Why did that keep coming back to him?
A memory stirred, took shape. Himself as a small boy, his nurse teasing him, holding something, a toy or an orange, out of his reach.
‘Give it to me!’
‘Now then, Master Richard, what’s the magic word?’
Oh God! Oh Jesus! The magic word!
Too late!
His sudden short, bitter laugh — for what use was the knowledge now? — nearly made him fall, but somehow he clung on and kept going. He closed his eyes and thrust again with both feet, scraping his flayed back another inch or two up the wall. His legs were cramping.
It was no good; he wasn’t going to make it. His back was slippery with blood, his shoulder muscles on fire. Another inch. Another. It was getting smoky.
Straccan coughed and opened his eyes — he didn’t remember closing them — and to his surprise the top was very near, four or five feet, no more. But he could gain no more height and he was light-headed now for he could hear voices again. This time they were calling his name.
Bracing his back and splaying his palms against the wall, ramming his feet against the other side, he kept himself from falling. The muscles of his legs quivered and burned like hot wires inside his flesh. Blood from his back had soaked his breeches.
I’m not going to fall, Tm not going to die, and when I catch up with that whoreson Breos I’ll poke his eyes out with a short stick!
‘Straccan!’
‘Sir Richard!’
He was still hearing voices. It would be heavenly choirs next. Any minute now.
Into Thy hands, Lord God…
‘Sir Richard!’
‘God’s lights, what’s the use? He’s dead, he must be. We might as well push off.’
‘No! He’s not among the bodies. He’s alive, he must be here somewhere!’
Havloc? That was Havloc’s voice, loud and desperate. And the other voice had been Maurice de Lacy’s.
Bastard! Anything to welsh on a debt…
‘Here!’ But instead of a shout only a feeble croak came from his throat. He tried licking his dry lips but his tongue was dry as well. He sank his teeth into his split lip, moistened his mouth with blood and tried again.
‘Havloc! Havloc, here! The well!’
‘Come on, man, we’re wasting time. Let’s collect the corpses and go.’ De Lacy’s voice was further away now.
They hadn’t heard him! They were leaving!
‘Havloc!’ The smoke was thick now and made him cough; he felt himself slipping and knew he had reached the end of his strength.
There was a noise overhead and a great burst of light as the cover was dragged off. ‘Wait! Here! In the well!’
Convulsively Straccan braced his body once more and looked up to see the black shapes of heads and shoulders no more than a foot or two above him.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chilled to the bone, Straccan opened his eyes and saw the faces of Havloc and the river warden bending over him. Behind them the stone walls of the hermit’s tower stood striped with soot and wreathed in smoke. He shivered.
‘What…’ he began huskily, and then again, louder, ‘what happened?’
‘You fainted,’ said de Lacy. ‘We got you out. You folded up on us. No wonder!’
Havloc slipped an arm round Straccan’s shoulders to help him sit up and the warden peered at his damaged face.
‘Nasty! They’ve spoiled your beauty for you, I’m afraid. How you got up that sodding well I’ll never know! God’s feet, I’d’ve bet a hundred marks it couldn’t be done!’
Straccan looked around. The mast and yard of the warden’s ship swayed gently, moored beyond the bank, and de Lacy’s men were going methodically about the business of stripping the raiders’ bodies.
‘The hermit…’
‘Over there.’ De Lacy pointed. ‘Amazing thing! Tough old bird.’
‘He’s alive?
‘Don’t ask me how!’
Getting to his feet, wondering which bit of him hurt the most, dizzy and disoriented and with the nagging feeling that there was something he should remember but couldn’t, Straccan saw the saint, a bloody scarecrow tottering from corpse to corpse, falling on his knees beside each one, tears pouring down his face.
‘What’s he doing?’
‘Praying for the bastards.’ The saint’s cracked voice rose and fell in passionate pleading for God to spare the souls of these wretches. ‘Don’t bother, I told him,’ muttered de Lacy, ‘but he just told me to sod off.’
Straccan counted six bodies, five he had accounted for and the one-eared outlaw that Breos had slain himself.
‘Where’s Wace?’
The warden looked grim. ‘We carried him over there, out of the wind.’ He waved a hand towards the low broken wall where the saint had freed the cormorant.
‘Dead?’
‘Not yet. Won’t last long though, belly wound. No chance. I’ll send word to the king.’
Straccan stumbled over to Wace. The clerk was laid out as if dead already, neat and straight and covered with the lord warden’s own splendid scarlet cloak, his body mounding it no more than a child’s. His face was parchment-pale, eyes sunk in brownish hollows.
Straccan knelt beside him. ‘Master Wace… Robert.’ The moth-wing eyelids fluttered open, the pallid lips moved.
‘Sorry…’
‘Christ, man, what for?’
‘Didn’t… kill him.’
‘You had a bloody good try! He’ll carry your mark.’
To his astonishment Wace’s lips twitched in a weak smile. ‘Not bad… for a… pettifogging clerk.’
Under the cloak his hand moved. Straccan took it, damp and cold as a fish, and clasped it between his own. ‘It was a brave thing.’
‘In his grace’s service one must… be prepared for anything. A pity…’
‘What?’
‘We didn’t find… the Banner.’
The Banner! Now he remembered! Gently Straccan laid the clerk’s hand down and tucked the cloak over it again. ‘Hold on, Robert,’ he said. ‘I’ll be back.’
The hermit was still kneeling by the dead but either his frenzied prayers were finished or he was waiting for his second wind. Straccan squatted stiffly at his side until the mad faded eyes swivelled to focus upon him.
‘You still here?’
‘As you see.’
The saint cackled suddenly. ‘Me too! In spite of that whore’s get! What was all this dying for, eh? What did he want? Tell me that!’
‘The same thing I came for: the lady Ragnhild’s banner.’
A shifty look crossed the old man’s face. ‘I told you, my memory’s poor.’
‘I’ve a word that may remind it,’ Straccan said. The saint was waiting, watching him with a curious intentness. He hesitated, then plunged. ‘Guinevere.’
In the silence that followed he could hear gulls crying overhead, the suck and slap of the river on the far side of the bank, and his own heart thumping.
‘Help me up, then,’ said the saint.
Straccan put his arm round the old man’s waist and lifted him — withered and light as a bundle of sticks — to his feet. Fresh blood gouted from the flayed patches on his meagre slat-ribbed chest, where Brun’s knife had started work, but he ignored it.
‘Ten years,’ he said disgustedly. You took your time! Is Lady Ragnhild well?’
‘She died.’
The saint crossed himself, mumbled a prayer and set off briskly towards the mossy wall where Wace lay. What was he doing now? Did he mean to give the dying man the last rites? No. He stepped straight over him to the empty cage, opened it, slid aside a panel at the back and took out a long flat leather satchel.
‘There,’ he said ungraciously, pushing it into Straccan’s hands. ‘Take it and clear off.’
Without knowing it, Straccan had been holding his breath. Now he let it out. ‘Do you know what it is?’
‘No.’
‘You never looked?’
/> ‘No.’ And without another word the old man returned to the dead, signing each body with the cross as the warden’s men began carrying them, one by one, to the ship.
The leather was salt-caked, dry and cracked, and its brittle ties crumbled as Straccan touched them. Inside was a softish roll wrapped in oilskin tied round with thongs. These too were dry and stiff, and he had to wet them with spit and work them with his fingers before he could undo the knots.
He looked around. No one was watching. De Lacy and his men were on the far side of the bank, Havloc with them; he could hear them grumbling as they dumped the bodies on the ship.
Carefully he slid the oilskin wrappings off.
The pennant was of stiff heavy sendal, once white but soiled and darkened with age. His hands shook as he unrolled it.
The dragon’s head blazed up at him, vivid as new-shed blood, its eyes stitched with garnets, its flaming mane and lolling tongue with gold thread, and the terrible jaws set with slips of ivory for teeth. The doubled silk had been slashed to show, stitched between the layers, another fabric, finely woven linen, brown with age and darkly stained.
Stained, possibly, with blood. Allegedly, with the blood of Christ.
His hammering heart shook his whole body as he knelt beside Wace. The flesh of the little clerk’s face had collapsed to show the skull beneath. He was still breathing but the end could not be long. Straccan touched his cheek gently. ‘Robert, look. We have it: the Pendragon Banner.’
The sunken eyes opened. Straccan held the half-opened pennant up so that the dying man could see it, and then touched the stained cloth gently to the clerk’s lips. Almost soundlessly, Wace whispered, ‘Is it in truth?’
Looking closely at the goldwork, Straccan saw among the metallic threads some strands that were indeed human hair of a rare deep golden shade.
‘Yes, it is. See!’
‘Guinevere!’ A smile of childlike wonder transfigured the clerk’s face. ‘It was true… after all.’
There was a tremendous rumbling noise. Straccan turned. Stones were falling from the wall of the tower. As he stared the whole thing collapsed, belching up a great cloud of dust and smoke.
Chapter Forty
The new leper-master visited each of his charges every day. With himself and Illtud, who had come with him from Ludlow, there were thirteen lepers at Cwm Cuddfan that summer: seven other men and four women. No children, thank God.
Here in the Hidden Valley they had an island to themselves, Ynys Gwydion, lying like a green gem in the lake called Llyn Gwydion. The lake, by some freak of chemistry, was an astonishing blue, and from the cliffs above the valley the jade island in its lapis setting was fair to see.
Sometimes, followed by Illtud who had appointed himself his guardian, Garnier climbed the difficult path to the shrine of Saint Nonna to pray, think and gaze upon the beauty below, marvelling that God should trouble to create such perfection of shape and colour and wondering if He, too, eyed it from far above and took pleasure in it. The shrine was a tiny shelter perched on a ledge of rock where the saint had fled from her father’s wrath. A fire was kept burning, said never to have gone out since the saint dwelt there. It was a daily task to carry up the wood, eagerly undertaken even squabbled over by penitents and pilgrims.
From this window-hole the saint had seen the sun rise as Garnier did now. From this perilous place she had threatened to leap to her death after her son was born, unless her furious father gave up his intention of dragging her back to another marriage, when she — now widowed — wished only to answer God’s call and become a nun.
From here Garnier could contemplate his new domain in its entirety, a miniature landscape spread beneath him. Most leper hospices housed the occupants in dormitories, men and women strictly segregated and often overseen with harshness, for was not leprosy God’s punishment for hidden sin? But on Ynys Gwydion the two married pairs had huts to themselves, the two unmarried women shared a hut and four of the single men shared another. The fifth, the silent man whose name in the register was Geoffrey, dwelt apart and alone.
He had always kept to himself; no one had ever heard him speak and now, in the last stages of the disease, he was too ill to leave his bed. Gamier always left the Silent Man until last so that if he should choose to speak, to make his confession, to ask for something or just to complain about the food, the weather or his fate, the master would have the rest of the day to listen. But the Silent Man never spoke. Perhaps he no longer could. No one knew anything about him, Sulien no more than the rest.
‘Is he dumb?’ Gamier had asked soon after his arrival.
‘I don’t know,’ Sulien said. ‘I talk to him but he says nothing. He can write, though. He sends me notes from time to time, writ in courtly French.’
‘Does he?’ Gamier was intrigued. What about?’
‘Requests. More charcoal, another blanket; once he asked for perfume.’
‘Perfume!’
‘He said he wanted to smell something other than death.’
‘How old is he?’
‘He was quite young when he came here. He can’t be more than twenty-five now.’
He’d been there seven years, the first leper to come to the valley; a Breos protege, brought by Breos retainers and with Breos silver paying for his keep and extra comforts.
Lord William was Cwm Cuddfan’s founder and patron. ‘A young lad of my household,’ he had said, and his orders were clear: Geoffrey was to have what food he fancied, not just the hospital ration; he must have fuel for his fire and not need to share any other man’s fire; and instead of the coarse wadmal the others wore, fine linen and good woollen cloth were provided for him.
He had a silver cup and plate, a fur coverlid, a cloak lined with otter skins, fur-lined slippers, even books! In life he must have been a rich young man with family, friends, a sweetheart or even a wife, yet no one came to see him. Once a year a Breos clerk came to enquire if he still lived and hand over a purse of silver for his needs. There was far more money than the Silent Man could ever use and Sulien said so. No matter, he was told. Do as you please with it so long as he lacks nothing.
The Silent Man must be one of the numerous Breos tribe, shut away when his disease became apparent. That was the usual thing. A leper, an unmistakeable sign of God’s displeasure, was an embarrassment to his kin. This Breos cast-off was the fount and origin of Lord William’s patronage.
The hospital here was unique in being run not by any religious order but by a physician, Sulien. At first no more than a wattle and daub hut, it had grown in the eight years since he had somehow talked Lord William de Breos into giving him the valley. Men and women were now nursed separately in two large airy halls, each with twelve beds and capable of holding two dozen patients at two to a bed; three, if push came to shove. In addition to the sick halls there were one-room cotts where patients could be cared for by their families if they wished, with the help of Sulien’s students. For the well-born there were two modest hall-houses where they and their own household servants could stay as long as necessary.
The students, men and women both, came from all parts of the kingdom to study the healing arts here, where foundlings were cared for, lepers made welcome, the sick and injured found help and the bereaved were comforted.
And now, without Lord William’s money, without a wealthy patron, without a miracle, this refuge in the Hidden Valley would be no more.
Chapter Forty-One
Two dusty figures, considerably the worse for wear, limped painfully across the outer bailey of Ludlow castle to the gatehouse of the keep. Challenged, the taller and older of the two croaked his name from a dust-dry throat and waited for the guard to step aside.
Looking him up and down, the man laughed. ‘Pull the other one,’ he said. ‘Get out of here!’
The younger man moved forward angrily, but the other held him back and addressed the guard again. ‘I am Straccan,’ he said, ‘and if you don’t want to cool your heels in your own guardhouse yo
u’ll either let me in or send to tell Lord Engelard I’m here!’ With a disbelieving sneer the man-at-arms called to a passing servant. ‘Find the steward and tell him there’s a fellow here wants to see the constable. Says his name’s Straccan.’
Straccan leaned back against the wall and looked despondently at his boots. He wasn’t used to walking and these boots had never been meant for it. The sole of one was hanging off; he had tied it in place with the thong that once laced his shirt. The other boot was so worn and down at heel that even a beggar would have rejected it. Havloc’s shoes had suffered worse and been abandoned five miles short of Ludlow.
Aratcha! The stone arch of the gatehouse rang with the echo. ‘My lord,’ said Straccan. He was surprised that the constable should appear in person but Cigony had obviously just come from his beloved hawks; there was a small barred feather in his hair and birdshit on his boots. He loosed another violent sneeze, wiped his eyes and stared at Straccan.
‘God’s teeth, it is you,’ he said. ‘What happened? Where are your horses?’
‘We were set upon,’ said Straccan, following him into the damp dim coolness of the keep, with Havloc trailing in their wake.
‘Outlaws, was it?’ The constable led the way to the stairs.
‘Breos’s men. A foraging party in the forest, ten miles back. They took everything,’ he said bitterly. He’d never forgive himself for that.
Cigony stopped and looked back at him in some surprise. ‘Why didn’t they kill you?’
Straccan shrugged. ‘Luck, I suppose.’ Luck! That was a joke. His luck had played Judas. Nevertheless he was alive; he could do something about it. ‘Is my man Bane here?’
‘I’ve not seen him.’
As they crossed the hall, followed by curious stares, nudges and whispered comments, Alis came running down the stairs and flung herself into Havloc’s arms. The two stood in a tight embrace, oblivious to all else, as Straccan followed Cigony up to the constable’s private room.
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