The Dragon Throne Read online

  Edmund would still be there in the dry, war-punished meadows near Acre and Jaffa, if an injury to Sir Nigel had not required them to voyage home. Edmund felt pity, even as he took in the sight of this comely young woman. It was a shame that an innocent onlooker had suffered an accident. He offered a prayer for the man’s life.

  A voice called his name. Edmund could not make quick progress through the churning crowd, and so many people made his horse nervous. He climbed down from his mount and remarked to Sir Rannulf, “There will be more trouble.”

  “They are only six wine-sick footmen,” said Rannulf dismissively.

  “And Sir Jean himself,” added Edmund.

  Sir Rannulf gave a gesture like a man swatting a flea—so much for Sir Jean.

  Sir Rannulf of Josselin had slain five men in a legendary joust many years before, and, it was believed, killed countless Christians and Infidels since. His lips had been scarred by a would-be murderer’s knife on one violent occasion, and Rannulf took care to shape his speech clearly as he responded, with what was, for the leathery knight, something of a chuckle. “Let us see them try their weapons.”

  Rannulf had nearly cut the throat of Nicholas as he lay mortally hurt just moments before, and only Hubert’s intervention had preserved the young knight from Rannulf’s sharp blade. Nonetheless, Nicholas was expected to expire within the hour. While Edmund judged himself no coward, it seemed to him that more men were killed under Heaven than necessity required.

  A trumpet’s notes rang out repeatedly, the brassy, all-alerting flurry slicing the murmur of voices, leaving only the sound of horses champing and shaking their bridles.

  A voice was lifted yet again. “Edmund Strongarm and Hubert of Bakewell,” sang out this fine voice, in the tones of a herald. “The squires Edmund and Hubert—attend you now to the prince.”

  King Richard had proven an impetuous, energetic leader of men during the Crusade; his brother, Prince John, was reckoned untrustworthy by King Richard’s cohorts. The prince had promised to stay away from England while Richard was crusading, and the war in the Holy Land was far from finished. Edmund could not fathom the nature of this princely command.

  The herald was calling again, his bright eyes and clean-shaven face looking in Edmund’s direction.

  It was the nature of heralds to deliver tidings and requests in a formal, slightly obscure manner. Anxiety pricked Edmund, and he wondered how difficult it would be to flee across the field of trampled daffodils.

  “What does this mean?” Edmund asked.

  “What else can it mean?” answered Rannulf. “Except that Prince John means some mischief. He is a grasping man, with love for no one.”

  “Am I,” asked Edmund, “to be put in chains again?”

  The thought took the breath from his body. Edmund rubbed the chafed places where until scant minutes before manacles had kept him under the law’s command. The previous night’s imprisonment had seemed endless. Although it was not the first time Edmund had seen prison rats and smelled the dank, fetid matting of prison bedding straw, he prayed he would never spend another such night.

  “We are all in chains,” said Rannulf, with what for this scarred warrior was a smile. “Of one sort or another.”

  “Straighten your tunic,” Sir Nigel was saying, hurrying around Edmund and adjusting his clothing.

  Rannulf performed the same office for Hubert, straightening the squire’s surcoat and brushing blades of grass from his sleeve. Hubert’s gaze was solemn, the young squire’s conscience just beginning to absorb the act of legal homicide he had committed moments before.

  “Keep your eyes downcast,” advised Nigel.

  It was considered ill-mannered in the extreme to look into the gaze of a royal prince. Kings, queens, and princes were rulers blessed by God. No ordinary mortal approached such a person except with a feeling of awe—and anxiety.

  “Prince John,” said Nigel in a tone of pride and concern, “wants to have a closer look at you.”

  5

  PRINCE JOHN WAS STANDING UNDER A canopy, a gleaming yellow jewel on his finger. The stone was topaz, Edmund recognized, on a well-worked silver ring. The younger brother of King Richard sported a short, well-tended beard, and when he smiled, his teeth were white.

  Edmund knelt beside Hubert, the two squires like young men at prayer, the taller, brown-haired Edmund taking as his cue the behavior of his better-educated, fair-haired friend.

  The heartbeat was swift in his chest. Edmund had dreamed of such a moment, it was true. He had eased into sleep, and stirred to full wakefulness with fantasies of a moment of recognition before a royal lord, but he had known even as a boy that such events never really happen. The toil of the war, and the slaughter of some two thousand innocent prisoners at King Richard’s command, had taught him that crowned kings and battle glory were sweeter in song than in life.

  “Sir Rannulf of Josselin,” the prince was saying, “it would please me to borrow your sword.”

  “My lord prince,” said Rannulf, presenting his sword, the blade across his two upraised palms. “It does me honor,” added the veteran killer of men, and Edmund noted how the words of high speech turned Rannulf from a weathered manslayer to the semblance of a gentil knight.

  “I would make the two of you, young Edmund and young Hubert, into knights,” said Prince John with the barest smile.

  The singing of Edmund’s own heart, the buzz of sounds and voices, memories and hopes, made the next words sound far away.

  “But first you must pledge to me your loyalty and honor,” said the prince. “Above any other man.”

  While any knight had the power to welcome a squire into knighthood, to have a prince perform the honor was a rare privilege.

  But Edmund gave a glance toward Hubert, took in the sight of his friend’s troubled gaze, and spoke for both of them. “My lord prince, we are in England on behalf of King Richard and Sir Maurice, his representative in Rome.”

  “Good Sir Maurice de Gray, such an honorable man,” said Prince John smoothly. “And his daughter, Galena, is a beauty, by every account.”

  “We owe our loyalty to Richard, your brother, by God’s grace our king,” said Edmund, feeling the strength leave his voice. No squire had ever spoken to a royal prince so boldly, Edmund was certain.

  “Do you indeed?” said Prince John. “Are you my brother’s creatures?”

  “So we are, if our lord prince might well forgive us,” said Hubert in agreement.

  Edmund was glad to hear his friend speak up—Hubert had always been the better phrase smith.

  “I think I will not forgive you,” said Prince John. “I had this day wagered a purse of new silver against bold Hubert here. And lost every ounce.”

  “My lord prince,” said Hubert, sounding politely woeful, “may it return to you tenfold.”

  “You two can repay this silver,” said the prince, “by entering my service as knights.”

  “Alas, my lord prince,” Sir Nigel said. “Their honor will not permit it.”

  “You displease me,” said the prince after a long pause, during which no one dared to speak. “All of you.”

  “And yet, my lord prince,” said Nigel, steel in his voice, “you could still name these two squires worthy knights, if Heaven gives you the grace.”

  “Sir Nigel,” said the prince, “I have no reason to weigh your opinion with any favor.”

  “I am but a sinner, and a killer of men,” said Sir Rannulf, speaking carefully and formally through his scarred lips. “Even so I am a Christian, my lord prince, and on my honor I commend these squires to you.”

  The prince chewed on the knuckle of his thumb. For a long moment he did not speak, and glared at the four fighting men as though he now wished that the earth would open and swallow them.

  At last the prince gave a shrug. “Because your manslaughter is so renowned, Rannulf, I will do as you suggest.”

  It took only a few heartbeats.

  The prince stood. He touched
Hubert’s shoulders with the blade, and said something too thrilling to be easily understood by Edmund’s dazzled senses. Then it was Edmund’s own turn.

  The voice of the king’s younger brother continued as though from far across the kingdom, adding, “In the name of Our Lady, Saint Michael, and Saint George.”

  A great cheer erupted as the prince added the words, “Edmund, be thou a knight.”

  Edmund believed it all the more when he glimpsed Hubert’s smile of amazement.

  Elviva will be amazed, thought Edmund. I was too lowly in the past, a mere moneyer’s apprentice, to suggest marriage.

  He could imagine the delight in her eyes.

  “You’ll feast with me tonight,” Prince John was heard to say. “Sir Edmund and Sir Hubert—I am not finished with you.”

  The prince smiled, too, but his countenance showed anger more than joy.

  Edmund felt a hand grasp his arm at the wrist, a firm grip that got his attention despite the crowd of well-wishers all around. It was the Templar priest who had been at the side of the injured scholar, a short man with bright eyes and the Templar cross that Edmund had learned to respect during the Crusade.

  The cleric stood as tall as he could to murmur, “Come to Temple Church for prayers before sunset.”

  “With pleasure, Father,” said Edmund, bending low to take in a further message.

  “And tell no one,” added the priest. “If you ever wish to see Rome again.”

  6

  ESTER TOOK HOPE FROM THE FACT THAT her father had stopped coughing, but it was a shaky courage, strongly braced by prayer.

  The river all around was rising, and this alone was enough to trouble her. Bernard opened his eyes every few moments, finding his daughter with his gaze and giving her a weak smile. She held his hand, keeping hold of it even when the tide of the Thames tossed the boat.

  The doctor, Reginald de Athies, advised the boatmen to row with more measured strokes. “Like a maid churning butter.”

  “I am greatly sorry my lords and my lady,” said the taller boatman, a fresh-faced youth outfitted in the shapeless gray cap and smock of his trade.

  River water sloshed over the side, and Bernard shifted weakly, the wet mixing with the blood on his gown, diluting it.

  “Good lad, you are getting river on my patient,” said the doctor.

  “The current, sire,” said the young boatman, “is no respecter of suffering.”

  “What a tongue twitches in the mouth of this knave,” said the doctor, as though pleased to have an object for his growing impatience. “Who taught you to speak to your superiors in such a tone, boat keeper?”

  “A gentleman passing over the river to the joust,” said the boatman, with an airy calm, “was just as learned as any on the river now, and this fine charitable knight gave us both a quarter penny.”

  “Silver you’ve spent on ale,” said the physician with growing heat.

  “A knight from some distant place, where coin is the only language,” the boatman continued, rowing with energy.

  England was slowly seeing evidence of foreign adventurers, older knights and younger vagabonds. With most fighting folk of honor on Crusade with King Richard, and only now beginning to return from the Holy Land, many foreign men-at-arms had attached themselves to Prince John’s cause, and found much work in collecting taxes and enforcing laws. Some wandering knights were rumored to be at large in the woods, extorting money and chattel from peasants and yeoman farmers.

  “We bought the dearest Rhenish wine,” the boatman was recounting, rowing all the harder against the current. “We enjoyed wonderful huge pitchers of it, until we could not swallow more.”

  Reginald gave Ester a pat of reassurance, as if to say “I’ll deal with this impertinent rower.” It was just a quick touch on the bare skin of her forearm, but that slight contact was enough to cause Ester to grow impatient herself.

  “There is no need to chide the boatmen, good doctor,” she said.

  “When churls drink costly foreign wine,” replied the doctor, “the world’s turned upside down.”

  It seemed to Ester that the distant bank would never arrive, and that it approached only to shrink back again, unattainable reeds and mossy pebbles.

  Westminster Castle was some distance west of London’s walls, not far from the river in a countryside of oaks and hedgerows. The castle was handsome, in the way of buildings constructed to endure siege and gradually transformed to a place of royal shelter. Arrow slits marked the high walls, narrow openings where crossbowmen could aim their weapons, and guards leaned against their spears in the manner of a drawing a child might make, towers and battlements, every soul with a cheerful duty.

  Sheep and cattle grazed across the flowery field, and somewhere a tool was being repaired, the sweet sound of hammer on scythe. In the distance a farmer’s wife shoveled ashy lime, engaged in making soap. The boat nosed the close-shorn grasses of the riverbank, and Bernard gave an involuntary wince, and then smiled in apology. A strong-hearted scholar, he had always taught Ester, should never complain.

  The injured man was met by men supporting a litter-bed. Ida, who had traveled ahead to fetch these attendants, beckoned them to hurry. The horsemen wore the livery of the royal Plantagenets, a leopard in red on the chest of every tunic. Only a careful eye could discern the worn hems of some of the garments, and the occasional faintly starlike design where a moth hole had been repaired by stitchery.

  If there was a single fact about court life Ester did not admire, it was the careful protocol that dictated every act a castle servant might commit. Ester had seen country folk, shepherds and haywards running on market day, bounding stride by stride toward home, or sprinting merrily toward a beckoning friend, but the men and women of the royal court never hurried. To break into a run was thought ungentle—no lady would think of skipping down a corridor, or rushing after a herald with further instructions.

  Even now, with her father’s life in the balance, the liveried servants took measured steps as they found their way down the bank of the river and listened to the doctor’s instructions on how to lift his stricken patient.

  “It will be like the time the churchmen moved the relics of Saint Gwen,” said the doctor, referring to the recent reburial and celebration of the skeleton of a local holy woman. The pious had gathered from far away to see the centuries-old bones swaddled in sendal, a rare silk, and buried with sung devotions.

  “Gently, gently,” the doctor called now, as the scholar offered a brave smile and let his body be lifted slowly—more slowly than the monks lifting the amber-and-walnut remains of the blessed Gwen.

  “Wait,” her father called in a whisper, squeezing his daughter’s hand in anticipation of the pain soon to follow as they were about to lower him onto the litter-bed.

  Giffard, a white-haired knight and steward to the queen, murmured to the scholar, “We will do you no harm, my lord Bernard.”

  Ester was grateful for the measured, time-consuming deliberateness of the servants as they eased Bernard onto the portable bed frame with such care that only once did Bernard give a start of pain.

  Was it Ester’s imagination? Or did she actually hear one servant murmur in a shaken voice to another, “He’ll be dead by dawn”?

  7

  WHEN HE WAS SECURE ON THE LITTER-BED, Bernard raised his head to look around, thanking the servants as they lifted their load to their shoulders, much as pallbearers carry a loved one to the churchyard.

  “There’s no need,” the scholar mouthed, “for all this trouble.”

  “They’ll see you safely home, Bernard,” said the doctor, with an air of professional cheer, “where you can drink hot wine and rest your head on a downy pillow.”

  “And be pitching quoits by summer,” said his daughter reassuringly.

  A leisurely game of throwing the disc-shaped stone toward a target was one of her father’s favorite pastimes, and he and his daughter sported often, long into the slow-fading evenings of June. Ester fi
xed the image of a twilight match between them, the smooth stone clanging against the iron post.

  To her displeasure, the doctor took the sleeve of her gown as the litter was born quickly and yet with care toward the castle gate.

  “Ester,” said the doctor, speaking in a soft voice, “if you will permit me, I should detail the nature of your father’s injuries.”

  “My father will play half-bowl with you, good doctor, on Midsummer’s Eve.”

  “I have every prayer that it might be so,” said the doctor. “And yet, dear Ester, I have gazed upon—” He hesitated, but having begun, took a breath and continued. “I have studied dead felons hanging, as the law decrees, and seen, if you will forgive me for mentioning it, their bones as flesh retires.”

  Ester had noticed that men sometimes went out of their way to display talents that made them tedious. She kept her voice the very example of patience. “My father needs me at his bedside, Doctor.”

  Reginald de Athies was a round-faced man with gray eyes. Ester knew he was unmarried. He was taking more pains than he would for a matron or a merchant, eager to impress Ester with his medical lore and windy diction.

  “The ribs are exposed as weather and winged creatures have their way,” the doctor was saying, “as you may have observed yourself.”

  “If you will let me join my father,” was all Ester would allow herself to say, in no frame of mind to discuss decaying criminals.

  “The ribs of a body form something like a wicker frame,” continued Reginald, “or bushel basket, containing our lights and other organs.”

  Ester was walking, as quickly as she could without breaking into a run, but the doctor was keeping the pace. “And I fear,” he added, “that the hoof broke your father’s ribs.”

  Scrolls of precious sheepskin brooded on shelves, waiting for the touch of Bernard de Laci’s quill. A priceless volume, Marcus Aureliuss’ Meditations, was open on the lectern in the corner, the dark letters distinct against the surface of the vellum.