Blood of the Innocents

by Michael Jecks

  ‘You all right, Frip?’

  ‘Sorry, John,’ he said, startled from his reverie. Hawkwood had joined him and now stood gazing out over the short area of plain before them. A half-mile away there was a stand of trees, but here they had a clear view of the land before them.

  ‘We need to post guards,’ Hawkwood said after a moment. ‘I’ll stand the first watch if you like.’

  ‘I am fine here. I’ll wake you when I get tired,’ Berenger said firmly. He had chosen to take his post here and he was not ready to be commanded to leave it.

  ‘If you’re sure. Wake me when you feel tired.’

  Berenger heard him tramping back to his men and settling. Meanwhile Berenger stepped forward, a little away from the firelights. They were too distracting to his eyes.

  There was a knack to watching in the dark. A man could not stare straight at an area and see it clearly. Only by gazing close to an area could he see sudden movement. Berenger watched the horizon, carefully concentrating on points just above the landscape, looking for a shape that could be slipping over the ground. It was times like this that he found his imagination would work its magic. He would see wolves, snakes the size of men, demons and dragons, all advancing towards him with the ponderous slowness of a starting mill-wheel in those moments when the water first lands in the topmost bucket.

  The dark was his friend. He had grown to like the night. Most people were terrified of it, thinking they would be attacked by sanguisuga, the vampires who flew on the wind to suck the blood of the innocent, or that ghouls or ghosts would appear and snatch a man’s soul. Berenger had no fear of such things. He knew his soul was gone: it had been taken when his wife died. Since then, he had only rarely thought that he could win it back. Perhaps if he helped Denisot to find his wife, Berenger would find some peace. He had thought that he would find comfort with the Abbot, but Will had taken that, just as he had taken the vision of happiness that Alazaïs had offered.

  He would find Will and make him suffer for his crimes.

  Saturday 20 August

  The next morning was grey, overcast and full of a fine mist that seeped into the men’s clothes and left them wet and grumpy.

  Berenger rode a little behind Grandarse as they left their camp. He had insisted that they should all set off with an oatcake as usual, and forced them to relight the embers of their fires so that they could cook them, but there was little joy in it. The men went through the motions, mixing, shaping, then cooking on hot stones near the fires, but there was none of the easy bickering that spoke of happy soldiers. Instead there was a sullen silence that matched the weather perfectly. Even Grandarse seemed to sense the general atmosphere and sat grimly eating his cake and sipping some watered wine. Imbert and Baz sat close together and glowered about them.

  It was a relief to mount and ride away, as if they could leave their feelings of misery behind.

  ‘What’s that?’ Hawkwood asked.

  Berenger peered towards the trees where Hawkwood’s finger pointed, but he could make out nothing at that distance. His eyesight, never terribly good, was much worse since his forty-third birthday. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A man, I think,’ Hawkwood said. There was a crisp incisiveness in his tone now. ‘Clip, take two men and see about that man. See him? Catch him and bring him back here.’

  ‘Why me?’ Clip said.

  ‘Just do as you’re told!’ Berenger snapped, and soon Clip was cantering along the grass with Pierre and Felix lumbering behind him.

  ‘Hold on!’ Hawkwood said, rising in his stirrups and peering towards the man. ‘Isn’t that Denisot?’

  ‘What happened to you?’ Berenger asked.

  ‘The company,’ Denisot said. ‘They killed Ethor.’

  He looked like a man who was already dead, Berenger thought to himself. He had a lump on the side of his head the size of a goose’s egg, and his brow had been opened, which meant his face was slathered in blood. Black streaks had run down his face and coagulated. Now they had cracked like the ice on top of a pool in winter when the boys have smashed it. Denisot’s face was full of misery and confusion. He looked like a man who had not eaten or slept for days. He sat on the ground while Hawkwood, Grandarse and Berenger stood about him, the rest of the men remaining on their mounts, Clip and Dogbreath warily surveying the road ahead.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Berenger said.

  Denisot shook his head as though in weary confusion. ‘We were walking, walking . . . they came out of nowhere, a company of a hundred men or so, and they rode at us. Ethor pushed me to safety, but they hacked at him till his head was broken open. They hit me,’ he said, gingerly touching his head, ‘but they didn’t kill me. I don’t know why.’

  Looking at him, Berenger felt he knew why. The man’s face was so bloody they must have thought he was dead.

  ‘I came to and . . . I found Ethor was dead, lying on top of me. I had to push him off. It was difficult . . .’

  ‘When did you last have something to eat?’ Grandarse said. ‘You look as though you’re starved, man.’

  ‘I don’t know. I have to find the men, though. Gaillarde is still with them.’

  ‘You’re walking back the wrong way, Denisot,’ Berenger said. He glanced up at Grandarse as he spoke. The centener pulled a face. Both had the same thought: Denisot was so badly hit about the head that he had become confused about the direction the men were travelling.

  ‘You must have something to eat. Give him some food,’ Grandarse called. ‘Frip, Hawk, we’ll rest here a little to let him gather his wits. We need a fresh mount for him, too. Poor devil hasn’t the energy to lift one foot in front of the other.’

  ‘Put him on the cart with the arrows. He can rest on that,’ Berenger said.

  ‘Aye. Clip? Give him food and be quick. If you have wine in that skin, so much the better.’

  Once Denisot was rested, Berenger and the vintaines rode on steadily until they came to the place where Ethor lay. Denisot had been right about the man. His head was cloven almost in two, with a great blow that must have instantly killed him. Berenger stood over the man and said a prayer for his soul. He set four men to dig a hole for him while the rest of the men rode on at a gentle trot to where smoke rose.

  The smoke enveloped a small wood. There, snuffing the air, Berenger knew what he would find. There was the clean smell of wood-smoke, but mingled with it he could detect burned fat and the unmistakable odour of roasted human flesh.

  ‘Denisot, you stay here,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ Denisot asked, and then blanched. ‘No! If it is her, I have to come too.’

  Berenger pulled a face. ‘If you’re sure. Let’s get it over with.’

  They rode at a walk into the woods, their path taking them through the trees and past a clearing on their left. Berenger sent Saul and Hawkwood to investigate and make sure that there was no risk of ambush from there. Clip and Dogbreath he sent over to the opposite side. He could hear Clip’s whining complaint as he went: ‘Why’s it always me, eh? Sending me off into the trees like this, like I was the man he could most easily lose, eh? It ain’t right.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Dogbreath snarled.

  ‘Oh, aye, that’s the way of it. You mark my words, man, we’ll all get killed on this ride. Ye’ll be killed same as me.’

  ‘Ye’ll be killed all right if you keep on,’ Robin said. ‘I’ll fucking kill you myself!’

  Berenger listened with only half an ear as the complaining faded away into the distance. There was a curious silence. From here, all he could hear for a while was the heavy breathing of the mounts, the occasional jingle of harness and thud of a hoof on the road as the beasts moved and stamped, but even those sounds seemed dull and flat here among the trees.

  Saul and Hawkwood returned. ‘It’s clear there, Frip,’ Hawkwood said. ‘But there’s been a lot of people held in there, from what I could see.’

  ‘Prisoners?’

  Hawkwood nodded. ‘I’d say so. Looks like a lot of peop
le sat down. If I was a routier here, I’d have the prisoners kept back while I rode down to wreak mayhem on my target.’

  Berenger nodded. It was how he read the ground, too. They waited for the still-complaining Clip and Dogbreath, and then made their way down the track to the source of the smoke.

  There was little enough left. Only two walls of the main convent remained. The others had collapsed as the appalling heat of the fire had cracked the limestone walls. The rocks had shattered, and now all that remained was a foul midden of burned spars with a tall chimney in their midst. Scattered among the ruins were the bodies of the nuns and lay-sisters who had kept this little convent alive. Berenger gave them a brief glance. There were no men lying in between them, so he assumed that the attacking force had surprised the women living here when they rode into their midst.

  ‘Christ Jesus!’ Berenger heard Denisot say. Berenger threw him a look of urgent surprise, wondering if he had seen something nearby to shock or alarm him, but then realised that the man was staring down at the bodies.

  Berenger looked again and this time his eyes were opened. He didn’t see a collection of dead nuns. In their place, he saw a woman of some sixty years with her legs wide, her habit thrown over her belly, and a gaping wound in her stomach; he saw a younger woman with an expression of horror and hatred twisting her figures, her throat slashed so deeply he could see the cartilage of her severed windpipe; he saw a nun who could have been his own Marguerite, eyes full of sorrow and even, perhaps, forgiveness. He saw women, some little more than children, lying crumpled like discarded toys in a midden. They were a collection of innocents and the most religious, destroyed because of the savagery and greed that lay at the heart of men in war, and he felt shamed to the core of his soul that he had not the wit nor the imagination to see that at first glance as had Denisot.

  Denisot was not sad, he saw. The bayle stood and gazed about him with determination, as though he was memorising every aspect of this fresh atrocity, that he might be the more resolute when he visited revenge on those responsible.

  Berenger had a thickening sensation in his throat. It was the choking that came with the realisation that he had mislaid his humanity since leaving Calais. What sort of man was he?

  ‘She is not here,’ Denisot said. He was stumbling through the place like a man in a nightmare.

  Berenger shook his head. ‘They will have a better use for her,’ he said.

  Just then there came a call from further up the road. It was Clip.

  Berenger ran to the call, his heart pounding, but Denisot was in front of him when they came upon the scene. He gave a gasp of horror, and sank to his knees.

  She was fixed to two trees. Her wrists had been tied with tight thongs, stretching her body between the two trunks in foul imitation of a crucifixion, her head hung down, her hair covering her face and breasts. Berenger glanced at Denisot; the man had hidden his face, and his body was racked with silent sobs. Berenger’s heart went to the man. He could imagine his own despair, were this his wife.

  ‘She was a nun, see, Frip,’ Clip said.

  Denisot looked up. The woman’s robes had been cut and ripped away, and now lay as shreds of black material lying all about her.

  ‘Berenger!’ Denisot managed.

  ‘This woman was only young,’ Berenger said, and turned away as Denisot wiped away his tears with a face hardened and grim once more.

  The wound that had killed her was the thrust of a knife to her left ribcage. From the look of the blood, it had penetrated her heart.

  ‘Why would someone do this?’ Berenger said.

  ‘Dear God,’ Denisot said. He was giving thanks for the fact that this was not his wife. Now he looked, it was ridiculous to think it was Gaillarde: the woman was thinner, without the thickening at her waist where she had borne children. He had caught a glimpse of her magnificent hair and made the assumption – and now he felt guilty at the relief that washed over him upon realising it was not his wife. ‘Another child – my God!’

  ‘What is this?’ Berenger asked.

  ‘I told you when we first met that I was looking for a man who had killed children and young women. He rapes them, and crucifies them like this before leaving them to die.’

  ‘Who would do such a thing?’ Berenger wondered aloud. It was incomprehensible to him. But some men viewed women and children as little better than animals. Perhaps this was one of those men who considered that a nun was only a female who could be taken. Possibly that was why he had stripped her naked first, so that he wasn’t reminded that she was a nun, whereas the other men in his party were less fastidious. They would rape a woman, nun or not, clothed or not.

  It was a strange thought, that this man could be more fastidious than his companions, Berenger considered. He did not like the fact that he could look on the body so dispassionately.

  ‘It must be one of the men in the English company. One of your men,’ Denisot said. He could not help himself. With a sneer and open contempt, he waved his hand at the victim’s slumped body. ‘This is the sort of man you were leading, Master Fripper.’

  Hawkwood glanced about them. They were near the main road at the top of the track to the convent, and the sun was filtering through the trees like lances of light and dust. He sucked at his teeth.

  ‘Rape I can understand. Men who have been in a battle and need a woman, that is at least understandable, just as I can understand killing. Many men will do that when the blood is still hot and lust is all they know . . . but to kill like this? To tie up this woman and make her suffer, then stab her? It makes little sense.’

  ‘What does it matter?’ said Clip, picking his nose. ‘Enough others suffered and died here. What’s one girl more or less? At least he gave her a quick death in the end.’

  ‘A quick death in the end – yes, that’s what I don’t understand. Why would he do that? A man who enjoyed torturing a child, who watched her suffer – why would he suddenly end her pain like that?’

  Berenger said, ‘Cut her down and carry her back to her sisters.’

  ‘Who, me?’

  ‘Yes, Clip: you! Get on with it.’

  While Clip climbed from his horse, grumbling to himself, Denisot glanced at Berenger. ‘This is the same as the bodies I saw near my village. It is as I said: the man who did this must be with the company you once led.’

  Berenger looked at him with a frown. He would have argued as an instinctive reaction, but then he nodded. He could not dismiss the proof of his own eyes. ‘I cannot imagine which of my men could have done such a thing. In my company, there was none, I am sure, who had the brutality to attack nuns in this way.’

  ‘We have men who have raped and killed often enough,’ Hawkwood commented. He saw Berenger’s expression and held up his hands. ‘Frip, I’m not arguing, I’m just saying that there are men in our company now who have done so. Grandarse himself used to enjoy taking women when we sacked a town. God’s cods, so did I, in my time. Younger men who are less disciplined can do this sort of thing. Older men who’ve had violence more ingrained in them, too. It’s not unique or particularly rare for men to behave in this way.’

  ‘Yes,’ Berenger said. Clip had cut the body down, and was now struggling to heave it over his horse. The nun’s figure was stiff and as easy to manoeuvre as a sack of grain. ‘In God’s name, someone help him! Yes, John, there are men who could do this sort of thing once in a while, but this man is committing his crime more regularly. He is killing wherever he has the opportunity. He enjoys watching his victims die, I think.’

  ‘I heard from a shepherd who saw him,’ Denisot said. ‘The shepherd saw a company of men go and rape a woman, but then, once they had left, one returned and crucified her. Perhaps this is what the man likes, to see his victims as they die? He would be a very cruel soul to do that.’

  ‘Or a madman,’ Berenger noted.

  Berenger stared at the nun again. She was surely only some fifteen years old, a slim little figure with her hair moving in the wind
from beneath the coif that had tried to enclose it, fine and golden. A novice, then.

  Then another thought struck him: if he’d had but a little more time in Calais before God sent the pestilence to deprive him of wife and children, he could have had a little girl like this. She would not be so old yet, but . . . He pushed the sadness down. He would not succumb.

  Clip was muttering and complaining, struggling with the unwieldy body, trying to shove it up over his saddle, while his horse skittered sideways, eyes rolling.

  ‘Denisot, remount. We have to find the men who did this.’

  Berenger was surprised to find that the rest of the vinteners would not ride away and leave the nuns in this condition. Grandarse ordered some to make fires while directing others to help.

  Soon two vintaines were collecting up the bodies and bringing them to the cemetery, where the rest of the men were set to digging. Even Imbert for once needed no urging. He slaved like the others. Denisot walked among the women’s bodies muttering the Pater Noster. His eyes were wide and half-vacant, like a man who has been moon-struck. This was a man who had travelled past horror and was halfway to lunacy, Berenger thought. And then he wondered if he had looked the same, when he was at Uzerche and a dozen towns before that.

  John Hawkwood watched. ‘Are you sure about this, Frip?’ he asked. ‘We ought to be carrying on.’

  It was Denisot who answered. ‘We have to. We cannot leave nuns to the mercy of wild animals.’

  ‘I agree,’ Berenger said.

  ‘Well, if you are sure,’ Hawkwood said. ‘I don’t know . . .’

  He was about to comment further, and Berenger saw in his face the same expression he had seen on Will’s face at Uzerche. The thought that Hawkwood could be like Will was enough to make him suddenly angry, as though it was a proof of incipient disloyalty.