The Orphan King (13 page)

“Had you been killed by only a pair of bandits, then you weren’t worth much in the first place,” the knight answered. “I wanted to see if you could get out of a difficult situation without my help.” He laughed at the sour look that Thomas gave him. “Besides, lad. They weren’t going to kill you. Not with the three of us still at loose to report a murder.”

“Perhaps if you had immediately told me you suspected a trap, my head and leg and shoulder wouldn’t be so sore. Instead of sending me back to the woman, you could have urged me forward, and I would have helped you with the ropes.”

“Did you learn a lesson?”

Thomas grunted in agreement.

“And it was, I suppose,” the knight said, “not to trust the stories of people you meet on the road.”

“More than that,” Thomas said. He spoke with grudging admiration. “I’ve learned I can trust your motives and your capabilities.”

The knight slapped him on the back. “Feels good, doesn’t it, to release that anger and make peace?”

“Not good enough to admit it to you,” Thomas said.

The knight laughed. “As unlikeable as you are, there are moments I can see it’s worthwhile to be your friend.” Then he became more serious. “Tell me about the powder.”

“That sounds like an order,” Thomas said.

“Forgive me. Will you be kind enough to satisfy my curiosity? I’ve never seen such an effect.”

“And you’ll likely never see it again. I had to use the last of it on them.”

That had been another reason for Thomas’s anger. He had no doubt that sometime in the future he’d have a real need for the powder. But now it was gone.

Their rope had been too valuable to use to tie the bandits; besides, to what purpose? After discovering the woman had lied about a robbery, Thomas had lost all need to bring the bandits to justice. Spending a day or two trying to herd the bandits to a local sheriff for the sake of revenge wasn’t worth the risk of being caught themselves as refugees from the gallows.

So, bandit by bandit, Thomas had taken a pinch of powder and blown it in their faces as they were helpless on the ground, fearing the sword of William. The results had been as predictable as they were devastating, and the four of them had left the bandits retching and screaming in agony along the road, knowing it would be a good hour before they recovered.

“The last of it?” the knight asked. “Certainly it’s an herbal powder that we can gather from a local plant.”

Thomas grunted again.

“Ah, so that’s not possible,” the knight said. “Where did you get it then?”

“Someday, perhaps,” Thomas said, “I can reveal the answer to you, but for now, I’ll simply ask you to trust me.” He paused. “In the same way, William, that I’ve learned to trust you.”

T
he wind, as it always did on the moors, blew strong. Above them, blue sky was patched with high clouds. William led the way along a narrow path cutting through the low clumps of heather. They traveled across the tops of the moors. The valleys below offered too much cover for bandits waiting in ambush.

Behind the knight, Thomas and Tiny John—as they now called the always-grinning pickpocket—followed closely. Isabelle, farther back, meandered her way in pursuit, stopping often to pluck a yellow flower from the gorse or to stare at the sky.

“Take them with you. It will guarantee you a safe journey to Magnus.”
Thomas remembered the old man’s whisper each time he looked back at the girl. Was there something more about her than met the eye?

But, distracting as the mystery in her face could be, Thomas had other matters to occupy his mind.

“This must be the valley,” Thomas said for the fifth time in as many minutes. “I am certain the last moor was Wheeldale—for as marked on my map, Wade’s Causeway led us there.”

“A remarkable map,” murmured William. “Few have the ancient Roman roads so clearly shown.”

As Thomas knew from Sarah’s patient teaching, Wade’s Causeway—a road sixteen feet wide that trailed across the desolate moors from Pickering to the North Sea coast—had been laid by Roman
legionnaires over twelve hundred years earlier. The speed of movement that the road allowed the Romans had made them a formidable invading force.

A thought struck Thomas. “How is it you know about Wade’s Causeway? You profess to come from far from here.”

Having local knowledge was not the only thing strange about the knight’s observation. Because so few could read, most barely knew past their own family history back two generations. To show awareness of the Roman invasion said something about the knight, did it not?

“Listen carefully,” the knight said with a grin that reflected their growing friendship. “Aside from faith and honor, knowledge is the most valuable thing a man can possess, and far more useful than a sword.”

Thomas grinned back, but could not help but notice.

The knight had skillfully avoided answering the question.

Silently, William cursed himself. Every second in the presence of this young wolf demanded vigilance. If Thomas was what he appeared, William could not let him suspect he was anything more than a knight, for that would lead to questions. Days earlier, he’d been very calculating about using the point of his sword to threaten Thomas, reasoning that it would reinforce the appearance he was trying to give of a knight reluctantly pressed into service.

If Thomas was of the enemy, he would know William’s role but could not know of the suspicions outlined by Hawkwood. It meant that the knight’s every action and every word had to reflect nothing more or nothing less than a fighting man under obligation to Thomas.

William slowly swung his head to survey Thomas. “England was only a barbarian outpost to the Romans. From where I come, there are many similar to this.”

Thomas looked across the valley again, as if he had accepted the knight’s answer. “Where
is
Magnus?” Thomas spat at the endless valley. “I know it is somewhere in these moors of York. Shouldn’t we have found a road that leads to it by now?”

William sighed and paused to wipe sweat from his forehead. “You want to do the impossible and conquer Magnus. When facing the impossible, why be in a hurry?”

“It’s far from impossible,” Thomas said. He shifted the bundle across his shoulders.

The knight did not disguise his snort of disbelief, for as a simple fighting man, he would be skeptical. “We are not much of an army. Only in fantasies do two people find a way to overcome an army within a castle.”

“I have the way,” Thomas replied.

“Thomas, where were you raised?”

“What does that have to do with this discussion?”

Everything
, William thought. He spoke with exaggerated patience. “It must have been in a place where you were shut in a room day and night and learned nothing about reality. You must see the world as it is. Castles are designed to stop armies of a thousand. Soldiers are trained to kill. Magnus, I’m told, has one of the most forbidding castles in all of the land. It will have a small army. There are just two of us.”

“Delivered on the wings of an angel, he shall free us from oppression,” Thomas said.

William squinted. “Make sense!”

“There is a legend within Magnus,” Thomas said. “ ‘Delivered on the wings of an angel, he shall free us from oppression.’ I have been told each villager repeats that promise nightly during prayers. It will take no army to win the battle.”

William did not interrupt the rustling of the waving heather for some time. He had questions now; questions that only Hawkwood could answer. The nightly promise had not, of course, existed in Magnus when he was a knight of that kingdom. Had Hawkwood, who foresaw so much, decided this was how Magnus would be reconquered?

But Hawkwood could not foresee Sarah’s death, and now Thomas might be a double-edged sword. How should he react to Thomas’s certainty? As one who knew little.

“You presume much,” William finally said, in a gentle voice that did not suggest mockery. “Is there oppression within Magnus? And where do you propose to find an angel?”

Thomas plucked a long stem of grass and nibbled the soft, yellowed end. “I know well of the oppression …” He paused. “It was told to me by someone who escaped from there. She was like a mother and a father. I believe my parents arranged to send her with me when they knew the pox had taken them.” He pulled the grass from his mouth and stared into William’s eyes. “Her name was Sarah. She was my teacher and my friend at the abbey. The monks endured her presence only because it was stipulated with the money my parents had left for my upkeep. She taught me to read and write—”

Abbey
. William was closer to the answer. Perhaps later he would push to find out which one. But to do so now would reveal an unnatural interest, especially when anyone else would have a much different question.

William shook his head in postured amazement and asked in response what would be expected. “Latin?”

“And French,” Thomas confirmed. “Sarah told me it was the language of the nobles and that I would need it when …”

“When?”

“When I took over as lord of Magnus.”

“What right have you to take this manor and castle by force?”

“The same right,” Thomas said, suddenly cold with anger, “that the present lord had when he took it from Sarah’s parents.”

D
uring the next half hour of walking, Thomas said little. The knight remained beside him, seeing no need to force conversation. Isabelle still trailed them, showing she had no desire to get nearer to Magnus. Only Tiny John showed enthusiasm, as if they were on an adventure.

“It must be close!” John said. “Let me get on your shoulders, William! I’ll get a good see from there.”

William groaned. “I feel like enough of a packhorse without my steed. To be arrested falsely for a chalice I didn’t steal is one thing. But to lose my horse and armor to those scoundrels …” He caught the anxiety that Thomas betrayed by chewing his lower lip. The knight sighed, a habit he had formed since meeting Thomas. “Tiny John, get on my shoulders, then.” William shook his forefinger hard at the imp. “
Without
taking a farthing from my pockets. I’ve had enough trouble with you already.”

Tiny John only widened his eternal grin and waved a locket and chain at William, who felt his own neck to reassure himself that it was not his.

“It’s Isabelle’s,” Thomas said. “Tiny John took it from her this morning. I didn’t have the heart to make him give it back yet. And she hasn’t noticed anything all day …”

William kept his face straight. The only reason Thomas would have overseen the theft was because he spent so much time glancing at the girl.

Tiny John tossed the locket to the knight. William glanced at it idly, then felt as if a hand had wrapped around his throat.
The symbol!

He knew now who had been sent to spy. The question remained, was she a partner with Thomas? Or was he ignorant of the danger?

“A peculiar cross emblem,” William mumbled as those thoughts raced through his mind. He, too, had learned acting skills. “Nothing I’ve seen before.”

Tiny John did not give him time to finish wondering. He darted to the knight’s back, then scrambled upward to his broad shoulders and shaded his eyes with his left hand to peer northeast into the widening valley.