The Skeleth Page 7

  “What weakness is that, Father?”

  Another slap on the shoulder. “He loves his son.”

  Katherine sidled closer to the door and cast a stealthy glance into the passage. There was no getting past the two men without being heard or seen, and now that she had stood listening for so long, she had no idea what might come of being discovered.

  “Aelfric has read the letter that I wrote him and knows perfectly well what it means.” Wolland pushed back the door to the stall and strode out into the passage. “When all is in readiness, I will ask what I need of him, and he will grant it to me.”

  Katherine leaned in as close as she dared. She pictured in her memory the elegantly scribed letter she had seen Lord Aelfric reading over and over in his chambers. If the light had been just a little stronger, she might have seen through the thin parchment to read it from behind.

  Wulfric made the telltale scrapes of someone cleaning out mud from the shoes of his horse. “What did your letter say?”

  “Ah, my boy,” said Wolland. “Remember that you are not merely my only son and heir, but also a knight sworn into my service. If I need for you to know something, I will tell you. Mostly, I tell you to hit things, because that is what you do best.”

  A long pause followed, interrupted only with the swish of brushes through the coat of Wulfric’s horse. “I am not stupid, Father.”

  Lord Wolland roared with ready mirth. “And who said that you were? Oh, very well, my son. I do not wish to leave you wholly in the dark. Here is how it stands: Wolland and Quentara are the two great powers of the north, each on one side of the wide river Tamber that forms the spine of our kingdom. We in Wolland now hold sway over the neighboring baronies of Tand and Overstoke, and of late our will has carried amongst the Uxingham Hundreds. The Earl of Quentara has counted Lord Aelfric a firm friend since their childhood, and if it comes to it could likely rely also on what force Tristan could muster. We are thus divided east and west of the river, with the city of Rushmeet straddling the gap, content to play both sides and take their tax on the trade that crosses on their bridges. Something of a deadlock, you see, especially with such a wide river and so few bridges to span it.”

  Another long pause. “And that is why we are in Elverain.”

  “Very good, my boy! You have it exactly.” Wolland sounded like a teacher congratulating a student for finally working out two plus two. “This little place is nowhere, and yet it is the gate to all that we desire. And with the aid of Madam Drake, and the somewhat-less-willing help of good Lord Aelfric, we shall have what we desire.”

  “Father . . . my lord—” When Wulfric hesitated, he drew out his words even longer. “What will men think of us, claiming victory so?”

  “They will think, my son, that we are their masters, and that is all I need for them to think,” said Wolland. “Now, let us come to it before Aelfric’s stable boys find their way back in here. My weapon—it is ready? It is moving?”

  Wulfric heaved a heavy sigh. “Your weapon moves, Father.”

  “Good, good.” Wolland drummed out the beat of a march upon the rail. “And what of Madam Drake?”

  Wulfric made a cough of disgust. “Her eminence barters like a common merchant. She demands to be made your Lord High Mystical, when all is done.”

  Katherine put a hand to her forehead. When all what was done?

  “Good.” Lord Wolland clapped his hands. “Excellent!”

  Wulfric tossed the brushes and tools in the corner of the stall. “I do not understand, Father.”

  “Another truth of politics, my son: You can trust someone only once you understand what she wants from you.” Lord Wolland leaned with careless ease against the stable wall, his rotund frame filling most of the passage. “Madam Drake craves the dignity of high office. She can only achieve such an end by binding her cause to mine. I am well content with that.”

  “Very well, Father. What then is your next command for me?”

  “To wait upon my word, and in the meantime enjoy the tournament and knock a few of Aelfric’s knights into the dirt.” Lord Wolland opened the shutters to the window that looked out into the courtyard, letting in the light of the first autumn day when the sun’s main strength seems not quite enough. “Not such hard asking, I hope?”

  “No, Father.” Wulfric followed Wolland out into the passage. To Katherine’s surprise, they turned to come her way, and she only just had time to squash herself into the straw beneath the half-height door.

  Wulfric took but a few steps before he came to a halt at Indigo’s stall. “Now, there.” He leaned in to look over the door. “There stands a handsome creature.”

  Katherine crouched but a few feet from Wulfric, so close that she could have touched him just by reaching up her arm. She stole a glance—Wulfric might have been eighteen at the most, but with the bulk of someone fed on good meat every day of his life. The hand he put to the door bore calluses and cuts whose pattern Katherine knew well, for she had ones to match on her own right hand from training with a sword.

  Wulfric gazed on Indigo in open awe. “Such a stride, Father, such form and fire. I have never seen his equal.”

  Indigo raised his head and flattened back his ears. Katherine feared that he might step right up to the door and take a nip at Wulfric’s hand, but he contented himself with ignoring him and turning instead back to his hay.

  Lord Wolland paused only long enough to throw a glance into the stall. “You know the custom of the joust, my son. Defeat the man who rides this horse, and he is yours.”

  Wulfric lingered a moment longer, staring at Indigo in astonished reverence. “That is the finest horse I have ever seen.” He turned to follow Wolland from the stable. “I will have him, Father.”

  Chapter 8

  Clouds slipped past above in silent shrouds. The sun hid his face from the world; Tom wished that he could do the same. He tugged the lead, coaxing the donkey onward past the killing place. The wind played chilly tricks with the corpses of the men strewn about him in the courtyard, rustling their clothes and making it look as though some of them were only just stirring from their slumbers in the grass.

  Tanchus leaned against the gatehouse wall, trimming his fingernails with a wicked-looking knife. “Now, you tell me, Hamon. Why didn’t you just kill this here boy last night?”

  “You can go on and kill him right now, if you like.” The crossbowman busied himself with inspecting the action of his weapon, cocking it back and firing it without a bolt. “When you’re done, toss him on the cart with the rest of the corpses, and then take ’em all down for burying, and when you’re done with that, go clean out the dung chutes, since that was what the boy was going to do next.”

  “Oho! I see now.” Tanchus stepped forward to poke Tom in the belly. “So, how’s it feel to be a slave? Eh? How’s it feel?”

  Tom knew better than to answer. He twitched the lead and walked on beneath the raised inner gates of the castle, leading the struggling, straining donkey and the cart loaded down to bent axles with the piled dead.

  The clops of the donkey’s hooves hollowed out into echoed taps on the cobblestones that paved the tunnel. Tom found that there was no need to ask the men to raise the outer gate, for it cranked up as he crossed through the tunnel, with grunts and jerks and shouts from above of “Heave, boys, heave!” Another cart trundled in off the drawbridge, smaller and in even worse repair than the one he drove. A troop of four peasant women pulled it by hand, their heads low, their forms huddled, flanked by a pair of Rutters bearing swords and wearing thoroughly ugly smiles.

  The heavy, recessed door drew back in the side of the tunnel. “About time, you hags!” Aldred Shakesby stuck out his head. The scar on his face twisted one side of his mouth into a smile that the other side did not match. “What took you so long? Did you have to grow that barley from the seed?” His laughter made his speaking voice sound almost musi
cal by comparison.

  One of the women stepped out before the others, heavy of hip and clothed in a housedress dyed a rusty-red. “Where are our men? Where are our husbands, our brothers and sons?”

  “Shut your noise.” Aldred wore a jack of heavy leather, studded with iron knobs set two fingers apart. He turned to call down the tunnel. “Tanchus Vidler, Hamon Ruddy, get over here! Search ’em for weapons, then lead ’em in.”

  “Now then, my lovelies, now then!” Tanchus rubbed his hands as he approached the women. “Arms out, let’s make sure this ain’t no trick!” He took to his task of patting them up and down with great relish.

  Tom stopped his cart on finding that one of the corpses had slid partway off the back and lay dangling with his arm dragging on the ground. He laid the man out straight again, sickness churning at his stomach, then took a deep breath and led the donkey onward.

  Aldred leaned in to sniff at the contents of the villagers’ cart. “Now, that’s the stuff! There ain’t two handfuls of decent food in this whole castle. You there, what’s your name?”

  “Rahilda Redfield.”

  “Redfield, right—wasn’t your husband beadle of the harvest this year? How much barley have you got in stock down in the village?”

  “Why don’t you come down to the village and count it yourself?” The big young woman restored a sack of barley that had fallen from the cart, placing it amongst baskets of parsnips, field beans and sourcress. Spatters of blood dribbled off the back of the cart from the severed throat of a slaughtered pig.

  Tom nudged the donkey forward, drawing up before the brigands and the village women, and, finding no space to pass by, stopped in front of them with his head hung low. The women turned to look at him; the shriek that came next doubled and redoubled in the confines of the tunnel. One of the women, her hair half gone to gray, shoved her way past the brigands and threw herself down beside Tom’s cart.

  “Ell. Elmer! My sweet boy.” The old woman trembled. She caressed the broken head of one of the corpses. “He was my son, my son, my only son.”

  Tom stared down at the cobblestones. He wanted more than anything in the world to kneel with the woman and speak some word of comfort in her ear, but he knew that he could not, that he had no friend amongst anyone there. No one in the castle there cared a thing for him—the women because they thought he was one of the brigands, and the brigands because they knew that he was not.

  “Mum.” A bony young woman put her arms around the old one, using the embrace to drag her up again. “I know it’s hard, I know it is, but we’ve got living folk to look after. That’s for us to do. Come now, Mum, come now, come away.”

  The old woman leapt up, then leapt to the attack. “Murderers!” She sprang at the brigands, trying to wriggle out of her daughter’s grip. “Monsters! Murderers! What have you done?”

  “You stay your hand, Diota Byley.” Rahilda stepped forth to block her way. “We’re in deep enough trouble as it is, so don’t dig us in any deeper. Brithwen, you hold your mother back, now.”

  “Mum!” The thin young woman grabbed her mother by the back of the dress. “Hold, Mum, please!”

  Diota Byley wrenched and wrestled, but could do no more than swing a fist an arm’s length away from Aldred’s amused face. “Murderers!” She collapsed on the flagstones of the tunnel.

  Tom kept his face turned away, hoping to escape both the wrath of the women and the notice of the brigands. In amongst the loud and angry echoes, a voice whispered in his ear. “How? How can you do such things? You’re just a boy.”

  Tom glanced aside. The youngest of the village women stood at his shoulder—in truth but a girl on the edge of womanhood, with free-flowing auburn hair and a heart-shaped face anyone would call pretty, even through the redness and the tears.

  “I’m not one of them.” Tom dropped his voice as low as it would go, hoping that his words would be lost in the tumult. “My name is Tom. I’m from Elverain. I came here with John Marshal.”

  The girl’s thin brows went up. “John Marshal? You mean Lord Tristan’s old friend? Is he here?”

  Tom had no chance to answer. Rahilda knocked him out of the way, then fell to searching through the bodies on the cart. She rounded back on the brigands. “Where is my Donston? Where is my husband? Where is he?”

  “If he ain’t on that cart, and he ain’t lying dead in the courtyard, then let’s just say our employer’s found a use for him.” Aldred scratched his nose. “Aye, best leave off thinking of him altogether.”

  “Some of you might find yourselves new men for marrying, and sooner than you’d think!” Tanchus seemed to find himself the height of wit. He scratched his chin, sizing up the women before him. “Let’s see, let’s see, who’ll I choose? Hmm, you there, with the curls. How old are you?”

  The auburn-haired girl went white and tried to hide behind Tom’s cart.

  “You keep away from my sister!” Rahilda seemed to forget her talk of caution. She sprang up and charged, and might have made it all the way to Tanchus had the crossbowman not been ready.

  Hamon Ruddy pointed his loaded crossbow at Rahilda’s chest. “Just you stop right there, if you don’t want this boy to cart you down to the graveyard with the menfolk.”

  The women let their anger give way to despair. Diota Byley sat on the cobbles, weeping with such force that it sounded as though she would choke, while Rahilda collapsed against the tunnel wall, striking at it in hopeless fury.

  “Come now, all the talking’s done. I’m not going to stand here listening to your wailing.” Aldred Shakesby made a show of turning away. “Get to the kitchen, and get our dinner started.”

  “But here, give us that first.” Between them, Tanchus and Hamon got the ale barrel out of the cart. They staggered off together, crab-walking the barrel through the tunnel.

  Aldred flicked a hand. “Kitchen’s along the far side, behind the hall at the back.” He opened the side door up to the gatehouse. “Get in there and get to work. And you there—boy! You think those bodies are just going to get up and walk to their graves all by themselves? Get on with you, or I’ll have you hanging from the walls by your innards. Move!”

  Tom led the donkey onward, clopping over the drawbridge and out onto the castle green. The sun threw off its cloak of cloud and shot its fire off the mountains that ringed the vale around him. Streams traced down through stands of spruce and fir, touching and flowing one into the next until they gave rise to the river that rushed through the meadows behind the castle, filling all the valley with a whispered lullaby. Had the circumstances of the day been any different, the beauty of the place would have made him stare about in happy awe.

  “Jumble!” Tom whistled on the castle green, and then again once in the encircling trees. “Jumble, it’s me. You can come out now. Come back. It’s me.”

  No answer came. Birch and alder leaned this way and that down the course of Tom’s travel, on a road that nearly bogged out time and again around the skirt of the castle hill. Fields spread out into the forests surrounding, inroads of axe and plow into a carpet of elm, ash and oak gone bare for the winter soon to come. Women and children stared at him from field and garden, but none of them approached.

  The road rose out of crackgrass and bog, up by turns through meadows and then copses of trees standing naked in the chill. Huts ringed the bulging end of the road, their gardens seeming to edge right up to the banks of the river. The graveyard stood on high ground, in sight of water but not so close as to risk a flood. The shallow pit opened up by the brigands was not nearly wide enough.

  Tom let the donkey off the harness to graze. He took up a shovel abandoned near the pit and got to work. Every now and again, someone from the village crept from the trees to watch him, but when he turned their way, they always slipped back out of view.

  “Jumble!” Tom tried whistling again, in between digs of his shovel into the eart
h. “Jumble, it’s me! Come on, boy, come on out.”

  The whistle came back down alone from the mountains. The donkey shot a look at him, chewing on a mouthful of long grass, then snuffled farther on toward the trees.

  Tom took a long look at the faces of the dead as one by one he laid them out in the grave. He found Tibalt Hackwood’s hat lying in the gory bottom of the cart and replaced it on his head before he arranged him next to his uncle Osbert. He made sure that all the men lay on their backs, faced up in a row toward the boundless sky.

  A question came to him then. He would not have been able to say from where, if anyone had been there to ask.

  “I will.” He spoke his answer to the dead, down on one knee with the butt of his shovel to the earth. “I swear to you all that I will.” He stood and started throwing in the dirt over the row of blank and staring faces.

  It felt as though the chilly wind blew against the sun, slowing its progress through the sky and drawing out the pain of the day. Tom’s arms ached to numbness from hauling the bodies of the village men up onto the cart, most of whom weighed more than he did. It took three trips up and back from the castle to bring them all down to their common grave. By the time he had laid out the last of the dead, he could hardly see where he swung his shovel in the falling dark.

  “The dung chutes are over there, boy!” Tanchus leaned forth to shout as Tom passed by the entrance of the great hall. Bawdy songs and torchlight filtered through a crack in the door behind him. “Hop to it!”

  Tom turned in the direction of his next task, but before he had gotten far, he stopped before something he had not noticed the night before, the one thing in the courtyard that looked like it was well made. A statue stood moonlit on a cleared spot of ground, fashioned in the likeness of a stallion rearing up on its hind hooves, the most handsome and noble horse Tom had ever seen, carved from the stone of the mountains with skill, long patience and love. The great forehooves were raised to give a thunderous blow, the shapely head thrown back in proud fury. Letters ringed the pedestal on which the statue stood. Tom bent to look at them, wishing—and not for the first time in his life—that he could read.