Knights of Lancaster: Passing Tibbay Sunday Snippets
Writing in the New York Finger Lakes September 15, 2024
Passing Tibbay
Andrew and Alain accompany Callum and Alec to Kentdale through the middle of Warraine’s small holding at Tibbay. When Andrew weaves protection it is a deep magic. Alec tries to sort it out.
The trick, if it can be called that, is to breathe with the swirling lights that cover us at all times. I found their rhythm and breathed with them until they pulsed and changed with my breath which gave me hold of their direction. Then as Andrew had, I took the lights and swirled them in a spiral, following the one he had already set around us. The yellows, orange and reds were strong among us warriors, with a smattering of purple blues from Andrew. “That is how he differs as a man in black. It would be easier to set them around me alone, but I’ll not chance disrupting what he’s done.” On this day, he was dressed in black from head to foot, his cope and hood as dark as a shadow. His hair curled black around his face and in his neck. Dark brows arched on his forehead. Black lashes framed his eyes. His skin was pale but there were apples in his cheeks. His face unmarked by any scars; his blue eyes seared with sorrow. Andrew was a handsome man of thirty-four. He stood near as tall as I and a stone heavier, a solid brick of a man. He rode the lord’s horse like a master, though he preferred to walk. He had a stride few could match, and he only agreed to ride to Kentdale because we must transport the horse. He would walk home.
I remembered his remorse at my carrying him home from Alnwick two years before. It had been as great a humiliation as his wounded groin. The Fisher King’s mark could rob him of his power in the Circles. It could make a eunuch of him, body and soul. That it did not was testament to his strength. I had feared he would seek death instead of healing. I was wrong. I set aside my memories and concentrated on the spell.
We forded the River Lune a quick sprint north of the village and then entered Tibbay riding straight and tall. Those who noticed us would see knights on horses and think nowt of it. If asked they would scratch their heads and wonder what the crest on our surcoats had been. The image would be out of memory’s reach. Most would forget we ever passed their way. The ones who might be troublesome would be distracted and swear no one rode by when they were on the road. It was important for us all to breathe deeply and maintain our calm. A ripple of fear or anger would show us more boldly and could spoil the cover spun about us.
Castle Howe, Sir Warraine’s seat, lay west of the village on a rise near the river. From there he held the manor which extended on an east west line from Gaisgill to Borrowdale close south of Fawsetwood; then on south passed the village to the Fells of Lonsdale, Howgill and Fell Head. Even Howgill Gate Croft on the Shap Road west of us was sworn to the lord of Tibbay. Tibbay Manor was fertile ground on both the High End and the Low End. The Castle Gate led west from the center of the village off the Orton Tibbay Road and entered the Bailey at the south end of the long motte that backed up into a river bend where Birk Beck met the water course. Built on an oval earthworks motte with a timber curtain, the castle overlooked the village and the waterway as did most of the towers made for the Norman kings. This was another in a string of fortifications which gathered information and enforced the power if not the majesty of the Henrys who ruled us. It was that power that the Scots challenged again and again. Strathclyde extended here two generations earlier. Now it was de Tallibois and de Lancaster who held its wealth.
Despite the riches of fertile land and flocks, Tibbay was small, a mere collection of cottages many of them connected to each other in a row along the road. A few free-standing homes were set apart with workshops in the yards behind. I saw a sign for a cooper, a smith, a family of leatherworkers, and a sawyer set on the winding Lune. The smoke of cooking fires and forges lingered low in the vale, smelling of oak and apple trees. The air was clearer up on the motte where there were other crafts housed within the bailey. A stiff breeze snapped the pennants over the tower declaring Warraine and another were inside. A flour mill set on the river outside the timber curtain wall. I knew Warraine’s Keep held the village bread ovens and expected those who lived here to pay for their bread and flour--not bake or grind their own. If the Edsons who were killed in Shaps’ cobbie yard had been the millers and the bakers that they claimed, their loss as members of the Keep’s kitchens could be severe.
The folk of Tibbay had a tidy commons where some livestock grazed. Speckled chickens ran freely in the streets, of which there were three, two branching off the main road from Orton to the fork near Howgill Fell several miles on south. There the east fork went to Sedbergh and the west to Kentdale. It was an old Roman Road as far as any alive could tell. Downstream from Tibbay was a weir for washing clothes. A spring fed well piped water to a pump where fresh drinking water and local gossip could be had. And none paid the least attention to the travelers who found their way out of the village and followed the river road between the Fells which rose higher and higher on either side. We breathed easier when we left the town, but watched our backs all the same.