himself, though, to a timid protest, which Ranulf ignored, for he thought Jennet would be fearful sharing a room with anyone but her brother, so soon after the thwarted rape.
As much as he needed a bath, Ranulf knew better than to ask for one, not in a small, shabby inn in the midst of winter. The innkeeper was able to scrounge up some soft soap of mutton fat and wood ash, and he washed himself as best he could with cold water and a burlap towel. When the children crept downstairs to join him in front of the fire, they were still filthy, but so unself-conscious that he realized bathing was for them done only in summer, if at all. They’d shared their lives with him by now, offered up in hesitant bits and pieces as they’d made the slow trek back to Newark, and the more they’d told him, the less he’d wanted to know.
Simon and Jennet were children of the Fens, having lived all of their brief years in the bleak isolation of the Lincolnshire salt marshes, more cloistered than in any convent. Their mother was long dead and Jennet had insisted so vehemently that their father was a “free man” that Ranulf knew he must have been a runaway villein, a serf bound to the land. Their world had been a wattle-and-daub hut out in the Fens; all they could say was that it had been north of Sleaford. There they’d dwelled, just this side of starvation, their father fishing for eels and sometimes taking water reeds into Sleaford to sell for roof thatching. But he’d not taken them; until Ranulf had shepherded them through Newark’s streets, they’d never seen a town. As far as he could tell, the only people they ever saw were other fishermen and their families, mayhap an occasional peddler-until the day the outlaws came.
They took turns relating the horrors of that day, with the detached composure of emotional exhaustion. How their father had sensed danger and sent them off into the marsh to hide. How they’d waited out in the wind-ripped bogs for their father to fetch them, huddling together for warmth as gulls shrieked overhead and night came on. How they’d seen the smoke, and when they dared to venture back, they found their home in flames and their father’s body sprawled by the hen roost. The hens were gone, of course, as was the pig that was their prized possession, and every scrap of food that Jennet had salted away and stored for winter. And whatever the brigands hadn’t carried off had been burned in the fire.
They did not seem to know how long they’d lingered in the ruins, and Ranulf did not press them; better such memories were mercifully blurred. They’d buried their father and eventually hunger had driven them to undertake this lunatic quest of theirs-to seek out their only kinsman, their father’s younger brother Jonas, plying his trade as a tanner in the distant town of Cantebrigge.
Stretching his legs toward the fire, Ranulf massaged his aching knee and watched the children as they ate their fill, probably for the first time in their lives. It was a Wednesday fast day, but he’d made a conscious decision to violate the prohibition against eating flesh; he could always do penance once he got back to his own world. Now it seemed more important to feed Simon and Jennet the best meal he could, and the innkeeper had served up heaping portions of salted pork, a thick pottage of peas and beans, and hot, flat cakes of newly baked bread, marked with Christ’s Cross. To Ranulf, it was poor fare, and he ended up sharing most of it with Loth. But Simon and Jennet savored every mouthful, scorning spoons and scooping the food up with their fingers, as if expecting to have their trenchers snatched away at any moment. And Ranulf learned more that night about hunger and need than in all of his twenty-five years.
What would become of them? How could they hope to reach Cantebrigge? And if by God’s Grace, they somehow did, what if this uncle of theirs was not there? They’d never seen the man, knew only what their father had told them, that soon after Simon’s birth, a peddler had brought them a message from Jonas, saying he’d settled in Cantebrigge.
That confirmed Ranulf’s suspicions: two brothers fleeing serfdom, one hiding out in the Fens, the other taking the bolder way, for an escaped villein could claim his freedom if he lived in a chartered borough for a year and a day. It was a pitiful family history, an unwanted glimpse into a world almost as alien to Ranulf as Cathay. But like it or not, he was caught up now in this hopeless odyssey of Abel the eelman’s children. In an unusually morose and pessimistic mood, he wondered how many Simons and Jennets would be lost to the furies unleashed by Geoffrey de Mandeville’s rebellion.
That was mere speculation, though. These ragged, half-starved orphans were all too real, flesh-and-blood burdens, weighing ever more heavily upon his peace of mind. All through supper, he’d been silently debating his conscience, seeking to convince himself that he’d done what he could, that he was not responsible for them. But when the meal was done, he heard himself saying reluctantly, “If you are truly set upon going to Cantebrigge, I’ll take you.”
Ranulf had been surprised and vexed that the children had not shown more enthusiasm for his offer. It was no small sacrifice he was making, after all, for he had more to fear than Mandeville’s brigands; Cantebrigge was the king’s borough, and so were most of the towns they’d be passing through on their way south. But the children’s acceptance had been subdued, even wary, and he’d gone off to bed in a thoroughly bad humor. In the morning, though, he’d awakened to find Simon and Jennet asleep on the floor by his bed.
This journey was likely to be as expensive as it was dangerous; it was already draining his purse. He might have to stop at Wallingford on his way west and borrow money from Brien, for he’d had to buy a mule for the children, and mantles, too, for their cloaks might better serve as kitchen rags. He’d already decided that if-God Willing-he ever got home again, this Cantebrigge detour was a secret he’d share only with Loth, for he well knew that his misguided chivalry would make him a laughingstock. Who would ever understand why he’d gone to so much trouble for the children of a runaway serf?
Their pilgrimage was an excruciatingly slow one. The children were fearful at first of riding the mule, and even though they were traveling along the Great North Road, it was rough going, pitted and rutted by the winter weather. Moreover, daylight hours were dwindling away, dusk infiltrating now by late afternoon, and in every town or village, they ran into rumors of Mandeville’s depredations. Raiding throughout Cambridgeshire, up into Lincolnshire, he was spreading terror and laying waste to shires already suffering from famine. He’d gathered together a motley army: his own vassals and tenants, unemployed men-at-arms, bandits lured to his banner by his promises of money and livestock and women, all for the taking. Ranulf heard stories of pilgrims ambushed, merchants robbed, villages plundered and burned. How much of it was true and how much was hearsay, he had no way of knowing.
At Grantham, they were forced to stay over an extra day, waiting out a freezing rainstorm. When they finally reached Stanford, they were delayed again, this time to find a barber for Simon. The boy’s jaw had begun to swell, for he had a rotted tooth which should have been pulled months ago. He bore the pain in good spirits, though, and carefully tucked away his yanked tooth as a keepsake. In truth, both children were starting to enjoy their first foray into the world beyond the Fens. They did not realize their danger, so utterly had they come to trust in Ranulf’s protection, and they were fascinated by the castle at Stanford, the timbered town houses of two stories, their first market. Every day brought new and strange sights, and each night an inn awaited them, where there’d be a warm fire and all the food they could eat and then a safe night’s sleep on pallets in Ranulf’s chamber. Ranulf marveled at first that it took so little to content them, until he realized that those who’d had nothing expected nothing, and he began to worry that he was unwittingly teaching them an unfair lesson-to hunger for more than they could ever hope to get.
By their second week on the road, they were in Cambridgeshire, and much too close to Ramsey’s captured abbey for Ranulf’s comfort. But at Huntingdon, they had a stroke of luck, for they were able to join a caravan of merchants bound for London to sell their wares, men who’d banded together for protection against Mandeville’s cutthroats and their own fears. They were more than happy to have Ranulf ride with them; the sword at his hip guaranteed his welcome.
They parted company at Caxton, the merchants continuing south, Ranulf and the children turning off onto the Cantebrigge Road. There were fewer than ten miles to go now, and his relief was considerable, for he’d heard a very disturbing tale from some of the London-bound merchants-that Mandeville had raided the town of St Ives. Ranulf found that hard to believe, for St Ives was a prosperous borough, site of a famed fair. Surely Mandeville did not have enough men or enough nerve to attack a town? Rumor or not, though, it was unsettling, and he was grateful that he’d soon be able to turn his young charges over to their proper guardian. What he would do if the uncle could not be found, he did not know, for that was a dilemma he’d resolutely refused to address, preferring to fall back upon his innate optimism.
But as those last few miles began to ebb away, so did Ranulf’s confidence, and he found himself struggling with a sudden sense of foreboding, wondering what they would find in Cantebrigge. Yet he never expected what awaited them around a bend in the road: a sky full of smoke.
Ordering the children to hide themselves until he returned, he began a cautious investigation. It was almost
