Black Ops

by Alan Baxter

John advanced and saw Amadour was right. Their tunneling had indeed fetched up against a brick wall. He peered through the face-sized breach his fellow miner had made. Some sort of man-made passage or cellar lay beyond.

  Among his companions, the discovery was cause for excitement. They jabbered to one another and, each eager to look through the hole, crowded forward in the close quarters of the mine.

  The purpose of a mine was often to bring down a castle or city wall. King Afonso, however, had directed the sappers to dig a longer tunnel that would enable Crusaders to come up well inside Lisbon and attack by surprise. By the looks of things, the miners might well have succeeded.

  John tried to share in the general enthusiasm. Inwardly, though, he felt dismay that his days in the soothing darkness might have reached an end. Scowling, he told himself his feelings didn’t matter, only his duty.

  “All right,” he said, “let’s find out exactly what this is.” He held out his hand, and one of the miners gave him a pick.

  Working together, he and Amadour smashed away enough brick for a man to squirm through the hole. A brick-lined tunnel ran away at right angles to the mine.

  Amadour peered through the opening, then grinned, revealing the gap in his front teeth that was the result of an altercation with an even bigger soldier from the German camp. “Still no sign of witches and such” he said, his tone a gibe at the sappers who’d imagined such creatures skulking about. “We just need to find a way to sneak up into the city.”

  “And hope the Moors haven’t already come down,” John replied.

  The sappers had started digging their mine far back from the city wall. With luck, that had prevented the enemy from discerning what was happening, but it would be unwise to count on it. Sometimes a defending army set out bowls of water to warn of miners, and tremors in the earth agitated the contents. Or someone could have noticed surface soil shifting when the burrowing beneath disturbed it.

  If the Moors did know what was happening, the brick tunnels would be a good place to wait in ambush. They wouldn’t even need to countermine.

  “Well,” John said. “we ‘protectors’ are here. You miners might as well get some actual use out of us. I’ll scout ahead, and the rest of you wait here.” He set down the pick, stooped to retrieve the lantern he’d used before, and Amadour took hold of the shoulder.

  “You don’t mean to go alone,” the big Norman said.

  “If the Moors are lying in wait,” said John, “a lone scout has some chance of spotting the ambush and retreating undetected. This whole crew certainly could not.”

  “A smaller group makes sense,” Amadour said, “but it’s reckless for one lone man to go. It needs to be the four of us, just like it was before.” He lowered his voice. “However you’re feeling, you know I’m right.”

  John drew breath for an angry retort but then thought better of it. He wished he’d never gotten drunk and told his friend how Elizabeth had died of a fever two weeks before what was to be their wedding day, and disliked the Norman referring to it even obliquely. Still, the big man had a point.

  “Very well,” he said. “You, Pascal, and Colm will go with me. Everyone else, wait here. If you see a company of Moors coming, run.”

  The four Crusaders slipped into the brick passage. John and Colm carried lanterns, Amadour had held on to his pick, and Pascal had borrowed a shovel, just in case further digging was required after all. Everyone wore a sword, though no one excavating a tunnel burdened himself with mail or a shield.

  Discerning no reason to prefer one direction over the other, John arbitrarily led his companions to the right. As he stalked along, he counted his steps and bade himself commit any turns to memory. That should facilitate the scouts’ eventual return to their companions and even give him some crude notion of where he was in relation to the enemy city overhead.

  For a time, there was nothing to see but lantern-shine sliding over brickwork and the darkness ahead endlessly slipping from its grasp. Despite the need to stay vigilant, the gloom and the quiet lulled him. Perhaps, now that the air was free of grit and there was no need to pound and scrape through hard-packed earth for every inch of progress, it eased him even more than before.

  Until, faintly, metal clashed, a shivery sound that took a moment to dwindle away to nothing. John jerked as though the noise had startled him from a doze, and around him, his companions did the same. The lanterns swung at the ends of their handles and set shadows rocking as though laughing at the men who cast them.

  “What was that?” whispered Pascal, peering about. He was as short and scrawny as Amadour, his fellow Norman, was tall and burly, and had a knack for mending damaged gear that made his comrades prize him. He’d been a tinker before the preaching of Bernard of Clairvaux inspired him to take the cross.

  “Somebody in armor?” asked Colm. He was rawboned and lantern-jawed, his shock of hair the yellow of straw and his skin waxy pale where the dirt of mining didn’t darken them.

  “I don’t think so,” John replied. It hadn’t sounded like the clink of mail or even the clatter that might result from some lummox dropping a shield. It had been more like the clash of a cymbal, peculiar as that seemed. “Whatever it was, it didn’t sound especially close. We’ll keep moving. Just stay alert.”

  As they prowled onward, though, John found it difficult to follow his own order. Perhaps because of the River Tagus flowing nearby, the air was dank, but paradoxically, it affected him like the warmth in a stuffy room. His eyelids drooped, and his limbs grew heavy.

  At some point, the cymbal—if that was what it was—resumed its clashing. For a moment, that seemed ominous, but the sound was still soft and likely no closer than before. It was even possible John and his companions were moving away from the source, in which case, it would be foolish to become alarmed.

  The cymbal sounded half a dozen times, long enough for him to start pacing in time to the beat. When it fell silent again, the sudden absence made him stumble.

  Later, the lantern light washed over the ghost of a child floating partway up the wall. The apparition jolted John out of his dulled complacency. Snatching for his sword, he squinted in an effort to determine if he was truly seeing what he thought he was. His companions exclaimed and recoiled.

  Then Pascal laughed a shaky laugh.

  Amadour turned to him. “What’s funny?”

  The scrawny tinker grinned. “If you lot weren’t a pack of wretched sinners, maybe you’d recognize the Virgin when you see her.”

  Or if we had eyes as keen as yours, thought John, for the thing he’d taken for a pale phantom was in fact a white stone statue of a female figure set in an alcove in the wall.

  A sensible man, or a leader concerned with fulfilling his responsibilities, should be glad it had startled him out of the half-stupor that had crept over him. Still, John felt the ache of loss, as though something precious had slipped from his hand

  He advanced to examine the statue, and his companions followed. Despite Pascal’s initial impression, the figure wasn’t an image of Mary after all. Pregnant and enthroned, the woman the sculptor had depicted wore a crown made of towers and clasped a horn overflowing with fruit and flowers in her lap. A lion gazed up at her like an adoring hound.

  “Shit,” Pascal said. He actually sounded upset, as though the statue had played a cruel prank on him.

  “Is it an idol the Moors worship?” asked Colm.

  “Perhaps,” said John. None of them knew much about the enemy’s faith except that it was false and pernicious. “But Lisbon is an old city. She could be some pagan goddess from Roman times.”

  “Moorish or pagan,” Pascal said, “it makes no difference.” He lifted his spade and aimed it at the statue’s face.

  “No!” snapped John.

  The little Norman glowered. “Why not?”

  John had reacted by instinct. It took thought a moment to c
atch up. When it did, he discovered he feared it would be bad luck to disrespect the statue. Besides, he simply didn’t want to see it disfigured.

  None of that would sway Pascal. Fortunately, there was a more rational consideration as well: “If you smash the figure, and there are Moors nearby, they might hear.”

  “But they didn’t hear us knock a hole in the wall?” Pascal replied.

  “We’ve walked a ways since then,” Amadour said. “Anyway, you need to follow orders.”

  Pascal made a disgusted spitting sound, but he also lowered the shovel.

  Colm ran his hand over his temple and the top of his head, smearing the dirt that clung there. “Speaking of noise,” he said, “I heard the metal sound again a while back. I… I don’t know why I didn’t say anything before.”

  “I heard it, too,” said John. “I think we all did. It just didn’t bother us this time.”

  “What is it?” Colm asked.

  “Definitely not Moors lying in wait,” John said. “They wouldn’t make a racket if they wanted to ambush us.”

  The lanky Englishman grunted. “I suppose that’s something to be thankful for, but I still don’t like it.”

  “Nor do I,” Amadour said, “and we’ve been exploring for a while. Let’s head back.”

  John’s immediate reaction was that this too was a bad idea, or if not that, an unpalatable one. “Somewhere, there has to be a stairway up or some sort of access to the city.”

  “Maybe,” Amadour said, “but if we’re no longer worried about stumbling into a Moorish ambush, the fastest way to find such a thing is to get the whole crew searching.”

  John realized that was true. “Fine,” he sighed. “We’ll fetch the others.”

  As they made their way back, the cymbal clashed out eleven beats. There were more strokes every time it called. John imagined that the miners’ intrusion kept troubling something’s slumber and that with every disturbance it was getting closer to waking.

  That wasn’t exactly how things felt, though. With dazed passivity once more overtaking him, it was more like the sleeper still slumbered soundly and dreamed a dream that was swallowing him and his companions.

  The miners passed a second goddess statue, then a third, and sometime after that, he lost count. John smiled drowsily to imagine all the labor it would have taken for Pascal to defile each and every one of them.

  That reflection stirred another. When the thought came into focus, he felt a stab of fear. “Stop!” he said.

  Blinking, casting about, the others once again appeared to be waking from befuddlements of their own. “What’s wrong?” Amadour asked.

  “The idol Pascal wanted to destroy,” John said, “was the first one we came to. Now, we’re passing others. That means we aren’t really retracing our steps. We’re lost.”

  “I thought you were leading us!” said Colm.

  “I meant to,” John said. “I paced off distances and noted the turns going in.” Or at least he had at first. He now realized that at some point he’d forgotten the necessity. “But heading back… I don’t know. I suppose I assumed one of you knew the way back and I simply followed along.”

  Amadour shook his head. “Something, maybe bad air, is turning us into sleepwalkers.”

  “Then when we get back to the mine,” John said, “and fresher air, we’ll be all right.” It would only encourage panic to point out that, whatever else stagnant, poison air could do, it couldn’t strike a cymbal.

  “How will we get back?” Colm asked.

  “Easily,” John said, squaring his shoulders. Up until now, with his taciturn melancholy, he likely hadn’t inspired a great deal of confidence as a leader, but that needed to change. “If a man in a maze goes right every time he comes to a fork, he inevitably finds his way out.” Somebody had told him that once. He couldn’t remember who, but he hoped it was true.

  Once they put his rudimentary plan into practice, he kept hoping to round a corner and spy the opening into the mine or, barring that, a passage free of crowned goddesses. The latter might at least be a sign he and his companions were traveling in the right direction. But in each new tunnel, white faces smiled from out of the murk. Stone lips seemed to quirk as the lantern-shine kissed them.

  Still, at least belated anxiety was shielding the miners from stupefying influences lurking in the air or anywhere else. No matter what else befell them, they wouldn’t lose their wits again.

  Or so John assured himself. Then the cymbal resumed its clashing and this time didn’t stop after several beats.

  Fearing its influence, he placed the looping handle of his lantern around his elbow. The flame inside was uncomfortably hot in proximity to his body, but the repositioning enabled him to use both hands to stop his ears.

  That failed to muffle the clashing. Before, he’d never managed to determine in which direction the metallic beats originated. Now he wondered if they arose inside his head as much as any place else.

  He was again striding in time to the rhythm. He struggled to alter his pace, but it was difficult. As soon as he shifted his concentration elsewhere, his marching feet resumed the tempo.

  He tried stopping, standing still, and the beats tugged at him. He doubted he could resist for long, and besides, pace by pace, Amadour, Pascal, and Colm were striding ahead of him. He couldn’t let them disappear into the dark without him.

  He trotted, caught up, and they turned their terrified faces in his direction. “Sing!” he shouted. “Drown it out!”

  “Oh splendor of God’s glory bright,” Pascal caterwauled, “Who bringest forth the light from Light—“

  Naturally, the pious little tinker had chosen a hymn, and perhaps, in this extremity, he had the right idea. John, Amadour and Colm joined in.

  Unfortunately, the hymn didn’t drown out the cymbal, nor, they discovered, could they resist singing in time to the beat. A few lines in, a flute shrilled, its melody unrelated to that of the sacred music and as dominant and corruptive as the metallic rhythm. It made it impossible to stick to the hymn’s original tune, and John struggled to fit the lyrics to the new one.

  Not for long, though. New words welled up inside his head, and even though he didn’t understand the language, they supplanted the verses he’d known since childhood.

  John strained to stop singing, but his voice proved as recalcitrant as his feet, and then, somehow, understanding flowered. He’d come on Crusade seeking only peace, but more was possible. Cybele could grant him ecstasy. He need only accept it.

  Acceptance meant giving in to the intoxication of the Magna Mater’s music, and, despite their initial resistance, that was what John’s companions were doing. Marching gave way to capering, whirling dancing. Amadour tripped Pascal with his pick and howled with laughter when the small man staggered and nearly fell. Colm drew his dagger and sliced gashes in his cheeks.

  They were all bewitched, John realized. It was his duty to break the spell, but how could he muster the resolve when, after two years of mourning, his misery was finally falling away? Striving to resist the magic for his comrades’ sake, he sought to recall the hardships and close calls he and the others had shared, the kindness they’d shown putting up with his sullenness, but another skirl of piping smeared the memories into a meaningless blur.

  Bare to the waist now, his face a bloody mess, Colm slashed his chest. Amadour tore open his shirt.

  John still couldn’t find it in himself to care, not enough to stop singing and dancing and intervene. He still knew who Colm, Amadour, and Pascal were, but any bonds of affection or obligation were burning away in the fire of a greater devotion.

  Indeed, he realized, every part of him that fretted or sorrowed was burning away. For a few dancing steps, he was grateful, and then he recognized the cost.

  As it was with his fellow soldiers, so too must it be with Elizabeth. He might still remember her
sly smile and teasing, her green eyes and way with dogs and horses, but they’d no longer evoke evens a wisp of feeling, painful or otherwise. Henceforth, all his love would belong to the Mountain Mother.

  Back in York and in the days since, he’d believed his grief unbearable, but it was preferable to the alternative. He’d rather suffer for the rest of his days than become a creature who no longer loved Elizabeth or cherished the time they’d had together.

  He contrived to dance clumsily, entangled his feet, and fell. Amadour, Pascal, and Colm capered obliviously onward into the dark.

  John pounded his forehead against the floor. It hurt, but that was all to the good. Each jolt diminished the music’s power. Eventually he stopped singing and felt no urge to start anew or to dance, either.

  Rubbing his throbbing brow, he rose and took stock. His lantern was still alight and intact despite his deliberate tumble. He hadn’t cast away his sword in the midst of his delirium. So all that was as he needed it to be. Now he had to hope that, without witchcraft guiding him, he could nonetheless locate his companions.

  He stalked onward, and Cybele smiled from her alcoves over and over again. Then the music changed, the wild dance giving way to something slow and solemn.

  Quickening his pace, he came to a spot where the passage he’d been traversing intersected another. Yellow light glowed at the end of the length of tunnel on the right, and after a moment, Amadour, naked now, gashed and bleeding like Colm, appeared amid the glow. The big Norman had his back to John and seemed to be paying close attention to whatever was happening in front of him.

  John set down his lantern and crept along the passage. He had no idea if it was even possible to sneak up on the power that had beguiled the others, but since Amadour was inadvertently providing cover, he might as well try.

  The scent of frankincense tinged the air and, with each step John took, a bit more of the chamber at the end of the tunnel came into view. The source of the amber glow was Colm’s lantern, set aside like his own. The light gleamed on a ten-foot-tall version of the statues in the alcoves with an altar positioned in front of it. No flautist or percussionist was in evidence. Maybe ghosts were playing the music.