XVII

 

 

Clairmont Castle

17 May, 1193

 

GISBURNE SQUATTED ON his haunches, staring at the huge footprints pressed into the black fen soil. Cast into deep shadow by the evening sun, they made his own seem like a child’s, sunk so far into the ripe-smelling mud they looked to have had the weight of an ox behind them. “A giant made of iron...” muttered Galfrid.

“You’re sure they’re his?” said Gisburne.

De Mortville’s steward nodded, and looked away. He was pale, his features haggard. Though he tried to cover it, his hands were shaking. From the look of him, he had not slept since the attack. “They don’t belong to anyone here, that’s for certain,” he said.

It was sheer chance that these few footprints had been preserved. All others had been obliterated by the frenzied activity since that terrible night. Within the castle, however, signs of his coming were still evident – and all too familiar. The same dark gore staining the ground. The same fierce burning upon the gate. The same sticky residue accompanying it.

There had been the same garbled, incredulous descriptions, too. Most were agreed that it was in the shape of a man – but emphasised shape, as if certain the resemblance was only superficial. Several spoke of the clank of metal, and of scales. Descriptions of the head or face – if a face it was – varied most wildly of all. They spoke of spikes, fins, jagged teeth and dead eyes. One man – a cook – made the startling claim that he knew the attacker. When pressed for details, a sweat had broken out on his brow, and he had – with utmost reluctance – whispered the name “Beelzebub.” He would not speak more on that subject, and Gisburne had not further pressed the point.

There were some new details. One of these was the hammer. This, Gisburne now knew, was the weapon with which the Red Hand had wrought such catastrophic damage upon his victims. Perhaps not surprisingly, the flames that leapt from the beast’s left hand had diverted the attention of witnesses from it – until now. Gisburne, who had seen its terrible, seemingly impossible effects, finally understood them. But he had never seen anyone use such a large, blunt weapon in battle. It was impractical – far too heavy for prolonged use. In fact, the only individual he had ever heard was capable of wielding such a weapon was a god.

A giant. A dragon. A demon. A pagan Norse god... Gisburne fought to banish thoughts of them all from his mind, staring hard at the gigantic footprints, telling himself this man – whoever he was – was as real, and solid, and fallible as he was. He breathed air and drank water, and blood ran in his veins. And he could be stopped, and killed – if only he could determine how.

First, he had to find him – and he had the knack of disappearing like a phantom. According to the steward, after the attack – which, Gisburne calculated, can only have lasted moments – the stunned men had mustered and pursued the fleeing creature, but had soon lost it in darkness and fog. At least one of the squires had fled at that point. They had been dispatched again the following morning, but had found nothing more than wagon tracks and the trail of a fox. All the time he had been telling Gisburne this, he had shaken his head, and cursed his inability to act during those fleeting, terrible moments.

“When it was upon him... I had a sword in my hand. If I had only struck...”

“...you’d be dead like the others,” said Gisburne. “And no use to anyone.” Gisburne did not blame him. What other action could there have been that had not been taken? None could have anticipated such a horror, and he had seen tougher men stunned into impotence by lesser shocks. “Not everyone is born to fight,” he said. “And swords are not the only tools that need wielding. You serve your master well. You are keeping his house and his memory alive.” The steward nodded, but looked disconsolate.

What he had done that morning, as the sun had risen on the now lordless castle, was spot the footprints. They were pressed into the mud where the bridge to the castle gate met the far bank of the moat. He then had the presence of mind to surround them with a row of logs from the pile in the yard, so they would be preserved. Even he was not sure exactly why he had done that. He said it somehow had seemed important to him to prove it had not been a ghost, but something of flesh and blood. Gisburne assured him that what he had done was of utmost importance – a thing that all others, thus far, had overlooked.

“You tried to follow these?” said Gisburne. “Back to where they came from?”

The steward nodded. “It’s hopeless,” he said. “A hundred yards along, the road becomes gritty. Sir Hugh had it made so to keep it in good order.”

Gisburne sighed. “So... three... three and a half footprints are what we have.”

Galfrid squatted down, raised his eyebrows and cocked his head to one side. “My old uncle was a master when it came to tracking. There was no animal or bird that he could not identify from the prints it made. Not only that – he could tell its age, its size. Whether it was moving swiftly or slowly. Whether it was injured, or healthy. Even whether it carried prey in its mouth. People thought him a wizard. But really, it was just looking.”

“So, what would your old uncle see in this footprint?” Gisburne raised a finger. “Only what we know, remember... Only what we see.”

Galfrid pulled off his hat and rubbed his palm across his head, as if coaxing his brain into action. “It is large, therefore its owner is likely large.”

“We have eyewitness accounts to confirm that.”

“It is deep. Exceptionally so – twice as deep as your own, and you are no small or slight man – so we can say he is of very great weight. Even if we account for his height, he must either be excessively fat...”

“Which we know he is not...”

“Or he carries a great weight with him.”

Gisburne nodded. “And what makes a man heavy, yet adds little to his bulk?”

Galfrid looked up. “Armour.”

“Thick armour,” said Gisburne. “Enough to stop crossbow bolts.”

“Metal plates. Dragon scales. That clank as he moves...”

“A giant made of iron,” said Gisburne.

“But he was running. The toes dig deeper than the rest. To carry such weight – to run with it, and to drag a man of Wendenal’s stature...”

“...would require a big man, of prodigious strength. Capable also of wielding a great hammer.”

“So, we are certain it is a man, then?” said Galfrid. “What of the dragon’s head?”

“A great helm. Made to resemble a beast. To terrify and confuse his victims.”

Galfrid’s eyes narrowed. “I thought you said only what we know?”

“Well, we know it’s not a dragon, don’t we?” said Gisburne. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, as if only then remembering that a third person stood with them, he looked up at the steward. “Don’t we...?”

The steward gave a heavy sigh that seemed to shake his whole frame, then drew himself up again as if in defiance of the feeling that was threatening to engulf him. “It matters little to me what you choose to call it. Only how it can be stopped.”

Gisburne nodded – even felt himself smiling at the steward’s words. “Once again, Master Steward, a wise assessment.” He stood. “If one were making armour in order to make oneself invulnerable, a great helm would inevitably be part of it. Such a thing could easily be fashioned to resemble a beast by one with the necessary skills.” Galfrid nodded sagely. Gisburne turned again to the steward. “Your master’s corpse...” he began. At the image those few words conjured, he saw the man shudder.

“He is laid out in the chapel,” said the Steward.

“I would like to see it.”

The Steward’s expression grew more pained. “If you must.”

 

 

DESPITE THE STEWARD’S persistence in referring to it as he – a habit hard to break after years of service – what they stood over upon the stone altar of the still chapel was no longer a man. Quite how it had been manhandled in here, Gisburne could not imagine. It was a thing of stark contrasts. For the most part, despite a few cuts and abrasions consistent with a struggle, the body was intact – that of a man who had suffered no more than a minor altercation. A fight outside a tavern. A fall from a horse.

There were four exceptions to this state. Each of them, Gisburne now recognised, was the mark of the Red Hand. The first was the right leg, which had suffered the attentions of fire. The burning extended little higher than the knee, but below that part had burned with a flame so fierce that the shin was eaten to blackened bone. The second was the head – or what was left of it. Its thick, rank smell filled the air. This, Gisburne supposed, must have been lifted upon a shovel or some other implement as the body itself was carried. He imagined them placing the gory, flattened mass here with a mixture of repulsion and reverence, bits of straw and of gravel still mixed with it from the courtyard, the shovel scraping on the stone as it was withdrawn. This part was no longer recognisable as human. At least, not at first. Though still attached to the body via a battered web of flesh and a few meagre sinews, taken on its own might have been anything – a trampled animal, the waste of a butcher’s shop. Then, one noticed human teeth, and – still intact, now fixed in a permanent stare – a single eyeball. Gisburne felt his gorge rise at the sight of it.

The third was the right hand – or, rather, the lack of it – hacked off by the attacker, and, according to the Steward, never found.

But it was the fourth thing – by far the least of them – that captured Gisburne’s attention most fully. Upon the chest – passing directly though the breastbone – was a neat hole, barely bigger than that made by a carpenter’s awl. Thick blood was caked around it, staining de Mortville’s deep blue velvet tunicella black. The puncture might have been made by a bodkin arrow or a slender misericorde, but Gisburne knew it was the result of neither.

“That is where the scrap of cloth was nailed?” he said, extending his finger towards it.

The Steward nodded, appearing as if he wished nothing more fervently than to be able to look away, but was unable to do so.

“And the cloth itself?” said Gisburne. “What of that?”

“Removed,” said the Steward. “Discarded. Before I could prevent it.” It was clear he regretted the loss, and in observing Gisburne’s methods, he was coming to regret it all the more.

“Discarded where?”

“I suppose...” The steward shrugged. “Tossed into the midden.”

“Show me where that is,” said Gisburne.

 

 

MINUTES LATER, GISBURNE was knee-deep in muck – a slimy, layered chronicle of the castle’s waste, about which thrummed a thick cloud of black flies. Beneath the surface, some of the matter was now so rotted it had turned to a kind of black soil, which smelled almost like fresh hay. But what lay above it – the addition of more recent weeks, warmed up by today’s sun – was not so sweet.

Gisburne had tied a cloth doused in vinegar about his face and now, a look of intense concentration in his eyes, poked about the heap with one of Conan’s discarded sticks, turning over gnawed bones, rotting vegetables, mussel shells and things now unidentifiable.

This heap was thoughtfully positioned beneath the northern tower of the eastern wall – downwind of the castle – but even upwind of it, Galfrid caught its pungent reek.

“What is he doing?” said the steward. It was less a question, more an expression of disbelief. He knew well enough what Gisburne was seeking – but he had never seen a knight lower himself to such a task.

“There’s nothing he likes better than wading through other people’s filth,” said Galfrid, deadpan.

The steward stared at him for a moment, then back at the absurd sight of Gisburne, prodding and poking at rubbish with his dog-gnawed stick. Fascinating as this sight was, Galfrid’s attention had wandered to the near featureless horizon. The light was failing. Night fell quickly here. Another half hour, and they’d be in pitch darkness.

A cry of triumph made him turn. In the next moment, Gisburne was wading back towards them, cloth pulled from his face, hand held aloft in a gesture of victory, as if he had recovered Escalibor from the waters of the enchanted lake.

It was no sword but a triangular, bloody scrap of weathered oilcloth. He extended his hand to his squire. On it, written in charcoal, Galfrid could clearly make out the figures: xxxix. And piercing the fabric was a small spike of iron.

Gisburne drew it out, and held it aloft in triumph. “This is what I sought...” he said.

“A nail?” said the bemused Steward.

“A horseshoe nail,” replied Gisburne. He looked the steward in the eye. “Thank you,” he said. Sincere as his expression was, Gisburne’s tone carried a finality whose significance the steward did not at first grasp. “You may leave us now,” added Gisburne. The steward shuffled, bowed, and edged away.

The moment the steward was out if earshot, Gisburne turned back to his squire, his eyes burning with a new fire. “A man who wields a hammer. Who uses charcoal and fire. And this...” He held the nail up between thumb and forefinger.

Suddenly, Galfrid understood. “A blacksmith...”

“A blacksmith who has made himself armour. Who has the skill to fashion a helm into the head of a beast. And this oilcloth...” Gisburne held it out again. “Weathered.”

“A tent? Cover for a wagon? A sail, maybe?”

“Whichever way you look at it, a traveller. We know he’s been on the move these past weeks. And that his appearance, when he strikes, is startling. Terrifying. Yet he moves unseen. Day to day, his appearance is nothing out of the ordinary.” Gisburne’s words were rapid, tumbling out of him.

“He would need the means to carry this armour. And to live and make his fire. He has help, maybe?”

“No,” Gisburne shook his head vigorously. “He works alone.” He held up his hands. “I know, I know – I speak from pure instinct now. But I’d stake my life on it, Galfrid. This armour of his... He builds a fortress around himself. I’ve seen other such men. They are solitary, trusting no other.”

Galfrid puffed out his cheeks. “Then he must have a horse as extraordinary as himself. How could any carry such weight?”

“What if it is not a horse?” said Gisburne.

“What else could it be?” said Galfrid.

“No horse was ever seen. He was always on foot.”

Galfrid spread his hands apart in exasperation. “But how else could he have got to John’s chambers in Nottingham so soon after the slaying in the woods? He got there ahead of Wendenal’s guard, even though they were riding full tilt. What other way is there? Wings? Sorcery?”

“Misdirection...” said Gisburne. “Not sorcery. A trick.”

“A trick..?”

“What if we’re looking at this the wrong way around? What if the parchment had been there all along – if he had placed it there before the attack? These are not random actions. He plans ahead. With meticulous precision.”

Galfrid rubbed his chin. “Then... His transport would not need to be fast at all.” He thought at once of the tracks that de Mortville’s men had found – and dismissed – that same morning. “A wagon...”

Gisburne nodded. “A wagon capable of carrying such a man, and his armour, and his tools.”

Galfrid stared out across the flat marshy plain, the previous day’s fog now completely burned away by the sun. He laughed to himself. “An itinerant blacksmith...”

“Whitesmith, too, perhaps,” said Gisburne. “Not a sorceror. Not a dragon. A common tinker.”

“A distinctive one, though, if he is indeed a giant.”

“Hard to hide on foot, but not so much when hunched upon a wagon. He’s invisible, Galfrid. The very antithesis of his monstrous disguise. A thing so ordinary, so banal, it is completely overlooked, even when it’s in plain sight.”

“My God,” said Galfrid. “We might have seen him on the road. At some wayside inn. We would never have known.”

“We have to hope he was as oblivious to us,” said Gisburne. “That he still believes John to be travelling with his entourage. Nothing suggests otherwise.”

“At least we know what we’re looking for.”

“And if we can tackle him in that guise, while he is divested of his metal skin, we know we can capture or kill him.”

“But if we don’t?” asked Galfrid. “If chance doesn’t put him in our path before he comes looking for John? Before he disappears into the swell of London?”

At that, Gisburne said nothing. His head was held low, his brow furrowed deeply. It was a moment before Galfrid realised his master’s attention was focused on the scrap of oilcloth. “These numbers must tell us something...” he muttered.

“Or they’re the ramblings of a madman,” said Galfrid. “Fifty-four, fifty-nine, thirty-nine...”

“No, the other way” said Gisburne, distractedly.

“What?”

“The order you said is the order we encountered them, not the order in which order they occurred. Thirty-nine was on Whitsunday, and fifty-four – Wendenal – upon Mayday. But Walter Bardulf was the first, five days before that.”

“Fine,” said Galfrid. “Fifty-nine, fifty-four, thirty-nine... But what does that tell us? We know who – after a fashion, at least. But when are we going to know why?” He threw up his hands again. But when he looked at Gisburne again, his master’s expression had suddenly changed. He was staring into the middle distance, his furrowed brow flattening as his eyes grew wider.

“Galfrid,” he said. “When is Whitsunday?”

Galfrid looked back at him, perplexed. “Are you mad? It was yesterday. I know your grasp of time is poor, but even you can’t have forgotten that day...”

“But how do we decide when it is?”

Galfrid shrugged, baffled by the line of questioning. “It’s fifty days after Easter.”

“And Lent? How long is that?”

“Forty days, from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday. But...”

“And Christmastide?”

“Twelve days.”

“Exactly.” Gisburne’s eyes blazed. “We count the days,” he said. “Do you see? He’s counting...” It was as if, in Galfrid’s mind, pieces that had previously been obscure were suddenly shifted into their proper relationship. Thirty-nine had occurred fifteen days after fifty-four, and fifty-four five days after fifty-nine. They were days. Numbers of days. And they were going backwards. Counting down. But to what?

Gisburne’s face, momentarily one of triumph, suddenly fell. “What day is this?”

“Monday. The day after Whitsunday.”

“No, the date...”

“The seventeenth day of May.”

Gisburne stood motionless, his hands frozen mid gesture. “By Christ...” his face paled. The fingers of his right hand tightened into a fist about the nail. “It can’t be.”

Galfrid’s mind was racing – calculating. “What? Can’t be what...?”

Gisburne turned and looked past him, all sense of triumph gone. “We must gather John tomorrow and get him to London with all possible speed. No more delays. No more pretence. And I must speak with Llewellyn.”

“Counting to what?” said Galfrid.

But Gisburne, lost in thought, would say no more.