The round cherub eyes searched past Gil’s frame and saw the still figure on the pallet. “Aye, ’tis me. What nonsense is this then?”
“Woodcock?” Biddy stretched out a trembling arm and Sparrow was by her side in an instant to sandwich her hand between his. “Have you heard … about my lady?”
“She is not where she is supposed to be?” he surmised grimly. “Aye, Master Wolf had some notion she might not be, although he should have given a deal more concern for his own whereabouts. Know you where they have taken her?”
“Somewhere called the eagle’s eyrie,” Friar interjected. “Your nose is usually everywhere it should not be: Have you heard mention of this place?”
Sparrow looked offended. “My nose has saved your arse on more than one occasion, Bishop Bother, and will undoubtedly do so again without—”
“Woodcock!” Biddy squeezed one of the small, fat hands with enough vehemence to send the little man up on his tiptoes. “I have not flaunted with Death to lie here and listen to children bickering! My lady is in the gravest peril. She must be rescued and will be rescued if I have to search every inch of masonry myself for this god-accursed eyrie!”
She started to get up, but thought better of it when the four cramped walls of the bothy once again did a sudden, wild dervish and sent her eyes spinning back into her head. Sparrow bent over her at once, his rancour and crushed hand both forgotten in rush of genuine concern.
“There now, you see what comes of always ordering everyone about? You have done more than enough for one day, you old harridan; leave the rest of the rescuing up to us.”
“Woodcock—” She snatched at a fistful of his tunic and dragged him a hand’s breadth away from her face. “You will find my lady, will you not? You will bring her back to me safe and sound?”
“I have already given my word to another to do just so,” he said. “And I consider his ire of greater consequence to my soul should I fail … although—” He tried to swallow through the increased pressure around his throat, and his eyes bulged at the sight of the wickedly sharp knife that had somehow found its way from Biddy’s apron to the juncture of his thighs, “I can see the merit of a double promise. Just so. Just so. You have it. I shall happily place her hand in yours myself!”
“See that you do, Woodcock,” Biddy hissed. “Or your days of flight are over.”
27
The Wolf opened his eyes slowly, careful not to move his lids more than the fraction needed to establish his surroundings. His body ached in a thousand places. He had not moved from where he had been thrown, hours ago, into the dank and musty corner of a stone cell, but he knew by the cautious flexing and testing of muscles in his legs, arms, and torso, that he was one massive bruise. He did not think any bones were broken, but there was evidence aplenty of fresh blood on the mouldy rushes beneath him. He could smell it, and he could taste it on a tongue that was as swollen and furry as the rats who crawled boldly from one fetid cell to the next, sniffing after putrefaction.
As near as he could remember, he was in the donjon beneath the main keep. Even though it had been many years since he had explored here as a child, he thought he recognized the steep, narrow flight of steps that curved around the forty-foot column of block and mortar that supported the floor above. A deep and cavernous chamber of unthinkable horrors, there were cells hewn out of the base of the stone walls, each one deep enough to hold a single man, tall enough to let him sit if he had the strength to do so. Ankles and wrists were chained to thick iron rings embedded in the mortar. Water dripped constantly into slimy black pools on the floor, the echo hollow and prolonged to give each drop a lifespan of several shivering seconds. Rats crouched in the shadows, tearing and chewing chunks of spongy matter that did not bear thinking about. Other dark, huddled creatures who might once have been men, groaned in their private hells, never loud enough to draw the attention of the guards, never quietly enough to tempt death.
The ceiling was lost in the gloom of arched beams, most of them coated