Swords From the West (17 page)

"It's a sin to talk of what you cannot do," cried Marie, angry because she wanted so to do it, and the gold coin made her afraid.

"What? A sin? And doesn't my Seigneur Achard sin? He'd drain the Tardoire if he dropped a sou in it. He gives us bread would make hogs vomit"-seizing the fresh bread from her he munched it angrily with his white teeth- "and it would be the greatest sin to let him have our gold! Yeux-Dieu. I will take only three pieces."

For the moment they forgot to lie quiet in their hiding, or to watch out.

"Nay, not one. Surely," she ventured, "if you and the peasant yield up the trove, there will be a reward."

"If Gabriel sounds his horn, Achard may part with a gold florin"Peter laughed-"but not otherwise."

Abruptly he stopped chewing and slipped the gold coin into his belt where a pair of crossbow bolts were thrust. Marie had not heard the armed man come to the door of the mill. The soldier glanced quickly around and jerked his head at them. "Come out, lovebirds," he said without feeling. He carried a pack and a light hand ax.

The Gascon obeyed warily, tensing as he saw the road below filling with horsemen, dismounting and unsaddling their beasts. Already they were gathering wood for a fire, while bowmen threaded the forest on either bank, searching the coverts. At a glance Peter knew them for veterans making a halt in their march. Cadoc's men, he surmised, or-

"Keep walking, youngling," the scout advised him, "the captain wants to chat with all skulkers."

"The English," Peter exclaimed, relieved. Marie held to his arm helplessly. Until now she had only seen the war bands passing through the streets of Limoges. Sometimes they had been followers of the English king, Richard; sometimes they had borne the banners with the fleur-delis of the French king, Philip; but always they had snatched up loot or driven off cattle. She had heard it said that they fought about the frontier line from Abbeville to the Pyrenees.

She dreaded that Peter might provoke these emotionless men, so boldly did the Gascon answer the questions of the English captain. The officer hardly looked at her; his gray face seemed lifeless.

"Dieu!" cried Peter "If you think I am not of the Chalus guard, take me to the Sieur Achard-or give me a weapon and I will best you with it, at any distance."

Instead of answering, the English officer pulled one of the crossbow bolts from the Gascon's belt, and examined its barbed steel head and oiled wooden shaft curiously-as if the missile were more important than his two prisoners.

Then a deep voice called "Mercadier, if you will not take his challenge, I will."

"Sire," the gray captain, Mercadier, answered instantly, "these villeins are of no account, but this bolt has a rare good balance." His expressionless eyes shifted to Peter. "Kneel, thou. Richard the king speaks."

As they knelt in the mud of the road, Marie saw a man rise with an effort from a saddle by the fire. He moved heavily, like a bear. His mail shirt and steel cap bore no signia.

"A mark-a mark, some of you!" he called impatiently and held out the crossbow in his hand for Peter to see. "Can you hit a mark with this, youngling?"

It was a fine new weapon of tempered steel, the shaft inlaid with ivory.

"Aye," said Peter.

When his men had stripped a band of bark from around a slender tree fifty paces off, and had marked a black cross on the white band with charcoal, Richard wound up his bow himself. Raising it to his shoulder he sighted carefully, and pulled the trigger free. The bolt tore through the side of the tree-a good shot at that distance.

"Have you skill to better that?" the English king asked.

"Aye."

Rising easily, the Gascon balanced the fine weapon in his hand and quickly slipped one of his own bolts into the slot. As he did so Mercadier stepped between him and the king. Sudden excitement seized the girl Marie as she realized that Peter had a chance to show his skill before such great soldiers as these. With his own weapon, Peter could bring down a hawk in flight-

His shot cracked full into the edge of the cross.

Yet Richard said no word of praise. Grasping the bow impatiently the king took more time for a second try. His bolt struck fair beside the Gascon's near the cross, and for the first time merriment gleamed in his tired eyes.

Peter however, took the bow again. He had the feel of it now, and he lifted it and loosed it in a single motion. His shot cut the center of the black cross, and the onlooking men-at-arms shouted involuntarily.

Marie felt a stab of exultation. Even Mercadier grunted, and bent his head to Richard's. Marie heard him say, "This marksman's worth having in our force. Achard will yield him for a florin. You'll take him?"

Holding her breath, Marie waited for the answer that might mean honor for Peter. Richard, flushed with anger, turned to the young Gascon. "You proved your skill," he choked. "For this minute, keep out of my sight." And he strode back to the fire and snatched and emptied a goblet of wine.

Defeat at this boyish test of skill stirred him more than a sudden wound. Mercadier looked at him and shooed Peter away. The Gascon walked through the silent men-at-arms as if he cared nothing for Richard's anger.

Marie did not move. Down the road, the English were questioning a slender friar astride a donkey; it was Brother Clement. At sight of him the girl felt her fear diminish. She thought he might have come to look for her out of the goodness of his heart when he heard a war band had camped by the mill.

Mercadier, confronting the friar, laughed suddenly, contemptuously. Drinking, Richard glanced over that way and motioned them over to him, bidding them say their say in plain words before him.

"The little shaveling lies greatly," protested one of the English knights with Mercadier. "He says and he maintains that he hath come this hour from the mark of the king of France."

"Let him say it to me," snarled Richard, in his restless mood. Brother Clement dismounted before the king, his diminutive figure dwarfed by Richard.

"You know my face?" Richard demanded.

No more than Marie did Clement recognize the mailed figures around him. He shook his head. "You are not Cadoc-"

"Cadoc!" Richard stared, amazed. "Have you never seen Ricard of England?"

Marie longed to cry out to Brother Clement. In the hard watchfulness of these routiers she felt a danger she did not understand. Brother Clement lived with his books, and his mind otherwise was simple. "Why, yes," he said at once. "In years agone I saw the Lionheart. He was riding to the great crusade. He was gay."

Richard stepped closer. "Then who am I?" he asked.

Troubled, Brother Clement gazed up at the bloodshot blue eyes and the broad head encircled by steel mesh. "I know not," he said honestly, "except that you are sick."

"Sick?" Richard's ungovernable temper rang in the words. "By the Horned One-how am I sick?"

Uncertainly, the young friar tried to explain. "Not in the body. In the spirit."

Richard emptied the cup in his hands without tasting the wine. The gray mist clinging to the treetops weighted on him. Within an hour he had seen his own likeness in the carefree Gascon, as he had been when he first mounted the saddle to ride to war. And the friar had seen him ride to the great crusade, to the battles beyond the sea, to the heights of Torun, where he had turned away so that he would not see in the distance the summit of Jerusalem that he had failed to take with his sword.

"Will you heal that with prayer?" he asked the friar.

The friar did not answer.

The moment at Torun was gone, and the bright day he had been greeted back on England's shore after his imprisonment in Germany. The scarlet coronation robe they had brought him, the hue of blood, to be crowned again, with the good Archbishop Walter speaking the words about the spirit of a king-he had that coronation robe somewhere in the packs, still.

Richard did not reason about this. His wine-soaked memory searched for what angered and hurt him. In England, he had not been able to endure the arguments of the assembly of barons. He had taken ship in a storm to cross to the frontier in France-to march with his men-at-arms, as in the Holy Land, seeking relief in action-to lead routiers, veterans of many wars, like Mercadier's crew, gleaning their pay from spoil while they raided Philip's border castles....

Philip lay safe at Orleans with the French court, scheming, taxing, bribing, getting his clutches on new lands. Philip was wiser than he, Richard, who could endure only the camps of his veterans. Because he was so painfully aware of this, it seemed somehow important that he should make this wandering servant of God understand that he was the king.

Perhaps if he showed the friar the coronation robe-but he had never put that on his shoulders again. Instead of calling for it, Richard went to the fire and brought back in his own hands a weather-stained mantle embroidered with the crouching lions of England. "If you do not recognize me," he said mildly, "you may know what this means."

Brother Clement nodded. "It is the royal signia of England." Suddenly he smiled. "Strange it seems to me, that I passed a rider an hour agone with the royal sign of France upon him."

"What!" Richard stared.

Mercadier almost smiled. "For a little friar that is a great lie."

Every man within hearing knew that no one except Philip Augustus, king of the French and Richard's most dangerous enemy, could wear such royal marking, and Philip had never been known to risk himself within a day's ride of the adventurous Richard.

"I have told," said Brother Clement, "the truth of what I saw."

He repeated it to Richard-how, riding hither through Chalus forest, he had passed a band of armed riders. They were going away by the river road, toward the ford, and their chief, who kept his face hidden, had worn a cloak ornamented with the fleur-de-lis of France.

"At dawn," Richard reflected aloud, "the shepherds sighted a war band on this road."

Still, he could not believe that Philip was so near. The clever Frenchman would never venture so far from a safe fortress. "Why did you come here?" he asked the friar abruptly.

"To find this woman," Brother Clement explained simply, pointing to Marie.

"Sire"-Mercadier touched his arm-"this riddle smells of treachery. Aye, it smells of bait for an ambush. Beware of it."

"The roan horse!" Richard called suddenly. "Saddle the roan, I say. I'll see for myself if it be Philip, or a trap."

A craving for action gripped him though the sober part of his mind admitted that Mercadier must be right. Philip would be more apt to pay another to set a trap than to lay one himself.

Richard ran to his horse, feeling the ache of old wounds in his legs. His sight, too, was not so sharp as it had been; he had not seen the black cross clearly in the white band of the tree. Taking a shield from an esquire, he swung himself into the saddle and turned the great war horse into a forest path without waiting for his companions, who were saddling in desperate haste.

Left to himself, Brother Clement persuaded Marie to climb to the donkey's back. While he led her home she told him wearily of her fear that harm would come to Peter Basil for taking the gold.

The mist was darkening with the end of day. It seemed to Brother Clement that no human power could check the evil gathering about the girl Marie ...

Riding headlong through Chalus forest, Richard felt himself again. As he beat to clear the branches and searched for a pathway to the river, he felt free and joyous. The roan charger was fresh and, even carrying Richard's weight, it had the pace of the other road-weary chargers.

When he glimpsed the castle tower through the trees he turned away toward the river. Often he had hunted this forest with its lord, Achard, and he knew the way. He did not think of riding to the castle for aid, now. He pressed the roan hard, not looking back for his followers.

The trees fell away on either hand and he galloped out into a meadow. He heard the rush of the river beside him and at the same instant sighted the other horseman.

On the path before him this rider had his back turned, and from his shoulders hung a mantle of blue velvet, splendid as Richard's coronation robe. With a glance over his shoulder the other put his white horse to a run. The light was failing fast.

The white horse flitted through the mist, and up over a rise. Following at a gallop Richard topped the rise to find a pavilion where a score of horses grazed, and as many armed men waited quietly.

And here the rider of the white horse turned in his tracks. Richard did not slacken his pace as he thought: They do not call out, so they wait for this; they do not move, so they have their orders given them.

The other's face was half hidden under a light helm. As Richard came up, he held the path. This is never Philip, Richard thought. Without warning, the man's sword lunged toward Richard's eyes, then swerved down to his groin. Richard's shield followed the swerve, brushing the point clear as he rode past.

As he thundered by, he drew his own sword, and instead of reining in, he bent in the saddle, circling fast to the right. Quick as he had been, the unknown rider was behind him and upon him. Richard's sword lashed back at him, and sparks flared as the other's shield deflected the long blade.

The nameless man was fighting silently, viciously, and to kill. His horse shouldered the flank of Richard's charger, and the point of his shield ripped across the king's face. Richard struck back, covering himself with his shield. The other's sword point went under the shield, and broke the links of the king's chainmail.

Feeling the bite of the steel, Richard twisted his body. The blade slipped across the leather covering his body and Richard, with his shield arm, tried to hold the other's sword against his body with all the strength of his great shoulders into the grip as he struggled for life.

The white horse was reined back, his sword was wrenched away. But in the seconds before the other got clear of him, Richard smashed the pommel of his long sword at the man's head. And deftly, the other's shield came up. This time it was beaten down against swordsman's head.