Gate of the Dead

by David Gilman

  He held the gold double leopard out to Blackstone; the dull glint of light caught the figure of the King. ‘This carries a Latin inscription. Has that pagan goddess you wear around your neck supplanted Our Lord Jesus Christ in your life? Do you know the bible’s teaching? Were you taught it in your village?’

  ‘Only enough to bear the sting of the village priest’s switch before he absconded to the whorehouses of France. I cannot read Latin.’

  ‘No matter,’ said Torellini as Blackstone took the coin. ‘The inscription translates to: “Jesus passing through the midst of them went on his way.”’

  Blackstone felt the blank despair of ignorance.

  Father Torellini smiled and patted his arm. ‘The book of Luke refers to Jesus passing through a hostile crowd of Pharisees. Do you see, Thomas, for those who are superstitious these words are a charm against thieves and the perils of travel. You have been sent a token to protect your journey home.’

  He pressed the coin into Blackstone’s hand, using both of his own to close the Englishman’s big fist. ‘There are enemies waiting for you; their assassins have already tried here. This is only the beginning.’

  10

  Blackstone’s men waited, impervious to the chill wind twisting down through the valleys from the Apuan Alps. The sun’s spring warmth returned only when the wind shifted and the forests suffocated its bitterness. Killbere had posted men as outlooks, but it was Blackstone’s battle-scarred bastard horse that first gave warning of his master’s approach. It snuffled the air, its whinny alerting the men. Within minutes Blackstone’s lone figure clambered up a jagged ravine, through gorse and olive trees, an unexpected route for his return.

  John Jacob cuffed one of the sentries. ‘The dumb beast has better sense,’ he chastised the man.

  Blackstone pulled off the cloak and hood, and then his linen shirt, wiping the sweat from his body. The chill wind prickled his skin. Elfred undid a blanket roll and gave him a fresh shirt. ‘You insult my horse, John. He’s not dumb. He can turn against lance and sword, he can trample and kill along with the best of men and his eyes are better than my own.’

  ‘We’d be best served if we had a few more like him, Sir Thomas,’ said John Jacob, giving the shamed sentry a glaring scold.

  ‘Well?’ demanded Killbere.

  ‘You were right. It was a trap,’ Blackstone answered as he finished dressing, hooking the ties across his padded jacket.

  ‘Damned if it wasn’t obvious. But you haven’t been in a whorehouse while our balls have been shrunk to walnuts in the night’s cold, have you?’ he said, handing Wolf Sword to its master.

  Blackstone took a half-eaten apple from Will Longdon’s grubby fist and bit hungrily. He had not eaten in hours.

  ‘It’s my pleasure, Thomas, to sacrifice life and limb in your service but that apple was paid for with coin from my own purse. No theft or threat was involved in its taking,’ Longdon said.

  Elfred jabbed him with the fletched end of an arrow. ‘Sir Thomas to you, you insolent lying bastard. I saw you steal that apple.’

  ‘That was another, you old blind fool. And I have known Sir Thomas since he got his feet wet invading Normandy and his blade wet killing those who got past your archers intent on killing our King.’

  ‘Aye, and it was likely your poor rate of fire that let them!’ Elfred said to the gathered men who jeered the hard-done-by Longdon.

  Blackstone tossed the core to his horse, ignoring Longdon’s outstretched hand. ‘You can fill your belly later,’ he said and walked to the horse, which raised its ears and snorted. He put his boot in the stirrup, and pulled on the opposite rein to stop the belligerent beast from turning and biting him, contesting his right to mount.

  The men got to their feet to follow Blackstone to their mounts. Elfred looked enquiringly at Killbere, who had been Blackstone’s first sworn lord many years before. He was ignored. This was not the time for questions. Blackstone had learnt something and he would tell them in his own time.

  The hilltop town of Cardetto, from which they commanded the surrounding countryside, was a day’s ride away. Towers and long-abandoned fortified houses on surrounding hills had been repaired since Blackstone and his men wrested them from a marauding band of routiers who savaged villager and merchant alike on the mountain tracks. The brigands had had no leader strong enough to hold the towers, and after they had burned a nearby monastery and slaughtered the monks, Blackstone and his men hanged twenty of the mercenaries in plain sight, and killed another forty who refused to yield their ground. Blackstone was a war leader who brutally imposed his authority, and his enemies had heard of it. Florence paid the bills and Blackstone’s men held the heights like sharp-eyed eagles. There had been no idle time between skirmishes. Every man had carried stone to those hilltops to rebuild and reinforce the ruins – Blackstone among them. Florence’s enemies employed other mercenaries to replace those Blackstone had killed, but they ventured no further than the boundaries of their own territory. It made no sense to fight unless they had no choice.

  A cowl of smoke from Lucca’s fires hovered over its roofs and towers like a malignant spirit. Blackstone was glad to be free of its claustrophobic narrowness. The anticipation of returning to England, despite the danger that awaited, thrilled him. He turned in the saddle.

  ‘Meulon, Gaillard, Will and John. Go down the mountain the way I came. Two miles south and one east is a shepherd’s hut. Father Torellini and a frightened silk merchant are there – one man guards them. Give him respect: he’s a knight. Escort them to me.’

  The men mounted, ready to do his bidding.

  Will Longdon pulled a face. ‘Another knight to obey and a damned priest to try and save our souls,’ he moaned quietly.

  Killbere hawked and spat. ‘You’re an archer! Your soul is beyond redemption. You should hope for a quick death so no priest has to wrestle with the devil for it. Get to it!’

  As the four men spurred their horses, Killbere turned to Blackstone. ‘He has a point, Thomas. And a silk merchant to boot? Is there a ransom for him?’

  ‘There’s a way home. And if we use our wits we will live long enough see England again.’

  11

  Hours later Blackstone and his men made their way through the defile that led up to their village. Flags wavered against a clear sky as Blackstone’s troops signalled each other from their mountain stronghold. The defensive line across the mountains had been unbroken these past fourteen months, the men’s bellicosity cooled by the winter snows and Blackstone’s regime of ongoing fortification.

  A stone-paved track led up through the village, whose houses tumbled down the hillside towards the broad spread of the valley below. The town dominated the main roads of the area: a strategic position of considerable importance. The Romans had seen its value and so did Blackstone. Its alleyways connected houses where his men lived with their women, sharing the town with the villani who had been abused by others before Blackstone came with his men. Those who had held Cardetto before were allied to the Visconti of Milan, the northern lords who were growing ever more powerful. Pisa had funded these mercenaries in return for a guarantee that Lucca and Pisa would be protected against anyone from the south fighting for Florence. Protection soon turned into savagery. With no one willing to challenge them the mercenaries’ cruelty was inflicted on the villagers. There were more than four hundred of these killers: Germans and Bretons, with a hard core of Hungarians, who were the vilest of men and who committed the worst atrocities, news of which spread across the mountain villages like a gorse fire on an August day. The surrounding villani fled for their lives, but these peasants’ cries for help made little impression on the Lucchese. Their city was safe. Its gates were closed. Those who scraped a living in the mountains were hardy, adaptable; they would build new hovels elsewhere, was the Lucchese’s argument. The communes closer to the city walls were safe. Food supply would not be interrupted; fuel would be brought in daily. Vicious slaughter was far removed from the day-to-day
existence of the city dwellers.

  ‘It is impossible to seize the village,’ Blackstone’s paymasters had told him. ‘The streets are steep and houses clutter the chiassi; there’s barely room for a donkey to pass between the buildings.’

  Blackstone saw the difficulty and had taken a dozen men to reconnoitre the mountain slopes that rose up from the impassable ravines on either side of the village. Abandoned hovels, sheepherders’ huts and ancient towers long broken down for their stone had been left to the wild grass and brambles. Their positions were no threat to anyone foolish enough to attack Cardetto, but once the village was seized, those places would be like an eagle’s wings, broad shields to a sharpened beak.

  He made certain that the mercenaries in the village saw his intent. For several days his men stood behind their shields, blocking any escape from the village. His archers wedged themselves in the rock crevices on either flank. Every man lit three small fires to give the impression that there were more of them than their enemy believed. By night more than two thousand fires flickered across plain and hill.

  Blackstone waited, letting the defenders’ nerves fray a little more each day. Let them wait, he had told his captains, they have food, they have water, but they do not have our advantage, that of knowing when the conflict will come. Blackstone would attack when the time was right.

  The snow stayed high on the mountaintops, the low winter sun throwing spear-long shadows to the front of Blackstone’s men. These lower slopes were tinder-dry as the east wind flayed gorse and men alike. Their muscles ached and the cold stiffened their grip on axe and sword.

  Killbere stamped his feet and pulled his hands beneath his cloak. ‘We need to take this goddamned place, Thomas, before my balls crack and drop into my boots. A good fight will stir the blood.’

  Blackstone shook his head. ‘Tomorrow, Gilbert. Ready the men for tomorrow.’

  ‘Another day? Sweet Jesu! They’ll barely be able to crawl into the place.’

  ‘They will run, and they will fight through the streets. House to house. They’ll do it because I’ll do it.’

  ‘Well, I’m getting too damned old to run! I’ll do my killing at a more leisurely pace.’

  ‘I want you to stay here and attend to the rearguard.’

  ‘You taunt me, Thomas? I’ll not be denied my share of the blooding!’

  Blackstone nodded and remained silent. A look that was almost one of pity.

  The colour flushed into Killbere’s face. ‘You take the centre, I’ll take the right flank.’

  ‘Very well,’ Blackstone answered. ‘If you feel it’s not too steep a climb for you.’

  It was only Blackstone’s smile a moment after he had spoken that stifled the older man’s impending retort. ‘Aye, well – you just remember who saved your ignorant backside when you were a boy. Who stepped forward at Crécy and the whole army stepped after me? Who stood at the hedgerow at Poitiers shoulder to shoulder with you and took the French bastards full on? If it had not been for your blood-lust for the French King I would not have had to follow you into banishment! You’ve a short memory since that damned German knight beat you around your thick skull at Crécy. We should go at them today. Why wait?’

  Blackstone turned to face the men who waited two hundred paces behind them. ‘You always told me to choose my ground when I fought. Can you feel that? The wind is turning. From the north. It will be at our backs tomorrow and it will scour through that village. That’s when we light the fires and let the smoke choke and blind them. And that is when we follow and kill them.’

  *

  They built up fires and dragged brush and wood onto them, smothered them in tufts of bog grass, laid wet sacking across the flames. Choking smoke funnelled up through the narrow streets, smothering the buildings. A thick plume that would soon be seen as a funeral pyre.

  Inside the hovels mercenaries boarded up their windows, lay down on dirt floors, covered their faces with rags, poured what water they had over themselves, ignoring the women and children’s screams. As the wind twisted smoke through the village Blackstone and his men followed in its wake, pounding up stone-laid steps, racing for the top through empty streets, not giving the defenders a chance to organize themselves. Blackstone and his men were silent, making no effort to break down doors and kill, their pounding feet the only sound. The more men up the hill, the less chance of being repulsed. As the mercenaries finally gathered their wits and pushed open their doors they were greeted by sudden violence as groups of Blackstone’s men surged up behind him and slaughtered them.

  Blackstone reached the top of the hill where three houses stood proud of the hovels below. Twenty men were behind him as they put shoulders and shields to flimsy doors. No one had ever dared attack this place before; no one could have even reached the lower streets – no one had thought of using the north wind as an ally.

  Meulon and Gaillard kicked a door down and met a rush of resistance. Their size and weight held the mercenaries who threw themselves forward, but the narrow doorway limited their attack. The two Normans thrust their spears into throat and groin, forced others back as their men killed the squirming mercenaries and then boxed another four into a corner. The small room stank of death. Swords were no match for spears and another house was taken. As the Normans jabbed and cut their way forward Blackstone forced his way into the second house, John Jacob and his men the third. Blackstone had Perinne at his side and Will Longdon at his back. A dozen archers crowded the alleyways, spilling into any space that allowed them to use their bows in the narrow confines and to search out a target in window or door. Some of the mercenaries turned their backs to run, but cloth-yard shafts pierced spines and hearts. Inside the house children screamed, a woman wailed, men yelled in defiance. Blackstone called Will Longdon’s name as he felt the wood splinter beneath his shoulder. Shield held high, he was in the squalid, half-lit room, where smoke still clung to daylight. A broad-shouldered man stood with six others. Blackstone could see he was the brigands’ leader, armour on his chest and arms. One of his men kicked a woman to her knees, grabbing a handful of hair. The snarling mercenary held the mother’s child and put a blade to its throat. He grimaced, saying something in a guttural voice that Blackstone did not understand. No need to. He would kill the small boy. In an instant Blackstone turned on the balls of his feet, away from the threat, going instead for the man who held the woman. Wolf Sword scythed down, cleaving the man from neck to waist, severing the hand that held the woman’s hair and whispering through a handful of her dark locks. So quickly had he turned and struck, so instinctive was his attack, that the mercenary leader’s gaze followed him – and did not see Will Longdon behind Blackstone’s shoulder and the drawn-back arrow that would pierce his left eye a heartbeat later. The child fell and the mother scrambled for him. Blackstone stepped over her as she slid below the attacker’s feet, drenched in blood, slithering through the gutted man’s entrails to reach her wailing child.

  By the time she had curled her body about him the remaining men were dead.

  Strong hands pulled her to her feet. Will Longdon’s rough voice shouted a command to quieten her screaming and passed the shivering woman back through the men to those outside for safekeeping. Blackstone put his foot on the mercenary leader’s chest, pulled free the bodkin-tipped arrow from the skull and gave it back to his archer.

  ‘Well shot, Will,’ Blackstone said, loosening Wolf Sword’s blood knot from his wrist.

  ‘A poor aim, Thomas,’ said Longdon, taking the bloodied shaft. ‘I was aiming for his right eye.’

  ‘It was good enough,’ said Blackstone.

  The village had been taken.

  12

  Father Torellini sat astride his horse and gazed up at Blackstone’s village. Smoke curled from roof holes; coloured cloth and linen shirts fluttered like flags on washing lines strung between the houses. He could see that at every turn of the narrow passageways armed men stood vigilant. Across the hillsides signal flags bent in the breeze on t
op of the long poles as Blackstone’s men passed information. Torellini did not understand what they meant but perhaps these lookouts were giving assurances that no one followed in their wake. And scattered around the fringes of the town were the usual camp followers: prostitutes, barbers and servants, those willing to serve a warlord, being paid for their services and enjoying the protection he might afford them.

  Condottieri were loyal to their company and the men who led them. Father Torellini knew merchant families and rich citizens who gathered family around them for protection, and these men were bound together by similar loyalties. Blackstone had his casa, the household of men who served him, be they knight, squire, man-at-arms or archer – nothing would break their ranks. And Blackstone was different from most other commanders. He did not seek fine silks, rich food, or collaterali, those ostentatious trumpeters paid to announce a commander’s status.

  Before the pathways began their ascent through the houses a dry stone wall had been built as a redoubt, a first defence to hamper anyone clambering across the broken ground trying to use the shelter of the ditch that ran along the foot of the village – which, he guessed, would flood in winter. Father Torellini sighed with grim satisfaction. Not only had Blackstone created an obstacle for an enemy foolish enough to try and attack from that position, but he had also made the graveyard serve his purpose of defence. Father Torellini’s eyes scanned the mounds – more than fifty of them at first glance. The wooden crosses, bound together with hemp, marking each grave were yet more obstacles for an enemy to overcome. Three paths led away from where his horse stood: to the left and right, trails that would be used by travellers; the third would take him straight ahead, up through the village. At the centre of this crossroads was a gibbet. There was no body swinging from it today, but when Blackstone executed anyone the death would proclaim to all those who paid their toll that the Englishman commanded these roads.