Garron nodded. “I still cannot believe this Black Demon left men outside the walls to kill anyone who came out to hunt.”
“He wanted all those left to starve,”Aleric said matter-of-factly. “He wanted no witnesses to what he had done. That action alone bespeaks a rancid soul, Garron, a soul the Devil stole years ago.”
Garron could not disagree.
It took a crackling laugh from old Miggins to cool the rage in his blood.
At least the weather was warm, Garron thought, when he wrapped himself in a blanket late that night to sleep near the great doors, the double thick wooden bars in place. He prayed the weather would hold. Two more days without rain, that’s all he’d pray for, no more. He didn’t want to tempt the fates. He’d briefly gone up the keep stairs to the solar and looked into the bedchambers. All the beds were broken apart, the few rugs in the master’s bedchamber gone. There was naught but mayhem, willful and vicious. Arthur’s enemy, this Black Demon, had been thorough.
But not the castle well, thank God, not the castle well.
Life, he thought, had changed irrevocably. Now life was about survival, not basking in a joyful homecoming. Not just his survival, but the survival of the souls who were now sleeping on the stone floor in the great hall. His souls. And they depended entirely on him.
The Retribution—what an odd thing to call the reign of terror that had very nearly consumed Wareham Castle. He wished now he hadn’t stopped at Oxborough Castle to give the king’s message to the Earl of Oxborough. If only he’d come here directly—but no, what difference would two days make? Not that much.
He waited until he knew all his people were sleeping before he let his mind stop making its endless lists and drift into sleep. His last thought was of the Black Demon, the man from whom Arthur had stolen silver coins.
7
Despite the Retribution, Wareham Castle was magnificent, Merry thought as she chewed on a small bit of bread Lord Garron’s squire gave her. The coarse brown bread was stale and gritty and tasted wonderful. Of course she’d recognized him; he was the first one who’d called out to her when she’d hidden. She said, “What is your name?”
“Me? I am Gilpin, Lord Garron’s squire.” He showed no recognition of her at all, thank St. Coriander’s white gums. Now that she thought about it, she didn’t think he’d even seen her. Gilpin said, “Everyone can speak only of the Retribution. Can you tell me what happened?”
She kept her head down and chewed on the bread, one tiny bite at a time. “Nay, I’m sorry.” He reached out his hand to take the last bit of bread from her, and she jerked her hand back. “Nay, I am very hungry. Truly.”
“You don’t look to be on the edge of starvation like the others.”
He was right. She was a selfish stoat. Merry realized he was looking at her closely now. She also realized she’d not spoken as a serf. She said, “It were bad, this Retribution, thass all I know.”
“No longer,” Gilpin said, patted her shoulder, and strode off, a slight frown on his forehead. She watched him hand the small chunk of bread to a bent old woman.
She hung in the background, watched all the people eat their small portions, and found herself making lists in her head, something she’d done since she was a young child, something her father had taught her. She watched the new lord as he spoke to everyone, questioning them about what had happened, and reassuring them endlessly. She could feel the rage pulsing in him, hotter and harder than the rage he’d felt facing Sir Halric, that mangy devil. But he’d controlled the rage when he’d fought Sir Halric, and he controlled it now. She imagined he did what was necessary, what was needful, and then he moved to something else. He was dark, his hair black as the North Sea on a moonless night, his eyes a pale blue, unusual, she thought, and wondered if those pale blue eyes of his would see she was the boy he’d saved. He was the only one of the four men who’d seen her clearly. She heard him speak calmly, heard him jest with his man, Pali, whose legs were so long old Miggins told him they could lay planks on his legs and three men could sleep on him, all stretched out. His eyes were red and weeping, Merry saw, the spring season tears, she’d heard the healer at Valcourt call it, but she didn’t know the recipe the Valcourt healer had mixed in his potion’s kettle to help him.
When at last everyone was settled, she watched Lord Garron check the huge double doors himself and see the two thick wooden bars were set firmly in place. She watched him wrap himself in a blanket and settle in by his men near the great front doors. Everyone slept in the great hall, and so she huddled next to old Miggins, who belched once and snored throughout the long night, louder than Merry’s pet pig.
The next morning, after Garron and his men rode out to hunt, Merry sidled up to Miggins. She recognized the scrawny old woman as the leader here. She said in a quiet voice, “Look at me.”
Miggins squinted up at her.
“Who are ye, boy? I don’t know ye. Did you come with Lord Garron?”
“Nay. I followed Lord Garron and his men. He saved me from kidnappers. He does not know I’m here. Who are you?”
“I am Miggins. I don’t remember my first name. Mayhap ’tis Alice, but all know me now as Miggins.”
“Miggins,” Merry said. She drew a deep breath and spit it out. “I am not a boy.”
Miggins gave her a long look and slowly nodded. “Nor are ye jest any girl, are ye?”
“Of course I am. I am a girl of no account at all.”
“Then why would anyone kidnap ye?”
Good question. “All right, not just any girl. I swear I will tell you everything, but not yet. Is there a gown about I could borrow? These boy’s clothes are dirty, and they smell.”
Old Miggins eyed her up and down, studied her clear eyes. “Nay,” she said at last, “yer not jest any girl. There’s the Lady Anne’s gowns and chemises, hidden away by the master who wanted to give them to his mistress, but she died only two days after his lady wife, both of the bloody flux. Why did you follow Lord Garron here? Why didn’t ye go back home? Do ye know about the Retribution?”
Merry looked out over the great hall. “I know nothing of this Retribution or this Black Demon. I can’t go home because my mother wants to wed me to a man with a blacker soul than this Black Demon has.”
“So, I suppose ye also have to hide from those men who kidnapped ye.”
“Your master killed the men who kidnapped me, well, all but one of them, but I still have to hide from my mother. When your master saved me, he believed me a boy and so he will not recognize me. Since I hear he hasn’t been here in many years, he will believe I belong here. Can you help me?”
“Hmmm, seems hardly fair, does it? To have to hide from yer own mither, ’tis a putrid thing. Why don’t ye jest tell him the truth? Lord Garron is a fine lad, pure of heart, straight in his thinking. At least I pray he is.”
“I cannot take the chance. He would have questions. Please, Miggins, let me keep my secrets for a while. I swear to you I am no threat to you or to Lord Garron or to Wareham.”
Miggins scratched her dirty elbow as she studied the young earnest face, the cheek smudged with dirt. “Take off yer cap.”
Merry pulled off her cap. A long, thick braid fell out and dangled down her back.
Miggins nodded, raised a gnarly hand, and touched the braid. “I niver before seen such a beautiful color—hair redder than my pa’s sins. What is yer name?”
“Merry.”
“Merry? That has a nice sound to it. Nay, ye’re not jest Merry. Yer a lady.”
“It truly doesn’t matter. Please, just Merry. Mayhap you can tell everyone to call me Merry and not tell Lord Garron or his men that I’m a stranger at Wareham. I must be very careful. I don’t want anyone to find me. It would be very bad, especially for Lord Garron. Please, Miggins, will you help me?”
“We’ll have to see about that, won’t we now?” Merry could hear a sudden craftiness in that robust old voice. “What have ye to say to that? What will ye do if I give ye the mistr
ess’s clothes?”
“If you keep my secret and give me some gowns, I will set everything to rights. I was mistress of my father’s keep until he died. It is bigger than Wareham.”
“Hmmm, there is much to ponder here. Ye’re but a little mite of a girl—”
“I’m not a little mite, I’m a big mite, and I’m not young, I am just turned eighteen.”
“Yer a baby mite compared to me. Ye can fix things here? Ye really can do it, Merry?”
“I can do it.”
Old Miggins thought and thought and scratched her elbow again, and finally she nodded. “If ye fail, ye fail. What difference? Come wi’ me.” Merry followed Miggins and a thin, hollow-eyed woman named Lisle up the curving stone stairs to the bedchambers. Lisle said, “I was Lady Anne’s personal servant. I kept her things safe. When the Black Demon came, I hid everything.”
8
When they walked into the lord’s large bedchamber, she couldn’t believe her eyes. The huge lord’s bed was smashed into kindling. The chest that had sat at its foot was in shards, the clothes pulled out and shredded. The stone floors were bare.
“There was once a beautiful tapestry on that far wall,” Miggins said, pointing. “The Demon’s men didn’t destroy it, jest took it along with the rugs. Lord Garron’s grandmother wove the tapestry.”
“Greed got the better of them.”
Lisle nodded at Merry. “’Tis so.” She sighed, and walked straight to the window that had once held a pane of valuable glass. Chill morning air poured into the room. “Be careful,” Lisle called out as she gingerly walked over the stone floor. “There are shards everywhere.”
“I wonder why the Demon didn’t take the glass,” Merry said. “It is very wasteful of him to break it.”
Miggins said, “Probably one of the louts with him smashed it before he could be stopped. We had two large glass windows, one in here and one in the chapel. I’ll wager that one’s shattered too. Lisle, has anyone been to the chapel?”
“Tupper found poor Father Adal’s body amid the wreckage of the altar, run through his chest with a sword. The beautiful altar, carved nearly two hundred years ago by the first lord, the Demon smashed it to splinters. No one else has gone to the chapel since, no one has any faith left. Do ye know, I dusted that altar for seventeen years. I ask you, how can a man destroy an altar?”
“The Black Demon,” Miggins said. “He bain’t afraid of anything or anyone, God included.”
After seeing the wreckage of Wareham, Merry had to agree.
“Here,” Lisle said, knelt down, swept away shards of glass with her strong hand, and gently pried up one of the stones against the wall.
Merry fell to her knees beside Lisle to lean over a hole two feet deep and two feet wide. Folded neatly within were gowns and shifts, a tangled flow of ribbons, even three pairs of slippers, all sadly out of fashion now, but who cared about that? She knew pointed slippers were now worn at Queen Eleanor’s court in London, and these toes were rounded, but they were finely cut leather, covered with red velvet, a bit faded, darned here and there, but again, it didn’t matter, they were beautiful.
Lisle picked the clothes out of the hole and handed them to Merry. “They’re sound enough still.” She stuck her hand into the slippers. “Lady Anne had big feet.”
Merry sat on the floor, pulled off the filthy boots, and slipped them on, tied the ribbons around her ankles. She grinned up at Lisle and Miggins. “I have big feet too. They are perfect. Thank you, Lisle.”
“Now a shift and a gown.”
The shifts were well-tended, but Lady Anne had been shorter than she was and they came only to her knees. As for the gowns, there were four. Merry chose the oldest, a green wool, shiny from many brushings, that came only to her ankles. Who cared?
“I didn’t see any stockings else I would have stuffed them into the hidey hole as well. I wonder what happened to them?”
“No matter,” Merry said, and pulled off her cap and began to straighten her braid.
“Allow me,” Lisle said, and began to twine the matching green ribbon through the thick braid.
Miggins stood back and looked her up and down. “What a fine little mistress ye are, Merry. That’s right, Lisle, make her look a lady, wipe those dirt smudges off her pretty face. The finer she looks, the faster all the people will look to her and obey her.”
Merry certainly hoped so. Before they left the wrecked bedchamber, Merry lifted her eyes upward and thanked Lady Anne for her bounty. As for the boy’s clothes, let Lisle burn them.
“Thank you both. Please, Lisle, Miggins, there is so much to do, please do not ask for explanations just yet. Father Adal, how old was he?”
“Not a young man, but he had a head of hair left,” Lisle said, “and usually a pleasing breath.”
“Did he read and write?”
“Oh aye, and he spoke beautiful Latin, at least that’s what Lady Anne told everyone.”
Merry thought about this for a moment. “If you would consent to it, I would be Father Adal’s bastard. Surely God will not mind, since our cause is just. I read and write too, you see, and thus that would explain it, since he would have taught me. What think you? Will you agree to it?”
“Hmmm, Father Adal came after Lord Garron left, mayhap some five, maybe six years ago. Why not? Lisle, we will see what the girl can do. If she fails, it doesn’t much matter.”
“Thank you. Thank you both.”
“We will tell the others,” said Lisle.
Merry hugged both of them, then rubbed her hands together, her list already clear in her mind.
The girl, Miggins thought, fair to bristled with energy.
She laughed when Merry said, “Now it’s time to begin setting things aright.”
Miggins said, “I’ll bet old Tupper’s last tooth that Mordrid stole Lady Anne’s stockings far before the Retribution came.”
“Who is Mordrid?”
“She was one of Lord Arthur’s lemans, fair to bursting with arrogance, she was. Ah, I shouldna said that.” Miggins shook her head at herself. “She were taken in the Retribution, a bad thing, a terrible thing.”
Merry wanted to know more about the Retribution, but now wasn’t the time. “Miggins, Lisle, gather all the people who are strong enough and bring them here to the great hall. I want to know what each person’s job was before the Black Demon came.”
Twelve women and ten old men stood in front of her, all of them alive, Tupper told her, because they simply fell over and pretended to die and thus the soldiers ignored them and they survived. None of the women were young, Lisle and Miggins the oldest. The girls, Lisle said, crossing herself, grief in her voice, had been ravished and taken by the Demon’s soldiers.
Miggins spoke to the group of pitiful men and women, then pointed to Merry and gave her each name.
9
Merry nodded to each person, repeated each name, and asked all what they could do. There was a lot of experience standing in front of her, thank St. Anthony’s arrow-pierced liver, and faces that were simply too weary and too hungry to much care.
Merry saw some distrust, she wasn’t blind, and surprise on those faces that hadn’t noticed her before. What could she say?
She could but try. She smiled at them. “I know I am a stranger to you. I know you have no reason to trust that I will set everything aright. I know you don’t like to keep silent, for Lord Garron is honorable and just, and he is the new Earl of Wareham, but if you will keep the truth about me to yourselves, if you will but say that I am Father Adal’s byblow, just for a little while, I give you this vow. I will make this great hall clean and help Lord Garron make Wareham prosperous again, if you will give me a chance.”
“Why don’t ye jes’ tell Lord Garron the truth?”
Merry looked at the wizened old man she didn’t really think was all that old. “If I did tell him the truth, he would have to return me to my home. I would be forced to wed a monster. I must stay hidden for a while until—” Until wha
t? She didn’t see how everything could resolve itself in her favor. She drew in a deep breath. “Until the king goes to my home to take charge.”
“Be ye so important the king hisself would stick in his nose?” This from a woman so thin she looked ready to cave in on herself. Ah, but there was a bit of vinegar and wonder in her voice, and Merry smiled.
“Aye, I suppose I am, but no matter. I’m here and I need you to keep silent so I may keep my vow. Until a short time ago, Wareham was a great castle. I believe that all of us can work to make it great again.”
If she managed to succeed, then what would she do? What if the king did indeed stick in his royal nose, what would change? She would still be sold to a stranger, it was the way things were done. She would have no say in the matter. She saw Jason of Brennan in her mind’s eye and felt bile rise in her throat. But her mother wasn’t here. Jason of Brennan wasn’t here. Merry realized in that moment that she felt as much hope as she hoped this pathetic group of people would soon feel.
They were speaking amongst themselves, grumbling, clearly not certain what to do. She said over them, “Listen, all of you are skilled, but you are weak and hungry and everything has looked hopeless for so long, you cannot see anything good happening, but I swear to you, the worst is over. Know that Lord Garron will bring food in a matter of hours, more than enough food for all of us, do not doubt it. I know you cannot imagine that your bellies will ever be filled again, but I swear you’ll be full to bursting by the end of this day. I swear all of you will have some laughter too by the end of this day.” And maybe even some hope, she added silently.
And Merry was certain of that, for when Garron set out to accomplish something, she knew to the soles of Lady Anne’s big slippers that he did it. “Bullic, you assisted old Clerc, the cook who was killed. You will now direct the cooking. Since feeding all of us is the most important task before us, let’s look at the cooking shed first. We want to be able to prepare the game the moment Lord Garron brings it into the keep.
“Keep faith with me, that’s all I ask. Now, I also know you are all weak from hunger, so we will do everything very slowly, and rest often. At the very least, we have water.”