The Valcourt Heiress (Medieval Song 7)

Aleric believed it even more amazing when he saw her beautiful script, all those elegant strange black lines and loops that made sense—to some people. He grunted as she read off items on the lists, and they made changes and adjustments. Each was satisfied that the other had the same goal: to have Wareham nearly back to normal by the time Garron returned. They were expecting three more families by the end of the week.

When Aleric sought out Merry an hour later, he said, “I have visited Arno the miller. He’s brought his wife, his wife’s mother, and his three children. His wheel broke and so I assigned men to repair it.”

Merry nodded. “I have consulted my herbal. I have ground up horehound, marisilver, and vervain, and mixed them together in hot water. I have a paste to rub into your shoulder. It will leach out the soreness. Come with me to the solar, Aleric.”

And so he went with her, and took off his tunic.

She hummed as she rubbed her sweet-smelling mixture deep into his knotted muscles. There were so many scars on his body, she thought, and so much hair as well, much of it white. She smiled as he groaned and sighed. And when he admitted the pain lessened very quickly and the soreness eased, she wanted to dance. That he smelled like wildflowers would make his men laugh, Aleric knew, but it didn’t matter. Since many of the men were sore, he sent them to Merry. Garron, he thought, would have the sweetest-smelling workers in Christendom.

More than a dozen men sought her out that day. Merry realized she would run out of the precious horehound. She had to consult her herbal for another infusion.

As she served Aleric his afternoon meal of gravied beef slices on hard brown bread, she said, “Keep sending me people; the more I practice, the faster I will learn all the recipes in my herbal. Ah, but I must plant herbs.” She fell silent and Aleric knew she was planning it all out in her head. He also knew there would be a long list on the morrow. He mentally selected two young men to prepare an herb garden.

Just after dawn the following morning, Merry awoke abruptly to yells. She had slept in Garron’s lovely new bed at Miggins’s insistence. “Aye, little sweeting, ye need yer sleep after listening to me snore loud enough to keep the pope awake,” which was true. She, Elaine, Ivo, and Errol spooned on the soft bed, the three dogs lined up like firewood at the foot. She pulled gently away from Errol, and quickly dressed in one of Lady Anne’s gowns Lisle had cleaned for her the day before, tied on her slippers, and raced to the door, grabbing her cloak and pulling it around her. She left Elaine sitting up, rubbing her eyes, looking alarmed.

“I don’t know what is happening,” Merry said over her shoulder, “but mayhap the Black Demon has returned. Quickly, Elaine, dress and go into the great hall. I will send all the children to you. Take care of them.”

The three dogs raced after her. The great hall was already pandemonium. There were at least thirty women there, awakened by the shouts, some of them weeping, wringing their hands, praying loudly to the blackened beams overhead. A woman yelled, “ ’Tis the enemy again! They will spit our guts on their swords and roast us over a fire!”

Then a chorus of voices joined in the refrain.

“The Black Demon is back!”

“They will rape all of us this time, even us old’uns!”

“Lord Garron took all the soldiers! There is no one left!”

Merry scrambled on top of a trestle table, waved her arms, and shouted, “Shut your mouths! What are you, bleating sh

eep? Wareham is your home! You defend your home. Listen to me, no one will come through the postern gate again, Aleric always has men guarding it.

“We are women, we are strong. We will show the enemy what we are made of. All of you—fetch weapons, anything that can break a man’s head. This time we will make the Black Demon run for his miserable life!”

The grumbles fell away. There was dead silence, then, “Aye, I’ll clout one of the whoresons!”

“I’ll kick their slimy parts to France!”

“France is the homeland to slimy parts!”

24

The women stripped all the iron pots and knives from the cooking shed, Talia grabbed a long-handled metal scoop for meat pies and bread, and raced out after them. Soon all the women and the workers were standing in the inner bailey, armed with planks of wood, hammers, mallets, and all the precious knives and pots, ready to take on the Devil. As for the soldiers, they stood in a small knot at the base of the ramparts ladder, looking up at Aleric.

They moved aside to let Merry climb the ladder to stand beside Aleric on the ramparts walkway. She stared down at a band of thirty men, their leader tall in his saddle, his gleaming silver mail covering a black tunic, his destrier black as a moonless sky. She felt fear, rancid as bile, rise in her throat, choking her—was it the Black Demon? Persuading the women to have pride and fight was one thing, actually seeing the Black Demon was quite another. But why had he returned to Wareham? He had already searched Wareham for Arthur’s silver, and that meant he’d learned where the silver was and had come back to get it.

There were no more than fifteen fighting men at Wareham, all the others workers, but she knew they would fight to the death. The women as well, she thought, pride filling her as she turned to look down over the inner rampart’s wall, into the inner bailey at the women clustered together, holding their weapons tightly against their chests, looking determined. Merry saw the soldiers still standing below her—what did Aleric have in mind?

The drawbridge was tightly winched up, the portcullis down. Thank the merciful Virgin’s stout heart it was only dawn and the cattle were still within the walls and not outside for the Black Demon’s men to slaughter.

Merry stilled her fear and stood straight and tall, like Aleric. She watched him turn and speak to Hobbs, who was kneeling behind him. Hobbs went down on his haunches and spoke to the men now climbing the ladder, one by one, staying low and quiet. They fanned out to both sides and crawled along the rampart walls, keeping their heads low as they positioned the quivers on their shoulders and readied their bows. She heard Aleric tell Hobbs, “Three of the men are in mail, the rest are not. There aren’t many archers, maybe a dozen, all of them standing in a straight line behind the horses. If it comes to shooting, tell our archers to aim for the necks of the soldiers on horses, but don’t kill any animals. We need them.”

Aleric nodded at her, still not questioning her presence, and said more to himself than to her, “It is not much of an army the whoreson brings to Wareham, nothing really to test a man’s mettle,” and then he smiled, a ferocious smile that would have scared her to her toes had she been on the other side of the moat. Aleric shouted down, “Who are you? What do you want?”

Their leader called, “I heard of Wareham’s destruction. Are you the last remaining man to stand upright in this blighted castle? Who is the girl standing beside you? Why was she not taken? I heard all comely maids and those even not so comely were taken. Are all the rest of your people dead or too weak to walk? Let me in and I will feed you and those who are still alive.”

Aleric said to Merry, “By Saint Albert’s pointed chin, I know that man, I recognize his voice and his horse—look at the four white fetlocks. Garron described his destrier to me, but I do not know the man’s name. He is the man we came upon in the Clandor Forest on our way to Wareham. He and three men had kidnapped a boy and Garron intervened. He himself fought this man, but the bastard managed to escape him. Now he is here. Is he the Black Demon? I wonder. If not, then the Black Demon is his master.”

Merry recognized his voice and his horse as well. Only she knew his name and who his master was, for his standard, held by a squire, luffed out in the stiff wind. Two black eagles, wings folded down, bones piled between them.