4

How, Simon wondered, was he going to explain all this to his mother?

He nearly asked the question out loud, but it was the sort of question one did not put to a servant, even a trusted old hand like Certig. Besides, the venerable servant had suffered a serious injury the past autumn when a branch broke from a tree during a storm and struck him on the head. Certig had been unconscious for a day and a night, and ever since Simon had not wanted to cause the man any more worry than necessary.

“Do you suppose, my lord,” asked Certig, “that misfortune might someday seize Marshal Roland?”

There was one smarting sword prick on Simon’s forearm. Roland had smiled as he had thrust the blade, not with happiness so much as quiet concentration, as a leatherworker might, punching a neat hole with an awl. Simon had not made a sound. The prince had protested, “Leave off, Marshal Roland!” and Roland had shrugged and sheathed his weapon.

The little wound smarted.

Influences, uncanny but powerful, were known to shape events. Stars and planets, imps and devils, all worked on a person’s life. Simon recognized that this particular mildly sunny day—the first of August, the Feast of Saint Peter in Chains—was for him personally a period of unparalleled bad luck. In truth, it was hard to imagine a day of sharper misfortune.

Simon headed home on Blackfire—a sweet-natured mount but a plodder—as Certig walked along with a hazel switch. The servant was too kindhearted to use it on the horse, but he let the flicking shadow of the hazel rod remind the creature not to stop and crop the summer grass along the road.

Simon had protested, but Certig had insisted that no serving man of character would let his lord walk while the servant rode. As for Simon, perched in the worn and peeling saddle, he did not bother kicking the horse or urging the animal into a canter. What was the use? It was no pleasure for Simon to pass gleaners raking the last of the hay and cowherds enjoying the shade of trees, all of whom had seen him earlier that day riding in high fashion.

“Good afternoon, Simon,” they called, each one of them, even the most taciturn oxherd, who rarely spoke.

Simon smiled and waved, wishing that he were invisible.

The river twinkled through the hawthorns, the rising tide soothing upward through the water-rounded stones. The Normans called the river Beau Lieu—“beautiful place”—while the English traditionally referred to it as The Water, as though the power to grace the land with vibrant names had long ago failed them.

A ship careened at the end of a long, yellow rope. This was the Saint Bride, the strong-timbered vessel owned by Gilda and her brother and used for trade across the Channel, where wheels of New Forest cheese were exchanged for Low Countries linen.

Like most seagoing vessels, the ship owed much of her design to the Norse fighting ships and freighters of great fame. While there were many other ships along the riverbank, and a burgeoning industry of shipwrights near the river’s mouth, few of the local craft were as seaworthy nor, thought Simon, as pleasing to the eye.

And none were named after such a popular saint. Saint Bride—or Bridget, as she was also known—was during her lifetime responsible for an impressive miracle: On the arrival of unexpected guests, travelers from afar, she transformed gray dishwater into sparkling new ale. Her visitors rejoiced, and were refreshed. As a result, she had become over the years a saint associated with bounty of every sort, and Gilda and her brother had thrived under her care.

Simon had hoped to cut a fine figure on his new steed, but now he hoped the shadows of the trees would hide them as they clopped methodically along the road. The nick in his left arm was not bleeding anymore, and a little vinegar would cleanse the trifling wound.

But his delayed, as yet unspoken response to Certig’s query would have been no.

No, Roland would not be struck down by man or Heaven anytime soon. He was a king’s man, with a family back in Montfort, a wealthy Norman village Simon, who had never been across the Channel, could only imagine. He pictured happy piglets and lambs and beaming farming folk, proud that one of their lords had been raised in London and was now serving the king of England.

Simon supposed, with a grim whimsy, that if Roland dined on the infants of English peasantry—actually ate them for midday meal—he would be scolded by some royal steward for his choice of food, but suffer no special punishment.

“Isn’t that Gilda,” Certig was asking, “down by the sternpost?”

“Hush, Certig.”

“Surely it is.”

Let us steal past, dear Certig, Simon wanted to say, and escape any notice.

But it was too late.

The individual beside the ship looked up, and was not fair-haired Gilda at all but her brother Oswulf, who resembled his sister the way a blade resembled a feather. Tuda was with him, the strong-armed helper dragging a coil of mooring cable up to the boathouse. Tuda rarely offered an opinion on anything, and Simon liked him for his cheerful silence. Tuda’s grandfather had built a henhouse on stilts, a local landmark, proof against weasels.

“What are the horns telling us, Simon?” called Oswulf. A river man was not entirely familiar with the horn blasts and calls used by poachers and other freebooting yeomen, but it was also possible that Oswulf knew full well what was being said.

“Oh, Oswulf, it is dreadful,” said Certig. “A terrible thing, impossible to talk about.”

Like everyone Simon knew, Certig did not want to say plainly what evil had taken place. To put words to misfortune made it worse, and confirmed it beyond hope.

Oswulf approached as Blackfire teased green acorns from the overhead branches. “Lord Simon, what has happened?” Oswulf asked. Although he and his sister were not of noble birth, their family had lived along the watercourse for as long as anyone could recall, and their family name was, by common usage, Shipman—Scipmann.

Edric had been well liked, but at the same time the scamp had been no one’s idea of a saint. Simon resented having to enunciate the news. “The lord marshal’s javelin,” he said, “has found our old friend Edric.”

“But only wounded him?” asked Oswulf hopefully.

“Oh, worse than wounded, Oswulf,” said Certig. “Far, far worse.”

“You saw it happen?” gasped Oswulf.

“We were right there,” exclaimed Certig, to Simon’s discomfiture. “He died in our very shadows!”

“And what, Simon,” asked Oswulf, narrowing his eyes, “did you do to defend our friend?”

If only I could see Gilda, thought Simon. Surely that fair-minded young woman would understand. Simon shook his head, indicating that he had been helpless to defend Edric. Someday, Simon vowed silently to himself, he would strike the marshal down.

“Please give my greetings to your sister,” Simon managed to say.

Oswulf turned away, too troubled to speak.

Just before Simon reached home, there was a slight rise in the road, the point where, it was said, a giant had been buried by the legendary hero Tom of Sway. Some said the giant merely enjoyed a slumber long and deep and would awaken, cheerful but famished after his long nap.

From Giant’s Crest, Simon could see his home. Aldham Manor, the house where he and his mother lived, had been built many years ago by Simon’s grandfather, and it had replaced a centuries-old dwelling. The manor’s lime-washed walls were beautiful in the afternoon sunlight.

It was unmistakably simply what it was: a thriving but unadorned location surrounded by farm and pasture. It was unpretentious, practical, and all the more lovely, in Simon’s eyes, for all that. Far beyond the rambling manor house, on a hill, was the much newer tower built by Simon’s father.

The structure was a keep of flint and mortar, a rugged redoubt made to withstand siege. Simon admired the tower, and enjoyed the fresh smell of it, and the practical way the family and servants could pull up the drawbridge and be safe from attack. No enemy had ever clattered up the road, and his mother had never walked the distance up the hill to visit the keep, not in ten years.

But she made sure, when the account scrolls were studied at the end of every harvest, that silver was set aside for the well rope and new shutter latches, where they were needed, with enough to provide crossbow bolts and slings. When Simon asked her why she bothered to maintain Foldre Castle, she would say that bloody-taloned war could swoop from any sky.

This was the difficulty, Simon knew, with his mother. She loved laughter, shared the richly flavored Aldham manor ale with the poor, and clapped her hands in time to the minstrel’s capers, but she required more. The daughter of a warrior of noble name, the widow of one of the Conqueror’s favorites, she hungered for a respected station in a kingdom that valued English ladies but little.

“Do you think Walter Tirel of Poix will turn out to be any better than the others?” Simon was asking now.

“I’ve heard that Walter Tirel is a man with a sharp sword, my lord,” said Certig. “But a man of grace, I’ve been told.”

“Who says this?”

“A plate servant can tell you a man’s character better than his priest, and such word travels across the Channel. We don’t see a man of Walter’s Tirel’s renown,” added Certig, “in our woodland very often.”

Walter Tirel. The name had a fine sound to it, Simon thought—a definite music.

An oxcart teetered and swayed its course up the deeply rutted way, conveying a lopsided load of milled oats, piled so high the load was sure to tumble.

Plegmund had worked the land of Simon’s ancestors, planting grain and breeding goats. He was a peasant of substance, one of Simon’s most prosperous tenants, and he had recently purchased an iron candle-prick—an iron bullock with a spike on its head for a candle—a fine object crafted in Portsmouth and admired by his neighbors. Simon had paid a visit, to admire the handiwork.

“My lord Simon,” said Plegmund, “there’s no need to worry about old Plegmund. My team will make it over the ridge easy as a song.” He put a hand to his mouth in a caricature of conspiracy. “We must be quick and quiet. I hear the king’s guard are about, making sure all is calm.”

Calm was meant ironically. The king’s men had a notorious intolerance for boredom, and London and her environs had been set alight in recent years and nearly destroyed by armed men with time on their hands.

“I do believe, Plegmund,” said Simon, “that you will need our help.”

The ancient flax-cloth sacks were packed to the point of bursting through their oft-mended seams. Blackfire tossed his head at the smell of so much fresh horse feed seeping through the cloth.

The recent arrival of the royal court—with its dozens of cupbearers, clerks, and armorers—drove up prices and made such grain all the more scarce. Plegmund had made an enormous purchase and would no doubt resell the oats to the king’s stables, with Simon and his mother keeping a good share of the profits.

“I might need, perhaps, a small amount of help, my lord,” said Plegmund. “Just this once.”

The cart’s wheels had never been perfectly round, having been made from the trunk of a great oak cut long ago into slices. Wear had shaped them into obstinate oblongs, and Simon marveled that the team of oxen could travel from ford to farm with such a wobbling, unsteady wagon. It was true that Plegmund’s oxen were the stuff of myth—massive brutes, with dewlaps that hung nearly to the road.

Simon shoved so hard the yoke shifted forward on the oxen, and the big animals took a few uncharacteristic light steps, nearly trotting, relieved at the quickening of their load. Nonetheless, the rise was too steep for the ambitious burden, and the cart groaned to a stubborn halt.

They heaved with all their strength against the cart.

The greeting of a young woman made them interrupt their efforts.