Michael Jecks - The Chapel of Bones

That had been the first motivation for him to consider leaving the King’s service. A warrior with such a handicap must surely die. There was no possibility of his surviving.

Not if slipping on a child’s turd could make him feel so weakly.

He bared his teeth and forced himself to carry on along the alley. Only a short while ago he had been a warrior who could instil fear into the heart of any opponent, but now he was just a sad old man, no good for anything.

The alley stopped and he walked out into the street, along to North Gate Street, and thence to Carfoix. As twilight took over the city, it grew astonishingly dark between the tall houses, and he slipped again on half-seen obstacles. Soon, though, he was approaching the main entrance to the Priory. He should hurry, he knew, because the gate there would soon be closed and barred, and if the corrodian was not there, that was no concern of the gate-keeper.

Hurrying his steps, Will found himself limping a little on his bad leg. He could see the open gateway, and was about to call out, when there was a tinny clatter to his side. As soon as his mind registered the noise, he had just enough energy to hurl himself sideways as the next arrow flew at his throat.

He crashed to the ground, tasting the bile of fear once more, crawling to the relative safety of a rotten barrel and pulling his cloak about him. In a moment the street disappeared, and he was back on the miserable bogs of Scotland.

In his ears he heard again the shrieks and agonised cries. Arrows wailed and hissed through the air, to strike flesh with a damp slap, or to pock at steel armour. Mail rattled and chinked, men fell, hiccuping or screaming, and William waited for the next bolt to strike him, pushing himself into the edge of the lane as though he could re-form his body to fit the cobbles and hide. Appalled, terrified, he expected to die, and he wasn’t ready !

There were no more arrows. Only the rasp of his breath, the smell of terror in his sweat and the sound of footsteps running away on the cobbles; and then, as the noise faded, so too did his petrification, and he found his soul swamped with vengeful rage.

He would find this would-be assassin, no matter who it was, and he would see him sent to hell with as much anguish as one man could inflict upon another.

Simon awoke early enough, but his mind was fuzzy after the wine and ale of the night before, and he lay back in bed, his eyes resolutely shut, demanding that sleep should once more overtake him.

Yesterday had been another day much like all the rest. He had woken, got up and dressed, walked to the hall to meet that pale reflection of a human, Andrew, and continued with his work.

God’s Bones, but it was tedious. They added figures, checked the tallies of tolls taken compared with the ships that had come to dock, and more or less busied themselves with little problems all the long day. It was detailed, painstaking work, and Andrew was as meticulous as he could be.

Halfway through the morning, Andrew looked up with a smile to hear the hail falling outside. ‘It sounds as if God is throwing His pebbles again, does it not? A terrible time to be out on the moors in this weather. Are you not glad to be indoors with a good fire roaring?’

Simon could not speak. He had listened to the hail with the lifting spirits of a man who remembered that there was a real life out there, beyond the walls of this dreary chamber. He had crossed the moors more than a hundred times, often feeling those icy balls striking his face with the fruitless desperation of a toddler beating at an older sibling. Yes, sleet and hail and snow could grind a man down and put him in his grave, were he unlucky enough to succumb, but Simon thought of hail as only a mild threat. He knew all the places to which he might run in the event of the weather closing in, and all the safe paths which would lead him to a warm fire and spiced wine or ale.

He couldn’t even look at the happy clerk who sat scratching with his damned reed all day. Instead he had muttered an excuse and left the room. There was an alehouse three doors away, and Simon entered to find some refreshment. He had a couple of good, meaty pies, with three quarts of strong ale to wash them down, but even that didn’t improve his mood. The town was fine; in reality it was moderately more comfortable and pleasant than his last home, with access to food, drink and luxury items which were never seen in Lydford, and yet the work was dull in the extreme, his companion was a pedantic, boring old woman, and …

No. It wasn’t Andrew’s fault. Simon knew that before he’d started his second quart. Rather, it was Simon himself and Simon’s family that were worrying him.

Meg was a good, loyal wife, and she’d never have held Simon back, but she was most unenthusiastic about moving all the way down to the southern coast. She had taken a while to get to know anyone in the small, insular community of Lydford, because the folk there had viewed her as a foreigner, and worse, the wife of the stannary bailiff. Nobody would trust a woman who possessed the ear of the man who could have any of them thrown in gaol. It had taken all her skills of diplomacy to wheedle her way into the homes and some hearts at Lydford, and the idea of having to do so again here in Dartmouth was daunting.

His son was no trouble. Peterkin, or Perkin, depending upon Simon’s mood, loved the idea of living by the sea. Any boy would want it! What, turn up the chance of meeting men who’d been abroad, who’d seen strange monsters and endured all that the sea could throw at them? They were romantic, exciting men, these sailors. That was what Peterkin thought. Given the chance, he would have been leaping about on boats, chatting to sailors, learning all the crafts to do with the port and generally getting under everyone’s feet in the process. Sadly, though, his sister Edith hated the thought of coming here. She was a young woman now, and her fiancé, Peter, a young apprentice, lived not far from Lydford. She had no wish to be farther away from him than necessary. That was why she’d wailed and moaned and complained about the prospect of being sent into exile so far from her home. Peter couldn’t go with them — he was apprenticed to a successful merchant, Master Harold — so that was that.

Which was why Simon was so lonely. He had spoken to Meg and they had discussed the move unemotionally and come to the only sensible conclusion: that it would be better for them all if Simon were to come to Dartmouth alone for a short while, to see what he thought of the place, to make friends if he might, and prepare the way for his family to join him. Perhaps Edith would break with her lover and be glad of a change of scene, perhaps Simon would meet other families with whom Meg might strike up friendships — and perhaps Simon could conceive of a means of depriving his son of too ready access to the shipping that lay in the port. The last thing he desired was for Perkin to find an ally who would let him travel to Guyenne or beyond without Simon’s knowledge. Sailors could be a dangerous breed.

He rolled over in his bed. There was a growing rebelliousness in his gut, and he remembered the rest of the day with sudden clarity.

After his lunch, he’d returned to his work, but boredom had served to sharpen his mood. He was incapable of listening to the clerk without snapping in response; no matter what Andrew said, Simon couldn’t like him, and his temper was not improved by the fact that he knew he was being unreasonable. In the end he grunted an apology, claiming his bowels were giving him trouble, and he walked out. But he couldn’t face the empty house where he was living, so he returned to the alehouse.

It had been filled with sailors and lightermen, all the human detritus that would wash up in a port’s drinking rooms, and Simon was shouldered roughly as he entered, although a sharp whisper that passed about the place soon stopped that. When people realised that this was the man who could impose harsher tolls, or who could order that an entire cargo be pulled aside and held until he had inspected each and every bale of goods, they were happier to leave him in peace.