Red Adam's Lady Read online

  “We’ll have the lot out; it’s fit for nothing but fowls’ meat,” Julitta decided after the briefest of hesitations. Fortunately the harvest was still in the barns, unthreshed. “The bins scoured out with vinegar and well smoked. Yes, and we’ll have the bread grain parched in the ovens after the baking’s done, since the season’s been a wet one.” For damp corn was speedily infested with weevils and mealworms, besides being liable to mould and sprouting.

  There were eel-worms and ropy slime in the vinegar, so that most of it was only fit for cleansing, and the casks must be recharred. The stockfish was rat-ravaged. “Siege rations,” said Brien apologetically, kicking a broken remnant aside. When fresh fish was available no one would willingly eat it, but in winter there might be weeks of storm. The butter and cheese, of that summer’s milk, were scanty in quantity but sound. The honey was good. The stock of candles and rush-dips was naturally low, but must wait on the Martinmas butchering for renewal since so much tallow had been expended on soap-boiling. Brien growled over damaged arrows, warped bow-staves and rusty metal, but on the whole the imperishable articles had suffered small harm. They continued their circuit, poked their heads into a couple of cells occasionally used for confining the criminal or the belligerently drunk, and turned back towards the stair.

  Before the ranked tiers of salt-meat barrels Julitta halted, her nose twitching. It had been assailed by a number of unsavory odors, but here was another, alarming as a bugle blast; a whiff of tainted meat. The Englishman snuffed like a questing hound, and Brien’s nostrils flared. In the torchlight they eyed each other with misgiving.

  “Hold the light nearer, Alfwin; there’s mischief here.”

  The full casks were ranged in three tiers against the wall, one before the other. The front row was depleted by three-quarters, the other two were almost complete. Julitta noted dust layers and veiling cobwebs, and an incredible suspicion could not be dismissed.

  “Hand me the torch, Alfwin. We’ll have that cask out.” She indicated one of the rearmost standing alone. The two men silently laid hold on it, tipped it on edge and trundled it from its bed, scared spiders and woodlice scuttling. Silently they wedged it on its side and removed the bung. The stench of decayed mutton gushed out. Still in silence, they beat back the bung and replaced the cask.

  “Two years!” hissed Brien. “Two years that sluttish bitch has let the cooks take the last-come meat!”

  The incredible suspicion was reality. This went beyond neglect; it was an appalling, criminal shiftlessness, ignoring the first rule of food management. Each autumn the new-killed meat, salted for storage, had been stacked in front of the old instead of behind it, and the unsupervised cooks had started to use it immediately instead of finishing first the previous season’s salting. The Scots were over the Border, rebellion abroad, a siege more than possible, and Brentborough Castle’s salt meat was mostly rotten.

  “By God’s Head, it’s a hanging matter!” swore Brien. “Give the word, Lady Julitta, and we’ll have that lout Godric swinging before dinner’s served! And that shiftless bitch should hang beside him.” He started for the stair, and Julitta extended the torch in a flaring barrier that halted him.

  “No!” she declared forcefully. “This must not go beyond the three of us.” They stared at her, the torchlight dancing on their faces and reflecting from their eyes. “We must not let a whisper of it go abroad among our enemies.”

  Brien nodded soberly. “True, my lady. It’ll gall me sorely, for if ever a man deserved hanging—but you’re right.”

  “It galls me also,” she agreed frankly. “And we know he’s a thief too, but we’ll have to wait for an accounting.”

  “A thief?”

  “The mutton carcass under the offal, remember? Peddled to the inn, I’ll wager my head.”

  Brien thumbed his chin, his scowl suddenly lightening. “Now there’s a hope. If he’s taken in the act—my lady, there’ll be a watch on him a mouse couldn’t evade.”

  He looked so like a terrier bristling at a rathole that Julitta grinned. “When the cat’s away—” she said. “I have business at the convent this day. Good hunting, Sir Brien!”

  She mentioned her intent at dinner, and did not correct Baldwin Dogsmeat when he impudently guessed aloud that it was always a pleasure to visit old friends. Sly grins the length of the table told how most folk interpreted her errand. The Abbess’s charity was justly famed, and all knew that to receive the girl she had rejected, as patroness of the convent and the greatest lady in the district, would cause her the most exquisite chagrin. Julitta serenely dealt with spiced pork and frumenty; they might believe she sought that ignoble satisfaction so long as they did not guess at her true motive.

  When the company dispersed after dinner Sir Bertram stood alone at the dais’s edge, gazing vaguely out of a window. Something forlorn in his aspect suddenly put her in mind of blinded Samson grinding among the slaves. In compunction she realized how she had practically ignored him in the hectic days since Red Adam gave her command of Brentborough. She moved to his side, and he turned at the rustle of her feet in the new rushes, his face still vaguely questioning until she spoke.

  “There’s been little time for diversion since my lord departed, Sir Bertram, for which I’m sorry. Will you favor me with a match after supper?”

  His sagging face hardened, and again she glimpsed what he had once been. “No, my lady.” She gasped at the rebuff, and he added sternly, “I may not, after your discourtesy towards my dear lady.”

  “If you mean that I have exposed her neglect of duty,” Julitta snapped, “whose was the neglect?” Then she closed her lips, disdaining to justify herself at Constance’s expense, or to complain that the initial discourtesy had been hers. The woman was his wife. If he did not know her for a malicious slut he was purblind in mind as in body. She stalked to the stair, reflecting uneasily on her suspicions. The seneschal had given his loyalty twice only, to his lady and his lord, and if she proved right a fearful and undesired vengeance was in her hands. Not for the first time she wished that she might lay the whole problem before her husband.

  Sulky wenches had to be herded back to the bower and set under Hodierne’s charge, informed in plain words that the Christmas livery of new clothing for every other member of the household must be completed before their own stuff would feel the shears. That spurred them. But Thyra, dawdling heavily after them, stared at Julitta with dull-witted insolence. “I’ve no call to set hands to scullions’ gear, wi’ m’ lord’s son in me belly.”

  “You fool, you should be sewing swaddling bands for the groom’s brat.” Julitta leveled a finger at her waist. “You’re nine months gone, not seven, and you’ll need them before the week’s out.”

  The girl gaped stupidly, fright in her face, and pressed both hands to her burden in the age-old gesture of a woman who feels the babe kick in her womb. She lurched after her companions, her silly lie exposed naked, and Julitta frowned after her. The girl looked ill; her pretty face was puffy and her high color faded to a greenish pallor. A prescient instinct told her that the birth was imminent, and it would go hard.

  Adela spoke grimly in her ear. “You’ll have no order in your household, my lady, until you’re rid of that Constance, inciting those trollops to insolence.”

  “That I know,” Julitta answered as grimly. “And I’d give much to accomplish it.” Resentment at the interference stirred in her; the problem was obvious.

  Adela hitched the elf-child higher on her hip, her hard mouth twisting into a smile. “Oh, I’m meddlesome, but believe me, I wish you well.”

  Julitta flushed. The woman was, after all, of an age to be her mother. “It’s her husband would have to go, and he’s served Brentborough loyally for many years.”

  “He’s blind and besotted. Guard against him; the man’s a dreamer, and dreamers are dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?”

  “They see things as they would have them, not as they are.” She hesitated, and added, “His
loyalty’s neither to you nor Lord Adam.”

  “Mistress Adela,” Julitta challenged her, “you hint at treachery. Have you knowledge?”

  “None,” the routier’s woman answered. Julitta had scarcely to raise her eyes to meet the straight gaze; they were almost of a height. “If I’d facts you should have them. But it’s not love she’s forever whispering in his ear, and her eye on you all the time. Be wary.” She moved away, striding arrogantly as a man. Julitta frowned after her. Then she mounted to the bower to check the work, commended Avice and Hodierne who were finishing her green gown, paid her third visit of the day to the kitchen and her second to the hospital. The elderly man with lung sickness, against all expectation, was recovering, and the girl attendant was looking worse. An excited throng brought to her a small boy who had fallen out of an appletree, and she set his collarbone and bound him up before an audience which decided that, young as she was, Lady Julitta knew her chirurgery.

  She came more than an hour late to the stables, to find Folie fretting under the saddle. She sidled and stamped, and Alain leaped to her head. Julitta reined her to a sober walk, away from the distracting scents and sounds of the stallions in the stables, and once through the gate held her to a canter.

  Alain closed up behind on his dun gelding. “M’ lady, did you know as Sir Bertram and his lady rode out right after dinner, wi’ Roger and Oswald for escort?”

  “No word where?”

  “No, m’ lady, but they took this road.”

  * Decomposed urine was the usual source of ammonia for domestic and industrial cleansing until the nineteenth century and chemical factories. Fullers’ workshops in towns even provided large jars outside their doors for the contributions of passers-by.

  11

  The valley road, once they passed Brentborough village and its fields, angled northwest along the river and plunged into dense woods. It kept to the north bank, sometimes following the river’s twists and sometimes swinging away, but seldom beyond sound of the water wrangling with the boulders of its bed. It was a turbulent river, subject to fierce spates when rain fell in the hills, and before the bridge was built at Arnisby its fords had yearly claimed their toll of lives.

  High clouds, shredded like thistledown, glided across the sky, and the sun blazed undimmed among them. A breeze from the sea stirred the leaves, crisping already for autumn. Shade and sunshine patterned the track; birds called alarm as they advanced; dragonflies flashed in and out of the shadows; flies buzzed about them and clustered round the horses’ eyes and nostrils so that they blew and tossed their heads in irritation. Squirrels flicked chittering away as they passed, and once a pursuing marten poised on a bough to stare arrogantly at them before bounding higher. Far away a stag roared; the rutting season was approaching.

  Julitta’s anxieties slackened their hold as she gave herself to enjoyment of the fair day and escape from her duties; even thought of her distasteful errand ceased to press. She found herself humming as she rode, and checked with amused consternation as she realized it was the tune of Red Adam’s song about the harlot. They overtook the carrier and his string of packhorses, starting on his round of upland hamlets and isolated farmsteads with salt and fish and woven cloth. Julitta halted to warn him also of the Scots, and soberly he promised to bear the warning with him. They left him standing in the track, plainly debating whether a wise man would return to Arnisby and let his profits go.

  The track forked, one branch angling left down to a chancy ford and then over the fells to Crossthwaite. It was little used, and Alain checked his horse and pointed to hoofprints plain in the floury dust.

  “M’ lady, here’s where Sir Bertram went. I’d know that big gray’s prints anywhere; throws out wi’ his off hind.”

  “Crossthwaite!” Julitta said aloud, gazing between the trees with narrowed eyes. Bertram and Constance were at liberty to ride where they would, but when they chose to visit the Ladies’ Delight without a word to any it set her wondering. Reckoning it along with the rumors she had heard this day, she was frankly uneasy. These were no times for the Brentborough seneschal to consort with even undeclared rebels.

  “There’s Hartleap Farm and Ravensghyll afore you gets to Crossthwaite, m’ lady,” Alain ventured. “Happen they’ve affairs—”

  “With Sir Humphrey,” Julitta said, and set her palfrey moving again. The pleasure had gone from her ride, the castle’s troubles returned to vex her. The golden day, the valley’s beauty, the river’s vigor, were forgotten; now she noticed the pestering flies, the dust that sifted through her clothing and gritted on her skin, the sweat sticking her fingers to the reins and her clothes to her body. Alain, more sensitive to her mood than she would have expected, fell silent.

  They entered a clearing snagged with pale stumps and scarred with black patches, old charcoal burners’ pitsteads. Higher up the hillside a faint ring of axes and a thin plume of pale blue smoke revealed this season’s work site. The track dipped to the riverside again, and by a shallow strewn with boulders they halted briefly to let the horses drink. Then they climbed to a wide terrace some twenty feet above flood level, and entered a more extensive clearing. In the middle of it crouched a tumbledown hovel of wattle and daub, erected by the woodcutters who had lived here a year or so until they had cut all the trees convenient to the river and floated down their timber to Brentborough. A man stood in the track, waiting for them.

  Julitta exclaimed and started forward, her palfrey whickering in recognition. “Ivar!”

  He came to Folie’s head as he had been used to, dour and unsmiling, but a warmth of pleasure softened his brown face. “Lady Julitta!”

  “Oh, but I am glad to see you! Is all well with you, Ivar? I was grieved to have brought such trouble on you—”

  “Aye, m’ lady, all’s well, and t’ better for seeing you. D’ye reckon I’d forget as you married that devil to save me?”

  “He’s no devil, Ivar. He never intended you harm. But I must hear—we must talk—”

  “There’s t’ owd house yonder, m’ lady, if you’d trouble to dismount and set out o’ t’ sun?”

  “Of course.” She signaled to Alain, regarding Ivar suspiciously, and turned her palfrey towards the abandoned hovel. Part of its roof had fallen in, and the thatch sagged over rotting rafters, but enough remained to provide shelter. A horse whinnied greeting from behind it, and Folie shied and answered.

  “Don’t your lord reckon enough to you to find you a fitter mount than this fool beast, m’ lady?” Ivar demanded disparagingly.

  She flushed. “There’s been no chance—” she began, recognized in his flinty face the hatred that no defence of Red Adam would abate, and checked in dismay; she would never persuade him to take service in Brentborough as she had hoped. Biting her lip, she reined in before the crazy hut, and Alain swung down and was at her stirrup, with a challenging glance over his shoulder at Ivar, to help her down.

  “It’s no fit place for you, m’ lady!” he declared, reaching for the bridle that Ivar held.

  Privately she agreed, but she had already accepted Ivar’s suggestion. She shrugged and approached the gaping doorway, expecting Ivar to relinquish the reins and follow her, but he did not move. Then something large advanced in the shadow, and Humphrey of Crossthwaite ducked his head under the lintel and smiled triumphantly.

  “Well met, Lady Julitta!”

  She wasted no time on words, but leaped for her mount. She snatched at the pommel from the off side, and Folie reared and squealed. A strong arm tore her away and sent her reeling back towards the hovel; her heel caught in her gown and she sat backwards with a jarring thump. Alain uttered one yell and hurled himself at Ivar, and the frantic mare lashed out at both with her forehooves, broke free, and danced beyond reach, while the two men rolled together in the grass. Alain bounded to his feet and leaped at Humphrey of Crossthwaite, who struck at him savagely with the loaded stock of his riding whip.

  Alain went down, rolled over, heaved himself to hands and kne
es and stared dumbly at the sword blade whose point pricked under his chin. Julitta, scrambling up, saw his face whiten, but he looked to her, contusion rising on his brow, and croaked, “M’ lady!”

  “Take your horse, knave, and ride home with a whole windpipe!” Humphrey brutally commanded, jabbing so that a red trickle started down the groom’s throat.

  He looked again to Julitta, repeating, “My lady!”

  “Your lady is mine, you may tell Red Adam. Be gone!”

  Alain sullenly picked himself up, hesitated, looked from Julitta to the sword, and tramped to his placidly grazing horse. He smeared a streak of blood across his brow, scowled white-faced at the fair knight, and rode from the clearing without looking back. Ivar had run to Folie’s head and now brought her up, sidling and dancing, the uneasy whites of her eyes gleaming.

  Julitta turned on him. “So for revenge on my husband you procure my ravishing, you vile Judas?”

  He gaped at her. “No—”

  A hard hand closed on her right arm. “Ravishing, fair Julitta? That’s no word for our sweet loving,” Humphrey protested.

  She regarded him with cold loathing. “I am not your whore.”

  He grinned and drew her towards the hovel’s doorless entrance. “You are my sweet friend and have been from the first, Julitta.” He pulled her under the roof’s shadow and seized her. His mouth bruised her lips against her teeth, and she set them fast, stood stone-still in his hateful embrace and endured, so that he lifted his head, held her at arms’ length by the shoulders and said cajolingly, “Are you frozen to ice, Julitta? This is no time to be coy.”