Homage and Honour (2 page)

Catching his
father’s eye, he reluctantly decided that he might as well show
willing and swung his legs down on to the ground. To stall for time
he pretended to be busy adjusting his horse’s harness but was
distracted. The slave urchin had returned with his bucketful and
was offering up a battered cup brimming over with fresh drinking
water. Raoul could not bring himself to drink out of the same cup
the slaves had been using. He shuddered and pushed the boy’s arm
away. He took a kerchief out of his pocket and wiped at the dirty
spot where their skins had touched. The kerchief he dropped on to
the ground.

He watched
while his father, Wolfram and Brandon accepted the cup and drank
their fill. He listened amazed as Brandon thanked the lad for his
trouble, but that was Brandon all over. He had a ‘feel’ for people,
an attribute his brother Wolfram shared, although to a lesser
degree.

He stood to one
side trying to look interested and hoping that his father would not
call him over. It was with relief that he mounted his horse when he
realised that the inspection was over and followed his father and
cousins back to the manor.

The skinny
slave urchin watched them leave; he was absently scratching at the
part of his hand that the creature had bitten, the same hand that
young Raoul had brushed aside.

The Lord Raoul,
Duke of van Buren rode home in fine fettle. The irrigation ditches
were almost finished, the ricca crop was safe. Son, daughter and
nephew would be advantageously married before the month was out and
the other nephew before summer’s end.

He was not to
know that death rode behind him and that only one of these
marriages would take place.

* * * * *

Convergence
(2)

The first of
them to set out on her journey to the Vada Stronghold hadn’t even
heard of the Vada until a few tendays prior to when this story
opens.

“It’s marry
Brentwood’s heir or enter the cloister, it is your choice.”

The Duke of
Graham’s second daughter stared at her father with despair in her
heart. She knew her elder sister Marcia was the important one. The
present Duke of Graham had no sons and it was Marcia who would
inherit the ducal position although it would be Margrave Brandon
van Buren who would take over the actual governance of the dukedom
when Marcia came into her inheritance. He would become the fifth
Lord Graham and Marcia his consort.

Tom, heir to
Brentwood was a large clumsy man, some five years older than
Elisabeth and the one time they had met she had not liked him at
all. It appeared, however, that he liked her otherwise he wouldn’t
have spoken to his father about a match.

“Could I have
some time to decide Father?” Elisabeth faltered. She did not want
to become Lady Elisabeth, Duchess of Brentwood and brood mare of
the Brentwood bloodline.

“What’s to
decide? It’s a good match.”

Elisabeth knew
that the situation was hopeless. Her father had decided, had
already accepted the proposal on her behalf.

“Yes Father,”
she answered, the picture of a dutiful daughter, “when will the
marriage take place?”

“That’s
better,” said Lord Jeremy, patting her on her head, much as he did
one of his hound bitches, “as for the marriage, after Marcia’s. Let
us say that you will be leaving for Brentwood in a few months.” He
turned away. It was a dismissal and Elisabeth knew it.

She fled to the
rooms she shared with her sister.

“What did you
expect?” was Marcia’s reasonable question as she continued with the
elaborate embroidery on her wedding-gown, “you’re fifteen this
summer.”

“I didn’t think
it would be so soon,” fretted Elisabeth, “I thought there’d be
time.”

“Time for
what?”

“I don’t know,”
Elisabeth muttered and flounced off towards the window
embrasure.

Marcia laid her
needle down.

“Beth, you knew
this would happen one day, why trouble yourself about something you
can’t do anything about? If not Tom Brentwood it will be another.
At least,” she continued, picking up the discarded needle and
frowning over tangles in the thread, “you’ll be able to attend
Court and we’ll be able to see each other.”

“I don’t
like
Tom Brentwood.”

“You’ve only
met him once,” she answered reasonably, “same time as I met
Brandon. Give it time.”

“I don’t want
to give it time,” answered Elisabeth with passion, “I don’t want to
marry him. I
won’t
marry him.”

Marcia ignored
that.

“It’s either
marriage or the cloister,” Marcia said, echoing her father’s words
but she was talking into thin air. Elisabeth had gone. The elder
sister shrugged, Elisabeth would come round of that Marcia was
sure. She had no other choice.

* * * * *

Elisabeth
retained an outward docility over the days that followed.

Her father made
arrangements for her dower and she made arrangements of her
own.

She stood at
Marcia’s side as she married her young husband. She sat in her
assigned place at the nuptial feast, the very picture of a dutiful
daughter. She made polite conversation to the noble guests. She
accepted their congratulations concerning her own impending
nuptials. She retired to her bedchamber.

Her knapsack
was packed. She unbuttoned her dress with fingers that shook with
haste and stepped out of the silken folds. She dragged out the
tunic and trews she had hidden under her bed wishing she had
managed to steal some boots but it couldn’t be helped. It had been
difficult enough stealing the clothes. She picked up the scissors
she had ‘borrowed’ from the sewing room earlier and took a deep
breath. It was time to cut off her hair.

At last the
discarded ringlets lay in an untidy heap at her feet. Elisabeth
thought for a moment then picked them up and tossed them in the
chest at the foot of her bed. Another moments thought and she
locked it. What to do with the key? She would have to hide it
somewhere where it couldn’t be found.

The key tinkled
with merry abandon as it fell through the necessary hole and into
the cess-ditch underneath.

She rubbed dust
from the corner over her face and rubbed it into her hair.

One last look
round the room that had been her home and refuge for the last six
years and she opened the door, looking up and down the corridor to
make sure it was empty. She tiptoed down the corridor and through
the large hardwood door at the end then, head high, began her walk
down the long hall and so reached the corridor beside the kitchens.
It was now only a few steps to the door that led out into the
courtyard.

Elisabeth took
a deep breath and as bold as brass, though her knees were shaking,
strode out as if she was a servant boy out on an errand. The cart
she was heading for was parked in its usual place and she hurried
towards it.

The smell was
overpowering and Elisabeth gagged, for this was the ‘dirty cart’,
the means by which body and other waste was removed from the castle
and its environs.

Holding her
kerchief to her face Elisabeth scrambled aboard and not a moment
too soon. She squeezed herself in between two of the large seeping
barrels and settled down, the rose-scented cloth pressed hard to
her mouth and nose. She listened as the driver and his boy
approached and felt the cart move as they settled themselves on the
front seat. The man clicked at his pony.

With a rumble
the cart began to move over the cobbles and towards the back gates.
The guards never searched this cart, as long as she remained silent
and out of sight she would be safely out of the castle before many
heartbeats passed.

Outside the
town and at a convenient spot Elisabeth intended to leave the cart
and make her way to the coast where she hoped to find a boat that
would take her to one of the islands in the Great Eastern Sea. She
couldn’t remain in Murdoch; her disguise wouldn’t hold up to
scrutiny for long, eventually she would be found and after this
escapade, being locked behind the walls of a Thibaltine convent
would be the least of her worries.

When the cart
slowed down to negotiate a rough patch, Elisabeth squeezed out of
her smelly hidey-hole and jumped down.

There was no
moon; the night was dark as pitch. As Elisabeth struck out across
country she stumbled often, lost one slipper then the other. She
was cold, her feet hurt but never once did she regret what she had
done. Anything was preferable to marriage to Tom Brentwood, ducal
heir or not.

She knew Port
Graham was some miles to the northwest. What she would do when she
got there she had but a hazy idea. She had some money and jewels,
perhaps enough to buy passage in one of the island trading vessels,
definitely enough to rent a small room and hide for a while until
she found a trader willing to take her.

The hunt would
begin at first light Elisabeth decided and began to worry about
where her father’s men would look for her.

It was a split
second decision. Elisabeth decided not to make for the Port. Her
father would think she might try for passage to the islands from
there, that or head for the dangerous island chain; these would be
the first places they would look for her. Well, she would not make
it easy for them. She would try to cadge a ride in a small fishing
boat and avoid the traders entirely.

There were
plenty of fishing villages and she was disguised. Her father’s
retainers would be looking for a longhaired girl, dressed as a
girl, a Contessa, a Duke’s daughter. Elisabeth no longer thought of
herself as such.

She reached the
first village at dawn and decided to skirt round it; it was too
near to the castle. She did the same at the next and the next after
that. She wasn’t challenged; in fact she met hardly a soul. She was
not to know that her father had declared a two-day holiday in
honour of his elder daughter’s marriage and that the free citizenry
were making the most of it. She slept the night under a thick hedge
and woke with the sun, thirsty and hungry. Her thirst she slaked by
drinking her fill from a nearby stream but she knew she would have
to get herself something to eat and soon. She decided to try the
next village and limped into its environs at the mid-morning
candlemark. There were a few curious looks but on the whole she was
ignored.

Elisabeth was
by now very hungry indeed. The village boasted one tavern, a
seedy-looking place and none too clean she realised as she went
in.

It had one
customer, a rough-looking man in seafaring boots who was eating at
one of the rickety tables in the corner.

The man looked
at her with an interest that missed little as she asked for a meal
in a voice that trembled with nervousness.

Elisabeth
realised from the man’s sharp intake of breath as she began to talk
that something had alerted him. But what? She was dirty. Her hair
was short. She was dressed in typical boy’s garb. She kept her
voice low and copied the attitudes she had observed in the
behaviour of her father’s pages in the great hall, at once deferent
yet confident.

The landlord
said nothing although his eyes opened wide at the coin Elisabeth
placed on the counter but he nodded, picked up the coin and bustled
away to bring her a simple meal.

The man in the
boots stood up and sauntered towards the bar where he stopped.

Elisabeth held
her breath.

“A boy who can
pay for breakfast,” the booted sailor said to no-one in particular
and pointedly staring at the wall, “could surely afford to buy a
pair of decent second-hand boots.”

Elisabeth said
exactly nothing.

“Rudtka got
your tongue? Where you from?”

Elisabeth
couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t give her away. She
stared at the dirty counter and hoped that he would go away.

The man looked
her over. Strange sort of boy he was thinking, why didn’t he speak?
Most boys of his acquaintance would fall over themselves to talk.
There was something strange here. The clothes, although dirty were
of good quality, so why was he not wearing anything on his feet?
Perhaps he had stolen the clothes?

He looked at
the boy’s hands and blinked hard. These were no ragamuffin’s hands.
These hands were of a delicate nature; the nails manicured no less!
They reminded him of the soft hands of his sisters.

“I think,” he
said in a low voice, “that you’d better tell me what you’re doing
here.”

Elisabeth
flicked a sideways glance at him.

“You’re a fool
if you think the landlord’s not wondering.”

“What do you
mean?”

“When an unshod
and dirty boy pays for a meal with a gold circle any landlord worth
his salt is bound to be just a teeny bit suspicious,” he explained,
“I noticed the glint of gold. He probably suspects you’re a thief.
What if he sets the Watch on you?”

Elisabeth paled
with fright.

“What shall I
do?” she gasped, completely forgetting to try and disguise her
voice.

His eyebrows
rose as realisation hit him.

“Young lady,”
he continued, ignoring her gasp of terror, “if I were you I’d get
out of here as soon as you can. You’ve run away, haven’t you?”

There didn’t
seem to be any point in pretending any longer. “What gave me
away?”

“Your hands. No
boy has hands like yours and your voice is a sure giveaway. You
should have practiced more.”

“Oh.”

“The coins
jangling in your belt-pouch don’t help either. There are
cut-throats and cut-purses around, slavers too, a young thing like
you would make a fine price in the slave markets at Fort.”

“I’ve got to
get to the North,” Elisabeth blurted.