‘Come, girl.’ Unceremoniously, he dragged her to her feet and shoved her towards the window and daylight.
Mercifully, with the clear, sweet air easing the pain in her chest, the panic receded, and with a flash of insight Gwenn knew that he was no demon. It was the routier, the one who had thrown the first stone, and for some reason he was trying to save her. He must be intending to throw her out of the window, after Katarin. But Gwenn was bigger than Katarin...
‘Hell’s Teeth!’ The mercenary’s mind and hers ran the same course. ‘The window’s too small.’ Jerking Gwenn to one side, he aimed a boot at the frame, and sent it spinning into the street. Another moment and he had her on the ledge, facing inwards.
She found herself looking directly into his eyes. ‘I’m too big,’ she said, clinging to his arms as though his strength alone could save her.
His dark head shook. ‘A tiny thing like you? Never. Bonne chance, my Blanche.’
The flash of white teeth as he grinned was the last thing she saw from the sill. He hooked his arm under her knees and sent her tumbling backwards out of the window and into the fresh air of La Rue de la Monnaie. The impact of her body striking the cloak forced that life-giving air from her lungs, and for a second or two it was all she could do to catch her breath. But she was not allowed any respite. The townsfolk muttered. The cloak was lowered. Helping hands rolled her out, onto the ground, where she lay gasping like a fish out of water.
‘Gwenn! Gwenn!’ Katarin cried. Blindly, Gwenn held out her arms to her sister, and then the tears came.
The cloak was stretched out over her head. It blacked out the sun. ‘Hold it steady there!’
‘Ready, Ned?’ A new voice asked, coughing, from farther off.
Silence gripped the crowd. All Gwenn could hear was the crackle of burning wood and the hiss of water on fire.
‘Ready, Alan. Jump!’
There was a crack like thunder, a sickening thud, and someone gave a gasp similar to the one Gwenn had made when the air had been knocked from her lungs. A bulging purse, with its strings snapped, landed with a clunk at Gwenn’s side. No doubt it belonged to her rescuer. Hugging Katarin, Gwenn retrieved it, climbed unsteadily to her knees and peered over Katarin’s brown mop of hair into the dip of the cloak. It had split, she saw, under the man’s heavier body. The cloak was lowered to the ground, and the mercenary’s grey eyes went straight to her.
‘You alright?’ he asked. Sweat beaded his brow.
‘Aye.’ Gwenn held up the purse. ‘Yours?’ He nodded. Lip curling, she chucked his no doubt ill-gotten gains onto his chest.
‘My thanks,’ he gasped, white about the face. He made no move to pocket his coins.
‘What’s the matter?’
Her dark saviour stretched taut lips into a grin. He was a stranger to Gwenn, but she would recognise excruciating pain on the face of the Devil himself. ‘You’re hurt!’ she exclaimed, dashing away a hot tear.
‘Aye. It was me who was too big,’ he gasped, and winced. ‘I think my leg has broken.’
Because the mercenary had saved her, and she did not like to see even a devil in pain, Gwenn moved towards him. Her grandmother was beyond her help, but this man was not.
Chapter Eight
The hamlet of Kermaria perched on the eastern bank of a marshy river tributary which wandered lazily through vast unchartered tracts of forest to the north, and flowed south through the wetlands, eventually seeping into the Small Sea. To the south the village was bounded by a flat, boggy area; the western approaches were protected by the river; and the woodlands screened it to the north. From a military point of view Kermaria needed little to make it defensible, it could be reached easily only from the east – the route to Vannes.
Its population was small. Neglected by their lord this past two years, a few stalwart villagers managed to scrape a meagre living from the marsh. They either cut wainloads of rushes and sedge for thatch and carted them to Vannes, or they netted fish and eel as well as the wildfowl which gathered in flocks on the reed-edged waters.
Riding into Kermaria along the main trackway, with her clothes sodden from the steady drizzle, Yolande tried to appreciate the forethought that had gone into the siting of this isolated manor. Her children would be secure here. Nonetheless her heart sank. It was a desolate, unlovely spot and her first sight of it, with the landscape reflecting back the oppressive, unremitting grey of the clouds, was enough to depress the spirits of the hardiest soul. A spine-chilling shriek, like that of a wild pig, whipped through the damp air. ‘What was that?’ she demanded.
‘Water rail.’ Jean’s smile mocked foolish fears. ‘An insignificant, timid bird.’
‘With a large voice.’ Shivering, Yolande drew her cloak about her shoulders though the dripping garment could not possibly warm her. ‘It almost had me out of the saddle.’
‘I’d forgotten what a townswoman you are. You’ll become accustomed to the birds, there is an abundance of them here.’ Jean’s eyes wandered along the approach road, and Yolande followed his gaze.
The avenue was protected on either hand by a stone wall two yards high. Ahead of them at the end of the avenue, loomed three stories of squat, drab building. Jean’s manor was a dumpy tower. Built on a square base, it was solid, grey and ugly. Green-grey lichen clung to the walls. Several window slits were visible, but only one of them, the larger central opening, would allow more than the slenderest spear of light into the interior. Pigeons nested in the sagging roof. All grey. Ivy-hung walls skirted an unkempt yard, in the midst of which a tumble of stones marked the spot where once there might have been a well. There was no well rope, the iron mechanism having rusted to dust. The outbuildings were in a similar state of disrepair and spoke of a lifetime of neglect. Rooks swirled on the horizon above the edge of the forest, black shapes against leaden clouds. Grey. Grey. Nothing but grey.
‘What do you think?’ Jean asked, a half-smile playing about his lips.
Yolande dredged her mind for a positive comment. ‘It...it looks very...safe, Jean, very sturdy.’ She eased her damp veil from the skin at the back of her neck.
‘You don’t like it,’ he said, lips twitching.
Yolande blinked through wet eyelashes at the pile of weathered stone. What could she say?
As they drew nearer, the dilapidation grew more apparent. The stones of the manor were broken and eroded; the mortar was gone in places; the stairway leading to the door had subsided, and some steps were missing. There was a gap between the top step and the door. A garden of weeds and moss was flourishing on the flat roof. If the building was left untended much longer, it would crumble back into the ground completely. Yolande knew her lover had rarely even visited the place since he had inherited two years ago, but to give him his due, the neglect was not all his; his father before him had let the place go to seed after Jean’s mother, Lady Anne St Clair, had died. God only knew what horrors lurked inside.
‘It has...possibilities,’ Yolande got out, hardly daring to look her lover in the eye. ‘But there’s much to be done.’
‘Aye.’ His dark eyes were smiling, teasing. ‘Go on, say it, my love. Admit that it could hardly be worse, and then we can laugh and have done. I’m lord of a bog. Do you understand now why I was loathe to bring you here?’
Yolande’s mare picked her way along the walled trackway towards the manor, and suddenly a woman materialised as if out of nowhere, work-reddened hands wrapped firmly round a sedge scythe. Yolande’s mare skipped sideways. Thin as the reeds in the riverbed, the woman stared at Yolande in unsmiling silence, hostile eyes lingering scornfully on Yolande’s soaked finery. The woman clutched her scythe to her scrawny breasts as though it were a talisman to ward off evil. The scythe moved, fractionally.
Biting her lip, Yolande reined back. There was no doubting the challenge in the woman’s mien. ‘Jean?’