by Judith Tarr
Like Mathilda, he meant. To the king there had never been any woman but that one. Henry had never understood, and maybe never would. So many flowers, so many fields—so sweet, each of them, in the plucking.
He was dizzy with lack of sleep and stink of death and sudden swirl of magic rising in the room. His father had used it seldom when Mathilda was alive, and never after she died. He found no comfort in it, and little enough profit, either, or so he always said.
Tonight it wreathed the king like smoke, pouring out of him with the life that, at long last, was freeing itself from the rotting flesh. Henry sat transfixed. If he had known what to do, he would not have been able to do it.
It was a spell. Even with his own gift of magic, which his mother had fostered and nourished and taught, Henry had never known how much was in his father. It had been buried so deep for so long, drowned in duty and in the mass of aging flesh.
William’s spirit climbed out of it as if from the pit of a dungeon, crawling over the lifeless, all but faceless bulk and rising slowly to his full height. He was tall, as tall as Henry—much taller than either of his elder sons—and broad, but there was neither bloat nor fat on this innermost self. He looked as young as Henry: nineteen summers, maybe, though hardened already and tempered by a life of war.
He glanced about. His eyes were keen, no sign of befuddlement in them. He arched his back and stretched, yawning luxuriously, as if he still had breath and lungs to savor it. His teeth were strong and white as he turned, grinning at the one who watched in mute astonishment.
“Ah,” he said. Even his voice was different: lighter, stronger, younger. “That’s better. What are you staring at, boy? Haven’t you ever seen a dead man before?”
Henry caught himself shaking his head like an idiot. “Not . . . like this.”
“Remember it,” the ghost-William said, “for when it’s your time. You won’t be the fool that I was. You’ve no fear of magic, nor disgust for it, either. She made sure of that.”
“Why—” Henry began.
The shade did not reply. It was fading even as Henry spoke, shrinking away from him, as if he stood on a dark shore and his father sailed away, riding a strong wind. The farther shore was out of Henry’s sight, though he craned to see, stretching eyes and magic as far as they would go.
He was not strong enough for that yet. The cords joining body and soul had begun to stretch and fray. He quelled the rise of panic, working his way back little by little toward the solidity of earth and life and the flesh.
Long before he lay gasping with relief, not even caring that he choked on the reek of gut-sickness and advancing decay, his father’s spirit was gone. William of Normandy, duke and king, conqueror of the English, was dead.
Henry had no tears to shed. He sat in quiet still, the silence of deep night. All too soon it would shatter. Then his brothers would take their legacies: duke’s coronet for Robert, king’s crown for William, and for Henry, gold and patience—and whatever else he could win for himself.
“Bastard to the end,” he said to the motionless bulk on the bed. “Robert’s a layabout, William’s a fool. I’m the last, but even you never reckoned me the least. Maybe you think I need the time and the tempering—but what will become of your domains with those two in charge of them?”
The king was dead and gone. The only answer Henry had, or could hope for, was the memory of a whisper in the air. Patience, it said. Patience.
CHAPTER 4
William pressed his forehead against the wall and tried to remember how to breathe. The stink of his father’s sickness clotted in his lungs, even here in the chapel, the length of the abbey away from the king’s deathbed. He could still feel that hand, all but dead and yet ungodly strong, groping toward his throat.
He could hear the voice, too, and the words it had spoken, echoing and reechoing in his skull. Go. Be king. Be king. Be—
And why should that be such a shock? He had always known that he would get England. Robert never could keep his mouth shut or his temper in check around his father. It suited the old man’s whim to let him keep Normandy. But England was a conquest, with far more to it than the world knew. England, he gave to the son who was obedient more often than not—though not to the youngest son, who was both obedient and brimming over with magic.
There was no fathoming the man. No arguing with him, either. Only Mathilda had ever been able to do that and win.
Abruptly William thrust himself erect. Candles flickered. Things danced in and over and through them: creatures of another world than the one he preferred to live in. It was a curse that he could see them, but it could be useful, too—as now, when their flutter and flurry warned him of another’s coming.
William was kneeling when the monk trod soft-footed into the chapel: his head was bowed, his body bent toward the altar. But his eyes were alert, watching sidelong, and his hand was never far from the hilt of his sword.
The monk halted beside him. His skin shivered. Magic brushed at it.
“What, lad?” said a voice he knew well. “Hiding in plain sight?”
William suppressed a sigh. Whether it rose out of relief or long suffering, he was not entirely sure. “My lord archbishop,” he said.
The Archbishop of Canterbury stooped and laid down his burden. It was threefold, wrapped in heavy silk: one part narrow and long, one narrow and shorter, and one squat and square.
William’s hand stretched toward them before he had time to think. His fingers were stinging as if with the touch of a flame.
“Yes,” Lanfranc said, sounding for once as old as he was. “Crown and sword and scepter. And the king’s seal, too, wrapped close inside the crown. They’re yours—if you ride for the coast tonight, and set sail for England at the turn of the tide.”
“The tide’s already turned,” William said. “Why the hurry? Robert won’t move in that direction until he’s secured Normandy. Should I be afraid of Henry? Or my sisters?”
“England,” said Lanfranc. “You should fear for England.”
William’s eyes narrowed. “Rebels again? Saxons? Danes?”
“Don’t play the fool with me,” Lanfranc said. His voice was mild, but the words were sharp. “There is more at stake than a mortal kingdom, and well you know it.”
William shrugged with careful unconcern. “That was always Cecilia’s worry. Or Henry’s, lately—he’s a fine little sorcerer. It’s the waking world for me, and no witchery to taint it.”
“That world is a delusion,” Lanfranc said, “and the king of all Britain cannot afford to live in it.”
“My father did.”
“Only at the end,” said Lanfranc, “and to his cost—and Britain’s, too.”
“Then why in God’s name did he give the crown to me?”
Lanfranc barely blinked at the outburst. “You can refuse it. No one is forcing it on you.”
William sucked in a breath. He was shaking as if with cold, although it was still the dead of summer, stifling even at night. “So that’s the bargain, then? All or nothing?”
“That is the way of it,” the archbishop said.
William stretched his hand toward the wrapped bundle that was the crown. The air was full of whispers and flitters, voices gibbering just on the edge of hearing, and minute gusts of air like the passage of wings.
If he had had any sense at all, he would have turned his back on it and gone to snatch Normandy from under his brother Robert’s nose. Let Henry have this. Henry was a he-witch from the time he was born. He could stand it.
But even hidden, the crown called to William. To be king. To rule. To be more than either of his brothers, lord above lords. To lift his hand, and every man would bow and submit, and call him Majesty.
Power had its price. If William had learned nothing else in his life, it was that.
“What do I have to do?” he asked roughly. “Do I have to turn witch? Sacrifice a black cock at the dark of the moon? Shed my own blood?”
“That will come c
lear in time,” Lanfranc said.
William could hardly have expected him to say anything else. “Just tell me what I have to do now.”
“As your father commanded,” said the archbishop. “Take these gifts. Ride for the sea. Sail with the tide.”
William had had enough. If he was going to do this, best get it over. His mind was already racing, reckoning how many men he could gather, how fast they could mount, and how soon they could reach the sea.
“There’s a ship waiting,” he said. It was not a question. “You’re riding with me. See that you’re mounted and ready in an hour.”
He had braced for resistance, but the archbishop bowed his head. “As my lord wishes,” he said.
William eyed him sidelong, trusting him not a bit, but there was nothing devious there that he could see. He thrust himself to his feet. The world that had lurched dizzily the day his father took that ill-fated leap was rocking now like a ship in a gale.
He steadied himself as best he could. Lanfranc was behind him—threat or guard or both, who knew? The air was all aflutter, like a dovecote with a fox in it.
Not long now. The words came from nowhere in particular. Death was in this place. He could hope it would be satisfied with his father.
Cecilia lay motionless on her hard narrow bed. Outside her cell, the novices slept in their dormitory. They were noisy sleepers, as children could be: sniffling, tossing, murmuring. Some dreamed hard; some, the newest and youngest, wept with homesickness.
The newest of them all was quiet, but Cecilia could feel the deep warmth of the magic in her. She was wonderfully strong; none of her mother’s bonds had constrained her, or weakened her in the slightest.
When she breathed, the earth breathed with her. Her spirit was woven deep within the fabric of Britain. Half a Gael, half a Saxon: born in two worlds, the world of the Old Things and the world of cold iron.
Cecilia, half a Norman and all enchantress, sighed against the rhythm of that breathing. Deeper even than Edith’s awareness, the isle of Britain stirred uneasily in its sleep. Away across the sea, beyond the walls of air, its king was dying. The new king, the one whom he had chosen, had left Rouen; he was coming, riding as fast as swift horses could carry him.
Cecilia would have chosen otherwise. But the king was the king. Bloated and bitter, emptied of heart and spirit by his lady’s death, closed off to his magic, he was still the trueborn king of all Britain. Even she, who was a Guardian of the Isle, had no power to undo what he had done.
They would all have to make the best of it. She rose and wrapped her blanket about her and trod softly through the dormitory. None of the novices saw or heard her, even those with the power to do it.
This was a difficult place for the likes of her to be. The one buried here kept still her malice, and her sister the abbess preserved it in the living flesh. The Old Things of Britain struggled within these walls. The earth beneath had begun, in parts, to leach itself of magic.
For five hundred years the Saxons had imposed their walls of iron on the old powers of Britain. The Old Things were driven out or hunted toward the edges of the isle. In the heart of England, magic was gone, the world all grey, and the rites of the Lord Christ perverted to the destruction of aught that was not of simple mortal flesh.
And then, one and twenty years ago, the walls of iron had broken. The walls of air had risen to defend Britain against invasion either human or magical. William the Norman, son of a Druid and a duke, had sailed in a ship full of Old Things, and with their help, conquered the Saxons.
But Britain was still full of them. There was no driving them out; they were too many and too deeply entrenched. William’s best hope had been to dilute the blood: to marry Saxon noble to Norman knight or baron, and encourage his lesser troops to find Saxon wives and lovers. What he had made no great effort to do—and that was folly—was to see to it that his Normans were well endowed with magic, and their ladies and their lemans were properly corrupted with it.
Cecilia paused beside Edith’s cot. The child shimmered softly in her sleep. She wore a cloak of night spirits, creatures of moonlight and gossamer, who wrapped themselves about her and defended her against the deadness that filled this place.
Such irony, Cecilia thought. This was the child of Saxon kings, bred to defy the Norman invaders and help win back the Saxon realm. And yet she was also a Gael, descendant of old gods and enchanters. In her the powers were delicately balanced: to raise great magic, or to suppress it utterly.
The Old Things were doing their best to shift the balance. So was Cecilia, for the matter of that. But there was old darkness laired in the heart of Britain, and stretches of emptiness where earth and water and air were deadly to anything made of magic.
It had grown worse since Queen Mathilda died. Now that the king was sinking down into death, the Old Things’ enemies were waiting. Too few of them had died or been destroyed. Too many had found new life again, with no strong king to constrain them, and no queen to stand like a white pillar before the gates of Britain.
Cecilia straightened her back. It was aching as if with the weight of the world. The walls of air were in her charge: defense against invasion from without, and against destruction from within.
Three Guardians should have stood with her. But one was in Normandy near the dying king. One was walled in her Isle of old magic within the isle of Britain. And the third was four years dead, and none had come to take her place.
Cecilia was alone. The enemy was all about her. Here was the weapon it had made, brought here to be shaped and tempered.
It had seemed—not easy, no. But simple, in its way. She would settle herself in the center of the forces against her father, take the Scots princess in hand and bind her to the old ways, and in such moments as that left free, mend all that had been broken since the Saxons swarmed to this shore.
Simple. Arrogant. Profoundly foolish.
Now a new king came who had no understanding or sympathy for the old ways. The defenses were weakened, the defenders scattered. The kingdom that should pass from strength to strength was hardly stronger than it had been when her father took it from the Saxons.
The earth shifted beneath her. She swayed and nearly fell.
The dormitory had not changed. None of the novices was awake. Rain drummed softly on the roof, which it had not been doing before, but that was the perpetual song of England.
Edith’s voice spoke, soft and blurred with sleep. “He’s gone.”
Cecilia stood in silence that had grown suddenly very deep.
“Was he a selkie?” Edith asked. “There was a thing without a shape, and a terrible stink. Then he climbed out of it. He talked to a man who looked just like him, but not as hard. Then he went away.”
Cecilia shivered. She had felt rather than seen it: the spirit escaping the burden of the body. The earth of Britain sighed, and shuddered once more.
A great power had left it. In its place was void.
The walls of air stood firm, but their foundations had begun subtly to crumble. Across the breadth of the isle, the Old Things raised their voices in a long, soundless keen. Gone! He is gone!
“He will come back,” Edith said. She was sitting up. Her eyes were open, but they were full of dreams. “When Britain needs him again, he’ll come.”
Cecilia had no doubt of that. The old powers were mourning him without reservation, but she was mortal and human, and he had been her father. There were no words for what she felt. No tears, either. Nothing but a kind of singing emptiness.
So much to do. So many battles to fight. His fault, most of them, or the fault of those whom he had trusted to hold power in his name.
“How like a man,” she said, not caring how bitter she sounded. “Roar in, sack and pillage—and roar out again with it all half done, and as much undoing as doing for the poor fools who come after.”
Edith seemed not to have heard her. Certainly the child would not have understood. Cecilia coaxed her to lie back down on her
cot, and drew the thin blanket up to her chin.
The wide eyes closed. Cecilia laid a blessing on her brow, with a flicker of magic in it. Edith smiled in her sleep.
Even in the roil of grief and loss and bitterness, Cecilia mustered a smile in return. Magic delighted the child: that was well. Very well indeed. It almost gave her hope.
CHAPTER 5
When William’s riders had assembled—a solid handful of knights and squires and servants, all on fast horses—Lanfranc was nowhere to be found. Nor would anyone admit to having seen him in the abbey. “My lord,” the abbot said when William got hold of him in the chapel—speaking carefully around the hand on his throat—“the archbishop is, as best any of us knows, safe and serene in his see of Canterbury.”
William growled and let him go. Bloody bedamned wizards. He left the abbot to nurse his bruised throat, with a flock of monks clucking and fussing over the old fool, and all but ran back to his visibly patient men.
The crown and sword and scepter were still where he had put them, in an ironbound box on the back of a sumpter mule. He opened the box to be sure. They had not turned to leaves and dust like faery gold. They were real. And never mind how they had got there.
He snatched the rein from his squire’s hand and swung into the red stallion’s saddle, ignoring the stirrups that hung like an invitation to sloth. The boy, who knew him well, sprinted for his own sensible bay. Even before the squire’s rear had struck the saddle, the lot of them were in motion. The gate barely had time to finish opening before William thundered through it.
They rode west as fast as horses could gallop. There was no moon, but William could see as clearly as if there had been. He had not remembered that the road to Touques was as straight as this, or as white. It shed its own light.
His men rode close behind him. The horses were calm, their strides steady. None seemed to mind the glimmering road, or the unnatural straightness and smoothness of it.
