Ironfoot

by Dave Duncan

  At that moment King Henry decided it was time to go and kill deer, although everyone else was thinking longingly about dinner.

  chapter 33

  the king snapped out a few orders and ran, leaping from the dais to vanish down the spiral staircase. His men poured after him, almost rioting at the stair head.

  Granted leave by the queen, I followed at my own pace, and was stopped by the clerks at the table, who proceeded to weigh out the first instalment of my royal pension in silver pennies. I signed for them, and we arranged how the balance would be paid to me by the sheriff of Northamptonshire. My tiny purse would not hold such a fortune, but they gave me a leather bag to carry it. Clutching more wealth than my father would have seen in his lifetime, I floated away in a rosy daze.

  The usual guards on the door were missing. I hobbled down the long wooden stair, staying well to one side because men in ones and twos went tearing down past me. When I reached the bailey, the turmoil had moved out of sight, although I could hear much angry horse noise coming from the direction of the stables.

  The only man in sight was the fool, slouched against a cottage wall, his single eye glittering inside his hood.

  “One ear hears that one leg may climb much faster than most pairs do,” he growled.

  I decided to take that as a compliment. “On the first rung, ’tis sure. But if one leg slips it has no friend to keep it from falling.”

  “And sometimes one eye can see farther than two.”

  About to pass by, I detected a gleam of truth in that chaff and halted. “What do you see that I have missed, Sir Scur?”

  “My bad eye sees no good, and my good eye sees much evil, but kings may see only what others show them.” The monster would have been kept out of the royal view, no doubt.

  “Aye, but was that what you meant before?”

  “A man may sin alone, may he not?”

  “He may,” I said patiently.

  “And two alone can sin together?”

  “It has been known.”

  “And three is one too many.” The old man twitched his hood so that his features disappeared altogether, and lurched into a shambling run, disappearing into the maze of cottages and sheds. Either he knew something he dared not put into words, or else his madness had flared up at news of my great success. But he had definitely been trying to tell me something, and this left me troubled.

  In addition to the distant turmoil of king’s followers madly trying to get their mounts saddled, all at the same time in a very confined space, I could hear loud male adolescent laughter. Tracking that, I came on a group of squires. Few of the Barton knights would be departing with the royal party, so their attendants could stay out of the way and avoid being ordered about. William was in the midst of the noisy pack, which included his former foes, Colbert, Delaney, and Kenric. They were all joking and mock wrestling, but the baiting was lighthearted now, since the despised squire had proved himself to be no milksop.

  Someone spotted my approach and shouted a warning. They all began bowing elaborately, uttering cries of “Make way for the king’s man!” Father Randolf had few supporters among these hellions.

  William certainly belonged in such company more than he did in Helmdon. I had come from there with two companions; if I had to go home alone how would I manage five horses?

  William pulled loose and smartly saluted. “Congratulations, Adept. I hear that your success has been justly rewarded.”

  “I could have done nothing without your skills and support, Squire.” His new friends were listening.

  “Nor I without your example. Your commands, my lordly master?”

  “Just don’t do any more fighting! I’m going back to the sanctum until dinner is ready.”

  “You heard!” a red-haired squire said, and punched him. “You’re not allowed to fight back.”

  William hooked a foot and pushed, spreading the attacker flat on his back. “Now stand on him,” Kenric suggested. “That still won’t be fighting.” Other, lewder suggestions followed.

  I left them to it. As well try to make a choir of cats sing in tune.

  Back at the sanctum, I hastened to hide my new wealth in the secret closet. Then I sat down to let my heartbeat slow and my mind absorb all that had just happened. I looked around almost sadly. My job here was done. My duty to return the horses to Helmdon required me to leave as soon as possible, and a brief but epic chapter in my life would be over. I wished I had some parchment so that I could copy out a few of the incantations in Sage Archibald’s grimoires. But the count would surely not grudge me a few wooden panels. I settled down at the table to begin writing.

  Before I could even open a book, I was interrupted by a thump on the door. Outside loomed Sir Kendryck, flaunting his inevitable big grin.

  “My nose needs attention,” he said. “So while you’re not hobnobbing with royalty, I thought you might spare a humble wounded Saxon a few moments of your time.”

  “Happy to. You’re much better company than most of them. Hold on a minute.” I replaced all the grimoires in the cupboard, took up my satchel, plus—after a moment’s indecision—my new cane. I was an adept now, and should not need a quarterstaff to assert authority. I set off with the knight to the infirmary.

  Kendryck, as usual, was in a talkative mood. “That squire of yours, the one that mashed me . . . squires’re calling him ‘Wildcat.’ . . . Wouldn’t he be happier . . .? I mean, I don’t want to offend, but . . .”

  “You won’t offend. Ask me.”

  There was a brief pause while we were passing the laundry and had to exchange innuendoes with the maids. Then Kendryck got back to business.

  “Would you release him to me? He’s a born fighter like I’ve never seen before, and I don’t believe he’s as happy as . . . I mean, I think he’d really like to get back into knights’ training. Every squire in the castle is urging his master to swear him in. Kenric’s giving me no peace. I expect some of them have asked you already?”

  “Nary a one so far,” I said. “I am certain William would be ecstatic to become your man, Sir Kendryck, but he isn’t sworn to me. His father contracted with the academy to educate him as a sage. Dean Odo would love to be rid of him, because he’s a rabid bear without a chain in Helmdon. But he’s not twenty-one yet and has to do as his father tells him.”

  “I’ll ask his sire, then,” Kendryck said. “Anyone else asks, you’ll tell them I’m first in line?”

  “Not unless William wants me to, I won’t. Knowing him, I’m sure he’s already picked out the poor wretch he’d like to attach himself to. Here we are.”

  In the infirmary I laid out bandages and some fever-reducing herbs, while Kendryck continued to chatter. Told to lie down on a cot, he obeyed without stopping his monologue. He remarked how impressive the king was, and what an improvement he was over his late Uncle Stephen, how William ought to be whomped a few times for cracking his—Kendryck’s—ribs and so keeping him out of the hunt, what a fantastic sage I would make if I stayed on at Barton as the count was sure to ask me to, but of course everyone knew that the king had claimed me.

  “You a familiaris now?” he asked.

  Here was the opportunity I needed! “What’s that?”

  “You’d better learn! The familiares are the king’s friends, the confidants he sends out to do what needs to be done. His troubleshooters.”

  “All nobles.”

  “Not with this king, they say! Some commoners, too.”

  Small wonder my appointment had caused surprise. Of course the king could change it any time he fancied, if I did not measure up to his hopes.

  Sir Kendryck was already off chasing another hare. “Loved the way you fixed that stuck-up priest! Yattering at us about our sins when he goes murdering children! What sin compares with that, huh? Bouncing a few buxom maidens doesn’t—”

  “A few?”

  “A dozen or two, but hell’s teeth, I’m twenty-two years old already. I’m not really lecherous like some I coul
d name. And none of them were real maidens in the technical sense of the word, except maybe one. But where’s the harm in that? Not one ever complained. Anyhow, I never liked the man. Old Father Christophe, now, he was an old dear, and his wife too. But Randolf? To listen to him, God made Heaven for Normans and us Saxon trash could expect nothing but the worst. Had to put up with him all the way to Northampton and back again until I wanted to punch his scrawny pompous nose.”

  “Hold still a moment,” I said, “until I get this packing out.”

  “Ow!”

  “Sorry. That’s done. Hold this rag to it in case it bleeds some more.”

  “Poor Alwin’s got the escort job this time, but he has it easy. The priest won’t speak to him except if he confesses, and Alwin can always threaten to gag him and tie him to his horse, since he’s a confessed murderer. What I think—”

  “Hush!” I said. “I’m going to sing an enchantment that should make your nose heal straight. You don’t want the girls to laugh at you for having a nose that bends to the left, do you?”

  “Dunno. It might match the right bend on—”

  “Shut up!” I said, which was no way to speak to a belted knight. The healing spell might work better a few days later in the healing process, but I wasn’t going to be here then. Certain two-part enchantments might work even better.

  I had barely finished before the much-delayed bell for dinner began to sound. The treatment was at once adjourned by mutual consent.

  When knight and adept arrived at the scrum of diners waiting to wash their hands, Kendryck pushed me forward with a bellow of “Make way for the king’s man!” and the crowd opened like the Red Sea for Moses. Squires and knights—lesser folk went elsewhere—stepped aside for the hero, touching forelocks and cheering me. I was a hero because I had unmasked the murderer, and I was the king’s man. Surely any minute now I would wake up.

  After that, when a belated dinner arrived, the king’s friend was not at all surprised to find himself seated between the countess and the baroness again. The queen had departed, heading back to Northampton. William was down at the squires’ table, between the two he had fought, Colbert and Delaney. Thanks to my ministrations, his black eyes and swollen face were in better shape than theirs. He was clearly just as popular among them as I was among the nobility. My promotion had been less painful, that was all.

  As it was Friday, there was no meat other than fish, but the high table was served sturgeon, a gift from the king, a royal fish that tasted like fine beef.

  Sir Bertrand du Blois, the steward, presided in the absence of count and marshal, but the countess pretty much ignored him, preferring to talk with me. The countess was much pleased with me. She had predicted who would turn out to be the killer, although for totally wrong reasons, and I had proved her right. Randolf might be a relation, but he wasn’t from her side of the family.

  “My husband will naturally reward you handsomely for your services, Adept,” she purred. “How much did the king give you?”

  “His Grace was most generous, my lady.”

  She shot me a withering look. “Well, don’t expect a mere count to top the king.”

  I had already had a brilliant idea on this topic. “If I might be so bold, my lady . . . the sage’s sanctum contains no less than five grimoires, which is an astonishing collection for a single sage to have amassed. I suspect that most of them were there when you hired Sir Archibald, and so are technically yours. If I might beg a gift of one of them, that would be more than adequate recompense for what little I have achieved in your service.”

  She beamed. “That is easily granted. Take two, one from the count and one from me, with our thanks.”

  I felt more than a little guilty as I thanked her—not because the replacement sage would need those books, as he would probably arrive with his own grimoire, assembled during his training—but because selling off that little library might bring in enough money to run Barton Castle for a year, and she clearly did not know that.

  “We may not even employ a house sage in future,” she remarked. “Once this pile is razed, our need for staff will be much reduced.”

  “I am sorry. It must be a great blow to lose your ancestral home.”

  “It’s not my ancestral home, boy. I am not at all sorry. I shall get to live in a proper house now, instead of this horrible old cage.”

  I had no reply to that. I wondered how many servants might find themselves homeless and jobless when the walls began to come down.

  Baroness Matilda, on my other side, eventually acknowledged my existence, because she needed me to pass her the pickled eels. I congratulated her on her betrothal.

  “Have you known him long, or was it love at first sight?”

  She shrugged, as if my good wishes were of no account, and the upcoming marriage little more. “Love has nothing to do with it, Adept. Beds are warmer with two in them. I have been married before; he has had two previous wives. The only tricky point in the negotiations was how his estate will be divided if I give him more children.”

  “He has some of his own?”

  “Four sons, three fully adult and one almost so. My son needs a father. When he is seven, I shall probably have to send him home to his uncle in Kilpeck. He is his late father’s heir, if he can manage to live long enough to come into his own.”

  “My lady! You cannot mean—”

  She tossed her head. “Of course I can mean it. Wicked uncles are as lethal as measles to young heirs, but my new husband is the king’s chief forester, and the king’s ear is strong protection.”

  “Chief forester is a very prestigious post.”

  “A very demanding one. Baron Weldon will be traveling a great deal, in attendance on the king when he is in England, inspecting the forests even when he is not.” She smiled—at her own future, not at me. “But it does have its rewards.”

  “Fresh venison?”

  She rolled her eyes: how naïve can a man get? “I am thinking of New Year gifts. Noble lords whose lands fall within the king’s forest cannot hunt on them without permission from the king or his chief forester.”

  I raised my wine and toasted her future prosperity. She turned away to speak with Aveline, her other neighbor. I was trash and unworthy of the royal attention that I had been granted and she had not.

  chapter 34

  i sent William off to the infirmary to tidy up and bring back my satchel, while I returned to the sanctum to gloat over the five grimoires. Which to choose? I would return Guy’s with thanks and innocently ask if he would now like to look over my two. Of course he would probably just have me copy them out in their entirety for his personal library.

  I decided I could not choose between the five until I had listed all their contents, so I found a passably clean writing tablet and set to work. I had trouble concentrating. Being sworn in as a king’s confidant was enough to justify a two-day drunk all by itself. On a darker side, I could foresee a massive headache in drawing up a horoscope for a juvenile prince with Caesarian ambitions, and my encounter with Scur had left me with a nagging feeling that I had overlooked something. So much had happened that day that I could hardly be blamed for failing to take in every word said or deed done, but I could not shake the notion that the one-eyed fool had seen something I had missed.

  Then William threw open the door and bounced in, grinning from shoulder to shoulder.

  “You look as if your day’s been as good as mine,” I said.

  He dropped my satchel on the table. “Oh, better. You just had a king and a queen pestering you. I’ve got four knights begging me to swear to them!”

  “Take all four. I gather that your injuries are no longer troubling you?”

  “My gonads are still grumbling a bit, that’s all.”

  “Lie down on the bench and I’ll sing to them.”

  William had no sooner obeyed than there came a tap on the door. He jumped up and went to answer it, hastily adjusting his clothing on the way. My amusement turned to aston
ishment when he put on his flunky voice and announced the visitors.

  “Baroness Matilda and the Widow Udela, master.”

  I bowed them in. “This is an unexpected honor, my lady.”

  “It should be.” Matilda strolled across the room, looking around with disdain. “Now you have done all the damage you can, I assume you will be returning to your burrow at wherever it is very shortly?”

  “Damage?”

  “Disaster follows you like your Saxon stench. The king has ordered Barton Castle razed. Don’t pretend that you had no part in shaping his decision. Our chaplain, my cousin, has been carted away in chains, having been bewitched by your evil arts. My father is distraught, my mother overwrought. You have cursed my family home like some bird of evil croaking on the roof.”

  My first impulse was to retort that the countess had seemed far from overwrought at dinner. My second was that if anyone was distraught, it must be Matilda herself. And my third was that her own betrothal should be included in that list of recent events.

  “You will be leaving Barton before the demolition begins, though?” I asked.

  “That depends on how long the king remains at Rockingham. He almost never spends two nights under the same roof, as you know, rushing all over England and half of France. His chief forester will rarely be apart from him at this time of year, but he has promised me that I will have a worthy home in either London or Winchester.”

  “Then the wedding will be soon?”

  “Within the week. Baron Weldon has gone back to Rockingham to see that everything is in order for the royal hunt, but he has been given leave to return right after it to solemnize his marriage.” She smiled demurely. “Before his, um, sudden departure, Father Randolf gave permission to waive the usual banns.”

  “A whirlwind romance!”

  Indecent haste was what most people would call it, but I knew why the bride, at least, was in favor. I glanced at William to see what he thought, but William was concentrating on Udela.