‘I’m no coward, horse-lover. I’ll find you, and I’ll cut your throat like a hog’s.’
‘Really?’ Robert said, and he slowly turned his head to stare at the man. ‘Next time we meet, Tranter, you’ll pay for your stupidity.’
‘Mine?’ the Tranter said, and grinned. Then he slammed the pommel of his dagger into Robert’s head, and the young man knew no more.
CHAPTER SIX
Bristol
Cecily knelt beside her palliasse and clutched the little wooden cross on her necklace, her eyes closed as she prepared herself and then began to speak.
The act of prayer had always been soothing. Mumbling her words as she drew down God’s attention upon herself, on Emma, on the Capons, on all she knew, would always in the past have brought her comfort. With her eyes closed, she could sense the presence of the Almighty as she fingered her rosary beads and talked directly with Him. But not this time.
She opened her mouth to speak, but the words would not come. There was a thickness in the base of her throat that seemed to all but choke her. Even as she stared down at her rosary, she knew it could hold no spiritual solace – and that knowledge came to her with a shock that felt like an actual punch in her belly.
Her mouth closed, and the beads trembled as her hands began to shake. Moaning, she leaned forward until her brow touched the palliasse, while tears began to seep from beneath her eyelids.
‘I can’t, I can’t do this!’
Her fingers gripped at the rosary, but there was no strength in them to move the beads along their cord. It seemed that God Himself had turned from her. Her soul was damned, because she had taken the vow to protect the child, to be like a mother to him all his days, and she had failed him. Now the boy was dead, and she was forsworn!
For one error, she would be cursed for all time; she was quite sure of it. Her fingers would not work the beads; her hands gripped the cross, but she felt no sensation of ease from the holy symbol. With a stifled cry, she threw the cross and rosary aside and fell sobbing to the bed. She hadn’t wanted those men to kill Little Harry, but it mattered not a whit; she knew her guilt. She had come to appreciate the full depth of her crime, and now there was nothing she could do about it. She was lost – perhaps forever.
‘I wouldn’t have done it if I could have helped it,’ she whispered, and the sobs began again.
She tried to beg for forgiveness, but He made no sign that He could hear her. At last, in desperation, she grabbed at the rosary beads again, but in her snatching them up, she did not notice that there was a knot formed. As her anxious fingers pulled the beads apart, there was a sudden give, and it seemed to her that time stopped.
The beads sprang from the cord that had bound them, and flew into the air, forming graceful arcs as they rose, only to tumble back to the ground, bouncing and rolling hither and thither.
‘God save me!’ she screamed in horror, her eyes rising to the ceiling as though Christ was there already, staring down at her with an immensity of sadness on his face.
Approaching Bristol
‘Shouldn’t have been so keen to insult the bastard,’ Robert Vyke muttered to himself as he opened his eyes. Some day, he told himself ruefully, he’d learn to think before opening his mouth. Not many men would accept advice on how to treat their beasts, any more than they would on their pewter, their weapons, or their wives.
The blow to his head had left him dizzy, and he hunched his shoulders in an attempt to keep warm. as he lurched painfully up the roadway.
The path ahead was muddy and badly rutted, and for all that the rain had dwindled to no more than a thin drizzle, Robert Vyke was soaked to the skin. A trickle of water ran down from his hair and followed the line of his spine to his waist.
From the light in the sky, he guessed that he had lain like a dead man for quite some time. He must get away before dark, but for now there was nothing in his mind but the need to sit and rest a little more.
Idly, he glanced at the puddle into which he had slipped. From here it looked like a shallow pool, but from his fall he knew it sank at least eighteen inches. Kneeling carefully on his good knee, he tentatively felt around the hole, testing with his fingers until he found a jagged piece of metal, which he hauled out. It was a dagger. The blade, bent almost around to the hilt, explained the injury, and he stared at it in disgust. Someone must have dropped it, and a horse probably stood on it, to make the blade form this impossible shape. It was odd that no one had seen it, for it must have been lying here on the road before being trampled by hooves and kicked into the puddle. As he wiped at the hilt, Robert saw with a sudden thrill that it was richly carved and inlaid with at least two rubies. He whistled softly. He had never touched such valuable stones before in his life! Those rubies would fetch a good few shillings, and Susan and he would be able to buy a pig – maybe a few sheep, too, as well as a new pony.
Without his bill, which Otho had taken, he had no protection, and perhaps this dagger would help him. Not that it would be much use in its present state. Better by far to rely on his old dagger… and then he realised that the horse-driver had stolen it. At his waist there was nothing but an empty sheath.
‘Bastard son of a diseased whore,’ he muttered from gritted teeth.
Well, that made his decision easier. He had to bend this dagger straight if he wanted a weapon of some kind. With that in mind, he set his good foot on it, wincing as his injured shin twisted, but the metal didn’t budge; his whole weight wouldn’t move it. Behind him was a hedge, and there were surely stones at the base to maintain its shape. Robert hobbled over to it, trying to find a gap between the rocks, but there were none; the vegetation was too thick. Pushing his way through further, he finally found a good gap, and here he managed to set the blade into a niche. By throwing his body’s weight against it, he succeeded by degrees in setting the blade almost true.
Looking down the length of the metal, he was satisfied. Pushing it into his old sheath, he found that it fitted very loosely, but at least it should be safe there.
His next problem was the matter of a staff. To walk without one in his present state was impossible. There were no decent lengths he could take from this hedge, for the boughs were all thick, and those that weren’t, were too short to be of any use. However, at the far side of the hedge was a small wood. The trees loomed overhead.
With some effort, Robert pushed himself through a thinner part of the hedge. It appeared to have been used before, for the way was already partly hacked, he noticed. Once in the wood, he was about to search for a six-foot staff, when he became aware of a strong odour in the air. To a countryman there was something familiar about that smell; like the stink of a fox, it was instantly repugnant. He realised it was rotting meat.
A gust hit him. The smell was everywhere. Keeping hold of the branch he had found, wincing with pain, he had to swallow hard to stop from throwing up. Then his eyes were drawn upwards, and he felt his breath catch.
It was like a blow in the belly, that sight. The head was that of a man with wild, dark hair, and it lay resting in the fork of a tree a scant two feet away. The eyes were heavily-lidded as though stupefied, the mouth just a little open, the lips blue and, beneath the chin was the raw meat where his throat had been hacked apart.
And Robert fell back, cursing, before his body at last convulsed, and his vomit spattered on the grass. Rising, he dare not look at that hideous spectacle, but pushed sobbing through the hedge once more, out into the clear, wholesome road.