The recent troubles, building for some time, had been twofold. First, those in the order who were not fighters had amassed a fortune for the order, for the Knights Templar had been a popular charity for centuries. But this very success proved a foundation for destruction—the noncombatant members of the order had taken this money and formed banking structures that had begun to threaten the power of kings across Europe.
The kings could not act, however, with such popular support for the Templars, tied closely to the victories of the Crusades. This support had disappeared over the last half century, however, as the Crusaders slowly lost the Holy Land to the infidels. When they had been defeated in their last stronghold on the edge of the Holy Land—a fortified town called Acre, a harbor on the Mediterranean—the king of France, who was deeply in debt to the order, took advantage of the loss. He had French members arrested and tortured into false confessions against the Church, then pressured the pope to officially disband the order.
Too many of William’s brothers-in-arms had died not by the swords of infidels, but by burning piles of wood lit by the very authorities they’d gone on Crusades to honor and protect.
“Your arrest, then,” Thomas said, “was unfortunate politics?”
“I refused to renounce my vows to the order,” William said. “It is a common fate for all of my brothers, one I was not afraid to share.”
“And—”
William interrupted whatever question Thomas intended next. He’d shared his own history hoping to learn Thomas’s. “Well, Thomas, from where do you hail?”
This was even more important than knowing Thomas’s name. If the young man was who William suspected, there was much to gain from the answer. He could send someone back to learn about Thomas’s boyhood and habits. From there, perhaps, the treasure could be found.
“I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind,” Thomas said.
William hadn’t expected it to be easy, but it had been worth a try.
“You are an unlikely troll.” William set down the large leather bag he had been carrying over his shoulder and contemplated Thomas. “That is a legend in this country, is it not—the troll beneath a bridge with three questions to anyone who wishes to pass?”
“I am not a legend,” Thomas answered, then added boldly, “but together, we may be.”
They stared at each other in a silence pleasantly broken by the burbling of the stream.
William saw a square-shouldered boy, dressed in the clothing of a monk’s assistant, who did not flinch to be examined so frankly. Ragged brown hair tied back. High forehead to suggest strong intelligence. A straight, noble nose. And a chin that did not waver with fear at a knight’s imposing gaze.
Then the knight noticed Thomas’s hands. Large and ungainly, they protruded from coarse sleeves too short for their wearer. Nearly a man, yet still a puppy with much growing to do, the knight thought with amusement.
What checked the knight’s smile was the steady grace promised in the young man’s relaxed stance, and the depth of character in the gray eyes flecked with blue that stared back with calm strength. Does a puppy have this much confidence, the knight wondered, this much steel at such a young age?
Then the knight did grin. This puppy was studying him in return with an equal amount of detached curiosity.
“I presume,” the knight said with a mock bow, “I pass your inspection.”
Thomas did not flush as the knight expected. He merely nodded gravely.
Strange. Almost royal. As if we are equals, the knight thought. He let curiosity overcome a trace of anger and spoke again. “Pray tell, your question.”
Thomas paused, seeming to weigh his words carefully. “Does your code of knighthood,” he finally asked, “make provisions for the repayment of a life saved and spared?”
William thought back to his tired resignation at the gallows, then to the powerful joy that followed at being spared by the miracle of the darkened sky. Even though he had expected the old man to appear at exactly the right time, it had still been a relief when the eclipse occurred as they had calculated.
“If there is nothing in this code you speak of,” William said slowly as he pictured the heavy ropes of his near death, “I assure you, there certainly should be.”
Although he had to pretend otherwise, William now knew this was the one they had been waiting for. He could anticipate what was coming next and was glad for it. Finally, after all these years, he and the others were on the verge of reclaiming what had been lost for so long.
Thomas nodded. “William, it was I who saved you from the gallows.” The young man cast his words across the water. “Consider me with kindness, I ask, in the regretful necessity that forces me to require repayment of that debt from you.”
William had always viewed himself as a fighting man, but now he needed to be an actor.
“Insolent whelp!” he roared.
In one savage movement, as if truly enraged, he surged onto the log and lunged at Thomas. His bare hands flashed. Fingers of iron tore into paralyzed flesh.
“I’ll grind you into worm’s dust!” the knight vowed as he tightened fingers around the neck in his grasp. “To follow me and lay such a pretentious claim …”
William’s biceps bulged as he began to lift Thomas by the throat with both of his war-hardened hands. This was a delicate moment. He had to make his rage convincing, yet needed to make it look as though Thomas could defeat him—absurd as the idea was—in hand-to-hand combat.
Unable to speak, Thomas did the only thing he could do. Eyes locked onto eyes, he waited for the knight’s sanity to return.
The knight only roared an animal yell and lifted Thomas higher.
Blackness began a slight veil across Thomas’s vision.
He brought a knee up in desperation. It bounced off the chain mail stretched across the knight’s belly and hidden beneath his shirt.
Still, William squeezed.
The blackness became a sheet.
I … must … explain, Thomas willed to himself. One … last … chance. He reached for one of the gnarled branches of the fallen log. If … this … breaks … I … am …
He did not waste energy completing the thought. With his final strength, Thomas pulled hard on the branch. It was not much. The knight’s rage had already drained too much life from his bursting lungs. But it was enough.
William—already in an awkward position with Thomas held extended in midair—did not anticipate the tug on his balance. Both toppled sideways into the stream.
Thomas nearly made the fatal mistake of gasping for air as the iron hold on his throat vanished. Instead, he bucked against the water and fought for the surface. He reached his feet in the waist-deep water and sucked in a lungful of air.
He looked for the knight, prepared to scramble for land.
Instead of a charging bull, however, he saw only the matted cloth of the knight’s half-submerged back.
Thomas reacted almost as swiftly in concern as William had moments earlier in anger.
He thrashed through the water and pulled the knight upward. The reason for the man’s state immediately became obvious. An ugly gash of red stretched across the knight’s temple. Thomas winced as he noted the smear of blood on a nearby boulder with which the knight’s head had collided.
He dragged the man to shore, ripped a strip of cloth from his shirt, and began dabbing at the blood. Within seconds, William groaned. He blinked himself into awareness and looked up at the boy.
“By the denizens of Hades,” William said weakly, his sudden rage vanished. “This cannot mean you have now really spared my life.”
They began their conversation as their outer clothes dried among the branches.
“You left the pickpocket and the girl at the road.” Thomas made it a statement. “And you seek to hide in the forest.”
“You followed me,” William countered as he hopped and slapped himself with both arms against the cold. “And don’t think because I am not strangling
you again that I accept your story about the rescue at the gallows.”
Thomas moved back to place several more cautious yards between them. “I was that specter.”
William laughed. “Look at you. A skinny puppy drenched to the bone. Not even as high as my shoulders. And you claim to be the specter who brought darkness upon the land.”
Thomas watched the knight shiver. It became apparent the shivering was not from the chill of the spring air when the knight reverently made a sign of the cross.
“Such a miracle I have never heard proclaimed,” William said.
Thomas could say little to that. He himself could still only half believe the events of the morning. Silence seemed to swallow them as they shivered in the depths of the forest.
“I was that specter,” Thomas persisted. “I stood upon stilts, covered by a black robe and—”
The knight moved to a patch of sunlight. His white legs gleamed. “Don’t bother me with such nonsense,” he growled. “I heard the specter speak. Your voice is a girl’s compared to the one that chilled the crowd.”
Thomas hugged himself for warmth. “I spoke through a contraption designed to conceal my voice.”
Again the knight waved him into silence. “I see none of these inventions with you.”
“I needed to find you quickly,” Thomas protested. “I barely had time to hide my bundle.”
“How old are you, lad?”
“Eighteen.”
“Eighteen,” the knight repeated darkly. His voice rose. “Eighteen!” He paused, and Thomas could see his anger grow. “You try my patience, puppy. No man—let alone a half-grown man—has the power to shoot flame from his hands or cast blindness upon the sheriff’s best men.” William drew himself up. “And no man has the power to bury the sun.” He touched his forehead and brought his finger down to examine the blood, then scowled. “If you continue to insist upon these lies, I shall soon forget you pulled me from the stream.”
Thomas paused halfway through the breath he had drawn to reply. The forest was silent.
He held up a hand and cocked his ear for sound. Any sound.
“Did the hangman make any suggestion that you would be followed?” he asked.
William shook his head, then scowled again. “None. The man was as cowed as any of the villagers. He fairly cried with relief to see me on my way.”
“I promise you, William,” Thomas said in a low voice, “I was that specter. And I beg you give me the chance to prove it.”
“For what reason?”
“That I will not reveal unless you make a vow to help me for saving your life. The help, I humbly add, that you have already promised to the person who saved you from the gallows. Once I prove I am the one who kept you from the rope, you will give me that vow.”
William waved a fist in Thomas’s direction. “Here is my word. Take the pouch of gold at midnight from the gallows—which, I assure you, will be heavily guarded—and deliver it to me tomorrow in the guise of the specter. Then I shall be in your debt. Failing that—as you surely shall—give me peace.”
Thomas grinned. In his careful planning of this day, he had never expected to be shivering and bare skinned, waiting for his clothes to dry, when he heard the words he wanted so badly. Still, his quest was just beginning, and only a fool looked a gift horse in the mouth to check for worn teeth.
His thoughts turned, as they often did, to the childhood songs repeated evening after evening by the one person at the abbey who had shown him compassion and love.
So much to be fulfilled …
A giggle interrupted his thoughts.
William sprang in the direction of a quivering bush. There was a flurry of motion and a short struggle.
William straightened. He held the tiny pickpocket and the mute-and-deaf girl by the backs of their shirts. William walked forward with his double burden, a feat of strength all the more impressive because it appeared that it took him no effort at all. Disgust was written plainly across his face.
The dirt-smudged pickpocket shook uselessly to free himself. “People shouted curses at us along the road. Threw stones and called us devil’s children,” he said mournfully from his perch in the air. “What had we to do but follow? We are fugitives, dead if caught again.”
William sighed long and deep and set them down with little gentleness. “I travel alone.”
“We shared the gallows together,” the pickpocket said. “And survived it together. Surely God has marked us to be together!”
William spoke with more resolution. “I travel alone.”
“Alone?” Thomas said. “And what if the one who has spared your life asks otherwise?”
“That is one thing,” William said. “But these two are an unnecessary burden. We owe them nothing. Just send them on their way with a couple of coins so they are able to feed themselves.”
Thomas remembered clearly every word the old man had spoken to him at the gallows. He remembered the old man’s final instructions. “Take them with you. It will guarantee you a safe journey to Magnus.”
Whoever the old man was, he had knowledge far beyond what Thomas possessed. Whoever the old man was, he had saved Thomas from destruction. For now, Thomas would follow the old man’s guidance.
“They stay with us,” Thomas said. “A few coins are not enough to keep them safe.”
William shook his head. “You don’t owe them safety.”
“What’s to stop them from following and reporting us to authorities as soon as possible?”
“A sword through their gizzards,” the knight growled.
The pickpocket grinned, knowing it was a jest. As for the mute-and-deaf girl, she continued to stare at Thomas. He reached for his damp shirt to cover his naked chest from the girl’s dark eyes. Then he wondered why he wanted to stare back. He had seen many of the village girls before, always ignoring their coy glances. Thomas had a future to find, the one given to him during his childhood in songs and fables. No girl had tempted him to look beyond that future. But this one …
He shook his head at the distraction and fumbled to pull the shirt over his head. There was much to accomplish by midnight.
A witch! A witch!”
William, who was enjoying drowsiness in the afternoon sun, his back against a tree, opened his eyes and grimaced.
John, the pickpocket boy, scarcely touched the ground as he dashed between trees and skimmed over fallen logs toward him. “An ugly, horrid, flesh-eating witch!”
This portion of the forest was far from the road and unlikely to be visited by superstitious peasants like the screaming boy. Yet if the boy cried any louder, even village bells would be put to shame and seclusion might soon become a lost luxury.
William glanced at the girl to see if she felt the same disgust at this noise. After all, she too was a fugitive—and who could predict how long until the hangman reconsidered his decision to set them free?
The girl, however, remained sitting on a nearby log, her head down as she stared at her feet. Either she was truly deaf or skilled at acting. Time, he decided, would tell.
William rose. He grunted with the effort, his head still sore from where it had hit a rock in the stream. He’d deliberately fallen so that he could lose the battle to Thomas, but he hadn’t expected the rock that protruded above the surface of the water. It had astounded him to discover that in a way, he did owe his life to Thomas. Not from the rescue at the gallows—that had been well planned—but from something as unpredictable as falling in the wrong place.
This told William that too much of their plan, like all battle plans, would be determined by chance. All that was ever possible was to prepare to the fullest.
“A witch! With giant claws and fangs for teeth!”
As the boy plunged into the small clearing, William extended his arm.
The boy slammed into it. “Oooof.”
“What is this nonsense you are determined to share with the entire valley?” Despite his determination to be angry, William smil
ed. The boy had forgotten his panic and, newly diverted, had lifted his feet to hang from the knight’s arm as a way to test both their strengths. “And why did you wander far enough to find the witch?”
The boy dropped from William’s arm and grinned.
“You slept, and”—he motioned with his head at the girl—“she doesn’t speak and barely moves. Was I, too, supposed to act as if dead?”
“You have a sharp tongue,” the knight warned. “Perhaps I shall cut it loose and serve it as supper to the witch—if indeed she exists.”
The boy’s eyes widened as he nodded. “She appeared from behind a bush! And it is not my flesh she seeks, but yours.”
“Mine?”
“She clutched my arm and pronounced it too skinny.”
“I suppose you then informed her that you knew of fatter game and pointed down the hill to where I slept?”
“She was horrid. How else could I seek freedom? She said your flesh would prove tasty enough.”
William returned to the tree, then slid down so that his back leaned squarely against the trunk. Finally, Hawkwood had appeared. But if the girl was not who she appeared to be, it would be best to pretend disinterest.
“A witch indeed.” William yawned. “More like an old crone wandering for herbs who even now cackles at your terror. Hmmph. Fangs and claws. What thoughts will you entertain next?”
The pickpocket boy squatted beside the knight. “Thoughts of money well spent.” He held out a grimy palm for the knight’s inspection. “I removed this from her pocket.”
William leaned forward for closer inspection. Sunlight gleamed off a thick gold coin, thick enough that it represented a month’s wages for any peasant.
The knight opened his mouth to admonish the boy, but bushes parted beside them, and before either could react, a heavy wooden cane slashed down at John’s hand. The boy pulled away, but not quickly enough, and the tip of the cane slapped his open fingers, spilling the coin to the ground.
John danced back, hugging his stung hand under his arm and biting his lip to hold back a cry of pain.
The Orphan King (Merlin's Immortals) Page 4