‘They have Renaut?’
‘Dare say he is dead, along with the others.’
‘You saw him dead with your own eyes?’
‘Yes.’ Godfroi looked to the others for support. Philip wondered if they would try to lie to him as well. They hated him now; it was in their eyes.
‘I have to see it for myself. I will not leave if there is a chance he is still alive.’
‘But, seigneur, the crusaders are still hunting us and now we are only five men!’
‘Honour is not a matter of numbers,’ Philip said. He stood up, staggered. Redbeard had given his head a good rattling. Well, perhaps next time it would be his turn.
He remembered his squire on his piebald pony, in the rain, that very first time. ‘Are you cold?’
‘I’ve been colder.’
If he were dead, he would not leave him to rot in the sun; a Christian burial at least. There was yet a chance he might be alive, hiding out in the woods.
They didn’t like it, Godfroi and the others. But they didn’t have to like it. It was their lot, and it was not much worse than his. He could hardly claim privilege now.
*
And he was right; they did find Renaut.
He was sitting near a well with a bloodied bandage over his eyes. Once a shepherd might have used it to water his sheep, for the place stank of animals. They had left him near the meagre trickle so that he would not die; at least, not straight away. Their horses’ hooves had stirred up the mud around the well and trampled the grass.
Philip scrambled down from his horse and dropped to his knees. ‘Oh God, Renaut, what have they done to you?’
‘Seigneur, don’t shout, it hurts when you shout.’ The lad was shivering from head to foot, like a wounded animal. He remembered when Leyla had taken an arrow in her shoulder near Acre, how she had just stood motionless, just like this, her flanks quivering.
A gout of blood dropped from Renaut’s nose. Philip turned to Godfroi, called for water, called for a comfort no one could give, called for the Devil to rise from the earth and take away to damnation whoever had done this to the boy.
There was not much he could do for him but wrap a clean linen bandage around the wound. Renaut’s breathing was ragged, his hands rested on Philip’s shoulders as he worked. Philip gave him fresh water, and all they had left of their red wine to replace the blood he had lost. He wished they had opium or belladonna.
When he had finished he had Renaut’s blood all over him, his blood and his tears.
‘I knew you’d come back,’ Renaut said.
‘I would not leave you.’
‘They thought you might. They waited here for a while, I could hear them, in the trees. But then they gave up and left.’
‘Are there are any others surviving?’
‘Only me. I lost my sword in the fight and they overpowered me. Seigneur, I would rather these devils had killed me.’
‘I will avenge you, Renaut, I swear it, I swear it on my father’s tomb.’
‘No, just take me home,’ Renaut said. ‘I don’t want to die here.’
Philip got him to his feet and with Godfroi’s help he put him on Leyla, hoisting him up into the saddle. The other men turned their heads as this was done, could not bear to look at what they had done to him. He must be in searing pain, Philip thought, yet he makes no sound.
‘What a place you led us to,’ Godfroi said.
Philip did not answer him. ‘The sun is near to setting,’ he said. ‘Let’s get away from here and find some shelter.’ They heard the distant howling of a wolf. A vulture flapped lazily into the trees, replete.
LIII
NOT A LIVING soul between them and Avignon, at least none that would show their faces to armed men, as sorry a sight as they were. It was already twilight when they found a hamlet in the shadow of a defile. It had been freshly torched, and the rotten straw in the barn was still smoking. But the church and a few ragged huts had escaped the flames and these would at least provide some shelter.
Godfroi sniffed at the acrid smell of burned meat. ‘We might even find something to eat, seigneur.’
‘Nothing that isn’t charcoal by now.’
‘Then it looks like we’ll be eating crow shit again,’ another of the men said.
The grass was still on fire, the undergrowth crackling as it burned. Red smoke drifted along the valley, backlit by the dropping sun. Philip thought it remarkable how the aftermath of destruction and terror could appear so eerily beautiful.
‘Look at that,’ he said to Renaut before he could stop himself.
A sparse dinner: some wild figs, a handful of olives. They watched their shadows dance on the smoke-blackened walls of the hut, tried not to look at the young man sitting hunched and miserable and shivering in the corner. Renaut would not eat. One by one they drifted outside, preferring to sleep under the trees in between their watches than listen to his muffled sobs.
‘I promise you,’ Philip said when they were alone, ‘I will find the man who did this to you.’
‘Seigneur, this was not your fault. Don’t blame yourself.’
‘I led you here, Renaut. You warned me of the dangers.’
‘You were trying to save your son. I spoke then from fear. Though I did not tell you this before, I so admired you for what you did. I would not have had the courage.’
‘Yet you followed me here.’
‘I had no choice. You are my liege lord.’
Philip jumped to his feet, put his mailed fist into the wall. The daub and wattle crumbled away under the blow. ‘What kind of men would do this?’
Renaut let out a small cry. ‘It hurts so much,’ he said.
It outraged him to see such a beautiful young boy reduced to this huddled and shivering wretch. ‘I will take good care of you, Renaut.’
‘I don’t want to live like this,’ he said.
Philip did not know what to say to that. I should not want to live without my eyes either, he thought.
‘Do you remember that soldier we found on the road? They had cut off his hands and feet. He begged you to kill him, remember?’
‘It is not so easy to take a life when the blood is cold.’
‘So you would not do it for me if I asked you?’
‘Especially not for you. Do not ask it of me.’
A log cracked in the fire. Outside the humming of the cicadas rose to a crescendo. ‘You are a good man, seigneur. A man of honour. I wanted to be like you one day. I am proud that I served with you. I always wanted to fight alongside you, and I did, didn’t I, for that one time.’
I have lost two sons now, Philip thought. The son I had, and the son I could have made this boy into. It was black outside, black as God’s heart. Inside himself he felt a cold ache, worse than hunger.
‘Please my lord,’ Renaut said. ‘Do not pace like that. Come here and sleep by me.’
*
Philip did not remember falling asleep. He started awake to a filthy dawn, grey and treacherous. Where was Godfroi? They should have had the horses saddled by now. He got up and went outside.
His sergeant-at-arms and the rest of the men were gathered around something they had found in the bushes. They all backed away when they saw him and by the looks on their faces he knew that whatever it was, they feared he would hold them responsible.
Renaut.
But Renaut had gone to sleep right there beside him. Why was he out here?
‘These two were on sentry duty,’ Godfroi said, nodding in the direction of two of his men. ‘They said they didn’t fall asleep but I say they did. How else could this have happened?’
Renaut lay on his belly, his hands trapped beneath him. Philip rolled him over as gently as he could. He had used Philip’s own dagger, taken from his belt while he slept. Expertly done, too, by the look of it; he had held the point just under his ribs so that when he fell it would travel straight upwards, into the heart. He would have died quickly. But still, no easy thing to die quietly, he supposed;
die and not even wake the sentries.
‘It’s not your men’s fault. Sooner or later he would have found a way.’ He stood up. ‘Do we have anything to bury him with?’
Godfroi shook his head.
‘Then help me. We’ll take him down there to the defile, by the stream. The ground will be softer there. We’ll not leave him for the carrion crows. I’ll dig his grave with my own hands if I have to.’
‘We do not have time! The crusaders, seigneur! They will be hunting for us at first light. The sooner we are out of the Pays d’Oc, the better.’
‘We’ll leave when I say so,’ he said.
It was a shallow grave at best, but they weighted it with large stones from the river to deter the wolves and the foxes, and Philip said a prayer over him.
Godfroi shook his head. ‘No good praying, my lord. He’s a suicide. You know what happens to suicides up there.’ And he glanced to the heavens.
‘If God will not allow this good young man entry and opens his gates instead to the men who did this to him, just because they wear a red cross on their tunics, then it’s not a heaven that I should wish to go to.’
Godfroi crossed himself when he heard that and exchanged dark looks with the others. Philip did not care that he had spoken a blasphemy. His heart was not on the eternal; all he wanted at that moment was to rip out the heart of the man who had done this to his squire and his friend.
LIV
AFTER THEY HAD buried Renaut, as best they might, the men were eager to be on their way. Philip ignored their entreaties and went instead into the ruins of the church. Such a church it was: a pitiful square box with bare limestone walls, and a floor of beaten earth, save for a few paved stones at the choir and the altar. No windows. There was a smoke-blackened wooden crucifix on the wall. Somehow it had not burned when they had looted it.
He slumped to his knees.
He would never understand God’s purpose. Why should He allow victory to torturers and let a boy like Renaut suffer such obscene violation? Where was the reason behind it, the mercy?
‘Alezaïs,’ he said.
He remembered her standing by the gate the morning he had left for the crusade. She would have never asked him not to go, she understood where his duty lay. Already she was slipping from him. He could no longer conjure the smell of her skin, nor hear her laugh when he closed his eyes, as once he had been able to do. Everything that mattered to him was slipping away, even memory.
Alezaïs, be there in heaven for me. Wait for me.
Wait for me while I do what? he thought. For my wife and for my sickly son and for my squire there is heaven; for me there is a drear castle, full of ghosts and duty. Duty to whom? To the children that Giselle may yet carry in my name? Not to Giselle, surely. If I do not go back she will not be very sad.
The castle and the fief will fall to her brothers, who will be very happy of it. She might cry some false tears, but what might she miss of him? He had been largely indifferent to her and she would be better off without him. She was still young and her family would find her a better husband who might treat her better.
Yet he could not do what Renaut had done. Despite what he had said to Godfroi, he believed as his sergeant did that heaven was shut up to those who took the path of self-destruction. But there were other ways of foreshortening a life; men were hunting him down at this very moment and it would be a simple enough matter just to stop running from them.
And why not? Was he supposed to still have faith in life, and in God, when God Himself had turned His back on him? If God was all powerful, why would He stand aside and let evil have its way like this? This unholy God had taken everything he loved, and everything he believed.
Very well. You may bend me, but I will not break. I shall defy you, God. I shall spit in your eye.
He climbed on to the altar and tore the cross from the wall. He picked it up with both hands and brought it crashing down on the stone slabs. The first time it would not break but the second time it snapped, just below its mid-point, leaving the cross and its victim in two pieces on the floor.
‘Damn you, God!’
Godfroi ran in, the men crowding the doorway of the burned church behind him. They stared at this madman and then at the cross that lay at his feet. Their eyes went wide.
‘Seigneur, are you all right?’
‘Get the horses ready,’ he said.
‘We are riding back to Vercy?’
‘No, we are going to find that devil with the red beard and I am going to settle with him.’
‘But, seigneur! We are just five. There are at least four score of them.’
‘I only want him. You can kill the rest if you wish.’
He stared them down. They backed out.
After they were gone he sank to his knees and wept for the way the world should be; a world where honour was rewarded and God was merciful; a world where children did not die before they were breeched and wives lived to be mothers and grandmothers and men did not put out other men’s eyes and leave them abandoned and in torment. That was what he believed in, but the world was not like that.
He took out his sword and held the hilt against his forehead. ‘I swear by my father’s soul that I will avenge you, Renaut. I will find the man who did this to you and I will take vengeance for you and for this crime.’
At that moment he heard the door crash shut and something slammed hard against it – a timber wedge, he supposed. Then he heard Godfroi ride away, the last of his men-at-arms with him.
LV
PHILIP THREW HIMSELF against the door. It did not budge. He tried to kick it down though he knew it was wasted effort. Finally he sat down on his haunches, his back against the cold stone wall.
He closed his eyes, imagined Godfroi dismounting in the courtyard at Vercy, he and his ragged band, the stable boys staring wide-eyed. There would be much play over their wounds. Godfroi would go down on one knee when the lady Giselle appeared. I am sorry, my lady. He was murdered in an ambush by brigands. We scarce got away with our own lives.
She would howl, for appearance’s sake, but life would go fair for her from then on. Godfroi and the others would sleep uneasy in their straw by the fire for a time, starting every time they heard the watchman at the gates, unsure if Philip might yet return. But they would likely think they had gambled well.
But they could not be sure it would turn out this way. Godfroi must know that if it became known what he had done, it would not go well for him.
Yet it must seem a risk worth taking. If they had stayed with him they faced certain doom. If life was more important to them than honour, then he had given them no choice.
He looked around for a way out of this dark little box where they had abandoned him. There was a hole in the roof but he doubted that he could reach it. There was, though, a circular opaque window, set in lead, right above the altar, and he wondered if he might climb through that.
When the crusaders had fired the church, several of the roof beams had fallen in. The blackened timbers were still warm to the touch. He dragged one to the wall and hefted it upright, wedging it just below the window.
He needed something to smash the glass. He supposed the iron upright of the crucifix would do as well as anything. If God wished to save his soul, then He might as well furnish him with some practical help.
Balancing on the beam was difficult. He straddled it and eased his way up and along it until he was within striking distance of the clouded glass. The timber creaked and bent beneath him. A dangerous fall if it gave way, the height of two men to the floor, but there was no choice.
It took three swings of the broken iron cross before the window smashed. But his moment of triumph was short-lived; there was a loud crack and the timber gave way underneath him and he fell.
The floor below the window was beaten earth or perhaps the injury might have been worse. Even so, as he hit the ground, he felt his right ankle turn underneath him. He lay there stunned. God in heaven, please don’t let it be
broken.
He sat up and felt down his leg for broken or exposed bone. No, it seemed all right. He flexed his knee, gingerly testing it. He climbed back to his feet, supporting himself on the wall; it was painful, but he could stand. He limped over to the corner of the church, hauled another timber from the blackened tangle of beams and dragged it back to the altar. He hefted it against the wall and then worked it higher until it was again under the high window.
He climbed again, holding the iron cross in his right hand, and smashed out the remains of the glass. The hole was small and he was a big man.
He thrust his two arms through it and took a grip on the outside wall. As he pulled himself forward the timber beam slipped and crashed on to the floor of the church. He scrambled for a foothold on the rough wall, working himself forward so that his head and shoulders were through the hole. For a moment he was jammed there, locked by the width of his own shoulders.
He wiggled through, by inches, until first one arm, then the other, were free. He looked down.
It had not seemed so far to the ground when he was standing below. Now it seemed a very long fall indeed. If he had almost broken his ankle falling feet first from the beam, how much more dangerous to fall head first? He twisted himself around in the hole so that he could grip the stone with his knees, tearing his clothes, then his skin, on a stubborn piece of glass that yet remained in the window’s frame.
He now hung upside down out of the window. There was a stringy patch of grass below. No hidden rocks, he hoped. All he could do was throw out his arms to break his fall, as best he could. He took a deep breath and braced himself. He relaxed his knees and calves and felt himself fall.
He smashed both his shins on the window frame as he came out, his wrists jarred as they took the fall, his head hit the ground hard and he blacked out.
*
Philip opened his eyes. He was lying face down in the dirt. How long had he been there? He moved his hands, then his arms, first one, then the other; then his feet and his legs, waiting for the pain. Nothing that was too bad. Encouraged, he eased himself over on to his back, spitting the dirt out of his mouth. He felt a loose tooth with his tongue. If that was the worst of it, he could count himself lucky.
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