[Sir Richard Straccan 02] - Pendragon Banner

by Sylvian Hamilton

  ‘Eh? Oh, that. The crusader’s sword. Thibaut brought it in.’

  She touched the leather scabbard gingerly, as if it might burn, and snatched her fingers away with a cry as if it had.

  ‘You told me Straccan was dead!’

  ‘What?’ Lord William stopped pacing. ‘Straccan? He is.’

  ‘Did you see him dead, when you went back there? Did you fetch up his body to be sure of him?’

  ‘There was no need. The tower fell in and buried him. There’s no way he could’ve got out.’ Was there? Sudden doubt tightened his throat uncomfortably. He’d gone back to the abandoned hermitage next day, to take the tower apart stone by stone if he must and rake the islet from one end to the other, and found no more than a pile of rubble. A search of the rest of that smelly mud hole yielded nothing but broken walls and an empty birdcage.

  ‘It’s his sword,’ Julitta said. She ran her fingers along the scabbard and took hold of the hilt, closing her eyes the better to see the images that crowded upon her inner sight. She saw him clearly — Richard Straccan, that cursed bone-pedlar — the cause of all her misfortunes: her husband’s death, the failure of their plot to kill the king and her own exile. Hatred scalded her belly like acid.

  ‘He was man alive when your squire took this from him. I see it.’ She frowned, eyes closed. ‘Straccan, and another with him, a servant. Their horses were drinking, your men took them by surprise.’

  ‘Merde!’ Breos picked up a footstool and hurled it at the door. ‘He had it! He knew where it was all the time and he got away with it!’ The stool struck the door frame and a leg fell off. The door was flung open and Thibaut rushed in, sword drawn, ready for anything that threatened his lord.

  ‘The man who had this sword, was he marked?’ Breos touched his own scabbed cheek where Wace’s mark scorched afresh.

  Seeing no danger in the room Thibaut lowered his blade and thought back to the encounter at the ford. ‘His face yes, and here,’ tapping the side of his nose.

  ‘God’s name, God’s mother, it was him! I should have cut his throat!’ Breos looked around for something, anything, to destroy, and stabbed the table furiously with his dagger.

  Julitta touched Thibaut’s sleeve and the squire jumped as if scalded. ‘What else did you take from him?’

  ‘The horses and everything on them,’ Thibaut avoided her eyes, addressing his lord instead, ‘bedrolls, provisions, weapons, baggage. I set a guard over it when the others left. Nothing’s been touched yet.’

  ‘Bring it all here,’ Julitta snapped. ‘My lord, Straccan had it with him. He had the Banner!’

  Breos slammed his dagger back in its sheath. ‘Do as she says,’ he ordered his squire. ‘All of it, every last scrip and bundle! If anything’s missing I’ll have you whipped. Move, damn you!’

  At the door, feeling a sudden chill at his nape, Thibaut glanced back. Lord William’s witch had taken a glassy egg-shaped stone from the case at her girdle and was gazing into it. The hairs rose at the back of his neck and he shivered.

  ‘I should have killed him,’ Breos said again.

  ‘You may yet,’ Thibaut heard her say with a throaty laugh. You asked for a token of faith, my lord. You have it! Straccan’s on his way here.’

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Lord William’s chamber reeked of stale smoke and incense. Thibaut set the hot-water jug down and flung back the shutters to let in the clean morning air. What had they been doing in here all night, his lord and the witch, after they found the Banner?

  After all their searching for it, clear across Wales, over the Severn and back again, the Banner had come to Lord William’s hands as if by magic. It had been there among the jumble of weapons, boxes, barrels and bales, saddlebags and bundles, the miscellaneous property of many luckless travellers: an old satchel, shabby and stained.

  They came to it late, after turning over and pawing through dozens of bags and bundles, flinging their contents aside. It was Thibaut who took up the satchel, but before he could open it Julitta had snatched it from him with a triumphant cry. He had the briefest glimpse as she unrolled it of the dragon’s gaping jaws and eyes like rubies — as perhaps they were — before his lord thrust him roughly out of the chamber, locking himself in with his witch. Thibaut had wrapped himself in a blanket on his pallet in the hall, but he hadn’t slept.

  Around midnight the witch went out, wrapped in her mantle, stepping silently across the hall lest she wake the sleeping men. She returned soon after, and Thibaut heard the key turn again. After that there were bumps and thuds and a thin mewing like that of a kitten or some other small animal. Thibaut heard the witch chanting what sounded like prayers and his lord giving the responses, but the language wasn’t Latin. A haze of smoke seeped under the door, and the stink of burning. And there were other sounds, but perhaps he had briefly slept and only dreamed them.

  She had gone yawning to her own chamber before dawn. The usual racket of his men getting up hadn’t woken Lord William. He was still fully clad, asleep at the table with his arms folded over the satchel that held the Banner.

  ‘My lord.’

  Lord William opened bloodshot eyes and waited until the two wavering images of his squire had merged into one. ‘What?’

  ‘It is morning, my lord. It is late.’

  ‘Eh?’ Intelligence struggled through the fumes of drugged wine and smoke and sought to make connections. ‘Jesus! Get me water to wash. Here,’ he held out the satchel, ‘lock this in the chest and give me the key.’

  Thibaut was shocked at his lord’s appearance. With grizzled stubble, matted hair and ravaged face, he looked like a church door beggar.

  ‘My lord, are you ill?’

  ‘Ill? No. Too much wine! Doesn’t help. He’s got my wife, you know. The king. He’s got her in chains.’

  ‘I know, my lord. I’m sorry.’

  ‘The devil you are.’ Breos knuckled his eyes, then stared at his hands, turning them over and spreading the fingers.

  ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No!’ Breos put his hands behind his back like a child hiding something. For a moment Thibaut thought he looked desperately afraid.

  When his lord had gone out, alone — to the old shrine, he said, the little cell perched on a rock ledge where Saint Nonna had hidden from her cruel father and borne her holy son — Thibaut started setting the small chamber to rights. All the rejected flotsam from last night’s search he carried into the hall, where the sergeants fell upon it, each grabbing what he fancied as his share.

  Thibaut found the dented cup on the floor and rinsed it, wondering what Lord William had been drinking for the sticky dregs had a queer unpleasant smell. The candles had burned right down and he scraped the holders clean of wax. That, too, was strange: grey, greasy, and ill-smelling.

  The brazier was quite cold. He picked it up to empty ash and cinders outside and stopped, for a moment unsure, and then all too sure of what lay half hidden in the curls of ash. Bones. Little delicate charred bones, broken and crushed.

  His unwilling mind rejected what his eyes recognised. They were the bones of some small animal, of course; what else?

  It was a steep climb to the shrine. Lord William was wet with sweat and hard out of breath by the time he reached it. A woven wicker shelter had been built over the ledge where the saint had dwelt and inside it was a carved wooden figure, life-size, that might have been Nonna and her infant son, or equally the Blessed Virgin and hers.

  A wood fire burned there, never allowed to go out; outside the shrine stood a great stack of firewood. No one climbed the path without an armful of wood. Perhaps the fact that Lord William had brought no wood accounted for the saint’s faintly reproachful expression. There was neither bench nor stool. Pilgrims did not climb all this way to sit in comfort; they came to implore or give thanks, and they did it humbly, standing, kneeling or lying face down on the bare rock floor. Some even mortified their sinful flesh further by putting pebbles in their shoes before trudging up t
he path; a barrel-full stood at the foot of the path for those who chose that penance and there was a great heap in the shrine itself, left there by petitioners.

  From up here Lord William could see all the valley. Its beauty did not move him; beauty never had. There was some activity at the gate, tents struck, men riding away — had the siege been lifted? No, some other company was setting up camp. Fat Oliver had been relieved. A nuisance, but the new commander would probably be just as accommodating.

  What shall I do?

  Who was he asking? Who heard? The God he had bribed and bargained with all his life, or the one Julitta called Lord of this World? How could Satan be more powerful than the God who had cast him out of heaven?

  The memory of last night swilled nauseatingly around his mind. He wasn’t squeamish, but the way that monster, whatever it was, that thing had fed and glutted, the gross sounds, the livid eyes… On the way up here he’d tried to believe that it was all a nightmare but there had been blood under his fingernails this morning.

  God, what have I done? I didn’t mean it! I was mad!

  Mad. Of course! He turned the word over in his mind and felt a vast sense of relief. He had been mad, and the mad were not held accountable for their actions. Fear for Mahaut and his son had unseated his reason, and in his madness that witch had sought to trap his soul with her promises to free his wife and son.

  I was bewitched!

  Bewitched, ensorcelled, led astray like Adam.

  The woman tempted me.

  She had lied and deceived him. It was not her dark lord who’d brought the Banner to him. That was God’s doing.

  And God had answered him! He knew what to do now. He didn’t need the Bretons, that misbegotten pack of enchanters and warlocks, and he didn’t need the witch. He would get rid of her and her hellish familiar, and offer the Banner to John for the release of his wife and son. The king would not refuse. It was God’s will.

  Leaning from the window he gave an exultant shout which echoed back from the opposite cliff, and rang again and again, diminishing until it died away. ‘Deus vult/’

  But the old leper had been right. His soul was an abomination, but God would forgive him. Whatever the cost — and it would be high — he would make his peace with God. Do penance, go to Rome wearing a sack, barefoot if he had to, and if the Pope ordered him on crusade to purge his sin, well, he’d done it before, he could do it again.

  And the leper… There must be no risk that he might tell his tale to anyone else.

  ‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Oliver le Gros had told Sulien. ‘If you tell me each morning that the bugger’s still in there, I’ll believe you.’ A week had passed, seven of Lord William’s forty days, and the bugger was still in there.

  Roger de Lacy had left his fat son-in-law in command and hurried back to his domain in case anyone was making hay in the sunshine of his absence. The siege of Cwm Cuddfan had settled down at the entrance to the valley. It was the only way out. The cliff sides were too high, too steep and far too unstable to climb, so if Breos made a break for it he must come this way. They couldn’t go in and drag him out, for by virtue of the shrine the whole valley was Sanctuary, and by the laws of Sanctuary a fugitive had forty days’ grace during which not even the king’s men might enter. But if after forty days he had not yielded, they would come in after him.

  Meanwhile the host and its plump commander were very much at ease. It was like a holiday, for no one shot at them and the besieged obligingly sold the besiegers fresh supplies — eggs, milk, meat and vegetables — every day, and for a price even undertook to do their laundry.

  Pilgrims and the sick were let in as usual, but the arrival of one of the king’s captains with a dozen men-at-arms and a handful of civilians in tow brought Oliver himself from his noon meal to see what they wanted. Von Koln took a letter from his pouch and offered it ‘in the king’s name’.

  Oliver looked angrily at the royal seal, and grew angrier on learning he was to be relieved of this comfortable sinecure and, worse still, of the backhanders William de Breos had been paying to send and receive letters.

  ‘So you’re Straccan,’ he said nastily. ‘Heard of you. Traffic in old bones, don’t you? Pah!’ With that he swung on his heel, bawling, ‘Break camp!’ and marched back to his tent, resentment showing in every line of his body, a resentment presently echoed profanely by his men, done out of their cushy billet.

  Bruno’s company set up their camp as a sick man, veiled and supported by his pretty, tearful young wife and with two menservants fussing around him, passed almost unnoticed through the gate into the valley. Just another leper, poor sod.

  Cwm Cuddfan was a deep gorge, a cul-de-sac, narrow at the entrance, broad in the middle where the lake and the lepers’ island lay, narrowing again at the blind end where a cataract cascaded down the rock face. The valley bottom was heavily wooded and the hospital buildings stood in small clearings amid the trees.

  The new patient and his wife sat down to wait while the servants arranged for their master’s admittance and treatment.

  With some hundred or so people living and working in the valley, not counting patients and pilgrims who frequently brought their families as well, there were bound to be accidents and injuries, and the bench where Straccan and Alis waited offered a good view of the open-sided tent where Sulien’s assistants dealt with casualties. Patients lay or sat, groaning or stoically silent according to temperament, while the attendants — Alis was surprised to see that some were women — dealt with their injuries.

  Today there were two men slashed or pierced with daggers, a woman who’d been stabbed with a pack-needle in an argument with a friend, a man bitten by a dog, another bitten by his wife and one of the hospital’s cooks, splashed with boiling fat, together with his apprentice — the splasher — whose jaw he’d broken by way of return.

  ‘The guest house is rather full, I’m afraid,’ said the almoner when Bane and Havloc found him. ‘Your lot’ll have to double up in the beds, ladies belowstairs, men above. If your master’s not leprous he can go in the men’s hall, but it’s two to a bed in there just now as well.’

  ‘My master wants to see Sulien,’ Bane said.

  ‘Everyone wants to see Sulien. I’ll tell him. You’ll have a long wait.’

  It was late afternoon when they were taken at last to Sulien’s hut. As Straccan’s shadow fell across his table Sulien — a young man, barely thirty, with untidy curls and friendly eyes — looked up from his writing. Beside his feet in a basket a battered-looking cat curled protectively around a single ginger kitten. Sulien laid down his stylus, took a jug and dish from the shelf behind him and poured milk, which he set beside the basket. The cat rose stiffly and began to lap.

  ‘I fished her out of the river, in a sack,’ Sulien said, as if carrying on a conversation. ‘There’s just the one kitling left now.’ He picked up the tubby ginger mite, which opened a bright pink mouth and emitted a surprisingly loud mew. The mother sprang onto the table, pawing anxiously upwards.

  ‘There, puss, forgive me.’ Sulien set the kitten down again. ‘Saint Gregory had a cat, you know,’ he went on, ‘in his retirement. Jacobus Diaconus wrote that the saint would carry his cat in the bosom of his robe, petting it, his sole companion. Please, sit down. I’m sorry you’ve had such a long wait. If you will lay aside your veil, Master’ — glancing at his notes — ‘Richard of Nottingham?’ He smiled reassuringly at Alis. ‘Don’t worry, mistress. I shan’t hurt your husband but I must examine him. There are other conditions that may be mistaken for leprosy. We must be sure.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ Straccan said, unwinding the stained fabric from his head and neck to reveal a hideously pustulant countenance. ‘This is just paint and glue; it’ll wash off. Forgive the deception, Sulien. I’m Richard Straccan; this will explain why I’m here.’ He handed Sulien the letter Bruno von Koln had shown Oliver le Gros.

  Sulien read it. He looked at Straccan unbelievingly and read it agai
n. ‘The Pendragon Banner… You found it? It’s real?’

  ‘I found it, yes, and William de Breos stole it. The king has commanded me to get it back.’

  ‘But you’ve seen it,’ Sulien said excitedly. You’ve held it in your hands! How in God’s name did you find it? Oh, if only Lady Hallgerd could know!’

  He sat entranced as Straccan told him from the beginning when the king had sent for him to the bloody debacle on the saint’s island and the ambush at the ford.

  ‘God’s mercy, is it true? Lord William has it here?’

  ‘It came here, I’m sure of that.’

  ‘How I wish I could see it!’

  ‘You shall, if I get it back.’

  Sulien’s face clouded. ‘How… Sir Richard, this is Sanctuary; you mustn’t challenge him here. William de Breos has been our good lord.’

  ‘Not everyone’s been so lucky. I followed his bloody track here from Maeselyn,’ said Straccan grimly, ‘and Llantali, and Tresaint. And before that,’ he added, anger rising and hard held in check, ‘from the convent of the Penitent Sisters where Mother Heloise died, and Saint Winnoc’s island, where your good lord murdered Robert Wace. And that’s just a small part of his handiwork. Don’t tell me you’ve heard nothing of this!’

  Sulien’s face was taut with grief. ‘No matter what he has done, you can’t take him from here until his forty days are done.’

  ‘I don’t intend to.’ Nor did he. He intended to challenge and kill him, and get the Banner back, God alone knew how.

  ‘This letter commands me to give you any help you need,’ Sulien said. ‘What shall I do?’

  ‘Where is he housed, and how many men has he got?’

  ‘They’ve commandeered one of the hall-houses, next to the stable. Some of his men have deserted and some he’s dismissed but he has — let me see — two knights of his own household, five sergeants and his squire.’

  We need a hut to ourselves.’ Sulien nodded. ‘And I want a gown such as your lepers wear, so that I can scout around without anyone else knowing I’m here.’