Banners of Gold: A Novel (Alix of Wanthwaite) - Softcover

Pamela Kaufman, Ph.D., is the author of the bestseller Shield of Three Lions, the first Alix of Wanthwaite novel, and The Book of Eleanor, a novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine—both available from Crown Publishers and Three Rivers Press. She lives in Los Angeles.

1
A bitter shaft blew from the firth. Cold as a bone, it whipped the last of the leaves off the wands, turned turnips in the field a bright blue, keened around our castle towers while inside we labored frantically to hang hides across arrow-slits. I was dragging a ladder to my second window when I heard a familiar scratching.

"Dingwall?" I called suspiciously. "Where are you, Dingwall?"

My hound pup's rump wiggled from under my bedmat.

"If you take . . ."

He faced me with a vellum in his jaws, tail thumping the rushes in anticipation.

"Give that to me, you wallydrag!"

He darted out the door as Gruoth lumbered in.

"Catch him, Gruoth! He's got Enoch's letter!"

She stood back as I flew past her. Through the courtyard and gate, across the moatbridge, down the steep spinney where I fell on rime-coated grass. I would kill that no-good brute, slice him small and put him in a saucepan. Wind howled, branches splintered and shot past like arrows, but I picked myself up and plunged after Dingwall where his tail disappeared in the brush. I found him crouched by the Wanthwaite River, the vellum spread under his splayed paws as he licked it with slow savor. He was too cowardly to swim, but he would dash up and down the banks for a week if I chased him.

Feigning indifference, I swung on a low branch, then hoisted my heavy cowhide boots over my head and let go with my hands, dangling upside down so my hair brushed the ground; Dingwall couldn't resist my hair. From this view, the sky was an alarming chaos of flying gray cushions; the earth thumped and shook, as if its heart beat in panic.

"Come, Dingwall," I called sweetly.

He growled, let flee a series of excited yips.

Puzzled, I turned my head and gazed into the pup's spiked tail, and beyond the tail to a horse's leg, and up the leg to a black boot in a gilded stirrup.

I put my hands flat and wheeled to an upright position.

A stranger looked down on me from an enormous chestnut destrier. Behind him stretched a line of soldiers and packed mules. Benedicite, how had they stolen so stilly through the wood? Then I recalled the beat I'd heard--horses' hooves.

The stranger pricked the vellum with his broadsword and held it forth. "Is this what you want?" As if he were offering the letter to a monkey.

"Aye. Thank you."

"Perhaps you can help me, lass. I seek Lady Alix of Wanthwaite, and the villagers in Dunsmere told me that this was the path. Are you one of her villeins?"

I hesitated. He was elegant as a black swan, swathed in dark furs over fine black wool and scarlet sendal, wore a crushed red hat on black crulled hair, but I didn't like the army behind him. Why would they travel to our remote Northumbrian estate with swords and heavy crates?

"Who seeks the lady?"

His lips tightened in irritation. "Bonel of Rouen, the king's man."

I studied him for insignia. "What king? William of Scotland?" Though he spoke with a Norman accent, not a brogue.

"King Richard of England!" he snapped, then pulled his reins as if to pass me.

King Richard.

Fighting a rush of fear, I leaped into the center of the path, fixed myself firmly.

His horse shied. "What are you doing? Be careful!"

By now I'd counted sixteen soldiers. "All the way from London, sir?"

"Yes." Snow began to fall in flakes big as rabbit tails, and I could hardly see him, but his voice threatened. "Please step aside before you get hurt."

I could think of no further delay. "I'll lead you, sir."

Abruptly I scooped Dingwall into my arms and scrambled up the slippery path half on my knees, the stranger following close at my heels while his men struggled with the laden mules. Before us, Wanthwaite's louring black walls and square towers pulsed in and out of vision behind whirling rings of snow.

When we reached the courtyard, I shouted over my shoulder, "Wait here, sir, and someone will come for your horses."

I dashed ahead into the great hall, where Dugan was climbing down a ladder from the highest arrow-slit.

"Dugan, armed men! From King Richard!"

He jumped heavily before me. "Keep your wits. Do ye ken their purpose?"

"Maybe from the king's Exchequer," I replied. "They have heavy crates."

"They canna dig silver from our ears, Alix," Donald assured me. "I'll tell him sae. Let summun elsit pay fer the Crusade."

"How many are they, Milady?" Dame Margery asked.

Before I could answer, the door blasted open behind us and Bonel swept in, a black mountain of a man in his swirling furs.

"For Goddes' sake, spare us!" Gruoth screamed.

All of us stared, stunned. In the wood, half of Bonel's face had been concealed. Now I saw that the right side was blighted by a webby scar centering on his eye, a huge magnified blue orb like polished ice with the eye painted on the underside. Then the door slammed behind him, and we were in semidarkness--the only illumination coming from the fire--and he was an incorporeal voice, dripping with honey and faint menace.

"I'm Bonel of Rouen," he announced, unperturbed by our reaction. "I represent King Richard on business with Lady Alix of Wanthwaite."

All of us drew slightly closer to one another.

"I'm Lady Alix." I tried to match his dignity, though my own voice bleated. He stared at me, transfixed, as if my face were as astonishing as his.

He recovered quickly. "I should have known at once, except that you're so . . . young."

So besmottered, he meant, so poor I took you for a villein.

"I'm sixteen." Let him think as he liked. I was proud of my tattered bliaut, bearskin vest, sheepskin cope, short plaid kilt with straw and feathers in the woof, bare raw knees, muck-covered boots--proud to look like the good Scot that I was, by marriage anyway. "Do you have proof that you represent King Richard?"

Bemused, he reached into his drafsack. "I carry the royal seal."

My heart squeezed as I held the heavy metal plaque in my muddy palm, pretended to weigh and study it. The seal gave Bonel an ominous authority far beyond his eye or voice, for few men carry the king's seal. Dugan leaned over my shoulder and muttered that it looked genuine, which it did. Richard rode with upraised sword on its polished surface, like himself yet different from when I'd last seen him in Acre.

I almost dropped the odious object as I returned it. "For the king's sake, welcome to Wanthwaite. Please let me take your cloak, and then join us by the fire."

Dame Margery dragged two faldstools close to the hearth while Donald crept quietly halfway up the stair and Dugan signaled to the women to draw close.

I caught the heavy furs as Bonel released two gold broaches. His crimson tunic had high, puffed sleeves with tight forearms; belted with jewel-studded leather, it flared just below his knees where it met fur-lined boots. Around his neck hung a gold Byzantine cross big as a horseshoe and encrusted with rubies. With his splendid dress, magnificent jewels, and viewed only on his good side, he was an impressive man. Yet, even discounting his uncanny eye, he was strange, a perplexing choice as royal officer; he might be a sultan from the east, or a Venetian, for he had the exotic and sinister aura of the orient.

"Thank you." Bonel appraised my face again, almost with wonder, then noted the positions of the Scots.

I unfastened my sheepskin to put with his cloak.

"You wear the Crusader's cross!" he remarked, pointing to my old Plantagenet bliaut. This time his shock was plain to see.

I tried to cover the stained emblem with my hands.

"It's not . . ."

Gruoth blabbed proudly, "Alix were on the Crusade wi' King Richard."

"But women weren't permitted on Richard's Crusade."

I shot Gruoth a warning look. "The fact is . . ."

"She went dressed as a boy," Gruoth boasted.

Benedicite. My face heated, I stared at Bonel's narrow boots.

"Quhat's wrong wi' yer eye?" Gruoth clattered on.

"Gruoth!" I jerked her braid. "Apologize to Bonel."

Our guest waved a bejeweled hand. "That's not necessary, Lady Alix. Everyone wants to know." He bent over Gruoth and lowered his voice. "I received my blue eye under peculiar circumstances, young lady. One stormy night four years ago I was struck by a thunderbolt which changed my life. I fell into a swoon, and when I recovered, I was marked by my scar and my eye. Ever since, I've had special vision; I can see directly into men's minds and hearts--especially into the evil that lurks therein." He straightened, touched his cross significantly.

Gruoth was entranced. "Did it cum from the Devil? Be it the Evil Eye?"

"No, God revealed Himself to me with His mighty bolt; I call this my Christian Eye."

"A miracle forsooth," I commented skeptically, not appreciating his gulling poor Gruoth. "If it please you, I would like to introduce my household, Bonel."

As I was presenting Dugan, Donald, Thorketil and Archie, Gruoth, Matilda, and my old nurse, Dame Margery, Bonel's men entered and quietly lined themselves against the walls. The Scots squinted at them suspiciously.

"Tell yer men to put doon their swords," Dugan ordered brusquely.

"They're always armed--a caution against thieves along the road."

"There be no robbers in Wanthwaite."

But the swords remained unsheathed, and the atmosphere chilled. The Scots turned slowly to count the wights; then Dugan threw me a subtle signal.

As I walked to a faldstool, my household moved as well, each person placing himself to oppose Bonel's soldiers if need be; Donald managed to slip up to the balcony. When Bonel sat on the stool opposite me, three mercenaries gathered close behind him, their faces pinched and surly, their hair plastered like tree fern on low foreheads.

Bonel bent forward like a conspirator, enclosed my hands with his bejeweled fingers.

"Lady Alix, I've come to take you to London."

THE WORDS exploded.

"London?" I echoed faintly. "That's a woodly jape, sir."

"No jape at all. Surely you've heard that two hundred hostages are being sent to the Holy Roman Empire in exchange for King Richard. Your name is on the roster."

I jerked my hands free and my movement permitted the firelight to catch his Christian eye: it glowed like a malevolent jewel.

"I'm sorry we couldn't give you fair warning, but your castle is remote, and we've had little time ourselves to prepare."

"You speak in riddles, sir. I know nothing of hostages or the Holy Roman Empire, and King Richard is leading a Crusade against Saladin in the Holy Land."

"Good God, can you be so ignorant?" Bonel cried. "Everyone in England knows that Richard left Acre almost two years ago, that he disappeared on his homeward journey and was thought to be shipwrecked until he was discovered as a prisoner in Austria!"

His insult brought a mighty roar from my household to the effect that they were not ignorant and that Wanthwaite Castle was in Scotland, not England. I let them rant as I watched Bonel; he was not a lunatick nor a scoundrel nor a sorcerer, but much worse: he was soothly an emissary from the king. I wondered how much he knew.

"That's enough!" I stopped Dugan. "Let the man speak. I want to hear more about these two hundred hostages and the roster."

Bonel's blue eye fastened on me like a spider. "King Richard is being held by Emperor Henry Hohenstaufen of Germany and Duke Leopold of Austria," he resumed, "and they demand a handsome ransom for his release, one hundred and fifty thousand silver marks."

Again the Scots interjected a loud groan of disbelief.

". . . of which England has raised one hundred thousand. For the rest, we are sending two hundred hostages with their English estates as security; many volunteered and the rest were carefully selected."

Selected? The word jarred my fantastick cells. "And I was one of those selected?"

"Yes. I can understand your confusion, since you're so isolated, but we have no time to jangle further. I'll answer questions along the road; now I suggest you begin your preparations."

I didn't move.

"You've made a long, hazardous journey for no purpose, Bonel. I can't possibly be a hostage."

There was no audible sound, but I was aware of the collective sigh of relief behind me. Bonel, the brow over his brown eye raised, gazed at me as if I were an irritating dolt.

"Your name is on the roster, and I was sent most particularly to accompany you to London."

"You can explain that I refused to come--that it's not your fault. Perhaps you can find someone else--someone more important--as you ride to London."

He rose, looked over his shoulder at his men, then stood silhouetted against the fire so that little flames darted around his black form, a Byzantine icon. "You have no choice in the matter, Lady Alix. England has been invaded."

The shocked Scots demanded details. King Richard's younger brother, Prince John, wanted to seize England, and King Philip of France was his ally. John's mercenaries had landed close to Sandwich--they held Windsor Castle.

I went weak with apprehension. "As a woman, I can hardly fight an invasion."

"No one is suggesting that you do so, but Philip and John are trying to pay Richard's ransom themselves. You see why the hostages are vital to our national weal."

"Aye, but . . ."

"There can be no buts."

"There are reasons I can't go, won't go."

"You have no choice. To refuse is tantamount to treason."

"To accept is tantamount to death!" I cried.

"No one will die. The king has sworn to redeem all hostages within seven months of his release."

"With what? If you couldn't raise the money, how can he?"

"He promised . . ."

"And if he doesn't, what then? The hostages are forfeit! Will die!"

"You have a female morbidity, Lady Alix, and don't understand . . ."

"Spare me your flattery," I interrupted angrily, "and let me think. I need to confer with my household."

He shrugged elaborately. "As you like, so long as you're prepared to ride at dawn."

He walked to a shadowy corner followed by his loathsome mercenaries. The Scots huddled close around me.

"I have a plan," I whispered feverishly. "We must say that Enoch's expected at any moment."

Gruoth stretched her stied lids. "But he be wounded, Alix."

"Don't mention his wound," I warned and quickly outlined my scheme. I would insist that I couldn't leave without Enoch and try to persuade Bonel to wait one more day. Meantime, Archie would sneak away to Dunsmere to rouse the villagers. As soon as Bonel left Wanthwaite, with me in his company, the Scots would join the rustics and prepare to fight.

"Aye," Dugan breathed, looking like a mad bull with his horned hat and red eyes. "We'll ambush them by the river quhere the big bend gi'es cover. They'll be too surprised to fight, and too weighted doon wi' silver."

We honed our strategy as well as we could do in our brief time, then called to Bonel.

"I should explain my refusal, Bonel. If you know my name's on the roster, you must know that I'm married to Lord Enoch Angus of Dingle-Boggs. He was called to Edinburgh by King William, but returns at any moment--we thought today, but certainly tomorrow. I must await his pleasure in this matter."

Bonel's smile unnerved me. Did he know I was lying?

"Queen Eleanor will leave London on December tenth, and you will be with her."

"Not December tenth!" Dame Margery shrieked so loudly that we all jumped.

"Be ready tomorrow morning, Lady Alix. You...