The Falcons of Montabard Read Online Free PDF Page A

helped the other women to lay out the pallets for the night. Under the strict rule at Coldingham, she had grown
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    accustomed to all forms of labour. Despite its prestige, the Priory had not been a haven for gently bred young ladies intent on nothing more serious than embroidery. Annais knew how to stuff both a sleeping pallet and a chicken. She could sew a fine seam and neatly stitch a battle wound. She wrote a fluent hand in Latin and French, but was equally at home daubing a wall in limewash with a hog's bristle brush.
    Once the pallets were arranged, the women began preparing for sleep. Annais removed her gown and draped it over a coffer, spreading the muddy skirts the better to dry out the damp. The garment was really in need of a stiff brushing, but there was small point when she and her father were to continue their journey on the morrow to her uncle's keep at Branton.
    Unpinning her veil, she took her comb from her travelling satchel and unbraided and groomed her hair until it shone like dark polished oak. Prayers were next and there were many to say. Annais ran her prayer beads through her fingers, counting off a smooth agate oval with each supplication completed. Her final one was for the missing young men.
    Her pallet was close to the door and her sleep was light. When the hinges squeaked, she jerked her head from her pillow and by the fluttering light of the night candle, saw several people enter the room. A striking woman with heavy bronze-red braids swinging beneath her veil was comforting a slender adolescent girl. Behind them paced a man of average height and build, dark of visage and watchful of eye. His cloak was lined with ermine tails and gold embroidery flashed in the candle glow. Annais realised that she must be looking at the Countess Matilda, her daughter Maude, and Prince David MacMalcolm who was King in all but name along the Scottish borders.
    Moving quietly, they crossed the antechamber and slipped through the curtain into the Countess's private domain. Moments later Annais heard murmurs and the sound of suppressed weeping. A whiff of church incense from their garments lingered in the air.
    Annais sighed and closed her eyes. She tried not to think
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    about the young men who had drowned - not so much for their sake, although she did say another heartfelt prayer for their souls, but for her own. The way to Jerusalem involved many sea crossings including the narrow channel between England and Normandy that had claimed the Blanche Nef. Her father had often spoken of the voyages of his youth. Sometimes, the more garrulous for drink, he had told expansive tales about waves as high as cathedrals and strange fish with huge jaws and teeth like rows of daggers. The stories had frightened her to the point of nightmares when she was a little girl and her mother had rebuked Strongfist severely for telling them. Annais's fears had diminished as she matured, but the notion of the journey itself was like a huge fish swimming through her mind, disturbing her tranquillity.
    The main door widened again, softly, and the flicker from the night candle illuminated two male figures. Annais wondered if she should scream, for their tread was careful, almost furtive, and one of them was wearing a sword. However, she decided that to get this far they would have already had to pass several sets of guards, and there was more cause for curiosity than concern.
    The one with the sword was fair-haired with features lengthening out of boyhood and a rash of adolescent blemishes at his temple and jaw. His companion was dark and had a face like a gargoyle, swollen of eye, puffy of lip and markedly devilish. He even moved like a creature from the other world, his shoulders hunched and his gait awkward, as if his long cloak concealed horned hooves and a tail. Annais almost started to make the sign of the cross then castigated herself for being foolish.
    They had nearly reached the curtain to the inner chamber when the fair one tripped