Scarlet
Authors: Stephen R. Lawhead
OTHER BOOKS BY STEPHEN R. LAWHEAD
KING RAVEN TRILOGY:
Hood
Scarlet
Tuck
(Winter 2009)
Patrick, Son of Ireland
THE CELTIC CRUSADES:
The Iron Lance
The Black Rood
The Mystic Rose
Byzantium
THE SONG OF ALBION:
The Paradise War
The Silver Hand
The Endless Knot
THE PENDRAGON CYCLE:
Taliesin
Merlin
Arthur
Pendragon
Grail
Avalon
Empyrion I: The Search for Fierra
Empyrion II: The Siege of Dome
Dream Thief
THE DRAGON KING TRILOGY:
In the Hall of the Dragon King
The Warlords of Nin
The Sword and the Flame
KING RAVEN: BOOK 2
STEPHEN R.
LAWHEAD
© 2007 by Stephen R. Lawhead
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published in Nashville, Tennessee by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc.
Thomas Nelson, Inc. titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].
Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lawhead, Steve.
Scarlet / by Stephen R. Lawhead.
p. cm. — (King Raven ; bk. 2)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-59554-086-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-59554-089-8 (trade paper)
1. Robin Hood (Legendary character)—Fiction. 2. Great Britain—History—Norman period, 1066-1154—Fiction. 3. Wales—History—1063–1284—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3562.A865S28 2008
813'.54—dc22
2008010535
Printed in the United States of America
08 09 10 11 RRD 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
To the dedicated
men and women at
UWMC and SCCA,
without whom . . .
PRONUNCIATION GUIDE
Many of the old Celtic words and names are strange to modern eyes, but they are not as difficult to pronounce as they might seem at first glance. A little effort—and the following rough guide—will help you enjoy the sound of these ancient words.
Consonants
– As in English, but with the following exceptions:
c: hard – as in
c
at (never soft, as in
cent
)
ch: hard – as in Ba
ch
(never soft, as in
church
)
dd: a hard
th
sound, as in
th
en
f: a hard
v
sound, as in o
f
ff: a soft
f
sound, as in o
ff
g: hard – as in
g
irl (never soft, as in
George
)
ll: a Gaelic distinctive, sounded as
tl
or
hl
on the sides of the tongue
r: rolled or slightly trilled, especially at the beginning of a word
rh: breathed out as if
h-r
and heavy on the
h
sound
s: soft – as in
s
in (never hard, as in
his
); when followed by a vowel it takes on the
sh
sound
th: soft – as in
th
istle (never hard, as in
then
)
Vowels
– As in English, but generally with the lightness of short vowel sounds:
a: short, as in c
a
n
á: slightly softer than above, as in
a
we
e: usually short, as in m
e
t
é: long
a
sound, as in h
e
y
i: usually short, as in p
i
n
í: long
e
sound, as in s
ee
o: usually short, as in h
o
t
ó: long
o
sound, as in w
o
e
ô: long
o
sound, as in g
o
u: usually sounded as a short
i
, as in p
i
n
ú: long
u
sound, as in s
u
e
ù: short
u
sound, as in m
u
ck
w: sounded as a long
u
, as in h
u
e; before vowels often becomes a soft consonant as in the name G
w
en
y: usually short, as in p
i
n; sometimes
u
as in p
u
n; when long, sounded
e
as in s
ee
; rarely,
y
as in wh
y
The careful reader will have noted that there is very little difference between
i
,
u
, and
y
—they are almost identical to non-Celts and modern readers.
Most Celtic words are stressed on the next to the last syllable. For example, the personal name Gofannon is stressed go-FAN-non, and the place name Penderwydd is pronounced pen-DER-width, and so on.
S
o, now. One day soon they hang me for a rogue. Fair enough. I have earned it a hundred times over, I reckon, and that’s leaving a lot of acreage unexplored. The jest of it is, the crime for which I swing is the one offence I never did do. The sheriff will have it that I raised rebellion against the king.
I didn’t.
Oh, there’s much I’ve done that some would as soon count treason. For a fact, I et more of the king’s venison than the king has et bread, and good men have lost their heads to royal pikes for far less; but in all my frolics I never breathed a disloyal word against the crown, nor tried to convince any man, boy, horse, or dog to match his deeds to mine. Ah, but dainties such as these are of no concern when princes have their tender feelings ruffled. It is a traitor they want to punish, not a thief. The eatin’ o’ Red William’s game is a matter too trifling—more insult than crime—and it’s a red-handed rebel they need. Too much has happened in the forests of the March and too much princely pride hangs in the balance to be mincing fair about a rascal poaching a few soft-eyed deer.
Until that ill-fated night, Will Scarlet ran with King Raven and his band of merry thieves. Ran fast and far, I did, let me tell you. Faster and farther than all the rest, and that’s saying something. Here’s the gist: it’s the Raven Hood they want and cannot get. So, ol’ Will is for the jump.
Poor luck, that. No less, no more.
They caught me crest and colours. My own bloody fault. There’s none to blame but the hunter when he’s caught in his own snare. I ask no pardon. A willing soul, I flew field and forest with King Raven and his flock. Fine fun it was, too, until they nabbed me in the pinch. Even so, if it hadn’t a’ been for a spear through my leg bone they would not a’ got me either.
So, here we sit, my leg and me, in a dank pit beneath Count de Braose’s keep. I have a cell—four walls of stone and a damp dirt floor covered with rotting straw and rancid rushes. I have a warden named Guibert, or Gulbert or some such, who brings me food and water when he can be bothered to remember, and unchains me from time to time so I can stretch the cramps a bit and wash my wound. I also have my very own priest, a young laggard of a scribe who comes to catch my wild tales and pin them to the pages of a book to doom us all.
We talk and talk. God knows we’ve got time to kill before the killing time. It pleases me now to think on the dizzy chase we led. I was taken in the most daring and outrageous scheme to come out of the forest yet. It was a plan as desperate as death, but light and lark-some as a maiden’s flirting glance. At a blow, we aimed to douse the sheriff ’s ardour and kindle a little righteous wrath in lorn Britannia. We aimed to cock a snook at the crown, sure, and mayhap draw the king’s attention to our sore plight, embarrass his sheriff, and show him and his mutton-headed soldiers for fools on parade—all in one fell swoop. Sweet it was and, save for my piddling difficulties, flawless as a flower until the walls of the world came crashing down around our ears.
Truth is, I can’t help thinking that if we only knew what it was that had fallen plump into our fists, none of this would have happened and I would not be here now with a leg on fire and fit to kill me if the sheriff don’t. Oh, but that is ranging too far afield, and there is ground closer to home needs ploughing first.
A
h, but see the monk here! Asleep with his nose in his inkhorn.
“Odo, you dunce! Wake up! You’re dozing again. It ill becomes you to catch a wink on a dying man’s last words. Prick up your ears, priest. Pare your quill, and tell me the last you remember.”
“Sorry, Will,” he says. He’s always ever so sorry, rubbing sleep from his dreamy brown eyes. And it is sorry he should be—sorry for himself and all his dreary ilk, but not for Will.
“Never feel sorry for Will, lad,” I tell him. “Will en’t sorry for nothing.”
Brother Odo is my scribe, decent enough for a Norman in his simpering, damp-handed way. He does not wish me harm. I think he does not even know why he has been sent down here amongst the gallows birds to listen to the ramblings of a dangerous scofflaw like myself.
Why should he?
Abbot Hugo is behind this wheeze to scribble down all my doings. To what purpose? Plain as daylight in Dunholme, he means to scry out a way to catch King Raven. Hugo imagines languishing in the shadow of the noose for a spell will sober me enough to grow a tongue of truth in my head and sing like a bird for freedom.
So, I sing and sing, if only to keep Jack o’Ladder at arm’s length a little longer. Our larcenous abbot will learn summat to his profit, as may be, but more to his regret. He’ll learn much of that mysterious phantom of the greenwood, to be sure. But for all his listening he’ll hear naught from me to catch so much as a mayfly. He’ll not get the bolt he desires to bring King Raven down.
“So, now,” I say, “pick up your pen, Brother Odo. We’ll begin again. What was the last you remember?”
Odo scans his chicken tracks a moment, scratches his shaved pate and says, “When Thane Aelred’s lands were confiscated for his part in the Uprising, I was thrown onto my own resources . . .”
Odo speaks his English with the strange flat tongue of the Frank outlanders. That he speaks English at all is a wonder, I suppose, and the reason why Hugo chose him. Poor Odo is a pudgy pudding of a man, young enough, and earnest in faith and practice, but pale and only too ready to retire, claiming cramp or cold or fatigue. He is always fatigued, and for no good reason it seems to me. He makes as if chasing a leaking nib across fresh-scraped vellum is as mighty a labour as toting the carcass of a fat hind through the greenwood on your back with the sheriff ’s men on your tail.
All saints bear witness! If pushing a pen across parchment taxes a man as much as Odo claims, we should honour as heroes all who ply the quill, amen.
I am of the opinion that unless he grows a backbone, and right soon, Brother Odo will be nothing more in this life than another weak-eyed scribbler squinting down his long French nose at the undiluted drivel his hand has perpetrated. By Blessed Cuthbert’s thumb, I swear I would rather end my days in Baron de Braose’s pit than face eternity with a blot like that on my soul.
Perhaps, in God’s dark plan, friend Will is here to instruct this indolent youth in a better lesson, thinks I. Well, we will do what can be done to save him.
W
hen Thane Aelred’s lands were confiscated for his part in the Uprising, I was thrown onto my own resources, and like to have died they were that thin.”
This I tell him, repeating the words to buy a little time while I cast my net into streams gone by to catch another gleaming memory for our proud abbot’s feast. May he choke on the bones! With this blessing between my teeth, I rumble on . . .