1189

it began on St. Theodore’s Day—Tuesday, July 4^th. That unhappy day was when I first sang the ancient enchantment I called the Myrddin Wyllt.

Many years earlier, I had found some pieces of rat-chewed, mildewed vellum amid the rubbish in a castle cellar. Although the words on it were almost illegible and written in a very old dialect, they appeared to be parts of a single poem, and since then I had stumbled on more scraps of verse that I identified as being from slightly later copies of the same work. I had tried several times to fit it all together, filling in gaps with some hopefully inspired guesswork, but meeting with no success until the spring of 1189. Then, just before leaving for France, while hunting for something else in my “miscellaneous fragments” collection, I found two other pieces of what were obviously yet other copies, which I had previously overlooked. The fact that even traces of so many versions had survived for so long suggested that it must have been a highly valued work. Manuscripts of that age are very rare indeed, and I spent every moment I could spare trying to reconstruct the original version. That was a very busy time for me, between meetings of the king’s privy council, the betrothal negotiations for my younger daughter, Royse, and the annual college budgetary conference.

When I had fitted it all together, the ancient song at last began to make sense. By convention, we use the opening words of an incantation as its title, and this one began, “Myrddin Wyllt beseeches thee,” so Myrddin Wyllt it became in my files. I knew that a man called Myrddin Wyllt had been a sixth-century prophet and madman in what we would now call southern Scotland. I was soon to wish that I had never set eyes on it.

It was midsummer before I could find enough time to get back to the work I enjoy most—repairing ancient spells that have become corrupted by time or the efforts of their original owners to keep them secret. I had invented this craft and was still better at it than anyone else. Early on that fateful morning, I went down to my workroom and eagerly read over what I put together the previous evening. I made a couple of trivial corrections, and then decided I would attempt to sing the whole song through, which I had never done before. Basically, the text was a prayer to Carnonos, the ancient antlered god of many names, lord of forests and good fortune. It was a hunter’s plea for guidance, and was obviously meant to be sung. I had no desire to go stalking venison through the streets of Oxford, but I dearly wanted to hear how the song would sound. The rhythm was obvious, but I had to guess at a suitable melody. I began to chant, and was soon caught up in the imagery, the invocation of trees and summer flowers, insects and peaceful wildlife, far from the muddling cares of mankind.

To my astonishment, I felt myself sliding into trance. Many of our enchantments require two voices, and it is quite common for the supporting cantor to be entranced during the rite. I had never met a spell that entranced the enchanter himself, though. My voice seemed to fade away, and yet I could still hear myself in the distance, as if someone else were singing.

By then I was standing on a hay meadow under a cloudless sky of deepest blue. The hills were richly clad in vineyards, but in the distance, I recognized the Vienne River and the distinctive mass of Chinon Castle, near Tours, in Touraine. This was the very heart of King Henry’s French domains.

A party of about twenty horsemen was making its way slowly up the gentle slope in my direction. They were riding destriers— warhorses—but none bore weapons or armor, which meant that they were either going to a parley, or coming from one. The hayscented air was absolutely still and the noon sun blazed pitilessly overhead, although thunder clouds were building in the north. The cavalcade’s snail-like pace was due to more than the summer heat, which might be hard on the horses and was certainly good for the grapes, but must feel like the breath of hell to the dying man leading that procession.

As they went by me, I barely recognized him: Henry by the Grace of God, king of England, duke of Normandy, Aquitaine, and Brittany, count of Anjou, Touraine, and Maine, lord of Ireland. He seemed to have aged ten years in the six weeks or so since I had last seen him. He sat astride his horse, but it was being led by a mounted squire. A knight rode very close on either side of him, each ready to catch him if he started to fall. Obese and white-bearded, he was clearly in agony. For a third of a century he had ruled the greatest empire since Charlemagne’s, extending for a thousand miles from the Scottish border to the Spanish. I had a strong suspicion that it was not going to survive this parley.

The men supporting him I recognized as Sir William Marshal and Geoffrey Fitzhenry, Bishop of Lincoln, commonly known as Geoffrey the Bastard, big men both. The last horse to go by me was a sumpter, bearing a bundle of poles and canvas that might be a small tent, but I guessed was a litter. Until very few years ago, the king had been an avid hunter, able to outride almost any man in his retinue. How are the mighty fallen!

And up ahead, in the shadow of the towering plane tree? Three men were waiting there, two of them on horseback, with an entourage of supporters and horses standing nearby, out of earshot.

One of the mounted men was unmistakable, a giant, well over a fathom tall, with a red-gold beard and icy blue eyes—Lord Richard, known as the Lionheart, the elder of Henry’s two surviving sons, a mighty warrior and a shameless traitor. The other beside him was a much less impressive person—Henry’s nemesis, King Philip of France, thirty-two years his junior, his liege lord for all his holdings in France, and now his master. Philip was short, ruddy, and seemed utterly insignificant, especially alongside the titanic Richard. He was reputed to be a clumsy and reluctant horseman, and certainly not a warrior, but he had no equal when it came to intrigue, scheming, and subterfuge.

Standing beside the two horsemen was a tonsured clerk, clutching a satchel. I could see no fussy clerics in the background group, which meant that the parley had been set up by the participants themselves, not forced upon them by the Church, and so it was a genuine effort to achieve something, not just another of the futile brothers-in-Christ holy rituals that buzz like blow-flies around all quarrels.

I moved my point of view closer, hoping to hear what the horsemen were saying, but they were studying the approaching party in silence. So Henry was about to die? Triumph for Philip, but what of his companion? Did Richard feel no guilt?

The agenda would almost certainly include the English king’s abject surrender. The feud had been long and complicated. Its ultimate cause was that Henry’s duchies and counties covered the entire western half of France, but France was Philip’s kingdom, so Henry was his vassal, owing him homage for all those lands. Henry paid lip service to the principle, but he was not a man to truckle to an overlord. Nor could he see any contradiction in the fact that he demanded absolute obedience from his own vassals, the earls and barons of England.

The immediate cause, boiling up over the last year or so, was that all three—King Philip, King Henry, and Duke Richard—had sworn to go on Crusade, to help wrest the holy city of Jerusalem back from the Saracen heathens. Henry was now far too sick to think of going, but he stubbornly refused to name Richard as his heir. Many years ago he had so honored his oldest son, another Henry, even having him crowned, so that he became known as “the young king.” The result had been feud and rebellion. Ultimately the young king had died in a tournament, and King Henry had not made the same mistake again, keeping Richard in doubt, constantly hinting that he might leave his empire to John, his youngest son. So Richard dared not go on crusade, lest his father die during his absence and his brother steal the throne. Likewise, Philip dared not go and leave Richard behind—he no longer feared the ailing Henry, but Richard had been a notable warrior since he was sixteen, aiding the young king’s rebellion.

Henry advanced with only his two supporters, leaving the rest of his retinue behind. All three halted.

Philip spoke and beckoned to a shadowy follower to come forward with a cloak to spread on the grass for the invalid. Philip’s show of pity failed to hide the delighted mockery beneath. Henry refused the mercy angrily.

The king of France turned to his clerk and ordered him to read out the terms. They were even worse than I expected. Henry must do homage in person to Philip, an act he had long managed to shun by sending sons in his place. He must acknowledge Richard as his heir throughout his empire, must pay a huge indemnity to Philip, and must give up certain key castles. And, of course, in the final insult, he must pardon all the nobles who had rebelled against him, and the list that the clerk handed to William Marshal was several pages long.

Henry had been my mentor. He had made my life. Seeing me first as a gawky youth, a crippled Saxon nothing, he had recognized my skill at enchantment and financed the rest of my education. The first task he had set me when I graduated as a sage had seemed to be a trivial matter, but turned out to be a major conspiracy. He had rewarded my success with a knighthood and the office of enchanter general. Now I watched my liege being destroyed, a once-mighty monarch being robbed of everything by a pair of greedy nobodies. I wept, but my tears fell far away.

Stone-faced, Henry heard the sentence, and then just muttered, “Agreed.”

But, as he gave his son the kiss of peace, I heard him whisper something that sounded very much like a promise of revenge.

Then I heard someone calling my name from a great distance, felt someone shaking me. I fell out of my trance and was back at my desk in Oxford.

Lovise was beside me, holding my hand and regarding me with concern. “Darling! What were you doing? You were weeping, I was frightened. I thought I would never manage to waken you.”

Feeling as if I had been beaten about the head with iron rods and then strangled, I scooped up my scattered wits. Such after-effects show that a trance-inducing enchantment is badly worded and needs more work. A raging thirst burned in my throat.

“Need a drink,” I mumbled.

She ran over to the table where I keep a carafe of wine and one of water. She filled a beaker with half of each and brought it to me as I struggled to sit up. I drained it.

“How long have you been gone?” Now she had jumped from worried to angry. “Lucky I found you! I brought down some invoices for you to approve.”

Lovise not only supervised the healing classes in the College, but was herself the most sought-after women’s healer in Oxford. She was no longer the sylphlike maiden I had married. Twenty-three years and four children had made her buxom, but she was still tall and blonde. Her eyes were still as blue as sapphires. And in my eyes, she was still the loveliest woman in England.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t mean to go into a trance, I was just trying to hear how it sounded.” I was babbling. “It’s a very old enchantment, so it’s oddly structured.”

She peered at the vellum. “What does ‘Myrddin Wyllt’ mean?”

“It’s a man’s name.” I recounted the horrors I had seen, and Lovise listened in amazement. She knew as much about enchantment as I did and could tell when rules were being broken. Only very rarely had we met a spell that could show visions, certainly none so detailed and credible. We had certainly never found any magic that could reach across the Narrow Sea.

“How far can you trust that vision? If it was a sending from Hell, you ought to burn the fair copy and all your notes immediately.”

“But if I was seeing real events, then I have been shown a page of history turning, for obviously King Henry is very close to death.”

And then we should have a new king—Lord Richard, surely. Please God, never his brother, Lord John!

Whether the vision had been sent from Heaven or Hell, I must decide what I should do about it. If that sounds like the peak of arrogance, coming from a former stable boy, then consider where time and fortune had brought him. Once a crippled Saxon in a land where anything of importance was spoken in French, I had risen to the office of Enchanter General of England. In Oxford I had founded and nurtured the finest college of purely secular knowledge in Christendom, and had collected the greatest library of what we still discreetly called “Ancient Song” but was in fact enchantment. My colleagues and I had driven the devil-worshiping Sons of Satan out of the country. We had organized the beneficial uses of enchantment throughout England.

I continued to enjoy the trust and approval of King Henry, who had later raised me to the peerage as Baron Durwin of Pipewell and appointed me to his privy council—me, the crippled son of a Saxon hostler, debating with the greatest lords of the land! What magic could top that? But the years were starting to tell on me, also. Harald, our eldest, was playing country gentleman now in Pipewell Manor, the estate the king had given me. Both girls, Iseut and Royse, were betrothed and gone to live with their future parents-in-law until they reached marriageable age, as is customary among the gentry. We missed them greatly.

That Henry was sure to die soon was barely a secret. Back in late May, as his health continued to deteriorate, he had flattered me with a summons to France in my capacity as a healer. I had known from the start that I would be unable to help him, because French enchanters were just as competent as English in the healing arts. I took Sage Wilbor of London with me as my cantor, and we did what we could to prescribe for the king, but his body was simply wearing out, and the war he was currently fighting was certainly not helping. Among his many troubles, he had an anal fistula that was starting to fester. What he should do was give his crown to his son, Lord Richard, and retire to die in peace in a monastery somewhere, but to tender that advice would be both useless and foolhardy. The king’s rages were legendary.

When in doubt, I usually sought my wife’s advice. “What do I do now, dear? The privy council already knows the king’s health is very bad. Do I ride off to Winchester and inform the justiciar that it is much worse, and he has just surrendered to his foes?”

“I think,” Lovise said with a fearsome frown, “that you should go straight back to bed. Your news is not urgent, because nothing will change until Henry actually dies. He is as tough as horseshoes, and you are in no fit shape to ride anywhere.”

As usual, she was absolutely right.

I had been entranced longer than I realized, and needed the rest of the day in bed to recover. Even on the next day, Wednesday, I was not at my best, but I was still official master of the college, so I had to put on my finery and preside at a graduation ceremony, handing out sheepskin scrolls to newly qualified sages, cantors, and healers. The ceremony held a special joy for Lovise and me, because Lars, our younger son, was now a qualified cantor. When his familiar grin arrived before me, I repeated the customary congratulations, shook his hand, and muttered, “Don’t celebrate too much; I may have an important job for you tomorrow.”

He just smiled—down—at me, and said, “Whatever it is, I can do both, Lord Enchanter.”

I made excuses and left the celebratory dinner early to go home and wrestle with the Myrddin Wyllt problem. I might need months of study to determine how trustworthy it was, and I would need to locate the flaws in it before it could be used without inflicting such painful aftereffects. Nevertheless, after long discussion, Lovise and I decided that I could not just ignore the warning. If Henry was near to death, then it was my duty to tell the justiciar, Ranulf de Glanville, who acted as regent when the king was out of the country. I knew that he was currently in Winchester, and so was Queen Eleanor, who had at least as much right to be informed.

I spent a couple of hours hunting for defects in the wording, and made some corrections. Another problem, of course, and a very common one with old manuscripts, was to know what melody to use. The words provided the rhythm, but after that we had to rely on experience—which means guesswork.

But just before we retired, I felt sufficiently recovered to ask Lovise to come back down to the workroom to help me with another enchantment, one that took much less toll of the chanter.

We still lived in the home that Queen Eleanor had given us when we were married, a modest house in the grounds of Beaumont Palace, outside Oxford. There we had raised our children, of whom only Lars was still at home. I had since developed part of the ground floor into a spacious workroom, thirty feet long. One entire wall of it was covered from floor to ceiling by shelves angled at forty-five degrees to make a collection of diamond-shaped boxes. In those were filed almost two thousand parchment scrolls, recording hundreds of incantations. Hobbling on my cane, I hunted down the one I wanted.

I untied it and handed the cantor’s part to Lovise. She smiled when she recognized the opening words, Loc hwær,“Look where.” This was the spell that elevated me to grandeur, for I had composed it myself, the first time anyone had created a new spell in centuries. Few people knew of its existence even yet, but it was a family treasure. It was a much simpler work than the Myrddin Wyllt, for it merely reported a person’s present location. It showed no visions, but was powerful magic nevertheless.

“So who are we going to spy on this time?” she asked.

“Lord John.” He and Richard were the last survivors of Henry’s five legitimate sons. His many bastards were not eligible to inherit the crown. I did not know whether John had joined Richard’s rebellion or remained loyal.

“You want to tell him the news also?” Lovise asked, with a hint of doubt that both amused and pleased me. Even then, Lord John’s name smelled of perfidy.

“No, I’m hoping he will remain in ignorance for some time yet.”

Loc hwær is a short incantation and we were both familiar with it. When we finished, she closed her eyes for a moment and then croaked, “Nottingham heall,” in the ancient cracked voice of a Wyrd, a voice that I knew well. Then she opened them and asked me what she had just said.

The news was welcome, and not surprising. Lord John owned not only Nottingham Castle but the whole county. What mattered to me was that he was a long way from both Oxford and London. Even tidings of great importance could travel no faster than a horse. By the time he heard of his father’s death, it would be too late for him to make any effort to usurp the throne.

I was up before dawn preparing for the journey—tidying up some business that would not wait until I returned, and chanting a few Release spells. Most incantations are Repeat spells, which have to be chanted afresh every time, but Release spells can be sung beforehand and invoked with a word or two when needed. In effect I was loading arrows in my magical quiver, a practice I had found advisable back in the years when I had traveled all over England, collecting all the ancient spell books I could find. Although King Henry had made the roads of England much safer than they had been before he came to the throne, travel still had its risks. I had never had the misfortunate to meet up with highwaymen, but I always included at least one defensive spell, a weapon that could hurt more than a blow with my cane.

As soon as Lovise was available, I asked her to watch over me while I invoked the Myrddin Wyllt enchantment again. Knowing now that it would put me into a trance, I played safe and stretched out on the leather-padded couch I keep in my workroom for just that purpose. Then I began to chant my appeal to Carnonos, lord of forests, and soon the cool shadows of woodland closed around me. With them came forest dampness, the scents of moss and pines. My own voice faded into the sighing of wind in high treetops, and then gradually into the faint, distant singing of a choir. Towering trees had become the pillars and arches of a crypt.

I peered around in uncertain candlelight, and made out a group of men kneeling alongside a bier, on which lay a body already swathed in cere cloth. I recognized Sir William Marshall again, and Geoffrey the Bastard, still in faithful attendance on his father, but others were too deep in shadow for me to recognize. Geoffrey was murmuring a prayer. Although he was bishop-elect of Lincoln now, he was always referred to as the Bastard to distinguish him from the king’s legitimate son of the same name. That other Geoffrey, the duke of Brittany, was dead by then, but the Bastard’s name endured. Unlike Henry’s legitimate sons, he had always stayed loyal.

The chill of the crypt seemed to cool even more, as a sense of loss ate into my soul. A world without Henry II would take a lot of getting used to.

But now I had a clear message to carry to Winchester: The king is dead, long live the king. Yet I lingered for a moment. The prayer ended, followed by a rustle of amens. The mourners began to rise and then stopped to listen. Tap, tap. . . . Like the tolling of some Tartarean death watch, the sound drew closer, louder, and gradually became recognizable as the noisy clank of sollerets on stone. Out of the darkness emerged a giant, huge and grim, pacing ever nearer. Candlelight glinted like frost on his hauberk, for even there he was wearing chain mail, although he had shed his sword and helmet before entering the church. Gog, Magog, Goliath . . . ? No, for this titan wore a surcoat adorned with three lions, gules passant, and everyone knew whose charge that was.

Nobody spoke. He stopped and stared down at his father’s corpse. If he prayed, he did not move his lips, nor make the sign of the cross. After several ice-cold minutes, he nodded to Geoffrey, beckoned to Sir William to follow him, and walked away. Clink, clink, clink . . . into the darkness.

My question had been answered. I hauled myself out of the trance.

“That was quick,” said a depressingly cheerful Lovise. “Didn’t you get acceptance?” She handed me a beaker of water as I struggled to sit up.

I drank. I had the same raging thirst as before, but the headache was merely a vague throb behind my eyes, so my changes to the text had improved it. “I did. I saw all I needed. The king is dead, long live the king!” Belatedly I crossed myself and whispered an Ave.

Lovise did the same. “So you and I are the only ones in England who knows this! Isn’t it treason to spy on the king?”

“If I say it is, will you report me to the justiciar?” Brief though the trance had been, I still needed a few moments to settle my wits.

“What will you do now?”

“Take the word to Winchester.”

My wife inspected me critically. “You’re getting old for breakneck long-distance trekking. Send a courier.”

“The matter is too important.” I stood up. “I shall present Lars to the queen, to celebrate his graduation.”

She smiled. “He was very late coming home. Can you imagine the hangover he must have?”

“I can,” I said. “But at seventeen he’s indestructible.”

I kissed my wife and went upstairs. Lars, understandably, was fast asleep, invisible except for a tangle of barley-pale hair on the pillow. I gave him a “God bless!” somewhat louder than usual.

The coverlet moved to expose one normally sky-blue eye, presently seeming more like a carmine sunset. People often commented how much Lars resembled me, but I could see little likeness between a dewy youth innocent of the world’s malice and the wrinkled forty-five-year-old face that scowled at me out of my mirror every morning.

“And thee also, Father.” He spoke in a hoarse whisper. “Sorry to wake you when you’ve just gotten to sleep. I’m going on a very important outing and need a cantor. Are you capable of staying awake?”

The rest of his face appeared, unshaven and not a little haggard. He nodded, then winced as if he wished he hadn’t. “Yes, sir.” “Are you capable of spending all day all the saddle?”

“All day?”

“Sixty miles or so.”

His face twisted in horror. “In one day?”

I laughed. “I think we can stretch it to two. We’re going to Winchester to get the queen out of jail.”

He threw off the cover. “How soon?”

“I’m just going to send for the horses.”

“Do I have enough time to put some clothes on?”

Juvenile humor, but he was seventeen.

Sixty miles in two days is a heroic exploit, which I was secretly dreading. No knight rides out without a squire or two, and no enchanter without a cantor. There were many men in the College I could have taken with me, but none I would trust as much as I trusted my own son. Besides, this would be a treat for Lars, to celebrate his graduation.

As soon as we had cleared the town and could ride abreast, he asked why I was in such a rush to visit Winchester.

“To inform Queen Eleanor that King Henry is dead.”

He looked at me in shock. Before he could ask the obvious question, I blocked it. “I can’t tell you how I know that, but I do. It’s the greatest secret in England, and you are the second man in England to hear it. God save King Richard!”

“Amen. He died in France? But no enchantment will work across the sea . . .”

“Sorry, son. I mustn’t tell you. Maybe one day.”

He nodded, an adult now. We rode on through the summer fields and a morning already growing hot. Then Lars reasonably asked, “Father, why is the queen being kept in prison?”

It was a good question, and should have been asked years ago, but youngsters growing up tend to accept everything they see as normal. The sun rises in the morning, the king is fighting in France, the queen is in jail . . . Politics is the king’s business.

“Because she bore too many sons.”

“Huh? Woman are usually faulted for not bearing enough of them.”

“Five in all, and five daughters—two daughters for King Louis when she was married to him and three for Henry—but girls just get married off. Sons cause trouble. Plantagenet sons do, anyway. Five: William, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, and John. William died as an infant, but all the rest grew up as typical Plantagenet males, worthy of the lion, the family symbol: bellicose, greedy, and lecherous. Every one of them wanted his piece of their father’s great empire, which he was never willing to give. He dispensed lots of fancy titles, but he never relinquished any real power. All four in their time curried favor with the king of France, who was always happy to make trouble. Henry died of camp fever while campaigning against his father. Richard is now our king. Geoffrey was trampled to death in a tournament three years ago, or so the French claim. And then there is Lord John.”

I had cast his horoscope when he was born, and it was a horror.

“And the queen?”

“About sixteen years ago the Lords Henry, Richard, and Geoffrey—John was still a child—rose in rebellion, with the support of their mother. The king won in the end. He forgave his sons, but he could not forgive his wife, and she has been a prisoner, more or less, ever since.”

Silence for a few minutes, as we went in single file past a loaded hay wain, then, “The new king isn’t married, so Lord John is now his . . . um, heir presumptive?”

“Maybe. Geoffrey was older than John and he left a posthumous son named Arthur, who succeeded him as duke of Brittany. He must be two years old now.”

Lars said, “Mm . . .” thoughtfully. A lot of people were going to be saying that now. Lord John was in his early twenties and the worst satyr of them all. The sooner King Richard married and produced a few sons of his own, the better for baby Arthur and the peace of England.

The urgency of the news we bore drove us like invisible whips. We could not have reached our destination in two days without changing our mounts several times at monasteries or priories on the way, for in those days every religious house was required to stable a few of the king’s horses, and my rank let me claim what I needed. Lars had never seen me do this before and was impressed.

By noon I was feeling my age. Had I ever been a fresh-faced, jeweled-eyed kid like him? Had the world ever looked so glorious to me back then as it did to him now? Probably not. His legs were the same length. My father had been a Saxon hostler working for Norman monks; his was enchanter general for England, and a peer of the realm. Lars had won his cantor’s cape at seventeen, which was younger than I had been, and now he was racing off with me on a mission of historic importance, carrying news that would change the face of Europe. The dust, the flies, the heat of early July—none of those meant anything to him. Lars was ready to pick up his horse and run with it.

We spent Thursday night in the chantry in Reading, roughly halfway. By sunrise on Friday, we were on the Winchester road again.

The summer sun was setting as we spurred our mounts to a gallop so we could reach the city gates before they closed, which we managed only because the guards saw us coming and waited for us. Perhaps the quality of our horses impressed them more than our dusty, disheveled selves. I knew Winchester well, and from there I led Lars by the fastest street to the castle. The curfew was still ringing.

But the castle gate was closed.

Lars said, “Oh-oh!”

We reined in. In a sling on my back I carried my favorite walking cane, a stout oaken one with a silver handle, given to me by Queen Eleanor herself. I now drew this and pounded the ferrule on the studded timbers of the gate. The spy hole opened and a whiskery face appeared behind the grill.

“Who goes there?”

“Baron Durwin de Pipewell and his son.”

“Come back in the morning.”

“I bring urgent news for the queen.”

“Come back in the morning.”

“Varlet! I am a member of the king’s council.”

“And you’ll still be that in the morning.”

He might have yielded had I told him I must see the justiciar, not mentioning the queen, but it was more likely that his orders excluded me specifically. The justiciar and I were old foes, and he knew I favored the queen whenever I could.

“Open this gate or you will regret it!”

His reply was fortunately cut off as he slammed the spy hole shut.

I was bone weary and now red-hot furious. What I should have done was to go around to the postern gate at the rear of the castle complex and open that with the Release spell, Cambrioleur.I had done that before. This time I didn’t. Instead I again struck the gate with my staff, only this time I gave it three strokes for effect, and then declaimed the trigger for a spell I had discovered years ago and often found useful: “Geat, opena!”

The castle gate was wide enough and high enough to admit a loaded hay wain, so its instant obedience was dramatic. Bolts and hasps and hinges tore loose from the timbers, and the whole great edifice toppled inward. Half a dozen men-at-arms screamed in fright and leaped back to avoid being crushed. The impact when it hit the ground was louder than thunder and must have been audible throughout all Winchester.

Lars said, “God’s legs!”—a foolish, if not blasphemous, expression that had become popular because the late king had favored it.

We fought with our horses for a moment. As soon as we had them calmed, I said, “Come!” and urged mine across the flattened gate. The shocked guards stared at us owlishly, and made no effort to stop us. Doubtless they were wondering who was going to pay for the damage. I was relieved to see that none of them had been hurt, for we would have had to waste time chanting healing spells for them. I headed in the direction of the King’s House.

“Your mother,” I told Lars, “will skin me if she hears that I have set you such a bad example. Understand that I can get away with such nonsense once in a while, just so long as I don’t hurt people, but that’s because of my title. Other sages cannot. Those who display their powers in public can be torn to pieces for being devil worshipers.”

He grinned. “I’m trying to imagine Mother opening a door that way.”

The image of the imperturbable Lovise ever doing any such thing made me laugh, as he had intended. “Your mother is a very competent sage. She could perform the enchantment, and so could you, if you knew the spell. But neither of you could get away with it as I can.”

To be honest, I was already feeling ashamed of that grandiose display, and sought to excuse it. “The justiciar and I are not on the best of terms, and he may try go keep me from access to the queen tonight. He will be less inclined to do so since I have demonstrated my . . . let’s just say since I have shown the strength of my feelings in this matter.”

Suitably impressed, Lars nodded.

Winchester Castle is quite new, having been built by King Henry himself, and is a favorite royal residence—or prison, as it was then. It includes a chapel, herb gardens, and so on; it lacks the grimness of most fortresses. Already the ruckus I had caused had brought scores of people out to look at the wreckage.

As we dismounted at the door of the King’s House, a fancily dressed flunky appeared to greet us. His tonsure showed that he was some sort of cleric, probably a deacon, for he was not garbed as a monk or priest. Although I did not recall him, he clearly knew me.

His bow was barely more than a nod. “Peace be with you, my lord.”

“And with you,” I said. “I bring an urgent message for the queen.”

“The lord justiciar has ordered that any communications for Her Grace will be passed through him.”

“You are aware that I, too, am a member of the king’s council?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Then fetch Lord de Glanville. I know he is in residence at the moment.”

Before he could respond, the man in question appeared at his back. His smile was sweet as lemon juice. “I’ll deal with this, Patrick. Have someone see to their horses. Enter, my lord.”

I followed him, Lars came hurrying after, and I did not forbid him. Glanville led us to the St. George Room, a pleasantly appointed meeting place, growing dark as twilight faded.

Ranulf de Glanville was elderly now, white-bearded and starting to stoop, but still subtle and sly. He was a distinguished lawyer, although he had led armies in his day, having notably accepted the surrender of the king of Scots at the battle of Alnwick. As chief justiciar of England, he acted as regent whenever the king was in France, fighting against King Philip and whichever of his own sons happened to be rebelling at the moment—which had been the case for much of the last seventeen or so years. Ranulf and I clashed often in the council and detested each other; his current expression showed that the situation had not changed.

The hot day had left the room as stifling as a warm blanket. He went over to the window and threw back the shutters to let in some air, then turned to face us with his back to the light. Discounting Lars with a glance, he directed his attention to me. “I am minded to throw you in the dungeon for damaging crown property.” Had the justiciar been on the bench and I in the box, his expression would have signaled a coming death penalty.

“Singlehandedly sacking a royal fortress? The king of France will be amused to hear of it.”

Having no answer to that, he bared his teeth. “So what brings you here, devil worshiper?”

“I have news that must be imparted to Her Grace before anyone else.”

“As you very well know, the queen is not allowed to receive visitors, and the king specifically forbade her to have any communication with you.”

“Nevertheless, my news be must delivered in person.”

“And I forbid you to see her.”

That was the opening I had been hoping for. “On whose authority?”

“The king’s.”

“No, my lord. That you do not have.”

His expression was hidden in shadow, but he crossed himself.

I nodded, and he would see my smile.

“Wait here.” He strode across the room and out.

“Clever,” Lars murmured. “You haven’t actually told him, but now he knows. Why must the queen hear it first?”

“Because she is the queen, and because Lord de Glanville is, and always has been, lickspittle trash.”

Two pages hurried in with tapers and began lighting candles all around the room. Dawn followed. Lars looked around, studying the padded chairs set against the walls and the paintings, nodding to himself. My son fancied that he had an eye for art. He went over to the tapestry of the dragon slaughter that gave the room its name.

“Very fair,” he said.

“However fair, a cage is still a cage.”

More pages brought washing water and towels so we could refresh ourselves. Next came wine and ale and a small table already laden with food and drink. I discovered that I was hungry. Lars always was. We did not sit, just stood by the table and gobbled. We both chose ale over wine to quench our thirsts.

Suddenly she was there, ennobling the whole room— Eleanor, Queen of England, hereditary duke of Aquitaine, duchess of Normandy, countess of Maine, Anjou, Nantes, Poitou, and several other places. Leaning on my cane, I sank to my knees. Lars was there before me.

In her youth she had been a legendary beauty. Now she was, incredibly, sixty-seven years old, and yet she looked thirty years younger. Part of that was artifice, for a wimple concealed her neck and a French cap her hair, but few lines marred her face, and her onyx eyes were as quick and bright as ever. Her gown had once been bright scarlet, but too many years and too many washings had worn it threadbare, and it had never had the trimmings of lace and ermine that a queen’s should have. She had probably retired before I arrived, because a captive has little use for evenings, and if so she must have dressed with great haste, yet that did not show.

“Baron Pipewell!” she said. “My faithful Durwin! This is a great and most unexpected pleasure.”

“For me just seeing you is an overwhelming joy, Lady Queen, but I come bearing very sad news.”

“How wonderful! I can’t wait to hear it. Do rise, both of you. Lovise is well, I hope? Present this handsome young man!”

“Lars, madam, my younger son and today my cantor.”

“Lars. How beautiful he is! He looks very much like you did, that evening when you burst in upon us in Beaumont Palace, breathing fire and raving about treason and Satanism.” She smiled at Lars, who was turning as red as her gown and seemed as tongue-tied as I had been when I first met her, in Burton, a quarter of a century ago. “Does he sing as melodiously as you do, Enchanter General?”

“Better than I ever did,” I said. “And he is quite facile on the gittern.” Lars shot me an angry glance, guessing that one of us might be required to perform shortly and I had just passed the honor on to him.

“Now to business,” the queen said. She crossed to a chair and sat, adjusting her robe. I realized that her long-time companion, Amaria, was present and gave her a brief smile of acknowledgment. In Eleanor’s presence other women always seemed irrelevant.

Ranulf de Glanville had followed her, and was standing just inside the doorway.

She glanced at him under her suggestive black lashes, then back at me. “I presume,” she added, “that what you have to say also concerns the justiciar?”

“It does, Lady Queen.”

“Then he may remain to hear it. Now break my heart, Enchanter General.”

“Lady Queen, your husband has been called to judgment.”

“That won’t take long. He’s in Hell already—I’ll vouch for it. When and where did this gratifying manifestation of Our Lord’s benevolence occur?”

“In bed, in Chinon. He had been failing for several days.”

“Chinon? So he truly managed to die in bed? Justiciar, do you accept Lord Durwin’s news?”

Ranulf had shrunk. “This is truth, upon your honor, Baron?”

For me, that was the highlight of the evening—that I, born into poverty, a despised Saxon, crippled in childhood, had risen so high that the current ruler of England must accept my word on a matter of state.

“Upon my honor, my lord, King Henry breathes no more.”

He bowed to Eleanor. “Then you are no longer a prisoner, Lady Queen. By your leave?” He turned and walked out.

She beamed in delight and turned to me. “How came you so soon by this wisdom?”

“Your Grace may recall that long-ago day when you so graciously received a very young Saxon cantor with a game leg? You charged me to cast a horoscope for your son, the Lord Richard, as he then was.” Who now was so much more.

“And a very sound horoscope it was. Yet I directed you to leave nothing out. When you predicted that he would become a king, you did not specify what realm he was to rule.” Her coal-black eyes had a trick of looking straight through to a man’s soul. “But you knew, didn’t you? You knew it would be England.”

“With respect, madam, I did not. The stars are never so specific. He might have been elected king of Jerusalem, or German Emperor, or have married a great heiress.” Besides, at that time Lord Richard’s elder brother, Henry, had been alive, and I had not dared to predict his early death. Now he was dead, their father was also dead, but King Richard lived. I had known for years—everyone knew—that Richard was, and had always been, Queen Eleanor’s favorite son, just as John, the youngest, had been his father’s.

I was relieved to see her smile creep back. “That was what I told him when he grew up enough to read your convoluted Latin. Nor did you say when he would receive this unnamed crown. Did you know that also?”

“Not the exact day, madame. The planets’ movements among the spheres are not predictable so many years ahead, and horoscopes can only predict dark times and bright times. We all have those, until in the fullness of God’s plan for us, we enter a dark time that we do not survive.”

She frowned, suddenly wary. “But you do have more information now than just the stars? You are quite certain that I am now a widow?”

“I am. I assure you that the information I give you came from an extremely reliable source and will be confirmed by mundane means within a day or two. King Richard . . .” I paused, hearing myself utter that strange combination of words. “His Grace has heard the news. I expect his couriers are already on their way to you.” I wasn’t about to disclose how I knew all this, even if she asked directly, but she knew better than to do so. Queens must not be seen to meddle in the occult. Everyone accepted and believed in horoscopes, so those were safe. Even the Pope employs astrologers.

She clapped her hands in delight. “Wonderful! You are Merlin Redux, Lord Durwin.”

“I have always ranked Your Grace ahead of Queen Guinevere.” Queen Eleanor’s fondness for Arthurian romances was well known. Nor had she lost her skill in steering banter along safe lines. She had not called me Lancelot, who had been the one to rescue Guinevere from captivity.

“And to be flattered again! I had almost forgotten how much I enjoyed flattery. Amaria, bring me some of that wine, and then we’ll all drink the new king’s health! After that,” she added mischievously, “Cantor Lars de Pipewell will sing something joyful for us.”

Mourning was not in her nature.

Aware that both Lars and I were exhausted, Eleanor neither kept us long nor made him sing for her. We were granted a fine room, with a bed that any innkeeper would have considered large enough for four. It was comfortable enough, except that the straps squeaked. Lars, who would normally sleep until noon if permitted, began to thrash about just before dawn, anxious to explore a new place—and a castle, yet!

Still aching from the previous day’s long ride, I growled like an angry bear. That stilled him for about two minutes. Then he decided he needed the chamber pot and bounced out of bed with excessive energy, making the straps scream. I gave up hope of more sleep.

The queen, we were informed, would receive well-wishers at Terce, which gave me a couple of hours to show my son around the castle and some of the town. Inevitably that led to visiting the town’s chantry, which was one of the first I had licensed to teach and qualify adepts, healers, and sages. It was ranked very close behind Oxford itself.

The dean of Winchester Chantry was my old friend and companion, Sage Eadig, so this was almost like a family gathering. I asked after Enid, he after Lovise. I proudly showed off Lars in his cantor’s white cape, and Eadig checkmated me by sending for his eldest daughter, Gwynda, who had been awarded hers a month ago. I explained that we had come to make an official inspection of his establishment, starting with the quality of the ale. He led us to the refectory, which was currently empty, except for a couple of servants preparing the tables for dinner.

Lars and Gwynda had played together as children, but had not met for four or five years. Since then, both had undergone changes that interested the other, and they settled off in a corner together to engage in what appeared to be a profoundly engrossing conversation.

Eadig and I exchanged amused parental smiles and carried our ale out of earshot. He had never been tall and now was close to tubby, with his flaxen hair thinned to a mist, but he was ever quick-witted, courageous, and trustworthy.

“I was expecting you,” he remarked, “because I heard you sneaking into the castle yester-eve. I sent a novice to find out if this was the end of the world, or if something more important might be happening. By all the suffering saints, what did you think you were doing? It’s the talk of the town. All England will . . . no?”

“No. England will have more important things to talk about.” I raised my ale. “Long live King Richard.”

My long-ago assistant nodded. “That’s what the gossip says this morning—that the king’s wizard came galloping to tell the queen. So it’s true? Henry has . . . when?”

“King Henry died in his bed, in Chinon Castle.”

When I did not add more, Eadig’s steel-colored eyes silently dissected me. He knew me too well. “When?”

“Very recently.”

“Then you must know how to fly? Or you have a spy at court and communicate with Despero in extremis?”

“Despero doesn’t work across the Narrow Sea. I’ve tried it.”

“Then you must have a new incantation, none I ever heard of.”

“As the old adage says, two can keep a secret if one of them is dead.” I grinned to show I was teasing. I knew I could discuss this with Eadig as I could with almost no one else, but I would not dare trust even him with the incantation itself. If it ever escaped into the world at large, it would create chaos. “Not new, very old. That’s why it is so powerful, of course. It purports to be written by Myrddin Wyllt.”

With his ale almost at his lips, Eadig paused long enough to say, “God’s legs!” before taking a drink.

“Quite. I’m still discovering what it can do, but I already know that it could almost be considered black magic, because if anyone could spy on anyone else at any time, the world would go insane. Lovers, merchants, soldiers—none of them could hide anything from anyone. This is one of a very small collection of extremely dangerous enchantments that I will pass on to my successor as enchanter general and to no one else.”

“No need to apologize. I wish we could call back some of the spells we teach our pupils. To King Richard! Long may he reign.” We drank.

“You are a marvel,” Eadig said, wiping foam. “So you’re digging into old Welsh lore now?”

“No. Myrddin was Scottish. Why are you grinning, friend?” A stranger would not likely have detected the alleged grin, and he removed it at once. “I was going to say I hope you didn’t pay too much for it, but it sounds as if you didn’t.”

Now I was mystified and it was his turn to read my expression.

“‘Myrddin’ is pronounced ‘Mirthin’. I can’t say it right. I’ll get Enid to pronounce it for you. It’s the old Welsh name for Merlin. ‘Wyltt’ means ‘wild’ and refers to the wild woods.”

I was stunned. Had I known that meaning of Myrddin, I would have thrown the old vellums away as worthless fakes. But an incantation that could look across the Narrow Sea was certainly not that. A spell composed by the genuine Merlin was an amazing find.

“I paid nothing for it,” I said, “except many hours of translating it into a legible text. I found it in a ruined fort at Rhuddlan.”

“In North Wales.”

“Right. The first time I tried chanting it, it showed me King Henry himself. He was obviously at death’s door. I already knew that he was entering a very dark time.”

“Casting the monarch’s horoscope is high treason, Enchanter.” I didn’t deny that I had done that. “There was always a chance that he would make it through the dark time, as he had survived so many others in the past, but two days ago I learned that he had yielded up his soul. I called for Lars to hasten with me here, to Winchester. I enjoyed the journey with him. He’s grown up so suddenly that I feel I hardly know him now.”

Eadig noticed my clumsy effort to change the subject, but did not object. “Children always do.”

“True. And the size of him! Takes after his namesake, Lovise’s brother.”

“Gwynda hopes to pursue her training as a sage. She’s very anxious to study at Oxford. You will have room for one more?”

“For your daughter? Of course. I can still exert some gentle influence. There is much less prejudice than there used to be against female sages. Lovise set a fine example. She never had trouble mixing wisdom and motherhood.”

After a pause, Eadig said, “So what happens now? Lord—I mean King—Richard is sworn to go on crusade, to drive the heathens out of Jerusalem. When will he do that?”

“He’s not the sort of man to be deflected from his preferred course of action,” I said. “It will depend on Philip of France. He’s a man not to be trusted.”

“Perhaps Richard will send Lord John in his stead?” The question was ambiguous.

I glanced around to make certain that no one was within earshot. “How much will you wager?”

Old friends—we both grinned. Lord John was nobody’s idea of a martial hero.

Eadig snorted. “Every time that billy goat comes to Winchester, we lock up our wives and daughters. Women seem to find him absolutely irresistible.”

I knew Eadig well enough to know that he was hinting that the new king’s brother used black magic. I pulled a face and said, “Are you sure?”

“No. Just suspicious.”

“I’ll look into it,” I promised.

“I expect you’ll be busy, with a new king and all.”

“I’m always busy.” Which reminded me that I must return to the castle and wait upon Queen Eleanor. She had called me Merlin Redux, which suddenly seemed truer than I had known at the time. We broke up the other tete-a-tete, and I dragged my cantor away, not quite literally.

“Nice girl?” I said as we stalked along the street.

“All right,” Lars said with a shrug. “I was trying to talk her into coming to Oxford. Why are girls always so stubborn?”

Back at the castle, we found well-wishers swarming like bees. Ranulf de Glanville had remained at his post, for he was still chief justiciar, but he must have spread the word to his friends. No doubt the worst of them were already packing, planning to flee from the new king’s vengeance, while the optimists among them rushed to Winchester in the hope of currying favor after years of treating their queen as a leper.

I saw many that I knew, and was greeted exuberantly by many who yesterday would have rather thrown me in their moats. Some of the glory of my news had stuck to me, and the queen added to it by sending for me before all the other supplicants.

I expressed a desire to return to Oxford at once, but she bade me remain in Winchester for a few days. She then sat me down on her right and Glanville on her left, and proceeded to keep us there for hours, while she received all the fawning toadies and accepted their oaths of loyalty in her son’s name. Those who saw me as an upstart Saxon turd smiled and bowed and kept their contempt warm on the hob for another day. Seemingly oblivious of how she might be storing up trouble for me, Eleanor was in the seventh heaven of delight at being a queen again, being in touch with the world, wielding power. She invited a few of her especial favorites to stay on for a small celebration.

Far into the night the party continued. Required to play the gittern and sing, Lars acquitted himself well. A page brought him a gratuity which popped his eyes, so Eleanor had acquired money from somewhere.

One of my own troubles arrived that evening as Lars and I were saying our prayers before climbing into our squeaky bed again. The door flew open without a knock, and in strode a young man, not tall but heavyset, extravagantly dressed in silks and satins and glowing with the confidence of high rank. He carried a lantern, which he set down on the table as if he intended to stay awhile.

We both sprang to our feet. Perhaps we should have completed our orisons first, but for all we had known the intruder was armed and dangerous. We both wore only our small clothes, meaning next to nothing in summer.

Lars opened his mouth to roar, but I sank to my knees again, reflecting that this time I was more honoring the Devil than God. Puzzled, Lars followed my example.

“So sorry to interrupt your perversions,” Lord John said mockingly. “You,” he told Lars, “out!” He jerked a thumb at the still-open door.

Both startled and furious, Lars looked to me.

“Do as His Grace says, Son.”

So then Lars guessed who this newcomer was, with curly hair of Plantagenet red, distinctive even in the uncertain lantern light, so he jumped up and bowed, using the flowery contortions of a full court bow, which were absurd in his near-nudity. He scooped up his clothes and left, closing the door softly.

By his family’s standards, Lord John was short, a foot shorter than the new king. Once he had been King John, but only briefly, because when he was eleven years old, his father had given him Ireland. Only three people truly believed that Ireland was Henry’s to give, the third one being the Pope. As soon as he reached eighteen and was knighted, John had been sent off to claim his inheritance. His efforts to convince the Irish that he was their God-given ruler failed so abysmally that he managed to alienate every man on the island, natives and Norman squatters both. It was after he fled back to the safety of England that his father named him John Lackland. It was unwise for anyone else to address him as such. I must be careful; he did not seem to be armed, but he was certainly dangerous.

He took the only stool, leaving me on my knees.

“Truly your son?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Such a relief! I thought I would have to denounce you. They castrate sodomists, you know. You have told my mother that my father died on Thursday. How did you, in Oxford, learn of this so quickly?”

I was very tempted to ask him how he had done the same thing, because I knew he had been in Nottingham on Wednesday evening. He did not know that I knew that, of course. How had he arrived in Winchester in three days? I would have guessed that to be impossible, even for a twenty-two-year-old renowned for a fanatical love of hunting. His fancy clothes showed that he had changed on arriving, but he had brought a strong odor of horse with him and his face was still filthy with road dust. He could not have set out any earlier than Lars and I left Oxford; he could not possibly have learned of his father’s death by mundane means. He could not have made that ride without the aid of some sort of conjuration.

“By enchantment, my lord. That is my profession and my duty.”

“You were spying on him? That’s a hanging offense at least.”

“My duties as enchanter general include advising the king of significant events. When His Grace is overseas, I report to Regent de Glanville. I knew that both he and the queen were here, so I hastened here at once.”

“That is no answer. Don’t mince words with me, devil worshiper.”

“My lord, I was not spying on the king, but I knew by the arts of my profession that he had died.”

Lackland narrowed his eyes for a moment, aware that he was not intimidating me, at least not yet. “We only have your word for that. How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“Castration and hanging would be a pleasure compared to what your noble mother would do to me if she learned that I had lied to her.”

His laugh sounded quite genuine. No one ever denied that John could be charming when he wished. “So true! And now my brother is king? He doesn’t give a spit for England, you know. The only lands he cares about are Aquitaine, Poitou, Anjou, Normandy, and the other French ones.” He shrugged. “Richard can’t speak above a dozen words of English. I speak it well, don’t I?” He had been doing so since he came in.

“Extremely well, my lord.”

“So Richard will undoubtedly appoint me regent, to run England for him.”

Hope and pray that he would not be so stupid!

“He has sworn the crusaders’ oath, my lord, so he will have to make some such arrangement for all his possessions.”

Pouting, John said, “Pah! Mother, you think? A woman ruling England? My grandmother tried that and made a total dung heap of it. Besides, the old bag can’t last much longer. When she heads off to Hell, he’ll have no other choice than me. I am, after all, his heir.”

No mention of their nephew, Lord Arthur? Many people would think he had a stronger claim.

“Richard is a great butcher,” John continued. “Massacres are his forte—peasants, towns, other peoples’ troops, anyone who annoys him. He’s never happy unless he’s building himself a new castle or sacking someone else’s. Yet he is as naive as a baby. King Philip plays him like a gittern. He convinced Richard that Father was planning to disinherit him and leave everything to me. That’s what started this latest war.”

This was fairly close to the truth as I knew it, and I wasn’t inclined to argue. I was still waiting to find out what my visitor wanted of me. Almost certainly I would have to refuse him, and people who crossed any male Plantagenet were wise to wear their chain mail to bed.

He regarded me for a moment in silence, then said, “I hear you can smite castles with a wave of your hand.”

“I did yesterday, but King Philip will surely hear of it. France has sages too, and they can put warding spells on all his castle gates.”

“Then why haven’t you been putting them on our castle gates, Enchanter General? Shouldn’t that be part of your duties?”

“Because it would be an intolerable nuisance in peacetime. The guards would have to know the password to open them, so the secret would inevitably leak. Only when enemies approach is the time to ward them, my lord.”

Another instant change of subject: “I have a small problem, Baron Durwin. You could help me with it.”

“I should be glad to do so if it is possible.”

“Quite possible. There is a certain fair young maiden whom I most grievously wish to mount. You could supply me with means to turn her icy refusal into feverish desire?”

Remembering Eadig’s hints that morning I was startled, and must have looked it. Had Lackland been spying on us, just as I had spied on the kings’ parley? If Eadig’s suspicions were correct, why was Lord John asking me for help in his Satanic rapes? Fortunately he would have expected me to look surprised and shocked. I decided that he was just testing me.

“I could, my lord, but then I would have to denounce both you and myself for using black magic. Detecting and stamping out Satanism are my principle duties.”

“And who decides what magic is black?” He was clever.

“Ultimately the Church does.”

“And in the meantime Durwin of Pipewell will decide?” His pale eyes studied me for a very long moment. “I am the heir to England and sundry other domains. I am a very dangerous man to cross, Saxon.”

“I do not doubt that, my lord, but I fear the Devil more. I will never dabble in black magic, not at any price.”

He leaned forward so his eyes were close to, and level with, mine. “So you say, but you walk on the rim of Hell, Enchanter— day in and day out. You snatch your powers from Satan, like a mouse stealing crumbs beside a sleeping cat, but this cat knows you are there and one day the paw will strike. Then you will fall off that narrow edge, on the wrong side. When I was born, you cast my horoscope.”

“I did.”

“I want to see it.”

“I do not have it. I gave it to your honored mother four days after your birth. I never keep copies of horoscopes.” I still had my notes, of course, but saw no reason to say so.

My continuing defiance reddened his cheeks. “Then answer me one question, Saxon. Did the stars tell you that I will one day be king of England?”

Now I had to pause and think. “I’m sure you are aware, lord, that the stars do not make such specific prophecies. They merely warn of good times or dark times.”

“But Thursday, for instance, must have seemed a very good time for Richard and a very bad time for Father?”

“I expect so,” I said, seeing where this was going.

“You have cast both my horoscope and my brother’s. Is there a similar match in our future, a very bad time for him and a very good one for me?”

I decided that lying to him would do more harm than good in the long run. With a sigh, I said, “Yes, my lord, they did. You will have to be patient, but it does seem that one day you will wear the crown of St. Edward.” And may God have mercy on us then.

The following morning, I went back to the chantry, leaving Lars still safely asleep. The sick were already lining up at the door, but my green cape gained me immediate entry, and I asked for Dean Eadig. Seeing no sign of Gwynda, I wondered if her absence had anything to do with Lord John’s presence in town.

Eadig received me in a small consultation room—a couch, a stool, and a solid soundproof door. Neither of us sat down. “You have new worries?” he asked right away.

“Possibly. You must know some workers in the castle stables?”

He nodded. Winchester is not huge and impersonal, like London.

“Lord John rode in last night. I should dearly like to know who came with him.”

Eadig looked at me as if I were moon-howling crazy. “All two or three hundred of them? He is rarely discreet about his state, Enchanter!”

“In this case I’ll bet he came with a very small train. I’m especially thinking about anyone who might be an enchanter.”

“Ah!” Now I made sense, yet still Eadig looked puzzled. “There isn’t a landowner of any worth in England who doesn’t employ a house sage or two. I’ve always suspected that you kept a pretty close tally of them.”

“I do,” I admitted. “And I know most of them personally, because all but a few old-timers studied in Oxford. But I cannot recall any who work for Lord John—which is odd, because the high and mighty usually ask me to refer sages to them. He probably employs some Frenchman, or Frenchmen. If I knew their names, I could ask Couché about them.” Armand Couché was the king’s enchanter general for his French domains.

“I’ll see what we can do,” Eadig promised. “So you think Lackland is dabbling in something he shouldn’t?”

“As you said, the notches in his bedposts certainly suggest that—he makes his late father look like a nervous nun. That, and the fact that he seems to travel faster than a stooping peregrine. Don’t quote me on that, please.”

“I never heard of a conjuration for traveling fast, Enchanter.”

“Neither have I.” That was partly what was rankling. I thought I knew every valid spell in the kingdom, certainly all the white magic, and I had copies of most of the black locked away in the crypt in Oxford. A go-like-the-wind conjuration would be enormously valuable. I could finance the entire college by marketing that to major landowners, whose estates are often scattered all over the realm. My other worry was that if John Lackland was using such lore, what else did he have that I didn’t?

Back at the castle, I learned that he had already left, bound for France to do homage to his brother. I suspected from Queen Eleanor’s icy demeanor when she told me this, that he had not asked her permission. That raised—but did not answer— an interesting question about who had precedence: the king’s mother or his heir presumptive? And when Richard named an heir designate, who would it be? John or baby Arthur of Brittany? The traditions of inheritance in England were not necessarily the same as those in his French domains.

I spent most of that day witnessing oaths of loyalty, as I had the day before. That evening, Lars mentioned that he had a message for me from his Honorary-Uncle Eadig.

“Been back to the chantry, have you?” I asked.

Baby blue eyes are wonderful for expressing innocence. “Well, I have nothing to do here, and I thought they might need an extra cantor, what with all these people jamming into the town just now.”

“Quite. Did they? Or was one of their cantors able to take some time off?”

“We went for a walk together. You want the message, Father?”

“Tell me.”

“Dean Eadig said that the man you were asking about arrived with a single attendant, a squire named Bran of Tara. He says Bran’s often been here before, but no one seems to know anything more about him.”

A king’s brother traveling with a single attendant was a bizarre notion in itself, almost enough to confirm my suspicions—mere abbots have been known to lead armies of fifty. Bran was neither a French name nor an English one, and where in the world was Tara?

Although the messenger had made wondrous speed from Chinon, it was Thursday before King Richard’s letters arrived, brought by a man I knew and respected, William Marshal. I was much surprised by this, because Sir William had been one of King Henry’s closest confidants—the aides known as familiares,a group to which I had been honored to belong for many years. I had expected King Richard to send one of his own cronies. The fact that the new king had accepted William Marshal’s oath of fealty so quickly showed the very high respect in which he was held. But William was also a shrewd judge of which side to butter his bread.

I was anxious to speak with him, but Queen Eleanor received him at once, wanting to hear details of her husband’s passing and the current situation in France. It was a long time before she gave William his leave, and night had fallen when he won free of all the fawning courtiers wanting news.

Lars and I were standing on the battlements, enjoying the evening’s coolness and studying summer stars in a moonless sky: Deneb and Vega, Aquila and Capricornis. Despite his size, William could move quietly, and we both jumped when the familiar voice came out of the darkness near my right shoulder.

“God be with you, Enchanter.”

“And with you, Sir William.”

“And . . . Lars, is it? Gods’s knuckles, lad, you’ve grown! I gather that your sorcery worked well, Enchanter. My trip was barely necessary.”There was a sliver of threat in his voice. William had always upheld his reputation with ferocity and I had just upstaged him.

“I am certain that you have brought much more news than I could convey. I congratulate you on gaining the new king’s trust so soon. That speaks volumes for your abilities.”

Like all knights of the slash-and-slice type, William was extremely touchy about his honor, which made him susceptible to flattery. He laughed. “Especially when I almost slew him outside Le Mans last month. I had him at the point of my lance, and he not armored! I killed his horse instead.”

“Thank God!” And quick thinking, William.

“Could you chant another spell for me tonight, just a small one?”

“Of course we can. If we didn’t bring the right enchantment with us, the city chantry will certainly have whatever you need.”

His chuckle in the darkness sounded embarrassed. “It’s a minor wound, and not earned in honorable battle. King Richard enjoined Gilbert Pipart and me to deliver his letters. We rode through Anjou, Maine, and Normandy. When we reached Dieppe, we jumped aboard a boat, and a plank in the deck burst under us. Pipart broke his arm and had to stay there. I scraped my leg a bit. And tomorrow I must ride to London.”

I said, “Saints, man! After a journey like that can’t you rest a day or two here?”

William’s hand thumping my shoulder felt like a falling chimney pot. “I have to collect a bride, my friend. The old king promised her to me, and the new one has confirmed it—Isabel of Striguil, no less!”

I whistled, for even I had heard of the fair maid of Striguil. Was that how Richard had bought William the incorruptible?

William was sprung from minor gentry. His grandfather had been Henry I’s marshal, meaning keeper of the king’s horses, and had been succeeded by his son, so that the title had become their family name. The current marshal was William’s older brother. By tradition and need, second sons become warriors, with third sons entering the clergy.

As a natural-born fighter, William had won acceptance into the retinue of the young king and been knighted. He had rapidly acquired a reputation in the lists, which were much more rough- and-tumble deadly in those days than they became later. When the young king rebelled against his father, William stayed loyal to his lord and was included in the pardon that followed. Taking William with him, the young king went off for some dozen years of knight-erranting and jousting. William became the most famous and admired knight in Christendom, so that no man dare meet him in the lists. After Henry died, William fulfilled his deceased lord’s deathbed request and went on pilgrimage in his stead to Jerusalem, where he could slaughter Saracens instead of de-horsing Christians. On returning to England, he swore fealty to King Henry. And now that he had outlived another liege, he had been coaxed into Richard’s service, and granted the honor and riches of Striguil.

William was in his middle forties, like me, and by then most knights must seek less strenuous employment, because their joints creak, their bones are crooked from badly-set breaks, and too many dents in their helms have jellied their wits. He was still in better shape than most, because he had ever been the best, always doing more damage than taking it. He had made immense fortunes in prize money and doubtless had spent every penny of all of them. His problem was a common one, and the solution to it must always be land, the source of all wealth.

In England—but not France—whenever any of the king’s vassals die without adult male issue, his widow and orphans become wards of the king. He uses them as prizes to reward his older fighting men, who will breed another generation of staunch warriors. Isabel had been waiting for years to learn her fate, for her inheritance was huge and her beauty legendary. Striguil Castle was strategically located on the Welsh border, so Henry had perhaps been saving her for the greatest of his warriors; much more surprising was the fact that Richard had at once agreed to honor his father’s promise—that was an even greater tribute to William’s reputation. Or possibly to his negotiating skill, which was considerable.

Although we were the same age, William and I, any pair less alike would be hard to imagine. He lived a life of blood and steel, I one of fusty old books and music. He was universally honored, I was largely despised and distrusted as a worker in dark arts. He was a huge and ferocious man, I was a cripple. And yet we had become friends! We had met first when he followed the Young Henry, and from time to time since, whenever he came to England or on my rare trips to France; we had met in council or just sitting around waiting on our betters, as courtiers always do. I like to think we hit it off because we recognized each other as basically honest, which is a rare attribute in the corridors of kings.

Down in our chamber, Lars and I discovered that what William dismissed as a scrape would have put most men in bed for a week. The healing enchantment I had in my baggage was not the one I would have chosen, but I knew it would work, so we sang it, and it did.

“All it needs now is some good English ale,” our patient declared, adjusting the pillows so he could lean back comfortably on the bed. “That pissy French wine muddles a man’s head too fast.”

I took that as a hint to dispose of the witness, so I bade Lars go and find what was needed. Confident that he would know not to be too fast about it, I then settled on the stool and returned William’s businesslike stare.

“I’m told Lord John got here just a day after you did,” he said.

Aha! So we scented the same quarry, William and I. I nodded.

“He was in France a month or so ago. Then he vanished. His father was worried about him. I can guess how you learned the news, but how did he?”

“I don’t know. I know for a fact—but I pray you not to spread this around—that he was in Nottingham on Wednesday evening, and here on Saturday night.”

“Godamercy! How did he find out so soon, then?”

How indeed? “That is something I intend to discover,” I said. “Of course, most men of high station keep a house sage. When you take up your honor of Striguil, I’ll recommend some good men to you. I have a fair idea of most of England’s enchanters, because they were trained in the Oxford College, but I don’t know of any in John’s service.”

“Why did he come here, to Winchester?” William mused. “Just to check up on Dear Mommy? Or did he know you had forestalled him, so it was no use heading straight to the Tower of London and trying to claim the throne?”

“I don’t know that either.”The thought that John might be spying on me as easily as I could spy on him was enough to make a turtle itch. “What I do know is that I intend to keep an eye on what he is up to in future. King Richard will not prohibit that, will he?”

“Not as long as you are discreet. He killed his father, you know.”

That he did not mean Richard. “He did?”

Sir William sighed. “Henry’s last few days were terrible. He went to another parley with Richard and King Philip, but he couldn’t even dismount for it, and we had to hold him upright on his horse. They dictated the terms, everything they could think of, and he just agreed to them all. He had to, he was in agony.”

I had witnessed that meeting and had watched the dying man whisper something about being revenged on his son. William must have overheard that, but he didn’t mention it.

“A month ago, when Le Mans fell, we put him on a litter and carried him north, dodging the patrols out looking for him, and heading for Normandy where he would be safe. Just think of it—the lord of the Angevin Empire being transported like a woman and scuttling from nook to cranny like a hunted outlaw! But when we were almost there, he sent his escort on ahead, and told us to turn around and go back to Chinon. We argued but he insisted.”

Going home to die, as his wife had said.

”Every day he was worse. He insisted on attending that final parley. We made it back to the castle and put him to bed. But then he demanded to hear the list of traitors he had agreed to pardon. Again we argued; again he insisted. The list was long, but the first name—”

I had guessed what was coming. “Was John’s?”

William nodded. “He didn’t listen to the rest. He just turned his face to the wall, and soon after that he became delirious.”

Five legitimate sons. Three dead and the other two both traitors, not one of them worthy to be his heir.

“But why John? The whole cause of the war was Henry’s constant refusal to name Richard his heir. He kept hinting that he was going to leave everything to John. Surely John should have remained loyal this time?”

William’s killer eyes narrowed. “You are implying that my liege, King Richard, would stoop to such foulness?”

“No,” I said hastily. “Richard never would, but I wouldn’t put it past Philip to sneak John’s name onto the list, just to twist the knife more.”

And I realized that I wouldn’t put it past Lackland to play on both teams, pretending to join in the conspiracy to stay on his brother’s good side when it seemed likely that he was going to win. Once he had curried favor with both sides, he might have then sneaked away, back to England, to await the outcome.

“We sent for Richard,” William said, “but he suspected a trap and didn’t come. Henry died early on Thursday, and we reported that, and he turned up on Friday, by which time we had moved the body to Fontevrault Abbey, where he wanted to be buried.” Then Lars returned, leading a burly footman carrying a small cask and a page bringing drinking horns. The conversation turned to merrier subjects.

I had overlooked the most incredible thing that William had told me.

Early the next day Queen Eleanor rode forth in procession, freed from her long penance at last and now, by royal decree, ruler of England until her son returned. Every town and hamlet turned out to cheer her. A strangely humbled Ranulf de Glanville accompanied her. The king’s warrant had given her the power to punish him, but she had not done so.

I did not try to claim the role of queen’s favorite, which could only increase my unpopularity in that company, so I found myself astride a scrawny, rawboned mare that no other baron in Christendom would have tolerated. I saw many smirks aimed in my direction. Those did not trouble me, because in the last week I had been sitting beside the queen while every one of those toadies knelt before us to swear loyalty to her son. There would be much jostling for status in the new reign, and I wanted no part of that. I had my own place in the government. If the Lionheart wanted me gone, then I would retire to Pipewell quite happily, and someone else could be enchanter general.

Lars fared even worse than I did in the horse stakes, and had to settle for a mule, trailing along at the end of the line, among servants and riffraff. I fretted, for I dearly wanted to return to Oxford and investigate the mysterious Bran of Tara. Even if he was not mentioned in any of my records, that absence would tell me something. I had done my best duty to the queen, I thought resentfully, and she did not need me now.

After a couple of hours, though, word was passed back that Her Grace required Baron Durwin, which gave me a lot of hard work to make my grudging mare move faster than all the mounts ahead of us. Eventually I arrived at the front, and Eleanor evicted a veteran bishop to make room for me on her right, which was the side she was then facing. Not that she couldn’t ride astride when she chose to.

“Ah, Lord Merlin!” she said. “I want your advice.”

“For what it is worth, it is yours to command, Lady Queen.”

“My son was born here, but he is a southerner at heart. You know that for years he has ruled my ancestral Aquitaine for me. Why he has hardly set foot in England since he was a child! The people barely know his name. The nobility do, but he is a stranger to the rest. I want to rouse them to joy over his accession. I want . . . where in the world did you find that wreck of a horse?”

“Just outside the glue factory door, my lady. I fear it has taken holy orders recently.”

The queen’s eyes glinted like dagger points. “Just because the first Merlin was allowed to speak in riddles doesn’t give you that right.”

I described how every holy house was required to maintain some of the king’s horses, and how this was resented as an effective tax on the church that many orders could ill-afford. Such animals were often very poorly fed and badly cared for.

She beamed. “Then if I abolish that law in my son’s name, it would be popular among the clergy?

“Their tonsures would glow with joy.”

“Splendid! I shall, of course, open the jails and free all prisoners. What other ideas can your nimble mind provide?”

By then I had thought up a few more, and our conversation prospered. Eleanor knew as well as I did that the nobility were aware of Richard’s record in Aquitaine, where he had raised taxes until the nobles rebelled, and had then brutally suppressed their rebellions. He was both a brilliant warrior and a very effective ruler, but not a lovable one.

Eventually the queen gave me the sort of opening I needed.

“My son mentioned that he hopes to fulfill his crusaders’ oath soon. Can you predict whether he will manage to retrieve the holy city from the Saracens?”

“I could update his horoscope, ma’am, if such be your orders to me. That should advise him of his best times for making the effort.”

She guessed what I wanted, of course, and reluctantly gave me leave to go home, although she warned that she might send for me soon. I collected Lars, and we headed northward on the first available trail. Once we had changed our mounts at a handy monastery, we made better progress. I was ruefully aware that my advice to the queen about horses had probably made travel much harder for me in future.

We took our time, but the weather continued fair and in due course we returned safely to Oxford and the college. Lovise made us welcome, complaining how empty the house had seemed with both of us away, and only the servants for company.

I had kept profuse notes on Richard’s horoscope, and I gave them to Lovise so she could update it, she being the only person I would trust with that very sensitive—and potentially treasonous— procedure. Similarly, I gave Lars the task of updating Lord John’s.

In recent years I had shed all my direct oversight of the college in order to concentrate on my own studies and my occasional work for the king’s council. I was therefore able to concentrate on our Irish lore, such as it was. I soon learned that the country was a political pigsty with innumerable petty kings squabbling like wild boars, unable to cooperate against the Norman intruders who had been staking claims to their trough at intervals for almost a century.

I learned that Tara was a hill, and whoever could claim the title of King of Tara was overall king of Ireland, except that there were usually several claimants. Of more interest to me was that the hill had ancient druidic connections. If Bran of Tara were a genuine sage, then he might be in possession of some lore that I had no access to. That made my metaphorical mouth water.

If I had imagined that I was going to return to my life of quiet scholarship, I was soon disabused. Queen Eleanor’s summons to Westminster arrived within a week. This time I took a larger train, although extremely modest for my rank: Lovise, my trusty Sage Wilbur of London, a couple of cantors, four servants, and two packhorses. One of the cantors was Lars, because I would not entirely trust any adolescent of his age when left alone with time on his hands, and especially not an adolescent with training in enchantment. I put him in charge of our baggage, which included several dozen incantations that I thought we might need.

I discovered that when Queen Eleanor ruled, all England jumped. The importance of Westminster was that the coronation was to be held in the cathedral there, and it was near to London, England’s greatest city and the center of its law and finance. If King Richard were really going on crusade, he would need money by the wagonload.

Eleanor had already issued a blizzard of edicts on a multitude of topics—pardoning criminals, relaxing the tyrannical forest laws, clamping down on corrupt officials. If her purpose was to make the people eager to accept King Richard, she failed. They wanted her to stay right where she was, on the throne.

I was granted an audience the day after we arrived. In less than two weeks, Eleanor had established a court, so that the throne room was packed with nobles and senior officials. The throne itself stood empty, waiting for its rightful occupant, but the queen sat in a canopied chair of state beside it, glowing with joy, and apparently thriving on a pace that would have exhausted men or women half her age. Her gown was sumptuous, far grander than the workaday garb she had been reduced to wearing during her captivity. She had gotten her hands on the crown jewels, too, so that she sparkled, from her coronet to her slippers.

She greeted me with calculated warmth—which of course was carefully noted by the audience—adding, “You and dear

Lovise will sup with me this evening.” That was to tell me that she knew I had brought my wife.

I presented her with the updated version of the king’s horoscope, which was all Lovise’s work. I had not needed to change a thing, only copy it out myself, since both queen and king knew my handwriting. Eleanor scanned it briefly. It showed that current year as being exceedingly favorable for him, as any fool could have guessed, but in 1190 the stars began to turn against him. By 1191 the prospects were mixed and his fortune darkened dramatically in the latter half of that year. From then until 1194, the outlook was black indeed.

“It would seem that he had better move quickly,” his mother said, giving me an angry look, as if I ran the heavens personally. She did know better, of course. “My son has little favor for enchantment. I sometimes think he even distrusts the stars. Take it to Francois, over there, and seal it. Tell him the red wax.”

Next!

I bowed out. Francois’s table stood nearby. I told him the red wax. He neatly tied the scroll with ribbon, dribbled the hot wax on the knot, and I sealed it with my ring, designed by Eleanor herself, many years ago now, a crown within a pentagram. I noted that red-wax scrolls went in the smallest of three bags.

A herald quietly informed me that the council would meet right after the private dinner, and I was expected at both. For “expected” read “commanded” of course. The frantic time had begun.

I did get a few minutes with William Marshal the following day, catching him in the middle of his wedding preparations. He admitted that he had heard Bran of Tara’s name, but thought he was merely Lord John’s chief ostler. When I asked if he had ever noticed John traveling at unnatural speed, he thought for a while and then nodded. “Since you mention it, he has seemed oddly nimble at times.” I could hardly claim that lukewarm testimony as support for my suspicions, but it didn’t deny them either.

Some of Eleanor’s old favorites were back, but many of the leading men of the realm were new to her, so one reason she was relying on me was that she had known me for so long. She also knew that I belonged to none of the baronial cliques. Since most of the nobility regarded me as an upstart heathen, they were secretly hoping that the new king would put me back in my place, cleaning out stables somewhere. I had met Lord Richard so rarely, that I had no idea of his opinion of me, my art, or my usefulness. Perhaps I was fortunate in that I was given little time to brood over my own future.

During the next month, the queen engaged in a long series of progresses throughout southern England, and I was included in all of them. Yes, she had me sit in on the meetings and often asked for my opinion, but I confess that my main value to her was as a healer. Even I found formal receptions and endless days in the saddle exhausting, and she was half again as old as I was. Her back hurt. I knew an incantation that would soothe it and let her sleep. I was always careful that two or three of her ladies of the chamber were present, because I knew how easily rumors could be started and then used to destroy men.

Lord John remained in France with his brother. People chuckled and whispered that the king liked to keep him under his eye.

Eadig came on a brief visit, escorting Gwynda to enroll in her advanced studies. Lars eagerly appointed himself her guide and mentor, an offer she accepted graciously. As senior students were required to live in residence, Lovise and I had to start adjusting to a house quieter than it had been in twenty years.

The next time Lars dropped in for what he termed “edible fodder,” I took a second look at him.

“What’s wrong with your eye?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing isn’t black.”

A sad tale emerged. Gwynda’s competent and trustworthy mentor had been preempted by a tall, dark young sage of Angevin descent, with a pedigree as long as a pikestaff and undoubted nefarious intentions. Lars had decided that eyelashes were the problem—his being very nearly as long as the interloper’s, but too blond to be visible. He had attempted to dye them with ink, which had made his eye sting. He had not assaulted his other eye.

Which I said I thought was wise of him. Alas, my sympathy did no good. The Angevin pedigree triumphed over true worth, honest Anglo-Saxon descent, and undoubted musical talent. I never heard Lars mention Gwynda’s name again.

On the 13^th day of August, in the year of Our Lord 1189, Richard the Lionheart entered into his kingdom, disembarking at Portsmouth. His reception was tumultuous, having been organized by his mother. From there he went to Winchester, no doubt to secure the royal treasury, and then on to Westminster. Every property owner of consequence in the country had already sworn fealty to him at the hands of Eleanor, but now we all had to swear to him in person for our lands, and this took days.

The main hall of the palace was packed with the great of the nation. He must have felt cooked in the formal state robes—which looked short on him—but he had the sense to wear only a simple coronet, not a weighty crown. With eyes of wintery blue, hair between red and gold, and his truly outstanding height, he was every inch a king. He began, of course with his mother and brother, then the nobility in order of rank, which meant that he ended with me, the most junior baron. When my name was called, everyone present must have heaved a sigh of relief that at least that part of the program was completed, but it wasn’t. I knelt, raised my hands for him to enclose in his—and he didn’t.

I looked up in alarm, into those icy killer eyes. Since he was standing and I was kneeling they were a long way up, which made them no less scary.

“Your Latin is much improved of late, Enchanter General.”

The nearer onlookers must have been puzzled, but I knew exactly what he meant. When he was seven years old, and an unwilling student, his mother had instructed me to cast his horoscope, but she had also made it plain that I was to make the text very un-plain, so I had written it in the most convoluted prose I could contrive. What boy could resist reading about his own future? Although renowned as a warrior, the adult Richard was also admired as a classical scholar, and I might claim some small part—or bear some blame—in having encouraged his studies.

“I am greatly honored that Your Grace remembers my humble work.”

“I will never forget your Satanic pluperfect passive subjunctives.”

I assumed he was joking. “Your honored mother did stress the importance of ablative absolutes, Lord King.”

“Oh, if I thought you’d dreamed up all that gerundive shit by yourself, you’d be in the Tower by now.” He had not smiled once during this exchange, and worse followed. “I understand that you informed my mother of my accession some days before my courier arrived in Winchester.”

Now I knew what he thought of my art. I wondered if I might be heading to the Tower. Suddenly my mouth was so dry I could barely speak. “This is true, Lord King.”

“Who told you the news?”

“No one told me, Lord King. Using those self-same powers that Merlin used to prophesy for Arthur, I saw your father on his bier.” Since Eadig had told me that Myrddin was Merlin, I could say that with a clear conscience, and my mention of Arthur stopped Richard in his tracks. Anything his great predecessor had done must be permissible for him.

He pursed his lips, but nodded grudgingly, then clasped my hands in his much larger ones, I pledged my loyalty, and he accepted it. Then I could rise and bow myself away, out of immediate danger. I had been publicly scorned, but it seemed that I was going to remain in royal favor, if only just. I learned the price later.

If we had all considered Eleanor a whirlwind, we found her son to be a tempest. He had already settled his French dominions, and he now proceeded to hammer England into shape also. In addition to some French properties that he had given his brother, he added six English counties, making Lord John the second wealthiest man in the country, after himself. He kept the castles in his own hands, though—he loved his little sibling, but he did not trust him. Before the end of the month, he had John safely married off to Isabella of Gloucester, to whom he had been betrothed for some thirteen years. It was typical of King Henry that he would hold a man’s loyalty by promising him some rich heiress as a wife, and then keep him unmarried for an age, while continuing to siphon the girl’s income into the royal treasury. Now that John had an undeniable, if unofficial, prospect of inheriting the English throne, he must be safely married, before foreign rulers started dangling delectable daughters in front of his eyes.

Richard dealt with his half-brother, Geoffrey the Bastard, by promoting him to archbishop of York and insisting that he enter holy orders, which disbarred him from ever making a bid for the throne. He had already positioned William Marshal in Striguil, on the Welsh border, to keep the Welsh barbarians in line. He bought off the Scottish king, William the Lion, by selling him a formal admission that Scotland was a truly independent country. It was a masterful demonstration of onshore piracy.

On September 3^rd came the coronation, and London had never seen anything like it. The whole city was garlanded. To the great annoyance of Lovise and about 999 other ladies in the realm, wives were not admitted to either the ceremony in the cathedral or the incredible banquet that followed. Queen Eleanor was the only woman present. This was not her doing, or Richard’s—it was ancient tradition.

The food was plentiful, but cold, the conversation guarded.

Lovise and I would have been more than happy to head straight home to Oxford after that, but Queen Eleanor was organizing musical soirees, perhaps in the hope of illuminating this dark northern wilderness with some of the gaiety and zest of her native Aquitaine, and we had received an invitation to one about three days later.

It was a very grand affair, with the cream of the kingdom packed into the reception hall of Westminster Palace like fish in a barrel. Queen Eleanor was there, but one who should have been was not—Aalis of France, King Philip’s half-sister. Richard had been betrothed to her for over twenty years, and her absence was scandalous but unmentionable.

Entertainment was provided by two of Richard’s favorite trouvères: Gace Brulé and Blondel de Nesle. England had little experience of the songs of Aquitaine and other southern lands, so the audience’s cheers and applause were probably more designed to please the king and his mother than to show appreciation of an art so unfamiliar.

And then, to my horror, Richard stood up and looked over the hall until his gaze settled on me like a hard frost.

“Baron Durwin of Pipewell! You are reputed to sing a fine tune. Come forward and let us hear some of England’s songs. Blondel, lend him your gittern.”

Being commanded without any warning to follow two of Christendom’s most renowned performers, felt bitterly unfair. Lovise told me later that the queen frowned and seemed about to intervene, but then changed her mind and didn’t. I was too furious to notice what anyone else thought, although I did hear some tittering. I slowly worked my way through the throng to the throne, leaving my cane behind to emphasize my limp and give me a little extra time to review what I might be going to sing. I accepted the gittern, and quickly checked the tuning. It was already perfect, so I could not steal any extra time to tune it while I gathered my thoughts. Then I bowed to the king and began.

I chose a love song that I had sung to Lovise on the evening we were betrothed—and many a time since. It seemed to me to go well, but the king’s applause at the end was brief and lackluster, so everyone else’s was too. Again, Richard had demonstrated in public that he disapproved of enchanters, and especially a baronial Saxon enchanter. My pride was not totally destroyed, though. As I returned the gittern to Blondel, he said quietly, “A most moving performance! Will you teach me that ballad, if it please you, Lord Durwin?”

His accent was hard for me to make out—he was from Picardy, north of Paris, but his courtesy was worth more to me than hours of cheering from the crowd.

“Me teach you, sir? I had sooner teach my horse to eat hay.”

Thus are friendships born.

Then, as if just to show me up again, Richard called upon Sir Conon de Béthune, another famed troubadour, and he sang his celebrated lament over the loss of Jerusalem.

At last Lovise and I were free to go back to Oxford to try to restore order to our lives. I felt supremely certain that I need fear no more summonses to attend meetings of the privy council. I should have been careful what I wished for. The following morning, when Lovise returned from making her calls, she was informed that I wanted to see her the moment she came in. She found me in my workroom, scribbling furiously, and in a truly toxic mood.

She sat down on the edge of the couch and regarded me quizzically. “Now what? You frightened Ælfweard to death.” Ælfweard was our doorman.

“The king has called a meeting of the great council!”

“I don’t see how that is the Ælfweard’s fault.”

Whether it was a terrified child or a rambunctious horse or a vagrant husband, Lovise’s tone always had a magically calming effect. I stood my quill in the inkpot and turned to face her.

“Probably not. I will apologize to him and tip him.”

“And besides, what is unexpected? A new king always summons the great council as soon as he is crowned. He needs it to vote him taxes.”

The privy council comprises whosoever the king chooses. The great council is a vastly larger affair, made up of all the bishops and archbishops and barons and earls in the kingdom, plus a few major abbots. Would-be wits call it un parlement, meaning a talking place.

“He is summoning it to meet in Pipewell Abbey.”

Lovise said, “Oh!” and at once understood my rage. Pipewell Abbey, where I had learned my letters and thus begun my climb to scholarship, might be physically capable of holding the great council itself, but every lord and bishop attending would bring scores of servants, other supporters, and horses. They would overrun the surrounding countryside like a Hunnish horde, and our estate of Pipewell Manor was the closest habitation of any size. It would be the first to suffer.

“I was in the process of writing to Harald to warn him,” I added.

“Why ever would the king locate such a huge gathering in such a mouse hole of a location?”

“Because our dear friend Ranulf de Glanville told him that Pipewell is in the very center of England.”

Lovise’s tone changed ominously. “Durwin! How do you know this?”

I said, “I overheard them.”

I liked to think that I had never told my wife a falsehood, but that time I was very close to doing so, because I had not overheard the king and the former justiciar while we were in Westminster. I had overheard them about ten minutes previously, while I was alone in my workroom. I had looked around in alarm, finding that I was completely alone. The voices had been unmistakable, and that was all I heard.

Lovise was suspicious. “You’ve been meddling with the Myrddin Wyllt incantation again! You had a vision?”

“I have not. I haven’t glanced at that accursed thing in weeks.” Like her, though, I was beginning to wonder if it might be meddling with me. Anxious to escape such a worrisome subject, I said, “I must finish this warning and send it off to Harald.”

“What can he do? The whole place will be wasted. You’d need a private army to keep the scavengers out.” But then, suddenly, my dear wife smiled like the sun breaking through storm clouds. “Baron Weldon will be going, won’t he? There’s your private army! Invite the Legiers to stay with us during the great council!”

I knew at once that she had found the solution, but what I said was, “Won’t the cure be worse than the disease?”

William Legier, Baron Weldon, requires an explanatory note, although to do justice to his eccentricities would need a great tome. He is two or three years younger than I, and we met when he was a squire in Helmdon College—a totally unruly, unwilling, rebellious, disruptive, and recalcitrant student. His ambition was to enroll in warrior training, but his equally stubborn father had decreed that he was to be an enchanter.

To William, I was a crippled Saxon serf with ideas above my station, and he would happily have smashed me to pieces with his fists and boots, except that I would not dare defend myself against a Norman, so it could not be a fair fight. The Fates, however, threw us together and he had to help me in my hunt for a murderer in Barton Castle. He then revealed all sorts of unexpected abilities—in Latin, penmanship, chanting, and playing the role of faithful assistant, although he only did that when someone else was watching. By the end of our quest, mutual respect had developed into friendship, and he seemed reconciled to taking up serious studies at Helmdon. I am certain that he would have made an outstanding sage. Alas, he was unexpectedly reunited with his father, and went off to help him instead.

And the Fates continued to favor him. Although he was the fourth son, in short order he inherited his father’s baronetcy of Weldon, wooed and won the very beautiful Millisende of Huntingdon, whose dowry made him a rich man. He distinguished himself at jousting and fought for King Henry, both during the royal sons’ revolt and later against the Welsh. Millisende bore him seven sons in ten years. And just to prove that he recognized no rules or traditions, he named them all after strangers instead of relatives, and in alphabetical order. How he ever talked his priest into doing this I cannot imagine. Every son took after his father, so a Legier family gathering was a permanent civil war, which William did nothing to discourage.

I wrote to William, and discarded my letter to Harald. Instead, Lovise and I mounted up and rode off to Pipewell Manor to warn him and help him prepare for the invasion.

The first Legier to arrive, only a day after we did, was Son Number One, Sir Absolon Legier, accompanied by Number Four, Squire Dominique. Absolon was his father in excelsis— taller, wiry, and sporting a mustache that implied that he was more arrogant than King Richard, were that humanly possible. In truth, he was a thoroughly likeable young man. He wore the cross of a crusader, which was to carry a lot of weight over the next few days. Squire Dominique was going to be his knight’s exact double in five or six years.

William and Millisende arrived the next day, herding the rest of their private army. Millisende and Lovise fell into each other’s arms as always. The years had thickened William, giving him the bull chest and shoulders of a warrior and a head to match. He greeted me with an embrace that made my ribs creak, lifting me off the ground as he always did. Nor could he quite hide his contempt as he was welcomed by Harald, for our eldest was a farmer born, with absolutely no martial inclinations.

“So it’s to be a siege is it?” William declared, surveying the landscape. “How much of this scenery do you own, anyway?”

“Twelve-and-a bit hides.”

“You’re going to lose every blade of grass on it. You’d better start by buying up enough hay to keep your livestock over the winter, because the horde will strip every field within a day’s ride of the abbey. Withdraw into the house and outbuildings. . . . And we’ll have to guard everything on four legs, or they’ll get eaten too. Pity you don’t have a small castle here, Durwin.”

I could not argue with that. Pipewell Manor was a humble seat for a baron, although it suited us. Even imagining a future where all four of our children gathered with children of their own, it might suffice. A dozen Legiers and their retainers it could manage, but only just. Servants would be sleeping on the floor, so we would not be lying when we turned away would-be boarders with the claim that we had no room.

“When is this invasion due to start anyway?” William demanded. “How did you get advance warning, humble baron?”

“Professional secret.”

He gave me one of the looks he had used twenty-five years earlier when he was promising to pound me into gravel, but this time he followed it with a resigned smile and went off to start planning the siege with Absolon, Baudouin, and an audience of younger Legiers. He also warned Lovise and Millisende to work on provisions for the duration of the great council and the local famine that would follow.

I soon learned that the current bone of contention in the Legier turmoil was that only Absolon and Baudouin were old enough to have sworn the crusader oath without William’s permission, and he forbade any of the others to do so, at least for now. They all wanted to go and slaughter Saracens, of course. Even five-foot-high Guiscard did.

Three days later, the first members of the council began arriving. They would all be supplied with accommodation in the Abbey itself—adequate, if not up to their customary standard. Their numerous attendants and horses would not be boarded there, and the nearest worthy house in sight was Pipewell Manor. There they found the entrance barred. Most of the apparent men-at-arms on guard were shepherds and footmen dressed up with armor and weapons supplied by William, but always at least one, and sometimes two, of the men on duty wore the cross of a crusader. They were sacrosanct and no one dare use violence against them.

Our two genuine crusaders, Absolon and Baudouin, had the youth and enthusiasm to cope with dawn-to dusk vigilance, but they did need breaks, and at times César borrowed one of the crusader surcoats and helped out, for he was tall enough to convince. This fraud was a serious offense, of course. He bragged later that he had refused admittance to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

When the king arrived at the Abbey and called the council to order, of course William and I were present, the two most junior barons. Probably no one in the kingdom knew what the crusade was going to cost, even Richard himself, and he didn’t care. The previous year, after Jerusalem fell and the idea of a crusade was born, King Henry of England and King Philips of France had agreed to impose a special tax on their respective realms. This was to comprise one tenth of every man’s income and the value of his movable property; it soon became known as the Saladin tithe. In England most of it had duly been collected, although a few dioceses were laggard. No domain in France possessed the mechanism to handle a universal levy, so the results had been poorer.

Possibly the clerics and nobles assembled in Pipewell thought that they had already paid their share. If so, Richard rapidly undeceived them. At times King Henry had seemed avaricious, but his greed was as nothing compared to his son’s. There were twenty-seven shires in England, and the office of sheriff was always regarded as a personal gold mine. Richard charged twenty-two sheriffs with malfeasance, fined them large sums of money, dismissed them, and then sold their offices to other men for even larger sums—which they would attempt to recoup with even greater malfeasance, of course.

He levied heavy fines against the men who had kept his mother in jail, although they had been obeying their king at the time, and he even fined men who had joined him in his rebellion against his father. He sold castles, titles, and appointments; he let men who had taken the crusader oath buy their way out of it. It was a dazzling display of rapacity. He reportedly said he would sell London if he could find a buyer.

On the final afternoon, the king gave audience to the great council, one man at a time, and extorted—I use the word advisedly—money from any them who had not taken the crusaders’ oath. Since he proceeded in order of rank, I again had the honor of being the last, long after candles had been lit and everyone of importance had been given leave to go and seek his lodgings, however damp, cold, and humble they might be.

William was second last. The king did not know him.

“Well, Baron? Are you not prepared to join the holy cause?”

“I am past it, Lord King, but I have seven sons, and I will send four.”

“Why not all seven?” The king, I think, was joking.

“The other three aren’t shaving yet, sire.”

Only then did the king smile and nod approval. “You are making a noble contribution. May they triumph in the Lord’s name. You have our leave.”

The smile vanished as he watched me hobble forward and kneel. “Ah, the minstrel baron? Why have you not taken the oath and sworn to rescue Jerusalem from under the heels of the infidels?”

“I am no warrior, Lord King.”

“No? I recall being told that you did once venture to tilt at an honest knight and contrive to unhorse him to his undoing by means of black magic.”

If he believed all that, then it was no wonder that he disliked me.

“With respect, Lord King, he had accused me of murder, and I demanded that I be judged by wager of battle. I was innocent of the charge, so God Himself settled our dispute.”

I won’t say that the king snorted, lest I be suspected of lese majesty, but the royal noise did sound snort-like. He did not dispute the divine verdict, though.

“Well, those who will not serve can still help. Clerk, put Baron Durwin down for a mere one thousand marks.”

“Your Grace! That is many years’ income.”

“Faugh! You can make it by boiling frogs’ eyes in a cauldron.”

End of audience.

But that was also the end of the great council, and the following morning we bade farewell to the Legiers, thanking them for saving us from our betters. William and I embraced, and then I turned away to speak to Millisende—

“What did you just say?”

Unaware of having said anything out of the ordinary, I looked back to William in surprise. “I said farewell.”

He was staring very hard at me. “No, you didn’t! You said, ‘See you in Ascalon.’”

I couldn’t have done, because I had never heard that name before, but I saw that Lovise had caught William’s protest and was watching. “I don’t recall saying that, friend. It was probably just one of those stray prophecies that float around in summer. Best ignore it. Pay no attention.”

William looked ready to punch me on the nose. “You were always odd, Durwin of Pipewell. But these days you’re positively weird.”

One week later a spotty youth in a colorful tabard turned up in Oxford to inform me that, while I had contributed as a baron, the cost of my continuing in the office of enchanter general would be another one thousand marks.

When I told Lovise, she bounced off the rafters. “We don’t have that much!”

I sighed. “But we can raise it.”

“Or we could make it,” she said, in a softer voice.

I looked at her. She turned away to hide a blush.

“Yes, we could, but that would be forgery and therefore black magic, which would imperil our souls.”

The church forbade Christians to lend money, but they could borrow it, so I donned my cloak and went off to speak to the Jews.

Richard’s greed fell mainly on the rich landowners, for only they had wealth to appropriate, but the wild popularity that had greeted him in August shriveled like a raisin. On December 12^th, he sailed away to France, and the country relaxed with an almost audible sigh. It was to be a long time before he and England saw each other again.