The Orphan King (4 page)

Thomas regarded them steadily. Where was the fear with which they had departed barely a half-hour earlier? Why the gleam of triumph behind Monk Walter’s eyes?

“Thank you,” Thomas said as the comforting weight of both sacks dragged on his arms. Yet he did not leave. An unease he could not explain filled him.

“Go on, boy,” Monk Walter sneered in the gathering darkness of the hall.

Still Thomas waited. Unsure.

Monk Philip gazed at the rough stones beneath his feet. “In the letter,” he mumbled, “what have you to tell the prior at Rievaulx about me?”

Thomas suddenly felt pity. The tiny man’s shoulders were bowed with weariness and guilt.

“Nothing to damn you,” he said gently. “Nothing to praise you. As if you merely stood aside all these years.”

“You show uncanny wisdom for a boy,” Monk Philip choked out, his head still low. When he straightened, he made no effort to hide tears. “Perhaps that is the worst of all, not to make a choice between good or evil. I’m old now. I can barely hear, yet the slightest noise wakens me from troubled sleep. My bones are brittle and I’m afraid of falling, even from the steps to the chapel. The terrifying blackness of death is too soon ahead of me, and all I am to the God who waits is an empty man who has only pretended to be in His service.”

“Quit your blathering,” Monk Walter said between clenched teeth. “Send the boy on his way. Now!”

Monk Philip clamped his jaw as if coming to a decision. “Not to his death. Nor shall I go meet God without attempting some good.” He drew a lungful of air. “Thomas, leave alone the—”

Monk Walter crashed a fist into the tiny man’s mouth. The blow drove Monk Philip’s head into a square stone that jutted from the wall. He collapsed to his knees without a moan. He smiled once at Thomas, struggled to speak, then toppled to the floor and did not move.

Thomas felt a chill. What had Philip been trying to say?

“Spawn of the devil,” Monk Walter hissed at Thomas. “Your soul will roast in hell.”

Thomas said nothing and rested the bag of food on his shoulder. He took half a step away, then turned to deliver a promise.

“Monk Walter,” he began with quiet deadliness, guessing suddenly the reason for Philip’s death, “if indeed there is such a place as hell, your soul will be there much sooner than mine.”

Thomas left the hall as silently as his shadow. He paused outside until the noises inside told him that the three remaining monks were struggling with Monk Philip’s body. Then, to fulfill his parting promise, Thomas slipped to the rear of the abbey into the cool storage room dug below the kitchen.

He departed shortly after into the darkness, climbing the valley hills with one fewer sack than he had planned.

A
ll stared at the soon-to-be-dead.

Since dawn, three ropes had hung black against the rising sun. Enough time had passed for a crowd to arrive and develop a restless holiday mood, jeering when the prisoners were finally hauled in a wagon to the gallows.

“Hear ye, hear ye, all gathered here today.” The caller, short and dumpy with middle age, made no effort to hide the boredom in his voice.

His words had little effect on the hundred people crowded in front of the crude wooden gallows. Each person had eyes only for the soon-to-be-dead.

“Get on with your blathering, you old fool!” The shout came from a woman with a hungry face near the back of the crowd. A skinny child held her hand.

The man scratched at a flea beneath his dirty shirt and ignored her.

“This punishment has been ordered by the sheriff under authority of the Earl of York,” he continued in a listless tone. “The crimes to be punished are as follows.” He unrolled a scroll and held it in front of him at arm’s length.

“Andrew, you dimwit! We all know you can’t read. Don’t be putting on airs for the likes of us.” This from a fat man with jowls that shook as he yelled.

The crowd hooted with appreciation even though none of them, including the speaker, realized the scroll was upside down. They grew quiet again.

And all stared at the soon-to-be-dead.

Six burly soldiers stood behind the man with the scroll. In pairs, they held three prisoners. Too often, even the weariest prisoners made a sudden struggle for freedom when finally facing the thick rope noose. It was the type of struggle the crowd hoped for. Hangings were as common as weddings or funerals, so without a final bolt for escape or howls of despair, it was a dull event. Indeed, this hanging only drew as many as it did because of the strange knight.

“John the potter’s son. Found guilty of loitering with the intent to pick the pockets of honest men. To be hung by the neck until dead.”

Most of the crowd shook fists at the accused boy.

He grinned back at them. Ragged hair and a smudge of dirt covered the side of his face. “Intent!” he shouted in a tinny voice at the upraised fists. “Intent is all you could prove. I’ve always been too fast to be caught!”

The hangman waited for the noise to end and droned, “The unknown girl who does not speak or hear. Theft of three loaves of bread and a bracelet of gold. To be hung by the neck until dead.”

The crowd quieted as they stared at her. She in turn stared at her feet. High cheekbones and long dark hair hinted at a beauty to flower—if she were to live past the day.

The tragic air about her forced a mumble from the middle of the crowd. “The baker could have easily kept her for kitchen work instead of forcing the magistrate on her.”

The baker flushed with anger. “And how many more mouths
should I support in these times? Especially one belonging to a useless thief who cannot hear instructions?” he asked his anonymous accuser.

Behind all of them—below the small rise of land that held the gallows—the town known as Helmsley lay silent as the spring day began to warm. Although it was important enough to be guarded by a castle, the town was little more than a collection of wood and stone houses along narrow and dirty streets.

The stench of mud and barn animals filled the air. Few of the people gathered on the rise noticed. They fell as completely silent as the town. The strange knight was about to be formally accused.

“Finally”—the hangman in the dirty shirt felt the growing excitement of the crowd, and his voice rose beyond boredom—“the Knight Templar. Found guilty of blasphemy and the theft of a chalice. To be hung by the neck until dead.”

The babble of the crowd renewed as each person strained to watch for reaction on the knight’s haggard face.
To be so mighty and to fall so far …

The darkly tanned knight did not acknowledge any curiosity. He had been stripped of all the wealth of his apparel except for his trousers, tunic, and a vest of chain mail. The bulges of his muscled arms and shoulders showed a man who had lived by the sword. He would die by the rope.

He stared forward with a slightly bowed head that hid the features of his face.

The hangman continued. “This on the twenty-eighth day of May in the year of our Lord thirteen hundred and twelve.” Finished with his painfully memorized words, the hangman scrolled the useless paper back into a roll and nodded at the soldiers.

To the crowd’s disappointment, none of the prisoners resisted. Each had a reason for not struggling.

The potter’s son did not believe he would die. At eleven years of age, death was simply not a possibility, even with the knotted rope less than a dozen steps away.

The girl appeared too exhausted.

The knight, resigned to death, perhaps was already back in his land of sun, speaking and laughing in his mind with old comrades.

The crowd grew restless again. Some had neglected a day’s work and traveled as far as six miles. Others had brought their entire families. With all attention focused on the three figures slowly climbing the gallows, no one in the crowd noticed a figure approaching from the town behind.

It wasn’t until the figure strode amid the usual cursing and jeering that anyone noticed him. Then, the awed silence was immediate.

As it should have been.

No man in the crowd stood higher than five feet and nine inches. This man was a giant, four hands taller than the tallest.

His attire cast a frightened chill among them. The black cloth that swirled around him gleamed with richness and flowed like a heavy river. A hood covered his face; his hands were lost deep in the folds of the robe. He projected nothing less than the shadow of death.

The figure did not break stride until it reached the gallows. Only then did he stiffly turn to face the crowd, confident even with his back vulnerable to the soldiers.

Many in the crowd backed away.

Andrew the hangman, frozen in shock and standing on the raised gallows platform, still appeared shorter than the dark and terrible giant who had walked into their midst.

The huge specter of a man let the silence press down upon the crowd.

Finally, he uttered his first words.

“The knight shall be set free.” His voice was unearthly, a deep, rasping evil that sent the crowd back even farther. “He shall be set free immediately.”

He extended his arms toward the crowd. One of the children keened high with terror.

The black specter hissed. Blue and orange flames shot from the right sleeve of his robe.

The silence, for several heartbeats, was such that the entire crowd seemed frozen. Then, as if time had resumed again, voices broke out.

“Return the knight!” someone shouted. “Before we all die!”

“Save us now!” pleaded another voice. “Set the knight free!”

The hangman blinked twice, then did something brave for a short, middle-aged man. He pointed at the figure. “Seize the stranger!” he ordered.

Two soldiers stepped reluctantly forward and drew massive, long swords.

The specter turned slowly and waited until the soldiers were nearly able to strike him.

“For your disobedience,” the specter rasped clearly, “you shall become blind as trees.”

He waved his left arm as if passing a blessing over the soldiers. Both fled the gallows, screaming and pressing their faces in agony.

“Do any others dare?” the specter asked as the soldiers’ screams faded.

Andrew, who may have been brave but was not entirely stupid, issued fumbling orders to the remaining soldiers. They, too, drew
weapons, but this time only short daggers to frantically saw at the ropes binding the knight.

The specter held his position entirely without motion. His hooded face stared at the crowd.

Then, before the knight was entirely free, a bent and white-haired man draped in faded rags stepped forth. He limped steadily the last few steps until he faced the specter with an unfearing upward gaze.

“I have been expecting you,” he whispered so that only the giant specter could hear. “And if you want to live and conquer Magnus, you shall give the crowd
my
instructions as if they came from your own mouth.”

Thomas did not reply. Did not move. He was balanced on stilts, and the shock of the old man’s words almost cost him his balance.

“Do you understand me?” the old man whispered calmly. “Nod your head slowly, or I will lift that robe of yours and expose the stilts upon which you stand.”

Thomas finally gave a nod. How could this old man know?

“Good.” The old man’s whisper remained the same. “Order the release of the other two prisoners.”

Silence.

The old man smiled. “Surely, boy, you have no acid left to blind me. Otherwise you have would done so already. With nothing left to bluff the crowd, you must listen to me.” His whisper intensified.
“Order the release of all of them!”

How had the old man known, too, about the acid that Thomas used?

The specter spoke above the head of the old man. “Release the others or face certain doom,” his harsh voice boomed.

The old man chuckled under his breath. “As I thought. You are badly underequipped.”

Thomas realized the hangman was unaware of the private drama between himself and the old man and grew brave at his continued safety.

“All three?” the hangman protested. “The sheriff will hang me.”

“Do as I say!”
Thomas thundered, projecting the confidence that a specter should.