Solomon Kane (5 page)

The pair of them were built like bulls. One was as tattooed as any tribesman. His skin was a chaos of flaming colour, as if, Kane thought, he was dissatisfied with the form God had given him. The other man was adorned with a beard that he must have spent vain hours braiding. He bore a staff much like Kane’s, which was resting against a log opposite the slope. As the two men stalked across the glade they brought a smell of decay with them, perhaps from the sodden leaves they were trampling. They halted within arm’s length of Kane as if challenging him to defend himself, and peered with a parody of interest at his face. “What’s this we’ve found in the woods?” the tattooed man said.

“Doesn’t look at home here,” the bearded man remarked.

“Doesn’t look like it would be anywhere,” said the voice closest to Kane’s ear.

Kane smelled breaths like the drains of a tavern – alcohol mixed with stale meat. The men’s eyes glittered with anticipation, and it was clear that staying silent would not help him. “I want no trouble,” he said.

“That’s a pity.” The bearded man seemed pleased with Kane’s answer. “You’ve got it,” he said and swung his staff with both hands at Kane’s midriff.

The handle caught Kane in the stomach, driving all his breath out of him. A wave of nausea surged through him, and he collapsed to his knees. The spectacle appeared to enliven the crows, which flapped as though they were applauding, but it failed to satisfy the tattooed man, who thumped Kane with great force on the back of the neck. This too was audibly appreciated by the crows, and it knocked Kane over. As he lay on the frozen ground with his knees drawn up – he might have been enacting the helplessness of a child yet to be born – the man with the knife stepped into view, sheathing his weapon. He was bald by choice, and his pate looked as raw with the elements as his broad sullen face. He considered Kane’s state for some moments before adding a vigorous kick in the ribs.

The breath that Kane had managed to recapture abandoned him, making way for another onslaught of nausea. One of the crows greeted the kick with a caw that could have been mistaken for a mirthless laugh. The three men stood over Kane as if they were pondering how next to cripple him, and Kane could only reflect as he struggled to regain his breath that Christ had suffered worse on his behalf. For the present the trio seemed content with Kane’s condition, and they turned away to find what they could steal.

The bearded man grabbed the bag from beside Kane’s staff and inverted it. The Bible fell out first, followed by a packet of bread and cheese, and the scrolls Kane had studied at the monastery. A few coins rolled across the leaves, and the tattooed man crouched ape-like to claim them. The bald man tore open the packet of food as
his bearded companion shoved a large fist into the bag and groped deep before heaving it wider to stare within. “Nothing,” he complained, and his fellows took up the refrain while a crow added a caw. “He’s got nothing worth lifting,” the bearded man declared, and scowled at the Bible before glowering at Kane. “You a priest?” he said like an accusation.

Kane wished he were entitled to the name, even if it would not save him. He gathered his strength and levered himself to his knees. He might have been at his prayers or awaiting a headsman’s axe, but he was simply attempting to feel less ineffectual without appearing to offer a threat. “Just a traveller,” he said.

“No traveller’s safe in these parts.”

“You want to watch out who you make friends with,” said the tattooed man.

“Shouldn’t ought to have left home,” said the man with the raw pate.

Kane was unsure whether they were taunting him as a preamble to worse. “Take what you want,” he said.

“Don’t worry, pilgrim.” The bearded man seemed eager to take Kane’s words as an insult. “We will,” he said.

His companions were regarding Kane’s belongings with disfavour. All at once the tattooed man stooped with an oath. One of the scrolls had partly unfurled, and the man stamped on it as though it were an insect. He used his other foot to spread it out and bent wide-legged to examine it. “Look at these,” he urged.

The baldest of them gripped his thick thighs as he squatted to glower at the scroll. “That’s no English writing,” he objected as if he were challenging anybody to suggest he was unable to read.

The bearded man poked at the scroll with his staff and used the tip to trace the lines of occult symbols Kane
had studied in a vain attempt to define the forces ranged against him. The man might have been a child learning to read with a fingertip underlining each word in a primer, except that his lips found no way of shaping the text. Resentment of his inability seemed to stoke his eager rage. “That’s magic,” he informed his cronies. “That’s how witches write.”

The three men turned to face Kane as the scroll writhed on the leaves, attempting to regain its secretive shape. It was obvious that they were pleased to find a reason to assault Kane afresh – any reason. The tattooed man tramped at him, pulping leaves underfoot. “What shall we do with you, eh?” he enquired, and a thought seemed to flare in his eyes as he glanced at the fire. “Shall we burn you for a witch?”

A crow cawed, and the other bird flapped like a black flag at a tournament. The man seized Kane by the hair and dragged him staggering to his feet. His grip felt capable of tearing clumps of hair out of Kane’s scalp. He manhandled Kane to the fire and forced Kane’s head down towards the flames while the shaven-pated man toyed with his knife, testing the point with his thumb, and the bearded man raised his staff as an additional threat. “Burn him,” he shouted, and the man with the knife yelled louder “Burn him.”

As though it were in league with his adversaries, the fire was blazing now. Kane felt the heat on his face like a reminder of Hell. It seared his cheeks, where he felt stubble begin to smoulder. The fire was stinging his eyeballs by the time he found the power to heave his head back against the grasp in his hair and then to stiffen his whole body against the brute strength of his captor. “Burn him,” the others cried like spectators at an execution. “Burn him.”

The tattooed man redoubled his grip on Kane’s hair and twisted it viciously before shoving with all his brutish might. Perhaps the unjust accusation of witchcraft lent Kane strength. After all his months of meditative retreat on the island – after all that he had done for the church and for himself – surely he was not to be slain as a sorcerer. He tensed every muscle against the assault, and this time his captor was unable to force him down. Eventually the tattooed man gave up the attempt but kept hold of Kane’s hair while he moved to peer into Kane’s face. His lips drew back from his teeth in a feral grimace. “There’s murder in your eyes,” he said in delight.

The other men welcomed the development with grunts of pleasure. Kane was silent, and his captor yanked ferociously at his hair. “Would you kill me, pilgrim?” he said.

Kane gritted his teeth while he offered up the painful ignominy to God. “No,” he said.

The shaven man brought his face so close that Kane had to breathe in the fellow’s raw stale exhalation. “You won’t kill the man who steals from you?” he said with disbelief that sounded gleeful.

Kane’s time at the monastery was being put to the test, and he did not hesitate. “I will not fight another man.”

His interrogator slapped Kane across the face with the back of his hand as hard as he could. His knuckles caught Kane’s nose, and blood trickled into Kane’s mouth. The crows or the other men – perhaps all of the spectators – uttered hoarse sounds of appreciation. “You worthless coward,” the bald man snarled. “Fight me,” he urged and punched Kane in the face.

Kane might have fallen except for the grasp in his hair. In a moment his captor released him. He managed not to collapse, though his head swam with the blow and
his face throbbed like a wound. He tasted blood, but as his strength ebbed back he refused to let it tempt him to retaliate. “I have renounced violence,” he vowed.

The words were not addressed to his tormentors, but the shaven man raised his raw-knuckled hand to cup it behind one misshapen empurpled ear. “What’s that you say?” he barked.

The tattooed man put his hands together in a parody of prayer, which the patterns etched into his skin rendered diabolical. “Says he’s renounced violence,” he intoned like a monk echoing a phrase of holy ritual.

“Well, that’s a shame.” The bearded man gave Kane a moment to anticipate what kind. “Because we haven’t,” he said and lifted his staff high. He used both hands to swing it, and the thick handle clubbed Kane on the side of the head. The blow flung Kane to the unyielding earth. In his last moment of consciousness he saw the sneering faces of the robbers, savagely painted by the firelight, and beyond them a crow taking to the air. Then a void as black as the crow swallowed him.

I
t seemed to Kane that a great voice spoke to him out of a vast darkness, summoning him before the throne of judgment. “You will do as I say, Solomon,” it said.

Time and space had no meaning in the dark. Instantly he was back at Axmouth, in the great hall of the castle he had once called his home. The light of many candelabras mellowed the stone of the walls and the columns that supported the high roof, but it could not soften the presence that dominated the hall. He was seated on the massive baronial throne at the end of the room, his powerful hands gripping its arms so hard that every knuckle stood out like a threat of a blow. His sternness might almost have turned him to stone, a statue of a magistrate. He was Josiah, Kane’s father.

Not everybody in the room was anxious to face him. The servants busying themselves about the long oaken table in the middle of the hall must be hoping that their activities would lend them anonymity – would let the lord of Axmouth think that they were hardly there at all, as good as invisible, certainly unable to overhear what was being said. The solitary figure who was confronting Josiah, standing defiantly before the throne, was just fourteen years old. What he lacked in age and stature he was making up in spirit, and Kane hardly knew whether to admire or counsel him, for he was Kane’s younger
self. Josiah’s keen grey eyes were regarding him without favour, and the long face etched by harsh experience was set in a decision against which there was no appeal. “Do not forget your place, Solomon,” Josiah said for everyone to hear.

The boy drew himself up in mute fury that he should be shamed in front of the servants. Every man must find his place, Kane wanted to assure him; it was ordained by God. He could not speak, and in any case he knew that he would have gone unheard. Before the boy could put his protest into words, Josiah said “You are the second son.”

Kane grew aware of the older youth. He stood closer to their father, relishing every nuance of the scene. Marcus had inherited the long face, but his chin was weak, his mouth loose and petulant. He wore his hair luxuriously long, and it was as pale as his eyes, from which it might almost have leached the colour. “Marcus is my heir,” Josiah said, but he refrained from glancing at him, so that Kane could have suspected him of loving the idea more than the man. “He will be master of these lands on my death.”

“Father, Marcus is a brute.” The boy turned to scowl at his brother, who raised a golden goblet of wine in an ironic toast to the truth. “And a bully,” the boy insisted.

“You will take holy orders.” Perhaps Josiah was determined not to hear anything that would make him regret his decision, rooted as it was in his ancestry, but Kane could have thought he was handing down the boy’s fate as a penance for rebelliousness. “You will join the church as I command,” Josiah said.

The boy’s eyes gleamed with dismayed rage, and Kane could have wished his youthful self to have been as voiceless as he himself was now. “I do not want to be a priest,” the boy said.

He was giving voice to all the frustrations of his youth – to being treated as inferior by his father and the traditions of their line and, more maliciously, by Marcus. “What you want is of no importance,” Josiah reminded him so fiercely that the words were echoed from every corner of the venerable hall.

Marcus watched his brother’s face as if it were a source of delicious amusement and lifted the goblet once more. “Father Simnal is here to take you to the abbey,” Josiah said.

Kane grew more conscious of the robed intruders as the boy did. All five men were crowned with black caps that had put his young self in mind of a judge about to pronounce a death sentence – a fivefold sentence that would deny Kane the chance to live as he deserved, to enjoy the world to the full. Father Simnal paced softly forward, stretching out his hands in a gesture of acceptance that might have foretokened a benediction, but the boy turned his back on the contingent from the abbey and faced his father. “I will not go,” he said.

Marcus’s eyes glittered with wicked delight while Josiah’s grew as cold and still as stone. If Kane could have found a means to reach the boy he would have urged him to accept the situation. He was only being sent where he would eventually find a home – in the embrace of religion. He might have found peace all those years ago instead of being driven to seek it as a refuge from all the evil he had committed since. Instead he had to listen to his father pronouncing judgment once again. “If you defy me you will have nothing,” Josiah said.