‘And rightly so.’ John’s doubts concerning the letter he carried were at one and the same time increased and diminished. Elene’s nature was like amber. It did not give off its glow until it had been warmed, and then heaven help the recipient if he was not prepared.
They returned to their mounts. Guy d’Alberin boosted Elene into the saddle, while John, distracted and thoughtful, set his foot in the stirrup.
‘Have a care to yourself,’ she said. ‘And come back soon.’
‘I will. And I’ll send a message to let you know when I’ve delivered the letter to Cousin Matille.’
She nodded, her smiled apprehensive as she kissed him farewell.
He started up the track that led over the hill and down to the main road. Elene shaded her eyes to watch him and his small escort of serjeants, and resisted the urge to tear after him and take back the letter she had written to the Countess of Chester. For all that she had proclaimed herself capable of standing up to Renard’s wrath, she was nevertheless afraid.
A shout floated on the wind from the direction of the horsemen just gaining the top of the rise and Elene saw them suddenly wheel around and come galloping back down towards her, the foremost man frantically gesticulating. She saw the twinkle of his spurs as he dug them into his horse’s flanks.
Master Pieter came to Elene’s bridle and stared. ‘Trouble afoot,’ he said brusquely. ‘Best go, my lady.’
Elene drew Bramble’s reins through her fingers. On the brow of the slope several more riders appeared. Sun flashed on armour and drawn swords. ‘Holy Mary!’ she whispered and swallowed convulsively. Bile rose in her throat as she remembered her kidnap and the assault that had so nearly ended in rape. Horsemen tearing out of nowhere and ripping the world apart.
Thus far Woolcot had escaped lightly from the Earl of Chester’s raiding. To reach it, his men had to get past the garrison at Caermoel. Twice at least since the siege they had attempted it and twice been beaten. The only other approach was from the east, across Henry’s former lands at Oxley, unoccupied now except for a harassed constable who did his best but was not really fit for the task in hand. Renard had had scant time to give his attention to Oxley, the defence of Caermoel and the earldom being his first priority. It was their Achilles heel and now it was exposed.
‘The church!’ she cried, whirling to Master Pieter. ‘Get everyone into the church!’ It was no guarantee of safety, but it was all they had. ‘I’ll ride back to the castle for aid!’ Turning Bramble, she slapped the reins against the mare’s neck and shrieked in her ear.
Unaccustomed to such rough handling, the little mare broke into a panicky gallop. Elene clung on for dear life, but when Bramble started to slacken pace, she kicked her again and shouted, wishing fervently that she were a man and accoutred with spurs.
Sheep scattered in bleating panic before woman and horse. The ground became tussocky and started to slope. Bramble stumbled and Elene was pitched on to her neck, lost her hold and fell off. The softness of the ground broke her fall, but even so her breath was knocked from her body and she was momentarily too stunned to do anything but lie on the prickly-soft grass, her heartbeat roaring in her ears, blackness before her eyes.
Gradually she became aware of shouting and the clash of weapons as the men of her escort and John’s attempted to hold the routiers while the villagers and cloth workers evacuated to the church. Elene sat up and collected her wits. Apart from bruises, she appeared to be in one piece. She staggered to her feet, hampered by the drag of her skirts. Her legs felt as though they were made of wet hemp. Bramble had stopped several yards away and was looking at her with flickering ears. Not daring to turn around lest she see some of the routiers galloping after her, Elene whistled to the horse and extended her hand. Bramble side-stepped, her nostrils wide, drinking in the smell of smoke.
‘Good girl, Bramble, good girl,’ Elene coaxed, advancing on the mare. Bramble tossed her head and sidled, Elene’s familiar scent warring with the instinct to run from the pungency of the smoke.
Elene closed her fingers round the reins and gasped with relief. Her limbs were weak and trembling but she knew she had to remount. Bramble was trembling too, ready to bolt. Elene set her foot in the stirrup. There was no groom to boost her into the saddle, no mounting block to stand upon, and nothing in sight she could use as one. Bramble was not a large horse, but suddenly she seemed like a mountain.
Sobbing through clenched teeth, Elene struggled. She grabbed a handful of Bramble’s cropped mane, pressed the heels of her hands into the brown, sweating neck and somehow scrambled crabwise across her back. The pommel dug into her abdomen and she had to fight to breathe, but the congestion eased as she came upright and shifted her weight backwards. The mare plunged and circled as Elene searched for the stirrups.
The smell of smoke was increasingly strong. Elene caught a glimpse of the cottages, flames bursting in the doorways, with their thatches alight as men armed with brands and weapons ransacked and then torched them. Her eyes filled with tears of grief and rage. ‘No,’ she sobbed, ‘oh no!’ The reins slackened in her fingers, and Bramble took the bit between her teeth and bolted, this time in earnest.
Woolcot’s priest was elderly with eyesight poorer than John’s own and a hazed mind. Elene had bought a corrody for him at a nearby priory, but it had yet to be implemented and a new priest found to replace him. Confused and querulous at the sudden invasion of his church when as far as he recalled no one had recently been born, betrothed or died, Father Edwig wrung his hands and tearfully demanded that they all get out.
John, still panting from the exertion of his rapid ride, took the old man’s arm and sat him down on a bench along the nave wall. ‘There are routiers coming,’ he gasped. ‘Hell spawn. The people have gathered here for sanctuary.’
‘Routiers?’ Father Edwig quavered. ‘Have they come to confess?’
‘Crime first, confession later,’ John replied, more than a hint of Renard ringing in his tone. ‘Are you strong enough to go up the bell tower and toll out the excommunicat?’
The old man regarded him dimly. ‘Have you come from the Bishop?’
John hesitated. Then he said, telling the lie with a face as open and candid as a child’s, ‘He sent me personally. You go aloft, take this brawny young fellow with you, and ring out the excommunicat as hard as you can.’ Beneath John’s hand, Father Edwig’s shoulder was light and bony. Hardly the strength to lift a halter, let alone peal down the wrath of heaven and hell upon a troop of hardened mercenaries.
The old priest stared hard at John. Sunlight poured through an unshuttered window and Edwig’s fuzzy vision detected a golden nimbus haloing John’s tonsure. An expression of awe filtered into his slack face. A dribble of saliva ran down his chin. Convinced that he was in the presence of God’s messenger, he let a burly young hayward help him to his feet, and in a daze shuffled off with him towards the belfrey stairs. When he looked over his shoulder, John’s figure was aureoled in sunshine so that he was impossible to look upon. ‘A miracle,’ he whispered to the hayward.
John, less convinced about the possibility of miracles, stepped from the shaft of sunlight and turned to the gathered workers and villagers. Several of the men were armed with pitchforks, spades and hoes. One even had a sword that had been handed down through his family for several generations. The women had their distaffs and brooms. Their array was brave, but scarcely impressive and probably laughable to the kind of men now plundering and burning their homes.
John set about calming and reassuring them. Help would come very soon, he said. He had a rich, bass voice that he knew how to control so that it enfolded the frightened villagers like a comforting blanket. His arm around a weeping, pregnant woman, he listened to the triumphant yells of the raiders and the first ominous crackle of flame and wondered if he could remember the damning words of the excommunicat. He had never had occasion to use them before. From the bell tower, the tocsin stuttered into life and was unevenly sustained, although John was unsure if the sequence was quite correct. The roar of flames grew louder as more of the village fell to the torch, and then they all heard the heavy thump of a sword hilt against the barred church doors.