Tristan was not ready for the question. ‘’Tis nice, sir. I like the way it looks. ‘Tis not too big and not too small,’ he said without as much persuasiveness as he wanted to.
‘Mmm.’ The barber nodded. ‘Well, lad, let us hope this nice knife was the right choice then.’ He walked over to the middle of the cellar, took off his shirt and said, ‘Let’s begin.’
The barber patiently explained how the knife worked. Using his own body, he demonstrated the various entry points for a lethal stab. Wide-eyed and completely engrossed, Tristan listened and watched as the barber touched the stiletto point to his eyelid, mimicking a thrust to the brain, then to his ribs, mimicking a thrust to the heart. He showed Tristan between which ribs and at what angle the knife should pierce the skin to reach and penetrate the heart. Next, he moved to the liver, and with his back to Tristan, he showed the entry points for the kidneys. Then it was the turn of the throat and the spine followed by the crippling of limbs like arms and legs, and even the testis.
Moving the stiletto’s handle up, down and sideways, Tristan learned that you could make numerous stabs through the same puncture wound so that the sharp needle point could pierce a vital organ multiple times thereby causing severe internal bleeding. The barber showed him how to use the weapon defensively, blocking another strike using the blade and crossguard. His last word of advice was, ‘Avoidance is the best defence with a stiletto.’ Hale handed the stiletto back to Tristan and grabbed a dagger off a nearby rack.
‘Keep up!’
Hale carried out various attack and defence moves. He leaped forward, turned to his left and then spun to his right, stabbing while bobbing and weaving all the time. Next, he went on the defence, moving backwards and side-to-side, blocking his phantom attacker’s strikes before he countered with a few thrusts and short jabs of his own. Tristan mimicked his every move.
The man’s attacks became more frenzied, each thrust accompanied by a hissing sound. Tristan could no longer keep up and stopped to watch as the wild-eyed man launched one simulated assault after the other. The next moment Hale headed straight for him and when one of the barber’s stabs flew past Tristan’s head, so close that he could feel the sudden rush of wind in his face, he knew that the man was lost to the present. Tristan scampered backwards out of harm’s way and got ready to dash the door. He’s as mad as a March hare!
A maniacal look flashed across Hale’s face as he feverously struck out at the invisible forces that circled him. On and on he carried. He lashed out with both tongue and knife, screaming and stabbing until he had nothing left and had no choice but to stop. The dagger slipped from his hand and clattered onto the stone floor, and while he rested with his hands on his knees, he panted heavily as he forced as much air as possible into his burning lungs. Drops of sweat rained down from his steaming white body and splashed onto the cold stone floor. Then he began to giggle, which quickly turned into hysterical laughter as tears started running down his face. Still bent over, he looked up at Tristan.
‘I think they’re all dead now, lad.’ Hale struggled to get the words out. Taking a few more deep breaths, he slowly got upright and stretched his back. ‘Time for a drink! Be a good lad and hand me my shirt.’
When Tristan saw the insane look in the barber’s eyes starting to wane, he tried hard to stifle the relief he felt. He could not, for eventually, it bubbled to the surface in the form of a grin that stretched from ear to ear.
They were sitting upstairs in silence, sipping their drinks, each embroiled in his own thoughts. Tristan wanted to know, and he believed that, right now, the man was at his most vulnerable, so he asked. ‘Where did you learn to fight, sir?’
At first, Hale appeared reluctant to answer but then leaned in closer and whispered, ‘The Clink.’ Tristan was taken aback by the matter-of-fact way in which the man had said it.
‘Prison?’
The barber was in no mood to talk about his past, but he knew the boy was stubborn when it came to gaining knowledge. Over the past few weeks, he had learned that Tristan had an insatiable appetite for understanding things, from what they were and how they worked, to where they came from and how they were made. And after all, he did like the boy, and he believed their pact was as solid as the rocks his tavern was built on, so he obliged.
‘I shall start at the beginning,’ Hale said. He took a long sip, savouring the bittersweet taste of the ale and kicked his legs out underneath the table. Then he lit up his pipe, his face temporarily obscured by the greyish fumes that rose up into the air.
‘When I was a wee lad, I lived in a small village called Hertford, twenty miles north of here. My father and I lived there, alone. My mother and sister fell ill with typhus after a visit to London and died soon thereafter. My father was the village blacksmith and one of many in the country who forged weapons for forces loyal to the King. He was renowned throughout the shires for the quality of his weapons. His methods and the hardness of his steel were unmatched by any other. From very early on I was tasked with the bellows to heat up the hearth in the smithy. Gradually, my father introduced me to the different tools, and before long, I was able to make small and simple items like spikes and chisels, but never weapons. “You can’t make a weapon unless you know how to wield it, son” my father used to say.
‘So, he taught me how to fight, starting with a small dirk. I practised day and night until he was confident that I could handle a weapon. Only then was I allowed to forge it. Over the years, I worked my way up from the smallest of daggers to the longest of longswords and the heaviest of battleaxes. Then, one day, he took me to a field of battle, not far from our town. Corpses laid strewn across a large meadow. Grieving mothers and wives made their way along the gruesome grounds, searching for loved ones. I can still remember the sounds, the air filled with anguished screams of those trying to live and those trying to die. My father put his arm around my shoulders and said, “Look, son, this is what your work is destined. I made my peace with God a long time ago. What you see is his doing, not mine. If you can live with this, then you have my blessing to follow in my footsteps.”
‘I watched a mother cradle the lifeless body of her young son in her arms, speaking to that same God and I struggled to understand the meaning of it all but on our way back to the village, it dawned on me that we were only the makers of the tools that God used to deliver his justice. And from that moment on, I had the same peace that my father had spoken of.
‘Back at the smithy, my father laid out his best weapons on a working bench, each one very dear to him. He asked me to choose one for myself. “Take your time, son. In the weapon you choose, you will find your identity.” I chose a dagger, and it became my companion until this day.’ Hale reached for his jacket from which he retrieved a magnificently crafted dagger and placed it on the table. It was a thing of beauty, made completely from iron, its handle engraved and inlaid with silver, gold and other metals Tristan did not recognise. ‘My father trained me well until the dagger was just another part of my body, which I could use without much thought. Satisfied that I could defend myself, he started sending me with horse and cart to deliver his weapons to a group of local gentry who were responsible for arming those loyal to the King.
‘’Twas on one fateful Thursday afternoon that I arrived back from another delivery to find the smithy and our house burned to the ground, the beams from the roof still smouldering. I rummaged through the hot ashes of our cottage looking for my father, but I found his body a few paces from the smithy’s collapsed hearth.’ The barber took another large swig, the tankard nearly spilling its contents as it trembled in his hand. ‘The spinster from across the road saw the whole event through her window. She told me ‘twas the cries of pain that got her attention, that there were four of them and that they reminded her of Roundheads because they all had their hair cut short. Who had sent them, till this day I don’t know, but those bastards held my father down while one of them shoved a red-hot poker up his rectum. He laid there in agony while they w
ent to work on the shop and house. Their leader finally put an end to his suffering, by stabbing my father through the heart with one of his own swords.’ Tristan could see the white of the barber’s knuckles as he gripped the table.
‘I asked the townspeople to bury him under the old oak tree on a nearby hill next to my mother and sister. Then I unhitched the cart, pulled the sword from my father’s lifeless body and said my farewells. Armed with the spinster’s description and a heart filled to the brim with fury and hatred, I started to give chase. ‘Twas just before dusk when I finally caught up with them on the outskirts of London. Luck must’ve smiled on those with vengeful intentions that day for I saw them just as they were exiting a field of freshly cut wheat, heading into a nearby woodland to make camp for the night.
‘’Twas close to midnight with the full moon bright in the sky when I snuck into their camp. I slit their throats one by one and watched their eyes as death rudely awakened them. Satisfaction close to what only an accomplished woman can bring to a man coursed through my veins when I saw the panic in their eyes. They desperately tried to breathe and scream…but nothing happened.
‘I left their leader, a burly man dressed in fine clothes, for last and when his turn came, I hit him on the head with the flat side of my father’s sword. When he jumped up from his slumber, I dragged the blade across the back of his ankles and severed his tendons. He fell to the ground like a piece of horse shit. Then I stoked their campfire and got the sword red-hot while I kept my eyes on him as he tried to crawl away. Still pleading for his life, I stepped on the back of his legs and drove the blade in between his buttocks, returning the favour they bestowed on my father. It sliced through his innards like a hot knife through lard. I turned him around and sat on top of him, beating away his arms, and looked him in the eyes, making sure he knew who was taking his life. It wasn’t important to him, but it was to me. I slit his throat. His eyes eventually glazed over and I remember falling over, lying on my back beside him while the smell of roasted flesh and excrement still hung in the air.
‘I’d never killed before that night, but through my actions, I found my salvation, alright. As I lay there, I laughed, I cried, I howled to the moon. I held my knife against my neck and asked God to take my life, but he had no mercy. After that, there’s not much I remember.’ The barber was out of breath and appeared tired. Tristan felt guilty. He thought he had asked the man a simple question and did not expect such a gut-wrenching and detailed remembrance. Hale continued as if he did not have a choice, like he needed to get it out.
‘Apparently, a local yeoman on his way to the London markets found me the next morning…the bodies of four murdered men and…a boy, knife still in hand, slumped over one of the deceased. I went on trial the next day. It all happened so quickly, and everything was so overwhelming. I’d never been to the big city itself nor inside a court with all its smartly dressed men. With my face still covered with the ash of our burnt-down cottage, I found from an early age that there was no justice in the law. They found me guilty by reason of madness, and threw me into The Clink. Part of me still thinks ‘tis because the four men I had killed had worked for the very same institution that employs the courts.
‘Have you ever been inside a prison, lad?’ Tristan shook his head. ‘’Tis a place rife with disease and ridden with a smell similar to shit that stinks more than the Thames on the worst of days and no matter what you do, there is no getting used to it. You couldn’t imagine keeping an animal in there, yet there I was, a prisoner among the heretics and the demented, not much difference if you ask me. All sorts of torturing occur in those dungeons and helpless screams penetrate your ears morning, noon and night.
‘What do you think happens when they throw a wee lad at the tender age of twelve into a cage filled with savages?’ Again, Tristan shook head. ‘’Tis a fight, lad, a constant fight for survival. Those with money or outside help have it fairly easy for the gaolers look after them. I had neither. The chief gaoler asked me what skills I had. I told him that I work with blades and not long after that, I became the prison’s barber. Slowly I started getting together some coin of my own and bought better bedding and food, but most importantly, I got rid of my chains. I didn’t squander away my money on whores and luxuries like the others. I saved every penny with only one goal in mind.’
‘To get out of there?’
‘Aye, to escape. No innocent man or boy deserved to be in a place like that. I cut those prisoners’ flea-ridden hair like a boy as possessed as those men around him until one day, a disgruntled and particularly vile felon tried to cut my throat with scissors that he had wrestled away from me. I grabbed a razor, and I can’t recall exactly how I did it, but when I finally came to my senses, they had removed the razor and were carrying away the man’s lifeless body. ‘Twas then the gaolers realised that I was more adept with a blade than I was letting on.
‘The next day I was in a cockpit, the gaolers’ little arena of perverse pleasure, fighting for my life, and then every week after that against men twice, sometimes three times my size. One gaoler in particular, a younger man, took pity on me. After fights, he made sure I got treatment for my wounds, that I got fed well, that I received my fair share of the winnings, well, whatever was considered fair for a paltry prisoner anyway. And so a bond between the two of us started to form, and with his help, week after week I fought for survival, still with only one aim in mind – to leave that damned place. I confided in this gaoler the ordeal my father had suffered, and in him, I found the only believer. “Why would a boy make up such a ridiculous story?” he said. Too bad he wasn’t the judge who had sent me to that wretched place.
‘Four years I spent in that hellhole. That place must’ve been built directly over the devil’s furnace. Then, one afternoon after another fight, I summoned up the courage and told the gaoler of my plan. I offered him all my saved money as a bribe, trying to buy not only my freedom but also the one item they had taken from me – my knife, the one I had made with my father’s help, which was now a prized possession of the chief gaoler.
‘Later that same night, the person who had entered The Clink as a boy left the same place as a young man armed with only a knife and a little bit of money in his pocket.’ As Hale guzzled the last of his ale, Tristan could sense the story was coming to an end. ‘Years later, a man named Nathaniel Hale returned to London to make a life for himself. By then he had lived and seen plenty, and he has been blessed by Fortuna ever since. And so here we are, lad.’
Tristan saw the swift movement, and his reaction was quick but not faster than that of the man who trained him. Hale gripped him by the wrist, nearly pulling him across the table. The barber quickly grabbed the very same dagger from his story and made incisions in both their palms after which he held Tristan’s hand in a firm grip letting their blood mingle.
‘You know what this means, right, lad?’ Tristan nodded for he surely did. ‘You are now a Dagger, and I am a Hungry One. Apart from Arthur, no one has ever heard my tale, and it dies with the blood that we spilled here today,’ said Hale, swearing the young one to secrecy.
Tristan was still hanging halfway across the table, the barber’s face so close to his own that he could feel the man’s breath on his cheek. Strangely, he felt no fear. ‘Aye, sir.’ The barber let him go, and as Tristan sat back, he still had one burning question and wondered how he should put it. ‘Sir, before I put all of this out of my mind for good, surely they found out who had helped you and made him talk?’
‘No. He disappeared too.’
‘Disappeared, sir?’
‘Aye. ‘Tis time for you to leave now, lad.’ Hale hesitated slightly, looked at his palm and said, ‘As for your question…you can bid him farewell as you walk out the front door.’ He chuckled when he saw the astonishment on the young boy’s face and pointed to the staircase with the dagger before he spat on the blade and wiped the blood off on his sleeve. ‘Off you go now.’
The next day when Tristan arrived at the Two D
aggers, Arthur greeted him at the tavern’s entrance and smiled when he saw the boy’s bandaged hand. Tristan was earlier than usual, and when he enquired about Mr Hale, he was ordered to wait. He watched Arthur disappear upstairs only to return a few moments later with a parcel in his hand. With his shaved head glistening and muscles bulging, Tristan could imagine Arthur as a gaoler, or an enforcer of sorts.
‘Nate’s attending to business,’ said Arthur, ‘but he asked that you deliver this,’ and handed Tristan a rectangular parcel that was tightly wrapped in a piece of cloth. He told Tristan the address and the instructions, then hinted at the front entrance.
Is this the first one? Tristan hesitated, somewhat surprised by the sudden change in plans and the nonchalant way in which the parcel had been presented to him. The barber had also said nothing. There had been no forewarning of an assignment that Tristan had considered to be of the utmost importance.
‘There’s no training today, lad, and remember, don’t let him down!’ said Arthur, simultaneously making up Tristan’s mind for him and cementing the significance of the task at hand.
After Tristan had left the Two Daggers, he stood outside the tavern a little bit disillusioned, but he quickly remembered the parcel clutched under his arm and took it in both hands. At first, he studied it up close, then turned it over and heard the muffled clang of rolling metal inside. I wonder…but he quickly got rid of the idea. He remembered the address that Arthur had given him and worked out the shortest route in his head. With the package safely secured under his arm, he started walking down the street, but he felt unsettled as if he was being watched.
The Fire Within Page 11