Patricia Ryan - [Fairfax Family 01] (35 page)

Brother Matthew paused in the shaft of sunlight from the open door. “I came to bid you farewell, Thorne. I didn’t mean to interrupt—”

“Nay, Brother,” Martine said, backing away from Thorne, whose gaze never left her. Matthew knew about them, of course—she had told him herself—but when he had outlined the rules she was to live by, he had explicitly asked her to remember that she was a married woman and must act the part. No sooner had she promised to do so than she had broken that promise! “I... we were just—”

“We were just saying good-bye,” Thorne said quietly.

She nodded, feeling absurdly close to crying. “Yes. Well. I’ll see you in the spring, then.”

Thorne smiled a little sadly. “Yes.”

Martine turned and walked away, tears spilling down her cheeks.

Martine re-inked her goose quill pen and leaned over the small sheet of parchment on which he was recording a recipe for an elixir of rosemary extract. It was for her
Herbarium Medico
, a project she had begun upon taking up residence at St. Dunstan’s and which, so far, had made the long winter months, if not less lonely, at least less tedious. Obligated to confine her movements to the monastery’s public buildings, and discouraged from talking to any of the monks except for Brother Matthew and Brother Paul, the infirmarian, she had only Felda and the other servants for company, and little to do.

It was drafty in her chamber, with nothing to shield her from the icy January breezes but a piece of translucent oiled linen stretched across the window. Matthew had given her one of those cunning little desks that the brothers used in the scriptorium—a combination chair and writing surface—and despite the chill, she kept it next to the window, the better to see by. But, although her vision benefited from this, her penmanship suffered; her hands, stiff with cold despite the fingerless gloves she wore, struggled hard to reproduce a semblance of the graceful lettering that the nuns had drilled into her.

Nevertheless, she concentrated hard this afternoon on the task she had set herself, trying to occupy her mind with the various plants and their medical uses—of tonics and elixirs and potions and powders—and not with the distant and disconcerting sounds from beyond the valley, the sounds of battle from the direction of Blackburn Castle.

Setting down her pen, she pressed both hands to the container of hot coals that hung from her girdle, letting the warmth travel up her arms and into her uneasy chest. The delicious, spreading heat made her think of a different kind of heat that had blossomed within her once, on a riverbank not so very far away, a heat that had roiled within her, consuming her in a white-hot flash.

It made her think of Thorne. She’d not seen him for three months, and she found that his image—his voice, his sky-blue eyes, the dimpled smile that belied the ruggedness of his face—clung stubbornly to her thoughts.

She cupped her warm hands around her face, now healed of its wounds, and closed her eyes. Was Thorne among those laying siege to Blackburn Castle? Of course he was. When Neville thundered back into Sussex on All Hallows’ Eve with his army of Welsh savages and seized Blackburn, claiming it for his own, Olivier summoned all of his vassals and every man who owed them fealty, to roust the cur. As Godfrey’s most skilled soldier, Thorne would be at the forefront of the siege. According to Brother Matthew, he would most likely command the archers.

The siege had been going on for weeks. Knowing naught of warfare, Martine listened anxiously to the faraway sounds that carried so well in the cold, thin air—the whinny of warhorses, the blare of trumpets, voices raised to bellow orders... or to howl in pain. Once, a multitude of voices screamed simultaneously, and Martine shivered in dread. Shortly thereafter three cartloads of Olivier’s men arrived at the monastery, groaning in pain from the burning pitch that Neville’s Welshmen had dropped on them.

Brother Paul and his assistants had been tending the wounded in the infirmary. Martine, experienced in treating injuries and knowing that the infirmarian’s expertise lay more in the arena of illness, frequently offered to help, but Paul always refused. She simply was not permitted in that part of the monastery, and so he asked her to serve them with her prayers instead.

The incessant tapestry of battle noise was punctuated by other, more mysterious sounds. The repetitive thudding, Matthew told her, was probably a battering ram being used to break down Castle Blackburn’s curtain walls. The occasional loud crash might be a missile hurled from either side by a stone-throwing machine.

From Brother Paul, Martine learned that the men in the infirmary regarded this as an exceptionally challenging siege. The castle, although unfinished, was superbly built and seemingly impenetrable. Although they had succeeded in filling in several sections of the moat with stones and logs so that they could cross it, they found the curtain walls immensely thick and well constructed. And then there were Neville’s Welshmen—a hundred or more ruthless brutes armed with crossbows for which they had a seemingly endless supply of bolts. They undoubtedly had provisions for a year or more, so it was quite possible they could hold out long enough against Olivier’s forces, and inflict enough damage, than the king would ultimately be forced to concede the barony to Neville despite his dishonorable method of acquiring it.

Martine picked up her pen and wrote until vespers, broke briefly for her solitary supper, then lit an oil lamp against the dying light and continued to work until she heard the chanting of compline at nightfall.

It was while she was putting away her pen and ink and parchment that she smelled the smoke—not the odor of woodsmoke so much as the smell of scorched flesh and something else, something raw and noxious.

Grabbing her mantle, she left the prior’s lodge and went to the front gate where Matthew and several lay brothers stood staring into the dark in the direction of Blackburn Castle. She saw no flames, just the pinpoints of torches on the battlements.

“What’s happening? What’s on fire?” she asked the prior.

“I’m not sure,” he murmured, squinting into the distance. He put a hand on her arm. “Come, there’s no point to standing out here in the cold. We’ll find out what happened in the morning.’

*   *   *

Martine had barely gotten to sleep when Brother Matthew woke her. “Sir Peter is here, my lady,” he said from beyond her chamber curtain. “He wants to see you.”

She threw a tunic over her shift and found Peter awaiting her in the hall, in full chain mail, his helmet in his hand.

“Sir Peter?”

“It’s about Thorne,” he said grimly.

“Is he... he’s not...”

“Nay, but he’s...” His stricken expression said it all. “I thought perhaps you might have something to ease the pain.”

Oh, God
. “Where is he?”

“The infirmary.”

“Brother Paul won’t let me go there.” She looked imploringly toward Matthew.

The prior’s astute brown eyes seemed to pierce through to her very heart. “Brother Paul’s asleep, and I see no need to wake him when you can tend to Sir Thorne yourself—that is, if you don’t mind.”

“Oh, thank you.” Taking her lockbox, she followed the two men outside and through the moonless dark, past the cloister and chapter house to a dimly lit building at the easternmost end of the monastery. Inside, it was all one long room with dozens of beds lined up against the walls, occupied by injured men, most of them asleep. A skinny, very young-looking monk greeted Brother Matthew and Peter respectfully, but gaped incredulously at Martine, his gaze lingering on her unveiled braids.

“It’s all right, Brother Luke,” said Matthew. “We’re here to see the knight who was just brought in.”

Brother Luke pointed to a curtained-off area in the far corner, near a crackling fire pit. “We’ve got him back where it’s warmest.”

“Mother of God,” Martine whispered when she pushed aside the curtains and looked down upon Thorne. Still in full armor, including a badly dented helmet, he was pale and sweaty, his breathing labored, his eyes glazed. Crossbow bolts protruded through the steel links of his mail hauberk from his right shoulder and forearm, and his leg on that side was twisted at an unnatural angle.

“Thorne,” she said softly.

He focused his eyes on her and then, for just a moment, his face relaxed and he actually smiled. His mouth formed her name, although no sound came out, but when he reached toward her with his damaged arm, his smile became a grimace of agony and he groaned, squeezing his eyes tightly shut.

Brother Luke came up with a tray bearing a basin of water, a bar of soap, neatly folded linen bandages, a collection of surgical tools, and a jug of brandy, which he set down on a table next to the bed. Motioning Martine aside, he quickly unlaced Thorne’s helmet from the hood of his hauberk, then went to work undoing the complicated system of straps and buckles that kept his mail hose, elbow pieces, knee guards, and greaves in place.

That brandy, Martine knew, was the only anesthetic the monks ever offered; it would be a far sight more effective with a little sleeping draft mixed in. Setting her lockbox down on the table, she withdrew a mortar and proceeded to grind the requisite ingredients into a powder.

“The siege was successful,” Peter said quietly, his eyes on his friend, who seemed unaware of his presence. “We’ve retaken Blackburn Castle.”

“How did you manage that?” asked Matthew. “I thought the castle was impenetrable.”

“It is. When we realized we’d never get through those walls, Olivier started talking about a truce with Neville, but Thorne said compromise was an outrage after what that bastard did to Anseau and Aiglentine. So he came up with a plan, and Olivier agreed to it.”

The monk wrestled the big Saxon out of his heavy steel and leather armor, tossing it piece by piece onto the floor. Every time his efforts jarred the two firmly embedded crossbow bolts, Thorne flinched.

Peter said, “The first part of his plan was classic siege strategy—mining beneath the curtain wall. We set up a big tent covered with hides next to the wall, and put a team of men to work underneath it, digging a tunnel. They shored it up with logs soaked in tallow, and when it was finished, we stuffed it with straw and dead pigs and torched it. I never saw such a fire in my life. You can’t imagine the stink.”

“We were downwind of you,” Matthew muttered. “I don’t have to imagine. The point of such a fire, I take it, is to collapse the tunnel and thence the wall?”

“Aye, but that’s the thickest wall I ever saw. It never did fall. Of course, Thorne didn’t think it would.”

Matthew frowned. “He
knew
it wouldn’t work?”

Peter said, “Aye, ‘twas all a diversion. We waited till nightfall to set the fire, you see, so we could execute our real plan under cover of darkness. While the Welshmen were all congregated on the battlements above the tunnel, pouring buckets of water over the side, Thorne, Guy, and I took a scaling ladder around to the part of the wall they’d left unguarded.”

Having divested Thorne of his mail, Brother Luke took a sharp little knife and proceeded to slice off his linen head-wrappings and blood-soaked quilted underclothes.

Peter shook his head, gazing sadly at the Saxon. “Thorne’s reasoning was that the castle was simply too well built to destroy. We had to find a weaker link in Neville’s defenses, and that weak link was his Welshmen. For all their strength and skill, they were only hired soldiers. They worked for Neville not out of loyalty, but because he paid them. Take away their silver and you take away their reason to fight. The plan was for the three of us to infiltrate the keep, find Neville, and take him hostage.”

“And be killed in the process,” Matthew said. “How could you possibly think you could go unnoticed in a castle full of Welsh mercenaries? ‘Twas suicide to even contemplate it. Didn’t you realize that?”

“Of course. We all made confession and were absolved this afternoon. We assumed we’d never come out alive. Thorne hadn’t intended for Guy and me to come along, but he couldn’t talk us out of it. When he raised the scaling ladder, he insisted on going first, to make sure the coast was clear on the battlements. But when he got to the top, he pulled the ladder up after him so we couldn’t follow.” Peter shook his head, his eyes glimmering. “And then he grinned at us, as if he’d gotten the better of us in a game of darts and not just sentenced himself to death.”

“And saved your lives,” Matthew said softly.

Peter expelled a long, ragged breath. “He turned and... was gone. The Welshmen put out the fire, and we waited. After a while we heard voices from the bailey and then a great commotion. Finally Neville’s flag was lowered from the high tower, and the Welshmen called down that they were prepared to surrender, providing they wouldn’t be hanged. Olivier agreed, and they raised the portcullis. We took their weapons and rounded them up into the tower. Neville was dead and Thorne was as you see him. Our chaplain gave him last rites immediately. The Welshman told us that he’d gotten into the keep, earning those two crossbow bolts in the process, and found Neville. Dragged him into the bailey at sword-point and made him tell the Welshmen he hadn’t enough silver to pay them.”

“Was that true?” Matthew asked.

“I wouldn’t think so. Neville wasn’t stupid enough to surround himself with a hundred bloodthirsty barbarians unless he could afford their asking price.”