‘You are not helping yourself,’ growled the earl. ‘I am not a man to—’
‘My lord, have you talked to your financier or not?’ demanded Iselda.
‘How dare you make demands, woman?’ Richard’s knuckles were going white.
‘You have not spoken to him. Because if you had, you would know that around two months past, a sum of money was deposited with Messer Wymer in our names. He is an honest man, my husband assures me, and your patronage and protection would mean our money was safe.’ Iselda folded her hands in her lap, calmly, as if she were dealing with an important though irritating client. ‘And we needed it to be safe, as it is a very, very considerable sum. In gold.’
Richard looked from Iselda to me and back again. ‘What has this to do with me?’ he asked at last.
‘My lord Richard,’ I answered, ‘you are right. We did not need to come here. We could have vanished. Do you know, we thought of sailing to India? Have you never wondered, my lord, in what sort of country your pepper and your ginger grow? I don’t expect we would still have been your vassals in Kodungallur. Or we could have bought ourselves new names and passed our lives in some little-travelled corner of Christendom. But we did not. I have to thank you for sending me on crusade, my lord, because I learned something quite unexpected there. Men like us – and, sir, we are very alike, you and I, despite the differing qualities of our blood – spend our lives wrapping ourselves in complications. No plan is so difficult that it cannot be tangled in yet another layer of complexity. And simple ideas are for fools, are they not? I thought of two things as I rotted in the Nile mud and breathed in the stink of King Louis’s dead men. One was my wife. The other was your manor in Cornwood. Now, as my teeth fell out of my mouth and my skin turned black, I would ponder how I could cheat you of that. What trick I could play that would better you. But then I was shown that those daydreams had been a folly, as much as the whole crusade was folly, and the pope’s great battle with the emperor, a mere struggle of vanities … And what did I learn? Nothing very astounding, I’m afraid: I found simplicity. And that is what we have brought to you.’
‘I fear the Egyptian sun has boiled your brains,’ said Richard, a sneer tugging at one corner of his mouth.
‘Of course! And I should like to enjoy it as long as I can. But here is the simple answer to our mutual difficulty, my lord. You covet my wealth, and I covet your manor at Cornwood. How much is it worth? Fifteen hides – a good price, I would estimate. Certainly a few hundred livres. We would like to make you an offer for it – the manor, and release from any and all obligations to your lordship.’
‘And I suppose you imagine me to be some manner of dung-smeared trader at a horse-fair! I am the king’s brother, sirrah! The idea that I would enter into business with … with …’
‘The Comte and Comtesse of Montalhac,’ Iselda broke in, politely. ‘The second and hereditary creation, bestowed by Queen Marguerite of France. My father, whom you knew as Jean de Sol, was the rightful Comte of Montalhac, and his line has been restored. You are not dealing with commoners, my lord, if that soothes your feelings at all.’
‘Is this true, Petroc?’
‘Strange to relate, it is.’
‘Well then, I congratulate you,’ he said, frostily. ‘But you still have the manners of a common rogue. And we are in England: you are still my vassal, sir. A vassal does not trade with his liege lord. That would be an outrage – nay, it is a blasphemy against the true ordering of the world.’
‘Yes, yes, my lord,’ said Iselda. Her patience was frayed and she took no pains to hide it. ‘Since we are discussing the ordering of the world, have you heard of the amount King Louis paid the Sultan of Egypt in return for his freedom?’
‘Of course,’ snapped Richard. ‘An unearthly – an ungodly sum. Unheard of. That infidels could be allowed to humiliate a Christian monarch …’
‘A king’s ransom, in fact,’ I said. ‘Four hundred thousand livres tournois. We saw half of it being weighed out – two days in the hot sun. Silver coin, you see. Gold would have taken far less time to count.’ I sighed, and leaned back in my chair.
‘What would you say to a king’s ransom, Earl Richard?’ Iselda asked. ‘Because it lies in Messer Wymer’s strongroom. We will pay, for Petroc’s freedom, and for your manor at Cornwood, what King Louis paid to free himself, his brothers and his army from the Turks.’
‘All of it,’ I added. ‘Take it or leave it. You could buy Sicily, though I wouldn’t advise you to. There: the wealth of the Banco di Corvo Marino, in return for a little bit of Dartmoor. It couldn’t be a simpler offer, you must admit.’
Richard stood up. Anger had stiffened his joints, and he was scowling like a child whose favourite toy has just been snatched by an older sister. He turned his back on us and paced across the floor of the solar. A tapestry of roses and vines hung against the far wall and the earl made a show of contemplating its pretty curlicues. Iselda turned to me and raised an enquiring eyebrow.
‘I accept.’ Earl Richard was speaking to the flowers on his tapestry, and his voice was muffled and distant. Then he turned on his heels. ‘I accept,’ he said again. He was a subtle man, the Earl of Cornwall. And now he was granting Iselda and I the merest phantom of a smile. ‘Lord and Lady de Montalhac, the manor is yours. Black Dog, I trust you will be a good neighbour – our lands butt up against each other, after all.’ The smile had grown. ‘But I will not be neighbours with a commoner, even one with a French title, for we are speaking of Devon and not Anjou, after all. So as I find, to my surprise, that I have sold you the Lordship of Sweetwood, you have also purchased the Barony of Slade and Sweetwood. The last baron died on the way to Jerusalem when I was a boy. My apologies, for it is a small and essentially meaningless title, but like your County of Montalhac it is hereditary, and unlike it, there is land. And, Black Dog, you understand me, I think?’
‘My lord, I do,’ I said. ‘If I cannot be your vassal, I must needs be your brother’s.’
‘Should we refuse, then?’ asked Iselda, quietly.
‘No,’ I murmured. ‘Earl Richard wants to make sure I am loyal, but I am an Englishman, so I’m already the king’s man. My lord,’ I said to Richard, ‘if you promise to leave the Barony of Slade and Sweetweed out of the affairs of England, and to leave us in peace, I accept.’
‘I give my word,’ said Richard, and I could see that he was already, in his mind, opening the first bag of dinars in the damp chill of a London strongroom.
‘Then we are done. Let us write each other titles and receipts, and you will want to send to Messer Wymer and tell him to start counting.’
‘Oh, and, Black Dog,’ said Richard, lightly, as if it were nothing but an afterthought. ‘Whatever became of that letter? You remember the one?’
‘Oh, my apologies! I never got around to delivering it,’ I said. ‘I suppose it is a little late now – but it seems I never needed to.’
‘Then …’ Richard suddenly looked immensely relieved. ‘Then we shall forget all about it, I think.’
‘Of course,’ I said, giving him my blandest smile. ‘Who wishes to remember a wasted journey? If you need to refresh your memory, I have it around somewhere – somewhere safe, hopefully, but I can’t imagine you would need to …’ Absently, I touched the Moorish amulet that hung beneath my tunic. A strange talisman: it had almost killed me, but now it seemed it had become my servant at last. Ink and parchment and cheap silver: unintentioned magic. ‘Though in the interests of forgetfulness,’ I added, lightly, ‘it might be wise to ask your dear friend Pope Innocent to lift a certain ban of excommunication.’
‘Sometimes His Holiness gets a little carried away. Consider it done. Your faith is, of course, unimpeachable …’ He trailed off.
‘My heart, Earl Richard, is as pure as the winter’s first snow. So let us all forget, eh? Memory can be such an inconvenience.’
‘The king’s ransom, eh?’ said Richard. A lawyer had been summoned, along with the local abbot, to witn
ess our contracts. Iselda and I both had blue fingers, for my wife had a better turn of phrase than I, and, trobairitz as she was, knew how words can be used to bind men tight. ‘And what are you left with now that you have ransomed yourself, Petroc Blakke Dogge?’ Richard went on. ‘Your manor gives you a few pounds a year. Who will buy the spices and the scarlet silks?’
‘I never cared for them,’ I replied. There was no need to mention that Louis Capet would be repaying his very large crusading debts to us in person, as we had agreed on that last evening aboard his ship. Richard was getting the money held by Messer Wymer, and that was quite enough for him. Louis’s debts were a detail, and what need did we have for details, now that we were taking the simple path? ‘I have spent most of my life a monk, a vagabond or a sailor, and like my Iselda, I lost my home when I was very young,’ I told him, dipping my pen for the last time. ‘The money was hard-won, and there is a lot of blood upon it, some of it mine. But did we earn it? About as much, I should say, as you have. You are welcome to it, and may it bring you joy. Because we have ransomed our happiness, Lord Richard. And it was cheap at the price.’
Epilogue
The granite is rough and warm beneath my calves. Grey and yellow lichen, curls and whiskers, tiny cups for faery-folk, crackle against my fingertips as I lean back into the sunlight. There is a little breeze to rattle the sedge stalks. It hisses across the grass, and the sheep twitch their ears, thinking it is bot-flies come to pester them. A ring ouzel perches in one of the gorse bushes and calls to me. ‘Come on, come on,’ he says, and bobs his white neck.
The breeze dies down, flutters against my face. Down from the High Moor it has brought me the smell of peat, of sheep-shit and bilberries. I turn my head and like a weathercock I catch the moving air. It blows from the north, from Ryder’s Hill, and I close my eyes and see where it has passed: Huntingdon’s Hill and down into the Aune valley, then up across Zeal Plains to Old Hill, skipping across Bala Brook, Middle Brook, Red Brook and up to the stones on Hickley Plain, down through the mires that give birth to the Glazes, swooping down and up Glasscombe Ball and through the stone row set there by the old giants, like sharp black teeth on the skyline. Past Hobajon’s Cross, brushing the flanks of Butterdon and Weatherdon and Burford Down, and so to me. I turn to follow it, and there are the soft rollings of the hills below me, dipping and rising, painted with copse and field and farmstead, hiding their deep lanes and winding rivers, until they surrender to the calm haze of the sea. I can see the edge of the world from here, a perfect silver line dividing the blue below from that above. All of my world, now, contained in a puff of warm and grassy air.
A thin line of white smoke rises up from the coombe. I am looking down on the tops of an oak wood. Pigeons whizz across the waves of green and bronze. Butterflies dance in little clouds above the topmost leaves, and a cuckoo calls out further down the valley. In the heart of the coombe lies the broad back of the house, and the smoke is coming from the biggest chimney. It rises, straight as a corn stalk, until it meets the breeze, which folds it over into a finger, a compass needle pointing south-south-west to the sea at Gara Rock and beyond to Finisterre, to Spain and far, far beyond the horizon’s knife-edge, the land of the Berbers.
I stand up and walk through the sheep to the little brook that runs down off the moor here. The water is cold and clear, running over dappled granite between thick growths of peat moss, and I kneel and wet my face. I squint to see myself. Is that a man of thirty-five years, with a scar for every one of them? Is that the boy who once played up here? I try to see who it was that crossed the Sea of Darkness, who stole from the dead and had death steal from him; who travelled so far, so very far from home. And all I see is a wavering shape that changes as the water flows past.
There is a call from down in the coombe. I hear my name, and as I stand up there is another sound, hardly there. The breeze should catch it like the smoke and send it out to sea, but though it seems so weak, this sound is stronger than the breeze. I begin to run, scattering the sheep. Time to go down, time to go home. Forgetting what I had tried to see in the brook, forgetting my own tears, I run, and for the first time in my life I find that the cry of a newborn baby can fill the whole wide world.
Pip Vaughan-Hughes is the author of three previous Petroc adventures: Relics, The Vault of Bones and Painted in Blood. He lives on Dartmoor with his family.
Also by Pip Vaughan-Hughes
Relics
The Vault of Bones
Painted in Blood
The Fools’ Crusade
Writing as Philip Kazan
Appetite
The Painter of Souls
Copyright
AN ORION EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Orion Books.
First published in ebook in 2011 by Orion Books.
Copyright © Pip Vaughan-Hughes 2010
Extract from Appetite copyright © Pip Vaughan-Hughes 2013
The right of Pip Vaughan-Hughes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the copyright, designs and patents act 1988.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 1 4091 0719 4
Orion Books
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
An Hachette UK Company
www.orionbooks.co.uk
The Fools’ Crusade Page 35