Free The Book of the Lion by Michael Cadnum

river.
    â€œFoolish people!” Hubert was saying. “The saints steadfastly protect a Christian from such ghosts.”
    â€œDo knights in this countryside ride about rutting and murdering?” I asked.
    â€œOf course they do!” said Nigel. “God’s lips, any knight would, except for fear of Hell. That’s why the lord pope has seen the wisdom in sending so many fighting men to the Holy Land. That and, of course, the great need of us there.”
    â€œA ghost is but a demon,” said Hubert. “However its disguise, I’ll spit on it, even if it carries its head like a bucket.”
    But the next day, on board our new vessel, we all studiously ignored the banks of the river, lest one of the aproned, matronly figures prove to be headless. Nor did we look up when a bird slipped from tree to tree calling an unfamiliar song, No return, no return.
    Behind hedge and cattle trough a devil might be hiding. Wenstan and Miles disagreed on a song about a woman in a citadel who grew her hair long, so any passing knight could climb up the long tresses and join her in corporeal delight. Miles contended that the hair in question was her privy hair, while Wenstan said this was the most irritating example of twisting a jolly song into something sinful. “It was the hair of her head,” stammered Wenstan. “Her head hair!”
    One evening a cow swam across the river, and the rivermen slowed the ship so it wouldn’t collide with the surging, lowing head. I could only wonder that the cow could have wandered so far from her usual pasture, and her companions. Now that it was feeding time the beast was near lost, and Hubert and I stood in the stern of the river ship and watched the cow for a long time, until she disappeared along the bank, her bell ringing softly in the willows.
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    We made our way through forest and farm when we had left the river behind.
    When we found no inn, Wenstan and Miles drove tall camp pegs into the soil, long wooden spears, with a shape like a nail-head at one end, and erected a great, sail-gray tent. The thick canvas bellied and fluttered until willing hands caught the ropes and helped to tie it down.
    In the midst of strange country, a bull across a stream gazing at us, a few hammer blows, a few quick knots, and the sky, the foreign landscape, was hidden by canvas. I told Wenstan how magnificent our tent was, and he said, after preparing his tongue to utter the words, “Good Edmund, when you see the tents of Our Lord’s army, you’ll think this dull.”
    I had heard of monstrous men in far-off lands, men whose faces and brains were in their chests, who had no heads, and the race of humans called unipeds, who bounded along the ground on one massive leg.
    In our whispered speculation Hubert and I agreed that to meet one man-monster would be a disturbing sight, but an army of them would strike terror.
    Each evening Hubert and I would practice sword work, Nigel looking on, calling, “Stance, watch your stance!” or “With a will, Edmund!” I learned how to hold my sword in the high ward, over my head, and the low ward, angled down by my knees. Nigel taught me to look at armor with a squire’s eye, how to help a knight dismount with a strong and willing shoulder, and how to assist with a war lance, dusting the grip with resin powder.
    Some farms had been blight-blasted and abandoned, house and granary burned to the ground. Others flourished. The vineyards sent forth yellow-green shoots, and the wheat fields were bare except for shivering, bright new life. Church bells reached us sounding oddly sour, the music of the call to prayer made bitter by our growing distance from home.
    I slept well at night. We ate the hen’s eggs and pullets Wenstan bargained for in nearby farms. We consumed goat and jellied eels, wine by the pottlefull, sheep’s milk, and pies of swan’s necks and goose livers, steaming hot.
    The road was