Read King's Blood Online

Authors: Judith Tarr

King's Blood (31 page)

BOOK: King's Blood
7.23Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
There was a most peculiar sense of homecoming tonight, even stronger than when he had come over from France. This was the heart of Britain—and he belonged in it.
He glanced at Robin FitzHaimo. The elaborate clothes and the long curled hair marked him the king's favorite, but in this place, under these stars, he was much more than that. He was a Guardian of Britain and a great enchanter, descendant of old powers and ancient lineage.
So then: what was Henry? Whatever his father's soul might have been—and there were those who said he was Arthur and Bran and Caswallon come back again—Henry's body was offspring of a Norman duke and a Flemish sorceress. There was no blood of Britain there, though of Druid magic there was quite enough.
Nevertheless, here was Henry, and here was, however unexpectedly, home. The dance that had begun slowly was swifter now, with a pounding pulse-beat that crept under his skin.
Many of the dancers were crowned with flowers: hawthorn mostly, a scent that to his senses was almost too pungent, and yet it stirred him strangely. There was nothing Christian about this dance, at all. It was purely pagan. It celebrated that least Christian of all rites, the union of god and goddess, flesh and flesh.
Henry loved women. He had never loved a single woman—how could he? They were all beautiful. Young or old, sweet young thing or sour old harridan, every one of them was a wonder of creation.
In the old time, he would have called them incarnations of the great Goddess. In this Christian and constricted age, they were temptation, and he was a great sinner. But ah, such a sweet sin.
Every woman here, whatever her age, was beautiful—truly; marvelously. Every one shimmered with magic. They danced life; they danced desire. They dizzied him with their sweetness.
He had barely eaten before he came here, and never touched the wine—and yet he was gloriously drunk. It was a giddy drunkenness, a surge of happiness such as he had never felt: a pure and unalloyed delight in the world and its beauty.
At the height of it, the dance paused. Or maybe the world stopped.
She was tall—nearly as tall as he—and fair. Saxon-fair, part of him thought: gold and ivory. But the power in her had nothing Saxon about it.
As fair as her face was, and it was very fair indeed, her magic was so beautiful that he stood in awe. The strength of it, the brilliance, and the perfect order of it, trained and honed like a fine weapon, moved him to tears.
In one way or another he had loved every woman he had ever lain with. A good number had borne his children; and he had acknowledged as many as came to him, and provided for them, because he was an honorable man. Some had had magic, and a few had even known what to do with it. But none had been as glorious as this.
It was the place and the dance and this night of all nights, and the sheer beauty of her. He knew that; he was sane, and rational enough when the sun was in the sky. But tonight, it did not matter.
She was staring at him as if she knew him. Her eyes were wide, her lips slightly parted.
He had to kiss them. There was nothing else he could do. Lips, then eyes—the lids trembling, but no resistance in her. She smelled of hawthorn, and of something sweeter beneath: roses, and a hint of herbs. Her hair was soft, slipping like silk through his fingers.
Most women, when he did that, closed their eyes and gave themselves up to him. This one raised her hand to stroke his hair.
Her touch made him gasp. The sheer, simple, casual power in it—the strength that hardly even knew itself—all but drove him to his knees. This was no wanton widow or hot-blooded farmgirl. Nor was she a goddess, although tonight there was that power in her.
He had no words for what she was. That disturbed him remarkably little. For this, there was no need of words.
The dance had moved away from them. They were alone on the edge of the grassy circle, some little distance from the lamps and torches, but not far from the outermost of the fires. A moment ago it had been a mound of woven withies filled with tinder. Somehow, while eye met eye, the flames had sprung up.
That was the first. The rest caught one by one in swift succession. The Beltane fires were lit.
The lady seized Henry's hand. He was already seeking hers. Their fingers met and wove together. They leaped in a broad exuberant arc.
The flames leaped high. They leaped higher. The lady laughed. Henry grinned. They tumbled together onto sweet and yielding grass.
They lay in fitful light, a flicker that now brought her face into sharp relief, now cast it into shadow. His court dress was much more intractable than her simple linen gown: no more than a long tunic, which slipped off as if meant to do exactly that.
He struggled and cursed at his own clothes, until her hands relieved him of the fight. She seemed to find it amusing to unfasten laces and slip odd bits of silk and fine linen free, uncovering him little by little.
He relaxed slowly and gave himself up to her. She rose over him, bare white body and smiling face, and fingers that lingered over him in places tender and not so tender, making him shiver with pleasure.
She stooped. Her hair streamed down, veiling them both. Her kiss had been warm before. Now it burned.
The music that drove the dance had changed. It was wilder now, its pulse more urgent. It beat in the earth, up through Henry's body into hers.
She was a maiden. That took him aback. But when he recoiled, her thighs tightened, holding him fast. If there was pain, she offered it to whatever powers she worshipped.
She was the goddess, he the god. They celebrated the rite in the heart of Britain, naked flesh on naked earth beneath the open sky. Her maiden blood fed the land. She drank deep of him, drained him dry.
 
Henry lay utterly and perfectly spent. The lady lay atop him, breathing hard. After an exquisite while, she lifted herself slightly and slid to the ground, but she did not try to escape his arms.
Somewhat to his surprise, he could speak. “That,” he said, “was the most . . . astonishing thing I ever . . .”
Her lips stopped his, but the kiss did not linger. Her eyes were shut. She traced the shape of his face, slowly, as if to commit it to memory.
Just as he began to wonder if, after all, she was blind, she opened her eyes. They were clear in firelight, taking him in as carefully as her fingers had.
“Henry,” he said. It was very important, suddenly, that she know that. “My name is Henry.”
“I know,” she said. Her voice was low and sweet. Her accent . . .
He waited to hear more, but that was all she said. Before he could move or speak, she rose and turned.
“Your name!” he called after her. “I don't know your name.”
She was gone, back through the fire into the swirl of dancers.
 
Henry looked for her. He danced himself into exhaustion, hunting for that one tall, fair-haired lady—but every time he thought that he had found her, the face that turned to his had the eerie otherness of the Old Things.
She had been mortal. He was absolutely sure of that. No Old One had that particular warmth, or that wondrous humanity.
Dawn brightened over the dancing-ground. The Old Things flickered out one by one, vanishing like mist and moonlight. Mortal dancers reveled for yet a while, all who had not gone to celebrate the rite in the orchards and the hedgerows, or stumbled off to more humanly comfortable beds.
Even as sunrise limned the horizon with fire, Robin FitzHaimo picked his way across the field. Henry barely trusted his tired eyes, but he thought he had seen the king's favorite arm in arm with a lord of the Otherworld, before the light swelled and the Old One melted into it.
Robin seemed content. Henry wished he could have said the same. His body was melting with satiety, but whenever he closed his eyes, he saw her face. She had no name, but he knew her. Down to the marrow of his bones, he knew her.
He would have gone on hunting her across the Isle, but the sun was up and his guide was waiting. There were women in grey and brown and some in white, moving slowly across the field, raking and clearing and carrying the lingering sleepers off to their beds.
None of them was the lady of the night. They bowed to Robin, with glances that found him familiar. To Henry they bowed much lower. Some bowed to the ground. Sometimes they murmured in a language he did not know: the same words, as far as he could tell.
“What are they saying?” he asked Robin.
FitzHaimo was going to be coy, Henry could tell. Then of course he had to do the opposite. “They are saying,” he said, “‘There is the blessed one, the year-king.'”
Henry stopped short. “The year-king? What—”
“You know what that is,” said Robin.
“What, will I be dead in a year?”
The sky was clear, the air already warm, but Henry felt as if a cloud had passed over the sun. So apparently did Robin: he shivered and made a sign against ill luck.
Henry shook off the cold and the clenching of fear. “Then we're lucky, aren't we? It's a Christian world. Kings die in battle or they die of old age—but after the One died on the Cross, there's been no need for the rest of it.”
“No?” said Robin. He looked as if he might have said more, but he turned instead and went on across the field, back the way they had come—a night or an age ago.
Henry could have stayed. But there were things he had to do, and people waiting, his brother among them. Women, too. Though when he thought of them, he could see none of their faces. Only hers.
CHAPTER 35
William's world was a glorious place. He was king; he would have to give up Normandy soon, if his brother came back alive, but meanwhile he was duke in all but name; and he was casting an eye on France. Why not? His father had taken a kingdom that no one believed he could take. Was his son any less a man than he had been?
He could rule it all. God was with him. After that strange sickness of his, with its eerie visions and its inducements to panic, his star had risen steadily higher.
He had even got rid of Anselm. Bloody mistake that was—he had been drunk on terror at the time. The man had proved to be a worse stick even than William imagined, and intransigent in maddening ways. He would not accept a secular lord's authority. Everything had to come from the Pope. And never mind that there were two of those more often than not, each claiming to be the one and only heir of Peter.
Ah well, William thought on this Whitsun morning, while a bishop of his own choosing—and a much better choice, too—sang the Mass in Westminster. Anselm was in Italy, or maybe France. It little mattered to William, as long as he was not in England.
William could hardly stretch and yawn loudly and shout his pleasure in the world, not in front of the whole court, but he could smile as he bowed before the altar. William was a happy man.
After Mass came the feast, the first in his new hall that was grander than anything that had ever been in Britain or Normandy or France. He had had it built higher and broader and longer, and made sure it would stand for a thousand years.
People were suitably in awe. “So high,” they said. “So big. We never saw the like.”
William laughed for the pleasure of it. “It's not half big enough for me,” he said. “You wait—I'll build another twice as high. It will be a wonder of the world.”
“Aren't you getting a bit above yourself?”
Henry had been alternately sunk in gloom and drifting in distraction since he got off the boat from France. He had a place of honor here, but William had half expected him not to appear, or else to go wandering off halfway through the first course.
But there he was, surveying William's splendid new achievement with a jaundiced eye. William cuffed him not quite hard enough to knock him down, and laughed. “There, puppy. You're jealous, that's all. If you're ever a king, you'll raise yourself higher than I could imagine.”
“I doubt that,” Henry said sourly. “You know what they say. The higher you fly, the farther you fall.”
“My wings won't give out,” William said. “I've paid a price or two. Now God loves me. He favors everything I do.”
“When He drops you,” said Henry, “He'll drop you hard.”
“He's not going to drop me,” William said. He reached for the pitcher, snatching it from the hands of the page who stood vacant-eyed and useless, and filled Henry's cup brimful with wine. “Drink up. This is a feast, not a funeral. Put off your gloomy face. You used to know how to laugh. Didn't you?”
Henry glowered at him, but drank the wine. William decided to be satisfied with that. He turned to the royal guest on his other side, the young king of Scots, who at least remembered what a smile felt like.
 
Henry drank his cupful, then had another, because the first might have been water for all the forgetfulness it gave him. He had been trying, night after night, to forget the lady on the Isle. Night after night, when his only thought should have been pleasure, he could only see her. He had not taken a bed-mate since Beltane, because none of the women who cast eyes at him was she.
And he had never learned her name.
His brother was trading banter with young Edgar of Scots, who was not too dour as his people went—surprising, since half of him was Saxon, which should have soured his disposition even more. But Edgar was lighthearted enough, all things considered.
It was a calculated lightheartedness, Henry could see. Soon enough he came to it. “My sister,” he said, “is of age now. An alliance—our two kingdoms—”
That brought William up short, Henry was pleased to see. But not for long. “What, that again? They trotted her out in front of me years ago. She agreed with me, it wasn't a match.”
BOOK: King's Blood
7.23Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Old Motel Mystery by Gertrude Chandler Warner
This Is Where I Sleep by Tiffany Patterson
Gods and Pawns by Kage Baker
Heaven Sent Rain by Lauraine Snelling
Sold by Jaymie Holland