But this was no summer joust, with pennants flying, silken favours tied to a blunted lance. This was just another form of ambush, with no quarter offered, sauve qui peut.
The second villager came at Falkan, swirling the olive-wood club. Caught off-balance, the young knight rolled sideways, abandoning his sword.
The bludgeon swung down, Baynard scrambling wildly, unsure of his direction. Please God, he thought, my father can’t see me from the station he’s earned in Heaven. A son of Tremellion rolling in the dirt, squirming like a weasel to avoid some peasant’s club.
He glimpsed the man come after him again, the weapon hefted for its final, shattering blow. No chance now to weasel away. All that was left was to roll in tight at his attacker, frantically clawing at the man’s sore-pocked legs.
He felt the wind of the bludgeon on his skull, heard a roar of surprise, then winced as the man tipped over him, over the edge of the unwalled street and down to the terrace of thick, corded vines…
Ignoring his enemy’s moans, Baynard tugged twice to free his sword from the bone and muscle that claimed it. Then he stumbled in search of his horse, caught at the reins and swung shaking into the saddle.
Only now did he spare time for his friends, praying they too had escaped from this unnamed hilltop snare.
* * *
They hadn’t, not yet, though Quillon was standing in slack-jawed witness of events.
His own efforts expended, he’d peered to see Guthric lumbering forward, the Saxon’s crescent-shaped axes cutting the tangible flesh of the air. And all the while he advanced, he bellowed from the depths of his body, the words without meaning, the sound of them enough to scatter wolves.
But the men who faced him with scythes were less than lupine, already backing away from the monster, tripping in retreat. The call from the fields had come late, they told themselves. They’d had little time to prepare, they told themselves. They should have been warned these weren’t ordinary travellers. God knows it, not ordinary at all.
Dropping their weapons, they fled. Guthric swerved to murder the man who’d carried the flail – Go into battle, you must expect to die – then yelled at Quillon to run the horses along.
Two from the right, Falkan alone from the left, the riders fled down the side tracks from the village. As companions, they’d come close to death, killed at least three of the enemy, failed in their innocent search for food and shelter.
Yet they’d once again protected the treasure. And, in their own terms at least, kept faith with the wishes of Tremellion.
* * *
It may well be that the taint of blood lingers, or that past aggression is reflected in the eye. What is certain is that each man has an aura about him: this one gullible, that one a weakling, the third untouched, emanating danger.
Whether rank with the blood of the unlamented villagers, or annealed by their escape, the travellers rode unchallenged through the sun-bleached Kingdom of Aragon.
Better yet, they reached a village near Escardille, found a tavern in the square and were told they’d timed things nicely; tonight would be the Fiesta de la Fuente, a celebration to which no priest had ever been invited.
Impressed that Baynard could – with some effort – understand him, the innkeeper took his young guest aside, to explain how it would be, this Festival of the Fountain.
‘The country you come from, I cannot say it’s the same, Señor Halcón. But here, in our village – May I ask it, are you married?’
‘Not – No, señor, I am not yet in that state.’
‘Excellent. Then it’s safe I continue. About the fiesta. And why we prefer our priests to be absent tonight. It is, how to say it, somewhat free, Señor Halcón. Much to the liking of the young. And lovers. And those who have always, if you wish, admired some certain lady from afar. Our only rule, and this we uphold with a hanging, is that at no time should violence prowl the streets. If a husband feels his wife has been, how did I say it, somewhat free, it’s for him to settle accounts when the festival is ended. But from dusk tonight…’ Then he opened his hands, stretched his fingers like starfish, and expressed an eloquent mixture of worldliness and happy resignation. ‘Señor Halcón, la vida es la vida, no?’
* * *
Baynard relayed the news to Guthric and Quillon. Whatever their views of morality – probably none – he wanted them to know the dangers of violence.
‘Any brawls, skirmishes or the like, and they’ll haul you away to be hanged. I’d regret that, messires, for I count on your company, at least as far as the Christian port of Tyre. But we have to understand; the rules are not of our making, though must be obeyed. So, if someone insults you, you’ll – What, Master Quillon? What will you do then?’
‘Take him aside for a quiet word, where it’s dark?’
‘Then start pushing? An exchange of fisticuffs? A roundelay with knives? No, my young safeguard, you’ll do nothing of the kind. If it happens you’re insulted, you’ll wear it like an honourable scar. If you’re struck, you’ll withdraw with dignity, carrying the mark. If not – then here’s the choice. You’ll enjoy no girls in this pagan Fiesta de la Fuente, because the villagers will have hanged you. Or I’ll have you reported tonight, to save your life, and see you locked away till the festival’s over.’
Quillon looked at Baynard Falkan. ‘Get insulted, an’ wear it? Be struck, an’ back away? I ’ave to say, m’lord, it ain’t in my nature—’
‘The girls, so I’m told, come from miles around, to see who’s who at the fair. And you, with your lion’s mane…’
‘Well,’ the safeguard murmured. ‘So long as it’s honourable. An’ dignitied – that the word?’
‘It comes close enough,’ Falkan told him. ‘It fits with what I ask.’
As for the seamed and hard-eyed Saxon, he was already raking women from the square with his gaze.
* * *
The village blossomed with torches and tapers, candles and sulphurous smoke. Within an hour of the eruption, the once Cornish poacher was known as el léon. Pretty young women paraded across his view, glanced to see if he’d noticed them, fought with calm determination to be close when he swivelled his feet. Santo Dios, but he was tall and well built. Un hombre hermoso. And see his hair, how it swung in the breeze of the night…
The ugly Saxon was not a man to be seduced. He’d already seen the woman he fancied, barged a path through the crowd toward her, then simply caught her by the naked slope of her shoulders. ‘I don’t know a word of your language,’ he told her. ‘Don’t even care to learn it. My name – me – it’s Guthric. I’m Lord Falkan’s man. And you? Who are you?’
Scared of him, yet fascinated, the dark-eyed woman seemed to spark her gaze in response. ‘Guthric? Tu nombre es Guthric? Yo, mi nombre es Juana.’
‘If I’m knocked again by these dancers,’ the Saxon told her, ‘I’ll give ’em a dance they never thought to see. Take me somewhere quiet, Juana. Just you an’ me an’ some wine. You understand?’
Then he nudged her from the crowd, handed her money and pointed at a wine stall, grunting as she bought a fine, fat-bellied flagon.
After that it was Juana who led the Constable of Tremellion along a series of alleyways and up unlit stairs, the strains of the fiesta fading behind them.
* * *
Falkan was meanwhile stretched out on his bed, determined to let the festival pass him by. God knows, they were attractive; these promised hours without violence; a rainbow of pretty women; and how much he wanted them, the thought alone disturbing him.
But more than some girl from Escardille, he wanted Magnat-Vaulmier’s daughter. Wanted her with an urgency that made him toss and turn on the rope-webbed bed.
He rolled on his side, stared at the wall, then twisted on to his back again, laughing harshly at his pious pretence.
For the sake of all that’s natural – You are twenty years old, Tremellion, and as lusty as the rest! What do you think to gain by sprawling here? Christiane’s respect for your disc
ipline? For your new-found celibacy? And all this for a woman you dream of marrying, yet may never see again?
Almighty Christ, you’re not betrothed to Vaulmier’s daughter! For all you know she has a dozen suitors more eligible than you! Why should she wait for you, Tremellion, when all you’ll be is a penniless knight – and unskilled in the arts of love?
Oh, yes, you’ve enjoyed a few women in your time. Fumbled with girls in the grass. Been in and out of love on occasion, and each in the space of a week. But now you sprawl here, a man who’s killed men, writhing with unwilling fidelity for someone who’ll probably greet you and ask, ‘Did we ever meet before, my Lord Falkan?’
He flung himself from the bed, washed his face, buckled his weaponless belt. All the while he struggled to translate the things he might say. ‘A pleasure to meet you, señorita. You must tell me the name of this village. And forgive my accent. I’m from King Richard’s Realm of England. I call myself Falkan – Halcón, if you prefer.’
Then, with a scathing glance at the ghost of his own piety, he made his way downstairs. The coins safely hidden, Baynard alone knowing where, he emerged at the edge of the plaza, hoping to find a woman who, in reality, would help him forget the woman of his dreams.
* * *
An hour of music, the flaring of candles, cavorting of clowns, the sleight of hand of ilusionistas.
Pretty young girls tempted him with their glances, and he twice joined the swirling spectrum of the crowd. But it wasn’t until an hour before midnight, that he saw the one he wanted. Saw her and lost her again. Carelessly tipped a table in his efforts to see where she’d gone.
By accident or design, she led him a desperate dance. One moment she was there in the throng; the next departed. The lean young knight edged his way in pursuit, his natural advantage of height denied him by the hats and ribbons, the mists of coloured smoke.
He saw her near one of the stalls and sprang to follow.
A man caught at his arm and demanded, ‘Who would you be, señor, to nudge my wife?’
Anger rising, Baynard fought to suppress it. ‘Forgive me, señor, I am clumsy. I have no wife as beautiful as yours, so must hunt the best I can.’
The man grinned at him then, pounded his shoulder, told him to continue with his chase. ‘You have the eyes of a hunter, señor. I am sure you will corner your prey.’
Falkan bowed himself from the couple, glimpsed the girl again and moved to intercept her. Unfortunately, she was now hemmed in by three eager young men, one of whom presented her with a sprig of dried spring blossom, another with a gaudy ribbon keepsake.
Falkan’s next move might well have seen him arrested, or worse. But it mattered to him to meet this girl, and he shouldered aside her cluster of admirers.
Aware his Spanish was not good enough for the task, he snarled at them in English, sensing them step back in confusion, scowling at this outlandish interruption. Then he took the girl by the hand, led her firmly away, and prayed to God his knowledge of her language would somehow see him through.
‘My senses have been set alight, señorita, since my eyes were brightened by your passing. In my own country – far from here – your beauty would be as the summer sun, melting winter.’ Then he grinned and said, ‘I must ask myself, which offends you most? My behaviour, or my accent?’
The girl moved away from him – but not, he noticed, to seek the protection of the crowd… Her reaction was cautious, her dark eyes wide, the set of her lips not yet moulded, neither hardening to anger, nor filling to a smile.
‘How do you know our language?’ she murmured. ‘This is not a place to which foreigners—’
‘I have visited this country before. Not here, but away to the west. I’m from King Richard’s Realm of England. You must tell me the name of this village, señorita. I call myself Falkan – Halcón if you prefer. And you? Or shall it just be the summer sun?’
‘You chose well,’ she said. ‘All the way from wherever it is, to be here for the Fiesta de la Fuente.’ Then she took his hand and led him to a shadowed corner of the square, colour and flame and scented smoke closing behind them.
* * *
Her name was Inés.
Fifty paces from the plaza and they were in her small, private chamber, half a flight up from her married sister’s rooms.
Taxing Baynard’s knowledge of her language, Ines said, ‘You should know, Halcón, I have only chosen you tonight because… Because it pleases me to compare our different ways. The Spanish style of love, you understand me? And yours, the far from here.’
‘Knowledge is fruit on the trees,’ Falkan nodded, ‘though I think we’ll find no great difference, strolling the orchards.’
* * *
He made his way through the high-walled garden at dawn. Gently closing the gates, he looked back at the house, heard the creak of an upstairs shutter, then nodded in the direction of the sound.
Christiane remembered again, Inés would never be forgotten. For that is the thing about it, when love goes well. Memories remain, as fresh in the mind as if the body had never aged.
Chapter Twelve
Hunched and weeping in the heavy military saddle, Doña Amata, Condesa de Monzón surrendered to the nightmares of midday. Her mind assailed by the demons of guilt and regret, she dared not even glance at those who shared her suffering. What had happened was none of her doing, but, had she honoured her vows, it might never have happened at all.
* * *
Some four months earlier, the young condesa had set out from the Catalonian señoria of Monzón, accompanied by her compañera, Doña Rosalia, ten devout members of the household and twenty-three from the village below the castle.
It had started well, the pilgrims escorted by a detail of the Knights of Santiago, a military order also known as the Knights of St James of the Sword. Strong, arrogant young men, they wore white surcoats, overstitched with a red cross on the shoulder. The cross was designed in the shape of a downpointed sword, a stab at the heart of the enemy, the Almohad Moors. These had swept up from Africa centuries before, seizing all but the north of the Iberian Peninsula. Since then, little by little, the Spaniards had driven the Almohades back. Though even now, almost five hundred years after their first invasion, the Moors had not yet been hurled into the sea.
Not that the Knights of Santiago were concerned by events in the south. Their task – and one they guarded with the utmost jealousy – was to protect the pilgrims who made the arduous journey to the shrine of St James of Compostella.
Offering a handsome contribution to their Order, the Condesa de Monzón had been granted the protection of six young knights, dramatic in their white surcoats, black helmets, black link-mail tunics, black scabbards and gloves and boots. With these elite defenders of the Christian Way at her side, the thirty-year-old Doña Amata had led her fellow pilgrims to the burial place of St James the Greater, out there near the western tip of Spain.
She had never asked – in truth never cared to know – why the others had chosen to visit Santiago de Compostella. We each have our reasons, she supposed, content that she would pray for the soul of her husband, Don Alejandro, killed in a skirmish with the Moors. Two years he’d been dead, and her pilgrimage late, God drumming His fingers with impatience. But she’d been there now, she and Doña Rosalia, those from the household, those from the village, the black-and-white freyles riding attendance…
The journey to Compostella had been long and tiring, yet as God might have wished it.
Prayers had been said, votive candles lighted, offertory boxes filled. The vivacious Amata had recanted her sins and been assured Don Alejandro was with the Spanish nobility in Heaven. She had then turned away, her duty done, albeit later than she’d promised, and started back toward the security and comforts of Monzón.
* * *
And then, with all but a week of the return journey completed, a powerful force of brigands had surprised the pilgrims, tearing the band apart.
Outnumbered five-to-one, the
knights had acquitted themselves with honour, cutting down some twelve of the brigands for the loss of two of their brethren. But the villagers had panicked, scattering across the sun-seared plain. The members of the household had likewise fled in disarray, the brigands swooping to murder or maim them, then strip them of whatever they possessed. The cart in which Amata and Rosalia were travelling was overturned. Mules and packhorses stampeded, the ground littered with souvenirs purchased by the pilgrims.
When it was over, two of the knights were dead, another two wounded and unhorsed. Seven of the villagers had been killed, another three dying before dark. Of those from the household of Monzón, four had been slain, as many injured, though these last were able to limp and stumble from the scene.
In short, of the forty-one pilgrims and knights who had set out on the homeward journey from Compostella, fewer than a dozen had escaped the knives and bludgeons of the attack.
Tragedy enough that so many lives had been lost. But a tragedy that had not yet finished with the travellers, for the cart was wrecked, its horse’s neck broken in the fall. The pack-animals had been driven off by the brigands, along with all but two of the palfreys, leaving the pilgrim band at the mercy of any sharp-eyed bandidos.
Doña Amata wept again, her slender legs spread wide on a saddle that wasn’t hers, her fingers curled around reins too thick to control.
Sweet God, if l had only enacted my promise sooner than this… But I chose to keep You waiting… And gave the devil time to recruit his filthy…
A hand raised to her face, hiding her shame, the desolate young condesa was unaware the weary mount had strayed from the path.
The Edge of the Blade Page 11
