'You could write a message,' Robbie suggested, 'and put it round an arrow?'
Thomas stared at him. 'I don't have parchment,' he said patiently, 'and I don't have ink, and have you ever tried shooting an arrow wrapped up in parchment? It would probably fly like a dead bird. I'd have to stand by the moat and it would be easier to throw the arrow from there.'
Robbie shrugged. 'So what do we do?'
'Make a noise. Announce ourselves.' Thomas paused. 'And I'm thinking that the cannon will break the tower down eventually if we don't do something.'
'The cannon?' Robbie asked, then stared at Thomas. 'Sweet Jesus,' he said after a while as he thought of the difficulties. 'Tonight?'
'Once Coutances and his men know we're here,' Thomas said, 'they'll double their sentries, but I'll bet the bastards are half asleep tonight.'
'Aye, and wrapped up warm if they've any damn sense,' Robbie said. He frowned. 'But that gun looked like a rare great pot. How the hell do you break it?'
'I was thinking of the black powder in the church,' Thomas said.
'Set fire to it?'
'There're plenty of campfires in the village,' Thomas said and he wondered what would happen if they_ were captured in the enemy encampment, but it was point-less to worry about that. If the gun was to be made useless then it was best to strike before the Count of Coutances knew an enemy had come to harass him, and that made this night the ideal opportunity. 'You don't have to come,' Thomas told Robbie. 'It's not as if your friends are inside the manor.'
'Hold your breath,' Robbie said scornfully. He frowned again. 'What's going to happen afterwards?'
'Afterwards?' Thomas thought. 'It depends on Sir Guillaume. If he gets no answer from the King then he'll want to break out. So he has to know we're here.'
'Why?'
'In case he needs our help. He did send for us, didn't he? Sent for me, anyway. So we go on making a noise.
We make ourselves a nuisance. We give the Count of Coutances some nightmares.'
'The two of us?'
'You and me,' Thomas said, and the saying of it made him realize that Robbie had become a friend. 'I think you and I can make trouble,' he added with a smile. And they would begin this night. In this bitter and cold night, beneath a hard-edged moon, they would conjure the first of their nightmares.
They went on foot and despite the bright half-moon it was dark under the trees and Thomas began to worry about whatever demons, goblins and spectres haunted these Norman woods. Jeanette had told him that in Brittany there were nains and gorics that stalked the dark, while in Dorset it was the Green Man who stamped and growled in the trees behind Lipp Hill, and the fishermen spoke of the souls of the drowned men who would sometimes drag themselves on shore and moan for the wives they had left behind. On All Soul's Eve the devil and the dead danced on Maiden Castle, and on other nights there were lesser ghosts in and about the village and up on the hill and in the church tower and wherever a man looked, which was why no one left his house at night without a scrap of iron or a piece of mistletoe or, at the very least, a piece of cloth that had been touched by a holy wafer. Thomas's father had hated that superstition, but when his people had lifted their hands for the sacrament and he saw a scrap of cloth tied about their palms he had not refused them.
And Thomas had his own superstitions. He would only ever pick up the bow with his left hand; the first arrow to be shot from a newly strung bow had to be tapped three times against the stave, once for the Father, once for the Son and a third time for the Holy Spirit; he would not wear white clothes and he put his left boot on before his right. For a long time he had worn a dog's paw about his neck, then had thrown it away in the conviction it brought ill luck, but now, after Eleanor's death, he wondered if he should have kept it. Thinking of Eleanor, his mind slid back to the darker beauty of Jeanette. Did she remember him? Then he tried not to think of her, because thinking of an old love might bring ill luck and he touched the bole of a tree as he passed to cleanse away the thought. Thomas was looking for the red glow of dying camp-fires beyond the trees that would tell him that they were close to Evecque, but the only light was the silver of the moon tangled in the high branches. Nains and gorics: what were they? Jeanette had never told him, except to say they were spirits that haunted the country. They must have something similar here in Normandy. Or perhaps they had witches? He touched another tree. His mother had firmly believed in witches and his father had instructed Thomas to say his paternoster if he ever got lost. Witches, Father Ralph had believed, preyed upon lost children, and later, much later, Thomas's father had told him that witches began their invocation of the devil by saying the paternoster backwards and Thomas, of course, had tried it though he had never dared finish the whole prayer. Olam a son arebil des, the backward Paternoster began, and he could say it still, even managing the difficult reversals of temptationem and supersubstantialem, though he was careful never to finish the whole prayer in case there was a stench of brimstone, a crack of flame and the terror of the devil descending on black wings with eyes of fire.
'What are you muttering?' Robbie asked.
'I'm trying to say supersubstantialem backwards,' Thomas said. Robbie chuckled. 'You're a strange one, Thomas.'
' delait nats bus repus,' Thomas said.
'Is that French?' Robbie said. 'Because I have to learn it.
'You will,' Thomas promised him, then at last he glimpsed fires between the trees and they both went silent as they climbed the long slope to the crest among the beeches that overlooked Evecque.
No lights showed from the manor. A clean and cold moonlight glistened on the greenscummed moat that looked smooth as ice –perhaps it was ice? –and the white moon threw a black shadow into the damaged corner of the tower, while a glow of firelight showed on the manor's farther side, confirming Thomas's suspicion that there was a siege work opposite the building's entrance. He guessed that the Count's men had dug trenches from which they could douse the gateway with crossbow bolts as other men tried to bridge the moat where the draw-bridge would be missing. Thomas remembered the cross-bow bolts spitting from the walls of La Roche-Derrien and he shivered. It was bitter cold. Soon, Thomas thought, the dew would turn to frost, silvering the world. Like Robbie he was wearing a wool shirt beneath a leather jerkin and a coat of mail over which he had a cloak, yet still he was shivering and he wished he was back in the shelter of their gully where the fire burned.
'I can't see anyone,' Robbie said.
Nor could Thomas, but he went on looking for the sentries. Maybe the cold was keeping everyone under a roof? He searched the shadows near the guttering campfires, watched for any movement in the darkness about the church and still saw no one. Doubtless there were sentinels in the siege works opposite the manor entrance, but surely they would be watching for any defender trying to sneak out of the back of the manor? Except who would swim a moat on a night this cold? And the besiegers were surely bored by now and their watchfulness would be low. He saw a silver-edged cloud sailing closer to the moon. 'When the cloud covers the moon,' he told Robbie, 'we go.'
'And God bless us both,' Robbie said fervently, making the sign of the cross. The cloud seemed to move so slowly, then at last it veiled the moon and the glimmering landscape faded into grey and black. There was still a wan, faint light, but Thomas doubted the night would get any blacker and so he stood, brushed the twigs off his cloak and started towards the village along a track that had been beaten across the eastern slope of the ridge. He guessed the path had been made by pigs being taken to get fat on the beechmast in the woods and he remembered how Hookton's pigs had roamed the shingle eating fish heads and how his mother had always claimed it tainted the taste of their bacon. Fishy bacon, she had called it, and compared it unfavourably with the bacon of her native Weald in Kent. That, she had always said, had been proper bacon, nourished on beechmast and acorn, the best. Thomas stumbled on a tussock of grass. It was difficult to follow the track because the night suddenly seemed much darker, per-haps because they were on lower ground.
He was thinking of bacon and all the time they were getting closer to the village and Thomas was suddenly scared. He had seen no sentries, but what about dogs? One barking bitch in the night and he and Robbie could be dead men. He had not brought the bow, but suddenly wished he had – though what could he do with it? Shoot a dog? At least the path was easily visible now for it was lit by the campfires and the two of them walked confidently as though they belonged in the village. 'You must do this all the time,' Thomas said to Robbie softly.
'This?'
