Hood (42 page)
With these thoughts, he lifted the reins and urged his brown palfrey on once more, following his escort to the count’s fortress, where he would spend the night, continuing on to the church the next morning.
Within sight of their destination now, the riders picked up the pace. At the foot of the hill, they turned off the track and rode up to the fortress, passing over the narrow bridge and through the newly erected gate tower, where they were met by the snivelling nephew himself.
“Greetings, Abbot Hugo,” called Count Falkes, hurrying to meet him. “I hope you have had a pleasant journey.”
“Pax vobiscum,” replied the cleric. “God be praised, yes.
The journey was blissfully tranquil.” He extended his hand for the young count to kiss his ring.
Count Falkes, unused to this courtesy, was taken aback. After a brief but awkward hesitation, he remembered his manners and pressed his lips to the abbot’s ruby ring. Hugo, having made his point, now raised the hand over the young count in blessing.
“Benedictus, omni patri,”
he intoned, then smiled. “I imagine it must be easy to forget when one is unaccustomed to such decorum.”
“Your Grace,” replied the count dutifully. “I assure you, I meant no disrespect.”
“It is already forgotten,” the abbot replied. “I suppose there is little place for such ceremony here in the Marches.”
He turned to take in the hall, stables, and yard with a sweep of his keen eyes. “You have done well in a short time.”
“Most of what you see was here already,” the count conceded. “Aside from a few necessary improvements, I have not had time to construct anything better.”
“Now that you say it,” intoned the abbot, “I thought it possessed a certain quaint charm not altogether fitting the tastes of your uncle, the baron.”
“We have plans to enlarge this fortress in due course,” the count assured him. “The town and church are of more immediate concern, however. I have ordered those to be finished first.”
“A wise course, to be sure. Make no mistake, I am most eager to see it all—especially the church. That is the solid cornerstone of any earthly dominion. There can be no true prosperity or governance without it.” Abbot Hugo raised his hands and waved off any reply the count might make. “But, no, here I am, preaching to my host when the welcome cup awaits. Forgive me.”
“Please, Your Grace, come this way,” said Falkes, leading the way to his hall. “I have prepared a special meal in your honour—and tonight we have wine from Anjou, selected especially for this occasion by the baron himself.”
“Do you indeed? Good!” replied Hugo with genuine appreciation. “It has been a long time since I held a cup of that quality. It is a delicacy I will enjoy.”
Count Falkes, relieved to have pleased his demanding guest, turned to greet the churchman’s escort; he charged Orval, the seneschal, with the care of the knights and then led the abbot into the hall, where they could speak in private before supper.
The hall had been renovated. A fresh layer of clay and gypsum had been applied to the rough timber walls, and after being pain-stakingly smoothed and dried, the whole was whitewashed. The small window in the upper east wall was now closed with a square of oiled sheepskin. A new table sat a short distance from the hearth, with a tall iron candletree at each end. A fire cracked smartly on the big hearth, more for light than heat, and two chairs were drawn up on each side, with a jar and two silver goblets on the table between them.
The count filled the cups and passed one to his guest, and they settled themselves in their chairs to enjoy the wine and gain the measure of each other. “Health to you, Lord Abbot,” said Falkes. “May you prosper in your new home.”
Hugo thanked him courteously and said, “Truth told, a churchman has but one home, and it is not of this world.We sojourn here or there awhile, until it pleases God to move us along.”
“In any event,” replied the count, “I pray your sojourn amongst us is long and prosperous. There is great need hereabouts for a strong hand at the church plough—if you know what I mean.”
“The former abbot incompetent, eh?” Raising his cup to his nose, he sniffed the wine, then sipped.
“Not altogether, no,” said Falkes. “Bishop Asaph is capable enough in his way—but Welsh. And you know how contrary they can be.”
“Little better than pagans,” offered Hugo with a sniff, “by all accounts.”
“Oh, it is true,” confirmed the count. “They are an ill-mannered race—coarse, unlettered, easily inflamed, and contentious as the day is long.”
“And are they really as backward as they appear?”
“Difficult to say,” answered Falkes. “Hardheaded and stiff-necked, yes. They resist all refinement and delight in ostentation of every kind.”
“Like children, then,” remarked the abbot. “I also have heard this.”
“You would not believe the fuss they make over a good tale, which they will stretch and twist until any truth is bent out of all recognition to the plain facts of the matter. For example,” said the count, pouring more wine, “the locals will have it that a phantom has arisen in the forest round about.”
“A phantom?”
“Truly,” insisted the count, leaning forward in his eagerness to have something of interest with which to regale his eminent guest. “Apparently, this unnatural thing takes the form of a great bird—a giant raven or eagle or some such— and they have it that this queer creature feeds on cattle and livestock, even human flesh come to that, and the tale is frightening the more timorous.”
“Do you believe this story?”
“I do not,” replied the count firmly. “But such is their insistence that it has begun disturbing my workmen.
Wagoners swear they lost oxen to it, and lately some pigs have gone missing.”
“Simple theft would account for it, surely,” observed the abbot. “Or carelessness.”
“I agree,” insisted the count, “and would agree more heartily if not for the fact that the swineherds contend that they actually saw the creature swoop down and snatch the hogs from under their noses.”
“They saw this?” marvelled the abbot.
“In full light of day,” confirmed the count. “Even so, I would not put much store by it save they are not the only ones to make such a claim. Some of my own knights have seen it— or seen
something
, at least—and these are sturdy, trustworthy men. Indeed, one of my men-at-arms was taken by the creature and narrowly escaped with his life.”
“Mon Dieu, non!”
“Oh yes, it is true,” affirmed the count, taking another sip from his cup. “The men I sent to track down the missing oxen found the animals—or the little left of them. The thing had eaten the wretched beasts, leaving nothing behind but a pile of entrails, some hooves, and a single skull.”
“What do you think it can be?” wondered the abbot, savouring the extraordinary peculiarity of the tale.
“These hills are known to be home to many odd happenings,” suggested Falkes. “Who is to say?”
“Who indeed?” echoed Abbot Hugo. He drank from his cup for a moment, then mused, “Pigs snatched away in midair, whole oxen gorged, men captured . . . It passes belief.”
“To be sure,” conceded the count. He drained his cup in a long swallow, then admitted, “Yet—and I do not say this lightly—the affair has reached such a state that I almost hazard to think something supernatural does indeed haunt the forest.”
A
ll through the night, Bran sat hunched beside the hearth, arms around his knees, staring into the shimmering flames. Iwan, Aethelfrith, and Siarles had long ago crawled off to sleep, but Angharad sat with him still. Every now and then she would pose a question to sharpen his thinking; otherwise, the hudolion’s hut remained steeped in a seething silence—the hush of intense and turbulent thought—as Bran forged the perfect weapon in the glowing fires of his mind.
He was not tired and could not have slept anyway, with his thoughts burning bright. As dawn began to invade the darkness in the east, the fires began to cool, and the shape of his cunning craftwork was revealed.
“That is everything, I think,” he said, raising his head to regard the old woman across the smouldering fire ring.
“Have I forgotten anything?”
He was rewarded with one of her wrinkled smiles. “You have done well, Master Bran.” Raising her hand, palm outward, above her head, she said, “This night you have become a shield to your people. But now, in the time-between-times, you are also a sword.”
Bran took that as high approval. He stood, easing out the kinks in his cramped muscles. “Well then,” he said, “let us wake the others and get started. There is much to do, and no time to lose.”
Angharad lifted her hand to the men slumped across the room. “Patience. Let them sleep. There will be little enough time for that in the days to come.” Indicating his own empty sleeping place, she said, “It would be no bad thing if you closed your eyes while you have the chance.”
“I could not sleep now for all of the baron’s riches,” he told her.
“Nor could I,” she said, rising slowly. “Since that is the way of it, let us greet the dawn and ask the King of Hosts to bless our battle plan and the hands that must work to make it succeed.” She stepped to the door and pushed aside the ox hide, beckoning him to follow.
They stood for a moment in the early light and listened to the forest awaken around them as the dawn chorus of birds filled the treetops. Bran looked out at the pitiful clutch of humble dwellings, but felt himself a king of a vast domain.
“The day begins,” he said after a moment. “I want to get started.”
“In a little while,” she suggested. “Let us enjoy the peace of the moment.”
“No, now,” he countered. “Bring me my hood and cloak; then wake everyone and assemble them. They should remember this day.”
“Why this day above any other?”
“Because,” explained Bran, “from this day on, they are no longer fugitives and outcasts. Today they become King Raven’s faithful flock.”
“The
Grellon
,” suggested Angharad—an old word, it meant both “flock” and “following.”
“Grellon,” repeated Bran as the banfáith moved off to strike the iron and rouse Cél Craidd. He turned his face to the warm red glow of the rising sun. “This day,” he declared, speaking softly to himself, “the deliverance of Elfael begins.”
I
t is a very great honour,” said Queen Anora. “I would have thought you would be pleased.”
“How should I be pleased?”
“Relations are strained just now, it is true,” her mother granted. “But your father thought that perhaps—”
“My father, the king, has made his views quite clear,”
Mérian insisted. “Don’t tell me he has changed his opinion just because an invitation has come.”
“This may be the baron’s way of making amends,” her mother countered. It was a weak argument, and Mérian regarded her mother with a frown of haughty disdain. “The baron knows he has done wrong and wishes to restore the peace.”
“Oh, so now the baron repents, and the king dances dizzy with gratitude?” said Mérian.
“Mérian!” reprimanded her mother sharply. “That will do, girl. You will respect your father and abide by his decision.”
“What?” demanded Mérian. “And is there nothing to be said?”
“You have said quite enough.” Her mother, stiff backed, turned in her chair to face her. “You will obey.”
“But I do not understand,” insisted the young woman. “It makes no sense.”
“Your father has his reasons,” replied the queen simply.
“And we must respect them.”
“Even if he is wrong?” countered Mérian. “That is most unfair, Mother.”
Queen Anora observed her daughter’s distraught expression— brows knit, mouth pressed hard, eyes narrowed—and remembered her as an infant demanding to be let down to walk in the grass on the riverbank and being told that she could not because it was too dangerous so close to the water. “It is only an invitation to join the court for a summer,” her mother said, trying to lighten the mood. “The time will pass quickly.”
“Pass as it may,” Mérian declared loftily, “it will pass without me!” She rose and fled her mother’s chamber, stalking down the narrow corridor to her own room, where she went to the window and shoved open the shutters with a crash. The early evening air was soft and warm, the fading light like honey on the yard outside her window, but she was not in a mood to take in such things, much less enjoy them. Her father’s decision seemed to her arbitrary and unfair. She should, she felt, have a say in it since it was she who must comply.
The baron’s courier had arrived earlier in the day with a message asking if Mérian might come to Hereford to spend the remainder of the summer with his lordship’s daughter, Sybil. He was hoping Mérian would help teach the young lady something of British customs and speech. Sybil would, of course, gladly reciprocate. Baron Neufmarché was certain the two ladies would become fast friends.
Lord Cadwgan had listened to the message, thanked the courier, and dismissed him in the same breath, saying, “I am much obliged to the baron. Please tell my lord that Mérian would be delighted to accept his invitation.”
So that, apparently, was that: a decision that trod heavily on some of her most deeply held convictions, and Mérian was to have nothing to say about it. Since the downfall of Deheubarth, her father had been writhing like a frog in cinders, desperate to distance himself from the reach of Neufmarché.
And now, all of a sudden, he seemed just as eager to court the baron’s good favour. Why? It made no sense.
The very thought of spending the summer in a castle full of foreigners sent waves of disgust coursing through her slender frame. Her aversion, natural and genuine, was also an evasion.
For what Mérian refused to admit, even to herself, was that she had enjoyed the baron’s feast immensely. Truth be told, she had glimpsed an attractive alternative to life in a crumbling caer on the Marches border. She did not allow herself to so much as imagine that she might acquire this life for herself— God forbid! But somewhere in her deepest heart lurked the hunger for the charm and grandeur she had experienced that glittering night, and, heaven help her, it all danced around the person of Baron Neufmarché himself.