Lammas, 1198

Lammas day dawned cloudless and hot. At Prime Michi brought his horse from the stable and saddled up for more practice at the quintain. The animal was one of several taken in the battle, and Michi had named it Etien—more accurately, he had given the name only to the animal’s hindquarters, leaving the rest of it anonymous. Michi was a poor horseman by the standards of Stephan or Johannes, and was still much more formidable on foot, but he could be no knight if he could not ride.

The castle was alive with cheerful giggles and hearty back-slaps in anticipation of the day’s events, as Madeleine made a round of the doors and windows, pouring salt and posting other wards. At Terce she sought out Michi and dragged him into the solar for a bath. Gaspard was found hiding in a tree, and it took the efforts of Stephan and several of the turb to get him out.

The household gathered in the great hall at Sext, where Michi gave his oath before Stephan: “I here swear solemnly by Almighty God and His name fealty and due homage to the Holy Roman Emperor; to ever be a good knight and true, reverent and generous, shield of the weak, obedient to my liege-lady, foremost in battle, and courteous at all times. I swear too by all that is holy and dear unto me, to aid those less fortunate than I, to relieve the distress of the world, to champion the right and good, and to fulfil my knightly obligations. Thus swear I, Michael of Bois de Haillot.” And Stephan then made him a knight, and presented him with a new shield decorated with a colourful flaming sword.

The entire household then walked the half-mile to the church, where half the village was waiting about the steps. Stephan and Pere Hugo had brief words, then Morris came forward with Celestine, blushing under a weight of summer flowers, on his arm. The wedding ceremony, held on the porch under the hot sun, was brief, then all who could crammed into the church for mass.

The wedding feast kicked off at Nones, held in the castle bailey where just five or six weeks before the feast of Saint John had led to the betrothal. Madeleine had ordered fine cakes from Liege, and there were casks of wine from the Champagne and many a butt of ale from the village. The day was still hot and clear, but towering clouds were piling up on the western horizon.

At Vespers Michi and Celestine returned to the village, trailed by a parade of onlookers, to tour five or six repaired and rebuilt homes for the luck of the households and themselves. When they returned to the castle they were called into the great hall for the presentation of the dowry and wedding gifts: a brass-bound chest from Morris and an embroidered blanket from Beatrice and the household; a fine sword belt from Hugh; a pair of gold and pearl earrings from Isabel and an illuminated book of poems by Effugio from Richildis. And from Daria a gold cross with four rubies for Celestine, blessed personally by the Cardinal Bishop of Westphalia, along with the dowry of 30 shillings.

Shortly thereafter Michi and Stephan helped Gaspard investigate a man in verdegris armour, whom the magus had seen watching the castle from the forest. They found no sign of the onlooker.

At Compline Michi and Celestine retired to their room, a tower chamber off of Gaspard’s laboratory. The room had been decked out with garlands of lavender, rosemary, and thyme. In the bailey the feast continued, with courting couples—along with a few others—jumping the bonfire. Events were brought to a premature end by a torrential thunderstorm.

Feast of Saint John, 1198

Midsummer’s night—always a time of idle plays and japes, carolings, the making of fool countenances, smiting, wrestling, dice, football, blind-man’s buff, bowling, cockfighting, and baiting. This year the villagers had spent four days burying their dead and tending their dying, repairing their homes and hedgerows, and counting their losses in the fields. Little of the village had burned, and though the crops were trampled in places the damages were slight. It might be a hard winter, but famine was unlikely. And now that the shock of battle was passing, the feast would surely be one to remember.

The festivities began in the afternoon after mass. The bailey rang with shouts and laughter throughout the afternoon, with events moving to the village green for the evening bonfire. Stephan beat all comers—even Michi—at arm-wrestling, while Michi took honours at the footrace. Madeleine spent the first half of the day attempting to interest Celestine in Gigot. Gaspard set to entertaining children with stories of their exploits, augmented by his illusions, but the imagery frightened the smaller children and the effort soon failed.

Michi was comforting Gaspard when an idea struck him. “Why don’t you make me up ta look like the lady, there, and I’ll tell a few stories!” Gaspard complied, and Michi immediately set about the tables, mimicking Lady Madeleine’s voice as best he was able to any who would hear him. His comments and propositions hardly befit the lady, though, and it wasn’t long before Madeleine found him out. She marched him back to Gaspard. “You change him back this minute!” But Gaspard became confused, and soon it was Madeleine looking like Michi, and the latter still like the lady. Even more confused now over who was whom, Gaspard plied his magic once more and gave each the voice of the other.

Much bickering ensued, to the further confusion of Gaspard and great amusement of a somewhat tipsy Stephan. The spells would defuse by daybreak, but until then it was agreed that laying low would best serve everyone.

A tearful Celestine, her tongue perhaps a bit ale-loosened, found the ostensible Lady Madeleine in the library. “Why does Michi claim to be married?” she asked. “Everyone knows no faerie can enter a church—so how could he really be married to a Fey lady?” Michi, in Madeleine’s guise, could only dissemble in horror. “You don’t think—“ Celestine’s tears ran heavier. “You don’t think he prefers the company of boys?” The false Madeleine was rescued by the false Michi, who suggested it might be time for Celestine to retire. But that brought up a conundrum: Like most servants, Celestine slept in her mistress’s bed. Would she go to bed with Madeleine and wake up with Michi, or go to bed with Michi and wake up with Madeleine?

When the erstwhile Michi made another attempt to steer Celestine toward Gigot, Stephan intervened. “Why are you so concerned to see her into a man’s bed?” The false Michi was taken aback, but eventually, out of Celestine’s earshot, confessed her agenda: “Celestine’s abduction at Vikten was no coincidence. When we returned, Lady Daria told me that Celestine’s father belonged to a black mass. He conceived her under infernal guidance—for no other reason than to be murdered in a ritual. But her mother sent the infant away in secret with her maid, and they ended up here. Now it seems they know who and where she is!” The others were shocked, but Stephan pressed: “What does that have to do with Gigot?” “Celestine is of use only as a child—an innocent. Once she is married and no longer a maiden, they will not come after her. So we believe. Daria commanded me to arrange her marriage—and quickly.” The false Michi seemed close to despair. “But Cyril is too young and Johannes is too old. She has no eye for Stephan, and I cannot get Gigot to even see her.” Madeleine spoke next: “Why just those few—surely she could have her choice of the manor’s young men?” There was a lengthy pause. “Because her father was Robert of Poitiers. A nephew of Eleanor. Of Aquitaine. She is a bastard, got on Robert’s mistress, but she is of the blood of Richard Coeur de Lion. Daria will not have her marry a village boy, and neither will I.”

There was quite a silence. Then Stephan said, “And her eyes are only on Michi. The one she always goes to when she needs a cask lifted or a horse brought out. The one who cut her from the cross in the pit at Vikten.” He crossed himself as all eyes turned toward the false Madeleine.

“Michi is an accomplished warrior and a hero of Etien’s attack,” Stephan said after a moment. “With Daria’s blessing I could make him a knight, and no man could say I was wrong to do so.”

The false Madeleine looked over her shoulder, as if Fey spies might be about them even then. “Have you forgotten that I am already married?” But the actual Madeleine turned to Gaspard. “What of this faerie marriage? Is it real?” Gaspard shrugged. “There was a feast of some kind. It might have been a wedding. Somebody’s, I suppose.” “There you have it,” the false Michi said. “For no comprehensible reason the girl is in love with you, despite your faerie delusions. I know you have eyes for her. And now Stephan will make you a knight. What of it?”

The next day, flowers in hand, a restored Michi stumbled through his first day of courtship with a delighted Celestine.

Friday before the Feast of Saint John, 1198

Vraagen’s visage was a death mask, but more than just the way he moved with a semblance of life, a great fear seemed to flow from him like a miasma. Madeleine swooned, and Gaspard fell to his knees, clutching his face and screaming. The creature commanded Daria to be still, but it had no hold on her, and with a blaze of fire the maga scorched a broad circle into the floor. But Vraagen had been a magus once, and he rushed the circle before Daria could cast a ward upon it.

Stephan, bruised and cut, threw himself in the creature’s path before it reached the prima, while Michi blocked the course of the lesser creatures. The things fought with strength they had never had in life, but Vraagen’s power was not in melee, and Daria’s spells leached the force from its attacks. Soon the creature fell to its knees, and the fighters moved in quickly, dismembering the corpse. Daria stepped over and pulled the aegis token from its crumbling neck.

“He made me do it!” Gaspard cried, arms around his knees. Cyril tearfully relayed how he had met the creature in the hog wood on one of his pre-attack errands, and it had taken control of his mind. He had fetched Gasard to Bar du Sud under false pretences, all the while knowing what he was doing, but all the while unable to stop himself. There the creature had made the magus his thrall. “I stole the aegis token, and awaited his further commands,” Gaspard said. “He bade me hide my role from everyone, and I could not but comply!” “But why? What did it want?” Michi asked. “Vengeance upon those who interred it?” Madeleine responded. “He was of Daria’s house. The better question is why the Count’s soldier dug him up.”

In the hall, Juliana begged to be sent back. “If I stay, the Count will not have to trump up grievance against you. And if I do not return soon to the camp soon, I will be missed. Let me return with him—but we will meet again!”

Etien had lost three knights and dozens of men; those remaining were dissipating into the night, chased by mobs of villagers, and could not be rallied. By the time dawn arrived the Count’s camp was broken and his train headed for Arbois and back to Frois Pont. “He underestimated us and did not plan a sufficient assault,” Johannes assessed the situation. “He won’t do so again, but I doubt he’ll be able to raise a large enough force to return before the end of summer.”

End of Chapter Three

Friday before the Feast of St. John, 1198

“Who else has committed high treason against the Holy Roman Emperor and his rightful vassal in this manor? Who else has bargained the lives of his comrades for a handful of the Count’s silver?” Daria stared at the two cotters. The great hall was silent; even the mice in the rushes had gone still.

Diederick, one of the village yeomen, had brought in Staas. “I caught him in the forest with three of the Count’s soldiers,” he had explained. “He was guiding as they marked a path. The soldiers fled, but this one was not so fleet of foot.” Staas’s cousin Erich was also brought in. He confessed to taking silver to sour the castle well, but found he didn’t have the stomach to complete the task.

“The punishment for high treason, by the immutable laws of the Holy Roman Empire, is dispossession, torture, and dismemberment,” Daria continued, her voice low. “By right I should have your eyes gouged, your tongue rent from your throat, and every bone in your feet broken one by one before I have you drawn and quartered. But there is not time.” She turned to other business, waving dismissively. “Hang him. Not here—down in the village.”

A crowd had gathered by the time Staas was dragged behind Stephan’s great destrier to the old oak by the green. Staas had lain at the center of many a village dispute over the years, and traitors are hated by all. But troubled times breed troubled minds, and the Count had worked hard to sway the villagers’ loyalties. “The Count is strong, and they say he will bring a real army,” Erich had said, before Daria dispossessed and exiled him. “He tells everyone he will put a new lord in the castle, and many believe him!” Indeed, a furtive mumble passed through the assembled villagers, and many a brow was creased.

And then there was Etien, surrounded by his men, watching and jeering from the edge of his camp. Stephan rode calmly into the center of the green, high in his saddle, and fixed the crowd in his eye. “Villeins of Bois de Haillot! We are each of us, from your Lady Daria to the poorest cotter on this manor, and all between, vassals of the Holy Roman Emperor. We are all bound to his law, and we all owe our allegiance to him. Soon it may come to be that we will have to account for our duties with our very lives.” Here he was interrupted by hoots and cries from the Count’s camp, but a steely glare in that direction quieted them. “I will be the first to defend our homes and our honour,” Stephan continued, looking from villager to villager, then sweeping his arm back toward Gaspard and Madeleine, “as will all those from the castle. No amount of silver will sway us from our duty.” He lowered his voice. “If there are any here who would shirk from that duty, let him now speak.” The crowd was silent, then one man stepped forward and spat on Staas. Another hissed, and others scrambled for dung and stones to throw at the hapless traitor. Michi swung the rope over a branch and fixed the noose around Staas’s neck. He hoisted it with a merciful jerk.

Etien scowled as the villagers jeered the hanging man, his eye meeting Stephan’s for a moment as the knight turned back toward the castle.

The rest of the day was spent in preparation. With the Count inciting treason—even the poisoning of the well—it seemed clear he did not intend to depart without control of the castle, however gained. The levies were drawn up and armed; the remaining villagers called to the castle. After much debate, Daria agreed that their duty to hold the Emperor’s fief superseded the terms of their Imperial charter (which forbade the improvement of the castle), and raised stone along the never-finished perimeter of the bailey wall.

The Count’s attack came late, after Compline, with a hail of arrows from the dark as a ram was run up to the newly-restored gatehouse door. An intense exchange drove the attackers back with the gate unbreached, but it was a feint only, and a further assault drove at the broad flank of the bailey wall. That very morning a man might have scrambled through the gaps, but Etien had not counted on that; the attackers had ladders and soon gained the wall. They were trained men, and fierce, and eager for easy glory against a pathetic cadre of untrained and poorly armed defenders. They cut easily through the levy, slicking the wall-walk with blood, but the defenders had determination and numbers on their side.

The din of fighting was drawing down when Madeleine cocked her ear. “A woman calls out—beyond the walls!” Below, just emerged from the brush of the surrounding forest, Lady Juliana struggled against a pair of soldiers. Stephan was over the wall in an instant, Michi, Gaspard, and Madeleine just behind. They cut quickly through the attackers and pulled Juliana back to the shadows of the curtain wall. “Why are you here?” Stephan demanded. “I had to warn you,” Juliana replied. “My lord Etien has built ladders in secret—tall ladders; much bigger than these.” They scrambled back into the castle and deposited Juliana in the hall with Daria and Johannes before climbing up to the roof of the keep.

They were just in time. The keep had never been finished above the second floor, and the uncrenellated walls offered little protection against the rain of arrows decimating the small contingent of levy stationed there. But that was coming to an end, as the Count’s soldiers were planting their long ladders and beginning to climb. Michi and Stephan rushed to the wall, but the attackers were already pouring over, led by the knight Geert. Etien’s man fought like his namesake, tenaciously and with no concern for his injuries, and by the time Stephan had dropped him another dozen men had gained the wall.

It was a true melee. Men fell screaming to their death, while others met axe or sword. The rotting floorboards ran slick with blood and offal, and everywhere was the din of steel on steel, of screams and shouts. Daria appeared, and her command of the winds blasted a handful of attackers from the wall. Michi and Madeleine forced over the last of the ladders, and slowly, finally, the fight came to an end.

And in the quiet that followed there was a rasping, cough-like laugh. Everyone turned. On the wall opposite, above the cliff face looking down upon the Meuse, a figure tottered into the meagre torchlight. Like Thorold, its flesh was the colour of brick, but thin and papery, stretched taut over near fleshless bone. It was dressed ancient opulence, robes embroidered heavily in the arcane symbols of the Order of Hermes. It stepped forward, pointing at Daria, while two more creatures, red and bloated and once soldiers of the Count, crawled over the wall behind it. Around its neck, on a simple leather thong, swung a fired clay disk with the mark of Triamore--an aegis token; the same key given visiting magi so that their magics might not be hindered by the covenant's protective spells. The most closely guarded of Triamore's treasures, and the key to unlock all its defenses.

Thursday before the Feast of Saint John, 1198

The bailey was alive with activity--a castle's preparations for war--so the peasant was little regarded as he made his way over to approach Stephan. Hat in hand, he held out a small square of folded paper. "Who from?" the knight demanded. "The lady, in the encampment," the villager stammered before taking a quick leave. Stephan regarded it, then unfolded the vellum. The hand within was neat, but it might as well have been Aramaic: Stephan could not read.

He found Madeleine in the library. "From the Lady Juliana," she confirmed, then looked sheepish. "It is supposed to be a secret, for you alone." "Just read it," Stephan replied. "She says she will ride in the hog wood at Sext, and asks that you find her there, alone. She will have only her maid." Stephan studied the stonework at the far side of the library. A message, a love letter—or a trap of some sort. "I do not trust her," Lady Madeleine opined. "Maybe we should talk to Gaspard."

The found Michi outside Gaspard's door. "There's somethin' wrong with Gaspard," he said. "He went out last night and was gone for hours, but won't say where he's been. It's as though he's got a mind of his own all the sudden." "Cyril went about for some hours after Compline as well," Stephan said. "He claimed Gaspard sent him on an errand." They entered the lab to find Gaspard huddled under a blanket. "You have suffered a shock!" Madeleine exclaimed, but try as they might, they could get no further details from the magus.

Sext was approaching. Stephan had Cyril saddle Renfrogne, then set out into the hog wood. The note called for secrecy, but Michi, Gaspard, and Madeleine were not far behind--along with Gigot and Celestine, whom Madeleine had been tasking together quite a lot recently. As the letter promised, Lady Juliana was riding her palfrey along the hog-trodden paths, her wizened maid trailing behind afoot. Both dismounted and walked. "Please forgive my manner," the young lady said. "I am unaccustomed to treachery. But it is no secret my lord Etien covets this castle, and he will seek to take it." "So why do you speak to me?" Stephan asked. Juliana looked troubled. "I have not been long in my uncle's court, but I see that he gets no good council. His knights fear him, and will not oppose his temper--he has none so bold as you. Surely there is some way to bring this to a peaceable conclusion?" "I am a man of war," Stephan replied, "and though I may love peace, I do not have the skills of a diplomat. What can I do?" "In one of the many squabbles among the Bavarian princes, my mother served as a hostage. My Count would have this castle--but he also offered marriage. Perhaps a token of trust would assuage his ambition--enough so he would see no threat in the castle, even if he cannot hold it."

It was nearly Vespers. Stephan had returned from his secluded rendez-vous with much to think on and a promise to meet again the day after the morrow, and had spent the afternoon giving Cyril some rather harsh lessons in swordplay. Suddenly a man rushed through the gate. "The Count attacks!" Stephan called for Renfrogne and sped from the bailey, Michi, Madeleine, and Gaspard in tow. It was no full-scale assault--rather, a wagon on the road approaching, just beyond the trees, beset upon by soldiers. Stephan put the spur to his destrier, but Madeleine's eye was caught by a commotion in a copse concealed by a nearby hedgerow. Someone had disturbed an angry raven: More soldiers, and a knight as well. No sooner had Stephan and Michi reached the cart than the knight--it was Gervais, from the feast--charged their flank, his lance seeking Stephan's heart. The blow caught Stephan's shield, and the latter knocked it wide. Arming swords were drawn, and the two armored horsemen jostled in a struggling circle, raining blows upon one another as they sought opening. Madeleine climbed into the cart (the driver having fled) and started from the battlefield, while Michi faced down the Count's soldiers.

Gervais was a powerful and determined opponent--the toughest knight Stephan had ever faced. Both were bloodied and bruised when Gervais rang a powerful blow off Stephan's helmet. The latter was dazed, and might have given his opponent the opening needed for a killing blow. But Gervais was in little better shape, and as he positioned for the final attack an unexpected strike from Michi dropped him from his courser, bleeding and unconscious. The tiny field of battle was suddenly silent in the evening half-light: The Count's men had all fled or been felled.