“May I ask why I’m doing this? Alaric said.
“You may not. Follow me.”
Gerwin continued along the same path. They crossed more rugged rises, where only clumps of spiky grass grew. Alaric saw that someone else was now waiting for them — a mendicant. Like so many of those vagrant clerics tagging along with the army, hoping to offer salvation in return for succour, his gray sackcloth habit was bound with rope, his face gaunt, his skin yellowed. His hair and beard were unkempt.
“Despite appearances, this man is a true priest,” Gerwin said. “He will hear your confession.”
“My confession?”
Gerwin viewed him through lidded eyes. “It’s for the best, I assure you.”
Alaric couldn’t reply. For the last minute he’d toyed with a frightening thought that his overlord had discovered his yearning for Countess Trelawna. Could the earl in his cold rage have decided to punish Alaric first, before seeking out the real offender?
“Make your shrift, Alaric,” Gerwin said.
Alaric contemplated bounding down the slope and trying to swim the estuary.
Impatiently, Gerwin planted a mailed hand on the squire’s head and forced him to his knees, before moving away a respectful distance. Alaric gave his confession, though he hadn’t had time to plumb his conscience. Afterwards, Gerwin paid the priest a couple of coins. The priest shuffled away into the darkness. Gerwin now opened his sack. Alaric watched, transfixed, wondering what he would do if a dagger was produced. Instead it was an item of clothing: a scarlet cape.
He gazed at it, baffled — and felt a sudden surge of excitement.
“Up,” Gerwin said. Alaric stood with shaking legs. Gerwin placed the cape over his shoulders and fastened it with a hook. “Follow me,” he said again.
Alaric followed quickly.
“Ideally you’d be wearing black hose,” Gerwin said. “To show you came from dust and that that’s where you’ll be returning. But we haven’t got any. Besides, I reckon your underwear is just about grubby enough.”
They splashed through a trickling stream, and approached a gutted ruin, firelight flickering from its arched windows. When they entered, Alaric saw that it was a derelict chapel, but that torches had been set in its sconces and that the narrow nave had been cleared of vegetation. Several of Earl Lucan’s most senior knights were ranged down either wall — Turold, Wulfstan, Hubert, Cadelaine and Brione — they all wore their clean cloaks and surcoats. They were helmeted and stood with heads inclined. Each man clasped his longsword in front of him, its point to the earth. There was no movement; it was as if they stood in prayer. From over their shoulders, firelight played on the decayed faces of ancient saints.
Earl Lucan stood beneath a weathered stone cross. He was garbed in black, though he’d removed the wolf-cloak and drawn back his coif. His expression was stern. Alongside him on a slab were several accoutrements; he placed a hand on them as Alaric approached.
“Kneel,” Lucan said, when the lad was directly in front of him.
Alaric did as he was bidden, his entire body shivering.
“This scarlet cloak is a memorial to the robe worn by Christ on the road to Golgotha,” Lucan said. “As such, it is a symbol of the humility you must always exercise.”
Alaric didn’t reply. His head was bowed, his hands joined.
“Take these.”
Alaric glanced up. Lucan was offering him a pair of leather shoes with a gilded spur attached to each heel. The lad’s mouth was dry as wood as he took them.
“Just as gold is the most coveted metal, so gold must be worn on your foot to take away all covetousness from your heart,” Lucan said.
Alaric nodded and shod himself.
Gerwin stepped up and handed Alaric’s sword to Lucan. It was still in its scabbard, its belt wrapped around it. In turn, Lucan presented it to Alaric.
“This is your sword.” He indicated with a nod that Alaric should strap it to his waist. “Just as it has two cutting-edges, so you must keep and maintain right, reason and justice on all sides. Never use it to betray the Christian faith or the right of the Holy Church.”
Shudders passed through Alaric’s body. The hopes and dreams he’d harboured for so many years still seemed distant, even though he was in the midst of their realisation. He couldn’t believe this was actually happening.
Lucan leaned forward and planted his lips on the boy’s brow. “Accept this kiss in confirmation of the order I am bestowing on you. As a sign of peace and love and loyalty, which you must always mete wherever you may rightly do so. Also, accept this.”
The slap to Alaric’s left cheek was hard, delivered with a flat hand but stinging force.
“This blow signifies that you must always — for the rest of your days — remember the order of knighthood, which you have now received. And that you must yourself strike blows in that cause, but only those which be valorous and just.” Lucan stepped backward. For the first time in several days, his creased brow smoothed and his mouth cracked into that fatherly half-smile of which his squire had once been so fond. “Welcome to our brotherhood,” he said. “Rise, Sir Alaric.”
Alaric rose in a daze, and the next thing he knew hands were clapping his shoulders and the great knights of the household were congratulating him. When they led him outside, his horse had been saddled and brought to the edge of the defile, so he could ride back to the encampment. On arrival there, the rest of the earl’s retinue were eagerly awaiting him.
There were cheers as he entered their midst. A fire was blazing and several water-fowl were turning on spits. The earl had also procured several kegs of ale, which the squires joyously broke open. Turold strummed on his lute, and over the next few hours there was much singing. The troops crowding tiredly along the nearby road gazed at them, faces stark and wondering in the firelight.
“Now I suppose we should show deference to you,” Malvolio said, burping in Alaric’s face.
“They say I’m a knight, but I don’t feel like one,” Alaric replied. “I haven’t got my own raiment. Or a seal.”
“Lucan will provide those when the war’s over,” Wulfstan counselled. “You’ll also draw a wage — a proper one, not a few measly coppers to see you by. That should be a new experience. Until you’re ready to go off on the quest, of course.”
The quest? Alaric eyes widened as he pondered these new possibilities.
“What does it matter?” Malvolio laughed. “We’re off to war, so we’re all going to die anyway, whether we have commoner blood or knightly blood.”
“It matters, you young oaf,” Wulfstan said, cuffing his ear, “because knights at least find honourable graves. At the end of the day, that’s all it comes down to — ensuring the hole in the ground where they put you is something to be venerated, not pissed on.”
The water-fowl were consumed with gusto, and then fish were produced, gutted and prodded into the flames on spears. Ale sloshed freely as the household celebrated long into the evening.
Lucan observed these events with fondness but no little sense of melancholy. Idealism was the preserve of inexperience. At length, he slid away from the cheery throng, throwing the wolfskin around his shoulders and walking downhill until he stood by the estuary edge, from where he gazed across the sluggish waters.
Trelawna was all he’d had.
Quite literally, she had been the only pleasant thing to ever happen to him.
He had vague, tender memories of his mother, but how terribly that all ended. He valued his closeness to his brother, but how could that compare? When he’d first been inducted into the Round Table it was a great moment, but he’d received that honour because in those grim, turbulent years after the death of Uther Pendragon, he’d happened to side with Arthur, the one destined to win, and the one whose favour he would earn through nothing more than his ferocity in battle. Would God regard that as a good thing? By contrast, Trelawna had brought genuine light into his world, not to mention other virtues — patience, warmth, gentleness, and of course that mystical fairy beauty of hers — all of which had mellowed him in a way the self-important grandeur of Camelot never could. Camelot was a worthy institution, dedicated to the cause of right, but it was built on conquest. Trelawna had embodied something else. She had come to Britain as a victim, as a prisoner, as a frightened rabbit whose innocence and charm had sweetened the dark wolf who’d been her captor.