Wild Wood (51 page)

Jesse puts a foot on the stairs—and takes it off.

Alicia’s head appears around the door. Her artificial manner wobbles at the sight of Jesse’s face, but she pushes the door wider. “The chapel’s in the base of the tower.” A breeze scuttles past as if it knows where to go.

When she finally enters, Jesse’s shadow is thrown across steps that twist up to an invisible roof.
You knew this place, didn’t you? You heard the wind climbing the stairs.

“So, we’re going down, not up.” Alicia flicks a flashlight into life. The stones of the staircase are massive pieces of granite, impressively cupped. “Just be careful, though. It’s like the back stairs in the house, but trickier. Easy to slip over.”

“I’m fine.”

Together, they walk down into the dark.

“It’s freezing in here.” Jesse pulls her jacket across her chest.

“That’s the spring. It’s under the foundations. Got a mind of its own, that thing.”

“You said that.” But Jesse’s not really listening.

“Did I?”

Light spills down the stairs into an anteroom and ahead to a pair of ancient doors, much scarred. “The chapel’s through there, it’s the oldest existing part of Hundredfield. Norman.”

“You said that too.” Jesse’s quite spiky.

“Right. Of course.” Alicia rattles the head of the key inside the lock. “Not having much luck today.”

“Shall I try?”

Alicia steps back. “It’s very stiff.”

Jesse hesitates. She touches the key, warm from Alicia’s fingers, and tries to turn it. Nothing.

Disappointment hits. She’d been sure, so sure, she could open this door.

“I’ll get some oil.”

Jesse tries again. “Wait!” As the key moves, the wards engage. With a click the lock gives.

Alicia eyes Jesse curiously. “Well done.” Pushing the doors open, she sweeps the beam of the flashlight over the walls. Perhaps they were plastered once, but now the raw stone weeps, and moss and liverwort cluster in cracks where mortar’s fallen out.

The light picks out piled-up lumber—old doors and windows, broken furniture, dark paintings in battered frames. And swings back to Jesse.

“Can I ask you something?”

Jesse holds her hand up to block the beam. “Sure.”

“Do you feel anything?”

Jesse hesitates before she shakes her head.

“I suppose it’s disappointing. The illustrations made the chapel look so opulent.” Alicia flips the light across the floor as she wanders farther away. “This is where the altar stood. You can tell from the tiles.” She holds the flashlight above, silvering her hair. “They were made in Winchester and brought all the way to Berwick by sea, then carried overland by pack mule to Hundredfield.
Cost one of my ancestors a bomb.” Dark tiles inlaid with a lighter color glint as the light sweeps on.

“What’re they?”

Alicia’s jiggles the beam over a row of large, flat stones, laid directly into the floor. “Graves. There’s speculation about who’s buried here, but so many records were lost in the Border Wars. And the fire.” She points the flashlight. “This one was important, though.” She kneels, brushing dust from the stone to clear the inscription. “Do you see?
Domina
. The Latin word for ‘lady.’ And she was buried right in front the altar too—a place of honor.”

“And this one?” Jesse stares at another of the stones; it’s separated from the lady’s grave by a slab with no markings at all.

“A total mystery. Very odd, though, that it’s anonymous.”

Jesse bends down over the third slab in the row. “Is that a cross?” The shape is faint in the eroded surface.

“No. It’s a sword. It’s the guard above the grip that makes it look like a cross. The grave of a fighting man, a knight most probably.”

“Nothing to say who it might be?”

Alicia shakes her head. “It was thought to be Fulk, but the shape of the sword is too late to be Norman—so this grave’s presumed to be a couple of hundred years later. Fourteenth century sometime. But the old reprobate must be buried here somewhere.”

That name.
“Fulk?”

“They called him the devil, or just the Frenchman. Time puts a gloss on murderers and thieves. The Normans were both.”

Jesse sees something, a flash behind the eyes. “What happened to him?”
The river in raging spate, and a body—a man with terrible wounds—rolling over and over as the flood carries him away, open-eyed.

“He was murdered at the end of a long, vicious, and profitable life; his son held Hundredfield, but he married a Saxon noblewoman, maybe that helped with the locals.” Alicia flashes the beam up to the groined ceiling. “What you drew—the rood—hung
right here; if you look, you can see the marks where the screen on which it hung stood. And somewhere nearby”—Alicia trails her hand along the wall—“was the alcove that hid Our Lady of the River. My great-grandfather said it was close to the altar.”

“I don’t remember that.”

Alicia looks puzzled. Light wanders across a pile of timber paneling stacked up against the wall. “Didn’t I read that? Tell you what, why don’t I go get the book?” Alicia hurries toward the doors.

“Hey! Leave the light.”

Alicia puts the flashlight on a step. “Sorry. Back soon.”

Jesse listens as the footsteps scatter away. She’s used to the dark now, and faint daylight picks out the barrel of the flashlight, fading the living beam from silver to gray.

Unwillingly, she turns to stare at the wall near the altar.

“Hello. I came.”

The whisper multiplies. The vaulted space has an echo.

Jesse has not been straight with Alicia; she felt, she feels, too much.

Slowly, she walks to the pile of paneling. And moves the first piece aside.

And starts to hum.

“Hi.”

Alicia spins around. “Rory!” She’s in Jesse’s bedroom.

He steps back a pace. “Sorry.”

“How did you find me?”

“I was looking for Jesse.” He takes in the book in her hands. “Bit of light reading?”

Alicia manages a smile. “Not exactly.”

“So, have you seen her?”

“Why?” Alicia tries to throw the word away. Fails.

“I’m her doctor. Why else?” He’s uncomfortable too. This is not an easy conversation.

Alicia opens a drawer in a bedside table, takes out another flashlight. “She told me about the woman on the tape, by the way. The stuff about ‘the mother.’ ” Alicia turns to face him, a stubborn set to her jaw. “Jesse said you were there. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“So? You heard what, exactly?”

“I’ve been asking myself that question since yesterday.”

“And?”

A pause that neither breaks.

Alicia closes the drawer and strides to the door. “Jesse’s at the keep. And before you ask, she convinced me to take her there. I’d better get back.” They reach for the door handle at the same time, his hand over hers.

Alicia stumbles. If she could say even the smallest thing that’s in her heart, she would. But she can’t. She hesitates. “Why didn’t you tell me about the tape?”

Rory can see how troubled she is. “Look, the last few weeks have severely rearranged my head.”

“You’re alone in that, of course.” That flick of irony has an edge.

“No, I’m not, Alicia—you’re right there too. So is Jesse.” Rory looks through the open window. “The keep was the first thing she drew. Did I tell you that?”

Alicia mutters, “Oh, this is just ridiculous.”

“You asked me what I thought. I still don’t know. But somehow, we’ve booked these tickets. It’s a waste if we don’t go for the ride. To the end.”

Alicia snaps, “What does that mean?”

“Ask yourself why Jesse’s turned up just as you’re trying to unload Hundredfield.”

Alicia doesn’t respond as she stamps past. Rory watches her go, but then, in a few strides, catches up.

“I could carry that.” He means the book.

“I can manage.”

They walk down the staircase and across the hall, past the suit of armor.

Rory tries to lift the ponderous silence. “Did you ever say who wore that?”

“No, I didn’t. Just another nameless knight.”

“Hope he was useful with that ax.”

Alicia’s ahead of him out the front door. “Never likely to know, are we?”

50

M
AUGRIS YELLED,
“Two ladders!” On the battlements the melee was fed by men climbing the walls, and the inner ward seethed with fighters from both sides.

An ax lay at my feet. I picked it up. In my other hand was Maugris’s sword. “The horses?”

“Go!”

Death stepped to one side as I ran, but embers fell like red stars in the thatch of the stables, and smoke filled the barns as I bolted inside.

Helios was at the end of a line of panicked horses, all tied along a central pole.

“Stand!”

The stallion heard my voice. Quivering, he stood long enough for me to haul myself to his back. The ax did the rest. Barging along the line, I lopped the ropes and set the horses free. Snorting, plunging, they hurtled for the open doors and, crazed by fire and smoke and noise, broke like a storm on the inner ward.

I remember men’s faces as they were run down. Some heard
us—and lived; some did not—and died under those hooves, for what I had set free would not be stopped.

On the battlements, Rauf and the archers still held. They cheered as they saw the horses run, and with the distraction, Maugris heaved a ladder back from the walls, men screaming as it fell.

But one ladder remained, and a man’s head topped the battlements. It was him. Alois. His face was daubed with woad.

“Brother!”

Maugris turned. Too slow.

Alois jumped. Too fast. And his sword took my brother between shoulder and neck.

Rauf roared and closed the distance between them as I jumped from the stallion’s back.

With ax and sword, I cleared a path to the stairs and up, and on the battlements I found them.

Maugris was alive, but twisting like a worm cut in two; Rauf and Alois swayed beside him, swords locked at the guard.

“Alois!” I screamed his name.

But it was Rauf who looked back. That was his death. Alois stabbed him in the neck.

I leapt as Rauf fell. Taller, stronger, I drove the monk back, back, and
down
to his knees; he should have died. But he was fast. Rolled away, and up.

“Bayard!”

Maugris, on one arm, slashed at Alois as the man’s dagger nicked my throat. He caught him in the belly and the monk dropped, doubled over

I knelt beside my brother in a shining scarlet pool.

He lifted a hand to my face. He could not speak. Then the hand fell back.

“Maugris? Maugris!”

Fixed, without life, his eyes stared into eternity.

I closed them. And then rose up and kicked the ladder from the walls.

And turned with a roar. If Alois lived, I was his doom. But he had disappeared. And Rauf lay dead.

All those I loved, destroyed in that one moment.
Except Margaretta.

“Look!” Tamas yelled, and pointed.

The fire in the keep, a tree burning from its crown, was dying. I ran.

The stairs of the tower was a throat and, roofless, breathed smoke into the sky. But the walls were stone, the steps, stone, and the stairs had no fuel to burn. Now, for lack of wood, the fire was dying, though the massive door of the keep still smoldered. I broke a way through with my ax, and the chapel itself was quiet. And dark. And I could breathe.