Company of Liars (9 page)

‘It's best I don't get too warm if I'm to take first watch. At my great age I'm likely to nod off if I get comfortable. But you should try and get as much rest as you can. You'll need all your strength come morning.’

I hardly needed to urge her to sleep; her eyelids were already drooping with weariness.

‘Why don't you take off your veil and make yourself comfortable? Your husband won't mind, I'm sure. You'll stick yourself with the pins if you fall asleep with that on.’

Her hand rapidly outlined the edges of the linen veil that framed her face, as if to reassure herself that it was still in
place. It was pinned to a barbette beneath her chin, concealing all of her hair save for a flaxen wisp at the temple. It was a curiously old-fashioned style for such a beautiful young woman. These days you only saw old women still wearing the barbette, seeing no reason to forsake something they had worn all their lives. But most were only to glad to be free of such a chafing restraint.

‘I can't… I don't need to take it off. I don't sleep lying down, because… of my baby. The bile rises if I lie flat,’ she added hastily.

Osmond slipped his arm around her and she leaned back gratefully against his shoulder. Even if she didn't feel the pins, he would by morning; it took nearly a dozen to fasten a veil like that. But it seemed he would put up with anything to protect his new bride.

She was not used to sleeping among strangers, that much was plain. She'd had a sheltered upbringing, but neither shyness nor modesty was an asset on the road. Did she, did either of them have any idea what they were facing out there? Had I once really been as naïve as them? When you are in love and you are young, you think that nothing life can throw at you is insurmountable. You think that together you can overcome anything. I prayed they would never come to know how swiftly life can divide you.

The dancing orange flames cast huge grey shadows of us on to the wall of the cave, our every movement parodied in a grotesque form, like a mummers' play performed for our mockery. Our shadows poured into one another, so that monsters appeared with two shaggy heads. Humpbacked dragons curled in sleep and mermaids flicked their sinuous tails. Shadows are such insubstantial things, yet they are bigger than any of us.

Zophiel sat upright against his boxes, his head lolling
uncomfortably on his chest. He'd pay for that in the morning with a stiff neck, but I wasn't too sorry. Rodrigo lay stretched out, snoring, sleeping the untroubled sleep of the just. Adela and Osmond nestled against the wall of the cave, Adela's head snuggled against Osmond's shoulder as his arms cradled her.

Jofre was curled up in the back of the cave as he had been all evening, but he was not asleep. The firelight glittered in his open eyes. He was watching Osmond and Adela. He couldn't take his eyes off them. And suddenly it dawned on me why he'd been so quiet all evening. It was not just the fear that Zophiel might mention the wager; the poor boy was in love. Why do the young have to fall in love at first sight and fall so hard? Adela and Osmond were newly married; what did Jofre think could possibly come of it? But the eternal triangle is as old as man himself. You might even say that Adam, Eve and God were the first, and look where that led. And in all those centuries of lovers' knots, no good ever came of it. But it was useless to warn him that it would only lead to pain. The young can believe in werewolves and mermaids, but not that the old have ever been in love.

As I watched the still bodies of Adela and Osmond, Rodrigo and Jofre bathed in the soft red glow from the fire, I realized with a sudden rush of emptiness that I belonged to no one, and for the first time in many years, I felt terribly alone. I had thought that I wasn't afraid of death. I was old and I knew it was inevitable, but I had never given it a shape before. Now, as this terrible sickness rolled inexorably towards us, I glimpsed for the first time the form death might assume and felt the panic rising in my throat.

Zophiel was anxious to be off at first light. The gorge made him nervous; being away from his wagon made him nervous;
we made him nervous. I think he hoped that as soon as he was clear of the gorge, he could rid himself of all of us, especially Adela.

Adela seemed stronger after a night's sleep, but she was still pale and didn't look as if her new-found strength would hold out for long. But after Zophiel's jibes of the night before, she was determined to show that she could walk as well as the rest of us, and even Osmond seemed to want to prove his wife's stamina to Zophiel. But Rodrigo, gallant as ever, was having none of it. He insisted that if we were to pull and push the wagon filled with Zophiel's boxes out of every water-filled rut on the track, Zophiel should at least assist by leading his horse on foot and Adela should be allowed to ride and save her strength.

Zophiel, seeing no way out of the gorge without our help, acquiesced with ill grace, venting his spleen for the next mile or so by tormenting the morose Jofre. Having realized that Jofre had kept the wager from his master, Zophiel was amusing himself by constantly turning the conversation back to the point where he seemed about to reveal the secret, before deftly turning aside from it. Zophiel enjoyed the game of cat and mouse and he was a skilled practitioner.

But this time it was Rodrigo himself who created the diversion. He suddenly clapped his hand to his forehead.

‘Camelot, I meant to tell you that a friend of yours, a child, was asking for you at the fair yesterday. I should have told you before, but all the commotion when we had to leave drove it from my head.’

I frowned. ‘I don't know any children.’

‘She said she knew you. She was a pretty child, unusual. Her hair, it was… like frost.’

I felt a chill as if cold, wet rags had been drawn over my skin. So Narigorm had been at the fair. I didn't know
whether I was relieved or disturbed. I had begun to think that I had imagined seeing her. Then a thought struck me.

‘Rodrigo, there were hundreds of people at the fair, how did she know that you knew me? Did you tell her?’

He shook his head, then shrugged. ‘Maybe she saw us together. But she asked me to tell you she will be with you soon. That is good news, yes?’

‘You didn't tell her where we were going, did you?’ I said, struggling to keep the note of alarm out of my voice.

Again he shook his head. ‘No, she did not ask.’

I breathed out heavily. I could see by the perplexed expression on Rodrigo's face that my reaction had not been what he expected and I couldn't explain my disquiet, not even to myself. Why would she send me such a message? Was she following me? No, that was a foolish thought. Now I really was imagining things; why on earth would a child want to follow an old man she'd barely met?

‘Camelot, this child, is she –’ Rodrigo began.

But his question was cut off by a sudden shriek which echoed through the gorge, freezing us in our tracks. There was no mistaking this sound; it was human and the human was in desperate trouble. The sound came from a little way ahead of us round the curve of the track, but our view was blocked by an outcrop of rock. As the shrieks continued, Rodrigo and Osmond pulled out their knives and sprinted down the track in the direction of the cries, closely followed by Jofre. But even as they ran, the screams stopped abruptly as if severed with an axe. Zophiel, Adela and I followed more slowly with the wagon, but as we cautiously rounded the bend we saw the others standing in the track, staring at something beyond.

Two men, their hoods drawn low over their heads, were bending over a third man lying in the mud. One of the
hooded men was dragging a leather pack away from the prone body, the other rummaging clumsily through the dead man's clothes. The murder had not been subtle. The victim's head was a bloody mangle of hair, brain and bone. His face would have been unrecognizable even to his own mother. The blows had doubtless been inflicted by the heavy wooden clubs which still dangled on leather straps from the murderers' wrists. The robbers had not even troubled to drag him off the track into the undergrowth to do their work and now, far from running off in fear when they saw us approach, they continued to work over their prey, like feral dogs who cannot be scared away from their kill.

Osmond was the first to break the stunned silence; yelling, he started towards the men, waving his arms as if to drive off animals. The two robbers raised their heads. They threw back their hoods, but remained crouched over the bloody corpse.

‘Going to stop us, young master?’

It was Osmond who stopped. The faces that leered up at him appeared at first to be grinning. But those were not smiles on their faces. Their lips, like their noses, were being eaten away. Patches of grey dead flesh covered their faces, like mould on rotting fruit. They were lepers.

They stood up and began to limp towards us, spinning the cudgels on their wrists as they no doubt had done before they struck the unfortunate wretch on the track.

‘Going to lay hands on us, young master? Going to take us? I've got an idea – why don't you give us that fine wagon of yours? I'm tired of walking. I could do with a wagon to carry me. I'll bet you've some good food on that wagon, wine too. Come on then, hand it over, or do you want us to give you a great big kiss for it?’

They had nothing to lose. The Church had already
declared them dead to the world. What could the law do to them that was worse? Hang them? In their condition hanging might have been a blessing, if any man had dared, but they were right, who was going to lay hold of them to bring them to justice? Who would have the courage to seize those fingerless hands and bind them tight or put a noose round those scabby necks? Can you execute a dead man? We steal relics from the dead and now it seemed the dead were going to steal from us.

It was Rodrigo who threw the knife. It was a powerful throw from a muscular arm. The blade sank deep into the leper's chest. He screamed, staggering backwards from the impact, trying to wrench the knife out with the stumps of his fingerless hands. Then he tottered towards us, mouth open, arms stretched wide as if he would gather us all to the grave with him, before he crumpled lifeless into the mud. His companion had already turned tail and was scuttling into the trees. He did not look back to see his friend fall.

5. The Cripples' Wedding

The six of us were obliged to spend many more nights sleeping outdoors in the cold and wet. The encounter with the lepers in the gorge seemed to have convinced Zophiel that it was not safe to travel alone, especially with the roads and tracks as waterlogged as they were. And although I now know that Zophiel had a more pressing reason for travelling in our company, at the time I believed that, despite his contempt for St John and his miracles, even he could see the sense in making for his shrine and settling there until the worst was over and the ports were open again. I, for one, was thankful for that, for we needed his wagon for Adela. She was in no condition to trudge through the mud, wind and rain, mile after mile.

It had rained every day for the past three months and though summers had been bad these last few years, none of us could remember any as bad this.

‘If rain on Midsummer's Day should fall, it will rain for seven weeks more,’ Adela had recited cheerily at first, much to Zophiel's intense irritation.

But seven weeks had come and gone. St Swithin's Day and his forty days and forty nights of rain had also come and gone. And still it rained. Not even Adela had faith in
her rhymes any more. There was nothing natural about this rain.

And with each day's downfall the mud grew deeper, the walking harder, our bellies emptier. The truth was, though none of us admitted as much, we had begun to depend on one another to survive. We shared all our food and ale which we bought with the little each of us earned from the villages we trundled through. We made makeshift shelters when we couldn't find an inn or a barn, and helped to gather fodder for the horse.

The mare, as we soon discovered, had been well named. Her coat had a fiery red-gold sheen to it and for that she had been named Xanthus, after the immortal talking horse given to Achilles. But in temperament she took after that more infamous beast of the same name, the man-eating mare of King Diomedes, except that our Xanthus was an even greater misanthrope, for unlike the king's horse who only devoured his enemies, she took delight in savaging friend as well as foe. She had a nasty habit of biting, without warning, anyone who got within range of her teeth, and for no good cause except that it amused her. So we quickly learned to judge the reach of her neck and to keep a safe distance, unless we had a firm grip on her bridle.

But Xanthus and the wagon she pulled became our ark, our covenant, the standard around which we rallied. We pulled them both out of ruts during the day and kept watch over them at night. The wagon carried our packs, our food, our ale; it even gave us shelter if we could find no other. All six of us now were headed towards the safety of St John's shrine to sit out the weather and the pestilence, and the thought of the dry beds that awaited us there, the easy money, the hot food and no more trudging in the mud and rain, was what kept us going when our bellies were aching
and our feet so wet and numb we could have broken our toes off and sold them as relics.