The Skeleth (4 page)

“What about Jumble?”

“We'll look for him as soon as we can, I promise you.” John beckoned him in between a pair of wooden buildings by the
wall. “Many of the older men of Tristan's village will know me on sight, and the younger ones should at least know me by name. Stay near.”

Tom ducked and dodged after John through courtyard grass that seemed surprisingly long and poorly tended. Piles of debris lay strewn all about—old tools, rotted wood, a plowshare gone to rust. A tower loomed at the opposite end of the courtyard, taller by far than anything else in the castle. Torches swarmed and swirled at its foot, racing back and forth as the village men plied the ram to the door.

“The postern gate is over there, Tom, right behind the great hall.” John gestured out across the courtyard. “If we get separated, go through it and down the tunnel to the river. The village is downstream—follow the banks.”

Tom took a momentary pause to get his bearings in the moonlight. The buildings—a smithy and perhaps a stable—looked in very poor repair, half bald of thatching on the roofs and full of holes in the wattle of the walls. The great watchtower leaned well out of straight, joined to the rest of the walls with too much mortar and precious little skill. Even amidst his terror, it still came as a shock; the more he saw of Tristan's castle, the shabbier and more run-down it looked.

John peered around the back of the long, low stables. “Now come, we've got to reach the men and persuade them to retreat. Their lives depend on it.”

Tom darted out behind him, watching the battlements for any sign of the crossbowman. He saw no one on the walls, though he thought he caught a flash of movement atop the
watchtower, someone looking briefly down at the attackers below before withdrawing from view.

“Men of Harthingdale!” John raised his voice as they reached the crowd of torches by the foot of the tower. “It is John Marshal. Listen and heed me, you have walked into a trap!”

An old man stepped out of the torchlight. “Well, I'll be a bolgug's grandmother!” He leaned on a spear whose shaft was almost as twisted as his back. “Now, there's some luck—lads, this here is John Marshal himself! Here, John, we've got the northern battlements and we're almost through the door, so give us the word on how to fight once we're in.”

John Marshal took his introduction for all it was worth. “All of you men—all of you, listen!” He stepped out into the light. “As you value your lives, you must leave now. The gates are shut, so take the postern tunnel. Hurry, with me!”

The men at the battering ram paused in their count, looking back in confusion. “But we're almost through. We've almost got them!”

Tom shot a look up the steps to the door. They really were almost through—the door was half off its hinges, staved in at the middle and ready to give way. Men held up boards to shield the battering crew, but no one fired or dropped anything from the tower or surrounding walls.

“You must trust me,” said John. “You have walked into a trap! We have no time to discuss the matter!”

The village elder stretched out an arm at the walls around him. “If these brigands keep this castle, there won't be anywhere safe in this valley, as well you know, John Marshal.
They could ride out at us whenever they like, and our lives wouldn't be worth living.”

“We don't have time to argue!” John lost his temper. “We must retreat! Where is Tristan? He will heed me. Where is your lord?”

“Why retreat when we can attack?” The men took up their battering ram. “Let's batter through, and whoever's in that tower, let them look to running while they can!”

Tom's stomach clenched in. He felt exposed, surrounded by the high curtain walls from which an attack might come at any instant. He kept to the shadows, scanning the western corner of the castle before him. Doors opened out onto the battlements from each side of the watchtower, and it looked like a fight had taken place atop the northern wall, for men lay collapsed and still along the walk. The villagers rolled and roared in their count—one, two, three, and then another crunching run against the door. In its echo rose the sound of a new voice, coming from the highest turret of the tower.

“Do you hear that?” Tom grabbed John's sleeve to get his attention. “Master Marshal, do you hear it?” He cocked an ear—it was a woman's voice, raised to a chant from somewhere high up in the tower. The noises of the villagers obscured what she said, but she spoke in strong rhythm, full of fury and empty of fear.

John strained to listen. His face lost its color. “Oh, no. No!” He shoved Tom. “Run! To the back wall, to the postern gate. Run for your life!”

Tom's heart thumped and bounced in his chest. He crossed the courtyard at a flying dash, making for the place where he
thought he saw the outline of a door. The voice of the woman rang out triumphant, chanting in a fierce, resounding ecstasy.

Something fell from the top of the tower. It struck the earth beside the village men and broke open, letting out a pallid glow and then a keening wail.

E
dmund Bale did not sing like a bird. His voice rolled deep, lovely but not delicate, and seeming far larger than what his slender frame should produce. It never failed to surprise those who had only heard him speak, so different was it both in tone and shape of word, and so strangely matched with a boy who was somewhat under average height for fourteen, with sunless skin and soft golden hair. It was the duty of every village in the barony to entertain their lord on Harvestide night, and though Edmund was only halfway finished with his song, he already knew that he was not going to let his home village of Moorvale down.

The grand hall of Aelfric, Lord of Elverain, seemed built to receive such arts. The strains of Edmund's song filled its vaults to the ceiling, and the tapestries, while woven with stern and noble scenes, yet enfolded the echoes before they could turn harsh. Trestle tables ran the length of the hall, whereupon sat
the folk from all the villages of the barony—Moorvale and Longsettle, Roughy and Dorham and Quail. Candles stood impaled on stands every few feet along, casting as much light as Edmund could remember ever seeing in a room at night. A fire blazed high in the grand hearth set in the western wall, though with so many folk pressed in together no one needed its heat.

Edmund knew just where to stand for best effect. He sang the
Deeds of Tristan
, a long chain of verses with couplet refrains that changed and interlocked, each telling of a brave exploit or noble act in the life of its hero. He raised his arms, faced outward from the fire. Beasts reared up in shadow and in song, but one by one Tristan defeated them:
Tristan saves a tiny village from a grute while the lord of the land cowers in his hall; Tristan rides alone to the marshy lair of the Buddleboggan, and wins a contest of riddles, forcing it back underwater for a thousand years and more; Tristan leads the villagers of Upenough to safety in the very teeth of the Nethergrim.

Edmund scaled the heights of the refrain, rising to each note with neither trill nor glide. He had the place in his grip—mugs sat forgotten at elbows and chins lay pressed on palms:
Tristan takes the fight to the mountains, leading his brave companions against the Nethergrim when no other man would dare to tread above the foothills; Tristan descends into the lair of this greatest of enemies, meets it in single combat and strikes off its head, bringing peace to the lands once again. Tristan the Good, defender of the meek. Tristan the Righteous, unstained in deed. Tristan the Brave, jewel amongst knights.

Edmund brought the song to a reverent close, drawing out the last note to leave it wandering in echo through the hall. A hush descended, and then, just as the folk around him rose to cheer, something struck him in the face.

Edmund spluttered, wobbled and tripped. He landed in the rushes strewn across the flagstone floor, and came perilously near to flopping onto the fire. He heard a stifled chorus of gasps, but no one moved to help him up. He rolled over, dazed, and saw what had hit him—a boiled cabbage.

“Stuff and nonsense!” The shout came from the same direction as the throw, from the high table at the head of the hall where sat the folk of noble rank. “You keep your seat from now on, peasant, and you keep your mouth shut!”

Edmund rubbed at his jaw where he had been struck. The folk in the hall sat stunned, their merriment turned into confusion and fright in a heartbeat.

“Tristan is a liar and a coward, and I'll fight anyone who says otherwise.” The knight who had thrown the cabbage sported a bristly black mustache that did little to soften the bitter contours of his mouth. He curled one of his hands into a fist while he pointed about the hall with the other. “Come on, any one of you, or all of you together. Just any of you clap, any of you cheer for that boy and his song, and I will take you outside and make you eat some dirt.”

Edmund, like everyone in the hall, looked past the scowling knight, in the direction of Lord Aelfric and Lady Isabeau, who sat in the chairs of highest honor. Lord Aelfric gazed fixedly down into his fine silver goblet, as though he was trying to pretend he had not heard what had just passed in his own hall.
Lady Isabeau clenched her jaw and then the arms of her chair, but neither she nor her husband spoke a word. The scowling knight resumed eating, as though he sat in his own castle and had just abused one of his own peasants.

“We were on those accursed moors for nine days, and this is what I get for my trouble.” The knight plucked up a stout-bladed dirk from the table. He stabbed it down, skewering a hunk of salted pork and then waving it about. “I wouldn't feed this to the dogs! Someone bring me something edible, and sharpish, or by all thunder I will—”

“That's enough, Richard.”

A wide shadow blocked the light of the fire. Edmund rolled over to find a man in lord's finery looming up behind him, seeming to have somehow stepped right out through the stonework of the wall. Everyone around Edmund stood up in surprise, and then bowed. Edmund tried to scrabble up in time, but before he could, the lord reached down to help him stand.

“You must excuse my loyal knight.” The lord was a man of middle age, stout and not over tall, halfway between powerfully built and running to fat. His face was broad, his thick black hair and beard were curly, and his eyes were dark and very deep. “He has his uses, but we call him Richard Redhands for a reason.”

Edmund took hold of the hand and staggered to his feet. “My thanks to you, my lord.”

“My lord Wolland, I will not hear it!” Richard Redhands leaned out over the high table. “Tristan is a charlatan, a faker, a knave in lord's robes, and I will not hear his praises sung by some gap-toothed yokel!”

The lord waved his hand. “Sit down, Richard. Make merry for once in your life!”

The herald of the castle rushed into the hall through the grand double doors, looking utterly flustered. “Oh, there you are, my lord! I was waiting to announce your entrance—how did you get past me?”

The lord had a ready laugh. “I've been in this castle before, my boy, many times. I know all the secret passages!” He shot a wink at Lord Aelfric—or perhaps at Lady Isabeau—but neither of them returned it.

The herald cast a discomfited glance at Lord Aelfric, then scurried into the hall and struck his staff to the floor for silence. “Ahem—make way for my lord Edgar, Baron Wolland, peer of the realm and Lord Warden of the March!” It sounded rather silly, since Lord Wolland was already in the hall, and so, with a blush on his face, the herald then retreated hurriedly through the doors.

Edmund made his bow low and solemn. “My lord.” He knew—everyone knew—that Edgar, Baron Wolland was the richest man in all the north, lord of a land twice the size of Elverain and on speaking terms with the king himself.

“That is I!” Lord Wolland swept onward to the high table, and took up a goblet in toast. “Edgar of Wolland, happy lord of that happy land just down river and across the moors from here. Come, come, good folk of Elverain, do not be cast down on this Harvestide night, where we celebrate the bounty of the year and the reunion of old friends!” At this, he slapped Lord Aelfric on the shoulder. Lord Aelfric remained so still and rigid that he looked as though he had died sitting up in his chair.

Edmund slipped back to his seat on the trestle bench, surrounded by family and neighbors and across from his little brother, Geoffrey. He managed to fend off a flurry of frightened attention from his mother, Sarra Bale, telling her that he was not hurt, that it was only a cabbage, and anyway they should keep their voices down so as not to anger the nobles any further. He felt Sir Richard Redhands's scowling gaze upon him, but did his best to pretend he did not notice.

Geoffrey leaned across the table, and dropped to a whisper. “And you're sure they came in off the moors?”

Edmund wiped cabbage juice from behind his ear. “I saw it with my own eyes.”

“You all right, son?” Edmund's father, Harman Bale, hobbled along the rows of benches to stand by his seat. He winced and staggered, holding one hand to the table and the other to his side. “Not hurt, are you?”

Edmund got up. “Father, you should rest. Your wound's not even halfway healed. Here, please, take my seat.”

Harman slid with a heave of breath onto the bench. “Your old dad's not what he used to be.” He was dark where Edmund was fair, his brown hair thinning at the crown. His beard had grown out ragged, poorly trimmed on one side—the bandaged wound in his belly still kept him from raising his right arm above the shoulder.

Edmund grabbed a log from the stack of wood by the fire, and used it to make a seat for himself at the end of the table. “You just need time to heal, Father. It could have been a lot worse, you know—you did stand up to the greatest wizard ever born.”

Harman reached out and landed a weak punch on Edmund's arm. “Like father, like sons!” He turned and did the same to Geoffrey. “Let Vithric tremble when he hears the name of Bale, that's what I say!”

As soon as sons and father shared the smile, it faded. It was true that each of them had, in his own way, thwarted Vithric's malevolent designs; but Vithric was still alive, and none of them knew when or in what form his revenge might come.

Edmund did something he had never even considered before. He let his father into his thoughts. “Father, why do you think these nobles are here?”

Harman Bale cast a dark look up to the high table. “Whatever Lord Wolland's here for, it means trouble for us.” He shook his head. “He's the richest man in all the north, and cousin to the king on both sides of his family. You mark me, son, everything that man says, does and thinks is politics.”

Geoffrey scrunched his freckles together. “Then why does he act like he's the village fool?”

Lord Wolland's voice boomed out from his elevated station, cutting across every conversation in the hall. “Now, your herald, there, my good Lord Aelfric, he knows not his own business!” He extended a pudgy finger to point down the central aisle, indicating a line of well-dressed folk as they entered through the grand double doors. “He's let my noble companions enter the hall unannounced, and after I gave him the slip around the side passage, even though he's a spry young lad of twenty and I'm but a fat old codger with one too many helpings of roast quail under his belt. Ha!” He patted his paunch. The
folk of the hall gave way to nervous tittering, and then, as he prattled on, honest laughter.

“That's the spirit, everyone! That's the way—happy Harvestide!” Lord Wolland drained off a gulp from his goblet, then waved it toward the entrance of the hall. “Now, I think I shall play the herald myself, and why not? Hark ye, hark ye, good folk of Elverain, for persons of great substance and rank have entered in among you! That one there with the mug in each hand is my lord Blave of Overstoke, and over there with the bald pate is my lord Sigbert of Tand. Cheer up, Tand, your wife says it makes you look manly! Ha! Now that one there in the furs and the preposterous hat is Hunwald of the Uxingham Hundreds, and up last is young Elísalon, whose title is one of those long wizardy things that no one can pronounce. Don't try, or she might grow cross with you and turn you into a goat, or something like. You
can
turn folk into goats, can you not, my dear girl? No? Father's thunder, I thought that's what wizards
did
! Well, what I am paying you for, then?”

Edmund watched the procession of nobles thread their way between the trestles on their way up to the high table, under the pouring stream of Lord Wolland's babble. The girl he had met upon the moors, the one Lord Wolland had named Elísalon, passed him by without answering the question in his look.

Geoffrey nudged Edmund once they all had ascended to their high places. “Those are half the lords of the north!”

“All the lords of the north that live east of the river,” said Edmund. “Everyone who dwells in Lord Wolland's shadow.”

“It makes no sense.” Geoffrey was two years Edmund's junior, and his voice had just begun to break, which made
attempts at hushed conversations rather pointless. “They could have crossed the river down in Rushmeet, like folk always do!”

Edmund leaned out across his table, looking past his neighbors at the row of noble personages at the high table. Though she sat amongst the lords, Elísalon did not seem to share in their company. She spread a parchment chapter book flat upon the table, dipped a quill and started writing. Whenever she glanced up, she seemed to look everywhere in the room except at Edmund.

“We should find Katherine,” said Geoffrey. “Where is she, anyway?

Lord Wolland banged his goblet on the high table. “Now harken to me again, one and all! It is time for me to play the gracious guest, and announce that on the fourth day hence, we shall host a grand tournament of arms, right here on Northend green before this very castle. There shall be jousting by the men of noble blood, contests of archery and quarterstaff for the common folk, feasts to burst your belly, and various entertainments of unsurpassed quality. I should know—I paid for them!”