The Leopard Sword (8 page)

Not very much.

He gestured to the crown of his own bald head.
“Cerebrum intacta est,”
he counseled in elemental, Greek-accented Latin. Sir Nigel and Edmund leaned forward expectantly in the lamplight.
“Ossae firmae,”
added the surgeon as though delivering good though unexpected tidings.

“He tells us you have a brain in your skull,” said Sir Nigel, with the sort of forced cheer that good-hearted people use around the sick.

The surgeon turned down the corners of his mouth, and said something we were all free to interpret as
but his condition is not good.

Surgeons dislike hale folk, preferring the ill. My mother cured illness by feeding us feverfew and valerian, and starving the fever out of our bodies.

And I, in turn, believe illness demands simple treatment, and dislike the guild of medical doctors. Besides, I doubt that surgeons know very much. Most doctors agree that the brain's function is to cool the blood. What I wanted to inquire was: Why, then, did a man always die if his brain was knocked out of his head?

But I did not argue with this foreign medical man. Instead I asked him politely,“How long will my head feel like a pail of river stones?”

Knowing he would not understand a word.

Osbert crept to my bedside, beaming. “We're all rich as millers again, my lord,” he said.

I shaped the soundless question with my lips.

“I won a golden fibula brooch from a Norman squire,” said Osbert, “and a blue jacinth-stone ring from his knight. The rest of the wager winnings were gold and silver.” He offered me a piece of apple, from a fruit he was carving with a short blade. “A Norman apple,” he said. “Beyond price—almost.”

I thanked him for the piece of fruit, which, although mealy with age, was sweet enough. “Do knights agree,” I asked, “that Sir Nigel was the victor?” In my judgment, neither knight had won a clear triumph.

“Can you doubt it, my lord? Besides, I wagered that Sir Nigel would be standing at the end of the joust, nothing more. Only Norman fighting men would take the bet, although they made up for their numbers in foolishness.”

“This is good fortune for you,” I said, nearly mistaking the sound of my voice for that of a very old man.“But it brings no coin into my purse.”

“Oh, I borrowed from what remained of your silver, my lord, both you and Edmund. I placed a wager here and there, with honest men.You are as rich as ever you were.” He made his eyes wide with enthusiasm, and put a hand on my bedding. “And I won back your excellent thimble from a servant of Sir Jean's, and that noble drinking cup of Edmund's, too.”

I felt drowsy, but I could hear him say,“Only don't tell Sir Nigel, good Hubert. I fear he dislikes a gambler.”

I stirred, and sat up to call after him, but my head throbbed as Osbert faded out of the lamplight.

 

 

I was carried by Edmund onto the
Santa Croce,
bound for Genoa. Edmund placed me gently into a sling, a hanging sailcloth bed in the freshly scrubbed, vinegar-scented hull of this vessel.

From above drifted the thuds and curses of someone being beaten. I have always disliked beatings, whether of man or brute, and I was heartsick at the sound of this captain or ranking mate belaboring a sailor with what sounded like a rope end.

The beating stopped at last. Sir Jean and Nicholas were aboard another galley, one that had already left, bound for Malta or Crete—Edmund was not sure which. It was fairly certain that the Frankish knight and his English squire would find swift transportation to Paris or London. “Sir Nigel would rather sail with a load of lepers than with Sir Jean and Nicholas,” Edmund said. It was expected that Nicholas would reach London before us.

“Besides,” I said, “if you see Nicholas, you'll have to kill him.”

“I will have his life,” said Edmund, “as I have sworn.” He spoke as one who would not be moved, and using a diction a little foreign to both of us, law-bound and formal.

“Was that, do you think, Edmund, the wisest oath to make?”

The vibration of my own voice caused me pain.Although suffering is a gift from Heaven, as the English priest had reminded me—allowing us to experience a tiny portion of Our Lord's suffering—I did not consider myself particularly blessed.

“I have made the oath,” said Edmund.“I cannot unsay it.”

My mother and my father were prayerful, and paid Father Giles good coin to teach me Latin verbs, but my mother once said,“Strong piety is for the priest, Hubert, and not for folk like us, who sup on white bread and the best peas.” My parents gave alms, and treated every soul with courtesy, but felt that God and the saints were not closely connected with a well-spoken woolman's life.

Many fighting men were both far more brutal and more devout than I. But even I recognized that a sacred oath, made while touching a holy relic—a saint's bone or a reliquary of saint's hair—was a contract with God. So was an oath invoking a holy name or divine entity, like Heaven.And an oath upon one's honor placed one's reputation, future and past, at stake.

I said, “Knights should call you Edmund Stronghead.”

He laughed gently.

 

 

 

Only later, much later, when the other squires had attached their canvas beds to hooks in the ship's timbers, and the keel rose and fell, did I wake, brimming over with a warning.

I tried to climb out of my swinging bed.

“Stay easy,” said Rannulf's voice. He pressed a clay bottle to my lips, and I drank poppy wine. It was a thick, sweet medicine, with a tarry undertaste.

For a taciturn man, Sir Rannulf was a tireless nurse, and had sat with Edmund during our voyage to the Holy Land when fever robbed my friend of strength and reason. I had begun to wonder if the seasoned knight had his own species of mercy.

“You should have seen the blow coming,” Rannulf chided gently.“Always be ready to check the blade,” he added, offering perhaps the oldest rule in swordplay.

But before I could make a sound, the poppy wine snuffed all thought, even as I struggled against it.

Don't trust him, I wanted to say.

The ship's captain was called Giorgio al Cimino, broad and bowlegged, a man not too proud to call on me in my sickbed, as I swung to the movement of the sea.

He swore by his name saint, the patron of warriors, the famous dragon slayer. He gave my friends Genoan-sounding names,
Nigello, Ranolfo, Edmundo.
He said that he was proud to have us all on his ship.

 

 

 

Captain Giorgio swung a knotted rope, judging by the sound, although he varied his choice of instruments, sometimes using a tawse, a leather strap that made a fine cracking noise against the deck. For long hours I could judge his position on the ship by his thumping blows. In my dazed state I believed I could hear demonic voices—or, perhaps, goats.

Father Stephen visited me again, and reminisced about his boyhood pleasures. He said that his family had enjoyed the services of a cupboard, supplied “floor to roof beam with meat pies. Pigeon, both cock and squab. And pullet and cockerel, and every venison pie known to man.We ate such on meat days, of course,” meaning that his family went meatless on Fridays, as the Church decreed. “And mead,” he recalled, entranced at the memory.“We drank mead at table, not brown ale.”

I let him describe these early days, feeling that Father Stephen was weaker than ever and sustained by the memory of comforts he might never taste again.

As an afterthought, he turned back to me one evening and said, “Squire Hubert, you have lost the look of a young man about to die. Unless pirates intercept us, of course. Then—” He ran a quaking finger across his throat.

The word sounded familiar, but I could not guess its meaning.

“Thieves,” he said in his thin, unsteady voice,“of the sea!”

 

 

Some people have praised the power of the poppy drug, sap from a blossom that flourishes in the distant East. Mixed with tart red wine to disguise the bitter flavor, it erases pain and delights the soul with dreams.

Or so I had been told. My poppy visions were tediously detailed—a splendid tower house, a castle assembled stone by stone. I beheld such a building take shape in my waking dreams, constructed by invisible masons, with oak roof beams, a strong tower for defense, a solar room for quiet moments, turrets, newel staircases, one wardrobe for garments, and another for armor.There was an audience chamber—surely this was a house for a bishop—and traceried windows, richness I had never actually seen in life.

At last, aching for fresh air, I rolled from my sailcloth swing, and groped for the ladder.

 

 

 

The sea dash cleared my head. The air tasted of salt, and of salt fish, and something pungent and earthy.

A goat pen was crowded with animals, nannies and young billies. The captain cracked a lash, hitting nothing.

I observed to Edmund, “He isn't very accurate with his blows, is he?”

Edmund turned, surprised.

“I am not Lazarus,” I said, laughing weakly, “risen from a hole in the ground.”

“You are thin enough to be a corpse,” said Edmund with a smile. “But don't worry—we'll fatten you.”

Osbert sidled up to me and said, “I never had any doubt of your recovery, good Hubert.”

I eyed Osbert with the keenest interest.

“I have wagered,” said the servant, “that we'll be on the Rhône River by Saint Andrew's day.”

The feast day for that first of Christ's apostles is at the end of November, which meant we had some weeks of sailing yet. The Rhône is a Frankish river, one of several possible routes north to England. Autumn was well in force here at sea, cold wind bellying the
Santa Croce
's sails. For a painful moment I ached for home, my father stamping his feet as he came in off Fisher Street with a song on his lips.

I found myself taking heart at Osbert's description of the fishing vessels we had passed, not one of them fast enough to keep up with the
Santa Croce.

“Slow as the last flies of summer, my lords,” Osbert was saying.

“And no sign,” I asked hopefully, “of pirates?”

“No pirate would attempt a ship like ours, good Hubert,” said Osbert, “bristling with swords.”

“Look here—Osbert mended your helmet,” said Edmund.

I ran my fingers over the neat stitches.

“I didn't know you had so many skills,” I said.

“I have many ways of serving two worthy squires,” said Osbert. “And I can mend my ways as well as I can stitch leather.”

“Can you?” I asked.

“By my faith,” said Osbert, sounding like any reformed sinner.

Because I thought that I was mistaken about Osbert—or because I believed that the crafty servant had changed his ways—I did not voice my fears.

 

 

 

All went well for days.

The chilly wind drove us into swells, and soaked us if we lingered in the bow. But we dined on boiled goat and goat cheese, and drank pitchers of amber wine. My head no longer hurt. Sir Nigel responded to my question about sea thieves by saying that Osbert was right—any right-minded pirate would fly from us. “We're the most fearsome ship on this sea.”

The assortment of ailing and injured knights and squires became less like aggrieved Crusaders, forced by ill luck to leave the Holy Land, and more like travelers beginning to envision the cooking smoke and friendly smiles of far-off home.

Sir Nigel was strong enough now to unsheathe his sword and make it ring against a practice shield, a battered, cut-up target. I held up the shield, dancing with the shifting of our vessel, until my own arms began to ache. Then Edmund braced his feet and gave Sir Nigel something of a contest, feinting with the target, dodging, making a rough game of it, Sir Nigel laughing with satisfaction.

It was not the first time that I believed Edmund was destined to be a better fighter than I would ever be, once he learned to use footwork and timing, and to wield the sword like an artful weapon and not like a club. Sir Rannulf folded his arms and smiled with evident pleasure at the sight of Sir Nigel's return to strength, and the other knights looked on indulgently and called out good-natured mockery. But some of the sailors went pale at the smash and bang of this sword practice, especially when Sir Nigel and Sir Rannulf let their naked steel swords ring against each other, brisk and dangerous sport on a coursing ship.

Captain Giorgio showed his white teeth and coiled his knotted rope, but the sailors were tight-lipped, aware, I thought, that they were outnumbered if a crew of swordsmen decided to take the ship to some closer port than far-off Genoa. “We wouldn't dream of such a thing,” said Edmund when I mentioned this.

He considered a moment longer. “Would we?”

 

 

 

I woke often at night to the groaning of the ship, the sea hissing as we sped before the wind, and I could not tell if the cry I had just heard was one of our dwindling number of nanny goats, or something human.

When I heard the squabbling voices that morning, I was not surprised. Perhaps some Crusader had in fact decided to threaten the crew into making for a nearby port.

Some trouble had been steeping all this while, but as I climbed into the sunlight behind Edmund, I stopped in my tracks.

Captain Giorgio held Osbert to the deck.