The dusk settled cool and dark, and as the moon began to rise, silver shadows were cast upon the land. Owls hooted and other creatures of the night rooted around for their supper as Cantia sat on the ground next to Hunt, her arms around the boy as the hut grew very cold and dark. As she rocked Hunt, attempting to lull him to sleep, the door to the hut jerked open.
Startled, Cantia stopped rocking her child as Gillywiss entered the chamber and pulled the door shut behind him. He had a fish oil lamp in his hand, a bowl of liquefied fat with a floating wick that gave off a significant amount of smoke and light. His dark eyes found her in the dim hut and, as she had seen earlier in the day, he flashed her a rather crazed expression complete with big toothy smile.
“My lady,” he greeted. “And how are you faring on this beautiful night?”
Cantia was in no mood for his jovial attitude. “Cold,” she said flatly. “It is cold and dark in here.”
He looked around as if just noticing the darkness. “So it is,” he said, finding more interest in her bags over by the wall. “Do you not have something warm to wear?”
Cantia watched him set the lamp down and pull open a satchel. “We need a fire,” she said. “The children need warmth that cannot be provided by clothing.”
Gillywiss was back to digging around in her bags, pulling forth the garments he had so carefully replaced earlier in the day. As Cantia watched, the man began pulling them on again, inspecting the fine fabric, running his fingers over the delicate stitching. It was the second time that day he had come to put on her clothes and rifle through her belongings, and Cantia was quite curious about his behavior. In moments like this, she could almost believe he was non-violent and rather sympathetic. In fact, she thought she might try to take advantage of his fascination for her wardrobe.
“My lord,” she said softly, “if you like the coats so much, I would happily exchange them for our freedom.”
Gillywiss looked up from the orange-colored surcoat he was presently inspecting. His dark eyes were curious on her, perhaps even interested, but before he could reply, Arabel spoke.
“My lord,” she said in her sweet, child-like voice. “I am the Lady Arabel du Reims. My father is Viscount Winterton. As Lady Cantia said, he will reward you greatly for delivering us to him, but I would like to offer you all that I have so that you may let us go. I… I have fifty gold crowns, some jewelry, a white goat and a black and white pony that I would give you if you will only let us go home. I promise I will have these things brought to you if you will… please, I just want to go home.”
The last words were spoken in tears. Cantia went to the girl to comfort her, pulling her up into her arms and rocking her gently. Arabel was so tiny that it was like holding Hunt on her lap, and Cantia soothed the girl softly.
Gillywiss was watching the exchange carefully. He wasn’t very adept at hiding his feelings so he looked away, back to the satchel, and began to pull out more belongings. He could hear Arabel weeping and Cantia’s soft words, and it fed both his guilt and his irritation. As his rummaging began to grow more agitated in motion, he began to realize there was someone beside him. He turned to see Hunt’s big blue eyes gazing up at him.
“Do you have a boy?” the child asked.
Gillywiss seemed reluctant to answer but he did. “Nay,” he replied. “No boy. Just girls.”
“A wife?”
“She is dead.”
He turned his attention back to the bag and Hunt joined him. The little boy reached into his mother’s bag and pulled forth a beaded belt, handing it to Gillywiss. The man slowed his digging, meeting Hunt’s gaze with some reluctance. It was clear that he was having some difficulty ignoring what was going on around him. Arabel’s weeping was pathetic and sorrowful, and Gillywiss was feeling it.
“I am not a bad man,” he finally said, looking over at Arabel and Cantia. “There are those in this village who would slit a man’s throat as easily as speak to him, but I am not one of them. You have nothing to fear from me.”
“Please take my offer,” Arabel sobbed. “I want to go home. I want to see my father.”
Gillywiss looked at the frail young girl, his sense of remorse growing. He wasn’t any good at fighting off his feelings, torn between knowing he shouldn’t care yet inherently caring. A sick child’s tears were not to be ignored.
“You would do this?” he finally asked her, some disbelief in his tone. “You would give me everything you own just to go home?”
Arabel nodded vigorously. “Aye, I would. Will you not accept, sir?”
Gillywiss pondered her words before letting his gaze move to Cantia and then to Hunt. He knew about the nobility of this country. He knew they were all arrogant and greedy, men and women included. They sucked the peasants dry and still hungered for more. He’d spent his entire life knowing these facts, yet when he looked at Cantia and the children, he did not sense greed or arrogance.
In fact, he sensed a good deal of compassion, of intelligence, and of kindness, especially from Cantia. She was a strikingly beautiful woman, to be sure, and he knew he could sell her to the highest bidder for a great deal of money. But the truth was that he had no desire to sell her. She intrigued him greatly. The whole family did, and he wasn’t exactly sure why.
“Tell me something,” he sat back on his bum, Cantia’s fine things still on his head or in his hand. “You have a desire only to see your father?”
Arabel nodded firmly. “Aye, sir.”
“Why not your mother? I do not understand the relation of this woman to you. She says she is the viscount’s wife, yet she is not your mother?”
He was pointing at Cantia, who looked at Arabel as she thought of an explanation. “Arabel’s mother abandoned her when she was a baby,” Cantia said softly, hoping that if she divulged personal details, the man might feel more of a connection to them and, therefore, more sympathy in his decision to let them go. “She knows no mother.”
Gillywiss lifted an eyebrow. “But you are the viscount’s wife?”
Cantia hesitated a moment before shaking her head. “Not in the eyes of the church,” she whispered. “But we are married in our hearts. That will never change.”
Arabel hadn’t heard of the true relationship between her father and Lady Cantia when she had been at Rochester, but in truth she wasn’t surprised. She had seen the way her father looked at Lady Cantia and, if she thought on it, she wasn’t all that upset about it. She liked Lady Cantia and she wanted her father to be happy. He was, in fact, a very lonely man, and Lady Cantia was very kind. More than that, she understood why her father could not marry Cantia. She was young, but she wasn’t ignorant in the least. Like her father, she was exceptionally bright.
“My mother left me when I was born,” she said. “Although my father told me that she had to go away, I know it was because she did not love me. I was born sick and I must have chased her away and made her ashamed. My father cannot marry again because he is still married to my mother even though she ran away from us.”
Gillywiss was listening seriously to a rather tragic, and very personal, story. His dark gaze found Cantia. “Is this true?”
Cantia couldn’t look at him. These were thoughts and situations that she had only discussed with Tevin. Now a stranger was hearing them and she was uncomfortable.
“Aye,” she murmured, looking at Arabel and stroking the blond head. “Arabel’s mother ran away fifteen years ago and no one knows what has become of her. Tevin… Viscount Winterton… has every intention of hunting the woman down, or at least finding out what has become of her, so that we can be married.”
“Do you know where the woman has gone?”
“Paris, he was told, but that was many years ago.”
“Her name?”
“Louisa,” Arabel said before Cantia could reply. “Louisa Berthilde Solveig Hesse. I am named for her. She is from the House of Hesse. Do you know where that is?”
Gillywiss smiled faintly. The young girl sounded as if Hesse was
perhaps at the ends of the earth.
“Germanic,” he said, looking to Cantia again. “Then you are the viscount’s mistress.”
Cantia had told Tevin once that she would be his mistress even if they could never be married simply because she loved him. It was usually a shameful title, but she was not ashamed, not in the least. She looked Gillywiss squarely in the eye.
“Aye,” she answered without reserve. “I am very proud of it, and of him. He is a remarkable man.”
Gillywiss, pondering the conversation, returned his attention to the satchels against the wall, now open with items scattered. He began to dig around in the bottom of the bag, searching for items he had missed the first time around, but as he groped around, he could hear voices in the forest that were growing louder.
Gillywiss stopped in his rummaging, ears poised and listening. The voices were drawing closer and without delay, he shoved Cantia’s items back in the bag far more carelessly than he had the first time and cinched the bag up. Then he kicked it over against the wall and rushed to the door, opening it just as several people came upon the cabin.
Hunt heard the loud voices and ran to his mother, who gathered him upon her lap and held him tightly. Cantia also made sure to position herself between Arabel and the door, both hiding and protecting the girl. Gillywiss had the door wide open as the group approached.
“What is your trouble?” Gillywiss boomed.
Men were muttering and women seemed to be weeping. “Marna is having her child,” a woman said fearfully. “It cannot be born without help. We must send for a physic.”
Gillywiss was confused. “What do you mean it cannot be born without help?” he demanded, looking to the group. “And where do all of you think to go? It looks like a mob.”
“We were collecting money to pay the physic,” one man said.
Gillywiss waved at them irritably. “We cannot bring a physic here,” he snapped. “If we bring someone from the outside into our lair, the authorities will know where we are. All of you know this. There are many wanted men here, men who will not be jeopardized. Do what can be done for Marna but there will be no physic.”
“But…!” a woman’s voice pleaded. “We cannot simply let her die. Marna and John have waited for this son and…!”
“And they have already lost three,” Gillywiss sounded angry and impatient with them. “This child will be dead like the others. Go back to your homes and let God’s will be done.”
“She is your own sister, for the love of God!”
“And she understands that I cannot allow our people to be put in jeopardy for her sake. Two lives are not worth many.”
“I will help her.”
The soft voice came from behind Gillywiss, inside the hut. Startled, Gillywiss, as well as a few of the people milling outside, turned to see Cantia moving forward in the darkness. Her lovely face was serious and calm.
“I will see what I can do,” she said evenly. “I have helped birth many a child. Perhaps I can do something.”
The women seemed willing, the men hesitant. Cantia’s gaze was unwavering upon Gillywiss as she hoped he would allow her to help the woman and perhaps thereby gain even more sympathy from the man in her quest to be released. When she should have felt guilty of her ulterior motives other than the milk of human kindness, she couldn’t muster the will. She was determined to do anything she could in order to secure their release and this was a brilliant opportunity.
“No,” Gillywiss said flatly.
“Aye!” a pair of women cried, moving for Cantia and reaching out to grasp her. “Let the lady help!” one of them wept.
The women had Cantia by the wrist, pulling her from the hut. Gillywiss started to protest but he was drowned out as more women took up the cry and began parading Cantia across the dark encampment, heading for a cluster of huts off to the northwest. Annoyed, he went in pursuit.
Cantia was most interested to realize that the group of women had been able to override Gillywiss’ wants. She tucked that knowledge back in her memory, wondering if she would have need of it at some point, as the women took her to a hut wedged beneath a pair of big oaks. The structure was made from rocks and sod, just like the others in the clandestine village, and the door itself was very nice and looked as if it might have been stolen from a manse or even a church. It had saints and gargoyles carved into it. Cantia was looking at the door curiously when it abruptly opened.
More women were inside the cramped hut, the smell of smoke and some kind of herb very heavy in the air. It was dark and crowded inside, and Cantia suddenly felt a little uncertain as someone gently pushed her inside. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. But she heard groaning and struggled to adjust her eyes to the dim light. On a pallet in one corner of the room, a heavy-set woman lay on her back and moaned. The sound was enough to drive the uncertainty out of Cantia.
Dropping to her knees next to the miserable woman, she went to work.
*
“Hunt, you must,” Arabel hissed. “No one is watching us right now. You must escape and tell my father where we are.”
Hunt was looking at Arabel dubiously. “But I do not know where we are,” he said. “And what about my mother?”
Arabel thought quickly. Her mind was very cunning, like her father’s, as she tried to think of a way out of their predicament.
“I would go if I could,” she whispered. “But I cannot. You are our only hope, Hunt. Your mother is in trouble and I fear what they will do to her. Can you not see that?”
Hunt nodded solemnly, fearfully. He was too young to fully grasp what kind of trouble his mother was in, or they were in generally, but he knew the situation was bad. And he was scared now that his mother had left them. Brow furrowed, he plopped next to Arabel as she lay on the makeshift pallet of rushes and musty skins.
“What do I do?” he asked. “How do I go home?”
Arabel put her slender hand on his wrist. “Do you remember the night we were captured that the moon was very bright?”
Hunt nodded. “It was big, like a big white wheel of cheesth.”
Arabel smiled at his lispy tongue. “Aye, it was,” she said. “When we left Rochester, the moon was on our left, to the east. Do you remember that too?” As Hunt nodded again, she continued. “If you go outside now, the moon should be in the same place. It is so bright that you will be able to see. If the moon was on our left when we headed away from Rochester, if you keep it on your right, you should be heading back towards Rochester. Do you understand?”
Hunt’s face scrunched up a bit as he thought on her words. Arabel could see he didn’t quite understand what she was saying so she rubbed her fingers in the dirt beneath them and proceeded to smear it across Hunt’s left arm.
“That is your left side,” she said. “You want the moon to be on the side that does not have dirt smears on it.”
Hunt lifted both arms, looking curiously at the dirt, until his face eventually washed with an expression of understanding. He grinned and slapped at his right arm.
“The moon thould be over here,” he said happily.
Arabel nodded. “Aye,” she was thrilled he was coming to understand. But her excitement was damped by the fact that a very young boy would be running off into the wilds in an attempt to save them all, out into the wilderness where any number of things could happen to him. It was a terrible gamble. “I am afraid for you all alone in the woods, Hunt, but I fear we have no other choice. I think you are very brave. I think you can save us all.”
Hunt wasn’t particularly thinking about the danger. He was a little too young to completely grasp the concept because in truth, he’d spent his entire life safely protected at Rochester. Wandering the countryside had never been an option for him. But he did like that Arabel had called him brave.
“Knights are brave,” he said.
Arabel grinned. “You are a very brave knight. Will you save us, Hunt?”
He nodded firmly. “I wish I had my sword.”
&nb
sp; Arabel looked around their hut. There wasn’t anything she could see that remotely resembled a weapon.
“Perhaps a sword would only slow you down,” she suggested, trying to discourage him from making a weapon the focus of his mission. “If you do not have anything heavy to carry, you can run swiftly, like the wind. If you see trouble, then you will hide. A sword would make it difficult to hide.”
It made no sense, and it was somewhat a lie, but Hunt thought seriously on her statement. Arabel was growing increasingly anxious for him to be on his way, terrified with every moment that passed someone would appear and Hunt would be unable to slip away. Hunt didn’t seem to have the same sense of urgency that she did. She grasped the young man by the hand and squeezed.
“You must go now,” she insisted softly but firmly. “Leave this hut and run far away from this camp until you see the moon, then keep it on your right side. Keep running, Hunt, until you come to a town or a church. Ask the people there where Rochester Castle is and ask for their help. If you tell them my father will reward them for helping you, it should make asking for assistance a simple thing.”
Hunt pondered her instructions, finally nodding his head and jumping to his feet. He brushed off his dirty knees. As Arabel watched with anticipation, Hunt went to the hut door and put his hand on the crude wooden latch. In fact, the entire door was crude and not very well made, as if someone had pieced it together with scraps of wood and branches. Dried grass or moss plugged up the holes. Hunt pulled at the moss, tossing it to the floor, until there was a big enough hole to look through. The child peered out into the darkness.
“It isth very dark,” he turned to Arabel after a moment, his expression uncertain. “Where did my mother go?”