The Fell Sword (67 page)

When he was gone, Pye turned to Edmund. ‘Stop all work,’ he said. ‘All the boys, girls, everyone in the yard. But listen, Edmund—’

Edmund stopped at the door.

‘If I die suddenly, you keep the mint going. Understand?’ Master Pye looked more than a little mad.

But Edmund nodded.

There were almost forty of them in the yard, with shop servants, house servants, apprentices and journeymen together.

Master Pye stood before them on a small crate. ‘Listen up,’ he said.

Then he was silent, and looked at them.

‘We’re in a war,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to explain our war, because it’s like a fight in the dark, and without a flash of lightning we don’t even know who we’re fighting. We’re fighting for our King – that much for certain – but we’re not defending land, or keeping our churches free of the infidel. It’s hard to explain exactly what we’re doing.’

He looked at them, his mild eyes more curious than inflamed.

‘This kingdom endured a mighty blow this spring, from the Wild,’ he said. ‘And now – unless we have a few successes – it looks as if we’ll lose the fur trade, and that’s a blow. And men are trying to forge the King’s currency – which is like robbing the King – and that’s a blow, too.’ He shrugged. ‘We’re going to make new coins for the King. It may not seem to you lads and lasses like some gallant last stand on a stricken field under a silken flag – but by Christ’s blood, my young ones, it
is.
If we fail here, and God send we do not, if we fail at this, the King takes another blow. And eventually it will all fall apart, and we’ll have nothing.’ He stood very straight. ‘When the world goes to shit the great do well enough in their fancy armour and their strong castles. It’s we who suffer. The men in the middle. In cities and towns, making things and trading things. What do we eat? How do we defend ourselves?’ He pursed his lips. ‘When I was your age, I was sometimes known to say, “Fuck the King.”’

That got a guilty titter from the apprentices.

‘Aye – for a bit I was even a Jack.’

Hush.

‘But the Jacks haven’t given us anything, and the King gives us law. So we’re in a fight. For law. The law that keeps us and the commons in the game. Not slaves. Not serfs. Now – in the next month, we’re going to be attacked. I’m guessing, but it’s going to be rough. Maids attacked when they go to buy milk. Boys beaten on their way to the Abbey for letters. Fire in the yard.’ He looked around. ‘We’ll have to work all day and stand guard, too.’ He paused. ‘I pay the highest wages in Harndon, and I’ll add some hard-lying money. Who’s in?’

Everyone was in.

‘They’re brave today,’ Pye said to his journeyman. ‘Wait a week or two, when a few of them are dead, and then we’ll see.’

Two days later, thugs attacked a party of girls going to the well behind the Abbey at the end of their square. Lizz Person had her face slashed, and only the chance interruption of a knight of Saint Thomas bringing winter clothes to the poor at the church saved the girls from rape or slavery.

The young knight took wine with Edmund and Master Pye in the shop’s office.

‘Ser Ricar Irksbane,’ he said. His eyes twinkled.

Out in the yard, a dozen apprentices jostled each other to sharpen his sword.

‘We all owe you our thanks,’ Edmund said, as well as he could. The worst of being on the knife edge between adulthood and childhood was in dealing with mature adults, he’d found. So he stammered more than he wanted to, and his bow was clumsy.

Ser Ricar was young, bluff-faced, and had the largest nose that Edmund could remember seeing on a man. He looked like a caricature of Saint Nicolas – an armed Saint Nicolas with broad shoulders and thighs the size of most people’s waists.

The heavy young man drank two cups of wine while his sword was being sharpened, and beyond his name and some beaming smiles said nothing.

Master Pye laughed eventually. ‘Ser knight, are you perchance under a vow of silence?’

The twinkling eyes blinked, and Ser Ricar rose and bowed.

Master Pye nodded. ‘Ser Ricar, have you by any chance been set to watch over us?’

Ser Ricar smiled into his wine, and just for a moment he looked a good deal sharper than he had a moment before. Then he looked the master in the eye and shrugged. And grinned like a village idiot.

Edmund walked him to the gate, and the knight nodded cordially to him and produced a slip of parchment from his belt purse. He pressed it into Edmund’s hands and smiled. Edmund noted that the young knight’s eyes were everywhere. They never stopped moving, now that the two of them were outside.

He saw the knight out into the street with his newly sharpened sword, and then he opened the parchment.

It said
Be on your guard
.

Edmund gave it to Master Pye, who nodded. ‘Bad times,’ he said. ‘The Queen’s handmaid is to be banished from court.’

Through the local girls employed in the Tower, all the neighbourhood knew how things went with the royals. Edmund sighed. ‘What can we do?’ he asked.

Master Pye all but snarled, ‘Nothing.’ Then he sat heavily. ‘I hate all this. I like metal. People are fools.’ He poured himself a cup of hippocras and splashed some into another cup for Edmund. ‘What men call politics is, to me, foolery. All this – why doesn’t the King banish the Galles? Why doesn’t he stand by his wife?’ He shrugged. ‘He’s my friend, but in this he’s a damn fool.’ He sighed again. ‘I’m writing out a note for Master Ailwin, and another for Ser Gerald Random. Talk to Random’s wife – she’s got all the sense in that house anyway. He’s hared off on some wild scheme, and she’ll know when he’s back. If the knights of Saint Thomas are standing with us, things are not as bad as they might be. But we need to pull together, or the Galles will take us all separately.

Blanche Gold curtsied to her Queen and held out a basket of clean and perfectly pressed linen. The Queen had a book of hours open on her lap and was sitting in the full, if thin, light of the winter sun as it blazed through the mullioned window of her private solar. Her hair was down, and it blazed like a bronze-brown sun around her.

‘Speak to Diota,’ the Queen said in a friendly voice. She knew Blanche – which was to say, she knew of the girl’s existence, knew she was pretty and trustworthy and knew, too, that she had had some trouble at the hands of the Gallish squires. But the Queen didn’t speak directly to servants – she let Diota handle that.

So she sat, reading, for a whole minute while the pretty blond girl knelt in front of her.

‘Sweeting?’ the Queen murmured.

Blanche reached into her basket and handed the Queen a beautifully scented handkerchief. Folded within it was a note.

The Queen found that her hands were shaking. But she unfolded the stiff parchment and her heart rose in her breast. ‘Ahh. Thank you, child,’ the Queen breathed.

Blanche rose, her duty done, and slipped away. And an hour later, when a Gallish squire tried to pin her to a wall and get his hand down the front of her kirtle, she thought,
we will bury you.
She tried to put a knee in his groin but his wrestling master had covered that. So she settled for letting him put his hand into the top of her dress, and then rammed the index finger of her left hand into his nostril and ripped with her nail as her mother had taught her.

Then she slipped through his arms before the fountain of his blood could foul her nice gown.

She skipped a little as she went down the long palace corridors to the kitchens. A good day.

Lady Emota was afraid when two of the Gallish squires cornered her. And less than relieved when they parted and the Sieur de Rohan stepped between them.

‘Ah,’ he said with a bow. ‘The most beautiful of the Queen’s ladies.’

She blushed. ‘My lord is too gracious.’

‘I could not be too gracious to a flower such as you.’ He leaned over her, raised her hand and kissed it. ‘Is there by any chance some man at this court you detest, so that I can kill him and win your love?’

She fought off a smile. He was so insistent – she felt her heart beating twenty to the dozen. She knew the Queen hated him, but then, the Queen treated her as if she was none too bright and her own mother said the Queen was merely jealous of her looks.

‘My lord, I am too young to have such enemies. And I fear no one,’ she said. ‘But the respect of a knight such as yourself is – a worthy—’ She was trying to think of a pretty speech.

He took her hand and kissed it – on the palm.

Her whole body reacted. She snatched the hand away, but she was suddenly warm. Her wrists tingled.

‘Oh!’ she said, and then backed away.

‘Give me but the smallest token, and I will guard the shrine of love wearing it as a gage,’ he said.

Emota had watched the older girls play this game. Holding his eyes, she untied the lace point on her left sleeve, and unlaced it, grommet by grommet. It was blue silk, made by her own hand, with a pretty silver point. She laid it across his palm. ‘Warm from my body,’ she said – shocked at her own daring, but she’d heard another of the Queen’s ladies use the phrase.

The Gallish knight flushed. ‘Ah –
ma petite
!’ he said. ‘I had no idea you were so practised in the game of love.’

Her heart was ripping along like a ship under full sail – she was overwhelmed, and at the same time that she felt like bursting with his attentions, she also wanted free of him. It was clingy, or sticky or merely—

His mouth descended towards hers, and she got a hand up, brushed his face lightly and ducked through his arms.

She ran.

Behind, she could hear him laugh. And no sooner was she free of him and a corridor away than she wanted him back. When she attended the Queen later, and they began the table arrangements for the Christmas feast, she glowed a little in her heart. And when the Queen cursed the perfidy of the Galles, Emota began to wonder.

Lonika – Duke Andronicus

Duke Andronicus looked at a table tiled to look like a chart of Thrake. ‘You say he’s east of Mons Draconis, at the edge of the Green Hills,’ he snarled. ‘Not on the coast to the east?’

Master Kronmir and Captain Dariusz, his master of scouts, stood before him. Dariusz kept glancing at the green-clad Thrakian with the traditional distrust of the scout for the spy. Seeing nothing on the other man’s face, he turned back to the Duke.

‘He’s got half the regiment of Vardariotes with him, my lord, and I’ve lost men.’ He stood stiffly, as soldiers do when forced to admit failure. ‘He passed over the mountains like a spring flood in full spate, and I can’t put men over the passes after him – they’ll be snapped up.’

Demetrius nodded. ‘So? Now the city is open to us by the coast road,’ he said.

The Duke scratched his beard. ‘Where is he going, do you think?’ He whirled and faced Kronmir. ‘And how could our special source be wrong?’

Kronmir shook his head. ‘He’s taken most of the guard troops – and some militia and stradiotes we lost in the fall.’ He shrugged. ‘He’s surprised us. Not much use in assigning blame over it.’

The Duke looked at his son. ‘How soon can we have a western army together?’ he asked. ‘As Master Kronmir says – let’s not trouble ourselves as to how we came to believe he wouldn’t leave the city, or that he’d turn east to the coast.’

Demetrius shook his head. ‘It’ll be ten days before we have enough force to take him.’

The Duke shook his head. ‘Make it five. And where does he get all this money? Christ Pantokrator, if the Emperor had this much ready silver, we’d never—’ He paused.

Demetrius looked at the maps, ‘He must be going for the fur caravans. That must be it. He’d have access to the Riding Officer’s reports. Someone’s talked. He may even know about the Galles.’

The men around the table looked at each other for as long as it took a winded man to draw a breath.

‘Demetrius – go. Take all your guards, Kronmir, Aeskepiles. Do whatever you have to keep them from getting to Osawa.’ The Duke made a face. ‘Mother of God. I took for granted that he wouldn’t march through Thrake. Kronmir, your palace report—’

‘What if he goes for the Emperor?’ Kronmir asked.

‘Should we kill the Emperor?’ Demetrius asked.

The Duke turned to Kronmir, and the two exchanged a long look.

‘No,’ Kronmir said. ‘That would, at this point, only make
her
stronger. But move him to the coast, so that he’s far from the scene of action.’

Albinkirk and the North Woods – Ser John Crayford

Ser Richard dismounted heavily and all but fell. When he walked from the mounting block in Albinkirk’s citadel’s main yard, he walked like an old man, with his left hand pressing against his backplate.

Ser John Crayford sat – fully armed – in his ‘hall’ with the Bishop of Albinkirk, two Hoek merchants, an Etruscan named Benevento Amato, and representatives of most of the fur trade companies in Alba. They all fell silent when Ser Richard entered.

Ser John stood. ‘More giants?’ he said, reaching for the mace that lay on the oak table.

Ser Richard shook his head. ‘Boggles this time,’ he spat. He collapsed into a chair brought by Ser John’s squire. ‘By the Lord’s grace, gentles. I offer my apologies for the smell.’

Ser John met Ser Richard’s eyes. ‘Any losses?’

Ser Richard shook his head. ‘We caught them well outside of the settlement area.’ He sighed. ‘I’m not the only knight who is tired. Ignore me, gentles. It was a small passage of arms, and we were victorious.’

The Bishop came over, placed a hand on him, and blessed him, and Ser Richard felt –
something.
Since being healed by Sister Amicia, he’d felt closer to God than he’d ever felt in his life, but . . .

‘The Bishop was just saying we must take a convoy into the mountains to take the year’s furs,’ Ser John said.

Messier Amato rose and bowed. ‘With all due respect to the church, my lords, I am not a rich man but I know this trade. My cousins are even now reaping the richest part of the trade at Mont Reale. But Ticondaga is an old centre for furs and other goods – Wild honey in particular.’

Ser John looked out the window. ‘Albinkirk and Lissen Carak receive most of that trade,’ he said.