30 - King's Gold by Michael Jecks Page B

same when he came here. David was ever crotchety and difficult – but he could afford to be, knowing he was the best.
    ‘Look over there, in the wrapping,’ David said at last, thrusting the blank into a quench. The hissing and bubbling was deafening.
    Baldwin walked to the table at which the smith had pointed, and found the package. Slowly, with care, he unwrapped the waxed material to reveal a new sword.
    He held it joyfully. It was a perfect blue, polished to a mirror-like perfection, with a fuller that ran for some two thirds of the blade. ‘You have created a marvel, David. This is beautiful.’
    The smith had joined him, rubbing his hands on the old leather apron that covered the front of his body. It was blackened and scarred in many places, where sparks had caught and flared. The mere sight was enough to make Baldwin feel queasy. In the last days of Acre, when he was young, fires had been started by the Moorish siege engines, hurling boulders and flaming bales designed to cause infernos all over the city. He could recall the screams of people burning. Some ran to rescue those trapped in buildings, and their clothes were pocked and marked like this.
    Baldwin swallowed and turned away. Death by fire was hideous.
    ‘I’ve not had time to finish the surface as I’d have liked,’ David said grimly. ‘I need another few weeks for that.’
    Baldwin hefted the sword in his hand. He had ordered this in December, when he first returned to Exeter after the trials of the last year. The smith had made the blade, while an armourer Baldwin knew, who worked with David quite often, had provided the cross and the grip, and had wound the fine leather about the hilts, fitting them together with the sword and then riveting the heavy round pommel in place.
    ‘This is proof that you are a master of your art.’ Inset into the blade on one side, Baldwin saw the letters picked out in fine gold script: BOAC ( Beate Omnipotensque Angeli Christi : Blessed and Omnipotent are the Angels of Christ). On the reverse, in memory of his friends in the Order, he had a small circle, and within it was a Templar cross.
    ‘Not perfect. I missed a little dint down there – see? I had my apprentice polish it up, and he failed there.’
    ‘No, I do not see,’ Baldwin said, smiling. ‘You are a man who is determined upon perfection, my friend.’
    ‘I don’t know why you were in such a hurry for it, anyway,’ the smith complained. He took the sword back and began to wipe a cloth smeared in fat all over it, rubbing quickly, and peering along its length to make sure that it was all uniformly covered. ‘The land should be calming, now we have a new King.’
    Baldwin took his sword. He would buy a scabbard from a shop farther along the street. It would be easy to find one that fitted.
    ‘The land should be calmer,’ he agreed. But as he left the smithy, he knew very well that the kingdom’s troubles were far from over.
    The King had been deposed and the Crown had passed on, but although many sought to uphold the succession, even if it was unorthodox, there were others who preferred to make as much profit as they could from the situation. Sir Roger Mortimer, his lover the Queen, and the under-age King Edward III ruling in a three-way council, was no recipe for peace. Baldwin suspected that the realm would suffer more dramatic shocks before long.
    He was determined to be prepared for them.

 

CHAPTER NINE
    Two Sundays before the Feast of the Annunciation 14
    Kenilworth
    It was the middle of his second day in the town before Dolwyn managed to enter the castle. He had not expected it to be so easy.
    The sun shone brightly, and without rain to wash away the ordure, the streets were becoming more noisome by the day.
    He sat outside an inn and enjoyed a strong ale while he watched passers-by: men-at-arms, women with baskets offering flowers or trinkets, urchins calling for coins, pestering any who looked wealthy until sent on their way with a cuff