Merlin Redux

by Dave Duncan

  A herald quietly informed me that the council would meet right after the private dinner, and I was expected at both. For “expected” read “commanded” of course. The frantic time had begun.

  I did get a few minutes with William Marshal the following day, catching him in the middle of his wedding preparations. He admitted that he had heard Bran of Tara’s name, but thought he was merely Lord John’s chief ostler. When I asked if he had ever noticed John traveling at unnatural speed, he thought for a while and then nodded. “Since you mention it, he has seemed oddly nimble at times.” I could hardly claim that lukewarm testimony as support for my suspicions, but it didn’t deny them either.

  Some of Eleanor’s old favorites were back, but many of the leading men of the realm were new to her, so one reason she was relying on me was that she had known me for so long. She also knew that I belonged to none of the baronial cliques. Since most of the nobility regarded me as an upstart heathen, they were secretly hoping that the new king would put me back in my place, cleaning out stables somewhere. I had met Lord Richard so rarely, that I had no idea of his opinion of me, my art, or my usefulness. Perhaps I was fortunate in that I was given little time to brood over my own future.

  During the next month, the queen engaged in a long series of progresses throughout southern England, and I was included in all of them. Yes, she had me sit in on the meetings and often asked for my opinion, but I confess that my main value to her was as a healer. Even I found formal receptions and endless days in the saddle exhausting, and she was half again as old as I was. Her back hurt. I knew an incantation that would soothe it and let her sleep. I was always careful that two or three of her ladies of the chamber were present, because I knew how easily rumors could be started and then used to destroy men.

  Lord John remained in France with his brother. People chuckled and whispered that the king liked to keep him under his eye.

  Eadig came on a brief visit, escorting Gwynda to enroll in her advanced studies. Lars eagerly appointed himself her guide and mentor, an offer she accepted graciously. As senior students were required to live in residence, Lovise and I had to start adjusting to a house quieter than it had been in twenty years.

  The next time Lars dropped in for what he termed “edible fodder,” I took a second look at him.

  “What’s wrong with your eye?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing isn’t black.”

  A sad tale emerged. Gwynda’s competent and trustworthy mentor had been preempted by a tall, dark young sage of Angevin descent, with a pedigree as long as a pikestaff and undoubted nefarious intentions. Lars had decided that eyelashes were the problem—his being very nearly as long as the interloper’s, but too blond to be visible. He had attempted to dye them with ink, which had made his eye sting. He had not assaulted his other eye.

  Which I said I thought was wise of him. Alas, my sympathy did no good. The Angevin pedigree triumphed over true worth, honest Anglo-Saxon descent, and undoubted musical talent. I never heard Lars mention Gwynda’s name again.

  On the 13th day of August, in the year of Our Lord 1189, Richard the Lionheart entered into his kingdom, disembarking at Portsmouth. His reception was tumultuous, having been organized by his mother. From there he went to Winchester, no doubt to secure the royal treasury, and then on to Westminster. Every property owner of consequence in the country had already sworn fealty to him at the hands of Eleanor, but now we all had to swear to him in person for our lands, and this took days.

  The main hall of the palace was packed with the great of the nation. He must have felt cooked in the formal state robes—which looked short on him—but he had the sense to wear only a simple coronet, not a weighty crown. With eyes of wintery blue, hair between red and gold, and his truly outstanding height, he was every inch a king. He began, of course with his mother and brother, then the nobility in order of rank, which meant that he ended with me, the most junior baron. When my name was called, everyone present must have heaved a sigh of relief that at least that part of the program was completed, but it wasn’t. I knelt, raised my hands for him to enclose in his—and he didn’t.

  I looked up in alarm, into those icy killer eyes. Since he was standing and I was kneeling they were a long way up, which made them no less scary.

  “Your Latin is much improved of late, Enchanter General.”

  The nearer onlookers must have been puzzled, but I knew exactly what he meant. When he was seven years old, and an unwilling student, his mother had instructed me to cast his horoscope, but she had also made it plain that I was to make the text very un-plain, so I had written it in the most convoluted prose I could contrive. What boy could resist reading about his own future? Although renowned as a warrior, the adult Richard was also admired as a classical scholar, and I might claim some small part—or bear some blame—in having encouraged his studies.

  “I am greatly honored that Your Grace remembers my humble work.”

  “I will never forget your Satanic pluperfect passive subjunctives.”

  I assumed he was joking. “Your honored mother did stress the importance of ablative absolutes, Lord King.”

  “Oh, if I thought you’d dreamed up all that gerundive shit by yourself, you’d be in the Tower by now.” He had not smiled once during this exchange, and worse followed. “I understand that you informed my mother of my accession some days before my courier arrived in Winchester.”

  Now I knew what he thought of my art. I wondered if I might be heading to the Tower. Suddenly my mouth was so dry I could barely speak. “This is true, Lord King.”

  “Who told you the news?”

  “No one told me, Lord King. Using those self-same powers that Merlin used to prophesy for Arthur, I saw your father on his bier.” Since Eadig had told me that Myrddin was Merlin, I could say that with a clear conscience, and my mention of Arthur stopped Richard in his tracks. Anything his great predecessor had done must be permissible for him.

  He pursed his lips, but nodded grudgingly, then clasped my hands in his much larger ones, I pledged my loyalty, and he accepted it. Then I could rise and bow myself away, out of immediate danger. I had been publicly scorned, but it seemed that I was going to remain in royal favor, if only just. I learned the price later.

  If we had all considered Eleanor a whirlwind, we found her son to be a tempest. He had already settled his French dominions, and he now proceeded to hammer England into shape also. In addition to some French properties that he had given his brother, he added six English counties, making Lord John the second wealthiest man in the country, after himself. He kept the castles in his own hands, though—he loved his little sibling, but he did not trust him. Before the end of the month, he had John safely married off to Isabella of Gloucester, to whom he had been betrothed for some thirteen years. It was typical of King Henry that he would hold a man’s loyalty by promising him some rich heiress as a wife, and then keep him unmarried for an age, while continuing to siphon the girl’s income into the royal treasury. Now that John had an undeniable, if unofficial, prospect of inheriting the English throne, he must be safely married, before foreign rulers started dangling delectable daughters in front of his eyes.

  Richard dealt with his half-brother, Geoffrey the Bastard, by promoting him to archbishop of York and insisting that he enter holy orders, which disbarred him from ever making a bid for the throne. He had already positioned William Marshal in Striguil, on the Welsh border, to keep the Welsh barbarians in line. He bought off the Scottish king, William the Lion, by selling him a formal admission that Scotland was a truly independent country. It was a masterful demonstration of onshore piracy.

  On September 3rd came the coronation, and London had never seen anything like it. The whole city was garlanded. To the great annoyance of Lovise and about 999 other ladies in the realm, wives were not admitted to either the ceremony in the cathedral or the incredible banquet that followed. Queen Eleanor was the only woman present. This was not her doing, or Richard’s—i
t was ancient tradition.

  The food was plentiful, but cold, the conversation guarded.

  Lovise and I would have been more than happy to head straight home to Oxford after that, but Queen Eleanor was organizing musical soirees, perhaps in the hope of illuminating this dark northern wilderness with some of the gaiety and zest of her native Aquitaine, and we had received an invitation to one about three days later.

  It was a very grand affair, with the cream of the kingdom packed into the reception hall of Westminster Palace like fish in a barrel. Queen Eleanor was there, but one who should have been was not—Aalis of France, King Philip’s half-sister. Richard had been betrothed to her for over twenty years, and her absence was scandalous but unmentionable.

  Entertainment was provided by two of Richard’s favorite trouvères: Gace Brulé and Blondel de Nesle. England had little experience of the songs of Aquitaine and other southern lands, so the audience’s cheers and applause were probably more designed to please the king and his mother than to show appreciation of an art so unfamiliar.

  And then, to my horror, Richard stood up and looked over the hall until his gaze settled on me like a hard frost.

  “Baron Durwin of Pipewell! You are reputed to sing a fine tune. Come forward and let us hear some of England’s songs. Blondel, lend him your gittern.”

  Being commanded without any warning to follow two of Christendom’s most renowned performers, felt bitterly unfair. Lovise told me later that the queen frowned and seemed about to intervene, but then changed her mind and didn’t. I was too furious to notice what anyone else thought, although I did hear some tittering. I slowly worked my way through the throng to the throne, leaving my cane behind to emphasize my limp and give me a little extra time to review what I might be going to sing. I accepted the gittern, and quickly checked the tuning. It was already perfect, so I could not steal any extra time to tune it while I gathered my thoughts. Then I bowed to the king and began.

  I chose a love song that I had sung to Lovise on the evening we were betrothed—and many a time since. It seemed to me to go well, but the king’s applause at the end was brief and lackluster, so everyone else’s was too. Again, Richard had demonstrated in public that he disapproved of enchanters, and especially a baronial Saxon enchanter. My pride was not totally destroyed, though. As I returned the gittern to Blondel, he said quietly, “A most moving performance! Will you teach me that ballad, if it please you, Lord Durwin?”

  His accent was hard for me to make out—he was from Picardy, north of Paris, but his courtesy was worth more to me than hours of cheering from the crowd.

  “Me teach you, sir? I had sooner teach my horse to eat hay.”

  Thus are friendships born.

  Then, as if just to show me up again, Richard called upon Sir Conon de Béthune, another famed troubadour, and he sang his celebrated lament over the loss of Jerusalem.

  At last Lovise and I were free to go back to Oxford to try to restore order to our lives. I felt supremely certain that I need fear no more summonses to attend meetings of the privy council. I should have been careful what I wished for. The following morning, when Lovise returned from making her calls, she was informed that I wanted to see her the moment she came in. She found me in my workroom, scribbling furiously, and in a truly toxic mood.

  She sat down on the edge of the couch and regarded me quizzically. “Now what? You frightened Ælfweard to death.” Ælfweard was our doorman.

  “The king has called a meeting of the great council!”

  “I don’t see how that is the Ælfweard’s fault.”

  Whether it was a terrified child or a rambunctious horse or a vagrant husband, Lovise’s tone always had a magically calming effect. I stood my quill in the inkpot and turned to face her.

  “Probably not. I will apologize to him and tip him.”

  “And besides, what is unexpected? A new king always summons the great council as soon as he is crowned. He needs it to vote him taxes.”

  The privy council comprises whosoever the king chooses. The great council is a vastly larger affair, made up of all the bishops and archbishops and barons and earls in the kingdom, plus a few major abbots. Would-be wits call it un parlement, meaning a talking place.

  “He is summoning it to meet in Pipewell Abbey.”

  Lovise said, “Oh!” and at once understood my rage. Pipewell Abbey, where I had learned my letters and thus begun my climb to scholarship, might be physically capable of holding the great council itself, but every lord and bishop attending would bring scores of servants, other supporters, and horses. They would overrun the surrounding countryside like a Hunnish horde, and our estate of Pipewell Manor was the closest habitation of any size. It would be the first to suffer.

  “I was in the process of writing to Harald to warn him,” I added.

  “Why ever would the king locate such a huge gathering in such a mouse hole of a location?”

  “Because our dear friend Ranulf de Glanville told him that Pipewell is in the very center of England.”

  Lovise’s tone changed ominously. “Durwin! How do you know this?”

  I said, “I overheard them.”

  I liked to think that I had never told my wife a falsehood, but that time I was very close to doing so, because I had not overheard the king and the former justiciar while we were in Westminster. I had overheard them about ten minutes previously, while I was alone in my workroom. I had looked around in alarm, finding that I was completely alone. The voices had been unmistakable, and that was all I heard.

  Lovise was suspicious. “You’ve been meddling with the Myrddin Wyllt incantation again! You had a vision?”

  “I have not. I haven’t glanced at that accursed thing in weeks.” Like her, though, I was beginning to wonder if it might be meddling with me. Anxious to escape such a worrisome subject, I said, “I must finish this warning and send it off to Harald.”

  “What can he do? The whole place will be wasted. You’d need a private army to keep the scavengers out.” But then, suddenly, my dear wife smiled like the sun breaking through storm clouds. “Baron Weldon will be going, won’t he? There’s your private army! Invite the Legiers to stay with us during the great council!”

  I knew at once that she had found the solution, but what I said was, “Won’t the cure be worse than the disease?”

  William Legier, Baron Weldon, requires an explanatory note, although to do justice to his eccentricities would need a great tome. He is two or three years younger than I, and we met when he was a squire in Helmdon College—a totally unruly, unwilling, rebellious, disruptive, and recalcitrant student. His ambition was to enroll in warrior training, but his equally stubborn father had decreed that he was to be an enchanter.

  To William, I was a crippled Saxon serf with ideas above my station, and he would happily have smashed me to pieces with his fists and boots, except that I would not dare defend myself against a Norman, so it could not be a fair fight. The Fates, however, threw us together and he had to help me in my hunt for a murderer in Barton Castle. He then revealed all sorts of unexpected abilities—in Latin, penmanship, chanting, and playing the role of faithful assistant, although he only did that when someone else was watching. By the end of our quest, mutual respect had developed into friendship, and he seemed reconciled to taking up serious studies at Helmdon. I am certain that he would have made an outstanding sage. Alas, he was unexpectedly reunited with his father, and went off to help him instead.

  And the Fates continued to favor him. Although he was the fourth son, in short order he inherited his father’s baronetcy of Weldon, wooed and won the very beautiful Millisende of Huntingdon, whose dowry made him a rich man. He distinguished himself at jousting and fought for King Henry, both during the royal sons’ revolt and later against the Welsh. Millisende bore him seven sons in ten years. And just to prove that he recognized no rules or traditions, he named them all after strangers instead of relatives, and in alphabetical order. How he ever talked his priest into doing
this I cannot imagine. Every son took after his father, so a Legier family gathering was a permanent civil war, which William did nothing to discourage.

  I wrote to William, and discarded my letter to Harald. Instead, Lovise and I mounted up and rode off to Pipewell Manor to warn him and help him prepare for the invasion.

  The first Legier to arrive, only a day after we did, was Son Number One, Sir Absolon Legier, accompanied by Number Four, Squire Dominique. Absolon was his father in excelsis— taller, wiry, and sporting a mustache that implied that he was more arrogant than King Richard, were that humanly possible. In truth, he was a thoroughly likeable young man. He wore the cross of a crusader, which was to carry a lot of weight over the next few days. Squire Dominique was going to be his knight’s exact double in five or six years.

  William and Millisende arrived the next day, herding the rest of their private army. Millisende and Lovise fell into each other’s arms as always. The years had thickened William, giving him the bull chest and shoulders of a warrior and a head to match. He greeted me with an embrace that made my ribs creak, lifting me off the ground as he always did. Nor could he quite hide his contempt as he was welcomed by Harald, for our eldest was a farmer born, with absolutely no martial inclinations.

  “So it’s to be a siege is it?” William declared, surveying the landscape. “How much of this scenery do you own, anyway?”

  “Twelve-and-a bit hides.”

  “You’re going to lose every blade of grass on it. You’d better start by buying up enough hay to keep your livestock over the winter, because the horde will strip every field within a day’s ride of the abbey. Withdraw into the house and outbuildings. . . . And we’ll have to guard everything on four legs, or they’ll get eaten too. Pity you don’t have a small castle here, Durwin.”

  I could not argue with that. Pipewell Manor was a humble seat for a baron, although it suited us. Even imagining a future where all four of our children gathered with children of their own, it might suffice. A dozen Legiers and their retainers it could manage, but only just. Servants would be sleeping on the floor, so we would not be lying when we turned away would-be boarders with the claim that we had no room.