01 - Murder in the Holy City

by Simon Beaufort

  That would explain Dunstan’s increasing agitation in the days before his death. Foolish, greedy monk. If he had gone directly to the Patriarch with his findings, he would still be alive, and so, probably, would Marius. And Geoffrey would never have been dragged into the investigation, and Hugh would be safely behind bars, along with his seemingly formidable force of supporters.

  “And of course, you killed Marius and pretended to have been attacked in the process.”

  Hugh shrugged. “What else could I do? I had recruited him to our cause when he began his so-called investigation with Dunstan. But he was foolish enough to come running to me when he thought Dunstan had been murdered. He was simply too much of a liability. I talked with him for a while, to make certain he had made no written records of what he knew, and then I stabbed him. I smeared the blood from his wound onto my head to convince you I had been hit.”

  “Why did you do all this, Hugh?” Geoffrey asked softly. “Was it worth the price?”

  “Oh yes,” said Hugh, surprised by the question. “And it would have been worthwhile for you, too, given time. You are my friends. I would have looked to your interests.”

  “But I would not want to profit from such crimes,” said Geoffrey coldly.

  “You would,” said Hugh earnestly. “Why not join us! We plan to kill the Advocate within the next two days, and hold the throne for Bohemond. This city needs a man like Bohemond. The Advocate is a weakling, and even his own men admit it. We have seven of his knights in our ranks, and every one of them is with us because they know the Advocate is a poor leader.” He left his men and moved nearer to Geoffrey. “Come with us, Geoffrey! You have been on desert patrols, and you know that the Saracens are waiting out there like wolves as the Advocate’s rule grows steadily more chaotic. If we are to keep this land Christian, we need Bohemond on the throne.”

  Geoffrey said nothing, and Hugh turned to Roger.

  “You come with us, then!” he said. “You are Bohemond’s man! You owe it to him to help us rid ourselves of this pathetic Advocate who is killing our hold on the land.”

  “All right, then,” said Roger agreeably. “Might as well swing for a sheep as for a lamb! I am with you, if it is for Bohemond you are working.”

  “No, Roger!” cried Geoffrey. “This is treason! How do you know Bohemond is even aware of these plans?”

  Hugh grinned at Roger and thumped him on the back in delight. “Good man! I should have known I could trust you.”

  “Aye, lad,” said Roger, returning Hugh’s smile. “You should have had me in on all this before. I would have been an asset to you.”

  “You still will be, Roger,” said Hugh. “Now, we have wasted enough time answering Geoffrey’s questions, and we have a lot to do.” He turned to Akira. “You have a cellar, I believe?”

  Akira looked astonished. “How the hell did you know that?” Then his expression hardened. “That bloody Maria!”

  Hugh smiled. “Open the door, if you would. You and Sir Geoffrey are going to spend some time together.”

  Geoffrey’s heart sank as he saw Akira fumbling around in a distant, fetid corner to haul open a heavy trapdoor that had been concealed under the moving red carpet of his floor. Roger helped him haul it open, and Hugh took a lamp from Adam and peered down into the yawning hole.

  “That should do,” he said, satisfied. He straightened up and looked across to Geoffrey and Akira, gesturing elegantly to the hole in the floor with his hand. “All yours, gentlemen.”

  “Now, you just wait a minute!” blustered Akira. “I’m not going down there! That trapdoor’s heavy and can’t be reached from down below. How do I know you’ll come back and let us out?”

  “My dear fellow!” exclaimed Hugh. “I assure you I have no intention of letting you out. I am afraid this is the end of the road for you, Akira. Your daughter tells me your customers are few these days, but that the trapdoor is sufficiently thick to muffle any cries for help anyway. She tells me you left her there on several occasions.”

  “That was years ago!” protested Akira. “And I’m an old man now! Please let me go …”

  “Shall I kill them?” asked Adam, stepping forward eagerly.

  Hugh shook his head. “Down in the cellar is better—no mess to clear up, you see.” He looked around him in disgust. “Not that it would make much difference here.”

  “Think about what you are doing, Hugh!” said Geoffrey, desperately. “If you fail, you will die as a traitor.”

  “Believe me, Geoffrey,” said Hugh, “I have thought about little else since this notion came into my head about three months ago. The Advocate must die. You are either with us, or against us, and you have made your position abundantly clear. We have been friends, and I do not want to watch you die. Now, jump down the hole, if you please.”

  Adam gave Geoffrey a shove that sent him staggering toward the cellar. Geoffrey glanced down at its black depths and gave Hugh an agonised look. Hugh wavered. He had forgotten Geoffrey’s intense dislike of underground places.

  “I would rather die now, up here,” Geoffrey said quietly.

  “No, you would not,” said Roger, wrapping his arms around Geoffrey in a powerful grip that rendered him helpless. Geoffrey felt himself lifted like a rag doll, and then he was bundled through the trapdoor before he could offer more than a token resistance. He was not sure how far he fell, but he landed hard on a stone floor, jarring his ankle and cracking his arm painfully against a roughly hewn wall. There was a yowl like a mating cat, and Akira landed on top of him, driving the breath from his lungs.

  “See you in hell!” Roger shouted down after them with a diabolical laugh, before the door was dropped back into place and Geoffrey and Akira were plunged into total darkness. Immediately Akira sprang up and howled in such a dreadful way that it served to force Geoffrey out of his own terror in order to make the butcher desist. Geoffrey took a shuddering breath, noting that not the merest glimmer of light could be seen through the edges of the trapdoor. No wonder Maria hated Akira if he locked her in here. He swallowed hard and crawled across to the screeching meat merchant.

  “Akira!” yelled Geoffrey, grabbing at his clothes. “Be quiet! I cannot think with all that noise!”

  Akira clutched at Geoffrey, and seemed to become calmer at human contact.

  “We’ll die here!” he snivelled.

  “How tall is the room?”

  “Taller than you,” sniffed Akira. “And taller than you with me on your shoulders, so don’t think we can get out that way.”

  Geoffrey released Akira and sat back. He put his hands in front of his face, but could see nothing. It had been like this when the tunnel had caved in on him in France. And the air in Akira’s cellar was rank, as though something had died down there. Geoffrey recalled Maria’s claim that she had a sister called Katrina who Melisende had never heard of, and felt a cold fear grip like an iron band around his chest. He forced himself to crawl on hands and knees to feel the walls, partly to see how big the cellar was, but partly to reassure himself that no skeletons lurked in its gloomy depths.

  “Here! What are you up to?” queried Akira suspiciously.

  “Just trying to see how far back the cellar goes,” said Geoffrey, his voice far from steady. He took a deep breath. Now, not only one friend had turned traitor, but two! Not only traitor, but they had wanted him dead. Neither had had the courage to kill him outright, and they had condemned him to die in the very way they both knew he dreaded more than any other. He found the wall and leaned his hot forehead against its chilly roughness.

  “Well, wait a minute, then,” said Akira. “I got a candle.”

  He rummaged around for a few moments; there were some scratching noises accompanied by some foul language, and then the cellar was alive with dancing shadows.

  “I always keeps a candle down here,” said Akira. “I stores me valuables down here, you see.”

  “How do you get out,” asked Geoffrey, instinctively moving nearer the light.

>   “I lets a rope ladder down,” said Akira, “and then I climbs back up it.”

  Geoffrey looked around their cell. Akira had been right when he had said they would not reach the trapdoor, for the ceiling was indeed taller than his and Akira’s height combined. No wonder his ankle ached viciously from where he had landed on it. The cellar was the same size as Akira’s room above, large enough for two men to lie end to end in either direction. It was empty, except for a strong wooden box in one corner and various rags and bones strewn about the floor. Geoffrey remembered Katrina and scrambled to his feet.

  The underground room was hewn out of solid rock, and so they would never be able to tunnel their way out. Geoffrey began to feel the familiar tightening around his chest when he imagined lying in the sealed chamber with Akira, with the air growing thinner and thinner …

  “What else do you have in here?” he asked, only to hear the sound of Akira’s voice, not to solicit information.

  “None of your business,” snapped Akira, walking over to the wooden box and covering it with one of the rags from the floor. “This is all your fault,” he said, suddenly aggressive. “If you hadn’t hung around old Akira’s house, then I wouldn’t be down here now, suffering.”

  “Sorry,” said Geoffrey. “I should have been more thoughtful.” He sat down on the stone floor and rubbed his ankle. “Do you have any more candles?”

  “I got one more,” said Akira, fishing it out of his pocket. “But it won’t do us no good.”

  “I suppose there is no other way out of here?” said Geoffrey, looking up at the dark rectangle of the trapdoor high above them.

  “Well, yes, as a matter of fact,” said Akira.

  Geoffrey stared at him in amazement.

  “But that won’t do us no good neither,” the butcher continued. “There’s a tunnel, but it can only be opened from the outside.”

  “Where is it?” said Geoffrey, leaping to his feet and peering around into the gloom as though it might suddenly make itself apparent.

  Akira gave a heavy sigh and heaved himself upright. “But it won’t do us no good,” he insisted. “You can’t open it from the inside.”

  “But we have to try,” said Geoffrey. “Anything is better than sitting here in the dark waiting to die.”

  Akira grumbled his way into a dark corner and poked about. “That bloody Maria! She sold me out, she did. It was her who told that blond knight about this place, knowing that we couldn’t get out once we were down here. Bloody Maria! I suppose you don’t have friends what might come for you?” he asked Geoffrey, suddenly hopeful. His optimism faded as quickly as it had risen. “No. Your fine friends are the ones that shoved us down here in the first place, and old Akira hasn’t had no friends since poor Joseph was took. And poor Joseph couldn’t have done much, him being a cat.”

  Geoffrey picked his way through the bones on the floor. “Did you have a daughter called Katrina?” he asked.

  Akira turned round to glare at him. “No, I did not, thank God! One bloody daughter is more than enough for poor Akira.” He gave an enormous, wet sniff, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and continued to prod. “Here we are.” He pulled at a large ring set in a second trapdoor and revealed a narrow tunnel disappearing into a sinister slit of blackness.

  Geoffrey regarded it in horror. “Is that it?” he asked in a whisper.

  Akira nodded. “I suppose we could try it,” he said listlessly. “But it’s a bit of a tight squeeze for old Akira these days.”

  Geoffrey looked from the great stone room to the narrow tunnel, and felt as though he were being offered a choice between two alternative routes to hell. He swallowed and took the candle from Akira with trembling hands.

  “How far is it?”

  “Not far, or bloody miles, depending,” said Akira, taking the candle back again. “Follow me.”

  Geoffrey closed his eyes in despair as Akira’s bulky form disappeared sideways into the narrow slit. If it were possible, this was even worse than the journey with Melisende, since the light was dimmer, and the tunnel horribly narrow from the outset. For a moment, he could not force his legs to move, but then the cellar grew darker and darker as Akira’s candle went further into the tunnel, and he entered at a run.

  The tunnel was a split in the rock and was a natural, rather than a man-made, feature. Geoffrey began to wonder how safe it was, and felt sweat coursing down his back and face as he envisaged the walls suddenly caving in from the pressure of the mass of rock above. Akira’s grunts and mutters ahead told Geoffrey that the butcher was having problems easing himself along, and Geoffrey began to feel sick. He clenched his hands into tight fists and drove everything from his mind except Akira’s golden wavering light ahead.

  Geoffrey had no idea how long they travelled. The split grew wider, but just when he allowed himself to feel relief, it closed in again, even tighter than before. He and Akira had moments when they became stuck, and one had to help prise the other forward. Geoffrey’s shirt was drenched in sweat, and his legs would not have held him up if it were not for the fact that the walls pressed so closely against his back and chest. Just when he thought it could grow no worse, the candle went out.

  The silence was absolute.

  “Light the other one,” he said in a voice that had an edge of panic to it.

  “Can’t,” said Akira. “Didn’t bring the tinder with me.”

  Geoffrey felt like strangling him, but he had lost the strength in his limbs, and knew his arms were far beyond doing anything so useful.

  “No matter,” said Akira. “I knows where this tunnel goes.” He moved forward, and then Geoffrey could only hear the sounds of his own ragged breathing and his thudding heart.

  “Akira!” he yelled. “Tell me about Maria! Tell me about your cat!”

  “What?” came Akira’s startled voice from the blackness. “What for? You afraid of the dark or something? Why would a knight be interested in old Akira’s cat?”

  Akira’s voice droned on, and Geoffrey followed it gratefully along the narrow split. He lost track of time completely: he might have been in the tunnel for a matter of moments, or for hours. Each step forward seemed to take an eternity, and he tried not to let himself think that if they could not open the other exit from the inside as Akira claimed, then they might have to make their way back along the tunnel to the cellar again.

  Just as Geoffrey was slipping into semiconsciousness, where all he was aware of were Akira’s mindless monologue and the laborious process of putting one foot in front of the other, Akira stopped.

  “Here it is,” he announced. “There’s steps here, so watch out.”

  Geoffrey edged forward carefully, feeling the walls widen suddenly so that he could put his hands out in all directions and feel nothing. Then he was tumbling down the steps, a helpless jumble of arms and legs, and landed in a heap next to Akira.

  “Clumsy devil,” muttered Akira. “Told you to watch out. Here’s the entrance.”

  It took a moment for Geoffrey to register that he could see Akira’s dim shadow poking around. At first he thought it must be the effects of banging his head when he fell down the steps, but he blinked hard and found he could still see. Unlike the trapdoor in the cellar, this door allowed the tiniest sliver of light to percolate through. He heaved himself upright and looked at it. It was made of wood, and sturdy, and light was seeping in along its bottom. And if light could come in, then so could air, and at least he would not die of slow suffocation in the cellar.

  “Where does this come out?” he asked Akira, calmer now that he knew the outside was almost within his grasp.

  “A garden,” said Akira. “It used to belong to a cloth merchant, but now some knight owns it, and he don’t like old Akira using this door. He blocked it off with some stones so I can’t get it open.”

  Geoffrey put his shoulder to the door and pushed with all his might. Nothing happened. He took hold of a ring that acted as a door handle, and pulled. The door remained fast. Taking a deep br
eath, he grasped the ring a second time, braced his foot against the doorjamb, and pulled with every ounce of his strength. He felt the blood pounding in his ears, and the muscles stretching nastily in his arms, but still he hauled. Then there was a resounding rip, and he went crashing backward, the ring still in his hand.

  “You must be strong,” said Akira with admiration. “You ripped the ring right out of the door. Of course, it don’t help us none.” He gave another wet sniff, wiped his nose against his shoulder, and sat down next to the disconsolate Geoffrey. “Told you it don’t open from the inside,” he said.

  “Is there a house nearby?” asked Geoffrey, rubbing the base of his spine, where he had fallen. “If we shout, will anyone hear?”

  “Oh, they’ll hear all right,” said Akira morosely. “But it won’t do us no good.”

  “Must you keep saying that?” cried Geoffrey in exasperation. “Why will shouting not help?”

  “Because the knight what lives there is called Sir Armand of Laon. And he’s a good friend of that skinny, fair-haired knight what threw us down here in the first place.”

  Akira wanted to return to the more spacious cellar, but Geoffrey refused to budge from the sliver of light and hot breath of fresh air that occasionally oozed underneath the door. The knight lay flat on his stomach, but could see nothing except some brownish weeds. Akira had told him that the garden was fairly large, and the chances of anyone hearing shouts for help from the road were remote. And even if they did, no one was likely to investigate cries coming from the garden of as powerful a knight as Armand of Laon. Geoffrey lay on the chill stone floor and watched the light fade from under the door.

  He did not think he was likely to fall asleep, but he did, exhausted by the events and tensions of the last few days. He awoke cold, stiff, and disoriented in total darkness. He was immediately seized by panic, and leapt to his feet struggling for breath. Akira, who was kicked awake in the process, grumbled in protest.