The Martyr and the Prophet (The Lost Testament Book 1)

by C. B. Currie

  The old man blushed as if he had been given a great compliment. ‘No, but I remembered that from sermons at the chapel. I always heed the words of the Prophet.’

  Algas saw no need for such nonsense. If a man needed to write his religion down then it must be too complicated. The Northman would rather wipe his arse with southlander scrolls than learn to read them. Yet the fellow seemed otherwise harmless. He fetched two of the upturned bowls that lay on the hearthstones and began to scoop broth into them. Algas sipped from his bowl, and raised his eyebrows and nodded approvingly. It was delicious and sorely needed.

  ‘Rabbit,’ the man told him, ‘I catch them in the forest. Milord says nobody is supposed to hunt, but he eats deer, doesn’t he. There’s never a shortage of rabbits.’ Then he continued his tale.

  ‘When a caravan passed through the world had changed. The Holy City had been captured and our armies were there. I traveled with the traders and their camels and mules until I was reunited with Milord and my brothers. When we returned to Wesgard he pensioned me off here on his land. I work the fields, tinker and fix things like the cart outside. He lets me have extra firewood and invites me to the commoner’s table on feast days, all because he felt sorry I came back with only one ball!’

  The old villager laughed at his own joke and Algas forced a smile. He thought the man must be going mad. Perhaps he was just lonely.

  The Northman slept soundly on a bed of sacking and an old blanket the old man laid out for him. He did not fear being turned in, for the tinker had explained why he would never do such a thing. Besides, if he caused any trouble, Algas could still kill him.

  Eight

  At Juniper Keep Beland usually had simple porridge for breakfast, sometimes with spiced with herbs and salt, occasionally sweetened with honey. Donnal however, had always appreciated food and was ever resourceful at finding good fare for the chapter house’s kitchens. They shared one end of a table in the refectory, where they dined on bread, cheese, soft-boiled eggs and bacon, washed down with Donnal’s favorite morning drink called qaweh, a hot, ink-black brew that he had acquired a taste for in Quresh. Donnal paid a spice merchant in Castlereach a pretty penny for it, along with the imported sugar that Beland was forced to add to sweeten the bitter qaweh, but it was said to be all the fashion to have it with milk in the ports of Selevia and Venchy and he thought that no doubt the nobles of Castlereach would be imitating those of the mainland by now.

  Just as they were finishing, there was a sudden commotion in the city streets and with some of the others, the two hurried outside to the courtyard to see what was the matter. A crowd had gathered and was moving toward the central crossroads of Bastion, where the Old Cock faced the Great Chapel, and the knights quickly joined them to see the spectacle.

  ‘A hanging,’ Donnal said, ‘I’d forgotten. The crier said yesterday a man has been sentenced.’

  In the centre of the crossroads, which was broad enough to serve as the town square, the crowd gathered noisily around a hastily erected gallows. It was little more than a platform wheeled out. On it were the gallows and noose, a stool, the hangman, hooded and menacing and a guardsman in the blue and yellow livery of Lord Dorand’s men.

  ‘That’s him,’ Donnal said, nodding at more guards coming from the west, parting the crowd to bring a disheveled youth in torn clothes and with a bruised face to the gallows. The citizens hissed and jeered at the condemned man, who looked up for a moment and Beland noticed he had one maimed eye, the socket mangled, swollen and bloodied.

  ‘A vagrant and a wastrel,’ Donnal went on, ‘from somewhere south and east, not this shire. He dragged a noblewoman’s favorite maidservant into an alley I’m told. Poor girl was scarce old enough to marry and now, she’s bound for a convent with a bastard in her belly. The Reeve has no patience for such trouble in the streets these days.’

  ‘Did he always have just one eye?’ Beland asked. He had heard of the new Reeve and his heavy-handedness, though he’d never met the man.

  Donnal nodded ‘Cerlic always gets his confessions, I’m told. Won’t matter how many eyes he has in a while. Best he make his peace with Heaven.’

  As the convict was stood on the platform, the crowd parted again this time in the north of the square and two soldiers escorted a small, stern looking man in a fine blue and gold cloak with a heavy silver chain of office around his neck and draped down his chest. The Reeve was perhaps fifty, with graying hair and a thin, cropped beard. He strutted to the platform, ascended the several steps and stood beside the condemned man. He was promptly joined by a portly young man in grey priest’s robes carrying a heavy leather-bound book.

  ‘This vagabond,’ he hesitated, leaned over to the fat little priest and returned to his posture, ‘Kelwen of Wickstone, has violated the king’s peace and the laws of the kingdom and of the shire. Lord Dorand the Younger has sentenced him to die this day.’

  Beland had expected the customary flourish of a court, but the Reeve had been mercifully to the point.

  Guards prodded the terrified Kelwen on to the stool and he climbed it gingerly, looking around at the hollering townsfolk. There were men, women, old women and small children; even priests and monks from the chapels and priory in the city had joined the jeering. Their faces were twisted and full of hate, even the little ones. Beland could sense the anger in the city and it smelled like battle. For a moment his mind clouded with the sounds of weapons clashing, the smell of blood and the heat of the desert, but his friend prodded him and his mind returned. He looked at the rapist again.

  The young man might have been a handsome youth, but for the pulp in his eye socket and his battered face. He had strong shoulders, a good crop of brown hair. While not as tall, he reminded Beland of Vanis.

  ‘It’s unlikely His Lordship has even seen the boy,’ Donnal said, raising his voice over the din of the crowd. ‘He usually lets Cerlic make his own decisions.’

  ‘Are they always condemned?’ Beland shouted back.

  ‘I’ve heard those that can afford not to be are spared, maybe just a rumor. Things aren’t as strictly done here as in the time of His Lordship’s father.

  The Reeve raised his hands to calm the crowd. And slowly the streets became quieter. Dogs barked in the distance and a cart rumbled and creaked somewhere not far behind them. Crows cawed and no doubt they would be feed soon enough. Beland cocked his ear to listen.

  ‘Kelwen of Wickstone,’ he said, ‘Are there any final words before you face the Prophet?’

  The boy looked around, terrified as the noose was placed over his head and the hangman leaned over a lever beside the stool. He was teary, sniffling and unable to speak coherently, though he tried in a stammering, quiet voice blurred by his own weeping. Beland couldn’t pick out a word of it. Wickstone was several shires away, and it was unlikely the boy’s kin even knew he was to die this day.

  ‘Very well the Reeve said, ‘Father Culdred will hear your confession.’

  Beland couldn’t hear the confession either. The fat young priest waddled over, leaned in and heard some more sobbing and mumbling, nodded his head compassionately and stepped away.

  The Reeve announced, nodded at the executioner and turned back toward the crowd. The lever was thrust to one side, a trapdoor opened and the stool dropped. Beland could hear the crack of the boy’s neck even at this distance. The crowd cheered and hollered some more.

  He had seen many men die. Bloodied, begging for their mothers, their wives, their children; for water, for help, for a swift death. He had seen men starved into shadows of themselves and maddened by hunger and thirst and incessant heat. He had seen limbs severed, heads rolled and the bodies of pregnant women mutilated in hovels and sandstone houses where they had been left till found by he and his brother knights – innocents murdered by the foot soldiers in their own army. Death was an easy sight but he was tired of it. He did not wish to see one more criminal struggle and twitch and the end of a rope, eyes bulging and tongue lolling as his throat gurgled helples
sly and the color faded from his skin. He wanted to see his son.

  He turned to Donnal, whom he found was also looking away. Their eyes met, and his old friend nodded, for he had shared a lifetime of the same sights himself. They turned and walked back to the chapter house in silence.

  Beland rode out of Bastion under a moody sky. Low, dark clouds wrestled with thin white wisps above, at turns threatening rain as a chill wind whipped from the northeast. He was glad of the cloak he had brought, a plain brown wool riding piece that almost matched his penitent’s tunic. That would not help him much if the rain came, but he was used to hard riding.

  The road east led across flat farmland, with the wide slow stretch of the Burr River to his right. This was the southern border of the Breadlands, the flat part of Somersvale Shire. Havenside lay not far away in the wooded highlands just over the river in neighboring Foresthills. Across Blackbarrow Bridge past Taryn Mill, the road would climb into these uplands. To his left, he passed more rich fields, farmsteads and hamlets and copses of trees with falling leaves that blew across the wide track as the wind tore them from the branches. He liked this weather too, as long as the rain held off. He enjoyed a cup or two of ale or wine over supper and had loved a woman once, but his greatest pleasure had always been travel, though these days he had less patience for making camp and preferred to sleep indoors after a day’s ride.

  The countryside was busy as summer waned and this road was busier than the quiet ride from the keep, because it ran south and east and linked Bastion with more cities and towns. On either side farmers mended fences, tended cattle or pigs or carried grain for threshing. Drovers brought their livestock to the city to be slaughtered ahead of winter, carters carried grain and messengers, pilgrims and clergymen went to and fro. It was not a road for thieves and robbers, for a farm or hamlet was never far from sight and barely a quarter hour passed without seeing someone.

  He had come to the midland shires over a decade ago when he had been posted to Juniper Keep and now thought of these lands as home. Before that he had been billeted at Castlereach and before that wherever the Order had sent him abroad. His father had been a minor knight in the service of a southeastern landlord who in turn served the king. He could not have expected much inheritance, being the third of four sons, and had not looked forward to a life in the clergy despite a pious upbringing that he felt had served him well. He had wanted to see the world and to be a knight and so he had joined the Order of the Chalice as a novice at sixteen summers of age.

  Those first years were hard but giddy. The Order put him to work as a stable hand, an armory assistant, a cook, and steward for avowed knights, all the while saying his prayers, learning swordcraft and following his orders. When he was considered old enough he was attached to knights on the Order’s campaigns aboard: southern Venchy, the coast of Selevia, and in his own manhood, he had fought in the east and freed the Holy City, surrounded by those parched deserts where he saw so many men perish. The giddiness had long faded and only duty now remained.

  His duty now was to say farewell to the son he had only known a few years and who did not yet know him as a father. It was not one he particularly relished but he understood the needs of the Order and he had always put his brother knights first. He could have run away with the boy’s mother, all those years ago. He might have if he’d known she had been with child. Or he might have done his duty and abandoned them both, for he could not remember any more how love had felt in those days.

  He passed a patrol of four armed riders in Bastion’s colors, escorting a prisoner on foot. They tipped their helms at him and carried on, the man with his roped hands pulled along behind the third horse, struggling to keep up. Beland was reminded of the condemned man he had seen that morning. That boy was of an age with Vanis, younger than the miscreant the patrol dragged by. He might have been guilty; he may just have been the only one who could not account for himself when the assault had taken place. He may have been unable to bribe his way out of gaol, or without a sponsor who could secure him a lesser sentence. The knight had sat in on enough courts to know that reeves and magistrates could be venal and liked a quick decision, and Cerlic in Bastion was rumored to be guilty of both.

  Though justice might not always be fair however, Beland knew its purpose. Every man had a lord, from the lowliest serf to the highest Barons. A man who did not till his master’s fields, serve in his guard, collect his taxes, dispense his justice or minister to his parish had no place in the King’s realm. Wanderers and vagrants were ever open to suspicion. Bastards who were cast out could either starve, beg, work, poach or steal. Many supported themselves with all of these. A woman could expect no better, selling herself into service of a household if she was lucky; whoredom if she wasn’t.

  The knight had heard of and seen the pretty boys who did the same and was glad there was no such fate awaiting his own son. Vanis would be an educated cleric, a pious monk, a man who would make his father proud and would have a place in the kingdom of Wesgard. That was better than most bastards could hope for. It was far better than dangling on a noose like the youth he had watched die that morning. That man had probably never known his father and never would. He wondered if the father had left when the lad was an infant or if he in turn, had never even seen his son. This he knew was how one rogue begat another.

  And it became clear to Beland then, as a chill shower whipped up and spattered his face with a light, icy rain, what it was he must do. He would defy just one more order. He would tell Vanis everything. And though it would remain a secret between the knight, the priests and the boy, at least then the boy would know who he was, his place in Heaven’s creation and whom to turn to when he needed more. Perhaps when he was pensioned off, the knight could go to the priory and be with his son. As best as he could manage, they would be family.

  Nine

  ‘Tell me again which books are gone,’ Prior Algwyn said calmly. Father Haendric stood by Father Caddock who had his arm in a sling, as Brother Cellim fumed quietly.

  ‘Saint Arnell’s Prayer Book, several illuminated copies of the Strictures, some of the heathen works,’ answered Caddock. ‘Father Haendric and I checked twice. What would thieves want with books?’

  ‘They’ll take what they can get, I suppose,’ Haendric said. ‘The bindings alone could be sold for good coin, and collectors sometimes don’t care where their books come from. The Heathens are popular in the capital and across the sea in Venchy.’

  ‘Heaven knows what anyone would want with the word of desert savages,’ added brother Cellim.

  ‘Those books had locks of gold leaf, from the finest craftsmen in Selevia,’ Haendric protested, ‘There are few in the kingdom who can read the language of the Qureshi, but any thief knows the value of gold.’

  ‘If I hadn’t disturbed them, they may have taken more,’ Caddock said.

  ‘Books can be replaced. Good priests cannot,’ the prior pointed out. ‘It was foolish to try and stop them and you’re lucky to be alive.’

  Brother Cellim turned to Haendric then. ‘And you’re certain the boy did not take any?’

  Haendric felt a flash of anger. ‘Of course not, Vanis is no thief.’

  ‘He stole that village girl’s honor.’ Cellim reminded him.

  ‘The girl had precious little of that to begin with, I dare say,’ Haendric snorted.

  ‘The Book of Elother says, “Beware the cur of a mongrel for he will surely flee in his sire’s steps”,’ Cellim goaded haughtily.

  ‘Oh, spare us your sermons,’ Haendric snapped. ‘The boy was not in league with any thieves and...’

  ‘Thank you, Father,’ Prior Algwyn interjected, ending the escalation. Haendric and Cellim were ever at odds over the bastard novice, and Algwyn was not fond of him either, but he’d already told Haendric he was satisfied the boy had nothing to do with the intruders. ‘Brother Cellim, Father Caddock, if you could leave us awhile?’

  The two left the prior’s office and Haendric took a seat. ‘I nee
d a drink, Heaven help me.’

  ‘You’re certain he took nothing more?’

  ‘The books were all accounted for when we checked them yesterday. It was before the beating Vanis received from the villager, Elbry. There are no more missing today. All he took was food from the stores and the lute Father Caddock had lent him to practice.’

  ‘And how long has he been gone?’

  ‘He left in the night,’ Haendric answered, ‘he said nothing to me. Cellim noticed he was not in his lessons this morning.’

  Algwyn took a tired breath. ‘I sent some lay brothers to ask around Havenside, but if he went before dawn, it is unlikely anyone saw him.’

  ‘He was always headstrong. Like his father.’

  ‘Ah yes, the Knight of the Chalice. We have a problem there.’

  ‘A problem?’ asked Haendric.

  ‘I needed a reliable courier so I sent a message to Inquisitor Miecal at Juniper Keep,’ Algwyn explained. ‘I told him about Beland and the boy.’

  ‘You did what?’ Haendric hissed, and looked side to side as though someone were listening.

  ‘Hear me out, friend,’ the prior pleaded, lowering his own voice. ‘Archbishop Celwyn in Castlereach has asked for the heathen books. He has a translator recently returned from the east who will read far quicker than you can do it.’

  Haendric wanted to argue but had to concede his eyes were getting poor and his hand slow, and that his command of the Qureshi tongue would never be as good as a cleric who had studied and lived there.

  ‘The deacons are sniffing out heresy,’ Algwyn continued, ‘and not just the heathen books. Anything new these days is suspect. We were always risking our reputations keeping the stuff here, and you, letting that base-born boy read it...’

  ‘It is harmless history,’ Haendric protested weakly, ‘or their version of it.

  ‘These days we can’t be too careful.’