Merlin Redux Read online

Whether the vision had been sent from Heaven or Hell, I must decide what I should do about it. If that sounds like the peak of arrogance, coming from a former stable boy, then consider where time and fortune had brought him. Once a crippled Saxon in a land where anything of importance was spoken in French, I had risen to the office of Enchanter General of England. In Oxford I had founded and nurtured the finest college of purely secular knowledge in Christendom, and had collected the greatest library of what we still discreetly called “Ancient Song” but was in fact enchantment. My colleagues and I had driven the devil-worshiping Sons of Satan out of the country. We had organized the beneficial uses of enchantment throughout England.

  I continued to enjoy the trust and approval of King Henry, who had later raised me to the peerage as Baron Durwin of Pipewell and appointed me to his privy council—me, the crippled son of a Saxon hostler, debating with the greatest lords of the land! What magic could top that? But the years were starting to tell on me, also. Harald, our eldest, was playing country gentleman now in Pipewell Manor, the estate the king had given me. Both girls, Iseut and Royse, were betrothed and gone to live with their future parents-in-law until they reached marriageable age, as is customary among the gentry. We missed them greatly.

  That Henry was sure to die soon was barely a secret. Back in late May, as his health continued to deteriorate, he had flattered me with a summons to France in my capacity as a healer. I had known from the start that I would be unable to help him, because French enchanters were just as competent as English in the healing arts. I took Sage Wilbor of London with me as my cantor, and we did what we could to prescribe for the king, but his body was simply wearing out, and the war he was currently fighting was certainly not helping. Among his many troubles, he had an anal fistula that was starting to fester. What he should do was give his crown to his son, Lord Richard, and retire to die in peace in a monastery somewhere, but to tender that advice would be both useless and foolhardy. The king’s rages were legendary.

  When in doubt, I usually sought my wife’s advice. “What do I do now, dear? The privy council already knows the king’s health is very bad. Do I ride off to Winchester and inform the justiciar that it is much worse, and he has just surrendered to his foes?”

  “I think,” Lovise said with a fearsome frown, “that you should go straight back to bed. Your news is not urgent, because nothing will change until Henry actually dies. He is as tough as horseshoes, and you are in no fit shape to ride anywhere.”

  As usual, she was absolutely right.

  I had been entranced longer than I realized, and needed the rest of the day in bed to recover. Even on the next day, Wednesday, I was not at my best, but I was still official master of the college, so I had to put on my finery and preside at a graduation ceremony, handing out sheepskin scrolls to newly qualified sages, cantors, and healers. The ceremony held a special joy for Lovise and me, because Lars, our younger son, was now a qualified cantor. When his familiar grin arrived before me, I repeated the customary congratulations, shook his hand, and muttered, “Don’t celebrate too much; I may have an important job for you tomorrow.”

  He just smiled—down—at me, and said, “Whatever it is, I can do both, Lord Enchanter.”

  I made excuses and left the celebratory dinner early to go home and wrestle with the Myrddin Wyllt problem. I might need months of study to determine how trustworthy it was, and I would need to locate the flaws in it before it could be used without inflicting such painful aftereffects. Nevertheless, after long discussion, Lovise and I decided that I could not just ignore the warning. If Henry was near to death, then it was my duty to tell the justiciar, Ranulf de Glanville, who acted as regent when the king was out of the country. I knew that he was currently in Winchester, and so was Queen Eleanor, who had at least as much right to be informed.

  I spent a couple of hours hunting for defects in the wording, and made some corrections. Another problem, of course, and a very common one with old manuscripts, was to know what melody to use. The words provided the rhythm, but after that we had to rely on experience—which means guesswork.

  But just before we retired, I felt sufficiently recovered to ask Lovise to come back down to the workroom to help me with another enchantment, one that took much less toll of the chanter.

  We still lived in the home that Queen Eleanor had given us when we were married, a modest house in the grounds of Beaumont Palace, outside Oxford. There we had raised our children, of whom only Lars was still at home. I had since developed part of the ground floor into a spacious workroom, thirty feet long. One entire wall of it was covered from floor to ceiling by shelves angled at forty-five degrees to make a collection of diamond-shaped boxes. In those were filed almost two thousand parchment scrolls, recording hundreds of incantations. Hobbling on my cane, I hunted down the one I wanted.

  I untied it and handed the cantor’s part to Lovise. She smiled when she recognized the opening words, Loc hwær,“Look where.” This was the spell that elevated me to grandeur, for I had composed it myself, the first time anyone had created a new spell in centuries. Few people knew of its existence even yet, but it was a family treasure. It was a much simpler work than the Myrddin Wyllt, for it merely reported a person’s present location. It showed no visions, but was powerful magic nevertheless.

  “So who are we going to spy on this time?” she asked.

  “Lord John.” He and Richard were the last survivors of Henry’s five legitimate sons. His many bastards were not eligible to inherit the crown. I did not know whether John had joined Richard’s rebellion or remained loyal.

  “You want to tell him the news also?” Lovise asked, with a hint of doubt that both amused and pleased me. Even then, Lord John’s name smelled of perfidy.

  “No, I’m hoping he will remain in ignorance for some time yet.”

  Loc hwær is a short incantation and we were both familiar with it. When we finished, she closed her eyes for a moment and then croaked, “Nottingham heall,” in the ancient cracked voice of a Wyrd, a voice that I knew well. Then she opened them and asked me what she had just said.

  The news was welcome, and not surprising. Lord John owned not only Nottingham Castle but the whole county. What mattered to me was that he was a long way from both Oxford and London. Even tidings of great importance could travel no faster than a horse. By the time he heard of his father’s death, it would be too late for him to make any effort to usurp the throne.

  I was up before dawn preparing for the journey—tidying up some business that would not wait until I returned, and chanting a few Release spells. Most incantations are Repeat spells, which have to be chanted afresh every time, but Release spells can be sung beforehand and invoked with a word or two when needed. In effect I was loading arrows in my magical quiver, a practice I had found advisable back in the years when I had traveled all over England, collecting all the ancient spell books I could find. Although King Henry had made the roads of England much safer than they had been before he came to the throne, travel still had its risks. I had never had the misfortunate to meet up with highwaymen, but I always included at least one defensive spell, a weapon that could hurt more than a blow with my cane.

  As soon as Lovise was available, I asked her to watch over me while I invoked the Myrddin Wyllt enchantment again. Knowing now that it would put me into a trance, I played safe and stretched out on the leather-padded couch I keep in my workroom for just that purpose. Then I began to chant my appeal to Carnonos, lord of forests, and soon the cool shadows of woodland closed around me. With them came forest dampness, the scents of moss and pines. My own voice faded into the sighing of wind in high treetops, and then gradually into the faint, distant singing of a choir. Towering trees had become the pillars and arches of a crypt.

  I peered around in uncertain candlelight, and made out a group of men kneeling alongside a bier, on which lay a body already swathed in cere cloth. I recognized Sir William Marshall again, and Geoffrey the Bastard, still in faithful attendance on hi
s father, but others were too deep in shadow for me to recognize. Geoffrey was murmuring a prayer. Although he was bishop-elect of Lincoln now, he was always referred to as the Bastard to distinguish him from the king’s legitimate son of the same name. That other Geoffrey, the duke of Brittany, was dead by then, but the Bastard’s name endured. Unlike Henry’s legitimate sons, he had always stayed loyal.

  The chill of the crypt seemed to cool even more, as a sense of loss ate into my soul. A world without Henry II would take a lot of getting used to.

  But now I had a clear message to carry to Winchester: The king is dead, long live the king. Yet I lingered for a moment. The prayer ended, followed by a rustle of amens. The mourners began to rise and then stopped to listen. Tap, tap. . . . Like the tolling of some Tartarean death watch, the sound drew closer, louder, and gradually became recognizable as the noisy clank of sollerets on stone. Out of the darkness emerged a giant, huge and grim, pacing ever nearer. Candlelight glinted like frost on his hauberk, for even there he was wearing chain mail, although he had shed his sword and helmet before entering the church. Gog, Magog, Goliath . . . ? No, for this titan wore a surcoat adorned with three lions, gules passant, and everyone knew whose charge that was.

  Nobody spoke. He stopped and stared down at his father’s corpse. If he prayed, he did not move his lips, nor make the sign of the cross. After several ice-cold minutes, he nodded to Geoffrey, beckoned to Sir William to follow him, and walked away. Clink, clink, clink . . . into the darkness.

  My question had been answered. I hauled myself out of the trance.

  “That was quick,” said a depressingly cheerful Lovise. “Didn’t you get acceptance?” She handed me a beaker of water as I struggled to sit up.

  I drank. I had the same raging thirst as before, but the headache was merely a vague throb behind my eyes, so my changes to the text had improved it. “I did. I saw all I needed. The king is dead, long live the king!” Belatedly I crossed myself and whispered an Ave.

  Lovise did the same. “So you and I are the only ones in England who knows this! Isn’t it treason to spy on the king?”

  “If I say it is, will you report me to the justiciar?” Brief though the trance had been, I still needed a few moments to settle my wits.

  “What will you do now?”

  “Take the word to Winchester.”

  My wife inspected me critically. “You’re getting old for breakneck long-distance trekking. Send a courier.”

  “The matter is too important.” I stood up. “I shall present Lars to the queen, to celebrate his graduation.”

  She smiled. “He was very late coming home. Can you imagine the hangover he must have?”

  “I can,” I said. “But at seventeen he’s indestructible.”

  I kissed my wife and went upstairs. Lars, understandably, was fast asleep, invisible except for a tangle of barley-pale hair on the pillow. I gave him a “God bless!” somewhat louder than usual.

  The coverlet moved to expose one normally sky-blue eye, presently seeming more like a carmine sunset. People often commented how much Lars resembled me, but I could see little likeness between a dewy youth innocent of the world’s malice and the wrinkled forty-five-year-old face that scowled at me out of my mirror every morning.

  “And thee also, Father.” He spoke in a hoarse whisper. “Sorry to wake you when you’ve just gotten to sleep. I’m going on a very important outing and need a cantor. Are you capable of staying awake?”

  The rest of his face appeared, unshaven and not a little haggard. He nodded, then winced as if he wished he hadn’t. “Yes, sir.” “Are you capable of spending all day all the saddle?”

  “All day?”

  “Sixty miles or so.”

  His face twisted in horror. “In one day?”

  I laughed. “I think we can stretch it to two. We’re going to Winchester to get the queen out of jail.”

  He threw off the cover. “How soon?”

  “I’m just going to send for the horses.”

  “Do I have enough time to put some clothes on?”

  Juvenile humor, but he was seventeen.

  Sixty miles in two days is a heroic exploit, which I was secretly dreading. No knight rides out without a squire or two, and no enchanter without a cantor. There were many men in the College I could have taken with me, but none I would trust as much as I trusted my own son. Besides, this would be a treat for Lars, to celebrate his graduation.

  As soon as we had cleared the town and could ride abreast, he asked why I was in such a rush to visit Winchester.

  “To inform Queen Eleanor that King Henry is dead.”

  He looked at me in shock. Before he could ask the obvious question, I blocked it. “I can’t tell you how I know that, but I do. It’s the greatest secret in England, and you are the second man in England to hear it. God save King Richard!”

  “Amen. He died in France? But no enchantment will work across the sea . . .”

  “Sorry, son. I mustn’t tell you. Maybe one day.”

  He nodded, an adult now. We rode on through the summer fields and a morning already growing hot. Then Lars reasonably asked, “Father, why is the queen being kept in prison?”

  It was a good question, and should have been asked years ago, but youngsters growing up tend to accept everything they see as normal. The sun rises in the morning, the king is fighting in France, the queen is in jail . . . Politics is the king’s business.

  “Because she bore too many sons.”

  “Huh? Woman are usually faulted for not bearing enough of them.”

  “Five in all, and five daughters—two daughters for King Louis when she was married to him and three for Henry—but girls just get married off. Sons cause trouble. Plantagenet sons do, anyway. Five: William, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey, and John. William died as an infant, but all the rest grew up as typical Plantagenet males, worthy of the lion, the family symbol: bellicose, greedy, and lecherous. Every one of them wanted his piece of their father’s great empire, which he was never willing to give. He dispensed lots of fancy titles, but he never relinquished any real power. All four in their time curried favor with the king of France, who was always happy to make trouble. Henry died of camp fever while campaigning against his father. Richard is now our king. Geoffrey was trampled to death in a tournament three years ago, or so the French claim. And then there is Lord John.”

  I had cast his horoscope when he was born, and it was a horror.

  “And the queen?”

  “About sixteen years ago the Lords Henry, Richard, and Geoffrey—John was still a child—rose in rebellion, with the support of their mother. The king won in the end. He forgave his sons, but he could not forgive his wife, and she has been a prisoner, more or less, ever since.”

  Silence for a few minutes, as we went in single file past a loaded hay wain, then, “The new king isn’t married, so Lord John is now his . . . um, heir presumptive?”

  “Maybe. Geoffrey was older than John and he left a posthumous son named Arthur, who succeeded him as duke of Brittany. He must be two years old now.”

  Lars said, “Mm . . .” thoughtfully. A lot of people were going to be saying that now. Lord John was in his early twenties and the worst satyr of them all. The sooner King Richard married and produced a few sons of his own, the better for baby Arthur and the peace of England.

  The urgency of the news we bore drove us like invisible whips. We could not have reached our destination in two days without changing our mounts several times at monasteries or priories on the way, for in those days every religious house was required to stable a few of the king’s horses, and my rank let me claim what I needed. Lars had never seen me do this before and was impressed.

  By noon I was feeling my age. Had I ever been a fresh-faced, jeweled-eyed kid like him? Had the world ever looked so glorious to me back then as it did to him now? Probably not. His legs were the same length. My father had been a Saxon hostler working for Norman monks; his was enchanter general for England, and a
peer of the realm. Lars had won his cantor’s cape at seventeen, which was younger than I had been, and now he was racing off with me on a mission of historic importance, carrying news that would change the face of Europe. The dust, the flies, the heat of early July—none of those meant anything to him. Lars was ready to pick up his horse and run with it.

  We spent Thursday night in the chantry in Reading, roughly halfway. By sunrise on Friday, we were on the Winchester road again.

  The summer sun was setting as we spurred our mounts to a gallop so we could reach the city gates before they closed, which we managed only because the guards saw us coming and waited for us. Perhaps the quality of our horses impressed them more than our dusty, disheveled selves. I knew Winchester well, and from there I led Lars by the fastest street to the castle. The curfew was still ringing.

  But the castle gate was closed.

  Lars said, “Oh-oh!”

  We reined in. In a sling on my back I carried my favorite walking cane, a stout oaken one with a silver handle, given to me by Queen Eleanor herself. I now drew this and pounded the ferrule on the studded timbers of the gate. The spy hole opened and a whiskery face appeared behind the grill.

  “Who goes there?”

  “Baron Durwin de Pipewell and his son.”

  “Come back in the morning.”

  “I bring urgent news for the queen.”

  “Come back in the morning.”

  “Varlet! I am a member of the king’s council.”

  “And you’ll still be that in the morning.”

  He might have yielded had I told him I must see the justiciar, not mentioning the queen, but it was more likely that his orders excluded me specifically. The justiciar and I were old foes, and he knew I favored the queen whenever I could.

  “Open this gate or you will regret it!”

  His reply was fortunately cut off as he slammed the spy hole shut.

  I was bone weary and now red-hot furious. What I should have done was to go around to the postern gate at the rear of the castle complex and open that with the Release spell, Cambrioleur.I had done that before. This time I didn’t. Instead I again struck the gate with my staff, only this time I gave it three strokes for effect, and then declaimed the trigger for a spell I had discovered years ago and often found useful: “Geat, opena!”