The Exiled Read Free Page A

yourself — for wool, spices and jewels arrived daily in barges down the Zwijn from the coast. More wealth to add to that already stuffed in behind the sturdy walls of this dynamic city — and Sir Mathew and his friends, the English Merchant Adventurers, commanded much of it.
    Thus it was Ivan’s job to see that his master, and his master’s ward, Lady Anne de Bohun, lived in peace, the peace he could help give them in dangerous times when so many coveted Sir Mathew’s rich possessions, this girl included. He took the office seriously as a matter of professional pride.
    Anne was a realist, too, for all the joking with Meinheer Memlinc. It was the darkest time of the year and she was grateful to have this short, powerfully squat man pacing at her side, alert as a hunting dog.
    Cold air breathed up from the ice of the canal into her face as she walked. Anne shivered, though she and Ivan were moving briskly, her pattens clicking on the cobbles, he pacing beside her in good leather boots, matching his stride to hers.
    Around them, houses crowded thick and tight, and warm light bloomed from some proud windows, though much of the town was dark. It was the wealthy who kept lights burning on into the night: the merchants, nobles and priests who crowded around the new Duke of Burgundy as his court formed, eager for advancement.
    Sensible people went to bed even before the curfew bell, however, for heat and light were expensive in winter and it was easier, and cheaper, to stay warm under the covers. You didn’t need light in bed.
    Nearly there now, nearly there. Anne could see Mathew’s house on the other side of the frozen canal just past the bridge. It was well lit for her homecoming and that was good: her toes were burning, tingling with the cold, pattens or no pattens to keep them out of the muck.
    ‘Mistress?’
    Ivan had slowed his pace and spoke softly.
    ‘Hold the light, lady.’
    He was always calm in a crisis, Ivan, for he’d survived far too many bloody turns to get excited, but even he, now, was tense, because ahead of them, blocking the narrow bridge across the canal that led to Sir Mathew’s house, was a compact group of silent men. Faint light from the stars caught the movement as they silently drew swords.
    ‘Behind me. Drop the light when I tell you.’ Ivan breathed the words and Anne slid quietly into his shadow.
    ‘Now!’
    The flambeau’s light hissed out into the dirty, banked snow at the lane’s edge, but as it died, the flame showed Anne another three men behind them.
    ‘Ivan, behind us. Three more!’
    ‘The canal. Jump when I yell.’ It was the only choice and so, as he sprang towards the men on the bridge screaming, ‘A moi, Sainte George!’ Anne kicked off her pattens, scooped up her skirts and ran to the edge of the canal.
    Too late to think, too late to judge the drop from bank to ice, she half fell, half dropped down, and though she rolled as soon as she hit the hard surface, to cushion the jolt, she knew she’d soon feel the shock in her muscles — if she survived.
    Above her there were shouts from the bridge as Ivan fought his way into the midst of the attackers. The men had seen her drop and someone was yelling, ‘Get the girl, get the girl!’, but Anne still had an advantage of seconds, though she was encumbered by long skirts.
    Breathing raggedly, heart jolting, she scrabbled to her feet and blessed the lessons of moving over the ice that Ivan had made her practise this winter — one foot, next foot, striving for balance. Then fear turned to panicked acid in her throat: she had to cross the fragile, new ice in the centre of the canal if she was to reach Sir Mathew’s frozen water gate ahead of her attackers. On the bridge, Ivan was fighting with the fury of his berserk ancestors, but he could not, single-handedly, hold them all away from her. She must do it, must move on.
    With a yell, two men dropped down off the centre of the bridge, but the freeze was only two days old and