Master of Shadows (14 page)

22

The ground rose sharply and they had to dig their heels into their horses’ flanks to keep them moving forward. The air around and above them was thick and heavy, like blame, and Lẽna felt that even time was slowing, turning to treacle. Jamie, Shug and the other of the younger men – the silent one whose name she had still not deciphered – were quicker off the mark and put some distance between the other two in their bid to reach the high ground. Some hundreds of yards ahead, silhouetted by moonlight against a monstrous storm cloud, Lẽna made out the shape of a rocky outcrop. For an instant she mistook it for a ruined building, before realising it was a natural formation.

A few spots of rain were falling now, plump outriders of a downpour to come, and the rocks on the hill’s summit offered the only obvious prospect of shelter. The leader cracked the long leads down on to her horse’s back from behind her, and the animal whinnied in protest and bolted forward.

Lẽna was rocked backwards in her saddle but gripped tight with her knees and used her stomach muscles to pull herself upright. In his eagerness to reach the rocks before the storm proper, the leader beat his mount’s sides until it was first alongside Lẽna’s and then slightly ahead. He was still holding the reins and still nominally in control, but no longer watching her as closely as before.

Lẽna had thought of little but her old war wound for the past two hours. The arrowhead had pierced her shoulder front and back, the shaft passing beneath her right collarbone. The surgeon had afterwards found it straightforward enough to snip through the wood of the shaft with a great pair of shears, before pulling it out of the wound. There had been bleeding and pain but nothing compared to the exquisite agony of having her dislocated shoulder reset. They had given her a leather strap to bite on, and when the bonesetter jerked her arm and popped the ball joint back into its socket, with a crack like a slammed drawer, she nipped the thing cleanly in two with her teeth.

Her French countrymen called her the hero of Orleans ever after, and a portent of final victory over the invader.

Fired by the sight of the banner borne by the maiden, they had pressed the English all the harder, until the squatters fled from their trenches and redoubts and the siege was lifted. She had been something clean – something honest. Into a war of sullied men and tainted politics she had arrived from nowhere like a blade freshly forged and mill-sharpened. That she knew the ways of the warrior had been beyond question. They had all of them, at one time or another, seen her stand and fight, cleaving the shield walls and harvesting her foes like wheat. But she came with more – with the strength of angels in her limbs and the very word of God upon her tongue.

Hugh Moray had taken her on to his horse and galloped through the city gates. Within the walls of the relieved city her wounds had been dressed, the arm and shoulder strapped, and then time had done almost all else that was required. The joint, however, had been altered for ever, and while the muscles, tendons and ligaments had adjusted to their new positions, there was always a little … slack.

The years spent working in the forest with axe and hammer had given her new strength, but still there was play around the joint. She found, by accident the first time, while trying to reposition a wagonload of logs, that what had been dislocated once was a little more inclined to dislocate again. Having learned the action required to free ball from socket – and the opposite move to put them back together – she had found it equally painful every time thereafter. But pain could be borne, while other indignities and sufferings could not.

Jamie had applied the second binding himself, but while he had been careful to pull it tight, knot-tying was evidently a skill he lacked. As she rose and fell in the saddle, so her arms had applied rhythmic pressure to the ropes and to the knots holding them. She had been oblivious at first, her mind on Patrick Grant and Robert Jardine and the objectives of the nameless leader of their little company. But then an unmistakable sensation had captured her attention: the tightness around her arms and shoulders had lessened. It was not as though her bindings had come anything like loose enough that she might shake her arms free, but they had loosened nonetheless. It was beholden upon her now to take advantage of the situation.

As her horse pressed on up the rise, she twisted her right shoulder, with all of her might, against the tension of the rope holding her arms in place across her back, and felt the always sickening pop of dislocation. As her arm flopped downwards, so too did the loops around her elbows. While the horses continued uphill, and the leader kept his attention on the way ahead, she shrugged the slackened bindings down her forearms and over her wrists and hands. Knowing only too well what had to happen next, she raised her left foot out of the stirrup and flung her leg over her horse’s back. With her right foot freed as well, she dropped to the ground. Landing on her feet, she allowed the momentum to throw her forward. She took the impact on her dislocated shoulder and grunted as the joint was forced back into place.

Sensing chaotic movement behind him and then hearing the sound of a fall, Angus Armstrong looked back and saw the woman sprawled on the hillside. Her horse had continued to trot on without her and he pulled on its reins and those of his own to bring both to a halt. He dismounted and ran back, momentarily disregarding any risk of approaching her unarmed, trussed as she was and now face down in the grass.

He reached her and rolled her on to her back. Her eyes were open, but although she looked stunned, she seemed otherwise uninjured. He helped her rise to her knees, her arms still behind her back.

They were both on their knees and facing the tor when a burst of sheet lightning turned the sky bright as day. On a ledge of granite high above them stood a fragile figure clad in a dazzling white shift. Her face was upturned to the heavens, her arms raised in an attitude of prayer.

23

Another cramp gripped Crista’s body, but not as strongly as before. As it eased, the fist in her gut unclenching, she felt a flow of warmth between her legs. The darkness that had enveloped her, shrouded her, was torn aside by a burst of blinding white light. It flickered and pulsed, its intensity rising and falling, so that it seemed to shimmer, as a third peal of thunder, the loudest yet, rolled over the world like the wrath of an angry God. She blinked, dazzled and momentarily blinded, and then, feeling a second rush of wetness, looked down to see that the front of her nightdress was dark with blood. It was pooling around her feet, and she craned her neck to check the backs of her thighs and saw more there.

From her position on the slope below, Lẽna stared at the vision that seemed to glow as though lit from within. All in an instant she felt her heart flood with a love she thought had left her long ago, and for ever.

The rain fell and her heart beat fast, and as she stared at the vision … the vision met her gaze. Filled with sudden ecstasy, she felt she was a girl once more, the girl she had been, the girl who had led an army to victory and who had stood with the dauphin, her hand in his, in the moments before he stepped forward and dropped to his knees and the crown was placed upon his head.

As quickly as it had come, the lightning blinked out. Blind in the sudden darkness but filled with a rush of energy and power, she leapt to her feet.

Back in the darkness, Crista ran her hands down the front of her nightdress and felt the thick wetness of her own blood. It was her first bleed, but she was none the wiser – she thought she must be dying. In horror and fear, she dropped to her knees, and pitched face forward on to the shelf of rock.

When the lightning came a second time, just moments later, the ledge was empty – the apparition vanished.

‘You wanted to see an angel,’ said Lẽna, turning to her captor. ‘Well now you have.’

She glimpsed the look of wonder on his face as she brought her forehead crashing down on to the bridge of his nose. Quick as a striking snake, she drew her head back and butted him again, with even greater force.

‘But she came for
me
,’ she said.

He toppled sideways, semi-conscious, and hit the ground hard. A sheet of rain, so dense it might have been a waterfall, sluiced across the hillside, drenching everything in an instant. The leader moaned, and there came the shouts of the younger men. Another flash of lightning turned night to day, and for the moment that it lasted she saw the three of them, dismounted at the base of the tor and holding their horses by their reins, looking around in near panic.

When the darkness returned, Lẽna sat down heavily. The pain from her shoulder was considerable, but she closed her mind to it as she worked her hands, still tied at the wrists, under her booted feet. She heard movement from the downed man and reached for him where he lay. He tensed at her touch and cried out.

‘Jamie!’ he bellowed, trying to rise. ‘Here to me, now! She’s loose!’

He had made it on to his knees and she swung both hands, knitted together at the knuckles, with all the strength she had earned in the woods. She thought of him as the stubborn trunk of a tree as the work-hardened heels of her hands met his jaw and she heard a crunch as some or other bone in his face was parted from its mooring. He dropped to the ground. She felt for his belt and located his knife. Drawing it swiftly, she sat and gripped the handle between her heels, then slid the ropes holding her wrists down the length of the upthrust blade. Her hands parted easily and she was free to turn her attention to the other men, now running towards her out of the dark.

She thought about killing him where he lay – opening the vein in his neck with his own knife and letting him bleed out – but the memory of the vision stayed her hand. She could similarly have dispatched the trio searching for her on the storm-lashed hillside, and her muscles fairly thrummed with the knowledge and skill required by the task. But instead she let them be, and for the same reason.

She had seen the claret red upon the angel’s white garb and had understood the message in a heartbeat. There was blood to be spilled on the path back to her God, but not his and not theirs. The necessary sacrifice was hers and hers alone. She knew it now as she had known it long ago – as she had always known it.

Thunder cracked and lightning flashed around her as she followed the contour of the hill. Her most urgent need was to be out of sight of any pursuers, and she leaned to her left, trailing one hand against the sodden grass of the slope rising steeply beside her. She heard a distant shout and guessed that one of them had found their leader. There were more calls as they sought and found one another in the dark, but she could tell she was putting distance and the curve of the hill between her and them. The torrent washed over her in sheets, like all the tears she had kept unshed down through the years. She realised she was crying too, and wiped the back of her hand uselessly across her eyes and nose.

With sudden anger and disgust she realised she was crying, at least in part, for herself. She wept too for her bold protector Hugh Moray, murdered in his bed long ago, his throat slit from ear to ear on the orders of Robert Jardine. No one had foreseen his treachery, not even she who heard the word of God. Jardine it was who had ordered more deaths besides, seeing to it that a score of his fellow Scotsmen of the Garde Ecossaise were slaughtered in one night, so that he might steal her away and sell her to her enemies for the promise of coins and lands.

When they came for her at Compiègne, they wore the colours of the Burgundians, allies of the English. In truth, though, they were traitor Scots, border Reivers from Hawkshaw with Jardine’s Judas coins in their purses. They had turned their coats and betrayed their French masters. She was the maiden they had been hired to protect, a prize of inestimable value. Now her life and death would be the making of their ambitious Scots master …

The rain stopped – or rather, she was suddenly beyond its reach. Behind her, above her, a near-vertical wall of black, darker than the sky around it, rose towards infinity. Within the mass of cloud, jagged thorns of lightning flashed like signs of life and further crescendos of thunder still rolled in all directions.

The storm cloud was moving away from her, though, and she had run out from under its baleful canopy. She was headed downhill into cooler air, her way ahead illuminated by moonlight. At the base of the slope she looked up at the stars, reassured herself that she was still heading eastwards, and pressed on. Her clothing was soaked through, and despite her exertions she was beginning to feel cold. The hairs on her arms rose up, pulling goose bumps of skin with them, and she shuddered. Her shoulder ached and she wondered if she had relocated it properly.

She was on a clear path, well trodden by people and animals, and she hoped she was back on the same trail her captors had been leading her along. Surely it would pass through or close to some vestige of civilisation?

She almost collided with the horses before she saw them. They were standing in the middle of the track, head to tail for comfort, their bulk neatly blocking her way. As she approached, the closest of them began to shy away. It was the horse she had been riding, a grey mare, as well as the one belonging to the leader, a black gelding with four white socks. A wave of pleasure and relief enveloped her. She looked heavenwards and mouthed a thank-you to providence.

She made a soft shushing noise as she advanced more slowly, before gently reaching out and clasping the tangle of reins that hung low beneath the mare’s nose. Next she reached for the other horse, and when she had them properly positioned, she tied the gelding’s reins to the long leads that had enabled the leader to control her horse on the trail. She gently stroked her mare’s neck, shushing all the while, before hopping one foot into the stirrup and heaving herself into the saddle. Her shoulder complained bitterly at the effort, but she settled back gratefully and turned her mount towards the east once more.

On horseback she had the speed and the freedom she required. If Sir Robert Jardine was somewhere ahead, waiting by the pilgrims’ trail – perhaps with Patrick Grant as his prisoner – then she desired to find him first, and in circumstances that were hers to control. She used her heels to coax the mare into a trot, keen to put many miles between herself and her former captors.

She had done enough damage to the leader, she was sure, to make it unlikely that he would be in any condition to follow her that night, and by morning she would be well on her way. For all her elation at the events of the past hour, fatigue hung around her shoulders like a damp shawl. The adrenalin that had coursed through her body had ebbed away and her senses were dulled. She would need to rest, and soon.

It was therefore understandable that she failed to notice the presence, in the deeper dark, of a third horse and the rider upon it.

While he watched her, he thought of Badr Khassan buried in a shallow grave in a cave far to the east, and wondered how many loved ones he would leave in the dark before the end.

It had taken an age to excavate a grave large enough to take the big man’s body, and when at last he had manoeuvred him into position, he realised he had not the heart to cover him with rocks and dusty soil. Remembering how they had left Jessie Grant, in the tomb under a nameless cairn on a hillside within a few miles’ ride of his childhood home, he had searched outside the cave until he found a stand of long-stemmed white flowers growing by the side of the stream that flowed reluctantly from the cave mouth. He thought they might be lilies, and he gathered armfuls and bore them back to the graveside. When he had enough, he placed them over Badr’s body, starting at his feet and leaving his face clear for as long as possible.

Finally he laid more flowers, just the drooping heads and petals, over the Moor’s face until he was completely covered and the cave was filled with their heavy scent. He looked down at his clothes and saw they were streaked with sticky golden pollen, like spiders’ webs.

‘I will hope to meet you on the road,’ he said, and turned and walked towards the light beyond the cave.

He had journeyed for many weeks since then and always into the west, before alighting on the pilgrims’ path leading from southern France to Galicia and on towards the shrine of St James.

Badr’s words in the cave had been his constant companions, holding his hand upon the road.

The Bear had a daughter! She might be his own age by now, or near enough. The very thought of it almost made him laugh, or perhaps cry. And then too there was the big man’s lost love, Isabella. What of her?

In spite of those twin fascinations, however, and the lure of Constantinople in the east, it was towards the west and Patrick Grant’s great love that he had been irresistibly drawn. Jessie Grant it was who had raised him and cared for him – had died for the love of him – and yet out here in the west was his true source, his wellspring.

In ways that none but he could understand – none save any other gifted with awareness of the spinning of the world, and the journey into the empty dark, and the push of all the souls within his own orbit – he knew with unshakeable faith that he would find her path and cross it.

His own mount was all but worn out by hard travelling and he had been on the point of approaching the mare and the gelding himself, and taking them for his own use, when the push had warned him of another’s approach. At first glance the trousers, the heavy boots and short hair of the bedraggled figure that emerged from the darkness of the trail made him assume he was dealing with a man. Only when he had had time to study the body language, particularly the posture adopted in the saddle, did he realise it was a woman who was helping herself to the unexpected bounty.

From the darkness beside the trail he had watched her fix the tack to her own liking, setting the black gelding so that he would have to trot along at her rear. She was well used to horses, that much was obvious, but it was her whole demeanour that had him sit up and pay attention.

She was on the run – and from challenging circumstances by the look of things. From her wrists there hung short lengths of rope, evidence of recent imprisonment, and the droop of her right shoulder suggested a wound or injury of some kind. There was fresh blood on her forehead. All the while she prepared the horses, she kept an eye back down the trail in the direction from which she had come. Despite the signs of trouble, however, and of the possibility of pursuit, she exuded no hint of anxiety, far less of fear. If she had recently been tested, it appeared she had passed and come out on top – and was single-mindedly capitalising on the advantage gained.

By the time she had mounted the grey mare and set out towards the east, John Grant’s interest was more than piqued. The push that had preceded this individual had told him someone was coming, as usual. But now, as she and the horses melted into the dark, an entirely new sensation bade him follow. It felt as though some sort of cord was pulling him into her wake. He smiled at the unexpectedness of it, and his inability to resist. He felt as tethered and bound as the black gelding, and he realised, with a not unpleasant shiver, that all the hairs on his neck were standing on end.

‘I hear you, old Bear,’ he whispered.

John Grant followed at a distance, so far to the rear that his quarry was always out of sight in the darkness ahead. From time to time he heard the clatter of hooves, or the sound of the horses snorting or tossing their heads so that their bridles rattled. At all times, too, there was the detectable presence of the woman herself. He felt like a dog fox following its prey into the night.

He glimpsed movement on the trail ahead and realised it was the rump of the grey mare, her languid, rolling gait faintly illuminated by the half-moon. He had a split second to notice that the horse was riderless before a dark shape flew out of the darkness to his left. Landing lightly on his own horse’s back, the figure lunged at him with powerful arms, striking him squarely on the chest so that he toppled, arse over tit, out of the saddle. He landed flat on his back on the soft earth of the trail. Whoever had knocked him from his horse now leapt from the beast’s back and landed astride him, one foot either side of his head, before dropping to place one knee across his throat.