Throne of Darkness: A Novel

by Douglas Nicholas

  The dark man stepped forward swiftly and took Cecilia’s wrist in his left hand, keeping the arm out straight and stiff. Now half her forearm was still on the table and half was out past the edge. Almost immediately Jack’s huge right fist went up and came down like a hammer, just outside the table edge; there was a muted crack, and Cecilia’s eyes flew open. She gave a startled yelp, curiously muted, and at once her eyelids began to sink again.

  Elias was half out of his chair, but Hob put a brotherly arm about his shoulder, and urged him to sit back down.

  Molly was already manipulating the ends of the bone, lining them up by what she felt beneath her fingertips, while Nemain hovered with splints and bandages. Cecilia mumbled unintelligibly, apparently a protest, but without much conviction, and soon she subsided.

  In a very short time Molly was satisfied; she held the bones stable while Nemain splinted and bandaged and fastened with string, and soon the arm was held firm and slung from a shawl knotted about Cecilia’s neck. Cecilia herself was snoring gently, and Elias wiped a sleeve across his forehead, damp with fear and strong drink.

  With Jack’s and Hob’s help, Elias moved Cecilia into her bed, covered her, and after a last cup and a promise from Elias to call them if Cecilia was troubled in her sleep, Molly’s troupe repaired to the wagons for the night.

  • • •

  THE NEXT MORNING Cecilia was indeed in some pain. When the travelers came into the cottage, she was sitting at the table, cradling her arm in its sling and rocking slightly in place, while Elias and the children fussed about getting breakfast. Molly immediately placed a small jar in front of her, told Estrild to fetch a cup, and poured Cecilia a draft. After that the goodwife seemed easier, while Molly and Nemain took control of the kitchen, and soon all had breakfast before them, and were quietly eating.

  After they had eaten, Hob and Jack got the animals hitched up, and Molly gave Elias jars of embrocation and of pain’s-ease for Cecilia, and instructed him in their use, and murmured words of encouragement to Cecilia, and kissed her and kissed each of the children. Then she said to Cecilia, “Your other hand, is it working well?”

  Cecilia, a bit puzzled, said, “Why, yes, Mistress Molly, ’tis well.”

  “Let us see, child, let us see,” said Molly, gesturing for Cecilia to hold out her hand.

  The woman put her hand out, palm up, to Molly. Molly took Cecilia’s wrist in her hand. “Let me see you close it, a rún.”

  The goodwife did so, her puzzled expression giving way to real bewilderment.

  “Now open it,” said Molly, and as soon as she was obeyed, she produced a soft deerskin purse from within her robes and placed it on Cecilia’s palm. “And now close it, and we’re done.”

  Cecilia closed her hand and Molly released her wrist. From the way her hand dipped, Hob could see that the purse was rather heavy.

  “But—”

  “Hush, now,” said Molly, and kissed Cecilia’s cheek, bent to embrace each of the children, patted Elias’s shoulder, and led her little family out the door and to their places on the wagons. She waved to the weir-keeper and his children, standing in their doorway.

  “Away on!”

  • • •

  “DID YOU HEAR what Master Elias said about that pile of bones, Mistress? It reminded me of what Monsignor da Panzano said, about the strength of those, uh, hyenas; their strength in the jaws,” said Hob as they trundled along, perhaps a mile down the road.

  “I did, and myself not wanting to show too much interest, but I had the same thought, and ’twas well that you asked, and twice well that you observed the bone pile so closely, and you coming back nearly in darkness.”

  “Does it mean that the hyena-men are scavenging on the battlefields, then, Mistress?”

  “ ’Tis worse: it’s meaning that they are skirmishing with the Northern barons’ knights, and destroying them. The king is winning in two ways: he reduces his enemies, and feeds his monsters the human meat they need, both at the same time. Otherwise he’d have to start feeding them English peasants, and I would think that that would be noticed, surely, and king or no king, he’d be swept from his throne.”

  They went along for a while longer with no sound but the plodding of the ox’s great hooves, the creaking of wood from the wagons, the rush of wind through the trackside trees, and then Hob, mulling over the events of the last days, asked, “Mistress, that leather bag that you gave to Mistress Cecilia—what was in it?”

  “ ’Twas enough coin to make them rich, for they gave to us when they had so little.”

  • • •

  IN THE VILLAGES for a few miles up and down the river, years and years later, a tale persisted, a tale told around the smoky comforting warmth of peat fires in the little cottages: how two queens of the Fae, and their handsome prince, and their demon servant, visited a humble cot by the weir, and were given lodging for the night; how they healed the goodwife with their magic; how they vanished the next morning, leaving behind them bags of silver.

  CHAPTER 13

  THEY CAME TO CHESTER IN midafternoon. They had come in on a road that ran slightly to the north of the city, and so had been forced to turn and come down perhaps a mile, and enter the North Gate. Hob was enjoying the walk: the trees beginning to sway in a freshening breeze; the scent of growing things; Milo’s steady pace.

  Chester was a city as York was a city, but much smaller. The troupe made its way with little hindrance through the streets to the banks of the river Dee. The sun-glare rippled on the surface of the water; swifts skimmed along above the river, then with piercing cries spiralled up toward the high air. Here Chester Castle crouched, a guard against the ever-volatile Welsh. It was the stronghold of Ranulf de Blundeville, the sixth Earl of Chester, one of King John’s few loyalists among the nobility.

  The troupe’s stated business, seeking employment as musicians, earned them admission to the outer bailey, but only after a thorough search of the wagons by alert and professionally suspicious guards. Sweetlove objected to any stranger entering what she now considered her wagon, and advanced, barking and snarling, on one sentry as he poked inside Jack’s wagon, until Jack caught up with her and scooped her up under his arm, whence she mumbled complaints and maledictions until the search was over.

  At last they were waved through into the expanse of the outer bailey, where they were able to find a senior page, a young man named Aubric, to direct them. The stables were backed up against one side of the curtain wall, a complex of three interlinked outbuildings. Molly’s troupe was shown where to put the wagons, wheels chocked, nestled against a nearby stretch of blank wall. The draft animals, Milo and Tapaigh and Mavourneen, were settled comfortably in the stables, and Sweetlove locked in the small wagon.

  Aubric was distracted for a moment; a young page needed to ask something, and the two conferred a short distance away, the boy’s high piping voice carrying indistinctly to the troupe. Hob looked a question at Nemain, but she shrugged. He took a moment to look around: across the expanse of grass with its grazing sheep and milk cows, a carter and his helper, high up on the wooden driver’s seat of a heavy supply wain, were trundling up to the inner gatehouse; a small boy with a long cane was herding ducks toward a pond near the inner bailey wall; and there, stretching the length of one wall of the outer bailey, were the white tents of the Cousins. Some lean-tos and improvised wooden huts had been fitted with small brick forges and with anvils, and here there was a constant wheeze of bellows, and a ringing as of many bells, as the swarthy men of the desert made play with their hammers, perhaps thirty at once, fashioning sword-blades, knives, ax blades, the murderous socketed heads of partisans and halberds.

  And here came Aubric again, done with his little subordinate. He conducted them through the gatehouse into the inner bailey and pointed them toward an annex where they would be heard and judged fit for the castle’s entertainment, or not.

  “Ask for Magister Percival,” he said; and so, carrying their instruments—the women each wit
h a claírseach, an Irish harp, Jack with the bodhran, a goatskin drum, and Hob with his symphonia, all in soft leather cases—they walked over to the indicated outbuilding, a substantial stone-and-timber structure that connected with the keep by a long enclosed walkway. Within, they found themselves in a large hall, with benches all around the walls, interrupted only by the doorway and by two arches: one leading to the passage ending at the keep, the other to a long corridor with smaller rooms on either side.

  They sat for some time on a bench, the instruments at their feet. Across the hall floor a troupe of acrobats tumbled and leaped, formed human pyramids, turned somersaults in tandem. Down at one end were five singers, heads leaned together, singing in harmony, each with the vacant look of one listening intently rather than watching, listening to his own voice while following those of his comrades: seasonal hymns, to be sung in the castle’s chapel.

  A young man, dressed in the Earl of Chester’s livery, said merely, “Come with me; bring your instruments.”

  Down the corridor, its floors of dressed stone still wet from recent washing, to a side room, its walls of wood stained dark and polished with beeswax—a faint honey scent lingered in the air—and benches on two sides of the room. On one sat a man in early middle age.

  “Mistress Molly out of Ireland,” said the page, and turning to the troupe: “This is Magister Percival; he will hear you play.” He withdrew, pulling a heavy tapestry across the archway, effectively muffling the faint sounds of the singers in the main hall.

  Magister Percival did not rise. He gestured them to the bench opposite his. Hob saw a lean man, bald but for a fringe of salt-and-pepper hair. He had somber heavy-lidded blue eyes, a strong nose, a mouth whose tight-pressed lips somehow managed to express disappointment with the world. A prominent vein snaked up each temple.

  “Play for me,” he said.

  “What would you hear, Master?” asked Molly.

  “What you will,” said Magister Percival, and he leaned back against the wall, crossing his legs and lacing his long fingers around his knees.

  Molly and Nemain consulted a moment, then Molly signaled to Jack and Hob to remain silent. She rested her claírseach on her shoulder, and began to play. After a few phrases Nemain’s harp joined hers, weaving notes in and around Molly’s main melody. The piece was a simple Irish country air, which, as the two women developed it, grew more complex; each time they circled around to the beginning of the refrain they added more and more grace notes and connective runs, till at last there was a bewildering rain of notes, all in perfect agreement, all advancing the main melody.

  Magister Percival did not interrupt, though the piece was not short, and when they had finished, although his expression did not alter by much, he nodded at them. Then:

  “Can you play for dancers?”

  Molly signaled to Jack and Hob, and they struck up a dance, Jack tapping and booming, Hob spinning out the melody line of a carola on his symphonia, while his drone strings purred below and the harps gamboled above. After that they performed an estampie, and then Jack and Hob put down their instruments and Molly and Nemain sang in Irish to their harps.

  At last Magister Percival clapped his hands, once, sharply, signifying that the audience was at an end. The page reentered and stood against the door, waiting.

  “You will be in readiness to perform this evening for my lord the Earl of Chester,” Magister Percival said. “Till then you may refresh yourselves—Guillaume will show you to the quarters where the performers may eat and rest. We expect a visit from the king in a few days, and I would have you play before him—I will say to you that I have not heard a better performance in a score of years. If you are well received by the king, there will be quarters for you until you are no longer needed.”

  “If it please you, master, we have our own travel wagons in which to lodge, over by the stables.”

  “As it suits you. Only be prepared when Guillaume comes for you to play.” He nodded to the page, who bowed to him, then beckoned for Molly and her companions to follow him, and with that, they had access to the castle, and to the bailey where the Cousins worked their forges.

  CHAPTER 14

  GUILLAUME SHOWED THEM TO A refectory where they were served hare cooked with wine and onions, slices of roast pork, coarse dark bread, and Rhenish wine. The acrobats were there, eating heartily and arguing amiably; gusts of laughter periodically swept their table. Hob gathered, from snatches of their conversation, that they had been accepted as part of the resident entertainers, and had hope of continuing patronage from the Earl of Chester.

  After Molly’s troupe had finished eating, Jack took out a small cloth and wrapped some of the meat and bread in it, and they returned to the wagons to await Guillaume’s summons. The women retuned their harps, and Jack unwrapped his cloth and fed Sweetlove from it, one morsel at a time, the small dog sitting politely beside him on a chest, accepting each tidbit graciously. Hob resined the wooden wheel on his symphonia.

  The women changed into the gowns they wore when at castles such as Blanchefontaine or Chantemerle. Jack and Hob had sets of clothing finer than their usual belted linen overshirts and wool hose—Hob’s had to be altered on almost a monthly basis, as he came into his full strength under Jack’s instruction, new muscle growing to his bones day by day.

  They had barely finished, and fitted the instruments into their soft leather carrying cases, when Guillaume rapped smartly on the wagon door, and announced, “Messieurs, mesdames, it is time.” They swung down from the wagon, Jack handing instruments down to Hob, and trooped after the page.

  They passed again through the gatehouse to the inner bailey. This gatehouse was a squat square tower, its entrance a pointed arch formed from three courses of brickwork; the passage through the gatehouse echoed to the sounds of their footsteps. There was the usual strong smell of horse; the women lifted their gowns, and the men watched where they walked, in order to avoid the occasional horse droppings.

  Bored guards ignored the troupe once they saw that Guillaume was conducting them. Twin yetts, iron grilles, one at each end of the passageway, were drawn up in their slots to allow free movement; they could be dropped at a moment’s notice if there was an alarm.

  The troupe entered the building where they had played before Magister Percival, and Guillaume preceded them down the corridor that led to the keep. Where the passage ended at the keep wall, an iron door of modest size but great thickness was flanked by two hard-eyed guards who, Guillaume or no Guillaume, took their time before passing them through.

  The leather cases were opened and the instruments drawn partially out and returned. Jack and Hob were examined for anything larger than their daggers, which doubled as utensils at dinner. One of the guards made to search the women’s gowns, but Molly gave him such a withering look that he decided it was unnecessary.

  Guillaume said, with a certain asperity, “Magister Percival awaits them; they are to play immediately,” and with that one of the guards swung about and fitted a heavy iron key into the bulky lock. It turned with a clank and he had to put his shoulder into it to move the door inward. Along a narrow passage, up a winding ill-lit turret stairwell, and here was a short broad corridor with a curtained archway on one side.

  Magister Percival stood by the arch, and when he saw them he lifted the heavy door hanging to one side and gestured for them to enter. Once through the arch, Hob saw that they were in a small unlit gallery overhanging the main hall; the three projecting walls were a carved screen of some fragrant wood. The torches of the main hall cast a wavering golden light through the screen’s openings, enough for the musicians to play by, but keeping the gallery dim enough to conceal those within from those below. Percival indicated chairs and murmured to Molly a general program of some dances interspersed with soothing music to accompany the diners without distracting them.

  Hob, waiting to begin, thought that it was an ideal place for an assassin with a bow to lurk, seeing without being seen. He looked around. Sitting
quietly in the corners were two men-at-arms: the Earl of Chester was evidently not one to leave safety to chance.

  And now Molly nodded to Jack, and the goatskin drum boomed out, and they were off in a lively rendition of a ductia. After that they played for a long time, Molly calling in a hushed voice to tell them what to play next.

  At times when the symphonia was not called for, Hob inclined a little closer to the screen. The openwork design of the screen left many openings, and through them he could see the upper side of the hall and, by moving about a bit, some of the rest. It made a brave sight, with its three hearths, the colorful tapestries and war banners draped on the whitewashed plaster of the walls, the artfully displayed collection of pole arms and of shields with their escutcheons. There was the usual bench and trestle-table seating for the castle folk and those tenants dining there this evening, and on a dais at the head of the room, the high table, where sat the castle’s knights and their wives, important guests, and Earl Ranulf himself with his family. On the wall behind the high table was an oversized silk banner with the coat of arms of the Earl of Chester, a shield with three garbs, or sheafs of wheat, gold on a field of blue.

  The earl himself proved to be a small man in his midforties, sturdily made, confident, and, from what Hob could see, an accomplished wit: the table was often set laughing at something he had said.

  Soon Hob was called upon to play again; when next he had the opportunity to observe the hall, the earl had retired, and the high table was half-empty. Molly and her troupe were excused for the rest of the evening by Magister Percival, and they returned to the wagons.

  • • •

  THE NEXT DAY Hob and Nemain took a moment to look in on Milo and the other animals. Hob went into the stall, the ox turning his head and snuffling with pleasure; Hob brushed him and inspected his ears, and generally made reassuring sounds, so that the enormous beast might know that all was well despite the strangers’ feeding and grooming him. He felt rather foolish about this, but still—they were not often apart, and the ox seemed to depend upon him in some way. And Jack took good care of Tapaigh, and Nemain—Nemain treated the little ass Mavourneen as though it were a pet. Nonetheless, Hob felt that Sir Balthasar would be scornful of his tenderness. When Nemain opened the stall door, his murmured endearments stopped immediately. He put down the brush and stepped out to join her.