CHAPTER ELEVEN
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Message Received
The Village of Oxshott
Kristoph was healing slowly but his misery lingered.
It was just before dawn on the fourth day after the battle that saw Harold Godwinson lose his life and Kristoph was awake, standing beside the horse that Alary rode because his bound hands were tied to the saddle. Alary wouldn’t permit him to have his own mount, even though his battered body screamed for it, instead making him walk beside him as they traveled. If Alary spurred the horse into a trot, then Kristoph ran beside him and if he happened to stumble, which he did once, then Alary would drag him for as long as he found pleasure in his suffering.
But Kristoph was strong, which probably irked Alary. He never begged for mercy and he hardly said a word about anything, not his pain nor his suffering nor his hunger, which was substantial. He’d hardly been fed since his capture but the previous night, one of Alary’s men had taken pity on him and brought him half a loaf of bread from the inn where Alary was staying, bread that Kristoph had taken gratefully and wolfed down. He had no idea when he’d be fed next and, even now, as the sun began to peek over the eastern horizon on this damp, cold morning, he wasn’t sure when he would eat this day, if he would eat this day. But his strength was returning for the most part and he suspected he’d be able to escape in a day or two.
That was the plan.
Therefore, he didn’t let his depression in the situation get to him. He’d been watching Alary for the better part of four days, analyzing his enemy. The man was petty and suspicious, but he didn’t seem particularly bright. Kristoph was fairly certain he could outsmart him at some point.
As he stood by the horse this chill morning with a few of Alary’s men standing around on guard, he noticed when a rider on a weary horse arrived and began asking questions of some of Alary’s men. Someone pointed to the inn and the man disappeared inside, which led Kristoph to wonder if the rider was looking for Alary in particular. It seemed to him as if the man was looking for someone from the way he was behaving.
But Kristoph didn’t give the rider any more consideration than that as the same man who had given him the half-loaf of bread untied his hands and gave him watered ale to drink and another cup full of a barley gruel, which Kristoph sucked down in one big swallow. He smiled gratefully to the man and handed back the wooden cups about the time another of Alary’s men came bolting from the inn, heading in his direction. Kristoph heard a reference to himself, twice, and his curiosity piqued. Soon enough, he discovered that he’d been summoned.
Fighting down his trepidation, Kristoph’s four-man escort took him to the inn, which was essentially one long single-room building and little else. There were people sleeping all over the hard-packed earthen floor although at this time in the morning, men were rising as serving wenches moved among them, delivering food. Coughing, snorting, and farting abounded as men woke to a new day.
Kristoph hadn’t slept in the inn the previous night. He’d slept on the cold ground next to the cart, so the stale heat of the inn was welcoming as his escort took him over to Alary, who was sitting next to the blazing hearth. Alary was breaking his fast for the day, eating his bread and cheese as he sat at the table with the rider who had so recently arrived on the weary horse. Kristoph had been correct in his assumption that the rider had been looking for Alary. When Alary looked up from his food to notice that Kristoph had arrived, he indicated for the man to sit.
“Join me,” he said, mouth full. “Have you eaten?”
That was more than Alary had said to him their entire journey north. Kristoph was instantly on his guard.
“I was given a ration,” he said.
Alary shoved bread and cheese at him. “Eat,” he said. “You and I must have a discussion and you cannot do it on an empty stomach.”
Kristoph was increasingly wary. He eyed the man sitting with Alary; a pale, young man dressed in rags with a running nose and bushy hair. He looked cold and hungry. He didn’t know the lad but that didn’t mean anything; something was amiss. He could feel it. Being that he was still starving, however, he took the food where he could get it. Breaking off a big piece of the warm bread, he took a healthy bite.
Alary looked up from his meal. “How are your injuries healing, kriegshund?”
It wasn’t the first time Alary had called him by that name. Kristoph spoke several languages and he wasn’t particularly insulted by being called a war dog. He was one.
“As well as can be expected,” he said, swallowing the big bite and taking another.
“Do your ribs still hurt?”
“Aye.”
“Your face is not so swollen anymore.”
“I will heal.”
Alary nodded, sopping up gravy on his trencher with his bread. “Tell me something,” he said. “Why would my sister be following us with a Norman army?”
Kristoph was puzzled by the question. He had to think a moment. “Your sister?” he repeated. “She is following us?”
“Aye.”
“Who told you this?”
Alary indicated the weary rider. “He did.”
Kristoph looked at the young man, who was gazing back at him with a good deal of anxiety. That was the only thing Kristoph could read from his expression. He returned his focus to Alary.
“I would not know why she is following us,” he said. “She is your sister.”
Alary nodded. “Aye, she is, but I have never known what is in her mind,” he said, rather casually. “This rider has come from Westerham. We were there the two evenings past, if you recall. This rider says that my sister is at Westerham with an army of Norman soldiers and she has told Lady Gunnora, the lady of Westerham, that they are following us. I have been asked to wait for her to catch up to us. Now, why do you suppose my sister is coming after us?”
Kristoph was astonished to hear this but, in the same breath, he was thrilled. His mind began to work very swiftly. The woman had been more than concerned for him when Alary and his men were beating him. She protected him and tried to stop them. Even after he’d been beaten unconscious, she’d evidently spoken to him because Alary’s men had seen her, although Kristoph had no memory of what she’d said. But she clearly had believed he was her prisoner and she had been furious with Alary for taking him from her. That much, he remembered.
My prisoner, she’d said.
If I had something I wanted back very much, wouldn’t I try to find help from a sympathetic source?
Kristoph pondered that very question which led him to a myriad of possibilities, not the least of which was the fact that he knew Gaetan would not give up looking for him. He knew that Gaetan would spend his entire life searching for him. That was truly the one hope that kept Kristoph brave in this dire situation.
What if… what if the lady warrior had somehow found an unlikely ally in Gaetan? The lady had been enraged at her brother when he’d taken Kristoph. Was she enraged enough to seek revenge against her brother by summoning the Normans to rescue her prisoner? And Gaetan, of course, would be happy to comply.
It made perfect sense to Kristoph.
“If your sister is in league with my countrymen, then that is not something I would know,” he said, skirting the subject. “I only met the woman once she’d captured me. I think that if she had been a Norman collaborator, she would not have captured me at all, so what you are telling me makes little sense.”
Alary swallowed the bite in his mouth, reaching for his cup of watered ale. “I agree,” he said. “But, then again, Ghislaine has never made any sense. She is a foolish woman, even more foolish once her husband was killed. I think his death did something to her mind because she was not the same afterward. Now I am wondering if she is not bringing the Normans to exact some kind of vengeance against me for taking you away from her. Would you not agree that is logical?”
That was exactly what Kristoph was thinking but he didn’t want to admit it. “My countrymen are not so easily swayed,” he said. “It is more likely that she is their prisoner.”
He was trying to throw Alary off the scent but Alary was sharper than he’d given him credit for. “Lady Gunnora did not seem to think so,” he said. “If my sister is following me, then it is for a reason. She wants you returned. And she wants to punish me.”
Kristoph could sense something foreboding coming about. He didn’t like the look in Alary’s eye. “My countrymen are not so foolish that they would follow a woman,” he said. “I would not worry over it.”
Alary shrugged. “Mayhap,” he said. Then, he turned to the young man sitting at the table. “Do you know who Ghislaine of Mercia is?”
The young man was wide-eyed with fright in the face of Alary’s question. “I… I think so, my lord.”
“You have seen her before?”
“I think so, my lord.”
It wasn’t much of an answer but it seemed to satisfy Alary, at least moderately. “Then I want you to take something to her and you will also deliver a message for me.”
As the young man nodded nervously, Alary turned to Kristoph.
“Give me your hand.”
Kristoph’s blood ran cold. “Why?”
“Give it to me or I shall force my men to give it to me. It is your choice.”
Kristoph studied him a moment, trying to determine why he wanted to see his hand. Give me your hand. Nay, he didn’t want to see his hand. He wanted the hand. He began to feel the familiar rush of battle because he knew, no matter his injuries, that he was going to resist with everything he had. If Alary wanted his hand, then he was going to have to fight for it.
“If you tell me what you are going to do, I will consider it,” he said evenly.
Alary’s eyes narrowed. “I have given you a command, prisoner. You will obey!”
“Nay.”
With that, Alary stood up and made a grab for Kristoph’s arm, but the knight stood up and dumped the table over, tossing the remains of the meal back on to Alary. He then threw a big fist at the first man who charged him. As that man went sprawling, a second man charged and Kristoph slugged the man in the nose, sending him to the ground. The third man who charged him was the soldier who had been kind to him and had given him food, and that momentary hesitation cost him. The fourth soldier, seeing the fight, got his hands on one of the big iron pots near the hearth and struck Kristoph across the back of the head with it.
The knight fell like a stone.
Within a few minutes, the terrified rider from Westerham was back on his mount, carrying the top portion of Kristoph’s left pinky finger with him. The message he was told to deliver to Ghislaine of Mercia was simple:
Follow me and the next time I will send a bigger piece of the Norman back to you. His life is in your hands.