Authors: David Wisehart
William still savored his
breakfast. He ate less than most men, and took longer doing it. Each spoon of
porridge was a thesis much debated between his teeth before the old philosopher
consented to swallow. A carrot had kept him occupied from Viterbo to Rome. An
apple was the work of an afternoon. William ended each meal reluctantly, as if
it were his last. At this pace, he would soon be right.
The charcoal kiln proved a
moderate success. Digging through the warm dirt, Giovanni discovered that only
one of the hazel sticks had not burned; three burned too hot; five charred into
coal. These last he whittled into a new set of drawing sticks. His dagger was
dull but did the job.
Nadja set aside her bowl of
tisane, then wiped Marco’s lips with a sleeve of the borrowed undertunic.
Giovanni winced.
“I could use a shave,” the
knight said, running a hand across his cheek.
My pleasure,
Giovanni thought, but confined his
shaving to the black stick now throttled in his hand.
“Vanity is a sin,” Nadja
said.
The knight beamed at her.
“But not one of the fun ones.”
It occurred to Giovanni that
the real Knights Templar never shaved. Instead of saying this aloud he changed
the subject. “Terrible battle. So many lost. I wonder who won.”
Marco propped himself up on
his elbows. The undertunic ripped open at the armpits.
Rot in Hell,
Giovanni thought, but what he said was,
“I’m curious. Who were you fighting for? The queen or the king? The Neapolitans
or the Hungarians?”
“I fight for honor.”
“Yes, but whose?”
“My own.”
“A mercenary?”
“I am what you see.”
“No man is what we see.”
“Who are you?”
“Giovanni Boccaccio. The
poet. Boccaccio. You’ve probably heard of me.”
“No.”
Giovanni turned to William.
“Are you sure he’s Italian?”
Marco leaned forward, too
close, and fixed Giovanni with an icy glare. “Are you sure you’re a poet?”
Giovanni saw the challenge in the
Templar’s eyes. Smiling, the poet set aside the stick and the dagger, then
slapped the black dust from his hands. He rose to the bait, and to his feet. He
brushed the earth from hose and hind, tilted his hat to the proper angle,
cleared his throat as if to quiet the court at Naples, and recited a poem he’d
written for Gian Barillus, King Robert’s seneschal.
Be a soldier, a knight and not a knave.
Chivalric, fearless, dashing, debonair.
Be a soldier. There’s glory in the
glaive
When weapons clang with sanguinary
flair,
To brave the contest and contest the
brave.
Be a soldier. Let cannons wake the air
To sear the blood-red sky with crack
and fire
To rattle heaven’s gate till you retire.
Be a soldier, the hero of the age.
The glory goes to those who bear the
brunt,
The paragons upon the poet’s page.
Your metal must be sharp when words are
blunt.
Set out, and let adventure vent your
rage.
One cannot keep the hunter from the
hunt.
Ride, and ride with God. Mount your
horse and saddle
To field the cross across the field of
battle.
Be a soldier. Put on your heraldry
And rise above the rabble down below.
Uncage your courage and ferocity.
Imagine it: you’re camped on a plateau
And there, not very far ahead, you see
The foe on the March. You march on the
foe.
Closer. Closer. The air is ripe. And
then—
A thunderclap of steel, the test of
men.
Two men meet on the field, two matadors
Who came prepared to win, not
compromise.
They might have shared some wine before
the wars.
They see themselves in one another’s
eyes.
Two men. Your life in his and his in
yours.
Two men determining who lives, who
dies,
United in the Devil's own endeavor.
Just one man leaves. The other? Stays
forever.
Be a soldier. Dismiss all your dismay.
If you would brave the danger in the
dawn,
If you would lose the night to win the
day,
If you would ride across the Rubicon,
If you would lead your brothers to the
fray,
If you would be remembered when you’re
gone,
Then yearn to fight and earn the right
to hold your
Head up high. Live or die, you’ll be a
soldier.
Nadja and William applauded.
Giovanni took a deep bow.
The hat tumbled from his head but he
caught it deftly, then flaunted it about as if to catch a shower of coins.
The drought persisted.
With no coins to cadge, the poet
returned his hat to his head and his ass to the earth.
Marco refused to join the
claque. “A Tuscan, by the sound of you.”
“A critic, by the sound of
you.”
“Where were you born?”
“I was born in bastardy and
raised in neglect. I made my bed in scandal, dipped my wick in wantonness, and
hung my hat in shame. Now I live in squalor. Welcome to my world.”
The friar cleared his
throat. “I’m William of Ockham.”
“A monk?” Marco asked.
“A greyfriar of England.”
The knight glanced at the
girl. “And you are...?”
“Nadja.”
He kissed her hand. “A
pleasure, my lady.”
She blushed, and took her
hand away. “I’m not a lady.”
“And he’s not a knight,”
Giovanni said.
“I met her in Munich,” said
William. “She predicted the pestilence three years ago.”
Marco asked, “What
pestilence?”
The others fell silent.
The knight seemed to realize
his mistake. “How long was I in darkness?”
“Two days,” said William.
“But the world has been two years in darkness. Do you not recall the great
mortality?”
“Vaguely.”
Giovanni glanced at Nadja,
who seemed as confused by Marco’s words as he was.
“You are addled,” William
said. “That is to be expected. It will all return in time.”
Nadja said, half in a
whisper, “Some things are better forgotten.”
Giovanni could not forget.
When the pestilence had first laid siege to Tuscany, he had asked God the
reason for their suffering, and found no answer. Asking men, he learned more.
Merchants from Genoa and Venice told Giovanni what little they knew, and much
that they suspected. There had been for many years, they said, a pestilence in
the East, in Cathay and Tartary and places with no names, in strange and
terrible lands that had never felt the touch of Christian grace. Some merchants
told of quakes and cataclysms that broke the world asunder, releasing the
Devil’s breath from the bowels of the earth.
Whatever the merits of these
traveler’s tales, this much seemed certain: the great mortality was spread by a
miasma, a foul air that entered through the nose or the mouth. It filled the
lungs and spread rapidly throughout the body, creating painful tumors on the
inner thigh or under the armpit, or revealing itself in black or purple spots
on the skin, or sometimes only by a bloody cough which expelled the bad air out
of the lungs and onto another person, and another, and another. In this way the
Devil’s breath spread westward from the heathen East into the very heart of
Christendom.
With the pope now a captive
in the gilded cage of Avignon, Rome could marshal no defense against such evil,
and within two years there was no Christian in any land that did not fear the
breath of their sick mother or father or child.
“You predicted this
pestilence?” Marco asked the girl.
She nodded. “I heard a voice
in a dream: ‘
Every third son shall die the daylight. Every third daughter
shall die in the night. The children of Noah shall drown in their tears.
’”
“No one listened to her,”
said William, “until it was too late.”
Nadja continued, “In the far
north, in the ice lands, they say an old woman causes the plague. A harridan
named Hel. She moves from village to village carrying a rake and a broom. When
she uses her rake, some villagers die and others survive. But when she uses her
broom....”
“They called Nadja the
daughter of Hel,” William said. “They tortured her and worse.”
“They would have killed me,
if not for the good friar.”
Giovanni saw that Marco had
a dagger in his hand. It was Giovanni’s blade.
How?
The knight must have swiped
it during the recital. Giovanni had set the dagger down when he stood up.
That was stupid.
Marco wiped the dagger on
his sleeve, leaving smears of charcoal on the fine white fabric. The knight
dipped a hand into Nadja’s bowl, splashed some of the medicinal wine on his
cheeks, and began to shave. The right side of his face was sunburned, but he
did not flinch at the touch of the blade.
“Are you a witch?” Marco
asked the girl.
Nadja shook her head.
“A Cassandra,” said William.
“Sent by God in our time of need.”
Giovanni thought he should
demand the return of his dagger, but it might sound petulant. If Marco refused
to give back the blade, Giovanni doubted he could wrest it from him. It had
been a decade or more since he’d fought a man. He had never fought a knight.
Marco’s wounds did not even the odds. The poet temporized. He opened his
Inferno
, laid it beside his father’s old ledger,
and took up the pen to continue his map.
“What’s that?” Marco asked,
still scraping his cheeks.
Giovanni raised the book.
“Dante.”
“Our guide,” said William.
“Where are you going?”
“To the Devil.”
Marco laughed. “Aren’t we
all?”
“Yes,” said William, “but
you are going to bring us back.”
The blade paused at Marco’s
chin. “What do you mean?”
“We are pilgrims in search
of a holy relic.”
“You mean a treasure?”
“A hidden treasure. A pearl
of great price. A relic which has vanished from the Earth, into the abyss. You
will help us find it. You will light the way and lead us down.”
“And bring us back alive,”
said Nadja.
Marco chuckled. “Not for all
the gold in Cathay.”
“Not for gold,” she said,
“but for honor.”
The knight shaved the other
cheek. “You don’t know me.”
“You are Marco da Roma,”
said the friar. “A soldier who kills for money. But you were once a knight of
the Templars. You once swore to protect the Holy Grail.”
“The Templars are dead,”
said Giovanni.
“All but one,” Nadja
replied.
William continued, “When the
Templars were destroyed, the Grail was lost to Lucifer.”
Marco nicked himself. Blood
ran down his chin.
Giovanni set down his book.
“There is no Holy Grail.”
“It has great power,” said
William, “but the Devil cannot use it. He dare not even touch it. But he can
hide it from the world and let the world fall into darkness.”
Marco said, “You’ve lost
your wits, old man.”
“We know who you are,” Nadja
said, “by the mark you bear. The red cross upon your heart.”
Marco opened the front of
his tunic and studied the tattoo blazoned on his chest. He did not seem to
recognize it.
William set aside his empty
porridge bowl. “It is the secret mark of the Knights Templar.”
“You mistake me for another
man.”
“The land is dying,” said
William. “The people are dying. We’re in the middle of a plague.”
“How do you know it’s the
middle?”
“Half the world is dead.”
“Not my problem.” Marco
dried his face with his sleeve, then wiped blood from the blade. “The only road
to Hell is death. You have saved me from that path. For that I thank you. You
have my gratitude, but not my service.”