The Leopard Sword (9 page)

Osbert protested, “I have done nothing.”

A sailor held up a purse, a leather money pouch, with a gash along the seam. He held up a short blade, too, the sort of sharp kitchen knife that is carried in the pocket with the point buried in a ball of wax.

I had seen this knife in Osbert's hand just days before, cutting an apple.

“My lords, I am guiltless,” piped Osbert.

“Edmund, bring my sword,” said Nigel.

“I'll do it,” said Edmund.

Sir Nigel turned to look at him.

“He's my servant,” said Edmund, “brought by me from the battlefield. I'll punish him myself.”

Sir Nigel said, in a low voice, confiding and gentle, “You know what the punishment has to be?”

Osbert gave out a high, crystalline wail, a keen sound that startled all of us into silence.

“No, good Edmund,” said Osbert at last. “Let Sir Nigel cut me, please—not you.”

Edmund was gone, down into the hull. He returned with a sword in its black leather scabbard. He drew Sir Nigel's blade, and looked to me without speaking.

Rannulf and I seized Osbert, and were in the act of stretching out the servant's arm against the deck when Osbert shifted, contracted his body, and forced it into a ball. Exasperated, Rannulf and I reached to grapple with him.

Osbert sprang up and leaped onto the rail as a flume of spray streaked through the morning sun. He jumped.

For an instant his head bobbed in the lacy foam of our wake.

And then he vanished.

We never saw him again.

In the hours following Osbert's death, Edmund watched the sea. He peered into the ship's wake, hurried from one rail to the other, and climbed to the limit of the bow, seeking a glimpse of his servant. At last he returned to the stern again, his head cocked, as though listening for Osbert's voice, still expecting to see his face appearing out of the wind-scored swells.

I joined him there beside the helmsman, a man tanned and wrinkled by the sun. Sir Nigel arrived to mark Edmund's mood, and took the opportunity to remark on the distant islands.

“Greek strongholds,” he said, to distract Edmund from his mourning. “Some of them were visited by the great knight Ulysses himself, in his legendary travels.”

“Ulysses sailed home through these waters?” I asked.

“Certainly,” said Nigel, eager to distract Edmund with any sort of conversation. “And had his men turned into breed-boars by a famous witch. Although,” he added with a chuckle, “I believe many sailors are half pig already.”

The wind was powerful and swept us onward, each fling of spray stinging our eyes. Sailors had searched the thin bedroll and cracked leather satchel, all of Osbert's remaining possessions. Squires and knights alike exclaimed at the rings and brooches that appeared, small objects of value that their owners had thought lost or mislaid.

“Osbert had my trust,” said Edmund, interrupting our attempts to entertain him with talk.
Mi truste.

“And mine,” I offered, but Edmund would only give me a pained smile.

“Leave him to the saints,” said Sir Nigel.

I wondered what the Heavenly Host would make of our bright-eyed, lively servant, and whether Our Lord would forgive him for his quick, too-clever hands.

The
Santa Croce
had one of the old-fashioned steerboards, not a rudder but an oarlike device unattached to the stern. Edmund offered to help the helmsman, and his assistance was accepted as Nigel and I looked on.

Edmund's eyes took on a sorrowful serenity as he guided the ship, the helmsman—a stout individual with many missing teeth—beside him offering quiet encouragement in a half-comprehensible dialect.

“I think,” said Nigel, “our friend Edmund is a born seaman.”

Our ship began to show signs of wear.

Water began to slosh back and forth in the hold, and two men worked a pump during daylight hours, in an effort to preserve the rummage, the casks and chests stored there.The pump was a wheezing, spluttering mechanism, a bellowslike affair. The sailors showed every evidence of urgency, and they sang holy songs as they worked.

Sir Nigel tried to coax our priest, but, after a day of brooding, Father Stephen continued to maintain that no soul dead by suicide deserved even a brief shipboard rite, and certainly not Osbert. Sir Nigel at last called a short requiem into the salt spray, and one of the Genoan sailors gave prayer in his vernacular, a common port language, unfit for holy office. It was the language of taverns and dice cups, and yet when the prayer spoke of Dio, more than one of us made the sign of the holy cross.

Afterward Sir Nigel confided to me that “ship men are a devil-fearing lot. That's why we need the prayers, to lay the ghost.”

“Do ghosts pursue Genoans in particular?” I asked, trying to make light of the subject.

“What man doesn't fear the devil?” said Sir Nigel.

 

 

Early one predawn, the spruce-wood mast split, with a resounding report.

Captain Giorgio adopted the habit of actually striking his sailors with the knotted rope he swung, and the ship took on a glum, harried atmosphere, passengers and crew alike watching the weather and the distant rise and fall of land.To take the pressure off the mast, sails were set on stays that thrust out on either side of the ship, so that our vessel must have looked like some great, oceangoing hen.

The water in the bilge sloshed and groaned with a sound like Osbert's
my lord, my lords,
and at night I woke, sure that I had heard the servant whisper,
Soon, my lord Hubert.

 

 

 

They call it
rak,
the scudding, low clouds that crawl across the sky. Some folk can read the shapes of clouds and see the harm to come. My father said such talk was foolish, but paid good coin to a stargazer once to hear my future told.

The astrologer recorded the hour of my birth, scratching the details onto vellum with a new goose quill. “Taurus,” he intoned meditatively, studying the scroll, “with Gemini rising. A nature that contradicts itself. Brave at heart, but changeable. Well-liked, but determined.”

“That's my Hubert!” said my father.

A week later the cunning man invited my father and the younger, boyish version of myself into his smoky study. “Your son will do you honor,” he said, smiling within his scholar's beard.“He will be a pilgrim, according to the stars.”

My father leaned forward in his chair. He had hoped to learn that I was destined for knighthood, and could not hide his disappointment.

“He'll travel to many holy shrines,” said the astrologer hastily.“He'll win you the favor of Heaven with his prayers.”

My father had paid good silver for the best sword masters he could hire, and swore ever after that astrologers were fools.

Now I wished I had the advice of a wise, far-seeing fortune-teller. The ship was surrounded by rising mist that twisted into shapes like ghosts, and when a sailor spoke, the words died on his lips, every sound absorbed by the chilly vapor.

Land appeared again one afternoon, a rind of coast, low and featureless. Captain Giorgio poured a cup of red wine from the goatskin he kept near the mast, and lifted it in salute to the far-off coast.

“Italia!” he exclaimed.

My heart quickened.

Somewhere on that landscape ruled the lord pope. The city of Rome, the capital of Christendom, with its myriad holy sites, was shielded by distance and sea haze from our hungry eyes.After Jerusalem, Rome was the most sacred city in the world. Every Christian dreamed of a pilgrimage to its holy places.The chains Saint Peter had worn in prison were kept in Rome, and the city boasted the magnificent and hideous Colosseum of legend, where holy martyrs had suffered lions to eat their still-living flesh, to the glory of God.

The wind had been bitter but strong, driving us under a clear sky. As we bucked the swells and began our journey north, along the long stretch of Italian mainland, the sky was rutted with cloud. The moon winked and vanished behind this scudding gray, and the sun rose scarlet and oval, giving no heat and little light.

Soon, soon,
said a guttering whisper.

The ship wallowed, shrugged off rushing waves, and then leaned into them, bobbing away from the sea, turning into it—trying every tactic, like a weary swordsman, to endure the pounding water.

I took heart at the crashing foam, and Edmund smiled through the sling stones of water. It was harsh weather, but this was, after all, an adventure.The storm drove every other thought, and every sorrow, from our souls. We were happy again, in our ignorance of the ways of the sea. We had faith in the mariners, and in the ship.

The sailors worried the rigging, and used heavy wooden mauls to drive stops—canvas wadding—into gaps where the ship's timbers began to part.

We ran aground one morning.

Sailors swore by Our Lady, and we all breathed prayers of our own, but the captain swung his knotted rope, cried out orders with the air of a man who was unconcerned. He caught my eye and called through the whistling rain something about land and sea and ships, how no one could predict a storm.

But as the day wore on, the vessel began to labor, stuck fast to the bottom.The captain, no longer putting on even a demonstration of calm, drove his men with a long ox whip. Men in the hold called out, straining and gasping, frantically working the pumps.

Rannulf made his way through the rushing foam. “The ship is breaking up,” he said.

“Do you believe so?” asked Sir Nigel. He cocked his head. “Yes, you may be right, Rannulf, by my faith.”

Sir Nigel and Sir Rannulf talked about ships, taking turns speaking loudly into each other's ears against the shriek of the wind.They agreed that even the strongest oak beam can take a downward force more successfully than a weight from the side. Speaking as though they had hours to analyze and compare, they admired the Genoans' vigor, but agreed that the captain had more bluster than ability.

Years of war study, planning siege engines and catapults, and finding out through experience which lances shatter and which can endure, gave them a midwife's calm eye for trouble. Edmund and I clung to ropes, and at last I cried out, “What can we do?”

“Do?” Sir Nigel gave one of his manly, exasperating laughs, perhaps joking at his own tough-mindedness. “If Heaven calls us, we'll go.”

Rannulf was drenched, rain and brine streaming from his beard. “Go get our war-kits and our safe-chest, both of you. Hurry!”

 

 

The hold stank.

The sour odor of dank cheeses, smoked fish, and moldy biscuit rose around us from the black water. Sergeants and squires elbowed, scrambling in the near dark. Sailors cursed; two men came to blows. Other knights had given the same command, it seemed. Body was wedged against body, but with a willed patience, most squires manhandled their masters' war gear up and out of the hold without bloodshed.

At midday sailors jumped down into the seething surf and began to unload the ship into tenders, ship-to-shore boats that bobbed and spun in the water.The surf was just shallow enough to allow a tall man to stand with his nose and mouth out of the water. When the keel snapped, with a single, heart-stopping crash, a few squires tumbled overboard in a panic. One head bobbed and vanished, and other squires strained to reach a tender and cling to its side.

 

 

We abandoned the
Santa Croce.

Despite the shallow waters, we were far from shore, but we could struggle forward along the sandy bottom, holding our equipment over our heads. Other knights and squires joined us, with an air of resigned necessity rather than panic. Our equipment was lashed together, swords and mail attached to our chest of treasures. One squire sang out a chant of praise to Our Lady, but when we were well away from the protective bulk of the ship, and the surf began to cut our legs out from under us, voices began to sputter and call for help.

I swallowed bitter salt water, inhaled it, coughed it up. I could not see the shoreline, but I made out Edmund's voice, calling for Sir Nigel.

I heard no answering cry.

The water lifted me and flung me forward, jamming my face into the sandy shore.

The first drowned man I pulled from the surf was Father Stephen.

I dragged several more bodies, bawling into the hard wind for Sir Nigel and Edmund. Sir Rannulf labored with me, hauling sodden men out of the boiling foam, and soon a line of drenched figures sprawled above the waterline. Some crawled or struggled to roll over and put their faces to the rain. Others remained inert, in postures that can only be adopted by the lifeless, arms entangled, mouths agape.

Edmund called my name, dragging a drenched figure from the sea. A sharp wave nearly spilled him, and he flung the body over his shoulders like a meal sack. I recognized Sir Nigel's short, silver hair.

The knight's arms dangled as Edmund kicked free of the foam. He flung the knight down hard, and stood helplessly over his body.Then he seized Sir Nigel's ankles and held him up like a life-size poppet, a child's play figure. He shook the knight, and a long gush of water spouted from Sir Nigel's mouth. The knight waved his arms, swung a fist, cried out something, and Edmund stretched him out on the sand.

All along the line of bodies, women and children had appeared from inland, the wind fluttering shawls and blouses as they stooped over the sprawling drowned and half-drowned. This was proof that in this unknown countryside some welcome would be provided—food, a warm hearth. But as I staggered up the wet sand to offer my greetings, I glimpsed the flash of a knife.