by Hana Cole
He scrunches up his eyes and seals his lips. From the group of the weakest boys he can hear choking. The sticks man hollers some fury at them and snaps his fingers at one of his men. Etienne’s guts turn cold as the man uncoils a long whip and begins to thrash at the little boys while the stick man rages. As the lime dust settles, Etienne can see Renauld, red-faced and wheezing.
‘The powder is making him choke,’ calls Daniel. ‘Help him!’
Renauld falls to the ground. Eyes bulging he gasps for air, hands at his throat. Etienne’s mouth is open but he can’t make any sound. Everything is moving very slowly. It feels like he is in a dream where he needs to run, but his legs respond as if they are sinking in mud. The men stand idle as Renauld’s whole body spasms silently. When he has stopped moving, the stick man lifts up his head up by the hair then lets it go with a casual sneer. Etienne flinches as the boy’s head cracks back down on the stone. He can’t believe what his eyes are showing him. He can’t move. Not even to turn his head to the others. It feels like a horse is standing on his chest. Two of the slavers come forward and toss the limp body into the water as though it is a sack of spoiled goods.
‘No!’ Daniel cries and races forward.
The slavers fall upon him. Delivering kicks to subdue his struggle they spread- eagle him on the ground. One of them forces his trousers down. Etienne’s bowels churn. He turns his head away. His friend’s screams are all he needs to know of the evil into whose hands they have fallen.
Huddled together like sheep under the crack of the slaver’s whip, they are goaded aboard, heads hanging, shoulders shaking with silent sobs. Their captors are chatting among themselves, laughing, scratching, oblivious. Who are these monsters? Etienne asks himself, even though he knows there is no answer. Even God would have no answer. They didn’t even call a priest for little Renauld, just tossed his body away like an animal carcass.
A priest. Staring into the fetid space before him, Etienne wishes very much that Father Gui were there, messy hair and black robes outlined against the night, eyes twinkling just as they always did when Etienne needed to know that everything was going to be alright. A hot lump snags the back of his throat. He scrunches his eyes tight.
As the men fasten them to iron cleats, Etienne can’t help but think of all those cold nights sitting in the lambing barns back home, chopping logs in the snow, hands all blistered and raw; how he got a beating from the farmer for going into the village with Marc when they should have been in the fields. He misses it all so much. With all his heart he wishes he had known. He wishes that there was some way he could go back in time and warn himself that the chains of his circumstances really weren’t that bad, that he would be trading them for chains much more terrible than anything he could have imagined sitting on his small little hillside wondering what else was out there. Well now he knows. He knows what becomes of you when you try to break free of the order God has set the world. And he would give anything to make it that he didn’t.
He draws his knees into his chest and buries his head. Behind him he can hear the sound of retching, then a warm stench as someone soils themselves. Wiping his cheek with his hand, he smears a ribbon of snot across his cheek. ‘If this is a test Lord then please make it stop soon,’ he sobs. ‘Because I know I can’t pass. And I’d rather die now than witness anymore of this terrible place.’
Chapter Seventeen
Gui found the splintered remains of the vessel listing in the port at Ajaccio. Its mast split, the topsail hung limp, shrouding the foredeck. It looked as though it had journeyed the five rivers of Hades. You’ll know it when you see it, the harbourmaster told him. Please God, don’t let this be it. But he knew from the sickening weight in his heart that it was.
He jumped aboard and kicked his way through debris of wood and canvass to the gash in the deck where the mast had fallen. It was too dark to see below but the stench spoke loud enough. Stomach pulsing, he dropped down into the hold to find himself standing in a decay of sea-bloated wood, mouldy fabric, human waste. He inched forward through the slop until he found the forehead cabin.
Hand shielding his nose, he waded in, a current of dread sucking at his guts. Something in the bilge water caught his shin. He toed at the bobbing object and a handkerchief unfurled to yield a wizened stump of fles; a relic, something once devoutly possessed. A blade of light from the battered deck above revealed iron manacles nailed to the bulkhead. The acid in his stomach surged up and he fled. Stumbling through the filth, he beat away the water in his path as though it were some living monster.
On his hands and knees he made it to the gunwale and emptied the contents of his stomach overboard. Skin cold and clammy, he wiped his face with an unsteady hand. A voice in his head was telling him it was not possible. He could not be on God’s earth and witness what he had just seen. Then he heard the clunk of something against the side of the hull and there was no denying it. A mop of fair hair atop a coarse wool tunic came to rest alongside. The body of a child. Blood rushing at his temples, he tore off his cloak. ‘Please God, no.’ He hung his torso over the side and thrashed for purchase.
The body looked too slight to be Etienne, but still it took all Gui’s steel to fix his eyes open as he heaved the water-laden cadaver onto its back. He did not recognise the features of the face that stared back, long-lashed and serene. Harbour lights gently dappling the water around him, the boy showed nothing of the horror that must have befallen him. Gui tugged at the boy, but before he could pull the body aboard, someone grabbed his legs. He torqued himself round.
His assailant, breath rank with alcohol, spat words Gui didn’t understand as they wrestled.
‘You are crew to this vessel? You know who that boy in the water is?’ Gui shouted as he groped for his knife. The other man’s eyes mocked.
‘Boy?’ he said slowly in French. ‘Yes.’ He rubbed a calloused thumb and forefinger together.
Gui slammed his fist into the slaver’s gut. ‘Where have you taken them?’ His hand tightened around the man’s throat. ‘Answer me!’
‘Sold…they are sold.’
‘Sold?’ Every fibre of Gui’s body felt as though it needed more air. Heart pumping a stinging brew of fear and rage, he stamped on the man’s knee and the slaver sank down.
‘Listen to me.’ Gui steadied his voice. ‘Tell me where they have gone and I won’t kill you.’ He pressed his dagger into the grease of the slaver’s neck.
‘Misr.’ The man dropped his head forward. ‘Misr. Egypt.’
‘Egypt?’
The man nodded violently. ‘Two days.’ He held up two fingers. ‘Two days they go.’
Gui’s guts were molten tar. But for two days.
‘You pay to me. I take you.’ The slaver grinned, showing the few sharp, yellow stubs that served him as teeth.
‘Pay you?’ Gui’s ears were ringing. His mind emptied. His body felt remote, light, as though it were not under his command. He squeezed the hilt of his dagger, piercing the slaver’s neck.
‘No kill me. Pray...please no,’ the man jabbered.
‘Take me to my son!’ Gui roared.
‘Yes, yes. I take.’ The blood shot eyes drooped pitifully. ‘Please. Mercy.’ The man began to weep.
Gui stared into the pathetic, sun-blistered face. Thou shalt not kill. In his breath of hesitation, the sailor jerked his fists upward, catching Gui on the chin. The men fell to the ground, wrestling in a tight embrace until Gui jerked free. His dagger plunged into the resistance of cartilage, and the man’s screams faded to a gurgle.
Panting, Gui threw off his assailant. A dark crimson pool spread out over the deck. He tried to bring himself up from all fours but his limbs were shaking. He lowered his head to the man’s chest. There was no life. Gui stared in disbelief at the body. The raw grate of his breath in his ears, he reached over to close the man’s eyes. As he did so, he found himself making the sign of the cross.
Later that evening Gui sat on the harbour wall, watching as the shimmering blac
k waters consumed the hulk of the slave ship. Two days before his son had stood on the very same ground, looked out over the same waters. Etienne was somewhere out there now, floating on this infinity of night towards who knew what fate. Misr. Gui breathed the strange sound. Egypt. If the slaver had been truthful. Numb, he considered the grimy soul now drifting down to feed the crabs. How quickly these new garments have become bloodied, he thought as he flipped his rosary over and over. Dressing up in Philippe’s fine clothes had felt like something of a game, a short-term necessity of circumstance. When he pulled off his cassock all those weeks ago, Gui had not considered he would never wear it again.
Deliver the weak and needy from the hands of the wicked. His mother’s words returned to him. He sought nothing less. Yet his Church would have him spill no blood. The same Church who rallied the faithful to arms in defence of the earthly Jersualem. They preached the glorious rhetoric that captured the hearts and mind of children for whose fate they denied responsibility. Would God really see him stand by with incense and chalice in hand while evil men rained blows upon the innocent?
Gui studied his hand - the wide, muscular palm. They were his father’s, the hands of a long line of warriors. Perhaps they were always destined to be bloody, he thought. Sealing his fingers over his eyes, he sought Agnes’s face, the softness of her skin, the smell of her hair. He saw her as last he had, lying on the bed, burning with fever. The numbness in his chest began to sear as it thawed. A bruise that ached far worse than any blow from a slaver. She was still alive. He could feel it. She would never depart this earthly realm without somehow letting him know. He had heard reports too often to doubt that. Mourners who, from afar, had seen their loved ones depart this world in a halo of golden light. If either she or Etienne had gone he would know it.
*
Gui folded the parchment in two, then immediately opened it and read it again. He had written to Agnes in the sleepless hours of the night before, when the stars of the firmament were shimmering so brightly it was impossible not to believe they were the immortal departed. He had wished on them with his life’s blood that he might hold his loved ones again. The note was an imitation of all he needed to say, but like a conversation he couldn’t bear to end, his eyes would not lift from the page.
He had nowhere to send it to, but the pretence that Agnes might cast her eyes over his words was all he had that afternoon to hold off the emptiness. He ordered a cup of wine, willing to accept even the false companionship of the grape, but all it did was fill his stomach with acid and fuel the urgency crawling in his belly that told him everything he needed to hold was slipping from his grasp.
Every flash of fair hair turned his head; a messenger boy tripping along the quay, a pickpocket weaving artfully among disoriented foreigners, a woman’s voice, shrill with reproach, chasing behind. Each time hope sparked in his heart before his mind had a chance to snuff it out with the visions that hunted his sleep – of Agnes on her sick bed, of that ship.
He had arrived at the port of Messina a few days before, courtesy of a small grain-bearing galley. A late autumn tempest had closed the harbour shortly after, leaving him stuck. With the last of busy season’s traffic dispersed by the storm, the captains of the vessels waiting to depart were few and they had wasted no time in raising their prices sky high. Soon, Advent would be approaching and it would be too late for sea-faring. If he could not find passage to Alexandria in the next week or so, he would be forced to winter in the Sicilian city.
Beyond the harbour chain, two large transports weighed anchor, their standards beating in the autumn gusts. The sun was flaming as it sank, but Gui could just make out the bold, red flags – one with two crossed keys beneath a mitre, the other a golden lion: Rome and Venice. They had docked together and he watched as they set their tenders to the water. Figures cast in shadow slid down rope ladders into the skiffs and sent glittering shards up into the air as they dipped their oars. Gui blew out the air from his cheeks. If they were his last chance before winter closed the seas, he doubted his pocket would stretch to satisfy their prices. Draining his cup, he crumpled his love letter into a ball.
‘Never throw away a love letter,’ said the foreign voice.
The man was dressed fashionably in a fitted doublet under a emerald green tunic.
‘You can tell?’ said Gui.
‘I am a trader. How can I sell if I do not know what a man may wish to buy?’
Gui considered the stranger’s accent, his showy clothes. ‘And you are from one of the Italian states.’
The man wagged his index finger, decorated with a large garnet ring. ‘The most important. Venezia.’ He thrust out his hand. ‘Enrico Zonta.’
Gui hesitated. The trader’s familiarity aroused his suspicion but his appearance seemed too memorable for him to be anything other than he claimed.
‘I am Marc,’ Gui said.
‘You look like a scholar. You are making pilgrimage?’
‘I am.’
Enrico Zonta considered a passing Arab girl, hips swaying with the weight of the pail on her head, then he said,‘Your clothes look borrowed.’
‘They are.’
‘I am intrigued.’ The merchant pointed to a tavern along the front. ‘Please.’
Gui told the other man just enough of his story to allow him to tell it convincingly. He was on his way to the Holy Land as penance for an adulterous affair.
‘You should have bought an indulgence!’ Zonta waved for a cup of wine. ‘Or at least brought your lover with you.’
‘Travel is a dangerous business.’
‘So is love.’
The Venetian had a benign face, soft from the pleasures of life but not sagging or ruddy with excess. His business was whatever he could sell - pearls, linen, perfumes.
Gui took a sip of wine. An earthy grape with a metallic after taste, it warmed his belly and softened his tongue. ‘I don’t believe that you can truly love more than one woman.’
Zonta heaved his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. ‘You only have one grand passion at a time, of course. But I have been to so many cities - Ragusa, Tripoli, Antioch, to the North. Each one a different pleasure.’
‘I will never love anyone else.’
‘Maybe, maybe not.’
‘What of your wife?’ asked Gui.
The trader patted him on the shoulder. ‘She is the only woman I have ever feared.’
The merchant shifted on his stool and sighed. His cheeks bagged like a sail bereft of wind, and for a moment it seemed to Gui that he was looking at the real man behind the affable persona.
‘Those transports harbouring over there,’ Gui nodded towards the dock. ‘I could get a pilgrim’s passage?’
‘They are merchant vessels but yes, if you have the coin someone will take you. You best be quick though. They leave in two days.’ He hesitated for a moment. ‘I could ask some acquaintances about a passage for you. You are staying here?’
‘Just off the square.’
Zonta called over more wine. ‘The Three Moors? I know the patron well.’
Gui’s head was already starting to buzz from the cup he was nursing, and he blocked the refill with his hand. The Venetian peeled it away and beckoned a serving girl to pour.
‘She is Sicilian,’ he said of the blonde-haired girl. ‘Norman. Come now,’ he grinned. ‘Let us be friends.’
The merchant edged Gui’s cup towards him, and there was something about the insistence of the gesture that sent a signal of alarm pulsing through the fog of Gui’s mind.
He tried to wave the girl away but Zonta grabbed her arm. ‘Resta. Resta cu’ noi,’ he said, bearing his gums as he smiled. Turning to Gui he made a fist with one hand and squeezed the other over his bicep ‘You are bold enough to cross the seas, but here, a thousand moons away from your love, you allow modesty to deny you?’
The girl fixed her gaze on Gui, reached out and touched his hair. His blood heated. The bitter aftertaste of the wine thickened on his tongue. He fumb
led for his thoughts, but they would not come to order.
‘Veni,’ said the serving girl.
Instinct drew Gui eyes towards the tavern’s exit but it was blur in the sunlight. He could feel beads of sweat forming on his hairline.
‘You are very rare,’ he said to the girl. Easing his stool away from the table, pulled himself to stand. A griping abdominal pain forced him to take a steadying pace forward. The merchant’s raised his cup.
Panicked, Gui looked around to find he was now the only customer in the inn. The next thing he knew, a bulky, donkey-faced man with a meat cleaver was standing on the threshold of the front door. The padrone emerged from the kitchens, showing a blade of his own. Digging deep Gui swiped up his bar stool. Holding it up as a shield, he backed away towards the side door the prostitutes used. The two thugs lunged towards him. Gui threw the stool at them, turned and fled, stumbling down an unlit corridor.
Shouldering open one of the doors, he found himself in a cramped boudoir. The window frame was rotten, and it crumbled as he kicked out the grille. A glance downwards, then he rolled out into the alley. Doubled over in pain, using the wall as a crutch, he staggered out into the labyrinth of the port town. Once he knew he was clear away from the tavern he gave into the burning in his guts. Mouth flooded with saliva, he forced his fingers down his throat, purging the tainted liquid from his stomach.
Gui drenched his head under a water fountain and hobbled on until he found an apothecary. It was then he discovered that his money pouch was gone. The Jew made Gui drink a foul, buttery emetic for the poison, and waiving payment, sent him on his way with an antidote of horehound and garlic to take after.
The next morning, under a head-baking sun, he scoured the port and its warren of thoroughfares in search of the man whom had so easily gained his confidence, and more pressingly, was in possession of the money he needed for passage to Egypt. The sun was mid heaven when, from the corner of his vision, a flash of recognition prompted him to turn. The Italian trickster was rounding the corner into one of the backstreets.
