What the Heart Sees (2 page)

“Sir Hubert tells me some of your arrows have been able to pierce through chain mail. Is this correct?”

“Not mine, Sire,” said Alfred the Oaf. “I can pierce through skin and fur well enough, and mayhap a leather jerkin if it’s not too thick, but my arrows are not fit against iron.”

Sir Thomas tilted his head slightly as Sir Hubert murmured something in his ear.

“The girl, you say? Where?”

Sir Hubert scanned the row of grimy faces. “Cassandra, the fletcher’s daughter. Come forward and acknowledge your liege.”

Cassie closed her eyes briefly, braced herself, then stepped out of the shadow of John the verderer.

“Forward. To me, girl.”

Cassie obeyed the sound of grinding rocks and moved away from the wall, feeling the eyes of every man turning to watch.

Sir Thomas’s brows drew together as she approached, and with good reason. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder. She was as slender as the bow she carried, with large green eyes and a face that belonged to a grimy little cherub.

“Sir Hubert informs me your arrows are the ones that have been piercing through mail. Is this true?”

Cassie moistened her lips. “They are my father’s arrows, my lord, I merely send them on their way.”

“And what makes these arrows so keen as to break through iron links?”

She kept her eyes focused on the toes of his boots as she handed him one of the ashwood arrows to inspect. The shaft was as long as her arm, the goosefeather fletching smooth and precisely trimmed. It was the tip, however, that varied from the blunt-nosed bodkins that were launched from most of the longbows. Made of twice-tempered steel, hammered flat and honed to a fine point, it could slice through leather like a knife and penetrate all but the thickest plates of jazzerant armor. The tip had another fearsome feature, one he acknowledged immediately with his soldier’s eye: It was double barbed, like a fish hook, and seated loose enough on the shaft that it would come off in the flesh and make even the smallest wound fatal.

“Why do all the men not have these arrows?”

“They take longer to make, my lord,” she answered quietly.

Sir Thomas narrowed his eyes. “And he trusts these few to you?”

The words a mere girl went unspoken, but she heard them as clear as the bell that tolled alarms. So did the men who knew her temper as well as her skill, and several of them made a sound in their throats, loud enough for Sir Thomas to take note.

The blue eyes scanned the faces, and their smiles faded. He looked back at Cassie, noting the two hot spots of color on her cheeks.

“I detect some champions among your peers. Before I can be convinced, however, I would see a demonstration.”

She raised her eyes then and looked calmly, directly into his. “I have but a score of barbed arrows left, my lord, yet if you would have me squander one by demonstrating that I can pluck an acorn off a tree branch, I would happily oblige.”

In the immediate silence that followed, Cassie nearly bit her tongue in half. Beside her, Sir Hubert’s chest was already swelling like a bladder filling with hot air. His face had darkened and his fists had clenched. He was a tic away from roaring at her insolence when Lord Purefoy chuckled and raised a gloved hand to stop him spluttering.

“Very well, girl. Come with me. I will choose a worthy acorn.”

Cassie’s knees very nearly buckled, for she realized how close she had come to being flung over the wall by Sir Hubert.

Taking two strides to each of his one, she followed Sir Thomas as he retraced his steps across the tower, down the stone stairs and along the wall-walk that skirted the long stretch of battlements. They passed through the second of the four towers that rose above the corners of the massive keep without stopping and descended again, striding toward the third tower, directly opposite the one where she had been posted.

As they climbed the stairs, the heavy thumping sound they had been hearing all night came clearer and she was somewhat startled to see that it had not come from de Caux’s camp at all. It came from the huge wooden trebuchet that was hurling stones at the castle gates.

The catapult had been maneuvered into position at the edge of the field. As she watched, the great beam of the arm was being winched back against the rear wheels and a large boulder, the weight of which required two beefy men to carry it, was seated into the canvas pouch. Upon a signal, the men backed away and a lever released the tension in the ropes. The arm swung forward and sent the boulder flying across the two hundred yards of charred fields to smash against the thick oak gates.

When it struck, she could feel the wall shudder beneath her feet and hear the rubble packed inside the wall shifting with the impact.

“The gates are holding thus far,” Sir Thomas said quietly, “but the noise grows tiresome. Think you that you could pluck one of those acorns off the tree?”

Cassie glanced through the teeth of the wall again. The men working the catapult were well protected, the iron scales of their long hauberks glittered in the weak morning light, covering them like long gowns from shoulder to foot. Apparently de Caux’s armorer had come up with his own ingenious design to thwart the vulnerability of the porcupine legs.

Sir Thomas signaled to Sir Hubert, who had brought some of the barbed arrows with him. Taking one, the dark knight smiled gently and handed it to Cassie.

“The distance may prove as much an impediment as the armor, girl, and I’ll not hold it against you if the acorns go unskewered.”

Cassie took the arrow and held the piercing blue gaze a moment longer before turning to study the catapult again. It took five men to work the war machine, though there were half a dozen more standing nearby to steady the wheels if they shifted off the blocks. Two worked the winch, two loaded the canvas pouch, one released the lever. The latter rivalled Sir Hubert in size and girth, with arms like tree stumps and a form bulked like a small mountain. She suspected the trigger mechanism would normally require the strength of two men, but this behemoth was able to handle it with only a bellowed roar as aid.

She nodded to herself and wiped the mist out of her eyes. She slipped a leather guard on her fingers and ran the feather fletching between her lips to smooth the flights, then raised the bow and stood sidelong to the wall. She nocked the arrow to the string and rested her hand lightly to her cheek, pushing slowly back on the bow until her left arm was straight and the tension in the string was at its peak. Sighting along the shaft, she stopped her breath, plucked her fingers free and sent the arrow on its way.

Both knights leaned forward eagerly to follow the hissing flight of the arrow. They saw it streak straight and true to the chest of the behemoth, punching through quilted gambeson and linked mail. He toppled backward off his balance, staggering with the force of the blow, his hands clutching for the shaft that was now buried half deep in his chest. As he spun around in disbelief, the watchers on the wall could clearly see the bloodied tip of the arrow protruding from his back.

Two stumbling steps and the mountain crashed to the ground. By then Cassie had nocked and fired two more of the barbed arrows, felling the pair who stood by the handles of the winch. The two men carrying a fresh boulder toward the catapult dropped their burden and ran for the protection of the forest, but they too were sent sprawling to the mud with arrows jutting from their spines.

Cassie lowered the bow and flexed her fingers to ease the tingling.

Sir Thomas said nothing for a full minute. He continued to stare at the five slain men, part of him wanting to shout with satisfaction, part of him understanding the horror of a weapon that could pierce armor at a distance that offered no possible defense against it.

“My God,” he murmured finally. “My good sweet God.”

“De Caux will be swallowing his liver,” Sir Hubert predicted. “He’ll not find too many volunteers willing to take their place.”

“Perhaps not, but he still outnumbers us ten to one and even the strongest of castles can eventually be undermined.”

Realizing there was a third pair of ears privy to their conversation, Sir Thomas turned to Cassie. “We need more of these arrows. How fast can your father make them?”

Hoping for some small crumb of praise for her marksmanship, Cassie held back her disappointment. “He is only one man, my lord. Perhaps if he had help—?”

“Go to him. Tell him he will have all the help he needs. The castle armory will be at his disposal. As well, the castellan keeps a ready supply of iron and steel plate in the storage rooms below the keep. He will be told to provide your father with anything he needs.”

“Yes, my lord.”

She turned to go but a further command halted her.

“When you have done this, join me in the great hall. You will take a meal with me that I might praise you properly for your skill at...plucking acorns.”

Cassie felt a surge of pride course through her veins. “Yes, my lord.”

“Oh...and when you are speaking to the castellan, tell him to arrange for a bath and some clean garments. I find myself with an appetite for the first time in many weeks and I’ll not be off-put by dirty fingers and the smell of an overfilled slops pail.”

“A courteous way to say: you stink like a dung heap,” she muttered to herself.

She had found her father working in the small smithy located against the wall of the inner bailey. He looked like a Moor, covered head to toe in black soot, but he grinned through the grime and sweat when he heard how the lord of the castle had singled out his daughter, how she had proved her skill, and how, now, with men put to the hammering and cutting, he would be able to make a hundred arrows an hour rather than half a dozen.

With neither page nor lackey immediately at hand, he sent her on her way to the vast storage rooms that lay beneath the castle keep.

“As many
dorés
of iron as you can carry,” he commanded. “Any hammered sheets if possible as well. ‘Twould save time in the forge if the iron has been tempered once already.”

Armed with two large canvas sacks and a horn-sided lantern, Cassie found the covered passage that followed the outer wall of the main keep. She went down a narrow, twisting staircase that uncoiled to the gloomy, cavernous undercroft and had to shake away visions of ghosts and huge salivating creatures. Tallow candles were set in black cressets mounted on every other stone arch, but the light they produced was weak and flickered in the drafty passage. Some had even blown out, which made for long gaps between leaving one pool of dim light and hastening to the next.

The outer wall glistened with dampness and smelled of mold and dankness. The low ceiling was vaulted to carry the tremendous weight of the castle walls and while she was not considered tall for a girl, Cassie was still forced to duck in places to avoid scraping her head on one of the thicker arched supports. The air was cold, her skin was clammy. Her clothes were already damp from the morning dew and drizzle, so the chill struck clear through to the bone.

There were so many storage rooms and niches carved into the stone base, she hoped she had not gone in the wrong direction after descending the spiral staircase. The air was close; she had the sensation of the walls pressing in on her, and she imagined shadowy figures lurking behind each archway. She had no idea where the donjons were—not that she even wanted to know such a thing—but she knew they must be down here somewhere too, and again her mind flared with images of chained prisoners, gaunt from starvation, pale as wraiths.

A shudder quickened her footsteps. She came to the end of a wide passage, as her father said she would, and found the narrow door that led to yet another vaulted chamber. Normally there would have been a pair of guards placed on the door, and indeed she saw a table and two small stools to mark their post. Since the siege had begun, all able-bodied men had been sent to the walls, for if the castle fell, there would be no need to worry over what remained of the corn and ale—neither of which were in great supply. De Caux had burned the fields and destroyed the winter harvest. Storage rooms that should have been bursting with sacks of grain, bins of corn, mountains of apples and carrots were all but empty.

Cassie heard what sounded like the scrape of a boot on the floor behind her and whirled around, holding the lantern high. Prickles flooded down her spine and caused her knees to knock together. She pressed her lips into a thin line and put a hand to the dagger she wore at her belt.

“Is someone there?”

Her voice echoed hollowly off the stone walls and bounced around the vacant storage rooms. She heard another sound and this time her ears were focused enough to identify the shuffling of tiny scurrying feet.

“Rats, for pity’s sake,” she muttered.

She expelled a long, slow breath and tried to grasp hold of her wits again.

“Courage,” she whispered to herself. “Courage, courage, courage silly girl. Fetch the iron, take it to Father, find the seneschal and...”

And what? Take a bath? Put on clean garments? Take a meal with Lord Thomas Purefoy as if it was her right and due? As if it was a common day occurrence for the daughter of a fletcher to even dream of sitting above the salt?

She shook her head and lifted the latch to open the door. It was black as pitch beyond the opening and she was thankful now for the lantern. Forcing her feet to move forward again, she focused straight ahead, passing by arched oaken doors, vaulted storage rooms where tournament armor and arms were kept.