Stepan, sitting on a pony next to Bellamus, stopped to inspect the dwelling. “This is yours?” he asked. “I was always told these old ones are haunted.”
“Not to my knowledge,” said Bellamus. He dismounted, handed his reins to one of the warriors who followed, and lifted the latch on the front door, opening it a few inches to call inside. “Hilda?” He kicked aside some of the snow in the doorway and dragged the door wide enough to slip through. “Hilda?” he called again, as Stepan squeezed in after him. The room was bright. Light poured in from a central aperture, below which was a pool of water now covered in snow and probably, Bellamus thought, frozen solid. It was the snow which was providing the illumination, reflecting the daylight into the corners of the atrium.
In answer to Bellamus’s call, a stout old woman came shuffling into view. First her head appeared from a door to the side of the atrium, her face framed in grey curls, broad and perplexed. Then she moved further into the atrium to reveal fine leather slippers below a loose-fitting brown robe. “Master?” she said suspiciously. “Good God, that isn’t Master Bellamus?”
“It is,” said Bellamus, embracing the woman who was suddenly beaming. They broke apart and Bellamus gestured at his companion. “This is Stepan, a knightly friend of mine.” The stout woman gave a flustered curtsey and Stepan bowed in return. “Are you well, Hilda?”
“We all thought you were dead!” said she. “Word came that your forces had been defeated and there were precious few survivors!”
“Well, as luck would have it, I was among them,” said Bellamus. “I and four hundred others who are now waiting outside. They’ll need feeding, Hilda. I appreciate it will take some time, but I would be most grateful if you could see to it.”
“Of course, Master,” she said, a little confused. “The stores are low but we’ll do our best. Nobody expected you back at all. The cook is seeing to his house, the servants are gone. It’s just me here. It will take time.”
“We have time,” said Stepan, breezily. He gestured at the snow and gave her a wink.
“We do indeed,” agreed Bellamus. “Fetch the cook and, if there aren’t any servants, hire some. There must be thousands in need of employment in this city. See to it for me, Hilda.”
“Yes, certainly, Master.” Hilda knotted her fingers. “A message arrived from His Majesty in your absence. Delivered by his royal guards.” Bellamus smiled, inviting her to continue. “It was a summons to court. They said if you ever came back, you had one day to present yourself. I tried to tell them that you would come in your own time but they were extremely rude.”
Bellamus laughed out loud at that, placing a fond hand on her shoulder. “Nobody could have done more, Hilda. I’ll go first thing tomorrow, then. His Majesty would not be pleased if I reappeared alone of the forces he sent north, looking like a beggar and smelling like a stable.” Bellamus gestured down at his clothes, dark with moisture and spattered with mud from the trail. The gold that had been hung at his neck and wrists was gone: bartered away for food or billets for his men on the long journey back. His hair was loose and ragged, and he had a month’s beard-growth on his face. But there was something about him all the same. For all their tattered appearance, his clothes had evidently once been fine and he did not carry himself like a commoner. This was the sort of man whose rough appearance did not make him less respected: it merely made him more noble.
Hilda departed to organise sustenance for the soldiers and Stepan settled himself to sleep on the floor of the hall, wrapped in a musky cloak he had acquired on the march south. Bellamus, meanwhile, began seeing to a bath. First he struck a fire with the very last of the tinder which he had carried with him on the march, striking iron and flint onto a piece of charred cloth. Adding this to some hay that he had kept close to his chest, he was able to blow it into a small flame that he fed with twigs until it was large enough to add some of the seasoned logs stored at the rear of the house. He left the fire to establish and next wiped the snow off the icy surface of the pool in the atrium. With the help of a cobble uprooted from the road outside, he discovered that the ice was only a few inches thick, with liquid water below. The snow must have insulated it from the worst of the cold. He smashed a hole large enough to allow him to fill a kettle with freezing water and hung it on a hook above the fire. It would take a long time to heat enough to fill the wooden half-barrel that he used to bathe and so he began searching for his razor. He was not surprised to find it undisturbed upstairs, along with his other possessions. Hilda was known throughout the community and would have kept the house safe. And besides, most people feared to step foot in the ancient stone houses.
As he shaved, inspecting his handiwork in a dull brass mirror, Bellamus thought. The first thing he needed to do was get a message to the queen. King Osbert would likely be in a fear-driven rage at having lost so many soldiers north of the Abus and Bellamus did not doubt that, without Queen Aramilla’s intervention, he was at serious risk of this shave being his last.
But contacting her would be difficult. In court, they affected barely to know one another.
