The Orphan King (Merlin's Immortals)

by Brouwer, Sigmund

  “Thomas? He is a good man,” Katherine said quickly. Too quickly.

  “Katherine,” Hawkwood said gently, “do not let his countenance sway you.”

  She stiffened. “Hardly. Do I forsake what little teaching I have received?”

  “My apologies.”

  “He defended me,” she said. “A man comely enough that he could choose among maidens fought for a freak behind bandages. What says that of his heart?”

  “Would that I could believe it,” Hawkwood said, “for in this cat-and-mouse game, none could suspect that you are one of us, placed in the candle maker’s shop since childhood. Thomas, then, had no other reason to defend you than what lay in his heart.”

  “He, too, is part of this terrible game?”

  “Yes, Katherine. As you were hidden here, so was Thomas hidden in an abbey. I’ve just now discovered, by the accusations against him, that it was the abbey at Harland Moor. That may help us soon, but I’m not certain of it. We’ll need to send someone there to learn more about his boyhood. Complicating things, he has been accused of the monks’ murder.”

  “I never believed he murdered them!”

  “Is that your heart speaking? Or your mind?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Beware of listening too closely to your heart. You must acknowledge that he fled the abbey in suspicious circumstances. One monk is dead from a blow to the head. Two others poisoned. The survivor testifies that Thomas is responsible. Until we know the truth about that too, we must proceed as if he cannot be trusted, even though he was to be taught in our ways and given the way to take Magnus.”

  “Was?” Katherine said.

  Hawkwood smiled at her back. “You have wisdom beyond your years. In happier times, you would already be the best of a new generation of Immortals.”

  “He is not one of us?”

  Hawkwood said, “The one who was to teach him died too soon. We do not know what happened in the years since. He appeared at the gallows to rescue the knight, but I fear he was sent by our enemy in hopes that we would trust him completely.”

  “Yet,” Katherine said, “he may not be the enemy.”

  “Is it hope that you express?”

  She said nothing.

  “Yes, Katherine, he may not be the enemy. And if he acts on his own, he needs our help until we are certain he can be trusted.”

  “If he acts on his own, he knows nothing of us or of them,” she protested. “It is like sending a sheep into battle against ravenous wolves.”

  “This, too, I have considered,” Hawkwood said. “Yet who shall we risk to deliver the knowledge? For the enemy still searches, and if he is one of them, the deliverer is doomed. We are so few that we can spare none.”

  Katherine sighed. “Yes m’lord.”

  “However,” Hawkwood said, “it does not mean we shall abandon him or the knight completely. It is fortunate indeed that Thomas defended you as he did.”

  “M’lord?”

  “You now have ample reason to befriend him.”

  Jailer!” William shouted at the rusted iron door. He did not expect an answer. “Two days have passed. Surely the lord of this manor must appear to us soon!”

  “Shhh!” hissed the man who hunched in the corner of the cell. He pointed at a tiny hole.

  William groaned and looked to Thomas for sympathy.

  Thomas shrugged and grinned. Under the circumstances—their fellow prisoner had said nothing since they had been flung into the cell—there was little else to do.

  What light appeared in the cell came from oily torches outside the grated opening in the door. It took Thomas only two large steps to cross the space between the clammy stone walls, three steps to cover front and back. It was so cramped that had the fetters on the walls been used, one from each side could have placed their wrists in manacles. Yet there were three of them in this small space, sharing the bedding of trampled straw that soaked up the wet dungeon filth.

  Thomas dug inside his shirt, searched quickly with his fingers, and snorted in triumph. “Found it.”

  He withdrew his hand and squeezed the flea between the nails of his thumb and forefinger until he felt a tiny snap.

  “Spare me the battle glories, Thomas,” William said. “We have much greater concerns. If we are able to meet the lord of this manor, we can present our case. He will see there is no injustice in the fate of those monks and then release us.”

  “I regret not sending that letter to the mother abbey at Rievaulx,” Thomas said almost absently as he scratched himself. “We might have been spared this.”

  William did not have to ask which letter. In the two endless days of darkness and solitude—interrupted only by the bowls of porridge shoved between the bars twice daily—Thomas had told the knight of his final day at the abbey, including the letter of evidence against the monks.

  “How often must I tell you?” William said with gentleness. “Unless the lord of Magnus learns who truly did poison them, we will hang. He must appear to accuse us so that we can defend ourselves.” Then the knight grinned. “As I’ve also told you many times since our arrest, there is justice in the monks poisoning themselves.”

  Thomas grinned back but without much feeling. It gave him little consolation that he had guessed right in his final hour at the abbey. As he had done countless times during the slow passage of time in the dungeon cell, Thomas replayed in his mind the moments before Monk Walter had lashed out with a heavy fist …

  “Quit your blathering,” Monk Walter said between clenched teeth. “Send the boy on his way. Now!”

  Monk Philip clamped his jaw as if coming to a decision. “Not to his death. Nor shall I go meet God without attempting some good.” He drew a lungful of air. “Thomas, leave alone the—”

  Leave alone the food, Thomas had realized as Monk Philip died. It could be nothing else. The monks knew Thomas would immediately retrieve the letter of condemnation upon leaving the abbey. By inserting a slow-acting poison into his requested provisions, he would die later and never reveal their crimes.

  Yet he could only speculate at the rest, based on the descriptions of the monks who had died. Philip, of course, had died from hitting his head after Monk Walter tried to stop him from revealing the food was poisoned. Prior Jack and Monk Frederick were the other bodies. With Thomas gone and the other two aware of his witchcraft, Monk Walter’s life was a stake. If Prior Jack and Monk Frederick revealed this to anyone, Monk Walter would be tried and executed. As a practitioner familiar with potions, Monk Walter had skills with poison. He could have easily administered doses of poison to Prior Jack and Monk Frederick, the same kind of poison they’d planned for Thomas’s death. Monk Walter, no doubt, had decided if Thomas wasn’t dead, the others must be silenced by poison.

  “The lord of Magnus will never appear,” crowed the man in the corner.

  “Ho, ho! After two days, the man of silence speaks,” William observed. “Have you tired of your scavenging friends?”

  “My good fellow, in my time here, I have seen many like you come, then go to the hangman,” the man said, apparently unperturbed by William’s jesting tone. “I learned early not to befriend any. It proves to be too disappointing.” He gestured at the corner hole with his hands. “These furry creatures that make their visits, however, are not so fickle. They require little food and their gratitude is quite rewarding. And they always return.”

  Thomas shuddered. He hoped he would not remain so long in the cell that rats would be more attractive than human company. Not when he had the means to conquer Magnus. If only I could escape—all it would take is one clear night and …

  The man dusted his hands of the last of the breadcrumbs he had patiently held in front of the hole, breadcrumbs saved from the occasional time that more was given than just porridge.

  “You said the lord of Magnus would never appear,” Thomas prompted.

  The man did not rise from his squatting position. He merely swiveled on the balls of his feet to fac
e them. His cheeks were rounded like those of a well-stuffed chipmunk. Ears thick and almost flappy. Half-balding forehead, and shaggy hair that fell from the back of his head to well below his shoulders. Patched clothing as filthy as the straw that clung to his matted and exposed chest hair.

  “It is time to introduce myself,” he said with a lopsided grin that showed strong teeth. “My name is Waleran.” He stood, shuffled forward, and extended his empty right hand in the traditional clasp that symbolized a lack of weapons. “Generally visitors hear nothing from me,” he said after William and Thomas had shaken hands with him. “Unlike you, they arrive alone and learn to ignore me after several days. Thus, I am allowed my peace. With two of you, however, the constant talking has given me little peace, and finally I am driven to break my silence.”

  “Two days of waiting shows remarkable patience,” William said.

  Waleran shrugged. “I have been here ten years. Time means nothing.”

  Water ticked in a constant drip from the roof of the dungeon cell to the floor.

  “Ten years!” Thomas examined him again. Although pale, Waleran seemed in good health.

  “You wonder what crime sends a man here?” Waleran replied to Thomas’s frank stare. “Simply the crime of being a villager in Magnus. My son, you see, went to the fields outside the castle one harvest day. Instead of threshing grain, he departed. London, perhaps. I am held here as hostage until he returns. And I am held as an example. As long as I am here, other families know the lord is serious in his edict. No man, woman, or child may leave the village except to work in the fields and return before nightfall.”

  “That’s monstrous!”

  Waleran smiled wanly at Thomas. “Indeed. But who is to defy the lord?”

  William began pacing the cell. “It is a strange manor, this Magnus. The lord murders its rightful owner, yet the Earl of York does not interfere. Entire families are kept virtual prisoners inside the castle walls, yet the village does not resist.”

  “Strange, perhaps, but understandable,” Waleran said quietly. “You’ve seen the fortifications of the castle and outside walls. Even a man as powerful as the Earl of York knows it is fruitless to attack. Besides, the lord of this manor is shrewd enough to give no cause for the earl’s anger.”

  William raised an eyebrow.

  “Because the entire village is in vassalage, this manor is extremely wealthy. The lord gives ample homage to the Earl of York in the form of grain, wool, and even gold. Simple, don’t you see?”

  “I do see,” William said thoughtfully. “The Earl of York is bribed not to attack a castle in his kingdom, which he could not successfully overcome anyway.”

  “Yes, yes!” Waleran nodded quickly. “And with enough soldiers within the gates, the villagers are powerless. Those who do leave to till and harvest the fields know they must return each night, or family members will be placed in these very cells. Richard Mewburn as lord of Magnus may be well hated by those inside Magnus, but all are helpless before him.”

  “What I don’t see,” William said in the same thoughtful tone, “is why this lord has not appeared to formally accuse us. We deserve the justice that must be granted anywhere in the land.”

  Waleran only shook his head. He returned to his corner, found a crumb to hold above the rat hole, and squatted in his former position. Minutes passed, broken only by the never-ending drips of water onto the stone.

  Thomas could not stand it any longer. “That is all?” he cried. “You are choosing silence again?”

  Waleran slowly craned his head upward and measured his words. “My silence would be better for you.” He sighed heavily. “Remember I am a reluctant messenger.”

  Thomas thought of the empty road leading into Magnus. He remembered the stories Isabelle and William had already told. Strong premonition told him he did not want to hear Waleran’s next words.

  “Magnus has around it a black silence,” Waleran said. “Traders and craftsmen learned long ago that they risked freedom and all they owned to visit. Whispers of death keep them away. And for good reason.”

  Waleran looked back to the hole and spoke as if addressing the wall. “Had there not been convenient charges against you, you would still have found yourselves within this dungeon. There are dark secrets in Magnus. Secrets that must remain hidden from the entire land.”

  He paused, and the deadness in his voice spoke chilling truth. “Why would the lord appear to hear your case? He needn’t bother, for the truth is simple. Strangers, once inside these walls, are never permitted to leave.”

  Thomas woke with the sour taste of heavy sleep in his mouth. He rolled into a sitting position and wiped straw from his face. How is a person to mark the passage of time in this dark hole? he muttered in his mind. No bells to mark the church offices; no sun to mark dawn or nightfall.

  In the unending flickering of torches, Thomas could see that Waleran lay huddled motionless on one side of the cell; William snored gently in his corner.

  The knight is tired too, Thomas observed.

  Because he knew the boredom that stretched ahead, Thomas concentrated on a routine to delay his restlessness. He plucked from his mind the first of many well-worn questions, determined to gnaw it yet again, like an animal searching for the tiniest shred of undiscovered meat.

  It demanded patience to turn first one question, then another, over and over in his mind, to approach it from every angle, to fit different facts into place. In four days of captivity, Thomas had concluded nothing new from all his questions and thoughts. However, all he had was time, and the questions, like him, would not leave the cell.

  Who is this knight? Thomas asked himself. A man of honor, he fulfilled his pledge by entering the castle walls of Magnus. He has become a friend, yet he speaks nothing of his past, nothing of his own quest.

  Regardless of his past, he, like any knight, no doubt could easily defeat a dozen unarmed and untrained peasants. But William no longer had a sword or chain mail, for he had been searched before being thrown into the dungeon, with loud, angry questions about how the objects had come into his possession, questions William answered by saying he’d stolen them.

  Thomas, in his well-rehearsed routine, moved to the next question. What would happen to Tiny John and Isabelle?

  Tiny John, no doubt, could well find a way to survive. But was Isabelle withstanding the terrors of being alone and friendless in Magnus? Thomas let worry fill his hunger-pinched stomach. And guilt, remembering how she’d protested the journey to Magnus and how she’d predicted the worst would happen. What work would she find to sustain her? What stranger might treat her with kindness? Or—Thomas dreaded the thought—would she simply flee Magnus and disappear from his life forever?

  Thomas smiled at his own foolishness. Logic told him that—barring a miracle—he and the knight would never leave this cell for anything but death by hanging. Worrying about a future with a girl should not even be a concern.

  Thomas moved to his next question.

  He closed his eyes and pictured himself in the panicked darkness in front of the scaffold less than a week earlier. Again and again, Thomas replayed those few minutes of terror beneath a blackened sky. The old man had known it was Thomas beneath those robes. The old man had known how Thomas had given the illusions of power. And the old man had known of his desire to win Magnus.

  How had that mysterious old man known so much? Who was the old man? And what had Sarah meant about the Immortals? Would he find out here in Magnus?

  And then there was the question of escape. Thomas’s power came from prepared potions and other trickery he could manage as if it were magic. He had none now, for he’d carefully hidden everything in his sacks outside Magnus before entering. And William had no weapons.

  It appeared the two of them were helpless, but surely he could think of some kind of solution, couldn’t he? Thomas attacked that problem with such intensity that William had to clap his hands to get his attention.

  “Thomas, you scowl as if
we have lost all hope.”

  Thomas blinked himself free from his trance and answered the knight’s easy smile. “Never!” Although it felt like a hollow promise.

  William yawned. “My mouth is as vile as goat’s dung. Even the water from this roof will be better.”

  The knight moved beneath one of the eternal drips and opened his mouth wide. After several patient minutes of collecting water, he rinsed and spit into a far corner of the cell.

  Waleran unfolded from his motionless huddle and grumbled, “Must you be so noisy? My friends will never venture forth.”

  William merely yawned again and said, “Precisely.”

  Before Waleran could retort, the door rattled.

  “A visitor,” droned the jailer.

  “Impossible,” Waleran said. “Not once in ten years has a visitor been permitted to—”

  The door lurched open, and the jailer’s hand appeared briefly as he pushed a stumbling figure inside. Thomas tried not to stare. Caked and dirty bandages still suggested mutilated horror. A downcast head and dropped shoulders still projected fear.

  Katherine. In one hand, she held a candle on a holder, the flame barely casting any light in the dimness of the cell. In her other hand, she gripped the handle of a basket.

  “Who is this wretched creature?” Waleran demanded.

  Thomas spun, shoved his palm into Waleran’s chest and drove him backward into the filth.

  “Another word and you shall pay—,” Thomas began in a low, tight voice.

  William stepped between them. “Thomas …”

  Thomas sucked air between gritted teeth to calm himself as Waleran scrabbled backward into his corner.

  “Please do not hurt him,” Katherine said clearly. “To be called ‘wretched creature’ is an insult only if I choose to believe it.”

  Thomas turned to her. She had set down her basket and candle holder and stood waiting, hands behind her back. She was only slightly shorter than he. Her voice, still muffled by the swathed bandages, had a low sweetness.