Putting her two and only triumphs on the parchment showed them up as weak. What matter to Henry, lord of a great empire, that Eustace, a common drunkard, had been proved innocent of a crime? How much would he rejoice at Lady Emma and young Lord Wolvercote’s rescue when he hadn’t known they’d been abducted in the first place?
Oh, dear.
Gritting her teeth, Adelia dipped her quill into the inkpot and pressed on, returning to the matter that concerned her most at the moment-the dowager’s perfidy.
“You, who prize justice above all things, my dear lord, will know how to right the great wrong committed by this woman according to the wish of your most devoted servant, Adelia Aguilar.”
Then, in case one of the king’s unknowing clerks might read the letter to him, she scratched out her signature and replaced it with that of Mansur.
She was searching for sealing wax when Allie flung the door open, ablaze with excitement. “Come and see, Mama, come and see.”
Adelia followed her daughter into the courtyard, where Pippy was staring at something that had been tied to the wellhead by a bit of string around its neck.
“What’s that, in the name of God?”
“It’s a puppy.” Allie was ecstatic. “It’s mine.”
Whatever it was, it was the untidiest animal Adelia had ever seen; very young and wobbly on long, thin legs, with a rough coat and eyebrows that curled upward like an old man’s.
“Bad,” Mansur said, “a sight hound.”
“A lurcher,” Gyltha said. “An’ it’s forbidden. Verderers see that in the forest and they’ll lame un, take out the ball of its foot. Bring down deer, lurchers do; bring down anything.”
Allie put her arms round the animal’s neck. “They’re not going to lame Eustace,” she said. The dog licked her face.
“Who?”
“Some men came and gave it to me. They said his name was Eustace. Look at his lovely brown eyes, Mama, he’s very intelligent.”
Adelia thought how typical it was of Will and the tithing to bring her a present that was illegal. But the damage was done; Allie had given her heart to the thing.
“Well,” she said, weakly, “we’ll just have to keep Eustace out of the forest.”
HANDING OVER THE SCROLL to Captain Bolt the next morning, Adelia asked if the king had arrived in England.
“Not yet, mistress. Somewhere between here and Normandy, I reckon.” He waved the report. “Yet he’s so eager for this, we may have to send it by boat-he’ll be glad to get it.”
“No, captain,” Adelia said sadly, “he won’t.”
TWO DAYS LATER, Roetger hitched himself down the stairs, and Adelia was asked to attend to him and Emma in the dining room.
On the table in front of them lay the dead warrior’s sword in a wooden scabbard that Roetger had made for it.
He was animated, eager for Adelia to sit down. He remained standing, his back to the window, leaning on a crutch. He began explaining how he had gone about cleaning the sword.
“We take great care, do we not?” he said to Emma.
She nodded. The two of them used “we” and “us” a great deal now.
“Horsetail from the kitchen first,” he said. “Millie gave it.”
It was Adelia’s turn to nod. The plant was an invaluable pot scourer; dairymaids polished their milk pails with it.
“No good,” Roetger said, shaking his head. “So we try vinegar. No good.”
“Do you know what did it in the end?” Emma asked. She couldn’t wait; she was as excited as the German. “You’ll never guess. Godwyn’s apple-and-plum preserve.”
“Preserve?”
Emma seemed to have forgiven the landlord now that he’d restored the sword. “He won’t tell us what’s in it apart from apples and plums, but it was miraculous.”
“Apple-and-plum preserve?”
“A cleanser most excellent,” Roetger said.
“Ye-es,” Adelia said encouragingly. She could see little of the sword with the champion’s great frame blocking the light from the window.
Roetger went on at length about how each polishing had revealed more and more of what lay beneath the thick patina. “It is old, so old.”
He moved aside so that light shone on the pommel.
Adelia gasped. What had once been warts were now inset stones gleaming like the sun. “What are those jewels?”
“Topaz,” Emma said smugly.
Roetger nodded. “From my own Saxony, I think. It is the stone of strength.”
“And it can make its wearer invisible if he needs to be,” parroted Emma, “and it changes color in the presence of poison, doesn’t it, Roetger? And it can cure anything, including piles.”
Her champion frowned at her. “It has great power.”
“Ye-es,” Adelia said.
Still, Roetger didn’t take the sword out of its scabbard. He talked of tang, fuller, weight, balance, how the hilt was attached to the blade, the “lifestone” set into the hilt, edges so perfectly formed that they might have been fashioned with a file rather than hammered in a forge.
“This weapon a god makes,” he said. “Wayland the Smith himself, maybe.”
“What’s that little ring thing there, at the bottom of the hilt?”
“Ach now,” Roetger said in the tone Adelia’s foster father had used when she’d asked an intelligent question. “It is the oath ring, the ring of a great chieftain.”
“You see,” Emma chipped in, “Roetger says-he knows everything about the history of swords-he says that when one of a chieftain’s or king’s men took an oath of allegiance, he knelt and kissed that ring.”
Rhys the bard had sung of a sword. “One among them finest of all, A ring on the hilt, valor in the blade, and fear on the point…”
“Ye-es.”
“Look, then,” Roetger said. He laid aside his crutch to pick up the sword as if he must be straight to handle the thing. He asked Adelia to stand up. Flicking the sword free of its scabbard, he held it out to her.
It was a rebirth. Apart from where it had been nicked, the blade gleamed as if new from the smithy.
Rhys had sung: “Tempered in blood of many a battle, Never in fight did it fail the hand that drew it, Daring the perils of war, the rush of the foe, Not the first time, then, its edge ventured on valiant deeds.”
“But look, look,” Roetger insisted. “See the fuller.”
Adelia, who knew nothing of weaponry, supposed the fuller to be the grooved bit running down the blade. She went nearer and saw a design like curling water. “What’s that?” Letters had been etched into the pattern.
“Look closer,” Roetger said.
Adelia squinted. “Is that an A?… R, T…”
“Arturus,” the champion said.
There was silence.
A chill over her skin rose goose bumps along Adelia’s arms and up her back. She couldn’t speak.
Emma was bouncing in her chair, squeaking with joy like a child.
“Excalibur.” In his reverence, Roetger began to sob. “What else? Where else? Are we not in Avalon?”
“But…” Adelia stared from face to face. “But that means… the body on the hill…”
“Yes,” Roetger said simply.
Emma, too, was sobbing. “The once and future king,” she said.
Roetger flung up his hand so that the weapon in it glowed amber in the light. Then he held it out to Adelia on his palms. Tears still fell, but he was smiling. “Mansur says it was passed to you. I am not worthy; it belonged to a great heart, and to a great heart it must go.”
“He wants you to have it,” Emma said. “You have the greatest heart we know.”
FOURTEEN
RIDING A SEDATE PALFREY and with Millie up behind her, Adelia trotted along the road to Wells at the head of a cavalcade.
In one of her horse’s saddlebags was a summons to appear at the Bishop’s Palace before King Henry of England. Sticking out of the other bag was a long, thin woven contraption, more usually used for carrying fishing rods, containing an object for which the monarchy and abbeys of Europe would give their eyeteeth-or certainly other people’s.