At the Crossing Places (6 page)

T
O BEGIN WITH, ALAN WAS VERY POLITE. HE ASKED
Turold about his long ride from Ludlow and the new helmet he had made for my father. Then he led him across the Yard, and as he opened the armory door, a large rat raced out.

Alan kicked at it. “Get out!” he snapped. “Who invited you?”

While Turold began to measure me up, Alan leaned against the door. He watched us with his blackberry eyes and picked his chinbeard, and although he didn't say a word, I could tell he was becoming more and more resentful.

“Now then!” Turold said to me. “What about your helmet?” His face is quite wizened, and when he concentrates, all the lines and cracks in it gather and deepen. “The same as Sir John's?”

“You mean with vents?”

Turold smiled. “Without vents, you wouldn't be able to breathe. Would he, Alan? No! I mean flat-topped or round-topped?”

“Flat-topped!” exclaimed Alan. “What kind of a helmet is that?”

“The most recent. The armorers in London are making them.”

“I see,” Alan said bitterly. “London! Ludlow! What's wrong with round-topped?”

“Nothing.”

“And sword strokes glance off flat-topped, do they?”

Turold pursed up his whole face.

“So what stops a man's skull from cracking open each time he's hit?” Alan demanded.

“You're an awkward customer, aren't you?” Turold said calmly.

“And you,” said Alan, “are an interference. What does it all cost, all this newfangled nonsense?”

“Are you paying, then?” Turold asked.

“I knew it!” shouted Alan. “Double the price! Half the protection at double the price!”

“Alan!” I said. “Please!”

“Are you mad?” said Turold. “If I overcharged, I'd get no work.”

“I've heard about you,” said Alan, his voice bitter as a sloe. “You and your armor.”

“Alan! Stop it!”

“It's junk.”

“That's enough!” I said, firmly and quite loudly, and I felt as if I were listening to someone else speaking.

Alan narrowed his eyes at me. Narrow as the dark sight of a helmet.

“Leave us alone,” I said hoarsely.

First Alan spat on the floor at our feet. Then he turned on his heel and slammed the armory door behind him.

Turold raised his eyebrows, and his forehead was a mass of wrinkles. “Very good, Arthur! Very good.”

I swallowed. “I was afraid to begin with,” I said. “I still am.”

“Keep well away from him,” Turold said. “That's my advice.
Now then, if you do choose the flat-topped, you'll need a leather cap, of course…”

After Turold had completed all his measurements, I took him up to the hall to meet Lord Stephen.

“My armorer made you welcome, I hope,” Lord Stephen said.

“In his own way,” replied Turold in a dry voice.

“He did not!” I exclaimed.

Lord Stephen listened and kept blinking. “Jealousy is a deadly sin,” he remarked. “Worse than pride or gluttony. Worse than avarice or sloth. It eats the guts of whoever suffers from it.” Lord Stephen gave Turold a little one-sided smile. “Well! I did rather expect Alan would be upset, but that doesn't excuse his discourtesy. You're our guest…”

“I've heard worse,” Turold said.

“You were brave,” Lord Stephen told me later. “It wasn't easy to speak to Alan like that.”

“He's always so angry, sir.”

“But by asking him to leave his own armory, you were adding insult to injury.”

“I just said it. Without thinking.”

“Perhaps you and Turold would have done better to walk away,” Lord Stephen said. “It's wise to avoid making enemies. Alan was rude to Turold, but the person he's really damaging is himself. Not for the first time either. He attacked Rhys once for very little reason, and broke his right arm. One more thing, and he'll leave my service.”

For a while Lord Stephen stared into the spitting fire. “Now the fire's angry,” he said, and he sighed.

“We had a cat called Spitfire,” I said, “but a peddler stole him. To make a pair of white mittens, Sir John said.”

“Yes, making enemies…” Lord Stephen said. “Weak kingship fosters enmity. Everyone curses and complains, and then some earls and lords start to think they could do better themselves.”

When Lord Stephen said that, I thought of how Sir Pellinore prevented Arthur-in-the-stone and Merlin from riding down the king's highway.

“Enemies within,” said Lord Stephen, “and enemies without. Out here in the March, we need more than words from King John. We have strong leaders…Hereford and Chester. Mortimer, too—he's the constable at Wigmore. But they need the support of their king.”

“Are they coming on the crusade, sir?”

“If they were to turn their backs, the Welsh would soon attack,” Lord Stephen replied.

“But why don't the Welsh join the crusades as well?” I said.

“That's a good question,” Lord Stephen replied. “I could answer that their hatred of the English is greater than their faith. And I could tell you that Welsh warlords still take slaves, human slaves, from here on the March, and they're not worthy to be Christian knights. And I could say they'd be unreliable allies. They're unruly and don't like taking orders and are always falling out with one another.”

Y
OU SEE THAT SQUARE?” SAID LADY JUDITH, STANDING
on her toes and reaching up as far as she could with her long right forefinger. “That shows our betrothal.”

I stared up at the blue silk boy and the green silk girl kneeling in front of their parents.

“How old were you, my lady?” I asked.

“Nine,” said Lady Judith.

“Nine!” I exclaimed.

“What's wrong with that?” Lady Judith asked. “The second stage of childhood begins when you're seven.”

“How old was Lord Stephen?”

“Fourteen,” said Lady Judith. “Now that one right up there! Can you see Lord Stephen falling out of the tree? He was eleven, and he broke his wrist and his right leg. Yes, here he is holding manor court for the first time. And this is when Piers was plowing in Fallow Field and turned up a pot full of Roman coins.”

“Roman coins!” I cried.

“All in good time,” said Lady Judith. “Lord Stephen may show them to you.”

“Who is this lady?” I asked.

“The mother of Coeur-de-Lion and King John. Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine.”

“Lord Stephen has met Queen Eleanor?”

“She's old now,” Lady Judith said, “very old, and her years are full of groans. But when Lord Stephen met her, she was still the most beautiful woman alive. Look! She was wearing a red mantle, poppy red, with a silver border embroidered with gold lions.”

“Did you meet her too?” I asked.

Lady Judith shook her head. “Coeur-de-Lion was away crusading, and the queen was ruling England. She summoned Lord Stephen with the earls of Chester and Hereford to advise her.”

For a while we stood and stared at the enormous wall hanging: The dozens of colored panels were bright as the beds of stormpurple pansies and orange marigolds and cream lilies and red roses in the garden at Caldicot; the wide borders were stitched with little sundials and burning candles.

“So this is the life of Lord Stephen de Holt,” announced Lady Judith, flexing her fingers. “Up to today. The seventh day of February in the year 1200. The plain linen at the bottom is for the part still unlived. God grant us both the years to complete the whole hanging.”

I looked at Lady Judith, and I know we were both thinking about the crusade and whether Lord Stephen and I will ever come safe home.

“I've been sewing it since we were married,” Lady Judith told me, “and that's twenty years ago.”

“Do your fingers sometimes get stiff?” I asked.

“All the time. On the worst days, Rowena has to sew on her own.”

“Mine ache when I've been writing for a long time.”

“Look!” said Lady Judith, and she pointed to the last stitched square. “Do you recognize this?”

I stared at a girl on horseback, with red-gold hair, her cloak on fire, pelting downhill from a castle towards a waiting boy and his horse.

“You see?” Lady Judith said. “You are part of the story already.”

L
AST SPRING, I WORKED OUT I HAD THREE SORROWS,
three fears, and three joys.

I still have, but they're all different.

My first sorrow now is that I realize my mother cannot have even wanted me to be born. I don't belong with her or Lady Alice or Lady Helen or anyone. My second sorrow is that my father is Sir William. He's a murderer and loathsome, and I dread having to meet him again. My third sorrow is Gatty. She and Jankin may never be able to marry, and I wish I could see her sometimes and talk to her.

My first fear is that my mother may not even be alive. But even if she is, she may not want to see me, and that's my second fear. My third is that Alan's right about my Yard-skills not being good enough, and that in the end Lord Stephen will decide not to take me to Jerusalem.

Winnie is my first joy. I like her and I think she likes me, and I'm looking forward to visiting her at Verdon. Second, I'm glad I'm Lord Stephen's squire. He's fair and usually friendly and even thanked me for coming to serve him. My third joy! That's my glorious chestnut warhorse. I'm going to call him Bonamy.

Y
ESTERDAY WAS AN UNLUCKY DAY, I'M NOT SURE WHY.
Maybe because it was the feast day of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, who mistook his father and mother for two robbers and killed them both. They were certainly unlucky!

Lord Stephen excused me Yard-practice and my lesson with Haket so I could accompany him to the muster at Verdon and meet all the other knights of the Middle March who have taken the Cross. But he had some business to attend to first, so I went up to my room and unwrapped my seeing stone.

It was odd. What I could see and what I could hear didn't exactly fit; or rather, they were two sides of the same story. That has never happened before.

King Arthur is mounted and in company, and at least fifty earls, lords, and knights are riding with him, as well as several hundred men on foot. His brother and steward, Sir Kay, is riding on his left, and Sir Brastias, commander of the North, is on his right. I can see Sir Lamorak and Sir Owain. And Sir Balin of Northumberland, King Bors of Gaul, King Ban of Brittany, and with his gold shield crossed by three grass-green stripes, the Knight of the Black Anvil: They're all with the king.

They're riding up a wide valley, and there's a wood in front of them.

Now a herald blows his trumpet, three short blasts, and King Arthur reins in.

“The dark drumroll of war,” says a voice, Merlin's voice, but I can't see Merlin in the stone. It's as if the words are inside Arthur-in-the-stone's head.

And now I can hear voices coming from the wood.

“Not until he's down and dead.”

“Our kiss-curl king!”

“Easy meat!”

“England has been lawless for too long,” Merlin says. “I've told you that before.”

“Down and dead,” says a voice in the wood. “Destroyed.”

“I can raise one hundred men.”

“And I can raise one thousand.”

“Last night,” says the voice of a young man, “I had a dream. I was right up in the air, staring down at all our castles and manors. They looked as small as chess pieces. Then the south wind spun, it rocked and toppled them. After that, there was a flood. A silver scythe. It picked up all our castles and our manors and carried them away.”

There's quiet for a while, and now I see King Arthur's whole army has come to a halt.

“For each man loyal to the crown, there is some Sir Pellinore, ready to take the law into his own hands,” Merlin's voice says, “and for each Sir Pellinore, a man intent on treason. Hunt down your enemies wherever they are—King Brandegoris and King Clarivaus, the King of the Hundred Knights, King Lot of Orkney. Oblige them to swear their allegiance; and if they will not, put them to death. A weak king soon fosters enemies.”

“There will be a fierce battle,” says a dark voice in the wood.

“That's what your dream means.”

“We'll topple King Arthur.”

“And we'll sweep him away.”

Now King Arthur's knights shout and separate, they canter away to left and right. There's a wind at their backs, and the linen surcoats over their armor tug and flutter.

Arthur-in-the-stone raises his gold shield, and the scarlet dragon ramping on it roars at whatever is lying in wait for it.

“The dark forest of my life,” Arthur says.

“But not alone,” says Merlin's voice.

The herald puts his trumpet to his mouth. He gives a long blast and Arthur's knights canter forward, followed by the foot soldiers. Now the king's enemy breaks cover. Hooting and howling, they run out of the trembling wood…

At this moment, there was a loud smacking and cracking on the stone steps up to my room. Hurriedly, I wrapped my obsidian in its cloth, and then there was a clout on the door.

It was Izzie, podgy and pink-faced.

“Why are you making all that noise?” I asked.

Izzie waved a stick and then smacked the wall with it. “It all echoes,” she said. “Is this your room?”

“What do you want?”

“Who's that man?” Izzie asked, pointing at my clay tile.

“Izzie!” I said. “What do you want?”

Izzie giggled and put her hand over her mouth. “Lord Stephen's ready to ride to Verdon,” she said, and then she giggled again and ran back down the steps, trailing her stick behind her.

“Now,” said Lord Stephen as we set off, “this country will be new to you. North through Bryn and Einion.”

“Welsh?” I asked.

“The names are Welsh but the land's English. It's east of Offa's Dyke. The muster's at midday and it's seven miles to Verdon, so we must keep moving.”

“I'm looking forward to seeing Winnie,” I said.

“And I want to know exactly how many Marcher knights have decided to take the Cross,” Lord Stephen said.

What I didn't tell Lord Stephen was that I was nervous Sir William might show up. “Adventure and the land oversea burn in his blood,” Sir John had told me before I left Caldicot, saying that he wouldn't be surprised if Sir William decided to go crusading one last time.

The first unlucky thing yesterday was that Izzie stopped me from seeing the battle between Arthur and his enemies. And then, while we were riding alongside the graveyard at Bryn, Lord Stephen made an awful choking sound and sneezed.

“God bless you, sir,” I said.

“Right next to all these graves,” said Lord Stephen, shaking his head. “I couldn't help it.”

It wasn't long before the angry dead took their revenge on us. About one mile after we had left Bryn, Lord Stephen's palfrey went very lame; and then, while we were struggling along, we saw two brown-and-white pigeons sitting on the path in front of us.

“The pigeons of Caehowell!” Lord Stephen exclaimed. “First my sneeze, then this lame beast, and now these death-pigeons. A
man may choose to ignore one omen, but we can't ignore three. We weren't meant to travel today.”

And with that, Lord Stephen patted his palfrey and wheeled him round.

Before long, it began to drizzle; then the rain quickened, and by the time we got back to Holt, we were both drenched. My nose was dripping. My chin and eyelashes. Everything!

“First things first,” Lord Stephen said briskly. “I must talk to Rhys about this poor hobbled creature. You go indoors out of this vile weather.”

Lord Stephen is never angry or even downcast, so I suppose the four humors must sing in harmony in his body. Johanna once told me at Caldicot that a child is only gloomy or resentful if he's conceived under a sickle moon; then his liver will be perforated with hundreds of tiny holes, like cheese, and he won't want to eat or drink much.

All the same, Lord Stephen wasn't at all pleased this morning. He sent Simon over to Verdon to find out about the muster and explain to Sir Walter why we hadn't come, and Simon returned with the news that only seven knights had turned up. “And five of them,” he said, “haven't decided whether or not to take the Cross.”

“I'd hoped we'd be sailing to Flanders soon,” Lord Stephen told me. “Count Baudouin will be taking the Cross in Bruges with his wife, Countess Marie, and I thought the Marcher knights could do so at the same time. But only seven! We'll just have to wait.”

To make matters much worse, Lord Stephen then said: “This delay does mean there'll be time for you to go Gortanore. After your birthday. That'll be best.”