Beyond the Burning Lands

TEN

THE SWORD OF THE SPIRITS

WHEN I WAS FIRST TAKEN down to the palace dungeons there was a drunken man in the next cell. In between singing and shouting insults at the jailers he demanded to know my name and the reason for my imprisonment. I did not answer him; as far as the latter was concerned I could not. To my own questions Barnes had only replied that I would be told what was necessary when it pleased the Prince to do so.

Later the drunkard was taken away, in a final flurry of oaths and objections, leaving me isolated: my cell was one of a block of four and the other three were empty. I wondered if they had done it from fear that I might use even so unlikely an instrument as that to further my supposedly treasonous activities. It was a relief to be free of the din the drunkard made but the silence that followed, broken only by a drip of water down the wall of the cell, soon became still more oppressive.

The cell was some nine feet square, stone flagged, with an iron grating and a bucket in one corner and a heap of straw in another. Chains were attached to iron stakes that were driven in between the granite blocks that made up the walls. It was some consolation that I had been left free to move about. The walls were unpromising surfaces on which to leave messages but previous dwellers here had done their best. I read “Jesus Saves,” presumably written by a Christian because that was the name of their god, and a man’s name, Roger Anderson. The letters were crude but a quarter of an inch deep. It must have taken months of patient carving.

I thought how unconcernedly in the past I had heard of this or that person being sent to the dungeons. While I was jousting, or talking with Edmund and Martin, or just lying idle in the sun, Roger Anderson had been crouched in these clammy depths, scratching with a piece of metal, perhaps a nail, against hard stone. And outside at this moment the world went on—people gossiped and laughed, loved and fought—as indifferent to my fate as I had been to his.

An iron grille over the door provided light, coming in the first place from a small window, also barred, high up in the passage. It was little to start with and faded into blackness with evening. I had no way of telling time. The monotony was only broken when a jailer, carrying a lantern, brought a jug of water and half a loaf of stale bread. I asked him what o’clock it was but he did not answer. He slammed and locked the door behind him, and the flicker of light went away with his footsteps until the next door cut it off. I drank from the jug but felt no hunger. Rats got to the loaf in the night and devoured all but a crust.

My mind revolved uselessly on possibilities and reasons. It must be something to do with King Cymru, I thought, but could not imagine what. But whatever had been said of me I was confident that I only needed to see Peter to put it right. I knew I was no traitor, and could meet any man who accused me.

Time dragged by and I could not sleep. Yet after I had resigned myself to being awake all night, sleep suddenly overcame me. And when I awoke it was light enough to see my surroundings again, though dimly, and a key was grating in the lock. I struggled up from where I had been lying cramped and cold on the straw, expecting the jailer with more bread and water. It was he who opened the door, but he stood aside for another. My brother Peter looked in at me.

He said: “Well, Luke, I find you poorly housed and bedded. But at least you are back with us. I cannot tell you how bitter a disappointment it was when Greene returned and told me you were lost.”

His voice was calm, even light in tone. I said:

“I would like to know of what I am accused and who accuses me. I was told some nonsense about treason.”

Peter nodded, as though in approval. “I see that a night in the cell has not cooled your spirit. I am glad of that. As to the charge . . . treason covers it but it has another name also, different but no less ugly. The charge is murder, and I accuse you.”

“Murder?” If I had not been shivering so hard I think I might have laughed. “Whom have I murdered?”

“Someone who did you no harm, who loved you even. Your Prince’s Lady. And with her your Prince’s heir.”

His voice had not changed, was steady still, but as I grew accustomed to the light I could see his face more clearly. There was a look in it, in the eyes particularly, which I had seen before. His mother, my Aunt Mary, had looked like that when she raged at me for supplanting him and afterward when she waited, in a cell much like this, for the burning to which she had been condemned.

So he was mad: he must be. The grief which Ann’s death had brought had rankled and turned into this sour lunacy. I felt the chill of fear. I said:

“Will this charge be made in court?”

“It has been made, in your absence. You were found guilty and condemned. All that is necessary is the execution.”

Could he have paraded his madness in open court, and nevertheless got a verdict from the Captains? One had heard tales of crazed Princes enforcing the whims of their derangement, but not in Winchester. Our Captains, surely, were made of stronger stuff. The chill deepened in my belly. I said with what calmness I could muster:

“I was with you when your Lady left us to take her bath; and with you when the maid brought news of her death. I did not part from you in the time between. So how can I be guilty of her murder?”

“You covered your tracks well.” His face had a small, cold smile. “I grant that. But a murderer does not need to be present when his victim dies.”

“Poison, you mean? But Kermit told you she died from drowning. Do you say he was lying?”

Peter stared at me. “You are a better fencer than I thought, but it was to be expected. Shall I tell you a story? After you had gone with Greene’s embassy my restlessness grew worse. I missed your company: does it please you to be told that, you who were my brother? And the pain of losing my Lady grew worse also. I could not bear to look at that part of the palace which had been hers. So I gave orders that it should be pulled down.”

He paused and I waited. If not mad then he was mistaken, and given opportunity I could prove it I knew my own innocence.

“Massy, the Builder Dwarf, saw to the work. One of his men found a strange thing and showed it to him, and he showed it to me. A line ran under the floorboards to a small room, fifty feet away, that is used for lumber. The line was made of some black stuff but had metal wire inside. And the wire was joined to the metal foot of the bath in which she died.”

Now my mind was in turmoil, half understanding, half refusing to believe what he was telling me. And yet he could not have made it up. He said:

“I called in Strohan, and asked him what he knew.”

Strohan was the palace butler, in charge of polymufs but himself true man, heavy and solemn and bald of head.

“He spoke freely when he had seen the wire and where it led. Last year his only grandchild died, a girl of six, drowned in the river below the mill. His wife went to the Seer, as women do, and got messages which he said the child had sent from the spirit world. She believed this, and believed it also when the message came that the Seer and his Acolytes needed to do secret things in the palace and to have a certain room kept for them. The poor fool thought it would help the child’s ghost return to her, and Strohan did as she wished. So the work was done one day while my Lady was absent, giving thanks to her Christian God for the child she was to bear. And then they killed her, from a distance. With a machine!”

He paused, and again I said nothing. He said:

“Does this surprise you? I think not. But surely it is an incredible thing—that a Seer should use a machine to kill? I do not think the Captains would have believed it, except that when we sent men into Ezzard’s house without warning we found the machine, and words written down for using it. It eats oil and spews out something called electricity which is invisible. It is a poison, it seems, that is more powerful when it works through water. That is why the wire led to the bath. The machine struck at her only for a moment and left no trace. It stunned her, her head fell under the water, and she drowned as Kermit said. The plot was cunning and cunningly carried out.”

I said in a dry voice: “I knew nothing of it.”

“So Ezzard said, until we showed him the machines we had found. There were many. I could not understand them all and would not wish to”—his voice cracked with disgust—“but I think it likely they have had many uses. To make voices in the Seances, and crowns of light, perhaps, foretelling a great future for a Prince in Waiting? Ezzard took you with him to the Sanctuary, and brought you back. So you say you knew nothing of this?”

“Nothing of killing.”

He said with contempt: “Lying will not save you. You are the Seers’ man and have been from the beginning. They took you away when our father was murdered and I became Prince. Then, when they knew she would bear my son, they killed my Lady. All this was done for you, so that when I too had been slain you would rule in my place.”

“It is not true.” He looked at me and laughed. I thought of some of the thoughts that had come into my mind after Ann died, and of my hopes that he would turn Christian. “I had no part in it.”

“You lie, but it does you no good. Will you beg for mercy next?”

I set my eyes to his. “No, I will not do that.”

He laughed; more loudly and the madness was in it.

“Then you save a little of the breath you have left! You will need it for screaming when you and your friends hang in chains in the palace square and fires are lit under you.”

“My friends?”

“I kept them for your return. When Greene came back without you I had a mind to kill him for his carelessness in losing you. After all, you were my brother and mean more to me than the others. But only you and your Seers kill the innocent, so I held my hand. Then I set a date for their execution. I chose Midsummer Day which the Seers have always called a day sacred to the Spirits. This year I will offer them a fine sacrifice. And on Midsummer Eve itself you return from beyond the Burning Lands to make the sacrifice complete! If that too was the Spirits’ doing, I am grateful to them.”

“Martin . . .”

“Your Acolyte friend? You will see him. I will hang him next to you as a favor.”

“He had no part in any killing. I will swear to it.”

“No more than you did?” The words were a sneer and I had no answer. He would not listen to anything I said. “No matter. The time is past for oaths and lies, for words of any kind. There is merely an end to bring about, and this day sees it. You are lucky to spend so short a time under sentence. It is an advantage over your friends. But I will tell the executioner to make up for it by giving you a slower death.”

He stared at me, his hand on the hilt of his sword.

“I thought I might have pleasure in bringing you this news, but you fill me too much with disgust. That you should have plotted her death, who begged me to call you back from exile . . .” He shook his head. “I must not think of it or I would kill you now. And you do not deserve such mercy.”

He turned and went. The jailer slammed the door and their footsteps echoed as they walked away.

• • •

The day was gray and warm, heavy with rain that had not yet fallen but seemed as though soon it must. But even if it fell in a torrent it would not quench the oil-soaked pyres of wood and straw heaped at the foot of the stakes in the palace yard. There were nine, and at eight figures hung in chains from the crosspiece: Ezzard and his Acolytes. The ninth was vacant.

A space had been cleared in front and soldiers guarded it. For the rest the square was crammed with people—the Captains and their Ladies on chairs at the front, other citizens of high rank behind them. Behind them again, the mob. They were hurling their derision against those already awaiting execution but as I was brought into the square under escort the jeers and yells rose to a higher pitch. Their faces were white foam on a shapeless sea of hatred, but as I was taken past I saw one I knew. It was old Parr who kept the sweetmeat shop in Leather Lane. My mother had given me halfpennies to buy from him when I first could walk and talk; and when I won the jeweled sword at the Contest he had stopped me in the street and rambled on interminably about old times. His face was different now: a spitting image of loathing.

I was brought to my brother where he sat in the midst of his Captains. There was an empty chair beside him, signifying his lost Lady. He said in a cold steady voice:

“Luke Perry, you stand condemned, by the people, the Captains and the Prince of this city, of murder and treason. The sentence is death by fire.”

He had spoken into silence. At those words there was a cry of what sounded like protest. I learned later that it came from the Christians, who rejected such a punishment even when the victim was one of their own. But the mob drowned this small outcry in their vast roar of approval, and blocked the attempts they made to get through to the Prince.

I said: “I am not guilty of this charge.”

They roared again, with anger. I saw Edmund standing behind his brother, Charles. His face was drawn and white. Even at this moment I could feel sorry for him. He had said he had wanted to aid me against the Bayemot but had not acted because he thought he could do no good. Nor could he now. It might be that he believed the indictment true.

He could not help me, nor could anyone. Ezzard and Martin hung in their chains on either side of the stake in the center which had been left for me. It was higher than the others, for the harder death which Peter had promised. I remembered Edmund’s words on the hill above Klan Gothlen: “You have a demon who serves you well.” Now as never before I needed him.

Peter’s raised hand quelled the tumult. He said:

“The city finds you guilty. I, your Prince, confirm sentence. Executioner, see to it.”

It was the formula. The executioner stepped forward to take my arm. I shook free and said in a loud voice:

“No Prince but a usurper! I was named as my father’s successor.”

If I had wanted to say more I could not have made myself heard for the din. If they could have got to me I think they would have torn me in pieces as hounds break up a hare. But once again they obeyed Peter’s lifted hand.

He said: “The Seer named you. Ask him again, above the crackling of the flames. Maybe you will be a Prince yet, in the land of the Spirits.”

They howled with mirth at that. I shouted:

“I name you coward!”

“Burn him!” Peter said. “Burn this traitor, who killed my Lady.”

The executioner’s grip was stronger now and one of the guards held my other arm. The crowd was yelling, but I could be heard by Peter and the Captains. I said:

“When Stephen challenged my father, after he had been acclaimed as Prince, he took that challenge and fought and killed him. But he was a true Prince.”

I watched his face. There was no need to take notice of my words. A challenge from a displaced Prince was different from that of a felon, condemned for murder. No one would hold it against him if he did not accept, nor even think it ignoble. But I saw his eyes narrow and knew my shaft, however feeble, had gone home. He got to his feet.

In the new hush he said: “Maybe you think to get a quicker and easier death. Do not deceive yourself. I accept the challenge but I will not kill you. You will smolder no less for having a bloody arm. Bring him a sword!”

• • •

He looked a worthy Prince. He was several inches taller than I, broad of shoulder but narrow in waist and hips. His long fair hair was thick, his beard and yellower mustache fierce. He was dressed not in finery like King Cymru but in a Captain’s leather jerkin, steel studded at the front, with a simple blue linen blouse underneath. The Prince’s sword, forged by Rudi’s grandfather and well tried in battle, hung from his belt.

By contrast I was a ragamuffin, my clothes tattered, boots scuffed, skin dirty from the journey and the night I had spent, unwashed, in the dungeon. I was tired, and weak with hunger. There was no sense, the jailer had said that morning, in putting even stale bread into a belly that the flames so soon would shrivel; and his wife kept hens who could make good use of it. And the sword that was given me, whether by accident or design, was more a boy’s than a man’s: scarcely longer than the one I had won, three long years ago, in the Contest.

We circled each other, and the iron of his boots struck sparks from the cobbles. I had hoped anger might unbalance him, but he showed no signs of it. He smiled, and said in a level voice:

“You are returned a great warrior, I am told. Greene told me of your exploits before he knew your crime. Luke, the slayer of the Bayemot, who won a king’s daughter in the land of the Wilsh. . . . I am honored to face your sword.”

I lunged while he was talking. He parried, back-handed, without breaking the rhythm of his speech. Steel struck steel and the shock jarred up my arm. I darted back, expecting the riposte, but he stayed where he was and laughed.

“Is this the Bayemot-killer? Is Bayemot the name the Wilsh give to rabbits?”

I thrust once more and was beaten back, and thrust again. I called in my mind to my demon to aid me, to bring me the strength and fury that I needed now as much as when I had struggled in the clinging embrace of the monster. But he would not come. Instead I saw the gentle face of Ann and my brother’s mask of grief. I was innocent of her murder but she had died because of me. That much was true.

Again I came at him but my blows were like the wing beat of a fly against a hornet. The crowd cheered him on but he needed no encouragement. Once my foot slipped and, still smiling, he allowed me to recover.

He mocked me. “You sweat. Are you warm, rabbit-killer? You will be warmer soon.”

Then, as I attacked, instead of passively taking the blow he struck. Fatigued and sick at heart as I was, I could not but admire the way he did it, pivoting perfectly and smashing his sword across my own. My nerve endings were shot through with pain. I staggered and fell, and the sword dropped from my numbed fingers. He took a step forward and put his boot on it.

“And now,” he said, “will you walk to the stake like a man, or shall I prick you on with my sword point?”

The mob was shrieking for joy. I looked up at him, smiling with hate above me. I thought I heard my name called but it could only be in derision. Then I heard it again, through the baying.

“Luke!”

I turned my head. Edmund had pushed through beside his brother. He had something in his hand: another sword. The sword I had left in the camp when I went out to walk in the moonlight—the sword the High Seers had forged for me in the Sanctuary.

He sent it skittering across the cobbles. Peter could have struck me down as I reached for it but did not. He said:

“I think now you have run out of friends and swords. One more makes no difference.”

My hand closed round the hilt. I had one friend in the crowd, as Peter had said, and it had taken great courage to do what he had done. Courage in a cause which he must be sure in his heart was lost. And another friend, hanging in chains and waiting for the torch to be put to the straw at his feet. At last the demon rose and I leaped at my tormentor with an angry shout. They might give me whatever death they could impose, but they would not make me go tamely to it.

Peter knew the difference with a warrior’s instinct. There was no more careless ease and no more mocking. He fought with skill and coolness and professional silence. The crowd, also sensing the change, quieted in their turn. I heard nothing but the thud of our feet, the clang and hammer of our swords as we traded blows. Once there was a deep indrawn sigh, from a thousand throats. It was not until blood trickled down my arm and split in heavy drops on the stones that I realized what had prompted it; and that I was hit. I had felt nothing.

Always his strength forced me back. I battered against a moving wall of steel, and muscle that seemed no less hard. I slipped a second time and he did not stand back but came after me. I twisted away from the blow which, had it landed, would have sliced my arm off at the shoulder as one carves a chicken at table; and darted clear. He moved swiftly, swinging his sword in an arc of brightness through the dull air. Then I met him, with every ounce of strength I could muster, in a downward smash that matched his own. Metal shrieked in the clash, and the agony of the shock almost made me fall. But I kept my balance and my sword. And saw his, broken to a stub only inches from the hilt, the blade shattered and useless at his feet.

For a moment we stared panting at each other. I could scarcely draw breath to speak. At last I said:

“I am innocent of her death, as Martin is. Keep your city and your title. We will go elsewhere, my friends and I.”

His answer was a howl that was neither of grief nor rage. It had both in it and more: madness and despair. He rushed at me, swinging his broken sword, and could have wounded me, even killed me, had I not jumped clear. He turned and came again. I thrust for his right shoulder to disarm him. But he leaped, careless of defense, seeking only to reach my skull with his shattered weapon, and the point of my sword took him between the ribs. His weight and the impetus of his charge wrenched it from my grasp.

But he lay on the cobbles, unmoving, with the point thrusting out through his back, and his blood gushing from beneath him. The stones were not stained for long. In the silence that followed, while people strove to take in what they saw, the first thick drops of rain fell from the sky. After that it came in a torrent, washing his blood away.

• • •

My first act as Prince was to make Edmund a Captain. He sat with the others in the Great Hall when Ezzard was brought to me. I said:

“Before Prince Peter, my brother, you were charged with using machines, with treason, and with murder. Each of these crimes is punishable by death. His court condemned you. Do you have anything to say against the sentence that was passed?”

He stood there, very tall in his black robe which was torn at the sleeve and rust-smeared from the chains. The deep blue eyes stared above the beaked nose. He said:

“No, sire.”

“What of your Acolytes?”

“They acted only under my orders.”

“All of them?”

“Not all. There were some who knew nothing of this.”

“Name them.”

He spoke three names and the third was Martin’s. I felt the tremor of relief run down my legs. I said:

“Do you swear it, as you stand in the shadow of your death?”

He said in a cold, bleak voice: “By the Great Spirit, I swear it.”

“Then the sentence on those three is rescinded. On you and your accomplices it stands. For the crimes which you confess you must die in the palace yard. But we will have no more burning. The ax will take your life.”

The tall, thin figure bowed toward me.

“I thank you for this mercy, sire.”

My legs trembled still, and I shifted my feet to hide it.

I said: “Take him away.”

• • •

When the High Seers came I received them with formal ceremony. Later we sat in private in the little chamber behind the Room of Minors. Lanark said:

“You have done well, Luke.”

I said: “And so have you. Ezzard is condemned by the High Seers as well as by the Prince of Winchester. You bring us a new Seer to replace one whom false Spirits drove mad. And the true Spirits speak again in the Seance Hall.”

Lanark watched me. He was very old, with brown grave marks on his hands and face. He said:

“Ezzard also played his part.”

“I am tired of this playing of parts,” I said. “We talk of men, not actors. I saw him die. The axman, I suppose, was nervous, never having taken the head of a Seer before. It required three blows to finish him.”

“At least you saved him from the fire.”

“And those four others who merely did as they were told, and helped him lay the cable and set up the generator? They obeyed orders and died for it. But whose orders did Ezzard obey?”

“No one’s,” Lanark said. His voice was tired. “And he did not tell us what he planned to do.”

“Can I believe that?”

“It is true. He did many things without consulting us. It was by his doing that your father was made Prince. He was a man of initiative but the initiative was not always well based. There was no need for this, and it put everything at risk.”

“Including his life and those of his Acolytes. But if there had been need and the risk acceptable . . . you would have had her killed?”

His eyes were old, too, and weary from looking into a broken past and a golden future which would not come during his life. He said:

“We want a better world than this, Luke. Science and human knowledge are not ends in themselves. We use tricks and maneuvers, but we do not murder the innocent.”

He had given me my answer and I knew he spoke the truth. It was a good answer but all the same I felt regret. I had been ready to disown and repudiate them, to forget the dreams of a new age of peace and order, and think only of this city I had won and that other one beyond the Burning Lands. It would have been much simpler. I said:

“So it goes on.”

“It must,” Lanark said. “You have served us well, Luke, but more is to be done. Much more.”

• • •

When they had gone I sat alone in the little room. Through the open window came the sound of the din in front of the palace: the crowd cheering and shouting my name. Less than a week ago these same shouters had jeered me as murderer and traitor and jostled each other for a better view to see me burn. Now I was their hero and their Prince, crowned that afternoon by the High Seers themselves—an honor no Prince of any city had known before. In an hour or two the Captains would drink to me at the coronation banquet. And soon I must go out onto the balcony to let my people see me.

It was triumph, I supposed, but it brought no joy. I sat in the old chair in which my father had sat, and Peter after him. On the wall hung Margry’s painting of my mother. In skill it was not to be compared with those in the high-towered city of the north, nor with that small likeness of an old man in the ruined palace in the forest; but it touched my heart as those had not.

There had been so many deaths since hers. I had been a boy then, and now was Prince of Winchester. And the rain had washed the cobbles clean of my brother’s blood.

The distant voices roared:

“Luke! Luke!”

I knew I must go and show myself to them. And after that there were things to be done: the high and necessary duties of a Prince.

But I sat on as dusk drew down over the city, thinking of the unalterable past—and all my dead.