Alexander, rousing more fully as Sara’s horse halted, and finding himself uncomfortably bundled up in a strange place in the dark, thrust his shawls aside with furious fists and gave a yell of rage and fright.
The gallop checked. The horses stopped with a slither and clatter and some command in an undervoice. Then they wheeled back across the mouth of the little quarry, and a man’s voice called out.
“Princess Anna?”
There was nothing for it. She cleared her throat and answered him. “Who is that? I know your voice, don’t I? Sadok?”
“The same, lady.”
“And your business with me?”
There was a pause as full of meaning as a shouted message. Then he said: “The king would not have you leave the court. He charges me to say that he is not your enemy. What happened tonight –”
“Sadok, do you know what happened tonight?”
Another pause, while the horses stamped and blew. She leaned over the bay’s neck and whispered hurriedly to Goren: “Let my rein go. I’ll go out and talk with them. Get back on your horse, and take the boy from Sara. They may not know you’re here with us, and there might just be a chance for you to get away, and the boy with you –”
“There’s just two of them, lady. I could hold them long enough –”
“No. No. Do as I say, but wait till I’ve spoken with them. Sadok was a friend of my lord’s. If there’s no help for it, and I’m forced to go with them, then leave Sara – they won’t hurt her – and save the boy if you can. You know where we were going. Keep him safely, and God go with you.”
“And with you, my lady.”
He drew back into the darkness, and to cover his exchange with Sara she raised her voice again: “Who is that with you, Sadok?”
“My brother, princess. My brother Erbin. You know him.”
“Yes. Very well, then. I am coming.”
Behind her she could hear the creak of leather as Goren mounted. Alexander was quiet. She turned the bay’s head, and rode out into the open moonlight of the road.
Neither of the waiting riders made any move towards her, and though they must certainly be armed, they had not drawn their weapons. Was it possible, then, that there really was some hope? She tried to steady her breathing as she drew rein beside Sadok’s horse, and put back the hood of her cloak.
The moonlight was stronger now, and she could see both men clearly. Sadok was a young man, much of an age with the dead Baudouin; he had been at March’s court since boyhood, and the two men had liked one another. Sadok and his brother had been with Baudouin in the adventure with the Saxon longships. It was possible, it was surely possible – ran Anna’s desperate thoughts – that in this night’s expedition, as in so much else in his chequered and violent reign, King March had made the wrong choice?
Sadok cleared his throat. “Princess, I am sorry. God knows I loved Baudouin, and could wish no harm to you, but –”
“Or to Baudouin’s son?”
Her horse was close to his, shoulder to shoulder. Her face, framed by the dark folds of her hood, looked fragile and lovely, wiped clear by the moonlight of the lines of stress and grief. Her eyes, large and dark, were on a level with Sadok’s. He read fear in them, and appeal. Her hand looked small and fragile on the rein. Anna the fair, Anna the chaste, who had never looked at any man but her husband, would have used any weapon available to save her son. So now she looked at Sadok with those frightened, appealing eyes, and under the muffling folds of her cloak her right hand was steady on the hilt of Baudouin’s sword.
She held her voice steady, too. “Sadok, Erbin – both of you – if you know what happened to my lord tonight, you know why it happened. And you know that there can be no good purpose in the king’s wanting me and my child taken back to the castle. He may spare me, but assuredly he will kill Alexander. As he murdered his father, and for the same reason.”
Sadok, who, with half the inhabitants of the castle, had been roused by March’s drunken shouting as he tore himself free from the restraining hands of doctor and servants and lurched, sword in hand, through the rooms and courts of the castle in a murderous search for Anna and her child, could do nothing but say, hoarsely: “Princess –”
“You called me by my name in happier times.”
“Anna –” Ironically it was Sadok, rather than Anna, who sounded desperate. “What you say is true, God knows! And God knows I wish you no harm, nor does Erbin neither. But what can we do? King March would never believe that we couldn’t come up with you, and even if he did, he would send others after you. And you – on this long road, exposed as it is on the moor-top to the very edge of the kingdom, you would surely be overtaken before you could come clear of his borders. But if you let us take you home now, and we go slowly, giving due care to the child … then by the time we get back the king will be sobered, and it will be daylight, and the castle is full of folk who were friends of your lord and you … Then surely, even he –” He broke off.
“Yes, even he.” Her voice had an edge. “Even he, as you are taking care not to say, would not murder me and my child in cold blood in the sight of the whole court. Perhaps not. But how long would you give us? How long, eh, Sadok?”
“The people’s love –”
“A fig for the people’s love! What can they do, poor rabble? If they had any power, they would have driven the Fox out long since, and taken my husband for their ruler. As, if he be allowed to live, some day they may try to take Alexander. Will you tell me one thing, on your oath?”
“If I may on my honour.”
“What were your orders tonight?”
“To overtake you, and escort you and the boy back to the king.”
“No accident by the way?”
He was silent. She nodded. “Don’t trouble, I understand. The Fox’s way. Nothing said that you could fasten on him, but an understanding. Yes?” When he still did not speak, she said, more gently: “Sadok, don’t think I am blaming you or your brother. You are the king’s men, and you have dealt with me more gently than you need have done. So, if you cannot ride back and say you never found us – and it’s true that the king would hardly believe it, and you would both suffer his anger – then for my lord’s sake, whom you both loved, could you not let his son go now, and just take me back with you? It would appease the king, and if I could once speak with the queen, then I might be safe for a time at least, and some day, perhaps –”
“We will do better than that, my lady.” He spoke suddenly, with resolution. “We will ride back and tell him that the boy is dead. We’ll think of some tale that he’ll believe – catching you at that ford back yonder, perhaps, snatching the baby from your maid so that she fell with him into the river and he drowned. And then we let you, who can do him no more harm, ride on to find shelter where you might. If you’ll give me something, a shawl, maybe, to show as a kind of proof? And if, for your part, you will promise me one thing?”
The hand that gripped the sword relaxed. She took a long, gasping breath. “God be good to you, my friend!” was all she could say, but in a few moments she had control of herself again. “And your brother? Erbin? What of you, Erbin?” Then, as the younger man began to stammer something about some favour he owed to Baudouin, and his willingness to support his brother, she stretched her hand in thanks to one and then the other, and said, in a voice broken between relief and wonderment: “But what in God’s name possessed March to send you and your brother to murder Baudouin’s son?”
There was a wry amusement in Sadok’s voice. “I told you he was still very drunk, and when he started shouting his orders I contrived to be near him.”
“Some day,” said Anna, “some day,” and left it at that. Then, echoing Sadok’s own words: “You spoke of a promise. Of course, if I may on my honour. What do you want of me?”
“Only that you will take your son into safety far from here, and rear him to remember his father’s shameful murder, and some day to come back and avenge it.”
“By God, I will!” she said.
“And we will be here, waiting,” said Sadok. He made a vow of it, and Erbin growled his assent. “Meantime, have you money to keep you till you find safety? I have a little by me, and Erbin –”
“I have enough.” Even now, she would not betray Drustan’s generous help, nor the presence of Goren, invisible in the shadows with the still silent Alexander. She pulled open one of her saddle-bags. “Here. It’s one of his night-robes. He was asleep when we – when he –” She was silent for a few moments, busying herself over the bag’s fastenings, but when she spoke again, trying to find some more words of thanks, Sadok reached for her hand again, lifted it, and kissed it.
“No more, Princess. Get you gone now, and make haste. We’ll contrive to delay our return till well after daybreak, so God go with you and your orphaned son, and some day let us pray we may meet again in peace and safety.”
He wheeled his horse, putting it to an easy trot, and soon he and his brother were lost in the dimness.
Goren rode out from under the trees. “I heard. We are safe?”
“We are safe, thanks be to God and to two honest men! So Alexander may now cry all he wants to. Come, Sara.” She turned her horse’s head eastward once more, adding, but not for the man to hear: “But so may not I.”
4
It took them the best part of a month. Not knowing how March would receive Sadok’s story – or in fact if he would believe it – they dared not take the direct road, but went by the tracks used by peasants and charcoal-burners, rough riding through forest or along secluded river-valleys or across low-lying marshland, which, when they reached March’s borders and entered the Summer Country, was perilous with bog and quagmire. Anna found that she had money in plenty; besides what she had snatched up as she packed her belongings, and what Drustan had pressed on her, she found another pouch of gold in her saddle-bag, put there, presumably, by Drustan. So the travellers were able to pay their way. Now and again they managed to put up at a reasonably respectable tavern, where they could rest themselves and their horses for a day or so, but usually they were thankful to find the shelter of some wayside cottage, or a farmer’s barn, or even, at the worst, a shepherd’s hut, abandoned for the summer while the shepherd kept his flock on the high hillsides.
One thing the rough riding and the constant care needed for the child – and the support and encouragement she had to give Sara – did for Anna: she had no time for grief. The days were a strain of riding, finding a safe way, looking, as the day waned, for shelter; and at night she was so tired that she slept soundly, and without dreams.
It took them three weeks to reach Glevum, and then they had to take a roundabout route to the bridge, but once across the Severn, and beyond the edges of the Summer Country, where the High King’s men kept the roads between them and the Cornish border, they felt safe, even though Anna feared that March would guess where she was heading.
The castle where Anna’s cousin had lived, Craig Arian, lay towards the head of the Wye valley, a little way back into the hills and beside one of the tributary streams. The widow, Theodora, had recently married again, an elderly man called Barnabas who had been an officer in one of the High King’s troops. Anna and her cousin had never been close, but she had from time to time exchanged greetings with Theodora. All parties, of course, knew that, since Theodora had no children, Anna’s claim to Craig Arian and its estate took precedence of that of the widow and her new husband, so Anna had every right to seek refuge there, but there had been no time to send a message reporting Baudouin’s death and begging for shelter for herself and her son.
So as the weary little party rode slowly up the winding river valley on the last stage of their journey, Anna was by no means sure what sort of welcome would await them. She had never met Barnabas, and had no idea what kind of man he was. A veteran of Arthur’s army, married to a widow of means and retired to a snug little property in this rich countryside? It was possible, it was even likely, thought Anna drearily, that he would shut the gates against Baudouin’s widow and the young son who could displace him and his own heirs from Craig Arian. And who could blame him if he hesitated to offend King March by taking in the fugitive princess? He could find the best of reasons for shutting his gates to her.
When at length they came in sight of the castle on its wooded crag, Anna halted her party, and sent Goren on ahead with the news of Baudouin’s death, and the widowed princess’s request for shelter.
“No more than that,” she said wearily. “I cannot ask for more, and God knows I have little right, for myself. But for the child … Beg them to let the child stay in safety and in secrecy, until perhaps I can go to the High King at Camelot, and ask him for justice. Go now, Goren. We will wait for you here, by the water.”
She need not have worried. When Goren came back he did not come alone, but with Barnabas himself, and half a dozen servants, and a mule litter containing his stout wife, who greeted Anna with kisses and tears of pleasure, then took her and the boy into the litter for the ride home.
“For your home it is, and his,” she said, “and you are welcome. No, say no more. You look weary to death, and no wonder! Come now, and after a rest and a good dinner you shall tell us all that has happened.”
“Anna,” said Barnabas, a heavily built greybeard with kind eyes and a ready smile, who limped from a wound sustained in Arthur’s wars, “if King March of Cornwall seeks you here, as well he may, we shall know how to keep him out, and drive him back into his own borders. So rest you now in peace, cousin, and trouble yourself no more, but look to your son, and we will keep this castle and these good lands for him till he is grown.”
And the Princess Anna, for the first time since her husband Baudouin had been murdered, put her hands to her face and wept.
* * *
TWO
Alice the Motherless
* * *
5
The little girl lay on her stomach, flat in the dust, watching a pair of lizards. They were fighting – or mating; she did not know which. The two occupations were, she thought, much the same. The lizards writhed and wrestled, hissing with wide, melon-coloured mouths, as they darted in and out of the shade of the tamarisk tree. Then they flashed up the rough stones of the garden wall, and disappeared.
“Alice! Alice!”
It was a man’s voice, high and rather toneless.
“Alice!”
The child made a face at the crevice where the lizards had vanished, and did not reply, but she rolled reluctantly over in the dust, ready to rise. From somewhere above and beyond the feathery branches of the tamarisk, a bell began a sweet, cracked chiming.
“Alice?” The voice was anxious now, and nearer.
“I’m coming, Father.” She got to her feet, unkilting the long gown which she had worn hitched up to the knee, and shaking the dust out of its folds. Then she picked up her sandals from among the roots of the tree where they had been thrown, and slipped them on over bare, grubby feet. The long gown, trailing, hid them. She smoothed the long, lovely mane of tawny-gold hair, folded her arms so that the loose sleeves hid her dirty hands, then, with downcast eyes, decorous, composed, beautiful, the Lady Alice followed her father the duke into the chapel of St Jerome at Jerusalem.
Duke Ansirus was a tall man of some forty years. He had been a notable fighter in his youth, and also a notable lover, fair and handsome and discreet. This last he needed to be, since his fancy took him invariably towards married ladies who, for a variety of reasons, found a change desirable, and Ansirus very desirable indeed. He had received a bad chest wound fighting alongside the young King Arthur at the battle of Caledon, and for some time his life had been despaired of. His eventual recovery, so said the doctors (and of course the local priest agreed with them), was nothing short of miraculous, so when he had regained his strength the duke undertook a pilgrimage of thanksgiving to the Holy Land. He did not, it is true, do it the hard way; his breathing still troubled him sometimes, and the incessa
nt fighting between the Franks and their neighbours, as King Clovis struggled to bring all Gaul under Frankish rule, made overland travelling dangerous; but he went by ship to Italy, and then to Greece, where he stayed for a month or so before undertaking the final stage to Acre and Jerusalem. And in Athens, at the house of a friend, he met a girl who – though she was unmarried and, indeed, a virgin – so captivated him that he married her out of hand and took her with him to the Holy Land. Her name was Alice, and her disposition was as discreet in its own way as his: she was a silent girl, who, having been reared as a penniless dependant, had learned very early not to let her beauty – which was undoubted – throw that of her cousins into the shade. To her, my lord Ansirus was an escape, an establishment, a fortune: if he was more, only Ansirus knew. She was a quiet and dutiful wife, who managed her domestic affairs with careful efficiency, and kneeled meekly beside her lord as he thanked God at some length daily for his restored health and now for his happiness.
She did not have long to enjoy the wealth and comfort of Ansirus’ castle, back in the rich heartlands of Rheged. A year after the couple’s return to Britain, Alice died in childbed, and the baby girl was handed to nurse.
It might have been supposed that the grief-stricken widower would blame the child for her mother’s loss, and thrust her from him, but the past year’s happiness had been intense, and his repentance of the sins of his youth was genuine. He transferred all he had of love to the baby. He had vowed himself, at his wife’s deathbed, to chastity, and this vow he kept. He had vowed, too, to make another pilgrimage, and undertook this within the year. He would have taken the child with him, but the women who looked after the nursery were so horrified that he, remembering the discomforts of the journey, and the dirt and disease of the Holy Land, let himself be persuaded to go alone. But by the time the little Alice, at five years old, was growing impatient with her nurses, and running freely about the castle gardens, she was so like her mother that the bereaved father could hardly bear to let her out of his sight, and when he planned his next pilgrimage he insisted – and this time Alice insisted, too, and she had a habit of getting her own way – that his daughter should go with him. So here they were at last, kneeling side by side in front of the picture of St Jerome with his scarlet robe and his pet lion, Ansirus with closed eyes and moving lips, his mind fixed on prayer, and the child Alice, her young face sweet as an angel’s, the grey eyes lifted towards God.