Chapter Twenty #2
Diamantha turned to look at her pale daughter. “No physic,” she said. “At least, not right now. Let us see how she does through the day and then we will decide. But if she is not better tonight, Cortez, I do not want you to stay in the room with us.”
His brow furrowed. “Why not?”
She looked at him with some fear in her expression. “I do not want her to make you sick as well,” she said. “She may have something catching.”
He shrugged. “If that is the case, then I have already been exposed,” he said. “Staying away tonight will not prevent me from becoming ill if it is already destined that I should be.”
Diamantha was struggling not to let her fear and disappointment swamp her. “God’s Bones,” she hissed angrily. “We have come all this way and now this.”
Cortez kissed her again and stood up. “Not to worry,” he said. “I am sure she will be fine by tonight. It was probably something she ate, a bit of stew that did not agree with her. She is a healthy child and she will quickly overcome this.”
Diamantha sighed, looking down at her sick baby. “I hope so,” she said. “We will remain here today. Mayhap she simply needs to rest.”
She sounded as if she were trying to convince herself that the illness would quickly pass.
To think of anything else would cause her to panic.
Cortez glanced over at the cage stuffed with the puppy, the kittens, the fox, and the rabbit.
At this hour of the morning, they were all sleeping in a big, happy, and warm pile.
“I will make sure MacInnis brings the menagerie some food,” he said. “I believe I will also leave some men behind as protection.”
“You will not be too far away, will you?” Diamantha put a soft hand on his arm, fearfully.
He shook his head, patting her hand. “Nay,” he said. “If you scream, I could probably hear you, but I believe you will be safe here.”
Diamantha felt marginally better as she returned her focus to her daughter, who was now starting to doze off.
Cortez watched the pair a moment, feeling saddened that they would not be able to join them now that they had reached their destination, but as he thought on it, maybe it was for the best. They were going digging for a corpse and he was fairly certain that Diamantha didn’t want to see what was left of her husband.
True, she had come along to identify him, but there were other ways of doing that; a ring, a sword, perhaps familiar clothing.
He was fairly certain she didn’t want to look at the face of a man who had been in the ground for four months.
“I will send you word later today of our progress,” he said, kissing her on the head. “Meanwhile, you and Lady Sophie will have a restful day. That is what I prefer, anyway. You will stay here while the men do the work.”
Diamantha didn’t have much to say to that.
She seemed more focused on her child, as she should be.
Cortez would finish dressing out in the common room, as he had given young Peter his mail coat to clean, so he kissed Diamantha farewell and quit the room, moving into the greater room where his men were dressed and eating their breakfast. A big day lay ahead for all of them and he was anxious to get started.
Anxious to disturb the dead.
*
Cortez recognized the area immediately. Not that he had expected it to change much in four months, but the battlefield literally looked exactly the same as it did the last time he saw it.
The Battle of Falkirk had been fought in a relatively small area, all things considered.
William Wallace had hid with his men in Callendar Wood and had engaged the English to the south side of forest. There were three brooks that converged there and upon a vast meadow of gently rolling hills, the Scots and the English had clashed together most violently.
The Scots were heavily outmanned by the English and their defeat, under Edward’s heavy hand, had been inevitable.
As Cortez stood on the outskirts of the battlefield, he could still hear the fighting going on.
Scot archers were being crushed under the weaponry of the mounted English knights.
He could see the knights swarming them, beating them down, as the ground began to run with blood.
He could hear the sights and smells of the battle and, judging from the expressions on the knights around him, he was fairly certain they could see and smell the same thing.
They were all remembering their fortune upon the field of battle. It had been a brutal day.
But Cortez shook himself away from the memories and took his men, with a single provisions wagon carrying a collection of spades and other digging instruments, around to the southeast side of the battlefield to the last place he had seen Robert Edlington alive.
The mud was fairly heavy on the small path that skirted the battlefield and the wagon became stuck, twice.
The soldiers had been forced to use sheer manpower to rock the wagon until it was able to roll forward again. It made for slow going.
As they moved around the perimeter of the battlefield, to the northeast along the path of a brook, Cortez came to a halt and gazed off towards the northwest. There was a hill in the near distance, without trees on it, and it had a rather flat top.
Cortez recognized it. He moved off the path and into the field itself, with its thick mud and intermittent green patches.
There were several heavy lines of foliage to plow through, but Cortez realized he was very close to the place he had last seen Rob Edlington.
Here, on the outskirts of the battle, which at that point in time had been dwindling off to the west, he had dragged Edlington out of the fighting and had leaned the man against a tree.
It had been a big oak with a split trunk, and part of it had been stripped for firewood.
As his horse plodded through the mud, through the heavy greenery, Cortez happened to glance over to his right and was struck with the vision of the split-trunked oak.
“There!”
He shouted the word, almost triumphantly, as he spurred his charger over to the tree, kicking up mud and clods of earth as he went.
The other knights were behind him, dismounting their horses quickly because Cortez had.
In his excitement, he ran his hands all over the tree before scrutinizing the ground around it.
“I left him here,” he said, pointing to the ground. “I pulled him over to this tree. I remember it clearly because of the distinct split trunk. See it? And see how part of it has been stripped for firewood? This is where I left the man. He is here, somewhere, and we will find him.”
Immediately, the knights began looking around, as did the soldiers who had accompanied them.
It was like a reflexive action, everyone eager to search, eager to find.
Everyone was hunting for a sign that Rob Edlington was somewhere beneath them.
Cortez finally ordered the men to break out the spades and he stood back with his knights to gain a better view of the area so they could choose where to place their test holes.
Overhead, dark clouds began to blow in, great puffy mounds that occasionally blocked the sun out.
Cortez turned his gaze upward more than once, wondering when the rain was going to return.
For now, they had damp, soft soil, not mud, and he wanted to dig while the conditions were good.
But the fact remained that he truly had no idea where to start.
As his men stood around, shovels in hand, he began to pace around the tree.
“When I last saw Edlington, he was here,” he said, indicating the south side of the tree.
“I left him when Edward was making his final push against the Scots and I could not have been gone more than a half hour at the most before returning. When I did, all of this was like a swamp of mud. I sank up to my knees in it. Do you recall how terrible the mud was? It swallowed up more than one man.”
The knights were nodding in remembrance of the mud of biblical proportions. Keir broke away from the pack and began pacing around just as Cortez was doing.
“You said that Edlington had no use of his legs,” he said, reiterating what everyone already knew. “But he had strength in his arms. Is it possible he dragged himself away from the tree?”
Cortez looked around, at the field, at the heavy foliage. “When I returned for him and found him missing, I looked around as much as I could,” he said. “The mud around the tree was particularly bad. It would not have been difficult for it to have swallowed a dead man.”
Keir looked at the tree. “But so quickly?” he asked, looking at the ground again. “You said you were gone no more than half of an hour. Would Edlington’s body have been swallowed so quickly?”
Cortez shrugged. “It must have been, for the man was nowhere to be found when I came looking for him,” he said.
Then, he motioned to the ground on the south side of the tree.
“Let us begin here with our holes. We will dig from the tree trunk southward, fifteen or twenty feet. Surely he must be somewhere around here.”
Drake snapped his fingers at the men standing around holding the spades, who immediately moved forward to begin digging holes in the quest to find Rob Edlington’s body.
Meanwhile, James, Oliver, and Michael began to walk about, looking under bushes and trying to see if they could find some trace of Edlington.
If the man had crawled off, which was a possibility, then they would hunt for him.
Bushes and any growth were devoid of the body of a knight, but they were finding broken arrows and shafts as they went.
Drake even came across a dagger, a lovely bejeweled one, that was sticking up through the soil.
There was a shield carved into the hilt inlayed with what looked like red rubies.
Drake held the dirk up into the light to see it more clearly.
Oliver, standing over Drake’s shoulder, pointed at the jeweled shield.
“I recognize that shield,” he said. “That is the crest of William Martin. He fought for Henry.”
Drake scrutinized the weapon. “Very nice,” he said. “And quite expensive. Mayhap I shall ransom it back to him.”
“Martin was killed,” Michael said, standing off to their right. “I am sure his widow would like to have that returned without cost.”
Drake made a face at the big man, conveying just what he thought of returning the valuable piece without expecting some compensation, but he tucked the dirk into his belt as he continued to search around for any sign of Edlington.
Meanwhile, the soldiers continued to dig several holes near the great oak, most of which were at least three feet deep.
The digging went on well into the morning.
At some point during the day, the knights also took up spades and began to dig.
Cortez had a shovel and he dug around the base of the tree, hunting for any sign of Edlington.
Keir, thinking that Edlington must have dragged himself away from the tree and probably the opposite direction of the battle, began digging about twenty feet to the east of the tree.
He managed to dig several smaller holes and one big one, turning up nothing.
The other knights, thinking Keir might have a point about Edlington dragging himself away, dug in various spaces around him.
By the time the sun was setting overhead and more clouds were blowing in from the east, they had dug sixty-three holes, had pulled up pieces of shields, more weapons including four big and extremely valuable broadswords, and pieces of leather that they thought were either parts of shoes or saddles.
No one seemed certain. But in their search, they never came across any piece of a corpse or even a hint of one nearby.
Cortez hated to return to Diamantha empty-handed, but the day had not been productive. Trudging back to the tavern as the sun set, he tried to remain optimistic about what the morrow would bring.