Noell went to touch Quintus on the arm, but Quintus did not look up until he reached the end of his prayer. Even then, he turned first to Steven, and said: ‘You must bury her, and send a letter to London, so that her family might be told.’
‘We cannot linger here,’ said Noell. ‘The abbot begs us to go.’ He spoke faintly, his eyes drawn to Mary’s bloody corpse, and a sickness of despair in his heart.
Why? he asked himself, silently. What harm could she do them now?
Noell and Quintus withdrew together, and as they climbed the stone steps to the cloister Noell told the other that the child was waiting for them, consigned to his care by the Maroc. Quintus was not pleased by the news, but did not propose that they should abandon this charge, so Noell took him to where the girl was patiently waiting.
To his surprise, he found Leilah there too, with a sullen expression upon her face. Before he could ask the question, she said: ‘I was told to go with thee. He would not stay to tell me why.’
Noell did not know whether Langoisse had grown bored with the gypsy and sought to abandon her, or whether he was anxious for her safety and honestly thought that she might fare better in the company of the scholar and the monk. There was no time to debate the issue aloud, so they gathered together all that they had, and left the Abbey a company of four.
Langoisse and his men had already gone, as many on horseback as there were mounts to take them, the rest left to catch up as and if they could. They had gone along the eastward road, which had brought the black friars and their escort. Noell guessed that they would try to lay a false trail before turning north, to work their way round to their real objective: the quiet strand where Ralph Heilyn had agreed to collect them, to take them to Ireland.
Quintus, with a pack much larger than Noell’s, took them directly to a northward-leading path across the fields, and led them with a sure stride along the hedgerow, between the fields of ripening corn.
When they were more than three miles from the abbey, they stopped to rest in a small copse. Quintus changed his clothes, removing his habit and dressing himself instead as if he were a yeoman farmer, with a cap to hide his tonsure. Noell was astonished by the apparent change in his mentor; in Noell’s mind the nature of a monk was so amply signified by the habit that Quintus in ordinary garb seemed a stranger of whom nothing was known. The austere face, which had seemed almost saintly within the cowl, appeared in its new setting as hard as any overseer’s, and Noell saw with a shock that here was a man who had at least as much of the appearance of an outlaw as the volatile Langoisse.
This curious new being produced bread from his pack and broke it, distributing it between the four of them.
‘Where will we go?’ asked Leilah, as she attacked her food. Of all of them, she seemed the lightest in spirit now, and Noell could see in her dark face that same innocent joy in adventure which had so surprised him on the night when the pirate crew came to the abbey. All travel seemed hopeful to her, perhaps because she had so long been a slave that every day which brought a change to her affairs was an affirmation of her freedom.
‘We must go to Heilyn,’ Noell told her. ‘We must go with the fisherman to Ireland. Wellbelove’s men will hunt high and low for us here, and there is no safety in the east or south. We need not stay with Langoisse once we are away. The True Church is strong in Ireland, and the Imperium weak. The foreign fishers who dock in Baltimore are almost a nation unto themselves.’
She was reassured by this, and said: ‘Langoisse might take me back then, though the vampire will be his mistress now.’
Noell looked at her hard, but there was no doubt that she believed it. ‘I think you misread him,’ he said.
‘Nay,’ she replied. ‘He beat her like a mistress, and branded her too, and she will curse me because she could not curse him. I will be unhappy, if I stay with him. That is why he sent me to you.’ She did not seem to be overly sorry at the thought of being set aside.
‘There is no power in her curse,’ said Noell, wearily, ‘or we’d all be dead by now. Having fed her the blood which she craved, she is asleep, and I do not think Langoisse intends her to wake. He has not taken her to be his mistress, but to destroy her.’
As he said it, he wondered whether he could be entirely sure. Langoisse had advised him against the temptations of vampire beauty, and had claimed to know whereof he spake. Might Leilah be right, and the violence of his treatment of the vampire mask lustful fascination?
‘We must find a place to hide until nightfall is nearer,’ Quintus said. ‘The soldiers will hunt for Langoisse, and will surely find his trail less hard to follow than ours, but whatever they find in the course of their hunt they will take to the castle, and we must not be found. We cannot ask for help from the farmers. In a barn or a hayloft we might lie low for a while, but we’d be safer still in some thicket where no one would go. Then we must make our way by twilight to the place where Heilyn told Langoisse to go, arriving as darkness falls, so that we cannot attract attention to the place.’
They agreed this plan, and moved stealthily from the copse, creeping along the hedgerows with bowed heads, hoping to avoid the labourers in the fields. With the corn in its present state, there were few men about, and they made their way to the bank of a winding stream, which had sparse woods on either side. They found a hollow near-filled with hawthorn and brambles, and found their way into a covert behind the thorny foliage of a spreading tree. There they sat, to wait until Quintus judged that the time was right for their race to the meeting-place on the distant shore.
As the afternoon passed, no one came near them, though Noell could take little comfort from it. No doubt Wellbelove’s men had chased along the road in the wake of the pirate; he could not help but wish that they might catch him, so that none would meet Heilyn’s buss but his own group of four. Then, and perhaps only then, would their passage to Ireland be certain to be a peaceful one.
What the Normans would do to the pirate, if they took him alive, would be as horrible as they could contrive. They would send him to London, where, Noell presumed, Richard would make a fine exhibition of his death. That would surely serve to complete his legend, and confirm him as a great hero and martyr in the cause of common man’s resistance against the empire of the vampires.
The composers of the most scurrilous broadsides would no doubt make much of this last adventure, and their lewd speculations would outdo by far the actual transactions in the Abbey. The Star Chamber would keep a steady eye on the printing presses of London, but somehow, somewhere, the story would be published, then marched around the nation in the ranks of a paper army which bore no standards. Langoisse dead might be a better man by far than Langoisse alive. A legend in print which might inspire men to rebellion could never do such a trivial and unworthy thing as to cut the throat of an innocent girl.
Noell could not make up his mind whether he would rather the vampire were destroyed or rescued. Whenever he sounded her name in his thoughts, what came to his mind, crowding out all else, was the beauty of her image and the purity of her skin. And whether he would or not, the idea of such beauty disarmed his endeavour to count her in the ranks of evil. Had she seemed more callous, or more proud, it would have been easier to hate her, but there was nothing in what she had done or said which he could take as a warrant for revulsion. Even the way in which she had asked for his blood had been a temptation rather than a threat. It might have been easier if he were a monk, and had taken vows of chastity, for then the temptation itself might have seemed a paramount evil, reason enough for violent response. Instead, he knew by his own father’s example how comfortably men could be beguiled by vampire ladies.
They did not talk a great deal while they waited. Leilah’s excitement had become muted, and her maid, it seemed, loved nothing better than silence. Quintus seemed thoughtful, and when Noell asked him questions he replied in dismissive fashion. They ate another frugal meal while the sun sank low in the west, lighting the cloud from below and turning half t
he sky into a vast cloak of red and gold. Not until the sun began to set did Quintus usher them from their hidey-hole and bid them hurry to the coast.
The monk’s calculations were thrown out by the little girl’s slowness, and it became apparent that they would not reach the sea before it grew dark, but they pressed on as hard as they could.
They lit no lantern when the twilight had finally gone, but there was a bright three-quarter moon, hidden only now and again by scooting clouds, and a few bright stars gave what assistance they could. The darkness slowed them down, but Quintus guided them with assurance.
The darker it became, the more Noell found himself alone with his inner thoughts. His unsoothed uncertainties were by no means comfortable company.
And what, he asked himself, if Langoisse does not die? Will he capture another fighting ship, and go on to greater triumphs of piracy? What legends might remain to be made, if he cares to sail to the mysterious south of Africa, or across the great ocean in search of the ruins of Atlantis, as rumour already urges him to do?
The real matter at hand, as he could hardly forget, was what would become of Quintus and himself. He was glad to be able to think of the two together, for he was far from ready to be alone in the world. Now Quintus had changed his habit, it was possible to think in other terms than taking refuge in another scholar’s hole. Perhaps their future and the pirate’s might be further entwined, so that all might seek adventure together. One day, there might be chapbooks of his own exploits, preserving his name for the admiration of future generations.
But there was poor Mary, with her gaping throat, and he could never forgive Langoisse for that.
‘What will happen to the monks whom we left behind?’ asked Noell of Quintus, completing his catechism of possible futures and drawing his teacher into his game of speculation.
‘They will play the victims of tragedy and terror,’ replied Quintus, struggling to speak calmly through his laboured breathing, ‘as indeed they are. I hope that the Dominicans will prove no heresy against them, and will let them alone. The abbot is not friendless, within or without the Church. To molest the abbey might prove to be impolitic, and if God wills it, the monks will be allowed to go on with their proper business. There will be no sign that you and I were ever there, and the stain of Langoisse’s murders will be laved away in prayer and lamentation, as all murders ultimately are. The True Faith is a rock in a troubled sea, which cannot be broken even by the fiercest storms.’
‘I hope you are right,’ said Noell. ‘I truly do.’
By the time they reached the place appointed, to which they had come by a most circuitous route, Noell had lost all track of the minutes and the hours, and was surprised to find himself at any destination, however temporary. They found no sign of anyone, on shore or off, but Quintus reassured them all that the time of the meeting was not yet come, and that they must wait with patience for at least an hour. Then they would see who would come, and who would not.
They rested, too exhausted even to eat, though they drank a little from a waterskin which Quintus carried. They lay down upon the shingle, and waited to recover their strength.
Noell lay on his back, looking up at the starry firmament, half-hidden by the scattered clouds, and half-revealed. It was far easier to suspect the real existence of God when the earth was dark, shadowed from the gaudy sun. The sky seemed almost empty behind the clouds, the few stars which showed were lonely and forlorn. Noell knew that the great majority of men had recently thought the realm of the fixed stars a close and narrow thing. How awesome it was to exercise the imagination upon the truth of things, which was that the darkness was unimaginably vast, and those tiny suns were lost in a wilderness of space.
If we are so very tiny, he asked of the sky, only part in play, what does it matter whether we live for sixty years, or six hundred, or six thousand? Will not the universe be just the same, untouched and untroubled by our infinitesimal efforts and pains? And if there is, after all, a God who hides His countenance behind that awful vastness, what can he possibly care about the tribulations of such as we?
The sky, of course, did not answer him. But as he looked up into it, he felt a strange shift of perspective, as though he were looking through some powerful optical instrument, which made the universe seem not so vast and lonely after all. It was as if his sight and consciousness were not contained in such a narrow prison as he had first thought, but free to roam that abyssal infinity where the stars were lost and lonely.
But I am, after all, here, he told himself, and here is not simply the space inside my head, but everywhere that my senses apprehend, and everywhen that my understanding can encompass. Why, I am as small as I can make myself, or as great, and I have only to look at myself in the right way to magnify myself as greatly as I desire! I have looked into a microscope, and seen the worlds within the world, and now I am staring infinity in the face. If there is a God, He may look me in the face, with His microscopic eyes, and read the very thoughts inside my mind.
He realised then, with all the shock of revelation, that it was not true what the vampire lady had said to him, that her kind and her kind only lived in the shadow of eternity. In that shadow all must live, each kind after its own fashion: those who might not die, and those who must.
He saw that even a common man could not simply say Here is today and tomorrow, and then naught; however narrow his allotted span he could not help but be a citizen of the vast empire of All Time. Every common man had ancestors, and most had children too, and whatever a common man did in the world, it was the heritage of all his forebears, and must extend in its consequences across all the generations of mankind, for as long as the world itself would last.
There was something which terrified Noell in the thought that what he was doing at that very moment had as its antecedents the whole history of man and the world, and must extend its effects, however subtly, through all of time to come … but it was a cheerful terror, which he was glad to embrace.
He had to swallow a curious lump which had come into his throat, and as he did so was suddenly afraid that he might lose this moment of vision, and forget entirely what it had taught him. But then he saw what a ridiculous fear that was.
It is not simply that we live in the shadow of eternity, he told himself, but that we are the ones who cast it, human and vampire alike. In the beating of our tiny hearts is the echo of forever.
ELEVEN
They did not immediately know when Heilyn’s buss came to keep her tryst, because she came silently to anchor without showing a light, too far from the shore to be easily seen. The first they knew of her arrival was the splash of oars from a small boat easing its way into the shallows. There was only one man in her, and she could take no more than half a dozen. The fisherman gave out a low whistle, and when Quintus and Noell ran to meet him he called out anxiously to know who they were.
It is Brother Quintus from the Abbey, and the lay scholar,’ the monk replied, as they clambered over smoothed rocks, careful of the slippery weed which grew there, to reach the bare sand where the boat was.
The fisherman seemed relieved to hear this news, but when Quintus and Noell arrived, wading into the shallows, he heard that others were approaching, and said ‘How many more?’
‘We have two with us,’ Quintus told him. ‘A woman and a child.’
The fisherman came out of the boat, and helped to pull it further in to shore, is this all?’ he asked, the tone of his voice testifying that he would be very glad if it were so.
Even as he spoke, Noell heard the sound of feet upon the wet sand, and knew that there were others here, though they had kept silent until now. He could not see in the darkness who they might be, and thought for a moment that it might be Wellbelove’s men come to capture him. He felt himself grabbed by the arms, and though he twisted furiously he could not get free. In the moonlight there were many shadows, and he could not count them. Only when a man spoke, and he recognised Langoisse’s voice, was he sure of what was h
appening.
‘Tis a pistol at your head, Master Fisher,’ hissed the pirate, in a low tone, ‘but ’twill do you no harm as long as you’re silent. Brother Quintus, Master Cordery, you must get into the boat, and hide our muskets with your backs when they shine a lantern on you. If you wish to avoid bloodshed, you must convince Master Heilyn that all is well before we board.’
‘You mean to steal the ship!’ exclaimed Noell. He had enough instinctive wisdom to keep his voice low.
‘Of course we must, pretty fool. What did you imagine that I had in mind, when I asked about his crew and their weapons, even at the risk of putting him on his guard?’
It seemed so obvious now. Noell felt himself a pretty fool indeed.
‘We can only do as he says,’ Quintus told him, his voice resigned. Clearly, Quintus had thought about things more thoroughly than he, and was not overly shocked by this new turn of events.
‘Does Heilyn know you?’ asked the pirate of the monk.
‘He has seen me at the Abbey,’ replied Quintus.
‘Good. But you must change those clothes which you put on, for they do not suit our present purpose. Do it quickly, I beg of you.’
Quintus complied, while the pirates waited impatiently.
Noell climbed into the boat, and moved to the prow while it was turned about in the shallows. Langoisse gave one oar to Quintus and another to the Turk, while he and two others crouched down, concealing their guns. They rowed out to sea, saying nothing, and Noell strained his eyes, searching the darkness for the shadow of the buss. His heart was pounding again, though he had imagined himself quite composed while they waited on the beach. The journey seemed long, though it could not have been, in terms of the clock.
When he finally caught sight of the waiting ship, he told the rowers to bear to port, and then shouted, at Langoisse’s instruction, for a light to be shown.
The sailors on the ship brought a light to her port bow, and Noell could see that four were there, all with muskets ready in their hands.
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