Blaze of Silver (21 page)

Will's mind simply refused to take in what he saw although his hand flew to his lips. He stood right in front of Ellie for almost a minute. “Why did you do it?” His voice, when he found it, rose high. “Why on earth did you do it?” He dared not touch her. Something in her expression frightened him. What desecration! Her hair! Her beautiful hair! He wanted to shout at her. After all, what good did she think such a sacrifice would do?

Before he could say anything more, Ellie raised her own hand and touched his cheek. Immediately, Will was aware again of the stinging. He tried to push Ellie's fingers away but she caught his own and made him trace the thin lines of the dagger. “Do you think I did that, too?” she asked softly. Will felt black dread descending. As it folded around him, it changed from black to crimson, the same crimson as the Old Man's beard, and Will gave a terrible groan. Now he ran his hand over the ragged remains of Ellie's plait as if they were wounds and took her in his arms. In response, Ellie pressed her cheek against his and when they finally parted, her skin was blotted with his blood.

Will went almost off his head, crippled by what had happened and what might have happened. He cried out that he had slept like a boy when he should have been awake like a knight. His cries were loud and unremitting
and Ellie could hardly persuade him to leave her side and saddle the horses. At every shadow, every noise, he rushed back, convinced that she was about to be murdered, then he ran back to the horses, convinced that they would be murdered, too.

It was Ellie who broke the spell. “Will,” she implored over and over, “Will, Will.” Eventually, she had to grab his arm and pinch it. Her voice betrayed no panic for she felt none. In fact, although the loss of her hair had given her the biggest fright of her life, the lightness of her head, now she tossed it about, was not unwelcome and although she waited for a great sadness to well up within her, it never arrived. Her hair had been beautiful but it was only hair. To her surprise, Ellie found that she did not really care. “Will, listen to me. You have to pull yourself together. Amal will have done this and I don't think he wants to kill us. He's just warning us, trying to frighten us away from Richard. He must have passed by. We must only concentrate on catching up to him.” She ran her fingers through the crop she had left. It stood up on end, forming a kind of halo. Then she made a funny face. “At last Marissa and I have something in common,” she said, and smiled the old smile Will had not seen for months.

The smile calmed him a little and he desperately wanted to believe her but he could not think the intruder had been Amal. Shihab would surely never have arrived and left again without creating a scene. Ellie, however, displayed an endearing obstinacy. “I am going to believe it was Amal,” she said decidedly as she helped to tighten Sacramenta's girth, “and I refuse to be frightened. You know, Will, I have felt so sorry for
myself, since Kamil”—her face darkened and her voice dropped before rising again—“but we can fight back, can't we? Amal and his Old Man may be able to do what they like and maybe we can't guard against them as easily as we can guard against snakes but we can refuse to be turned into mice. Say we can, Will. Say it.”

“How can I say it when I don't feel it?” cried Will. “If I were to lose you, what would be left for me?” He couldn't help it. He had never felt so helpless, so in the grip of forces against which he had no weapons.

Ellie came over and took his face between her hands. She made him look up but he didn't want to for he could not get used to her new appearance. Without her hair she was a little girl again while he felt so old. Nevertheless, he did not move away. “William de Granville,” Ellie said, forcing him to meet her gaze, “you are a knight of England. Your king needs you. Hartslove needs you. The memories of all the people you have loved and still love need you. Old Nurse needs you. And”—she looked straight into his eyes—“I need you. Don't you see? You are doing just what the Old Man wants. He doesn't care about killing bodies. He wants to kill souls. This dread is his victory. Throw it off, Will. If you can, then I can, too. We can do it together. We have the horses and we have each other. If we can't be brave now, then we really are lost and I don't want to be lost, Will, and if I don't want to be lost, you can't be lost either.” As her words died away she held his face tighter, took a deep breath, and kissed him. It was a kiss filled with everything they had ever shared, filled with their present fears and their future hopes. It was not delivered as a reward or in
expectation of gratitude: Ellie gave it because it felt as natural as breathing.

Will never forgot that moment. It was not a moment of joy or of triumph or of reassurance. He did not realize at once what it really was. The kiss was not fleeting, nor was it passionate. It was firm, almost severe, and was full of something deeper and more durable than a sudden impulse. It seemed somehow at odds with Ellie's new, almost childish looks but he knew it could only have come from a heart that beat for the same things as did his own. It did not dispel his worries about either Ellie's feelings for him or their situation yet he no longer felt helpless. The kiss gave him a new kind of courage he had not felt before. He no longer felt alone.

Afterward, they did not speak but mounted quickly. Hosanna set the pace and the two horses sped on, side by side. Occasionally Will looked over at Ellie and saw her face set with the effort of keeping up. But he did not need her to look at him. Even as they galloped, though his fears were as sharp as ever, the crimson pall of dread began to lift from his shoulders. Hosanna felt strong underneath him and when the horse flicked back his ears to hear his master's words, Will found his heart glowing.

It did not glow for long, for almost at once the weather became their enemy. Struggling against gales strong as a slamming door, the horses were battered half to death. At night they shivered and more than once even Ellie's new hopefulness was not enough to keep them cheerful. Sometimes Will imagined Amal already at Speyer and Kamil's knife already lodged between Richard's ribs. Sometimes he could already
hear men muttering Kamil's name and his own with loathing. Then he depended on Ellie's encouragement and Hosanna's keenness as never before. On many icy dawns, humans and horses would gather together, leaning on each other to pool their collective strength.

Then the weather changed again. Now they traveled through countryside turned eerily magical by a winter sun sparkling with an edge unknown in England. The snow was pristine and the trees star-studded with frost. The vista was so bright that it stung Will's and Ellie's eyes. Life was difficult for the horses as the snow balled in their feet. Will endlessly had to climb on and off to dig it out. At first they preferred this to the slush, but as the days dragged on, the brittle otherworldliness of it all sickened them and they longed for something duller and less piercing. As the clouds once again began to gather they at last heard news of the silver horse. Seeking hospitality from a farmstead, they learned that she had passed through two days before. Will began to panic again. They must go faster. It would be worse to be nearly there and still to fail. He asked more of the horses, hardening his heart as Ellie and Sacramenta visibly drooped. When they finally reached the Rhine and found another barge for the last lap, they all collapsed onto it with gratitude.

This river journey, however, was far from peaceful. The bargeman asked questions all the time and Will had to make up increasingly evasive answers. Indeed, the bargeman's questions were so pointed that Will and Ellie feared that he was another of the Old Man's spies. Once this thought had taken hold, they could stay on
the barge no longer, and early one morning they slipped overboard and were away.

It was lucky they did, for through the dawn mist the following day, Ellie saw Shihab's tail, unmistakable as it swung away through trees in the distance. Ellie called out to Will, who had been conscious of nothing, his face dead with the monotony of the pace. He stood up in his stirrups and came back to life, whooping, hoping that the mare would hear and slow down. But a brisk breeze blew his words back to him and though they hurried on, they did not catch her. In the next clearing, however, in front of a rough forge, they found a farrier, his arms folded and his head full of gruff complaints. Yes, he had seen a silver horse and the rider had not stopped even though the animal had lost a shoe. He felt insulted when Will did not hide his joy at this news. “That animal'll be hopping lame soon enough,” the farrier said sourly.

“Poor Shihab!” Ellie whispered, but she could not condemn Will's glee.

They pressed on and on but, much to Will's frustration, never caught sight of Shihab again. Soon Will stopped asking for he reckoned they must have fewer than a hundred miles to go. “If we go as fast as the horses can carry us, we can get to Speyer in under two days,” he said to Ellie. “We will have to push them very hard but it will just be for that short time. When we get there, they can easily recover.” He found that he himself could not rest at all. All the time he saw Amal raising the dagger for the fatal thrust. Even the slightest delay was unthinkable.

About three hours after dawn on the last day of
January, they at last passed through the gate of the town. Neither Will nor Ellie had any strength left to cheer and while Hosanna was still sound, Sacramenta was limping badly as they ground to a halt in the shadow of the great cathedral. Bone-tired, the horses' hooves dragged. Will slumped off, his ears still reverberating from the endless galloping beat and his muscles throbbing. But even as his body tried to readjust, his mind was asking why their haphazard arrival had been completely uncontested. The town seemed sleepy, and not just with the sleep of a winter's night. Where were the soldiers, the retainers, the wagons and horses, and all the great gaggle of imperial hangers-on who should have been jostling for space in the streets? Where were the men from England and from the Angevin lands who had made the journey to see Richard? Where was Queen Eleanor, who must surely be here by now? Big as the cathedral was, they could surely not all be living inside it? Will gazed about him, uncomprehending. Any moment now, the place would come alive. It would. It must.

But it did not. Nobody appeared until a group of women emerged from a small door. Their heads were covered and they walked with that special gliding movement that marked them out from field-plodding peasants. Will stared at them. Nuns. He shook his head. He didn't want to see nuns. Maybe he had made a terrible mistake and this wasn't Speyer after all.

The women stared back disapprovingly from under their veils. They too were expecting visitors but of quite a different nature. They instinctively moved to the other side of the road and would have passed by swiftly
and in silence if Ellie had not addressed them directly. When the girl called out, the nun at the head of the small procession jumped, pretending that she had been too cocooned in prayer to notice the dirty travelers for she did not like to be thought lacking in Christian charity. But she need not have worried. Ellie was too tired to feel anything other than relief when she spoke French and was understood. “We are seeking King Richard of England.” Ellie was suddenly very conscious that she looked like a gypsy. She could not imagine what these women made of her hair or her shaking legs. “We must see him. Where is he?”

The nun was taken aback. She had been expecting demands for food or money. Such a question could be answered easily and at once. “Why, he's not here,” she said. “All the imperial court has moved up the river and the prisoner king with it.”

Will fell to his knees. “But he was to be here!” His voice was a wail. “He was to be here.”

A young nun standing behind her superior and wanting her breakfast, shrugged and began to walk on, pushing her sisters before her. “Come on, Petronilla,” she urged. “You have answered their question.”

“Just wait, Hersende,” said the older woman, clicking her tongue. “Our breakfast will not run away.” She turned back to Ellie, a little more expansive now, thinking to teach the greedy nun a lesson. “King Richard
was
here,” she said, “but there was trouble—squabbling—and the emperor decided to reconvene the court in Mainz. It was the English king's men who wanted this,” she added, sensing that Will was about to say something unflattering about the emperor, which she did not wish
to hear. However, Will could think of only one thing. “But now we must carry on,” he cried, “and our horses are so tired.”

“Not only tired, but lame,” Hersende observed tartly, looking at Sacramenta.

Ellie began to sink. Her blood felt thick and her skin raw, as if she had been turned inside out. Her eyes rolled back. Now Petronilla abandoned all her reserve. She could not let a girl, even a filthy one, collapse into the gutter. “So many people wanting to get to King Richard,” she observed as she caught Ellie in her arms. “It's said that Queen Eleanor has even sent for the pope. Certainly, he would not be the strangest person who has passed by.” Petronilla was surprised to find Ellie jerk up.

“Has a man on a silver horse been through?” Her green eyes were now huge black holes. “You must tell us.”

Alarmed at the intensity of the question, Petronilla was more careful with her reply. “Well, the men we have seen have been mostly knights and bishops,” she said brightly. “The church always sends its sons onto the road.”

Will lost his temper. “She asked if you have seen a man riding alone on a silver horse. It has a wall-eye. It is unmistakable. Now, please answer.” His words echoed around the square.

Petronilla hesitated, but Hersende, her mind on only bread and milk, responded immediately. “As a matter of fact, yes,” she said. “Only an hour ago—”

“That's enough,” said Petronilla sharply. Nuns were not supposed to admit to staring at strange men.