The Gallows Curse (17 page)

    Talbot,
his hood pulled low over his craggy face, shuffled his backside into the
shelter of the trees next to where Raffe lay. By way of a greeting he punched
Raffe on the arm with his great fist.

    'I
remember a time when you'd have had a knife across my throat afore I got within
a lance's blow of you.'

    'I
knew you were there, you great ape,' Raffe lied. You make such a racket, they
will have heard you coming out on the
Santa Katarina
.' He jerked his
head towards the cog-ship out in the bay.

    They'd
known each other for twenty years, but the old rogue hadn't changed since
they'd first met at Acre. Talbot had been a sapper, one of the worst jobs in
the Crusaders' army. Sappers burrowed under the walls of the city and lit fires
beneath the stones to weaken the walls to make them collapse, while the
defenders in the city hurled down any weapon they could on to their heads. And
the Saracens would tunnel towards them from inside the city. If they met, the
two sides would fight each other in the pitch darkness of those narrow tunnels.
You had to be as tough and fearless as a mountain lion to survive that, and
Talbot was.

    Raffe
grinned affectionately at him. 'But I didn't think to see you here. Your lads
impatient for their money, are they?'

    Talbot
bridled indignantly, 'I came to watch your back, Bullock. If the marsh-men
catch you spying on them and their cargo, your miserable carcass'll be lying at
the bottom of some bog pool afore you can utter a curse. Whereas I can tell
them you're a just a poor simple clod who wouldn't know his own arse if I
wasn't there to kick it. They've only got to look at you to see the truth of
that.'

    If
any other man had said as much to Raffe he would have laid him out cold, but
instead he merely grinned. What Talbot couldn't fight his way out of with his
great fists he could talk his way out of, at least with ordinary men. He wasn't
quite so skilled in talking his way out of trouble with the nobility. Back in
the Holy Land, Talbot would have found himself swinging from the gallows,
hanged by his own commander, If it hadn't been for Raffe. It was the kind of
debt that forged an instant and eternal friendship between the most unlikely of
strangers.

    And
Raffe had known he could rely on Talbot to get him word when the
Santa
Katarina
was sighted off the coast. He had a network of street urchins and
boatmen who knew every inch of the river from Norwich to Yarmouth. A dog
couldn't fart in Yarmouth without Talbot getting wind of it in Norwich. Through
this web of rogues, Talbot could obtain anything that a man could pay for,
though it was wisest not to enquire as to the source, that is, if you wanted to
keep your guts safely in your belly.

    'Any
sign of this man you're looking for?' Talbot asked.

    'Not
yet, but he'll be here. As soon as I discover who the traitor is, I'll swear on
oath to the sheriff in Norwich about what I heard him say and he'll be in
chains within the day. With luck this night's work will rid us of Osborn too.
John is bound to take the manor back from him, once this traitor is arrested.
After all, a lord who doesn't even possess the wit to discover that his own men
are plotting treason is hardly- competent to have oversight of the king's
lands. And John will take it very ill, that Osborn has allowed this rebellion
to fester under his roof.'

    Talbot
squinted at him. 'Way I see it, you wanted rid of that bastard Osborn from the
outset, so why didn't you tell what you knew straightway? If you heard this man
so plainly, how is it you didn't recognize the voice? Even if you didn't; know
it then, you've surely heard it since.'

    Raffe
hesitated. He wouldn't trust Talbot with a clipped farthing if money was
involved, but he would wager his life on the man's ability to keep his own
counsel.

    'If
you want the truth I didn't hear what was said. It was a girl in the manor, a
villein, she reported it to me. But she thinks one of the men may have seen
her, glimpsed her anyway. If he's still at liberty when he discovers that he
was overheard, her life wouldn't be worth the dirt on his shoe. That's why I need
proof before I can act. I'll tell the sheriff I heard what was said, and I
won't need to mention her.'

    'So
you'd lie for this lass,' Talbot grinned. 'Pretty, is she?'

    'I'd
lie to save a life,' Raffe snapped. 'And we both know it wouldn't be the first
time I've done that, don't we?'

    Mortals
are strange creatures; they cling to life even when that life is nothing but
pain and misery, yet they will throw away
their lives for a word, an
idea, even a flag. Wolves piss to mark their territory. Smell the stench of
another pack and wolves will quietly slink away. Why risk a fight when it might
maim or kill you? But humans will slash and slaughter in their thousands to
plant their little piece of cloth on a hill or hang it from a battlement. We
mandrakes can give them victory, but on whom shall we bestow it? For both sides
will pronounce their own cause just. And which is the brave man and who is the
traitor? You must choose; we mandrakes never do. We simply give them both what
in their hearts they truly crave — the illusion of a glorious death, which the
poor fools imagine is immortality.

    You
don't believe me. Let me show you. Two old soldiers lying side by side on the
hill watch the little ship bobbing out in the bay. The sailors on the ship
watch the shore. They all wait impatiently for the blessed cloak of darkness to
cover their wretched little deeds, but the sun will not be hurried by the whims
of men.

    The
cog-ship shuddered as the racing tide twisted her against her anchor ropes.
Hunched under the castle of the ship, Faramond shivered miserably in the wet
wind, which had grown sharper as the light began to fade across the Norfolk
marshes. Although they were sheltered from the great ocean waves behind the
sandy island of Yarmouth, the lurching of the ship seemed even worse now that
they were at anchor. The three rivers raced into the basin of water and the sea
tide pushed hard against them, creating a turbulence that felt more violent
than any at sea.

    Faramond
tried to shuffle downwind of the breeze which blew charcoal smoke and the
stench of pickled pork across his face, but he could not leave the safety of
the shadows in the ship's stern and the best he could do to escape the
nauseating stench was pull his cloak over his mouth and nose. As soon as the
Santa Katarina
had come within sight of the English coast, the five
Frenchmen had been forced to spend the daylight hours squatting in the stern
under the castle of the ship, well out of sight. Even had they dressed in the thin,
patched clothes of the sailors, a casual observer would see from the way they
staggered like newborn calves across the rolling deck that they were not
accustomed to life at sea.

    The
captain cursed as he struggled to reach round the huddle of men to grab a coil
of rope.

    'How
much longer must we sit here?' one of the men grumbled loudly.

    The
captain grabbed him by the shoulder. 'I told you, keep your mouth shut. Sound
travels across water.' He squinted over to the horizon where the pale sun was
sinking beneath the waves. 'Be a while yet before we get the sign, they'll not
risk crossing open water till it's good and dark. So you'd best settle down and
get some sleep. It'll be the last chance you'll have to close your eyes
tonight. Once you're on the move, your head will think your eyelids have been
hacked off.'

    Another
man grasped his shirt and whispered, 'They will come tonight, you're sure of
this?'

    'God's
bollocks, those sons of bitches had better be here. I I'm not hanging around with
you lot on board, that I can promise you.'

    The
man's eyes narrowed with anxiety. 'But if something happens to prevent —'

    'They'll
be here,' the captain said firmly, as if he was trying to pacify a child.
'They'll have had watchers posted ever since we sighted land. They'll not risk
leaving us here longer than they have to.'

    He
edged away and strode rapidly towards the bow, as if trying to put as much
distance as possible between him and his unwelcome cargo.

    The
men made pretence at closing their eyes, but Faramond knew they could no more
sleep than he could. It was not just the stiffness of their bodies, the hard
boards and the cold keeping them awake; God knows they were used to worse than
that. No, what would not let them rest was the fear of what might happen in the
next few hours, days and weeks. They'd had plenty of time to think during the
voyage,
and imagine too — imagine just what could happen to a man
trapped in a foreign land among his mortal enemies. Approach the wrong person
or betray yourself by the wrong word and death would be the least of your
troubles.

    It
was not for nothing that King John of Anjou was known far and wide as the worst
of the Devil's brood. Rumour abounded in France that John had ordered Hubert de
Burgh to castrate his sixteen-year-old nephew, Arthur, the rightful heir to
Anjou, and to gouge out his eyes as the lad lay chained and starving to death
in John's dungeon at Falaise. And when Hubert had refused, John had brought the
boy to his castle at Rouen and kept him imprisoned there. One night at Easter,
when John was drunk after dinner, he had slain his nephew with his own hand
and, tying a weighty stone to the corpse, had cast it into the River Seine. If
a man could so cruelly plot the murder of his own kin, the exquisite torture he
might devise for a French spy, before death mercifully released the victim, was
beyond any normal man's imagination.

    And
Faramond and his companions would be depending for their very lives on
strangers whose loyalty was at best dubious, for hadn't they already betrayed
their own king? A man who might have been on your side yesterday could just as
easily betray you tomorrow. Some men change their allegiances swifter than
birds in flight change direction.

    Yet,
as Faramond had tried so hard to convince his beloved wife, this was a just
war, a noble cause to depose a wicked tyrant. Even the Pope had denounced him.
Any man who rid the world of King John, an enemy of God and the Holy Mother
Church, would be assured of the papal blessing. Of course, the Pontiff had not
said as much in so many words, but his meaning was clear to all, and thus it
followed that any man who helped to depose this tyrant would be blessed by God
Himself.

    Faramond
had repeated these arguments to himself as he lay awake on the tossing ship,
retching over and over again. G
od was on their side.
And now, sick with
fear at what the coming hours would hold, he tried to remind himself of that
again, but he knew all the tricks of rhetoric and he could not convince himself
this was God's work as easily as he could persuade others. All he could think
of, as he sat shivering on that deck, was capture, humiliation, torture and
then . . .

    
St
Julian and all the saints, I beseech you protect me.
He patted at the front
of his tunic, feeling for the small silver reliquary containing a tiny fragment
of the bone of St Julian of Brioude pinned beneath a piece of polished rock
crystal. His wife had sold all the jewels she owned to buy the relic, so
desperate was she to keep her husband safe.

    One
of the deckhands who had been keeping watch frantically beckoned to the
captain, who was at his side in an instant, peering out towards the land. It
was dark now and only the tiny red rubies of flame strung across the rise above
the marshes marked out the village fires. The deckhand was pointing at
something out on the marsh, and the captain nodded. He raised a lantern,
allowing the light to shine out over the rail before lowering it hastily,
repeating the signal several times in quick succession.

    Then,
sidling across to where Faramond and the other men sat, he shook the nearest
man awake.

    'Boats
are on their way. So be ready to move quickly. And not a sound, not till they
tell you it's safe. The marsh has many ears.'

    As
quietly as they could, Faramond and the others fastened their cloaks ready, and
checked for the hundredth time that their scrips and bundles were securely
fastened. They were travelling light, no papers, only a few spare clothes, and
a bite or two to eat. They carried nothing which could slow them down if they
had to run, except the round flat silver ingots strapped to their chests inside
their shirts. Those were cumbersome, and already chafing the skin. But they
were indispensable; men would have to be paid and paid well.

    The
captain, motioning them to keep low, beckoned them across to the gap in the
rail, where a rope ladder was already
being rolled out. Faramond was so
stiff from the cold he could hardly stand up, never mind keep his balance on
the rolling deck. In the end he dropped to his knees and crawled across it.
Reaching the safety of the rail, he crouched, peering through the gap.