you there are bandits still lurking?” Fetch asked Alain as they walked along at the front of the group.

“There might be.”

A branch snapped in the trees, and all the milites flinched and spun to look, only to see a doe spring away into the forest. They laughed and called each other cowards but hurried forward anyway to where the woodland dropped back into an open countryside marked by low, marshy ground and thickets of dense brush where the earth rose into hillocks. The road had been raised to cross this swamp, and it was out on the road they found themselves at dusk with nothing but mosquitoes and gnats and marsh flies for company.

“Light fires,” said the chatelaine. “We can see anyone coming from either side if thieves have a wish to attack us. The smoke will drive off the bugs.”

It was difficult to find dry wood, but enough was found that they breathed in smoke half the night and were bitten up anyway. The wind came steady out of the northeast. Late, very late, Alain woke and, startled, found himself staring up at the heavens. Blanche snored softly beside him.

Stars winked, and then were covered again by cloud.

“Ah!” he said, although he hadn’t meant to speak.

“Do you see?”

“I pray you, Chatelaine. Can you not sleep?”

“I cannot sleep, my lord. But I saw there a glimpse of hope. God smile on my journey. It is right that I sought you out. For months we have seen no sign of the sky. But now … now I have.”

“Any spell must ease in time.”

“You persist in believing that these clouds are the residue of a vast spell woven by human hands?”

“I know they are.”

“Not God’s displeasure?”

“It is true that some evils fall upon us without warning or cause. Yet so many of the evils that plague us we bring about by our own actions. Why should we blame God? Surely God weep to see their children act against what is natural and right. So the blessed Daisan would say. So Count Lavastine said. We aren’t made guilty by those things that lie outside our power, but we aren’t justified by them either. Evil is the work of the Enemy. It is easier to do what is right.”

“Think you so, my lord? It seems to me that humankind have in them a creeping, sniggering impulse to do what is wrong.”

“Yet none say it is right. Those who do wrong make excuses and tell stories to excuse themselves or even blame their folly on God, but their hearts are not free of guilt. That guilt drives a man to do worse things, out of pain and fear. It is a hard road to walk and more difficult still to turn back once you’ve begun the journey.”

She chuckled scornfully. “Many folk say they are doing right and believe it. The Enemy blinds them.”

“They blind themselves.”

“Who is to say that the wicked don’t flourish and the innocent fall by the wayside? Where is God’s justice when it is needed?”

He peered at her, but it was difficult to make out her face with the cloud cover cast again over the heavens. “It is in our hands, Mistress Dhuoda. We have the liberty to choose our own actions.”

“What if we choose wrong?”

He sighed, thinking of Adica. The wind sighed, echoing his breathing. Reeds rustled out in the marsh. A man rolled over, making a scraping noise against the ground as he turned in his sleep. Blanche snorted, seemed about to rouse, and settled back into slumber.

“Why didn’t God fashion us so we could do only what is right, and never what is sinful?” she continued.

“Then we would be no different than the tools we ourselves carry. If we did what is right, we would receive no merit from it, not if we had no choice. We would be slaves, not human beings.”

“It might be better so,” she murmured.

“Do you think so?”

“Sometimes I do,” she said, and after that nothing more.

At length he fell asleep.

THEY came to Lavas Holding on St. Abraames’ Day. From a distance, the settlement looked little different than the place he had first seen seven years ago—or was it eight? It was difficult to keep track.

The high timber palisade surrounded the count’s fortress with its wooden hall and stone bailey. Beyond the wall the village spilled down a leisurely slope to the banks of the river. Now, however, a fosse and earthen embankment circled the village and the innermost fields, orchards, and pasturage, cut in two spots by the course of the river. Many of the locals looked familiar to Alain, but all of the men at arms were new and by the sound of their words not Lavas born and bred but from farther east.

“Where is Sergeant Fell?” Alain asked the chatelaine as folk pressed close to stare.

“He was given leave to retire back to his home village, with no more than ten sceattas for all his years of service. And likewise, the others, with little enough or nothing, turned off because Lord Geoffrey feels safer with milites brought from his wife’s kin’s lands to protect him. It’s brought grumbling, and rightly so.”

“Who is this, Mistress Dhuoda?” demanded one of the
soldiers, coming out of the hall with a spear in one hand and a mug of ale in the other.

“Captain, I pray you, where is Lord Geoffrey?”

“He’s ridden out with the lady’s brother, to take a look at a bull.”

“The one belonging to Master Smith of Ferhold? He’s already said he won’t part with that one for any amount of sceattas.”

“He’ll part with it,” said the captain with a sneer, “if Lord Geoffrey wants to add it to his herd. Who’s this?” He squinted as if against bright sun and pointed toward Alain with his spear.

Servants edged closer to whisper and stare. There was Cook, looking thinner and older, and an astounded Master Rodlin with a pair of sleek whippets at his heel. The whippets lowered their heads, whining, and cowered behind the stable master, but Sorrow and Rage sat peaceably with their faithful gazes turned on Alain, waiting to see what he wanted them to do.

“Those are big dogs,” added the captain, and in his look and in the suppressed hiss of murmured voices there was a tense air as of a storm brewing.

Alain fixed his gaze on Cook and, taking Blanche’s hand, led the girl over to the old woman.

“My lord,” Cook murmured, with a glance toward the suspicious captain. Her hands were chapped and dappled with age marks, and her left hand had a kind of palsy, but her eye was still keen.

“I pray you, Cook,” he said quietly, “do not call me by a title that does not belong to me. I have a favor to ask of you.”

She nodded, dumbstruck. The captain coughed and looked around to mark the position of his soldiers, but only five or six were in view, loitering by the stables or at the corner of the hall.

“Keep watch on this child for me, if you will. She is the daughter of a man I called brother.”

Cook regarded him, nodded, and extended a hand.

“Go on, Blanche. Do as I say.”

She bit her lip, she looked up at him with a frown, but
she placed her grimy hand in Cook’s aged one without protest.

“I pray you, Lord Alain,” said Dhuoda, coming up behind him. “We must not stand here in the courtyard like supplicants, else he’ll take action.” She indicated the restless captain.

“I’ll wait in the church.”

“Nay, my lord! You’ll wait in the lord’s audience chamber. It would be fitting!”

“I pray you, Mistress Dhuoda,” he said in a softer voice. “Make no trouble for the innocent souls standing here around. I prefer to wait in the church, if you don’t mind it. I wish to pray beside the count’s bier.”

“Of course!” She flushed red. “Of course, my lord!”

“Who is this man?” demanded the captain, stepping off the porch that fronted the hall. “He’s not welcome here!”

Somehow or other the servants got moving right away and impeded his path, leaving Alain and Dhuoda to walk in solitude out to the stone church set apart from the other buildings beyond the palisade.

“What does Lord Geoffrey fear?” asked Alain, indicating the new earthworks.

“He fears justice, my lord. He fears Lady Sabella.”

“Why should he fear her? Is she not in the custody of Biscop Constance in Autun?”

“Not for many years, my lord. Lady Sabella usurped her old seat. She holds Biscop Constance prisoner and rules Arconia again. Lord Geoffrey offered his allegiance to Biscop Constance, but it’s likely the noble biscop cannot help us. There are bandits roaming the lands. Have you not heard of our troubles?”

“What particular injuries has Lavas Holding sustained?”

“Ravnholt Manor was burned to the ground last autumn a few weeks after the great storm. Eight people were murdered, and perhaps more, because it was hard to discover remains within the ruins of the hall. A dozen or more we found later hiding in the woods, but four girls were never accounted for although witnesses had seen them alive and running from the conflagration. They were not little ones
but youths, and one recently wed. You will have no doubt about what the bandits wanted with them, poor things.”

“Did no one seek them out? What happened to the bandits?”

“There was a single skirmish, my lord, two days later. Then the bandits vanished, or so Lord Geoffrey’s scouts said. I don’t know the truth of it.”

“Do you not believe them?”

She shrugged, reluctant to say more. After the silence grew thick, she went on. “The girls who were taken were only servants’ daughters. Two were slaves—their parents had sold them into service to discharge the debts they owed Ravnholt’s steward.”

“Did Ravnholt’s steward not seek to recover those lost souls?”

“The steward was killed in the raid.”

“Who is in charge there now?”

Her dark look matched the dreary day and the ominous swell of wind in distant trees. “Lord Geoffrey left the land fallow. Said he’d see to it later. Yet we’ve desperate need of planting. Surely you know … it’s hard to think of planting with frosts still coming hard every night. There is a blight in the apple trees here and eastward. There may be no apple crop at all this year. In the south a black rot has gotten into the rye …” She looked sideways at him, blushing again. “Yet you must know, for that’s where you were found, wasn’t it? In the south, by a mill.”

“Mad, so they tell me,” he said as they came up to the church and its narrow porch. He stepped into the shadow and turned to look at her, who stood yet in the muted daylight.

“Not mad,” she said, but she didn’t mean it. “You had the dancing sickness, my lord.”

“And much else besides, I am thinking. I sustained an injury to my head. For a long while I wandered without my faithful hounds. I was lost and blind.” He snapped his fingers, and the hounds waggled up to him and licked his hands. He patted them affectionately and rubbed his knuckles into their great heads, just how they liked it, and scratched them behind their ears.