Joanna (37 page)

“I saw them there,” the man replied, pointing, “but”

There was a shrill, mindless shriek from the crowd, then a man’s voice, high with hysteria, shouting, “Fire! Fire!” Tostig cried, “God! No!” and Geoffrey’s head snapped around. Paler than at night, but no less evil-looking, there   was again a red glare reflected from the low-hanging clouds. A roar burst from the confined people, a wailing of insane terror mingled with rage against those who had confined them so that now they would die in agony. The roar died down as the madness took firm hold. In that half silence came another roar, that of devouring flames mixed with a few screams of fear as the men scouring the lanes saw that the fire had spread west. Then sound burst out anew, and with the second wave of sound the whole mass of people began to move.

Geoffrey had no need to pause to think. ‘‘Let them go,” he bellowed, gesturing to Tostig and the man near him to spread the order.

No force of men could hold them quiet or force them to leave the Chepeside in a safe and orderly manner. The crowd was now a ravening beast and would tear apart anyone or anything that stood in its way. Geoffrey saw a man-at-arms go down, saw his horse seized, saw the man who seized it torn away from his prize, thrown down, and another grasp at the horseall in a matter of seconds. Joanna was on horseback! If these mad creatures laid eyes upon her they wouldWith a gasp of fear, he roweled his tired stallion into a trot toward the south end of the Chepe.

Just as he turned west, a riderless horse charged out of the lane mouth ahead of him and, encountering the edges of the mob before it, a wall of humanity to the left, and fire to the right, it reared and screamed with terror, lashing out with its hooves so that those who had thought to seize it shrank away, preferring their own feet. Hard on the heels of the animal, Knud burst forth from the alley.

“Where is Lady Joanna?” cried Geoffrey.

“In the lane, my lord,” Knud gasped, gesturing with his head at the opening from which he had run.

Relief made Geoffrey sway in the saddle. Joanna was not part of the seething caldron of death. The relief was short lived. From the corner of his eye, Geoffrey had seen men. and women darting into the mouth of that lane. Worse, the   crackle and roar of the fire was nearer. It was moving fast, very fast.

“Go get your men out of thisthose that still live,” Geoffrey ordered. Take them north till you find the ways free and then to my father’s house. Wait there for us. I will see to Lady Joanna myself.”

He spurred into the lane, not waiting for a reply. Knud stared after him for a moment appalled. Beorn would kill him if anything happened to the lady. It was his duty to keep her safe. It was also his duty to save his men. His eye caught a knot of three men-at-arms struggling against the crowd. He began to force his way forward to them. Lord Geoffrey would take care of Lady Joanna. He had said so, and Knud believed the young lord was well able to fulfill what he promised.

In fact, that confidence was very nearly misplaced. Geoffrey, like most of the people fleeing the fire, would have paid scant attention to the huddle of dark clothes at the bend in the lane. Fortunately, greed overpowered fear in the mind of one of the men who fled the fire. His eye was caught by the metallic glitter of an ornament on the purse fastened to Joanna’s belt, and he turned aside to snatch at what he saw. That twisted Joanna’s body and her wimple, already unseated by her fall, came away completely, revealing the full glory of her hair.

“Joanna!” Geoffrey bellowed.

He struck the thief dead and came off his horse to snatch Joanna up in his free arm. There was something in the feel of her body that stilled the agony which had gripped his breast and begun to climb into his throat. There was warmth and resilience to it. Geoffrey had lifted enough dead men to recognize the total flaccidity of lifelessness. He clutched her closer and she sighed, “Oh,” and then, more strongly with a shade of indignation, “You hurt me.”

Relief and rage welled up in Geoffrey simultaneously. He did not know whether he wished to hug Joanna tight and weep with joy or strangle her and scream with rage. More frustrating still, he did not have time for either emotion. A   fresh wave of people could be heard pouring into the lane. Geoffrey shook Joanna roughly.

“Stand,” he ordered. “Stand until I can mount and pull you up.”

He pressed her against the building, put one of her hands on a jutting beam, and turned toward his horse. The poor beast was so tired that it had not moved a step from the spot at which Geoffrey had dismounted. Even the waves of sparks and smoke no longer woke much response in Orage. War-horses were far more accustomed to being close to flames than an ordinary animal, and the past twelve hours had further numbed the stallion’s fear mechanism. Geoffrey sheathed his sword, grasped his rein, and swung into the saddle, cursing the fact that he did not have another usable arm. Two were simply not enough. He needed to guide the horse, hold Joanna, and fight. The refugees pouring around the bend in the lane had sent up a shout at the sight of the mounted figure. They were mad with terror and resentment. Any person on horseback was their enemy at this moment.

Instinct saved Joanna, who was still only semiconscious, from endangering them both still further. When Geoffrey left her, she started to topple forward. The fear of falling is deep, deep in the phylogenetic memory of man, however, and Joanna’s hand closed on the beam upon which Geoffrey had pressed it. She held to it so tight that, although her knees had started to buckle, she remained upright long enough for Geoffrey to wrench Orage sideways and seize her. He could feel the muscles and tendons in his shoulder scream in protest. Joanna was a slender girl, but she was almost as tall and almost as hard-muscled as Geoffrey himself. She was no feather to lift in one arm.

The stress did not last long. Before Geoffrey needed to do more than raise her from the ground, Joanna’s head had cleared enough so that she lifted her foot to set it on Geoffrey’s in the stirrup. With that help, it was short work to set her firmly in the saddle in front of him. Now, desperately, Geoffrey roweled his horse into faster motion. The dull plodding quickened for a few steps into a trot and then   stopped. Geoffrey applied the spur again, but it was too late to avoid the oncoming mob. He could do no more than back his horse into a break between two buildings, pass his reins into the hand that was holding Joanna, and unsheathe his sword again.

In an ordinary way such a mob, armed only with knives and snatched-up makeshift clubs, was no danger to a mounted man with a real weapon in hand. Usually the destrier would fight too, with death-dealing hooves and snapping teeth, but Orage was too tired to lift and slash with his front hooves. Indeed, Geoffrey expected the poor creature would drop dead of a burst heart at any moment. Worse, Geoffrey could not swing his sword freely because of Joanna. Had he known they would need to stand and fight, he would have seated her pillion behind him. While he still thought they could escape in front of the mob, of course, he wished to hold her before him so he could protect her with his body. Also he feared she would not be able to hold on alone.

Howls of glee greeted Geoffrey’s defensive move. He ground his teeth and then tightened his arm as he felt Joanna shift in the saddle. “Loose me.” Her voice was thin, but clear. “Loose me, I wish to take hold of your ax. Defend your right. I will defend your left.”

Geoffrey’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. He knew in extremity a woman might try to defend herself with her knife, but the perfectly collected manner in which Joanna reached down, looped the leather thong of the ax over one wrist, and hefted it in both hands left him voiceless. She was worse than her mother! Even in Ian’s worst tirades about his headstrong wife he had never accused Alinor of seizing his weapons.

The sword on one side, the ax on the other, made the leaders of the mob hesitate. In that one quiet instant, Joanna’s eyes took in the markings on the weapon she had lifted.

“Geoffrey!” she cried, “Beloved! You are safe!”

No single remark could have been further from the truth or more ridiculous. As if to underscore the wild inaccuracy, before Joanna’s last word was quite out of her mouth, the   entire mass of houses just beyond those opposite them fell in.

The crash, the roar, the sheet of flame that leapt heavenward, the blast of air straight out of the mouth of a burning hell had one beneficial effect. No thought remained in any man’s head beyond self-preservation. The yells of terror were louder than the shout of expectation had been and, as one man, the entire mob turned to run. Some started blindly southward; others turned hysterically back in the direction from which they had come. At once, all were locked into a madly struggling mass. Joanna, who had faced their animosity boldly whimpered with pity. She could hardly feel fear of the leaping flames that could be seen through the alleys between the houses so great was her horror. Geoffrey was also horrified, but he knew there was no way to save these people from themselves. What worried him was that there was no way to get past them either. For an icy moment, panic gripped him. Geoffrey was no coward, but he did not wish to burn to death trapped in that alley. It was not a clean or easy way to die.

A swift glance over his shouloer showed him that the alley under the overhang of the houses at least went all the way back. There was no wall immediately behind them, but he could not turn the horse; the opening was too narrow for that. A quick question brought Geoffrey the assurance that Joanna could walk. He let her down from the saddle and she sidled past Orage. Then he dismounted himself. He knew quite well that if he had good sense he would go at once and just leave the tired stallion. Probably there would be fences, perhaps gates that would be wide enough for men, or capable of being climbed but impossible for horses to pass. Joanna was his first and foremost responsibility. Nonetheless, it was impossible to allow a dear and trusted servant to die in pain and terror. With tears in his eyes, Geoffrey came around and lifted his sword to swing at the trusting stallion’s throat.

“It is wide enough here to turn Orage. Back him through, Geoffrey.”

The voice, which had been thread-thin with shock and   fear, was fuller although still high-pitched with excitement. There must be a way out, Geoffrey thought, sparing time to rub his cheek gratefully along the horse’s soft muzzle as he dropped his sword. A single glance behind wiped all thoughts from his mind beyond the need to escape immediately. The mob was still struggling in the lane, the battle intensified by those who continued to pour into it from the Chepe, but now the roofs of the houses on that very street were already aflame. Geoffrey began to press backward, and Orage moved sluggishly to his urging.

When he came into the yard behind the house, Geoffrey was horrified to see that it was just thata yard. On all sides they were blocked off by a tall fence. Before he could berate Joanna for the false hope she had raised in him, she was proffering the ax and pointing to a locked gate. Geoffrey stared for a moment, sick with disappointment. Then, doggedly, he took the ax and struck.

“I’ll have to kill Orage,” he said with the second blow. “I cannot leave him here to die in the fire.”

“Kill him? Leave him here? Certainly not!” Outrage brought Joanna’s voice to its usual full timbre.

A knight’s destrier was a valuable piece of property. It was not unknown for a man to pledge a small estate to buy a really good horse. Joanna had been strongly oriented to the preservation of property by her mother; in fact, she would struggle to that end nearly to the last breath in her body. The thought of voluntarily destroying or abandoning so valuable an animal was an abomination to her. She was not surprised at what she considered Geoffrey’s casual attitude toward his possession. Her mother had explained that men were idiots about such things. From her own experience, Joanna knew that her father had been most careless about his personal possessions and Ian was just as bad, giving away farms and other things (if Alinor did not stop him) as if they could be replaced by wishing. It was a wife’s duty to curb such extravagance as best she could.

Geoffrey cast a glance at her over his shoulder. She was standing very near, just out of range of the swinging ax, straight and tall, apparently quite calm, and firmly gripping   the stallion’s rein. The glance also took in the bright peaks of fire now rising from the roofs across the street. An untimely convulsion of mirth seized Geoffrey. Everything since he had lifted Joanna from the filthy lane was upside down and completely madthe way she had taken his ax; the pleased voice in which she had announced that he was safe; the calm with which she directed him to use a war ax to hew wood; the indignation with which, in the face of almost certain death, she insisted on dragging along a tired horse. His next stroke went awry, but it did not matter. The wood around the lock splintered, and he threw himself against the gate.

It seemed that laughter bred miracles. Instead of a narrow gateway through which only a man could pass, a double closure swung open onto a passage that skirted another fence and then turned sharply to the right. Holding his weapon in readiness, Geoffrey plunged forward. There was so much noise, between the sounds of the fire and the shrieks of the mob that he did not know what he would find around the corner. One thing was sure, however, that it was necessary to get out of the trap they were in. The heat was such that, although he could not see the flames yet, Geoffrey was sure the buildings alongside were burning. It was all the more dangerous for not being visible. Geoffrey expected that the whole mass would explode into flames at any moment.

The miracle held. Around the corner was another alley that plainly opened into the lane beyond. With Joanna at his heels, Geoffrey ran forward. The situation was so desperate that he did not care what was in the lane. Somehow he would force a passage. That, fortunately, was not necessary because there was no tangled mob. Those people who appeared flashed by, running as fast as they could. In the mouth of the alley, Geoffrey paused, intending to mount Joanna. When he turned, his mouth dried with fear. The houses they had just passed were alight. He threw Joanna into the saddle, seized the rein, and began to run himself, tugging at the horse. Perhaps his panic and that of the others in the lane communicated itself to the animal, or perhaps the   few minutes of rest acted as a slight restorative. Whatever the reason, the destrier managed to work up a sodden trot that did not slow Geoffrey. Nor did anyone try to attack them. For the few who glanced their way, the bared ax was warning enough. Most did not even look; they only ran, blind with terror.