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

by Leslie Barringer

  "He will do well enough by then, at the rate he goes," said Anne. "But let not cross-eyed Romarec keep such frequent guard; he offends the lad beyond measure."

  "A plague on your mercy," laughed Joris in great good humour.

  "Had I chosen the other course, maybe I would listen to you. Yet you yourself seem very tired of our princeling. Is his hair too nigh the colour of your own?"

  "His temper, as he grows stronger, is something too waspish. Nay, Joris, do not visit it upon him

  "What kind of a life will his be henceforth?"

  "That is no affair of ours. For what you have just now said, he shall have Romarec for guard all night. What, shall he air his whims in the shadow of the Rock? Not he, by the chimes of hell! I have half a mind to break his knees; so long as his head and hands are hale Duke Conrad should be served. Nay, I cannot sit here like a slug. Gandulf was going to receive the cattle which Gaston sends for our winter provision; but I shall go myself, or little Thorismund will rue it."

  Red Anne shrugged her shoulders and smiled, reaching out for her lute. With voice pitched low as an oboe she sang a little song, watching the rain slant down beyond the cavern entry.

  "When Merlin brought him to the lake

  To take the brand Excalibur

  Pendragon seemed but half awake

  When Merlin brought him to the lake

  The brand Excalibur to take;

  But lo! The shining steel astir

  When Merlin brought him to the lake

  To take the brand Excalibur!

  "But little thought had Arthur then

  Of Guendolen or Guinevere.

  He heard the thunder of his men,

  And little thought had Arthur then

  Of Guinevere or Guendolen.

  The witch-prow cleft the haunted mere;

  But little thought had Arthur then

  Of Guendolen or Guinevere!"

  Joris sat with hands cupped beneath his pointed beard, and eyes hard and contented under their heavy lids.

  " 'He heard the thunder of his men,'" Anne quoted softly when she had done. " 'Thousands of slain in the meadows, and the royal standard taken … Joris laughing amain at the end of a great battle … ay, and ten thousand men shall follow Joris.'"

  "A strange and partial prophecy," said Joris, remembering. "Nothing of this our means of success, or of the Barony of Thierne. But the promise of my runes was misty enough in places; maybe the effort of welding a rhyme corrupted their message. And so in your foreseeing, with Ivo's mind for your mirror. A mirror distorted – or so Lys had it – by Ivo's love for you."

  "You speak his name kindly at last," muttered Anne, pressing queer chords from the lutestrings. "If – when – we are shriven, Joris, I will have masses sung for his soul."

  "By the chimes of hell!' grunted the outlaw. "Are you giving over so far? Are you through that fog I might not know – the bitter fog beyond the striving gods?"

  "Not I," responded Anne, grown suddenly sullen. "But it – when – we are churched again it were well that one of us had honesty in his heart."

  Joris chuckled and spat, gaining a man's amusement from the literalness of a woman. To him the coming ceremony was a thing of convenience only; so far he had prospered apart from God and in spite of a devil made manifest.

  "Take it not too hard," he advised. "There are queer readings of honesty in that galley. Nay, what if your Ivo were right – what if Judas Iscariot were indeed a very godly man?"

  Anne was silent for a moment, and when she replied her voice was grim.

  "Ivo's heresy bites deep," she said. "In faith I believe it hard to come at Christ through his Church. But why did you remember what Ivo said about Judas Iscariot?"

  The laughter wrinkles deepened upon the cheeks of Joris.

  "They say red hair is unlucky," he intoned. "Judas Iscariot had red hair."

  Red Anne grinned and threw her hood at him.

  * * * *

  Bellowings far in the forest, and a tossing of black horned heads against the stormy sunset. Laughing men on ponies, shaping with shout and spear butt the course of that brown unruly herd across the hills to the Rock. Every westward-facing valley filled with a red light and a clamour of driving wind. Hawthorns stripped and frantic against the slate-gray cloud wrack, heather and bracken scourged and whistling, tarns flailed to a furrowing glitter of saffron, rose, and steel…

  It was as though the moors cheered Joris at his first harvesting of fortune. Riding ahead of the tumult, he scanned the forward slopes, permitting himself from time to time a little choking sound of laughter…

  "You will have the beasts between Pont-de-Foy and Ververon?" Gaston had asked at the parley; and Joris had shaken his head.

  "Give them to me to eastward of Mamion," he said. "I will see them across Varne."

  But since Mamion lay south of the Rock, there was no need to cross the river at all; and as Joris breasted a gentle slope and watched his shadow – a blue-gray centaur – climbing over the fading ling-tufts, he broke into his favourite song and boomed down-wind the name of Fastingal.

  His life as he had made it was a brutal affair enough, but when he was alone – when he lacked that lust for domination which servile blood inflamed in him – his heart still held a boy's awareness of splendour incommunicable. So, for a long moment, he was at one with hills and wind and sunset. To himself the ringing song seemed shorn of spoken meaning; it voiced some exultation that burned with the burning western sky, yet gathered force from the sweaty reek of the sturdy beast between his knees.

  "By God, I am alive!" he swore when his song was ended.

  And with a great contentment he rode into the western end of the defile that deepened to the chasm of his home.

  Fires sparkled, smoke bellied gray-white in blue gloom, but men stood at gaze without approaching their leader. The echoing uproar of driven cattle aroused the jackdaws from their winter nests among the limestone crannies; and the mingled din of bird and beast played Joris up to the door of his cave.

  There by a newly kindled fire stood Madoc, fully armed, and very white beneath the tan of his hatchet face.

  "Where is Anne?" demanded the chieftain.

  "Gone," said Madoc tensely. "Taking with her the prince."

  "Taking – with – her – who was on guard?"

  "Romarec. He also is fled. And had it been my fault I too should have gone by now."

  Joris looked his lieutenant up and down, and slipped from the pony's saddle. The very wings of his nostrils were pinched and white with rage; he clapped one hand on his sword hilt and made a little clawing gesture with the other.

  "When – when–" he croaked.

  "The night before last," responded Madoc. "Romarec knifed the sentry at the top end yonder; the fool was asleep, I believe. Easy enough to get away if they had ponies hidden; no one counts the ponies these days. I had twoscore men ranging wide all day yesterday, but they saw nothing."

  Joris wheeled, and lurched into his cave. His groping hands touched something in the darkness – the canvas cover of Red Anne's lute, that hung on a peg from one of the posts set up in the sandy floor. The strong fingers gripped the lute neck, feeling the inner cover of velvet rasp on the tautened strings before they whirled the thing aloft and crashed it against the wall. Other gear clanged and tumbled with it; Joris caught at his head with both hands and uttered a long howl of baffled fury. Then he pitched forward on to his blankets – biting, snarling, blaspheming alone in the darkness, with all his glory shredded and spent like the glow of the dead sunset.

  "You hag of hell!" he groaned aloud; and then his words spread chokingly amid the names of Anne and Ivo, of Rufin and long-dead Tiphaine de Ath.

  Once he began to laugh; but that was after he had found a wine skin. Then he paused and filled his lungs for a jest.

  "Judas Iscariot had red hair!" yelled Joris of the Rock.

  CHAPTER XI. THE CAUSEWAY AT MARCKMONT

  "It is like the edge of the world," said Juhel,
staring out of the window to where, above the last hovels of the hamlet, the land split into long shoals and the sedge-brown marshes widened eastward beneath low-dragging clouds.

  "the bright water beyond is the Lake of Cremalvay," said Piers beside him. "On a clear day, and especially when the light is low, you can sometimes see the further shore. When hawking is in season again we shall have rare sport – if we are still here."

  Four towers, wide for their forty-foot height, and linked by stout curtain walls, composed the Castle of Marckmont. They stood on a low mound at the southern end of the long stone causeway which carried the northward road. This barony, indeed, was two parts water, and the third part the poorest lowland corner of the realm.

  "If we are still here," repeated Juhel softly, his mind ranging backward over autumn, winter, and spring, with their alarms and journeys and the stormbound months on the crags of Ger above the northern sea. There Juhel had come to a new conceit of womankind; the Countess Reine could be stern enough, but her frank brown beauty went with a generous humour that the boy found worshipful and strange. Also he had a scar on his hand and a sweet memory in his heart – a memory of humming sea wind and upborne crash of waves, of sunlight pale on the clean brown rushes of the floor of the winter parlour.

  In the great painted cradle beside the hearth had lain the baby Viscount Lothair, cooing contentedly to himself, weaving a slow infinity of gesture with tiny helpless hands. Came a sudden howl in the passage, a shouting, a padding rush – and a boarhound, crazed and slavering, thudded against the jamb of the half-open door and hurtled sideways into the room where only Juhel stood. Over the arm of a chair beside the cradle hung a new crimson cloak of the count's; as the great brindled brute hunched his body and turned, Juhel leaped in front of the baby and snatched up the garment in both hands. His cry chimed with the snarl of attack; backward and sideways he stumbled, bowled over into the scattered fire ash by the weight of the hound's spring. But the red eyes and the murderous jaws were whelmed in crimson velvet; a half-gagged snap ripped the ball of Juhel's right thumb, forcing a louder yell from him as Nino Chiostra's sword blade flashed a foot from his face.

  The velvet had drunken the venom, and the would healed cleanly; but Juhel would never forget the shock and scent of the scalding wine, the intent scowl of John Doust bending above his hand, the strong arm of the Countess Reine about his shaken body and her hoarse words in his ear: "Juhel, brave Juhel, God give you your due, for never can we." Also there was the fair face of the Lady Dionysia de Saint-Aunay, ward to my lord, who held the steaming bowl for Captain John; yet best of all were my lord's own eyes, raised from the frightened child in his arms to look at his faithful page.

  All that was six months past, for it happened between the escape of Prince Thorismund and the fall of the first snow. Now full summer filled the land, and still the old King Rene clung to life, fretting the nerves of great lords who feared for plot and counterplot. The Count Raoul had brought to Marckmont two thirds of the fighting men of Gar; the little castle held only half of them, the rest being quartered in long huts by the windmill. But Juhel had only just arrived, having come with Nino Chiostra by way of hastain, Olencourt, and Belsaunt; and joyfully he dropped his gear in the little room he was to share with Piers.

  "In faith I am glad to be here," he said. "And so, I believe, is Master Nino."

  For the next room sounded a great splashing, and the Tuscan's merry tenor lifted in cynical song.

  "Observe Farncesca, how she stands,

  Carim-cara, cara-carim;

  As lithe a maid my heart demands

  Without Francesca's clawlike hands,

  Carim, cara,carissima.

  "Giovanna's eyes are kind and sweet,

  Carim-cara, cara-carim;

  But tho' my word be indiscreet

  Giovanna has enormous feet,

  Carim, cara, carissima.

  "Yet this my lay I'll not prolong,

  Carim-cara, cara-carim;

  Lest Cupid's hour should strike, ding-dong,

  And prove me altogether wrong,

  Carim, cara, carissima!

  Carim, cara, carissima!"

  Piers looked sideways at Juhel, and Juhel shrugged his shoulders.

  "At most times he seems very gay," murmured Juhel, "yet once I heard him weeping in the night."

  Piers nodded gravely. The little Lady Dionysia was heiress of Saint-Aunay, a proud fief in Nordanay; her father was that luckless count slain three years previously by Lorin de Campscapel. Sixteen and blonde and lovely, she did not lack for suitors among the proudest in the land; and whatsoever private equality was kept between Raoul of Ger and his comptroller, the Tuscan was nevertheless a landless foreigner, a nobleman's bastard whose sword was quick but whose first tool was a graver. The Lady Dionysia liked him, jested with him; but she cried scorn of his ungallant song without dreaming of the pain behind it.

  "Greeting my Tuscan mandrake!" boomed John Doust's voice beyond the half-closed door.

  "Well met, old bear from foggy England!" carolled Nino Chiostra.

  "You come to Marckmont and speak of fogs? By the scabbard of Michael Archangel, lad, I can count your ribs as never before. The remedy is copious inward application of baked heron, garnished with mallows, and weighted wit a multitude of chopped eels."

  "Per Bacco! The water was cooling, but a sight of your red jowl sets it steaming anew. To-night I thrash you at chess; to-morrow will do for accounting."

  "What news of the king?"

  "Dying, they say in Belsaunt. But that we have heard before."

  "And of Ger?"

  "All is well enough. The lord viscount has six teeth and crawls about the floor."

  "He will take kindly to swordplay, that one. Let me have the training of sons of lovers of peace. With five hundred of them I would make cold meat of the Soldan and tumble every city in Cathay."

  "There, there," crowed Nino. "Lothair shall conquer Muscovy, and I shall be receiver general of taxes paid in amber. Amber to the ceiling, John, and I will go about to carve it with an ax. Or he shall plunder the Indies, and all your points be strung with pierced gems."

  "Damnably uncomfortable when you came to buckle your sword belt."

  "No need for sword belts those days; our peace should quarter the earth."

  "Good Saint George deliver me from a day that needs no sword belt."

  "Ay, you are right war dog. Sword time takes the mind away from baying of the moon, giving a zest for little else but wine and puddings and sleep. But care killed the pig, and there is in one of my packs a lump of rock crystal sweated by Vulcan himself at the forge of the old gods. It will serve, it will serve … ten thousand little devils, cannot someone hammer flat the nails in this bathtub? No, I err; it is a pebble, fallen out of my riding boot. So fast we rode, John, the gravel flew over the treetops. Name of a dreadful name, bring me towels or I perish!"

  Piers ran to obey. Juhel stood a moment alone beside the unglazed window, sniffing the lazy summer air of the great marshes.

  "Nothing can beat the coast," he mused, "but this is very fair."

  * * * *

  So it proved in the weeks that followed, when Piers taught Juhel to walk on stilts between the silvery sand spits. Sometimes they poled a boat, pausing to snatch up bow and shaft and let fly at the waterfowl. Wild swans furrowed the mere, riding in kingly files and squadrons; once the boys heard a commotion and found a young swan slaughtering ducklings with poignard thrusts of his orange beak and cruel stamping of webbed feet, while the mother duck cried to unheeding heaven, tearing a circular trail in the reeds, whipping the water with frantic breast and wing.

  Piers fended the destroyer off, while Juhel rescued the sole survivor – a pitiful brown-gray fluffy thing, that twitched and squeaked and fouled his hand in its terror.

  "Here, duck," cried Juhel softly, floating the mite away on a tuft of grasses; and when the fugitive pair had vanished his eye fell on the three plump bodies fallen to arrows that afternoon a
nd now lying in the bottom of the little barge.

  "Why should we kill them if the swan may not?" he marvelled. "What if a water sprite jumped like a fish and flung us in to drown? The swan was doing it for fun, of course – hey, but so were we."

  He stretched himself in the blunt bows and let Piers propel them forward. Rags of blue sky grew between cloud packs, and the dull steely water responded with innumerable shades of blue and green and shining gray. Sedges and half-drowned willows, and above them the faintly stirring poplars, whispered to a first breath of morning wind; eels twirled ghostly dark in the brown water beneath his nose, and a low hum of countless insects swelled from the shore a dozen yards away.

  "I do not really want to kill anything," said Juhel to himself. "Or anyone – unless, perhaps, it were Joris of the Rock."

  When they had landed and moored the barge, Piers and he walked slowly homeward in the growing heat of noon. The hamlet was all but deserted, for serfs were getting in the hay beyond it, and John Doust had marched the men-at-arms across the causeway for a mock battle in the foothills to the north. But by the door of one hut a sturdy peasant girl sat shelling peas; the pages passed close by her, and Juhel saw that she had very light blue eyes and very long dark lashes in a sunburned face. Juhel was big for his age now, with comely rounded features; he felt the pale eyes on him, and wondered, not for the first time, what such a creature might be thinking as she sat there like a cat in the bright sunlight. Part of him claimed disgusted knowledge; the Marckmont wenches preened themselves these days, with so many tall soldiers thronging the mean street; why should she challenge a page's eye unless she could not help it? Did she ogle the haystacks thus, or sweep her lashes up so proudly for the nanny goat she milked of a morning? Part of him vowed she did, and mocked her for a fool.

  A week later he came on her gathering sticks in the oak glades toward the village of Olvay. Boldly she stood in his path, bare-armed, with her ragged skirt kilted above her strong brown knees. The moment slid out of time, and there was no past or future; Juhel felt he was damned for a coward if he did not clip hand hiss her soundly. She feigned to avoid the caress, but at the last her mouth met his own squarely. His grasp, that had been gingerly, tightened with sudden fury; hands and feet of this brown supple thing might be hard and earth-stained, but there was much beside that flowered smoothly from her rags beneath his fingers. The girl knew no subtlety; a hint of practice in her giggling surrender dug at his half-scared joy, yet could not uproot it.