“Your Grace. Welcome again to Brantham. I regret you find us in a worse case than when you left us.”
From her sidesaddle atop a dainty white jennet, the Empress swept a glance over the chaotic scene in Brantham’s bailey. “I could say the same,” she replied, with a faintly ironic smile. “By the sound of things, you are well on your way to setting the situation to rights. Let me not hinder you. We are on our way to the Devizes.”
With a gracious but forceful sweep of her hand, she indicated her small retinue, including a tall knight Cecily recognized as Brian FitzCount. “Can you spare us a night’s lodging?”
Cecily turned to Piers Paston with a questioning look. “Your own chamber is ready, Mistress Cecily,” said the castellan. “The gentleman can lodge in my quarters.”
Having quietly dismounted, FitzCount lifted the Empress down from her horse. Cecily could hardly contain her admiration. Clad in a borrowed gown and veil of indifferent quality, fresh from a siege and rout, Maud still looked every inch a queen.
“Show our guests to their accommodations,” Cecily ordered Sire Paston. “See that they are made comfortable.” To the Empress she added, “Forgive my poor hospitality. If there is anything you need—”
“You have your hands full,” the Empress reminded her. “When you have dealt with your duties, I would have a word with you.”
A good hour passed before Cecily felt confident that Brantham’s manpower had been effectively harnessed to meet the crisis. The sun had sunk low on the horizon, making the western wall cast a long shadow over the bailey forecourt. A faint breeze stirred the air, but carried no smell of approaching rain. In the lull, Cecily finally let herself think of her brother. She’d intentionally refrained from asking about Geoffrey, hoping no one would volunteer bad news. With all her other responsibilities delegated, she could no longer postpone an inspection of the great hall.
He must be there, among the wounded.
Cecily clutched the scrip Sister Hawise had filled for her. Since she’d completed an apprenticeship of several months in the priory herbarium, her personal oversight would be most useful in ministering to the sick and injured, including her brother.
After squinting into the setting sun, her eyes took several minutes to accustom themselves to the dim light inside the keep. She climbed the winding stairway to the great hall, relying on habit and memory to compensate for her darkened vision. A wave of cool moist air wafted up the stone steps from the cellars. It made Cecily all the more conscious of the beads of sweat on her brow and the smarting flush in her cheeks.
By the time she reached the hall, her eyes had grown used to the gloom. At the entry she hesitated, scanning the orderly rows of pallets laid out on the rush-strewn floor. Prone bodies twitched and rustled. A low murmur of sighs, groans and snoring all but drowned the sound of muted voices. There was nothing muted about the smell, however. The heat had melded odors of blood, vomit and excrement into a single overpowering stench. Feeling her gorge rise, Cecily raised a hand to her nose.
A short plump figure rose from its crouch beside a nearby pallet. Mabylla Paston swooped down on Cecily, her veil askew and a smudge of dried blood across the bridge of her blunt nose. The picture of harried competence, Mabylla had obviously kept better order in her domain than her husband had kept outside, in his.
“My dear chick, they told me you’d come. A welcome sight you are, I must say.”
Cecily held out her scrip. “Healing herbs from Wenwith. You’re welcome to them, except a few pots of salve I’m saving for the lepers.”
Mabylla took the scrip and rummaged through its contents, drawing out one linen bag after another and holding it to her nose for identification.
“Sanicle!” she cried. “And betony. I was fresh out.” She accepted Cecily’s offerings as eagerly as any pretty trinket from Saint Audrey’s Fair.
Again Cecily glanced around the hall. “Where have you put Geoffrey?” she asked. “How does he?”
Mabylla stopped digging in the scrip. “Didn’t they tell you?” Tears welled up in her tired, kindly eyes. “He’s laid out in the chapel, dear lad. He was past our poor skills to heal.”
Cecily did not cry out or fall faint. Mabylla’s plain words of regret only confirmed the uneasy foreboding she’d carried for months like a weight upon her heart. After the Battle of Lincoln, when word had reached Brantham that Giles and Hugh were among the casualties, Cecily had wondered how much longer Geoffrey could survive. In her seclusion at Wenwith, she’d grieved for him as bitterly as for the others.
“He made a good confession and died shriven.” Mabylla tried to console her. “There’s that to be thankful for.”
“Father?” Cecily asked haltingly.
“With him in the chapel. Still holding his poor hand, I expect. He’s taken it so hard—his last son. It’ll do him good to see you, my dear. You run along to him. We’ll manage here, and all the better for the medicines you’ve brought us.”
The body of Geoffrey Tyrell lay on a low catafalque before the altar of Brantham’s chapel. Despite the past days’ upheaval, he’d been washed, clean shaven and laid out in fresh clothes. The boyish contours of his face sharpened by a month of fasting during the siege of Winchester, his features were settled into the composed serenity of death. Walter Tyrell knelt beside his son’s corpse, clutching one thin, lifeless hand.
He looked as though he’d shrunk inside his clothes, so loosely did they hang upon his once robust frame. In the months Cecily had been away, her father’s hair had turned snow-white. For over twenty years she had fought against his efforts to mold her into his milksop idea of a lady. Just as vehemently she had fought for his attention. At least when he’d argued or scolded, she’d had the satisfaction of knowing he was paying her some mind. Now, seeing her father so aged and broken, Cecily felt a pang of protectiveness for him. Gently, she laid a hand on his bowed shoulder.
“Father…”
He started and turned to her.
“Ah, Cecily. For a moment, you sounded just like your mother.”
Not knowing what else to do, or how to offer him comfort, she slipped to her knees beside him and murmured the familiar phrases of the Pater Noster.
“At least Geoffrey came home to die.” Her father sighed, when she had finished praying. “He won’t be like the others—buried far from home, by strangers.”
Cecily nodded silently. Let him find a crumb of comfort where he might, as Mabylla had taken consolation in Geoffrey’s shriven death. No sense reminding her father he still had one child left, and expecting him to draw solace from that. What was she, after all? Middle child of five. One bitch in the litter, he had once referred to her, not meaning it unkindly.
A cipher. An afterthought.
No matter that she’d outrun, outridden and outfought her brothers, time and again. To him, she was only a daughter and counted for nothing.
“You should get some sleep,” she said. “I’ll stay here.”
He did not even turn to acknowledge her suggestion. “Plenty of time to sleep later.”
“The keep is in an uproar, with all the wounded soldiers and refugees,” Cecily remarked hopefully. Action and responsibility might prove an antidote for this daze of grief that had enveloped her father.
He shrugged one gaunt shoulder, hearing her plea but plainly past caring.
“The Empress has come.”
Walter Tyrell stiffened. His leonine head reared. “Has she, the proud slut? I’ll not stir a step for her sake. Rather, have her come here, to see what her arrogance has cost me.”
Cecily’s mouth fell open. Until this moment, she’d never heard her father speak