Something Red (19 page)

“Roger!” shouted Hob.

The unmoving rider in the center now lifted a hand, shaded his eyes from the whipping snow. “Who’s that, then?” he called.

“Ranulf, sir, it’s Mistress Molly’s folk! It’s Hob!”

Ranulf spurred up close to Molly; he touched his forehead.

“God and His saints protect you, Mistress,” said Ranulf, almost shouting to make himself heard above the gale.

Molly had not met Ranulf at the monastery, but she had listened to
Hob’s account, and had considered the soldiers’ invitation before deciding otherwise. Now the world had changed around her, and any haven was welcome; she greeted the man-at-arms cordially.

“And you, sergeant,” she said in a voice that by some means carried bell-clear above the wind. “Well met at this stormy crossroads.”

When he heard this last Hob looked about in some surprise. At first there was nothing to see but the shifting veils of snow, behind which he could dimly perceive the black walls of the woods, the white folds and hollows of the ground beneath its steadily increasing blanket. Then he became aware of three irregular patches near the road, somewhat darker than the surrounding land. From the central patch protruded the charred end of a log: this was their campsite when first they crossed the Dawlish. At this spot crossed the southern road they had just returned on, the eastern road to Blanchefontaine Castle, and the short western spur that ended at Dickon’s Ford. The Dawlish was very near, then—hidden from the eye by the blowing snow, hidden from the ear by the moaning wind.

There followed a period of some confusion, as the riders advanced and clustered about the lead wagon, the horses restless and frightened in the storm. The riderless horses now proved to be those mounts sold to the castle that Ranulf had awaited at the monastery.

Nemain and Jack Brown once more set brakes and trudged forward, to see what was toward. Nemain was hunched inside an enormous sheepskin cloak of her grandmother’s, the fleece inward, yet she shivered somewhat; Jack’s coat was crusted white across his broad shoulders, yet he seemed not to notice, and had only drawn up his hood as a concession to the weather.

“We make our way to Blanchefontaine, Sir Jehan’s hold. We passed by Osbert’s Inn at midday, and hope to come nigh the castle before dark, or mayhap soon after.”

“And what was it you saw at Osbert’s Inn, sergeant, and you passing by?”

“Slaughter, Mistress—we had hoped to stay a day there, but . . . I spoke with the reeve’s man there, and he said you had left that morning, and he commended you to me. Come you with us to the castle, Mistress. This storm will only wax the stronger. You will be well received, and you are not safe out here: if the cold does not kill you, this terrible creature will.”

“Indeed I had some such thought myself, the southern way being blocked, and the animals tired and hungry, and we looking to take refuge somewhere.”

After some consultation about the order of march, Molly sent Hob back to help Nemain with the little wagon, while she mounted to the lead wagon’s seat. Ranulf assigned one of his horsemen—Goscelin or Joscelin, Hob was never sure of the man’s name—to ride beside Mavourneen, with a line to her bridle, as an aid to the two young ones in controlling the donkey, whose sweet temperament was somewhat offset by the fear and disorientation that the weather engendered.

Ranulf and the body of his men went forward, that the trampling of so many hooves might ease the passage of the wagons. Roger and another man rode immediately in front of Molly’s wagon, each with two unsaddled horses trailing behind, lead ropes tied to the soldiers’ saddles, and Olivier was off to the side.

Olivier slowed his horse till he fetched up level with Molly’s seat on the big wagon. He rode alongside for a bit, a rangy, strongly made man. His rough tenor came clear through the moaning of the wind. He spoke loudly enough for Roger riding in front, and even Hob in the wagon behind, to hear.

“Mistress, I’ll wager Roger would trade you his mare for that sweet little donkey.”

Roger did not turn his head. His voice drifted back to them.

“Shut up, Olivier,” he said.

R
ANULF WAS CLEARLY
a leader of some experience. He set a pace that was brisk but not sufficient to stretch out the column, and every so often would walk his horse to the side and let the column proceed past him, counting his men and his horses: he wanted no one wandering off into the snowstorm. When Jack came past with the last wagon, Ranulf would turn his horse’s head and nudge it into a trot up the line to resume his place at the head of his troop.

But after a while the brisk pace slowed to a plod, and then became a gritted-teeth struggle against the weight of the cold, the snow, the increasingly obscure path through the forest. Twice Ranulf halted the column to send out scouts to either side. He had them secure long lines to their saddles, the other ends held by their comrades, as they walked their mounts at right angles to the path to find landmarks that could not be seen through the whipping veils of white; after a bit they would come back and confirm the party’s position, having ridden up close to this rock or that broken tree that normally could be spotted from the trail.

A dimming of the light behind the ceiling of cloud had signaled the close of day when the riders ahead of the wagons slowed and began to bunch up, and finally halted altogether. Molly set the brake and went forward through the snow to see what was amiss. When Nemain, leaning sideways to peer ahead, saw her grandmother dismount, she did so as well. Hob, cramped and uncomfortable on the chilly wagon seat, climbed down and followed her, thinking to bring some blood and hence warmth to his legs.

The two made their way up the column, past Roger and the riders ahead—Nemain had to skip aside as one of the riderless horses, restless, danced about on the trail, pulling at its lead—till they came to where Molly stood with Ranulf and a couple of his men, dismounted. They were staring down at a body at the side of the road. The experienced warhorses stood quietly, but some of the riderless horses, not yet
trained, had backed to the ends of their lead ropes, nostrils flared at the scent of blood.

The corpse, plainly visible, lay on a patch of ground bare of snow, sheltered as it was under the thick lower branches of a mountain pine. It was a man in ragged green hose, grimy-handed, with a golden beard and a gash that ripped him from crutch to ribs. Parts of him, too big to be the work of birds, had been eaten. Hob gaped at him. Gold-Beard.

Behind the pine was a tiny clear space before the next rank of trees began, and there were snow-covered mounds there; beside one was a small dead animal of some sort. Hob squinted at it. It was a brown leather shoe, and part of an ankle clad in brown hose, that protruded from the snowdrift. Gold-Beard was not the only bandit to have been caught here by the nameless terror.

Molly stood from her examination. She turned in a circle, looking into the white whirl of the storm that was uncommunicative as the grave.

“Does it range these forests everywhere, and it scouring the woodland for meat the while?”

“The castle is not far, Mistress. Let us get behind its walls,” said Ranulf. Then he turned to his men. “Mount!”

The column re-formed as Molly and the two young folk tramped back to the wagons.

B
UT, AS THOUGH TO MOCK
Ranulf’s eagerness for refuge, the storm redoubled in intensity. Drifts lay across the trail, ice spicules stung the face, and the wind through the harp of the trees rose from moans and wails to a shrieking roar.

The light began to fail, and Ranulf had tallow-coated torches of pinewood broken out from one of the packhorses. He ducked inside Molly’s big wagon and plied flint and steel. After some difficulty, a torch
was ignited and he came out and lit the others from it. The resin and tallow warred with the snow and it was uncertain whether they would stay lit. Some went out; others held a spitting, wavering flame.

Halts to send scouts to the side, secured by lines, became more frequent. Finally they stopped. Ranulf could no longer tell where they were, save that the castle must be very near. Snow began to accumulate on the roofs and the left side of the wagons, on the horses’ rumps and the riders’ shoulders. Heads were bowed and hoods held close to foil the worst of the biting winds. Ranulf sent a man back to Goscelin where he rode at Mavourneen’s head; after a moment’s consultation, Goscelin undid leather lashings and handed over a curving shape swathed in goatskin: a hunting horn. The first rider took it and rode back up the line.

A moment later they heard the braying call of the horn from the head of the column. Nemain, on the seat at Hob’s right, cocked her head to hear a reply. The horn wound again. She pulled her hood back; beneath her hood she wore a coif, a helmet-close cap of linen that covered her ears. She undid the laces under her chin and pulled up the flaps over her ears, the better to hear. She leaned across Hob, bracing an elbow on his thigh, and gazed into the darkening forest.

Suddenly the wind fell off sharply; the warm salt scent of her body rose to Hob from beneath the sheepskin cloak. She leaned, listening for an answer from the night. The ruddy fluttering light from Goscelin’s torch played over her as she cocked her head to hear, and Hob found himself marveling, despite the aching cold tormenting him, at the translucent perfection of her ear, red-tipped in the frosty air, set close to the skull and delicately back-slanted—he wondered dreamily how he had never noticed this before. To Hob they two seemed sheltered in a circle of wavering red-gold torchlight, and the whole world left outside in the darkness, and before him flitted a brief, incoherent memory of last summer: warm sunlight filtering through the treetops, green leaves, green eyes.

“There!” she said, pointing forward but to the left, and just then the wind returned and slapped snow into his face, and he awoke to the night, and his fear of the unknown slayer, and his dull grief for the lost Margery; and Nemain was just a skinny girl again and halfway to being his sister. He wondered if he had slept for a moment.

Hob peered up the line of the stalled caravan. He could just discern, through the snowfall, Molly climbing down from her wagon seat, swathed in one of her shawls, and making her way forward. Presumably if Nemain could hear the horn’s answer, Molly could as well.

Up at the front of the column Ranulf sounded the horn again and this time even Hob could hear the reply from the castle, not the raucous bawling of the cow horn Ranulf blew but a deeper bronze moan, just perceptible above the gale, but very different in tone from the voice of the storm.

Soon thereafter Molly returned to her wagon and the little column resumed its progress, moving ahead and veering slightly to the left. There was another stop to wind the horn, and this time the reply was close. The weather made one more prodigious effort to defeat them, the snow seeming a solid barrier, the wind shrieking. The company stumbled ahead—they were half-blind, but hope had set their hearts alight and strengthened their limbs, and they moved quickly.

And again the wind dropped off sharply, and Hob became aware of a looming darkness directly before them. The column of horsemen ahead halted, Molly’s wagon halted, and Nemain set the brake as the little ass halted as well.

Goscelin looked back at Hob and Nemain from his place by

Mavourneen’s head. He was grinning broadly within his hood.

“The castle,” he said.

Part
III

THE CASTLE

CHAPTER 12

G
OSCELIN DISMOUNTED
. H
E
wrapped his mount’s reins and Mavourneen’s lead rope about his free hand and held the torch high, peering through the snowfall to see what they were doing ahead. After a bit Molly’s wagon rumbled on, and Goscelin began to trudge forward, leading the two animals toward a short movable wooden bridge.

The bridge spanned a dry moat, two fathoms deep and as wide across; on the far side a tall hedge of English thorn ran along the inner bank of the moat, an impenetrable wall of intertwined branches thick with three-inch flesh-tearing spears. Ranulf had placed men on both sides of the bridge, with the sputtering tallow-and-pinewood torches casting a fidgeting light over the snow-covered planks. To either hand the snowflakes dropped into the golden torchlight, glittered an instant, and fell from sight into the dark ditch. The
boards mumbled and banged beneath the hooves and wheels, and the wagon slid a little sideways, making Hob snatch for a handhold as his balance wavered. He sent a swift wordless prayer that the side rails of the bridge might be stout enough to hold the wagon if they struck. An instant later the skid stopped.

Then they were over the gap, still on the extended tail of the bridge. This tail rested on log rollers; the bridge could thus be drawn back toward the castle if necessary, leaving no way across the moat. The wagon rolled off the bridge tail and bumped down onto the clear stretch of snow-clad earth between the hedge and the castle gatehouse.

The gatehouse was formed from two round towers, midway in the western curtain wall. The towers were conjoined by a rectangular three-story structure that housed the entrance to the castle courtyard. The valves of the outer doors stood open, and Ranulf and the advance guard had already ridden in, trailing their share of the new horses. Their hooves rang on the stone, a hollow din, booming in the enclosed space. Molly’s wagon followed them, and there was still room within the gatehouse passage for the small middle wagon. Goscelin walked them in under the ceiling, a low-arched affair of stone, pierced with round holes; each hole was perhaps a cubit in diameter. The walls on left and right had narrow vertical openings in the stone: arrow slits.