Your time is coming, young man. You fool no one in your borrowed finery.
“You better hope I do, or you’re spending the next fifty years as Geoffrey’s pocket knife.”
They trotted forward for a few streets in silence.
“Maybe I didn’t understand. Do you want to be in the hands of a power-mad dictator?”
A few more streets.
“Maybe that’s what makes you happy. Some dead peasants for breakfast, a little tyranny for lunch, and then a light snack of despotism right before bedtime. I wouldn’t like it much, but maybe you fancy magic-sword types think it’s the best thing since sliced serf—”
Enough!
Henry shut up.
Keep your weight off the saddle. Lean a little forward, and keep your knees bent.
“Thank you.”
I don’t know why I’m doing this.
Henry tried to lift himself off the saddle. He managed for about a hundred feet before the weight of the armor forced him back down.
“I did it. That was—what—almost a minute!”
Excalibur sighed.
They arrived at the gate. The line was even longer now, but Henry breathed a sigh of relief: He couldn’t see Prince John or Brissac anywhere. Had they gotten bored? Taken a lunch break? No matter. Time to move.
Remember, you are a knight. You are entitled to go to the front. Back straight! Knees flexed! You’re a knight, you worthless pig!
Henry nudged the horse with his knees, and they trotted forward. Riding in a steel shell was confusing. The armor started moving a few seconds after the horse did, and stopped a few seconds after it stopped. Henry had to catch himself by grabbing on to the saddle horn.
Two pikemen dashed in front of him, the butts of their weapons grounded in the dirt.
Henry tried to pitch his voice low and loud. “Who dares…to…uh…impede the progress of Sir…” Henry’s mind went blank. Who was he? Real knights had all sorts of symbols and devices painted on their armor—the heraldry announced who you were, where you were from, and who had bought you Christmas presents when you were five.
Henry glanced at his shield and saw a hawk, a bunch of stripes, and something that looked like a constipated weasel, but he knew as much about the meaning of the images as he did about German cheesemaking. He could be anybody—
This is the device of the Sagramores of Milan, ancient even in my day.
“…Sir Sagramore of Milan?”
A knight trotted forward on his horse and glanced at Henry without interest. “We are under the peace of Prince John of England, Sir Sagramore. Please disarm.”
“You ask a knight to disarm? Monstrous!”
The knight sighed. “We ask only that you do not enter the Plantagenet empire equipped as for war, Sir Sagramore. Your helmet, please.”
Henry said nothing. The moment stretched. The pikemen got antsy. They moved closer, eager looks in their eyes. Well, what did it matter if the prince and the jerk weren’t here? Slowly, Henry reached up to remove his helmet, his heart pounding.
“I shall have words for Prince John when I see him.”
The knight nodded, barely looking up from his writing tablet. “Indeed. Then you are in luck, Sir Sagramore. There the prince is now.”
The knight pointed across the town square. Prince John was entering at the head of a squad of men-at-arms. The knight waved his hand. “Your Highness! Sir Sagramore of Milan wishes an audience with you!”
John turned to face them. From across the square, he locked eyes with Henry and smiled. It was the smile of a wolf. A wolf with rabies. Henry’s chest tightened like a drum-skin.
“How do I get this nag to gallop?” muttered Henry.
You don’t want to. This is a war horse, you could not control it at—
“Now.”
I’m warning you—
“NOW!”
Quick, with your heels and yell, “Chargez!”
“CHARGEZ!”
The horse trumpeted, rose up on its hind legs, and wheeled around. Henry almost fell out of his saddle and clung desperately to the horse’s neck. Confused, the horse started to gallop—straight back through the gates and into the town.
John turned to his men. “He dies, or you do!”
I told you so! shouted Excalibur. You have no control! You are no knight!
The streets whirled past on left and right, cobbles striking sparks from the horse’s shoes, and the trees and awnings that made Southampton pretty threatened to decapitate Henry if he ducked at the wrong time.
“Yeah, great! Any other wonderful advice?” he shrieked, as he ducked under a tree.
Hold on.
“Thanks!”
Don’t mention it.
And now John’s men had pulled out onto the street behind them.
“Stop, thief!”
As soon as this horse stops, Johnny-boy, thought Henry. And now a flight of steps appeared. Oh, no—
Going down two flights of stone steps on a crazed charger is like riding a washtub down a waterfall. Henry held on for dear life as the horse leaped, skidded, neighed in panic, and scrambled down from cobblestone to cobblestone. Townsfolk jumped out of the way. Laundry and groceries went flying. Henry was sure people were making noise, but he couldn’t hear anything above his own screams.
Whatever you do, don’t throw up, said Excalibur.
Henry’s stomach promptly started to churn. “I hate you.”
And now they were racing down a wide arcade, with booths under the eaves. As his horse’s breathing deepened, Henry decided it was time to lighten the load a little. First, the helmet.
“Sacré!” One of the soldiers went down, nailed on the tête by the helm of Sagramore. Now, a gauntlet—
“Cochon!” Henry was starting to get the hang of this. Now the other gauntlet. He kicked off a greave and spun the gorget behind him, leaving just the chest plate and the arm pieces.
They galloped through a fullers’ courtyard, the stink from the cleaning vats clearly afflicting princely John more than Henry. Henry adjusted his bearings. If he remembered correctly, just a mile to the left was the church of St. Peter the Fisherman. If he could make it there—
They landed on the stones of the main square still in one piece. Ahead of Henry was the church, its doors wide. Sanctuary. Once he got in there, not even John would dare to touch him.
Henry kneed the horse. “GO!”
They charged across the square just as John and his goons appeared out of the alley. Off came the rest of the armor, and Henry and the horse galloped up the three broad, shallow steps to the open doors of the cathedral, and inside.
Cool. Dark. Peaceful. The horse came to a stop. Henry rolled out of the saddle and collapsed to the floor of the cathedral. He looked up. Five burly priests stared down at him.
“Sanctuary!” he gasped. “I claim…the right…of sanctuary.”
The priests looked at him. Then they looked outside, where John’s men were galloping closer and closer. Then they looked at each other. Then they edged away into the darkness.
“You jerks!” shouted Henry. “Just see if I donate to the building fund now!”
John’s soldiers entered the door, blocking out the light. Henry went for the stairs. He dashed through the apse, past the priests who had been enjoying the show, and into the nave.
The light streaming through the stained-glass windows was a big hit with Excalibur.
This is glorious! Not even Camelot had such beauty!
“Great. The stairs?”
Oh. In the shadows next to the altar, in that large column. Can’t you see them?
“Now I can.”
Henry hadn’t paid much attention to the cathedral when he’d been in Southampton with Brissac, but he knew three important facts: It was big. It had two or three separate rooftops equipped with nice, climbable flying buttresses. And its rear was very close to the houses of Underchurch, the neighborhood that had sprung up between the cathedral and the river.
/> Henry dashed for the column, with John no more than three yards behind. The stone stairs corkscrewed above, lit every ten feet or so by a tiny slit of daylight. Henry scrambled up, using his hands as much as his feet. The stairs were worn down in the center, slippery. Below him he could hear the soldiers. Closer. Closer.
And then he was up and out in the bell tower. The wind was blowing hard and cold, and it smelled of snow and the sea. Henry could see past the towers, out to the harbor, and east across the white and brown countryside. The bells hung in giant racks from their yokes in the ceiling. A priest stared at Henry, horrified.
“Bar the door!” yelled Henry. “Saracens!” He didn’t wait to see if the priest actually believed that the hordes of Saladin had traveled two thousand miles to assault suburban England. He scrambled over to the lip of the tower and saw he’d miscalculated. The buttress was on the other side of the tower, past the door—and now John’s men burst through, standing between Henry and his escape.
John pointed, and the soldiers spread out left and right to flank him. He made a few passes with his sword, and his men stalked forward.
The wall was behind Henry. John was in front of him. He was trapped. Unless—
Henry grabbed the bell rope and started to climb. The rope sagged under his weight. BING! The bell, a high B-flat by the sound of it, swung loudly in its yoke. The soldiers put their hands to their ears.
BONG! Henry climbed across the yoke mechanism, twenty feet above the soldiers, where he was sheltered from the full noise of the bells. DING! Unfortunately, the bells themselves were too high above the tower floor to actually hit any of them, but Henry rocked the ones he could, trying to generate as much painful clamor as possible. BING!
The soldiers spread out. BING-BONG-A-LONG BING! Henry circled, checking out the tower from up top…
There it was. The flying buttress leading down to the lower roof, just off the east side of the tower. BONG-BONG! Henry eased forward and tossed his knife behind him. It dropped with a clatter on the west wall, and the soldiers clustered around it. Henry dropped down, leaped over the low east wall, and crawled onto the ledge. Only ten feet down to that tiny, tiny buttress—
“Could you help me out here, Excalibur? Tighten my grip, or something?”
You’d like some advice on dueling against masonry? A little information on sword-strokes specially designed to attack architecture?
“All right, all right. Jeez.” He let go, and dropped.
“There he is!”
For a sickening moment, Henry’s feet threatened to shoot out from under him. Then he got control, and inched out along the buttress toward the tiled roof that covered the nave. He didn’t look back, but he listened for the muffled thuds that would mean he was being followed onto the buttress. One foot, five feet, ten feet—nothing. Twenty feet, he was at the roof’s edge, and no one had followed. Smart—the spider’s walk of the buttress was no place for a man in armor. Henry chanced a look back. Johnny was shouting at the troops. Now they were dashing back down the stairs. Trying to head him off, no doubt.
Henry leaped down to the roof, and raced across the tiles to far end of the church. There were more buttresses, at least five of which overlooked the roofs of houses. Eeny, meeny, miny—
—moe.
Henry jumped onto a house-top, and then across the street to another roof. He was in Underchurch now, a warren of buildings and alleys. The houses leaned out over the streets (so the folks on the top floors could dump their slops more easily on the folks below) and the roofs almost met in the middle.
The roofs were a little world of their own, filled even in winter with pigeon coops, barrels of dried fish and pickled vegetables, cloth and lumber and rope. Henry leaped from roof to roof, finally knowing where he had to go. Three blocks south and east, and he was on a warehouse overlooking the church plaza, sharing the wood coping with a vat of onions and a dozen barrels of slowly salting cod. He squinted at the plaza. He was in luck—John had taken the bait. He could see the men running through the maze of alleys, trying to catch him on the ground.
What are you doing?
“Doubling back.”
He worked his way back across the roofs to the cathedral. His luck held—his horse was still there, snapping and rearing, holding at bay a dozen up-and-coming young entrepreneurs who clearly wanted it for themselves. One flourish of Excalibur, and they were flying down the alleys. The horse trotted to him like a puppy. Henry grabbed the reins, hitched himself onto the saddle, and rode toward the gates.
One block, fine. Two blocks. Three, and he heard the sound of hoof beats and running feet. Four, and the gates were in sight. Five, and he was galloping onto the dock, and John and—yes, it was Brissac—were right behind him.
And there it was, the ship about to raise anchor. Henry dug in his heels, and the horse whinnied and raced forward. It leaped onto the deck as they raised the gangplank and the tide took them out, away from the dock, the wharf, and the gates.
As the Gorgonoki drifted south, faster and faster, Henry crawled up into the rigging. There they were, one parti-colored figure and one with long black mustaches, standing furious on the wharf.
“So long, Prince Jerk!” yelled Henry. “Give my regards to your jerk brother!” And with that, they were around the last bend, headed for the open sea.
15. Not Constantinople
“There to go for you. Constantinople.”
“That’s not Constantinople. That’s Bordeaux.”
“No, is Constantinople.”
“Look, I know Constantinople when I see it, and that’s not Constantinople.”
They were standing on the deck of the Gorgonoki, Henry and Captain Dimiturglu, staring at the city that was definitely not Constantinople.
“How for you to say is not Constantinople!?”
“For one thing, Constantinople is on the sea, and this is a river.”
“But this just river side of Constantinople. How you know other side not sea side?”
“Because this is the Garonne river. That city would have to stretch for fifteen hundred miles for the other side to be the sea.”
“Look is there.” Dimiturglu pointed. “Church of St. Sophia.”
“That’s a warehouse.”
“There is Golden Horn.”
“Barge dock.”
“Straits of Bosporus.”
“Drainage ditch. Do you really think you can get away with this?”
Captain Dimiturglu draped a friendly arm around Henry’s shoulder. “Crazy visions you got. Come with me to barber, we bleed you, you see right, everything good. I buy for you first leech.”
Henry shook himself loose and stepped back. “We’re two thousand miles by sea from Constantinople. Sail me there, or give me my money back.”
At this, Dimiturglu hung his head, and then glanced back at the other crewmembers.
Henry rubbed his forehead. “You don’t have my money, do you?”
Dimiturglu smiled, embarrassed. “You know, in Nantes, we go drinking? There is these girls, and they—”
“You partied my money away, and you didn’t even invite me.”
Now the sailors really did look ashamed. One of them slapped Dimiturglu upside the head and babbled in Whatever-ese. Dimiturglu nodded sadly. “Semikodomir says you right. We should to invite you. We break Code of Guy.” Then he brightened. “But is okay! You like Bordeaux. Fun town. Lots of girls! Right, boys?” The sailors nodded. Dimiturglu elbowed Henry in the ribs. “And the Queen, the Queen of England herself.” He whistled and sketched an hourglass shape with his hands. “Here is Court of Love, boy. In Bordeaux, all about love. And sometimes killing with swords. But mostly love.”
They deposited him on the wharf. “No hard feelings, eh?” Dimiturglu hugged him again. “Anyway, is no ship go take you Constantinople except those crazy Vikings. This as far as you go. You good boy. Use Captain Dimi’s name, people give you discounts. Good speed.”
Henry kept his mouth shut and his face gl
um until the captain was back on his ship. Then Henry turned and strolled down the wharf, fast but casual.
Are you going to let that little troll get away with that?
“It’s fine.”
NO! It is not! Draw me! Go back for Justice!
“During that last hug, I cut his purse. We’ve got enough Justice to last two months, I think.” They got off the wharf and headed into town.
On the voyage south, the cold weather had broken, and now spring was blowing through Bordeaux with the smell of new greenery, wet, black earth, and the last of winter’s provisions being opened—raisins and dried apples, old beer, cakes of figs and hard bread softened in wine. Between the spring breeze and the city’s southern latitude, the day was positively warm. Henry threw back his hood and turned his face to the sun.
He bought a couple of dried figs from a peddler. They were new to him; the fruit usually didn’t get as far north as Paris. “Tasty,” he said, chewing.
Keep your mouth closed.
Henry shut his mouth and looked around. It sort of looked like the captain was right—this was the City of Love. The merchandise on display was flowers, trinkets, and sweets; the streets were packed with happy couples, young and old; bright red hearts and blue forget-me-nots fluttered on banners from every window and rooftop; the women seemed to think that anything less than three colors in their dresses was immodest; and there were more public displays of affection per yard here than there were per mile in Paris. Billing, cooing, kissing and hugging were everywhere. Henry was embarrassed and jealous at the same time.
“Oh, no,” he said.
Now what?
They had arrived at the main street. The old town wall was hidden from view by a mob of pale, skinny youths with over-spangled lutes and slicked-back hair.
“Troubadours. I hate troubadours.”
Troubadours?
“Jerks with lutes. Bertran de Born wannabes.”
Oh. Musicians. In Camelot, they had to sleep outside the city walls.
“Really. Tell me more.”
The musicians had grabbed all the sunny street corners and church steps, and were yodeling away about their lady-loves in nasal Provençal, a dialect of French that even the French found annoying.
The Wrong Sword Page 9