Joanna (34 page)

The tremor in her voice gave her away. Instead of losing his temper and telling her to go back to bed or mind her needle if she could not sleep, Geoffrey took Joanna in his arms. “I must see if I and my men can be of help. Also, Engelard has a house on that side of the river, and I know he is with the king.”

There was a short, tense silence. Joanna knew that if Engelard d’Atie had a house in Southwark, it was tenanted by a mistress. A single wave of fury swept Joanna at the notion that Geoffrey should endanger himself for some common doxy. Shame followed. She knew nothing about the woman who might be as well born and as innocent as Geoffrey’s mother. In any case, it would be impossible for Geoffrey to face himself or his friend, knowing he had been at hand and had not tried to help.

“Go then,” she said, keeping her voice steady with an effort, “but have a care. Unless the rain comes soon, the fire will run fast before this wind.”

They both glanced out the window again and drew breath. The red glow seemed to be spreading and brighter. Geoffrey dragged his tunic over his unlaced shirt while Joanna found a pair of cross garters to replace the pair he had torn.

“I will be lighter without mail,” he said, paused, and added, “Set someone to watch, beloved. If by some hard chance it should leap the river, gather your things and go. I will not be long behind you, but do not wait for me.”

Geoffrey did not wait for a reply, afraid Joanna would begin to cry. The temptation to comfort her would be near irresistible but merely a self-indulgence. There was no real danger here. He hurried down the stairs, shouting for his men to dress and take weapons but not armor, then out to   the stable area to kick the grooms awake and get the horses saddled.

It was quiet enough on this shore of the river, the horses hooves thudding dully on the wide dirt road that led toward the Chepeside. Alert to what he would not have noticed at another time, Geoffrey cursed the dust that rose and tickled his nose. That it should rise at all at this hour of the night was a bad sign. In spite of the heavy clouds and the wind that flapped his destrier’s mane and bellied out his tunic, there was too little dew in the air to wet down the dust. That meant that the wind did not yet carry rain with it.

At first, they went very slowly because it was a black night without moon or stars. As they drew eastward, however, a brighter glare lit the sky and began to reflect on their path so that they were able to spur their horses into a trot. Geoffrey passed his father’s house and glanced back at his men. Should he leave a group in case the fire leapt the river? He looked up at the sky. If that came across, ten men could do no more to save the place than none. Still, there was no need to leave those within unaware. He called to the youngest of his men-at-arms to go wake the caretaker and his few servants and warn them to watch the fire.

They continued, quickening their pace. Now the gusts of wind brought a smell of burning and even a sense of heat. Geoffrey no longer needed to wonder whether he should slow his pace to warn each house he passed. Most showed lights already, the inhabitants awakened by the sounds of the people streaming westward on the road. Thus far, there was no problem in moving in the opposite direction, but Geoffrey feared things would soon get worse. He cocked an ear to the murmur rising from the group of men following him. It was a deep litany of blasphemy. So far so good; there was no sign of panic. In a battle, Geoffrey would never have listened or doubted his men for a minute. They were brave and well trained, but a fire was different.

A few minutes more brought them to the road that led across the bridge. Here they found the trouble Geoffrey had foreseen. The road was choked with people, most with   laden carts. Although he stopped several and questioned them, Geoffrey could not get a clear picture of the situation. Indeed, it seemed as if it might be less serious than he had thought. Everyone he questioned had fled without seeing the fire itself. All were tenants who, having removed their own furniture and possessions, cared little whether or not the house that sheltered them burned to the ground. For them the light in the sky and the odor of smoke had been reason enough to fly.

Drawing their swords and applying the flats liberally to heads, shoulders, and the flanks of the beasts of burden, Geoffrey and his men struggled across the bridge. For a little way, matters on the opposite side were just as bad, but as they worked their way west along the river, the crowd thinned. Although the fire was clearly further south, Geoffrey took little comfort from that. The glare from the sky now lit the road as bright as a sunset and the gusts of wind that came from the south were almost too hot to breathe.

‘‘Lord,” Tostig muttered, leaning from his horse toward Geoffrey, “what do we here?”

The fact that his master-at-arms asked such a question was a mark of the man’s fear. “We do not have far to go,” Geoffrey replied, raising his voice against a growing dull roar. “I must be sure Lady Maud is out and away.”

A few loud obscenities rose from the tail of men following, but Geoffrey was relieved. They were of a general nature concerning the trouble caused by women and marked a renewal in the heart of his men rather than any increased fearfulness. Most knew Lady Maud’s house, having accompanied their lord there to revelries given by Sir Engelard. The way was not far.

When they reached Lady Maud’s, it was Geoffrey who voiced obscenities. The house was awake all right, but the frightened servants were running about without sense or direction. Some were weeping, some praying, a few were carrying buckets of water from the river and throwing them on the house. He swung off his horse and ran past the outbuildings and stable yards where frightened horses and mules   stamped and whinnied. Halfway up the stairs he could hear the screams and sobs of terrified women. Cursing louder, he pushed open the door. Lady Maud knelt before a crucifix, wailing for help, for mercy, for forgiveness of her sins.

Geoffrey did not try to reason with her or even, beyond a word or two, try to calm her fear. Fighting loose of the avalanche of maids who fell upon him, screaming for succor, he dragged the hysterical woman to her feet. With Maud gripped firmly in one hand, he slapped two of the nearest maids hard enough to make immediate pain and fear more imperative than their terror of the nearing flames. As those women dressed their mistress, Geoffrey cowed the others into obedience. They were to dress themselves and take whatever was most precious that they could carry. His authority and the realization that they would soon leave brought order.

Lady Maud was now rational againat least as rational as she ever was for she was as thoroughly silly as she was beautiful. Geoffrey shepherded her down the stairs, not because he wanted her out of the house yet but because he knew if he left her she would relapse into hysteria and infect the other women whom she was supposed to control. As he bade her for the tenth time to be still or he would slap her silent, he made a mental apology for each time he cursed Joanna for too strong a will.

The moment Geoffrey reached the garden, however, it was apparent that he had been none too soon in removing Lady Maud from the house. Tostig had organized the servants into a bucket chain and part of the outbuildings were well doused, as was the front of the house. Ladders were being set up to soak the roof. Meanwhile, the men-at-arms were leading out the horses and dragging Lady Maud’s traveling cart from its shed. But then the wind came in a blast from behind the cluster of buildings across the road. Geoffrey slapped a hand to his face as something flew against him and burned his cheek. And a sheet of flame, hundreds of feet long and God alone knew how high, swept up, just as great breakers in a storm rose and swept over the   beach near Roselynde, and fell across the houses opposite.

For a single shocked moment, paralysis held them all. Then’chaos broke out. The horses reared and tried to bolt; men and women screamed; Lady Maud flung herself upon Geoffrey, enveloping his head in her flowing sleeves so that for a moment he could not see or breathe. Mercifully, the gust of wind died and the wave of flame fell. There was no apparent result beyond a slight increase in the dull roar they had been hearing for some time. Fortunately, only Geoffrey and the experienced men-at-arms knew what that was. They had heard it often enough in Wales. Geoffrey bellowed at the men to leave the traveling cart, to saddle every horse there was, with blankets and cord if nothing else were available. The maids were to be mounted behind any man who could ride.

In the midst of these arrangements an altercation broke out at the foot of the garden. Tostig and some men ran down while Geoffrey struggled to free himself from Lady Maud’s clinging arms. Finally in desperation, he lifted her like a sack over his shoulder. Relief blossomed as does a flower when he found that the fight had been between some panicked servants who wanted to steal the boat tied at the stairs and flee and others who were more fearful of what would happen to them if Engelard ever discovered what they had done than of the fire. Geoffrey had not known that Engelard’s boat was left with Lady Maud, and everyone had been too excited and busy to remind him. Breathing prayers of thanksgiving, Geoffrey dumped his burden unceremoniously into the boat, detailed two steady men-at-arms to keep her there, by force if need be. Back at the house he found four men who assured him they could handle the craft and seemed to be calm and knowledgeable enough about it to be telling the truth. He sent them with two older, more stable maids carrying the money and jewels to take Lady Maud across the river. If possible, they were to put her into Joanna’s care, he ordered.

The furniture was being dismantled and the clothes packed with sufficient speed so Geoffrey went down again   to help with the horses. He glanced anxiously at the buildings across the road and growled curses again at the flickers of light behind the windows. They were burning from the back already. He raised a shout to abandon whatever was not yet packed and get to horse. Then, just as his voice died, as if it had been playing with him, giving the illusion of a chance of safety, the wind rose again. In minutes, the buildings were gutted and in front of the appalled eyes of the men and women rushing out of the house, a sheet of flame burst out through the roofs with a roar that drowned even the shriek of terror that rose with the fire.

Geoffrey could never remember what had happened in the next few minutes. The milling horses and shrieking people, the wall of fire that roared and leapt, sticking out long tongues of flame toward them as if in derision of their puny efforts to save themselves, the wild physical effort of forcing struggling, hysterical women into the arms of men nearly as helpless with fear and onto the backs of fighting, rearing horses all blended inextricably into a mad nightmare of futility. Yet it was not futile. Somehow everyone was cleared out of the house, mounted, and driven out past the worst of the burning.

In the relative quiet of a churchyard in an area from which everyone seemed to have fled, reason and order were restored. Geoffrey and Tostig took hasty council together, examining the sky because they were out of sight of any flames, and trying to judge in which direction the fire was spreading. They agreed that it was moving north and east toward them but that it was hopeless to try to go west because the flames had reached the river on that side.

“I am afraid we will never get to the bridge before the fire does,” Geoffrey said. “The roads will be choked a mile back, and with this bunch of fools that will begin to scream and weep and frighten the horses, I dare not take a chance on being caught. Let us try to ride south and see if we cannot come around behind the flames to a safe place.”

The cavalcade got under way again but did not advance far. Soon their way was blocked by men and horses retreating from a spot where the flames were spreading too fast to fight. This news produced a new outburst of terror that was quelled by a stronger outburst from Geoffrey, who could not help wondering as he shouted down the cries of fear how long his voice would hold out.

“My lord, my lord,” someone shouted into the relative quiet that followed Geoffrey’s command.

“Yes?” Geoffrey responded instinctively.

A tall, powerful man in the blackened robes of an alderman pushed through the crowd. “Will you help us, my lord?” he cried.

“In what way?” Geoffrey asked cautiously. “I have these people that I must see to safety.”

“My lord, the fire must be stopped from running north here. If it reaches to the river” His voice shook.

Probably he has warehouses by the river, Geoffrey thought sardonically. Nonetheless, he was in complete agreement with the idea voiced. If the fire reached the river in this area, there was the chance that the flaming debris would be blown onto the structures lining the bridge and would run across to ignite the other bank also.

“There are few houses here,” the alderman continued. “If we can tear them down, my lord, and wet the others, perhaps we can check it.”

“I will help if I can,” Geoffrey agreed, thinking the plan most sensible, “but I must be rid of these women who are near mad with fear. And most of the horses too are more a danger than a help.”

“I can send a guide who knows the streets to see them safe out into the country.”

“Good. Then what do you want of me?”

“Authority to empty and pull down the houses, my lord. Those in them will not listen to me. They do not understand that the fire will take all anyway.”

Geoffrey understood. The owners of the houses wanted promise of compensation before they would give permission for demolition. This, of course, the alderman would not offer. The apprentices and journeymen with the alderman   were useful enough to pull down houses and fetch water, but they had no weapons and were useless for enforcing his will. He needed Geoffrey, or any other nobleman, because the commons would think many times before bringing a suit for recompense against a nobleman’s order and the men-at-arms could enforce the order without argument.

“Very well,” Geoffrey agreed.

Instructions were given. Several of Lady Maud’s menservants volunteered to stay with the fire fighters. The rest of the group was entrusted to a sensible-looking, middle-aged man who seemed to know what he was doing. All the horses except Geoffrey’s Orage, Tostig’s mount, and two more for running errands were also dispatched with four men-at-arms to be sure that the animals were not “adopted” by strangers on the way. Free of the helpless who could only distract them, they turned to their work.