De Vrailly made a face. ‘Then your law is something that excuses weakness and devalues strength. He chose to fight and was beaten. God spoke on the matter and no more need be said.’
The earl’s eyes were just visible inside his visor and Gaston had his hand on his sword; while the earl was speaking reasonably, his hand was on the pommel of an axe at his saddle bow. His knights all had the posture – the small leaning forward, the steadying hand on a horse’s neck – of men on the edge of violence. They were one step away from a disaster of blood. He could sense it.
‘You will apologise to him for the barbaric deaths of his squires, or our agreement is at an end.’ The earl’s voice was firm, and his hand was steady on his axe. ‘Listen to me, messire. You cannot take this man to court. The king has only to hear his story and you will be arrested.’
‘There are not enough men-at-arms in this country to take me,’ de Vrailly said.
The earl’s retainers drew their swords.
Gaston raised his empty, armoured hands and interposed his horse between the two men. ‘Gentlemen! There was a misunderstanding. Ever it has been so, when East meets West. My cousin was within his rights as a knight and a seigneur. And you say this Ser Gawin was also within his rights. Must we, who have come so far to serve you, my lord Earl – must we all pay for this misunderstanding? As it pleases God, we are all men of good understanding and good will. For my part, I will apologise to the young knight.’ Gaston glared at his cousin.
The beautiful face showed understanding. ‘Ah, very well,’ he said. ‘He is the son of your ally? Then I will apologise. Although, by the good God! He needs training in arms.’
Gawin Murien had recovered enough of his wits to pack his armour onto one horse and mount another. Then he followed the earl through the column, the way a child follows his mother.
The earl raised his visor. ‘Gawin!’ he called out. ‘Lad, the foreign knights – they come from different customs. The Lord de Vrailly will apologise to you.’
The Alban was seen to nod.
De Vrailly halted his horse well out of arm’s reach, while Gaston rode closer. ‘Ser Knight,’ he said, ‘for my part, I greatly regret the deaths of your squires.’
The Alban knight nodded again. ‘Very courteous of you,’ he said. His voice was flat.
‘And for mine,’ de Vrailly said, ‘I forgive your ransom, as the earl insists that by your law of arms, I may have encountered you unfairly.’ The last word was drawn from him as if by a fish hook.
Murien looked a less-than-heroic figure in his stained cote-hardie and his hose ruined by a night of kneeling in the courtyard. He didn’t glitter. In fact, he hadn’t even put his knight’s belt back on, and his sword still lay on the bed of the wagon.
He nodded again. ‘I hear you,’ he said.
He turned his horse, and rode away.
Gaston watched him go, and wondered if it would have been better for everyone if his cousin had killed him in the yard.
Chapter Five
Ser Gawin
Harndon Palace – Harmodius
Harmodius Magus sat in a tower room entirely surrounded by books, and watched the play of the sun on the dust motes, as it shone through the high, clear glass windows. It was April – the season of rain but also the season of the first serious, warm sun – when the sunlight finally has its own colour, its own richness. Today, the sky was blue and a cat might be warm in a patch of sunshine
Harmodius had three cats.
‘Miltiades!’ he hissed, and an old grey cat glanced at him with weary insolence.
The man’s gold-shod stick licked out and prodded the cat, whose latest sleeping spot threatened the meticulously drawn pale blue chalk lines covering the dark slate floor. The cat shifted by the width of its tail and shot the Magus a disdainful look.
‘I feed you, you wretch,’ Harmodius muttered.
The light continued to pour through the high windows, and to creep down the whitewashed wall, revealing calculations in chalk, silver or lead pencil, charcoal, even scratched out in dirt. The Magus used whatever came to hand when he felt the urge to write.
And still the light crept down the wall.
In the halls below, the Magus could sense men and women – a servant bringing a tray of cold venison to his tower’s door; a gentleman and lady engaged in a ferocious tryst that burned like a small fire almost directly under his feet – where was that? It must be awfully public – and the Queen, who burned like the very sun. He smiled when he brushed over her warmth. Oftimes, he watched others to pass the time. It was the only form of phantasm he still cast regularly.
Why is that? he wondered, idly.
But this morning, well. This morning his Queen had asked him – challenged him – to do something.
Do something wonderful, Magus! she had said, clapping her hands together.
Harmodius waited until the sun crossed a chalk line he had drawn, and then raised his eyes to a particular set of figures. Nodded. Sipped some cold tea that had a film of dust – what was that dust? Oh – he had been grinding bone for oil colour. He had bone dust in his tea. That wasn’t entirely disgusting.
All three cats raised their heads and pricked their ears.
The light intensified and struck a small mirror with the image of Ares and Taurus entwined on the ivory back – and then shot across the floor in a focused beam.
‘Fiat lux!’ roared the Magus.
The beam intensified, drawing in the light around it until the cats were cast in shadow while the beam sparkled like a line of lightning – passing above the chalk designs, through a lens, and into a bubble of gold atop his staff. Unnoticed by him, it struck a little off centre and a tiny fragment of the white beam slid past the staff to dance along the far wall, partially reflected by the golden globe, partly refracted by the mass of energy seething inside the staff itself. The intense light flicked up sharply, licked at gilding of a triptych that adorned the sideboard, struck a glass of wine abandoned hours before. And, still focused, it passed across the east wall, its rapid passage burning away a dozen or more characters of a spell written in an invisible, arcane ink, hidden under the paint.
The older cat started, and hissed.
The Magus felt suddenly light headed, as if at the onset of a fever or a strong head-cold. But his mind was abruptly clear and sharp, and the staff was giving off the unmistakable aura of an artefact filling with power. He saw the rogue light fragment and deftly moved the mirror and the focus to touch the staff perfectly.
He clapped his hands in triumph.
The cats looked around, startled, as if they had never seen his room before – and then went back to sleep.
Harmodius looked around the room. ‘What in the name of the triad just happened?’ he asked.
He didn’t need rest. Even after casting a powerful phantasm like the last, the feeling of the helios in his staff made him tingle with anticipation. He’d promised himself that he’d wait a day . . . perhaps two days . . . but the temptation was strong.
‘Bah,’ he said aloud, and the cats flicked their ears. He hadn’t felt so alive in many years.
He took a heavy flax mop and scrubbed the floor, eliminating every trace of the complex chalk pattern that had decorated it like an elaborate Southern rug. Then, despite his age and his heavy robes, he was down on his knees with a square of white linen, scrubbing even the cracks between the slate slabs until there was not a trace of pale blue chalk. However eager he was, he was also fastidious about this – that no trace of one phantasm should linger while he performed another. Experience had taught him that lesson well.