The Enchanter General 03 - Merlin Redux

by Dave Duncan

  I wondered if he really believed that homily, because in practice it would rarely stand up to scrutiny. “He was man far above your reach, Sir Richard. Even the great council dares not obturate him at the moment.”

  His lips shaped the name of Lord John, but only his eyes dared speak it.

  I nodded, and with that my night’s work was done. The Achilles enchantment released me and reaction set in. Every joint and muscle in my body seemed to scream, as if I were being torn apart. I would have fallen if Brewer had not caught hold of my arm.

  “You all right, my lord?”

  “No,” I muttered. “I am going upstairs to bed. Kindly remove the carrion, wash the floor, and lock the doors when you leave. You can return the keys in the morning.”

  I crawled up the stairs and went to sleep on the rug beside my bed.

  It took me three days to throw off the effects of the Achilles incantation. On the first day, Lovise and Lars managed to rouse me enough to get me into bed, and once in a while push some food and water into me, but the rest of the time I just slept. On the fourth morning she cuddled up close and asked if I were ever going to wake up.

  “No. Well, maybe tomorrow. How are you?”

  “I am well, thanks to your tender loving care.”

  I managed to roll over to kiss the end of her nose. “Your sarcasm is what I love most about you.”

  “That’s not what you used to tell me. Oh, Durwin, you were marvelous— Sir Lancelot to the rescue! You looked so calm and confident when you walked in . . . and so horribly vulnerable! But the trouble isn’t over yet, love. Men from the privy council arrived last night. They’re staying in the palace, of course, and they’ll to want to hear from both of us.”

  “Don’t worry, dear. No one else in the kingdom could get away with blatant sorcery like that, but I can.” I wasn’t quite as confident as I tried to sound. It was one thing for King Richard to butcher 2,700 Saracens in cold blood, but for an elderly cripple to take on eleven armed men and an alleged sorcerer singlehanded and kill them all must seem an intolerable insult to chivalry and the Christian faith.

  Three days in bed without proper sustenance had left me very shaky, but I managed to rise, make myself presentable, and in due course receive the delegation from London. One of them was William Marshal, who thoroughly disapproved of my style of fighting and was always inclined to put much more trust in Lord John Plantagenet than I ever did. Yet he had to agree that I was entitled to defend my wife and home against armed intruders. In the end they all came around to this view, and congratulated me. They went back to London with the surviving thug, the one I had put to sleep. I later heard that he had been hanged, but I suspect he had a very nasty time in the Tower first. Even if his testimony implicated Lord John, which I doubt, that couldn’t bring down the villain. Justice must wait until King Richard returned.

  “And what happens if he doesn’t come back?” Lovise asked me that evening, as we were relaxing after the long summer day and celebrating life with a fine French wine.

  “Then we shall have to hide from King John. Lord in Heaven, what a horrible sound those two words have!” I drank some wine to take away their taste. For the first time I thought seriously about what else Lord John had said.

  “On second thoughts, my angel, we had better go into hiding right now and stay there until the king does comes back. It seems that John had his pet sorcerer spying on us like I sometimes spied on them, at least while we were in Austria. You remember Lackland mentioning a Father Ferdinand?”

  Lovise nodded, regarding me carefully.

  “Father Ferdinand will have described a blond, aging minstrel with a lift on his right shoe, who sold Richard to Duke Leopold.” That admission made even my own wife stare at me in horror. “You didn’t!”

  “Yes, I did, because the king ordered me to. He was sick, exhausted, and trapped. He judged it better to give himself up than to be arrested in the street at sword point like a common pickpocket. So he sent me to negotiate his surrender.”

  “But if John has that evidence in writing, he’ll give it to the privy council! He may have done so already. He’s as spiteful as . . .

  “As an adder?”

  “Thank you. Why don’t you fetch the Loc hwær scroll and we’ll ask where he is at the moment?”

  Good idea. I began to rise and then fell back in my chair . . .

  I saw a vision of a spacious hall, with tapestried walls reaching to an arched ceiling. The windows were high and glazed, the floors covered with carpet instead of rushes. On a table in the center stood a bowl of Easter lilies, so I knew that this was a foretelling. A man in rich clerical robes was standing with his back to me, flanked by a couple of less senior divines and three or four well-garbed laymen, but only the central figure was distinct, and the vagueness of the others was another sign of prophecy. They were facing the open doorway, so it was a reasonable guess that they were about to receive special guests.

  That entrance hall was very familiar to me, but it took me a minute or two to place it. At last I recalled being a guest there more than a year earlier, on my way to the Holy Land. So the man in the ornate costume with his back to me must be John of Alençon, archdeacon of Lisieau, and this was his palatial “house.” I knew then exactly who was expected. This was springtime, next year.

  A herald in bright livery entered and proclaimed the name I had already guessed—Richard, king of England, duke of Normandy, et cetera. Freed from his captivity and back in his own domain, he was restored to his former Herculean majesty, no longer the ragged invalid I had parted from in Vienna. The infamous emperor must have fed him well. And on his arm stepped a diminutive but graceful and dauntless old lady—Eleanor, dowager queen and duchess. She looked years younger, now that her favorite son was restored to her.

  So I knew that the Lionheart would once again be at liberty and, since he would never dare journey through lands ruled by King Philip, he would have visited England on his way to Lisieau, in the heart of Normandy. The greetings that followed were warm and genuine, for the archdeacon was an old friend.

  Gradually the minor characters faded away, even the queen, until a later hour darkened the sky beyond the windows and I was seeing only Richard and his host seated across an empty fireplace, drinking and reminiscing. The king was leading the conversation, as kings always do, and I was granted snatches of it. He had been delayed by bad weather in the Narrow Sea, and was worried about some place called Verneuil, which Philip was besieging. He said little about the ongoing treachery of his brother in league with Philip. When he did mention it, it was more in pity than in anger.

  Suddenly he stopped talking about that and looked quizzically at de Alençon. “You are jumpy, old friend. Something troubles you?” He laughed. “You have seen my young brother!” de Alençon nodded. “Indeed I have. I told him that I thought you would be lenient with him, and treat him much better than he would treat you if your positions were reversed.”

  “I am sure you are right. I will not harm him. Send for him if he is here.”

  The archdeacon rose, but instead of pulling a bell rope to summon a servant, he hurried out of the room. In a few moments Lord John came in, shaking and cowering, as well he might when faced with the king and brother he had betrayed so abominably.

  “John!” Richard held out his arms.

  John rushed forward and dropped before him, groveling and weeping on the king’s boots. John of Alençon followed him in, shaking his head at the spectacle.

  Richard bent and raised his brother. “John, John! Fear not. You are only a child, and you have gotten into bad company. It is those who misled you who will be punished. I forgive you.” Then they embraced.

  Unnoticed except by me, de Alençon rolled his eyes. At twenty-seven, Lord John was no child! But I thought I knew the speech that the Lionheart had been quoting. As an adolescent he had joined his brothers Henry and Geoffrey in rebellion against their father, King Henry. Henry had won, but he had forgiven their treason, and
what Richard had just said sounded as if it might be the very words he had heard when he was pardoned. John had been only an infant then and would not have been present, but he had probably heard the story many times. Richard had been sixteen. He would have remembered his father’s leniency.

  The scene wavered and faded away. I was back in Oxford, in the previous summer, and Lovise was frowning at me.

  “What did you see?”

  I reached for my wine. “Disaster. Richard is going to forgive Lord John. The traitor will be allowed to live.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  “I suppose it’s good Christian charity—or family solidarity. It shouldn’t make any difference to us, though.” Or would it? If John had already put Father Ferdinand’s evidence before the privy council, when Richard returned, would he support my version of events or his brother’s? The more I thought about it, the more I began to doubt. Would I even be alive by that time to receive a royal pardon?

  Then I felt another foreseeing coming.

  The time was again spring, but the landscape was farther south than Lisieau and unfamiliar to me. I was facing a small castle encircled by a besieging army, which had worn the grass underfoot to dust and was fouling the air with the inevitable stench of latrine pits. The castle flew a baronial pennant I did not know, but I recognized Richard’s lion banner above the largest tent, although the lazy afternoon breezes hardly stirred it.

  The siege was ending even as I watched. A passable breach had been battered in the wall and orders were being shouted to hold any further shots from the trebuchets. Angevin forces were streaming in the gates that now stood open. In a few moments the pennant was hauled down. I could hear cheering, and then a bugle.

  I made my way through the camp toward that big tent with the banner. Men were going in and out a lot, but I could see no sign of Richard himself. Suddenly uneasy, I willed my invisible self to move faster, and was delivered instantly to the center of the crisis, where the Lionheart reclined on a bed, propped up on pillows, horribly pale. His left arm was supported by a sling and that shoulder was heavily bandaged. Even in the dim light I could see white streaks in his hair and beard; his face was twisted by pain, but also aged. He was several years older than in my previous vision. Doctors and aides hovered around, helpless to relieve the situation.

  “Can I bring you anything, sire?” one asked.

  The king made a feeble attempt at humor, as men will do to demonstrate courage. “Baron Durwin is what I need most. No, no—do not send for him. He cannot possibly get here in time.”

  I wanted to scream that I was there already, but I produced no sound, because in reality I wasn’t. Nor could I sing the incantations that might save the patient, but he was right to say I could not be sent for and arrive in time. I knew some of the men crowded in the background: William the Marshall and Walter Hubert, now archbishop of Canterbury, who looked as dusty as if he had just spent hours on a horse. If people like those two were being summoned, then the crisis was extreme. A deep shoulder wound is almost always a sentence of death, not immediate, but in a week or ten days, when the gangrene spreads. I had little hope that the Lionheart had three days left.

  “Lord King!” A young man-at-arms streaming sweat pushed his way in from the doorway, shouting. “Chalus-Chabrol has fallen! Your banner flies there now.”

  The dying man nodded. “We heard the bugle. Falk, give this man a silver mark for bringing us these happy tidings.”

  The messenger gabbled thanks. Then, perhaps hoping to increase his sudden wealth, he added, “And we got the archer what shot you, Your Grace!”

  “Well done.” The king looked around the fence of faces and spoke to an older man I did not know. “Bring him here. Don’t let them hurt him.”

  Why was I seeing this? Where was Chalus-Chabrol? Was I supposed to warn Richard never to go near it? I had learned back in Dürnstein castle that the Myrddin Wyllt prophecies were not carved in the rock of destiny. Some of them were written in smoke and liable to change. This tragedy was located years ahead of my seeing it.

  A few minutes later a prisoner was manhandled in and slammed to the ground near the king’s bed. One bystander aimed a kick—

  “Leave him!” Richard barked. “Stand up, lad. What’s your name?”

  The captive rose, rubbing his wrists and ribs to soothe bruises. He wore no armor and his clothes were threadbare. He looked like a sixteen-year-old who had eaten very little recently, and whose efforts to seem defiant produced no more than a childish pout.

  “Bertrand de Gourdon.” He omitted any term of respect. When addressing a king, that required either considerable courage or extreme folly.

  “You’ve killed me, you know,”Richard said gently. “My wound is festering, so within a week, I will be called to my Maker. What have I ever done to you that you should want to kill me?” He spoke in the southerners’ Occitan, which I had trouble following.

  “You killed my father and my two brothers.”

  The dying man smiled wanly, surveying the grim faces of the audience. “That’s a fair answer, is it not, friends? And this young man is not just an expert crossbowman, he was the only defender on the battlements at the time, the only one brave enough to make a show of defiance and take me on in an archery contest. He had no shield except an old frying pan. That is true manhood! Bertrand de Gourdon, I forgive you! Fulk, give him a purse of silver. You are free to go, Bertrand.”

  The boy accepted the purse disbelievingly and looked around at the watchers’ scowls. Then he made an awkward bow, thanked the king, and went. None of the onlookers shifted, though, so he had to push his way through. He disappeared under the flap, but I doubted very much that he would walk out of the Angevin camp with his bag of silver.

  Richard sighed. “Walter, I must rest now. We will talk at length later.”

  The tent began to empty. William Marshall caught the eye of Archbishop Hubert, who nodded. The two of them took their leave of the king and went out. I followed as they strolled over to a deserted area where they thought they would not be overheard. Beyond them, at the far edge of the camp, I saw Bertrand de Gourdon, now naked, tied between two posts, and gagged. His captors were sharpening knives, while other men were gathering to watch him being flayed. Probably both Marshall and Hubert noticed, but neither commented.

  “No hope?” Hubert asked.

  Marshall shook his head. “When they unwrap his bandage, they can smell the rot in Limoges.”

  “Donkeying around without any armor, I suppose?”

  “Of course. He just thought he’d get off a few arrows one evening.”

  The archbishop growled like a hound. “Even Saladin warned him against tomfoolery like that! So who’s it to be—Arthur or John?”

  “He won’t say. He may decide later, or he may leave it to us. John’s starting to make trouble again. But Arthur’s only twelve years old, and his mother won’t let him out of Brittany.”

  “Not even to inherit an empire?” the archbishop said skeptically.

  “Well, perhaps, but Philip must have heard the news from his spies by this time, and if he isn’t readying his army already, I’ll eat my castle.”

  “John’s shown that he’s not much of a fighter.”

  “He couldn’t be worse than a twelve-year-old.”

  “You could be Arthur’s regent.”

  “No! It has to be John,” Marshall insisted.

  And I, the unseen listener, wondered whether the flawless Sir William had already sent notice to John that the throne was about to become vacant. Hubert was silent for a long moment. Perhaps he was wondering the same, but he did not ask.

  Finally he shrugged. “You will regret this, William,” he said.

  I was given no time to consider this dread vision, or what I was supposed to do about it. The Myrddin Wyllt whirled me away like an autumn leaf. Uncertain cheering assailed my ears and I found myself in a church I knew, Rouen Cathedral, in Normandy. John sat on the throne—a plumper, older, and more h
eavily bearded John than I knew—and Archbishop Coutances was just placing a coronet on his head, making him duke.

  I groaned a silent No! and was instantly swept away.

  Westminster Abbey came next, where Archbishop Hubert was anointing the new king with holy oil. If Arthur was currently the age I had heard William Marshall give him, then it was ten years since I had foretold that John would one day wear the crown of St. Edward. Oh, poor England!

  Enough! Surely that is enough?

  No, Carnonos had yet more horrors to show me.

  The prisoner was secured by three chains—to both wrists and his neck—although they had enough slack to let him move around his cell. Yet it was a cell, with a tiny barred window and a door of massive timbers. His clothes had once been those of a nobleman, although now they were filthy and torn in places. He had a bench to sit on or sleep on, a water bottle, and a bucket, nothing more, not even a candle or a blanket. I viewed him by the fading light of evening, seated on the bench, legs outstretched, leaning back against the cold ashlar blocks of the wall, tortured by the slow creep of empty time. That was no way to house a prisoner of quality, perhaps a hostage who should have been treated with honor.

  Only when I realized how young he was—sixteen?—fifteen?—did I guess his name. I also guessed why I was being shown his torment, and then I cried out silently to Myrddin Wyllt to spare me from what I was certain must be about to happen. But I was not spared, and neither was the boy.

  Metal clanged and squealed; the door opened. The prisoner’s chains clattered wildly as he swung his legs to the floor and stood up. A man appeared in the entrance, and for the moment came no further. He was finely garbed in an ermine-trimmed robe of scarlet, but he had a sword belted on over it, and those do not belong together. He stared sullenly at the prisoner, and belched.

  The boy made a slight bow, little more than a gesture, for he never took his eyes off his visitor. “God preserve you, Uncle.”