The Lode Stone Read online

  The Lode Stone

  Medieval Stones

  J. A. McLachlan

  Published by Kay Crisp Books, Ontario, Canada, 2019.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  The Lode Stone

  The Lode Stone

  PART ONE

  Chapter One: Coming Home

  Chapter Two: The Hero

  Chapter Three: Simon’s War Horse

  Chapter Four: Repentance

  Chapter Five: Knowing and Having

  Chapter Six: Eviction

  Chapter Seven: To the Manor Borne

  Chapter Eight: The Quarry Mistress

  Chapter Nine: A Fine Businesswoman

  Chapter Ten: A Mid-Day Guest

  Chapter Eleven: The Wrong Lord

  Chapter Twelve: Haunted

  PART TWO

  Chapter Thirteen: Isaac

  Chapter Fourteen: At Sea

  Chapter Fifteen: The Crusaders

  Chapter Sixteen: The Corpse

  Chapter Seventeen: Sword Fight

  Chapter Eighteen: Naples

  Chapter Nineteen: The Menorah

  Chapter Twenty: Pierre d’Avignon

  Chapter Twenty-One: A Man Unmoored

  PART THREE

  Chapter Twenty-Two: The Vagabond

  Chapter Twenty-Three: The Pride of Men

  Chapter Twenty-Four: The Riding Master

  Chapter Twenty-Five: Stirring Up Trouble

  Chapter Twenty-Six: A Picnic in the Woods

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: Thieves

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: One Step Ahead

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: A Complicated Matter

  Chapter Thirty: A Good Man

  The Sorrow Stone | Chapter One

  The Lode Stone

  Published by Kay Crisp Books

  Copyright © 2019 by Jane Ann McLachlan

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced by any means, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, photocopying or recording, or translated into a machine language, without the written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and events are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN: 978-1-9993836-5-7

  Cover Design by Heather from Expert Subjects

  Formatting by Chris Morgan from Dragon Realm Press

  www.dragonrealmpress.com

  Other Books by Jane Ann McLachlan

  Historical Fiction:

  The Sorrow Stone

  The Lode Stone

  The Girl Who Would Be Queen

  The Girl Who Tempted Fortune

  Memoir:

  IMPACT: A Memoir of PTSD

  Creative Writing:

  Downriver Writing: The Five-Step Process for Outlining Your Novel

  Books by J. A. McLachlan

  Science Fiction:

  Walls of Wind

  Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy:

  The Occasional Diamond Thief

  The Salarian Desert Game

  Midsummer Night Magicians

  As an author, I love to hear readers’ comments on my books. If you enjoy reading The Lode Stone, please consider posting a review on Amazon. To do so, go to the book page for The Lode Stone—https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZR9RDQD —and scroll down the page past my picture and bio to a button that says “Leave a Customer Review”. Click on that to write and post your review.

  Thank you!

  The Lode Stone

  Le Puy, France, 1190 A. D.

  By Jane Ann McLachlan

  PART ONE

  Chapter One: Coming Home

  “...apa...hor!”

  I heard my daughter squealing, her voice catching as she ran. I had not given up trying to scold her into a more suitable decibel, not to mention her habit of racing at top speed everywhere she went, but it was a losing battle. A half-hearted one as well, since I had been just as wild in my youth.

  “Horse! Horse!” Her excited shrieks increased in volume as she got closer, and I could make out the words.

  “Papa’s horse! Papa’s horse is coming!”

  I put my hand to my chest, covering a sudden, sharp pain, and ran to the door just as she burst through it.

  “Papa’s horse has come home!” Alys squealed, falling against me.

  “You saw Papa?” I managed to get out past the tightness in my chest and throat. I had been waiting for this, my thoughts scattered, my work disordered, ever since the news had reached the castle and swiftly filtered down through the town of Le Puy that Lord Charles and a half dozen men out of the fifty who went with him were on their way home. A month of worry and prayers—could they be here at last?

  “Did you see Papa riding home?” I asked again, grabbing Alys by the shoulders, barely resisting the urge to shake her.

  She looked up at me wide-eyed, confused. “It is Papa’s horse,” she stammered, her eyes filling.

  I bit my lip, angry with myself for frightening her. She was little more than two years old when Simon left and four years had passed since then. Simon’s huge war horse had fascinated her, but a child who could not remember her father’s face could not be trusted to recognize his horse.

  “We will go and meet them, shall we?” I asked, forcing a calmness I did not feel into my voice. I turned to scoop up Guarin, who was sitting up on his mat, sleep forgotten, watching his sister with bright eyes. Settling him on my hip I grabbed Alys’s hand before she could dash off without me. “Show Mama where you saw Papa’s horse,” I said.

  She tugged me through the town toward the high road that skirted Le Puy and led directly to the castle. She wanted to lead me south where the road was first visible, but I headed straight west, into the sunset, knowing they would be past the spot where she had seen them by now. The closer we got the faster I walked as more and more people joined me, hurrying toward the King’s road. The past caught me as I remembered making this same trip over a year ago to meet Lord Barnard’s casket and the four men dispatched to bring it home for burial. I had hoped my Simon would be one of them, as I hoped he was coming now with Lord Barnard’s son, our new lord.

  Soon I was pulling Alys behind me as she stumbled to keep up. I did not waste my breath speaking, although I knew most of the people who lived in Le Puy. Nor did they speak to me. We were all thinking, half a dozen out of fifty, and hoping our husbands or sons or brothers were among the lucky few coming home.

  But Alys had seen her papa’s horse. My heart pounded, and not because of carrying a three-and-a-half-year-old and hauling his six-year-old sister behind me. What if Simon was wounded? What if...

  I stopped all such thoughts. What did I care how he came home if only I could have him here with me again?

  “Are you pining before I have even gone, Melisende?” he had murmured, brushing aside a few strands of hair that had escaped my cap and wiping the moisture from my cheeks with his thumbs. “Do you not know I would break the bonds of heaven itself to come home to you?” He bent and kissed me as I clung to him...

  I swept Alys up in my other arm, heavy as she was, and broke into a run. She knew her father’s horse. How often had she begged me to repeat to Guarin (and her as well, listening breathlessly) the tale of its one white sock and the blaze of white down its nose where her Papa had told her lightning ha
d struck, and not even that could stop his fine horse.

  Not even lightning could stop his horse from carrying him home, I told myself as I ran toward the high road. It was only a story but it brought tears to my eyes, then and now. Simon, I thought. I ran faster. Simon!

  I was gasping for breath by the time I crested the low hill and could see the road. And there they were, eight men on horseback, more than we had expected but so much fewer than we had waved off four years ago, sending them bravely on their crusade to the Holy Land.

  We saw him at the same time, Guarin jumping in my arms and Alys calling out and pointing so that I almost dropped them both. It was Simon’s horse, the one white sock muddied but still visible, and the blaze along its nose clear against its chestnut hair. Simon was looking in the other direction, something must have distracted him, for surely he would be looking toward the village otherwise, searching for me. I set the children down and straightened, one hand shielding my eyes as I squinted into the sunset, the other raised to wave as he turned toward me...

  It was not Simon.

  Lord Charles was riding Simon’s horse.

  My hands fell to my sides.

  He looked at me. I know he saw me, his pale, weary face turning even paler, eyes widening for just an instant.

  I stepped forward, pushing through the other villagers scanning the little group of men. What was Lord Charles doing on Simon’s horse?

  He turned away, quickly it seemed, as though he had not seen me at all. Or perhaps as though he wanted me to think so.

  Chapter Two: The Hero

  Simon was a hero, so they said. It is true he was a foolish, impulsive man in his quiet way, given to thinking too much of others, too little of himself. I knew the story of how he had saved Lady Celeste’s life when he was a boy of nine, running right under the hooves of her rearing horse. She lay unconscious on the ground after falling from its back and Simon pulled the horse aside before it could trample her. Everyone knew the story and the favoritism she and her husband, Lord Barnard, showed him because of it. It embarrassed Simon, he refused to talk about it, saying anyone would do the same.

  No one I knew would do the same.

  “Promise me,” I demanded fiercely when I could not talk him out of joining his lord’s crusade to the Holy Land—they need someone to tend their horses he had explained, as if it made perfect sense for a young blacksmith with little fighting skills to attend his lords on their crusade—“Promise me you will not leap in front of charging horses or flying arrows or wild Saracens cutting down Christians with their curved swords, like a farmer moving hay with his scythe!”

  “Oh Melisende,” his face creased in the tender smile I loved. “I will never tempt death to steal me away from you.” He cupped my face in his hands and bent to kiss me, a tall man but always gentle. “But it is a war I am going to, you know, not a masque or a tournament. I cannot make such a promise.” He drew me close but I bumped my hip against the sword at his side, a strange appendage on my Simon’s belt, and the moment was lost.

  I should have kissed him. For that matter, why did I not pull up my skirts and let him have me there on the firm wooden table in our little house beside the smithy, right in the daytime, sword and all, as he lingered making his goodbyes? Did I not know I might never see him again? I did! I felt it with a cold certainty, but stubbornly I blamed him, I wanted to punish him. They would not have taken him if he refused. Lady Celeste would have intervened if he had reminded them he had risked his life for them already and once was enough.

  “...Simon of Saint-Gilles, blacksmith...”

  I looked up, forcing my thoughts back to the present. The priest was naming in his prayers each man who had not returned to us. The Cathedral of Notre Dame was filled with the townspeople of Le Puy and every one of them had lost a father, son, brother, husband. I was not consoled by our common grief; rather, it isolated me. How could I complain when everyone bore as great a sorrow as I, and appeared to be bearing it more steadfastly?

  On the highest hill at the outskirts of town the monks in the hermitage of St. Michel d’Aiguil would be reciting similar prayers for their patrons, all the noble families in the area. They had been doing so all this week, the bells in their tower ringing as they prayed for the dead noblemen. But they had only a few names to consider in their prayers. Lord Barnard would be named, but not his son. Lord Charles was here among us this Sabbath morning, at the front of the cathedral, alive and unharmed. Lord Charles who had not brought my husband home, but had brought his horse.

  My Simon had saved his life. So Lord Charles had said three nights ago at the feast his mother threw to welcome him home. I had had to swallow my bitterness when Marie arrived breathless at my door to tell me the story of my husband’s noble sacrifice as she had overheard it. Lord Barnard and Lord Charles were surrounded by the Saracen, their men cut down around them in a skirmish during the siege of Acre. All hope was lost until Simon came charging through the heathens, breaking their circle. It was too late for Lord Barnard, but Lord Charles was able to escape, thanks to Simon’s courage. Only Simon died before he could make it back out. Lord Charles had no choice but to leave him, King Philip had called a retreat, he was leading his army away to regroup...

  Simon’s sacrifice, he had called it. I was what Simon sacrificed, I told myself grimly as I stood in the church hearing the list of names.

  When the prayer was over, Alys tugged at my hand. “Is Papa a hero?” she whispered.

  “Papa is a man who forgot he had a family,” I whispered back. Beside her Guarin stared up at me, his eyes wide. The only father he would ever have was the one he heard about from me. “And a hero,” I added.

  I did not doubt Lord Charles’ story. It was just like Simon. He loved the young lords, Charles and Roland, as though they were his younger brothers. He had already saved Charles once, for Lady Celeste was carrying him when her horse reared, though at the time no one knew she was with child. Oh yes, Simon would save Charles again if he saw the need and a way to do it. I did not doubt Charles’ story. But I still wondered, how did Lord Charles end up on Simon’s horse?

  Simon had brought that horse home as a foal, a runt born early. It had pulled a ligament in its foreleg before it was weaned. Lord Barnard had given it to Simon in gratitude for his years of loyal labor at the castle stables—and also because no one else would have it. We fought over that, Simon wasting his time and our money on an unweaned foal that was lame. Even if it healed it would never be good at the plough or fancy enough to pull a carriage. He spent hours feeding it from a cloth with a hole cut in the end. He could never bear to see an animal hurt and not go to its aid, especially a horse. We had a daughter to feed and provide a dowry for, and there would be others, God willing, I argued. But Simon said it was a gift from his lord and he would keep it.

  I did not want any horse. My father had fallen from his horse. His hand got tangled in the reins and the frantic beast had trampled him to death trying to free itself. I did not want a horse around my baby, but this was a wide-eyed, long-legged foal still trembling and crying for its mother’s teat. Even I had not the heart to refuse it when Simon brought it home.

  The foal’s leg healed, it grew into a sturdy colt, and Simon trained it. No one could train an animal like my Simon. They wanted to please him so badly it was simply a matter of letting the poor beast know what was expected of it. That colt grew into the finest war horse anyone had ever seen. We could have sold it for a small fortune, enough to live on the rest of our lives. Only Simon would not sell it. For every man who offered, Simon found some reason the horse would not be happy with him. Happy! What was he thinking? An animal was supposed to be happy? I shook my head.

  “We are happy, are we not?” Simon had said.

  It had never occurred to me to wonder if I was happy. I had been pleased when Simon approached my father, there was no denying it. He could have had any number of girls to wife, a fine blacksmith trained and favored by the lord of the region, working four
days a week in his own smithy and the other three days at the castle stable. And he was handsome and gentle-spoken. I woke with a smile on my lips the day we were wed and every day since, despite his foolishness at times. Yes, I was happy. But I was not a horse! A horse had no right to expect to be happy! I looked at Simon indignantly, suspecting he was amusing himself with foolish words as he sometimes did. He wore that good-natured grin on his face as though he thought he had made a convincing argument, and I could not stop myself from laughing. “Well, find a lord who will make him happy before he eats us into poverty,” I said.

  And then King Philip II called for men to ride with him on the Third Crusade to free the Holy Land from the heathen Saladin. And Lord Barnard and his son decided to answer the call with fifty men. I never asked whether Lord Barnard suggested Simon go with them, or Simon offered himself. It was not something I wanted between us. At any rate, the question of selling his horse was settled. And I knew, at least, that my husband had the best horse in the king’s army.

  “My lode stone,” Simon had called him, letting the huge beast nuzzle his fingers before he mounted. “He will bring me home.”

  “I would rather I was your lode stone,” I had answered tartly.

  Simon laughed softly. He cupped my chin in his hand. “You are my home,” he said, “as I am yours.” And he kissed me. In front of the whole town out to see their men off he said that, and kissed me. I smiled as he swung himself up onto the great warhorse. I remember smiling.

  I even held out a carrot-top, tender leaves with a good chunk of carrot still attached to them, as big as the first joint on Simon’s thumb, and Simon had big hands. I should not have left that much, making last night’s stew, but since I had it might as well go to the horse. I was not soft on the animal, mind. I liked horses, and this one particularly, but Simon was the one who was soft on animals. Nevertheless, quite a few chunks of good food had bypassed my pot to go to this horse since it came to us as a foal.