Lammas Night (33 page)

“Well, you may want to continue putting him off on that,” she murmured, still oddly ill at ease, Graham thought. “Have you given any more thought to your own regressions?”

“Only the ones about Drake,” he replied, pulling a footstool closer and propping up his feet. “I was hoping you'd managed to come up with something further on those, and that was why you wanted to work with me tonight.”

“It was. Now I'm not so sure. This whole thing with William bothers me.”

“Then why did you let me agree to have him become further involved? And what about those last two cards?”

“I'd rather get back to your regressions first,” she replied, collecting several closely typed sheets of foolscap from a drawer and returning to sit by his chair.

He reached for them, but she shook her head.

“No, I don't want you to read this yet. I'd like you to go into trance and see what further you can recall, now that you've made the initial contacts. David rang me about your hits on Drake and Elizabeth, and you've told me what you and William uncovered, Let's see what you'll come up with on the others without prompting. I have some background for guiding you now and asking the right questions.”

“All right,” he agreed, removing his already loosened tie and draping it over the chair arm. “At least this isn't as emotionally loaded as the other. Any special approach you'd like me to use, or shall I just settle in and wait for instructions?”

“Go ahead and get comfortable. I want to scan my notes one more time,” she said.

With the ease of the well-trained subject, Graham closed his eyes and went into trance, feeling the familiar, fluttery sensation, over an immeasurable instant, that signaled its deepening to a normal working level. He paid brief attention to his body, making certain it was comfortable, letting his breathing settle into the slow, shallow pattern that would sustain him while he turned to other considerations. Then he simply let himself drift in anticipation.

“Take another deep breath and let go,” came her voice as her hand finally touched his forehead in familiar cue.

He obeyed and felt himself settling into yet a deeper level, lethargy stealing across his limbs and further cushioning him from outside distractions as he focused on her touch and waited. The touch disappeared, to become discernible again on his left wrist. He could feel her fingertips resting lightly over the pulse point. Concentrating on the strong, steady beat took him deeper yet.

“That's fine,” he heard her say. “Find a depth where you can still hear and speak to me. Are you there?”

“Yes.”

He breathed the answer almost inaudibly, all his awareness concentrated in her voice and the touch of her hand on his wrist.

“Good. Now, in a few seconds, I want you to begin casting back in time as you've done before. Then I'm going to read you the list of names you gave us after your last regression. I want you to flow back with those names and try to focus in on one of them. Are you ready?”

“Yes.”

“All right. Begin going back now. Back to your childhood and beyond … your birth … and before that. Go back to Drake … and keep going. Someone named George … and Sir William Wallace … a monk named John … Sir Reginald FitzUrse … Sir Walter Tyrrel.…”

He could feel himself hurtling back past the years in response, each name conjuring brief, bright memories that flashed and lingered only in after image by the time he could try to focus on them. Some were evoked by the names he heard, others admitted of no naming he could recall, yet he knew that all of them were a part of him.

He let them flow, not even trying to hold to any one of them, until he sensed a slowing. Abruptly, with an almost physical jolt, he was in another awareness, another body, another set of memories.

C
HAPTER
14

He wore mail and leather. His mailed fist was wrapped around the hilt of a sheathed sword, ready, as he and the others stepped through the narrow transept door. Spurs jangled against the threshold, and steel-shod boots echoed against the grey stone floor.

Incense hung heavy on the air, along with the scent of candle wax and the musty pungence of damp vaults and moldering tombs. He could feel the pulse beat throbbing in his temples—and at his wrist, where a human touch kept some part of him anchored other-when—but he was not Graham any longer. He was Sir Reginald FitzUrse, the King's man and bearer of a sacred obligation.

Keen in the dimness, he looked out past the nasal of his Norman helm and waited for his eyes to adjust to the inner twilight, every sense straining against the silence, against the anticipation. Grey against the greyer walls, he could make out arches springing from a clerestory level and the paler jewel-gleam of windows high over his left shoulder. Ahead, candlelight played on column, wall, and a chapel beyond. A voice niggled at the edges of his consciousness, wanting words from him, but he was too deeply involved to pay it mind or describe what he saw to the disembodied presence that somehow was with him, yet not with him. It was sunset—the appointed hour. It was time to move.

He glided forward like a beast of prey unshackled. Two others flanked him, one to either side, and a third lingered at the door behind them to guard against intruders. Ahead, beside the great support pillar of the north transept, the sacred victim emerged from shadow, a young monk at his side bearing the heavy processional cross as if it were some great knight's standard. Clearly, the monk had not the eyes to see what was about to happen.

“Hold!” the monk cried, darting in front of the victim to bar their way with his cross. “This is the house of God! For the love of God, this is your archbishop! Forbear!”

“We know the man,” FitzUrse said, drawing steel.

The blade hissed from its scabbard with a sound like a serpent stirred, cold and deadly in the nearly darkened cathedral. It was echoed in the slithering sound of Tracy and le Breton drawing theirs. Behind them, Morville's weapon was already in his hands. FitzUrse heard it clash against stone as Morville secured the transept door and moved to guard the nave approach, for there were archbishop's men in the back of the church who must not interrupt the ritual. The pulse beat in FitzUrse's temples quickened.

The archbishop stood his ground as they moved yet closer. He knew why they had come. All of them were dancers in the sacred round, playing out their designated parts. FitzUrse would make the pretense of negotiation, as agreed, but the outcome had been decided long ago—sealed by a king's words and the crowning of a young king and the will of the victim himself. It was the sacred year, the sacred hour. The sacred substitute must die, lest the land be afflicted.

“Do not try to escape, archbishop,” FitzUrse called, knowing he would not. “Will you raise the anathema you pronounced on the King's men or no?”

The victim shook his head, following the pattern.

“I may not, for the sake of my office.”

“Do not provoke us, Thomas of London!” Tracy retorted. “You force us to drastic measures by your stubbornness.”

“Here am I, the priest of God. Do what you must. I will not be moved,” the victim said.

The tableau seemed to freeze for just an instant; then started again in slow motion. The victim turned insolently as if to walk away toward a downward passage. As FitzUrse lunged forward to seize the archbishop's pallium and pull him back, intending to create just enough of an uproar to justify the greater force of swords, Tracy and le Breton joined in the scuffle and also laid hands on him, swords already poised to deal the fatal blows.

The victim—no stranger to warrior ways—twisted in their grip to fend them off, his eyes hot with anger at their presumption. As his gaze met FitzUrse's in that first instant of protest, FitzUrse feared the man had lost his nerve.

“No!” the victim shouted. “Reginald, you are my man!”

The others faltered, well aware that their colleague had been vassal to this man—and that to lay hands on him thus was against all the laws of chivalry—but FitzUrse caught the double meaning and yanked the victim closer, raising his sword. The victim had not quailed but had singled him out to strike the first blow.

“FitzUrse, you pander! I am your liege!” the victim cried, in unmistakable confirmation of FitzUrse's action. “Remember your duty!”

At the same time, the flashing eyes were averted to permit—yea, to
will
—the sacrifice.

“Take him!” FitzUrse shouted, jerking the man around with such force that his skullcap went flying, leaving the tonsure bare. “In the King's name, strike!”

The victim's one free hand flew to his eyes to block the sight as the sword descended, lips moving in final prayer. The monk would have interposed himself between victim and blade—still unaware of the true nature of what was happening—but le Breton caught him in a glancing blow that skittered down the shaft of the processional cross and wounded the man's shoulder even as FitzUrse's blade descended true.

Blood burst from a hand-sized gash across the victim's tonsure and crown as FitzUrse's blow connected, with Tracy's stroke but a heartbeat behind, cleaving the skull. The victim gasped and staggered to his knees, already dying as le Breton also struck, blade shattering against the stones. Morville joined to strike the fourth and final blow. The victim toppled slowly northward, as was seemly, life already fled. So quickly, the deed was done.…

Breathing hard, FitzUrse leaned on his sword and tried to catch his breath, almost sick at the exertion and the emotion. At their feet, the sacred blood pooled and seeped into the stones, struck from the crown that had borne the victim's anointing as archbishop seven years before. There was blood on FitzUrse's blade, and he wiped it shakily on an edge of the victim's sacredotal robe.

The sacred victim was slain, his sacred blood spilled upon the ground. With his sacrifice, he sanctified the young king's life and ensured the prosperity of the land for at least another seven years. FitzUrse played out his part of that pageant and would live out his life in honor for having slain the sacred king's surrogate, though he would endure the form of royal displeasure for a little while.

But as he bowed his head in homage to the God lately housed in the cooling body at his feet, his moment of meditation was shattered by a stranger scampering out of the shadows to ghoulishly scrabble his sword point in the shattered brains. It was all FitzUrse could do to force down the gorge rising in his throat.

“Stop it!” he hissed, flat blading the man away from the body. “Enough of this. We must all away.”

Then, in a ringing voice, he called toward the rear of the nave, where some of the archbiship's men and a few laymen from the town still cowered—ritual words to those with ears to hear and hearts to understand.

“Mark well! He wished to be king, and more than king—let him then
be
king!”

Then, to murmurs of consternation and affirmation, both, he led the others toward the transept door and into the outer darkness, not looking back.…

Color rippled and swirled behind Graham's eyelids—an interlude of rainbow maelstrom just distinct enough for him to realize he was no longer the Norman knight FitzUrse. Then he was plummeting backward again in time and into another life. He sensed an in-between time in passing that was not limbo but something far more reasoned and orderly—distinct and purposeful, if only he could have lingered to remember—but then he was in a familiar scene and body again, again with a sacred mission. He rode once more in the New Forest, ten seven-years before the death of Thomas Becket, and he knew well the Red King who rode at his side.

The King was dressed for hunting, rich russets and browns of leather and homespun dark against his pale-grey steed, the heavy face florid as usual, topped by the shock of red-blond hair peculiar to the offspring of the Conqueror. It was Tyrrel—who was Graham—who wore blood red today. The fine crossbow given him by the King was strapped to the saddle by his knee, the sharp steel quarrels in a quiver at the other side. The shadows were lengthening, for the hunt had not even started out until midafternoon.

“It is the morrow of Lammas, Wat,” the King said, drawing rein to gaze across at him in compassion. “Now is the appointed day and the proper hour. Be merry, for thou art much blessed to be the instrument of the God.”

Tyrrel bowed his head and tried not to see the crossbow with its tight-stretched string.

“You honor me, my liege. And yet I wish that it were some other man you had chosen for the deed.”

“And doubt that the deed was done in love?” The King swung down from his grey with a smile and came around to hold Tyrrel's bridle, stroking the neck of the bay distractedly. “Nay, friend, thou knowest the terms of the sacrifice. 'Tis not the slaying but the laying down of life for the land, the spilling of the sacred blood—yet, the dying is better if it be at the hand of one who loves the victim.” He laid a gloved hand on Tyrrel's boot. “Dost love me, Wat?”

Tyrrel closed his eyes and nodded, blinking back tears of grief.

“Lord, you know I do!”

“Then come and perform this last act of love in my service, sweet friend,” the King whispered. “Come. I am not afraid. It is my destiny. For this was I born.”

Not looking at the King, Tyrrel swung down and began unstrapping the crossbow from its place. The straps in the buckles were stiff beneath his fingers, and he could not reach the quarrels from where he stood. As he went numbly to the horse's other side, the King turned and began strolling slowly away from him, boots turning up dead leaves and moss on the forest floor, making a soft, rustling sound like a deer.

Tyrrel fitted a bolt to the weapon. Each click of the ratchet, as he cocked it, seemed to echo through the forest like a new doom. He raised it far enough to ensure that all was in order, then held the readied weapon close along his thigh as he moved away from the horses. No need to show the King his death before he must.