by Dan Davis
“Any chance you relate that story now, sir?” Walt asked. “The one where you captured Mortimer in Nottingham, when King Edward was young? I should like to hear it, sir.”
“Hush, Walter. Watch the flanks.”
He sighed, because I often chided him with such warnings in dangerous places and usually nothing happened.
A shout pierced the air. Harsh and guttural, echoing along the trackway. We drew our weapons just as a score of desperate men descended on us from both sides of the road, all suddenly screaming their battle cries.
We cut them down to a man. Walt fought like the Devil himself, racing from the dead to the living to run the next one through with a mad joy on his face. I followed the last of them through the trees, spearing one in the spine and jumping from my horse to follow the last two on foot where I killed them with my sword.
Both pitiful creatures wept and begged. They were so thin and filthy. I killed them without a word and drank from them both.
Their blood filled me with strength. I was used to drinking it when wounded or exhausted and much of the power of the blood went into restoring me. But, drinking those men when I was uninjured and fresh, I felt how the full potency of the blood seeped into my bones.
I had a purpose. I would kill and drink, kill and drink, the strength from my next victim building upon that of my last so that I would grow to match the strength of the immortals Peter and Christman, who were apparently my uncles.
I would grow to be a match for my brother William whenever he returned.
If I drank enough powerful men, perhaps I could one day return to Priskos and beat the filthy bastard to death and throw his shrivelled carcass into a ravine.
Those scrawny, desperate robbers on the road had been a start but I would have to find warriors and lords, if I was to become what I needed to become.
Returning to the site of the villeins’ ambush, I found a wild-eyed Black Walter standing over the whimpering forms of the wounded survivors.
They would not survive for much longer.
“You must drink their blood, Walt.”
“God forgive me,” he said, but in the end, he did not require much coaxing. Walt was a born survivor. Willing to pay the price for life, whatever it was.
I showed him how it was best and easiest to drink from the neck or wrist of a body where the heart still fluttered with vestiges of life and he sank his teeth into the wounds and gulped it down. Even when he heaved and vomited it back up, he drank once more.
All the men died and we left them to rot on the side of the road. Whether they had any families left alive nearby to bury them, I neither knew nor cared.
“Cold blood does not work?” he asked me later, when the bodies were miles behind us.
I recalled submerging myself into a vat of congealing blood beneath the hills of Palestine, so many years before.
“It works to heal you and will maintain your health. But it is not so potent as blood from a living man. And it congeals in your mouth and belly and it is quite foul.”
“Living blood it is, then.” He was quiet for some time. “What if those men had not come along? I would make ill?”
“You would grow weaker, the sunlight would burn and blister your skin even more than when you are satiated. And your pallor would take an ever greener tint.”
“Green?”
“There was an immortal monk that I kept prisoner once. He would turn the colour of mould and rotting pears. As I recall, Eva would take on the hue of a mint leaf.”
“Never been a man admired for my features. And I can keep my skin shrouded so as to not blister in sunlight.”
“You would also lose your mind. Although, in your case it would prove difficult to tell.”
“We always knew something was queer with you, sir.”
“Who is we?”
“All of us. The lads. The men and the archers both. You and Old Tom and John and Hugh. Something off. Something to do with blood magic.”
I scoffed. “How could you possibly know that?”
“The company servants would get bled regular, right? The young lads. Yet their blood would get taken off. We thought it was blood magic. What else could it have been? You was burning the blood, praying to Satan for your strength and your youth. All the lads thought so. Well, not so much that anyone would have done a thing about it. But that was what was said.”
And I had thought us so clever. So subtle and cunning. But I should have known how a company of men can talk and talk so that a bunch of fools can together arrive at wisdom.
“Damn your eyes, the lot of you.”
“Yes, sir. But what do we do for blood if we find no more desperate men?”
“If there are no men to kill and your time for blood is come, you may drink of mine. And my blood will keep you hale and steady. But we are now heading into pestilential France, where all men are desperate and two lone Englishmen will be welcomed not.”
And I was more right about that than I expected.
***
As we rode across the county, the weather grew wetter and wilder almost every day. I hunched in my saddle and plodded onward with nought but the thoughts in my head and the rain drumming against my hood or my hat. Always on my mind, of course, was the dead girl, whose life I had cut short through my witless romantic notions.
And often I pondered the condemnation that Priskos expressed over my worshipping of Jesus. He had called cathedrals monuments to folly. As if worshipping God was folly.
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.
How could such blasphemy be truth? Of course, he was older than Jesus and from a pagan land somewhere to the east. And Alexander had been a pagan, as had Caesar, and yet they were sung of in ballads as heroes that upheld a kind of chivalric ideal. If they could be chivalrous without worshipping God, was it possible for me, also? I did not know what to make of it, only that I found it horrifying and intriguing in equal measure.
South of the fortified city of Luxembourg, we came to the outskirts of town where a large and bizarre group filled the road in a long procession ahead of us. They wore robes and sombre clothes with red crosses on their fronts and backs and almost all were men but there were some women at the rear. All wore hoods or caps, also with a red cross on, and they marched in silence with their eyes on the ground.
“Monks?” Walt ventured.
They moved in a long procession, like a chain, walking two by two. Two or even three hundred of them. At the front, down by the town, the leaders of the procession held aloft banners of purple velvet. As the first of them reached the town, the church bell began to sound and it kept on with its ringing, over and over, as if it would never cease.
We followed the strange procession right into the market square, where they filed into a large circle and the townsfolk came out and surrounded them.
In the centre, many men stripped themselves to the waist so that they wore nothing more than a linen skirt down to the ankles. Their outer garments were laid reverentially in a big pile to one side of the open space within their circle, and I watched in confusion as pestilential townsfolk were dragged and carried to the mound of clothing where they took turns laying upon it while others prayed over them.
The robed worshippers began to march around and around the circle in a procession. In the centre, a powerful old man with a big beard held his hands aloft and chanted something.
All of a sudden, he cried out a command and all the marching people threw themselves to the ground, most violently, face down with their arms outstretched as if crucified to the floor.
The leader stalked among them and thrashed them on their bare backs with a switch, one at a time. Not all received such a punishment but a good number of them did. When he was done, he ordered them to their feet and each of them produced a heavy scourge from a bag on their belts. It was a short wooden rod with two or three leather thongs dangling from it and each thong was ti
pped with metal studs. With another command from the big bearded fellow, they each began to beat their backs and breasts in time.
The leader and three of his attendants walked amongst the madmen, urging them to have strength and to pray harder.
On the far side of the square, the folk parted and a sobbing mother stepped forward into the magic circle carrying a bundle which she placed in the centre and wailed. A flap of cloth fell back and I saw that it was a dead child, not more than a year old, already turned black with putrefaction. Prayers were said over the poor thing and its mother but no matter how she wailed and how they prayed, the baby did not return to life and the mother was dragged away.
All the while, the mad worshippers continued to whip themselves bloody. And then they began to chant a prayer in time to their thrashing of themselves.
“What in the name of God is happening here?” I asked a tall man who stood far to the rear.
His eyes were shining, rimmed with tears, as he turned to me. “They mortify their flesh. Praise God!”
“Who are these men? Where do they come from?”
“The Brotherhood of the Flagellants,” one man said.
“They come to us from the East,” said another.
“From Bavaria.”
“Hungary,” said a woman. “So I heard.”
“They said with their own mouths they was come from Nuremberg, Martha. Why don’t you ever listen?”
I interrupted their argument. “What do they hope to accomplish through such acts?”
No one wished to speak the words until one young fellow turned and answered with a sob. “To end the plague!”
Their pace accelerated and the Flagellants threw themselves to the floor again and got to their feet to continue to the thrashing.
“What nonsense,” I said, far too loudly, for a dozen or more townsfolk turned and gave me the evil eye. Some even cursed me.
“We should go, sir,” Walt said, for he had a nose for trouble. Perhaps I should have listened but the orgy of self-mutilation fascinated me to such an extent that I could not draw my eyes from them. The fronts and backs of both the men and the women were beginning to spit more and more and the smell of blood was in the air as it was sprayed and spattered toward the crowd on all sides. Women were as enthusiastic as any of the men, their bared breasts bouncing and bloody as they whipped their flails around their flanks onto their fronts.
The big man in the centre, along with his three burly attendants, called out orders and lead the chanting prayer.
“Why do the leaders not mortify their own flesh?” I asked the folk about me.
Sensing criticism, they scoffed and scorned to answer.
“He is the Master,” a lad who spoken before told me.
The Master shouted a command and the Flagellants threw themselves to the ground once more and fell silent but for their panting and wincing while the leaders strode amongst them, whipping a few of them.
“Should this Master not suffer his own punishments?” I said, speaking far louder than I intended. My voice filled the quiet square and the Master whipped his head around to me.
His eyes locked on mine.
Walt whispered. “We should go, sir.”
“You!” the Master shouted, raising a finger to point at me.
A great rustling sounded as every face in the town square turned to mine.
“What great sinner is this?” he roared. “What great sinner is this that dares to interrupt our sacred rites?”
Walt began to turn his horse. “Time to retreat, sir?”
“I think so,” I said and attempted to turn my horse about through the crowd.
“Yes!” the Master cried. “Yes, see how the sinner flees before our righteousness. Flee, you murderers and robbers. None you shall find but endless woe. The wrath of God on you shall fall.”
I turned back to him.
“Richard. Sir,” Walt muttered, looking at the outraged faces all around us. “My lord. We must—”
I sat upright and called across the square. “And who are you? Who are you to make such pronouncements? You who command these mad fools to beat themselves bloody while you yourself stand unharmed?”
A collective intake of breath echoed around the square and the faces turned back to him.
The Master’s face above his beard turned the colour of boiled beetroot. Without a word, and keeping his gaze fixed upon mine, he untied the rope about his robes and shrugged off the clothes from his torso. The flesh of his muscular upper body and fat belly were white as chalk.
White, that is, other than the mass of red welts, pink scar tissue and weeping, pussy wounds that covered his back, chest and shoulders.
The crowd turned back to me as the Master, triumphant, raised a hand to me once more.
“You shall know what it is to suffer for your sins. Bring him here!”
All at once, the townsfolk all around me surged forward, their faces grim and wild with righteousness. Hands grabbed my horse’s bridle and tail and, already nervous, he began to panic. I fought him as the hands reached for my ankles.
“Unhand me!” I roared.
Walt was swearing at the men and women that grabbed at him. The crowd began to shout their encouragement and their rage built into a roar that filled the square.
I leaned over and punched the face of the man who had my right leg but three more grabbed hold of my forearm and began to heave me down from my saddle. I held on with my knees and yanked a dagger from my belt with my off hand and stabbed it down, striking flesh. They released me, shouting in anger that I had drawn blood.
More surged forward.
I realised that I was about to be ripped to pieces by a mob of mad, French peasants.
A rage filled me. A rage unlike any I had known. A rage that caused me to shake and growl like a bear.
My mind filled with visions of Priskos. His words. His assault on me. That violation.
I pictured my friend John being slaughtered by the black knight. I recalled the assassin that came so close to killing me in the Southwark stews.
Felt the agony of the bolt that had struck me in the face.
Saw Osanna’s dying eyes fixing on mine.
Back in England, Eva and Thomas died in agony, over and over again, and only I could save them.
There was no decision. It was all instinct and blind rage.
I drew my sword and, screaming a wordless battle cry, I slashed down at the mob. My blade cut into the flesh of the faces of the nearest men. Blood sprayed up to splash across the crowd. My horse tried to flee but there was no way out. A young man leapt up behind me and I thrust my dagger around my flank and into his, sending him to his death. My blades stabbed down, left and right, killing and maiming men and women who still came at me.
Walt fought them also, with sword and dagger, so that the screams of the dying merged with the shouts of the madmen all around.
When one fell, two more took his place. It was as though there was no end to them. No satiating their lust for blood.
And there was likewise no bounds for mine.
It was a slaughter. They died and they died and I killed them with joy.
Without warning, it seemed, their hatred turned to panic.
Dozens were dead, scores were blinded or maimed, and instead of pushing forward the ones closest to us began to fight to get away. Pushing against the crowds behind to escape the terror that was my sword. My horse wheeled and rushed into whatever spaces formed, causing more panic. And their panic spread. Like soldiers breaking on the field, or a herd of animals sensing a predator in their midst, the townsfolk finally understood, on some primal level, that they were facing something that could not be faced. They were fighting something that could not be beaten. Like a living plague, I charged from the dead to the living, bringing agonies and swift death.
The crowds parted before me and streamed away through the side streets, pushing the aged and the children before them and trampling those that fell.
My h
orse was wheeling and breathing in terror, so I climbed down and pushed him away. Walt stayed mounted, controlling his horse, while he chased away the rest of the madmen nearest to him.
The Flagellants alone had not fled, and I stalked toward them, wiping blood from my eyes and licking it from my hands.
A dozen of them rushed me with their flails and walking sticks. I smashed their skulls with my sword and threw them aside as I approached the Master, who stood his ground and prayed. His three attendants chanted some mad prayer and came at me with willow switches in one hand and wooden crucifixes in the other. I stabbed the first in his guts, cut the right hand off the next and the third dropped to his knees, weeping and praying to God with his head bowed like an invitation. With one swing, I cut off his head and kicked over his body.
The Master shook and tears streamed down his face into his beard.
I dropped my sword and seized him by the shoulders.
“Who am I?” I said, my voice low like a growl. It did not sound like my own. “Who am I? I am a sinner. I am a murderer. I am the wrath of God.”
I sank my teeth into his neck and ripped out a chunk of flesh that I spat onto the ground. He screamed as I sucked the blood from his neck.
Walt grabbed me by the shoulder.
“People will see, lord.”
“Let them see.”
“These folk will talk.”
“Let them talk!” I snarled. “Let them all talk. Let all France talk and let them tremble at the word of our coming. Soon, I will kill my way across France and they will fear me.”
I drank more from the dying man until his heart stopped and I threw him down and raised my voice.
“Englishmen will drink the blood of the French.” I shouted it so my voice echoed hard from the houses walling off the square. “Spread the word. The English will drink the blood of the French until we find the knight of the black banner. Spread the word. You fear the pestilence? I am the pestilence. I am Richard of Hawkedon and I will murder every soul in France until I find the knight of the black banner. We are the English and we will bring death to France!”