The King’s Arrow Read online

  Simon breathed a prayer to Heaven for the broken-bodied, now silent Edric. The man expired in the blood-soaked earth, his sins unconfessed, and Simon felt the coming sorrow of Edric’s wife and children in their ramshackle homestead. He could not bring himself to look at the prince, let alone the marshal.

  “My lord prince,” Simon began, when he could make a sound. He was going to add a word of welcome—stiff and unfelt courtesy, but necessary all the same. Could you not have given him a lash or two, and sent him home?

  His death was legal, Simon knew. Poaching the king’s game was a capital crime, and the king had commanded swift punishment to such criminals. But still—Simon remembered Edric’s chuckle, and the way he danced on market day, quick-footed in work and play.

  Simon would have asked, Why, my lord prince, did you have to kill him?

  But Prince Henry himself wore a sad smile. “I thank you, friend, whoever you are,” said the prince. “You did well to block his escape—although it is a shame to see a man die so.”

  The royal huntsman arrived at last. Oin fitzBigot had allowed Simon to ride in the New Forest since boyhood, if not to actually hunt there. “My lord prince,” said Oin, “this is Simon Foldre.”

  “Who?” asked the prince absently.

  “My lord,” said Oin, “I told you he’d make a good hunting companion to the king’s friend Walter Tirel from Picardy.”

  Simon’s heart leaped at the sound of the well-known noble name. And at the promise of a royal hunt—that sort of honor had always been beyond the reach of Simon and his widowed mother. No one but the king and his favorites could legally so much as bend a bow in New Forest.

  The royal marshal was silent, eyeing the shadowy oaks beyond the grazing land. Like the king, the marshal was a red-haired man with blue eyes, and a fighting man’s thick neck and deep chest. Roland was in charge of the king’s personal security, and he protected the gateways, halls, larder, and kennels of the king with his personal attention and the well-honed talents of his staff. In the absence of the prince, Simon would have hazarded his future in a confrontation with Roland right then.

  From within the woods now came a series of shrills on a horn, answered by a distant series of similar blasts from near the river, a woodsman’s code.

  Roland said, “Already word of this poacher’s death is spreading, all the way to the salt shore. Let them all respect King William’s property.”

  Simon was impressed at the marshal’s ability to interpret the horn blowers’ code, but not surprised. It was said, half in jest, that Roland met with spiders every night, collecting information on everything from cowpox to taxes.

  There were lingering figures on the forest verge, no doubt apprentice poachers, stunned at the fate of their master. No human beings actually lived in the woods, although there were tales of half-mad felons who had escaped the law for so many years they had grown cloven hooves and horns.

  The shadowy observers ran off. Only one lingered at the edge of the sunlight, one of Edric’s nephews, unless Simon was mistaken, waiting until he could safely steal forth and claim his uncle’s body.

  Not three months earlier Simon had come upon Roland wrestling a goose girl to the ground near the bridgehead. Simon had heard a gasping plea for help, parted the saplings, heard the young woman’s grateful thanks, and found himself eye to eye with Roland as the young woman escaped.

  “He’s the sole son of your father’s loyal swordsman Fulcher Foldre,” Oin was saying. “Fulcher married an English beauty, a duke’s daughter.”

  “Is that right?” inquired Henry. He was dark-haired and had dark eyes, and usually spoke quietly. His cloak bore a silver-and-jet pin shaped like a falcon or a griffin, or some other beaked creature. This single ornament, Simon guessed, was worth more than all the plates, pitchers, swords, and charms of a noble English household.

  “My lord prince, my mother’s father,” Simon said, “was Usher of Aldham.”

  “Oh, yes?” said Prince Henry with mildest interest, melancholy, it seemed, at participating in the death of the poacher.

  “And Usher’s family,” Simon continued, “called these fields home since Noah’s flood.”

  Roland reached down and seized the projecting shaft of the javelin. He withdrew the weapon from Edric’s body with a twist. “This dead felon, Simon,” said the marshal, “could make a similar claim, along with many a marsh leech in England.”

  Simon was speechless at this insult. He was not fully armed, but he was far from defenseless. Men out riding for hunting or sport usually carried a stabbing sword. Simon had a formidable blade at his belt, with which his father had once frightened off a party of drunken English squires.

  Simon’s hand went to the hilt of this weapon.

  3

  It was the year of our lord 1100.

  Nearly thirty-five years had passed since William the Conqueror had sailed from Normandy, the countryside across the Channel from England. He had arrived with knights and squires, and destroyed King Harold’s army. Norman noblemen had replaced the English-speaking aristocracy throughout the realm. The best land had been confiscated from English families and given out as rewards to the victor’s loyalists.

  There had been bitter resentment among the suddenly powerless natives, and towns to the north had rebelled until King William had devastated farmsteads and villages, causing the deaths of untold numbers. Now the Conqueror’s son, William Rufus—the Red—continued the mastery of the defeated kingdom, ensuring that his friends and cousins held positions of power.

  Wherever William Rufus traveled, his men stole what they fancied, destroyed what they chose, and even the most distinguished English families were powerless to protest. The current king was thought to be a worthy heir to the throne, but where the first King William had crushed his enemies with a dashing ruthlessness, the current king was thought to be ruthless without much originality. To his father’s passion for the hunt, William Rufus added a zeal for the stag and hound that was already legendary.

  The eighteen summers of Simon’s life had seen some gradual political and social changes. While no Norman in a position of power ever bothered to learn much English, every Englishman of ambition studied the language of the conquerors. More than a few Norman aristocrats fell in love with local women and married them, and some English noblemen were lately being awarded minor positions of stewardship. It could be easily argued that Norman rule was not so different, summer and winter, from the English feudal establishment.

  Now Simon was absorbing Roland’s insult, as Prince Henry was giving a wave of his hand, reassuring Simon. “For myself, I would rather this lively poacher were still alive. But my brother is king, and his command is law.”

  “God keep him,” offered the marshal.

  The prince gave Simon a searching, but friendly, glance. “Walter Tirel,” the prince said, “was mentioning over morning wine today that he wanted to hunt with an English varlet who knows the woods.”

  A hunting varlet would be expected to act as the game servant—to carry the quiver, hand out the arrows as needed, and have an eye for the woods and its creatures. To serve a nobleman at the royal hunt, even in a secondary role, was a magnificent privilege.

  Roland leaned from his saddle and spat into the grass.

  Bad feeling existed between Roland and Walter Tirel, as everyone knew, going back generations. One of the marshal’s forebears had quarreled with Walter’s ancestor, an earlier duke of Poix, on the summit of a bridge, and the duke’s horse had trod upon the marshal’s ancestor, or soiled him—the songs about it were amusing and varied. Helping Walter could only irritate Roland, and this further pricked Simon’s ambition.

  Besides, Walter was widely regarded on both sides of the Channel as a wealthy nobleman, with a lively spirit and—rumor had it—a beautiful, virtuous younger sister who was as yet unmarried. Walter would make a powerful acquaintance, if only Simon would allow such a soaring ambition to enter his mind.

  “My lord prince,”
said Simon, “I will serve the king and his guest with all my honor.”

  “We can’t,” said Marshal Roland, looking right at Simon, “let the Count of Poix step into the woods with one of our two-legged English dogs.”

  Prince Henry turned and gave the marshal a silencing glance. Insulting the English nobility was considered dull-witted sport and bad manners, although to Simon’s knowledge it was a common practice. Prince Henry was considered more gentle in spirit than his father had been, and more understanding than his brother the king. More than one Englishman had whispered over beer that Henry would make a better sovereign by far than his red-haired, red-handed sibling.

  The prince turned again to Simon and gave him a pleasant smile. “No, we can’t, really, let the nobleman walk about with some English toadstool who can’t tell main from maine. But you do speak well enough, Simon or Lymon, whoever you are—grandson of your grandfather.”

  “My lord prince,” interjected Roland, “this young man should be cautioned that if the least harm comes to Walter Tirel, it will cost him his head.”

  Hunting was a dangerous enterprise, and many noblemen had died of hunting accidents over the years, partly caused by drunkenness, and partly because the greenwood-hued cloaks hunters wore to hide from the deer made them easy to mistake for game. Such fatal accidents often resulted in further violence, as the friends of the stricken hunter set upon the perpetrator, however innocent his blunder might have been, and cut him to pieces.

  But the prince was no longer interested in the conversation. “This stallion is two years old, perhaps?” inquired Henry, reaching for Bel’s bridle.

  The horse nosed the prince’s hand, shifted its head to one side to give the royal brother a glance, and took a long, four-legged pace back, disregarding Simon’s whispered, “Be still!”

  “Little older than that, my lord prince,” said Simon. “He’s as spirited as the westward sea.”

  “I’ll take him,” said the prince.

  Simon started, and glanced about. Surely he misunderstood.

  Oin’s expression was pained, one eye shut, as though against bitter wind. Anger swept upward, through Simon’s spleen, the organ of ire, radiating heat down through his limbs.

  “Hurry, hurry,” exclaimed the prince impatiently. “This is an English habit, is it not, to gape around with their mouths open? Dismount, my good Simon. My brother was in an ill humor all this week, and such a gift will brighten his mood. You will walk home.”

  Simon did not dismount. He clung to the high pommel of the saddle. Bel’s leather furnishings alone were worth a servant’s annual wages, expensive tack Swein had loaned Simon with a gracious laugh. Losing the horse—having the stallion stolen by the prince—would be a painful shame to Simon, and a stern financial challenge he would have to make good to Swein and his family.

  “Look,” said the prince, “how eager Bel is to have a new master. This will be a gift for my brother, to ease his spirits when he learns that there are poachers in his woods.”

  The prince was cordial enough to smile as he spoke, but it was a royal smile, welcoming and dismissive at once. “This gift will help to ensure the king’s permission,” the prince added, “that you may hunt with us tomorrow.”

  4

  How, Simon wondered, was he going to explain all this to his mother?

  He nearly asked the question out loud, but it was the sort of question one did not put to a servant, even a trusted old hand like Certig. Besides, the venerable servant had suffered a serious injury the past autumn when a branch broke from a tree during a storm and struck him on the head. Certig had been unconscious for a day and a night, and ever since Simon had not wanted to cause the man any more worry than necessary.

  “Do you suppose, my lord,” asked Certig, “that misfortune might someday seize Marshal Roland?”

  There was one smarting sword prick on Simon’s forearm. Roland had smiled as he had thrust the blade, not with happiness so much as quiet concentration, as a leatherworker might, punching a neat hole with an awl. Simon had not made a sound. The prince had protested, “Leave off, Marshal Roland!” and Roland had shrugged and sheathed his weapon.

  The little wound smarted.

  Influences, uncanny but powerful, were known to shape events. Stars and planets, imps and devils, all worked on a person’s life. Simon recognized that this particular mildly sunny day—the first of August, the Feast of Saint Peter in Chains—was for him personally a period of unparalleled bad luck. In truth, it was hard to imagine a day of sharper misfortune.

  Simon headed home on Blackfire—a sweet-natured mount but a plodder—as Certig walked along with a hazel switch. The servant was too kindhearted to use it on the horse, but he let the flicking shadow of the hazel rod remind the creature not to stop and crop the summer grass along the road.

  Simon had protested, but Certig had insisted that no serving man of character would let his lord walk while the servant rode. As for Simon, perched in the worn and peeling saddle, he did not bother kicking the horse or urging the animal into a canter. What was the use? It was no pleasure for Simon to pass gleaners raking the last of the hay and cowherds enjoying the shade of trees, all of whom had seen him earlier that day riding in high fashion.

  “Good afternoon, Simon,” they called, each one of them, even the most taciturn oxherd, who rarely spoke.

  Simon smiled and waved, wishing that he were invisible.

  The river twinkled through the hawthorns, the rising tide soothing upward through the water-rounded stones. The Normans called the river Beau Lieu—“beautiful place”—while the English traditionally referred to it as The Water, as though the power to grace the land with vibrant names had long ago failed them.

  A ship careened at the end of a long, yellow rope. This was the Saint Bride, the strong-timbered vessel owned by Gilda and her brother and used for trade across the Channel, where wheels of New Forest cheese were exchanged for Low Countries linen.

  Like most seagoing vessels, the ship owed much of her design to the Norse fighting ships and freighters of great fame. While there were many other ships along the riverbank, and a burgeoning industry of shipwrights near the river’s mouth, few of the local craft were as seaworthy nor, thought Simon, as pleasing to the eye.

  And none were named after such a popular saint. Saint Bride—or Bridget, as she was also known—was during her lifetime responsible for an impressive miracle: On the arrival of unexpected guests, travelers from afar, she transformed gray dishwater into sparkling new ale. Her visitors rejoiced, and were refreshed. As a result, she had become over the years a saint associated with bounty of every sort, and Gilda and her brother had thrived under her care.

  Simon had hoped to cut a fine figure on his new steed, but now he hoped the shadows of the trees would hide them as they clopped methodically along the road. The nick in his left arm was not bleeding anymore, and a little vinegar would cleanse the trifling wound.

  But his delayed, as yet unspoken response to Certig’s query would have been no.

  No, Roland would not be struck down by man or Heaven anytime soon. He was a king’s man, with a family back in Montfort, a wealthy Norman village Simon, who had never been across the Channel, could only imagine. He pictured happy piglets and lambs and beaming farming folk, proud that one of their lords had been raised in London and was now serving the king of England.

  Simon supposed, with a grim whimsy, that if Roland dined on the infants of English peasantry—actually ate them for midday meal—he would be scolded by some royal steward for his choice of food, but suffer no special punishment.

  “Isn’t that Gilda,” Certig was asking, “down by the sternpost?”

  “Hush, Certig.”

  “Surely it is.”

  Let us steal past, dear Certig, Simon wanted to say, and escape any notice.

  But it was too late.

  The individual beside the ship looked up, and was not fair-haired Gilda at all but her brother Oswulf, who resembled his sister
the way a blade resembled a feather. Tuda was with him, the strong-armed helper dragging a coil of mooring cable up to the boathouse. Tuda rarely offered an opinion on anything, and Simon liked him for his cheerful silence. Tuda’s grandfather had built a henhouse on stilts, a local landmark, proof against weasels.

  “What are the horns telling us, Simon?” called Oswulf. A river man was not entirely familiar with the horn blasts and calls used by poachers and other freebooting yeomen, but it was also possible that Oswulf knew full well what was being said.

  “Oh, Oswulf, it is dreadful,” said Certig. “A terrible thing, impossible to talk about.”

  Like everyone Simon knew, Certig did not want to say plainly what evil had taken place. To put words to misfortune made it worse, and confirmed it beyond hope.

  Oswulf approached as Blackfire teased green acorns from the overhead branches. “Lord Simon, what has happened?” Oswulf asked. Although he and his sister were not of noble birth, their family had lived along the watercourse for as long as anyone could recall, and their family name was, by common usage, Shipman—Scipmann.

  Edric had been well liked, but at the same time the scamp had been no one’s idea of a saint. Simon resented having to enunciate the news. “The lord marshal’s javelin,” he said, “has found our old friend Edric.”

  “But only wounded him?” asked Oswulf hopefully.

  “Oh, worse than wounded, Oswulf,” said Certig. “Far, far worse.”

  “You saw it happen?” gasped Oswulf.

  “We were right there,” exclaimed Certig, to Simon’s discomfiture. “He died in our very shadows!”

  “And what, Simon,” asked Oswulf, narrowing his eyes, “did you do to defend our friend?”

  If only I could see Gilda, thought Simon. Surely that fair-minded young woman would understand. Simon shook his head, indicating that he had been helpless to defend Edric. Someday, Simon vowed silently to himself, he would strike the marshal down.