by Dave Duncan
William hesitated, but then decided not to balk this time. He returned with four sheets, tablets, an ink bottle, pen box, and a sand bottle. “Is there aught else that my lord requires?”
“Yes. Are you going to continue posing as a cretinous shithead, or could you possibly manage to be helpful for a little while?”
William swelled as if about to charge, fists clenching. “Depends what you want, peasant.”
“What I need. Put your ass on that stool. I need someone to chant the responses to the incantation Ubi malum. If you are going to keep pretending that you can’t read and write, then I’ll have to ask the marshal if the count has a secretary or someone else who can help me.”
William’s face had gone back to its idiot mode. “You’re the adept, Saxon. I’m just a squire.”
“One of those spoiled brats who is too stupid to learn to be a priest or a sage, but is scared to follow in his father’s footsteps?”
The color drained out of his face and for a frightening moment I thought I had gone too far.
“Take that back or I will make you eat your teeth.”
“I’ll take it back when you admit that you’re a fraud. You pretend to be stupid to provoke the sages at Helmdon, but you’re not, and they know it. If you were as obtuse as you act they wouldn’t bother with you. That’s a stupid game, but this isn’t a game, Squire. We have a killer to catch and hang before he kills anyone else. Can you read this?”
William took one look at the page and said, “No.” But there was a hint of disappointment in his tone.
“It’s not easy, I admit. So I will have to read out the responses and you will have to write them. You can read your own writing, I hope?”
“In French, yes.”
“And you have no idea what Ubi malum means?”
“‘Where is the evil?’”
Astonished, I said, “Right! Bad thing. Not bad person, unfortunately, but if we can perform it correctly, this chant should smoke out our villain, or at least put us on his tracks. We’ll practice it over and over until we know we can sing it perfectly, then you will buckle on your sword, I’ll bring my staff, and we’ll go and denounce him.”
After a fateful moment when success hung in the balance, something overcame the boy’s obstinate contempt for learning—the attraction of participating in meaningful magic, or a vision of him actually getting to use his sword, or just shame at being inferior to a Saxon. He nodded. “I’ll try a line or two, but one day you’ll kneel at my feet and eat dirt until I tell you to stop.” He sat down and opened the ink bottle.
Feeling as if I’d just broken a horse, I turned to the beginning of the spell. “It begins with a long preamble by First Voice, that’s me, asking where the evil lurks, the darkness, deadly sin, and so on. I call on all spirits and powers of light to aid me. Then you answer for the spirits.”
William looked skeptical, but he listened to the first few words of the response, screwed up his face in concentration, and laboriously spelled them out, letter by letter. Even seeing upside down across the table, I could tell that his penmanship was superb, every letter laboriously crafted in Carolingian miniscule. His spelling wouldn’t matter, because only he had to be able to read it.
After a painful few minutes, we reached the end of the first response. Now to the next step, which I fully expected to be much harder.
“Tell me what it means, because you can’t just make noises like a trained jackdaw. You must understand, too.”
“It’s a recipe for beef soup.”
I said nothing.
William closed the ink bottle, wiped his pen, and shouted, “I don’t know!” He folded his arms and glared murder.
“Then I’ll have to teach you, won’t I? And you will have to learn. This is going to take all day, Squire, and perhaps all day tomorrow. We’ll get tired and our butts will grow sore with sitting; our eyes will ache, and we’ll growl and snap at each other, but it must be done. Will you go back to Helmdon and say that Rolf was murdered, isn’t that a shame, but you didn’t even try to catch his killer? This is worth the effort! I know I’m tough enough to do it. Are you?”
There was only one way an adolescent Norman could answer a challenge from a Saxon cripple. “I’m tough enough to tear your slimy tongue out.”
“I’d turn you into a toad if someone hadn’t beaten me to it. You won’t help—is that what you mean?”
“No. I mean I’ll do what you want and then I will kick you into a jelly and break every bone in your filthy body. Do you agree to that, you insolent peasant pig?”
“I’ll agree to let you try, any time after I’ve exposed the blackguard who killed Sage Rolf. Now deliver. This incantation is mainly Church Latin with a couple of lapses into French Latin. First response . . . the verb comes at the end, of course . . . Omnes spiritus et potentiae summonitionem meum audire . . .”
My reluctant apprentice scowled mightily. “‘All spirits and powers hear my summons.’”
I gaped at him for a moment and then laughed aloud with equal parts astonishment and relief. “Where in Hell did you—”
“In Hell!” he snapped.” What’s next?”
We went on to the second response. Again he wrote it out in a hand no monkish scrivener could have bettered and this time he rattled off the translation without hesitation.
“That’s better than I could do,” I admitted, hoping that honey might work better than vinegar.
“I can do anything in the world better than you can, you glorified serf.”
“You promised to prove it.”
“Including fighting. Next?”
At that point we were interrupted by a tentative tap on the door. William jumped up and strode over to it.
“Enter. No, it’s quite safe if I say so. Come in, John.”
The page entered, eyes flickering around like moths as he assessed this dangerous, secret place.
“I was sent to tell the adept that dinner will be ready when the noon bell sounds and he may eat at the knights’ table, and, um, you at the squires’ table, and I am to show you where to wash your hands.”
William said, “Food at last.”
I reached down for my staff. “Thanks, John. Welcome news. The knights’ table is the first one below the high table, I assume?”
chapter 17
wacian the bottler was an imposing man of ample girth, with a spare chin, a ring of keys on his belt, and a Medusa stare that could have frozen the French king’s army. He deeply regretted that he was unable to assist the learned adept at the moment, as he had a dinner to supervise. He would certainly wait upon the adept at the earliest possible moment thereafter. His manner suggested that around Easter next might be convenient.
With that, I had to be content. I had come to the hall as fast as I could, so I could choose a place at the extreme end of the table. There, I could lay my staff along the base of the wall, where it would be within my reach but not trip anyone. The high table grandees sat on stools, lesser folk on benches—which probably became beds by night.
William had stopped on the way to watch some squires at weapons training, pointing out that he could take his cue from them, because they would not likely be the last to arrive at the trough. I suspected that he was worried about meeting a peer group doing a real man’s job. If he were mocked, he would surely feel he had to prove himself in a fight. Then I might have to find another assistant.
Order of arrival in the hall had nothing to do with the order of being served, of course, for that would be determined by rank. Everyone had to sit at their assigned table, and the hall began to fill up in groups and patches. I expected to be given a wide berth by the knights themselves, but there I was mistaken. The first to arrive plumped himself down on the bench beside me. He was not much older than me, but very much larger and also sweatier, as if he, too, had just come from weapons training, possibly wrestling stallions.
“Kendryck of Stane, Adept,” he announced. He had a friendly, weather-beaten face and fla
xen Saxon hair.
“Honored, Sir Kendryck. Durwin of Pipewell.”
“Lucien of Leicester,” announced a second knight, settling opposite. He was older, swarthy, and certainly Norman. His expression was less friendly, but perhaps more genuine.
“So!” Kendryck boomed. “Was Sage Archibald murdered?”
“I do not know yet whether he was or not. But I am certain that Sage Rolf was.”
The knights exchanged glances.
“Your art tells you this?” Lucien asked.
“It does.”
Questions began flying, too fast to finish answering before more arrived:
“One sudden death is murder but the other is not?”
“I don’t know, but I intend—”
“How can you be so sure of one and not the other?”
“I’ve just started my—”
“How did Rolf get here so fast after the first death?”
“That’s a secret of—”
Other knights were arriving, being brought up to date, and joining in the interrogation.
“How did you bypass the curse on the sanctum door?”
“Another secret—”
“When are you going to accuse the killer?”
“When I have—”
“Aren’t you frightened he will strike at you next?”
“Sirs! Sirs!” I held up both hands. “Your Honors . . . first, yes, I am aware that the villain may seek to treat me as he did the two sages, but I am intent on doing my duty, just as you always are. When I know who committed these crimes, I will report to Sir Hugh first, or to the count himself. And I would be most grateful if you noble knights could help me in a small way.”
“How is that?” asked Sir Lucien, and the rest fell silent to listen.
“I am attended by an apprentice, William Legier. I need his help if I am to unmask the murderer. He is a proud lad with many fine qualities, but you have many squires of about his age here, and I worry that some of them may question his manhood because he is not in knight’s training. That is not by his own wish, I know. He desperately wants to be, and I fear that his father, an honored knight, has forbidden it, for reasons that the boy will not discuss. I also know that his nature is to accept any challenge, any challenge at all from anybody. He will not be able to aid me if they damage him.”
“Damage him?” Kendryck said. “Those young devils will grind him to meal. We’ll pass the word, right, hearties?”
“Tell them the adept will turn them into sheep.”
“Be an improvement. They’re all horny as goats already.”
Other voices agreed.
“But the kid will be fair game afterward?” asked another knight. “We’ll have to promise them that. I’ll tell them.” He rose and went to the next table, where William was already pinned within a crowd of his peers. Beyond them, the third table was filling up with stablemen and a man wearing a farrier’s leather apron, showing how much the count valued his cavalry. All other servants were ranked lower and farther from the seat of power.
The hall was almost full. At the high table, I recognized Hugh the marshal, Father Randolf, and Bertrand the steward, but there were also three men I had not seen before. Two of them were tonsured, and I guessed that they were the count’s clerical staff.
I turned to Sir Kendryck. “Where did Sage Archibald sit?”
“Mm?” The knight looked blank. “Anywhere he wanted. High table, of course. Count and countess always sit on the chairs in the middle, but unless there’s guests or a feast, Count likes folks to move around, change neighbors.”
That made sense. Life would become very dull if you had to converse with the same people every mealtime. I posed one of the questions I had been intending to ask Wacian.
“And where was the sage sitting two days ago, when he was smitten?”
“Don’t know,” Kendryck said cheerfully. “I’d just gotten back and I was helping with the horses, so I missed the meal. Had to eat in the kitchen with the scullions.”
“I had my back to them,” said Sir Lucien. “By the time I looked around, he was on the floor and everyone jumping like hares.”
“Me too,” said a third. “Looking the wrong way, I mean.”
This seemed like a conspiracy of silence, but apparently their ignorance was genuine, because the query was passed along until an older knight two places away leaned around his neighbor to answer it.
“At that end, next to the priest.”
I thanked him and considered what that might mean. Diners at the high table sat along one side only, so that everyone there faced the hall. I must conclude that only one of the other diners, the priest, had been close enough to Archibald to slip poison into his food or drink, and Archibald would have had no neighbor on the other side to distract him while it was being done. It’s a poor answer that doesn’t raise a new question, as Guy liked to say.
The conversation was ended by Wacian ringing a hand bell at the far side of the dais. Everyone rose, the hall fell silent, and the count entered from the personal quarters, with the countess on his arm and two women following behind. All four wore black. The woman directly behind the countess was the widowed daughter, Baroness Matilda, in a gown of fine material and cut. The fourth, likely her lady companion, was some years older, and more humbly dressed, although still in black.
The count and countess went to the chairs in the center, the women moved along to empty spaces at the far end from me. The count surveyed the hall, then glanced along the table to locate the priest, and nodded a signal.
Father Randolf said grace, mainly in Latin, which not a dozen people present would understand, but switched to Norman French to lead a brief prayer for the soul of the count’s brother, so recently deceased. Then he took a moment to mention the funeral of Sage Archibald, although he somehow conveyed the idea—without actually saying so—that prayer wasn’t very important in his case because any sage was doomed to burn in Hell for trafficking with the Devil. After the amens, everyone sat down and the noise started up again. Footmen marched in from the staircase, holding loaded platters overhead. Being a fire hazard, the kitchens would be out in the bailey somewhere.
“What happened to your leg?” Kendryck asked, as a convenient conversation starter. I told the story. The knights made sympathetic noises and began to relate narrow escapes of their own.
The high table was served first, then a drinking horn and a trencher of stale bread were dropped before each of us; large jugs of ale followed, and after them came the food dishes. Hands grabbed, knives and spoons wielded, trenchers piled high. Up at the high table it was the same picture, with the food communal, everyone dipping into everything within reach. No one received individual dishes. Even the beer was laid out in jugs for diners to refill their horns—or beakers, in the case of the notables at high table. Furthermore, at the high table the food was all served from the front of the table, meaning no footman had to go around the end of the table, where Archibald had been seated. The sage had not had any reason to turn his head away from his neighbor. How could anyone have poisoned him under these conditions?
But just because Rolf had been poisoned did not mean that Archibald had been. Guy’s grimoire had contained a few very nasty curses. I had skipped past them as soon as I realized what they were, but now I wondered if I ought to take a better look at them, or find the dead Archibald’s library to see what might have been available there.
Worse yet: if a potion could be stolen from the sanctum, so could a grimoire, or several grimoires, for some enchanters own more than one. Fortunately a death curse must be a very dark and evil incantation, which would likely need more than one voice. I must keep in mind that there might be more than one person behind the murders.
The food was closer to cold than warm, but there was plenty of it, and fair variety: fish, ample bread, ample goose grease to spread on it, mountains of beans and peas. There was even enough pork for everyone to get some. I feasted, although I could not match the effor
ts of Sir Kendryck, who was eating like a whole herd of starving horses, feeding food into his mouth with one enormous hand while the other grabbed more off the trencher. Many of his fellows were as busy, although Lucien, being older, was less voracious.
The count was deep in conversation with the marshal, Sir Hugh Fiennes; I detected a glance or two in my direction.
The buzz of conversation gradually withdrew to the far end of the hall, where the minor servants sat, and then died away as all mouths were put to more urgent uses. A young fiddler began playing, strolling around between the tables. He soon added a sad lament, singing in langue d’oc, the French of the south. Troubadours were fashionable now, because Queen Eleanor was known to be a connoisseur of their art.
After a few songs, the fiddler withdrew to the far wall to take a break; conversations sprang up like January snowdrops.
“Courtly love!” Sir Kendryck snorted—apparently he was capable of breathing while engulfing food. “I prefer the real thing.”
“Sure you’re old enough to manage the real thing now?” retorted his other neighbor, thus starting a bout of vicious elbowing.
“Is there much of it goes on here?” I inquired blandly. The dead sage’s rumpled bed intrigued me.
Kendryck’s blue eyes bored into mine. “Fornicating or fantasizing about virtue?”
“Shock me.”
“You expect me to gossip like an old woman?”
“Oh, no. I’m sure His Lordship keeps his household firmly on the path of righteousness.” In fact I was sure that—in private—the unsubtle young Kendryck would dish the dirt with all the tact and boisterous enthusiasm of a dog sidling up to a bitch in heat, and probably provide much grist to others’ mills on his own account.
“Tell you later,” he mumbled.
The count was eating while listening to Hugh. His wife had not let grief dull her appetite, nor had their daughter’s companion, but Matilda herself was merely picking at what she had on her trencher. She seemed wan and depressed. Was she mourning her Uncle Rolf or Sage Archibald? Why did her face seem so familiar?
A sudden loud jeering whipped my head around. It came from near the entrance and grew louder and closer, accompanied by a tinkle of bells. A large, shabbily dressed man was approaching the head table in a very clumsy, flat-footed dance. This could only be Sir Scur, the count’s fool, although his head was hidden inside a keg-sized mask of blue fur—probably dyed with woad— shaped as a giant rabbit’s head with grotesquely huge ears. No finicky diner need see his mutilated face.