Medi-Evil 3 (18 page)

 
Ramon jumped up however, glaring. His eyes were red-rimmed and sore, his once handsome face ingrained with dirt. A deep, clotted sword-cut was visible across the bridge of his nose. “For Christ’s sake, boy,” he snarled.
“In front of the entire house?”

 
The squire halted in his tracks. “I … I thought you were dead.”

 
Ramon spat out gritty phlegm. “Do you have anything to drink?”

 
Ulf turned to his horse and unhooked the wineskin. “It’s poor quality …”

 
“Don’t give me some damned trade patter,” Ramon grunted, snatching and uncorking it.
“Just the drink.”

 
The boy stood awkwardly as his lord and tutor gulped down the tepid fluid. The others had already lost interest. They sat or stood in silence, fidgeting with weapons, staring at nothing. Only
Thurstan
watched Ramon, his rugged brown face more sullen than usual.

 
Ulf glanced out into the surrounding wilderness. Heat wavered on its dry, dusty ridges. “They say this land was once a forest, but that the Romans cut down all its trees to make crosses.” He looked at Ramon. “Quite appropriate for us, don’t you think?”

 
Ramon wiped his mouth. “I can’t see how it has any relevance at all.”

 
The squire shook his head, bewildered at the change that had overtaken this once noblest
chevalier
. “Then why are you here?”

 
Ramon looked hard at the boy. “Why are
you
here? You’re young, virile. Why aren’t you back
there
?” He indicated the distant, smoggy haze of Jerusalem. “Using
this
?” He slammed his mailed fist into Ulf’s groin, felling him like a young ox. “You’re landless, nameless. For God’s sake, why aren’t you plundering, grabbing your share?”

 
“You know why,” the boy choked, rolling in agony.

 
“Damn right!” Ramon snapped, turning away. “And more fool us.” He spotted
Thurstan
watching him. “Do you have a problem, sir?”

 
“Do
you
, Ramon?”
Thurstan
replied. “Because I think I can resolve it for you.”

 
Ramon’s hand stole to the hilt of his
longsword
. “Any time you feel appropriate.”

 
Thurstan
nodded, and slipped down from his saddle. With a
rasp
of steel, he drew his blade. They circled each other warily …

 
“Enough of this, in the name of Christ!” cried an angry voice, and Bernard
d’Etoille
stamped between them.

 
He was an elderly man, once dignified but now as haggard and dingy as the rest. Arch-Deacon of Salisbury, he’d been advocating this ‘holy war’ since long before Pope Urban preached it at Clermont four years ago. Even now, his purple robes hung over a suit of chain; the blessed mace he carried had many times been caked with Saracen brains. However, as with so many of them, things had changed for Bernard
d’Etoille
.

 
“Hasn’t there been enough killing?” he shouted. “You call yourselves soldiers of Christ, yet after slaughter and theft on a monstrous scale, you’re ready for it again … even in the midst of your penance.”

 
“Our penance, yes,” Ramon said with a slow smile. “Now
there’s
a sore point, father-confessor. Who exactly chose this penance?”

 
“Me,”
came
a deep, resonant voice.

 
The company turned. Three more riders had approached. They too were windblown and battle-scarred,
and despite the searing heat, heavily mailed. One by one, they removed their helms, shaking
loose
their sodden locks. The central rider, massive in shoulder and a head taller than the other two – in fact, with the exception of
Thurstan
, a head taller than any man there – was Gilles
fitzOslac
, Count of
Cerne
, Leopard of
Gerberoi
. He’d always been a stark, imposing man, even dusty and bloodied as he was now. His hair and beard were thick and dark, yet shot with silver, his eyes a piercing blue. There might have been
an honest
nobility about him, had somebody not once slashed his face to bloody ribbons. Now it was a crisscrossing puzzle of hard, white scars, lending him a near-daemonic countenance.

 
One after another, his
mesnie
knelt in deference.

 
He surveyed them in silence. The duo with him also held their peace, awaiting instruction. The first of these was
Joubert
, the Leopard’s son – a surly, scowling individual; the second was Simon de
Vesqui
, the baron’s personal bodyguard. He was
Aquitainian
by origin, with a thick, guttural accent and feral, dog-like features.

 
“Do we have a full complement?” the Leopard asked at length.

 
His warriors rose slowly to their feet.

 
“To some extent, my lord,”
d’Etoille
replied.

 
“To some extent?” the Leopard said. Unable to explain, the priest averted his eyes downwards. “
Thurstan
?” the Leopard asked.

 
Thurstan
sniffed. “Gilbert and Tancred are dead, my lord. Gaillard refused to come.”

 
“Refused? But I gave orders.”

 
Thurstan
shrugged. “He was a man possessed when I last saw him. Drunk, drenched in blood … ravishing the harem girls as if there was no tomorrow.”

 
“There won’t be a tomorrow for him!”
Joubert
snarled.
“When we return.”

 
Ramon couldn’t resist an ironic smirk.
“
Return?
”

 
The Leopard looked hard at his captain. “Your faith in me weakens by the day, Ramon.”

 
“
We
weaken by the day,” Ramon replied boldly. He gazed out into the grey,
smouldering
emptiness, into the great haze of heat and sand and shattered rock.
“And now
this
.”

 
The Leopard gazed out as well, and couldn’t suppress a thin smile. “Yes.
This …
”

*

The Leopard of
Gerberoi
had a vision, and that vision was Eden – not some nebulous notion of paradise, some vague province of
tranquillity
, but
the
Eden. The very place; that oasis of life in the sunburned Hell that was this ‘Holy Land’, this scorched stripe of wilderness on the outer verge of the vast Seljuk Empire. Only there, he’d decided, in the verdant vales where God Himself had stridden and conversed face-to-face with his earliest, most sinless creatures, could they find
succour
for the heinous crimes of the past three years. Perhaps the Tree of Knowledge would provide answers? Mayhap the Risen Christ, offering gentle palms and tears of joy, waited in its cool shade, eager to reward their effort with lasting forgiveness?

 
Of course, they’d been promised similar in those heady, far-off days, when they’d sailed the English Sea and rallied to Duke Robert’s standard, to hear the beseeching prayers of Pope
Urban’s
legates. The enthusing cries had gone up like birds into the great vaults of the cathedral: “Any Christian soul, be he ne’er so base, who lifts his spear in the face of the foe, will
stake
his place in the Heavenly fold no matter the sin he later commits. He who dies fighting in the Lord’s name will claim the life eternal on the stroke of his departure! Better yet, he who survives the ordeal may seize what he will from the heathen in direct and lawful reward for the glory of his conquest! God is generous to those who carry his pennon. Destroy the Mohammedan scum! At them! Mind and body! Kill them … kill them all!”

 
That wondrous day in Rouen in the mellow October sunshine, with heraldic banners billowing and a thousand valorous voices cheering, seemed a world away now: beyond the rivers of blood and bowel shed so savagely at
Dorylaeum
and Antioch; beyond the baking wastes of
Malabrunias
, where Christians had perished in their thousands, riddled with famine, thirst, disease; beyond the towns of
Banias
and
Ma’arra
, ravaged and left in seas of avenging flame, their innocent inhabitants scattered and slain like dogs; beyond the flies and the dirt and the sweat and the pain – and of course, beyond the jabbing blade of guilt, for there were few, in truth, who by the end of the great ‘crusade’, felt honestly and truthfully that
this
was the will of the Lord.

 
Eden – only Eden, with its tender flowers and fresh-fallen dew, was fit to scour the memory of such calamities. Yet no-one, not even
d’Etoille
, who’d passed his holy tests at Cluny, the home of ascetic leaning, knew for certain where this fabled garden lay, except that it was somewhere to the southeast, beyond Mount Hebron and the Dead Sea. If the thought of this further pilgrimage, now through some vast, trackless land abounding with the sons and brothers of those they’d defiled and slain, filled them with dread, the warrior-priest had already advised those who would
listen
that death in their present unclean state would be worse still. In any case, who’d have expected them to cover the immense distance to Jerusalem and survive? Yet they had. And Eden couldn’t be as far away as that.

 
First of all, they would seek
Uruk
– the earliest city known to Man, built by the banished tribe of Adam
aeons
even before the founding stones were laid at Babylon. A place, it was said, where the first human words were uttered, the first letters written, the first metals struck from the forge. Here, and only here, would they find the maps and scrolls to lead
them.

*

They were perhaps forty in total, straggling in linear formation through the desert of broken stones and scrub-thorn. Ulf rode at point, alongside
Thurstan
and Ramon. For the most part they picked their way in silence, coated in dust, broiling in their sweat-soaked mail. Every so often cruel laughter would sound from behind, where the Leopard and his son, and their lackey, de
Vesqui
, drained their plentiful wineskins,
always,
it seemed untroubled by recent events.

 
Ulf spat froth and mopped his brow. They’d been riding five days since Jerusalem, and he was saddle sore beyond description. His face had thinned to bones and was wizened as if by age. His long yellow hair lay in plastered streaks on his back, bleached to near-silver.

 
“Do you gentlemen think those three behind us are truly here for the good of their souls?” he wondered.

 
“I don’t presume to think about my overlord at all,” Ramon said. “Except as knight and master, whose worthiness is beyond
question.
”

 
“With all respect, that is a lie,” Ulf replied.

 
Ramon snorted. “Believe what you will. In the mean time,
return to the luggage … bring
me some fruit. My gums are blistering.”

 
The boy gave him a sullen look, wheeled his horse about and trotted back along the column.

 
“He’s your squire, yet you treat him like a slave,”
Thurstan
observed.

 
“He’s English, isn’t he? What other way is there?”

 
Thurstan
chuckled. “A thing I’ve always wondered about, Ramon … why a good scion of
Tancarville
, whose father and brothers charged the English shield-wall at Hastings, then aided the Bastard in all his northern butcheries, should take an English
soke
-lad and train him for the merit?”

 
“It’s the youngest son’s prerogative to behave irrationally. Without a penny to my name,
nor
a rood of land, it’s my belief I can do more or less as I please without having to answer for it.”

 
“Have you always had this secret soft heart?”

 
Ramon glanced sidelong at him. “Are you questioning my courage?”