The Language of Stones

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The wizard looked sideways at Will, as if he had chanced to raise an important point. ‘The dispossessed king left no child. But there remains a living blood line whose claim, according to the strict laws of kingship, is stronger than Hal’s – and that blood line has continued all the while and is presently into the fourth generation.’

‘Who is it? A great lord?’

‘A duke, no less. The royal blood flows now in the veins of Duke Richard of Ebor, he who was sent by the king’s council not long ago to rule over the Blessed Isle as Lord Lieutenant there – though what right he has to such a title as that may well be debated. Still, he is a man in all his power, and a most capable governor. In truth he is most like a king, and kingly in his thoughts. When last I spoke with him I saw that it was in his mind to return into the Realm and press his claim to rule.’

‘But I don’t understand. Surely everyone would be best served by the crowning of the rightful king according to the laws of kingship. And surely, if he’s the better leader of men into the bargain—’

‘Think again. What did I just say about Friend Hal?’

‘Oh, I see…’ Will nodded. ‘You mean there are many lords who prefer to keep King Hal because he’s easily handled. While the true king is shunned for he’d be strong with them.’

‘Now you see clear to the bottom of the pail. But that is a truth best not spoken aloud, for the man who does so puts his life in jeopardy.’

All that day they walked along through a mellow land that rolled gently across their southerly path. For a league or so it rose up to broad chalky tops, then fell away for the same distance into rolling clay vales. As they climbed higher there were stretches where dense clumps of spiky furze showed off their yellow flowers. Gwydion led Will on sheep tracks that ran among the bushes. For much of the way the sky was hazy and threaded with the warbling of larks, but as the sun declined across the south a chill wind blew in across the high plain.

Gwydion looked into the western sky to where clouds were boiling up. ‘Thousands of years ago there were great temples to the moon and sun over there. All are now in ruin and forgotten, and the moon and the sun are both the less for it. One day, if you would know the essential nature of magic, I will take you to the Great Henge. It was once called in the true tongue, Celuai na Sencassimnh, which is to say “the meadows of the storytellers”. It was built on a node in the earth where three great oaks once stood, and a tower was raised upon them. Later, when the woods around were cleared, a henge of wood was built, then two of stone, one within the other. Many of the tombs of the kings of the First Men are set about it.’

Will listened, hoping to hear more about the battlestones, but Gwydion called him onward, saying, ‘Look down there! What do you see?’

Will shaded his eyes and looked into the south. In the distance the land was all a-shimmer with light. ‘What is it?’ he asked, awed. It seemed like a vast plain, part land, part sky, yet brilliant as a bank of fog.

‘That, Willand, is called the sea.’

‘The sea…’ Will echoed, still staring at the ribbon of light. ‘I had no idea it would be like that.’

‘To the south of us lies the valley of the Bourne. Do you see that grey spire that sits on yonder skyline like a crack in the sky? That is a chapter house, a cloister of the Sightless Ones.’

Will stared at the sharp, soaring point. ‘Who are they? They come up every year to the bogs near Middle Norton to take the tithe. I know they come to impoverish honest folk, but it’s said their eyes have been plucked out. And do they really have hands that are red?’

‘As red as a rooster’s comb, some of them. And yellow fingernails like claws. Do you know the saying, “to be caught red-handed”?’

Horror thrilled down Will’s spine. He knew that to use the name ‘red hands’ in their hearing risked the cutting off of a man’s lips. ‘But are they truly blind?’

‘As blind as love and justice. Though they deal in neither of those fine goods. Nor do they believe that all things come full circle. They are mind-slaves, you see.’

Will shivered, and the wind that whipped among the furze bushes seemed suddenly cold. ‘Who are they?’

‘Clever blood-suckers who have found a way to interpose themselves between lord and churl and so grow fat at the expense of both.’

‘Why don’t the lords and the churlish folk fight back against them?’

‘The churls can do nothing because the work of the Fellowship is under the protection of lordly arms. And that is so because the Fellows relieve the lords of the trouble of collecting tithes and taxes. The chapter house which you see down there is one of many thousands that have been built across the Realm to store their ill-gotten booty in. That spire is second only in height to the great Black Spire of Trinovant, which place you will also see one day. In such places are kept all the tithes taken from the districts round about. Half they keep for themselves, and half they pass on to the lords who rule.’

‘What if a village can’t pay?’Will asked, thinking of some of the thin years they had had in the Vale. ‘What if there’s a poor crop or a failed harvest? Or damp rots the grain after threshing? Or pests come and spoil it? What do the Sightless Ones do then?’

‘In that case the Iron Rule is invoked.’ Gwydion looked out darkly from under his eyebrows. ‘When famine comes the only way the Sightless Ones can be appeased is by making an offering of youth to the Elders.’

‘Youth?’

‘Children. They call it having too many mouths to feed. Did I not tell you that the Fellowship is always on the lookout for new recruits?’

‘Are we going down there now?’ Will asked, putting a hand to his throat.

‘The grey spire yonder lies close by the city of Sarum. But we are going a little way beyond, to the royal lodge of Clarendon, and there, as I have already told you, our host is to be the king himself.’

They came off the high downs, passing on the way an ancient earth circle. Gwydion waved his hazel wand at it and said that these overgrown banks were all that remained of the once-great Figgesburgh Calendar. In times past it had held a huge mirror of polished bronze that had sent beams of sunlight down into the ancient palaces of Sarum on the most sacred of days. And on sacred nights the ancient astronomers had used their great mirror to interrogate the stars. Will delighted in the feel of the place and tried to imagine the observatory that Gwydion described, but so little of it remained now that even Gwydion’s words could not easily bring it back to life.

They descended by a wooded valley and reached the limits of Clarendon Forest just as the sun was setting, but tonight there was no beautiful display of pink and gold in the sky to bid the day farewell. Grey clouds that looked as heavy as anvils had gathered, and there was the sound of distant thunder as they entered the forest.

Will soon saw that this was no forgotten forest like Wychwoode. This was a much-visited royal park, and within it stood a magnificent hunting lodge that had become over the years a palace in its own right. Gwydion said that the king’s court came often to Clarendon to hunt, and that a hundred foresters kept his herds and managed his chases.

‘But the king never liked hunting. He is not a man of blood. It is his nobles who enjoy the killing, lesser men, cruel and brutish – and loud, as you will soon see.’

Will looked up at the leaves of the great oaks. They were in the dark green of late summer, but many had become covered in a white bloom they called in the Vale ‘oak mildew’, and he knew that meant the trees hereabouts were unhappy. The lodge itself could be seen at the end of a long processional avenue, a green maybe two thousand paces long by a hundred wide. Gwydion saw him looking at it and whispered, ‘It was made so to prevent an ambush of the royal party.’

‘But who would want to ambush the king?’ he asked, shocked.

‘Politicking is a deadly and self-serving game. The aim is for one lord to make himself richer than all the rest, and so more powerful. If he owns more land, then he can lord it over more men. If he is rich enough he will have the final say in all things, for he may keep the king himself in his purse.’

Will shrugged, thinking of Lord Strange. ‘But what use is all the gold in all the world if a man cannot sleep easy at night and be at peace with himself and his neighbours?’

‘Ah, lad! I would that your country wisdom was better understood among the company we are soon to meet. But it is not.’

Will recalled what Gwydion had said about the usurper’s curse that lay upon the king, and a pang of fear ran through him.

Gwydion shook his head, ‘Chivalry gutters low in these latter days. There is ever the stink of greed and ambition rising over the king’s court. Violence must soon follow, as night succeeds day.’

Now they were nearing the lodge, many people were to be seen. The poor and the sick, hearing of the king’s presence, had come – as was their right – to petition him, to receive his healing hand. But they had been allowed to approach the lodge only as far as a line of hurdles. Behind these stood a wall and a gate, and beside the gate-posts half a dozen soldiers lounged at their ease.

Gwydion moved unnoticed to the front of the crowd. He murmured and moved his arms, slowly, as if casting a stone towards the group of soldiers. Then, with Will following in his wake, he unhooked one of the hurdles and walked through the gap.

‘Hoy!’ one of the soldiers shouted. Three of them got up, pushed forward their iron hats and moved towards Gwydion. Their chief carried with him an axe with a long handle. He said, ‘And where do you think you’re going?’

‘To see the king, of course,’ Gwydion told him.

‘Get back there!’

Two of the three soldiers made to lay hands on what appeared to them to be an old man too bewildered to obey instructions. ‘Stay back behind the hur—’

Then their chief came forward. He pulled the others away and bowed an abject apology. ‘I’m sorry, your grace. They didn’t recognize you. Let Duke Edgar and his kin pass!’

‘Come along, Henry,’ Gwydion muttered.

‘Henry?’ Will repeated, looking around, but then he darted after the wizard as he went through the gates. ‘Who’s Henry?’

‘You are. How does it feel to be taken for the young Earl of Morteigne and Desart?’

Will looked at himself but could see no change. The soldiers looked at one another. One of them shook his head while the other tried to argue with his chief.

Will glanced round. There rose a hooting and jeering from the crowd of petitioners.

‘But that’s not his grace!’ the soldier insisted. ‘That’s a beggar!’

His chief turned away angrily, saying from the corner of his mouth, ‘Can’t you see, it’s meant to be a disguise…’

A second set of guards came into view by the inner doors, two mailed and helmeted men, wearing royal tabards of quartered red and blue and embroidered with golden lions and silver flowers. A third man was seated at a high desk. He wore black hose and jerkin and had sharp, watchful eyes and hair cut and shaped like a black mushroom. Will disliked him on sight.

Gwydion began to twist and turn along the passageway, like a man beginning a dance or preparing to throw a heavy weight ahead of him. Though nothing was thrown that Will could see, something appeared to hit the man square in the face, so that he almost fell off his stool, but then straightened.

‘Good evening, your grace,’ he said smoothly. ‘The gathering awaits.’

‘Thank you, chamberlain,’ Gwydion said, in a voice that was not his own. He whispered words to the guards and made signs above their foreheads so they swept their helmaxes aside and opened the doors for him. Will stumbled as he went past them, but they just looked straight through him. He snapped his fingers under the nose of one of them, but the man did not notice.

As Will entered, what he saw made him gasp: the hall was fifty paces long by at least half that in width, and lit by half a thousand blazing candles. It was the biggest room he had ever seen, and by far the brightest. The roof above was supported by ornate beams between which many flags hung, all in bright colours and all bearing lordly devices. The floor was made of squares of pure black and pure white stone and the painted walls had been plastered to a smooth flatness and pierced by tall, dark windows. Between the windows were arrays of trophies, mostly deer skulls, complete with antlers, or huge boars’ heads that made Will think of Lord Strange. But this hall outdid the tower of Wychwoode in every way. Two long, finely-wrought elmwood tables set with all manner of mouthwatering foods ran the length of it, each of them seating more than a hundred well-dressed folk, and capping those tables was a third high table, more ornate than the others and raised above them. The high table was set with eight seats, whose backs grew taller towards the middle, where Will supposed, the king and queen sat.

And there was a deal of noise too. Everyone was talking and a band of minstrels was playing music, while a man in sparkling robes of many colours juggled fire in his hands. Will watched him making great boasts and amazing the watchers with the shapes he made in the air.

‘Careful you do not catch fire, Jarred,’ Gwydion told him. ‘They say illusionists burn very well!’

The moment the juggler saw who had entered, he let out a yelp and his leaping flames all dropped to the ground in a smoky heap.

Then the music ceased.

Gwydion’s arrival hushed the echoing din, and when the guarded doors banged shut, a profound silence fell. Will felt his palms dampen, and everything that Gwydion had told him about self-serving lords came together.

All eyes were now on the wizard. On the top table a man sitting on one of the two tallest chairs, a big man in blue and white robes, got to his feet. ‘Who dares enter the royal presence uninvited?’ he demanded, angrily.

At first Will took the man for the king, but then he realized that he could not be, for here was a thick-set man with short, greying hair, a fighter’s neck and heavy, black eyebrows. He had limbs that a lifetime of sword practice and riding at the hunt had kept powerful. His hawk nose and hooded eyes gave him a cruel and self-possessed air that was at odds with all that Will had been told about the king. And this man was aged forty-and-some years, which was ten years older than King Hal should be, for the present year was the thirty-first of King Hal’s reign, and he had become king while still a babe in arms.

‘You know me well enough, Edgar de Bowforde,’ Gwydion cried, throwing up his arms, ‘though it is not my part to answer to you, nor any of your people. Even so, I will tell you, and all who dare to ask, that I am come here at your king’s command, for he did bid me appear before him whenever I deemed an appearance necessary.’

All the while as Gwydion’s fiery words rang in the rafters, Will’s gaze ran between Duke Edgar and the incredible woman who sat beside him in the other of the two tallest chairs. Will saw right away that she must be Queen Mag. She was slim and gowned in brilliant crimson, and her headdress was elaborate with what looked to Will like horns sweeping up from the sides of her head and overdraped with the finest of crimson veils. Her hands were ringed and covered in jewels, and her death-white face was set off by a pair of blood-red lips and eyes that were as black as night. If she was beautiful, then it was the kind of beauty that made women proud and caused men to obey. When she spoke her voice was honeyed with amusement. ‘Then come in if you please, Old Crow, and eat with us.’

Edgar gnashed his teeth at that, but then the queen picked up a chicken leg and tossed it down onto the floor.

‘No doubt, you’re here again to beg at my husband’s table.’

There was uproarious laughter all around, but it faded somewhat as Gwydion bent down to pick up the morsel. He called a greyhound out from under one of the tables, and began to feed it flakes of flesh while stroking its head. ‘Listen to me carefully, Mag, for I shall speak neither loud nor long to you. You should know that, whether you like it or not – whether you believe it or not – privilege always brings with it responsibility. We shall soon see what it has brought to you and your friends.’