The Harp and the Blade (16 page)

Dram by dram

And likewise bottle by bottle,

I poured it in To fill my skin

Through an ever-ready throttle.”

It had been a long time, I reflected wistfully, since I’d had any whisky. It is strange that only the Irish and the Scotch have the sense to make that excellent drink.

“I had a young wife, both fair and frisky:

But what the hell!

A wedded life,

As you know right well,

Can play the devil with drinking whisky.

I was strong:

Wrong is wrong,

And surely duty is duty.

I ditched the hen,

For I scorn men

Who’ll scamp ideals for a beauty.

Death called for me. He was feeling frisky.

Sure of his kill;

But wait and see—

He guzzled his fill

And a whole lot more, of good, strong whisky.

Fool to think,

Drink for drink,

That he could better his better!

I watched him fold And, passed out cold,

Crouch at my feet like a setter.

Oh, what a head! Death didn’t feel frisky

When he came to.

‘Can’t I be dead,

Not feel like I do?’

He groaned—
”

If I hadn’t been bellowing I would have had warning earlier. As it was they were almost on me before I heard the horses.

Having time for nothing else, I dove for my sword, and that was the nearest thing to a garment I had when the woman rode into the clearing. The dozen or so men behind her could have ridden me down if they felt like it; therefore I didn’t try to run. Instead I put my back against a tree and looked them over for enemies.

It was typical of the locale that I found one forthwith. The first man to range himself beside the woman was the fellow who had chased me off my road and into Conan’s life. A second later he recognized me.

“That’s a spy of Chilbert’s, Ann!” he told her. Then he looked at me, and I couldn’t imagine why I’d once thought he had a merry, likable face. “Will you hang peaceably or are you going to fight?” he inquired.

I had no answer for him in my despair. If they hanged me, naturally I was going to see to it that they hanged a corpse. But as I was considering rushing them to get it over with, the woman amazed me by interceding. “Wait a minute, Jean,” she said, and I saw to my incredulous relief, that she was in charge. I’d been giving all my attention to the men previously, but now I wanted to know something about her. She was as blonde as myself, a neatly but strongly built, sweet-faced woman who knew her own mind.

“Why don’t you put on your clothes?” she suggested.

“Are your dogs called off?”

“My men,” she corrected me. “For that long anyhow.”

My ragged garments weren’t quite dry, but I was glad to get into them. Clothes, even though they’re of no real use in a fight, make a man feel more protected.

She gazed at me searchingly when I had finished and was facing her again. “You were singing a song,” she reminded me.

Her unexpected remark gave me hope that we could conduct negotiations on the friendly basis I earnestly desired. “That’s right. Did you like it?” I asked, brightening.

“No,” she said.

“Oh well,” I shrugged, “it’s not a woman’s song.” It seemed to me that the conversation had reached a dead end, but she opened the way.

“My husband’s very fond of it.”

“Your husband seems to have good taste in all things.” Nevertheless, I was wildly searching for an explanation. That song, appropriate to its subject, had been written in Gaelic.

My puzzlement, I could now see, was giving her a great deal of amusement. “My husband can, fortunately, only recall snatches of it,” she teased me further, “but he sings it all the time. He says if was made by his best friend.”

Dumb with bewilderment, I was convinced that I was in reality dreaming. The other men couldn’t make any sense out of her words either and stirred restlessly. Not very hopeful that there was a rational explanation for the woman’s improbable statements, I began trying to remember on what occasions and with whom in France I could possibly have sung that song.

Promptly and stunningly it was clear that there could be but one solution to the problem. The song was the one I had been mumbling over and over during that last hour or however long it was, of the stand at the vault.

She saw I had the key and smiled. “You’re the man he was talking of,” she told me rather than asked.

“Why must I be?” I countered. “Once the song is made anybody can sing it. “

“Yes,” she conceded gaily, “but I don’t believe, as far as that particular is concerned, that anybody but the maker and my husband, who happens to like him, would bother.”

I laughed, as I could well afford to do, seeing that enemies had turned out to be allies. She laughed back, and from that moment we were friends. Her companions were still mystified, naturally, and the man called Jean spoke for them. “What’s so funny about a song nobody can understand?”

“Oh, but I can understand it,” she contradicted him. “Conan studied in Ireland, and he told me what it means. Jean, this man you were going to hang if he’d be nice about it is Finnian who was with Conan in the fight at the Old Farms.”

I had been correct in my original estimate. Jean’s face could be very jolly indeed. He was off his horse in an instant, offering apologies and pledges of friendship, and all the others followed his example. Conan, it was understandably clear,’ was well liked by his men.

Being a little shaky from reaction, I didn’t have much to say in return, but I grinned amiably. After my experiences of the past few days it was good to be with people I could respect again.

“It’s my turn now,” Ann told them after a minute or so, and they drew aside to let her stand before me. Conan, as I would have expected, had used sound sense in choosing his woman. She was clear and honest and laughed when she could. Her face was very serious then, though, and she had great dignity as she looked at me. Beneath her scrutiny, perforce, I looked at myself and wondered what, if anything, there was for her to see. A man can feel very humble when a woman is considering him, and one corner of my mouth twitched down in self-derision.

She saw that and quite simply took my face between her hands and kissed me. “You’ll come with us, won’t you?” she asked, letting her palms fall to my shoulders. “Conan will never forgive me if I don’t bring you along. He’s away now, but we expect him back within the week.”

If, as it seemed, I was condemned to be mixed up in the troubles of that country whenever I happened to be in it, it was well to be among friends. And it would be grand to see Conan again. “Thanks,” I said. “Who’ll ride me?”

“Take my horse, and I’ll double up with somebody else,” Jean offered. “I owe you that for running you that day.” He chuckled. “Nobody told me that you took Conan up on Chilbert’s horse.”

“Didn’t you know that?” Ann asked. “Why, that was the top of the joke.”

“I was away when Conan got well enough to tell just what had happened, and I only got the story second hand.” He scrambled up behind a comrade. “Let’s get started. I want to have a drink with this man.”

I rode next to Ann at the head of the Cavalcade. “How did you happen to be passing by?” I queried.

Her face became sad. “Word of a Dane raid on the Loire came to us,” she said somberly. “I have kinsmen there. That is, I had. The house had been burned when we arrived.”

“Maybe your kinfolk escaped,” I suggested, but she shook her head.

“They would have come to us, I’m sure.”

My unfortunate, if inevitable, question had left her in a despondent mood I didn’t try to break. She would have to have it out with herself, and the sooner the better. I on my part had enough to occupy my mind. My hosts had imminent war on their hands, and there was no telling when it would break upon them. To what extent a friend’s war is one’s own is a question of some delicacy. Rationally I could justify non-participation, but there are so many times when obeying the dictates of common sense makes a man feel like a louse. My strongest hope was that a lull in action would give me the chance to leave gracefully. Conan, I knew, would give me a horse to replace the one I’d lost on his account.

In a couple of hours we came to the ford, and I saw that the barge I had stolen hadn’t been duplicated. It was the tag end of summer, however, the water was low, and we crossed easily to the banks where I’d first seen the girl I’d extracted from the Danes. I hoped she had emerged from her subsequent difficulties as fortunately as I.

A
BOUT
fifteen miles beyond the ford we came to Conan’s stronghold. It was only partially completed, but it was of solid stone. Except for church work or where Rome or Charlemagne had passed I had never seen a stone edifice before, and I halted to admire it. This was what had inspired Piers with the longings he’d never try to satisfy.

“Conan got the idea for it somewhere,” Jean said with satisfaction. “It’ll be thirty-five feet high when we’re through, with plenty of room for men to maneuver on top. What’s more, it’s ditched, with water around it deep enough to drown a man. That fort will need some taking.”

I agreed and rode on, noting that although there were wide fields under cultivation all the horses in sight were clustered in the shelter of the fort. There could be no surprise attack which could prevent the villeins from taking refuge, intact with families and food. These lands could be defended with a minimum of loss, and attackers working out from such a base could do so in the confidence that all would be well with their own when they returned. To possess such an island, one which the floods could sweep by and leave comparatively untroubled, was to have the upper hand in the world.

We crossed the ditch, and a wide one it was, over a wooden bridge which had been let down for us by a man on watch. The hall, not to mention the other buildings within, was an old Frankish wooden structure, but Ann told me that that, too, was to have a stone substitute in case by any chance the wall should be successfully stormed.

“I’ll arrange for dinner to be served as soon as possible,” she told me when our horses had been led away. “Jean will show you where you sleep when you’ve attended to the wine he was talking about.”

She smiled and turned away, but as she did so a girl came out of the hall and rushed to meet her. I knew that girl, and as the women embraced it came to me that she was one of the kinfolk whom Ann had mourned for dead. About the others, I was aware, she had been sadly right.

Jean and the other men, naturally interested, forgot about me, so I stood to one side watching. They all asked a lot of questions and had many bitter things to say about the Danes. But the fact that even the girl herself was alive was better news than they had expected, so on the whole they didn’t feel so bad.

Then one of the men happened to shift his position, and she saw me. Her mouth closed on a word, and she stared with no sign of welcome. The others turned to see what she was looking at, while I smiled uneasily.

“Oh, do you know Finnian?” Ann asked.

That was exactly the wrong thing to say. “He wouldn’t tell
me
his name,” the girl replied austerely, “though I asked him civilly.”

“I was busy,” I muttered lamely, wondering how it was that even the most brainless women had a genius for making a man feel like a fool. Not that this one was by any means brainless.

“Where did you meet him?” Ann pursued, and I mentally crossed myself.

“Down by the ford. He threatened to kill me with a fish spear.”

“Oh, no!” Ann’s voice was horrified.

“Oh, yes! And the next time I saw him,” the indictment went on remorselessly, “he was with the Danes. Friends with them,” she emphasized.

The men were scowling doubtfully, and I saw with regret that the bridge had been pulled up behind us. There were no readily understandable explanations, and I didn’t attempt to present them with feeble excuses. “Well, what’s going to happen?” I inquired shortly. “Are you going to let me go in peace or not?” That I would not longer accept their hospitality, even if for Conan’s sake they should continue to offer it, was a foregone conclusion.

But having made a dent in my peace of mind, she was satisfied. She had paid me back for the cavalier way in which circumstances had forced me to treat her. “Of course,” she said in a small, reflective voice, “he did save me from the Danes when they were getting ready to sell me for a slave.”

“Marie!” Ann’s tone contained a mixture of relief, amazement, and indignation. Jean threw his head back and shouted his mirth. I bitterly wondered what I had done to deserve meeting such a girl. Marie smiled, pleased with herself.

“I’m sorry, Finnian,” Ann apologized contritely for their doubt of me. “Why didn’t you say that in the first place, Marie?” She shook the girl, still partly angry with her. “Tell me what happened.”

“I don’t know exactly what did happen,” her cousin answered truthfully. “They were taking me away in one of their ships, then all of a sudden they landed, he threw me over the side, and carried me away.”

“How did you manage to shake a Dane loose from anything valuable?” a man asked respectfully.

“Poetry,” I replied. “He liked mine.” I could see they thought I had actually used some sort of spell, but they didn’t say anything.

I was tired and anxious to get at the wine Ann had mentioned, but that girl was always in my way. It was embarrassingly evident that something was expected of her, and an uncomfortable silence fell upon us. She flushed, thinking a moment, then went at it bravely. Coming quickly to me, she smiled, though half fearing I might rebuff her. “I don’t know you or where you’re going. Maybe after today or tomorrow I’ll never see you again. But at the worst time for me you were the best friend I could have, and that was good of you. Very good.”

It was well done, and, remembering how bitterly I had resented having to put myself in danger for her, I knew it was better than I deserved. Nevertheless, I could not in graciousness say my service was nothing. I winked at her. “I couldn’t bear the idea of so much Christian beauty being wasted on buzzard-faced Moorish infidels.”