Whitemantle (12 page)

Once they had all taken their seats, the King’s Champion came clattering in. Resplendent in full armour and sitting on a white horse, he issued a ringing challenge, raising his voice – and his sword – to east and west. Then he threw down his right gauntlet and waited to hear if there was anyone present who would deny the king his throne.

In the echoing silence that stretched out after the Champion’s intimidating words, Will wondered what would happen if the doors were suddenly flung wide and some fearsome fighter in black armour walked in. But the moment disappointed him. Instead there followed more miserable music, then a coughing and a shuffling of feet before a serjeant-at-law in a green gown bustled in and banged the foot of his ceremonial rod into a specially placed wooden plate on the floor to declare the proceedings lawful. Then the Four Pages of the Hallows fetched in the symbols of kingship – a golden sceptre, a sheathed sword, a chalice and a crown. As soon as they were set down on their cushions at the four corners of the dais, Will knew that all was in place for the king’s arrival. Throughout his long reign, King Hal had always been attended in ceremony by others – at first by his regents and later by his wife. While Queen Mag’s star rode high, two thrones had stood side by side
on the dais of the White Hall. But now, as Will had already noted, there was just one.

Everyone waited patiently for the king. An uncomfortably long time passed and still Hal did not appear. Fidgeting began, then a murmuring spread among those at the back. The lords sweated in their velvet coats. Slanting sunlight shattered into a thousand shards of colour as it played across the scene. Images of ancient kings swept imperceptibly across the assembly. Half an hour went by, marked by the clanging strike of the time engine in the palace tower. No one dared to move.

‘A change has come over Duke Richard while he has been in the Blessed Isle,’ Gwydion whispered at last. He tapped his hand on the elm-wood railing in front of him like a man coming to some unhappy conclusion.

‘A change?’ Willow asked, turning. ‘Why do you say that?’

She gave the wizard a worried glance and Will saw that her concern was for Bethe, that any ‘change’ the duke might have met with in the Blessed Isle might also have affected their daughter while she was there.

Willow stiffened when Gwydion said, ‘I fear that perhaps he may have fallen under some malefic influence. I should like to ask Morann about it.’ She raised her voice in question. ‘Malefic influence?’

‘Yes, Master Gwydion,’ Will whispered, taking his wife’s hand. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Only that power may have finally corrupted the good duke, just as I warned it would.’

Willow sat back. Will also subsided. He offered his wife a brief smile of reassurance, but the wizard’s grim words continued to resound with him. Duke Richard had always been bent on restoring his blood-line to what he regarded as its proper place, and there was nothing like a win upon the battlefield to spur on lordly ambitions.

Will’s hands gripped one another as he turned the matter over in his mind. His contemplation of the lonely seat below recalled to his mind the time when Mother Brig the seer had held a Great Council of her own. Her dire warning to the duke was that Death would take him in the very next battle he fought. Will now believed he could see the circumstance against which the message warned.

‘He can’t be…’ he murmured to himself. ‘No, he can’t be thinking of
that.
’

But then, all of a sudden, the waiting was over, and instead of King Hal making the loneliest journey of his life, it was Duke Richard of Ebor who came striding along the north aisle.

In all respects Richard seemed to be exactly the man for such an occasion – tall, confident and in the flush of victory. He had impressed Will from the first moment, and now he looked every inch the warrior-king. But despite everything, Will’s fingers laced one another tightly against the disappointment that was now waiting to pounce.

‘Oh, no…’ he breathed. ‘Oh, no, don’t do it…’

In Duke Richard’s hand was a twisted ivory rod. It might have been the staff of office of the Lord Protector, but Will knew better. It was a unicorn’s horn. Long ago he had sensed the magic in it. Now he felt a deep certainty that it had been a mistake for Duke Richard to bring it here.

As the duke mounted the dais and approached the high throne, he stopped and turned to look down at the lords gathered below. Despite the silence, he seemed caught by the glamour of the moment and unable to resist the temptation to linger upon the royal dais in full view of the house.

Will drew breath, staring at the serried ranks of lords, watching them turn their heads, ready to receive their king – yet seeing only Richard. Richard of Ebor – not
with
the king, but
in place
of him.

As Will watched, Richard seemed to struggle with
himself. Will swallowed hard, hoping against hope that the duke would turn away, but he did not. He approached the throne. And in his mind’s burning eye Will saw Death sitting in that golden chair. Death beckoning. Death, grinning a welcome.

Will rose up from his own seat, leaned forward across the rail, hands gripping it tight as talons. It was like watching a sleepwalker reaching the edge of a cliff. Unable to do otherwise, Will shouted out.

‘
No!
’

The word echoed in the still air. But it did not stop the duke. He put out his arm and dared to lay a familiar hand upon the throne.

He turned, waiting for a rising tide of calls that must surely come, calls for him to seat himself – the rightful king coming back after three generations of usurpers, returning to claim his own again! But Will’s shout had roused others to call out. There came no approving tide to urge Duke Richard on. Instead there were shouts of, ‘No! No! No!’

Noblemen got to their feet and turned to one another aghast. This could not be happening. Could it? Surely, Richard of Ebor had declared many times that it was
not
his intention to claim the throne from Hal. If that had been his aim, then he should have done so at Verlamion.

But Will saw how easily Richard had been deceived. He had spent too great a time among his own people. For too long he had spoken only with those who would not gainsay him, and he had lost his sense of the general feeling. Had he, Will wondered, fallen prey to his own secret ambitions?

Will watched him now as he attempted to seize the dangerous moment, to jog the elbow of fate in one brilliant move. There would be a glorious turnabout, as he swung the affairs of men about at the pivot. He would do it. He, Richard of Ebor, the rightful king!

But the brilliant moment turned to dust in his hands. He had failed. And what was more, he
knew
he had failed.

All Richard of Ebor’s personal charm ran to earth in that instant. He spread his hands in appeal, hesitated, tried to rally. But his face had paled and everyone saw then that he had brought them to the brink of disaster.

Sly Isnar was quickly on his feet, calling on Ebor to stand away, to acknowledge Hal as his rightful king. Will looked on in astonishment now, for Richard’s too-rapid reply was madness.

‘My noble lords, why should I do that when, by the laws of blood, I have a better right to the throne than the grandson of a usurper?’

‘Why don’t you do something, Master Gwydion?’ Will whispered, horrified.

‘I must not interfere!’

‘But, look at him…he’s dying! How could he have so misjudged the spirit of the hour? How could he have disregarded Mother Brig’s plain warnings?’

Down below, Richard turned defiant now, adamant that he would not leave the king’s dais. Doubtless he was telling himself that should he do so now all would be lost. Maybe he was asking: whose army controls the City? Who do the common people of Trinovant love? Who has the king in his power?

This gathering could still be cowed! He would make a declaration! He would speak from the throne!

But though the lords were mindful of their safety, they were not cowards. The closest of Ebor allies took Duke Richard’s words stonily. Many others rose to their feet. They called out that they had fought for him in good faith as a deliverer. They had sworn only to divest weak, holy Hal of his queen and her rapacious friends. Such men now remembered that they had sworn allegiance to Hal as their king. They had certainly not fought at Verlamion
or Cordewan or anywhere else, to unseat the king and put Richard of Ebor in his place.

As Richard made to lower himself onto the throne, Will saw the Stone of Scions flare green. As those emerald rays touched the guardian statues above, they stirred. Weapons trembled in giant hands. They began grinding their teeth and tearing the air with thunderous warnings.

‘Pride!’ shouted Magog.

‘Ambition!’ shouted Gogmagog.

Ebor looked up and grimaced at the stamping, raging giants. A fit of dizziness seemed to seize him, as if he felt the ground opening beneath him. He staggered, reached out again to steady himself against the arm of the throne, and dropped the unicorn horn which he had been so tightly grasping.

Then Richard fell to his knees, and the White Hall burst into uproar.

Edward bolted forward onto the dais and lifted his father. Edmund struggled forward as best he could to lend a hand. But Richard shrugged off the help of his sons. He straightened proudly, and walked away from the throne. At the foot of the steps he was enveloped by his personal bodyguard, who pushed a way through the commotion all the way along the north aisle and out of the White Hall.

D
awn struggled through cold mists as the last of the summer died. There was now moss greening the faces of the gargoyles and grotesques that stood along the roofline of the White Hall. The boatman stamped and patted his arms against his coat and at first gave Will scant respect for having bribed him from his bed to go out looking for yales.

Oars squeaked dryly in their thole pins as they went out across the river. Breath steamed in the half light. Across the river the towers of Isnar’s own chapter house rose leaden grey behind its wall.

‘Going to be a hard winter, I think,’ the boatman muttered.

‘Do you think we’ll see a yale?’ Gort asked, and Will thought he heard in Gort’s question another – and if we do see a yale, what will that presage?

‘You can always hope, sir. Here was always a good place before sun-up, back in the old days.’

‘Have you seen many?’ Will asked, doubting the man.

‘They used to come all along the south bank at this time of year,’ the boatman said. ‘Why, as a child I remember my grandad saying they could be seen all the way from the Shad right up to Wandle Brook.’

Will was tempted to point out that that was not what he had asked, but he let it go and said instead, ‘They’re not so rare, then?’

‘Rare? Myself, I seen only thirteen in as many years.’

‘Rare and getting rarer…’ Gort murmured.

The boatman rested on his oars. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but the yale’s an animal that don’t come and go according to your desire or anyone’s. He’ll let you see him – or not – according to his own mind. And that’s how it should be.’

This was the top of the tide. The boat glided ever closer to the muddy shore opposite the White Hall. Over here it was like another world – the rotten smell of Lamb Hythe marshes, the sun heaving itself up over a festering terrain of reeds and rushes. And among it all the private walls and towers of Lamb Hythe Cloister, and the wooden ways where twice a year the flocks were unloaded from boats and driven into the red hands’ slaughter yard.

Movement caught Will’s eye. A light skiff was going the other way, crossing from Lamb Hythe to the Palace Steps. It carried a hooded figure fast through the early morning, and Will’s curiosity alighted briefly on him.

They’re everywhere, he thought dismally. Clustering here especially, always ready to drink at the fount of power. There’s no doubt which way they’re trying to steer the world. The question is –
why
? And I wonder what Maskull thinks of them. I guess he’d do a deal with them in a moment if he thought it would nudge the world a little further towards his own embrace. But why would they want to make an ally of Maskull when they get so rich peddling lies of their own devising?

They were coming to shore now. Water birds watched them approach, kept their distance. ‘I’d just as soon not see a yale,’ Gort said miserably. ‘An animal as grand as that should be left to go about its affairs unseen.’

Will took his eyes off the solitary boat. He felt urgency
gnaw at him again. ‘Wortmaster, I think you’ve guessed the real reason I asked you to come out here.’

Gort nestled deeper into his rug-like coat. ‘What’s that, then? Planning an intrigue, are we, hey?’

‘No intrigue. I’m worried. We should be up with events, not following them like, like…’

‘Latecomers at a funeral?’ A large dew drop had formed on the tip of Gort’s nose, and he wiped it away. ‘You’re right, Willand. But we can’t get any closer to the centre of events than we already are. We’re stuck with our situation, don’t you see? “Bereft of ideas” as Master Gwydion calls it.’

‘He might be, Gort. But I’m not. And I’ve heard his arguments a hundred times – we must be careful of Maskull, we must act at the fulcrum of events, more haste means less speed – I appreciate all that. But while we sit here the queen is being given hospitality by the Regent of Albanay, and we ought to have more concern about her intentions.’

‘I expect we ought.’ Gort’s eyes fixed on him. ‘But whose back are you talking behind right now? Is it the queen’s, or Master Gwydion’s, hey?’

Will looked away and sighed, then he let his mouth run away with him. ‘Gort, I can feel the pressure inside me. It’s building. Everything’s getting tighter, like the Realm is a great bow and something’s drawing it back and back still further, drawing it until it’s about ready to snap! One day it
will
snap, or else an arrow will be let fly with such power that—’ He stopped suddenly.

‘That what?’

‘That everything we know will be pierced through the heart.’

Gort made no reply at first, only looked back dourly, but then he said, ‘And amid all this plummeting of the whole world into disaster the thing you wanted most was to take me out in the early morning and show me a yale. Ah, well.’

Will let out a hopeless sigh. ‘You must think me a weakling and a very great coward, not to move, not to do something myself. I should be like King Arthur of old and seize the world by the scruff of its neck. Gwydion expects it of me, but I don’t know how.’

The mists ahead flickered as if with the light of King Elmond’s fire. The hairs on Will’s neck rippled, and he shuddered. After a while he said, ‘Tell me what happens when a phantarch fades, Wortmaster.’

Now it was Gort’s turn to set his eyes wandering among the mistbanks. Moisture frosted his beard. ‘Oh, well…you stop seeing him for what he is and start disregarding him. You stop hearing the sense in what he’s saying. The magic leaves him and the glamour goes, you see. After that, he takes himself off and is soon forgotten by mortal minds. Like all magic is.’

They sat in silence for a while, Will digesting the Wortmaster’s words. He was thinking what a world without magic could be like. It seemed inescapably horrible. The boatman had shipped his dripping oars and was sitting quietly, but Will knew he would stir soon. They would have to leave before the ebb tide got going and made it impossible to land at the White Hall steps.

The boatman stiffened. Then he grasped Will by the shoulder and held up a finger for silence before pointing into the reeds.

The beast was beautiful, a presence that came out of the vapours to blend with the uncertain light. It was a creature somewhat like a great, white deer, though lion strong and perhaps more like a he-goat in the shape of its head. Thicknecked and powerful it seemed, and its horns and tusks gave it an air of majesty. The pale golden discs of its markings rippled against white as it sank into the mud on each step. Proudly it came, not acknowledging them, down to the water’s edge to drink. A big, bull yale that threw back
its head, looked at last towards Will, then swivelled its long, twisted horns and gave a throaty call before vanishing again like a silver shadow into the mists.

‘Well…’ the boatman said smiling. Then he turned the boat, ready to row them back across the Iesis. ‘A rare old sight, that.’

As the oars creaked and the grey waters parted, Will looked to the Wortmaster and said, ‘I had the strangest feeling just then.’

‘Oh?’

‘I could have sworn the beast spoke to me in the true tongue.’

Gort looked back with an unreadable face. ‘They say that yales have something of the power about them. I didn’t hear anything, but then my ears are full of bristles and old wax.’

‘They weren’t words that people could hear. They were the kind that just seem to arrive inside your head.’

‘Oh, that sort.’ Gort snuffled and sneezed. ‘What was the message?’

‘It made no sense. It just said, “Save me.”’

Memories of that astonishing moment in the White Hall when Duke Richard had made his lethal choice ran through Will’s mind. It was hard to make sense of it all. Immediately afterwards, he had followed Gwydion down from their dusty little gallery, arriving just in time to see the duke emerge white-faced and tight-lipped into the brightness. He had refused to hear Gwydion, and then he had lost his temper with Sir John Morte, his seneschal’s son and his own kinsman. ‘Do not strew objections in my path, cousin. If this nest of vipers will not leave my hall then you must drive them out at bill-point, do you hear me?’

And so it had been. Richard had sent the lords out of the City to think again. Then the great doors of the White Hall
had been slammed shut and locked, and the statues that had stamped and thundered against the duke had been looped with ropes and pulled down. Teams of frightened men had hauled them out through a back way, lashed by the strained shouts of their overseers. And Will had seen them, ancient Magog and Gogmagog, broken with hammers, their trunks and limbs shoved into a corner of Albanay Yard, stacked there like so much lumber, ready to be burned.

But somehow the burning had been overlooked, for no one had the stomach for that kind of sacrilege. Perhaps it was natural respect, perhaps it was what some liked to call superstition, or perhaps the men had a disinclination to burn anything that could stare back at them. But the fate of the guardians soon faded from the duke’s mind, and the oak wood lay warping under sun and rain. The pile became the haunt of spiders and wood lice, and as autumn came and the west wind drifted russet oak leaves around them, the ancient guardians were forgotten.

By the time the gusts of the equinox gave way to the first frosts, Richard’s manner had become icy too. He had withdrawn, keeping mainly to his apartments, and was now seldom seen about the palace. Duchess Cicely asked Gort to offer him healing. She wanted Gwydion to talk with him. But all they found in the duke’s heart were immoveable regrets and a morbid desire for power that he would not relinquish.

One day Will saw him stride across Albanay Yard with his guards and go alone into the White Hall. From their small, high window he watched him walking up and down the aisles, looking at the empty benches. The next day Richard sent out a demand to the lords that his right of succession was to be recognized for he was, as his great army proved, the
actual
ruler of the Realm. The next Great Council – which he would announce at his pleasure – surely
would
see an abdication.

Now, as Will looked out over the same windswept precinct, he saw the wizard hurrying purposefully towards the royal apartments. There was something about Gwydion’s demeanour that made Will take notice.

‘Hoy!’ he cried, and dashed down the stairs in pursuit. ‘Master Gwydion! Wait!’

But the wizard would not wait, and his destination did not bode well.

‘This is the red hands’ doing!’ Gwydion cried, bursting in on Edward while he was at his papers.

Will had not been able to stop him, and Edward, who had not asked for Gwydion’s visit and clearly thought it an intrusion, looked annoyed. Nevertheless he maintained his poise under the wizard’s blast, waving back his people, and nodded a brief understanding towards Will. He even went so far as to set aside his dignity as Earl of the Marches by offering an indulgent smile to the wizard. ‘Really, Crowmaster, you mustn’t upset yourself so. You’re seeing the Fellowship behind everything these days.’

‘They
are
behind everything!’ Gwydion shook his staff wrathfully. ‘These are dark days. But mark this! I shall have their spies crawling on their bellies through Albanay Yard before this day is done!’

Edward showed himself to be mildly amused, though Will knew he was not. ‘I’d ask my father’s leave before doing anything as exciting as that,’ he said, and then added, ‘though it would be marvellous fun to watch, I suppose.’

‘Smirking scullion! I should strike you to your knees!’

Edward rolled his eyes, half in innocence, half in vain show. ‘Old man, what have
I
done to deserve this?’

Will tried to calm the wizard, fearing for him now. ‘Master Gwydion, come along! Let’s not be angry with our friends.’

Edward looked askance at Will. ‘The Fellowship is the
Fellowship. He should know what they’re like by now. Why does he hate them so?’

Will answered with a tight smile. ‘He gets a little…
upset
sometimes.’

Gwydion looked sharply to him. ‘Do not manage me, boy! And I do not hate the Fellowship. We are opponents. We want different things for the world.’

‘Oh, leave them be. They’re charitable enough,’ Edward said.

It was like tossing kindling on a bonfire. ‘What acts of
charity
have you seen them perform? Answer me!’

‘Many. They maintain poor houses. They feed the starving. They, they…’

‘That is not
giving.
It is
buying
! In the days of the First Men, there were no poor! Do you not see the difference?’

‘Crowmaster, those ancient days are gone. You cannot hope to set the clock back.’

‘Imbeciles!’ Gwydion threw off Will’s restraining hands and marched away, trailed by Captain Jackhald and two hapless guards.

Seeing now that they were alone, Edward said, ‘Can’t you keep a tighter grip on him? He frightened the life out of me, bursting in like that.’

‘It won’t happen again.’ Will spread his arms. ‘But you realize…he’s right.’

‘Oh, not you too!’ Edward looked witheringly at him. ‘My father’s not in league with the Fellowship. Isnar called for King Hal to be recognized, or have you forgotten?’

Will saw an opportunity. ‘Perhaps Master Gwydion spoke more deeply than you allow. What he meant was that folk are drawn to the Fellowship through the deepest of fears. I’ve thought much upon what the Great Lie means and I see now why Master Gwydion was loath to tell me about it. It was not so much because he feared I would be deceived by it, just that everyone must come to his or her
own understanding of the world, and of people, before the enormity can be truly understood.’

‘Be that as it may—’

‘Edward, the Great Lie persuades folk that they can avoid the meeting which, in truth, all mortals must make.’

Edward sat back, serious now, trying to see the meaning of Will’s change of tack. ‘You speak of…Death.’

‘Yes, I do. The Sightless Ones promise an invisible life beyond the grave, a life that stretches out in endless comfort wherein every initiate will be reunited with those he has loved in life. But this is an
invention
, a dangerous infection of the mind that must be stopped from spreading!’