He picked up a pair of blacksmith’s pincers and squeezed the grip until the pressure brought pain. He could not be too late. It was impossible; he would not allow it to happen.
And then he heard the sound of shouting from the gardens backing on to the other side of the narrow alley and a woman’s scream.
Dropping the pincers, he grabbed his father’s shield by the short hand-straps and began to run.
30
As soon as Linnet had retired to the sleeping loft on the second floor of the house, Ironheart fetched his tools and his shield and brought them outside to the bench by the yard wall.
Bracing the shield against his leg, he took up a pair of blacksmith’s pincers and began to pull out the tacks that held the shield’s rawhide rim in position. A section near the top was damaged and needed replacing. It was something he had meant to do in the winter but had kept putting off. Now the truces had all come to an end and there was no time left.
Robert ceased playing with the kitten and ambled across the yard to watch Ironheart at work.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m going . . . ,’ said Ironheart between grunts of effort as he pulled the tacks out of the wood, ‘to replace . . . this damaged section at the top . . . with a new piece of rawhide. See?’ He pointed with a calloused forefinger. ‘That’s the mark of a Scottish short sword. Nearly got me, the whoreson.’
Robert nodded, grey eyes large and impressed. ‘Can I help?’
‘I don’t see why not,’ Ironheart said gruffly. ‘You see that jar over there? Bring it here, will you? I’ve had a piece of rawhide soaking in it overnight, so it should be soft enough to cut and nail by now.’ He watched Robert carefully lift the yellow glazed jar and bring it to him, a look of intense concentration on his small face. A pang went through the old man, so warm and sweet that it made a mockery of the barriers he had erected against the world a quarter-century ago. Thus had Jocelin learned the art of caring for his weapons, a small child against Ironheart’s knee. Those had been the springtime years. Now, in the cold approach to winter, he could smell the spring again and wanted to weep because he had missed the summertime completely and was aware of the last leaves of autumn drifting from the tree.
‘Now what do we do?’ asked Robert, bringing him firmly back to earth.
‘Take the hide out of the jar and squeeze it as hard as you can.’
‘Like this?’ Robert screwed up his face in disgust as the wet rawhide bulged between his fingers. ‘It’s all slimy and it stinks!’
A chuckle rumbled up from the depths of Ironheart’s chest. ‘You can’t nail it on when it’s hard,’ he said and looked at the child’s tendons standing out on the bony wrist. There was nothing on him - he was like a skinned coney - but there was a powerful underlying tenacity. Still chuckling, Ironheart rummaged among his tools and discovered that his shears were missing.
‘Leave that now. You’ve squeezed out most of the water. Go inside to Gytha and ask her for a pair of shears.’
Robert scampered off. Picking up the crumpled piece of rawhide, Ironheart gave it a final wringing with his own powerful, scarred hands. Gytha’s shriek and Robert’s even louder scream brought him abruptly to his feet.
The little boy shot out into the backyard, the shears clutched in his hands, his eyes huge with terror. Gytha raced after him, followed by Ella, stumbling on her skirts. ‘Soldiers, sire!’ she gasped. ‘Soldiers with swords coming this way from Ferrers’ house! They mean mischief, I know they do!’
‘What’s happening?’ asked Linnet in bewilderment. She stood at the foot of the loft stairs, her face flushed with sleep and her lustrous golden-brown braids bared.
Ironheart opened his mouth, but before he could speak the front entrance of the house was darkened by three men clad in the leather armour of regular troops. Two brandished long knives, the other wielded a hand axe.
Linnet screamed, then cut the sound off rapidly against the palm of her hand. Ironheart seized his sword and shield from the bench and faced the intruders.
‘Get out of my house or, by God, I’ll kill you!’ he snarled.
One of the soldiers laughed. ‘You’re a foolish old man,’ he said, advancing with a heavy, deliberate step. ‘And God’s asleep.’
Linnet backed away. Never taking his eyes off the soldiers, Ironheart sidestepped so that Linnet could squeeze past him. ‘Hide in the cellars next door,’ he muttered from the side of his mouth. ‘Gytha has the keys.’
Linnet cast a frightened glance over her shoulder then ran into the backyard. Grabbing Robert’s hand, she pulled him across the yard at a run and out of the back gate into the communal narrow entry running behind the houses. Gytha and Ella panted behind her. She reached for the iron ring on the gate of the house adjoining Ironheart’s and twisted. The door did not move. She thrust her shoulder against it until her flesh bruised and her bones hurt. The door’s hinges had dropped at some time and its base dragged the dusty ground. Gytha and Ella joined her, kicking and pushing, fear lending them strength. Finally, reluctantly, the door scraped open enough for the women and boy to squeeze through into the yard of the vintner’s house.
Wheezing, Gytha unfastened the hoop of household keys from the belt at her thick waist and found the one to the solid rear door of the building.
‘Lord William said we should hide in the cellars.’ Linnet panted, staring round the empty backyard with wide eyes and thinking that at any moment they would be caught. From the direction of Ironheart’s house they heard a loud bellow and the shriek of steel meeting steel. Then someone screaming in pain. Gytha fumbled the key into the lock and twisted and pushed.
The house was dim and had the musty odour of places left unoccupied for a time. The walls were bare, for the merchant had taken all his portable goods with him and only the plainest of furniture remained. An empty cauldron stood over the fire pit, which had been cleaned of rubbish and new kindling laid to hand.
‘The cellar’s this way,’ Gytha gasped and disappeared behind a wooden screen into the storeroom. Bunches of herbs and smoked hams hung from hooks hammered into strong wooden beams that supported the floor of the sleeping loft above. Two buckets stood on the floor beside an old pair of pattens and several cooking pots were laid out on a trestle. There was a candle lantern standing on the trestle, too. Gytha pounced on this and, with shaking hands, kindled a flame from the tinderbox laid beside it. Holding the light aloft, she hastened to a low doorway at the end of the room and told Ella to pull back the heavy iron bolts. Linnet ran to help the maid. Fortunately, the bolts, although stout, had been kept well oiled and were easy to draw back. The oak door swung open and the candle flame danced, making huge shadows on the rough-cut sandstone stairs that led down into a throat of darkness.
Robert hung back. ‘I don’t want to go down there,’ he whimpered and clung tightly to his mother. ‘I don’t like the dark. Monsters might get me!’
‘You cannot stay up here.’ Crouching, Linnet cuddled him. ‘And there are no monsters. Sir William wouldn’t allow them to live in his cellar, would he?’ Over Robert’s shoulder, she gestured the other women to continue down the stairs. Gytha gave her the hoop of keys, holding out to her the cellar one, and started downwards to the dark horseshoe arch where the first room opened out. Linnet smoothed Robert’s hair. ‘Look, I’ll carry you and you can hide your face against my shoulder.’
Robert still resisted, a whine of fear escaping between his teeth, but Linnet scooped him up in her arms. She did not have the time to cozen him further and could only hope that he would not begin to scream.
A scraping sound came from the direction of the yard entrance and almost simultaneously the women heard the thump of weapons upon the street door.
‘Quickly, my lady!’ Gytha hissed, beckoning from the foot of the stairs, her eye-whites gleaming.
Linnet started down the steps, Robert clinging to her like a limpet. She began to close the cellar door with the hand not supporting him but stopped as Ironheart staggered into the storeroom, his mouth twisted in a grimace of effort and pain. She widened the door again. He was too breathless to speak but gestured her down the stairs. Wordless herself from the sight of blood glistening on his shoulder, she gave him the key and hastened down after the other women. As she reached the cave, she heard the front door crash down and the iron key grate in the cellar lock.
The dampness closed around them like a tomb, musty and cold. Gytha brought over the lantern to light Ironheart’s way down the steps. He leaned heavily on the rope supports hammered into one side of the wall, and when he reached the bottom collapsed against a row of casks, his breathing harsh.
‘I haven’t given you away,’ he panted. ‘We killed the first three, me and Jonas . . . and the two who came after . . .’ His eyes squeezed shut and he put his hand to the wetness at his shoulder.
‘Where is Jonas?’ Gytha asked. Her hand trembled as she set down the candle lantern.
Ironheart swallowed. ‘I’m sorry, Gytha, there was nothing I could do. There were two of them at me and I could not reach him. I tried, God knows I did. Then one of the bastards ran into this yard after you and I gave chase. I got him - but he got me. You think you’re safe enough in your own house not to bother with mail.’
‘Let me have a look.’ Kneeling, Linnet reached to examine the wide split in his leather jerkin, tunic and shirt.
‘No time,’ he gasped. ‘They will be looking for loot, and in a vintner’s house that means the cellar.’
Linnet withdrew and looked at him askance. ‘Then why tell us to come here in the first place?’
‘The cave runs the length of all the houses and then some more. There is a passage branching off beneath the entry where there used to be a meat store. We had a dispute with the old basket-weaver across the alleyway - he cut a room for his workshop and broke through into my cellars. As far as I know, the hole has only been boarded over. It should be possible to crawl through. Give me your arm, girl.’
Linnet was almost dragged to the floor by Ironheart’s weight as he levered himself to his feet and leaned briefly against the casks.
‘Here, boy,’ he commanded Robert, who was holding tightly to Linnet’s skirts. ‘Carry my sword for me, be my squire.’ He held out the weapon. The candlelight flashed upon the blade edge and up the tendons of the man’s rigid hand.
Tentatively Robert did as he was bid, his own small hand inadequate on the braided grip.
At the top of the stairs, the door suddenly rattled vigorously on its hinges. ‘Locked,’ said a gruff voice. ‘Use the axe, Greg.’
‘This way,’ Ironheart whispered hoarsely and began weaving a path through the casks. The cellar door shook beneath the blows of an axe and they all heard the sound of splintering wood.
Linnet did not like the way Ironheart was breathing and from the size of the wound, as she had briefly seen it, she was sure that it would need attention very soon if he was not to bleed to death.
They rounded a corner and had to stoop as the roof of the cave suddenly dipped and seemed to reach an end. The lantern light illuminated the chisel marks on the walls where the cave had been cut. To their left the shadows seemed blacker than elsewhere and it was towards these that Ironheart headed. In a moment, the shadows resolved themselves into a narrow, dark connecting passageway. Gazing over her shoulder, Linnet saw only blackness but the hammering sounds went on and there was a cry of triumph as the soldiers split through the door.
‘I want Joscelin,’ Robert whimpered as they crouched along the passage and into the storage cave of the house next door. ‘Will he come and save us, Mama?’ He, too, looked back with the wide eyes of a hunted animal. The weight of the sword was making his wrist droop.
‘If he is able to, I know he will,’ Linnet said. She knew he had gone to the castle. Probably the alarm had not even been raised there yet, and by the time it was it might well be too late. ‘But for now, sweeting, we have to use our own wits.’
‘Mama, why can’t we—?’
‘Hush,’ she admonished quickly, ‘they will hear us!’
They could not see the soldiers’ torchlight but suddenly they could hear their voices in the first cellar and the grate of footsteps on the sandy cave floor.
‘’E don’t have much wine stored down here to say he’s such a busy merchant,’ complained a rough voice. ‘Hold the light closer, Greg, I want to see the mark on this barrel. Hah, Rhenish!’ A glint of greedy pleasure entered the voice and there were various unidentifiable clinking, scraping sounds, followed by the trickle of wine into some sort of vessel. All in the tunnel held their breath. Gytha shielded the light of the lantern beneath her cloak and turned away from the first cellar. Ironheart silently removed his sword from Robert’s hand.
‘You reckon there’s anything upstairs worth a look?’ asked one of the looters between swallows.
‘We’ll investigate in a minute. By Christ’s toes, this is good stuff.’
Footsteps scuffed in the direction of the passageway and Ironheart tightened his hand around the grip of the sword.
‘Hoi, Thomas, look at this. There’s a passage here; bring the torch!’
In the moment while the refugees deliberated between fight and flight, another voice, angry and imperative, filled the first cave.
‘I might have expected you two tosspots to find the wine!’ There came the sound of a blow and a pot smashing on the cave floor. ‘Get upstairs now. The men I sent to de Rocher’s house are all dead and there’s no sign of the old fox or the woman and child. I want them found, is that understood?’
‘Yes, sir. We was only investigating the cave. They could be down here for all we know!’
‘Oh, aye,’ said their captain sarcastically. ‘I presume you were drinking all the barrels dry to make sure they weren’t hiding in them. You must think I was born yesterday and blind. Go on, get out of here and find Simon; he’s coordinating the search parties.’
‘Yes, sir.’
The sound of running footsteps retreated and the captain’s voice, softly cursing, followed them, boots crunching upon the shards of broken pottery.