CHAPTER 42 #2
There was a crash as a knight destroyed a door.
He stamped out again, and Avelyn didn’t understand what he was saying, but it was clearly swearing.
The man stood for a second, breathing hard.
His hair was part shaved, cut short to fit under his helmet, dark but greying.
There was frost on his armour. It looked heavy, and he moved slowly with it, but easily.
The clothes under it were dirty. He looked like he had been riding for days.
The hem of a blue cloak lined with heavy white fur brushed the ground, muddy to three or four inches.
He left far deeper prints in the snow than Avelyn and Jericho had.
Prints.
It wasn’t snowing enough to have covered their own yet.
Avelyn saw the knight’s gaze follow them, then travel upward until their eyes met.
The sword he drew from its sheath on his back was almost as tall as he was.
For an excruciating second, Avelyn had no idea what to do—God knew someone like that would break him in half without trying—and then like a choking engine, common sense kicked in, stuttering but functioning.
“Stop!” Avelyn yelled in Latin. “We’re priests! We were sent from Rome!”
A pause. “Priests?” Latin too.
He felt his shoulders sink with relief. You could know that Latin had been an international language among educated people a thousand years ago when these knights came to England, but actually shouting it at someone about to cut you in two was something else.
Jericho put one hand on his back, the way you encouraged prize horses. Good: steady.
“There are miracles here,” Avelyn said doggedly. “We were sent to verify them. My name is Avelyn, this is Jericho. And—you?”
“Guillaume Villiers. What is this place?”
“The people here call it Caer Halen. The Salt Fortress. It . . . I think it was made with magic,” he said, because there was no use trying to explain salt light to an angry giant who couldn’t see it.
He would, if he was lucky, be here all week.
If he wasn’t, he would be here for about four and a half seconds.
“You’re telling me,” Guillaume said with feeling. “We can’t get out. This is the third time we’ve circled back to this castle.”
Avelyn stared at him, feeling like he was standing six feet to the left of himself. He was speaking in Latin to a knight, a very real-seeming knight, who understood. “How long have you been here?”
“God’s teeth, I don’t know. The sun never rises.” Guillaume eyed them doubtfully. “You don’t look like priests.”
“Normal clothes corrode here. They turn to salt.” Avelyn nodded at the rivets on the man’s armour, salt-fogged. “That will only get worse. You should try to find something that was made here. It’s . . .” He didn’t know the Latin for immune. “Stronger.”
The man studied him, raking over his hair, still black, and his unnerving, salt-bright skin. “What are you? Are you Irish?”
“Yes, travelling from Glendalough,” said Avelyn, naming the oldest monastery he could think of because that seemed a lot better than admitting to being from here. His English history wasn’t very good, but he didn’t think anyone born in England had been a natural friend to French knights.
The knight nodded once, as if that was reassuring. “Good. Come and preach to my men. They’re in need of a holy man.” There was a sharpness to him that said: now we’ll see if you’re a real fucking priest.
“My pleasure,” Avelyn said carefully.
“What, you don’t talk?” the knight snapped at Jericho.
Jericho said something in French with a graceful dip of his head, and the knight laughed with a mix of surprise and pleasure.
“Very good. Well, come on, both of you.”
“What did you say?” Avelyn whispered.
“I said I didn’t want to speak out of turn before a lord so great,” Jericho whispered back.
Avelyn swallowed. Knights, real knights, the kind England hadn’t seen for a thousand years, trapped here. Just like they were. “Jericho, are they dreams, or have they been here for a thousand years and they don’t know?”
“Does it matter?” Jericho said, watching them.
He was right. They were dangerous, whichever it was.
Some of them had pulled their helmets off.
Their heads were half shaved, the same as Guillaume’s, and they were all dirty and gaunt, stubble shadowing their faces, fingernails traced in black.
Hard blank eyes followed Avelyn and Jericho as they crossed the courtyard.
They were teetering right on edge of eviscerating somebody for no reason except they were tired and angry.
“God, what do we say to them?” Avelyn asked, helplessness blooming through his whole mind. What would they do, if they didn’t like what he said?
Jericho pulled his sleeve to make him come close. “Don’t overthink it. It’s just about making them believe they’re good and brave and full of chivalry.”
“Do you believe that enough?” Avelyn asked, just as quiet. He had made that joke about the Devil, but the reality of thirty violent men was different. “Because I don’t.”
“Boys! I’ve found some priests. They’re going to talk to you,” Guillaume said shortly, having rounded them up.
“See the good in them,” Jericho whispered. “Make them see it too. Come on, look at them. They’re just children.”
As the blank gazes clamped onto his, Avelyn saw with some dismay that Jericho was right. The knights were mainly younger than he was; eighteen, nineteen. Guillaume was only thirty or so.
Barely older than Avelyn’s students.
“Good morning,” he said carefully. He fell into the easy precision he had cultivated for years for the radio.
“You are tired, so I won’t talk long. I know this is a strange land.
This fortress is called Caer Halen, the Salt Castle.
Its lord is the god of this place, who the people here say sleeps deep below. ”
There were interested murmurs. Not usual sermon material. Priests didn’t generally go around admitting there was more than just the one god.
“This fen is haunted, and sometimes you will see demons here, and nightmares. But you are men of faith. God protects and keeps you, even when the sun does not rise. Once there was a young knight at Arthur’s court, just like all of you: born to a great house, and hopeful of honour.
But when the King said, Tell me a story, sir, he could not: he hadn’t done anything yet, he had faced no hardship, nor contest . . . nor devils on the fen.”
Some smiles.
“So when a monstrous knight rode into the court on his horse and challenged the King to a duel, Gawain said, ‘Let me.’ The strange knight told him to land a blow, and that in return, he’d have to take the same.
Gawain killed him; he cut his head off. But then the knight picked up the head, and the head said, ‘You gave your word: find me at the Green Chapel on New Year’s morning a year hence. ’ I think you all know that story.”
There were nods. Avelyn was telling the Hreod version, but he knew it was probably one of a dozen similar stories floating around half of Europe.
There was always a mad challenge and a knight who couldn’t die, and there was always a young man who, at least on first inspection, seemed like a total idiot.
Jericho met his eyes and nodded slightly. Keep going.
“This is a strange story, because everyone asks, why in God’s name would Gawain go off just to be killed?
But you all know. You all know that giving your word is sacred.
You all know what honour is, and what it means.
You all know why he went. And you all know that creatures like that monstrous knight, and places like this, are not written into the world for your downfall.
They are only God’s way of allowing you to test your honour and your valour.
Lesser knights would stumble and turn away.
Great knights know that no curse will touch them while they carry their faith and their virtue strong.
So do not fear this fog, nor this castle.
There is nothing here to harm you. Only stories for you to tell, when you return to the court. ”
More smiles now. When he said the Lord’s Prayer, they all joined in, and after Amen, he thought maybe they had changed a tiny fraction.
They looked . . . brighter. Less tattered, less dead behind the eyes.
A couple of them had a tiny rough-and-tumble fight when one mimed cutting the other’s head off with an axe.
Jericho was talking to a few of the closer knights, showing them something between his hands—a little salt owl, the tame ones that would come right up to you.
Incredibly, the knights weren’t murdering it, just stroking its sooty black chest with gauntletted fingertips, laughing when it hooted at them. It had an authoritative hoot.
Guillaume looked pleased. He smacked Avelyn’s shoulder too hard. “That’s good. You speak marvellous well.”
“Thank you,” said Avelyn, a little flat, holding his shoulder. He had never understood why so many Outside men liked to hurt each other and call it friendliness. Perhaps the idea was that if you were hurt every day then it wasn’t shocking when a real fight came.
“I like those stories about the old king,” Guillaume reflected. He was studying his knights. “You’re right. They make the men braver. You’ll come with us,” he added abruptly. “We need holy men.”
Avelyn shook his head. “We can’t, we need to get to our abbey.”
“We need to get off this cursed fen,” Guillaume said. “Then you can go to your abbey.”
“No,” Avelyn said slowly, “thank you.”
“How’s this. If you try to leave us,” Guillaume said, sounding quite pleasant, “I’ll break your pretty friend’s face and pass him round my men, who haven’t seen such a fine thing as he is for a long time, and then you won’t like him so much, will you?”
Around them and above, the salt light was flaring its aurora brightnesses again. Avelyn brushed a strand of it and watched the particles dance over his knuckles. For the first time, he wasn’t afraid at all. All he could think was that some people really walked into these things.