by Peter Telep
Because he was, as Christopher told me, a true servant, the embodiment of a great knight-to-be. And I am nothing but a murderer. A drunk. A freak. And I am wanted by no one, no one except someone just like me.
Montague.
So that is how I’ve come to be with this villain.
Doyle circled around the cookfire to Montague, proffered his good hand to the brigand. Montague’s sweaty palm made contact with his own and, with the usual repulsion, Doyle hoisted the pot-bellied bull calf to his feet.
“My thanks, laddie,” Montague said. He tried in vain to smooth out his stained silk shirt. He tucked the shirt deeper into the bulging waist of his threadbare breeches, then went on, “And if I can offer you two bits of advice: never eat as much nor grow as old as I.” There was no one in the realm who appreciated Montague’s humor more than the man himself. He was the happiest wool sack Doyle would ever know.
“I’ll never be like you,” Doyle said, wanting fervently to believe that, but sensing in his heart that it was not true.
Montague lifted an index finger. “But you already are. And we need each other.” As he lowered the finger, his lips tightened and the whimsy vanished from his eyes. “They cut up my three faithful lads and left me alone to die, just as you were left out here by Arthur, alone to die. Fate’s tossed us together, and together, laddie, we’ll forge a new life. And I’m full of new ideas this morning.”
“Such as—”
“Such as what we’re going to do. We’re going up to the Bristol channel. That’s where the deniers are to be made. This war has raised the port trade. We can slip back into the merchant world. I have a friend at the port of Blytheheart who might be able to help.”
“That port is five or six days away,” Doyle informed him, “and that’s not walking. And we’ll have to cross over the Parret River, and the foothills of the Quantocks. Have you ever been up there”?
“Montague has been on top of every mountain, in every hole, sailed every river, and explored every wood in all of Britain. There is no place that can hold me down, laddie.”
Doyle seriously doubted that. “If we do manage to start a trade in Blytheheart,_ it will be an honest one. From the beginning. I will not rob my way into a business.”
Montague batted off Doyle’s implication with a quick wave of his hand. “No need to remind me of that. It’s high time I settled down to something honest. I’m weary of the road. And with the Saxons buzzing about like bees, it’s far too dangerous to drift. The blood of my boys taught me that.”
With no ideas of his own, traveling to Blytheheart was as good as any, and Montague did make it sound worth their while, yet he wondered about Montague’s “friend.” Surely trade boomed in the channel ports, but they were so far away. If only the village of Falls had not fallen; it was once the inland trading mecca of south central Britain. They had to travel all the way to the coast to find a decent marketplace now.
Doyle had stressed to Montague that if he was successful in starting a trade, it would be honest. But in order to get to Blytheheart they would have to brigand their way there. Would he be successful if his future was established on such behavior? Was it all right if he stole from Saxons, since they were the enemy and would do the same if they had to? He remembered something that Weylin had told him, that two wrongs do not make a right.
But what did he really have to lose? He’d been stripped of his duty as an archer in Arthur’s army, stripped of the means even to fire a longbow, and stripped of the place he had decided to call home, the castle of Shores. If there was a time to take chances, it was now.
Doyle returned his gaze to the Saxon scouts standing at the river’s edge. “All right then, Monte. Get out my crossbow. I will show you what a good shot I still am—even with this hand. And I won’t even have to kill them.”
4
Little Baines, bundled in linen and nestled tightly in a riding bag strapped across Marigween’s chest, used his tiny arms to pull himself higher in the bag to expose his shoulders to the sun. There was something about the morning light that the baby enjoyed. The rounsey’s bouncy trot had given him a case of the hic cups, and Marigween found the sound more annoying than amusing. Everything annoyed her now, most particularly the fact that she was lost.
“Where are the five guards, Baines?”
She scanned the low, sun-browned hills that formed a meandering line on the western horizon. The five tallest peaks, nicknamed “the guards,” were nowhere in sight. If that half circle of small mountains was visible, it would point the way south to Glastonbury, where at least she could find a place indoors to sleep.
After leaving the cave, she had spent the first night in the stone forest. Too excited to sleep, she had listened to the owls all night. Baines had been remarkably quiet. The second, third, and fourth nights had been spent in the various woods that dappled the landscape of Shores. Only a pair of woolen blankets had stood between them and the creatures of the night. She had feared being dis covered by some nocturnal beast, but had been even more wary of the watchmen or hunters that might have roamed the wood. Saxon or Celt, both would have meant an end to her journey.
Now Shores was behind her. She was in open territory. The minor thrill of adventuring to Blytheheart was gone. She couldn’t find the guards. She might wander into a Saxon army or camp or something even worse. What would the barbarians do to her? To her baby? She clenched her reins, then snapped them, snapped away the horrors in her mind. Those images would only make her too frightened to continue. She was headed west; that was correct. The guards would probably appear sometime today. She shouldn’t worry herself; that was foolish.
She felt Baines continue to be jolted by the hiccups. As she grew calm, she allowed herself a smile. “You drunk little baby. Been lifting a tankard too many, have you? Wait until your father hears of this …”
Christopher. She mouthed his name. He should have been her husband by now, but the wretched war had always come in the way. She could not deny him his duty; he had to serve. But what kind of !ife could he really give her? Everything was still frozen because of the war, and on top of that, many more questions would have to be answered. How would they explain their son? What about Lord Woodward? He was bound to learn of her relationship with Christopher. What if the abbot condemned them? What if … ? More doltish fretting. She knew it was wrong to worry, but why was it so hard to stop?
Flies buzzed about her rounsey’s ears. She had given up trying to swat them away to ease the animal. The horse’s ears flinched the way Baines did under his hic cups. Her rounsey would have to comfort itself, as would she.
Marigween sighed deeply over her life. But at least now she took action; she did not rot in Merlin’s damp cave. The old man would never understand her. Yes, she had been spoiled, but she was not one to demand luxuries. Christopher had tried to make it comfortable for her, and relatively speaking it had been, but he could do nothing to busy her mind. She really didn’t need a four-poster bed with a thick mattress to sleep on; didn’t need a cushioned seat at a dais table to eat from; didn’t need a large tub to bathe in or sweet-smelling shifts to put on afterward. She could live without all of the physical amenities of being a noblewoman. But she could not live without the stimulation of her mind.
Merlin had been interesting to a point. But he had never spoken plainly or directly, and she had tired of riddling through conversations with him. And he had never taken her to the place where he had retired nightly. She had tried following him more than once, but he had somehow disappeared down one of the many tunnels that began in the rear of the main cave, and Marigween had always found herself back where she had started, having walked in a perpetual circle. Merlin had a special place back there, but he wouldn’t share it with her—probably because she was a woman. She despised his secrets.
Ah, she missed her chambermaids. She missed their conversations over the nature of men, the nature of the realm, the nature of what it is to be a woman, a noble woman. Ph
ilosophy had been as absent as Christopher from her life. Her mind was now shriveling into the workaday pea of peasant. Her Latin went unpracticed, save for a few notes to Uncle Robert and her good-bye note to Merlin. She had run out of things to read in Merlin’s cave. She had run out of ways to enlighten her self. That had been what she had missed most about living in a castle, about being a noblewoman: the light of knowl edge, of discovery. At least in Blytheheart she could practice her Latin with Uncle Robert, could read the many scrolls they had at the monastery, could converse with the many, many people that traded and lived at the port Blytheheart was alive, and its life might renew her spirits.
If there was one person who had kept Marigween going thus far, it had been Baines. Mothering took up a good part of her day, and she loved tending to little Baines, making him smile whenever she could. But she wanted mothering to be only a part of her life, not all of it. She loved Baines to the core of her being, but she would not be happy if she sacrificed everything for him. It was not being selfish. It was being human.
“I remember, Mother, I remember when I asked you if you liked taking care of me.”
It had been a cool, quiet night in the manor house. Marigween had crept into her mother’s bed. Father had been off fighting a war as usual, and she lay there star ing at the faint, moon-cast shadows on the splintery rafters.
Mother wrapped an ann around her and said, “When you are a good girl, I love taking care of you. When you are a bad girl, I love taking care of you. Do you know why”?
Marigween shook her head.
“Because you are my flesh, my blood, and there is nothing you can do that will ever stop me from loving you. My love has no bounds. You are a part of my life. The most important part.”
“How come I’m only a part of your life?”
Mother held her tighter. “Because I am me and you are you. And one day you will have a child. And that baby will be the most important part of your life. But you will still be you and that baby will still have its own life. One day I’ll have to say good-bye to you. And that will be more painful than anything. A large part of my life will go away. If you were all of my life, then when you grow up and leave, I would die.”
“I don’t want you to die. Don’t. Please don’t …”
Marigween’s cheeks and neck were cooled by the many tears that suddenly flowed over them. She barely noticed the horse under her. She was consumed by a new remembrance, the day Mother had died. Father wouldn’t let her go into the room, but the door was slightly ajar and she had caught a glimpse of Mother. She was shocked at how pale Mother looked. Her hair looked too red, her skin too white. Doctors and monks surrounded her. Near the window, Father cried.
“I was too young, Mother! I needed you. I need you now! Don’t you know Father’s gone and I’m alone?”
The tears of orphans. Marigween felt the world could be flooded with them. Hers alone might engulf Britain. She was terribly lonely. She hungered for a shoulder to rest her head on, someone to assure her everything would be all right.
Marigween looked ahead. The five guards remained hidden. She wished she could lift the horizon with the force of her teary stare, fold it back toward her, and view what lay on the other side.
5
“How goes it now?”
“My lord, some have breached the walls.” “And from you, sir”?
“I do not understand their tactics.” “None of us do.”
“Aye, they shifted all of their archers to one side!” “Indeed, they’re mad”!
“Your report?”
“They’ve dispersed from the south side.”
“Tell me, what of those who reached the wall-walk?” “They struck down a few.”
“Aye, they did, but too few made it.”
Christopher shifted his weight from one leg to the other, standing next to a pair of guards just inside the entrance to Arthur’s tent. At the back of the tent, the king was on his feet, his gaze trained on a recently drawn map of the castle in his hands. A group of battle lords created a curtain wall of armor and muscle between Christopher and his lord.
An audience is exactly what I do not need.
He could not deliver the news of Woodward’s death to Arthur with a group of battle lords standing around to pass swift judgment on him.
I should have told him last night. It wasn’t too late. A night’s rest has not made it any easier. Now my delay has made things even worse.
“What about you, Lancelot? What do you have to report from the castle of Rain?”
The blond knight spoke through clenched teeth. “Those foul, greasy boars still infest the fortress. I conveyed your message to Lord Nolan, and he asks that we solve our conflict here with all expediency so that we may lend him a few of our brothers-in-arms.”
“Ha, were it only that simple! But we will do t. Now. I’ve a new plan to undermine the walls.” Arthur set the parchment map down across a hastily assembled desk: a sheet of wood atop a pair of barrels. Then he looked up and studied the faces of the half dozen men before him. A question narrowed his brow. “We’re missing some one. Sir Woodward, I believe, yes? Has anyone seen him?”
As a few of the battle lords voiced their “no’s,” and one muttered that he had not seen him since last night, Christopher turned away from the group and began to slip past the two guards toward the tent flaps.
“Christopher?”
An epithet fired in Christophees mind, though he lacked the time and privacy to voice it. He stopped, turned around. “I see you are very busy, my lord. My business with you can wait.”
“Woodward knew about this council, did he not?” Arthur was insulted by Woodward’s lack of attendance and he made no effort to hide the fact in his voice.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Then where is he?” The king’s brow was now high in demand.
The other battle lords turned to face Christopher. He noticed them, their hard eyes, but none harder than the king’s. He wanted to dissolve into the wind, or, at the very least, slip out of the tent.
Christopher knew he looked guilty, knew there wasn’t much blood in his face, knew he exhibited all of the things he always did when nervous, all of the things most people did when under this kind of pressure. First,he put an end to his rocking back and forth. Then he moved on to his hands, let them hang limp. Next he opened his mouth slightly and breathed. He did not swallow; he just breathed. He could do nothing to calm the nerves in his eyelids, which twitched violently, but he doubted anyone in the tent would notice them. All right. Whether he looked a little more calm was arguable. He did feel a tinge less nervous.
One decision was final: he would only confess the truth to Arthur in private. He would have to delay things now. But in the face of Arthur’s question, he would have to lie. Would he be able to explain the lie away later? He remembered what Merlin had told him: to close his eyes and be honest. He remembered how Orvin had worried about the other battle lords; the old knight had said that one of them might find and finish him.
Moons ago Christopher had disobeyed Arthur’s orders and had rescued Doyle from the castle. For that he was no longer squire of the body, squire to King Arthur, squire of all of Britain. He was now squire to a dead man. Christopher had been dishonored when he had been relieved of his duty to the king. He had not upheld the codes of knight and squirehood. He had betrayed Arthur’s trust in him. He had started down a path filled with potholes of deception, holes he kept tripping over. It seemed he had been more a true servant before he ever became Arthur’s squire; once he was the king’s servant the lying began, and now, no longer Arthur’s squire, the lying piled up and threatened to block out the sky. He had a relationship with Marigween that was founded on lies and lust. That fact had caused him and Woodward to meet in the forest. That fact had caused Woodward to die. In one respect, Woodward’s death had been his fault. Woodward would never have challenged him if he had left Marigween alone. If Woodward were still alive, Christopher might be able to p
rove his worth by excellent service to the man and earn back his title. Christopher might be able to serve the king again. But not now. Perhaps not ever.
Is it really too late for me?
He wondered if he was caught too tightly in his web. Had he chanced his way too close to the gallows tree? He tried to see himself through Arthur’s eyes. Here was a misguided youth who let his heart rule his mind. So it was with young men. Age brought the balance of mind and heart. Christopher could see that far, but he could not imagine what Arthur would think of him after hear ing about Woodward’s death—compounded by the fact that he had lied about it.
The lies got easier the more he told them. The journey to evil, Orvin had once said, is as quick and easy as tracing it on a map; in a blink you’re there. It had been only a blink ago that Christopher had been thirteen and innocent and practicing with Baines in the eastern wood. Full of truth and honor and dreams galore, the world had been untamed and unexplored and ripe for Christopher of Shores.
In a blink, years had passed. A blink ago, Arthur had asked him where Woodward was. In a blink further, Christopher would take a fork in his life’s path; either stall the inevitable or let it all come out and damn the suspicions of the battle lords to hell.
Those eyes. Look at them. They’ll kill me. I know they will. Orvin was right.
“My lord, I do not know where Woodward is. I have not seen nor heard from him since yesterday.”
As he had by his courting of Marigween, Christopher knew he had once again abandoned what he held so high. Suddenly he knew he had made a grave error, knew it was the coward’s way out of the situation, knew it was not the course of a true servant. He had to stop the lies; only then would he be at peace. But just as suddenly it was too late to pull the words back.
The king frowned, twirled a finger in his beard. “It’s his castle we’re trying to win back. You’d think he would like to know about our progress and future efforts.”