Cully had the captain’s case, and he unrolled a map. It was not very accurate, because it had been designed merely to give a traveller distances from various towns to Harndon.
“At last light, de Vrailly was at Second Bridge,” Favour said.
“Get to the bad part,” Cully said.
Favour cleared his throat. “There’s banners with de Vrailly,” he said. “Towbray’s banners.”
Gabriel struggled to be awake. “Towbray? He’s in the dungeons-”
“Ser Gelfred picked up a couple of royal archers yester e’en,” Favour said, his eyes on Cully. “Looking for new employment, they said, as the Earl of Towbray had sworn fealty to de Vrailly.”
Gabriel nodded. “That could be,” he said. “Wake Ser Michael.” He frowned.
Lord Corcy appeared out of the darkness. “Towbray-that snake,” he said.
Gabriel would, in that moment, have preferred almost any other man awake rather than the old Alban lord, who was possibly an ally but not yet proven. But there was no crying over spilled milk. “Towbray has a passion for changing sides, I agree,” he said.
“His presence will cement the loyalty of many of the southern barons,” Corcy said.
Gabriel stared into the darkness, and then down at his map. He measured a distance-Second Bridge to Lorica.
“How long for you to reach Gelfred?” he asked.
Favour bowed. “Before daylight. I swear it.”
Ser Michael appeared from the barn. He looked the way Gabriel felt.
“Your pater’s with de Vrailly,” he said bluntly.
Michael froze.
Gabriel watched him carefully.
“Idiot,” Michael swore.
Gabriel found that he’d stopped breathing for a moment, and now he breathed again. He put his arms around Michael. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve gotten knocked around the last few hours-it’s as if the pillars of the earth have been knocked over.”
Michael spat. “I came here to rescue him,” he said.
“He refused to go with Ser Ranald, two days back,” Favour said. “I’m that sorry, Ser Michael, but we was-not best pleased. He was the only royal prisoner to turn us down.”
“That idiot,” Ser Michael said. He looked at his captain and shrugged. “So?”
“Officers,” the captain said.
Blanche was awakened to find Nell leaning over her.
“Wake up, girl!” Nell said. “Get the Queen up!”
The babe awoke and, finding the world changed, challenged it with a yell.
Outside, a brazen trumpet rang out a long call.
The barn seemed to explode into motion. Once, as a child, Blanche had seen her mother find a nest of mice in a chest in their garret. As soon as she touched it, mice ran in every direction, making her mother scream.
This was like that, except that the mice were unkempt men and women.
At the door, an archer stopped Nell.
“We attacked?” he asked.
“Not yet,” Nell spat, and pushed past him, looking for horses.
Nothing had been packed well in the exhausted darkness. The cursing from beyond the door was fluent and very descriptive. Blanche might have admired it, but she had all her damp laundry to pile into a basket thrown through the door by Nell’s boy.
The babe was louder than the trumpet.
Sister Amicia awoke-if she had been asleep. She picked the baby off her mother’s lap as soon as it finished feeding and began to bounce it. She grinned a very un-saintlike grin at Blanche.
Blanche got the Queen bathed-just a sponge and lukewarm water-and into a shift that hung on her like a sack. Then she put the Queen in the same gown she’d worn the day before-the white gown of a bride or a penitent sinner. The gown in which the Queen would have been burned.
“Don’t fuss,” Desiderata said, taking her baby back from Amicia. “Don’t fuss. If we’re moving now, there’s a reason. Be quick, Blanche. Leave anything you cannot carry.”
Blanche frowned, thinking that it wouldn’t be the Queen’s problem if Blanche had no clothes and no clean swaddling for the baby.
But again, Nell appeared to save her. She had Blanche’s palfrey of the day before in the small stall just outside the door, and she had a donkey. Cully, the master archer, stood by the donkey.
“Just gi’ me your baskets,” he said kindly. “I’ll see ’em onto the animal.”
Blanche favoured him with a smile. She knew she must look a fright, but there was nothing she could do-no bath, no clothes, no nothing.
The saddle on her palfrey was worth more than her whole wardrobe had ever been worth, and she wondered whose it had been.
Cully tightened a belt and set the tine of the buckle, and gave a tug at the laundry basket. It didn’t move.
“You ha’ any trouble with this animal, call me, my lady,” he said.
“I’m no lady,” Blanche said.
Cully grinned. But he said nothing, and then he was through the great double door of the barn.
“Archers-on me! Fall into the left with your horse to hand.” He took his bascinet-as fine as many a knight’s-off the pommel of his saddle and pulled the aventail over his head.
An archer brushed past her and his hands tried most of her body as he went past. The man leered back at her.
Blanche’s right hand caught him just above his eyebrow and slammed him against the doorpost.
Another archer laughed. “She’s a quick ’un, Cat!” he said. He grinned at Blanche, who glared.
Then the trumpet rang again, and armoured figures poured into the great barn’s yard. Pages scurried by with horses-chargers and riding horses, sometimes as many as three horses to a page. The men-at-arms began to mount.
She got the Queen up on another palfrey brought by a page she didn’t know. That page was also a woman, a pleasant, dark-haired woman old enough to be Nell’s mother.
“They call me Petite Mouline,” she said in an Alban deeply accented with Occitan. “The cap’n says that this ’orse is for the lady Queen, yes?”
Petite Mouline had a fine breastplate and her maille was dark and well oiled over a bright red arming coat. Her smile was warmer than the horse. “Oh, the petit bébé!”
The Queen emerged from her birthing room with the sister at her elbow, and she put a dainty foot into her stirrup and leaped into the saddle with a vitality that belied the last few hours.
Amicia mounted her own horse more carefully.
In the stone-flagged yard, Bad Tom’s voice-as loud as Archangel Gabriel’s trumpet-put the company-or rather, the fragment of the company with them-into order.
The Red Knight was in full harness. Outside, the moon was small and bright-bright enough to cast shadows on the ground and to light his shoulder armour in a dazzle of complex reflections.
He bowed to the Queen. “Your grace, I cry you pardon me. De Vrailly has moved faster than I expected.”
“We must run-I understand.”
He smiled. “Well, your grace, as to that-” He turned as Lord Corcy came up.
“I’m with you, my lord,” Corcy said. “I must get home, collect my harness and the men I can trust. I hope you’ll agree to let the sheriff and his men disperse.”
“I’m afraid I must ask you all to come with us for a few leagues,” the captain said.
Corcy nodded. “I was afraid you’d see it that way. I beg you to reconsider. These men won’t betray you until pressed. I will swear any oath you name.”
The Queen reached out and took Lord Corcy’s hand. “I accept your word, my lord. Go, and return.”
“We’ll just keep your son as our guest,” the captain said.
He and Corcy exchanged a long look, and Blanche thought there might be blood, but Corcy bowed. “Very well, my lord. Adam, remain here with these gentlemen. Where will I find you, sir?”
The Red Knight-in his proper colour, visible even in moonlight-nodded. “North of Lorica, and moving quickly,” he said. “We’ll have de Vrailly at our heels.”