joined him. ‘I told him to bring the people in last night,’ he muttered. ‘Fucking idiot. Thanks for trying.’
Alcaeus watched the plumes of smoke rise and his stomach did flips. Suddenly, again, he was seeing those the irks under his horse. He had once, single-handed, fought off four assassins who were going for his mother. Irks were much, much worse. He tasted bile.
He thought of lying down.
Instead, he drank wine. After a cup, he felt strong enough to visit his page, who was recovering from terror in the resilient way teenagers so. He left his page to cuddle with a servant girl and walked wearily back to the guard room, where there was an open cask of wine.
He was on his fourth when Ser John’s fist closed around his cup. ‘I take it you are a belted knight,’ Ser John said. ‘I saw your sword, and you’ve used it. Eh?’
Ser Alcaeus got up from his chair. ‘You dared draw my sword?’ he asked. At the Emperor’s court touching a man’s sword was an offence.
The old man grinned mirthlessly. ‘Listen, messire. This town is about to be attacked. I never thought to see it in my lifetime. I gather you had a bad day yesterday. Fine. Now I need you to stop draining my stock of wine and get your armour on. They’ll go for the walls in about an hour, unless I miss my guess.’ He looked around the empty garrison room. ‘If we fight like fucking heroes and every man does everything he can, we might just make it – I’m still trying to get that fool to send the women into the castle. This is the Wild, Ser Knight. I gather you’ve tasted their mettle. Well – here they come again.’
Ser Alcaeus thought that this was a far, far cry from being a useful functionary at his uncle’s court. And he wondered if his true duty, given the message he had in his wallet, was to gather his page and ride south before the roads closed.
But there was something about the old man. And besides, the day before he’d run like a coward, even if he’d had the blood of three of the things on his sword first.
‘I’ll arm,’ he said.
‘Good,’ Ser John said. ‘I’ll help, and then I’ll give you a wall to command.’
Abbington-on-the-Carak – Mag the Seamstress
Old Mag the seamstress sat in the good, warm sunshine on her doorstep, her back braced against the oak of her door frame, as she had sat for almost forty years of such mornings. She sat and sewed.
Mag wasn’t a proud woman, but she had a certain place, and she knew it. Women came to her for advice on childbirth and savings, on drunken husbands, on whether or not to let a certain man visit on a certain night. Mag knew things.
Most of all, she knew how to sew.
She liked to work early, when the first full light of the sun struck her work. The best time was immediately after Matins. If she managed to get straight to her work – and in forty years of being a lay sister, helping with the altar service in her village church, of tending to her husband and two children she had missed the good early morning work hours all too often.
But when she got to it – when cooking, altar service, sick infants, aches and pains, and the will of the Almighty all let her be – why, she could do a day’s work by the time the bells rang for Nones in the fortress convent two leagues to the west.
And this morning was one of those wonderful mornings. She’d been the lay server at church, which always left her with a special feeling, and she had laid flowers on her husband’s grave, kissed her daughter in her own door yard and was now home in the first warm light, her basket by her side.
She was making a cap, a fine linen coif of the sort that a gentleman wore to keep his hair neat. It wasn’t a difficult object and would take her only a day or two to make, but there were knights up at the fortress who used such caps at a great rate, as she had reason to know. A well-worked cap that fit just so was worth half a silver penny. And silver pennies were not to be sneered at, for a fifty-three-year-old widow.
Mag had good eyes, and she pricked the fine linen – her daughter’s linen, no less – with precision, her fine stitches as straight as a sword blade, sixteen to the inch, as good or better as any Harndon tailor’s work.
She put the needle into the fine cloth and pulled the thread carefully through, feeling the fine wax on the thread, feeling the tension of the fine cloth, and aware that she pulled more than the thread with each stitch – every one gathered a little sun. Before long, her line of stitches
Good work made her happy. Mag liked to examine the fine clothes that came through to Lis the laundress. The knights in the fortress had some beautiful things – usually ill-kept but well made. And many less well-made clothes, too. Mag had plans to sell them clothes, repairs, darning-
Mag smiled at the world as she stitched. The sisters were, in the main, good landlords, and much better than most feudal lords. But the knights and their men brought a little colour to life. Mag didn’t mind hearing a man say fuck, as long as he brought a little of the outside world to Abbington-on-the-Carak.
She heard the horses, and her eyes flicked up from her work. She saw dust rising well off to the west. At this hour, it could never bode well.
She snorted and put her work in her basket, carefully sheathing her best needle – Harndon work, there was no local man who could make such – in a horn needle case. No crisis was so great that Mag needed to lose a needle. They were harder and harder to get.
More dust. Mag knew the road. She guessed there were ten horses or more.
‘Johne! Our Johne!’ she called. The Bailli was her gossip, and occasionally more. He was also an early riser, and Mag could see him pruning his apple trees.
She stood and pointed west. After a long moment, he raised an arm and jumped down from the tree.
He dusted his hands and spoke to a boy, and heartbeats later that boy was racing for the church. Johne jumped the low stone wall that separated his property from Mag’s and bowed.
‘You have good eyes, m’ame.’ He didn’t smirk or make any obvious gesture, which she appreciated. Widowhood brought all sorts of unwelcome offers – and some welcome ones. He was clean, neat, and polite, which had become her minimum conditions for accepting even the most tenuous of male approaches.
She enjoyed watching a man of her own age who could still jump a stone wall.
‘You seem unconcerned,’ she murmured.
‘To the contrary,’ he said quietly. ‘If I were a widowed seamstress I would pack all my best things and be prepared to move into the fortress.’ He gave her half a smile, another bow, and sprang back over the wall. ‘There’s been trouble,’ he added.
Mag didn’t ask foolish questions. Before the horses rode into their little town square, shaded by an ancient oak, she had two baskets packed, one of work and one of items for sale. She filled her husband’s travelling pack with spare shifts and clothes, and took her heaviest cloak and a lighter cloak – for wearing and sleeping, too. She stripped her bed, took the bolster and rolled the blankets and linens tightly around it to make a bundle.
‘Listen up!’ called a loud voice – a
Like all her neighbours she opened the upper half of her front door and leaned through it.
There were half a dozen men-at-arms in the square, all mounted on big horses and wearing well-polished armour and scarlet surcotes. With them were as many archers, all in less armour with bows strapped across their backs, and as many valets.
‘The lady Abbess has ordered that the good people of Abbington be mustered and removed into the fortress immediately!’ the man bellowed. He was tall – huge, really, with arms the size of most men’s legs, mounted on a horse the size of a small house.
Johne the Bailli, walked across the square to the big man-at-arms, who leaned down to him, and the two spoke – both of them gesturing rapidly. Mag went back to her packing. Out the back she scattered feed for her chickens. If she wasn’t here for a week, they’d manage, longer, and they’d all be taken by something. She had no cow – Johne gave her milk – but she had her husband’s donkeys.
She’d never packed a donkey before.
Someone was banging at her open door. She shook her head at the donkeys, who looked back at her with weary resignation.
