at the top of the hill, when he went out to hunt. There were lots of them, and they tied his hands and took him away.”
“Where to? Which way did they go?”
“Toward the miners’ camp, I suppose. One of the men has followed. We’re getting the rest of the horses saddled now, sir.”
“Good.” Baldwin stared at Sir William. “We must hurry; this cannot be permitted. It is one thing to take moormen hostage, quite another to take a knight captive.”
“Do you know of any reason why they should have taken your son, Sir William?” asked Simon.
“No, I’ve no idea why they should do this,” declared the knight with frank astonishment. “We’ve always lived side by side with the miners on the moors, and there’s never been anything like this before. We’ve paid when they wanted money, we’ve not intimidated them, I’ve recognized their power, and it would have been stupid to try to curb them – that would only have led to more troubles. No, I’ve no idea why they should have done this.”
Simon slowly nodded. “Very well. Let’s get ready, then.”
Hugh and Edgar trailed after them. Baldwin’s man wore a happy smile, and he clapped Hugh on the back as they went. “Don’t worry,” he said cheerfully. “It’ll be fun,” and began whistling.
“Fun!” muttered Hugh contemptuously and sniffed. He had the unpleasant suspicion that there would be blood shed, and he had no wish to see the color of his own.
In the courtyard they found a mass of confused and anxious men. Some wore helmets, some mail, but most simply had their leather or quilted jackets. All gripped weapons, rough agricultural tools or long-handled pikes; only a few wore swords. One stood with shy embarrassment clutching a worn billhook. Pale faces or flushed, all held the same quiet concern. It was one thing, Baldwin knew, to accept a master’s food and lodging, but when it came to protecting him, the nature of an oath of allegiance took on a wholly different and more fearsome meaning. All these people were aware of how little Sir William must value each of their lives against that of his oldest surviving son, and in their eyes he read the age-old calculation: would their leader be able to win without throwing away his men’s lives needlessly? It was there in the narrow watchfulness, in the slow, unhurried movements, in the careful stroking of a hand over the haft of a lance. All these men felt the same tension as they looked at Sir William.
Baldwin was about to turn and mention this to the knight when the older man pushed past him, going to the stairs and climbing halfway up them. But this was not the same Sir William. A few moments before, he had been an elderly man bent with his cares, his vitality sapped by recent events. No longer. Now he was a warlord.
There was no shout from the crowd to welcome him. At a hanging, even the victim would get cheery applause, but not Sir William. The men stared up at him, and he stared back, and a strange stillness slowly settled on them all, curiously out of place for such a sizeable group. It was no surprise, Baldwin reflected. After all, these men had seen the steady decline of the head of the Beauscyr family. They all knew that he had few enough years left. His walk had gradually slowed, he tired more easily, and the strength which had marked him out as a great warrior had begun to fail him.
For several minutes there was no sound but for the whip and crackle of clothes drying in the gusting breeze on the lines by the kitchen. The sun peered between some clouds and added a tinge of warmth, but still Sir William stared. Some men began to shuffle, their feet restlessly slapping in the little puddles of sloshed water from the buckets.
“You all know what’s happened to my son.” His tone was pensive, almost sad, but carried clearly. “He’s been captured by miners and taken away. I don’t know why. It could be that the tinners want to hold him to ransom. They’ve done it to others before, though they’ve never dared do it to me in the past. It’s probably because I agreed to pay them not to damage the Manor’s lands. Now they feel so powerful, they think they can threaten even me. It’s my fault, if they think that. I should have realized. But I could do nothing, because they threatened other things if I tried to use force to keep them from here. I had to pay. I am sorry, because it means that you all must now fight to help me free my son.”
Now he stood upright, and there was no sign of his age as he glowered down. “But understand this, all of you. This is not just for me and my family. It is to save you! If the miners get away with this, they’ll know they’ve beaten the strongest in the moors. They can’t be permitted to take hostages freely whenever they wish. If they do that, no man will be free anymore, not just knights, but farmers and merchants, villeins, even the men in the tenements – all will have to submit to the miners. Do you want that? They will feel able to go anywhere, into your fields, ruining your families’ crops. That is what will happen if we allow them to win now. They will know they have the power to order.”
His voice grew, swelling until it filled the square yard, and the men stopped shuffling and listened closely, many with frowns of understanding darkening their faces. One or two glanced at friends, nodding with a new conviction. Sir William carried on. “I don’t ask any of you to follow me to free my son. Few if any of you feel the need to defend him, beyond your duty to the Manor and to the land’s heir. But you have to come with me today. Not for me or for him, but for yourselves and for the other people of the moors, to protect yourselves and to keep the land free for all. We have to break the arrogance of these miners and make them understand that they cannot continue to threaten and extort, steal and harry. They have to learn that we will stand our ground and defend ourselves. And the way to do this is to free my son. I do not want to fight, I’m old and my time for war has passed, but I will not let robbers and outlaws take my land without holding a sword to them and saying, ‘No more!’ No, I do not want to fight – but I will if I must, and now, today, I may have to. So may you. Not for me, not for my son, but for yourselves.”
Suddenly he grasped his sword and whipped it from its scabbard, holding it over his head. “Is any man among you not prepared to fight for your land?”
The yard erupted in a great bellow of denial, the shouts echoing round the buildings and making the horses stamp and snort. A hound barked, deep and mournful.
“Then mount your horses and follow me!”
Baldwin cast an eye over the men, now cheering and waving their arms. It was a good effort, he admitted to himself. Men who a few minutes before had been muttering blackly about standing up for the son of a knight who should have seen his peril, or who had nervously fingered weapons while thinking about the miners’ own, men who had wondered how much the tinners would ask for Sir Robert’s life and whether it would be too much, who flinched at the thought of injury – for in the heat of summer a wound could fester, and that spelled a slow and tortured death… all now raised swords, daggers and polearms over their heads and applauded. The first lesson that a warrior captain has to learn, he thought dryly, is how to persuade the men fighting for him that they are fighting for themselves. Sir William had been a soldier for many years, and that lesson was one he had not forgotten. One man, he saw, had his arm slashed by a carelessly handled knife; he stared dumbly at the dripping blood for a moment before waving and cheering again. The sight made Baldwin sigh. It was strange how men could decide to throw in their lot with someone just because of a pretty speech.
“Impressive.” Sir Ralph had walked up unseen by the others, and Baldwin glanced at him with a question in his dark eyes. He had not seen the knight all day, not during the panicked rush to put out the fire, nor when the bodies were found. Now he stood surveying the men in the square with a kind of sad recognition. “I used to be like them,” he said musingly. “Full of fire and honor. Keen to defend my rights and privileges, come what may and the Devil take my enemies. Now it’s just for money I fight, and money doesn’t last as long as a cause. Nor does it flame the belly as well.”
“At least it keeps your belly filled for a while,” said Simon lightly from behind.
Sir Ralph did not meet the bailiff’s gaze, staring instead at Baldwin. “Only for a while. Only for a while. And when the money’s gone, there’s nothing else. No cause, no honor, no great freedoms. Just a search for more money.” He glanced at the crowd. “At least they have their cause today, even if it won’t last.”
Baldwin mulled over his words as they fetched their horses and prepared to ride out. The man’s face had held an infinite sadness, as if he sorely missed times past when he had honorable battles to fight, one loyal and chivalrous man in a company of similarly motivated warriors. Baldwin could understand his feelings of loss and the sense of missing purpose: it was the same lack of direction he had known when his Order had been destroyed, which had consumed him until he had undertaken his search for the man he felt must be responsible. Yes, Baldwin could easily comprehend his feelings.
Simon was on his horse and waiting long before Baldwin. In the melee which was the yard, simply keeping the horses calm enough to be saddled was taxing Hugh and Edgar, and thus it was that Simon was the first to see the younger Beauscyr brother. From his vantage point, looking over the heads of the crowd, he could see the boy
