[Sir Richard Straccan 02] - Pendragon Banner

by Sylvian Hamilton

  ‘The leper-master must be told,’ Sulien said.

  Why?’

  ‘He will hardly fail to notice the addition to his flock.’

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  From the coast at Fishguard on the morning of Saint Ninian’s day, a watchman saw the sail of the royal galley, Esnecca, taudy pregnant with the wind from the west and the royal standard flying at the mast, and blew his horn to alert everyone to the imminent arrival of the king.

  John had good reason to be pleased. Even his father, great Henry fitzEmpress, had never managed to bring Ireland to heel as he had; and to crown his satisfaction Mahaut de Breos was his prisoner, together with her eldest son, below deck. Standing in the prow with the bishop of Winchester, watching the Welsh coast getting clearer and nearer, John whistled a cheerful tune — to the dismay of the crew, who reckoned whistling might raise a contrary wind even now, at the very last moment.

  The galley’s captain, acutely conscious of the crew’s reproachful looks and wholly sharing their anxiety, tactfully suggested that king and bishop might enjoy a cup of good Anjou wine in the deck-cabin to toast their swift and easy passage. In high good humour, John agreed, and the dangerous whistling stopped: none too soon, the captain reckoned. Those on board could now see the crowd gathered at the quayside, and smoke rising from kitchen fires.

  John drank and set down his cup. Ireland had been very rewarding, very submissive, very green, but it was good to get home. There were pleasures in store. The Irish ladies had been more than welcoming and John was not the man to disappoint them, but he was fond of his wife and eager to see his young son. But before he was reunited with them at Windsor, he would have the satisfaction of seeing William de Breos on his knees, pleading for his wife’s freedom and offering in exchange the enormous amount of plunder he’d gathered during the past few weeks.

  John smiled. That would really come in handy! He’d need every penny for the show of force necessary to put the wind up those barons and lords who had grown complacent in his absence, up to all their old tricks, hatching plots and making trouble. The king laughed.

  ‘I’ll teach ’em,’ he said.

  Bishop Peter des Roches looked puzzled. ‘Sire?’

  ‘My lords temporal,’ said John, his mouth twisting as though the good wine tasted sour. ‘They’ll have got cocky while I’ve been away. What other king was ever cursed with such subjects?’

  ‘Indeed, my lord,’ agreed the bishop. He’d been miserably seasick all the way across and wasn’t really thinking, which was never safe with John. ‘You are afflicted even as Job was.’

  ‘Don’t mention Job to me. He only had boils; I’ve got barons.’ John looked slyly at des Roches. ‘Worried, Peter? Do you see my throne crumbling? Do you?' His voice cracked like a whip and the bishop jumped. ‘The campaign was a great success and we’re almost home.’ He cocked his head as a wobbly‘Huzza!’ came from the shore. ‘Ah, they’re cheering! How nice! Or is that the sound of my realm groaning under the papal fist? Be honest, Peter. Do my people hate me?'

  Des Roches blinked. The king’s moods changed so suddenly, and he really didn’t feel well at all. ‘Urn, no, my lord king,’ he said, ‘they don’t.’

  ‘They don’t, do they?’ said the king smugly. ‘That’s because they hate foreigners and foreign meddling and Romish interference more than anything else.’ He put a companionable arm round the bishop’s shoulders, which didn’t reassure the prelate one bit.

  ‘That’s the secret, you see,’John confided. ‘They look on themselves, and me, as victims of a busy-fingered avaricious leech in a funny hat hundreds of miles away in Rome. What business is England — and my archbishop — of his? Shoving Rome’s nose up our arses! Determined to terrorise us until we give in! Well, I won’t and they won’t, and that’s what keeps em sweet, Peter.’

  He waved to the crowd, close enough now to see their faces. ‘My English,’ he said fondly. ‘They’re a funny lot. No one has ever understood em like I do. Father never did, God rest his soul, and brave brother Lionheart wouldn’t have pissed on England if it caught fire! But I understand them, they understand me, and they’re on my side!

  So they were, for the most part, the bishop thought: the common folk, the country gentry and especially townspeople, for John had been liberal in the matter of charters and privileges. The towns knew which side their bread was buttered and Rome never buttered it. But the common folk had neither silver nor levies, and most of the lords — who had — were not on the king’s side.

  A ragged cheer rose as the gangplank went down. The king snapped his fingers and a page darted into the cabin and came out again with a purse. John flung a handful of coins into the crowd, the sun gilding the silver pennies to a shower of gold as they spun. The cheering redoubled.

  A messenger in royal livery waited on the jetty with letters. A clerk seized them and trotted close behind the king, breaking seals and reading aloud. A name caught the king’s ear.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘From the constable at Ludlow, sire. He writes that Wace has been killed and that Straccan has returned without the Banner, saying he’d been robbed by Breos’s men.’

  The king looked hurt. ‘Straccan,’ he said. ‘Well, well. And there was a man I almost thought I could trust.

  Chapter Fifty

  With her thumb Osyth traced on Janiva’s brow and breast the runes of guard and warding, murmuring the spells that would draw power from the rock of the Edge, its trees and waterfalls, and from the new-waxing moon, to protect her.

  ‘Drink this; it’ll make it easier to leave your body,’ Osyth said. The drink smelled musty and tasted of rot. Janiva swallowed obediently and almost gagged on the thick lumpy brew, ‘You must keep it down!’ She managed to, though it was touch and go for a minute.

  During these past few days, waiting out the waning moon, they had talked for hours. ‘She’s a dark heart, that one,’ Osyth said when Janiva spoke of Julitta, of the kidnapping of Straccan’s daughter and the innocent child the sorcerer Rainard de Soulis had murdered to feed his demon. ‘Dark through and through. We’re born with power in our blood, in our bones, and it ain’t good nor bad; it’s what we do with it. She’ll fight you with fear and despair. She’ll use illusions to trick you and break your will. Don’t believe em. They’ll be lies.’

  The fire in the rock cleft blazed up higher than Janiva’s head. She took a deep breath, balled her hands into fists and walked into it.

  Flames were all around her, beneath her feet, licking her legs; her skin was lit by fire. For a moment she quailed and felt the heat, smelled her hair singeing… then she breathed out, stepped forward, trod the flames underfoot and stood among them. They were cool, whispering silkily over her skin. She was herself a being of flame, burning but unconsumed, her hair a torch, her breath fire, fingers blazing like candles. She stood a moment more, then parted the flames with her hands and passed unscathed to the cave behind the fire.

  The runes Osyth had marked felt cold on her skin, as if drawn with ice. The only sound was her breathing. Lit by the distant flickering fire, the cave was full of shifting shadows.

  These last days as the moon waned, her courage had waned with it. She knew fear. Julitta’s curse had so damaged and diminished her that she might not have the strength, even with Osyth’s help, to defeat her enemy. But now, the night of the new moon, fear had gone; she felt a fierce eagerness. Perhaps the drink had lent her courage.

  The two women had made and brought here a pallet of boughs and leaves: oak for courage and strength and rowan for protection against spellcraft. Lying down, Janiva slowed her breathing, aware of the pulse of her blood slowing too. The words of the Summoning still rang in her ears and seemed to echo from the walls of the cave, as if many voices repeated it, until the whole cave rang like the resonant aftertone of a bell.

  There was the scent of herbs — vervain for strength, woodruff for courage — and of wood-smoke from the fire which hid and guarded the entrance to this s
ecret, sacred place. Cranna ca mar, Osyth called it, the Womb of the Mother; the women’s place, this cave in the rock where supplicants of the Goddess in long years past had come to seek answers to their questions in dreams.

  How many, Janiva wondered, over how many hundreds of years? And although she was still awake, the grip of her body was loosening and her inner sight glimpsed them: many faces, one blurring into another; many women, young, old, grieving, joyous; numberless as the stars, clad in skins or in linen, wool, or silk. Here she must sleep and leave her body, to find her enemy in the world most folk remembered only dimly from dreams while Osyth tended the Mother’s fire, a beacon to guide her back if she should lose the way.

  The Summoning would draw Julitta from her sleeping body. ‘She won’t expect it,’ Osyth said. ‘Catch her nappin, you will. By now she reckons you’re destroyed, but you were stronger’n she thought.’

  ‘What if she won’t come?’

  ‘She’ll come,’ said Osyth. ‘She must'

  Asleep in Cwm Cuddfan Julitta moved restlessly, her hand groping under her pillow until it closed on the oval casket. Beneath their closed lids her eyes moved rapidly, flicking from side to side, and she muttered in her sleep. Under her hand the casket grew warm.

  No one answered Sulien’s knock and after a few moments he pushed the door open and called softly, ‘Sir Richard!’ He could see the pallets on the floor, each mounded by a sleeping body, but there were no snores, no sighs or murmurs. He nudged the nearest sleeper with his foot. No response. Puzzled, he stooped to shake the sleeper’s shoulder and found nothing under the blanket but rustling straw.

  The voice at his back made him jump. ‘Shouldn’t you be in bed?’ Sulien turned to see Straccan in the open doorway. ‘I might say the same for you, Sir Richard. Couldn’t you sleep? Where are your companions?’

  ‘It’s the best time to reconnoitre,’ Straccan said. ‘The new moon’s bright enough and there’s no cloud. We’ve been having a quiet look round while everyone else is in bed.’ At his low whistle two more figures Sulien recognised as his servants appeared behind him. ‘We were going to bed now, unless you have something else in mind.’

  ‘I do. Will you come with me, Sir Richard? It won’t take long, I promise, but you must come alone.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To the island. To Ynys Gwydion.’

  Straccan followed Sulien through a dense belt of willows, emerging at the lakeside, where three coracles lay upside down on the sand. The water was black in the moonlight and utterly still. Moon and stars were reflected in it, like the sky of some other world beneath the lake, where water elves might dwell.

  ‘Why are we going there?’ Straccan demanded.

  ‘There is something you must see, something you must know before you fight Lord William.’

  ‘I didn’t say I was going to fight him.’

  ‘But that is why you’re here.’

  Sulien flipped one of the boats over and got in, Straccan after him.

  ‘You’re right. If you’re trying to warn me off, don’t waste your breath, Sulien. I mean to challenge him.’

  ‘Even though this is Sanctuary? You know the consequences.’ Of course he did. To violate Sanctuary was sacrilege. By fighting, shedding blood in the holy precincts, he invited excommunication.

  ‘If this was God’s antechamber I would still challenge him,’ he said relentlessly. ‘Don’t try to stop me.’

  The craft had a most peculiar motion, Sulien seeming to stir the water rather than paddle, but it made its erratic way across the lake with admirable speed. As they neared the shore a light flared and Straccan saw a dark figure bulk out of the shadows, holding a lantern.

  Sulien beached the coracle, and the man with the lantern came closer. He wore the gown and hood of a leper. ‘Go with him,’ Sulien said. ‘I’ll wait here for you.’

  ‘God save you, Sir Richard.’

  Straccan stood still. Surely he knew that painful rasp, all that remained of a man’s voice?

  ‘Gamier? What are you doing here?’

  ‘I am master of the lepers on the island.’

  ‘I never thought to see you again.’

  ‘Nor I you,’ Gamier said. ‘But God, it seems, had other plans.’

  ‘Why did Sulien bring me here?’

  ‘Will you come with me? I have something to show you.’

  ‘Something to do with Breos?’

  ‘Come and see.’

  They passed a few huts with doors and windows fast shut against the dangers of night, elves and whatever else folk feared in this part of the country. The rise and fall of the ground now hid the lake and it was dark here, with trees crowding close. An owl ghosted into the branches and not far off a vixen yelped.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘We are here.’ It was another hut, somewhat larger than the others and set well apart from them. ‘You need not come in,’ the leper said. ‘You will see well enough from the door.’ Pushing open the door he went in.

  Straccan could see a bed and on it a body. Gamier held up the lantern. The corpse was small and thin, the uncovered face, framed in limp white hair, so horribly disfigured by the nodules of leprosy that it was impossible to say whether this was man or woman.

  ‘Look well,’ Gamier said.

  ‘Why? Who’s that?’

  Gamier came out and closed the door. ‘What do you know of Prince Arthur?’

  Surprised by this change of subject Straccan said, ‘The duke of Brittany? He’s dead.’

  ‘So all the world believes. He died at Rouen eight years ago, murdered by his wicked uncle the king, so they say.’

  The lake came into view again, and it was with relief that Straccan saw the coracle at the water’s edge and Sulien in it.

  ‘I’ve heard the tale,’ he said, wondering where this mystery was going and how much longer it would be getting there.

  ‘That’s what it is, a tale, a tragic story such as minstrels sing.’ The leper coughed rustily. ‘A convincing story, isn’t it? It must be; even the king believes it.’

  ‘What?’ said Straccan, who in common with the rest of Christendom thought that King John had killed the duke, and had no trouble believing it.

  ‘He has carried that blood-guilt all these years,’ Gamier said, ‘but it isn’t true, my friend. John didn’t kill Arthur.’

  ‘How do you know? And what’s it got to do with that old man… Was it a man?’

  They had reached the boat. ‘Have you told him?’ Sulien asked the leper.

  ‘Not all, not yet. If you’ll be patient a little longer, Sir Richard, I’ll tell you what happened, as the lord de Breos told it to me.’ With mounting disbelief Straccan listened as Gamier recounted the events at Rouen eight years before. ‘Breos deceived them both,’ the leper finished. ‘John thinks himself murderer and kin-slayer, and believes Breos got rid of the duke’s corpse so no one would be able to prove what everyone suspected. To Arthur, Breos was — at first — his saviour, who not only rescued him from his uncle’s drunken rage but spirited him out of prison and promised to make him king.’

  ‘I never thought Breos was that clever,’ said Straccan.

  ‘Nor he is. The plan was all his wife’s, the lady Mahaut.’

  ‘It would never have worked.’

  ‘No? Kings have been overthrown before, and many held Arthur’s to be the better right. And of course, if Breos made Arthur king—’

  ‘He’d be the mightiest lord in the realm,’ said Straccan, beginning to find this believable after all. ‘The power behind the throne.’

  ‘That’s not all,’ Gamier husked, coughing again, unused to so much talking. ‘With a Breos daughter married to the young King Arthur, a Breos son to the Princess Eleanor—’

  ‘A Breos dynasty, by God!’ He believed it altogether now, and it was frightening.

  ‘That was Lady Mahaut’s plan.’

  ‘But nothing came of it! Why didn’t Breos play his king?’

  ‘Don’t you u
nderstand?’ Sulien said. ‘You’ve just seen him.’

  ‘What? That was an old man!’

  ‘He was just fifteen when John took him prisoner at Mirebeau,’ Gamier said, ‘and only twenty-three when he died today. He has been hidden here for more than seven years.’

  ‘God forgive me,’ Sulien said. ‘I had no idea!’

  ‘Sir Richard, I have a charge for you, if you will undertake it,’ Gamier said.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘To take a letter to King John — Sulien will write it — and tell him what you have seen here.’

  ‘I saw a dead man. How do I know it’s Arthur?’

  Gamier took a purse from his pocket and upended it, spilling something small and bright into his gloved hand. A man’s ring.

  ‘Look.’ It lay in his palm, a great carved ruby set in gold. He held it close to the lantern. The design cut in the stone was the seal of Brittany.

  Straccan looked at the ring, and then back in the direction of the lonely hut with its dreadful secret. He crossed himself.

  Gamier put the ring back in the purse. ‘Lord William had no king to play.’

  ‘Ask someone else,’ Straccan said harshly. ‘I’m in trouble enough with the king.’

  ‘I believe God means this task for you. Why else would he bring us together again, here, now?’

  ‘Not for this! Choose another messenger.’

  ‘I trust you, Sir Richard. And you have the king’s ear.’

  Straccan laughed. ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

  ‘My brother said so, at Ludlow.’

  ‘Paulet? He was wrong.’

  ‘The king gave you a horse, he said.’

  ‘That was a whim! Kings have em. And since then I’ve “incurred his displeasure”, as they say.’

  ‘But you can approach him.’

  ‘Anyone can!’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Well, no.’ Straccan paused, that unarguable truth pushing past his resistance to sink home. ‘He’ll never believe it.’