Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) (16 page)

‘Make sure you fill it,’ she said, pointing to Dane’s cup and thinking the man could stew in his own juices next day for all she cared. ‘To the brim if you please.’ And Joe laughed at that, his face suddenly full of a boy’s mischief that warmed Bess’s heart.

By the time the other patrons had emptied their last cups and disappeared into the damp night Bess was struggling to keep her eyes open, Joe was blind drunk and Dane was … Dane. Allen Greenleafe had insisted on all accounts being settled before they were too drunk to count their coin, but Bess guessed the man was simply canny enough to want his money before his guests saw their sleeping chambers. Her suspicions were vindicated when Allen hobbled over and began banking the fire, which was their cue to retire to bed.

‘You two are upstairs,’ he said to Bess and Joe with a jerk of his grey-bearded chin. ‘There are two rooms up there and yours is the one that doesn’t have Mrs Greenleafe snoring in
it. You, I’m afraid,’ he said to Dane, ‘are in the barn down the lane by the mill.’

‘I’ll sleep here,’ Dane said, nodding at the rush-strewn floor and the two dogs that still slept on.

Allen shook his head. ‘No you won’t,’ he said. ‘Not with your thirst. You’ll find Hogg’s barn dry and … spacious.’ He turned back to the fire and continued shovelling old embers onto the logs that still burned, smothering the flames. ‘You won’t be the first to bed down in there and we’ve had no complaints before.’

‘From the cows?’

‘Now look here,’ Allen said, turning back to face them, trailing his lame leg, his face clenched with offence.

‘I jest, sir,’ Dane said, raising a hand. ‘Give me a jug to take to bed and I shall not care where I sleep.’

Which left Bess and Joe climbing the stairs, knapsacks over their shoulders, candle lamps held out before them, and pushing open the door to the bedchamber they would share to maintain their pretence of being brother and sister. The lie in itself had been a good idea, Bess knew, for it lent credibility to Dane’s tale of them travelling to London to bury their brother. But neither she nor Joe had yet brought up the subject of their sleeping in the same bedchamber and now here they were, in a small bare room, the door closed behind them.

Just weeks ago she would have dismissed as absurd the very idea of sharing a bedchamber with another man, let alone this young man, a tenant farmer’s son and now soldier in Shear House’s garrison.

She watched him spread his bedroll and blanket out on the floor beneath the small window in the far wall and she knew he must be feeling as embarrassed as she. Perhaps even more so. Then he cleared his throat and turned, as though he had heard her thoughts. ‘I could sleep just outside the door,’ he suggested. ‘I know Dane said I must not leave your side, but we’re in no danger and I’d be just out there.’

‘Don’t be silly, Joe. You wouldn’t have the room to lie flat out there and after all that riding you must get a good night’s rest.’ She felt her brows arch. ‘Things are not as they were,’ she said, thinking of the chaos that nowadays reigned in the kingdom. ‘Besides, the folk back home need never know, for I am sure of your discretion and you may be assured of mine.’

He nodded. ‘I shall never breathe a word of it,’ he said, fiddling with his shirt sleeves.

‘There then, we have our agreement. Now, if you would step outside whilst I get ready.’

‘Of course,’ he said, making for the door.

‘At least we are not in a draughty barn with the rats.’ Bess could not help but smile at the thought of Dane bedding down somewhere out there on such a gloomy wet night.

‘He will be happy enough with his bed partner,’ Joe said, raising an imaginary cup to his lips.

‘No one else would have him,’ Bess said, and Joe’s smile was full and strong. Then he left, shutting the door behind him, and again Bess thought, as she took off her damp coif and bodice, how glad she was to have the young man with her.

By the time she called him back into the bedchamber she lay cocooned within the blankets, arms tucked close against her body, looking up at the whitewashed ceiling upon which the glow from her candle danced. She tried to ignore the sounds of Joe undressing, instead listening to the rain scattering upon the roof and the wind that was steadily building beyond those poor walls. It was painfully embarrassing to have a man lying on the floor in her room, but then all she had to do was think of what her brothers must be enduring and her discomforts were as nothing and her toes could uncurl themselves. She felt dry and warm and safe. And she could not know that beyond the Greenleafes’ walls sharp steel was glinting dully in the wet night. And men were coming for her.

Bess woke to what for a heartbeat sounded like a drumroll of thunder, but which she then knew to be boots thumping up the stairs.

‘Joe!’ she said, as the bedchamber door crashed open and men stormed in, one of them kicking Joe in the face as he tried to rise.

‘Don’t you touch him!’ Bess screamed, scrambling backwards so that her shoulder blades pressed against the cold limewashed wall.

‘Shut your mouth, woman,’ one of the men growled, turning savage eyes on her.

‘Get hold o’ him,’ another man barked, gesturing at Joe who lay in a dazed heap half illuminated by what little moon-glow seeped through the window’s thick glass.

There were five of them and two carried swords: Dane’s and Joe’s swords, Bess saw, though they looked somehow less dangerous than the weapons which the other men gripped.

‘You!’ she said, recognizing the squat man who had brought them to the Greenleafes’.

He clutched one of his sickles and pointed it at her. ‘I’ll have that pretty tongue if you don’t hold it still,’ he threatened, and Bess’s heart bucked at the realization that none of the men had their faces covered now. They have no fear of being identified later, she thought, dread filling her soul like ice-cold water.

‘Search it proper,’ a scrawny old man growled at two others, a man and his son by the look of their copper hair, who were on their knees rifling through her and Joe’s gear.

‘You come here, to our village,’ the squat man said, hauling Joe up, one fist fat with nightshirt, the other clutching the sickle’s haft, ‘with yer firearms and yer money.’ He thrust Joe against the wall and brought the sickle blade up. But Joe launched his knee into the man’s belly and slammed a fist into the side of his head and the squat man doubled. Then the older man with copper-coloured hair sprang up and swung his club,
catching Joe’s left temple and sending him spinning, blood splattering up the white wall.

‘No!’ Bess screamed and now there was a man on top of her, clawing at her linen nightdress, ripping it like some frenzied animal. She felt hot spittle on her naked breasts, was vaguely aware of a man grunting at another to
stop the whore screaming
, and the next moment she felt the pressure of a hand over her face and mouth, smelt tobacco and faeces on those molesting fingers.

She writhed and thrashed, every sinew in her body enraged, trying to resist the irresistible. She knew they were beating Joe, could hear the dull blows of them kicking him, but she was consumed by her own terror now.

Francis!
her mind screamed,
my boy!
Not just terror. Fury, too, at these animals. Fighting for her life she opened her mouth and bit into the hand and the man screamed, then the back of his other hand smashed into her face. Blood was in her mouth. Not her own, she realized with crazed joy, seeing the fleshy wound on her attacker’s hand.

‘Hold her still, damn you!’ someone growled and then she felt hands grasping her legs, knew they were being forced wide. Knew what was coming.

No!
‘No!’ she yelled, frenzying, kicking as though her life depended on it, for she knew that it did.

‘There it is,’ one of them growled, touching his throat. Stroking it hungrily. ‘Feast yer eyes on that.’

They had got her legs wide now, the dead weights of their bodies pressing down on them, and she felt a bristled cheek scratch her inner thigh, felt hot breath on her private parts.

‘Makes you hungry, don’t it?’ the squat man said, his ugly face joining the others. Down there.

Is Joe dead then?

‘Out of my way, Jonas,’ the squat man said, pushing the others aside.

‘You said I could go first,’ Jonas protested.

‘Get off, Jonas, or I’ll tell Phyllis,’ he spat, and with that Jonas squirmed up the bed and clamped a hand on her right breast, grinning like a dead fox.

Francis! My baby!

Knuckles gouged into her cheek, the blow blinding her, and now there was a hand around her throat, squeezing, the finger ends in amongst the cords and sinews, digging deep.

Then something about the air in the room changed, seemed to shiver, though she did not know what was happening until the squat man’s head jerked back and a knife slashed open his throat, spraying her with hot blood.

Suddenly her legs were free, the weights that had pinned her to the bed gone as her attackers reeled in the face of this vicious threat.

Dane!
Dane spun, caught the arm that was swinging the club at his head and plunged the knife into the man’s eye socket, yanking the blade free and turning again even as the man with the copper hair slumped to his knees dead. The hanger swept through the gloom and he twisted aside, clutching his own cloak and hauling it up, snaring the short sword amongst the woollen folds and wrenching it from the clubman, as he scythed the knife across the man’s throat, instinctively ducking a swipe from another club.

‘Gut him, Nate!’ the one with Dane’s own rapier squawked. ‘Gut the bastard!’

The younger copper-haired man had picked up the squat man’s sickle so that he had that in one hand and his club in the other. He stepped forward and Dane flew at him, catching the sickle blade on his knife and slamming his head into the man’s face. The young man staggered back, blinded, flailing his weapons before him in a desperate defence. Dane went for him, suddenly dropping to the floor with a flurry of knife strikes that made the man mewl as he dropped in a pile, his hamstrings cut.

‘I’m sorry!’ the last man shouted. ‘They made us do it. I
never laid a finger on her. Or him!’ He gestured down at Joe who was half-sitting against the wall, eyes glowing white.

‘You want to kill me with my own sword?’ Dane asked, as though he found the idea almost amusing, beckoning the man on with his knife. Gore was dripping from the blade, Bess saw. ‘Well here I am. Come.’

The man shook his head and Bess saw the wet stain spread down the legs of his breeches as he wet himself. ‘I won’t fight,’ he said, then threw the sword at Dane’s feet.

‘Then you might as well stand still,’ Dane said, striding up and plunging the knife into the man’s chest and twisting it savagely so that the blade lacerated the heart. He pulled it free and wiped it on the dying man’s tunic, then turned to Bess.

‘We should go,’ he said. Behind him the man’s eyes rolled in his head, his legs buckled and he thumped to the floor.

Bess could not move. She was paralysed.

‘Up you get, lad,’ Dane said, extending a hand to Joe and hauling him to his feet. Joe pulled away and raised his hands to show he was all right, though his legs were unsteady and his face was a blood- and snot-smeared mess.

‘Must I carry you, Bess?’ Dane asked, turning back to her. She knew he would.

‘No,’ she said, climbing from the bloodied blankets, trembling fiercely. Five men lay dead or dying. The walls were spattered with blood and there was the smell of faeces again but this time it was sharp and offensive.

‘How did you know?’ Joe asked.

‘They came for me too,’ Dane said, ‘that ugly lad who liked your gun and some others.’ Bess shuddered to think what scene awaited whosoever went into the barn down the lane. ‘We should go.’

Bess nodded, steeling herself for flight, then dressed hurriedly, as did Joe, as Dane crouched by the man whose hamstrings he had severed.

‘The man that spoke for you on the road yesterday,’ Dane said in a soft, even voice. ‘Where will I find him?’

The clubman was sobbing, teeth bared in savage pain, blood pooling on the boards around him.

‘Tell me and I’ll kill you cleanly,’ Dane said. ‘Don’t tell me and I’ll cut off your balls and walk away.’

The man pulled a hand from the boards and looked at it. The palm was slathered in thick, dark blood. ‘The last house on the bend. By the church,’ he whimpered.

Dane nodded, then took the man’s hair in his fist, pushed the head back against the wall and sliced open the windpipe, so that Bess heard a soft gush of air and then a foul frothing, choking sound.

She watched the man die. Part of her didn’t want to, but a stronger part would not let her tear her eyes away. ‘Shouldn’t we just get away? As fast as we can?’ she said. Once the other villagers knew what had happened they would want revenge. They were likely already coming. Looking at Joe she doubted he could put up much of a fight.

‘Not without my pistols,’ Dane said.

For some reason Bess closed the door behind them, shutting in all that death so it could not follow her, and down in the tavern stood Allen and Cecily Greenleafe, his arms around her protectively, their faces masks of horror.

‘It was none of our doing,’ Allen muttered. ‘We knew nothing of it.’ From the looks of them they had been rudely awakened too and Bess preferred to believe they had played no part in the betrayal.

‘As fine a drop as your ale is, Mr Greenleafe, you will understand if I do not call on your hospitality again,’ Dane said, leading Bess and Joe out into the night, his sword arm ready. But when they got outside all was quiet, the village in darkness and the rain falling softly now, a drizzle whose scent Bess inhaled gladly to cleanse her nose of the stench of death.

The horses were as they had left them and within moments
they were walking them up the lane towards the church behind whose steeple the moon glowed when not obscured by black cloud.

Bess desperately wanted to gallop away, to flee the place as fast as her mare could carry her. But Dane said they were wiser to move quietly, at least until they had paid their last visit, and Joe had nodded his agreement, so she had held her tongue. Now she all but twisted her head off her neck, looking through the dark for attackers she was sure must come. Her heart was thumping and her arms and legs ached where the men had gripped and mauled her, but what were bruises compared with their intent?