Brother Cadfael 07: The Sanctuary Sparrow

and dry sweetness. Dimly she was aware of punctures of sky shining through the hay, distinguishably paler in the timber darkness before her, where whoever built this stable and loft had placed a ventilation lattice to air his store.
    Somewhere behind her, at the door end of the loft, a larger square of sky looked in, the hatch by which the hay harvest was forked in here for storage, high above the barred doors below. She heard the rungs of the ladder creak at Iestyn's weight as he climbed in haste, and ran to fling himself on his knees beside that outlet, to watch his enemies close about his refuge. She heard, and suddenly was able to comprehend what she heard. The thud of fists hammering on the barred doors, the challenge of the law without.
    'Open and come forth, or we'll hack you out with axes. We know you there within and know what you have to answer for!'
    Not a voice she knew, for an eager sergeant had outrun his lord and his fellows when he heard the bars slam home, and had come well first to the doors. But she knew the import of what he bellowed to the night, and understood fully at last into what peril she had been brought.
    'Stand back!' Iestyn's voice rang loud and hard. 'Or answer to God for a life, you also! Well away from those doors, and don't venture back, for I see you clearly. And I'll speak no more with you, underling, but only with your master. Tell him I have a girl here between my hands, and a knife at my belt, and so sure as axe strikes at these timbers, my knife slits her throat. Now bring me here someone with whom I can parley.'
    There was a sharp command without and then silence. Rannilt drew herself back as far as she dared into the remaining store of hay, towards the faint pattern of stars. Between here and the head of the ladder by which she had climbed there was a silent, motionless presence which she knew for Susanna, on guard over her lover's only weapon.
    'What did I ever do to you?' said Rannilt, without rancour or hope.
    'You fell foul,' said Susanna, with unblaming bitterness. 'Your misfortune and ours.'
    'And will you truly kill me?' She asked it in pure wonder, even her terror momentarily forgotten.
    'If we must.'
    'But dead,' said Rannilt, in a moment of desperately clear vision putting her finger on the one disastrous weakness in the holding of hostages, 'I am of no more use to you. It's only living that I can get you what you want. If you kill me you've lost everything. And you don't want to kill me, what pleasure would that be to you? Why, I'm no use to you at all!'
    'If I must pull the roof down upon myself,' said Susanna with cold ferocity, 'I'll pull it down also upon as many of the innocent as I can contrive to crush with me and not go alone into the ark.'
    Chapter Thirteen
    Friday night to Saturday morning
    Hugh had halted his men instantly at Iestyn's challenge, drawn back those who had reached the stable doors, and enjoined silence, which is more unnerving than violent assault or loud outcry. Moving men could be detected, stillness made them only dubiously visible. The rising ground to the headland bore several small clumps of trees and a hedge of bushes, cover enough for men to make their way halfway round the stable, and the rest of the circle they closed at a greater distance, completing a ring all round the building. The sergeant came back from his survey, shadowy from tree to tree down the slope to the meadow, to report the stable surrounded.
    'There's no other way out, unless he has the means to hew a way through a wall, and small good that would do him. And if he boasts of a knife, I take it he has no other weapon. What would a common workman carry but his knife for all purposes?'
    'And we have archers,' mused Hugh, 'if they have no light to show them a target as yet. Wait - nothing in haste! If we have them securely, it's we who can afford to wait, not they. No need to drive them to madness.'
    'But they have Rannilt in there - they're threatening her life,' whispered Liliwin, quivering at Brother Cadfael's shoulder.
    'They're offering to spend her for their own ends,' said Hugh, 'therefore all the more they'll keep her safe to bargain with, short of the last despair, and I'll take good care not to drive them over the edge. Keep still a while, and let's see if we can tire them out or talk them out. But you, Alcher, find yourself the best place in cover to command that hatch above the doors, and keep it in your eye and a shaft always ready, in case of the worst.