Chapter 30: Pin Prick

(Lady Alwen narrates)

I cannot move my head. The Count has me pinned to the block, his knife at my throat. I was so close to death, trusting my life so explicitly to my dear husband who has come prepared to die to rescue me. The executioner deserved to die for what he did to poor Stephen. There was no just cause for his untimely death. He was an innocent victim of the greed of those who will make or break kings for their own advancement or advantage. There was no trial, no witnesses called to testify against his summary conviction, and no charges even read out. It was murder pure and simple and the perpetrators must and will be brought to book and pay for this crime and any other.

But I fear I am greatly confused by the cries of the various players involved. Clearly Will has brought his archers from the Castle. I cannot see them, but news of them sweeps through the crowd from within the Inn, as they are seen emerging from the woods by the leet, but in their turn they seem to have been nullified by the traitor bowmen controlled by John of Wakefield, a rival archer that Will has often told of in relating different incidents during the years on the road. The Lord Wellock, and his thirty men I can just see from where the Count presses my head to the block. Somewhere behind me, by all account there are the six or seven Black Knights that I saw yesterday. They have returned, yet I thought they were turned away, perhaps not as enemies but because there was no room at the Inn? But why return yet sit out their waiting for ... what?