by Dan Davis
“Oh,” the boy said, taken aback. “She weren’t really a maiden, lord. They just call her that. It’s a jest. Because really Joan would lift her skirts for any old—”
“I understand,” I said. “So you know who did this terrible thing?”
“No one recognised them,” the boy said in a hushed tone. “Which means only one thing, lord.”
I assumed he was going to claim they were shapeshifters or some form of man-beast because children love such stories. He stared at me, so I forced myself to ask. “What does it mean?”
“Jews,” the stable boy said and lowered his voice to a whisper. “It was the Jews what done it, lord. They can make themselves look like other men. So me and my brothers are going to set a fire under the Jews’ houses tonight. Send them all to hell, right and proper.”
“The men responsible have sailed for the Holy Land,” I told the stable boy. “A group of men led by a great lord from the north and many here noticed them. One of the knights was a giant. You have no cause to burn the homes of the innocent.”
He scoffed at my ignorance, all deference forgotten. “The Jews ain’t innocent,” he said. “Even if they didn’t do Joan, they did our Lord, didn’t they?”
I smacked him in the ear hard enough to knock him to the straw.
“I’ll get my brothers on you,” the sobbing boy said from the ground, his hand over his ear. “You ain’t nothing round here, big man.”
“Please do direct your brothers to me,” I told him. “I will knock them on their arse too, then I will drag them to the town reeve for planning murder and fire setting. Any fires get started in Dartmouth tonight, then we shall know whom to hang, won’t we. Now, brush down my horse properly, or I’ll cut your balls off and feed them to the Jews.”
That day I watched the ships bobbing in the port and asked for passage from traders and masters. It seemed to me that the town was a mistrustful place full of muttering and unkind looks that turned away whenever I glanced in their direction. But still, I spoke to everyone who would hear me.
“Don’t take crusaders,” one said from his gangplank after looking me up and down. “Sling your hook.”
There was one large vessel with high sides, teeming with men. “You cannot afford the cost of a place on my ship,” the master said, leering at me as the ship was loaded behind him.
“I am sure that I can,” I said, thinking of the silver the Bishop had given me. It seemed a shame to spend it all on a single passage but I was willing to do so. “I will pay whatever it takes.”
The master took my elbow and led me to one side, lowering his voice. “The cost is for you to allow me to lay with you, every night, as a man lays with a woman.”
I looked at him to see if he was in jest. “I am unwilling to pay that cost.”
He scowled, spat at my feet and shoved me aside on his way back to his ship.
Disheartened, I went back to the inn and drank wine until my head span. Across the room from me, a group of impoverished young men muttered and stared. I grew certain they were intending to run me outside and beat me bloody. I knew not what I had done but I would have welcomed a fight so I staggered across to them and loomed over their table. One of them leapt to his feet, and I shoved him back so hard he fell on his arse and sat there stunned.
“What is it with this place?” I slurred as I spoke. “Are you lads looking for a fight? Because if you are then you have chosen the correct inn for I am rather keen to pummel a man’s face into offal.” I doubted that the individual words were uttered with any clarity but I trusted that the general thrust would be clear enough.
They were afraid of me even though they were many and I was swimming in wine. “We know it was you what did that to Joan,” one of them said.
“Joan?” I spluttered. “What in God’s name are you talking about?”
“You was seen,” one said, with tears in his eyes. “It was you, clear as day.”
“That girl was dead before I even arrived in this goat turd of a port,” I said, placing my hand on the hilt of my sword. “Are we fighting or not?”
They declined.
I lay on my mattress that night with the room spinning around me listening to the sobs of the dead girl’s mother through the wall. I was certain that William and his men had carried out other murders before Ashbury. They had continued to kill again and again on their way to Dartmouth.
I stuffed my fingers in my ears, prayed to God to give me strength and swore to take any outward-bound ship the next day.
***
I woke late, mouth dry and head pounding and went to the docks and to ask everyone I could about getting passage onward. Dartmouth was heaving with ships. I forced my way through shouting gangs of men and the rising stench of fish as the hot morning got hotter throughout the day. Finally, I heard of a French ship that was ready to leave that night. I was to speak to the sailing master.
That man was Oberto, and when I finally tracked him down, I discovered that there was no way that he could have been more helpful. For Oberto was an experienced sailor and he knew a young fool with a fat purse when he saw one.
“I hear you are heading for the Mediterranean,” I shouted to him after I climbed the gangplank to a deck full of barrels and men. The ship was La Bon Marie and it was a slab-sided cog with a huge mast, crisp square sails. She was manned with Frisians, had a French name and owner, was commanded by a Genoese sailing master, but she flew an English flag.
“No more room for merchandise,” Oberto the master said, scowling. “Can you not see we are full?” He indicated the barrels and boxes stacked everywhere upon the deck and tied in place. “I cannot stow so much as one more rat.”
He was well dressed, dark and reeked of wine. He swayed on his feet though the ship was not moving.
“I am no merchant,” I said, full of my own importance. “I must get to Marseilles.”
His ruddy face lit up. “A passenger. How wonderful. I am bound for Genoa which is so close to Marseilles they are almost touching.” He held up a dirty thumb and forefinger by way of demonstration. “I have a luxurious cabin currently unoccupied and just waiting for you, young man. You are eager to become a warrior of God. You wish to raise your shield in defence of the Holy Land and win back Jerusalem. Well, God has blessed you, my friend, but we must leave this day, on the evening tide.”
Because I was looking for one, I saw the destination of the ship as a sign from God. I was eager to make up for my earlier delays and I wished to show the Lord I was eager and willing to pay for my sins. I could not wait to get away from the unkindness of the town and the sobbing of the woman at the inn. So instead of waiting for another ship, striking a hard bargain or inspecting the cabin, I ran off. I sold my very fine palfrey for pennies to the innkeeper. He protested that there had been a glut of fine horses sold just a day or two ago and he could pay no more. I then paid half a fortune for what Oberto said was a cabin. I was so ignorant of the world I did not even know to buy my own supplies for the long, appalling journey.
We bobbed out of the harbour that evening as the sun sank on the distant horizon. We headed south into the English Channel, toward Brittany. And once again I was in pursuit of William and his murderers.
“But this is no cabin,” I protested.
The cabin in question was no more than a filthy curtain slung across an alcove in the airless belly of the ship. It stank, it was dark as boiling pitch and full of rats. They scratched and scrabbled along the beams. Water dripped everywhere.
“How dare you deceive me, so? I demand a better cabin. A real cabin.” The motion of the ship was unnatural and made my head spin and my guts roil.
“It’s the best cabin in the whole ship,” Oberto lied, grinning. “Even my own cabin is nothing but a hole compared to such luxury as this.”
“You swindler,” I growled. “You no good Italian cheat.”
“I shall be happy to drop you at the next port along the coast,” Oberto said. His smile faltered at my clumsy insults.
No doubt he sensed the violent thoughts bubbling up. “Of course, I shall have to retain your payment.”
“How dare you, you swindling little swine.” I was a whole head and shoulders taller and I leaned over him, feeling the anger building within me. “Find me somewhere suitable to bunk or I shall take back my payment and more besides.”
He swallowed. “I am afraid there truly is no other place, my lord. The men sleep in hammocks below deck with no more than eighteen inches between them.”
“What about your own cabin? Perhaps I shall take that from you?” My threatening tone was immediately undermined by a violent gagging that gripped my guts.
“Please,” he said, lowering his voice. “My men would not tolerate such a loss of face for the ship’s master. They are a proud crew. They would kill me.”
“Then they would be doing me a favour.”
“I am the lone man aboard who can navigate. They would put into the nearest port and find a new ship. You, they would have to kill also.”
“They can try,” I said. I was angry with myself.
“The best I can do, my lord,” Oberto said looking down and backing away from me, “is when we land in Brittany, I will buy a ship’s cat to deal with the rats.”
I was already ashamed of delaying my pursuit of Earl William. More to the point, I was already suffering from the seasickness and I clutched the low beam above as my stomach turned over.
I gave in.
There followed many days of vomiting in the dark. I purged myself inside out and after I was as empty as a man could be my limbs and mind were hollow. Despite laying in rotten filth with the stench of ancient bilge filling my nose day and night, I felt cleansed. As if I had left the past behind me when I had departed England.
Of course, I was wrong about that. I had not yet learned that we carry our histories with us wherever we go.
It took weeks of sailing down the coast. We hopped from port to port waiting out storms. Sometimes we were caught in the most astonishingly vast waves. I stayed out of the crew’s way and clung to my bunk and every single time I thought that the ship would be sunk. The final storm came as we were closing on Marseilles and we were forced to run before it. Or so Oberto claimed. But we found ourselves in Genoa, many weeks after setting off. By then it was beyond the end of sailing season.
Oberto claimed he was yet willing to sail back to Marseilles but the crew rebelled. The swirling sky above was the same for days on end; a dark smear of roiling cloud, full of storm. To sail out now would be risking their deaths.
“They do whatever you tell them to do,” I said.
His eyes twinkled. “Not in this.”
“But it is so close,” I said. “If we had not met that storm we would have made port there days ago.”
“Hmmm,” Oberto said, shrugging.
So I bade farewell to the fat little drunkard on the deck of his rotten bucket of a ship. The sailors ignored me and most ran off into the bustling madness of the port of Genoa, no doubt to the brothels and taverns.
“I am so very sorry to see you go,” he said, grinning.
“I bet you bloody are, you swindling Italian cheat,” I said.
Still, he had been my only company on the ship and I was about to be alone again.
I reached the bottom of the gangplank and dumped my heavy pack and other belongings onto the dockside. Oberto called my name and stood for a moment looking down. Then he yanked the gangplank back halfway where it quivered in the air over the strip of water between the sides and the wharf. He stood at the rail.
“I told you before that Marseilles was this close to Genoa.” He held up his hand with finger and thumb pushed together. “But I did not know you, then.”
“What are you saying?”
“Marseilles and Genoa? More like this far away.” He held both hands out at shoulder width apart.
“You bastard.”
I appraised the distance to the rail. The dark water below was full of debris and a film of slime.
“You are a good man, Richard,” Oberto said. “You will not hurt me.”
In fact, it was something like two-hundred and fifty miles to Marseilles, through storm and rain and appalling weather. Few boats risked those conditions and none would take me.
I cursed Oberto’s name with every step.
All the while the enormity of my task weighed on me. Finding William somewhere out in the world, which was larger and more terrifying than I had imagined, seemed impossible. Surely, he would not have remained in Marseilles.
But I finally trudged into that grand old city.
And there I found the Beast.
Chapter Three - The Beast
I blundered into Marseilles before sundown, bone tired and ravenous and looking for a hot meal and a dry bed.
It had taken me ten days to walk from Genoa along the road that ran roughly west with the coast. Sometimes the coast turned north, other times south. But always it felt as though I was going back on myself toward England and away from William.
The landscape of that Mediterranean coast was one of astonishing beauty. I had seen nowhere along the outer edge of Europe to match it. There was coastal plain, mudflats and dunes but mostly it was mile after mile of field and forest, dotted with villages and towns. Inland were great hills. The other side, often out of sight, was the storm-wracked Mediterranean. The folk living along that coast were decent enough, though getting them to understand me was sometimes difficult.
Many travellers welcomed me as a companion. Without a horse to carry it, I wore my mail hauberk. I slung my helmet from my pack and wore my shield across my back as I walked, so I was sought out as a deterrent to robbers and bandits on the road. Little groups would walk together between the towns. Oftentimes, the grateful travellers provided food and wine for me and the other men-at-arms and soldiers.
A couple of days out from Marseilles I fell in with an Italian master mason who was heading to the city with his family to build a church. He was in fine mood for, starting in the spring, he would have work for years to come. The eldest daughter was rather lovely and she seemed quite taken with me also. Yet we could not converse and the mason watched us like a hawk when we sat together, smiling at each other and miming.
I reached Marseilles at sundown. It was a dry evening, for once, though everything was soaked and glistening in the sunset. It was a magnificent and ancient place with a vast stone wall and carved gateway. Inside were more stone buildings, some two or even three storeys high. Masses of people hurried about, here and there, but I was too exhausted to be much aware of it. The air was all smoke, salt, fish and orange sunlight.
Bidding fond farewell to the mason and his family inside the gate – especially his eldest daughter, who winked as she was dragged away – I asked locals politely for directions to somewhere I could sleep and be fed. Some ignored me, hurrying off. Others scowled and cursed me for a foreign devil. I spoke the language of northern France and the city folk spoke the language of the south. I was able to understand them but they treated me as if I was a Saracen.
Oberto had told me that Marseilles was a port city that favoured and welcomed travellers but I supposed that he had lied to me once again. Assuming I would be likely to find a room near the docks I walked toward the water. Some filthy children found me and pestered me for coin until I roared at them waving my arms and they ran away screaming and laughing.
Finally, one man who was fixing nets with his boy directed me down a narrow street.
“Tavern down there,” he said, glancing around. “Cheap. Good wine.”
I thanked him earnestly.
But it was a trap.
I thought I imagined that I was followed down that street because when I turned, I saw nobody. The street led to a small square with stone buildings on four sides. It stank of faeces and rotten fish, and I could see no obvious way out.
I turned to leave. First six and then a dozen and more men stalked out of the street into the square. They spread out around me
. They were ordinary townsfolk but grim and muttering.
I backed away and backed away until I was cornered against the walls of two houses. They stretched up above us. There was nowhere to climb out.
“Can I help you good fellows with something?” I said, smiling.
They close in on me, still muttering to each other. I saw a wineskin passed around. They stood staring at me. More men walked into the square from the alley which seemed a long way away.
“I can assure you,” I said. “That if this is about a woman, then I never touched her. I just arrived.”
They surrounded me further, swearing and cursing. Some seemed full of wine’s bravery and there were many of them. But I wore my hauberk and had a sword at my hip and shield on my back. I was taller than any of them and they surely knew that a knight trained in fighting from youth. Yet, I was exhausted and hungry and their numbers and unexplained anger concerned me.
My instinct told me to draw my sword but I knew that there would be no turning back from such an act.
“Where are you from?” a man demanded, pushing his way to the front to stand before me. He was old, about forty and he had the neck and shoulders of a bullock and a red, angry face.
“Genoa,” I said, angry at the shaking in my voice. I was a lord, armed and armoured and I would not be afraid of a gang of fisherman.
“He lies. He’s not a Genoese.”
Others took up the cry. “Liar! Liar!”
“I never said I was born there, I said I just came from there.” I looked over the sea of heads. The exit to the square was a long way away.
“He’s English,” another man said. “He’s an Englishman if ever I saw one. His skin’s as white as a fish belly.”
“Tell the truth or we’ll gut you like a fish,” the bull-necked leader said. He mimed what I assumed was a gutting motion in front of my face with his meaty fists.
“I am a Norman,” I lied. “I arrived in your city mere—”
But my words drowned in the braying of the mob.
“He’s a Norman. Another Norman. We found another one.”