He waited. The half moon was high in the night sky before he heard the sounds he had been waiting for. They came from the small side door set in the courtyard wall and almost under the mulberry tree. Muted sounds but loud for all that in the night quiet. They ceased and silence fell once more. Nothing stirred. More soft sounds and the door was open. Dai ducked under the low lintel and into the courtyard where a trio waited for him in the shadow of the branching mulberry tree: Twm, Giles and the reluctant pilgrim, Roger de Comfrey, eyes gleaming with the thrill of danger. Dai looked at Twm who nodded. All well, then. Everything quiet, everyone to bed. He moved silently back into the street; they’d agreed an owl’s call and he’d made those calls often enough in the bandit days. Soft, fluting, carrying down the length of the narrow street. A pause and an answering call. Silence then shadows became substance, became men who crept noiselessly closer in the deep shadow of the wall. They halted outside the half-open door. Blue, Sakoura, Mehmi, Edgar, three of Sakoura’s own men who had been eager to join this desperate venture. There they would stay unless or until they were needed. No noise, see. That was their best weapon.
Dai and Twm edged noiselessly along the courtyard wall hugging the shadow of the mulberry tree for as long as they could. The lamps hanging from under the courtyard arch would burn all night. At the further end of the courtyard they showed a night guard but he was dozing, certain that the house was secure. His master would not have it otherwise. Besides, who would want to break into this rotting, mouldering place? A small corridor, Rémi had signed. Beware dry leaves, pools of stagnant water, sherds of broken jugs. They could see the black opening but to get there they had to break away from the shadows of the tree. Their clothes were dark but they knew it was movement that would give them away, a shifting of shadows within the shadows. That, and if Vecdet had kept any of his mastiffs here at this house. No sign of them, no sound. The marauding dirty white cat stalked boldly across the courtyard; from somewhere unseen its mate yowled softly. They looked at each other. Nodded. No dogs here, for certain. They crept out of the shadow of the tree along the inside of the courtyard arches, keeping away from the revealing lamp light, until they came to the dark mouth of the corridor.
The grille was low down, at ground level, barely an opening at all and hard to spot. Dai would have stooped to it but Twm nudged his arm and shook his head. No noise – best weapon. Better not risk a low call. They crept along the rank corridor, feeling their way now in the deepening dark. A door was at the further end, a small door, very low, not head height. It was not locked but steep steps went down into an underground corridor. Stone steps but crumbling, Rémi had said, as far as he could tell. After that, he didn’t know. It was dark and he dare not risk taking the time to look further.
‘You’ve done well enough as it is, Rémi,’ Dai had told him. ‘We’d have no chance it it wasn’t for you.’
Rémi gave a ghost grin. It was street-life learning. However long ago, however young he’d been, you never forgot lessons learnt on the streets. It meant the difference between life and death.
The door was still unlocked. The reason was clear as soon as Dai grasped the wood and felt it crumble beneath his hands. They felt for the low lintel, slid under and edged down the treacherous stone steps, finger-tipping the rough walls, toe-ing for the next step, the next, down to the black corridor, their eyes in their finger tips and toes. A scutter behind him and Twm moved too hastily. Rats. Only to be expected but unexpected, all the same. Small stones rattled down the last of the steps. They froze into stillness. Nothing. Silence. They were in the corridor, the ground firm earth under their feet, but it was pitch black, and not even a rancid smoky sheep-fat candle to guide them. They felt their way along the corridor, their quiet breathing abnormally loud in their ears. A door, this wood half rotten as well. Another door, hanging crazily half open. An empty doorway. All opened into empty blackness that stank of damp and decay. Then a solid door, new most like, with a wooden bar pushed firmly into its socket in the stone wall. Dai eased it back. Plenty of practice, see, breaking into pantries and kitchens and storerooms. However long ago, however young he’d been, he’d never forgotten lessons learnt on the run. It meant the difference between life and death, didn’t it now?
The door opened on to blackness. ‘Kazan?’ he said in the soft, flat tones that wouldn’t carry as whispers did.
‘He will come, Niko,’ she said again and again. ‘I know he will. Have faith.’ There is always room for faith. But so much time had passed and they were so cold and so frightened and still there was no sign from him. There is always room for faith.
She had grown used to the rustlings and squeakings and hissings around them. Let the creeping, crawling, scuttering creatures go about their business. They were not the enemy. They meant no harm. A rustle outside the grille. She stiffened, listened, intent. Nothing. Only a cat’s call. An owl she’d heard earlier, soft fluting in the night; another cat’s call. Both out hunting little defenceless creatures. Niko was uneasily asleep, pillowed against her, muttering and restless. She stroked his curly hair, kissed his forehead. Poor child. He was so young, too young to live through such troubled times. She saw again the crudely made windmill with its sails turning in the wind and the laughing boy held in Blue’s strong arms. That was how it should be, she thought. Hatice and Blue and Niko, safe and happy. Not this. It should not be like this. There is always room for faith. He would come, she told herself, but her whole body ached with despair. At first she didn’t hear the slight sounds at the door, her name spoken in a soft, flat voice.
‘There they are,’ Giles murmured. Four figures emerging from the deep shadows of the corridor: Dai half-carrying Kazan; Tom with Niko slung over his shoulder. Only the courtyard to edge round, then they were in the shadow of the mulberry tree, the wonderful, unexpected, life-giving door to freedom just beyond.
Giles stumbled, clutched tight to the boy, cursed silently as loose tiles rattled. The guard jerked awake.
‘Who’s there?’
He saw across the courtyard shadowy shapes. Not his master’s men. He was wide awake now, yelling the alarm, his shouts sharpened by dread of Vecdet’s fury.
Men roused suddenly from sleep in alarm and confusion, grabbing weapons and bursting into the courtyard. Tom dropped Niko on to his feet and pushed him towards the mulberry tree and the open door as Giles and Roger ducked through, Blue close behind them. Tom drew his sword free from its scabbard and knew Dai already had that lethal falchion in his hands.
Blue breathed deeply. This was more like it. Brusting for a fight, he was. And that big bastard with the squashed nose and scarred face? That cruel bully who’d hurt those two young uns? He’d a reckoning to make with that one.
And there he was, towering over the rest, huge and hard and heavy fisted. No sword. He’d charged out without it, trusting to his bare hands. Good enough, Blue grunted, for he had little skill with a sword. Weapons God gave a man, now that was different; bare hands and fists and feet – teeth and nails, if needs be. Blue charged towards him. And then recoiled feeling as if he’d smashed his fists into the stone wall behind him. He shook his head to recover himself and clenched his fists again, smashing blow after blow after blow, forcing the huge man back a step, and another. Then, out of nowhere, a massive fist landed a blow that sent him reeling. He felt blood in his mouth, blood pouring down his face and blinding him. He swiped it away, somehow twisting and dodging the next murderous blow but it landed on his shoulder with paralysing force. He staggered backwards into two who were close-fighting and the clashing of their swords rang in his head. Big Aziz was towering over him, his booted foot poised ready to stamp into the shamefully soft flesh of his belly and groin. Blue flung himself sidewards and rolled and rolled again. He lumbered to his feet but his timing was wrong. The man’s foot swung hard into his ribs. He felt a crack and realised he was wrong: this man was more than his match. This man was hardened by cruelty while he, Blue, was softened by drink and quiet living. Out o
f the corner of his eye he saw the boy he would have taken as son, and the boy who was a girl and full of courage. He shook himself clear-headed again. He could not lose. These two were dear to him, trusted him, loved him. Hatice whose poor ravaged forehead told him of brutality and suffering. Dai who had taken him in. Edgar-the-altar-boy who had won a fair, pale bride. All these. He could not let them down. He gathered his strength. He must square up and fight and win.
Edgar staggered with the impact of Blue’s fall. He felt the clash of the guard’s sword against the flat of his own, felt pain in the palm of his hand and vibration travel up his arm and jar his whole body. He was no fighting man but he’d insisted on his share in the rescue and here he was helpless, confused, his back against the wall. His opponent swung his sword up and over his head and lunged in for the killing stroke. Somehow, Edgar shifted sideways, heard the singing blade travel past him and hit the stone wall, the singing reverberating on and on and on like the struck bells of the monastery. The guard followed the strike and fell against the pommel, the wind knocked out of him, and in that moment Edgar brought his sword edge up and across the man’s body, but the blow was too feeble to do more than rock him off balance. The man stumbled sideways and took a fresh hold on his sword but Edgar had already shifted his grip, raised the pommel and smashed it up under the man’s jaw. Once, and again. A third blow caught the side of his head with a sickening sound of bone crunching. The man fell to the ground.
Dodge back, knee up and boot kicking hard into the man’s groin, sending him staggering back, arms flailing; a stride forward, blade up and arrowing towards the man’s body and in between his ribs; twist and pull. Dai felt movement behind him and whirled round, deftly side-stepping, falchion lifted and sweeping down, slashing deep into the man’s leg and cutting through, the force of the thrust keeping it going, almost severing the leg, and the man howling and clutching at the spurting blood. Dai ignored him, focused on the next attacker, launching himself at the man’s knees and pulling up, sending the man backwards and across the sword-swing of Giles’ opponent. The swing caught him full across the face. Giles jabbed under his opponent’s raised arm and into the exposed armpit. He spared a glance at Dai’s intent, expressionless face streaming blood from a slash wound. His body was balanced, tensed, his hands in their leathered gauntlets grasping the pommel of the falchion, crunching upwards into the under jaw of a guard who had launched himself forward. One glimpse, then Giles saw no more as he parried a thrust and tangled the man’s arms, bringing his own blade against the man’s neck, forcing it into his flesh, cutting off air. He was hardly aware of the man behind him until Tom was there, his free arm grabbing and trapping the man’s sword arm by the elbow, his own sword sweeping down into the flesh and bone of the trapped elbow. Metal struck against metal, ringing and echoing in the confines of the courtyard. Grunts and cries of pain and heavy panting breaths. The din of men desperately doing each other down to death. From beyond the wall came the first cries of alarm and the pounding feet of the night watch.
Vecdet looked down on the chaos from the balcony. How had it happened? How had the Welshman and his man found a way in? And his men, his own fighting men, taken by surprise, forced back, on the edge of defeat? That night guard, that useless, woman-hearted creature; that blow-fly-ridden turd; blind-eyes he had been, and blind-eyed he would be before the night was done. And those three, betraying his hospitality, traitors all, fighting alongside the Welshman. How could he, Vecdet, the wily one, be so taken in? His beady, pouchy eyes blazed like kindling. That boy, that slippery creature who had escaped him once before. He was the one. Let him be destroyed now as he should have been destroyed then, like the vermin he was. Vecdet eased his bulk down the steps, his back against the wall. There he was, the wretch, at the foot of the steps, a thin-bladed dagger glinting in his grasp. Well then. He pounced, grabbed the boy, dashed his wrist against the sharp edge of the stone wall and heard with satisfaction a gasp of pain. Good. He grabbed the dagger as it slipped out of the boy’s grasp and hauled the wretch upright by the hair on his head, twisting his podgy hands tight into the strands and up the steps backwards, one by one, yanking remorselessly when the creature stumbled and cried out with pain, up the steps, one by one to the top. He stood on the balcony with the boy pressed against his fleshy body, pinioned by one engulfing arm so that the sour stench of sweat rose to the boy’s nostrils. The boy’s own knife, sharp-pointed, fine-honed, he held under the boy’s ear, its tip just pressing into the flesh. ‘Dafydd the Welshman,’ he shrieked in his gelding voice. It carried over the courtyard. ‘Look here.’ It was enough. Chaos ended and silence began. ‘Stop now or the boy dies.’ He imagined sliding the point into that neck, lusted for the feel of the flesh giving way under the blade, sliding up and into the eye sockets and reaching into the head space. He shivered with pleasure. But he must not. Not yet. That was to end his own escape. ‘Put down your weapons.’ The Welshman’s sword was the first to clatter to the ground.
‘Let him go free.’
‘Tell me, Welshman, why should I do that?’ He smiled, sure of himself again. He had the boy, his sure shield; the fool of a Welshman would do anything to keep the boy safe. And that commotion at the gates, the night guard demanding entrance, let that be to his advantage as well. ‘Let them in,’ he shouted. ‘Let them see how this murdering Welshmen breaks his word as easily as he breaks the peace of the curfew.’ Then there was searing pain in his wrist and he screamed. The wretched boy had bitten him to the bone. In the moment he relaxed his hold the boy twisted and wrenched himself out and away and fell flat against the balcony railing, gasping and panting. The rotten wood cracked under the force of his fall. Vecdet lunged towards him, the thin point of the dagger raised. He crashed against the broken balcony railing. Crashed through rotten wood. Crashed through and down to the courtyard below. His huge body smacked dully on to its surface. His head cracked sharply on the tiles. Blood seeped in a dark pool.
Kazan could never quite remember the afterwards. The guards arriving, yes; the consul roused from his bed and loud in disapproval until it was clear the two young boys had indeed been stolen. This was not something that could be explained away. Vecdet was dead but there was no one to blame. A rotten balcony, and the man threatening death to the guest of an honoured citizen, in front of witnesses, Sakoura’s friends, who would demand justice of the Bey. The consul saw the way the wind was blowing. He was already regretting his refusal to search the property. Best let these travellers leave in the morning, keep the events of this night from the Bey, if that was possible. At least keep it from Genoa. And there was Vecdet’s man to deal with, the huge, hulking Aziz, battered and bruised, one eye swollen and closing up, confused at his own defeat and loudly grieving over his dead master. That other big man looked in no better shape.
Blue had never felt so beaten. His whole body hurt. He had lost one tooth at least and his mouth was full of blood. There was blood in his eyes. He had a broken rib. But he had won through.
Tom watched Dafydd’s rush up the stairs to the girl. She was dazed and shaking, clinging to the fragile railings. He watched as Dafydd pulled her away from them and to safety close against him, cradling her. ‘Safe now. Safe.’ His hand was stroking her hair, smoothing away fear, because that was what he did, this one-time pot-boy. He brought comfort in the dark to terrified creatures, man or woman, boy or girl. His conscience, that terrible conscience, bound him to care for any strays who came across his path, even the coward son of a knight-at-arms, sobbing in terror in the blackest night. Safe now. Safe. And in the caring he found some comfort himself, and relief from the guilt of being alive when those he loved were dead. I thought myself dishonoured, Welshman, but I was wrong. I was wrong. Safe now. Safe.
Roger was bright-eyed still but his boyishness was gone. There had been so much at stake. This was no game. Take nothing seriously and nothing serious will take you. That had been his motto. And now? It was life and death. No game. Sword piercing flesh. Life ended on a sw
ord thrust. A dagger’s blade. A pommel smashing into a man’s brains or his jaw or smashing the teeth from his head. A fall from a balcony on to the hard stone below. He thought he would for ever remember the sickening crack of skull on stone.
‘I would rather be a pilgrim,’ he confided to a miraculously unscathed Edgar and a torn and bleeding Thomas. They were standing in the dark shadowed secrecy of the mulberry tree waiting for the consul to make his decision. Edgar opened his mouth to agree but it was Thomas who spoke.
‘And so would I,’ said the dark man.
Roger paused the moment it took for his heart beat to pulse and pulse again. ‘You had no pleasure in warfare even when we were squires,’ he remembered. ‘Not even the pig-hunts.’
‘Never. To kill. Be killed. What life is that? To torture, maim, crucify your enemy. What victory is that? Christ was crucified for our sins and our redemption and yet we fight on and on spilling more and more blood.’
‘You should have been the monk,’ said Edgar. ‘Not me.’
‘Yes, I think so too, Edgar, I think so too.’ Thomas was surprised at his own words.
27
Let’s go, we two, my lovely girl.
O white-bright face, my maid whose eye’s
a glowing ember, if we’ll go, let’s go now
(Dafydd ap Gwilym, 14thC)
Later. Sakoura’s home. His wife and Agathi and Hatice there to welcome them with caresses and soft exclamations of distress. The wounded were tended and eased though it would take time for ragged cuts and gouged flesh to heal. Niko was asleep pillowed between Hatice and Blue, with Agathi never far away. She was leaving him at daybreak, this brave young brother of hers, and what had seemed right yesterday was no longer so but she was promised now to this young man with the golden curls and very blue eyes who she loved with all her heart. Yet she owed her brother her love and loyalty as well. She felt as if she had awoken at last from the nightmare that had kept her in its thrall for so long now. Edgar felt her distress. He didn’t know what to do or say.
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