The Ravens’ Banquet

by Clifford Beal

  “That was not the point, brother,” I said, wearily. “Do not think that I take these actions merely as an expedient to end my life.”

  “That seems to me exactly what you’re doing,” he shot back. “For it would appear each and every step you have taken brings us to your self-destruction. I rue my own role in your desperate affair.” He turned away again. “I am sorry Richard. Sorry and sore pained that I’ve been unable to guide you to a more sensible course.”

  My hand gently enfolded Anya’s charm that yet hung from my breast. A talisman made of small flowers, a few words, and a gipsy’s magic twenty years ago in a faraway land. I pushed back my chair and, knees cracking, stood up. With hot pain lancing my thigh, I made my way to William at the window, a fresh breeze wafting in to meet me, and placed my hand on his shoulder.

  “Dear brother, it is I that must thank you with all my heart. Your steadfastness has gotten me what I wanted.”

  A weak smile drew up the corners of his mouth. “What is that then, an adventurous death with honour intact?”

  I shook my head. “All I ask for is judgment… true judgment without betrayal as its bedfellow. Believe me; I will acquit myself well when the time comes, bad leg or no.”

  “Faith, I do not understand you, Richard. Have you so much blind love for those that rule the King’s mind that you would take their punishment for them?”

  “It’s for a long collection of sin that I now seek judgment. And this is the best place for it. If God wills it, then I will survive.”

  William smiled thinly again. “You’re sounding more like a Puritan in your old age, brother. I had not taken you for a Calvinist.”

  I had to laugh a little, recognising even as I did so that it was the first real mirth I had felt in an age. “You cut me to the quick. I had never entertained the notion. Perhaps, if I do manage to leave this place, you’ll find me shouting hellfire from atop a barrelhead at Charing Cross.”

  “I only pray that you do manage to leave this place – alive,” replied my brother, sombre once again.

  I turned from the window and limped to the little oaken table.

  “The journal that you have asked me about. It sits here,” I told him, laying a hand upon the mound of paper. “I want you to take it with you once I leave here to go to the Green. It shall be for your eyes alone and no one else’s. And when you’ve read it, and seen through my eyes, you must burn it.”

  William’s brow creased.

  “Aye, burn it,” I repeated. “It’s enough for me that only one other soul knows what I think... and what I have done. Perhaps, afterwards, you will even understand my heart.”

  William moved to my side and grasped my arm. Grasped it with a brotherly warmth that gladdened me and saddened me both. For it was a great pity that such a gesture had taken a lifetime to come to pass.

  “I will do as you ask,” he said. “And I will give you my trust that what you now do is the right course for you.”

  “Brother, there is no single path to redemption if such a thing exists. But Time and Fortune have led me this way to make amends… to set a balance to things.”

  I turned to the table where my confessional lay, a scribbled adventure, smudged with ink, wax, and tears these long weeks gone by. “Let not my wife read this thing,” I told him. “It’s a tale that will only confound and vex her needlessly. And do look after her and the children if things go ill. I served her not well these past years, I know that. My head and heart were often long distant even though I stood at her side.”

  My brother’s eyes glistened when he spoke. “That such hard times would bring us together again after so many foolish years of bitterness,” he said. “It’s a small solace, but a solace nonetheless.”

  I smiled at him. “Aye, a solace nonetheless. Let us at least both take that with us from this place.”

  My hand folded again around Anya’s charm, and the face of my blue-eyed gipsy woman came back to me, as real as life and like yesterday.

  This is a charm that I have made. Keep it upon your person always and it will preserve you from harm.

  “I am ready, brother. Come what may.”

  About the Author

  Clifford Beal, originally from Providence, Rhode Island, worked for 20 years as an international journalist and is the former editor-in-chief of Jane’s Defence Weekly in London. He is the author of Quelch’s Gold (Praeger Books 2007), the true story of a little-known but remarkable early 18th century Anglo-American pirate as well as Gideon's Angel (Solaris 2013).