The Fellowship of the Talisman Read online

  A muted scream brought Duncan to his feet. For a second he stood listening, and the scream came again, a fighting scream, of anger rather than of pain. Conrad surged up. “That’s Daniel,” he shouted.

  Duncan, followed by Conrad, charged down the hall. A man, stumbling erect from a sodden sleep, loomed in Duncan’s path. Duncan shoved him to one side. Conrad sprang past him, using his club to clear the way for them. Men who came in contact with the club howled in anger behind them. A dog ran yipping. Duncan freed his sword and whipped it from the scabbard, metal whispering as he drew the blade.

  Ahead of him, Conrad tugged at the door, forced it open, and the two of them plunged out into the courtyard. A large bonfire was burning and in its light they saw a group of men gathered about the shed in which the animals had been housed. But even as they came out into the yard the group was breaking up and fleeing.

  Daniel, squealing with rage, stood on his hind legs, striking out with his forefeet at the men in front of him. One man was stretched on the ground and another was crawling away. As Duncan and Conrad ran across the yard, the horse lashed out and caught another man in the face with an iron-shod hoof, bowling him over. A few feet from Daniel, a raging Tiny had another man by the throat and was shaking him savagely. The little burro was a flurry of flailing hoofs.

  At the sight of the two men racing across the courtyard, the few remaining in the group before the shed broke up and ran.

  Duncan strode forward to stand beside the horse. “It’s all right now,” he said. “We’re here.”

  Daniel snorted at him.

  “Let loose,” Conrad said to Tiny. “He’s dead.”

  The dog gave way, contemptuously, and licked his bloody muzzle. The man he had loosed had no throat. Two men stretched in front of Daniel did not move; both seemed dead. Another dragged himself across the courtyard with a broken back. Still others were limping, bent over, as they fled.

  Men were spewing out of the great hall door. Once they came out, they clustered into groups, stood, and stared. Pushing his way through them came the Reaver. He walked toward Duncan and Conrad.

  He blustered at them. “What is this?” he stormed. “I give you hospitality and here my men lie dead!”

  “They tried to steal our goods,” said Duncan. “Perhaps they had in mind, as well, to steal the animals. Our animals, as you can see, did not take kindly to it.”

  The Reaver pretended to be horrified. “This I can’t believe. My men would not stoop to such a shabby trick.”

  “Your men,” said Duncan, “are a shabby lot.”

  “This is most embarrassing,” the Reaver said. “I do not quarrel with guests.”

  “No need to quarrel,” said Duncan sharply. “Lower the bridge and we’ll leave. I insist on that.”

  Hoisting his club, Conrad stepped close to the Reaver. “You understand,” he said. “M’lord insists on it.”

  The Reaver made as if to leave, but Conrad grabbed him by the arm and spun him around. “The club is hungry,” he said. “It has not cracked a skull in months.”

  “The drawbridge,” Duncan said, far too gently.

  “All right,” the Reaver said. “All right.” He shouted to his men. “Let down the bridge so our guests can leave.”

  “The rest stand back,” said Conrad. “Way back. Give us room. Otherwise your skull is cracked.”

  “The rest of you stand back,” the Reaver yelled. “Do not interfere. Give them room. We want no trouble.”

  “If there is trouble,” Conrad told him, “you will be the first to get it.” He said to Duncan, “Get the saddle on Daniel, the packs on Beauty. I will handle this one.”

  The drawbridge already was beginning to come down. By the time its far end thumped beyond the moat, they were ready to move out.

  “I’ll hang on to the Reaver,” Conrad said, “till the bridge is crossed.”

  He jerked the Reaver along. The men in the courtyard stood well back. Tiny took the point.

  Once on the bridge, Duncan saw that the overcast sky had cleared. A near-full moon rode in the sky, and the stars were shining. There still were a few scudding clouds.

  At the end of the bridge they stopped. Conrad loosed his grip upon the Reaver.

  Duncan said to their erstwhile host, “As soon as you get back, pull up the bridge. Don’t even think of sending your men out after us. If you do, we’ll loose the horse and dog on them. They’re war animals, trained to fight, as you have seen. They’d cut your men to ribbons.”

  The Reaver said nothing. He clumped back across the bridge. Once back in the courtyard, he bellowed at his men. Wheel shrieked and chains clanked, wood moaned. The bridge began slowly moving up.

  “Let’s go,” said Duncan when it was halfway up.

  Tiny leading, they went down a hill, following a faint path.

  “Where do we go?” asked Conrad.

  “I don’t know,” said Duncan. “Just away from here.”

  Ahead of them Tiny growled a warning. A man was standing in the path.

  Duncan walked forward to where Tiny stood. Together the two walked toward the man. The man spoke in a quavery voice, “No need to fear, sir. It’s only Old Cedric, the bee master.”

  “What are you doing here?” asked Duncan.

  “I came to guide you, sir. Besides, I bring you food.”

  He reached down and lifted a sack that had been standing, unnoticed, at his feet.

  “A flitch of bacon,” he said, “a ham, a cheese, a loaf of bread, and some honey. Besides, I can show you the fastest and the farthest way. I’ve lived here all my life. I know the country.”

  “Why should you want to help us? You are the Reaver’s man. He spoke of you. He said you saved the bees when the Harriers came.”

  “Not the Reaver’s man,” said the bee master. “I was here for years before he came. It was a good life, a good life for all of us—the master and his people. We were a peaceful folk. We had no chance when the Reaver came. We knew not how to fight. The Reaver and his hellions came two years ago, come Michaelmas, and …”

  “But you stayed with the Reaver.”

  “Not stayed. Was spared. He spared me because I was the one who knew the bees. Few people know of bees, and the Reaver likes good honey.”

  “So I was right in my thinking,” Duncan said. “The Reaver and his men took the manor house, slaughtering the people who lived here.”

  “Aye,” said Cedric. “This poor country has fallen on hard times. First the Reaver and his like, then the Harriers.”

  “And you’ll show us the quickest way to get out of the Reaver’s reach?”

  “That I will. I know all the swiftest paths. Even in the dark. When I saw what was happening, I nipped into the kitchen to collect provisions, then went over the palisades and lay in wait for you.”

  “But the Reaver will know you did this. He’ll have vengeance on you.”

  Cedric shook his head. “I will not be missed. I’m always with the bees. I even spend the nights with them. I came in tonight because of the cold and rain. If I am missed, which I will not be, they’ll think I’m with the bees. And if you don’t mind, sir, it’ll be an honor to be of service to the man who faced the Reaver down.”

  “You do not like this Reaver.”

  “I loathe him. But what’s a man to do? A small stroke here and there. Like this. One does what he can.”

  Conrad took the sack from the old man’s hand. “I’ll carry this,” he said. “Later we can put it with Beauty’s pack.”

  “You think the Reaver and his men will follow?” Duncan asked.

  “I don’t know. Probably not, but one can’t be sure.”

  “You say you hate him. Why don’t you travel with us? Surely you do not want to stay with him.”

  “Not with him. Willingly I’d join you. But I cannot leave the bees.”

  “The bees?”

  “Sir, do you know anything of bees?”

  “Very little.”

  “They are,” said
Cedric, “the most amazing creatures. In one hive of them alone their numbers cannot be counted. But they need a human to help them. Each year there must be a strong queen to lay many eggs. One queen. One queen only, mind you, if the hive is to be kept up to strength. If there are more than one, the bees will swarm, part of them going elsewhere, cutting down the number in the hive. To keep them strong there must be a bee master who knows how to manage them. You go through the comb, you see, seeking out the extra queen cells and these you destroy. You might even destroy a queen who is growing old and see that a strong new queen is raised …”

  “Because of this, you’ll stay with the Reaver?”

  The old man drew himself erect. “I love my bees,” he said. “They need me.”

  Conrad growled. “A pox on bees. We’ll die here, talking of your bees.”

  “I talk too much of bees,” the old man said. “Follow me. Keep close upon my heels.”

  He flitted like a ghost ahead of them. At times he jogged, at other times he ran, then again he’d go cautiously and slowly, feeling out his way.

  They went down into a little valley, climbed a ridge, plunged down into another larger valley, left it to climb yet another ridge. Above them the stars wheeled slowly in the sky and the moon inclined to the west. The chill wind still blew out of the north, but there was no rain.

  Duncan was tired. With no sleep, his body cried out against the pace old Cedric set. Occasionally he stumbled. Conrad said to him, “Get up on the horse,” but Duncan shook his head. “Daniel’s tired as well,” he said.

  His mind detached itself from his feet. His feet kept on, moving him ahead, through the darkness, the pale moonlight, the great surge of forest, the loom of hills, the gash of valleys. His mind went otherwhere. It went back to the day this had all begun.

  2

  Duncan’s first warning that he had been selected for the mission came when he tramped down the winding, baronial staircase and went across the foyer, heading for the library, where Wells had said his father would be waiting for him with His Grace.

  It was not unusual for his father to want to see him, Duncan told himself. He was accustomed to being summoned, but what business could have brought the archbishop to the castle? His Grace was an elderly man, portly from good eating and not enough to do. He seldom ventured from the abbey. It would take something of more than usual importance to bring him here on his elderly gray mule, which was slow, but soft of foot, making travel easier for a man who disliked activity.

  Duncan came into the library with its floor-to-ceiling book-rolls, its stained-glass window, the stag’s head mounted above the flaming fireplace.

  His father and the archbishop were sitting in chairs half facing the fire, and when he came into the room both of them rose to greet him, the archbishop puffing with the effort of raising himself from the chair.

  “Duncan,” said his father, “we have a visitor you should remember.”

  “Your Grace,” said Duncan, hurrying forward to receive the blessing. “It is good to see you once again. It has been months.”

  He went down on a knee and once the blessing had been done, the archbishop reached down a symbolic hand to lift him to his feet.

  “He should remember me,” the archbishop told Duncan’s father. “I had him in quite often to reason gently with him. It seems it was quite a job for the good fathers to pound some simple Latin and indifferent Greek and a number of other things into his reluctant skull.”

  “But, Your Grace,” said Duncan, “it was all so dull. What does the parsing of a Latin verb …”

  “Spoken like a gentleman,” said His Grace. “When they come to the abbey and face the Latin that is always their complaint. But you, despite some backsliding now and then, did better than most.”

  “The lad’s all right,” growled Duncan’s father. “I, myself, have but little Latin. Your people at the abbey put too much weight on it.”

  “That may be so,” the archbishop conceded, “but it’s the one thing we can do. We cannot teach the riding of a horse or the handling of a sword or the cozening of maidens.”

  “Let’s forsake the banter and sit down,” said Duncan’s father. “We have matters to discuss.” He said to Duncan, “Pay close attention, son. This has to do with you.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Duncan, sitting down.

  The archbishop glanced at Duncan’s father. “Shall I tell him, Douglas?”

  “Yes,” Duncan’s father said. “You know more of it than I do. And you can tell it better. You have the words for it.”

  The archbishop leaned back in his chair, laced pudgy fingers across a pudgy paunch. “Two years or more ago,” he said to Duncan, “your father brought me a manuscript that he had found while sorting out the family papers.”

  “It was a job,” said Duncan’s father, “that should have been done centuries ago. Papers and records all shuffled together, without rhyme or reason. Old letters, old records, old grants, old deeds, ancient instruments, all shoved into a variety of boxes. The job’s not entirely done as yet. I work on it occasionally. It’s difficult, at times, to make sense of what I find.”

  “He brought me the manuscript,” said the archbishop, “because it was written in an unfamiliar language. A language he had never seen and that few others ever have.”

  “It turned out to be Aramaic,” said Duncan’s father. “The tongue, I am told, in which Jesus spoke.”

  Duncan looked from one to the other of them. What was going on? he asked himself. What was this all about? What did it have to do with him?

  “You’re wondering,” said the archbishop, “what this may have to do with you.”

  “Yes, I am,” said Duncan.

  “We’ll get to it in time.”

  “I’m afraid you will,” said Duncan.

  “Our good fathers had a terrible time with the manuscript,” the archbishop said. “There are only two of them who have any acquaintance with the language. One of them can manage to spell it out, the other may have some real knowledge of it. But I suspect not as much as he might wish that I should think. The trouble is, of course, that we cannot decide if the manuscript is a true account. It could be a hoax.

  “It purports to be a journal that gives an account of the ministry of Jesus. Not necessarily day to day. There are portions of it in which daily entries are made. Then a few days may elapse, but when the journal takes up again the entry of that date will cover all that has happened since the last entry had been made. It reads as if the diarist was someone who lived at the time and witnessed what he wrote—as if he might have been a man not necessarily in the company of Jesus, but who somehow tagged along. A sort of hanger-on, perhaps. There is not the barest hint of who he might have been. He does not tell us who he is and there are no clues to his identity.”

  The archbishop ended speaking and stared owlishly at Duncan. “You realize, of course,” he said, “if the document is true, what this would mean?”

  “Why, yes, of course,” Duncan answered. “It would give us a detailed, day-by-day account of the ministry of Our Lord.”

  “It would do more than that, my son,” his father said. “It would give us the first eyewitness account of Him. It would provide the proof that there really was a man named Jesus.”

  “But, I don’t—I can’t …”

  “What your father says is true,” the archbishop said. “Aside from these few pages of manuscript we have, there is nothing that could be used to prove the historicity of Jesus. There do exist a few bits of writing that could be grasped at to prove there was such a man, but they are all suspect. Either outright hoaxes and forgeries or interpolations, perhaps performed by scriptorium monks who should have had better sense, who allowed devotion to run ahead of honesty. We of the faith do not need the proof; Holy Church does not doubt His existence for a moment, but our belief is based on faith, not on anything like proof. It is a thing we do not talk about. We are faced with so many infidels and pagans that it would be unwise to talk about it. W
e ourselves do not need such proof, if proof it is, that lies in the manuscript, but Mother Church could use it to convince those who do not share our faith.”

  “It would end, as well,” Duncan’s father said, “some of the doubt and skepticism in the Church itself.”

  “But it might be a hoax, you say.”

  “It could be,” the archbishop said. “We’re inclined to think it’s not. But Father Jonathan, our man at the abbey, does not have the expertise to rule it out. What we need is a scholar who knows his Aramaic, who has spent years in the study of the language, the changes that have come about in it, and when they came about. It is a language that over the fifteen hundred years it was in use had many dialectical forms. A modern dialect of it is spoken still in some small corners of the eastern world, but the modern form differs greatly from that used in the time of Jesus, and even the form that Jesus used could have been considerably different than the dialect that was used a hundred miles away.”

  “I’m excited, of course,” said Duncan, “and impressed. Excited that from this house could have come something of such significance. But I don’t understand you. You said that I …”

  “There is only one man in the world,” the archbishop said, “who would have any chance of knowing if the manuscript were authentic. That man lives at Oxenford.”

  “Oxenford? You mean in the south?”

  “That’s right. He lives in that small community of scholars that in the last century or so …”

  “Between here and Oxenford,” Duncan’s father said, “lies the Desolated Land.”

  “It is our thought,” said the archbishop, “that a small band of brave and devoted men might be able to slip through. We had talked, your father and I, of sending the manuscript by sea, but these coasts are so beset by pirates that an honest vessel scarcely dares to leave its anchorage.”

  “How small a band?”

  “As small as possible,” Duncan’s father said. “We can’t send out a regiment of men-at-arms to go crashing through almost half of Britain. Such a force would call too much attention to itself. A small band that could move silently and unobtrusively would have a better chance. The bad part is, of course, that such a band would have to go straight across the Desolated Land. There is no way to go around it. From all accounts, it cuts a broad swath across the entire country. The expedition would be much easier if we had some idea of where the Harriers might be, but from the reports we get, they seem to be everywhere throughout the north. In recent weeks, however, from the more recent news that we have had, it seems that they may be moving in a northeasterly direction.”