“Have you seen my father?” Aymeric asked, dreading the answer. “Did he fall?”
De Bois shook his head, but another voice broke in.
“I saw him. He was ahead of us when they brought us in here. Bernard Gui took him deeper, down to a lower level.”
All five of the boys fell quiet. They had heard foul stories of the Inquisition. Hellish screams came up from the deep places far below, telling their own truth.
1307
THE YAZIDI VALLEY
“Fifty breaths, little fish,” Javed whispered from somewhere in the dark.
Samira couldn’t pinpoint his location from the sound. She had been explicitly told not to. Her new era of training was begun. This was different; it wasn’t focussed on physicality or fleetness of foot. It demanded fortitude of spirit and will. And it was by far the most difficult trial so far.
She stood with her back to the cave entrance, a pitch-dark night behind her and the silent depths of the cave ahead. Javed was somewhere cloaked in the dark. He had just promised to attack. Now it was down to her to identify his position and hit him with the weighted stick before fifty of his breaths had expired. Failure meant carting buckets of water up and down the hillside from dawn ‘til dusk tomorrow.
She had wasted five breaths already and had no idea how to proceed. She strained to see any sort of geography within the dark, trying to piece together from memory and reality the layout of the cave, and place him. The problem was she could stand there for a hundred, a thousand breaths and still not see the old man.
She needed to think differently.
“Use the breath of Allah,” Javed had said. “It will lead you to me.”
She called on her ritual, closing down her senses one after the other, the last thing to go not her heartbeat this time, but rather the thing that had been at the forefront of her mind all day: a pale faced youth with a black mane of hair and her mother’s face.
At twenty breaths, she reached the calm centre of her being, and felt the breath of her spirit in her face. Every muscle and tendon sang. Every instinct was to demand more answers about Bologna, about the black-haired youth, and about the dark canyons of the stone city. But Javed had given her a task, and she didn’t intend wasting another breath if it meant spending tomorrow on the mountainside carrying water.
Twenty-five breaths now, she realised, half of her allotted time gone already.
“Find Javed,” she whispered, and felt the cold hand of her spirit touch her cheek, before it too was gone into the blackness.
There was no sense of doubling this time, no seeing through the spirit’s eyes, her sight rushing away from her, but instead she realised that she could track its breath in the darkness, a sigh like the lightest mountain breeze, a series of ripples in the black like the waters of the tarn disturbed by a pebble.
Thirty breaths.
Samira followed the ripples as they moved through the cave, until they met and bounced against a different disturbance, another series of ripples emanating from the far wall where the drying fish hung.
Forty breaths.
There.
There was no thought in her movements; she stepped to one side quickly in case her own position had been given away, then raised her arm and threw the stick underarm.
Forty-five breaths.
She heard it clatter against the wall at the same instant she saw the ripples in the darkness fracture and dissipate leaving only silent dark behind. Even the soft breath of spirit was no longer audible.
“Got you,” Samira said aloud.
Fifty breaths.
“And I have you, little fish,” Javed said, and laid a cold knife against her throat.
◆◆◆
“I do not understand,” Samira said.
She sat across a newly lit fire from Javed. The old man worked with careful precision, preparing a fresh brew.
“What did you ask of the breath?” Javed said.
“I asked it to find you.”
“And it did as it was bid,” Javed replied, “as best as it knew how to. Remember, little fish, you are not the only one who holds the breath of Allah. Now you know how to find mine.”
“But it was not in the same place as your body,” Samira said.
“And neither was yours,” he replied with a gentle smile. “I cheated, just as you did.”
“So, I won?”
“No, little fish, you lost. The knife to your throat was proof of that.”
“Which means I still have to carry water tomorrow.” It wasn’t a question.
Javed smiled and passed her a crude cup filled to the brim.
“Of course,” he said. “Assuming you have the breath for it?”
1308
THE PALACE, PARIS
Aymeric and the others lost track of the days, even weeks.
They had been surprised when the faint sounds of Christmas bells reached them from the churches in the streets outside; their captivity had stretched into months and showed no signs of coming to an end.
They were starved of news of their brethren. The intermittent screams of pain and anguish clawing desperately up from the dungeons were the only proof that any of the others survived. Their jailers never spoke to them. They arrived twice a day to deliver filthy water, thin gruel and stale bread. It was the only food they had eaten these past months. Always the same meal. There were no blankets, and they hadn’t been offered fresh clothing since they had arrived. Their night shirts were fouled and filthy. It was deliberately dehumanising. During the cold nights the five of them huddled in a group in the corner furthest from the exterior wall, taking turns to be the innermost for a blessed hour of a shared warmth.
Guillaume de Bois wasn’t adjusting well to their imprisonment. Although the others were weakened by the poor sustenance, but their spirits remained strong, and true to the Order. But de Bois was weak. His instinct to flee wasn’t a solitary moment of cowardice, it was an indication of his true nature. The man was a coward to the core.
They were awoken one morning, months after the Christmas bells, to the sound of de Bois clattering on the iron cell bars with their pewter water jug and screaming, “Let me out of here,” at the top of his lungs. And the death knell, a promise he should never have made. “I will confess to anything. Whatever you want. Just let me out of here, that is all I ask.”
Aymeric heard hurried footsteps on the stairs, rushing up from below. He had no time to consider any other options, so did what was required of him to protect the Order.
Aymeric stood, stepped up behind de Bois’s back and, before the youth even realised he was there, took him by the neck, with an arm across his throat, and twisted, hard.
The sound of bones breaking was loud even above the noise of the guards arriving. He released his grip and de Bois fell, glassy eyed and already dead before the jailers could unlock the door.
The cell gate opened; the first time since they’d been bundled inside all those months ago, and two jailers came in to drag the dead youth away. Aymeric steeled himself, ready to launch a desperate bid for escape, but a cold chuckle from the doorway put paid to any thoughts of freedom.
The cadaverous figure of Bernard Gui loomed in the doorway, his hand resting casually on the hilt of his sword.
Three more armed men stood at his back, blocking any chance of escape.
“I had thought to spare you the ordeal, my young ox,” Gui said, “after all, you are merely aspirants, not yet avowed on the dark satanic path of your Templar brethren. You might have spent out the rest of your days here, not free but at least free from pain.” He kicked at de Bois body as the jailers dragged it away. “But now I see that there is a man’s spirit in your veins, and a man’s spirit deserves to be tested against the forge to prove its worth. Or lack of.”
Gui turned to the three men behind him.
“It is time for a family reunion, I think. Bring him.”
Aymeric saw his fellow aspirants tense, ready, against the odds, to take on a fight.
He shook his head. Now wasn’t the time. “Rest easy, brothers. I will have no more of your blood on my hands.”
“A wise choice,” Gui said, turning his back.
They led Aymeric away, through cold stone corridors and down the winding steps to the dungeons.
A man’s spirit deserves to be tested against the forge to prove its worth.
Aymeric prayed as they descended.
◆◆◆
It got warmer as the lower they walked. At first it was a welcome respite from the bitter cold of the cell, but it quickly became a terrible glimpse of what awaited below. The air was arid in Aymeric’s throat, and tasted of burnt meat and ash. A scream like a ghost chased away up the stairwell and past him, then another. Aymeric felt the warmth on his hands and face, hotter now than even the fiercest summer sun.
They reached the foot of the stairwell, and half-dragged half-pushed Aymeric passed cell after cell. Each one contained men that he had known in what seemed like another lifetime now. None called out, there were no words of encouragement or strength. They barely moved so much as to acknowledge him. These were beaten men, but they were not broken. He felt their eyes on him as he was bullied into the central chamber of the lower dungeon; the domain of the Inquisition.
Gui stopped before a long table. “Say hello,” he said.
It was only then that Aymeric recognised his father, and that was only because of the mop of black hair, now shot through with grey, that spilled over the table’s edge. What Aymeric had at thought was a slab of meat was Lucian de Bologna’s body. The flesh was a mass of burns, bruises, weeping sores and tiny wounds, but his father’s eyes were clear as he turned his head and saw Aymeric standing there.
“Be true, boy,” was all the Knight said.
Aymeric could barely see for tears as they strapped him down to an adjoining table.
Gui bent over him.
“I will not confess,” Aymeric said, sounding far braver than he felt in the face of his father’s suffering. “You may do with me what you will.”
“You are quite right, I may,” Gui answered and moved to the centre of the room where a great forge was kept pumped and white hot. He drew out a thin poker, its end glowing bright in the dim light in the dungeon. “But it is not your confession I need.”
Aymeric couldn’t help himself, “What do you need?”
“From you? Only pain.”
Gui showed Lucian de Bologna the hot poker, but instead of using it on the Templar, he bent, and stroked the tip of the iron along the length of Aymeric’s nightshirt, from sternum to groin, burning the material away into ash. The embers seared into Aymeric’s pale flesh. He gritted his teeth against the pain, determined not to give Gui the satisfaction of his pain as the torturer pushed away the charred remnants of his clothing, leaving him naked on the table.
Gui addressed Aymeric’s father.
“You have shown great strength in protecting your faith and your duty. I actually admire that, Templar. You are nothing if not stubborn. But there are more ways than one to break a man. I think it is time for us to really hurt you, Lucian. I wonder if you have the same iron will when it comes to watching your boy die?”
He went back to the forge and fetched another poker, the tip as white as the first. And again, he showed it to the older Knight before leaning over Aymeric.
“What do you think the boy prizes most?”
He waved the poker near Aymeric’s face.
“His eyes?”
Aymeric felt the skin around his cheeks and nose sear and blister.
“His tongue, perhaps? Boys do so love to talk.”
Gui moved the poker lower. Aymeric lost sight of it as it went rolled lower, below the rise and fall of his chest, and felt his balls tighten involuntarily as the heat washed over his inner thighs.
“Or his cock? Boys do so love to fuck, don’t they? Even those holier than thou, like you, Templar. You swear your oaths to God and sire bastards wherever you go to kill. So, what say you, Lucian de Bologna? Shall I take your son’s manhood and end your line right here? It would be a mercy.”
The poker lowered, and Aymeric fought not to cry out as the hairs of his balls burned. The heat was unbearable. Gui flicked the poker to one side, searing a finger length burn into the soft meat of Aymeric’s inner thigh that flared with such a white heat that he couldn’t stifle the sudden pain. His cry echoed around the dungeon.
“One inch to the left and it’s gone. One inch, it’s not so much,” Gui said, and seared another burn a finger’s width higher up Aymeric’s thigh. This time Aymeric bit down on the pain, and barely whimpered.
But the damage had been done.
“Enough,” Lucian said from the other table. “Leave the boy. You shall have what you need.”
“Father, no. I can stand it.”
“Aye, lad, I know you can,” his father replied. “But I cannot. What kind of father would I be if I let you suffer agonies that are rightfully mine to bear?” Lucian turned his head to address Gui. “I have your word that the boy will live?”
“You have it,” the cadaverous torturer said. “I cannot offer him freedom, but he will not be harmed while he is under this roof.”
Lucian nodded.
“It will suffice. Call for my priest. I would make my confession in the proper manner before God before I make it before you.”
“It shall be done,” Gui said.
Aymeric struggled when they undid his bonds, trying to fight against the arms pinning him down, before Gui’s men dragged him away. He damned the Inquisition as the spawn of Satan, but Gui merely smiled; he had everything he wanted. Lucian de Bologna was broken.
1308
THE YAZIDI VALLEY
Spring came to the mountains, but it did not bring good health to Javed.
Over the winter he developed a hacking cough that refused to be salved, despite their combined knowledge of the healing powers of plant and herb. The old man looked every year of his age as he walked, stooped and slow, down to the tarn to sit on his favourite rock while Samira trained in the thin sunshine.
He had not lost any of his wits though and refused to be coddled or mothered.
“I am an old man, and I am dying,” he said, bluntly. “Both of these things are true. And natural. It is what old men are good at. But I am not done yet, little fish. I promised to see your training to completion. I am a man of my word. I do not break promises.”
He had leaned heavily on a spear as he came down the path, and now he used it to point down into the dark waters.
“Seventy of my breaths for one of yours. And do not think that I will breathe faster now that I am dying. It is my body that is weak, not my spirit.” He smiled crookedly, showing tea-stained teeth.
Seventy was once again more than she had ever done, but she sensed an urgency in the old man, a need to push her hard, and knew that he was afraid time might make a liar out of him. She too made a promise, in her heart.
I will not let him down again.
She disrobed and slid without a splash into the dark waters that still retained their winter chill.
“Count as slowly as you like, old man,” she said, before sinking under. “I am not coming up until I am ready.”
Samira saw the refracted shape of the old man peer down at her from his perch, and allowed her body to sink lower, until she stood on the rock bottom of the tarn, the surface a glistening plate of fractured silver high over her head.
Twenty breaths.
She called up her ritual and closed down her senses one after the other, no sight, sound or feeling penetrating her calm centre. The water moved, sending a warmer current at her cheek as the breath of Allah made its presence known.
Rise, Samira commanded silently, and the spirit began a slow ascent away from her.
Forty breaths.
She felt no discomfort, only a quiet calm.
She saw through her spirit’s vision, watching the shimmering surface come closer, as if it were sinking towards her
rather than she rising up to it. The old man was still on his position on the rock.
Fifty breaths.
Her spirit was just below the surface now, and Samira, still on the bottom, kicked off gently and allowed herself to rise, slowly, taking care to keep the spirit between herself and the shimmering figure of the old man high above. When she reached what she judged to be the halfway point, she twisted and swam off to the side of the tarn, some six feet and more to the left of Javed’s position, and hung in the water, calm, untroubled. Waiting.
Sixty breaths.
She was not at all sure her plan would work, but she had seen the ripples in the dark in the cave, and noticed how they interacted with Javed’s spirit. She called on the breath of Allah, which still hung just under Javed’s perch, and commanded it to make itself known to the man above it.
Seventy breaths.
The water shifted as if a strong current suddenly washed though the tarn. Up above, Javed spotted the disturbance, and, bending over, stabbed down hard into the water with the point of his spear,
At the same time, Samira climbed silently up out of the tarn, well to the left of Javed’s position. She circled as soft and quiet as a moon-cast shadow and came up behind his position as he was still stabbing the weapon into the water.
“Seventy five, old man,” she whispered into his ear.
Javed was so astonished, he toppled forward, off balance, and fell head first into the tarn.
They were both laughing as Samira pulled him back up and out onto the rock.
◆◆◆
It was the first time she had bested the old man in the years of her training, but she felt no joy at her little victory.
The soaking in the tarn had worsened Javed’s cough over the coming hours to such a degree that flecks of blood showed in his spit as they made their way back up to the shelter and warmth of the cave. Worse though, was when he allowed Samira to make the strong black tea, contenting himself with lying – not sitting – on the ground beside the hearth.
Dagger of the Martyrs Page 6
