by Dan Davis
“Put it away,” I said, to confused looks. “Almost every soul within is a servant. I would avoid starting a mass panic, which we will surely cause if we charge in like soldiers.”
Walt scratched his head. “Can’t we just kill them all?”
“We’re not killing anyone unless they are a revenant,” I said. “Knights cannot slaughter at will, like barbarians, our oaths will not allow it. Our oath to the Order of the White Dagger is to kill the spawn of William de Ferrers.”
“Yes,” Rob said, sliding his blade back through his belt ring. “You are right, of course.”
Walt shrugged. “If you say so. What if we’re in danger?”
“Defence of one’s self and one’s companions is a separate matter. If anyone attempts to harm us, we will kill them as usual.”
“Oh,” Walt said, brightening. “That’s alright, then.”
The castle was lit up all over, just as it had been on my first visit. Empty stairwells and chambers were lit with beeswax candles and lamps in the walls and fires burned in rooms with no people. Even if Gilles had been present, it would have been a mad waste of money. Who was the display for? The servants? It was they who were employed in all the cutting and fetching of wood and lighting and refilling of lamps, all day and all night. Who was it supposed to impress? All I could think was that it was for God, for who else would be watching? Perhaps it was some strange expression of guilt that he felt for his crimes, I thought, or perhaps I was assuming that he was a man and not a demon in human flesh, for if he felt guilt at all then why would he continue as he had?
On the ground floor we found two servants carrying empty serving trays and they froze in surprise when they saw us approaching.
“Where is La Meffraye?” I asked them.
“Eh?” they asked, both gormless.
“The woman,” I snapped. “The old woman servant.”
“Old woman?”
“Come on, man,” Walt said, grasping a fistful of the man’s clothes at his chest. “Can’t be many women servants here.”
“Yeah there’s the old one and the young one,” he said, eyes flicking between us. “But we ain’t allowed to speak to them, nor even to go near them, sir, not for no reason at all, sir.”
“Specially the young one,” the other man said, glumly.
“Quite right, too,” I said. “Now, where can I find their quarters?”
They blew out of pursed lips. “Can’t be saying, my lord. Can’t be saying. Not allowed, is all. Not on our lives.”
I grabbed the free one by the neck. “It’ll be your damned life if you don’t tell me where they are!”
He gulped and pointed a shaking hand. “You go down by the lower hall, through the outer yard, past the guardhouse toward the chapel but then you gots to go through—”
“Take me there!” I said and shoved them both forward, tossing their trays to the floor. “Now! Faster!”
They all but ran through the castle and we hurried after them.
“Thought we weren’t hurting no one innocent,” Walt observed behind me.
Other servants we saw drew back in confusion to allow us to pass until we came out into a vast courtyard.
“That tower?” I asked the servants, pointing to the nearest one, which had smoke drifting from the chimney.
“Oh, no, sir!” they said. “We ain’t allowed in there, sir. That’s the magician’s tower.”
I turned on them. “The what?”
“The magician’s tower. The sorcerer.”
His idiot companion shook his head. “Alchemist, my lord. He’s the master’s alchemist.”
“What goes on there?”
They both turned white. “Can’t say, my lord.”
“Forbidden.”
“Not to go near.”
“Not never.”
I drew my dagger and forced the nearest one to his knees, placing the edge of my blade against his throat. “Do they take the children in there?”
The servant pissed himself and wept, tears welling and quickly spilling down his cheeks. “Yes,” he whispered. “Yes.”
Throwing the servants down, we raced toward the base of the tower and threw open the door. I took the stairs two at a time and wound up and around to the first chamber, which was lit up and had a table with the remains of a recent meal but no one else. There were noises above. A man’s voice echoing through the floor. Up and round and up again until I threw open the door to the room where the noises came from and there I froze in horror.
Before me was an unholy scene.
A man in white robes with his hands outstretched stood in the centre of a five-sided star painted on the wooden floor. At each point burned large candles and there were bowls of blood beside them. At the feet of the white-robed man was a naked boy, whose arms and belly had been crossed with cuts, bleeding freely. He writhed against his bonds but his mouth and eyes were wrapped with black velvet cloth and a well-dressed brute held him down by the shoulders, leering at his victim as he did so.
Across the room at the slit window, looking out at the night, stood the third and final man. He was tall, wearing very fine clothes, as a rich lord might wear.
They all turned as I burst in, their eyes filled with surprise and fear turning quickly to anger.
The alchemist jabbed his finger at me. “Begone from this place! I shall cast you out with the power of the demon Barron, with the power of Satan, with the power of—”
I rushed him and drove my fist into his guts with such force that he was lifted from his feet and driven back before collapsing into a ball, his white robes settling around him.
The man on his knees leapt up and backed away, holding his dagger back by his hip, ready to drive it into me. On his belt hung a coil of rope, such as a herdsman wore. “You made a mistake,” he growled, lip curling into a malicious grin. “The last mistake you will ever make.”
He darted at me with incredible speed. Immortal speed. His dagger flashed low and then up toward my neck, twisting and flicking the blade like an expert cutthroat.
I leaned away, grasped his wrist and whipped my sword down to take his arm clean off at the elbow. I tossed his forearm, somehow still clutching the dagger, over my shoulder. He wailed and fell, clutching the stump of his ruined arm and scurrying back on his arse toward the wall while blood gushed from his terrible wound.
The third man had not moved from his spot by the window. There was a short sword at his side with an ornate hilt, in a scabbard decorated with gold.
“Are you him?” I said, stepping slowly toward the window. My toe kicked over a bowl of blood on the floor and it splashed across the floor in a dark, shining fan. “Answer me.”
He faltered, shaking, looking at me and at my men behind me. “I am… I am Sir Roger de Briqueville.”
“You are him,” I said, drawing closer still. “You are the Marshal. Do not lie to me.”
“No,” he said, raising his chin and holding my gaze. “You are mistaken. You will not find him here.”
I stopped. For some reason, I believed him. “Where is Gilles de Rais?”
Briqueville hesitated. “Not here.” I tilted my head and he hurried on. “That is to say, sir, that he has relocated temporarily to his castle at Machecoul, to better protect his noble prisoners.”
“He knows the Duke is coming for him?”
“Ah, yes. Indeed, he does. At least, he suspects that it is so.”
I looked around to see that Rob had scooped up the boy, Little Jean, in a cloak he had found somewhere and was removing the blindfold and bonds, all the while whispering gentle things to him. Walt stood over our other two prisoners with his sword drawn. I knew it would be taking every ounce of self-control he had to resist murdering them both.
“You are an immortal?” I asked Roger de Briqueville.
He glanced at the man with the dismembered arm before drawing his eyes back to me. “I know not of what you speak.”
I sighed. “It is a shame that you are not honest
with me. All your deceit means for me is torture for you, sir. You should know that I will take off your fingers and your eyelids and your ears and at some point as your body is taken from you, piece by piece, you will tell me it all anyway. So why not avoid the bloody and agonising part and simply tell it all now?”
Walt spoke over his shoulder. “Seems a shame. Maybe we should do it anyway? I’ll do it.”
“Perhaps you are right,” I said. “I would enjoy seeing justice done.”
“Please,” Briqueville said, his calm demeanour beginning to waver. “I am an innocent man. A mortal man.”
“Be silent, Roger,” the one with the missing arm said through gritted teeth.
I turned to regard him. He was a well-built man of forty or so, with a big jaw and a low brow like a shelf over dark eyes.
“And who are you?” I asked him.
He spat at my feet. “You will soon die. All of you will die.”
“Who is he?” I asked Roger de Briqueville.
“Sillé,” he said. “His name is Sillé.”
“Ah!” I said, brightly. “I have heard of you. Yes indeed, you are one of Gilles de Rais’ most faithful servants. You are one of those men who journeys out into the villages and homes for a hundred miles east and west to bring home young boys and sometimes girls, using your rope there to bind them up. You bring them back here and your master drinks their blood and murders them. And so do your comrades, the servants Poitou and Henriet. I have met them, sir. I saw how their strength and speed were much increased. I know what they are. And I know what you are, too.”
“And we know what you are!” Sillé said. “A traitor and a betrayer of the true master!”
“The true master?” I wondered if he meant my brother William, who was perhaps considered by these servants as the master of Gilles de Rais. “Tell me about the true master.”
Sillé scoffed.
Walt laughed his mirthless laugh. “Seems like we got another one who cares nought for his fingers and his eyelids, Richard.”
I nodded. A whimpering behind me brought my attention and I spoke over my shoulder without taking my eyes away from the captured men. “How is the boy, Rob?”
“Freezing, exhausted. Cuts ain’t deep, though. Reckon he’ll be right as rain, God willing.”
The alchemist groaned and shuddered and crawled to the wall. I wondered if I had fatally ruptured his entrails. “Are you one of the blood drinkers?” I asked him. “I know who you are. You are Prelati the Florentine alchemist and sorcerer. Did the Marshal give you his blood to drink?”
Prelati looked at me with tears in his eyes. “No.”
“Is he telling the truth, Roger?” I asked. “Or are you all three here for the boy’s blood?”
“No, by God,” Briqueville said. “Not I. I would never stoop so low. It makes a man’s seed dry and I have a noble name to pass on. I will take a wife and make a son and that will be the only everlasting life for me.”
I resisted the urge to explain to him that he would hang before he made a son and merely nodded. “What of these others?”
Sillé, clutching his stump to his chest, roared at him. “You are a betrayer! The master will cut your heart out. You will burn in Hell.”
“Can I shut him up, sir?” Walt asked.
“Please do.”
Walt kicked Sillé in the belly, then he aimed a second kick in the man’s face which drove the back of his skull into the wall with an awful, wet crunch. He fell unconscious, his chest soaked with the blood from his wound and the arm itself now flung out and leaking everywhere. Sillé was not long for the world.
“Well?” I asked Briqueville.
“He is one,” he said, pointing to Sillé. “He and Poitou and Henriet.”
“Oh? Not Prelati? And you truly expect me to believe that you are not one either?”
He shook his head. “Never. It is evil.”
“And yet you are willing to partake in child murder,” I said, confused. “How can you speak of evil?”
He lowered his gaze. “I never killed a child with my own hand and I never knew what this place was until it was too late. You see, I was deceived, sir. Snared. I wished to flee but was trapped from fear of my lord, who would never let me go nor let me live if I fled.”
It sounded so similar to the excuses of the priest Dominus Eustache Blanchet that it made me doubt not only Briqueville’s words but the priest’s also.
I sighed. “And what about you, Prelati? Let me guess. You are a victim, also and were forced against your will to sacrifice children and summon demons?”
On his hands and knees, he crawled forward along the floor toward me, knocking over a candle that rolled into a pool of blood and was extinguished. “You are as he is, are you not? The master is afraid of you, my lord. He knows you. From a long time ago, he knows you. A century ago, he said, confiding in me one dark night. You are an ancient one, of great power. Greater even than the true master and your blood will make me more powerful than the others. Please, please, my lord, hear my words and know that they are spoken from the depths of my heart. I beg you. I will serve you. I will serve your every whim. I can perform transmutation if only you provide the materials and I can make you rich, my lord. Richer than any king since Croesus. All I ask in return is that you make me one of you, like your good men here. Give me your blood this night and I will create mountains of gold and I will summon demons to serve your every whim for millennia, until the Last Judgement.”
He fell upon my legs, grasping them and reaching up with one hand. With my knee, I struck him in the face and he fell back, wailing, spilling another bowl of blood across the floor and further soaking his white robes.
“I would never give the Gift to a creature as pathetic and useless as you. And it seems that even Gilles de Rais, who gave his own blood to odious, witless fools like Poitou and Henriet, thought you unworthy of it.”
Prelati wailed and covered his face with his robes as he scuttled away on his side toward the wall, like a wounded spider.
Sillé stirred and pulled himself upright, clutching his arm once more. His face was grey and his eyes glazed.
“Sir?” Rob said. “We should get the lad away, now.”
He was right and not only for the boy’s sake. For all I knew, there could be half a hundred soldiers gathering outside the tower, alerted by servants.
“Sillé?” I asked him. “Do you deny that you were changed by ingesting your master’s blood?”
He lifted his chin. “Why would I deny such a thing? I am honoured by the blessing. I am brought closer to God by the gift of the blood and I have done their bidding. Such an honour can never be taken from me, not by you and not by death.”
“My Order is sworn to unmake all beasts such as you, Sillé.” I showed him the blade of my sword. “Kneel, and prepare for your death.”
He tried to spit but his mouth was too dry. “You will never unmake the master.”
“Lean forward,” I commanded, and struck his head from his body with a single stroke. His head rolled toward Prelati, who thrashed it away by kicking his legs, and scurried back across the room.
“Your turn,” I said to Briqueville.
He tore his gaze away from the headless corpse twitching within the pentagram. “I swear to you that I am not what he was. I swear it.”
“You certainly deserve death anyway for the crimes you have done.”
“I do,” he said, sobbing. “I do.”
“Your only hope,” I said, “is to submit a full confession of those crimes and the crimes of your master to the Bishop of Nantes and the Duke of Brittany.”
He cried out and sank to his knees. “I will. I will do it. I will.”
“Give me your sword,” I ordered, and Walt moved to my side in case Briqueville attempted to use it on me instead of surrendering it.
Behind me, a door banged and I jumped about to see Prelati fleeing through a door, his robes billowing out behind him.
“Sneaky bastard!” Wal
t cried and ran after him.
But I called Walt back. “We have tarried too long as it is. The murdering sorcerer will get what is coming to him but now we must get the boy to safety and drag Briqueville to Nantes.”
I looked down at Little Jean as Rob held him like a baby in his arms. The boy was deathly pale and shivering, eyes flicking about beneath their lids.
“All will be well now, son,” Rob said to him. “All will be well.”
***
There were no soldiers waiting for us, and the servants I had accosted earlier had long fled, along with every other soul in the place, or so it seemed. Once we made our way through unchallenged, we roused the porter and ordered him to open the gates.
“These men are good friends, Miton,” Briqueville said. “Let us out at once.”
“In the dark?” Miton said. “Anyway, how’d they get in?”
“You know me, do you not?” I said to him.
Miton’s face clouded. “You said you was one of my lord’s men but you was a liar. I should never have let you in before.”
“Oh, but I am a faithful servant, am I not, Roger?”
“Indeed he is, Miton. Would I be in his company if it were not so?”
Miton eyed the injured boy in Rob’s arms and hesitated. My patience long gone, I grasped Miton and lifted him against the wall. “Open the damned gate. Now.”
Stephen and my servants met us on the plain and we rode away from the evil place, though it left a filthy stain in my soul. I felt contaminated by the evil and executing one servant and taking another had only served to deepen the feeling that no amount of killing could undo the malevolence that had been done.
At least we had recovered the child while breath remained in his body. We brought him at once to Tilleuls where the physician Pierre Moussillon treated the boy’s wounds and put him to bed. Ameline and her servant Paillart had opened the door willingly, this time, and managed to rouse the old man.
“Your father is in good health,” I said softly to Ameline, by which I meant that he was not pissed as a newt. “I had thought you alone would be capable of attending to the boy.”
“Yes,” she said, smiling. “He has been entirely himself these past three days. I think you have given him some hope, perhaps. Not for Jamet, of course, but for the people here. It is like a curse is being lifted.”