The Last Enchantment - Mary Stewart [62]
"Thank you," I said. "Now, you've been out all day. Get yourself into some dry clothes, and get something to eat. I've just heard something from Beltane that persuades me that a watch on the postern gate might be profitable. I'll tell you about it later. When you've eaten, come down and join me. I'll find somewhere dry to wait, where we won't be seen." We rejoined the others, and I asked: "Beltane, can you spare Casso to me for half an hour?"
"Of course, of course. But I shall need him later on. I was bidden back there tomorrow, with this buckle mended for the chamberlain, and I need Casso's help for that."
"I shan't keep him. Casso?"
The slave was already on his feet. Ulfin said, with a shade of apprehension: "So you know what to do now?"
"I am guessing," I said. "I have no power in this, as I told you." I spoke softly, and above the tavern's roar Beltane could not hear me, but Casso did, and looked quickly from me to Ulfin and back again. I smiled at him. "Don't let it concern you. Ulfin and I have affairs here which will not touch you or your master. Come with me now."
"I could come myself," said Ulfin quickly.
"No. Do as I told you, and eat first. It could be a long watch. Casso..."
We went through the maze of dirty streets. The rain, steady now, made muddy puddles, and splashed the dung into stinking pools. Where lights showed at all in the houses, they were feeble, smoking glints of flame, curtained from the wet night by hides or sacking. Nothing interfered with our night-sight, and presently we could pick our way cleanly across the gleaming runnels. After a while the tree-banked slope of the castle rock loomed above us. A lantern hung high in the blackness, marking the postern gate.
Casso, who had been following me, touched my arm and pointed where a narrow alley, little more than a funnel for rain-water, led steeply downward. It was not a way I had been before. At the bottom I could hear, loud above the steady hissing of the rain, the noise of the river.
"A short cut to the footbridge?" I asked.
He nodded vigorously.
We picked our way down over the filthy cobbles. The roar of the river grew louder. I could see the white water of the lasher, and against it the great wheel of a mill. Beyond this, outlined by the reflected glimmer of the foam, was the footbridge.
No one was about. The mill was not running; the miller probably lived above it, but he had locked his doors and no light showed. A narrow path, deep in mud, led past the shuttered mill and along the soaked grasses of the riverside toward the bridge.
I wondered, half irritably, why Casso had chosen this way. He must have grasped some need for secrecy, though the main street was surely, in this weather and at this time, deserted. But then voices and the swinging light of a lantern brought me up short in the shelter of the miller's doorway.
Three men were coming down the street. They were hurrying, talking together in undertones. I saw a bottle passed from hand to hand. Castle servants, no doubt, on their way back from the tavern. They stopped at the end of the bridge and looked back. Now something furtive could be seen in their movements. One of them said something, and there was a laugh, quickly stifled. They moved on, but not before I had seen them, clearly enough, in the lantern's glow: they were armed, and they were sober.
Casso was close beside me, pressed back in the dark doorway. The men had not glanced our way. They went quickly across the bridge, their footsteps sounding hollow on the wet planks.
Something else the passing light had showed me. Just beyond the mill, at the corner of the alley, another doorway stood open. From the pile of timber stocks and sawn felloes outside in the weedy strip of yard, I took it to be a wheelwright's shop. It was deserted for the night, but inside the main shed the remains of a fire still glowed.