The other knights also stood and raised their wine to Molly, who stood by the window with the light finding silver wavelets in the gray flood of her hair, and acknowledged their praise with the slightest inclination of her head.
Hob and Jack and Nemain also stood, and drank to she on whom they all depended.
And then there were salutes to Queen Nemain, and to Squire Robert, and to Master Jack Brown, for their parts in saving the Northern nobles from a ghastly end.
Nemain alone was not drinking wine, but saluted with her cup of tea brewed from herbs that Molly collected as they traveled. Hob noticed it; suddenly he could not remember when she had last drunk anything stronger than mint tea, or well water. It was odd, and—
Jehan broke into his thoughts. “There’s war coming, soon or late though it be, and Balthasar and I must return to Blanchefontaine—I wish to see how the crops are coming along, and I have not held court in far too long, and we will be delighted to see Lady Isabeau and Dame Aline again. I trust you will come with us, madam?” This last was to Molly.
“We will that,” said Molly.
“But before that,” said Sir Jehan, “there is this that we must do.”
Sir Balthasar stood, and went into the next room, returning with a large burlap sack, such as might be used on campaign in a supply wagon, so capacious that its folds concealed any hint of what it contained. In his brusque way, he dropped the bundle without ceremony on the end of the table. He drew out a scabbarded sword, a gold-buckled belt, golden spurs.
“Squire Robert,” said Sir Jehan formally, “no one here can doubt your courage, your good faith; you have killed men, one of them fairly described as a giant; you have killed a sorcerer; and you have killed a monster from some pit of Hell. Sir Balthasar says he has never had a more apt pupil. Kneel before him.”
Hob, taken all unawares—he knew he was to be knighted someday, but this had been kept a surprise from him—went down on one knee before the grim castellan. Sir Balthasar, without ceremony, pulled the sword from its sheath, banged the flat down on Hob’s left shoulder and then on his right; nor were they love taps. Hob felt them, and was sore for a few days afterward.
“Rise, Sir Robert,” growled Sir Balthasar, sheathing the sword again.
Hob, the blood singing in his ears, rose. The huge castellan knelt before him, causing Hob no end of embarrassment, and fastened the spurs about his ankles. Then he threaded the gold-buckled belt through the scabbard loops, and strapped the sword to Hob’s side. He embraced Hob, saying “Welcome, brother,” and stepped back, and here came Sir Jehan and Sir Odinell to do the same.
“Both Sir Odinell and myself offer you service, if you wish to swear fealty to either of us,” said Sir Jehan.
Hob—Sir Robert, now—looked at the lord of Blanchefontaine. “I thank you both, sirs. But I cannot swear to either; there is one to whom I must swear, and that is Queen Maeve.”
“We thought as much, but wished to make the offer,” said Sir Jehan. Sir Balthasar drew from his belt pouch a small crucifix, and handed it to Hob.
Hob had studied the forms of knighthood and the swearing of allegiance. Although it felt strange, it did not feel ludicrous, for him to pledge formally to the woman who had raised him from child to knight. She was Molly, but she was also Queen Maeve, and a more powerful woman had rarely walked the earth.
He went to Molly and knelt before her, the cross between his two palms, and said the old words. “I am at thy service, madam. I swear, upon Our Savior and this cross, that I will always be a faithful vassal to thee and to thy successors in all things in which a vassal is required to be faithful to his lord, and I will defend thee, my lady, and all thy successors, and all thy castles and manors and all thy men and their possessions against all malefactors and invaders, at my own cost and of my own free will, so help me God and His saints.”
“Rise, Sir Robert,” said Molly, not a bit troubled by Hob’s oath being sworn on a cross. He stood and she embraced him, and kissed him on both cheeks. Then, the mother overwhelming the queen for a moment, she straightened the scabbard on his sword-belt, muttering to herself “There, that’s better” almost inaudibly.
“To Sir Robert,” said Sir Jehan, raising his goblet, and this was echoed by all, and Hob stood there, extremely happy but for his fear that he would blush in front of the company.
He looked around him: everyone was smiling, even Sir Balthasar, although that grim knight’s smile rather resembled the expression one sees on a wolf, just before it springs.
Sir Odinell turned to Sir Jehan, and said, “As anxious as you are to return to Blanchefontaine, brother, ’twill have to be the day after tomorrow, for tonight we will have a great feast to honor our new knight, and on the morrow I trust you will have neither desire nor capacity to travel.”
• • •
WHEN THE MEETING had concluded some time later, Sir Odinell drew Hob aside, and said, “Sir Robert, there is something I would have you see. Come with me, if you please.”
Hob had been a knight as long as it might take Milo to walk a league, and here was the Sieur de Chantemerle addressing him as “Sir Robert” and, more significantly, asking his cooperation—“if you please”—where before he might just have told the young man to come with him. Hob was not his vassal, but one did not easily refuse a lord in his own castle. To be treated as an equal by a man approaching middle age, and a knight, and a lord of extensive lands, was dizzying.
He followed Sir Odinell down the winding stone stairs to the hall, and thence to the outside stairway to the bailey. The men-at-arms at the little gatehouse at the bottom of the stairs threw bolts and hauled open the door to the outside; they saluted Sir Odinell and then they saluted Hob, with his knight’s belt and his spurs. The day was fair, and Sir Odinell’s bald head with its fringe of graying hair gleamed in the sunlight. He put an arm about Hob’s shoulder and steered him toward the stables.
Hob was acutely conscious of the longsword in its scabbard swinging against his left leg, and he put his hand on the hilt to still it. They crossed the beaten earth of the bailey. Against a far wall the dog grooms were working with Sir Odinell’s pack of Irish wolfhounds, descendants of the pair Sir Jehan had given him. In the other direction housecarls had strung a line between two poles set in the dirt, and were beating some of the castle’s tapestries with wooden paddles in which holes had been cut; small clouds of dust arose and were whirled away by eddies of the endless breezes whistling in from the German Sea.
And here they were at the stables, outbuildings stretching along half the length of the northern curtain wall. They stepped into sudden gloom, cool after the sun-warmed bailey. Here was a long corridor divided into stalls, some of them large enough for more than one animal. They went along the corridor, the air rich with the warm salt smell of horse, the sweet nose-tickling scent of hay, the ammoniac bite of urine. Away down toward the far end a groom called something unintelligible to one of his mates; the answer, even farther away, was as faint as an echo.
Sir Odinell stopped before a large enclosure, perhaps three stalls’ worth, with a chest-high board wall in front of it. Within were a groom as well as a large mare and her colt; the big-boned mare was black, but the colt—Hob leaned forward eagerly, a hope growing in his heart. The colt had a soft halter on it, and the groom led it over to the front wall. Hob reached over, felt the warm neck, the soft nose; the colt whickered a little and pushed against his hand, perhaps moved by some nursing instinct. It was a beautiful gray, the color of dull steel on a cloudy afternoon.
“My lord, that colt—it resembles your . . .”
“You have the right of it, Sir Robert: this mare is Larmes; her colt here is the get of my destrier, Ferraunt. I know you have admired him, and especially his color, so like steel it is, and fortunately the colt takes his color from his sire. We will train him up for you, and he is yours.”
Hob was leaning into the stall, stroking the small velvet nose. “My lord, this is too—”
Sir O
dinell broke in, putting a hand to Hob’s shoulder: “Sir Robert, consider. Everyone in this castle owes life itself to you and your family, and our gratitude will never fade. This is but a little gift; your gift to us was the greater. Let us have no more protests; ’tis your destrier, and I wish you joy of him.”
“I thank you, my lord.”
The colt pushed at him, breathing warm air into his palm, tickling him. Hob smiled at the earnest little face. A destrier of his own! The colt sneezed against his palm, reminding him of Milo, and he had to laugh.
CHAPTER 38
FIRELIGHT AND TORCHLIGHT and candlelight: it seemed to Hob that the great hall of Castle Chantemerle was more brightly lit than ever he had seen it. If Molly’s wagons were what he considered his home, and Castle Blanchefontaine his second home, surely Chantemerle was his third, another place where Molly’s troupe was assured of a lifelong welcome, and a refuge, strong not only in its walls but in the knights and men-at-arms in residence there, each of whom was cognizant of the little family’s role as their saviors: saviors from a particularly horrid evil.
This goodwill, this gratitude for their deliverance, which was accomplished primarily by Molly and Nemain but in which Jack and Hob were essential partners, perhaps contributed to the exuberance with which folk were celebrating Hob’s elevation to knighthood.
He had reluctantly laid his sword and golden spurs aside for the feast, but of course one wore the belt of knighthood. He was in the seat of honor at Sir Odinell’s right hand. To Hob’s right was Sir Odinell’s daughter, Mistress Eloise, now a young lady of fourteen years. Around the table on the dais were the rest of Hob’s family; Dame Maysaunt, Sir Odinell’s wife; and Chantemerle’s household knights. The long trestle tables and benches of the lower hall were filled with the castle folk: men-at-arms, housecarls, servants of all kinds—everyone not on duty. So tight-knit a community, working and eating and sleeping within the same walls, is itself like a large clan, and although they might not be privy to each last detail, they knew in general that the horror that had come to prey upon this stretch of the German Sea coast in past years had been destroyed by Molly’s folk, and they were happy to see Hob’s advancement.
The chefs had outdone themselves. Dish followed dish—chicken and rice cooked in almond milk and sugar; the poached dumplings known as quenelles, some made with veal, some with herring; and later, sculptures of ships, of castles, of miniature jousting knights, all made of sugar. Pitchers of good red wine were constantly replenished, and there were various punches, apple cider, perry. Hob—he found it hard to think of himself just yet as Sir Robert—was enjoying himself, eating and drinking with great gusto, listening to Sir Odinell’s tales of campaigns that he and Sir Jehan had been on together and to Mistress Eloise’s anecdotes about her adored wolfhounds.
Mistress Eloise had been a girl of perhaps eleven when Sir Jehan, having acquired two litters of wolfhound pups from Ireland, had given Sir Odinell a male and a female, one from each litter. Mistress Eloise had promptly named them Erec and Enide, after the characters in her favorite romance. Sir Odinell had let her have them as pets till they grew to adulthood, and one or the other was still her constant companion. They were the parents of the wolfhounds Hob had seen being trained in the bailey.
Between Hob and Eloise lolled an enormous brindle-furred shape: Enide, the matriarch of Sir Odinell’s pack. Sir Odinell would jest that Eloise needed no guard—there was always one of the fiercely devoted dogs within arm’s reach of her. Now Eloise took a morsel of beef from her trencher and held it below the table. Enide, lying on her side, lazily lifted up head and shoulder, daintily took it in her wolf-killer jaws, and lay back down, chewing dreamily.
Now came the moment Hob had been dreading: Sir Odinell rose, called for attention, and embarked on a speech, not overlong, detailing Hob’s virtues, while Hob, acutely embarrassed, found the whole hall looking at him as he was showered with praise. Then Sir Jehan rose and did the same, and even Sir Balthasar growled his way through a discourse on how much Hob had exceeded his other pupils in the arts of murder.
And worst of all: the cry went up for a speech from Hob himself. Afterward he was never sure what exactly he had said—gratitude to Sir Jehan and Sir Odinell, for their instruction in the conduct of knights, and to Sir Balthasar, his especial teacher for the Norman martial arts, and then he spoke of techniques shown him by Molly and Nemain, and Jack, who had taught him both how to become strong and various useful, if somewhat low, sleights to use in combat. Somehow he managed to acquit himself reasonably well—Molly herself told him afterward that he seemed both calm and polished, which he found ludicrous but was nonetheless relieved to hear.
Sir Odinell had two jugglers, and musicians—none so good as Molly’s troupe, thought Hob—and a troubadour from the Continent who performed a long section from Aucassin et Nicolette.
Finally, when at last the speeches and pledges and healths had been exhausted; when Mistress Eloise had gathered up Enide’s leash, kissed her parents good-night and Hob as well, and wandered off to bed; when most of the lower hall had cleared; when Sir Balthasar and Sir Odinell were deep in a technical discussion concerning the crossbreeding of horses; and the only ones still drinking hard were the younger castle knights, Hob said his farewells and went down the table to join Nemain.
She took his hand and rose and, in turning, staggered a bit; she put a hand to the table to steady herself, knocking over her goblet, spilling the little left in the vessel across the layers of cloth draped over the table. Hob steadied her, and they began to make their way along the table. Hob was thinking idly that Nemain must have drunk deeply: usually she was as agile as a cat.
This drew his gaze back over his shoulder to the goblet lying flat on the table, and the cloth there, unstained, wet but colorless—Nemain had been drinking well water, and not wine.
He had barely time to be puzzled when here came Daniel, Sir Odinell’s seneschal and a friend, with his young wife, Hawis, and another round of congratulations began, and for the moment the incident of the goblet of water was forgotten.
CHAPTER 39
ON THE SECOND DAY AFTER the feast, in the predawn darkness, Hob was breaking his fast in the troupe’s solar. This was one of Hob’s favorite places when they were guests in Sir Odinell’s castle: high rooms in one of the seaward towers of Castle Chantemerle’s keep, with a clear view out across the German Sea. The table held honey beer, hard rolls, and the sheep’s-milk blue cheese brought up from Yorkshire, the work of the monks at Jervaulx Abbey. Molly’s little family were all ready to take the road; it remained only to hitch up the animals and form up in the bailey with Sir Jehan’s party, and they were off to Castle Blanchefontaine.
Nemain had picked at her roll, and had drunk only mint tea brewed from leaves Molly had gathered, and looked out the window at the slowly lightening sky. Suddenly she got up and, excusing herself, hurriedly left the solar. Hob looked after her, surprised. The sea wind rattled the shutters a bit; gulls mewed; and suddenly a dark cold shadow swept across his life.
He had seen Nemain, with Molly, engage in a battle of will and magecraft with a sorcerer at least as powerful as Yattuy, if not more powerful, a battle that lasted from the middle part of the night until dawn. Yet the Berber had overwhelmed her. And her appetite had been waxing and waning for some time now. And today, if he read her sudden departure correctly, she could not even keep her breakfast down.
Hob considered Nemain’s cup of mint tea, and her digestion, so sensitive of late that she could not face the thought of wine. He was worried. She seemed a bit weak, and weary, she who had always been so active, a slim and formidable warrior. Yet she looked healthy, even robust: she had gained a bit of weight this summer, and her bosom had swelled, so that she seemed to be flourishing, and yet was tired and irritable.
It was one of those moments when a host of small observations, having plucked at one’s sleeve again and again, and having been ignored in the face of more pressing demands, suddenly ris
e up to block the path ahead. He turned to Molly.
“Mistress!”
“Aye, Sir Robert?”
He ignored Molly’s attempt at a pleasantry; he was imagining all sorts of terrible explanations for what afflicted Nemain, and who better to turn to than Molly, that wise woman?
“Mistress, what, what is it that ails Nemain? She—is she— She is ill, is she not?”
Molly put her hand to her face and turned away for a moment, and Hob’s heart began to pound at the back of his throat. Jack’s face was, if anything, more expressionless than usual, and he seemed very involved in scratching behind Sweetlove’s ears.
Sweetlove began to growl, looking at the door to the solar, and just then Nemain, very pale, opened the door, and the little dog, recognizing her, subsided. Nemain went to the table. She had washed her face at one of the castle’s fountains, where the cold water ran down to each floor from tanks on the roof, and her pale face was not quite dry: it had a slight sheen of moisture to it.
She took her cup and went to the seaward window seat. She sat, sipped, swirled the mint tea around her mouth; she leaned out the tower window and delicately spat the tea into the German Sea, crashing so far below into the headland on which the castle sat.
Out there, past the saltwater vastness, the sun began to breach the rim of the world; a river of fire burned along the surface of the German Sea from the horizon to the castle; the dawn breeze began to blow, rippling the edges of Nemain’s veil. She took it off and, here in the privacy of her family, pulled pins from her hair and let the incoming salt air blow it back from her face.
The sunrise cleared the windowsill; the new rays struck red flame from her hair; her still-damp face glowed white. She was gazing out over the water, and Hob looked from her to Molly. Fear for her gnawed like a badger at his heart.
But Molly was still turned away from Hob, her face partially hid in her hand. Now she said, “Nemain, mo chroí.” Hob’s concern grew as he heard the quaver in the older woman’s voice. “Your husband here is fearful for your health, and he’s after asking me what ails you, and I about to tell him, but ’tis your place and not mine to tell him what troubles you.”
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