which were to be slaughtered, Simon fretted.
‘I am worried, if they are taken…’ he said.
‘I know,’ Sir Charles answered. ‘But there is no point arguing with this command, Simon. In truth, you are better not to comment at all. The castellan is concerned about conserving food, and if you were to make a fuss, and people realised you were here solely to gain food that may not be forthcoming in the city…’
He needed make no further comment. Simon knew that if it came to a decision, any castellan in the land would order him and his family out of the castle. There was no room for sympathy in time of siege.
The chamber to which he led them was large, with a good fire already crackling in the fireplace. There were tapestries about the walls to keep the warmth in, and rugs thrown over the floor. Yet there was only one bed, no truckle, and one bench for Hugh to sleep on.
Sir Charles saw Simon’s look. ‘I shall order a palliasse for your servant and your son,’ he said.
‘You are very kind, Sir Charles,’ Simon said. ‘I don’t know what I’d have done without your assistance.’
‘There is no need to thank me yet, my friend. Wait and see what happens before you do that,’ Sir Charles said. On hearing a bell, he spun about, startled. ‘That’s the alarm bell. I must go. Simon, would you come too?’
Simon threw an anguished look at Margaret, who was sitting on the edge of the bed with Peterkin on her lap. She nodded, almost without meeting his eyes. Peterkin did, though, and as Simon ran along the corridor and out onto the upper battlements with Sir Charles, all he could see was his son’s petrified expression.
It set a new thought racing through his mind. He had lost one son. He
Baldwin left the body in the clearing, but brought the man’s horse back, leading it through the woods and out the far side, then over the grassy plain towards the camp. There was no sign of Pagan’s horse. Baldwin assumed it must have bolted, and he struggled to lift Pagan’s body on to the captured mount. It was enormously hard work, for the body would keep slipping and sliding off, but at last he had Pagan thrown over the saddle and lashed in place.
The others had finished off the men from the reconnaissance. The one who had been knocked from his horse by Baldwin was dead. Stabbed once in the heart and once in the eye, he would never rise again. Sir Ralph had taken his own man, too, and the fellow lay with a great slashing cut in his neck, while the last was pierced many times by Alexander’s sword. Bernard too was injured, with a terrible cut along the line of his shoulder and down his right arm, but he swore it was only a scratch and hardly worth looking at. Baldwin did try to clean it, and bound it in an old cloth he found among Bernard’s clothes. With luck it would heal.
But when he spoke to Sir Ralph, he learned that the intruders had done more than kill Pagan and wound Bernard. They had succeeded in finding Thomas Redcliffe too. One of the men had slipped into his makeshift tent and run him through several times with a dagger. The man who did it had been chased away by Pagan, a sobbing Roisea said, so Baldwin was at least happy that he had avenged her husband.
Sir Ralph was pleased with his own victory. ‘The fellow was a good swordsman,’ he said appreciatively. ‘He had a fair amount of training, I’ll be bound, to be able to hold his own so effectually against me.’
Baldwin shook his head as he saw the body. ‘The men who came here were determined, I’ll give them that,’ he said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘The leader who killed Thomas was in charge of a group which tried to kill him in Winchester some days ago. I was there, and that was why I decided to come up here to Bristol in the first place. I’d intended going straight home, but seeing that Thomas had been attacked, and because he admitted to me that he was a King’s Messenger, I thought that joining him was my duty.’
While they had been talking, Roisea had joined them. Her face was streaked with tears and dirt, and she wiped at her eyes with hands that were stained with blood.
‘What do you say about my Thomas?’ she asked. Her voice was broken with despair.
‘Madame, he was a messenger for the King, so he told me,’ Baldwin said.
‘No – he cannot have been. He has never travelled much.’
‘Perhaps he was given a message to bring to the King when he was on pilgrimage.’
‘Pilgrimage! I find it hard to believe that story,’ she said. ‘He told you that, didn’t he? When he left home, he said he would walk to St Thomas’s shrine, but I was ever doubtful. I never saw him try another pilgrimage in his life. Why should he suddenly begin now?’
‘What did you think he was doing, then, madame?’ Baldwin said.
‘I thought he travelled to London to speak with other merchants, men who did not know him and were not aware of is failure, to seek his fortune with them somehow.’
‘Why should he mislead you?’
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted sadly. ‘I think because he did not want me to grow hopeful. He felt as though he had failed me when his business folded, but it was not his fault all his lenders demanded their money back. Especially old man Capon. He was the most insistent.’
‘But Thomas would not have found it easy to get money from the merchants of London,’ Baldwin said. ‘He must have known that. They are the most hard-nosed, unpliant businessmen in the world. Prising money from their coffers is harder than getting it from the purse of a tax-collector!’
‘My Thomas did, though. He persuaded them.’
Baldwin eyed her pensively. ‘You say he succeeded in winning money from them?’
‘He told me that he would soon have his reputation and his resources renewed.’
‘He meant he would have money again?’
‘He was quite sure of it,’ Roisea said sadly.
Baldwin looked over at the body of her husband. ‘And he made no mention of being a King’s Messenger?’
There was no need for her to answer, and in any case, Baldwin was as keen as Sir Ralph to pack everything and leave. He left her there, ordering Jack to help her, while he gathered up his own belongings, before going to the body and searching it quickly for a message. There was nothing. Any message he held for the King must have been in his head, not committed to parchment.
They were on their way as soon as Baldwin had finished and Thomas’s body had been set slumped over his own horse. Thomas and Pagan would be given a Christian burial when it was safe so to do. It was the least Baldwin thought they could do for the two men.
Riding to the ferry, they were pleased to see that the boat was clearly visible, and bellowing and waving, they succeeded in gaining the ferryman’s attention. It felt like an age, but at last the vessel landed on the shore and the men could begin to board her. Sir Ralph insisted that the friars and Roisea should take the first sailing, and Baldwin was equally insistent that Jack should be safe.
Jack kept looking at Baldwin with a strangely earnest expression, rather like a lady’s lapdog begging for a treat or to be allowed outside. He was obviously shocked by the suddenness of the fight, the swift deaths of so many men. But Baldwin had no time for the lad’s fears, especially since he was nervous that the party’s disappearance must surely lead to an investigation before too long. He did not want to be caught between the River Severn and the whole of Queen Isabella’s host.
It was a glorious relief to see the boat sail away, and then a blessed age before it completed its cruise to the opposite bank. Baldwin paced fretfully up and down the shoreline all the while, chewing at his inner lip, casting an equal number of glances towards the ship and back towards the woods where the men lay dead.
‘The boat is coming back,’ Bernard stated laconically. Alexander was whittling at a stick with his short dagger, while Sir Ralph sat on his horse saying nothing. The three appeared perfectly easy in their minds, even with their friend and companion tied on the horse a short distance away.
The ship made its slow progress over the water towards them, and after what felt like half a day, ground its way up the shore. Sir Ralph and his men were first aboard, while Baldwin waited, and then he took the reins of the horses with the dead men on their back. As he did so, there was a cry from the ship.
‘Get on board quickly! They’re coming!’
Baldwin snapped his head around and saw a small contingent of horse, perhaps a vingtaine, milling about at
