The Gallows Curse (74 page)

    She
wasn't even aware that she was talking. But somehow all of the events of that
evening spilled out of her as if she was a fractured pot and couldn't hold
anything in.

    
Why
couldn't I kill him? Why didn't he die?
She was drowning in a thousand
terrors: that Osborn would come looking for her; that she had failed Gytha;
that her child would be cursed; that she would never find her son again; that
Athan would never rest in his grave. And yet the only question that her mind
could cling to was — why couldn't I kill him? Why? Why?

    Raffaele
took her frozen hands in his, chafing them to warm them. 'You couldn't kill
him, Elena, because you don't know how. You've never killed anyone.'

    'But
Hugh and Raoul... I killed them. And they're dead.'

    Raffaele
looked earnestly into her face. 'But you didn't kill them. I know now who did,
and you must trust me, it wasn't you. You only dreamt of their deaths, as you
said all along.'

    'But
the mandrake ... I used the mandrake to help me see the dreams clearer. And it
was clear. I was in a church. There was a man lying on the floor, stabbed, and
his face, his eyes had been put out. There was a monk too ... he was begging me
not to defile the holy place.'

    Raffaele
frowned. 'But Hugh wasn't stabbed in a church.'

    'Then
who was?' Elena said. 'Someone was. I saw them.'

    An
expression of horror slowly dawned in Raffaele's eyes. He drew his hands away
and covered his face. He was moaning, and for a moment or two Elena thought he
was crying. She lightly touched his bent head.

    'Raffaele,
the man I dreamed about. Did I kill him too? You know, don't you? You know who
it was.'

    For a
few minutes he didn't answer her, then he began to speak, staring not at her
but at his hands.

    'I
think what you saw, was not what
would
happen, but what
did
happen four years ago. Gerard and I ... you must understand we had no choice
... or perhaps we did. Can any man really blame another for making him do what
he knows to be a crime against God? You didn't dream about what you would do,
but what we had already done.'

    'But
I saw myself doing it,' Elena protested. 'I was there. I saw the knife in my
own hands.'

    Raffaele
stared up at her, his face stricken with anguish. 'Do you remember the first
day I brought you to the Lady Anne? She asked you to eat and drink from a
chest. You remember that?'

    Elena
nodded. 'The day before her son died.'

    'When
you came into that chamber, Gerard was already dead. I'd put his body into the
chest. The food was laid out for you on top of it and you ate from it. Bread
and salt, as I asked you to.'

    Elena's
eyes had widened in fear. Her throat was closing up so tightly it was as if a
hand was pressing its fingers tightly around her neck.

    'But...
to take bread and salt that has laid above a corpse, that means you take the
dead person's sin upon you! You tricked me . . . you tricked me into becoming a
sin-eater!'

    She
threw back the chair and frantically paced the chamber, wiping her hands up and
down her kirtle as if the blood had seeped back over them again.

    Raffaele
struggled up too. 'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, but I couldn't let Gerard die in
mortal sin. I swore to him I would not. I owed him my freedom, my life,
everything. He was like a brother to me, more than a brother.'

    Elena
turned to him, blazing with anger. 'But you let me carry his sin. How could
you? If it was so terrible, how could you make me carry it?'

    'I
swear on my life, I truly believed it couldn't hurt you. You were a virgin,
pure and untouched. You could not be hurt by it.' Raffaele's hands hung limply
at his side like a helpless child's.

    Elena
stared at the wax dripping from the candle. 'A virgin, but ... I wasn't. I'd
slept with Athan for the first time the night before. That was the night ... he
got me with child. What have you done, Raffaele?' she screamed at him. 'What
have you done to me and my baby and to Athan'

    'I
didn't know. I swear I didn't know. You're the last person on this earth I
would hurt. If I'd thought for one moment. . .'

    'But
you didn't think. You didn't. You let me carry it. You made me carry it. You
made me a murderer.' Her head snapped up and she stared at him. 'My dream about
my baby, hurting my baby, was that also what Gerard did?'

    Raffaele
lifted his head, bewilderment mingling with his pain. 'But there was no baby in
the monastery at Montauban. I don't understand . . . tell me, tell me what you
saw.'

    'I
was in a room, there was cloth hanging everywhere and baskets full of it. A
store room, but round, not square. I could hear a babe crying. I was angry, so
angry that they were hiding it from me. When I found it, I just wanted to kill
it. I dashed it against the wall. Night after night, I dreamed I was killing
that little bairn. I thought... I really believed that was what I was going to
do to my own son. That's why I gave him to Gytha, to keep him safe, so that I
couldn't hurt him.'

    Raffaele
sank back on to the stool. He was murmuring to himself, so softly that Elena
could hardly make out the words.

    'This
cannot be. The Church promised us that if we took the Cross every sin we had
committed before the Holy Wars and while we fought them would be instantly
forgiven, wiped out as if they had never been. They promised. He was an
infidel. An unbeliever. It was a holy slaying, a righteous act. The Church
swore that we were forgiven.'

    'What?'
Elena demanded. 'Was there a baby? Did Gerard murder a baby? Tell me, I have to
know. I have to know it wasn't me.'

    Raffaele
wrapped his arms over his head, then let them fall helplessly. 'Yes, there was
a baby, many babies. But this one, this was not like the others. You have to
understand ... it was war. Men do things in war . . . things that they would
never . . . good men . . .'

    His
face convulsed as if he was trying not to cry, and it took several moments
before he could continue.

    'Some
months after Gerard's father set sail to fight under Richard in the Holy Land,
Gytha came to Gerard and told him that the spirits had warned her that his
father was in danger and was calling for his son to help him. Lady Anne pleaded
with him not to go, but Gerard was adamant. He would not fail his father, he
said.

    'As
soon as Gerard arrived, he sought out Osborn to whom his father owed
allegiance, thinking to find him fighting under his command. Osborn told Gerard
he was too late. His father was dead. The sappers had been tunnelling under the
city walls to weaken them, Talbot was one of them, but the Saracens were
burrowing out the other way, using the tunnels to attack under the cover of the
Greek fire which the defenders were hurling from the city ramparts.

    'Gerard's
father had been close by the wall when one of the Saracen raiding parties broke
out from the tunnels under the cover of smoke. He was last seen fighting them
off, but then he disappeared. That night they searched for his body, but they
had little hope of finding it. Many corpses were so badly burned or crushed it
was impossible to distinguish one man from another. Even the chevrons and
emblems that distinguished knight from foot solider were burned or torn away.
The best that could be done was to bury the remains of the dead in mass graves,
but at least they had priests aplenty to say Masses for their souls.

    'Gerard
was grief-stricken by his father's death. He blamed himself for not having
arrived sooner, but he vowed to finish what his father had begun and so we
joined Richard's army.

    'A
few days after we arrived, Acre surrendered. Richard set tough terms. He vowed
to spare the lives of all those in the city, if Saladin would give him two
hundred thousand golden pieces and release the fifteen hundred Christian
prisoners he held. As a pledge of faith, Richard let many of the ordinary men
in the city depart in safety with their wives and children, but he kept two
thousand of the more prominent men and their families hostage until Saladin
should meet his demands.

    'But
Saladin refused to hand over the men and money on the appointed day. Some said
he had already killed the Christian prisoners, others that he had sent word
that he couldn't yet raise the full sum of money demanded, and was asking for
more time. Who can tell which was the truth? I only know that these two great
leaders could not come to terms, so Richard gave the order that every hostage
in the city was to be slain.

    'Gerard
and I were mercifully spared the task of actually slaughtering the captives,
instead we were sent to drive them out of the city, so that they could be
executed in plain sight of Saladin's camp. We were ordered to go from house to
house and drive them to the gates of the city. The men were bound and led out
like slaves, the women and children left to walk behind or, if they refused,
lashed together with ropes and dragged out. Beyond the walls we could hear the
screams and wails as Richard's men herded them together. The men they dragged
to their knees and struck off their heads; the women and children they ran
through with swords and pikes.

    'It
was late in the afternoon when we came to a house on the far side of the city.
We were exhausted, sodden with sweat and maddened by the flies that crawled
over every stone in that city. A man ran out of the house and knelt before
Gerard. He seemed to be trying to tell us his name was Ayaz. He had a cloth in
his hands and he opened it up to show Gerard. He'd evidently bundled up
anything of value he possessed — his wife's jewels, tiny silver cups, coins and
other trinkets. He begged Gerard to take them all in exchange for their lives.
Gerard refused, but Ayaz continued to plead. He laid the cloth at Gerard's
feet, picking up handfuls of the gold and silver, trying to thrust them into
Gerard's hand.

    'Gerard
was wearily pushing them away. Then suddenly he froze, staring at one of the
objects in his hand.

    '
"My father's ring!" he cried. He held up a gold ring with a single
pearl held in place by a knot of gold. "This is my father's ring. Where
did you get it?"

    'But
the man couldn't understand him.

    'Gerard
pushed the ring in his face. "Where! Where!" he was shouting.

    'Ayaz
kept shaking his head in incomprehension, then finally he shrugged and drew his
finger across his throat to show he had taken it from a dead man, a murdered
man. I heard Gerard gasp and turned to look at him. An expression of horror and
rage was spreading across his face. Gerard had realized that it was this very
Saracen grovelling before him who had slain his beloved father; the father he
had arrived too late to save.

    'With
a scream of grief and fury that seemed to rip heaven itself apart, Gerard
lifted his sword, then stabbed it into the Saracen's heart. Ayaz dropped where
he still knelt, a look of utter bewilderment on his face. Gerard, pausing only
to draw out his blade, ran into the house. I followed hard on his heels. Ayaz's
wife lay dead inside, a bloody knife in her hands. She had stabbed herself
rather than be taken alive. Gerard was beside himself with rage. He ran from
room to room searching everywhere. He was sure she had hidden her children and
he was determined that not a single child of his father's murderer should
remain alive to carry on that infidel's name.

    'But
though he searched every conceivable nook and chamber, he could not find
another person in the house. Then he heard a baby crying. He followed the sound
and eventually found the infant hidden in a basket under a pile of linen. I
watched him pick the baby boy up by the feet. I shouted at him to stop, and he
turned to face me, the infant dangling from his hands.

    '
"And let him grow up to slaughter other good Christian men?"

    'His
voice was harsh and bitter. I'd never heard him speak like that before, it was
as if another man was speaking through his mouth. It wasn't him, I know it
wasn't him. Then, as if he was killing a fish, he dashed the baby's head as
hard as he could against the white wall.

    'I
was horrified. But I don't know why I should have been. We both knew the child
would be slaughtered anyway by Richard's men outside the wall. You could say
what Gerard did was more merciful, for at least the child died instantly. If it
had been thrown into the melee outside, fallen beneath the bodies of terrified
men and women, or been hacked at by the exhausted, frenzied stabbing of
Richard's men, the infant might have taken hours to die in pain. But it was the
shock of seeing Gerard, that good, noble, brave man, commit such an act that
rocked the foundations of all that I knew and loved about him. It was an
indelible stain which seemed to haunt him from the moment the deed was done.