The Dragon Throne

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

Viking
Published by Penguin Group
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Published in the U.S.A. by Viking, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2005

Copyright © Michael Cadnum, 2005

All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

 

eISBN : 978-1-440-67832-5

 

for Sherina

 

THE SKY OVER THE BROAD GREEN JOUSTING field was blue, and the sun was bright.

Ester de Laci believed that it was a great shame that on such a fine day a fighting man was likely to be killed in a feat of arms. But all of London had turned out to see it—including Prince John and his courtly guard—and so had she.

The young lady stood on tiptoe, craning her neck within the crowd of other gentlefolk, a position from which it was both proper and safe to observe bloodshed. Not yet, she told herself.

Not yet.

She felt sick to her soul. She had never seen a joust before, and for the moment she was not eager to have a very good look at this one.

But at the same time she didn't want to miss it.

When Ester craned her neck and stood as tall as possible, the young lady-in-waiting to Queen Eleanor could see perfectly well as the master of the tournament let drop his signal cloth. The rooks in the spring-bare trees around the field rose at the shock, the breathtaking crash of impact, two warhorses and two heavily armored men colliding under a clear sky.

The crowd cheered as a lance shattered, the shards spinning in the sunlight. Ester wanted to run away through the crowd to avoid the sight. How could a Christian city allow such a spectacle?

But she kept watching. The folk in the crowd called encouragement in London dialect to the young Englishman—
“Gif herm, Squire Hubert!
”

Hurt him, Hubert.

Hooves drummed once again across the grassy field, the brass fittings of the harnesses jingling in the collective intaken breath of the crowd.

The people around her gasped, a hundred throats silenced. The horses fought together, judging by the sounds of equine grunts—Ester had to look away again for an instant. “He's down!” cried an English voice, and another prayed aloud, “Hubert and Saint George!”

Saint George was a famous hero, the slayer of a dragon, and the patron saint of English fighting men. Our Lady help them
,
Ester preferred to pray, her eyes momentarily squeezed tight. And yet she felt the liveliest curiosity—the compelling urge to look and see what was happening.

The joust was a trial by combat, the just-returned Crusader squire Hubert of Bakewell battling Sir Nicholas de Foss. If Hubert succeeded, his fellow squire Edmund would go free and be considered innocent of the charges of theft recently leveled against him. If Nicholas triumphed, however, Edmund's life would be forfeit.

Edmund had looked every bit the stalwart and serious-minded young man, even bound by the bright royal chains. Ester did not know whether the charges against the tall, well-favored squire were true but like most of the gathered crowd, she cheered at the sight of him, and she prayed all the more fervently now that Heaven might spare his life.

Her father, the scholar Bernard de Laci, stood on his tiptoes and gave a cry of satisfaction. Ester tried to look, but the gentlefolk all around elbowed one another and blocked her view. She could clearly hear the sound of sword biting into shield. The weapon rang sharply against the edge of the opposing steel, even through the hubbub of curses and prayers. She would long remember the sound of a blow striking through surcoat and chain mail, into sinew or flesh, and the shudder of both satisfaction and compassion of the crowd all around her.

It had been a mistake to come here, she now believed. Only her duty as a daughter had convinced her to leave Westminster Castle and cross the river, and now here she was. She told herself that she would never by choice see another lance-and-sword contest as long as she lived. Ester turned to confide as much to Ida, her companion, but Ida had a cat's way of vanishing whenever unpleasantness was in the air.

She caught her father's arm and called into his ear, nearly afraid to give voice to the question, “Father, what has happened?”

“Ester, praise Heaven,” exclaimed Bernard. “Our English lad chopped the Frankish knight down like a stump!” He gave his daughter a sympathetic smile. “It's as well you did not see it, Ester,” he added, “but it brought joy to this old bookman's heart.”

“Our Lady be thanked,” breathed Ester, grateful that Edmund could go free. She added a prayer for the soul of the vanquished Frankish man-at-arms.

But even then she could hear the Frankish squires drawing weapons, clashing them together to call attention, and swearing by Saint Michael that they would have revenge.

THESE ROUGH-CLAD SHIELD BEARERS HAD been drinking hard from goatskins of wine. All during the joust they had jostled each together and raised mailed fists, a dozen or so Chartrians with the crudest possible accents.

Ester could speak the language of Paris, and sing in a voice that her father said was like honey off a spoon. Despite her youth, she was a capable attendant to the royal mother of King Richard and Prince John. In earlier years Queen Eleanor had employed dozens of ladies of honor, but now kept only a few trusted companions of either great experience—or sterling promise.

Such ladies were usually of high or at least respected birth, and they were expected to be able to sew and soothe, remember the names of both knights and squires, and even, when the time came, to join their lady queen in hunting. Ester was convinced that knights were brutal sinners, and artless compared with the men and women of a royal court—although it had to be admitted that occasionally a fighting man was pleasing to look upon.

If I had a crossbow, Ester thought, I could teach these churls some manners.

This impulse did not surprise her. Ladies to the queen were expected to be gentle one moment, like iron the next. Bernard took Ester's arm protectively as the Frankish men-at-arms surged forward through the crowd of noblemen and pie sellers. A solidly built horse was pulled wide-eyed into the angry knot of Franks, and soon one man was mounted, crying
“sanc! sanc!”
demanding bloody revenge.

Another armed man pulled his wine-heavy frame into a saddle. Prince John's men drew around their royal English charge, halberds gleaming in the sunlight. The outnumbered Franks stirred, forced back by the greater number of the celebrants. Yet another steed was pressed into the melee, Frankish oaths and the flash of spurs working the snorting steeds through the crowd.

It was not unheard-of for a joust to end in a general melee, but Ester was surprised at such rude behavior in the presence of King Richard's brother, John. Even as she shrank with her father back through the shouting, excited crowd, she took heart at the glimpse she had of Sir Nigel of Nottingham climbing onto a mount himself and laying about him with a broadsword, punishing the angry Franks.

He was joined at once by the just-liberated Edmund Strongarm, who, having embraced Hubert and raised an open-faced salute to Heaven, now stirred to action. Without a helmet, and wearing only a surcoat over his wool sleeves, Edmund looked—in Ester's eyes—the very image of a Christian fighting man as he urged his mount between the ranks of drunken Frankish rioters and the royal person of Prince John.

One of the Frankish footmen brandished a halberd, a staff tipped with iron shaped into a point, a gleaming blade on either side of the shaft's tip. It was a staff designed to gouge out viscera or cut open the unprotected face.

Edmund seized this weapon as it thrust in his direction, grasping the long shaft with his two naked hands. It was no easy contest—the footman was built like a breed-boar, with a wide back and short legs. As Ester watched, Edmund wrested the weapon from his attacker, broke it in two, and flung the pieces away.

The square-jawed Jean de Chartres, tearful at the result of this joust, seized the bridle of Edmund's mount. The stocky older knight was convulsed with grief. He shook his gloved fist at Edmund.

“Frankish pigs,” muttered a London voice nearby.

“Folk will believe that the blessed saints have decided the matter,” her father confided to her, guiding her easily away from any further coarse language.

There was a certain good-spirited edge to his tone. It was a subject she and her father had discussed by candlelight. No churchman would have approved her father's skeptical view, that God's earth was replete with injuries and joys not authored by divine will.

Ester loved her father deeply, and respected his knowledge of both Greek and Latin. He had taught her to sign her name and read capably enough—few other women could tell
ego
from
egg
. But in secret she prayed that Heaven might forgive his inquiring soul. He had once confided that he did not believe that the queen's revered relics of Saint George were the bones of a saint at all, but simply the “knuckles of some man or woman no longer in need of them.” Her father said most legendary saints were the stuff of candle smoke, little more than stories.