The Half-Hanged Man

by David Pilling

  In her astonishment at seeing Martin, she had forgotten all about the Jew. “Have you seen him?” she said, rising from the sofa, “has he returned? He left here in a hurry last night, and took the letter with him.”

  “He is here. I met him in the street in the early hours of the morning and escorted him home. A man followed us for a while, some villain in a cloak and a mask, but he ran away before I had a chance to kill him. One of Enrique’s servants, I should imagine.”

  “What did Levi say? Will the burghers declare for King Pedro?”

  “Ask him yourself. Levi! Get in here, you old Pharisee. I know you’re listening to our every word.”

  The door slid open, and Simuel Levi shuffled into the room. He was wearing his shamefaced, furtive expression, Eleanor noticed, and had reverted to playing the vulnerable, crook-backed old man.

  “The burghers have agreed to declare for the king,” he muttered without looking at Eleanor, “and they assure me that as soon as the royal flag is displayed outside the walls, the people will follow suit. Enrique and his supporters will be expelled or killed.”

  He took a hesitant step towards Martin, wringing his yellow, liver-spotted hands. “You must leave the city now, before the fleet arrives,” he said, “and hurry back to Seville.”

  Martin threw himself back, onto the sofa. “Why?” he said, patting Eleanor’s knee before she could recoil, “there is no danger here, so long as the burghers keep their word. And if they do not, I want to witness their punishment. I hear Don Gutier is a thorough man.”

  His careless insouciance angered Levi. “Don’t be a fool!” cried the old man, “our fleet is not here yet, and until the royal banner flies from the walls Algeciras is a death-trap. The streets are full of dangers.”

  “I know. I’m one of them.”

  Levi coloured. “Very well!” he said resignedly, throwing up his hands, “do as you wish. Parade in the broad light of day, and take your chances. The Lord knows I cannot stop you.”

  “Ah, Simuel Levi, they said you were wise.”

  Martin rose, treated the old man to a mock bow, and offered his hand to Eleanor.

  “Come, my dear,” he said, “take my hand, and let us wander down to the docks. There should be some rare excitement down there, quite soon.”

  Eleanor would rather have held a poisonous snake, but knew she dared not refuse. She well knew how Martin’s mood could switch from pleasant to lethal in a second. She hitched her lips into a smile and placed her hand in his.

  The church bells were already clashing as Martin and Eleanor fetched their animals from Levi’s stable – Martin had retrieved them during his nocturnal wandering - and rode down towards the docks. The wide street was full of people heading in the same direction, babbling with excitement and fear, and they had to guide their way carefully through the press.

  “I expect the fleet has been sighted already,” said Martin, shading his eyes to peer towards the sea, “young King Pedro likes to act quickly. Good.”

  “Why didn’t Albuquerque tell us about the fleet?” wondered Eleanor. She had to raise her voice to be heard above the noise and hubbub of the crowd. She knew the question was indiscreet, but it hardly seemed to matter anymore.

  Martin gave one of his careless shrugs. “Possibly he didn’t know. Relations are strained between the King and his Chancellor. The young eaglet chafes under the talon of the old crow.”

  They turned a bend in the street and now they could see the harbour and the broad waters of the Bay of Gibraltar, deep blue and glittering in the aching brightness of the morning sun. The docks were packed with hundreds of people, the great and the good of Algeciras mixed in with the lower orders. Social differences were briefly forgotten as they gaped and pointed at the line of black dots steadily approaching from the sea to the north.

  Martin stood up in his stirrups to get a better look. “Well, well,” he murmured, “here they come. I count fifteen galleys…no, sixteen, enough to carry several hundred soldiers.”

  Even perched on her mule, Eleanor could barely see over the heads of the people in front of her. She noticed that a few of the more prudent souls were already peeling away from the crowd, and hurrying back up the cobbled street as fast as they could. She wondered if the promise of the burghers would hold good, and felt a shiver of fear at the thought of the fate of Algeciras, and her own, if the city declared for Enrique.

  Her eye was drawn to two young men in particular. They were knights, mounted on enormous destriers even bigger than Martin’s gelding, and one wore a long white cloak embroidered with the red cross of the Order of Santiago over his gleaming harness. Eleanor’s admiring gaze was drawn to the Templar’s companion, a startlingly handsome man with curling hair and the face of an unshaven angel.

  She glanced back at the Templar, and her hand flew to her mouth as she recognized the face under the iron coif. She hadn’t seen it for four years, ever since its owner left Alonchel, but Eleanor would recognize her brother anywhere. Don Charles Menezes de Alonchel had grown a drooping moustache since she had last seen him, and his youthful face had acquired a few deep lines. Otherwise he was lean and dark as ever - almost, but not quite, his sister’s twin.

  Eleanor was certain she had made no sound, but perhaps Charles sensed her presence. He glanced up as he and his companion cantered up the street, and his jaw dropped when he saw her. She had neglected to hide her face.

  Charles sawed back on his reins. “Eleanor, is that you?” he cried, shading his eyes with a white-gloved hand to stare at his sister in disbelief.

  Eleanor found she was lost for words, an affliction that never troubled Martin.

  “Well, this is interesting,” he said, emerging from under the shadow of an awning, “Don Pero Carillo and his Templar friend. I did hear you were both in the city with Enrique.”

  If Charles had looked astonished before, he now looked in danger of erupting as angry blood flooded up his neck. The curly-haired knight Martin had named Don Pero Carillo urged his horse between Charles and Martin, and reached for the broadsword at his hip. Martin’s sword had already leaped from its scabbard.

  Their blades crunched together, steel against steel, and the big horses plunged and wheeled in a circle. The fugitives from the docks gave the fighters a wide berth, disappearing down side alleys or into shop doorways rather than risk the whirling blades and clattering hoofs.

  Eleanor was too close to the duel for comfort, and urged her mule out of the way. She could hear shouts coming from the docks now, mingled with the blare of trumpets and the clash of cymbals.

  “God save King Pedro! Hail King Pedro!”

  The people of Algeciras had seen sense and were declaring for the King. Those few who had decided otherwise were fleeing through the streets, and if it were not for the presence of her brother Eleanor would have joined them.

  Charles drew his sword and looked from his sister to the combatants, his face an agony of indecision.

  “Go, Charles!” shouted Carillo as he parried another vicious cut from Martin, grimacing as his opponent’s blade missed his face by inches, “your first duty is to Enrique! You must get him out!”

  Charles grasped Eleanor’s arm. “Come with me,” he said in a voice that brooked no argument, and she allowed him to lead her up the street. Charles cleared a path with the flat of his sword, and his horse trampled or barged aside those who were too slow to get out of the way.

  They forced a path through the narrow street and reached a plaza, with a pretty white church at the northern end and covered market stalls in the centre. There were less people here. Charles reined in for a moment.

  “Eleanor,” he said, looking at her with singular concern, “I don’t know how you came to be here, or to be in the company of that man. My mind is full of questions, but we only have time for one. Where do your loyalties lie?”

  She held his gaze, and in other circumstances would have burst out laughing at the seriousness of his expression. “Where they have always lain,�
�� she replied, “with my family.”

  His pressure on her arm increased. “This is not the time for clever answers. Who is the true King of Castile, Pedro or Enrique?”

  “I care nothing for either. I have never even seen them.”

  Charles’s face flushed again, and for the first time in her life she was afraid of him. “Never even seen them?” he shouted, and now his grip was agony, “what do you mean? I just saw you with my own eyes, in the company of Pedro, God rot him!”

  “No, you are mistaken. His name…his name is Martin…”

  Cold sweat prickled on Eleanor’s skin as the truth dawned. But t was absurd! The King of Castile would never choose to risk his life masquerading as a common mercenary, and enter a city full of his enemies with no companion save a young girl. He would have to be mad to take such a risk.

  Her brother studied her expression. “He fooled you,” he said in a softer voice, releasing his iron fingers from her arm, “that is what I will choose to believe until we have leisure to speak further. For now, you must come with me.”

  “I go where I please!” she said fiercely, “you forget yourself, Charles, and you forget me. I have been ordered to do things against my will for a long time now, and am heartily sick of it.”

  “Father said you inherited our mother’s pride,” he said gloomily, twitching his reins, “and that the only way of getting you to do something was to order you to do the opposite. Go back to Pedro if you wish, assuming brave Carillo has not slain him, and ask him why he deceived you. Perhaps his soldiers will stop raping you long enough for him to supply an explanation.”

  Eleanor hesitated, and he clapped in his spurs and urged his beast into a lumbering trot. “Choose,” he cried as he rode away, “you always did claim to know best. Now prove it.”

  7.

  Don Carillo did not succeed in killing Pedro the Cruel. Instead, when he saw the Castilian soldiers disembarking from their ships and flooding into their town, Carillo knew the duel would have to be abandoned. He threw his sword at the King of Castile, and galloped to safety with soldiers and citizens in close pursuit, calling him traitor and howling for his blood.

  Pedro’s brother, the pretender Enrique, was also lucky to escape. He and a handful of loyal knights were forced to abandon the bulk of their possessions and the fine house they had hired in the merchant’s quarter, and ride for the northern gate as though all the demons of Hell were at their heels. Several knights were pulled from their horses by enraged citizens who would not have dared meet their eyes just a few hours before, and mercilessly beaten to death in a manner that Pedro no doubt approved of.

  Enrique himself, with a sadly reduced group of companions, escaped with his skin intact, if not his pride and ambition. Among those who escaped with him were Carillo, Don Charles de Menezes, and Eleanor: she had made her choice, and gone with her brother.

  Eleanor was not the only woman to escape from Algeciras in the company of Enrique. The other was his young and beautiful wife, Doña Juana de Villena. She was the daughter of Don Juan Nuñez de Lara, Lord of Biscay and one of the three most powerful nobles in Castile after the King.

  Enrique’s mother, Leonor, mistress of the late King Alfonso, had sought to promote the cause of her son by secretly marrying him to such an important heiress, much to the rage and chagrin of King Pedro and Albuquerque, who had planned other matches for her. The girl herself, used as a pawn in the great game of marriage and politics, seems to have persuaded herself that she was in love with Enrique, and insisted on sharing all his dangers.

  During the harrowing flight from Algeciras Eleanor was impressed by Juana, who had hacked off her chestnut locks and wore a sword and leather jerkin like any common ballasteros. The young noblewoman never once complained, even when the company was forced to ride hard through the night from Pedro’s soldiers.

  At last the pursuit slackened, and the fugitives came to rest in the middle of a desolate, moonlit plain, their exhausted horses threatening to collapse beneath them. Like her companions, Eleanor had ridden thirty miles at a furious gallop, and had to bite her lip against the throbbing pain in her thighs and lower back.

  “So this,” said Enrique, pulling off his leather helm and throwing it to the ground in disgust, “is what has become of my coup. This is my army of conquest, which I planned to lead to Seville in triumph! My wife, three knights, and…who in God’s name are you?”

  He frowned suspiciously at Eleanor. She drew breath to explain herself, but Charles intervened before she could speak.

  “This is my sister Eleanor, Majesty,” he said, “I found her in Algeciras, wandering the streets. She had suffered at the hands of Pedro, for refusing him when he tried to take her virtue. She has pledged her loyalty to you, and swears death to the pretender.”

  Enrique looked unconvinced, and Eleanor had no desire to hide behind such a clumsy lies. “My brother is trying to protect me,” she said, “but I can speak for myself. The truth is I came to Algeciras in the company of King Pedro, without knowing who he was. He called himself Martin and had adopted the guise of a common sell-sword.”

  To her surprise, Enrique had no difficulty with this version of events. “That sounds like my brother,” he said, looking her up and down, “it is his habit to walk among his enemies in disguise, imagining it a great joke. And I take it you are no nun?”

  She risked a smile, and shook her head. “No. It is a long story.”

  “Longer than we have time for, at present.” Enrique twisted in the saddle and looked back to the south. “Pedro’s bloodhounds may still be tracking us. We must ride on.”

  “Our horses are fit to drop,” said Don Juan Rodriquez de Señebria, the third and last of Enrique’s remaining knights, “and where do we go? Your Majesty’s list of supporters grows thin.”

  Enrique looked lost. Eleanor did not know it then, but the pretender was in even worse straits than she thought. His little rebellion had died at Algeciras before it ever really drew breath, and there was no-one he could run to. His mother, Leonor, was in royal custody at Seville, though that did not stop her intriguing from afar, and his brother Don Fadrique was head of the Order of Santiago and could not afford to openly support any revolt against King Pedro. As for the barons and burghers of Castile, many harboured sympathies for Enrique, but dared not show them while Pedro was in the ascendant.

  “It seems,” sighed Enrique, “that we must be discomfited. I would welcome any suggestions.”

  “Let us go north, across the Pyrenees into France,” Carillo said eagerly, “and plead for support from King John, or Edward of England. If they will not help us, we could hire out one or other of the Great Companies. Think of it, Majesty, you could march on Seville with great Captain-Generals like Robert Knolles or Hugh Calveley at your back!”

  Enrique would not have it. “England and France are at war, and I would not unleash the Companies on Castile. What would I pay them with? I have no money beyond that I carry in my purse, and what I can promise once Pedro is overthrown. No mercenary would sign an indenture made of promises.”

  “Abandon the cause, then, and find a ship that will carry us East!” cried the excitable Carillo, “let us fight and die in the Holy Land, like true Christian knights!”

  The other men looked thoughtful, and Eleanor perceived that Carillo’s notion, useless though it sounded to her, held a certain appeal for them.

  “Speaking as a woman,” she said, “I have no wish to die in the Holy Land, or anywhere else but Spain. Nor do I think Your Majesty should abandon your cause. Your brother would be overjoyed to have you out of Castile so easily.”

  Enrique’s frown returned, but then his wife chose to speak up. “She is right, my love,” said Juana, “now is not the time to flee abroad, to wander through Europe begging for help, or to hide your head under an Eastern sun. Stay in your native land and wait for better days. Your brother Pedro is a vicious fool and will soon alienate the whole of Castile.”

  Enrique looked from his
wife to Eleanor, and back again, and threw up his hands. “The men tell me to flee, the women tell me to stay and fight,” he exclaimed, “the world is turned upside down, and I know not what to do or where to go.”

  “If you leave, I will stay and fight your cause,” his wife said stoutly, “I will hole up in the mountains and forests with these knights and a band of outlaws, and ambush Pedro’s troops wherever we find them.”

  Enrique looked at her with admiration. “It is settled, then,” he said, “we will stay and fight it out. Just us, against all my brother’s knights and men-at-arms! Perhaps they will write songs about us.”

  “Satirical ones, probably,” said Charles, who seemed less keen to throw his life away than the others. “Majesty, may I suggest we ride inland, and give Seville a wide berth? We may yet evade Pedro’s soldiers if we lose ourselves in the countryside.”

  Enrique agreed, and the little group of fugitives resumed their flight. They wandered through Castile for several weeks, hiding where they could by day and travelling by night. To avoid detection the men sadly doffed their knightly gear, burying their helms and hauberks in the woods or by the roadside, and spent the last of their money on purchasing food and clothes from local peasants.

  Eleanor put off her ridiculous and now somewhat tattered nun’s outfit and mimicked Doña Juana in donning male garb: a jerkin, breeches and cracked leather boots. To increase her resemblance to a man, she cut her long hair brutally short.

  “Such a pity to trim those raven locks,” said Carillo with his usual smiling gallantry, “I had dreamed of running my fingers through them.”

  Eleanor went crimson. She thought she was in love with the angel-faced knight, and entertained nocturnal fantasies about him that would have had any true nun hurrying straight to confession.

  Carillo’s fine notions of chivalry only extended to people of his own class, and he disappointed Eleanor by suggesting that the company keep their money and obtain what they needed by violent means.