Son of the Morning (16 page)

‘Let’s go and see. Be careful with your spear now, you may need it at any point, there are dragons in these woods for sure.’

‘John, the boy comes with us!’ Philip was shouting over to his son.

‘You wanted him to hunt, father, he’s hunting, as am I. There’s no nobler prey than the dragon – I could be St George himself!’

‘Haven’t the English rather bagged that saint?’ said Philip, ‘you’ll make him a traitor.’

‘I will make him a hero!’

Charles rode his pony into the woods after John, Ramon trotting beside him. There, about fifty paces from him through the trees, was a dragon, next to a horse. Or rather it was very clearly one of the prince’s acrobats dressed up as a dragon, a long stuffed tail behind him, ridges on his back and a crocodilian snout covering his head.

A stream of red leapt from its mouth. It was breathing fire! Charles realised, to his delight, that the acrobat had just put a roll of scarlet cloth to his lips and flicked it out suddenly.

‘Shall we spear this saucy fellow?’ said John.

‘Let’s run him through!’

The two princes trotted towards the dragon, but the dragon didn’t stay where he was. He jumped onto a horse and began to trot away himself.

‘Blow your horn, cousin, blow your horn!’ shouted John.

Charles put the horn to his lips and blew. All the prince’s retinue came lolloping after him – ladies, fools, poets and minstrels all whooping and shouting. Two darker figures, horsemen who peeled away from the King’s party, followed on too.

Charles galumphed through the woods, John at his side, Ramon trotting behind so as to sustain the conceit he couldn’t outpace the royalty. His French uncle irritated Charles normally – too friendly too quickly, too sure he knew what was on the boy’s mind and inclined to treat Charles as nothing more than a performing monkey. But Charles was enjoying leading the hunt and felt a childish pride in being first through the trees.

‘Oh, in the name of Christ, where has the dragon gone?’ said John. ‘He’s going too quickly. Someone go and get him, and tell him he’s going too quickly!’

John put his spurs into his horse and Charles kicked his pony to keep up. But John, a good rider on an excellent horse, outran him easily and Charles quickly found himself swallowed up by the mob of cavorting courtiers.

‘There he is!’ One of the riders who had come from the king’s party cried out. Through the trees, nearby there was a flash of green.

‘Follow the prince!’ shouted a brightly clad squire.

‘Kill the dragon!’ shouted a squeaky voiced lady.

‘Be careful, in the name of God!’ Ramon cried out – a man dressed as a fool had run his horse straight into the count, unseating him. No one seemed to notice.

The main body of the riders lummoxed on after John, but a group of about ten split to pursue the green that had been seen through the trees. Charles, following the prince, suddenly found a presence at his side. A rider he did not recognise from the court caught his bridle.

‘Let’s steal a march on your Uncle John!’ he said. ‘Let’s spear that dragon before he does!’

‘Let me go! Do you presume to touch royalty? Let me go, you base fool!’

But the man did not let go. He spurred his horse forward, tugging at the pony’s bridle and pulling the animal into a reluctant gallop. They tore through the trees, outstripping the ladies and minstrels who had split from the prince, racing towards where the dragon had appeared. Charles was not an idiot and knew he was in the grip of an assassin. His mouth went dry, his heart raced and he tried to summon the courage to leap from the pony but he couldn’t. He abandoned its reins and clung to its mane as the trees flashed by. The more he willed himself to jump, the tighter he clung.

The boar came from nowhere. There was a rattle and a great squeal and it rushed past him, fast as a gunstone. Screams from the ladies behind him. The rider was tearing at the bridle, the pony fretting, whinnying as it ran, the rider forcing it on.

Another rider came to the other side of the pony.

‘We’ve lost them,’ he said and shoved Charles from his saddle.

The green of the trees blurred, the brown of the floor rushed up at him. He fell. The whole experience had the quality of a memory, even as it was happening. He smelled blood in his nostrils, the leaves on the ground, had the taste of soil in his mouth. His shoulder struck first, then his head. Everything was slow and fast at the same time.

Bang
! He was winded, dizzy; he tried to stand but a rider was coming for him full tilt, trying to charge him down. Charles rolled away – by luck more than judgement – as a hoof smashed into the ground beside his head, but the second man had dismounted and was running towards him with a knife. It was clear to Charles he was in mortal danger, but the knock to his head had disoriented him, and he just sat watching as the man ran at him.

A noise. A heavy breath. Something beside him in the trees – a man of blood. All blood. Red robes, a red hat, his face hanging down in tatters, his eye socket exposed, his ears burned and charred. He was on all fours, panting like a dog, but in his hand he carried, bizarrely, a lighted candle.

The man with the knife stopped. The other horseman had come around and was staring down too.

‘What in the name of Satan are you?’

‘His servant,’ said the tattered man. He swallowed the candle.

‘He looks like a cardinal. What’s wrong with his face? I don’t like this,’ said the man with the knife.

‘You’ll like this less,’ said the cardinal and belched out a great billow of fire, smoke and sparks. The horse screamed and bucked, the rider fell, his hair and head on fire. The man with the knife was also burning, all aflame, screaming through the woods.

The tattered man took Charles by the shoulder, smoke still seeping from his mouth. ‘She shone at me! I’m lucky to be alive. Things are not going well for me, but I must have arrived here for a reason. It is obscure to me, but I can sniff it on you – you interest the chief gaoler of Hell. Say my name when your purpose becomes apparent.’

‘Apparent?’ The boy was convinced he had been knocked into dreamland. He drew back from the man whose breath stank of sulphur.

‘Ready. Say my name – Nergal – if you need me. My name is Nergal.’

The rider was lying on the floor, his head flaming like a torch, howling and rolling.

‘I need to get a face,’ said Nergal, ‘and his won’t do. Remember, call me when you are ready – we may aid each other’s purposes.’

‘What is my purpose?’

‘I don’t know. Destruction, I should guess.’

‘What’s destruction?’

‘To burn and break things.’

‘I am to be a great burner and breaker?’

‘My presence here would seem to show you’ll be one of the best. Now I must go.’

With that he picked up his hat, put it to his ravaged head and ran off through the trees.

The horse lay dead, charred and smoking on the ground. Some dry bushes were burning about twenty paces to his left, where the rider had collapsed. He was still on fire. The knifeman was dead, the white of his skull showing through his burned skin.

There were voices around Charles, faces – pink blurs.

‘What happened, oh little man, what happened?’ John was there. Ramon too.

Charles felt tears coming down his cheeks and he could not stop himself weeping.

‘What was it, cousin Charles? What has happened here?’

‘A dragon!’ said Charles, ‘Uncle John, it was a dragon!’ And he cast himself into John’s arms.

4

Montagu rode in to Berkeley lightly attended by only four squires and eight pages, no more than a couple of cooks, a falconer, armourer, scribe and minstrel – the very minimum a gentleman of his standing needed to get by.

Two weeks’ hard riding brought him there just before the early Easter. The weather had been good. It was a sweet spring, the hedges full of birdsong, the meadows in flower. Montagu counted himself lucky to be a freeman on such a day – at liberty to wander and to see England in its glory, from the vast shimmering lakes of the northern hills to the woods of the Midlands, and now this pretty, even if formidable, Gloucestershire dwelling rising out of a lilied moat, its walls girded by a necklace of yellow affodells.

The castle was an impressive structure, two curtain walls and, just visible above them, the flinty square structure of the new castle attached to the old round Norman keep.

Berkeley had seen the diamonds of Montagu’s banners from afar and had the gates open for his arrival. The lord himself came running out to meet Montagu, dressed in a surcoat bearing his family’s distinctive crosses pattée – the arms tapering in towards the centre of the design like four arrowheads.

‘Thomas!’ shouted Montagu. ‘It’s good to see you, old man!’

‘No older than you, Salisbury!’

‘And so old enough! How long has it been?’

‘Ten years.’

‘It seems longer. I should have come this way before.’

Montagu dismounted and the two men bowed to each other.

‘William, you’re very welcome, especially at such a time. I should have thought you’d be in the south readying for the French invasion. It’s all we hear about nowadays.’

‘Not going to happen now,’ said Montagu. ‘Thank God for corrupt men. The Genoese mercenary admiral didn’t pay his men. They mutinied. Result – four in every ten of the French invasion force packed their banners and went home. We’re on French soil burning Philip’s lands – he won’t be on ours for at least another summer. The king will force Philip to battle. If he doesn’t dither himself into the grave before that.’

‘What does Edward hope to achieve there? Surely he can’t think he could win France.’

‘He thinks he’s the rightful king of France. He has a claim through his mother. God is on his side. We’ll give Philip a bloody nose for invading the Agenais, make safe our allies in Flanders and then head home with a sackload of booty. The southern ports are full of French riches already.’

‘Good stuff, good stuff! So what brings you here?’

‘On my way to my own lands. Seemed a good idea to pay you a visit. Why pay for board at an inn, I thought, when I can drink old Berkeley dry for nothing?’

‘Very good! Come with me, I’ll have rooms made ready.’

The pages led the horses in as Montagu’s men followed him through the gates in the curtain walls and then into the inner castle – through a long tunnel into the courtyard. It was very impressive, just as Montagu had remembered it, low buildings with crenellations on them – the big gothic windows of the Great Hall and some higher, solid towers fronted by ornate doors carved with the images of saints.

Montagu listened but he couldn’t hear them singing, as nobles often could. Berkeley saw him cock an ear.

‘Do vigil here, then they may sing to you.’

‘You still have saints?’

‘Yes, does it surprise you?’

‘Not at all,’ said Montagu, meaning ‘very much’. A king had died here, after all.

That said, there was an air of peace about the place, a lovely smell of apples from a cart overflowing with them. Healthy, well-liveried servants moved about, busy and smiling.

‘It’s good of you to come, really good,’ said Berkeley. ‘We’ve not had many visitors here the last ten years.’

‘No.’

Montagu knew why – Berkeley had stood trial for the murder of the old king. He had been acquitted, but the stain of the accusation had never left him. Other nobles shunned him and he’d not been at a tournament since the day he’d left Westminster a free man.

‘My God, it
is
good to see you.’ Berkeley patted Montagu on the shoulder. You’ll do me the honour of joining me to dine tonight, William?’

‘I know you keep an incomparable table,’ said Montagu. ‘Of course!’

Berkeley certainly did know how to throw a feast. Even though he had no idea Montagu was coming until a few hours before the Earl arrived, the food was lavish and the wine excellent. The warner – the first course – itself would not have been out of place at the king’s court. It was a ‘sotiltee’ – a sugar sculpture – in the shape of a crown with, springing from its centre, three leopards.

‘You had that knocked up this afternoon?’ said Montagu.

‘The cook’s a good ’un,’ said Berkeley. ‘Though we may be far from civilisation out here, it does not follow that we must live basely.’

The hall was enormous – the finest in England, Berkeley said. Large stained glass windows shattered the sinking sun into blue and red as the servants busied themselves among the tables. Montagu had come unexpectedly and so the hall was only half full. It took more than a few hours to get news to the goodmen of Gloucestershire that the king’s favourite friend had come to the castle. Still, there were enough young knights and ladies, all of whom wanted to meet the famous earl and to talk to him about his exploits in the east, in France and – above all – the night he had plucked the tyrant Mortimer from his bedchamber at Nottingham Castle.

‘How did you get in?’ they all wanted to know.

‘Carefully and quickly,’ was his answer. The truth – that they’d employed a secret passage into the castle – had never really been revealed. The castle was a royal seat and no one wanted it widely known that there was a direct route to the king’s bedroom from a crag in the cliff on which the castle stood. He was sure Edward had had the passage sealed now, but seals can be undone so silence was the best option.

Eventually, the number of young people approaching the table grew too great and Berkeley waved them away.

‘You’re a hero to these people, William.’

‘Only because they don’t know me. I did my duty – it would have been impossible not to.’

‘Quite, a few of these youngsters should hear you say that. In any enterprise modern knights seem to consider only two things – the money it will bring them and the advancement they might win. I tell them, honour wants no reward.’

‘But it can get one.’

‘Well, quite.’

Montagu wondered how Berkeley could talk of honour when he’d allowed the old king to die under his roof. He felt a spark of anger at the man’s hypocrisy. He’d wanted a chance to bring up the subject of Edward’s death. This appeared to be it.