Martyr's Fire

by Sigmund Brouwer

  It was rapidly becoming the foremost port on the east coast, prospering by the shipping of wool and woolen cloth, and importing wine. The shipping destinations were so diverse that Isabelle had had to hire this sailor to report back to her about the destination of the ship on which Thomas had paid for passage. It could have been headed to Scotland in the north, across the channel to Holland or France, or as far south as Spain.

  When the sailor had returned with the information that Thomas was going to Lisbon in Portugal, she’d considered her money well spent, especially after the sailor found her another ship with the same destination, leaving a few days earlier than Thomas’s. She would be waiting for Thomas when he arrived, able to finally learn what he intended by fleeing England.

  “I know you have no further business with me,” the sailor said, nodding and bowing. He smiled, showing pride in his single tooth. “Yet there is another who sent me to request a meeting with you. The man you inquired about on the ship that goes to Lisbon the day after next.”

  Thomas. She should have known he would have found out about her. It seemed always that he was a couple of steps ahead. For all she knew, Thomas had only made it appear that the Priests of the Holy Grail had conquered Magnus, and this was simply another part of his game.

  “Where is he?” she asked.

  “Follow,” the sailor said, pointing down a street.

  With the ever-present gulls swooping and squawking above, Isabelle remained a few paces behind, but the wind was blowing the wrong direction, and even at that distance, the man’s odor was as repellent as his appearance.

  Thomas.

  She was alone here, trusted by those who sent her to complete her task.

  Alone. There would be nothing to stop her from betraying those who sent her. And their cause. She had half-decided that she would do it, if only Thomas would agree to flee from them with her. He had gold. She had gold. They could board a ship together. Find a place safe from Druids. And both of them could leave the battle and live in peace. It was dream that she’d first forced away from her thoughts, then allowed to return again and again, so that it almost seemed real.

  Thomas.

  Thinking of him, she lost her customary caution and turned into the alley behind the sailor. He stepped into a doorway, and when she followed, he sprang out again, holding a knife low, its blade pointed upward. The expert move of a man accustomed to a street fight, a man prepared to sweep the point of the blade into a man’s belly. Or, like now, her belly.

  “Into the doorway,” he ordered, motioning with the knife.

  She did as commanded.

  “Your gold first,” he said, standing so close that his breath washed over with a stench of sewage. “If you scream, you’ll only have time to scream once, and it will be lost among the gulls. It will be your last scream, and I’ll have the gold anyway.”

  “My gold?”

  “Don’t play innocent with me. I know you have plenty of gold. You’ve paid me, and you’ve paid to secure passage to Lisbon. You may be wearing clothing of a peasant, but your skin is too fine and your body too nourished to be a commoner.”

  He grinned widely, showing gums again and the single tooth. “And a commoner would not be stupid enough to follow a sailor into an alley. You’re about to discover why a woman like you should never travel alone. The gold is in a pouch hanging from your neck. Safe from pickpockets, perhaps, but not from me.”

  Isabelle reached to her neck and pulled out the pouch.

  Keeping his knife at the ready, he reached out with his other hand. She reached across, and as he took it, she raked her nails across the top of his hand.

  He grunted with pain and stared at the scratches that welled with blood.

  “That will cost you,” he said. “I had been intending to kill you quickly, but now there will be nothing gentle about it. And I’ll make sure I enjoy it.”

  Isabelle forced herself to look into the filth of the man’s face. Both the filth of grime and the filth of his leer.

  “Think about your hand,” she said, “and ask yourself if anything about it feels strange.”

  He waved his knife at her. “No tricks. It won’t gain your freedom.”

  “There’s no trick at all,” she said. “But you will notice I have a second pouch around my neck.”

  She pulled at the cord and lifted out the pouch, leaving the cord around her neck. She shook the pouch to indicate there was no jangle of gold coin. “And your hand. A strange sensation? Burning?”

  The sailor frowned. He shook the hand that she’d scratched.

  “Ah,” she said. She held out her own hand. “You’ll notice I’m very careful never to touch my eyes or mouth.”

  The sailor’s frown turned into a grimace, and he shook his hand harder, as if a dog were attached to it. “What madness is this?”

  “Not madness, but a fast-drying poison from a foreign land where soldiers there use it to coat the tips of their arrows. All it takes is a scratch from the arrow, and the person dies within minutes. Those soldiers have arrows, but I prefer to coat my own nails with it.”

  She smiled. “This pouch contains pills to counteract the poison. I keep the pouch with me as protection, should I ever accidentally scratch myself.”

  “Open the pouch,” he grunted, threatening her with the knife. “Now.”

  Isabelle spilled the contents of the pouch onto her palm, showing small tablets of compressed herbs and powders of various sizes and colors.

  “You’ll see your guts spilled on the dirt if you don’t give me the pill by a count of three.”

  “You can count that high?”

  “One …” He grunted again with pain, and terror crossed his face.

  “The burning,” she asked, “it’s climbing your arm?”

  “Two …” He was frantic, and she feared he would thrust the knife in his panic.

  Isabelle daintily plucked a small pill from her palm and handed it to the sailor. He popped it into his mouth and forced it down with an audible swallow.

  Isabelle cupped her hand and poured the remainder of the pills back into the pouch. She tightened the top of the pouch with the cord and dropped it below her neck again, out of sight in her clothing.

  She watched the sailor with a smile on her face.

  His own expression was a puzzled frown. It didn’t last long. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he sagged to his knees.

  “I had wondered what that pill would do,” she told him, not even sure if he could hear anymore. But, of course, she knew exactly what it would accomplish. No Druid reached her age without a comprehensive knowledge of herbs and roots, and every Druid held such a pouch to cover a wide range of contingencies.

  She sighed. “I suppose it’s obvious, isn’t it, that I gave you the wrong one.”

  On his back now and crumpled in a contorted fashion, he could not answer.

  She stepped over him, and, breathing through her mouth to avoid his stench, plucked her gold pouch from his open hand.

  She took a step away, then spun around and grabbed his knife.

  The sailor had definitely been correct about one thing. It was dangerous for a woman to travel alone.

  She kept the knife.

  “I’ve already said it once. Board this vessel alone, or not at all.”

  Thomas, in reply, merely shifted the puppy beneath his arm to the other. It was a deliberate act, done slowly to show he had no fear of the loud sailor. It was also a difficult act. The cloak Thomas wore did not encourage his movement. Yet he would not ever consider traveling without the cloak. Thomas understood well why Hawkwood had worn such a garment. It concealed much of what he must always carry hidden upon him.

  The sailor facing him jabbed a dirty finger in the air to make his point. “A dog and all its fleas. We’re not interested in having a beast wander around underfoot, tripping one of us and sending a man overboard. Or dropping filth for one of us to step upon. Hah! Might you be thinking this is Noah’s Ark?”

&
nbsp; The sailors around him, always eager to watch a confrontation, laughed loudly.

  “Aargh! Noah’s Ark! Good one, Cap’n!” The laughter continued in waves as that joke was passed from crewman to crewman.

  Thomas had secured passage upon the Dragon’s Eye, a merchant ship, one that was already near full with bales of wool from the sheep that grazed on the hills of the inland moors. It was one of the few merchant ships not owned by the Flemings or Italians. That he had been able to barter his passage in English had been a blessing; facing the jeers of the sailors was a small price to pay.

  As he stared at the sailor, silence finally settled upon them, broken only by the constant screaming of gulls as they dipped and swooped for the choicest pieces of garbage on the swells of the gray water beside them.

  “This creature once saved my life,” Thomas said calmly, “and you will receive the full price of passage for him.”

  The sailor squinted. “Eh? You’ll pay double just to keep the mongrel beside you across the North Sea and down the Atlantic?”

  Thomas nodded. Around him, the stench of rotten fish, of their entrails discarded carelessly in the water, of salt-crusted damp wood forever soaked with fish blood, and of mildewed nets.

  Now he looked directly into the sailor’s eyes, bloodshot and bleary above a matted beard.

  “Double passage,” Thomas repeated firmly. To prove his point, he quickly produced another piece of gold.

  The sailor in front of him coughed politely.

  “Well, we welcome you aboard. You and your companion.” The sailor smiled, but there was no kindness in his eyes. “It would appear you both deserve to be treated like kings.”

  A deck hand led Thomas to the rear of the Dragon’s Eye and chattered like a man who was far too accustomed to lonely weeks at sea with a crew of only eighteen, none with anything new to discuss.

  “You picked a fine ship, you did,” the deck hand said. “A cog like this handles the roughest seas.”

  The cog was over one hundred feet long, with a deep and wide hull to hold the bulkiest of cargoes. Thomas stepped around the bales of wool. Above him, the single sail was furled around the thick, high center mast. Thomas had seen cogs leaving the harbor with open sails and knew it was large enough to drive the boat steadily in front of any wind.

  “It’s not fast, nor an easy boat to maneuver,” the deck hand continued, like one eager to impart knowledge, “but it’s almost impossible to capsize.”

  He lowered his voice. “And its high sides make it difficult to be boarded at sea by pirates.”

  He smiled at the result he had hoped to achieve. Thomas’s face had darkened with sudden concern.

  “Look about you,” the deck hand waved. “The castle at the prow”—his voice became smug—“the fighting tower at the front is how I should explain it proper for you land people, lets us fire arrows and such from above at any raiders who draw close.”

  He then waved at their destination on the cog, ahead of them by some fifty feet and several dozen tons of wool piled in orderly stacks of bales. “The sterncastle—the tower at the rear—is for important guests.”

  The deck hand sighed. “A bed and privacy. What gold can’t buy!”

  Then he remembered he had superiority because of his knowledge and immediately began lecturing again. “We’ve got oars—we call them sweeps—should the gales be too rough or should we need to outrun pirates. You might be asked to man one then.”

  Now, Thomas said or did nothing to stop the flow of words he barely heard.

  Dangerous gales and pirate attacks. What folly had brought him here? The words of an old man who had betrayed him. And some vague references in his secret books. Such madness to begin the journey, let alone hope in its success.

  Yet what else was there to do? The reward on his head had been increased, and with the Priests of the Holy Grail slowly controlling town after town, there soon would be no place safe left for him in northern England. Unless he chose to live the uncertain life of an outlaw, and his contest for life and freedom against that wily Robin Hood had shown how dangerous that might be.

  The deck hand interrupted his thoughts. “Here you are. The sterncastle. My advice is that you tie the dog inside. There’ll be enough grumbles about a dog enjoying the shelter denied us crew without his presence outside as a daily reminder.”

  Thomas nodded.

  The deck hand hesitated, an indication he knew he should not ask. But his curiosity was too strong. “Our destination is Lisbon. Do you intend to go beyond Portugal?”

  The scowl he received from Thomas was answer enough.

  I’m fortunate we depart before you hear about the gold offered for my head. The less you know the better.

  The deck hand stumbled back awkwardly to make room for Thomas to enter the dank and dark sterncastle.

  Most certainly the Druid spies will someday discover I escaped England on the Dragon’s Eye, and eager will be the sailors to impart that information for the slightest amount of gold. They cannot know my destination is that of the Last Crusaders. Jerusalem. The Holy City.

  If the deck hand believes this to be luxury, Thomas thought with a sour grin, then he and all the crew have my sympathy.

  As if in agreement at the squalor of the dark and cramped quarters, hardly more than walls and a low roof, the puppy beneath his arm whined.

  “You like it no more than I?”

  Thomas set Beast on the rough wooden floor. He shivered, then crawled beneath the crude bed.

  “They told us two weeks to Lisbon if the weather is favorable,” Thomas told his now-unseen companion. “And crossed themselves when I asked how long if the weather wasn’t.”

  Another answering whine.

  Thomas smiled. A week earlier, Beast had first growled fearlessly as Thomas entered the cave after his absence of several days, caused, of course, by the time spent captive among the outlaws led by Robin Hood. The fearless growls had then changed to yips of total joy as the puppy had recognized Thomas.

  Thomas had responded to the barking and jumping with equal joy, something that had surprised him greatly. True, he had not intended to leave the dog to die slowly in the cave, and indeed, he had worried upon his capture that the puppy would die the slow lingering death of starvation. But Thomas did not want to be burdened with concern for anything except his goal of winning Magnus. And, until that joy at their reunion had so surprised him, he had intended to leave the puppy somewhere with peasants. Instead, he had spent two days in the cave, poring through the ancient pages of knowledge or staring in thought at the natural rock chimney that allowed sunlight to enter, uncaring of the aches that still battered his every move because of the fierce fight with Robin Hood.

  Those two days he had puzzled his next move. Yes, Magnus seemed out of reach. But almost before he had learned to run, the quest for Magnus had been instilled in him by his mother, who disguised herself as his childhood nurse.

  Without Magnus to pursue, what else had he in life?

  So, despite the near impossibility of his task, he could not let it go.

  And at the end of the second day in the cave, Thomas realized the only chance of victory, no matter how slim, would be in trusting Gervaise one more time and uncovering the reason the books had been hidden. The only clues he had were vague references to the Last Crusade, written in the page margins of two of the books. And simply because they were too similar to what was in the book given him by Hawkwood during their midnight discussion before the betrayal, he had realized he could not ignore what it meant.

  A sudden wave nearly pitched him against the far wall of his quarters. He recovered his balance, but realized the wave was a brutal reminder of the obstacles ahead. Had he chosen correctly the direction for his search? Or was the old man’s book merely bait? To be wrong meant a year wasted, one more year for the Priests of the Holy Grail to add strength to their hold over the area around Magnus.

  “Strive to do your best here on earth,” Thomas heard the patient vo
ice echo in his mind, “yet in all your pursuit, remember and take heart that it is only the first step toward something much greater.”

  At that thought, Thomas’s eyes watered. Gentle and kind Gervaise, the calm speaker of that lesson, now too, like his mother, Sarah, had surely passed from this life, and all in effort for Thomas to save Magnus.

  God rest their souls. Thomas finished his prayer with a sudden determination to continue his quest, if only because of the sacrifices others had made. And God be here on these cold gray waters with mine.

  Thomas opened his eyes. He had little hope of returning to England, let alone any victory over the Druids who held Magnus.

  Shortly after dawn on the third morning, Thomas wanted to die.

  “Carry your own bucket out,” the sailor snarled into Thomas’s cramped quarters. Thomas sat hunched over his knees on the edge of his bed. “We’ve no time for soft-headed fools around here.”

  The sailor half-dropped and half-threw the empty bucket in Thomas’s direction, then slammed the door in departure.

  Thomas could not even lift his head to protest.

  A small part of his mind realized that the deck hand had been right about bringing Beast aboard. For two days, food had been brought to his quarters. For two days, each visitor bearing that food—except for a small, dirty cook’s assistant who had stooped to let the puppy lick his hands—had grumbled about wasting it and valuable space on a useless dog.

  The larger part of his mind, however, thought nothing about Beast or the obvious resentment among the crew.

  Thomas truly wanted to die.

  The cog, as promised by the first deck hand, rode the rough seas with no more danger of sinking than if it had been a cork. However, like a cork, it tossed and bobbed on top of the long swells of water as the winds slowly took the cog south through the English Channel and into the vast North Atlantic Ocean.

  Only once had Thomas been able to stagger to the door of his quarters to look out upon those waves, green-gray and hardly any different in color than the bleak sky. The waves had seemed like small mountains, bearing down on the vessel without mercy, lifting it high, then throwing it down again, only to be repeated by the next rushing surge of tons of water.