Grave Goods Read Free

to ransom her son with it.”
    “What in hell can she possibly … oh, all
right.
Fulk, take the others away, all except that one and the lady. And send up that pill-pissing butcher who calls himself a doctor.”
    Fulk signaled to two of his men, who began kicking the prisoners to their feet. “Do you want me to hang them, my lord?”
    “No, Fulk, I don’t,” Henry told him wearily. “I want to enlist them. I want them to teach my bloody archers a thing or two, and they can’t do that with their necks stretched.”
    As the prisoners were taken away, the king turned to Rowley and gestured to an unusually long bow propped in a corner. “How do they do it? I tried and I could hardly bend that damn thing, but those wizened little bastards pull it back as easily as a pump handle.”
    “It’s a skill we’ve got to learn, no doubt about that,” Rowley said. He set about taking off his chausses.
    “And the penetration … one flight just missed me and hit a tree. I pulled it out later. Nine inches in, it was. I swear, nine inches into solid oak. If it hadn’t been for the wind …”
    “That’s what saved me; the wind swerved mine and took off most of its force.” The bishop looked morosely at the calf of his leg. “Still went in, though, and,
damnation,
it’s taken a couple of links in with it.”
    “That’ll need cauterizing, then,” the king said, cheering up. “And now, Owain, my boy, what are those two yammering about?”
    The interpreter, an elderly border Welshman with the gift ofmaking himself near invisible, had been attending to the conversation of mother and son in the tent entrance, most of it pursued by the woman. “Interesting, my lord. Urging him to tell you about Arthur, so she is. Something about Glastonbury and a vision …”
    “Arthur?” The king, who’d collapsed onto a stool, sat up.
    “What I can make of it, my lord—the son’s not a soldier by rights—he was with the holy men at Glastonbury a time ago, and she wants him to tell you something that happened, a vision, a burial, I can’t make it out at all… .”
    “Glastonbury? He can speak English?”
    “So it would seem, my lord, but he’s reluctant… .”
    Henry turned to a crouching page. “Fetch a block. And fetch Fulk back. Tell him to bring an ax.”
    Apart from the sobbing pleas of the mother to her son, the tent fell quiet. Every now and then the wind from outside sent the burning logs of the brazier into a flare so that the shadows of the men who sat round it sharpened and then faded again.
    The entry of the doctor and his assistant added the smell of drying blood—their hands and apron were covered in it—to that of bruised grass, sweat, and steel.
    “How’s De Boeuf?” the king asked.
    “I have hopes of him, my lord. Thirty stitches but, yes, I have hopes.”
    “And Sir Gerard?”
    The doctor shook his head. “I’m afraid not, my lord.”
    “Shit,” the king said. When the doctor took his arm to examine it, he jerked it away. “Attend to my lord bishop first. His leg’ll need cauterizing.”
    “So will that arm, my lord. The cut’s gone deep.” The doctor picked up the brazier’s poker and stuck it into the glowing ash.
    Accompanied by the page, who was weighed down with an ax,Fulk came in, cradling three feet of tree trunk like a baby. He set it down, relieved the page of the ax, and, at a nod from his king, dragged the prisoner to the block, shook him so that he folded to his knees in front of it, and showed him the ax. The blade gleamed in the firelight.
    “Take the woman out,” Henry said. “No, first get this fellow’s name.”
    “Rhys,” the interpreter said.
    “Now then, Rhys …” He had to wait until the page, with some difficulty, hauled the screaming Welshwoman out of the tent. “Tell me about Arthur.”
    The prisoner’s eyes kept blinking in terror. He was a tall, lanky man, probably in his thirties, with unfortunate teeth and straggling fair hair. His voice, however, was