Wild Wood (40 page)

Mack draws Jesse close, puts an arm around her shoulder. She doesn’t feel it. She feels nothing. As they walk through the car park, a clamor grows in Jesse’s head.
Never hold, never touch, never hear her voice, never, never.

Something’s howling, it’s trapped in her chest, and her whole body drums with holding it in.

She cannot look up, she cannot speak as pain distills from tears she will not cry.

Until she hears the child.

She stops. “Listen.”

“To what?”

“A baby.” The screams grow louder. “She’s terrified.” Distraught, Jessie hurries along the lines of parked cars, peering through windows.

“We’ll find it.” The car park is small—Mack stops, puzzled. “Which direction?” He turns a circle.

“Here. She’s in here.” Jesse’s found a Mercedes, expensive, new-looking. Tears cascading down her face, Jesse hammers the button on the lid of the trunk.

A large, well-dressed man is staring at them, keys in his hand. “Can I help?”

Jesse runs to the stranger. “Oh, thank God, thank God! There’s a baby in there.” Jesse snatches the keys. She fumbles as she tries to push them in the lock.

“Hey!” If the stranger was astonished, now he’s angry.

“Jesse, give the man his keys. Please.” Mack tries to take them.

She swats his hands away. “Let me, I just . . .” The key turns, the trunk lid pops open.

Jesse’s hand drops to her side. The cavity is empty.

Mack takes the keys from her and gently closes the lid. “There you are.” He gives the bunch to the nonplussed owner. “Sorry.” Mack takes Jesse’s hand to lead her away.

“But I
heard
her.” Jesse strains to look back as the Mercedes starts up. She tries to shake herself free. “He’s taking her away!”

Jesse’s tall, almost as tall as Mack, but he’s stronger, and for a moment they’re almost wrestling.

The car speeds up as it leaves.

“She’s gone.” Jesse’s voice is piteous. “She’s lost. No one will come when she cries.”

Mack pulls Jesse close. “It’s okay.” He smoothes the hair from her face. “No one’s lost.”

“I am.”

“No, Jess, you’ve been found.” He puts an arm around her waist as he unlocks the MG. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”

36

I
T HAUNTED
me. To have held Godefroi, to have felt the blow as he died but not to have heard his voice, or offered more comfort than I did—these things scarred my heart.

My brother was selfish and certain of his superiority in this world. Some would see it as God’s vengeance that he died at the hands of those he so despised. But it came to this. Flore had married Godefroi, and he had loved her with all his soul. And if that love had brought him death, perhaps, in the end, he did not care because she was lost to him.

But I cared. I, who had never allowed myself the comfort that comes from such love. Each day I breathed, Death walked at my left hand; to have a home and children would have tied me to the life I knew I must one day lose, and I had chosen this path—so far as a younger son has choice of any kind.

But I was a Dieudonné. Alois said my brother had been judged. For what
he
had done to Godefroi, I would judge him. He would know it before we both died. . . .

Dawn woke me as it slipped into my prison. Since I had lived to see this day, it seemed God must wish it so. Yet, I had no time to brood on fate as the door was flung open, and the hut filled with men. Hands raised me, arms hauled me, and I was pulled into the light, an animal, fighting, taken from its burrow.

“Here.” Alois. I could hear his voice, but a naked foot pinned my head to the earth and I could see nothing.

I yelled, “Bury us together or I will haunt you.” That I meant.

“You try to bargain with me?” Alois stood near.

“Find out.”

A man knelt beside my feet and I felt the knife at its work. It sawed through the rope binding my ankles.

“I know these tricks, Alois.” It was true. The raiders were pitiless—as we were. He would want me to run: practice for his bowmen.

“Get up.”

I did not move.

“Get up, Bayard.”

I saw his hand in front of my face. He wished me to grasp it.

Perhaps I might not immediately die.

I shuffled to my knees and used his weight as my brace when I stood. Soon, there would be strength. I would need it. I was ringed by men with eyes sharp as blades.

“Yes, look well, Bayard de Dieudonné. These are the people you abandoned. You did not think them worth food or shelter. I do. That is why they have come to me.”

Behind the men, women and children were clustered, and in their front rank stood Rosa. I looked away quickly. For the sake of our past, I would not show I knew her. But there were other faces. Ambrose the carpenter was there, and Welyn, the smith from the village whom Godefroi had banished. And beside them was Swinson. An eye was closed over with scars and he had crutches beneath both arms, but he had lived, and like Odin’s, the stare from that single eye was implacable.

I did not see Margaretta, or the children.

Alois yelled, “Bring it.”

Backed by the sun, a boy walked a horse from among the trees beyond. The stallion whickered when he saw me and danced, though the lad tried to hold him.

But when Helios flung up his head, he was thrown like a doll through the air.

Helios scattered the crowd as he came, magnificent as his namesake. Only a fool challenges a warhorse in such a mood.

Alois was not any kind of fool—he too jumped away.

How clever that horse was. He knew to separate me from those who threatened my life and he did that, forcing his body between me and the fighters.

I know what he expected: into the saddle and gone. But that was not possible, though I snatched the trailing reins and gentled him to a stand.

Avoiding the animal’s hooves, I yelled out, “Give me Godefroi.”

“Yes.”

I stared at Alois. I had lived to be astonished. “You will let us go?”

“What is my name?”

I did not understand.

The man barked, “Tell me!”

The shout unsettled the stallion and he brayed a challenge. Turning the horse in a tight circle, I said, “Your name is Alois.”

“More than that.”

“You are Edmund Swinson’s son.”

Alois thrust his face against mine. “Swinson. Named for a keeper of pigs. That is what your family made us. But that is not our name.” He stepped back, sweeping his arm wide. “You took this land from my family, but now the wheel is turning, Norman. Soon, I will sit in your fine keep, true lord of Hundredfield, and you will find no refuge in the north. The hand of every man and, yes, every woman will be turned against you.” He spoke to the
crowd. “And I say, let them see. Let them all see what you and your brothers have become.” His followers, so many more than I had seen last night, stamped and roared.

Them.
Bootless, weaponless, he would send me back with my brother’s body. A crude demonstration of power.

“I was born at Hundredfield, Alois, as were my brothers. My father, and my father’s father before us. We are not Normans.” The tumult died as the crowd listened.

“What are you, then? None of our kind. Your day is done.” Alois waved a hand, and with no more respect than for a sack of turnips, Godefroi’s headless body was dragged to where I stood. It was naked. A bloody sack was flung at my feet. I did not look inside.

Stay and fight?

To challenge this man meant I would instantly die and two of the three Dieudonné brothers would be raven food. Maugris could not hold Hundredfield alone.

I bent to pick my brother up as our former serfs watched; no hand was offered as I struggled. It was hard. I made myself see the corpse as a slaughtered buck and not a man, not Godefroi.

Helios was trained to blood and did not flinch as I slung the body over the saddlebow. It was stiff as wood, but the seat was built for a man in full armor; I could sit behind Godefroi if I held him hard against my chest.

“Rope.” Alois was instantly obeyed and a coil was passed under the stallion’s belly to bind my brother’s hands to his feet. My captor beckoned the boy who had tried to lead Helios. Alois pointed. “Cover his eyes.”

One last sacrifice of pride. A rag was tied so that I could not see and rough hands pushed me up to the stallion’s back. The sack with Godefroi’s head was looped to my belt. It would bounce against my thigh.

A shout from Alois: “Wait!”

The stallion snorted. He was offended by the tone.

“What is the name of the girl you seek?”

“Margaretta.”

The crowd muttered.

Alois raised his voice. “The children are your brother’s get on my sister’s body. It is good they are not here.”

“A fine thing for a man to kill his own nephew.”
But Maugris would have killed our niece.
“But the girl is the daughter of my brother’s wife. Your sister cares for her.”

“His wife?” Alois laughed, others did also. “This mess of carrion thought he had a wife? We know better. She was never wife to him.” Alois held up his hand. The laughter stopped. “My father suffered and should have died, but my sister remained when he was thrown out from Hundredfield’s gates. She has chosen your kind, Norman. Your family. She will die as you will. Tell her this.”

“And yet God is compassionate. You were a monk, Alois. He forgives, why not you? None of this is Margaretta’s fault.”

“Not my God. He takes an eye for an eye; he does not forgive. You have whistled your fate like a dog, Norman, and it has come to rip you apart.”

I heard Alois slap Helios on the rump, and the horse leapt forward. I fought to hold my seat and my brother’s corpse. I would not think of what bounced at my knee.

The ride was bitter and bootless; my feet ceased to feel as the day grew colder. Helios stopped at last, and the rag was pulled from my eyes. In the fading day I saw we had come to a clearing in the trees—not one I knew. “I thank you.”

The boy, sawing at the ropes binding my hands, spat in my face, and, booting his horse, cantered away into the dim, cold quiet of the forest.

I was alone with my brother’s corpse. Death had not shocked me for years, yet this husk was a pitiable thing.

I thought of Godefroi’s nameless daughter. She would never
know her father. If we lived, and she lived, Maugris and I must tell her what kind of man he had been. What would we say? In the end, the tears of a woman never disgrace the dead. It is a different matter for a man.

Like a slap, a cold gust stung my face. This was the second day since the fight at the crossroads. Did Maugris know of the attack now, or had Rauf been surprised as I had been and murdered?

Helios whickered and I patted his neck. A stream bolted down a hillside close by. Follow the water and I might find the river that ran past Hundredfield, but we must both drink first, the horse particularly, though he had carried the living and the dead all day without complaint.

It was hard to dismount and not treat Godefroi’s corpse with disrespect, though Helios stood quiet as I clambered down. I led him forward and found a place where the stream had cut a basin in a sheet of rock. I bent, scooping water into my mouth, as the horse waded farther into the flow, though the water was no warmer than ice.