Blades of Valor (26 page)

She moved to the fire, then held the book out, as if to toss it in the flames. “If I destroy this, no man may ever threaten any of us with knowledge of secret powerful weapons.”

She hesitated. “Yet great power can be used for great good.”

Several more heartbeats. Then she turned.

“Thomas,” Queen Isabella then said softly, “I trust you with the book. You and the Immortals. Do with it what you need to advance the cause of all that is good in our kingdom. Destroy the false copy and protect the true one with all your mind, body, and soul.”

Fifty-Two

C
ontrary to what you might think,” Lord Hawkwood said, smiling at Thomas, “we are not ready to depart this abbey for Magnus.”

Thomas innocently raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Queen Isabella was satisfied that no more Druid leaders will arrive. Surely there remains nothing for us here.”

Father gazed at son.

They stood along the river in front of the abbey hall. Midmorning sun warmed their backs. They shared the feeling of peace given by a valley quiet of wind, quiet except for the distant lowing of cattle and occasional bleating of sheep.

Much had been accomplished. Day after day in the last two weeks, solitary travelers had arrived in the valley. Without fail, when captured, each had pleaded innocent to the charges of Druid conspiracy, but Waleran—as part of a desperate bargain to save his own life—had identified each as a Druid.

The full horror of the Druid secret circle had been exposed in those two weeks. Again and again, Queen Isabella had murmured in shock and surprise to face each new arriving Druid. Many she knew from their positions of power in society. Magistrates, sheriffs, priests, knights, and even earls and dukes.

All, now, were stripped of their worldly wealth and safely imprisoned. In one swoop, most of the Druids across the land had been taken.

Beyond that, Queen Isabella had pledged to begin action against remaining Druids who falsely posed as priests in the northern towns. Not only would the spread of their power be contained, but the base they had established in the last few years would be totally eliminated.

“Thomas,” Lord Hawkwood said, his stern tone betrayed by a playful smirk, “were you raised as an Immortal?”

Thomas grinned and nodded. He enjoyed knowing he could not—even in jest—fool the man in front of him.

Strange,
he thought,
to one day suddenly be forced to consider a stranger as a flesh-and-blood father. Especially a man accustomed to shrouding himself in mystery.

“Of course,” Thomas replied.

“Tell me, then, why is it that we are not ready to depart?”

Thomas looked beyond his father’s shoulder to the high walls of the abbey. At the tiny window that he had so often used for escape.

“We are not yet ready to depart because there does remain something for us here. Something we could not seek until Queen Isabella departed, for she should not know of it.”

“Mmm.” Lord Hawkwood was noncommittal.

Thomas grinned again in pleasure.
As before. When I was a boy. Exercises of the mind. Tests of logic.

“My mother would have enjoyed this.” The words came from his mouth even as they reached his thoughts. Thomas stopped, suddenly awkward. Always, deep inside, there was the ache that Sarah was gone.

“I grieve too,” Lord Hawkwood said after a lengthy silence. “Perhaps that is the highest tribute. To never be forgotten.”

For several minutes, each stood without speaking, in the companionable way that friends develop when comfort replaces the need to fill air with words.

Then a tiny roe deer moved from the nearby trees, hesitant at first, then confident that it was alone. Thomas clapped, and the deer scrambled sideways so quickly that it almost fell.

The effect was so comical that each snorted with laughter.

“Life,” Lord Hawkwood then said. “The past should not prevent us from looking ahead and drinking fully from life, from enjoying each moment as it arrives.”

Thomas let out a deep breath. “Yes.”

“And you look forward to drinking deeply from this cup with Katherine?”

Thomas coughed. “Our reason for delaying departure,” he said quickly. “You were testing my observations.”

Lord Hawkwood graciously did not pursue the subject of Thomas’s affections and instead nodded.

“There had to be more reason for the Druids to arrive here than a single book,” Thomas said. “For many of these men, it involved the risk of travel and the need to explain a lengthy absence. No, there must be more.”

“An interesting theory,” Lord Hawkwood said. “What might you guess?”

“Before I answer,” Thomas challenged, “I have my own question for you. Why did you allow Isabelle to be sent by the Druids? You could have warned me.”

Lord Hawkwood nodded solemnly, as though resigned to answer. “She was another test, my son. And a painful one, I know. I grieve that your heart was wounded, but I cannot deny you have allowed it to make you a better man. Such trials prove one’s character, Thomas. We all experience betrayal, heartache, and cruelty. Had you let the pain harden you and corrupt you, the Druids would have found it an easy task to beguile you. Had Isabelle’s beauty and promises of power tempted you more than the inheritance of which you had little proof, you would have been forever lost. But your faith in that which you could not see—faith in the future of which your mother taught you—preserved you. That faith grew through every hardship you faced. You stand before me now, a man with an unshakable faith in the true God and a commitment to do what is right rather than what is easy or profitable in the eyes of this world.”

His father’s pride and approval, coupled with his concise explanation, dissipated all the rage, confusion, and hurt Thomas had carried for so long.

Thomas cleared his throat, tightened with emotion, and moved to embrace his father. “Thank you. I am glad I have not disappointed you.”

Lord Hawkwood’s eyes reddened with unshed tears as he enveloped his son in his arms. “Never. You are a delight and a worthy heir. I hope my answer has satisfied you and that you can finally put to rest the memories of her treachery that haunt you.”

Thomas pulled away and nodded. “I believe now I can. It is quite amazing how the truth can unburden man. I scarcely even knew the weight of my own anger. But now that it is lifted, I feel …”

Thomas burst into laughter. “I feel joy. Freedom. A lightness I’d all but forgotten.”

Lord Hawkwood chuckled. “I’m glad to see you in such a jovial mood. Perhaps it will help you solve the last mystery before we depart for Magnus.”

“Ah, yes! What is it that remains for us here?” Thomas tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Perhaps a weapon?” He cocked a brow playfully.

“Indeed, a weapon would be most useful for those engaging in battle,” Lord Hawkwood conceded.

“And what,” Thomas asked, “is the single most powerful weapon available to men?”

“Not swords.”

Thomas nodded.

“Not arrows. Not catapults.”

Thomas nodded again.

“Not any physical means of destruction. For with the invention of each new weapon, there will be a countering defense.”

“So …” Thomas bantered.

“So, as you full well know, my son, our greatest weapon is knowledge. In warfare. In business. In the affairs of our own lives. In the defense of our faith. Without knowledge, we are nothing.”

Thomas pointed at the tiny window high on the abbey wall. “Were we to wager today on my odds of answering your question, I would have an unfair advantage. For last night, as I puzzled yet again what might draw so many Druids to this valley, I returned to the bedchamber of my childhood.”

Lord Hawkwood straightened with sudden interest. “You have not discovered …”

Thomas grinned mischievously. “Ho, ho! The student knows something the teacher does not. Surely you speak truth that knowledge is power!”

“Thomas, tell me!”

Thomas bent to scoop pebbles into his hand. One by one, he began to toss them into the tiny river.

“Thomas …” Lord Hawkwood warned.

“In the Holy Land,” Thomas said, “Sir William informed me that I held the final secrets to the battle. Yet”—Thomas pointed his forefinger skyward for emphasis—“I had no inkling of what he might mean.”

Thomas tossed two more pebbles into the water before continuing. “Sir William returned from exile in the Holy Land to spend time in Magnus with me,” he said. “Had the final secrets been there, he would have claimed it then. Moreover, had this mysterious object of great value been there, the Druids, who held Magnus for a generation, would have claimed it. Instead, since my departure from this abbey, both sides—Druid and Immortal—have been intent on learning the secret from me, a secret I did not know I possessed. I can only conclude that whatever it is, it has lain here at the abbey.”

Lord Hawkwood nodded.

“Indeed,” Thomas continued, “if you yourself did not know where at this abbey it is located, I must conclude that it had been sent to Sarah, along with the books she chose to hide in the cave.”

Again, Lord Hawkwood nodded.

“Whatever this secret was,” Thomas concluded, “Sarah hid it before her death. Whatever this secret was, the Druids were willing—no, desperate enough—to each undertake a journey from their separate parts of England.”

Thomas smiled. “Returning here to the abbey brought back to me some of my first memories of Sarah. How she would sit beside my bed and help me with my prayers or sing quiet songs of knights performing valiant deeds. And every night, her final words as I fell to sleep never differed.”

His focus shifted from the edge of the valley hills to his father’s face.

“Sarah would say, ‘Thomas, my love, sleep upon the winds of light.’ Each night, she would simply smile when I asked what that meant.”

Lord Hawkwood began to smile too.

“Yes,” Thomas said. “Your words to me at the gallows—now it seems so long ago—as a mysterious man, hidden beneath cloak and hood, were almost the same.”

“Bring the winds of light,” Lord Hawkwood’s voice was almost a whisper, “into this age of darkness.”

“Knowledge,” Thomas said. “The knowledge accumulated by generations of Immortals.”

“Yes, Thomas,” Lord Hawkwood said. “Merlin himself founded Magnus as a place to conduct our hidden warfare against the Druids. Yet he destined us for more. To search the world for what men knew. And to save that knowledge from the darkness of the destruction of barbarians.”

Lord Hawkwood’s voice became sad. “Time and again throughout history, gentle scholars have suffered loss to men of swords. Great libraries have been burned and looted, the records of civilizations and their accomplishments and advances wiped from the face of the earth. Few today know of the wondrous pyramids of the ancient Egyptians, of the math and astronomy of the ancient Greeks, of the healing medicines of—yes!—the Druids, of the aqueducts and roads of the Romans.”

In a flash, Thomas understood. “Immortals of each generation traveled the world and returned with written record of what they discovered … ”

“When Magnus fell,” Lord Hawkwood said, “it was more important than our lives to save the books that contained this knowledge. That is why so many of us died. Your mother and I, Sir William, and a few others escaped with the books of these centuries of knowledge, while the rest gave their lives. Why did each Druid willingly undertake a journey here when given the message by Waleran? Each assumed, rightly, there would be spoils easily divided. Books beyond value. One, two, perhaps more books for each. Books that can only be duplicated through years of transcribing.”

“Father,” Thomas said quickly, because now, seeing the worry on the older man’s face, he found no joy in prolonging his news, “the books you sent to this abbey are safe.”

“Yes?”

“Sleep upon the winds of light,” Thomas said. “What better place to hide something than in the open? My mattress was placed upon a great trunk, placed so that its edges hid the sight of the lid of the trunk. A passerby, or even a searcher, of course, would think it only a convenient pedestal to keep a sleeping child away from nighttime rats. But within that trunk … each night I truly did sleep upon the winds of light.”

Fifty-Three

O
n the grassy grounds of the Church of St. Katharine, Isabelle knelt beside a little girl. She winced as the child vomited and began crying anew. Some of the contents of the girl’s stomach splattered onto Isabelle’s hands.

“Mary, Mary,” Isabelle said in a soothing tone, “we’ll find a way to stop your stomach from hurting.”

Isabelle always kept buckets of water nearby. She dipped a clean cloth into the bucket, then wiped Mary’s face. Almost as an afterthought, Isabelle wiped her own hands.

Isabelle stood and faced Mary’s sister, who coughed several times. The older girl was about Rowan’s age, and inevitably, Isabelle’s thoughts wandered. She hadn’t seen the boy since he walked away from her at the carriage. Every night she prayed for his safety.

“Elizabeth,” Isabelle said, “don’t you worry either. Mary will be better by nightfall.”

Elizabeth wiped her nose. “I have no money to pay you. My sister and me, well, we find a way to live on the streets.”

“That’s of no matter,” Isabelle said.

Isabelle had a shrinking pile of coins, and when she came to the end of it, she’d worry about what to do next. In the meantime, it gave her satisfaction to know that the silver and gold that had been entrusted to her in pursuit of Thomas would be put to better use.

She found it ironic to be nearby a church named St. Katharine, knowing that the young woman of the same name had won the heart of Thomas. But she’d also realized that her own feelings for Thomas had been more about possessing yet another object in a life where she’d been given anything she wanted.

The Church of St. Katharine was also the most famous hospital in London, and the poor and hungry gathered at its doors every day, allowing Isabelle to offer help where she could.

In this case, it was obvious to Isabelle that little Mary had internal worms.