Even Gisburne, who knew well enough what to expect, felt his flesh creep at what was revealed.
There was the living skull, its dark flesh burned and withered until it barely covered the bone. There were the lips drawn back across the blackened teeth, and the lidless eyes that stared without cease. And there, beneath it all, were the two misaligned sides of what flesh remained, divided from right brow to the left of his chin by a near-vertical scar.
That life could exist behind such a shattered visage seemed impossible. It was a face that belonged in the grave—in Hell. But even they had spat it out.
As if sensing something, the vision turned and looked directly at Gisburne. Gisburne, chilled to the bone in spite of the balmy weather, looked back into the face of Tancred de Mercheval.
IT HAD BEEN over three months since he had seen him last, when he delivered him into Haget’s care. Then, he had been a broken man. Not physically—he had injuries, yes, but God knows he’d already had a lifetime of those. It was what was within that had changed. Something new was emerging. Or perhaps something already there was falling away—Gisburne could not be certain. He only knew that some metamorphosis seemed to have occurred—that the vile grub that was Tancred was somehow transformed; into what, he could not exactly say. But now, his decision to keep the one they had called the White Devil alive when all thought him dead suggested new possibilities—possibilities he could never have grasped when he had first brought him here.
Haget had accepted Tancred without argument that day—the only living being Gisburne knew who would. Gisburne trusted Haget completely, but there were other reasons why Fountains seemed appropriate. Many among Haget’s brotherhood were former soldiers—they gravitated towards him, and he gladly accepted them—and if it came to it, were far better equipped to handle Tancred and his pagan manservant than the average pasty cleric.
In the event, no such precautions were needed.
“Model residents,” Haget had told Gisburne when he had arrived that morning. “Tancred observes every office, day and night, and prays in between. He shames some of the brothers with his devotion. And his man sees to his every need without a word.”
Haget had nevertheless made a point of taking Gisburne via a circuitous route through the infirmary—a reminder, he supposed, that the Abbey was not here just to grant favours to the well-connected.
It seemed much changed since his last visit. The place was now packed with ragged, grey figures—old men, young women, barefoot children—some pale, many thin and hollow-cheeked, some merely looking lost.
“All these people are ill?” he had asked as they passed through.
“Hunger is a sickness,” Haget had said. “Rest assured, the tables of their lords are replete with food. It’s not they who suffer, just the poor souls who helped put the food there.” His eyes blazed with a pale blue fire. “There is a familiar cycle to these things. When the harvest is good, those above merely take the best part of it. When it is poor, they take it all—and demand more work to make up the shortfall. The people who work the land tire and hunger. They entreat their lord, who tells them to tighten their belts—that it is necessary. The priest tells them that it is good for the soul, that it will make them stronger. So they tighten their belts. What choice have they? But they do not grow stronger, only the hunger does. They begin to eat the fodder meant for their animals. Now their animals hunger. Their lord tells them to work harder still, for his table must not be wanting. They forage the hedgerows—but their lord takes that, too. Bereft of nourishment, they seek out the plentiful deer in the forest, whose meat furnishes the royal tables. When caught, they’re flogged if they’re lucky, hanged if they’re not. Those not bold enough to poach begin to look to the ailing ox, and think how many mouths its flesh might feed, until, finally, they give in to temptation. Well, why not? It was going to die anyway. Its meat is tough and meagre, and soon gone. And now they have no food to eat, no seed to grow, no ox to plough. And what does their lord do? He punishes them over the death of the ox. And here we are...” He spread his hands wide, then shook his head in anger. “It almost makes me want to take up my sword again.”
“Now you see why outlaws flourish,” said Gisburne. “The monk Took thought as you did—and he did take up his sword.”
“That is where we differ, he and I,” said Haget with some asperity. “Took is not one with whom I am happy to be compared, though neither can I wholly blame those who follow him, or his master. Man does not live by bread alone, but he dies without it. And anyone who promises it—he is a king in the eyes of the starving.”
“Famine is fertile ground for some,” said Gisburne as they moved on past the gardens.
“We provide what alternative we can. The wheat and barley may have failed across the land, but at least here we have a fair crop of root vegetables. We forage, we fish. We should be getting some spring crops soon, God willing. The land almost turned to marsh in the rain, but we have built up the beds so they drain. People here will not starve, but I fear more will come—and we cannot provide for everyone.”
Then they had turned into the small, cloistered courtyard, and there had been Tancred, fit and capable and practising swordplay.
TANCRED STARED AT Gisburne for several long seconds before finally turning away and seating himself upon a simple wooden bench. Gisburne had held his gaze, looking for signs of recognition, uncertain whether he really wished to see them or not. But his look conveyed nothing. The Norseman brought water, and Gisburne watched as the two of them drank.
“I admit I am surprised at you allowing this,” he said.
“You mean the sparring?” Haget gave a gruff half laugh. “It’s true I have made no secret of my feelings about war and bloodshed. About so-called ‘holy crusades.’” He almost spat the words. “That puts me out of step with most of Christendom. But how many of them, I wonder, dare to ask themselves what Christ would do? Would he take up the sword, and slaughter his brothers? Kill those who did not believe the same as he?” Haget shook his head in disgust, his fists clenched in anger. Gisburne guessed he did not get to air these views often.
Haget sighed deeply. “I also do not forget that I was once a soldier. I detest killing, most of all in the name of God.” He held up a hand as he said it, as if to fend off objections. “I know you will say that it is sometimes necessary, even good, and we can argue that point from now until doomsday, but my point is that while I abhor killing, I nonetheless understand and respect the disciplines of knighthood. The ideals, the physical challenges, the patience they teach... The restraint... These things are good, for mind and body. And so, yes, we allow this. I allow this. It is good for him. It has restored his health; and he finds himself through it, learns again who he is. One must know that before one can embrace anything else. A man is not a hollow vessel to be emptied of one set of ideals and filled with another. This, the mason understands better than the bishop. The ground upon which we build must first be firm.”
“And what of him?” Gisburne nodded towards the big Norseman.
“You will not be surprised to learn that many of the brothers are uncomfortable having a pagan in their midst. But where else should he be? Where better than here?” He shook his head. “You know my views. The truth of Jesus Christ cannot be forced on anyone. God gave us free will; one must choose, or it is meaningless. I would even venture that there are lessons some of my Christian brothers might learn from him. Rarely have I seen such devotion.” Haget’s brow creased into a frown, as if contemplating an impossible conundrum. “Though given what you have told me about Tancred—and what I have heard—it seems hard to credit.”
“Tancred always had something about him,” said Gisburne. “As a youth, he was charismatic. Everyone wanted to know him, to be in his company. I’m not sure even we entirely knew why.”
Haget looked at Gisburne in surprise. “You knew him?”
“I was just a boy, starting my training in Normandy, under Gilbert de Gaillon. Tancred was older. A
squire, still, but a model of all we aspired to. And a great fighter. But now I see that there was more to it than that. He is, in a sense, two men. He changed, you see, after his injury.”
“You mean the burning...” said Haget. As he gazed upon Tancred’s wrecked, skull-like visage, Gisburne saw him—this veteran of a dozen battles—give an involuntary shudder.
“No,” said Gisburne. “Not that. As a young knight he took a sword blow across the face.” He ran his finger from forehead to chin.
“A sword blow to the face?” Haget looked at Gisburne in astonishment. “You will understand that I have seen many such injuries, but none from which the sufferer fully recovered. That he survived at all is a miracle.”
The word “miracle” rankled with Gisburne. It hardly seemed appropriate to one such as Tancred. “In a sense he did not. It disfigured him, of course. But far greater was the damage done to his mind. By all accounts, the Tancred we now know—the mad, cruel, heretical Templar—was born that day. The old Tancred, it seemed—the good-natured boy I had known—was dead.”
“And the burning? The destroyed flesh?”
“That came later,” said Gisburne. Haget turned his searching blue eyes upon him, and Gisburne did not wait for the question. “He took those close to me prisoner, and the burning was my response. Quicklime, then fire. He should have died. But he refused.”
“Refused? How does one refuse to die?”
“I don’t know. But something similar happened during our last encounter. He should have died, but did not. They used to say he had the Devil’s luck. Even when he lay at my feet, defeated, defenceless... I could not finish it. At last, I gave up trying to kill him and instead brought him here.”
“Once is luck. Three times is something else.”
“Perhaps,” said Gisburne. “What is certain—and what I never understood—is that, no matter what evil he did, people saw something in him that they wished to follow. The Norsemen do not give their loyalty to just anyone.”
“Only one being has true power over life and death, Gisburne. Perhaps that is what they saw in him.”
“You mean God?” Gisburne laughed. What a cruel twist that would be. “Tancred always believed God worked through him. I’m not sure his victims felt the same.”
Haget nodded sombrely. “Such men do pose a problem for the theologian. God favours the good; that is a fundamental principle of our faith. Why then do evil men flourish?”
Gisburne looked him in the eye. “You have an answer to this question?”
“I do. It is a challenge, one by which we all may be tested.”
Gisburne looked back at the weird figure of Tancred, sitting bolt upright upon the low bench. Certainly this man had tested him. “You know he made the journey from England to the Holy Land in just thirty-two days?”
Haget shook his head. “That’s not possible...”
“Yet he did it. The voyage from Brindisi to Acre alone took me fourteen, and that was considered swift. Tancred did it in seven. Flat seas, clear skies. The most favourable winds one could imagine. And overland, the weather smiled every step of the way, though it was winter.” He gave a bitter laugh and looked up at the sky. “Even today the sun shines on him.”
“Well, then, I stand by my claim of a miracle, for clearly someone was looking out for him...”
“How do you know it wasn’t the Devil at his back?”
Haget, for once, said nothing. There was no knowing, only faith.
Gisburne did not know what he believed about Tancred. He had seen enough of life to have abandoned the belief that God granted favours to the living. One thing he could not deny, however—that he had seen with his own eyes, time and again—was that when it came to luck, good or bad, some seemed to possess far more than their share.
Hood was such a man. In the desperate battles on the way to Thessalonika and at Hattin, there were many who had felt their chances improved simply by standing with him. That was Hood’s great secret—the reason for his growing following. Good God, hadn’t Gisburne felt it himself? And hadn’t it proved itself to be the truth at Hattin, where they both had escaped impossible odds? For the first time Gisburne wondered if he had survived that ordeal only because of Hood—if he owed his life to him. He shuddered at the thought.
“Put aside the petty acts, the small deeds that brought us all here, and see it for what it is,” said Haget at length. “What was it that stayed your hand as you stood over him? I believe his redemption—your mercy towards him on the battlefield—was part of a greater plan.”
“I don’t know about th—”
But Haget waved an impatient, dismissive hand. “We don’t need to know. We are not meant to know. Believe or don’t believe; we must get on with life regardless, and make our choices, each according his conscience. More than that, we cannot do.”
Gisburne gestured back towards the infirmary. “So, those starving in there—are they part of a great plan too?”
He’d sounded more spiky that he intended. The Abbot sighed heavily, as if answering for the twentieth time that day. “If God chooses to challenge me in this way, it’s because He wishes me to fight. And fight I will. Metaphorically, I mean. It’s those who say ‘It is God’s will’ and do not rise to it who have failed Him the most. We are not all ascetics here, Gisburne. We do not simply pray and contemplate. We do. I thank God for my food, but I don’t expect Him to bring me breakfast. I suspect that underneath it all, you and I are not so different.”
Gisburne could not disagree with that. Pragmatism was the quality he most admired in men. Not just in men.
“Well, then,” he said. “I suppose it is time to see if this gift of Tancred’s can be put to good use.”
“DO YOU KNOW who I am?” asked Gisburne.
The skull-face, with its perpetually staring eyes, gazed back at him, a perfect blank.
“The Abbot tells me you are Sir Guy of Gisburne. I have heard of you. A noble knight.” The rasping whisper of a voice was chillingly familiar, yet its character was altogether changed—entirely devoid of the spite and bitterness Gisburne associated with the White Devil. “They also say you saved me from destruction.”
Gisburne nodded slowly. Tancred did not need to know that the destruction he had saved him from was Gisburne himself. He glanced at the big Norseman, who looked on in stony silence—expressionless and implacable. He had been there, had seen Tancred’s downfall. Would he tell him? Had he already? And how much, he wondered, was really destroyed that day? How much of the man remained? How much of the knight? How much of the mad Templar?
“Tell me,” said Gisburne. “What is the role of a knight?”
“To serve one’s lord and Almighty God, and to protect the weak and innocent.”
“And do you know who you are?”
At this, Tancred faltered. “My name is... Tancred. My father was Hugh de Mercheval. They tell me he is long dead. My mother too. My memory of this is... unclear.” He stopped, thought for a moment, then—his eyes boring into Gisburne’s own—said: “Do I know you?” Something like a frown distorted the features of his wrecked face.
“Do you?” asked Gisburne.
The glassy, unblinking eyes studied him intently, his head, for a moment, cocked to one side.
“In Jerusalem, perhaps?” Gisburne prompted.
“Have I been in Jerusalem?”
“You have.”
“You would think I would remember that,” he said, a curious note of sadness in his voice.
“It was... memorable,” said Gisburne. It had been Tancred’s plan to set the entire city ablaze—an ambition he had come within a hair’s breadth of achieving. But the face before Gisburne remained resolutely blank.
Then, without warning, Tancred’s eyes seemed to widen further still, and there came a sudden horrible, hissing breath. Oh, God, thought Gisburne. He does remember. Tancred’s bony finger raised, and pointed at Gisburne three times, his face once again distorting weirdly—this time, in a manner Gisburne had
never before seen. As the dry chuckle clicked in Tancred’s throat, Gisburne understood that this haunted, agonised grimace must be a smile.
“Fontaine-La-Verte!” hissed Tancred in triumph. “When we were boys. You trained there under Gilbert de Gaillon. A great man. Is he well?”
Gisburne dropped his gaze. “He, too, is gone. Taken before his time.”
“That is indeed... sad.”
“I fight now to restore his good name. And to rid this land of its greatest villain—an outlaw, thief and rebel. So, tell me, Tancred de Mercheval—will you fight with me, to protect the weak and serve your God?”
At that, Tancred suddenly dropped to his knee, his domed scalp bowed.
“All I have to give is yours,” he said.
“ARE YOU SURE about this?” said Mélisande, frowning at the mounted figures of Tancred and the Norseman ahead. They were flanked by two monks, provided by Haget as an escort. He had made light of it, saying the brothers had business in Nottingham anyway, but their size rather suggested they had been hand-picked for the task.
“That is now the fifth time you have asked me that,” said Gisburne.
“Do you wonder at it?”
Gisburne sighed. “Tancred remembers nothing of the man he was. As a young knight, he was a good man—an inspiration to others. I saw it myself. Perhaps this new injury has undone what the other did—returned him to the man he once was.”
Mélisande, who for several minutes had been mesmerised by the bobbing bare skull ahead, tore her eyes away and grimaced. “Your mercy is... admirable. Especially in the heat of battle. But to take him in with us? Into a new conflict? And one of such importance...”
“Tancred is the best swordsman I have ever seen,” said Gisburne.
“And...?”
“And... He is the only outsider ever to have returned from Hood’s lair.”
“Ah.”
Guy of Gisburne- The Omnibus Page 101
