by Dan Davis
Jocelyn was not a complicated man but I was sure even he could outwit me. Anselm came from the best stock yet retained a perplexing innocence, even in the face of brutality and the knowledge that I was an unnatural, blood-drinking fiend. The lad was a fine squire but his trusting nature meant that a commoner like Swein could bend Anselm’s ear on the supposed plight of the common man and the lad’s heart would bleed for the imagined suffering. And even such a credulous fool as he was a wiser man than I.
And Swein. A man of no more than eighteen years, who had received no education, no training of any sort other than the bow and probably the plough until a year before. Even a man such as he possessed greater skill at reading men’s intentions that did I, a lord over twice his age, with decades of fighting experience.
There was no way out for me. If they ever opened the cage door, I could attempt to fight my way out and I would. But I had no illusions they would be taking chances with me.
Upon stripping my armour and weapons, they had also removed every sharp object from about my person, so puncturing a large vein and bleeding my precious blood everywhere was out of the question. I was relieved because I had no desire to take my own life. I wanted to live. I still wanted to kill William. It was the only thing I had left.
I rubbed my wrist against the edge of the bar in front of me. Perhaps I could grind the skin away until I bled enough that they would remove me from the cage and then I would fight my way free. But the edges of the flattened bars had been forged or hammered or ground smooth.
Defeated once again, I slept.
When I woke, it was to the sight and feel of sword blades held against my throat. The blades had been eased between the bars by three of William’s men, their faces leering down at me.
“What are you doing?” I asked, holding perfectly still.
“Don’t you try nothing,” one said, in an almost incomprehensible northern dialect. He was probably Cumbrian, which was barely one step up from a Scotchman.
“What could I possibly try?” I asked, astonished that they would send in three men who were clearly slower and dimmer than even I was.
“We know you’re a tricky one, lord,” one of the others said, a young lad no more than fourteen.
The third man, older, nudged him, hissing. “You don’t got to call no one lord in Eden, Nobby.”
“Oh, right you are, Sid.”
The first man, their leader, cleared his throat to gain the upper hand. “You hold still while we feed you, right?” He nodded at the boy, Nobby, who withdrew his sword and bent away behind myself and came back holding a basket.
“Here you go, lord,” Nobby said.
“He can’t see it,” Sid said. “And he ain’t no lord, not no more.”
Nobby giggled.
“So,” I said. “You’re the mighty soldiers of your lord William’s great army, are you?”
Nobby grinned.
“We are,” Sid said. “Or we will be when we’re turned into sons of Adam.”
“He’s making mock,” the first man, the Cumbrian said. “You might be a lord and all. But Big John said you can’t talk to us like that.”
He pressed the point of his blade against my Adam’s apple. I pushed my head against the bars and twisted away but I had nowhere to go and he drew blood. There was a look in his eye that suggested an inability to control himself.
I grabbed his blade with both hands and pushed up as hard as I could.
The blade bent where it met the underside of the bar. It bent a long way and then snapped, clattering to the floor of my cage. I swept it up, holding the half-blade in my bare hand.
I shoved it through bars of the cage and on through the Cumbrian’s neck before he could jerk away.
Sid swung his own sword from out and sent my broken blade crashing down, out of reach beyond my cage.
We all watched as the Cumbrian held his hands to his throat, that familiar confused expression on his face as the hot blood flowed out through his fingers. The smell filled the air along with the cries of his fellow.
“What are you doing?” William was out of his room, charging over to my cage around the central altar. “What in the name of God are you cretins doing?”
“John asked us to feed the prisoner,” Sid said. “Little John, so it was. He said to keep the lord under our sword points while we gave him his food. But he done broke Tom’s sword and shoved it up him.”
“So I see.” William looked at me as if I was a misbehaving child. “Well, get a bucket under him before we lose it all in the floor. Tom, can you hear me, Tom? Do not look so worried. Once you die, you shall finally be one of us. You should rejoice. Look at me, Tom, you will die and then you will live forever. Let yourself go, brother.”
“Why save his life?” I said, standing as best I could in my cage. “Let the fool die. He is incompetent. Is this the sort of man you wish serving you? He is not worthy of my blood.”
The giant, Little John lumbered in, ducking under the lumpy, rock-hewn ceiling.
“Incompetent?” William said. “He is a little too keen for my favour but that is no bad thing. You were loyal, Tom, were you not? Why would you kill this man, Richard?” William eased the man to the floor as he spoke. Tom yet held his hands to his throat, though the life in his eyes was fading. “He was bringing you food. He was helping you. That is it, Tom, let yourself die, there’s a good man. Do you know, Richard, why you killed him?”
“He is your sworn man,” I said. “That is enough.”
“You killed him because you are a murderer,” William said. “Just as much as I am. Only, I am also a creator. I am building a new world, a new Eden. Without me, all you can do is destroy. I am helping you.”
“You are building a manor in the king’s wood,” I said. “And filling it with slaves. Do not delude yourself that you are doing anything great.”
“Have you not seen our Eden?” William said, indicating the world above us. “I have made my own Garden, as described in the Book of Genesis. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground. Trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Well, we have trees aplenty but the tree of life is here, it is our blood. The tree of knowledge is that which we grow in ourselves.”
“This is no Eden,” I said. “This is a hunting lodge, belonging to some baron that you have ousted. Growing crops, all crammed inside the gates, does not make an Eden.”
“There were the four rivers of Eden and we have our own four around our Eden here. We have our Pishon, Gihon, our Tigris, and Euphrates.”
“You mean the rivers of Sherwood?” I asked. “You have utterly lost your mind.”
“No,” William said. “It is you who has failed to grasp what we can make of this place. This wild place, where those from the world of men fear to enter. We who dwell here live as Adam did in the Garden. Without sin, without death, without fear.”
“Without sin? All that you do here is sin.”
William shook his head. “John, draw us plenty of blood out of Richard. This will be as perfect a time as any to do this.”
“To do what?” I asked but I knew, really.
“Lash Tom to the altar,” William commanded and the men that crowded the small room lifted up and then eased the dying form of Tom the Cumbrian onto the table in the centre of the room.
Little John leaned his face against my cage. “I don’t suppose you will be going to give up your blood willingly, this first time?” His voice rumbled low, from deep within his guts.
“Try to take it,” I warned him. “Open my cage and you shall see what happens.”
“Ah,” Little John said. “I do so enjoy fighting talk.” He laughed and grabbed a short spear from one of his men. “Come on lads, time to earn your keep again.”
“I will shove those spears up your arses,” I said, as the men with spears manoeuvred themselves about my cage. My heart raced, watching the iron spearhea
ds catching the lamplight.
They thrust through the bars from all angles. There was little I could do to stop them though I made as good a fight of it as I could. It was not a matter of will, or strength or speed. I was so very limited by the manner of my confinement. It was, indeed, a matter of geometry.
With my palm, I broke the shaft of the first spear that lanced through toward my chest. But I was stabbed in the back.
I pinned another spear against the bars with my shoulder but another gouged out a lump from my thigh.
I was speared through the shoulder, the legs. Blades sliced my scalp and my chest.
The pain was white fire, slashing through my flesh. I was cut a dozen times. I growled, shouted, and slammed against the bars, swearing I would kill them all.
They laughed and stabbed me again.
“Enough,” William’s voice crashed over their jeering. “We have enough.”
They stepped away, clapping each other on the back for their good work. I hunched on all fours in the bottom of my cage, watching the blood drip from the wounds of my head. The drops splashed down between my hands into the shallow pool of blood under me, dark red on sandstone and black iron. My breath would only come with my chest juddering, betraying the weakness and despair I felt.
The blood pooling under me ran into the carved lines in the floor. The blood collected in them, like drainage ditches or gutters, then rolled, and flowed through the bars out into the cavern.
Of course, that was what they were. Channels, catching the blood and funnelling it away from me and into a bowl-shaped depressed carved low into the floor by the table.
Upon the table Tom, the Cumbrian lay dead, or as close to it as made no difference. His throat was destroyed and the skin of his face was white as chalk. Tom did move, his fingers flexing and his mouth gaping open and closed like a fish slowly suffocating upon the riverbank. The huge, solid oak table was drenched with his blood.
William himself kneeled by the pool that collected my own and scooped out a cupful. The cup he used was wooden, ornately carved with intertwining oak and vine leaves, big enough to hold a pint or more.
“Behold,” William said to me, holding the cup up. He moved to the other side of the table. “Hold him,” William said to his men. “We must move quickly while he retains the strength to drink.”
William held up the back of Tom’s head and gently poured the blood into Tom’s mouth.
The Cumbrian coughed and blood — my blood — sprayed out of his mouth but William continued pouring, holding Tom’s head. Other men held him down and ropes wrapped around him at chest, hip and knee. Still, Tom writhed and still William poured it in, his face as rapturously proud as a mother spooning porridge into her baby’s mouth.
“Dear God of Eden,” William said, his sonorous, echoing off the carved stone walls. “The God of the Green. The God of the oak and the vine. The God of the rivers and the earth. Take this acolyte upon your holy altar and find him worthy of your gift. The Oaken Altar, carved from the Tree of Knowledge, is ready to accept this sacrifice. This man has given his essence and poured out his sin here at the Altar of Oak in the place of the blood. The sacrifice of his life and his blood is offered up to you, freely. We pray to you, the God of the Green, that you sanctify his sacrifice with the gift of eternal life so we may welcome this man who is called Tom into our brotherhood and into our immortal band as a son of Adam.”
When all was gone, Tom fell back, twisting in his bindings.
William peered at Tom and then pointed at me. “We must have more blood,” he said.
For a long moment, I was afraid they would slash me open further. But my blood had not stopped flowing. My shirt was drenched with it. I ran down my arms and down my legs, into the channels and the bowl by the table was filling up.
Twice more, William poured a pint of my blood into Tom until finally, William was satisfied. He stepped back, wiping his bloodied hands on his bloodied tunic.
“That should do it,” he said. “Now, we wait.”
I looked up across the room, holding myself still so my wounds would not gape open and further. My breathing was loud in the small space. My head ached. I had a raging thirst.
“That was not such a bad thing, was it, Richard?” William said. “You do look quite a mess. I shall have my men bring you water and so on. See to it, John. And now, Richard, you will watch the magic that our blood works. Our blood, with its power to bring life to the dead. To raise them up to be stronger, faster, all but invincible. And immortal.”
“You make them like us,” I said, my voice weak, for I knew from Tuck some of what was done.
It struck me, then, how what I had inflicted on Tuck and the Frenchman in the Weald was in some way being revisited upon me. It was God’s punishment for my crimes. A man who injures his countryman, as he has done, so shall it be done upon him. Fracture for fracture, eye for an eye, blood for blood. It was the Lord’s justice but I had brought it down upon myself.
“I make them almost like us, brother, almost,” William said, a small smile in the corner of his mouth. “Our blood fills up their veins, once their own are emptied. They will not age, it is true if they ever wake from their slumber. Sadly, they must then consume blood themselves or else they will die. One day, I shall discover a means of freeing them from such bonds. But until then, we must feed every man with blood every other day, or he begins to lose his strength. In a week or so, he will die. That is why we must keep these people in the pens above. We have tried the blood of pigs and cows and sheep and goat but nothing works, not fully. Human blood. It must be. So to build my army I must build my feedstock. A man slaughtered and drained will provide seven or eight pints but he can do so only once. From a living man, we can draw off a couple of pints every other day. It is a wonderful system. One blood slave can feed one of my men, day after day. Is it not wonderful? Do you see what we can do here? What we can do to all England? We have no limit on what we can accomplish. But it all starts here, in Eden. So you shall heal and grow strong and then we shall speak again.”
William nodded, smirked and strode back through into his chamber beyond and slammed the heavy door shut behind him.
They brought me water, wine and cloth to wipe some of the blood from myself. I took it all without fighting, for I needed it.
“Here,” John said, thrusting another cup through the bars.
I took it without thinking, such was my thirst, and threw it down my throat. I gagged.
“This is blood,” I said, stupidly, though I had still swallowed what I had in my mouth. From one of your faithful servants?”
“Do you wish to heal your wounds or do you not?” Little John said, that smirk across his lumpy great face.
He was quite right. William knew me well, even then when we were so young.
I drank the whole thing. It was quite beautiful. That thick liquid, sliding down my throat. When it hit my stomach, the ache was like the longing for a lost love. The warmth spread through my body, caressing me from inside, glowing and tender.
My flesh drew together, the bleeding stopped. I sighed and leaned back against my bars, holding the empty cup to my chest.
“Enjoy that, did you?” Little John said, his grinning head up near the stone ceiling. “Lovely stuff that, ain’t it. Funny, you wouldn’t think a scrawny bitch like that would taste so sweet. That’s right. That was your Eva’s blood you just drank.” He laughed so hard his whole body shook, his great barrel chest sounding like a bell.
My head snapped up. My sight burned with clarity. Every filthy pore on his face was as clear as a mountain stream. The sweat on his brow, the lines around his eyes, each of the night-black hairs of his beard.
“Don’t worry,” Little John said, his lips wet and sneering. “We ain’t killed her yet. We ain’t done nothing to her but drained her of a little blood. Our lord don’t like us fiddling with women. And anyway, she scared the lads off from raping her after what she done to poor Alf. See, we need her alive and whole,
right? We need her to make sure her old dad comes here to rescue-”
I threw the cup at his face. I could not extend my arm and I had to fling it through the square space between the bars but I had a belly full of blood and my eye and hand worked in perfect harmony.
The wooden cup flew like an arrow, at the perfect angle, and cracked him on the bridge of his nose.
Little John screamed like a girl, throwing his head back and his hands up to his face. Blood streamed from his nostrils and his eyes watered.
I laughed so hard that I thought the wounds in my head would open up again.
“You will pay for that,” John said, his voice nasal and swallowing his blood as he spoke. “No, your bitch will pay for that. You hear me, you lord’s bastard, your precious woman is going to pay the price for that.”
“My precious woman?” I said, still laughing. “Is that truly what you think?” And I laughed harder though my heart ached.
John kicked the bars of my cage, his huge strength rattling the thing in its timber frame.
“You don’t fool me,” John said, blinking through his tears and the bars above my head.
“I would wager there is little that does not fool you, John the Bailiff,” I said. “You are as thick as two short planks. Is your great head no more than solid skull all the way through?”
He roared and kicked my cage again. The iron bars shook and shifted before settling back.
I wished to rile the monster further, hoping that he would inadvertently break my cage loose from its moorings. Instead, his fellow men drew him off, muttering about disturbing their lord and glancing at William’s door.
“You will bleed and bleed,” John said, his huge voice lowered to a rumble. “You will bleed for days and months and years and we will make an army from your blood. You will be in here when England falls. You will be in here when Ashbury burns to the ground. You will be in that cage until you are mad with grief and weak as a woman. You are nothing now, not a lord, not a knight. You are cattle.”
His men drew him away while John sneered down at me. Then they were gone.
All of them, they left me alone in that underground chamber with no one to watch over me and no one to watch over the other body. Tied to the table was their comrade, Tom the Cumbrian, covered in blood. His own was mostly outside his body, yet he had a belly full of mine working inside him.