by A Werner
Nearly an hour passed before a moment of clarity washed over Pero and he realized how far he had travelled. This part of the world was known but new to him. He had never journeyed this far in this direction before.
Glancing back over his shoulder, he searched the trail but there was no sign of Niccolus and Arrigo. Frustrated by this, he eased Zaon back to a trot before bringing her all the way down to a complete walk.
“I’m sorry, girl,” Pero said as he pushed his hand through Zaon’s mane and patted her on the neck. “You are too fast. We left them boys far behind. We’ll slow and give them opportunity to catch us up.”
Pero relaxed, inhaling a deep breath of alien air. He knew this land by reputation only. On both sides of the road stood rows of giant oak trees, stoic pillars forming a natural fence for an orange grove to the northeast and a wet marsh to the southwest. This land was owned by a reclusive old knight whom he had never met and whose name eluded him. The road was suffering from a lack of maintenance, potholes, ruts and dried up channels everywhere.
A familiar noise rustled above him. A small flock of blackcaps erupted from a nearby tree. The flock darted and dodged in unison, reminding him of the infamous banquet where he injured Rugerius Fabbro. Earlier that day, before they had gathered in the hall to sup, Rugerius and his princely lot found sport unleashing trained peregrines on a large flock of defenseless blackcaps. It was a massacre. Hundreds of little bodies felled and further mutilated and mauled by giant mastiffs and drooling hounds. It served no purpose, just mindless sport. It was an unnecessary waste of life. He could still picture Rugerius Fabbro, Bergus of Brindisi, Clytus Eutropius and a hundred other knights of Parthenope laughing hysterically, eating voraciously, chugging down jugs of liquor, and pawing sky clad women. They lived carefree.
As the blackcaps disappeared over the marsh, Pero took note of a faint star freshly emerging in the early twilight. The sun was still high above the horizon but night was clearly on its way.
“So mighty one in heaven,” Pero grumbled towards the distant star as though it were God. “Are you incensed enough by my bad behavior to strike me down? Where is your thunder and lightning? Feeling a bit impotente, are we?” Pero watched Zaon’s head methodically bobbing in rhythm with each step she took. He deflected the thought that he was the one feeling a bit ineffective. “What must I do to gain your attention? Have I become that irrelevant?”
“This is suicide,” Pero mumbled to himself. “What is wrong with me? I know this is a trap.”
Zaon abruptly stopped and sniggered.
Pero wasn’t startled but his bright blue eyes were alight. Two cloaked figures were emerging from the northeastern line of oak trees. They were clumsy, crawling from the thicket on hands and knees. ‘Are these the assassins? Only two? They could have at least waited until I was a stone’s throw from Eagles Pass before trying something.’ Pero wrapped his anxious fingers around the hilt of his sword and squeezed the grip tight. He was ready. He was ready to fight, maybe even die. ‘Bring it on!’
The cloaked figures appeared quite harmless, awkward. They dressed like common peasants, a male and a female, both of them draped shapelessly in course earthen homespun, their heads shielded from the sun by ill-fitted hoods. ‘Is this a ruse?’ The male was rightfully hesitant to show his face or stammer forward. The female, however, had a stripe of sauciness about her. She shoved her hesitant companion from behind with her shoulder, urging him to approach the knight, obviously against his will.
Pero de Alava was under no obligation to recognize their presence. They were quite literally beneath him and he could proceed without as much as a glance. It was expected. Yet and still, he was feeling a mite paranoid. He knew he must remain vigilant. Pero spurred Zaon forward again, slowly. He tilted his head in the direction of the peasants, gracing them with a less-than-menacing scowl. He made sure to make and maintain eye contact with them, his right hand still squeezing Miriam as if she were Anthea, fully prepared to lift her into action if this went bad. ‘Let this be the trap. Let this be the moment.’ The next thought passed quickly. ‘Be careful what you wish for.’
Naïve as a rose bud chancing an early spring the young girl mistook Pero’s interest as kindness. She lit right up. With a bright, cheerful smile, she dramatically produced a basket from behind her back. “Good evening, Senor,” she said in a charming, confident street-vendor voice. “Would my lord care to purchase a fresh piece of fruit?” With thespian flair, the girl dramatically drew back the red fabric covering the basket and revealed several large, newly harvested oranges.
Pero didn’t have to guess where these oranges came from. He glanced momentarily at the trees beyond the peddler’s backs. He knew without question that the fruit had been filched. ‘Thieves.’
The wind passed through the tops of the trees as Pero stared at them, his spirit darkening, his mind considering what his next move should be. The male peasant was shaking in his muddy boots, timidity nearly inducing a seizure. The girl was audacious, the arresting smile speaking volumes about the pluck in her heart.
Pero’s resentment tore through her smile. He realized he didn’t care about her audacity right now. He was on a mission; a quest. ‘Justice had no champions. Wrongs have to be righted.’ No matter how small and insignificant the crime appeared to be, it was his burden to restore balance. ‘That’s the word Francis used,’ Pero recalled. ‘Everything in life is about balance or some darn thing. There are no small crimes, no petty thieves. The time for clemency is over. Those who commit evil must be stamped out, firmly and unmercifully.’ These poor unfortunate creatures happened to cross Pero’s path at the wrong time, on the wrong day.
Pero dismounted Zaon and quickly bared Miriam.
The soiled tramps both stammered backwards, their terrified eyes focused on the ringing blade.
“No, no,” the girl begged, oranges raining out of the basket. “We don’t mean to offend.”
Pero was not listening to her. He swung his blade at the boy, skillfully halting its progress in midair. The tip stopped just short of his Adam’s apple. No blood was shed but the sword rested there, threatening to continue its flight at any moment and find purchase. Both creatures froze.
“Tell me the truth or I will take your lives,” Pero growled.
The boy could not speak. It was all he could do to stop himself from passing out.
The girl fumbled for a response. She dropped the basket and fell to her knees, the palms of her hands patting the ground. “Tell me, sir; tell me what we can do. Do not injure us. We have done nothing wrong.”
During her descent from courageous peddler to submissive beggar, the hood fell away. Her youthful loveliness was exposed. Doe-eyed and frightened, she looked up at Pero with big brown, pleading eyes, tears streaming down her dirty cheeks.
Pero gawked unbecomingly. He felt as though he suddenly had a sword at his throat, his train of thought completely disrupted. He stuttered, “Did. . . you . . . um. . . Did you. . .” He finally managed to catch hold of himself and spit the question out. “Did you steal the oranges?”
“Yes,” she declared from her knees, her tenacity magically reemerging. “Yes, we did.” Her tone was bitter and biting. “You want the truth; I’ll give you the truth. I filched the oranges from the trees right over there!” She pointed back at the grove behind her, each word emphasized with a finger point.
Pero was charmed and found himself speechless.
The girl continued to protest. “I was hungry. My brother was hungry. Forgive us for taking from the trees what God made to grow because we was hungry.”
Her honesty and her audacity impressed Pero to no end. There was an impertinent fire burning beneath all that dirt and grime. ‘If she were anyone else, I would have struck her for such insolence. Why am I allowing this?’
The faint noise of approaching horses grabbed everyone’s attention. Pero craned his neck around and spied his escorts closing in over the nearest hill which was still a fair distance away.
/> Pero returned his attention to the captives and paused, his thoughts racing. He sheathed his weapon and instructed the young lady to rise to her feet and recover her oranges. He also encouraged the young man to compose himself and cease his shaking but this was an impossible request for the lad was far beyond assurances. The moment Pero removed Miriam’s tip from his neck, he fell down on his knees, sobbing and praying; repenting for every sin he knew he had done and for every sin he had forgotten he had done.
Mindful of their vassalage, Niccolus and Arrigo rode to Pero and took up positions on either side of him, prepared to protect him.
“Peasant,” Pero shouted at the boy whimpering and kissing the ground. “How well do you know this area?”
Salvation had done nothing to hearten the fellow. He could not collect himself or lift his face from the dirt and speak.
The girl had finished collecting all the oranges in her basket. She placed the red cloth back over them and popped off proudly. “My brother Cambio knows these woods better than any living man.”
Cambio felt his heart rush up to his head.
Pero realized he was experiencing an unexpected surge in his loins that he had been suppressing for years. It was lust. He wanted her. He wanted the girl. His mind’s eye was suddenly exploding with lewd images. Pero had no idea where these unhinged thoughts were coming from but they were flooding his virtue, drowning it. He shook his head violently to rid himself of the fantasies but they continued to swarm as bees tend to do.
‘I’m engaged to Anthea,’ he defended and stopped. ‘No, I’m not engaged, not anymore. I’m free to do anything I want to do.’
Pero advanced on the girl and did not stop until her ashen face was staring him square in the chest, his imposing build towering above her by more than a head.
The girl did not appear to be intimidated. She didn’t flinch or shutter. Defiant, she locked eyes with him, her right arm cradling the basket, her left fist pressed firmly into her hip.
“Could Cambio,” Pero asked her slowly and deliberately, his deepest yearnings wishing to take her and kiss her, “lead us to Eagles Pass?”
Recognition came slowly but the girl was lastly beginning to detect Pero’s wantonness. Until now, she had thought the stranger to be nothing more than a pompous jerk trying to unsettle her with his broad shoulders and manly frame. Noblemen were always trying to make little girls cower. But now she marked the curiosity sparkling in Pero’s heavenly blue eyes. She grinned, turning up the charm. Rising up as high as she could on her toes, she leaned in closer to his ear, her face brushing gently through a few stray strands of dark curly hair. “For a few gold coins, anything is possible.”
Pero was nervous now, his breath labored. He started to feel self-conscious as he realized his men were watching. ‘What must they think of me?’ And then he remembered Rugerius Fabbro. ‘How would that pig handle this?’ That was no mystery. Pero was certain. Without hesitation, Rugerius would take the poor girl to ground and ravage her while his men stood over him cheering. His men, in fact, would hold back the weak little brother who would, despite his cowardice, discover some lost cache of valor to protest his sister’s undoing. They would heartlessly force the boy to watch the assault. ‘If I’m going to commit myself to this quest, I must learn to be mercenary like Rugerius. I must take the girl and use her. I must defile her. There is nothing preventing me. God be damned.’
“Arrigo,” Pero commanded, “give the boy a gold coin. He will be joining our company.”
Officially pressed into service, Cambio closed his eyes and began to pray again.
“And …” Pero added, feeling shameless and sure, “… give this young lady three gold coins . . . for her oranges.”
The girl smirked at the offer. She knew what this was. The knight wasn’t after oranges. This was payment for services not yet rendered. ‘I’ve never been with a man before. Never thought to sell myself either.’ She looked Pero up and down. “He is handsome. I could do worse. And three gold coins is nothing to sneeze at. I’ve not seen that much wealth since Ma and Pa died.’
Arrigo opened the company’s purse strings and flipped the boy a gold coin. Cambio caught it cleanly. Arrigo then nudged his horse over to the girl. He dropped three gold coins into her awaiting hand. Sternly he snatched the orange basket away from the girl, apparently hoping the manner in which he claimed it might send a message to Pero.
It did not.
Pero was absorbed and leering.
Cambio was frightened and truly humbled by his lowly station in life but that didn’t make him any less a man. Many letches had cast their wanton eyes upon his sister with ill-intent, seeking to deflower her before she had reached a just and respectable age. ‘The girl is only fifteen,’ Cambio thought.
As Pero had predicted, the lad found courage. Cambio came boldly between them. He hugged his sister, his back bumping into Pero’s front, nudging him out of the way.
Pero could feel the eyes of his men upon him. He knew they were expecting the boy to receive the thrashing of his life. Pero would have been in the right if he had wished to do so. Cambio prayed to God, Pero did not wish to do so.
Always pleased to receive an embrace from her big brother, the girl hugged Cambio right back. Since their parents had passed two winters back, they had only each other to lean on. The girl, however, found her thoughts were not on her brother as she held him. Cambio was not as tall as the handsome knight. When she rose up on her tiptoes, she could see over his shoulder. Her fetching brown eyes continued to hypnotically pull on Pero’s wantonness. From where she stood, the black-haired Spaniard looked like a gold mine. ‘He will be a good lover. I’m sure of that.’
Zaon was growing restless. The palfrey couldn’t find any more roughage to nibble on. She neighed and brushed her moist snout against Pero’s right arm, drawing him instantly out of his stupor.
Pero suddenly felt self-conscious again. He was back to feeling judged. ‘What must they think of me?’ A blush warmed his tan cheeks. He was vacillating again and he knew it. ‘The girl is baseborn and unclean, beneath me. This is madness.’
Trying to disguise his humiliation, he remounted Zaon in a huff and started scanning the blue skies for a diversion of sorts. There was nothing up there. The sky was empty, not a bird or a cloud to save him. There wasn’t a single distraction in the heavens, not anywhere, nowhere. And then there was something. A small, mysterious object racing through the air. A white dot. A comet. Pero strained his eyes. ‘It can’t be.’ It was the winged horse he saw earlier in the day, running gracefully on the ether. ‘I’ve seen this creature before.’
And then it was gone.
Pero grabbed a handful of his curly black hair and squeezed his eyes tightly shut, wholly concerned he was losing his mind. And then his ears detected a peculiar sound skittering in a tree behind him. He shot around quick and spotted a tiny, white-faced man with even whiter hair, wearing a sharp brown suit and suspenders, standing on the edge of a bent branch, watching them. The man was no bigger than a thumb and light as a leaf.
“What the heck is that!” Pero gasped, pointing directly at it.
Realizing it had been spotted, the tiny man leapt from the branch and vanished inside a flowery bush, his frightened green eyes bulging out of his head.
Everyone turned ever so slow in the general direction Pero was pointing. No one saw anything.
Pero de Alava was entirely frustrated. He didn’t like this game his mind was playing with him. It was time to get out of this bewitched spot and continue the quest. “Let’s go,” he demanded of his men, his angry blue eyes still scanning the flowery bush where he believed the little fellar had fallen.
Cambio pressed the gold coin he received in his sister’s hand, adding it to her take. “Run,” he commanded her for all to hear. “Run home, Gisele. Do not stay here. Bad things are going to happen to you, if you stay here.” Cambio glanced back at Pero and tried not to scowl but scowl he did. “It’s not safe here, Gisele.”
/> “Yes brother.”
Cambio stole a moment to examine his only sibling. She was a mirror-image of their mother. Their parents had passed and memories were fading fast. The youngsters had no one to care for them so they did the best they could to fashion a living, he cobbling shoes like his father before him, and she gathering wild herbs, roots, vegetables and fruits from the fields and selling them at market. Cambio kissed Gisele’s dirty cheek and she rewarded him with a sweet smile.
The peasant boy steeled himself. He had never steeled himself this much his entire life, never had any call to do so before. With a rush of confidence, he released his sister and returned to Pero. He bowed before his new master and staggered off towards a path leading into the tall oak trees shielding the orange grove. Catching everyone by surprise, he produced an axe from beneath his cloak. “Come, come quickly.” He didn’t comprehend how his producing this cheap blade had heightened everyone’s awareness. “The main road will take too long. I know a few short cuts through the fields. The deer trails should take us to Eagles Pass before dark.”
Pero was mad at himself. If this boy had been an assassin, there may have been blood. He had lost his focus. Pero clicked his tongue in his cheek, pulled on the leather reins and motioned Zaon towards the path.
Convinced his shamelessness was done Pero turned Zaon back around for one last look at the girl, and in that brief moment of temptation, grew weak again. The opportunity to commit an unforgiveable sin was standing right there. His battle with God had been renewed. He was going to vacillate again and he didn’t care. Pero discreetly instructed his caretakers to attend to Cambio in the forest. He would be the one doing the catching up this time.
Arrigo, still unhappy about having to hand out gold coins, trotted away. He didn’t concern himself with anything happening here. He wanted to get to Eagles Pass. The killing fields were always the surest route to promotion.