‘No? Pity.’ Zophiel studiously brushed some dirt from his sleeve. ‘Too bad this one’s married then.’
‘If you’re talking about Adela, I have no interest in her except as a friend.’
I winced for I knew he had walked right into Zophiel’s trap.
‘No, I thought as much. Your tastes don’t run to skirts, do they, Jofre? I’ve heard it said that some men find the meat of the cock more to their taste than the breast of the hen. Personally, I find it loathsome and revolting. Still, as I say, how unfortunate for you this particular cock is married. Who knows, you and your master might have managed –’
Jofre, suddenly comprehending, flushed with anger. He flew at Zophiel, his fists raised.
Zophiel, laughing, neatly sidestepped him.
I stepped between them. ‘Leave it, Jofre, can’t you see he’s trying to bait you? Go and take your anger out on the birds with your sling, where it will do some good.’
I bundled up his cloak, thrust it into his arms and pushed him towards the door.
As I opened it, Zophiel called out, ‘I’m afraid your friend Osmond will be keeping his clothes on in your company from now on, boy, but if your tastes run to cock birds, you might try a bit of swan. I’m sure he’d be grateful; after all, a freak like him can’t be getting much either.’
It took all my strength to stop Jofre smashing his fist into Zophiel’s face, something I was itching to do myself.
I returned to the chapel late in the afternoon with half a sack of beechnuts, hazelnuts and acorns. It had taken several hours to gather what little I had for, judging by the churned–up soil, either wild boar or the local pigs had been foraging heavily in the area for mast. The beechnuts would take an age to shell, but we had little else to do in the dark evenings and they could be dried for flour, if we could restrain ourselves from nibbling them for long enough. The door was unbarred and I was surprised to find the chapel empty, but I could hear Cygnus’s voice drifting up from the crypt below. It sounded as if he was telling Adela a tale to keep her occupied. I barred the door to the chapel before joining them and found the two of them huddled round the brazier in the crypt. They smiled as I came into the room.
‘No sign yet, Adela?’ I asked her.
She shook her head.
‘It’ll come in its own time. Be thankful you can rest now for when the baby does come, you won’t have a minute’s peace for years to come.’
Cygnus rose and pulled his purple cloak around his shoulders. ‘If you can keep Adela company, Camelot, I’ll go and see to Xanthus.’
‘I’d best come up with you and bar the door behind you. Zophiel will be furious if he comes back to find it open and all his boxes left unguarded.’
Cygnus clapped his hand to his mouth. ‘I left the door unbarred, didn’t I? That’s how you got in. I was thinking of other things and then Adela called up and…’
I chuckled at his horrified expression. ‘No harm done, but I suggest you don’t mention it to Zophiel, otherwise you may find yourself tied to the wagon again.’
I barred the door behind Cygnus and turned again to look around the chapel, just to reassure myself that, as I said to Cygnus, there was no harm done. I checked the pile of Zophiel’s boxes in the corner. The stench of the mermaid permeated the room – seaweed and that bitter perfume of myrrh and aloes. I had grown so used to the smell by now that most days I no longer noticed it, then at other times, without warning, I would smell it afresh and the memories would come flooding back – the day they brought my brother’s head home.
It was months after the news came that Acre had fallen. And in all those months we didn’t know if he was dead or alive. He might, we told one another, even now be on his way home to us. He could be wounded. He was being nursed somewhere until his strength returned and then he’d come limping home. One day, when we least expected it, he’d walk back through the door. We went on hoping that until the day we were summoned to the solar and saw the casket on the table in front of my father and smelt that odour.
I wouldn’t have recognized his head. The face was wrinkled and dark like leather, the eyelashes and beard startling white. The lips were drawn back from the teeth in an awful grin, the eyes squeezed shut as if horror-struck by something he had seen and couldn’t bear to look at. They said it was his head, but I wouldn’t believe it until I saw the little piece missing from his left ear where a hound had bitten him as a boy. Strange how, in the end, it is only our scars which distinguish us. My father held the head between his two hands as if my brother was again a little boy standing at his knee to receive his blessing. He did not weep. ‘I can bury my son now,’ was all he said.
People blamed them, you know, blamed the knights for not holding on. Even though Jerusalem had fallen many years ago, still as long as we held Acre, people believed that one day we would take the Holy Land again, but once Acre fell, a dream fell with it. They had destroyed the one last thread of hope and people could not forgive them for that. My father was one of them, saying the knights that had fled were traitors, betraying Christ and their King. My father said he’d rather his son came home on his shield than as a coward. We begged him not to say it, but he had spoken and it was too late.
Do you think words have the power to kill? Who knows where they go once they are spoken aloud; they drift off like seeds in the wind. ‘Speak no evil,’ my nursemaid used to say, ‘for tiny demons lurk everywhere just waiting to catch your words and use them to tip their arrows with poison.’ My father had spoken and now my brother was dead.
I heard Adela calling anxiously from below.
‘Coming,’ I said.
I glanced again at the boxes; none of them seemed to be missing. At least Zophiel wouldn’t find out that Cygnus had left the door unbarred. I turned to go back down to Adela. The late-afternoon sun shone in through the window, sending long shafts of light across the stone floor. Layers of dust had accumulated since the builders abandoned the chapel. We hadn’t troubled to sweep it. What was the point when we continually trailed mud in? But now, as I turned to go, I noticed something I had not seen before. Several of the boxes had been moved, swivelled out and then pushed back into their original positions, leaving fresh fan-shaped trails in the dust. Most likely Zophiel himself had moved them before going out to fish. He constantly checked them, so doubtless he had done so again that morning. For a moment I was tempted to try to open one until I heard the sounds of voices outside, Osmond and Narigorm returning. I went to unfasten the door.
Jofre didn’t come back for supper. No one had seen him all day. Zophiel was adamant that no food should be left for him, since he had not contributed so much as a plucked sparrow to the pot. I have to confess that no one, not even Rodrigo or the tender-hearted Adela, put up more than a token protest, for we were so cold and hungry that even if we had wanted to save some food, I doubted we could have resisted eating his share.
As darkness fell, so the air grew colder. Down in the crypt we stacked the brazier with wood and huddled round it in our cloaks. The wood was still too damp to burn well and gave off more smoke than heat. The river rushing below seemed louder than ever. Sometimes we heard the grinding of a branch or some other object forced against the pillar of the crypt by the surging water. The stone amplified the noise so that it sounded as if some huge beast was gnawing away at the foundations of the chapel.
We were just preparing to settle down for another cold night when we heard the wolf again. A wolf’s howl, however often you hear it, still sends shivers down your spine. Adela cried out in alarm, and both Zophiel and Rodrigo started to their feet.
‘Is the door still barred?’ Zophiel asked sharply. ‘No one has been out since I barred it tonight?’ He looked round at us as if he thought we might have sneaked up and opened it while he wasn’t looking.
‘But Jofre is still out,’ Rodrigo said. ‘He may be walking home. The howl came from the side of the river nearest the town. Jofre will be in danger and if he is… not able to defend himself…
’
‘Drunk, you mean,’ said Zophiel. ‘Yes, I’m afraid you may be right. When our young friend is in his cups, he’s incapable of defending himself against a marauding rabbit, never mind a wolf.’ The thought seemed to give him considerable satisfaction.
‘Then you will go with me to find him?’
I was astounded that Rodrigo should think for one moment that Zophiel would go and I was not surprised by Zophiel’s sneering refusal. ‘You really think I am going to give up my sleep to go looking for that drunken little sod? Serve the boy right if he does get eaten.’
But Zophiel’s hands were trembling and I knew his refusal had less to do with his contempt for Jofre than his fear of being out there in the darkness with a wolf prowling round.
We heard another howl and stiffened, listening. Adela, cringing at the sound, gazed fearfully up at the ceiling as if she thought the beast might leap through the chapel window above our heads. Osmond pulled her tightly to him. This time not even he could pretend it was a dog.
‘Wolves guard the paths of the dead,’ Narigorm said suddenly. My stomach lurched. Narigorm was crouching just outside the circle of flickering yellow light cast by the brazier. Her face and body were concealed in the dark shadows of the crypt, but her hands were in the pool of light, hovering over the runes. There were only three in front of her, not the whole set. I could see nothing else on the floor with them – no shells, no herbs, no feathers. I had watched Narigorm work the runes often enough to know that using only three meant she was asking a question of them. A simple question, but the answer would not be simple, that I did know. And was the wolf the question or the answer?
Zophiel strode across the room and seized the child’s wrist, pulling her hand away from the runes.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked in a dangerously quiet tone.
Narigorm lifted her head. Twin flames reflected in the pupils of her eyes, like fire burning in ice. ‘Wolves bring the spirits of the dead home, however far they have travelled.’
Cygnus shifted uneasily. ‘I’ve heard that tale before. My mother used to tell me that the spirits of the newly dead travel the ancient straight tracks to get back to their ancestral homes. Wolves guard the tracks to make sure that the spirits of the dead are not taken from the path by demons or witches. Is that what you meant, Narigorm?’
Narigorm didn’t reply but sat motionless, gazing up at Zophiel. Man and child stared at each other, both expressionless. It was Zophiel who looked away first. He dropped her arm as though he had been stung and turned abruptly on his heel.
As if a spell had been broken, Rodrigo reached for his stave and cloak. ‘I am going to find Jofre.’
I leaned on my stave and prised myself stiffly to my feet, wrapping my cloak more tightly around me.
‘I’ll go with you, Rodrigo. I may be too old to make much of a fighter, but there is safety in numbers. A wolf won’t attack a man in a crowd. Who else will come?’ I looked at Osmond, but he studiously avoided my gaze and stared at the floor.
The night was clear and frosty, each star bright and sparkling in its sable bed. The moon was rounded but not quite full; tomorrow it would be. Now, though, it was bright enough to flood the bridge with opal light. Below us the water, black now, roared and surged beneath the arches. The silver moonlight glinted on its surface like scales on the back of a giant fish.
Once off the bridge, the road curved away in the darkness, running between scrubland littered with tree stumps. Rodrigo had brought a lantern as the law demands for those brave or foolish enough to be abroad at night, proof that our business was honest. An honest man, the law says, will go abroad openly and not wish to conceal his presence or identity. But what does the law say of those dishonest men who can then see the light from miles around, proclaiming a traveller ripe for the plucking? Who will protect the law-abiding from the law? Still, that night I feared the wolf more than man and the light would at least help keep that at bay. Cygnus had bravely joined us and he glanced uneasily around at the bushes on either side of the road where shadows ran and branches growled.
Suddenly Rodrigo stopped dead and pointed. ‘Over there,’ he hissed. A pair of eyes, low to the ground, glowed in the flame. For a moment neither we nor it moved, then it turned its head and began to slip away. We caught sight of the red bushy tail and breathed a sigh of relief; a fox, only a fox. We continued on our way. Our eyes and ears began to hurt with the strain of looking and listening for any sign of the wolf, but there was none.
There was no sign of Jofre either on the road, even though the curfew bell in the town had rung an hour since. We reached the town gate. A steep embankment, topped with a wattle fence, marked the town boundary. It was in poor repair, not much defence against anyone except old dotards like me who can no longer scramble over fences. A town like this could not afford a wall. As we expected, the cart gate in the wooden gatehouse which straddled the road was firmly shut.
I rapped on the wicket gate with my staff. A small grilled shutter in the gate opened, revealing the head of the night watchman.
‘What’s your business?’ he growled.
‘We come looking for a lad.’
‘No accounting for taste.’
I ignored the remark. ‘This man is the boy’s master. He’s come to fetch him home. The boy should have been back hours ago. You know what these young lads are, always chasing some pretty girl. Can we come in and find him?’
‘Gates are locked for the night.’
‘All the more reason to find him and to fetch him home. This lad’s a bit of a handful once he’s had a drink or two, he gets rowdy, disturbing good folks in their houses, chasing their daughters, smashing things. You don’t want to be dealing with endless complaints on your watch, now do you? Let us in and we’ll haul him out of here before he causes any trouble.’
The watchman hesitated.
I pushed a coin through the grill at him. ‘For your trouble.’
That seemed to persuade him and the small wicket gate in the main door swung open.
Once inside we described Jofre to him, but he only shrugged, impatient to return to warming his backside at his fire. He told us no lads had passed through this gate, but then he had only been on watch since the curfew bell and Jofre had probably been in the town long before that.
We walked three abreast down the main street, hoping that we might see Jofre making his way towards the gate. The town looked even more squalid under the yellow-orange glow of the night torches. Most of the houses were dark and shuttered and only the glimmer of candlelight here and there showed through the cracks. But despite the curfew bell there were still people abroad. The taverns were open and every now and then a group of revellers would spill out. Occasionally a man would be thrown out, landing on his backside in the street if he was lucky, or face down in the sewer if he was not. The alleys and snickets were darker than before, but the odd squeal or yell which emanated from their depths suggested they were not deserted.
We drew level with the Red Dragon Inn. It was brightly lit and sounds of raucous laughter rang out from inside. However hard up they were, there were plenty of people determined to make the most of this Christmastide, whatever the rumours of pestilence or perhaps because of them.
The door of the inn opened and a girl threw a pail of slops out into the street. We all jumped back.
‘Careful, girl,’ I yelled. ‘Mind where you’re throwing that.’
She looked up. It was the same serving wench we had seen lounging outside the inn on the day we came past.
‘Beg your pardon, sirs, I…’ She suddenly smiled in recognition. ‘Aren’t you the gentlemen came by with a wagon a few days back?’ She put the pail down and tugged at the front of her dress, revealing even more of her ample breasts. ‘Managed to shake off that old tight-arse who was leading the mare, did you? Does he ever crack a smile, that one? If you’re looking for a good time, you’ve come to the right place. You come along in with me, sirs. We’ll soon see you right.’
‘I remember him all right. Came here a couple of nights back with the mummers. Good-looking lad, nice manners, gentle too. He could share my bed anytime and there’s not many I’d say that about. But he wasn’t interested in getting between my sheets, if you get my drift. Always the way with the good-looking ones, either they’re monks or mollys.’
‘Have you seen him tonight?’
‘Maybe.’
I fumbled in my purse; Rodrigo saw what was required and proffered a coin. The girl took it with a small bob and tucked it into her bodice.
‘He’s in the stew.’ She caught Rodrigo’s arm and pulled him a little way up the street until we came to the entrance to a dark alleyway. ‘Up there second right. You’ll see the sign.’
‘You are sure he is there?’
‘I’m sure. Someone in the Red Dragon saw him go in. More to the point, they saw who he went in with.’ Her smile vanished and she gripped Rodrigo’s arm urgently. ‘You want to get him out of there, quick as you can. Like I say, he’s a nice lad and I wouldn’t want to see that pretty face of his messed up.’
Rodrigo looked alarmed. ‘You think someone is going to hurt him? Why?’
‘Look, if anyone asks, I haven’t said anything, right?’
We nodded.
‘The other night when he came in with the mummers, he started getting friendly with one of our local lads, more than friendly, if you get my drift. If your lad had gone for anyone else, no one would care what he did or who he did it with, so long as he could pay for it, but Ralph is trouble. His old man is Master of the Butchers’ Guild. He owns a deal of property in the town, fingers in a lot of pies, and he’d stick them in a lot more if he could. I reckon he knows the way his son leans, must do, but he won’t have it. He’s arranged a marriage between Ralph and the daughter of a baron who owns a dozen farms round these parts. You can see how it would be a good match; the baron produces the beasts, the butcher slaughters them. Keeps all the profits in the family, especially as the girl is the baron’s only surviving child.
Company of Liars Page 29