Pillars of Light (47 page)

Quickfinger and Hammer both shook their heads. “But if it means getting out of here, I’ll learn bloody fast!” Quickfinger grabbed an oar and set about throwing up enormous jets of water with it, to little effect. We made an untidy job of getting into any rhythm, not helped by Hammer squatting in the bow, screaming at us to hurry. I could already see the danger: my eyes were trained on the quayside, where a dozen or so men were leaping into the little boats and coming after us, gaining all the time.

A huge splash a yard away sent a gout of water into our skiff as a lobbed rock just missed us. With a howl, Quickfinger dug his oar into the water as if hoeing carrots and immediately we skewed to the right and threatened to turn a complete circle.

“Give me your oar!” I roared at him and banished him to the stern. “Just lie low and don’t move!”

It was hard work but terror lent me strength, and soon we were out of range of missiles from the shore and heading towards the open sea and the Tower of Flies jutting out from the end of the breakwater. Beyond it lay three warships: surely one of these was the vessel detailed to pick us up. I checked our course over my shoulder and then put all my effort into the rowing, but even so, it seemed the thin, dark men in their small fishing boats were catching us stroke by stroke.

“Oh God!” cried Hammer a few minutes later.

“What?” There was a splash away to my left. “What was that?”

“Crossbow,” said Quicksilver succinctly.

I risked a look back and saw that we were heading too close to the tower. The red morning light twinkled on the helms of the men up on the tower battlements. This time I saw the crossbow raised, pointed right at me. It took every ounce of willpower I possessed to turn back to my task and ignore my coming death. I heard the quarrel whistling through the air towards me, and closed my eyes, even as I drove the oars into the water and heaved with all my might. There was a dull thud and a heavy vibration, and when I opened my eyes again a crossbow bolt stood in the stern between Quickfinger’s splayed feet.

“We’re never going to make it!” Hammer shouted. “Look, they’re gaining on us!”

Over Quickfinger’s shoulder I saw the little flotilla of boats coming right at us now, could make out the features of the two men in the leading skiff as they turned while they rowed, their sharp noses and dark beards jutting from beneath their head-wrappings.

With immense effort, I dug the right oar in and hit something hard. A rock? I stared down to see the dark outline of a massive chain just below the surface. The keel of our little boat grazed over it, and then we were free of it. My left oar skimmed the surface so that a silver feather of water flew off the top of the blade, and we skewed away from the Tower of Flies, across the bows of the pursuing boats and into the open water. I prayed the warships would see our plight and come for us, but they didn’t appear to have seen us.

“Take my turban!” I yelled at Quickfinger, who just stared at me, mouth open like an idiot. “Unwind it and wave it to attract their attention.”

I could see the nearest ship flew English colours, and that lifted my heart, but only for a moment, as there was a rough, shearing sound and a hole appeared in the cloth through which the sky shone for a second, and a clout of red fabric traced the arc of the crossbow bolt that then buried itself in the sea.

Quicksilver sat down again, looking ashen. And then suddenly there came a shout from the warship, and a moment later it was coming towards us, at a barely perceptible pace, until you saw the banks of oars rising and falling in what seemed from such distance a languid precision. I saw the men in the boats chasing us gesticulate and stop rowing; two even turned tail. Relief swept over me, but it was ill timed, for just as the warship hove into sight a bolt struck Quickfinger in the shoulder and knocked him overboard.

“Shit!” I shipped the oars and scrambled after him. There he was, just below the surface, yellow hair waving gently in the tide like some great sea anemone, a dark wash of blood blooming on the water. Bracing my chest on the side, I leaned over, reached down into the chill water, wrapped my fingers in his hair and hauled with all my might. Up he came like a cork out of a bottle, and as soon as he surfaced curses and water flew from his mouth with equal force. I did not let go. Together Hammer and I landed him like a huge fish. The bolt was lodged in the top of his shoulder. I didn’t think it would kill him, but he was paler than I had ever seen him.

Even so, as soon as he could reach it he swarmed up the rope ladder the warship dropped for us, using one hand and the crook of his elbow, and his feet like monkey’s hands, as if Paradise awaited at the top. Between us, Hammer and I managed to get the treasure sack, the cross and ourselves onto the ladder, despite the chop of the waves carrying the skiff away from under us, and the rope bucking and snaking like a live thing. Falling over the side of the ship onto that solid deck made me feel like weeping with relief.

This euphoria was not to last long. Barely had we confirmed our identity to the captain—a ruddy-faced man who stood as foursquare as a bear set to worry terriers—when there was a scream of “ ’Ware Greek fire!”

Looking up, I saw one of the warship’s great sails catch, and within seconds it was blazing with a heat so fierce I could feel it
scald my face half the deck away. The captain ordered men up the mast to cut the sail down and dump it overboard, but it was already too late: the flames were running from top to bottom of the sheet, ravenously searching for more solid fuel to feed upon. I saw a man beat at the fire that touched the deck and come away with his hands aflame, then his face and hair as he beat at himself in panic. The sail came crashing down a moment later, to be shovelled overboard, along with a sailor caught up in the lines and burning like a torch, and suddenly all was mayhem.

We had come within range of the Tower of Flies’ ballistas: the soldiers of the Muslim garrison were hurling fire pots at us—no doubt delighted to have a target to aim for after weeks of inactivity—and now two more landed, spraying their lethal contents across the deck.

“Sand!” the captain roared. Men staggered across the deck to spill sacks of sand over the tarry mixture, but although it smothered the flames for a few seconds, nothing could quench them. They burned with a salty sea-flame—green-blue, blue-green—

“Christ!” I experienced a sudden hallucinatory flashback of the smell of burned chemicals.

Quicksilver turned a questioning face to me.

“That green smoke we saw around the Muslim cavalry galloping towards the city? I’ve seen it before. Remember those experiments on the road to Exeter?” In my mind’s eye I saw the Moor blowing on his chemical compounds, coaxing them to life as they cast weird green light on the sharp planes of his beautiful face.

Quicksilver’s expression was a picture of amazement. “The Moor! Well fook me sideways,” he said at last. “Now that’s what I call a reet good miracle.”

There was a scream behind us. Turning, I saw the green flames bursting back into greedy red life, and soon there were holes in the planking through which you could glimpse the lower deck and the
rowers beneath, screaming and scrambling as gobbets of the Greek fire dripped down upon them.

The captain sent men to whip them back to work. “If we don’t move out of range we will all perish!” he shouted at them, but the sight of the enemy fire eating its way through everything it came in contact with was too terrifying for logic to prevail, and within minutes all the rowers had abandoned their oars and were running in all directions, many with their clothes and hair afire. The stench took me back to that day on the battering ram when Acre’s defenders had rained Greek fire down on us. At least on solid ground there had been somewhere to run—as Quickfinger had done—but here there was only the sea, a great stretch of deep, dark water, between us and the other warships, who were keeping their distance. And even that wasn’t safe, for where the fire pots hit and shattered, the liquid they contained merely floated on the surface and burned and burned, creating murderous islands of fire that crept to join with one another.

Soon there were men choosing the sea over the doomed ship. I saw that those who dived off in order to swim beneath the burning surface and come up farther out survived. But I knew I could not do it.

Hammer had no such hesitation. Without a word he clambered up onto the side and leapt off, vanishing from sight beneath the inky waves below.

Quickfinger turned a long, lugubrious face towards me, and with his good arm reached for my hand. “You saved my life, John. For about ten minutes.” He gave me his lopsided grin. Then he reached into the treasure sack, selected a likely piece and stuffed it down inside his tunic. “Come on, lad. Time for another unlikely escape.”

“I can’t swim.”

“Hold on to me. Reckon I can swim well enough for two, even wi’ only one arm.”

I shook my head. “I’ll drown us both.” I mustered a wobbly smile. “You go.”

He regarded me sadly. “Aye, well, I’ll see thee in Paradise, John. It’s been … interesting.”

And then he was gone with a great splash. The dandelion head showed for a moment amid the roiling water and smoke, and then sank without trace. I strained my eyes to watch for his re-emergence somewhere beyond the chaos but saw nothing.

The hills of the far land stretched hazy and serene beneath a blue sky indifferent to the fates of men. Somewhere up there was the Moor. My heart yearned towards him with such force I almost cried out. Had I been able to fly, I would have made my way up there as fast as an arrow, calling his name. Except that I did not know his name. The absurdity of that almost made me laugh, even as I raked those distant hills with my helpless gaze. But at that moment a great cloud of choking black smoke came billowing up from the lower decks and engulfed me, obscuring my view like a personal message: I would never see him again, not in this life.

Why had I not followed him that day in Rye? I should have gone with him, wherever he went, told him my feelings could not be denied, that I would travel to the ends of the earth just to be by his side. I had not understood my heart then, fool that I was. But I understood it now. It was love—pure and simple—and I had been too weak to see it, too much of a coward to embrace the truth.

Tears burned. My life had been a lie from start to finish. I masqueraded as a man, but really I was just a wild creature taken off the moors. I walked in clothes and spoke the words men used, but I was no more than a shaved beast. I had lied and faked and led my troupe to an evil war and then to their deaths, one by one, and for what? A dream of treasure and misplaced glory: lies, both. I had let myself be pushed and pulled by the tides of men and had failed simply to turn and say “no” before it was too late. I would never
see any of them again—Saw or Ned or Will, Mary, Quicksilver, Hammer and Ezra. Savaric and Reginald. And finally, always, the one to whom my thoughts turned last thing at night and first in the morning: the Moor. And I had no one but myself to blame.

Well, there was no time for regrets now. Now I would give my lying corpse up to the tides not of men but of the great sea itself. And in my arms, the greatest lie of all: a portion of Christendom’s greatest fake.

I clambered awkwardly overboard, clutching the relic close—at least its weight would carry my soul straight to the bottom—and reminded myself that drowning was said to be a fair death if you didn’t fight it. Certainly it had to be better than burning alive. I fixed my mind on the memory of a pair of laughing, half-moon eyes and jumped.

The sea hit me like a cold wall, driving all the breath out of me. Then the water closed over my head and tried to press itself in through my mouth and nose. Burning above; burning within. I took one last look upwards in that strange, cold, dark green world.

Overhead, the hull of the ship was a great black whale, and the fiery waves a flare of orange like the promise of Heaven.

Z
ohra brushed a hand across Nathanael’s curly black hair. Such a thrill to touch him again, a private heaven to feel him warm and breathing, when she had thought him dead.