Geoffrey Condit (25 page)

    He watched.  Seen the sword flash fourteen times, the surprised heads jump and tumble, and the blood. So much blood.  He’s helped the servants collect his uncle’s body, and numbed with grief, wrapped his uncle’s head in soft linen stained with blood and his tears.  The King had given them leave to take the body home for burial.

    “Peter.  Peter.”  Her voice pulled him away, back to the present.   He shook himself and looked at Catharine.

    “I ... ”

    “I know.  You’ve been sitting here for an hour, your face a fierce mask of emotion.  Your men-at-arms and squires are too frightened to say anything.  They sent for me.  I can imagine what witnessing that trial has done to you.  Made you remember what happened a dozen years ago, and fifty miles away.”

    He enjoyed her cool fingers touching his face.  “I’m sorry.  It is cruelly fresh as yesterday.”

    “Perhaps that is the value of memories.  Their eternal freshness make their lessons, if we learn them, guardians of our present,”  Catharine said.

    “You’re right.”  He stood up.  “I’m making a fool out of myself.  Sitting here ... ” 

    “No, you’re not.  You need to talk about it.  Share the pain.  Get it past you.”  She sat down and spread her grey velvets skirts around her.  The fur trimmed cloak fell back showing her deep red hair.

    “It won’t ever be past me, Catharine,” he said, “but the sharing, that’s another thing.”  He wiped his face with his open hands, and was surprised to feel the wetness.  “It would be good.   Having monsters chasing around in your head with no outlet can make you mad.”   Then sitting in the deserted pavilion, he told her of the nightmare of Tewkesbury.

    He’d sat sweating in his Milanese armor, made at the famous Missaglia workshops, waiting for the battle to begin.  Old Nick shifted under his weight, the men around him muttering prayers and curses.  Fourteen household knights, armored and mounted, waited with him.  To his left, less than fifty feet away, Richard Plantagenet waited with his household knights and squires.

    The nightmare of battle swarmed around him.  Heart pounding, he slashed at whatever clashed and moved within range of his bloodied sword.  Men and horses screamed.  Then to his left he saw three mounted knights close with the unprotected Richard Plantagenet, the King’s brother.    Peter spurred Old Nick, and charged the unsuspecting knights, creating a wedge between them and their quarry.  Sword swinging, and buckler raised, he saw one knight fall from the saddle and scream as he died under the hooves of his war horse.  Old Nick raised on his hind quarters and fought with another battle stallion.  Peter held on with his thighs, and cut with his sword.  He felt the steel bury itself in a helm, and saw the second knight crumple from the saddle.  The riderless horse shied and ran from the bared teeth and slashing hooves of Old Nick, now in a battle frenzy.

    Fighting for control, he watched Richard engage the third knight, and bring him down.  The sea of battle surging around them, eased and fell away.  The two men raised their helmet visors, and recognized each other.  Richard saluted with his war hammer.  “You will be remembered,” he said.  Then flipping down his visor, he lead his troop in the thick of foray, war hammer swinging.

    The rest of the battle went on in a haze of bloody fatigue.  He swung his sword automatically, arm leadened.  Then in one miraculous moment it was over, and not yet noon.  In blood splashed and dented armor he knelt on ‘Bloody Meadow’, and accepted the accolade of knighthood form his sovereign, Edward IV, the tall blond giant, equally splashed with blood.  The bloody sword descended, tapping him on each shoulder.  And he rose, hearing the words of King Edward as if in a dream.  His father hugged him, armor to armor, and he heard the King and his father exchange words, in the excitement of battle camaraderie.

    Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, had come by later and thanked him personally.  The slim youth, two years older than Peter’s sixteen, had accepted the silver goblet of wine and spoke of the battle and his debt.

    “You saved his life,”  Catharine said, her voice bringing him back to the present.

    “Yes.  And then there was Uncle William, your plight-troth at the time.”  He swallowed, grateful for her hands holding his.

    She gave a faint smile.  “How little did we know we were linked even then.”

    They found Sir William Trevor after the battle with the other Lancaster captains and the Duke of Somerset in the nave of St. Mary’s Abbey.  Worn with fatigue, battle stained and bloody, Will had stared back and bowed.

    “Uncle Will always had a sense of humor,”  Peter said.  He told the painful scene where his uncle had denied the his King and died for it.

    “And your father forced you to watch his execution?  How insanely cruel,”  she said, anger in her voice.

    “No,” Peter said, voice worn.  “It wasn’t really.  He wanted me to see the price dynastic ambition can extract from a people.  The needless hell you can go through because of it.”  He wiped his face clean of tears.  “It was his way of getting me to see.”

    “You don’t have to watch Buckingham die, you know,” she said.

    “No, I don’t.”  He gave a rueful smile.  “But part of me says be there just to make sure it will happen.”

    “Carnahan will hang tomorrow morning,” she said.

    “I know.  I owe the man.”  Peter dragged a hand through his thick hair, and wished for a place to hide his savaged emotions.  His wounds ached like hell.

    “Owe the man?”  Catharine clenched her fist.  “How can you say you owe the man anything?”

    “Maybe it’s myself I owe.  But I’m going to see him before the afternoon is finished.  Did Abby ride with you?” Peter shifted in his seat and stood.

    “Yes. I couldn’t  keep her in London.  I bet by now she and Agnes are plotting about the baby, who’s going to spend the most time with it.  A real pair, those two.”  Catharine rose and took his arm.

    Carnahan stared up at Peter, but made no move to rise.  His feverish eyes, bloodshot, rested on Peter’s face.  The late afternoon  light illuminated the grey blue rock cell.  It seeped and stank.

    The jailor cursed, “Get up, man, for his lordship.”  He aimed a kick, but the mercenary captain made a quick move and the jailor sprawled on his face, keys clanging on the uneven rock floor.

    The jailor sputtered, and rolled in the filthy rushes in alarm.  Peter grinned, and helped the indignant man to his feet.  He wrinkled his nose at the man’s stench, slipped him several silver pennies, and jerked his head to the door.

    “Yer Lordship.”  Fear in his eyes, the man touched his forehead with two fingers and left.

    “So what does the Lord of Trobridge want with a condemned man?”  Carnahan gestured with the clotted handkerchief in his wounded hand.  His unshaven face, dirty, cracked into a smile, old with cynicism.  “I would offer you a chair, but ... ”

    “You face the hangman tomorrow.”  Peter pulled a pewter flask from the pocket of his robe.  “Drink this when they come for you.  By the time they put a rope around your neck, you won’t feel a thing.”

    Carnahan swallowed, shaken, and took the flask.  “Why should you do that for me?  I’ve done everything evil a man could think of to you and yours, and you’re doing me a favor.  Are you mad?”

    Peter smiled faintly.  “No.  I don’t feel sorry for you either.  A man with your education and lack of ethics is better off dead.”

    “Then why?”  Carnahan gave a short laugh of disbelief, and ran his good hand through his unkempt hair.  “I’m hanging tomorrow, remember?  Why are you doing this?  What is the point?”  He opened his wounded hand.  The palm slash showed red, puckered, and pus ridden.  Proud flesh.

    “I’m not sure.”  Peter regarded the fevered man.  “We share the brotherhood of the sword.  You loved your son.  I thought it was worth something, your bravery, and courage.  The love.” 

    Carnahan swallowed, tears welling unshed.  He blinked and looked away.  When he turned back, his cheeks were wet.  “There is one thing.  The boy Ned.”   He cleared his throat, and spat into the floor rushes.  A chill October wind blew through the iron barred window high in the grey rock room.  Carnahan shivered.

    “Your son?”  Peter pulled off his heavy hooded robe, and dropped it beside Carnahan.  The man looked stunned, then something living grew in his eyes.

    “Aye. He has no one else.”  Carnahan ran his hand over the expensive cloth of the robe.  “Could you take him into your household?”   He looked up, face drawn, eyes fevered with hope.

    “Done.  I’ll send a good dinner and breakfast with my doctor,”  Peter said.  “She’s an old herb woman.  Do as she says.  The jailor will not bother you.”   He turned to go.

    Carnahan cleared his throat once more.  “About your ruined face, Lord Trobridge, I suspect you’ve learned a thing or two worth knowing about yourself since having it.”

    “Aye,”  Peter said.  “I have.”

    The study of the Abbot of Sherbourne shown with candle light.  Pete and Catharine entered the warm, wood paneled, elegantly appointed room.   A smiling Francis Lovell, the Lord Chancellor, motioned them forward.  Richard Plantagenet, By the Grace of God King of England, stood, pleased and confident, before the master chair by Abbot Ramsam’s massive oak desk.  “Welcome, Lord and Lady Trobridge, ” he said.

    “Seven times you have come to my rescue in my times of crisis.  Once you saved me on the field of battle.  Once in saving my nephews from Buckingham.  Once in uncovering Buckingham’s and Lady Stanley’s treachery.  Twice in saving my good servant Lord Caxton.  Once when I called you with your men to serve in quelling this rebellion.  And once again in capturing  the traitor Buckingham.”

    Peter knelt and kissed the coronation ring.  Catharine did likewise.  The King gestured, and they stood.  Catharine smelled the fresh scent of beeswax from the timed candle now reading eight o’clock at night.  A thin gold circlet graced the King’s dark head.  His sharp features reflected a relaxed humor.  “Peter, your family has ever been loyal to the Crown.  Never has treachery touched your House.”  He picked up a page heavy with official ink, and stamped with his personal seal of the White Boar and the Privy Seal of England.

    “We are grateful.  To represent this, we are raising you to the rank of earl.  My brother knighted you on Bloody Meadow for saving my life and rallying our troops in time of need.  Tonight we are doing nothing more than you deserve.  We are creating you First Earl of Trobridge.”  He handed Peter the paper and laughed.  “I am told when you married, the fury of Lancaster fell upon unsuspecting York.”

    Catharine felt the heat rise in her face.  When she glanced at Peter, his lips twitched and his eyes shone with mischief.

    The King shook his head. “This was not my intention when I agreed to your union.  But it looks as if the two of you have resolved any differences.”  He reached out and took Catharine’s left hand.  “The famous wedding rings the wives of Trevor wear.  A band of iron.  Symbolic of a relationship welded so strong it cannot brake, only grow stronger with adversity.”   He smiled and restored her hand.  “I am given to understand you are carrying the heir to the House of Trevor.”

    “True, Your Grace.”  Her heart quickened, her hands went to her stomach.

    “Good.  Then go and be happy, Peter and Catharine Trevor,”  King Richard said.  “I will call you when I need you, my lord.”

    Then they were outside under the stars of new awakened night, on the spacious abbey grounds.  Catharine turned to Peter, their hands intertwined.  “A band of iron.  His Grace was right.  That is what we’ve created.  Now I understand.  Where will it lead us, Peter?”  She touched his face tenderly.

    “I don’t know what the years will hold,” he said. gathering her into his embrace, “but we have the shaping of our happiness and our days.  And that is a great deal.”

The End.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Geof Condit is a history buff, enjoying the research, and bringing the past to life. A graduate of Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, he has been writing for many years. He currently works in a family ceramic business.