XXXIX. Alwich
The snow was half-melted when the two strangers rode up to the palisade gate of the Rimors’ motte castle. They might have been spied earlier, but the piebald steed on which they sat almost blended into the speckled landscape.
The leading stranger wore a heavy brown cloak edged in squirrel, with a liripipe hood over his tunic, and dark blue hose. He had shaggy blond hair and wore a dark bejeweled patch over his left eye.
Riding pillion on a green cushion behind him, in a heavy hooded cloak, his passenger remained unidentifiable save only that, from the way she sat, she was female.
In the center of the bailey, the stranger dismounted, then led the horse to the fenced paddock beside the stables. People there and around the well eyed him suspiciously. There was something in his manner that spoke of soldiery, or maybe it was the terrible scars beneath his eyepatch. One could only imagine how he’d acquired them. And it was odd how he left the woman on board the horse.
He walked across the mucky yard toward the main hall, located in the center of various outbuildings, barracks, the bakery, and the cooking house. Smoke poured from the hole in the center of its roof.
On the scarp, above the flying bridge to his right, the wooden keep stood half disassembled, surrounded by piles of stones, two small treadwheels, and a half dozen masons. The old wood keep was in the process of being rebuilt much more grandly in stone.
The stranger asked a woman outside the baking kitchen where he could find Ainsley Rimor of Alwich, and she pointed to the hall next door. The stranger thanked her and, after a final glance back at his passenger, he entered the hall and closed the door after him.
A fire blazed in the central fire pit. A bent old man tended it. Nearby, seated on an ornate leather stool, Ainsley Rimor of Alwich leaned back against a long table and listened to a recitation of the Chanson de Guillame by a scholarly performer, possibly a poet, who stood before him. The stranger paused, taking in the room, and to listen. He nodded along with the romance. This was the first part of it, where William of Orange, Vivien, and Gui battled the villainous Saracens. That it was being recited suggested that Rimor of Alwich did not himself read French. Beside him sat a girl of perhaps seventeen years, dressed only in a dirty linen chemise. She hugged a green woolen cloak about her shoulders for warmth. Rimor of Alwich’s left hand appeared to be busily at work between her legs while he listened to the recitation. A chessboard with spilled pieces and a game of tables lay farther down the table, as if the players had grown bored with both games.
Elsewhere around the room stood ornate, boxlike chairs with cushions, and tapestries, small tables, numerous pallets on raised frames, and one curtain-enclosed central bed for the lord of the manor. A red gown or bliaut with blue trimming lay over the side of the bed, probably the girl’s. The furnishings had all been moved out of the wooden keep above.
The stranger strolled over to the old man tending the fire, who was sprinkling lavender seeds over it to scent the hall.
Softly, the stranger said, “Seumas, it’s been such a long time. How are you?”
“I am . . . well enough.” He squinted at the stranger. “We are acquainted?”
The stranger smiled and patted his arm. “Long ago.”
Seumas McCrae cocked his head. Perhaps this one had been someone’s child who used to run about inside the castle. Many children had come and gone in his time, beginning with the children of the original lord of the manor. The scarred face no doubt kept the stranger from being recognizable to anybody.
The girl turned her head to stare at the stranger, and this movement caught the peripheral attention of Rimor of Alwich. He raised the hand that had been between her thighs to silence the recitation of Guillame, then stood. He was a squat and solid-seeming man with graying ginger hair and beard. He resembled no one in the close family of Rimor de Ercildoun.
“Begone,” Alwich said to the scholar. “We’ll continue this later, tonight perhaps.” Ignoring the girl, he walked toward the fire. He limped somewhat. His hip gave him trouble in the cold weather. “You go off now, too,” he told old Seumas. “The fire will tend itself awhile without you poking at it.” He had the snappish manner of someone easily irritated. He waited then while the scholar and the old man left the hall, and presented his aching hip to the fire. The girl continued to stare at the stranger as if sizing him up.
Rimor of Alwich acknowledged the stranger’s observation of the girl. He smacked his lips. “Like the courtesan, do you? Ranulf acquired her for me in the Bankside stews when he traveled to London. He’s a randy old thing, isn’t he? Well, we all are in these fleshy vessels.” He plucked at his tunic. “They lead such lives of filth and squalor. You want a bit of her first? I shouldn’t blame you.” The stranger said nothing. “No? Well, all right. Just being glamoured like ’em, you don’t share the appetites of these liches, do you? Of course.
“I’ll tell you, I expected to hear something from Ranulf days ago. Thought surely you would be back through the gate by now. How has he eluded us again? What is our situation, Lord Ađalbrandr, hmm?” Contempt colored his voice, suggesting he did not have a very elevated opinion of the one-eyed stranger, who simply continued staring at the courtesan. “Oh, yes, all right, all right.” Alwich turned to her. “Shoo, go off now. Go put on your clothes and dawdle in the yard awhile.”
They both remained standing, facing each other, while she pulled on the bliaut, tucking her chemise into it, then shoes. In the meantime, Alwich attempted to communicate silently, but the knight wasn’t having any, and threw the probe back at him. Clearly, Alwich’s sharp tone had not been well-received.
The girl clopped across the room and out the door. “There. Now you can tell me, have we achieved our goal?” asked Alwich.
The knight replied, “If you mean, are there any remaining who know of your transformation? Aside from us, there are not. Even the miller has been dispensed with.”
“Oh, but I thought—”
“Ranulf, I should tell you, is also a casualty. He won’t be acquiring any more courtesans from the Bankside stews for you, so you might want to treat that one better.”
Alwich waved off this news. “Pah. We’ll just have to confiscate some other monk, and hopefully this one can protect the crypt. It has been compromised twice now. We really should relocate the Yvagvoja, hmm? Don’t you agree? Anyway, what about the Rhymer himself?”
“Nowhere to be found.”
Alwich pushed out his lips. “Well, how am I to take that? Is that good news or bad?”
“Is it good news you want? Our Casseov recovered from his wounds in the crypt and returned through the gate, the only one to survive an encounter thus far.”
“The only one not shot through the head, you mean,” Alwich replied sourly.
Ađalbrandr drew closer. “That’s exactly what I mean. What I am wondering about is the condition of the sister. The one called Innes. She is—”
“Still being cared for by the nuns of Cluny. I visited last spring to be certain. She remains a nameless madwoman there. They take in all kinds, even lepers. Who can say if some pestilence or other won’t finish her for us? For all I know, her nose has rotted off already. Of course, if it’s your preference I can speed matters along, use a dight and bring her into the fold. One of us riding her would look like a miraculous recovery to the world, and old Ainsley Rimor of Alwich could retire from the scene after his years of service.”
The knight nodded thoughtfully. “So she does inherit if you, say, were to fall down a well.”
Alwich blinked a few times, then tittered. “Well, she would, yes. Of course, the widow Mac an Fleisdeir would quick find us another suitable ‘relative,’ hey?”
“Oh, did I not mention that the widow’s Yvagvoja also perished in the tombs of St. Mary’s?”
“No. No, you didn’t. What, did he wipe us all out?”
Ađalbrandr grinned. “Not quite.”
Alwich rubbed at his aching hip. “Well, then, um, why don’t I have some mead brought in and we can drink to our having survived him—unless, of course, your tastes are a bit more wanton, in which case I’ll call the girl back. Or perhaps something else for you?”
“Perhaps in a bit.”
“As you wish.” Nonplussed now, he didn’t know what to say to Lord Ađalbrandr. The Queen’s consort did wield a fair amount of power, whatever he might think of him. He said, “Did you see the work being done upon the scarp? We’re replacing the wood keep with one of stone. Going to have hearths on every floor. In all the rooms! Carved-out niches in the walls with holes above so the smoke is pulled out. It’s remarkable to be on the cutting edge of change in this primitive society. Of course, MacGillean did it first. I’m not even sure that was our influence. Ahead of his time, though nothing compared to the perfect gleaming heights of Ailfion.”
