Brandishing his new dagger, Joscelin straightened and moved up through the garden. Suddenly, an enormous black sow galloped around the corner of the building and almost bowled him over. He leaped aside and found himself confronted by two foot soldiers, their own knives to hand for the purposes of pig-sticking. The sow snorted away down the garth, wallowed across the damaged wattle fence at the foot and disappeared into the noisome alley beyond. The foot soldiers and Joscelin appraised each other over their poised weapons.
‘I have no quarrel with you,’ Joscelin said. ‘Let me go my way in peace and I will let you go yours.’
The men exchanged swift glances and returned their scrutiny to Joscelin. He was suddenly very aware of the gold braid edging his tunic, the quality of his cloak and its ornate clasp - temptations far greater than a prospective haunch of roast pork that was already halfway to Broadmarsh by now.
‘We wouldn’t rightly want to quarrel with you either,’ said the older of the two men, ‘but we’d like you better if you was to hand over that cloak and clasp as a sign of goodwill.’
‘Your purse and belt, too,’ added the second, whose quick crafty gaze had not missed the promising roundness of Joscelin’s money pouch and the gilding on the tooled leather belt.
One soldier moved right, the other left. Joscelin ran at the latter, dagger lifted to strike. His attack was blocked as the man grasped his knife hand. Joscelin responded in a similar manner by grasping his opponent’s wrist and used their grip on each other as leverage to hurl the man hard to the right, fouling the other soldier’s path. Having broken free, Joscelin ran. He heard the sound of rapid footfalls in pursuit but he had a start on them and, being faster into the bargain, reached the market square well in front. Across it, Joscelin saw soldiers rolling wine barrels out of a vintner’s cellar while the vintner and his family watched in helpless shock. A hauberk-clad soldier sat astride his war-horse conducting operations, a long whip dangling from his fist.
Behind Joscelin, there was a triumphant cry. ‘There he is, the whoreson, get him!’
Flashing a glance over his shoulder, Joscelin saw the two soldiers he had just evaded running out of the doorway of a house on Cuckstool Row. Joscelin took to his heels, knowing that if they caught him they would kill him.
The marketplace was a shambles of overturned booths and stalls, the looters picking among them like scavengers at the scene of a larger animal’s kill. Joscelin sought the shelter of these booths, dodging in and out between them, weaving from one to the other across the square towards Organ Lane. Near the low wall that separated the corn market from the rest of the stalls, a looter threatened him with a short knife but backed off the moment he saw the gleam of Joscelin’s dagger and went in search of easier prey. Joscelin was preoccupied in watching the looter and did not see the body sprawled behind one of the raided booths until too late. He measured his length across the corpse and lay upon it, momentarily too winded to move. When he drew his first breath he almost choked, for the stench emanating from the dead man’s garments proclaimed him an employee of one of the numerous tanneries down by the Leen bridge. Essence of excrement mingled with that of putrefaction, rancid mutton fat and the metallic tang of tannin. The stink was so powerful that Joscelin retched. In the background he could hear his pursuers approaching and knew that in a moment they would be upon him.
In haste, Joscelin tore off his mantle and gilded tunic. Stuffing them beneath the trestle in the booth, he rolled the corpse over, dragged off its cloak and stained tunic and dressed himself in the foulsome rags. A greasy, louse-infested hood and a knobbled quarterstaff completed the ensemble - and not a moment too soon. As Joscelin started to walk away from the corpse, his two pursuers ran panting round the side of the booth.
His fall had been greatly to his advantage. Still winded, Joscelin did not stride out as he might have otherwise done, which would have given him away immediately. Instead he moved with a shuffling walk more reminiscent of a peasant.
‘Ho!’ cried one of the soldiers. ‘You there, have you seen a noble running this way? Tall, wearing a dark-red cloak?’
Joscelin shook his head and mumbled a reply in the rustic Anglo-Dane of the countryside. At the same time, he gestured with his arm so that the dreadful stench of his garments wafted towards the men. Neither of them, he hazarded, would want to move in as close as it would take to kill him.
‘Ah God, he stinks as if he’s been dead a week!’ declared the other soldier. ‘Can you tell what he’s saying?’
His companion shook his head, equally baffled. ‘His accent’s too heavy. Come on, we’re wasting our time. Let’s search round the other side.’
Cold sweat clasping his body, Joscelin watched them walk rapidly away. He breathed out hard, then in again. The smell from his garments was not as bad now that he had grown accustomed and it had quite probably saved his life. Turning, he cut his way across the marketplace and up towards the town gate near Derby Road. The looted houses of Long Row bordered the marketplace with a ragged line of fire. As he hurried up the muddy thoroughfare, Joscelin hoped desperately that his father’s houses were close enough to Derby’s not to have been torched.
From a dark alleyway, a band of hurrying soldiers emerged like wine running from an open flask. They spilled over Joscelin before he could avoid them and then they drew back, exclaiming at the stench of him.
Joscelin’s hand relaxed on the grip of his dagger. ‘Where in God’s name have you been!’ he roared at Conan.
His uncle set his hands on his hips and stared Joscelin up and down. ‘I might ask the same of you.’ His scarred lip curved lopsidedly towards his left nostril. ‘Christ’s buttocks, but you stink worse than a three-week-old battlefield! ’
‘I had to exchange clothes with a tanner’s corpse to keep myself from being skewered by two routiers,’ Joscelin said shortly. ‘I thought you’d be in the Weekday.’
‘And so we would, except that Godred’s uncle has an alehouse on Cherry Tree Lane. We were paying our respects there when a brawl of Derby men came by and started causing trouble. We got rid of them soon enough, then realized it was more serious than our little disagreement. We’re on our way back to your father even now.’
‘There’s no time to waste.’ Joscelin began hurrying up the hill again. ‘I don’t think Derby’s men will harm Linnet and Robert - they’re too valuable - but I don’t want them taken into his care.’
‘Surely your father’s knights will protect the place?’ Conan trotted beside him, his nose still wrinkled in response to the stench of Joscelin’s garments.
‘My father had business with a wool factor up Organ Lane and he gave most of his men leave to go round the town, the same as I gave leave to you,’ Joscelin answered. ‘As far as I’m aware, only the servants are there.’
They arrived at Ironheart’s three houses to find them standing ominously silent and tranquil. A cookshop across the road was on fire but otherwise this quarter of the town had seen less damage. But it was still obvious that all was not well. The front door of the first house hung drunkenly on one hinge and on the floor in the passage were the plundered bodies of Ironheart’s squire and Gytha’s husband, Jonas. The rooms were all empty. Everything of value had been stripped and no one answered Joscelin’s shout. He strode into the yard. Gytha’s laundry tub lay overturned, a mess of torn, crumpled linens, spilling across the ground. Ears flat to its small skull, Gytha’s kitten hissed and spat at him from beneath a wooden trestle. A bowl of water containing some strips of softened rawhide stood on the bench beside some of his father’s weapon-mending tools. His father’s red and gold shield lay on the ground, a great split running from a damaged section of rawhide right through to the centre boss. There were blood smears on the ground.
He picked up a pair of blacksmith’s pincers and squeezed the grip until the pressure brought pain. He could not be too late. It was impossible; he would not allow it to happen.
And then he heard the sound of shouting from the gardens backing on to the other side of the narrow alley and a woman’s scream.
Dropping the pincers, he grabbed his father’s shield by the short hand-straps and began to run.
Chapter 30
As soon as Linnet had retired to the sleeping loft on the second floor of the house, Ironheart fetched his tools and his shield and brought them outside to the bench by the yard wall.
