by David Gilman
‘The stirrup! Robert, seize the stirrup!’ A voice, she thought it Blackstone’s, called out. ‘Robert! Strike out, man!’
Then the horse lunged, its strength powering it back towards the riverbank.
*
Will Longdon and Halfpenny nearly went into the water when Aelis’s horse lost its footing. As they steadied their mounts they saw her tugged rapidly away by the current. The water was not deep but the pools were and river goblins could snatch ankles as well as submerged branches. A foot caught between two river stones would quickly drown anyone caught below the water. They were traps set by the river spirits. As Halfpenny yanked his horse’s reins he saw Robert Thurgood throw himself from the saddle. For a moment he thought that he too had fallen but seconds later saw his lifelong friend was striking out towards the flailing woman. Halfpenny urged his horse forward; no one could stay midstream without causing problems for those who followed.
The momentum of the other horses carried the men across the river. Jack Halfpenny could only watch Thurgood splashing towards the helpless woman. Every once in a while his friend disappeared from view and visions of boyhood jabbed away at his memory like an archer’s knife. They had fought at Poitiers together and been in Blackstone’s ranks since soon after. Killing an enemy and whoring with friends was a life well lived, but to die in a river was to fall victim to fate’s foul claw. Unjust and cruel, it threatened to take his friend. For a brief moment he almost jumped into the water to help but knew that would have caused his own death. As water sluiced from his horse’s shoulders and its hooves dug into the opposite shore’s muddy bank, he was raised high enough to see Thurgood pressing the girl’s body against a tree stump midstream. Its slimy trunk offered no purchase but somehow his friend pinned her above the water. ‘Hold on!’ he shouted as he urged the horse forward along the riverbank in a futile gesture of help. If he could find some shallows he could ride the horse into the river in the hope of his friend reaching him. Let her go! his thoughts urged. No woman’s worth dying for! His progress was stopped by the trees further downstream. He could go no further. He saw Blackstone had already spurred his horse along the far shore and then fearlessly ridden it into the river. If any horse could withstand the current it would be that beast of battle. And then Blackstone had hauled her onto his saddle leaving Thurgood clinging to the half-submerged tree. Halfpenny laughed. Cursed fool did it! He saved her.
‘Come on! Robert! Swim, man. Here! Come on!’
Blackstone had kicked free his foot from the stirrup and Thurgood stretched for it. But the current took him. Halfpenny saw the gaunt look of exhaustion on his friend’s face. Perhaps he had heard his shouts of encouragement because he turned towards Halfpenny. It looked as though he raised an arm. Yes, yes, Robert. I see you. ‘Strike out!’ he yelled, cupping his hand to carry his voice.
Thurgood threw his arms into the water, thrashing, head down, turning for the bank. But he made no progress. For every stroke forward he went back five. He was caught in an eddy. He seemed to kick and half raise himself. Then the dark brown water swept him away. Halfpenny saw the agony of defeat on his face and then suddenly he was gone.
All that remained was the bend in the river, echoing with the gurgling laughter of the river spirits.
*
Aelis had no sense of how long it took Blackstone to reach the shore. She slipped in and out of consciousness and then felt the soggy ground beneath her back. A man’s hands pressed below her breasts; she tried to fight him off, but then she vomited and spewed water and bile, her body curling like a child into a protective fold.
‘Bad luck. I told you, Thomas. She brings bad luck with her,’ a voice said from somewhere behind her head. ‘She lives?’
She opened her eyes as Blackstone covered her with a blanket.
‘She lives,’ he said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Blackstone and his men pushed through the forest in an attempt to follow the river and find Robert Thurgood. The archer was a strong swimmer but Halfpenny had seen him swept away. His friend forged ahead of the others but after an hour it was obvious the river, and Thurgood, were lost to them. They were being slowly defeated by the tangled growth of the ancient forest and impenetrable thorn and bramble. They could smell wild boar and knew it was unsafe for a man to be more than a few yards from his companions. The deeper they went, the darker the forest became, even though the leaves had not yet fully formed on the branches. But the heavy sky and the interlacing canopy began to make the search dangerous. Beasts of the night would soon come out to follow the hunting paths.
Blackstone pulled the men out of the forest and returned to the camp where he had left Aelis, wrapped in blankets next to a roaring fire, one of a dozen Blackstone ordered lit: dry tinder and wood were plentiful in the forest. He knew that warmth and food were now more important than a fruitless and dangerous search in the approaching night.
Jack Halfpenny was riven with despair and no words of comfort from Blackstone would have eased his pain – so none was offered.
‘Jack, you will stand first watch. Keep the fires burning,’ Will Longdon told him. It was best to keep a man occupied when a grievous loss was his night’s companion. ‘I don’t want to wake and see you or your men slumped. Pick three others from your twenty and make sure they patrol back and forth. Push two out on each flank within sight of the fires. Rotate the watch every three hours.’
Halfpenny obeyed, determined not to show his grief. Men died at your shoulder in battle; there was no good or bad way to die. Lance, fire, sword, mace, beneath the iron-shod hooves of a war horse: no difference at all. Dead was dead. Carrion for the crows. Better to die with friends, though, he reasoned to himself. The last cry for help given to the man you had lived and fought with over the years. Not like this! Not swept away like a helpless beast caught in a torrent. Yet a beast had no thought. Knew nothing about death. Robert Thurgood would have known every second of his final, desperate gasp for life.
*
Thurgood had felt as if he had wrestled with Meulon or Gaillard. These men, as tall and strong as Blackstone, could crush men with their bare hands. The weight and strength of the fast-flowing river twisted and bent his body and slammed it hard against some unseen obstruction in the river. The sight of Jack Halfpenny racing down the riverbank in a vain attempt to reach him roused a strange sensation within him. He knew he was moments from being pulled under but he tried to raise his arm in farewell to his lifelong friend. He saw that Blackstone had forged his way clear of the water on his war horse and that the woman had been saved. Bewilderment ran through him: why had he plunged in to save her? He had no feelings for the woman; she meant nothing to him. He had lusted after her as much as any other man, but knew she was untouchable. His thoughts mocked him. Perhaps she had been a lure dragged through the water and he, like a fish, had been entranced by her. Then he had choked and managed to push himself momentarily above the surface. The roar of water in his ears conjured images of battles he had fought in which men’s voices rose up and became part of the very air they breathed. He remembered himself and Halfpenny bending into their war bows as one, loosing the arrows and knowing they were slaying a common enemy. They had challenged each other all their lives. Halfpenny was the better bowman, Thurgood had always known it, but never resented it – though regret scorched him now in these last moments of his life. He wished he had pillaged more, wished he had taken more women against their will when he had had the chance. Blackstone’s threat of punishment for such crimes seemed of little importance now.
Thurgood felt the change in the current as he was swept around the bend and lost sight of his friend and companions. It carried him out into the middle of the stream where some power below twisted his legs as the current above fought it in the opposite direction. The shoreline forest deepened, casting its gloom onto the water. Perhaps this was the portal into death that was about to snatch his soul from his body. He fought against the contradictory forces but his strength was fa
iling. He could see in that brief moment that the river calmed as it flowed away from the bend and then settled into deeper water. If he could reach it, then he might have a chance of survival. He filled his lungs with air, stretched every sinew and struck out for the middle. He cursed his waterlogged jupon that was as heavy as steel. There was no way to count the heartbeats that it took to reach the calm stretch but there was a sudden, soothing cradle that rocked and bore him along. His final effort had taken what little strength he had left. He raised his face to the sky and spread his arms. The evening mist rose, seeping through the trees: wisps of water spirits beckoning his soul. Robert Thurgood closed his eyes and surrendered to the river gods.
*
Killbere watched as the men settled around their fires. The captains went among them organizing the night watch. A man had died, but nothing changed in how seasoned fighters went about the ritual of creating warmth and food. Cooking pots nestled into embers and the smell of pottage steamed into the night. They had been lucky. The rain held off and only one man had drowned. It was a small price to pay. The fighting force that Blackstone led was still intact.
Killbere peeled off his mail and lifted his shirt. The wound was now only a blemish on his skin. The girl’s skills had rid his body of poison, but he suspected she had infected the men with something more lethal. Fear.
‘Your wound has opened again?’ said Blackstone as he approached and settled his blanket next to the fire.
‘No, it’s like an infant’s arse. Smooth and unblemished.’
‘A pity she couldn’t have treated your face then,’ said Blackstone and accepted the dark piece of food offered by Killbere.
‘Blood cake,’ said Killbere. ‘I kept some. It’s good. I would not welcome a face without blemish. A man’s face tells the world what he is about. Ask anyone who gazes on your features. The German knight did you a favour that day at Crécy. Had he not scored your face with his blade you would have grown into a pretty man. The women would have swooned and men would have spat at you in the street. There’s nothing more troubling than seeing a man who looks like a woman.’
‘You forget Guillaume,’ said Blackstone, remembering his young squire who had died a vile death at the hands of the Savage Priest.
‘You’re right,’ admitted Killbere. Guillaume Bourdin had often been teased for his boyish looks but his courage was without question. ‘My God, that boy had a lion’s heart,’ he said and bit into the blood cake. ‘We lose good men, Thomas. It’s to be expected, but some of them deserved life into old age so they could tell the tales.’
‘We leave that to the scribes and their exaggerations,’ Blackstone said, falling into silence. Each of them gazed into the fire.
‘And drunken old veterans who can lie better than most,’ Killbere said after a few moments. ‘Thomas.’ He looked at his friend, knowing what had not been said needed to be spoken. ‘She brings bad luck with her. She’s cursed. Perhaps those people at Balon were right about her and her father. They scorched the evil from him but perhaps his malevolence passed to her.’
Blackstone raised the wineskin to his lips and then passed it to his friend. ‘You’ve become as superstitious as an old crone, Gilbert. The man healed others, just as she healed you.’
‘But I was lying between earth and heaven. I knew nothing of what she did to me. Magic is a powerful tool that conjures forces we cannot understand.’
‘She healed you with herbs and potions. I stayed with you throughout and when I left the room another man took my place. She knew she could have died had she not saved you.’
‘You know she has other powers though. You can see it. She draws men’s desires to her like a beggar to a money-lender.’
‘She stays under my protection, Gilbert. Thurgood died because he tried to save a woman from drowning, nothing more.’
Killbere shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But she spins a web, Thomas. Who’s to say she did not draw him to her? Eh? Witches do that, you know. When their own souls are being pulled from them they suck a man’s spirit from him like a spider sucks an insect’s juices.’
Blackstone stood and retrieved the wineskin. ‘Do you feel less of a man since she healed you?’
‘Me? No. Never better. All I’m saying is –’
‘Listen to me,’ Blackstone insisted. ‘I watched her force the bile and poison from you. I saw what she did. If she was a sorceress she could have drawn the life force from you too, Gilbert. She touched your cock, not your soul.’
Killbere’s jaw dropped, the food on his tongue falling to his chest.
‘That’s right, Gilbert. It was no dream of your nun. She straddled you that night.’
Blackstone strode away. No matter how much he wished otherwise he knew Killbere was right. Thurgood’s death caused ill feeling towards Aelis. He needed to be rid of her.
*
The man-at-arms who guarded Aelis sat on a fallen tree a dozen paces behind where the girl’s fire burned and the canvas shelter that had been put up for her. She sat wrapped in a cloak, knees drawn up, holding the warmth within the weave, the tin plate of food untouched at her side. The sentry got to his feet as soon as Blackstone approached.
‘You’ve eaten, Collard?’ he asked. He knew the name of every man who served him. Collard was under Meulon’s command and had been with Blackstone since Italy. He was a veteran like every other who had sworn allegiance to the scarred knight. The man’s pockmarked face with its uneven beard was as patchy as a moth-eaten cloth. The swordsman scowled.
‘Later, my lord. There’s time yet when my watch is over.’
‘Very well,’ said Blackstone. ‘Has anyone approached?’
‘None, lord. And they would not get past me if they did.’
‘You fear her?’ said Blackstone.
‘I fear no one, Sir Thomas.’ He grinned, exposing broken teeth through the patchwork. ‘Except you, lord. You would loosen any man’s bowels if you faced them with Wolf Sword in your grip.’
Blackstone spoke lightly. ‘There are many who have tried to separate me from it and they showed no sign of fear. I ask you again, do you fear her?’
Blackstone’s quiet insistence unsettled Collard. He nodded reluctantly. ‘She says nothing to provoke a man to be fearful, but there’s… something not right. I don’t know what.’
‘This woman has done nothing to harm any of us. If anything she is a force for good with her healing skills. She saved Sir Gilbert. Remember that,’ Blackstone said, despite his own uncertainty.
He moved next to the fire. Aelis raised her eyes. Her toes peeked beneath the cloth that she had wrapped around her and he wondered whether she was naked beneath the cloak, but there was no sign of her clothing drying next to the fire.
‘You are dry and warm?’ Blackstone asked.
She nodded.
‘You haven’t eaten,’ he said. ‘The cold will bite and we all need food when we can get it.’
‘I have no hunger,’ she answered. ‘Not after a man died trying to save me. What was his name?’
‘Robert Thurgood. He was an archer. He was young and he was strong and one of the few men who could swim. It makes no sense to let his death starve you of good food. Eat.’
She shook her head and hugged her knees closer, her toes now covered. Blackstone picked up the plate. ‘Collard, take this food for yourself.’
The man-at-arms strode forward and took the plate. ‘Thank you, Sir Thomas.’ He turned back to the fallen tree. He would eat, but keep watch on his sworn lord and his charge. If the woman was a sorceress she could strike Blackstone down with a spell. It was well known that a woman like her could do such a thing. If Blackstone fell he would slay her without another thought.
‘The men fear me even more now,’ she said. ‘You have lost a good man. A valuable man.’
‘Every man who serves me is valuable. We mourn every man we lose because part of us dies, because we share much together. We turn our backs on death until it has to be faced. It awaits us all. You bear no bl
ame for what happened. The horses faltered. It was expected.’
‘What of tomorrow? Do you search for his body?’
‘No. He will have been swept downstream. I need to catch up with my King.’
The gloom had settled across the forests that stood behind and to the sides of the open land where they camped. The horizon was barely a smudge as the damp air settled. She shivered.
‘Get under cover – the dew will be heavy tonight. There might be rain by daybreak.’
She turned her face to him. ‘Robert Thurgood did not seem like a man who would die easily, Sir Thomas. When he was close to me in the water with his body pressed against mine and his breath was on my cheek I looked into his eyes through the fear in my own. We cleaved together like lovers caught in a maelstrom. There was a strength in him that would be hard to kill.’