“That has no sensible rhyme, lackwit, and you waste my energies! Get out out of my sight!”
My sweet lord of St. Erth
Ye need not go a-begging
In yer humble holey lin-en
There come three wagons full of wool and
But a clutch of knaves to guard them-in.
“Enough of your twaddle!” Dienwald jumped to his feet and advanced on Crooky, who lay on the rush-strewn floor smiling beautifully up at his master. “Get to your feet and tell me about this wool.”
Crooky began another mime, still crouched on the floor. He was driving a wagon, looking over his shoulder; then fright screwed up his homely features. Dienwald kicked him in the ribs. “Cease this!” he bellowed. “You’ve less ability than the bloody sheep that slaughtered themselves.”
Crooky, exquisitely sensitive to his master’s moods, and more wily than he was brain-full, guessed from the pain in his ribs that his lord was serious. He quickly rolled to his knees and told Dienwald what he’d heard.
Dienwald stroked his hand over his jaw. He hesitated. He sat down in the lord’s chair and stretched out his legs in front of him. There was a hole in his hose at the ankle. So there were three wagons of raw wool coming from Beauchamp. Long he’d wanted to tangle with that overfed Lord Henry. But the man was powerful and had many men in his service. From the corner of his eye Dienwald saw his son, Edmund, dash into the great hall. His short tunic was patched and worn and remarkably filthy. His hose were long disintegrated, and the boy’s legs were bare. He looked like a serf.
Edmund, unconcerned with his frayed appearance, looked from his father to Crooky, who gave him a wink and a wave. “ ‘Tis true, Father? Wool for the taking?”
Dienwald looked again at the patches that were quick wearing through on his son’s elbows. He shouted for his master-at-arms, Eldwin. The man appeared in an instant and Dienwald knew he’d heard all. “We’ll take eight men—our most ferocious-looking fighters—and those wagons will soon be ours. Don’t forget Gorkel the Hideous. One look at him and those wagon drivers will faint with terror. Tell that useless cur Prink and Old Agnes that we’ll soon have enough work for every able-bodied servant in the keep.”
“Can I come with you, Papa?”
Dienwald shook his head, buffeted the boy fondly on the shoulder, a loving gesture that nearly knocked him down into the stale rushes. “Nay, Edmund. You will guard the castle in my absence. You can bear Old Agnes’ advice and endless counsel whilst I’m gone.”
The stench was awful. By the evening of that first day, when the wagons and men camped near a stream close to St. Hilary, Philippa was very nearly ready to announce her presence and beg mercy, a bath, and some of the roasting rabbit she smelled. But she didn’t; she endured, she had to. They would reach St. Ives Fair late on the morrow. She could bear it. It wasn’t just the raw, bur-filled wool, but the smell of moat dried against her skin and clothes and mingled with the odor of the raw wool. It didn’t get better. Philippa had managed to burrow through the thick piles of wool to form a small breathing hole, but she dared not make the hole larger. One of the men might notice, and it would be all over. They would sympathize with her plight rightly enough, and let her bathe and doubtless feed her, but then they would return her to Beauchamp. Their loyalty and their very lives were bound up with Lord Henry.
She pictured her cousin Sir Walter de Grasse and tried to imagine his reaction when she suddenly appeared at Crandall looking and smelling like a nightmare hag from Burgotha’s Swamp. She could imagine his thin long nose twitching, imagine his eyes closing tightly at the sight of her. But he couldn’t turn her away. He wouldn’t. She prayed that she would find a stream before arriving at Crandall.
To make matters worse, the day was hot and the night remained uncomfortably warm. Under the scratchy thick wool, adding sweat to the stench, the hell described by Lord Henry’s priest began to seem like naught more than a cool summer’s afternoon.
Philippa itched but couldn’t reach all the places that were making her more desperate by the minute. Had it been imperative that she jump into the moat? Wasn’t there another way to get to the forest? She’d acted without thinking, not used her brain and planned. “You think with your feet, Philippa,” Lord Henry was wont to tell her, watching her dash hither and yon in search of something. And she’d done it again. She
’d certainly jumped into the moat with her feet.
How many more hours now before she could slip away? She had to wait until they reached the St. Ives Fair or her father’s men would likely see her and it would have all been for naught. All the stench, all the itches, all the hunger, all for naught. She would wait it out; her sheer investment in misery wouldn’t allow her to back down now. Her stomach grumbled loudly and she was so thirsty her tongue was swollen.
Her father’s guards unknowingly shared their amorous secrets with her that evening. “Aye,” said Alfred, a man who weighed more than Lord Henry’s prize bull, “they pretend it pains them to take ye—then, jist when ye spill yer seed and want to rest a bit, they whine about a little bauble. Bah!”
Philippa could just imagine Alfred lying on her, and the thought made her ribs hurt. Ivo had been heavy enough; Alfred was three times his size. There were offerings of consolation and advice, followed by tall tales of conquest—none of it in the service of her father against his enemies—and Philippa wanted to scream that a young lady was in the wool wagon and her ears were burning, but instead she fell asleep in her misery and slept the whole night through.
The next day continued as the first, except that she was so hungry and thirsty she forgot for whole minutes at a time the fiery itching of her flesh and her own stink. She’d sunk into a kind of apathy when she suddenly heard a shout from one of Lord Henry’s guards. She stuck her nose up into the small air passage. Another shout; then: “Attack! Attack! Flank the last wagon! No, over there!”
Good God! Thieves!
The wagon that held Philippa lurched to a stop, leaned precariously to the left, then righted itself. She heard more shouting, the sound of horses’ hooves pounding nearer, until they seemed right on top of her, and then the clash of steel against steel. There were several loud moans and the sound of running feet. She wanted to help but knew that the only thing she could possibly do was show herself and pray that the thieves died of fright. No, she had to hold still and pray that her father’s men would vanquish the attackers. She heard a loud gurgling sound, quite close, and felt a bolt of terror.
There came another loud shout, then the loud twang of an arrow being released. She heard a loud thump—the sound of a man falling from his horse. And then she heard one voice, raised over all the others, and that voice was giving orders. It was a voice that was oddly calm, yet at the same time deep in its intensity, and she felt her blood run cold. It wasn’t the voice of a common thief. No, the voice . . . Her thinking stopped. There was only silence now. The brief fighting was over. And she knew her father’s men hadn’t won. They would tell no tall tales about this day. She waited, frozen deep in her nest of wool.
The man’s voice came again. “You, fellow, listen to me. Your guards are such cowards they’ve fled with but slight wounds to nag at them. I have no desire to slit any of your throats for you. What say you?”
Osbert wasn’t amused; he was terrified, and his mouth was as dry as the dirty wool in the wagon, for he’d swallowed all his spit and could scarce form words. But self-interest moistened his tongue, and he managed to fawn, saying, “My lord, please allow this one wagon to pass. Thass ours, my lord, my brother’s and mine, and thass all we own. We’ll starve if ye take it. The other two wagons are the property of my lord Henry de Beauchamp. He’s fat and needs not the profits. Have pity on us, my lord.”
Philippa wanted to rise from her bed of wool and shriek at Osbert, the scurvy liar. Starve indeed. The fellow owned the most prosperous of Lord Henry’s demesne farms. He was a freeman and his duty to Lord Henry lightened his purse not overly much. She waited for the man with the mean voice to cut out Osbert’s tongue for his effrontery. To her chagrin and relief, the man said, “ ‘Tis fair. I will take the two wagons and you may keep yours. Say nothing, fellow,” the man added, and Philippa knew he said those words only to hear himself give the order. Her father’s farmers would race back to Beauchamp to tell of this thievery, and likely bray about their bravery against overwhelming forces—and take her with them, if, that is, she was in the right wagon.
Suddenly the wagon moved. She heard the man’s voice say, “Easy on the reins, Peter. That mangy horse looks ready to crumple in his tracks. ‘Twould appear that Lord Henry is stingy and mean.”