The Prince and the Pilgrim (13 page)

All was bustle there, men eating and drinking and chaffing the giggling servant-girls who carried food and beer to them; men cleaning their weapons and seeing to their horses and harness; the castle’s own grooms busy with buckets and brushes, and the coming and going by the gate of market-women and local folk bringing their wares to sell.

Alexander made for the stable where he had seen his own horse led on the previous evening. It was there, comfortably housed and sharing a manger with half a dozen others. His saddle was
on
a wooden rack near the door. He was lifting this down when one of the grooms came in, dumping the pail he carried and hurrying to Alexander’s side.

“You give me that, sir. I’ll do it.” He took the saddle and lifted it to the horse’s back, then stooped to pull the girth tight. “’Tis a rare handsome beast you’ve got here. I did him last night myself. He was tired – come a long way, had you? – but I gave him a warm mash with a drop of beer in it, and he ate up a treat. There he is now, ready to go. You going far, young sir?”

“That depends. I see people have come in this morning, country folk. Have you heard if the river’s still in flood?”

“It’s well down this morning, so not to worry, young master. It’ll be down to no more than knee-deep by this. The track this side never gets flooded – not so’s you can’t get through – and the footing’s good.” He gave the horse’s rump a caressing slap. “You’re going north, I take it?”

“Yes, for Rheged and then the north-east.” Alexander, grateful to the man for his care of the horse, stayed chatting for a few more minutes, then thanked him and took the bridle, leaving the groom beaming over a couple of copper coins. Without exciting more than some curious stares and a civil “Good morning” or two from the crowd in the courtyard, he led his horse out, and across to the gate. He saw no reason to reward the porter there, merely waiting in silence while the man pushed the heavy door open for him. Once across the moat he mounted and turned his horse’s head along the track north of the river,
heading
for the road he had glimpsed yesterday, that led up past the monastery buildings from the end of the broken bridge.

He never reached it.

Three of Queen Morgan’s escort, up and about even earlier than Alexander, had ridden out hunting, to find something more substantial for the castle’s table than the fat geese and capons brought in by the local peasants.

They rode up into the woods that clothed the sides of the valley. Here the going was rough, the trees close-growing, with dense underbrush, and they soon scared up a deer. That it was a young doe, heavy with fawn, did not trouble them. The chase was all. The hounds were urged on with shouts and laughter, and the party galloped helter-skelter, necks for sale through the trees as the doe made downhill for the river.

The river, though it had certainly fallen during the night, was still fairly high, and running noisily, so that Alexander, riding at a swift canter along the bank, heard nothing of the hunt. The first he knew was when the doe broke suddenly out of the trees, which here grew close down to the water, and sprang clear into the road, barely three inches in front of the horse’s nose.

The chestnut was a good horse, as steady as he was swift, and did not easily take fright, but the inevitable check, with the violent swerve and plunge to one side, only narrowly avoided collision with the fleeing doe. Even so, Alexander might have stayed in the saddle and kept control, had not the beast’s sharp swerve taken it off the track and right to the river’s edge, where the
recent
flood had loosened a section of the bank.

Under the slam of hoofs the ground broke, crumbled, and slid into the water. The horse fell, pitching his rider sideways into the river. The doe, untouched, flew the broken bank like a bird and was soon lost in the trees on the far side, while the hunting party, breaking from the woods a few moments later, found their hounds circling at a loss at the water’s edge, and Alexander’s big chestnut floundering up the river bank.

Alexander himself lay still where he had been flung, half in the rush of water, half on the stony rubble of the broken bank.

Alexander woke to a headache, a sharp pain in the left foot, and a nagging soreness in the left forearm. He was in bed, and it was dark, but a candle burned beside the bed, and its little light showed him that he was back in the bedchamber in the Dark Tower where he had slept last night. Last night? He felt drowsy, and slightly sick, with a heaviness in his limbs that set him wondering how long he had slept, or indeed – as the wraiths of dream still hung about him – whether he had ever ridden out from the place at all. The candle-light swam against his eyes. He shut them, and slid into sleep again.

When he awoke it was to daylight, and the click of the door-latch. The door opened to admit a stout woman with a basket over her arm and a beaker in one hand. She was followed by the boy who had served him yesterday, carrying a steaming bowl and an armful of linen towels.

“Well, and so you’re with us again!” The woman spoke with a sort of familiar, almost professional cheeriness. From this, and from her plain dress and amply aproned figure and the white wimple hiding her hair, it was a good guess that she had been nurse to a couple of generations, at
least
, of the owners of the castle. She dumped her basket on the table. “And in more ways than one, young master! You thought you’d got away from us, didn’t you, and found it wasn’t quite as easy as that! Eh, well, you were lucky they found you so soon. You’ll come to no harm, but you’ll have to bide a few days, and let old Brigit look after you … Here, drink this. Can you sit up? That’s right … Put the bowl down here, Peter, and get the other things set out for me. Quickly now! Come along, young master, all of it … Done you good already, by the looks of you. If you could have seen yourself yesterday morning when they brought you in from the river, like a drowned corpse you were, as white as wax and with that black bruise on your face and the blood, and dripping with water as cold as snow-broth –”

“The river?” The word brought the beginnings of memory. He put his good hand to his head, winced at the touch, and said anxiously: “My horse? He took a toss. There was a deer … That’s right, a doe jumped into the road. Is he hurt?”

“Don’t fret yourself, he’s all right. Not a scratch. So you remember it now? Well, that’s a good sign, anyway! Yes, you both took a toss, and you were lucky, too. Another handspan deeper, and you’d have drowned before they got you out. You hit your head, but it’s no more than a bruise to spoil your handsome face for a day or two.” She laughed fatly, busying herself with cloths and hot water. The water smelled of some herb mixture, and he relaxed gratefully back on the pillow.

“I’ve hurt my foot, I think. Did you say there was blood?”

“That was from your arm here, and a nasty little gash it is, too. Aye, you can feel that, can’t you? Bide still now, we must make sure it’s clean. They reckoned you must ’a speared your arm on a bit of a broken branch when you went over the bank. Your foot’s naught to worry you, a sprain that’ll keep you lying up for a few days, no more. I told you, you were lucky.”

“It seems I was. Who brought me in?”

“There were three of them out hunting. It was Enoch carried you in here. There, that’ll do you for now. You stay where you are, and rest yourself, and Peter’ll bring you something to eat in a minute. Nay, young master, I said stay there in your bed … It’ll be a day or two before you feel right enough to go about, with that knock on the head. And don’t fret yourself about your horse. It’s cared for. You just do as old Brigit says, and the two of you will be out of here and on your road before the week’s out.”

In this, as it happened, she was wrong.

Alexander ate what the boy brought him, fully resolved to get out of bed as soon as he had finished, and see if he could relieve his reluctant hostess of what must now be a decidedly tiresome guest. But either the knock on the head had been worse even than it felt, or there had been some sort of soporific drug in the drink the nurse had given him, for when he sat up and tried to rise, the room spun dangerously round him, and the feeling of nausea returned. He lay down again
and
shut his eyes. A little rest, yes, and then the world would hold steady and he would be himself again …

But when he woke once more it was dusk, almost dark, and he felt no inclination to move from his bed. His head still ached, and the arm throbbed. Peter, coming in (for the third time that day, though Alexander did not know it) with a bowl of broth and some fresh bread wrapped in a napkin, gave him a doubtful look, then set the things down and hurried out of the room, to frighten Brigit with the news that the young lord looked to him to be none too lively, and all set for a real bout of the fever such as had taken his, Peter’s, uncle off that time he had fallen drunk into the moat and lain there for the whole night before anyone found him.

He was right enough about the fever, though it was brought about by some infection of the torn arm rather than by the chill of the water. For the next day or two Alexander was back in the hot and nightmare land of feverish visions, where night and day slid past in the same aching dreamland, and where faces and voices came and went unheeded and unrecognised.

Till he awoke, it seemed all of a sudden, clearheaded and with memory restored, to find that it was night again, and he was lying in a strange room, much larger than the other, and richly, even luxuriously furnished.

He was propped on silken pillows in a big bed with costly hangings, and set about the chamber were gilded chairs with brightly embroidered cushions, and carved chests, and bronze tripods
holding
candles of fine wax that smelled of honey. Against the wall opposite the bed’s foot stood a table furnished with a white linen cloth and various vessels such as Brigit the nurse had used, but these vessels were made of silver and silver-gilt or perhaps gold. And stooping over the table, mixing something in one of the golden goblets, was the most beautiful woman that Alexander had ever seen.

She turned her head, saw him awake and watching her, and straightened from her task, smiling.

She was tall for a woman, and slender, but with a rich fullness of breast and hips and a suppleness of waist that her amber-coloured gown did little to hide. Her hair was dark and very long, hanging in thick braids as if ready for the night, but carefully bound with amber ribbon and tiny golden knots where jewels glittered. Her eyes, too, were dark, with a charming tilt of the lids at the outer corners, a tilt followed by the narrow dark brows. Another woman would have seen straight away that brows and eyelids were carefully drawn and darkened, and that the proud curves of the mouth were expertly reddened, but Alexander, gazing up weakly from his pillows, saw only a vision of beauty that would, he thought vaguely, surely vanish in a moment, and leave him with the old nurse, or the kind but unexciting Lady Luned.

She did not vanish. She came forward into the light cast by the sweet-smelling candles, and spoke.

“So the unfortunate traveller is awake? Good evening, sir. How is it with you now? No, no –”
as
he struggled to lift himself – “don’t try to sit up. You’ve had a bad fever, and you must rest a while yet.” So saying she laid a hand on his brow, a cool, strong hand that pressed him gently back against the pillows. No vision, certainly, but a real woman, and a very lovely one … This, thought Alexander hazily, this was how the adventure should have started, but no matter; that blessed deer had, in the best traditions of the old tales, brought him back to the Dark Tower and the bedchamber – was it her own? – of the lovely lady of all those boyhood dreams …

“You?” he said, and was dismayed at the sound of his own voice. Like a lamb bleating, he thought, and tried again. “Who are you?”

She went swiftly to the table to pick up the gold goblet and carry it back to the bedside. Stooping, she slid that cool hand behind his head and lifted it, helping him to drink.

“I am your nurse now, Alexander. When I heard what had happened I had you carried here, into my own chambers, where I could look after you myself. There is no one in the kingdoms who could care for you better. Come, drink.”

The neck of her gown was loose against the creamy throat. As she stooped lower he could see her breasts, round and full, with the deep shadow between. He tore his gaze away and lifted his eyes to see her watching him. She was smiling. Confused, he tried to speak, but she shook her head at him, still smiling, and tilted the last drops to his mouth, then carried the empty goblet back to the table.

Her voice was cool and composed. “You will
sleep
again, and tomorrow the fever will be quite gone, and the arm healing. I dressed your hurts while you still slept. The foot will pain you for a while longer, and you must rest it. Now I shall send Brigit to you again, but I will see you in the morning.”

Alexander, who knew he could never have asked this faery goddess to help him where he now needed to go, felt nothing but thankfulness as she set the goblet down and turned away. But there was something he had to know.