Isle of Glass (13 page)

“No, Sire. Bishop Aylmer has set me at your disposal. He
asks only that I sleep and serve Mass with his people.”

“Does he feel that he needs a spy?” Though the King’s tone
jested, his eyes did not.

“You know my lord needs no such thing. You also know that
you were about to ask him for me. So, he anticipated you. What will Your
Majesty have of his servant?”

“First,” answered Richard, “the truth.”

“That is the truth, Sire.”

The King pointed to a chair. “Sit.”

As Alf obeyed, he paced, restless. “I call Aylmer friend. We
owe each other our lives many times over. But a king can never trust a friend.
God’s feet! He can’t even trust his own family.”

Richard stood in front of Alf, hands on hips. “When my older
brother was as young as you are, he tried to throw my father down and make
himself King. He died for it. And I learned something. Blood-ties mean nothing.
Friendship means even less. All that matters is myself. And winning, Brother.
And winning.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Tell me so when your beard has grown.”

Alf did not know that he smiled, until Richard glared and
said, “You laugh at me. What do you know that I’m so ignorant of?”

“That the world is a cruel place,” Alf responded, “but that
it’s not as cruel as you think. Aylmer cares for you, as his King and as his
friend; I'm his free gift. Even though I look as if I were about to deliver a
sermon.”

That won laughter; Richard relaxed visibly. “Ah, but you
just have.” He sat by a table laden with sheets of parchment. “There’s a
promise I made to you when you were playing at royal ambassador.”

“Yes, Sire?”

“Yes, Brother.” He shuffled the written sheets, frowning at
them. “When I came here, there were messages waiting. You’ve told me the truth
about Rhydderch’s raids. Bitter ones they’ve been, too, for Gwynedd. And
Rhydderch’s neighbors are worried that he’ll bring down reprisals upon them
all, for there’s word of resistance, and forces gathering along the Marches.
There’s a war in the making, and no small one, either.”

“So I told you, Sire.”

“It’s a bad time for it,” Richard said. “Winter’s begun and
the harvest’s in; everyone’s laid his sword away and hung his shield on the
wall. A sitting target for a man who’s not only reckless but clever.”

Alf watched the King steadily, with a sinking heart. Richard
moved restlessly in his chair, tugging at his beard, contemplating a winter
campaign: snow and cold and long grim nights, and the swift heat of battle.
Perhaps there would be glory, a contest with Kilhwch, King against King, with a
crown for the winning; or with the elven-prince, the Flame-bearer of Rhiyana,
who had raised his scarlet shield in all the lands from the sunrise to the
sunset.

The King turned his eyes to Alf, only half-seeing the white
tense face. “As soon as I can escape, I'm riding south. But I’ll do this much
for you: I won’t take my army with me. Only my own knights, and whoever else
pleases to come. Rhydderch will learn that he can't start a war without
involving his King in it.”

“Sire,” Alf said, “this is madness. To destroy three
kingdoms for a few days’ pleasure—Sire, you can't!”

The lion-eyes glared. “Do you gainsay your King?”

Alf opened his mouth, closed it again. He knew how Alun had
felt before Rhydderch. Helpless, and raging. And he could not loose his
sorceries upon this madman as Alun had upon Rhydderch.

His head drooped. He had failed. He would have to tell Alun.
If he closed his eyes, he could see the Rhiyanan knight hobbling down a
passageway, aided by a crutch and by a sturdy monk—Brother Edgar, who was
simple but strong. Alun was intent on his body’s struggle, only dimly aware of
the mind-touch.

Alf withdrew. Later would be soon enough.

“Come now, Brother! Don’t look so grim.”

For a moment Alf recognized neither the voice nor the face.
His own face had gone cold; Richard checked a moment, then slapped his
shoulder. “We’ve both had enough of this. Ride out with me.”

Alf rose slowly. Richard grimaced at his habit. “You can sit
astride a horse in that?”

“Try me,” Alf said.

The King grinned. "So I will. But boots you’ll have—you
won’t gainsay me there.” He turned away, calling for his own riding gear. “And
boots for the Brother, Giraut; and mind you bring a pair that will fit!”

o0o

After the riding there was work to do, a charter to copy and
a letter to write; and after that, a feast in the Earl’s great hall. Richard
kept Alf by him, although there were stares and murmurs at this blatant display
of a new favorite; and such a fair one, with so grim an expression, who ate
little and drank less and spoke not at all.

The Earl feasted his guests well though unwillingly, and
regaled them with all the wealth of the North. His triumph was a minstrel who
knew not only the latest airs from Languedoc but the old songs of Anglia in the
old tongue.

“For,” said the jongleur, tossing back his yellow mane, “my
father was a troubadour in the court of the Count of Poictesme, but my mother
was a Saxon; and she swore by King Harold’s beard, though he was dead a full
hundred years. She told me tales of the old time and my father taught me the
songs of the south, and between them they made a jongleur. What will you have,
then, my lords? Sweet tales of love?” His fingers lilted upon the lutestrings.
“Deeds of old heroes?” A stirring martial tune. “A call to the path of virtue?”
Stern didactic chords. “A drinking song?” An irresistibly cheerful and slightly
drunken air. “Only speak, and whatever you ask for you shall have.”

“War,” the King said promptly. “Sing about war.”

The minstrel bowed and began to play.

o0o

Alf toyed with his wine-cup, half-listening. He knew that
Richard watched him. As did many another: Aylmer farther down the high table,
and Jehan below among the squires, and Thea forgetting to play the proper
hungry hound.

He looked at none of them.
War,
he thought, hating it
and all it meant.
War. Blood. Three kings, three kingdoms. I have to stop
it. I have to.
But how, he did not know.

o0o

Richard’s voice rang out suddenly, cutting off the singer.
“Enough of that! Sing us something new, man. With a moral in it that a priest
would like to hear.” As he spoke, he caught Alf’s eye; the monk looked away.

The singer bowed in his seat and said, “His Majesty
commands; I obey. There’s a tale my mother used to tell me that’s so old, maybe
it’s new again.” He struck a sudden ringing note and intoned, “
Hwæt
!”

The listeners started; he laughed. “That’s the Saxon for
Oyez! Once on a time, my lords and ladies, which was in the old Angla-land,
there was an abbey. There lived a cowherd named Cædmon. He was a gentle man,
was Cædmon, but rather slow in the wits; everyone loved him, but everyone
laughed at him, too: for that is the way people are, as we all know, sieurs.

“It was the custom then when there was a feast for the
revelers to pass the harp round, and for each person to sing a song. Poor
Cædmon dreaded that harp’s coming, for he couldn’t sing a note and he had never
learned a song. When the harp drew near to him, he would get up and slink away
to his byre, and hide in the dark and the silence and the warmth of the cows.

“One night, when he had fled from the singing and gone to
his bed in the hayloft, he dreamed that a man came and greeted him and said,
‘Cædmon, sing me something.' Cædmon was bitterly ashamed and like to weep, and
he said, ‘
Ne con ic noht singan
’—‘I don’t know how to sing.’ But the
man, who was an angel of the Lord, insisted that Cædmon sing. Then Cædmon stood
up, and lo! music came pouring out of him, the most beautiful song in the
world. This is what he sang:

‘Nu sculon herigean
heofonrices Weard,

Meotodes meahte ond his
modgeÞanc,

weorc Wuldorfæder, swa he
wundra gehwæs,
ece Drihten, or
onstealde.
He ærest scop eorðan
bearnum
heofon to hrofe, halig
Scyppend;
Þa middangeard moncynnes
Weard,
ece Drihten, æfter teode
firum foldan, Frea ælmihtig.’

“And that in our feeble tongue is to say: ‘Now must we
praise the Guardian of heaven’s kingdom, the might of the Measurer and His
mind’s thought, the work of the Father of glory, as He, eternal Lord, ordained
the beginning of all wonders. First He shaped for the children of earth, heaven
as a roof, a holy shaping; then afterward for men He created Middle-earth, the
earth’s surface—He, Guardian of Mankind, eternal Lord, almighty King.’ ”

The singer fell silent. There was a pause; then all at once
the feasters began to applaud. He bowed and smiled and bowed again, and
accepted a cup from the King’s own hand.

“Splendid!” Richard cried. “Wonderful! It’s a pity we’ve let
the old custom lapse. We ought to revive it.”

He paused, struck by his own words. “Well, and why not?
Walter, fetch my harp! We’ll all try our hand at it.”

Several of the higher lords looked mildly appalled; their
inferiors either feigned interest or answered sudden and urgent calls of
nature. Alf saw one man’s lips move as he struggled to recall a song.

By Richard’s will they all tried the game, some well, some
badly, with the aid of a free flow of wine. One dour-faced elderly knight
startled them all with a bawdy drinking song; Bishop Aylmer countered it with
an
Ave Maria
.

At last there was only one who had not sung. “Come now,”
said the King, holding out the harp. “Are you a Cædmon, Brother Alfred? Sing me
something!”

Alf took the harp slowly and set it on his knee. It had been
a long lifetime since he had learned to play such an instrument from old
Brother Aethelstan, who had been a gleeman in his youth. He tightened a string
that had gone out of tune three songs ago and met the King’s stare, his own
level, almost defiant. His head bent, his fingers flickering through a melody.
Down the hall, he sensed Jehan’s start of recognition.

“‘Ut quid iubes, pusiole,
quare mandas, filiole,
carmen dulce me cantare,
cum sim longe exsul valde

intra mare? O! cur iubes canere?

“‘Why do you bid, beloved child, why do you command, my
dearest son, that I should sing a sweet song, when I am an exile afar upon the
sea? O! why do you bid me sing?’ ”

Richard was no scholar, but he knew enough Latin to understand
Alf’s meaning. His expression darkened as the song went on; then little by
little it lightened. For the lament turned to a soaring hymn, companion to that
which had begun it all, and Alf’s eyes above the harp were bright, challenging.

His own eyes began to dance, amused, admiring. Here at last
was one who could both obey him and gainsay him, yet who bore no taint of
treachery.

Alf silenced the harp and returned it to the King, and
slowly smiled.

The rain that had buried the town in mire gave way to a
heavy blanket of snow. Richard cursed it and his court, which held him back
from his war, though he prepared with as much speed as he might.

“I’ll be King of Gwynedd by spring,” he vowed to Alf, “or
I’ll have Rhydderch’s head on a pike and your I-told-you-so’s in my ears from dawn
until sundown.”

“King Winter may prove stronger than Richard of
Anglia," Alf said. “Why not yield to him and spare yourself a struggle?”

“Am I to turn craven before a flake or two of snow? I’ll
ride south before the month is out, you and winter and all the rest of it be
damned.”

o0o

So might they well be, Alf thought as he made his way from
the castle to the Bishop’s palace. It was late, and dark, and it had begun to
snow again; he huddled in the cloak Richard had given him.

All at once he realized that he had fallen into the midst of
a small company, youths with the King’s livery under their cloaks, three of
Richard’s squires escaped from their duties. He tensed and walked more quickly.

But they had seen and recognized him. “Hoi!” one called out.
“It’s Pretty-boy!”

They surrounded him, solid young men, battle-hardened. Their
eyes glittered; they hemmed him in, wolves advancing on tender prey.

He had averted his own eyes instinctively, lest they catch
the light and flare ember-red. Wherever he turned stood a squire, grinning.

He stopped. “Please, sieurs,” he said. “It’s late and I have
no time to spare.”

They laughed. “‘Please, sieurs. Pretty please, sieurs. Oh,
prithee, let me go home to my cold, cold bed!`”

One took his arm, friendly-wise. “Poor little Brother. I’ll
wager you’ve never had a proper good time. We’ll have to fix that, won’t we,
lads?”

The others chorused assent. Alf stood still. Perhaps, if he
pretended to play their game, they would let him go.

They herded him toward an alehouse. The ringleader, a
handsome dark-curled fellow whom the others called Joscelin, held still to his
arm. “Come, little Brother,” he said. “Join us in a mug or two. Or three. We
all know how well a priest can hold his ale.”

They reached the tavern’s door and swarmed through it. The
room was crowded; it reeked of smoke, of sour ale, and of unwashed bodies. The
three squires and their unwilling guest elbowed their way to a table, put to
flight the townsmen who had occupied it, and shouted for ale.

Joscelin clung close to Alf, stroking-close. The other two
were content to laugh; he shot small barbs meant to draw blood. “It isn't
sacramental wine we get here, but it’s not refectory ale either. Drink up,
pretty Brother. I’m paying.”

Alf stared at a brimming mug. It was not clean, he noticed.

Abruptly he swept it up and drained it in three long gulps.
Another appeared, and another. He felt nothing but a heaviness of the stomach,
although his companions, having matched him mug for mug, were beginning to wax
hilarious. He measured the distance to the door, considered all the obstacles
between, and waited for his chance.