by Judith Tarr
“Britain is magic,” Edith said, shaping each word with care. “You can’t do this. I won’t let you.”
“And who are you,” said Henry, “to allow or forbid?”
“She is a daughter of kings,” Malcolm said before Edith could speak, “and a Lady of the Isle, and a Guardian of Britain.”
Edith opened her mouth to point out that she was not yet a Lady and probably never would be, but Henry was already speaking. “If you are all that, lady, then you know I have to do this. Who else can? There are kings in Scotland and Wales, and they’re as royal as any, but this needs William the Bastard’s blood. Doesn’t it, spirit?”
Malcolm spread his hands. “It does seem so. I only bought you seven years. William conquered this kingdom; it stands to reason that his blood would be required to save it.”
“There,” said Henry. “That’s clear enough. What do I need to do? Is there a ritual? Does it need a consecrated weapon, or will good Norman steel do?”
He had drawn his sword, the idiot, as if he would fall on it then and there. Edith rose up in outrage and blasted it to shards.
He stood empty-handed, staring at the smoking fragments that had been a sword. She was perilously close to rendering him into the same condition. “If you must die,” she said with all the control she had left, “you will do it in the proper way and in the proper time. You!” she cried to her father, “Begone! I loved you while you were alive and honor you in your death, but if you take my beloved from me, I will hound you through all the worlds.”
Malcolm’s ghostly brows rose. “Ah, so,” he said. “So that’s the way of it. Well, lad, I wish you a good fight. With this one you’ll need it.”
Henry opened his mouth to speak, but Malcolm was gone. They were alone in the starlight, beside the still lake. Nothing moved; apart from them, nothing breathed. The world itself had gone motionless.
Edith rounded on Henry. “Don’t you dare kill yourself! Or get yourself killed, either.”
“Is there any other choice?” he asked her with a touch of weariness.
“There are endless choices! I won’t lose you. Do you hear me? I won’t let you go.”
“Even if this kingdom falls? Even then, lady?”
She shook her head. “It won’t fall. I won’t let that happen, either. Will you promise not to die until there truly is no other choice?”
“Yes, but—”
“Good,” she said. Then she stopped. “Do I appall you?”
He blinked. “No,” he said. “No, you’re fascinating.”
She would not ask the question that her heart was insisting she ask—that no doubt, great man for woman that he was, he was expecting. She kissed him, because there was no resisting it, and pulled him to his feet. “I’ll lock you in durance vile if I have to—bear that well in mind. I’ll make sure you keep your promise.”
“Yes, lady,” he said meekly.
She eyed him with suspicion, but he was the picture of innocence. He went willingly with her away from the lake, back toward the houses and the Ladies’ protection.
Henry was enchanted—truly. But the conclusion he had come to, in spite of his promise, would not go away. He had been arriving at it, one way and another, since he set foot in England the year before. He was the one. The land had chosen him. In every way it could, it had been telling him so.
He was not afraid. Death was a door, the old religion said; and the new one, its own God knew, preached the superiority of heaven. Not to be alive again, not to see her living face, did trouble him—but who knew? He might be granted leave to haunt her.
He was as close to content as he could be, as his beautiful and imperious guide brought him to the largest of the round houses in the Isle. People were still awake there, conversing softly by firelight: the three Guardians and one or two white-gowned Ladies, and a cat that was not, by its nature, a cat at all.
Cecilia greeted them with a glance that saw a great deal—but not everything. Henry smiled as he sat beside her.
She did not smile back. The council had been grim, he could tell from their faces. He had a fair reckoning of what they had been saying, too.
His lady—because she was that; he could not deny it—was eyeing him narrowly. He would tell his sister later what he had decided. For now, there were greetings and inconsequentialities, and after a little while, they all repaired to bed for what was left of the night.
There was a bed for Henry in this house, but the lady Mathilda, having kissed him until he was dizzy, turned and slipped away. She had another house, it seemed, and another bed, to which he was not invited.
He resolved not to be offended. He knew nothing of the customs here, or the laws that might govern Ladies of the Isle. Sleep was welcome in any case, and his heart was at ease. His mind was made up.
“You have gone completely mad.”
One thing Henry could say for his sister: she spoke her mind. He had had to hunt her down and find her alone, which took some doing. At last, late the following day, he followed her to one of the gardens, where she had set to hoeing weeds.
He already knew that all the Ladies did whatever needed doing, no matter how menial. A hoe was not his usual weapon, but he plied one with enthusiasm if not skill, while he told her what he had decided to do.
She heard him out—that was one of her virtues, too. When he finished, she stopped what she was doing, and looked him straight in the face, and said what she thought.
“I’m not mad,” he said. “I’m called—chosen. Isn’t it obvious? William won’t do it. Robert isn’t even in it. It can’t be a woman or you’d do it—don’t pretend you wouldn’t. I’m the one of the sons with magic. The land is in me. I have the blood. I’m willing. What else do we need?”
“Sanity,” she said promptly. “You are not meant to die a wasted death.”
“Wasted!” His voice had escaped his control; she swayed in the blast of it. “What other hope is there? What else can anybody do?”
“The king can die,” she said.
In the wake of those words, silence grew to fill the world. The murmur of wind and water, crying of birds, voices of people and animals, died away. The sky seemed to stoop lower, listening. The earth was breathlessly still.
“But,” Henry said in that great silence, “it has to be a willing sacrifice.”
“Not necessarily,” she said.
“Then it’s murder. No more or less.”
“Or a tragic accident.”
“Like Richard? Like that?”
She nodded.
He hacked a nettle to death with the hoe—taking great satisfaction in it. “So that was murder, too.”
“That was the Hunt, delivering a warning. William knows the price of his intransigence. It seems he’s willing to pay it.”
“He has no conception of it,” Henry said sharply. “He’s a willful innocent.”
“He’s a willful idiot.” She threw down her hoe and stalked to the end of the row of beans on their poles, then spun. “I’ll tell you what I see,” she said. “I see a rule that’s gone on long enough, a king who will not do his duty, and a kingdom that will not endure much longer while he is king of it.”
“You’ll wield the knife, then,” he said.
“I may,” she said. “I’ll do everything I can to keep it from drinking your heart’s blood.”
“Why? Am I not worthy?”
She was on him before he saw her move, bearing him back and down in pure astonishment. No one had done that to him since he was a child—and certainly not his august and much elder sister.
He lay in the furrow with beans dangling overhead and her furious face thrust into his. “You’re a worse idiot than he is! Don’t you know what you are—what Father meant you to be? You’re the next king. That’s what the land is telling you. It’s chosen you. But it can’t keep you, or use you, or cure itself of its sickness, until the crown passes on. Do you understand now? He is the year-king. You are the king hereafter.”
“I’m not—”
She slapped him until his ears rang. “You of all people, I would have thought would see it from the first. What, are you blind? Robert’s useless here—luckily he’s the eldest; he could have Normandy, which takes care of itself. William should have been less stubborn than he was; if he had done what our father wanted him to do, he would have given you a strong kingdom that you could raise above the rest of the world. Father reckoned without the grey abbess and he reckoned without William’s consummate stupidity. It seems he overestimated you, too.”
“If this is the old rite,” he said with difficulty: she was a substantial weight, sitting on his chest, “I have to kill him. I have to kill my brother.”
“Someone does,” she said. “It’s been foreseen. What you two did yesterday, that began the new order. This will be the last rite of the old way: the last royal sacrifice to bind the powers of Britain. There is no escaping it. If we shrink from it, we all fail. The kingdom dies.”
“Why? Why us? Why now?”
“The world changes,” she said. “Even the powers change. A world is ending, even as a new one is born. We’re its midwives—yes, even you; don’t stare at me like that. There’s blood; there’s pain. There’s death, and there’s what lies beyond death. Then—there’s a new kingdom. Briton, Saxon, Norman. All together.” Her finger thrust painfully at his chest, right above the heart. “That’s for you to do. You have to live. The old order has to die.”
She left him there, lying in the furrow, with his head buzzing and his mind reeling in confusion. So much that he had thought he saw, or believed he knew, was all changed. The world was different. The light fell in a way he had never seen before.
To be king. To take Britain in his hand, and do what he knew must be done—the elation, the exultation of it, sent the world spinning even while he lay flat on it.
But if he was to do that, William had to die. That was why the Hunt was still free in the daylight. It was waiting for its last quarry: the blood and soul of a king.
CHAPTER 49
I won’t do it,” Henry said. “Find yourselves another executioner.”
He had lain for a long while in the furrow before he got up and went to find the Guardians. They were waiting for him in the Lady’s house, in smoky dimness that seemed black dark after the bright sunlight. Once his sight had cleared, he could see that all their faces were somber. FitzHaimo looked as sick as Henry felt.
No wonder. He was plotting his lover’s death.
“This is a sacrifice,” the Lady said, “a gift to the gods. It’s the last royal blood they’ll drink. Sacrifices hereafter will be of another kind.”
“The Christians gave it up a thousand years ago,” Henry said.
“So they did,” said the Lady, “and their last sacrifice was the greatest of all: their god’s own son.”
“They laid the burden of it on the Romans,” he said, “and on the Jews—not on his brother.”
“Therefore his hands were clean, when he profited from it?” The Lady shook her head. “The old way was simpler. There was no sin or damnation. The king died of his free will, and the new king performed the sacrifice.”
“This king will not die of his free will,” Henry said.
“What if he will?” That was Mathilda. “What if he accepts his fate? Will that change anything?”
“It won’t happen,” said Cecilia.
“It might,” Mathilda said. “He’s a better man than he knows. In the end, when he sees there’s no other choice, he may surprise you all.”
“We can’t wager on it,” Cecilia said. “This has to be done. How we do it, and when—”
“Soon,” FitzHaimo said. That was the sound of pain exquisitely controlled. “It must be soon.”
They bowed to him. Even Henry curbed his tongue. He might have asked whether that of all people he could persuade William to do what must be done, but he chose silence.
It could be cowardice. Maybe it was wisdom. They were plotting a king’s death—high treason in the world Henry had grown to manhood in. Here, it was something higher and somehow cleaner. It was ritual, and sacrifice.
No wonder his father had fled this world and his brother turned his back on it. There was nothing easy or simple about it. The light was too bright; the darkness was full of terror. And it all came down on the king’s shoulders, even with the pillars that were the Guardians, and all the powers that bowed to his name.
He had to leave that house, though not yet the Isle. He was not ready to face his brother and know that William was condemned, by the oldest laws and powers of Britain, to death. Above all he was not ready—nor might ever be—to carry out that sentence.
William had been keeping close to the sea that summer, keeping his eye on Normandy. The duke had to come back sooner or later, and William wanted to be within easy reach when he did. Then—who knew? Maybe they would go to war over the dukedom. Or else they would join together and conquer France.
On the first of August, which was the feast of St. Peter in Chains, stag-hunting season began. A day or two in advance of that, William brought a small company to one of his hunting lodges: Brockenhurst, that was older and smaller than Brampton, but better situated for the deer. The rest of the court stayed behind in Winchester, being dutiful.
A week or two of hunting, William was thinking as he rode back from the first day’s hunt, then maybe he would take an army and head for Normandy. England had seen enough of him for a while, and he of it.
But today and tomorrow and for however long it pleased him, he was hunting the red deer in his own forest. They had shot two fine stags today—one with his arrow and one with Walter Tirel’s. Walter Tirel’s was much the larger, which he would never stoop to brag of, but some of the others were not so delicate.
William had fallen back a bit from the rest of the hunt. They were almost to the lodge, and he was enjoying the fine weather and the free sky too much. He was halfway tempted to go back out again. There were a few hours of daylight left—why not make use of them?
The others had venison in mind, and as much wine as they could swallow. That would not be a bad thing, either, William reflected. He stayed with them therefore, and rode into the manor’s court somewhat behind the others.
They were all milling about in the tight space, made tighter by the presence of a stranger. William saw the horse first, a stocky iron-grey cob, then the rider: a dwarf with a black beard, thickset and powerful, and nigh as broad as he was tall. He looked vaguely familiar, but William could not put his finger on where he had seen the man before.
The dwarf’s trade and purpose were clear to see: he had set up an anvil and small forge in the corner by the stable, and was hammering lustily at a bar of iron while a horse waited to be shod.
The horse, unlike the dwarf, was very familiar indeed: a fine bay mare with a star on her forehead and one white hoof. William looked for her master, and found him soon enough, leaning against the wall, conversing with one or two of the knights.
William felt the grin spread across his face. “FitzHaimo!” he roared. “You bloody reprobate! Where have you been?” He pushed through the crowd of men and horses, in one instance lifting a large and oblivious knight bodily out of the way.
By the time he got to Robin, he found a grin to match his. The eyes that went with it looked a little haunted, but he did not let it trouble him just then. He swept his friend into a strong embrace.
Robin’s grip was just as strong—if not stronger. William’s ribs creaked. They let each other go in the same moment. “I thought you’d vanished into a hollow hill,” William said. “Trust you to unvanish just in time for the stag-hunting. Would you believe it? After all the cursed weather we’ve had, the deer are as fat as they ever were. God is smiling again, and no mistake.”
“Fat deer are a blessing,” Robin said. The smith called to him just then with a question about the mare; William did not get a good look at his face.
Time enough later for that. People
were calling William, too. He thumped Robin on the shoulder and brushed a kiss past his ear. “Sit with me at dinner.”
Robin nodded, maybe at the smith, maybe at William. William shrugged and left him to sort out the mare’s shoeing.
Robin was late to dinner, damn him, but the rest were all there, and the wine was plentiful and the venison splendid. Whatever was keeping Robin, it was not the smith—the man came in between the venison and the pigeon pie with a gift for the king: six black hunting arrows tipped with fine steel and fletched with raven’s feathers. “A small token of regard,” the dwarf said in his deep rumble of a voice, “and a minor tribute for a king.”
William rose to accept the gift, and bowed. “My thanks, sir smith,” he said. “You do beautiful work. Stay with us a while; we can use you.”
“Many thanks, my lord,” the smith said, bowing to the floor.
William opened his mouth to invite the dwarf to share the rest of the dinner, but he was already gone. He was agile on those thick bandy legs, and quick, too.
Indeed he did beautiful work. William had been able to see as much from a distance, but once he had the arrows in his hands, he could see how well they were made.
Walter Tirel whistled softly, leaning on William’s shoulder. “These are wonderful,” he said.
“Aren’t they?” said William. He lifted two from the rest and pressed them into Walter Tirel’s hand. “Here, take these. Not that you need any help to shoot the fattest deer in the woods, but why shouldn’t the best have the best?”
Walter Tirel flushed, but he was not fool enough to refuse such a gift. He thanked William with a kiss that promised more and better for later, and sat down just as Robin finally deigned to appear in the hall.
The place that William had been keeping for Robin was occupied by Walter Tirel. Robin seemed not to mind. He found a place farther down the table and let the servant fill a plate and a cup for him. He went straight for the wine, which was not like him—but yet again, William was distracted before he could say anything about it.
