The Great Siege

6

The blood-red sun went down below the horizon of the western hills and the afternoon darkened into twilight.

‘I’m scared,’ whispered Agnes.

They were walking down a long lane in a bleak country with hills to east and west. The evening star began to rise. They would have to find shelter soon.

Then they crested a rise and there was a small wood ahead. As they came near, Lettice’s sharp eyes glimpsed an orange glow through the trees.

‘Firelight!’ she cried, and started to trot towards it.

‘No,’ Hodge whispered urgently, and actually dared to seize her grubby dress. ‘Hold back, maid. You know not what kind of folk they may be.’

‘And singing!’ added Agnes.

They waited, hushed. And an old woman’s voice, strange and low, sang in the darkening wood.

Nicholas and Hodge looked at each other uncertainly. The air was growing colder by the minute, they must find shelter, and where else was there? Yet there was something here that made their skins prickle with dread.

‘Let go of me!’ Lettice said, suddenly imperious. And she twisted and broke free of Hodge’s grasp, and she and Agnes ran on into the wood before the boys could stop them.

The girls pulled up sharp in a clearing. Hodge and Nicholas came rushing up behind them.

There was a warm glow of fire, and something sizzling over it on a spit. There was a cauldron beside. And in the darkness beyond sat three, no, four people, backs against the trees, faces deep shadowed in the firelight. An old woman who smiled at them, black-toothed and nodding. Three men. And further off, a beaten-down donkey standing asleep, and a low donkey-barrow with frayed rope traces.

‘Why,’ said one of the men, looking up from the wooden bowl he was slurping from. ‘Here’s a pretty one. Come nearer, maid.’

He smiled, and the men looked at each other. Then they noticed Hodge and Nicholas standing behind them.

‘What a tribe, is that all of ye?’

Hodge was just about to say that the rest were back on the road, a dozen or more, but Lettice blurted out, ‘Five’s all we are, and fearful hungry, mister!’

‘Then come closer,’ he said softly. ‘And tell us your story.’

Agnes shook her head. ‘We have none. Our father died!’

The second man clucked. ‘You fell on hard times but lately though, I see from your boots and garb. Do any know you be here?’

Hodge again tried to speak first but Agnes’s high pitched voice wailed above him, ‘Nobody! Not a soul in the world knows of us now!’

Hodge shoved Nicholas in the ribs and they both stepped nearer the fire, close by the girls.

‘Stand tall,’ he whispered.

The men slurped more broth. ‘Ye’ll sleep here?’ said the first man, wiping his lips.

Nicholas said they would. What choice did they have now? Even the air on the back of his neck and legs was cold.

‘But we two may lie awake a good deal,’ he said pointedly.

There were only shreds left on the spit, but the vagabonds hung the cauldron over the fire again and threw on more sticks to reheat the last of the stew.

There was little enough meat, but big white bones floated in the thin broth. Hodge stared at the stew and wouldn’t eat. He asked for bread but they had none.

‘You must eat, lad,’ said the old woman, but Hodge only stared at her woodenly and said nothing.

‘Then ye’ll sleep well enough, right down by the fire! Eh?’

Again the men looked at each other.

Nicholas felt uncomfortable. Something was wrong here. Yet if they went out onto the road now, it would be bitter cold, the hoarfrost settling, the poor creatures of the field limping through the stiff grass. Owls hunting. There were still wolves in the Welsh forests, they said. This was a good shelter.

He would stay awake, that was all.

The vagabonds gave them blankets that smelt foul. Or maybe it was just the air. The odour of poorly butchered meat. But perhaps he was wrong to be so mistrustful and suspicious. All they had done so far had been kindly and hospitable.

He drowsed then stirred. ‘Hodge,’ he whispered. ‘Stay awake.’

Hodge nodded. ‘My belly’s too empty to do otherwise. Besides, I’d no more sleep here than at the gates of hell.’

In the small hours, Nicholas pushed his blanket off to go and empty his bladder. He had been fast asleep.

Hodge was snoring gently. The girls all lay in a row, huddled up to each other. The vagabonds lay the other side of the embers. He had been wrong to be so suspicious.

He went some way away behind a tree, and there was something there, half under the leaves. The moon passed behind a cloud. There was a foul smell here, even in this cold air. He stared down, his throat tight, and then up. Thin cold cloud raced past and the moon sailed out. Something hung from a branch above him, twisting with the wind.

With stomach knotted, ears ringing with terror, he turned and ran back.

In the clearing, two of the men were already on their feet, one looking over to where the girls lay.

‘Hodge!’ he yelled.

The sleeping servant was awake and on his sturdy legs in a second, squat dagger in his hand.

The men stood stock still.

One smiled his blacktoothed smile, lit by the eerie moonlight.

The girls were slowly awakening.

In the darkness behind, Nicholas heard the old woman cackling. Then she shucked her rotten teeth and crowed, ‘Well, a lively night for all!’

‘What’s with the dagger out, lad?’ said one of the men.

Hodge held it out steadily before him.

‘There’s something in the woods,’ said Nicholas, trying not to let his voice shake. ‘Hanging from a tree.’

The man turned on him. ‘There’s lots in the woods, lad. Badgers and hedgepigs and-’

‘I mean a body, half butchered.’

The man’s face darkened visibly, even in the dark of night. ‘So if we steal a sheep, well, what is that to thee? Mortal men must keep flesh and spirit together. You woudn’t turn us in for sheep thieves and see us hanged at Shrewsbury assizes, would ye now?’

Nicholas couldn’t speak. All he knew was that was no sheep back there.

‘We’re going now,’ said Hodge, stepping back very carefully.

The girls were standing, rubbing the sleep from their eyes.

‘To us, mistress,’ said Hodge quietly.

In a flash, one of the men had seized Agnes and there was a gleaming blade at her throat.

‘One step backwards more and the little one here will be drained of her blood like a hung rabbit, d’ye hear me? I’ll not have you high-born whelps going out on the road and squealing to all and sundry of us. You’re going nowhere, not now. You hear me?’

They froze.

Clouds covered the moon once more and in the blackness, a figure moved in silence. It was Susan. She swooped down and seized a brand off the dying fire, whirling it through the air to make it burn again. Then there was a hiss, a man’s cry, a shower of sparks. A girl’s sob, and scuffling in the leaves.

The moon was still dark.

‘Run! Back to the road!’

In blind terror, the children stumbled away between the trees, scuffing up cold leaves rimed with frost, arms and faces scratched with holly and blackthorn. Girls weeping, men roaring close behind them, as in a nightmare. Nicholas shook his head furiously as he ran, trying to clear away the visions of Lettice or Agnes, seized in the darkness and hung from the branches of trees, their throats open wounds …

Somehow, they never knew how, the five children stumbled clear onto the road and ran to each other. They crossed themselves, shaking and sobbing, Susan muttering over and over again, ‘Thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, thank you Blessed Mother Mary …’

‘Move,’ said Nicholas. ‘Keep moving, all night.’

They moved down the road as fast as they could in the dark, judging the closeness of the hedge from the sound of their footfalls.

There was sudden movement in the hedge to their left. Lettice clutched Nicholas in terror. A snuffle, an odour. Only a stoat or a fox, hurrying away from them.

After a time the moon reappeared. Unable to help themselves, they looked back as they walked.

On the road behind them, staring after them, stood a single figure. Something glinted, hanging from his right hand. A long-handled axe. He did not run after them, this watchman of the night, silent and motionless. They felt the power of a demonic hatred flow towards them. But it was as if they were not worth pursuing. They were damned anyway.

They walked all night. None would have slept.

‘We will sleep in the day,’ said Nicholas as they marched, exhausted.

But even then, they knew, the nightmares would follow them.

He could have spewed at the thought of what he might have eaten from that cauldron last night. But already he felt something inside him toughening in the face of hardship, and prayed an odd, halting prayer that his heart would not toughen beyond all pity too.

That day they found shelter in a tumbledown barn amongst some winter hay. The girls were so tired they slept deeply, hungry as they were.

‘We cannot go on,’ Nicholas muttered, almost to himself. ‘We are not going to make it. We are already dying.’

Hodge said nothing.

‘We must get food. Come nightfall, I’m turning thief as well as vagabond.’

Hodge nodded. After a while he said quietly, ‘Some have an airy-fairy fancy of life on the road. But in truth, it’s filled with the poor and desperate and savage. It’s no place for us.’

‘There is no place for us.’

Hodge looked hard at Nicholas.

‘You mean … Shrewsbury. You mean the church, or the poorhouse.’

Hodge took in a deep breath.

‘There is a parson there, and a schoolmaster, and town parishes are rich. In the parish of St Thomas’s, I heard of a girl that left her baby there on the doorstep. She was dying herself. I heard the parson and his wife were well known for taking the bairn in and caring for it as if it were their own. If not that, he’d be Christian and find them shelter at the very least. Serving maids in grand houses, perhaps …’

Nicholas tried to think clearly, in the pit of misery. Care for your sisters. His father’s dying wish. Be just, be faithful. To the very end.

When he spoke his voice was thick with grief, tears welling in his eyes.

‘We go back to Shrewsbury. The girls will find shelter there. But not I.’

He shook his head savagely.

‘Not I. I go on.’

Grief weighed on him all that day as he tried to sleep. Too tired to sleep, almost, and sorrow searing his heart. He saw his father’s body left lying in the village street. No decent church burial for him, but a traitor’s hurried interment. The world was in ruins.

But as well as sorrow, anger burned in his belly like a knot of bright hard flame, and hatred as pure as fire. Anger, hatred — and an undying thirst for vengeance.

That night he stole bread and a ham from a poor farmhouse with a lazy guard dog in its yard. He felt wretched. How many children here would now go hungrier through the winter for it? Yet the poor stole mostly from the poor. The rich were too well protected.

They walked back north for two days until they came in sight of the town.

People hissed and clacked as soon as they saw them. Beggars, thieves, Egyptians. Let the constable thrash them out of town again, they’d only cheer him on.

The children huddled in St Alkmund’s Place in thin rain. Stout citizens scowled at them as they passed by, muttering curses on them. Such as they belonged only in the open countryside, on the rain-lashed hills or in ghoul-haunted woodlands. Ditches for beds, dead leaves for coverlets.

‘Look, master,’ said Hodge, nudging him hard. ‘There.’

Round the corner and into the marketplace came filing a column of the poorhouse children, going up to St Mary’s church for morning prayer. They wore off-white linen gowns, much-washed and patched and frayed at the hem, yet clean enough. All wore bonnets, and all had boots, however crudely made. All were thin, but none were starved. He saw no sores, though several heads shaven for lice could be glimpsed beneath the bonnets. As they walked in pairs, hand in hand, with glowing red cheeks, they laughed and chattered like children anywhere, for all their poverty. And against the rain, they wore cloaks, though all of different colours, black, grey, brown and dun. On closer view they were hardly cloaks, mere large cuts of woollen worsted, yet worn round the shoulders and hooped over the head, quite enough to keep off all but the worst rain. Doubtless used again as blankets on cold nights. On the left shoulder of each cloak was sewn a small white lion, emblem of St Mark’s Poorhouse.

‘Wish I had a woollen cloak, at least,’ said Hodge. ‘They’re better garbed than we are.’

Nicholas understood his point.

Susan hadn’t spoken for two days, not a word, and now she pressed herself against the wall, head bowed, gazing into the running gutter as intently as a treasure seeker.

‘Is she gone mad?’ whispered Lettice, staring down the street at her.

Nicholas smiled weakly. ‘No, not mad. She is very tired. We are all tired, aren’t we?’

Lettice nodded. Her plump cheeks were already thinning away, and very grubby. Her left eye looked red and swollen.

‘Now listen to me,’ said Nicholas. ‘I want you and Agnes and Susan to be very brave girls. Will you?’

She and Agnes looked up at him anxiously. They knew what being brave meant. Nasty medicine, bad news.

‘Hodge and I must go away for a time.’

‘No!’ both girls cried as one, with such howls that even Susan stirred and looked up. ‘You can’t leave us! Never!’

‘Never,’ he repeated, hugging them both. ‘I never will completely abandon you. I will know where to find you. It was the last thing our father made me promise. Would I dishonour him?’

‘Then why are you going?’ Lettice wailed.

‘Just for a short time. Because …’ He sighed. He hardly knew himself. ‘Because I must. Because you will be safe and well cared for, and I am too old, and cannot rest, nor …’

It wasn’t working. Too complicated. The little girls’ eyes were filled with tears and resentment. He put it differently.

‘You saw all those children, walking through the market square in their warm woollen cloaks? You are going to stay with them, just for a while. And I–I am going away, to seek my fortune!’

Their sobs slowly subsided.

‘As a pirate?’

‘Well, no, not exactly. But I shall travel over the sea, and bring back chests and chests full of gold, and-’

‘We’ll come with you!’

‘You can’t,’ he said bluntly. Then, more subtly, ‘Our father wouldn’t want you to.’

They still looked miserable, but intrigued by the chests of gold.

‘Will you come back?’

‘Of course I will!’ he laughed. What a player he was. ‘Very soon, laden with treasure.’

‘And donkeys?’

‘And a whole train of donkeys.’

Little girls’ minds were so hard to fathom.

‘And monkeys,’ he added, ‘jewels, ostriches, and little blackamoor slaves, all sorts of things. But only if I go away first and seek my fortune. Then I will return, and find you, and we will all be happy as before.’

‘In the farmhouse?’

‘Yes. In the farmhouse.’

The girls wept and clung to him.

He was suddenly aware of Susan at his elbow. She still said not a word. She reached out and hugged her brother, one swift hug, and then took her little sisters by the hand, and led them away down the alley.

The boys followed at a distance.

They threaded through the old medieval streets of the city until at last they came to a low wooden door in a long wall. They knocked.

Nothing happened. They knocked again.

Eventually a bolt was shot, and a stern-faced woman appeared.

Susan tried to speak, they could tell from the heave of her shoulders, but not a word came out. The stern-faced woman looked her up and down without encouragement. Finally Agnes spoke, though they couldn’t hear her words. The woman questioned them for several minutes, not smiling once. At last she jerked her head and stood back in the doorway, and the three girls went in. The door was shut and bolted behind them.

There was long silence until Hodge said, ‘They will prosper there, master. Have no fear. They will be well enough.’

‘Till I return.’

‘Till we return,’ said Hodge. ‘You’d be lost without me.’

Nicholas looked at the stout servant lad and smiled faintly.

‘Come on, then. Let’s go and find that treasure.’