Company of Liars (3 page)

The men in front of me ambled down the track, stumbling over roots and stones. One sprawled on his hands and knees. I helped his friend haul him to his feet. He slapped me on the back and belched; his breath stank worse than a dragon's fart. There were going to be some sore heads in those parts come morning. As we steadied him until he could work out which foot to move first, I glanced behind me at the Green. Though I could not make out any faces at that distance, I could see a blur of white stark against all the
browns, greens and scarlets around. She was standing on the edge of the grass, still watching me. I could feel her staring, trying to prise me open. I found myself suddenly furious with her. My anger was without cause, I knew that, for the poor child had done nothing to me at all, but I swear that if her master had come out of the tavern at that moment and given her another strapping, I would not have been sorry. Like him, I wanted her to cry. Tears are natural. Tears are human. Tears confine your curiosity to yourself.

So, you may ask, was that it? Was that the beginning? Was that what caused it all, half a pastry offered to a child with eyes of ice? Hardly a day of ill fortune for anyone except the fat merchant. You're right, if that had been all, it would have been nothing, but there was something else that happened on that day, several miles away, in a little town by the sea called Melcombe. Unconnected, you would have thought, yet those two events were to become as tightly woven as the warp and weft in a length of silk. Threads drawn from different directions, yet destined to become one. The warp thread in this cloth? That was the death of one man. We'll call him John, for I never knew his name. Someone must have known it, but they never admitted it and so he was buried without it.

John collapsed in the crowded market place. He was seen to stagger, clutching at the sides of a cart for support. Most thought him drunk, for he had the look of a sailor about him and, as everyone knows, sailors spend what time they have ashore supping liquor until their money runs out and they are forced back to sea again. John bent double, coughing and hacking his lungs out, until frothy spatters of blood sprayed from his mouth on to his hands and the wheels of the cart. Then he sank to his knees and keeled over.

The passers-by who went to his aid at once shrank back, gagging and clapping their hands over their noses. This stench was not the ordinary stink of an unwashed drunk, but so fetid it seemed to come from an opened tomb. Nevertheless, those with stronger stomachs did make shift to take him by the arms and turn him over, but he screamed so loudly with pain that they dropped him again, startled. The men stared at him, unwilling to risk touching him again, yet not knowing what to do to help.

The man who owned the cart prodded John with the toe of his shoe, trying to encourage him to crawl away, since he obviously didn't want to be lifted up. The carter wasn't a callous man, but he had to reach the next village by nightfall. He could smell rain on the wind and was anxious to be off before it fell again, turning the tracks into a quagmire. It was the devil's own job to drive that forest track once it got muddy and if you had to stop to shoulder the cart out of a rut, you were easy prey for any thief who fancied helping himself to your purse and your cart, leaving you as good as dead in a ditch. God knows there was no shortage of such scoundrels in the forest. He prodded John again, trying to make him roll out from under the cart. However anxious he was to leave, the carter could hardly drive over a sick man.

John, feeling the toe against him, seized the carter's leg and tried to hoist himself up on it. He lifted his sweating face, his eyes rolling back in his head as another wave of pain shuddered through his body, and it was then that the carter saw that John's face and arms were covered with livid blue-black spots. It was a sight to make any man flinch away, but the carter didn't comprehend what he was looking at. He didn't recognize the signs. Why should he? They had not been seen here before, not in this place, not in this land.

But someone recognized them; someone who had seen those telltale marks before. He was a merchant, well travelled beyond our shores, and he knew the signs only too well. For a moment he stood stupefied, as if he could not believe it could happen here. Then he grabbed the carter and croaked,
‘Morte bleue’.
The small crowd that was gathering about them stared uncomprehendingly from the merchant to the writhing figure on the ground. The merchant pointed, his hand trembling.
‘Morte bleue, morte bleue’
, he yelled, his voice rising hysterically, then summoning up what few wits he still possessed, he screamed, ‘He has the pestilence!’

The carter was right. That night it did rain. Not drizzling as it had done at dawn; that had only been the prologue. No, this time it poured. Hard, heavy drops striking leaves, earth, crops and thatches, turning paths into streams and fields into swamps. It rained as if it was the beginning of the flood and perhaps those who saw the first drops fall back in Noah's day thought, like us, that it signified nothing. Perhaps they too believed that by morning or the following day it would stop.

2. The Company

‘Where have you come from, boy?’

It wasn't a friendly enquiry. The innkeeper stood in the doorway, bouncing a stout stick rhythmically against the palm of his hand. He was a big man, his muscular arms covered with black hair. He was not in his prime and his belly was too big to suggest he was nimble of foot, but then he didn't need to be. One crack from that stick and he would not be required to give chase to his opponents.

The lad facing him hesitated, his eyes fixed nervously on the bouncing stick. He took a step backwards and stumbled, hampered by his flamboyant travelling cloak. He was a slim youth, shorter than the innkeeper. He grasped the cloak tightly about him against the rain with a hand the colour of rosewood, long and softly elegant. A lute hung over his shoulder. No farmer's boy, this one.

‘Answer me, boy, if you know what's good for you. Are you come from the south?’

The lad took another step back and swallowed, plainly uncertain whether yes or no was the right answer.

‘Y… yes,’ he finally ventured.

‘He means he was born in the lands to the south,’ I said, stepping as rapidly as I could between the raised cudgel and
the shrinking boy. ‘But he's not come from the south these many months. I myself saw him only last week at the Magdalene Fair at Chedzoy, that's up Bridgwater way. That's right, isn't it, boy?’ I slid my foot across his and pressed hard.

The lad nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, from Chedzoy, we came down from there.’ He shivered miserably, the rain dripping from his hood.

The innkeeper looked him up and down suspiciously. ‘You, Camelot, you'll swear you saw him there?’

‘On the bones of St Peter.’

He looked back at the lad, then finally lowered his stick. ‘Two pence for a room, penny for the barn. Hay's clean. Mind you keep it that way. Dogs sleep outside.’

There weren't many men in the inn at Thornfalcon that evening. A few travellers like myself and a handful of locals, but the rain was keeping many by their own hearths. The innkeeper was in as foul a mood as the weather. It was, after all, only the backend of July, and he counted on long, warm summer evenings to fill the benches in his courtyard. He bellowed and raged at his wife, who in turn slammed the ale down on the tables so that it slopped over, glowering at her customers as if they were to blame. Her sour face wasn't helping trade either. If a man wants bad-tempered company he can usually find it at his own hearth; he doesn't need to pay someone else for the privilege.

I saw the lad enter with an older man. He looked round and then, spotting me in the corner behind the fire, pointed me out to his companion. They both came across. The older man had to stoop to pass under the beams. He was olive-skinned like the boy, but whereas the lad was a slender, delicate-looking youth, the man had the broad, muscular
frame of maturity, running a little to fat. The lines in the corners of his eyes had set and his dark hair was streaked with grey. He wasn't what you'd call handsome, but striking enough with his Roman nose and full mouth. He'd doubtless turned more than a few heads in his youth, probably still did. He gave a courtly bow and sat down heavily on the bench opposite.

‘Buona sera, signore.
I am Rodrigo. Your pardon for the intrusion, but I wanted to thank you. Jofre tells me that you spoke for him. We are in your debt, Camelot.’

‘Jofre?’

He inclined his head towards the young man who stood respectfully at his side.

‘My pupil.’

The young man gave a half bow in imitation of his master.

I nodded. ‘You're welcome. It was just a word and words are freely given. But let me offer you one word more. I don't know where you really come from, and it's no concern of mine, but these days it's safest to say you've travelled from the north. These rumours make people cautious.’

The man laughed, a deep laugh that made his tired eyes dance. ‘An innkeeper threatens his customers with a cudgel and that is cautious?’

‘You said rumours, what rumours?’ Jofre interrupted. He was plainly on easy terms with his master.

‘From your lute and your garb, I took you to be minstrels. I'm surprised you've not heard the news on your travels. I thought all England knew by now.’

The master and pupil exchanged glances, but it was Rodrigo who answered, glancing around first to see if others were eavesdropping on the conversation.

‘We have not long been on the road. We were both in the employ of a lord. But… but he is old and his son has
taken over the running of his estates. He brought with him his own musicians and so now we try to make our fortune on the road.
È buono
,’ he added with a forced cheerfulness, ‘there is the whole world to see and many pretty girls as yet unbedded. Is that not right, Jofre?’

The lad, who was studying his hands with a miserable intensity, nodded briefly.

Rodrigo clapped him on the shoulder. ‘A new start, is it not,
ragazzo
?’

Again the boy nodded and flushed a dull red, but did not raise his eyes.

A new start for which of them, I wondered. I guessed there was more to the story than Rodrigo had told. Perhaps the gaze of one or the other had strayed too close to a pretty girl in the lord's family; it's not unheard of. Bored women left too often alone are not averse to a dalliance with a good-looking minstrel.

‘You said there were rumours,’ Jofre reminded me, with a note of urgency in his voice.

‘The great pestilence has finally reached our shores.’

Jofre's eyes widened in shock. ‘But they said it could not reach this island.’

‘They say before a battle that their king cannot be defeated, but they are usually wrong. It was brought on a ship from the isle of Guernsey, so they say, but who knows, they may be wrong about that too. But wherever it came from scarcely matters now; the point is it has arrived.’

‘And it is spreading?’ Rodrigo asked quietly.

‘Along the south coast, but it will spread inland. Take my advice, travel north and stay well away from the ports.’

‘They will close the ports, surely, as they did in Genoa?’

‘To the south, maybe, but the merchants will not suffer
the ports to be closed on the east and west coasts, at least not until they see the dead lying in the streets. Too much money sails on the waves.’

A stifled sob made us both glance up. Jofre was standing, fists clenched, face blanched, his mouth working convulsively. Then he turned and barged blindly out of the inn, ignoring the furious curses of the innkeeper's wife as he rushed past her, knocking a dish out of her hands.

Rodrigo rose. ‘Your pardon, Camelot, please excuse him. His mother – she was in Venice when the pestilence came there. There has been no word since.’

‘But that doesn't necessarily mean the worst. How could she send a message in these times? True, the rumours say half have perished, but if that is so, then half have survived it. Why should she not be one of them?’

‘So I tell him, but his heart tells him otherwise. He adores her. His father sent him away, but he did not want to leave her. Distance has translated a mortal woman into Holy Virgin in his memory. And because he worships her, so he is afraid he has lost her. I must find him. The young are impetuous. Who knows what they will do?’

He hurried out after the boy, pausing to speak to the innkeeper's wife whose temper had grown, if possible, even more savage since Jofre had spilled her dish. I couldn't hear what passed between them for the chatter of the other customers, but I could see her scowl melting to a reluctant smile and then to a deep, rosy blush. And when he bowed, kissed her hand and excused himself, she gazed at his retreating back with the cow eyes of a lovesick maid. Rodrigo had learned the art of courtly love well. I wondered how he dealt with jealous husbands. I guessed he was not quite so skilled at winning their admiration or he would not now find himself on the road.

I settled back to my ale, which was passable, and the pottage, which was not, but it was hot and filling and when you know what an empty belly feels like you learn to be more than grateful for that much. But I was not left to sit in peace for long. An unkempt man, who'd been warming his ample backside at the fire, slid on to the bench vacated by Rodrigo. I'd seen him in these parts before, but had never exchanged more than a gruff ‘G'day’ with him. He studied his tankard of ale in silence for a long time as if he expected to see something new and startling crawling out of it.