The Dragon Throne Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  I - The Kingdom of the Lion

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  II - Soldier Pilgrims

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  III - The Devil’s Pathway

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  IV - Blood beside the Sea

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Viking

  Published by Penguin Group

  Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

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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

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  for Sherina

  Day moon,

  will you answer us

  at last?

  I

  The Kingdom of the Lion

  1

  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.

  2

  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.

  Bernard was tall and favored with aquiline features and eyes quick to show feeling, but he was not the sturdiest of men. It was her turn to force their way through the folk drawn toward the struggling band of fighting men, leading her father by the hand. The two of them were making slow progress. Already the force of arms and weight of disapproving people drove the Franks back, and farther back, horses kicking and slipping, growing so close that the heat from the anxious steeds swept over Ester.

  She caught a glimpse of a red-faced spearman, his jaw set in effort as he fought to control his horse, all thought of revenge already lost as he struggled with the reins. The horse whinnied, the high, hysterical scream of a steed unused to such tumult.

  Ester lost her father’s hand in the sudden rush of stumbling men and women.

  She cried out a warning.

  Most reliable mounts had been shipped off with knights and squires to fight in the Crusade. This frightened animal, alarmed at the press of shouting people, tossed his head, broke the grip of his rider, and plunged forward.

  Knocking Bernard to the ground.

  The iron-shod hoof of the horse plunged into the fine-spun gown of the scholar’s body, not once but twice.

  Bernard gave out a shriek of pain.

  3

  THE HORSE WAS HAULED AWAY, SNORTING and wild-eyed.

  The scholar writhed, unable to make a further sound.

  Ester knelt beside her father, praying fervently under her breath to the Blessed Virgin, convinced against the evidence of her senses that her father was merely bruised, shaken, short of breath.

  Ester had seen blood before. A gentlewoman was expected to know how to hunt, and she had seen hounds tearing the still-living deer, brought down by her own crossbow bolt. A person of good name was expected to be strong-hearted. Even her mild-tempered father enjoyed watching the mousing hawk return with its prey, and had bet a penny or two on the success of Ever-So, a favorite falcon of the queen’s, which excelled at nabbing wood doves.

  Bernard coughed, and his breath caught. His body twisted with an effort she felt in her own soul. His eyes found hers.

  Still he could not speak.

  The crowd fell silent, clearing a space, folk who did not know the scholar by name or reputation recognizing in his dark gray mantle the garb of a prayerful man, a priest or man of letters.

  Ida arrived from nowhere, a red-haired young woman with points of color in her cheeks. Judging by appearance, she could have been Ester’s younger sister. “I’ve sent a boy for a doctor,” said Ida. “And a priest,” she added. Ida had a way of saying just that sole additional word one did not wish to hear.

  The crowd parted silently, and for a moment the just-freed Edmund gazed down at Ester from horseback. He reassured his horse with one broad hand, the big, square-shouldered squire taking in the sight of the stricken scholar, his eyes quick with compassion.

  “Don’t move me,” her father was saying when she put her ears close to his lips.

  Or perhaps he was imploring “Please move me” as he coughed again and blood started at his nostrils and erupted from his mouth. The scholar reached up to take his daughter’s hand as a voice sang out, “Way, make way,” and Reginald de Athies, physician and astrologer, forced his way to Bernard’s side and fell to his knees.

  “You’ve taken hurt it seems, old friend,” said the doctor.

  Bernard spoke, but his voice was strengthless.

  “No, we can’t let you lie where you are,” said the doctor. The physician looked to Ester. “We can’t leave him here.”

  “Father, we have to move you,” said Ester.

  She could not hear him, but she understood his message: “It doesn’t matter.”

  “The priest is on his way,” Ida was saying, “that little Father Catald from Temple Church.”

  To give Bernard de Laci the final blessing, she was about to add, Ester was certain.

  She held her father’s hand and sensed his pulse—now strong, now ragged. She had kept a vigil not two years ago when her mother’s lungs filled with water and she drifted into Heaven’s company. Ester could not mistake the ever-weakening rhythm of her father’s heartb
eat, and she moved her lips in prayer.

  Father Catald had a small man’s way of slipping easily through a crowd, and he wore a fleece-white mantle marked with a large Templar cross that won him easy passage wherever he might go. Like any red-blooded Templar, he had been eager to see today’s joust, Ester could imagine, and like any man of short stature, he had found a place well in front of the rest.

  Before the pink-cheeked priest could begin any appropriate rite, Ester took his arm and insisted, “Bless me, Father.”

  “Quite willingly, Ester,” said the blue-eyed priest in a tone of gentle wonderment.

  “I am making a vow,” Ester continued, “here and before Our Lady. If my father’s life is spared, I swear before all Heaven to make a pilgrimage to Rome.”

  “Ester, this is more than a young lady should promise,” responded the priest, looking more shaken by Ester’s promise than by the sight of her stricken father. While not a warring man himself, the little man belonged to the famous fighting order of knights who carried swords in the name of God. He had been left behind by the other Templars so that he could hold daily mass in the nearly empty Temple Church.

  Her father plucked at Ester’s sleeve, his eyes wide with alarm. Vows were not undertaken lightly—a sacred promise could be no more easily dissolved than a marriage.

  “Good Ester,” Ida whispered, blinking her green eyes, “be careful what you swear.”

  “I vow it,” Ester returned in her most fervent manner, “before Heaven’s Queen.”

  4

  EDMUND WAS RELUCTANT TO LEAVE THE place where the injured scholar lay, attended by a young woman in a well-made mantle and hood.

  This fair young lady had hair the color of sunset at sea, a rare golden-red hue, and eyes the color of green a Crusader in the arid Holy Land could only dream of, the green of hillside and home.