The Dragon Throne (3 page)

The prince chewed on the knuckle of his thumb. For a long moment he did not speak, and glared at the four fighting men as though he now wished that the earth would open and swallow them.

At last the prince gave a shrug. “Because your manslaughter is so renowned, Rannulf, I will do as you suggest.”

It took only a few heartbeats.

The prince stood. He touched Hubert's shoulders with the blade, and said something too thrilling to be easily understood by Edmund's dazzled senses. Then it was Edmund's own turn.

The voice of the king's younger brother continued as though from far across the kingdom, adding, “In the name of Our Lady, Saint Michael, and Saint George.”

A great cheer erupted as the prince added the words, “Edmund, be thou a knight
.”

Edmund believed it all the more when he glimpsed Hubert's smile of amazement.

Elviva will be amazed, thought Edmund. I was too lowly in the past, a mere moneyer's apprentice, to suggest marriage.

He could imagine the delight in her eyes.

“You'll feast with me tonight,” Prince John was heard to say. “Sir Edmund and Sir Hubert—I am not finished with you.”

The prince smiled, too, but his countenance showed anger more than joy.

 

Edmund felt a hand grasp his arm at the wrist, a firm grip that got his attention despite the crowd of well-wishers all around. It was the Templar priest who had been at the side of the injured scholar, a short man with bright eyes and the Templar cross that Edmund had learned to respect during the Crusade.

The cleric stood as tall as he could to murmur, “Come to Temple Church for prayers before sunset.”

“With pleasure, Father,” said Edmund, bending low to take in a further message.

“And tell no one,” added the priest. “If you ever wish to see Rome again.”

ESTER TOOK HOPE FROM THE FACT THAT her father had stopped coughing, but it was a shaky courage, strongly braced by prayer.

The river all around was rising, and this alone was enough to trouble her. Bernard opened his eyes every few moments, finding his daughter with his gaze and giving her a weak smile. She held his hand, keeping hold of it even when the tide of the Thames tossed the boat.

The doctor, Reginald de Athies, advised the boatmen to row with more measured strokes. “Like a maid churning butter.”

“I am greatly sorry my lords and my lady,” said the taller boatman, a fresh-faced youth outfitted in the shapeless gray cap and smock of his trade.

River water sloshed over the side, and Bernard shifted weakly, the wet mixing with the blood on his gown, diluting it.

“Good lad, you are getting river on my patient,” said the doctor.

“The current, sire,” said the young boatman, “is no respecter of suffering.”

“What a tongue twitches in the mouth of this knave,” said the doctor, as though pleased to have an object for his growing impatience. “Who taught you to speak to your superiors in such a tone, boat keeper?”

“A gentleman passing over the river to the joust,” said the boatman, with an airy calm, “was just as learned as any on the river now, and this fine charitable knight gave us both a quarter penny.”

“Silver you've spent on ale,” said the physician with growing heat.

“A knight from some distant place, where coin is the only language,” the boatman continued, rowing with energy.

England was slowly seeing evidence of foreign adventurers, older knights and younger vagabonds. With most fighting folk of honor on Crusade with King Richard, and only now beginning to return from the Holy Land, many foreign men-at-arms had attached themselves to Prince John's cause, and found much work in collecting taxes and enforcing laws. Some wandering knights were rumored to be at large in the woods, extorting money and chattel from peasants and yeoman farmers.

“We bought the dearest Rhenish wine,” the boatman was recounting, rowing all the harder against the current. “We enjoyed wonderful huge pitchers of it, until we could not swallow more.”

Reginald gave Ester a pat of reassurance, as if to say “I'll deal with this impertinent rower.” It was just a quick touch on the bare skin of her forearm, but that slight contact was enough to cause Ester to grow impatient herself.

“There is no need to chide the boatmen, good doctor,” she said.

“When churls drink costly foreign wine,” replied the doctor, “the world's turned upside down.”

It seemed to Ester that the distant bank would never arrive, and that it approached only to shrink back again, unattainable reeds and mossy pebbles.

 

Westminster Castle was some distance west of London's walls, not far from the river in a countryside of oaks and hedgerows. The castle was handsome, in the way of buildings constructed to endure siege and gradually transformed to a place of royal shelter. Arrow slits marked the high walls, narrow openings where crossbowmen could aim their weapons, and guards leaned against their spears in the manner of a drawing a child might make, towers and battlements, every soul with a cheerful duty.

Sheep and cattle grazed across the flowery field, and somewhere a tool was being repaired, the sweet sound of hammer on scythe. In the distance a farmer's wife shoveled ashy lime, engaged in making soap. The boat nosed the close-shorn grasses of the riverbank, and Bernard gave an involuntary wince, and then smiled in apology. A strong-hearted scholar, he had always taught Ester, should never complain.

The injured man was met by men supporting a litter-bed. Ida, who had traveled ahead to fetch these attendants, beckoned them to hurry. The horsemen wore the livery of the royal Plantagenets, a leopard in red on the chest of every tunic. Only a careful eye could discern the worn hems of some of the garments, and the occasional faintly starlike design where a moth hole had been repaired by stitchery.

If there was a single fact about court life Ester did not admire, it was the careful protocol that dictated every act a castle servant might commit. Ester had seen country folk, shepherds and haywards running on market day, bounding stride by stride toward home, or sprinting merrily toward a beckoning friend, but the men and women of the royal court never hurried. To break into a run was thought ungentle—no lady would think of skipping down a corridor, or rushing after a herald with further instructions.

Even now, with her father's life in the balance, the liveried servants took measured steps as they found their way down the bank of the river and listened to the doctor's instructions on how to lift his stricken patient.

“It will be like the time the churchmen moved the relics of Saint Gwen,” said the doctor, referring to the recent reburial and celebration of the skeleton of a local holy woman. The pious had gathered from far away to see the centuries-old bones swaddled in sendal, a rare silk, and buried with sung devotions.

“Gently, gently,” the doctor called now, as the scholar offered a brave smile and let his body be lifted slowly—more slowly than the monks lifting the amber-and-walnut remains of the blessed Gwen.

“Wait,” her father called in a whisper, squeezing his daughter's hand in anticipation of the pain soon to follow as they were about to lower him onto the litter-bed.

Giffard, a white-haired knight and steward to the queen, murmured to the scholar, “We will do you no harm, my lord Bernard.”

Ester was grateful for the measured, time-consuming deliberateness of the servants as they eased Bernard onto the portable bed frame with such care that only once did Bernard give a start of pain.

Was it Ester's imagination? Or did she actually hear one servant murmur in a shaken voice to another, “He'll be dead by dawn”?

WHEN HE WAS SECURE ON THE LITTER-BED, Bernard raised his head to look around, thanking the servants as they lifted their load to their shoulders, much as pallbearers carry a loved one to the churchyard.

“There's no need,” the scholar mouthed, “for all this trouble.”

“They'll see you safely home, Bernard,” said the doctor, with an air of professional cheer, “where you can drink hot wine and rest your head on a downy pillow.”

“And be pitching quoits by summer,” said his daughter reassuringly.

A leisurely game of throwing the disc-shaped stone toward a target was one of her father's favorite pastimes, and he and his daughter sported often, long into the slow-fading evenings of June. Ester fixed the image of a twilight match between them, the smooth stone clanging against the iron post.

To her displeasure, the doctor took the sleeve of her gown as the litter was born quickly and yet with care toward the castle gate.

“Ester,” said the doctor, speaking in a soft voice, “if you will permit me, I should detail the nature of your father's injuries.”

“My father will play half-bowl with you, good doctor, on Midsummer's Eve.”

“I have every prayer that it might be so,” said the doctor. “And yet, dear Ester, I have gazed upon—” He hesitated, but having begun, took a breath and continued. “I have studied dead felons hanging, as the law decrees, and seen, if you will forgive me for mentioning it, their bones as flesh retires.”

Ester had noticed that men sometimes went out of their way to display talents that made them tedious. She kept her voice the very example of patience. “My father needs me at his bedside, Doctor.”

Reginald de Athies was a round-faced man with gray eyes. Ester knew he was unmarried. He was taking more pains than he would for a matron or a merchant, eager to impress Ester with his medical lore and windy diction.

“The ribs are exposed as weather and winged creatures have their way,” the doctor was saying, “as you may have observed yourself.”

“If you will let me join my father,” was all Ester would allow herself to say, in no frame of mind to discuss decaying criminals.

“The ribs of a body form something like a wicker frame,” continued Reginald, “or bushel basket, containing our lights and other organs.”

Ester was walking, as quickly as she could without breaking into a run, but the doctor was keeping the pace. “And I fear,” he added, “that the hoof broke your father's ribs.”

 

Scrolls of precious sheepskin brooded on shelves, waiting for the touch of Bernard de Laci's quill. A priceless volume, Marcus Aureliuss'
Meditations
, was open on the lectern in the corner, the dark letters distinct against the surface of the vellum.

The late King Henry, father to Richard and John, had endowed Bernard's studies, saying that the wise man was an ornament to his court. The de Laci family had an estate near the Seine at Honfleur, and land near the village of Beer along the English coast, but they had never been wealthy enough to thrive except by serving the crown. Bernard had confided to Ester that the old king would rather hear of Caesar's military victories in Gaul than the Nature of Virtue, and that the new king, Richard, had little use for either. In contrast, the legendary Eleanor of Aquitaine had enjoyed the consolations of philosophy during the long winter nights away from her sons, and often asked the scholar to read to her.

In recent weeks the queen had kept to her own chamber, plagued, some said, by illness. Ester knew that the queen drew strength from solitude, an unusual trait. Constant companionship, song and chatter, filled the days of rich and poor.

It was rumored that Queen Eleanor had followed John's journey here to make certain that he did not cause too much mischief in Richard's kingdom. In a world in which the eldest son inherited most of the wealth and power, younger sons were often lean and restless, and Ester reckoned John as hungry as any man alive.

“Ruth?” her father called weakly from his bed.

It was the name of Ester's mother, dead these long seasons ago.

If Bernard was surprised to see his daughter sitting beside him, and not his wife, he gave no sign. He reassured Ester, silently forming the words, “Don't fear for me.”

Some people said the right combination of syllables could catch the Devil's attention. Sometimes Ester was frightened at the way words in the open books of ancient learning seemed to dance and shift in candlelight. Her father was a wise man, and had explained to his daughter the dignified life of a Stoic, but now Ester wondered if too many hours with a pagan philosopher might have put his soul in jeopardy.

 

By any purely rational measure, Ester realized, her father was close to death.

Before nightfall it began to rain outside, the soft music of falling drops against the wooden window shutters. Reginald searched his patient's chest with his fingers, pressing gently. Her father gave a moan without waking, and Reginald met Ester's eyes.

“The damage may be great,” he said. “As I had feared.”

He sat with Ester long into the night, as the candles burned down and began to gutter. Ida set out a new candle, a long white taper, as Bernard sank from a restless half-awakened state to an uneasy slumber, and at last into a deep torpor, sweat beading on his brow.

Ester silently renewed her vow to go on a pilgrimage to Rome. But it was enough to challenge her faith, the way her father's breath slowed down so completely. He held it and kept it shut within his lungs to the count of twenty of her own heartbeats before he exhaled again—a long, phlegm-choked sigh.

Besides, her vow, while solemn, had been rash. She had neither gold nor rich jewels. While it was true she dressed herself with care, she had stitched her gown herself, with her own silver thimble and thread.

No one in the queen's court had a robust purse. A pilgrimage to Rome was a costly undertaking, requiring horses and armed protectors. Such a journey was beyond her means, and beyond her hopes.