The Gallows Curse

by Karen Maitland

  ' "My father's ring!" he cried. He held up a gold ring with a single pearl held in place by a knot of gold. "This is my father's ring. Where did you get it?"

  'But the man couldn't understand him.

  'Gerard pushed the ring in his face. "Where! Where!" he was shouting.

  'Ayaz kept shaking his head in incomprehension, then finally he shrugged and drew his finger across his throat to show he had taken it from a dead man, a murdered man. I heard Gerard gasp and turned to look at him. An expression of horror and rage was spreading across his face. Gerard had realized that it was this very Saracen grovelling before him who had slain his beloved father; the father he had arrived too late to save.

  'With a scream of grief and fury that seemed to rip heaven itself apart, Gerard lifted his sword, then stabbed it into the Saracen's heart. Ayaz dropped where he still knelt, a look of utter bewilderment on his face. Gerard, pausing only to draw out his blade, ran into the house. I followed hard on his heels. Ayaz's wife lay dead inside, a bloody knife in her hands. She had stabbed herself rather than be taken alive. Gerard was beside himself with rage. He ran from room to room searching everywhere. He was sure she had hidden her children and he was determined that not a single child of his father's murderer should remain alive to carry on that infidel's name.

  'But though he searched every conceivable nook and chamber, he could not find another person in the house. Then he heard a baby crying. He followed the sound and eventually found the infant hidden in a basket under a pile of linen. I watched him pick the baby boy up by the feet. I shouted at him to stop, and he turned to face me, the infant dangling from his hands.

  ' "And let him grow up to slaughter other good Christian men?"

  'His voice was harsh and bitter. I'd never heard him speak like that before, it was as if another man was speaking through his mouth. It wasn't him, I know it wasn't him. Then, as if he was killing a fish, he dashed the baby's head as hard as he could against the white wall.

  'I was horrified. But I don't know why I should have been. We both knew the child would be slaughtered anyway by Richard's men outside the wall. You could say what Gerard did was more merciful, for at least the child died instantly. If it had been thrown into the melee outside, fallen beneath the bodies of terrified men and women, or been hacked at by the exhausted, frenzied stabbing of Richard's men, the infant might have taken hours to die in pain. But it was the shock of seeing Gerard, that good, noble, brave man, commit such an act that rocked the foundations of all that I knew and loved about him. It was an indelible stain which seemed to haunt him from the moment the deed was done.

  'By nightfall every Saracen in the town was dead, save for the prostitutes. Some three thousand died that day, so they said. Gerard finally reported to Osborn that the town was cleared. He told him of the many bodies he'd found inside: men who'd poisoned their own children rather than leave them to the mercy of Richard's soldiers; girls who'd jumped to their own deaths, women with their babies in their arms who'd thrown themselves down wells rather than be taken alive.

  'All this he told Osborn, and Osborn laughed ... he just laughed . . . I've never been able to forgive him for that. It was at that moment I understood what a truly good man Gerard was. He cared about what he'd done. He remembered it. He condemned himself for it. But Osborn, with the murder of hundreds on his hands, had only laughed. He regretted not one moment of the pain he had caused, nor one drop of blood he had shed.

  'That night the priests who travelled with Richard's army came round blessing the men and trying to cheer them, assuring them that all their sins had been washed away that day, and that they had done God's glorious work, for these pagan cattle were doomed to hell. They stood on any mound they could find and shouted the words of St Bernard of Clairvaux into the sweltering night — "The Christian glories in the death of a pagan, because thereby Christ himself is glorified."'

  Raffaele was staring at the wall in Ma's chamber. He seemed to have forgotten where he was or that Elena was even there. She felt sick. She had been there. She had seen the girl hurl herself down into the courtyard. She had seen Gerard murder that innocent baby, just as Raffaele had watched it, except that Gerard's hands had become her hands. It was her own fingers that dripped red with that infant's blood.

  She flinched as Raffaele suddenly began to speak again, distantly, as if he was explaining something to himself rather than to her.

  'But I could never bring myself to tell Gerard the truth about what else I discovered in Ayaz's house. It would have destroyed him. And I couldn't add to his pain.

  'You see, after he killed the baby, Gerard ran from the house. He was violently sick, but he didn't want any man to see him vomit in case they thought him a coward. I was about to leave too, when I noticed a low door that we had overlooked before. I discovered it led to some kind of chamber, shaped like a giant pot, with a channel running into it from the flat roof above. I took it to be some kind of cistern. In the winter rains, it would fill with water, but it was summer then and the siege had been a long one. Every drop of water was gone. But the cistern was not empty.

  'There was a man inside. He lay curled up at the bottom, under a blanket. As I entered he cried out in alarm and I knew at once by his words he was a Christian prisoner. There was something familiar about his face and I guessed he was one of the soldiers I had met when we'd first arrived, though I couldn't recall his name. I scrambled into the cistern to help him up, telling him I would take him to safety at once, but to my astonishment, instead of being delighted to be rescued, he begged me to kill him.

  'I was astounded. I told him the siege was over. Richard was the victor and he was safe, but still he pleaded with me to end his life. I couldn't understand it. He threw off the blanket and then I saw why he wanted me to grant him the mercy of death. His feet and hands had been lopped off. No man on God's earth would want to live out his days like that.

  'He told me that he had a son and wife at home whom he adored. He couldn't bear to return home to them, unable to do the smallest task for himself, not able to feed himself or even clean the shit from his own backside. Better his son believed that his father died a noble death on the battlefield than that he lived on as a useless mockery of a man. How could he be a father to his son, or husband to his wife like this, he asked me, with tears streaming down his face. He was humiliated to weep in front of me, and he couldn't even wipe away his own tears.

  'I felt as if all the breath had been sucked out of me, for as he spoke of his home, I knew at once where I had seen his face before, or rather, a younger version of it. I told him that his son, Gerard, was here in this city. That he had been in this very house not minutes before. But he begged me not to tell Gerard he was alive.

  'And then . . . and then he asked me to do all in my power to protect Ayaz and his family. He told me how he had been captured by one of the raiding parties from the city and dragged back through the tunnels into Acre itself. The city leaders had mutilated their captives and left them to die. But that night Ayaz had found Gerard's father crawling among the dead and dying prisoners. He'd smuggled him home, tended to his wounds, fed him with what little they had, and sheltered him.

  'You see, like many in the city, Ayaz's own father had fought in the last Holy War, not as a Saracen, but against them, as a Christian. Ayaz's father had been taken prisoner and forced to convert to the Muslim faith in exchange for his life. He had married a local Muslim woman, and their son Ayaz, like so many others in the city, now found himself fighting against his own Christian cousins. Ayaz had tried to save the life of Gerard's father out of honour and respect for his own father who had once been a Christian.'

  Elena had hardly dared breathe in case she interrupted Raffaele's tale, but now she couldn't help blurting out the question, 'Did you do what the poor man asked? Did you kill Gerard's father?'

  'I couldn't do it.'

  The words were spoken so softly and with so much grief that despite her anger, Elena wanted to throw her arms about
him and comfort him.

  'I was a coward. I couldn't kill him, not once I knew who he was. I made arrangements for him to be brought back to England ... I think ... I hoped that in time, when he had learned to live with what he now was, he might want to see his son again.

  'But the more I got to know Gerard, the more I realized what the knowledge would do to him ... do to them both.

  Gerard had slaughtered the man who'd saved his own father's life and, worse still, he had murdered Ayaz's only son, a helpless infant. Gerard couldn't have borne that knowledge. And if I had reunited them, then his father would also come to know what Gerard had done in his name. How could I add to the pain of either one of them? Weren't they suffering enough?'

  Elena pressed her hands over her mouth to stop a scream escaping. 'That man . . . that poor man in the cage in Ma's cellar, that is Gerard's father!'

  Raffaele raised his head and looked at her, his face distorted in misery. There was no need for him to say anything.

  'How could you leave him like that in the cage?'

  'What else could I do?' Raffaele sank his head in his hands. 'I had to keep him safe and hidden. I didn't have the money to pay for lodgings for him and someone to take care of him, not for all the years he might live. How was he to survive, by begging on the streets? Ma took him in when I didn't know where else to take him. She was grateful to me for saving the life of her brother Ta . . . a brother she had not seen since she was an infant. She agreed to take him. A life for a life, she said. And at least in here he is not forced to endure the contempt or pity of the world, for Ma pities no one.'

  Elena couldn't look at him. She closed her eyes, trying to piece together all the fragments of her thoughts that lay shattered around her. The dreams had not been about her. She was never going to harm her baby. All that had happened, her arrest, Athan's death, what Raoul and Hugh had done to her and now tonight, attacking Osborn, none of this would have had happened, had it not been for a single dream, a dream which was not even her own, but one that Raffaele had forced on her.

  'Why?' she screamed at Raffaele. Why did you choose me? You could have chosen anyone as the sin-eater — a beggar, a thief, a stranger, anyone. Why me? Why punish me? What had I ever done to hurt you?'

  He stared at her. 'But don't you understand? It was never to be a punishment. I couldn't carry this alone. While Gerard lived we bore it together. It was our burden, but also our bond that made us closer than any blood brothers. Once he'd gone I couldn't give that to a stranger. This is my past, my memories, my whole self, and I wanted you to share it. You were the only person in the world I could give this to, because ... because I love you.'

  Elena froze in horror, staring at the pathetic wretch of a man in front of her. Tears were running down his sagging cheeks. He held his great hands out in a useless gesture of a child seeking comfort, and then let them drop as if he knew they would never be grasped.

  The door banged open and Ma scurried into the chamber. Raffaele turned abruptly away, scrubbing the wetness from his face. Elena couldn't move. She could only continue to stare at him in utter disbelief.

  Ma glanced from one to the other, sensing the atmosphere, but there was no time to pander to it. She snorted impatiently.

  'On your feet, the pair of you. There's a boat waiting for you down river. He can't risk coming closer to the town for fear of being stopped and searched. I'll take you there myself. I need Talbot here in case the soldiers come. Hurry, it'll soon be dawn and we want you safely out of sight of Norwich by then. Here's your bundle, my darling. Now, give me that cloak and amulet, case any sees it.' She thrust a darker, shabbier cloak trimmed with grey rabbit's fur into Elena's arms. 'This'll keep you warm on the water.'

  'Water?' Elena repeated dumbly.

  'Haven't you told her yet?' Ma scolded Raffaele. 'What on earth have you two been talking about? Master Raffe's come to take you with him.'

  Elena flung the cloak off, her eyes blazing with fury. 'Go with him? I can't go with him! I won't! You don't know what he's done.'

  Ma just as firmly thrust the cloak back at Elena again. 'So you are going to stay here, are you? You've just attacked the most powerful man in these parts, wounded him and let him recognize you, and now you think you're going to sit and wait for him to find you? Well, you're not waiting here, my darling. You may not be fond of your own head, but I'm planning to keep mine on my shoulders for a good few years yet, if the Devil can spare me.'

  'You needn't fret, I won't put you in danger,' Elena said, jerking her chin up defiantly. 'I'll leave this place, but I'll leave it alone. Not with him, never with him.'

  'Brave words, my darling. And what exactly will you do alone? Even supposing you manage to evade capture with half the country looking for you and a wolf's bounty on your head, how do you imagine you're going to live? Begging, or whoring in the alleys of some filthy little town? You think the girls here are hard done by, but you wait until you're forced to service the stinking drunks and poxy rogues who can't afford a girl from a whorehouse. When they fuck you against a wall and give you a punch instead of a coin, when you have to spend what's left of the night sleeping hungry in a graveyard, then you'll understand what it really means to be alone.'

  Ma's words were brutal, but they did what she intended them to do and slapped Elena into understanding the reality of her situation. For the moment she felt herself sinking in despair, but then she remembered what had been floating somewhere beneath the surface of her mind. She clutched at it desperately.

  'We can tell them,' Elena said, 'tell them what Osborn did. Then they'll arrest him not me.'

  Raffaele and Ma glanced at each other as if her wits were wandering.

  Elena turned to Raffaele. 'Remember I told you what I overheard in the manor about a ship and the French? I know now who it was who was talking in the bedchamber.'

  Raffaele said wearily, 'I already know. It was Hugh, but —'

  'No, no, it wasn't. It was Osborn. I should have recognized his voice at the trial when my son . . . but I was too upset to even think of it.'

  Raffaele stared at her. 'You're wrong. Osborn is the king's man. It was Hugh who was the traitor. After all these months, you couldn't possibly remember his voice.'

  'I didn't,' Elena said. 'But tonight when he realized that I was his villein, he told me he knew I was the girl who he'd seen running away from the door. He thought I'd come to ask him for money to keep quiet about what I heard.'

  Raffaele looked stunned. 'All this time I thought. . . but it was the wrong brother.'

  Ma grunted. 'It would explain why Osborn was so keen to get Elena back.' She turned to Elena. 'But, my darling, I'm afraid this isn't going to help you. It only adds to the danger you're in. You've no proof except what Osborn told you and he'll deny it, but now he'll be more determined than ever to silence you for good.'

  Raffaele's face was haggard and pale in the candlelight. 'Elena, please come with me. Let me try to atone for what I've done to you. I'll protect you and see that you want for nothing that a man can provide for a woman. I know that my body repulses you. I've always known that and, believe me, I understand how you feel better than you can ever imagine, for my body disgusts me too. But I swear on Gerard's soul I will not lay one finger on you. And if you should in time find a man who loves you, and whom you love, I promise I will let you go to him with a glad heart. I begged you before to trust me and I did not deserve that trust, but I shall. I swear it.'

  Talbot poked his head round the door. 'If they don't go now, Ma, there'll be no going at all.'

  Ma nodded. She didn't wait for Elena to reply, but thrust her bundle into her arms, pushing the girl firmly towards the door. Elena found herself hurrying down the stairs behind Raffaele without even knowing if she had agreed to go or not.

  Outside, Ma grasped both their hands and with one on each side of her she hurried them through the silent streets. To any casual observer glimpsing their shapes in the darkness, Ma must have looked like a child walking betw
een her parents.

  The streets were completely deserted now. The inns and alehouses had emptied. Candles had been extinguished or long since burned away, and there was not a chink of light to be seen in any of the blind houses. A fine drizzle was falling, which clung to their faces in a wet mist of tiny beads, soaking their clothes. Elena shivered.

  Raffe carried a lantern low down, so that they could pick their way across the open sewers and through the tight little lanes. A beggar, curled up in the entrance of a courtyard, groaned in his sleep as the light from the lantern brushed his eyes. He turned over, hugging himself tighter against the cold and rain. His sallow wrinkled flesh glistened wetly through the holes in his rags and his filthy bare toes scrunched into fists.

  The three strange figures steadied one another over the slippery cobbles, the lantern casting a misty yellow halo around their feet, but their faces were hidden in the darkness. Elena glanced over Ma's head at the tall figure lumbering beside her. He kept his head and his shoulders hunched forward like a prisoner being marched to the gallows.

  Elena still had no idea what she intended to do. She could not forgive what he had done to her. Yet, though she told herself she hated him, she understood the need to share your most terrible secrets with someone. Who could you allow to glimpse the dark creatures that prowl within you, except someone you truly love? And Raffaele did love her. She knew that. Deep down, she had always known it.