King's Blood

by Judith Tarr

  Most of them were men—knights and men-at-arms. The few women did not look like ladies, and they certainly were not nuns.

  In the castle’s hall, a man sat on a high seat. He was not a child, but neither was he very old. He wore a cotte of crimson silk; under it, visible at throat and wrists, was the grey gleam of mail. His hair was ruddy brown, his face strong-boned but fine, and his eyes were as grey as rain, cool and distant as they rested on the people who drank and feasted and caroused in front of him.

  He was not a king, but he was no commoner, either. He had magic. A great gleaming tide of it, brilliant and beautiful.

  She had seen him before. Somewhere—in a place deep down in memory—he was there. But she could not grasp it. It almost seemed that it willfully eluded her.

  The mist quivered. The hall shifted, brightened, grew. The man in the high seat shrank in height and breadth and much brightened in hair and beard: fair-haired, red-bearded, blue-eyed. The other man was earth and water and the powers of air. This one was fire: hot, hasty, changeable, and inescapably powerful.

  That one she knew. This was the Norman king, the one they called Red William. He had no magic, but his eyes could see between the worlds. He did not like that: she saw how he tried not to look when folk of air danced among the rafters of his hall.

  The mist blurred again; again she saw a hall, smaller than the first two, and this time there were two men: grey and old, black-haired and not so old. Father and son, she thought. They had the same face, hawk-nosed and wild. They were not as magical as the brown man, but there was power in them, and the ferocity of birds of prey.

  And then came the last vision, the last hall, the only one she knew for herself: her father’s dun on Eidyn’s mountain, and her father in it. She had never thought of him as old, but it struck her with a small shock that he was. His hair was still mostly dark, but his beard had gone white.

  She shut her eyes. When she opened them again, the world was closed in with mist and rain, and the visions were gone. What they meant, she could not be sure. She could not be marrying all of them, and certainly not her father. But fate had shown them to her. Somehow their destinies were twined with hers.

  Time would tell. That was a favorite saying of her father’s. Malcolm was an old fox and a sly one. He knew the uses of patience.

  She could learn them. She was young, but she was a woman, and women needed patience.

  She was almost at peace, thinking that. She still did not know what she was supposed to do, but she would. In time. When she was ready.

  CHAPTER 19

  Fornicators! Sodomites!”

  William had come to Gloucester Cathedral to hear Mass on this bright Sunday after Midsummer, as he had been doing more or less devotedly since his illness in the spring. He told himself it was only prudent. Cold iron was no use against what stalked him—but he still had some hope of good Norman Christianity.

  He liked a good sermon, too: a little brimstone was good for the soul. A rousing chorus of damned souls, an angry God, a voice duly thundering from the pulpit, was almost as entertaining as a troupe of mountebanks.

  This priest of Gloucester, speaking in the bishop’s stead, was in splendid form. But William had not expected to be taking the brunt of it.

  Oh, it was veiled in the Bible and a pack of parables, but the man’s eyes were on William and his escort, and when his long white finger stabbed the air, it stabbed toward the king. “Lost in lust,” he intoned in a melodic snarl, “wrapped in one another’s arms, bearded kiss to bristling bearded kiss—bodies locked that never were meant to fit together so—”

  William’s teeth gritted so hard they ached. One or two of his squires blushed furiously. The rest of them either looked bored or slumped against one another—body to body as the priest so vividly described them—snoring unabashedly.

  If the king walked out on the sermon, there would be a scandal. He did his best to shut his ears to it—not easy considering the strength of the priest’s voice. He should have been a herald: that clarion call would have carried across a battlefield.

  “Rise up!” the priest cried. “Rise up against the children of Sodom! Cleanse the earth of their sin! In God’s name, in the name of holy purity, let their foulness be scoured away!”

  “It seems he’s put a great deal of thought into it,” Robin observed. Good if quiet pagan that he was, he had been elsewhere during Mass, but William had regaled him with the sermon’s more telling points.

  “I’d say there was more than thought in it, myself,” William said. “There’s a man who’s made a thorough and no doubt intimate study of his subject.”

  William was mostly dressed and pacing the floor of his bedchamber, still incensed after a full day of chewing it over, but Robin was in bed and at ease. He stretched out naked on the coverlet and yawned. “Pity you couldn’t have shown him for what he is.”

  “One of us?” William spat. “I’d disown him.”

  Robin yawned again and stretched. William stopped short. That was a very fine body, lying there—no longer a boy’s, but lean still and beautifully drawn, and as supple as an eel.

  William was not in the mood to be seduced. He was too bloody angry. “They have no damned right to preach against me. I’m the king—and I am what God made me.”

  “Priests have never been noted for practical logic,” Robin said, “particularly when it comes to matters of the flesh.”

  “I’ll give them sin,” William said. “I’ll sell them to the Saracens. They think they know what debauchery is? There’s a lifelong study for them.”

  “Now there’s a dream,” Robin said. He propped himself on his elbow. He was more awake than William had thought, and more serious, too. “You know, you should be thinking. It’s not only the Church that needs a king to perform certain duties. The kingdom needs it, too. King’s blood is more than what he sheds when he bleeds. He’s bound to pass it on—to get an heir.”

  “I have an heir,” William said. “I have two. There’s Robert—who I admit is a sluggard, but he has the blood—and Henry, who’s a sorcerer, too. Henry’s been populating the earth with bastards. Robert’s been a bit less diligent, but there’s no doubt he’s a man for women. There’s more than enough of the Conqueror’s blood to keep old Britain happy.”

  “You are the king,” Robin said. “King’s blood is the land’s strength.”

  “It’s got as much of that as it’s going to get,” William said. He hoped he sounded grim rather than desperate.

  “You should think,” said Robin. “There’s more to the rule of a kingdom than the king. A queen is its strength, too. Your mother stood beside your father over the land of Britain. When she died, the land suffered. It’s still suffering.”

  “That’s no fault of mine,” said William. “It’s not mine to mend.”

  “You know better than that,” Robin said.

  William scowled at him. “What would I do with a queen?”

  “Share the rule with her. Get sons on her.”

  William shook his head. “No. Oh, no. I’m not sharing my power. And I certainly am not—”

  “Think,” said Robin. He kept saying that. William was going to hit him the next time he said it. “A queen who is also an enchantress, who is prepared to do her duty, who can stand beside you and stare down the priests and the scandalmongers—”

  “Well,” said William, “if that’s all I need, I’ll call on my sister. I don’t need to marry her, do I? Wasn’t there an old kingdom that had brother and sister sharing the throne?”

  “No doubt,” said Robin, “somewhere. But the Church would still thunder against you—maybe worse, if it can add incest to the count of your sins.”

  William hissed through his teeth. “God! Is there no end to the prurience of priests?”

  “I would say not,” said Robin. “Since they can’t have it, they dream endlessly of it, and with great invention, too.”

  “I’m not going to take a queen,” William said.

&n
bsp; “You may have to,” said Robin.

  “Why? Do you have one in mind?”

  If William had hoped to catch Robin off guard, he was disappointed. “In fact,” Robin said, “there is one. Would you like to meet her?”

  “Who is she?”

  Robin smiled. Then he shook his head. “No, no. You’re not interested.”

  “You’re teasing me,” William said, and not pleasantly, either. “Tell me who she is.”

  “She’s in a convent at the moment,” Robin said. “Her lineage is doubly royal. She goes both to Alfred and an old royal line of Britain. She has great magic.”

  “Her name,” William said with the rumble of a growl. “Tell me.”

  “Edith,” said Robin. “Her name is Edith.”

  A bark of laughter escaped William. “What! Old Edward’s queen? She’s years dead.”

  “Hardly,” Robin said. “That Edith was no descendant of Alfred. This one comes from the old blood.”

  William’s eyes narrowed. People said he had more brawn than brain, and thinking was not his greatest strength. But he was not quite an idiot, either. “What, old Malcolm’s daughter? My brother Robert’s goddaughter? She must be all of seven years old.”

  “Twelve,” said Robin, “and growing fast.”

  “No,” William said flatly. “I don’t rob cradles. I don’t lust after little boys, and I won’t take a girlchild from her mother’s tit.”

  “Meet her first,” said Robin, “before you refuse altogether. She has magic to burn—and wit and skill to go with it. Your sister has been tutoring her since she was a child. She’s been raised to stand beside kings.”

  “One of whom will not be me,” William said.

  “Will you at least look at her? For me?”

  William rounded on Robin. “That was a low blow.”

  “All’s fair,” said Robin lightly, “in love and politics.”

  William raised his hand to box the boy’s ears, but lowered it before he began. Robin’s smile never wavered. “You’d risk losing me to a woman? You’d do that?”

  “There’s no risk,” Robin said.

  “Then what of her? Is it fair to any woman to bind her to a man like me?”

  “This is a queen,” said Robin. “She knows her duty.”

  “Duty is a cold thing,” William said.

  “If it saves your kingdom,” said Robin, “and saves you, then it’s worth the price.”

  “Is it?”

  “Look at her and see.”

  William started to shake his head, but something made him stop. “You could find yourself regretting this.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Robin said. He opened his arms.

  William should have turned his back on them. It would have served the conniving fool right. But he had no sense when it came to Robin FitzHaimo. He sighed, he growled, but he let those arms draw him—however briefly—away from the world and its troubles.

  CHAPTER 20

  Edith almost failed to come back from the Otherworld once she had read all her father’s letters. She left them there, safe in a place she knew, with words of guarding on them and folk of air to watch over them. It took all the will she had to pass through the worlds again, and go back to the cloister that had been set to trap her.

  Knowledge is power. Her father had taught her that. So had Sister Cecilia. The abbess did not know what Edith knew. Nor would she, if Edith could help it.

  Always since she first began, she had taken great care to reappear in hidden places: a dark corner of the cloister, a forsaken bit of garden, the far end of the orchard. On that day of revelation and confusion, she was not as careful as she should have been. She sent no scouts ahead, and did not look first to see where she was going.

  She fell out of air onto the paving stones of the cloister, far enough and hard enough to drop her bruisingly to her knees. The cloister, mercifully, was deserted—until she heard the gasp of breath behind her.

  She scrambled up and spun. A nun in black had been sitting on a bench in that distant corner. Her face at first was a pale blur; then Edith’s sight cleared enough for recognition.

  Sister Gunnhild stared at her as if she had done exactly what she had: appeared quite suddenly out of thin air.

  Edith’s whole mind and body went still. A babble of excuses ran through her head, but none of them reached her tongue. Some of the nuns might have chosen to believe whatever story Edith could think of to tell. But not Sister Gunnhild. Her sight was too clear and her mind too logical.

  Even so, Edith had to do something. “Sister—” she began.

  Sister Gunnhild closed her eyes. “You are not here,” she said. “You were never here. I saw nothing and heard nothing.”

  Edith opened her mouth, but closed it again. Sister Gunnhild’s fingers were in her ears. She was setting Edith free—though with what perturbation of mind, Edith could too easily imagine.

  She took the gift. She fled away down the cloister.

  Edith kept her head down and her magic to herself for the rest of that day. Every time someone coughed, she jumped like a cat. But no summons came from the abbess.

  The next day after morning office, she had her daily hour with Sister Gunnhild. She almost refused to go—but she still had not been ordered into the abbess’ presence. If there was a trap waiting for her, then so be it. And if there was not . . .

  Sister Gunnhild was sitting in the library as always, walled in books. Her face was no more or less easy to read than it ever was. She said nothing of what she had seen, and showed no sign of having remembered it.

  Edith bit her tongue and sat where she always sat. It was hard to focus on the page in front of her, but somehow she managed.

  And that was how it was. No summons from the abbess. No word from Sister Gunnhild. After a week she began to believe that she was safe.

  Then the summons came.

  That had been a strange day. When Edith went for her usual lesson, Sister Gunnhild was not there. Sister Librarian did not know where she was. Edith spent the hour reading, despite the temptation to slip away elsewhere.

  After her hour in the library, she went to the kitchens for her morning duties. It was never quiet there; not only the nuns and novices and the abbey servants had to be fed, but there were the pensioners and the not infrequent guests as well. But this morning the kitchens were more than usually frantic.

  Edith caught one of the undercooks as she flew past. “What—”

  The girl spun them both full around. “The king! The king’s coming here!”

  For a wild instant Edith thought she meant Malcolm of Scots.

  But this was England. England’s king was William—Red William, whom Edith had seen in a vision in the Otherworld.

  “What does he want with us?” she asked.

  The undercook shrugged free. “Does it matter?” she flung over her shoulder.

  Probably not, Edith thought. Except that nothing a king did lacked consequence. For him to come here to this house of holy women, full of Saxons who had been raised in secret rebellion against all that was Norman—it was not a casual visit. There was no way it could be.

  She rolled up her sleeves and set to work kneading bread. She always had loved that part of her duties: digging deep into the yielding dough, rolling and folding it, beating it into submission. There was more of it than usual today: enough for the royal party, and made with the finest flour, too, and not the coarse brown meal that the nuns were given.

  She was deep in it, well and truly floured, when Sister Gunnhild came to fetch her. She brought the summons Edith had been dreading for a week and more: “Mother Abbess would see you.”

  There was nothing about her that warned of betrayal. Edith searched hard for it, too; but Sister Gunnhild was the same as she had always been. She was bringing a message, no more.

  Edith set herself in such order as she could, brushed off as much flour as she might, and followed Sister Gunnhild. She was somewhat surprised not to be taken to the a
bbess’ study. Instead they went where the novices were not to go, out through the cloister toward the guesthouses.

  There was a great crowd there of men and horses, hawks and hounds and all the appurtenances of a hunting party. Most of them had found places to settle and were dicing or talking or tending the animals. They all had eyes that tended to wander, and not many of them seemed to care that the women they stared at wore nuns’ habits.

  They had a distinctly pagan air, though they were no worse than Edith’s father’s men had been prone to be. Men were men, unless they were clergy—and even there, Edith had heard enough to know that not every priest or monk was devoted to his vows.

  Edith knew better than to meet those bold stares, but she could see quite well sidelong; she had had enough practice in it. Normans, she already knew, were human enough when they were not raping and pillaging. They were big men in the main, red or brown or fair; not many of them were small or dark. Their ancestors had been Vikings, ruthless raiders from the north. Normans—Norsemen. She could see it in them, a hint of wildness beneath the silk and linen and the finely woven mail.

  As many as they had seemed to be, there were no more than two dozen altogether. That was a small escort for a king. Edith wondered if the rest were in the town, or if this William really had come to the abbey with hardly more attendance than a minor baron.

  The king was in the hall where noble guests were used to dine. It was open now to what air there was on this breathless summer day, the trestles laid away and the benches lined against the walls. There were chairs by the hearth, which was clean and swept of ashes, but no one was sitting in them.

  In her vision, Edith had seen this man as a creature of fire. Certainly he was as restless as that.

  Even in Abbess Christina’s presence, clouds of the folk of air surrounded him. They shrank and shuddered near the abbess, but they could not stay away from the king.