Linnet screamed, then cut the sound off rapidly against the palm of her hand. Ironheart seized his sword and shield from the bench and faced the intruders.
‘Get out of my house or, by God, I’ll kill you!’ he snarled.
One of the soldiers laughed. ‘You’re a foolish old man,’ he said, advancing with a heavy, deliberate step. ‘And God’s asleep.’
Linnet backed away. Never taking his eyes off the soldiers, Ironheart sidestepped so that Linnet could squeeze past him. ‘Hide in the cellars next door,’ he muttered from the side of his mouth. ‘Gytha has the keys.’
Linnet cast a frightened glance over her shoulder then ran into the backyard. Grabbing Robert’s hand, she pulled him across the yard at a run and out of the back gate into the communal narrow entry running behind the houses. Gytha and Ella panted behind her. She reached for the iron ring on the gate of the house adjoining Ironheart’s and twisted. The door did not move. She thrust her shoulder against it until her flesh bruised and her bones hurt. The door’s hinges had dropped at some time and its base dragged the dusty ground. Gytha and Ella joined her, kicking and pushing, fear lending them strength. Finally, reluctantly, the door scraped open enough for the women and boy to squeeze through into the yard of the vintner’s house.
Wheezing, Gytha unfastened the hoop of household keys from the belt at her thick waist and found the one to the solid rear door of the building.
‘Lord William said we should hide in the cellars.’ Linnet panted, staring round the empty backyard with wide eyes and thinking that at any moment they would be caught. From the direction of Ironheart’s house they heard a loud bellow and the shriek of steel meeting steel. Then someone screaming in pain. Gytha fumbled the key into the lock and twisted and pushed.
The house was dim and had the musty odour of places left unoccupied for a time. The walls were bare, for the merchant had taken all his portable goods with him and only the plainest of furniture remained. An empty cauldron stood over the fire pit, which had been cleaned of rubbish and new kindling laid to hand.
‘The cellar’s this way,’ Gytha gasped and disappeared behind a wooden screen into the storeroom. Bunches of herbs and smoked hams hung from hooks hammered into strong wooden beams that supported the floor of the sleeping loft above. Two buckets stood on the floor beside an old pair of pattens and several cooking pots were laid out on a trestle. There was a candle lantern standing on the trestle, too. Gytha pounced on this and, with shaking hands, kindled a flame from the tinderbox laid beside it. Holding the light aloft, she hastened to a low doorway at the end of the room and told Ella to pull back the heavy iron bolts. Linnet ran to help the maid. Fortunately, the bolts, although stout, had been kept well oiled and were easy to draw back. The oak door swung open and the candle flame danced, making huge shadows on the rough-cut sandstone stairs that led down into a throat of darkness.
Robert hung back. ‘I don’t want to go down there,’ he whimpered and clung tightly to his mother. ‘I don’t like the dark. Monsters might get me!’
‘You cannot stay up here.’ Crouching, Linnet cuddled him. ‘And there are no monsters. Sir William wouldn’t allow them to live in his cellar, would he?’ Over Robert’s shoulder, she gestured the other women to continue down the stairs. Gytha gave her the hoop of keys, holding out to her the cellar one, and started downwards to the dark horseshoe arch where the first room opened out. Linnet smoothed Robert’s hair. ‘Look, I’ll carry you and you can hide your face against my shoulder.’
Robert still resisted, a whine of fear escaping between his teeth, but Linnet scooped him up in her arms. She did not have the time to cozen him further and could only hope that he would not begin to scream.
A scraping sound came from the direction of the yard entrance and almost simultaneously the women heard the thump of weapons upon the street door.
‘Quickly, my lady!’ Gytha hissed, beckoning from the foot of the stairs, her eye-whites gleaming.
Linnet started down the steps, Robert clinging to her like a limpet. She began to close the cellar door with the hand not supporting him but stopped as Ironheart staggered into the storeroom, his mouth twisted in a grimace of effort and pain. She widened the door again. He was too breathless to speak but gestured her down the stairs. Wordless herself from the sight of blood glistening on his shoulder, she gave him the key and hastened down after the other women. As she reached the cave, she heard the front door crash down and the iron key grate in the cellar lock.
The dampness closed around them like a tomb, musty and cold. Gytha brought over the lantern to light Ironheart’s way down the steps. He leaned heavily on the rope supports hammered into one side of the wall, and when he reached the bottom collapsed against a row of casks, his breathing harsh.
‘I haven’t given you away,’ he panted. ‘We killed the first three, me and Jonas . . . and the two who came after . . .’ His eyes squeezed shut and he put his hand to the wetness at his shoulder.
‘Where is Jonas?’ Gytha asked. Her hand trembled as she set down the candle lantern.
Ironheart swallowed. ‘I’m sorry, Gytha, there was nothing I could do. There were two of them at me and I could not reach him. I tried, God knows I did. Then one of the bastards ran into this yard after you and I gave chase. I got him - but he got me. You think you’re safe enough in your own house not to bother with mail.’
‘Let me have a look.’ Kneeling, Linnet reached to examine the wide split in his leather jerkin, tunic and shirt.
‘No time,’ he gasped. ‘They will be looking for loot, and in a vintner’s house that means the cellar.’
Linnet withdrew and looked at him askance. ‘Then why tell us to come here in the first place?’
‘The cave runs the length of all the houses and then some more. There is a passage branching off beneath the entry where there used to be a meat store. We had a dispute with the old basket-weaver across the alleyway - he cut a room for his workshop and broke through into my cellars. As far as I know, the hole has only been boarded over. It should be possible to crawl through. Give me your arm, girl.’
Linnet was almost dragged to the floor by Ironheart’s weight as he levered himself to his feet and leaned briefly against the casks.
‘Here, boy,’ he commanded Robert, who was holding tightly to Linnet’s skirts. ‘Carry my sword for me, be my squire.’ He held out the weapon. The candlelight flashed upon the blade edge and up the tendons of the man’s rigid hand.
Tentatively Robert did as he was bid, his own small hand inadequate on the braided grip.
At the top of the stairs, the door suddenly rattled vigorously on its hinges. ‘Locked,’ said a gruff voice. ‘Use the axe, Greg.’
‘This way,’ Ironheart whispered hoarsely and began weaving a path through the casks. The cellar door shook beneath the blows of an axe and they all heard the sound of splintering wood.
Linnet did not like the way Ironheart was breathing and from the size of the wound, as she had briefly seen it, she was sure that it would need attention very soon if he was not to bleed to death.
They rounded a corner and had to stoop as the roof of the cave suddenly dipped and seemed to reach an end. The lantern light illuminated the chisel marks on the walls where the cave had been cut. To their left the shadows seemed blacker than elsewhere and it was towards these that Ironheart headed. In a moment, the shadows resolved themselves into a narrow, dark connecting passageway. Gazing over her shoulder, Linnet saw only blackness but the hammering sounds went on and there was a cry of triumph as the soldiers split through the door.
‘I want Joscelin,’ Robert whimpered as they crouched along the passage and into the storage cave of the house next door. ‘Will he come and save us, Mama?’ He, too, looked back with the wide eyes of a hunted animal. The weight of the sword was making his wrist droop.