We never saw him again.
In the hours following Osbert’s death, Edmund watched the sea. He peered into the ship’s wake, hurried from one rail to the other, and climbed to the limit of the bow, seeking a glimpse of his servant. At last he returned to the stern again, his head cocked, as though listening for Osbert’s voice, still expecting to see his face appearing out of the wind-scored swells.
I joined him there beside the helmsman, a man tanned and wrinkled by the sun. Sir Nigel arrived to mark Edmund’s mood, and took the opportunity to remark on the distant islands.
“Greek strongholds,” he said, to distract Edmund from his mourning. “Some of them were visited by the great knight Ulysses himself, in his legendary travels.”
“Ulysses sailed home through these waters?” I asked.
“Certainly,” said Nigel, eager to distract Edmund with any sort of conversation. “And had his men turned into breed-boars by a famous witch. Although,” he added with a chuckle, “I believe many sailors are half pig already.”
The wind was powerful and swept us onward, each fling of spray stinging our eyes. Sailors had searched the thin bedroll and cracked leather satchel, all of Osbert’s remaining possessions. Squires and knights alike exclaimed at the rings and brooches that appeared, small objects of value that their owners had thought lost or mislaid.
“Osbert had my trust,” said Edmund, interrupting our attempts to entertain him with talk. Mi truste.
“And mine,” I offered, but Edmund would only give me a pained smile.
“Leave him to the saints,” said Sir Nigel.
I wondered what the Heavenly Host would make of our bright-eyed, lively servant, and whether Our Lord would forgive him for his quick, too-clever hands.
The Santa Croce had one of the old-fashioned steerboards, not a rudder but an oarlike device unattached to the stern. Edmund offered to help the helmsman, and his assistance was accepted as Nigel and I looked on.
Edmund’s eyes took on a sorrowful serenity as he guided the ship, the helmsman—a stout individual with many missing teeth—beside him offering quiet encouragement in a half-comprehensible dialect.
“I think,” said Nigel, “our friend Edmund is a born seaman.”
Our ship began to show signs of wear.
Water began to slosh back and forth in the hold, and two men worked a pump during daylight hours, in an effort to preserve the rummage, the casks and chests stored there.The pump was a wheezing, spluttering mechanism, a bellowslike affair. The sailors showed every evidence of urgency, and they sang holy songs as they worked.
Sir Nigel tried to coax our priest, but, after a day of brooding, Father Stephen continued to maintain that no soul dead by suicide deserved even a brief shipboard rite, and certainly not Osbert. Sir Nigel at last called a short requiem into the salt spray, and one of the Genoan sailors gave prayer in his vernacular, a common port language, unfit for holy office. It was the language of taverns and dice cups, and yet when the prayer spoke of Dio, more than one of us made the sign of the holy cross.
Afterward Sir Nigel confided to me that “ship men are a devil-fearing lot. That’s why we need the prayers, to lay the ghost.”
“Do ghosts pursue Genoans in particular?” I asked, trying to make light of the subject.
“What man doesn’t fear the devil?” said Sir Nigel.
Early one predawn, the spruce-wood mast split, with a resounding report.
Captain Giorgio adopted the habit of actually striking his sailors with the knotted rope he swung, and the ship took on a glum, harried atmosphere, passengers and crew alike watching the weather and the distant rise and fall of land.To take the pressure off the mast, sails were set on stays that thrust out on either side of the ship, so that our vessel must have looked like some great, oceangoing hen.
The water in the bilge sloshed and groaned with a sound like Osbert’s my lord, my lords, and at night I woke, sure that I had heard the servant whisper, Soon, my lord Hubert.
You’ll swim with me soon.
They call it rak, the scudding, low clouds that crawl across the sky. Some folk can read the shapes of clouds and see the harm to come. My father said such talk was foolish, but paid good coin to a stargazer once to hear my future told.
The astrologer recorded the hour of my birth, scratching the details onto vellum with a new goose quill. “Taurus,” he intoned meditatively, studying the scroll, “with Gemini rising. A nature that contradicts itself. Brave at heart, but changeable. Well-liked, but determined.”
“That’s my Hubert!” said my father.
A week later the cunning man invited my father and the younger, boyish version of myself into his smoky study. “Your son will do you honor,” he said, smiling within his scholar’s beard.“He will be a pilgrim, according to the stars.”
My father leaned forward in his chair. He had hoped to learn that I was destined for knighthood, and could not hide his disappointment.
“He’ll travel to many holy shrines,” said the astrologer hastily.“He’ll win you the favor of Heaven with his prayers.”
My father had paid good silver for the best sword masters he could hire, and swore ever after that astrologers were fools.
Now I wished I had the advice of a wise, far-seeing fortune-teller. The ship was surrounded by rising mist that twisted into shapes like ghosts, and when a sailor spoke, the words died on his lips, every sound absorbed by the chilly vapor.
NINETEEN
Land appeared again one afternoon, a rind of coast, low and featureless. Captain Giorgio poured a cup of red wine from the goatskin he kept near the mast, and lifted it in salute to the far-off coast.
“Italia!” he exclaimed.
My heart quickened.
Somewhere on that landscape ruled the lord pope. The city of Rome, the capital of Christendom, with its myriad holy sites, was shielded by distance and sea haze from our hungry eyes.After Jerusalem, Rome was the most sacred city in the world. Every Christian dreamed of a pilgrimage to its holy places.The chains Saint Peter had worn in prison were kept in Rome, and the city boasted the magnificent and hideous Colosseum of legend, where holy martyrs had suffered lions to eat their still-living flesh, to the glory of God.
The wind had been bitter but strong, driving us under a clear sky. As we bucked the swells and began our journey north, along the long stretch of Italian mainland, the sky was rutted with cloud. The moon winked and vanished behind this scudding gray, and the sun rose scarlet and oval, giving no heat and little light.
Soon, soon, said a guttering whisper.
The ship wallowed, shrugged off rushing waves, and then leaned into them, bobbing away from the sea, turning into it—trying every tactic, like a weary swordsman, to endure the pounding water.
I took heart at the crashing foam, and Edmund smiled through the sling stones of water. It was harsh weather, but this was, after all, an adventure.The storm drove every other thought, and every sorrow, from our souls. We were happy again, in our ignorance of the ways of the sea. We had faith in the mariners, and in the ship.
The sailors worried the rigging, and used heavy wooden mauls to drive stops—canvas wadding—into gaps where the ship’s timbers began to part.
TWENTY
We ran aground one morning.
Sailors swore by Our Lady, and we all breathed prayers of our own, but the captain swung his knotted rope, cried out orders with the air of a man who was unconcerned. He caught my eye and called through the whistling rain something about land and sea and ships, how no one could predict a storm.
But as the day wore on, the vessel began to labor, stuck fast to the bottom.The captain, no longer putting on even a demonstration of calm, drove his men with a long ox whip. Men in the hold called out, straining and gasping, frantically working the pumps.
Rannulf made his way through the rushing foam. “The ship is breaking up,” he said.
“Do you believe so?” asked Sir Nigel. He cocked his head. “Yes, you may be right, Rannulf, by my faith.”<
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Sir Nigel and Sir Rannulf talked about ships, taking turns speaking loudly into each other’s ears against the shriek of the wind.They agreed that even the strongest oak beam can take a downward force more successfully than a weight from the side. Speaking as though they had hours to analyze and compare, they admired the Genoans’ vigor, but agreed that the captain had more bluster than ability.
Years of war study, planning siege engines and catapults, and finding out through experience which lances shatter and which can endure, gave them a midwife’s calm eye for trouble. Edmund and I clung to ropes, and at last I cried out, “What can we do?”
“Do?” Sir Nigel gave one of his manly, exasperating laughs, perhaps joking at his own tough-mindedness. “If Heaven calls us, we’ll go.”
Rannulf was drenched, rain and brine streaming from his beard. “Go get our war-kits and our safe-chest, both of you. Hurry!”
The hold stank.
The sour odor of dank cheeses, smoked fish, and moldy biscuit rose around us from the black water. Sergeants and squires elbowed, scrambling in the near dark. Sailors cursed; two men came to blows. Other knights had given the same command, it seemed. Body was wedged against body, but with a willed patience, most squires manhandled their masters’ war gear up and out of the hold without bloodshed.
At midday sailors jumped down into the seething surf and began to unload the ship into tenders, ship-to-shore boats that bobbed and spun in the water.The surf was just shallow enough to allow a tall man to stand with his nose and mouth out of the water. When the keel snapped, with a single, heart-stopping crash, a few squires tumbled overboard in a panic. One head bobbed and vanished, and other squires strained to reach a tender and cling to its side.
We abandoned the Santa Croce.
Despite the shallow waters, we were far from shore, but we could struggle forward along the sandy bottom, holding our equipment over our heads. Other knights and squires joined us, with an air of resigned necessity rather than panic. Our equipment was lashed together, swords and mail attached to our chest of treasures. One squire sang out a chant of praise to Our Lady, but when we were well away from the protective bulk of the ship, and the surf began to cut our legs out from under us, voices began to sputter and call for help.
I swallowed bitter salt water, inhaled it, coughed it up. I could not see the shoreline, but I made out Edmund’s voice, calling for Sir Nigel.
I heard no answering cry.
TWENTY-ONE
The water lifted me and flung me forward, jamming my face into the sandy shore.
The first drowned man I pulled from the surf was Father Stephen.
I dragged several more bodies, bawling into the hard wind for Sir Nigel and Edmund. Sir Rannulf labored with me, hauling sodden men out of the boiling foam, and soon a line of drenched figures sprawled above the waterline. Some crawled or struggled to roll over and put their faces to the rain. Others remained inert, in postures that can only be adopted by the lifeless, arms entangled, mouths agape.
Edmund called my name, dragging a drenched figure from the sea. A sharp wave nearly spilled him, and he flung the body over his shoulders like a meal sack. I recognized Sir Nigel’s short, silver hair.
The knight’s arms dangled as Edmund kicked free of the foam. He flung the knight down hard, and stood helplessly over his body.Then he seized Sir Nigel’s ankles and held him up like a life-size poppet, a child’s play figure. He shook the knight, and a long gush of water spouted from Sir Nigel’s mouth. The knight waved his arms, swung a fist, cried out something, and Edmund stretched him out on the sand.
All along the line of bodies, women and children had appeared from inland, the wind fluttering shawls and blouses as they stooped over the sprawling drowned and half-drowned. This was proof that in this unknown countryside some welcome would be provided—food, a warm hearth. But as I staggered up the wet sand to offer my greetings, I glimpsed the flash of a knife.
These were scavengers, cutting corpses of their purses, buckles, rings—and if a body was still coughing, a quick in-and-out quieted all complaint. I cursed a shawled figure, swung a fist and missed, and she raised a high, sharp cry.
Several shadows that had been watching from a copse of stunted pines left their hiding and hurried down the sandy beach armed with cudgels and staves. I had studied sword work with scarred sergeants, the best fighters my father could afford. I am not easily frightened by an attack, but unarmed as I was now, I took a few blows on my forearms before I began to fight successfully with my fists.
My attacker was a farmer, judging by his beige-cloth apron and tunic, and although his cap was cut in a style I did not recognize, I saw in him a harvester’s strength, broad feet, heavy forearms. Such men have long ago mastered the downward stroke, splitting the ox skull with a single blow. I avoided his heavy swings, bloodied his face, knocked him down, and kicked him until he was still. Then I dealt with his fellow farmers, joined by Edmund, who was also unarmed but lost no time in snatching a truncheon, breaking it over a head, and driving another assailant into the sand.
Sir Rannulf’s opponent leaped at him with a knife. It is one of the earliest lessons in combat, how to knock aside a thrust and step inside your opponent’s guard. Sir Rannulf half killed the farmer with a blow to his face, and seized the knife from his stunned grasp. The knight knelt over his attacker and, taking a swine butcher’s care, cut his throat.
All the scavengers fled, bleeding, staggering, except Rannulf ’s dying man, the dark red spreading in the sand around him.
When several new figures stood on a ridge, observing us from a height, we gathered together. One of the hooded men was on horseback, and all of them carried staffs.We had no weapons, and our company was small: a few coughing, spewing sailors, some half-dazed Frankish squires, and the four of us.
“We must live to see Rome,” rasped Sir Nigel.
Rannulf retrieved the knife from the dead man’s throat, and Edmund dug a scrap of timber from the foam, a piece of flotsam from the Santa Croce. The ship was broken-backed beyond the surf, a dark, fragile husk. Edmund brandished the improvised club, took a swipe at the air, and then motioned to the far-off men, Come on.
I had to love Edmund’s spirit. I wrapped a length of wet cordage around my fist. My friend and I would not die easily. The figures on the ridge fanned out, the horsemen directing them, hoods and mantles billowing in the wind. They were calling as they approached, a foreign curse or battle cry.
TWENTY-TWO
Only when they were close enough for us to see their eyes did we notice the crosses dangling around their necks, and the wine sack held aloft. The unarmed men slowed as they approached.
“Sheathe your weapons, men,” said Sir Nigel with something like humor.
Edmund let the wooden club fall and sank to his knees, exhausted.
The hearth fire danced in the center of the hall.
We drank spiced wine, the hot drink doing little to dissolve the lingering cold in my feet, my joints, along the long muscles of my back. I huddled in a coarse blanket as holy brothers, members of a devout order, set wooden platters with slabs of bread and cheese before us.The other survivors were warmly attended as well, one or two of them close to death.
“I pray to every saint,” said Sir Nigel,“that I never set foot on a ship as long as I live.”
I considered before I spoke. “Will you not return to England?”
“We have been spared for a high purpose,” Nigel said, ignoring the question.
“If Heaven desires that we travel by sea—” I continued.
“Then, yes, I’ll hire myself out as a helmsman,” snapped Sir Nigel, with a welcome hint of his old spirit.
There is warm hospitality in the company of such monks. My father and I had stayed in an inn run by an abbey—the Mitre and Sword—when we traveled to Derby. We had some casual friends among the clergy, who saved their best ale for us—or so they led us to believe—in a pitcher on the top shelf.
But because su
ch people have devoted their lives to Our Lord, they offer all travelers the same benevolent care. I think there is something impersonal in the mercy of someone who does not know my name, but this is no doubt because of the smallness of my own soul, when matched with those who serve God. I was grateful that night to hear the rain spitting on the fire from the smoke hole in the roof.
I used my Latin to ask one of the brothers how far we were from Rome, and he said we were less than ten leagues from that city.
“Ten leagues!” I exclaimed, repeating the news to Sir Nigel.
“How far is that?” asked Sir Nigel.
I was momentarily crestfallen at my own ignorance. “It can’t be far.”
“Far or long,” said Nigel, “we’ll find King Richard’s ambassador to Rome, and make ourselves useful to him.”
The Crusade had not changed Nigel the way woad dye turns raw wool to blue. But some new stitchery was present in the fabric of his character, a new quiet. I hoped this meant that Sir Nigel foresaw a long, safe life ahead, and not that he expected to die soon and desired a conscience full of grace.
“We are poor now, all of us,” said Sir Rannulf, cutting off another slice of brown bread, and offering it around before taking a bite himself. Perhaps Rannulf had changed recently, too, I thought, although I could not measure his moods and silences so easily. Certainly he had been a friend to me in my illness, but I was not sure I could trust a man who cut a throat as unemotionally as he sliced a loaf.
“The treasure will wash up on the shore,” I said.
“No iron floats, nor any gold,” said Edmund solemnly.
All of our armor, our silver—my thimble, Edmund’s cup. In my gratitude at being alive, I had not felt the loss until now.
“Surely we’ll find something,” I said.
“We’re as wealthy as a gang of tomcats,” said Sir Nigel, with a matter-of-fact good humor. “No more, and no less.” Poverty was not a shameful condition—some chose that state, seeking to work in almshouses among the ill, or to travel on endless pilgrimage to holy places. But for a pair of squires looking to establish themselves as knights, our loss was devastating.
The Leopard Sword Page 7
