1192 (part 1)

that fateful year began with a January attack by King Philip on Gisors, the greatest of the border castles defending Normandy. Eleanor’s forces held out, and Philip had to withdraw, because most of his barons refused to violate the Truce of God. He rode off back to Paris to lick his wounded pride and plot other deviltries.

“. . . and consequently,” he declaimed, “it is our will and decision . . .”

He was striding to and fro, dictating to a team of secretaries. His tunic and mantle were of finest silk, trimmed with ermine, but all his finery and jeweled orders failed to make him anything but a weedy young man with a devious manner and shifty eyes. Even his voice failed to impress.

“. . . that for all these demonstrated atrocities and iniquities, we do declare the aforesaid knight, Richard of England, to be a most treasonous and perfidious vassal . . .”

Three or four witnesses stood in the background, and at least one of them was a cleric of high rank, a bishop or an archbishop, but I could see none of them clearly. The secretaries were also misty and indistinct, even varying in number as I watched, but there was absolutely no doubt that the speaker was Philip II of France, spewing his spite. Every hair of his fur collar was as clearly displayed as the way his breath smoked in the cold palace air, and so was the gleam of hate in his eyes.

“. . . and do therefore command you, our dearly beloved cousin, as heir to the said lands, to hasten here to our capital and do homage for them, videlicet the Duchy of Normandy, the Duchy of Brittany . . .”

I turned to peer through the snow swirling past the window, and I could indeed see the mighty Seine River below us. When King Philip added the hand of the Lady Aalis to the bribes he was offering, I had learned enough. I pulled myself out of the trance.

I was not on my couch, but I was in my workroom, sprawled over my desk. I had not chanted the Myrddin Wyllt—it had summoned me, yet again. The vision had been a dramatic warning, giving me more urgent matters to worry about than the mechanics of foreseeing.

King Philip had been as clear and solid as the fingernails I was driving into my palms, but the scribes and witnesses had been blurred, so what I had seen was a prophecy, not a current event. Philip knew what he was going to do, but the rest of the cast had not been selected yet. So when would this revelation become event? Outside my window, there in Oxford, I could not see as far as the palace wall, as snow added to a heavy overnight fall. Soon, before spring.

And why had I been shown this now, today, early? Because the justiciar, Archbishop Walter, had spent the night in Beaumont Palace, not thirty yards from my door. He had been planning to depart this morning, but he wouldn’t go in this weather. I must tell him my news at once. Before I reached the door of the workroom, I realized that I must first find Lars or Lovise to chant the Loc hwær with me.

Dealing with Bishop Longchamp had always been a strain, a reminder to keep one’s will up to date. Calling on my old friend Walter was a pleasure in itself. He had obviously decided that the blizzard that had blown in last night justified a few hours’ extra sleep, which he had certainly earned during his strenuous months of ruling a bitterly divided country. I sent up word that I needed to see him on a matter of urgency, and in moments was ushered into his dressing room, where I found him wrapped in a fur robe, having his scalp shaved by his valet.

He was a tall, bony man of my own age or a few years older— scholarly, amusing, good company. It was rumored that he had absolved Richard for rebelling against his father, but what else could he have done?

He waved the razor aside long enough to say, “Baron Durwin, good morrow! Is this problem so urgent that I must send Jacques away immediately and wear my miter all day?”

“Not quite,” I said. “It does concern the king of France, but I think it will wait long enough for you to be made symmetrical.” He chuckled and told his valet to be quick but not so quick as to bleed him. As soon as his head was dried he dismissed the man, told me to talk, and set to work to dress himself.

“King Philip,” I said, “is going to offer to accept Lord John’s homage for all King Richard’s domains in France, and marry him to Lady Aalis.”

Clutching his hose, the archbishop sat down heavily on his chair and stared at me as if hoping that I was making a joke. “Is going to? How come you by this knowledge, friend?”

“In performance of my duties as enchanter general, Your Grace.”

“You mean that you are being Merlin now, and I have to play the part of King Arthur?”

Nicely put—but he was an archbishop and prophecy was blasphemous.

“Aye, Your Grace. I fear I mean exactly that. Philip has not yet sent the letter, but he will do so soon. Within the next week, or possibly two, I think. Will John refuse such a bribe?”

“He already has a wife.”

“There were some doubts about that marriage, as I recall. The Pope was reluctant to sanction it.” Wives could be discarded.

Walter thought for a few minutes and then nodded. “It isn’t a case of, ‘ Will John refuse such a bribe?’ but rather, ‘ Can John refuse such a bribe?’ and the answer is no. He can’t possibly, because if you disregard loyalty, honor, and duty, and are ruled solely by greed, then acceptance makes sense. So, what can we do to stop him? I feel strangely reluctant to cut off the king’s brother’s head. Richard is fond of his brother and wouldn’t like it.”

“Lock him up in the Tower of London until the king returns?” The moment I said that, I knew that this was not feasible either. Supposing the king does not return? Then you unlock the cell door and run like the Devil?

“Can you provide a copy of this letter, Durwin?”

“No, sir. I can only offer my word. And my head, I suppose.”

“Well then.” Walter sighed. “No one can possibly stop him except the queen.” He meant Dowager Queen Eleanor, not the real queen, Berengaria. “You will have to make all speed to Normandy and tell her what you foresee.”

Thoughts of racing over through drifts and over waterlogged countryside, of crossing the storm-wracked seas of January held no appeal. “Sir, let me write a letter. You have many younger men, skilled couriers, who can reach Rouen long before I could.”

There I was speaking common sense as well as cowardice, and he nodded. “I wonder where Lord John is now?”

“Lincoln.”

Even Walter flinched at that brazen display of sorcery, but he did not question my knowledge or ask how I knew. Belatedly, he resumed dressing. “Then go at once and write your report to Her Grace. I will write one of my own. I just hope that her response arrives in time. I will go to Winchester to wait for it. And you will come with me.”

Back at my house, I wrote my letter and sent it over to the justiciar. Soon afterward, at dinner with Lars and Lovise, I faced an unexpected family rebellion.

“I am deeply concerned at the way you keep falling into trances without meaning to,” my wife declaimed. “Suppose you do that when you are riding a horse?”

“Obviously the horse will have to stop and pick me up.”

Humor was not appropriate, as I was quickly informed. I was arguing with two qualified sages, both of whom could quote dangers and precedents.

“That Myrddin Wyllt incantation is Satanic!” Lovise said. “It is taking control of you, and you must stop using it. Stop now!”

“She’s right, Father. You know that it is questionable, and therefore a downward step.” Reaching into his fabulous memory, Lars began to roll off a long list of initially well-meaning sages who had slid unwittingly into darker and darker magic. My ability to argue was limited by the fact that he was quoting instructors I had trained myself with the same examples.

I eventually had to bend my councillor’s oath and reveal a little of what was happening. “The test is not the method but the purpose, correct? The end justifies the means?”

Two heads nodded, but reluctantly.

“I am not doing this for my own benefit. Today I was shown the most serious move yet by King Philip of France against our liege lord, King Richard. His treachery and deceit are appalling. He is violating not only his personal oath of loyalty but also the Truce of God that protects crusaders. If the Pope will not stop him, then we must try. Do you disagree with that?”

Lars said, “Father, let us help you. You must stop invoking the Myrddin Wyllt!”

“I haven’t done so in months. It sends me visions when it wants to.”

“Then let me use it instead and perhaps it will leave you alone for a while. I am convinced that it is leading up to something big, which may not be as innocent as you hope.”

Lars was not a boy any longer; he was a skilled sage, and his opinions must carry weight.

“I will have to ask the justiciar’s permission,” I said. “He can swear you in as my deputy, I suppose. As soon as the roads clear, he is going to Winchester, and he wants me to go with him.” Lars flashed his old grin. “That will make a change from copying incantations, day in and day out.”

Lovise said softly, “I too will enjoy a change of scenery.”

So I was going to Winchester with two babysitters.

Later that day the snow turned to rain, and two days after that the justiciar and his train left Oxford, bound for Winchester, which was still the official capital of England, as it had been in the days of King Alfred the Great. We followed the next day. After a cold and unpleasant journey, we found the castle full, so Eadig made us welcome in the chantry. We settled in to wait upon events.

There was a race in progress, although we were the only people who knew it. On one hand, Philip had to dictate and dispatch his letter to John. It had then to be delivered to him, which was no small feat in the middle of winter, and John had to rush to Paris to do homage, an egregious betrayal of his brother.

On our side, my warning had to reach Queen Eleanor in Rouen, the capital of Normandy, and her reply had to reach us in Winchester. Richard had given her authority over John, so she could even order Walter to arrest him—provided she believed in my prophetic powers. My neck was definitely on the block. I told no one, but I had fears that the race was also a contest between me and Bran of Tara. King Philip, too, must have enchanters in his service.

Early the next morning, the three of us gathered in the room Lovise and I shared, and she chanted the Myrddin Wyllt incantation. Nothing happened, nothing at all. My wife was definitely displeased. Lars took her place on the bed and tried his luck. The incantation had worked for him once before, but this time he saw nothing. We had to assume that this was good news. The Loc hwær reported that John was still in Lincoln.

On our second morning, we gathered in Lars’s room, which was as cramped as a monk’s cell, and he stretched out on his bed to chant the Myrddin Wyllt. After he reached the end and just lay there with nothing happening, my attention wandered.

“Durwin! Durwin, wake up!” That was Lovise shouting, far away. I came back with a start. Had I nodded off? No. Thirsty, I reached for the beaker that we had set ready for Lars. It seemed that old Myrddin’s ghost had chosen me as his disciple and voice, me and no others.

“What did you see this time?” my wife demanded furiously. Anger often masks worry.

“You barely gave me time to see anything!” I thought back. . . . “Queen Eleanor has received the letters!”

Lovise and Lars snapped, “And?” in unison.

“And oh, saints! That lady has a vocabulary like a veteran Brabancon!” I laughed at their expressions. “She is coming. She was shouting for her litter. If I understood her Occitan correctly, she plans to hang a ball and chain on Lord John’s scrotum.”

(For those of you fortunate enough not to have heard of them, the Brabancons are the most vicious and feared of all mercenaries, monsters who kill men, women, children, and old folk without distinction, except that they rape the women before killing them.)

But to cross the Channel in February, a woman of almost seventy? If her ship went down, the traitors would win.

Either Carnonos was an obstinate god or the Myrddin Wyllt was a stubborn incantation. It refused now to respond to anyone but me. If Lovise invoked it, it ignored her. If Lars did, it might or might not respond, but only through me, depending on how far away I was. The other two grew very worried about this, but I just accepted that it worked. As long as we could trust its predictions, it was an incredibly powerful weapon against the two renegades.

A few days later I headed over to the castle to make my regular report to the justiciar. As usual, Walter received me alone, although rumors of Merlin Redux prophesying for him were already circulating.

“The queen has not yet reached Dieppe,” I told him. “If the weather continues to hold, she ought to be here in a less than a week.”

He nodded, frowning. “The sooner the better. A troop of mercenaries turned up in Southampton yesterday, claiming that they were hired by Lord John.”

“Lord John was at Warwick last night.”

Now Walter scowled furiously. “Durwin, you told me yesterday he was still at Lincoln! He could not have ridden to Warwick in one day, not with the roads in the shape they’re in.”

“I think he could, Your Grace. I’ve caught him doing this before. He travels with one attendant, an Irishman named Bran of Tara. I assume that he is a sage. How they do it, I don’t know.” But would very much like to.

“Then he could be in Southampton tonight or sometime tomorrow. He’ll be gone over to France before the queen gets here.”

“Unless we stop him,” I said. “How soon can we get there and start making arrangements?”

The rain had let up the following morning when Lord John rode into Southampton town, possibly the busiest port in England. He headed straight for the castle, followed by a single companion, as I had predicted. The castle officially belonged to the king, but by then most of the constables in the country were in John’s pocket. They might not obey him against direct royal orders, but they would cooperate so far as they could, anticipating a fat bag of gold as a farewell gift, and preferment if Richard failed to return. John rode in unchallenged, dismounted, and ran up the stairs to the keep without a hint that he had covered two hundred miles in a couple of days.

Stable hands had come to hold the horses. John’s attendant, a stocky man with a forked black beard, had just unfastened a fat and obviously weighty saddle bag, when he realized that armed men had closed in around him. Lars was with them, wearing his green cape.

“You are Bran of Tara?” he said.

“What of it?”

“In my office as deputy enchanter general, I arrest you on suspicion of practicing black magic. Come with me and bring that bag with you.”

Glaring, Bran dropped the bag and raised a hand as if about to cast a spell. Lovise, who had come in close behind him, jabbed a finger in his back and put him to sleep with a single word. It was safer to keep things in the family.

By then Lord John had cheerfully walked straight into the constable’s office and found himself in the presence of the justiciar and me—no constable. We were both seated in the most comfortable chairs I had ever met. I had promised myself some like them.

“Greetings, my son.” Walter extended his archbishop’s ring, so that John had to kiss it, dropping on one knee to do so. “Did you have a good journey?”

“Until now I did.” John rose, glanced around, then slammed the door shut behind him. There was a third seat present, but it was a simple three-legged stool, nothing like the two richly padded seats that Walter and I occupied. That was not my idea. I thought it petty.

John snarled and said, “On your feet, Saxon!”

“Stay where you are, Durwin,” Walter said. “Please be seated, John. The enchanter general and I have some questions to put to you. At the moment this is just an informal inquiry, you understand. It probably won’t have to proceed any farther.”

In the two years since I had seen the king’s brother, he had changed very little—just as dapper, just as arrogant, perhaps a little thicker in the belly and jowls. He put his hands on his hips. “I am sure it won’t, Your Grace. Ask your questions, and I will decide whether or not I will answer them.”

“How is your dear wife, the lovely Lady Isabella?”

John shrugged. “Haven’t seen her in months, and she was never lovely.”

“We have reason to believe that you have been in communication with King Philip of France.”

“Have you really?”

“Have you been?”

“What if I have? We’re on friendly terms, the king and I.”

“He has been spreading vicious lies about your brother, accusing him of terrible crimes. How can you be on friendly terms with a man like that?”

“Richard can be very trying at times.”

We were treading water here, waiting on evidence. If matters were proceeding as planned, my wife and son down in the yard were hastily rummaging through Lord John’s baggage, hunting for incriminating evidence. Unless they brought us some soon, the archbishop and I were going to be in deep trouble. All we had against John was his bizarre ability to travel like a bird, and the only evidence for that was my word against his.

Walter said, “Durwin?”

I took a turn in the lists. “Tell us where you slept last night, my lord.”

John’s contempt flamed into scarlet rage. “What business is that of yours?”

“Black magic anywhere is my business, my lord. I am charged to find it and report it to either the king or the church. I admire your riding raiment. It is very finely styled, and the leather is clearly of excellent quality. Doe skin, is it? Yet it is remarkably splattered with mud and dust for such an early hour. A nobleman on the road would normally have his servants clean it for him overnight. If he lacked servants, his host would provide some. So I am curious to know how far you have come this morning.”

“And you can remain so.” John was starting to display the beginnings of a Plantagenet temper tantrum. His father had been known to chew a mattress in his fury.

“Yes, but to arrive here at Southampton so early? All the way from Warwick!”

He showed his teeth in an animal snarl. “You’ve been spying on me, you lopsided Saxon slug?”

“I know you were in Lincoln until two days ago. Just convince me that your journey here wasn’t aided by Satan.”

He had a hand on his sword hilt. “No, first you convince me that your spying wasn’t.”

Walter intervened. “So, John, you don’t deny that you were in Lincoln two days ago?”

“I refuse to answer lies thrown about by a Saxon witch. I—”

Lars strode in, detoured around Lord John, and handed me a vellum scroll. He nodded respectfully to the archbishop and went out again. I unrolled the parchment. It was fine, soft calfskin, and the surface was totally blank. Why should a man travel with a saddlebag full of blank vellums? I could feel the warding spell on it. Whatever was written there could not be read without the antiphon. I turned it toward Walter, so he could see that we had failed.

Knowing that he had won, John was smirking. “What have you done to my ostler?”

“He has not been harmed,” I said.

“I warned you years ago not to annoy me, witch. I will deal with you later.”

Walter frowned at him. “We’ll have no threats here. Baron Durwin was only doing his duty, and we will find out when you left Lincoln. You will be staying here for a few days, I trust?”

“I have not decided.”

“I do hope that you tarry until your honored mother arrives. We expect her here very soon.”

John guessed my part in this right away, for his anger flipped back to me again, flaring up like oil on a fire. “You are a meddling pest! Stay out of my affairs from now on, for I shan’t warn you again.” He faked a smile at Walter. “I am waiting for the rest of my escort to arrive, Your Grace, and then I am heading over to France to inspect some of my lands there. This is none of your business.” He wheeled around and was gone, slamming the door behind him.

So our plot failed. I hung on to the scroll that Lars had brought me, and later that day I managed to remove the warding on it, revealing a long text written in a language unknown to me. I ran the Algazelus test for evil on it and the entire parchment turned black. That convinced me, but it would not have brought the wrath of civil law down on Bran of Tara, and it was certainly not enough to clip Lord John’s wings.

More of Lord John’s mercenaries arrived over the next few days, but Walter had interdicted all the ships large enough to carry them, at least for a short while. John was still there when Queen Eleanor arrived. She moved at once into the castle and sent for him. Their interview was brief and private, with no one else present except her faithful Amaria. I had foreseen it the previous evening.

Eleanor was seated, while Amaria brushed her hair for her. Her hair, I saw, was white and cut quite short, for she kept it hidden inside her French hood when she was in public. When the knock came, Amaria answered the door and reported, “Lord John, Your Grace.”

“Admit him.”

In he strode. He blinked at seeing his mother déshabille, then bowed low and started to say something.

“Shut up!” she snapped. “I don’t need any of your buttery words. I am ashamed that my womb could ever have spat out such a faithless slug as you. All the oaths that you have sworn, and all the riches your brother has poured out to you, and you stab him in the back at every chance you get!”

John displayed amusement. “Had a rough crossing, did you?” For a long moment they stared at each other, furious mother and insolent son. Then—“Just tell me why you are here,” she said quietly.

“I am on my way to inspect my French lands, Mother. The best fertilizer is the owner’s shoe on the soil, you know.”

“Then listen carefully, Farmer John. If you leave here on a ship, I will confiscate every acre you own in England, every hide of land, every inch! And don’t doubt my power to do so.”

John did not, for he lost color.

“Now get out,” she said, and he went without a word.

I had written to my long-time friend Nicholaa de la Haye in Lincoln Castle, and her reply was waiting for me when I returned to Oxford. She confirmed my spying—John truly had journeyed from there to Southampton in less than two days. I hoped that he would be more careful in future, as long as I was around to watch him. He might well try to arrange that I wasn’t, of course, and I warded our house to repel curses.

In the following weeks Eleanor summoned four successive meetings of the great council and had every member swear a new oath of fealty to Richard. The peace could not last, however, and the news from the Holy Land was not good.

One morning I looked out the window and saw summer. By the calendar it was April, but the showers had done, the blossom had fallen, and swallows were frantically snapping up insects to take home to feed their broods. I trotted downstairs and found Lars already at work. We exchanged blessings.

For many months he had been copying incantations onto rolls of silk. I helped him with the proofreading, but it was tedious work for both of us, especially him. The advantage of silk was that a couple of bags could hold spells that would weigh a ton if written on vellum.

“The time has come,” I announced. “We must go.”

He looked at me darkly. “Another vision?”

“No, just a hunch, but it will take us at least two months to reach the Holy Land, perhaps longer if we travel as minstrels. By then the war may be over.”

Lars took up the rag and wiped his pen very carefully. “Father, you have never told me exactly why we are going there.”

“Because I don’t know. I have been shown the two of us serenading an audience of crusaders. You saw us on a ship. I suspect that our exact purpose has not yet been settled, just that we will be needed somehow.”

He nodded solemnly and stood up. “Then we must go for the sake of our souls.” He added innocently, “I must remember to collect some worthwhile sins, for which I will be absolved when I have completed my pilgrimage to Jerusalem.”

The hard part was saying farewell to Lovise. In the early days of our marriage, I had often been absent for long periods. Sometimes she had accompanied me, riding fourscore miles or more in a week, but even when I had to leave her behind, she had never complained. This time she did, because she thoroughly distrusted absolutely anything to do with the Myrddin Wyllt enchantment.

I prevaricated. “We are going to Westminster to see the queen. If she sees no need for us to go farther, then we shall turn right around and come home. All right?”

“You have foreseen this meeting?”

“I swear that I have not touched that spell since we returned from Southampton.”

Which was true, because I had discovered that I knew it by heart, and sometimes, in those hazy moments as one drifts off to sleep, I found the verses singing through my mind. And then I would dream. Who can chose to dream or not dream?

She embraced me. “I have spent more than half my life married to you. I want you to come back safely and make it two-thirds.”

“I want it to be three quarters or more,” I said. “It will never seem like too much.”

A leisurely ride through two wonderful spring days brought us to Westminster. I had visitor privileges at the palace, so as soon as I made myself known there, we were assigned comfortable quarters, together with water and towels. I had barely finished drying my face and hands when there came a knock on the door, which Lars opened to reveal a page in Queen Eleanor’s livery. He was no more than twelve, and looked absolutely terrified as he reported that Her Grace would receive Lord Durwin right away.

I felt a jolt of alarm myself, mingled with triumph. I tried to remain impassive as I looked at Lars.

“Just a hunch, mm?” he said coldly.

“We shall see.” I turned back to the boy and tried a soothing smile. “Lead me. I won’t eat you, you know.”

That comfort didn’t work. He did say, “No, my lord,” yet he seemed to cringe away from me as he led me downstairs to the Queen’s withdrawing room. A cleric I did not know, undoubtedly one of her secretaries, seemed just as apprehensive as he rose from his desk and went to announce me.

The queen dowager was alone, except for her faithful Lady Amaria, who sat quietly in a corner, embroidering a sleeve with only the rhythmic movements of her fingers to show that she was alive. Eleanor had no use for the gossipy chatter of palace women. Ever since she had inherited Aquitaine as duke in her own right, she had lived in a man’s world of war, rebellions, and crusades. She considered men best employed in the roles of troubadours or the gentle make-believe knights of chivalry.

She jumped up from her desk and came to greet me with hands outstretched, just as I seen in my dream. She was showing her age now—the long years of imprisonment had preserved her like a flower pressed in a book, but the exhausting work of ruling her son’s empire was making her pay for every minute twice over. Yet, while her face had more lines, the glitter of her eyes under the long lashes was as fierce as ever.

“Welcome, Lord Merlin!” She offered me fingers to kiss, which was a signal honor. “You are very prompt.”

“Prompt, Lady Queen?”

The smile deepened. “I had just finished dictating a letter summoning you, when word came that you had arrived at the gate. The news sent poor Francois into a paroxysm of prayer. I thought he would need a long sustaining draft of ink to recover.”

“It was purely by chance, Your Grace. No magic involved.”

“No?” She registered disbelief, but then let her amusement fade as she led me over to chairs and bade me be seated. “Well, the timing is suspiciously fortuitous. I need your service.”

“As healer, minstrel, or enchanter, Your Grace?”

“Probably all of them! Know you John of Alençon, archdeacon of Lisieau?”

I recalled a rather plump cleric with an amiable face whose constantly convivial expression masked a powerful, analytical mind. “I have never spoken with him, but have heard him address the council.”

She nodded. “He knows you. My son values him highly. I am sending him to Outremer to beg the king to come home. Beg! That shameless recreant, Philip of France, not content with spreading vile lies about him to anyone else who will listen, is now plotting against him with the German Emperor.”

I waited for her to mention her other son, but she did not. She said, “Philip swore to observe the Truce of God. He swore a separate oath with my son that they would not move against the other’s lands until both were safely home. Hah! Renegade! Perjurer!” She fell silent, biting her lip.

After a moment I ventured to ask, “Just what are you asking of me, Lady Queen?”

“You are Merlin Redux, Lord Durwin. Prophesy for me! Will my son be able to take Jerusalem?”

I drew a deep breath and said, “No.” Twice now I had dreamed of King Richard standing on a ship—at the stern, facing back over the wake, under billowing sails filled by a joyfully blustery wind. He was staring at the brown landscape fading into evening, and there were tears on his cheeks.

She nodded, saddened but unsurprised. “It seems that the army is badly divided. The leaders, especially what are left of the French forces, oppose anything he wants to do. They squabble over who will be the king of Jerusalem. They disagree over what the army should do next. Go to him, Durwin, and tell him that his empire is falling apart without him. Outremer is a trap and a snare.”

She fell silent, perhaps remembering her youth, when she went there with her first husband, Philip’s father. She had been quite a hellion in those days, it was said. There had been rumors of an affair with her uncle.

“The king my liege puts no stock in my prophesies, Your Grace.”

“Then convince him! Go with the archdeacon. Bring my son home, alive and well. Or swear to me a prophecy that he will return safely.”

“I have no guidance to offer on that, Your Grace. But I do swear that I will do anything I can to help my king, according to my oaths.”

She smiled wanly. “His obstinacy may not be the worst of your troubles. That will be to avoid King Philip’s spite. It is said that Philip, on his way home, held a secret conference in Milan with the German emperor. If he has turned Henry into another enemy, then my son’s future is dark indeed.”

Now I could see why she had been desperate enough to send for me, but not how I could possibly help. Nevertheless, one cannot refuse frightened queens or sorely worried mothers.

“If there is a way, I will find it for him, Your Grace,” I said— rashly, as it was to turn out.

Later that evening I was formally presented to John of Alençon and in turn presented Lars. As I expected, the archdeacon was affable enough on the surface but hard as horseshoes underneath. In the presence of the queen, we were all very gracious.

An archdeacon is a bishop’s senior deputy. Clerics distrust enchanters, of course, suspecting them of dealing with the Devil, and they are almost as opposed to troubadours, who are given to singing bawdy songs mocking noble persons, or praising the allures of other men’s wives. The following morning, when we all set out with a troop of guards, John of Alençon and I rode side by side, and then the mask was dropped.

“I trust that neither you nor Sage Lars will be casting spells and summoning spirits while you travel with me, Lord Durwin?” I was a peer of the realm, a member of the king’s council, and just as much an emissary of the queen as he was, so I was not about to submit to bullying. “We will sing and play joyfully upon our gitterns, Your Grace. You may then wish we were castling spells and summoning demons of the most horrible aspect.”

He frowned. “If your talent be that threadbare, you had best stay clear of the king, for he is no mean troubadour himself.”

“Indeed yes, my lord. I have heard him sing. And Queen Eleanor herself praised my rendition of one of his compositions.”

We called it quits then, for the time being.

Only once on our two-month journey did anything out of the mundane occur to upset our divine. It was not by my design, but by then I had pretty much accepted that the Myrddin Wyllt had a mind of its own—and had taken charge of mine as well. We sailed from Portsmouth over to Dieppe, and from there we had a four-day ride to the archdeacon’s house in Lisieau. I would have called it a palace. There we spent two nights, enjoying the greatest comfort and best food any of us were to experience in the next year or more. On the second afternoon, I reached for another pigeon stuffed with truffles, and the room faded. . . .

I was standing in a grossly overcrowded street, or perhaps market place, for open stalls defined the sides of it. Half the people filling it were struggling to go either this way or that, while being impeded by the other half’s clamoring to sell them something—garments, snacks, jewelry, fruits, themselves, their sisters, or drinks of uncertain nature poured from wineskins into much-used cups. The inhabitants blurred into the architecture. No one noticed me, much less tried to sell me anything, so I knew I was not present in the flesh.

When? Where? Why? What was I supposed to see?

The noontime sun stood higher over the rooftops than it ever does in England. The constant tumult of voices was dizzying, as were the odors of spices, cooking, perfumes, people, and the dung that paved the roadway. A plague of flies made the air almost unbreathable. Heavily bearded men wore strange head cloths and long robes, some black, some brightly colored; the women were packaged until only their eyes showed. But there were also monks, priests, and armed crusaders proudly flaunting the cross on their surcoats.

I was somewhere in the Holy Land, without doubt. Jerusalem itself, or one of the coastal cities? The background details all seemed very sharp, which meant that I was being shown imminent events, possibly even happening at that very moment.

Then I heard shouting drawing nearer through the babble. The words were mostly in French, being repeated in a harsh tongue I did not recognize. “Make way!” they proclaimed. “Make way for the king!”

I heard horses, saw armed riders advancing through a surf of angry protest from the displaced throng. What king? Richard himself? I felt a sickening presentiment that I had been brought there to witness something both epochal and horrible.

Indeed I had. As the vanguard passed me, I saw their principal following, a finely dressed man of around fifty, wearing the crusader cross, and mounted on a curiously nondescript horse. He alone in that mob had some space around him, although not much. He was smiling, acknowledging the cheers of the Christians, ignoring the sullen silence of the browner faces. He seemed every inch a king, but he wasn’t Richard.

A couple of monks shouted to attract his attention, holding up a letter. He edged his horse closer and reached down to accept it. They grabbed his arm, pulling him out of his saddle. Knives flashed. There were screams, blood—

I recovered my wits lying on the floor, looking up at many worried faces. Apparently I had started shouting, “No! No! No!” and then fallen off my chair. Someone had thrust a knife handle into my mouth to prevent me from chewing my tongue, although the Myrddin Wyllt chant did not produce that sort of fit. They told me I had been unconscious for a very few minutes, however long it had seemed to me.

I managed to sit up, with Lars’s help, and demanded a drink. In a few moments I was back on my chair at the table, and John of Alençon had dismissed the servants.

Our host disapproved strongly. “Does this happen often, my son? I mean, you are facing a long and strenuous pilgrimage, not a journey to be undertaken by anyone whose health is precarious.”

“It is a very rare event, Your Grace. How many kings are there in the Holy Land at the moment?” I racked my memory for any clue to the victim’s identity, but he had worn no armorial bearings, and his guards had been Templars.

John of Alençon’s frown darkened. “To the best of my knowledge, only our own King Richard. The German emperor died on his way there, and his son and successor, Henry VI, has remained at home, struggling to hang onto his crumbling dominion. King Philip tucked his tail between his legs and fled after a couple of months. The king of Jerusalem, of course, but the last I heard there were still two rival claimants—Guy of Lusignan and Conrad of Montferrat. Why?”

“Because I just saw either Guy or Conrad murdered, Your Grace, struck down by two assassins dressed as monks.”

The archdeacon stared hard at me for a long minute, then turned to look at Lars, who sprang to my defense.

“If my father says that this is so, Your Grace, then you should believe him. I have never known him be wrong. He told Queen Eleanor of King Henry’s death a week before the official news arrived.”

“So I have often been told.” John of Alençon made the sign of the cross and then drained a beaker of the superb wine. “I cannot see that this makes any difference to our mission. If anything, it makes King Richard’s departure even more urgent. When we reach Outremer, you will be able to issue warnings to whichever claimant was elected, Durwin.”

I said, “Aye, Your Grace, but I doubt that there is still time to do that. I believe the deed was done while I was watching.”

We followed much the same path to the Holy Land that King Richard had taken two years before. We had no trouble within his empire, all the way south to Gascony, or even after that, when we rode across Toulouse. The count of Toulouse was officially one of Richard’s vassals, but not one he would trust very far. Fortunately, an archdeacon on pilgrimage was not to be hindered or impeded. In the port town of Marseilles, we were fortunate to obtain passage on a ship of the type called a buss, which had thirty oars and one mast with a square sail. It was cramped and foul-smelling, but we had been warned about that many times.

The master, whom I knew only as Onfroi, specialized in shipping pilgrims and crusaders to the Holy Land—and back again, although he grumbled that there were far more going than coming. He was waiting for a full load, but the archdeacon had royal money enough to change his mind, and we left the following day.

From Marseilles we followed the coast all the way to Sicily, touching in at Genoa, Pizza, Salerno, and finally at Messina—so many wonderful cities, but never did we have long enough to explore them properly. A couple of hours to stretch our legs in the docks or along the beach was all. Lars went half mad with frustration, and I was not much better. We played and sang every day the weather permitted to keep our hands in. Our repertoire was chosen more to amuse the sailors than the archdeacon, but when he celebrated mass on Sundays, we duly switched to holy songs.

We had two days at Messina, in Sicily. Lars went off with some of the younger sailors, John of Alençon disappeared on his own business, and I explored the city. I hated the local language, which sounded like Latin run through a flour mill, but our second day there was a Sunday and I was deeply impressed by the singing in the cathedral.

No sooner had we raised sail and continued on our journey, than John of Alençon beckoned me to where he was standing on the fo’c’sle, his gown writhing in the wind. He was wearing his archdeacon face.

“Good morrow, my son.”

“Good morrow to you, Your Grace.”

“I learned in Messina that the dispute between Guy de Lusignan and Conrad of Montferrat over which should be king of Jerusalem was settled in the latter’s favor. A few days later, in Tyre, he was dragged off his horse by two infidels dressed as priests and stabbed to death. That happened on the 28^th day of April.”

I just nodded. It had been a farseeing, then.

“You receive these prophetic visions often?”

“More often than I would wish, Your Grace.”

“You do not summon them? Then who is sending them?”

I was not about to mention horned gods, of course. “I have to believe that they come from Heaven, not Hell, my lord. I try to put them to good purpose, never evil.”

John of Alençon pursed his lips in frustration. “Queen Eleanor told me she dictated a letter summoning you and you arrived at the palace before it could be copied and sealed. I assumed that this was a blessed coincidence, but your description of an event that was happening hundreds of leagues away has to be a sending from either God or Satan.”

I shrugged. “Did you learn who ordered this devilish murder?”

His Reverence scowled at the way I had changed the subject. “Sinan. Or so one of the murderers confessed before dying.”

I suppose I looked utterly blank, because he continued. “Known as the Old Man of the Mountain, Sinan lives in Alamut, a mountain fastness somewhere in Syria, controlling a sect of infidels who worship him and will reputedly do anything he tells them to, believing that they thus go directly to Paradise. They will leap off cliffs at his command—or kill people. Even other infidels fear him. Reputedly even Sultan Saladin himself does, because he has found some of Sinan’s followers among his own bodyguards.”

If the Myrddin Wyllt enchantment expected me to battle this Sinan, it was backing the wrong tortoise.

“So tell me, Lord Enchanter,” the archdeacon said, “why were you vouchsafed this revelation? And how will you use it in Our Lord’s service?”

“I don’t know yet, Your Grace.” That was a lie. The vision had been sent to convince my companion—a personal friend of King Richard—that my prophecies were reliable. He would so inform the king. The king would believe him and start to trust me. It would be up to me to nourish that trust and use it to good purpose.

From Sicily we headed eastward to Corfu, Rhodes, and Cyprus, then sailed as close to southeastward as the wind would let us, aiming for Outremer. Saracen pirates had been a problem there in the past, so the master told us, but King Richard’s ships had cleaned the sea of them. By then the archdeacon had taken my measure—or succumbed to my irresistible charm, as my irreverent son put it—and our relationship had become less formal.

He demonstrated this as we were standing together in the prow, watching the coast of the Holy Land creep up over the horizon. “I am not entirely looking forward to this, Enchanter.”

“What in particular, Your Grace?”

“Having to tell our king that his mother says it’s time for him to stop playing and come home.”

“If his temper is as bad as his father’s was, then I certainly do not envy you.”

“And I confess I do not envy you either, Durwin. Richard has always detested practitioners of the occult. He is convinced that you are all either frauds or devil-worshipers.”

My lord king had made that very clear even before he left England.

We came, then, safely to Outremer, and specifically the city of Tyre. After the fall of Jerusalem, five years earlier, Tyre had been almost the only part of the Holy Land still in Christian hands. In the twelve months since King Richard arrived, he had recovered a narrow strip of coast, marked by a line of small ports like a string of beads—from north to south, Tyre, Acre, Jaffa, and Ascalon. I was to see all of these, but very little of the interior. Tyre is the largest, and was where Conrad of Montferrat had been murdered.

King Richard, we were informed, was presently in the far south of the Holy Land. As yet, he had made no attempt to take Jerusalem.

Master Onfroi had brought some cargo that he was anxious to unload now, but again Archdeacon John produced a large bribe and persuaded the master to take us south to where the army was encamped, at Ascalon. Reluctantly, Onfroi embarked a local pilot and set sail again.

We made a brief stop at Acre, so Lars and I disembarked for a hurried inspection of the battered little town. In my vision of the siege I had seen it only from landward, not inside the walls. The damage from the long battle was still very evident, with hardly a building not bearing scars inflicted by the diabolic blizzard of rocks hurled at it by the Christian catapults. When we returned to the inner harbor, we were hailed by a tallish, deeply tanned man in his forties.

“Lars!” followed by an even more surprised, “Baron Durwin!”

We turned and together exclaimed, “Maur!”

Maur son of Marc was the Oxford sage I had assigned to lead our crusader contingent. He was a brilliant healer and a fine organizer, but in two years he had acquired a shocking stoop and streaks of gray in his beard. He had the haggard look of a man who sleeps poorly. “What are you doing here, my lord?”

He was carrying a bedroll and he was at the dock, so what was he doing there, instead of tending the army? And I wasn’t sure what I was doing anyway, so as we clasped hands, I countered with, “I might ask the same of you, Sage.”

“I am going home, my lord. There is nothing to be done here. Men are dying like moths in a campfire, but we healers are not allowed to do anything at all now. Only priests and mundane doctors are allowed to treat the sick, and they are useless. Fever and dysentery kill five times what the infidels do, yet enchantment is strictly forbidden.”

“God help us! It’s that bad?”

“Remember Ranulf de Glanville, who used to be justiciar? They buried him just three weeks after he stepped off the boat at Acre.”

Appalled, I said, “Well, we are on our way to see the king. You come with us and tell us all about it and we’ll see what we can do to put things right.” I took his arm. When he began to protest, Lars took his other arm, and we headed back to our ship with Maur between us.

The winds were so skittish that for the next two days we were rarely out of sight of the Holy Land, and it was not an attractive prospect. The coastal plains were generally fertile, but baked brown by the summer sun, not lush like England or France. The hills beyond were drab and dry, almost desert, although somewhere within them lay Jerusalem, sacred to Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Without that objective, Lars and I agreed, Outremer would hold no appeal at all.

Those two days were not wasted, though. Sage Maur was well informed on the war—after all, what else was news in the Holy Land?—so the Archdeacon and I, and even Lars, cross-examined him in great detail. The army, he said, was champing at the bit, frantic to head inland and free Jerusalem—that was what they had come for. Even the French barons were back in line, now that the squabble over who was to be king of Jerusalem had been settled. But Richard was intent on cutting the road to Egypt, or even invading that country, for it was Sultan Saladin’s main source of supply. I was not hopeful that I would be able to carry out my mission from Queen Eleanor to see the king safely home that year. It was already the end of May, and the Middle Sea became impassable about the end of September. Next year he might have no kingdom left to return to.

Of course, we asked about the death of King Conrad, and Maur’s account confirmed what the archdeacon had learned in Messina. News to us, though, was that the barons had later elected the young Count Henry of Champagne to be his successor. He had the virtue of being a nephew of King Richard as well as of King Philip, so he was acceptable to both factions in the Christian army.

“And who ordered the murder?” Lars asked, a question neither the archdeacon nor I had yet put.

Maur seemed strangely reluctant to answer, but eventually dropped his voice to a whisper and named the Hashshashin, followers of the Old Man of the Mountain. Killing with knives was their style. And why, Lars demanded, would this Old Man want the new king of Jerusalem killed? Nobody knew that, the sage insisted, and would not even name anyone who might have hired the killers. Two years in Outremer had wrought drastic changes in my old friend of Helmdon days.

The most troubling thing of all that we discussed during his long interrogation was the king’s ban on enchantment and the resulting disastrous state of the army’s health. I wondered if my main duty might be to see the army home, not just the king.

“It began when the kings arrived at Acre last year,” Maur said. “Many newcomers, including both kings, came down with a strange disease, which made their hair and fingernails fall out. King Richard had himself carried to the front on a litter and joined in the fighting by using a crossbow. He is reputed to be a crack shot with it. King Philip just stayed in bed. The doctors could find no cure except rest and patience. They prescribed fasting and bloodletting, of course, but those just weakened the patient, as usual. The king adamantly refused enchantment.”

None of which was news to me. “It sounds like the sailors’ sickness,” I suggested. “Did you try any of the enchantments for that?”

Maur shook his head, avoiding my eye. “Nobody had thought to bring any of those. Not us, not the French, not the various baronial healers . . . we had come to help an army, not a navy.”

“I brought one,” Lars muttered angrily.

Because of the Church’s ingrained suspicion that enchantment was unholy, the two kings had banned its use in the crusade. Some men accepted the sages’ help in secret, and those efforts were often successful, but the ban had remained. If flux or fever felled you, the medics would bleed you, priests pray over you, and a chain gang of prisoners bury you.

Around noon on the 29^th of May, we were towed into the harbor at Ascalon, whose name was oddly familiar to me, although I could not recall where I had heard it. Its tiny harbor was jammed like a herring barrel with ships of all descriptions. Even flying Queen Eleanor’s banner, we had to wait while room was cleared for us. There was very little town to be seen, for Muslims and Christians had fought over Ascalon many times in the last hundred years. The army’s tents had replaced it, spreading far off out of sight, but everything was dominated now by the walls that King Richard was rebuilding, sprouting like a giant cancer, stronger and greater than before. No wall that Richard built was likely to fall down in the next strong wind.

“Ascalon is the gateway to Egypt,” Sage Maur had told us. “Saladin tore down the old battlements when he heard that a new crusade was coming. If the Templars, say, or the Knights Hospitaller, can hold Ascalon, they will split his realm in two, Egypt south and Syria north.”

“And Jerusalem?” Lars asked.

Maur pointed at the barren, dead hills. “Go forty miles inland. Don’t try it without an army.”

A little later, as Lars and I were leaning on the rail together, he said, “This is where you meet William.”

“William Who?”

“William Legier. My godfather. Don’t you remember? Three years ago, right after the great council at Pipewell, you told him you would see him again at Ascalon.”

“That may have been what William thought he heard, but I didn’t say that. I couldn’t have done. I’d never heard of Ascalon.”

“I was there, Father,” Lars said softly. “I heard it too.”

“Oh.” What else could I say? I looked back at the turmoil ashore and wondered why on earth William would have come to the Holy Land himself when he had promised the king he was going to send four sons in his stead.

The moment we docked, an earl and two deacons hurried up the gangplank to learn who aboard merited that flag. Archdeacon John was whisked off to meet with the king, but it took me a little longer to persuade a mere knight that I might indeed be a member of the English aristocracy, not just a minstrel. Lars and I were escorted to the barons’ compound, where Earl Robert of Leicester, laughingly vouched for me. He ordered his chief squire to find us a tent—somewhere, anywhere, for space was at a premium.

The size of the crusaders’ camp was amazing—tents, horses, oxen, camels, mules, weapons, kitchens, stonemasons, builders’ yards, makeshift chapels, banners, bakeries, latrines, paddocks, armories, hospitals, wagons, stretched out in all directions, farther than the eye could see. Above all people, thousands of people. Even this enormous sprawl must have borders, though, which must be constantly patrolled and guarded against Saracen raids. All of this was the responsibility of one man! I marveled that even royal shoulders could carry such a burden.

“Durwin! I might have known! Durwin!”

I turned at the shout, but for a moment I did not recognize the crusader pushing his way through the crowd in our direction. It was William, of course, but his beard was more white than brown, and three years had aged him ten. I dropped my bag and gittern to accept his embrace.

“You foresaw this!” he muttered as we separated.

“Not truly. What brings you here, old friend?”

“Revenge.”

I recoiled from the torment in his eyes. “Not Absolon? He was such a—”

“All of them: Absolon, Baudouin, César, Dominique. I came to collect some dead Saracens in return, so their souls can find peace. And also,” he added fiercely, “so that their brothers do not come on the same mission. Their mother is close enough to insane already.” I mumbled something meaningless, as one does. What words could replace four stalwart sons? Then, “Where did it happen?”

“In Acre. They had barely set foot ashore when the fever got them. They never blooded a sword, not one of them. They lie in unmarked graves, but I swear I will see they are avenged.”

I looked to Sage Maur, for this horror tale confirmed what he had told us, and then at Lars, who was as white as a sunlit cloud. We are all aware of Death lurking in the far distance and we all pretend not to notice. He only becomes truly terrible when he comes close.

“Show us where you are billeted, William,” I said. “We have only just disembarked and need to find our way around.”

He laughed. “Come then. We’ll clear some corpses out of the way to make room for you.”

A little later I registered at the royal enclosure. I was informed that the king was in conference, which of course I could have guessed. I left word of where I could be found.

I did not try to spy on Alençon’s meeting with the king, but the whispers that sped around the camp were consistent. The astonished Richard had embraced his old friend and then taken him into his tent for private talk. Outside that tent only Lars and I knew why the archdeacon had come, or the substance of Queen Eleanor’s message, although many people could probably have made a shrewd guess. After the archdeacon had taken his leave, so it was said, the king sat alone in silence for a long while. That did not surprise me. He must now choose whether to stay in the Holy Land in fulfilment of his oath, or hurry home to defend his empire from the avarice and treachery of his brother and King Philip. Richard always trusted his mother’s judgment, and if she said the danger was acute, then he would believe her.

Confident that the court secretariat would be able to find me when I was summoned, I spent the next two days inspecting the hospital situation with Maur and Lars. It was appalling. As Maur had warned me and William now confirmed, disease was killing far more Christians than Saladin was. I did not interfere, because Richard was quite capable of marching me onto a ship and sending me home. Or of chaining me to a rock and dropping me into the harbor, for that matter.

Just as troubling was the state of the army’s morale. Less than half a year ago, the crusade had been within twelve miles of the Holy City it had come to rescue. Many men had ventured to high ground and actually seen it in the distance. Now summer had come, and they were back on the coast, mainly in Jaffa and Ascalon. The men wanted to head inland and finish what they had started. Richard disagreed. He knew the strength of Jerusalem’s defenses, knew that Saladin was pouring men into it, and knew that every man in his own army would consider his oath fulfilled the moment he stepped into the Holy City. Then they would all head for home like bees at sunset, and who would then man the ramparts against the inevitable Saracen retaliation? The king wanted to head south, invade Egypt, and thereby drag Saladin to the negotiating table. Alas, high strategy was too subtle for the rank and file. It was even beyond the understanding of most of the barons, and mutiny was brewing.

My summons came toward evening on the second day, as a welcome breeze off the sea began to soften the unbearable desert heat. The king’s tent was an elaborate complex, and he was seated on a plain chair in a sort of courtyard where he had only sky above him and could not be observed by anyone, except God and perhaps his own concealed guards. After what had happened to King Conrad, I would have wagered a lot of money that those concealed guards did exist, even if Richard had not ordered them himself. The ground was covered with an uneven, muddy carpet. Tables and more chairs stood around in no discernable order.

I bowed. He looked tired, and gaunt. My eyes told me what I already knew by hearsay—that he had repeatedly been sick. I wondered if he was managing to sleep.

He began without formal greeting. “Describe the murdered man’s horse.”

I thought back . . . “An elderly bay gelding with a white blaze and four white feet.”

“A newly appointed king riding trash like that?”

“That was what I saw, Your Grace.”

King Richard shrugged. “You are likely right; he was on a private visit to a friend. Why are you here?”

“Because your royal mother sent me.”

“To do what?”

“To be useful in any way I can—and I do have some unusual skills.”

“Like seeing what is happening hundreds of leagues away?” He truly hated the thought; he did not want to believe, and it is very hard for any of us to credit unwelcome news. Above all, Richard the Lionheart wanted to be known as a man of honor, never one who had dealings with the Devil. Yet he did keep corresponding with Saladin, which the fanatics considered worse.

“Sometimes I can, Lord King,” I said cautiously. “I cannot do it to order. The visions just happen.” Not quite true.

“When the Devil sends them? Will we take Jerusalem and drive out the heathens?”

“I have received no direct guidance on that matter, sire. I suspect that the answer is no. Of course, I cannot see a negative, but I have foreseen you leaving the Holy Land with tears running down your cheeks.”

He glared at me in silence. I kept my eyes lowered and waited, not venturing to return the gaze.

He said, “Sit down.” And when I obeyed, “You are not afraid to offer unwelcome news, Baron Pipewell.”

“Such would be no true loyalty.”

“My mother trusts you. My father did. So I will try to. How can your unnatural arts be useful to me, as you put it?”

“I will tell you of my visions when they come, if they do. More urgently right now, your army is wasting away. You must know that you have hundreds of men lying at death’s door, yet you will not let people like me try to help them?” This time my anger won, and I did look straight at him, a breach of decorum. Kings should not be questioned.

The wintery eyes chilled even more. “I suppose I could let you prove it on a few victims.”

After two days of silent rage, I found it difficult to control my temper. “About five years ago, gracious lord, I was summoned to treat a dying woman. I had two days’ hard ride to reach her and by the time I arrived, she could not breathe, her lungs were full of phlegm, her fingernails were turning blue. Her physician had given up hope. My cantor and I chanted over her, and she recovered. Had she not done so, Archdeacon John would not be here now.”

His face turned white, but whether from rage or shock I could not tell.

“Your mother,” I added unnecessarily.

“Go then!” he barked. “See what your magic will do for the fluxes and the fevers of Outremer. But you must first warn your patients that your treatment may imperil their souls, and they must give their consent.”

I stood up and bowed. “And one thing more, sire?”

“Ask.”

“If I am granted a vision and it suggests immediate action— an enemy attack coming, say—I shall need access to your presence.” No subordinate would dare interrupt him to say that a wizard wanted audience.

He showed me the royal teeth. “I am tempted to cut off your head and mount it on a bedpost. At least it would be handy.”

“But not much use, even as decoration.”

“I suppose not. Fulk!”

A leather flap billowed, and a young knight appeared. Noting that he held an already-spanned crossbow in one hand and a bolt in the other, I felt the hair on my neck stir.

“Lord King?”

“This is Baron Durwin of Pipewell. Some credulous folk call him Merlin Reborn. He is to be kept supplied with the passwords, all of them.”

From then on, wherever I happened to be, every day just before the night watch came on duty, either Fulk Gourand or some other royal aide would appear at my elbow to whisper passwords in my ear. I was usually so busy that I barely heeded them. Fortunately the Myrddin Wyllt never distracted me with visions when I was healing.

As Richard had known, rumors about the man with the cane being Merlin Redux were already circulating in the camp. I wasn’t happy about them, but I assumed that they would aid me rather than hinder, so I paid them no heed. I had a fairly imposing flaxen beard by then, which may have helped give me archaic status. I was also known as Three Legs, which I liked even less.

We soon discovered that there were more healers still around than Maur had known, mostly barons’ personal sages. All of them had been healing in secret, but their patients had been mostly knights and lords, not the common archers, men-at-arms, or servants. When we passed the word of our new royal authority and set to work, it did not take us long to find the best incantations for the local plagues, and soon we were hauling men away from death’s door by the wagon load. Those who were too far gone to give consent, as the king had required, we had to allow to die, but most of those had passed out of our reach anyway.

Soon I had organized teams, starting with cooperative priests or deacons, who began the process by explaining to each potential patient the Church’s official view that enchantment was devil worship. Knowing the chances of dying from whatever disease they had contracted, very few of them decided to refuse treatment. Next came a squire or page, who asked about symptoms, and thus was able to advise the enchanter and cantor of what they had to deal with—dysentery, typhoid, or tertiary fever. Those were by far the commonest, but there were a few others just as nasty.

One man I was happy to meet again was the king’s favorite minstrel, Blondel de Nesle, and we soon renewed the brief friendship we had struck three years earlier, in England. He came and listened to my chanting one morning, and after a while asked if he could try. He sang like an angel, that man, and the spirits rewarded his patient with a very fast recovery. Tall, slender, blond as his name implied, and a wry observer of mankind, he made an excellent enchanter, or cantor. And when a sufferer declined enchantment as devils’ work, Blondel would sing a psalm or two over him, which often seemed to help too.

I saw very little of William Legier. While I was busy healing, he was busy hunting Saracens. He went out daily with any scouting or foraging party he could find, but the enemy was rarely available for his murderous purpose. Lars had decided that my old friend had gone mad and I found that hard to deny with conviction. To avenge four deaths from fever by slaughtering other human beings hardly seemed rational. I think if his sons had died in battle he would have been happier. It was the very futility of their lives that drove him.

While I was working two thirds of every day at healing, the barons mutinied. Led by Duke Hugh of Burgundy, who had taken King Philip’s place as leader of the French contingent, they voted to attack Jerusalem. Richard seemed to dither for a few days. I may have helped him decide, for I was able to report that I had just seen Lord John in Nottingham Castle, which I knew well, so he wasn’t conspiring with Philip in France.

Early in June, the king announced that he would agree to make another try for Jerusalem, and would remain in Outremer until the following Easter. So the crusader army set out, unwinding across the plain like some gigantic hungry serpent.

Most of our patients were recuperating by then, so I left a small party of healers behind to tend the invalids who remained, while the rest of us went off with the vanguard. The Saracens increased their night raids, but lost more men than they slew. By June 10^th, we had reached Beit Nuba, a small fortress at the base of the hills. It had been razed by Saladin and repaired by the crusaders, for this was where they had halted in January, a mere twelve miles from the Holy City, just one easy day’s ride on a good road—had there been a good road and no resistance.

So near, and yet so far!

And there all progress ceased. The heat was much worse there than it had been in Ascalon, where breezes off the sea had brought us some relief. For a few days, we healers were less in demand, and it seemed that we had left the diseases behind, but they soon caught up with us. Probably it was just that the army had dug fresh latrine pits, which soon became as foul as usual. Even the Romans had known that fevers are caused by bad air.

Rumors abounded—that we were waiting for reinforcements, that the Saracens had poisoned every well between Beit Nuba and Jerusalem so the summer heat would dry us up like prunes, that the walls of the Holy City were so strong that a siege would take longer than the two-year struggle for Acre . . . and so on. I was not so much concerned with why we were going nowhere as I was about Lord John and King Philip conspiring back in France, but I had no more visions to guide me.

Then, on the 20^th, or thereabouts, one came. It was while Lars and I and a group of similarly dog-tired healers were slumped around a fire in the evening, chewing some appallingly vile dried meat. It think it had previously been part of an elderly camel. The fire, I should mention, was minuscule, for there was almost no fuel to be had except dung. It barely warmed the meat laid on it, but it scattered sparks upward to the stars. There was no conversation. I suppose we were all dreaming of the loved ones we had left behind, so very far away. Somewhere much nearer, a group of crusaders were singing Le Chanson de Roland, in Burgundian accents.

According to what Lars told me later, my eyes rolled up and I began to mumble in some unknown tongue. He grabbed me lest I topple into the fire, while everyone else began to mutter about Merlin.

After a few moments I came to myself and looked around to see where I was. Then, “The king!” I said. “I must tell the king!” I scrambled up, almost forgetting my cane in my urgency. Ignoring warnings that there was no way I would be allowed in to see him at this time of night, I went stumbling off through the camp, with Lars at my side, steadying me every time I stumbled over tent ropes.

Passwords! Passwords? What in the name of Holy Peter were tonight’s keys to Heaven?

Fortunately, I had remembered them by the time I reached the guards around the royal enclosure. Challenged by two pikes with a flashing sword right behind them, I said, “Blessed are the meek!” That got me inside, where a flaming torch demanded my name and the second password, but I had the third one ready: “Barleycorn.” The third would win me immediate entry, even if King Richard was in bed with Queen Berengaria—except that she happened to still be far away in Acre.

That same young Sir Fulk Gourand I had met the first time I had been allowed in nervously raised a flap for me and announced, “Baron Durwin de Pipewell, Your Grace.”

I limped into the lions’ den. His Grace was not alone. He was in conference with at least a dozen nobles, all standing in a circle, meaning that they were talking business. At least thirteen pairs of eyes turned to glare at the intruder.

“Durwin!” Richard barked. “You have news for us?”

“Um, yes, Lord King.” I glanced uneasily around the audience. Did he really want me to babble prophetic heresy about visions? I tried to convey with my eyebrows that the two of us ought to withdraw to somewhere private.

A voice said, “Merlin? . . .”

“It had better be from a reliable source!” the king snapped, and I caught the hint—he wasn’t yet ready to receive reports of visions in public.

“One of our best sources, sire. He says that there is an enormous enemy caravan on its way north, guarded by a large escort. At least a thousand camels, he estimates, possibly twice that. He thinks it will be in our area right about the time of the full moon . . . sire.”

Well! The mood brightened dramatically. The lions smelled antelope and smiles blossomed everywhere. The king, especially, looked delighted.

“Excellent! Do you know what route the infidels will take?”

“Alas, no, Your Grace.” One rocky hill or sandy gulch looked like another in a vision. “It may not even have been decided yet.”

“True, very true. My lords, I shall send out more scouts. This may be a chance to bring Saladin to his knees.” The king gave me a nod of dismissal.

Sweating, I found my way out into the chill desert night. Lars was there to escort me back to the Leicester camp—his night sight was much better than mine. I fully expected an early morning summons, but it seemed to come one minute after I closed my eyes. Lars was fast asleep, so Fulk guided me back through the maze to the royal enclosure.

Richard looked almost as weary as I felt, but he was obviously well pleased with me. The strain of leading such a motley army was telling on him, making his moods unpredictable. I was granted a chair and a goblet of fine wine, then he demanded a proper report on my vision.

“I saw some place in the desert waste, Lord King, at first light. The moon was just setting, so it was at the full or one night past it. The caravan was assembling to move out. The vanguard had already left, and they were definitely heading north.”

“Truly a thousand camels?”

“More, sire, many more. Plus horses, mules, dromedaries. A huge host.”

“I already have spies out, you know. They haven’t reported any signs of a great caravan leaving Egypt.”

“It probably isn’t within their range yet, Your Grace, and they have to come back here to report, which takes time.”

“You are very confident, Baron.”

“I stake my word on it, sire. And something I can tell you that your spies cannot—something I could not reveal earlier— is that you are going to intercept it. While I was watching, I watched the Christians’ attack. I swear I saw you in the lead, sire, on a gray horse, with a full moon setting.”

He laughed. “But you did not see yourself there? Because I am going to take you with me, Baron Durwin of Pipewell! And if your vision is not a Satanic trap, we shall deal the Saracens a deadly blow.”

Which would be nothing compared to what he would deal me if it was.

That brief struggle was honored with the monstrous name of Tell al-Khuwialifia, after a pitiable oasis in an otherwise empty desert. On the 24^th of June, the Christians attacked in force, charging out of the dawn. No one had suggested that I don armor or carry a lance. I stayed on the outskirts with a band of other healers, ready to treat our wounded, but few needed us. Although vicious, the fight was short, for most of the Saracens soon panicked and fled. Quite apart from the thousands of baggage animals we took, the loot was stupendous, and it was the first real booty the crusaders had seen, for Acre and other towns they had liberated had all been already stripped bare by the Saracens. Weapons and food, silks and jewels, silver and gold—it was a mythical hoard.

My name was made. The pretense that I was a spy-master running a secret troop was needed no more—not that anyone had ever believed in it anyway. There were no more jokes about devil worshiper or Lord Three Legs. From then on I was a hero, Lord Merlin Redux. Even bishops were sometimes polite to me.

And from then on, King Richard believed in my prophecies—usually.

Soon after that profitable raid, I had a vision of near-panic in a congested city that could only be Jerusalem. I stood atop David’s Tower like an angel on a cathedral spire and watched fortifications still being strengthened. With the vision of a hawk I could make out dead animals being dropped into wells of sweet water far outside the city walls.

But then my view shifted to a street where a long string of camels ridden by armed men was wending in single file through a crowd of weeping and wailing spectators. Dreamlike, I went with them, although in the real world I would never have been able to keep up with them in the crush. I could tell from the riders’ rich raiment and fine weapons that these were no ordinary troops. Eventually we reached a great city gate, which shadows told me faced north, and there foot soldiers were holding the spectators back and the camel riders were forming up in formation around one man. So richly clad he was, and so impressively attended, that he could only be Sultan Saladin himself. Who else would command an escort of hundreds? When the force was properly assembled in formation, the gate was swung open and he rode out.

I went and told King Richard, as soon as he dismissed yet another conference, that Saladin was fleeing Jerusalem. He just grunted that I must not tell anyone else, and dismissed me.

The barons’ meeting had been noisy, and secrets spread like plague in the crusader camp, so I soon leaned the gist of the arguments. The barons still wanted to push on to Jerusalem. The army, almost to a man, agreed strongly. Some of then had been far from home for years, struggling to reach a city that was now a mere day’s walk away. The French, under the Duke of Burgundy, were especially insistent. The Latins who resided in the Holy Land—mainly Templars and Hospitallers—all agreed with Richard, for it would be up to them to hold Jerusalem after it had been liberated from the Saracens’ grip and the crusaders had departed.

Richard, of course, had the added problem of the renegades, his brother and King Philip. What were they up to, back in France? Now that John of Alençon had left to return home, only two other men in the camp knew about that problem—Lars and I—and Richard did not know that Lars did. That same night I was shaken awake and summoned back to the royal compound.

His field tent was almost as sparse as the one I shared with Lars, only slightly larger. Clearly the king had been unable to sleep. He was barefoot, wrapped in a silk gown, and pacing. He greeted me with a grim but apologetic smile.

“I need your advice, Lord Merlin. Pour yourself some wine, sit down somewhere and listen to my troubles.” He took one seat, leaving me a choice of the other.

“I listen well, Lord King, but advise poorly.” His wine was the best in the entire Holy Land, and if to lend a loyal ear was the best way I could serve him, then so I must.

“I apologize for mistrusting you in the past.”

“No need, sire. I am overjoyed that you trust me now.” But did he? I think even now that Richard never trusted any man completely. He knew men too well. And he was right, because I was later to learn that even my Myrddin Wyllt prophecies could be fallible.

“I must warn you, Lord King, that your honored father, may he rest in peace, would heed my counsel on almost any topic except warfare. I am no warrior.”

“But I am,” he said. “And every other man in this camp thinks he is. I want some common sense, that’s all. If you have a vision or two to add, so much the better. Now listen!”

He rose to resume his pacing and began to stack his troubles on my shoulders like straw on a camel. If he lingered too long in the Holy Land, he might lose his kingdom. If he could not take Jerusalem, he would slink home a failure, and that would greatly aid Philip in his aggression, whereas if he could take Jerusalem, he would be a hero throughout Christendom, and no man would dare lift a finger against him. But could he take it, even with all those camels and other pack animals that the caravan raid had provided? His supply lines would be a flimsy thread winding forty miles from the coast through hostile terrain, and even water would have to come from Beit Nuba. Horses and camels drink rivers of water. The holy city itself was almost invincible, protected by rocky cliffs, vulnerable on only one side, where the defense could concentrate.

“Worse,” he growled, still pacing and speaking more to history than to me, “even if it falls, who will hold it? The Hospitallers and Templars are spread too thin, and every other man in the army wants nothing more than to say a prayer at the Holy Sepulcher and then run home with all his sins forgiven. When the next fighting season opens in March, we shall be gone and Saladin will pluck the peach from the branch again.”

The king refilled his goblet and at last sat down. “He is an honorable man.”

For a moment my sleep-starved brain did not understand. Then I said, “The sultan, sire?”

“Aye, Saladin. We are negotiating, he and I. Not face to face, but through his brother, Safadin. If we can make a treaty, we can save thousands of lives on both sides.”

That there had been talks was common knowledge, but I was astonished to hear that the war might end in a truce. Some men—especially Frenchmen—would certainly call these negotiations treason and betrayal. I confess that I was frightened as I glimpsed the full horror of the king’s predicament. Was he seriously expecting me to advise him? Must I bear that cross?

Then my thoughts went otherwise. I looked up and saw that he was regarding me wryly. “You are nodding at something. What?”

“I have been wondering why, if you are so reluctant to attempt an assault on Jerusalem, you brought the army out of Ascalon and so far inland, back to Beit Nuba, where it was last Christmastide. But if you are negotiating a treaty, your voice must sound much louder here than it was when you were down on the coast. You are feinting? Twisting the sultan’s arm, Lord King?”

Those cold pale eyes studied me. “I suspect that you are the only man in the army who has worked that out, Baron Durwin.”

“Perhaps just the only one rash enough to say so, sire.”

He smiled—faintly. “It helps me just to talk it out with someone, and especially with a clever man. If you have foreseen anything that would help, then I want to hear it. But also, I am curious to know what you suggest.”

“Your Grace has already heard everything I have foreseen, and I do not know how any of that will help. I feel almost as if a curtain had been drawn across events, and I am not permitted to meddle further. But a question, if I may? Would you have caught that caravan at Tell al-Khuwialifia had I not foreseen its existence and prophesied that you would intercept it?”

Richard’s eye narrowed, but that may have just been a reaction to the unusual experience of being questioned. “Possibly not. Our spies might not have detected it in time for us to prepare. Why?”

I hesitated, because I wasn’t sure why I had asked. “I am puzzled that I was sent such a clear and helpful vision a few days ago, and now, when you need it, sire, I receive nothing.”

Richard Lionhearted was many things, a very complex person, but stupid he never was. He frowned. “You are assuming that your visions come from God and that the wealth that fell into our laps at Tell al-Khuwialifia was a blessing, but I cannot be certain that it was. It boosted morale enormously, yes, but many men now find themselves much richer than they were, and this tempts them to forsake the cause and go home. It could be that your visions do come from the Devil, and now the Lord is blocking them. You cannot argue that the other way, can you?”

Sadly, I said, “No, sire.” Satan could not block God.

His nod indicated that my audience was now over. “Take that lantern and my thanks, Baron,” he said, and headed for the crucifix to pray.

I had failed him.

The stalemate dragged on. Richard announced that he would go with the army to Jerusalem if it went, and would fight with it, but he would not lead it there, for he was certain the assault would be a disaster. The French took him at his word and saddled up for the journey. No other contingent joined them, and by the end of the day they had returned to quarters.

That effectively ended the Third Crusade. On July 4^th, that fateful anniversary of the disastrous Battle of the Horns of Hattin, an unhappy and sulky army pulled up stakes and began its move back to the coast.

In Jaffa, Lars and I were assigned a very pleasant room— cramped for two, but with a fine view of the citadel and the harbor. The city had surrendered to Richard immediately after the battle of Arsuf, almost a year ago by then, so it had suffered none of the siege damage that had wrecked Acre. We inspected the hospitals and chanted healing spells for anyone who wanted them. We also performed as troubadours a few times, and after one concert, I recognized the hall and realized that we had just fulfilled the long-ago vision that told me we were going to go on crusade.

All too soon the king went north again to Acre. Lars and I followed, and there I was presented to the two queens— Berengaria, queen of England, and Joan, Richard’s sister and widow of King William of Sicily. They were both very gracious and regal, although neither seemed a fabulous beauty to me, who so yearned to be reunited with Lovise.

Acre was still recovering from its long siege, much of it still in ruins. I was assigned a room because I was a baron; Lovise would have called it a closet. Lars had to make do with a blanket on the floor, which was narrowly better than sharing a tent with a gang of men-at-arms.

Richard allowed his negotiations with Saladin’s brother to become public knowledge, because agreement seemed very close. The Christians would keep the coastal strip and the Saracens Jerusalem. The Holy Sepulcher itself would be a Christian church again, which pilgrims would have the right to visit. One indigestible problem was that otherwise insignificant town of Ascalon, south of Jaffa. Richard had invested many months in fortifying it again, because it was the throat between the two halves of Saladin’s empire, Egypt and Syria. He insisted that it remain fortified. Saladin would not agree. Neither side would yield on this. Needless to say, Richard’s enemies continued to spread more rumors of treachery and bribery.

Timing was becoming critical. The shipping season in the Middle Sea ends at the end of September, and many ports forbade departures much after that date. Richard had previously announced that he would stay in Outremer until Easter, but now he seemed so frantic to be off homeward that twice he summoned me and demanded a prophecy of when he would have a signed treaty in hand and could leave. Twice I had to confess that I had been sent no vision.

He scowled at this admission, as he did whenever his Merlin failed him. “Then you had better do what the rest of us do, Baron Durwin. Go away and pray for a miracle, because we surely need one.”

I took that as a dismissal, and departed. I did remember to put a smile on my face as I limped across the crowded anteroom. It wouldn’t do for the king’s prophet to be seen delivering bad news.

A few days later, on 29^th July, King Richard received his miracle. It was sent by Saladin.

I was no longer kept informed of the daily passwords, because Richard’s Merlin was so well known that no one would deny me access to him. He had already retired to bed when I came hopping and skipping, banging my cane, in a fevered rush to tell him my news. This was the palace of Acre, not an army camp, and the king slept with the queen. There was a slight delay before Richard emerged from his bedchamber with a sheet wrapped around his nudity and a glare that would have panicked Hannibal’s elephants.

“Well?” His roar might have been heard all the way to Jerusalem.

I did not flinch. “Lord King, the Saracens are attacking Jaffa.”

His reaction was a surprise. His glare faded into a blank, faraway stare, and then into a delighted grin. Everyone else exchanged astonished glances.

Then the Lionheart said, “Well, that cunning old rogue!” It was exactly the response an expert chess player might make when his opponent makes an unexpected, but clever, move.

Again, I glanced around at the surrounding guards’ faces, and saw that they were still as much at a loss as I was. The king barked one question at me: “When?”

“Now, sire.” I knew that because the foreseeing could not have been clearer had I been standing on the Jaffa town wall.

Nobody got much sleep in the rest of that night. By dawn the king was aboard ship and ready to sail, with a band of about fifty knights and a couple of thousand archers. A small army under Henry of Champagne was preparing for a long march south to Jaffa. Lars and I were in that land party, and it gave us our only real experience of warfare. Of course, Saladin had foreseen this expedition, and had posted troops all along the way to harass and impede us.

As Richard had seen immediately, Saladin’s attack was a masterstroke. If he could retake Jaffa, the port closest to Jerusalem, then the crusaders would be right back where they had been a year earlier, and the Third Crusade would have been an even greater failure than the Second. He very nearly did succeed.

Of course, I can only report what I learned later. Lars and I were busy riding southward while trying to stay alive under the Saracens’ blizzard of arrows. On the second day Saladin’s siege engines brought down a section of the Jaffa town wall and his troops swarmed in to begin the looting and other horrors that always follow such an event. Saladin ordered an immediate attack on the citadel, but was unable to stop the violence in the streets and houses. Thus the citadel was still holding out when Richard’s flotilla arrived. Faced with enemy flags flying in the town and a noisy army lined up on the beach, he assumed that the whole city had fallen until a young priest leaped down from the citadel wall into the sea and swam out to explain.

The king ordered an assault. A storm of bolts from his archers cleared the beach for him, sending the Saracens fleeing to the shelter of the town. As soon as the ships were in shallow water, Richard tore off some of his armor, jumped overboard, and waded ashore. His knights followed, and one of the fiercest struggles of the entire crusade followed on the beach. The giant Richard fought like a legend—Achilles, or Arthur—but so did the man beside him, Baron William of Weldon. Screaming, “For Absolon, for Baudouin, for César . . .” he even out-fought the king himself. That triviality may seem unimportant, but it had a strange influence on later events.

The citadel forces sallied to help. Despite their enormous advantage in manpower, the Saracens were driven off. A couple of days later Saladin ordered a counterattack and there was more ferocious fighting, in which Richard again fought like a one-man army. His utter disregard for his own safety was legendary and the source of his nickname. It was also madness in a king, especially one who ruled such a jumble of territories and had yet to sire an heir. Even Saladin himself is said to have criticized him for this. But again he triumphed. The Christians prevailed, and the Saracens withdrew with their proverbial tails between their legs. Henry of Champagne’s relief force arrived just after that. Lars, Blondel and I set to work repairing the wounded.

William Legier had received an arrow in his left shoulder, which can be a very dangerous wound, but we managed to extract the head and it healed cleanly. He was a happy man at last.

“So, how many Saracens did you kill?” I asked him as I bandaged him.

“Lost count,” he admitted. “Either seven or eleven, but I finished with César, so I need one more for Dominique, to make them all equal.”

“No, you don’t. I am quite certain that Dominique, wherever he may be, is quite satisfied with his memorial, and would be happiest if you just went home now to be a father to his surviving brothers. Won’t that satisfy you?”

He thought for a moment and then shook his head sadly. “You’d never make a warrior, Ironfoot. You never understand.”

The Battle of Jaffa was the end of the crusade. King Richard and Sultan Saladin had fought each other to a standstill. All that remained was to agree on a truce, and then the crusaders could all go home. For the Lionheart, going home was to be much easier said than done.

Jaffa before the battle had been far from a paradise. After the battle it was much less like one, and Richard chose to keep the army outside the city, in tents. This was little improvement, for there were hundreds or even thousands of dead Saracens and dead horses lying everywhere. No one was prepared to bury them, and the stench became indescribable in the August heat. Inevitably, it brought fever. One man badly smitten was the king of England.

As I well knew, this was far from the first time he had been sick since he arrived in the Holy Land, but it was the first time since we enchanters had been allowed to use our art to treat diseases. Alas, Richard was a stubborn man, and he refused to accept our help in his own case. Possibly he feared more accusations of devilry. He grew steadily sicker.

Meanwhile efforts to end the war continued. Saladin’s brother, Safadin, was the main go-between, accompanied by various emirs, their equivalents of our barons. The sticking point was still the fortification of Ascalon, and eventually it was Richard who yielded—the walls would come down. On September 2^nd the Treaty of Jaffa was signed, although the Lionheart was reputedly too weak to do more than offer a handshake.

My information on this came from his aide, Sir Fulk Gourand, who often came to visit Lars and me when we all happened to be off-duty. The three of us would drink wine in the dark, because lights brought such hordes of insects—not that we didn’t get well bitten anyway. Poor Fulk was a fifth son, whose gift for languages had won him his post at the king’s side. With the crusade ending, there would be plenty of able young knights wandering around Christendom looking for employment, and he had no prospects for a living if Richard died. He was appalled that the king was throwing his life away by refusing the healing that conjuration could bring. How could any healing possibly be evil? Had not Jesus healed the sick?

But one night soon after the signing, Fulk seemed more cheerful. “He’s going back to Acre,” he announced after his first swallow of wine. “Says he’ll go in a litter, and he’ll feel better when he gets there.”

“Cleaner air will certainly help,” I said. “Is he strong enough to bear the journey?”

Fulk groaned and said, “I hope so.”

“Lars and I will tag along, just in case he changes his mind on the way.” I could leave the rest of the army in the hands of all the other healers who were now free to serve.

Even with the war ended, a king must not travel without guards, and it was a large procession that wound its way back northward. Lars and I had no trouble attaching ourselves to it. By the middle of the month we had reached Haifa, a small settlement across the bay from Acre itself. The original crusader fort there had been destroyed by Saladin, but some pleasant buildings were still standing, and here Richard called a halt. I feared that he now felt too sick to travel and was preparing to die.

“This is ridiculous!” I told Lars. “I am going to heal him whether he wants it or not. Bring the whole bag. We may need all of them by now!”

In practice we both knew almost every healing chant by heart, but it never hurts to prepare for the worst, so Lars grabbed up the sack of enchantments, and we set off to beard the Lionheart in his den. I stooped out of our tent and almost butted into Fulk, who was puffing as if he had been running. It was, as usual, a very hot day.

“Lord Durwin! The queen wants you!”

“She’s here?” Silly question, because Fulk couldn’t have run all the way from Acre in that heat. “We are just on our way to see the king.”

“I think you’d better hurry if you want to catch him alive.”

We were ushered quickly into the presence of not one, but both queens. Joan, Richard’s sister, was tall and fair-colored. Berengaria, his wife, was tall and dark. They were seated under an awning on the flat roof of a house, and a lady-in-waiting was standing by to interpret, for Berengaria’s Latin was poor and her southern French baffled me completely. Translation is always an awkward arrangement, but that fact might come in handy if either of us ever had to plead that we had been misunderstood. The patient lay under another awning, distant enough that the sea breeze would carry away sounds, and prevent him hearing whatever we said.

“Baron Durwin,” the attendant said, “Queen Berengaria wants to know if you can heal her husband’s fever, as you have healed so many others.”

Wasting no time, Lars had hurried straight from the top of the stairs, over to the dying man. He came back to me to report: “Maybe. Worth a try.”

“Lady Queen,” I said, “your royal husband, our liege, forbade us to chant over him. If we disobey him, he might cut off our heads. Only if you assure us that he has since changed his mind, and that he asked you to send for us, will we dare to do this now.”

Before the attendant could even translate what I said, Joan said, “Yes, he did. I was here and I heard him.” Her reactions were faster than the Spaniard’s, although the language problem might have had a lot to do with that. I didn’t believe what she said, and she did not expect me to, but now we had all the excuse we needed.

I bowed. “Then, by your leave, we will begin at once.” And so we did.

As we strode over to the patient, I heard Lars mutter, “Pray God we are in time.”

The king’s breathing was a heartrending sound, even for me, who was hardened to that choking rattle.

I said, “Amen. Let’s start with the Vene.” We had no need for texts. I gave Lars a pitch and we began a long and desperate battle against the king’s sickness. For the first hour or so, I thought we had come too late, and I would probably have given up had our patient been anyone else. At last he began to breathe more easily, and after that we progressed rapidly. His fever dropped, his pulse steadied, and eventually his eyelids flickered.

I raised his head and let him have some sips of wine.

When he had drunk, he whispered, “By what right?”

“Her Grace, our queen, passed on your orders, sire, saying that you wished us to treat you.”

He frowned, then smiled faintly, and his beard moved in a nod. I was relieved to see that he understood. Patients who have sunk so close to death often recover their physical health but not their wits.

“It is wonderful to see you back, Lord King. The land will rejoice. Now I will send for fresh bedding, and a sponge bath for you. Drink as much as you can, and eat a little when you feel able. You have a lot of recovering to do.”

So we left, spreading the good news to the queen and a whole crowd of courtiers waiting in suspense downstairs. Church bells were rung in Acre.

Three days later, when I paid my usual evening visit to see how the patient fared, I found him already sitting up, sipping broth. I inquired after his bowels and so on. He was still very weak, but I had done all I could for his flesh. His spirit, I judged, now needed help much more. His crusade—for it was his, more than anyone’s—had failed. At best he could claim a draw, but the Holy City remained in the heathens’ hands, and he must see that as a loss. He still had to find a way home, time was running out, and we did not know what John and Philip might be up to behind his back. I feared that his will to live was faltering, and I needed to boost it. I knew exactly how to do this.

“I was granted a vision, Lord King. It was very brief, but quite clear. Saladin is dying, sire! Not right away, but I have seen his death, and there were spring flowers and herbs beside his couch.”

The king took his eyes off me and stared into the distance for a long minute, while I waited for an answer. When it came he spoke it to the scenery. “So all I have to do is stay here until Easter, as I promised, and when the Sultan dies, all his emirs will start scrapping like raunchy cats, and I can pick up Jerusalem like a fresh-laid goose egg?”

“I can only report what I have foreseen, Lord King,” I said uneasily, wondering why he was not more pleased by my news. The fighting season was almost over. The chances that King Philip would attack Touraine or Normandy before next Easter must be very slight. What was wrong?

His eyes, no longer bright with fever, turned to me again. “You swear this is the truth, Enchanter?”

“Aye, sire. Have I ever lied to you?”

“If you haven’t, then you are the only one who hasn’t.” He smiled. “You had better spread the news. Tell my brother.”

“Better to go home and show him,” I retorted, which was extremely improper of me.

He raised an eyebrow, but did not comment, just waved away the two nurses. They scurried off, no doubt to whisper the exciting prophecy they had just overheard. I realized that he had some more personal matter on his mind.

“Bring that stool close,” he commanded, and when I had done so, he continued quietly, not looking at me. “I am very grateful to you, Lord Enchanter, and I no longer doubt that your gifts are from God. I have another matter that troubles me. Can you cure . . .” He drew a deep breath. “Sterility?”

This was a king talking! All men want heirs, but kings especially need them.

“We are not talking about impotence, sire? You can perform the act itself? It is the lack of results that distresses you?”

He nodded, reluctant to put the problem in words. He had been married to Berengaria for a year and a half. Of course they had been far apart for much of that time, but even so, two strong and healthy lovers should have become a threesome by now. The most likely prevention was a curse, and for a moment I thought about Bran of Tara. It did not seem wholly out of character for Lord John to have a sterility curse laid on his brother.

“I have heard rumors to the contrary,” I said.

He shook his head. “I have acknowledged two by-blows. It doesn’t matter, because they cannot inherit, and kings are expected to keep mistresses. Just between us two . . . I doubt that the timing made it possible in either case.”

“Babies do not count very well, Lord King. They can emerge at seven months or ten, whenever they choose. Their mothers have been known to tamper with the data, too. I do have an incantation for the condition you fear, but it is back in England. It requires a single voice, so only the subject and the enchanter need know its purpose.”

I recalled that its marginal notes implied that the singer almost never detected acceptance, and therefore it might be no more effective than plain encouragement, so I continued: “The best treatment is a compound of love and persistence. It is the easiest medicine to take that I know of.”

The Lionheart closed his eyes. “Go, then. And if you breathe one word of this discussion, I will personally cut out your tripes.”

As soon as the king was strong enough to travel, the court moved back to Acre. When I went to see my patient there, I was informed that he was in conference. When next I had a vision I believed was urgent enough to report to him, I was again denied admittance. Finding myself persona non grata, I could only assume that he now so regretted his medical confessions that he could not bring himself to look me in the eye again. As it happened, I was wrong, and he had another reason for avoiding me, but there was nothing I could do. I could not even explain to Lars, who was sorely puzzled.

A few days later I was summoned by the Bishop of Salisbury, Hubert Walter, a close friend of the king, and a nephew of the late Ranulf de Glanville. If you expected a senior priest to be effete and emaciated, he would have disappointed you, for he was a tall and vigorous young man who looked as if he had been carved out of oak. There were a couple of dozen of us standing two-deep around the table, from earls to bishops to minstrels. I was not surprised to see William Legier there; ever since the battle of Jaffa he had been high in the king’s favor. I wasn’t sure in what capacity I had been included—prophet, healer, or minstrel?

Walter began by swearing us all to secrecy. That done, he said, “We are here to plan King Richard’s departure. He has named us as his chosen companions. The two queens will be leaving imminently, but he still has matters to attend to, and must delay his own departure. Sailing so late in the year is always dangerous, and this voyage will be especially perilous. Do any of you wish to visit Jerusalem and wait until the sea lanes open again next year?”

All heads shook.

He smiled. “I expected nothing less. The danger we shall face is that our king has acquired a number of very powerful and unscrupulous foes. Chief among them, of course is Philip of France.

“Nor must we forget the freelance pirates—Moorish, Greek, Saracen, and others. One thing is certain: if anyone can catch King Richard on his way home, Philip will pay a huge price for him, and what will happen after that does not bear thinking about.”

He looked around the glum faces. “Anyone want to change his mind? No? Well, then, you wonder how we will travel? The winds are westerly just now, and no ship ever built can sail through the Gut of Gibraltar against the winds and the current. Nor can any survive the rages of winter in the ocean beyond, so the sea route to England or Aquitaine is out of the question. I do not know which road the king will choose.”

All eyes seemed to turn on me, the king’s prophet, but I did not know either, and did not speak.

There was very little discussion. A sea voyage so late in the year was a daunting prospect in itself, and the political threat was worse.

The bishop dismissed us. “The password will be, May St. Brendan be with you. On the day you receive that, go down to the dock at sunset.”

I lingered, indicating that I needed to speak with him when we were alone. He was obviously reluctant to grant me a private interview, either because he was a bishop and I was a devil-worshiper, or because he knew I was currently out of royal favor. But I persisted, and when the last witness had left, I said, “Your Grace, I have important counsel to offer the king regarding this journey he plans.”

“Then you had better write it down. He does not wish to speak with you.”

“I do not understand. Do you know why I have fallen out of favor?”

“No.” Obviously this was not his fault, and I ought to be glad that I was included in the escort—assuming that I was not to be forgotten at the last minute. I bowed and departed.

On the way out I was accosted by one of Queen Berengaria’s ladies and conducted into her presence. She made me welcome, and we had the usual struggle with dialect and translation. She again thanked me for saving Richard’s life and presented me with a splendid ruby ring, which fitted on my pinkie.

I then begged a favor—that Lars be allowed to accompany her. I assured her that he was very good at curing sea sickness, and she readily granted my wish. My real motive, of course, was that I thought her chances of surviving the journey to England were much better than her husband’s.

When I told Lars of this arrangement, he saw through me right away. “So that at least one of us will survive to comfort Mother in her old age?”

This heavily tanned young man with the sun-bleached hair was not the youth who had left England with me. Crusading had aged him, and me perhaps even more.

“That’s part of it.”

“What has Myrddin Wyllt been telling you now?”

The answer was dusk, a storm, and a ship driven ashore, men fighting for their lives in the surf, myself among them. “Nothing,” I assured him.

“Father!”

“Nothing except this: I have foreseen you arriving at home and greeting your mother, but I am not there. If we leave here together, then the implication must be that I have died on the journey. If we go our separate ways, then perhaps I am merely delayed. You want my oath on this, Son?”

My logic was very shaky, and honor required that he resist, so we had a long argument. In the end I won, and he agreed to accompany the two queens. Thus I took one more step down the slippery slope. When I had implied to King Richard that I knew a cure for sterility, I had not mentioned that I believed it to be useless, so I had not quite told a lie, but what I told my son was outright falsehood. Thankfully, it worked anyway, and when the two queens sailed away on September 29^th, Lars was aboard and my burdens felt lighter.