Read Online The King’s Arrow by Michael Cadnum - Free Book Online Page B

prince, “ordered the dogs slain and the pike shafts readied?”
    â€œI would be required to report as much to the king.”
    The prince laughed quietly. “Of course, I was speaking only to test you,” he said.
    â€œYou are cunning, my lord prince.”
    â€œDo you enjoy bloodshed, Roland?” asked the prince in the tone of someone considering a matter of philosophy.
    â€œIn past years I did very much, my lord, but no longer.”
    â€œWould you wish for a more peaceful season, dear Roland?”
    This was true enough—Roland would be glad when his life became serene, the way his father’s had been. His father had been the royal chandler, with responsibility for the king’s candles, but the job had a status beyond that of simply providing illumination for the long winter nights. Chandlers were generally reliable and respected men, attended by cheerful and efficient servants.
    His father had been full of praise for the ancestral home of Montfort, refuge of scholars and holy men, and how finely scented the beeswax of that place had been and how softly woven the wicks. His father could pass by the heads of a dozen men on pikes, gaping and eyeless, ignoring them because his heart was full of nostalgia for Candlemas as it had been celebrated in his boyhood.
    In Roland’s view, the English were lucky to learn Norman ways. Not long ago a goose girl who lived in a hole in the ground near the river, a pathetic hovel, accepted a quarter silver penny to lie with him. A quarter of a penny could buy a flock of geese, a goose girl, and a bushel basket for the eggs, but in his tenderness he had felt a generosity, and was just settling in with the lass when young Simon Foldre had stumbled across them.
    The young woman had all but screamed rape! and hurried off with his silver piece, and Roland had had to endure Simon Foldre’s challenge. Simon was not altogether a useless young man—he was half Norman, after all. And he was tall and well built—no easy opponent. He had a way of pronouncing the Norman words and vowels with superlative care, as though aware that at any moment he might be exposed as what he really was—a hare raised by cats.
    â€œI shall ride to London at dawn,” said Henry decisively, “stopping first in Winchester to drink new ale.”
    With a stab of regret, Roland realized how much he wanted the prince where he could watch him.
    Roland gave a dutiful bow. “But the king will be better defended, my lord prince, with you by his side.”
    â€œNonsense,” said Prince Henry. He laughed. “I need to find out how it is that the rats of the Fleet River have grown big enough to eat dogs.”
    â€œYou heard about that butchery in Boulogne, my lord,” said Roland. “Lord Walter of Poix, our Norman friend, had to endow a very large window of stained glass to escape the Church’s censure.”
    â€œYou don’t like Walter, do you?” inquired the prince.
    Surely the prince had heard the minstrels sing, “The man ahorse and the man afoot met upon a bridge.” The rhyme was most offensive to Montfort pride—the Tirel hero of the song pissed on the unhorsed Montfort. That was what passed for humor in these troubled times—no sober Christian could smile at such a lyric. Roland was not sure, but he was willing to wager that he had heard the dwarf whistling the tune just last week.
    â€œI think we need not fear the lord of Poix,” said the prince. “His grandfather had a mastiff who could eat candles.”
    Sometimes Roland was convinced that the king and this brothers could not be spoken to as a man would speak to another, rational soul. Their minds were a mystery—even the best of them uttered nonsense. “Candles, my lord?”
    â€œHe ate twelve church tapers at one sitting, and my own uncle lost a silver shilling wager.”
    â€œThat certainly does burnish Walter’s name,”