Cross of Fire

by David Gilman

  Blackstone heard voices and laughter rise from below. Now the formalities were over the joyous occasion had raised everyone’s spirits. Blackstone made the final turn and saw the Prince step into view. If an attack was imminent, it was time to gamble. If his instincts were wrong, they would laugh him out of court. Blackstone trusted his instincts.

  ‘To arms!’ Blackstone bellowed.

  His sudden cry and appearance, pounding down the stairs, Wolf Sword in hand, momentarily stunned the Prince. Alarmed at the fleeting thought it was Blackstone trying to kill him, the Prince shielded the Princess. Blackstone gestured him away from the stairs. ‘Get back!’ By the time his words echoed across the cold stone walls he was in front of the Prince, putting himself between the royals and the men who loomed out of the depths of the building. Men’s voices roared as a sudden and furious clash of steel spilled from the side passages into the hallway. Three men lunged from the shadows towards Blackstone, big men wielding falchions and swords. Blackstone rushed at them as Killbere and the captains blocked more attacks from the side passages. The entourage scattered, crouching against the walls as Chandos and his armed escort of four men threw themselves to support Blackstone, who killed the first assassin and blocked another. A knife slashed his left arm. He ignored it. Blackstone turned, saw the bloodletting behind him as some of the entourage were struck down. He ignored the blurred image of half-lit death in the shadows.

  ‘Get them out!’ Chandos bellowed as Blackstone killed another assailant.

  Blackstone seized the Prince’s arm. ‘With me!’ Blackstone commanded the heir to the English throne.

  Prince Edward made no complaint. He grabbed his wife’s arm and pulled her up the stairs behind Blackstone. The studded door swung open at his hammering. The wide-eyed sentry jumped back, already armed, alerted by the commotion below.

  ‘Guard the stairs,’ said Blackstone. ‘Go!’ he ordered the Prince, who tugged his wife with him. Too late. Cries of alarm echoed up from the floor below as the guard there was killed. Footfalls pounded upwards. ‘Come on!’ Blackstone ordered the sentry. They reached the top floor. The Prince rushed towards his quarters.

  ‘No,’ Blackstone yelled. ‘The bedding is poisoned. In here.’ He shouldered open one of the other doors. The Prince pushed his uncomplaining wife inside. ‘Block the door,’ Blackstone told him.

  Their eyes met. ‘Thomas, I am unarmed.’

  Without a second thought Blackstone pressed Wolf Sword into the Prince’s outstretched hand. ‘God save you, my lord,’ said Blackstone. The door slammed. He turned to face the attackers swarming up the stairs. A dozen or more men. Sword blades slaked with blood. It was a well-sprung trap – the first assault below had forced the Prince into the only escape route open to him: the staircase. The sentry killed the first two men as they struggled up the steep stairs. Blackstone seized a fallen sword. He and the man stood shoulder to shoulder, holding the high ground as the surging attackers crammed up the stairwell, hampering each other’s strikes. The unnamed soldier fought well but then sword thrust and grabbing hands yanked him down into the wolf pit. Blackstone stood alone, the dead at the top of the stairs slowing the attack. He peered into the throng of men and saw the unmistakable burly figure of Gruffydd ap Madoc, silver mane and beard sluiced with sweat and stained with blood. A wild man shouldering his men aside as he stormed up the staircase to engage with Blackstone. So it was true. Lady de Sagard had bought the Welshman off.

  Ap Madoc bellowed: ‘Thomas! Give him up and I’ll spare you. In God’s name I swear it!’

  Blackstone rammed his blade into a man’s stomach and then booted the body free of its grip. He cut and thrust and parried, using his fist to beat the men forging through what was now a narrow gap as they stumbled over their fallen comrades. A slashing knife blade cut into his injured leg’s thigh. He staggered momentarily and then braced against the searing pain as he jabbed the sword into the snarling man’s throat. Sweat stung his eyes.

  ‘God has disowned you,’ he shouted over the grunting roars of the men determined to kill him and the Prince. It was only a matter of time now before they overwhelmed him. He could hold them back for a short while longer. Their sheer numbers would push him back. Heartbeats pounded away the minutes of life that remained.

  And then that unfaithful bitch Fate blessed him with the kiss of life.

  The assault faltered as Meulon’s strength forced open the door on the half-landing below, pushing aside the tide of men. Chandos and Killbere, with John Jacob and Beyard at their back, cut a swathe into the attackers with their men. Blackstone saw the look on ap Madoc’s face. The attack had failed and he knew it. He raised his face to Blackstone and, baring his teeth with a grin, turned and escaped down the stairs. Chandos, Killbere and John Jacob fought their way up to Blackstone. Meulon, Beyard and the others made quick work of the surviving routiers. The men’s splattered faces and jupons bore witness to the hard and bitter fight it had taken to reach Blackstone. As Chandos reached the top step John Jacob bent and hauled aside the bodies to give them free passage.

  ‘The Prince?’ said Chandos.

  ‘In there. Take care in his chamber – poison was used on his bed. There’s a dead girl.’

  Chandos nodded and pushed past Blackstone. This was no time for more questions.

  ‘Bastards fought hard, Thomas. They were determined,’ said Killbere.

  ‘And here,’ Blackstone replied, binding his leg with a dead man’s belt.

  ‘Aye, I see that. Who led these men?’

  ‘The Welshman.’

  Killbere scowled. ‘He’s not among the dead,’ he said, glancing down the body-strewn stairs. ‘What next?’

  ‘He escaped. You and the others stay and guard the Prince. Take nothing for granted now, Gilbert. We are in the heart of the whore.’ Blackstone stepped over the dead and went as quickly as he could down the stairs.

  ‘No, Thomas! Wait for us,’ Killbere called.

  Blackstone turned. ‘Gilbert, protect him. Do as Chandos commands.’ He smiled. ‘Do as I ask, my friend. I have to finish this.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  Blackstone pursued Gruffydd ap Madoc into the cellars. Wine barrels lay along one wall, racks of wine bottles on the other. Light seeped down a narrow stone staircase at the end of the room. It was the only way out. Gripping the sword hilt tighter, he stepped warily onto the narrow steps that curved up to the right. Shifting the borrowed sword into his left hand, he edged around the corner. Light spilled down. Ap Madoc was running for his life but there was no sign of him. Blackstone pressed his weight into his wounded leg, ignored its protest and pushed up further into the room above. Pig, sheep and game carcasses, skinned and cured, hung from hooks. A servant lay slumped against a wall in a pool of blood; what had been a tray of wine bottles lay shattered at his feet. An open arch revealed a kitchen: meat on a spit, signs of food being prepared on a vast table, steam rising from a cauldron. The servants had fled, no doubt terrified by the fleeing Welshman and the violent death of one of their own. An open, arched wooden door led into another passage from where sounds of a busy city reached him. He turned into a narrow alley that led into the street. An overturned handcart, baskets of fruit and vegetables scattered, the carter thrown off-balance on the sloping cobbled street. The lumbering Welshman was as strong as an ox and had collided with him. There was still no sign of ap Madoc as burghers stooped to help the man right his cart while others gathered his wares and ran off with them. When he saw Blackstone, one of those helping the fallen man pointed towards a narrow alley across the street. Behind him to the right Blackstone saw soldiers blocking the main entrance to the palace. There was no time or need to warn them of the narrow entrance at the rear that gave access to the cellars. The attack had failed and there would be no further attempt on the Prince’s life that day. Not when the assassin’s leader had escaped.

  Blackstone ran hard, his injured leg throwing him into an awkward gait. The narrow street was blocked halfway down.
Men and women cowered, pressing themselves back against the shopkeepers’ stalls. A man lay sprawled, the back of his head caved in, his blood on the cobbles not yet congealed. A child cried uncontrollably, pressed close to the skirts of a woman in the crowd. The dead man wore a blacksmith’s apron and an iron bar lay close to his outstretched hand. Perhaps he had tried to stop ap Madoc and paid the price.

  ‘There!’ said a man, pointing at the sunken watercourse that ran under the city. The Canal du Caudeau had been dug over fifty years to divert water from the River Caudeau north of the city; it powered water mills to grind wheat for the city’s bakers and flowed beneath the streets, eventually to spill out into the broad expanse of the fast-flowing River Dordogne beyond the city. Blackstone clambered over the low stone wall to see the shallow water gushing into a tunnel. He glanced up at the sky trying to gauge where he was in the city. The sun was behind his shoulder; the Dordogne was south of the walls. The canal offered the chance of escaping beneath the city walls and if ap Madoc reached the river he would be gone on one of the many barges plying their trade.

  ‘The river?’ Blackstone called.

  ‘Five hundred paces,’ the man shouted, pointing behind him. ‘Four men!’ he warned.

  Blackstone slithered down into the water. Ap Madoc must have escaped with survivors from the attack. He crouched, peering into the gloomy tunnel; the reflected light from the water gave only so much illumination along the curved walls and roof. He waded in, the knee-deep water pushing behind his legs. His free hand guided him along the walls, eyes adjusting to the near darkness. He edged around a corner into complete darkness. He paused, attempting to hear a man’s laboured breathing or footfalls splashing through the water. There was only the echo of the gurgling stream.

  Blackstone pressed ahead and as he turned another corner firelight flickered across the ceiling twenty paces ahead. The spluttering sound of water droplets hitting flames sizzled in the dank air. The light grew brighter. It came from a side passage. He increased his pace. If more routiers had escaped and found another route beneath the city, he wanted to kill them before they turned into the main tunnel. An arm extended forward, the burning torch guiding its bearer. Blackstone snatched the man’s wrist, his blade angled low, ready to plunge beneath the man’s armpit. The torchbearer cried out, terror widening mouth and eyes; were it not for Blackstone’s strength he would have fallen back into the stream. Blackstone felt the old man’s body tremble beneath his grip as he kept the torch raised.

  ‘Who are you?’ said Blackstone.

  ‘Lord, don’t hurt me, I beg you. I am the tunnel keeper. I am charged with keeping the water free of obstruction… I beg you…’ the man stuttered.

  Blackstone lowered his sword. ‘How far does this passage take me until I see light again?’

  ‘I have a torch burning in each chamber where another passage joins this one.’

  ‘No daylight? I thought the canal revealed itself to the streets above.’

  ‘It does, it does,’ said the keeper, ‘but not here, not until it runs into the river.’

  ‘Darkness the whole way?’

  ‘Aye, lord. The whole way. Except for my torches. A man can get lost down here and drown. The nearer the river, the stronger the flow and depth. And there are no torches burning once you are past the final chamber. Only darkness. And then the drop into the river.’

  ‘Take me to the next chamber,’ said Blackstone.

  Shadows cast the man’s face into a contorted grimace. He shook his head. ‘I am fearful, Lord, of what you seek.’

  ‘Men who tried to kill the English Prince.’

  The man shuddered, crossing himself. ‘Assassins? They could wait in any of the side tunnels. We would never see them before they struck at us. Even the Almighty cannot see us down here.’

  ‘Then ask His forgiveness for your blasphemy and thank Him I am here instead.’

  *

  Blackstone kept one hand on the nervous man’s shoulder, pushing him ahead. Blackstone sweated in the fetid air and his lungs laboured from the heat. He ignored the pain in his leg that demanded he stop and attend to it. He could not gauge how far they had travelled but when the tunnel widened the tunnel keeper hesitated, bracing against Blackstone’s grip. With quickening breath, he whispered, ‘Someone’s ahead.’ His voice was barely audible over the splashing of the water, which had increased in strength, making Blackstone think they must be closer to one of the chambers and soon after the plunge down to the river.

  ‘Where?’

  The man trembled as he nodded: forward. Although Blackstone could see no one, he trusted the keeper’s instincts. He put his ear close to the man’s mouth, ignoring the stench of someone working in sweating darkness day in, day out. ‘A passage. To the right,’ the man whispered.

  Blackstone pushed him onward. The man’s head shook from side to side in dread. ‘Keep moving,’ said Blackstone, eyes searching the hewn-stone walls. And then the flickering light exposed a darker patch in the wall, not yet discernible as anything more than deeper shadow. Three paces from the side passage was a narrow tunnel. Blackstone forced the man’s arm forward, the torch now level with the side entrance. A shadow loomed; steel glinted. Blackstone hauled the tunnel keeper aside; the attacker’s blade struck stone instead of flesh. The torchlight flickered behind Blackstone as the tunnel keeper turned and ran, splashing through the water. Blackstone rammed the sword at the half-turned man but he twisted, parried the blow and in the diminished light Blackstone did not see that in his free hand he held a sharp-pointed dagger. Blackstone felt it pierce his mail into his side; the barely healed old wound tore. Ignoring the raw pain, he grasped the man’s wrist, keeping the blade in his side, smothering the man with his own body, stopping him from bringing his sword to bear. Blackstone head-butted him. Felt and heard bone, cartilage and teeth break; forced the man to step back with a spluttered gasp. Blackstone released his wrist and rammed the sword into the man’s stomach and then kicked him down into the swirling water. The darkness had, by now, engulfed them, but Blackstone knew his attacker would have no fight left in him. He knelt on one knee in the water, grappled for the man’s head and hauled it above the surface, pressing his other knee into the man’s stomach wound.

  ‘The Welshman. Gruffydd ap Madoc. Where? Where is he? Ahead or in a side tunnel?’

  He felt rather than saw the man shake his head. He was gasping for breath, fighting for the life that would soon desert him.

  ‘Where?’ Blackstone asked again.

  ‘Ahead. Waiting… I tried to escape… but the tunnel was… too narrow…’

  Blackstone let the wounded man’s head drop back into the water and pressed his weight onto his throat until his struggle ceased. He stepped over him, felt the wound in his side and knew that loss of blood and his injured leg would disadvantage him against the Welshman’s strength. There were still three more men ahead waiting to kill him. He stumbled forward, confident they would not attack him in the darkness. It would serve no purpose. Three men against one would get in each other’s way and might cause more injury to themselves than to him. He reasoned that if they were waiting to ambush him together rather than one man at a time, then they would be in one of the far chambers and would use the tunnel keeper’s torches to attack him. That would give them enough room and light to overpower him.

  A distant glimmer of light on water forewarned him of the hidden chamber. Tumbling water reflected tongues of flame. The strength of the current behind his legs pushed him on. Beyond the chamber the sound of cascading water echoed along the tunnel. Pressing himself against the wall, he edged forward. When he reached the chamber’s mouth he would have no choice but to step into plain sight and expose himself to immediate attack. Torchlight danced across the roof, showing the tunnel widened left and right. Straight ahead was darkness as the cave-like canal tumbled the water away towards the river.

  Where would the killers be? Left or right? If he laid such a trap, he would have men on both sides t
o overwhelm him. Two on one side, the third on the other. The curving wall led into the chamber. Men wielding swords with their right hand would want room to throw their arms back and strike. The chamber wall to the left would restrict their movement. It was clear to him that they would attack from the right-hand side of the chamber. He tightened his grip on the inferior sword and took a determined stride into the open space. A rapid glance to his left showed the chamber empty but as he turned he saw ap Madoc standing behind a second man. Where was the third? It made no difference. And it was too late. The shadows concealed what the man held.

  There was the sudden twang of a bow cord and then searing pain as a crossbow bolt pierced his chest. The impact forced him back against the wall. His sword arm went slack and he forced his left hand across his body to grasp the sword before it fell into the water. He gasped for air. Ap Madoc remained motionless as the bowman threw aside the crossbow and lunged forward. Blackstone parried the sword strike but the man’s strength easily blocked it and then he swung his fist into Blackstone’s face, splitting the skin on his forehead. Blood blinded one eye. His knees sagged. He brought his head up sharply and connected beneath the man’s chin. The routier staggered back, spat out what remained of his teeth and rammed his sword towards Blackstone’s exposed midriff. Blackstone twisted onto his injured leg, which gave way, dropping his hip; the blade edge ripped across his jupon, scraping against the mail beneath. The man’s impetus took him past Blackstone, who backhanded the sword pommel into his temple. Dazed, he fell back, stumbled in the water and fell. Blackstone threw his weight down onto him, pushing the blade into his chest. He squirmed, his contortions so fierce that Blackstone’s sword blade snapped.