The Book of the Lion Read online

  The rat sat up, caught like a unicorn by my voice.

  Daylight appeared in the high window slits, three gray stripes, and birds began their chirrup.

  I stretched my arms and legs with great difficulty, the chains even heavier than before. For all the qualities of my master Otto—his welcoming smile, his gentle laugh, and his store of Frankish phrases—he had one sure defect.

  He had cheated the king.

  Otto had devised a way of blending Norse copper in with the silver during the smelting. “Scarcely a crime at all, Edmund,” he confided. Copper was a valuable metal, too, in its way, he assured me. I think he enjoyed the art of creating the alloy as much as any increase of his own wealth. Otto bought brown ingots of the stuff from merchants traveling down from York and Whitby, and the pennies made one-fifth of copper, four-fifths of the king’s silver, were as pleasing to the touch, and made the same cheerful sound bounced off a tavern tabletop, as pure silver.

  Or, almost the same. I could tell the difference in smell and even taste, and certainly this debased argentum was less rich to the touch. But Otto had explained that the miller paid little heed to the coin that kissed his palm.

  So the Devil instructs us, his eager pupils. He teases us with evil hope. The gray slashes of daylight burned brighter. They crept slowly across the stony ceiling of my chamber. The light fell upon my hand as it rested on the floor, alive with the tiny, sporting bodies of fleas.

  My master was guilty, and so, as his apprentice, was I. Not that I had ever been offered a choice, and not that I had enjoyed any profit, aside from an increase in the quality of the pullets we supped on, and the quality of the ale we drank. But had I ever cautioned my master, or warned him against the wrath of the king?

  The door opened, and an old man brought in a plate of brown bread and sheep’s cheese, and a cup of flat beer. The bread was delicious, and the beer gone in two swallows. When I asked what had become of Master Otto, whether he lived or died, the white head shook sadly.

  I prayed to Saint Peter—who had been in chains himself—that I might stay as I was for weeks or months, if it be the will of Heaven.

  The slashes of daylight fell all the way across my cell and began to fade to dim russet.

  Footsteps echoed, and a key rattled.

  “You’ve business with the sheriff,” said the deputy, and I recognized a kind of humor in the remark as the manacles were struck from my wrists. A man condemned to hang would be described as having business with the scaffold-builder. A man about to have his nose severed for thieving from the alms box would be said to have an appointment with a good sharp edge.

  chapter THREE

  It was not quite sundown, but in this vast room it was already dark.

  Candles were lit all around, a beautiful sight, with brass candlesticks, except just at the sheriff’s elbow, where his wine cup awaited his touch. There a candlestick of gold—a short candlestick, but worth a knight’s ransom—gave off a fine light. A whippet, a lean, white bitch, looked upon me with the mildest curiosity.

  The castle was known as a place of wonders. The sheriff kept a fool, an exotic, silent creature, and the sheriff’s wife was renowned as a beauty. It was said that Robin Hood himself once paid a visit within these walls.

  “So here we see Edmund,” said the sheriff, running his finger along a roll of vellum. I was dressed in my tunic, a smock of soft brown wool stained with my master’s blood. It was a cloth few sons of freedmen were wearing, this excellent burnet, but my feet were bare.

  Once again I breathed a prayer. I remained as I was, but I had eyes.

  I could see no sign of a fool, and no woman at all. The Exchequer’s man sat beside the lord sheriff, and I tried to read his expression. The Exchequer’s man was no longer armored but dressed in finery, rich indigo sleeves. I had never seen a ceiling so high, roof beams so far above.

  “This is what he is called—Edmund, simply that, no hamlet, no father’s name?” the Exchequer’s man was asking.

  “His father was Arthur, a freedman,” said the sheriff.

  Where I found the courage to ask a question I cannot say, but the words were out before I could silence myself. “My Lord Sheriff,” I said, still kneeling. “My good master Otto—does he live?”

  The sheriff met my gaze. He looked worn with thought. “It’s a grievous injury,” he said, not unkindly. “The liver cannot keep the blood hot when so much is lost into the air.”

  “He’s dead,” said the Exchequer’s man.

  “I am at your mercy, Lord Sheriff. And at the mercy of our lord king.” I don’t know how I managed to speak in such a knightly manner at such a moment, and my voice was little more than a whisper.

  “The mercy of the king!” laughed the Exchequer’s man. The sheriff rolled the parchment in his hand into a wand. “Mercy is exchanged,” he said, “for acts of penance.” What penance could I give, I wondered, that would earn even a single hour of mercy? The sheriff turned to listen to the whispered word of Hugh, his young deputy.

  The sheriff lifted his eyebrows, reached for the silver cup at the table beside him—old silver, inset with carnelians, Flemish work—and took a sip. “You’ve never been on horseback, have you, Edmund?”

  “Indeed, my lord, before my father and mother were taken ill with black spleen, as it pleased Heaven, I would ride to market with his wares.” My father had been a cooper, a laboring man, but one of high skill, expert at carving poplar barrel wood. My father had paid for my apprenticeship when I was twelve years old by working red-eyed and weary by firelight. I had never mounted a horse in my life.

  Hugh spoke again, in a low voice, and hurried from the chamber.

  The sheriff turned to the Exchequer’s man, his face alight, and said, “I’ll offer Edmund a chance to win the favor of our king and the mercy of his God.”

  “But this is the son of an ignorant craftsman,” said the Exchequer’s man. “I’ll bet you a gold mark he’s never been on so much as a cob horse.”

  “Are you accusing Edmund of lying?” said the sheriff.

  “My Lord Sheriff,” I rasped. “I’ve a good touch with beasts, and ease their fears.” This much was true—cur and hen alike enjoy my company.

  Neither man spoke for a moment. “He has a crime to answer for, and I would hardly blame him for telling a lie,” said the Exchequer’s man at last.

  “But, good Alan, you see how well he could bear a sword,” said the sheriff. Even though the sheriff was uttering careful London-speech, he pronounced swurd like his fellow townsmen. “And an apprentice cannot be held accountable for his master’s avarice.”

  “Of course he can,” said Alan.

  “But see how fit he is to battle. And what a waste it would be, before Heaven, to take such a sword arm away from God.”

  Alan waved a hand, like a man worried by a gnat. “Besides,” he said, “if we strike off a hand he may well survive. If we send him to the Holy Land against Saladin and the pagan armies, he may well never see this town again. And nearly all the Crusading men have gone, weeks past. Who’ll take this apprentice townsman and turn him into a squire?”

  As I was led back down the corridor of the castle, a man stood in our way, hand on his hips, feet spread, barring our passage.

  He wore a sword, the iron knob of the pommel gleaming brightly.

  “Ah, Sir Nigel,” said the sheriff, approaching behind us. “Here you see our young man with the strength of four of the king’s men. Or was it five?”

  I had never seen this knight before, although I knew most other knights of the local countryside by reputation. Sir Nigel was shorter than I, although this was not unusual—I am considered tall. He had steel gray hair cut very short, like many men who go helmeted much of the time, and the whites of his eyes were faintly yellow. There was a jaundiced cast about his skin. He wore a tunic similar to mine, and if anything his was more begrimed, but with house soil, not with blood.

  “This hammerman says he can ride a horse,” said the sheriff
.

  Sir Nigel put his hand on my face, peeled down my lower lip, and felt along my eyebrow to the faint scar I have there, where a billy goat caught me as a boy.

  “God can be cruel,” said Nigel. “Killing my beloved squire in an accident, and leaving none to carry my shield but a liar.”

  “Let us keep him, then,” said the sheriff. “I’ll have the surgeon stand by with a poultice, something to catch the blood when the wrist is handless.”

  “They tell me you are called Edmund, and that you’ll do anything to save your own skin,” said Nigel. His tunic was soiled with duck fat and goose, a wine stain down by the hem. Like any man of quality, he kept a good table.

  “Indeed, my lord, anything. Even serve God,” I said.

  “My choice is not so limited,” he said. “There is one other youth seeking a Crusade,” said Nigel. “Son of a wool merchant from the west—a man with glass windows in his house, and two chimneys.” Glazed windows were very rare, except in chapels and churches. “This young man can fight, battle-ax or two-handed sword. I’ll choose from the two, the winner between you and Hubert.”

  The knight’s eyes narrowed to a laugh, and I knew my dreams were thin.

  I would never manage to best a merchant’s son at a game I had never played, sword to sword. And this knight, accustomed to measuring an opponent, could look into my heart.

  “Be quick,” said the sheriff in a low voice to the two of us. “Before the Exchequer’s man has a change of heart.”

  chapter FOUR

  Sir Nigel walked with a slight stiffness in his stride through the evening shadows. He made his way before me through the narrow streets, past timber and clay dwellings.

  Householders lingering in the streets nodded respectfully as he passed, and many gave me a glance, too. Many a sweet-faced young woman gave me a feeling look. None of them were Elviva, however, and I saw in the eyes of my neighbors the sympathy they would feel for a wretch climbing the scaffold, into the noose.

  We made our way through the bakers’ quarter, men who went to bed early so they could rise and knead their dough into bread by morning. We left the city gates, the guards there saluting us with cheer. The late winter fields were green, the trees bare and bronze in the setting sun. Sir Nigel and I approached a walled living-stead beyond the town.

  The knight pushed open a large wooden gate studded with bronze points. We paused in a small, clay-paved courtyard before a house of blue stone. I had seen this place from the road, one of the few stone dwellings in the countryside. It had belonged to Sir Roger, an old knight, war weary from a Crusade long past. The old knight had died of a flux, bleeding from his guts, some six months past. This was the new tenant of Roger’s hall.

  Horses nickered from the stables at the sound of the knight’s voice. We stopped in the door yard.

  “Take a stance,” he said in London speech.

  I understood what he was saying, tan a strythe. My heart was beating fast as I planted my feet, held my head at an angle, jaw set, as I had seen knights do on tournament day.

  Nigel walked around me, a man studying a bullock he had led from market. I knew what was coming, but it was still a shock when he charged into me and knocked me flat.

  I jumped to my feet.

  “Try again,” he said.

  I was down at once as he struck me with only one fist, swung backhand, a blow I had seen coming. He did not offer me a hand to help me up, nor did I expect or deserve one.

  “Your master Otto was a thief,” he said at last.

  “No, my lord, he was an honest coiner.”

  The knight gave a laugh, but there was sadness in the sound. “Again,” he said.

  This time he barely touched me, a quick stab of his open hand, below my ribs. I gasped, swore to myself I would not go down, and fell.

  I was on my feet in an instant—shocked at myself, ashamed. I was in angry tears.

  “You won’t defame my master Otto,” I heard myself say. “Or his good wife.”

  The knight laughed. “I’ll do all of that, Edmund. Ride the wife to market, and you looking on, if it pleases me. I’m making a mistake, I am afraid before the saints. I’m making a terrible mistake to let a thief’s apprentice sit at my table. But it is a blunder I am making with my eyes open.”

  I hated him.

  The knight showed me into a great hall with oak beams in the ceiling, and a graceful figure I took to be a pleasure-woman offered him a cup.

  Straw was thick all over the floor, and servants appeared through the hearth smoke, unbuckling Nigel’s sword. Beyond, a large fireplace gave off cheerful firelight, with the oblong shapes of hams and haunches festooned over the oakwood smoke. Nigel sat with a sigh and nodded that I should join him. I took a long look around, hoping for—and fearing—a sight of this Fighting Hubert.

  The bench Nigel indicated for me was a well-planed piece of oak, better than any my master had possessed. Knights were renowned for their enjoyment of manly appetites, women, food and drink. I had been living in the household of a minter, however, and while we had enjoyed nothing like the finery of the sheriff, we had drake for midday meal, and the whitest bread.

  The table knife was decent silver, wood-handled, and heavy. I longed to tell Elviva where I was. This knight watched every move I made as I accepted a warm bread trencher with a slab of beef from a broad-shouldered manservant.

  “Wenstan,” said Nigel to his man. “Edmund here thinks he can better Hubert in combat. And Edmund here has carried neither sword nor buckler in his life.”

  “Hubert?” said Wenstan, as though the idea stunned him. “Oh, I don‘t—” He stuttered over his words. “I don’t think that would be a fair contest at all, my lord.”

  “We’ll see tomorrow,” said Nigel, as though it mattered nothing to him, either way. “But we can’t have Edmund riding forth naked to have his head stuck onto a pike, can we?”

  Naked, to men-at-arms, means unarmored. A messenger, even an archer, however well-appointed, was naked in the eyes of an armored man.

  The cup Wenstan served me was heartwarming red wine. “Oh, my lord, we’ll have Edmund caparisoned like a Templar,” said Wenstan. In conversation, anyone of much greater quality than oneself was addressed as my lord, even, if the case arose, my lord king, my lord pope. I noted that Wenstan did not refer to me as “Master Edmund,” or “squire.”

  I was still in my blood-dyed burnet, cloth of quality, but I was alive to the fact that the serving man wore the best sort of brass buckle on his belt, and a knife with a buck-horn handle.

  “Hubert is out riding,” Nigel said. “Running down a vixen, I would guess. He has new chain mail and a barely used saddle. He’s getting used to the feel of the leather.”

  I chewed and worked hard to swallow the suddenly flavorless meat in my mouth. I was sorry when Wenstan left us alone.

  “I would have left to join our king on the Holy Crusade long before this,” Nigel was saying, “but sick as I was, I could not stand up or leave my bed.”

  “It grieves me, my lord, to hear it,” I said.

  Nigel swallowed wine and considered me. He said, “A hammer killed my squire.”

  This could only be a poor omen, or an ugly coincidence. Before I could think of how to ask after this misfortune, he added, “It was a stonemason’s mallet, dropped from the chapel of Saint Bartholomew, not five weeks past. Knocked out his brains and all his senses. He died.”

  It did seem unnecessary to add that a youth with neither brains nor senses could not live, but I expressed myself as my master had taught me. I said I was sorry to hear of my lord’s loss.

  “I will not refer to him again,” said the knight. “It pains me.”

  “As it pleases you, my lord.”

  “I had a dream,” said the knight, “and after waking, I told it to the lord sheriff over wine yesterday. I dreamed the man who killed my squire rose from the dead and came to see me, offering his service. I spent hours wondering how such a thing could come to pass.”<
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  I kept my eyes downcast.

  “I killed the mason for his bad luck,” said Nigel. “Climbed up the scaffold, cut his throat, and paid the master mason a bag of silver pennies for the loss. Real silver,” he said pointedly, “with old King Henry’s face stamped in them.”

  I kept my mouth shut, scratching flea bites on my legs.

  “You’ll need beef to give you strength,” said Nigel. “Perhaps you aren’t a bad youth, in your heart. I was a muscular lad like you once, and with no more sense than a duck. I have killed three men in my life, Edmund. One by accident, only my second tournament, braining a knight from Poitou with the flat of my sword. One a yeoman goose thief I ran down and skewered—” Nigel stabbed the wooden trencher-board with his knife—“through the spleen, so he bled bright red. And just recently this star-cursed mason’s apprentice.”

  A trip to the Holy Land to fight for the True Cross absolved a sinner of even the worst crimes in the eyes of Heaven. Still, I was surprised that such a seasoned warrior had not taken many more lives.

  “Before I die,” he was saying, his eyes bright, “I pray to serve Our Lord in one great battle.”

  “God wills it,” I said in a soft voice, unthinkingly echoing the Crusader’s cry.

  Nigel slapped the table, laughing, his eyes keen. This knight’s gaze had a powerful charm—I could not help liking him now. “Maybe you have a counterfeiter’s heart, and a Christian’s liver.”

  The liver, I knew, was the seat of courage, but I was not braver nor more cowardly than any other man.