The Giants' Dance (28 page)

And when he looked again, she seemed no longer to be an ancient beggarwoman, but a young woman as fair of face as Willow. He recoiled, blinking.

‘What's the matter, Willand?
Something in your eye, perhaps?'

When he looked again she was as she had been before.

‘I…' Urgency pushed him on. ‘I…I'll tell Master Gwydion I saw you.'

‘Tell him my favourite food is salmon!'

‘Salmon, did you say?'

‘Leastways,
this
beggar is a chooser!' She wagged her
stick at him, then, as one remembering an afterthought, she said, ‘Now think on all that I've said! Beware your brother! Hah ha ha ha ha!'

He left her then, and went back towards the castle, looking ever for a white cat that had once more gone its own way.

A
nxious days passed. Every sunrise, Gwydion went alone to the Round House, but his report to the duke every sunset told that no matter how he worked the Blow Stone's stump he could not make it shift its shape or reveal the resting place of the battlestone they must now so urgently find.

Every day Gort brought powders and flasks of dew. Gwydion danced around the dead stump with absorbed concentration. ‘There
must
be a secret within,' he told the impatient duke. ‘It remains only for me to find it. But these things take time.'

As for Will, he told Gwydion about meeting Mother Brig, but said nothing about the red fish or its loss. That was partly due to shame over his foolishness, and partly that he had begun to tell himself the fish was of no consequence. It had passed easily into his possession, and passed out of it again just as easily.

Instead he fretted over Willow's likely return and watched all that passed in and around the castle. He saw Lord Dudlea near the water cisterns. He was looked after by no guard, and Will saw that he no longer wore chains, even on his ankles. He was carrying a yoke from which hung two full
pails of water, and he looked askance at Will, but made no comment, except to seek his gaze and to make a
baa
sound, like a ewe calling to a lamb.

Will hurried to the Round House, thinking it no more than some kind of curious insult. He thought again about what he had heard concerning the captive, and noted the improvement in his treatment.

‘Of course,' Gwydion said. ‘It is Lord Sarum's doing. Friend Dudlea has offered to trade knowledge about the queen's secret weapons.'

‘What has he said about them?'

‘Very little, as yet. Nor will he without first receiving certain guarantees.'

‘Why don't you
make
him talk?' Will said.

But the wizard turned his attention back to the Blow Stone, saying, ‘Foolish words. They make you sound weak, like a torturer.'

And Will left the Round House, feeling an intolerable pressure building in his head.

Not long after the noonday bell, a fast messenger galloped into the outer ward and threw himself down from a lathered horse, unstrapping his satchel as he ran. The duke came out from his solar. His knights and Edward, his heir, were with him. Will approached, but Edward looked at him as a man who sees only a stranger, and the bodyguard came forward with their bills and helm-axes. Not wishing to confront them at such a moment, Will drew back from their challenge.

His decision was wise, for within moments a commotion took hold of the whole castle, and a whisper began spreading abroad:
‘The earl's son has come at last!'

The looked-for army of Lord Warrewyk, Earl Sarum's firstborn son, was reportedly no more than two leagues distant. The welcome prepared in the town for the son was
even greater than that which had greeted the victory of the father. Jackhald said that a large host of men had come across the Narrow Seas and had landed in Kennet, where more had joined the march. The army had swung widely to the west, avoiding the great city of Trinovant. Three engines of death came in pride of place with Lord Warrewyk, three ox-trains of twenty yoked pairs, each hauling a great fire-belcher.

Will and Jackhald watched as the army approached and the town was called out to receive it. Throughout the afternoon, Ludford more than doubled its strength so that a formidable company was now gathered without the walls, and the joy of the townsfolk at that was real enough.

‘Now we shall see whose arms are the greater,' Jackhald said with satisfaction.

‘There's nothing to be cheering about,' Will told him gloomily.

Jackhald grinned back, robust. ‘Down in the dumps again, are we? You're beginning to sound like a proper crow. You should ask Master Gwydion to see if a spell hasn't been placed on your head by some witch or another.'

Will let the comment pass, though he reflected on the rhythms of his increasing discomfort. It was no wonder, for here he was sitting atop a flowing lign, yet trapped among stone walls that shattered it like a fountain. His mind quickly became bemused whenever he tried to make sense of the confusing patterns. Dread feelings rose and fell twice a day, and came later every day like the tides of the sea. During a nondescript phase of the moon the rise was bearable, but at every sharp quarter the pain and confusion threatened to swamp his sanity. And as the lorc continued to fill with power the pressure on Will's thoughts increased.

He watched Lord Warrewyk's army entering the town by the Broad Gate. Now, just as before, a great mass of
men marched down towards the soldiers' camp, while others came up into the castle precincts. The nobles rode under three banners. The first had three white bucks upon bars of black and gold. The second flew two silver lions upon red. Between them, there was a red banner with a muzzled bear in silver. The bear, Will knew, was the badge of Lord Warrewyk himself, but he was unsettled to see the two silver lions, for they were the arms of John, Lord Strange.

Almost seven years had passed since the summer when Will had learned to read and write in Lord Strange's tower in Wychwoode. It had been some five years since Lord Strange had appeared among the king's forces at Verlamion. Now, true only to his own inconstancy, he had switched sides. No matter how much water might have flowed under Evenlode Bridge, it seemed, nothing had been able to wash Lord Strange clean. Will shuddered at the thrill of horror he always felt at the sight of the half-man. From the neck down Lord Strange was like any other lord, but his head was that of a wild boar. And it had grown even bristlier and more boarish – his tusks were yellower, his snout more pointed, and a stiff ridge of grey bristles now ran right over the top of his head.

‘Filthy crow!' he grunted as he turned into the outer ward and saw Gwydion standing near the duke.

As the Hogshead strode towards him and launched out his sword, Gwydion did not turn, but suddenly raised his gnarled staff. ‘John le Strange, I warn you – approach me no closer.'

‘Gnngh!' Lord Strange snorted in his wrath. His sword was lifted, made ready to chop down, but when the time came it did not move. The razor-sharp point only circled irresolutely in the air while Gwydion's back remained turned.

‘Show your face to me, wizard, for I would speak hard words to you!'

The hundreds who were gathered saw Gwydion turn
about. His eyes were dark and his voice soft. ‘Speak then. What have you to say to me?'

‘You have cursed me! And now you will cure me, or else, as I swear by all the rotting stumps of Wychwoode, you will die at my hand!'

‘Hear me, John le Strange, and hear me well. I do not deal in curses. Nor do I bear you ill will. I have told you as plainly as I dare that you have only yourself to blame for your misfortunes.'

‘You told me my blood would fail!' The pig-voice rasped out. ‘You said girls would be born to my line! Girls! So my title would pass to the son of another! Since you spoke those words, I have sired naught but daughters! What is this if it be not a curse?'

‘Be content, John le Strange. For daughters are a joy denied to many. And surely they are the equal of sons.'

‘Four daughters!' he sneered. ‘You have cursed me!'

‘My words warned what would befall through your own failings. You allowed the sacred grove of Wychwoode to be destroyed, though you were its appointed warden. Did you think such a deed would go unpunished? What goeth, goeth about again! Greed and ambition are what destroy you.'

‘Then pity me my misfortune!'

‘Is it any wonder that misfortune attends one as obdurate as you?'

What Will knew but Lord Strange did not, for it could not be told to the Hogshead directly without killing him, was the true nature of his curse. The spell had been laid by Maskull, concocted from the dregs of Lord Strange's own inconstancy and made as a flag to show the sorcerer how the winds of change were blowing in the Realm. The spell forced Lord Strange's face to show the greed and corruption that lay in the hearts of his fellow lords, but so fashioned was the spell that he could have restored himself at any time, simply by rooting out his
own
failings. Yet he
had remained deaf to all the wizard's hints.

The Hogshead brandished his sword again, but impotently, for it was as if his elbow and shoulder were both locked tight.

‘Gnngh! Sorcery! See how he practises sorcery against me!'

Gwydion hooked a little finger. ‘I warn you, defiler of groves – if you shake that stick at me one more time I shall scatter no more acorns for you to eat.'

Those who watched now goggled and gasped, for the sword suddenly seemed to become an oaken branch, one laden with acorns that began to drop all around as Lord Strange shook it.

Nervous amusement began to ripple among those who saw. Then laughter broke out. Will felt Lord Strange's spirit falter under the burden of humiliation. The Hogshead cried out as his anger was trodden down by Gwydion's ridicule, then his courage failed him altogether.

As Gwydion walked away, the Hogshead's sword – a sword once more – fell in the mud, and he shouted after the wizard, ‘Master Gwydion, I am heirless!'

At Will's side Jackhald guffawed. ‘Well, that's a pretty sight, ain't it? They say it's called vanity when a person looks in a glass and sees what's not there. But hairless? Him? Ha! Ha! Ha!'

Will could not help but feel for Lord Strange. His appearance and manners were far worse now than they had been six years ago. That fact, more than anything, warned how close the Realm must have come to degradation.

As Will watched the Hogshead go, ill-boding thoughts simmered in his mind, but then he felt an unexpectedly gentle touch on his shoulder. He stiffened, turned and found himself staring at a face that was far easier on the eye than Lord Strange's.

It was Willow's.

S
upper was over and night had fallen. The wizard, the two loremasters Gort and Morann, and the little family that had been reunited all settled down in Gort's wonderful rooms. Willow had brought the green fish talisman. Straight away she handed it to Will, who hung it next to his heart where it seemed to belong. It felt very good to have it back, and he pressed it between palm and breast and closed his eyes briefly like a man savouring the moment.

‘Are you all right?' Willow asked.

He smiled at her. ‘Oh, yes. Better than I've been for some time.'

She squeezed his hand and smiled back. ‘Me too.'

As darkness deepened across the ceiling and walls, they gathered close together round the fire while Gwydion sketched for the newcomers a picture of what had taken place in their absence. When talk of the dreadful battle on Blow Heath was done, the Wortmaster opened a bottle of his sweetest honey mead.

Willow smiled and touched her husband's face. He looked back at his wife now as she nursed their child, and found himself filled with the same contrary emotions he had felt back at the Plough – great joy that his family were
with him, but an equal fear for their safety, for now here they all were bottled up together in Ludford and their enemies bearing down on them.

Morann recognized Will's misgivings and laid a hand on his arm. ‘I'm sorry for the delay. These are dangerous times and I had an errand of my own that would not wait. But it's good we left when we did, because we were not long out of the Vale when we happened upon the queen's host.'

‘You saw them?' Will said, struck with horror.

‘We saw them all right,' Willow said. ‘But they never saw us. That was through some craft of Morann's, I suppose, for they came right by us. Then, as soon as we could, we rode west, and ran straight across Lord Warrewyk's army.'

Morann nodded. ‘Willow went up as bold as you please to the earl. She pushed aside his bodyguards and warned him to his face that he was heading for a wrathful meeting with a far larger army.'

‘And what did he say to that?'

‘He thanked me, of course,' Willow laughed. ‘Wouldn't you have done?'

‘The king himself rides with the royal host?' Gwydion asked.

‘He's at the head of it,' Morann said. ‘With the queen and Henry de Bowforde at his elbows.'

Gwydion stroked his beard. ‘You say a
larger
army? How many soldiers were with the king?'

‘A very great many,' Willow said. ‘More than enough to make Lord Warrewyk and his twelve thousand turn aside, and he struck me as a man who'd give battle at the drop of a hat if he thought there was the smallest chance of winning.'

Gwydion nodded. ‘That is not far from the truth. Lord Warrewyk is warlike, but I fear he is persuaded here by a greater strategy of which he remains wilfully ignorant. He has more than doubled the strength of Ludford. Now
perhaps the Ebor falcon is too big to be locked up, even by the fetterlock which the queen has brought with her.'

‘I wouldn't wager a wooden spoon on that,' Willow said. ‘You should have seen the king's army! We thought there must be forty thousand men if there was one.'

‘Forty thousand?'
Will said sitting up. ‘Surely that can't be right.'

‘At least,' Morann said. ‘And it'll be fifty thousand by the time it arrives, for it's swelling all the while as it goes.'

Will whistled as he looked to the wizard. ‘Fifty thousand? Is that possible?'

‘My guess is that it will be sixty,' Gwydion said flatly.

‘Am I dreaming?' Will looked from face to face. ‘How many men are there in the Realm?'

‘Sixty thousand would account for one in every seven men of fighting age,' Gwydion said.

Willow grimaced. ‘Men certainly flock to the king's banner, though most have been driven to it like sheep.'

Gwydion drained his mead. ‘The common men of the Realm do not regard their king badly. To most, he is the embodiment of Sovereignty. Do not forget that he has now reigned over everyone, man and boy, for more than thirty-seven years. Hal's father was king before him. And his father's father before that.'

‘No one speaks of it openly, of course,' Gort said, ‘but among the Duke of Ebor's people all three generations of King Hal's blood are thought of as tainted – a usurper's line, you see. Our duke doesn't dare to make an open claim, oh, no! But by the strict law of blood he is the rightful king and that knowledge eats at his heart as a codling grub eats at the core of an apple.'

Will felt the comfort of the talisman next to his heart. He drew it out. ‘Tell me, Morann, what do you make of this?'

Morann took the little green fish and examined it closely,
setting it on the flat of his long dagger, then turning it over between his fingers and rubbing it against one of his front teeth to test it. At last, he cleared his throat and said, ‘Seven times seven score crystal forms are found within the earth, but I never have seen the like of this before. It is no earthly stone.'

Will looked to Gwydion. ‘Then where did it come from?'

Morann said, ‘As to the maker – the craftsmanship seems to me magical. And if there might be a meaning to whatever's graven upon it – I cannot read it.'

Morann gave the talisman back and Will felt Gwydion's eyes bore into him as he prepared to make an admission. He told them all about the red fish and how he had managed to lose it.

‘It must have fallen out of my pouch.'

‘Why did you hide it from me?' Gwydion asked.

Will felt foolish. ‘I don't know. Several times I was going to tell you about it, but I couldn't. And then after I'd lost it, well…'

‘You did not lose it,' Gwydion said.

Will looked at him. ‘What do you mean?'

‘It was stolen.'

The others stared, but Will knew straight away what Gwydion meant. His eyes flashed away from the wizard's own. ‘The Sightless Ones!'

‘Oh, not them, I think.'

‘But what about the white heart token that you found?'

‘Perhaps it was left only to mislead us.'

‘Do you think so?'

‘It is a probability.'

Will turned his own talisman over in his fingers. The honey mead was settling his belly. Firelight danced on the blue and gold painted walls. A beaming moon inched across the dome of the ceiling and hid among the plaster vines twined about the chimney.

At length, Will broke the silence. ‘I have a bad feeling about Lord Strange.'

The wizard's eyes glinted with firelight. ‘Lord Strange is the author of his own downfall. I have already offered him three good chances to redeem himself. He has refused them all.'

‘I know he hates you, Gwydion, but can you do nothing more to help him break his curse?'

‘Oh, Lord Strange!' Gort said. ‘Poor creature. But pity the poor piggy that has my Lord Strange's head too, hey? Will's right, though, Master Gwydion – the Hogshead does believe you've put that curse on him.'

Willow said, ‘What I don't see is why you had to reveal his future to him? Wasn't that cruel?'

Gwydion inclined his head. ‘Cruel? Howso?'

‘It seems cruel to foretell a person's doom.'

‘It is only so if that person decides he cannot avoid his foretold doom.'

‘But Lord Strange is pig-headed,' Gort laughed, ‘isn't he?'

Gwydion said, ‘Lord Strange is stubborn, but he is not stupid. He is a wilful schemer. When I made my warnings to him he was not past redemption, though I fear he may now have reached a depth from which it is impossible to return.'

‘But I still don't think you should have foretold his lot,' Willow said. ‘It's like knowing the day you're going to die.'

The room was quiet save for the soft crackling of the fire. Flamelight played in Gwydion's eyes as he allowed Gort to refill his goblet. ‘How else could I have given him a chance to seize his own true destiny? The spell that infests him is such that he must help himself, or die an ugly death. I cannot do more than I have done already.'

Willow said, ‘Well, I feel sorry for the Hogshead. It must be terrible to carry such a burden.'

A look of sympathy settled on Willow's face. It was such a mix of strength and kindness that Will felt his fingers tightening again on her hand.

He looked to the wizard. ‘You once foretold my own doom in this very place. You said that I was to die under a portcullis. Yet I have not.'

‘I did not say you would die under a portcullis.'

‘You said “one would become two”.'

‘That was, and is, a prophecy of the Black Book.'

‘Just as it is that “two will become one”.'

Gwydion's eyes moved to Morann's face. ‘You should not have told him.'

Morann's gaze was unblinking, guileless. ‘It was there to be told.'

‘So was the portent that Edgar de Bowforde “should beware castles”, so also that Lord Warrewyk shall “die by the star” – I have told one, yet I have not told the other! I always choose my words with care. I never gave Will to believe that he could not escape his doom.' Gwydion's eyes sank into the shadows of his face. ‘This shows well the difference between him and Lord Strange. When I took him to dwell for a season with Lord Strange it was partly in the hope that he might learn to read and discover the redes of magic from the Sister of Wenn, but I also had hopes that his presence might teach Lord Strange enough to redeem him.'

Will said, ‘You mean, you put me there as encouragement? To show him what it would be like if he could have a son of his own?'

‘That was…one aspect of it, I suppose.'

‘Oh, Master Gwydion!' Willow snorted. ‘How you do dare to meddle so in folk's lives.'

The wizard's chin jutted. ‘Willand is a true Child of Destiny. He must not forget that!'

‘However could I do
that
?' he said wryly, then asked,
‘So, do I have the power to overturn portents too? Need I fear the portcullis' teeth no more?'

‘I did not say that.' Gwydion spread his hands.

‘I'm going to my bed now if you don't mind, Gwydion,' Will told him as he got unsteadily to his feet. ‘Your talk makes my head spin.'

‘Me too,' Willow said, following him. ‘That mead's gone straight to my head.'

Gwydion called after them, ‘All I was trying to say, Willand, was that one difference between you and Lord Strange may be that you truly believe you can shape your own future, whereas he does not. But there is still time enough for a portcullis to fall on you!'