by Mark Teppo
“How much were you willing to pay?” Andreas asked.
Jacobi frowned. He had told Domingo how much he had been willing to pay. Why was this man asking him again? With a tiny sigh, he repeated the number, glancing around as he did.
Andreas leaned forward. “Are you afraid one of those mercenaries Domingo told you about would hear what you are offering us?” he asked.
“No,” Jacobi sputtered. “I just…This is hardly the place to talk about money.”
“Then why did you ask us to come here?” Andreas asked.
Jacobi felt his face flush, and Andreas laughed.
“Did you think we were just going to wander in here and say, ‘Why, yes, sir trader, we’d be happy to risk life and limb for a paltry sum such as you are willing to offer’?” Andreas asked. He shook his head and raised his tankard.
“Are you trying to bully me into paying more?” Jacobi snapped.
Andreas belched and shook his head. “How can an honest man be frightened if he is not confronted with a weapon?” He put his hands on the table. “Have I brought a knife to this table?”
“No,” Jacobi said.
“Then I think you are using the wrong word,” Andreas said. He raised his empty tankard and waggled it, trying to catch the eye of one of the serving girls.
“What do you want, then?” Jacobi said.
“Triple,” Andreas replied.
“What?”
“I want triple the price you offered,” Andreas said, smiling.
“That’s outrageous,” Jacobi sputtered.
“So is the original number you offered,” Andreas pointed out. He smiled as the dark-haired girl swept over, pouring herself into his lap. “I seem to have emptied this one already,” he said, showing her the inside of his tankard. “Might you be so kind as to bring another?”
She laughed, found an excuse to touch his chest several times as she got up, and disappeared into the crowd with his empty vessel.
Andreas turned back to Jacobi, and his face lost some of its easy charm. Jacobi swallowed, seeing for an instant a different man entirely sitting across from him. “You came to us,” Andreas said quietly, “knowing full well our order does not do mercenary work, and then you remind us that we are not above doing such work for kings and queens, as if to say that our honor has a price that only the very wealthy and powerful can afford. Now, some of my brethren might take that as a slight, comparing us to the Templars like that, but I am a well-traveled man. I have been to France. I understand that, on occasion, the French have a tendency to be brusque—rude, even—and I do not fault you or your family or your fellow countrymen for such gracelessness.” He smiled—a cold, hard smile of a man who had seen much worse things than mere gracelessness…and done such things as well. “I too have my own moments of clumsiness. Like now, perhaps, when I tell you that if I were to take this commission, I would gladly gut you and leave you behind at the first sign that you had lied to us about the dangers of this journey.”
Jacobi nodded slowly. “I understand,” he said. His throat was tight, and he forced himself to swallow, fighting the bilious anger rising from his gut. Just like the rest, he thought. So quick to make threats. So quick to push others around. He considered rejecting Andreas’s offer. He could get double the number of mercenaries for the original price he had offered.
But what of Vilapros? There was no doubt in his mind that the captain’s men would intercept him on the way back to the village. The captain’s man might couch his terms in pleasant language, but the ugliness was the same. The road was there. Jacobi owed for using it.
Just like the rest, he thought bitterly. Did it matter who he paid?
But this was different, wasn’t it? Hire them, he reminded himself; do what you were asked to do.
“Double,” he said with a light cough.
Andreas smiled, and it was as if a shadow had fled from the room. “I like you, Jacobi de Reyns,” he announced. “You are not easily cowed.” He slapped the table with his hand. “Double it is,” he said. “But I want half before we leave.”
Late in the afternoon, clouds had billowed over the mountains, straining to bring water to the many valleys hidden within the Pyrenees. The rain shower had been brief, a narrow curtain of warm water that moved slowly across the mountain lake before falling on the tiny village of Estartyol that lay along the western shore of the lake. The storm dragged warm air in its wake, and when the sun fell behind the mountains, the evening was cool but not crisp. A sure sign that the season was turning. Spring was coming.
A shawl loosely wrapped about her shoulders, Gaucelis strode toward the chapel of San Berenguer. The sky above was still streaked with clouds, white threads across an indigo canvas, and candlelight leaked out from many of the doors and windows of the small village. She could hear the sound of raucous voices from the one-roomed shack the villagers called a tavern, and judging by the cadence of the one voice that rose above the rest and the sporadic laughter that accompanied it, Míro was telling one of his ribald stories. A new one, she suspected, judging by the wealth of laugher.
She did not join the rest of the villagers very often for Míro’s performances. While the village did not suffer much in the way of leadership, both she, in her role as healer, and Alice, the old dowager from Catalonian nobility, suffered the weight and responsibility of the villagers’ safety. As such, she knew it was best to be more concerned about the well-being of Estartyol than the ribald witticisms of Míro’s plays.
The chapel was the only building in Estartyol that was made from stone, and its walls were old when it had housed a pagan temple. Charlemagne had brought Christianity with him when he had scaled the Pyrenees during his efforts to conquer Spain. He had driven out the old religions, converting many of the temples into churches celebrating the Christian God. Some, however, were in remote locations, more readily forgotten than transformed. His armies had pillaged them and left them in ruin, the fallen walls waiting to be rediscovered by those who needed sanctuary, those who the Church and the Inquisition—its instrument of forceful conversion—deemed dangerous. Heretical.
The chapel was never locked. Gaucelis pushed open the broad door and entered the tiny church. When she closed the door behind her, the sounds from the tavern vanished. The chapel was still and quiet. A single candle burned at the far end, and judging from its height, it had been recently lit. There were a dozen rough benches scattered around the chamber, haphazardly arranged in a broad arc in front of the raised altar. As Gaucelis walked toward the altar, she spotted a huddled shape lying near one of the frontmost benches.
She rushed toward the body, half dreading and half knowing who it was. She knelt and carefully turned the prostrate person over. “Constansa.” She sighed when she saw the young face.
The woman lying on the floor was still breathing, a slow but steady rhythm of exhausted slumber. Gaucelis had felt an urge to come to the chapel this evening—the nervous twinge in her heart that she had long learned not to ignore—and she was relieved to find her apprehension was misplaced. “Rest, my child,” she whispered to Constansa as she arranged the young woman more comfortably on the floor. As she did, she noticed a piece of pale parchment trapped beneath Constansa’s body. Pulling the parchment free, Gaucelis held it up to better examine it in the weak candlelight.
Constansa had drawn a half circle along the bottom edge of the parchment. Above it, following the curve, was a dense wall of hard charcoal slashes that marched across the sheet like spear tips. On the other half of the sheet, descending from the top, were splotches of red—some bright and shiny, while most were dark and hard. It looked like a rain of rose petals, and Gaucelis’s breath caught in her throat as she realized the source of the paint. She dropped the parchment and grabbed at Constansa’s limp hands, searching for signs of violence.
Constansa’s pale wrists were unmarked, but the tips of several fingers on her right hand were smeared with dried blood. A jagged cut, still oozing blood, lay across her left palm
. Brush, palette, and paint. The artist using her own body as tools.
Gaucelis let out a try cry of fright when she realized Constansa’s eyes had opened. The young woman was not awake, but her eyes were large and dark, holes in her head like the empty eye sockets of a skull. Constansa’s lips moved, and Gaucelis leaned closer, trying to make out the words being whispered over and over again.
“They’re coming…”
II
Andreas had been trying to remember the words to a ribald drinking song he had heard a few weeks ago when Saluador rode up next to him. The Spaniard’s horse was a hand or so taller than his own, and in keeping with the man himself, much more spirited. Andreas was tall enough to see over most crowds, but Saluador eclipsed him readily. The Spaniard kept his beard and hair short, cropped close to his head, and when he smiled, his cheeks dimpled in a way that was very disarming to the ladies. Unfortunately, Saluador had not managed how to make his ready charm extend to his eyes. The ladies found this contrast exciting and dangerous, but Andreas thought that a man who couldn’t smile naturally was a man who harbored a deep and long-standing grudge. Probably against something he could never change, like God or the weather or the color purple. Which made him unpredictable.
Still, he bore the scars of brotherhood on his forearms. He had been to Petraathen. He had been found worthy by the Electi, the aged fathers of the Shield-Brethren order, and he had survived the Trial of the Shield. Andreas’s reservations meant little.
“What do you think our cargo is?” Saluador asked, letting his horse match the ambling gate of Andreas’s mount.
Andreas sat up in his saddle and glanced over his shoulder at the caravan of four wagons following him. Each wagon was heavily loaded with a variety of chests and crates. “Are you collecting wagers?” he asked, squinting at Saluador, the sun in the sky behind the taller Shield-Brethren.
“Aye.” Saluador laughed. “Though, if the trader told you, then your wager is no good. It would not be fair to the rest of us.”
“Jacobi did not tell me,” Andreas said, knowing that was part of what the others had sent Saluador to find out.
“Did you peek?”
“How?” Andreas asked. “I haven’t seen chests sealed that tight since the last time I was aboard a Venetian trade ship.”
Saluador smacked his hand on his thigh. “So you tried to peek!”
“Aye, I did,” he said with a laugh. He leaned toward Saluador, his humor shifting to a more serious tone. “Before I accepted the commission, I asked around. Jacobi de Reyns has a reputation for being an honest man, and he’s been running goods through Catalonia for a few years. I found a number of men who had worked as caravan guards. They all said he paid without issue and the job was easy work. Three days ago, he arrived in Barcelona, coming from someplace farther south—Xàtiva was what some heard. On arrival, he paid off his existing guards, and then he came directly to our chapter house.”
“So what changed?” Saluador wondered.
“I don’t know,” Andreas said with a shrug. “He’s hired us for six days, to take him to some village we won’t have heard of, he says. Up in the mountains. It can’t be that far.”
“Could be farther than you think,” Saluador said. “Six days means we could be in France. Near Toulouse.” He shook his head. “The Inquisition is still chasing Cathars over there. Not a good time to be hauling secret goods.”
Andreas nodded, his gaze flicking back to the lead wagon. Jacobi drove it himself, sitting awkwardly on the wooden bench, his legs splayed out against the edge of the wagon. Andreas found it curious that the trader had eschewed a horse for the much less comfortable plank on the wagon, though perhaps there was a story behind Jacobi’s stiff-legged posture.
“I warned him,” Andreas said. “I told him that if he was using us as a shield to hide what he was transporting, I’d gut him and leave him by the side of the road.”
“I’d help,” Saluador said.
Aye, Andreas thought, I’m sure you would.
They hadn’t been on the road a full day and already he was having second thoughts on accepting Domingo’s request to lead this mission.
Gaucelis unrolled the parchment and laid it on the knife-scarred table, using several of the tavern’s cups to hold the sheet flat. The other three—Míro, Alice, and Tibal—gathered around to inspect the illustration Gaucelis had discovered with Constansa.
“Is that blood?” Tibal asked, scratching at one of the hardened lumps with a fingernail. He squinted, showing his teeth, peering closely at what was now caught under his nail.
“It is,” Gaucelis said. “She cut her palm and used her blood to make the…these petals.”
Alice hung back, ostensibly to grant Tibal and Míro space to pore over the illustration. Gaucelis knew Tibal’s eyesight wasn’t what it had once been, and Míro made little effort to hide his fascination with Constansa’s illustration. But Gaucelis knew there was a deeper reason for Alice’s reticence. It had been nearly two years since Constansa’s last creative outburst—as Alice was wont to describe it—and Gaucelis knew the dowager had prayed heavily that the previous incident had been the last. That the young woman was of sound mind and spirit. That she was safe.
That they all were safe.
“It is oddly beautiful,” Míro said, clearing his throat nervously when he caught sight of Alice’s hard glare. “Rose petals falling from the sky, like tears from God. The fact that they are red tells us that God is looking down this hill of spears—this battlefield—and is saddened by what He sees.” He gestured at the sheet. “She tells a sad story with much brevity and clarity. As a poet, I find it marvelous.”
“As a man who has been in the mud and muck of more than one battle, I think you’re a fucking idiot,” Tibal muttered.
Míro did not take umbrage to the veteran’s comments. Their tempestuous relationship provided the grist for more than one night’s worth of fanciful tales that had made the dark winter nights less bleak. Gaucelis knew that Tibal rarely missed one of Míro’s performances, even when he was the subject of the poet’s ribald mockery.
“What else?” Alice asked, prompting Gaucelis to tell the others what she had confessed to the dowager not an hour before. Míro, who had been about to reply to Tibal, closed his mouth and looked expectantly at Gaucelis.
“She spoke to me,” Gaucelis said. “Even though she was still asleep, she said, ‘They’re coming.’”
“Who are?” Tibal demanded. When Gaucelis didn’t answer, he pounded his fist against the table, making the tankards jump. “Who is coming?” His eyes were wide, and his jaw worked heavily, like a hound worrying a piece of gristly meat.
“I…I don’t know,” Gaucelis said. She felt a softness in her eyes, tears threatening to come, and she lowered her head so the others would not see her despair. How could she protect these women?
“What am I supposed to do?” Tibal demanded, first to her and then to Alice. “Huh? I have half a dozen men who know how to wield a sword. We have no walls. We can’t stop that bastard Vilapros and his men from coming here whenever they want. We have no hope against a real army.”
“We don’t know anyone is coming,” Alice said in a quiet voice. “We don’t know for certain.”
“Waiting until we know for certain is too late,” Tibal spat. He stabbed a finger at the charcoal lines across the bottom of the sheet. “If the Inquisition is pushing its crusade into the mountains, none of us are safe. Who knows where Vilapros is hiding in the mountains, but I’m sure he won’t go to ground and hope they won’t find him. He’ll run at the first sign of an armed host, and his band of ruffians will run with him. The Church stripped him of everything—his pride too. He won’t stand up to them. Everyone else is worthless. We’ll all be dead.” He banged his hand on the table once more, swearing heavily, and then he stormed out of the inn, slamming the door behind him.
“And you think I am the overly dramatic one,” Míro noted in the silence that followed. “Maybe this is no
thing more than a bad dream. We all have them once in a while, don’t we?”
Gaucelis shook her head, and Míro raised his eyes toward the room of the inn and sighed. “How long has she been having the dreams this time?” he asked.
“She never stopped,” Gaucelis admitted, drawing an outraged gasp from Alice. “I burned them,” she continued, letting go of the secret she had held for the last two years. “I gave her scraps of paper. It calmed her. It made it easier for her to sleep. If she could draw what was in her head, then it went away. It was the only thing that seemed to ease her suffering. And when she slept, I took the pictures away and burned them. That way no one would ever know. It was our secret—hers and mine.”
“So why didn’t you burn this one?” Míro asked.
Gaucelis gestured at the sheet. “Because she hurt herself. I couldn’t hide what she did to her hand. I think she doesn’t want our secret to be secret anymore.”
The small caravan reached the base of Montserrat in the late afternoon, several hours earlier than Jacobi had anticipated. There was an inn—marked by a black sheep painted on a warped plank of wood—at the break in the road. The main road continued north, following the winding course of the Llobregat River. Beside the inn, another track went west, heading up into the rocky embrace of the multi-peaked massif. Santa Maria de Montserrat, a Benedictine monastery, lay at the end of the road. Pilgrims who were unprepared for the austere hospitality of the monastery stayed at the inn before embarking on the final leg of their journey.
Jacobi walked painfully about the yard of the inn, trying to loosen the knotted muscles of his left leg. The pitchfork and subsequent infection had left a stiffness in his leg he could never quite get rid of. As he worked out the tension in his leg, the five Shield-Brethren helped his three-man crew with securing the wagons and unhitching the horses. He was mildly surprised by the Shield-Brethren’s assistance—normally the hired guards made it very clear that their jobs started and ended with protecting the wagons. Everything else was Jacobi’s problem.