Look-See: Lionheart

 All my best storytelling happens when I allow myself to be incredibly self-indulgent. When I slip down into the non-linear, lush world of flashback, backstory, character recollection. People don't exist in a vacuum; we recall things; scents trigger memories, and dreams leave us nostalgic for the past. Not to mention, to study history is to leap forward and backward in time; to tread well-worn avenues, and to diverge down forested footpaths, into the unknown, the rarely explored. To dabble in theory and empathy. I can write tidy stories, but that isn't where I flourish. That isn't where I feel wild, and attached to the story, and like a conduit for its energy. I can ask myself: what's most marketable? What will the greatest number of readers prefer? Or I can ask myself: what story do these characters need me to tell?

With Lionheart, it's a case of the latter question. It's why I've not rushed it. This is going to be a behemoth of a book. And could I streamline it? Yes, of course. But the streamlined version wouldn't be the same story at all. For me, every scene, every sentence, is the result of great thoughtfulness. I'm thinking "what do I hope to convey through showing the sunlight glint off of a ring?" "What does a scent or a sound add to our understanding of this character?" Sure, the gist of the story would be the same, without the flashbacks, and the small details; without the attention to expression or gesture or physical fear response - but without those things I would not have portrayed my exact vision of a character, of a moment, of an emotion, of a whole story. Because that's what I want to tell - the whole story. I'm not here for the gist; for the suggestion of something. I'm always chasing that particular ache that only comes from the richest kind of narrative; from the complete understanding of a group of characters. 

If I want to wander down the footpaths of Sherwood Forest with Robin, I won't set that aside for expediency's sake. If I want to pull back the curtain on a wild, violent, passionate duke-turned-king-turned-crusader, I will allow myself the indulgence. I thank those waiting on the next Sons of Rome installment for their patience: it's been a long wait, and I don't have a date for you yet, but I promise that it will be most worthwhile. 

Excerpts from Lionheart

Copyright © 2021 by Lauren Gilley 

 

Both of Robin’s parents were storytellers.

Mother told him the story of the very first alliance between wolves and vampires; about the she-wolf who found two infant immortals washed up amidst the reeds of the Tiber. That kind, motherly wolf who’d lost her own pup, and who had plenty of milk to share with two hungry vampires. The story of Romulus and Remus, the twins who founded Rome, the first of their kind to take wolf Familiars, and to establish the precedent.

Robin’s favorite story, though, was his father’s telling of his and Mother’s beginning as wolves. Of their bound vampire: Mikkel.

Mikkel Tyrson, of Nordic blood, tall, broad-shouldered, flaxen-haired, and devastatingly handsome – Mother’s addition, with a wink and a laugh in response to Father’s nose wrinkling – carried the old gods with him when he struck off down the Volkhov River to the Varangian settlement of Garðaveldi, the realm of towns, in the settlement of Rus’. A wild and lawless place of forests, and rivers, where the crowded, ancient trees oversaw the brawling and feuding and allying of Varangian, Slav, and Khazar alike. A place where shrines to Odin butted up against crucifixes, and the prayer rugs of the worshippers of Allah. Striking, boisterous, magnetic, Mikkel made a name for himself, and earned a following of ferocious Viking descendants, unfailingly loyal. With them he eventually shared the truth of his immortality, and his men willingly offered their veins to him, keeping him strong on small sips and swallows, for he never took too much, never wanted to weaken his men.

Among his company was a druid of old, with wild long hair braided with bones, who prayed to the god Loki, and who commanded the powers of fire; and who could slay a wolf, and stab a man and bring forth an immortal being who could walk on two legs or four. His name was Tjörvi, and he was a mage, bound to his lord vampire, the most loyal of all. It was from the wolves of this wild Rus’ that Tjörvi plucked the strong sacrifices with which he would bind Mikkel’s most loyal of followers. He created a wolf pack, one from which Mikkel could feed, one that would follow him for centuries, to Constantinople, to Greece, to Gaul, until he settled, finally, in another wild and reckless land: in England. There he prospered, in his feral and merry way, as mercenary, as tourney champion; as irredeemable seducer of maidens.

“Don’t make him sound so terrible, darling,” Mother would say, as she chopped carrots. “None of those girls was unwilling.”

“Did I say they were?” Father asked. Slyly, to Robin: “Fathers always want to wring their hands over innocence, but women know what they want, and there’s nothing wrong at all with a passionate streak.” To his wife: “Isn’t that right, my love?”

Mother snorted – but her cheeks pinked, too.

But the problem with secrets, Father lamented, is that they always have a way of finding their way to the light. Mikkel was caught, by one such angry father hellbent on chastity. In flagrante. And with his fangs in the neck of his young lover, blood running down his chin, blood running down her pale throat and pooling between her breasts.

Mikkel fought, and Mikkel fled, but the whole of the town rallied, and the sheriff became involved, and someone, somehow, knew about silver; knew to fit a silver head to a gray goose feather and the archer’s aim was true. The arrow struck Mikkel’s heart, and he was sick, weakened; unable to fight back. His wolves rallied to defend him, but some were cut down, others struck with silver arrows. Captured with silver-weighted nets and clapped in silver shackles. Where, Father wondered, had such wealth of silver come from? Whose deep pockets had provided that kind of richness of suitable restraints?

Some of the wolves escaped. They tried to free Mikkel – but he wouldn’t let them. “They will kill you, my children. Go. Run. Flee.”

Tjörvi had been the hardest to subdue. Silver cuffs worked with spells shackled him, dampened his powers. He asked where these bundled-up Christians had learned such sorcery, and they pelted him with stones. They tore through his belongings and found his Mjolnir pendant, and his runic writings, and his incense, and his tools of worship. They tried him as a witch, and found him guilty, but he would not burn.

They would chop off his head, they decided, but first, his punishment would be thus: that he be forced to kill his lord and master, the inhuman, unnatural creature who called himself Mikkel Tyrson.

Mikkel smiled bravely, bound every inch to a stake. “I love you, my witch,” he said, still with his devastating smile. “I’ve had a good run. Do your worst.”

Tjörvi refused. At first. But then came the nails through his hands, and his feet. Silver nails, poisoning his blood. Silver stakes driven through his bowels, through his thighs. Molten silver poured into his forced-open mouth, until his tongue was scorched and shriveled. They killed him ten times over, until he could no longer scream, and no longer fight them. He burned so many…but they were always replaced by more, and more, and more. And in the end, Mikkel said, “I won’t get out of here alive. Do it, darling, make it quick, and we can be done with this.”

It took a tremendous amount of power to burn a vampire entirely to ash. To destroy his bones, and his ever-healing heart, and reduce him to nothing but dust.

But Tjörvi did it. And, in the aftermath, Tjörvi was ruined.

On the night before he was scheduled to be executed, some of the escaped wolves returned, and broke Tjörvi free. He begged them not to help him: he’d killed his master, had severed the bond between them, and he wanted to die.

But kitten-weak, his hair going gray from effort, his powers damaged as if from human disease, he could not resist, and so they disappeared, those last few wolves, and they hid Tjörvi away somewhere where no one knew him, and where he could live in secret again, until the next catastrophe.

“But where did he go?” Robin asked.

Father and Mother shared a look, and shook their heads. “Somewhere safe.”

Robin couldn’t decide why it was his favorite story, with an ending like that. He had nightmares about spelled silver cups; about Mikkel burning, and burning, and burning; about Tjörvi with a mouth full of silver. It was a dramatic ending, to be sure: no happily ever after here. A caution that immortal didn’t mean unkillable…and that humans would never see them as forgivable, not with ungodly powers such as theirs. Fear and hatred were, perhaps, the greatest powers of all.

But before the tragic ending, the story was really a chain of stories; each lustrous as a pearl, strung together, one after the next.

The story of the time Mikkel rescued an unwilling bride from her wedding to a too-old ogre of a man her father owed a great debt to. Mikkel had strode into the garlanded glade where the wedding was to take place, gleaming like a fairytale hero, and challenged both the girl’s father and her would-be groom to a duel. “Both of you at once, come on. And if I win, you turn her over to me.” Mikkel won, no surprise, and after a night of tumbled passion found the girl a sweet woodcutter in the next town to marry.

Then there was the story of how Robin’s father – the fittest and finest bowman in all of Mikkel’s company – had once, through use of disguises, managed to win first, second, and third place at an archery contest. When the ruse was revealed, the fat merchant who’d put up the prize money tried to have him arrested; but Father was too quick. He pinned the merchant back to his chair with three arrows through his cloak, scooped up the bags of coins, and was gone.

“Ranulf Fletcher,” Father would say, imitating Mikkel, and Robin had never met his parents’ bound vampire, but he could hear him, then, envision him as if he were in the room with them, “never has a finer archer ever lived.”

“It’s good that my name wasn’t Cooper, then, eh?” Father said, laughing at his own old joke, and Mother would say, “You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” but she laughed when he grabbed her around the waist.

It was Father who taught him how to use the bow, as soon as he was strong enough – which was far sooner than for the human boys. Wolves were stronger, their eyesight keener, their instincts more finely honed. Father made him his own bow, a miniature one, carved from yew, same as his own, and arrows to match, fletched with gray goose feathers. By the time he was six, Robin could hit the center of a target at forty paces.

In the short, golden hours of dusk, in the time between the end of the day’s work and supper, in the shade of the oaks and willows that vaulted the stream behind their cottage, Robin practiced until his small fingers were callused, and his arms were shaking. Father would adjust his stance and his grip with quick expert touches. “Head to the side. Good. Rotate this shoulder. Good. Not so wide, feet closer. Good.”

The bowstring snapped; the shaft whistled; the arrowhead punctured cloth and hay with a soft thwap that echoed off the tree trunks.

Robin loved his mother, and he loved her secret collection of books, hidden beneath a loose floorboard; loved her lessons of the world, his reading assignments. She taught him Latin, and the old Norse tongue of her homeland; taught him the Slavic languages of Rus’, where she’d become a wolf. Her kiss on his crown, her strong hand cupped around his skull when she wished him goodnight – that was home. That was good food in his belly, and comfort, and a confessor to run to, when he scraped his knees playing.

But there was something sacred about the time he spent with his father, those warm summer evenings when he learned the art of the bow. Away from Mother, Father taught him other things, too. Taught him about his brothers, hundreds of years old, long-grown and gone off on their own. Alphas who’d left to find mates and start their own packs. Robin didn’t know if he’d ever meet them – neither did Father – but he liked the thrill of thinking it might be a possibility. He envisioned strong, fox-haired men with freckled faces and quick smiles; charming storytellers with a wink for a pretty maid and a hair tousle for the little brother they would know straight off, because he smelled of their blood.

Father taught him that honor was not merely a word thrown about by lords and ladies. “Treat every woman like a fair maiden,” he said. “Only weak men are brutes.”

And, when Robin asked one night, “Do you miss it? Being bound?” What he really meant was: Do you miss Mikkel?

Father stood leaning on his own bow, and the sun sank the last inch so that it kissed the trees, and sent a bright flare of light across their sleepy patch of town; it glowed like flames in Father’s hair and eyelashes; illuminated the sad, faraway look that had come into his eyes. He nodded. And then he fixed Robin with a serious gaze.

“I didn’t know it until I felt it myself, but there’s an instinct in all wolves – there’s a pull” – he touched his own chest – “toward a binding. The wolf in you wants to belong to a vampire. But, Robin, I want you to promise me: should the chance ever arise, do not bind yourself quickly or lightly. If you ever belong to someone, I want it to be a strong and fair vampire. A prince of a vampire.”

Robin considered this seriously. When he envisioned himself bound, he envisioned a figure like the Mikkel his father’s stories had conjured: tall, handsome, golden; merry, swaggering, admirable. “What about a king?” he asked.

Father laughed. “You aim high.” He laid a hand on Robin’s head – not to ruffle his hair this time, but just to hold him in place, a gentle weight. His expression grew soft. “Just so long as he never asks you to be less than what you are.”

“I’m a Fletcher of Locksley,” Robin said, frowning, confused. “My father is the greatest bowman in all of Nottinghamshire, and one day, I’ll be even better.”

Father smiled. “Exactly.”

~*~

Alfonso II King of Aragon, the Troubadour, paced lightly back and forth across the room, hands linked at his back, bearded face aglow with tired delight.

Little Much, his pale hair gleaming white in the glow of the candles, attended to his master, unbuckling his sword belt and setting it aside.

And in the center of the room, gleaming as a jewel amidst plain stones, the twenty-seven-year-old prince who’d been steadily grinding the region’s rebellion to dust beneath his bootheel, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Aquitaine.

Will would always remember his first impression of the duke from eight years ago, then only twenty, and still all leg and fury. Throwing men out of his campaign tent and brandishing naked steel. Prideful – but was it boastful if you could deliver on your promises? He’d been beautiful then, and was resplendent now. He’d grown into himself; a man now, a warrior. Taller than nearly everyone in his company, but lean, and densely muscled. Candlelight carved a gleaming line down his smooth brow, and his straight nose; caught at the faint dampness of his lips, where he’d no doubt taken a few deep swallows of wine. His hair, a wavy red-gold when clean, gleamed russet in the dimness, all in curls and corkscrews from his helm, still damp with sweat at the roots. Dirt smudged his high cheekbones. He smiled at whatever Alfonso was saying – laughed, even – but the close grain of his beard couldn’t hide the way his jaw was clenched.

He was hurting.

Much clocked Will, acknowledged him with one quick glance, but continued unfastening Richard’s armor.

Richard’s notice was even subtler – only a flicker of movement at his lashes, as his gaze slid over – but the fact of it sent a pleasant shiver through Will’s belly. Much had scented him, because he was a wolf. But Richard had spotted him because he missed nothing.

One day, that kind of observation was going to get Will in deep, deep trouble with his lord.

“…incredible,” Alfonso was saying, grinning broadly, gesturing. “I saw you up on the walls yourself, and I thought ‘My God, he’s going to be thrown over.’ But you kept your feet! You took the castle! Seven days. Christ.” Laughing, he stopped and turned to face Richard. Reached out and clapped him on the shoulder. Will saw the notch appear between Richard’s brows, the only outward sign of the pain it caused.

“You’ve made a showing here today,” Alfonso said, leaning forward in earnest, tone become serious – though still tinged with delight. “You’ve told the people of your duchy something. Let ill-intentioned rebels seek to throw off their rightful duke, and he’ll put them all down like dogs. You’ve the heart of a lion, Richard, and now all of Aquitaine knows it.” He gave him a little jostle, and Richard’s lips pressed flat and went white before he managed a smile.

“They know it for now. Until the next rebellion.”

Alfonso laughed and finally withdrew his hand. Richard relaxed a fraction. “You worry too much, my young friend. Tomorrow’s rebellions are tomorrow’s problems. Tonight, we celebrate.” He stepped back, arms held wide, an invitation to dinner, to the castle – probably an invitation to bathe and dress hastily, as Alfonso himself had already done.

Richard’s smile was strained, and not only from pain, Will thought. “I’ll join you shortly, Your Majesty.”

“See that you do.” Alfonso backed toward the door. “I hear there’s to be goose. And” – he held up a finger of one hand while gripping the doorlatch with the other – “there’s quite a lovely kitchen wench or two. You know I don’t go in for that sort of thing–”

Richard snorted.

“–but you should take your pick before your Brancobans get hold of all the best ones. A few still even have most their teeth, from what I hear.” He laughed, Richard echoing it hollowly, and then went out, thankfully closing the door.

The moment he was gone, Richard groaned, shoulders slumping where he stood – but unevenly. Will had suspected that was the problem. He held his whole left side stiffly, and touched Much on the shoulder with his right hand. “God’s legs, get the wine.”

Much dropped the gauntlets he’d removed on top of a chest and flitted to the table, snatching up a whole bottle and not even bothering with a goblet.

Richard took it from him with a huff of thanks, pulled the cork with his teeth, and then drank deeply, wincing when tipping his head back sent fresh pain through his bad shoulder.

He gasped for breath, after. “You might as well quit skulking, Scarlet.”

“Only waiting patiently, your grace,” Will said, feeling his cheeks heat, as he stepped out of the shadows and approached the duke. Up close, he smelled of mud, and his own sweat, and other people’s blood. “I didn’t want to betray your condition to the king.”

Richard’s wry grin was more of a grimace. He took another long swallow of wine, licking stray red drops off his lip afterward.

If Will’s eyes followed the tip of his tongue, he was only an animal, after all.

“My condition will be fine if I can get drunk enough. Get this off.” He shrugged – setting his mail hauberk to rippling, and startling another groan out of himself.

“I don’t know how we’re going to get it off if he can’t lift that arm,” Much said to Will, scowling.

“We’ll call a blacksmith and have him cut it link-by-link if we have to.”

“I can lift the arm,” Richard insisted, thrusting the bottle toward Much.

Much fumbled the bottle and glanced up at Will, doubt and worry peeking through his scowl.

“Your grace,” Will tried, “you might further damage–”

“I said I can lift it!”

“Very well, then.” Will took the bottle from Much and passed it back to Richard. “A bit more, then, I should think.”

Richard glared at him, but drank.

It was an arduous process. First, they unstitched the surcoat, now sullied with mud, and blood, the seal of St. Valerie covered over with the filth of battle. Richard did lift his bad arm, teeth bared and gritted, veins standing out in his throat, while Will and Much together lifted the heavy mail hauberk off over his head.

“It’s free, your grace,” Will said, and Richard let his arm fall with a contained scream that hissed through his teeth, his eyes shut. He staggered forward then, and Will caught him by his waist, muscles warm, and damp through the padded doublet and shirt, clenched tight against pain. The duke dropped his forehead down onto Will’s shoulder a moment, catching his breath.

For a man with the hypersensitive perception of a wolf, it was an overwhelming closeness. Will felt the scrape of Richard’s beard against his own cheek; felt the tickle of sweat-damp hair at his temple; felt the damp heat of Richard’s breath rush down into his collar, and across his chest, raising goosebumps that had nothing to do with temperature.

In motion, Richard was all of elegance, trim and supple. But the chest pressed to Will’s was deceptively solid; he felt the heft of muscle, and the firm curve of ribs that worked in unsteady hitches as the duke fought to regain his composure. His hand, big and warm, clenched tight at Will’s tunic, knuckles buried in the inward curve of his waist.

Much – stronger than he looked, werewolf-strong – had carried away the hauberk, and crept back now, almost timid. “More wine, your grace?”

Will answered. “Fetch another bottle, please.”