CHAPTER 14
Odo wants to know why I have never mentioned Nóin before. “Some things are sacred,” I tell him. “What kind of priest are you that you don’t know this?”
“Sacred?” He blinks at me like a mole just popped from the ground and dazzled by a little daylight. “A sacred memory?”
“Nóin is more than a memory, monk. She’s a part of me forever.”
“Is she dead, then?”
“I’ll not be telling the likes of you,” I say. I am peeved with him now, and he knows it. Nóin may be a memory, but even so she is a splendid pearl and not to be tossed to any Ffreinc swine.
Odo pouts.
“I meant no disrespect,” he says, rubbing his bald spot. “Neither to you, nor the lady. I just wanted to know.”
“So you can run off and tell the blasted abbot?” I shake my head. “I may be crow food tomorrow, but I en’t a dunce today.”
My scribe does not understand this, and as I look at him it occurs to me that I don’t rightly understand it, either. I protect her however I may, I suppose. “So now!” I slide down the rough stone wall and assume my place once more. “Where was I?”
“Returned to Cél Craidd,” he says, dipping his pen reluctantly. “It is the night after the raid and it is snowing.”
“Snowing, yes. It was snowing,” I say, and we press on . . .
It snowed all night, and most of the next day, clearing a little around sunset. Owing to Angharad’s timely warning, we were well prepared and weathered the storm in comfort—sleeping, eating, taking our ease. To us, it was a holy day, a feast day; we celebrated our victory and rare good fortune.
Around midday, after we’d had a good warm sleep and a little something to break our fast, Lord Bran and those of us who had helped in the raid crowded into his hut to view the spoils. In amongst the bags of grain and beans, sides of smoked meat, casks of wine, and bundles of cloth that made up the greater part of the take, the Grellon had found two small chests. The heavier goods had been hidden in the wood not far from the road, to be retrieved later when the weather was better and the sheriff far away.
The wooden boxes, however, had been toted back to our snuggery. With a nod from Angharad, standing nearby to oversee the proceedings, Bran said, “Open them. Let’s see what our generous baron has sent us.”
Siarles, waiting with an axe in his hand, stepped forward and gave the oak chest a few solid chops. The lid splintered. A few more blows and the box lay open to reveal a quantity of small leather bags that were quickly untied and dumped on a skin beside the hearth around which we all stood. The bags were full of silver pennies, which was more or less to be expected.
“Again,” said Bran, and Siarles wielded the axe once more and the second chest gave way. In it were more leather bags full of coins, but also three other items of interest: a pair of fine white leather calfskin gloves, richly embroidered on the back with holy crosses and other symbols in gold braid; a thick square of parchment, folded, bound with a blue cord, and sealed with wax; and, in its own calfskin bag, a massive gold ring.
“A fine bauble, that,” said Siarles, holding up the ring. He handed it to Bran, who bounced it on his palm to judge the weight of gold before passing it on to Angharad.
“Very fine work,” she observed, holding the ring to her squint. She passed it along, saying, “Much too grand for a mere count.”
Indeed, the ring looked like something I imagined an emperor might wear. The flat central stone was engraved with a coat of arms such as might be used by kings or other notables for imprinting their seal on important documents. Around the carved stone was a double row of glittering rubies—tiny, but bright as bird’s eyes, and each glowing like a small crimson sun.
“A most expensive trinket,” replied Bran. Leaning close, he examined the engraving. “Whose arms, I wonder? Have you ever seen them, Iwan?”
The big man bent his head close and then shook it slowly. “Not English, I think. Probably belong to a Ffreinc nobleman—a baron, I’d say. Or a king.”
“I doubt if anyone in all Britain has ever worn the like,” said Siarles. “Where do you think de Braose got it?”
“And why send it here?” asked Iwan.
“These are questions that will require some thought,” replied Angharad as Bran slipped the ring onto his finger. It was far too big, so he put it on his thumb, and even then it did not fit; so he took a bowstring, looped it through the ring, and tied it around his neck. “It will be safe enough there,” he said, “until we find out more.”
We counted up the silver, and it came to fifty marks—a splendid haul.
“The gloves might be worth twenty or thirty marks all by themselves,” Mérian pointed out. She had come in during the counting and stayed to see the result. Stroking the gauntlets against her cheek, she remarked that they were the sort of thing a high-placed cleric might wear on festal days.
“What about the ring?” wondered Iwan aloud. “What would that be worth?”
No one knew. Various sums were suggested—all of them fancies. We had no more idea how much that lump of gold and rubies might be worth than the king of Denmark’s hunting hound. Some said it must be worth a castle, a cantref, maybe even a kingdom. Our ignorant speculation ran amok until Angharad silenced us, saying, “You would do better to ask why it is here.”
“Why indeed,” said Bran, his fingers caressing the bauble.
We fell silent gazing at the thing, as at a piece of the moon dropped from the sky. Why had it been sent to Elfael in the bottom of a supply wagon?
“Oh, aye,” said Angharad, her voice cracking like dry twigs, “a treasure like this will bring swarms of searchers on its trail.” She tapped it with a bony finger. “It might be as well to give it back.”
This dropped us in the pickle pot, I can tell you. With these words, the realisation of what we’d done began to break over us, and our triumph turned to ashes in our mouths. We each crept away to our beds that night full of foreboding. I hardly closed my eyes at all, I was that restless with it. God knows, it may be deepest sin to steal, and in ordinary times I would never take so much as a bean from a bag that was not mine. But this was different.
This was a fight for survival.
Rule of law . . . king’s justice . . . these words are worth less to the Ffreinc than the air it takes to breathe them out. If we steal from those who seek ever to destroy us, may the Good Lord forgive us, but we en’t about to stop and we en’t about to start giving things back. It does irritate the baron and his nephew no end, I can say. And the sheriff, it upsets him most of all on account of the fact that he’s the one who is meant to prevent our raiding and thieving.
Shed no tears for Richard de Glanville. He is a twisted piece of rope if ever there was one. It is said he killed his wife for burning his Sunday pork chop in the pan—strangled her with his own bare hands.
Personally, I do not believe this. Not a word. In the first place, it means our Richard Rat-face would have had to get someone to marry him, and I heartily doubt there is a woman born yet who would agree to that. Even granting a marriage, impossible as it seems, it would mean that he had taken matters into his own hands—another fair impossibility right there. You might better claim the sun spends the night in your barn and get more people to believe you than that the sheriff of the March ever sullied his lily-whites with anything so black. See, de Glanville never lifts a finger himself; he pays his men to do all his dirty deeds for him.
To the last man, the sheriff ’s toadies are as cruel and vengeful as the day is long; a more rancorous covey of plume-proud pigeons you never want to meet. God bless me, it is true.
The folk of Derby still talk of the time when Sheriff de Glanville and three of his men cornered a poor tinker who had found his way into mischief. The tale as I heard it was that one bright day in April, a farmwife went out to feed the geese and found them all but one dead and that one not looking any too hearty. Who would do a mean and hateful thing like that? Well, it came
to her then that there’d been a tinker come to the settlement a day or two before hoping to sell a new pot or get some patchwork on an old one. Sharp-tongued daughter of Eve that she was, she’d sent him off with both ears burnin’ for his trouble.
Now then, wasn’t that just like a rascal of a tinker to skulk around behind her back and kill her prize geese the moment she wasn’t looking? She went about the market with this news, and it soon spread all over town. Everyone was looking for this tinker, who wasn’t hard to find because he wasn’t hiding. They caught him down by the river washing his clothes, and they hauled him half-naked to the sheriff to decide what to do with the goose-killer.
As it happened, some other townsfolk had rustled about and found a serf who’d broken faith with his Norman lord from somewhere up north. He’d passed through the town a day or so before, and the fella was discovered hiding in a cow byre on a settlement just down the road. They bound the poor fella and dragged him to town, where the sheriff had already set up his judgement seat outside the guildhall in the market square. De Glanville was halfway to hanging the tinker when the second crowd tumbles into town with the serf.
So now. What to do? Both men are swearing their innocence and screaming for mercy. They are raising a ruck and crying foul to beat the devil. Well, the sheriff can’t tell who is guilty of this heinous crime, nor can anyone else. But that en’t no matter. Up he stands and says, “You call on heaven to help you? So be it! Hang them both, and let God decide which one shall go to hell.”
So his men fix another noose on the end of the first rope, and it’s up over the roof beam of the guildhall. He hangs both men in the market square with the same rope—one wretch on one end, and one on t’other. And that is Richard bloody de Glanville for you beginning and end . . .
What’s that, monk?” I say. “You think it unlikely?”
Odo sniffs and wrinkles his nose in disbelief. “If you please, which one of them killed the geese?”
“Which one? I’d a thought that would be obvious to a smart fella like you, Odo. So now, you tell me, which one did the deed?”
“The tinker—for spite, because the farmwife refused to buy his pots or give him work.”
“Oh, Odo,” I sigh, shaking my head and tutting his ignorance. “It wasn’t the tinker. No, never him.”
“The serf then, because he . . .” He scratches his head. “Hungry? I don’t know.”
“It wasn’t the serf, either.”
“Then who?”
“It was a sneak-thief fox, of course. See, Odo, a man can’t kill a goose but that the whole world knows about it. First you gotta catch the bloody bird, and that raises the most fearsome squawk you ever heard, and that gets all the others squawking, too. By Adam’s axe, it’s enough to wake the dead, it is. But a fox, now a fox is nimble as a shadow and just as silent. A fox works quick and so frightens the flock that none of them lets out a peep. With a fox in the barn, no one knows the deed is done till you walk in and find ’em all in a heap of blood and feathers.”
Odo bristles at this. “Are you saying the sheriff hanged two innocent men?”
“I don’t know that they were innocent, mind, but de Glanville hanged two men for the same crime that neither could have done.”
Odo shakes his head. “Hearsay,” he decides. “Hearsay and slander and lies.”
“That’s right,” I say. “You just keep telling yourself that, priest. Keep on a-saying it until they find a reason to tighten the rope around your fine plump neck, and then we’ll see how you sing.”
CHAPTER 15
The snow continued through the night and over the next days, covering all, drifting deep on field and forest, hilltop and valley throughout Elfael. As soon as the hard weather eased up a little, we fetched the captured spoils back to Cél Craidd, along with the four oxen kept in a pen not far from the road, trusting to the windblown snow to remove any traces of our passing. We kept a right keen watch for the sheriff and his scabby men, but saw neither hank nor hair of them, and so hurried about our chores. The wagons we dismantled where they stood, keeping only the wheels and iron fittings; the animals were more useful, to be sure. One we kept to pull the plough in the spring; the others would be given to farmers in the area to replace those lost in one way or another to the Ffreinc.
It was the same with the money. Bran did not keep what he got from the raid, but shared it out among the folk of his realm, helping those who were most in need of it—and there were plenty of them, I can tell you. For the Normans had been in Elfael going on two years by then, and however bad it was in the beginning it was much worse now. Always worse with that hell crew, never better. So, the money was given out, and those who received it blessed King Raven and his men.
Oh, but that great gold ring began to weigh heavy on the slender strap around Bran’s princely neck. Worth a king’s ransom it was, and we all stoked a secret fear that one day the Red King himself would come after it with an army. We were all atwist over this when Friar Tuck showed up.
I had heard his name by then, and some few things about him—how he had helped Bran in his dealings with the king and cardinal. But whatever I had heard did nothing to prepare me for the man himself. Part imp, part oaf, part angel—that is Friar Tuck.
His arrival was announced in the usual way: one of the sentries gave out the shrill whistle of a crake. This warned the Grellon that someone was coming and that this visitor was welcome. An intruder would have demanded a very different call. For those few who were allowed to come and go, however, there was a simple rising whistle. Well, we heard the signal, and folk stopped whatever they were doing and turned towards the blasted oak to see who would appear through the hedge. A few moments later, a fat little dumpling rolled down the bank, red face shining with a sheen of sweat despite the chill in the air, the hem of his robe hiked up and stuffed in his belt to keep it from dragging through the snow.
“Happy Christ-tide!” he called when he saw all the folk hurrying to greet him. “It is good to see you, Iwan! Siarles! Gaenor, Teleri, Henwydd!” He called out the names of folk he knew. “Good to see you! Peace to one and all!”
“Tuck!” shouted Siarles, hurrying to greet him. “Hail and welcome! With all this snow, we did not think to see you again until the spring.”
“And where should I be at Christ-tide, but with my own dear friends?”
“No bag this time?”
“Bag? I’ve brought half of Hereford with me!” He gestured vaguely toward the trail. “There’s a pack mule coming along. Rhoddi met me on the trail and sent me on ahead.”
Bran and Mérian appeared then, and Angharad was not far behind. The little friar was welcomed with laughter and true affection; I glimpsed in this something of the respect and high regard this simple monk enjoyed amongst the Grellon. The king of England might receive similar adulation on his travels, I’ll warrant, but little of the fondness.
“God with you, Friar,” said Mérian, stepping forward to bless our visitor. “May your sojourn here well become you.” She smiled and bent at the waist to bestow a kiss on his cheek. Then, taking that same round red cheek between finger and thumb, she gave it a pinch. “That is for leaving without wishing me farewell the last time!”
“A mistake I’ll not be making twice,” replied Tuck, rubbing his cheek. He turned as Angharad pushed forward to greet him. “Bless my soul, Angharad, you look even younger than the last time I saw you.”
Wise and powerful she may be, but Angharad was still lady enough to smile at the shameless compliment. “Peace attend thee, friend friar,” she said, her wrinkled face alight.
“Brother Tuck!” cried Iwan, and instantly gathered the sturdy friar in a rib-cracking embrace. “It is that good to see you.”
“And you,Wee John,” retorted the priest, giving the warrior a clip ’round the ear. “I’ve missed you and all.” Iwan set him down, and the priest gazed at the ring of happy faces around him. “Well, Bran, and I see you and your flock have fared well enough without me.” Adju
sting his robe to cover his cold bare legs once more, he then raised his hands in a priestly benediction. “God’s peace and mercy on us all, and may our Kind Redeemer send the comfort of this blesséd season to cheer our hearts and heal our careworn souls.”
Everyone cried “Amen!” to that, and when Tuck turned back to Bran, he said, “Some new faces, I see.”
“One or two,” confirmed Bran. He grasped the priest’s hands in his own, then presented the newcomers; I found myself last among them. “And this one here,” he said, pulling me forward, “is the newest member of our growing flock and as handy with a bow as King Raven himself.”
“That’s saying something, that is,” remarked Tuck.
“Will Scatlocke, at your service,” I said, thrusting out my hand to him.
He took it in both his own and shook it heartily. “Our Lord’s abundant peace to you, Will Scatlocke.”
“And to you, Friar. See now, two Saxons fallen among Welshmen,” I said in English.
He cast a shrewd eye over me. “Is that the north country I hear in your voice?”
“Oh, aye,” I confessed. “Deny it, I’ll not. Your ear is sharp as Queen Meg’s needle, Friar.”
“Born within sight of York Minster, was I not? But tell me, how did you come to take roost among these strange birds?”
“Lost my living to William Rufus—may God bless his backside with boils!—and so I came west,” I told him, and explained quickly how, after many months of living rough and wandering, Bran had taken me in.
“Enough!” cried Bran. “There is time for all that later. We have Christmas tomorrow and a celebration to prepare!”
Ah, Christmas . . . how long had it been since I had celebrated the feast day of Our Sweet Saviour in proper style? Years, at least—not since I had sat at table in Thane Aelred’s hall with a bowl of hot punch between my hands and a huge pig a-roasting on the spit over red-hot coals in the hearth. Glad times. I have always enjoyed the Feast of Christ—the food and song and games . . . everything taken together, it is the best of all the holy days, and that is how it should be.