第2章 The Death

The funeral of Lord Gareth of Northgate took place on the eighth day after his death, in the great hall of the castle that Edward had never entered. He watched from a distance, standing at the edge of the crowd that lined the road from the village to the castle gates, and he saw the casket carried out on a bier of black oak, draped in green cloth and strewn with white lilies. He saw the nobles riding behind it, men and women in mourning black, their faces solemn, their postures proper. He saw Richard at the head of the procession, dressed in the colors of Northgate, his hand resting on the pommel of the sword that marked his new status as lord. He looked young, Edward thought. Younger than he had looked that morning. The weight of the cloak, the armor beneath it, the sword at his hip—it made him look like a painting of a lord rather than a man. Edward knew what he looked like in comparison: a peasant in dirty clothes, standing at the edge of a road, watching his father's funeral without the right to mourn, without the right to grieve, without the right to feel anything more than a distant, detached sorrow for a man he had never known. The procession moved slowly. The church bells tolled. The people of Northgate wept openly, and Edward wept with them, though no one knew why. He had never known the man who lay in the casket, but something about the ritual of death—the bells, the black cloth, the solemn procession—touched something in him that he could not name. Perhaps it was the simple fact that his father was dead. Perhaps it was the memory of a face he had never seen. Perhaps it was the realization that death did not care about legitimacy, that the grave was the great equalizer, that Lord Gareth lay in the earth just the same as any peasant who had died in the fields. After the funeral, after the prayers and the laying to rest, after the crowd had dispersed and the castle gates had closed, Edward did not return to Oakhaven. He walked to the road and stood in front of the gates and waited. He waited for an hour. Then two. The sun moved across the sky, and the light changed from white to gold to gray, and still he waited. He knew he was being foolish. He knew that no one would come out to see him, that the guards would not acknowledge his presence, that he was nothing more than a speck on the horizon of this family's drama. But he had spent twenty-three years being nothing, and something in him refused to accept that nothingness as final. At dusk, the gates opened. A single figure emerged, and Edward's breath caught. It was not Richard. It was a man he did not recognize, older, with graying hair and a face that had been carved by wind and worry. He wore the clothes of a steward, not a lord, and he carried himself with the tired authority of someone who had spent a lifetime managing the affairs of people greater than himself. You are the bastard, the steward said. It was not a question. Edward did not deny it. I am. You have no business here. I know. The steward looked at him for a long moment, studying him with eyes that were sharp despite their age. Lord Richard has given orders that you are to leave the lands. You are to return to Oakhaven and you are not to come near the castle again. This is your warning. If you return, you will be arrested for trespassing. Is that all? That is all. The steward turned to leave, then paused. Your father... he asked that you be provided for. There is a small sum in the vault, enough to set you up in trade if you are clever. He did not want you to suffer. Edward felt something shift inside him, a crack in the ice that had formed around his heart. His father had thought of him. Not often, perhaps, but once. In the end, he had thought of him. Thank you, Edward said, and the words felt inadequate, small against the magnitude of the moment. The steward nodded once and walked back into the castle, leaving Edward alone on the road as night fell. He thought about the small sum in the vault. He thought about Oakhaven and the fields and the inn and the endless, grinding poverty of a life without purpose. He thought about Richard, standing at the front of the funeral procession, wearing his father's colors like a second skin. And he made a decision. He would not go back to Oakhaven. He would not live the rest of his life as a peasant who happened to be related to a lord. He would find out what his father had meant by his dying words, and he would find out who his mother had been, and he would discover whether there was something more to his blood than bastardy and shame. He walked away from Northgate in the darkness, toward the east, toward a road he had never traveled and a future he could not yet imagine. The journey east was long and arduous. Edward walked for days, his feet blistering, his throat parched, his mind consumed by thoughts of what he would do next. He had no money, no home, no plan. But he had something more valuable than any of those things: he had a purpose. The crown of Saint Edmund awaited him in the cursed city of Blackmere, and he would find it, even if it killed him. Along the way, he passed through villages and towns, each one more desperate than the last. The plague had touched them all, leaving behind empty homes and hollow eyes. People looked at him with suspicion and fear, as if he carried the sickness within him. He did not blame them. The world had changed since he was a boy, and he was no longer the same person he had been. He was harder now, tougher, more determined. The life of a bastard had taught him that kindness was a luxury he could not afford, and that survival required both cunning and cruelty. He would need both if he hoped to claim what was his.