The humor had soon faded, though. His captors were understandably fearful of the English king’s wrath and dared not spend more than one night under the same roof lest their presence be betrayed to Henry’s spies. They put Will in mind of mice trying to avoid a stalking cat, scurrying from one burrow to another. Sometimes it was a castle of a de Lusignan ally or vassal; twice they’d had to sleep in the woods and once even in the nave of a small church.
Not surprisingly, Will’s leg was not healing as it ought and with each passing day, the risk of infection grew greater. Will would far rather have died on the battlefield as his uncle had done than to die slowly and painfully from a festering wound. He had never been one to borrow trouble, feeling sure that life would invariably dole out his allotted portion. Nor had he ever been fanciful or readily spooked. But lying awake in the stable blackness, he found it alarmingly easy to imagine that Death was lurking in those gloomy shadows, no longer willing to wait.
If only they would remain here for a day or two. Every hour that he spent in the saddle lessened his chances of recovery. That night, they’d dragged him into the great hall to show the castellan their prize, giving him a sudden sense of pity for the bears chained and set upon by dogs for the amusement of spectators. As he listened to their boasting, he could feel a slow anger stirring, embers from a fire not fully banked. They had ambushed a highborn and defenseless woman, their own liege lady, had slain men not wearing armor. His uncle had been struck down from behind. Where was the honor in that?
He’d managed to contain his rage, to appear oblivious to the jeering and insults of those in the hall. He was never to know the castellan’s name, but the face he would not soon forget-florid and rotund, fringed with greying hair that reminded him of a monk’s tonsure, and eyebrows so thick the castellan seemed to be peering out at the world through a hedge. Will had good reason to resent the man, for he’d been the one to write the ransom letter to Countess Ela. He’d been sorry to see that the castellan had a young, comely wife, thinking that she deserved far better than she’d gotten. She was the only one in the hall who’d regarded him with a hint of sympathy, had even sent a servant over to offer him hippocras when the others were served. The wine had flowed like nectar down Will’s parched, scratchy throat, but then he’d had an unsettling thought: was this to be the last wine he ever tasted?
The castellan had accorded his guests center stage long enough to let them brag of their exploits. Only then did he ruin their triumph by giving them his news. While the January rising against Henry Fitz Empress had been instigated by the de Lusignan brothers, they’d been joined by the Counts of Angouleme and La Marche, and Robert and Hugh de Silly. But Robert had ended up in one of Henry’s dungeons on a diet of bread and water and, according to the castellan, he’d soon died of it. Will was surprised by Robert’s rapid decline and death, for men could survive a long time on even such meager rations. He felt not a shred of pity for the dead rebel, though, and for the rest of his unpleasant evening in the hall, he consoled himself by imagining the de Lusignans in a sunless cell, sharing Robert de Silly’s unhappy fate.
But if the castellan’s revelation had given Will some grim comfort, it had sent his captors into a panic. Will had watched them conferring amongst themselves, failing utterly to disguise their distress, and grieved that his uncle could not have been slain fighting more worthy foes than the de Lusignans and their dregs.
A horse nickered softly nearby, as if acknowledging Will’s presence in the stable. Stretching out as much as his shackles would permit, he sought to ease his aching leg in vain; no position lessened the pain. He supposed their decision on the morrow would depend upon the state of their stomachs and heads. Panic-stricken they undoubtedly were, but they were also likely to be suffering acutely from swilling down enough wine to fill the castle moat. Asking the Almighty to inflict the torments of the damned upon them all come morning, he then said a brief prayer for his dead uncle, his ill-used queen, and the other men who’d died on the Poitiers Road. After gently reminding his Savior that his own plight was in need of redressing, he finally fell into an uneasy doze.
One of his guards stumbled into the stable the next morning, wincing with each step, and Will decided his chances of spending another night here had dramatically improved. He was given water and sullenly assured that someone would remember to feed him, sooner or later. After that, he was left alone. He napped intermittently as the morning wore on and he was famished by the time another hungover captor brought him a bowl of stew and a loaf of stale bread. Not having a spoon, he ate with his fingers, concluding that it was better he not know the identity of the mystery meat coated in grease. He was using a chunk of the bread to sop up the gravy, trying not to think upon the tasty meals he’d enjoyed in Poitiers, when he heard soft footsteps in the straw outside the stall.
The girl was young, with knowing dark eyes and a tempting swing to her hips. It took Will just a moment to place her in his memory; she served the castellan’s wife. She was accompanied by the same guard who’d fetched his food. The man still looked greensick, but seemed a little happier about this new duty.
“My lady said even a poor wretch of a prisoner deserves God’s pity,” she announced in a disapproving voice that contrasted with the flirtatious look she gave Will through sweeping lashes. “This is for you.” Putting a large round loaf of bread down beside him, she sashayed out, batting those lashes at Will’s captor and drawing him after her with such ease that she looked back at Will and winked.
Will sniffed the bread and sighed happily, for it was freshly baked, still warm, marked with Christ’s Cross. But as he started to tear off a piece, his fingers found an oddity. Squinting in the dim light, he discovered that a section of the loaf had been removed and then replaced, like a plug corking a bottle. Extracting it, he found that the center had been hollowed out to conceal strips of flaxen cloth and a rag saturated with an unguent of some kind. The smell was faintly familiar and he thought he caught the whiff of yarrow or perhaps St John’s wort. He leaned back against the wall, staring down at the bandages and ointment in his lap, and for the first time since his troubles began, his eyes misted with tears.
Never had Will known a spring to pass so slowly. April seemed endless, days merging one into the other until he no longer had a clear memory of any of them. At night he was so exhausted he slept like the dead and in the morning, he’d be hustled onto a horse again, once more on the run. But the wound in his thigh no longer leaked pus or threatened to poison his body with noxious humors, and by May, he could put weight on the leg without pain.
In May, too, their hectic, panicked pace eased up, for his captors learned that Eudo de Porhoet had rebelled again in Brittany and Henry had gone west to deal with this faithless vassal once and for all. No longer fearing the dragon’s breath on the backs of their necks, the men finally felt secure enough to slow their flight, and that also assisted Will’s recovery. Unfortunately, they had yet to drop their guard with him; he was always bound hand and foot on horseback, chained up at night. He was content to wait, though, for a mistake to be made. What else could he do?
In mid-May, they lingered for an entire week at a castle held by a distant de Lusignan cousin. Will occupied himself by watching for their vigilance to slacken, by imagining the vengeance he wanted to wreak upon every mother’s son of them, and by giving fervent thanks to the Almighty and a Poitevin lord’s kindhearted wife for mercies he probably didn’t deserve.