by Dave Duncan
Ignoring William’s impertinent sigh, I opened the ink bottle and made the additional changes that instinct told me were needed to make sense of the text.
And on the third attempt, it worked. I felt a huge surge of power, a sudden extreme sense of urgency that rapidly faded away. Again William bared his bloodstained teeth, this time in a leer of triumph.
“Success?” Stephen asked.
“Yes, sir. Something should happen. If he’s within the castle, he should be here soon. If he’s out in the village, he’ll need a little longer—although it depends on how long he can resist the call. Some people are more resistant than others. I know because there is a less potent summoning that my tutor uses on me when he and I are searching for herbs in the forest. When he’s ready to leave, he can call me back to him. If I am gathering something valuable, I can resist the urge for about ten minutes, but then I start to itch and twitch and sweat and the compulsion becomes unbearable.”
Stephen leaned back against a complicated astrological horoscope and folded his arms. “If you can pull this off, Adept, I think the king will offer you employment. In fact, I am sure he will.”
My heart leaped like a horse going over a hedge. I must not flub this! “Sir, I honestly believe I have been very lucky so far. My tutor warned me not to try enchantments on my own yet, and I disobeyed him only because the need was so great. I cannot guarantee to meet with such success in future. I cannot call myself a sage without at least two more years at Helmdon. Two years of full-time study, that is.”
The knight’s smile said he understood the problem. “That might be arranged. You would have to be on call, of course, in case of emergency, and His Grace would expect you to pay off your debt with service after your training is completed.”
“You are making my dreams come true, sir.”
Stephen smiled and shrugged at the same time. Generosity was easy when you had the royal purse beyond you. “And Squire William? You have—”
Someone knocked on the door, and all three of us jumped. William rose and limped across to open it.
“This seems too soon,” I said. “It may just be happenstance.”
William said, “Enter, Father.”
Stephen and I exchanged horrified glances.
“Whatever have you done to your face, my son?” the priest asked as he stepped inside, raising a hand in blessing. William shut the door, and stayed close to it.
“I was exercising with some of the squires, Father.”
“And how are they this morning?”
“I hope they will live, Father.”
The priest’s gaze switched to me—rather too quickly, I thought, but then I was looking for signs of guilt. He seemed to be breathing harder than usual, as if he had been running.
“Durwin, my son,” Father Randolf said, “I just stopped in to apologize for my unseemly display of temper yesterday morning. Such rage is a sin in any man, and especially in one of my calling.”
“You always had a vicious streak, Randolf.”
The priest wheeled around in a swirl of robes. “Stephen?” Then he took in the grouping—the squire leaning against the door, the knight wearing a sword, and I at a table covered with texts. He had been addressed by name, not by his title.
He strode over to me, snatched up a couple of tablets, and scanned the Latin text. Then he angrily threw them down.
“So you think your deviltry has summoned me here to confess to murder?”
“That is the presumption,” Stephen said, rising. “They summoned a murderer and you responded.”
“That is an outrageous suggestion! All clergymen have renounced violence. How can you accuse me of such a monstrous crime?”
“Easily, Cousin. I remember lying on the ground with you on top of me, trying to throttle me while you banged my head up and down. Father had a devil of a job hauling you off me. I had thrown your favorite ball into a holly hedge, as I recall. And now you honestly claim that you came running here to apologize for some cross words to an insignificant menial you despise as a mountebank?”
There was a painful pause. Then the priest bowed his head and clasped his hands. After a moment he crossed himself and looked up. “No. I didn’t know why I had to come here, but I did. Clearly I underestimated the powers of darkness.” He pulled up a stool and sat down, beside the table but not facing it. Stephen did the same. William remained by the door.
“You expect a court to accept witchcraft as evidence?” the priest asked the knight. Adept and squire did not matter now.
“No, but my father will believe me, and probably His Grace the king will also. You will not be allowed within a mile of him.”
Randolf shook his head with contempt. “Faugh! You think I have designs on him next? No, this is no great assassination conspiracy you have exposed. I killed the boy Colby in a fit of ungovernable fury. He was an odious, prying little cockroach! He came by the vestry one morning. I thought he wanted to make confession or discuss confirmation, but it turned out that he had been spying, mostly on what his master was up to with female patients, but on some other matters also. He did not want to confess to me, he wanted to blackmail me. I lost my temper— and this time Uncle Richard was not around to control me.”
“What, exactly, did you do?” Stephen asked.
“I threw him down on the fleece and smothered him with it. Once I began, I had to finish, and I did. When I was certain he was dead, I wrapped his corpse in the fleece and hid it under the bench. I barely left the vestry for the rest of the day, you may be sure. I could think of nowhere to hide the body permanently within the castle, nor could I smuggle it out by the gate, and it would start to stink fairly soon. So that night I tied the bundle up with rope, carried it to the wall, and dropped it into the moat.”
Thus might a man admit to swatting a mosquito. I was appalled to see no sign of regret, no repentance or human sympathy. Poor little Colby had not been a person at all. He was a nuisance, so I killed him.
Stephen’s face was white, and I suspected that my own was, too. That a man of God would confess such a crime with such indifference!
“And is that all?” Stephen demanded. “There have been two other unnatural deaths.”
“I admit to both. Archibald was a skilled sage, especially masterful in astrology. He began to drop hints. I realized that he suspected me of being responsible for his varlet’s disappearance, and once he knew where to direct his arts, he might very well uncover evidence that would incriminate me.” He glanced at me. “As this callow boy has now managed to do, so I’m sure it would have been easy for a qualified and experienced sage. I slipped in here one morning and poisoned his wine supply. When I saw him stumbling around on his way to dinner, I knew my scheme had worked.”
“It did not worry you that he might share that poisoned wine with a visitor?
“Archibald was not one for sharing, and he drank more than most. I expected him to finish the wine by nightfall.”
“And how did you pass by the pentagram to get in here?”
“I once asked him . . . We were sitting here one long winter night, arguing about the dark arts. I asked him what would happen to a child who tried to open the door. He laughed and said not much. ‘It will feel like a blow on his funny bone, that’s all.’ And it was exactly like that.”
Sensing that there was to be no attempt to escape, William had taken the stool by the door that Stephen had vacated. If there was to be any violence, it would most likely be started by Stephen, who seemed tempted to tear his cousin apart. I suspected that neither William nor I would try to stop him.
“And our Uncle Rolf?”
“The same reason. He was at least as skilled as Archibald, probably far more so, and he knew that he had a murderer to find, which Archibald had not known for certain.” He gestured at the shelves. “It was easy. I took the poisoned wine flagon to the castle and switched it for the water bottle by his bed. When this Saxon boy turned up in his stead, I thought I was safe, but he straightaway
found Colby’s corpse wrapped in a fleece that could be traced back to me, and I realized that I was in great peril. That was why I lost my temper.”
“Lucky that I had witnesses there to defend me,” I muttered, but no one paid heed.
“And you relied on Archbishop Becket to defend you? You believe that the Church will defrock you, but that will be your only punishment?”
Randolf shook his head. “That is not true. I will undoubtedly be confined in a monastery for the rest of my days.”
“A layman would be hanged.”
“But I am a priest. Not a righteous priest, a disgrace to my calling, I admit, but still a priest, and a secular monarch may not touch me.” He smiled and I longed to punch his arrogant face in.
Stephen grimaced, as at a bad taste, and looked to me. “I repeat what I said earlier. His Grace has great need of men with such ability, Adept. If he sends for you when he is here you may use a cane, but a quarter staff is too easily turned into a weapon to be admitted to his presence.”
“I understand, sir. I can walk with a cane. May I just ask the witness how he knew which bottles up there contained poison?”
Randolf curled his lip at me. “You suspect me of lying—me, a priest? On another of those nights Archibald and I were whiling away in idle gossip, I reached for what I thought was the wine bottle on the table and he laughed that I had better not drink from that one. He had been working with it, mixing a sleeping potion for a patient in pain. He mentioned the name, dwale, and then listed some others that were as deadly. I had to gamble that he would not recognize the taste. Evidently he did not, any more than Rolf did, the following day.”
“You will come with me now to repeat your confession to my father,” Stephen said.
Randolf rose obediently. “And then you will send me with an escort to the bishop in Northampton? But please not Sir Kendryck! Whatever my sins, they do not deserve another four hours’ torment in the company of Sir Kendryck.”
“In my opinion,” Stephen said as he opened the door, “your sins deserve an eternity in Hell.”
The door closed. Enchanter and cantor sat in horrified silence for a while. We had triumphed, but the victory tasted like ashes to me, and apparently to William also. Two men and a boy had been ruthlessly destroyed by an arrogant popinjay who lacked the decency even to pretend remorse.
At last William said, “How could a man like that become a priest?”
“He isn’t a priest. He never was and never intended to be. He’s a politician. He has a count for an uncle on one side and a bishop for an uncle on the other. He had his eyes on the king’s council or even the Roman curia. He probably keeps a cardinal’s hat among his spare underwear. Makes me ill. Don’t know about you, Squire, but I’m going back to bed.”
“Sounds like a good idea, master, but before you do, I’d be really grateful if you would sing another lullaby to my nuts.”
chapter 31
distant cheers and the strident cry of trumpets awoke me like a peal of thunder in my ear. The king! Suppose he sent for the Saxon miracle worker and men-at-arms came to drag me naked from my bed at this time of day? I threw off the covers and massively collided with my squire, who had been similarly inspired.
Very few minutes later we were both dressed, groomed, and downstairs. Waiting. And waiting. And still waiting.
Impetuous but relentless, tyrannical but famous for his justice, dreaded by his enemies and adored by his followers, irascible, exuberant, terrifying, inexhaustible, and overwhelming, Henry the Second by the Grace of God, King of England and Wales, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, Count of Anjou, etc., etc., lord of a third of Europe, was a fanatical follower of the chase. He swept into Barton like a whirlwind at the head of a company of about sixty. That was a tiny fraction of the hundreds who would accompany so great a monarch on state occasions. Even a bishop or the abbot of a great abbey might lead a larger train, but the fact that more were not needed was a glowing tribute to the strength of the king’s peace, which he had restored after the chaos of his predecessor’s rule.
He was at that time thirty-one years old and just completing the tenth year of his reign.
Would a monarch eager to be about his pleasure waste time on trivia like some crippled Saxon youth who had lucked into the answer to Count Richard’s domestic problems—admittedly unusual domestic problems? He had come to inspect the crenellation, perhaps to collect his new chief forester, Baron Weldon, and then be on his way. Conceivably he might nod agreement if Sir Stephen—a great power in Barton Castle but a very minor attendant in the king’s household—managed to catch the royal ear long enough to mention a promising adept who could be engaged at a very minor cost. Of course he would not waste royal hunting time in receiving the lad. Why did I think I mattered?
Then a fist thundered on the door and the way Squire William hurtled across the room to open it testified that my latest incantation had worked well that morning.
I was close on his heels, of course. Outside loomed a giant, seeming to fill the narrow alley from side to side. I had seen this colossus eating at the squires’ table and I marveled anew that William had survived their encounter. What was new was the magnificent shiner he now sported.
“Squire Delaney of Carlton!” William said. “Feeling better now?”
“Deal with you later,” the titan growled. “The adept is wanted. I was told to give him this, or I’d break it over your head.” He offered a stout oak walking stick. That someone—almost certainly Stephen—had made the notorious Goliath play page was a wicked jest.
I set off as fast as I could, leaning on the unfamiliar cane, flanked by an urgent Squire Delaney and followed by William. He still had a limp, but it was no worse than Delaney’s. William had not been invited but was undoubtedly coming in the hope of being admitted into the royal presence. A man might live a long lifetime and never see more of his monarch than his image on coins.
Came a taunt from behind: “Say, Goliath? The adept has an enchantment that cools hot balls nicely. Worked on me, might work on apes. You should ask him to try.”
“Next time I’ll kick harder, then.”
“You’ll be able to sing soprano in church. . . .”
The insults did not sound serious, more like banter between two men who had tested each other and were satisfied by the results. I could have cured his black eye also, had he accepted my offer the previous evening, but a man whose friends called him Goliath was probably the sort of he-man who never accepted help from anyone.
But then we arrived at the stairway up to the keep, where a squad of royal archers stood guard. Master of Horse Alwin was there to identify people. Goliath and I were allowed to proceed, but William was turned back and joined the crowd of spectators.
The great hall had changed yet again. Three clerks were bent over a small table by the door, scribbling furiously. The only other furniture in sight was the count’s grand chair, up on the dais, presently unoccupied. Men were standing around everywhere, speaking softly, and almost all wearing green hunting garb, including the count. The absence of women showed that this was a business meeting, and only a very privileged few stood on the dais: the count, Sir Stephen, Baron Weldon, Sir Hugh, four men I did not know—and the king.
Although not especially tall, Henry Plantagenet was burly, and already starting to put on weight. He was still more beefy than plump, yes, but most of the men present were knights, and beefy by definition. His hair was reddish, as was his thin mustache, and his face was heavily freckled. He had a large head, which he bore thrust forward aggressively, his blue eyes never still. He rarely sat down, even to eat, and even those engaged in private conversations never took their gaze away from him for more than a second or two. The most powerful man in Christendom after the pope, he was restless, fidgety, yet fully intent on whatever he was considering at the moment.
I stood by myself and studied the protocol: when to bow, when to kneel. A few men were left on their knees to state their business. In general, th
e king seemed displeased. The news that a priest, a Norman aristocrat, had confessed to three murders would not have improved his mood, whatever it had been before he heard that. He must gain some satisfaction from the news, though, for it fully supported his contention that the clergy should be subject to the full weight of the law.
Then he dismissed a man impatiently and strode across to the group containing Stephen, who had noted my arrival and nodded to me. Now he beckoned, and it seemed that the hall hushed for a moment at the sight of a tall youth hobbling forward on a cane. Who was this in a cleric’s robe, untonsured, and most likely a mere Saxon from the look of his flaxen mop?
Feeling my hand shaking on my cane, I mounted the dais, bowed, and went to be presented.
“Adept Durwin of Helmdon, Lord King,” Stephen said.
I would have knelt, but the king said, “No. Come over here.” He turned and strode across to a window—he never just walked anywhere.
No one followed us. Not just an audience, but a private audience!
Henry turned his back on the rest of the company and assessed me with the bluest eyes I had ever seen. “What happened to your leg?”
I told him.
He dismissed the matter with a nod, but then came a hint of smile and a twinkle. “I have heard a very improbable account of your actions here during the last few days, Durwin. I want to hear it from your own lips.” He spoke the French of Anjou, softer than the Normans’.
I told him, stressing that I had disobeyed my tutor’s orders only because the need seemed to justify it. I tried not to brag, but I didn’t deny my success either, and I gave full credit to William’s astonishing assistance. I was taller than he, but not by much, and I felt much smaller under his intimidating gaze. It hardly flickered until I had finished.
Henry was a marvelous listener, guiding the speaker with nods that were almost imperceptible and yet signaled, either that he already knew that so move on, or that he hadn’t known that but he took the point. He interrupted with questions only twice.