by David Capel
There was a small bag of solidi dating from the time of Heraclius, and a number of gold medallions, elaborately portraying the half-pagan symbolism of Constantine and his sons.
There were two large icons, carefully wrapped in muslin, and I held a reliquary, decorated in repoussee gold and silver reliefs telling of the life of some forgotten saint whose dusty remnants doubtless lay within.
A priceless ivory diptych showed an image of St Theodore of Tyron slaying his dragon. Another, cracked, displayed the image of St Andrew. That alone would pay for my passage home.
I handled numerous crosses of wood embellished with gold, or else just forged from pure metal. There was a vase for communion wine and three gold communion cups.
In that sack was enough to buy my estate twice over, if the rascals infesting it would ever sell.
Last of all I noticed an oblong shape that had not fallen from the sack when first I emptied it. Wrapped in cloths, I had to unwind it, and there I found a most peculiar object. It was black and bent, old beyond rust, the lance point of a fragile looking spear. With it was a vellum page which I started to unwrap. The words were in Latin.
But before I could read them I heard the dreaded sound I had been expecting – the tell-tale hollow knocking sound of horses’ hooves upon hard ground.
They were here.
Hurriedly I scooped a paten, a few coins, some cups and two medallions back into the sack, tying its mouth as best I could. I ran to the one of the windows and glanced out. For the moment there was no-one to be seen. I dangled the sack out of the window and let it drop. It fell and tumbled roughly down the steep slope, bouncing once, twice, and catching in a bush not far from the bottom. As far as I could see it had not split or broken.
Then from the mouth of the path leading back towards the road and village rode Erkan and his villain. I darted back inside, but whether they saw my head or not, I knew I had been cornered.
φ
My heart pounded within me, and my arm quivered with the strain of holding the bow taught and steady.
I heard their boots scrape on the flagstones outside, then the door burst wide open. I wanted it to be Erkan, but it was his brutish companion who blundered in first. As I had hoped he did not see me at once, behind the altar in the shadows of the church.
I let fly, and for a moment forgot my self-imposed injunction to grasp the next arrow immediately. Instead I watched as his one eye opened in shock, his mouth agape, framed by his long drooping moustache as the bolt hit home. It hit him in the chest, just above and to the left of his heart, and it pierced his black leather jerkin and buried itself half way to its feathers with a thudding crunch.
There was a blur of movement as Erkan tried to seize his brief chance to leap through and at me. He knew in a flash, as I did, that this was his moment, while I struggled to draw the next arrow. And he would have caught me as I hesitated, had not the big man fallen back against him, groaning and clutching at the shaft which brought forth a pumping, welling effluence of blood that stained his hands to crimson.
As Erkan thrust the heavy weight of the body aside I just had time, fumbling in near panic, to notch a second arrow. I drew the spring-like horn again.
“Stop!” I roared, and then nearly loosed again, which would have been a fatal change of plan had I missed. Seeing that he was too late to rush me, the Turk sprang back behind the door and I had missed my chance to shoot. His man groaned and writhed on the floor, his life blood spreading and draining from him onto the dusty floor.
“Stop there!” I yelled, “Stay and listen!”
“You son of a dog, Lascaris, I’ll kill you. Put down that bow and fight me like a man!”
“I will not fight,” I replied, and then I laughed, a croaking, forced laugh, and the tension in my body near overwhelmed me.
“I cannot fight you, Erkan, you and I both know that. Though I can shoot you, of course. But no, I would not fight. I would deal with you.”
“Deal with me? So does the rat talk when he is caught in a trap! I would no sooner deal with you than with a monkey. You’ve shot my man, but you did not dare shoot me, I saw that. Miss, with your trembling hands, and I would come into your hole there and kill you like the vermin you are.”
He was right, of course. I could not take the gamble of shooting at a moving man. I had been lucky with the first one, framed as he had been by the door, and unsuspecting. Yet Erkan dared not enter the room for all his bluster. Instead he hooked his arm round the door and tried to pull at his companion, who groaned in agony.
“Leave him!” I said. “He goes to meet his maker.” And indeed the man fell silent and his breathing grew very shallow.
“Don’t pretend you care, Erkan. I know you to be a ruthless, self-seeking bastard. It is for that reason that I know you will deal with me, rather than risk your hide, once you know what I have to offer.”
“Me, self-seeking?” he scoffed. “You speak for yourself.”
“Perhaps I do,” I laughed again, and the mirth exploded from me this time. “If that is the case, then we are of a kind. So listen to what I have to say.”
“What can you offer me, that I can not just take for myself one I have wrung your neck?”
“Gold, Erkan, gold. The desire of your black heart. It is here, in this room where I stand. And some of it can be yours. See here!” I kicked some of the trinkets across the floor to the doorway, rings and coins. They glittered in the sunlight that lanced through the high windows on the southern wall.
There was a pause while Erkan digested the sight of it.
“What is it that you propose?” His concern for his comrade seemed to have dissipated remarkably quickly.
“First tell me of Safia.”
“What?” he guffawed in incredulity. “You dare mention her name? I suppose that’s just about right. She’s certainly mentioning yours!”
“She speaks well of me?”
“What do you think? You fool! After you abandoned her on the road in little better than a roadside brothel? We’re lucky she’s not on a slave train to Baghdad as we speak. To be sure she speaks of you, and I have never heard such words from a female tongue. We caught up with her two mornings back. She was sobbing and swooning and tearing the house down when we arrived.”
I couldn’t keep the surprise from my voice. “You arrived that morning?”
“We rode through the night like the very wolves of Hell. I thought that I would catch you there, in some love nest of the kind you had made for yourself in Nabuk. Even I, who know what a rat you are, did not suspect that you would have left her there and stolen away like a thief. A lady! You discarded her like a rag amongst those thieves. I suppose you had your pleasure with her and that was enough.”
I was silent, unable to answer the unanswerable. But he read my mind.
“I thought as much. You rogue! I could tell by the vehemence with which she damned you. What a vixen!” He laughed again. “I don’t blame you, mind. I would probably have done the same. A fierce piece, but none the worse for that. For a time at least!
So you abandoned her. And now she goes back, sullied, to her dolt of a father. Not that he will know.”
“Her father’s men knew not the circumstances of her flight?”
He paused, the clever fox. “How did you know of them? But yes, of course we met them on the road, three Arab popinjays, dressed more for a dance than a chase, and that is how we knew of your betrayal.” He thought for a moment.
“You must have guessed they were in pursuit, and that they would meet us on the road. Hence the speed of your flight. So yes, we turned and followed you hot foot after that. I should have known you were up to no good when I saw your guilty face in the market!” He laughed, and then went on.
“And when we found her they left us to return her to their master in shame. Not that the old dotard will know the whole tale. Unless I tell him. Yes,” he mused, “I wonder what Safia would pay for my silence?”
I swallowed my disgust and
sought to change the subject. “That is by the by now. And you said yourself you would have behaved as I did. So follow me now once more and listen! I have gold here to spare, but only if we act in our mutual interest. Besides, you have no real grudge against me.” I looked at the dying man and continued hurriedly.
“Yes, we have fought, but only as soldiers must. Your game is wealth, and mine is survival. The sword – and the bow – are just means to an end, and not worth the risk if we both achieve our aims without them. Yes, I admit that you are a better soldier. But I have the bow. And what use is the finest champion against that?”
“Come on Lascaris, enough of the flattery,” he said, reading me once more from behind the door. But I could tell he had softened. “What is your proposal?”
I licked my lips. I had to put this right if I were to persuade him to leave me. I felt that the more we talked, the more he would become accustomed to me, and the urgency would leech out of the situation. It is much harder to attack a man after a long conversation than in the heat of confrontation. Or so I hoped and judged.
“First tell me, Erkan, how on Earth you found me here? How did you track me away from the Orontes and into these hills?”
“Easily enough, Lascaris.” I could hear the pride in his voice. “You would make no scout or spy in the Imperial service. You blunder about the country declaring your presence as if on a pleasure trip! That garish coat you discarded a few miles back. Once I knew you were wearing that, it was child’s play to follow your trail. Every idle peasant in Syria has noticed the strange foreigner galloping along looking as guilty as sin. And you hardly deviated from your path. How many times did you turn? Twice? Thrice? No, I am afraid you have a lot to learn in the art of flight, coward though you are. And of course Urgut here could follow a man across a flat plain even if he rode amongst a herd of wild horses. He saw your tracks at once from the caravanserai and again as they paused and turned towards this place.
But now it is my turn for questions, Lascaris. What brought you here, to this crumbling fort in the hills? And how did you know of the gold hidden here that you speak of? You can’t have come across it by chance, or brought it here yourself.”
“No indeed, though it was chance, or rather desperate ill-fortune that delivered me into your power at Manzikert and brought me here to Syria.” He laughed at that, as I hoped he would. “But I heard of this place from a chance meeting on the road in Asia. A monk, fleeing from Syria, told me about it. His abbot had hidden it here from the Arabs.”
“Ha! And now you seek to take it for yourself. Typical! But it will take more than a few trinkets to buy me off, you know.”
“I know that, Erkan. That is why I propose to share it with you fully and fairly. I have prepared a bag for you. It contains more of value than you have ever possessed, or would otherwise, I should think. Take it, and risk not the fight that will leave one of us dead. Take it and go in peace to enjoy it.”
“You dead, most likely.”
“Perhaps, but can you take that risk? When you already possess all you need?”
He thought for a moment. “Where is this bag?”
“Down there. At the bottom of the slope. Below this chapel, just opposite where you came upon this castle from the path.”
“So you want me to leave you, collect this bag, and then what?”
“Then we both go our separate ways, Erkan. I will watch you saddle your horse down there and go back down the path. Then I will follow soon after. Both of us will be rich. And both will be alive.”
There was a long pause while he digested this offer. I could almost hear his thoughts weighing up the risks and possibilities that confronted him. Yet in the end he took the easy choice, the one that kept his options open.
“Very well, I will go and look at this bag. But I don’t trust you, Lascaris. Don’t run away yet! If I don’t find this thing, or you have sought to buy me off with trifles, I will come back, and I will kill you.”
“Fair enough. I will await your judgement from here.”
I heard the scuff of his boots as he left the overgrown courtyard outside, and for the first time in an age I released the tension in my bow. Fire spread through the muscles of my chest and forearms and they trembled after the strain. I stood motionless, listening, until at length I heard him scrabbling in the bushes below.
I peered out of the chapel window and saw him find the bag. He squatted down and looked at its contents. He examined them carefully, spreading them out on the rough ground and turning the items over and again in his hands.
He glanced up at me, squinting into the sunlight.
And then, without a word or a gesture to me, he replaced the shining golden cups and plates in the sack, walked over to his horse, and vanished up the path.
I let out a long sigh of breath that I had not realised I was holding in. I waited until I could hear nothing more of him, then turned and looked at the assembled treasure behind the altar. Erkan had not even bothered with the rings and coins I had tossed at him, let alone the corpse of his erstwhile companion.
Did this mean that he was sated?
I had no way of knowing for sure, but I had to believe in my gamble. Feverishly I collected my winnings together. I had no bag, so I stacked the larger items as best I could, and stuffed my pockets with medallions, coin and jewellery. Every couple of minutes I thrust my head out of the window to see if Erkan had returned, but there was no sign.
I picked up my new found wealth and carried it outside, stepping over the stiffening body of Urgut. His blood had stopped pumping from the wound in his chest, and lay in a black pool around him. The first flies had gathered for the feast.
I scrabbled back through the breach in the wall and tumbled as furtively as I could down the slope, looking right and left and trying to balance my pile of golden things. At last I reached my mule and there I could stow the precious haul in the saddle blanket. I clutched my bow once more and loosed the dagger in its sheath, then led the best straight up the far side of the mountain into the trees.
χ
“I confess to the Lord my God and before you, venerable father, all my countless sins, committed by me unto this very day and hour, in deed, word and thought.”
I paused for a moment until the Patriarch mumbled in a tired voice, “Go on.”
So I listed them. All of my sins, or all that I could remember, since my last confession some time before I left the City of Constantine.
I spoke of the gluttony and drunkenness of my life in the City, which raised barely a murmur.
I described my cowardice and selfishness on the journey east. There was a polite silence.
I talked of my anger and jealousy, my intolerance and dislike of those I had encountered – the officers and men of the Roman army, the mendicant hermits, the feckless peasants, and above all the ruthless Erkan.
Patriarch Aemilian sighed and started to rattle off some pieties about the pitfalls of wroth and the weakness of man.
“But, forgive me father, there is more.”
I told him about the killings, all of them, right up to the one-eyed Urgut in the castle only a few days before. Some in anger, some in self-defence, and some less than necessary. In most, a strange sense of elation and pride at the achievement of taking a man’s life.
This awoke his interest some more. Aemilian was strong against the pagan Turk, and could see little wrong with slaying the enemies of Christ. He put down my emotional reaction to the righteous spirit of the Christian soldier.
“And now my son, we move to the question of penance…”
“But father, there is more.”
And so I told him about Jalila, and my lust for her, and our gross, drunken adultery, all the way to our fight and my pride in our final cruel dealings with one another.
The priest cleared his throat nervously, but I continued before he could say anything.
“Father I have yet to tell you about the daughter.” Then with a brutal honesty painful to my own ears, let a
lone those of this ageing, virgin monk, I described my seduction of the young maiden, the slaking of my lust for the soft curve of her pale body, my betrayal of her trust and the final deception before my flight.
As my story reached its shameful climax the old man began to splutter and hiss like a boiling pot until he exclaimed, “Enough! You pollute the air with this, this filth! I have never heard the like. Begone from my presence! You are here to mock me and the teachings of the church with such depravity, I shall tell the governor that he has been deceived…”
I sat there calmly while he ranted on in indignation, and seeing that I was motionless he finished his tirade and stood to go or summon the guard. But I held up my hand and said,
“Patriarch, I am going to see your colleague John Xiphilinus in Constantinople.”
“What?” he exclaimed, astounded. “To pollute his ears also with this filth…?”
“No, with something valuable. Something important that I would seek your guidance on.”
“What? What is this nonsense? What could you possibly have? I…”
“It is the lance that struck the side of Christ on the Cross. The lance of Longinus.”
This brought a moment’s stunned silence.
“That’s preposterous. The lance is in Constantinople! There cannot be two lances!”
I shrugged. “Suit yourself. This one was taken by the Emperor John Tzimisces when his troops raided Jerusalem a hundred years ago. It was authenticated then, according to the writing that goes with it. At any rate, I intend to take it to Xiphilinus, who will no doubt be able to judge. I’m sorry to have wasted your time.”
I stood up to leave, but he held up his hand to stop me.
“Wait! I had better take a look at this relic. Where did you find it?”
“In one of Tzimisces’ castles some distance from here. I was hoping you would be able to advise me on it. You see, I wanted to be sure that I was doing the right thing by taking it to the City.”
“You are right. I should certainly examine it to see that it is not a fraud. Where is the lance?”