Jon fitz William kept a modest house in Shrewsbury: modest that is, for the shire reeve. His property was comprised of three buildings arranged roughly like a horseshoe: house, stable and storehouse, and walled off from the rest of the town by a tall fence. His house, like any burgher's, was half-timbered and thatched, but unlike the average freeman denizen of Shrewsbury, his house was palatial in scale. The buildings were arranged pleasantly around an enormous herb garden, which in turn was ringed by a cobblestone drive that saw oxcarts come and go with some regularity. The place had a castle's appetite.
The reeve had surrounded himself with people from home. Friends and family had crossed the channel to join him in England, and they had brought with them friends and family of their own, so that Jon's house was a regular beehive, full of garrulous Norman peasants. He ruled the place less like a feudal lord, and more like a village patriarch. His word was law, but everybody seemed at their ease to to dispute it, from his wife to the nominal servants, to the multitude of children scampering about the place in pursuit of dogs, chickens and each other.
Jon showed Eamon around his property for some hours. There were many interruptions from the place's many denizens, and Jon was utterly uninhibited as he pointed at this and that, and told Eamon how it came to be there. The fence (more like a palisade) was new: the result of thieves pilfering the storehouse. The garden beds were raised because the River Severn flooded every time it rained, and lady fitz William was bloody fed up with the havoc this caused her parsley and marjoram. Jon was particularly proud of his stable. He had spoken of his horses at length already, when they had been Jouiae's guests together, and he mostly repeated himself when he spoke of the races they had won and would be entered into. When he spoke of his desire to find a good bit of land on which to breed more, he finally broke new ground.
And so Eamon learned that the reeve's elevation in status had not come with a grant of land. Fitz William took a portion of the shire's taxes and paid no rents (and he was bribed a-plenty, he said with a laugh), so he was quite better off than the average burgher or serf, but he wasn't a landowner. Though he said all this smiling, confident and apparently carefree, Eamon sensed there was unease beneath. It took very little encouragement to get Jon to own it.
Jon fitz William was entirely dependent on the generosity of his king, and Henry Beauclerc was getting old. The king's heir was Matilda, a woman who had first married the Holy Roman Emperor of Germany, and then Geoffrey, the Count of Anjou. She had at that time spent most of her life in foreign parts, and few in her father's court knew her or her views, or whether or not she would honor commitments and appointments like Jon's. Trepidation had spread throughout the royal court. There were rumors that she would supplant Norman and Saxon alike with Germans and Angevin.
Eamon felt an impulse to offer up some placating remark or joke, but could think of nothing. He stood awkwardly by as Jon grew quiet: contemplating a future without a title and its revenues. There were a score of families that depended on fitz William, and Eamon saw how the responsibility weighed on him.
Jon wasn't the sort to brood for very long however. He clapped his hands together, laughed, and suggested a bit of food and ale. Eamon was brought to the dining room: a hall really, where the lady fitz William urged Eamon and Reed to sit next to each other on a bench seat. This brute of a woman was built like an anvil, and just as unyielding. She brooked no refusal to anything she had to offer. She forced ale into their hands, and brought enormous wooden trays of bread, butter, jelly, cold ham and cheese.
This signaled a general invitation for all in residence to come and gather, and to eat and drink. As they ate, Eamon's host entertained him with the story of how he helped William Pantulf clear the outlaws out of the Forest of Arden, many years ago. He was occasionally helped along in the tale by a man or two who had been with him: cheeky old graybeards, who assured Eamon that Jon had shit his pants the first time they had been ambushed.
“He still can't see an arrow be knocked without you hear him farting,” an elderly old fighter said, and laughed his wheezing laugh.
It took some application of the lungs to be heard over the general din of the room. The place was louder than Versailles at Michaelmas, and Eamon missed many details. He gathered that Jon's satisfactory performance of his duties during this venture was what had first set him on the path to being noticed by Henry Beauclerc, but he wasn't sure what those duties had been.
Inevitably, Jon wished to discuss the business that had brought Eamon. The lady cleared the hall with a shout that could have felled a tree. The household scattered and disappeared; only the girl slobbering with the dogs under the table lingered to scratch Eamon's knee and beg one last piece of buttered bread. Lady fitz William scooped her into her broad bosom however, and took her away. Eamon and Reed were left then alone with Jon and a pair of his closest confidants. They sat in companionable silence for a time, savoring the peace and quiet.
“I'm putting together a company of men-at-arms,” fitz William eventually explained. “I wondered if I might persuade you to join.”
“The venture?”
“Dangerous,” Jon said. “And secret. I can tell you few details, beyond what you'll be paid: five hundred shillings for a year's obligation.”
“Five hundred!” Reed exclaimed, rising from his seat a little.
“If I were you, I would only take the silver you need for the year, and set aside the rest for ransom.”
“That bad,” Eamon remarked.
Jon spread his hands in an apologetic shrug. He then raised a finger towards Reed. “You buy your man a horse and a spear, and he can sign on for fifty.”
“I don't much like the idea of committing to the unknown,” Eamon said. “How do I know I won't be fighting friends or family?”
“How can you ever know?” Jon replied.
That was true enough. Families were very often dispersed, oaths and obligations were myriad and contradicting, and battlefields were confusing. There were plenty of stories of men-at-arms slaying kin and never knowing until after the battle, when helms were removed and identities revealed.
But Eamon hadn't been asking out of prudence, and he suddenly felt sick to his stomach. This deception, this spying for Weevil, did not suit. It felt wrong: and not just in the childish sense of it. It wasn't him. This wasn't the kind of man he wanted to be. His next question choked in his throat.
Reed saw Eamon's unease, and without the least hesitation, launched into a barrage of his own questions. Where would they be going? Who would they be fighting? Would they be serving the king? Jon obliged him with answers, but they were uniformly vague. You'll be going overseas. You'll be fighting strong and numerous foes. You would be serving no one but the captain.
“And who is the captain?” Reed demanded.
“Are you alright Eamon?” Jon asked instead of answering.
“You look like you're choking on an egg,” said one of Jon's men.
Eamon stood abruptly. Like most men with a guilty conscience, the feeling made him wonderfully angry, and he had had enough. “I can't accept your offer,” he said sternly.
Jon was taken aback by Eamon's abruptness and manner, but he was in no rush to take offense. “I can't blame you. It's foolishness to try and recruit men in such a way, even for so much.”
“Bloody nonsense,” Jon's man agreed.
“Well, you have a fortnight to change your mind, less the time it takes you to get down to Cardiff. What men have been recruited will gather there. If you go to the castle and give my name at the gate, Robert of Gloucester or one of his people will see to the details and pay.
“You would get your answers there as well, or just after you sailed.” This he said to Reed.
Eamon tried to take his leave then, but Jon wished him to stay to supper. So began a short but earnest campaign to retain his guest, in which he was joined by his wife, when she learned of his going. It was then that Eamon saw how unhappy and self-conscious they were at the manner of his leaving: poor, brutish peasants, rebuffed once again by a snobbish nobleman. They were good, worthy people, who wanted nothing more than to be liked, and like in turn. Yet another source of unease joined the general frenzy of gnawing upon Eamon's insides.
“I need some time to think about our business lord,” Eamon told Jon. “May I call again tomorrow?”
“You're welcome any time!” lady fitz William gushed, utterly relieved and invigorated with new hope.
“I have business in Coughton tomorrow,” Jon declared.
“Oh, you can send Rou,” she argued, strangling her husband's arm. The elderly man in question made a dubious face.
“I'll be back in a few days,” Jon said soothingly.
“Would you have me ride with you?” Eamon blurted the offer thoughtlessly: seized of a sudden impulse to assure Jon of his fondness for him. Even as the words tumbled out, he realized he was being somewhat foolish, and more than a little awkward. “I hear it was only a Norman army that cleared the forest of outlaws, so you can't be too careful.” Eamon's smile was forced, but because the jest was weak and the gesture appreciated, neither Jon nor his wife took his grin for anything but wry. And so they parted on better terms than they might have, with a promise from Jon to send for Eamon as soon as he was at his leisure.
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Reed was grumbling again as they walked away from the reeve's house. His monologue was more passionate than usual, born of fear as it was. In a quiet stretch of a muddy street, he took Eamon by his arm.
“What is it you intend to do?” he demanded.
“I don't know,” Eamon snapped.
“You can't defy Weevil,” Reeve declared, after some nervous hesitation.
Eamon stared at him angrily. He made no accusation, not out loud, but Reed heard it all the same: “you're only thinking of yourself.”
“It's not just me that-” Reed caught his tongue. They weren't alone on the street, and passersby had spoiled their privacy. He waited for several steps, then continued in a whisper. “You defied the men that came to arrest me: sent them away pissing in their pants, and you've been with me all this time. If Weevil informs, it will be that fat bastard that comes to arrest us both!” He pointed back at Jon's house.
“I know that!” Eamon snapped. He sighed. “But he's a good man Reed. I would sooner side with him than Weevil in anything.”
“That's not the choice now is it?”
“What is the choice then?”
“Whether or not to swallow your pride and get your hands dirty. When you came home you said you wanted to restore your family to its old standing, remember? Your people were earls once, and kings before that. Do you think such things came to pass because your ancestors were squeamish about pursuing their interests?”
Eamon stopped in his tracks, glaring at Reed indignantly. “Just yesterday you were scolding me for picking a fight with Bairon of Anjou. Now you're telling me to betray a friend's confidence like it's... digging up turnips.”
“There's a difference between killing a man out of spite and blabbing about his business. And what confidence? What secret did he tell you? What oath did he ask you to swear?”
“God doesn't split hairs. Do you remember? You can fool yourself, but you can't fool God. On my day of judgment, what would I tell Him about today?”
Reed flinched at those words. They were his own, more or less: spoken to a rebellious little Eamon when confronted over some minor child's mischief many, many years ago. They were the words of a different man: a faithful man, far removed from the cynic and misanthrope he had become. That man had been named Athelstan, and he had been a priest, but now he was Reed, and he was a murderer and a thief. Nevertheless, a kernel of the old priest remained, and Eamon's words found that soft, vulnerable core, and struck it like a scourge.
Eamon walked on, oblivious to the harm he had caused until, turning to ask Reed about a trifle, found he had been walking alone. Anger and concern vied for dominance in his breast as he turned back, looking for his missing servant. Anger soon won out however. After blundering down a few random streets, Eamon abandoned his search as hopeless, and he went home.
Home, that was the word for it, however poorly it fit. Eamon and Reed resided at the Old Thane's: a tavern that had once been the hall of a minor Saxon lord. They had the use of the old servant's quarters next to the family apartment for four pence a month. Their landlord was ostensibly Egburt, who had inherited the place from the thane, but it was his sister Editha, who actually had the management of it, and to whom Reed paid their rent.
When Eamon returned, the doors to the hall were thrown open to admit the freshening afternoon breeze. He could smell the evening's pottage cooking, and in spite of the early hour, he saw figures seated by the long hearth, and heard the raised voices of drinkers already in their cups.
He went to the stable, and there he found Kicker in her usual state of restlessness. He took a brush to her, and he was so preoccupied with his discontented thoughts that he didn't notice the hush that befell the hall, or the men that crept through its doors and cautiously approached the stable with daggers in their hands.
It was Kicker that warned Eamon. She raised her head and snorted as the stable door creaked open. Even so, Eamon had hardly turned around before his attackers were on him. A human wave crashed into him and drove him hard against his horse's flank. Knives flashed and plunged. Men grunted, groaned and shouted, and then a man was screaming: a horrible high-pitched scream of terror. Kicker had bitten the man by the meat of his neck and shoulder; she lifted him like a doll and threw him out of the stall, and then she was living up to her name, and kicking wildly. She crushed Eamon's foot cruelly, and kicked him in his thigh, but she hurt his attackers too, and she won him the freedom to draw his own dagger.
Men began to fall out of the stall then, one after the other as the horse and Eamon's dagger took their toll. Some rose back up and stumbled for the exit, holding deep wounds and favoring broken bones. Then all were ejected in a clump, and Kicker came thrashing out after them. She bit and tossed another man, and so began a general rout, as the would-be assassins fled from that terrible horse and her indomitable knight. They abandoned their fallen, and deserted the man who still grappled on the floor with Eamon.
Eamon found himself on his back, struggling against the enormous weight of the man atop him. The assassin's dagger was pressing hard against his chest, its blade bending from the forces upon it, its tip grinding through the gaps in his chainmail and piercing the skin over his heart. He gave one last, gasping, groaning, heave. His attacker gasped and groaned back at him, and flecks of his bloody spittle dribbled into Eamon's beard.
Eamon's arms had just begun to tremble when a hand seized his attacker's hair and snapped his head back. There was a horrible squelching sound as a knife passed into the side of his neck. Eamon clearly heard the snapping and tearing of flesh as the blade ripped down, and then the man's hot blood was pouring into his mouth, nose and eyes.
Eamon's savior seized him by the scruff of his mail, and hauled him away from the enraged horse. They fell out of the stable together, and Eamon felt, rather than saw the other man stand and throw the stable door closed. Eamon wiped the blood from his eyes, and blinked at his rescuer. He was on the verge of thanking Reed for his timely return when he recognized Shank's vile leer.
“Fucking hell Eamon,” Shank gasped. “Is that a horse in there or a bloody demon?”
Eamon didn't answer. He just lay there panting, and listened to the screams of his horse mix with those of the man she stomped into oblivion.
----------------------------------------
It was dark by the time Reed returned to the Old Thane's. He came stumbling and muttering, and clutched to his breast the leather bottle of distilled wine spirits that had finally quieted the demons in his head.
Drunk as he was, Reed nevertheless sensed that something was wrong, almost as soon as he arrived. The Old Thane's was never so quiet. Editha brewed the best ale in town, and though her brother's tavern was on the nice side of Shrewsbury, they didn't turn their nose up at any prospective drinkers, so long as they came with real silver.
Reed paused, listening for signs of trouble. He heard nothing, until a knife was pressed against his throat; then he heard his own breath, inhaled as a sharp gasp, which was immediately stifled by the hand that clamped itself over his mouth.
“Leave off,” a voice said. It came from the shadows to the side of the hall door. “It's the priest.”
“Sorry about that mate,” said Reed's would-be killer. The cold metal carefully extricated itself from his throat, and its wielder patted him gruffly on the shoulder as he came around from behind him. “Go on in. They're just about done putting your lord's face back together.”
“Christ what a mess,” said the invisible man by the door.
“At least he still has his eyes.”
Confused and afraid, Reed stumbled inside. He almost didn't recognize the young man seated by the hearth.
Eamon's attackers, faced with an armored man, had mostly struck him in the only vulnerable place they could. His face was apple-red in the firelight, swollen, and a puzzle of crisscrossing stitches, scabby cuts and little hurts. A pair of figures hovered around him: sewing, wiping and fussing. Editha held up a tankard of water and commanded Eamon to drink. He took a single gulp: as big as he dared, and she sucked her teeth when she saw how much escaped through the open wounds in his cheek and throat. She tenderly wiped the bloody seepage.
“No more water,” commanded the man who sewed.
Reed gaped when he recognized him. Weevil grimaced as he bit his thread: finishing one stitch only to thread his needle for yet another.
“Your ear isn't supposed to be this floppy mate,” Weevil joked. “It might just be easier to give it a tug and be done with it.”
“Tug away,” Eamon said dully, and his voice was a hoarse gurgle.
Seated at a bench to the side, Jon fitz William chuckled, and Reed was floored yet again.
“Better not,” Weevil decided. “It might affect your balance! Of course, we could always crop the other one to match. You'll look like a terrier, but you never were very pretty, hey?
“Why look who it is!” Weevil exclaimed when he saw Reed. “There now mate, I told you he'd be back. What do you say to my handiwork Reed? He looks better than ever, hey?”
“What did you do to him?” Reed asked cautiously.
“Do to him? I saved him the barber's fee mate.”
“It was Bairon,” Eamon explained.
“Hush now,” Editha interjected. “You shouldn't be talking.”
“I recognized some of Ogier's men," Jon said. "But not the others.”
“What happened?” Reed asked.
“He was attacked in the stable,” Jon explained.
“There were eight of them,” Editha added. “They were in here drinking: waiting for him to come back.” She glared at Reed. “Where were you?”
Reed began to weep then. Sniffling like a little boy, he collapsed before Eamon and looked up at his terribly mangled face in abject misery. “I'm sorry,” he blubbered. “I should have been here!” He clutched Eamon's knee, until the young man's hand took his own reassuringly, whereupon he seized it, and buried his forehead in his knuckles.
Weevil rolled his eyes, but said nothing of his disdain until he had finished with Eamon's ear. “Here now Reed, stifle your racket and hold this candle close. I want to make sure I didn't miss anything in all this thicket.”
Reed would have done as he was asked, but Editha wouldn't have it. She saw how drunk he was, and so it was her hand that held the candle as Weevil probed Eamon's thick, curly scalp, looking for any more hurts in need of sewing. Satisfied, Weevil slathered Eamon's injuries with honey and bandaged his entire head, leaving only his mouth, nose and eyes exposed.
Weevil then instructed both Editha and Reed in his care. “Come the morning you wash him thorough with turpentine. Thorough, you hear? It'll hurt like hell but you have to do it, even if he says no. Use it to get the bandages unstuck too. Let him dry out, then grease him up with the rest of the honey. Don't be shy with it, and don't you go eating any of it. It's for him. The last thing a man wants is gangrene of the fucking face, yeah? We might save him if it just starts in his nose or ears but there aren't many other bits we can go lopping off. I'll come by tomorrow and check on him.
“Now then,” Weevil said loudly, and turned to address Egburt. He had sat quietly at the back of the hall, as far from Weevil as he could get. He stared up at the Welsh money-lender in growing terror as he stepped towards him. “Come tomorrow, when you're running your mouth about your guest there, you're going to forget who it was that come and stitched him up, right? Eamon's a good man, and he doesn't need his reputation ruined on account of owing money to the likes of me, right?
“I said right?”
“Yes lord,” said Egburt.
“Who was it sewed up Eamon's face?” Weevil asked.
“Uh,” he said.
“I did,” Editha answered for her brother.
“She did,” Egburt agreed.
Weevil took a small purse from his belt and tossed it at Egburt. The bag bounced off his chest and hit the floor with a jingle. Egburt waited for an exasperated, encouraging look from Weevil before scrabbling to retrieve it.
“Lord Eamon, Reed, I'll see you tomorrow. Lord fitz William,” Weevil bowed slightly to the shire reeve.
“Watcyn,” Jon said: acknowledging Weevil's civility but returning none of it. Once Weevil had gone, he looked at Eamon sadly. His face was full of questions and concern, but he asked nothing, and made no accusations. He stood. “I'll let you know if we find the bastards who got away.”
“Will you arrest Bairon?” Reed asked.
“If we take his men and they claim he ordered it.”
“What if I kill him?” Eamon asked.
“You won't find me in your way,” Jon replied.