1190

life returned to normal, although the formerly rich were left licking their financial wounds, while the poor licked their platters to collect every last trace of grease. Queen Eleanor spent the winter at various places in southern England, but I remained in Oxford and she never sent for me. In February of 1190, she crossed over to France.

The king had put England in the hands of his trusted William Longchamp, who had been his chancellor in Aquitaine. Longchamp was first appointed Bishop of Ely, then chancellor and justiciar, which meant that he was regent when the king left the country. Somehow Richard also persuaded the Pope to make him a papal legate, which gave him authority over the church as well as the state.

This low-born autocrat was a very unprepossessing little man, with a beard that started at his eyes. He walked with a limp and spoke with a stammer. His southern French was almost incomprehensible to the English nobility, who used the northern dialect of their Norman ancestors. He turned out to be quite as grasping as his master, importing a herd of his own relatives, all of whom he appointed to profitable offices, turfing out native-born gentlefolk, many of whom had just bought their appointments from the king. The clergy soon detested him as much as the nobility did.

He sent for me early in the new year. I rode to Westminster with Sage Wilbur, whom I had recently appointed master of the College, but the justiciar called for me only, and I entered alone. The justiciar, regent, chancellor, papal legate, and bishop of Ely were all seated at a desk half buried in parchment, but only the two of us were present. Although his chair was higher than standard, he still looked small. He raised a bushy eyebrow when he saw my cane, and waved me to a stool.

He leaned back and studied me. My conscience was clear, so I waited unblinkingly. I could match his stare, but leaning back on a stool is never advisable.

“I am told that you are Merlin reborn.”

“Our Lady Queen, may the saints preserve her, is very fond of Arthurian allusions, Your Grace.”

“You cannot tell the future for us?”

“Alas, no. Only Merlin could do that, Your Grace.”

“But you have great occult powers. And you have been enchanter general for many years.”

“Since 1166.”

“A Saxon appointed to so high an office at so young an age? Your father must have had great influence.”

“My father was an ostler in Pipewell Abbey. He died when I was a child.”

That produced a smile, a rare one from this tyrant. “I have risen higher than you, but my father was a knight. I started higher.”

“I had much good fortune to aid me, Your Grace. I foiled a Satanic plot to murder King Henry. He knighted me on the spot.”

“And you must have served him well since. You will serve me in his absence?”

“Anything I can do, short of black magic.”

“But you cannot foresee future events?”

“I can cast horoscopes to determine what the stars hold in store for a person, but no more than that.”

“Lord John.” It was a question.

I pulled a face, which was an answer.

Longchamp leaned forward. “King Richard has forbidden him to enter England without my permission.”

I was tempted to wish him luck with that, but I just waited for more.

“Can you use your skills to warn me if he makes the attempt?”

At least I was not being asked to actively prevent John from crossing the channel, which I could not have done without dabbling in black arts.

“Very few enchantments reach across the sea, my lord, but if he remains in northern France, then I believe I can place him. Were I to advise you, say once a month, of his whereabouts, would that suffice?”

The justiciar shook his head. “Once a week!”

“You do not appreciate the effort you are asking, Your Grace. Every two weeks, and sometimes I may have to admit that I don’t know. And I will need free use of the royal couriers to report to you.”

Another intimidating stare. “You are of lowly birth, you hobble around on a cane, and you bargain like the Pope. We have much in common, Enchanter.”

“You honor me, Lord Bishop.”

There was a pause, but then he said, “Every ten days, then. Anything I can do for you?”

I guessed that absolutely nobody entered his office without begging for something, and he was nonplussed that I had not brought a list of my own requirements.

“Not for myself. Lord John has a retainer, an Irishman named Bran of Tara. I suspect he may be an enchanter of some power. I have had little success in learning more about him, but it might be to both our advantages if you did.”

Longchamp gave me a second smile and made a note. It seemed that the two low-born upstart cripples were going to get along famously.

I returned to Oxford and my continuing efforts to improve the Myrddin Wyllt enchantment, which I would need to keep watch on Lord John for the justiciar. Any text that imposes cramps and headaches on the chanter usually lacks style. “The spirits dislike bad grammar,” was what I told students, but rhythm and vocabulary were important, too. I went through the incantation word by word several times. I did manage to cure it of its more sadistic habits, but it insisted on imparting a raging thirst.

Because the Myrddin Wyllt was a single-voice enchantment, I needed no cantor to assist me, and even Lovise was unaware that I was spying on the king’s brother for Bishop Longchamp. I reassured my conscience by reminding it that I had my own reasons for distrusting the man and a duty to suppress the use of black magic in the king’s realm. I had no admissible evidence that Lord John and his Irish accomplice were dabbling in such evil. Even if I found any, it would have to be truly heinous before I would dare report it to the king.

Noontime worked best for my snooping because that was when John ate dinner, and the language he used to the servants told me which country he was in. If I saw him out of doors, the landscape served the same purpose— the style of the cottages or the presence of vineyards.

Longchamp never kept his side of our bargain by sending me information on the mysterious Bran of Tara, but I soon learned what the man looked like. Whenever John was having a private one-on-one with someone, it was either a girl he was seducing, or a certain swarthy, shortish, heavy-set man of around forty with a forked black beard. He kept the front of his scalp shaved from ear to ear, a style I have not seen anywhere else. Since I never witnessed the two men together with others, I could assume that this man must be a very confidential aide, so who else but Bran of Tara?

One day near the end of February, I viewed John on the move with banners flying and a train of a hundred or more. Clearly, this was no hunting trip. The countryside looked much like Norman bocage, but I wanted to know where he was heading, so the next morning I checked on him again.

I was astonished to find myself viewing a hall where at least a dozen men were seated around a very large table, actually several tables pushed together, all littered with thick law books. John was there, and so were the king and Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury. I recognized Archbishop Geoffrey of York and several bishops I had seen at the coronation. Some of these men seemed oddly blurred, as if my eyes were malfunctioning. Such people rarely assemble so early in the day.

King Richard was glowering, clearly displeased. John seemed quietly amused, enjoying his brother’s displeasure, no matter what its cause. I was most surprised to see Justiciar Longchamp in this assembly, looking attentive and obedient, waiting to learn where the royal anger would strike. I had not been aware that he had left England.

The king was tapping his fingers on the table and staring at the door, so he was being kept waiting by someone. Waiting for someone, I guessed when I noticed two empty chairs directly opposite him. At last two footmen on duty by the door opened it to admit the absentees. The first was Queen Eleanor, robed in splendor and wearing both a gold coronet and a triumphant expression which would have dropped me groveling on the floor in terror had it been directed at me.

Behind her crept in Aalis of France, Countess Vexin, half-sister of King Philip. Aalis was close to thirty years old, but her looks were fading and she seemed older. Her position two paces behind Eleanor gave her the status of servant, which her attire did not deny—I could tell at a glance that it had not been made by the same expert seamstresses as the queen’s, nor of the same fine fabrics. Her hair was unbound and in need of better grooming. She was taller than Eleanor, although her stoop hid that.

Richard rose to honor his mother, and most of the other men followed his lead. Some, like the two archbishops, did not. The women curtseyed and Eleanor swept around to one of the empty chairs, which another footman had already pulled out for her. The instant she was seated, so was everyone else except poor Lady Aalis. The footman did move her chair for her, but reluctantly, as if he had been instructed not to hurry for that one.

Aalis, obviously aware that she was the agenda of the meeting, cowered in her seat like a guilty child.

“Begin,” the king said. The three clerks dipped their quills in inkwells.

Archbishop Baldwin signified the opening of proceedings by thumping his crozier on the floor three times. “Aalis, Countess of Vexin, these noble lords are gathered here today to examine the condition of your betrothal to His Grace, Richard of England. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

Aalis made a visible effort and sat up straight. “Do you?”

That anybody, and especially a woman, should talk back to an archbishop in that way produced a roar of anger from every man present. Queen Eleanor just pulled a face to register contempt.

Baldwin hammered on the floor for order, and repeated the question.

Sullenly, Aalis muttered something inaudible.

“Louder!”

“I so swear.”

“You are a daughter of the late King Louis VII of France and his second wife, Constance of Castile?”

“So I have been told, although it is a long time since I was treated as—”

Thump! “Just answer my questions, without comments. You were betrothed to Lord Richard, as he then was? When was that?”

“1169—January.” She was sinking lower on her chair, like a snail retreating into its shell.

“And how old were you then?”

“Eight.”

A quick calculation told me that Richard would have been eleven.

“At that date, what was his station?”

“Duke of Aquitaine.”

“So you then went to live at his court in Aquitaine?”

Aalis shook her head. She had lost her brief defiance, and was now keeping her gaze on the floor.

“Answer! The clerks can only write words, not gestures.”

“No.”

For the first time the archbishop had received a reply that some of his audience had not expected. He ignored the murmurs of surprise and looked to the king for a nod to continue. To my astonishment, Richard was seated on his left. I was certain they had been arranged the other way around just moments ago.

“So where did you live during your betrothal?”

“At the court of King Henry.”

“In England?”

“Or France, wherever he happened to be.”

“And when did you first go to his bed?”

Silence. Everyone seemed to stop breathing.

Aalis managed to raise her head once more, but there were tears running down her cheeks. “Never! I never submitted voluntarily to him, but he did drag me to his chamber sometimes when he was drunk.” Baldwin hammered the floor for order. “. . . often came to my bed. I asked and asked for a door with a lock, but was never allowed one.”

Granted that kings collect mistresses like peasants collect fleas, their lemans are not usually royal princesses, and wards under their protection ought to be entirely off-limits, even for them. The idea of a young lady seducing Henry II was as ludicrous as a mouse challenging a cat to a wrestling match.

“And how old were you when you first copulated with King Henry?”

“He took my maidenhead when I was twelve. I fought and—”

Thump! went the crozier.

“And did you give him a child?”

Aalis showed her teeth in another brief flicker of defiance. “I gave him nothing! But he took four whelps off me!”

This time the archbishop let the howls continue until they died out by themselves. Most of the outage was pretense, because there had long been rumors around court that Henry was trespassing on his son’s territory, but an issue of four offspring was a genuine surprise. I was not alone in finding it appalling. I noticed that Eleanor was enjoying every bitter syllable of this savage exchange, but she had always detested her husband’s sweethearts.

“And where are these royal children now?”

Aalis made them wait for her answer, but at last she murmured, “They are all dead, Your Grace.”

Baldwin glanced at the clerks to make sure that they were recording all this. There were actually two clerks, although earlier I had thought there were three.

“Their names?”

“They were never baptized.”

“That is indeed sad,”the Archbishop said. “And most strange.”

His hint at infanticide seemed to chill the room, but he did not follow up, possibly because that would have created a scandal throughout all Christendom. Instead he went straight to the heart of the matter, the reason this conference, or trial, had been called at all.

“Are you aware that the Church forbids a man to marry a woman who has had carnal relations with his father?”

“Really? How interesting!” For the first time, Aalis turned her head to study the venomous jailer beside her, Dowager Queen Eleanor.

I saw not a few faces at the table struggling to suppress smiles, for there had long been rumors of a brief but torrid affair between the juvenile Eleanor and Geoffrey IV, Count of Anjou, Henry II’s father. If that were taken seriously, then Richard himself was illegitimate, and should never have been crowned.

I did not witness the outcome, because I was awakened by banging and shouting. The voice was Lovise’s, naturally, because no one else would dare disturb me. I lurched to my feet and staggered over to unbolt the door, while the room swayed all around me.

I croaked, “What?”

“The justiciar is coming! He’s in Oxford and heading this way. He sent a harbinger to tell you that he will be inspecting the College.”

“Justiciar?” I mumbled. “Longchamp? Is impossible.” I had just seen him in Normandy.

But then, at last, the truth flashed like sudden lightning, and I understood.

Our new ruler, Bishop Longchamp, had taken to making royal progresses, and I should not have been surprised that he had chosen Oxford as one of his first destinations, for it was not far from Westminster, and Beaumont Palace was one of the most comfortable of the king’s residences. He stayed two days there, peering over shoulders and being a thoroughgoing nuisance. He disrupted work in the College and expected me to act as his guide, although I had long ago managed to separate my duties as enchanter general from the day-to-day responsibilities of running the library and school.

He even demanded to see where I worked, so he came limping into my workroom with a herd of lackeys at his heels. I loudly warned them not to touch any of the scrolls racked along one wall, but of course one young idiot had to test me by reaching out a daring finger. He hit the floor with a scream of agony, and everyone left very soon after that.

As Longchamp was preparing to depart the next morning— with me holding his stirrup for him to mount—he remarked that he would be crossing to Normandy next week. I was sorely tempted to tell him that I already knew that, but I didn’t, because I had assured him back in January that only Merlin had ever been able to see the future. That, as they say, had been then.

Once I was certain that the pest had left town, I went down to the crypt and brought up the chest in which I kept the original fragments of the Myrddin Wyllt parchment.

I began to compare them with my transcription yet again, checking every word. Both Latin and French have past, present, and future forms for verbs, but the Old Tongue lacked a future tense. To express the future required compound wording, and I saw that I had missed some of the implications in the poetic language.

Although I had thought that the spell was merely for spying, now I saw that it had been prophesying for me—foreseeing as well as farseeing. Even on that day back in the summer, when I had been shown that tragic last parley between King Henry and his son, the sun had been high in the sky, yet in Oxford the morning had been young. Two days later, I had been shown Richard surveying his father’s body in the chapel at Fontevrault Abbey, but that had not happened until the following day, as William Marshal had told me. I had assured Queen Eleanor that the king was dead, but if Myrddin Wyllt was capable of foretelling future events, I had better be more careful from now on.

I also understood the strange variances I had seen in the Aalis trial. While the nature of the main event was inevitable, many unimportant details, such as the seating plan and the number of recorders, had not been settled at the time of my viewing.

Eventually I gave up and called on Lovise for help, which I should have done much sooner, for while I had a better eye for syntax, she had a better ear for deliberate subtleties in the original. She made me wait while she finished writing up some medical notes, and then came down to the workroom. As I expected, she pulled a face when I told her I was spying for Longchamp.

“He is quite capable of putting on his bishop’s miter and putting us all on trial as Satanists,” I said in self-defense. “He could lock us up in the Tower. We must make sure that he always sees us as useful to him. But this changes everything. I told him I could keep watch on Lord John, but my information on where I see him is useless unless I know when that is. I think I can tell foreseeing from farseeing by looking at the details, which are blurred and jiggle around in the prophecies. But I need to know how to direct the vision in time. I can’t see it in the text.”

Lovise pulled the parchment closer and read it over for a while in silence. At length she said, “You can’t do that. You would be giving Carnonos orders, which gods don’t like. Look here.” She pointed to one brief verse:

Where fish swim low and birds nest high,

Where berries grow and great trees huddle,

Show me the path, the better way.

“This isn’t a spying tool at all, it’s for foretelling, an appeal to this horned deity to guide you to the best hunting. It gives you information you need to know, not what you think you ought to know.”

I could see that, up to a point, and mentally kicked myself for not seeing it sooner. For instance, it had told me what Bran of Tara looked like.

“But it asks whom I wish to observe. Here, at the end: Who must I seek to guide me? That’s when I tell it the name of—”

“Then you shouldn’t. The god isn’t asking you. You are asking the god. It means, Who else?”

I digested that lesson in silence for a moment, then said, “But what conceivable use can it be for me to know that Richard is not going to marry Lady Aalis?”

Any wife, I suspect, has a way at looking at her husband that warns him he is being as thick as a brick. Mine certainly did.

“He is jilting his betrothed after she has spent twenty years of her life waiting for him in his father’s court while being royally raped and bearing four bastard children? How do you feel about that?”

“I am appalled. Revolted. I admired Henry greatly. I never thought he could sink to such depravity.”

“Her brother is King Philip of France?”

“Half-brother, yes.”

“How do you think he must feel? And he will certainly find out, somehow. Richard and Philip are going off together on crusade? Joint leaders? Just whom are they going to be fighting? Saracens? Do you still believe that?”

Saracens—or each other? “You may have a point, dearest.”

Lovise stood up. “And this Carnonos? If the Church hears that you are worshiping a horned god, what name will they put on him?”

She was a sage too, so she should know better than to think along those lines. “I am not aware,” I said coldly, “that the Gospels anywhere describe Satan himself as having antlers, although some of his beasts may. Horns possibly. Even that is just an artists’ conceit, nothing more.”

“I do hope so,” my wife said sweetly, “because you know what happens to people who follow that one’s advice, don’t you?”

I kissed her cheek. “You are right, as always, darling. Prophecy is far too dangerous. I shall lock the devilish incantation in the crypt. No more Myrddin Wyllt’”

The following morning I locked all my texts and notes of the Myrddin Wyllt in a stout oaken chest in the cellar, and secured the chest with a fearsome warding. From then on, Lovise and I together kept track of Lord John with the Loc hw&r. If it failed to report where he was, we would assume that he was not in England, and report this to Justiciar Longchamp.

King Richard’s crusade would have been much more successful had he heeded the counsel given him by his horoscope. He dillydallied in France, meeting with innumerable barons, taking forever to organize his army. He even made a side trip south into Spain to woo Berengaria, daughter of King Sancho of Navarre. His interest in her as a future wife had been rumored for years. No doubt the Berengaria match would be very advantageous for securing his southern borders, but the delay was another loss of crusading time.

There was very little official news. Rumors and gossip flourished, but even members of the king’s council must rely on snatches and snippets. The whole story had to be put together months after the events actually happened. Personally, I was ambivalent about the great cause. As a good Christian I hoped that Richard would succeed in rescuing Jerusalem from the heathens. I dreaded hearing that he had died and left the empire to John. To be honest, I deeply resented the personal cost, which had completely swallowed money destined for our daughters’ dowries. I was wounded by the king’s distrust and dislike.

In Lyons Richard met yet again with Philip, and from there went on to Marseilles, where he encountered further delays. It was not until August that he set sail for Italy. He visited every port along the way, for that was the custom, and at Ostia declined to go upstream to Rome to hobnob with the Pope. Indeed, his reply to the invitation was said to be an exceedingly insulting message, describing the Vatican as a “snake pit of corruption,” no better than the moneylenders Christ had driven out of the temple.

He arrived in Sicily on September 23^rd. He had expected a triumphal greeting, because his sister, Joan, was married to King William there. Unfortunately, William had just died and Tancred, his successor, tried to be difficult. The ever-duplicitous Philip had arrived earlier, and was actively hostile, poisoning Tancred’s mind against the English king. Richard settled the negotiations by betrothing his nephew, Arthur of Brittany, to one of Tancred’s daughters. In order to sweeten this arrangement, he named Arthur as his heir. Until then he had declined to name a successor, playing the same game on John that their father had played on him.

This astonishing declaration was supposed to be kept secret. Either because he had spies in his brother’s court, or by occult means, Lord John soon heard that he had been disinherited. John, being John, was not willing to put up with that.

It was about the time of Richard’s dealings with Tancred that Queen Eleanor began an astonishing journey for a woman of her age. She went south to Aquitaine, her homeland and hereditary domain, and then crossed the Pyrenees Mountains to Pamplona to collect Queen-designate Berengaria. From there she returned to France and eventually crossed the Alps into northern Italy, arriving in late November. That land had been stripped of food by Philip’s army, and was roamed by dangerous bands of outlaws. Somehow the queen and princess survived, but they did not meet up with Richard until March 30^th 1191, in the extreme south of Italy.

Fifteen months since he had left England, the king was still a long way from the Holy Land, and his most notable achievement so far had been to insult and alienate his most powerful ally, Philip of France. He had also supported the Sicilian usurper, Tancred, which was to be yet another problem that would return to haunt him in the future.

Meantime, in England things were going from bad to terrible. The avaricious Longchamp kept acting like an emperor, making royal progresses around the country, and bringing in foreign mercenaries to seize castles. He even tried to take the great fortress of Striguil away from William Marshal by force, one of his stupidest notions.

I kept my head down in Oxford, mainly helping out at the college, because half the healers in England had gone on the crusade, so we were frantically training more. News of the war drifted back unevenly, usually two months old, even older in winter. Rumors flew, of course, as they always do. The country waited and prayed. The death rate among crusaders was brutal, and we all knew that King Richard had earned the name of Lionheart by his indifference to personal danger.

Lord John knew that also, and was confident that news of his brother’s death would gallop up to his door any day. I would not have been surprised to hear that he kept a crown tucked away in his sock box.

As an omen that things could still become worse, just after Christmas, Longchamp sent for me. The weather was ghastly, and I had a long, wet ride to Westminster.

The-regent-justiciar-papal-legate-bishop had moved to a far grander office than the one I seen before, but he did let me sit in his omnipotent presence, an honor granted to few.

“I have news for you,” he said sourly, and then proceeded to make me swear an oath of secrecy on what he claimed were holy relics. “The king has declared that the duke of Brittany is to be his heir.”

“Arthur!? A three-year-old boy?” What craziness was that? Brittany was part of France, so Duchess Constance, Arthur’s mother and regent, must be firmly under the thumb of King Philip. “Is this certain, Your Grace?”

“Quite certain. The king made the decision back in October and sent a special messenger to tell me. Of course, the declaration is only valid until Queen Berengaria gives him a son, but it is now that we must worry about. I have reason to believe that Lord John has heard of this, which could present problems. I need you to tell me where the infant is, and who is in charge of him.”

“I regret to say, Your Grace, that I cannot do that.” I had promised my wife that I would not use the Myrddin Wyllt, which was the only enchantment I knew that could work across the sea. “I have never met the baby duke or his mother.”

He scowled. “What has that to do with it?”

“Quite a lot in the occult arts, I’m afraid. I will try, of course, and will let you know if I meet with any success.” With that, I was curtly dismissed to ride back to Oxford.

Without mentioning Arthur, I asked Lovise if I might bring Merlin out of the crypt, and she said no. So that was that.