Having a knight at his table, Edmund knew, would do his household honor.
13
EDMUND EXCUSED HIMSELF FROM THE wine merchant’s house without tasting food or drink—although he was hungry, and thirsty, too.
Maud, the widow of Otto the moneyer—Edmund’s former master—had remarried. She now lived as the wife of Aymer le Goff, and her husband prospered as chief mason of Nottingham, with an appointment to maintain the city walls. Edmund was heartened at this news—a new husband was often the only means a widow had to provide for her future.
Maud welcomed Edmund with joyful tears, and Aymer called out into the street to come and “see the returning warrior, defender of Jesus!”
Edmund had dreamed of homecoming, but of a different kind, every beloved face in its familiar place. The young knight was increasingly in need of quiet so that he could sort through his tangled feelings.
Aymer insisted on showing Edmund around the fine, stout-timbered dwelling Maud now called her own. It was a prosperous house, with a solar-room for spending pleasant hours with family and guests, and separate bedchambers for the many daughters from Aymer’s previous marriage.
“You’ll live here with us, dear Edmund, won’t you?” pleaded Maud. “And eat stewed mutton and figs every noon—that used to be your favorite.”
“And we’ll find some dimpled pink-cheeked lass to wed and bed you, Sir Edmund,” Aymer joined in heartily.
Aymer’s daughters peered through the doorway, too awed to make a sound.
“They’ve never seen a Crusading knight,” Aymer explained. “Not one who has spilled pagan guts.”
All five little girls shrank at these words.
Edmund begged leave for himself, saying that he wished to offer his prayers in the parish sanctuary.
Edmund wandered the familiar lanes under a starry sky, bumping his head more than once on an overhanging eave. He had grown taller, or perhaps the town had grown small.
The crooked byways of Nottingham looked as he had remembered them, but they smelled, more strongly than he had recalled, of both human and animal ordure. Had the thatched roofs always appeared so mildewed, even by moonlight? Had these thin, furtive cats always lurked behind dung heaps, and had the pigs feeding on refuse outside dwellings always bickered so loudly?
He had offers of a soft bed in many a noble house, including the sheriff’s castle where, the page boy assured him, “every manner of sweet nourishment was being readied.” Men and women called out cheerfully to him as he passed.
Edmund smiled and returned greetings, and he accepted more than a few swallows of offered ale, the brown, thick drink he had dreamed of, better than the brew of any other town. Tavern owners pressed food upon him, fish pies and smoked eel, grilled suckers—young rabbits—and fat golden cheese.
Edmund felt, however, that the city indeed had diminished and that the peaked roofs, the chimneys, and even the parish churches were all smaller than he had remembered. Long after the last welcoming matron ceased to call after him, the town subsiding into sleep, Edmund walked the many passages between shops and dwellings, and the night watch let him wander with a chuckling, “Welcome home, Edmund.”
Now when the young knight stood still, he was certain he heard the rhythmic chime of chain mail. A booted foot splashed a puddle.
Someone was following.
When Edmund paused to rub the head of a street dog—had these creatures always been so scrawny?—the brindled mutt peered down at the distant hulking shapes of horses in the stable beyond and stiffened, sniffing the air.
“Who’s coming after me, like a velvet-footed weasel?” inquired Edmund of the cur, almost believing the creature could speak. What nature of enemy, Edmund wondered, could insinuate his way through the city gates, and past the night watch?
Some enemy.
Some furtive enemy, subtle as the Devil.
Edmund crouched and waited.
A mouse scampered over Edmund’s foot, and a night-creature—a bat or an owl—half flew and half fell across the stars. The knight had learned around Crusader campfires that no swordsman loves a city fight, where crowded walls secrete enemies and prevent a free swing of the blade.
He crept onward along the street. It was with a feeling of relief that Edmund found the stables, and located Surefoot.
If there was going to be any fighting tonight, thought Edmund, it would be on horseback.
The horse was feeding on a trough of summer grass, and he welcomed Edmund with a gentle nicker.
The stored-up grasses of the previous sunny season—mostly brome and meadow catsfoot—gave the stable a sweet scent, and the horse gave off pleasant animal heat against the increasing night chill. The good-hearted creature reminded Edmund of another horse, one Edmund had loved well—brave Winter Star, mortally injured during the same battle that had so badly stricken Sir Nigel.
Edmund stroked Surefoot. He was speaking to the animal in a soft voice, when the horse shot up its head and gave a snort of warning.
14
A LIGHT TREMBLED AT THE FAR END OF THE stables.
A smoky candle was held aloft by the half-seen arm of a figure wearing what appeared to be a sword and riding-armor, a leather chest piece with a chain-mail skirt.
“My lord?” queried a youthful voice.
Edmund was unaccustomed to the respect routinely offered a knight. For a moment he was convinced that this approaching man-at-arms must have mistaken him for someone else. “If you are looking for Edmund, the former moneyer’s apprentice,” he responded at last, “you have found him.”
Then he had to laugh silently at the sound of his own voice. He used to overhear gruff, sword-wearing men on market day in years gone by and marvel at their rough manner. Now Edmund himself had turned into one of them, and he did not entirely relish the transformation.
“My lord, if it please you,” said a youth with wax-yellow hair, little more than a boy. “I have a word for your ears.”
“If you have come to put me in chains,” said Edmund, speaking with a calm, defiant frankness, “you will need companions.”
“My lord, I have a duty to you,” said the young man, “and a bitter message.” He sank to his knees in a show of obeisance. His hand was trembling, the light sending quaking shadows throughout the stable. “One I have been reluctant to deliver, if you’ll forgive me.”
“What knight do you serve, good squire?” said Edmund.
“My lord, I serve you,” said the boy. “If you would allow it.”
Edmund considered this. “Who sends you to me?”
“My lady Elviva,” was the reply. “She said I’d make a better squire than house servant, and I will prove her right.”
Edmund directed the lad to stand up.
“My lord,” continued the boy, “the gate guards are loyal to King Richard, and will not let the prince’s men set foot in town. But the report from messengers is that the usurper’s men have captured Sir Rannulf.”
“What messengers carry such tidings?”
“Woodsmen, Sir Edmund—outlaws, if you please, but not the cutthroat variety. Men who have little love for Prince John.”
“These rough men must be mistaken.”
“And my lord,” added the lad reluctantly, “Prince John’s men have offended our cause all the further by capturing Sir Nigel.”
Edmund struck the stable wall a blow with his fist. Horses stirred all around, nickering and turning in their shelters.
“And, my lord, forgive me for reporting so,” said the boy, all but sinking to his knees again, “these green-clad men say that the prince’s followers have taken Sir Hubert captive, too.”
Edmund wrapped his hand around the pommel of his sword. Heaven be my shield. “Is there any further news you have for me?” asked Edmund, with a great effort at calm.
“My name is Wowen Wight, my lord,” said the squire. “My father was scutifer to old Sir Roger of this town, and he was a patient teacher. I think you’ll find I can tell a spe
ar from a spoon.”
A scutifer was a shield bearer, an additional assistant employed by many knights. Edmund had known the late Sir Roger by sight and reputation, and had seen Wowen’s father, Azo, winning bets as a wrestler on many a market day.
“The prince’s men have set up camp across Lazar Field,” reported Wowen, “grilling a doe from the king’s woods. If it pleases you to fight Prince John’s hirelings,” added Wowen, “I’ll be honored to battle at your side.”
These words gave Edmund a certain involuntary thrill. “Fighting is not the stuff you’ve heard in songs,” he said. How gruff I sound, Edmund thought—like a grizzled knight. Much, in truth, like Sir Nigel or Sir Rannulf before they had their ale and mutton at day’s end.
“My father did not raise a simpleton, my lord,” said Wowen. “Or a coward.”
“How old are you, squire?” asked Edmund.
“I have seen thirteen winters, my lord,” he replied, growing just a bit taller at being called squire. “I can use a knife as well as any skinner.”
Edmund felt his own lack of experience keeping him where he was, in the security of the warm stable. This large, holy sword was a boon, but just then he needed Nigel’s advice, and Hubert’s quick eye.
“Sleepy men can barely fight,” offered Wowen, with the assurance of a novice.
He added, “Let’s surprise them.”
15
EDMUND WAITED UNTIL THE PREDAWN hush, watching from a place with the woge gard—the wall guard—from a perch high above Goose Gate.
“Look at that—see them pass around another wineskin, Sir Edmund,” said one of the guards, pointing with a gnarled finger across the moon-bleached field where cooking fires subsided, and the sounds of talk and song grew quiet.
“They don’t look much like fighting men,” said Edmund thoughtfully.
“I count five sets of helmets and shields,” advised the guard. “And more than a dozen spear carriers, none of them as fit as King Richard’s men used to be. It’s a sad thing, to see a king’s brother putting armor on England’s tavern dregs.”
“No sign of their prisoners?” asked Edmund.
“No, my lord,” was the answer.
“In readying an attack,” Nigel had once counseled, “you wait, and then you wait. And after that, you begin to wait.”
Edmund waited.
“The roosters will stir before long,” advised Wowen.
The city gate whispered open at last.
Edmund urged his mount forward through the starlit field.
Surefoot was happy to race Wowen’s mount, a sleek, black mare with a single splash of white on one foreleg. Surefoot was what horsemen called an entire—a stallion. While Surefoot had always been energetic, the presence of the mare made the spotted silver-and-gray male eager to show off his speed.
The drowsy prince’s men did not see them coming, until Surefoot snorted and kicked among them.
True enough, only one sentry had been posted, and even from horseback Edmund could smell the wine on his breath. Edmund drew his sword, but hesitated to use the weapon against a clumsy fellow countryman. The heavy-footed spearman offered a halfhearted jab with his spear, and Edmund let his own suppressed bitterness give strength to his counterattack.
The young knight raised his foot from the stirrup and kicked his opponent in the head. The footman fell back, arms wheeling, until he collapsed in a pile of saddle blankets.
Edmund cut a great arc out of the air, the blade making a sharp song. Footmen let their weapons fall as Edmund demanded, “Where are my companions?”
Only one knight climbed into his saddle, a bushy-haired man. He sawed heavily at the reins, trying to wrestle his mount around to face the attack. Surefoot approached the startled horse and, with no prompting from Edmund, took a bite out of the alarmed animal’s mane.
Wowen darted close on the other side of the shaggy-haired knight and made a sawing back-and-forth with his knife at the knight’s saddle girth, cutting it through. Wowen gave a tug at the knight’s arm, and the man tumbled from his horse—followed by his saddle.
Edmund leaned down from his mount and put the point of his sword into the shaken knight’s wispy chin, just firmly enough to prick the skin.
“If you have hurt my friends,” said Sir Edmund, “by the saints—”
Edmund stopped the onward rush of his words. He had been given to rash vows in the past, and now, with this holy weapon in his grasp, he realized the weight of his threats.
Chop them all up, urged an inner, spiteful voice in Edmund’s heart. Scatter them for the flesh-crows.
Edmund drew a long breath. Of all the virtues, Edmund knew, God most prized mercy.
A group of quickly dressed footmen and disheveled knights rode beside Edmund and Wowen through the breaking dawn.
The woolly-haired knight introduced himself as Neville of Eu, and he spoke in tones of businesslike gentility as he dabbed at his chin with a wad of folded linen. Sir Neville remarked, with an air of jovial wariness and a heavy Frankish accent, “If you intend to free your fellow Crusaders, Sir Edmund, you will find yourself greatly outnumbered.”
Edmund made no answer.
It was correct for Sir Neville and the spearmen to ride quietly with Edmund. They had given their word that they would be peaceful—and besides, they were close to another, larger band of Prince John’s men and had little fear of Edmund and his squire.
The road was a swath of dark, spring-damp mud, pounded and gouged by hoof and cart. When a sentry’s warning sang out, “Saint George and Prince John!” the shaggy knight responded, “Prince John and Our Lady!” As the phalanx of riders entered a well-ordered camp, morning wine was being warmed over a merry fire.
All around Edmund, twenty men buckled sword belts and fitted on helmets in the glow of the sunrise. The young knight nearly laughed, given the absurd odds against him, but he recalled all the tales he had heard of solitary knights taking on a score of fighters. Such bold men-at-arms were always cut down, in both history and song, but not before nine or ten of their opponents writhed on strife-torn soil.
Edmund recognized that he and Wowen were trapped. There would be no easy escape.
He realized that Hubert would have been capable of some cunning act, and that Rannulf would have scattered men to the right and to the left.
But Edmund wanted more than anything to see his companions again. He said, simply, “Show me to my friends.”
16
AS ONE NIGHT EBBED INTO ANOTHER, ESTER rarely interrupted her vigil at her father’s side.
Reginald proved his worth as a physician, looking in on his patient several times during both day and nighttime hours, and often brought something to brighten Ester’s long wait—Valencia oranges or Poitevin peaches. Such fruit was rare. The Crusades had taken up most of the freight vessels throughout Christendom, and what shipping remained was increasingly harried by pirates.
“The doctor seeks to snare you in his net,” said Ida.
“I barely notice him,” said Ester, “except to discuss my father’s health.”
“The bee spies the hedge rose,” said Ida, employing a well-worn conversational motif, “whether the blossom notices or not.”
Bernard drifted into a restless sleep, shivering and muttering. At times he parted his eyelids, only to look around as if at some unholy place, startled, unaware of his surroundings.
At the sound of his daughter’s voice, however, his anxiety always subsided. “Have some warm hippocras,” she urged—spiced wine, yet another gift from Reginald. Bernard drank, and while he did not stir beyond a few moments of wakefulness, neither did he drift again into unfathomed torpor.
“Is there reason for hope?” Ester asked one evening, stopping the doctor at the doorway, one hand on his sleeve.
Reginald took her hand.
During one of Father Catald’s visits, Ester reminded the priest of her pilgrim’s vow.
“We don’t bargain with Heaven, Ester,” he reflected with a me
ditative smile.
He had brought her six pears, a remnant from last autumn’s harvest and still unbruised. The little priest remained standing in the center of the room, his hands tucked into his sleeves. “We can strike no agreement with Our Lord,” he said, repeating his counsel.
His eyes were full of unspoken meaning—as though he was about to add “And yet.”
“In my prayers tonight,” said the priest, “I’ll remind Heaven of your vow.”
One evening Ester was mending her father’s slipper by the light of a single candle.
The feel of the thimble gently rasping against the needle was pleasing, a sense of small but definite effort making a torn thing whole again. His favorite leather slippers had been brightly colored. Many times she had offered to repair them, but he had insisted, “Some things are better as they are.”
So she was not listening, nor paying full heed, when his bare foot slipped down out of the bedding, followed by the other. Only when he was standing did she realize what was happening, and she stood herself, letting her mending fall to the floor.
Bernard ran a hand over his head, arranged the folds of his gown, and walking—a little shakily, but taking a tall man’s strides. He reached the plate on which the six glowing pears were still in their prime.
“They are real,” he said, with a quiet laugh.
“Father Catald brought them,” was all Ester could say.
“I thought they were a vision,” said Bernard.
He took a bite, and closed his eyes in pleasure.
17
HUBERT PACED THE WIDE, STONE-PAVED floor.
“Don’t worry yourself, good Hubert,” said Nigel. “We’ll see you all the way to Rome, and into the Lady Galena’s arms.”
“At what risk to each of you?” asked Hubert. “It would be safer for you to stay here in England.”
The Dragon Throne Page 5