And here came Guillaume, with a directive from Magister Percival to perform three dances: two sprightly, with a stately dance between them. The precise choices the master left up to Molly. Soon Hob was deep in concentration, closely following the rattle and thump of Jack’s drum, smoothly turning the symphonia’s wheel as the fingers of his other hand danced over the keys.
When the three dances were done, Magister Percival sent word for a spell of silence; then the tireless Guillaume reappeared with a request for unobtrusive but constant music. Molly had Nemain play her harp to Hob’s accompaniment, a task at which the young husband and wife were achieving a kind of quiet excellence.
But they had not played for very long before Hob became aware of a rising turmoil in the hall below. Still cranking the symphonia’s wheel, he leaned closer to the screen and risked a quick look down into the hall.
King John was pounding the table with his fist. He was clearly in one of his infamous rages, at first addressing Earl Ranulf—as far as Hob could tell, it was about some third party whose actions had displeased him—and then more and more just shouting into the air before him, his gaze the abstracted unfocused look of one envisioning a foe who is not present, his face ruddy as raw beefsteak, his hands clutching at his already disheveled hair.
The music trailed off into silence. It seemed disrespectful to play over the king’s tirade. And now, to Hob’s great astonishment, the king fell from his chair and rolled upon the rush-strewn floor, bellowing at the top of his lungs, snatching great handfuls of reeds and throwing them in the air, and finally stuffing a fistful of the tubular stalks in his mouth, biting down on them, his eyes bulging and staring at nothing while his fists and heels beat a drumroll upon the floor. This was the notorious Angevin temper, a half-crazed display of rage, with which both John’s brother, the Lionheart, and their father Henry before them had been afflicted.
Suddenly Magister Percival himself appeared beside them. “Play the first piece that ever you played for me,” he said to Molly, his face expressionless, his voice low but singing with intensity.
Molly gave the “keep silent” signal to Hob and Jack, nodded to Nemain, and took her own claírseach onto her lap, resting it on her shoulder. She swept her fingers over the strings, and they were off on the simple Irish air that gradually grew more complex, becoming more and more intriguing as the ear strove to follow, through the rain of notes from the plucked strings, the play between the two harps, and all the while the piece retaining the sweet and soothing quality of the original country song.
Slowly the king’s thrashing subsided; he lay for a time gazing at the great beams that upheld the hall ceiling, while the folk, from the earl to the lowest page boy, looked at anything but the king, and strove with wooden faces to seem not to have noticed anything amiss.
Soon the king sat up, swiping rush stalks from his surcoat, running his hands through his hair. The earl offered him a hand, which the king angrily thrust aside. He rose and resumed his seat; he spat out a fragment of stalk; he took a sip of wine. He looked for a few moments up at the musicians’ gallery, and spoke aside to one of his aides, who left the dais. John then resumed his conversation with the earl as though nothing had happened. Earl Ranulf had a tight smile upon his lips and seemed to be laboring to maintain his part in the conversation despite the shock of John’s spectacle of fury.
Magister Percival signaled for them to stop. “Do you leave us a little silence,” he said. “Let speech and jest recover at the table. Yes?” This last was to a page who held aside the heavy cloth that sealed the archway into the corridor.
“By your leave, Magister Percival, a word with you?”
The music master stepped out through the curtain; a few moments later, he returned, and held out a soft leather purse to Molly. She took it, and hefted it; her eyebrows rose somewhat in surprise.
“You are invited to join the musicians at Windsor Castle. It appears the king finds your playing . . . soothing,” said Magister Percival in the dryest of voices.
• • •
SOMEWHAT LATER in the evening, when the symphonia was again silent, Nemain and Jack performing on harp and drum, Hob looked through his spy hole and saw, seated beside the king, Yattuy the sorcerer. The Amazigh was like a shadow in his dark-blue robes beside the king’s richly embroidered surcoat. The king, looking out over the hall, leaned toward him, and the tall magus bent to speak in the king’s ear, muttering, muttering. Hob could not even hear the sound of the Berber’s voice over the music and the general noise of the feast, but the sorcerer’s whole aspect, and his proximity to the king, spoke of a desire for privacy, if not secrecy itself. As Yattuy spoke, the king’s mouth turned down, but he nodded, and nodded again.
King John straightened, and made a dismissive gesture. The Berber stood and bowed, and made to turn away, but the king stayed him with a hand on his sleeve. Yattuy turned back, and the king drew a large gold ring from his right hand, and folded it into the sorcerer’s sinewy brown hand. Yattuy bowed again, and withdrew.
Hob sat back from the screen, thinking of Father Ugwistan’s words: “He is a frightening and powerful man—he speaks to kings and they listen.” He looked over at Molly, who had set her claírseach down while her granddaughter and her lover played. She sat with her usual big-cat composure, but Hob thought to see a faint expression of unease, and the fitful light from the torches in the great hall that struck in through the fanciful carving of the wooden screen, though it set small patches of brightness tangling in her silver hair, yet left Molly mostly in shadow.
CHAPTER 17
HOB WENT TO HEAR MASS in the chapel of St. Mary de Castro. He reached it by climbing up a narrow winding flight of stone stairs in the gatehouse tower, and then turning left through a doorway of no great size. It was a pretty little chapel; against a side wall stood wood scaffolding, and already one could see the beginnings of frescoes that had been commissioned. Hob stood in the back, listening to the drone of Latin competing with the occasional military call-and-response from the men-at-arms on guard duty on the tower roof reporting to those below at the gate.
He became aware of someone standing close at his elbow: Father Ugwistan. The Berber priest at first seemed lost in his devotions, but then he took a half step back and plucked at Hob’s sleeve. Bent over his paternoster beads, Ugwistan began to murmur to Hob, low enough to be mistaken for prayer by the nearest worshipper.
“I have been listening; the Cousins speak of the two women who pay them such close attention, and how they believe them to be witches, and so on. They work at their forges, and they amuse themselves with chatter about this one and that; but this, this is more serious—they wonder are you aware of them. It is a matter of a day or so till Yattuy is again among them, and then the talk will reach his ears, and from him to King John is but a small distance. I have also a missive from Monsignor da Panzano. His business takes him to the north, but he desires to meet with you, for time is short and he wishes to know what you plan to do. So: here is this inn, at these crossroads, marked on this square of parchment.”
A small bit of parchment slid smoothly between Hob’s left elbow and his side. He took it with his right hand and quietly tucked it into his pouch.
“It is twenty leagues up the coast. Monsignor regrets he cannot meet somewhere closer, but his business is a desperate one, and he cannot always control where he must be. Be there in a sennight, but leave tomorrow, before the women are denounced by these bouda, and then imprisoned.”
The Mass ended, and Father Ugwistan slipped away to the stairwell before the first of the worshippers turned to leave. Hob was not far behind him, his thoughts in a whirl. He made straight for the wagons, to report to Molly.
• • •
IN THE EVENT, the king and his military entourage were leaving Chester Castle the next day as well, and all was confusion in the outer bailey. Hob and Jack went into the stables, and brought out the three draft animals and hitched them up. With vigilance at the outer gatehouse be
ing much reduced—parties of knights and men-at-arms and supply wagons were constantly passing outward to join the column forming outside the walls—it was easy enough for the three wagons to trundle through the echoing passageway and, skirting the king’s growing column standing all along the verge of the road, make off toward the east and, having gone out of sight of the castle, turn north, eventually gaining the coast road.
Part II
THE EYE OF THE HYENA
. . . It stalks the sheepfolds of shepherds and circles their houses by night, and by listening carefully learns their speech, so that it can imitate the human voice, in order to fall on any man whom it has lured out at night.
. . . It is true that if the hyena walks three times around any animal, the animal cannot move.
—The Aberdeen Bestiary, ca. 1200
I trot, I lope, I slaver, I am a ranger. I hunch my shoulders. I eat the dead.
—Edwin Morgan, “Hyena”
. . . awful Thing of Shadows, speak to me! Why dost thou laugh that horrid laugh?
—Byron, Heaven and Earth
CHAPTER 18
MOLLY HAD SET A FAST pace up the coast road, for twenty leagues was a good way for an ox-drawn wagon to travel at speed, and she did not want to miss her appointment with the papal agent. Still, with effort comes a need to rest, and soon enough she had them pull off the road at a promising spot, with good grazing for the animals, and a fresh breeze from the Irish Sea.
She was generally a person of good cheer and brisk intelligence, and so it was the more striking that she had become quiet, and introspective, and sat that evening at their campfire, after they had eaten, staring moodily into her cup. Hob and Nemain exchanged glances. The silence stretched on for a bit, then Nemain, who was both impatient and outspoken, cleared her throat.
“There’s something troubling you and no mistake, seanmháthair,” she said. “What is it, then?”
Molly looked up and around the fire at the other three, and seemed to come to herself.
“ ’Tis these bouda. So many of them, and each one a double hundredweight, and none of them easily killed—not by iron, that’s certain—and they led by this sorcerer, who is by my sense of him a lion of the Art, and myself not knowing what to say to yon papal spy, nor what to do with these conriochtaí—I’m turning it over and over in my mind, and sure I’m no nearer an answer than when I started.”
Hob tended not to delve too deep into his family’s abilities in the matter of what they called “the Art”—what old Father Athelstan would have called “traffic with the Devil”—for though he could not believe that either Molly or Nemain would be a part of something evil, yet it went against all his beliefs and the teaching he had received. It was easier not to pry, and in any case the women were secretive about their practice. But now he had to ask; he looked from his wife to her grandmother.
“Can you not just slay them with, with, a spell? A curse? Or something like?”
Molly looked at Nemain. The young woman shook her head. “Nay, seanmháthair, I’d not know where to begin. He’s a grand husband,” she said, patting his arm a bit, “but in fey matters, isn’t he deaf as a post.”
Molly sighed. “Hob, a rún, to work the Art against someone, it’s requiring concentration, and the force of the will, and sometimes an object or two, to help . . . aim, let us say, the will. ’Twill work against one enemy, or perhaps a few, if they are in one place, and if you know their names—names, as I said to the good monsignor, give you power over the named—and if you are not fighting also in the world of things—the world you know. Have you never wondered why we do not go back to Erin and destroy our foes with our spellcraft? The clan that attacked us has its share of practitioners of the Art, and a mort of wild Irish tribesmen as well, with their short spears and their Dalcassian axes, so that one must fight in the solid world and the spirit world, both at once. When we return, Nemain and I will have to deal with their witches, while their warriors will have to deal with Jack Brown and Robert the Englishman, and others. Aye, let them chew on Sir Balthasar and see if their appetite for war does not wane.”
She picked up a thin branch from the ground and poked at the fire. “But that’s a trouble for the future. ’Tis this day, and the next, and the next, that I’m planning and scheming for, and, thus far, ’tis all for naught. I’m asking the Mόrrígan to show me my path, but I’ve no response.”
“She will answer,” said Nemain, in a soothing tone. “When has She ever failed you?”
Hob was now concerned—usually it was Molly who comforted, who advised. He had rarely seen her so at a loss.
Molly stood and stretched. “That’s enough keening about my troubles for one day. ’Tis time I were in my bed. Jack, come cheer me up.”
She went toward the big wagon, and Jack drained his mug, stood, winked at Nemain and Hob, and followed her.
CHAPTER 19
SUDDEN SHOUTS AND SCREAMS FROM the road ahead. Hob looked back to Molly for guidance. She was already standing up on the swaying wagon seat, balancing easily, pulling open the hatch and reaching into the wagon for her bow. She called to him over her shoulder: “Away on!”
Plainly they were to become involved; Hob turned and pulled harder on Milo’s guide rope. The ox stretched his neck out to accommodate the increased tension, then realized that he was to increase speed. He gave the obligatory wheezing groan of indignation, but then began to move appreciably faster.
They came past a last few trees, a final cloud of bushes, and there, so close to the road that most of the gardens were behind or to the side of the dwelling, was a small tenant’s cottage. The narrow strip between cottage and road on one side of the doorway was given over to a chicken run fenced with wicker, and on the other side an herb garden, and it was in this latter that perhaps seven men—armed men, mercenaries—were struggling with two women, by the looks of them mother and daughter. In the doorway, an arm outflung over the threshold, lay a man with a gray beard and a deep cleft in his bald head. The doorstep was soaked in his blood.
Hob had a moment to take this in, dimly aware of Molly kicking the brake shut and clambering toward the roof with her bow. In a heartbeat the bandits had the women down, some men pinning each woman’s wrists and ankles and the others tearing at their clothing. The herbs were being crushed beneath the women’s heaving, straining bodies and the stamping boots of the men, and the savory scents so released, speaking of domesticity, peace, the kitchen, lent a nightmare quality to the horror before him.
Hob was beginning, now that he was a new-married man, to see a bit of Nemain in all women. He had had the experience of a long night’s fear for her turning to rage; now he found that same rage ready to hand on the instant. It came surging up, quick, strong, a salmon jumping a waterfall at the Tyne headwaters, the battle fury that would in time make him in Ireland the much-feared “Robert the Englishman,” and he dropped the lead rope in the dust of the road and pounded toward the herb garden, drawing his dagger on the run.
There were three men holding the mother’s limbs, and two the daughter’s. The two men not engaged turned toward Hob. The nearer clapped a hand to his knife-hilt just as Hob reached him. The young man seized his opponent’s wrist and plunged his own dagger into the mercenary’s midsection, and again, and again. The mercenary’s legs buckled; Hob released him and he began to sink down, gasping and holding his belly.
The second man had unshipped an ax from a hook on his belt, a fighter’s ax, polished and keen-edged, and now he whirled it in a swift arc at Hob’s head. The young man had just enough time to leap backward outside the range of the gleaming axhead, and then to step rapidly backward to avoid the reverse swing, and as he took another step, now almost in the road, a stone turned under his heel, and he fell flat to his back, directly in front of Milo. For a moment he lay with the wind knocked from him, and then his attacker loomed over him, the ax swung high over his head, beginning the downward stroke, unavoidable, the terrible onset of gleaming death.
; At that moment Milo, timid Milo, suddenly came alive, stretched forth his neck, and swung his great head with its shortened, blunted horns, swung it as a king bull would hook at another bull in a to-the-blood battle for herd rule, the power of his thick neck driving a flat horn-tip into the soldier’s chest. Hob heard ribs break; the soldier was knocked down, arms flung out; he sprawled breathless, half-stunned. Hob rolled up to his feet, stepped onto the wrist of his foe’s ax hand. He bent down, snarling through clenched teeth, implacable, remorseless: with a grunt he drew his dagger across his enemy’s throat, and withdrew it, and the man’s lifeblood began to pump out into the dust of the road.
He straightened. Jack went past him in a fast limping run, his war hammer at the ready; as he passed he tossed Hob a loaded stick. Hob sheathed his dagger, picked up the heavy stick, and went after Jack. From the wagon roof-walks, Molly and Nemain sent their crow-fletched arrows whistling toward the cottage door, where two or three mercenaries, who had been tearing up the little rooms, the poor furniture, in search of anything of value that might be plundered, now tried to reinforce their comrades. The first out was allowed to get a few paces from the threshold before the women struck him down. The other two had just managed to step outside when arrows sprouted from their chests, the women as usual instinctively dividing their targets: Nemain to the right, Molly to the left.
The five remaining in the herb garden had abandoned their victims and turned to meet Hob and Jack’s onslaught, drawing swords and poniards. It did them little good: Jack, with his unusual strength and his long experience at weaponcraft, crashed into their midst, the hammer side of his war hammer smashing into one routier’s chest, shocking his heart to stillness, the backswing circling the dark man’s head and the crow-beak coming around and down to plunge into a second man, there where the side of the neck joins the body.
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