The Ravens’ Banquet (34 page)

I looked away from that cold cell, unable to look anymore at the bloody icon. The old man had seen where I had been.

“Looking for a peek at the witches, were you? Too late for that, boy,” and he barked out a laugh that rumbled with phlegm. “And
I
would be there now, watching them roast, if I had not lost the dice throw this morning. Damned shame because I would have given anything to see it, I would have.”

I could have set my hands about his scrawny throat then and there, throttling him until I snapped his neck. It was just he and I and the rats. But I didn’t. I walked past him and started up the winding stair. He was at my back, huffing and cursing me for wandering off, but I was past any caring. I was a dreamer in a waking dream; my feet carrying me up those smooth worn stairs without purpose.

Setting the lantern upon the top step, I pulled the straps from off my shoulders and let the basket drop from my back. The loaves spilled out over the stones, rolling and spinning. My hand reached for the bolt of the massive oaken door and slid the ironware back. As the old man sputtered his rage, I walked out of the tower and into the air again, now tinged with sharpness in the fading light – and with smoke.

I was halfway back to the gatehouse when I first heard the sound. The sound of a great many people, jeering, and shouting as one. The roar abated to a murmur, then rose again. I could hear the tattoo of drums pounding out a dreary slow beat, the beat of a dying heart.

My boots halted on the cobbles and I turned to face the town. Would that I had never turned back. My eyes beheld a great plume of black, coiling upwards like some terrible serpent. It writhed about the twin spires of the market church, growing thinner as it rose upwards, specks of ash mixed black and grey frantically swirling up from the flames below.

Goslar was devouring its witches.

I turned my eyes away but it was too late. My mind’s eye had already shown me the horrors as if my orbs had drunk in the very sight in the flesh. And then, somehow, I was through the wall and gate once again, unchallenged. Insignificant.

I wandered off in the twilight, back the way I had come, aimless. The road followed the curve of the town walls, the rising slopes of the Harz on the far side of the rutted track.

I remember that my heart was not sick – at least not then or there. It was still empty and dry as dust. I heard a gentle neighing and looked up. Ten paces ahead was a riderless horse, grazing at the roadside. There was no sign of its owner and as I approached I recognised the beast. The saddle, pistol and empty scabbard made me sure. It was the black horse that had carried me to Holda’s oak the night before. I gathered his reins and looked around. And my eyes glimpsed a figure in white, standing at the treeline above me. It was there for but a moment before disappearing into the darkness of the forest. But what I had seen was lithe and tall; a woman. The last rays of the sun faded out at the same instant and I thought of the portal to other realms. I pulled myself up into the saddle and sat there, scanning the forest. For her. And in that small passage of time, I was fair suspended, poised between what had gone before and what was to come. All Purpose fled. All Reason banished.

But a chill gust suddenly blew across the faded leaves of the trees, filling my face and drawing me back to this world. I tugged the reins, prodded the beast with my boots, and made my way up the road, headed north. I did not look upon Goslar again. Ever Fortune’s Fool, I was now in search of an army to serve. God willing, I would find what remained of the Danish host – or any other army that would have me. A young old soldier can always be put to work in such times as these.

Dear Andreas had spoken the truth all those weeks ago in Göttingen as we stood in the bell-tower of Saint Jacobi’s, high above the world.

I have forgotten how to do anything else. So will you, in time.

It was, indeed, just as he had foretold.

M
Y BROTHER ENTERED
my room, somewhat wheezy and breathless from the long twisting climb to the top of the Martin Tower. He walked to my little table and set down the sack of food, a thing he had done each week since his first visit.

I put my pen down and gathered up the sheaves of paper that I had been scratching upon these many days and nights.

“What word, brother?” I asked him. “Have they set a day to it yet?”

“Aye,” he said, doffing his hat and wiping at his brow. “It is fixed by order of Parliament and was this very morning delivered into the hands of the Lieutenant of the Tower. Two days hence, at eight of the clock on the Green.” His voice was quiet and gone was the scolding tinge that had marked it during our first few meetings.

I nodded. “I thank God that they have honoured the word of the examiners. I’ve sat here now for days in certain expectation it would be refused.”

“In the end it was Colonel Wharton who argued it out for you with General Fairfax,” said William. “He holds the word of a soldier to be a thing most sacred. I could not have made the plea with more eloquence.”

“That men such as he still hold office, I do find astonishing,” I replied. “It’s near to restoring my faith in mankind, I think.”

William’s voice suddenly regained the sharp edge of elder brother. “Then restore my faith – give up this enterprise while there is yet time. I still cannot believe that this will be the first judicial duel to actually be fought in over fifty years. It is sheer madness. The entire House is in uproar.”

A smile quickly came to my lips. At least I had stirred up that nest of self-contented magpies.

That silent gesture only irritated my brother further. “I know not what you’ve given start to, Richard, but you owe me explanation in full. Why have you demanded this mad recourse to the sword?”

I looked up at him knowing that it would be easier to sprout wings and fly my prison than to bring him to understanding. He had not seen with my eyes. He had not walked with my legs. He had not heard with my ears. He had not done what I had done in Germany.

“We have spoken of this before. It is not a light matter… or done from a bitter heart… on that you must believe me, William.”

“Aye, your honour,” he replied in low voice, only half-convinced. “I must tell you that they have found a champion to fight you. To call him ‘King’s Champion’ seems a bit nonsensical given the times we find ourselves in. And it’s to be contested with rapier and dagger.”

“Who is he?” I asked, “Do I know him?”

William moved to the window ledge and leaned on it, looking outside.

“He is an Ensign – and half your age. It seems that his brother was cut down at Naseby and he is of a mind to take revenge. Revenge on any cavalier that was also on the battlefield that day. You will do, he says.”

William turned again to me, exasperation rising again in his gorge.

“All you needed to do was give the committee a few names and take a new commission with Fairfax. The war is as good as done and you would never have seen another battle, I am certain.”

“That was not the point, brother,” I said, wearily. “Do not think that I take these actions merely as an expedient to end my life.”

“That seems to me
exactly
what you’re doing,” he shot back. “For it would appear each and every step you have taken brings us to your self-destruction. I rue my own role in your desperate affair.” He turned away again. “I am sorry Richard. Sorry and sore pained that I’ve been unable to guide you to a more sensible course.”

My hand gently enfolded Anya’s charm that yet hung from my breast. A talisman made of small flowers, a few words, and a gipsy’s magic twenty years ago in a faraway land. I pushed back my chair and, knees cracking, stood up. With hot pain lancing my thigh, I made my way to William at the window, a fresh breeze wafting in to meet me, and placed my hand on his shoulder.

“Dear brother, it is I that must thank you with all my heart. Your steadfastness has gotten me what I wanted.”

A weak smile drew up the corners of his mouth. “What is that then, an adventurous death with honour intact?”

I shook my head. “All I ask for is judgment… true judgment without betrayal as its bedfellow. Believe me; I will acquit myself well when the time comes, bad leg or no.”

“Faith, I do not understand you, Richard. Have you so much blind love for those that rule the King’s mind that you would take their punishment for them?”

“It’s for a long collection of sin that I now seek judgment. And this is the best place for it. If God wills it, then I will survive.”

William smiled thinly again. “You’re sounding more like a Puritan in your old age, brother. I had not taken you for a Calvinist.”

I had to laugh a little, recognising even as I did so that it was the first real mirth I had felt in an age. “You cut me to the quick. I had never entertained the notion. Perhaps, if I do manage to leave this place, you’ll find me shouting hellfire from atop a barrelhead at Charing Cross.”

“I only pray that you do manage to leave this place – alive,” replied my brother, sombre once again.

I turned from the window and limped to the little oaken table.

“The journal that you have asked me about. It sits here,” I told him, laying a hand upon the mound of paper. “I want you to take it with you once I leave here to go to the Green. It shall be for your eyes alone and no one else’s. And when you’ve read it, and seen through my eyes, you must burn it.”

William’s brow creased.

“Aye, burn it,” I repeated. “It’s enough for me that only one other soul knows what I think... and what I have done. Perhaps, afterwards, you will even understand my heart.”

William moved to my side and grasped my arm. Grasped it with a brotherly warmth that gladdened me and saddened me both. For it was a great pity that such a gesture had taken a lifetime to come to pass.

“I will do as you ask,” he said. “And I will give you my trust that what you now do is the right course for you.”

“Brother, there is no single path to redemption if such a thing exists. But Time and Fortune have led me this way to make amends… to set a balance to things.”

I turned to the table where my confessional lay, a scribbled adventure, smudged with ink, wax, and tears these long weeks gone by. “Let not my wife read this thing,” I told him. “It’s a tale that will only confound and vex her needlessly. And do look after her and the children if things go ill. I served her not well these past years, I know that. My head and heart were often long distant even though I stood at her side.”

My brother’s eyes glistened when he spoke. “That such hard times would bring us together again after so many foolish years of bitterness,” he said. “It’s a small solace, but a solace nonetheless.”

I smiled at him. “Aye, a solace nonetheless. Let us at least both take that with us from this place.”

My hand folded again around Anya’s charm, and the face of my blue-eyed gipsy woman came back to me, as real as life and like yesterday.

This is a charm that I have made. Keep it upon your person always and it will preserve you from harm.

“I am ready, brother. Come what may.”

Clifford Beal
, originally from Providence, Rhode Island, worked for 20 years as an international journalist and is the former editor-in-chief of
Jane’s Defence Weekly
in London. He is the author of
Quelch’s Gold
(Praeger Books 2007), the true story of a little-known but remarkable early 18th century Anglo-American pirate as well as
Gideon's Angel
(Solaris 2013).