The Dragon Throne (7 page)

A scutifer was a shield bearer, an additional assistant employed by many knights. Edmund had known the late Sir Roger by sight and reputation, and had seen Wowen's father, Azo, winning bets as a wrestler on many a market day.

“The prince's men have set up camp across Lazar Field,” reported Wowen, “grilling a doe from the king's woods. If it pleases you to fight Prince John's hirelings,” added Wowen, “I'll be honored to battle at your side.”

These words gave Edmund a certain involuntary thrill. “Fighting is not the stuff you've heard in songs,” he said. How gruff I sound, Edmund thought—like a grizzled knight. Much, in truth, like Sir Nigel or Sir Rannulf before they had their ale and mutton at day's end.

“My father did not raise a simpleton, my lord,” said Wowen. “Or a coward.”

“How old are you, squire?” asked Edmund.

“I have seen thirteen winters, my lord,” he replied, growing just a bit taller at being called
squire
. “I can use a knife as well as any skinner.”

Edmund felt his own lack of experience keeping him where he was, in the security of the warm stable. This large, holy sword was a boon, but just then he needed Nigel's advice, and Hubert's quick eye.

“Sleepy men can barely fight,” offered Wowen, with the assurance of a novice.

He added, “Let's surprise them.”

EDMUND WAITED UNTIL THE PREDAWN hush, watching from a place with the
woge gard
—the wall guard—from a perch high above Goose Gate.

“Look at that—see them pass around another wineskin, Sir Edmund,” said one of the guards, pointing with a gnarled finger across the moon-bleached field where cooking fires subsided, and the sounds of talk and song grew quiet.

“They don't look much like fighting men,” said Edmund thoughtfully.

“I count five sets of helmets and shields,” advised the guard. “And more than a dozen spear carriers, none of them as fit as King Richard's men used to be. It's a sad thing, to see a king's brother putting armor on England's tavern dregs.”

“No sign of their prisoners?” asked Edmund.

“No, my lord,” was the answer.

 

“In readying an attack,” Nigel had once counseled, “you wait, and then you wait. And after that, you begin to wait.”

Edmund waited.

“The roosters will stir before long,” advised Wowen.

The city gate whispered open at last.

Edmund urged his mount forward through the starlit field.

Surefoot was happy to race Wowen's mount, a sleek, black mare with a single splash of white on one foreleg. Surefoot was what horsemen called an entire—a stallion. While Surefoot had always been energetic, the presence of the mare made the spotted silver-and-gray male eager to show off his speed.

The drowsy prince's men did not see them coming, until Surefoot snorted and kicked among them.

True enough, only one sentry had been posted, and even from horseback Edmund could smell the wine on his breath. Edmund drew his sword, but hesitated to use the weapon against a clumsy fellow countryman. The heavy-footed spearman offered a halfhearted jab with his spear, and Edmund let his own suppressed bitterness give strength to his counterattack.

The young knight raised his foot from the stirrup and kicked his opponent in the head. The footman fell back, arms wheeling, until he collapsed in a pile of saddle blankets.

Edmund cut a great arc out of the air, the blade making a sharp song. Footmen let their weapons fall as Edmund demanded, “Where are my companions?”

Only one knight climbed into his saddle, a bushy-haired man. He sawed heavily at the reins, trying to wrestle his mount around to face the attack. Surefoot approached the startled horse and, with no prompting from Edmund, took a bite out of the alarmed animal's mane.

Wowen darted close on the other side of the shaggy-haired knight and made a sawing back-and-forth with his knife at the knight's saddle girth, cutting it through. Wowen gave a tug at the knight's arm, and the man tumbled from his horse—followed by his saddle.

Edmund leaned down from his mount and put the point of his sword into the shaken knight's wispy chin, just firmly enough to prick the skin.

“If you have hurt my friends,” said Sir Edmund, “by the saints—”

Edmund stopped the onward rush of his words. He had been given to rash vows in the past, and now, with this holy weapon in his grasp, he realized the weight of his threats.

Chop them all up, urged an inner, spiteful voice in Edmund's heart. Scatter them for the flesh-crows
.

Edmund drew a long breath. Of all the virtues, Edmund knew, God most prized mercy.

 

A group of quickly dressed footmen and disheveled knights rode beside Edmund and Wowen through the breaking dawn.

The woolly-haired knight introduced himself as Neville of Eu, and he spoke in tones of businesslike gentility as he dabbed at his chin with a wad of folded linen. Sir Neville remarked, with an air of jovial wariness and a heavy Frankish accent, “If you intend to free your fellow Crusaders, Sir Edmund, you will find yourself greatly outnumbered.”

Edmund made no answer.

It was correct for Sir Neville and the spearmen to ride quietly with Edmund. They had given their word that they would be peaceful—and besides, they were close to another, larger band of Prince John's men and had little fear of Edmund and his squire.

The road was a swath of dark, spring-damp mud, pounded and gouged by hoof and cart. When a sentry's warning sang out, “Saint George and Prince John!” the shaggy knight responded, “Prince John and Our Lady!” As the phalanx of riders entered a well-ordered camp, morning wine was being warmed over a merry fire.

All around Edmund, twenty men buckled sword belts and fitted on helmets in the glow of the sunrise. The young knight nearly laughed, given the absurd odds against him, but he recalled all the tales he had heard of solitary knights taking on a score of fighters. Such bold men-at-arms were always cut down, in both history and song, but not before nine or ten of their opponents writhed on strife-torn soil.

Edmund recognized that he and Wowen were trapped. There would be no easy escape.

He realized that Hubert would have been capable of some cunning act, and that Rannulf would have scattered men to the right and to the left.

But Edmund wanted more than anything to see his companions again. He said, simply, “Show me to my friends.”

AS ONE NIGHT EBBED INTO ANOTHER, ESTER rarely interrupted her vigil at her father's side.

Reginald proved his worth as a physician, looking in on his patient several times during both day and nighttime hours, and often brought something to brighten Ester's long wait—Valencia oranges or Poitevin peaches. Such fruit was rare. The Crusades had taken up most of the freight vessels throughout Christendom, and what shipping remained was increasingly harried by pirates.

“The doctor seeks to snare you in his net,” said Ida.

“I barely notice him,” said Ester, “except to discuss my father's health.”

“The bee spies the hedge rose,” said Ida, employing a well-worn conversational motif, “whether the blossom notices or not.”

Bernard drifted into a restless sleep, shivering and muttering. At times he parted his eyelids, only to look around as if at some unholy place, startled, unaware of his surroundings.

At the sound of his daughter's voice, however, his anxiety always subsided. “Have some warm hippocras,” she urged—spiced wine, yet another gift from Reginald. Bernard drank, and while he did not stir beyond a few moments of wakefulness, neither did he drift again into unfathomed torpor.

“Is there reason for hope?” Ester asked one evening, stopping the doctor at the doorway, one hand on his sleeve.

Reginald took her hand.

 

During one of Father Catald's visits, Ester reminded the priest of her pilgrim's vow.

“We don't bargain with Heaven, Ester,” he reflected with a meditative smile.

He had brought her six pears, a remnant from last autumn's harvest and still unbruised. The little priest remained standing in the center of the room, his hands tucked into his sleeves. “We can strike no agreement with Our Lord,” he said, repeating his counsel.

His eyes were full of unspoken meaning—as though he was about to add “And yet
.
”

“In my prayers tonight,” said the priest, “I'll remind Heaven of your vow.”

 

One evening Ester was mending her father's slipper by the light of a single candle.

The feel of the thimble gently rasping against the needle was pleasing, a sense of small but definite effort making a torn thing whole again. His favorite leather slippers had been brightly colored. Many times she had offered to repair them, but he had insisted, “Some things are better as they are.”

So she was not listening, nor paying full heed, when his bare foot slipped down out of the bedding, followed by the other. Only when he was standing did she realize what was happening, and she stood herself, letting her mending fall to the floor.

Bernard ran a hand over his head, arranged the folds of his gown, and walking—a little shakily, but taking a tall man's strides. He reached the plate on which the six glowing pears were still in their prime.

“They
are
real,” he said, with a quiet laugh.

“Father Catald brought them,” was all Ester could say.

“I thought they were a vision,” said Bernard.

He took a bite, and closed his eyes in pleasure.

HUBERT PACED THE WIDE, STONE-PAVED floor.

“Don't worry yourself, good Hubert,” said Nigel. “We'll see you all the way to Rome, and into the Lady Galena's arms.”

“At what risk to each of you?” asked Hubert. “It would be safer for you to stay here in England.”

“And serve the prince?” interjected Edmund.

Hubert sighed and shook his head.

Edmund felt deep compassion for his friend, and he was nursing a secret plan—a scheme that included overpowering the guards, surmounting the Tower walls, and hiding in a merchant ship along the wharf. He admitted to himself, however, that the details of the plan needed further work.

The trip back to London had been one of honorable arrest, as was appropriate when knights took their social equals into custody. Rannulf had nothing to say, and Nigel accepted his capture as a temporary matter to be, as he put it to the prince's men, “resolved through a bribe or an act of God.”

The swelling troop of sergeants, barely competent knights, and assorted pikemen, had guarded their wards with care but every courtesy. The three-day journey back to London and the stone fortress and prison of the Tower had been marked by their captors' curiosity and increasing respect as Nigel described the siege of Acre.

“We will travel back to Rome,” Nigel was saying now, “because it is our duty under Heaven.”

Hubert made a gesture of exasperation. He had been able to see neither home nor family, and now ran his hands through his hair like a young man at the very limits of anguish and disgrace.

“Our Lady will not abandon us, Hubert,” Edmund said.

Hubert gave a worried nod.

Their sojourn in a large chamber in the Tower had so far lasted only one night and half a day, and it had been far from unpleasant. While it was true that guards stood outside the door, the knights had dined on smoked river pike and roast piglet, and as much prized white bread as they could eat. They had been allowed to keep their weapons—a gesture of high courtesy—but Sir Robert de Tuit, steward to the king, had asked the knights to swear that they would not use their swords. They were guests, and at the same time they were prisoners.

A few more knights had begun to return from the Crusade in recent days, war-scarred men with no taste for further strife, nor with news of major victories. These homebound warriors were generally loyal to Richard, and Tower guards had shared the rumor that Nigel, Rannulf, and the two new knights might be liberated by an armed band of former Crusaders.

Now Edmund was quick to reassure Hubert that they would find Galena well and true in her love for Hubert. Nevertheless, Edmund felt the stirring of a private doubt—what was to keep Galena from falling in love, or even marrying, in the many months before any of them could see Rome again?

Edmund was pleased to see that Wowen could burnish a sword, showing a deft hand with a whetstone. The squire took a boyish wonder in daggers and cutting weapons generally. Edmund showed him how to repair a spur that Rannulf had nearly lost in the forest, mending the leather and putting a new point on the single goad.

A few times on the journey back to London, and here in their comfortable prison, Edmund had found his voice lifted in song. It was not unusual for a fighting man to sing, or to lift a pious prayer, or to burst into tears at the sight of a crucifix or the image of Our Lady. But Edmund had never before been given to such prayerful songs as “O Sweet and Holy Wound” or “Our Lady, Heal My Longing.”

Even now, Edmund was singing softly, only half aware of the sound as he polished the leather of his own spur.

“I do believe,” said Nigel with an affectionate smile, “that our friend Sir Edmund suffers greater heartache than he will admit.”

The iron-studded oak door gave a rattle.

A key was worked into the lock, and when the door swung inward a page boy strode into the room. He was pale, and the flush in his cheeks betrayed high feeling.

“Worthy lords,” he began, his glance darting from man to man.