Scarlet

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  “Precisely,” agreed the baron. “Is this not what I was saying?”

  “To make good Clement’s claim,” said Philip, “you must first depose Urban for good. Blood would flow.”

  “It may not come to that,” replied the baron.

  “If it did?”

  “Qué será,” answered his father. A drum began beating just then, and Baron de Braose gazed out across the field to a clump of beech trees where the handlers were waiting. “If all goes well, you will receive a sign before Christmas. I will send it with the winter supplies.” With that, he put spurs to his mount and galloped away.

  Earl Philip watched his father’s broad back, his frown a scowl of displeasure. “A word beyond this field and we are dead men,” he muttered.

  “Count Falkes!” The baron called back to him. “When you catch this phantom raven of yours, let me know. I think I’d like to see him hang.”

  Well, thought Falkes de Braose as he rode into the town square, we would all like to see King Raven hang. And hang he would, there was no doubt about that. But there were other, more pressing matters on his mind than chasing down elusive thieves. And anyway, Elfael had been quiet lately—not an incident in many months. Most likely, the black bird and his band of thieves had been frightened away by the sheriff, and was now raiding elsewhere—someplace where the purses were fatter and the pickings easier.

  Count Falkes paused outside Abbot Hugo’s stone-built church. It was a handsome building. The abbot had spared no expense, commanding the finest materials available and gathering the best masons, and it showed.

  The count had no great love for his abbot, a haughty, high-handed cleric who connived and conspired to get his way in everything—from the cloth of gold for the altar to the lead roof gleaming dully in the sun. That very roof Falkes paused to admire just now. Ordinary thatch was not good enough for Hugo; it had to be lead, cast in heavy sheets in Paris and shipped at great expense across the channel. And then there was the stonework—only the most skilled stonecutters were allowed to work on the archway carvings, producing the finest decoration money could buy. At the church entrance, Falkes stopped to examine a few of the finished sculptures—some of the last to be finished: a dragon with wings, chasing its tail for eternity; a centaur brandishing a sword; a lion and horse intertwined in mortal combat; Aquarius, the water man, with his bucket and ladle; an angel driving Adam and Eve from the Garden; a winged ox; a mermaid rising from the waves clutching an anchor; and more, all of them contained in dozens of small stone plaques around the arch and on the pillars.

  Falkes traced the shapely outline of the mermaid with his finger. He had to admit that the work was extraordinary, but then, so was the cost—and increasingly difficult to bear. It meant, among other things, that he required constant support; he was still far too dependent for his survival on regular supplies from his uncle. True, the largest part of the problem was the baron himself, and his unquenchable zeal for conquest. If Baron de Braose was prepared to build slowly, to develop the land and settle the people, Count Falkes had no doubt that Elfael and the territories west could eventually be made to yield untold wealth. But the baron was not willing to wait, and Falkes had to bear the brunt of his uncle’s impatience—just as he had to endure the umbrage of the abbot, whose spendthrift ways could well ruin them all.

  Falkes entered the church. Cool and dim inside, it breathed an air of quiet serenity despite the steady chink of chisel on stone. He stood for a moment and watched the two masons on the wooden scaffold dressing the capitals of one of the pillars. One of them was carving what looked like a bear, and the other a bird.

  “You there!” shouted Falkes, his voice loud in the quiet of the sanctuary. “What is your name?”

  The masons stopped their work and turned to look down at the count, striding down the centre of the nave. “Me, Sire? I am Ethelric.”

  “What is that you are carving, Ethelric?”

  “A raven, Sire,” replied the sculptor, pointing to the leafy bough issuing from the face carved into the top of the pillar. “You can tell by the beak, Sire.”

  “Remove it.”

  “Sire?” asked the mason, bewilderment wrinkling his brow.

  “Remove it at once. I do not wish to see any such images in this church.”

  The second stone-carver on the scaffold spoke up. “Begging your pardon, Sire, but the abbot has approved of all the work we are doing here.”

  “I do not care if the king himself has approved it. I am paying for it, and I do not want it. Remove the hideous thing at once.”

  “There you are, Count Falkes!” exclaimed Abbot Hugo, moving up the nave to take his place beside the count. His white hair was neatly curled beneath a fine cloth cap, and his robe was glistening white satin. “I saw your horse outside and wondered where you had gone.” Glancing at the two stone-carvers on the scaffold, he nodded to them to get back to work and, taking the count by the arm, led Falkes down the aisle. “We’ll let these men get on with their work, shall we?”

  “But see here,” protested the count.

  “Come, there is something I wish to show you,” said the abbot, surging ahead. “The work is going well. We have years of construction still before us, of course, but the building will soon be serviceable. I’m contemplating a consecration ceremony on the eve of All Souls. What do you think of that?”

  “I suppose,” agreed Falkes diffidently, “although Baron de Braose will not be likely to attend. But see here, that carving in there . . .”

  The abbot opened the door and stepped out. “Why not?” he asked, turning back. He looped his arm through the count’s and walked him into the market square. “I would very much like the baron to attend. In fact, I insist. He must see what we have achieved here. It is his triumph as much as my own. He must attend.”

  “I agree, of course,” said Falkes. “However, the baron is away in France and not expected to return much before Christmas.”

  “Pity,” sniffed the abbot, none too distraught. “Then we will simply wait. It will give us time to finish more of the corbels and capitals.”

  “That is what I wanted to speak to you about, Abbot,” said Falkes, who went on to explain that his treasury was all but depleted and there would be no more funds to pay the workers. “I sent a letter to the baron—and it, like everything else, awaits his return from France.”

  Abbot Hugo stopped walking. “What am I to do until then? The men must be paid. They cannot wait until Christmas. The work must continue. The work must go on if we are ever to see the end of it.”

  “That is as may be,” granted the count, “but there is no money to pay them until the baron returns.”

  “Can you not borrow from somewhere?”

  “Do you really need cloth of gold to dress the altar?”

  The abbot pursed his lips in a frown.

  “You said you wished to show me something,” said Falkes.

  “This way,” said the abbot. They walked across the empty market square to what was left of the former monastery of Llanelli, on whose ruins the town was being raised. The modest chapter house had been enlarged to provide adequate space for the abbot’s needs—which, so it appeared to Falkes, were greater than his own, though he had a score of knights to house. Inside, what had been the refectory was now the abbot’s private living quarters.

  “I have drawn plans for the abbey garden and fields,” the abbot said, placing a rolled parchment in the count’s hands. “Some wine?”

  “You are too kind,” said Falkes. Unrolling the skin, he carried it to the room’s single window and held it to the light. The outline of the town was a simple square, and the fields, indicated by long narrow parallel lines, seemed to be some distance from the town and almost twice as large as Llanelli itself. “What are you thinking of growing?”

  “Flax mostly,” replied the abbot, “and barley, of course. We will use what we need and sell the surplus.”

  “With such a great extent of fields,” said the count, �
�you will surely have a surplus. But I am wondering who will work these fields for you?”

  “The monks.” Abbot Hugo handed him a cup of wine.

  “How many monks do you reckon you will need?”

  “As to that,” replied the abbot with a smile, “I estimate that I can make do with no fewer than seventy-five, to begin.”

  “Seventy-five!” cried Falkes. “By the Virgin! If you had said thirty I would have thought that was fifteen too many. Why do you need so many?”

  “To carry on the work of Saint Martin.” Falkes turned an incredulous gaze upon the abbot who, still smiling, sipped his wine and continued, “It is ambitious, I confess, but we must begin somewhere.”

  “Saint Martin’s?”

  “You cannot imagine,” said the abbot, “that we would continue to call our new Norman abbey by its old heathen Welsh name. In fact, I have prepared a letter to the pope requesting a charter to be drawn up in the name L’Abbaye de Martin de Saint dans les Champs.”

  At the mention of the pope, Falkes rolled up the parchment and handed it back to the abbot, saying, “You would be well advised to hold onto that letter a little longer, Abbot.”

  CHAPTER 8

  King Raven’s greenwood refuge served in most respects as a village for those forced to call it home. Deep in the forest, King Raven’s flock had carved out a clearing below the protecting arm of a stony ridge. At great effort, they had extended the natural glade to include a pitiful little field for barley, a sorry bean patch, and one for turnips. They had dragged together bits of this and that for their huts and crude shelters, and the pens for their few scrawny animals. There was a patched-together tun which served as a granary for storing a scant supply of grain, and a seeping pool at the foot of the rock scarp that served them for a well.

  In the days following the archery contest, I came to see the place in a little better light than had greeted me on first sight, but that en’t saying much. For it did seem that a lorn and lonely air hung over the place—the vapour of suffering produced by the folk whose lives were bound to this perilous perch. No one was here who had hope of a better life elsewhere—saving, maybe, only myself. Now, a right fair forester like myself might find living in such a place no great hardship for a few weeks, or even months. But even I would be screaming to get free long before a year had come round. And these poor folk had endured it for more than a year—a tribute, I suppose, to Lord Bran and his ability to keep the flame of hope burning in their hearts.

  I greatly wondered how they could keep such a place hidden, all the more since there was a bounty on Rhi Bran’s head. The baron’s reward had been set at a price, and it kept on creeping up, higher and higher as King Raven’s deeds became more outrageous and damaging to the de Braose interests. The reward was enough to make me wonder how far some poor fella’s loyalty might stretch before it snapped like a rotten rope. I also wondered how long it would be before one of the sheriff ’s search parties stumbled upon Cél Craidd.

  Yet as I settled in amongst my new friends, I soon learned that the location was well chosen to confound discovery; to find it would take a canny and determined forester well trained to the March, which the baron did not possess. Beyond that, the folk worked hard to keep their home secret. They contrived everything from confusing the trails to sowing rumours specially concocted for Norman ears and sending spies among the folk of Elfael and Castle Truan. They kept perpetual watch on the King’s Road and the forest approaches ’round about, marking the movements of all who came and went through the March.

  Also call me tetched if you will—I came to believe there was something supernatural in it, too. Like in the old legends where the weary traveller comes upon a village hidden among the rocks on the seacoast. He sups there with the local folk and lays him down to sleep in a fine feather bed only to wake raw the next morn with sand in his eyes and seaweed in his hair, and the village vanished never to be found again . . . until it pleases its protectors to show itself to the next footsore wanderer.

  I arrived at this odd belief after several curious encounters with Banfáith Angharad. They called her hudolion . . .

  It means enchantress, Odo, thank you for interrupting.”

  “Ah, it is the same as hud, no?” he says, the glint of understanding briefly lighting up his dull eyes. “Enchant.”

  “Yes, from the same word,” I tell him. “And it is pronounced hood, so see you set it down aright.”

  My leg is on fire again today. It pains me ferocious, and I am in no mind to suffer Odo’s irritating ways. I watch as he bends his nose to the scrap of parchment and scratches away for a moment. “So now,” I say, “while we’re about it, his name is not Robin, as you would have it. His name is Rhi Bran—that is, King Bran, to you.”

  “Rhi is the word for king, yes, you told me already,” he intones wearily. “And Bran—it is the same as Raven, no?”

  “Yes, the word is the same. Rhi Bran—King Raven, see? It is the same. I will have you speaking like a Welshman yet, Odo, my lad.” I give him a pain-sharp smile. “Just like a true-born son of the Black Country.”

  Odo frowns and dips his pen. “You were telling me about Angharad,” he says, and we resume our meandering march . . .

  Indeed. Angharad was wise in ways beyond measure. Accomplished in many arts—some now all but lost—she could read signs and portents, and, as easily as a child tastes rain on the wind, she could foretell the shape of things to come long before they arrived. Old? She was ancient. Wreathed in wrinkles and bent low beneath the weight of years, she appeared to the unsuspecting eye merely one more old soul awaiting Elijah’s chariot.

  But the eyes in her head were bright as baubles. Her mind was quick and keen, restless as a wave on the strand and deep as that selfsame sea. If she sometimes shuffled in her shapeless dress, her mind leapt light-footed and deerlike. Yet she never rushed, never strove, was never seen to be straining after anything. Whatever she needed seemed to come to her of its own accord. And if, betimes, their elders grew uncomfortable in her presence, the children always found peace and comfort in those stout arms.

  She was, as I say, adept in all manner of curious arts. And it is through one of these or another that I suspect she purposed to keep Cél Craidd concealed from all intruders. How she did it, I have never yet discovered. But I know the old ones put great store in what they called the caim—a saining charm, you might say, useful for protection against many dangers, threats, and ills. Something like this must protect King Raven’s roost. Then again, it may be I that am that big a fool and there is no such thing.

  I soon came to regard our banfáith not as a doddering, spindle-shanked hag, but as the very life and spirit of Cél Craidd. Her soul was deep and gentle and blessed, her wisdom true as the arrow from Bran’s unerring bow, her will resilient as heartwood and stronger than iron. From the flutter of the first dove of morning to the hushed feather-sweep of the midnight owl, nothing eluded her notice. The reach of her restless, searching senses ranged over her forest stronghold and far, far beyond. At times, I do believe, they reached right into the very castles of the Norman barons.

  One particular occasion taught me to respect her judgement, however queer that judgement might seem at first blush. Well, a fine dry winter had set in. I had been some weeks with the forest tribe, learning their ways and getting to know the folk right well. I helped in the fields to gather in the paltry root crop; I chopped firewood by the wagonload; I helped slaughter two of the three pigs, and salt and smoke the meat to keep over the winter. I also turned my hand at building two new huts—one for a family that had come a week or so earlier than myself, and one for a young widow and her wee daughter rescued from Count Falkes’s marauders and their hounds.

  Mostly, however, I went hunting with Iwan, Siarles, and one or two of the other men. Occasionally, Bran would join us; more often, Iwan led the party. Siarles, whose skills as a forester were greater even than my own, always served as guide since he knew the greenwood well: where the deer would
be found, around which bend the pigs would appear, or when the birds would flock or fly. A good and worthy huntsman, uncanny in his own way, he made sure we rarely returned empty-handed from the chase. To be sure, it was desperate hunting—we brought back game or we went hungry.

  In all these things, I was tested in small ways, and never openly. Still, through a word or gesture, or a glance exchanged, I soon came to understand that, while they accepted my presence among them, they did not wholly trust me yet. They were testing both my abilities and mettle, as well as my honour. This was only natural, I know, for a folk whose lives depended on remaining out of sight. The baron’s spies were everywhere, and the abbot was a wily, relentless foe. King Raven lived or died on the loyalty of his flock, even as they lived or died with him.

  So, they watched and they tested. Far from begrudging them their doubt, I welcomed every opportunity to prove myself.

  What’s that, Odo? Strayed from the point, you say?” Lately, our Odo has taken to interrupting me whenever he thinks I have wandered too far afield and may not be able to make it back to the place of my departure. So he checks me with a word or two. “Perhaps,” I allow, “but it is all of a piece, you see.”

  “That is as may be,” he says, rubbing his bald priest patch. “But you were speaking of an incident that, ah”—he scans his scribbled scrip—“taught you to trust Angharad’s wisdom.”

  “Right you are, Odo, lad. So I was. Well, then . . . where was I?”

  “The days were growing dimmer and a fine dry winter had set in.”

  He resumes writing, and we go on . . .

  One morning a few days before Christmas, I heard the call of a raven, but thought nothing of it until I saw people hurrying to the bare circle of earth beneath the tree they called Council Oak. “Will! Come, join us,” called Iwan. “It is the summons!”