Fire Song (37 page)

“Thinks they get sick maybe,” Fenice grunted, trying to produce a hacking cough that would make the guard shy away.

She succeeded better than she expected, the deep breaths made necessary by the coughing stimulating her feeling of nausea so that her bile rose in her throat, and she choked and gargled and spat. This was too much even for the guard, and he pointed to the tower where the noble prisoners were confined. Fenice stumbled across the bailey, dragging the heavy cart behind, and repeated to the guard outside that the soil buckets of the lords were to be emptied.

Here Fenice met the first check, for the guard on duty snarled that no one had given him any special order regarding the clearing of soil from the prisoners’ cells. Fenice’s first impulse was to run, but she realized that that would only betray her, and she stopped herself before she did more than shy away. She put out her hand toward her cart and then it came to her that if she missed this opportunity to get inside the tower, she might never have another.

“I wait then,” she whimpered, shivering with fear but squatting down beside the cart.

The guard made a disgusted sound and raised a hand to strike, but even as he was about to drive the stinking nuisance away he realized that the gate guard had passed the creature. It was near the end of the watch and he was tired, but he knew that his replacement would be annoyed and complain if he had to accompany the dung collector. It was not worth the trouble to save a few steps, he thought, and growled, “Oh, curse you, come on then,” and unlocked the door of the tower.

Fenice almost made the mistake of jumping to her feet in her eagerness. Fortunately, the hem of the tunic she wore had caught under the clumsy rag wrappings on her feet, and she fell forward sprawling. She had an instant to be again grateful to the kindly powers that were helping and guiding her before the guard cursed again and poked at her with the long-shafted billhook he carried. In her desire to get inside, she was already rolling away, so she was barely pricked, but rage boiled up in her. Fenice had often bowed meekly under insult and oppression from her equals and superiors, but she was not accustomed to physical gestures of cruelty and contempt from those she knew to be beneath her.

Still, she contained herself, grabbed her pail, and shuffled into the tower. A torch was flaring on the wall, and Fenice saw with a surge of satisfaction that the door of the cell was not locked with a key but with a large bar. She hesitated, instinctively waiting for the guard to open the door for her, but he poked her again with the billhook, and she realized she would have to lift the bar and open the door herself while he presented his weapon as a threat to the prisoners within.

She set her bucket down by the wall and began to struggle with the bar. It was almost impossible for her to get it off its hooks, and she was terrified that the guard would realize she was a woman, but he said nothing as she strained, and at last she was able to push it out of its rests, set it on the floor, and pull the door open. As she entered the cell, a new fear seized her—that it would be so dark in the unlit interior that she would not be able to recognize Aubery. However, the cell was very small, and she saw the faces of both men as they sat up, startled by the grating of the hinges and the sudden light. One was William Mauduit. She did not know the other.

The slop bucket was in the corner. Fenice shuffled two steps, seized it, and backed out, closed the door behind her, emptied the bucket into hers, barely opened the door wide enough to toss the bucket back inside, and closed it again, levering the bar up and into its braces as quickly as she could. She had no intentions of permitting the prisoners to cause trouble or giving the guard any reason for suspicion before she discovered in which cell Aubery was being kept—if he were imprisoned here rather than in the donjon.

As the bar dropped home, the guard lowered his billhook with a slightly relieved expression. Fenice went out to empty the bucket into the barrel on the cart, came in again, and preceded the guard up the winding stair to the second level of the tower. Here she repeated the procedure, noting that the Earl of Warwick and Gilbert Seagrave were the occupants of the cell. Wearily she trudged down the stairs to empty the bucket, came up climbing more and more slowly as her hope dimmed.

On the third level, she again set down her bucket and began the struggle with the bar. She was shaking with effort and sickness, nearly blinded by tears. As she heaved desperately at the heavy piece of wood, she prayed for help, for the strength to endure until she found Aubery.

This time it seemed as if her prayer was not to be answered. The bar stuck, and the guard prodded her angrily with the billhook, however, the prick as the weapon went through her threadbare tunic and thin shift, and the rage and fear generated in her lent strength to her arms. She shoved frantically, the bar flew up out of its hooks and fell to the floor with a loud thud, and the guard growled threateningly. Hastily, Fenice opened the door, and found her prayer had been answered after all. Aubery was just getting to his feet as the light of the torch on the landing illuminated the cell.

Overwhelmed with joy and relief, Fenice hesitated. Uttering a louder curse, the guard shoved her with the billhook. Her eyes on Aubery, she tripped over the rag foot wrappings and fell to her knees, crawling forward toward the slop bucket out of the line of the guard’s weapon. But the brief hesitation had shown her that her husband had been hurt. His face was bruised all over with one eye blackened and swollen shut, and his gown was torn and stained with blood. The rage Fenice had so long contained exploded.

She got to her feet, grabbed the bucket, whirled toward her tormentor, and threw the contents into his face. His shriek of surprise and disgust was cut off by a mouthful of filth, and he dropped his weapon to claw at the disgusting matter clotting his eyes and mouth. Aubery dove toward the fallen weapon, but Fenice had run forward too, swinging the bucket with every ounce of strength she had, taking the guard in the stomach. As he bent over, Aubery rose and slammed the butt of the billhook across the back of the man’s neck, where it was not protected by his helmet. He did not cry out but fell and lay like a log.

“Oh, Aubery, are you badly hurt?” Fenice cried.

And Aubery, who had begun to ask, “Who—” gasped instead, “Fenice? Fenice?” and then could say no more as he nearly strangled on an astonished joy that changed quickly to shock and horror.

But Fenice had forgotten her appearance in the sudden dreadful realization that her furious act had spoiled any hope of freeing the prisoners in the near future. This attack on the guard would surely be taken for an attempt at rescue. Vigilance would be increased. Worse yet, the commune might come to the conclusion that the attempt had been intended to free Aubery in particular, and God knew what they would do to him or where they would hide him. Could they conceal what she had done by killing the guard and hiding his body?

As Fenice’s eyes passed frantically around the cell in a hopeless, nearly insane quest for a place of concealment, a better answer came to her. There was no place to hide the guard, of course, but the arrow slits in the wall showed gray sky, not black, and she remembered that Rafe had said the changing of the guard took place at sunrise. He had told her also that there was always some confusion as one group replaced the other. If the bodies were exchanged, Fenice thought, if Aubery’s robe were put on the guard and he put on the guard’s clothing, Aubery could escape by pretending to be a guard going home after his tour of duty was over.

“Quick,” she cried, “quick, take off your gown and put on the guard’s armor.”

Aubery was still staring at her in numb, revolted amazement, and Fenice quickly outlined her fears and the one hope she believed remained, that he could escape during the confusion while new guards were replacing those going off duty.

“For though some may lodge here in the keep, some must go home,” she said. “Oh, I am sure some go home or go out to eat at an inn. Is this not possible?”

Although Aubery’s lips parted as if he were about to answer her, he seemed unable to find words, and he turned away, not being able to bear looking at her.

“I am sorry,” Fenice sobbed, “but when I saw they had hurt you—” She choked back her tears as well as possible. This was no time to make excuses. “I am sorry,” she repeated, “but you must escape—you must!”

Still without speaking, Aubery knelt and started to strip the guard. He knew what Fenice had said about the need for him to escape was true. The reason Aubery was alone in this topmost cell was that he had not yielded tamely to capture. After the crowd of armed militia had rushed in to make prisoners of the unarmed and unsuspecting guests, Aubery had, he remembered, overturned the table at which he had been sitting and also wielded his bench as a weapon. Once the English nobles were imprisoned, the mayor of Pons, speaking for the whole commune, had judged his captives guilty of deliberately setting their men to steal, rape, and riot. Aubery alone cried foul at the mayor’s ruling.

Nor had he been a pacific prisoner. Originally Aubery had been in the cell on the lowest floor with William Mauduit, his ferocity, grand clothing, and the fact that he had entered Pons in company with the Earl of Warwick having deluded the commune into believing him a nobleman rather than a simple knight. However, Aubery had induced Mauduit to help him rush the guard and the town official who had come to name their ransoms. After that he had been isolated on the top floor, being considered too prone to encourage rebellion in others to have any companion and too dangerous to keep below, so near the outer door.

When the commune heard of this successful attack on the guard, Aubery thought, they might well come to the conclusion that his ransom was not worth the trouble he was causing and have him executed. At the least, they would load him down with chains and fasten him to the walls. Fenice was right, he must escape. As he thought her name, he glanced at her again and shuddered. From somewhere about her person she had drawn a long knife and was advancing on the guard, from whom he had removed helmet and habergeon.

“What are you doing?” Aubery choked, thinking she was about to plunge the knife into the unconscious man.

“I want his shirt,” Fenice said. “I must mop up the filth on the landing. If the new guard comes up to check on you, he must not find anything to rouse his suspicions. The slave might have spilled some soil, but he would have been made to clean it up.”

“You are mad!” Aubery snarled, but he pulled off the guard’s tunic.

Still, he made no move to help her, standing up and beginning to remove his own clothing with his back to her. Aubery might have been somewhat less furious had the disguise Fenice assumed been less disgusting, but his rage would not have been much diminished. The fury that made him barely able to control his desire to beat her until he could no longer raise his arm was as much a result of his own helplessness over the past two days as of disgust or recognition of the increased danger to all that her action had created. It was the final indignity, capping his misuse and capture by a crowd of ignoble commoners, that he should be freed from his cell by a
woman
in the revolting guise of a soil gatherer.

He heard Fenice retching and sobbing on the landing, and an ugly sense of satisfaction stirred in him. She had gotten herself into this, he thought as he manhandled the still-limp guard into his tunic and gown, let her enjoy it. Then he bound and gagged the man with his cross garters, laid him out in the darkest corner of the cell, and began to try to cram himself into the guard’s clothing. Everything was too short—Aubery had to tie the guard’s hose around his hips rather than his waist, which did not matter because the tunic and habergeon would hide it. Fortunately the man was fat, and the armor went over Aubery, even though it bound badly across the shoulders.

“Let us go,” Fenice begged from the doorway. “Please, let us go.”

“Go out and pretend to empty your pail,” Aubery said, so angry that he did not even think that he might be exposing her to danger. “Then come in again. If someone is watching or passes by, that will serve as a reason why no guard is at the outer door. I must speak to the others. Perhaps it would be better for the Earl or Seagrave to go—”

“No!” Fenice cried.

Aubery lifted a hand as if to strike her but did not, snarling, “You are too filthy to touch. Get down the stairs, or I will kick you down them.”

Fenice stifled another sob and lifted her bucket. She had known how Aubery would react to what she had done, but she had never thought he would find out. She was weak and shaking from nausea, from terror, from shame. Clinging to the wall, she crept down the stairs and out the door, lifted the cover from the barrel, pretended to dump the contents of the bucket, and set it down to cover the barrel again. Slowly she lifted it and went in again, too frightened even to pray that the noblemen would refuse Aubery’s offer, but the Mother of Mercy and the saints had not forgotten her.

“No, I think it would be too dangerous,” Fenice heard a voice say, and Aubery reply, “I do not think you should consider my safety, my lord, but what would be best for all.” She crept up a few steps, holding her breath while she listened for the response, in her anxiety nearly cursing her husband’s stubbornness and courage. The earl’s laugh, which she recognized from the inn where they had met, gave her hope, and his answer fulfilled it.

“We are not considering
your
safety, Sir
Aubery,” Warwick said, “but our own. We all agree that only one can go. We could get out of this tower, but I do not think there is any way the rest of us could escape from the keep itself. With your face battered like that, you have the best chance. No one will recognize you, probably your own mother would have trouble doing so, and your accent will not give you away if you must answer questions, because you can slur the words, and no one will wonder at it.”