“Come away, Beamis,” Alice said, dragging at his tunic sleeve. “Leave them be. They are newly married-well, not that newly-and they wish to play for just a moment. Why don’t you come with me and I will show you what this play is all about.”
To Hastings’s surprise, Beamis turned his ugly face upon Alice, found something akin to a smile, and gave her his hand. “Not too much play,” they heard him say to her. “Lord Severin must have my head clear so that I may give him superior council.”
Trist waved his paw after them.
When Severin and his soldiers arrived at Sedgewick the following afternoon, the keep was deserted. There were but a few servants milling about, a very old porter who scratched his bald head and muttered about the blackness of men’s hearts, and a dozen chickens who were squawking loudly because they hadn’t been fed. Children and women were nowhere to be seen.
Severin turned to Sir Alan as they came to a halt in the inner bailey.
“He is gone,” Gwent called out. “He and all his men are gone. The old porter tells me he rode out yesterday.”
“Was Lady Marjorie with him?”
“Aye, she was. Riding beside him, pale as an angel, the old man said.”
Q
353
“Where would he go?” Severin said aloud. Then he realized that he had left only twenty soldiers at Oxborough. Only twenty, but still it was enough. The gates were closed and barred. No one unknown could enter,
no one.
Severin remembered that day so long before when two of de Luci’s men had managed to get into the inner bailey. He had been stabbed in Hastings’s herb garden. No, Beamis had orders. No one unknown would be allowed into Oxborough.
Still he worried. He worried more when they questioned some farmers on the return route to Oxborough and discovered that de Luci had co’ne this way.
Severin cursed, plowing his fingers through his hair.
“My lord,” Sir Alan said, “de Luci can do nothing.”
“He is mad and he is smart. I don’t trust him.”
“I hope he has not harmed Marjorie,” Sir Alan said, and all could see that he was smitten.
They rode hard back to Oxborough.
“Please show me where the Healer lives, Hastings. My belly hurts and Lady Moraine told me that the Healer could make even a dying pig well again.”
“We can’t leave Oxborough right now, Eloise,” Hastings said, corning down to the little girl’s eye level. “Lord Severin wants us to pretend that this is a siege. Now, let me try to make you feel better.”
But Eloise’s bellyache went away before Hastings could give her a rather sweet-tasting potion of pounded daisy powder mixed with wine.
Hastings was mending one of Severin’s tunics-a pale blue onewhen Beamis came running into the great hall. Edgar the wolfhound raised his head and growled deep in his massive throat.
“It’s the Healer,” he shouted. “By Saint Ethelbert’s elbows, de Luci hasher!”
Hastings didn’t at first understand, then she rose quickly, the tunic falling to the rushes at her feet. “Oh no,” she said, “oh no.”
“He is outside the walls, the Healer held in front of him on his warhorse. He has a rope around her waist and a knife held to her neck. He says he wants to speak to you or the Healer dies.”
Hastings ran out of the great hall, through the inner bailey, to the outer bailey and up the wooden rampart stairs. She stared down at a sight that scared her to her toes. The Healer was seated tall and straight in front of de Luci. So, de Luci had decided that if he had threatened Marjorie, Hastings wouldn’t have cared. He could be right about that. But the Healer. . .
“Healer,” Hastings called down to her. “Are you all right?”
“Aye, Hastings,” the Healer shouted. “This man is mad. You are not to trust him. Do not do anything he says.”
For that, de Luci cuffed her hard against the side of her face.
“Don’t touch her, you miserable whoreson!”
“Then you will give me what I want, Hastings, and you will do it now.”