Joris of the Rock [The Neustrian Cycle, Book II] (Forgotten Fantasy Library)

by Leslie Barringer

  "A penny for my lord Count's thoughts," said Juhel very softly.

  "Bah, much he cares," commented Guy, with eyes fixed on the plumed casque ahead of them. "There, on the left of the road, he had his row of gibbets. Seventy-two, they say, and some doubly loaded. That was his answer in the end."

  "I suppose he enjoyed it," breathed Juhel after a pause.

  Guy pulled a face.

  "Yes," he muttered, "I want to fight when I am a man, but not against dirty serfs. I should not have enjoyed it."

  "Nor I. Now … Gavin would."

  Juhel spoke experimentally, with seemingly innocence; his companion rose to the bait.

  "Yes, rot him, he would. He is never content unless someone is being hurt; yesterday he dropped his work to run because two grooms were fighting in the stable. If he cannot set one dog on to another, or find a rat to pound to death, he will catch hover flies and put them into spiders' webs… I should like to see him bewitched into a hare's shape and squeaking as he fled before our dogs!'

  "I have made up a little poem about him," confessed Juhel with lofty carelessness.

  "What? Tell it to me!"

  "If you promise not to tell him."

  "Go on! I promise!"

  "This is it:

  "Listen to Gavin

  And think of thunder

  Of battle fronts closing,

  Of panic and plunder,

  Of rape and of murder,

  Of drowning and flame,

  Till, scared by the sound

  Of his terrible name

  You'll rhyme it with 'ravin'

  "But lords, have no fear,

  I doubt if he'll hurt you;

  And ladies, no need

  To set guard on your virtue.

  Walk in his wake

  Down the length of a street,

  And see the queer turn

  Of his knees and his feet,

  And you'll rhyme it with 'spavin.'"

  Guy was impressed and amused; for some time afterward he memorized the poem with soundless movements of his lips, and during the whole of that journey Juhel and he were friends.

  The first night they slept at an abbey. When on the following day they came near the river Varne the Count of Barberghe turned eastward at the Inn of Harmony instead of holding on his way south to cross at Angmer. Past the great hold of Olencourt he led his train in haste, for there was no love lost between him and the dour Castellan. And in the afternoon of the second day Juhel first laid eyes on a city – the fair city of Belsaunt, builded and walled with red and gray stone around the red palace of its bishop and the gray cathedral of Saint Austreberte, its patron.

  The cynical page became a flushed and wondering child; Juhel had not understood in what small space the burgher families dwelt above their crowded shops. Trim girls laughed at his absorbed face; one fair-haired minx leaned out of an upper window and flung a rose at it. Startled, he caught the flower as it fell, and most ungallantly hurled it back, missing the pink foolish maiden by inches only. Then the deepening sunlight flashed on the blue and silver-coloured sign of the Four Swords; Juhel must fling his bridle to Guy and leap to the cobbles, scuttling forward to hold the gilded bit chain of Robin's Barberghe's bay.

  Amid his careful duties he found time to note the thronging blazons of great lords – the gryphon, gold on blue, of the Constable Volsberghe, the red and yellow wolves' heads of Montcarneau, the silver fleurs-de-lis of Olencourt, the black bull of Ahun. He himself stood trimly enough in tunic and hose of black and red, with the three Barberghe chevrons counterchanged on his breast and a crow's feather in his red pointed hat.

  "I believe it is going to be better now," he thought.

  * * * *

  Supper was not at the Four Swords, but in the sombre machicolated mansion of the Duke of Ahun. There Juhel saw the Sieur Gaston de Volsberghe, lately returned from service in the Emperor's armies, with truth and legend like a cloud of evil bats around his banner; and among the mob of pages Juhel ate his fill of veal and mutton and wild goose, with puff- bread and pynnonade, a confection of almonds and pineapples which he particularly loved.

  In a corner of the great hall he sat down on a bench and folded his hands over his stomach, praising Saints Christopher and Nicholas for his removal from the cheeseparing dominion of the Countess of Barberghe, He would have liked to talk to Guy, but Guy was drinking with the Volsberghe pages – no, horrors, Guy was maudlin drunk, with his arm about the neck of Gavin!

  Gavin's prominent light eyes roved round the noisy crowd and came to rest on Juhel; Gaven's sleek rat-brown head was cocked attentively toward the grinning slobbering lips of Guy.

  Something – perhaps the pynnonade – turned over in Juhel's inwards; he was betrayed, and knew it. Gavin nodded reflectively, and got up on his feet.

  Juhel slipped past the dais screen and into a kitchen passage. Almost blindly he fled, with no intent but to flee; and in a moment his little flitting figure was swallowed up in the vast Hotel de Ahun.

  "Little reptile, I will flay you!" raging Gavin sang into the gloom; and Juhel heard his pounding feet in the flagged passageway behind.

  Smells of damp stone, lanterns hanging at corners, round-arched windows that gave glimpses of courtyards grassed or cobbled between dark sheers of masonry; once a group of poplars, feathery against opal afterglow, and once a silent reach of garden, shadowy blue and shining gray beneath the summer moon…

  Stairs and more stairs, with direction lost, an upper corridor, barred by faint lights here and there; a rumour of approaching words, waning only to wax sharply; a door ajar, a panic-stricken push and cautious entry, a queer smell of beeswax…

  Juhel cowered on a shadowed wooden floor behind some sort of pierced wooden screen; he was near a yellow-coffered ceiling, pleasantly lighted by a great chandelier whose pulley ropes ran down out of his sight. Curious muffled shapes stood round him in the confined gloom; he had just time to realize that he was in the in the minstrel gallery of some small hall when deep voices resounded terrifyingly in the passage.

  "Hamo, you will keep this door shut and stand on guard outside it until I send to dismiss you. No one is to enter, not my lady Duchess herself. See to it."

  "Yes, my lord Duke."

  There came the scrape of a drawn sword; Juhel held his breath in fright as a head came round the door. But the Duke of Ahun was hooded against the night air of his upper stories; one glance to left and right at the blanketed harp and viols, at the music stands and benches, could not show him the huddled boy in the deep shadow among them.

  The head vanished, the door slammed; Hamo leaned against it with a cough, and when his lord had gone began to whistle softly to himself.

  Juhel sat with triple terror knotting in his brain – terror of his present predicament, of Robin Bargerghe who must shortly miss him, of Gavin when the two of them should meet again. Then a door grated open, this time out of his sight in the chamber below; and the great voice of Gaston de Volsberghe thrilled the listener's eardrums.

  "In faith, y lords, I feared I was come home to rust awhile; but now it seems unlikely."

  Laughter followed his words, and a setting and scraping of chairs; nearly a dozen men had entered and were placing themselves around a table. Through the patterned holes of his gallery screen Juhel saw gleaming silks and satins, the flash of a gemmed sword hilt, the flick of a ringed hand. He dared not move forward to press his eye to a chink in the carving, lest the boards groan or creak with his weight; instead he held himself very still.

  "Be seated, my lords," came the request of the Duke of Ahun. "I have set seal on every entry; we may speak freely for a time."

  There was a final stir and trampling, dying down into expectant silence. Then someone spoke in tones like the Sieur Gaston's but more tired and hollow-sounding; and Juhel knew that it was Gaston's father, the old Duke of Volsberghe who was constable of the realm.

  "The first news, my lords, is that our cock is game."

  "I knew it,"
crowed a younger man, in a voice so aptly of the barnyard that a gust of laughter ringed the board.

  "The Duke of Camors," thought Juhel, "and half-drunk, too. But the rest of them are marvellously sober."

  Words and phrases, quietly spoken at first, becoming gradually more audible as the speakers warmed to their subject.

  "He shall have no alternative, my lord Duke."

  "The mischief is that all our northern holds are clean impregnable without protracted siege…"

  "Oh, ay, Barberghe, time is everything."

  "And Montenair is hapless."

  "Well, Marckmont at the crossing of the marshes…"

  "But who know what is in the head of Raoul of Ger?"

  "Dreams, and a damnable quickness with steel."

  That was Juhel's own master; so the Barberghes, foxy sire and spiteful son, were both in this coil, whatsoever it might prove to be. Gradually a sense of the scene formed in Juhel's mind. There was Gaston explaining, inviting, forestalling criticism; the constable seconding him with a flung word or two; Camors hiccoughing a little, but very sure that all was for the best; Barberghe moodily considering, objecting, temporizing; someone else scenting blood but still half dazed by an enormous supper. Ahun himself was all but silent; a few younger men confined their opinions to grunts and monosyllables.

  Juhel's inexpert conjectures stabbed and recoiled amid the fragments of discussion; only gradually were his own fears forgotten in the realization that he listened to a planning of great treason. At length he felt his eyes widen, and a shiver not of dread assailed his body. "Our cock" was Conrad of Burias; when old King Rene died his nephew Thorismund was to be set aside – and old King Rene was lying sick in Hautarroy.

  "But why not wring the princely neck?" demanded someone gruffly.

  "Because his cousin of Franconia has next claim," said the Sieur Gaston smoothly. "Do you want Franconian armies to find us all at odds? Thorismund must be seized and – persuaded. Moreover, we must have Belsaunt; for this place is the key to all the north."

  "I see. And my lord Count of Ger being also my lord Baron of Marckmont–"

  "Holds coast road and marsh road, dividing my lord my father from my lord of Barberghe, and me from my greatly desired Belsaunt."

  "My lord and my lord and my lord!" thought Juhel in the shadows, his natural disrespect at length reasserting itself. "Gaston must be set on his plan, since he keeps his temper so shrewdly. But it is a great baseness, and they are making of me a rebel and a traitor."

  Juhel squirmed at the idea, thus first presented to him, that his own life was one of thousands staked to by these noblemen. Thousands of people were living all round him; in Belsaunt, in Honoy, in Neustria, in Christendom, in Heathernesse that stretched to the ultimate sweep of ocean – and merely by living after their customs they compelled each other. War, and a reaching after power, were customs of great lords. For a moment existence was revealed to Juhel as a thing of hideous and unbearable complexity; if it came to a vote down there, the word of tipsy Camors or wily Barberghe might doom great rivers of blood and tears to flow. And yet – Saint-Eloy-over-Hardonek had taught him so – he knew that all that would be must accord with the rulings of the Sieur God.

  It was too difficult for Juhel, whose youthful heart still quaked for signs of a great mercy beyond the dull horizons of adversity; he sat spellbound and sick, half heedless of the tense debate until Gaston de Volsberghe closed it with a fist blow on the table.

  "Then I will wound this prodigy of Ger whose name so plagues you all. For the rest, each to his task, and say no word to your ladies, for you know what that may mean."

  The last gust of laughter had a reckless ring in it. Chairs were thrust back; Camors belched joyfully. Voices thinned and lessened, footfall and movement checked at the doorway and receded beyond it. Behind Juhel, in the upper corridor, someone hailed Hamo, who replied with alacrity and stumped quickly away.

  Juhel sat rigid for a moment, and then groaned and grimaced in a torment of pins and needles. Many seconds elapsed before he could stand upright; then he slipped out into the passage and scuttled unhappily off to find the way by which he had come.

  Corridors, corners, stairs, a brushing of dusty arras – once the squeak of a rat that turned in a moonlit entry. Then a covered way resembling one walk of a cloister, but with no low wall between the outer columns; instead, you stepped straight out upon gravelled paths, in a shadowed angle of a garden where ghostly roses stared from the black web of their bushes, where trim beds were pallid with ranked marigolds and tulips.

  The mingled breath of delight halted the boy in his tracks. He sniffed, and choked down a sob; it was cruel that such beauty should strike up between two miseries. Gavin would roundly deny that he had chased Juhel from the hall; what, then could be said to the Viscount Robin?

  Later Juhel wished that he had grasped more tightly the splendour of his moment among the friendly flowers; for as he neared the steps that led up into the great hall, one of the Barberghe squires came out and looked around.

  "What are you doing here?" he demanded, moonlight showing him the chevroned tunic and the still-chubby face.

  "I got lost," was Juhel's truthful reply.

  "Well, come with me. My lord Viscount wants one of you – you will do."

  "Where is my lord?"

  "Gone to the bear pits. They are to have a torchlight bearing."

  Presently Juhel had to cling to the squire's sword belt, so thronged was the gallery round the sanded pit. In a strange war of costly perfumes and upriseing animal stench he wormed his way through the press; once he was crushed against the fur-trimmed mantle of a slim and lovely lady. He embarked upon an apologetic stutter, but the lady looked down and smiled, her chin no more than a foot above his own. Her oval face was glorious in the red flicker of torchlight; she had green eyes and a pale skin and hair that gleamed like bronze beneath the rim of her yellow horned headdress, and Juhel knew her for the Lady Yolande de Volsberghe, daughter of the constable, sister of the Sieur Gaston, and – some said – mistress of Prince Thorismund himself.

  "Some day some maid will not expect apology for that," affirmed the lady Yolande with critical good humour; and her soft scented hand came up and tickled Juhel under the angle of the jaw. The boy blushed painfully and struggled away; and later, crouching silently by the balustrade and beside the silken legs of Robin Barberghe, he wondered if the many tales they told of here were true.

  It was queer that her lovely remembered features, seen so close for a second or two, could blot out the noisy sport beneath for moments at a time. Not until blood began to spurt did Juhel succumb to the spell of the game; then he stopped wondering whether the lady Yolande was really so fair as he believed, and watched with paling cheeks and quickened breath the grim death shuffle on the blotched brown sand.

  Midnight found the Viscount Robin too drunk to retire to his inn; the household had followed the count thither and only Juhel was left with his young master. Robin Barberghe slept in a bed beside the Duke of Camors; Juhel lay on a mattress near them, glad that the night was warm, and the duke's page friendly, and the duke's great boarhound much less formidable than he first appeared. Weariness conquered his dread of coming retribution; the ducal snoring that lulled him to sleep seemed barely separated from the boarhound's morning sneeze that awakened him.

  Then, indeed, sunlight and dew and twitter of birds could not redeem him from wretchedness. Like a criminal he slunk behind the sleepy viscount into the courtyard of the Four Swords; sullenly he looked at Gavin and Guy, wondering how soon their chance would come.

  It was just before breakfast, when Robin Barberghe went alone into his father's bedroom. Juhel, groping in his saddlebag for a clean shirt, found his beloved ballad book gone and gave a yelp of dismay.

  Three minutes later he was down in a small flagged court leading off the main inn yard. He struggled in Guy's skilful grasp, while Gavin lugged the book from a belt wallet.

  "Let me alone, you b
ig beasts!" he screeched. "Give me my ballad book and let me alone!"

  "Get hold of his other hand, Guy."

  "Ai, the little devil kicks – you would kick, would you?"

  "Yes, I would kick you dead if I could. Oh, no, I did not mean it. Gavin, please, please, Gavin, do not throw it away!"

  "You made a rhyme about me, little pig – now see where you book is going."

  Up flew the slim brown leather-covered tome, curving downward again to lodge on a jut of crazy tiles.

  "There, now the pigeons can read it. And that is only the beginning. I'll make you write your poem down and eat it. And now you will be late to breakfast…"

  Guy released Juhel, and the tormentors fled laughing. Juhel stood white and still, gnawing a knuckle and staring up at his treasure. A servant of the inn passed through the yard, and like a flash the boy turned to him.

  "Will you get my book for me, please?" he demanded, pointing aloft. "I will give you a florin and three pennies, which is all I have."

  "None of your games with me, young master," said the man, disappearing without an upward glance.

  Juhel clasped his hands and stood considering. Tow great tears stole down his smudged face; then he flew at a water butt, climbed up on its edge, and scrabbled with hands and foot at the leaden drainpipe above.

  "If you fall in there, you will drown," said a quiet voice from nowhere. Juhel craned his neck, changed grip on the lead, felt his firm foot slip on the mossed edge of the butt, and half jumped, half fell to the flags, whence he did not attempt to rise or look for assistance.

  Instead, he lay utterly hopeless, crying softly and rubbing his bruised behind; but when he found a young man bending over him he started up on an elbow with more of defiance than pain in his expression.

  "Are you hurt?" demanded the same quiet voice. "No? Or more than usual? One moment, someone is coming…"

  The young man was of middle height, and wore thin leather garments of the sort used under armour. His uncovered hair was thick and light brown, his aquiline face brown-ivory, austerely yet sweetly carven; his wide pale mouth held a half smile at its chiselled corners, and his eyes were almost of faery, being green-gray flecked with amber. Juhel blinked at their friendly regard, and the stranger stood upright.