The Book of the Lion (6 page)

I could not believe what I was hearing when he spoke, softly, in an even voice, his words clear despite the scar along his lips.

He said, “God give you strength.”

God's strength.
It was a phrase Father Joseph used, encouraging my father as he faced death. Perhaps, I thought, Rannulf is not such a prayerless man after all.

My tool struck sparks. My hammer found its rhythm, driving the injury out of the helmet, until it was whole.

 

 

 

 

We rode into town early the next morning, all of us having spent a hectic and sleepless night, and, in the company of the priest, confessed our sins.

Afterward, outside the church, a crowd of our neighbors gathered. My master's wife—his widow—Maud swept me into her arms, a long, breath-stopping hug.

“Don't worry about me, Edmund,” she said. “I'll be living with my brother and his wife, with God's blessing.”

Every week Maud loaded a basket with loaves and cheese and delivered it to the almshouse, where the poor and sick took shelter. She told me once that helping a bereft person was like helping Christ Himself. While always quick with her opinions, she viewed the world through the impatient cheerfulness of her own spirit. I could not meet her eyes just then, hoping she did not think me a great sinner.

“You were Otto's right hand,” she said. “But a hand has to obey its master.”

“The saints protect you,” I said, tears in my voice.

With the cheering of the throng, I could not hear what Maud was saying as I pulled myself nervously into the saddle. And then I saw Elviva.

How is it that some women give every gesture a kind of beauty? Even in waving farewell, Elviva was graceful, one hand to her throat to keep the shawl in place against the chill. We had met in the market some forenoons, and walked into the sun near the churchyard, sharing our hopes. She had told me once that she prayed to Our Lady to bring her a husband with a strong arm and a full heart. I told her that her prayers matched mine.

When I reached down to take her hand the warhorse displayed a surprising patience, shaking the bridle, tossing his head, but standing quiet as I tried to find words. Elviva's father, the wool-man, and her mother, a thin woman with a sweet smile, looked on, little dreaming how much Elviva and I felt for each other. Perhaps as a Crusader returning from the wars—in the unlikely chance that I survived—I would have some new status in the eyes of a merchant.

Winter Star watched the other mounted riders make way ahead, and trotted to join them, tossing his mane. Elviva ran along with me, as I tried to control the horse and failed. I was a little frightened of the noble charger, as though I rode upon a lion, and felt a certain gratitude toward him. Only in my dreams had I ever sat upon such a steed.

At last Winter Star and I left Elviva behind.

 

We were a “right gang of worthy men,” as Nigel put it. A rooting pig from one of the nearby households scampered, unhindered by its hugeness, caught up in the festivity. Men and women both wished us Godspeed as we clattered up the cobbled street through the city gates.

Hubert perched on a new, black mount named Shadow, with a soft mouth and a calm eye. He carried a pennon on a pole, dark blue, a new, gleaming silk that sighed and fluttered as we rode.

To my great surprise Winter Star continued to accept the false confidence of my voice, and showed few of the high spirits of the previous day. And yet even so the horse snorted and tossed its head more than I would have wished, and I could see Sir Nigel smiling, glancing meaningfully at Wenstan.

A bet was on, I guessed. How far would it be before Winter Star bolted and left me in the mud?

Behind us rode Rannulf. His teeth gleamed through his scar. Beside Rannulf was a man I had never seen before this morning—Miles, a rotund squire, older than a knight's assistant is usually expected to be, with a charge of white through his red hair.

Miles was always singing, whistling, humming. Both Wenstan and Miles carried their master's fighting gear, a helmet, shield, and war lance. Rannulf and Nigel wore sea-blue tunics, with a blazing white Crusader star.

Even a few of the Exchequer's men smiled as we passed, and I have never been more proud or joyful than I felt that morning. As we left the city, passing Sir Nigel's hall, I felt more than happy—I felt pure at heart, cleansed of every dark thought, and every misdeed. Peasants in the field stood up from their work and saluted, their voices lost in the morning air. Sir Nigel raised a gloved hand, and so did Hubert.

And so did I.

 

The town dogs followed us into the farmland, a handful of them, yipping. As the highway grew long, well into the morning, they ran silently, tongues distended. This sight both heartened and saddened me, and I felt sorry for the dogs, who expected we were falconing or, at very least, heading forth to flush rabbits from their holes.

One by one the town curs dropped away, gazing after us with regret, until only a demi-hound I had seen around the kitchen middens kept our pace. The dog fell in stride with Winter Star, and the stallion shied.

“Easy,” I said, and the horse shook his bridle but kept trotting.

The dog was too small to guard a hall, too big to hunt mice. Who was I to tell the animal he was making a mistake? Perhaps beasts have their Crusades, and their Heaven, too.

Shortly after midday it began to rain. Knights and men donned thick woolen cloaks with deep hoods, and the rain beaded on the wool. Winter Star splashed and curvetted in the puddles that soon appeared in the road. The high way was far from empty, huddling figures of merchants with hired guards hurrying through the rain on foot, wagoners bawling curses at their oxen, minstrels and mountebanks trudging along together.

I did not fall off my mount. But it took all my concentration, the horse inflating himself and sneezing, capering and kicking. I was exhausted by morning's end. The rain ceased in time for a midafternoon meal, the prime dinner of the day for a man of Nigel's rank. Nigel offered our Lord thanks, in our unworthiness, for this sustenance, and we ate waybread, brown, moist slices, and dry cheese made from mare's milk.

I was a little surprised that, only a few hours out of town, we were already military in provision and manner, even Hubert accepting a cup of wine from Wenstan with what he must have thought was a manly nod of the head. The dog accepted a morsel of cheese from my fingers, and Hubert gave him a healthy chunk of salted beef.

As we continued south, perhaps an hour before sunset, two great brown mastiffs rushed through the brambles on the verge of the road, and seized our dog companion by the flank and throat. Within a moment our hound was ripped in two, blood flying, the two attacking monsters gobbling and growling as they tore our dog to pieces.

Nigel whipped out his broadsword, leaned out of his saddle and sliced off a mastiff's head. Rannulf accepted his lance from Miles, balanced it, squared his shoulders, and ran down the second offending dog. The lance skewered the brute's haunch, and the great mastiff hung on the point of the lance as Rannulf lifted the kicking body clear of the road, shook his weapon, and let the body fall.

Field men ran calling out, armed with ax and staff, but when they saw the Crusader star and Rannulf's lance they fell silent.

 

Nigel and Wenstan headed along the high way again, Nigel without a second glance at what had happened. The knight gossiped about whose maidenhead had been lost under what hayloft. He said that a poacher had been hanged by this oak up ahead, for stealing a flitch of venison, already dressed. Or perhaps not that oak, he said, but another similar tree, back a mile or so.

I let Winter Star pace more slowly, so I might overhear what Rannulf and his man were saying. To my delight, the horse obeyed my touch at once.

“Balance, my lord,” I heard Miles say. Balaunce. “Of course, in the case of a man, unhorsing is all that matters. Knock him, nick him.”

Rannulf spoke at last. “Still, it was a pity the point was so wide of the heart.”

Before we drifted to sleep, Hubert whispered from his pallet, “Did you see how angry Rannulf was, when he saw those dragons hurting our dog?”

I considered this. “He acted with due haste,” I said.

“So if you or I were attacked, he would come to our aid,” said Hubert.

I said that this was undoubtedly true. But privately I was not certain. I could easily imagine Rannulf watching bears consume either one of us, out of interest in the way the beasts used their claws.

When I closed my eyes I saw my master's hand, spiked to the anvil. I saw the startled eyes of our dog companion, and the spreading blood of the suddenly headless mastiff.

They say that a lion sleeps with his eyes open. Despite my fatigue, Saint Mark sent me watchfulness that night, and I kept waking to hear the slow, steady breathing of my companions.

 

The next morning I could scarcely stand, crippled by a day of riding, and my injured foot was aching again. I hid my discomfort, although Sir Nigel rode beside me later that morning, and said, “I've known fighting men to start the day with three flagons of the strongest cider, to ease the road-ache.”

“They have my pity, my lord,” I said.

Sir Nigel gave a laugh. “I bet a Flemish penny you would fall off yesterday. Rannulf collected on the wager last night.”

Sometimes, even armed as we were, we traveled in a tight phalanx, Nigel at the point, sometimes standing upright in his stirrups as he rode, his gaze sweeping the forest. At times like this I dared not meet Hubert's eye, but I could sense him, tense, one hand on the pommel of his sword.

Even knights were sometimes attacked by the bandits and madmen who lived in the woods.

 

 

 

 

Innkeeper and ferryman alike greeted us with forced smiles and hollow heartiness.

Crusaders often slept in inns and forded rivers without lightening their purses, since their quest was sacred, and even the burliest wine seller had no means to enforce his fee. But Nigel paid with pennies, quartered and halved after the custom of our countryside, and the metal was always the soundest quality. Maiden and matron poured us all an extra measure of beer, and kept the tapers burning until the last of us had lurched off to our pallet in the warmest corner of the inn.

Day by day, we heard all the verses of this lay as Miles sang them. We traveled south. Rain fell, the sun broke through, the wind was cold, then swung from the west and blew warm, sometimes all within an afternoon. Rivers overflowed their banks in places, and a fire had erased the shambles, the butcher's district, in one town we passed through, aproned men standing disconsolate, the smell of charred beef in the air.

Far from needing encouragement from me, it was Hubert who delighted at the sight of a flock of sheep fording a river, swimming like a vast, tufted rug. He was the one who brought a smile from the ferryman, and when he bid a mason good morning, the broad, swarthy man, powdered with sandstone, told us all that the shire bridge had been washed away, but that the ford not four miles east was no deeper than a laugh.

As we approached London the road grew populated with castle stewards and wine merchants, barrels of wine rumbling over the wagon tracks in the road, and barrels of money, too, under guard, spearmen and ox handlers alike wearing black Exchequer's armor. Oxen and dray horses labored shoulder to shoulder, wheels sending forth scythes of mud as the drovers lashed the straining beasts.

Sometimes we would pass a lady with her attendants, side-saddle, as her gentle horse picked its way through the mountains of mud, but for the most part this was a world of men, figures clotted with black mud and chalk clay, gray loam and black topsoil. God's universe was suffering a second Flood, and was transformed to mud.

“More mire,” was all Hubert would say as we struggled to a hill crest and gazed at the rain-bronzed acres ahead. Priest and dairymaid climbed stiles, slathered with muck, hesitated, and descended to the mire, slogging through the deep, wet world.

In my heart I was alive with excitement, each starling's chuckle an adventure to me. I was far from the place I knew, so far that I was in a foreign land already, although we were still in England. I affected the manner of a war-wise traveler, but inside I was ablaze with curiosity.

Waking each morning was less painful to my frame now, and climbing into the saddle each time hurt less and less. After a few days I did have trouble recalling any field that was not so sodden it mirrored sky—dry dirt was distant memory. But this was a further sign that I was embarked on a high adventure. My clothes were so damp they chafed my skin, but I didn't mind. A few mornings I drank deep of Nigel's wine, and by the time we hurried toward the thatch and timber of London, knight and man among us were indistinguishable because of the skin-deep dirt.

 

The first
carta mundi
I had ever seen was rolled out on my master Otto's counting table, a king's clerk showing off a prize purchase, a map of the world, as rare as a mermaid's tooth. On this map London was a stand of spires and flags on a hill overlooking all of England, which lay around it in an irregular but pleasing shape, like a pie. London was at the center of the kingdom of England, and all that was beyond the pie's crust was mapmaker's fancy, a ship like a beetle, and off to one side a sea dragon with a head like a hen.

And so the real, actual city was at first a little bit of a disappointment.

At a distance in the morning sun, the great city looked like any other town that had grown beyond its walls. A smelter, or an alchemist, was melting some light metal—tin, I thought by the smell, and a walker trod around and around, treading his master's chalky earth into a powder that could be oven-fired into mortar. A wheelwright rolled one of his wares ahead of us, splashing in the gutter down the middle of the street, but it was only as we entered the town, and continued to enter it, in the shadows of the high, thatched roofs, that I was able to believe I was really in London at last.