On the fourth floor of the keep, Selene stood
backed against the closed door of the lord’s chamber, her arms
outstretched protectively, holding on to the frame at either side
in fearful yet determined defiance of the two who faced her.
“You promised,” she cried, panting in
wide-eyed terror. “Gwenefer, you said Deirdre would be safe. And
I.”
“Tell them to open the door, Selene,”
Gwenefer demanded. “They will open it for you.”
“You can’t have my baby as hostage. I did
what you wanted, now go away.”
“I,” Emrys said, his dagger pointed at
Selene’s throat, “would like very much to kill you. And I will if
you do not order that door opened at once.”
“No,” Selene whimpered, shrinking against the
door in her effort to get away from the menacing man before her.
Every bolt on the strengthening iron bands that crossed the solid
wood pressed hard into her back, hurting her. She thought she would
be impaled upon that door, held there forever by Emrys’ knife and
her own guilt.
“Now,” Emrys threatened softly, moving one
step closer. “Call to them now.”
Suddenly, Selene’s resistance crumbled. She
did not want to die. Not yet. Not yet.
“Arianna.” Her voice cracked with fear.
“Arianna, open the door.”
“Are you alone?” Arianna called through the
heavy wood. “It’s not a trick, is it?”
“Open the door,” Selene sobbed. “Please. I’m
so afraid.”
The bar slid back with a grating sound that
rumbled through the wood behind Selene’s ear, and the door opened a
little. Gwenefer caught at Selene, turning her and pushing her
toward the opening. Arianna, seeing only Selene, moved the door
further to let her in. Emrys reached over Selene’s shoulder and
thrust the door wide. Arianna stood firmly, weapon in hand,
blocking the entrance to the room.
“Deirdre. Don’t let them take her.” Selene
got no further. Emrys pushed her from behind and, overcome by
terror, she fainted, leaving the Welshman open to frontal attack as
she collapsed toward the floor. At once Arianna slashed at him with
the dagger she held.
“Have a care, wench,” Emrys growled. As he
spoke he cracked her smartly across the wrist, knocking the blade
from her grasp before she realized what was happening. She had
never seen anyone move so fast. “Get out of my way,” he snarled at
her.
“Never.” Arianna refused to move. The
entrance to this chamber was constructed so that one defender could
block entry, and this Arianna was determined to do for as long as
she could.
“Move or die,” Emrys said, lifting his
dagger. “I want those hostages, and I will have them, but you are
all going to die in a very short time, so it may as well be now for
you.”
Arianna looked him straight in the eye and
stayed where she was. She saw his blade coming closer and knew he
would kill her, but the danger to herself seemed unimportant. She
had to protect Cristin and Deirdre and hope that help would come in
time to save them. She uttered a quick, silent prayer and stood her
ground.
She heard a sound behind her, and her
startled senses noted an object flying past her ear. There was a
loud, cracking thud. Emrys crashed to the floor. Stupefied at what
had happened so quickly, amazed to find herself still alive,
Arianna looked down and saw a gash along one side of Emrys’s face,
and one of Reynaud’s carved crutches on top of his inert body.
“I never thought,” came Reynaud’s calm voice
behind her, “when my friend the carpenter made those crutches for
me, that either would ever serve as a weapon. Luckily, my arms are
strong from using them every day.”
She whirled around to stare at him. He was
hanging on to his remaining crutch and one post of the bed where
Cristin cowered with Deirdre in her arms, and he was grinning at
her like a young boy.
“How did you get here?” she cried.
“It’s a secret. Will you hand me my crutch,
please? Was he alone?”
“Gwenefer was with him, but she’s not here
now.”
“Ah, yes, the traitor within our walls. No
doubt she has gone for reinforcements. Is Selene hurt?”
“I think she has only fainted.” Arianna felt
rather like fainting herself, but she held herself upright by a
great effort of will and handed Reynaud his crutch.
“Cristin,” Reynaud ordered, “put the baby
down and help Arianna to drag Selene into the room. Then push that
murderous Welshman out and bolt the door again, and this time open
it for no one.”
“Listen!” Cristin scrambled off the bed and
ran for the window niche in the eastern wall.
“Get away from there, girl,” Reynaud called.
“There are arrows flying. Keep those shutters fastened.”
“Don’t you hear it?” Cristin’s face was all
alight. “A trumpet. It’s my father, I know it is. He’s come to
rescue us.”
“That may be,” Reynaud told her, “but in the
meantime, the Welsh are still within the bailey, and we need to
close the chamber door. Now, stop dancing around and help
Arianna.”
It was no great task to remove Emrys. He was
not very large, and he had been knocked backward by the force of
the blow that had felled him. They needed only to twist his legs
around and roll him over in order to heave him into the
corridor.
Selene was another matter. At first she was
unconscious, a dead weight, and Arianna would never have believed
anyone so small could be so heavy. Arianna herself was trembling
and weak-kneed in reaction to her brush with death. She tugged and
pulled at Selene, and Cristin tried to help her, but it was a
difficult job. Just when she thought they were succeeding, Selene
awoke from her faint and began to scream and cry and thrash about
on the floor, her wild movements further impeding them.
“Stop kicking me,” Cristin cried, still
tugging at Selene’s ankles. “We’re trying to help you.”
“Slap her hard, Arianna,” Reynaud called over
Selene’s wailing. “That will silence her.”
Arianna knew he was right. It was the only
thing to do, and it had better be done at once before Gwenefer
returned with more men. She drew back her right arm, put all her
strength behind it, and hit Selene as hard as she could. She was
surprised by how good it felt. She had to restrain herself from
doing it again, and at that impulse realized she was close to the
same kind of collapse Selene had suffered.
Selene fell completely silent.
“Get up,” Reynaud ordered coldly. “Walk over
to that chair and sit in it. And keep quiet.”
Selene obeyed him meekly, while behind her
Arianna finally closed and bolted the door.
“And now, Master Reynaud?” Arianna had
retrieved her dagger and stood before him holding it, pale but
composed, having forced herself back from the edge of hysteria.
Reynaud nodded approvingly.
“Now we wait,” he said, “and hope Cristin is
right that Lord Guy has come. Sit down, my dear, before you fall,
and tell me why Selene was in the corridor with that Welsh woman,
and not in here with you and the children.”
“She was behind us on the stairs, and when
she shouted for us to close the door, I did.”
“The mother, protecting her child.”
“Why, yes,” Arianna said, puzzled at his
sarcastic tone. She saw Selene sitting quietly on the chair where
Reynaud had ordered her, tears running down her cheeks. Arianna
wanted to go to her and offer comfort, but her own legs would no
longer hold her weight. She climbed onto the huge bed and huddled
there, shaking.
‘This same protective mother,” Reynaud went
on, “then told you to open the door to certain murderers.”
“I suppose they forced her. I could not see,
Reynaud, I only heard her voice.”
“Reynaud, it is my father,” Cristin called
from the window niche. “Look at all the torches! And how many men
he has with him! They are in the inner bailey. Come see, there’s
Thomas.”
“Thomas?” Selene started up from her chair.
“Thomas is here? I must go to him, I must tell him what happened. I
have to explain.” When she ran toward the door, Arianna jumped off
the bed to pursue her, stumbling and nearly falling on still-shaky
knees.
“Stay here, Lady Selene!” Reynaud exclaimed.
“It is dangerous to leave this room. The Welsh may still be within
the keep. Wait until Thomas comes for you.”
Arianna put her arms around Selene, brought
her back to the chair, and gave her Deirdre to hold. And then they
waited for hours, their vigil punctuated by Cristin’s eager
descriptions as the rising sun revealed the results of the previous
night’s attack. Cristin would not be kept away from the windows.
She ran from one side of the room to the other, peering through
chinks in the shutters to see whatever she could.
“There are a lot of people lying on the
ground. There’s blood all over,” Cristin reported with childish
excitement. Selene moaned and closed her eyes and looked ill, but
Cristin went on relentlessly. “Those must be the prisoners the
guards are surrounding. There aren’t very many of them.
“Oh, Geoffrey is hurt, look at his arm. Why
don’t they hurry and come for us, so I can go to help him? What is
Benet doing with my father?” Cristin turned from the window, her
face so pale the freckles across her nose stood out boldly. “My
father is hurt, he’s limping and leaning on Benet. Reynaud, please
let us go out now. My father needs me.”
“Stay here, child. It won’t be long, I
promise.”
It was only a moment or two later that they
heard Sir Kenelm’s familiar voice on the stairs, and at Reynaud’s
nod Arianna threw open the door.
“Guy sent me,” Kenelm said, his quick
soldier’s glance noting the condition of all the occupants of that
room. “It’s safe to go to the great hall now.”
Cristin ran past him and down the steps,
calling out for her father and for Geoffrey. Selene, the still
peacefully sleeping Deirdre in her arms, was not far behind.
Arianna went more slowly, glad to hang back
and help Reynaud down the stairs and thus miss Selene’s reunion
with Thomas. Kenelm also lent his brawny strength to support the
tired architect. The three of them walked into the great hall
together.
The first thing Arianna saw was Thomas, with
his arms around Selene and Deirdre snuggled between them. Arianna
left that tender scene, and found Guy in his big wooden chair with
young Benet beside him pressing a bloodstained rag to his thigh.
Geoffrey sat nearby, his left sleeve soaked in blood. Cristin
fluttered anxiously between the two men.
“Are there many wounded?” Arianna asked
Kenelm, already going over in her mind the list of supplies she
would need.
“Not many,” Kenelm answered. “We surprised
them with all the gates opened, and we were armored. There wasn’t
much of a fight.”
There were in fact twenty wounded men,
including Guy and Geoffrey. Arianna ordered all of them brought
into the hall so she could tend to them more easily. Only a few
were seriously hurt. Geoffrey had only flesh wounds to his left arm
and side, which would heal quickly. Guy also had a flesh wound in
his right thigh, caused by a Welsh arrow. It was painful, but
clean, and his chief concern over it seemed to be that his chain
mail hauberk had been damaged and would have to be repaired.
“You are fortunate the links weren’t embedded
in the wound,” Arianna told him, wrapping a linen bandage around
his leg. “Let the blacksmith have the extra work and rejoice that
you will be healed within a week or two.”
“The blacksmith is dead,” Guy said sadly.
“We’ll have to find another. It won’t be easy. He was a good
man.”
There were others dead, some dear friends.
Captain John had fallen defending the inner gate, along with
several young men Arianna knew well. Worst of all was the loss of
Joan. Arianna found her facedown in the kitchen, along with two of
the serving girls, and she and Cristin wept together over her
before going back into the hall to mend the wounded as best they
could. Cristin worked by Arianna’s side through the rest of that
day, never once flinching at what was required of her.
“I’ve helped in the stables with the horses
from time to time,” Cristin said. “I’ll just pretend that’s what
I’m doing now. I’m not afraid of blood.”
The one who did fear blood, Selene, had gone
to her bedchamber, taking Thomas with her. He reappeared an hour or
so later, looking flushed and happy, but of Selene there was no
further sign that day.
Some of Guy’s household knights were married,
and their wives, who had sheltered in their own rooms inside the
keep, now made their way to the hall to look for their husbands and
to offer what help they could among the wounded.
In Selene’s absence Arianna took charge of
the domestic side of the castle, so smoothly that she herself
hardly realized what she was doing. She simply saw what was needful
and made arrangements to supply it. She called the carpenter and
ordered coffins made for the dead, spoke to the village priest and
arranged for the bodies to be washed and prepared for burial. She
had the kitchen cleaned and restored to its usual neat condition
and put the most intelligent of the serving girls in charge of the
evening meal. She sent Linnet to help Selene with Deirdre. She told
the glazier to come the next day to measure the broken windowpanes
for replacement, and the carpenter’s assistants to repair damaged
shutters and doors as soon as possible. The inner bailey must be
cleaned, and fresh sand sprinkled on the dreadful stains that had
soaked the ground and the floor of the great hall and corridors.
The village folk needed help in setting their disturbed lives to
rights once more. And all the time, while issuing orders and seeing
more and more that must be done, she tended the wounded. It was not
until she at last sat down to eat something, long after nightfall
of that endless day, that Arianna remembered the Welsh prisoners
someone had told her about, and ordered food taken to them.