Chapter 4

Chapter 4.

At last the number of people filling the dining hall for the midday meal had begun to dwindle. The venison pie had been a firm favourite and every single portion had been sold, with some of the regular customers being disappointed. Jenny had secretly confided that she had already hidden a good-sized portion away for her afternoon break, so determined was she that she should have some. For the others, the roast chicken had to suffice. Eleanor had tried to eat their meat, if only to allay the suspicions of the rest of the staff, but it didn’t sit well in her stomach, and made her feel ill each time she tried. In the end she gave up, opting for the vegetable stew. Now each day she would find a bowl of hot vegetables waiting on the table for her and a plate of honey cakes sitting next to it.

As she watched the last of the customers rising from their tables and heading for the door, she gave a deep sigh. It had been a long, hot day. One of the men staggered in her direction and then grabbed her, a chubby hand catching her around the waist and pulling her about.

“Give us a kiss sweetheart,” he lisped, his breath reeking of stale beer.

“I’d sooner kiss a badger’s backside,” she informed him, pushing him back with the straight finger that she dug painfully deep into his chest.

The heathen reeled sideways and then laughed as he stumbled backwards into one of the tables. He eventually found his balance and with a wink went reeling and tottering after his friends.

As he swayed at the doorway, trying unsuccessfully to make any sort of forward progress, a man in a plain padded jacket entered the room and looked around. Seeing the empty tables he glanced up at Eleanor.

“Have you finished serving?” he asked, his voice full of soft brown tones. A companionable smile played at the edges of his lips.

“We have,” Jenny said, coming over from the kitchen door to stand in front of her with eyes shining and her hips swaying as she moved. “But for you Esquire, we could make an exception.”

“Is there anything left?” he asked sitting down at one of the nearest tables.

“The best venison pie this side of the mountains,” Jenny told him with a sly grin. “I’ll fetch it, and Eleanor here can get you a jar of our best ale.”

The barman was chuckling to himself as Eleanor went over to fetch the ale.

“Shouldn’t we make him pay first like all the others?” she asked him.

“He’s the Sheriff’s Lieutenant,” he informed her, pouring ale from a large earthenware jar into a pewter tankard taken down from the special shelf. They normally served the ale in wooden tankards, but a few pewter ones were held behind the bar for special customers. It would seem that the Sherriff’s Lieutenant was such a one.

“She’s been casting her cap at him since the midwinter feast but he doesn’t take any notice,” the barman confided in a whisper, shaking his head as Jenny passed them with a plate piled high with venison pie, smiling as she did so.

The last twelve days working at the inn had been a mixture of back-breaking work during the day interspersed with narrow escapes at revealing her identity during the evenings. Although she hadn’t progressed very far in her task of finding the men who had destroyed the Gatekeeper, she had learnt a lot during her time there, especially from the hours spent with the heathen girl. Jenny had unwittingly taught her how heathen men treated their women and how the women used their feminine charms to get what they wanted in return. She had also learnt a lot about Broughton’s daily life, things that she might not have learnt otherwise. For example, she knew that the Knight Sherriff was the king’s appointed representative, and as such was responsible for administering the king’s justice in that area. It also meant that the man sitting at the table tucking into Jenny’s dinner was an important figure in that barbaric town and might be able to help her, given the right incentives.

Carrying the pewter tankard with both hand to make sure that none of it spilled, she crossed the room and leant down as she had seen Jenny doing on numerous occasions, pushing her chest forward and placing the drink carefully on the table in such a way that the recipient was forced to look up, noticing her bodice and its contents.

“Is there anything else I could get for you?” she asked keeping her voice soft and low.

She ignored the snort from the barman who must have been watching.

“Err..no. I think I’ve got everything thank you,” the esquire replied with a strained smile

Close up she could see that the esquire was really quite young, his cheeks smooth. The mouth in the middle of the light beard was finely chiselled, his nose straight. His brown hair was cut short, and covered his skull like a silky down.

“Excuse us please,” Jenny said interrupting her observation by the simple expedient of grabbing her arm and dragging her out into the corridor that lead to the dish-washing room.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing,” the heathen girl demanded her cheeks burning with indignation.

“I was being nice,” Eleanor insisted. “He’s an important customer.”

That seemed to exasperate Jenny further. “He is important,” she snapped, “too important for a mere farm girl. Stay out of this, I saw him first.”

Eleanor couldn’t help but be intrigued by this strange reasoning.

“Harry says you have been throwing your cap at him for quite a while but he ignores you. I thought I like to see if he notices my cap.”

Eleanor realised she might have said the wrong thing because Jenny’s hand’s suddenly looked as if she really wanted to get them around someone’s neck and squeeze hard.

“Just stay out of my way,” the girl hissed, before going back into the dining hall, slamming the door noisily behind her.

Pushing the door open a crack, Eleanor watched Jenny though the opening as she sat on the bench next to the esquire, smiling and moving her shoulders suggestively. She had seen this sort of dance before in the glades. The woman smiling and lifting her head at a certain angle, encouraging the pursuit. The man watching, smiling, moving closer, or edging away, It was a dance as old as time itself. There was a moment however when the esquire’s attention wandered, and in gazing around the room noticed her peeking through the gap. For an instant their eyes met and locked, he winked and a sense of being co-conspirators flashed across the intervening space. Smiling, Eleanor let the door slip closed. That first step had gone well. As the woman of her community had once said, “once the hook has been baited, you can only wait and see if the fish will bite.”

After the sharp words exchanged between herself and Jenny there was a distinct coolness between them for the rest of the day. The heathen girl refused to talk to her even when they undressed in the same room and got into bed. The next day, Jenny’s natural good humour re-asserted itself and soon she was chatting away as if nothing had happened. After the lunchtime meal, as they cleaned the tables and floors Eleanor felt emboldened enough to raise the matter with her.

“I thought you said you were betrothed to the carpenter, otherwise I wouldn’t have stepped on your toes like that.”

She felt rather proud of herself, using one of the many phrases that Jenny had taught her.

“It’s alright,” Jenny declared with a small grin. “You weren’t to know. Actually there hasn’t been a formal betrothal, it’s just an understanding we both share. If however I took up with someone like the esquire, I am sure he’d understand.”

Eleanor wondered if he would. If she had agreed to Ackeal’s proposal, she would have been bound by her acceptance to stay true to him and only him. The idea of accepting a man’s proposal while actively looking for something better smacked of shallow, self interest, not a life-long affection. Perhaps that was just the heathen way. She was learning new things every hour about the barbarians beyond her woods.

The next day, she planned to take greater care than usual with her appearance. After rising early, before the rest of the heathens who lived and worked at the inn, she tripped down to the yard and took a bucket of fresh water into the smallest stable so she could wash herself and comb her hair. It was something she did every morning. Sharing a room with Jenny had its advantages, but without privacy she couldn’t afford to loosen her hair when she slept, so she spent her nights with it tied up. It was only in the morning, out of the sight of prying eyes that she dared undo the thongs and let her hair flow free. Catalyn had given her a polished obsidian mirror so she could check that her ears were well hidden after all that combing and plaiting.

That morning as she stared into the mirror, she wondered what the esquire would make of her. Although her face was longer than most heathens, her hair was now a pleasant golden brown colour. It was worrying that the stain was beginning to grow out, revealing faint flashes of white at the roots. Her eyes, like the rest of her people’s, were the colour of cornflowers and almond shaped, dipping down towards the nose. Compared to the heathen women in Broughton her face looked thin and haggard. They had fuller lips, button noses and rounded cheeks. They looked contented, happier, fatter. She looked tired, and to be fair, for most of the time that was exactly how she felt. Pinching her cheeks to bring some colour into them, for a moment she fancied she looked a bit more like the rest of the heathen women, at least similar enough to pass for one.

As she did most mornings, she washed her face, hands, neck and feet, and then scrubbed the front of her dress as best she could. Luckily, the material shed most of the dirt it came in contact with, leaving Eleanor using a cloth and lye soap to remove the patches of dirt that clung. After the dress she cleaned her boots with a little wax. In all her life, Eleanor had never hated anything as much as she hated those boots. She had no idea why Catalyn had forced them on her as the shoes Jenny and Margrite wore about the inn were much like the ones she had left behind. Pulling the leather monstrosities on, she swore that when she got back she and Catalyn would be having words about those boots.

As the rest of the heathens at inn began to leave their beds, Eleanor got on with her chores. Drawing another bucket of water from the well, she took it into the kitchen and left it there. As there were only two groups staying at the inn, a family of four and two young men travelling together, it didn’t take long to serve the breakfast and clear away afterwards. After drying the platters, she helped Jenny take the dishes back into the kitchen and once there breakfasted on hot rolls with butter (she now knew all about butter) and spoonfuls of apricot preserve.

It took only moments to clean the rooms that had been vacated that morning, brushing the floors, stripping the beds, taking the sheets to the steaming outhouse where the boiler maids worked. As soon as she was finished her morning duties, she returned to the room she shared with the Jenny and took out the shawl from the reed basket and pinned it in place with her mother’s silver brooch, Kicking the basket back under the bed, she was about to leave when Jenny appeared at the door.

“Going out?” she asked eyeing the shawl.

“I thought I would go for a walk before the midday meal,” she replied, her heart beating fast in her chest.

“Good idea. I’ll come with you,” Jenny suggested, a sly glint in her eyes.

“No,” Eleanor found herself saying, her hand raised, “No thank you. I just want to be alone for a while,”

“So, you wouldn’t be thinking of walking towards the castle then,” Jenny replied, her face hardening as she took up a position in front of the door with her arms folded.

All morning Eleanor had been working on a story to tell the esquire, one that skirted the truth but would glean her the information she needed. Perhaps it would be a best to try it on the heathen girl first.

“Actually I was,” she told her, her head held high, “and with good fortune I was hoping to spot the esquire and speak to him.”

“Why you little trollop,” Jenny exclaimed, red spots appearing on her cheeks as she took a step closer.

Eleanor stayed calm. “I want to talk to him about my brother,” she continued trying to look serious as she spoke.

“Your brother?” Jenny asked, her eyes narrowing and her shoulders relaxing slightly.

“He went out one day to help strangers chop down trees,” Eleanor continued, encouraged by the girl’s interest, “but he never came back. We have searched and searched, but it’s like he fell off the edge of the world. I am hoping that the esquire can help us, perhaps he knows the men who came, or other men who buy trees. I saw one of the strangers and can describe him. I fear for my brother’s life, that he may have been set upon.”

“What’s your brother’s name?”

“Hamberlyn,” Eleanor replied almost without thinking.

“That’s a strange name,” Jenny replied, her mouth working as if she found Eleanor’s story hard to swallow. “I’ve never heard of anyone in these parts with a name like that.”

“We don’t come from these parts,“ Eleanor reminded her gently. “I came to Broughton because someone on the road said that they had seen long wagons with logs in them coming this way. I have looked high and low but no one remembers these men, nor their wagons.”

“So that’s why you are here, “Jenny declared triumphantly. “I always thought you were a bit of a strange fish. Those hands have never done a real day’s work in their life, and the way you wear that dress. It’s like you’ve never worn one like it before. You never pin it back when you’re doing dirty work, or use it to carry things from one room to another. It’s obvious you don’t wear a dress when you are working around the farm…perhaps you people do all your hard work in your shifts. The only reason I can think of for a young woman to leave home and take up residence in big town, is if she is looking for a good husband.”

Eleanor felt herself blinking and drawing back at this revelation. “I am NOT looking for a husband ,” she insisted, “I am looking for...a brother.”

Jenny’s grin couldn’t have been wider. The heathen girl was so pleased, she placed a friendly arm across Eleanor’s shoulders.

“I tell you what,” she suggested, “let us both go and talk to him. You can talk about your brother, and I’ll talk about anything that takes my fancy.”

That may be for the best Eleanor thought as Jenny pulled out an embroidered shawl from the chest at the bottom of her bed and flung it over her shoulders. She followed the girl as she hurried downstairs and skipped out of the side door, quickly making her way through the streets. Eleanor trotted after her like a dog obediently following its master. They soon arrived at the river, but for a bag of gold, Eleanor could not say for certain which road or pathway they had used to get there.

She had heard from Harry, the cook’s assistant, that the Knight Sherriff lived in a big castle down by the river, but she had imagined it being a neat square tower with turrets. The reality as they followed the cart-rutted track that ran beside the river were massive stone walls that rose from the green water meadow like a mountain. As she got closer to a huge opening in the wall, she could see that the walls were made from small boulders, probably taken from the river, stuck together with an unknown grey compound. All along the outside of the walls, market stalls had been set up selling food and other goods. Brightly coloured awnings fluttered overhead with the stall owners standing beneath shouting their wares to potential customers. Avoiding a group of soldiers leaving the inner courtyard on horseback, they made their way through the curved entrance tunnel. Looking up he realised it was big enough to build a house inside. There were thick, studded gates standing open and a metal grille that could be swung back to reinforce the gates in times of war. Once inside they were faced by a broad expanse of grass with small houses clustered together, built against the opposite wall. Smoke rose from several chimneys and the sounds of metalworking floated above the voices and the clanking of wagons.


“Over there, “ Jenny whispered at her elbow, pointing to a group watching two sets of men lunging at each other with wooden swords like children.

Jenny wandered over to a nearby brazier and spoke to a man selling the chestnuts that were roasting there. She returned with four on a cabbage leaf and offered them to her. Eleanor shook her head, preferring to keep her eyes on the combatants as they swung and hacked at each other.

“Do they get hurt?” she asked noting how the men slammed their wooden weapons against each other’s bodies with such force, that she fully expected blood to flow.

“Do you see the padded jackets and the face guards they are wearing?” Jenny told her. “They protect them from the worst of the hammering. Even a sharpened steel blade would find it difficult to get through one of those padded jackets.”

Ambling towards the fighting, they joined the small crowd watching the men fighting. The audience consisted of a number of young women like herself, and few young men, but the majority of those watching were men well past their prime.

“Go on Jake” a heathen in a blue tunic was shouting, “ keep your guard up lad, or else he’ll ‘ave you. Oh no,” Jake’s supporter groaned as one of the fighters tripped and fell backwards onto the muddy grass.

“That’s thirty mylar you owe me Jim,” his neighbour informed him with a toothy grin. “That lad of yours will never amount to much, you’ll just have to accept it. He takes after his mum, not his dad.”

From the other side of the blue tunic, Eleanor heard a gruff laugh and a barked retort.

“I reckon he does take after his dad, it’s just finding out which of these likely lads is his sire, that’s a puzzle.”

“Don’t take offense Jim,” the first speaker hastily interjected, grabbing Jim’s arm like an old friend. “You know Helman has a foul tongue and a rancid mind to go with it. Pay him no mind.”

Jim however, had no intention of ignoring the insult. Without warning he swung his fist sideways, catching the man who had jeered at him across the throat. Within a heartbeat the heathen called Helman was on his back coughing and choking, his eyes watering.

Eleanor instinctively shrank back from the violence. Edging sideways, she stood behind Jenny, using her as a shield. Jim’s friend, the dark-skinned man with white hair, shook his head with dismay as he regarded the man choking on the ground.

“That wasn’t very clever Jim, you know he’s…”

Whatever Jim’s companion was going to say was stifled in its telling as Helman rose from the floor with a knife in his fist and launched himself at his attacker. Eleanor heard a warning cry as the blade descended, aimed at Jim’s unprotected back, but before blow could fall, Helman shuddered and froze. For an instant he stood with his arm raised, staring in disbelief at his midriff. Then with a groan he crumpled to the floor and lay there with the heel of a dagger protruding from his ribs. Jim turned slowly with a look of triumph on his face.

“That bastard never knew when to back down,” he snarled. “I’ve done the world a favour killing him. Now there’s one less pig in it!”

“What the hell is going on?”

That cry came from one of the men they had been watching. Tearing off his leather face guard, the esquire strode over, elbowing Jim out of the way before kneeling down and pushing his fingertips against the side of Helman’s throat.

“He started it,” Jim’s friend declared, looking around for support. Eleanor saw some of the crowd nod their assent, as did Jenny. “He would had knifed him in the back, if old Jim here hadn’t got his blade in first,” he continued.

“Is that how it went?” the esquire demanded standing up and addressing his comments to Jenny, who nodded back at him.

“He attacked from behind,” she added with a sneer, “and ran on to that man’s blade. If he hadn’t been such a coward he might still be alive.”

There were murmurs of agreement from the others witnesses.

“Take the body away, “ the esquire shouted to the men he had been training with. As they moved to pick up the corpse, the esquire turned to Jim. “You owe the Sherriff’s office three crowns,” he told him softly, his stance and tone promising instant retribution if the man refused to pay. “It’s the standard fee for burying your mistakes.”

Seemingly unconcerned, Jim dug into the pouch hanging from his belt and handed two coins to the man glaring at him. Then with a whistle and a nonchalant shrug he turned and walked away. His friend picked up the bundle that had been sitting at his feet. Slinging it over his shoulder, he spared the esquire a nervous glance before hurrying off in pursuit.

“Jake!” the esquire called out as he stared at the two men now walking swiftly across the grass. The man who had fallen over while fighting earlier came scurrying up. “Use this to give him a decent burial,” he said tossing the coins at him. “And Jake,” he added as the man began moving away to carry out his orders. “Your father is no longer
welcome here. Tell him I will throw him into the deepest, darkest, dungeon we have if I catch him fighting one more time.”

Jake nodded, his eagerness to please written across his youthful face. As soon as it became evident that the esquire had nothing further to add, he ran back to rejoin the men carrying away the body.

“My Lord,” Jenny said, adding to his woes from the tiny grimace he made at the sound of her voice, “if you can spare a moment, could we have a word with you about…”

Jenny’s voice died to a whisper as the object of her attention turned on his heel and stalked away without a backward glance.

Eleanor saw the way she stared at the esquire as he strode up the ramp and into the castle proper. All humour and light was gone from her face. If, as the sagas of her people were correct and hate and love were just two sides of the same coin, it looked like her feelings for the esquire had changed and she was now planning his downfall.
“Men!” was all she said, soft and low as if the word was a blade she could slip between his ribs. “He’ll learn,” she promised.

As Eleanor followed her out of the castle grounds and back through the tunnel, she realised she had been in a dream during her time at the inn. She had come to think of these creatures, these heathens, as people, a folk much like her own, but she had been wrong. They were but a shallow footstep from the savages that had stormed Mithrail’s gates and slaughtered its inhabitants. In their dark hearts, an innate savagery and bloodlust simmered just below the surface, needing the merest prod to bring it to the boil. A man had died in front of these people, he had been one of their own, but no one seemed to care that his life was cruelly taken from him. If they felt that way about killing one of their own, she could see how little regard they would pay to the mass killing of a race that was so very different to the one they knew. Even their womenfolk were savages in their own way. None of the females who’d witnessed the argument and killing had spoken out against it. They were like their men, hardened to the violence and death that filled their every waking moment.

Her people were a community, they gave their labour and skills freely for the common good. The heathens followed a different star. They were born alone, alone they lived and alone they died. Each took from the world in which they lived, whatever they felt was owed them. They stole what they could get their hands on, bartered what they couldn’t steal and only bought what they couldn’t be stolen or barter for. As a race, they were despicable.

Following Jenny through the side door of the inn, she was immediately caught up in the midday meal preparations. It wasn’t until much later that she had time to put her thoughts in order. The next morning she would go out and return later claiming she had met a family member who had told her that her brother had returned. She would beg Margrite’s pardon she told herself and ask for her wages. Then she would leave, making her way back to the forest, follow the trail that Catalyn had pointed out and be safe and snug in her own home before the sun had set on the second day. As she mulled over what she would say, she realised that she was being naïve. How many women in that town had stepped out of their front doors and never returned. The Knight Sherriff and his men might uphold the king’s laws, but there was a darker, deeper law at work in the heathen heart. One where a missing girl would be cause for gossip one day and totally forgotten the next.

During the afternoon break in the kitchen, when Jenny was describing the what had happened and laughing at Helman’s look of consternation when he realised that it was he and not his intended victim who was about to die, Eleanor covered a plate of honey cakes with a cloth. Later, when it was time to fetch water for cleaning the dining hall floor, she took the cloth out to the stables in the bucket and hide the four honey cakes wrapped in its folds inside the bran bin. As there no one staying at the inn that night who had a horse that needed stabling, she knew it would be safe until the following morning.

As they cleaned the dining hall, brushing the floors, scrubbing the tables and benches, Jenny berated her for being sullen and told her she was a stupid goose for letting the esquire’s bad temper ruin her day. Eleanor kept her own council, determined to be on her way as soon as she dared leave.

Instead of being allowed to rest before the evening meal, Margrite came into the dining hall and told them to go to the kitchen and help prepare the vegetables. Harry apparently had taken to his bed with ague. Eleanor had no sooner changed her wet hessian apron for a dry white one, when she was called to the bar to begin serving drinks. Without a moment’s rest, she went from drinks to food to serving drinks again. She was leaning against the bar quenching her thirst with a drink of well water, when she felt a tug at her sleeve. She turned to find the esquire standing at her elbow.

“My Lord, “ she said, surprised to see him there after the day’s proceedings. “How may I serve you? We have some roast duck left if you wish some. I hear it is excellent.”

“Firstly, may I apologise for my behaviour today,” he blurted out before she could continue. “I was…distracted. I didn’t mean to behave in such boorish manner. It was inexcusable of me. I hope you will be able to forgive me. I have made my apologies to your companion. She told me that you wanted to speak to me about your brother.”

Not wanting to miss a valuable opportunity to find those responsible for killing the Gatekeeper. Eleanor recounted the story she had told Jenny.

“You say the men he went with wanted his help chopping down trees?” When Eleanor nodded, he frowned. “Which trees?” he wanted to know.

“The largest trees he could find,” she told him.

“But where? Where were these tree to be found?”

“Inside the Imperial Forest,” she admitted reluctantly, fearing that such an admission would lead to more questions than she could prudently answer.

“You know that removing anything, including trees, from the Imperial Hunt is punishable by death,” he told her in his harshest tone. Again Eleanor nodded. “Do you know where in the Hunt they went?”

Eleanor shook her head thinking she had already revealed more than was safe.

“Your friend said you saw one of the men?”

“Yes,” she told him, remembering some of what Ackeal had told her about the men who had attacked Hamberlyn. “He was driving a wagon that was about ten paces long. He only had one eye, the other was an empty socket.”

“One eye you say,” he replied, suddenly caught up in his own thoughts.

“Some time ago,” he told her with a sigh, “we found a number of bodies floating downstream. I was sent to investigate. We worked our way upstream until we reached the ….. ford on the edge of the Hunt. There we found three wagons as you have described. We also found blood on the ground, a lot of it. One of the men pulled from the river had one eye, also as you’ve described. We had no idea what the wagons were doing there, but at least we now know, thanks to you, that they were involved in illegal felling, in stealing the king’s timber. All the bodies were buried. They had been in the water a long time and…” The esquire stopped mid sentence, suddenly embarrassed. “If you could describe your brother to me,” he continued looking at her kindly and taking her hand in his, “Perhaps we might have already found him for you.”

“He looks…” Eleanor started to say before her mind went completely blank. She couldn’t describe Hamberlyn. “He looks like me,” she tried, her voice shaking, “…but taller.”

The esquire searched her face, then stepped backwards to take in her height.

Shaking his head he gave her the only news she knew he could. “There were none among the ten we recovered from the river that had your height and delicate bones.”

“You make me sound like a bird,” she protested as a cover for her confusion.

“But a very pretty bird,” he insisted with a smile, confusing her even further.

Eleanor carefully removed her hand from his, terrified that she had gone too far.

“You mentioned ???ford,” she told him picking up the two tankards of ale that the barman had placed on the bar for her. “I think that is the other side of the great forest from our farm. We live close to the Jallanger River. Perhaps the answers to this riddle can be found there.”

Eleanor couldn’t help a glow of triumph as she left the esquire and continued with her duties. She had found herself a wolf and had given him a brief sample of the scent he needed to follow. The Gatekeeper had raised his head above the forest a mere two hundred paces from the banks of the broad Jallanger. She had founds herself a heathen male and shackled him to her desires. Those responsible for felling the greatest of Remembering Trees would soon pay for their foul desecration of her people’s greatest treasure.