A Knight's Enchantment

by Lindsay Townsend

  David and her father might have been half a league away, not a few paces. So simple and tempting it was, to cross the dusty floor tiles and ancient strewing herbs to where Solomon was, in his favored place, standing beneath the arrow slit and torch. He had been reading a text by torchlight, but now he rolled up his parchment and smiled.

  Shalom, he mouthed as the guard turned to beckon David, a greeting that wrung tears of longing to her eyes. Eagerly she marked the tiny changes in him. His beard had a few more gray hairs. His fingers were stained with sulphurs and his own favorite herb, alkanet. His face was more fleshed out. His dark eyes twinkled at her.

  That he was hale and whole and in possession of his wits was better than she had dared to hope. She had been so afraid for him, so terrorized at the thought of the malice of Bishop Thomas against him, especially when she was held hostage by Hugh. For so long this slight, stooping father of hers was all she had.

  To stop herself doing something foolish or giving herself away—for this new guard did not seem to know that one of the prisoners was her own father—Joanna forced herself to step to the fireplace.

  She could sense David and her father watching. Solomon was still smiling.

  Does he not recognize the danger we are now in? The thought made her annoyed, then ashamed. Her father was otherworldly, with his mind on the starry heavens. Perhaps it was a blessing he was as he was—he could cope with imprisonment as he had coped with the many blows life had dealt him: with a mild, sanguine heart.

  David was different. With the grace she remembered in him, he strolled to the bench with the guard. As he paused, awaiting further orders, his face remained impassive, no longer open and boyish. He had, she realized with a pang, some new gray hairs amidst his fair hair. A legacy of his time in the prison pit? Was he pleased to see her? She did not know.

  “I bring news from your brother!” she wanted to burst out. “We are striving to free you!” Their previous ease, when she and David had spoken of Jerusalem and the great Arab scholars, seemed impossible to recover.

  “You, sit here,” said the smaller guard to David, pointing to one end of the bench. “You, there.” He pointed to the other end of the bench.

  The two men settled where indicated and she was perched between them, all three of them staring at the two cups in her hand and then at the small fire in the grate.

  “Sir, have you another two cups, please?” Joanna asked. “Then we might all partake of the bishop’s bounty.”

  Panic crawled over the guard’s face. The ale had stopped foaming, but it was clear he believed it a lethal brew. He stared at the copper cups with hesitant fascination.

  “I will see if there is another cup for you,” he said, stepping away from the fire with alacrity.

  “You escaped my brother,” David whispered in Latin. “Pray God that you do not fall into his hands again.”

  The harshness of his voice chilled Joanna.

  “I am here because of Hugh!” she began, desperate to explain.

  David shook his head, his thin mouth a wire of disapproval. “Not on my account,” he replied, misunderstanding her. “You do nothing for others, my lady.”

  “That is not true!” To her horror, she realized that she and Hugh had erred. They had not thought of any message or token that she could deliver to David to show her true intent. How could we forget, she berated herself, but knew the answer all too well. For the last mile of their journey she had been consumed with dread for Hugh.

  “We are striving together in this,” she said, but David turned away from her on the bench, as if he blamed her for his imprisonment in both donjon and prison pit.

  “It is good you are home safe, daughter.” Solomon spoke for the first time, holding out a hand to receive one of the cups.

  Joanna leaned toward him. When their hands touched, she wanted to kneel at his feet and wail forgiveness for having been away and now, with her return, for being the reason he was back in the donjon. All she could think to say was the bald truth. “I am truly sorry you are here.”

  “No matter. You will continue the work.” Solomon drank from the cup, giving a sigh of pleasure. “When he is ready to speak to me again, David and I will continue our disputations.”

  The guard was returning from turning out the contents of a chest, carrying a pewter cup.

  “That will not do,” Joanna said at once. “I am sorry, but the bishop said that for this potion to work, the cup must be the color of the sun, either gold or copper.”

  Together, the two guards glanced at the scatter of objects beside the chest. “There are none such here,” said the smaller one.

  Joanna, her heart hammering afresh as she told lie upon lie, spread the fingers of her free hand. “I am very sorry. The bishop was most insistent on the point.”

  The guard looked ready to kick her and the useless contents of the chest about the room.

  “I have two more copper cups within my chamber.” Joanna rose from the bench. “If you allow it, sir, it is the work of moments for me to fetch them. I am sorry, indeed, that I did not think.”

  “Go, then,” the guard interrupted, mollified by her apology.

  Before he or his companion changed their minds, Joanna moved to the door.

  Running upstairs, she found the cups and wrote a hasty note for her father. Returning to the first-floor chamber, she fretted outside the door until the guards readmitted her.

  “Here we are.” She displayed the copper goblets and hurried to the fire to pour the contents of the remaining cup between three. As she did so, she skimmed the slip of parchment along the bench to her father.

  Quick as a waterfall, David fell upon the note and hefted it aloft, his eyes glinting with triumph.

  “The lady is passing messages.” His accusation echoed round the stone walls.

  “David,” said Solomon, mildly, as if all the Templar had done was to point out a mistake in her pouring.

  “What is this?” The smaller guard had the paper now and was squinting at it furiously.

  “You are mistaken.” Joanna was so furious, so hurt, she wanted to lash out at the man she once thought of as a friend, but she could do far more than that. “I heard a blackbird call this morning and have written down the song in the language of birds. My lord bishop said that Solomon had a delight in such matters.”

  “I do indeed.” Her father understood at once. The language of birds was a veiled reference to alchemy, of which, pray God, David had no knowledge. “Blackbirds and wrens and eagles.”

  She appealed directly to the guard, who, between shooting dark looks between her, David, and Solomon, had laid out the slip of parchment on the palm of his hand. “Does that appear as any writing you know, sir?”

  “It does not,” the guard said, peering again at the alchemical symbols, “although it may be code.” He showed it to his fellow guard, who nodded.

  “Then take it to my lord,” said Joanna at once. “It is no grief to me.” She sensed David’s baleful glare at her use of one of his brother’s phrases but ignored him. Her breath kept stopping in her throat as she willed the guard to pass the note to her father.

  Solomon spoke directly to David. “You should try the fortified ale. It is most agreeable.”

  David folded his arms and kicked at a fallen log in the fireplace.

  “Then I shall drink yours.” Still appalled by his malicious attempt to make trouble, Joanna drained the second cup and offered one of the other copper goblets to the nearest guard. She smiled in a winning way, pretending in that moment that she was giving the cup to Hugh. “For your patience and courtesy, sir.”

  Stepping forward, the guard reached his decision. He flung the note on the fire and took the cup.

  “To your health, my lady. Next time, you must sing the song of the blackbird to us, so we might all enjoy it.” He sipped the drink and nodded, possibly in approval. “I will keep the cups.”

  It was a dismissal. Fearing that there would be no “next time,” Joanna ro
se to her feet. She did not know, now, what the guards might say to the steward, or to Bishop Thomas. She did not know when she might be allowed to visit again. Close to tears of frustration, her reunion with her father shattered before it had even begun, she had no choice but to walk around the bench to the door.

  She could have avoided passing David but she deliberately brushed past him, allowing her long skirts to slap against his legs.

  Chapter 33

  Hugh woke with a sore, throbbing head. It was no worse than he had endured after a night of strong ale, so he counted himself as fortunate. Better yet, the bishop’s guards had filched his gold and brooches, and his dagger with the fine hilt, but they had reckoned him a drunk of quality. He had been brought to the donjon.

  Had Joanna seen him brought in? Was she safe? Had he been hauled before Bishop Thomas and then dragged up the tower staircase? His back and knees ached as if the devil himself had thrust long spikes into him. He could feel huge bruises on his arms and legs. His captors had not troubled to carry him much. He checked his teeth with his tongue: all there, which was a pity. He fancied having Joanna fuss over him with a gap-toothed mouth. He was still wearing the stacked boots, and his dyed chestnut hair must still be just as red; with that and his mazed head, he felt a stranger to himself.

  But he was in!

  He was inside the bailey of the bishop and inside the stone tower. A new hostage for Thomas, someone rich and foolish, for whom a noble family would pay handsomely. The plan was working: he had not been recognized as Hugh Manhill.

  If only Thomas knew.

  Hugh smirked, then regretted moving any part of his face as the thunderstorm in his brain shot lightning bolts up and down his body.

  “Lie quiet,” said a voice he knew, close to his ear. “The guard is yet within the chamber and he thinks you still dead to this world.”

  Hugh half opened his eyes and the dim light clawed at him. He was sprawled on a rough heap of bedding. Yes, the guards certainly thought him quality: they would have dropped a poor man onto the floor timbers in a corner. David, the brother who did not know him yet, was sitting on a stool beside his pallet, playing dice on top of another stool. Where was Joanna’s father? And Joanna herself?

  He tried to open his eyes a little more and decided it was easier for the moment to keep them closed.

  “Davey.” He whispered the name he had called his brother when they were boys. He could hear the faint rattle of the dice. “Davey.”

  David dropped the dice into the rushes between them. Scrabbling there gave him the chance to come closer.

  “How do you know my name? Are you a brother?”

  Hugh sensed his wary interest, but it pierced him that David should think him a fellow Templar, rather than a brother in true blood.

  “As a boy, you feared the moon would fall on your head. Nigel told you the moon was white because it needed blood and it was looking for a boy with golden curls to crush for blood. We both had light hair then.”

  He forced himself to open his eyes. “I am your other brother.”

  David looked as moon-crushed as any gold-haired lad. He looked as flattened as a beetle under a boot. With widening eyes and a gaping mouth, he pointed at Hugh’s hair, his padded cheeks, and reddened face.

  “My brother is not so tall, either!”

  “I have pads in my boots and Joanna changed the rest. Good, eh?”

  David swore some oath in Arabic and lurched to his feet. Hugh could feel the anger and despair of his brother pouring from him like smoke from a fire. He braced himself for more blows, hissing urgently, “’Tis no grief to me, what you cannot understand, Davey, but what of Joanna? How is she?”

  “Oh God.” David put his head in his hands. “God forgive me.”

  “What have you done?” Hugh demanded. His head pounded, feeling as if it was about to explode like an old cracked pot. His brother had done something: he had that closed-in, guilty look from boyhood. “David?”

  David lurched away, tottering as if he were the one who had been beaten. Sweating with alarm, trembling in every limb, Hugh forced his legs off the pallet, forced his body to rise, and promptly lost all sense again.

  Chapter 34

  In the chamber directly above the donjon hostage room and “prison” Joanna worked to produce aqua fortis, the “strong water” made from saltpeter and used in alchemy to dissolve all metals except gold. She needed the aqua fortis to break the door locks and, if needed, iron fetters.

  The sleeping potion and its antidote were ready. She would have to make certain that she and her father had the antidote, and Hugh, too, when he came. David she was less sure of, but if Hugh said she should give David the antidote, she would.

  Was Hugh here in the donjon? She did not know. Yesterday she had heard a commotion as a new prisoner was hauled up the stairs, but Richard Parvus happened to be with her, prowling and prodding everything he could stick his fat finger into without being burned. He had barred her chamber door with his broad body, silently daring her to ask him to move. Because she knew his response, she did not ask.

  Was the new prisoner Hugh? Hugh in disguise?

  She heard no news. Since she had tried to pass the note to her father—and thank nature she had used signs of alchemy in it, instead of words!—the guards had changed toward her. No one had said anything directly to her, but worse, they did not speak to her at all. The maids, too, must have been instructed not to gossip with her and now delivered her lukewarm meals in silence.

  “You should labor hard,” Richard Parvus told her, his round face shining with amusement. “Our lord grows weary of your lack of results.” He left soon after that, firmly closing the door after him.

  “David, you fool!” she roared into the unlit furnace. She longed to smash something, anything, but all was too valuable and she had no time to waste. Grimly, her hands still shaking with frustration, she set to her work again.

  “You stupid bastard!” Hugh was raging inside. His insides were molten and his temper roared. If Beowulf had been there, or one of the bishop’s alaunts, he would have cheerfully set the dogs on David. His wolfhound would be pining—he was pining for the good beast—and he was terrified at the thought of Joanna, pacing the floor above him, not knowing he was here, not sure now if she could trust the Manhills. “You utter, stupid, bastard, bastard idiot!”

  “The guards will hear you,” David said, hunched over the chess set.

  “They are outside, fool!”

  “And they will still hear you, with the rage you are making.” David had changed from his session in the prison pit, and not for the better. Where he had been easy in manner he was now surly and laconic, determined to be right in his mistake. “I thought Joanna returned to West Sarum for her father. I thought she had evaded you. I assumed she had forgotten me.”

  “Me, me—it is ever you, David. You are as bad as Nigel.” Hugh slapped his queen onto the next square. “Your king is dead,” he snarled. “I win.”

  “What if I am right?” David persisted, smug as only a Templar could be. “What if she has indeed changed sides?”

  “And if she has, brother, whose fault is that?”

  But now the door was opening and a guard approached: it was time to be the rich fool again. “Will you give me a match, sir?” Hugh asked, as if he had no care in the world. “Shall we wager on it?”

  “You have no money,” the guard answered, with a faint sneer.

  “My family will pay,” Hugh said, meaning it in quite a different way.

  Today was the final day that the Abbot of Glastonbury and his party were staying at the bishop’s palace. Close to the cages where the low-born or those deemed worthless were imprisoned, the abbot’s carts were being loaded. The bailey yard was filled with shouting youths and men, hurrying to put chests and clothes and church plate under cover before nightfall.

  Tomorrow the party of monks would lumber out of West Sarum and the bishop might remember her again. Worse, he could want her in his bed. W
orst of all, he could demand she turn all base metal into gold at once.

  The aqua fortis needed to dissolve the iron locks was condensing into a glass flask. Soon she would have enough.

  She checked over her supplies. Gloves, so she did not handle the acid. The “strong water” in its glass flask. Her pot of sleeping potion. Her pot of antidote. If she could somehow draw the guards into the chamber and give them the sleeping draught there, the aqua fortis might not be needed. She could perhaps filch the keys off the sleeping guards, unlock the door, then lock the guards inside—a nice revenge.

  Or should she wait until the guards were changing? Sometimes the new guards were slow to come to the donjon and there were no guards outside the chamber door, sometimes for as much as an hour. If that happened, she and her father could work on the locks and both of them be away—

  That will not work. You have thought this way months earlier and decided it would not work. There are too many other guards. If you should meet the new ones on the stairs or in the bailey yard, what then? You, a girl, and one old man cannot fight your way out.

  And what if David raised the alarm again? In that case, they might not even reach the ground floor of the donjon.

  There were now three guards, not two, a sign that a new prisoner was within the first-floor chamber. Was it Hugh?

  “I have to know,” Joanna said to herself, pulling her cloak over her shoulders and hiding the precious flasks in the unlit furnace. “Until I know that Hugh is indeed inside this prison, I dare not set our plan in motion. I cannot do this alone.”

  It was a bitter thing to admit, but it was the truth.

  “We need Joanna’s help,” Hugh told David. “I cannot work our flight alone.” It humbled him to acknowledge this, but it was no more than the truth. “I cannot ram my way through the door. Once she gets us out of this chamber, things will change.”