by Dan Davis
He laughed in my face and clamped a massive hand on my shoulder. “You should not be. I did not wish to make you. Your father did not know what you are. Your brother did not know. You are ignorant. But this not of your making.” He thumped me on the arm with a friendly blow as powerful as a kick from a horse. “Come.”
With a casual flick of his wrist, he buried the axe in the chopping block so quickly that I barely saw it. The head of the axe was buried almost to the hafting.
I followed Priskos back into his cave, where he indicated I should sit at his table once again. He served me with strong beer and sat in front of me.
“Your father? He is my son. I did not intend to make him.” He turned to look at the entrance to his curiously domestic cave. “A man needs woman. Many years, I have been here, in this place. I take woman, she serves me until she grows old and weak. Then I take new woman.”
He drank a gulp from his beer and wiped his lips and beard.
Many questions sprang to mind and I chose one. “What happens to the old woman?”
“I honour her.”
“How do you honour her?”
“I drink her. I bury her.”
My stomach churned, even though I had suspected it would be something like that.
“But why not let them go, sir? When they have fulfilled their usefulness to you? Surely they can do you no harm? Would it not be more honourable to let them live?”
He pressed his lips together as he regarded me. I was beginning to perceive that when he looked at me in such a manner, he was thinking one thing about me.
Weak.
“Blood gives strength. An old woman’s blood is weak but this honours them. This is their final duty to their lord. Their offering. Their sacrifice.”
I wanted to ask about the woman he had in his power now but I was already, in my heart, intending to rescue her from him and I did not wish to alert him to my concern for her.
“You said my father was your son,” I said instead. “But who was my grandmother?”
He took a deep breath and a slight smile appeared beneath his beard. “Cunning woman. She bested me.” He laughed, like a growl. “First in thousand years.”
I wondered how old he was. “How did she best you?”
“I choose to not spill seed into woman. I choose not to make sons.” He shrugged. “In this, some of times, I fail. I fill a woman. When her belly grows, I drink her. Take new woman.”
“If your woman gets with child, you kill her?” It was monstrous. He was a beast. A demon. “Why? Why not allow them to bear children?”
He shook his head. “I make bad sons.”
“Bad how?”
He licked his lips and pressed them together before answering. “Some are weak in mind, like Christman. Some are quick and wise but fall to ambition, as did Caesar. Some try to kill me, their father, as Peter one day will. I see it in him. Some sons conquer world, like Alexander.”
I was beginning to suspect that this man was himself quite mad. Perhaps he was my ancestor but how could I trust anything he said?
“Your sons conquered the world?” I asked.
Clearly, he detected the disbelief in my voice as he responded with a rueful smile. “So much is forgotten. You know it not.”
“Indeed, please tell me. Help me to understand.” When he yet hesitated, I continued. “You told it to William, sir. Why will you not tell it to me?”
“Your brother is like me. Your brother is man like his ancestors. Like my great sons.”
I was insulted. “And what am I?”
He looked closely at me. “A Christian.” He grimaced and turned to spit on his own floor.
“I am, sir. And proudly so. What else could I be? And William is a Christian also. For a time, he believed himself to be Christ reborn. Or an angel, perhaps. And then he claimed to be some incarnation of Adam, the first man, and he sought to recreate Eden upon the Earth. Did he claim to be something else when he came to you? I fear, sir, that he has no shame. He will speak whatever the listener wishes to hear, if it means he gets what he wants in return.”
Priskos held himself very still. “No man deceives me. In here,” Priskos thumped his chest, “William is conqueror. A man to remake world.”
“I thought you said you killed sons like that.”
He sighed. “They all fall to ruin if I do not. Once, I took kingdom to make it strong. I made mighty son. Philip was his name. His son was stronger, in some ways, but also he was mad. He conquered much and did much war but he could not conquer his own heart. His name was Alexander. William is like this. He burns with fire that destroys everything it touches and then it will destroy him, also. I had to put an end to his life to save his people.”
I almost laughed in his face. Surely, I thought, this was proof of his madness. He believed that Alexander of Macedon was his grandson and although it sent a thrill through me to imagine that I was of the same blood as the most famed conqueror in all the world, I was sure of its impossibility. At least, it was highly implausible. How could this man who lived in a cold cave with a single woman to serve him have once been a mighty king?
“If you believed that William is like Alexander of Macedon, why did you let him leave here instead of killing him? What do you want from your sons and their sons?”
“It is every man’s duty to conquer all before him. To make his name and his deeds live on in minds of his people and in blood of his sons. But sons of my sons make none of their own. Line shrivels to nothing and this drives great men mad. Alexander could make no sons, and so he brought his wife to his companion. But this is no good. Without sons, no man is complete. They destroy themselves. They grow angered at me. William will do this. It is his nature to do so. If he becomes an Alexander, I will put an end to him, also.”
“And what about me?” I asked. “Do you mean to put an end to me?”
He regarded me. “You are not Alexander. You are not Caesar, nor are you Hattusili, Atreus, or Cleomenes. No.”
Although I did not know some of the names he mentioned, I knew of course that I was being gravely insulted. I struggled to contain my anger. “What am I, then?”
“A man like Peter. One born to serve.”
Whether he was attempting to anger me or it was merely incidental I did not know but it was having that effect on me.
Born to serve.
Was it true, I wondered? Was that all I was? A dutiful knight, when I could have been so much more?
“I am a knight,” I said. “I serve a lord. I serve a king. But this is the order of things. Not servitude but duty, sir.”
“I know what is a knight. One who serves. A servant is a slave. Slaves have traded honour for life.”
I scoffed. “What about Peter, then? He serves you and so you do not kill him? Why did you allow him to be born at all?”
Priskos held my gaze. “A lord needs men to serve him. Who better than sons?”
“Is that why you allowed my father to live when he was born?”
The Ancient One shrugged. “A mistake.”
So easy for him to rip my heart open. He had called me weak, called me a natural servant, and said my father’s existence—and therefore my own—was a mistake.
Already, I was beginning to hate the Ancient One.
With great effort, I remained seated by gripping the edges of the table. “How then did I come to be born? Who was the cunning woman who bested you?”
He furrowed his brow and looked through me into his past.
“I took woman I should not have taken. The daughter of lord. Yet I saw her, travelling through woodland far to north. I do not take daughters of great men. Trouble follows, always. I take strongest common women, as their fathers are afraid and if they come with their spears and torches, I slaughter them. Yet, lords have many swords and their men cause endless mischief.”
His eyes wrinkled as he continued.
“But this girl. I saw her. I had to have her.” He made a gesture to show how helpless he had been a
nd then snatched at the air. “I take her. She fights me, for years she fights but I break her. Then, she loves me.” His grin turned into a laugh. “She tricks me. Years, she tricks me, loves me in her words and deeds but holds hate in her heart.” He nodded to himself. “Strong, strong woman. She seduced me with food, with water. All poisoned. That night, I spill my seed in her, for she has taken my heart and I have lost my mind in her. A woman’s power. Belladonna, hemlock, you know these? I wake, fighting to breathe. She slits my throat.” He used a finger to trace a line from ear to ear, and then he jabbed his thumb into his chest. “She pierces my heart. She flees.”
He shook his head, sighing but he had a smile on his face.
“How could you survive such injuries?”
“She do good work on me. But I am strong. I come back. She flee north and west, returned to her people. They put her with lord for husband. Her belly must have already been big. Some weak men stand such things, if it brings him wealth and name of another greater than him. She flees across water, to the land of Britain.”
“You let her go?”
“Perhaps I should have killed her. Killed child. But she fought. She won her life. My people would have sung songs of her.”
“And that child was my father, Robert? So he was not the son of the old Lord de Ferrers?” I laughed in disbelief. I knew of course that a great many are deceived about the identity of their true fathers. After all, it had happened to me. And yet my father had also been a bastard, unknown to him. I wished that the old sod had known it before William had killed him. “Robert de Ferrers was not an Alexander either.”
Priskos nodded. “No. So be it.”
“But why? Why are you the way you are? Why is it like this? Why can I live on as I am, ageless and powerful, yet I cannot become a father? Why does our blood have such power that when a mortal drinks it, they gain our strength? Why?”
Priskos pointed up. The darkness of the jagged rock ceiling was like an infinite void. “Gods make it so.”
I hung my head in my hands. “That is it? You do not know why you have this power?”
He frowned and jabbed a thumb into his chest. “I know. It is Sky Father who was my father. I am half god.” He pointed a finger at me. “You have Sky Father in your veins.”
I shook my head and scoffed. “The Sky Father? Is that it? I had hoped you would have true knowledge about our origins rather than some pagan nonsense about—”
I did not even see him move.
It was no more than a blur and a noise and then pain. He threw the table aside with such force that it smashed upon the wall with an almighty crash. His hands were around my throat and he hoisted me aloft as they squeezed into my neck under my jaw.
The strength in his fingers was inhuman and I could do nothing to resist them. I kicked out and struck at his arms but it was like fighting with an oak. Blood rushed in my ears and my vision darkened.
He tossed me to the floor like a rag and I clutched at the dry dirt as if to hang on to the Earth itself. Soon, my breath came back to me and I looked up at him.
“You worship the god of the wrong people,” Priskos said. He pointed at me. “Your gods are the gods of sky, of thunder and lightning. Your gods are Sun and Moon and gods of lake and river. Your dead god is desert god, for desert people. God of death and of weakness. God of word, not deed. You must cast him off.”
I sat up, rubbing my neck. I should have been angry but the fact that I had insulted him first gave me pause.
Also, I was quite terrified of his power. His strength was so far beyond my own that I was stunned.
Climbing to my feet, I looked him in the eye.
“You have it wrong,” I said, warily. It was a risk to challenge him but I could not allow his insults against God to go uncontested. “Jesus is for all of us. For all of mankind. His message is for each of us as individual men and women, so that we may be saved and reborn.”
We stood glaring at each other. Priskos kept his eyes on mine but turned to spit on the floor.
“You are fool amongst fools. But you do not know. Their victory is almost complete. Their madness conquered the strength of Rome when their strength of arms was too weak. They made great empire rot from the inside. They drove apart families with their lies. Jesus Christ was not one of us.” He slapped his chest. “His words were never meant for you, for any of us. And yet you have them in your heart all same, corrupting you, making you weak. You must throw off dead god.”
It was like the Devil was speaking to me, tempting me away from the light of Jesus Christ.
“I am a faithful servant of God and His son Jesus Christ,” I said. “And I shall not waver in my devotion.”
I thought he would be angry and braced myself for another assault. Instead, he seemed saddened. I felt I had disappointed him once more.
The woman came in, then and began to clear out the hearth. She took no notice of us or the smashed table.
“Did you ever make immortals by feeding them your blood? Did any of your sons or their sons? If mortals are drained of blood and then they drink from us, they become like us.”
“This I have done.”
“And what happened to them? You must have many sons and grandsons. And they must have made many immortals. Where are they all?”
“They fall.”
“They are all dead?” I asked. “What about the men who brought me here? They are your sons, are they not?”
He scratched at his beard. “You must go home.”
“I wish to,” I replied. “Once you tell me how to save my people.”
“Your ears are bad. Your blood saves them.”
“But it does not!”
“Then your blood is weak.”
I took a deep breath before replying. “Can my blood be made strong?”
He hesitated. “You drink blood of your enemies, yes?”
I nodded. “To heal wounds. To restore myself after battle.”
“Seek more enemies. Strong men. Destroy them. Drink them.”
“And that will make me stronger?” I asked, imagining finding and killing men, not because I was wounded and they were my enemies but because I wanted strength for myself. “But I cannot slaughter innocent men.”
He scowled at that. “Then do not.”
“Drinking the blood of strong men makes me stronger? More than the blood of weak men?”
He frowned. “But of course.”
“What makes a man strong?”
“You do not know?”
“The strength of his arm or the strength of his will? Or do you mean a powerful, wealthy man?”
Priskos tilted his head. “These are all the same thing.”
“Once, perhaps,” I replied. “Not always today.”
He nodded. “This world is mad. The weakness of your dead god infests the hearts of men. Weakness is worshipped. Failure is worshipped. Meekness celebrated. A world of weak men.” His levelled his finger at my face. “This is your world.”
“My world is a great one. We have built things that your barbarian people, whoever they were, could not comprehend. Have you seen the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris? Or the one in Chartres? Once, I won a battle in the shadow of the Cathedral of Lincoln, an edifice more magnificent than any other. The spire reaches halfway to Heaven. It is a monument to the glory of God.”
Priskos scoffed. “A monument to madness.”
“How can you say such things? These achievements are greater than any other. What did your world create that was half so glorious and everlasting?”
“We created you. All of you. You come from us. We worshipped the gods and we gloried in the feats of men. Our monuments were the songs that were sung of them.”
“Songs? Your songs are forgotten. Our castles and cathedrals will stand for ever.”
His mouth twitched at the corners. “They will crumble to dust. Our songs are sung still. Names changed, tales twisted. And sung still.”
I wished I had not come. It was all so abstruse a
nd what little I did comprehend was hard to take.
“Yes, yes, very well,” I said. “So I must kill and drink strong men to strengthen my blood. Their blood is best.”
Priskos spread his hands and sat back a little. “Best? Well, the best blood is not of men.”
I sighed, rubbing my eyes. “What?”
He smiled. “Best blood of all is blood of child.”
I kept my eyes on him but it was clear he did not speak in jest. “A child’s blood is stronger than a man’s? How can that be so?”
“Child’s blood hold’s all force of life. What child may become is in blood. Drink this blood, take whole life. A babe’s blood is best. From mother’s belly, from breast. Or blood of girl who soon becomes woman.”
“By God,” I said. “By God, I shall never do such evil.”
He snorted. “No. I know this.”
I knew what he meant when he said it. Weak.
“William drank the blood of my brother’s children,” I said, suddenly recalling it. “My half-brother who was the son of my mother. William killed him, and his wife, and he tore apart—” I broke off, unable to speak of the horror.
Priskos regarded me coldly. “William understand this. William will take what needs to be taken. He will travel path to greatness. To everlasting fame. To glory.”
“If doing evil is the price for your idea of greatness, I shall never pay it.”
“Then you fail.”
I nodded slowly, growing angry. “Because I am weak.”
His smile grew into a grin, showing big yellow teeth. “It is law. Weak die. Strong live.”
I shook my head. “As a knight, it is my duty to defend the weak from the strong.”
“Yes, yes,” he said, nodding. “This good, yes. This how we make our people safe. Our own people. Outsiders we destroy. This why to protect your people, you must become strong. Stay strong. Always.”
“Very well,” I said. “I understand.”
Priskos seemed doubtful about my understanding but he did not pursue it any further.
“Enough, now. You will learn this, or you will die.”
As I watched the woman, whose name I still did not know, bustling about the cave that was her prison, I resolved two things.