Authors: Miles Cameron
Ser John looked at himself in the polished bronze mirror recently mounted on the armoury wall, and laughed aloud.
His new squire, young Jamie, paused. ‘Ser John?’
‘Jamie, there’s nothing sillier than an old man aping a younger one,’ he said.
Jamie Vorwarts was a Hoek merchant’s son. His whole family had died in the siege and the boy had nowhere to go. He knew more of arms than business, and he could polish steel better than any squire Ser John had ever had. He was perhaps fourteen. He was tall, a little too thin from hard rations, and his face was a little too pinched to be considered handsome.
He went back to polishing his master’s new six-piece breastplate. It was an expensive miracle of steel and brass, with verses from the Bible inscribed around the edge.
‘You could at least tell me I’m not old,’ Ser John said.
He was standing in front of the first mirror he’d owned in twenty years, wearing a fine green doublet, three layers of heavy linen covered in silk, and laced to the doublet were a pair of hose in green and red – themselves embroidered in flowers and fall leaves. The hose were slightly padded and quilted to wear under armour, and so was the doublet, but for Albinkirk they were as good as court clothes and they made him look slim and dangerous.
And old.
‘Mutton dressed as lamb,’ he said with a curse.
Jamie looked at him and allowed himself a smile. ‘That’s damn good, my lord.’
‘I didn’t concoct that little saying myself, you young scapegrace. When I was about forty years younger, that’s what we called prostitutes who were too old to roll over.’ The old man frowned.
‘Older women are very attractive,’ Jamie said carefully.
‘I know somewhere you will be very popular indeed,’ said Ser John.
An hour later, the two of them arrived at Middlehill Manor with a pair of donkeys laden with hampers. Ser John sat on his horse in the yard, noting that the new sheep had trimmed the yard grass, and he didn’t see so much as a wayward scrap of cloth on the ground – the grass was yellower than formerly, but the house was clean and neat, the door was replaced on its pintles – he’d helped with that himself – and out in the fields, six women took turns holding a plough for winter wheat. Their furrows were none too straight but then ploughing was hard work even for a fit man.
‘Jamie?’ he asked. ‘See those fine ladies struggling with a plough?’
Jamie leaped down and then paused. ‘Is it a chivalrous thing to plough?’
Ser John frowned. He felt like a magnificent hypocrite whenever he spoke on chivalry, as he’d spent most of his life killing men for money while wearing armour. But he shrugged. ‘Jamie, to the best of my understanding, anything you do to help a woman who needs help is chivalry. In this case, that’s ploughing.’
Jamie stripped his cote and his doublet in the warm sun, and Ser John smiled, thinking that he would endear himself
very deeply
to the six women who now paused, favouring their backs and fully aware that they were about to be saved from more ploughing.
Helewise came into the yard and smiled. ‘I ploughed yesterday,’ she said. ‘My pater taught me a woman can do aught a man can do. But by the wounds of Christ, he was a gentleman and never had to plough a furrow in his life.’ She caught herself tossing her hair, which just happened to be down. And clean.
‘I could rub your back,’ Ser John said. ‘It works when I’ve exercised too long with the sword.’
She smiled happily at him. ‘I might hold you to that, ser knight. But not, I think, until all are abed.’ She was already moving towards the door, and although she spoke naturally, she kept her voice low. ‘And perhaps not tonight.’
He stabled his own horse and saw that the nun’s palfrey had been there – her elegant shoes had left prints in the straw, and there were fresh droppings in the next stall.
He went into the house, and Helewise indicated a settle in the kitchen and went back to wrapping twine around herbs. ‘I saved most of my herb garden,’ she said. ‘I suppose they’re really wild plants, and the Wild didn’t mind them too much.’
He joined her, cutting lengths of hemp twine and giving each bundle of rosemary a single twist. A very young boy – just seven or eight – took them one at a time, climbed a ladder, and hung them from the rafters.
‘What brings you here this time?’ Helewise asked, eyes twinkling.
‘I’ve sent to the King for a new garrison,’ Ser John said. ‘Until then, Jamie and I are knights bent on errantry. You may see us more frequently than you like.’
‘I doubt it,’ she said, and just for a moment their hands touched.
‘Sister Amicia was here,’ she went on. ‘She’ll be back tonight, more’s the pity.’
‘You mislike her?’ asked Ser John.
‘Never say it. By the rood, John, I love her for her confidence. She makes women proud to be women and my daughter fair dotes on her. I won’t say my daughter’s bad, John, but she was in Lorica where it is all the fashion for young gentlewomen to play the wanton—’
John smiled.
‘Don’t smirk at me, sir! I’m too old to kindle and too practical to come to harm.’ She blushed.
‘For myself, madam, I find you very beautiful.’ He reached out, greatly daring, and pushed a lock of her hair from her forehead. He smiled into her eyes. ‘But it is all the Queen. She is a force of nature, and she has them all playing at it.’
‘I won’t hear a word agin’ her.’ Helewise sat back.
‘I speak none. But what is right for the Queen might not sit so well with a mother,’ Ser John said.
‘Where was all this wisdom twenty years ago, messire?’ she asked.
He laughed. ‘I hadn’t a grain of it, sweeting.’
She shook her head. ‘I miss Rupert. Seems an odd thing to say to you, but he was solid. And he was better with Pippa than I am.’
John shook his head, leaned into the chimney corner and stuck his booted feet out towards the fire. ‘I was never jealous of him. I’d never make a husband.’ He looked at her. ‘He’d never ha’ made a knight.’
‘True that,’ she said. ‘I crave your hands on my body,’ she said suddenly.
‘Now who’s wanton?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘Any gate, you best not come to me tonight while the nun is here.’
He smiled and rose. ‘In that case, I’ll not quibble to hold the plough and work up a good sweat.’
‘Though you look very fine,’ she replied.
As swift as a sword strike, he bent over and planted his mouth on hers.
Three long breaths later, she broke away. ‘Fie!’ she said. Delight rather ruined her attempt to be severe. ‘Broad daylight!’
Later the nun came into the yard, and Ser John, now stripped to his hose, took her palfrey, and then used a fork to muck the straw and put in new. She brought feed.
‘I have your package,’ he said. ‘Right here in my saddle pack.’
She smiled. ‘You needn’t have. We’re not much for things of this world.’ She smiled more broadly. And then frowned. ‘I haven’t seen a Wild creature, but down towards the old ferry I saw a swathe of destruction as if a herd of oeliphants had made a dance floor. Trees are down. And there’s a house I think I remember intact, now roofless.’
‘By the ferry?’ Ser John asked. He was rooting in his pack and it began to occur to him that he’d left her package on his work table in Albinkirk. ‘How often do you get to the ferry?’
‘Every week,’ she said. ‘I have a special dispensation to say mass at the ruined chapel there. It’s the only kirk for seven mile.’
Ser John had a sudden notion. ‘Wait,’ he said. He reached in his belt-purse, and there it was – a package the size of a big walnut. ‘Not in my saddle bag at all, I fear,’ he said ruefully.
She took the package and looked at it. He thought she looked disappointed. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘May I borrow your eating knife?’
He drew it from the sheath of his roundel and handed it to her, and she slit the waxed linen of her package. It proved to actually
be
a walnut. She cracked it open it and gasped.
He paused and then said, ‘Are you all right?’
Her face worked, and she was weeping silently. Then she gathered her wits. ‘Bastard!’ she spat, and hurled the walnut shell across the stable to clatter against a distant stone wall, lost in the darkness.
Ser John, provided with yet another test of chivalry, elected to slip quietly out the main stable door. Some things are too perilous for mere men, and the air around her had begun to glow a golden green, casting light in the dark stable, and he didn’t think he was up to whatever she might be about to face.
But in a few heartbeats the light died away, and he heard a fragile laugh. She stepped into the dying light of the day from the darkness of the stable, and something glittered on her hand.
‘He sent me a profession ring,’ she said. She held out her hand, the way a woman might show a betrothal ring. The ring bore the letters ‘IHS’ in beautiful Gothic script.
‘Who did?’ asked Ser John, feeling like a man caught in someone else’s story.
She frowned. ‘I think you know,’ she said.
Ser John bowed. ‘Then I think he’s a bastard, too.’
Over dinner, the women admired the ring. It was gold, and very handsome. Sister Amicia was back in control of herself – she showed the ring calmly, and admitted readily that Ser John had brought it to her.
Phillippa tried to tease her, leaning forward and saying, ‘Perhaps it is from a secret admirer!’
The look she received caused her to sit silently for five whole minutes.
Helewise kept shifting in her seat, looking at the ring from various angles, and finally she reached out, almost unconsciously, and caught Sister Amicia’s hand. ‘It seems hermetical,’ she said.
‘It is!’ Amicia said, obviously delighted. ‘I can store
potentia
in it. It is a blessed thing.’ She smiled at Helewise. ‘How did you know?’
Helewise shrugged. ‘It seems to change shape.’
‘Change shape?’ asked the nun. She grinned. ‘I haven’t seen that. What shape does it take?’
Helewise shook her head. ‘You – a holy woman of power – accepted this token and put it on without question?’
Amicia paled. But her face cleared when she drew the ring easily from her finger, and it sat, heavy and potent, in her hand. ‘You are right, Helewise, and Sister Mirim will rightfully assign me a penance for recklessness. Among other things,’ she said, frowning.
‘There it goes again,’ said Helewise. ‘It changed shape in the palm of your hand. Just for a moment.’
‘What did it look like?’ asked Amicia.
‘Much the same, I suppose,’ Helewise said, looking at Ser John for support. He smiled at her, having seen nothing.
But young Jamie leaned forward with the earnestness of the young. ‘
Ma soeur
, sometimes it doesn’t say IHS.’
Amicia flushed. ‘It doesn’t? What does it say?’
He shrugged. ‘It looks to me like “G&A”.’
Amicia sighed. ‘Damn,’ she said, and dropped the ring into her belt pouch. Then she smiled her girlish, impulsive smile at Phillippa, and said, ‘I think you are right after all. A secret admirer.’
The Wild North of the Inner Sea – Thorn
Thorn had walked several hundred miles, by his own count. He had crossed the Adnacrags, and then he had crossed the Wall, and then he had crossed the river. He had gone west, and he had gone north.
His wanderings took him to the great marshes where boggles bred in the freezing headwaters of the immense river system that defined the borders of the far west. He worked his will on them, not once but five times – in a swamp so vast and desolate that there seemed nothing alive but rotting vegetation and ooze for a day’s walk in every direction, and the massive mounds that bred the boggles rose like organic volcanoes at his command.
And then he started east, now on the north shore of the mighty Inner Sea. He had never been here before but he walked with confidence, and the knowledge of where to place his feet seemed to roll like a helpful poison from the black space in his head.
Somewhere to the east lay the land of the Sossag people. Beyond them was the country of the Northern Huran.
Thorn felt it would be petty for a being of his power to avenge himself on the barbaric Sossag for their failure to aid him in his hour of need. He felt such behaviour was beneath him, but he found himself plotting it nonetheless. The Huran had lost many warriors in his service. The Sossag had not. They had chosen to go their own way.
North of the Inner Sea was a different kind of country – Wild, indeed, but thickly populated with Outwallers. He had had no idea that the Great North Woods held so many men and women and children, and he moved cautiously. It was not that he lacked the power to destroy; but he had learned enough humility to know that moving undetected created fewer complications. He moved cautiously west, skirting the settlements of the great beaver and the Gothic swamps of the Kree where the Hastrenoch bred amid dead trees and brook trout. He passed to the north of the outlying Sossag villages and their northern cousins of the Messaka, and turned south into the squalid villages of the Northern Huran, whose markings he recognised. There were also ruder settlements – wild irks without a lord, and in the middle of the lakes, islands made of great logs and piled rocks by the Ruk. The giants.
The black space in Thorn’s head had plans for the Ruk.
He stood on the shore of a lake in the burned lands and waited until the Ruk came to him. He gave them gifts, like children at a party, and turned them to his own ends. The Ruk were too simple for debate and argument – instead he ensnared them and sent them on his business, breaking them to his will as easily as a man disciplines a dog.
He repeated this at every lake in the burned lands that had one of the islands that the Outwallers called crannogs.
He sent other creatures to listen, and to speak, and to gather news, and he learned that the Northern Huran, having taken losses in his wars, were threatened by their southern cousins across the Great River, and from further east. And he learned that the great Etruscan ships had not come this year. He set spies to visit the distant court of the King of Alba, and to watch that blazing fire, his wife, the Queen.