by Chris Page
Desmond threw a pebble into the crashing sea far below. ‘I found her high on the castle ramparts, only she wasn’t alone. Someone else had beaten me to it, but the consolation he offered was in the form of an embrace. A passionate one with a long kiss, which she was returning with interest. It didn’t look to me as if that was the first time they had kissed, either.’ He smashed his clenched fist into his palm.
‘It was Edward de Gaini, and for a moment I was tempted to go and get a sword and challenge him.’ ‘You would lose,’ said Twilight quietly. ‘He is skilled in the use of weaponry, especially swordsmanship. As the king’s battle leader he has to be.’
‘It would be an honourable way to go, especially as I don’t want to live any longer.’
‘Perhaps it is time for you to have a break. A few quiet days with your bears, Sir Valiant, and Scroopy, somewhere well away from here.’
‘Where?’
‘Avalon, with Rawnie and the children and Guinevere, the woman who knows more about broken hearts than anyone. I think we’re past the time when we have to worry about Freyja getting the information out of you as the twins did.’
‘When do you think I should go?’
‘Why not now?’
Desmond gazed out at the dark sea and thought for a moment.
‘On one condition.’
‘What is it?’
‘That you promise to come and get me as soon as anything significant happens in the war against the Viking.’ ‘I promise.’
‘Twilight,’ said Desmond, adopting a serious tone. ‘I will never get over Gode.’
‘I’m sure you will,’ replied the astounder.
‘How long will it take?’
‘I’m no expert on these things. The enchantments do not extend to matters of the heart, but I would say it will take a minimum of three weeks and nine days to get over her.’
‘Three weeks and nine days, is that all? I thought it would go on forever. Besides, that’s four weeks and two days,’ said the young troubadour.
‘It is,’ replied Twilight. ‘But the fact is, as you have just demonstrated, you’re already capable of thinking of other things besides Gode.’
‘Guinevere,’ breathed Desmond, his firefly mind moving immediately on demonstrating Twilight’s point. ‘Is she as beautiful as the legends say she is?’
‘More so, especially as her beauty is tempered by the wisdom of old age. I am completely in awe of her.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Around eighty. She might even let you have the key to Merlin’s scriptorium where you can immerse yourself in the wonderful literature he collected. Now, dry your eyes, re-plait your loose pigtails, and take my hand. We can’t introduce you to the most famous lady in the land looking like that.’
Chapter 9
Jack Cat was a scavenger, thief, and fearless Jadventurer who cared little for any man or woman, excluding those in his band of rootless types whom he loosely called his ‘comrades.’ Ex-soldiers, mercenaries, outcasts, misfits, and cutthroats of every description attached themselves to his cause, which owed nothing to religion or politics, and everything to fighting for money, robbery, and any other means of extortion of gold, goods, cattle, and horseflesh from their rightful owners.
The bastard son of a relationship between a highborn nobleman called the Duke d’Averne, local warlord and owner of Castle d’Averne, and a kitchen midden who later died giving birth to his younger sister named Annie by the kitchen staff, Jack learned to scavenge and steal what he needed to survive before he could walk. He lived with Annie on the margins of the castle where his birth father ruled with an iron hand. Jack and his sister did not exist as far as d’Averne was concerned, and he would not tolerate the presence of his grubby bastards around the place. Had he found out that Jack and his sister eked out a living skulking around the kitchens and the under environments of the castle and usually slept in the dungeons or secret passages, he would have personally thrown them from the highest castle rampart. Luckily for Jack and Annie, Castle d’Averne was a huge and complicated structure comprising a labyrinth of rooms, secret passages, and entrances reaching deep into the bowels of the hill upon which it stood, all of which were well known to Jack and his beloved little sister. The duke was also away a great deal fighting various wars and would only leave a skeleton staff to defend the castle.
They lived a charmed life on the scraps and goodwill of the kitchen retainers, most of whom had known their mother and the circumstances surrounding their birth. During the night when everyone was asleep, young Jack would often creep quietly around the big castle, which was situated on the Offa’s Dyke border between South Wales and Mercia. Passing snoring guards he made lasting friends of the duke’s hunting dogs, and that gave him a free run of the place at night. Unhooking the keys to the weapons store, Jack would stand on tiptoe to quietly open the massive oaken door and marvel at the piles of swords, spears, and shields adorned with the duke’s crest. Pretending to be a soldier, he would practice thrusts and parries with the short swords, the only ones he could lift.
Finally, after many years of ducking and dodging around the darkest corners of the castle, their luck ran out. When Jack was ten years old, the nine-year-old Annie was discovered asleep in one of the dungeons by the castle reeve, who was dragging a drunken soldier to the depths of the castle to rot for a few weeks. Jack was playing with the weapons in the store at the time and avoided capture. Hauled up in front of the duke, the dirt-encrusted Annie screamed at him that he was her father and had killed her mother.
Jack found the shattered body of his beloved little sister among the rocks around the base of the hill upon which the castle was built. She had been thrown from the ramparts towering high above by, as Jack discovered the next day, the Duke d’Averne himself. As he cradled her peaceful, grubby little face in his hands, he vowed to avenge her death.
Unsure if his sister had told the duke of his existence, Jack was particularly wary for the next few days, staying deep in the secret passages. When no search of the dark, underground areas of the castle was made, Jack began to make his plans.
In the early hours of the morning, seven nights after he buried the broken body of little Annie under an elm tree in a nearby copse, Jack again unhooked the weapons store key from its place beside the snoring guard’s seat and carefully opened the door. He’d been in there so many times he could find anything without a light; the wooden sword and spear racks, the shield stacks, rows and rows of metal helmets and armor along the floor, longbows fifty deep on great wooden staves protruding from the walls, and quiver upon quiver of arrows hanging by their leather shoulder straps.
None of which he wanted.
Carefully opening a solid wooden chest with rusty iron hinges, he put his hand inside and withdrew one of a number of oiled linen bundles. Unrolling the bundle on the floor, he withdrew by the handles two small stabbing daggers with long, thin blades tapering down to sharp points. With the tapered blades measuring the length of Jack’s arm from his elbow to wrist, they were ideal for what he had in mind. Carefully wrapping the daggers back in the oiled linen, he placed them inside his ragged tunic and retraced his steps. As he placed the key back on its hook, the guard snorted in his sleep and rolled his head onto his other shoulder. Jack, quite used to this and not in the slightest bit frightened, paused in front of the guard and reached inside his tunic as the man resumed the steady rhythm of sleep. He could practice on this clod of a guard; see how long it took him to die. He leaned in close to the side of the sleeping face and studied the whiskers rising and falling on his cheeks. The neck was the obvious place. The death strike only had one chance—if he missed or didn’t kill with the first thrust, he, too, would be dead within moments or, worse still, suffer the same fate as little Annie. Deciding against it, he moved quietly away and began to work his way upward into the more habitable parts of the castle.
Altho
ugh still only ten years old, Jack Cat had learned how to move around Castle d’Averne with the agility and silence of his namesake, although cats didn’t know how to use the shadows like he did. There was one old retainer he had to watch out for whose job was to keep the torches alight during the night that hung in metal brackets around the corridors of the upper rooms. Being a lazy type, the old retainer only did it at dawn, shuffling around with a lighted taper just before anybody important got up. Jack knew his way around up here because there was always food left over on the big feasting table in the great hall from the evening meal enjoyed by the duke and his guests. The table never got cleared away until early the following day because the duke’s carousing tended to go on long into the night. If Jack got there before the rats, which, like him, lived on the castle leftovers, he and Annie would dine out in some style down in the dungeons and secret passages on the remains of the meal Jack brought back with him. Neither of them held any fear of rats or any of the other scavenging prowlers of the night. They were all kindred spirits surviving in the black margins of a world that relied entirely upon an ability to steal what was required in order to live, without being caught.
Passing two other slumbering soldiers, Jack carefully made his way toward the end of the castle where the duke’s bedchamber was. The duke’s hunting dogs were spread along the corridor leading to his chambers. Jack gave each one a friendly pat and was rewarded with a thump of recognition from the tail. None of the five big, well-fed hounds bothered to even open their eyes. The large oak door to the bedchamber was ajar, and Jack could hear noises coming from inside. Peering around the door, he could clearly see the figure of the duke moving around on the large bed. With a groan the duke rolled to one side and almost immediately began to snore. After a few minutes the figure of a woman slid carefully out of the side of the bed, quickly pulled on a dress, and, gathering some other bits of clothing from the floor, made toward the door. Melting into the shadows outside the door, Jack watched as the woman tiptoed quietly down the dimly lit corridor.
More bastards for throwing over the parapet, eh, Duke? Jack thought, slipping in through the bedchamber door and closing it soundlessly behind him.
Dogs asleep, guards asleep, duke asleep, and bed companion gone.
Approaching the snoring duke, who was lying chest down with his face to one side away from him, Jack carefully laid the oiled linen bundle on the side of the bed and unrolled it. Taking out the two daggers, he hefted them in his hands to get the feel, put one down on the floor in between his feet, then raised the other high above his head with both hands on the handle.
For a long moment he studied the snoring figure lying naked on the bed. Then he slowly rehearsed the arc of the dagger that would bring it to the point of entry he’d chosen.
Down through the back of the bare neck where it joined the spinal column.
Then he rehearsed the arc of the second strike. Down through the bare back where the heart was. If the duke was thrashing about, he’d just have to do the best he could or maybe even abandon the second strike.
He thought of his beloved little sister Annie and the short, inferior life she’d had and the brutal way this evil, snoring lump of cow dung had killed her.
Then he brought the first dagger down with all the strength his wiry ten-year-old body could muster.
‘Comrades,’ bawled Jack Cat at the top of his voice to his assembled band of mercenary misfits. ‘I have a proposition that might appeal to you.’
Two hundred men immediately shut up. When Jack Cat said he had a proposition, it paid to listen. He was a good leader and fighter who’d looked after them well so far.
‘This man here,’ he pointed to a tall, tired-looking young man who had recently arrived on a sweating horse and who had been ensconced in a head to head with Jack since, ‘is an emissary from King Alfred.’
Jack paused to let the sudden muttering that greeted this news to die down.
‘Now, I know there’s not much love in our mercenary hearts for that man and his quest to rule these lands, but he is in a bit of trouble by all accounts and needs help. And as we know all too well, help means payment . . . in this case in gold.’
That really got their attention.
‘Who will we be fighting?’ shouted Patch, Jack’s second in command. He was called Patch because he lost his right eye and half his cheek to a mighty curved sword slash when fighting for Martel’s Vagabonds at Poitiers in Gaul against the Saracen invaders, a disfigurement he covered with a large black patch.
‘The Viking,’ spat Jack dismissively. ‘They’re trying to take Wessex.’
‘Nasty bunch but nothing we can’t handle,’ Patch replied. ‘How many?’
Jack looked at the emissary with his eyebrows raised.
‘About five thousand,’ replied the tall young man.
‘Where are they?’ boomed the deep voice of Baby Giant from the middle of the band. He was called Baby because he got very emotional and would burst into tears over the smallest thing, right up to when he was killing people—and Giant because he stood almost seven feet tall. Despite the constant torrent of tears that flooded down his high cheeks, he was a good man to have alongside in a battle. You might get a little wet from the tearful spray, but none of the enemy would get anywhere near you. His stock in trade was the wielding of a huge double-handed sword bigger than anything the Viking had. He’d taken many tearful lives with that monster of a weapon.
‘They are wintering in Combe Castle, which is near Bristol.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘About three days’ ride west from here,’ said Jack Cat.’Where’s that pig’s bladder Alfred?’ This time the question came from a tall, thin man with intense blue eyes called Arrow, a famed bowman of the group who could shoot a fast, low-flying partridge down at two hundred yards.
The emissary answered stiffly. He didn’t take to the reference of his king as a pig’s bladder. ‘My liege is wintering at Tintagel Castle in Kernow. He has two thousand men now, and more are coming every day.’
Most of them started mimicking the accent and words of the young man and laughing raucously. Jack bawled for peace and they shut up.
‘How and when are we to get paid?’ The question came from a black-haired, short but powerfully built man known as Bullwhip. Curled in his left hand was the nine-foot braided leather length with a silver tip and woven handle that was his stock in trade and from which he was never parted. On many occasions he’d taken out the eye of an approaching adversary before they got anywhere near the range required to use a sword or axe.
Everyone looked at the emissary.
‘As your leader said, payment will be in gold pieces every month. Two pieces per man when actually fighting or marching to battle. Food and drink in between.’
‘And the spoils once we have beaten the scurvy Viking?’
‘King Alfred will not allow any rapine or pillaging of Celtic folk or their settlements. You can have any trophies belonging to the Viking.’
Jack Cat looked around his hardy band of fighting outcasts, misfits, and villains and then at the young man. This was precisely what this strange bunch of men lived for, the mercenary contract of trust and reliance versus gain. No loyalty, no causes, they survived on a bloodlust for fighting and the satisfaction of getting paid for it. Many of the made-up names they adopted were used to hide their real identity as well as glorify a particular skill with weapons or strength. In battle they relied on each other for survival yet would just as easily face their comrades from the opposite side if the paymaster dictated. Either way they would give their all.
‘We leave in the morning,’ he said. ‘If we don’t get our due exactly as you have said we’ll just as gladly kill Celts.’ He jabbed a dirt-encrusted index finger at the emissary. ‘Starting with you.’
There were two ever-present members of King Alfred’s inner circle who, although not in
volved in the decision-making process about battle strategy, were equally important to the running of his affairs. The first one was named Hywel, and he was the eldest son of Alfred’s older brother Aethelred. Alfred was the youngest son of King Aethelwulf and his wife, Osberga. Born in the royal palace at Wantage in northern Wessex, Alfred was educated by his mother and soon showed a keen interest in learning whilst his elder brother was more interested in weapons and warfare. When his brother Aethelred became king of Wessex upon the death of their father, Alfred was still only just in his teens. After a few short years as king, Aethelred himself was killed in the battle of Ashdown, and Alfred became king at the age of twenty. That had been five years ago. Hywel was Aethelred’s only son and attached himself to the court and rule of his uncle, becoming at the age of eighteen his trainee. By the time the Viking raiders arrived at Winchester under Guthrum, Hywel held full responsibility for the privy purse of King Alfred and held the rather grand title of Keeper of the King’s Treasury.
In short, he looked after the king’s money.
Before Hywel’s father had succeeded as king, he appointed a permanent guardian for his son, knowing that as part of the royal family of Wessex his life would be constantly under threat. This guardian was a strong, fearless, and silent man called Classen, and from an early age he had watched over the young Hywel as he grew into manhood. Only five years older than Hywel, Classen’s strength and fearless attitude were inherited from his father, who had been Aethelred’s personal bodyguard and had died alongside his king at the battle of Ashdown.
Classen’s silence was due to a birth defect.
He was a deaf mute.
Wherever Hywel went, Classen would follow. They became inseparable and could communicate perfectly with just a look and minimum sign language. Thus, when Hywel was appointed as a trainee to Alfred’s court, Classen came, too.
This saved Hywel a great deal of sweat and toil because during this campaign they carried Alfred’s treasury with them in a number of very heavy leather saddlebags.