The Young Lion (6 page)

The only light was from torches left burning in the corridor outside. It revealed bulk but gave the barest outline of the man who stood silently beside the sleeping platform.

Henry realised it was Douglas.

He shuffled his feet to wake the interpreter but there was no sign of the child, although he had been there earlier when they went to bed. Henry’s immediate instinct was to wake Guillaume, but Douglas gestured vehemently, warning him not to. He turned in profile so the dim yellow light from the torch shone on him; with a finger to his lips he jerked his head towards the open doorway. Guillaume had locked the door, Henry remembered.

Henry moved stealthily from beneath the stitched sheepskin cover and followed Douglas.

Outside, he realised Douglas had already removed from the chamber Henry’s tunic, braes, riding boots, belt, dagger and a riding cloak lined with fox-fur, the warmest he had.

They descended five flights of stone steps, dashed across a balcony, ran down a short staircase and entered the stables. Six horses were waiting: two saddled, the extra four on leads. Why, he wondered. Will we not pick up fresh horses on the way?

Under the light of a torch in the stables Douglas handed Henry
a note embossed with the King’s unicorns. It bore the seal
DR, Davidus Rex
. It said:

He read it twice: it made no more sense on the second reading. His heart was already pounding.

They mounted, took two horses each and rode into a midnight world of silence but for the sound of hooves and quiet snorting. Henry looked to the sky to try to determine the direction in which they travelled but cloud hid the constellations and the moon.

Douglas did not speak, even to the horses. They rode until Henry sensed his mount was tiring. As if he had shouted it out, Douglas stopped. Henry tried to undo the saddle but found himself fumbling in the dark. Douglas changed his own saddle then finished Henry’s work for him. In the cold night air their piss steamed like water from a kettle, and the horses’ breath made a diaphanous vapour against the blackness. From a goatskin bottle Douglas offered Henry a drink that burned his tongue and made him want to gag. But it was astonishingly warming. Douglas also had small flat oaten cakes. The night was now so cold Henry was more keen to remount than to stand around and eat.

As dawn broke he realised they were on ground much higher than Carlisle. They had travelled north-east and crossed many rivers, mostly clattering across bridges, but several rivers they had had to ford. His frozen feet felt dead inside his boots. Thick damp mists draped mountainsides that reared around them. All through the night he had seen no sign of human habitation: no torches on the walls of a town, no village, no smell of smoke rising from
the roof of a hovel. It had been so dark he was not even sure if they had ridden through scanty forest or open country, and realising this he had a strange thought: not since early childhood had he so abandoned himself to the care of another human being. He trusted Douglas as he had trusted his father when Geoffrey taught him to swim. He had no idea where he was or what he would be required to do. Suddenly, he began to flounder in a sea of fear.

I must not dishonour my family. I must not dishonour them, pounded inside his head.

Another few hours passed, and with the second horse tiring, they stopped again. They were in a world of low cloud and hills, but Henry was able to see well enough now to change the saddle himself. He devoured the oaten cakes and several fillets of smoked venison. Douglas insisted he drink more of the vile-tasting liquid, and disgusting as it was to the tongue, it was so warming Henry felt his feet throb and tingle, and painfully return to life. As he ate and drank, his fear abated.

Douglas, who had been busy with the horses, strolled over, took him by the shoulders, shook him gently and stared into his face. Henry noticed that he was unarmed. So I won’t be required to fight some huge animal, he thought. He recalled his father’s ordeal: forced to bring down a wild boar, on foot.

Their horses used the respite to eat the dew-heavy grass. Henry wanted to nap and pointed to a dry stretch of ground beneath a tree, but Douglas shook his head and pointed at the tree trunk. The only sounds were of the horses’ grinding teeth and the soft purling of a creek, nearby but out of sight.

They rode through the day.

Wan sunlight and drizzle kept the landscape permanently grey but Henry realised it was a world he had seen before. The trees were as tall as mythical giants; some were already wearing spring
leaves like pale green wings that fluttered in any breath of wind. A sense of enchantment lifted his spirits. The horses, refreshed by food and daylight, were happy to canter. In the distance Henry glimpsed farmed land and shining lakes, so still that pieces of sky seemed to have fallen to earth. Mist hovered around the lakes’ edges where flocks of ducks bobbed and paddled while swans drifted past, leisurely and elegant. Willow trees bordering the lakes were still bare, their thin, pale limbs hanging like long, flexible bones. On flat land nearby he saw herds of deer and a huge stag standing on a rocky outcrop; it followed them with glistening dark eyes, every so often lifting its muzzle to check the wind. He longed to ask Douglas about the other animals he’d seen that time they had lain in the bath: the snow wolves and the big cats with thick cream-coloured coats and blue eyes. They must live further north, in the highest mountains, he thought.

As twilight faded and the black of night began to seep upwards from the earth, fresh terrors roused within him. He had not slept for a day and a half. Ridiculous ideas and images began to crowd his imagination: pictures of dragons he had seen painted on manuscripts and on the walls of churches. He saw a writhing beast with the body of one animal, the head of another, the legs and tail of a third. From under jutting brows an eagle with wings that spanned the sky glared at him. It seemed to watch him not as its prey but as if Henry were its mate; as if it wanted to join its talons to his and tumble through the sky. It vanished after a moment and was replaced by a green serpent with fifty heads and fifty glistening open mouths and flickering tongues. Behind each tongue was a palisade of hundreds of teeth.

I’m beginning to go mad, he thought.

Suddenly he started to cry. He wept and wept, tears streaming from him until the outer woollen part of his riding cloak had a wet patch on its front. He was ashamed to be weeping in Douglas’s
presence. Douglas had noticed but made no offer of comfort, and they rode on, into the gloom of a second night.

Once he recovered from the embarrassment of crying like a child, Henry found his tears pleasant. He realised that his chest, tight and hard with fear before he wept, felt softened, and that warm blood flowed around his heart. His ribcage felt as if a large soft light glowed within it. From the water of tears, a flame.

With his weeping ended he looked around for Douglas but could not see him. Yet he had the feeling Douglas was observing him. Then, as if a wall had risen directly in front of them, as one the horses came to a halt and lifted their heads to the sky.

Henry’s mount was so insistent on looking up he was forced to let the reins drop. Balancing on its forelegs it gave a small jump, left then right, and shivered all over. Douglas reappeared. He and Henry both leaped to the ground. They undid the surcingles and wrenched the saddles, saddlebags and sheepskins off their mounts.

‘They’re dancing!’ Henry gasped. ‘The horses are dancing.’

Until the night took hold they watched the horses’ wild cavorting, then Douglas took Henry’s hand and led him through the dark to something that he could see only as a denser shade of black. It was a tall smooth stone, higher than a man. Douglas pushed Henry’s palms flat against it.

Henry felt a pulse of light flow down through the crown of his head, through his heart to his feet. It rooted him to the earth. The thought flashed through his mind that he would like to lift his hands off the stone, but he could not move. He turned his head to look for Douglas, but couldn’t see him. He expected another wave of panic, but the stone was strangely calming and he realised there was something else that was odd: the obelisk was warm, and it pulsed in a rhythm like light playing over the small, rhythmic waves of a sea. It seemed easier to see it without trying to look at it, so he closed his eyes. Colours streamed towards him, each one
a distinct form of light that moved through his fingers and palms into his body. He felt his organs flourish within him, like a garden that bounds with summer life. He found he could see into the dark more clearly now, and that Douglas was just a couple of yards from him, his own palms resting on another stone. They stood in complete silence, except for the small cries Henry gave as the menhir’s light streamed through his body. Mostly they were cries of delight, a few times of exquisite pain.

The energy pouring into him was so exhilarating he didn’t want to move. But after some time the stone began to cool. It became cold and lifeless.

Henry opened his eyes.

He followed Douglas, who carried the sheepskins off the horses’ backs to a doorway and into a pitch-black interior. Douglas gently pushed him down onto an earthen floor and passed down a sheepskin. With more shoves and pushes, he conveyed to Henry that he was to remove his riding boots, stretch out and sleep. He undid Henry’s cloak from its fastening at his throat and stretched it over him.

Henry could sense Douglas had moved off a few yards to make a bed for himself. There was no breeze and despite its lack of a front door, the house felt warm inside, fragrant with smells of growing plants, fungi and wood.

His sleep was of a kind Henry had never experienced, as if he had sunk to the bottom of an ocean. His body was joyfully relaxed. Usually, after a very long, cold, wet ride his calves and thighs would ache, but instead of pain, he felt every particle of his body, every muscle, bone, organ, even the skin on his face, ripple with vital happiness.

The beautiful green light that had flowed from the stone into his feet and calves now moved in a rhythm through his whole body. Gradually he became aware he was both deeply asleep and
wide awake: he could hear and see as if it were daylight. And walking towards him, in full regalia, a golden crown on his head, an ermine cloak on his shoulders, a scarlet silk tunic beneath it, was the Lion.

‘Lord King,’ Henry felt himself say, as he lay prostrate before him, ‘my whole life I’ve aspired to your greatness.’

The Lion nodded. ‘I am aware of that.’

Henry rose to his knees and looked into the deeply sad eyes that gazed on him. King Henry, it was said, had never laughed since the day he learned his last surviving son, his Crown Prince, had drowned. His gaze was neither kind nor unkind, neither friendly nor hostile. It was purposeful. ‘Stand up,’ he ordered.

Henry stood.

As he did so the King, with astonishing speed, drew his sword from its scabbard. ‘You will fight me,’ he said.

Henry panted with dismay. ‘Sire, I am unarmed,’ he replied.

The King, who was taller than Henry and whose dark-red beard stretched halfway down his chest, gave a faint smile. ‘So I see,’ he remarked. His voice was as deep as Henry remembered it from earliest childhood when he was allowed to sit on his grandfather’s lap and plunge his fingers into the dense hedge of his beard. ‘But I am not,’ he added. His gaze moved from his grandson’s face to the shining blade in his grasp. Should I pray, Henry wondered. Should I give thanks to the Saviour for my life, although it has only been short? Should I ask Him to rescue me?

The Lion snatched his thought: ‘Prayer is mostly nonsense and mostly useless,’ he said. ‘It’s the noise of fear or greed.’

Abruptly, Henry remembered there was something required of him. ‘Sire,’ he asked, ‘what is my test?’ In an instant, the sword flew from the hand of the Lion into his own.

‘Kill me!’ the King ordered. His face was expressionless but his voice roared.

‘Grandfather …’ Henry stammered.

The King stretched out his jewelled hand and the sword flew from Henry’s back to his. ‘Well then, I shall kill you, my boy.’

He had the same calm, pitiless gaze as when he had first appeared.

‘No!’ Henry shouted. ‘I won’t be slaughtered! Even by you!’

Immediately, he held the sword in his own hand again.

The King smiled. Then laughed. Then threw back his head, roaring with laughter, his long, terrible teeth gleaming white in his red mouth, his shoulders hunched beneath his mane. Henry thrust the sword he held straight through the lion’s open maw, jamming his arm behind it up to his shoulder. He felt iron strike through the beast’s lungs and heart, into its guts. Blood bubbled out its mouth in such abundance it soaked Henry to his thighs. It collapsed onto its side and with a small twitch, its tongue lolling from its open jaws, the great creature died. Henry stood up to stare at the enormous corpse. Gingerly, he withdrew his arm and sword from its mouth and contemplated the beast. Its dark-maned head was the size of a horse’s rump. The four killing teeth at the front of its mouth were as long as his fingers. He gave a deep sigh and kneeling in the blood, gently closed the yellow eyes. As he did so, a swell of unbearable longing for it to come back to life pulsed out from his heart, a yearning that seemed to move from him into the universe. He rested his face against the rough hair of its jawbone and stroked the small round ears. Lying there, he returned to ordinary sleep.

Their resting place was an ancient yew tree.

Henry slept for almost a whole day, waking only in the afternoon, astonished to find himself inside a tree trunk.

The smell of roasting meat had roused him. Douglas had killed a brace of geese with his slingshot and spitted them over a fire. A couple of yards away the megaliths were visible. Henry could see they had once been a cromlech around the yew tree and there had been, perhaps, sixteen of them. Now only three were left, and the third was broken in half. Apart from their size and apparent great age, there was nothing unusual in their appearance.