Chapter Text
For as long as Hob can remember, there's been a tower and a garden outside of London.
Not that tower, not the Tower, that fortified square monstrosity dark with ravens' wings and covered in bird shite, that great eye looking over the city like a disapproving father, reminding them all that good old Bill the Conqueror is watching, always watching from beyond the grave. No, this is a different tower, a proper tower, the sort that soars upwards instead of bloating outwards, striking not at other countries with their wealth and their resources, but at the very vault of God Himself. It's a massive thing, a beautiful thing, made of black stone so smooth and perfectly-laid that from a distance you can't even see the seams between the bricks, and it stands in the middle of a copse of trees that have grown up around it, shielding the base from view.
The first time that Hob sees the tower is when he's very small, small enough that he's got no concept of his own age except that his sister is a baby and she's smaller still, so he must not be a baby any longer. He's sitting beside his father in the wagon as they trundle along the old Watling Street road, on the last stretch before they reach the city proper, and he sees the tower rising up out of the early morning mist, a black finger pointing accusingly at the sky. He can't see the base for the trees, but he can see that it's outside the city by a ways, far enough that one can avoid it entirely if you'd care to, but close enough that if the city gets bigger – and his da says it seems to get bigger every year – it will eventually swallow the tower up, and then there will be two towers in London.
From the very top of it, the smudgy black shapes of birds wheel and dive. The wagon is too far away for them to hear the calls.
"You mustn't ever go to that tower, Robert," his da says. Hob eyes the freefalling birds, and the tops of the trees, like puffs of green wool. Between them he thinks he can see spots of other colour, bloody red and sunny yellow. "It's a cursed place. A monster lives there."
That gets his attention, monsters being the interest of all young boys. Hob sits up straighter, trying to appear as grown and responsible as possible. "What sort of monster?" he asks, and his father chuckles, wry and resigned.
"Not the sort that you can fight, little knight," his da says. "It was there when I was a boy, and when my father was a boy, and who knows how long it was there before that. But my father told me that it used to be a lord's castle, and the lord who lived there was cruel and strange and made deals with devils."
"Devils!"
"Ay, and stranger things still! Spirits and faeries, too. Until eventually he couldn't hide from God any longer, and his castle was smote with lightning and fire, until all that was left was the tower. He protected it with his magic, you see."
"Does magic work like that?" Hob asks, his knowledge of magic being limited to the sort that faeries might work, curdling milk and stealing babies from the cradle. His da only shrugs, though.
"Who knows? It was a different time. But the tower still stands, and my father said the lord still haunts it, coming out in the day to tend his garden and to tempt travellers with promises of money and titles."
"That doesn't sound like a monster to me."
"Ay," his father says, and for a moment his eyes go far away, looking not towards the tower but towards the city ahead of them, centred between the horns of their well-mannered ox like a target. "Like I said, not the sort of monster you can fight. But you still mustn't go there. Even earthly lords will make foul deals with you. They'll promise you a half-groat for a day's hard labour and then tell you that you misheard, and give you a penny instead. And there's nowt you can do about it because they've all the money and all the power, and so you have to take what's offered you and pretend to be thankful for it."
"But that isn't fair," Hob says, and his father looks down at him, focused again, and he smiles but it isn't a sweet smile, like the sort he gives the baby, or the besotted smile he gives Hob's mother. It's sad. Hob hadn't realised that a smile could be sad.
"Nothing in life is fair," his da says, and then he ruffles Hob's hair, and they speak no more on the dark tower.
+++
The White Horse is Hob's favourite tavern
It's a filthy, roistering shithole to be sure, and the ale is so simultaneously weak and thick it might as well be silt dredged from the bottom of the Thames, and you can't take your eye off your money lest some enterprising purse-slitter sets their sights on you, but it's home. It's more home than any other place Hob's been since his village was consumed by the plague, and he's been a fair number of places on campaign for King Richard.
It's more home than ever now, with his mates on either side of him, drinking the same swill and breathing the same piss-scented air. Crispin and Aiden jostle each other for the attention of the serving girl – she'd been a hawkish thing when last they'd been in London, more leg than anything else, but over the past two summers she's sprouted like a weed and gained bosoms to match, so now the entire tavern is agog at her. Roland's got a wife and a little one in Canterbury, but even he's looking, drunk as he is, and when he sees that Hob isn't he kicks out under the table.
"She's pretty," he says, and Hob has to admit that yes, she is, but she's pretty like a painting is pretty, the sort of thing you shouldn't touch. She's too full in the face, still, brimming over with baby fat, and when he looks at her he can't stop himself from seeing his little sister's chubby cheeks, and he can't stop himself from remembering the way they'd wasted away in the weeks it had taken her to die of the plague.
"Pretty enough," he says, because they're the only words he can think to say. It's not a failing on the girl's part, but lately he finds himself seeking out older fare. There are plenty of butcher's wives and candlemaker's eldest daughters looking for a tumble in a hayloft, if one knows where to look, and Hob is very good at looking. Still, there's something lacking in all of it. Maybe the shroud of death following him off the battlefield, maybe something wrong with his own head, but...
"Death," Hob says aloud, and Crispin and Aiden stop their tussling and look at him.
"You've gone and set him off," Aiden says to Roland.
Roland's hand flies to his chest. "What, me? I was just talking about the serving girl!"
"Drink up, Hobsie, we're celebrating," Crispin says. He shoves his own cup of ale closer, as if his watered-down piss is any better than what Hob's got in front of him. "There's no death here today! We're alive, we've been paid!"
"It's just so stupid," Hob says, and his three friends groan.
"Ay, come on, Gadling..."
"Can't take you bloody anywhere."
" Look, I've seen death," Hob says. His tongue unlooses with each word, like it's all been building up in him, some foul humour of the brain, and now he's got no choice but to let it out. That pretty girl and her long legs and her budding bosoms has unlocked anger instead of lust, and he doesn't have the words to explain why, so he tries to find the words for something else, something similar. "I lost half my village to the Black Death. I fought under Buckingham in Burgundy. It's not like I don't know what death is. Death is...stupid. It's fucking stupid."
"You're a fool, Hob," Roland says. "Drink your drink."
He's built up steam, though, and the words come fast and furious. "Nobody has to die," he says. "The only reason people die is...is 'cause everyone does it. You all just go along with it." He sees it, then. Like the sun rising over the hills and burning away the mist, he sees the core of all the hurt, why the girl with her nipples pebbled through her kirtle does nothing for him lately but the smith's widow does. He brightens, feeling drunk as much on joy as he is on ale. "But not me," he says. "I've made up my mind. I'm not going to die."
"Hobs, death comes for every man."
"You don't know that! I might get lucky. There's always a first time. And there's so much to do, so many things to see..." For the first time he nudges Roland back beneath the table. "Women to swive, ale to drink, people to drink it with!"
"As if it could be that easy," Crispin scoffs. "You just...decide you aren't going to die?"
"Have any of you lot ever tried it?"
There's a shuffling and a glancing about from the three of them. Hob doesn't think anyone's ever tried it. He reckons most people are thinking about death when it's almost upon them, and then it's too late. But if he starts now, maybe that makes the difference.
"Prove it," Aiden says. The shuffling and the glancing gets louder, somehow. They're all four of them equipped with sword and dagger, nicked from the army before they'd scarpered with their wages at the end of the last fight, but Hob dares to guess that none of his mates are willing to do more than graze him with a blade. It's one thing to kill a man in battle, and quite another to stab him in the gut when he's asking you for it. The silence grows, and with every second that winces past Hob feels his certainty solidify.
Then, "The tower," Roland says. They all look at him, but he isn't even facing them. He's looking towards the door that's just swung open, letting in another patron. Through it they all get a brief glimpse of sky, blue as blue can be, and though none of them can see the tower that Roland is talking about, they all know it.
"Barking," Crispin says. "I heard if you set foot on the grounds God himself smotes you."
"Smites you, idiot," Roland says. "And He doesn't. My cousin went inside, once."
"Horse shite."
"Bull shite," Aiden agrees. "There's not a man alive been inside that cursed thing."
"He did! He said it was bigger inside than it ought to be, and there was a grand entry hall all covered in dust. And a throne at the end of it, and stained glass like in St. Paul's."
"Like you've been in St. Paul's," Crispin says. There's a brief scuffle as Roland tries to lunge over the table and slap Crispin about the face. Hob's still looking at the doorway. Remembering, like hearing a voice underwater, what his father had said years and years ago. That some monsters weren't the sort that you could fight.
Death is like that, he thinks. Not something you fight, but something you deny. Decry. Something you face and tell it no.
"I'll do it," he says. The whole table goes quiet. It feels like the whole bloody tavern goes quiet, even though that isn't possible. He can still hear the raucous conversation of the next group over, the laughter, the drunken cheering and moaning and belly-aching, but all of it is very far away from the three pair of eyes fixed on him now. Hob swallows. "I'll do it," he says again. "Though I've not heard anything about men being struck dead just for touching the gate."
His friends exchange glances, and then Aiden and Crispin look to Roland, who wets his lips with another draught of ale before he says, "There's a garden, isn't there? Everyone knows there's a garden."
"Roses," Crispin says. "I've heard it's roses. Every colour, too, even ones that flowers oughtn't be."
"Climb the wall and nick a rose," Roland says. "And if you do that and nothing strikes you down nor stabs you or bites you, then maybe it's true. Maybe you can just 'not die.'" Just by his voice, Hob senses the doubt in him. Still, that tower has lorded itself over London since he was a boy, and long before that, too, and he can't deny that he's one of a thousand poor blighters who'd give a pretty penny to know what's inside.
Hob takes a swig of his ale. It's grassy and bitter and there are bits floating in the bottom of the cup, but it goes down smooth.
"Let's go, then," he says, and slams the cup on the table.
"What, now?"
"Aye, now! It's a few hours' ride to the tower, right? We'll reach it right at sundown. I'll pluck a rose and we'll be back here before morning." There's more shuffling, a murmur from Aiden, and Hob points at him. "Don't tell me you're backing out. I'm the one puttin' his bloody life on the line."
"Fine, fine," Aiden says. He grabs for his cup. "Just let me finish my ale first, and then we'll go."
Aiden finishes his ale, and Hob drains the rest of his, too, though Roland and Crispin both abstain, made suddenly chaste by the possibility of being smote, now that they've all decided they're going through with it. Even if they weren't going to accompany him, Hob thinks he'd do it. He hasn't felt this alive outside of the battlefield in...in a while. It's not that he's wanted to die. Far from it – living has always been the thing he's wanted most. It's just that it's hard to see the living part when you're surrounded by mens' guts steaming in the early morning dew, when you're woken at midnight by the screams of horses, when you spend so much time with blood in your mouth that you forget that food has a taste other than iron.
But if he does this, if he steals the rose, if he brings it back, if nothing touches him...what then? He could go anywhere. Do anything. See everything, no consequences, nothing to hold him back. It'd be marvellous. A miracle.
It's mid-afternoon when they leave the White Horse, thick and soupy with summer heat, flies buzzing around the horses. Hob's rouncey takes a long piss while he's saddling her, so he steps aside after to do the same, leaving his mark against the outer wall of the tavern. "Charming," Roland says, and Hob winks at him as he shakes himself clean.
"Like you've never done," he says. "I watched you vomit in a well, once. 'Least I'm not making the whole town drink my piss."
They bicker back and forth as they mount and set off; Roland's got an ancient hackney with a knobbly gait, and he winces every time they slow to anything below a trot, so they keep the pace quick and even, leaving the more claustrophobic main roads behind in favour of drifting further and further from the city proper. There's no place like London, Hob thinks, but sometimes he's still glad to be leaving her behind, and as they emerge past the last cramped gasp of houses and stairs and eaves and walls he looks up into the sky, still bluer than blue, and feels his heart lighter than it has been in ages.
It's a fine day for riding, and the time passes quickly. Even Aiden starts singing after the first hour, to lighten the day and give them something other than blowing horses and their own farts to listen to, and Hob joins in not longer after, his head still pleasantly buzzing with drink. He hasn't got a voice like Aiden's, tuneful and sweet, but he can hum the middle bits, and it makes the trip seem shorter even though, as he'd predicted, it's just about sundown by the time they reach the copse of trees that the tower juts out of.
"What a sore fucking thumb," Crispin says as he dismounts. They'd all seen the tower on approach, a huge, black thing like the spine of a devil, covered all over in carvings and crenellations so that where it wasn't smooth it'd looked like the frothing of a great wave. They'd all seen it, yes, but it hadn't seemed real – but now they're close enough to it that they can make out details, and Hob can see pops of otherworldly colour in between the trees, and whether or not it's 'real' seems to matter less than whether or not it can hurt.
"Dunno," Hob says. He looks up and up, craning his neck to try and make out the gargoyles on the parapets, or the reliefs carved into the tower's sides. The stone is so black that it absorbs the light, but he thinks he can make out the shapes of fantastical creatures, all twined together, cavorting. Far, far above them dark shapes wheel and turn in the sky, maybe ravens, maybe something else. "I think it's pretty."
"You think this is pretty?" Roland says. "It's the devil's work, is what it is."
"Dunno," Hob says again. A lord, his father had said. A lord who'd trifled with strange magic, who'd made deals with devils, but just a man. Though if there's still something living in that ancient bastion, who's to say that whatever is left is still a man at all?
They tie their horses to the trees at the outermost edge of the copse and leave Aiden behind to guard them. "Scream if you're being set upon by devils," Crispin says, and Aiden kicks him in the shin. Hob laughs, but Roland is curiously quiet, his eyes cast upwards like he expects one of those smudged birdlike shapes to start diving towards them. It doesn't get any better once they're under the shelter of the trees – if anything, he gets worse, fidgeting and swearing at every broken twig and kicked pebble.
It's not a large copse, but it's dense, and it takes them another twenty minutes to work their way through bramble and briar. The sun sinks lower and lower, and it's sitting half-submerged in the horizon by the time they find the centre of the little forest, casting everything in a pinkish-gold light that doesn't fully penetrate the branches, and sees them dappled like trout with patterns of orange and shadow. Hob would be tempted to lie down in the moss and the heather if not for how his heart is galloping.
Just a foot or two ahead, Crispin stops and Roland stops right behind him. "Christ preserve us," Crispin says. Roland's hand flutters as he crosses himself.
"Budge over," Hob says, and then he steps out into the centre, too, and for a moment he forgets how to breathe.
The tower has always seemed massive, but from a distance you can convince yourself a thing is smaller than it truly is. Standing at the base like this, not a one of them can deny how impressive it is. It must be a hundred feet tall, soaring upwards, and surrounded at its base by a wide, high wall made of the same black stone, piled up rougher than the tower itself. Every dozen feet or so there's a hole in the wall, just large enough to peer through, just large enough to admit the sight of colour, fantastic and beautiful, but not large enough for anything but a sparrow to squeeze through. Still, Hob stumbles closer to look through, pulling away from Roland's grabbing hand.
"Gadling," Roland hisses. "This is a bad idea. That thing's no earthly tower."
"I thought that was the point!" Hob says. He climbs over a fallen log, overgrown with moss, and presses himself chest and belly against the wall. Nothing happens, save that now his back is sun-warmed while his front is cool and damp.
"We shouldn't be here," Crispin says. "Come on, Hob, let's just go back. There's a fey feel to this place."
Hob ignores his friends, digging his fingers into the craggy seams between the stones. He thinks he could get a good handhold here, or here, enough to start climbing, and now that he's at the base of it the wall doesn't seem insurmountable, just difficult. He sticks his tongue between his teeth and grins at it. He's as appreciative as the next man of an easy win, but sometimes a fellow likes a challenge, and if this is what stands between him and not dying, then it only seems proper that it be hard.
And there's one of the holes, here. They march up the wall in ordered rows – decorative? something else? he can't tell – but it's large enough for him to look through, so he sidles along the wall a bit until he finds one at the right height and holds his eye against it.
"Hob, please," he hears behind him, hissed so low it might be Crispin or Roland or neither, but he doesn't pay it any mind, because what he sees through the hole in the stone, beyond the wall, is a garden.
He'd known there would be a garden. His da had told him, long ago, and Crispin had said there were roses, but the gardens that Hob knows are little things, household things, herb-scented with rosemary growing woody and wild and garlic pushing up its thin green shoots through a cover of woolly dittany.
The garden that surrounds the base of the tower is just as grand and massive as the tower itself, with a white stone pathway winding through, weaving in between looming rose bushes. Bright yellow cowslip grows along the path's edges, while purple foxgloves nod their heavy heads, but the roses. There are red ones and white ones, and yellow ones in every shade of sunrise and sunset, and delicate little buds no bigger than his thumbnail that he can't even tell the colour of because they're so small, but in greater number than all the others there are roses darker than blood, almost as dark as the night sky, and flecked all over with white like a river of stars.
"It's beautiful," he breathes, and then a hand grabs hold of his shoulder and yanks him away. "Oy!"
"It was casting a spell on you," Roland hisses. Hob hits at him as he's dragged a few feet away, and it's only with the second thud of his fist on Roland's arm that he's let go. He stands up a bit straighter, and tugs at his tunic. "It was sucking you in!"
"Through the hole in the wall?" Hob asks. He doesn't feel like his mind's been muddled with, he feels alive. "Come off it, Roland. It was you lot what wanted proof. Either you stand and watch me give it, or you can fuck off back to London and I'll come find you in my own time."
Crispin shifts uneasily, foot to foot. Then he exhales.
"Do it, then," he says. "Do it and be done with it. Then we can be gone from this cursed place."
Hob grins at them both. He still feels a bit like he's drunk, even though it's been hours and the White Horse's ale is barely more than water. Drunk on the sight of victory, maybe, because just beyond that wall, not quite within arm's reach, is salvation. No, not salvation – there's nothing holy about it. But, a salve, maybe. A salve against death.
"I'll be back before you know it," he says, and ignores the way that Roland crosses himself again as he turns back to the wall and takes a running start.
He gets a few feet of headway, fingers crabbing against the rough stone, finding purchase in the cracks between, and for an instant he hangs there, uncertain. If he lets go now he'll fall on his arse but there won't be any lasting harm. The worst that he'll suffer is for his pride. If he keeps going, though...
He grits his teeth and hauls himself upward.
It's hard going. The handholds made by the holes in the wall are too even and too close together to be much help, so he ends up using them mostly with his feet, balancing precariously midair as his aching fingers grope for the next crack in the stone. By the time he's halfway up the wall, some two metres or so, his fingertips are nearly numb, and when he finally gets one elbow over the lip he's sweating and panting, and three of his fingers are bloody.
And then he's on top of the wall.
The stone is in that middling ground between narrow and thick, wide enough for him to straddle without discomfort either way, though he wouldn't risk standing on it with how high up he is. And he is very high up: from here he can clearly see Crispin and Roland's nervous faces, can see the trail they've left where they dredged their way through the forest, and he even thinks he can see glints of the world outside, the fields bathed in the dying glow of the sun. He swears he can hear their horses whickering.
But on the other side of the wall is the garden.
It's even more beautiful viewed from up here, rather than through two feet of stone. The tower soars upwards, like an arrow shot straight at the sun, and the sky far above them has begun to take on the velvet darkness of twilight. There's no coverage of leaves here to give the flowers and their hedgerows tabby spots, but instead they're all uniformly shadowed, turning the white blooms into deepening violet, and all gold-limned in the last dregs of sundown.
It's the black roses that hold his attention, though. There are so many of them, and as Hob braces himself for the inevitable climb back down the other side he swears he sees a few of the lighter flowers beginning to take on a darker cast, too. He knows nothing about flowers save that they're pretty and both city and country maids find them pleasing, but he swears he's seen something like that before. Something that creeps in the darkness.
He shrugs, and starts his second climb.
It's harder going, going down than up. He can't see where he's putting his feet, and so he gropes fitfully in the increasing gloom, moving half as quick as he had on the other side. He's bloodied another finger by the time both feet are on solid soil again, and the first thing he does, other than suck in a few whooping breaths of relief, is to stick them in his mouth to try and soothe them. His tongue floods with iron, but there's naught better than a man's own spit to ease a simple wound, and soon enough they've warmed through again and the bleeding has slowed, and they're only slightly red when he takes them from his mouth, with a few lingering drops of blood around the nail beds. He's torn one, he sees; he hadn't even noticed, and it barely hurts, so he shrugs it off.
The garden awaits.
The soil is thick and loamy under his feet, his shoes sinking in but not sticking; he can hear water burbling somewhere, now that he's paying attention, but he can't see where it's coming from between the hedges and the wide base of the tower. On the other side, perhaps? Curiosity wars with the urge to get what he's come for and get out; curiosity, as it so often does with him, wins. He steps amongst the hedges and the roses, and hears, much more distantly than should be reasonable, the sound of Roland calling.
"I'm all right!" he calls back. He doesn't even think about the possibility of alerting the tower's owner until after he's shouted, and then he freezes, head cocked and listening for the sound of footsteps. There's nothing, though – just the breeze and the raucous cry of birds far above. He can see them up there, blurry vee shapes winging about the crest of the tower, a few of them dipping down lower such that he can almost make out details: the curve of a wing, the fan of a tail. He shakes his head. No one is coming for him, so he presses onwards.
The garden is possibly the most beautiful thing he's ever seen. He remembers his mum's garden when he was a boy, a wild, shaggy thing that hadn't cared what it looked like because it'd had three children to feed. It'd had its own prettiness, found in dewdrops on turnip leaves and trundling, iridescently green beetles emerging from beneath the buds of lungwort and coltsfoot. The tower garden is a different beast altogether, pruned and trimmed and everything perfectly within reason, with not a single leaf or thorn out of place. He wanders through the hedges, studying the blooms and the leaves and even the trunks of the shrubs, fascinated by just how lovely everything is. Even the smell is lovely, no hint of manure or bird shite, only the delicate perfume of roses, and even that isn't too overwhelming, despite how many blossoms there are. He stops beside a rose the size of a grown man's palm, vivid oxblood red and in full bloom, and leans down to breathe deeply of the centre of it. He comes away with shimmering golden pollen on his nose and eyelashes, and laughs in delight.
"Hob!" someone calls, too far now to determine whether it's Roland or Crispin, but the tone of the voice is urgent. Hob rolls his eyes.
"Yes, yes!" he calls back, and starts his search in earnest. He doesn't know what he's looking for, save that he'll recognise it when he sees it. The problem is that the deeper into the garden he goes, the wilder it seems to become. Hedges that were neat in their rows are suddenly crowding into the path, and roses that had had nary a thorn between them are suddenly brushy and strange, leaning over the gaps between rows, almost as if they're now reaching for him. When he'd looked over the garden from the top of the wall it had seemed a very easy layout to remember, and none of the hedges had been tall enough to block his vision, but...
Some ten minutes in, Hob admits to himself that he's lost.
He's got a knife and flint on him, he thinks, so he could burn his way out if he really needed to, but he doesn't want to, and besides, that seems an awful thing, to be caught in a blaze and unable to find your way through it. He's got his sword still, so he could start hacking at the hedges, but again, he doesn't want to. He wants to find the rose that he'd been searching for and then leave. He also wants to make his way to the base of the tower and find out who might still live there. A ghost? A devil? Or just a man?
He sighs heavily, and sits down in the middle of the path to give his aching feet a minute to recover. The hedges seem to arch over him, blocking out the sight of the emerging stars save for directly overhead. Everything is very dark and dreary now, a stark contrast to the wonderful garden he'd seen in the golden glow of sunset, and though it's all still very beautiful, it's beautiful like a wolf is beautiful. Some sleek, nighttime predator that could just as easily rip his throat out as look at him.
"What to do," he murmurs. He hasn't got a torch – he'd left them in his rouncey's pack. He hasn't got any food, nor a blanket to ward off the evening chill, so staying here for the night is feasible, but an unpleasant prospect. He's still just the tiniest bit drunk off their mad rush to the tower, but the thrill is rapidly dissipating, and doubt creeps in behind it. He's decided that he isn't going to die, but there are worse things than death, aren't there? And he's not a fan of pain.
"Fucked the dog this time, didn't you, chief?"
It's a much different voice from Crispin or Roland, and it's also much, much closer. Almost directly above him in fact, and Hob tips his head back, peering up through the thornrows and the leaves, squinting until he spots a patch of darkness that's a different texture than all the rest. It shifts a bit, and then hops down a ways, and it resolves into a large, black bird. Hob's seen ravens on the battlefield before, feasting on corpses, but he's never seen one like this: glossy and trim and with pale, almost white eyes.
"Did you just talk?" he asks it, and the raven gives an approximation of a shrug with its wings.
"Sure, if you call this talking," it says. "Kind of miss having lips, but whatever." The raven's mouth opens, and there's another flash of white. Teeth, lining the hard black shell of its beak. Hob scoots back on his bottom and the raven laughs. "You should've seen where they were before," it says, and flutters down another few feet. "You shouldn't be here. The master of the tower doesn't like visitors."
It sounds quite bitter, Hob thinks. Either it doesn't like visitors either, or it doesn't like the master of the tower. He swallows. "I've decided I'm not going to die," he tells the raven, which tilts its head back and forth. "So I've got to pick a flower and bring it back to my mates as proof."
"Bold claim," the raven says. "Who are you to decide that death won't come for you?" There's a beat, and then the raven laughs, croaky and terrible. "I like it! Why the fuck not? Just grab any old flower, chief. What's stopping you?"
"I don't know," Hob says mournfully. "I'm looking for something specific. I'll know it when I see it, but I don't know what it is. And now I can't bloody see anything because it's getting dark." He thumps his fist against the path and then winces as gravel grinds into his skin. Even hands that have known nothing but sword and plough fall to pieces in the face of stone.
The raven is quiet for a long while, long enough that Hob wonders if it's left – but no, there's been no sound from it, no shift of wing or feathers, and if he squints through the gloom he can still make out the bone-button circle of its pale eye.
Finally, it laughs again. "Sure!" it says. "Fuck it! Worst that happens is we get some fresh meat. Win-win for me all around. Follow me, chief."
And then the raven spreads its wings and takes off. Hob watches it go, a black shape against a black sky, mapping its path only by the way it blots out what stars haven't been obscured by the hedges. He scrambles to his feet and runs to follow, looking for the white flash of its eyes, the glint of its upsettingly human teeth as it grins and cackles above him. "This way!" it croaks, and Hob turns left, and then left again, then straight, weaving between the roots of the hedges and pulling free of the rose thorns as they pluck as his tunic. A stone in the middle of the path nearly trips him, but he catches his balance in time to watch the raven soar right and so he bears that way, too; something wraps around his wrist and tugs, but he yanks it free, and he catches a glimpse of a woody vine falling away from his hand in the split second before he turns another bend.
"Here!" the raven calls, and then Hob can't see it any longer, so he skids to a halt...just barely keeping himself from slamming into the base of the tower.
The stone is just as smooth and perfectly-laid as it's always seemed from a distance. More so, even, now that he can see the amount of effort that must have gone into the cutting of each block. The carvings he's always admired are even more devastatingly beautiful up close, and the whole tower gives off a faint luminescence, not strong enough to be called true light, but...but it seems like it wants to be seen more than everything else, and so Hob sees it, and it's wonderful. The hedges and roses grow wild right up to the tower's only entrance: two massive double doors made of some dark wood, nearly as dark as the stone, with silver knockers shaped like flower heads. Three carved busts flank the tops of the doors, staring down in accusation: one in the shape of a dragon, one an eagle, and one a horse. The pale-eyed raven shimmers out of the darkness and lights on the ear of the horse.
"Here you go," it says, and then makes a sweeping gesture with its wing. "Go wild."
"I'm not going inside," Hob tells it. His heart pounds a bit faster at the thought. What if he did, though? What would he find? Who would he find?
"Not inside, idiot," the raven says. It gestures again, this time with intent. "There."
Hob follows the line of its pointing wing, and then he understands.
There is a path that leads up to the doors, packed earth and gravel, but in the very middle of it, a dozen or so feet from the entrance, there's a single rose bush. It's small and mean and woody, and the leaves are such a dark green that they look nearly black, and they're covered all over with a gilded powder that makes them look like someone's dipped them in gold, but not, Hob thinks, in a way that's beautiful. It looks sick, is what it looks like, it looks like it's struggling when all the rest of the garden is in riotous bloom. But there is still, despite that, a single rose growing upon it, the same dark colour as all the most numerous ones in the garden, but darker, somehow, still, with more of that gold speckling on its petals. The centre of it is black velvet, and even its pollen is a violent, bloody red.
He knows it as soon as he sees it. That's the flower he needs.
Hob looks up at the raven and gives it a wave. "Thanks, friend," he says, and the raven clicks its beak – and teeth – at him.
"Don't thank me for your own funeral, chief," it says. "You should be able to find your way out once you pick that thing."
Hob considers the bloom. There are no thorns that he can see, no vines, no rough-edged leaves. Compared to the rest of the garden, this little bush seems very alone, almost like it's been waiting for someone to come and put it out of its misery. He kneels down beside it, touching the gold-tipped leaves and rubbing the strange, gritty powder between his fingers. It feels like sand at first, but then it crumbles into dust, and then less than dust, and wisps away. It leaves a faint residue on his skin, at the same time as his bloody fingers leave a few beads of red on the leaves that he touches.
"Huh," he says, and then he turns his eyes to the rose.
It's smaller than all the others, smaller and with slightly curled petals that are a tannish brown at some of the edges, dry and flaking. There are a few scaly patches on the leaves nearest the bloom where the gold dust has congealed and left a spot like a bit of dried-down molten lead, or a bit of particularly fancy bird shite. He picks at it with a thumbnail and it flakes away under the pressure, revealing a smooth, light green splotch underneath it. It doesn't smell like anything, he notes. All the other flowers are perfumed and lovely, but this one just seems to have...given up.
"Well," he says to it, "it doesn't look as if anyone's taking care of you here. What's say you see the world a bit before you go on, ey?" He reaches for it, and is it his imagination, or does it lean into his touch? The petals are softer than velvet, softer than silk, softer than a woman's inner thigh, which he reckons is the softest thing in the world, and there's a sound when he touches it, like a sigh on the wind. He thinks about trying to dig up the whole bush with his dagger, to see if he can plant it elsewhere, but...what are the chances he'll be able to get over the wall with a whole shrub lobbed over his shoulder? And besides, it doesn't seem like it's much longer for the world. If he takes just this single bloom he can prove to his mates his intent not to die, and maybe, if flowers have souls, this one will have the chance to reach Heaven without having the tower in the way.
Hob takes a deep breath, and he uses his thumbnail to clip the stem.
Nothing happens. Not fire, not lightning, not even an ominous rumble of the ground. The sigh on the breeze gets a little bit louder, if anything, but that could just be the wind and nothing more. Above him, the pale-eyed raven laughs uproariously.
"He did it!" it caws. "Son of a bitch actually did it! Holy shit, I can't believe you did it. Good luck, chief! Good fucking luck!" Then it spreads its wings and takes off, leaving behind a smear of white dung on the forehead of the horse, and it disappears into the gloaming.
Hob holds the flower by the stem, between his fingers, cupping the delicate head. It's heavier than he thought it would be. Warmer, too. When he brings it to his nose there's the faintest hint of a scent – nothing at all flower-like. Iron, maybe, or fire. He brushes his lips against the petals to feel their softness, then tucks the thornless stem into the neck of his tunic.
"Shall we?" he murmurs, and then he turns, and follows the path back into the hedges.
It's easier to find his way back to the wall, just like the raven had said. He'd thought he'd been lost for an hour at least, when the leaves had been closing in, but from tower to wall it only takes him maybe five minutes of steady walking before he sees the high stones again. "Hullo!" he calls out, once the wall comes into view. The hedges still seem wilder here, unfriendly in the lack of light, but it's not near as bad as it had been. "Crispin? Roland?"
There's a scrabbling-shuffling sound. "Here!" Roland calls back. "We're here! Oh, thank Christ, Hob, thank God, we thought you'd been taken!"
Hob laughs, studying the wall to try and find a good handhold to start with. "Taken by what?"
"The Devil," Crispin says. He's come right up to the wall, following the sound of Hob's voice, and Hob can see his eye peering through one of the many little holes. "Or worse."
"Worse than the Devil?"
"Death itself, maybe."
"Don't let the clergy hear you say that," Hob says with a grin. "Saying that damnation is better than death."
"One's the same as the other, if you ask me," Roland says. He still sounds further away. "Come over again, I want to leave this place."
"All right, all right. I'm coming."
It's harder going, climbing in the dark, but he makes good time, and when Hob reaches the top of the wall he finds that none of his fingers are bloody, and, now that he thinks about it, the handholds had seemed...kinder. Not any easier to find or grab, but once he'd dug his fingers into them it hadn't hurt, and his fingers had never gone numb. And the drop on the other side seems a bit less intimidating, too, especially with Crispin right there, staring up at him. "Catch me!" Hob calls down, and Crispin flings out his arms just in time for Hob to let himself drop. They both go down into the soft loam, Crispin swearing, Hob laughing, neither of them worse for wear.
"You idiot!" Crispin hisses. "You could've broken something! You could've brained yourself! You could've brained me!" Hob leans in and plants a smacking kiss on his mate's cheek, and laughs harder when Crispin makes an exaggerated noise of disgust before trying to wrestle himself free.
"Let's just go," Roland says. He creeps a bit closer, eye turned up to keep the tower within sight, and seizes Hob by the arm, and hauls him up. Then he spots the rose, and his fingers tighten.
"Ow," Hob says.
"You bloody did it," Roland says. "You bloody well did it. You stole a rose from the garden."
"Manky-looking thing," Crispin says, brushing dirt from his hose. He's giving Hob a new look, though. Sort of awed. Sort of frightened. "You couldn't have picked a nicer one?"
"None of the nicer ones were right," Hob says. He can't explain it, except that all those other roses, with their plate-sized petals and their perfect golden pollen, had seemed...less real than this one. This one is honest. Sad, and dying, but honest.
"Come on," Roland says, and starts tugging Hob away. "You've made your point, death won't touch you, come on."
They pick their way through the dark and the underbrush, occasionally tripping over root and vine, until they emerge, panting and sweating, from the copse of trees and back out into the unfiltered moonlight of the countryside. The horses are there waiting for them, all four lying down in a neat circle, almost nose to tail, and in the middle of them is Aiden, sound asleep.
"Oy!" Crispin says, and he stoops to pick up a clod of earth, which he flings at Aiden's chest just as the man is rousing. "Sleepy-bones, wake up! What if we'd needed help? What if we'd been calling out, save us, Aiden, save us! You wouldn't have heard it, you louse!"
"I'd have heard it!" Aiden says. He brushes dirt from his tunic, and can't hide a huge yawn as he rises and stretches and grins. "I heard your complaining well enough! 'Come on, Hob, come on!' Sounded like a maid urging him on."
"Here, lads, it's done," Hob says, before either Roland or Crispin can throw a fist. "Let's ride back, and if we're lucky we can beg a last pint at the White Horse before sleep calls us."
"Sleep is calling me now," Aiden says, but his grumbling peters out as they rouse the horses and mount up, and Hob is still buzzing with the thrill of thievery, so he doesn't feel too uncharitable about any of it. The stem of the rose is warm where it's tucked against his breast, and the petals are soft where they tickle his chin, and as they ride back to London under cover of night the lightness in his heart doesn't abate one bit, nor get any weaker. It seems to swell, actually. He feels alive, terribly and wonderfully alive, and he urges his horse on faster and harder, whooping his exultation into the warm summer air. Aiden takes up the cry behind him, and soon even Roland and Crispin are back to chattering and singing, and there's no mention made of towers or roses until they reach the bounds of London a few hours later, in the deepest, darkest part of night.
"Let us see it, then," Aiden says, nudging his mare a little bit closer. The streets are empty of everything but guards and cutpurses, so they're making good headway towards the White Horse. "This flower you risked your life for."
"There wasn't much risk," Hob says, and turns his chest towards his mates so they can have a look. "Thought I was lost for a moment, but a raven came and helped me." He leaves out the part where the raven talked, or had teeth like a grown man. It seems the sort of thing that might send Roland into hysterics.
"Ravens are bad omens," Roland says, but he crowds closer, too, and looks at the flower all the same. "It's not very pretty."
"What do you know from pretty?"
"I know a fair flower when I see one," Roland protests, "and that's no fair flower. It looks like it's taken with bad humours."
"Your face is taken with bad humours," Hob says. "Your eyes are milky from all the phlegm in you."
"You're so full of piss your breath stinks," Roland shoots back. Hob aims a kick at his shin, but his rouncey shies away before he can land it, which sets Roland to laughing. "Even your horse takes my side!"
The White Horse is still open when they reach it, though just barely, and the serving girl – the same lovely lass from earlier – is leaning against the counter with her chin cradled in her hand, dozing quietly. She rouses when they enter, having tied their horses to the rail out front, and gives them a tight smile.
"Evening, sirs," she says. "Cook's gone to bed, I'm afraid."
"No need for food, we're celebrating!" Hob tells her. He leans in close, and she is pretty, she really is, long and slender as a new willow, but he finds himself thinking that the rose is still a more honest beauty, already showing the worst bits of itself, making the remaining loveliness shine all the brighter. "I know it's a trouble, but could we get a pint for each of us? And we won't bother no one nor ask any favours."
"Men always ask favours," she says, but she goes to the tun behind the counter and fills them four pints, and then she hollers for the boy to go and stable their horses. It's just the five of them in the tavern this late, but Hob is still vibrating with excitement, with possibility. The rose is still warm against his breast as he raises his cup in a toast.
"To living," he says, and Crispin nods. "To good friends and shite ale, and...and roses, too."
"Hear, hear," Aiden says, and even Roland lifts his cup, the tink of them colliding booming in a room so used to noise, now somehow louder in silence. "To music!"
"To God and country," Roland says.
"To pretty maids," Crispin says, and winks at the serving girl.
"To death," Hob says. "Wherever he might be."
They drink, and it's still the same ale, still barely better than river water, but it's sweeter, and richer, and life is richer, and the rose tucked against his heart feels like an old friend, almost, like he's rescued some poor animal from a trap.
All of which to say that Hob is feeling very good about himself, and very pleased with himself and well-satisfied, when the torches go out and plunge the tavern into darkness.