The Knight And The Rose by Isolde Martyn

Author:Isolde Martyn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 1999-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

SILENCE RODE WITH them like a third companion as they struck north back across the moor towards Conisthorpe and the greyness closed around them filling their breathing. Without the sun for a signpost, the thin, stony road they eventually found looked unfamiliar. Lured by an alewife’s candle lighting the gloomy morning, they stopped in the next village to learn direction. What they heard between gulps of mulled ale blunted their thirst—the village was Enderby. They had stumbled into Fulk’s demesne.

The news that Sir Fulk’s men were visiting all the villages asking questions about travellers of their mien and stature was given freely; but it took another coin beside the payment for the meal to buy the alewife’s silence. They did not speak of their blunder afterwards but grimly left the road, fording the ditches from field to field where the ivy and tangle of thicket permitted, skirting the undergrowth until the towers of Fulk’s keep were beyond their sight. The wind rolled the clouds away like tumbled corn bales and they journeyed with a tearful sun behind their left shoulders, trusting that they should come to the River Wharfe eventually. They would need to follow it along to find a crossing.

“A most excellent strategy this—returning,” remarked Jankyn dryly. “At least the Mallet will not have posted scouts to watch the bridges if he thinks we are running away. They will be making inquiries further south.”

“Please God!” Geraint crossed himself. “Unless the alewife betrays us.”

The bridle track delivered them onto a churned but broader road and a steep rise. About a furlong on they came upon a forge. Jankyn spun a story that they were seeking service with Sir Ralph de Middlesbrough. The smith shrugged at the name, shook his head then stared fishlike at the road they had toiled up. Beyond a cooper’s wain, men-at-arms in yellow and black were whipping their steeds up the hill.

Geraint drew his sword, spurred down and hacked the rope that held the wain’s barrels. Thundering down the hill, the rotund missiles drove panic into the oncoming horses, dispersing the riders in all directions, and giving the fugitives the chance to outpace them for a further mile across the open country. But the horses were tiring.

“We need sanctuary,” panted Geraint, wincing with pain. “Some abbey altar to crouch behind and, please God, a healer.”

“Mayhap a crowd will do instead. It’s a river crossing we’re coming down to and a town besides. Be cheerful, sir, see!”

With a prayer on his lips, Geraint spurred his horse onto a bridge already perilously jammed with carts.

The town with its dark grey stone clearly owed its existence to the bridge and some of its prosperity to the exorbitant toll they paid to cross it. The market square was jaunty with pennons, its air redolent with the tantalising aroma of sucking pig. They dismounted and tugged their horses with them past the stalls. The itinerant vendors were there—the usual basket stalls, piemen, conjurers and sellers of elixirs and pastes for boils and pustules.

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