Elizabeth Chadwick - Shields of Pride

‘Gytha, I’m sorry—’ Linnet began, knowing that whatever she said would be inadequate, but the older woman cut her off short.

‘Nay, Mistress Linnet, it is kind of you to offer comfort, but it ain’t much use. It’ll not bring him back, will it?’ Gytha compressed her lips. ‘He’s dead. It’s our own lives we must save.’

Linnet bit her lip and nodded, recognizing the older woman’s brusqueness as a bulwark against the onset of grief. On a stone slab jutting from the wall lay the carcasses of two skinned sheep and she had to swallow several times before she could speak. ‘We could try the sword,’ she suggested.

‘You will break the blade, my lady.’

‘I don’t think so, not if we put the hilt under like this.’ She lodged the pommel, which was shaped like a flattened fist, beneath one of the wooden planks and pushed downwards. For a moment nothing happened. Linnet raised her foot and braced it against another strut for more leverage. With a loud creak and then a sudden splintering sound, one of the holding nails flew out of the wood and tinkled on the ground. Gytha took hold of the loosened plank in her strong laundry pummeler’s hands and ripped it away from the hole.

‘It’s mortal narrow,’ she pronounced, peering dubiously through and running her hands over her ample curves.

Linnet loosened some more boards and Gytha and Ella pulled them free. The women held the lantern up to the hole and saw that it led through into a dusty cellar full of bundles of rushes and withies, woven baskets and trugs, some completed, some half-finished and beyond them, stairs leading up to a shadowed doorway.

‘Old Andrew’s workshop,’ Gytha said. ‘The door comes out in his garth, under his grapevines.’ Her plump face wrinkled. ‘There’s no telling it’s going to be any safer there, save that his cellar door’s well hidden beneath all the greenery and he’s not a rich man - nowt worth looting.’

But it was not loot alone they were after, Linnet thought, remembering the exchange of words between the soldiers in the first cellar. She, Robert and Ironheart were sought, and God alone knew for what purpose. Anger at their helplessness flashed through her like fire and renewed her courage.

‘Hold up the lantern,’ she commanded Gytha. ‘I’ll go first and you can pass Robert through. Here, sweetheart, take the sword for me.’

The gap was like a lightless window set in the middle of the wall and she had to drag her skirts through her belt so that she could clamber through the aperture. The air on this side was thick with the chaffy residue of old Andrew’s trade and made her sneeze. She stifled the sound against her hand but it still seemed to echo resoundingly.

‘Pass me through the sword,’ she called to Robert. ‘Hiltfirst; it’s very dark in here and I don’t want to cut my fingers.’

There was a scraping, grating noise. Using the haphazard gleams of Gytha’s lantern, Linnet located the grip and pulled the sword through into the new cave. Robert followed it through, agile as a small ape. As she helped him down, she could feel him trembling, but he neither spoke nor whimpered.

Then, without warning, without time to run or hide, Andrew’s cellar door was flung open and bright daylight flooded down the dozen stairs, blinding Linnet and Robert.

‘I told you, I ain’t got no valuables hidden away!’ whined an elderly, cracked voice. ‘See for yourselves. This here’s me workshop!’

‘Nothing valuable? Oh, come now, I wouldn’t say that. Looks to me as if you’ve got two little birds nesting in your straw.’

Linnet’s eyesight began to adjust and she saw a broad-shouldered, leather-clad soldier standing at the head of the stairs grinning down at them. An old, scrawny man dangled from the soldier’s fist by the ripped edge of his hood.

‘I nivver seed ’em before!’ the old man squeaked with an incongruous mixture of fear and indignation. ‘They’re nowt to do wi’ me.’

‘Good, then you won’t be wanting a share in the reward for finding them,’ the soldier said cheerfully, and dropped him. Turning, he shouted, ‘Lads, come and look at what I’ve found!’ Grinning broadly, he started down the stairs. Linnet saw his look intensify as his eyes settled on the dark hole in the wall behind her and Robert. She licked her lips, knowing he would investigate and soon discover the two serving women and Ironheart. It was too late to distract him from what he had seen and deduced.

Robert was shuddering, his eyes growing wider with each footfall of the approaching soldier.

‘My lady,’ the man said. ‘You will yield yourself and the child into my keeping.’ His left foot scraped the bottom step. He made a beckoning gesture.

Linnet wrapped both hands around the sword grip and attacked him. The blade swung in an arc and hit his lower bicep and elbow. Although the blade did not bite flesh, he was knocked off balance. Cursing her, he began to straighten up and reach for his own sword but Linnet struck again and this time caught his throat between the edge of his gambeson tunic and his jawline.

He choked and clutched at the wound, blood spurting between his fingers. Linnet dropped the sword, picked up Robert and thrust him at the wall. ‘Go back!’ she commanded. ‘Stay with Gytha and Ella until I come for you.’ As the women took him, Linnet began feverishly piling up baskets and stacking rushes against the hole to concealing it, while in front of her the man died, his eyes full of frightened disbelief.

More soldiers arrived at the top of the stairs. ‘Found some treasure, have you, Rob?’ one shouted. The laughter left his voice and his eyes widened as he took in the scene below. ‘Rob?’ he croaked. ‘Christ, you bitch, what have you done to him?’

Linnet backed away from the men, sidestepping the body so that their eyes followed her to the far wall, not the one that concealed the opening behind the precariously balanced trugs and baskets. ‘I am the lady Linnet de Gael, daughter-in-law of William Ironheart,’ she said as they advanced down the steps, clubs and swords at the ready. ‘It will go ill with you if I am harmed.’

She saw the looks they exchanged. The soldier who had spoken reached the foot of the stairs and crouched beside his dead compatriot to check him for signs of life. His fingers came away bloody and he looked at her across the corpse, his face twisted with revulsion. Linnet returned his stare. ‘Soldiers killed my father-in-law,’ she said. ‘I took his sword to defend myself.’

He jerked to his feet and, crossing to her in two swift strides, struck her across the face. ‘You whore!’ he snarled. ‘Rob would never have attacked you. Soft as mutton fat he was with women!’ He raised his hand to strike her again but one of the others caught him back.

‘Steady, Alex. Lord Ferrers said he’d pay good money for her and the brat. And he can be mighty peculiar. It’s nothing to him to thrash a woman to death but if we bring her to him in any kind o’ state, he’ll have us on the gibbet for sure - and that’ll be all of us dead because of her, and no profit.’

Alex resisted the hand clamped on his wrist for a moment longer, then shrugged free and pushed his way out of the cave.

‘Where’s the boy?’ demanded the soldier who had intervened. His face was stone-hard and without compassion.

‘At the castle with his stepfather,’ she lied, looking straight in his eyes. ‘You’ll not get your hands on him.’

He scowled. ‘Get her out of here,’ he snapped to his two companions. ‘Take her to Lord Ferrers’ house. Alex and I will follow with Rob’s body.’

Linnet was seized by the elbows and dragged up the stairs into the full daylight of the basket-maker’s backyard. They tied her hands with a strip of leather and knotted a rope leash through her belt with which to pull her along. Linnet put up a token struggle, enough for them to jerk her roughly a couple of times, but she did not engage in spirited resistance. The sooner they were away from the cellar, the better.

As Ferrers’ hirelings pulled Linnet out of the yard, more men came running up the alleyway from the direction of Ironheart’s house, their swords drawn. Linnet dug in her heels and stared. Her heart pounded in swift hammer strokes. ‘Joscelin!’ she screamed. ‘Joscelin, Conan, help me!’

The soldier holding the rope swore and turned to strike her with his sword-hilt. Linnet dodged the blow and kicked him as hard as she could in the testicles. Unbalanced by her tied hands and the rope at her waist, the force of her effort toppled her and sent her sprawling in the alley’s filth. The soldier grunted and hunched over, for while she was only wearing soft indoor slippers, his gambeson was on the short side and at least part of the blow had connected. Before he could straighten and turn, Joscelin was upon him with a single killing blow. Linnet screamed and rolled away as the body struck the ground at her side. She struggled to her knees. Joscelin pulled her to her feet and freed her wrists, untied the the rope at her waist, then pulled her fiercely into his arms.

She clung to him, shaking. One man had fled up the alley towards Organ Lane, the others lay dead. Linnet could smell their lifelessness as though they were already putrefying. The stench invaded her nostrils and descended to her stomach, bringing on a lurching nausea. Then she realized that Joscelin’s garments were the source of the stink and that they were naught but infested rags.

‘Are you all right?’ He held her a little away to study her face. His hand gently touched the swollen mark where the soldier had hit her. ‘Where are the others? Once they’ve done looting and burning, they’ll turn on anything that moves and even the size of Conan’s troop might not deter them. We have to reach the castle as quickly as we can.’

Linnet nodded jerkily. She was far from being all right but for the nonce she could cope because she had to. She compressed her lips as the stench of his garments continued to agitate her stomach. ‘We hid in the house cellars. The others are still there.’ She swallowed and swallowed again, then pushed out of his arms. ‘Your father’s been wounded - badly, I think. It was very hard to tell in the dark. We had to leave him in the passageway between the caves - he could go no further. I bandaged him as best I could and left him a pitcher of wine to ease his thirst and his pain. He gave me his sword, and I—’ She shook her head and refused to think in that direction. She needed all of her faculties until they were safe. Averting her gaze from the corpse at her feet, she stumbled towards the vintner’s backyard. ‘I will take you to him,’ she said.

Pausing only to give Conan orders and send a soldier in search of a hand cart to carry the wounded Ironheart, Joscelin hastened after her.

‘If I’m going to die,’ Ironheart grumbled, ‘I’m going to do it at Arnsby in the bed where I was conceived and born, not on some poxy borrowed pallet in this godforsaken place!’

Linnet eyed him with exasperation as she cleaned the razor with which she had just finished shaving him and went to empty the laver bowl of scummy water down the waste shaft. ‘This godforsaken place’ was a comfortable private room in the tower of the castle and had been vacated by a senior officer at some considerable inconvenience. The bed, far from being poxy or a pallet, was a sumptuous affair, large enough to hold six people, and boasted crisp linen sheets and the finest Flemish coverings. In the three days since he had been placed there, Ironheart had gone from grey-faced docility to his current state of febrile crabbiness in which he was impossible to please.

‘You’re too lively to think of dying, Father,’ she said briskly. ‘If you would only keep still and cease complaining, the wound would pain you less.’

‘It’s the pain that tells me I’m still alive!’ he retorted, shifting irritably against the pillows. His left arm was caged in a leather sling and beneath it he was padded with swathes of bandage. The constable had sent his own physician to attend Ironheart. According to the good doctor, who had stitched the tear, Ironheart was suffering from an excess of choler and the wound had only served to further unbalance his humours. Linnet had had to bite her tongue on the comment that her father-in-law’s humours had always been out of balance. Fortunately, the physician had owned the good sense not to suggest bleeding as a remedy, otherwise she would have been bound to speak up since, in her opinion, Ironheart’s wound had already bled him white.

The doctor had applied a token leech or two to Ironheart’s arms and prescribed an infusion of Black Alder and agrimony to soothe the choler and help balance the humours. He had drawn up a strict diet for the wounded man, consisting of broth made from oxblood and dark bread soaked in milk, sprinkled with iron filings from a sword blade. It was small wonder that the invalid baulked every time he saw her or her maid approaching him with a bowl and spoon.