E. M. Powell

by The Fifth Knight

  “Oi! Watch your feet.”

  Palmer looked down past his wet boots at the sudden call. A crewman of around his own age sat on the damp floor of the hold, propped up against a pile of full grain sacks. The man clutched a small covered lamp, which cast a dim glow.

  The slacker. Palmer got to the bottom of the ladder, ready to send him up above. But now that he was closer, he saw the sailor had a deep cut down one cheek, deep enough to see the white of bone in the bloody gash.

  “Excuse my rude tongue, sir knight.”

  “It’s I who should seek excuses, fellow.” Palmer hauled his drenched surcoat up over his head and flung it over another pile of sacks to dry. He nodded at the man’s injury. “That’s a belter.”

  “Deck plank came loose and caught me smack on.” Forehead pebbled with sweat, the man shifted his eyes to Palmer’s hand. “Yours isn’t bad either, sir.”

  Palmer looked down. Scarlet drips swirled through the small puddles of seawater around his wet boots. He examined his jagged cut. “Can’t feel much at the minute; my hands are that cold.”

  “That’ll pass,” said the man, “and it’ll hurt like the devil then.” He swallowed and tried to smile. “Like me face.”

  Palmer looked around the swaying, cramped space. A large jug of wine with a cork stopper sat wedged between two sacks. He reached down, uncorked it with a flick of his thumb, and bent down to pass it to the man, hanging on to the sacks for balance. “Get some of that down you. My squire master swore by drink to help lay the pain. And even if it doesn’t, at least you won’t care so much.”

  The man murmured his thanks and drank.

  As he did so, Palmer ripped a strip from the top of one of the sacks with his knife. He tore the rough cloth in two with his teeth, then wound it around his injured hand. The man was right. In the warmer air, the open flesh throbbed with new life. He took the offered jug from the sailor and downed several large mouthfuls himself.

  A clatter came from the ladder. The scrawny calves of Sir Hugh de Morville appeared, scrabbling for a hold on the wet rungs.

  “Hold this thing steady, can’t you, Palmer?” The whined request was thin as the man himself.

  Palmer moved over and propped it with his foot while he drank another draught of wine.

  De Morville slid from the ladder and gave the injured man a disinterested glance. Like a hungry bird, he eyed the jug Palmer held. “Share it, can’t you? I’m piss-wet through and half-frozen besides.” He clicked his fingers as he held out his hand.

  Palmer wiped his mouth with the back of his bandaged hand and passed the jug over. He no longer wanted any. The movement of the cabin in the storm stopped his thirst. Soon he’d have to spew the alcohol out to the fishes. At least he had its warmth and numbness — that would last a while. He took another section of torn sack and tried to wipe down his wet chain mail.

  Two loud thumps came from the ladder. Sir William de Tracy jumped from the middle rungs and landed with a bang on the floor, narrowly missing the injured crewman. “Saints alive, man. Don’t get underfoot.”

  The man murmured a low apology and tried to shift.

  “Leave him be,” said Palmer. “He’s caught a bad blow.”

  “Bugger him,” said de Tracy. “I smell Gascony, don’t I?”

  De Tracy hadn’t much on de Morville in height, but with his barrel chest he made two of de Morville crossways. It was the same with his hair: de Morville’s sat like a thin, dead rat on his head, while de Tracy’s curled red and thick till it met under his chin in a heavy beard.

  De Morville hung on to the jug. “Do you have to arrive everywhere like a battering ram, de Tracy?”

  “That’s because I’ve nowt to hide.” He signaled for the wine. “You don’t have to look like a widow who’s going to be ravished. I’ll give you the bloody thing back.”

  De Morville handed it over and watched de Tracy’s supping with greedy eyes.

  De Tracy pulled the vessel’s rim from his lips with a loud smack and held it out to Palmer. “You did a right special job up there, boy. I’ll warrant Fitzurse chose well when he asked you to join us on our quest.”

  Palmer wordlessly waved it back to de Morville. His head rocked in time with the tossing boat.

  “You’re white as a corpse, Palmer. What’s the matter with you?” said de Morville. “Fainting because you lost a finger of blood?”

  Palmer shook his head in reply. He stepped past the injured man over to the ladder, hand firm over his mouth.

  “Can’t hold your drink? Thought so, with a wench face like yours.” De Tracy laughed hard. “And a sap with no sea legs too.”

  Palmer scrambled up the ladder to the deck, willing his stomach to hold on. He made it out on deck and ran to the edge. He leaned out over the thunderous waves and retched himself empty, same as the day he’d been sent away to become a page. Seven years old, his landless cottar father dead from a terrible growth that filled his stomach and ate the rest of him away. His four small sisters clustered in a mute group, as his weeping mother pushed him from her to the rough clutch of the earl’s steward. The bewildering journey by cart, which ended at a busy port, where a ship waited to wrench him from his family, his home, his childhood. The green and gray curves of land had shrunk fast as the vessel tossed up, then down. His insides had coiled in loss so hard he thought his heart would stop. But he wouldn’t cry, not in front of the hard-eyed men who sailed the ship and mocked him for a fearful whelp. Yet he couldn’t keep his grief and loss in: he’d gone to the side of the ship and vomited and vomited.

  As Palmer straightened up, he used his tongue to clean off his coated teeth. Fitzurse stood by the mast, deep in conversation with the hulk le Bret. Neither seemed to notice that, though quieter than before, the world tossed and bounced beneath them. The ocean raced past, the set sail making quick work of the many miles’ journey to England.

  Palmer would prove his worth as a professional soldier once they were on dry land, once they got to Canterbury and its mighty cathedral. Within its walls, they would find Thomas Becket, its archbishop and leader of all the souls in the kingdom. A leader locked in bitter conflict with King Henry himself.

  The King had ordered action, action that Palmer could scarce believe he’d been hired to execute. Oh, he’d rise to the challenge, serve his king, demonstrate his loyalty, his fealty. ’Course he would. He’d be paid handsomely for it. His jaw had dropped of its own accord when Fitzurse had named the price.

  His stomach and throat drew together in a fresh sour spasm, and he leaned over the side yet again with a stifled oath. He’d do anything at all. Long as he could do it on dry land.

  CHAPTER 2

  “How much longer till we get there?” Palmer asked le Bret, the driver of their small tarpaulin-covered cart.

  Ahead, down a long, straight, featureless highway, with winter-empty ploughed fields on either side, lay the town of Canterbury. The storms of two days ago had been replaced by clear skies and ice on the air, making for easier progress along the mud-churned road. Plumes of grayish-white smoke rose from hundreds of hearths and hung above the distant roofs, shrouding the cathedral’s huge towers.

  Le Bret shrugged. “Hour. Two, maybe.”

  “Good,” said Palmer. “My backside’s sick of this seat.” He shifted to stretch his deadened legs and nodded to where the other three knights led the way on horseback. “I’d rather ride any day. Keeps you moving. And warm.” He pulled his thick woolen neckerchief tighter to keep the afternoon’s deepening chill at bay.

  Le Bret shrugged again. “Need the cart. Fitzurse says so.”

  “What for?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Palmer shook his head to himself. Le Bret didn’t know much.

  “You there!” De Tracy’s shout carried across the frozen fields. “Make haste and stand aside.”

  Palmer leaned to one side to see past his mounted companions. Shortly ahead on the roadway on the left side were two men, ragged laborers mending a wide
gap in the hedge by laying new pleachers. Piles of dead branches and shorn evergreens spilled partly onto the road. Both men looked up at the order and dropped their billhooks at once. They bent to scoop the trimmings back into the ditch, scrabbling low in their haste.

  As the knights on horseback went past, the men snatched their coarse dark woolen caps off and bowed their heads.

  Palmer’s rumbling cart drew level. One of the ragged men risked a glance up, then dropped his gaze abruptly again.

  “Sorry, sirs,” he muttered, eyes fixed low on the muddy wheels.

  Neither Palmer nor le Bret acknowledged him.

  “Stupid peasant,” said le Bret as they carried on.

  Palmer glanced back around the canvas cover. The men had replaced their hats and were reordering their work, gesturing angrily to each other. He faced forward again. “He should have better manners. But they’ve a job to do with that hedge.”

  Le Bret smirked. “You a clod-grubber, Palmer?”

  “Better that than the son of a gargoyle and a whore. Go grab yourself, le Bret.” But Palmer was born a clod-grubber, with no land, no money. He’d hedged, ditched, picked stones from behind a plough, pitching them into a basket on his back until his five-year-old knees would near give way. Unblocked privies, carried hay on his shoulders. Always following behind his weak, meek father, trying to earn enough to feed them as well as his mother and his sisters. And never succeeding. Like the men on the side of the road, he’d lived in rags, feet numb and frostbitten in split, useless tatters of boots. He too had snatched off his cap a thousand times to his betters.

  Palmer took a last look back at the two men bent low at their backbreaking task. There would come a day when they couldn’t do it anymore, when illness or old age or a slipped billhook would rob them of their pitiful livelihood. He settled himself onto the hard seat again. He wouldn’t have to face that fate, not anymore. Once he’d finished his work for Fitzurse, he’d never know poverty again.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Dusk sucked the last of the daylight from the sky as they made steady progress through Canterbury’s muddy, narrow cobbled streets. A hoarfrost white-edged the steeply pitched red roofs. Above them, the gray stone arches and towers of the cathedral rose to five, six times the height of the tightly packed half-timbered houses. Palmer had to lean right back to see how far they reached. “Happen they tried to build all the way to heaven, eh, le Bret?”

  He got a grunt in reply.

  The few people out and about hurried to their hearths, with their noses buried in cloaks and shawls. By the time Palmer and his companions arrived at the neat grassy area next to the huge church, they were alone. Leafless tall oaks and sycamores surrounding the cathedral patterned the sky in the fading light to the west. Dark-feathered crows filled the branches, settling for the night.

  “Dismount.” Fitzurse’s rapped order sent the birds calling and fussing into the air. As he swung himself from his horse, he turned to address his men. “Our first task is to track down the Archbishop.” He nodded toward the Episcopal Palace, with its brightly lit mullioned windows. “I have been told we will find him there.”

  Palmer secured the cart’s pair to a post alongside the others. Excitement surged within him. Here he was, a workaday mercenary knight, about to deliver the King’s displeasure firsthand. About to arrest the Archbishop himself.

  “Forward, men,” said Fitzurse. He pulled a double-headed axe from his belt in a swift movement. “Let valor be your watchword.”

  Palmer tightened his hand on his sword. He was used to fighting. But being part of this group was true power. Something new, something special. The quick thump of his blood through his veins told him how much he liked it.

  Fitzurse arrived first at the closed heavy wooden door of the palace. He pounded hard on it with his fist. “Open up, in the name of King Henry!”

  Silence but for more cawing from the crows.

  “Open up, I say!” Fitzurse hammered again on the door. It remained unopened. He turned to le Bret. “Break it down. Now.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Theodosia knelt in prayer in her cell as the choir of monks in the cathedral sang their way through Vespers. It used to be her favorite Hour, the one that closed the day, with scores of candles lit to defeat the gloom. Now it signaled the start of the night, and its long, dark hours where she would be at her weakest and wide open to temptation.

  At least she had remained unmolested last night. Brother Edward had been full of praise when she made her confession earlier. While she’d been grateful for his encouraging words, she couldn’t claim a purer heart or stronger resolve. Her repose had been a deep, dreamless sleep, so exhausted she had been from her penitential rosary on top of Vigils. But now another night faced her, a night where Satan could slide in and tempt her with sunshine and flowers and music and men. How could she fight against him?

  As if God heard her fears, the monks’ voices echoed in reverence in the sung psalm: “Domine, clamavi ad te: exaudi me; intende voci meae, cum clamavero ad te.” “I have cried to thee, O Lord: hear me; hearken to my voice, when I cry to thee.”

  She rested her hands on her open Book of Hours, not needing to read the familiar text. The words could be sung for her ears only. She closed her eyes and lost herself in the powerful message, her lips in silent echo. “Incline not my heart to evil words; to make excuses in sins.”

  A faint thud interrupted her contemplation. She opened her eyes.

  The monks sang on to the next psalm, but she was behind now. Refusing to indulge her irritation, she traced a finger along the sacred phrasing to try and catch up.

  Another thud. She rose and pressed her ear against her curtain, lit from beyond by the candles in the cathedral. Nothing.

  A louder bang came this time. Again, the choir prayed undisturbed. It must be from outside. She heard a male shout through the tiny outside circular window that gave her cell some air and daylight. Was a soul in distress, desperate to seek help from Mother Church? A further call sounded.

  She got to her feet, but what help could she be? If she looked out, she might be seen, a grave offence, the graver if seen by a man.

  A third loud thump decided her. Her beloved cathedral, her sacred shelter, might be being desecrated. She could not stand by and allow such sacrilege. Most of the daylight would be gone; no one would see her at the rounded opening in the dark stone. She pulled her little table below it and climbed up to have a look out. All seemed quiet. Whatever was afoot, it ceased and so would be of no further distraction to her.

  As she prepared to climb back down, a sudden movement at the doorway to the Episcopal Palace caught her eye. With the loudest bang yet, the door caved in and light spilled out, illuminating a group of knights who stood there with weapons drawn.

  One of the young monks stood in the doorway, gesturing to the strangers that they could not enter. Then the biggest stranger pulled back his massive broadsword and ran the young brother through. The monk doubled over the blade that pierced him, then fell to the ground as the knight yanked it back out.

  Theodosia stifled her scream of horror with her sleeve.

  The first four knights surged in through the door, stepping on the lifeless brother. Only one of the group hesitated, the last broad-shouldered one. He paused and looked down at the murdered man, but then stepped through after the others.

  A raid. Every man and woman of God knew of such terror, where men intent on murder, rape, plundering, descended on houses of God and destroyed everyone and everything within. Her vow of silence could be broken in a dire emergency — she had to warn the monks. She stepped over to her internal cell window and wrenched the curtain back. Yellow light pierced the gloom.

  “Brothers!” Her voice, quiet for so long, made a feeble plea. “Brothers!” Louder, but still unheard. She knocked against the metal bars, but the dull clinks were no match for the choir in full worship. “Listen! I beseech you. The cathedral is under attack.”

  The monks’ voices s
oared into the next psalm of the service, and it echoed back from the vaulted ceiling. They sang that God would hear them, that He would help those in distress.

  “Can anybody hear me?” She hit her balled fists harder on the rusty bars, hammering as loudly as she could, though her knuckles split and tore. “Brothers!”

  The monks sang on, as if mocking her pleas.

  Theodosia shrank back from the window and slid to her knees, the strength gone from her legs. Her fate, all of their fates, were in God’s hands now. Her bloodied fingers fumbled for the crucifix tucked beneath the neck of her habit as she tried to join the prayer.

  But the sacred words deserted her, her dry mouth unable to form a single one. She knelt in frozen terror, listening out for the next shout.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Palmer stepped over the young monk’s body into the high-ceilinged hallway of the Archbishop’s palace. He brought up the rear of the group with rapid steps, his footsteps echoing with the other knights’ on the red-and-black tiled floor. These rules of engagement surprised him. The monk had been defenseless, unarmed. A hard shove with a shoulder would have got past him.

  “You there!” Fitzurse broke into a run.

  Another brother peered out past a partially opened door in the far corner of the hallway.

  Fitzurse stopped before him. “Take us to the Archbishop. At once.”

  This monk was old but did not try to flee. He stepped out into the hallway, staring at Fitzurse’s raised axe, his drooping chins quivering. His horrified gaze went to the crumpled body at the front door, and he crossed himself. “What errand of the devil are you on? We are all men of God in here. No one will fight you, sir knight.”

  To Palmer’s unease, Fitzurse brought the edge of his axe blade to the old man’s throat. “Take us to Thomas Becket. Now. Or you can join your young friend in Paradise.”

  The monk shook as if gripped by fever. “He is that way.” He raised a cautious pointed finger to a shadowed passageway to the left.

  Fitzurse lowered his weapon and jerked his head for the knights to follow him. The monk sagged against the wall, his breath a terrified rattle in his thin chest.