Noell found himself set up against the cloister wall, alongside the boys and one of the monks who had come to see what was happening. Then his captor stepped away from him to join others of his band.
Facing the prisoned company was a rank of ruffians who seemed in the half-light as odd and dirty as any Noell had seen in the worst parts of London. All were armed, most with swords and daggers, the great majority of which were drawn. He counted seven, but there had to be more, because they were looking back and forth as if waiting for a fuller gathering, and there was none yet to be seen who took the part of leader. There was a knife-point aimed at Noell’s chest from a short distance away, its owner a small, wizened man whose eyes glittered in the near-darkness. The giant who had brought him downstairs had stepped away into the shadows.
More lanterns were brought from the dormitory where the monks slept. The abbot was with them, and Quintus too. Noell’s racing heart slowed slightly as these figures of authority approached, though the more the lamplight showed him of the motley crew into whose eager hands he had fallen, the less reassuring he found them. The wizened man was revealed to have an awful toothless grin, and the yellow seams of his face were contorted in an expression of determined fierceness, as though he would dearly love an excuse to use his blade.
It was not until the abbot demanded to know what was going on that Noell saw the leader of the band, which was now revealed to be at least a dozen strong. He was a tall, handsome man with black hair, who carried himself like a gentleman – almost like a vampire – and had not deigned to draw his sword. He seemed much calmer than his fellows, but his expression was grim, his lips seeming tight and bloodless. He was dressed all in black, and his clothes were of good quality, though spoiled by grime and sea-salt.
On either side of this curious captain were his lieutenants, even stranger in kind than he. One of them was the monster who had carried Noell down the stairs, taller than his master, disfigured horribly about the face. It was indeed the case that he had no nose, merely a puckered wound where it had been cut away. His height was emphasized by a coloured turban wound about his head. He was dark-skinned, as Noell imagined a Saracen or a Turk might be; he was certainly no man of Gaul.
On the leader’s left-hand side was a figure by no means as fearful, yet all the more unexpected for that. It was a woman in man’s clothing, or perhaps a girl, for she looked no older than Noell himself, and a good deal smaller. She was as dark-skinned as the monster, with her long black hair in braids. For a common woman she had exceptionally pure skin, but her brightly-rouged lips were incongruous. She was wielding a pistol in her right hand, a dagger in her left, and raised these weapons in a curiously excited display. Her companions seemed in deadly earnest, but her eyes were alight with excitement, as though this affair were a game which she was fervent to play. And while her companions looked to the approaching monks, she fixed her eyes instead upon Noell, looking him up and down with an eagerness he did not like. This girl was shadowed in her turn by a tiny petticoated servant, surely no more than twelve years old.
When the leader of the invaders began to speak, Noell looked away from the woman, hungry to discover what had brought these ruffians to the abbey.
‘We are in urgent need of sanctuary, my lord abbot,’ said the tall man, ‘and we are hungry enough to think ourselves starving. We have come a long way, and are unused to walking. We beg hospitality, and a measure of kindness.’
‘Who are you ’ demanded the abbot, fearfully. He had to look up at the invader, being small of stature and rather fat. Noell judged that he lacked the natural authority required to challenge the haughty intruder on equal terms.
‘My name,’ said the other, with a mock bow, ‘is Langoisse.’ He was obviously pleased by the audible reaction which this news caused.
‘The pirate!’ The exclamation came not from the abbot but from several of the brethren.
‘A poor sinner,’ said Langoisse, languidly, ‘forced by injustice to live by thievery, who seeks the charity and protection of Mother Church, and who has brought potential converts to the faith. This’ – he indicated the noseless monster – ‘is Selim, a Turk, who was a galley-slave with me many years ago; and this’ – he pointed to the amazon – ‘is Leilah, a Maroc gypsy princess, whose soul stands in desperate need of salvation, though she is gentle of temper and noble in heart.’ His ironic tone was lightly contrived, as though he were addressing an audience of ladies in a very different court.
It was Quintus who moved forward now, trying to take control, because he saw that the monks were very frightened, and that the abbot was uncertain what to do.
‘There is no need for your men to bare their steel here,’ he said. ‘Indeed you must have bread, if you are hungry, for it is our Christian duty to provide relief for those in need. No doubt your eventual destination is far away, and you must eat and rest to prepare yourselves.’
Langoisse laughed. He did not immediately reply to Quintus, but sent two of his men across the cloister to the dormitory, telling them to rouse the remaining monks and bring them all to the refectory. Then he sent two others, with orders to search the entire premises bordering the outer court, and then the church, and to bring anyone they found. Then he turned to Quintus and said: ‘We are anxious that news of our coming is not carried into the town. No doubt the Englishmen sleep soundly in the castle, and would not like to be disturbed. It may be necessary for us to claim hospitality for several days, and though we have been told that this is a good and safe house, we must be sure that we are secure.’
The pirate turned around, looking back towards the gate. Noell could not see it, but he could hear the wooden bolts being drawn to seal it against the world. Then Langoisse ran his eyes over the line of those stationed against the wall, pausing when he saw Noell, who knew himself to be conspicuous because his dress marked him out as neither monk nor servant.
‘Who is this?’ he asked, bluntly.
‘A lay scholar,’ said Quintus, quickly. ‘A guest like yourself.’
But another voice spoke up then, and said: ‘Master Cordery!’
Noell, astonished to be recognised, turned towards the brewhouse door, where the last of the pirates were now gathering. It was a newcomer who had spoken, and he realised that the intruders had other prisoners. They were bound, and their hands were pinioned behind them, despite the fact that both were skirted. One had her face concealed by a heavy hood, but the other was bare-headed, and it was she who had spoken. She was fair-haired, and seemed just as young as the so-called gypsy princess. Noell recognised her as readily as she had recognised him, and was distressed to see her condition. She was Mary White, the child of a servant in Prince Richard’s service, who had grown up in the court at the Tower of London, and had known him there.
Langoisse came quickly to stand in front of him, and now he did draw his sword, to place the point at Noell’s throat. ‘How does she know you?’ he demanded, in an anxious tone.
But before Noell could answer, he saw the pirate’s face change, as the name which the girl had spoken touched a chord of familiarity.
‘I am an outlaw,’ said Noell, trying with all his might to sound bold, ‘like yourself. But the price on my head is a mere thirty guineas, and I think you are held to be worth near seven times as much.’
Langoisse smiled at him. ‘As little as that?’ he said. ‘Richard is too unkind. He knows how much it wounds me when he pretends that my death would be of little interest to him. I think he might remember me better, now, for I have borrowed something from his court which I found aboard the stricken Wanderer. The loss of this handmaid’s mistress will surely remind the prince what a debt of honour he owes me, and increase the dislike which he has for me. ’ He took three steps along the pavement, and with a theatrical flourish of his hand he tipped the hood from the face of the second prisoner.
The woman seemed undisturbed by this treatment, and did not flinch from the rough hand. Though the lantern was not near to her, there was no dou
bting her considerable beauty. Her black hair was very sleek, her features finely-formed. Her polished complexion, utterly without blemish, revealed her for what she was in a world where most common women painted their faces to erase pockmarks and discolourations. Her eyes were almost closed, and it seemed that she was on the brink of collapse, held up by the rough man who gripped her upper arm.
‘May I present the vampire lady Cristelle d’Urfé,’ said Langoisse. ‘Late of the court of Prince Richard, unfortunately interrupted in her journey to Lisbon, by untimely weather and unforeseen circumstance. She is not entirely well.’
The last sentence implied far more than it said. Vampires were rarely made unwell by ordinary sickness or discomfort. Noell guessed that she had been given a drug, perhaps a poison to bring her near to the trance which overtook vampires when they were sorely hurt. That may have been necessary in order to subdue her for what must have been a difficult and dangerous journey.
Noell looked round to see the abbot’s reaction. The little man’s face seemed quite drained of blood.
‘How dare you …?’ he began.
Langoisse was quick to interrupt him. ‘Bring the devil into a cloister’ he queried. ‘But there are no Gregorians here. And if there were, what better place to bring the devil’s kin than the Lord’s house, where her evil can be countered by your piety? What harm can she do in this holy place?’
Noell realised that this little speech was aimed not so much at the monks, who were all assembling now in the cloister, but at the pirate’s own followers. Many of them would be simple men, for whom vampires were the stuff of mystery, possessed of supernatural malefic power. They might well need reassurance that their captain was not leading them to destruction. Yet he might be doing exactly that, for the vampires were ever enthusiastic to punish common men who hurt their own. Langoisse was quite right to say that when Richard found out that a lady of his court had been captured, he would spare no effort to pursue the pirate.
‘If you need food,’ said Quintus, quickly ‘then someone must go to the storehouses, and to the kitchen. Perhaps we should go now to the refectory, where we may talk more comfortably, and let those who must go about their work.’
‘Exactly so, ’ said the pirate. ‘But we must make sure that we understand one thing while we are all gathered together, and all must hear what I have to say. If we are betrayed to the Normans, all will die, beginning with the abbot and ending with the least of the boy servants. You know who we are, and you know that we are enough to carry out our threat.’
Noell looked again along the rank of the pirate crew, counting their blades and their pistols. They had no muskets with them, and only one or two carried packs. He guessed that it was by necessity rather than by choice that the band was travelling so light; they must have lost the greater part of their possessions in the gale. Many of the men looked back at him, suspicious or intrigued by the fact that his name was known, and he imagined the kinds of thought that might be stirring in those minds where the name of Cordery had meaning. Outlaw he might be, but he was not like them. He was the son of a vampire-lover who had slaughtered his noble mistress, and tried to welcome a plague to the streets of London. There was no reason why they should like him.
When the whole company began to go indoors, the small man kept the tip of his blade close to Noell’s neck. It was as though, in the pirate’s reckoning, he required to be watched as carefully and superstitiously as the vampire lady herself. But the gypsy girl carefully fell into step beside him, and he was surprised to see that she regarded him with a more fascinated and kindly eye. It was as though she sought to assure him by her presence that no harm could possibly come to him. She had put her own weapons away.
THREE
W hen morning came, the monastery had already returned to a semblance of normality. The monks were in attendance at matins, consigning themselves to the safety of the Lord’s authority with the imperturbable litany of their prayers. The pirates were discreetly quartered, though they kept a watchman at the gate and a lookout in the church tower.
The Lady Cristelle and her servant Mary White had been secured in the cells which were kept, in theory, for the use of penitents. Sometimes, even nowadays, a monk would be ordered to be confined there to expiate some misdemeanour, but the time was long gone when gentlemen who had incurred the wrath of the Church would commission the brothers, in consideration of suitable gifts, to undertake burdensome penances on their behalf. It was a measure of the gradual decline of religious authority that such penances were now very rarely handed down, nor taken altogether seriously when they were. The cells of Cardigan Abbey had seen few occupants these last fifty years, and the monks had been well content to leave them alone. None cried sacrilege, though, when Langoisse decided to redeem the prison from its long disuse.
Everyone had been commanded, by the pirate and the abbot alike, to maintain the appearance of normality. In accordance with this instruction Noell went to the library, but he sat in the larger room, and did not even attempt to work. He wondered whether the visitors knew of the existence of the secret cellar, and concluded that they probably did not. All of a sudden, the documents which had come to seem so tedious regained their aura of mystery and their preciousness. He resolved to protect them, if he needed to and if he could, from the danger of being stolen.
He was not entirely surprised when he was interrupted in his pretence of reading the scriptures by Langoisse, who took a chair nearby.
‘I knew of your father, Master Cordery,’ he said, in a friendly tone. ‘I never met him, but I heard that he was a good and trusted man.’ In the daytime, he seemed slightly less handsome; the good light showed up the ageing of his skin, and the oiliness of his hair. He was thirty-five years old or thereabouts, and his cheeks were roughened with old small scars. His eyes, though, were a vivid brown, and very clear. He had a penetrating gaze.
‘I am sure that he knew of you,’ replied Noell, evenly.
‘We have a deal in common, you and I,’ said the pirate. ‘I spent my own childhood in the Tower, and was similarly exiled. I have some notion of what you must be feeling.’
‘We heard that your ship went down off Cape Clear,’ Noell told him, not wanting to speak of personal matters. ‘Did you know that the Firedrake is in Milford Haven?’
‘My own ship was long past Carnsore Point before we had to abandon her,’ Langoisse replied, ‘and the kind wind blew our boat into Cardigan Bay. We came to the bare coast east of here, and made our way across country. It might have been better had we been driven into the Bristol Channel. I could easily gain passage on a ship out of Swansea, but it would be difficult there to avoid an alarm being raised. Now, those who would do me harm need not know that I’m alive until I’m gone, but it may not be so easy to find a shipmaster to take us away.’
‘It must be an inconvenience to be a pirate, ’ observed Noell, ‘and yet to have no ship.’
Langoisse laughed, taking no offence. ‘’Tis not the first time I’ve lost one,’ he said. ‘I dare say ’twill not be the last.’
‘When they do discover that you’re alive, and what you’ve done, they’ll hunt you more ardently than before. The kidnap of a vampire lady is not a crime they’ll forgive.’
‘Forgive!’ Langoisse’s voice had more of a snarl than a laugh in it now. ‘There is no forgiveness asked. Richard is not forgiven for what he has done to me, nor shall I ever forget what I owe him, and I will not be quieted by fear of the vampires’ revenge.’
‘But you have placed the good monks in danger by bringing the vampire lady here. They would be blamed enough for sheltering you and your crew, but no one need know about that were you quick enough to leave. The presence of the lady makes this a rather different matter, more difficult to conceal and more likely to invite punishment.’ ‘I always heard,’ said Langoisse, ‘that the monks of Cardigan belonged to the True Church. Your presence here would cause them trouble enough, if it were known. I hope to go quietly, and if it should not b
e so, then the abbot is welcome to tell all questioners that I forced him to help me. I wish no harm to the brothers.’
Noell knew that the monks of Cardigan did indeed think themselves part of the True Church, but whether that was the same True Church that Langoisse meant, he could not tell. For all he knew, Langoisse might be a Gregorian, believing that the vampires were instruments of Satan, and that the vampire papacy and the Holy Office were parts of the devil’s empire. But as he met the pirate’s gaze, he thought that he could see the soul of a fellow unbeliever. After all, Langoisse had been high-born among common men, near to becoming a vampire himself.
There was justice, in any case, in what Langoisse said. Noell’s presence here was proof enough that the abbot’s loyalty was not to the Normans. If he ever were to be found, the abbot would claim, under the spur of necessity, that the monks had not known his true identity. There was little to distinguish the imposition which he made upon the abbey’s hospitality from the sanctuary which Langoisse demanded. And yet, to be accessory to the abduction of a vampire lady was a crime of a very high order, even if enacted under threat.
‘What would you have me do?’ asked the pirate, when Noell did not reply. ‘Would you have me let her go, or murder her and burn her body?’
‘You should not have brought her here.’
‘Now I have her,’ replied Langoisse, ‘I might take her to hell with me, if I judge it worth my while. If I could get her safe away, I might try to ransom her for another ship, but it might be best to destroy her.
I have not made up my mind. Would you like to see her?’
‘Why?’
‘Are you not a scholar, come here as a member of the Invisible College of England? Is it not your purpose to learn what you can about vampires, in order to fight them? I have heard of this Quintus, too, you see. It is true, is it not, that your father sought to learn the secret of that magic which makes vampires of common men?’
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