Chapter 17: Word Comes Late

(Will Archer narrates)

After lunch I am summonsed to appear at the East Gate, which has mostly been quiet these last few days with people from Chester flooding around the North Gate, by the Castle. I am surprised and initially concerned to see Henry Small, the man I left in charge of my son Robin and his best friend Hugh, standing exhausted by his steaming horse.

“What ho, Henry, where are the boys?” I call from the town wall above the gate, while lifting the mask from my mouth to sound all the clearer for it.

I try and pitch my question with as level a voice as I can. I have had enough practice in both raising and lowering the pitch and tone of my voice to almost comfortably moderate my true feelings of late. I have heard myriad pleas by husbands and fathers to release wives and children to escape the pestilence and remained as unbending as stone. But when confronted with injury or worse to someone close to me, it is almost too much to bear.

“Have you not had a messenger from Wellock, this last day or two, Sire?” Henry replies with a question of his own across the void. “It should have come the day before yesterday.”

“No. I have had no word.”

“They are safe, both boys, but they are on their way to Brugge, my Lord. May we speak privately, that we may be frank without all the town bear witness?”

“Aye, I will come down directly, but we must take precautions because of the plague. Do you have a clean kerchief about you?”

“Aye, ‘tis not very clean though, but should be suffice to cover my mouth.”

“And nose, Henry, we believe this pestilence is spread by touch, breath and by unclean water.”

“Aye, well, my kerchief’s clean and dry enough for that.”

I watch him as he extracts a grubby kerchief from the depths of his pouch, folds it in two diagonally, stretches it over his nose, and ties the ends together behind his head. I run down the steps, eager to find out what has happened.

“So,” asks Henry as I arrive at the keep, “all who arrives at the Castle or town find the gates closed to all?”

“It is the only way to contain it, with round the sundial manning to enforce it. Nor are any of the inhabitants allowed to leave, though some of them are itching to get out, I’ve had to resort to using the stocks. I have had no reports of any of the nearby hamlets and villages catching it, so I can only assume I was right in my assumption. Tell me, what has befallen Robin to give him the notion to visit Brugge, is it a rich tournament?”

Henry tells me that Robin has sailed to Brugge ‘on a mission of chivalry’, which mystifies me, and between them they had agreed to split up so that Henry departed as he was the only one able to find his way back.

“I backtracked the way they went,” says Henry, “and made it to Coratown then Hensmere, but the trail was two days old be then. They told me that Master Robin had chartered a river boat in Coratown. I made my way down to the river wharf but the particular boat that they caught was not there, having passed through that morning on his regular trip down river. Another river captain, who was unloading cargo before heading upstream, said he’d passed the fellow earlier. Then he told me that he had taken down a group of six knights and their horses just half a day after, that were hoping to catch the next tide, though he never said which way they was aheading. The captain said he saw Robin and his two friends set sail.”

“Two friends?” Will asks mystified, “and why Brugges anyway?” Henry explains about the mix up with the Lady Elinor in the wood and the absconding Count who left licking his wounds “in a place where no tongue should go!”

He explains “All three of us had all misinterpreted the actions of the Count, a fat Flemish-Norman scoundrel, who abandoned his bride in favour of her dowry.” He went on to explain the insistence of the Countess, who required Robin to make good his mistake by escorting her to her banker in Brugges, but it had to be without delay or the Count would get there first. “But that there Count was shot sweet as any aim I’ve seen at the butts, but that was one butt shot side on through both them buttocks, so, ‘stead o’ one wound, ‘ee ended up with four!”

Henry laughed so much at his own joke that I am filled with much of my own thoughts while he roots around for another kerchief to wipe his eyes that he is very likely looking for the same one that he has tied around his nose and mouth.

Firstly, I had to agree with Henry and assure him that he did nothing wrong in allowing Robin, as the cause of the poor woman’s fate, to escort her in the manner in which he has. That Robin was indeed honour bound to assist the Lady in restoring her dignity and her family’s fortune in an urgent race against time.

In a way I am grateful that Robin has rescued a married lady of some considerable rank, sufficient to secure a match with a Count, almost ranking with an English Earl or Norman Duke. She is undoubtedly a spinster who is probably unable to attract anyone without a fortune on offer as an incentive.

At least Robin’s heart will not be in danger, unlike mine was with Alwen, who I thought a prize too far removed from me to marry, but didn’t have a richer dowry than six pence. Such heartache it caused me for so many years, which happened at the very age that my Robin is now. I will be pleased at the end of this adventure that Robin is spared that same heartache.