The Prince and the Pilgrim (10 page)

“Will the High King believe me?”

“I think so. He knows March. And there must be men still at March’s court who remember that night. Drustan is not in Cornwall now; he is at his castle in the north, but he will stand by us if need be, and of course there is Sadok, and he –”

She stopped on a gasp, and a hand went to her throat. “Sadok! And Erbin, too! Ah, God, I should have thought it straight away! Once those men get home to March with their report, we can guess what will happen to Sadok and his brother!”

Before she had finished speaking, Alexander was on his knees beside her chair. “I’ll go today! No, Mother, hear me! You said just now that you had planned to tell me about my father’s death when I was eighteen, and then send me to the High King to seek vengeance on the murderer?”

“Yes, but –”

“This is the day! What happened this morning – you could call it fate! Anyway, it has happened, and – you said so – there could be danger, so what matter a few more months? I will be eighteen within the year! So I will go now, today –”

“
Today?
Alexander – no, listen! Even if it were possible to let you go on such an errand –”

“Then the sooner the better!” He swept on, his eagerness blowing her protests aside like a high wind. This was his own ground, man’s business, and himself a man after his first fight and his first kill. He did not need wit and subtlety for this; he was his father’s son, brave and high of heart, but also young enough – and inexperienced enough – to
see
this as an adventure, like the tales of excitement and wonder he had listened to as a child. “Why not? With good horses, and two or three men, you can be sure we will overtake those two long before they reach March’s border. They’ll see no reason to hurry; in fact they may hang back from telling King March how their officer was killed, and even, perhaps, their news of Baudouin’s son. He sounds the kind of king who would have the tongue out of a bringer of bad tidings!”

“But – if you don’t manage to come up with them? If they take a different road? In any case you don’t know the way.”

“I’ll take someone with me who does, a couple of men. Uwain, I think, he’s a good man, and another – no more. Just the three of us; we’ll travel all the faster. We’ll catch them, never fear.”

“And when you do?”

He sprang to his feet. “Need you ask? They won’t take their news to King March, to put Sadok and his brother at risk. That’s what you want, isn’t it?” Something in her expression checked him. “What is it, Mother? You needn’t fear for me, you know! They won’t be expecting us. We’ll have surprise on our side, and –”

“It’s not that. You’re forgetting. These men are not likely to be March’s spies, why should they be? They must have been here by accident, on other business. I would like to know what that was.”

He stared in dismay. “You mean let them live? March’s men?”

“Even so. Until we know who they are, we can’t know if they were also Baudouin’s – your father’s – friends.
I
would not risk your killing men who perhaps stood against your father’s murder, perhaps even fought with him when he fired the Saxon longships. True, they serve March, but I would not have them killed without we know more about them.”

“Ye – es, I see. And have news of Cornwall?”

“That, too. Believe me, Alex, if they do seem dangerous, we will make sure they take no news back to their master. If they were Baudouin’s men, they’ll not try.”

“I suppose not. Well, all right, Mother, of course I’ll do as you say. We’ll bring them back to you, all of us scatheless. And a pretty tame affair this promises to be!” He took her hand, and lifted it to kiss. His look of disappointment had gone, and the sparkle of eagerness was back. “But afterwards, have I your leave to ride to seek Drustan, and go with him to the High King?”

She smiled, and lifted the hand to touch his cheek. “How could I stop you? Of course. But one thing more, Alex; even if you have to send Uwain and the other man on, do not go yourself inside March’s border. Not yet. Not until we know more. Do I have your promise?”

“Well – yes, I suppose so. Yes, Mother, I promise.”

So it was left. Further than this she knew she could not, should not protect him. Though his eighteenth birthday was almost a year away, she knew as well as he did that she could not have prevented him from doing as he wished. But she was satisfied. He would keep his word, and later, when, as she had planned, he went with Drustan
to
Camelot, he would be secure, with a strong sword and good guidance, till he could demand Arthur’s sanction and support. She was conscious mainly of a deep relief and release. The burden she had carried through all these years, of knowledge and the dread of action, had been lifted from her. As he had said, this was the day.

She drew a deep breath. “Then go with my blessing,” she said, “and God go with you.”

There was no way to guess which road the Cornishmen would take, but their own way was easy enough to choose: the fastest. So they headed south-east from Craig Arian, to cross the Wye by the Roman bridge at Blestium, and then through the hills to the Severn estuary and the short crossing some way east of Venta.

Once past Blestium, a small township boasting a decent inn, the road was hilly, in places little more than a rough shepherd’s track, but the weather had been fair, so the going was dry, and they made good speed. They got no glimpse of the men they followed, and the stony track did not hold hoof-marks, but there were signs – fresh horse-droppings here and there – that riders had recently passed this way. They were barely a mile short of the Severn ferry when, light failing, they halted in a clearing by a woodcutter’s hut, to rest their horses and eat the food they carried. The hut itself was deserted, the woodcutters having gone, with the good weather, deeper into the forest, but the hut stank, so, the night being fine and dry, they preferred to sleep outside. Uwain and Brand, who both knew the road, assured Alexander that the first ferry would cross soon after daybreak, so
it
would not advantage them to be there before that. The hut where the ferryman slept was on the far side of the river. So the three of them ate their rations, and soon, to the comfortable sound of the horses grazing nearby, Alexander, wrapped warmly in his cloak against the night dews, fell asleep.

The morning came in fine, with an early mist hanging wreath-like from the trees and veiling the hilltops. They reached the long hill that led down towards the ferry while the sun was just inching up behind the crests of the hills and sending shadows long and blue in front of them. Mist lay in long clouds along the waters of the estuary, and between its white banks the water gleamed, flat and quiet. The tide was rising, and seabirds circled and called. They could see the ferry’s brown sail about a third of the way over towards them. Brand had told them of a tavern he knew, a short way beyond the southern end of the crossing, and the thought of breakfast was a good one.

“If they’ve been this way, we’ll get news of them from the ferryman,” said Uwain. “And if they haven’t, why then, we’ll be ahead of them, and we can wait for them on the high road from Glevum. They won’t be pressing their horses, after all. They wouldn’t expect to be followed.”

In this last, at any rate, he was right. The Cornishmen had ridden the same way, and at their ease, not being over-anxious to get home with their news. They had not, as it happened, recognised Alexander, so their only news would be unwelcome, the loss of one of March’s trusted men. And March, as Alexander had guessed, was
not
a master who received bad news pleasantly. So they went slowly, with the result that they missed the last ferry, and had to spend the night in the ramshackle hut at the water’s edge, where the ferryman slept if chance or bad weather prevented him from making the last crossing of the day.

As Alexander’s party approached, coming out from the shade of the trees and clattering down the gravel road towards the jetty, the two Cornishmen were leading their horses out from behind the hut, their eyes on the approaching sail out on the tide.

At the sound of hoofs they turned, but not in alarm; their swords were still in their sheaths. The badge of the Boar showed white on the breasts of their tunics.

Then one of them, a big fellow holding the bridle of a roan horse, gave a sudden shout, and there was a flash as his sword seemed to leap into his hand.

“That’s him! That’s the murdering young bastard that killed Kynon!”

And almost before Alexander’s party knew what was happening, the two men were in the saddle, and were racing on them with swords drawn and at the ready.

The speed and anger of the attack left no time for words, or even thought. Swords met and clashed, and the horses circled, their hoofs sparking on the stones. There was no chance to cry halt, to manoeuvre for a parley; no way that Baudouin’s son could have identified himself and tested where the Cornishmen’s allegiance had lain
all
those years ago. What he could not have known was that the man he had killed in that fateful skirmish had been the brother of the man who now strove, with more strength and skill in combat than the young prince possessed, to kill him in his turn.

Afterwards Alexander could never remember just what happened. The big fellow on the roan beat at his guard, forcing him back, pace by pace, his horse plunging and skidding on the stones, towards the ditch and bank at the side of the road. The fight with Kynon in the river had not been like this; here there was no room for fear or exhilaration: time seemed endless, and at the same time flying. Beside him was a crash and a cry, and a loose horse blundered into his opponent’s side, and in that moment he felt his sword slip past the man’s guard. It was beaten aside, but came out bloodied at the tip.

Alexander was gasping for breath now, dragging air into his lungs with snorting gulps past teeth bared in the grin of extreme effort. He spurred his horse savagely, driving it forward against the roan, just as the Cornishman, recovering, knocked the prince’s sword high and wide, driving in below it for the final, killing stroke.

It missed by a hair’s breadth; by the breadth of the armoured strap on the prince’s shoulder, which it severed. Then Brand’s horse hurtled against Alexander’s, and Brand’s sword, metal screaming along metal, forced the Cornishman’s weapon aside and sliced past the armoured gorget and into the fellow’s throat. He fell with a crash
to
the gravel of the road, and his horse, whinnying with terror, whirled round and bolted into the woods, splashing the stones with blood as it went.

“You’re hurt, sir?”

Alexander, still caught up in the aftermath of the fighting, shook his head dazedly, while with unsteady hands he tried to slide the sword back into its sheath. “It’s his blood. It splashed. I owe you thanks, Brand. I believe he had me there. He’s dead, is he?”

“Yes, sir. They both are. There was no time for anything else.”

“I know. It can’t be helped. Are you all right?”

“Yes, sir, but Uwain’s hurt.”

“Badly?” He wiped the sweat from his eyes with the back of a blood-smeared hand. The sun, just clear of the hilltops, blazed straight into his eyes, level and brilliant, blinding him. So few moments had passed in that desperate encounter. He swung himself out of the saddle, threw his bridle to Brand, and ran to where Uwain was lying.

The fallen man had a cut in his side across the hip-bone. When they had washed the worst of the blood off – there was a trickle of spring water in the bank nearby – the wound looked clean, but it was deep and jagged, and after they had dressed and bound it as best they could, still bled sluggishly.

“The ferry,” said Alexander urgently. He was kneeling at Uwain’s side, holding a cup of water to the wounded man’s lips. “If we can get him down to the ferry, and across as far as the tavern you spoke of –”

“Look there,” said Brand, pointing.

Alexander stood up. The estuary stretched gleaming and bright, the mist clearing in the sun. The brown sail was still there, but it was almost at the farther shore.

Alexander stared. “He was called back? I don’t see anyone waiting there.”

“No, sir.” Brand was contemptuous. “He went back. He must ’a seen the fighting, and such as he won’t come near till all’s done. He won’t come over again till he sees us gone. So what’s to do now?”

Alexander glanced down at Uwain. The latter was trying to drag himself to his feet, protesting that the wound was nothing, he had had worse at hunting, he was good for a day’s hard riding … but the prince put out a hand to press him back.

“No, wait. Rest there a minute.” Then to Brand: “We must get rid of the bodies. If their horses are still about, turn them loose. If other travellers come this way, we don’t want questions asked, not yet. At least you needn’t go into Cornwall now. This one first. You take the heels. That way, I think.”

Between them they dragged the dead men off the road into the woods. There was a quarry, overgrown with brambles and bushes, where road-metal had once been dug, and here they found a shallow ditch where the bodies could lie. With daggers and their hands they scrabbled loose stones and gravel to cover them. The roan horse, grazing near, they caught, stripping it of its harness, and sending it off with a thwack from the
flat
of a sword. The other horse had gone. Then they went back to Uwain, and helped him into the saddle.

There was still no sign of the ferry, “But all the better,” said Alexander, who had had time to think. “If we crossed to find the tavern and lodge there, the news of this would run the length and breadth of Dumnonia almost before nightfall. As it is, all the ferryman saw was a skirmish at the edge of the woods, and when he does bring himself to come over, I doubt if he’ll look further.”

“And Uwain?”

“There was a good-looking tavern in Blestium. We’ll get him back there – you can manage that far, Uwain? Good man. We’ll get you there and get that leg seen to. We can lie up there for a day or two, to see how it does.”

“Your lady mother won’t be too pleased.”

“That’s true, but you can tell her how it happened. There was no chance to do otherwise. It’s like the first fight – as if a sort of fate was at work. And it would have been my fate, had it not been for your sword, Brand. See that you tell my mother that, Uwain.”