The Priest of Blood (16 page)

I could not estimate the days I had been in my dark prison, but it seemed an eternity. I can also guess that I had been somewhat cared for, even in the barrel, for I no longer wore my breeches and tunic, but was dressed as if for a pauper’s grave in a cloth that barely covered my loins. Clothes were brought—these were not as fine as the ones I’d had, but once I washed up more, another servant threw a proper tunic and shoes to me.

The Emperor didn’t treat his servants badly, nor did he dress me as someone who would go to work for him. Instead, he pointed to a great ship in the harbor. I gathered from his motions and a word here or there that I would be taking a long voyage.

When I had regained some strength, he secured the shackles at my ankles; all the while I was too weak to struggle against this. I accepted my fate. I would never see Alienora again. I would never see the baron’s castle upon the hillside. Or the marshes that guarded my beloved Forest. Nor would I be able to help my younger brothers or sisters. All was lost.

My mother’s ashes floated above me as gray clouds moving eastward.

I looked to the ship, which was being loaded with cargo and on which I saw others like me, hapless youths being sent off to some unknown fate.

On shipboard, with the Emperor working beneath the commanding officer, I was soon in yet another darkness: the hold of the ship, crowded by more youths and men, many of whom spoke my language. I learned of tales of sorrows of the younger boys, sent or kidnapped, as was I, or enlisted if they sought fortune in the wide world. We were headed toward Byzantium, or the Holy Land, or faraway end-of-the-Earth countries with names that could not be uttered in our own languages. We would fight for the Pope and for the king and for the glory of Sir Ranulf, a rich knight who desired to fulfill a Crusade to stamp out a heresy in a southern city that was not yet occupied. We were not to be Crusaders, or gain wealth ourselves, although this was the mythology that many of my companions had on that long and arduous journey east. The Emperor had been, I learned, a pirate of sorts, but had discovered the Savior on an island in Greece and had determined to serve him in this way: by enslaving and kidnapping and bringing into the Lord’s Service those youths who would bring him the most coin.

2

While I had many adventures aboard that ship, and I saw a boy of fourteen cut the throat of a man of twenty, most of the journey was tedious and without horizon. We ate hard, salty bread, and drank what tasted like bilge water. I grew sick some days from the sea’s motion, as did many of my companions. One man threw himself from the ship, taking his shackled companion with him, willing to drown rather than continue the journey. But I remained hopeful—not of the foreign land upon which I would set foot, but that my love for Alienora, and her love for me, would sustain the both of us through any trial that we would encounter, separately or together.

When we finally came into port, and our shackles were taken off, I had already accepted this new fate and this new world. I had begun believing that I was a servant of the Holy Cross, and that I must gain my fortune, however meager, from this endless war with the East in order to prove myself worthy of one so far above me as Alienora. I was not to be a mercenary soldier of the lowest caste, but one of the infantry, which was called a Badge of Honor by those above us in rank who took treasure and honor at will; but to us, being the infantry meant we were the unpaid slaves of a Holy War.

We would have no weapons but those we took on the battlefield from the dead infidel, and we would only find food and water after the knights and soldiers had their fills. Men talked incessantly of remission of sins and of the death of honor as a pilgrim-warrior, and there were monks who were handsome and bright who told those of us—some as young as eleven or twelve, in truth—that we were doing this for the honor of Jerusalem, which was the center of all Christendom, which the heathens of Satan had defiled and blasphemed for too long.

There were so-called papers of transmission and manumission from the baron, as well as a passage of armor. That was not to say I would be well armed, but the papers would be sent on to the Knights Hospitaller, to whom my baron sent me. I would never hope to be part of that Holy Brotherhood of Knights, but no doubt I would be doing some fighting on their behalf as a servant-soldier. As a bastard, my life would be fodder for the Glory of the Most High. My lot in life had been thrown in with other serf and peasant youth—our lives were part payment to some king from the baron. Other boys and youths like me had been sent off, as well, and I was overjoyed to see my companion Ewen Glyndon, the shepherd boy, among those in our group.

His face was dark with grime, and his hair a tangle of bird’s nest, but I recognized him through his eyes, which had not dimmed in their warmth. I could not believe that we might’ve been on the same long voyage and had been within arm’s reach of each other the whole time without recognizing each other at once. I embraced him as if he were a younger brother. I held him, wishing not to have to lose even the smell of him for a moment to this strange land and these strange people around us.

He laughed, and told me that he had been sent along on my passage by his own request. “Kenan Sensterre wished me gone, and I begged the baron’s daughter for help in this plight. She thought you had been murdered, but when she learned that you were to be sent to the Holy Land, she bade me kiss your cheek so that you would feel her love. I am here as her message to you. She will never forget you, Falconer. She will always seek your salvation and safe return.” Then Ewen pressed his lips near my ear by a wisp of hair that hung down from my scalp.

“Do not fear for her. She is safe,” he whispered. “She told me to let you know that there is a token of love she holds for you so that she might always remember you.”

I thought of Alienora and felt gladdened by all of this. I felt as if the Fates watched over me, and over my beloved, and Ewen was a messenger from them to let me know that the love between Alienora and me could not be ended by war or exile.

I did not appreciate, at the time, the great sacrifice Ewen had made for me, nor did I understand the full extent of his friendship; but if you have ever been sent to a foreign land, to face certain death if not hardship, and you had seen a familiar face, you, too, would keep that person at your side at every moment.

As I looked at other youths, similarly sent to soldiers, I realized that all of us who were from among the poor and subservient had the look of the vanquished upon us, no matter the land of our origin. We were payment for the debts of war. I have since learned that much of mankind’s security and comfort is built from such payments, and the wealth of many human nations has been built on the backs of such as I, sent off to fight without weapon in hand, for the glory of others. I counted myself, and Ewen, as lucky for having survived the trip with only a sense of the heaviness of the burden of life and the charge put to us to help with the bringing of the land of the Cross back under the holiness of Christendom.

I did not lose heart. Alienora’s face remained within my mind, and I felt as if I could speak to her in my dreams and she would hear me.

Nor did I lose hope when we docked and went overland some hundreds of miles or more, many of my fellow soldiers dying along a sunburned roadside, keeling over from fever or thirst or hunger. There was little in the way of supplies until we reached an encampment of Holy Knights at the outskirts of a stone castle called Kur-Nu. Many in my company were calling it the City of the Miracle, for it held a cloth that had touched the Lord’s face before the crucifixion. If you had told me that we were far away from Jerusalem, the center to our world then, I would not have known. Our commanders had told us that we were about the work of the Lord and of the Pope and of the kings of Christendom. We traveled to the south and east. On some days, over a mountain pass, I could see the blue of the distant sea.

I was young, still, and I believed more in goodness than I did in evil, despite what had happened with my mother, despite Corentin and his dark heart, and despite the betrayals I felt from my master, Kenan. I had lost a sense of justice, but I still believed that benevolence could come from the darkest shadow. After a skirmish along a trade road, in which we took camels and supplies from the infidel, and during which our commanders slaughtered every living enemy, I found myself with a weapon. I took up the sword offered to me—a double-edged broadsword that had belonged to one of the recently killed infidels we fought.

Ewen and I quickly learned how to wield it, as well as the mace, which was a weapon of the Saracens, though the knights would not then touch it, nor would the sergeant-brethren. Most of us in the infantry had daggers, another instrument of battle that the superior knights sneered at. Knights had the great swords with legendary names, blessed by saints and the Pope in Rome, passed down from king to knight with magical Christian properties. Those of us who would fight on foot simply had ordinary weapons, and I was honored to be given the broadsword, despite the fact that it was no use in spearing. Still, I learned to wield it, to cut and hack at the enemy, and my muscles built fast as if they’d been waiting for years to grow from my scrawny shoulders.

My waist narrowed even as my chest expanded, and the running and marching that we had to do during the campaigns and sieges built up my endurance. When the days were on fire, I ate little and fasted and prayed on the marches through the desert; but when we took an enemy encampment or came to a castle that already held Hospitallers, I ate better than I ever had. The Hospitallers, our patrons, knights and soldier-monks who were our masters in every way, promised that among us, even a serf could rise to become a sergeant-brethren if we proved ourselves in battle, and that to die while on this holy pilgrimage would mean immediate remission of sins and entrance into Heaven. Ewen and I both determined that we should use this Holiest of Crusades to make our fortune and take our place in the world.

I had, at last, become a man, and felt the blood of life within me as I never had before. The love of my brethren—the infantry as well as our decorated commanders, the Brethren and the Knights Hospitallers, and the banner of my own Duke of Brittany, who had offered his services to the crown of France and to Rome for this Crusade against the unholy of Byzantium and of the Holy Land, all brought my love of mankind back to me. We were one—a fighting force, and we lived and died together. I buried myself in our brief victories, finding the wenches of the foreign hordes to be as soft and delicate as the Breton women of home, although none made me forget my beloved, my sacred pain of love for Alienora de Whithors.

Ewen was not as good at battle as was I, so I always made sure to stand before him, and when we marched, I kept him to my side and a little back, so that if a blow were struck from nowhere, if the whistle of the arrows flew toward us, I might protect him. I was quick with the shield I had acquired, and even faster when it came to striking and turning and watching him even while I fought. Many of the youths were so young that they should not have been fighting, but the world was the way it was, and I watched many of our own die in Christian honor alongside the infidels that we slaughtered. Do not ask me too much of our military campaigns, for I was low in rank and took orders without understanding their nature. One of the monk-knights told us of our Christian Love, and how, in killing the enemy, we were bringing the love of our Savior to their souls, for in killing for the Holy, we brought the infidel into God’s embrace.

We heard from the brethren and knights of the Hospital that we must keep to the fires at night if we were at camp, for the tales of demons were rampant. They came in the dark and ran like wolves, grabbing the dying up in their jaws, taking them from where they lay before any could rescue them. We were told to stay near the banners and the great crosses that the monks kept, as well as with our fellow soldiers when the sun set. “These demons are sent by our unholy enemies,” a monk warned a group of us. “We must take in the sick and bury our dead before nightfall or risk such terrors.”

“Do they only take the dying?” I asked.

He looked at me with interest, as if he had not expected a question from anyone. “A strong youth could cut one down. They avoid the quick. I have been told that fire and the ax subdue them. I once watched one burn.”

His mention of burning made me ache for a reason of which I was not certain.

“I saw a demon once,” I told him. “In my home. I was a boy, and with several huntsmen, we drew it from a deep well. It had wings like a dragon.”

The monk smiled. “That I have never seen. These are weak demons, and the locals call them Ghul. Our prisoners fear the thought of them coming in the night. Devils are everywhere in this land, I’m afraid. We are bringing the light of God with us to chase them into the shadows forever.”

3

Within a few weeks, I had already seen battles and bloodshed. The Hospitallers had a reputation for caring for the sick, and so, after a battle, one of my many tasks was to find our men who had survived but were heavily wounded and carry them to the tents that were set up for the purposes of care. I often sat by with a rag to wipe at the blood from a countryman’s breast that had been savagely cut open, or to hold the oil lamp so that one of the brethren-at-arms might see better as he stanched the flow of vital fluids from a soldier. Despite my weariness and exhaustion, I felt an excitement about life I had never before known. I was lean and muscular, and nearly nineteen years on Earth. I had begun to prove that I was worthy of a higher station, and I had managed to rescue Ewen from close scrapes with death at the hands of the ungodly. When one particular battle was over, after a full day and night of attack against a walled city, during which the Knights Hospitallers and the Teutonic Knights brought their infantries together against an infidel stronghold, I looked through the terrible yellow-brown dust smoke, smoke from a fire we’d set to burn infidels in their place of worship.