“Not much. Nothing, really.”
“Tell us. We’ll judge.”
Martin looked more and more unhappy. I said:
“He is bound by oaths and you know it. He must not tell the secrets of the craft and we must not ask him.”
“Let him speak for himself,” Edmund said. “Do you say so, Martin?”
Martin said uncomfortably: “I’ve nothing really to say.”
Edmund looked at him curiously. “You believe in the Spirits now—is that it?”
“Yes,” he said. But it sounded as though the word was being dragged out of him. “I believe in them.”
• • •
We left the city the day before we were to march on Andover and camped in the fields on the far side of the road from the Romsey army. The reason for this was that Prince Jeremy had invited our men to join his at supper on the eve of our campaign together. He said that although it had been wise to keep the two forces from mixing inside the city, it was also wise that they should meet and feast moderately together before setting out. In this way they would get to know and have confidence in each other. My father was more dubious about this than he had been about the earlier suggestion but agreed that it could do no harm. The feasting, he pointed out, would need to be moderate, particularly as far as drinking went, since we were to ride next morning.
When we went over I, of course, found myself saddled again with James. He took me down the lines, denigrating even his men, which I thought unpardonable: they were less stout than ours, he said, but then they did not live so well. I ignored that and asked him about something else which struck me as odd: they had bowmen with them, at least a hundred, I could not understand what they were doing with an army in the field. Bowmen were part of the garrison, a defensive force. James said:
“An idea of my father’s.” He shook his head. “It probably won’t work.”
“I still don’t see . . . Even if they could come up with a troop of horse, the horsemen would gallop out of range before they could do any real damage.”
“It’s something to do with a scheme for luring the enemy into an ambush where the bowmen would shoot them down. As I say, it will very likely prove useless.”
“But meanwhile your own walls at Romsey are undefended.”
He gave a high laugh. “The women can toss slop buckets down on anyone who attacks. Apart from that, they can take their chance. The bowmen are defending the one Romsey skin that is precious. In my father’s eyes, at any rate.”
I said in annoyance: “I do not think that is true, unless it is your own skin you mean. Your father is concerned for you more than himself; and more, perhaps, than you deserve.”
“What does he deserve? Does a weak man deserve anything?”
“A son owes a duty.”
“You can say that,” he said bitterly, “with a father such as yours.” He looked at me with hatred for once showing instead of the usual ingratiating affability. “You can respect your father.”
It was not worth responding to the remark. We went on down the lines and he showed me the horses, drawing attention to their weak points. But he came back to the subject just before we parted. He said:
“You will grieve, I suppose, when your father dies?”
“Yes, but I do not expect to do so for a long time to come.”
“It could happen in this campaign. He fights in the van, doesn’t he, not from behind like the Prince of Romsey?”
“But fights well. It would take a good man to unhorse him.”
He laughed, but it was more a titter, mirthless.
“Good warriors have been brought down before now by cunning lesser ones.”
I said nothing, but left him.
• • •
The feasting was moderate as Jeremy had promised: extremely moderate. The meat was barely enough to go round and the ale, which for some unfathomable reason they called the Strong, was thin and sour compared with what our men were used to. There was some grumbling but our Sergeants controlled it well and got the men back to their own lines fairly early on the promise of a measure of decent ale there. It was not a particularly auspicious start to a joint expedition, but it could have been worse: there had been no fighting or even quarreling.
My father did not come back with the rest of us. Jeremy asked him to stay the night in his tent, an ornate affair four times the size of my father’s own and lined with silk: in this respect, at least, James could not bemoan Romsey’s poverty. Jeremy said he wanted to have a final private discussion about the campaign. I think my father thought he was nervous and needed reassuring. At any rate, he agreed to stay.
In our camp there was for some time a buzz of noise, part of the excitement which always attends the first few days in the field. Gradually it died away as the night drew on. I myself lay awake for a long time, turning restlessly despite my weariness. It was not the hardness of the ground which caused this—I had grown accustomed to hard living the previous summer—but a fit, for which I could find no cause, of my old melancholy. When I did sleep I had bad dreams: I could not remember what they had been but twice I woke in fear, sweating despite the chill of the night.
After that I slept heavily, exhausted. Edmund had to shake me into consciousness. I blinked up at him, and asked:
“What is it?”
“They’ve gone . . .”
“Gone? Who? What do you mean—gone?”
I was aware of a hum of talk and shouts outside; it had an anxious disturbed note like that of a hive broached by a clumsy beekeeper.
“The Romsey army. They have left camp in the night.”
“My father . . .?”
“I don’t know.”
I pulled clothes on and ran out, Edmund with me, to find the Captains. They too were agitated and most of them talking at once. They paid me no attention. It was some time before I could piece things together. The Romsey tents were still there, with their baggage train and heavy gear. But there was no sign of men or horses. Except for six men. My father’s bodyguards lay outside the Prince of Romsey’s tent with their throats slit. Of my father there was no sign.
Blaine said, above the others: “They cannot have got far. We can be up with them before they reach home.”
“If they are heading for home.”
That was a Captain called Greene, a man who did not say much but usually talked sense.
“Where else?” Blaine asked.
“They have left their tents and gear,” Greene said. “Would they do that unless they were sure of exchanging them for something better?” There was a silence in which I heard a rooster crowing distantly through the dawn air. “The plan was to take one of the Andover gates by treachery. There are gates nearer than Andover.”
As he spoke we knew it was true. Blaine cursed but quietly, not with his usual bluster. Then Greene called one of the Sergeants to form a troop. The Captains rode with it and I also. I was not invited but no one told me I must not. We rode, in near silence, along the road to the East Gate, past the abandoned Romsey camp.
Light was beginning to come into the sky behind our backs but it was difficult to see much. We had almost reached the East Gate before Blaine, with an oath, halted his horse and pointed upward. The pole above the gate carried a flag, and its colors were not the blue and gold of Winchester but the yellow and black of Romsey. We stared at it. While we were doing so the air hissed and a man cried out; his horse reared and dragged him away, an arrow in his throat. We knew now why Jeremy had brought his bowmen.
Blaine called a retreat. We went, but not before I had seen something else, stuck on a spear over the gate, flapped over by Romsey’s flag. It was a man’s head. At that distance and in the half light one could not see the face but there was no doubt whose it was. It wore the spiked helmet of the Prince of Winchester.
NINE
BOLD PETER
WHEN I GET HIM,” BLAINE said, “I will have him scourged each day for a week and in between he will lie naked in a salt bed. Then I will have his chest opened and his ribs pulled outward, slowly, till he looks like a bloody eagle. I will . . .”