Devil's Lair

by David Wisehart

  When he was finished, the knight looked up. “Thank you.”

  “Thank God,” said William. “You are a difficult man to save.”

  That afternoon Giovanni dug fresh charcoal from the kiln as Nadja fussed over the wounded knight. Marco da Roma reclined a few feet away with his head resting in the girl’s lap. Nadja held a mazar bowl to his lips, from which the knight slurped an infusion of willow bark in small wine.

  William still savored his breakfast. He ate less than most men, and took longer doing it. Each spoon of porridge was a thesis much debated between his teeth before the old philosopher consented to swallow. A carrot had kept him occupied from Viterbo to Rome. An apple was the work of an afternoon. William ended each meal reluctantly, as if it were his last. At this pace, he would soon be right.

  The charcoal kiln proved a moderate success. Digging through the warm dirt, Giovanni discovered that only one of the hazel sticks had not burned; three burned too hot; five charred into coal. These last he whittled into a new set of drawing sticks. His dagger was dull but did the job.

  Nadja set aside her bowl of tisane, then wiped Marco’s lips with a sleeve of the borrowed undertunic. Giovanni winced.

  “I could use a shave,” the knight said, running a hand across his cheek.

  My pleasure, Giovanni thought, but confined his shaving to the black stick now throttled in his hand.

  “Vanity is a sin,” Nadja said.

  The knight beamed at her. “But not one of the fun ones.”

  It occurred to Giovanni that the real Knights Templar never shaved. Instead of saying this aloud he changed the subject. “Terrible battle. So many lost. I wonder who won.”

  Marco propped himself up on his elbows. The undertunic ripped open at the armpits.

  Rot in Hell, Giovanni thought, but what he said was, “I’m curious. Who were you fighting for? The queen or the king? The Neapolitans or the Hungarians?”

  “I fight for honor.”

  “Yes, but whose?”

  “My own.”

  “A mercenary?”

  “I am what you see.”

  “No man is what we see.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Giovanni Boccaccio. The poet. Boccaccio. You’ve probably heard of me.”

  “No.”

  Giovanni turned to William. “Are you sure he’s Italian?”

  Marco leaned forward, too close, and fixed Giovanni with an icy glare. “Are you sure you’re a poet?”

  Giovanni saw the challenge in the Templar’s eyes. Smiling, the poet set aside the stick and the dagger, then slapped the black dust from his hands. He rose to the bait, and to his feet. He brushed the earth from hose and hind, tilted his hat to the proper angle, cleared his throat as if to quiet the court at Naples, and recited a poem he’d written for Gian Barillus, King Robert’s seneschal.

  Be a soldier, a knight and not a knave.

  Chivalric, fearless, dashing, debonair.

  Be a soldier. There’s glory in the glaive

  When weapons clang with sanguinary flair,

  To brave the contest and contest the brave.

  Be a soldier. Let cannons wake the air

  To sear the blood-red sky with crack and fire

  To rattle heaven’s gate till you retire.

  Be a soldier, the hero of the age.

  The glory goes to those who bear the brunt,

  The paragons upon the poet’s page.

  Your metal must be sharp when words are blunt.

  Set out, and let adventure vent your rage.

  One cannot keep the hunter from the hunt.

  Ride, and ride with God. Mount your horse and saddle

  To field the cross across the field of battle.

  Be a soldier. Put on your heraldry

  And rise above the rabble down below.

  Uncage your courage and ferocity.

  Imagine it: you’re camped on a plateau

  And there, not very far ahead, you see

  The foe on the March. You march on the foe.

  Closer. Closer. The air is ripe. And then—

  A thunderclap of steel, the test of men.

  Two men meet on the field, two matadors

  Who came prepared to win, not compromise.

  They might have shared some wine before the wars.

  They see themselves in one another’s eyes.

  Two men. Your life in his and his in yours.

  Two men determining who lives, who dies,

  United in the Devil's own endeavor.

  Just one man leaves. The other? Stays forever.

  Be a soldier. Dismiss all your dismay.

  If you would brave the danger in the dawn,

  If you would lose the night to win the day,

  If you would ride across the Rubicon,

  If you would lead your brothers to the fray,

  If you would be remembered when you’re gone,

  Then yearn to fight and earn the right to hold your

  Head up high. Live or die, you’ll be a soldier.

  Nadja and William applauded. Giovanni took a deep bow. The hat tumbled from his head but he caught it deftly, then flaunted it about as if to catch a shower of coins. The drought persisted. With no coins to cadge, the poet returned his hat to his head and his ass to the earth.

  Marco refused to join the claque. “A Tuscan, by the sound of you.”

  “A critic, by the sound of you.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “I was born in bastardy and raised in neglect. I made my bed in scandal, dipped my wick in wantonness, and hung my hat in shame. Now I live in squalor. Welcome to my world.”

  The friar cleared his throat. “I’m William of Ockham.”

  “A monk?” Marco asked.

  “A greyfriar of England.”

  The knight glanced at the girl. “And you are...?”

  “Nadja.”

  He kissed her hand. “A pleasure, my lady.”

  She blushed, and took her hand away. “I’m not a lady.”

  “And he’s not a knight,” Giovanni said.

  “I met her in Munich,” said William. “She predicted the pestilence three years ago.”

  Marco asked, “What pestilence?”

  The others fell silent.

  The knight seemed to realize his mistake. “How long was I in darkness?”

  “Two days,” said William. “But the world has been two years in darkness. Do you not recall the great mortality?”

  “Vaguely.”

  Giovanni glanced at Nadja, who seemed as confused by Marco’s words as he was.

  “You are addled,” William said. “That is to be expected. It will all return in time.”

  Nadja said, half in a whisper, “Some things are better forgotten.”

  Giovanni could not forget. When the pestilence had first laid siege to Tuscany, he had asked God the reason for their suffering, and found no answer. Asking men, he learned more. Merchants from Genoa and Venice told Giovanni what little they knew, and much that they suspected. There had been for many years, they said, a pestilence in the East, in Cathay and Tartary and places with no names, in strange and terrible lands that had never felt the touch of Christian grace. Some merchants told of quakes and cataclysms that broke the world asunder, releasing the Devil’s breath from the bowels of the earth.

  Whatever the merits of these traveler’s tales, this much seemed certain: the great mortality was spread by a miasma, a foul air that entered through the nose or the mouth. It filled the lungs and spread rapidly throughout the body, creating painful tumors on the inner thigh or under the armpit, or revealing itself in black or purple spots on the skin, or sometimes only by a bloody cough which expelled the bad air out of the lungs and onto another person, and another, and another. In this way the Devil’s breath spread westward from the heathen East into the very heart of Christendom.

  With the pope now a captive in the gilded cage of Avignon, Rome could marshal no defense against such evil, and
within two years there was no Christian in any land that did not fear the breath of their sick mother or father or child.

  “You predicted this pestilence?” Marco asked the girl.

  She nodded. “I heard a voice in a dream: ‘Every third son shall die the daylight. Every third daughter shall die in the night. The children of Noah shall drown in their tears.’”

  “No one listened to her,” said William, “until it was too late.”

  Nadja continued, “In the far north, in the ice lands, they say an old woman causes the plague. A harridan named Hel. She moves from village to village carrying a rake and a broom. When she uses her rake, some villagers die and others survive. But when she uses her broom....”

  “They called Nadja the daughter of Hel,” William said. “They tortured her and worse.”

  “They would have killed me, if not for the good friar.”

  Giovanni saw that Marco had a dagger in his hand. It was Giovanni’s blade.

  How?

  The knight must have swiped it during the recital. Giovanni had set the dagger down when he stood up.

  That was stupid.

  Marco wiped the dagger on his sleeve, leaving smears of charcoal on the fine white fabric. The knight dipped a hand into Nadja’s bowl, splashed some of the medicinal wine on his cheeks, and began to shave. The right side of his face was sunburned, but he did not flinch at the touch of the blade.

  “Are you a witch?” Marco asked the girl.

  Nadja shook her head.

  “A Cassandra,” said William. “Sent by God in our time of need.”

  Giovanni thought he should demand the return of his dagger, but it might sound petulant. If Marco refused to give back the blade, Giovanni doubted he could wrest it from him. It had been a decade or more since he’d fought a man. He had never fought a knight. Marco’s wounds did not even the odds. The poet temporized. He opened his Inferno, laid it beside his father’s old ledger, and took up the pen to continue his map.

  “What’s that?” Marco asked, still scraping his cheeks.

  Giovanni raised the book. “Dante.”

  “Our guide,” said William.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To the Devil.”

  Marco laughed. “Aren’t we all?”

  “Yes,” said William, “but you are going to bring us back.”

  The blade paused at Marco’s chin. “What do you mean?”

  “We are pilgrims in search of a holy relic.”

  “You mean a treasure?”

  “A hidden treasure. A pearl of great price. A relic which has vanished from the Earth, into the abyss. You will help us find it. You will light the way and lead us down.”

  “And bring us back alive,” said Nadja.

  Marco chuckled. “Not for all the gold in Cathay.”

  “Not for gold,” she said, “but for honor.”

  The knight shaved the other cheek. “You don’t know me.”

  “You are Marco da Roma,” said the friar. “A soldier who kills for money. But you were once a knight of the Templars. You once swore to protect the Holy Grail.”

  “The Templars are dead,” said Giovanni.

  “All but one,” Nadja replied.

  William continued, “When the Templars were destroyed, the Grail was lost to Lucifer.”

  Marco nicked himself. Blood ran down his chin.

  Giovanni set down his book. “There is no Holy Grail.”

  “It has great power,” said William, “but the Devil cannot use it. He dare not even touch it. But he can hide it from the world and let the world fall into darkness.”

  Marco said, “You’ve lost your wits, old man.”

  “We know who you are,” Nadja said, “by the mark you bear. The red cross upon your heart.”

  Marco opened the front of his tunic and studied the tattoo blazoned on his chest. He did not seem to recognize it.

  William set aside his empty porridge bowl. “It is the secret mark of the Knights Templar.”

  “You mistake me for another man.”

  “The land is dying,” said William. “The people are dying. We’re in the middle of a plague.”

  “How do you know it’s the middle?”

  “Half the world is dead.”

  “Not my problem.” Marco dried his face with his sleeve, then wiped blood from the blade. “The only road to Hell is death. You have saved me from that path. For that I thank you. You have my gratitude, but not my service.”

  Giovanni turned to William. “You don’t need him.”

  “We do need him.”

  Nadja said to Marco, “I saw you in a vision. You were holding the Grail. It is your destiny to seek it, to find it, to bring it back to the world. With the Holy Grail you will heal the land and save the people.”

  The stranger seemed troubled. “How did you find me?”

  “We found your villa in Rome,” said the friar. “We spoke to your majordomo. He told us you had joined an army moving south.”

  “You’ve been to my house?”

  “Ten days ago.”

  “You will take me there,” Marco said.

  “It is not on our way.”

  “It is now.”

  “Rome is to the north. We must head south. South, to Lake Avernus. That is our calling.”

  “Not mine.”

  Nadja said, “You must lead us to the Grail. That is the prophecy. I have seen it.”

  “I’m going to Rome,” the knight insisted, “and you will take me there.”

  “We don’t have time,” said the friar. “Apocalypse approaches. The Fourth Horseman rides the—”

  Marco grabbed Nadja by the hair and pulled her to his chest. She screamed. He clamped a hand over her mouth and held the dagger to her throat.

  Giovanni froze, not knowing what to do. If he tried to free her, the girl could be killed.

  The knight fixed William with a venomous glare. “You will take me home.”

  The friar raised his hands in submission.

  “Yes,” he said. “I believe we will.”

  CHAPTER 8

  His hostages were bound and gagged and moving north, taking Marco to find his villa, which he could not remember.

  The old man walked ahead, leading the donkey. His hands were tied behind him by the sumpter’s leash. Marco and the girl sat in the juddering cart. The knight held the dagger in one hand, the hazel switch in the other. The girl’s wrists were tied with a rope from the tool bag. The poet walked two spans behind the cart. His wrists were bound by the friar’s belt, which also tied the girl’s ankles. If the poet lagged, he would yank her from the cart; if he walked too close, Marco kicked him in the chest. The knight had improvised other bonds from bricolage: stockings and ribbons, laces and leather straps. The red floppy hat was stuffed into the poet’s mouth and tied in place with particolored hose, but the poet still gave him trouble. The fool would not stop humming.

  “Quiet, you.” Marco smacked the poet with the switch.

  The poet glowered, then looked away.

  Marco’s skull throbbed. Blood sang in his ears. He could feel his eyeballs pressing against their sockets. His throat was dry and his stomach churned. His muscles were sore all over. Each new breath felt like a kick in the ribs. Worse, the back half of his body ached from sunburn. His woolen clothes chafed his blisters and every jolt of the cart was a fresh torment.

  The pilgrims had found him on a battlefield, the friar had said. Marco recalled neither the battle nor the field. His former life now lay in shadow. This road would take him back, and put the test to the old man’s tale. If these people had agreed to take him home, he would not have tied them up or frightened the girl. Instead, they forced his hand. Now they understood what it meant to disobey him. Now they understood that he was in charge. Now they feared him.

  Marco liked the way it felt.

  He smelled the battlefield a mile before he saw it. The road cut through a thick swell of bloated corpses. Some lay with arms or legs poi
nting to the road as if they had been dragged and dropped. His hostages must have cleared the road themselves on their way south.

  The stench roiled his gut, but he had eaten nothing worth a second taste. Behind him the girl began to heave, then choke. He stopped the cart and untied her gag. She spat vomit over the sideboard as he slapped her between the shoulder blades to clear her lungs. When she could breath well enough to mutter a thank you, he tossed aside the soiled cloth that had silenced her, reached into a garment bag for another of the poet’s pretty silks, and tied a new gag in place of the old.

  They continued on.

  Nothing about this place seemed familiar. Marco needed to look around. He thought he might recognize some of the faces, if any faces remained. Most had been ravened already by birds and worms.

  “Is this where you found me?” he asked.

  The old man nodded. His gag would not permit elaboration.

  Marco ordered a halt. He intended to take the hostages with him into the field, but that meant leaving the cart behind. If he had more rope he could hobble the donkey, but he’d already used the friar’s belt and the rope from the tool bag to fetter the hostages. The sumpter’s leash was too short to trammel its legs, and Marco saw no trees or bushes to hitch the donkey to. Only corpses.

  That might work.

  Marco stepped down from the tumbrel and nearly collapsed from the pain. His legs were weak. The soles of his feet were sunburned. He had not walked more than three dozen paces since waking to the world. Putting a hand on the cart to steady himself, he waited until the earth stopped swaying, then went around to the front and untied the friar.

  “Get in the cart.”

  The old man obeyed him.

  Feeling a little better now, and ignoring the arguments of his legs and feet, Marco started to tether the donkey to a corpse, but the animal kicked and brayed, so he abandoned the idea. He would have to block the wheels.

  He saw no rocks of sufficient size. Most were smaller than a child’s fist. He considered gathering gravel to heap beneath the wheels, but that seemed a great labor for a meager gain. Instead, he seized a corpse by the ankles and dragged it behind the wheels. He grabbed a second corpse by the wrists, to block the wheels from rolling forward, but one of the rotting arms tore free from the shoulder. The flesh was too far gone. Marco examined the limb. Even better. He wedged the arm in front of the right wheel. Now the donkey wouldn’t stray.