Swords and Shields (Reign of the House of de Winter) (33 page)

“I did, my lord.”

Davyss was dumbfounded. Outraged, shocked, and dumbfounded. Sending a soldier to bring Denys to him, he pulled up a three-legged stool and sat heavily, all the while mulling over what he’d just been told. After several long moments, he clapped a palm to his forehead in a gesture that suggested he was astounded by the entire circumstance.

“The de Mandevilles were not coming to Norwich,” he muttered to himself, although the others could hear him. “Drake feared that they would go after de Winter properties, but they did not. They went to Thunderbey instead and they have been there for two damnable months.”

The messenger was watching Davyss with concern, unsure if the man was speaking to him. He couldn’t take the chance that he was expecting an answer. “Aye, my lord, two months,” he said. “We thought it would be a simple thing to purge them.”

Davyss eyed the man as he rubbed at his chin, thinking on the situation. He simply shook his head after a moment, still lost to his own thoughts. “De Mandeville at Thunderbey,” he mumbled again, as if he were having a conversation only with himself. “Why did we not see this coming?”

The soldier who had summoned Davyss glanced to the others in the small room, curiously, before speaking to Davyss. “My lord?” he asked curiously, thinking Davyss was perhaps looking for an answer from any of them.

Davyss wasn’t particularly looking for answers and he knew he had been talking to himself, so he waved the man off. “It ‘tis nothing,” he said, “except… except Drake warned me of the de Mandevilles after the attack on Spexhall. He feared the de Mandevilles would try to attack de Winter properties but instead they went straight to Thunderbey. Thunderbey is a very large, high-walled castle. I find it astonishing that they were able to breach the walls and capture the keep.”

The messenger from Thunderbey shook his head. “They were disguised, my lord,” he said. “No army came to Thunderbey to capture her. As I said, it was a day like any other, but before the nooning meal, the keep and the inner ward were in the hands of another army. They simply slipped in and we did not notice them.”

Davyss frowned. “No army simply slips in unnoticed,” he said, “but that is beside the fact. What is done is done. Damn du Reims; he should have been more vigilant. Why was he not more vigilant? On the day his daughter married my son, he warned us about the de Mandevilles. Did he not follow his own advice?”

No one had an answer for him. They all sat there, wondering about the implications of the fall of Thunderbey and what that meant for the House of de Winter. As Davyss sat there and pondered the situation, still muttering to himself, he finally spoke up for all to hear.

“Of course we have no choice in this,” he said. “With du Reims gone, Drake is now the Earl of East Anglia. Thunderbey is my son’s property and, of course, we will regain it for him, but I must send word to him immediately on what has happened. He will need to come home and bring back the three thousand men I sent with him for Edward’s cause. We will need them.”

The messenger from Thunderbey nodded. “That is why I have been sent here, my lord,” he said. “I am sworn to East Anglia, who is your son. We tried to gain the castle back for him but we failed, and that is why we need your assistance. Will you not come, my lord?”

Davyss looked at him, something of suspicion flooding his features. “Pride,” he complained quietly. “It was your pride that kept you from coming to me sooner. Is that not true?”

The messenger hung his head. “We thought we could regain it with the four hundred men we had, my lord,” he said. “But that has not been the case.”

“Why not?” he demanded. “The de Mandevilles are no great force.”

The messenger shrugged. “Mayhap not, my lord, but they have managed to hold our keep for several weeks,” he said. “Thunderbey has known peace for so long that we have no siege engines or war machines. We have an army, but it is not a highly trained or equipped one because Lord Christian has never laid siege nor attacked an enemy his entire life. Therefore, we were ill-prepared for this. We built ladders to mount the walls but the inner walls are so tall that the ladders weaken and collapse. Then we built platforms, but the enemy inside the keep doused them with coals and flammable things that would burn them down. We lost three of them. We are currently attempting to tunnel under the wall but the tunnel collapsed last week, killing ten men. We are trying to re-tunnel, but the commander thought we had better seek assistance at this point. Regaining the keep of Thunderbey requires more than we can give.”

Davyss sat on that information, pensive in expression now, knowing what he needed to do but he sincerely needed Drake and Devon and those three thousand men returned to him. As it was, he only had about four thousand men total scattered around Norfolk and he would have to leave his other properties with hardly any protection at all if he were to draw on most of those men.

But, as he saw it, he had little choice. Recalling Drake and Devon and Dallan and all of his troops from Scotland would take time, and time wasn’t something they had. Thunderbey needed to be reclaimed and reclaimed quickly. Davyss knew he was going to have to call on some of his allies for manpower, men like de la Rosa of Framlingham and Summerlin of Blackstone. He sat back against the wall and considered his options as Denys suddenly appeared.

The de Winter brother had run all the way from the keep, through the cold and dark, and now stood just inside the doorway of the guard room, his face pinched red from the cold and puffs of breath coming from his mouth. Davyss explained to his son what had happened in a few short sentences, enough so that Denys took on the same surprised expression that Davyss himself had exhibited. When Davyss finished, Denys simply stood there with his mouth open.

“Thunderbey is
captured
?” he said, astonished. “We must send for Drake right away. It is his property, Papa. He will need to come home right away.”

Davyss nodded patiently. “I know,” he said. “That is why I have summoned you. You will be charged with sending missives to our allies and to Drake, telling them what has happened. Tell Drake he must come home immediately and bring my army back with him. Word must be sent to Framlingham Castle and Blackstone Castle asking for men and material. I will accept one thousand men from each. Meanwhile, we recall some of our own men from our holdings in Norfolk. Go now to my solar and pull forth my ledger that has how many men we have at each property. I will join you there shortly so we may begin the recall.”

Denys fled. Davyss stood up from the stool, pulled up by one of his soldiers, because he wasn’t exactly young and sometimes it was difficult for him to stand up when he’d been seated, especially in the cold weather. On his feet, he faced the messenger from Thunderbey.

“We will ride to Thunderbey and save her from herself,” he said in a rather ironic tone. “You will remain here for the night, fed and rested, and then return to Thunderbey and tell your commander we will come as soon as we can. It is my estimation that we will be fully mobilized in six or seven days and then it will take us at least three days to reach Thunderbey. Tell your commander that.”

The messenger nodded. “I will, my lord,” he said. “But… but what about the new Earl of East Anglia? Will you not wait for him?”

Davyss shook his head. “Did you not hear, man?” he said. “He is in Scotland. It will take weeks for him to return. Do you want to wait weeks?”

“Nay, my lord.”

“Then ten days is what you must wait. Go forth tomorrow and tell your commander that.”

“I will, my lord.”

Davyss left the gatehouse without another word, heading back across the bridges and moats until he reached Norwich’s keep. He paused in the hall, looking around for his wife, but didn’t see her and assumed she had retired for the evening. Even as he headed up the stairs to his bedchamber, he wasn’t quite sure what he was going to tell his wife. He couldn’t send Denys alone to conduct a siege, young as he was, so Davyss was convinced he had to go. He hadn’t ridden to battle in ten years and he was quite certain Devereux would try to talk him out of it.

He was right.

Elizaveta was up before dawn.

Her pregnancy sickness was unpredictable at best so when she awoke in the morning and felt well enough to move around, she got up, bathed in warmed rosewater, and dressed in a warm, dark green, woolen gown, wrapping herself in a heavy cloak that was lined with rabbit fur, a cloak that Lady de Winter had purchased for her in London during their visit in October. It was lovely and soft and warm.

Wrapped up against the cold, Elizaveta emerged from the chamber she’d been assigned to by Lady de Winter, the one where Drake usually slept, and descended the steps to the large common area below. There were two adjoining halls on this level, the entry level, and already men were breaking their fast in one of the halls as the sun began to rise. Elizaveta took a piece of warm bread from a passing serving girl and took it with her outside to walk. Spending so much time lying about made her want to stretch her legs and walk, and Norwich Castle was the perfect place to do so. It was a massive complex, one she found very interesting, so there was always something to see as she walked about.

The bread was soft and delicious, with herbs and onions, and she chewed enthusiastically as she made her way down the steps to the bailey. It was a somewhat small bailey surrounding the massive keep and she was immediately set upon by happy, but hungry, dogs who wanted what she had. She walked, they followed, and she ended up throwing them pieces of the hard crust. It made for quite an entourage as she made her way out of the bailey and across the bridge that connected to a second bailey. The dogs trotted after her, wagging their tails.

When she reached the second bailey, this one the smallest, some soldiers tried to chase the dogs away from her but the dogs wouldn’t budge. She laughed at the soldiers’ efforts as she continued down to the lower bailey where most of the activity at Norwich happened. There was a tanner down below and she had spoken with the man about producing some new boots for her, cowhide, and she wanted to see if the man had any hides for her to inspect. With her doggy escort, she crossed the second bridge down into the lower bailey with its enormous gatehouse, protecting the whole of Norwich.

By the time she reached that bailey, however, there was some commotion going about. Men at the gatehouse had spotted something, made difficult through the fog that had settled upon the ground during the night, but the rising sun was burning some of it off. Elizaveta didn’t pay much attention to the soldiers at the gatehouse, focused on the tanner’s shack near the corner of the bailey where she could already see the tanner moving about. She thought of having the tanner make a tiny pair of boots for the baby, too, smiling when she thought of Drake’s son and putting a hand over her belly, protectively. Her pregnancy has been mostly miserable so the moments of joy in a new child had been few and far between, but at this moment, she was feeling fairly joyful.

You will conceive a son this night, Elizaveta. Swear it.

Her smile grew, thinking of Drake’s reaction when he would come to realize she had kept her promise. She knew how happy he would be and she was already thinking of names for the child, assuming she would have to start the child’s name with a “D” as two generations of the de Winters had done. Drake’s entire family had names that started with that letter, except for his sister, Katharine, who was named after her grandmother, so Elizaveta had been thinking of all the possible names for the child that Drake might approve of. It had occupied her thoughts as of late, planning for the future, thinking on the lovely family she and Drake would have.

Shouts from the gatehouse began to distract her but she was over at the far end of the bailey at this point, well away from the gatehouse. She’d not yet reached the tanner when the gates began to open and people began scurrying. Casually, Elizaveta turned to see what the fuss was about and saw two mounted knights enter the bailey with a wagon between them, driven by one soldier and manned by a second. It was foggy in the bailey and difficult to see who the knights were, but as Elizaveta watched with curiosity, the sun broke through and the fog cleared up in spots, enough for her to recognize one of the horses, a big dappled rouncey with a black mane and tail.

It was Drake’s horse.

Shocked, Elizaveta forgot all about the tanner and began to run towards the knights, who had already passed through the bailey and were crossing the bridge into the second bailey. Unfortunately, there were crowds of men between Elizaveta and the knights who had just passed through and she had to run around men blocking her path, delaying her, and the knights and the wagon moved further and further away. Additionally, the running had brought back her nausea and she was forced to slow down, feeling ill and anxious and thrilled as she could see the knights now entering the second bailey.

Elizaveta began to walk, unable to exert herself now with her nausea returning, but her eyes never left Drake or his horse, even as they passed through to the second bridge leading up to the keep. She walked after them, tears of joy in her eyes, so very happy to see that he’d returned and not even questioning why he had returned. All she knew was that he had and that was all she focused on.

Her husband had come home.

Summon by a harried servant just as he had left his chamber, where Devereux was still dressing, Davyss was just descending the entry stairs of the keep, down into the bailey, as Drake was ascending. He met his son in the middle, his features grave with concern.

“Drake,” Davyss gasped, reaching out to grasp his arm. “Why are you here? What has happened?”

Drake was exhausted and gray in the early morning light. He was sporting several days’ growth of beard and his eyes were dark-circled. He looked like hell. Visor flipped up on his helm, he started to speak to his father but he couldn’t seem to do it without tears filling his eyes. He’d been dreading this moment for weeks, planning what he was going to say, but now that the moment was upon him, he could hardly speak.

“We have brought Dallan home, Papa,” he said hoarsely. It was rare when he called his father “Papa”, belying the severity of the information he was about to deliver. “He was killed in an ambush.”

Davyss’ breath caught in his throat, his eyes at first widening with shock and then, just as quickly, narrowing in disbelief as the information sank deep. The hand on Drake’s arms tightened and he suddenly threw out a second hand, grabbing Drake as if to hold himself steady. But it wasn’t enough and he pitched backwards, onto his arse on the cold, stone steps as Drake dropped beside him, struggling to keep his father from falling over any further. Devon, who had been at the base of the stairs, raced up to help his brother.

“I am well,” Davyss waved off his concerned sons although that wasn’t exactly the truth; his world was rocking and his legs were like water. Still, he held tightly to Drake as his stunned mind mulled over what he’d been told. “Dallan is dead?”

Drake blinked back tears at the sight of his father’s grief. “Aye,” he whispered. “He fell in a skirmish. He was brave and strong until the end.”

Davyss’ features began to crumple as sorrow overwhelmed him, but he fought it. He fought hard to maintain his composure. “My son,” he murmured. “My Dallan… he is gone?’

“Aye, Papa.”

“He was brave, you said?”

Devon, his face rife with grief, nodded. “Aye,” he said softly. “He was very brave. He fought off a great attack but he was simply overwhelmed.”

“He was killed.”

“Aye.”

Davyss simply sat at that, laboring to keep himself from falling apart. He’d asked three times if his son was truly dead and all three times, the answer was affirmative. There was no doubt. Now, he had to accept it. He swallowed hard, several times, still holding fast to Drake as if afraid to let him go. When he finally lifted his head, his lips were trembling with emotion.

“Did he die alone, lads?” he asked hoarsely.

Both Drake and Devon shook their heads and, at this point, Devon’s tears were falling again. “He did not,” Drake assured him quietly. “We were with him. We held him and told him we loved him. He did not die alone, Papa, I swear it. We were with him as he passed on.”

That seemed to comfort Davyss a great deal. With his sons’ help, he managed to stand, preparing himself to go to the wagon to view his son’s body, when Drake suddenly came to a halt, his focus on the keep entry. Startled, Devon and Davyss looked to see what had his attention and all three of them saw Devereux standing at the top of the stairs.

Wrapped in gray wool, she blended in with the misty morning, her lovely face emotionless but she was clearly looking at the wagon below. It was a terrible and unexpected moment, something the men had hoped would not happen this soon. They’d hoped to prepare their mother for the truth, but not out here in the midst of the bailey for all to see. Drake hastened to speak.

“Mother,” he said hoarsely. “I….”

Devereux cut him off. “I heard,” she said, sounding oddly hollow. “I heard what you said. Where is my Dallan?”

Devon rushed to her, to help her down the stairs, but Devereux didn’t seem to need any help. She brushed Devon off, her face like stone, as she made her way down the steps. Deeply concerned, Devon and Drake and Davyss followed her, trailing after her as she made her way to the wagon where Dallan’s body had been traveling in an oak box that Drake had purchased in the town of Auckland.

Devereux gazed at the casket, wet with mist, for several long moments, seemingly too stunned to speak or even move much. She simply stood there and stared at it as the entire bailey of Norwich seemed to come to a stop, watching her, all of them knowing that something dreadful had happened. Since Drake and Devon were present, it was not difficult to assume that the casket in the wagon held young Dallan de Winter. Some of the soldiers in the bailey crossed themselves and murmured a prayer, while still others were openly grieving. Dallan had been well-liked, by everyone, so his death was a great blow to those at Norwich.

But the blow to Devereux was the greatest of all. Dallan had been her youngest, her last child, and he had been her close companion for years. He had only been sent away to foster, at the rather old age of ten years, because Davyss had insisted. Still, he hadn’t gone far – only to Framlingham because it was only a four-day trip away – and Devereux had brought the lad home as a young man of fourteen where he had finished his training at Norwich with his father.

It had been a running family joke, how Dallan was always attached to his mother’s apron strings. Drake and Devon and Denys had teased him about it, but Dallan had taken it in stride. His education had been unconventional, to be sure, but Dallan had emerged a very skilled knight, taught by one of England’s best, even if his teacher had been his own father. But the gist of the situation was that Dallan had been very close to both parents and particularly to his mother.

Therefore, Drake and Devon and Davyss watched apprehensively as Devereux finally approached the casket in the wagon bed, putting her hand on it without hesitation. She rested her hand there for a few moments, simply feeling the wood beneath her fingers, contemplating the body it contained.
Her beloved son
. She stroked the wood a few times before speaking.

“Open the casket,” she said softly.

Drake left his father to stand next to her. “Mother, please,” he begged softly. “He has been dead for weeks. You do not want to see him as he is now.”

Devereux considered that a moment. “Have you seen him recently?”

“Aye.”

“When?”

“This morning.”

“Then I would see him, also.”

“Mother, I beg of you….”

“Open it, Drake.”

Drake looked to his father beseechingly but Davyss simply nodded; the pain evident in every corner of his expression.

“Do it,” he whispered.

With a heavy sigh and a heavy heart, Drake leapt up onto the wagon bed and opened the lid of the casket, which was not secured. He lifted it up and set it on the wagon bed beside him. Meanwhile, his mother had moved up next to the casket to see her son wrapped up in his burial shroud, an expanse of unbleached fabric that covered his features. She reached in without reservation and peeled back the material around his face and shoulders.

It was Dallan, but he wasn’t as bad as Drake had led her to believe. The cold weather had preserved his body well, well enough so that there was thankfully no smell and decay was minimal. Dallan was ghostly white, and a bit sunken in the eyes and cheeks, but he didn’t look terrible. He looked as if he were sleeping.