Christopher
Because they were trying to appear as normal as possible, the best plan that Christopher could see was to ride right up to the pickets and ask for entry. As the younger of the two of them, Christopher was going to act as Matha’s squire.
Christopher was worried that Matha would need to brazen out whatever lack of confidence in the plan he had, and as they approached the first guard along the main road to Skipton, he urged his horse just a little ahead of Matha’s before coming to a halt. They’d waited until later in the afternoon to move in the hope that the guards would be thinking more of dinner than of them.
The guard stepped into the road, backed up by two others with pikes. Christopher had a flashback to the battle at Tara but managed to shake it off.
“We are here to join Balliol.” Christopher started off with English, thinking that, whoever these men were, they were low enough in the hierarchy that French wouldn’t be their language of choice.
Luck was with them, and the man answered, albeit with a Scottish accent. “My lord.” He gave a quick bow in Matha’s direction and then turned back to Christopher. He’d guessed right that a lord might not necessarily condescend to speak to lowly soldiers, and it was acceptable that he’d taken on the task. “I must ask your names.”
“I am Edward, squire to my lord Matha of Breifne.”
“Irish, eh?” One of the guards to the rear looked them up and down with suspicion.
“Indeed.” Christopher tried to maintain an air of earnest intent, but Matha simply looked bored, which on the whole was exactly the right approach to take.
The guard didn’t ask for more information, and it wouldn’t have been his place to question a knight. He tipped his head to indicate the road behind him. “You’ll be stopped again a quarter-mile down the road where you’ll be asked your credentials by someone with higher rank than I.”
“As I would expect.” Christopher urged his horse forward, and they clip-clopped down the road another quarter of a mile.
“This was a mistake. We should have done this surreptitiously,” Matha said in an undertone. “We could have waited until nightfall and simply joined one of the companies.”
“No.” Christopher shook his head. “For starters, we would have had to leave the horses and our gear behind, including our swords.”
“We could have hidden them.”
“You can’t just join a group—especially the two of us, who stand out in this crowd. Sneaking around would have drawn more questions than we’re going to get by being upfront.”
“I don’t know.” Matha looked genuinely worried.
“If you were so concerned, why didn’t you say something sooner?”
“It’s different now that we’re here.”
“You did great back there.” Christopher bit his lip as they approached the next layer of security. He was trying to project confidence, but Matha’s doubts had him wavering too. “Just do it again.”
“Gilbert de Clare, eh?”
“He’s dead. He can hardly argue.”
“I suppose if anyone has a right to claim ownership of Clare it’s the man who killed him.” Matha straightened his shoulders and affected a haughty look. This time the man who stepped out to bar their way wore a sword.
“We’re here to join Balliol,” Matha said, now in excellent French. “I’m Matha ap Gilla of Breifne.”
It was only now that it occurred to Christopher that they should not be using Matha’s real name. Hopefully, nobody here would know the details of anything that had happened in Ireland, and certainly not the name of the son of a man who had been a minor lord of Breifne. In retrospect, it was also far better that Huw had gone to James Stewart. He had been David’s companion far longer than Christopher and might be more recognizable, especially with his great bow on his back.
The man’s eyes narrowed, but he responded in the same language, indicating Matha had guessed right. “Where are your men?”
“Since Clare was killed, I have none. I lost everything.”
The man’s lip curled briefly, a reflection of an internal sneer at Matha’s obvious mercenary tendencies. But as Christopher had hoped, he didn’t hold them against him, simply lifted his chin in acknowledgment. “We can use your sword, my lord.” His eyes went to Christopher.
Matha saw it and added, “My squire, Edward.”
The man nodded. “Does King Balliol know you’re coming?”
“No. We have never met.”
“You can probably find billet in the town. The captains are meeting tonight at the castle to discuss the battle plan. We won’t be privy to that, but at least we can eat. Give the man at the castle gate my name, John Bulmer, and he’ll admit you.”
Matha bent his head. “Thank you.”
Christopher bowed his head too, and they rode into the camp. Again, Christopher had to blink away thoughts of Tara, and although he managed to clear his vision, sweat beaded on his forehead.
“Are you okay?” Matha said.
Christopher closed his eyes, breathing in and out until the anxiety passed. Callum had suggested some techniques for getting past the immediacy of post-traumatic reactions, and he’d been working on them. After Tara, he’d been fine initially, but it felt as if the more time passed the worse things got. When he’d confessed this to Callum, he’d laughed, though not in a mocking way, but with understanding. Christopher still thought one of the real reasons Callum had agreed to send him on this expedition was to give him something to do and take his mind off himself.
“I’m okay.” He opened his eyes and forced his vision to clear.
“We all have bad memories,” Matha said. “Some men have been known to drink too much because of them.”
“I’m not doing that,” Christopher said. “I know better than to do that.”
“If you ever start not knowing, tell someone. Tell me.”
Christopher nodded, though inside he wondered if the point at which he drank himself to sleep would be past the point where he would be able to ask for help.
The ride through the camp was uneventful, considering the fact that they were enemy soldiers, and every second Christopher was sure that someone would recognize them. He wasn’t wearing his helmet, which on second thought might have been a good idea. As it was, they reached the entrance to the town, which was being guarded on the road by two men. It wasn’t much of a defense, really—literally no more than two sawhorses and two men with pikes barring access to the main street through the town.
A newly dug or re-dug ditch on both sides of the road was the only other barrier of any kind between the army and the town. To the left, the ditch ended at the river, and the water level was such that a moat had formed for a hundred feet. To the right, a ditch looped east and north until it stopped at a stone wall demarcating a farmer’s field.
If someone had a mind to, they could leap the ditch and cut through the yards behind the houses and workshops to the left and right.
Christopher and Matha, however, were waved through the barrier. They both knew enough about how these things worked to realize that before entering the castle on foot they had to find housing for their horses, if not themselves. Neither of them was high-ranking enough—nor did they want to be viewed as such—to justify staying in the castle itself.
So Christopher leaned down to speak to a guard, who appeared to be coming off his shift. He didn’t wear a sword, and his tunic indicated he belonged to the town’s garrison, not to Balliol specifically. Christopher said in his best medieval English, “Do you know where we could find lodging for us and our horses?”
The man stopped. Knights, whatever their nationality, were to be respected. “We have only one inn, and I know it’s full, but my aunt and uncle decided this noon that they’d do their part and take in lodgers. No point in passing up the opportunity for coin.” He hesitated, seeming to have more to say, but he swallowed it down. Christopher could only hope that his hesitation was because he wasn’t thrilled about hosting a rebellion against the king. “Tell them Alvin sent you.”
The name wasn’t one Christopher had ever heard in medieval England before. It wasn’t Saxon or Norman. Christopher might have thought the man was Norwegian except for his perfect English. He didn’t feel he could explore any of that, however, at least not at this time, so he and Matha accepted the directions and made their way to their possible lodging.
Skipton was a small town, really a village, that had suddenly turned into an armed camp. The streets were packed with soldiers. Unlike in Shrewsbury or London, the houses had been built a good twenty feet apart, with yards and gardens, many of which were fenced. The house to which they’d been directed was slightly larger than most, two full stories, and Christopher wondered if Alvin’s uncle was the village headman—or rather, since this was England, the town’s mayor.
The front door was right on the street, and as Christopher and Matha arrived, the door opened, and a woman came out with a broom to sweep the dirt as if the road was her porch.
It was a lost cause to Christopher’s mind, but it saved him the need to knock. He dismounted and approached her. “Excuse me. Your nephew Alvin sent us. We are looking for lodging for the night.”
At first, the look the woman gave him was startlingly fierce, and he felt taken aback, but then her expression smoothed into something entirely noncommittal. “It isn’t much for great lords like you.”
“We would be grateful for any bed you could offer us, and even more, a safe place to leave our horses.”
The woman paused again, clearly hesitating to commit. Then her husband appeared around the side of the house and intervened. “Alvin sent them. Of course we have room for you and your horses. I am Gunnar, and this is my wife, Inge. Please come with me, my lords.”
As they followed him around to the back of the house, Matha, who’d dismounted by now too, leaned into Christopher. “They’re Danish.”
Being from Ireland, Matha knew Danes when he saw them, and Christopher vaguely remembered that the Danes had once been big in the north of England, so their descendants would still be here. At one of the crossroads that morning, before they’d discovered this mess, they’d passed someone heading to Thorlby, an adjacent town, named (obviously) after Thor, the god of thunder and a personal favorite of Christopher. If he’d known then what he knew now, he would have told the man to turn around.
Gunnar led them into a largish yard, thirty feet square, that included a couple of outbuildings. One was the kitchen, set apart from the house because of the danger of fire, and another was a barn. Chickens strutted across the dirt, and a boy of seven ran after a pig that weighed twice what he did.
The house butted up against the river, so they didn’t have any neighbors on that side. From the bank, Christopher could see the raised drawbridge, protected by a wooden gate on the town side, and the road heading north out of town.
He turned to look at Gunnar. “We appreciate this.”
“Certainly, my lord.” Gunnar stood in front of them, looking from Matha to Christopher with an expectant expression.
“Payment. Of course.” Christopher dug into his purse for a few coins, the same amount he’d paid the innkeeper for a room and food last night.
From Gunnar’s wide-eyed look, it was something of an overpayment, but Christopher was happy to have a place to stay at all. It was late afternoon by now. He hoped that Huw and the others were well on their way to completing their tasks too.
Gunnar pocketed the coins. “Bread is just out of the oven, and the beer is fresh if you’d like to take your rest.”
Christopher looked to Matha, who nodded. “Thank you. We aren’t due at the castle for another hour. It would be good to settle in first.”
A large table took up one side of the central room, necessary for the numerous children Gunnar and Inge had, but only Matha and Christopher were eating now. Inge seemed to want nothing to do with them, because it was Gunnar who served them. The walls were decorated with various weapons, many of them ancient. He even had a bow, though it was half the size of Huw’s great weapon.
At the sight of it, Matha got to his feet to inspect it, and when Gunnar reentered the room with a small plate of cheese, he said, “This is of Irish make.”
Gunnar set down the plate. “I have relatives in … Ireland.”
He turned to leave, but Matha put out a hand and spoke in a foreign language.
Gunnar stopped, his eyes narrowing as he listened. Then, he answered in English, “My ancestors came to these parts hundreds of years ago.”
“I’m surprised, then, that your loyalties lie with Balliol,” Matha said. “Or that you support his alliance with Norway.”
Gunnar’s feet appeared frozen to the ground, but he had something of his wife’s ability to remain expressionless, because his face gave nothing away. “I try to stay outside of the affairs of kings.”
“That’s probably wise,” Matha said.
To hide his discomfort, Christopher took a big bite of his buttered bread. After Gunnar hastened away, relief he couldn’t hide on his face, Christopher spoke around the food, which was delicious, “Why’d you ask him that? He can’t tell us the truth.”
“But we know it now, don’t we?”
“I suppose we do.” Christopher sat back in his chair.
“It could be that most of Skipton feels as he does.”
Christopher nodded thoughtfully. “And before we’re through here, we might need them.”