CHAPTER FOURTEEN
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That Dark Sky
Tavern of the White Feather
Bicester
It could have been worse.
That’s the way Kristoph looked at the situation with his finger. It was healing very well thanks to the wine he soaked it in almost every night, given to him by the same man who had been giving him food and drink this entire time. At night, wherever he was chained – usually on the wagon and with the livestock – the soldier would bring him food and sit next to him. For the first few nights, the man didn’t say a thing, especially after the episode that saw Kristoph lose the tip of his finger, but a couple of days ago, the man actually began to speak to him.
At first, it was small talk, but last night, it was an entire story about daughters he had lost to the Danes. Mostig was the man’s name and Kristoph listened to the man tell a horrific story about watching his daughters’ abduction and his home going up in flames. Injured, sick, he’d wandered until he’d been found by Edwin of Mercia’s people, who took him in and sheltered him in exchange for his service as a soldier.
Mostig didn’t mention how he came into the service of Alary and Kristoph didn’t ask. In fact, Kristoph didn’t ask anything because he didn’t want his curiosity to get back to Alary. The less antagonizing the man, the better. Kristoph didn’t want to lose another finger.
It was a misty night in the village of Bicester, a densely-populated berg with poorly constructed homes crowded in around each other and torches burning near the town square in a vain attempt to stave off the darkness. The mist was creating a wet coating on everything but the torches had been soaked in fat, which meant more heavy black smoke than flame was pouring from them on this night. It was a very dark night, in fact, with the moon obscured by the clouds. All was eerily quiet and still as the residents of the town huddled behind their locked doors, preparing for sleep.
Kristoph sat on a bed of old straw beneath the wagon, watching the night beyond the livery yard where Alary had stabled his horses for the night. There was a tavern across the street, simply called The White Feather from the sign scratched above the doorway, and he’d seen Alary disappear inside when they’d arrived in town earlier that evening.
Kristoph was expecting his soldier friend to come out of the tavern at some point to give him something to eat but the man hadn’t made an appearance yet, so he sat beneath the wagon and watched the mist fall, his thoughts wandering to his wife and daughter as they so often did these days. Hardly an hour went by that he wasn’t thinking of Adalie and their daughter, Chloe.
It was the only thing that kept him strong enough to stay alive.
Kristoph glanced at his left hand, his long and strong fingers beneath the weak light. The little finger was the one that Alary had cut and he’d been mercifully unconscious when it had happened so he never felt a thing. He’d awoken to a bandaged hand and a little finger that had the top knuckle removed. It really wasn’t all that bad as far as amputations went; it could have been the whole hand and he wouldn’t have known until it was too late, so he was grateful for small mercies.
Still, he wasn’t feeling so merciful towards his captor.
He tried not to think of Alary at all, a man who kept him heavily chained at all hours of the day and night. Alary might have been an arrogant arse with delusions of grandeur, but he wasn’t a fool. He guessed that his captive would try to escape so he kept him tightly bound, always secured to something that was heavier than he was so he couldn’t easily run off. Even now, as Kristoph tested the chains that were secured to the axel of the wagon because testing the anchor of his chains had become a habit, he heard the door to the tavern open.
Men were spilling out into the night, heading over to the livery, and he recognized several of Alary’s men, drunken and loud. He didn’t like when they got drunk because one or more of them always wanted to fight him, challenging the great Norman invader. He didn’t feel like getting into a fight this night so he tried to stay out of sight, sliding back behind the wagon wheel to obscure his form. His ribs were still damaged, his beaten body was slowly healing, and the hand with the half-missing finger was still very sore from the injury.
But one thing was for certain – his strength was returning and, with that, so was his drive to escape these Saxon bastards.
Surprisingly, Alary was one of those who had come from the tavern. Kristoph could see him crossing the road, talking to his men, laughing with them, and drifting in his direction. Since Alary didn’t usually socialize with his men, this was of concern to Kristoph and he watched very carefully as the man crossed the road, hanging on one of his men and laughing uproariously. Unfortunately for Kristoph, Alary seemed to be heading in his direction.
Damnation, he thought. He wasn’t ready to lose another finger, or worse. Alary managed to stay clear of him most of the time, but with drink, he became more aggressive. The closer Alary drew, the more Kristoph braced himself.
Unfortunately, he wasn’t quite as concealed as he’d hoped. Alary spied him under the wagon bed, tucked back by one of the wheels. He bent sideways to see him more clearly and almost ended up falling over. He laughed.
“Norman?” he called. “What are you doing under there? I can see you. Come out from there!”
Kristoph debated whether or not to obey but he knew if he didn’t, things would go badly for him. He didn’t want to agitate a very agitable man. Slowly, he pulled himself out from beneath the wagon bed. Alary made his way over to him as he came out from beneath, the mist drifting down onto his face and head.
“Look at you,” Alary said drunkenly. “You look terrible.”
Kristoph couldn’t very well disagree. “I do not smell very good, either.”
Alary laughed. “That is to be expected,” he said. He gazed at Kristoph a moment, sobering. “We must speak, you and I. There is much to tell.”
The last time Alary had been friendly like this, Kristoph had lost part of a finger. Therefore, he was extremely wary as Alary plopped down beside him, sitting in the old straw as he gazed up into the misty sky, blinking his eyes because he was getting water in them. But he kept staring up into that dark sky, reflecting the darkness of his troubled mind.
“You will be happy to know that my spies tell me that your Norman friends are no longer following us,” he said. He cast Kristoph a sidelong glance. “Does that surprise you?”
Kristoph wasn’t surprised because of one primary factor – he didn’t believe Alary in the least. He suspected the man was trying to play some kind of demoralizing mind game with him but he wasn’t about to let Alary get the better of him. If the man was trying to cause him grief, then he was in for a disappointment.
“You sent them the tip of my finger,” he said after a moment. “If it were me, I would take your threat seriously. They did what they had to do so that you will not cut off something more vital.”
Alary nodded thoughtfully, as if they were having a perfectly normal conversation. “But to back off completely?” he asked. “They must not be very loyal friends if they have abandoned you.”
“You are probably correct.”
“Is that what Norman loyalty is worth?”
Kristoph wasn’t sure if he was trying to antagonize him or ask a genuine question. Kristoph knew it was safer, for him, to simply agree with him.
“You told them to stay away, and they have,” he said. “I should think you would be pleased.”
Alary nodded, looking up at the sky again as the soft mist fell on his face. He closed his eyes, feeling the cool cleanse of the mist upon his face but he also began to tip backwards because of the drink in his system. He ended up bumping back against the wagon.
“Norman,” he said after a moment. “Why have you come here? What will your people do now that they have killed my king?”
Kristoph had heard variations of this question since his abduction and, for once, he sought to take charge of the conversation. Much as he did with the lady warrior that first day he’d been abducted, Kristoph viewed this moment as an opportunity to make himself less of an object of hate and more of a man who had simply been obeying orders. It had worked with the woman, but Alary… he was different. There was something not quite right about the man, which made Kristoph proceed very carefully.
But it had to be done. If had any chance of survival, he would have to take it, in any form.
“I was only following the commands of my liege,” he said, leaning forward to look Alary in the face. “But what of you? Are you frightened now that the Normans have come to the shores of England? Truthfully, England has had many enemies come to her shores, men who have taken chunks of the country for themselves. The Danes, for instance. They continue to raid and loot, not only in England, but as far south as Breton. We have had our troubles with them. Why do you fear the Normans so?”
Alary blinked as water pooled in his eyes. “Would you not also fear men who came to your shores and killed your king?”
It was as vulnerable and truthful as Kristoph had ever seen Alary. He knew it was the drink talking, but it didn’t matter. It was a surprisingly weak question as the wine removed all of Alary’s inhibitions and controls. Perhaps there was something human inside the man, after all, and it was to that human part of him that Kristoph intended to appeal to.
“You want to know what the Normans will do?” he asked. “I will tell you quite simply – they will come. They will continue to come and abducting me will not make them stop coming. If you want to survive this conquest, then you must ally yourself with the Normans and holding me hostage will only make you the enemy in their eyes. You can cut off my hands, my feet, my ears, and send it all back to them with threats, but I am one knight who is meaningless in the grand scheme of things. They will not care if you cut me to pieces and send me back. It will only make you more of an enemy in their eyes and they will come for you. They will not stop until they have you. Do you want to survive? Then you will listen to me. I will tell you how to survive.”
By this time, Alary was looking at him, his drunken expression rippling with concern. “How many men have come with Normandy?”
“Tens of thousands. You were on the field of battle; you saw how many there were.”
Alary had. Suddenly, his drunken state wasn’t quite so pleasant. It was magnifying his emotions, fear or jubilation or sorrow. He looked at Kristoph, his brow furrowing.
“If they keep coming, I will send you back to them in a puzzle that no man could put back together,” he said, growing agitated. “That will keep them away!”
“I told you it would not. They do not care about a solitary knight when it comes to conquest.”
“They must not come to Mercia!”
“They are already in Mercia.”
Alary’s eyes widened as he realized what the Norman said was true. He groaned, as if becoming ill. “They are crawling all over the south of Sussex and Wessex,” he hissed. “Of course they are in Mercia!”
Kristoph watched the man closely, hoping this didn’t mean he was about to lose another body part. “Do you want to keep them away?”
“They must stay away!”
“Do you want to keep them away?”
Alary labored to climb up from the dirty straw, staggering because he couldn’t quite catch his balance. He ended up leaning against the wagon to steady himself.
“How do I keep them away?” he finally asked. It sounded like a plea. “Tell me!”
Kristoph felt a huge surge of hope in that question. Maybe – just maybe – he could keep himself alive and in one piece until he had the opportunity to escape. If he could convince Alary that he was of help, that he could help him keep the Normans away, then perhaps that opportunity would come at some point.
Kristoph could only pray.
“I will tell you the secret on how to keep the Normans away,” he said. “But you cannot threaten me any longer. You cannot cut off any more fingers and, for God’s sake, feed me and let me sleep in a bed. Keep me alive and I will tell you how to keep the Normans away.”
Alary was so drunk that he didn’t have his usual steadiness of mind. What Kristoph was offering was quite attractive to him. Even though Tenebris wasn’t actually his but a fortified lodge belonging to his brother, still, it was the only thing he had. He didn’t want to relinquish it. The fear of losing it to the Normans was wreaking havoc within him.
“I will,” he finally said, wiping his running nose with the back of his hand. “What will you tell me?”
“Feed me and we will discuss it.”
One of the best moments of Kristoph’s life was when Alary ordered his equally-drunken men to unchain the prisoner, but he wasn’t so drunk that he left Kristoph unattended. With a drunken four-man escort, Kristoph was escorted over to the smelly, low-ceilinged tavern where he sat on the floor by the hearth and enjoyed a feast of boiled mutton and bread.
But to Kristoph, it was the best meal he’d ever tasted.
He tasted hope.
Maybe he would live through this, after all.
At least, that was what he thought until the next morning when Alary woke up with a headache and no memory of their conversation.