Keeper of the Dream

by Penelope Williamson

  “Traitor,” Henry spat, and swinging back his left arm, he backhanded Raine across the face. The king had on a leather gauntlet studded with mail and the sharp metal sliced through Raine’s cheek, laying it open.

  Raine’s body shuddered from the pain of the blow, but his reason barely knew that it had happened. His gaze was on the girl who lay unmoving on the rough moorland grass.

  Henry’s lips peeled back from his teeth in a sneer. “Strike off the spurs of this poor knight and then he will be a knight no more.”

  A man stepped forward with his sword and hacked off Raine’s spurs, the symbol of his knighthood. The man’s sword cut through the leather of Raine’s boots so close to his heels he drew blood, but Raine felt nothing. His gaze had not left the body lying in the grass.

  When they dragged him away to tie him to the wheel of the cart that would carry him to prison and a traitor’s death in London, he twisted his head around for one last sight of her.

  Someone emerged from the woods, leading a horse. Sunlight glinted off red hair. At least, he thought, Taliesin would see that she was taken home.

  27

  Hamo, the rat catcher, sat at a ring-marked table in his favorite tavern, feeling good and making his third cup of ale last for a while. He liked coming to the Crooked Staff. The ale here didn’t taste like cow’s piss and most of the whores still had at least some of their teeth. But tonight he wasn’t interested in either the whores or the ale.

  He was fascinated by a girl who sat huddled on a bench in a far corner. She nursed a cup of ale in her hands, though she had yet to drink from it. Her gaze was fastened on the door and each time it opened up to the misting night, she straightened, only to sag back with disappointment when it didn’t yield whoever it was she waited for.

  She wasn’t any whore—he had two good eyes and he could see that. Not only was the mantle she wore of good Welsh wool, but she had an air about her. It wasn’t unusual for quality to wind up in a place like the Crooked Staff. Taverns here in the stews of Southwark often got those travelers who arrived after sunset and so weren’t able to pass through the gate into Londontown.

  Hamo had just picked up his ale and sidled over to the girl, thinking to strike up a little conversation, when again the door opened and again she sat up … and stayed up this time. Hamo turned to see just who it was that had brought about that look of immense relief on the girl’s face. He was a young man, a boy really, with long coppery curls and a swaggering way about him.

  As the boy came up to the girl, Hamo took a step, planting himself in the boy’s way.

  “Excuse me,” the boy said, in a sweet, musical voice.

  He was pretty as a lass and near enough to a babe to still be pissing in his swaddling cloths. But there was something strange about his eyes, a light glowed in them, kind of like a candle shining through a shell. One slender, white hand rested on the hilt of quillon dagger that just might have seen some use here and there.

  Hamo shifted aside, letting the boy pass. Hell, no wench was worth getting his guts spilled over.

  Taliesin dropped down onto the bench beside Arianna, blowing a lock of hair out of his eyes. “Whew, what a hellhole this place is.” He looked around him, his nose quivering at the sight of rickety benches and tables filled with the tinkers and ditchers and scavengers that made up the Crooked Staff’s clientele. The place stank of tallow smoke, wet wool, and human sweat. “No one bothered you, did they? That man—”

  “He was only looking.” Arianna lifted the chipped clay cup to her lips and took a swallow of the weak ale, grimacing at its bitterness. The low din was suddenly shattered by roars of laughter that came from a game of handicap and cries of “Pass around the cup!”

  “What did you find out?” she asked. She was glad of the noise, for then Taliesin wouldn’t be able to hear the quiver of fear and exhaustion in her voice.

  The squire rubbed his finger around a wet puddle on the table, avoiding her eyes. “My lord hasn’t come to trial yet, and no one seems to expect it soon. Henry is afraid he will demand a trial by combat.” In such a trial a man had the right to prove his innocence by meeting his accuser on the field of battle. Of course the accuser, King Henry, would not fight—he would have a champion take the field in his stead. But it was doubtful, so the gossip went, that there was any man in England who was a match for the Black Dragon.

  “So Henry is just going to leave him shut up in the Tower until he rots,” Arianna said, her voice as bitter as the ale. “May God give that whoreson of an English king a thousand cartloads of bad years.”

  A whore swayed past Taliesin, flashing a smile and showing off a lot of bare leg. The boy took a good long look and grinned, but then he turned his attention back to Arianna. “How are you feeling, my lady?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, forcing a brightness into her voice.

  In truth, she felt tired and weak from the fifteen-day journey it had taken to get here. She still wasn’t quite recovered yet from her wound. Her father’s leech had claimed it a miracle that she lived at all. But then he hadn’t known that Taliesin was magi, and it was a known fact that wizards were well versed in all the healing arts. For weeks, the squire had stayed by her bedside in the chamber in her father’s llys where he had brought her, pouring concoctions down her throat the properties of which she didn’t want to think about.

  Taliesin leaned closer now to study her face. “If you’re feeling pain, my lady, I can give you—”

  “No, no. I’m all right. Well, maybe a little hungry …”

  The squire snapped his fingers and pulled a greasy bundle from beneath his mantle. He unwrapped the cloth, giving Arianna a soggy tart filled with eggs and cheese that he’d bought from the public cookshop where he’d gone to find information as well as food.

  But when he pressed the food into Arianna’s hands her stomach heaved, and she had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting.

  At the look on her face, Taliesin took the egg tart away and supplanted it with another. “Here, try this instead. Tis eels.”

  She shook her head, pushing the food back at him across the table. “I guess I’m not hungry after all.”

  Taliesin patted her shoulder. “What you need is sleep, my lady. You will do your lord husband little good if you collapse from exhaustion or become ill because of your weakened condition.”

  Arianna repressed a shudder at the thought of the chamber upstairs, wedged tightly with pallets covered with flea-infested blankets. “I think I’ll just sit here awhile,” she said.

  She leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes and immediately Raine’s face filled her mind. In this memory of him he was smiling, that rare and beautiful smile. She tried not to think about where he was now, locked in a cell deep within London’s infamous White Tower.

  “I wonder,” she said aloud. “If he even knows yet that I live.”

  The next day they joined the traffic of rickety carts and sumpter beasts, crossing the Thames over a wooden bridge that was falling into ruins. Rain drizzled from clouds that hugged the walls and towers of the town.

  “Look there, my lady.” Taliesin said, pointing to a fancy barque that bobbed alongside a rotting wharf. “That ship has come all the way from Spain. What do you guess she carries? From the smell I would say it was figs.”

  He shouted to her above the clamor of church bells and the clack of watermills, pointing out various other barges and ships that crammed the water. Arianna knew he was trying to distract her gaze from the traitors’ heads that rotted on pikes over the gate.

  She did keep her eyes averted from the gruesome sight as they paid the toll, then entered into Londontown.

  From Southwark, across the river, the tall, sheer walls and the four whitewashed turrets of the White Tower, where Raine was imprisoned, had dominated the jumble of gabled roofs, gray walls, and church spires of the city. But once through the gate they entered into a warren of narrow, twisting streets aswarm with lop-eared swine, rats as big as cats, and a m
ultitude of people all trying to sell something. She could no longer see the Tower and Arianna was relieved that Taliesin seemed to know the way.

  She followed him down a street clogged with chicken heads, feathers, and entrails from the poultry stalls that lined the way. The stink was too much for Arianna, and she covered her nose with her hand. Before long the back of her hand became splattered from the black muck being thrown up by the hooves of Taliesin’s cob.

  Suddenly an enormous rectangular keep loomed before her. Its walls were so tall they looked to be brushing the bottom of the sky, and the huge whitewashed expanse of stone was pierced only by narrow arrow-slits. It was easy to see how the White Tower had earned its reputation as England’s most formidable prison.

  They had no trouble getting inside, but once there Arianna and Taliesin were passed from one officious person to another until they were turned over to the king’s gaoler.

  He looked them over, a faint sneer on his steeply sloping lip. “My lady, my lord,” he said, bowing in a mocking manner to each of them in turn. The ring of keys at his thick waist jangled. “You get lost? This be the White Tower ye’re in. Not Saint bloody Paul Cathedral.”

  Arianna had to clear her tight throat. “I wish to see the Lord of Rhuddlan.”

  The man pursed his lips. “Can’t”

  “W-why not?”

  “King’s orders, that’s why not.”

  Arianna pulled out the leather, silk-tasseled purse that hung from her girdle, concealed by her cloak. “I have money …”

  The gaoler looked at the purse, licking his fat lips, but then he shook his head sadly. “Now, normally, ye see, I’m not one to say ‘no, thank ’ee’ to the generous offer of a little gift. But it’s worth my life t’ go against the king’s law on this one.” He leaned over, spewing garlic-scented breath in Arianna’s face. “He tried to murder his royal lordship, he did. And he’ll swing for it, aye. Then they’ll scoop out his guts and cut off his prick an’ his balls—”

  “Never mind,” Taliesin said. He wrapped his arm around Arianna’s shoulders, supporting her sagging weight. “We’ll go see the king at Winchester.”

  Arianna followed Taliesin numbly back down to the river, where he hired a passenger boat to take them to Winchester. I’m going to Winchester to visit the king, she thought. Where she would get down on her knees and beg for her husband’s life. But first she would have to beg, she now knew, just for the privilege of seeing him.

  The boat drifted slowly up the sluggish, muck-scummed river, past brothels with their wooden steps running down to the docks for the convenience of the boatmen and sailors.

  Their pilot pointed these sights out to her, taking pride in the wonders of his city. “And there be the gallows of Tyburn Hill, mistress,” he said, his greasy finger indicating a small rise by the water’s edge. Ravens wheeled and settled on wooden, cross-shaped gibbets that rose, silhouetted against the gray sky. One of them was occupied.

  Arianna watched in silent horror as the hanging body began to swing in the wind. Though reason told her it could not be Raine, still she held her breath, her nails digging into her palms. Slowly the body turned … but the man’s face was unrecognizable, picked clean by the ravens.

  The stews gave way to manor houses set behind tall walls with spacious gardens. The manor houses gave way to marshlands. And then there, on a flat grassy plain, floating in the misty rain and looking like a mythical kingdom, were gabled roofs, a white palace, and the two great spires of Winchester Cathedral.

  The boat pulled right up alongside the water-stained wall of the king’s palace, called White Hall because it, too, was built of whitewashed stone. But as they climbed the long wooden steps that led to the entrance of the palace’s great hall, a man coming down hailed them.

  He was a noble, by the richness of his dress and the width of his girth, and he bowed at Arianna as she and Taliesin came abreast of him. “If you’ve come to see the king,” the man said, “he isn’t here. Gone hunting at Cumberland’s estates.”

  Arianna’s voice cracked with frustration. “When is he expected back?”

  The nobleman looked around him, then leaned into her and his round, florid face creased into a wreath of smiles. “Well, he’s hunting more than roe and buck, you see. ’Tis Cumberland’s eldest daughter he’s really after.”

  Amidst chuckles and more smiles, the man went on his way, leaving Arianna staring dumbly after him. Nearby, the abbey bells began to ring compline. It would be dark soon. She knew she ought to think about getting some food and finding a tavern for the night, but suddenly it all seemed such an effort just to draw breath. She felt so tired. She had concentrated all her strength on first getting into the Tower to see Raine and now on having an audience with the king.

  “What do we do now?” she said, unable to keep a tremble out of her voice.

  When she got no answer, she looked behind her. The wretched squire had disappeared.

  “Damn you,” she whispered as tears of defeat crowded her eyes. For the first time she began to doubt if she would ever win Raine’s freedom, if she would even see him again. “Damn you, damn you, damn you—”

  She heard a shout and whipped back around. A man stood frozen at the top of the steps, a man whose hair glinted bright gold even in the drizzle that fell on the courtyard.

  “Arianna!”

  Arianna turned away from the window with its view of the cathedral spires. She dropped down onto a stool before a brazier, holding her hands over the red-burning coals. Her wedding ring glinted in the firelight, and she twisted it around and around her finger.

  Oh, Raine …

  Her wound throbbed and her whole body ached with the effort it took to keep from giving way to tears and despair.

  A sound at the door brought her head up. Earl Hugh of Chester entered, looking relaxed and elegant in a willow green bliaut and fur-trimmed pelisse. He seemed to have gotten over the shock he’d had on seeing her. His finely sculptured mouth was curled into one of his mocking smiles.

  “Arianna … you make a beautiful Lazarus.” He shook his head, his smile deepening. “You must have superlative leeches in Wales.”

  Arianna stood up, curtseying. “My lord earl—”

  He waved a languid, heavily ringed hand at the table filled with platters of untouched cheese-filled wafers and tiny, crescent-shaped pork pies. “You weren’t hungry?”

  “Nay. Thank you … My lord earl—”

  “Hugh, my dear. You must call me Hugh.” He flashed another insouciant smile. “We’re family, after all.” He poured her a glass of wine, pressing it into her hands. It was verney and its sickly sweet smell caused her stomach to heave.

  She set the cup back onto the table. “You have said you will help to get me an audience with the king.”

  He sucked on his lower lip. “Well, actually, seeing the king will do you little good, I’m afraid. He flies into a fit of temper at the mere mention of my brother’s name. You haven’t said what you think of my town house.”

  “It is very beautiful,” Arianna answered, though in truth she’d paid little heed to her surroundings since he’d brought her here this evening.

  “I am really a very rich man,” Hugh was saying in a voice that reminded her of cod oil, smooth and slick. “And money can gratify a lot of desires. For instance, if I desired to see my brother escape from the Tower, doubtless I could arrange it.”

  Arianna’s heart began to thump unevenly and she struggled to keep her face blank. She refused to let herself hope, for she didn’t trust Earl Hugh of Chester. She could not forget that this was the same man who had shot an arrow at his brother’s chest.

  “You will do this for Raine?”

  The earl came to stand before her and his handsome mouth curved into yet another smile. “Nay, I do it for you. And for myself, of course. I never do anything unless it is for myself.” He traced the length of her collarbone where it protruded through her bliaut. “But there is a price.”

  The bone j
umped beneath his fingers. “A price?”

  “Ah, Arianna, sweet, sweet, Arianna. There is always a price.”

  There was a price, Hugh thought, for everything.

  The price, for instance, for loving the wrong woman too much, could bring you to a cell in London’s White Tower, chained to a wall.

  He thought of this now as he followed the gaoler down the rotting wooden stairs that led to the subcrypt, deep in the earth below the chapel of the keep. Although the rain had stopped during the night, the walls still dripped water. Hugh suspected they probably seeped moisture even during the dry summer months. But then perhaps the dripping walls were a blessing, if that was all a man had to drink.

  Arianna had warned him that the gaoler would accept no bribe, but it had been laughingly easy to get in—all he’d had to do was trot out his title. There were some benefits, he’d told her, to being the Earl of Chester.

  They followed a narrow, low-ceilinged passageway that seemed to be leading into the very bowels of the earth, and stopped before an oak door with a massive iron bolt. Hugh felt Arianna shiver beside him. He wondered whether it was from the cold or the superstitious dread all humans got at the thought of being in a dark hole in the ground that was so much like the grave.

  “Let me go first,” he said, and his voice bounced hollowly off the stone walls. “We’re not sure what we will find.”

  “It’s worth my life to be lettin’ ye in here,” the gaoler whined. “The king said—”

  “Shut up,” Hugh growled. “Or your life won’t be worth the spit it takes to say your name.”

  The gaoler’s breath came out in another wheezing whistle, clouding around his face. But his keys clanked against the bolt of the door. A grating sound echoed, and then the door groaned open.

  Hugh stepped inside the tiny cell.

  It was like walking into the darkness of death. The air was fetid and damp, with a smooth feel to it, like velvet. The very walls seemed to shiver with the cold, but it was an old cold, of a place that had never known the sun. He beckoned to the gaoler to pass him the torch.