The Leopard Sword

by Michael Cadnum

  “And like any Crusading sinner,” said Sir Nigel, “his past crimes, whatever they might have been, are washed clean.”

  Sir Jean stood as tall as he could—he was a big man—and I had a flash of sympathy for him. Like many knights, he was grieved to be leaving the war, and he wanted any possible way to assert his pride.

  Nicholas released Osbert. The manservant sprawled on the deck, and then he attempted to be equal to the dignity of a squire-at-arms’s service. He stood upright, pulling at his tunic.

  Sir Jean put his hands on his hips. “Let me hear the servant confess,” he said.

  “We’ll attend to this,” said Sir Nigel, “in our own time.” And then Nigel laughed and made an openhanded gesture. “Share some wine with me, each of you.”

  The weather was sharpening, waves higher, the wind behind us strong and cold, our sail straining at its ropes.

  Edmund and I had arranged a place against the rail, a canopy of canvas, a worn sailcloth on the deck. Sir Nigel offered the serving man a cup of wine, and Osbert drank gratefully. Sir Nigel found a knob of bread wrapped in a blanket—hard, dry ship’s fare—and broke off a piece for all of us before he ate any himself.

  “The next time, Edmund, such an accusation is voiced, your man will bleed,” said Nigel. The loss of a hand, or an entire limb, was common punishment for stealing, often followed by public hanging. “Guilty or innocent, it will not matter.”

  “You will not force a confession?” asked Edmund.

  It was a surprise to me to hear Rannulf chuckle, a low, almost silent laugh.

  Sir Nigel would have laughed, too, I believe, but did not want to offend his two earnest squires. “Surely, Hubert, you and Edmund don’t think that I pay any heed to a Chartrian too stubborn to put on clean clothes?”

  “Of course you’re equal to the name,” I insisted.

  I wondered if Heaven would forgive me for the sin of envy. It was true that I had been a loyal squire to Nigel long before Edmund had stepped across our threshold, and I knew that I was much quicker with a sword. And yet Edmund was the sort of fighting man people follow with their eyes. I believed that while in future battles I would be brave enough, and quick to parry, slice, and cut, piles of dead enemies would heap up around Edmund.

  We stood high in the stern castle, gazing into the stiff salt wind. One enemy ship followed us, a loyal shadow.

  “Someday,” he said, “I’ll become equal to the name, with God’s grace.”

  I swelled myself up, swelling out my chest. “Let mee heer heem con-fess,” I said, sounding, I must confess, every bit exactly like Sir Jean.

  “There were flies on his blouse,” said Edmund, as though confiding a secret. Knights were generally discussed with respect, even in private.

  I laughed.

  I had Edmund laughing with my further imitation of Sir Jean, big with pride as I gazed about.

  And then the dogged enemy craft drew my full attention. “Do you think she will catch us?” I asked.

  Edmund considered. He looked up at the blue sky, judging the weather.

  I wanted her to run us down, just then. I wanted another enemy to attack us so that I, too, might win a name. Hubert Quicksword. “Why do they keep rowing and rowing after us—why not turn back?”

  “Faith,” he said.

  He even spoke more like a knight than I did. He was often solemn and used few words, while I chattered, tried to make people laugh, and was in every way a more feather-weight squire.

  “I’ll wager,” I said, “the silver thimble I found that we’ll be fighting again by sunset.”

  Gambling had been forbidden in the Crusader camp, and now that we were aboard ship the deck was alive with the rattle of dice. I had discovered the silver thimble on the battlefield, long after the fighting was over, among the wreckage of horseflesh and weaponry. Both Saracens and Crusaders used thimbles and thread to repair everything from clothing to saddle work, but a silver thimble decorated with stars and crescent moons was a treasure.

  “I’ll not accept your wager, Hubert.”

  “My thimble against the silver cup Osbert found under the dead—” To speak of dead horses was to remind Edmund of the noble Winter Star, a mount I knew he still mourned.

  “The cup is made of trade silver,” he protested,“half brass. Three bent old cups like that would equal one of your thimbles.” A moneyer’s apprentice knows alloy from ore, and amber from glass.

  Edmund was honest, too, the way knights were expected to be and rarely were. No wonder Rannulf admired him, and Nigel, too. “Take the bet, Edmund,” I said, with too much feeling.

  “If it pleases you,” he said hesitantly.

  “‘If it pleases me!’” I said, exasperated, imitating him quite well—capturing his note of manly caution, that solid, clear-minded common sense that I had come to love and depend on, but which at the moment I could not tolerate.

  “Do you think Osbert is a thief?” asked Edmund in a soft voice.

  “Of course he is,” I responded, with little regard for what I said. “There can be no doubt. You saw him snatch that arrow off the deck yesterday. No one has such quick hands but a sworn pickpocket.”

  Edmund blinked. “I trust him, Hubert.”

  What could I respond? I was ashamed of my own tongue, and wiped my hand across my lips.

  SIX

  Later that day the wind out of the east was cold, and Edmund and I huddled in our wool cowls.

  Not so many days ago I had sat sweating in a Crusader tent, in heat I was sure would never end. In the long hours of the siege I had used the handle of a knife to crush lice hiding in the seam of my tunic, and when I had asked Edmund if he could recall ever being cold—truly cold—he had chuckled and agreed that it seemed impossible such a thing could be.

  And now here it was, a true chill, and I did indeed find it refreshing.

  The stiff breeze allowed the ship to cut through waves, and often during the day rowers from below climbed up through the hatch and walked among us, muscular men looking both well fed and at ease. I remarked to Sir Nigel that the oarsmen looked happy, considering that they were imprisoned felons, and Sir Nigel responded that a wise captain would feed and water every rower with care. He added that some leaders shared prize money from captured enemy vessels with the rowers, along with the rest of the crew.

  “If the Infidel should catch us at sea,” said Nigel, “we’ll think ourselves lucky if they chain us to an oar.”

  For the first time since we left the Holy Land, there was the bright sound of several men joining in laughter. A very large rat had startled a cook’s mate, the beast darting out of a sack of flour.The creature proceeded to cause startled cries and relieved laughter wherever it scampered.

  “I thought it was a devil!” cried a shield bearer sheepishly.

  And no Saracen ship was likely to capture any of us. Edmund had been right—there was no further sea battle. The enemy vessel broke off its pursuit by midafternoon, as we looked on.The long, low warship turned in a single, swift move—no vessel can turn about as quickly as a galley—and in a few heartbeats she had set a course for the north.

  “She’ll harass the shipping out of Constantinople,” said Sir Nigel when we reported this development to him. “And I pray God’s mercy on anyone they meet.”

  For the first time I felt reassured that Sir Nigel was relieved to be alive, and beginning to relish the thought of sizzling mutton and a warm bed.

  Edmund shook his head and laughed, but I insisted—I owed him silver.

  Osbert was seated on our trove chest, a short sword at his hip, and he leaped aside when I said I needed to withdraw a bit of our riches.

  “I have lost a wager,” I added without a trace of sorrow.

  “But you’ll win your share again another day, my lord,” said Osbert, eager as ever to please.

  I struggled with the large lock, tarnished and heavy.When I had the chest open at last, I rummaged inside, searching among the silk-wrapped treasures. Sea
rched, and paused. And rummaged more quickly.

  “Osbert, where is the rest of our booty?” I asked.

  “My lord, it is all in the chest, I pray, where it belongs.”

  Osbert’s manner was enough to move a footstool to fury. It was never proper to address a squire as my lord, and I found this simply another example of Osbert’s oily behavior. Nevertheless, for the sake of Edmund, I treated Osbert with steady good manners when I said, “Has Sir Rannulf removed anything from the chest?”

  Osbert put both hands to his breast.“I can say that he has not, good Hubert,” he answered in a trembling voice.

  Edmund joined me in gazing into the open trunk. He searched slowly, and then more urgently, through a chest that should have been full of wrapped and padded prizes, but was now nearly half empty.

  “Hubert, it’s true,” Edmund exclaimed at last. “Someone has stolen our treasure!”

  SEVEN

  Osbert was on his knees before us, his hands held pleadingly in the half-dark of the ship’s hold.

  “I know nothing of any missing riches,” he said. He added, “I swear it on every holy thing.”

  Efrec halydam. Even a thoroughly bedeviled thief would be reluctant to swear such an oath, unless he spoke the truth.

  “I loyally serve my lord Edmund and all his fellows,” Osbert was saying, “and would do no hurt to any of you.” He turned his head slightly, and looked up at me from an angle. “Besides, you don’t see a new-hatched fool before you, good Hubert.Why would I steal treasure from the very men most able to skin me alive?”

  “Some creatures take such risks,” I said. Edmund stayed close to me, perhaps ready to stay my hand if I could not keep my temper.

  “I’m a sinner, like most other men,” said Osbert. “I’ll play ram to any lady’s ewe, by my faith. But I am no thief.”

  “If you say it often enough, you’ll convince yourself,” I retorted, but my ill humor was softening. Osbert had a way of gazing hopefully, like a pup with his head to one side. If it was nothing more than a false display of innocence, it was certainly ingenious. Osbert was the one ready with a pitcher of sweet wine, or reaching to pluck a weevil from the crust of bread one was about to devour.

  The servant had the gift of being easy to like. It was a powerful charm. I helped Osbert to his feet, and he said, “Thank you, my—” He was about to say my lord. “Hubert, I thank you.”

  “Someone stole your thimble, nonetheless,” said Edmund.

  “And your cup,” I said.

  Rannulf and Nigel looked on, as grim-faced as any two knights in Christendom. Sir Rannulf’s possessions were intact, his collection of scimitars at the bottom of the chest untouched, and Sir Nigel’s sacks of coins were likewise nestled toward the corners of the trunk, and largely safe. Edmund and I had suffered the keenest losses, although whoever had stolen the goods had been hasty—much of our silver remained, and the two of us were still much wealthier than when we had set forth from Nottingham months before.

  “Some thief did his work during the fighting,” said Edmund. “That was the only sure opportunity.”

  “Not every servant is an honest one, my lords,” said Osbert.

  Nigel put a hand on my shoulder, his grip steadier than it had been the day before. During the recent sea battle he had done little more than look on, his sword lashed to his grip, as he called effective directives to the fighters. “Some sinner will pay a price for this, Hubert.”

  One’s soul is a pearl of great price, and Christ’s death was the price of our redemption. Price was the secret of each dawning, and each sunset, all of it bought with Our Lord’s blood. I knew that Sir Nigel meant something extraordinary with this remark, but I did not guess that even now he was prepared to sacrifice his life.

  In the several remaining days of our voyage to Chios, the passengers were quiet, but it was a simmering silence. Even the dullest member of the ship’s crew must have been aware that Sir Nigel kept staring icily across the ship at Sir Jean, and that the big Chartrian knight made no attempt to look away or hide his disdain. It was plain to all of us that Sir Nigel believed, on no particular evidence, that Sir Jean and his manservants were guilty of the crime.

  It did seem that Sir Jean had more weight in his belt purse now, and that Nicholas gave his own gipser a pat from time to time. Surely Sir Jean’s gaze was showing off some secret triumph over us. He smiled and made remarks that had his servants laughing, and made a show of trying to kick Osbert with his good leg whenever Edmund’s servant scurried past.

  “The knight needs a lesson in virtue,” Nigel remarked one evening, “taught from the back of a horse.”

  The few gnarled chickens brought along for food were served up in a thin, stringy stew. The bread, which had always been scant and stony, ran out long before the wine. There was plenty of that, both sweet and tart, so for the last day of our journey squires staggered about, stumbling and vomiting, but without much talk or laughter, all of us chilled by the growing enmity between Sir Nigel and Sir Jean.

  A few more Crusaders died of fever or wounds, and the priest’s clerk succumbed, too, and was buried at sea with brief prayers spoken by a knight from Bremen as the wind drove us.The white-bearded captain directed us to be cheerful—the ship was good, the port was near, or some such—I could never make out a single word, and I have some ability with unfamiliar tongues.

  My father had sailed as a young man, delivering lanacloth—woven wool—to the merchants of the Low Countries and the Seine. Just as he had taught me to take an interest in cloth and drapery, he had taught me to love ships, from the spruce mast to the rummage of the hold. But every time the oars ran out to assist the power of the sail, I was all the more convinced that I would rather travel by sail alone than by the strength of a rower’s back.

  Islands rose and sank behind us. The smell of land was often in the air, but a foreign, sun-stunned scent, herbs and dry plow land.

  On the Feast of Saint Denis—the saint usually pictured carrying his own serenely smiling severed head—we approached our harbor. We had seen other mountaintops pass us by and had gazed across the windy sea at the dim impression of other harbors, fishing boats skimming the water. Now, after less than a week, the oars swept us steadily toward a tawny, rocky range of brown land. The faraway sounds of voices and song reached us.

  Edmund and I leaned excitedly over the rail, watching the land approach. It unfolded from a flat, promising range of hills, to a place with depth, valleys and woods. A child ran along the shore with a dog—or a small horse. Or some other creature I knew nothing about. The world was filled with wondrous creatures, like the heathens Father Giles once described to me, with eyes in the palms of their hands.

  “Father Giles explained to me about the fall of Troy,” I said, hastily trying to recall what Greek I might have learned. While I had scratched out my Roman puella and puer on a tabela, a student hornbook, I had seen the Greek alphabet only on a single vellum scroll. Father Giles, who had studied with scholars in Ireland, had declared that the Greeks had invented fighting as knights knew it, lining up in a long row of lances and charging into an opposing, equally eager enemy. “He told me a Greek warrior-chief would not take a single step on a journey without consulting the Delphic oracle.”

  “I thought you could recite Greek backward.”

  “I can, indeed,” I said.

  Edmund made a show of waiting expectantly, and we both laughed.

  Rocky hills rose skyward, groves of gray-green trees in the distance. A goat somewhere bleated, and a cow or sheep bell clattered. A village of white houses embraced a sunny harbor, crowded with the bare masts and webbed rigging of sailing ships. While Venice and Constantinople were the major ports of the Crusade, Chios was another traditional harbor, thriving now with everything from ship repairs to provender for the distant war, crates of honeycomb and leathery stacks of salt fish.

  Blue-black mounds of charcoal were shoveled into sacks, and spools of hempen cordage were wheeled along the qua
y. On an overlook, wooden scaffolding and a half-built stone wall showed where a castle was being erected, tower masons pausing to shield their eyes and watch the San Raffaello as she kissed the wharf.

  But before a single man could disembark, Sir Nigel marched across the deck and delivered an insult to Sir Jean.

  “Let us see,” said my master,“if a Frankish knight can fight as well as he can steal.”

  EIGHT

  It was what I had been waiting for—hard words, one knight to the other—but it was a shock to hear them.

  Sir Jean stiffened, and for an instant his big, petulant features looked sincerely puzzled, an expression that made him seem momentarily appealing, like a boy unable to comprehend adult speech. Nicholas, beside him, made a show of stepping before his master protectively. Sir Nigel turned on his heel and marched back through the startled throng, a pleased expression on his face.

  The land beneath our feet was so steady it mocked our sea-addled strides—Edmund and I had to put a hand out to each other as we stumbled.Women stepped aside as we stiff-legged our way to a well, then let the bucket fall into the shaft with an echoing splash. Everyone knows that water is a source of serious illness, but after days of salt air Edmund and I both drank deeply, letting the water spill.

  The village was sun-soaked, the air sweet. Donkeys, animals like stout little horses, observed us with gentle gazes. Women opened shutters, and partly closed them as we passed.Young women saw us and lowered their eyes. They wore bright red or yellow girdles about their waists, and flowing white garments. Older women, handsome and mysterious, spied at us from beneath bright-woven shawls. I felt my heart quicken at every street crossing, at every wellhead, with the notes of far-off female song.

  Sir Nigel strode ahead of us, as he liked to do, and secured lodging for us in an inn beside a huge, spreading tree. The proprietors were a man and wife, who peered at us with a kind of cautious pity that made me both proud to be a Crusader, and annoyed. Why should they pity us?