Chapter Eight #2
“I think you do,” she said quietly. “I am not sure why you two have ignored me all this time, but it will stop. My name is Lady Allaston and I am chatelaine. But I suspect you already know that. Why is it you ignore me so? You will tell me why you behave this way.”
The men were looking at her fearfully by now.
There was the older servant and then a younger, fatter servant who could have been the older man’s son for as much as he looked like him.
The round man looked to the older man, who seemed genuinely distressed.
Hesitantly, the older man looked at Allaston.
“We are mere servants, my lady,” he said. “We do our job and that is all. We do not wish… that is to say, we do nothing to anger the Lord of Cloryn.”
Allaston wasn’t clear on what he meant. “What do you mean anger him?” she asked. “Has he threatened you?”
The older man shook his head nervously. “Please, my lady,” he pleaded. “Leave us be. We only want to live.”
Allaston was further puzzled by his statement. “What do you mean by that?” she asked. “Why would you not live? I asked you why you have ignored me and you have given me answers I do not understand.”
The younger of the two abruptly ran off, waddling away and disappearing around the side of the keep, but the older man remained.
He carefully regarded Allaston, a soft morning breeze blowing about his thin gray hair so that it lashed him around the eyes.
Still, his gaze did not move away from her.
There was something in his expression that was both serious and grim.
“My lady,” he said, his voice soft. “You must not ask questions you do not wish to know the answers to.”
Her brow furrowed. “Like what?” she demanded. “See here, what is your name?”
“Blandings, my lady.”
“Blandings, if you want to continue working in the kitchens, then you had better start making some sense,” she said firmly. “I am in charge of the keep and kitchens, and if you want to keep your job, I will have answers. Is that clear?”
Blandings nodded, his features tightening with anxiety. “Aye, my lady.”
She threw an arm in the direction the fat servant had gone. She pointed. “Who was that?”
“My son, Robert.”
At least they were making a slight amount of progress. That was the most she’d gotten from the man in two weeks. “Very well,” she said. “Does he speak?”
“He does.”
“Then you will tell him to speak to me if he values his job.”
“I will, my lady.”
Her eyes watched him as she studied him curiously. “And you,” she said. “What did you mean that I must not ask questions I do not wish to know the answers to? Of course I wish to know the answers, otherwise, I would not ask the questions.”
“Aye, my lady.”
“Do you know where that horrible stench is coming from?”
He hesitated. “Aye, my lady.”
“God’s Beard, then where?”
It was evident by Blandings’ expression that he realized he had no choice but to answer her. He had been holding a big wooden spoon used for de-hiding the bones in the pot and he turned back to the simmering cauldron, stirring the boiling bones and hide.
“You have not been outside of the castle, my lady?” he asked quietly.
Allaston shook her head. “I have not,” she said. “I have been told to stay to the keep and kitchens. Why do you ask?”
Blandings continued to stir, resigned that he was being forced to speak on something he could hardly bring himself to voice. His tone was so quiet when he began to speak that Allaston barely heard him.
“If you have not been outside the gates, then you do not know,” he muttered.
Allaston was trying to follow what he was saying.
“I was brought here almost six weeks ago,” she said.
“I was brought here in the dead of night, and bound in the back of a wagon, so the only time I was outside the gates was when I arrived. I’ve not been outside since.
Why? What goes on out there? And what does that have to do with the terrible stench? ”
The old servant swallowed hard, watching the boiling pot as he stirred it. He had come this far. He had to tell her the rest so that she knew everything.
“De Llion laid siege to Cloryn three months ago,” he said softly.
“The lord tried to fight him off. Lord Oreck was a very good knight and a fair lord. He fought valiantly for five days and four nights, but in the end, de Llion and his men managed to mount the walls. Once they were inside the bailey, it was only a matter of time before they breached the keep. They killed everything that moved, my lady. Everything.”
Allaston was listening with some horror and sorrow.
“I know,” she said solemnly. “They came to Alberbury Priory and killed many nuns before abducting me. The last I saw of the priory, it was going up in flames. And then they brought me here. I spent three weeks in the vault before de Llion released me and made me his chatelaine, so I understand a bit of the workings of de Llion and his army. They are conquerors.”
The old servant was looking at her, his wrinkled face pale and drawn. “They are much more than that,” he said. “Do you know what he did to the people of Cloryn? To the lord and his wife and children?”
Allaston shook her head. “I do not know. I was not told.”
The old servant was back to hanging his head again as he stirred.
“The night they breached the keep, de Llion’s men dragged the lady and her children from the keep.
The lady was very kind and noble, and the two boys were brave and strong.
They were so young, so very young. As de Llion’s men had their way with the lady, right there in the dirt of the bailey, still other men took the two boys and…
with the youngest boy, they took him by the ankles and swung his head against the wall, killing him.
The other boy was taken outside the walls where Lord Oreck had already been impaled.
As the man was dying, de Llion’s men put the boy in front of him and slit his throat, right in front of his father.
It was the last thing Lord Oreck saw before he died.
Then, they tied the boy to Lord Oreck so the man could breathe his last against the cooling corpse of his son. ”
Allaston was beyond horrified. As she listened, her mouth hung agape and tears filled her eyes. It was the worst thing she had ever heard and bile rose in her throat. It was a struggle to swallow it, not to become ill.
“Impaled?” she whispered. “What… what do you mean?”
The old man labored through the physical description of what he meant, using the wooden spoon as an example of the impaling post. “They take a man and ram the post up through his anus,” he said, using hand motions to describe the terrible deed.
“The end of the spike comes up through the neck or the chest. Then they post the spike, out there beyond the walls, leaving the man to die for all to see.”
Allaston seriously thought she might become ill but she fought it.
The entire concept was far beyond what she had ever imagined the most horrible death to entail.
She did not know her father had used the same techniques during his time at conquest. All she had been told was that he had killed many men during that time, a small mercy her mother had withheld from a young and impressionable girl.
Therefore, the tactics used by de Llion were staggeringly shocking and gruesome.
It was horrific beyond belief. Until she remembered what Bretton had told her of her father’s savagery a few weeks ago.
“But… the wife?” she breathed. “What happened to her?”
The old man, seeing Allaston’s brimming tears, began to tear up himself. He stopped stirring the boiling pot, closing his eyes tightly against the memories he was dredging up. Like a nightmare, they haunted him.
“They let every soldier who wanted a turn at her rape her,” he murmured.
“Several of them had her in the bailey and then they dragged her back inside the keep where even more soldiers had their way with her. She was abused until she was nearly dead, my lady. Then, they took her outside the walls where they impaled her on a post just as they had done to her husband, just as they had done to all of Lord Oreck’s men.
What you smell… it is the rotting corpses outside of the walls, my lady.
It is the phantoms of Lord Oreck and the people who once used to live here. ”
Allaston clapped a hand over her mouth, stifling the moan of horror. The tears that had once been brimming were now running down her cheeks.
“Sweet Jesus,” she wept softly. “All of them?”