[Sir Richard Straccan 02] - Pendragon Banner

by Sylvian Hamilton

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  The morning sun was hot, but the first frosts had already bitten Pouncey Edge and autumn promised a wealth of nuts and berries. Sitting idle for a few moments, lost in thought, her spindle in her lap, Janiva looked up with a smile when she heard Osyth’s footfalls.

  ‘Tobias the potter will be off on his rounds in a day or two,’ Osyth said. ‘Before the rains come. He’ll take a message for you to your knight, if you want.’

  Janiva shook her head. ‘No, it’s too late. I sent him away. He said he’d come back, but he didn’t.’ She had refused him then, how could she turn to him now? It would be shameful to creep to the shelter of his arms, the protection of his name, now that she was bereft of all else.

  ‘Ah well, if your cott and goats mattered so much to him,’ said Osyth, with her disconcerting habit of answering thoughts rather than words, ‘and if your pride matters so much to you…’

  ‘It’s not pride,’ said Janiva quickly.

  ‘Ain’t it?’ Osyth gazed into the cloudless distance. After a while she said, ‘You can always stay here, you know. I’ve a year or two left in me. Want to take my place?’

  Janiva let the spindle drop and twirl at the end of its woollen thread. ‘I don’t know, Osyth. I don’t know what to do.’

  Ask the Mother.’

  ‘How, when I don’t know what to ask?’

  ‘Put yourself in her hands,’ the anchoress said, ‘and trust her.’

  The shrine at Cwm Cuddfan had been rebuilt. A bright new shelter of woven willow boughs shielded the statue of Saint Nonn—from wind and rain, and once again the fire burned high above the valley.

  Gamier climbed to the shrine every day. The death of the Silent Man and all that followed would always trouble him, but now he had other matters on his mind. There was the tragic death of two of his flock, Meurig and David. They had been friends and — despite their affliction — young enough to laugh at times and young enough in both years and affliction to hope… . They all hoped, for the first few years.

  The two had disappeared about the time of the battle between Breos and Straccan; at least no one recalled seeing them after that. Meurig’s corpse, bruised, battered and stabbed with his own knife, had been found beside his beached coracle on the far side of the island, a rocky shore where no one ever landed. A few days later searchers with dogs found David, beaten to death with fists and a stone in a cave behind the cataract. The remains of a fire and fish bones showed the two men had spent some time there; the sandy floor was a palimpsest of their footprints and the traces of their fight.

  It seemed they had quarrelled and fought: Meurig had killed David and fled, only to die of his own injuries. Not unusual. Tempers flared easily and men, whole or leprous, frequently killed one another. A tragedy, but no mystery.

  Except for one thing: the single imprint of a bare foot among the many in the cave, a perfect foot, small and narrow. That they had fought over a woman, Gamier was sure, but whoever she was she had fled.

  The other matter was a mystery of a different kind. In the palm of his right hand, in the very spot where Straccan had placed the thread from the Pendragon Banner, he had felt for some time a sensation of warmth, a tingling thrill that this morning had spread to his thumb and three remaining fingers. He stripped off his mitten but kept the hand clenched and pressed to his chest, not daring to look. When at last he did, the shock ran through his whole body.

  In the centre of the palm was a patch of pink firm healthy skin, twice as big as a penny. Yesterday it had been only half that size.

  He was trembling from head to foot, stunned, afraid to believe what he saw But there it was. Tentatively he touched it with his other gloved hand, and he could feel it, could feel the coarse fabric and the pressure of his touch.

  ‘“Oh Lord my God, I cried unto thee and thou hast healed me. O Lord, thou hast brought up my soul from the grave. Thou hast turned for me my mourning into dancing, thou hast put off my sackcloth, and girded me with gladness…”’ The words of the psalm echoed back from the other side of the valley, sending a flock of birds soaring and wheeling above his head.

  ‘Master Sulien.’

  It was the German captain who had brought Straccan to the valley at summer’s end. Sulien frowned. What could one of the king’s captains want with him? The man carried a document case. Sulien’s heart sank; it must be the order to leave the valley.

  ‘I am to give you this.’ Bruno opened the case and handed Sulien a letter-roll, from which hung a very large black wax seal. Sulien looked at the seal, a depiction of the king enthroned, wielding the Sword of Justice. On the other side was the king on horseback, wielding the Sword of War.

  ‘From the king,’ Bruno prompted unnecessarily. ‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ He looked almost gleeful, Sulien thought wretchedly. Probably the man would relish the job of driving them all out.

  He unrolled the parchment and read aloud. ‘“We, John, by the Grace of God King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine and Count of Anjou do hereby grant…”’ His voice failed him there and he read to the end silently. Then he went back to the beginning and read it again, slowly and carefully, to make sure there was no mistake.

  ‘God in heaven! It’s a grant of land! The king has given us the valley!’ His legs failed him and he sat down on the stool. He looked at the beaming Bruno. ‘I must write at once, and thank His Grace… such generosity. How did he know? Someone must have spoken to him for us. Of course, my lord de Breos.’

  ‘Straccan,’ said Bruno.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sir Richard Straccan. For finding that Banner the king offered to him a rich vife. He asked for this instead.’

  Lord William trudged the pebbled beach from one boat to the next, pausing briefly at each. The skippers eyed him warily, a grizzled old man, fierce and gaunt. The stuff of his cloak was good, the purse at his belt was heavy, but one after another they shook their heads and turned him away, spitting and forking their fingers at his back to ward off the Evil Eye.

  He looked unlucky. Seafaring men need all the luck they can get. They weren’t willing to risk theirs for a Jonah, no matter how much he offered for passage to Normandy. A man would have to be desperate to take him.

  There was such a man eventually, of course; there always is.

  Lord William watched the Sussex coast sink below the horizon with tears running down his cheeks and tried to pray for his wife.

  She was to be forgotten.

  She had always had a terror of confined spaces but of course John had found that out. After the first night and day Mahaut de Breos knew she would never see her husband nor her children again. This cold, narrow cell, which held only a verminous straw mattress and herself, was to be her tomb.

  No food was brought to her. Soon she understood that none would be.

  Where had they put her son? Was he here at Windsor, or at Corfe? Perhaps John had let him go. The offence, after all, was hers. She prayed for him, for all her children and for her husband, pleading with God for their lives. She had nothing to bargain with now, nothing to offer in exchange. She would build no more churches, endow no more shrines, feed no more beggars in the hope of keeping God’s goodwill. With no priest between them she must speak to Him directly, admitting her sins and beseeching his mercy not for herself but for her family.

  The cell was set in the thickness of the castle wall. A shaft of light came through a slit-window far above her head. She could tell night from day and so count the hours of her dying.

  Hunger was uncomfortable but thirst was worse. Thirst was torment unspeakable as her tongue thickened in her parched mouth, and she bit at the veins in her hands to moisten her lips with her own blood.

  There was an iron grille in the floor, too small to let a body through, covering the mouth of an old well shaft. When the sun was high a beam of light shone down and she could see the oily gleam of foul water far below. On the third day she discovered a rusty iron ring fixed to t
he grille and a chain dangling from it. When she drew it up, a small battered iron cup was on the end.

  The chain was too short to reach the water.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight

  Straccan’s manor of Stirrup lay halfway between Dieulacresse and Nottingham, and the domestic quarters followed the plan of the Roman villa that had once been there: a square of buildings around a central space. The main entrance was guarded by a modern watchtower with an old cracked bell to give warning of anyone approaching. Various doors opened off the yard into stables, mews, storerooms, kitchen, bath house, bakery, brewery and living quarters.

  Separated from this complex by a stream and an orchard were the farmworkers’ cotts and farm buildings. The surrounding fields, apart from pasture and hay, yielded wheat and barley. It was a small manor but well run and — unusually — there were no villeins. The farmworkers and their families and all the manor servants were free.

  Straccan could have bought more land but he was content with Stirrup. It didn’t do to be too obviously rich. Rich men attracted notice and notice meant trouble, and he’d managed to avoid both until the events of last summer, which had first brought him to the king’s notice.

  When the tinny clank of the bell announced his arrival his daughter gathered up her skirts and ran to meet him and be scooped up in his arms. His housekeeper and steward, his clerk Peter and Bane, gathered at the gate to greet him.

  ‘Where’s Janiva?’ Gilla asked. ‘You said you’d bring her home.’

  ‘She wasn’t there, sweetheart. I don’t know where she is. I don’t know where to begin but I won’t stop looking until I find her.’

  Later, in the room that served as their office, his clerk picked up the small gold cup and frowned at the inscription. ‘“Cymbium Wulstani sum” — what’s this?’

  ‘Lock it up, Peter. That’s Saint Wulfstan’s chalice, given him by King Harold. Write on the morrow to all our agents and tell them it’s for sale. When they’ve stirred up enough interest, we’ll consider bids.’ He yawned. ‘I’m going to bed.’

  Straccan looked at the cup without interest, almost with dislike, feeling none of the usual thrill at handling a relic, especially one so notable as this. It had cost two men’s lives, thieves though they were, and almost cost Havloc his. But it would fetch a surprising sum of money for Alis and her sisters; there was a world of difference between a small gold cup worth a pound or two and a precious relic worth whatever someone was willing to pay.

  He’d be glad to be rid of it.

  He hadn’t slept in his own bed for months and now he was in it he couldn’t sleep anyway, fretting while the hours of darkness crawled on. Where should his search begin? Where might Tostig have taken her, north, south, east or west? And how far? Mentally he drew a ten-mile circle around Shawl, groaning to think of the towns it encompassed. Would Tostig have taken her to a place he knew or a city, such as York? No one at Shawl knew anything about the man, his origins, his family. Straccan remembered him as having the speech of the area, not exactly that of Shawl folk but like enough. That was no help.

  He would have taken her somewhere he considered safe from that ranting priest, somewhere the Church wasn’t likely to find her. Probably not a town, then, and certainly not a convent.

  It was almost dawn.

  ‘Oh God, Mary Mother of God, help me find her!’

  He punched his pillow for the hundredth time and took up the other strand of his anxiety: what to do about Gilla’s future.

  ‘Father?’

  He sat up in bed. ‘Gilla?’

  She had brought a candle; it lit her face and bright hair, edging them with gold as she stood at his bedchamber door.

  ‘What is it? Are you sick?’

  ‘No. Can I come in?’

  ‘Come here.’

  She set the candle on the aumbrey and scrambled up onto his bed, tucking her bare feet under her. He reached to grasp one small slender foot and found it cold as stone.

  ‘Where are your shoes?’ he asked, wrapping the coverlid round her.

  ‘I forgot them. Father, I think I can find Janiva.’

  ‘What? How?’

  ‘I can scry for her.’

  He drew in a long, long breath and let it slowly out. She could do that; it was an ability she shared with Janiva. Last year when Gilla was kidnapped, the witch Julitta de Beauris had sensed that power in her and forced her to use it against her will. Later Janiva had taught her how to manage the gift, if gift it was.

  Uneasily Straccan said, ‘I don’t know, sweetheart.’

  ‘I can do it.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes. It’s easier when everything’s quiet.’

  He reached for his bedgown and wrapped himself in it. ‘You need a bowl of water.’

  ‘No. It works better for me with the candle. I just look at the flame.’

  She sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed, and he watched her as she watched the flame.

  ‘Janiva,’ she whispered, ‘Janiva, where are you?’

  The flame wavered, steadied and grew until it filled all her vision, thinning as it did so to become a circle, a ring of fire through which she saw…

  … a high cliff, miles wide, with a streak of white like a forked branch across its stone face. She saw it from afar and from above and, like a flying bird, swooped down towards it. Now she could see trees, bushes, a narrow path, a walled enclosure, a stone hut built against the cliff face. Although it was night she saw everything clearly but without colour.

  ‘What place is this?’ she asked, and again saw the great scar, or whatever it was, on the rock face, shining so whitely that it dazzled. Then she was staring at a candle flame, nothing more.

  ‘Draw it,’ Straccan said when she tried to describe it, and while it still glowed in her mind’s sight she took the charcoal he offered and scrawled the mark on the bedsheet. An upright stroke, with two branches slanting upwards from its right side. Straccan copied it carefully onto a wax tablet.

  ‘I don’t know where it is,’ Gilla said. ‘It’s very big, the cliff rises in steps and there’s a waterfall. But Janiva’s there, in that house.’

  ‘I’ll find it.’ Straccan hugged her. His tears ran into her hair. ‘Get dressed, honey. I must wake Peter, get him to send a copy of this to every one of my agents, and to every town in the kingdom. Someone will know where it is. We’ll find her, sweetheart. We’ll find her!’