FIRE THE keep.” Maugris took the stairs to the inner ward without haste. In crisis, my brother was calm. That is why men followed him. “Come to the postern when it is done.”
Margaretta!
I ran for the tower.
If a man could fly upward, I took the stairs as if I had wings, and locked or not, I kicked the door of Godefroi’s chamber open.
I had not warned them.
As I rushed through, there came a crack, a sound I heard but from somewhere far away, and then—I fell into night.
“Wake!” Pain. It came as I lay in a black and queasy bog. My eyes jangled open just as Margaretta poured water over my face again. Pushing her away, I tried to stand. And could not.
Aviss began to whimper.
I held out my hand as comfort, but the child screamed, and I saw that blood covered my whole arm.
Had I been injured and not known it? I touched my head. One side of my scalp ran red. The wound from Alois’s camp had opened. “I was wrong to bring you here.”
Margaretta said nothing. A heave, and she pulled me to my feet. Aviss in my arms, the baby in hers, we stumbled down the stairs to the chapel.
I pulled the covering of the alcove aside. Margaretta gasped. The Madonna’s plinth was empty.
I fumbled the panel open. “Go, but block the way.”
She nodded. “Do not fear for us.” She knew it was likely I would die. I saw it in her eyes.
Consecrated or not, I ripped coverings from the altar and pulled the Madonna’s hangings down. “Block the tunnel against smoke. Do not come out.” I pushed the material into her arms.
She knelt inside the opening with the children. “Bayard.”
And I knelt also, my arms around all three.
She whispered, “Come back to us.”
Between love and desire, I kissed her.
And pushed her inside. “Go.” The door was pulled closed.
I forced myself to run from the chapel.
Upstairs, in the hall, I laid fire through the rushes and, as they burned, snatched some up and held them against my mother’s tapestries until they bloomed a terrible rose.
Fire is an animal. It has a voice. As smoke began to drift, I heard it. A monster that grew in size and power as it leapt to eat the ancient rafters of the hall.
Blood in my eyes, I ran outside and counted the gates. One, beside the keep. Two, as the path turned to the pleasance. Three, at the garden itself, and—
“À moi, à moi!”
Maugris!
Deep in the melee at the postern gate, Hundredfield tunics were few, but my brother fought on with three men at his side.
I became the fourth.
Now three faced those who came from the river side, and we two, at their backs, took those who fought in the garden. Forward, slice, back, feint; practiced rhythm, well mastered, as the blades clashed and sang. We were armored and well trained. They were not.
A man went down before Maugris, screaming. His head was gone in a swoop. “Is it done?”
Another fighter tried for my eyes. I blocked his knife and took him through the guts. Blood sprayed from his mouth. Red rain. “It is done.”
A crack and I looked up. The cap-house was burning as, around us, the pile of bodies grew.
“Close it.” Maugris meant the postern gate.
I jumped forward with Tamas. Three to fight, two to build the rampart from still warm bones.
Under the swords as they wheeled and bit, we dragged dead men as if they were logs. Some we swung at those coming up. Some we built in a wall.
Maugris called out, “Back, fall back.”
One of our fighters pitched on his face. An ax in his back.
Four of us now. Tamas and me to push, Maugris and one more to fight.
As I had pulled it open for Godefroi, now I began to close the postern gate—my shoulder like a bullock to the door as men howled and died in the narrowing gap.
The postern was heavy and thick, three layers of oak, studded and bound with iron. I felt the weight on the other side more and more, as the gate began to push against us.
Smoke was our savior. On that windless day it rolled from the top of the keep down to the river, an evil coverlet choking those on the path, while we in our mother’s garden breathed clean air.
So we pushed back. And closed the gate. And dropped the lock bar down.
Maugris wheeled. “Now.” He sprinted away. And we followed. Down to the inner ward.