The King’s Arrow Read online

  The definite possibility now existed that the royal marshal was now also mortally hurt. By me, thought Simon. I have joined the ranks of rebels and traitorous felons. I will not live long.

  Someone approached on tiptoe.

  Vexin of Tours took in the sight of the fallen marshal with little interest, but he gazed upon the king with unmistakable disbelief, ripening at once to horror. His nearly paralyzed gaze shifted in small, halting phases from Simon to Walter, and back again to the king’s sprawling form. In his great dismay, the famous lover did not look the picture of virile beauty. His artificially colored eyebrows were imprinted on a face that was waxy with shock.

  There could be no greater affront to good name or vanity than to be tangled in an incident of royal manslaughter. But Simon hoped that this worldly nobleman would utter some reassurance or offer Walter and Simon some promise of companionship. Even more, perhaps Vexin would be blessed with insight into physiology or the powers of Heaven, and be able to detect some lingering life in the stricken monarch.

  Vexin spun on his heel and ran.

  Walter put his arm around Simon, like a friend protective of a drunken companion. Simon could feel the frantic pulse within the mantle, belying Walter’s outward calm.

  He whispered, in a voice barely able to make itself heard, “Simon, we must depart.”

  24

  Simon had never walked so purposefully, counting out the steps—fifteen, sixteen—because he knew that with care the day would unfold with no further danger. But his steps had never made such an annoying, troubling crisp-crisp across the many generations of fallen leaves.

  Surely, he thought, the huntsmen will call out.

  Of course the servants will see the crumpled, heaving form of the marshal beside the increasingly wax-pale doll, the tangle of leaf-green clothing, the stubbornly lifeless monarch. The silence will be lifted, and the day break wide.

  But protected by the complicit, almost sentient holly tree, the gasping marshal and his lord were unseen by the company. And this secretive, all but silent pace, with the very ravens that would soon descend, hungry for the dead man’s eyes, made Simon feel the profoundest guilt.

  Who are you, insisted a metallic inner whisper, to follow this murderous nobleman while the king lies there like a bloody banquet for the ants?

  Call out, insisted this nagging voice. Alert the still-unaware company scattered through the woods. You are no better than Walter, if you do not sound the alarm.

  But this shrill consideration was followed by quite a different sort of thought. Was it too late, he wondered, to distance his destiny from that of Walter Tirel?

  Walter loosed the killing shaft, Simon would declaim. I am innocent, a wraith, a vapor, without will or power to choose.

  But some bright-eyed retainer would retort, “Who was it, then, who struck the royal marshal, Simon?”

  Had the woods always been this dazzling tangle of green-filtered sunlight and deep, night-flavored shade? Had the ravens always croaked in that incessant, single-note vocabulary, that surely must convey the message dead-dead-dead even as it sounded like laughter?

  The remaining hunters were stirring. The dog handlers and the riders of the follow-horses restrained their animals, their day still ready, still beginning. They had drawn up at the sight of the stag’s escape. They milled quietly now, waiting for the king to give chase. Simon envied them. For them, the king still lived.

  Oin the head huntsman no doubt believed that the best part of the hunt was about to begin. He called, “Blood spoor!” alerting the handlers that the dogs best at following a wounded quarry should be loosed from the tethers. He had mistaken the marshal’s shout for word that the deer was hurt.

  Walter said nothing more, his mantle swinging behind him. Simon followed his example in refraining from speech, and this was further proof that the stiff, frozen spell of the day’s events could be broken.

  The servants and man-at-arms behind the leaf screen ahead had no inkling what had happened. Walter walked toward them, quickly but with no sign of panic, looking, as he raised a gloved hand, like a man who had forgotten some important implement. Walter had never so impressed Simon as he did now.

  Certig offered Simon a questioning look, but said nothing. Even so, something about Simon’s glance must have communicated trouble to the veteran servant, who lifted his fingers to his lips as though to silence himself.

  Bertram held the bridle of a horse, and he cocked his ear, taking in his master’s whispered message.

  The man-at-arms gave a nod, as though the tidings were the sort he heard every day, and the knight turned to Nicolas. The expression on his face was expectant, his cheeks flushed.

  Simon drew near, expecting to have to steady the herald when he heard the news. But despite his shock he was curious, too, how a knight conveyed such tidings. It was considered bad luck to share bad news without invoking a saint, or without asking for Heaven’s help. And it was considered cruel to break the worst sort of news without first giving a word of caution regarding the message.

  Besides, Simon tried to believe, unless the event could be translated into speech, perhaps it had not yet really taken place.

  “The king is down,” said Bertram in a low voice.

  Not The king is slain. But while not conveying the definitive word, or an even more pungent The king is dead, the news could not be mistaken. A quarry that was down, an ox roped in for the slaughter, a tree long accustomed to storm, all could be down for one reason alone. And the very slight softening of the tidings made them all the heavier when the mind briefly weighed and understood.

  Nicolas’s eyes grew round, but his face took on a look of knowing uninterest, as though the knight was recounting a piece of typical gossip.

  Simon wanted to protest. It might not be true. Or it may have been true briefly, but perhaps now the king was choking, gagging, coughing out some new breath and living again.

  Someone should go back and look.

  The knight added, “We must save Simon Foldre from harm. He is one of us now, and it would shame us if our hunting companion fell into the wrong hands.”

  Nicolas gave a nod, and all the retainers looking on expectantly would have seen only a young herald and a man-at-arms discussing plans of no interest, and they beheld Walter leaping onto the nearest mount.

  Bertram’s message made no immediate sense to Simon, even as he climbed into a saddle himself, letting the man-at-arms choose the mount and shoulder him up and into a saddle with a low cantle and a modest pommel, yellow leather and decorated around the margin with crosses, as though to keep the rider in the embrace of Heaven.

  The animals waiting here were the most placid of all horses, soft-mouthed mares and experienced geldings, horses who would accept the tumult of the hunt, the sight of frenzied hounds, and the eager cries of huntsmen, without growing excited themselves. These creatures had been intended as decoys, a small, placid herd to make the approaching deer feel welcome.

  Simon regretted this pacific quality now as he tried to tickle more speed out of his surprised mare, a moon-gray mount with dark forelegs. The horse cocked her ears at the sound of his unfamiliar urging even as she broke from a willing canter to an all-out gallop.

  25

  Mares were sometimes possessed of a quality that folk called simply marespirit or mareishness.

  Simon knew this to be the female counterpart to a stallion’s keenness, a willingness to outrun anything and even fight if the need arose. Something in Simon’s touch awoke this quality in his long-legged mount, and she flew through the oaks and out into the tussocks and hedgerows, scattering field birds as she coursed.

  Simon crouched low in the saddle, grateful for this pale mare’s eagerness at leaping the bramble hedges she encountered. Simon had begun by intending to escape the king’s men, but now he realized that he might need to escape Walter himself.

  The logic was sound. Why should the nobleman suffer the sole witness to survive? With Simon’s head severed
from his shoulders, Walter could claim that Simon had loosed the deadly arrow—or even that Simon had acted deliberately, out of English malice.

  As fleet as Simon’s own mare was, Walter must have chosen an even faster horse. When Simon looked back, he could see the nobleman steadily gaining on him. Simon blamed his own bad judgment for wanting this day to be a boy’s dream of high excitement. And he cursed his own nature, for trusting his fate to the character of a foreign-born man he did not really know.

  Simon tried to run his horse as the hare flees, angling off course only to switch back in the opposite direction, the mare taking heart at this new sport. This gambit was effective at first, but then Walter ran his horse like a greyhound, cutting off the field, and cutting off yet more of the grassland, as Simon ran out of freedom, the corner of the acreage boxed in by a pinfold, a high-walled stone pen for livestock, splashed with lichen and moss.

  Simon turned to face his pursuer, his mount lifting her head and ripping at the mossy floor of the pinfold with her dark forehoof.

  She wanted a fight, and Simon could only wonder how he could survive even the first attack by Walter Tirel. He was unarmed, or poorly equipped—but surely this knife at his belt would provide him honor as he drew as much blood as he could before he died.

  Bertram and Nicolas were approaching, their horses awakened to their task, and far in the rear was Certig, his mount laboring, not wanting to be left behind by the sudden game of trapping Simon in the cold, moss-plastered corner of the livestock pen.

  “Where,” cried Walter, “are you going?”

  “Leave me,” said Simon. “Please, leave me here.”

  It was an impulsive plea, and he knew it would not work. Walter would need to destroy the only witness. But Simon added, “There’s a ship nearby, the Saint Bride, and the tide is just turning.”

  Walter said, “Simon, I cannot abandon you here.” His voice was ragged, his breath unsteady. While Walter had shown masterly self-control immediately after the event, the swift flight and his growing insight into his predicament had apparently begun to alter his reserve.

  Bertram had arrived, his own horse, a strongly built bay gelding, wanting to nose his way into the heavily breathing, spirited assembly.

  The knight tossed his head, indicating the east, and said, with an effort at calm, “We must hurry to the river.” Bertram added, “My lord, I believe your friend Lord Simon fears you more than the king’s men.”

  Simon had seen before that Walter took his time in recognizing the turnabouts of communication. Only now did the nobleman realize what fear forced Simon as far into the livestock pen as he could go, sawing at the reins and backing the mare into the deepest shadows.

  Walter lifted his sword hand. His glove was stained with water splashed up from the field, and there was blood, a line of uneven staining along the palm. Within the leather his fingers were trembling.

  This sign of deep feeling on Walter’s part shook Simon. It showed that the nobleman’s manner, his well-balanced aplomb, was just that—a manner, a way of behaving. Walter’s outward calm did not mean that all was well, or that what had happened could be undone.

  “Simon,” said Walter, “my friend, you are my companion. If I leave you here, they will hack you to bits.”

  Nicolas, the herald, had arrived by then. His own horse nuzzled Simon’s mare excitedly, nose to nose. Nicolas took a steady look at his master and another at Simon.

  “My lord,” said Nicolas, adopting formal language, “gives you to know, Lord Simon, that he is a man of chivalry and that he will defend you with his life.”

  His phrasing was perfect. But the lad spoke with a voice barely under control, a blanched copy of his usual poise.

  Bertram, too, who this morning had been the picture of solid attendance, seized the bridle of his master’s horse, and gestured pleadingly, Away, away.

  “I give you my word,” said Walter, “that you are safe with me.”

  This reassurance was exactly what Simon had needed to hear, but he was aware that Walter, for all his quality, was a man of dynamic and changeable temper.

  “I’ll see that you escape with your lives,” Simon said simply.

  “My gratitude,” said Walter, “will be undying.”

  At that moment Certig’s mount cantered into the shadow of the pinfold, the old servant asking, “What’s wrong, my lord Simon? Tell me what has happened.” But Certig knew already, or had guessed, tears in his eyes.

  The rugged Certig of earlier years would have been the steadiest of all. But since his injury Certig had been easily confused, and now when the old servant wanted to disbelieve what had happened, searching for any reason to think all would be well, Simon did not have the heart to tell him.

  A horn was sounding a distant piercing note, followed by a sour high note, the brassy message Come all, come all softened and filtered by its passage through the woodland and the humid afternoon.

  Simon thought he understood why. In the confusion after an accident, Simon had heard, hunters often looked to themselves, fleeing the scene—especially when an active, deadly swordsman like Roland was present to enact instant vengeance.

  Unless, of course, the marshal was still stricken. Additional horns were sounding in the woods. One was the silver-chased ox horn of the royal hunt, but another joined in from a far-off place, its shrill sound muffled by the distance, a series of notes. Another horn responded from the horizon.

  Horses approached, heavy mounts, and men called to each other. Spear shafts spanked flanks of horses, urging them to greater speed, and when the menee sounded next it was close, not far from the high, moss-bound walls of the pinfold.

  “Certig,” said Simon, in his firmest voice. Simon forced out the words like a man used to giving fighting orders. “Ride to Aldham Manor. Tell my mother to move at once into the tower.”

  “The tower, my lord Simon?”

  “My father’s keep,” said Simon in a tone of gentle exasperation. “On the hill behind the house. She and Alcuin and the house servants could hold off an army from there.”

  Certig groaned. “Oh, we don’t have to hide there, do we, my lord? What has happened to make us so afraid?”

  “The king is dead,” said Simon.

  “Did our lord king hurt himself?” asked Certig, sounding like child in need of comfort.

  Simon let his horse step gently sideways, into Certig’s mount, jostling the servant and causing him to gather the reins more firmly in his grasp. This soft collision had its intended result, stirring Certig back into his wits. He said, “I begin to understand.”

  “We’ll hasten down to the river, Certig,” said Simon, “and sail the Saint Bride to sea.”

  “By Jesus, you’d better be quick,” said Certig. “Hide in Normandy, my lord. They’ll never lay hands on you there.” Now that he was in possession of his spirits, the old Certig was back in full. “Oh, never fear, Lord Simon—your mother will be secure.”

  Before Simon could say more, heavy horses arrived, wild-eyed and dancing as their riders pulled them back. Walter and his companions were trapped in the livestock fold by five of the marshal’s men, resplendent in their blue-and-gold surcoats—with Grestain in the lead, a broadsword in his hand.

  26

  Simon realized that actual fighting would not be much like the pretty, long-winded ballads, in which a wounded adversary swooned and woke and offered up a prayer in rhyme, forgiving the victor. And yet he was not prepared for what actually happened.

  “Stand aside, before Heaven,” cried Nicolas, in a piercing voice amazing from such a slight youth, “for the passage of Lord Walter, lord of Poix and peer to the crown of England.”

  This command was given in such a ringing, disciplined manner that three or four of the horsemen drew all the harder on their reins. Their horses backed, snorting, shaking their bridles.

  But Grestain, the royal sergeant, stood in his stirrups, as though Nicolas had not made a sound. This Grestain—so fond of his days herding
oxen, thought Simon—is the mortal who will deliver me to death.

  It was clear that Bertram and his companions were not equipped for fighting. Simon had a knife at his belt, but nothing else, and even Walter, aside from his bow, carried only a shortsword, a modest weapon compared with a war blade. Bertram was likewise outfitted for the hunt, with a short sword in a brass-chased leather scabbard, and he wore no helmet or body armor.

  Grestain, by contrast, was a royal sergeant and accustomed to arming himself with little warning. His leather helmet gleamed, the nasal guard that extended before his face making him look cross-eyed with determination. The other riders and their heavy stallions were likewise armed for combat, with only a few dangling buckles betraying their haste.

  Bertram urged his mare forward with a gentle click of his tongue, like any placid rider. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but looked like a man more prepared for diplomacy than bloodshed.

  It began as a feat of horsemanship.

  Bertram encouraged his mare to ride into Grestain’s warhorse with a gentle but insistent, “Press on, press on.”

  The mare needed little encouragement.

  The stallion responded with a snort, pawing the air with a forehoof, and instantly the mare fought back, taking a nip out of the stallion’s ear. Soon the animals were squalling like gigantic cats, the big warhorse towering over the mare, the smaller horse seizing the stallion’s neck in her teeth and hanging on.

  Grestain, encumbered by shield and sword, could not cling to the reins. He toppled sideways out of the saddle, but after his clumsy, arm-waving effort to keep his balance, the gleaming broadsword was no longer in Grestain’s grasp. The weapon had found its way into Bertram’s hand, and the knight began cutting great slices out of the increasingly helpless Grestain.