‘There you have it. But I won’t sing any more.’
‘I once had a friend, a Moor,’ I said, just to keep us talking together. ‘He sang well, and at night – I used to sail on a ship, and hardly ever walk on the land – at night we would sing and tell stories over our meal, and my friend would sing his Moorish songs. I could not understand the words, of course, and I would ask him what they meant. He told me they were love songs, but really about God, and how to find him in this world.’ This was only vaguely what Nizam the helmsman had told me, for we had spent many long hours talking of his faith, and of the teachers he had called Soof but whom Isaac, the ship’s doctor and a Jewish scholar from Al-Andalus, called Sufis. I tried to explain some of this to Iselda. ‘Anyway, some of the troubadour songs I have heard sound like the ones my friend sang. I always thought that was curious.’
Iselda furrowed her brows. She no longer looked as if she wished to knock me off my horse, which was a good sign, I supposed. ‘My mother used to say that our songs – not the songs, but the form of them, really – came from Al-Andalus. Can you sing one of your friend’s?’
‘No!’ I shook my head. ‘But I remember the tune of one.’ I began to whistle it, and though the sound fell flat in the wide valley we were riding through, Iselda smiled, and even the Captain and Bertranz, up ahead, turned in their saddles and grinned.
‘That could be two dozen songs, but you are right. I would like to speak to your friend.’
‘Alas, you cannot. He went off into the east to look for a master, for he wished to become one of those Sufis himself. It is strange: he was a great giant of a man, a blackamoor from beyond the Egyptian desert, and the rudder of our ship looked like a twig in his hands, though it was the trunk of a young tree. But he was calm inside, calm as a millpond. I hope he found his teacher. I miss him, though.’
‘So in these songs the loved one was God Himself ?’ Iselda was interested now, and her horse had drifted closer to mine. ‘It is the same in our songs, though vulgar folk don’t wish to hear that.’
‘Yes. They were all about the lover, and drunkenness, and heart’s desire. You say vulgar folk and I am speaking of sailors … but that was why I loved the songs. One meaning for those that listened with their ears and …’ Iselda understood, for she grinned knowingly. ‘Anyway, another meaning if you listened with your heart. Not your head: your heart.’
We let ourselves sink deep into a discussion about all this, in which I was very much relying on my heart to guide me, for my head had no idea, really, what we were talking about, and after she had told me of the troubadours and their songs, and I had told her about my life and made her tell of hers, the sun had started to roll down into the west. At last there was a shout from up ahead, and the Captain called to us that there was a likely-looking barn just off the road where we could spend the night. We trotted up to join them, and that was all we spoke that day, for Iselda set to tending the Captain’s wound and I went about gathering wood and cooking dinner, the last of our eggs and some herbs from the deserted vineyard behind our shelter. Later I fell asleep without meaning to, for the day had been long and the fire was warm, and the next day Iselda rode with the Captain, though every now and again she would turn and smile back at me, and when we stopped to take our luncheon of cracking, yellow cheese and dried-out bread, she let me share my portion with her.
Since we no longer needed to ride under cover of night, we made camp that evening in an abandoned house, for war and famine had emptied out this corner of the land. The place had long since been plundered, but there was a roof and a fireplace, and we made ourselves as comfortable as we could. I was tucking myself into a corner on a pile of old broom twigs I had gathered outside, and Bertranz had already fallen asleep by the door, when the hiss of a cold log on the fire made me look up. The Captain was lying on his side, propped up on one arm, and Iselda was settling herself down beside him. They were very close, and then she bent down and seemed to be whispering into his ear, her long braids brushing the floor on either side of his silver head. I could not hear what was said, but the soft shush of their voices sounded warm and happy. I realised that I had not heard people so at ease for many, many days. And then I began to wonder what I was seeing. The curve of the singer’s shoulder as she leaned, the way her leg was curled under her, and the easy way the Captain was lying, despite the pain I knew he was suffering from his wound: if it were not impossible, I would have said I was spying on two lovers.
Well, that was impossible, but … was it? Yes, impossible. The Captain had no interest in women, nor in boys. I had never really given it much thought, for since I had known him his life beyond the Cormaran might as well have been that of a priest. He was the warmest and kindest man, but on the inside you might see a silence in him, an austerity that I had always thought was part of his faith and of the horrors that lay in his past. Captain de Montalhac lived his own life, in so far as it was ever separate from that of the Cormaran, as if he were a bon homme, and while he never frowned upon the romantic or lusty attachments of his crew, and was always the courtliest man to all women, he spent his nights alone.
We met a party on the road who told us that Montpellier was full of rowdy French soldiers, and so we decided to head for Marseilles, where we had a better chance of finding a Pisan or Genoese ship. We rode north and east, skirting Narbonne and Béziers, and by the time we had the fens of the Camargue on our right shoulders it felt like springtime. It seemed, as we rode, that the Captain had Iselda at his side, and I rode alone, for Bertranz was proving to be a moody fellow: not ill-natured, but withdrawn. Boredom got the better of him sometimes, and I discovered that, before he had turned bon homme, he had been one of Pierre-Roger’s sergeants-at-arms at Montségur. He had been in the party that had gathered outside Avignonet, and had burst into the house where the Inquisitors and their retinue were sleeping or praying. He thought he had killed the Franciscan monk called Stephen de Saint-Thibéry, but it had been a butcher’s shop. We killed them with axes, he muttered, like swine. I was a soldier; I had seen blood before. But not like that: running down the walls, and hair and bones all over us. By the time he had ridden back to Montségur he had thrown his sword into a ravine, and by the summer he was a bon homme. I almost envied him his conversion. All the butchery I had seen had only turned me more cold inside, and more weary of my fellow men. Bertranz had not found peace, but he knew his face was towards the light, and I could find no such comfort.
Captain de Montalhac did not seem to be in pain any more. His wound had not been grave, and perhaps would have been healed by now if we had not left the pog. But when he had fallen as we struggled down the mountainside, he had torn it open and the dressings had become soiled, and by our second night of liberty it had begun to throb and ooze yellow pus. Iselda, though, had more than a little knowledge of herb simples and the workings of the body, and her ministrations seemed to have driven out the infection. But the Captain was impatient to reach the sea and we spent far longer in the saddle each day than he was truly capable of bearing, and when we would stop for the night, in abandoned barns or houses, or hostelries in out-of-the-way villages, he would look drawn and almost transparent with fatigue. But he was beginning, despite that, to seem like his old self again, and when we chanced to ride together we would laugh at our old stories and remember voyages and places we had seen together. Still, every night, he would stay awake late into the night with the singer at his side, the two of them murmuring in low, fond voices, their bodies close and easy with each other.
Now that we were free, and even, perhaps, safe, I found myself becoming quite consumed with the need to be at Iselda’s side. I wanted her to sing, but I also wanted to learn where the unearthly wonder of her voice came from, and what she carried within her that could bring forth such beauty. But every day it was at the Captain’s side that I would see her, a few paces in front or behind me, and always there was a warmth in her voice that I did not seem to hear when she talked to me. One day, though, I had
let my horse lag behind the others, for my own wound, the deep one under my arm, had not yet healed properly and the constant throbbing and darts of pain it sent down to my hand and up into my neck were making me tired and lightheaded. I had wrapped myself in silence, expecting nothing but the next hoofbeat, when Iselda appeared beside me.
‘How is it with you, Petroc?’ she asked. She was looking at me closely, concern in her eyes. I stretched, embarrassed, and tried to shake off my lethargy.
‘I am fine,’ I assured her. ‘Daydreaming.’ I smiled, hoping to reassure her, and she smiled back. Reaching across the space between us, she took hold of my hand, tangled as it was in reins and horse-hair, and squeezed it, not gently.
‘If you are hurt, come to me,’ she said. ‘And we can talk. I would like that.’
‘I will,’ I said, pain and startled joy rendering me all but dumb. She let go of my hand and laid hers on my breast just above my heart.
‘Is it here? Your arm has been stiff, hasn’t it?’
‘In the armpit. It is not bad: a good sharp piece of stone went in and I took it all out. It is clean, but stubborn. Annoying, more than anything.’
‘Come to me and I will see …’ Her hand hovered above my shoulder, then she smiled almost ruefully and closed her fingers. ‘I will see what I can do.’ Throwing another smile behind her she trotted back up the track to the Captain, and I took a deep breath and watched her as she leaned in to tell him something – no doubt how I was faring. I would take her at her word, I told myself. I wanted, more than anything at that moment, to feel her soft but definite touch, to see, if only for a few moments, her face grow tender, the way it did when she bathed the Captain’s wound.
But somehow that did not come to pass. My own wound began to heal after that, and by the next day was paining me so little that I would have felt foolish in seeking Iselda’s help. So instead I worked harder, making sure it was I who gathered the evening’s firewood, fed the horses, bought, scrounged or snared our meals, and as my master seemed to grow stronger, so I became almost happy. For as I told myself, it was not my place to envy the Captain, and I drove such thoughts from me as best I could. But as his strength returned, so Iselda drew ever closer to him. She kept his wound clean and mending, and the pain seemed to be gone, though as he was a brave man it was hard to tell how much it troubled him, for he would never say. I could not stop my thoughts from turning to the two of them, though, however much I tried. Above all, I wanted to know what it was they whispered about, so late into the night, and where their warmth – nay, I will call it what I knew it was, and that was love – where their curious love had come from.
Then one day, with the walls of Nîmes in the distance and thin rain sheeting down out of a high grey sky, the Captain raised his arm and we halted.
‘Iselda is leaving us,’ he said, abruptly. I turned to her in amazement, but she just nodded, her face a mask.
‘Where are you going?’ I cried, with more heat than I perhaps intended. She lifted her head and narrowed her eyes at me, for the rain was blowing into her face.
‘I have to look for something,’ she said.
‘Will you be coming back to us?’
‘No,’ said the Captain. ‘Not now. We will be at Marseilles in a day or so, and then on board a ship. Iselda cannot come to Italy, so she may as well leave now.’ And he walked his horse up to hers and, leaning in his saddle, he took her in his arms and held her tight, wrapping her slight form in his old black cloak. Then he let her go and without a word he turned his horse and began to amble up the road without a backwards glance. I gave Bertranz a look and he nodded and set off after him.
‘Iselda, how can you leave like this?’ I said, for she was still sitting there, the rain dripping down her face.
‘One parting is like another,’ she said. ‘Have you not become used to saying farewell?’
I knew she meant the dead back on Montségur, but somehow I also knew she was talking about all the other farewells I had said, all the others who had gone into the dark.
‘Too used to it. I did not think we would be parting so soon.’
‘Spring is on the way. The birds will soon be coming back to us across the sea, and the flowers. Or that is what the world promises us. I’m not sure if I believe in spring, though. I need to find it.’ She wiped the rain from her eyes.
‘You are going to find the spring? Dear Iselda, it will find you!’ I protested. She gave me a look as if I were the dullest of fellows, then half a smile.
‘Will it, though?’ she said.
‘My lady, I do not think that spring will come for all of us,’ I told her, and I knew I was letting too much sorrow into my words, but I did not care. ‘Man seems to desire winter these days, have you felt it? There is an ending of things, and steel is as cold as ice and as merciless. I wish for spring more than anything in heaven or on earth, but I do not know if it will find me. But it will find you, Iselda, for it will always have need of a nightingale. I would wish you Godspeed, but I do not want us to part.’
‘Oh, Petroc,’ she said, and the smile she gave me was full of pain and, at last, that tenderness I had so wished to find in her. ‘Go with the Sieur de Montalhac. He needs you now.’
‘Do any of your songs end well?’ I asked bitterly. ‘For this one does not.’
‘I have been singing them all my life,’ she said, ‘and they are all sad. Save for one,’ and she smiled again despite the rain lashing at her, a real smile such as was not seen on the pog of Montségur. ‘Only one. Now fare thee well, Petroc, Sir Black Dog. I pray that the spring does find you, wherever you are going.’ And without another word or a backwards look, she kicked her horse and cantered off into the curtains of rain, towards the line of black mountains that rose in the west.
That night the Captain rolled himself in his blanket and went to sleep before Bertranz and I, and when he awoke his leg was stiff. He was quiet all that day, and when he dismounted at its end he was baring his teeth in pain. It was plain that he was missing Iselda, so I tried to leave him to his thoughts, though I was sorely tempted to pry, just a little, into what exactly had passed between them.
The next morning the Captain limped to his horse, and when he began to pull himself up into the saddle his leg gave way suddenly and he dropped onto the stony ground, his heel still trapped in the stirrup, the black bag which held the Mandylion across his chest. He began to struggle and I saw he was desperately trying to push the bag away. I ran over but he tried to wave me off, the bag now lying a yard away in the grass, and indeed for an instant I thought he was more embarrassed than hurt, but as I bent over him I saw a damp patch spreading across the thigh of his leggings, and a faint but unmistakable reek of corrupted flesh crept into my nose. With the help of Bertranz I got him back on his feet, but standing on the damaged leg made him turn pale and, ignoring his almost angry protests, I made him show me the wound.
The shard of stone that had struck the Captain had cut a gash almost the length of my hand before burying itself in the meat of his thigh. When he had slid down the rock wall he had torn off the scab and opened up the place from which the shard had been pulled. It had begun to heal again – at least the superficial edges of the gash, which were now scabbed and pink. But at the centre of the wound the scab had turned to an oozing crust that came off with the bandage, revealing a black, welling hole surrounded by a raw welter of wet flesh mottled in shades of pink and sulphurous yellow. A dark, almost black bruise was spreading across the skin surrounding the wound.
I knew little about healing, but I had to do something. With Bertranz I gathered handfuls of thyme, which was just beginning to put out new green shoots from the dry clumps that grew everywhere among the rocks of this land. We boiled some water, cleaned the wound as best we could and made a poultice from steeped thyme leaves. It smelled sweet and seemed to drive off the smell of decay, and though the Captain kept silent, jaw clenched, when it was done and his thigh bound with the cleanest linen I could find in our packs,
he looked more comfortable.
‘You missed your calling, Patch,’ he said. ‘I am amazed.’
‘I used to watch Isaac at work – he cleaned me up often enough. But I know nothing. Your leg smells better, nothing more. Why did Iselda leave? She knows far more than I. Could she not have stayed until we reached Marseilles?’
‘I sent her away,’ said the Captain firmly.
‘But why?’
‘To keep her safe. She did not need to follow us. Where I am going …’ He paused, and laid his hand on my arm. ‘I am leaving. And it is to serve my faith. Iselda’s place is here. She has done enough for the cause.’
‘Very well. But we must get you to a surgeon,’ I replied sullenly.
I was telling nothing more than the truth. By the end of that day he was shaking with fever. We bathed the wound morning and evening with hot water and thyme leaves, but the infection was seated deep within the muscle, and I feared there was a well of corruption that was spreading inside faster than I could salve the outside. We tried to draw out the suppuration with a hot compress, and that at least broke the fever for a while.
‘Patch, take the bag. With the … the crucifix. I cannot carry it any longer.’ I nodded.
‘Of course,’ I said. His eyes had gone unfocused with pain.
‘Get me to the sea,’ he muttered, as the compress steamed against his blackening flesh.
‘Soon,’ was all I could say as I dabbed the sweat from his forehead. ‘Very soon.’
I thought of lancing the wound, but that was just something I had heard said, and I was not going to stick a knife in my dear friend’s leg if I had no way to deal with whatever happened next, not when there was a chance we might still reach Marseilles in time. At least the rain that had followed us for days finally lifted. But while the sun had come out again and we were now passing through olive groves, dappled by their miraculous green, the Captain’s pain had grown so bad that he could hardly speak, and for every hour that passed he seemed to age another year. And if spring was coming, we did not notice it.
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