The Seal (26 page)

Here on the
ground he found himself battered and pounded by the legs of the broad-bodied
horses. Hot liquid blinded him, he wiped it away – blood – and
still he saw nothing. The horses panted, their neighing was all passion.
Crouching between blows, Etienne reached out to the hilt and pulled. The
stubborn weapon would not come. Now something fell over him and he was thrown
away from the body with his sword stuck in it and down upon his face. In that
space above he could hear the grunts and cries and blows muffled by the bulk of
what had laid itself over him, and realised with a certain equanimity that he
was not only being crushed but drowned also, since his mouth and nose took up
more snow-turned-mud than air.

He pulled up,
coughing, and reached with a free hand, panting, groaning, spitting, and
fumbled behind him. Something grabbed his hair and pushed his face down into
the mud again. In his ears the activity of the horses grew dull. Stars began to
lift upwards into the dome of his mind. The weight on his back would force him
to rest a while, sheltered from the noise and the blood.

In the day of evil he will protect me in the secret of
his Tabernacle. I thank thee, oh Lord! I thank thee
!

Of a sudden he
was lighter.

He felt a
pulling at his belt and found that he was heaved half sitting half lying on his
side, vomiting mud next to the weight that had fettered him, now stabbed in the
back of the neck. His saviour had been, from what he could make of it,
Jourdain, who was moving over the killing field of carcasses that had been cut
down and were fallen all around. Etienne wiped the bloody dirt from his eyes.
The horses were moved away, he could hear their grunts. He looked with his
hands for the corpse wearing his sword; when he found it he gave a heave that
caused his hurts to burst into a thousand darted lights that coursed through
his head. He pulled with all his strength – since this must surely be the
last time he would do so before he died – and it came away; he stood,
dizzy, soaked in the other man’s blood, more blood dripping from his hand and
his nose.

The Norman was
at his work of killing a dark figure that threw itself down screaming. Etienne
could not make out Delgado, but he could hear the Catalan laughing to his right
and a hint of movement and a groan, then he heard a shout of ‘Again!’; it was
Jourdain.

Sleet and night all around.

He heard a call,
‘Etienne!’ And it struck him as he stood twisting and turning with his blade
extended outward into black. At that moment the sky dropped its stars and he
tasted blood on his lips. That was when the pain swelled through him like a
sunrise, to a place beyond him so that his eyes rolled upward and he was gone
out of his head.

T
he
Eagle made good journey under oars, rounding the north coast of Ireland and
heading upwards of the
north channel
towards Scotland
one month after their departure from Portugal. For the most part the journey
had been without incident. The gold had been secreted into the bilges and used
as ballast and, though she lay low in the water, the breezes had been strong in
her sail and the old galley had cut through the rising and falling of the vast
grey expanse as if it were short work.

Marcus at the
foredeck looked outward to the horizon of land touching the lip of the sea, now
reddening and purpling in deference to a setting sun.

These days
Marcus had no words. He looked at the ground or the sky, or even the sea, and
saw nothing of his soul, nor did he wish to see it, since to see his soul was
to recognise that in that dwelling he would find nothing but a vast emptiness,
a place heartless and doomed.

A chill breeze
rose upward to the lateen sail. This breeze did not bring to him the smell of
jasmine; it did not bring the farms and orchards, the stables and granaries of
the Christian kingdom. It brought him nothing of the struggles of his Order and
victories fought for the greatness of the Lord and the grave of His Holy Son.
It was a foreign breeze, full of misgivings.

He was roused
from his concerns by the gong. The sail was flapping. He turned around and saw
Roger de Flor calling out to the overseer to pick up the pace and for the steer
master to steer two points away from the island.

The great gong
sounded again. Wood groaned and the slaves grunted in response as the oars hit
the water in time to the mounting beat. The hull creaked and the cordage
strained as one hundred and fifty slaves pulled and fell forward, pulled and
fell forward, bones and muscles stretching. The wind brought forth the smell of
their stale sweat and urine. Marcus made his way over the catwalk to the poop
where stood Roger de Flor, contented and singing to himself, holding one tiller
and calling out to his steersman at the other.

He was crinkling
his disordered face and baring his teeth in a smile by the light of the setting
sun when Marcus asked, ‘What?’

‘Two things,’
the other man said. ‘There is a squall coming towards us, south-south-west, see
its scurrying feet?’

Marcus followed
the line of Roger’s eyes to the stern and saw the sea churning and boiling as
if in it a million fish were competing for space.

‘It is a bad
business, that wind,’ Roger said, whistling and smiling.

‘And the other thing?’
Marcus asked, impatient.

‘An English galley.
She will not leave
off without toll,’ he said, and turned to command his men to prepare to drop
sail.

‘What toll?’
came Marcus’s irritated reply.

‘That would be
this galley and every man upon her!’

As the sail was
hauled in, the squall struck. Marcus took hold of a railing as the Eagle surged
and pulled and tilted and water curled over the bulwarks.

‘This wind will
oppose the swells that come from the north!’ Roger shouted. ‘It shall build us
a steep sea! Those fools . . .’ He pointed behind them at the vague shape of a
galley whose sails caught the waning light and made pearls of them. ‘They are
coming to ram us so near to land in this treacherous sea!’ He laughed as if
this were a most pleasant day. ‘We will let them come.’

There was a
twitch at the corner of Marcus’s mouth that sent a shiver over his face. ‘We
must outrun them!’ he said, tight with anger now. ‘Think of our cargo and our
charge!’

‘See that
weather?’ Roger pointed to a dark cloud over the seaward skyline. It stretched
to the south with its long, ragged streamers, red and angry. ‘This old galley
is weighed down, Marcus!’ Roger said. ‘She would be hard-pressed to outrun a
dying mule! That other ship has half our draught . . . there is nothing for us
to do but entice it to its doom upon the rocks. We shall take to our heels and
see if they follow.’

‘But shall we
escape the rocks ourselves?’

‘That is between
God and his ocean!’

At that Roger
drove the galley into a strait between the island and the mainland.

It was night
when the English galley approached with the fierce wind in her sails. The
lightning caught its image like a ghost ship with illuminated oar banks and a ruffle
of foam under her belly.

The Eagle kept
ahead through the mighty work of the slaves on the sweeps. They worked the
galley between the forces of wind, tide and swell, which made her shake and
pitch, grabbing at the water with a creaking of timbers and a dropping of her
nose into the foam.

The wind veered
sharply to the west. The current, on the other hand, sought to take the bow of
the Eagle towards land, and her beam on to the steep seas.

‘Pull her up!’
shouted Roger, flinging himself onto the tiller as the
galley
was swept up by the thrashing water
. ‘Pull her up!’

Around, above,
beneath them there erupted a storm of sound, a thunderous roar, as the Eagle
heeled sideways. Oarsmen were flung over one another, escaping the churning
waters only through being shackled to the deck. Cordage flew in the air and
coiled around the bodies of sailors who fell to the bulwarks or over the side.
Beneath them the boards creaked and groaned and water lapped at their heels.

Roger’s work
brought the galley under control and lazily she returned. He made a yell to the
slave-master to unshackle what slaves had survived and to put them to their
oars.

Marcus felt the
tremble of this moving world of wood beneath his feet as a perilous thing, held
together by hope and a prayer. He looked for a handhold and wiped his eyes of
spray. Out in the turmoil of elements he saw the English galley being turned
around by its nose, leaving her pitching, with her broadside exposed to the
Eagle’s ram.

Roger de Flor
saw it also. ‘Speed up the drums!’ he shouted to the overseer and he in turn
called instructions to the bow. The wind strengthened and spears of rain cut into
the eyes. ‘Get those oars moving! Ready the bowsmen!’

But at that
moment St Elmo’s fire lit the night and the men saw a rising mountain of sea
that seemed to Marcus’s untrained eye to have swept around the island and cut
into the seas from the south. A moment later white water broke over the English
galley and there was heard a great crack, a tearing asunder of heaven and
earth, as it was gathered up and tossed with a snapping of her mast into the
vast world of white foam that travelled a path towards them.

Roger cried out
instructions but they were lost. ‘The tiller is gone!’ was the last thing he
said, for at that moment a wall of black water full of splintered mast, cordage
and enemy galley came hurtling towards the Eagle. Marcus made a grab for the rails
and lost his footing, falling into a tangle of ropes and oars and mast and
boom. The slaves gave out a wild chorus of yells and the world shook as a
shudder was sent running down the length of the Eagle’s spine.

The last thought
Marcus had was for the gold, broken up and scattered into the unknown depths,
and then his mind closed over and he fell into a black chasm

T
he
Eagle lay some distance from the beach. A part of her was sitting up
half-visible out of the water with the tide going out around her like liquid
glass. Roger was sat upon the beach surveying the dark bay as first light made
a silhouette of her broken shape.

He and the grand
commander, together with his ship’s captain and a small number of men, had
survived the quarrel with the English ship. Now the sea was spent. The only
evidence of her temper were the dead horses, dead men, split wood, barrels and
torn sails that lay strewn over the beach. Only one animal had managed to swim
ashore and it now stood shivering and twitching its ears, looking this way and
that with a wild eye as if wary of further evils.

Roger had, for a
time, observed the grand commander standing before the calm waves, staring and
staring as if such a concentrated effort would undo all that had passed. The
man stood without a movement except a regular shaking of the head, a spasm of
the face and a vacant look in the eye. Roger decided he had to take matters
into his own hands and he sent Andrew to find wood for a fire. When the old
knight returned and a good fire was made, the slaves and what was left of his
men sat before it shivering and Roger de Flor too sat down, like a dog guarding
his flock.

He was watching
Marcus with a keen eye, wondering what the man was up to, when, perhaps feeling
himself observed, the commander began making his way to him, shaking from cold.
When he was standing over him in the thinning darkness Marcus gave him a smile
made of twitches and ticks.

‘The Eagle is
full of sea,’ he said, patting his sides.

Roger de Flor,
with arms crossed over bent knees, wiped his face of salt and with his own
shiver nodded. ‘It is likely to be so.’ There was a wry smile.

‘And the gold?
It shall not be drowned.’ He bent his body down until his face was thrust at
Roger’s disfigured one, until they breathed together that air between them. ‘It
shall not!’ His lips moved in a tremble as if he were asleep and worried by a
dream. With an effort noted and observed by the mercenary, he whispered more
potent than a scream, for his eyes bulged and the veins stood out at his
temples, ‘A moment ago an eagle flew above the galley . . . moreover, see that
sky? As calm as a summer’s day! It is an omen!’

Roger stared
into the cold blue face of that man, stooped and half smiling with veined,
troubled eyes, and realised two things. He realised, firstly, what he had known
in Cyprus, and then at Atouguia, where he had observed the man’s friendship
with the gold: that Marcus, upon taking charge of it, had leant his soul upon
its salvation and was, therefore, unwilling to let the gold rest. He understood
it. To lose a fortune was one thing, but the plain fact that this Templar was
perched on the threshold of a new thing was Roger’s second realisation: namely,
that such a quandary laid upon the shoulders of this man had accomplished in
him a loss of his wits.