Pagan in Exile (14 page)
But Roland’s there. Raising his sword over his head, both hands on the hilt, and –
WHUMP!
Brings it down like an axe between the horns and the neck. Cutting the spine. Through the marrow.
Ending the agony.
Everything dissolves in a wash of tears. I don’t know why – this is crazy – it’s just an animal. It’s dead. That’s nothing to cry about. But I’m so confused . . . maybe it’s not the stag. Maybe it’s the way they actually did it. All together like that, so perfect and assured.
Scrubbing the tears away, to look at the blood-soaked earth under the yawning wound. It’s dead, all right. And there’s Berengar, whooping, his arms around Roland. Galhard, slapping Jordan on the back. Jordan, his neck scratched and bloody, ruffling Roland’s hair. Everyone grinning. Everyone excited. A confused babble of voices, as everyone tries to make himself heard.
Except me. I’ve got nothing to say. I don’t belong here. Gazing up at the sky, which is high and bleached and silent, with faint streaks of distant cloud and a lazy bird, hovering, drifting like a tuft of down in the breeze.
‘Why are you crying?’
It’s Foucaud. Still in the saddle, leading Jordan’s palfrey. Mind your own business, Beanstalk.
‘I’m not crying.’
‘Yes you are.’
‘I’m not!’ Dismounting, to avoid his bug-eyed stare. So dizzy! God! And the side of my face hurts. Resting my forehead on the mare’s sticky flank. If only I could lie down somewhere.
‘Look, Pagan!’ This time it’s Roland, striding towards me. His face is as bright as silver: below it, his crimson tunic is heavy, almost black, with blood. ‘Look, Pagan. Lord Galhard gave me the hart’s right foot.’
Well stuff me with saffron. Isn’t that exciting.
‘Because it’s been six whole years since last time, and I acquitted myself with honour,’ he continues. Is this really Roland? It doesn’t even sound like him. ‘Look Pagan, look at the size of it.’
Looking obediently. One sawed-off cloven hoof. Sinews trailing.
‘Very nice.’
He frowns, a shadow creeping across his radiant features. ‘What’s wrong?’ he says.
‘My head hurts.’
‘Where?’ And he reaches for the throbbing, stiffening side of my face. But his hand is thick with gore. Caked with it. I can’t help flinching.
‘What did I do?’ he says. ‘I didn’t touch it.’
‘Don’t. Just don’t.’
‘There’s a bruise coming up. It’s only a bruise. We’ll rinse it in bay oil when we return.’
‘
Roland!
’ (He staggers as Berengar jumps on his back.) ‘Roly-poly! That’s my boy, eh? Eh?’ Berengar grappling him around the neck. Rumpling his hair with blood-tacky fingers. ‘Still haven’t lost the old touch, have you Roly? One blow and it’s done. Been practising on the Turks?’
‘Something like that.’
‘This boy’s no eunuch! This boy’s got balls to spare!’ Berengar punches Roland playfully in the ribs. ‘What do 122 you say we get you a woman? Hmmm? Just to round off the day. Lots of nice girls, if you know where to look.’
‘Thanks, but I think not.’
‘Come on, Rolls! You’re a man now!’
‘No, I can’t.’
‘Forget the Templars! Enjoy yourself! This isn’t Jerusalem!’
Roland grins sheepishly. Jordan appears beside him, something dangling from his long, fastidious fingers. ‘Anyone for a scrotum?’ he inquires. ‘Or should we send it to the Abbot?’ Berengar bursts out laughing.
Look at them. The three of them. Towering above the rest of us, with their clear blue eyes and their identical noses, and the same folds in their cheeks when they smile. Blood-spattered. Sweat-soaked.
Why can’t I bear to look at them?
‘Oi, Pagan.’ Isoard appears. Standing there with his teeth bared, his hands behind his back. ‘Isarn thought you’d better take this.’
What? What are you talking about?
‘Hold out your hand,’ he says.
And let you chop it off? No thanks.
‘Hold out your hand, Pagan, or you’ll get my surprise in the face!’
Holding out my hand, reluctantly. He produces his own hand, piled high with something greyish and bloody and formless.
Splat!
Into my palm.
‘Isarn said you’d probably need these brains. Since you don’t have any of your own.’
Looking down at the warm, quivering mass. Berengar’s laughter booming in my ears.
Suddenly losing control of my stomach.
‘Uh-oh! Stand clear, everyone!’ (Berengar.) ‘Upwind, please!’
Oh God. Oh God. Retching and heaving. Groaning. Gasping. I’m going to die. I’m just going to die. Mess all over the ground. All over my boots. Don’t know where the vomit ends and the brains begin.
‘Well, Isoard.’ Jordan’s unmistakable drawl. ‘That’ll teach you to throw meat at people, won’t it?’
Oh good. Did I hit Isoard? Well aimed, Pagan. On my knees now, exhausted, with Roland’s hand on my head. Everyone else has moved away (even the poor old horse). Looking up, and there’s the carcass. On its back, half-flayed, its hide propped up at the corners with little sticks so that the blood won’t run off. Isarn working away at the belly, hauling out reams and reams of intestines. Other people hacking off limbs.
Jesus. I feel so sick.
‘It must be the sun.’ Roland’s voice seems to come from a long way off. ‘Or the blow to your head. Just lie down in the shade for a while. We should be leaving soon.’
‘I’m so thirsty.’
‘I’ll get you a drink.’
He wanders away, tossing the severed foot from hand to hand. What’s he going to do with that, I wonder? Eat it? The dogs are gathered around what’s left of their kill, whining, pleading, as Isarn and Joris and Isoard pull it to pieces exactly like ants. The guts in one sack. The head in another. Limbs wrapped up like babies’ corpses. Blood drained off into leather bottles.
They really know what they’re doing.
‘Here.’ A leather bottle, thrust in my face. Roland’s returned. ‘Drink this.’
‘It’s not – it’s not blood, is it?’
‘Blood? Of course not. It’s wine.’
Very warm wine. Clawing at my throat like a Turkish mace as it goes down. Not the smoothest drop I’ve ever sampled.
‘Perhaps I’d better not.’
‘Too rich?’
‘You could say that.’
‘I’ll see if I can find some water.’
He disappears again, his step buoyant, his hair gleaming like gold in the sunlight. Some of the dogs are fighting over scraps of meat, but everywhere else it’s happy faces and cheerful voices. Berengar, swigging wine. Jordan waving his stag’s scrotum. Galhard laughing with Aimery. Isarn beaming as he wallows around in the stag’s ribcage. Everyone is talking as loudly as possible.
‘Thought we’d lost it after the soiling.’
‘That Lionhead is worth his weight in gold!’
‘Keep the bladder, boy. You can’t beat stag’s urine for poultices.’
‘Did you see the way Lord Jordan jumped that last gully? Like a bird. He could ride his way to heaven.’
All the merry babble. And here am I, dirty, stinking, ill, ignorant, with a sore head and a split lip, sitting in a pool of my own vomit.
I’ve never felt so alone in all my life.
‘Cheer up, Pagan.’ Roland again, this time with a wineskin full of water. ‘Foucaud says you can keep this until we get back. Wash your face. You’ll feel better if you do.’
That sounds unlikely. It’ll take more than a clean face to lift my spirits. But what’s the good of arguing?
The water tastes faintly of wine and sweat.
‘Can you stand? Yes? Lord Galhard wants to leave, now. He wants to get back before dark. You’ll be able to make it, won’t you?’
‘Yes, my lord.’ Taking his hand, as he hauls me upright. All around, people are springing into saddles – some more lightly than others. Aimery seems to be limping. Joris grunts and groans. But Roland leaps onto his horse’s back without effort, as fresh as a spring dawn, strong and serene. He pulls me up behind him as if I were made of feathers.
‘What you really need is a good, long rest,’ he says. ‘You just didn’t get enough sleep, last night. You’ll be all right tomorrow.’
‘If you say so, my lord.’
Galhard’s already mounted, and moving off into the sun. He keeps the pace slow because the horses are all tired out. Blood drips from the warm, heavy bags tied to their saddles, and the dogs scuffle and snap as they fight over each drop. Suddenly, from the end of the straggling column, someone begins to sing:
He sang to me and bade me follow
Down the meadow path to where the roses fade
And laid me down in a grassy hollow
On a flow’ry bed of woven lilies that he’d made.
Is it Foucaud? Surely not. I didn’t know he could sing so well. Heads turn, and the horses flick their ears as other voices join in: Isarn’s, thin and high; Aimery’s, loud and raw; Berengar’s, like the sound of bagpipes passing through a goat’s stomach:
He sang to me and bade me kiss him
Sweet as honeysuckle, his soft lips met mine.
He asked if I would surely miss him
And my heart still sings with gladness at our love divine.
The lazy chorus drifts across the sunny landscape like a wisp of smoke, and the leaves rustle, and the insects buzz, and all at once Roland’s ribcage swells, almost breaking my grip, to accommodate the air that he proceeds to use in a way that I’ve never heard him use it before.
He begins to sing:
He sang to me of his desire
Down there in the hollow where I laid my head
And spoke to me with words of fire
As gentle breezes sighed upon our flow’ry bed.
I don’t believe it. This can’t be true. Roland Roucy de Bram? Singing a dirty troubadour ballad? His voice is softer than I would have expected, but rich and tuneful. Warm. Mellow.
Oh God, it’s so confusing. I don’t understand. What’s happening here? There’s something going on, and I just can’t work it out.
He sang to me, my gentle lover,
There where flowers bloomed and where the larks sang
sweet
But now it’s cold and the spring is over
And I long for summer days when once again we’ll meet.
‘By the balls of Baal, but I’ll be glad to get off this horse,’ Berengar adds, as the last, gentle note falls from the air. ‘I feel as if someone’s been using my buttocks for a battering ram.’
The sweet saints preserve us. If only someone would.
T
here are people waiting for Galhard in the hall. Three monks, all in Benedictine black, are perched like crows around the high table. The tallest seems to have something wrong with his eye: it’s wet and inflamed, and he keeps dabbing at it with the corner of his sleeve. His neighbour has the face of a lizard, seamed and ancient, with a wide mouth, an almost invisible nose, and small, bright expressionless black eyes. The third monk isn’t much older than I am. He’s the kind of wholly forgettable person you’d always be leaving behind by accident.
None of them looks like a match for Galhard.
‘So,’ he says, erupting into the hall, ‘you’re from the Abbot, are you?’ His tone is grumpy, but not life-threatening. Yet.
‘My lord,’ the tall monk replies, ‘we are brethren of Saint Jerome. I am Brother Humbert. This is Brother Norgaud. We have come here to represent our good father Abbot Tosetus, concerning a matter which has distressed him greatly.’
As Galhard approaches the high table, large and heavy and smelling like a leper’s armpit, Brother Humbert’s voice falters a little. But Galhard’s not after Humbert: he’s after the wine. He swills down what’s left and turns to Germain, who’s been hovering at his elbow ever since we dismounted.
‘More wine! he barks. ‘‘Where’s the food? What have you been doing, you lazy clods? I want something to eat and I want it now!’
Ominous rumbling of agreement from Berengar, as he drops onto a bench by the door. Germain scurries off to the kitchen. Aimery unbuckles his swordbelt, throwing it across one of the tables.
Clank!
And here’s Jordan, his beautiful surcoat encrusted with dry blood, looking around for a place to collapse. He sees me, and winks.
I don’t understand Jordan. I don’t understand why he’s being so nice. Why did he offer to let Foucaud rub down Roland’s horse? So that I wouldn’t have to do it myself? Or was it just to annoy Roland? It certainly
did
annoy him. But he had to accept Jordan’s offer, in the end, because I happen to feel exactly like a pair of old riding breeches that someone’s wrung out and beaten dry on a washboard.
The dogs creep in and throw themselves onto the rushes, too tired even to sniff around for scraps. Some of them fall asleep; some lick their wounds. Galhard deposits his great bulk on one of the high-backed chairs, and stretches his legs out in front of him.
‘Well?’ he growls. ‘Let’s get on with it. I’ve been hunting all day, and I’m tired. What does the Abbot want to tell me?’
‘My lord,’ says Humbert, in a high voice, ‘two of our brethren, Brother Raoul and Brother Guibert, were lodging with Father Puy of Bram last night. Brother Raoul arrived back at the Abbey around noon, alone. He told us that Brother Guibert had been abducted. By you, my lord.’