The Silver Knight (2 page)

Sufyan frowned. “You know him? He is your overlord?”

The miller shook his head. “Our lord cares nothing for our troubles, only that we pay our tithes. This silver knight on the black horse... no one knows where he hails from, but he comes here every year at this time. He speaks to no one and seems to draw away if any of us get too close. He eats the food and drinks the ale we leave in the lychgate, but none from this village have had speech with him.”

“Why, then, does he come here?”

The miller shrugged. “To fight the blood-fiend.”

“Your curse,” guessed Sufyan. “Tell me about this blood-fiend.”

“Horrible it is, friend, a true pestilence of evil! No one knows when it started or what brought such a plague to Kirkfield, but every year, for three nights exactly, the blood-fiend rises from its grave and prowls the area around St. Botolph's.”

Sufyan remembered the squat, gray Saxon church on the edge of the wood, its Norman spire with the red shingle sitting crooked on the tower. It was a fair distance between church and village, and he wondered aloud if St. Botolph's served another parish hereabouts.

“No,” said the most voluble farmer, low-voiced. “There was a demesne not far hence attached to a manor house. The lord and his retainers would have attended St. Botolph's. But there is no man living there now, and the house lies in ruins. I let my pigs wander there after the acorns in autumn, as my father did before me. To my knowledge, the family abandoned the demesne years ago.”

“These are troubled times,” Sufyan said carefully. “A family can rise and fall according to the whim of chance. Even the smallest baron can find his holdings snatched from him should he favor the wrong side in a civil war.”

The miller nodded. “Aye, that's true. Even this far north, the war touches us. Our overlord is for King Stephen, but you'd find plenty here who don't care who sits on the throne, man, woman or goat, as long as we have peace and an end to the taxes.”

They looked at him to see his reply. Sufyan smiled. “My allegiance is to the Church and none other.”

“Not even your faith could save you, friend, if you'd stayed out tonight and chanced upon the blood-fiend!” the miller whispered loudly.

Sufyan hid his grin in another sip of ale. If these villagers knew to what faith he belonged, no doubt they'd chase him from the tavern and stake him out for their cursed fiend to feast upon. He drained the tankard with a sigh and signaled for another. “Wouldn't the knight come and save me?”

The miller's expression clouded. “No. The knight only battles the fiend. He trusts the people of the village to stay safe within their houses. It's not our place to interfere with the order of things. The knight has always fought the fiend and driven it back to its tomb by the third day. If any man, woman, or child happens to be so foolish as to be abroad late at night at this time, they will become the blood-fiend's victim. ‘Tis the way of things.”

“How long has the knight fought with this creature?”

The miller sucked in his breath and looked around the tavern as if he could find the answer there. “Years,” he said at last. “Many years. I remember my grandfather talking about the silver knight and the blood-fiend.”

Sufyan snorted. “Then, with all respect, your knight must be aged and infirm by now. How can an old man fight a monster? You should send your strongest men to help.”

“No!” The miller paled at the suggestion. “You don't understand. The blood-fiend has a terrible strength. Only the knight can hope to defeat it.”

“Clearly he does not, if it returns every year. Why not simply exhume the corpse of the fiend during the daylight hours and destroy it?”

An embarrassed quiet greeted his question. The miller scratched his head and slid his gaze sideways. “You're an outsider, so it's not for you to know these matters. A priest cannot exhume a body without the permission of the bishop, and old Father Thomas is reluctant to bother His Grace with such a wild tale. After all, the bishop lives a long way from here and has more lofty things to think upon. Even if he did hear of our fiend, he might think it a matter for the secular and send soldiers rather than priests. Why bring trouble upon the village?”

“Why, indeed?” Sufyan reached inside the collar of his tunic and lifted the gold and carnelian seal of the Prince Bishop from beneath the black cloth. He let the torchlight glimmer along its curved edges for a moment, allowing it to dazzle his audience, who looked but did not yet comprehend its meaning, before he dropped it back against his skin.

“I am His Grace's chief summoner,” Sufyan said, sitting straight as he announced his office and title. “I speak for the Prince Bishop of Durham. His authority rests in me. If you need permission to open the tomb and exhume the body of this blood-fiend, I will grant it.”

This time, the silence was absolute.

“Sir,” said the miller, “we would be grateful for your assistance, but no one knows which grave contains the blood-fiend. You see, sir, none from Kirkfield dare to face the fiend. Not these days. The last man to do so, sir... he died. Sucked dry, he was, all the blood drained from him. He had such a look of horror on his face, too. As if he'd been scared to death.”

* * * *

The church door closed behind him with a thud that could have tumbled the walls of Jericho. Sufyan looked back at it as if the door had been at fault rather than his careless tug on the latch. As the echo faded around him, he stepped forward to examine his surroundings.

The nave glimmered in the light of a dozen lamps, their flames dipping and swaying in the draft from the door. A Saxon font carved with crude figures stood in the center of the floor. Sufyan touched the chilled stone, running his fingers over the tiny sculptures worn smooth by time. A wooden lid had been set on top of the font to prevent evil from tainting the holy water. Sufyan wondered what would happen if he dipped his fingers into the font. Would his skin melt down to the bone and reveal him as a heathen, the way the Christian fanatics in Antioch had once declared? He doubted it, but did not try to open the lid.

He walked slowly toward the altar. Wide, solid pillars painted in red and blue joined in simple arches on either side of him. The roof was timbered and undecorated. The narrow windows were paned with small quarries of plain glass. Cold and damp seeped through the stone pavement, seeming to chill his toes through his boots.

A narrow grille set into the floor drew his attention. Sufyan paused and examined it for a moment before he lost interest. He shivered and looked back at the bell tower. A colored rope hung from the loft, its end coiled around a hook set into the wall. He felt the urge to pull on it to see if ringing the bell would summon the blood-fiend. Already he regretted his impetuous offer to stay in the church and help the silver knight.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time, a way of escaping more of that piss-poor ale and the enthusiastic attention of the villagers. He'd decided this so-called fiend was nothing supernatural but wholly the work of human agency. Sufyan imagined it was a ruse dreamed up by a local gang of smugglers, who used superstition to scare away the villagers. The knight was probably their ringleader, who set up yearly meetings in the church under the guise of battling the blood-fiend. And as for the local man who'd died... he'd obviously spied on the smugglers and had been caught and killed as a warning to the villagers to stay away.

He, however, was no mere peasant to be tricked so easily. Sufyan felt confident that he could take on a handful of smugglers and expose this cunning deception. Perhaps the Prince Bishop would reward him for uncovering the trickery. Sufyan already knew what he would ask for as recompense—six months taken off his current sentence.

The cold seemed to deepen around him. The flames in the lamps closest to him guttered as a breeze whispered through the church. It brushed his hair, and Sufyan felt his skin tighten in response. No wonder the villagers believed in the story of the blood-fiend; their church was as cold as Hell and had all the welcome and atmosphere of a charnel house.

He turned back to the altar, thinking to tuck himself into the priest's niche where it'd be warmer. As he strode forward, he realized he was no longer alone in the church. A slender figure dressed in silver mail knelt in a tiny chapel to the right of the altar.

Sufyan frowned. How had the knight got past him? It was impossible—unless, of course, he'd been within the chapel all this time. Annoyed, Sufyan approached, glancing at the little chapel. In appearance as plain as the rest of the church, it differed in only one respect—its window, paned with red glass in myriad different shades. To him, it looked like a jumble, a window made of off-cuts from some larger work, but even though the sun had gone from the sky, still a light shone through the red window and brought color to the silver knight's pale expression.

Hands clasped in prayer, his helm on the floor beside him and his face lifted to the window, the knight remained motionless, as if unaware of Sufyan's scrutiny.

Sufyan stared at him, noticing everything—the style of the mail, the shape of the spurs, the worn scabbard, and the glinting hilt of the sword. The knight's long surcoat was quartered white and gray, the only identifying emblem a serpent coiled around an oak tree, sewn in silver thread.

It was not a symbol Sufyan recognized. English lords had a fondness for dragons, lions, and other noble beasts. The serpent seemed an unlucky creature, although he had seen it used before on Italian arms. Perhaps the knight was a mercenary from Padua, Venice, or Milan.

Even in profile, Sufyan could see the knight was both young and beautiful. In the twilight of the church, the knight's skin looked pallid, as white and cold as frost, and yet it shone with the soft bloom of good health. Dark hair, disordered by the helm, ruffled over his forehead to frame features sharp and bright even in repose. He had eyelashes as long and thick as those of a pretty Greek boy-whore, and a pout that sent Sufyan's thoughts in a direction even more inappropriate.

So much for the belief that the silver knight was aged and infirm! Surely he could be no older than twenty-five. Sufyan adjusted his reasoning. Maybe this young man was the descendant of the silver knight the miller's grandfather had seen. Blood feuds could last for generations in Syria. He supposed a duty could last just as long in England.

The knight turned his head and looked directly at Sufyan.

Sufyan gazed back, unabashed at being caught staring. He let out a breath of appreciation for the man kneeling before him. The knight's eyes were wide and dark, their expression deep and cryptic. Sufyan thought he would be glad to unlock such a lovely mystery. He felt himself grin foolishly, his body responding to the blatant, measuring gaze.

He'd always found the Normans rather reserved, preferring to take his pleasures amongst the blond, blunt-spoken Saxons. His current employment meant such pleasures were snatched only briefly, stolen moments on the road far from the critical eye of the Prince Bishop. But the silver knight gazed at him with a shining expression and parted lips, looking for all the world as wantonly joyful as a courtesan, bought and paid for and lying in Sufyan's bed.

Sufyan forgot the blood-fiend, the idea of the smuggler's ring, and the cold of the church. He stared at the knight, so captivated he believed he could even forget his own name. The knight looked like an angel. Not the flaxen-haired, winged creatures the Christians depicted in their art, but the fierce angels of Islam, beings of light and fire and beauty.

The silver knight got to his feet. Upright, he stood only a few inches shorter than Sufyan. The knight tilted back his head to continue looking at him. Sufyan stared at the line of his throat and imagined how it would feel to kiss such pale skin.

“Ah,” said the knight, breaking the silence between them, “I saw you on the road today. You are the summoner. And a Saracen, too, if I am not mistaken.”

He spoke English, his accent touched with the lilt of Norman French. His voice was soft, like velvet nap, and Sufyan leaned forward to hear more of it. “You have me at an advantage, my lord,” Sufyan prompted, “for I do not know you or your name.”

The knight lowered his eyes, and a small smile touched his lips. “My name is Everard de Montparnasse.” He bent to pick up his helm, which he tucked under his arm, and walked toward the font.

Sufyan trailed after him. “Why were you following me?”

Everard gave him a coquettish glance over his shoulder. “You think too highly of yourself, summoner. I was not following you. Our paths led in the same direction. I take it you have heard of the blood-fiend that haunts this place?” Delicate winged brows lifted as he posed the question, but he did not wait for an answer. “It is my duty to destroy the fiend. Each year, it rises again; each year, I do battle with it.”

They stood on either side of the font, eyeing one another across the wooden lid. Everard set his helm on top of the font. Sufyan dragged his gaze from the knight's beautiful face and looked instead at the helm. An old-fashioned thing, its visor was a slit rather than the contemporary design that reminded him of oiled traps closed together. It had no plumes or decoration save for scratches and dents where swords and clubs had battered the metal. The armor belonged to the First Crusade, if Sufyan was any judge. Everard's grandfather could well have worn this in Syria.

“You can't be a very good knight if the fiend crawls out of its tomb time and again,” Sufyan said, returning his attention to their conversation. “You should kill it properly, not let it retreat to its lair to revive the next year.”

Everard smiled. “Ah, but how does one kill what is already dead?”

“One exhumes the body and makes certain it cannot rise again.”

Beneath the lamplight, Everard's pale face seemed to go whiter still. He reached across the font to grasp Sufyan's sleeve. “You know about such things?”

Sufyan felt a jolt of awareness at the touch. By God, he was thinking with the wrong head! If he weren't careful, his desire would get him killed. He looked away from Everard's beguiling face and scanned the interior of the church, half-expecting a gang of ruffians to leap out at him from behind the pillars.