Lammas Night (34 page)

The King's back was to him, perhaps a dozen steps away. Tyrrel could hardly miss at this range, and he an expert shot, but he moved yet nearer to pause beneath a sacred elder tree. If the deed must be done, it must be quick and sure. Sacrifice demanded that the sacred blood be spilled upon the ground, but it did not require that the victim suffer. As Tyrrel raised his weapon, the King stopped beside a giant oak and turned slightly, one gloved hand resting against the trunk.

“'Twill be a beautiful sunset, Wat,” he said softly, not seeming to see the weapon as he turned full body toward Tyrrel and met his eyes, then raised his own to the sunlight slanting through the leaves as his face went set. “Shoot, in the God's name, or it will be the worse for thee!”

Tyrrel felt his vision blurring as he shouldered the weapon and sighted, but he did not falter. Only as his finger tightened on the trigger did he see the King's eyes drop to his again for just an instant. In that fraction of hesitation, he fired and the bolt went just a little wide, glancing off the tree trunk before burying itself in the King's breast.

“Sweet face of Lucca!” the King gasped, one hand catching himself against the tree as the other clutched involuntarily at the barbed death in his chest.

The crossbow fell from Tyrrel's numbed fingers as he stared in horror. “William, my God!”

“Not thy fault, Wat. Stay back!” the King murmured through clenched teeth as he sank to his knees. “Hard enough for thee. I distracted—Finish it … myself.…”

With that, he pitched forward on his face, driving the bolt out through his back and dying instantly.

Tyrrel ran to him then and caught up the King in his arms, but it was over. Like Ishtar weeping for her son-lover Tammuz or Isis for Osiris or the Marys for the White Christ, he held the still-warm body close and let the tears stream down his cheeks—tears of grief and thanksgiving. As he laid the body back upon the earth and rose to leave, his destiny fulfilled, Graham was once more able to draw himself apart.

“Gray …”

He could hear Alix's voice coming from far away, but a part of him stil did not want to listen to her.

“Gray, you're too deep. Come up a little, so you can talk to me,” the far-off voice insisted. “Look at the lives and tell me what you see. Tyrrel … FitzUrse … Wallace … George … the monk named John.…”

He managed to fasten on the final name, and an image formed behind his eyelids of a man riding into a monastic courtyard with a handful of ragged men-at-arms. Somehow he knew that he was a brother of that community and that the new arrival was the King. Unlike the FitzUrse and Tyrrel memories, however, a part of him now knew he was but observer, even though he saw through other eyes.

“He has not done well by the land,” he murmured aloud, seeming to watch the King from some vantage point outside the refectory door, where the royal party entered to dine. “His barons are in revolt. Even as he joins us, he flees from them. They say he has lost the royal treasure in the Wash.”

“What is the year?” a woman's voice asked softly. “What is your name?”

“'Tis the seventeenth year in the reign of King John,” Graham replied. “I am Brother John, a monk of Swineshead Abbey.”

“What are your orders, brother?” the voice asked. “Have you been told to kill the King?”

He swallowed and saw himself in memory, preparing the cup.

“It is known what must be done. The King himself has said that if he lives another six-month, there will be famine in the land.”

“Why is that?”

“He is forty-nine and has found no substitute to die for him,” Graham replied. “Even though his heir be not of age, the land cannot stand another seven-year without the blood.”

“Do you kill him, then?”

He nodded, a curt, nervous gesture, for he sensed the chill of his own approaching death, but there was resignation in his voice as he replied.

“I am infirmarian here at Swineshead. We have the knowledge to extract the poison of a toad, to distill it into the very metal of the cup,” he said softly. “The King will drink, and it will soon be over. He is one of us. He will know his fate and accept it when it is upon him.”

“But if the King dies by poison, how can his blood be spilled upon the land?” the question came. “Is this not required?”

He smiled—a patient, secret smile. “Those who prepare the body know their duty, lady. When he is boweled, they will see that the blood goes where it ought. It is ever thus when a king dies that his parts be buried throughout the land and the blood spilled to lend their blessing.”

“Was this done?”

“I know not, lady.”

“But he
does
die in that year,” she said. “Does he drink the cup, or is it other death? Go forward in time and tell me what you see.”

Graham turned his head against the chair back, not wanting to go on, yet compelled by the voice.

“He drinks, but I must drink before him,” he said uncomfortably, grimacing as a ghost of remembered cramping in his gut started to double him over with very real pain.

“Enough. Do not relive your own dying,” she commanded. “Let go of this life and move on. Go forward in time and tell me what you see.”

He sighed and released it, grateful for the respite, and merely drifted for several heartbeats. Then, with a wrench, he was else-when again—sitting a horse behind his Scottish schiltrons on a slope east of Falkirk and waiting for an English charge.

“Who are you?” the woman's voice came to him softly, intruding on his concentration as he examined the scene behind trembling eyelids. “What do you see?”

He shook his head, seeing the faces of his Scots spearmen turned trustingly to him for words of cheer and knowing there were none to offer. They faced a far superior force.

“I have brought you to the ring, lads. Dance if you can!” he cried aloud.

Even as they cheered him, loyal to the last, he was plunged into the midst of battle: leading their charge against the heavily armored English knights, watching his men fall before Edward's Welsh bowmen.

“What is your name?” the woman's voice persisted. “Stand back and observe. Tell me what you see.”

He moaned as the scene of carnage rippled away, then stiffened as later memories of the same life intervened.

Betrayal and capture. English knights taking their prize back to London. And
he
was that prize.

“Who are you?”
the outside voice insisted.

“Oh, God!” he sobbed, still far too deep to respond to anything but the terror of sudden comprehending. “They mean to slay me for another land, another king! I would gladly die for my own lord—but for this English usurper?”

He was gasping for breath, his head rolling from side to side, but the grasp on his wrist began to pull him out a little and calm him as the woman's voice soothed.

“Detach yourself!” the voice demanded. “Do not feel it. Tell me only what you see and hear. Are you Wallace?”

Shuddering, he gave a curt nod—felt her hand tighten on his wrist to keep him from slipping deep again.

“Good. Tell me what you see, then. You were captured by the English at Glasgow after being betrayed by your own. Tell me of your trial.
Remember
it—do not relive it.”

He drew a deep breath and felt a part of him relax, watching as the scene took shape before him.

“Westminster Hall. It is the sacrificial month. They say I have forsworn my oath of fealty to their English king and set myself as king in my own land. They crown me with laurel to mock me.”

“Yes, go on.…”

“They—seat me in their great hall facing north, with the laurel on my head, and the travesty of trial proceeds. But they know, as well as I, what they really do. It is not the King they mean me to die for but the Lord Edward, who is twenty-one and needs a life.”

“Do you offer a defense?”

He shrugged and gave a weary smile. “To what purpose? The English know my innocence. I never gave my oath to any English king. But the English prince must have his sacrifice, and they have chosen me.”

“You know this to be true?”

“Of course. It is plain for anyone with eyes to see. My life must end before the month is out.”

“You need not relive that.”

Despite her words, he sensed the further memory welling up to consciousness, though this time he felt nothing. He was totally detached from what the eyes of the doomed Wallace saw.

“They name it traitor's death,” he murmured, “but the form of execution is time hallowed. They drag me on a hurdle to a place called Smithfield. The ground is sanctified by other sacred blood. A peacefulness surrounds me as they walk me to a copse of elms where a noose awaits—and other things.”

“Do not go on,” the voice said sternly. “You need not live this death.”

But he paid her no mind. He was victim this time, not the instrument of sacrifice. His body would be slain and might cry out in its weakness, but the sacrifice was all a part of the pattern. He found himself fascinated by the different perspective.

“The rope is rough around my neck, but there is no pain as they hoist me off the scaffold,” he whispered. “Darkness en-crouching on my sight, and then a great jolt as they cut me down still living—a burning in my belly—”

“Gray, don't!”

He could feel her nails digging into his wrist, but he shook his head and almost smiled. There was no cause for fear.

“I am apart from the pain,” he assured her. “My dying eyes behold my blood streaming from the wounds they have given me. I watch it soak into the earth. I retreat to the Second Road as I have been taught to do. I look down at what they do to my body, beyond their pain, and it occurs to me that it does not even matter that I am dying for a foreign prince.

“Only the land matters—
all
the Isle of Britain—not just Scotland, England, or Wales. Thus have died the long line of sacred sacrifices through the eons, to fecundate the land and make it fruitful. The Lord Edward knows it. I think he even sees me as I drift above my body and gently loose the silver cord.…”

Graham slipped into gentle darkness then, losing the thread of Wallace until the voice called him back. Again, he swooped into another set of memories, though these were more of knowledge than participation. He could sense a rough impatience in that part of him, mirroring the cunning and ruthlessness of the man whose identity he now assumed.

“Who are you?” the voice demanded.

He was far enough apart to know that it was Alix asking, though a part of him lodged in yet another life.

“George Plantagenet, brother to the King,” he replied briskly.

“Which King?”

“Why, Edward, of course—the fourth of that name.”

“I see. And what year do you die?”

“In 1479, in the sacred month of February. The King is thirty-five.”

“You are a sacrifice, then?”

“Yes.”

“And how do you die?”

He smiled—a taut, crafty grimace with no warmth whatever—seeing it all from a point somewhere above the body of the doomed George.

“A dagger thrust up under the ribs to the heart,” he said clinically. “It is very well done. There is little pain, but the blood flows.”

“A dagger thrust?” the voice murmured. “But if you are—tradition has it that you were drowned in a butt of Malmsey.”

“Has it? I know nothing of that.”

“Well, perhaps tradition is wrong,” he heard her murmur. “Are you content to die as sacrifice, then?”

Graham shrugged. “I would rather die as king than as substitute, but the end is the same. It is necessary.”

“I see. Go forward, then. Who else have you been?”

He was out of George Plantagenet in an instant, but somehow he could find no other name until he reached Drake. Yet there was something in that intervening time …

“What after that?” Alix urged.

“Others played their roles,” he found himself saying. “I was called to—other tasks.”

“What other tasks?”

Stillness. A closed door. Somehow he knew he was not allowed to answer.

“Can you tell me more of those tasks?” she repeated.

He found himself shaking his head.

“Very well. Is there anything else we should explore?”

He drew a deep breath and rolled his head several times from side to side, not in negation but in a gesture of futility at trying to dredge forth something that would not quite come. There was something.…

“Something—yes. Can't … quite … remember. Something about—Tyrrel … and FitzUrse. Mustn't forget.…”

“What mustn't you forget?” she urged. “Go deeper, Gray. Focus on it and bring it to the surface. Read its meaning.”

He shook his head again. “Can't. Not time yet.… William … important.… No more.…”

The concentration set things spinning. Hands clamped to his temples, he groaned aloud with a physical vertigo as well as a psychic one and tried to pull out. Her touch on his forehead eased the discomfort a little, drawing him nearer to his own body and memories, but he opened his eyes too soon. Disorientation throbbed behind his eyeballs even worse than at Buckland.

Wincing, he dropped his head into his hands and shuddered, almost sick to his stomach.

“Jesus, Alix, I think a bomb went off inside my head! What did you do to me?”

“Go back under and let's try coming out again,” she said, moving to the chair arm and putting her thumbs to his temples. “Relax and take a deep breath.…”

He let his hands fall to his lap and obeyed, retreating immediately to the comfort of trance. After a few minutes of concentrating on her words and the light pressure of her thumbs along the sides of his head, the pain subsided, and he let himself gradually come out again. A shadow of dull ache persisted behind the bridge of his nose as he cautiously opened his eyes, but it could almost be a mere lack of sleep. Nothing compared to what he'd felt a few minutes before.