by Jay Ruud
“But, where is she?” Merlin wanted to know. “Where can we find the lady Brangwen?”
“Here, here,” the monk answered. “There is a small room outside of the monks’ living quarters, within the cathedral itself in fact. I arranged to have the lady Brangwen housed there temporarily, as long as she is abandoned and friendless here. One of our young monks is seeing to her needs as best he can while we try to help her figure out what to do next. Look, I will speak to the abbot on your behalf, and get you an interview with the lady tomorrow morning, if you think that will suffice.”
“Perfect,” Merlin agreed and rose to go. “We’ll return in the morning at about terce, then, will that be agreeable?”
“Good then,” Master Oswald also rose and began showing us to the door. “We shall meet again in the morning. I do hope my thoughts on these matters were of some help to you.”
“Invaluable, invaluable,” Merlin told him. Then suddenly Merlin turned toward him with some agitation, as if he had just thought of something new. “Oh, one more thing, Master Oswald! I wonder if you can tell me something about the shape of the wound on Sir Tristram’s leg. Was it a deep cut or slash, or was it more of a hole? Please, you were the only one who looked at the wound closely, can you describe it?”
“Strange you should mention it, and word it exactly that way. Yes, I did notice that there was a rounded shape to the wound. Why? Is that significant?”
“It may well be,” Merlin answered “Until tomorrow morning, then,” and with that, we exited into the street.
Chapter Eight
A Cock and Bull Story
It had not been difficult to find the Cock and Bull Inn. The colorful sign hung outside a shop on a corner just down the street from the cathedral: an angry looking red bull with a colorful rooster perched on its left horn. We soon discovered the reason for the name: Everything on the bill of fare was either some dish made of chicken or some kind of beef preparation. We sat now near a glowing fire in the dark inn, heads close together at a dark wood table.
I was eating a beef meat pie, with gravy and some local vegetables mixed inside the crust. Sir Dinadan was eating a creamy blancmange with shredded chicken breasts. And Merlin was enjoying an omelet made with local oranges and lemons, cooked in olive oil. We had a pitcher of Bordeaux wine on the table, and were eating better than we had since leaving Camelot. And we were going over what we had heard that day from the witnesses we had interviewed.
“How believable is the monk?” Dinadan was asking.
“He’s the only one I‘m absolutely certain is not lying,” Merlin said. “And I do believe he is quite right about Isolde’s death. Poisoning very satisfactorily explains what happened to her—far more satisfactorily than any broken-hearted nonsense. As for Tristram, his fate seems to have been sealed when the poison from the weapon entered his body. Nothing is likely to have saved him.”
“But it’s like Master Oswald says,” I asserted. “There wasn’t any reason for the Norsemen to poison their weapons. What would it matter to them if Tristram died a lingering death? They just wanted him out of the way so they could escape.”
“I have heard,” Dinadan mused, “that the Norsemen’s favorite god, Balder, was killed unexpectedly by a sharp missile that did not at first seem to pose any danger to him. It may be that Norse warriors regularly poison their weapons for that reason. I have little experience fighting against them myself.”
“Well I have,” Merlin announced. “In Arthur’s Scandinavian wars. And what you say about the god Balder is true, but we did not run into any poisoning of the kind you suggest. The point is moot anyway, though. Sir Tristram was not wounded by a Viking blade. He was wounded by the lance of one of the city’s guard. One of Sir Kaherdin’s men.”
That pronouncement, made so confidently and matter-of-factly by the old mage, left Dinadan and me staring at one another’s gaping jaws. After a moment or two of stunned silence, I babbled, “But…but how can you know that, for sure?”
“God’s nostrils, boy, didn’t you hear what Master Oswald said about the wound?”
“About it being round you mean? Why is that important?”
“Dunce of a Cornishman!” Merlin cried, exasperated. “It’s of primary importance! What kind of a spear does a Viking use as a weapon?”
“Viking spears have iron heads that are thin and sharp, like knives,” Dinadan volunteered. “I remember that much. They’ll use them to thrust, as was done to Sir Tristram, or to throw, or sometimes, when they have long heads, as a cutting weapon.”
“Precisely,” said Merlin. “No Viking weapon made that rounded wound. Sir Dinadan, perhaps you can enlighten young Gildas as to what weapon would have made that wound.”
Speaking through a mouth full of blancmange, the now-enlightened Dinadan said with some confidence, “It was made by a fighting lance, of the sort borne by Kaherdin’s troops. Tristram was wounded from behind by one of his own men.”
The news came as a shock to me, but not a complete surprise. The poisoned wound was too personal, the bitterness in this city too virulent, for Tristram’s death to have been an accident.
“The question, of course, is who was behind the attack,” Merlin continued.
“Well my money’s on the wife,” Sir Dinadan said. “I was here with Tristram for a long time. And I was never shy about telling him how he treated his wife worse than a serf or villain on his land. If he had had any land. But she was about as cold and vengeful as any woman I’ve known. That performance about the black sail was about as cold-hearted as it could be.”
I felt a pang in my stomach, as if instinctively I needed to rise to the defense of my lady’s sibling. Even though Isolde seemed to despise Rosemounde, Rosemounde had charged me specifically in this case to find a defense for her sister against the charge that her words had caused Sir Tristram’s demise. “Well, look, to be fair, how could she not be bitter? She was in an impossible situation, wasn’t she? What was she supposed to do? So she struck out with some hurtful words. That doesn’t make her a murderer, does it?”
“Well, obviously, she didn’t stab him herself. She would have had to hire or convince somebody in the guard to do it for her,” Dinadan said. “But I think she hated him enough to do that.”
“What about her brother?” I asked. “He could easily be behind this. He knew all about his sister’s marriage. His family pride—and there’s an awful lot of it there—couldn’t possibly allow him to just let that insult to his family go.”
“I can’t see it,” Dinadan said. “Remember, I’ve been here with Tristram for a long time. Kaherdin was his closest friend, except maybe for me. And to be completely honest, I can’t stand him. He’s got that quick temper, he’s arrogant, he’s unpleasant. But he’s always been loyal to Tristram, I’ll say that for him. I would have a really difficult time believing he could have wounded his friend from behind with a poisoned lance.”
“He was on the ship for days with Isolde,” I reminded him. “Somebody poisoned her on that boat. Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to kill Tristram because Tristram was the love of his life, or whatever you’re saying, but he needn’t have any compunction about killing La Belle Isolde, right? Somebody on that ship was a murderer.”
Dinadan was turning red, and Merlin, having calmly finished his omelet while Dinadan and I had been speculating, broke in with an obvious point: “We don’t really know anything. The two of them have motives, but there are other things to consider. What about King Mark himself? He seemed quite reconciled when we spoke with him. But wouldn’t the murderer want to seem innocent? And if Isolde or Kaherdin were guilty, why would they have shown us their worst traits when we interviewed them?”
“I can answer that,” Dinadan said. “They think they are beyond reproach, beyond the law, because of their status. It wouldn’t even occur to either of them to cover up a crime, because if they did it, they’d think i
t wasn’t a crime.”
Merlin gave a little half smile, recognizing that there was indeed some truth in what Dinadan had to say. But he had one other caveat. “There is another fact to consider. Captain Jacques had such a sudden change of mood earlier, after we had interviewed Kaherdin and his men, that it seemed that he might be hiding something. Or know something that he wasn’t telling us.”
“Captain Jacques? You really think he may be a part of this?” I asked.
“I think he knows something. Perhaps even just realized that he knows something. But he’s not sure what it means.”
“Well, I know for one thing that he couldn’t have been responsible for Tristram’s wounding, or even witnessed it, because he was left behind to guard the city when the bulk of the garrison went after the Norsemen,” Dinadan volunteered.
“Well, we’ll just have to see if we can get him to tell us what was affecting him. But enough of that for now. I want to know one thing: on the ship, when I had my spell, what did I say? You haven’t told me yet.”
“You haven’t asked,” I reminded him.
“What is this about?” Dinadan wanted to know. “You mumbled something that made no sense. This is an infirmity, is it not? What can your crazy ramblings have to do with anything?”
Merlin shrugged. “Those spells are times when I am touched by God,” he said simply and with surprising calm. The silence at the table was palpable. “They call me a prophet. But it’s a kind of a trance. The things I say during those moments, before I black out, always prove to be true. But since they are always cryptic, I usually can’t understand them until the time is past.”
“Well,” Dinadan said, “God touches you in a funny way, then. Little cosmic joke of his, sending you messages you can’t interpret?”
“The dog turns on its master. But there is another wolf with horns,” I said. “That was what you said when you went down.”
“Well, that’s crystal clear isn’t it?” Dinadan scoffed. “So all we need to do is find a dog, right?”
A long snout poked in front of me just then, looking for a mouthful of my beef pie, which, fortunately, I had already finished. “Down girl,” said a voice, and the long head was pulled back. I followed it and looked up to see Captain Jacques, holding a large dog on a leash. “So,” he said, you found the place and you’re already eating. I’m glad to have found you. Please allow me to join you,” and he pulled up a chair, telling the dog to “Sit, girl!”
The dog was tall and built like a deer, with long delicate legs and a sleek body. She reminded me a great deal of the queen’s greyhounds, Dido and Aeneas, but was a good deal taller and was covered with a long wavy coat of russet and white fur. She had an intelligent, curious face, and her brown almond shaped eyes stared at me with an almost calculating expression.
“What is she?” I asked, fascinated by the dog’s face and generally aloof demeanor.
“Ah, she’s what they call a Borzoi,” Captain Jacques answered, absent-mindedly petting her deer-like head, which the dog tolerated while looking about inquisitively. “You don’t see them around here much,” he continued. “I won her off a seaman from Ragusa a year or so ago, when she was still a pup. She’s a great hunting dog—fast as a greyhound. The seaman told me that in Russia they train them to chase down wolves. Anyway, I usually keep her with the other dogs of the garrison in the kennel, but sometimes when I’m out and about in the evenings, I like to bring her along. She senses things that I might miss.”
One of the bar wenches sauntered up to the captain and flirted a bit before taking his order for a meat pie and ale. She was ruddy and round-faced, with sparkling blue eyes that fixed solely on Jacques. “You know Captain,” she said, batting her dark eyelashes at him. “You probably ought to get a new girlfriend. That one’s too skinny, if you ask me.”
“Hello Meg,” Captain Jacques replied. His eyes wandered over her own ample hips and bosom, which were noticeable even in the shapeless grey dress she wore, with its sleeveless brown tunic and leather girdle around the waist. Her blonde curls protruded from her wimple. “I notice that’s not a fault of your own, now, is it?”
“No sir,” she murmured over her shoulder as she walked off to take care of the captain’s order, wiggling her backside at him as she stepped away.
The captain laughed and waved her off, and then looked at Merlin with some seriousness, asking, “So, old man, have you found out anything useful in your questioning of people today?”
“Well, you saw my limited success with Kaherdin and his men. I must say that Master Oswald was especially helpful with his learned observations. As for the lady Isolde, she was most forthcoming about her feelings. Feelings of bitterness and vindictiveness seem to run deep here in Saint-Malo.”
Captain Jacques nodded as he drank from his glass of ale that had just arrived. “It is true,” he said, putting down his glass. “It is even part of our reputation, I’m afraid. Ah, the things I could tell you…” and he trailed off, though Merlin was leaning forward expectantly. “Listen,” the captain suddenly said, putting up his finger for quiet. I listened. A bird’s song was floating in with the night, a loud song full of whistles and trills.
“Beautiful,” I murmured.
“The nightingale,” Captain Jacques continued. “There are a few orange and hickory trees even here in the city, and the birds will nest in them, and entertain us with their songs at night. My friends,” the captain stretched out, taking a bite from his meat pie. “You know that Brittany is famous for its storytellers. Well, let me share with you a story of our city that has become widespread throughout Brittany. People call the story ‘The Nightingale.’ It may tell you something about the character of the people of Saint-Malo.”
“Well, let’s hear it then!” Sir Dinadan asked. “It’ll help pass the night, and maybe teach us a thing or two.”
“With your permission,” the captain nodded to Merlin, and the mage nodded back his assent. “All right then,” he began. “So, it seems that once upon a time in a village near Saint-Malo there were two great knights, who lived in palaces that were right close up near one another. Now one of these knights, let’s call him, I don’t know, ‘the husband’ or something. Well this husband has just married himself a very courteous, noble lady. Now the other knight, we’ll call him ‘the lover’ or just ‘the knight,’ is a bachelor and a chivalrous one, spending his time in tournaments and such, giving his riches away to other knights and his own retainers. But all this time, you see, the knight was pining away with love for the wife of his neighbor.
“Well, he pleaded with her for her love, and did noble deeds, and all of those things that knights are supposed to do who love courtly ladies. And so after certain years, he finally won her over, and she granted him her love. But though they lived so conveniently right next door to each other, the two of them found no way to meet for a tryst anywhere on the grounds of either estate, for the husband watched over his wife more closely than a hawk. The lovers needed to find some way to meet, if only to talk to one another as an outlet for their unconsummated love.
“Now there was a tall stone wall between the two houses, right outside her closet window, separating her casement from the lover’s on the other side. The lady would often talk to her lover on the far side of the wall, and the two of them would sometimes toss love tokens over the wall to one another. So they passed a number of months, pretty much as happy as they could be under the circumstances of their separation, and the husband none the wiser.
“Well, it got to be the early summer—this very time of year we’re in now. The meadows were green, the trees were in bloom, and the nightingales were singing. The wife and her lover listened to one particularly vocal nightingale who sang in the trees near their houses, and they thought only about their love. When the old husband had gone to sleep in his own room, the lady would come in the evening to her window and stand, under the pale moonlight, and c
all to her lover over the wall, while they listened to the nightingale. He was always waiting for her, and always answered.
“Eventually the husband came to realize that his wife was waking every night and standing at her open window, and became suspicious. He demanded to know what in the world she was doing there. She told him it was only to listen to the nightingale, whose song was the most beautiful in all the world, and that no one could know true joy who had not listened to the song of that beautiful bird. Well, her husband listened to her, but he didn’t believe a word of what she said. He gave an angry laugh, and stalked off.
“His plan was to trap the nightingale. He set every one of his household servants to set snares all around the house and the orchard. They put traps in the trees, coated the branches with sticky lime, until, of course, the nightingale was finally caught. The servants immediately brought the ensnared bird to their master, the angry husband.
“Her lord brought the little bird in his bare hands to his wife’s chamber, and told her with a cruel smile that he had caught the nightingale. He showed it to her, saying, ‘Here, my lady, is the bird that kept you awake and kept you from sleeping in my bed night after night—disturbing your peace. Well, that will never happen again. Watch how I take care of this.’
“The lady was aghast. She pleaded with him to let her have the bird and to do it no harm, but in a fit of brutish cruelty the husband took the bird between his hands and broke its neck. Then he threw the dead bird at the lady, splattering the front of her dress with blood. In the end he stalked from the room, leaving her to weep over the dead bird.