The Eagle and the Sword (The Perilous Order of Camelot Book 2)

by A. A. Attanasio

  The best fish of that day's catch arrive on pewter and wood plates. The monks place them atop their broken millstone altar, before an oaken crucifix carved by Saint Piran himself. The church, a squat structure with walls of woven sticks and packed dung, is the only structure in Mousehole large enough to host Kyner and his men.

  Most of the villagers can find no place to sit inside. They stand in the torrential night, squeezed together under makeshift canopies of hawthorn branches whose waxy leaves shed rain.

  Happily, they tend the fires in the monastery's stone ovens and pass plates of steaming fish into the church through empty windows: smoking eels aswirl in butter and cod and bass glazed with berry sauce and roasted hazels.

  From the hearths of the hamlet come baskets of honey dumplings and barley loaves, bowls of dandelion soup sprinkled with hard-boiled yolks, blue cheese, mugs of blackberry pudding, and flagons of raspberry cider and whortleberry wine. The villagers spare nothing of their summer bounty.

  Behind the altar, the priest and the monks bless the food and serve the warriors. Kyner presides at the altar in the hamlet's one chair, the ecclesiastic seat the priest occupies during daily celebration of the Eucharist. At his side, perched on a settle behind the altar, Cei, the cavalry's officers, and the hamlet's elder, a local clan leader with a full mustache, oversee the gathering.

  The other cavalrymen sit on rushes covering the stamped-earth floor and use benches as tables. Seven of their number died in the fighting on the beach, and their helmets lie at the foot of the crucifix.

  The three most severely wounded have propped their helmets in the candlelit niche behind the altar so that they may receive the monks' healing prayers. Kyner's surgeon and Mousehole's leech tend those men in the sacristy.

  No sooner has the food been served when a monk, soaked and trembling, bursts into the jammed assembly and shoulders through the village elders to the altar. "Father, he's killing them!" he blurts, seizing the hem of the priest's cassock.

  "Be calm, brother."

  "The Eagle of Thor—killing the wounded Saxons! Even the ones who wish to convert! He's killing them all!"

  "Hah!" Kyner laughs coldly. "He won't stop until he's killed every one."

  "Father!" the monk protests. "He damns their souls."

  The priest turns a supplicating look to the chieftain. "Our brother is right, my lord. The Savior insists we show mercy."

  Kyner reaches for a honey dumpling and shakes his large, brutish head. "Arthor knows nothing of mercy."

  "Yet," the priest persists, "he carries the image of the Blessed Virgin. Our mother of mercy."

  "Arthor leaves mercy to her alone." Kyner speaks around a mouthful of food. "For him, there is only the sword. And tell your brothers to stay clear of him. He'll send them to heaven if they try to protect the pagans."

  "No!" The priest cannot accept this. "You would let him murder holy men?"

  "Let him?" Kyner chokes on his food and flushes scarlet.

  Cei pounds his father's back and frowns at the priest. "Arthor once beheaded a priest in Trier for trying to protect an old Saxon grandmother clutching the Bible! I tell you, he is the devil's own spawn."

  "Aye—" Kyner coughs, freeing his throat and reaching for a goblet. "He's my iron hammer. Tell the whole story, Cei. That hag's Bible hid a treacherous blade meant for my heart."

  "But—a priest!" the holy man says, appalled.

  The chieftain quaffs cider and dismisses the murder with a wave. "An Arian priest—a Christian polytheist. And empty-headed, to boot! Bringing such a viper into my presence. If not for Arthor, I'd have been slain in Trier, and at this moment flames would be eating Mousehole - and crabs and seabirds eating you."

  The priest ponders this and thinks to ask again, "My lord, how did you know the Saxons would raid us this night?"

  Kyner wipes crumbs from his stupendous mustache. "Never mind that now—the killing has already been accomplished." He points to the open portal.

  Arthor, tall and fearsome, stands in the church doorway in full chain armor. Slick sword and shield in hand, his head covered in a rawhide helmet crested by scarlet boar bristles, he fills the portal, a silent effigy of death. He offers grim countenance, his face hidden behind a bronze vizard impressed with a Gorgon's viperous grimace.

  The festive animation of the room falls at once to silence. The rescuers pass sullen, apprehensive looks among themselves. All but Kyner seem anxious. Indeed, a flush of admiration brightens the chieftain's heavy features at the sight of the stark warrior.

  Neither Cei nor any of the other officers seem to share the old warrior's affection, and this further arouses the priest's curiosity. Stepping past a monk who has budged aside to let Arthor in, he moves hurriedly to the door to greet the champion.

  "Come into the house of the Lord of Peace and be refreshed, soldier of Christ. You fought zealously for your Lord. Perhaps too zealously, my son. There was no need to kill the wounded. We would have tended them."

  "The Lord has said that those who live by the sword shall die by the sword," a dark voice replies, muffled by the vizard. "I have fulfilled the law."

  Gently, the priest lays a hand on the leather fist gripping the bloody sword. "Yes, my son. You and your comrades have saved us from the sword of our enemies. Now the killing is done. Come into the house of your Lord with your hands empty, a worthy Christian."

  Arthor's hand opens, and the priest takes the sword and passes it to the monk behind him. "Cleanse and sanctify this blade, brother, for this night it has served our Savior. The shield as well."

  "No." Arthor lifts the blood-streaked shield with its image of Jesus' mother, her hands clasped in prayer, her lovely, radiant head bowed. "The Virgin stands by her son."

  The priest nods and smiles proudly. He reverently takes the shield in both hands. "I will place her there myself. Come. Share our joy at our salvation. Join us in this feast of our happy gratitude. Honor us with your presence."

  "Bare your head, Arthor!" Cei shouts from across the crowded room. "The fighting's over. Show some civility. This is a house of God!"

  Kyner stands, goblet of raspberry cider in hand. "I drink to Arthor before our Lord and Savior. And before this company." The chieftain casts a pointed look at Cei, who grudgingly nods and lifts his goblet in the air. "Arthor!"

  A respectful chorus of voices echo. Unmoved, Arthor unstraps his helmet. Short, sweat-spiked hackles of badger hair stick out around a blond face too young for whiskers.

  A murmur of astonishment seeps from the monks, who had not expected a boy to fill so large a frame or execute the killing ardor and lethal horsemanship they had witnessed on the stormy beach. Jaws loosen at the sight of his rose-tinged cheeks, his milk-pale countenance downed with adolescence.

  The priest steps back a pace and his hands tighten on the shield in momentary disbelief. A child! Yet indeed, something wicked about the lad's cold eyes, aslant and acid yellow, and his taut, angry mouth, clamped as if perpetually ready to take or give a blow. A cruel child, he thinks to himself.

  "Come, young warrior," the priest gathers his wits to say. "Come and sit at the table with your kin."

  "Fah!" Cei shouts in cold mockery. "Arthor is no kin. Nor is he even a Celt. He'll sit at the back with the new men, as always."

  "Now, Cei," Kyner admonishes brashly, "show some charity. The boy has saved our lives. Tonight he'll sit at table with us. Come, Arthor! Place yourself beside me."

  Arthor ignores him and goes directly to the crucifix, not even glancing at the altar-table laden with sumptuous piles of food. He kneels before the helmets of those seven fallen in battle and closes his eyes.

  The priest follows and stands the shield before the base of the crucifix so that its top rests against the solitary nail that pierces Christ's feet.

  He barely hears the boy's whisper: "Mother Mary blesses you courageous men, who have paid with the sanctity of blood for her Son's glory."

  The resuming festivities mute the rest of his prayer. Even
so, the priest, bending closer as if to steady the shield, detects sincerity in the flutter of the boy's closed lids. For a moment, the young face loses its complex gloom and seems fixed by no more than a child's prayerful inwardness.

  And then, Arthor rises. His face sets angrily, eyes amber wasps. He ignores the entreaty of Kyner, "Arthor—stay! Feast with us. Ignore proud Cei, who wears humility poorly. Come, lad! Eat and drink at my side."

  Through the length of the packed church Arthor stalks, meeting no man's gaze, his bristly brown hair brushed back as if by the wind of his passing as he returns to the storm-wrung night.

  Rain slashes against him, and he bends into it and hurries past the smoking ovens and the gawking villagers. Quickly, he leaves the hamlet and descends dark paths toward the pounding sea.

  At his command, fishermen have stacked the Saxon's war-boats, set them ablaze, and heaved the heathen corpses atop the pyre. Arthor walks away from those shadowy fires and their wet reflections in the black sea and follows the long, pale combers to the far end of the cove. There, slurs of fire from the burning ships and torchlight from the hamlet cast meaty streaks of light in the downpour.

  Climbing a dune of witchgrass, he finds shelter in a shallow cave above the booming surf. He sits hunched, hugging his knees. Raindrops stand like tears on his cheeks. He does not cry, though his breath stirs hugely in his chest. His heart kneads an old rage. He will not sit at Kyner's side like a faithful dog.

  Smoldering for what he might be if he had been born to the chieftain rather than cast fatherless into the world, he plays for himself tedious fictions of greatness. His muscles ache with the killing frenzy that possessed him in battle, and he imagines that this strength is the might of a warlord, a king's valor spent building an empire. The hammering voices of the enemy clang in his skull, forging the victories of his kingdom.

  But these are fictions. They fall quickly away, no longer able to sustain him as they did when he was a child, before he learned his talent for killing. The bare truth remains: he is a foundling and nothing more, useful only for his murderous cunning.

  He wishes he had never been found in the bramble woods where his shamed mother had left him to die. Better to be dead, he thinks, hating himself for thinking this yet unable to thwart his despair. Better to be dead than nameless and with no destiny.

  All night, he stays in the cave. Eventually, the song of the rain sifts through his tightly woven anger and soothes him to sleep. When he startles awake from a battle-dream, clutching for the sword he does not have, the storm has moved on. Clustered stars blaze over the black face of the sea.

  By their trifling light, he watches breakers rise and fall and phosphorescent crabs scuttling before them along the littered tide line.

  Loneliness pervades him, and he prays again to Mary, the same prayer he has offered all his young life to the only mother he has ever known, "Mother Mary, give me strength to defend your Son now that He has left us alone in the devil's world. Give me strength to fight for Him until He returns."

  And as always before, the same sweet voice opens from far inside, so faint and still he must hold his breath to hear her say what she says each time he calls her: Love is first, Arthor. Never abandon. Never abandon.

  At dawn, he bathes in the sea, then climbs a path among black rocks and returns to Mousehole. The company, glassy-eyed from a night of drinking, sit heavily in their saddles. Kyner ignores him, angry at the boy for shaming him in front of the company and spurning him at the feast. Punishment must follow. Cei orders him to saddle his horse, knowing Arthor cannot refuse, hoping he will, so that Kyner's hand will be forced.

  Arthor complies silently, and when he is done, Kyner leads the company into the mist-strewn woods, not waiting for the disrespectful youth. The monks, stung with pity, help him prepare his palfrey. After he mounts, a monk returns his helmet, and the priest comes forward with sword and shield. They have been meticulously cleaned.

  "Remember," the priest counsels, "our Savior served. The Prince of Heaven served humbly."

  Arthor's hard mouth flinches with disdain, and the cold in his stare freezes the priest's heart. "Jesus knew he was a prince of heaven. Born of God's love. I am born of lust and violence. I serve the humility of the blade."

  The priest shakes his head sadly. "Then, my son, I ask you to contemplate what you told me last night. He who lives by the sword -"

  "Of course. My fate certifies the sword." The youth smiles grimly. "Am I not God's warrior?"

  Chapter 3: Melania of Aquitania

  Melania of Aquitania, renowned in her province for her classical beauty and erudition, remained hidden in a tower for a year while warbands of Salian Franks raged through the countryside stealing crops, murdering Roman landowners, and enslaving women and children.

  Melania's father and brothers died defending the extensive Gallic estate that had been in their family for over five hundred years, and her mother shriveled away soon after. Once the most noble and proud of Aquitania, her family teetered on extinction, surviving only in herself and her father's grandmother, a one-eyed crone who knew all the secrets of the ancient estate.

  Great-grandmother connived with Melania as intimately and cunningly as a sister. Even before the mourning for their dead ended, they scrutinized options: The Salian Franks, who had suffered under the iron fist of the last Roman general in northern Gaul, loathed everything Roman; so, there was no hope of marrying Melania to a Frankish chieftain to preserve the estate. Flight, too, was impossible. In Italy, the Ostrogoths and the kingdom of Odovacar were at war, while in the Eastern Empire, the most that a beautiful young woman of learning such as Melania could hope for—even with her extensive estate in faraway Gaul—was the life of a high-class prostitute. Saint Helena, the mother of Constantine, the first Christian emperor, had begun her illustrious life as such a prostitute, and Great-grandmother offered her as an example.

  But Melania would not have it. Selling her favors to wealthy noblemen did not disturb her half as much as the misery of losing her family's ancient lands, which she would have to forsake to travel East. She would do anything to preserve her ancestral estate.

  "Anything?" the crone asked when she heard this. She stared intently at her great-granddaughter with her one good eye.

  "We have already pondered a life of prostitution," Melania replied. "What could be worse?"

  The crisscross of wrinkles in the old face netted darkness from within, a shadow that seemed to leak from inside the old woman. "There is an unchristian way to save us. Would you have it, then?"

  Melania arched her dark and delicate eyebrows. "What are you keeping from me, old mother?"

  The crone cackled mirthfully and led Melania to the tower. The oldest edifice in the province, the spire of black granite served as a watchtower, which the estate's Roman founders had erected in the century before Christ. During the 180 years since the empire had become Christian, the tower had been used by the family as the bell turret of their church.

  Great-grandmother knew the hidden passageways that led into labyrinthine cellars, then farther down into extensive catacombs that connected the grottoes and caverns of a subterranean stream.

  Accompanied by wavery shadows of an oil lamp and the sibilant echoes of the blind current, the crone led stately Melania through dank stone corridors. The lamp revealed rock-hewn chambers crowded with lichenous kegs and cobwebbed amphorae. Farther along, they passed stacks of clay tablets and bins of moldering scrolls.

  At last, the stone pathway meandering among innumerable stalagmites delivered them to a crypt etched with inscriptions from the reign of Emperor Augustus. Into the anonymous dark of that recess, Great-grandmother thrust her oil lamp and exposed a profusion of long, thin-necked pots depicting animal-headed gods—beakers and primitive retorts of desert alchemists—and a clutter of magical instruments: calipers with cuneiform markings, jackal-headed wands, a necklace of ivory leviathan teeth, crystal spheres with bloodlike webworks at their cores, and mirror-glass discs th
at broke the lamplight into a delirium of rainbows.

  In her gnarled hand, the old woman retrieved a small, intricately embossed urn of black silver. Wings of bearded sphinxes served as handles, and the urn itself embodied an orphic egg entwined by twin vipers whose gnashed fangs interlocked to clasp the hermetic lid.

  "Do not open this!" Great-grandmother warned sharply before handing the urn to Melania. The old woman reached again into the crypt and removed a silver throat band tooled with reptile motif to look like a snake with a serpent-head at each end, exposed fangs gaping at one other.

  She fitted the band about Melania's pale throat, and a magnetic chill sparked through the girl. "This will protect you from them."

  "From whom, old mother?"

  The crone did not answer but reached a third time into the crypt. She came out with a blade of speckled lodestone, its haft of quartz bound with bands of blackened silver. "And this, if needs be, will kill them."

  "Who?"

  "The lamia."

  Fright reached deep into Melania, and she nearly dropped the urn. Lamia—a lovely Greek word—meaning "devouring monsters." Since her earliest childhood, she had heard frightful tales of the lamia, shapeshifting wraiths that could thread keyholes in their most tenuous form and then solidify to taloned beasts muscular enough to rip free a man's lungs and squeeze his throbbing heart before his startled face.

  "I thought those were stories for scaring naughty children." Melania gazed fitfully at the exquisite urn in her hands.

  "Oh dear, no—those stories of the old Romans who founded this estate are all true, child," the crone says through a toothless smile. "Our forefathers did bargain with Phoenician traders for all these pagan objects, just as we heard in the stories when we were children. They had aspirations of sorcery, those first settlers who came here when this land was wilderness. They purchased magical amulets, necromantic potions, effigies of power whose use we've long forgotten. Most, truth be told, lost their efficacy centuries ago. But the urn you hold in your hands, the band about your throat, and this lode-knife—oh, they are yet potent, child, they are yet potent—as you shall see."