Company of Liars (24 page)

It was fortunate for Jofre that the prior wanted to keep the disgraceful incident as quiet as possible and deal with it privately behind closed doors, for he knew it did not reflect
well on the discipline of the monastery and both prior and novice master might be called to account, a situation they wanted to avoid at all costs. Had it not been for that, Jofre could well have found himself facing the Church courts on a serious charge and the penalties would have been grim indeed. As it was, the prior was content to leave the matter of Jofre's discipline to his master Rodrigo.

But if Rodrigo intended to blister Jofre's ears with a lecture, he was obviously saving his words until we were well away from the monastery. For unlike the night before, he remained tight-lipped and silent, despite Jofre's anxious glances in his direction and, like Jofre, the rest of us waited for the explosion which we knew must surely come.

It was a silent, grim-faced party that followed Xanthus and the wagon back out on to the road once more. Not even Zophiel suggested that Cygnus should be tied to the back of the wagon now. There was no point in pretending he was our prisoner any more. As before, once we were clear of the monastery lands, the road was nigh on deserted. The rain had settled in again, a fine mizzle, and the only sounds were trundling wagon wheels and the raucous cries of the rooks wheeling in the grey skies above as they mobbed a heron who flapped heavily too near their roosts. The thought of another night sleeping out in the open was depressing us all.

The river in front of us was swollen, brimming to the top of the banks after all the rain, but at least it hadn't flooded, though it threatened to at any time. Where the river crossed the road the banks had been widened out and the bottom raised with large flat stones to form a ford. But it was hard to tell if the ford was passable for the fast-flowing water was muddy and full of swirling brown leaves and twigs carried down from higher up the stream. To one side of the
ford, a stone humpback bridge had been built, wide enough for people and horses, but not for the wagon.

Zophiel handed Xanthus's bridle rein to Osmond and prodded his long stave into the ford to test the depth. ‘Faster and deeper than I'd like, but we've little choice. We've not passed another track wide enough for a wagon since well before the monastery. We must either cross the river here or retrace our steps a good many miles. And,’ he added, glaring at Jofre, ‘thanks to our young friend, we will hardly be welcome at the monastery if we are forced to return that way. So we will have to cross.’

Jofre glowered at the ground.

‘Two people will have to wade out in front of Xanthus, spaced as far apart as the wagon wheels, then they can warn in time if any of the ford stones have been washed away. It had better be someone who can swim. Cygnus?’

Cygnus shook his head. ‘I never learned.’

Zophiel swung his stave on to the wagon, almost hitting Cygnus on the head, so that he was forced to flinch away. ‘A swan that can't fly or swim. What exactly can you do, boy?’

‘I'll do it,’ said Osmond. ‘I was always in and out of the river when I was a lad, wasn't I, Adela?’ She looked at him sharply and Osmond suddenly flushed as if he had said something he shouldn't.

‘I will go too,’ said Rodrigo quietly. They were the first words he had spoken all day. ‘I am taller and heavier than Camelot. The river will not find it so easy to knock me over.’

I grinned. ‘Thank you, Rodrigo, for your tact in not saying what you really meant, that you are younger than me.’

Rodrigo made a courtly bow, but he didn't chuckle as he normally would have; this business of Jofre was clearly
preying on his mind. The sooner he tackled the boy and cleared the air, the better for everyone.

Narigorm scrambled down from her little nest in the well at the front of the wagon as Zophiel went to check that his boxes were secured, but Adela had to wait until Osmond could help her down. Her swollen belly was making the manoeuvre more difficult by the day.

‘I swear that if the wagon was swept away, Zophiel would let us drown and save his boxes,’ Osmond muttered. ‘I'd give anything to know what he's got in them. Cygnus, didn't you see what it was when you were hiding in the wagon?’

Cygnus, with a curious expression on his face, began, ‘I did see…’

But he broke off abruptly as Zophiel reappeared from round the back of the wagon. Cygnus hastily turned away and made for the bridge. The rest of us followed, except for Adela who was begging Osmond to be careful. He assured her that he'd be across the river before she was and with an embarrassed grin at Rodrigo, took a tentative step into the fast-flowing stream, shuddering as the icy water crept slowly up his legs.

I'll say this for Xanthus, she could rear and buck with the best of them when she was in a bad temper, but faced with real danger she was as steady as a rock, and though she hesitated on the edge of the water, she plodded her way across as Zophiel led her forward. Perhaps the familiar shapes of Rodrigo and Osmond walking ahead of her helped to keep her calm as the muddy water swirled about her.

Rodrigo and Osmond had almost reached the other side when a cry rang out from behind us on the bridge and almost at the same instant from Osmond. We spun round to see a young lad with his arm around Adela's breasts and a knife at her throat. An older man stood on the bank
holding a long, murderous-looking pike under Osmond's chin, the sharp point digging into his throat. As we stared, a woman and a girl appeared on the far side of the bridge, blocking our way across. They too were armed with knives. They were a wiry-looking family, scrawny but tough, like those who have known many times of hunger but have survived and become the stronger for it. Filthy and ragged they may have been, but these were no cringing beggars. There was a look of malice in their faces, even in that of the young girl, which told you at once they would have no hesitation in using their weapons if they were so minded.

‘Pay the toll if you want to use this crossing.’ The man's legs were bare, but the rest of him was encased in some kind of dark, mildewed leather and he wore a round leather cap on his head. His skin was as leathery as his clothes, so weathered and crinkled by sun, wind and snow that it was hard to tell flesh from garments.

‘Is this the way you collect tolls, at knife point? Does your master know of this?’ demanded Zophiel. ‘Who owns this crossing anyway?’

‘I own it. I live under the bridge, so I own it and I say who crosses and who don't. I'm master here.’

‘You think so?’ Rodrigo jerked his stave up out of the water, knocking the pike away from Osmond's throat, and in one fluid movement he struck his stave down hard across the man's knuckles. Old Leatherskin gave a yell, dropped the pike and fell backwards on to the bank. In the same moment Osmond, staggering backwards as the pike blade grazed his throat, lost his footing on the slippery river bottom, slid off the ford stones and sank into the deeper part of the river. He surfaced, gasping, and struggled to regain his footing, but the current was too strong. Rodrigo tried to grab him, but he was too late. Osmond was swept
downstream, his stave still clutched in his hand, and without a sound he disappeared from sight round the bend of the river. Adela screamed.

Rodrigo hesitated only for a moment, then, using his stave as a vaulting pole, he leaped for the bank just as Leatherskin was reaching again for the pike. But Rodrigo's stave had done its work; the man's hands were still numb from the blow and Rodrigo was able to wrench the pike from him and turn it against him, pinning him down on the grass with the pike's lethal point aimed straight at his heart.

Faced with all the commotion inches from her face, Xanthus, not unreasonably, began to rear and tried to back away. As she pushed, the back wheel of the wagon slipped off the edge of the ford and the wagon lurched sideways. It teetered perilously back and forth, the current threatening at any moment to sweep Zophiel, Xanthus and the wagon into the river. Zophiel took a wild gamble. Grabbing her bridle firmly, he brought his whip down hard on Xanthus's hindquarters. She skipped forward and bolted for the bank, dragging the wagon the last few feet safely to the water's edge.

As soon as Zophiel reached the bank he swiftly hitched the horse's reins to the branch of a tree and ran over to where Leatherskin lay pinned down by his own pike. Zophiel hauled him to his feet, twisting Leatherskin's arm behind him.

‘Now, my friend, what were you saying about a toll?’

Leatherskin, though clearly shaken, had not lost his fighting spirit.

‘You may have bested me, but he's still got the girl,’ he said with a malicious grin, nodding towards the opposite bank. The boy had pulled Adela back off the bridge on to the bank and had her kneeling on the ground in front of
him, his knife pressed against her throat, like a ewe about to be slaughtered. Adela was sobbing wildly, calling out for Osmond.

The boy looked over the river at his father and then up at us on the bridge. He grinned, showing several missing teeth. ‘Don't you try and come near me,’ he warned. ‘I'll cut her throat afore you get within a yard of her.’

Zophiel, not to be outdone, thrust Leatherskin down on his knees. ‘Tell your brat that if he doesn't let her go immediately, we'll run you through.’ And to prove he was quite capable of carrying out his threat, Zophiel jerked the man's arm up behind his back until he squealed with pain.

‘If… if you kill me, he'll kill her. So I reckon it's stalemate. But see here,’ he added, in a wheedling tone, ‘all we want is to make a living same as you. We look after the ford, keep it clear for folks like you, so it's only right and proper you give us a few pennies for our trouble.’

‘Who granted you the licence to collect tolls here?’ Zophiel demanded.

Rodrigo broke in.
‘I denti di Dio
, Zophiel! What does it matter if he has a licence or not? That boy has a knife to Adela's throat –’

‘Watch out behind you, son!’ the woman yelled from the far bank, but the boy turned his head too late. Osmond's stave cracked down upon his skull and he fell senseless to the ground, the knife rolling harmlessly away. Then Osmond was lifting Adela to her feet and pressing her to his dripping wet shirt. Blood was oozing from the pike cut on his throat. They clung to each other desperately as if they had both feared the other dead.

The boy's mother cried out and tried to push her way through over the bridge to reach her unconscious son, but Cygnus and Pleasance held her back. Cygnus firmly grasped
her knife arm, trying to keep the dangerously waving blade away from his face. So frantic was she to get to her son that she put up no resistance when I pulled the knife from her hand. The girl, meanwhile, had run back to hide under the bridge from whence came the shrill, echoing cries of a baby.

Zophiel turned his attention to Leatherskin once more, his eyebrows raised in that triumphant way of his. ‘Did you say stalemate? I think, my friend, you'll find it's checkmate.’

Leatherskin struggled to put on his most ingratiating smile. ‘It was only a little joke. He'd never have harmed her, but you can't be too careful. We get all kinds trying to cross the bridge. They'd rob a poor man blind if we didn't put on a show of strength and that's all it was, a show. Wouldn't dream of harming you good folk.’

‘Don't give me that,’ Zophiel spat. ‘Collecting illegal tolls. Threatening travellers. How many others have you robbed? You'll swing for this, you and your whole family.’ He gave Leatherskin's arm another sharp twist.

The little man squealed and a flicker of satisfaction crossed Zophiel's face.

‘Your lad crac… cracked my boy's skull,’ Leatherskin gasped. ‘If he's dead, I'll not be the only one for the noose.’

Zophiel made no reply, but slightly relaxed his grip on the man's arm.

Leatherskin looked up at him, a cunning smile on his face. ‘Come now, we neither of us want to go involving the justices, do we? We can both do each other a bit of good. You'll be looking for a place to sleep tonight, somewhere warm where you can dry off. But there's no inn for two days' walking, so it looks like you'll be sleeping rough, unless…’ He paused in mock thought. ‘I just might know of somewhere you can sleep warm tonight. What do you say? Worth a penny or two, that, I reckon.’

‘What are you suggesting, that we spend the night like rats crouched under the bridge with you?’ Zophiel sneered.

‘Oh no, my great lord,’ Leatherskin replied with equal sarcasm. ‘Our little bridge would be too humble for the likes of you. No, I'm talking about an inn. Leastways, it was.’

‘I thought you said there was no inn in these parts.’

‘There isn't. Like I say, it
was
an inn. A widow woman took it over after her husband died. Did all right too, until those bloodsuckers at the monastery told her she couldn't sell her own brew any more, had to sell what the monks sold her at the prices they chose. Ruined her it did. I reckon they wanted her out, but she refused to budge, said she wouldn't give 'em the satisfaction.’

‘So if the inn is closed, what good's that to us?’

‘You're so sharp you'll cut yourself. I'm coming to that. She doesn't sell ale no more, nor meals. I doubt she's got enough food for herself these days, no one has around here except for those bleeding monks.’ He spat. ‘They still do all right for themselves, no matter the rest of us starve. Still, that won't worry folks like you. I dare say you carry plenty of food and ale of your own.’ He stole a covetous glance at the wagon. ‘But the sleeping barn at the inn is still standing. 'Course, she's not allowed to call herself an innkeeper any more, nor hang a sign, but she'll let you bed down in the barn for a few pennies and a share of your supper. She's a sour old skinflint, but who can blame her after what they did? Come on, what do you say? Want to know where it is? You'll not find it without I tell you where to look.’

He nodded across at the far bank towards the shivering, wet Osmond. Adela had stopped crying, but was still clinging to him, plainly shaken, her face white.

‘Looks as if they could do with a night in the dry. Not
good for a lass in her condition to be sleeping rough, if she's not accustomed to it.’