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

by Leslie Barringer

  "Midnight," said Raoul of Ger; and when he was belted and cloaked the chaplain led him to a postern in the street wall of the gloomy palace. A gentleman-at-arms saluted; pikemen grounded their butts; Juhel flicked his own cloak round his shoulder in imitation of his master.

  Outside was blinding moonlight and rushing wind. At the foot of an ink-black alley lay the darkling sheen of water; beyond were the dim island towers of Sanctalbastre, and beyond again the rock of Ingard, crowned by the great royal castle, loomed sable in cloud-shadow.

  "My lord Count," asked the chaplain, "shall I call the linkmen of the household to light you home?"

  "I thank, Father – no. I have only to round three sides of Saint Andreas to reach the Burning Bush. It is nearly as plain as daylight."

  A moment later Juhel was trotting behind his lord as the latter strode into the open space before the western end of the cathedral. From a street on their left came voices and a flickering of torchlight; a glance showed Juhel a perspective of shuttered houses, with a tall gateway open at the end of them, and a lighted courtyard filled with moving men. By twos and threes the torches passed into the warren of alleyways; it was Sunday morning, and the guests of the cardinal count were leaving the Hotel de Estragon.

  Raoul of Ger turned away and aimed for the northwestern angle of Saint Andreas. Juhel, as he went, picked out the saint's own image above the doorway. Galilee porch and ranked kings and bishops in their niches, steps where the beggars sat by day, slender western turrets where the pigeons nested – all these, as moonlight flashed and passed, stood sharply cut in solver-gray and sable, or blurred and lost in one dark face of stone. Behind the soaring bulk of the great central tower dim masses of gray cloud went scudding; the plane trees and chestnut trees that lined two sides of the square kept up a constant hiss and roar, shifting and tossing their dark foliage against frowning stillness of blank-windowed palaces behind them.

  There were houses of great noblemen – the Hotels de Lestembourg, du Fors, de Boqueron, and at the far end, coming close against cathedral outbuildings beside the northern transept, the Hotel de Hastain, the home of young Thorismund, heir to the sick and ancient king.

  Count Raoul and Juhel passed the base of the northwestern tower; the boy glanced up at the buttressed bulk of the north nave aisle. The roof was invisible now, and only a line of crocketed finials cut into the stormy sky.

  "Like a great ship riding at anchor," thought Juhel, "only safer, and kindlier, and more blessed, and very still."

  He glanced across the windy square to taste the contrast of the raging trees, and suddenly caught his breath. Then he reached out and tugged at the count's flying cloak.

  "My lord," he muttered, "my lord! We are followed!"

  "Where? By whom?"

  "Two men, among the trees. They are still now. One, two, three trees to the left of the turret with the shining vane."

  "Over many people about for cutpurse dealings," commented the count. "See, the torches all over the square behind."

  "They have no torches," whispered Juhel, wishing he carried a dagger.

  "Come along, boy, we are only five minutes from the inn."

  The count's voice was amused, but he quickened his stride. Ahead was a dark entry, leading through the buildings of the choristers' school into the open space behind the cathedral apse. From that passage branched a narrower alley, which skirted the flank of the Hotel de Hastain and led into the same open space a score of paces to the left of the other. Gaining the mouth of the entry, the count paused; straight ahead of him stretched the dark passage, with a wooden post at the far end to resist its use to foot passengers. Beyond the post were cobbles, wall-shadowed, tree-shadowed, and at length brightly moonlit, running to a gutter and a sheer house wall; and as Raoul of Ger stepped forward an owl's cry, thrice repeated, rang from among the trees behind.

  Juhel gasped. Along the branching alley something creaked. The mystified count ripped out his sword and advanced up the passage to the alley mouth, with his page shivering in rear.

  Darkness and emptiness in the alley; only the rushing of leaves to be heard. The count's left hand came groping backward, to find a hot clutching paw; the count trotted down the covered way, dragging the scuttling Juhel behind him.

  In a flash they were clear of the building; a deep-toned twang resounded from their left, and something whizzed to thud into wood behind them. Over his shoulder Juhel saw a swinging first-floor shutter in the building beside the mouth of the alley; then he was hauled past the low wall of the choristers' playground and flung into the black shadow of a buttress of the cathedral apse.

  The count knelt to peer round the arras, and a man broke sword in hand out of the passageway, shouting something unintelligible toward the window beyond him.

  "Behind the buttress!" cried an answering voice.

  The man turned; then, at a clash of steel in the passage, turned again.

  "Oh, God!" he squeaked, and ran like a rabbit across the moonlit space to disappear in the mean streets beyond the angle of the Hotel de Hastain.

  The shutter clashed to in Thorismund's dark wall. A second armed man, with a boy scampering behind him, broke from the passage and stood glaring this way and that.

  "Watch, ho!" he roared at the top of his voice. "Come on, you skulking knaves! Watch ho! This way!"

  "Get into cover," called the count calmly. "They shot from the window beyond you."

  The count was out in the moonlight again, pointing with his sword.

  "Who the devil are you?" spat the other, striding up with blade advanced; and then: "Why, Raoul, what the fiend is all this?"

  Juhel saw that the newcomer was Sieur Brian de Saulte, brother of the great duke and close friend of Prince Thorismund.

  "I do not know," confessed Raoul of Ger. "For God's sake come behind the buttress – and the lad, too. Now what is amiss? What happened to you?"

  "I came from the cardinal count's and saw two knaves go stealing along in front of me – after you, if it was you ahead – and one of them hooted like an owl, and then they slipped into the passage – and I after them, and one turned like a stoat, but I had already drawn; and besides, I wear chain mail. He lies there at least. What befell you?"

  the Count of Ger told him, while Juhel and the Saulte page grinned at each other in scared excitement.

  "But that is the Hotel de Hastain," muttered the Sieur Brian, with a thunderous frown on his fair hawk's face.

  "Well I know it. Was it a crossbow?"

  "Was it – yes. The bolt sticks in that post. Hark, here is the watch."

  Lights had appeared in the windows across the way, but the Hotel de Hastain reared an unresponsive bulk against the stars. Torches guttered round a corner and came streaming down the wind; lanterns swung amid steel corselets and a glitter of guisarmes. In the passage someone stumbled and swore.

  "Hell to pay," cried a clear voice. "Conrad, mind your feet; a dead man, I vow."

  In a moment the space at the end of the passage was bright with torch and lantern; the bolt gleamed in the wooden post at the height of a man's heart. Backed by a gay-clad group of nobles, a beautiful youth with flame-red hair and cloak of emerald green stood staring at the count and the Sieur Brian, and at a saluting captain of the watch.

  "What has passed here?" he demanded imperiously.

  Brian de Saulte bowed low and gestured at the post. The Count of Ger lifted his chin and looked his royal cousin in the eye.

  "My good lord prince, I seem to have dodged a bolt intended for Brian – who, coming behind me, slew one of those who followed and had given the signal to shoot."

  "To shoot where from?"

  "That window."

  Thorismund turned, and in the haughty press behind him someone sniggered.

  "Impossible," said the prince flatly.

  "My lord Prince, I saw and heard it."

  "Do you know what you are saying? That is my own house."

  "I know what I am saying. That is your own house. I
noticed it. The angle of the bolt confirms my words. It missed me by a yard only, and my page here by inches."

  "Page? Here, stripling, you tell what happened."

  Juhel, already sufficiently scared if only by the new tone in his master's quiet voice, now swallowed and stood forward to begin a faltering tale. The prince listened soberly, and beyond him in the unsteady light Juhel could now make out the dark impassive face of Conrad, Duke of Burias.

  "Bring the corpse here," commanded Thorismund when Juhel had done. "Show a lantern, someone. Montdor, is this a man of my own following?"

  The prince's chamberlain moved forward and bent low.

  "I never saw the rogue before," he said after a moment. "Upon my oath he is none of yours, my lord."

  "Nevertheless–" began Brian de Saulte harshly; but the young prince stepped forward and caught at Brian's hand.

  "Montdor," he ordered sharply, "guard my honour and yours! Indoors at once and apprehend that crossbowman. Conrad, you and I will see Brian to his door. Captain, dispose of this carrion; if another man be caught, bring him to me forthwith."

  "One moment, Thorismund," said Conrad of Burias curiously. "May I ask my lord of Ger why he thought this foul blow aimed at Brian rather than at himself?"

  Raoul of Ger flashed his charming grin full in the speaker's face.

  "Why, then, Raoul?" inquired the prince, with one hand now on an arm of Brian and Conrad alike.

  "Gramercy for that courteous query, my lord Duke," said Raoul of Ger. "But no one knew how or when I, with one follower or more, might leave my lord Archbishop; while many must have known that Brian, with one page only, might pass hereby soon after midnight."

  "I am answered," replied Duke Conrad. "But also I say, the Sieur God be praised it missed you both."

  "Amen to that!" cried the prince. "Now enter with me, all, and see what Montdor finds for us."

  The count of Ger bowed and begged to be excused. Thorismund of Hastain eyed him angrily, but made no objection. Juhel was suddenly aware that no man present respected the prince as he respected the Duke of Burias, or the Count of Ger, or fiery Brian de Saulte. And Juhel would have liked to know what happened next; but the count took a courteous farewell of the prince and his companions, and walked deliberately away.

  Ten minutes later, while on his knees after pulling off the count's elegant puce-coloured thigh boots, Juhel looked up onto his master's face and gave a gasp of nervousness.

  "What is it?" asked Raoul of Ger sharply.

  "My – my lord, at Belsaunt, four nights since, I overheard a secret conclave…"

  Raoul of Ger listened, sitting almost motionless on the great bed, with fingers of one slim strong hand twisting slowly amid Juhel's curly hair. Once or twice he stopped the boy to question him, but mostly he kept silence until the end. Then he bent the dark head backward and looked into Juhel's wide brown eyes, reaching out with his other hand for a crucifix that lay in the top of his open travelling chest.

  "Have you spoken of this to anyone else?" he asked.

  "No, my lord."

  "then take this crucifix and swear upon it that you will never tell again a word of that Belsaunt council to any human being unless I so bid you."

  Juhel swore willingly, glad of the hand in his hair and proud of his great service – for such he guessed it to be. For the count's next question he was unprepared.

  "If you were I, Juhel, what would you now do?"

  "Accuse the traitor lords before the King's Majesty," replied Juhel promptly.

  "It is not so easy as that," said the count, smiling. "The word of one small page, however honest, will not carry far. The mouth of one small page, however truthful, can all too soon be stopped in Hautrarroy. This tale of yours will be accounted to you, but marvel not if you never hear of it again."

  * * * *

  Noon in the great tilting ground beside the royal river. Banners listless on their striped staffs, paint blistering on the bright shields of parade beside the door of each trim silken pavilion. Master Nino Chiostra grimacing at his handiwork – for he himself had laid the gold ground and the black gerfalcon on the shield of Raoul of Ger. Juhel's hand sticky with heat on the black-studded yellow leather of Safadin's bridle; beyond Safadin's glittering chamfron, above the oval sweep of trampled grass, a perspective of red-draped barricades and gaily patterned awnings, holding between them a pink and gray-white sea of faces. Somewhere at the far end the fierce Count of Lestembourg, with a page adjusting his sword belt as Piers now adjusted the belt of the Count Raoul.

  Juhel was desperately excited; his free hand shook as he raised it to beat the flies from Safadin's twitching nostril. The stallion's teeth clashed on his silver bit; a great hoof rose and stamped, raising a blur of dust. In the bright swell of steel that guarded Safadin's chest Juhel saw his own brown reflected face blob-nosed, with receding brown and chin, like the face of an idiot Jew.

  The count appeared, a steel-and-yellow figure of unwonted breadth, with his curved shield slung at his left shoulder, and with a falcon "displayed," of black cuir-bouilli, rising from the morse-encircled crown of his great closed helm. A languid buzz of interest thickened along the lists; here and there a northern voice shouted a word of approval.

  There came a throaty clamour of trumpets, and long-drawn shouting of the heralds. Piers swung the silver stirrup; Raoul of Ger hopped twice and clanked into his saddle. When the shield was in place Juhel let go of the bridle and stepped back. The count held out his right hand, in its steel-cased gauntlet, to receive the haft of a hornbeam lance thrust upward by a squire; the three-pronged plate at the tip flashed as it swung level and high again.

  Safadin snorted and stamped anew, trampling a dozen paces into position. Raoul of Ger leaned slightly to his saddlebow and couched his lance. Two hundred yards away the dragon-crested helm of Lestembourg gave back the noonday light.

  Once more the trumpets clamoured; the count's gilded spurs winked; and the great bulk of Safadin broke forward through the trembling sunlit air.

  Juhel clenched his fists and stood erect; a little eager mooing sound escaped his lips before he tightened them. All the force of his boy's spirit bore down the lists with that bright receding avalanche of flesh and blood and bone and silk and steel.

  Grimly out of the distance grew Lestembourg's blazon – lozengy azure and sable, charged with a golden dragon, hurtling, flashing above the red-draped tilting barrier.

  Eight flying horsehoofs drummed to the crash of impact; both lance shafts crack and shivered, the fragments flying in air. Juhel gave a gulp of relief, and Piers let out a long breath; either horseman straightened up and slanted his smashed weapon aloft before checking and wheeling his mount to repass at a canter.

  Again the applause was feeble; three hours of jousting had cloyed the public taste for niceties of encounter. Only when a rider clanged to earth was there now any real shouting; the first moment for which Juhel waited was gone, and the second and third brought his heart into his mouth for no purpose, since Count Raoul and his opponent broke each three lances with a ferocious dullness, neither so much as losing a stirrup to tip the scales of honour.

  Juhel had Safadin's bridle again almost before he was aware; Piers vanished within silken doors to serve his dismounted master with wine. A groom led the destrier away; another pair of noble horsemen fronted each other in the hot lists.

  "Next the mellay," thought Juhel; for at two o'clock the jousting would become a tourney, and Thorismund of Hastain and Gaston de Volsberghe would lead the two parties, each containing thirty lords and chevaliers. And Juhel must dance about between the outer and inner barriers, keeping as close as he might to the black-and-yellow colours of the Count Raoul. The combat was to be a plaisance, with blunt lances and pointless swords; old King Rene himself had seen to that. As it was, bad blood would no doubt show; when the jousting barrier was removed the laziest burgher drained his ale and opened his eyes to watch what might befall.

  But division of tourney cut righ
t across court faction; the young prince and the constable's son had drawn the written names of their followers from a tilting helm. Thorismund found Conrad of Burias Robin Barberghe, and the Duke of Camors behind him; Gaston drew the Duke of Saulte and the duke's brother Brian, with two great lords as yet politically neutral – the youthful Counts of Montcarneau and Ger. Each combatant flaunted a silken sash bound round his sword arm above the gleaming elbow cop; Thorismund's men bore crimson, Gaston's white.

  Juhel, with eyes so lately opened to the underworld of intrigue, grinned at this mating of foes and sundering of friends. He wished that he might watch the whole engagement; and then, half ashamed of such idle desire to gape like a townsman, he sent a quick prayer into the blue sky above the opposite awnings – a prayer for the safety and achievement of his master. Save for the danger to Raoul of Ger, who was of slighter stature than many of his peers, Juhel found utmost satisfaction in the quick alternate din of kettledrums and trumpets, in the drawled yells of the tilting marshals and the formation of the two glittering lines of array.

  Not a face of the contestants could be seen; only a close knowledge of blazons could help the spectator to accurate counting of gain or loss. But only a fool missed Thorismund's golden portcullis, or Gaston's golden gryphon, or the red boar of Burias – or, indeed, the chevrons of Barberghe and the gerfalcon of Ger. Juhel, priding himself on his skill in that side of his service, had a third of the noble names from their owners' brilliant shields before the signal was given for onset.

  The constable, the old Duke of Volsberghe, bowed to King Rene and moved to the purple-hung rail of the royal balcony. Stiffly he raised a thick white truncheon; silence brushed the lists as with a down-swept wing. Loud in the hush fell truncheon, clattering on the boards of the gallery; to one concerted stamp and jingle the raised lances sank to the charge, and a roar of cheering all but drowned the curt adopted battle cries of Gules and Argent.