Samurai and Other Stories (23 page)

The floor between the men and the cross was laid out in a huge circular mosaic, a pattern that spiralled in towards the centre. Latin inscriptions ran alongside miniature figures. Menzies had no schooling, but the Earl had spent many a year in the cloisters of the Abbey with the monks. The Earl started to walk the spiral, mumbling to himself.

“Calgary... our Lord... King of the Jews. A storm... a crown for the king. He dies...”

Menzies got another cold chill up his spine. Suddenly he had no desire to see what lay on the plinth.

The Earl kept mumbling.

“The crown is taken, spirited away... a safe place, high in the mountains... “

He was almost at the centre of the spiral now.

“The Brotherhood of the Thorn... guardians.”

He reached the centre of the spiral. He looked at his feet, then at the black circle painted on the white robe.

“I know what it is,” he whispered.

He motioned Menzies over to join him. Menzies looked down.

A crown of thorns.

The Earl stared rapt, at the stone plinth.

“The crown worn by our Lord during his passion,” he said. “The thorns are stained with his blood.”

He turned back to Menzies.

“With this, we can retake the Holy City. With the Lord’s blood in our hands, we can wipe the heathen from the face of the earth. We can make the world Christian.”

Before Menzies could naysay him the Earl strode across the floor towards the plinth.

The hooded figure stepped in front of him, blocking his path. The Earl didn’t hesitate. He raised the sword and swung, backhanded. The robed figure seemed to move languidly, only raising an arm in defence. The sword went halfway through the forearm. The figure made no sound. And there was no blood. The wound gaped, grey and dry.
 

The Earl hacked again. The arm came away at the shoulder. The other hand gripped the sword and without seeming to exert any force, snapped it off, a foot from the hilt.

Menzies started to move forward to his liege’s aid. At the same moment six more robed figures emerged from the shadows, and moved quickly to block any move he might make. They did not attack him... they didn’t have to. He could not reach the Earl.

The white robed figure had the Earl by the throat. The pair spun around in a grotesque parody of a dance. The Earl was trying, without much success, to reach a vital organ with what remained of the sword. His face had gone bright red and he gasped, struggling for breath.

Menzies jumped forward, intent on trying to get through. An arm, heavy and solid, swung and hit him in the chest. It felt like he’d just ran into a tree. He went down hard, the back of his head smacking against the mosaic. His vision blurred.

His head rang like a bell, but beneath that he heard the Earl call out.

“I am here in the name of Jesus Christ. I do the Lord’s will.”

The white robed figure went still, staring straight at the Earl. The big man took his opportunity. He shoved the broken sword under the robed man’s chin, pushing through till the blade punched out the back of the skull. The body went down without another sound.
 

The Earl stepped up to the plinth.

“We have it, Menzies,” he shouted. He reached down towards the crown of thorns. “I have my prize.”

The six robed men, as one, turned and moved towards him.

The Earl still had his back to them and did not see them approach, still intent on the crown.

“My Lord,” Menzies called, but his voice was barely a whisper. He tried to stand but his legs refused to bear him. He could only watch as the six men grabbed the Earl. They took the sword from him as easily as taking a toy from a babe. Once the Earl was disarmed two of them moved aside to the large wooden cross and lowered it, almost reverentially to the ground. The others started to drag the struggling man towards it.

Menzies saw their intent and went cold.

“No!” he called, but yet again only a whisper emerged. He began to crawl forward, but his head felt like it might explode. His world began to go black at the edges.

The robed figures spread the Earl’s arms along the spars of the cross.
 

An arm went up and came down.
 

There was a dull thud, then silence for a heartbeat before the Earl’s screams began and a splash of red on the wood showed where he had been nailed through the wrist. The big man screamed again as it was repeated on the other side, and mercifully lost consciousness for a time as they drove a nail through both his ankles and deep into the main stay of the cross.
 

A figure broke away from the group to go to the plinth. It returned with the crown. The Earl woke. His eyes went wide with fear as he realized his fate. He threw his head from side to side but they held him, as if calming a recalcitrant babe. They rammed the crown down hard on the Earl’s scalp. Blood joined tears to run in runnels down his face.

They hoisted the cross into place against the cavern wall.
 

The six figures prostrated themselves on the ground as the Earl cried out, his pain echoing around the cavern and sending bats scattering overhead.

Menzies tried to crawl, but the darkness was even closer now.

He saw the Earl raise his face to the roof and scream in pain.

“I do the Lord’s will.”
 

Soon the darkness covered even that sight. He let it take him, and fell into oblivion.

*
   
*
   
*

He woke to a headache that pounded like a drum. When he tried to stand his stomach heaved and he brought up what little he had in his stomach. After that, he felt strangely stronger.

The feeling of wellbeing only lasted as long as it took him to turn to face the cross.
 

The Earl hung limply—chin lowered to his chest. Blood showed all around his head where vicious thorns had pierced the scalp. More blood coated his left side from a wound that had been punched through the chain mail under his ribs. A black circle was painted on his tunic. He did not look to be breathing.

The six robed men still knelt on the ground at the foot of the cross.

My Leige!

Menzies stumbled across the cavern floor. His sword lay near the centre of the mosaic but he paid it no heed as he approached the cross.

Did the Lord will this blasphemy?

The kneeling figures ignored him as he approached. He reached up to touch the Earl’s tunic.
 

The big man’s head lifted.

He lives. My liege lives.

The Earl’s eyes opened.
 

There were no pupils, just a blank, milky white stare.

Wood creaked and groaned. Menzies couldn’t take his eyes from the face, but was aware that one wrist was now free of the nail that had pierced it. He felt gentle hands push him aside.
 

The robed figures helped the Earl down from the cross then prostrated themselves before him.

The Earl stood in front of the bloodstained cross and opened his arms wide. He spoke—his voice a dry rasp.

“To Jerusalem. The Lord wills it.”

The kneeling figures kissed his robe.

Menzies turned and fled.

He had no idea where he was headed. He only knew that he had to get out of that chamber, away from those milky white stares.
 

If I had stayed there but a minute longer, I would have been tempted to join him.

He ran, slamming into the stone by the doorway. He reached the exterior door before he realized he could see clearly. The sun was rising, a thin watery dawn.

We have been in there all night.

He staggered out to the clearing. A figure loomed in front of him. He threw a punch but it didn’t have strength enough to land. Someone grabbed him beneath the arms as he fell, off-balance.

“Dear God, James,” David of Hawick said. “What has become of you?”

*
   
*
   
*

A minute later he was sat by the fire at the far end of the clearing. His gaze rarely left the entrance to the tower, but nothing moved there.

Not yet.

The Hawick man fed him some dried bread and wine and the heat of the fire started to loosen the chill in his bones.

“I’m sorry,” David said. “I ran when I should have been by your side.”

Menzies waved him aside.

“We all should have ran,” he said quietly. “Mayhap we would all yet be alive.”

“The Earl?”

Menzies wasn’t ready to tell that story.

“What have you been doing all this time?” he asked the Hawick man.

The man looked sheepish.

“I started to run,” he said. “I even got as far as going down the cliff. Then I came to the ledge where we left John the Swift. He was just lying there, two crows feasting on his face. I couldn’t find it in myself to leave him. So I made a cairn and buried him under it. I sat with him through the night, saying the words. It was the Christian thing to do.”

The Christian thing to do.

Menzies sat for long minutes looking into the flames. Pictures came to mind, of the Earl, crowned in thorns, riding at the head of a vast army before the gates of Jerusalem, every man among them staring ahead with a milky-white gaze as they hacked the Saracens to bloody pieces.
 

And it wouldn’t stop there.

He saw the Earl sitting on a throne as all the Kings of Christendom were brought before him to bend a knee, a Christendom that would all bow before the holy relic, believing it to be the Lord’s will. He saw countries fall. He saw home, and Melrose Abbey, the monks in grey robes, black circles painted on their chests. He saw a world of nothing but obedience and dead white stares.

And with that came a memory of the night before.

The air is filled with the sound of sword strokes thudding into the body beneath the robes.

Yet still it stands.
 

“Die you devil, die!” the Earl shouts. “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The grey figure goes still. It makes no defence as the Earl brings the sword round in one clean sweep that nearly takes its head off at the neck.

Swift on the heels of that came another memory.

He hears the Earl call out.

“I am here in the name of Jesus Christ. I do the Lord’s will.”

The white robed figure goes still, staring straight at the Earl. The big man takes his opportunity. He shoves the broken sword under the robed man’s chin, pushing through till the blade punches out the back of the skull. The body goes down without another sound.
 

“It was the same both times,” Menzies whispered. “They made no defence.”

 
He came to a decision. He stood, groaning at aches and pains the length of his body.

“Where to James?” David asked. “Do we head for home?”

“Not yet. Come with me, or stay, it makes no mind to me. But we have our duty as Christians to perform.”

Menzies tore long strips from his tunic, and wound them tight round a piece of wood. He lit it from the fire. David of Hawick followed his example.

Together they strode back into the tower.

*
   
*
   
*

The earl and his disciples still stood before the bloodied cross, heads bowed in a mockery of prayer. The Hawick man would have ran again then, but Menzies put out a hand to stop him.

“You did right by John the Swift. Now we shall do right by our liege.”

Menzies strode across the mosaic. His foot kicked his sword that still lay there, sending it skittering across the polished stone. He didn’t bend to retrieve it.

I don’t need it. I have something else that will serve me better.

The earl looked up at his approach. The pale eyes seemed to stare into Menzies’ soul. The big man opened his arms wide, welcoming.

“You have been by my side these many years,” the big man said. His voice sounded dry and hoarse, and had withered to little more than a whisper. “Join me now. The Lord wills it.”

“Aye,” Menzies said. “The Lord wills it.”

He stepped forward and thrust the burning brand into the cloth of the earl’s robe. The black paint on the front took first, raising a fiery circle that spread quickly. Menzies smelled the acrid tang of burning hair as the earl’s beard blazed. The big man started to flap his arms, attempting to put out the flame.

“In the name of Jesus Christ, be still,” Menzies shouted.

Despite the flames, the earl complied. He stood, silent even as fire ravaged his face. The last Menzies saw was one of the white eyes pop and sizzle, then the body fell away to the ground. The disciples swayed like drunkards.
 

The crown of thorns hissed and crackled as the flame reached it.

The robed disciples moved forward, but even as they reached with longing towards the earl, the fire took completely and raged through the tinder-dry wood of the crown. As a man, the disciples fell, pole-axed, onto the mosaic.

*
   
*
   
*

They let the fire take its course. By the time it was done the earl’s body was charred and ravaged, the crown of thorns indistinguishable from the rest of the remains.

“In the name of Jesus Christ, be at peace,” Menzies said softly. He ground his foot on the remains, scattering the crown, and most of the earl’s head, to dust and ash.

Just as he was leaving he remembered his promise.

Bury me at home, Menzies. Promise me that at least?

“We are a long way from there, Sire,” he whispered. “But I will do what I can.”

He gathered the ashes and collected them in a small leather pouch he normally used for coins. Without another word he turned and left. He did not look back.
 

It was only when they were back out in the heat of the sun that David of Hawick spoke.

“What did we just do?” he asked.

Menzies set his eyes on the horizon and home. He didn’t reply, but something that the Hawick man had said earlier echoed in his mind.