A Tapestry of Dreams (44 page)

“No, I suppose I cannot,” he replied reluctantly. “But do not let her delay too long in choosing what she will take.”

“We can go with nothing if we must,” Audris said.

Hugh shook his head. “No, take what you like. There are more than enough horses, for I will not leave Sir Lionel’s destriers for the Scots. My men-at-arms can ride them, and we can use their horses and the palfreys to carry the baggage.” He pulled her close again with the one arm he had kept around her and kissed her. “Send a woman to the stable when you are ready, and the grooms will come up with the horses.”

At the best speed Audris could make, they were not ready until long after Compline. In a sense it was Lady Maud who was the cause of the delay, but not because she cared about her possessions. She made no protesting outcry when Audris told her they must leave Heugh that night, accepting what she was told with quiet resignation. Apparently life in Heugh had been far more uncertain than life in Jernaeve had been, and Maud had fled her home—or prepared to flee it—more than once. She only asked Audris if “her lord,” seemingly avoiding saying his name, would not wish to take with him the contents of the strongboxes and what little plate they had. Audris, who had no experience of running from an enemy, had never thought of it, but she agreed at once. Whether the coins and valuables were Hugh’s or another’s, they should be kept safe, and Maud seemed to know what to do. Audris left her to it and spent the time devising a waterproof covering of leather and oiled silk to keep Eric dry.

In fact, it was only when everything was all ready and they were waiting in what shelter the outside stair provided for the grooms to finish loading the horses, that Maud caused a real problem. The men-at-arms brought the saddle horses around; one of the men raised Fritha to the saddle; Hugh mounted Audris and then turned toward Maud.

“I cannot ride,” she whispered, shrinking back from him. “I will delay you. Leave me to my fate.”

Hugh’s mouth opened, then jammed shut. He spun on his heel and looked at Audris, who turned her hooded head to him. He could not see her face, but he knew what he would have seen in it had there been light enough, and he sighed audibly.

“There must be a pillion saddle in the stable,” he growled at a groom, who was holding one of the baggage animals. “Get it and put it on Eadgar’s horse.” He nodded toward the man-at-arms he meant, and then said to him, “We will switch at each rest stop, using the palfrey meant for Lady Maud as a relief animal.”

Hugh told himself he had no right to be annoyed with Lady Maud. Many women could not ride alone and rode pillion behind a husband or brother. Still, the small check made him feel uneasy, although he could not think why it should, since the start of any journey was always full of delays, gasps and wails over things forgotten, and sometimes even turnings back. All things considered, Lady Maud’s inability to ride was nothing. There was just something about the woman—perhaps it was only her fear of him, if it was fear—that cast a pall like evil over whatever she took part in.

At first, however, aside from the slow pace made necessary by the rain and darkness, the journey started well. They rode south along a rough track that led to one of the demesne farms, one man well ahead to come back or cry a warning if necessary. The scout was waiting near the edge of what had been planted fields, now a sea of trampled mud that would bear no fruit, to say the way was clear to the river. As they went by, Audris shuddered at the smell of burning that hung in the wet air. She had never gone to look at the remains when raids had passed over Jernaeve lands. When she thought of something that might help or comfort the victims, she ordered it sent to them, but she had no curiosity of that morbid kind that takes a warped pleasure in examining disaster or gazing at grief. In fact, she feared such sights, guessing that they might come out in her weaving.

At the bank of the river they turned west, following another rough track, which led to another farm, also ruined. They went around it, keeping wide of what had been buildings and sheds. Audris felt ashamed, thinking that Hugh had noticed her distress and was reacting to it. She was mistaken; he simply wished to avoid the chance of one of the horses uncovering and treading on a live coal. He saw nothing in the burnt-out ruins to inspire horror; he had fired farms and villages himself when he followed Sir Walter to war. Actually, what thought he gave the devastation was a brief gladness that his messengers had reached these people in time for them to escape and save their stock. The smell of burning was clean; there was no stench of charred flesh hanging in the air.

The track, such as it was, ended at the second farm, and they took to the woods themselves, at first following a little path Audris assumed had been made by the children gathering firewood or, perhaps, by the pigs. The river grew narrower and still narrower as they followed it, mostly by sound, but they rode sometimes nearer, sometimes farther from it as the banks were steeper or more shallow.

They were in wooded land now that showed no sign of cultivation. It was very quiet, for the rain had thinned to a bare drizzle and the horses trod on soft, sodden mulch, which gave back no sound. All one could hear above the very soft gurgle of the river was an occasional snap of a twig and the drip of water from leaf to leaf. Infrequently a horse blew as it cleared its nostrils, and the sound seemed so loud that it made Audris jump each time. The lead man was much nearer, near enough for them to hear when his horse’s hoof struck a stone in the turf, because he was watching for side streams or other dangerous irregularities in the ground rather than enemies.

Only once did they find him blocking the way, and as they pulled their mounts to a halt Audris smelled smoke again. The scout and Hugh exchanged some whispered words, then one of the other men-at-arms dismounted, went ahead a little way, and disappeared. It seemed very long, but Audris knew it was really a short time before he reappeared and said aloud, in a quite natural voice, “Woodcutters, my lord. They have seen and heard nothing. I warned them about the Scots.”

Hugh turned in his saddle. “Would you like to dry yourself and rest in the woodcutters’ hut, Audris?”

“Not now,” she replied. “Eric is asleep. If it is safe to stop when he wakes, I would rather stop then for greater ease in suckling him.”

“Good, for I would rather stop just before we reach Dere Street. It would be best to rest the horses then, in case there are Scots there and we must go hard and fast to some other breach in the wall.”

They did not stop near Dere Street, though. From where they met the woodcutters’ trail, the river curved more sharply southward, continuing to narrow as they followed it until it became little more than a wide stream. After about an hour, the woods began to thin and show signs of human use. The rain had stopped completely by then, and the clouds were breaking up, driven by a fickle breeze. In the open areas, their eyes, now accustomed to nearly total blackness, found it light enough to see, which should have raised everyone’s spirits.

Audris, however, after an initial spurt of relief, began to feel oppressed. Ugly images formed in her mind of burnt buildings—and worse, of bodies so charred and distorted that it was hard to tell human from beast. Fear tightened her throat, not because she expected enemies to leap out at them, but because she thought she might be foreseeing a distant evil. She put away the images, trying to fill her mind with Hugh’s face, with Eric’s comical grimaces—and suddenly the wind veered and strengthened, and a sickening odor of burnt flesh choked her. Almost simultaneously they heard the dull thudding of a horse coming fast, and Audris saw Hugh reach for his sword. A low cry identified their own forerider, and Hugh dropped his hand to his destrier’s neck.

“A burnt-out farm,” the man said, “but all is quiet there now.” He hesitated and started to speak again, but another gust of wind carrying an even stronger stench made him cough. When he caught his breath, he went on, “The Scots are mad. They did not drive off the stock. They fired the barn and burned the beasts—the yeoman and his sons, too.”

“When?” Hugh asked.

“The ashes are cold. Yesterday or last night.”

“Is it far around?”

“I am sorry, my lord, I did not look.” The man seemed surprised. “I made sure there was no danger. We can pass.” Then he saw the slight turn of Hugh’s head toward Audris, and he realized his master wished to protect his wife. “We can cross the water here,” he said. “It is not deep, and we will be well away from the farm. It is back from the river.”

Hugh’s attempt to spare Audris was worse than useless, unfortunately. Although they were less plagued by the foul odor of death after they forded the river, Hugh’s horse suddenly jibbed and snorted, rising a little on his rear legs as he came alongside a thick patch of brush and bracken. Hugh’s sword was halfway out when Audris’s quick eyes made out the cause. She uttered a cry that was strangled by retching. There were four of them—a woman and three little ones—and the many black patches of dried blood showed they had not died swiftly or easily.

“Ride on,” Hugh said harshly.

They obeyed, but they could not escape the horrors, which mounted as the farms became more numerous and as the sky lightened. The worst of all was in the tiny village where the source of the river met the Roman road. They should have gone around, but by then Hugh only wished to get by as fast as possible, and there was no way to know how far afield the victims had been pursued. Most seemed to have been caught right in the place, however. The corpses lay scattered all around the perimeter, as if the Scots had deliberately surrounded the place so that there would be no way for the inhabitants to escape.

By then Audris had no more tears, although she could not stop the dry sobs that racked her. All she could do was alternately clutch her baby and finger her knife, whispering softly between sobs, “I will cut his throat myself. It will be quick. He will never know. I will cut his throat myself.” That was after they found a babe that had been spitted on a stick and half roasted.

Outside the alewife’s house, the only building that had not been burnt, there was a little girl, not more than four. She had been so abused that her body had split apart almost to the navel. They galloped past as fast as they could, regardless of the uncertain light and the danger of a fall, so fast that they almost missed the forerider coming back down the far side of the road, half hidden by the trees. He signaled wildly at them, but it was already too late, for as they slowed they could hear the shouts of men who had heard the clatter of their horses’ hooves.

“How many?” Hugh roared.

Audris heard the rage, the lust to kill in his voice, and she was nearly racked apart because she desired revenge for what she had seen, and yet she feared for her husband and for her babe and for herself if that rage drove Hugh to attack too many. And deep within her, too, she knew the men who were coming down the road had not committed the atrocities they had seen.

“Twenty… fifty… I could not tell,” the man-at-arms replied, his first, short answer betraying his own desire to attack, governed by the better judgment of belated caution.

The shouts were growing nearer. Hugh turned his head to look longingly up the road, but then gestured ahead to the west, growling, “Ride! Ride! We must bring the women safely to Jernaeve first. But we will come back.”

In one way the horrors Audris had seen were a help. She was so drained of emotion by the time they reached Jernaeve, just before the sun rose, that she only clung to Hugh for a little while when he told her he would not enter with her. She tried to beg him to be careful, to remember that he was precious to her—oddly, she never thought “needful,” which was the first thing she would have said a year past—but she never did say any words.

They had forgotten Eric when they embraced, and he was squeezed between them and woke and began to scream. By then the three great bars that closed the gate had been pulled back. Hugh kissed her one more time, hard and fast, pushed her toward the opening gate, then mounted again and rode away. Audris hurried through the gate, leading her mare, with Lady Maud staggering beside her and Fritha driving in the packhorses.

Audris went only as far as the shed backed against the wall used to shelter the gate guards in foul weather. The captain of the troop doing sentry duty on the wall jumped to his feet and bowed as she came in. “Demoiselle?” he asked nervously.

“Demoiselle no longer,” Audris replied, laughing, and then, almost shouting over the shrieks of her son, added, “I am Lady Audris now—and my son, as you may hear, wants to break his fast.”

As she spoke, she unfastened the wrappings that had shielded Eric, sat down on the bench the captain had vacated, and bared her breast. The captain bowed to her, then, smiling, bowed to the screaming infant also, and left the shed. Lady Maud watched his retreating back, then turned and leaned wearily against the wall, staring at Audris.

“The maids whispered to each other that you are a witch,” she said. “Are you?”

“No,” Audris answered firmly. “Although you will hear all the folk hereabout say the same, I am
not
a witch. I know no spells and can cast no enchantments. All I know are the prayers that Father Anselm taught me to say when I make my potions for healing, and those are prayers to Christ, to Saint Jude, and to the Holy Mother. My weaving… That is too hard to explain.”

“But all the men bow to you—”

“Why should they not?” Audris asked impatiently. “Jernaeve is mine, and my uncle is an honest man who has taught the people to respect me.”

Then she bent her head over Eric in a clear sign that she did not wish to enlarge on the subject. What she had said was true. Every person beholden to Jernaeve knew that Sir Oliver would punish severely anyone who displeased his niece, but the alacrity with which they obeyed her and hung on her slightest word was more than simple respect. Audris had set her mind against acceptance, however, and she certainly would not discuss such matters with Maud, who seemed half mad sometimes.

There was a silence broken only by Eric’s snuffles and grunts as he suckled. He was more than usually passionate about it, having slept longer than his regular time because of being cradled near his mother’s heart and because, securely supported as he was, the movement of the horse was soothing to him. In about ten minutes, Audris pried him loose and transferred him to her other breast. He protested the transfer loudly. When she had him settled, she became aware, as one does, that someone was staring at her. She thought it was Maud and at first tried to ignore it, but the sensation grew more intense, and she looked up to find her uncle standing in the doorway.

“Uncle!” Audris gasped.

“Why are you sitting like a beggar at the gate?” Oliver asked crossly. “Do you think I have changed so much that you should fear to come into your own hall to suckle the heir to Jernaeve?”

“Oh, uncle, no,” Audris cried, stretching her free hand toward him. Tears started to her eyes, but at the same time she smiled. “You heard Eric. I only stopped to feed him here because I did not wish to be deafened.” Then she began to sob. “I am sorry to have angered you, uncle, so sorry. I beg you to forgive me—not because I fear you but because I
love
you.”

“But you trust me so little that you fled your own place rather than tell me you had chosen a man at last.”

“It is not true!” Audris exclaimed between sobs. “It is not! I explained in my letter—”

“But you did not explain to my face. How could you think I would deny you the right to marry the father of the child you carried? It was bad enough to let him take you without marriage or betrothal, but once it was done, it was done. And where
is
your husband? Do you suspect I would do him harm to keep my place as guardian?”

Oliver’s words were bitter and his voice was harsh, but the bitterness and harshness were bred from pain, not rage, and Audris bowed her head, shaking with pain herself as she realized how much she had hurt him. Her mind spun, trying to find a new reason, a reason that would make what she had done more acceptable, and it steadied on an image—the image of a unicorn threatening Jernaeve.

“There was more, uncle.” Audris lifted her tear-streaked face to him. “I wove four pictures that I never showed to you—all four of the unicorn—
la licorne,
Hugh Licorne. The first two were innocent, showing the meeting of the unicorn and the maiden and the ripening of their love. But the third showed the beast trampling this lower part and threatening the keep itself with his horn. When Hugh saw it, he vowed he would never enter Jernaeve again so long as he lived.”

Oliver’s expression changed, and an odd prickling passed over Audris’s skin as she realized her uncle had accepted the inevitability of her relationship with Hugh the moment she mentioned the tapestries. She had an impulse to protest, but she saw the pain was gone from his face, so she held her tongue. Nothing she said would change Oliver’s mind about her tapestries, and his belief had soothed him, which had been her purpose. In proof, although he did not reply, he stepped forward to take the hand she held out to him. Then he bent forward to kiss her brow, sighed, and bent still lower to look more closely at Eric, who was nearly full and turning his head this way and that as he toyed with the nipple he was still reluctant to relinquish completely.

“So, here we have the new lord of Jernaeve, do we?” Oliver said quickly, as if he wished to forget or bury what Audris had told him. “I see he takes after his father.”

“In size and strength and looks, he does,” Audris agreed, “but I hope Jernaeve will not be Eric’s heritage. I hope to have more sons. Eric will have Ruthsson and—” Audris hesitated. “And perhaps something more.” Then she peered around her uncle and, having found Maud, drew her to Oliver’s attention. “This is Lady Maud of Heugh. She—”

“Hugh? Is she, too, related to your husband? Did not your letter say there was only a great-uncle living?”

“Oh, the names are so confusing!” Audris exclaimed. “Heugh is a place, not a person.”

Oliver frowned, then, as he remembered, his voice rose unbelievingly, “Sir Lionel’s wife?”

“Yes,” Audris said, relieved that the subject of Maud’s relationship to Hugh had been dropped. “It seems that Sir Lionel spoke the name Kenorn during the trial by combat. It is not so common a name, and it happens that Hugh’s father was named Kenorn—”

“Hugh’s father?” Oliver repeated. “I did not know Hugh knew who his father was.”

“Yes, yes. It turns out that Hugh is not a bastard at all. There is proof that Margaret of Ruthsson was duly wed to Sir Kenorn—but Hugh could discover nothing more than the name. So when the quiet time in summer came, he felt he should ask Sir Lionel whether he knew Sir Kenorn. But when we came to Heugh—”

“We?” Oliver echoed pointedly. “Why did he permit you to travel with a newborn babe?”

Audris laughed, the laughter catching on a sob. “Because he is as indulgent to me as you, uncle. I said I wanted to go, so he took me. But it was not pure caprice on my part. I thought if I was near, Hugh would not dare begin a brangle with Sir Lionel. But it did not matter, for Sir Lionel was dead. Everything in the keep was very strange, but before Hugh could sift out what was what, the Scots—” Audris’s eyes widened. “Oh, heaven,” she cried. “I have been telling you all these tales and not told—”

“Never mind. We know the Scots are on the march.” Oliver’s face fell into angry lines. “I was out the day before yesterday, and we lessoned some raiding parties very well. I piled their dead in heaps all along the borders of your land, and they have stayed well to the east of Sandhoe since then. But they were only small parties, raiding. Alain has patrols out in the hills south of the great wall. Did you not see them?”

“Only raiding…” Audris shuddered and swallowed hard, but she did not tell him what she had seen. She knew his indifference to what happened on land that was not beholden to Jernaeve. Then she answered his question. “We came in from the north where the breach is near the bridge. Hugh wanted to be as far from Dere Street as possible.”

“That was wise,” Oliver approved. “There is an army going southeast along that road, perhaps to attack Durham or even intending to threaten York. Corbridge is taken, but no large force has come west from there. Young Oliver is by Hexham, and the Scots have not yet troubled the abbey. But they will not forget Jernaeve, curse them. They will come.”

Suddenly Oliver stopped and blinked and Audris realized he was wondering why he had been telling her, of all people, such things. She was not certain herself, first associating this rare exposure of his concern with her own feeling, which had been growing steadily, that she was capable of doing anything necessary for herself. The notion had crystallized in her mind when she had wanted to go to Morpeth; it had been confirmed when—ignorant and all unknown as she was among the people of Heugh—she had hidden her fear, descended into the seething inner bailey, and chosen just the right woman in whom to place authority (backed by her own status as a noblewoman). Thereby, all the women had been organized so that the stock was penned, the children controlled, and a good meal produced for the men guarding the walls.

However, as she nodded and agreed sadly, “Yes, they will come,” and her uncle stared at her for a moment, his mouth setting harder with disappointment, Audris sighed. Oliver had not recognized her change from girl to woman; he had only been hoping she would foresee safety. Well, she was silly to expect more, Audris thought. Had she not thanked God more than once that Oliver was not the most perceptive of men? She could not have it both ways. It was enough that he loved her. Let him see her as pleased him best, for in the end it mattered little. She was ripe to make her own life now.

While they were talking, Eric had stopped sucking. Feeling him release her breast, Audris pulled her gown up and rose to her feet as she lifted him to her shoulder, patting his back to bring the wind up. Oliver stepped back a pace and drew a long breath.

“Go up to the keep,” he said. “Your tower is as you left it. Your aunt will welcome Lady Maud. I must send out messengers to bring in the yeomen.”

Memories of the horrors they had passed rose in Audris’s mind, and her eyes closed over tears as her arms tightened around Eric. “I pray God you have not waited too long,” she whispered.

Oliver had started to turn away, but his soles gritted on the floor as he swung back toward her. “So? I will bid all make haste. And what of Alain and young Oliver? Shall I call them to Jernaeve to—”

“No!” Audris exclaimed in instinctive fear and revulsion—and then she was ashamed, for she had no present cause to dislike and distrust her cousins, so she kept her eyes closed. But she did not wish harm to come to them; Oliver and Eadyth would grieve. “Send them to their keeps to watch the southern croplands,” she said. And when she did open her eyes, Oliver was nodding and looking at her with a kind of uneasy wonder.

“You are right,” he said. “The army will settle around Jernaeve, but Alain’s and Oliver’s men cannot make the difference between holding the lower wall or losing it. On the other hand, they may make the difference between having some crops or no crops to harvest this autumn. From their own keeps they may be able to drive off the small parties foraging south for supplies.”

Audris looked up at him blankly; she had known nothing of the reasons. She only feared her cousins—although it had been many years since either of them tried to do her a despite. But she could not tell her uncle; her aunt would not listen when they
had
hurt her and Bruno had been punished for protecting her. Had she understood her uncle better then… but she had not; it was much later that she had learned to love him. At that time she had feared Oliver almost as much as she feared his sons. And then Father Anselm had come, and she was mostly safe after that. It was all long ago, but still Audris felt relief that Alain and Oliver would not be in Jernaeve. She smiled to herself as her uncle left and walked toward the barracks. Hopefully he would be very disappointed in her, and the Scots would not come soon or, if God was merciful, at all. She had had no foreseeing—no vision, no urge to weave.

***

Unfortunately, however, Oliver was not disappointed. In fact, Audris’s instinctive remarks fit the timing of events far better than she wished. Had Oliver’s summons to his yeomen been a day later, many of them would have been lost. Moreover, his summons
would
have been just a day later, for the day after Audris arrived, a number of men who held small keeps along the North Tyne sought shelter in Jernaeve for themselves, their families, and their small troops of men-at-arms. Some had been driven out, and some had yielded on terms. All reported that Sir William de Summerville was bringing a large army south along the river from Liddesdale. Oliver had shrugged angrily. Summerville was bad news; probably he carried a grudge over his last attempt on Jernaeve.

There had been discussions that day and the next—while still more refugees of all types came to Jernaeve’s gates seeking safety—among the knights who had gathered. Most of them wanted to attack Summerville’s army near the breach in the great wall. They argued that it would not take many men to hold that breach, with the river on one side and Jernaeve’s lower wall on the other. No matter how many men Summerville had, only a few at a time could come through.