“No knight is undefeatable,” Balin scoffed.
But Brulen said nothing. He respected the high magic, understood the power of Avalon. He would share a look with his mother and change the subject, knowing his brother’s heart better than she.
They were two of a kind, yet different. Born from the same widow’s womb at almost the same moment, each had always been the only significant male influence on the other, save for the storied exploits of a phantom father they managed to snatch from passing knights and wring from their mother, who was reluctant to glorify his warrior deeds.
Yet whereas Brulen took his mother’s lessons to heart, Balin snuck off to hear the Gospel from the village priest, a soft bellied, hard-hearted hermit named Brother Gallet. Brulen spoke sometimes to the people who came to his mother for help and knew many of them had become Christians. He knew there was good in the way of the crucified king and his teachings.
But the stories Balin brought home secondhand, for he was unwilling to learn to read them himself, were cruel and exclusionary, selected or perhaps concocted by Gallet to stir his aggressive soul with notions of divine righteousness and holiness. Brulen found it hard to reconcile the man who had died on a tree for teaching love with the God of Gallet, who instructed the leaders of His chosen people to show no mercy to captives and to stone women to death.
“Listen,” said Balin.
Brulen looked toward the road.
That road wound sleepily through the forest in which they stalked and played, emptying out at last to the village of Belande and the Castle Sewingshields, the stronghold of King Detors. It was through this tunnel in the greenwood that people came now and then to seek their mother’s aid.
They always came one or two at a time, usually after nightfall, fearing the edicts of Detors against witchcraft.
But it was only a little after noon. The sun was high and perhaps a dozen people emerged from the forest, the two biggest of their number, the blacksmith and butcher, Balin noted, pulling a squeaking cart piled with unbaled hay. A single stout post rose from the center. The crowd bore an assortment of tools as if bound for some unguessed communal task: knives and hatchets, a scythe and sickles.
At their head was Brother Gallet, bearing his staff of office, a pine pole capped with a simple leather-wrapped cross within a crude willow circle.
Brulen caught his breath and Balin held up his hand.
They would make no move. These were their neighbors. Several of their number had been to the cottage before for succor.
They watched as the priest led the others down the path.
Their old hound, Killhart, bounded from the cottage as he had not done in uncounted summers. Planting his legs apart, he situated himself in the center of the path, laid back his ears, bearing his teeth in a warning snarl. When the people gave no heed, he split the air with a volley of snapping barks, so ferocious it flecked the ground with froth and caused the priest to pause. Several of the villagers recoiled.
Eglante came out of the doorway, wiping her hands on her skirts. She had been preparing their supper.
“Get back, cur of Satan!” Gallet screamed over the dog’s incessant barking. He stormed at the dog, raising his staff over his head.
Killhart sprang.
Gallet brought the staff down with a crack on the dog’s head that resounded in the clearing.
Killhart fell limp, his old white head red with blood.
The priest fetched him a few heavier clouts to be sure, making Killhart’s limp body jump.
Balin cried out in anguish. They had both loved that dog, been carried in its jowls as babes. To Balin especially, Killhart had been more than an animal. He had been Balin’s constant companion in his adventures in the forest, running down rabbits and breaking hosts of imagined enemies with a stick of wood. Their mother had told them Killhart followed him around in the woods much as he had their father, and Balin had taken a special pride in that relationship.
His shriek was matched by their mother’s own, as she ran forward and fell on her knees next to the faithful old animal, cradling his broken head.
“See?” Gallet called out to the others, beckoning them forward. “What need of a lawful husband has this witch of the wild? She has this hound of hell for a mate. Mark you well her unnatural grief.”
The people gathered closer, some of them nodding to themselves, never taking their eyes from Eglante.
“What is the meaning of this?” she wailed. “Who are you?”
“A servant of the Most High,” Gallet responded, drawing himself up imperiously as the dog blood ran down his staff and over his pale knuckles. “Who do you say you are?”
Eglante rose from the corpse of Killhart, the front of her skirt stained red. “Ask these people who I am,” she said.
“They have told me who you are,” Gallet said, gesturing at the people shuffling at his back. “They have told me of your potions and spells. Do you deny brewing them here?”
“I do not,” Eglante said, throwing back her head and brushing away her tears with the back of one hand. “I give them whatever they ask of me for a fair price.”
Gallet thrust his finger at her like a dagger point, his stained, rotting teeth bared much as Killhart’s had been. “What price, vile succubus? Their bodies? Their souls? You lead them down the Devil’s road!”
The boys dropped nimbly from the tree, but in the end, Brulen’s grip failed him and he crashed unprepared to the ground, twisting his ankle.
Balin landed panther-like beside him and hoisted him up without a word. They limped quickly down the hill, Balin with one foot still bare.
“What gives you the right to murder my pet?” Eglante shrieked, balling her fists.
“The authority of the king and the God that reigns above him,” said Gallet, gesturing to the sky as though his deity were looking on them from some celestial pavilion.
At that instant, the pied raven swooped down from atop the cottage thatch and flew in the priest’s face, drawing blood with a claw from under his left eye. The priest struck at it with his staff and it wheeled away, gliding into the forest as the villagers gaped after it.
“You see?” Gallet bellowed, dabbing at his bleeding face with his sleeve. “She commands the fell beasts of land and air. Take her!”
The butcher and the blacksmith rushed forward and snatched Eglante’s arms.
She tried to tear herself free, but they held her too tightly.
“What have I done?” she demanded, as the crowd parted and they dragged her toward the hay cart.
Balin and Brulen stumbled to the edge of the crowd, breathless.
“Mother?” Balin called.
The closest man to the boys, the miller, Hull, laid hold of Balin’s arm as a woman pulled Brulen from his brother’s grasp.
Enraged, Balin lashed out and bit the soft part of Hull’s hand till his teeth crunched against bone.
Hull shrieked and flung him away. He landed in the grass, sprawling.
Brulen offered no resistance. His wide eyes followed his mother as her hands were bound behind her back. She was carried up into the hay cart and fixed to the pole.
Two other villages hauled Balin to his feet. He thrashed and snarled wordlessly, bucking in their grip, and two more gripped his ankles and hoisted him in the air. They pulled his wiry limbs taut, and still he shook, although it agonized his small muscles.
“Look you, brothers and sisters,” Gallet said, pointing to Balin. “This hellspawn Brulen is like a wild animal nursed on black milk! The Devil’s own son.”
Neither Brulen in his shock nor Balin in his rage bothered to correct Gallet’s mistake.
But an old hag of a woman with wild, unbound silver hair in a white robe spoke up.
“No! Their father was Sir Ballantyne, one of King Detors’ noble knights.”
“This one’s savagery is more suited to the nobility of hell than of any knight,” Gallet sneered.
“Ballantyne died a hero in service against the Sax
ons at Cad Hill,” she went on.
Gallet stared at the old woman, and she met his gaze with bold blue eyes that made his own narrow.
“Who are you?” he whispered uncertainly, the blood from the raven’s claw trickling down his cheek like a demon’s tear.
The blacksmith leapt down from the cart, leaving Eglante alone. She twisted to look at Gallet.
“It will go ill for you, priest,” she called, “if you murder the heirs of a noble knight in the name of your god.”
Gallet turned from the old woman, oblivious to her as she faded back into the crowd and passed unnoticed to its rear.
“But my god is your God, harridan,” he said to Eglante. “You shall learn that presently.”
The priest’s eyes went to the butcher. He was kneeling, striking flint to tinder, sparking a brand.
Balin stopped thrashing and watched in disbelief as the butcher flung the burning brand into the back of the hay cart.
Every maddened eye turned to the fast rising flames. Only Eglante’s saw the old woman who had spoken give a single prim nod. Eglante bobbed her chin in silent recognition and then she turned once more to her sons as the unbearable heat rose and her hair singed. Her dress caught fire and her reddened eyes splashed her cheeks with tears that the thirsty blaze drank up almost immediately.
“Be good boys!” she choked through the flames as her hair blackened. “Be good men!”
Brulen wailed and sagged in the arms of the villagers who held him.
The villagers retreated from the blaze and the human fuel which burned at its center.
Gallet raised his arms and spoke a benediction, which the crackling fire and the screams of Eglante and Brulen drowned out.
Balin made no outcry.
He looked across the torch head of his mother at the place where the old woman who had spoken his father’s name had stood.
But she was gone.
In her place was the Lady of The Lake, undimmed by the inky smoke that rose from his burning mother, cold in her glittering white garment atop her spotless white horse, her beautiful face terrible and remote, majestic as a snow-covered peak.
Balin watched her as she turned and rode back up the little path to the forest.
Somewhere the raven called, perhaps in laughter, perhaps in lament.
CHAPTER THREE
For ten hours, the two brothers spent their last night as squires kneeling shoulder to shoulder in silence before the altar in the dim candlelit chapel of Castle Sewingshields. It was the final test of knighthood, the last passion, and for Balin, a reminder of Christ’s lonesome vigil in Gethsemane. His legs were numb and stiff, well beyond aching, and the sweat had spoiled his ritual bathing, but he didn’t care. The beauty and power of the moment, the culmination of all his boyhood aspirations, almost overcame him.
They were garbed in the ritual black hose and boots of death, the white vestures of purity, and over all, the red robes representing the royal blood to which they would swear fealty. On the altar lay their swords, entwined in belts and frogs, their gilt spurs, and the shields bearing their chosen blazons. Per pale indented argent and gules, two boars combatant, argent and gules. It was a special dispensation the College of Heraldry had granted them, two knights bearing the same design with the placements reversed. Twin knights were uncommon. The boars were a tribute to their father’s own rampant boar crest.
Already they were the two greatest fighters of Northumberland, unmatched except by each other. King Detors bragged that they would be the finest knights in Albion.
What Brulen prayed for in the stillness, if he prayed at all, Balin could not guess. Brulen still admitted to him a lack of faith in the god of their father. In the intervening years since their mother’s death, he had cleaved to her teachings more fervently than ever, though necessarily in secret. Balin prayed to be as good a knight as their father had been, to be truthful and brave, to serve his king well. He prayed for his brother, that he come to know the light of the Lord Jesus Christ before the Devil took his soul.
Long and hard had they trained, orphan brothers wielding dirty spoons and towels in the kitchens of Detors, pitchforks and shovels in the stables, and finally porting lances and swords and securing armor in the pavilions and on the tiltyards. They were no man’s sons, and yet every knight had become like a father, eager to teach them all they could, for all knew their circumstance and pitied them. The greater was their achievement for their sad and humble origins.
Balin apprenticed to brawny Sir Claellus, a God-fearing man and an even tempered master, a master swordsman who bragged to the other knights that Balin was the finest fighter he had ever trained. Brulen had fattened Claellus over the years with the abundance of game he had brought to their table.
Claellus had known their father Ballantyne, and presented them both with their father’s own swords.
Brulen was the squire of Sir Gernemant, a quiet, lanky fellow, well-traveled, who led his apprentice around King Detors’ library almost as much as he did the proving grounds and valued lessons of wisdom over strength at arms.
They shared some of their training with each other, of course. Balin instructed Brulen in the finer points of jousting, and Brulen tutored Balin in heraldry, an aspect of book learning that appealed to Balin for it entailed so many colorful pictures. Brulen got a better education in tilting than he did from Gernemant, and Balin learned the emblems of much of the Albion gentry.
When the morning light shone through the stained-glass window, casting the brothers in deep reds and blazing whites, the prelates entered for the morning mass, along with the sponsor knights, Sir Claellus and Sir Gernemant , old silver bearded King Detors, and his callow son, Prince Clarivaunce, the heir apparent.
The mass began, and the celebrating priest took the lectern to intone the opening prayer in Latin, Balin sensed Brulen stiffen at his side.
The priest was Gallet, the very same who had presided over their mother’s execution.
Of course, it would be Gallet. Gallet had been Balin’s mentor and confessor. As the man who delivered them to Detors, he had truly put them both on the path to knighthood and had likely requested the honor of presiding over their accolade. It made Balin slightly uncomfortable, but in the years since their mother’s execution, he had come to understand Gallet’s cruelty. The enemies of Christ must be eradicated without mercy lest the world fall to darkness. His mother, unfortunate fool that she had been, had counted herself against God by indulging in the Devil’s teachings. He still grieved for her. She had been a kind woman, and as a son, his heart ached for her, but he bore Gallet no hatred. That, he reserved for the bitch who had led his mother astray. That villainess, the Lady Lile. He could still see her as he had that day, haughty through the flames.
Brulen, however, was another matter. Out of the corner of his eye, Balin could see his brother fixing the priest with a hard gaze.
“Someday I will kill Gallet,” Brulen had told him once.
“Why?” Balin had asked.
“How can you ask me that?” Brulen had countered.
“Will you kill Hull the miller and all the villagers who were there that day?”
“If ever they have the misfortune to cross my path,” Brulen said.
“That’s foolish, brother.”
“Don’t you hate them for what they did?”
“Who am I, to hate them for doing what the Lord decreed?”
“You think God wanted our mother dead? Burned alive?”
“Not her, but her wickedness, yes. And she wouldn’t let go of it. That’s what burned her in the end. Gallet did not light that fire, Brulen. It was lit in her long ago. A devil’s fire. And you know well the hand that lit it.”
It had been a point of perennial and heated disagreement between them, and they had not spoken much of it after that. But even though they didn’t give it voice, it came out sometimes, in their sparring. The clacking of their practice weapons, struck to shivering, became the harsh words of their unending cont
ention. Every counterattack was a retort, every blow a point. When either fell or was thrown exhausted to the straw, that was an argument won.
No knight who is false can stand against one who is true, their father had said.
But they were too evenly matched. Neither could ultimately ever convince the other. This was a bitter shim between the brothers, who should have loved each other above all others and without condition, but did not. Could not.
The mass progressed to the accolade. As King Detors limped slowly to the other side of the communion rail, assisted by Sir Claellus and Sir Gernemant, Gallet blessed their shields and swords.
Sir Claellus took Balin’s shield and spurs and passed him his naked sword.
Taking it point down in his fist, Balin touched his forehead to the pommel and intoned:
“I swear by my faith, by my blood, all loyalty to my lord under God. I shall honor my oath to him against all his enemies, in good faith and free of guile.”
He held his sword out and lowered his head.
King Detors took the sword from him and touched the flat of the blade first to one shoulder, then the other, saying, “In the name of God, St. Michael, and St. George, I dub thee, Sir Balin.”
Sir Claellus took the sword from the king and handed it once more to Balin. He rose on shaky legs, but did not falter, and accepted his shield. Sir Claellus wrapped his belt twice about him and handed him his chivalric spurs. Balin sank his sword into its scabbard and felt its weight at his side.
It was the happiest moment of his life. His head swam with the great things he would do. He breathed in the incense clouding from the assistant priest’s censer the sweet odor of heated tallow, and the candle smoke. These were the smells of the breath of God Himself to Balin, and he felt the approval of the Divine wash over him. He was a knight at last in the eyes of God and man.
Beside him, the ritual was repeated for Brulen. He heard his brother murmur the sacred oath, and prayed it was true.
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