SirenSong (49 page)

It was just about the time the shoe was cast that William
blew the
mort
. Inside the keep, they heard, for they had been warned and
were listening. Alys and Elizabeth stopped what they were doing and looked at
each other.

Both had been very busy, Elizabeth preparing for the
treatment of the wounded and Alys for the last-ditch defense of the keep
itself. Both had feared it would come to this, but it was a shock that the
defense of the walls had failed so quickly. Still, both were calm. Alys knew
there was nothing to fear for herself. Her plans were made. Elizabeth also had
little fear. She would live or die with William. She wished to live, but she
did not fear to die with him.

The horn was a signal for a furious spurt of activity. The
great wooden shutters that closed the windows of the keep were braced with
heavy bars. Pails of water were poured over the iron-bound foot-thick wooden door
that closed the hall off from the outside stairs. The tops were knocked from
several barrels of oil that stood just outside on the landing of the stairs
that rose into the keep in the forebuilding. These stairs, unlike those of
stone that connected the floors of the keep inside one tower, were made of
wood. Torches were thrust into the fire and carried to holders on each side of
the doorway, others were laid ready. All this was work for the ablebodied. The
old men and women clustered together, pounding herbs and preparing medicinal
draughts and ointments according to Elizabeth’s instructions. Those too feeble
for this work prayed. Martin had been among the latter group. He was not so
feeble as to be unable to prepare for the wounded, but he never did such tasks
because of his deep fear that he was an unclean thing whose evil would somehow
contaminate the healing materials and make them ineffective or even deadly.
Although Martin fought the feeling, telling himself that God was good, it
always lay in him, ready to rise and choke him. At the sound of the horn,
Martin’s prayer faltered and he fell silent.

For a few minutes he remained kneeling, then looked blankly
around at the seeming chaos that was swiftly readying Marlowe for its final
stand. It was his fault, Martin thought dully. Abbot Martin and Abbot Anselm
had been wrong. They had tried to believe and to teach him that the outward
form does not reflect the inner soul. He had struggled all his life to believe
that, struggled to root out all evil from his soul so that it should be
straight and beautiful in God’s eyes even if his body was ugly and crooked.

Until a few weeks ago, Martin had continued to hope that the
abbots who saved him and were kind to him were right. When Abbot Paul had cast
him out, he had said that the soul in so warped a body could not be saved
except by death immediately after baptism.

It was a soul created by the devil and oozed evil. It was
the evil in Martin that had corrupted the abbey, Abbot Paul claimed, not his
own laxness.

When he lay dying in the road, Martin had wondered if that
could be true. But then Sir William had found him and his life had been filled
with richness and kindness and love. He had thought little of Abbot Paul’s
cruel words, preferring to believe that God had afflicted him, found him
worthy, and brought him in His own mysterious ways to a place where he could
perfect his goodness and die in peace. Now, standing and watching everyone make
ready to die—although they did not yet know it—Martin wondered if his rescue
and years of happiness had been another snare and delusion of the devil.

Had evil oozed from him and little by little rotted Marlowe?
It seemed so, indeed. After long years of resistance, Sir William, his greatest
benefactor, had yielded to sin and committed adultery with the woman he had
loved purely for so long. Little Alys, as pure and stainless as gold, had
overthrown the meekness and obedience required of women and said in a voice of
adamant and with eyes glittering with the flame of hatred that she would commit
the mortal sin of murder. And now Marlowe itself and all in it were about to be
destroyed. Had all this corruption come from him?

Was there no way, Martin wondered, to redeem the evil he had
wrought? He knew God was stronger than the devil. He knew He did not will evil,
not even to those He hated, much less to those He loved. Surely there must be a
reason that God had permitted him to be born, even if the devil planned it. God
was the stronger. If there was no reason, there was no God. Yet man had free
will, and it was his duty to find his own way, to find the reason that made
sense of life. So, Martin thought, retreating instinctively to a dark corner
where he would not be in the way, he must discover the reason for himself,
since surely God did exist.

Only it was very hard to think when his own guilt and his
hatred for Mauger, who was surely more evil than he because evil clothed in
fair form was more deadly than naked evil… That was the answer! The evil that
was nakedly foul—himself—was put in this place to rid the world of the evil
that was outwardly fair. How right! How just! How good was God!

Suddenly all was clear. Martin began to inch his way along
the wall, sliding into Sir William’s chamber to pick up a long-bladed,
razor-sharp hunting knife which he tucked into the bosom of his tunic. Then he
sidled along the wall again, closer and closer to the stairs, unnoticed,
waiting until he could slip out. He felt strong and light as he never had
before, sure at last, if not of redemption, that he understood the reason for
his damnation.

If he did not stop the fair-seeming evil that was Mauger, it
would spread corruption far and wide. Martin realized now that he had not
corrupted Marlowe, nonetheless, he was still at fault. He should have seen his
duty sooner and done it, but the evil was so fair-looking, Mauger being tall
and blond and handsome with a ready smile that he had been blind. Thus Mauger
had corrupted Marlowe. Lady Elizabeth, being good, had sensed the evil under
the fair looks and had been unable to love her husband. That fact had called to
Sir William like a siren song over the years. Mauger had threatened to force
marriage on Alys, and that had turned her from womanly thoughts of love and
devotion to hatred and murder.

So all was clear. Since he had been so blind, Mauger had at
last openly committed evil. God did not ask the impossible of any but the
saints, so God had made it possible for him to understand and to deal with the
evil that endangered man and to keep clean the sweet, pure souls of those in
Marlowe.

Then all was ready at the stairs and Alys called the
servants away so that none would block the passage where those men who could,
fled the walls and began to retreat into the keep itself. As swiftly as he
could, Martin made his way down the stairs. He was only just in time and slid
aside into the darkest part of the forebuilding as the groaning wounded
stumbled in through the door to the bailey.

They were the first to come, let through by Hugo to crawl
down the stairs by the side of the southwest tower. Others, Martin knew, must
be coming down the gate tower, which Sir William had been defending. All the
men of Marlowe keep were drawing together, trying to fight their way through
their enemies to one stair or the other. Although he could not see it, Martin
could imagine the attackers pouring over the wall as the defenders yielded or
retreated, trying to overwhelm them before they could escape into the great
keep itself.

Through the relatively flimsy wooden structure of the forebuilding
which was a shelter against the weather and not meant to be defensible, Martin
could hear the tempo of the battle increase. He could not understand this. It
seemed to him that as men left the fighting, it should grow less. He was not
worried, however. He knew that Sir William would come last, shepherding his
men. Then there would be time for him to get out. He knew just where to hide.

There was nothing mysterious about the increasing noise of
battle. The defenders were bunching together, coalescing into larger and larger
groups—those who could. This permitted them to dispose of any attackers between
their groups as each group strove to reach the tower or the stairs. They could
overthrow the ladders that intervened because a few fought on the periphery of
the group while the others had time to denude the ladders of climbers by
pouring hot oil or sand or dropping rocks on them and then pushing the ladders
over.

As the groups grew, however, more and more of the wall was
left completely undefended. The attackers poured into these areas without
resistance, and they did not stand idle. They charged with desperate ferocity,
doing their best to break up the defenders, to get to the stairs and into the
tower before the defenders could. These men were nearly all experienced
mercenaries. They knew that taking a keep was both the most dangerous and most
profitable of the various types of war. But to gain the real profit, the women,
the rich drinking and eating vessels, the jewels and money and cloth, one had
to get into the heart of the keep itself. If William and his men could get off
the wall and inside first, it would take another desperate and even more
dangerous assault to win.

In a very short time, there were many more of Mauger’s men
on the walls than William’s, and many groups were broken. The only reason that
all the defenders were not immediately overwhelmed was that the battlements
were only wide enough for four men to stand abreast, and if they did they could
hardly move. Thus no more than three of the invaders could confront three of
the defenders at any one time or place. Still, the numbers told heavily against
William’s men as did the need to carry with them as many of their wounded as
they could. Mauger’s force could replace those who were wearied or only a
little hurt with fresh men. There was no relief for William’s people.

The mercenary troop leaders knew their business. As soon as
it was clear that the intention of the defenders was to escape, they began to
bellow for the archers to come up. Protected by the heavily armed men-at-arms,
the archers could shoot at those defending the tower and stairs with little
danger of hitting their own comrades. For William’s men there was also the
danger of watching for the shafts. Many fell to sword strokes because their
eyes were elsewhere at the wrong moment.

William, himself, who knew better, had to fight the
temptation to watch for arrows. The memory of being struck was still green. He
fought with the strength of desperation, panting for breath as fatigue and loss
of blood seemed to deprive him of air. He struggled, too, to call encouragement
to those who still strove to reach him. Many did not. Caught between terror and
terror, many of the recruits threw down their arms and cried for quarter.

At last it seemed to William that he and the few veterans
who fought beside him were all the resistance left on his side of the tower. He
shouted, “Down! Down!” and began to back toward the door. He would have been
last in, but his men saw his weakness and closed up before him, thrusting him
back. A flash of pride was drowned in reason. William stepped back into shelter
and stood leaning on his sword, fighting off the desire to let everything go
and drop.

He had little time to gather strength. The last of the men
who had won their way around the walls were coming through the other door.
Close behind them pressed the attackers. William stopped the last of his men,
shouting that one should grab the door bar, the others should pull the closest
opponents through to them, then slam and bar the door. Briefly William was
engaged again in killing one of the too-eager attackers. Then the bars were
fast. Blows battered at the heavy wooden door, shaking the thick bars, but it
would take more than men’s bodies to burst through that obstruction. A ram
would be necessary.

His energy restored a little by this success, William turned
to the side he had been defending and shouted at the men to come through. One,
then another came. William braced himself to fight again, and found Diccon
beside him, yelling about the stairs at the other end.

“Can you hold and bar this door?” William asked.

Diccon was so spattered with blood that William could not
tell whether it came from the master-at-arm’s body or from other men. There was
no hesitation, however, in Diccon’s assurance that he could nor any lack of
energy in the way he sprang toward the still-open portal. If the defense of the
stairs near the keep failed, they would have to fight their way across the
bailey and might find the forebuilding held against them. Worse, Alys and
Elizabeth would never close the keep while he was outside, and the attackers
might get in.

William ran down the stairs of the tower, only just catching
himself before he toppled over in his haste. He managed to stay upright, but he
was sweating and grinding his teeth with fear before he came out into the
bailey and saw there was no fighting there yet. He bellowed to the men running
toward the forebuilding to go to the stairs. Most of them paid no heed, being
blind and deaf with fear and fixed on reaching safety. Two or three understood,
and those who were following him down the tower steps were all veterans and
came with him.

They were in time, although barely—but barely was enough.
The tide of attackers gathering to pour down the stairs as the plug that had
defended it so long failed, met a new, firm resistance. The last of the wounded
hobbled, staggered, crawled, or were dragged into the forebuilding. For a
minute, two, William and the men with him, who now included Diccon, held on,
not realizing those left in the bailey were already dead or too far gone to
move. In those two minutes, Martin sidled through the door, flattened himself
against the wall of the forebuilding, and slipped around the side toward the
northeast.

No one noticed the single bent figure in dark clothes
hobbling along. If a man or two did see him, they dismissed him from their
minds as another of the wounded. The scuttling form paused a moment in the dark
angle between the forebuilding and the northwest tower, rounded that, and made
a wavering dash for a low stone shelter built out from the wall itself. He
might have been seen then, except that shouts of fury burst from the men
fighting on the stairs as William’s party suddenly broke contact and ran, with
every bit of strength left in them, for the forebuilding.