Blaze of Silver (15 page)

“Where shall we go?” wept Elric.

Hal thought for a moment, trying to keep his composure. “We ought to go home,” he said doubtfully, “to tell them.”

Elric clung to him again. The thought of Old Nurse's face was unbearable. “No,” he cried, “we should at least try and find Hosanna and Sacramenta. Surely they can't be dead, too? We must find them. Isn't that what Will would want us to do? And what about the silver?”

Hal frowned. He knew he should care about the silver.
All his training told him that matters of state were more important than personal losses. But he could not care. He did, however, care very much about Hosanna and Sacramenta. He looked about him. The cart tracks were still visible. Hitching Elric onto Dargent, he climbed on himself. Elric was right. They should find the horses. It was the least they could do.

If Dargent found carrying the two of them hard, he did not object. They dismounted often to try and tease out the ransom cart tracks from others. Hal was puzzled greatly by the southerly direction the ransom seemed to be taking for surely the imperial troops should be heading east. At the river, when the cart tracks disappeared entirely, they had to guess which way to go. Neither Hal nor Elric thought about Kamil, presuming him dead with Will, or about Shihab. They thought only of Hosanna and Sacramenta and Hal had a hard job keeping Elric from despairing self-reproach.

It was through luck on the third day that they found Ellie's necklace. Lying down for the night having stolen rabbits from peasant traps, Elric shifted and groaned until Hal suggested they move to somewhere more comfortable. Elric mumbled and put his hand under his back to pull out what he thought was a stone and tossed it away. It landed under Dargent's saddle and, in the thin dawn light, it would have gone unnoticed except that the leather thong caught on the stirrup and suddenly, in front of Hal's eyes, the green jasper trickled out in a glowing stream. Hal was not quick enough to catch it, but Elric was. It dropped into his filthy hands and at once the boy began to jabber. “God in Heaven, Hal, it's Mistress Ellie's necklace! And here in
this place! She must be alive! The men who've got the silver must have taken her with them.”

But Hal could not believe it. “They've stolen it from her,” he said, but he quickly finished saddling Dargent.

Elric refused, point-blank, to accept that. “This necklace is full of luck,” he declared confidently, his old chirpiness returning fast. “If we found it, it's a sign. I just know it, Hal. I think at least Mistress Ellie is alive. Perhaps Will, too.”

Hal did not dare believe it, but he didn't want to knock Elric back. “What's the necklace telling us to do, then?” he asked gently, forbidding himself really to truly share Elric's hopes. “Should we go on following the tracks or not?”

“Yes, follow them,” said Elric. “Come on.”

Hal frowned but did not refuse.

But the tracks kept on disappearing and when they asked people they met if they had seen a cavalcade of heavily armed men surrounding wagons, the people shrugged, unable to understand Norman French and not very impressed with two ragged creatures on an increasingly ragged horse. Deeper and deeper into unfamiliar country they went, crossing borders unknowingly and occasionally hiding from men wearing strange armor and flying unknown pennants. The forests seemed thick and endless and nothing about them inspired confidence. Once, some jobbing stonemasons told them, in a gutteral dialect they could just about grasp, that wagons had gone south, and for a week they rode faster, expecting every day to see Hosanna's red tail or, by some miracle, to hear Will's or Ellie's voice. But most of the time they both knew they were going around in bigger and
bigger circles though neither said a word about that. At night Hal stared at the stars as if they could help him but they never did.

After a month of utter frustration, even Elric's optimism was fading and one morning, Hal saddled Dargent and turned the horse to the North. Elric argued, as was his habit, but though Hal listened, he was not deflected. This was no good. As they made their way slowly back along roads they had already traveled, Elric fell silent. Only in the evenings, as he held fiercely on to Ellie's necklace, did he tell Hal that he knew, he just knew, all would be well. They had not found the necklace for nothing. Hal let him prattle but he himself felt leaden as he sat in front of their makeshift fire trying to think, trying to work out what Will would do in his place. Never did he come up with the same answer twice. He needed somebody else to talk to.

Hal did not tell Elric at once that they were going to Arnhem to tell Marissa what had happened, and to see if the nuns had heard any news, for convents were hotbeds of gossip, and by the time Elric realized, and objected violently, Hal was exhausted enough to be sharp. “At the very least the nuns will give us another horse,” he snapped, “and maybe they know something. Nobody may care about dead Hartslove men but if Richard's ransom has gone missing they'll care about that.”

“Why do we have to go to Marissa's convent, though?” Elric muttered furiously. He couldn't bear the thought of her triumph when she knew the trouble he had caused. He pressed Ellie's necklace into his palms. “She'll just shout.”

“If Will and Ellie are dead, she has to know, and it's
our duty to tell her,” Hal retorted. “And if, as you believe, Will and Ellie are alive, then perhaps we'll learn something that might be helpful. Why did the ransom seem to go south, for instance, when we know Richard is at Speyer? I don't know anything anymore, nor do you. We need to talk to other people, preferably people whose language we can understand.”

Their arrival at Arnhem was not a happy one. Marissa, pale and very thin under her ugly habit of undyed wool and with her short hair still shocking, was astonished, then devastated to see them. As Hal told his tale she would not look at Elric, which crushed and humiliated the boy more than any shouting. She spoke exclusively to Hal, begging for every detail, gazing at Ellie's necklace with dread. She did not wait until Hal had finished before jumping up, her distress making her mind very clear. “The nuns will give us horses. If Will is dead, we must get to Richard—or at least you and I must, Hal—” She glared dismissively at Elric. “We can't tell what's happened to the ransom but suppose it's been stolen?” Hal gave a small exclamation. It was possible, of course, but stolen by the imperial soldiers? It made no sense. Marissa did not stop, however. “Richard and the emperor must know that Will had nothing to do with it,” she said, pacing up and down. She couldn't bear the idea of Will's name being dragged through the mud any more than she could bear the thought that despite the fact that she had remained in the convent, God had sent down this appalling punishment. “And then we've got to look for Hosanna and not give up, ever, until we find him. Never, you understand? Never.”

She ran to the prioress but though she begged and pleaded the prioress would not allow her to leave. The refusal was calm and measured and she looked to Hal to uphold her against Marissa's hysterical rage. No nun from St. Martin's could go rampaging around the country when there were two perfectly good men to perform such a duty. At this Hal looked very uncomfortable and Elric sat up a little straighter. It was enough. Marissa turned on the boy with the full force of her scalding grief and frustration. She hated him. He was wicked and dangerous. What was more—she chose her insults with cruel care—he lacked all the qualities necessary to be a knight like Will. Even Kamil, a foreigner, had been a better friend to Hartslove. Will had taken Elric in because he felt sorry for him and had been repaid with mayhem and death. Marissa spared Elric nothing and the boy's ears were still ringing with venom when he mounted the horse the nuns lent him. The horse was not as fine as Dargent, but for once Elric made no comment. Indeed, it was only by chattering hard to Hal as they left Arnhem headed for Speyer that he could drown out Marissa's words and carry on clinging to the certainties he prayed were embedded in the green jasper necklace that he had tucked into his shirt.

After they had gone, the prioress sat with Marissa for a long time. The girl was silent now; then abruptly she got up and ran into the abbey church. She knelt right at the front as she railed against God. The wise prioress watched her from the back, frowning slightly, and when, three days later, she found Marissa, her belongings, and the laundry pony gone, she did not become agitated or send out a search party as Agnes and the
other nuns expected. Instead, she sat in the abbey church herself, praying that God would look after this troubled child and do with her as he, not the prioress, thought best.

An hour after the Old Man's arrival, he sat dressed in the finest gold and silver samite under a jewel-encrusted canopy held by four shivering slaves. Four more slaves, equally chilled, held flaming torches aloft. Darkness fell quickly and the ship was swallowed into the black with nothing to reveal its presence save occasional tiny pinpricks from lanterns and the surge of voices carrying clearly across the still waters. Under the flares, a feast of exotic splendor had been laid out. The Old Man was not eating. Instead, he had swapped his juggling oranges for walnuts, which he cracked between his thumbs, a favorite trick and one he had learned from a slave who had afterward been put to death so that he could teach nobody else. Amal had been summoned to sit at his side and the place opposite was empty until Kamil was brought from the tent in which he had been confined. The Old Man gave Kamil a long, hard look, then broke into a beaming smile. His whole face danced though his eyes were glacial. “Sit, sit.” He nodded.
Crack, crack, crack
went his thumbs. “You must be tired from all the traveling. Sit. Eat.”

Kamil sat but even had he been starving he would not have taken food from the Old Man's table. The Old Man threw down the nuts and reached for some figs. “You will have missed all our lovely fruit,” he said as if Kamil was a young relation who had been away on a holiday, “and we have missed you, Kamil.” He chewed slowly, over and over, and occasionally his teeth snapped together. A long silence followed. From the beach in front Kamil could hear the murmur of soldiers gathering driftwood and from the caves behind he could hear horses stamp and sneeze at the swish of grain pouring onto the floor for their evening feed. All the time he felt the Old Man's eyes on him, and eventually, in his own time, met his gaze. He wanted to look fearless but it was hard to stop his cheeks from quivering.

The Old Man paused and licked the sticky fig syrup from his fingers, each in turn. “Well, Kamil, this is a strange place to meet,” he said, darting his tongue in and out of his mouth like a lizard. “Our last conversation took place in the mountains and here we are at the sea.” He bared teeth stained yellow with saffron. Amal shifted his bones. “At the sea,” the Old Man repeated softly and picked up more walnuts. He splintered one shell effortlessly, then threw the kernel away. “Do you know,” he said, “had I really set my mind to it, I could have had you killed anytime over the past two years? Several times I nearly gave the order to find you, but then it occurred to me that you should be given a chance. After all”—his currant eyes were wide with false tenderness—“at the time we last met, you were only young, only a boy. So I said to myself, let's see what kind of a man Kamil turns out to be. Let's see if
he is worthy of his father and his ancestors. Let's see how he develops as a warrior. Let's see exactly what he is made of.” He popped another fig neatly into his mouth but it was large and some of the purple juice ran down his chin and into his beard. The tongue emerged again and only after it had finished its business did the Old Man continue. “The thing is, Kamil, I still don't know how you have turned out, so I hope you'll forgive me but I've taken the liberty of devising a little game to test you.” He gestured around. “Here we are in this delightfully secluded spot and, do you know, I find myself longing to see a tournament. Your new friends, the Christians, are keen on tournaments, are they not? I know you have seen a good few at Hartslove.” He paused and his tongue slid about. Amal could not take his eyes off it.

“We also have the perfect ingredients,” the Old Man said when his tongue had retreated once again. “Two knights, one Christian and one Saracen. What could be better? You see my game? There will be a contest between yourself and the Earl of Ravensgarth, and the prize”—his eyes were like fireworks—“will of course be the king's ransom.” He rubbed his hands together. “But we must make it more interesting than that, must we not? So I suggest that if the earl kills you, the ransom should be returned to the imperial court. If you kill the earl, the ransom will go not to me—why would you fight for that?—but, and here is such a clever twist, it will go to those for whom it was intended when you stole it. What could be fairer? Each man fighting not just for his life but for his cause?” He waited for Amal's ecstatic praise to die away before turning back
to Kamil. “And just in case either of you decides not to fight, I better say that if that happens, I will keep the ransom myself, as I shall, of course, if you both die.” He sighed at the thought, then cracked three walnuts in quick succession.

Kamil had to speak now. “And Ellie?” He could hardly breathe. Immediately he knew he had made a mistake.

“The girl?” The Old Man held his hands in the air.

Kamil could only nod.

“Oh, I didn't realize she mattered!” The Old Man looked craftily from under his eyelashes and considered. Then his face cleared. “I know! We'll make her part of the prize. She can't be left out, can she? Let's see. If you kill the earl, you can have her to do what you like with. But”—he plumped himself back into his cushions—“if the earl kills you, I think perhaps I should take her back to Syria with me. Yes. That's what I'll do. I'm sure I can find a use for her.” He smirked. “And what about the horses? Now what have we got? Those two chestnuts and the silver?” He pondered, then chuckled. “Whichever one of you is dead won't need one, of course.” He pondered some more. “I think the horses should be my prize. I particularly liked the look of the one you were riding when I first met you. Hosanna, isn't it? I'll take him. My men can draw lots for the others. Or perhaps I should give that silver mare to Amal? He really has earned something nice.” He turned and his arm, cobralike, wound around Amal's waist.