The Half-Hanged Man

by David Pilling

  He handed over a folded sheet of vellum, sealed with a blob of red wax stamped with the royal arms of Castile. “On no account are you to open this letter and read the contents,” he said severely, “it is written by the King himself, and His Majesty’s words are not for your eyes. You are the messenger, nothing more.”

  The mission sounded simple enough, and tinged with just enough mystery and potential danger to make it exciting. She thought of the strange set of circumstances that had brought her here, and what her father might make of his precious daughter being employed in such a fashion.

  I am doing it for the good of Castile, father, and did he not say that I must do my duty? If you and my brother can risk your bodies in the service of the State, why can’t I?

  Eleanor might well have used these words to justify her scandalous conduct to Don Estaban, if it came to it, but she knew them for a fraud. She was going to Algeciras because it was exciting, and opened up the prospect of a far more stimulating life than the one offered by Don Felipe.

  Her thoughts turned to her young suitor. Eventually she would have to marry him, assuming she survived the mission and wasn’t immediately dispatched on another by Albuquerque. Marriage seemed a more dismal prospect than ever, even to an amiable and halfway attractive husband.

  Don Fernandez’s words came back to her: “I can no reason, barring pregnancy, why Eleanor could not continue to serve you even after she is married.”

  Pregnancy. That was part of a whole world still alien and frightening to her. Her upbringing had not equipped Eleanor with much understanding of sex and procreation, bar a few mumbled, hideously embarrassed references to it by various hard-faced tutors. A blush came to her own cheeks as she recalled Martin saying she had the eyes of a whore.

  At that moment Eleanor resolved never to be the slave of men’s lusts or the mysterious and often lethal business of bearing children. That was her only hope, she reckoned, of retaining her independence.

  Algeciras was spread out before them, its white walls slowly fading to a dull grey as night descended. The horizon beyond the town was filled by the dark, silent waters of the Bay of Gibraltar, with the rugged silhouette of the Rock and the walled citadel guarding it visible on the southern side of the bay.

  Eleanor had found Toledo a breath-taking sight, but this was even more so. Born and raised inland, she had never set eyes on the sea before. To her mind Algeciras and Gibraltar were half-legendary places, scenes of so many bitter battles between Christians and Moors.

  “One day we will tear that place away from them,” said Martin, disgust and resentment fighting for supremacy on his face as he glared at the citadel guarding Gibraltar, “we might have done so already, if King Alfonso had not died of plague.”

  He looked quite the soldier now, having donned a mail shirt over his leather jerkin and a helmet with cheek-pieces and a brim in place of his hood. Eleanor could have almost found him attractive, were it not for his relentlessly sarcastic tongue and awful dead eyes.

  She shaded her eyes to get a better look in the gathering gloom, and glimpsed the Moorish banner, a yellow crescent against a green field, drooping from the highest tower of the citadel. She knew something of the recent wars, having heard excitable versions of them from her father. In his pitifully crippled state, the old man loved to tell of the battles he had fought in with startling courage and success, depending on how much wine he had taken on board.

  “For two years we besieged Algeciras,” he would say, squirming on his pallet as he waved his sword in the air, cutting lanes through ranks of invisible Mussulmen, “for two years we sat outside the citadel, even as plague swept through our ranks and the enemy showered arrows and stones and boiling oil down on our heads, screaming on their false Prophet to deliver them from the fury of the Christians. But Allah didn’t come, and we prevailed in the end, God be praised!”

  There was much more in this vein, as Estaban described with furious glee how he had ridden through the streets when the town had fallen at last, hacking down Godless pagans right and left and guiding his horse over their heaped corpses.

  From the memory of these bloodthirsty recitations Eleanor plucked out a few useful facts. Algeciras was essentially a Moorish town, built by Moors and held by them until the successful Castilian siege just a few years previously. Flushed with his victory, King Alfonso had flooded the half-ruined town with Christian settlers and moved on to besiege Gibraltar, where he met his death. Gibraltar was still in Moorish hands, a state of affairs that seemed to thrust knives into Martin’s soul.

  “I can’t look anymore,” he growled, jerking on his reins, “let us be about our business, or else I will end up swimming the bay and attacking the citadel single-handed.”

  Eleanor bowed her head in agreement – she was staying in the character of a demure nun – and guided her gentle mule in the wake of the dust kicked up by Martin’s gelding, which he bullied mercilessly along the wide, rutted highway. Strong as his animal was, he seemed intent on flogging it into the ground, and even in the darkness Eleanor could see the beast’s flanks were wet with blood from the cruel slashes of Martin’s spurs.

  The gates were still open, and they joined the thin trickle of traffic entering the city. At any moment Eleanor expected to be stopped and arrested as a spy. In the event no-one spared her a second glance, bar the sentries on the gate who leered at the pretty young novice before waving her through. Cursing the looks she was born with, Eleanor pulled up her wimple and shawl until only her eyes were visible.

  “Now you look like a Mohammedan woman in a burkha,” Martin said reprovingly as they guided their horses through the cobbled, torch-lit street beyond the gates, “a bad look for a Christian, and it won’t do you any good. Men will be drawn to your eyes.”

  He grinned at her. “Whore’s eyes,” he said, and she had to restrain herself from striking him.

  “Albuquerque said you know the way to Samuel Levi’s house,” she said quietly, “so tie a knot in that insolent tongue of yours, and take me there.”

  Inclining his noble-looking head in a mock bow, Martin urged his gelding through the mob of beggars, lepers and street hawkers clustered near the gates.

  Irritating as he was, Martin evidently had his uses, and knew the city well. He led Eleanor away from the bustle and noise of the main street, down a sloping alleyway, which obliged them to dismount and lead their horses, and on through a maze of alleys and side-streets. At no point did he appear lost, though he was uncharacteristically tight-lipped and silent as they crept through the dark heart of Algeciras.

  They encountered few people, bar a few whimpering beggars and one or two drunks lying insensible in puddles of cheap wine. Martin wrinkled his nose at their stench, and one of the beggars was unwise or drunk enough to shuffle up to him and whine for money.

  The supplicant was rewarded with a vicious punch below his ribs that left him doubled up on the slimy cobbles and gasping for breath.

  “For God’s sake, let him be!” hissed Eleanor.

  “I shall not let him be,” snarled Pedro, white-faced, his eyes blazing with hatred, “he is a filthy animal, and animals need discipline.”

  Before Eleanor’s horrified eyes, Martin kicked the man again and again, his face drawn and pale with a terrible inner fury. At last, when his victim had ceased shuddering and whimpering and appeared to be dead, or at best unconscious, Martin spat on him and strode away.

  Shaking her head at such senseless cruelty, Eleanor dug inside the pouch in her girdle, and placed the few dineros she carried inside the beggar’s limp hand.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, though she had nothing to apologize for, and hurried away after Martin.

  Simuel Levi’s house was one of the more modest buildings in the merchant’s district, but by no stretch of imagination the residence of a poor man. It was set a little way back from the main street, which even in this affluent part of town was littered with animal dung and the contents of people’s chamber pots flung from
upper-story windows. There were other slimy things strewn about the cobbles, bits of seaweed and rotting fish, for the merchant’s district was situated near the docks.

  Martin and Eleanor crouched in the shadows of the alley opposite Levi’s house. The alley was barely wide enough for them to sidle in single file, so they had left their horses tethered to the railings of a merchant’s garden. Eleanor gagged as a night wagon rumbled past on the main street in front of them, carrying its load of human waste, but the stench didn’t seem to affect her companion. His earlier rage had quite dissipated and he was calmly studying the little white house, with its pretty tiled roof and avenue of lemon trees leading to the green-painted door.

  “The house is probably being watched,” he murmured, stroking his beard thoughtfully, “Levi is suspected of having royalist sympathies, though he was careful to bow the knee to Don Enrique and send him an ostentatious present of Byzantine gold when he arrived in Algeciras. The Jew has not made a single wrong move so far, but Enrique is no fool.”

  He stood up and flattened himself against the wall. “Go up to the door and ring the bell,” he said to Eleanor, “when the hatch opens, whisper the password. A Carmelite novice visiting a Jew may be considered strange, but not as strange as one in the company of a soldier. I will stay here.”

  A worm of fear crawled up Eleanor’s spine. “I thought you were supposed to be protecting me,” she hissed.

  Martin shrugged. “You will come to no harm. If anyone tries to ambush you between here and the door, I will deal with them.”

  Eleanor’s fingers closed about the hilt of her poniard. She didn’t trust Martin in the slightest. The worm became a snake, its coils tightening around her vertebrae as she realized she might have to cope with any unwanted assailants in the dark by herself.

  She left Martin kneeling in the shadows of the alley and hurried across the wet cobbles, feeling utterly ridiculous in her heavy novice’s outfit and almost tripping over her long skirts. She pushed open the little gate, hurried up the paved avenue and reached for the brass bell-pull hanging by the door. Anxious not to alert any undesirables in the area or wake up Levi’s neighbors, she gave it only a gentle tug, but the sound of the bell seemed to fill the silence of the night, crashing and echoing inside her head like cymbals tumbling down a flight of stairs.

  Eleanor laid her ear flat against the door, her heart rattling as she listened for the sound of approaching footsteps from within. There were none, and she twisted around to make a hopeless gesture at Martin.

  The alley was empty. He had deserted her. Eleanor was alone, friendless and stranded in the middle of a strange city, standing like a fool on the doorstep of a stranger’s house. Her mouth was suddenly dry, and a patina of sweat formed on her forehead despite the chill of the night.

  “Damn him,” she muttered, and turned again to try the door, hammering on it with the palm of her hand. At last she heard shuffling footsteps from inside, and the little hatch set into the upper part of the door shot open.

  “Who is it, trying to knock down my door at this time of night?” demanded a weary, bloodshot pair of eyes, “more Godless heathens, I suppose, come to mock the old Jew. I warn you, I have a crossbow and am eager for a chance to use it.”

  “Maria,” whispered Eleanor. This was the password given to her by Don Albuquerque, who had reckoned it an appropriate one, since it was the name of King Pedro’s mother.

  The eyes became a touch less suspicious, and for good measure Eleanor produced the letter bearing the royal seal and waved it before them.

  “Put that away!” hissed the old man’s voice, suddenly alarmed, “do you want the whole street to see? Come inside, in the name of God, before you rouse the town.”

  There was the sound of a heavy bar being shifted, and heavy iron keys rattling inside heavy iron locks, before the door swung open a few inches, just wide enough for Eleanor to squeeze through.

  She did so, and just had time to glance back at the alley before the door slammed shut. There was still no sign of Martin.

  6.

  Simuel Levi was taller than average, though slightly stooped and round-shouldered, and of a sallow complexion. He had a nervous, furtive look about him as he beckoned Eleanor to follow him down the shadowy passage of the hallway.

  “Come,” he whispered in a hoarse voice, “come, come.”

  Like a man who spends his life waiting anxiously for the next catastrophe, she thought. There was no light in the hall, save from the lantern he carried, and she obediently followed his stooped figure, swathed in a night-gown and furs, as he hobbled away into the gloom.

  The house was cold and deathly quiet, with no sign of any servants, and the walls were bare. Eleanor had seldom been in such a cheerless place, and was relieved when the flickering light from Levi’s lantern revealed a heavy black door. He stopped before it, carefully laid down the lantern and plucked the heavy bunch of iron keys from his girdle.

  “In here,” he breathed, fiddling with the keys until he had the right one, “we can talk safely in here. My study and sanctuary.”

  Beyond the door was a large room, quite different to the starkness of the hall, with carved oak panel on the walls and plush, comfortable furniture. There were several shelves of leather-bound books and ledgers, all of them with notes attached in what Eleanor presumed to be the Jew’s neat, concise handwriting.

  Simuel ushered Eleanor inside, pointed her towards a high-backed chair next to a desk of dark polished wood, and carefully locked the door again.

  “Now,” he said in a much stronger, more assertive tone, “let’s have a look at that letter.”

  Eleanor was surprised by the sudden change in him. Levi had straightened his back, losing the hunched, nervous look, and several years had dropped away from him. He strode purposefully to his desk – his slight limp had also vanished, she noticed - and sat on the chair facing hers. The room was dimly lit by tapers in brackets on the walls, and he provided more light by placing his lantern on the desk.

  He held out his hand. “Give it to me,” he said impatiently. Wondering at the subtle ways of the world, and whether she would live long enough to acquire them, Eleanor produced the letter and handed it to him.

  “You have not asked my name,” she said as he broke the seal and unfolded the vellum, leaning back and squinting to make out the writing.

  “I am not interested in your name,” he murmured absently, waving her into silence. His eyes widened as he read, and he half-rose from his chair, frowning and biting his lip.

  “Did Don Albuquerque inform you of the contents of this?” he demanded.

  “No, sir,” she replied, feeling uncomfortable under his intense, scrutinizing gaze, “he gave it to me sealed, and with strict orders to deliver it to you with the seal intact. All I know is that you are to sound out the loyalty of the burghers.”

  Levi nodded, neatly re-folding the letter and tucking it into his girdle. “That was prudent, I suppose, though Albuquerque does tend to overdo the secrecy. Since it is pertinent to your mission, you may as well know that His Majesty has dispatched a fleet of galleys that are even now working their way around the coast to Algeciras. They are filled with troops commanded by one Don Gutier Fernandez. If the burghers do not persuade the rest of the town to repudiate Enrique, declare for King Pedro and open the gates to his soldiers, Don Gutier has orders to storm Algeciras and massacre everyone inside.”

  “I must go,” he said, moving towards the door, “you stay and wait for me here. My servants are abed, but I will rouse and inform them of your presence. If I am not back by noon tomorrow, I recommend you leave this house and get out of the city as quickly as possible. Don Enrique’s agents are prowling the streets, and I would not give a half-dinar for the virtue of any attractive young girl inside Algeciras when King Pedro’s army arrives.”

  He unlocked the door and was about to stride out when Eleanor called after him. “You have still not asked my name.”

  He shrugged his bony shoulde
rs. “I told you, I’m not interested. It is best I know as little about you as possible.”

  “You should at least know that I didn’t come here on my own. I had a bodyguard, a sword-for-hire named Martin. He deserted me.”

  That made his wrinkled brows knit together. “Did he, indeed? Albuquerque should be wiser in his choice of servants. I can see he chose well in you, at least. Now I must go.”

  He slid out and quietly shut the door, but did not lock it, leaving Eleanor alone in semi-darkness.

  She dozed a little in one of the comfortable leather sofas, and was roused by the morning light slanting through the wooden shutters. Her eyes cracked open, and she realized someone was gently tapping her on the shoulder.

  She instinctively reached for her poniard, but a hand closed over her wrist.

  “Careful,” drawled a familiar voice, “you might hurt someone with that little sticker, most likely yourself.”

  Through eyes still bleary with sleep she made out the grinning, insolent features of Martin. His athletic figure was half in shadow, silhouetted by the light flowing into the room, but there was no mistaking him.

  Eleanor didn’t waste time on making surprised noises, knowing that they would only amuse him. “Why did you come back?” she demanded, snatching her wrist free, “for that matter, why did you run away? To hunt more defenceless beggars, perhaps.”

  Martin laughed and folded his arms. “I had brought you safe to Simuel Levi’s house, which was all I was contracted to do. I wanted to do some spying about the town, and could hardly have you lagging after me, falling over your skirts and appealing to the conscience I don’t have.”

  “You could have told me you intended to slip away!”

  “I could have, yes. But I didn’t.”

  That was clearly all the explanation she was going to get. Martin turned away, yawning, and wandered over to peer through a gap in the shutters. “I must say, all this cloak and dagger stuff appeals to me,” he mused, “Levi reckons I have a natural skill for it.”