Lord of Midnight (3 page)

“Comes?” her mother asked, catching her thread.

Claire flung one set of shutters open to the rain-pounded bailey. “The horn. I heard the horn!” Surely she hadn’t imagined it. No, the dogs were barking. She ran over to the big doors.

“Is it Clarence?” asked Amice behind them.

“Of course not,” replied Felice, continuing to riffle a tune. “In this weather? Our brother likes his comforts.”

Claire halted by the closed doors, hope shriveling. How true. Her father wouldn’t struggle home in this weather when in a day or so it would clear into summer. Even so, she pushed open one of the doors and stepped outside, where the overhang of the thatched roof still sheltered her from most of the rain. Thomas came up beside her.

“It
could be
Father.”

She shivered in the damp chill. “Certainly someone’s out there. See, the guards are going onto the walkway to check.”

As she spoke, one guard turned and climbed down the steep wooden steps to wade through the bailey toward them.

Not her father, then. They’d have opened to him immediately.

Disappointment was chased by foreboding. Who
would
travel in such weather?

“A party of armed men, lady,” the guard said to her mother, who had come out swathed in a cloak. “Can’t make out the pennant or banner in this weather.”

“And they wish to enter here?” Lady Murielle asked.

“ ‘Pears so, lady. Do we open?”

“Not without knowing who they are! Return, and have someone inform me as soon as we know.”

As the man waded back to the palisade, she said, “We can’t let strange men in without your father here, can we Claire?”

“I don’t know. It’s so horrible out there. Can we refuse?”

“We
can
, I suppose. Oh,1 don’t know. I wish Clarence…” She covered her mouth with her hand, and Claire wrapped an arm around her.

“If someone travels in this weather, it’s their own fault,” she said, though deep in her bones she felt that someone traveling in this weather had a dire purpose.

“You’re shivering, dearest!” Her mother drew Claire under her own cloak and called for more coverings. Servants hurried out and soon Claire was physically warm. It didn’t really help the shivers.

She looked at her mother. “What if it’s something to do with Father?”

“Oh, don’t think that Claire!”

Claire returned to watching the wooden gates, wondering how someone was supposed to block thought.

“Why?” asked Thomas. “I
want
news of Father.”

Lady Murielle looked at him helplessly. “How can it be good news, Thomas? It’s been weeks since we heard that your father was in the Tower, and he’s not returned home. I can’t think why…”

Claire hated putting things into words, but she hated avoiding the truth more. “He’s doubtless refusing to take the oath.”

Her mother sighed. “I do fear that. He can be so stubborn.”

“Is it stubborn to stand for what he believes is right?”

“Don’t lecture me, Claire. You’re as bad as he is sometimes!” She gestured at the gate. “Someone is out there, and I know it is some consequence of your father’s stubborn folly. I
told
him not to go!”

Claire sighed, remembering her mother arguing with her father, pointing out the dangers, weeping over the consequences. She remembered him cheerfully assuring his wife—assuring them all—that right would prevail, that God would support the just.

How could anyone argue against that?

Her mother could. She’d lost her temper. “It’s not a
game
, Clarence! What are you going to do? Take arms against men who live for war? The blooded swords, as you call them? Your sword is blunt, and your armor rusty from decades of neglect!”

“Murielle, my love,” her father had answered mildly. “God does not require that all His tools be perfect. But see, I will have Ulric clean my mail and have my sword honed.”

Claire had fled to weep out of sight, even though there’d been some laughter in the tears. Her mother was haranguing because she loved her gentle husband and was terrified. Her father probably truly thought he could appease her by having his weaponry and armor put in order.

“He’s refused to take the oath,” her mother said, hand over mouth again. “I know it.”

The guard was scrambling back down the ladder, almost slipping in the mire at the bottom in his haste.

“The king!” he gasped as he staggered toward them, sliding again and having to use his spear to stay upright.

“The king?” Lady Murielle exclaimed

“Here?”

“Nay, lady!” the man panted. “But ‘tis his banner held before those outside the gates. What are we to do, lady? What are we to do?”

Panic rang in his voice, the same panic that shot through Claire. Why would men come with the king’s banner except to execute the king’s justice on a traitor’s home? Would King Henry take direct revenge on the family? It had been the way of things in the past. Killing and maiming to teach others to be more cautious.

And raping. The traditional male revenge.

Claire hugged herself. The king was her father’s friend. He’d held Claire and Thomas on his knee—

Abruptly, making her jump, a horn blared beyond the gates. It answered a lot of questions, for it was the demand of a lord to enter his property. It was almost a relief. A usurper wouldn’t destroy, would he?

“So,” said her mother dully. “We are lost.”

Amice and Felice appeared behind them, huddling under one cloak. “What is it?” Felice demanded.

“The new Lord of Summerbourne,” said Lady Murielle in a shaking voice. “Admit him, Niall.”

Face grim, the man trudged back to the gates, his steps dragged down by more than rain and mud.

Her aunts were exclaiming, protesting.

complaining. Amice, as was her way, had started to weep.

“Are you just going to stand here and do nothing?” Felice demanded.

“What can we do?” Lady Murielle said. “We’ll have to seek refuge at St. Frideswide’s. Will we be allowed to take our clothes? And what of Thomas? Thomas?”

Claire realized then that her brother had run off. Her brother, who had just lost his heritage here. She looked around, but knew she wouldn’t find him, and she couldn’t try now. She only prayed he wouldn’t do anything foolish.

Thank heaven he didn’t have a sword.

A cracked voice split the air. “What’s going on out there? Have pity on an old woman, you thankless creatures!”

Claire turned to see her grandmother struggling out of her chair supported by her stick, looking like a hunched gargoyle backed by the fire.

“Claire! Come tell me what’s happening!”

Lady Agnes of Summerbourne, mother to ten children including Lord Clarence, was a difficult woman made worse by crippling pain, but it wasn’t right that she be left alone at such a moment. Claire went back into the hall, dropping the damp cloak once she was beyond the doors.

“Well, girl?” Lady Agnes demanded. She had to scowl up for she was bent almost double and needed her solid stick to even move. “What’s happening?”

Claire helped her back to her padded chair by the fire. “A troop of soldiers are before the gates, Gran. We don’t know who they are, but they carry the king’s standard and have demanded entry as of right.”

“Ah.” Lady Agnes slumped down, gnarled hands tight on the bent top of her stick.

“It seems the king has given Summerbourne to someone else. We’ll have to leave.” On a day drenched with rain and sunk deep in mud, they would have to leave their home. “Mother speaks of going to St. Frideswide’s—”

She broke off, remembering that Lady Agnes and Mother Winifred of St. Frideswide’s had been at war for years over ownership of coppice rights in Sydling Wood.

“Foolishness,” grunted her grandmother.

“You think we can deny them entry?”

She received a withering stare.“‘Course not! But I’ve no mind to run away, especially to that woman’s cold charity. Wait and see. That’s the best course. Wait and see.” But then she stared into the glowing logs and muttered, “I did think I’d live my last days in peace though. Foolish boy.”

Claire saw a tear in the creviced face.

It stirred the dread in her heart. Lady Agnes, too, feared the worst, the unspoken worst. That’s somehow—how? how?—her father was dead.

A sudden rumble spun her to face the hall doors. She knew that sound. The mighty bar was being winched up so that the double gates of Summerbourne could be opened. The king’s men were about to enter.

The new lord was about to take possession.

Servants were gathering around the doors, quiet in their muttered concerns. Claire went over, commanding her way back to the front. They pelted her with questions as she passed.

“Who be it, lady?”

“Are they come to throw us all out?”

“Is Lord Clarence returned?”

“Will we keep our places?”

“Will we all be killed?”

“What should we Jo?”

She tried to give honest answers. “A troop of men. I don’t know. Perhaps. I don’t know. Probably they won’t hurt you unless you anger them. Stay calm. Be sensible…”

Then she, like her mother, was staring at the opening gates as if she could see through them. In her present mood, she wouldn’t be surprised to see Lucifer himself there, with a horde of horned devils at his back.

But as the gates swung wide, they only revealed more rain, rivers of mud, and a troop of weary men at the far side of the wooden bridge. At the front ranked a handful of horses whose riders were hidden by long hooded cloaks. Behind she could just make out some packhorses, and a half-dozen foot soldiers armed with long spears. Hardly force enough to take Summerbourne if they resisted.

What point in that, however, with the weight of the king’s authority on the invader’s side?

One rider bore a sodden pennant that she couldn’t make out, but at the front another held the king’s standard. The square of cloth hung straight on its frame, still able to catch the dull light with threads of gold.

Strangely, the mounted men showed no sign of moving forward.

She grew desperate enough to think of running out into the rain, of wading through the ankle-deep mud to get up on the palisade walk. But then, finally, finally, something happened.

A foot soldier led a horse slowly through the deep puddle that always formed at the far side of the bridge during heavy rain.

A riderless horse.

A packhorse? There was something on its back.

What had the king sent?

Hooves beat an ominous drum roll on the wooden bridge.

Then, alerted by their own mysterious instinct, her father’s hounds ran forward, already howling their dirge, and Claire’s tears started. Swelling, trickling, bouncing down onto her damp tunic, they almost seemed part of the relentless rain.

The whole world wept, as well it should.

Her father, Lord Clarence of Summerbourne, had returned to his home.

Amid the mournful chorus, the cloaked man led the horse up to the hall, to within a foot of where Claire stood.

“This be the remains of Clarence of Summerbourne,” said the foot soldier, stolidly reciting his piece. “Lord Renald of Summerbourne has conveyed him here with all speed, and grants his family till vespers to mourn before he will enter.”

With a bow, he turned and slogged back out of the manor.

Claire watched him go, able to do nothing but stand frozen. She didn’t want to touch the bundle. She didn’t want to cut ropes and unwrap it. She didn’t want to see the final brutal truth.

Then her mother wailed and embraced the bundle, calling for servants to come help take care of Lord Clarence. The servants wept, too, as they eased the leather bundle off the horse and carried it gently into the hall.

The world wept.

Claire trailed after numbly, and watched as they laid the bundle on the table and began to cut the ropes that bound it.

She turned away, not ready to face the truth, then started when she heard a mighty thud.

What was happening?

What were they destroying?

Then she realized it was only the bar settling back to seal the closed gates. Ah, yes. The invader would stay outside until vespers, but then he would enter to seize her home.

Because her father was dead.

Claire made herself turn back.

The servants were gently peeling back the sodden, hooded cloak. She’d seen death. She’d helped to lay out the dead, including her grandfather, an uncle, an aunt, and a baby brother and sister.

She didn’t want to lay out her father.

As the last part of the wrapping was peeled back, she stared. This wasn’t her father! This mailed man wasn’t Clarence of Summerbourne.

But it was, though she could scare believe the picture before her eyes. After all, he’d ridden out in ordinary clothes. She’d never actually seen her father in armor before.

Now a mail coif covered his soft, pale hair, and he’d shaved off the mustache and beard he’d always worn in the old English manner. A sword and battered shield lay neatly on top of him, his hands clasped around the hilt.

No, she wanted to say. No. This is all wrong. He should be in his favorite blue wool gown with his rabbit-fur blanket over his legs to keep them warm. Instead of a sword, one of his books should lie open under his gentle hands as if he had just paused in reading it.

She stepped forward over the hounds that lay slumped down now, sad heads on paws. Looking at her father’s pale face, she could almost believe he was sleeping.

No. That wasn’t true either.

He looked dead, and rather older. Only thirty-five years old, with roundish cheeks often rounder with smiles, he’d been her friend as well as father. Now his cheeks had sunk, and gray death had stolen the merry man. She fell to her knees.

People spoke in hushed voices, moving around her. She knew she should be doing something—caring for her brother, or supporting her mother. For now she could do nothing but kneel here, wet cheek to hard, cold iron, saying farewell. How wrong this harsh, violent stuff must have felt against his skin. If only he had never felt called to put it on.

In the end people moved her and lifted him to a long board so as to carry him to the chapel. She watched the cortege leave, knowing she should go too, with her mother and brother.