Though it had been clear that she understood her captors, she still refused to answer questions with anything but celtic jibberish.  From the fine linen of her dress and its precise stitching it was obvious that she was not common folk, but a ransom offer had yet to come from the vastness of the Norselands.  She gave a title for a name, Thor's Maid, perhaps seeking a shelter of pagan malediction against mistreatment or rape.  In the last of the war a ship had gone in pursuit of a band of Norse pillagers and been driven for days by a southerly gale before finding shelter between the crags of an unknown fjord.  A party of sailors gone ashore for fresh water had taken her from a crowberry patch.  On his way down to her cell Senechal noticed the odd, bow-legged gait of the jailer.  Keys rattled, the door creaked open.  Careful, Senechal, she kicks like a mule.  The captive lay curled in straw on stone, a bowl of gruel at her side.  She rose in the same linen, now stained filthy and torn.  Crusted blood was on her legs.  Menses, he hoped. She would need a scrubbing and a meal.

     In his quarters Senechal stood blade in hand while two husky wenches from the kitchen stripped and washed his charge.  At his query, one wrestled her down long enough for the other to declare her a virgin.  Then they dressed their cussing and spitting victim in a page's tunic, a mite short, though it would make for a fine display of her long legs on the lynx hides.  The sharp twinge of annoyance he felt at the thought surprised Senechal.  After a while she quieted her alien swearing to have a bowl of stew, but only offered silence for thanks.  Stumped, he slashed a strip of cloth from her discarded dress to tie her wrists to a post of his bed.  Sitting near his fire to wait for the King's summons, he had a taste of the brew steaming in mugs at the hearth.

     Soldier, share your drink.  By God she had spoken like a Christian.  And true, the stew was a bit salty.  Heartened, Senechal obeyed his guest.  The clay was too hot for her to manage with her wrists bound tight, so he freed her left hand to hold the mug by its handle and fetched another brew for a toast.  But she stayed mute and Senechal returned to his stool.  He heard her cry, so he had another brew. Then her breathing slowed and he had a fourth one.  Waiting, gazing at the crackling ambers.  Sleep was heavy on his eyelids when he caught the sudden drop of a lowering shadow.  A snare was at his throat throttling the life out of him. Pulling at the bind he kicked at the edge of the hearth.  She lost her grip on the choke, but his head rang on the flagstone and she was on him, legs parted on his chin, hands winding around his forearms the bind he was still holding.  Shaking pain from his skull he flipped her off and had her in a leg hold, elbowing off the fingers that sought to gouge out his eyes, striking off the hand that tried to make tight the bond around his wrists.  Soon she was prone.  Sitting on the side of her head, his knees on her arms, he again tied the same strip of cloth around her wrists.  Girl, no need to go around more than twice.  Tie a knot.  Fast.

     Tied now with her hands at her crotch, chest heaving under the trussed tunic she was a luscious sight.  Senechal was breathing hard.  A luscious sight, indeed, and not so young that she wouldn't be wise to the ways of the world, the ways of young cloistered creatures eager to sin, be they reluctant novices quartered behind stone walls under nuns' pitiless eyes, or vestals betrothed to the eternal love of a voyeur god.  Could she be one lusting for the homage of her kind, an amazon in leather and boots, godmichet packed in saddle bag?  She was wild and mean and merciless enough, for sure.  They told sagas of Norseland women wielding weapons, one reputed to have routed a pack of savages by beating her sword on her bare, ample breasts.  Senechal was angry, furious with his lapse, reliving the brief moments of the assault, his gut wrenched by a memory.  The stone at his back, her hands trying to hold on to his arms, her thighs at his cheeks, the taste of her at his lips.  The scent of her, waiting for the summons from the King.

                               * * *

     Never mind the troubadour's rhymes, the knights' dark hours were of the lonely sort.  Petty lords from crumbling keeps in the pay of a cause, or masters of vast domains called to serve their ruler, their hordes rode from bivouacs to battles across plains and over mounds through a land sometimes lovely, sometimes ravaged, but always emptied of its panicked dwellers.  The rabble was weary of the men at arms, their wanton pillages and their inexhaustible craving for their thin wine, their sullen wives, their half-starved daughters.  Yet, crowding around a campfire on the eve of what could be their day of judgment, the knights would boast of their conquests.  In the fog of war an elderly servant bent over a tavern bench reclaimed her youth as a lady-in-waiting looking in a kitchen for sweets for her mistress.  A lay cook at a burned out abbey reigned as the mysterious charge of a Mother Superior dispatched on a fool's errand on King's order.  The elegies withered in the smoke of the lies and the knights would drift to sleep with a longing in their heart.  Home and the women there, be they betrothed or spouse, or simply a neighbor once surprised bathing in a stream.

     Senechal did not join in the liars' rounds. His rank and authority sprouted from his closeness to a boy-King whom he had trained in the warrior's arts when he was a young man.  The bond caused much gossip and unease in occasions not related to the practical matters of armed conflict.  Estranged from the camaraderie of the fighting men and notwithstanding his occasional lucky breaks in the King's quarters, his nights were even lonelier than those of the merry boasters at the firesides.  On his travels Senechal had observed and longed for the lot of a master in a small, remote keep, in a prosperous farm even.  To have the family he never had, the peace of a home, perhaps a spirited companion to raise children with.

     Someone like the wiry one.

     The night was stretching into the melancholy of the longest hours of the watch. Beyond the occasional cadenced steps of a patrol the palace was unusually silent. Even the clattering cacophony and the whimpers of the dogs had ceased in the kitchen.  The summons had not come.  Soon Senechal would return his captive to her cell. Perhaps the king had fallen asleep, perhaps he had not dared to sully the royal bed with heathen trash from the gaol.  All-Saints-Day nearing, the Cardinal and the Queen with their entourages had gone North to the Abbey in his Seat, spies surely remained.  There wouldn't be another chance for the captive to lay with the King, willingly or not.  Hers would be the usual fare of her kind.  Beaten into submission to the slavery of the slop bucket brigade, raped by one stable boy after another, and finally, if she lived, a place as a wench in the kitchen where she would have to endure the mocking resentment of those who had bathed her for an aborted chance at a privileged fate.

                               * * *

     Alms and multiple thanks had risen to the Supreme Deity to honor the King's safe return from his victorious campaign, but nagging questions about succession continued to dominate the palace gossip.  The Cardinal was said to have granted a wish to hear the confession of the Queen's brother, a Duke in an eastern province. Returning from the Abbey a courier had reported seeing a large coach pulled by an equipage of twelve horses and escorted by several dozen heavily armed riders bearing ducal ensigns.      With most of his war comrades gone home with their spoils, the King was quite vulnerable, thought Senechal.  The intrigue stank of a brewing cabal.  Perhaps the Cardinal already held an edict from the Pontiff.  Hadn't the King consorted with a daughter of the Moor, an enemy of the Faith?  The end could come in a matter of hours, or days.  A stiletto would be no match to a pack of traitorous Palace Guards armed with a papal order.  On his way down to the gaol the monarch might trip, or a blade would do its work.  Senechal would be next, or already dead, or worse facing inquisition.  On the wheel or the rack he would confess his and his King's depravity.  He would be carted away before raucous crowds, stripped to his chemise and handed to an indifferent executioner at a carrefour gallow beyond the city walls.  Should the King escape or negotiate his return to power, the one witness to his transgressions could not be allowed to live.  Raison d'etat would have no mercy, even for a faithful comrade-in-arm. Branded with the affront to justice of false testimony, he would swing above the splatter of his wastes, crows gathering to peck on his carcass.

                                      * * *

     The day rose peacefully in the palace.  With most dignitaries away and the King in council with advisors and close friends, folks went on with their tasks and the jailer gave little thought to the empty cell and its gruel bowl now thoroughly scoured by the rats.  A pity, the harridan must have breathed her last without dinner.  Not one to be kicked without consequences that Senechal.  Not one to be bothered when his quarters were bolted shut either.  It was not until the shadows lengthened in the afternoon and the torches were lit in the darkest quarters that the King and his council decided that a show of force was in order.  Where was Senechal?  No one knew.  Summoned, the Captain of the Night Guard revealed that shortly before dawn Senechal had requested two horses with light gear and enough victuals for an overnight trip.  King's order.  That was news to the King. And who relayed that order?  Why, Senechal of course.  Who rode with him?  Hard to tell, in the smoky corridors where the torches were burning out.  A monk, perhaps, in a black cape, hooded.  A guard had noted the fellow's rather large boots that caused him to trip on the way to the courtyard.  Surprisingly light when helped on his horse.  An ascetic monk?  Not the kind of comrade known to Senechal.  At his request the riders were escorted no further than the city's North Gate.  A Cardinal's spy?

     The gossip from the palace's lower innards brought more facts but little clarity. The monk did not wear britches.  Senechal had fetched from the gaol a captive that two wenches were ordered to spruce up in his quarters.  For his pleasure, they assumed.  The King said nothing and joined in the general puzzlement, then the certainty that the fiend had gone to collect the reward of his betrayal beginning with thievery of war bounty, a rather insignificant pagan idolatrix, but still, royal property.  They both would hang.

Next, AN ERRANT KNIGHT AND HIS SQUIRE