The King’s Arrow

by Michael Cadnum

  The assembled horsemen crowded forward to defend the sergeant, but Bertram made short work of thrusting and stabbing, using the mare as a battering ram against the larger, less determined mounts. Two saddles were empty, then a third, until only one royal guard remained on horseback, in full retreat back toward the woods.

  Simon was aghast at this sudden butchery, but fascinated, too, at the deftness shown by Bertram even now. He backed his increasingly uneasy horse out of the widening pond of flesh and gore, and with an air of a woodchopper ready for his next task, turned to learn his master’s will.

  Simon was further surprised at Walter’s reaction to this violence. He gave no sign of concern for the agony of the men still writhing, facedown in the scarlet mud, and he offered no words of praise to Bertram. Walter’s manner was that of a man who had seen such sudden death routinely and did not believe that it warranted comment. The violence calmed Walter, and he looked around with a smile to see if Simon, too, was feeling increasing confidence.

  Walter accepted the gift of the broadsword from Bertram, along with its belt and sheath, and buckled the weapon on with a look of worried satisfaction. He hooked his thumb into his belt and swelled in the saddle, as though he had felt quite shabbily dressed until now.

  Walter murmured a quiet command to Bertram, and the knight rode off beside Certig, a small herd of sheep parting, scattering, and reforming with resilient meekness as the horsemen passed.

  Simon envied the sheep that instant—by the day’s end these animals would be cropping this very grass under a lively summer rain shower, kept safe by their very number. He envied Bertram and Certig, too, heading off to the thick stone walls and experienced housemen of Castle Foldre.

  There was no such promise, Simon knew, that he would be so much as breathing by day’s end. Without Bertram and Certig, Simon felt all the more defenseless.

  He knew an ancient path that bisected the pastureland, plunged straight through a field of nettles where Caesar the goat stood with his feet spread, chewing earnestly, tethered to a stake.

  The horses were eager, well into the mood of what they took to be the day’s sport. Nicolas looked ever more youthful, punished by the sunlight sifting down through the clouds, but he was a skilled horseman, riding flank like an experienced squire.

  There was about the afternoon a feeling of reprieve, like that moment when a fragile earthen vessel topples and before it strikes the ground, an impression that perhaps, with a little further luck, jeopardy might prove to be an illusion.

  They rode hard.

  27

  A smile lit up Gilda’s face as Simon and his companions approached.

  She was so beautiful in the afternoon sun, her countenance such a relief from the events Simon had just witnessed, that he was swept with emotion.

  “What are the horn blowers telling us?” she asked.

  Gilda had been carrying a wicker basket down to the ship, the freighter alive to the tide, the unanchored ship stretching her mooring cables, the ship eager to depart like a living thing made of spruce and tar. Walter made a gracious gesture from horseback as he rode down toward the river, acknowledging her with a show of courtliness, and Nicolas offered her a pleasing, “Good afternoon, my lady.”

  Gilda’s spirits began to wilt.

  Simon realized what an enigmatic group they must be, all courtesy and tense smiles, while their horses were spiky with blood and spattered with the claylike mud of the local byway.

  Gilda’s smile was further replaced by an expression of concern as Simon’s companions rode their mounts to the river and out into the water. The horses splashed the current with their muzzles, taking a moment to drink, the water around them stained dark at once with mud and with gore.

  Walter climbed aboard the vessel and turned to help Nicolas on board, with the air of a man who owned and disposed of everything within sight—including the services of the astonished Oswulf, standing beside the ship’s tiller. Tuda, Oswulf’s chief rope mender and seaman, climbed up from the ship’s hold, his mouth agape.

  Simon told Gilda, “We require the ship.”

  “What do these people want?” called Oswulf, indicating Walter and his herald as though they were a pair of beggars who had blundered onto the vessel.

  Simon repeated his statement to Gilda’s brother in a voice that would have been audible across the river.

  “The ship is not available for hire,” called Oswulf, without explanation or courtesy, ignoring his visitors and preferring to speak at a shout with Simon.

  Walter had the manner of so many aristocrats, believing that his station in life, his wealth—and his skill with sword and lance—made speech unnecessary and even a little unseemly. He would not engage in a parley, and he certainly would not utter a word of English. He folded his arms and waited.

  Oswulf, for his part, ignored Walter, making a point of having freight to secure, canvas to tug into place, matching a nobleman’s arrogance with a freeman’s disdain. Tuda took his master’s stance as an unspoken command, and he worked a sweep through an oarlock, getting ready to push the ship off with the long oar.

  Nicolas set to work rearranging cargo on the deck, and Tuda smiled, pleased to have a helping hand.

  “Oswulf, will you take us to Normandy?” asked Simon, riding to the river’s edge and dismounting.

  “I won’t,” said Oswulf, with deliberate bad manners, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand.

  “The ship is ours,” responded Simon, realizing as he spoke that his rights as a lord of all the farmland around did not extend to piracy. It was true that, in an emergency, a man and his ship could be pressed into service, but free folk like Oswulf and his sister would have to be paid a fair price.

  Oswulf moved deliberately, but his actions were emphatic. He sprang from the ship and hurried through the shallows to the stony bank. He seized a mooring peg from the shore, a tall, heavy stake with one sharp end and the other shaped like a mushroom from being struck with hammers and mauls over the years.

  He held the object like a club. His message was clear. This was his ship, this his mooring place. He would do what he chose. “Our ship needs no passengers, Simon. We are full of Aldham cheese for the merchants of Brugge harbor.” He lowered his voice. “What is this the horn blowers are saying? What’s wrong?”

  “Walter will pay a good fee,” said Simon.

  “Surely, Oswulf,” urged Gilda, “we have room for three gentlefolk.”

  Oswulf said nothing.

  “What has happened?” Gilda asked, turning to Simon.

  It was easy for Simon to understand Oswulf’s position. He was protective of his sister, not wanting her to spend shipboard hours or even days with a high-handed Norman lord. And he felt resentful of Simon’s ability to play the English and the Norman lord all at once, and perhaps was even further confused as to Simon’s ultimate loyalties.

  Simon could see that Oswulf understood that something uncommon had happened, and that a crisis was unfolding. Furthermore, he had a businessman’s sense that, as the owners of the sole ship of any substance on this stretch of the river, he and his sister could secure a good, round purse.

  “Oswulf, take the price he offers you,” said Simon.

  “Why?” Oswulf seemed to like the sound of his own obdurate inflection.

  He made a show of sauntering past Simon, gazing up toward the trees. It sounded as though horses were approaching, a good many, and coming on fast. “Why should some crisis in the woods have anything to do with my sister and me?”

  “He’ll take the boat without your leave, otherwise,” said Simon.

  Lord Walter was still wearing his sweeping hunting mantle, and leaning against the rail, he looked like a gentleman in no hurry and quite pleased at the way Nicolas was stowing the huge, wax-coated wheels of cheese into the hold.

  “He certainly will not take the ship,” said Oswulf in a confrontational tone, awakening to a new stubbornness.

  “Accept his silver, Oswulf,” Sim
on pleaded, but the big Englishman brushed past him, hurrying down toward the vessel that gave every sign of being ready to depart in his absence.

  Perhaps Oswulf realized the tactical error he had made, leaving the two strangers with only Tuda to attend them. Nicolas was already hauling on the severed length of mooring cable, and the ship was turning with the outgoing tide, her prow quick to catch the current toward the sea. Far from hindering this effort, Tuda was working hard with the oar, compelling the keel away from the shore.

  Oswulf hurried, climbing over the side. He seized the tiller of the broad freighter, just as the vessel began to make way toward a half-submerged stump. At the same time a new sound reached them, the high notes of an alarm, and another one across the woodland, two ascending notes, echoing along the river. The horsemen had arrived, and were taking positions along the bank beyond the trees.

  Simon accepted Walter’s help in climbing on board the ship, and in turn assisted Gilda. The vessel was already slipping well into the current, the rocky bank drifting away as the abandoned horses accepted their freedom, plunging playfully like dogs in the water.

  “Master of the ship,” said Nicolas, using the English title of respect, “my lord gives his word of honor, before all that is holy, that you and your vessel will be rewarded.”

  Oswulf shook his head with a confused frown, acting out the role of a river man confronted with the incomprehensible. But when he spoke he was less blunt, showing that he had understood enough. There was a shift in his tone—even a stubbornly single-minded river merchant like Oswulf realized that months and years later he would see Simon in church and at market, and that intractable behavior was unwise as well as unneighborly.

  “Simon, do tell me, please,” he said, softening his manner. “Why should we endanger our lives and our ship?”

  Simon could not for a long moment bring himself to broach the tidings.

  “Something terrible has happened,” he allowed himself to say.

  Oswulf’s eyes were round with the unspoken question.

  Simon made a gesture, the wave of his hand that meant that he could bring himself to speak no more.

  “What is it?” asked Oswulf.

  Riders rode hard up and along the bank above. Commands were barked, horses snorting, spear shafts clattering against stirrups as Simon got ready for a hail of arrows, or the whistling approach of a javelin.

  Simon said, “The king has been killed.”

  FOUR

  The King’s Arrow

  28

  Roland Montfort spoke, but with every word blood bubbled from his lips.

  He could stand, and he could execute a halting step, but he felt lost to his normal powers. Roland stretched out a hand, and the oak tree beside him offered support. Undersergeants scurried around leading horses, the huntsmen scattered by now, everyone not absolutely bound by duty running off. The incident was too great, and no one would want to admit that he had witnessed the king’s dead body.

  Roland was glad he was in pain, because with the king dead it was honorable and even necessary to suffer. It was a way of mourning, and a way of experiencing a wrathful humor. His very flesh was heated, and when he gave a command, telling Grestain to ride out and lay hands on the killer, the words made a bone in his skull vibrate and caused his vision to blur.

  “But don’t slay Lord Walter,” Roland instructed his sergeant in conclusion, blotting his mouth on his sleeve. “Bind him well, and bring him back alive.”

  Roland called for Oin, the chief huntsman. “Let no one else escape the woods,” he said.

  “The men of good name have ridden off already, my lord marshal,” said Oin. The huntsman wiped his tears. In his sorrow, he was waiting for some further instructions. He was a bluff, agreeable man who could calm dogs and servants with a nod. Oin could run a stoat to ground, but he would be useless, Roland knew, in a fight against other men.

  The sergeant’s man returned shortly and said that the knight Bertram de Lis had killed Grestain. He gasped out his news before Roland could question him, a ragged recitation that sounded shameless, as though Walter and his cohort were an act of God that no guardsman could confront and survive. The marshal was tightening the saddle girth of a big stallion as he heard the report of his sergeant’s death.

  He was silenced by an instant of sorrow. Then he asked, “How did the good sergeant die—by sword, ax, or spear?”

  “My lord,” came the undersergeant’s answer, “by the might of his own blade, taken from him by Bertram.”

  Those full-blooded Norman knights could fight, thought Roland. You could hold off an army with three men like Bertram. The undersergeant addressing Roland now was Aubri, with a cowherd’s accent and a youth’s flushed cheek. Roland had thought Aubri had ridden north, toward Winchester with the prince.

  But it was like scolding a duck, chiding a youth like Aubri. Roland kept his mouth shut. He felt flush with purpose, grim and wrathful. Roland had possessed one task in life, his single reason for eating and sleeping the king’s safety, and Walter Tirel had drawn a bowstring and destroyed it all.

  Many riders gathered now, recent arrivals from the lodge wanting to avenge the king, and to avenge their fallen sergeant, too. They were an agitated lot, still strapping on their helmets and buckling on their swords, but Roland would whip them into a fighting force in an instant.

  There was no mystery what Walter was going to attempt. His ancestral home of Poix beckoned as a haven, and Roland gave the instructions clearly, each syllable causing the little fissure in his skull to vibrate painfully. Any pursuit would require ships.

  “My lord, wait one moment, if you please,” said a familiar voice.

  It was none other than Climenze, the undermarshal.

  “I thought you were with the prince,” exclaimed Roland in surprise. “In Winchester, on your way with him to London—along with Aubri.”

  “My lord, I was directed here,” said Climenze. “By the prince himself.”

  “By Heaven’s mercy, you can help,” said Roland, pleased to see Climenze after his initial surprise, and setting aside any puzzlement.

  “My lord Roland,” the undermarshal was saying, “if you would consider what proceedings would please our royal prince.”

  Roland marveled that this son of a mule driver could have learned to speak like a clerk. It was the surest way to advance in the world of circumspect and violent men—speak like one of them.

  “Prince Henry,” said Roland, irritated that any explanation was required, “will surely want Walter manacled and set behind walls.”

  “My lord, the king’s death—” began Climenze. The words stopped him. Climenze made a visible effort and continued, “The king’s mishap was purest accident, I warrant, and nothing more.”

  Roland knew better. A guardsman helped Roland into the saddle. The marshal’s ears were ringing. Who would have expected that upstart Simon Foldre to have such a potent right fist?

  “Think carefully, my lord marshal,” said Climenze, seizing Roland’s horse by the bridle, “what the prince and his supporters might have in mind.”

  Roland raised his voice, even though the effort made a fissure in his skull ignite like red lightning. “Our duty!” he cried.

  “Our duty to the king,” came the breathless, eager cheer from the horsemen all around. But perhaps they were not so fervent as he might wish, Roland thought. Perhaps the spirit of the men would kindle only when they spied their quarry. No doubt they were bemused with unexpected grief over the fallen king, and would take time to rise to the pursuit.

  The royal marshal rode hard, scattering geese, flushing a billy goat, bramble hedges and puddles all but vague impressions.

  Climenze rode along with the rest. No one wanted to be left out of this fierce chase. The lord marshal knew that a new song would ring throughout the kingdom after this day—the story of Walter of Poix seized, Walter brought to London in shackles, Walter confessing for the good of his soul.

  And Simon Foldre, th
ought Roland. Yes, that half-Norman upstart—he would beg for mercy, too.

  29

  Simon realized as soon as he had delivered the news of the king’s end that his choice of words, and the truth they conveyed, could have been more artfully expressed.

  Gilda put a hand out to the side of the ship to steady herself at the report, seizing one of the sail sheets and causing the furled canvas to creak and sway, the entire mast describing a tight circle in the sky. Oswulf reeled, too, deck pegs squeaking all the way to the prow.

  When he could manage to make a further sound, Oswulf said, “Simon, get them off my ship.”

  An arrow snapped through the air, missing the ship and splashing in the current beyond. The passage of the humming projectile and its entrance into the water was much like the flight of a swift or a barn swallow, quick-flying birds that never meant any harm to human beings.

  The contrast between the happy hum of the arrow and the instant death that it implied made Simon feel all the more concerned at the predicament he had forced upon his companions. He felt responsible for encouraging Walter to go hunting and had a dismal insight into events. He realized that without his own discovery of the antler in the woods—it seemed ages ago now—the king would still be alive.

  Walter gave the riverbank a thoughtful, calculating glance. It was possible to dodge an approaching arrow, with nimbleness and luck, but not if several arrows arrived at the same time.

  “Simon,” said Oswulf, not belligerent now so much as pleading, “I don’t want this trouble.”

  As he spoke he made an effort to steer the ship away from the bank, across the widening circles the vanished arrow had made in the water as Nicolas, unbidden, began working at the ropes binding the sail.

  Borne almost entirely by the outgoing tide, the ship was at first slow to answer the tiller, but as the weathered canvas fell open, the keel made a satisfying sound beneath their feet, and the entire ship’s frame shivered with gathering speed.