Читать книгу Medieval Brides - Anne Herries - Страница 24

Adam stripped off his gloves as he crossed the threshold of Fulford Hall and nodded a greeting at Gudrun, who was sewing in the doorway where the light was strongest. She had her cloak about her shoulders to ward off the draught. Neatly avoiding little Agatha, who was laying in the rushes, Adam gratefully accepted the mug of ale Matty offered him and made a beeline for the fireside. The ride back from Winchester had given him a thirst, and he was damp to his core.

Matty relieved him of his cloak, shook it out, and slung it over a nearby peg. Maurice came in. He was on his own, as Richard and his squire were no longer with them, having remained behind in Winchester. Adam could see no sign of their guests, or his wife. As he unbuckled his sword and took a seat on one of the fireside stools, he wondered where she was. After receiving Félix Tihell’s intelligence that some rebels were definitely hiding out near Fulford, he found he needed to see her. Where the devil was she?

Gudrun was bent industriously over some linen, scissors flashing as she cut off a length of thread. Herfu clattered in, looked at Adam, and stopped dead in his tracks. Tutting, Gudrun flapped at the lad to get him out of her light, and as he moved towards Matty and the ale jug he threw Adam an odd look.

‘Gudrun, where is Cecily?’ Adam asked, in his halting, careful English.

The housekeeper glanced up from threading a needle. ‘Went out, sir,’ she answered shortly, and bent back over her work.

Adam glanced at the wood basket, and was glad to see that it had been replenished since dawn, when he’d ridden out. He cast a log on the fire. A stool creaked as Maurice joined him. ‘Out? Where?’

Gudrun hunched deeper over her sewing. ‘I do not know. She didn’t say.’

Brian Herfu cleared his throat and pushed himself away from the trestle. ‘Sir Adam?’

‘You know where she is, Herfu?’

‘N-no, sir.’

The lad’s leg was jiggling, the way it had when they had faced the Saxon shield wall at Hastings, before the Breton line broke, the way it invariably did when Brian was facing something unpleasant. Cold fingers trailed down Adam’s back. ‘Herfu?’

‘Your lady went out before noon, sir. She led me to believe she was only beating the bounds, setting the miller’s boys to work in the woods. I…I thought she would be back within the hour…’

Throat dry, Adam got slowly to his feet. ‘And…?’

‘After two hours had passed Le Blanc went to look for her, and…and he…he’s not returned either.’

Adam stared blankly at Herfu for a moment because his mind, despite all they had learned from Tihell in Winchester, refused to digest what the lad was saying. ‘She’s gone?’ This was what he had feared would happen from the moment Tihell had informed him that Emma of Fulford had been tracked going onto the Downs a few miles south of here. So why should he feel as though the ground had been cut away beneath his feet? Why was there a pain in his chest?

Herfu nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘You are certain she went willingly?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Adam’s heart fell to his boots. ‘Well, Maurice,’ he said, disgusted to hear a distinct tremor in his voice, ‘it seems Tihell was in the right. Her sister is in the area. Would you care to lay odds on my wife having joined her sister with the Saxon rebels?’

Rising, Maurice stood awkwardly at Adam’s side and jerked his head towards Gudrun, who had laid aside her sewing and was openly observing Adam’s reaction. ‘I’m not so sure, sir. That one knows more, I’m sure.’

Thrusting his ale at Maurice, Adam strode straight to Gudrun. ‘Where is my lady?’

Gudrun’s eyes met his steadily. ‘I do not know.’

Maurice was right. The housekeeper did know something. Her gaze was just a little too unflinching. If Adam had thought it would do any good he would have hauled the woman to her feet and shaken the truth out of her. Instead, he waved Brian Herfu over. ‘Herfu?’

‘Sir?’

‘What happened after I left for Winchester? Full report. What did my wife do?’

Brian swallowed. ‘She…she set us all tasks. The slaughtering being done, Lufu and the women were put in charge of the salting and curing, the troop was to dig new latrines, and Harold and Carl were to gather wood. Lady Cecily led me to believe she left to check up on them.’

‘Led you to believe, you say?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Briefly closing his eyes, Adam forced himself to face the fact that Cecily had deliberately set out to deceive his man. And, if that was the case, her loyalties were no longer in question. His wife had betrayed them. Had betrayed him. Pain sliced through him—the worst kind of pain, a pain that was every bit as keen as the pain he had felt when Gwenn had died. No, no.

He hardened his heart. He could not care. He did not care. He had sworn that never again would he care to the point when it hurt.

‘It…it was awkward, sir,’ Brian was saying. ‘After the baby vanished.’

‘Baby? What the hell is going on?’

With a sigh, Gudrun shoved the needle into her work and set it aside. ‘Philip, sir.’ She cleared her throat. ‘He was lost this morning.’

‘Lost?’ Adam was utterly at sea. The woman was telling him, as coolly as you please, that the baby she doted on was lost. Why did she not look more concerned? Nothing made any sense.

Except the bald fact that Cecily was not at Fulford.

Had she gone to escape him? Or to join his enemies? But even these questions, important as they were, were lost under an overriding question: was Cecily safe?

And now here was Gudrun, placidly telling him that baby Philip had been lost. He struggled to concentrate. Was she safe?

‘He was stolen. Abducted,’ Gudrun said. ‘Your men could not find him, and when they stopped looking Lady Cecily went to search for him herself.’

Adam rubbed his forehead. What was he missing? Gudrun was too calm—far too calm. She had to know where Philip had been taken, which meant that she knew where Cecily had gone. They were all in on it. He smothered a curse. ‘Did she have a groom with her?’

‘Yes, sir. In a manner of speaking,’ Herfu chipped in.

‘In a manner of speaking?’

‘Wat accompanied her.’

‘Wat? Christ on the cross—that boy’s no proper escort!’

Herfu looked at the floor. ‘Sir, it was as I said. Lady Cecily implied that she would remain within earshot.’

‘Hell’s teeth.’ Adam glared at the downbent head. ‘Sometimes, Herfu, you haven’t got the sense you were born with.’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’ His foot jiggled. ‘Th…there’s more…’

‘Out with it.’

‘It’s about the cook—Lufu. She’s vanished.’

‘Again?’

‘Yes, sir. I’ve just been to the cookhouse, and Evie says she’s not seen her for the past hour or more. She and her husband have been salting meat on their own. The miller’s mule has gone too.’

Adam swore, and snatched up his sword. ‘Maurice!’

‘Sir?’

‘Find me a dry cloak, and saddle that grey gelding. And the two blacks.’

‘We’re going out again, sir?’

‘Clever boy.’

‘Full arms, sir?’

‘Yes to the helm, and no to the mail. I’m not about to draw attention to myself, which is why I’ll take the gelding and not Flame.’

Maurice opened his mouth and closed it.

Adam gritted his teeth. ‘What?’

‘Sir Richard wouldn’t approve, sir.’

‘Sir Richard isn’t here to approve or disapprove. But we will wear leather gambesons—padded ones. Move, man.’

‘Aye, sir.’

Gudrun reached for Agatha and whipped her out of the doorway as Maurice ran out.

‘You, woman,’ Adam said in English, before he recalled her previous mistress, Cecily’s mother, had been Norman. He reverted with relief to that tongue. ‘Come back, please.’

Agatha on her hip, Gudrun approached warily. ‘Sir Adam?’

‘You know where she went?’

‘I…I know where she was headed, sir.’

Some of Adam’s tension eased, and he managed a smile. ‘Good. Where’s your husband?’

‘Wilf? Butchering the sheep carcasses behind the cookhouse, sir.’

‘Does Wilf ride?’

‘Of course, sir.’

‘Fetch him. He can be our guide. Herfu, you stay here. Post some guards up on the rise.’

‘You’re expecting trouble, sir?’

Buckling on his sword belt, Adam strode after his squire. ‘When will you learn, lad? Anything is possible.’

Under the canvas shelter, hugging Philip to her breast, Cecily was battling with despair. Not one of these people would meet her gaze. Undeterred, she cleared her throat, ‘My sister, Emma, has anyone seen her? Judhael said she was here.’

Outside, someone squelched through the mud. A horse whinnied. And still not a soul would meet Cecily’s eyes. She looked directly at the shepherd. ‘Gunni, Emma is all right?’

Gunni shrugged, and reluctantly met her gaze. ‘Lady Emma’s well enough. She went to gather dry kindling as we will be lighting a proper fire this evening.’

Emma? Gathering wood in the rain? But she nodded as though it was her sister’s habit to perform menial tasks. ‘So I shall see her soon?’

Gunni nodded. ‘Aye, lady, soon.’

Not ten minutes later, a woman ducked into the shelter. Even though she was expecting Emma, it was a moment before Cecily recognised her. Her sister’s cloak was dark with rain and mud, and when she thrust back her hood Cecily saw that she had dispensed with her veil completely, like a peasant. Her nose was red, her cheeks pale and her hair was thrust back in a single plait that looked as though it had been slept in. Never had she dreamed of seeing Emma so dishevelled.

Cecily jumped to her feet. ‘Emma!’

‘Cecily!’ They embraced, Philip between them. ‘They didn’t hurt you? I made Judhael swear—’ Breaking off, Emma pulled away and stripped off her kid gloves. Cecily noticed they were split at the seams and a greyish brown rather than the cream they had once been, and the boots that peeped out from under Emma’s bedraggled skirts were not the beautifully stitched riding boots that Cecily remembered. They had been replaced with heavy workaday ones, similar to those she had worn at the convent. The transformation took her breath away.

‘What?’ Emma asked, seeing her expression.

‘Nothing. It’s just…you…you’re so changed.’

Emma lost her smile. ‘We’ve all changed.’

‘That’s true.’

Tossing her gloves aside with an echo of her old arrogance that tugged at Cecily’s heartstrings, Emma drew Cecily onto the bench and gazed at the baby in her arms.

‘I wondered if he would bring you here. I hoped…’ Emma’s voice trailed off.

‘What? That I would join you?’ Firmly, Cecily shook her head. ‘This is no place for our brother, Emma, you must see that.’

Unhappily, Emma sighed. She lowered her voice. ‘Of course I see that. It’s just that Judhael…he…he can be so very persuasive. He always knows he is right, you see.’

Cecily made an impatient noise. ‘This is an instance when Judhael is not right.’ She drew breath to say more, but a warning squeeze on her arm had her glancing towards the opening of the shelter. Judhael was there, watching them.

Emma scrambled to her feet so quickly that Cecily frowned. Was her sister afraid of him? After seeing them at Winchester, in the Cathedral, Cecily had assumed they were lovers, but it was beginning to look as though she feared him…

‘You got plenty of wood?’ Judhael demanded, in a most unloverlike voice. He shoved his thumbs in his belt, and as he did so Cecily noticed that the back of one of his hands was scored with a deep scratch, the blood on it recently congealed.

‘Aye.’

‘And the beacon? You checked that?’

‘Yes. The cover’s not been touched, so the wood’s quite dry. I put fresh kindling there too, just in case.’

‘Come here then, wench, and give me a kiss.’

Wench? Open-mouthed, Cecily watched in astonishment as her prim sister, her butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth sister, let Evie’s brother sweep her into his arms in front of his men, in front of everyone. And she didn’t even blush. The world might have changed, but her sister had changed even more.

As Judhael angled Emma’s head to him, so she could receive his kiss, Cecily found herself staring at the dried blood on the back of his hand. It looked odd—as though—a shudder ran through her—Judhael had not scratched himself, he had been bitten, and the bite looked very much like a human bite!

Wilf took Adam and Maurice directly through the woods to the chalky rise which led to Gunni’s hut. With worry about Cecily’s welfare a cramp in his guts, Adam thanked God that the man did not waste time with delaying tactics or pointless deviations. He simply pointed through the rain up a slippery track and said, ‘There it is, sir. Gunni’s hut.’

At the top of the rise Adam saw a rough tumble of stones that had some order to it and was roofed with dried bracken. A man in chainmail had beaten them to it. Le Blanc. He was on his knees by the wall of the shelter, bending over the body of a woman, tucking his cloak around her like a blanket.

Adam stopped breathing. He could scarcely bring himself to look. It couldn’t be Cecily, it couldn’t…

At his side, Wilf sucked in a breath. ‘Lufu!’

The name had Adam breathing again, and his guts griping with guilt. Not for the world would he wish harm on Fulford’s cook, but if it had been Cecily…He burned to look into those blue eyes once more, to know that she was safe. The question of whether Cecily had betrayed him or not was a mere trifle compared to that. These past days the fear of betrayal had occupied his mind, but now that the worst had apparently happened there was room for only one thought: Cecily must be safe. The implications of this—hell, he would think about implications later.

Now that he could breathe again, he noticed that Le Blanc’s roan and a mule—the miller’s?—were tethered by the hut.

‘Lufu!’ Wilf hurled himself from his horse.

Le Blanc’s mouth was a thin, angry line. His helm lay on the ground beside him and he was holding the girl’s hand, chafing it. Her lip had been split, she had a nasty discolouration on one cheekbone, and blood in her hair. ‘She’s alive, sir,’ Le Blanc said. ‘But she won’t waken.’

Tossing his reins at Maurice, Adam hurried over.

Wilf had Lufu’s other hand and was stroking it, speaking softly in an English so heavily accented that Adam couldn’t catch the full meaning. But any fool could understand the gist of it. Wilf was fond of her. He was telling her that she would be all right now they had found her.

Staring grimly at Lufu, Adam prayed the man was right. Apart from the bruising to her face, her skin was the colour of bleached linen, and her breathing was alarmingly shallow. ‘God’s Blood, she looks as though she’s been through a mangle.’

‘I reckon she has.’ Le Blanc swallowed and gestured vaguely towards a rocky outcrop. ‘She was beaten. I…I saw most of it from behind that. I couldn’t do anything, sir, there were too many of them.’

‘Them?’

‘Saxons. They would have—’

‘Take it slower, Le Blanc, so Wilf can follow you.’

‘Sir.’ Le Blanc’s eyes found Wilf’s. ‘I…I’m sorry she’s hurt, but the man moved like lightning—’

‘Saxon?’

‘Aye. I thought he was bluffing at first, it never occurred to me that he’d hurt one of his own, and by the time I’d realised what he was about it was over. Besides, there were others with him. They would have killed me, and I still wouldn’t have been able to prevent it.’

Wilf frowned, trying to follow what had been said. ‘You say a Saxon did this?’

‘There were several present or I would have intervened, I swear. But only one of them spoke to her, and only one of them did the beating.’ Slowly, he shook his head. ‘What kind of a man would beat his countrywoman to a pulp like this?’

‘We should move her inside,’ Adam said. ‘She’s soaking. She doesn’t need a chill on top of a beating.’

‘I thought of that,’ Le Blanc said. ‘But it’s possible her ribs are broken, and I was worried about moving her…’

‘If we use your shield and a cloak as a stretcher to get her into the hut, she should be all right,’ Adam said, hoping to God he was right. ‘We have to get her warm. And someone must go for proper help.’ Adam turned to Wilf and asked in English, ‘Is your wife the best person to deal with this?’

‘In Lady Cecily’s absence, yes.’

Cecily, Cecily, where are you? ‘Fine. Let’s get Lufu into the shelter, and make her comfortable, and then Wilf can fetch Gudrun. She’ll be a better judge of whether Lufu can be got safely back to Fulford than any of us.’

Together, they eased the unconscious Lufu onto Maurice’s cloak and Le Blanc’s shield. Inside the hut the light was poor, but to one side there was a low shelf with a mattress stuffed with heather. They placed Lufu on it.

After Wilf had set out for Fulford, and his hoofbeats had died away, Adam made Le Blanc strip off his mailcoat. ‘Leave your helmet behind too,’ he said. ‘I’m leaving mine here.’ Saxons did wear conical helmets, but Adam did not want to present too warlike an aspect. If he and Le Blanc were spotted he’d rather they were taken for huntsmen or poachers.

Uneasy about the idea of continuing up Seven Wells Hill so lightly armed, Le Blanc didn’t scruple to say so. ‘Wouldn’t we be best to wait until Wilf returns?’

A hideous image of Cecily in the hands of the beast who had beaten Lufu flashed into Adam’s mind. ‘No time,’ he said. ‘But I’ll take Maurice instead of you, if you’d rather stand guard over Lufu.’

Le Blanc bristled, as Adam had known he would. Two years Maurice’s senior, Le Blanc had campaigned with Adam in Brittany and Normandy, and was not about to cede superiority to a mere squire. ‘No, sir. I’m your man.’

‘Maurice, stay with the girl.’

‘I’ll not leave her, sir.’

As the grey and the roan climbed towards the summit of Seven Wells Hill, the rain began to ease and the breeze strengthened. High up, a red kite coasted into view. Uncertain of what he was looking for, but praying they would stumble across something, anything, that might lead them to Cecily, Adam found himself envying the big bird its vantagepoint. Perhaps it could see Cecily. Not that the vista was bad from up here, with what must be the whole of Wessex spread out below them on all sides. At the peak, it must be like standing in the middle of a map.

Shivering, grateful for the thick padding in his gambeson, Adam urged the gelding to the summit, and took a moment or two to get his bearings in the hope of seeing something that would tell him what to do next. He was almost at a complete loss, riding on pure instinct—something he never liked to do. At bottom, he was a planner, a strategist who disliked taking unnecessary risks, but today his instincts were screaming at him, telling him that all the planning in the world might not be enough to lead him to Cecily.

Below lay the wooded valley they had ridden through—the one that led to Fulford. Behind him, to the north, lay Winchester, with its acres of cultivated fields. The peasants’ strips were clearly visible, brown stripes marked off by ancient hedgerows, by the twisted trunk of a leafless crab-apple or a lichened medlar. To the south the land rose and fell in soft curves as it disappeared into the distant reaches of the South Downs. Today they were blurred by low-lying cloud and dark with the last of the rain, but on a clear day one might see the sea he had crossed.

‘Take a look at this, sir!’

Adam wrenched his gaze from the undulating waves of downland that he had been scouring in the vain hope of seeing a diminutive figure in a blue cloak and wheeled his horse round.

‘A beacon!’ Le Blanc had pulled up in the centre of a flat, grassy area at the top of the hill. Leaning to one side, he drew his sword and flicked at several turves of grass that formed a mound in the middle. As the turves flipped over, Adam saw they were camouflaging an oilcloth, which in its turn had been flung over a squat metal brazier. Clinging to his pommel, Le Blanc lifted the oilcloth with the point of his sword. The brazier was brimful with wood and ready to fire, assuming that the oilcloth had kept off the worst of the weather.

The brazier had probably last seen use when Duke William’s fleet had been sighted to the east of the Narrow Sea. It would have called out the fyrd, the local militia. With its commanding position, the Seven Wells beacon would be visible in most of Wessex…

‘Do you think it’s still in use?’ Adam said, his pulse quickening as inspiration struck. ‘Le Blanc?’

‘Sir?’

‘Fire it. Fling damp vegetation on it so it smokes like hell, and then gallop back to Fulford. Fetch Herfu and as many men as you can muster.’

Le Blanc blinked. ‘But, sir, Saxon scouts are bound to see the smoke, and every rebel within spitting distance will be on you in a heartbeat.’

‘Exactly.’ Adam waved an arm to encompass the vast landscape spread out below. ‘Look about you, Le Blanc. If we don’t fire it we could be searching for their camp till the last trumpet sounds. This will draw them out in no time.’

‘I’ll fire it, sir, but I’ll not leave you. Maurice is bound to see the smoke. He can raise the alarm.’

‘They’ll outnumber us.’

Le Blanc shrugged. ‘Nevertheless, I’ll not be leaving you.’