The Dragon Throne (2 page)

Bernard was tall and favored with aquiline features and eyes quick to show feeling, but he was not the sturdiest of men. It was her turn to force their way through the folk drawn toward the struggling band of fighting men, leading her father by the hand. The two of them were making slow progress. Already the force of arms and weight of disapproving people drove the Franks back, and farther back, horses kicking and slipping, growing so close that the heat from the anxious steeds swept over Ester.

She caught a glimpse of a red-faced spearman, his jaw set in effort as he fought to control his horse, all thought of revenge already lost as he struggled with the reins. The horse whinnied, the high, hysterical scream of a steed unused to such tumult.

Ester lost her father's hand in the sudden rush of stumbling men and women.

She cried out a warning.

Most reliable mounts had been shipped off with knights and squires to fight in the Crusade. This frightened animal, alarmed at the press of shouting people, tossed his head, broke the grip of his rider, and plunged forward.

Knocking Bernard to the ground.

The iron-shod hoof of the horse plunged into the fine-spun gown of the scholar's body, not once but twice.

Bernard gave out a shriek of pain.

THE HORSE WAS HAULED AWAY, SNORTING and wild-eyed.

The scholar writhed, unable to make a further sound.

Ester knelt beside her father, praying fervently under her breath to the Blessed Virgin, convinced against the evidence of her senses that her father was merely bruised, shaken, short of breath.

Ester had seen blood before. A gentlewoman was expected to know how to hunt, and she had seen hounds tearing the still-living deer, brought down by her own crossbow bolt. A person of good name was expected to be strong-hearted. Even her mild-tempered father enjoyed watching the mousing hawk return with its prey, and had bet a penny or two on the success of Ever-So, a favorite falcon of the queen's, which excelled at nabbing wood doves.

Bernard coughed, and his breath caught. His body twisted with an effort she felt in her own soul. His eyes found hers.

Still he could not speak.

The crowd fell silent, clearing a space, folk who did not know the scholar by name or reputation recognizing in his dark gray mantle the garb of a prayerful man, a priest or man of letters.

Ida arrived from nowhere, a red-haired young woman with points of color in her cheeks. Judging by appearance, she could have been Ester's younger sister. “I've sent a boy for a doctor,” said Ida. “And a priest,” she added. Ida had a way of saying just that sole additional word one did not wish to hear.

The crowd parted silently, and for a moment the just-freed Edmund gazed down at Ester from horseback. He reassured his horse with one broad hand, the big, square-shouldered squire taking in the sight of the stricken scholar, his eyes quick with compassion.

“Don't move me,” her father was saying when she put her ears close to his lips.

Or perhaps he was imploring “Please move me” as he coughed again and blood started at his nostrils and erupted from his mouth. The scholar reached up to take his daughter's hand as a voice sang out, “Way, make way,” and Reginald de Athies, physician and astrologer, forced his way to Bernard's side and fell to his knees.

“You've taken hurt it seems, old friend,” said the doctor.

Bernard spoke, but his voice was strengthless.

“No, we can't let you lie where you are,” said the doctor. The physician looked to Ester. “We can't leave him here.”

“Father, we have to move you,” said Ester.

She could not hear him, but she understood his message: “It doesn't matter.”

“The priest is on his way,” Ida was saying, “that little Father Catald from Temple Church.”

To give Bernard de Laci the final blessing, she was about to add, Ester was certain.

She held her father's hand and sensed his pulse—now strong, now ragged. She had kept a vigil not two years ago when her mother's lungs filled with water and she drifted into Heaven's company. Ester could not mistake the ever-weakening rhythm of her father's heartbeat, and she moved her lips in prayer.

Father Catald had a small man's way of slipping easily through a crowd, and he wore a fleece-white mantle marked with a large Templar cross that won him easy passage wherever he might go. Like any red-blooded Templar, he had been eager to see today's joust, Ester could imagine, and like any man of short stature, he had found a place well in front of the rest.

Before the pink-cheeked priest could begin any appropriate rite, Ester took his arm and insisted, “Bless me, Father.”

“Quite willingly, Ester,” said the blue-eyed priest in a tone of gentle wonderment.

“I am making a vow,” Ester continued, “here and before Our Lady. If my father's life is spared, I swear before all Heaven to make a pilgrimage to Rome.”

“Ester, this is more than a young lady should promise,” responded the priest, looking more shaken by Ester's promise than by the sight of her stricken father. While not a warring man himself, the little man belonged to the famous fighting order of knights who carried swords in the name of God. He had been left behind by the other Templars so that he could hold daily mass in the nearly empty Temple Church.

Her father plucked at Ester's sleeve, his eyes wide with alarm. Vows were not undertaken lightly—a sacred promise could be no more easily dissolved than a marriage.

“Good Ester,” Ida whispered, blinking her green eyes, “be careful what you swear.”

“I vow it,” Ester returned in her most fervent manner, “before Heaven's Queen.”

EDMUND WAS RELUCTANT TO LEAVE THE place where the injured scholar lay, attended by a young woman in a well-made mantle and hood.

This fair young lady had hair the color of sunset at sea, a rare golden-red hue, and eyes the color of green a Crusader in the arid Holy Land could only dream of, the green of hillside and home.

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.”

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.”