Lancelot Read online

  Including the rearguard, there were thirty-three warriors amongst us, along with another twelve men, young and old, who could be called upon to fight if necessary. Not enough to beat King Claudas. Not without my father and Uncle Balsant and our champion Tewdr leading them. We all knew it. But warriors need their boasts like kings need wine, and that dawn the men’s threats and promises were as a salve to their wounded pride. Because while friends had lain dead in the snow, picked at by Claudas’s men, while spear-brothers had raised their shields and stood their ground and fought to the last breath, these men had fled into the night.

  So had my father and my brother. So had I.

  I could see them in my mind now, my uncle and Tewdr, Budig and Salaun and the others, as I gathered wood for the fire which my father’s steward, Meven, had summoned to life with feathered sticks and dry tinder. Like heroes from one of the old tales they had made their stand, those brave men, so that we who now lay about by that stream, dazed and drained and beaten, could live. We would sing of them one day. I was certain of it. When my father came back to himself and raised a war host and paid our enemies back in steel and blood.

  Steel and blood. That was how it would be, I swore to myself as I tramped shivering back to Meven, my arms full of sticks. Then over the bundle I saw a boy some four or five years older than I holding the sparhawk’s wicker basket which I had set down against a silver birch tree. He was carrying it towards another fire beside which three men crouched, blowing the flames and feeding them a morsel at a time.

  I dropped the sticks and ran.

  ‘This will burn better than—’ the boy called to those gathered round the fire, but he did not finish what he was saying because I threw myself at him, hitting him in his side so that the two of us were flying for a heartbeat, then we were in the snow, flailing. Fists whirring, his larger than mine, and he was yelling wildly. A man’s curses from a boy’s mouth. Until hands bigger than either of ours grabbed his cloak and hauled him up and he was flying again, this time landing in a hole all his own.

  ‘Are you mad, boy?’ the man bellowed at him. It was Reunan the potter, and his son, who had thought to burn my basket, was called Tudi. ‘This is the king’s boy!’ Reunan cried. ‘You’ll get us hanged or worse. Beg his pardon for the love of all the gods!’

  ‘I didn’t know it was his basket, Father!’ Tudi protested, the colour gone from his face except for a raw graze on his forehead above his right eye where one of my blind punches had caught him. ‘He just came at me. Like a little boar. What was I to do?’

  The only reason I knew Tudi was because he had put himself forward to be Hoel’s apprentice, for which I could not blame him, hawks being infinitely more exciting than the pots his father made. Not that Reunan saw it that way and in all likelihood would never have allowed his boy to learn the falconer’s art even had Hoel accepted him. Which of course he had not.

  The potter grabbed his boy with one hand and with the other struck him across the cheek. ‘Beg his pardon, lad, or I shall beat you halfway past death.’

  ‘Reunan!’ His wife Briaca was standing behind him, her chafed red hands to her mouth. But Reunan hit Tudi again and this time blood flew from his lip onto the snow.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Tudi spat towards me as I gathered the upended basket and wiped the snow off it, fearing that some damage might have been done to the little creature inside.

  ‘This is mine,’ I said.

  ‘Cry your pardon, I did not know. It was so light,’ Tudi protested. ‘I was just looking for dry fuel for the fire.’

  ‘He’s a fool, my prince. I know it. But he meant you no harm,’ Reunan said, wincing at the hurt he had done some fingers in hitting Tudi. Bad for business, that. Not that he had a workshop now, or customers clamouring for his wares.

  ‘Well, this is mine,’ I said again, lifting the basket so that I could peer in through a small gap in the weave.

  ‘No, boy. It’s mine.’ I turned to see my father, sitting by Meven’s fire on an oak chest which one of the slaves had carried through the night. Most of the slaves had taken their chances and fled in the chaos and the dark, but this one, having to bear my father’s own chest, had been watched closely. ‘Bring him to me, boy,’ my father said, his head lifted slightly from the fur-clad mass of his body.

  They were the first words he had spoken since we had turned our backs on Balsant and Tewdr, and all eyes were on him. Every tongue around those half-dozen fires was still. My mother nodded and hissed at me to obey and quickly, for she could see the king emerging from his dark languor and would have me draw him out further.

  The basket pulsed in my hands. I could feel the life in it, beating like a zealous heart. I nodded and walked towards my father.

  ‘Even as those rancid swines were burning and slaughtering, the boy here had the courage to save my bird,’ he told them all, beckoning me to him with a flap of his big hand. ‘A shame he could not carry old Hoel off too, hey.’ His voice was flat as a pond and folk did not know if they should find humour in the words, so wisely kept their faces straight.

  I should have said something then, before it was too late. I should have explained what had happened. Told him I had only done what Hoel asked of me. But the weight of all those eyes, like ring mail pressing me down into the snow. And it was already too late.

  ‘Father,’ I said, stopping five feet from him in the space his retainers had made for me.

  ‘Take him out. Let me see him,’ the king said. He sat a little straighter in anticipation. Everyone knew how he loved the gyrfalcon. His people hoped the sight of it now would restore him to his nobility.

  I put the basket down and pulled Hoel’s gauntlet from my belt, thrusting my left hand into the soft, cavernous space which reeked of sweat and sheep grease, feeling that I was betraying Hoel by doing it. Then with my other hand I reached for the latch, my fingers fumbling at the peg fastener as Hoel’s had done at the mews, until the little door was open.

  ‘That son of a sow Claudas did not rob me of everything,’ my father mumbled into his black beard, and I peered inside the basket, as if by sheer will I could change the sparhawk into the tercel. She shrieked at me for a coward. In my peripheral vision I saw my father sit a little straighter, his dark brows knitted. I shushed the sparhawk, easing my gloved hand into her mute-spattered prison, hoping she would not savage me when I lifted her out, for she did not know me well. Then I brought her out of the basket into the crimson-hued dawn and the gasps made her bate wildly but she could not fly because I gripped her jesses and held on.

  I turned my face, wary of her beating wing, knowing she hated all those eyes on her as much as I did. She was confused too, by the familiar glove but the strange hand within, which did not come close to filling it.

  ‘What is this?’ my mother asked. Some others were whispering or murmuring but most were watching my father again now, fearing his reaction.

  ‘She’s broken her tail feathers, see?’ Derrien told the gathering, and to my horror I saw he was right. It must have happened when I made Tudi drop the basket. But breaking the sparhawk’s feathers was the least of my crimes and everyone knew it.

  ‘Boy?’ That was all my father said. His eyes said more. He stood and came over to me and I turned slightly, pulling my left arm behind me because I thought he would take the sparhawk off the glove and snap its neck. Or else he would hit me.

  He did neither. But loomed over me, the stench of his bear fur in my nose, and glared at the bird, which glared at the king. In truth the bird met my father’s challenge with such a look of mad defiance that he surely must have admired her. Or envied her.

  But she was not the snow-white gyrfalcon and would never be.

  My father’s eyes came back to my own and I shivered. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. His teeth dragged across his lip and then he turned his back on me. On the hawk. And trudged back through the snow to the fire.

  And then, as men and women found their voices again and went back to fe
eding the flames and warming themselves, my uncle Balsant came back from the dead.

  Folk cheered when they recognized who had come. They clambered to tired feet and called Balsant’s name and lifted their cups of meltwater as if raising cups of mead at a wedding feast. And Balsant knew they needed this moment, this small victory in the midst of defeat, so he sat tall in the saddle, like a conquering hero, though stopped short of drawing his sword and pointing it at the sky.

  My own heart leapt in my chest, for my uncle and for the stallion which carried him. Malo. Still shining from his grooming, his muscles bunching and smoothing in beautiful rhythm, the warrior swaying gently upon him. My father’s greatest and best horse. Polished ebony. Night made flesh, emerging from the woods into the dawn, as aware of the stage he trod as was the man on his back who should have been dead but was not.

  They had tried to kill my uncle by the looks. A bloodstained strip of cloth bound his right thigh and another wrapped his right forearm, ill-tied and soaked through. There was dried blood in his beard and on his neck and the flesh around his left eye was blue and so swollen he could not have seen much out of it. I tried to imagine the fight from which he had come, the only Benoic man still standing. I spun the picture in my mind, of Balsant hacking our enemies down with his great sword. Defying them until all was lost and he chose, almost reluctantly, to escape so that he might fight another day.

  ‘It is good to see you, Balsant,’ Govran greeted him, patting Malo’s neck where the jagged veins bulged beneath the skin.

  ‘This all of us?’ Balsant asked, looking over the gathering whose breath rose to him in a cloud. He had expected more than this. Was disappointed perhaps that Tewdr, Budig, Salaun and the others had given their lives for so few. He expected greater than the debris he now saw floating on the dawn tide. It was true we had left too many behind.

  ‘This is it,’ Govran admitted, ashamed. My uncle made a deep sound in the back of his throat and Malo lifted his head towards the fire and nickered. I knew the proud beast was wondering why his lord and master had not come over to fuss him. My father would pay for that next time he climbed onto the stallion’s back.

  ‘Meven, fetch Balsant a drink,’ my mother called over her shoulder, her eyes on my uncle’s back as he dismounted. Govran took Malo’s reins. My mother went over and took Balsant’s hand. I saw his big fingers curl round hers. A stab of hatred twisted in my guts. ‘Come. Warm yourself,’ my mother said, leading him to the fire where my father sat, one of the only sons or daughters of Benoic who had not risen to greet Balsant. His eyes were on his brother, though, and he must have been relieved to see him alive, even if he would not show it. Even if I had finally broken him by bringing the sparhawk instead of his gyrfalcon. Even though I had brought him such disappointment.

  ‘Tewdr?’ Derrien asked. We all knew Tewdr was dead of course, but even as low as we were, men were not beyond morbid curiosity. Derrien was not alone in wanting to know how our champion had spent his last moments in this life.

  ‘He fought. He died,’ Balsant said and would be drawn no further. He was no bard, my uncle.

  ‘You saw King Claudas?’ Hector asked. It was a good question if the nods at his asking were anything to go by. More important I suppose than the gory telling of Tewdr’s last moments.

  ‘I saw him,’ Balsant said, wincing as he raised his hands to the fire to warm them. That wound in his upper arm would need cleaning and stitching. But he’d had worse. ‘Would’ve liked to give him a proper welcome,’ he said through a grimace, ‘but I’d just put two men down when I saw one of the whoresons fighting with Malo.’ A grin came to his lips then. ‘Trying to pull the beast by his halter he was, the damned fool, and o’course Malo was having none of it. So I bid my farewells to those I was killing, ran over to the beast, killed the idiot who was trying to steal him, and mounted while I had the chance. Once we cleared that mess, there was not a bastard among them who was going to catch us.’ He shrugged. ‘Here I am.’

  Hector glanced at my father but it was clear the king, all furs and glower, had nothing to say. He was staring into the fire, listening to the whispering tongues of the flames rather than looking at his brother. ‘Well, we will thank the gods for your deliverance, Uncle,’ Hector said, gaining an approving nod from my mother.

  ‘Don’t thank the gods, lad. Thank this,’ Balsant said, gripping the silver-chased hilt of the sword at his right hip. ‘And thank those other men who stood with me, shoulder to shoulder.’ It was not meant as an insult to those warriors who had not stayed, but some of them could not help but take it as such. Not that Balsant cared what they thought. He had said it for those women amongst the gathering who were swaddled in grief and swallowing their tears. Tewdr’s wife Annaig. Budig’s wife Madenn. Salaun’s woman Enora, and others besides.

  ‘So where will we go?’ my uncle asked, looking from the king to my mother and even at Hector. But Hector was still more boy than man and he could only squirm under the weight of a question like that.

  ‘West,’ my mother said. ‘To King Ronan’s land. He is no friend of Claudas and will help us. For a price.’

  ‘And we have the silver to buy his help?’ my uncle asked. Mutterings at that.

  My mother frowned. We did not have the silver. Or if we did, she did not want everyone round her knowing about it. Even with Balsant returned to us, she feared my father’s own men turning on him. She believed they might rob us and kill us and seek service with another king, perhaps Claudas himself.

  ‘No, we continue north,’ my uncle said, seeming to look through the pines ahead, beyond to the white heath and oak woods and further still. The dawn sunlight cast the right side of his face in a sickly hue and in the shadow on the other side I saw liquid oozing from his swollen left eye. ‘North, to Bro-Dreger,’ he said.

  ‘To the Beggar King?’ The king’s voice was a low rumble, like rocks tumbling down a hillside.

  ‘He will help us, brother,’ Balsant said, nodding at my father. ‘As well you know, he will help you just to have you in his debt.’

  ‘We would not put ourselves in that man’s debt,’ my mother said through a twist of lips. The very idea put a bad taste in her mouth.

  ‘What choice do we have?’ Balsant asked her. Then he shrugged. He looked exhausted. Too tired almost to talk. ‘He won’t call in the debt until my brother sits on the throne again. By then we will be stronger. And when we are stronger …’ He shrugged again.

  ‘We repay in favour, silver or blood. However my husband sees fit,’ my mother answered for him, coming round to my uncle’s way of thinking.

  They both looked at my father, who nodded then turned his gaze back to the fire. And so it was decided we would continue north. To the lands of the Beggar King.

  3

  The Beggar King

  WE MOVED SLOWLY through that white, sleeping world. Fur-clad like beasts. Trudging and sluggish, weak with hunger but relentless. To the soaring eagle and the swan we must have looked like a trickle of old blood working itself across clean linen.

  We were too many and too well-armed to prove a temptation to brigands. And we always maintained a rearguard, in case King Claudas’s men had taken up the scent, so we did not fear man or wolves. But we did fear the unnatural winter, which still reigned long after it should have given way. It was cruel and spiteful. Murder to some of the old and the wounded, and hard even on the young and strong, because they were not accustomed to it. We had shut our doors on the world these last months. Smoked ourselves like mutton joints by the hearth and half drowned in hot spiced wine. We had shared the bestial warmth of hounds and sheep, cocooned ourselves in pelt and fleece and crawled with lice.

  Now our greatest enemies were starvation and the cold, and by the time we came beneath the Beggar King’s sky we had left another six corpses for the wolf and the carrion crow. No tools to dig a grave in the frozen earth. No strength to anyway, nor to gather wood for pyres. The dead were abandoned by the living, some with their dignity stri
pped along with their wools and linens. Left there naked; blue-skinned offerings to Arawn, lord of the dead. I saw two given a shroud of brittle ferns and snow for their kinfolks’ need for some ritual, and it struck me that come the thaw those corpses would emerge as grisly gifts among the wood anemone and lady’s smock. The dead seeming to rise with the sap.

  I saw no further sign of Flame and was sad for it. Either the fox was wary of coming near such a caravan of hungry people, or else he knew I had no food to share with him. It was possible he had even been caught in one of the snares which the men set every night away from the camp, but I heard of no one catching or eating a fox and so I hoped my little friend was alive and well and wished him good luck nightly as I lay looking up at the stars.

  Each day before the dawn I would climb out of my nest of skins and pelts, melt the snow with the steaming contents of my bladder, and go shivering with Govran into the woods to check his traps. The groom thought I went to be away from my father and admitted he did not blame me, what with the king mired in his dark mood, and I let him think that. But really it was because I wanted to make sure he had not caught Flame, and because I needed whatever scraps of flesh he would give me for the sparhawk.

  One morning, he gave me the head and both forelegs of a hare. Another day, he let me take the ribs, hips and neck of a squirrel, but nothing more because he knew it was for the bird and he would not see folk starve on her account. In truth I still begrudged the bird for not being the gyrfalcon and for having to carry her basket every step of the way. Added to this, my own stomach ached with hunger such that it took a great determination not to eat those meagre morsels myself. But I was all the more determined to keep the sparhawk alive because my father had so readily dismissed her. Had, with quiet contempt, dismissed us both.