The Traitor's Daughter (5 page)

Neither of them spoke of what Marion must forget, though
Alais thought that there was little chance of her remembering what had happened
to her, her husband or her son. Nonetheless, she set herself to helping the
woman, who seemed more prepared to accept her assistance than she had the day
before. Although she was desperate to see her mother and counted every second
spent here rather than with her a loss, Alais worked to the best of her
considerable ability. Marion had also suffered because of the French and she
prayed that as she was helping Marion, so someone was helping Lady Eleanor, for
Sir Hugh must have left her with people he trusted. By the time the stable boy
came to tell her that everything was ready in the yard, Marion had been bathed and
her many wounds attended to and helped into a clean shift. Alais left the
servant to administer the potion for forgetfulness, saying another prayer for
its efficacy as she left the room.

Hugh watched Alais walk into the manor house and
marvelled that a woman who had been through what she had been through could still
think to offer help to a servant’s daughter. He allowed himself a moment’s rest
by leaning against the wall of the barn, allowing his eyes to close for a few
moments. He was tired, but could not permit himself the rest he needed. There
was too much to be done and now that his steward was incapable, he would have
to do much of it himself. As he rested, his thoughts turned to Lady Alais. How
calm and composed she seemed this morning, far removed from the screaming
harridan he had met less than twenty-four hours previously. Now she carried
herself with assurance. She, too, looked tired and he guessed that she had had
a restless night. Nonetheless she was clean and tidy and looked like the
nobleman’s daughter that she was. Doubtless she had busied herself with the
affairs of the manor in his absence. The thought crossed his mind that she and
Matthew would make a good team to run his manor and it made him smile. Despite
his first, immediate impression of her as a scared and helpless woman he now
saw that there was much more to her than that. Then, she had been desperate for
help and, now that he had seen what had been done in the town, he could only be
surprised that she had kept her sanity. As the day had gone on he had been more
impressed with her as his thoughts turned more often to her than they should.

It had been her face that had kept him going through the
dreadful day and night since he had last seen her. Her hope in him had inspired
him. He knew it was wrong and he knew it imperilled his mortal soul, but there
was something about this woman that met a need in him. It was as if she was the
beacon of light in the dark world into which he had had been immersed for so
long. He shook his head; his own private darkness seemed nothing in comparison
to the darkness he had witnessed the day before. He had seen things in this
raid that he had never seen as a soldier and hoped never to see again.

Hugh was proud to be a soldier, even a paid soldier. It
was all he had ever wanted and he had worked hard, both on testing his courage
and on building his physical strength. In his time as a page at court he had
listened to discussions and had himself discussed strategies of past battles
and he had learned and grown until he was confident in his abilities, until the
time had come for him to be tested.

While others sought riches and worldly goods, he wanted
only to serve his king in the field of battle. This war with the French seemed
to be what he had been waiting for. He had been a knight with few resources
save physical strength and courage, a second son, whose older brother had grown
into a healthy man. His only concerns were to prove his own and his king’s
honour and to gain as much wealth as he could from tournaments and soldiering.
He had certainly gained wealth from tournaments, but honour had proved more
elusive.

With his brother’s death everything had changed and
being a soldier was no longer the simple path to glory and wealth it had once
seemed to be. Now it was more of a burden and he had regretted not staying with
Edward in France.

Even today, he had not been able to go into battle
solely for the fight. He had first to fulfil his promise to Alais. Later, when
he had understood the nature of the battle he was fighting, he had seen there
would be no glory in it for anyone.

He had fought the Scots for Edward and he knew what a
battle was like, but this had not been a battle. He had quickly discovered that
he was not fighting experienced or trained soldiers and that the French had not
expected to meet resistance of any kind, let alone the skilled resistance that
he had offered. It had not been difficult for him to rally the burgesses and
townspeople once he had demonstrated that the French could be beaten. Once the
initial panic was over, he had sent out men to gather up those who had managed
to escape, but as they began to push the French back towards their boats he had
been horrified by what he had seen. The French had not come to conquer or even
to return to France with the spoils of war, but they had come to kill and to
maim and to destroy and to spread fear. The streets were littered with dead
bodies – men, children, women, animals. Warehouses had been torched and wool
burned and wine casks destroyed, spilling their contents into the river. He
could have forgiven it if he had known that some of the spoils of war had gone
back to France to be consumed there, but it appeared that everything had been
destroyed where it was. The English looters were the only thieves here. Hugh
had left that problem for the burgesses to resolve themselves, for the looters
were their own people.

To Hugh, this had been a cowardly raid, not simply
because it had been carried out in the expectation that there would be little
or no opposition, but because it targeted the weak and defenceless. He had
killed women and children in the past when it had been unavoidable, but he had
never gone out of his way to kill them and he had always done so with a heavy
heart. There was no glory to be had in fighting the defenceless. What did it
prove if he was stronger than a woman or a child?

Once he had fulfilled his promise to Alais and found her
mother, he had set about repelling the French. Once that had been accomplished,
well into the night, he had taken care of his other obligation to Matthew and
his daughter. He had found Marion in her own home.  The broken and bloody body
of her husband Piers lay over that of their firstborn. A staff lay beside him
where it had fallen from his hands. Marion lay against the wall, her skirts
torn and ripped. She had been raped, many times by the look of it. She was
alive and he guessed that Piers’ murderers had been interrupted before they
could kill her, but she had lost all sense and stared vacantly across the room
at her dead husband. Hugh had covered the bodies with Piers’ own cloak. Then he
had put Marion onto the bed to wait until it would be light enough to make his
way back to Hill. He could not tell whether she had slept or not, but he had
stayed awake with his sword in his hand in case the looters should come during
the darkness. And all the while he had kept the face of Lady Alais at the front
of his thoughts. It was her smiling face that he saw, the brief smile he had
seen when he held her hand in farewell.

And now he had come back with nothing but bad news for
her and she had taken it calmly and then turned to serve others. This was just
such a woman that a man should have to come home to after a battle. He thought
of his own wife, pale and sickly, always putting her own needs before anyone
else’s. It was the thought of returning to her from the wars against the Scots
that had led him to make his way home via the shrine at Walsingham. The longer
and more difficult journey had given him time to discover in his memory some of
his wife’s better points and to remember his obligations to her.

He knew that he would always return by the quickest way
possible to a woman like Alais. Her first words had not been for herself or her
mother, but for him and her concern made him feel a better man than he knew
himself to be.

Alais entered the courtyard with the stable boy. In the
time she had spent with Marion, Edmund had roused the priest. The carter had
also hitched up the cart and a number of the wounded townspeople were lying in
it. Alais’ expression darkened; she knew that the cart would also serve to
bring her mother’s body back here for burial.

Women and children from the town were milling around the
courtyard together with some of the servants that she had seen the day before.
The men were heavily armed; they had taken Hugh’s stories about looters to
heart.

Hugh was standing holding his own horse and a smaller
one, for her. She smiled when she saw him and he responded in kind.

“What will happen to Marion?” she asked Hugh as he
helped her to mount her horse.

Hugh seemed astonished that she should care enough to
ask. “She will stay here and when the baby is born, if she still is not
recovered, she can still stay here and we will look after her. I will make sure
that he is acknowledged as the heir and that there is something for him to
inherit.”

Alais wondered if that meant that Hugh had money of his
own, or whether he expected that by that time his father would have died and
she would permit him to use some of his inheritance to help the child. She knew
that she would, when the time came.

“Although,” said Hugh looking out over the still smoking
town, “it will be a long time before there is anything worth inheriting down
there.”

She followed his gaze. The walls of the town looked
strong and it was impossible from this distance to see the extent of the
destruction. Then she realised that she could not see any church towers above
the walls in the southern part of the town.

“They burned the churches,” she whispered.

“Burned the churches, burned the people inside them,
killed the priests, killed the animals in the market, burned the wool on the
wharves, burned the houses. It seems it was not an invasion after all. They
came to destroy, not to conquer.” Hugh’s voice was bitter. Alais saw the
despair and grief on his face and also the confusion. “What was the point?” he
asked, looking at a point beyond her. “Where is the glory in killing
defenceless children, in raping pregnant women? Why risk God’s judgement by
killing people at Mass?”

Alais had no answer for him; she was too caught up in
her own grief and questions to be able to console him.

Hugh helped her onto the horse and the small group set
off.

As they came to the town Hugh explained how he had
managed to find Lady Eleanor, still in St Michael’s church, badly wounded, but
ignored in the haste of the French to kill and destroy as much as they could
before they were turned back.

Alais felt tears come to her eyes as he described how he
had taken her mother to friends in Cuckoo Lane who had themselves suffered
losses in the raid. “They are good people,” he said, “and Dame Margaret is
skilled with herbs. She made sure that Lady Eleanor was comfortable.”

“Thank you,” murmured Alais, as she set her face and her
heart to face the death of her mother.

The scene that met Alais on their entry into the town
was very different from the one that had presented itself on her arrival three
days ago. The town was unnaturally quiet, as if people were afraid to speak
above a whisper. The few people they saw were clearing up after the fires and
all were armed.

The smell was incredible. The acrid smoke was infused
with the smell of burnt flesh and scorched wool. She understood why Hugh had
described it as a little bit of hell. It reminded her of one of the walls in
the church at Leigh. The painting showed the day of judgement with the
unrighteous going down to the fires of hell. The condemned had the same fearful
expression as the people she was seeing in the streets now. The fires of hell
could not burn more fiercely than the fires that had burned here. And hell must
smell like this. The air was heavy with the smoke from the many quenched fires.
Alais began to cough and Hugh silently handed her his leather bottle. She took
a long swallow. As she returned it to him, she found herself caught by his
expressive eyes.

“My lord?” she enquired, not understanding the question
he seemed to be asking.

“I would have spared you this, Lady Alais, if I could.”

“I know, Sir Hugh. I am grateful for everything you have
done and for the chance to see my mother one last time.”

He nodded, as if satisfied, but still he held her gaze for
a while and she was spared the worst sights, because she was unable to tear her
eyes away from his.

When she was able to take in her surroundings again, she
saw the remains of houses that had been destroyed by fire and became aware of
the awful keening made by those with unbearable grief. She bit her lip,
suddenly aware that she would soon be joining them. After so many of her
siblings had died, she was only too familiar with grief, but she had always
managed to maintain some dignity in her grief. She had seen it as her duty to
support her mother, so that she could grieve. Now that her own turn had come,
Alais thought she would not know what to do. She had cried for her older
brothers dead in Edward’s first, wasted campaign in Scotland and she had cried
for her father, but for her five siblings who had died since then, she had been
silent. How could she grieve for her mother in a strange place, among
strangers? They would not understand what her mother meant to her. They would
not know the kind of woman she had been, or the kind of wife and mother. She
had been the example that Alais had followed all her life – the kind of woman
she wanted to be herself.

When they arrived at the house at Cuckoo Lane, Hugh led
Alais and Father Roland to the back of the house. The townspeople who had taken
shelter at Hill and walked back with them had returned to their own homes, or
what remained of them, as they passed through the town. The carter had turned
off to God’s House Hospital to leave the injured in the care of the lay
brothers and sisters there. He had instructions to join them in Cuckoo Lane as
soon as he had completed his task.