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anything that William Legier agreed to do, he did in style, and he had purchased not four but six excellent horses, together with fine-quality tack. Four spares would not be much harder to lead than two, he argued, and a purchase of that magnitude had let him pay with one of the king’s gold hyperpyrons. An armed foreigner flashing wealth on that scale must seem suspicious, so now both of us needed to leave as soon as possible. I mounted and we rode off into the interminable forests of Germany.

“Do tell me, Baron,” I said, “how you found such magnificent steeds in such an anthill of a village.”

“I just whistled and they came,” William said with unbearable smugness. But eventually he explained that a horse trader and his train had been passing through, on their way to Vienna. I retorted that Myrddin Wyllt must be looking after us, which put my companion into a two-hour sulk, because he saw that my statement might be true and he hated being beholden to magic.

I had taken the chance to pull on the boots I had bought in Vienna, putting my previous footwear in the pack sack that had held the new ones. Of course, I was now limited to a grotesque lurching walk without my iron step, but as long as I could stay mounted, only the horse would notice that one of my stirrups was higher than the other. I hoped that this flimsy disguise would deceive any guards who waited at city gates and might have been told to look out for me.

And so we rode off into the seemingly endless forest. At first, we headed upstream along the river, west and north, which we knew to be the right direction for England. Everything that lay between us and home was still a mystery to us. There was little traffic, and the weather stayed dry and cold for the first few days, and most nights we found shelter in some barn or woodshed, with or without the owners’ knowledge. The land was hilly, the road a braid of trails, so that any pursuit would be lucky indeed to find us.

Out of the blue one day, William asked, “What’s Lionheart doing now?”

“He’s on his way to Regensburg. Leopold’s taking him to meet the emperor.”

“Durwin!” William shouted. “You’re doing it again! Did you prophesy for the king like this?”

“Not often,” I admitted. The late Myrddin Wyllt was keeping me informed in more detail than he ever had before. To my annoyance, he had no interest in Lovise or our children, and would show me nothing of their activities. Knowing that William had briefly considered becoming a sage himself and could be trusted, I then told him about the ancient appeal to Carnonos.

“Maybe they really should hang you as a pagan witch,” he said, but I knew he did not mean it. William was a very practical man, and I was much too useful to be wasted on a gallows.

As much as the terrain allowed, we stayed close to the Danube. If you wonder why we did not travel on the river itself, the answer is that very few craft sail upstream on it. The river people build their boats in the headwaters, then float them down to Vienna, where they sell both their cargo and then the boats themselves, for lumber. Then they walk home.

The weather turned bad after the first few days, and few things are more unpleasant than a day on horseback in drenching rain. Thereafter it varied between horrible and even worse, but the German Empire has much colder winters than England does. Also miserably hot summers, so I have been told, but William and I did not stay around to find out. There were many days when I could envy King Richard, warm and dry back in Dürnstein, for Myrddin Wyllt kept me aware of his condition. I was happy to see him recovering his health, although returning strength brought the torments of boredom and impatience with it.

In effect I was the best-informed man in Christendom, and I passed on all the news to William. Leopold’s letter announcing Richard’s capture reached the emperor just a week after the event. Henry at once wrote to Philip of France, whose joy at the news was even greater. I saw him dictating a reply, so excited and close to drunk that his scribes could barely make out his Latin. He reminded Emperor Henry of the agreement they had made in Milan, and of his relative, Conrad of Montferrat, who, so he claimed, had been murdered on Richard’s orders. The fact that there was not a shred of evidence that the Lionheart had been involved in that crime in any way was completely irrelevant, of course.

One day soon after that, William saw me with tears in my eyes, and I explained that Queen Eleanor had just learned of her son’s imprisonment. She and Justiciar Walter of Coutances would now be faced with the problem of raising the money to pay Richard’s ransom. Fortunately, at that unhappy moment, they had no idea how enormous that ransom would be.

By then the bargaining was underway, with letters flying back and forth between Vienna, Paris, and wherever the emperor happened to be, for he had no fixed capital. William and I traveled fast, considering the state of the roads, but we could not match the pace of the imperial couriers. We avoided the cities as much as we could. It was only two days after we passed by Regensburg that Leopold arrived there with his prisoner to show him to Henry.

The emperor, who ruled even more of Christendom than Richard did, was a much less impressive person. His grandiose raiment and high heels failed to hide the fact that he was of short stature, and seemed excessively so compared to the English king, or even Leopold. He wore no beard, and his enemies whispered that he could not grow one. As successor to Charlemagne and all the Caesars, he liked to regard himself as rightful ruler of the entire world, but his mind was fast and his eyes were never still.

Believe me when I say that the prisoner was not allowed to remain there for long, because the duke was frightened that his liege would steal his treasure away from him. So once Richard’s identity had been confirmed, he was packed off back to Austria, while the other two settled down to do some furious arguing. My German wasn’t up to understanding much of what was being said, but the sheer loudness of most of it was enough to convey the emotions involved.

We had already learned—because it was on everybody’s lips—that the emperor was in grave danger of seeing his empire fall apart. Half or more of his greatest vassals were in open revolt, including a couple of archbishops. His attempt to retake Sicily from the usurper Tancred had been a military disaster. The prospect of a king’s ransom must seem like a gift from Heaven to him right then.

Near Regensburg, William and I fell in with a band of merchants heading the same way we were. At first, they were suspicious of us, naturally afraid that we might be spies for a gang of outlaws that preyed upon innocent travelers, but they eventually accepted our story of being honest crusaders on our way home. By then I had gone back to wearing my iron shoe, having traded my matched boots to a village blacksmith in return for a sword. It wasn’t much of a sword, and I was never much of a swordsman, but I was able to show the merchants’ paid guards that I could wield it passably well, if not as well as I played my gittern. However ancient we might seem to these youthful huskies, two extra swordsmen were a welcome addition to the company.

Of course, we were often questioned—at bridges or fords or even upon entering small villages. Usually our stories were believed. When they weren’t, I used the Præcipio tibi spell to compel obedience. Our merchant companions knew the country, and led us away from the Danube and over the hills to Nuremberg and so into the drainage of the Rhine, which flows into the Narrow Sea in the Duchy of Brabant, another part of the German Empire. That was a comforting thought, but we were still a very long way from home.

I had given up worrying about my king by then, being convinced that he was a lot safer in prison than he would be at liberty, when he would most certainly ride off to fight someone, probably either King Philip or brother John. I had taken instead to keeping an eye on that treacherous John. A year had passed since I warned Justiciar Walter Coutances and Queen Eleanor that he was heading over to Paris to conspire with Philip. Then she had managed to keep him in England. She couldn’t do that now, since he had learned of Richard’s capture. Convinced that his hour had come, the faithless worm insisted to anyone who would listen that Richard was never coming back. To Paris he went, and that morning, as my horse ambled along a grassy trail, I was watching a great ceremony in the Louvre Palace. Fortunately, but as usual when I was foreseeing, my riding companion was William, who was accustomed to my long silences and knew what they signified. On this occasion I exploded in a string of foul oaths. The couple ahead of us looked around, but did nothing more.

“What’s eating you?” William asked. “Seen your own funeral?”

“I think I would prefer that. I’ve been watching Lord John doing homage to King Philip for all of his brother’s lands in France—the duchies of Normandy, Aquitaine, Brittany, the counties of Anjou, Touraine, and Maine. I know that last night he swore to marry the wretched Aalis and give the Vexin territory back to Philip.”

William spat. “Does this surprise you? Loyalty has never been an outstanding attribute of the Plantagenet tribe.”

“But then he did homage for England itself!”

He actually lost color. “God’s teeth! His father never did that. Philip has no claim on England!”

“He does now.” This was by far the worst treason yet.

“If that scum ever becomes king, then Lord Jesus help us all.” I had known that my companion had no love for Lord John, but now he told me why, and even on that forest trail he lowered his voice. “A friend of mine . . . I won’t mention his name. He has no title beyond his knighthood, but he inherited a goodly estate by marrying a rare beauty. She was sixteen and could have stepped right out of a dream. I doubt if he even bothered to ask what her dowry would be. But one night, a couple of weeks after the wedding, who should ride in but Lord John and a troop of armed men. He demanded hospitality, and when your king’s brother does that, you don’t tell him to say ‘Please.’

“My friend obeyed, and tried to play the gracious host, although the banquet must have cost him a month’s rents. That was bad enough, but right after the meal, John announced that he would sleep with his hostess that night. My friend refused, of course. John had him beaten up—ribs and both legs broken, fractured jaw, and so on. Then he dragged the girl into the bedroom by force and kept her there for the night. That’s the sort of belly worm that stands next in line for the throne of England.”

“I’ve heard similar tales,” I admitted. I’d also heard many stories of Richard seducing pretty girls, but never by outright rape. With his attitude to money, he could buy the Queen of Sheba for a night or two.

“We ought to round up Queen Berengaria and send her to that Dürnstein place to give the king something to do in all this spare time he has.”

“Good idea,” I said. Of course, I thought of the king’s worries about his own fertility, but did not mention them.

The sooner the Duke and the emperor could agree on an asking price for their prisoner, the better it would be for the peace of Christendom. Why wasn’t the Pope thundering about their violation of the Truce of God?

That night we slept at one of the better inns we had encountered. William and I shared a bed, for neither the first nor last time in our lives. I was weary and hoped for sleep, but it failed to come. I tried to see my dear Lovise, but Myrddin Wyllt refused me. He sent instead a view of King Philip and Lord John celebrating their new relationship—just the two of them, plus a couple of busty wenches, all four of them well lubricated by wine.

This was of no interest to me. I tried to withdraw, but Myrddin Wyllt seemed determined to keep me there. What was I supposed to see?

Suddenly another figure appeared in the room, facing me and apparently unnoticed by the others. Tubby, swarthy, with a forked beard and a curious sort of tonsure, Bran of Tara bared his teeth at me in triumph, and made a strange two-handed gesture. The seeing vanished.

The shock of it jerked me out of my trance. I cried out, wakening my bed mate.

“What’s wrong?” demanded a sleepy voice.

“Lots,” I said. “Lord John is using magic. I always suspected, and now I know.”

“I’m not surprised.” William rolled over, back to his previous position.

But it was a serious development. Once again the Myrddin Wyllt had been overruled by opposing magic. And John would not take kindly to being spied upon. I must hurry! I was needed back in England, and if any serious magical contest developed, I must have the use of all those spells I kept in my workroom in Oxford.

On the 14^th of February, Emperor Henry VI and Duke Leopold signed a treaty in Würzburg, Bavaria. They agreed that Richard would pay a ransom of 100,000 marks, an amount so mind-boggling that William refused to believe me when I told him. The two kidnappers were to split this loot equally. Of course, they did not call it a ransom, because then they would fall afoul of the Truce of God. Instead they agreed that one of Leopold’s sons would marry one of Richard’s nieces, a daughter of the late Duke Geoffrey and sister of the infant Arthur. The 100,000 marks was to be her dowry. Even Helen of Troy had not cost that much.

They also tagged on a lot of petty conditions that Richard must agree to, such as providing galleys and troops for Henry’s reconquest of Sicily, and persuading the Pope to absolve them of any breach of the Truce of God. Also, Richard must stand trial for his alleged crimes. That clause worried me a lot, because how could he prove that he had not poisoned the Duke of Burgundy, or hired the Old Man of the Mountain to have King Conrad stabbed?

By then, William and I were making better time, because we had reached navigable water on the Rhine. We sold our horses at a small profit and bought passage on boats. Our travel was still not trouble-free, for every town and petty baron along the way expected to be rewarded for the trouble of watching us go by, but most of the time we could stay out of the wind and snow, which was more than could be said for horseback.

The end of the month brought us to Antwerp, the main port of Brabant. March is not a good time for sailing, but we still had much of the money the king had given us, and enough money will buy anything. We sailed on the third, and four days later landed safely in a village called Grimsby. I won’t describe the voyage, except to say that the moment we set foot on dry land we both fell on our knees and gave thanks to God. And when I stood up, the first thing I saw was Lars’s wildly grinning face.

“There’s a church here,” he said. “You’re too late for mass, but at least you could say your prayers out of the wind.” In our embrace, he lifted me clear off the ground. When he set me down, he said, “You’re lighter than you used to be, Father. God save you, too, Godfather.”

“And you, Godson,” William retorted. “You’ve grown a span since I saw you last.”

“It’s these boots, my lord.” He hadn’t lost his jackanapes sense of humor.

“You also seem to have inherited your father’s skill at prophesying.”

“I rummaged through his grimoires while he was gone.”

“How did you get here?” I asked, although I knew that Myrddin Wyllt must be involved.

Lars shrugged, and then shivered, for the wind on the beach was biting. “The Queen sent me. As soon as I told her you would be landing here on Sunday, she threw gold at me and told me to get here and bring you to her as fast as you could travel. They have a meal waiting for you over there at the inn,” he added hopefully.

William chuckled. “Good planning! At the moment, hot food counts for more than the queen’s nightmares. Your father hasn’t kept one mouthful down since Wednesday, and I could eat a harbor seal myself. Lead the way.”

Like a common porter, Lars scooped up our—admittedly scanty—packs and led the way. The inn was merely the front room of some fisherman’s house, but his wife was a good cook. I hadn’t known I was hungry, but after draining a horn of watered ale I changed my mind. Lars had eaten earlier, so he did most of the talking, while William and I gulped her excellent herring and onion potage.

“So how long have you been spying on us?” I asked.

“About a fortnight. Before that you seemed to be outside my range. As I told the queen.” I suspected that Lars was lying, at least to some extent. He had lied to the queen, too. What I wanted to know was whether he had seen me betraying King Richard to Duke Leopold. If he had, and had let anyone else know, there was either an ax, a rope, or a skinning knife in my future.

He glanced uneasily at William, and obviously decided that he could be trusted—and would have to be, since he knew that Lars could not have known of our arrival by any mundane means.

“Yes, I used the same enchantment you did,” he went on. “But it is finicky, you know? It wouldn’t show me anyone but you, Father, and nothing before you took to the river.”

“That’s good. And how is Her Grace?”

“A lightning bolt in a wimple, as always. The justiciar held a meeting of the great council in Oxford last week, and she sent for me. That was when I told her that you were to be landing here today. She tore chunks out of my hindquarters for not keeping her better informed.”

“The council was called to consider the ransom demand?” I was very glad that I had not been in England to attend.

“I suppose so. It’s rumored to be a weighty one.”

“It’s very close to impossible,” I said.

Sunday or not, our business seemed so urgent that we decided to start our journey south immediately. As soon as we were on our way, riding three abreast, I asked what news there was of Lord John, for I had not dared try to farsee him since Bran of Tara had disrupted my vision. Lars recounted very much what I had espied that day—that John had done homage to Philip for all his brother’s domains in France and also, or so it was believed, England too. After that, I now learned, the renegade had tried to seize the crown by force, hiring some Flemish mercenaries and bringing them across the Narrow Sea in an armed invasion of England.

The traitor had marched on London, but the city had rejected him and remained true to the king. So had the great majority of barons and other landowners. The privy council had raised an army to oppose him, and was meeting with much success. He was now believed to be holed up in either Windsor or Tickhill castle, both of which were currently being besieged by government forces.

William promptly asked Lars what he was doing for a living these days, which I should have done sooner, of course. With an admirable effort at modesty, my son revealed that he was now the nation’s expert on the treatment of diseases found in Outremer. Employed by the college, he lectured both there and in provincial chantries on that topic, and he was also in demand by returned crusaders whose fevers had recurred, as many of them did. He didn’t say that he was raking in money like heaps of autumn leaves, but he certainly gave that impression.

He then mentioned in passing that he was betrothed to the most beautiful girl since Helen of Troy. She had been widowed at sixteen when her knight husband died of wounds received in the siege of Acre. And, since he, Lars, had foreseen my return, he had assumed my approval and arranged for the wedding to be celebrated next Monday. He was, after all, very nearly twenty-one, and her parents were agreeable. I asked what his mother thought, and he smugly reported that she was enthusiastic about the match. She had helped him choose the house he had bought—in Oxford, a short walk from Beaumont Palace. At that point I most happily gave him my blessing.

After the first day’s ride, William left us to head for his own seat, near Loughborough, and I was free to question Lars about his use—or abuse—of the Myrddin Wyllt enchantment. I was reassured as much by his air of hurt innocence as by his words.

“We were all worried to death, Father! The whole country, I mean. We didn’t know if the king had left Outremer, and even Myrddin wouldn’t tell either me or Mother anything. Nothing! We were terrified that your ship had gone down with all hands. But then rumors began to circulate that King Richard had been taken prisoner somewhere in the empire. I tried the Myrddin Wyllt again, and this time I saw you and Baron William riding with a group of merchants. After that I checked on you every few days. I told no one except Mother, honest! Two weeks ago I saw a vision of a boat arriving in Grimsby with church bells ringing for Sunday mass. I don’t know how I knew it was Grimsby, I just did. And the queen sent for me . . .”

And he hadn’t been able to resist impressing the queen with his prophetic powers.

“All right then,” I said. “There are times when that enchantment seems to think for itself. It was very wise to blank you out for so long, because I think our old foe Bran of Tara may be able to eavesdrop on what it tells us. Believe me, Lars, I have done nothing I am ashamed of—nothing at all—but some of my actions could be badly misrepresented, with disastrous results. The important thing is that the king is alive and well, and he was not captured by King Philip.” Possibly thanks to me and Myrddin Wyllt. “The French dog has a personal hatred for Richard, but the emperor is only interested in money, and Richard has lots of that.”

Lars and I spent our second night at Pipewell, with Harald and Hilda, who rejoiced at my safe return, and were certainly planning to attend Lars’s wedding. Our third day brought us to Oxford. We deliberately arrived there too late to call on the queen, but no hour would have been too late to waken Lovise, who would have sat up until dawn, waiting for us.

It had been a long year since I rode out of her life. I won’t try to recall everything we said to each other that night. I doubt if I could, for most of it was incoherent baby talk and mumbling, during fondling and between kisses. Some sorts of happiness can’t be fitted into words.

Clad in my best clothes—which were very loose on me now— and with my hair and beard newly trimmed, I presented myself in the morning at Beaumont Palace, where Queen Eleanor had waited for me ever since Lars had foretold my return. I was shown at once into her private withdrawing room, with no one else present, not even the normally inevitable Amaria.

Eleanor was showing her age at last. There were lines around her eyes and mouth that had not been there when I left her, a year ago. I knelt to kiss the fingers she offered.

“My Merlin! You are most welcome back.” She waved me to a chair.

“And happy to be so, Lady Queen, but I fear that I failed in my mission. You ordered me to bring him home, and that I did not do.”

“But he is well?”

“He was grievously ill several times, but he has recovered his strength now. Prison boredom torments him, of course, but his captors are very careful to keep him from harm.”

“His captivity is monstrous! I have written several very strong letters to the Pope.”

I could imagine. “And the ransom the scoundrels are demanding is beyond belief.” I was still a member of the privy council and thus entitled to know what it had decided, but I dared not put direct questions to the queen dowager.

“It may be beyond what his dominions can raise,” she said. “It seems likely that we shall have to tax every man in the kingdom a quarter of his income and a quarter of his movable property, men both in England and across the seas. Churches and monasteries will be melting down their plates. Can you wave a magic wand and create thirty-five tons of silver for me, Lord Enchanter?”

“I don’t think so, Your Grace. I shall have to read over my spell books and see.” In fact, I was fairly sure that there were such enchantments in my collection, but at the moment I was trying to estimate what a quarter of my income would be. Certainly a lot less than the tax collectors would believe.

Speyer is located on the Rhine, upstream from Worms. It is a small town, but much more imposing than the sprawling shanty clutter of Leopold’s Vienna. It boasts a magnificent cathedral, built of brown stone in traditional style. The long, high nave must always be breathtaking, and on the morning that Myrddin Wyllt showed it to me, it glowed with imperial majesty. Tapestries bedecked the pillars, trumpets blared and echoed responded. Emperor Henry VI himself was there, crowned and bejeweled on his throne, while the electors of the empire were assembling in their robes and riches, a feast for the eyes—the dukes and prince-bishops who select the emperors, gathered now to sit in judgment on Richard of England. Some were his enemies— Leopold of course, and Boniface of Montferrat, brother of the murdered Conrad. Some were his friends and even relatives, like Otto of Brunswick, the nephew who had ruled Aquitaine in his absence. The two dominant clerics of the empire, the archbishops of Mainz and Cologne, were there, and both must be very unhappy at the conflict between this trial and the Truce of God.

A host of lesser grandees flanked them, including observers from England and some of his French lands, including the dwarfish William Longchamp. I also saw some of the companions who had survived the shipwreck but failed to complete the trek to Vienna. They were exhibited as prisoners, of course. I did not get a clear enough view of them to count them, and had no way of knowing how many of the missing were still alive, if any.

And there was Richard, the tallest man there, clad in simpler clothes, but still projecting the royal authority of the anointer, as if he knew that God was on his side and would stand by him. There was no precedent for such a trial.

When the crowd had settled and the opening prayers been said, the charges were read: that Richard had sold out the crusade to Saladin, had failed to attack Jerusalem, had ordered the walls of Ascalon dismantled, had tried to poison King Philip, had arranged for King Conrad to be assassinated, had supported the usurper of Sicily, Tancred, to the detriment of the island’s rightful overlord, the emperor. And so on. There was no mention of a flag being thrown into the moat at Acre, which would have seemed a farcical trifle in such a context. Nor did anyone mention that the emperor desperately needed a lot of money to glue his empire together again.

Calm, assured, and kingly. Richard rose to answer the charges. One by one, he demolished them. He described the events of the crusade, mocking Philip for deserting it in abrogation of the many oaths he had sworn. As for Tancred, he had been holding Richard’s sister, Joan, prisoner—what would any honorable knight have done except take up arms against the man? And when that problem was resolved, of course Richard had had to make peace with him so that he could journey on to the Holy Land and fight the Saracens. Hour after hour he spoke with such royal poise and majesty that he won over the entire assembly. The simmering antagonism of the opening faded into admiration, and Philip was exposed as the cowardly renegade he truly was.

Last of all the accusations came the assassination of Conrad of Montferrat, and it was then that Richard pulled out a letter, written on a scrap of parchment bearing traces of Arabic writing from an earlier use. It was signed by Sinan, leader of the Hashshashins, and it witnessed—in very bad Latin—that King Richard had had nothing whatsoever to do with the death of Conrad. This was all true, but I had written this tract months ago to Myrddin Wyllt’s dictation in the priory on the island of Lokra, off Ragusa. Richard did not say so, and its evidence was accepted by his judges.

This final revelation completely won over his audience. He walked forward and knelt to the emperor, who raised him and gave him the kiss of peace. The congregation cheered, and the vision faded.

I had never been as proud of my king as I was at that moment.

“Aha! So you’re back,” Lovise said. “I was about to send for the embalmers.”

She was seated in my favorite chair at my desk in the work-room—portraying anger, but not quite masking the relief that underlay it. I lay stretched out on the couch, although I had no memory of arriving there. All I could recall was waking before first light, pulling on a woollen robe, and coming downstairs. A glance at the windows told me that I must have been there all day, for it was now evening. I decided that I was very hungry, and my mouth was drier than the hills of Outremer.

“I am sorry if I worried you,” I mumbled, struggling to sit up. “You know I never come to harm in these trances.”

“No, I do not know that! Did you plan this one, or did it ‘just happen,’ as you call it?”

“It just happened. Today was the day of the trial. Oh, Lovise, it was marvelous! Richard utterly—”

“I don’t give a fig for Richard! It is you I worry about, you, my husband. That damnable Myrddin Wyllt enchantment has enslaved you. You don’t summon it anymore; it summons you! You’re not trailing around after the king now, you’re home in England, and what does it matter to you what happens to him half a continent away?”

I looked around in the hope that I might see a flask of something to drink, moving my tongue and lips in an effort to produce some saliva. “It matters to me whether our liege is Richard or that damnable treacherous brother of his. Oh, darling, he was magnificent! All those dukes and archbishops and the emperor himself, sitting there ready to condemn him as a criminal—and he won them over, every one of them! I thought he was going to steal Henry’s empire away from him.”

“So?” my wife shouted. “What does it matter to you? Why does that devilish Merlin ghost have to pick on you? What does it expect you to do about this vision it has given you, anyway?”

“I’ll send a note to the queen, and maybe Walter, telling them the good news. Those scoundrels have no excuse to hold Richard prisoner anymore! Under the Truce of God they have to release him now.”

My wife spat out an oath I had never heard her use before. “Truce of nothing! You are as naïve as a baby! He won’t walk free until they’ve bled him of every penny they can squeeze out of him. And even then, King Philip may still put in a higher bid.”

She was absolutely right, of course; her common sense was prophesying as truly as Merlin ever did. I did not argue with her, so I must have known then that she was right. She had foreseen Philip’s subsequent efforts to buy the prisoner, but fortunately even the emperor didn’t dare back out of the agreement he had made. Yet it was to be almost another year before Richard stepped ashore in England, a free man again.

I stood up and stretched painfully.

“Burn it!” Lovise stormed.

“What? Burn what?”

“The Myrddin Wyllt! Burn it and every copy and note you’ve ever made on it. Maybe then you will be free of it.”

That would feel like tearing my eyes out. I shuddered and did not answer. “I must find a drink,” I said, moving toward the door.

“Not so fast!” Lovise had not moved from her seat—my seat, at my desk.

I realized with dismay that we were having our first real quarrel in twenty-six years of marriage. I stopped and said, “Yes, dear?”

“I want to know what all these incantations are here for.” She gestured at the spell rolls I had been working on the previous day and had intended to work on today, had Myrddin Wyllt not carried me off to Speyer. Lovise had had hours, perhaps all day, to read them, and she must know exactly what they were for.

“They’re alchemy spells,” I said. “I’ve had them for years and never really had time to—”

“To start turning lead into gold?”

“Well, I was afraid all England would have to pay ransom to get its king back, but now that the German princes have found him innocent, we shouldn’t have to—”

Lovise’s icy blue stare never wavered. “The last time I suggested we magic up some money to pay taxes, you told me that this would be dabbling in black magic. Suddenly the ethics of counterfeiting have changed?”

Realizing that we must talk this out, however dry my mouth, I sat down on the edge of the couch. “Yes, dear. They have changed. In the first case, we were being taxed to send our king off to the Holy Land to recover Jerusalem from the heathens. That was money for a holy cause. But the ransom the Germans were going to demand would be against the Truce of God, and therefore a very unholy cause. I would happily cheat them.”

“You are splitting hairs. You think the Germans won’t think to test the coins to make sure they’re genuine silver?” Lovise’s voice drooled contempt.

“They can try. First, they’ll scratch a coin or two to make sure they aren’t just lead with a wash of silver on top. And then they’ll weigh them against a standard weight. Every metal has its own density, as you know. Ordinary counterfeits are easy enough to detect. But the alchemists know how to combine metals so that the mixture weighs exactly what that same volume of silver would weigh, and how to enchant it so that it has the same bright luster. If the Germans do persist in demanding a ransom as if Richard had been captured in a fair battle, then their cause is ungodly and we need have no scruples in paying them with fake coinage.”

For a long moment my wife just stared at me. Then she said softly, “We discussed this with Lars once, remember? The three of us. We discussed the danger of the slippery slope? You are sliding, Durwin! What once you saw as utter evil now just seems like bad taste to you. Suddenly ends justify means. Black magic is only a darkish gray. Fall into that pit and you will never emerge again.”

I rose and held out a hand. “The point is moot, darling. They won’t dare demand a ransom now, so the council won’t have to wring out the country’s lifeblood. I promise that I’ll tuck all that alchemy lore back in its chest in the crypt. Let’s go upstairs.”

I was wrong, of course. Richard had to agree to contribute that gigantic “dowry” to marry off his niece, and the council had to find the money somehow.

I was called to attend the next meeting, and I had never seen so many glum faces. As the queen had predicted to me, every man in England would be required to pay a quarter of his annual income and the value of a quarter of his movable property, while the country had not yet recovered from the brutal “Saladin tithe” of two years ago, levied to pay for Richard’s crusading army. There would be many hungry bellies come next winter.

Furthermore, since there could be no hope of raising such a sum without Lord John’s six counties paying their share, a truce had to be arranged. An uneasy and unhappy peace settled over the land.

Near the end of June, I was called to Westminster for another meeting, but the news was no more cheerful. Money was coming in so slowly that it might be years before we could buy our king back. No truly helpful ideas were presented. Earlier, I had requested a private audience with Queen Eleanor. As soon as we adjourned, she received me in a small and heavily perfumed dressing room, where a Moorish girl was trimming her nails for her. She had said very little at the council meeting, and her face had given away nothing at all, but it was an easy guess that she was very unhappy at the current situation. She addressed me in Latin, which the slave girl would not understand.

“Have you brought any cheerful prophecies, Lord Durwin?”

“No, Your Grace. My sight has been neglecting me lately, but it does that often. I did bring you these, though.” I handed her six silver pennies, each inscribed Henricus Rex, because Richard had not yet changed the coinage.

The queen examined them, holding them at a distance as many elderly folk do. “It always flattered him, you know. He was never this handsome.” She was referring to the gross caricature of Henry on the obverse of the coins. “These are very welcome, my lord, but taken all together they will not scratch the total of our needs.”

“This is true, but I merely wondered if you could tell which are genuine, and which ought to bear my likeness instead of your late husband’s?”

Her eyes flashed with delight, and something like her old smile returned. “I certainly can not! But others more skilled than I will surely examine what we offer.”

“I have a friend who is an expert in money, ma’am. He lends it, so he must be careful that what he gets back is of true value. I asked him the same question, and he had to admit that he could not tell the real from the false.”

Her smile grew even brighter. “And anything that can fool a Jew will certainly fool a rabble of greedy Germans?”

“A reasonable hope.”

“You truly made some of these by your magic?”

“A little magic, Your Grace, and a great deal of hard work. I had to mold a freshly minted coin, and those are not easy to find. Then I had to make the necessary stamps, and melt metals in a crucible. As a child I used to watch my father at work—he was the farrier in Pipewell Abbey—so I am familiar with forges. Those six took me almost a month, so to make a large number will require a team of skilled workers. Even imitation pennies have a cost, although they come much cheaper than real ones.” Mostly they were composed of lead, which is much cheaper than silver, with a proportion of tin, and enough magic to give them the right glitter and ring, because every type of money has its own voice when dropped on a hard surface. I had rewritten several incantations to create the effect I needed.

The queen asked no more questions about sorcery. She spread her fingers to inspect her manicure. “This was prettily done,” she said in French. “Go now and find Francois and tell him I need him.”

As the Moor left, the queen gathered up the coins and turned back to me. “How many of these six are fakes?”

“Five, my lady. I marked the real one with a scratch so I could know it.”

She laughed. “You truly must be Merlin Redux! Here, take them. You have my royal permission to spend them, but you must break your stamps and make no more. I could appoint you a moneyer, Baron Durwin, and let you take over one of the king’s mints. The one in the Tower would be the most suitable, I should think. Because,” she added with a mischievous smile, “if you got caught counterfeiting, a dungeon would be ready to hand! But no, we must not do this. If it ever became known that my son had been paying off his ransom with false coin, he would be both furious and chagrined. He would have your head, and perhaps mine as well.”

I bowed. “I confess that I am relieved by your decision, Lady Queen, and my wife will be even more so. She knew what I was doing, and despised it.”

I was genuinely happy, yet I could not but think, as I took my leave, that queens never go hungry, never have to walk behind a plow in leaky shoes, never have to listen to their children crying themselves to sleep on empty stomachs. Let the people pay the ransom. He is their king, after all.

The next day I rode home, eager to tell the news to my wife. Knowing how much it would please her, I did what I had not done in nigh-on twenty years—I rode the whole way in a single day. I changed horses at every posting house, of course, so I did not have to exhaust a single mount, just myself, and it was midsummer, when the days are long. The sun was resting on the horizon as I rode up to the Oxford post. After so many hours in the saddle I would have enjoyed a walk to my door, but I had baggage, although not much. So I accepted the normal offer of an escort, and a groom rode alongside me for the short journey across town to Beaumont Palace. I dismounted at the gate and shouldered my bag. As he led my weary horse away, I felt a sudden flash of warning, like the silent flicker of summer lightning.

I paused, looking around. There were no lights in windows yet, no children still playing on the palace grass, and the streets of the town had been deserted. Most people would already be in bed, if not asleep. Nothing seemed wrong, but . . .

“Myrddin Wyllt?” I whispered. No one answered, yet I felt even more confident that danger was lurking somewhere close.

I think I mentioned earlier that I had learned long years ago never to travel without a few defensive spells, usually memorized Release spells. I had none stored in my head that day, but I did have a few parchment incantations at the bottom of my pack. I knelt, scrabbled through my laundry, and found what I wanted— the Præcipio tibi that had served me so well on my travels in Germany. I read it through quickly. Then I rose and banged on the gate with my cane. In a surprisingly short moment, a youthful but whiskery face appeared in the grill. It belonged to no one I recognized, so I leaned close and softly spoke the charm to enslave him. His eyes iced over.

“Whose man are you?” I asked.

“Lord John’s, master.”

“Tell me where Lord John is right now.”

“I don’t know, master. The captain didn’t tell me.”

“Tell me what the captain did tell you.”

“He told me to mind the gate, and be sure to admit an old man with blond hair and a limp, wearing a faded blue jerkin, who would be arriving shortly.”

I had already assumed that Bran of Tara must have been spying on me, to have foreseen my all-day trek and late arrival. That mention of my blue jacket confirmed it.

“Tell me where are the real guards are.”

“In the guardhouse, master. Asleep, but not harmed.”

So I had Bran himself to deal with here, plus an unknown number of others.

“And who is in charge?”

“Lord John, master.”

“Let me in!”

I told him to leave the gate open and precede me to the guard room, a few paces away, where two men I did know lay prone and unconscious. I told my temporary slave, “Now lie down beside them and sleep until dawn.”

I might have tried to waken the two genuine guards, but that would take time I did not believe I had, and might not succeed anyway, because I knew my opponent was a very powerful sorcerer. The man from Tara and the Plantagenet monster were in control of my house, my servants, and worst of all, my wife. Leaving the sleepers in peace, I rummaged in my pack once more, until I found a parchment scroll bearing a spell I had never used. The glosses on the original had warned that it was hugely dangerous, even to read aloud. I had chanted it once, and the acceptance alone had scared me so much that I had never spoken the release, letting the power die away over the next couple of days. It was listed in my files simply as the Achilles.

Peering in the fading light, I read it over in a soft whisper, and was appalled again at the violence the words threatened, but I felt no acceptance. I took some calming breaths and tried again. This time acceptance came in a rush, speeding my heart, banishing the fatigue of my long day’s ride, and making my whole body quiver with a lust for battle. I sent a quick prayer to Heaven that I would not need to invoke this monstrous incantation.

I hobbled swiftly through the dusk to my front door, which was unlocked, contrary to all my standing orders. Fearlessly I went in, dropping my pack and shouting as one does on returning home after an absence. Nobody answered, but there was light in my workroom, so I headed that way. The door stood open; in I went.

Only three candles lit the long chamber. The first thing I saw was Lovise in the center, gagged and bound into a chair with ropes like those we used in our stable. Her gown had been ripped open to expose her breasts. Her eyes were wide with horror at the sight of me walking straight into the trap. Behind her stood Lord John, clutching a gleaming knife long enough to carve meat off a roasted ox.

A few feet to their left, my right, was the portly shape of Sage Bran, leering at me through his forked beard. I did not doubt that he had foreseen my arrival and had some deadly spells ready to cast. The rest of the big room was crowded by seven or eight men-at-arms holding naked blades—swords or pikes—and two more who were aiming spanned crossbows in my direction. I barely noticed any of them. They would do nothing until the order was given. John and Bran were the danger.

“Welcome home, Baron Durwin,” the prince said, unable to resist a slight sneer.

“Get out of my house and take your dogs with you.”

“Watch your tongue, Saxon. First, you will give me the stamps you used to make those coins you tried to bribe my mother with yesterday.”

“I threw them in the Thames. Go and look for them yourself.”

John pouted. Without taking his eyes off me, he said something in a language I did not know. Bran replied briefly, but he also shook his head, so he had probably been asked if I were lying.

“Foolish of you,” John said. “You will have to make replacements for me. You clearly do not understand the gravity of your situation, Durwin. In the short term, I have your wife here, at my mercy, such as it is. She’s too old for my taste, but my gallant lads, here, would enjoy sharing her. In the longer term, I have Father Ferdinand. You do remember Father Ferdinand? A very large man—wasted as a priest, ought to be a woodcutter or a blacksmith. He has already described for us, in writing, the elderly blond minstrel with the crippled right leg who sold King Richard to the duke.”

I felt a chill and, at the same time, a rush of fury that almost overcame my grip on the incantation I was holding in. Obviously, Bran of Tara had been spying on me for a long time. I ought to feel flattered, but for the first time in my life I was seeking violence—deadly, personal violence. I seethed with it.

“If Father Ferdinand’s affidavit is not enough,” Lord John continued happily, “then his bishop and Duke Leopold have given permission for him to travel to England to testify at your treason trial. He will be accompanied by some other witnesses. You made a fool of the duke, and Leopold is a very touchy man. Now do you understand your problem, Durwin?

Had his knife been under my throat instead of my wife’s he couldn’t have frightened me by that time. I was infused with the soul of Achilles, and Achilles never knew what fear was.

Biting my words, I said, “I understand more than you do, Lackland. I order you to leave my house at once and take all your flunkies with you.”

John considered my defiance for a moment, then asked Bran another question. Again the answer seemed to be negative.

“First,” the prince continued, “I want the password to release those.” With a nod of his head he indicated the wall of scrolls where I stored my collection of incantations.

“You shan’t have it.”

“I will count to three and then cut off one of your wife’s nipples. If you still refuse—”

This had gone far enough. I could no longer resist the raging of the Release spell still throbbing in my head. I spoke the trigger words, Magna qualis Achilli, and at once it made me, as directed, more terrible than Achilles.

If you are reading this, I assume that you are familiar with the hero of Homer’s Iliad, the greatest of all war stories, so you are already aware that “Fast-footed” Achilles was not only the swiftest warrior in the Achaian army, but also the greatest of all human killing machines, unmatched and utterly ruthless. I spun around and went for the nearest of the men-at-arms, a green youngster whose chain mail hauberk looked too big for him; he also held his pike as if he’d never touched it before. That was not what made him my first victim, though, but the fact that he was standing in front of the wall of scrolls, so when the ferrule of my cane stabbed him in the eye, he fell back against it.

The resulting flash of lightning and clap of thunder almost drowned out his scream. He dropped the pike, which I caught before it hit the floor, discarding my cane. At a length of eight feet, it was clumsy for indoor fighting, but it had both a stabbing blade and an ax. In two unequal steps I reached Bran of Tara, who was not wearing armor. I cut his throat with a single slash. Sharp cracks indicated that the two crossbows had loosed, but both quarrels missed me by a yard. The next to die was the other pikeman, who hadn’t even started to react.

The two crossbowmen to my left had barely begun to reload, so I rushed them while they still had their mouths wide open, which made good targets for my stabbing blade. That left the swordsmen, and by then they had awakened to their peril. They all tried to flee. I got two of them before they reached the doorway and the rest jammed in it. The last one standing did turn and try to parry, but he was far too slow, and my weapon had much greater reach than his. I stabbed him right through his chain mail, which broke the point of my blade, but by then I had no more need of it. This slaughter could hardly be described as a battle. Achilles had merely executed a dozen or so sluggards. I ended where I had begun, with the pikeman who had been felled by the wards on my library. He was starting to sit up, so I cut his throat also.

To Lord John, the only survivor, my move along the big room must have seemed little more than a blur. I slowed down to human speed and came at him with my pike leveled.

“Cut off a nipple, would you?” I roared. “Guess what I am about to cut off?”

He screamed, slashed Lovise’s left breast, and fled, howling in terror at the miraculous change in fortune and leaping over corpses, some of them still twitching.

I let him go because attending to my wife was far more urgent than trying to curb a cur like John. I had never intended anything else, because nothing would save me if I were convicted of injuring the king’s brother. After half a year in the Holy Land, I knew the enchantments for wounds by heart. The spiteful gash was not deep, so I easily closed it and stopped the bleeding. Then I took up Lord John’s knife and cut her bonds. I pressed down on her shoulder when she tried to rise.

“Sit a moment,” I said. “Take some deep breaths. There may be a slight scar, I’m afraid.”

“But you will be the only one who will ever see it.”

I was reassured that her ordeal had not driven her out of her wits. My gentle wife was as tough as any veteran campaigner, a descendant of Danish raiders. “I hadn’t expected such a welcome.”

She leaned against me. “I wish you hadn’t had to kill them all, but I know you had no choice. I am enormously proud of you, dear Durwin, my most perfect knight.”

“I am just as proud of you. Most women would still be screaming their heads off.”

“I just have to catch my breath first.”

Then she did rise, and we embraced. I led her off to bed, for she had lost blood and endured a traumatic experience. I cast a gentle relaxation spell on her, one I often used to help patients sleep.

Then I went downstairs to see what other trouble I had. My alertness and general well-being surprised me, for marginal notes on the Magna qualis Achilli scroll warned that it was always followed by a major reaction. I found our servants on the dining room floor in the same sort of induced coma as the guards at the gate, so I left them to sleep it off. I still had to decide what to do with the bodies in my workroom, and the ghastly pools of congealing blood. Strangely, I felt no guilt and no regrets. That was Achilles’ doing.

The prudent Lord John, I assumed, would certainly have kept a saddled horse handy, so he was doubtless fleeing away under the stars, faster than a terrified owl. There was no moonlight, so I could only hope that he would fall off and break his neck. I wasn’t about to twist his luck—not yet, anyway, but clearly our feud was not over.

Killing people was against the law, usually, and major crimes were the business of the sheriff. I knew that Baron William Brewer, then high sheriff of Oxfordshire, was currently on his way to Germany to help negotiate the king’s ransom and release, but he would have left someone to look after his larceny business while he was away, so I strolled over to Beaumont Palace itself, which was where he was most often to be found. A few windows were lighted and the lantern by the door was lit, so I applied the knocker with some vigor.

The shutter opened and a frown appeared behind the grille. “Yes?”

“Fine evening. I am Baron Durwin.”

“Oh! What can I do for you, my lord?”

I held up a bloody hand. “I’ve just killed some men, and I’d like the bodies removed, please.”

That brought me to the attention of the deputy sheriff, Sir Richard Brewer, son of the high sheriff, a fat-faced youngster with a straggly mustache and an air of horrified desperation at having to deal with a peer of the realm come to confess to a major crime. Worst of all, I even seemed to be sober, which precluded the most obvious excuse. He wasn’t stupid, though, and as soon as he recovered from his initial disbelief, he acted as reasonably as possible under the circumstances.

He gathered some men with lanterns and a cart. I noticed a blanket tossed into the cart and guessed that it probably concealed chains, in case I turned violent. I led him and his helpers to the main gate to see the two supposed guards fast asleep, and the snoring stranger, whom I identified as the only one of the gang I had spared. I insisted that he could be safely left there in the meantime, and he would probably turn out to know nothing.

Then we went to my house. Even I was appalled when the lanterns revealed the abattoir that I had made of my workroom, with a dozen corpses lying in a congealing lake. I warned everyone not to touch the warded wall of scrolls. Of course Brewer was strongly disinclined to credit my story.

“You expect me to believe that you slew all these men singlehanded?”

I was old, and a cripple.

“I expect you to believe that I am the king’s enchanter. The spell is mightier than the sword.”

He again surveyed the carnage. “Who’s the unarmored one?”

“Bran of Tara. He was a sorcerer in the service of the man who initiated all this horror, the man who led it.”

Young Brewer thought for a moment, detecting more trouble in the guarded way I had spoken. “So who was this leader?”

“The one who wounded my wife? He escaped, unfortunately.”

“His name, my lord?”

“You are happier not knowing his name, son. Let’s just say that in the poor light I did not recognize him, but don’t ask me to repeat that under oath.”

At that point young Brewer decided that he had both a duty and the authority to perform it. He flared. “I ask you again— who led these men when they invaded your house? I am aware that you both are a nobleman and a royal confidant, my lord, but you are not above the law!”

I wondered if he really believed that homily, because in practice it would rarely stand up to scrutiny. “He was man far above your reach, Sir Richard. Even the great council dares not obturate him at the moment.”

His lips shaped the name of Lord John, but only his eyes dared speak it.

I nodded, and with that my night’s work was done. The Achilles enchantment released me and reaction set in. Every joint and muscle in my body seemed to scream, as if I were being torn apart. I would have fallen if Brewer had not caught hold of my arm.

“You all right, my lord?”

“No,” I muttered. “I am going upstairs to bed. Kindly remove the carrion, wash the floor, and lock the doors when you leave. You can return the keys in the morning.”

I crawled up the stairs and went to sleep on the rug beside my bed.

It took me three days to throw off the effects of the Achilles incantation. On the first day, Lovise and Lars managed to rouse me enough to get me into bed, and once in a while push some food and water into me, but the rest of the time I just slept. On the fourth morning she cuddled up close and asked if I were ever going to wake up.

“No. Well, maybe tomorrow. How are you?”

“I am well, thanks to your tender loving care.”

I managed to roll over to kiss the end of her nose. “Your sarcasm is what I love most about you.”

“That’s not what you used to tell me. Oh, Durwin, you were marvelous— Sir Lancelot to the rescue! You looked so calm and confident when you walked in . . . and so horribly vulnerable! But the trouble isn’t over yet, love. Men from the privy council arrived last night. They’re staying in the palace, of course, and they’ll to want to hear from both of us.”

“Don’t worry, dear. No one else in the kingdom could get away with blatant sorcery like that, but I can.” I wasn’t quite as confident as I tried to sound. It was one thing for King Richard to butcher 2,700 Saracens in cold blood, but for an elderly cripple to take on eleven armed men and an alleged sorcerer singlehanded and kill them all must seem an intolerable insult to chivalry and the Christian faith.

Three days in bed without proper sustenance had left me very shaky, but I managed to rise, make myself presentable, and in due course receive the delegation from London. One of them was William Marshal, who thoroughly disapproved of my style of fighting and was always inclined to put much more trust in Lord John Plantagenet than I ever did. Yet he had to agree that I was entitled to defend my wife and home against armed intruders. In the end they all came around to this view, and congratulated me. They went back to London with the surviving thug, the one I had put to sleep. I later heard that he had been hanged, but I suspect he had a very nasty time in the Tower first. Even if his testimony implicated Lord John, which I doubt, that couldn’t bring down the villain. Justice must wait until King Richard returned.

“And what happens if he doesn’t come back?” Lovise asked me that evening, as we were relaxing after the long summer day and celebrating life with a fine French wine.

“Then we shall have to hide from King John. Lord in Heaven, what a horrible sound those two words have!” I drank some wine to take away their taste. For the first time I thought seriously about what else Lord John had said.

“On second thoughts, my angel, we had better go into hiding right now and stay there until the king does comes back. It seems that John had his pet sorcerer spying on us like I sometimes spied on them, at least while we were in Austria. You remember Lackland mentioning a Father Ferdinand?”

Lovise nodded, regarding me carefully.

“Father Ferdinand will have described a blond, aging minstrel with a lift on his right shoe, who sold Richard to Duke Leopold.” That admission made even my own wife stare at me in horror. “You didn’t!”

“Yes, I did, because the king ordered me to. He was sick, exhausted, and trapped. He judged it better to give himself up than to be arrested in the street at sword point like a common pickpocket. So he sent me to negotiate his surrender.”

“But if John has that evidence in writing, he’ll give it to the privy council! He may have done so already. He’s as spiteful as . . .

“As an adder?”

“Thank you. Why don’t you fetch the Loc hwær scroll and we’ll ask where he is at the moment?”

Good idea. I began to rise and then fell back in my chair . . .

I saw a vision of a spacious hall, with tapestried walls reaching to an arched ceiling. The windows were high and glazed, the floors covered with carpet instead of rushes. On a table in the center stood a bowl of Easter lilies, so I knew that this was a foretelling. A man in rich clerical robes was standing with his back to me, flanked by a couple of less senior divines and three or four well-garbed laymen, but only the central figure was distinct, and the vagueness of the others was another sign of prophecy. They were facing the open doorway, so it was a reasonable guess that they were about to receive special guests.

That entrance hall was very familiar to me, but it took me a minute or two to place it. At last I recalled being a guest there more than a year earlier, on my way to the Holy Land. So the man in the ornate costume with his back to me must be John of Alençon, archdeacon of Lisieau, and this was his palatial “house.” I knew then exactly who was expected. This was springtime, next year.

A herald in bright livery entered and proclaimed the name I had already guessed—Richard, king of England, duke of Normandy, et cetera. Freed from his captivity and back in his own domain, he was restored to his former Herculean majesty, no longer the ragged invalid I had parted from in Vienna. The infamous emperor must have fed him well. And on his arm stepped a diminutive but graceful and dauntless old lady—Eleanor, dowager queen and duchess. She looked years younger, now that her favorite son was restored to her.

So I knew that the Lionheart would once again be at liberty and, since he would never dare journey through lands ruled by King Philip, he would have visited England on his way to Lisieau, in the heart of Normandy. The greetings that followed were warm and genuine, for the archdeacon was an old friend.

Gradually the minor characters faded away, even the queen, until a later hour darkened the sky beyond the windows and I was seeing only Richard and his host seated across an empty fireplace, drinking and reminiscing. The king was leading the conversation, as kings always do, and I was granted snatches of it. He had been delayed by bad weather in the Narrow Sea, and was worried about some place called Verneuil, which Philip was besieging. He said little about the ongoing treachery of his brother in league with Philip. When he did mention it, it was more in pity than in anger.

Suddenly he stopped talking about that and looked quizzically at de Alençon. “You are jumpy, old friend. Something troubles you?” He laughed. “You have seen my young brother!” de Alençon nodded. “Indeed I have. I told him that I thought you would be lenient with him, and treat him much better than he would treat you if your positions were reversed.”

“I am sure you are right. I will not harm him. Send for him if he is here.”

The archdeacon rose, but instead of pulling a bell rope to summon a servant, he hurried out of the room. In a few moments Lord John came in, shaking and cowering, as well he might when faced with the king and brother he had betrayed so abominably.

“John!” Richard held out his arms.

John rushed forward and dropped before him, groveling and weeping on the king’s boots. John of Alençon followed him in, shaking his head at the spectacle.

Richard bent and raised his brother. “John, John! Fear not. You are only a child, and you have gotten into bad company. It is those who misled you who will be punished. I forgive you.” Then they embraced.

Unnoticed except by me, de Alençon rolled his eyes. At twenty-seven, Lord John was no child! But I thought I knew the speech that the Lionheart had been quoting. As an adolescent he had joined his brothers Henry and Geoffrey in rebellion against their father, King Henry. Henry had won, but he had forgiven their treason, and what Richard had just said sounded as if it might be the very words he had heard when he was pardoned. John had been only an infant then and would not have been present, but he had probably heard the story many times. Richard had been sixteen. He would have remembered his father’s leniency.

The scene wavered and faded away. I was back in Oxford, in the previous summer, and Lovise was frowning at me.

“What did you see?”

I reached for my wine. “Disaster. Richard is going to forgive Lord John. The traitor will be allowed to live.”

“That’s crazy!”

“I suppose it’s good Christian charity—or family solidarity. It shouldn’t make any difference to us, though.” Or would it? If John had already put Father Ferdinand’s evidence before the privy council, when Richard returned, would he support my version of events or his brother’s? The more I thought about it, the more I began to doubt. Would I even be alive by that time to receive a royal pardon?

Then I felt another foreseeing coming.

The time was again spring, but the landscape was farther south than Lisieau and unfamiliar to me. I was facing a small castle encircled by a besieging army, which had worn the grass underfoot to dust and was fouling the air with the inevitable stench of latrine pits. The castle flew a baronial pennant I did not know, but I recognized Richard’s lion banner above the largest tent, although the lazy afternoon breezes hardly stirred it.

The siege was ending even as I watched. A passable breach had been battered in the wall and orders were being shouted to hold any further shots from the trebuchets. Angevin forces were streaming in the gates that now stood open. In a few moments the pennant was hauled down. I could hear cheering, and then a bugle.

I made my way through the camp toward that big tent with the banner. Men were going in and out a lot, but I could see no sign of Richard himself. Suddenly uneasy, I willed my invisible self to move faster, and was delivered instantly to the center of the crisis, where the Lionheart reclined on a bed, propped up on pillows, horribly pale. His left arm was supported by a sling and that shoulder was heavily bandaged. Even in the dim light I could see white streaks in his hair and beard; his face was twisted by pain, but also aged. He was several years older than in my previous vision. Doctors and aides hovered around, helpless to relieve the situation.

“Can I bring you anything, sire?” one asked.

The king made a feeble attempt at humor, as men will do to demonstrate courage. “Baron Durwin is what I need most. No, no—do not send for him. He cannot possibly get here in time.”

I wanted to scream that I was there already, but I produced no sound, because in reality I wasn’t. Nor could I sing the incantations that might save the patient, but he was right to say I could not be sent for and arrive in time. I knew some of the men crowded in the background: William the Marshall and Walter Hubert, now archbishop of Canterbury, who looked as dusty as if he had just spent hours on a horse. If people like those two were being summoned, then the crisis was extreme. A deep shoulder wound is almost always a sentence of death, not immediate, but in a week or ten days, when the gangrene spreads. I had little hope that the Lionheart had three days left.

“Lord King!” A young man-at-arms streaming sweat pushed his way in from the doorway, shouting. “Chalus-Chabrol has fallen! Your banner flies there now.”

The dying man nodded. “We heard the bugle. Falk, give this man a silver mark for bringing us these happy tidings.”

The messenger gabbled thanks. Then, perhaps hoping to increase his sudden wealth, he added, “And we got the archer what shot you, Your Grace!”

“Well done.” The king looked around the fence of faces and spoke to an older man I did not know. “Bring him here. Don’t let them hurt him.”

Why was I seeing this? Where was Chalus-Chabrol? Was I supposed to warn Richard never to go near it? I had learned back in Dürnstein castle that the Myrddin Wyllt prophecies were not carved in the rock of destiny. Some of them were written in smoke and liable to change. This tragedy was located years ahead of my seeing it.

A few minutes later a prisoner was manhandled in and slammed to the ground near the king’s bed. One bystander aimed a kick—

“Leave him!” Richard barked. “Stand up, lad. What’s your name?”

The captive rose, rubbing his wrists and ribs to soothe bruises. He wore no armor and his clothes were threadbare. He looked like a sixteen-year-old who had eaten very little recently, and whose efforts to seem defiant produced no more than a childish pout.

“Bertrand de Gourdon.” He omitted any term of respect. When addressing a king, that required either considerable courage or extreme folly.

“You’ve killed me, you know,”Richard said gently. “My wound is festering, so within a week, I will be called to my Maker. What have I ever done to you that you should want to kill me?” He spoke in the southerners’ Occitan, which I had trouble following.

“You killed my father and my two brothers.”

The dying man smiled wanly, surveying the grim faces of the audience. “That’s a fair answer, is it not, friends? And this young man is not just an expert crossbowman, he was the only defender on the battlements at the time, the only one brave enough to make a show of defiance and take me on in an archery contest. He had no shield except an old frying pan. That is true manhood! Bertrand de Gourdon, I forgive you! Fulk, give him a purse of silver. You are free to go, Bertrand.”

The boy accepted the purse disbelievingly and looked around at the watchers’ scowls. Then he made an awkward bow, thanked the king, and went. None of the onlookers shifted, though, so he had to push his way through. He disappeared under the flap, but I doubted very much that he would walk out of the Angevin camp with his bag of silver.

Richard sighed. “Walter, I must rest now. We will talk at length later.”

The tent began to empty. William Marshall caught the eye of Archbishop Hubert, who nodded. The two of them took their leave of the king and went out. I followed as they strolled over to a deserted area where they thought they would not be overheard. Beyond them, at the far edge of the camp, I saw Bertrand de Gourdon, now naked, tied between two posts, and gagged. His captors were sharpening knives, while other men were gathering to watch him being flayed. Probably both Marshall and Hubert noticed, but neither commented.

“No hope?” Hubert asked.

Marshall shook his head. “When they unwrap his bandage, they can smell the rot in Limoges.”

“Donkeying around without any armor, I suppose?”

“Of course. He just thought he’d get off a few arrows one evening.”

The archbishop growled like a hound. “Even Saladin warned him against tomfoolery like that! So who’s it to be—Arthur or John?”

“He won’t say. He may decide later, or he may leave it to us. John’s starting to make trouble again. But Arthur’s only twelve years old, and his mother won’t let him out of Brittany.”

“Not even to inherit an empire?” the archbishop said skeptically.

“Well, perhaps, but Philip must have heard the news from his spies by this time, and if he isn’t readying his army already, I’ll eat my castle.”

“John’s shown that he’s not much of a fighter.”

“He couldn’t be worse than a twelve-year-old.”

“You could be Arthur’s regent.”

“No! It has to be John,” Marshall insisted.

And I, the unseen listener, wondered whether the flawless Sir William had already sent notice to John that the throne was about to become vacant. Hubert was silent for a long moment. Perhaps he was wondering the same, but he did not ask.

Finally he shrugged. “You will regret this, William,” he said.

I was given no time to consider this dread vision, or what I was supposed to do about it. The Myrddin Wyllt whirled me away like an autumn leaf. Uncertain cheering assailed my ears and I found myself in a church I knew, Rouen Cathedral, in Normandy. John sat on the throne—a plumper, older, and more heavily bearded John than I knew—and Archbishop Coutances was just placing a coronet on his head, making him duke.

I groaned a silent No! and was instantly swept away.

Westminster Abbey came next, where Archbishop Hubert was anointing the new king with holy oil. If Arthur was currently the age I had heard William Marshall give him, then it was ten years since I had foretold that John would one day wear the crown of St. Edward. Oh, poor England!

Enough! Surely that is enough?

No, Carnonos had yet more horrors to show me.

The prisoner was secured by three chains—to both wrists and his neck—although they had enough slack to let him move around his cell. Yet it was a cell, with a tiny barred window and a door of massive timbers. His clothes had once been those of a nobleman, although now they were filthy and torn in places. He had a bench to sit on or sleep on, a water bottle, and a bucket, nothing more, not even a candle or a blanket. I viewed him by the fading light of evening, seated on the bench, legs outstretched, leaning back against the cold ashlar blocks of the wall, tortured by the slow creep of empty time. That was no way to house a prisoner of quality, perhaps a hostage who should have been treated with honor.

Only when I realized how young he was—sixteen?—fifteen?—did I guess his name. I also guessed why I was being shown his torment, and then I cried out silently to Myrddin Wyllt to spare me from what I was certain must be about to happen. But I was not spared, and neither was the boy.

Metal clanged and squealed; the door opened. The prisoner’s chains clattered wildly as he swung his legs to the floor and stood up. A man appeared in the entrance, and for the moment came no further. He was finely garbed in an ermine-trimmed robe of scarlet, but he had a sword belted on over it, and those do not belong together. He stared sullenly at the prisoner, and belched.

The boy made a slight bow, little more than a gesture, for he never took his eyes off his visitor. “God preserve you, Uncle.”

“But not you,” John said. He was drunk.

The resulting silence might have been intended to terrify the youth, but it did not seem to. Eventually he was the one who broke it.

“To what do I owe the honor of this visit, Lord King?”

“A problem. I have a problem. Two problems. I mean you are a problem, but I have another problem—can’t find anyone willing to rid me of the first one. Problem, that is.”

Arthur’s fists clenched. “You mean no one is willing to blind me and castrate me as you ordered?”

“Never did,” his uncle said, slurring the words. “Mean we talked a lot about it, but I didn’in’t sign that.”

“And now you have signed my death warrant but can’t find an executioner willing to shed royal blood?” His voice was admirably controlled.

“Got no choice. You swore allegiance. You agreed I was rightflull king. Then you ’scaped. You led’n army ’gainst me.”

“Escape?” Arthur snapped. “If I escaped from Le Mans, then I was a prisoner, and if I was a prisoner, then any words I swore were sworn under duress. I am the rightful heir!”

“Tha’s the problem—words! Words!” the king muttered, and walked into the cell, drawing his sword.

Durwin! Durwin! What's wrong? Wake up! Wake up!

For a few seconds I heard Lovise’s voice as she tried to rouse me, and then I slid back into Myrddin Wyllt’s sty of nightmares.

I was in a town I knew quite well, Le Mans, in Anjou. Some houses had been smashed by rocks that trebuchets had thrown too far, and there were fires burning in the distance, but the inhabitants must have taken refuge elsewhere, for the only souls I saw were a troop of soldiers marching along. In their midst rode King Philip, triumphant.

I saw Chateau Gaillard, King Richard’s masterpiece of a castle overlooking the Seine, only 25 miles from Rouen itself, a stronghold he had sworn could never be taken. I saw it with a breach in the outermost wall, and a French flag flying above the keep.

And so on. City after city, stronghold after stronghold, I was shown the fall of the Angevin empire. Henry II and Richard the Lionheart must have been weeping in their graves. But then came something different.

I stood by a marshy, reed-infested river under a summer sky, almost certainly back in England. In the distance stood a castle I recognized as Windsor, not far from Westminster, so the river could only be the Thames. When I turned around, I faced an astonishing sight—a great array of baronial pavilions, each in its own colors and flying its distinctive pennant. There were several dozen of them, each guarded by knights and squires, but the greatest and most impressive boasted the three-lion standard of the king of England. I had seen similar gatherings in the Holy Land, but much more diluted, scattered throughout an army camp. Here there was no army, just the assembled nobility and senior clergy of England.

I moved in closer. In a central clearing between the royal pavilion and the host of barons’ tents, a meeting was in progress. King John was instantly recognized on a throne, although he was older and fatter than the last time I had seen him, while he was murdering his nephew. The extra years had just added to his look of dissolution. He was flanked by high-ranked clerics in their finery, and a few—astonishingly few—loyal supporters. William Marshal was with him, and some men arrayed like bishops.

Looking along the rows of benches occupied by the opposing nobility, I recognized many I knew, all of them older than I remembered. Among them sat unfamiliar, younger men, probably heirs of those who had died in the generation that had passed since the crusade. And all of them were grim-faced and purposeful, as they must be if they were in revolt against their liege lord the king. What in the world could have brought about this rebellion?

A stocky herald in gaudy tabard arose on the rebels’ side and began to read from a large sheet of parchment. He was facing the throne as if dictating terms of surrender to the king, but his text was worded as if spoken by the king himself. That confused me for a moment, but then I realized that the rebels expected John to sign and seal this tirade as his own proclamation.

JOHN, by the grace of God King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou, to his archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, barons, justices, foresters, sheriffs, stewards, servants, and to all his officials and loyal subjects . . .

If my preceding visions had been correct, then most of those titles were historical fictions by now.

. . . that we have granted to God, and by this present charter have confirmed. . .

Heirs may be given in marriage, but not to someone of lower social standing. Before a marriage takes place, it shall be made known to the heir’s next-of-kin . . .

If a man dies owing money to Jews, his wife may have her dower and pay nothing towards the debt from it. . .

No man shall be forced to perform more service for a knight’s fee, or other free holding of land, than is due from it. . .

The city of London shall enjoy all its ancient liberties and free customs, both by land and by water. We also will and grant that all other cities, boroughs, towns, and ports shall enjoy all their liberties and free customs . . .

“Father! Father, wake up!” A heavy hand slapped my face. Unable to rouse me from my long trance, Lovise had sent for Lars. “Wake up, Father. You’ve been gone for hours.”

“Lars? Where . . .” I was in my chair in Oxford. Wasn’t I?

No. I was standing on high battlements, and a quick glance around told me exactly which castle they belonged to, because I knew it well, having almost died in a cellar there, long, long ago. Lincoln is one of the largest, strongest, and most strategic fortresses in England. But I had seen it only in days of peace, in the reign of Good King Henry. There was no peace now, with arrows flying and the battlements manned by troops in armor. Crash! The masonry trembled under my feet as a missile struck the walls.

Sheltering behind the merlon next along from mine, a man was shouting orders in a shrill voice. He was not tall, and wisps of white hair hung from below his helmet, yet he seemed to be in charge, for men ran to carry out his orders. Then he turned to peer out the crenel at the enemy, and I saw that he wasn’t a he at all. She was my old friend, Nicholaa de la Haye, hereditary constable of the castle, a woman quite as tough and determined as Dowager Queen Eleanor. Nicholaa would not surrender to God himself, even if the walls were collapsing around her. She was old now, but chain mail suited her.

So who were the enemy? I looked out upon Lincoln market square, crammed with troops and two small trebuchets. Ha! They would need a lot more artillery than that if they were to take Lincoln Castle. The last time there had been a Battle of Lincoln had been during the anarchy, the civil war that I recalled from my childhood. Had John’s misrule brought those terrible days back again?

Then I saw that the besiegers’ flags bore the yellow fleurs-de-lis of France. Merciful Heavens! A French army in the heart of England? Oh, John, John! What horrors have you wrought?

I saw no more, because Lars tipped a jug of water over my head and yanked me out of my trance. He had solved the problem by means he had been taught in the College, but with the caveat that they should only be used in grave emergencies, because such sudden withdrawals can be dangerous to the subject. One such emergency is a state of trance lasting more than two hours, which mine already had. I survived unharmed, although I was confused at first. I forget what I babbled while Lovise wiped my face and Lars poured me more water, this time to drink.

“Whenever you’ve been to, Father, here it’s still 1193. King Richard is still a prisoner in the Empire. Remember now?”

I drank a bucketful and then nodded. “Um. Yes. But I have been shown a terrible, terrible future.”

Lovise fetched dry clothes for me, and went to find some food while I changed. Then the three of us settled into chairs, and between mouthfuls I outlined what I had witnessed. I had seen Richard die, which he must do eventually, of course, but the death I envisioned would be due to his own folly and when he had reigned only ten years. He would die childless, because John was going to succeed. There would be some dispute about that, and later John would personally murder Arthur, his nephew. In subsequent years he would lose all or most of his lands on the continent, and his barons would rise in revolution. And after that the ultimate disaster of a French invasion.

There was a long silence. Bats were chirping in the darkness outside.

“Advise me!” I pleaded. “I trust you two more than any else in the world. If I tell all this to anyone else, I will be chained to a wall in some prison for the insane. Why have I been shown all this? What am I supposed to do about it?”

“You haven’t told me everything that happened here the night that Lord John came visiting,” Lars said.

I let Lovise tell him, for I was hoarse. I could not shake the certainty that all this outpouring of foresight had been vouchsafed me so that I could do something with it, but I could not see what that something might be.

“Well?” I said at last. “What does it mean? What must I do? Why me, and why now?”

“I think that ‘now’ is important, Father. But first, who is sending you these visions, and are they good or evil?”

My wife and son then stared at me as if I were a criminal on trial.

“The visions must come from either Heaven or Hell,” I said, “but that isn’t very helpful, is it? Either will act through an agent, a saint or a devil.”

“Do they lead you to do good or evil acts?” Lovise asked, ever logical.

“Good, I think. With my foresight I helped the Lionheart strike a couple of deadly blows against Saladin. I probably saved him from falling into Phillip’s deadly clutches. I count those as good.”

“But your visions have never failed! You think that now you can change the future?”

“They failed once,” I said. “In Dürnstein Castle.” And suddenly I understood. “No! The future can’t be changed by ordinary means. But it can be changed by other magic!”

“Lars?” Lovise said. “You think you know the answer.” Mothers are good at making statements like that.

Lars, of course, was no longer the boy who had scrumped the deacon’s apples and battered the school bully to jelly. He was a prize graduate sage, an experienced traveler, and he had been quietly nodding for some time as I recited the wisdom I had received from the Myrddin Wyllt.

“Merlin? Are you truly Merlin Redux, Father?”

“No!” I insisted. “If I were, I would surely have more control over the seeings. But Merlin’s ghost may be sending me these visions. Or Merlin himself, in his lifetime, may have foreseen the need for someone to . . . oh, such twisted speculations must drive a man mad.”

“That makes more sense, I think. He could have foreseen the need for you to recover ancient, forgotten magic. He’s been training you for this all your life. Have you ever had a whole gallery of visions thrown at you like this? Like tonight’s collection, I mean?”

“Never. But it varies. Sometimes there is no vision. I remember Baron William asking me questions and I would tell him the answers without having been aware that I knew them. But this entire wagonload of sordid future history dumped on me all at once . . . no, never.”

“I said early on that I thought this foreseeing of yours would lead to something important. And now I think that what happened tonight is important. You have been shown the stakes. The time has come for you to do what is required of you.”

I shivered. Lovise said, “Do you think Lord John really has a letter from this Father Ferdinand describing you playing Judas?”

At that we had to explain to Lars about John’s threats and my actions in Vienna. He pulled a face as if he’d drained a horn full of lemon juice. He thought for a moment and then suddenly lost color.

“You’ve found the answer?” his mother asked.

He nodded. “Merlin! Tell me, Father, what name do you most associate with Merlin—the original Merlin, I mean?”

“King Arthur, of course.”

“The once and future king!"

Lovise whispered, “Oh, no!”

“It makes sense,” our son insisted. “Merlin has trained Father to see the future as he did, and the future is a tyrant so terrible that the earls and barons of England revolt against him. A tyrant who is defeated in battle, who brings back the horrors of the Anarchy, when Stephen and Maud fought for the throne. A tyrant who murders the right-wise born king, Arthur of Brittany. This revelation comes immediately after that same villain threatens to destroy Father, so that they are now mortal enemies—literally mortal enemies.”

I was appalled by this logic. “And what am I supposed to do? Challenge John to a duel? Ambush him with a crossbow? Poison his wine cup?”

“I think your method of attack is obvious.”

“My powers do not extend to murder.”

“Of course they do,” Lars said. “Murder by magic. And if you review Lord John’s horoscope, I’m sure you’ll find that he is in a very vulnerable period just now. The brother he has betrayed is alive after all and about to be either released outright or ransomed. Three nights ago, he led a band of men-at-arms and a sorcerer against a low-born Saxon cripple and suffered total defeat. We must strike while the stars are against him, Father!”

I shivered, recalling some of the atrocities I had witnessed in my long war against the Sons of Satan. Must I now change sides? But my son had said We, and I took comfort from that.

But not much comfort. “You both know that to commit the horrible crime you propose would require full-blooded black magic performed at midnight on a pentagram. I should need four accomplices, and all five of us would be risking our immortal souls.” Years ago, Lord John himself had predicted that such would be my fate.

“Count me as one, of course,” Lars said.

“And me as another, dear.”

“Lovise! You’re not serious!”

“I am serious. You think I am that flighty Queen Eleanor, to betray my husband? I have not forgotten my wedding vows. Besides, I think Lars is right. You are Merlin’s successor, and Arthur Plantagenet is to be Arthur Pendragon’s. Why has it taken us so long to see this? Your destiny and duty is to secure his path to the throne of England—Arthur Redux!”

“There are still only three of us. We must have five. Who will believe our story or volunteer to imperil his soul? Do you expect me to go around the College asking who would like to join in a jolly pentagram party to kill the king’s brother?”

Lovise stood up. “It is obvious that we should all sleep on this. Lars, do you want to go home for what’s left of the night or would you rather stay in your old room here?”

Sometimes ideas that have seemed too horrible to contemplate will suddenly metamorphose into obvious truths, and this was one of them. A man who would take a sword to a chained and unarmed youth would certainly not hesitate to revenge his humiliation at the hands of a despised Saxon wizard. I now considered my danger from Lord John to be both clear and imminent. And so must Myrddin Wyllt—whatever mysterious entity lay behind that name—because he, or it, had rushed me through the rest of the evidence at breakneck speed. John no longer had his tame sorcerer to hand, but he might have a back-up for all I knew. If he truly possessed a letter signed by Father Ferdinand—or had counterfeited such a letter based on Bran’s farseeing—he might drop it on the privy council’s table at any moment, although he would more likely recognize that anything coming from him would seem tainted, and find some crony to deliver it for him.

Someone, for instance, like William the Marshall? I shivered all over at the thought.

The next morning, therefore, I was abroad at first light, sad-dled up and riding north. Late on the second day, I reached William Legier’s seat outside Loughborough and was relieved to find him at home. They all made me welcome: William himself, Millisende, and their surviving sons, Enguerrand, Frank, and Guiscard, who was very nearly a young man now and enjoyed hearing me confirm his own certainty that he already was.

Millisende had suffered a bad crusade, losing four children at a single stroke, plus living for two years in the dread that her husband might never return either. She was thinner, although her black mourning dress contributed to that impression, and her hair was white as ivory. My arrival must serve to remind her of the losses she had suffered that Lovise had not, yet she greeted me with unaffected joy.

William himself showed me to my usual room. Then he closed the door, leaned against it, and said, “What’s wrong? You look like a three-day-old corpse.”

“A week old at least. William, old friend, I have a very great favor to ask, something I never thought I would ask of anyone. I also have a long story to tell you, so that you will understand my need.” He folded his arms. “I will never, ever, suspect you of lying to me, friend Ironfoot, so just tell me in two short sentences.”

“A few years from now, King Richard will die childless. John will inherit the throne and run the country into utter ruin. He will lose—”

“Two sentences, I said. So what are you planning to do about it?”

“Kill John. Now.”

“A very good plan, I’d say. Count me in. But I foresee trouble when his big brother returns to his realm.”

“My way of killing can get around that problem. I shall use black magic. But I need two helpers to complete the pentagram.” His face darkened. “And what happens?”

“Lord John suffers a fatal accident, wherever he happens to be at the time.”

William laughed then. “Is that all? Happy to oblige. I wouldn’t call that black magic at all—more a public benevolence. And I think I know someone else who would happily make up your five.”

“I thought you might. You told me his story once, remember?”

William’s brewer makes the finest ale in the county, and the two of us consumed a lot of it far into the night as I told him the entire story, in detail. I had judged him correctly. Above all, William Legier was a fighter, and any true knight must despise the conniving, faithless John Plantagenet. As I had been, he was disgusted to learn that Richard was going to give his shameless brother a pardon instead of the hempen collar he deserved.

We drank our final toast of the night to “The once and future king.”

By the second sunset after that, I was home again. Lovise gave me a worried look, but did not verbally compare me to a corpse of any vintage. Instead she showed me four spells that she had selected from our black magic collection in the crypt. I read them through with growing revulsion. Each one seemed worse than the last, and the fourth made my flesh creep. I had confiscated it from the Sons of Satan, and they had possessed nothing worse. It was short and infinitely vicious.

“This one?” I said, looking up. “The others are all too long to expect two amateurs to manage.”

“I thought so,” she said. “If that does not ruin him, I can’t imagine what will.”

“We’ll have to write out the parts before William and his friend arrive.” If his friend declined to cooperate, we would have to find another fifth voice.

My dear, lovable wife smiled grimly. “I already did. We just have to proofread them against the original.”

William arrived about an hour later, accompanied by a man he introduced merely as Rolf, which I was certain was not his real name. He was in his early twenties, younger than I had expected, and must have been strikingly handsome before Lord John’s thugs worked him over. Now he was lacking half his teeth, his nose was twisted, and he walked with a cane, as I do. That damage alone would have justified his hatred of the prince, even without the subsequent rape of his wife. He assured me that he was eager to help with my project.

“It must be done at midnight,” I explained. “If you are not too weary from your journey, I can send for my son and we can chant the spell tonight. It won’t take very long.”

“And what will it do to the subject?” William asked.

“That is not specified, but it will be both fatal and humiliating.”

Again, I recalled Lord John warning me in Winchester that one day I would be enlisted by Satan. Now it was happening and I might rue the consequences through all eternity. I considered that John himself had long preceded me.

At midnight, in the crypt, lit by the spooky light of only five candles, we assembled at the points of a pentagram that Lars chalked on the paving for us, and we sang the enchantment. We had already read it over five or six times—backward, as is usual in rehearsal.

It was written in a version of Parisian French, but the spell itself was much older, translated from Old Norse. I could have guessed that from the content, and Lovise could tell from the curious word order. We five, who all liked to think of ourselves as good Christians, solemnly beseeched the mischief god Loki to wrack shameful destruction on John Plantagenet, Count of Mortain. As I had predicted, the invocation did not take long, and I felt acceptance like peals of divine laughter, mingled with an upsurge of personal shame.

Judging by a complete lack of comment, the others felt much the same. Lars set to work with a mop and a bucket that he had arranged beforehand, washing away the pentagram. Lovise took up a candle and led the way upstairs. We burned our song sheets in the fireplace.

“How long until it acts?” Rolf asked.

“Impossible to say,” I said. “But I am sure we will hear when it does.”

Personally, I expected news of a shipwreck or a fall from a horse, but two days later Oxford buzzed with word from Dorset that Lord John, indulging in his beloved sport of hunting, had somehow managed to get bitten by a rabid fox. The details of the encounter were never entirely clear, but I did admire Loki’s panache. John died about three weeks later, insane and convulsive.

So we had cleansed the world of a great evil. But two days after the state funeral—which I naturally attended—Lars, Lovise, and I began carrying all the black magic scrolls and grimoires up from the crypt, and methodically burning them. Now we need never be tempted to use any of them in future. Knowing how animate some of those spells could be, we made sure that not a single page survived. The last to burn was the Myrddin Wyllt. I was very happy to watch it go.