“Look to the rope on the bedding-pack, ye chucklehead. ’Tis not fast, mule’s lopsided, ye’ll lame it next!”
Simkin silently tightened the rope and rebalanced the packs. It gave him an excuse to pass near Celia and brush against her leg as it dangled in the stirrup. She dimpled and pulled her horse away.
“Lane’s narrow,” she remarked, looking down at the youth through her long curly lashes.
Simkin shivered with a thrill of anticipation and fear. Her beauty reminded him of the rose mallows, blue speedwells and marsh marigolds he used to bring to his mother. He wanted to touch Celia, and he thought that he would certainly find a way to kiss her tonight. His shyness had been waning with every mile that they struggled into this wild strange country. Yet every time he looked at her she reminded him of Roland. The moments with Roland had been before the smallpox made Simkin ugly. Nearly two years ago. Roland had been one of the mummers who came to Cowdray at Christmastide. They had played in the Buck Hall before Sir Anthony and his family. The servants had been allowed to crowd in by the buttery screens. The play was about St. George and the Dragon and a beautiful maiden whom St. George rescued. The maiden’s part was played by Roland. He was very fair like Celia, and he had her provocative innocent manner. He, too, was beautiful, and Simkin at first sight had yearned for the boy. It happened that after the performance Sir Anthony invited the mummers to spend the night in one of the hay barns so that Simkin had found it easy to meet Roland by the watering trough and talk with him. Later, after they had all had much wassail he had lain with him, too. Lain with Roland in the fragrant hay barn and discovered a dark rich joy. But in the morning when the mumming troupe left for Chichester Simkin had hidden himself. He did not understand what had happened to him and soon managed to forget it. He did not now think of that night, except for a fleeting recognition that something about Celia reminded him of Roland.
“Holy
Jesu
,” cried Ursula, peering apprehensively at the huge mountain to the west. “Can that be
snow?
At Michaelmas!”
“’Tis snow,” agreed Wat. And the least o’ our troubles, he added to himself. His charges must reach safety before nightfall, not only because of weather but also because of the danger of robbery. The shepherd in the cot at Patterdale had stared long at Wat’s pouch, then peered through the door at the three horses and the laden mule. Wat fingered his dagger and his matchlock. Bloody-fool jaunt this was. And they could go no faster through the ruts and little brooks full of slippery stones.
By twilight they reached the end of the lake, and at a fork they paused uncertainly beside a ramshackle bridge. There was nothing living in sight but some scraggy sheep.
“O-o-oh, look!” Celia cried. Her keen young eyes spied a battlemented tower through the trees. “Naworth!”
They turned up a path and scrambled to higher ground.
“There’s a church, too,” Ursula cried in relief. “But what a formidable keep. ’Tis a very fortress!”
“Needs be on the Borders,” said Wat. “I wonder where they’re lurking.”
The keep was silent and had a grim deserted air. No smoke rising, no lights in the slit windows.
Wat dismounted, crossed to the drawbridge and pounded on the heavy ironbound portal. He yanked the bellrope. Nothing happened, though they could hear distant jangling from within the courtyard.
“God’s nails!” Wat growled. “What ails ’em in there?” Border strongholds, Wat knew, always contained guards, and usually cattle—often “lifted” from the other country. He yanked the bellrope again.
“Somebody’s coming over yonder,” said Celia, pointing up the lane. “It’s a
priest!
”
They all turned and saw an untidy old man in a cassock, waddling out of his gray stone vicarage next to the small church.
“What d’ye want?” he shouted, wagging his tonsured pate at them. “There’s nowt in ther-re but them whull na be disturr-bed.”
“But Sir Priest!” cried Ursula, “we’ve come to Naworth by invitation, Lady Dacre
asked
us. We’ve traveled a long way—” her voice wavered as the priest scowled at her through the gloaming.
“Her-res not Na’orth,” he said contemptuously. “Here’s
Dacre.
Na’orth’s thirty guid mile to the nor-rth, past Brampton.”
Wat shared Ursula’s startled dismay, and struck in forcefully. “Is’t so? Well, bigod, we can go no further tonight. If this be Dacre, Dacres must own it, and his lordship’d want us welcomed.”
The priest waggled his head again. His stupid face grew stubborn. “Mebbe so, mebbe so, forbye we dinnent welcome Southrons. Keep’s bolted an’ shut, so ’twill bide.”
“Where can we sleep?” cried Ursula. “We’re hungry, cold. We can pay . . .” She drew a shilling from her pouch. The pudgy hand went out for it; the priest bit the coin suspiciously.
“Ye can lie i’ the kirk,” he said. “Ther-res water to drink i’ the beck.” He turned and waddled away to his tiny vicarage. He slammed the door and they heard bolts grind into place.
“At least they’ve a priest up here,” said Ursula ruefully, breaking the silence, “and a cross on the church.”
“Lot o’ good
they
be,” said Wat. “Can’t eat ’em. We might lie i’ the church, except our bedding’s soaked.” He frowned at the mule who had fallen in the last beck they had floundered through.
They could smell peat smoke from the priest’s chimney hole and a whiff of roasting goose. Nobody had eaten since dawn before they climbed Kirkstone Pass, and the farmstead near Windermere which had sheltered them last night would furnish them no breakfast but moldy clap-bread.
“That old lump o’ suet has a fire, an’ I’ll make him let us in if I have to beat his door down!” Wat suddenly shouted.
But Wat had no weapon which would budge the barred vicarage door or reach the windows, which were high up and shuttered fast. He and Simkin pounded and shouted to no avail. A bitter wind rose, whistling from the mountains, bringing with it silver needles of sleet. They crowded together inside the church, shivering, too cold for speech. Wat eyed the sanctuary lamp glimmering above the altar. From the candle inside they might start a fire, but there was nothing flammable in the church except two wooden prayer seats.
“Bigod, Goddamn—” Wat muttered, while his own teeth began to chatter.
The women huddled in each other’s arms, striving for warmth. Simkin stamped up and down the only aisle, his feet numb.
Ursula thought how dreary a death this would make, to starve from cold and hunger in the savage uncaring North. She had begun to burn inside, and knew that an ague was upon her. Her knees wobbled so that she could no longer stand, and she slumped down on the dank paving. From instinct she looked towards the little wooden crucifix on the altar and began to pray.
Her aunt’s collapse frightened Celia out of the exhilaration she had been feeling. She chafed Ursula’s wrists distractedly.
Wat glanced at them both with exasperated pity while he thought of desperate plans. There must be some cot, some hamlet nearby, even in this forsaken country, which he could ride to. The priest had mentioned Brampton, whatever that was, it must be nearer than Naworth. He thought of returning to the shepherd’s hut at Pattersdale, but that would take all night, and scant hope of help there anyway. And how to leave the women. Lady Southwell was ill already. That he could hear from her moans and prayers through the darkness.
“Sim!” he said to his son. “Stay here wi’ ’em. I’ll have another go at the keep.”
Wat strode out into the sleet, spurred by the need for action of any kind. He shook his fist at the vicarage, and groped his way back to the great looming fortress. He again found the bell-rope, and listened to the jangling clamor inside with impotent fury. There was no response. As his arm dropped he felt a touch on his elbow.
Wat started, then crossed himself, for he saw a pale shape beside him. It seemed to be a woman’s shape, with long dark hair and a light robe.
“Whyfore d’ye make such a din?” it asked in a plaintive voice. “Is’t the Scots? Are the mosstroopers raiding tonight?”
Wat’s scalp ceased prickling, he forgot even his physical cold in relief that the apparition spoke good English.
“No, Lady,” he said, “there’s no raid, we’re but a party of Southerners bound for the Dacres at Na’orth. We’re frozen, starving, benighted.”
“I’m a Dacre,” said the woman in a sad murmurous voice. “Bluidy Bess, they call me here, though I was born a Neville, and ha’ lived in London Town. My mother was half Southron. I like Southrons.” Her voice trailed off, and she seemed to be turning away.
Wat grabbed her by the long woolen sleeve. “I’m a Southerner,” he cried sharply. “We all are, we need help. Where do ye live, Lady?”
“In there . . .” she answered as though astonished. He felt her arm raise as it pointed to the fortress. “Wi’ blind Janet.”
“Take us in!” commanded Wat, wondering if she were truly feeble-witted. “How’d ye get out—not through that portal.”
“Nay . . .” She shrank from his detaining hand. “My own secret way—when the three kings don’t watch me too close.”
“Oh . . .” said Wat, and pondered a second. “Well, it so happens, Lady, them three kings’re friends o’ mine, they
want
ye to take me inside.”
There was a long pause, during which Wat tried to control his fretting. If she slipped off into the darkness, or if he held her forcibly, there would be no further hope.
“’Tis very cold out here,” he added, “the kings don’t want ye to get cold.”
“Don’t they?” she asked with childlike surprise. “Yet
they’re
cowld, you know, Oswin in particular, King o’ Strathcylde. He’s cowlder than the snows on Blencathra. For here is his own kingdom.”
“Aye, no doubt—” said Wat, swallowing, “and I’m a guest in his kingdom, he longs to welcome me!”
He released his breath as he felt her sudden acquiescence. She began to edge around the fortress on the narrow strip of ground between it and the moat. Wat grabbed her flowing sleeve and followed. She began to go down steps just where the moat joined the rushing beck. Wat accurately judged that she had turned into some passage to the dungeon. The air became foul, the stone walls slimy as he guided himself with one hand and held her sleeve with the other. Suddenly they mounted again, and Wat with a spasm of relief saw the distant light of a fire. They crossed a dark chamber, and she stopped at the doorway to the inner firelit room.
“I don’t see the kings,” she said on a note of irritation. “You said they’d welcome you. You mustn’t lie to me . . .” There was something threatening in her change of tone as she added the last words, while Wat had his first good look at her.
She was slender, she was probably about thirty, she would have been beautiful except for the vacant look on her pale oval face and the fixed half-smile on her little mouth.
“The kings must’ve gone to bed,” said Wat. “’Tis late . . . Ah, who’s this?”
A stout aproned woman arose from a velvet-covered chair, and groped towards them. Her eyes were shut, and she cried, “Lady Bess, Lady—who’s wi’ ye?” in an anxious voice.
“A
friend,
good dame!” cried Wat heartily. “No Scot. I vow it on the Cross, but friend from the South, bound for Na’orth and in sore need of shelter.”
He muttered, “By your leave,” and grabbed a fistful of oatcakes which were warming near the hearth. “Glory be to Christ,” he continued between avid gulps, “I see ye’ve a red deer roasting on the spit!”
Bess Dacre watched him somberly as she stood with one hand on her chest tugging at the gray woolen neck of her gown as though to expose her left breast. “The blood’ll go here,” she said softly, tapping her breast. “Bring the blood, Janet!” She gestured towards the roasting venison.
“Anon, anon—Lady Bess,” said Janet. “’Tis not yet hot enow . . . Wull ye explain ye’re beesiness—” she cried in the direction of Wat. “I maun hear-r ye speak again. I’m blind.”
“God bless ye, poor woman,” said Wat with sympathy. The oatcakes relieved his lightheadedness, and he became practical. It did not occur to him to speculate on the presence of a mad woman and a blind woman as the inhabitants of Dacre fortress, he saw them only as a means of salvation.
Half an hour later Wat had rescued his charges from the church and assembled them by the fireside of the keep’s inner room.
Ursula lay drowsing on a pallet which Janet had found. Her violent shaking ceased after Janet gave her a noggin of the fiery liquid which they called something that sounded like “whiskybaugh.” Celia and Simkin devoured hunks of the steaming venison, drank noggins until Celia’s exhilaration returned, tinctured by a dream quality. Nothing seemed strange to her now, she was warm at last, she was fed, she watched with languid interest as the tall woman in gray wool came over to Janet and ceremoniously offered her breast, a white round breast with a raspberry nipple. Janet marked it with venison blood. The mark was a cross, with wavy lines around it; from the familiar offhand way that Janet drew the markings with her reddened finger, nobody could doubt that this was an established custom.
“It quietens m’ puir lady,” said Janet, with composure, from her velvet seat by the fire. “This was one o’ her bad days—an’ a’ that wranglin’ an’ janglin’ o’ the courtyard bell!” She turned a reproachful face in the direction of Wat, who had now regained all his strength and become curious.
He asked questions, and Janet answered him placidly. This was Lady Elizabeth Dacre, wife to Sir Thomas of Naworth Castle. She had often been a bit mad, but so were all the Neville family. Her brother, the Earl of Westmorland, had been imprisoned in London for trying to murder his father and wife, though this remained unproven. He had also been accused of invoking angels to assist in his throwing of dice. But these moments of folly were past. The Earl regretted them; he had repented. Janet obviously believed that any aberrations should be overlooked in so famous and powerful a family. She had grown up with Lady Bess at Raby Castle in County Durham; she had always known how to treat her, so it was natural that when the lady’s bad fits came on her, they were both sent to Dacre for a while.