The Coming of Dragons: No. 1 (Darkest Age) (11 page)

The market people were closing their stalls when the service ended and they came back out into the fading afternoon light. Edmund had followed Elspeth into the church and sat beside her on a bench near the back. He had understood little of the Latin words and found the candles and the darkness oppressive, but it was a relief to be out of the market noise and away
from Cluaran’s orders. From the corner of his eye he had studied Elspeth’s devotions. She had joined in all the prayers, murmuring along to the monks’ chants. She clearly knew them as well as he knew the rituals of his mother’s household gods.

Cluaran met them as they came out, accompanied by a stout monk whom he introduced as Brother Anselm.

‘He’s cellarer for the monks – in charge of food and supplies,’ he told them. To the monk he said, ‘Anselm, these are the two apprentices I told you of. Well-meaning lads, though slow at times.’

‘I see they’re good Christian boys, at least,’ the monk said approvingly. Edmund blinked. He must have looked more at home in the church than he had felt. ‘You must be our guest for supper tonight,’ the monk continued, addressing Cluaran. ‘The abbot will be pleased if you’ll sing a saint’s life for us. Such skill you have with the holy songs, it’s hard to believe you’re not of the true faith.’

Cluaran shook his head with a half-smile.

‘And your lads?’ said Brother Anselm. ‘Can they hold a tune as well as you?’

‘Alas, no,’ Cluaran said. ‘They’ve little skill, either of them. But they’ll help you in the kitchen and wait at table tonight, if you tell them their duties. Elis here,’ he gestured towards Elspeth, ‘is simple-minded; he’ll not talk much.’ He glanced meaningfully at her. ‘But he can cook, so set him to watch the spit. The other boy, Ned, can split logs and move a cask, for all his puny looks.’

Edmund opened his mouth to protest, but the minstrel turned on his heel, leaving them in the charge of Brother Anselm.

Elspeth’s glare of indignation matched Edmund’s, but then she shrugged, raising a finger to her lips to warn him to keep silent. The monk led them to a cluster of buildings behind the church, and took them into the stone-walled hut that contained the kitchen. Hams and onions hung from the blackened beams. Anselm set them to chopping vegetables on a block while he went off to stir the great central fire.

‘Does Cluaran think we’re his slaves?’ Edmund hissed when he saw the monk busy with poker and bellows.

Elspeth chopped savagely at a carrot. ‘He’s sent us here to keep us out of the way,’ she muttered. ‘He doesn’t even trust us to keep our mouths shut. Simple-minded indeed!’ She split a turnip with one blow.

Edmund set to chopping a string of small shiny-skinned onions. But when he looked up again, his eyes stung with fumes, he could have sworn he saw a smile on Elspeth’s lips, and he wondered what she was planning.

The monks’ refectory was in a great hall, far bigger than the kitchen. With the crowd of monks, novices and guests at supper, it soon grew hot and steamy. Edmund and Elspeth were called hither and thither, bearing pitchers of ale and carrying bread to the four long tables, while Brother Anselm and his kitchen novices served soup and meat. Cluaran,
who was sitting at the guests’ table between an aged pilgrim and a puffed-up merchant with a silver chain, ignored them totally.

Edmund was fetching more ale at the great cask when he saw Elspeth pass by with a charger piled up with flat loaves. She began to set the bread down at intervals along the table, leaning between the guests who went on eating and talking as if she was not there. As she approached Cluaran she paused, then seemed to trip, tilting her charger and sending the bread tumbling over the table. A loaf splashed into Cluaran’s soup, and another in his lap. The minstrel sat very still and didn’t look up. Edmund choked, caught between laughter and horror –
don’t draw attention to us!
With relief, he saw that no one else had noticed. As Elspeth passed him with the empty bread board, she gave him a sly wink.

Servants are invisible!
Edmund thought. He should have known that from his own court. Cluaran had chosen their disguises well, for all their indignation.

‘You’ve worked hard enough tonight, lads!’ said Brother Anselm, waving them both from the room. ‘Leave off now and take your own meal in the kitchen.’

At the end of the evening, Cluaran sang the tale of ‘Saint Erkenwald’. Edmund sat on a heap of rushes just outside the hall doorway to listen. The minstrel’s sweet voice rang, clear as birdcall. When the song ended there was tumultuous applause, and calls for more. Cluaran sang again, this time in the strange language Edmund had heard before. There was
meaning enough in the sound – conflict and love and jealousy and longing – but not in the words themselves.

When the monks filed out of the dining hall and into the church for their night-time service, Edmund saw Cluaran stay behind to speak with three of the other guests, hard-faced men in dark cloaks who scowled at his approach. But they still withdrew into a corner with the minstrel to talk in low voices. Edmund watched them from inside the door, wondering what Cluaran was up to, until a young monk shooed him away, saying that he and Elis were to sleep in the stables behind the abbot’s house. Cluaran did not look up as they left.

Next morning, the minstrel seemed distracted as he led them to the market square. He stopped outside the church and pulled a small clinking pouch from inside his tunic. Shaking the contents on to his palm, he handed Edmund and Elspeth a few copper coins.

‘You can buy food in the market,’ he told them, nodding towards the far side where early-arriving traders were already setting up stalls.

‘Market day was yesterday,’ said Elspeth in surprise. ‘How can there be one today?’

‘It’s the spring festival,’ Cluaran explained. ‘It lasts for three days – even when there’s no spring to speak of.’ His face was faintly mocking; the sky above was cold and grey with clouds. ‘But that’s a mark of all the children of Adam: they drink and laugh for the entertainment’s sake. And it’s
as well for me,’ he added in a lighter tone. ‘I’ve a living to earn, after all.’

More people were in the square now. Looking away down the road, Elspeth could see carts rolling into the town, and a man walked past leading a string of horses.

‘Meet me back here at sunset,’ Cluaran told Elspeth and Edmund. ‘And do not draw attention to yourselves.’ He turned and walked briskly after the horse trader.

As the square became busier, Edmund saw that Cluaran was right; this was as much a fair as a market, with peddlers selling amulets and strings of beads and good-luck charms, and entertainments set up among the food stalls. A ragged man was playing the bagpipes for flung coins, and one or two booths offered fortune-telling or games of chance. Edmund felt a giddy sense of freedom as they wandered among the early buyers; he could not walk like this at home without some guard dogging every footstep.

When they grew hungry, their noses led them to an open hearth where a whole pig was spit-roasting over a charcoal fire. Soon they were sinking their teeth in chunks of meat, the fat dribbling down their chins.

By mid-afternoon, more entertainers had arrived – pipers, singers, a stout boy with a big drum.

‘Find the ball, sirs, find the ball! You, my lady, care to try your luck? A silver piece if you can uncover it.’

The ringing cry made Edmund stop by a booth draped in fabric the colour of ox blood. A small crowd had gathered
round the table where a burly man brandished three cups, tossing them in the air one at a time before upending each on a board. Then he held up a painted wooden ball and placed it under the middle cup with a flourish.

‘I’ve seen this trick,’ Elspeth whispered as the man began to move the cups rapidly over the board. ‘It looks easy, but you can never find the ball.’

First one and then another customer paid his penny and made his guess, but it seemed that the stall owner could not be beaten. His hands were huge, almost hiding the little cups, yet they moved with dizzying speed, flicking the cups in complicated patterns without ever lifting one from the table. Edmund saw that Elspeth was watching the progress of the cups with growing fascination.

‘It must be that one!’ she muttered, staring at the left-hand cup as the hands stopped moving. The latest customer thought so too; he pointed to the cup on the left.

‘It’s not there,’ murmured Edmund, shaking his head. ‘He’s moved it back to the right again.’

With a flourish, the man raised the left-hand cup to show that it was empty. ‘And here it is!’ he boomed, producing the yellow-painted ball from the right-hand cup as the customer marched off, leaving behind his copper coin.

Elspeth turned to Edmund, open-mouthed. ‘You saw him switch it! Or,’ she added quietly, ‘did you use … you know … ?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Edmund said. ‘Or maybe I did, without
realising.’ He flushed guiltily – it felt like cheating – but all the same, why not? He concentrated on the stallholder. There was a moment of uncertainty, then he found himself looking from the man’s own viewpoint. He could see the table beneath him, the great hands flashing to and fro. He could not see what the wooden ball was doing. But somehow he knew where it was. It was as if the man was focusing with more intensity on the cup that held the ball.

He felt something else, too: a flicker of thought that sent him back to himself in a rush. The man despised his audience. He saw them all as fools, to be played with and duped.

Three more customers tried their luck and failed. Each time, Edmund whispered to Elspeth: ‘The middle one.’ ‘Now the right again,’ – and each time, he was right.

‘You should play him yourself!’ Elspeth said. ‘I have a coin left.’

Edmund thought for a moment. The man was so contemptuous, he deserved to be shown he was not dealing with fools after all. He nodded, took the coin from Elspeth and stepped forward to lay it on the table.

‘Trying your luck, young man?’ asked the stall owner, already moving the cups about. At first Edmund tried to concentrate on the movement, but he knew he didn’t need to. Looking through the stallholder’s eyes, it was obvious where the ball was each time.

‘The cup on the left,’ he said when the showman’s hands stopped moving.

The man’s face stiffened. ‘Are you sure now?’ His voice was cheerful, but his eyes had narrowed. When Edmund nodded, he lifted the cup. The ball rolled out – and a shout of approval went up from the watchers. Edmund held out his hand for the prize, but the stall owner, beaming around at his audience, raised his hand for silence.

‘You’ve a keen eye, I see,’ he said, looking at Edmund. ‘And you’re game for a wager, I’ll be bound!’ He picked out a small stack of coins from his leather bag, holding them between finger and thumb. ‘Ten silver coins if you can find the ball twice more! What do you say?’

Don’t draw attention to yourselves
, Edmund remembered too late. The audience had swelled to a small crowd, drawn by the cup-and-ball man’s ringing voice. In the front, Elspeth watched bright-eyed.

‘Go on, Edmund!’ she urged.

From all around, people shouted conflicting advice.

‘Take your money, boy; don’t be a fool!’

‘Peace, woman, can’t you see the luck is with him? Go for the purse, lad!’

Edmund hardly heard any of them. It had been hard taking coppers from Cluaran for today’s food; at home, Edmund had handed out silver to his father’s people without thinking twice.

‘I’ll wager,’ he announced, to the delight of the crowd.

‘Another coin, then, if you please,’ said the showman, matter-of-factly.

Edmund faltered. ‘But I don’t have …’ he began. The people nearest to him heard, and began to hoot their disappointment. He felt his face heating, but there was nothing he could say. Burning with embarrassment now, he started to turn away.

But the showman had scented a mark, and would not give up so easily. ‘Come now,’ he cut in. ‘A well-set-up young man like yourself will have something about you that you can wager. A ring or a brooch perhaps?’

Before Edmund could move he stepped round his stall and twitched aside Edmund’s cloak. Edmund angrily knocked his hand away, but not before the man’s sharp eyes had spotted his name-brooch glinting in the muddy folds of his cloak. His meaty face crinkled in delight.

‘There, you see?’ he crowed. ‘That silver birdie will do fine.’ He was talking to the crowd now, over Edmund’s head. ‘And you can’t back out of a wager, can you?’ There was a mutter of agreement as people pressed forward, eager for the show.

Beside him, Edmund felt Elspeth tense.
We should run
, he thought. But a cold determination, hard as stone, had seized him. The showman meant to cheat him, but Edmund knew for sure that the man would fail. He pulled his cloak tight around him, hiding the brooch, and took a confident step towards the booth.

‘I’ll wager,’ he said clearly.

‘What are you doing?’ hissed Elspeth.

Edmund had no time to explain. All his thoughts were fixed on the showman, who had gone back to the other side
of his stall. Soon the huge hands were making the cups dance across the board. Edmund realised that this time he was not looking through the man’s eyes, but focusing on the wooden ball itself – and it seemed the ball was answering him. He still knew where it was! Fierce triumph filled him as the hands skittered and whirled.

‘The middle one,’ he said, hardly looking at them.

He was right. The crowd roared.

Now the man was working in earnest. His face was set as he held up the ball and replaced it beneath the left-hand cup. Catching his mood, the crowd fell silent.

Once more Edmund followed the movement of the invisible ball: centre, to right, to centre again. Then, with no warning, it vanished.

Edmund wondered if anyone had heard his gasp. He had
felt
the ball there, under the cup. Now there was just a sense of emptiness. He heard the murmur of the crowd above the sound of the cups sliding on the table, and then caught sight of a sly glint in the showman’s eyes. No, he had not lost his power. If he stretched his mind he could still feel the wooden ball – not on the table but somewhere else, hidden.