Gate of the Dead

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Gate of the Dead Page 9

by David Gilman


  A simple stone shelter had been built on the approach path, barely big enough for half a dozen men to stand in, but its purpose was not a sentry position. It housed a crucifix, and a fine one at that; the figure of Christ in his torment was solid silver against the dark heavy wood to which it was nailed. Blackstone had given his men a place to remember their Lord God. Next to it stood another stone hut, a hermitage where an ageing mendicant monk offered his blessings to each of Blackstone’s fighters. The Holy Mother Church forgave them their sins. A man could go to war knowing his soul had been cleansed.

  Blackstone turned in the saddle and looked at Torellini, as if he could hear the priest’s thoughts echoing across the hillsides. He smiled. He knew what his men needed and that prayer and forgiveness gave comfort not only to them but to those who paid Blackstone to fight for them.

  ‘We took the crucifix from a merchant from Siena who tried to slip past us on his way to Lucca,’ said Blackstone.

  ‘And the graveyard is sanctified?’ Father Torellini asked.

  Blackstone nodded towards the old monk kneeling before his saviour. ‘We found him wandering the hillsides. Too much sun, but he’s devout, so I had him sprinkle some holy water. He can chant as many prayers a day as he wants. I can’t hear him.’

  Blackstone urged his horse forward while Father Torellini watched the monk muttering incessant prayer, spittle dribbling into his matted beard.

  ‘And where would he get holy water from?’ the priest called after him.

  ‘We stole it,’ Blackstone answered.

  *

  Village boys ran forward to take the men’s horses as Blackstone and his captains walked up the twisting passages. Elfred and Will Longdon each took one of the silk merchant’s arms, their pace and strength aiding the frightened man up the steps. His questions about his abduction had so far been unanswered: his only consolation was that the cavaliere, Fra Stefano Caprini, followed them up the tortuous streets. One who protected pilgrims would surely not allow Blackstone to murder or torture him. Torellini’s dwarf trailed at the rear as Meulon took it upon himself to carry the priest on his back to the top.

  ‘And a donkey carried the holy man,’ mocked Will Longdon.

  ‘And the donkey will kick your balls if you get too close,’ said John Jacob, striding past them both, catching up with Killbere and Blackstone.

  ‘Your loose tongue will lash you to death one day,’ Elfred added, puffing with effort.

  ‘A man should have some joy in his life. Not that you’d know anything about that, old man,’ he answered, then grinned at Oliviero Dantini’s worried face.

  ‘You understand?’ said Longdon.

  The man nodded.

  ‘Good. Happiness is the next best thing to godliness and godliness is only on my lips and in my heart when I’m shit-scared of getting killed. But happiness is with me all the time providing I can torment these miserable Norman bastards. It’s a simple life.’

  ‘You stupid whoreson, he has no idea what you’re talking about,’ Elfred moaned. ‘Get a move on.’

  ‘Course he understands. Even rich men like a joke, don’t you?’ he said, grinning again at the confused silk merchant. Longdon unslung his covered bow to jab at Meulon, but before he could stretch out his arm he smelled the stench of sweat at his shoulder. Gaillard looked down at the smaller man, nudging him aside. The two Normans had fought together before Blackstone had even arrived at their master’s castle after Crécy.

  ‘Be careful, little man,’ Gaillard said. ‘You trip on these steps and that war bow might go up your arse and out of your big mouth.’

  Longdon was, like most of the others, smaller than the two hulking Normans, whose stature was matched only by Blackstone, but he was as muscled as any archer who could draw a war bow. The years with Blackstone meant that men from different countries fought together without rancour, but for Will Longdon, Frenchmen – Norman or not – belonged lying face down in the mud with an English arrow between their ribs. He was not afraid of either of them and swore by God’s blood that if ever the humour left him he would strike low and fast with his archer’s knife and geld the bastards. The fear that held him back was Blackstone’s retribution. His sworn lord valued those close to him.

  He quickened his pace, stepping past Meulon, dragging both merchant and Elfred with him. ‘Heaven favours the strong of heart, Meulon, but you’d best hope the good priest has a prayer an English God can understand.’

  *

  What Dantini took to be ruffians came out of their houses and greeted Blackstone and their captains as they made their way through the twisting streets. The silk merchant had never seen such rough-looking men. Their appearance frightened him. They wore barely any armour, preferring leather doublets tied with broad belts that held knives and swords; some wore a metal breastplate, others a thigh piece on their exposed fighting side. They looked filthy and all were unshaven. Some chewed food and spat into the gutter; others pushed women back into the darkness of their houses when they tried to peek out and see the warlord and his men return. Yet others loitered like the gangs on the corners of his own city, but these men were a different breed from the young men of rival families in Lucca. He averted his eyes from their gaze, feeling like a lamb trying to creep through a pack of wolves.

  Their eyes followed him.

  No one smiled.

  It was with relief that he finally stepped into the small piazza at the top of the town. Four houses squared off the area and the house at the head of the square was one storey higher than the two-storey houses that flanked it. Women came out of the buildings to greet Blackstone’s captains. Whores or wives or both, Dantini did not know, but he noticed that when Blackstone pushed open the door to the bigger of the houses and stood back to allow Father Torellini to enter, no woman came out to greet him.

  Dantini stood helplessly, trying to take in what was going on around him. Nothing was as he had ever witnessed before. His attention was caught by the lower rows of stone on the base of the house next to him and without thinking his fingers reached out and caressed the uneven etched grooves. The marks were not from the hand of any stonemason or sculptor. He was suddenly startled as one of Blackstone’s men grinned at his uncertainty and drew an arrow from his belt. He rubbed its point into the groove and then made a small gesture with the arrow.

  ‘Sharpens up the heads nicely,’ said the man.

  Blackstone turned back from the door and faced the men.

  ‘John, have the dwarf and our rich friend put into separate rooms. Guard them. Treat them well. Food and water. A woman if they want one.’

  Dantini felt the sweat drying on his spine, a shiver of discomfort that was not fear. ‘Sir Thomas!’ he called impulsively, and wished he had not spoken when those in the square turned their gaze upon him.

  Blackstone waited as the merchant found the courage to continue and realized he might soon be the laughing stock of these barbarians.

  ‘I... I would like to bathe.’

  ‘Of course,’ Blackstone answered. ‘You’ll have hot water brought to your quarters or you can join me and my men in the bathhouse.’

  Dantini was caught by surprise. The Englishman had a bathhouse. His men washed. ‘I would... prefer to bathe alone,’ he answered lamely. The alternative was too unpalatable for words.

  ‘And you shall have a clean linen shirt, Signor Dantini. It will be of sufficient quality not to irritate the skin. We took it from a baggage train going to Milan.’ Blackstone paused and waited for the merchant’s reaction. ‘The man who wore it won’t be needing it any more.’

  His comment had the desired effect. Dantini’s jaw dropped. And then Blackstone added, ‘We ransomed him. He lives in a palace and has many more.’

  The men in the square laughed – and Dantini could do little more than smile thinly at being the butt of the Englishman’s humour.

  ‘We don’t kill every merchant we meet,’ Perinne added. ‘Only those who can’t take a joke.’

  Blacks
tone ushered Torellini into his house as one of the Normans, the one called Gaillard, pointed to one of the houses.

  ‘Your room is there.’ And then as an afterthought: ‘You want a woman?’

  Dantini shook his head vigorously. ‘No, no. I do not.’

  ‘I didn’t think so,’ Gaillard said, and placed a hand, which seemed to the diminutive Italian to be the size of a pig’s thigh, against his back and gently nudged him towards the door.

  What sport would be had with him? he wondered. What conclusion would Thomas Blackstone reach as to who had betrayed his presence in Lucca?

  It had been impossible to ignore the gibbet at the crossroads.

  13

  Blackstone settled Father Torellini onto the straw mattress, which was half propped like a chair. Woven grass mats covered the baked clay tiles and the stone walls held the heat from the fireplace where Blackstone stacked more split logs. The mountain oak would burn long and warm. Torellini looked around the sparsely furnished room. It was a soldier’s quarters: a roughly hewn table and bench in front of the window and a cot with blankets on the opposite side of the room. He had been told there was a privy at the back of the house and that the drains took water and waste below the piazza and into the ravine on one side of the town. Another deterrent. Climbing through excrement would take a particular type of soldier – probably only the likes of Blackstone himself would consider such a route in attack. The town’s foundations had been built by the Romans, which was why there were sufficient wells for the town to survive even if besieged.

  A couple of women brought hot food and extra blankets for the older man. The women were not unattractive and the broad hips and tantalizing breasts swaying beneath their half-tied shawls reminded the old priest of a time when he had tasted the pleasures of the flesh.

  The two men ate in silence watching flames devour the logs.

  ‘Those women are not yours,’ Torellini said matter-of-factly.

  ‘No,’ said Blackstone, shoving another mouthful of goat stew into his mouth.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ muttered Torellini.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Blackstone asked.

  Torellini pulled a piece of gristle from his teeth and threw it into the flames. ‘A man like you needs a woman. All men like you need women.’

  Blackstone glanced at this priest who had cradled his torn body at Crécy, taken his wife and children to safety before Poitiers, and who served God and the wealth of Florence.

  ‘I lie with one when I need to,’ he answered. ‘I make sure they are looked after. No one here is taken against their will.’

  ‘You’ve taken no wife either, nor bred more children,’ Torellini said, making it sound like casual conversation, as if he had no care for Blackstone’s domestic arrangements.

  A gust of wind swirled around the piazza and flapped the tanned pigskin stretched across the window opening.

  Blackstone scraped the plate, wiping it with a crust of bread. He filled his mouth, as if camouflaging the words. ‘I have a wife and children,’ he said. ‘What other sins would you have me commit?’

  ‘I have an interest. I apologize. Yes, I remember them.’

  ‘So do I,’ Blackstone grunted, pushing himself up from where he sat cross-legged before the fire.

  ‘You have heard nothing these past years?’

  ‘They’re somewhere in France. That’s all I know. They are lost to me, but what happened in Lucca is not. You have more important things to worry about than my family. I’m going to find out who betrayed me.’

  *

  Steam smothered the room’s ceiling, making heavy rivulets of condensation trickle down the old plastered walls etched with men’s names. How long had names and comments been scratched into the wall? A thousand years? More? Latin and Tuscan, Hungarian and German, words Blackstone could neither read nor understand. Bored and angry men leaving their mark, telling the world they had been there, wanting little more than sex and money and a full belly to sleep on.

  At some time in history someone had painted images onto the walls that curved into arches supporting the ceiling’s tightly laid Roman bricks. They haunted the walls like ghosts in the plasterwork, tints of blue and terracotta, broken faces like scarred fighters on a fractured background.

  The square bath was big enough for a dozen men to sit chest deep. Women had boiled copper pots, crushing scented herbs into the bubbling water, then warmed bolts of linen cloth for the men to dry themselves.

  The bathhouse was used only by Blackstone and his closest companions – those who had fought at his side over the years and who commanded his men. John Jacob, Elfred, Meulon and Gaillard sweated in the humid air. Will Longdon, linen cloth wrapped around him, lay stretched out on the clay tiles. Sir Gilbert Killbere, as always, declined to share anyone’s water. An old warrior did not consent to bathe with those he commanded and these men still respected his rank and privilege. Had it not been Thomas Blackstone they followed they would stand in Killbere’s shadow and face the enemy.

  A mongrel born and bred. Blackstone’s own words echoed from the past. How in Christ’s name he kept the strictness of command in place, yet could still bathe in the same soup water as them, Killbere never understood. But Blackstone did just that. A fine line separated familiarity and obedience. So be it. But Sir Gilbert would bathe on his own terms.

  ‘I have been summoned to England,’ Blackstone told them.

  They looked surprised, but each man kept his thoughts to himself. No one spoke. Their sworn lord would explain his own reasoning when it suited him, but the silence was only a few seconds old before Will Longdon expressed his opinion.

  ‘That is to be welcomed, I would say. We’ve done no fighting here worth speaking of. Defending these mountains is one thing, but it’s not anything to move the blood around a man’s body. The men’s arses are growing as fat as sows, even though you keep building these damned walls halfway up towards the heavens,’ he said, nodding towards Blackstone. ‘England, eh? My dick quivers at the thought. It means there’s summat afoot with the French.’

  ‘Your cock has no connection to your head, you ignorant bastard,’ Killbere growled. ‘It would rise like a flagpole if a damned goat fluttered her eyelashes. It has a mind of its own! Sweet Jesus on the Cross, Thomas, you’ve a hundred archers commanded by a village idiot.’

  ‘Aye, but he’s my village idiot,’ Blackstone answered. ‘And with Elfred’s wisdom at his back he’s brought down enough death to carve a path for us through our enemies.’

  The men in the bath nodded in agreement, breaking into smiles at Killbere’s belligerent antagonism. He too knew that men needed prodding, that a kick up the arse from him was a welcome sign of respect for those who would stand at his back.

  ‘That is a fact,’ said John Jacob gravely. ‘And cannot be denied, Sir Gilbert. It should be written that death has been unleashed by a village idiot.’

  All the men except Meulon laughed and splashed water on the already dry Longdon, who complained bitterly and would have showed them his backside had Blackstone and Killbere not been present.

  ‘You have already been betrayed, Sir Thomas,’ Meulon said, ‘and a summons to England might be another trap.’

  ‘It’s a command from the King,’ said Blackstone. There was no need to explain Torellini’s questioning of the Great Seal.

  ‘Forgive me, Sir Thomas, but we have seen how kings behave. King John butchered my first master, Lord de Harcourt, and Edward’s son outlawed you on pain of death,’ Meulon answered.

  ‘Because Thomas tried to kill a King! You do not strike down the divine, Meulon, whether he’s French or not,’ said Elfred.

  ‘I am Norman and Sir Thomas knows where my heart lies. I would have slain Jean le Bon myself given the chance,’ said Meulon. And then as the memory was caught: ‘We lost too many good men to the house of Valois. A cause needs to be great for that to happen again.’ He looked Blackstone. ‘Isn’t money a good enough reason for us to stay here?’ He turned to the
others, and shrugged. ‘What do I know? I’m a common man who follows Sir Thomas. Where you go, I go.’

  Elfred clambered from the bath and wrapped the linen sheet around him. The heated water still steamed and it was an opinion long held that too much of it could weaken a man. ‘According to the quill dippers we have two hundred and forty-five lances; that’s several hundred and thirty-five men. Are we to march them home? We are contracted to Florence.’

  ‘The contract is only held for six months at a time,’ said John Jacob.

  ‘And we’ve had three contracts,’ said Meulon. ‘They will want Sir Thomas for as long as he is prepared to stay.’

  ‘They’ll find others,’ Gaillard said. ‘Will Longdon is not wrong, Sir Thomas. Our fighting days are few and far between. Our enemies stay in their own territory. They take their payments and have no wish to die fighting us.’

  There was muttered agreement between them.

  ‘For now we keep this news to ourselves,’ Blackstone said. ‘The men will be told in the next few days. But Meulon is right – we must discover who betrayed me. And why.’

  John Jacob shrugged. ‘It can only be one of three men. Your priest, his dwarf or the merchant. Only they knew in what church you would meet.’

  ‘It was not Father Torellini,’ Blackstone said in a tone that would accept no argument.

  ‘Throw the bastards over the cliff,’ said Will Longdon. ‘Whoever bounces is the guilty one.’

  ‘You would make a fine priest yourself with such skills for determining a man’s guilt,’ said Blackstone. And then explained what he wanted done.

  When the others had left and as Blackstone dried himself, Killbere remained, keeping stubbornly silent.

  ‘You can say what’s on your mind now they’ve gone,’ said Blackstone.

  ‘And what good would it do me?’

 

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