by Dan Davis
They were going to kill me.
My guts churned. My heart hammered against my ribs pounding in my ears like the sea against black rocks. I struggled to breathe as the hands clawed at me and teeth were bared.
I sent a final prayer to God and drew my sword, intending to slay as many as I could before I was born down.
Different shouts intruded. Barked orders from the rear. The mob before me was drawn back by unseen hands.
Soldiers of Marseilles had arrived.
They yelled and beat at the men attacking me. They forced their way through and stood in front of me making a protective screen and ordered the mob to return to their homes. It took a while and a few of the city folk staggered off with head wounds but they dispersed.
Falling to my knees I thanked God for delivering me from death. I knew then that He was guiding me on my quest.
As I finished my prayers, my saviours gathered me up and beat me into a bloody pulp.
***
When I woke I was in a gaol. Some frozen black dungeon with no light. At first I was afraid I had been blinded.
Feeling around my body I found that my sword, pack, purse and hauberk were all gone. I lay on a damp stone floor in nothing more than my underclothes. The floor reeked of sweat, mould and the acrid, throat-burning sourness of old piss and human shit. I was already shivering when I woke. My face was stiff with dried blood and my beating by the soldiers came flooding back.
“Awake, are you, boy?” The voice spoke softly but in the close blackness the sound made me jump out of my skin.
“Where am I?” I asked, but it came out as a moan.
“God loves me. Bringing you to me.” The voice chuckled. “I saw you. When they opened the door.” He spoke English with a strong accent. “I knows you, boy.”
The voice was familiar. “Who are you?” I tried to sit up.
Laughter again. Low, deep laughter.
“The Earl was heartbroken that you was not at home. He had plans for you, boy.”
Before I got higher than one elbow he scrambled over to me in the dark and pinned me down.
I am a big man and strong. Even then when I was so young but this was a man who had grown into his strength over many years. A man who had filled out with flesh over his muscle and dense bone. I felt his weight pressing down, his giant belly and smelt his stench and I knew who it was.
“Rollo,” I said.
One of Earl William’s men. That stupid, huge great Norman beast who had murdered his way out of his own hanging.
He laughed again, a low rumbling I felt inside my body.
His breath was rancid as he leaned his face close to mine. “We gutted your brother real nice, didn’t we, boy. Oh yes, we gutted him like a trout and he wept when he died. Sobbing like a baby for his poor bit of cunny getting savaged by the Earl right in front of him.”
The Beast Rollo thrust his hips and belly down onto my body and I felt a soft-hard rod pushing against my stomach. It could only have been Rollo’s enormous, tumescent phallus.
To throw him off I heaved myself up, the muscles in my back and legs straining. But I had no hope. He was twice my weight and he had me pinned on the bare stone floor.
“I cut off your brother’s head myself,” Rollo said. His lips sounded wet, like he was salivating. “It weren’t a quick one, neither. It was a shame but the Earl wanted her ladyship all to his self so he dragged her off to her bed. I would have liked to have seen what he did to her. But I can imagine it pretty well enough, oh yes indeed.” There was a wet slithering sound as he licked his lips right over my face.
“Coward,” I growled and writhed and twisted. He fell to one side and I got a hand free and punched the darkness where I thought he would be. My fist punched his skull and I nearly broke my hand. I punched his face and neck and shoulder but as I was on my back my blows had no weight behind them. Rollo was a monstrous, fleshy oaf and he felt nothing, grabbed my wrist and pinned me again.
“I been hungry,” Rollo said, almost whining. “Please lord, I know he is yours. But I been so hungry. Oh dear me, Christ, I been ever so hungry down here. Ever so hungry. And thirsty.” Warm spittle dribbled down onto my chin, neck and lips.
The world turned. And I knew.
I saw Isabella’s ripped and torn neck.
The woman in Dartmouth. The wives and children of the mob in Marseilles. The teeth marks on the wet nurse’s skin. Their wounds caused not by saws or knives but with teeth.
William and his men were tearing into their victim’s living flesh with their teeth. And drinking the blood.
I slammed my head forward, his nose smashing under my forehead.
Rollo grunted. Lifted his head away a fraction.
I butted him again, hard. I felt his grip loosen so I crashed my head forward a third time and Rollo growled, stood and picked me up like a rag doll, dragging me to my feet in the dark.
His fist hit me in the guts so hard I thought I was going to die.
That a blow could hurt so much was astonishing. Unable to draw breath, the panic rose inside me, certain I would suffocate from the paralysis his blow had dealt me. Even as it wore off and I could sense a breath on the horizon, I was certain that my insides had been minced. My guts ruptured. The humours would leak into my body rot me inside out.
I curled upon the floor and as soon as I gasped he kicked me in the face. The darkness burst with silver fire. Some instinct made me roll over and I avoided the next blow. It rushed by my head and I jumped to my feet and limped away as far as I could, trying to control my heaving lungs. I crouched against a damp wall.
Rollo was panting in the dark.
“Where you think you”re going to go, boy? He chuckled that deep, low sound. “You”re my lovely little feast, you are. You”re my lovely little lamb.” His feet scraped on the floor as he circled. “Come here, little lamb. Let me taste you.”
I slid sideways along the wall, feeling my way with a hand on the crumbly wet stones. If I could just get behind him, I thought, I could knock him senseless. A blow to the back of the knee to bring him crashing down, followed by kicks to the temple until he was dead.
My foot whacked into something solid under foot and a bucket clunked over, spilling a pile of stinking, liquid shit over my feet.
His triumphant growl alerted me to his charge and I tried to jump to the side.
Instead I slipped in the shit.
He caught me with a glancing blow powerful enough to send me staggering into the wall just as Rollo thudded into it where I had been standing. He snarled in pain and I smashed my elbow toward the sound, connecting with something hard. As he backed away I stalked forward swinging my fists and elbows into his face, his neck, his hands. He grabbed my forearm with a meaty hand and squeezed, bringing me to him.
Instead of pulling away I grabbed his wrist, stepped forward and threw him with my hip. Earl Robert always said the bigger your enemy is the easier he is to overbalance. But Earl Robert, as far as I know, never fought in a black dungeon with his feet covered in slimy shit.
My feet slid midway through the throw and I collapsed with Rollo half on top of me.
We were both stunned. Exhausted by the fight and the fall. His weight had crushed the air from my body. He himself was old and corpulent and he could not catch his stinking breath fast enough. I recovered my breath after a moment but he lay across me, his throat dry and rasping, breathing ragged and hot in my ear. I tried to wriggle out from under him but he pushed my face down and leaned his massive weight on top of me while he got his breath. My head was being crushed, the skin on my face grinding against grit on the slimy stone floor. There was no chance I could lift myself up against his immense force. He may as well have been a mountain atop me for all the use my shaking arms were pushing against it.
So I slid my face along the floor. The skin under my eye scraped into shreds and the flesh of my cheek tore.
“No you don’t, boy,” Rollo growled above me and heaved down harder. “Where you going
?”
It may have been my imagination but I was sure I could hear my skull cracking.
I squirmed my legs up like a frog and shoved myself away further, ripping and gouging my face down to my lips. I got far enough away that his weight was not right above me. It gave me enough space to twist out from under his hand and I lashed out, catching his locked-out elbow with my own. It cracked and Rollo cried out, lifting his body from mine but staying on his knees. I jumped up, ignoring the pain of my bleeding face and grabbed out toward the sound of his panting.
My fingers snaked into his greasy hair and gripped his massive head. He grabbed my wrists but I used my knee to smash him in the face.
It hurt me but it hurt him more. I smashed him again, bringing his face down onto my knee each time. His grip weakened until I was kneeing a wet, crunching mess and his hands dropped.
Still, he stayed upright.
Moving behind him, I got my arm around his throat and another behind his huge neck and squeezed for all I was worth. I ignored the pain in my face and knee.
Rollo reached behind his head and punched me in the face and he slapped and scratched my arms and hands but I held on. He writhed and bucked but I squeezed harder. He coughed out a spray of blood from his smashed face.
He went limp. I squeezed more until I was sure he was not pretending then let him drop. His body hit the stone floor with a thud. I backed away and sat, heaving down air until my heart slowed.
Rollo was not dead. A flicker of life remained inside his vast lump of a body and after a short while he stirred.
“Tough lad,” Rollo mumbled, wheezing. “But a week ago I’d have killed you.”
I kicked him in the face and stamped on his hands with a shit-covered heel until I felt fingers break and Rollo was hissing in agony. It hurt my foot but it was a satisfying trade.
“Where is William?” I asked Rollo, feeling the tatters of my cheek.
“Gone.” Rollo found it difficult to speak with so many teeth broken. His skull must have cracked, too.
“Do not try me,” I warned him.
“Gone,” Rollo muttered. “To find God.”
“Where in the Holy Land has he gone?”
“Back to Acre,” Rollo said. “From there to Jerusalem. Where died and where he was reborn, as the Christ was before him.” He chuckled and then coughed blood.
Acre. Earl William was heading for Acre. I let out a great shuddering sigh.
I had a destination.
“He left you here alone?” I asked.
Rollo wailed. “I couldn’t stop. He ordered me to flee. She tasted so sweet. The Gift. I wanted it to last. I am so weak.” He wailed again. “Forgive me, lord.”
“Why, Rollo?” I asked to the darkness, picking pieces of grit from my face. “You are drinking blood? What is this madness that has possessed you all?”
“Madness?” Rollo spat. The sound was wet and thick, like a slap. I thought I heard the hard tinkle of teeth mixed in with the blood. “We are angels, boy. Earl William died and God Himself rose William up. Turned him into the Angel of the Lord. He is the Destroyer. William chose us to share in his gift. We taste of him and we gain his strength. To keep it we must drink. Drink from the Destroyer on God’s day. So we each of us drink to stay strong, Sabbath to Sabbath. And we share. We share his sacrament and we become strong. Once we prepare the way he will ascend. Ascend on a pillar of flame to sit in judgement beside the Lord. From now until the end of days.”
I kicked him in his huge belly to silence him. He groaned and I kicked him again. I felt him swing at me in the dark so I kicked and stamped down on him once more. Kicking his head with bared feet was like kicking against a rock. But he fell mute again. Other than his laboured and wheezing breath. The foulness of that breath was greater than that of the shit bucket.
If there had been some way to restrain him then I would have done it. I had more questions. But soon he would become dangerous again and I could not share that black cell with him. And I knew that if I allowed myself to sleep even for a moment while Rollo lived then I would never wake.
Instead I prayed that God would see justice in my actions and forgive me if he did not. Anyway, the man was convicted before his hanging. I would be merely carrying out the sentence he had escaped from.
“None but God Himself can sit in judgement, Rollo,” I said, standing and stretching my aching limbs. “Which you are about to discover.”
“No. Murder. Murder.” Rollo cried as I crossed to him once more. “Murder,” he roared. My ears rang.
I beat him unconscious and sat across Rollo’s back. I got my arm around his neck and pulled upward.
And that was how the guards found me when they threw open the heavy door and blinded me with lamp light.
The guards lifted me from him and took me away. A grizzled old sergeant cleaned my wounds, allowed me to wash, bandaged my face, fed me and gave me a bed. All the while there was a local dignitary and a couple of priests apologising for locking an innocent knight on crusade in with such a monster.
Witnesses including a stone mason had sworn that I had been on the road when the murders had taken place. They said I had entered the city no earlier than the night I was attacked.
“The killings of the women and children lasted for many weeks,” they told me. “Soon after the English left.”
“The English were here?”
“King Richard the Lionheart and thousands of Englishmen gathered here. They camped to the north. The French, too, led by Philip. The French army was bigger, of course. They left two months ago and then the murders started. A shipwright’s wife was taken. Her body found mutilated. More women followed, always taken in the night. Children too. Every man went armed in his own home. Then that one was found asleep in an alley clutching a dead woman and her child to him. They had been cut about the neck. We believed we had our man. But there was another killing the next night while we had this one locked away. No more followed yet everyone thinks another is still out there.”
“The other men have fled for the Holy Land,” I said. “You can cease fretting.”
You are following King Richard the Lionheart, yes?” they said.
“Certainly,” I lied.
“When you see him,” they said. “Tell him that Marseilles treats Englishmen within the law.”
The very idea that I would ever speak to Richard the Lionheart was laughable. “Of course I shall tell him,” I said. “It will be the first thing I say.”
I gave thanks to God that the good fathers of Marseilles thought enough of justice to let me go, despite what the mob wanted.
The next morning, Rollo hanged.
They let me watch from afar, up on a balcony away from anyone who might attack me. Rollo was still raving about serving the Angel of God while he dangled. With the noose tight about his neck, still he wailed in despair and wept and cried out for William. The hangman had to climb up and clutch onto Rollo’s legs and jerk up and down to hasten his end.
The first of my prey brought to justice.
Six more to go.
Chapter Four - The Lionheart
Those men of Marseilles even returned my sword, helmet, shield and mail hauberk and most of my remaining coin.
“We pray to God that you will forgive us for throwing you in with that devil,” they said on the docks. “Take that great cog at the wharf and join your fellow Englishmen, Richard of Ashbury. Never come to Marseilles again.”
It was good advice. William headed for Acre. The city of Acre was in Outremer, as us Franks called the Christian parts of the Holy Land, much reduced since the rise of the Saracen king, Saladin. The English were heading for the Holy Land so I resolved to join them.
I took that Italian ship toward the city of Messina on the island of Sicily. Messina was where King Richard had finally gathered his forces for the crusade. That ship crept down the Italian coast spending days and even weeks in some of the ports while wind and storm kept ships from sailing out again. My face, thank
God, healed and there was no scar.
Always I asked after William and his pack of murderers. If I found them I had no way of fighting them all but still I asked. But whichever route they had taken to Acre they had not come my way.
Battling through the last of the bad weather, I arrived in Messina before the Christmas of 1190.
The city of Messina nestled against the isle of Sicily at the far eastern end, opposite the toe of Italy. It was another ancient place, unlike anywhere outside the Mediterranean. A hundred years before I was born the city was conquered by Normans as the first step in the eventual reconquest of the island from the Moors.
Even in winter the sky over that city could be so blue that I would find myself staring up, open mouthed. There were statues everywhere; the marble tarnished and speckled with salt and age but no less impressive for all that. The buildings that surrounded the perfect arc of the bay were of a golden sandstone. The waters were well protected from the elements by a magnificent hook of land that curved out and around so far that it almost closed off the entrance to the harbour.
Philip the King of France was also overwintering in Sicily with his vast army. The two kings had fallen out but they had committed to winning back Jerusalem from the Saracens.
I paid little attention to those so high above me. There were two or three thousand English soldiers and knights at Messina. After so long a time in the company of hostile foreigners I was happy at finding so many Englishmen so far from home.
Ragged and filthy and bordering on penniless I was no different from so many other knights there. We were second sons and adventurers seeking glory or escape from boredom or from a woman. My father had not been rich nor a very good soldier. Yet a handful of knights remembered Henry of Ashbury as a solid, dependable man and I was acknowledged as the new lord of Ashbury.
Rumour of the nature of the massacre at Ashbury had flown before me and some treated me warily, for a curse is infectious.
No one had seen Earl William. If it had been him alone I was seeking I would have assumed he was disguised, travelling incognito. But his companion was the giant Hugo who could no more hide among men than a castle could hide among houses. So William and his knights had taken another route toward Acre.