Chapter 38
Ranulf saw the smoke for several
bone-jangling, heart-wrenching miles as he urged the indifferent
nag he was riding to its best speed. Too soon, and yet not soon
enough, he and his reduced company galloped toward the dark pall
hanging over the castle turrets. He thundered past stragglers
clutching baskets and small chests, but when he shouted, “What
news?” he received no answers.
He jolted past men sitting on the
scorched earth, many with tears scoring down their smoke-blackened
faces, but the wood behind the camp was still green in a world
turned gray and black, and he clutched to hope like a sacred relic.
Edith would have reached the wood and would be safe there: he knew
this even as he entered the great field and saw the smoldering
wrecks of tents and wagons.
“Has there been a war?” Edmund asked,
his voice cracking as if he was five years younger.
Ranulf gritted his teeth and lashed his
horse, weaving round the trails of ash and embers. The stink of
fire, charred wood, burned cloth and flesh smacked him like a punch
in the back of his throat. It had been a whirlwind of flame and
destruction.
He rode on, seeing a glove, a single
gauge, pinned to a barrel by a long metal nail. It was a bizarre
accident and, sickeningly, it reminded him of a glove he had seen
before, pinned in a very different way. When he found Olwen dead on
the track that fatal morning, a single glove—given her by Giles—had
been pinned beneath her twisted body. In his shock and grief he had
never thought of it, never saw it as anything but tragic
mischance.
What if it was more,
though? Giles loves to gloat. What if Giles ordered that glove left
under my Olwen, as a sign? What if he took the other glove as a
grisly token of some kind?
Perhaps he was wrong, but he had never
found the other glove.
When I return to the
north, I must walk those woodland tracks.
He had avoided it because walking where
Olwen had died gave him no pleasure. Now he recognized he had no
choice.
Later, that is for
later. Where is Edith?
Up ahead, sitting on the ground on a
saddle without a horse, a lad with long red hair rocked to and fro.
Ranulf called to the boy. “Hey! Have you seen—?”
As the huddled figure looked up at him,
he realized that this was a girl—one of the dagger-girls who
haunted every tourney ground. Swiftly, he checked his first
question, about Edith. “Do you need help, girl?”
“To lose more?”
Ranulf found his bag of coins and
tossed it to her.
“Thank you kindly, sir.” She bowed her
head and shook the coin bag, a strange smile hovering about her
lips. “Are you sure?”
Before he could ask her what she meant,
his squire began shouting.
“Sir! Look here, look you!” Off to one
side, Edmund had dismounted and was kicking through ash piles
farther up the hill. Now he fell to his knees and began desperately
scooping and flinging charred wood and canvas away from a prone
figure.
“Oh, God.” Twisting onto his belly,
Edmund was copiously sick.
Ranulf swallowed his own mouthful of
bile and swung down from the horse, kneeling stiffly beside his
captain. Staring at the stricken face, twisted as a gargoyle, he
acknowledged that the world was truly mad. Stephen had been a
doughty fighter, a good man, betrothed to one of the maids. He had
survived the war in France and the pestilence; now he was dead with
a crossbow bolt through his heart. Forcing his icy hands to move,
Ranulf closed the man’s staring eyes and tried to recall a
prayer.
“Treachery.” The girl spoke his
thought. “Your man had no chance. When she allowed herself to be
taken, the rest of your company lost heart and scattered. They are
long gone.”
The girl shook the bag of money again.
“Sir Giles offered her more gold than this. He killed your man when
he protested as she took it.”
Ranulf closed his own eyes and tried,
for the sake of Stephen’s soul, to say a prayer. There was no doubt
whom this distraught young woman meant by she, but he did not believe it. She loathed Giles, and
with good reason.
She lies, yes, and has
lied, and doubtless will always stretch and mold the truth, but not
to harm. Never to hurt others. She detests Giles! She has cause to
hate him. You know this.
“Fired at by a fellow knight.” Edmund
was shaking like a loosened window shutter. “By a friend.”
“It happens,” Ranulf said harshly,
wanting to stop the lad from sinking into tears that he would
loathe himself forever after for shedding. “Get off your knees and
see if you can see any of the men hereabouts. Baldwin”—he called to
another man who had gone out hunting with them; an older, steadier
sort—“You look, too. The rest stay close.”
He tore off his cloak and used it to
cover Stephen, blocking out the deep hole in his body. The poor
wretch looked as if he was sleeping, in a bad dream, which was
worse, but at least the bloodstains were hidden.
“You.” He did not want to speak any
more to the dagger-girl, but need compelled him. “You say my lady
is with Sir Giles?”
She laughed, showing crooked teeth.
“They went off together on horseback.”
Ranulf was glad his squire was out of
earshot. “She went with him willingly?”
“Eagerly, my lord. Most
eagerly.”
You lie! Edith
had never lied like this, for malice. What harm had she ever done
this redhead? None, he wagered. Fighting it down, Ranulf mastered
his rage and asked quietly, “How long ago was this? Which
direction?”
The girl shrugged, making a great play
of stirring the ash near her feet with her heels. “Here and there.
I did not notice. I cannot say how long.”
“He can, though,” said Lucy, coming
alongside Ranulf. Carrying Rano in a sling, she had emerged from
behind a heap of charred planks—part of a mock “castle” that had
been caught in the conflagration along with so much else. Beside
her, having just released her hand, Gawain held himself very
straight, his lips moving as he whispered something over and over
to himself.
“Yes, my page?” Ranulf crouched so he
and Gawain were a height.
Gawain glanced up at Lucy, who nodded,
and the boy took a deep breath.
“My lady was beaten by Sir Giles and
she fainted. He used his crossbow like a sword, hacking about with
it. He did not see me because I hid behind a water
barrel.”
Edith
struck—Ranulf gripped his own arms tightly before he started
smashing everything in sight. His head felt as if it might leave
his body, he was so lurid and hot with anger. I
should have killed him in the forest when I had the chance, without
waiting to see justice done.
Gawain chewed on his lower lip. “I did
not challenge him.”
“You did right,” Ranulf said quickly.
“You kept watch for me.”
“See?” Lucy said, resting a
work-roughened hand on the little boy’s shoulder. “I told you your
lord would not blame you.”
“Before he took her, she said
something.” Gawain frowned. “I do not understand it.”
Spit it out,
boy! Ranulf rocked on his heels, grinding a charred tent
pole under his boots, imagining it as Giles’s face. “Whatever you
remember is useful,” he encouraged him as his guts boiled at the
slowness of all this. “It will help me to find her.”
The dagger-girl snorted, but Ranulf
ignored her.
“Anything, Gawain.”
Gawain hopped from one foot to the
other. “I want to come,” he burst out. “I want to rescue
her.”
“And you shall.” Ranulf would have
promised anything. “Where should we ride?”
“To the yellow castle.” Gawain took
another deep breath and recited, “‘Not the yellow castle.’ That is
what my lady said, exactly.”
Giles has no yellow
castles, was Ranulf’s first thought, and he glanced from
Gawain to Lucy. “What is it, and where?” he cried out. “Where?
Where in all this realm of England do I seek her?” Frustration
gnawed at him like a wolf chewing on a bone.
“In the greenwood there are people with
us who will know,” Lucy answered, calm and warm as new milk. “Our
lady told us to gather there, and we have.”
Ranulf rose. “Take me to
them.”
“She does not want to be found,” the
dagger-girl muttered spitefully as he passed her. She was still
sitting in the midst of the smoking tourney field on the saddle
without a horse. “A fool’s quest.”
“Better a fool than a viper,” Ranulf
answered.
Stalking behind Lucy and his scampering
page, he realized too late that he had forgotten his captain, lying
dead and untended on the tourney field like so much midden
rubbish.
Forgive me, old
friend, he thought, and he shouted to Edmund to see to
Stephen’s body and to gather the rest of his forces.
“To the greenwood, quick as you can!”
he ordered. “Bring fresh horses, good runners!”
He wanted them all to be riding out
again within an hour.
To this yellow castle,
wherever that is.
Lady Blanche looked out over the
battlements of the bailey of her castle. With a sigh, she marked
how one section of the curtain wall still needed repairs, and that
after her husband had promised he would see to it. Richard, of
course, was excited about his latest joust. He was like a boy
playing with a barrel of apples, she thought, and the picture gave
her no peace. Her husband’s love of the tourney had, over the
years, meant that she remained in this cold, small castle, and that
her dowry had been spent on elaborate prizes and
entertainments.
And for what? The fools had succeeded
in setting their own camp ablaze, and so her careful plans were
ruined: they would not now be spending money in her markets. She
had been ill and none of those courteous gentle knights had called
on her. The mob in the churchyard was back, and Richard was making
jokes about barring the castle gates. Her harvesters were demanding
more money. It was not as bad as two years ago, during the time of
the great death, but it was poor enough.
She heard galloping horses and
peered—her eyes were weak at a distance—over the battlements
again.
“My Lady Blanche!”
She recognized Sir Ranulf by his bellow
and bowed stiffly to him. Where was her husband, to stand with her
facing this handsome brute? Off stuffing himself with cheese and
fruit tarts in the kitchen, no doubt.
“I trust you are now recovered, my
lady.”
She said nothing, refusing to be
mollified. She still ached from the fever and was sore all over. He
was plainly not riding to see her, or joining her joust of peace:
he and his men were in drab battle dress and armed to the hilt. Sir
Ranulf was in his usual black armor but it was very drab,
mud-splattered, without shine, and no favors anywhere.
He glowered at her as if she was a
target and bawled out, “My lady, have you seen Sir Giles? And the
princess? I must have urgent speech with them.”
Did he mean they were now a pair?
Despite her aching back and sides, Lady Blanche began to be
intrigued. “I am not sure,” she called down. “Would they have
passed this way?” Recalling now that the princess had never called
or asked after her, she added, quite deliberately, “I may have seen
a couple riding forth, oh, an hour ago. Very comfortable they
seemed together. He was kissing her hand as a sign of his
admiration.”
Even though her eyes were weak at a
distance, she saw his face darken.
She added a final twist. “The lady was
laughing.” Let Sir Ranulf make what he would have of that news, she thought, satisfied when the knight said a
brusque, “Fare you well,” and rode on. Did these men think she had
nothing better to do than to gossip and to keep watch?
And how was she going to pay the
harvesters?