'Done. But does that great ugly man yonder not have a wineskin about him? I am feeling quite in need, now that you have reminded me of my audience with the owl.'
Dimitri was happy to make Will's acquaintance and to share his wine. There were some scrapings of fatty stew left and he doled them out, searching my friend's face with approval.
You are a fighter, eh? Good, good. One is lost – poor Jens, may he find peace – and another is found.'
What is in this wine, friend Dimitri? It is tanning my throat as it goes down,' Will enquired through a mouthful of beans.
Yarrow, melissa, rue, dandelion, and-' he made some harsh sound in his own tongue, '-for to thicken up the blood. Drink more. It will make you piss like a warhorse, boy, and carry off the bad spirits.'
And indeed we spent a good part of the afternoon hanging off the stern, voiding our bad spirits into the Gironde. But I told Will all that had happened since Sir Hugh de Kervezey had ambushed us that quiet morning. My flight from the abbey, the fight on the wharves of Dartmouth and Greenland, and Anna's rescue: I ran through it all as quickly as I could, far more eager to hear Will's adventures than to retell my own, although he was forever stopping me to hear something in greater detail, and those details were not what I wished to linger upon. But after my jaw ached with talking, and we had found ajar of wine free of herbs, I placed my finger firmly on his breastbone.
'That is my sorry life, up to this very instant. You have had it all, every last drop. Very gruesome, is it not?'
'No! Not at all. You have lived, man. Christ! But you have left out everything important: the lady Anna. How… Patch, have you…'
I held up a too-hasty hand. 'The Vassileia Anna is under the protection of Captain de Montalhac, and – could we, please, not talk about her just now? She is the niece of the Emperor of Byzantium, for God's sake!'
'Brother, I feel I have tumbled into quite a different world. My old friend Patch, the great Captain and an imperial princess! But what were you doing in the dead hours of the night with her in the city, eh?' His eyes were twinkling. I shook my head grimly. The last thing I wished to do was besmirch Anna's name any more than it surely was already.
'Nothing. Escorting her back to the ship. I don't know. For fuck's sake, Will, tell me your story, or must I beg you?'
I knew him well, and he was desperate with curiosity. But he saw my unease and rolled his eyes. Tou wish to hear it so badly? You will find it very thin gruel in comparison to yours,' he said, resignedly. 'I doubt that, brother.'
'But I swear it!' He held up both hands in his old familiar protest of innocence. It had always made him seem more roguish and guilty, and it did now. I told him so. But he shook his head. 'Truly, Patch. You will see.' He took a long swig from the jar and cleared his throat like a mountebank at a village fair.
'Kervezey's flail – it was Kervezey, wasn't it? I have never been completely certain…' I nodded. 'The flail caught me a good whack-' 'I thought I heard your skull shatter,' I put in. He winced.
'Not quite, brother. It caught me high on the shoulders, in the main, although it laid me open from here to here.' He leaned forward and parted his hair to show a tangle of thick scars like pink twine that ran at a slant from his left shoulder-blade up his neck and almost to the crown of his head. 'You heard bone break, sure enough, but that was my shoulder. I lay like a dead man in the mud, and it was the mud that stopped the bleeding, I think. When I woke up there was no one to be seen. You were gone, and I remember a horse in the water, thrashing. I dragged myself into the hedge and left the world again for a while. I heard people pass by, and I think they were searching, but they did not find me. I would hear things from a long way off, then the world would be dark again. I may have slept for days, I don't know. When I finally came to myself, though, I was as hungry as a wolf and every inch of me burned or ached or stung. I had been raked over by a fever, it seems, as my clothes were salty with old sweat and – Christ's stones! – I stank. There was nothing for it but to set out up the road, although I found myself to be quite safe, for everyone I chanced to meet could not so much as glance at me, foul and stinking as I was. To make things worse I could not move my head or neck – for weeks, in fact, which made me seem even more lunatic, I suppose. Finally, towards night, as I was staggering along all giddy with pain and starvation, some fine church-prince on a grey horse came up with his companions and saw fit to throw me a fistful of coin to demonstrate his Christianity. Very Christian it was to take his amusement as I grovelled, all crippled, in the dust for his charity, but no matter. I bought food and drink at the next village, stole some clothes, cleaned myself as best as I could in the river, and set out for London a new man – a man without the use of his neck, true enough, but at least there was a head still upon it, brother!' 'Indeed. And next?' I said, all impatience. 'Next I thieved my way to London, found my father's business acquaintances, and set off to Flanders, where I took up with a mercenary company. It was the plan I made for you, Patch, do you remember? But I knew that it would not be safe to go home, and I am afraid I did not relish explaining matters to my old papa. It was the right choice, though, was it not? The path that should have been yours led me back to you!' He shook his head in wonder. 'You are not done, brother,' I said, exasperated.
'Nothing else to tell. I found Sir Andrew Hardie's company, the Black Boar, in Antwerp, and they took a shine to me – I could move my head again by then, which was a help. I… truly, nothing has happened since then, Patch. The soldier's lot I have found to be an exceedingly dull one. We lazed about in Flanders, growing fat and poxy; we made our slow and easy way south at the first sniff of war, and we have been lolling around Bordeaux for a good month, doing nothing but eat, drink and feel fat French rumps.' He sighed and looked at his hands. 'These soft things are about to get a shock, by the looks of it,' he said wistfully. 'I understand I may be required to do what they call-' he made a ridiculously foppish motion and twisted his face into a mockery of noble horror,'-work!
'Oh aye, work you shall, boy! Work you shall!' I grabbed the wine from him. 'No more of this, for a start.' We grappled for it as I tried to drain it dry, choking and coughing wine all over the deck and myself, then we were laughing until the tears came. As we were drying our eyes I had a thought and asked: 'But hold up, brother. You know how to fight well enough. You skewered that man's eyeball like a matron threading a darning-needle. You didn't learn that in Balecester. I never knew you to carry a blade.'
Well, they taught me. And they found I had a natural… aptitude. The thing about mercenaries is that they fight for money. And they fight over money. There are all sorts of little wars, Patch, flaring up like grass fires anywhere that mercenaries come together. The Black Boar had it out with a band of Catalans who had been thrown out of Greece and thought we'd slighted them over some contract or other. It… it wasn't like Balecester, right enough. No drunken scholars dodging fat watchmen. My company wanted me blooded. They started a fight at a little Flemish market fair and pushed me into the thick of it. My choice was kill or be a corpse, and here I am. It happened again, more than once. I have been blooded, all right. But you know what it is like, too. I am…' He looked at me and smiled: rueful, bitter, the most honest look he had given me all day. 'I am good at it, Patch. I do not enjoy the killing. I enjoy the fight, but to kill…' he shook his head. 'More wine, if you please. Last night, brother – that was the first time for you?'
For a ghastly moment I did not know what he meant. How could he possibly know about the bawdy-house? Then I realised.
'Not my first fight, but the first…' I put my hands to my temples. 'I never killed a man before last night. I wish with all my heart I had not done it. I wish he lived and it was I lying dead…'
'But you live. You are here drinking wine under the great blue roof of heaven. And is it not sweet? Kill, Patch, or be a corpse. I would rather be alive, brother. And from the many rough miles you have travelled, I think you would, too.' 'It cannot be as simple as you put it.'
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'But it is, brother. It truly is.' And he put his arms behind his head, lay back and closed his eyes. The sun shone down on us both, but as I too stretched out to bask in its warmth a chill whispered through me, although the day held no shadows. I went on watch at five bells and Dimitri put Will to cleaning the blades that had found so much work on shore. There was still no sign of Anna, but there was plenty to be done as the Cormaran sailed out of the Gironde and into a perfect sea, and I was glad to empty my mind of anything but the wind and the ropes. We rounded the Pointe de Grave and turned south, gliding past the long dune of Arcachon towards Bayonne. The sun fell slowly towards the forests away to the west and at last, as the brazier was lit to heat our dinner, Anna appeared on deck. We were about to put the ship about, and I could not leave my station, but she saw me and raised her hand. She wore a simple tunic of some dark, rich-looking stuff, and her black hair was pulled back and hidden under a simple white coif. She looked both pure and alluring and my blood began to whisper softly in my ears. That is your woman,' it said. I shook my head in happy disbelief, then as the sail cracked and bellied there was a minute of wild activity, and when I made fast my rope and turned to her again, she was stepping into the cabin and did not look back. Gilles followed and closed the door behind them. It was no more than I had expected. Mikal had eaten with the crew, but the Princess Anna Doukaina Komnena could hardly be expected to squat around a cauldron and bandy words with the likes of us, although I knew she would probably prefer to. But all the same my dark humours crept over me again, and when someone tapped me on the shoulder to relieve me of the watch I could hardly bring myself to make the few paces over to the brazier.
Tonight there were stories to be told and I did not want to tell mine, but knew it would be dragged from me anyway. I took no pleasure in the memory of what I had done, but I obliged when my turn came, and discovered, as the demijohns of good Bordeaux wine went around, why soldiers tell their war stories. The telling and retelling began to ease some hurt deep within me. I am not one of those men to whom each killing is a mark of pride, and in truth I believe I carry each cut I have inflicted on others in some scarred quarter of my soul. That night, though, as we danced every murderous step again, I became part of the Cormaran for good. I had fought and I had killed, and tonight I brought currency of my own to the circle of men, and as I stood and showed for the third time how I had stuck my knife up under a man's ribs and held him until he breathed his soul into my face I found I was among friends, and home at last.
Later I slept like a thing of stone, to be awakened at dawn by the tossing of the ship beneath me. We had run into a storm off San Sebastian, and it chased us down to the Pillars of Hercules, green water a never-ending torrent across the decks and lightning playing about the mast-top. Will, whom the crew had taken to with a vengeance, did his best to learn sail-craft in between hours spent puking off the stern. He was wan company at best but it gave me a simple, boyish pleasure to teach what I knew of this strange new world to my friend. He must have found my ease and enthusiasm a little wearing, and began to tire of my assurances that the sickness would soon pass, I who had never suffered it. But unlike many I have known, who have begged to be put ashore, or even weakly tried to put an end to themselves, Will tottered about his work doggedly, and the crew, and I, loved him all the more.
The Pillars were a gateway indeed, and sailing through we left the dismal weather behind. I must have made a fool of myself, running from one side of the ship to the other, straining my eyes this time towards Spain and the great bulwark of the Gibr-al-Tariq, this time over to the distant brown shores of Africa. We were in a different world entirely, it seemed, a place of hot breezes and warm nights. Will's sea-legs found him at last, and we marvelled at how lean he had grown. 'I have puked my old life away,' he said in wonder. For the first time in my life I went about shirtless and my skin turned from its waxen English white to livid, smarting red and then to a deep brown. Even my teeth were feeling better. The only thing missing was Anna.
Since revealing herself to the crew she had kept her distance. I understood why, of course. She could not throw on her sailcloth tunic and go back to being Mikal, and I knew that when she had first come aboard she had feared the men – not without reason, although she had won over most hearts, I believed. She would be safe amongst them, though perhaps no longer comfortable. But it was me she was taking pains to avoid, and fool that I was I could not fathom the reason for it. She spent her days with the Captain and with Gilles, or with Nizam up on the steering deck, my own favourite place on the Cormaran, which I no longer had time to visit. Even Will, whose roguish spark had well and truly kindled itself again, would find time to lean on the rail and tell her things that made her laugh. When we did talk she was distant or distracted, and the one night when we shared the Captain's table she barely said a word to me. I missed her horribly, although she was there before my eyes every day. Then I began to worry, and worry tumbled with guilt and confusion until I had convinced myself that everything was my fault. She had never wanted to share my bed: I had forced her. Then I had led her fecklessly into danger and forced her to kill. Now she undoubtedly hated me as much as I was beginning to hate myself.
These were becoming black days, despite the glory of the weather and the friendly sea, and we were no more than two days' sail from the Pillars when I began my rapid fall into a despair deeper than I had ever imagined man could suffer in this life. The humours of melancholy filled me as smoke from a guttering candle fills and blackens a closed lantern. The fight returned to me again and again, sometimes as a blur, sometimes in horrible detail, far clearer than it had been at the time. I felt again and again the resistance and then the give of the man's innards against my knife. I remembered that I had smelled shit as he died, and that his bowels must have let go. And then the face of Deacon Jean would return to me full of terrified outrage at what was happening to him. I heard, again and again, the hot splash of his blood on the floor of the cathedral, and it mingled with the screams of the mad hermit of the island after I had wounded him. So much death, so much pain; and all at my hand, all on my account. And Anna… Perhaps because our night together had been so violently changed from love to bloody riot, I could hardly think of what we had done together without it seeming a defilement, and I the defiler. I began to have dismal, churning dreams, and then sleep itself came less and less often, which was a blessing. I took to avoiding company – even that of Will – when I was not needed; and would sit behind a water butt, my arms clutching my knees, silent and still as the hours passed by.
I had all but forgotten the miraculous chance that had bought Will back, so much so that sometimes, as my afflicted conscience gnawed me, I would see him struck down by Sir Hugh's flail and add his death to my burden of guilt, even though he walked the deck a few yards away. Mostly I took his presence for granted, and he had the good sense to leave me to myself. He seemed to know when the shadows were not so thick around me, and then we would be easy with each other once more. One night, after the sun had set with its usual magnificence behind the hills of Spain, the stars had appeared and the Cormaran’s wake glowed and sparkled faintly, I felt so overwhelmed by the beauty of it all that I felt a sudden need to blot out this lovely world on which I was but a stain. So I sought out a full wineskin and set about emptying it into myself. Had the ocean been wine I would have gladly jumped overboard with mouth open, but although no wineskin could hold enough to dull my torment I found myself, at some later point in the evening – the intervening parts having vanished from memory – leaning heavily on the forward rail and regarding the blade of the new moon which was sinking, yellow as a sheaf of ripe corn, below the invisible horizon.
The stars blazed here in the south, as bright as a winter's night in Devon. With the fixation, the false clarity of mind that comes with drink, I tried to fathom the unimaginable distances between my little self bobbing on the sea and the moon, set in its crystal sphere, and beyond it past the planetary spheres to th
e sphere upon which the stars were fixed, and even further, to the Primum Mobile itself. Brother Adric had given me Ptolemy's Almagest to read at the Abbey, and, although I had understood what was written therein as an ant understands a pachyderm, the vast machinery of equants and deferants, the wonderful, logical complexity of it all had never ceased to fill me with joy and wonder. Tonight, however, I was thinking of distances, endless tracts of emptiness and the lonely music of the spheres as they turned in their immutable orbits. The moon was waxing and there was the faintest hint of the old moon caught in the calliper-grasp of her arms.
Will came to lean beside me and we passed a wineskin back and forth and watched the strange glow of the wake. I wanted to be alone and so said nothing, but after a while he cleared his throat.
'I am intruding on your… solitude, Patch,' he said. I shrugged and kept silent, but he went on.
'I know what melancholy feels like, brother,' he murmured. I turned to him in surprise despite myself. ‘You?'
Yes, why not? It was early in my time with… the company. I was brought very low, low enough to wonder how quick a rope around my neck would get the job done. I didn't get very far, but I thought about it very carefully. Probably thought about it too much, actually, because while I was agonising and debating I began to feel better, and little by little the life came back into me.' 'But why? What made you?'
'There is much I cannot…' he paused, and gave me the most haunted look I had ever seen upon his face. 'I do not know. The shock of being cast out of my familiar world, perhaps. The knock on the head. Many things can stir up the black bile. It is done, though. That's what I wanted to tell you: it passes. Time is as good as any potion, of that I am convinced.'
'I have thought about it too,' I admitted, unwillingly. 'But it seems too easy an escape.'
'And what of the comforts of Mother Church?' he asked. 'It was no help to me, but you…'
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