Squire's Honor

by Peter Telep

  “Our ride is already docked at the wharf,” Orvin informed them in one of the few precious moments when his mouth wasn’t stuffed with food.

  “Are you referring to the Pict cog?” Merlin asked. “Exactly,” Orvin confirmed.

  “Yes,” Doyle said, investing in the idea. “We make a deal with the captain of that ship. I’m sure we can find someone who speaks both Pict and Celt.”

  “I know someone who does,” a portly, large-breasted woman said, arriving in the doorway like a gale.

  She was, to Christopher’s accounting, a female Montague, dressed in a rather vulgar multicolored fab­ric, the likes of which he had never seen before. Every one of her fingers was weighted down by a gaudy, gem­ stone ring. She flaunted an equally showy headband that had a blue jewel in its center. This third eye made Christopher feel uncomfortable with her arrival, if only for the reason that it woke memories of Mallory, that crazed knight whom he had slain. Mallory had worn a headband similar to this woman’s.

  Montague rose and circled around the table, moving as if drawn by some powerful force to the woman. He took her hand and kissed it. “Morna. You look delicious this afternoon.” As she blushed, he turned to the table. “This is a friend of mine. Morna. Meet Christopher, Doyle, and Brenna. And over there, Sir Orvin. And over here is—”

  “Merlin the magician,” Morna finished. “An honor.” “More advisor than sorcerer,” Merlin said with a mild smile. “It’s not my magic—but the land’s.”

  Christopher looked to Orvin, knowing there’d be some reaction on his mentor’s face. Surprisingly, Orvin just sat and stared.

  “Morna, you were saying you know someone who could interpret for us?” Doyle asked.

  “Come, sit down,” Montague said, leading his friend by the hand to an empty chair beside his.

  Once seated, Morna took up Doyle’s question. “Ah, yes, I know someone who speaks the Pict language. In fact, she works for me.” And then with an odd smile, she added, “Her name is Jennifer.”

  Doyle adjusted himself in his seat and averted his gaze. “That’s good. We’ll … need her.” He suddenly did not sound very enthusiastic about the news.

  Christopher leaned over to his friend. “What’s wrong”?

  “I’ll tell you another time,” he answered softly.

  “It seems you’ll be doing a lot of talking later,” Christopher noted.

  Merlin cleared his throat. “Orvin. After we’re finished here, I suggest you, Christopher, and Jennifer go down to the cog and speak to the captain. We’ve no time to waste.” The druid brushed a few crumbs out of his beard, then raised his brow in wait for a reply.

  Orvin nodded his assent.

  Something was definitely wrong. Orvin ought to be fighting with Merlin over the druid’s idea, even if it was a good one. Did Orvin’s compliance have something to do with what Christopher had felt and seen in the sky above the wharf? He was going to talk to Orvin about that anyway, but the old knight’s new attitude regarding the druid intrigued him all the more.

  With the food and drink filling his stomach, and now a new hope lifting his spirits, Christopher stood. “I’m ready to leave now,” he said, looking at his mentor.

  “All right,” Orvin said.

  “I’ll meet you down there,” Doyle chipped in behind him. Christopher had no objection to Doyle’s volunteer­ ing to come along, though it seemed Montague would have a lot to say about it.

  “One more grave matter,” Merlin began, his tone sounding as if he wanted to slow everyone down, “there’s a child we have to find.”

  “Baines might be on the cog,” Christopher guessed.

  Merlin shook his head negatively. “Marigween was captured by an impressment gang. They would not have taken your son with them.”

  “That’s right,” Doyle said. “Unless it was all somehow planned. But Seaver looked surprised to see us.”

  “Yes,” Christopher agreed. “He didn’t know about my son until I—until I told him.”

  “It is my belief that when Marigween was taken, your son was abandoned. It is of course my fervent hope that he is still alive. And if he is, he may very well be here in Blytheheart.”

  “So what do we do?” Christopher said with sudden urgency. “Merlin, will you help the monks search for him?” Merlin shook his head, no. “They will not want my help. But I’ll search myself. I think it wise, however, that I first pay a visit to the Marshal’s prison and question the two men whom Brenna shot.”

  “They wouldn’t tell us anything back on the wharf,” Brenna reminded. “What makes you think they’ll talk now?”

  “Perhaps they know nothing about Christopher’s son. But I believe they will know the Saxon cog’s next port of call.”

  Murmurs of agreement floated around the table.

  “I’ll inform Robert and the other monks of what has happened, and tell them to continue searching for the child,” Orvin said, then glanced to Merlin. “And it would be helpful to get word of this back to Arthur. Your absence has surely been noted by now.”

  Christopher thought about that. Yes, if Arthur could be informed of what was happening here, it might make his former squire appear a notch less like a murderer on the run. The fact that he was in the company of Merlin and Orvin helped matters in more ways than one.

  Merlin looked directly at Christopher, as if reading his fear. “I believe that by now the king is as upset with me as he is with you,” the druid said. “But in my note I will defend your desertion as best I can. I will, however, have to tell him what you told me about Woodward.”

  How did the druid know? How could he possibly know that Christopher had yet to tell Arthur about Woodward’s murder? Both he and Orvin had left the night Christopher was supposed to have confessed. Then he’d waited until morning, and then he still hadn’t been able to do it because of the presence of Arthur’s battle lords.

  “I guessed right,” Merlin said with a smile partially hidden by his beard. “Your voice revealed you that eve, Christopher. I knew you would delay in telling the king. And now your face informs me you’ve yet to do so.”

  Christopher wished his guesses were as accurate as the druid’s. His future would look immeasurably brighter. “All right, Merlin. Tell the king. I should have done so myself. What little honor I had left, I lost back there. I should not have delayed.”

  Merlin lowered his brow, then stroked his beard. Then he said, “Honor, young man, is within the heart. And if it is truly there, it can never be lost, only hidden, only forgotten.”

  And with that, everyone rose. The serving wenches began to clear the table. Brenna said she was going to the stable to check on her rounsey. Doyle and Montague were going to their room for a private discussion, after which Doyle would meet them at the Pict cog. Moma told Christopher she’d have Jennifer meet them, then she took Merlin by the arm and told the druid she had a friend who could get him a carrier pigeon for the note to Arthur. It seemed she had a lot of friends in Blytheheart. And that probably meant she had some power. For a moment, he wondered what her connection was with Montague, then shrugged off the thought as he left the table with Orvin. They strode out of the inn into the late afternoon sunlight.

  “I guess we can wait out here for Jennifer,” Christopher said as he leaned against the side panel of the merchant’s cart.

  Orvin looked around, then pouted. “Nowhere to sit, young saint. And I’m not going to plop on this dirt.”

  As depressing as the circumstances were, Christopher knew he would feel far worse if not sur­rounded by his friends. He imagined what it would be like to stand here alone, waiting for someone named Jennifer to come down and meet him. His fate would rest in a stranger’s hands. That might be the case now, but at least he wasn’t alone. Though Orvin grimaced and complained, the old one’s presence comforted him.

  And Orvin’s misery loved company as much as Christopher’s.

  “I want to go back inside,” the old knight pleaded. “Stay out here a while longer.”<
br />
  “But it’s too hot.”

  “She’ll be down. And since we have a moment, I want to talk to you.” Christopher lifted his gaze to the sky. After a long, thoughtful moment, he said, “I saw some­ thing.”

  Orvin was suddenly next to him, and he grabbed him sharply by the shoulders. “You did? You did?”

  Christopher’s gaze was shaken down to the smiling old man. It was always hard to look at Orvin’s teeth; they appeared to be made of some yellow-colored wood that had been eaten away by insects. “When I was in the water, I looked up to the sky and I …”

  He closed his eyes as he continued, slipping easily into the memory. But then it wasn’t a memory; it was happening to him once again. He was back, floating in the waves, and he felt exactly as he had earlier in the day. No recollection had ever been this real. His mind had somehow driven the sun back to the east.

  The azure wash loomed down and scooped him up into its presence.

  He floated in blue waves, waves made of air. There were no clouds, no birds, just him and all of the blue. He wondered what was happening and at once decided he was so hungry and tired that he was probably about to slip into a black sleep. This wasn’t what would be; it was just a prank of his mind.

  But then it was as if someone had read that thought, and the airscape abruptly changed, bursting into white­ hot flames. He screamed and looked down at his body, which was engulfed in fire —but he felt no heat, no pain. Strangely, he was a part of this new place, this place made of red and yellow and orange, and if he chose to leave, he could, but it somehow felt reassuring to be here.

  What’s happening to me? What am I supposed to see?

  In a blink the flames were sucked away into a black abyss. Now he floated through a starless night.

  Show me! He ordered the black. Show me what will be! A single star appeared, and then its white light blos­somed and its rays began to rotate. Soon the star took up half of all the black, and as it spun, it fired off rain­ bow-colored lightning bolts of energy. One came directly for Christopher. He had no time to react.

  It struck his eyes.

  He was in a small room that reeked of mildew and something dead, and his gaze was locked on a bed. Someone lay under the woolen covers. He could not lift his head to see who was in the bed or view any other part of the room. He heard someone crying. A woman. And then a baby added its tiny voice to her lamenting. Outside, beyond the room, he could hear people shout­ ing. And then all sound was replaced by the beating of his own heart.

  A heartbeat. Another.

  The image of the bed was devoured by the front yard of the inn.

  “Young saint! Are you all right?”

  Christopher turned his head, saw Orvin staring at him intently. “I wanted”-he realized he was out of breath

  -“I wanted to tell you what I had seen back there, but I just saw something now.” He swallowed, then put a hand to his chest, feeling like his ribs weren’t enough to contain his pounding heart.

  Once he grew calm, he told Orvin all that he had seen, then asked, “Was it really the sky”?

  Orvin pressed his lips firmly together, staring at nothing in particular. “I have never experienced any-thing like that. It might have been the sky. But I—I’m not … I cannot be sure.”

  If Orvin didn’t know what had happened to him, then it probably wasn’t the sky and was simply his imagination lording over his weakened senses. But how would· that account for the feeling? “Orvin, when I was in that room and heard that crying, I somehow knew that the person lying in the bed was dead. Even if I hadn’t heard the crying or seen the body. Even if I closed my eyes and hadn’t seen anything. I know that person was dead.”

  “Who do you think it was,” Orvin asked. Christopher paused. How could he—

  “You do not think … Ha! I don’t believe God’s that merciful, young saint,” Orvin said, apparently no longer taking him seriously. “I fear he’ll keep me in this plague we call Britain for a few more moons.”

  “I’m not jesting, Sir Orvin.”

  “Nor am I, squire,” Orvin said, his tone dropping to suggest that he controlled the conversation.

  “I know no one likes to discuss their own death—” “’What makes you so sure it was me in that bed?” Orvin said, cutting off Christopher’s intended reassurance.

  He thought about the question, and then wasn’t sure how to put his answer into words. He simply said, “I felt it.”

  Orvin chuckled.

  “No, it’s true!” Christopher cried over the old man’s cackling.

  Orvin collected himself. “Oh, young saint. We’re all going to die. The real question is when. What did your vision show you about that?”

  Christopher searched his memory. Nowhere had there been an indication of time.

  “And,” Orvin continued, “how do you know you were glimpsing the future and not the past”?

  Christopher had been asking what would be; that was the only reason he believed what he’d seen was the future. Orvin was right. He could have been see­ ing the past. But was it his past? He had no recollec­tion of ever standing over someone’s deathbed. Why would the sky show him someone else’s past? It seemed more likely the sky would show him his future.

  “Does the sky play by any set of laws or rules?” he asked Orvin.

  The old knight tucked a long lock of stray hair behind his ear. “Laws of nature, laws of men. But then—”

  “What I mean is, does it have to be my past or myfuture I see?” Christopher interrupted.

  The old man let the notion sink in, and as it did, his eyelids edged open a bit, and his gaze flinted with some­ thing. “I’ve always seen things from my perspective. Must it always be that way? Do you believe you saw the past or future from someone else’s point of view?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Now that is interesting,” Orvin said. The idea ignited his banquet table expression, the one he always wore when he was about to eat. But then his hand went to the small of his back, as if someone had just thrust an anlace into his spine. “Where is this Jennifer?” he asked angrily. “Indeed, I will die out here—and before my time.”

  “Not out here,” Christopher corrected, thinking of his vision. Yes; he still felt Orvin’s death. But perhaps the image was not connected to the feeling.

  At least he was sure about one thing: the uncertainty and confusion were simply his luck. He’d sought the future in the sky, and he’d finally received a reply, but one so perplexing that the blue heavens might as well have remained silent.

  If, in fact, they had spoken to him at all.

  3

  Doyle tugged off his glove and let it drop onto the riding bag at the foot of his bed. “What do you want me to say? You want me to tell my friend I’ve more important business to attend to, is that it?” He swung around to face Montague.

  The fat man sat at the window chair and stared down at the pedestrians milling about Bove Street. “We have to strike now while the abbot is ripe.”

  Doyle’s incredulity led him a step closer to the man. “You don’t think he knows about our incident on the wharf? You don’t think he learned names? He’ll proba­bly want us out of Blytheheart anyway.”

  “He knows about it, laddie. But he has not learned names. At least not yet.” Montague slipped a thumb into one of his nostrils, then used his forefinger to clamp the bridge of his nose.

  “Quit that,” Doyle said. “And how do you know what the abbot knows?”

  “You’re forgetting about Moma. She also deals with the abbot’s chancellor.” Montague removed his thumb from his nose, studied the findings on the finger then flicked them out through the open window.

  “That still doesn’t matter,” Doyle said. He took a seat on the comer of his bed nearest Montague, settled his forearms on his hips, and gazed absently at the planks of the floor. “Christopher saved my life. He’s my blood brother. There’s no question about me helping him. But even if he was just an acquaintance I’d help him.�
��

  “Why?” Montague asked quietly.

  Doyle rose from the bed, came up behind Montague, and thrust his three-fingered hand over the fat man’s shoulder and let it hover inches from the brigand’s face. Startled, Montague drew back as Doyle said, “You wanted to know about this. Now I’ll tell you.” He pulled his arm away and turned from Montague, walked toward the door and then spun on his heel to face the man once again.

  He lapsed into the story of how he had killed Leslie and Innis, how afterward he’d felt so guilty that he had thrown himself to the Saxons in the hope that they would kill him. He told Montague how Seaver had butchered off his fingers so that he’d never be able to fire a longbow again. He spoke faster as he went on to describe how Christopher had rescued him from the cas­tle, and was probably partly responsible for him not being hanged from a gallows tree for murder. Doyle owed his life to Christopher, but he also owed it to him­ self to prevent Seaver from maiming anyone else.

  In short, it was a convincing and emotional story, one which left Montague remarkably speechless for many moments afterward. Finally, the plump man hoisted him­ self up from the window chair, and, scratching at his sweaty temple, he turned and said, “I’m not happy about delaying our meeting with the abbot, laddie. But I see your point. I’ll tell Moma we’re going to be busy for a while.”

  Doyle was hit head-on by the fat man’s last comment. “You’re coming?”

  “I owe a little to your squire friend myself,” he said, then lumbered past Doyle toward the door.

  “What do you mean?”

  Montague slid the door latch aside and opened the door. He paused, looked over his shoulder, and the frus­tration was all but gone from his face. “You think about it, laddie.”

  As he turned to go, Jennifer moved suddenly into the doorway. She and Montague exchanged a brief look as he skirted around her and left. After closing the door, she stepped almost silently into the room, light and lithe and graceful.