by Chris Page
He pointed upward to a small dark spot on the highest point of the headland. Desmond looked at the almost indistinguishable dark outline of the cave.
‘Is there something else in the cave with his casket?’ he whispered reverently. Twilight smiled. ‘There could be,’ he replied enigmatically.
Desmond could hardly bring himself to utter what he thought it was. ‘The holy grail,’ he managed eventually. ‘The holy grail is buried in there with King Arthur?’
Twilight’s black eyes danced with delight, but he didn’t reply. And Desmond Kingdom Biwater could only shake his head at the wonder of it all.
After a month of harrying the Viking, Jack Cat and his band returned to Tintagel Castle. He’d lost twenty-five men but had accounted for at least double that number of Viking. The disruption and occasional chaos caused had worked perfectly, and with the ever-present protection of Twilight, his escape from each foray had been successful. Because Freyja’s presence had not manifested itself due to her other duties, Jack and his men, despite the dire warnings issued by Twilight, were sceptical that she actually existed.
Due to the success of the raids conducted by Jack’s men, the Viking had given up on the idea of corralling Celts for later sale into the slave trade. Every time they secured a suitable number in the pens, or when taking them to the coast for onward shipping to the lowlands in their longboats, Jack and his men would pounce and set them free. ‘Jack Cat’s Renegades’ were beginning to forge a reputation among Celts as a force for everything that was good about King Alfred’s cause, a fact that wasn’t lost on the king and his newlywed battle leader. Many of the Celts set free by Jack and his men subsequently arrived at Tintagel to sign up for the king’s army, and the numbers soon swelled to ten thousand. In a roundabout way by capturing settlement Celts for the slave trade, the Viking were helping to recruit men for Alfred’s army.
The other reason for Jack’s return was that a month had gone by and they were due another advanced pay day. It was also another opportunity for Jack to see the saddlebags of gold pieces that had been burning through his nightly dreams since Alfred first opened them in front of him. The second payment ritual played out the same way as before, and the same people were present. Once again Jack fought every sinew to keep the intensity of his interest hidden.
Later that night having paid his men, Jack sat with Patch, Arrow, and Bullwhip quietly discussing the matter. During their month harrying the Viking, the four of them had spoken privately of the gold many times. What they hadn’t come up with was a plan to steal it.
Yet.
‘Our problem,’ said Jack in a low voice, ‘is that the very person who protects us against the Viking will also be the biggest threat against us stealing the gold. That sorcerer can make himself invisible, change scenery around to suit, see through thick stone walls, hear at great distances, and sense things before they occur. He’s as quiet as a fish and faster than one of Arrow’s shafts. For all we know he’s listening to this very conversation from somewhere up there.’ He pointed up to the night sky.
‘He must leave the castle sometimes,’ growled Arrow. ‘How would he manage to look after us if he stayed here? Even he can’t be in two places at the same time, can he?’
‘What about those other two who guard the gold all the time?’ Patch joined in.
Jack answered. ‘Sam Southee told me about them one night when we were sitting up a tree at Combe. One of them is a deaf mute called Classen. Bit of a handful by all accounts. The other is Alfred’s nephew Hywel. Looks after all the king’s money. They take it in turns to sleep and even then they sleep on top of the saddlebags. They’re both totally dedicated to the king and would rather die than lose a single gold piece.’
‘If they never leave the gold and can’t be bought, then they’d have to be taken care of,’ Bullwhip said, running his hand around the circular leather thongs of his silver-tipped whip. ‘And that would mean killing the king’s nephew.’
They thought about this for a while.
‘Alfred would never forgive that,’ said Jack. ‘Best we play a waiting game. Keep our eye on the situation, especially when the big battle starts, eh, Patch?’
‘I’ll keep my eye on it, no mistake.’ Patch grinned, pulling the black patch around to cover his good eye.
‘Aaahh, put it back,’ cried Bullwhip. ‘Reminds me of too many of my victims.’ They all laughed as Patch’s single, glittering eye reappeared.
King Alfred’s wife, Elswith, had a son; it was their firstborn and they named him Edward. Twilight transformed a highly delighted king back to Tintagel Castle from Wales to see his baby for the first time. The king called for a celebration, and arrangements were made. All Alfred’s senior staff and soldiers were invited and also some of the senior monks. Twilight also brought back Desmond, Rawnie, his brothers and sisters, and a special guest for the celebration.
Guinevere.
It was the first time she’d left the island of Avalon for fifty-five years.
The celebration was to be held in the great hall at Tintagel Castle. Twilight offered to transform both Elswith and the baby Edward, but Alfred decided to leave them in Wales. It had been a difficult birth, and the baby, although healthy, was quite small. The future king and his mother could rest.
All those invited made an effort to spruce themselves up for the occasion. It had been a difficult and arduous time, and there had not been much time for frivolity and feasting. The central feature of the evening was to be a huge feast for the sixty guests. Alfred was particularly keen that people who would not normally associate with one another should mingle and be seated together. Local mead and barley wine would be provided together with roasted hogs, poultry, fish, and freshly baked bread. Being the middle of winter, vegetables and fruit were not available. After the feast Desmond would play his lyre together with other musicians found amongst the assembled soldiery and locals. A juggler had also been found together with two acrobats. With the huge trestle tables placed down the centre of the great hall groaning with food and a gentle glow cast by many lighted wall torches, Alfred greeted each guest with the Baron de Lyones, Gode and Edward de Gaini, Rawnie and Twilight by his side.
Led in by Desmond, Guinevere was the first guest. She would sit in the place of honour on Alfred’s right, the position that would have been occupied by Elswith if she had been there. Alfred had never met Guinevere before.
Straight-backed with a luminous, gracious inner beauty that can only be achieved by someone who has led a very special life, Guinevere, in a long, green and dark blue dress, smiled directly into the young king’s eyes before he graciously bent to kiss her hand. She would later reveal that the dress was sixty years old, and she had last worn it at Camelot. She’d kept it in an old chest on Avalon out of pure sentiment and put it on occasionally when she was feeling a little sad.
‘Queen Guinevere,’ Alfred said softly, straightening up and using her old title from when she had been King Arthur’s wife. ‘It is a great pleasure and honour to meet you.’
‘The pleasure, Your Majesty, is all mine.’ Guinevere’s murmur was just enough to carry.
Their eyes locked. There was great poignancy in their meeting for the first time. The young king, who would later be called Alfred the Great because of his pioneering rule, and the legendary old queen and great beauty who had held her own young king in her arms as he died all those years ago.
Guinevere’s past clung to her like whispering dreams; her presence spoke of Camelot, Excalibur, mighty battles, the Knights of the Round Table, gracious chivalry, Merlin, and the incomparable Dux Bellorum himself, King Arthur. That Arthur’s death had, in part, been because of her great beauty and Mordred, Arthur’s cousin’s equal love for her. The battle of Camlaan, fought to the death by both sides just minutes away, had really been about which of the two great leaders would claim her. In the event, they both died. Mordred in the battle itself and
Arthur later in her arms on the isle of Avalon. Even now it was possible to see why two such mighty men had revered her so much.
She moved along to the Baron de Lyones and smiled up into his dark, scarred face. De Lyones, too, bowed and kissed her hand.
‘Baron de Lyones,’ Guinevere said softly. ‘Your likeness to your grandfather Sir Tristam is remarkable. I knew him well and was a great admirer of his.’
‘Thank you, ma’am. Tintagel Castle is honoured by your presence here. My grandfather’s coat of arms and weapons are kept high on my walls here as a mark of respect for all his great exploits. I strive always to be a good example to his memory.’
He motioned to the crossed swords over a blue, yellow, and silver shield and matching pennant high on the walls.
Guinevere looked at the display for a few moments, then leaned close to the baron.
‘Later we will talk about those wonderful days of the Round Table. I have some vivid memories of Sir Tristam that I’m sure you will be interested to hear.’
Even after all these years looking after lepers, she could instantly switch into the mongering, captivating manner of court gossip. The baron was completely bowled over and gave a short bow as she moved on to Gode and her new husband and Rawnie and Twilight. As her escort, Desmond had stayed at a respectful distance behind her with a look of pure devotion on his young face. His look now switched to neutral as Guinevere was just as gracious and captivating with first Gode and then Edward de Gaini. Finally Guinevere got to Rawnie and Twilight. Her sparkling eyes told how much she was enjoying herself. Twilight bent to kiss her hand. When he raised his head he had an impish look on his face, and her hand was now bedecked in fine rings of silver, agate, and emeralds.
‘To match the beautiful dress,’ he murmured. ‘I should have thought of it before you got to the king.’
Guinevere’s throaty, eighty-year-old laugh embraced him, and she turned back to Rawnie and held her newly bedecked and jewelled fingers out.
Rawnie held out her own bare fingers, and they laughed together like two young sisters.
‘I’ll work on him later,’ she said.
Following Guinevere, the other guests began to make their way down the line.
The great feast to celebrate the king’s firstborn was getting under way.
After everyone had eaten their fill, the tables were cleared away. Jack Cat had found himself sitting between Bede, the senior monk, and Hywel, the keeper of the king’s purse. Jack was the only member of his band invited. The others were, no doubt, getting drunk as skunks at some of the parties going on outside the castle where Alfred had generously donated a great deal of mead.
With Hywel at the celebration, the chances were that only Classen, the deaf mute, was on gold guard duty. Carefully not asking any questions about the gold pieces, Jack engaged in conversation with both of his dining companions. They wanted to know all about his exploits fighting the Viking, and he was happy to enlighten them with a bit of boasting.
But he was careful not to drink too much mead, which was not the case with Hywel, who soon began to slur his words. Excusing himself, Jack decided that it was time he acquainted himself with the castle’s layout.
On each of the two occasions he’d been paid by Alfred, the saddlebags had been produced in one of the main rooms on the second floor, two floors up from the great hall. Jack, being a bit of an expert on the interiors of castles due to his upbringing, had already worked out that Tintagel was pretty much the same as the one he’d spent the first ten years of his life scavenging around in the lower regions with his beloved sister. Both Castle d’Averne and Tintagel shared a number of similar features, due, no doubt, to the methodical attention paid to them by the Romans when building them some five hundred years ago.
The great hall, for instance, looked exactly the same to Jack as the one in the Castle d’Averne. Same size, same shape. He hoped that other rooms were the same, particularly the secret passages. After all, if the castles were pretty much the same design, why not the secret bits? The purpose of secret passages was to enable those upstairs to evacuate the place if an attack looked like imminent or a quick exit was required. Or for other more clandestine matters, like the movement in and out of contraband, assassins, or women.
As the celebration really got going in the great hall, Jack made his way stealthily down into the bowels of the castle and was heartened to find some of the vast rooms he passed were used for the same function as those at Castle d’Averne. The weapons store, for instance, where, as a young boy, he’d spent so much time practicing with the swords and had taken the daggers that he’d used to kill the Duke d’Averne, was in exactly the same place. So were the kitchens, so frantically busy with the celebration upstairs that he passed by completely unnoticed. Jack felt he was coming home as each narrow, dark passage brought yet another familiar feature. Even the dungeons, places he and his little sister had slept in most nights, were in the same places.
This was beginning to look good, very good. Now, what about the most important bit of all? The secret passage that led from top to bottom. If that was in the same place, Jack was in business.
The gold business.
In the pitch-black environs of the castle catacombs, he felt his way carefully along a narrow passage. He was as deep as he could go now and could tell how deep by the sound of the waves, now at maximum high tide, crashing against the outer rocks by his ear.
If the passage is here it will be on this next corner. His hands felt around the narrow passage.
Then nothing. There was an opening. Jack went down on his knees and reached out with his right hand.
Steps. Leading upwards.
Before going up the steps he went straight on, following the strong breeze blowing in his face. As he walked carefully up a slight incline, the noise of the waves told him he was close to the exit. Then he was outside, on a narrow ledge just above the boiling water. When the tide receded this would give access directly to a small beach.
Jack had found the escape route. He retraced his steps back to the upward leading secret passage and began to carefully ascend the broken, curving steps.
He heard the commotion of the busy kitchen as he passed, the thick wall of stone muffling the clanging of pewter vessels and earthenware cooking pots. Two floors further up he heard the music and celebratory cries of the great hall where he’d eaten earlier. This showed he’d reached ground level. On up past a bedchamber. There were spy holes in the passage at this point and muffled voices, but Jack wasn’t interested in any activity going on there. Finally, one floor further up the passage stopped, the opening covered by what looked like a thick linen curtain. Jack had reached the top, which by his reckoning was the second floor.
Where the room with the saddlebags was.
He listened before carefully parting the curtain. He was in a small, bare room off an empty bedchamber. The chamber itself had a number of rolled-up scrolls on a table and some wax seals.
He was in the king’s bedchamber.
By his reckoning the room with the saddlebags was the next one.
He checked the leg knife tucked well down inside his boots. Weapons had not been allowed in the great hall, but Jack never went anywhere without something sharp with which to fight. Then, with the lightness of many years of creeping around such places, he eased himself across the oak floor to an open door on the other side. Before he got to the open door, he heard a noise and froze. The noise began to repeat itself, and Jack recognized the regular rhythm of snoring. He smiled to himself, his thoughts going back to the guards at Castle d’Averne who used to snore outside the weapons store while he deftly hooked the key from the wall and let himself in.
But that was make-believe.
This is real.
He peered slowly around the opening. As his eyes focused, his heart gave a lurch.
The deaf mute, Classen, was asleep. The w
ell-built, powerful-looking man sprawled in slumber across the gold-carrying saddlebags.
Jack had a sudden, random thought.
If Classen was a mute, how come he could snore?
He put it down to air escaping through the nose and mouth passages. Although mute, the man still had to breathe, didn’t he?
On a small table to one side lay Classen’s weapons. A wicked-looking double-handed sword, a short sword, and a vicious-looking metal-headed club.
Jack leaned in close, held his breath, and studied the man’s face, another old habit. Classen’s hairy top lip trembled each time he exhaled. Poor bastard, couldn’t hear or speak, wasn’t much of a life, and now it was about to get worse.
On a sudden whim Jack decided not to kill him. He picked up the metal-headed club and before he changed his mind swung it at the snoring mute’s head. Without a sound Classen slumped to the floor. That would last long enough for Jack to make his getaway.
There were four saddlebags, but even with Jack’s great strength he could only manage three of them. He staggered back to the secret passage with the saddlebags around his shoulders.
Thirty minutes later with the saddlebags safely hidden, he was back in the great hall downing a large pot of mead in one go. Around him the celebrations were in full swing, and no one seemed to have missed him. The rest of Jack Cat’s Renegades could go find their own gold—this belonged to him.
Since interesting things happened to him in castles, he might even buy one of his own.
Chapter 11
The morning after the celebration, Twilight returned his family and Guinevere back to the safety of Avalon. Having managed the meeting with Gode and Edward de Gaini without any problems and eager to get back to the war with the Viking, Desmond stayed at Tintagel Castle.
Classen had eventually come round and, apart from a large, egg-shaped bump on the side of his head, was alright. If anything, Hywel’s head was worse from too much mead. Alfred decided to let Twilight deal with the robbery of the saddlebags, which, unbeknown to the thief, had been full of false gold coins that would fade away to nothing in a matter of days.
