By Sylvian Hamilton (7 page)

'Adeliza!
Bring food and ale! Come into the office. You can stick your feet in
a pan of water, and tell me your story!'

Chapter
8

'Robert
de Beauris of Skelrig is your man,' said Bane. 'It's his picture. He
sent his servant Crimmon with it to his sister at Arlen Castle.'

'Arlen
Castle?' Straccan rubbed his unshaven chin with a rasping noise.
'What does the lady there?'

'She's
the baron's wife.'

Startled,
Straccan said, 'What was the man doing, carrying such a precious
thing to a noble lady with no escort? Why a man alone, skulking
through the country like a felon?'

'It's
all a bit queer,' said Bane. 'After they shuffled me off at Berwick I
asked around, quietly, and found people who knew this Crimmon. He
came from Mailros, they said. So I rode south out of town, as if I
was going back home, and then turned back west. There are three big
hills; make for them and you're there. There's a fine abbey and a bit
of a town, not much, but growing. I presented myself at the abbey,
told them Prioress Rohese had sent me and showed her token. Here it
is.' He pulled a cord over his head and dropped the prioress's token
on the table. 'They were hospitable and the lay brothers were
gossipy. They fed me and gave me a bed, and told me all they knew
about the lord of Skelrig. He's some sort of nephew to Gerard de
Ridefort.'

'Exalted
circles we move in,' said Straccan. 'Barons and their ladies, and now
de Ridefort! He was Grand Master of the Templars at Jerusalem, twenty
years or so gone--which makes the business of the paltry messenger
stranger still.'

'This
Robert has been away from his barony for some time, they said, on
knight-service. He returned just after Christmas. Seems he asked to
enter the abbey at Mailtos as a novice, but the abbot wouldn't have
him. Robert got very worked up and begged to be let stay, even as a
lay brother, but the abbot said no and threw him out. He went back to
Skelrig, and hasn't been seen since.' Bane yawned and stretched,
wincing as stiff muscles pulled. 'So I went there, and as soon as I
asked to see Lord Robert I was grabbed and shoved into a nasty little
hole next the stable, and locked in. They seemed scared stiff of me.
They shouted through the door, who was I, what did I want. I said I
had business with Lord Robert and they'd better let me see him or
they'd be sorry, all the usual stuff. Everything went quiet after a
while and I reckoned it must be night-time so I had a go at the lock,
but there was a bolt outside as well.

'When
they opened the door it was mid-morning, and there was this little
priest standing there shaking and as grey as my shirt, and half a
dozen fellows with bows and swords huddled behind him like children
behind their mother. He started shouting Latin and suddenly chucked a
cup of water over me—holy water as it turned out –cos
when I didn't vanish in a puff of sulphur he turned pink again right
away, and the others shoved him aside and took over. Before they
could really get started on me I shouted, 'Crimmon, Crimmon's dead,'
and they listened to the rest. Someone went off to tell Lord Robert
and I was taken into the tower. It's just a very small tower with a
few outbuildings, though they say he's a very rich man. Anyway, three
floors up, there he was, behind a closed door and shouting through it
just like we'd been doing below!'

'Mad?'

'Barking.
And terrified.'

'What
of?'

'Demons.'
Bane poured and drank more ale. 'He's shut himself up in this room.
He let me in after I'd yelled all about Crimmon and the picture and
the Prioress of Holystone. Well, he didn't let me in, he had a lad in
there with him, a dumb boy, to do things like that –fetch and
carry, open doors, empty pots—because he, de Beauris I mean,
is sitting up there inside a great circle, all made of candles and
incense-burners and bowls of holy water and crucifixes and relics and
bunches of herbs. No one else goes into it, and he won't budge. He's
got a bed in the circle, and a table and chair, and a chest full of
money. He's wearing a monk's robe over a hair shirt, he's festooned
with relics and crucifixes and he stinks to high heaven.

'I
told him the whole story: how his man died, how the prioress got his
letter and the picture and wanted to know what to do with them. And
after going over it again and again for hours, he finally told me
he'd sent it to his sister Julitta, the lord of Arlen's wife.

She
knew what to do with it, he said. Then he opened the chest that's how
I know it was full of money –and took out a handful of coins
and threw them into one of the bowls of holy water, and told me to
take it, and thank you very much, and why didn't I start back right
away?

'I
headed straight for Alnwick. The roads up there are unbelievable.
Thank God it was dry; if it had been wet I'd never have got there. I
might never have got back home either; it's all bog when it isn't
flood. On the road a galloper passed me, going my way head down, but
I'd seen him before back there at Skelrig. And there he was again, in
Alnwick when I stopped for the night, lurking about and watching me.
So when I'd had enough of it I gave him the slip and followed him for
a change. He panicked about a bit when he realised he'd lost me, and
then went into a house and presently came out again with another man.
And this is where it gets queerer still. Guess who the other fellow
was.'

'Who?'

'That
Gregory's man, the one who came here after the finger of Saint
Thomas.'

'His
name's Pluvis,' said Straccan thoughtfully. 'You're sure it was him?'

'No
mistaking him, ugly sod.'

'Did
he see you?'

'He
didn't know me. I watched them while they talked, and then the
Skelrig man got on his horse and set off back the way we'd come. And
wotsisname, Pluvis, shouted to a servant and went back inside, and
presently five horses were brought to the door, and out he came with
two other men and two archers. Now one of the men I've seen before;
he was Eustace de Vesci. The other I didn't know. White face, black
hair and moustache. He and de Vesci wore mail. The archers looked
foreign, I think they were Saracens. I whined for charity and one of
them threw a handful of horse shit at me. De Vesci went off by
himself and the others rode north. I hung around a bit to ask who the
pale man was '

'Well?'

'Nobody
wanted to talk about him. I couldn't find out a thing beyond his
name: Rainard, Lord Soulis.'

Chapter
9

The
small thick gold coins felt unpleasantly greasy, and Straccan rubbed
his hands on his tunic after counting them, glad to be rid of them.
Pluvis had taken the relic, paid the balance due and gone. The
strange figure on the ugly coins wasn't an octopus, it was no
creature Straccan had ever seen –something like a toad with
tentacles round its mouth. Whatever it was, he disliked it and the
gold it decorated, and took it all to Eleazar the Jew to change for
other coinage, keeping just a few for curiosity's sake. That done,
clean silver in his purse and more at home in his safe place, he rode
again to Holystone to tell Prioress Rohese what Bane had discovered.

'I
am amazed that your man was able to learn so much,' she said. 'Our
bailiff's son had no luck at all, and was a week away.' (Straccan had
given her an edited version of Bane's account and a list of his
expenses.) 'He ate and drank enough for two,' she observed sourly,
casting a critical eye down the listed items.

'Bailiff
Ambrose's son?' said Straccan.

'No,
your man Bane!'

'I
told you he was intelligent. I never said he was abstemious,'
Straccan protested with a smile. 'It was a long hard journey, and he
was ill used by Skelrig's ruffians as well.'

'I
am sorry for that, indeed. I suppose this precious thing must now go
to the Lady Julitta. Do you think she might be persuaded to sell it?'

'Who
knows? I'll ask her, if you wish.'

'I
know nothing of her brother,' the prioress said. 'I wonder where he
got the picture.'

'His
uncle, or whatever he was, the Grand Master, would have been able to
lay hands on almost any holy thing,' said Straccan.

'Julitta
de Beauris was no great heiress,' the prioress observed.

'Her
mother was Alice de Ridefort, the last of twelve daughters if I
remember right, and her father some petty lordling, a Scot, I
suppose. However, Julitta inherited nothing. What there was went to
the heir, her brother, who was niggardly with her dowry. But she's a
great beauty. I have seen her, and all they say is true--a great
beauty. Arlen would have her, dowry or none. It made quite a stir.'

'Do
you want me to take the picture to her?'

'Yes.
I will write and tell her how we came by it, and if you will be my
messenger I'll be in your debt.'

'Not
forgetting my charges,' said Straccan. They smiled at each other with
perfect understanding. 'I'd like to see my daughter, while I'm here.'

The
lady was not at Arlen Castle but at her summer hall, which had no
drawbridge. Its modest gate was guarded by men-at-arms and the
largest hounds Straccan had ever seen: two enormous bandogs the size
of small ponies, chained one at each side of the gate, straining at
their collars and growling savagely, all white teeth and scarlet
tongues. A thin dirty boy much marked by ringworm, sat by an iron
winch from which chains ran to the dogs' collars. As Straccan
approached, the boy turned the wheel and the dogs were reluctantly
hauled aside. As he passed into the inner court, one threw back its
head and bayed after him, a chilling deep-toned sound that echoed
back and forth from the surrounding walls. A steward called a boy to
escort him to the lady's solar above. There, a waiting woman looked
up, harried, from piles of scattered garments and open clothes-chests
trailing silks, velvets, cambrics and ribbons. She led him up a
winding stair to a window, and pointed out across another inner yard.

He
found her at last in the stable, sitting in the straw in a tumble of
soiled silks with a colt lying across her lap, its sides heaving as
it drew in one painful breath after another, eyes bulging and
suffused with blood, foam from its mouth everywhere. Her hands
soothed the suffering creature and she bent to whisper in its ears,
blowing her own breath into its red nostrils, regardless of the froth
and muck on her gown and veil. The narrow long-fingered hands held
the colt's shaking head and, as Straccan watched, it grew quieter.
The stertorous gasping eased, the congested eyes closed and opened,
closed and opened, bulging less and less.

The
woman wiped its nose and mouth with a wet cloth, taken from a bucket
behind her, that reeked of wine, squeezing the cloth so that a
trickle of liquid ran into the animal's mouth, keeping up a constant
flow of whispered words, soft and soothing, just beyond Straccan's
hearing. Suddenly the colt, which had appeared dead a moment before,
sucked in two or three deep breaths and raised its head to look
round. It lurched to its feet, staggered, half fell, regained its
footing, stood trembling on its thin long legs and uttered a
lamb-like bleat which was answered instantly by a shrill anxious
whinny from another stall.

'That's
his mother,' she said. 'He'll be all right now. Milon!' A groom's
head appeared over the partition. 'Take him to his mother.'

Straccan
stood aside to make room as the groom led the colt away. 'What was
the matter?' he asked, extending a hand to pull the lady to her feet.

'He
began to cough, and couldn't stop,' she said, wiping her hands on
the soiled silk of her skirts. 'Then he had one fit after another.'

“
I
thought he was dying. What did you do?'

'Oh,'
she gave him a sideways smile, 'I talked him out of it. Who are you?'

'My
name is Straccan. I come from your brother, lady. Indirectly.'

'Give
me the icon.' she said. She had washed, and changed her clothes. Her
skin glowed, flawless, in the candlelight and her pale silver-blonde
hair escaped in slippery gleaming waves from a red gauze veil. She
sat with Straccan alone over the remains of their meal at a small
table in her solar while her women came and went, chattering like
birds, giggling and filling the room with scents and colours.

'The
what?'

'The
picture.'

He
unbuckled the pouch at his belt, laid it on the table and took out
the cylinder, handing it to her. She held it but did not open it.

'There
is also this,' he said, taking out the brief message the unfortunate
Crimmon had carried, 'and this, from the Prioress of Holystone."
He proffered Mother Rohese's letter. To his surprise, she cracked the
seal and read the letter like any clerk.