Thomas drew his cloak close about him—despite being high summer the night would be a chill one—and picked out a solid beech under which he could sit and lean against.
What was he going to do?
Thomas had few doubts that he would discover little at Asterladen, and without a local guide there would be no means by which he could find where Wynkyn de Worde had gone. If he tried to find it by luck, then Thomas knew he’d be spending the rest of his life wandering about the sprawling forests of Germany; Wynkyn had protected his secret well, and would surely have ensured that casual eyes would pass straight over any turnoff or pathway.
And after Asterladen?
England.
A thousand miles away, and a murderous war to negotiate to get there.
Thomas couldn’t resist a wry and somewhat humorless grin. Here he was with, to be sure, the few gold coins that Etienne Marcel had given him, but very little else. His robes of a friar would do little to protect him against felons or brigands, or the rampages of disbanded and unpaid soldiers. Meanwhile, he had unfriendly territory to traverse and, more importantly for the moment, an empty stomach to endure.
Whatever he’d said to the horse about acorns, the last thing Thomas felt like now was crawling about the earth like a mad Nebuchadnezzar looking for nuts.
He smiled again, more genuinely this time, watching his horse snuffling about happily beneath a tree a few paces away. Well, tomorrow he would set out early for Asterladen, beg a meal (would it be better if he hacked off a foot tonight in order to win more sympathy?), and then hope that some tired old peasant could wake up enough from his doze before a fire to recall something about an ill-tempered old friar who had once passed his way.
And then, Thomas suddenly, stunningly, realized that despite all his anxieties about what lay ahead, what he might encounter, he was actually a little happy. He hadn’t realized how much he had missed the roving life, living from hand to mouth, surviving the daily surprises that foreign territories were likely to throw at him, being alert and quick enough to swing about and stick a murderous bandit who’d leaped out from beneath a tree before the bandit had time to stick him.
Thomas slumped down a little further against the tree, wrapping himself more securely in his robe.
In the morning he would cut himself a stout stave from a young tree. That would afford him almost as much protection as a sword.
Happy, warm, and with something to keep him occupied when he woke in the morning, Thomas slipped into sleep.
HE WOKE deep into the night, wondering what had roused him. He heard the soft sounds of the horse, but did not think that that was what had woken him: the gelding was some way distant, searching the banks of a small creek for young grass.
If not the horse, then what?
Thomas was cold, and horribly stiff, and he found it difficult to move. He twisted his head about slowly, trying to spy out anything else unusual. At this distance from habitation it could be anything, from prowling cats to something far more sinister.
Night was an untamed landscape, and the abode of demons.
Thomas suddenly remembered the horror of the demon visitation the night spent in the Brenner Pass, and he jerked fully awake, scrambling into a sitting position and staring wildly about.
He heard the horse give a snort of startlement, and then shift as quickly as his hobble allowed.
Thomas got to his feet, cursing both his left leg, which had gone numb and would hardly hold him, and his stupidity in not having the foresight to cut himself a stave before he had gone to sleep.
He leaned against the trunk of the beech with one hand, rubbing and kneading at
his treacherous left leg with his other hand, and looked about.
There, the horse, standing rigid and wild-eyed, staring at a spot some thirty paces away. There stood a massive oak tree, and from the massive trunk of this oak emanated a silvery glow.
Imps? Fairies? Elves? Worse?
Thomas finally managed to get some feeling back into his leg, and he hobbled forward a few paces, looking for something he could use as a weapon.
The horse gave another sudden snort, and Thomas looked up again. A huge, razor-tusked boar had emerged from behind the oak and was walking stiff-legged, head down, toward Thomas.
It was glowing with a strange, ethereal light.
Thomas stared, his fear freezing him into immobility. Ordinary wild boars were the most dangerous creatures of the untamed landscape.
A demon-boar was infinitely more hazardous.
Thomas, the boar whispered, and it swung its head threateningly to and fro.
Thomas backed up until he was trapped by the trunk of the beech tree. Thomas.
Thomas’ hands groped about the trunk behind him, desperately hoping that he might find a loose branch … something … that he might use as a weapon. Thomas, you go to a bad place. Beware.
And then the apparition was gone, and Thomas was left shaking and sweating and wondering if the boar had been St. Michael or some demonic phantasm sent to confuse him.
He sat awake for many hours, until finally, in the cold pre-dawn, he fell into a deep slumber.
CHAPTER SIX
The Friday before the fifth Sunday after Trinity
In the fifty-first year of the reign of Edward III
(16th July 1378)
— I —
THOMAS WOKE with a start.
Something warm and damp was running over his face, and he flailed out with a hand, cursing.
His horse gave a snort of disgust, and backed away, and Thomas finally managed to unglue his eyes.
It had only been his gelding. Lonely perhaps, and wanting his human companion’s company.
Slowly Thomas got to his feet, apologizing to the horse with a few soft words.
What had happened last night?
He remembered waking, and seeing the ethereal boar.
What was it the boar had said… danger? Well, there was danger everywhere, and the boar, whatever or whoever it had been, had told him nothing he was not already aware of.
Thomas shook his head, trying to clear it of his remaining sleep fuddlement. Of what came after he remembered nothing; it was if he had fallen directly back into deep sleep.
“Beware,” Thomas muttered as he brushed dead leaves away from his cloak.
“Beware of what? Asterladen? Wynkyn’s hidey-hole?”
His stomach growled, and Thomas sighed, rubbing his face to try and wake himself up a little more. He needed food, and a warm fire to eat it by, and a good husbandman who would rub his horse down for him.
Groaning at the remaining stiffness in his limbs and back, Thomas retrieved the bridle and saddle, and whistled the horse over.
ASTERLADEN, as it turned out, was only a morning’s ride away, and Thomas was there by noon after being given directions by a friendly pedlar he had encountered just after setting out. It was a large village a mile off the road. Some thirty well-kept stone houses, their steep roofs tiled with slate, sat about a grass square where young boys herded grazing geese, and girls sat on three-legged stools to milk placid, fat sheep.
A husbandman, his smock and leggings marked with the labor of his morning’s plowing, walked out of the nearest house, his face curious, if not particularly welcoming.
“Good morning to you,” Thomas said in Latin, and then realized his mistake as the husbandman’s face creased in ignorance.
Thomas repressed a sigh. He was so used to dealing with people who, with some education behind them, could converse in the universal language of Latin, that he now had to think hard in order to find some words which this peasant could understand.
“Good morning, man,” he tried again, this time in heavily accentuated German.
Thank God he’d spent some time talking with Marcel’s German guards in their journey north.
In reply the man merely nodded, his eyes narrowing in suspicion.
“Ah, I wonder if…” Thomas thought hard, trying to remember the words and phrases, “if I might trouble you for a small meal and something to drink.”
“Be off!” the man yelled, his face now openly aggressive. “We’ll have none of your begging kind here! Your masters are rich enough to feed you, go beg at their feet!”
Thomas wondered if he should offer the man some coin, but was loath to do it for two reasons. One, all Christians were obligated to feed and shelter clerics who
wandered by, and, secondly, Thomas didn’t want this man—or any of his neighbors—to know he carried a purse of gold hanging at his belt.
“I ask in Christ’s name,” Thomas tried again, but was interrupted by the man who took two strides forward, and waved a hand threateningly.
“Be off with you! We’ve enough troubles without having to feed your kind as well.”