Devil's Lair (11 page)

In her dream she saw a man
crowned with a circlet of leaves. He held a spear, which he gave to a
blindfolded knight whose face she knew.
Marco.
The knight took up the spear. The first
man faded. The tip of the spear began to glow with a Heavenly light. Behind
Marco flowed a river of fire. Behind the river loomed a wall of grey stone and
an iron gate. The knight wore no helm, no chestplate, no vambrace, no greaves.
Sweat ran in rindles down his neck. He turned to face the darkness and fought
with a monster veiled in shadow. From the darkness came a sound like the
hissing of a snake—

Nadja opened her eyes.

The dream fell away, but the
hiss continued.

Snake.

She lay on her back and
listened. The snake was near her feet. Dead leaves scratched against reptilian
skin as the serpent approached.

It was night. The woods were
dark. She did not smell the ash of the campfire, only the fusty air of the
forest, spiced with the scent of urine. Her kirtle was wet. She remembered
stepping away from the camp to make her water in the woods. The falling dream
had seized her.

The snake was on her left
side. Its cold skin slid against her small toe. Nadja felt along the ground
with her right hand and found a stone. She gripped it. She stomped her left
foot down on the snake, then rolled, the stone clutched in her fist, and
brought the weight down hard on the serpent’s body and then the head, and
again, and again.

By the time Giovanni
arrived, the reptile’s head was pulp. “Nadja,” he said, taking her shoulders in
his hands.

She dropped the stone and
remembered to breathe. He helped her to her feet. When he saw the mangled
snake, he questioned her with a glance.

“First catch of the day,”
she said.

His laughter kindled hers.

Marco sat chewing hard bread
and washing it down with sips of small wine. He saw Nadja approach with
something in her hands.

“Morning,” she said with an
easy smile.

The knight repacked his
rations. “Aren’t you afraid?”

“Should I be?”

Marco stood, slapping crumbs
from his tunic. “You were kind to me, and I hurt you.”

She offered him a large flat
leaf with cooked meat on it. “A theriac,” she said. “Snake meat and herbs. It
will make you stronger.”

Marco accepted it with a
nod. “Thank you.” He held the meat under his nose. It smelled like...what?
Smoked
lamprey.
He ate it with
his fingers. “Good cook,” he mumbled.

“I cooked for a family in
Munich,” she said. “A cook and a maid and a wetnurse.”

This surprised him. “You
have a child?” he asked, but when he saw her face he regretted the question.
“I’m sorry.”

She shook her head and
studied the ground. If the girl did not want to speak of it, he would not pry.
Instead, he ate the remainder in silence.

As he licked his fingers
clean, the girl said, “It will protect you from snakebite.”

“I have not been bitten by a
snake.”

“You will be.”

Nadja walked off, leaving
Marco to wonder at her words.

Giovanni heard a rustling in
the woods and glanced up from his book to see Nadja walking back to camp. He
returned to his reading and did not hear the attackers until it was too late.

A startled cry alerted him.
Two men had grabbed Nadja from behind. Four others broke from the shadows and
rushed the spot where Giovanni sat with William. One, wearing a breastplate,
hurtled the fire and nearly landed in the poet’s lap, but Giovanni rolled and
scrambled away, then got to his feet and made a valiant effort to flee, dodging
tree trunks and ducking branches before the soldier tackled him, pinned him to
the ground, mashed his face into the earth, grabbed his hair, yanked his head
up, and put a cold blade to his throat. Giovanni knew instantly he was going to
die. It took a little longer to discover he was wrong.

They dragged him back by the
scruff of his tunic and forced him to sit with a cold blade under his chin and
a bony knee against his spine. The soldier bit Giovanni’s earlobe, a quick nip.
The poet felt his own blood cooling on his neck.

A whisper roared in his ear:
“Hop again and I’ll roast you like a bunny.” The man’s breath smelled of rotted
teeth.

There were seven of them,
all men. Two were dressed like soldiers. The others looked like field hands,
sunbaked and brawny. They were young—three about Nadja’s age—but
the bandit leader was at least as old as Giovanni’s father’s: loose skin and
grey hair and dark eyes that withered you with a look.

“She’s a sport,” said the
one holding Nadja.

“I could use a little
sport,” said another.

The leader said, “Down,
dog.”

A third bandit searched the
pilgrims, taking particular interest in what Nadja’s kirtle might reveal.
Giovanni’s satchel was upended, his books and papers scattered. His relic pouch
was emptied and flung aside.

“We have no money,” said
William.

The leader slapped him
across the face, then cut the pouch from William’s rope belt. “I’m not afraid
to kill a monk.”

“I’m a friar, not a monk.”

The leader slapped him
again. He pulled the glass lentil from William’s pouch. “What’s this?”

“A piece of glass,” said
William.

“What’s it for?”

“For you, if you want it.”

The leader tossed it aside.
The glass lentil smacked against a rock and shattered. The man pulled out the
vial of oil from the pouch. “And this?”

“
Oleum infirmorum.
”

Another slap.

“Holy oil,” said William.
“To anoint the sick.”

The leader opened the vial
and drank it. “I feel better already.” He tossed it aside. “You a priest?”

“Would you like to make your
confession?”

Slap.

Another man said, “If you’re
a priest, where are your bags of gold?”

“I took a vow of poverty.”

The bandit leader looked at
Giovanni’s rich clothes. “What about him?”

“I took a vow of poetry,”
Giovanni said. “It is much the same.”

Slap.

“No money,” one of the men
reported, “but a bit of food.”

“They got a girl,” said
another.

The leader grinned. “Then we
won’t go hungry.”

They threw Nadja to the
ground. She kicked and fought and screamed. Four men wrestled with her as the
leader watched. The two soldiers held Giovanni and William back. The rough gang
pulled off Nadja’s kirtle and chemise. They shoved her naked onto the road,
pinning her there with her limbs splayed, one man anchoring each arm and leg.

Giovanni struggled against
his captive. The leader punched the poet in the nose. Giovanni’s world went
dim. He shook his head and tasted blood. When he looked up again, he saw the
youngest bandit kneeling between Nadja’s legs with his proud flesh exposed. The
leader shoved the younger man aside to take the first turn.

“God will punish you for
this,” said William.

The leader bellowed his
amusement. “Your god is dead.”

He dropped his hose and
raised his tunic. His hand groped the blonde tuft between Nadja’s legs. “Damn,
woman.” He tossed something aside: a tatter of wool blotted with blood.
Giovanni saw it land on the road. A wooden peg bounced from the rag and rolled
in the dirt like a severed finger.

The bandit leader spit on
his hand, pulled at his limp cock, and slapped it against Nadja’s thighs until
his manhood stiffened. He grabbed her ass to elevate her hips and laughed as he
entered her. He hollered and sang as he savaged the girl. The others laughed
along. They did not hear the warning sounds, the scuff of boots running on the
road.

Giovanni saw the dull flash
of a rusty sword, then the face of the man who held it: one cheek scalded by
the sun.

Marco ran to where the girl
lay screaming. He held the sword in both hands, raised high. Closing with the
rapist, he swung the blade in a level strike at the man’s neck. The blade did
not win through but lodged itself in bone and flesh and cartilage. The force of
the blow threw the rapist from the girl, knocking him sideways. Blood burst
from the man’s neck. The falling body took the sword with it to the ground, the
hilt slipping from Marco’s hand.

The knight reclaimed his
sword by pressing the heel of his boot under the dead man’s chin and pulling
hard on the hilt. The neck yawned, spouting red mist as the sword came free.
Blood streamed off the tapered end like water from a wet dog’s tail.

The soldier who held
Giovanni shoved him forward and scampered for safety. The other men fled in
competition with the first. Marco went for them, slicing the breastplated
soldier at the back of his knees. The soldier dropped like a penitent and
toppled over. Marco chased down the others.

Giovanni heard the soldier
moan, and felt his own bile rise. The poet staggered to his feet, picked up a
stone, and went in a fury to the fallen man. The man wore a breastplate but no
helm. Giovanni pounded the man’s face with the stone until his hands were
bloody to the wrist. Then he sat back, exhausted.

The man was still alive. His
left eye had burst, oozing a clear jelly like fat tears. His left cheek was
shattered. His lips were impaled on loose grey teeth. As he rasped and groaned,
blood bubbled up from the mangled maw. Giovanni knew he should end it, but the
bloodlust had abandoned him and he no longer had the will.

A shadow loomed across the
body. The poet looked up to see Marco sheath his wet blade, then draw the
dagger.

“A soldier,” Marco observed.
“He might have known me. Now he won’t survive the sunset.”

Marco offered Giovanni the
dagger’s hilt: the same dagger he had stolen a few days before.

The poet shook his head.
“Yours now. You do it.”

Marco knelt over the dying
man to deliver the misericord. The breastplate protected the soldier’s chest,
so Marco raised the man’s left arm to expose the armpit. He pressed the point
of the blade between the upper ribs and plunged it straight through to the
heart.

The next day, when they came
upon a rivulet that crossed the road, the pilgrims stopped to drink their fill
and replenish their flasks. Nadja went downstream to wash herself. Marco
offered to protect her, but she sent him back to the others. She did not want
to look at him now, and did not want him to look at her.

Finding a quiet place where
only God could see her, Nadja squatted over the beck and washed between her
legs. The rapist had not spilled his seed inside her, she thought, but she had
been proven wrong before. This time she needed to be sure. She cleaned her
loins as best she could, then washed her face and her hair. After letting her
clothes fall to her feet, she rinsed her kirtle in the water and used it as a
wet rag to scrub herself all over. She did not stop until her skin was pink and
sore.

From her bag of herbs she
took three peppercorns and ground them into a powder between two rocks. She
tore a tatter from her wet gown and rolled it in the black powder until the
cloth was covered with pepper. Nadja squeezed this pessary into a tight ball
and inserted it into her vagina as deep as it would go, then she put her
clothes back on and sat on the grass, with her feet in the water, and wept for
the child she would never see again.

CHAPTER 12

The town of Corona Corvina
sequestered itself behind a thick wooden wall on a mountainside overlooking a
cliff. As William climbed the steep grade leading up to the gate, he saw the
chapel’s roof peeping over the enceinte and the crucifix piercing the sky.

“Father Ignazio sheltered us
on our way south,” he said to Marco, who now led the company. “A good man.”

“With good wine,” Giovanni
added, walking behind them with Nadja. The donkey followed, saddled with packs.
The poet clenched tight the reins in his hand, as if the beast were his last
worldly possession, and William noted again how the lust for property led men
to fear and despair.

Marco no longer wore his
bandage. His wound was nearly healed. William had never seen such a fast
recovery. Marco’s sunburn had faded as the rest of his skin bronzed; it took a
discerning eye to see where the old color bled into the new. The knight did not
limp as before, but marched at a pace that winded the others. Killing the
bandits had renewed his confidence. He seemed to gain strength from the death
of other men.

When they arrived at Corona
Corvina, the double doors were closed. No guards stood at the gate, no men on
the watchtowers.

“Hello!” cried William.

No one answered.

Marco knocked with the flat
of his hand, then with the hilt of his sword. The double doors rattled under
the blows. The group waited, calling out from time to time and listening for an
answer that did not come. The town was silent behind its walls. Losing
patience, Marco slid his sword between the doors and lifted the latch on the
other side, but the latch fell back into place again. On the second attempt he
caught the point of the blade under the latch, then pushed it forward so the
wood fell free. He opened the doors and the pilgrims entered.