Further down the road, beyond the bridge over Wintering Beck, Lucan’s own chaplain, Father Belisarius, stood beneath a yew tree, his two altar servers flanking him. Compared with the vagrant, he was resplendent in a hooded black habit, snow-white tabard and matching gauntlets. He, too, was praying, incanting in Latin, incense smoke curling from his thurible. A few yards on, Lucan’s wife, Countess Trelawna, and five of her ladies were seated side-saddle on their palfreys. As it was a cold day they wore woollen gloves, taffeta cloaks over their tightly-fitted kirtles, and wimples and veils tied in place with bands of silk. Countess Trelawna was eight years younger than her husband, but now in the full flower of womanhood. Her hair was honeyed gold, and, when uncoiled, descended in tresses to her slender waist. Hers was a serene kind of beauty, very gentle, very childlike. Her nose was slightly upturned in a fetching elfin way, her lips full but soft. Her eyes were as blue as her husband’s, yet infinitely kinder.
As Lucan rode by, their gazes met, and she smiled in her distant, wistful manner. Her ladies were more demonstrative. Those knights who weren’t married would gallivant up to them in search of favours, which, in honour of the day, they were showered with.
“I suspect the countess fears for your safety, my lord,” Turold said, a little embarrassed, as always, by his chatelaine’s coolness to her husband.
Lucan was unmoved. “She needn’t. Were I worried, I’d have called the host for battle.”
“Loving wives rarely see such reality. Not when their husband’s safety is at stake.”
“Aye,” Lucan grunted. “So I’ve heard.”
He drew the broadsword from his hip and transferred it to the scabbard on his saddle, then kicked his horse forward, riding to catch up with those leading the hunt, many of whom were already spreading out into the wildwood. The gamekeepers beat their drums and blew their horns, spreading out in a line, the hounds gambolling ahead of them. Riding just behind them were Lucan’s squire, Alaric, and his two closest companions, Benedict and Malvolio, respectively Turold’s and Wulfstan’s squires.
At eighteen, Alaric was the oldest and most serious-minded of the three. He was tall and spare of limb, but after his years of knightly training, had developed a strong, wedge-shaped body. He kept his brown hair short and his face clean of bristles. He was a fresh-faced lad, not exactly handsome, but for all his youth there was a manliness about him, which the local village girls had noticed. At sixteen and fifteen, Benedict and Malvolio were boys in comparison, the former thin and rangy but clean and handsome of aspect, the latter short and dumpy and somewhat less appealing. They wore their hair long but cut square at the shoulder as was the fashion at Court.
“You understand, Alaric?” Malvolio chided him. “In these days of peace, there’s no call for knights. If Earl Lucan were to knight you, it would cost him dear. A horse to call your own, an equestrian seal, full armour, full weaponry, a bed in the knights’ hall. Why make such expense when all you’d be doing is exactly what you do now — loafing about the castle? Surely it would be more cost-effective to leave things as they are?”
“Alas, it’s true,” Benedict said. “The only time a knight is needed is when he must die heroically in battle. Isn’t much of a life we’ve chosen for ourselves.”
“It isn’t much of a life Alaric has chosen,” Malvolio said. “How often has he made that tiresome trip to Camelot, and had to stand in the ante-hall while his master is honoured at the Round Table… and yet here he is, unfit even for his master’s table?”
Alaric smiled. It wouldn’t be a normal day if they didn’t rile him, though there was often some truth in their jest. For all his success in the tourney — and Alaric had proved himself many times with sword and lance in sport — he knew his master believed that only war could test a man’s true mettle. And Alaric had never yet fought in one. The last major crisis to afflict the kingdom had occurred when a vast horde of Danes had invaded along the River Humber. Arthur had triumphed, though it had seen a terrible slaughter on both sides. By nightfall, the crows were picking at five Danish kings, along with eight Knights of the Round Table, and maybe thirty thousand other men and ranks. Earl’s Lucan’s left eyebrow was still bisected by a hard, white scar where a Danish war-axe had cloven his helm.
But that had been a decade ago, when Alaric was still a lad. With so many widows and orphans made, it seemed wrong to wish for such perils to revisit the kingdom purely so that he might benefit. Instead, Alaric had hoped that with the advent of his eighteenth birthday, Earl Lucan might make an exception to his normal rule, but it seemed not.
He attempted to laugh. “At least I get a hunt to celebrate my coming of age.”
“Aye,” Malvolio agreed. “The Penharrow Worm would have been allowed to slither across the land, ravaging every farmstead, if it hadn’t been for your birthday. The good people of the North owe you a boon for being born on the first day of March.”
A call went up from along the line. The three squires steered their horses towards the call, ducking under low boughs, wading to the fetlocks through clumps of dew-soaked bracken. When they arrived, the earl’s keepers were leaning on their quarterstaffs. In their midst, a foul fetor rose from a pile of fleshy organs and glistening, semi-liquid pulp. Splintered bones and cartilage were visible, woven into the mess along with scraps of black and white hide. A single hoof jutted out on a slender, fleshless shank.
One by one, the rest of the hunt gathered. At last, the men stood aside to allow Earl Lucan to dismount. He stood in silence, regarding the obscenity. When Wulfstan arrived, he sank to his haunches for several long moments, before standing up and searching the surrounding area. The circle of spectators widened to accommodate him.
At last he came back. “This is what it does, my lord — regurgitates its food.”
“Regurgitates?” Lucan said.
There were grave mutters. The atmosphere of gaiety had diminished somewhat.
Wulfstan scratched his beard. “Evidently, it swallows its prey whole… but it would take a long while to fully digest a beast of this size. It would become sluggish and might even curl up and sleep, which would leave it vulnerable out here in the open. So it absorbs what it can, and then, as I say, vomits up the remains and continues on its way.”
Silence filled the glade. Men cast nervy glances over their shoulders.
“How long since it was here?” Lucan asked.
Wulfstan probed the rubble with his finger. “There’s more than a whiff of decay. I’d say a day, maybe a day and a half.”
“Plenty of time for it to re-ensconce itself.”
Wulfstan nodded grimly.
“Can you track it?”
“Yes, my lord. Now that we have a starting point. The last place it attacked was the hamlet at Hubblewell. That means it’s heading due northeast… for the Flint Axes.
“Over the last few weeks livestock was destroyed at Godhall, Langbourne and Wathby. Those are also within easy striking range of the Axes.”
“You’re thinking what I’m thinking?” Lucan said.
“I believe so, my lord. It’s using Dungeon Ghyll as its lair.”
There were sharp intakes of breath among the knights.
The borderland between Arthur’s kingdom and the pagan realm of Rheged was mainly wilderness. From Penharrow to Hadrian’s Wall, from Carlisle to Durham, it consisted almost entirely of trackless moor, foggy mountain and fathomless wood. There were many ways for an unwary traveller to die out here, but there were also places that even local folk would avoid — places like Dungeon Ghyll.
It was a geographical oddity even in this land of extremes: a labyrinth of crags, defiles and deep, water-filled caverns, covering about six square miles. It was much overgrown with trees and vegetation, many of its channels so narrow and so thick with undergrowth that they were almost impassable. It occupied high ground at the far northern end of Penharrow Vale, and was accessible in various ways, though on the south it was bordered by the so-called ‘Flint Axes,’ a row of three towering rock forms shaped like the blades of axe-heads.