Warlord (Outlaw 4) (33 page)

‘You are mistaken,’ I said, rising to my feet. ‘Henri d’Alle was punished – he paid for that crime, a crime he did not commit, with his life. He was put to death by someone who calls himself the “man you cannot refuse” because he was innocent. He was innocent and this “man you cannot refuse” was guilty, and was attempting to keep his guilt a secret. Your negligence in seeking out the true perpetrator of the crime led indirectly to my father’s death!’

I found I was jabbing my index finger at Bishop de Sully, my voice rough and barely quieter than a shout. De Sully looked up at me as I ranted at him, his mouth open in surprise and showing his few remaining teeth. All the authority seemed to have gone from him and I recognized, quite suddenly, how old and tired and sick he was, and dropped my arm, feeling ashamed.

‘Peace, my friend, peace,’ said a familiar voice behind me, ‘this garden is meant as a haven of tranquillity.’ And I turned to see Brother Michel standing behind me, smiling serenely, his arms folded across his belly, his hands tucked into the opposite sleeves of his simple habit. Beside him stood the servant Alban, astonished
at my rudeness, but bearing a tray of wine and cheese. ‘It is time, Your Grace, for your nap,’ said Brother Michel in a soothing voice. The sun was approaching the meridian.

‘But I must explain to this boy, I must tell him …’ quavered the Bishop.

Brother Michel smoothly interrupted him: ‘You know what the new doctor has said about complete rest, Your Grace – and you may talk again with Sir Alan later. Perhaps this evening. Perhaps we can even persuade him to stay with us for a while.’

The Bishop nodded, and got obediently to his feet and began meekly to walk towards the corner of the garden and the house, shepherded by Brother Michel with his right arm around his shoulders.

I said: ‘Your Grace, I cannot stay, I am afraid: but I would ask one more question, if I may: do you have any idea of the identity—’

But the monk turned his head back to me: ‘Be patient, Sir Alan, I beg you – refresh yourself: eat, drink, and I shall be with you very shortly. Then we can discuss the right time to arrange another interview with His Grace.’ And then he caught sight of the bowl of thyme that the Bishop had left on the stone pathway. ‘We mustn’t forget your medicine,’ said Brother Michel, and he took two steps back towards us and reached down with his left hand to pick up the fragrant clay bowl.

I looked at his hand as it descended, grasped the bowl and picked it up, and it was all I could do to prevent myself from crying aloud in surprise. In a blinding flash, I knew the identity of the ‘man you cannot refuse’ – for I saw with a sense of chill horror that the left hand, which Brother Michel had used to collect the bowl of thyme, had two tiny thumbs, each perfectly formed and sprouting from a single thick root.

Chapter Eighteen

As Brother Michel and the Bishop walked away towards the big stone house, it took all my self-discipline to turn to the servant and say: ‘Just set the tray there, please, and leave us in peace for a few moments.’ And while Alban, the serving man, slowly walked away, shaking his head at the foolishness of his betters, I whispered to Hanno: ‘We must go, now; we must leave immediately.’ So many pieces of the puzzle had suddenly fallen into place that my head was reeling. I had to find somewhere safe and quiet to think. ‘We must get out of here, right now!’

Hanno did not argue. As soon as the servant had disappeared into one of the outbuildings, we began to saunter casually towards the gate in the garden wall, and the waiting horses, not hurrying, certainly not running.

‘Why do we go?’ said Hanno quietly.

‘Brother Michel is the “man you cannot refuse”,’ I said. ‘I am certain of it. He was a friend of my father’s when they were at Notre-Dame together, and he is the one who stole the relics from Bishop Heribert. He is the one who has been killing clerics, or
rather ordering their deaths, and he is the one who’s been trying to kill me these past months.’

Hanno stopped. ‘Maybe I just go and kill him now.’ We were a dozen paces from the garden gate, and before I could answer, it swung open and a tall knight strode into the walled garden: it was Sir Eustace de la Falaise, the dull, cheery Templar I had last seen with Sir Aymeric de St Maur in the Order’s compound north of the city.

He was not alone.

Behind Sir Eustace came a file of men-at-arms; half a dozen men each carrying a loaded crossbow – and pointing it at Hanno and myself. But it was not the sight of so many men aiming their weapons at my unarmoured body that gave me pause – it was the clothing that they wore. Each man, including Sir Eustace, wore a white linen surcoat with a shield depicted on the chest: a blue cross on a white field with a black border.

They led us out of the garden, in silence, through the house and out the other side – the crossbowmen keeping their weapons trained on us at all times. I knew that it was useless to protest, and the slightest wrong move would leave us lying pierced and bleeding on the ground. We were ushered by Sir Eustace into a private chapel beyond the Bishop’s palace, near the abbey wall, and made to stand with our hands in the air while the men-at-arms appropriated all our weapons, even the dagger Hanno hid in his boot-top. The men-at-arms stripped us down to our under-chemise and braies and tied us tightly to two heavy, high-backed oak chairs by the wrists, waists and ankles. Sir Eustace checked the ropes, then without a word they all filed out of the chapel, leaving us bound and helpless, in that house of God. Alone in the chapel, both Hanno and myself spent a futile few moments struggling against our bonds, and both discovered that we were well secured. I raised
my eyebrows at him, and he gave me a half-shrug – there was nothing to say – and so we waited in silence, contemplating our surroundings and our likely fate.

The chapel was small but stone-built, with the main door set in an arch at the western end, a font in the centre of the space and a large altar at the eastern end. On the altar was a huge golden cross, and set before that was a wooden box, slightly larger than a foot square, nestled on a vast purple velvet cushion. The box was of dark brown wood, polished with beeswax and seemed to be the centre of veneration on the altar. Beyond the altar, in the north-eastern corner of the chapel, I saw a wooden door, perhaps a discreet entrance for the priest, perhaps leading to a vestry or storeroom of some kind.

The rest of the chapel was sparsely furnished, a couple of benches, pushed up against the far wall and the two impressive chairs that held Hanno and I captive – but it was filled with the most marvellous light, shafts of red, brown, blue and green, which streamed through a large stained-glass window directly opposite our chairs, in the southern wall of the chapel. The window occupied almost all the wall before our eyes, beginning perhaps four foot from the ground and soaring up to the high domed roof of the chapel sixteen feet above. It was about four foot wide and constructed of small coloured panes of glass held in place between delicate strips of lead. Perhaps inevitably, it depicted an image of Our Lady, cradling the infant Jesus and looking with deep compassion at the miserable mortal sinners huddled at her feet. It was breathtakingly beautiful, a masterpiece of light and colours; a true visual treasure. And I found that I could not look away. As the hours passed and the sunlight shifted, I grew mesmerized by that exquisite coloured image of Our Lady; I prayed to her, asking for her to intercede with Almighty God for my sins – for I felt certain that I would soon be meeting the Lord – and I vowed that I would be a better man if I managed to survive this encounter with the three-thumbed
‘man you cannot refuse’. I do not know if I slept or dreamed, but as time passed the face of Our Lady seemed to change – and began to resemble Goody, my beloved. I realized that I had not seen her in so many months, and I felt the absence like a void in my soul. A part of me wished that, instead of coming to Paris to track down this evil man who had ordered my father’s death, I had instead forsworn vengeance and gone home to Goody. Perhaps Robin had been right: if I had been content to let the matter lie, I might now be in Goody’s arms instead of anticipating my death like a bound pig awaiting the November slaughter, in a foreign land far from all those whom I loved.

After three or perhaps four hours, Sir Eustace entered the chapel by the big door to my right. He stood in front of us, still wearing his amiable idiot’s grin, but his eyes, I noted, were cold black shards in his handsome face. His hand toyed with something that hung from the right-hand side of his belt.

‘You are a persistent fellow, Alan Dale,’ he said. These were the first words that he had uttered since capturing us in the garden. ‘Persistent even for a gutter-born busybody who can’t keep his nose out of better men’s affairs.’

I said nothing but looked down at the object he was toying with at his belt. It was a weapon of some kind, unlike any I’d ever come across. A wooden handle in the shape of the capital letter T protruded from a broad leather scabbard about eight inches long. His blunt fingers stroked the horizontal crosspiece of the handle as he spoke.

‘You were warned to leave well alone, and by your liege lord, no less, your superior before God, but you refused to listen to him,’ he said, his words humming with anger. And I thought:
Robin – he knows that Robin told me to drop my enquiries. This angry moron and the three-thumbed freak, and the rest of the murderous Knights of Our Lady, are all acquainted with Robin, and their relationship is such that they can ask Robin to tell me not to investigate my father’s death
. A cold, black pit opened up in my stomach. But Sir Eustace was still speaking.

‘You were thoroughly warned, but you would not let it pass; and now we have all had enough of your meddling. You are a hard man to kill, I give you that, Dale, and you have the luck of the Devil in battle; but today your luck has run out. Today is the day that you will die. Today you will see the face of God.’

Sir Eustace paused, and took a gulp of air; he had worked himself up into some sort of state, and was trying unsuccessfully to control himself. When he spoke again it was in short panting breaths. ‘But you are blessed, too; more blessed than you deserve or than you can imagine. Your death will be swift and painless; and your Salvation will be assured.’

He stopped. I said nothing, but Hanno then spoke.

‘You talk too much,’ said my bold Bavarian. ‘When you have some killing to do, you don’t talk – you kill. Only a fool talks before he strikes. But you, you are a talking fool. Talk, talk, talk. I will tell you this for nothing, talky fool: you threaten us, you’d better kill us good while you have the chance, because when I get out of this God-damned chair, I am going to rip out your cowardly liver and choke you with it. That will stop your talky mouth!’

The fury on Sir Eustace’s face was now obvious: he pulled out the strange weapon from its sheath and brandished it in front of our faces. ‘You see this, you sacrilegious scum! You see this,’ he was shouting, and I felt a speck of his hot spittle graze my cheek. I stared at his weapon; truly I had never seen its like before. It was the head of a broad-headed lance, an elongated diamond shape about two inches across at its widest point and tapering to a wicked needle tip. The iron of the lance head looked ancient, pitted here and there, but had clearly been well cared for and burnished brightly. In the socket where the long shaft would once have been fitted was a stubby wooden T-shaped handle, approximately four inches long, fitting the lance-head socket snugly. Sir
Eustace gripped the wooden crossbar in his palm, and made a fist, so that the lance head protruded from between his second and third fingers.

‘You see this!’ Sir Eustace bellowed, his words again accompanied by a storm of spittle. ‘This is the instrument of your deaths. And while you are not worthy to even look at it, by the mercy of the Blessed Virgin, and her son Our Lord, you shall receive death from it; and solely because of its sacred power, you shall be received into Heaven. This is the Holy Lance that pierced Our Saviour’s body on the Cross, this blade has been anointed with the blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ! Christ’s holy blood …’

Eustace had a light froth around his mouth now; his black eyes gleamed with madness. And while I stared mutely in hopeless fascination at the extraordinary object in my enemy’s hands, Hanno spoke.

‘Talk, talk, talk …’ he said. ‘That is all you can do, you talky fool …’

Sir Eustace took two steps towards Hanno, his right fist lashed out like a bolt of lightning, and he punched the lance-dagger deep into Hanno’s chest. It was a single thrust, snake-fast and perfectly accurate, an inch to the left of the sternum, directly into my friend’s living heart.

I heard the door opening to my left, and a voice from the east end of the chapel shouting: ‘Eustace, no! I told you to leave them be!’

Sir Eustace stepped back, ripping the bloody lance-dagger free of Hanno’s punctured chest. Thick dark blood was bubbling from the wound. And I twisted my head to stare into my old friend’s eyes as he died. There was a slight smile on his lips, and he managed to utter one word, just a whisper, before his eyes rolled and he slumped unstrung against his bonds.

The word was: ‘Perfect!’

* * *

Something of myself died with Hanno that day. And the memory of his ugly, battered face and his proud final word, still makes my eyes prick and burn four decades later. But I console myself by thinking that Hanno died happy: no sane man wishes to die, but many a warrior I have known has spoken to me of the manner in which he would prefer to depart this earth. Usually, these men say ‘in battle, with a ring of enemy slain around me, like the heroes of old’ or something similar; but I think Hanno – who always strived for perfection in everything, and especially in the arts of war – would not have been dissatisfied by the manner of his passing. He was killed by a skilled enemy; by a man who must have made a considerable study of the perfect way to kill. I think that perhaps Hanno was content to die at his hand, and may even have provoked him for that very purpose. But I pray that Sir Eustace was right, and that the Holy Lance did indeed have the power to confer entry into Heaven with its lethal punch. I also silently vowed that I would split Eustace’s cowardly heart one day, if God gave me the opportunity, and look in his eye while he died.