“For how long?”
She did not reply. But previously scattered thoughts suddenly came together. The store of food. Her hasty packing. The information about firewood, about his recovered gear. He felt a creeping dread.
“Are you coming back?”
Still she said nothing.
“Why such a hurry?” he said. His voice was stern. This time, when she remained mute, he gripped her wrist and turned her towards him.
She flashed angry eyes, resisted him with surprising strength, her beautiful face creased in a frown. Then she gave up, let her head fall. “I had a contact inside Castel Mercheval.”
Gisburne let her wrist drop.
“A servant. He passed me bread and ale – the food that kept you alive. Information, too.”
“Had...? You said had...”
“Today...” She faltered. “He was not at the appointed place. I must assume he has been discovered. If so, God help him. And if he has been discovered, then it’s only a matter of time before they also find me. So, you see, I must leave you. For your own good.”
“But I only just got you back...” The feeling behind the words surprised him.
“You must accept it.”
“But you could lie low here. How are they to know...”
“No!” Mélisande shook her head, her patience almost gone. “They will make him speak. Then they will know I am somewhere in this forest. But they don’t know about you. Not yet.”
“But if he speaks...”
“I told him only I needed food for myself. He could not tell them anything of you even if he wanted to. Now I must move if I am not to bring Tancred down upon you.”
Gisburne stared at her for a moment in the fire’s dying light.
“What of Tancred? You said you were passed information.”
“Tancred believes you dead. You almost were.”
“The first of those facts is in our favour,” said Gisburne thoughtfully. He took a determined step, meaning to reclaim his sword. He winced, and staggered, steadying himself against the cave wall. “The second, not so much...”
“Tancred will work on Galfrid, get what he can from him. Meanwhile, he has sent for an enginer from Amiens to open your reliquary box. He fears devices that may damage its precious cargo.”
“He’s no fool.”
“Apparently the first two men who touched it collapsed and lost their wits,” said Mélisande, giving Gisburne a searching look. “They say it is cursed.”
That gave Gisburne a grim satisfaction. But he doubted Tancred – the blessed, incorruptible Tancred, God’s right hand – would be put off by such a trivial threat. Gisburne had thought no one would be able to force open the reliquary. But he was wrong. Another like Llewellyn could do it. And when they did...
“Help me,” he said, taking another step towards the cave mouth.
“What?”
“Help me get my armour on.”
Mélisande actually laughed at that – a strange, strained chuckle. “You’re going after your box, when you can’t even get your armour on?”
“They can keep the box,” he said. “I’m going for Galfrid.”
She stared at him, dumbfounded. “Are you mad? You’re half dead. You must heal first.”
“When does the enginer arrive?”
“Three days, but–” said Mélisande.
“Then I have three more days to heal. After that, Galfrid will become superfluous to them.”
Mélisande had seen the tenacity of this man – had seen how he had dragged himself back to life. She nodded slowly, then gripped his hand.
“Succeed,” she said.
“You could join me,” he said. “We could fight together.”
She shook her head. “I cannot.” Somewhere out in the forest, a distant horn sounded. She tensed, turning towards the sound, and pulled her hand away. “I told you. They are hunting for me. They will scour these woods until they find me; and once they have done so, they will stop. And you will be free.”
“But if they don’t capture you...” began Gisburne. Then he saw the wounded look in her eye, and finally understood. “No!” he said. “Not that... I won’t allow it.”
“You cannot stop it.” She stepped further back from him, defiant – but her voice had softened now, was almost pleading. “I am known to them. But you... You do not exist. You’re dead. A ghost. The only one who can move secretly against them. If there is anything that can be done now, it must be you who does it.”
“I won’t have you sacrifice yourself...” He grabbed at her hand, but she wrested it free.
“It’s not a sacrifice,” she insisted. “It’s a tactic. Think. I am of the house of Boulogne. Even Tancred would not dare to cross that line.”
Gisburne was not so sure. “One does not negotiate with Tancred de Mercheval,” he said.
She smiled sweetly, her eyes fixed on his. “Then you had better come to my rescue.”
She threw her bow on the ground and backed away towards the halo of light at the cave’s entrance.
“Don’t worry, I’ll make it look good,” she said. “I never submit without a fight – even if it’s a token one.” Outside, the horn sounded again in the forest – closer, this time. Another answered it. Gisburne fancied he could hear the distant barking and baying of hounds. Mélisande glanced out towards the forest, then back to him – the look in her wild, sad eyes a mix of defiance, torment and exhilaration.
“Think of me,” she said, then rushed forward, kissed him hard on the lips, and was gone.
XLVII
WHEN THE YELPS and cries had finally abated, Gisburne crept out of the cave and into the forest.
It had been an agony greater than any he had suffered at Tancred’s hands. At first, as he had stared in shock and despair at where she had stood a second before, he had cursed the numb, cramped slowness of his limbs – his ineffectual grasping at empty air. Then he thought to charge after her, to take on her pursuers there and then. But he knew that was folly – one that would surely get her killed, squander the advantage she had won for him at such great cost, and in turn condemn Galfrid. So he sat, listening but not wanting to hear, powerless to prevent her plan, his head appreciating its infallible logic, his heart detesting it.
Three days. He had lost three days. When he had finally stepped out of that cave – and felt the blessed relief of fresh, clean air in his lungs – it had prompted an absurd parallel in his mind. He had thought of Christ. The Saviour had been destroyed, was buried in a cave, and rose again after three days. Gisburne laughed at this until he thought the pain in his side was going to kill him – then, unable to stop, he laughed some more. Finally, the hysterical release burnt itself out. He had stared out over the forest for some time after that, flexing his muscles, feeling them return to life, relishing the pain that told him he was alive.
And so he stood, cloaked by an odd calm, surveying his new domain with his tomb at his back. Resurrected. A ragged saviour. But he brought no message of peace; no forgiveness, no promise of paradise. He was a spirit of destruction. An avenging angel.
And avenge he would.
Mélisande had been true to her word. In the cave was the greater part of his gear. His sword, shortsword and knife. His satchel containing coins, char-cloth, fire-steel and flint. And his great helm, still in its leather bag. His hauberk she had somehow managed to remove from him in order to tend his wounds. There was also the longbow – where that had come from, he did not know – and a meagre handful of arrows. It was little enough to work with, but it was a start.
When he descended into the forest, he found parts of it densely packed – sometimes impenetrable. Here and there were clear paths – some evidently used for hunting on horseback, others used perhaps only occasionally by foresters or foragers. At the end of one such path he happened upon a wide, almost circular clearing. All about it were huge trees of unimaginable age, and in its centre a bowl-shaped depression into which a slimy leaf mould had formed. It was, he realised, an old b
ear or wolf pit. He stared into its dank interior for a while, then walked on.
He had meant to return to the cave, to make sure the fire didn’t die. But within him, another flame – which Tancred had failed to extinguish – was burning with renewed ferocity. He walked obsessively amongst the trees for hours – walked until it was almost too dark to see – feeling the blood flow back into his limbs, getting to know the forest in the broad expanse between the cave, the road, and Castel Mercheval.
Three days. He had three more days until the enginer came. Three days to prepare. Three days for Galfrid and Mélisande to continue suffering at the hands of Tancred. But he would bide his time. There was only one road by which the enginer could come – and he would use that fact, too.
As he walked – as he grew in the darkness – the words of his old mentor came back to him.
“You can’t control a battle. Anticipate your enemy’s possible moves as best you can. Try to think like him, if possible. Understand, however, that you can never know what a man will choose to do in the heat of battle; he may not even know that himself. But you can limit his options. That is the key. Control the battlefield.”
Control the battlefield. That would be his strategy. Other, more heretical thoughts swam alongside it in his head. Thoughts of which he knew de Gaillon would not have approved. But his purpose – his method – was clear. A mounted knight was unstoppable, so unhorse him. On foot, he remained a formidable soldier, so knock him down. On his back, even the strongest knight was at his attacker’s mercy. And Gisburne would show none.
He would strike fast. He would give them no opportunity to see their deaths approach. He knew Tancred did not fear death. But even there, he had the advantage. He was dead already.
In the dying light he gazed down at his fingers – still soot-black from the cave wall. How old a relic of ages past this was – whether of those whose hand prints marked the cave walls – he could not tell. It was now commingled with soot from the fires set by Mélisande’s living hand. At least, he hoped it was still living. He raised his eyes from his blackened fingertips to the deep shadows amongst the trees.
Three days.
This would be his battleground. Here, he would build the engine of Tancred’s destruction. And he knew that destruction must be total – the rogue Templar’s vile nest and all in it reduced to ash.
It was time to embrace the forest. Time to put aside all gentility, all restraint.
It was time to become like Hood.
V
TANCRED
XLVIII
Nottingham Castle – October 1190
WILLIAM DE WENDENAL didn’t have time for this. It was late, he had eaten and drunk too much, and until moments ago had been in that part of the evening where, the day’s obstacles successfully negotiated, it had seemed safe to expect nothing more taxing than a conversation by the crackling log fire with his honoured guest and a slow slide into unconsciousness. But now – thanks to the recent intrusion of one of his serjeants – his head was hot with the business, and he was already feeling the gnaw of indigestion in his chest.
The poacher had been caught red-handed and would hang – that was beyond doubt. But, given the circumstances, it had seemed politic to grant this one an audience. Not that he gave a damn for the thieving wretch, but his guest had taken an interest, and that did matter. Wendenal needed to show every courtesy; his career might well depend upon it. He wasn’t happy about it, all the same. Apart from anything else, the encounter would very likely mean him having to speak English, which he hated. And in front of this most esteemed visitor, too. It was just embarrassing.
He sipped his wine agitatedly, his eyes making a fleeting connection with those of the other man, the two of them – until recently engaged in animated discussion – now standing in an expectant – and, for Wendenal, awkward – silence. He felt exposed. On show. As he strode impatiently, his guest – his own goblet abandoned – drifted away from the warming glow of the great fireplace, retreating towards the shadows. He seemed to like shadows, to be at the edge of things. Or perhaps it was his having to be at the edge of things that was the source of his everpresent, smouldering frustration. There was much Wendenal could not know or guess about the man. Some said his whole family was descended from the Devil – a tale that his guest’s father had apparently related often, and with obvious relish. Wendenal poked at the fire irritably and watched the orange sparks fly up the chimney. If the granting of this simple request would send the Devil-prince off to bed happy, then he would do it. As far as his own feelings were concerned, though, to make any kind of favourable impression this night, the miscreant’s story was going to have to herald the Second Coming at the very least.
There would the usual protestations of innocence, of course. He’d heard them a hundred times before. “I didn’t do it.” “It was someone else.” “I was with my wife.” “I was with someone else’s wife.” Or, occasionally, there would be pathetic attempts to justify the crime, as if the laws of the land were suddenly mutable, and open to negotiation. “I had to do it.” “Someone made me do it.” “My family was starving.” Dangerous notions of that sort had been spreading like a plague of late. But such delusions had always been about, if one knew where to look, festering in corners, ready to infect the desperate and weak-minded. Last Lammastide, one poor wretch even had the nerve to claim God told him to do it – appearing to him in the form of a woman with the head of an owl as he was emptying his bowels in the woods. So, a liar, a thief, and a blasphemer, all in one.
Clearly the man’s wits had cracked – and what dark thing had crept in to take possession wasn’t Wendenal’s concern. That was a matter for clergymen. What was meted out here was earthly justice, and here the flesh was punished without prejudice. That was his way. Even-handed, absolute. When one stood in judgement, sympathy was the enemy of clarity. Anyway, if he were to give credence to every story that came his way, there wouldn’t be a single guilty man in the whole of the two shires.
Something unusual in this particular poacher’s story had caught his serjeant’s attention, however. And, more importantly, that of his guest. Wendenal had known poachers make such claims before, of course – and more often, of late. One couldn’t blame them for it when faced with death; the desperate but vain attempt to imbue their lives with some value, to wriggle free of the noose. Part of him admired their tenacity. But the greater part was appalled by the arrogance. By what warped sense of propriety did these stinking, ragged clod-rakers think they had the right to bargain with him, holder of one of the highest offices in the land? Did they seriously believe they could face him as an equal and make him barter, as if in some dung-strewn peasant market? When it came to it, none ever had anything of value to offer anyway, nothing to give their life even fleeting worth. This one would undoubtedly follow the same course.
The case was cut and dried: he had been captured in the forest with one of the king’s deer shot dead at his feet and would be strung up within the week – tonight, if Wendenal had his way. Strictly speaking, the law required only flogging or a fine for the crime of poaching – but such lawbreakers were, almost by definition, never good for the money, and there had been too many liberties taken in recent months for Wendenal to be satisfied by leniency. But for now, it would do no harm to indulge the whim of his visitor. And, he had to admit, he trusted his loyal serjeant’s gut on such matters more than he trusted the wisdom of many of his knights. After all, hadn’t he risked his master’s displeasure to bring this to his attention?
At the clatter of the guards’ approach, Wendenal drained his goblet of wine and slapped it down on the oak table. Fortified by drink and a simmering irritation, he turned to face the doorway and struck a suitably authoritarian pose – catching a last glimpse, before he did so, of his guest hastily retreating beyond the tapestries before being swallowed up entirely by the deep shadows at the far end of the chamber. That was how his friend – no, he did not dare call him “friend”, not quite yet – ho
w his ally liked to do things. To observe. To take note. To weigh up. So unlike his hothead of a brother, thought Wendenal.
The heavy door clanked and creaked, and the prisoner was brought forward.
The man who stood before him, his hands bound, cut a curious figure – one that Wendenal could not easily fathom. He was tall, dark haired, with fine features, his physique that of someone who had grown up well-fed and – unless Wendenal misread the signs – trained in the fighting arts. (Fed by whom? And trained for what?) His bearing, whilst not exactly noble, was certainly far from the hapless peasant Wendenal had been expecting. Yet, at some point not long ago, the course of this man’s life – and his fortunes – had undergone a dramatic change. His appearance was ragged, his hair long and lank, his visage neither properly bearded nor properly razed, his apparel that of one who had been months on the road. (The road from where? To where?) The clothes themselves – inasmuch as they could be discerned one from another – were a strange mix of the exotic and the commonplace, a layering of the richest and the most mean garments. So what was he? Built and equipped for combat, certainly, but clearly no knight. Garbed like one come from the Holy Land, but clearly no pilgrim.
The man stood straight, unmoving, his head only slightly bowed. That he had lived and fought hard was clear. There was no fat on him; his limbs, though not large, were like iron – something beaten and shaped in extremes. Where the tanned flesh was exposed, scars were visible – Wendenal counted at least four, on his forehead, chin, forearm and the back of his left hand. Each had been inflicted by a blade – save the one on his forearm, whose long shape looked like a burn. Most striking of all was his face, which showed absolutely no fear. No anger, no resentment, no defiance. The look – or, perhaps, it was the absence of a look – unnerved him. To allow time to muster his thoughts, Wendenal turned slowly about and paced before the prisoner, searching for some clue in his face. The man’s dark eyes – fixed on a point on the stone floor, some yards in front of him – glinted in the firelight like steel, revealing nothing whatsoever. Once or twice Wendenal had seen the look on campaign – the look of a man who had been to Hell and returned, and who had nothing left to fear.
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