The Wrong Sword Page 3

  “No.” Geoffrey’s voice was winter-cold. Henry realized he had just skated back toward the headsman; he shut his mouth. “I need no forgery from you. I need the veritable sword. I have a map, I have clues, I have a trail. I need you to read the clues, riddle them out, and then to find the sword and prove it true.”

  Henry’s heart sank. A sword, a map, a quest…it sounded like a fable from Geoffrey of Monmouth, or Chretien de Troyes. “And which…which sword is this, My Lord?”

  “The one they call Cut Steel. The sword of Arthur, another lord of the Bretons. Excalibur.”

  Of course. “Uh…perhaps, since you’ve spent most of your life on the Continent…My Lord…you didn’t know that Excalibur is…just a legend?”

  And here came the smile. “Then you’re in trouble. Aren’t you?”

  6. North by Northwest

  The rain drifted into the courtyard, a gray mist that beaded on wool and fur, and hardened shoe leather into blistering discomfort. Henry tried to ignore it and focus on what he needed to do. You’d think he’d be used to travel by now. He had covered more miles in sixteen years than most people saw in a lifetime. Ever since his hometown of Sanbruc had earned the title of “the lost village,” he had been constantly on the road, from Brittany to London to Cornwall to Paris, all thanks to the Plantagenet family’s Rampaging Knights Urban Renewal Program.

  But as he stood in the damp courtyard, watching the supplies being lashed to the mules, Henry felt the tears well up behind his eyes. When he’d finally come to Paris and hooked up with Alfie and Valdemar and the rest of the goliards, it looked like he’d found a place where he could stop running for a minute and get in out of the cold. But here he was, on the road again, this time tied to a mule to travel north to Calais, and from there across the water to Gwynedd in the dead of winter…It wasn’t fair. And just like everything else in his life, it was the fault of jerks with swords.

  Henry tried to get control of himself and looked around the courtyard. It was filled with market stalls. He realized with a rush of horror that one of the vendors had a Welsh accent. And another had muscles out to his ears. Alfie and Valdemar. What are they doing? Are they crazy?

  “You have the money and the supplies. Go fast and quiet until you’re on Welsh soil, out of reach of John and Philip.” Geoffrey glanced at Henry, tied up by the mules, and turned back to Brissac. “And remember, Edmond, the boy is a resource. I don’t want him dying on you before you find the weapon.”

  “It will be…hard, Lord. He is insolent.”

  Geoffrey laughed. “Yeah, he gets right under your skin, doesn’t he?” Then he raised a finger. That was all he did, and yet Brissac was riveted. Brissac knew with a solemn joy that, penniless and dressed in rags, Geoffrey would still have been his master. “But you know what’s at stake.”

  “One king. One country. One law.”

  “Keep that in mind, when our little friend irritates you. Think what could happen, if John finds the sword before us. Or Philip. Or Uncle Raymond, God forbid. Even I’m afraid of that one.”

  Brissac looked pained. “But, Lord, surely a knight would—”

  “How many good knights have we sent already to the Chapel Perilous?”

  “Twelve, Lord.”

  Geoffrey nodded. “Did any succeed, any that I was unaware of?”

  Brissac said nothing.

  “Where honor fails, low cunning may succeed.” Geoffrey studied Henry, sizing him up. “This one has a gift for survival. He has lived for ten years without father or mother, place or guild. Can you say as much?” Brissac shook his head. Geoffrey continued. “He can read Welsh and Latin. The Book of Four Branches tells us Arthur was a Roman and a Celt. Any chronicles he left, any hints or riddles, will be in those tongues. And the boy knows weapons.” Geoffrey smiled. “Well enough to fool you, at any rate.”

  Brissac ground his teeth.

  Geoffrey smiled even wider, and stretched. “And if he dies, who’s to care?”

  Henry tugged at his ropes. The cords were hemp. That was good, even though they scratched like cats’ claws—hemp was stiff and brittle. It didn’t have the flex and give of good wool rope. So there was a lot of room for Henry to work with…

  The first coil popped off his wrists. Henry kept his back to the wall and concentrated on looking depressed. His guard kept working on the radish he’d been gnawing since breakfast.

  The second knot was loose. At this point, an amateur would have just dropped the ropes and bolted, but Henry kept the ropes on and scanned the courtyard. The entrance was filled with men-at-arms. No good. The walls were too high to scale. The stairs up to the battlements and the keep were in the rear, behind Geoffrey and Brissac, but also behind dozens of market stalls. Yeah. That was the way. If he got out himself, he could forestall whatever idiot plan Alfie and Valdemar had cooked up. So welcome to the Château de Paris—fortress, dungeon, home to visiting dignitaries, and playground of the agile and terrified. Just let Geoffrey the Jerk and Sir Jerk de Brissac move a little to the left…

  “Henry. My boy.” Geoffrey’s hand landed on his shoulder. “Let’s take a look at the food. I’ll get you something sweet for the trip. Some raisins. You like raisins, don’t you?”

  Geoffrey took Henry’s arm and led him toward the stalls. Henry desperately fiddled with his ropes to keep them from slipping off—even without the knots, Geoffrey’s grip was like steel, and Henry didn’t want him finding out too soon.

  They wandered from cart to cart, getting closer and closer to Valdemar’s. Henry started to sweat. And there they were, facing Valdemar in disguise across a mound of onions.

  Geoffrey picked up an onion, examined it. “Hmmm. This produce looks none too fresh. Peddler, come here.”

  Valdemar came around the cart. Henry saw Valdemar’s hand moving inside his cloak. No, no, no!

  “This produce is rotten. Take a look.” And before Valdemar could move, Geoffrey had leaped up, grabbed his head, and slammed it into the cart’s iron wheel. In an instant, he had knocked the giant smith unconscious to the ground, and taken the knife from his belt.

  “Did you think me a fool? Did you think you could escape?” The knife was at Henry’s throat now, pressing hard enough to draw a trickle of blood. “Look around you, boy. Look at the walls.”

  Henry looked up. The Swiss crossbowmen had their weapons cocked, aimed at—

  There was Alfie, and there was Gerard, and there were Clothilde and Stephen and Guillaume…dear Jesu, there was Mattie, too. And all of them were looking at the business ends of crossbows.

  “Please…”

  “I am fighting for the future, Henry. I am fighting for a new Empire of the West. I will not let anything interfere with that. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  Geoffrey held up his hand. The Swiss lowered their crossbows. “Leave.”

  Alfie hesitated. Geoffrey pressed the knife harder into Henry’s neck. Alfie left with the others.

  Geoffrey released Henry. “You will remember this, I hope.”

  Henry looked Geoffrey in the eyes, careful to keep his face blank. “I’ll remember that you take hostages.”

  “Good.”

  7. Abbey Road

  Gray sky, white ground, black trees. Sound muffled by snow, until all you heard was your own breathing, and all you felt was the cold, sharp in your ears and your nose, dull in your boots and leggings.

  Or, if you were tied to a mule on your back, wearing nothing but your tunic and drawers, cold everywhere and pain in everything. Henry tried to clear his throat and keep moving, even if that amounted to no more than shivering inside his manacles.

  They had long ago left England behind. Now they traveled through a dismal waste, thick forests broken by ruins that were ancient before the Romans, standing stones that gave no shelter, roads that vanished under bridges leading nowhere. It was all pretty eldritch. Henry knew it from Alfie’s tales—the borth Annwn, the Door to the Land of Shadow. A stone cairn appeared through the snow, wi
ped clean by the wind. Brissac turned in his saddle. “There it is. How are you, thief? Comfortable?”

  Henry tried to control his chattering teeth, without much success. “C-Couldn’t be better. How’s the body odor? Taken a bath yet?”

  The Swiss mercenaries laughed. Brissac wheeled on Henry, his sword drawn—

  “Ah-ah-ah! You k-kill me, wh-what will Geoffrey say?”

  Brissac turned away, but Hauptmann, captain of the Swiss, rode up to Henry and examined him.

  “Ritter…he could die. Let us cover him.”

  “The tower is near enough. Cover him then.”

  To be fair, Brissac hadn’t shackled Henry until after he’d tried to escape. But they had just landed in Southampton; Brissac was still seasick; Henry could speak the local dialect, while the Swiss were practically mute; and by then, Alfie and the others would have vanished to where Geoffrey couldn’t find them.

  Really, it had been too good an opportunity to ignore.

  But as Henry had leaned over the inn’s stable roof and gently lowered himself to the ground, crossbow bolts had hissed out of the darkness, aimed so well they had pinned his clothes to the wall behind him without even drawing blood. He had been trussed up like a chicken in his own braies—

  “There it is.”

  Henry craned his neck to see. Wow. It was a genuine, honest-to-goodness Dark Tower.

  Black and ancient, it rose above the pines like a castle guarding a border. Beyond it the land opened out in a wide valley, shrouded in fog, indistinct except for the top of the Glastonbury Tor, a terraced hill poking out of the sea of mist. The road zigzagged up the slope and then cut through a dark wood, vanishing into shadow long before it reached the tower.

  “The Chapel Perilous.” Brissac leaned down and spoke in Henry’s ear. “The key to Excalibur’s resting place. Twelve good knights have entered, never to return. My Lord Geoffrey thinks you may solve the riddle where they did not.” Brissac squinted up at the high black walls. “I think he is an optimist.” He turned to the Swiss. “Take him down. We camp here tonight.”

  Hauptmann and Weiss lifted Henry gently off the mule. While the other mercenaries made camp and built a fire, Hauptmann covered Henry with a cloak and handed him a wineskin.

  As Henry drank, one of the younger, eager-beaver mercenaries asked Hauptmann something in German. Henry could make out the words “two watches” and “moonrise.”

  The other mercenaries shuddered. “We do not walk that road by night,” said Hauptmann.

  Brissac grabbed Henry’s wineskin and tossed him a bedroll. “Sleep,” said Brissac. “Tomorrow we see if you’re better than a knight.”

  Henry was awakened early the next morning by the sound of Brissac and Hauptmann, praying. The Swiss knelt beside them, heads bowed. The Latin muttering rose to an earnest “Defende nos in proelio, contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium!” and ended with an impassioned “Amen!” The men stood and broke camp in silence.

  Hauptmann hoisted Henry onto the mule and struck off his chains.

  “Today you ride free,” said Hauptmann. Henry gulped. Whoopee.

  The path sloped up perfectly level, without rut or break—Caesar-smooth, they’d have said in Sanbruc. It was a flywalk, so narrow there would be no room to step aside for anyone coming down. With each turn, the empty space to the right and left became more impressive. The men were silent, focused on keeping the horses calm, staying away from the edge. By noon, they reached the summit—a wide, empty road lined by trees.

  From each tree, too high to reach, hung a dead knight. There was a faint clatter as armor jostled against armor in the wind.

  “The Boulevard of Souls,” whispered Hauptmann.

  “They’re just suits of armor,” said Brissac. “They’re empty.”

  “You say!”

  Henry licked his lips and stared. The helmets were sealed shut. No flesh was visible. The armor could be empty…or it could be corpses dangling from those hemp ropes, under the bare trees. He felt a trickle of cold sweat down his back.

  “Shut up!” said Brissac. “Any cowards, flee now.”

  No one moved. Brissac mounted his horse and trotted forward. The others followed.

  Half a mile on, Brissac slowed and stared upward.

  “What is it?” asked Henry.

  The knight stared at a painted shield dangling from one low branch. “Three herons azure on a field argent. Pierre d’Anjou. He saved my life at Poitiers.” They rode the rest of the way in silence.

  The boulevard widened into a plaza, and they came at last to the Chapel Perilous.

  The battlements floated high above, blotting out the sun. The walls emerged seamless from the ground, as if the tower had grown like a tree from the living rock. Big stone carvings dotted the square in front of the entrance: a pillar, a sphere, a set of stairs that ended in mid-air. Chiseled into the flagstones were diagrams that could have come from Ptolemy, and images of hooded men carrying unguessable devices. On the front step was carved a seven-circuit labyrinth.

  Brissac and the others didn’t even set foot on the pavement, stopping their horses well short of the open square. Henry walked onto the plaza and examined the pillar. Small, irregular holes pierced the top like the sights on an arbalest. One faced south-southeast; beneath it a symbol had been chiseled off the stone, and the only thing left was the legend “MMCLVII.” Henry looked through. All he saw was a notch in the far mountains.

  “You have twenty-eight days.” Brissac signaled the Swiss, who began to make camp.

  “Exactly?” Henry returned from the pillar. “Or did you just pick the number out of a hat?”

  “That’s the number of days from when you go in to when your body appears on a tree outside.”

  “Oh.” Henry stared at the black walls. His heart couldn’t sink; it was already in his boots.

  “All right, boy.” Brissac put his hand on Henry’s back. “In you go.”

  “Wait!” Hauptmann stepped up. “Ritter, allow him at least some way to defend himself.”

  Brissac stared at Hauptmann, as if amazed at the insolence; then he looked at the faces of the other Swiss, who had gathered behind their sergeant.

  “Fine, then,” he said. “Give him a blade, for all the good it will do.”

  Hauptmann took off his short sword and buckled it around Henry’s waist. That broke the dam. Before Henry knew it, they had loaded him down with a helmet, two dirks, a shield, three slings, a knife—“For eating with,” said Haer.

  Henry turned to face the tower. Behind him he heard the ratcheting click of crossbows being cocked—in case he changed his mind. His back itching like mad, he strode out across the flagstones. The Swiss followed him a few yards in, crossbows ready. Then they stopped, and Henry walked on alone.

  The square stretched out forever. Henry felt like an ant on a table. To his right and left he passed objects that were somewhere between statues and buildings—a ball on a cable swinging from a stone frame; a wide, shallow bowl carved with cryptic shapes; a series of gears laid flat into the paving stones. Finally, Henry arrived at the gates.

  There were no gates.

  It was an opening twelve feet high. Nine men could have walked in abreast. Clouds of fog rolled out of the gap to swirl around Henry’s feet. He edged closer.

  There was no floor.

  Blocking the entry from wall to wall was a pit with sides as smooth as glass. Mist poured over the stone lip on the opposite end and hid the bottom from view. Henry turned back toward the Swiss, opened his mouth, and closed it again. If they had seen how the other knights had gotten across, they would have told him.

  He sat down, dangling his legs over the edge. The other side was hidden in the mist. Could he jump? A blind jump into the nothing? No, thanks. Use a rope and a grappling hook? Was there anything to grab onto on the other side? Would Brissac even have thought to bring them?

  Henry shifted uncomfortably and stood up. He had been sitting on more of the stone carvings. They w
ere a series of six panels, starting with a naked man walking toward a—

  No. Henry looked away from the walls, back across the plaza. The panels were meant to be seen by someone walking toward the gate, not away. He was looking at the last one first. He stepped out, and began again.

  Looked at properly, the panels were actually the homiest things Henry had seen since Paris. They were just a typical “Stages of Man” carving, like the ones they had on the altarpiece at St. Germain. This one was the life of a knight. The first panel was a noble birth; then a child at play; then a page with a cup, then a knight with a sword, then a king with a crown and scepter. The last panel before the pit was Death—the soul of the knight leaving its body and all its worldly possessions behind it in a heap as it passed through the Gates of Peace.

  Oh.

  Henry unbuckled Hauptmann’s blade and tossed it into the pit. After a few seconds, he heard the clank as it hit the bottom. The other weapons followed. Slowly, the mist cleared from the entrance. For the first time, Henry was able to see a bridge over the pit, the same shade of gray as the mist and the stone. No railing, of course. He knelt down and felt the bridge. Narrow and slippery. Henry sighed. Better not take any chances. Unarmed, on his hands and knees, he crossed the bridge into the chapel.

  8. The Chapel Perilous

  Light flashed through the Chapel Perilous, scattering rainbow-fringed sunbeams into the hallways and cells. Henry pulled the blanket over his face and squeezed his eyes shut, but it was useless. There was no way to drift back to sleep. It was like this every sunrise. At midday, there was a deep, unfathomable booming sound, and at sunset, the dying wind blew a single vast organ note throughout the keep.

  The chapel was a mystery of water and air, light, and stone. Henry walked every day through signs and wonders.

  He hated it.

  He’d also decided that he hated the chapel’s monks, who weren’t the friendliest bunch you’d hope to meet. One of them had been waiting on the other side of the bridge when he crossed, a big man with a scar that reached from his tonsure to his chin. He helped Henry to his feet. When Henry said, “Thanks,” the monk said nothing, just stood there.