"My lord, there's no need to beg my pardon," he said. "I'm honored to have made your acquaintance."
Now, that was the absolute truth. The more powerful men that Faucon knew in this shire, the more influential men who knew him, the harder it became for Sir Alain to strike.
"Nor will this be a wasted trip," Faucon continued. "When my chatelaine learned I was bound for Merevale, she begged me to visit Nuneaton, which, she informs me, is not far from here. I'm to convey her love to her daughter, who is a student with the sisters."
"That you shall do and easily so," Abbot Henry replied, looking truly pleased at this news. "Your chatelaine is correct. Nuneaton is but a way and a bit to the east of us.
"Come, then," the Churchman said, turning his back on the fish ponds and death as he stepped down into the deeply-worn path that crossed the abbey's lands.
The track, exactly wide enough to accommodate a small wagon, began at the abbey's fish ponds, then wound its snaking way between the fields that fed the monks and the pastures where their sheep grazed. While some of their fields presently rested under the stubbled remains of this autumn harvest, a surprising number showed signs of having been recently turned. These stretches of land sported sweet green lines that spoke of new growth. This could only be those vegetables— turnips, cabbages, onions and garlic— that did well during the colder months.
Beyond the newly-planted fields was a sharp lift of land dotted with rows of carefully pruned and now-barren fruit trees. As the path reached the hillside, it zigzagged up its side to the top, where the monks had built their church and home.
A movement in the track just below the hilltop caught Faucon's eye. He squinted. It was a sway-backed brown nag making its way down toward the fields. The beast moved no faster than a walking man, perhaps because it carried two. The man holding the reins wore a commoner's white linen cap. His tunic had once been a bright green, but now showed brown and rusty orange spots, his chausses were a faded red. The second man wore no cap. His wild dark-red hair stood out around his head and his brown gown was pulled high onto his thighs, revealing yellow stockings.
"Huh, more visitors. How unusual," Abbot Henry said from where he walked in the track ahead of both his flock and his guests. "Brother Samuel," the Churchman called without turning his head, "run forward and see what business these two have with us."
A fair-haired youth barely old enough to shave raised the skirt of his habit and stepped up out of the path onto the still-green verge. As the young monk raced toward the hillside, Faucon followed him onto the verge then strode quickly forward until he walked alongside, and a little above, the abbot.
"Should I accompany the brother, my lord?" he asked.
The Churchman offered his new Crowner a quick wink. "I hardly think there's any need for that. What sort of threat can anyone pose to us on a day when we're accompanied by two knights and a soldier?" His tone suggested he was a man fully supported by his faith.
Rather than retreat to his previous place behind the monks, Faucon continued walking along the rough verge, matching the abbot's pace as he watched Brother Samuel. The monk was fleet of foot, for he was already a quarter of the way up the hillside while the descending nag had yet to reach the halfway point. Just then the red-headed rider slid off the horse's rump. Only as he came to earth and his dark tunic fell into place, its hem reaching to his shoes, did Faucon recognize him as a priest.
Waving frantically, the distant clergyman raced down toward the oncoming monk. When monk and priest met, the stranger grabbed Brother Samuel by the arms. Almost immediately the young monk broke free of the clergyman's hold to turn in the track.
"Father, he speaks no French," he shouted down to his abbot, his distant call faint but audible.
"Then return to us," Abbot Henry shouted back, his hands cupped to his mouth.
"If you will, my lord," Faucon said to the abbot, "my man and I will go ahead to discover what brings your visitors here." Although he formed this as a question, to his mind, seeking the abbot's permission was but a formality.
"With my blessings," Abbot Henry nodded.
Faucon turned to look at Alf. The common soldier had already stepped up onto the verge from where he walked at the very back of their party. "Alf, at all speed," he commanded in French.
"As you will, sir," the Englishman replied with a nod.
As Alf trotted toward him along the verge, Faucon stepped down into the track in front of the abbot. He jogged, his mail jangling in tune with his jolting pace. Being less burdened by the accoutrements of war, Alf swiftly passed by his employer.
On the hillside, the English priest put a hand to his brow as he looked down upon them. Realizing that others came, he threw himself into motion, rushing pell-mell down the track after Brother Samuel. Such frantic haste only spurred Faucon to greater speed.
Alf and Brother Samuel met near the base of the hill and traded positions, the monk leaping onto the verge while the soldier stepped down into the track. A moment later the wild-haired clergyman and tall commoner met. Just as the priest had with Brother Samuel, he grabbed Alf by the forearms. And just like the monk before him, Alf tore free from the man's hold. He turned to look back at his employer just as Brother Samuel trotted past Faucon.
"Sir, it's not English he's speaking," Alf called. "I cannot understand him either."
That had Faucon lifting his heels until he sprinted. Then it was his turn to have the priest's surprisingly strong hands clasped around his forearms. The red-headed man was a little taller than Faucon and, unlike most clergymen who were clean-shaven, wore a full beard that was only a slightly lighter shade of red than his hair.
Everything about him— his grasp on Faucon's arms, his tense shoulders, his narrow, long-featured face, and his pale gray eyes— radiated urgency. His mouth opened. Sounds that might have been words tumbled from his lips. Although Faucon considered himself almost fluent in the commoners' tongue, having learned the language at his nurse's knee, not one syllable this man uttered made sense to him.
"I don't understand you," he complained, pulling his arms free of the clergyman's grasp. "Can you speak English?"
That won a groan of frustration from the priest. Faucon looked at Alf, who had retreated to the verge. "What of you? Did you understand any of what he just said?"
"Some of it sounded, familiar but I can't say I understood anything," Alf said with a shake of his head. "I'm thinking he must be a Northerner. I've never met any myself, but I'm told that when they speak the common tongue, they do it in a way that is oddly twisted."
Once again Faucon faced the priest. He lifted a hand to point up the track at the horse and rider, now but a furlong or so away. "Does that other man speak English?"
Instantly the priest pivoted in the track. "Waddard!" he shouted. "Halpa min. Spaak firr ek."
That this Waddard gave a quick nod said he had no trouble understanding his clergyman. Using only his left heel the commoner gave his mount a few quick kicks. The bony horse responded with a sorry snort but no additional speed. That one-sided kick had Faucon studying the mounted commoner more closely. It wasn't the lack of a saddle that had Waddard perched awkwardly atop his horse. Instead Faucon guessed that the man had injured his right hip, and that he walked with great pain if he walked at all.
"Sir knight, you must help us," the commoner called to him in perfectly understandable English. "I am Waddard, potter of Mancetter, and he is Father Godin, our priest. We've come to beg urgent aid from the abbot. He must stop them."
"Stop who?" Faucon called back, grateful to hear words he understood, even if they didn't quite make sense.
"My son Dickie is dead—"
Waddard of Mancetter choked off into silence, then cleared his throat and tried again. "My son Dickie is dead, and my neighbors are set on cutting his body into pieces before nightfall."
Faucon's eyes widened. Alf took a startled step back and nearly fell from the verge into the deep track. "Sir," he gasped as he caught himself, "the
re's only one reason to cut apart a dead man."
"I know," Faucon replied grimly. Folk only quartered the dead when a corpse refused to stay in its grave.
Faucon turned in the track. Brother Samuel had just rejoined the other monks behind their abbot in the pathway. Behind the Cistercians, both Brother Edmund and Will leaned to one side as they walked, seeking to better see what occurred in front of them.
"My lord abbot," Faucon shouted, "these two men have come from a village called Mancetter. They wish you to return with them to prevent their neighbors from cutting a dead boy into pieces."
The abbot jerked to a stop, his hand flying to the wooden cross that hung from a leather thong around his neck. His flock halted behind him, fluttering and flapping. Some moaned. Others dropped to sit on the edge of the verge. Then, almost as one, eleven of the Merevale brothers folded their hands and began to chant out a prayer of protection from evil.
Rather than bow his head along with his spiritual cousins, Brother Edmund clambered onto the verge. Skirting the monks, Faucon's clerk moved toward his employer at what was almost a run for him. Will followed just as quickly.
As Edmund halted next to Alf, the monk glanced to the opposite verge as if considering leaping across the track. He took too long in his deliberation. Will stepped over the pathway and claimed the spot. For good reason. It offered an unobstructed view of both Faucon and the men from Mancetter. Eyes narrowed, Brother Edmund turned a shoulder to the two soldiers and looked at his employer.
"Sir," he said, "I think we shouldn't be surprised to hear such news. Indeed, I'm thinking we should have already encountered other such instances since our arrival here."
"Instances? Of the dead walking?! How so?" Faucon retorted, startled by his clerk's unexpected and all-too-calm pronouncement.
"Because where Herla's army rides," Edmund began.
"The dead are uneasy in their grave," Alf completed in astonishment, his eyes wide. "How do you know of Herla?" the English soldier demanded of the Norman monk. Edmund ignored his question.
"Herla?" Faucon glanced between them. "Who is Herla?"
It was Alf who answered. "An ancient king. He leads his retainers in a ceaseless ride, for as long as they never dismount, they have eternal life."
"Exactly so," Edmund agreed brusquely without looking at the commoner. "The English call him Herla, but our tales speak of him as Harlequin."
"Holy Mother save us! Harlequin is real?" Will gasped out, crossing himself.
Faucon did the same. First the walking dead and now Harlequin? Their mother had happily terrified both her sons with tales of the gigantic, unholy man who carried a massive mace and led an army of the walking dead.
"Indeed he is, Sir William," Brother Edmund assured the knight, speaking directly to Faucon's brother for the first time since Will's arrival in Warwickshire. "And indeed we should all be begging our Lord's holy mother to aid us, if what these commoners have told Sir Faucon is true."
Both Will and Alf stared at the monk in unguarded and horrified interest. As for Faucon, he felt as though the ground beneath his feet was tilting and turning.
"As to why, I think we should not be surprised, sir," Edmund continued, turning his attention back on Faucon, "Herla's influence is strongest here in the north. I have it on good authority that he and his army are often seen riding Watling Street." As he said this, the monk gave a jerk of his head as if to indicate the ancient road that cut across England.
Shocked beyond speech, Faucon could but stare at his clerk. How could a monk— or any man for that matter— speak so sensibly of such supernatural and unsensible evil? The urge to sit on the verge and pray along with Merevale's monks filled him. He might have done it, except one tiny certainty lifted out of his spinning thoughts.
Edmund couldn't possibly know where Watling Street lay from here, not when they were both new in this shire and this was their first visit so far north in Warwickshire.
In all truth, Faucon also had no idea know where Watling Street lay. All he knew was that the Street began at Wroxeter in the north of the Welsh Marches, then angled southeastward until it reached London, from whence it proceeded to Richborough and the sea. If Edmund couldn't know that much, how could he say he knew who or what might walk on the Street?
The earth steadied beneath Faucon's feet. "Who is this authority you so trust?" he demanded. "And how is it you know anything about what happens here? You said you hailed from the south."
"And so I do," Brother Edmund replied with a nod. "I'm from London, for the most part. It was while I was in Paris studying at the university—"
"You studied at the university in Paris?!" Faucon burst out in abject surprise, certainty slipping from his fingers as the earth again began to shift.
A dead man's corpse had killed his living son, Harlequin's army was real and walked here in this shire, and the man who served him as a menial clerk had been educated in the most prestigious university in all Europe. But that was impossible. Edmund had once inferred that he was bastard-born. Only the richest noblemen sent their sons and wards to Paris. Everyone else attended the school in Oxford— where Faucon's father would have sent him had Will not been injured— which wasn't even a chartered university. What great man had opened his purse on Edmund's behalf?
"Yes, in Paris, both before and after the ban. I received my master of the arts there." His clerk gave a casual shrug as if having been accorded the second highest degree a scholar might achieve was no great thing. "As I was saying, while in Paris I met a man, another cleric, who was then in service to my— our country as an ambassador. Master Walter had formed an interest in the reanimated dead after reading the tale of a man who met Hellequin—"
"Hellequin?" Alf asked.
"Another pronunciation of Harlequin," Edmund said, again shooting the soldier a disapproving glance for daring to interrupt a second time. Then, clearing his throat, the monk shifted until he stood a little in front of the commoner.
"Master Walter was astonished to learn of a man who had encountered the army of the dead and interacted with one of the walking corpses, and managed to survive. That set him on a quest to collect any and all similar tales while he journeyed between the courts of foreign kings and bishops. Once Master Walter had collected as many tales as he could, he approached the masters of the university in Paris, seeking a copyist. Although I was but a student at the time, my mentors recommended me. I ultimately made Master Walter six copies of his collection.
"Years later, after I returned to England and had taken my vows, Master Walter again sought me out, once more in need of a copyist. This time, the tales in his collection had come from our own land, many of them originating from this area and farther north, on into the Marches. He was very grateful when I again agreed to scribe for him. Before he had located me, he'd approached a number of my brethren, as well as some unaffiliated clerks. None were willing to aid him. He told me they all refused to read, much less copy, such tales."
Edmund's lips twisted in scorn. "Ignorant, fearful fools! As if words on parchment are anything more than just words! Nor can the act of copying a word call forth whatever it is that word describes. Just as with prayer, there must be intent.
"Moreover," the monk continued, scorn giving way to satisfaction, "they should have realized that the copies would be housed in the library at Hereford. Bishop William has long been Master Walter's patron. But you must know that, sir, what with the bishop being your uncle? You must know that your lord uncle has long had a fondness for good stories well told, and is a patron to any man who can tell them."
This time Faucon's jaw loosened. He once more stared at his clerk, stunned beyond speaking. A dozen questions arose, all of them more personal than he had a right to pose or that Brother Edmund might tolerate from him. No wonder the monk had called clerking for Warwickshire's new Crowner a penance. And no wonder Edmund was frantic to win Bishop William's forgiveness for whatever wrong he'd done that resulted in his demotion. So well educated a man mus
t find riding out daily to deal with backward commoners in these backward hundreds akin to burning in hell.
When his employer continued to stare at him, Edmund cocked his head a little. "Sir, gather your wits. You must pay heed, for this is very important." His tone was that of master to student. "You must ask these men how many in their village have been visited by the dead man's corpse. Of those who have seen the abomination, how many have fallen ill?"
Both Edmund's question and his manner cut through Faucon's spinning thoughts. He sucked in a deep breath, feeling as if he were rising out of a dream. "Let me ask them," he told his clerk, then again faced the track and the commoners waiting in it.
Waddard of Mancetter had brought his nag to a halt a few feet behind his Northern priest. Honest grief expressed openly had left dirty tracks on the potter's plump cheeks. As he realized he had his Crowner's attention, the commoner cried, "Tell me, sir knight, what does that monk say? Will the abbot come?
"But he must come," Waddard continued, offering Faucon no time to answer. "No matter what my neighbors felt about Dickie, no one should be allowed to desecrate his body this way, not when there's no proof that he, too, will walk."
"Will walk? What reason is there to cut up a corpse that hasn't walked?" Faucon retorted, his voice knife-edged. Either a corpse walked, or it didn't.
Waddard jerked at the harsh reply. His gaze shifted from armed knight to armed knight to armed soldier, then he nervously tucked a strand of sandy-brown hair back under his white cap. And said nothing.
Faucon damned his carelessness and tried again, speaking more gently. "If the villagers haven't witnessed your son's corpse moving, why do they wish to dismember it?"
The commoner shook his head. Fear yet twisted his expression. His lips began to quiver. He scrubbed his hand over his face as if to hide his reaction.
Faucon tried one more time with the question he should have asked first. "How long has your son been dead?"
Lowering his hand from his face, Waddard aimed his gaze at his horse's ears. "We found him this morn, sir," he replied quietly, his words trembling along with his lips.
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