VI
IT TOOK THREE attempts to find Llewellyn’s “foxhole”. The first had brought him to a dead end in a dank, airless vaulted interior that smelt of damp earth and vinegar and which was filled, as far as he was able to tell, with barrels of pork and salt fish. Next time, he’d have the informant mark the map on a piece of cloth, and keep it in his pocket.
As he wandered, the shadows gliding and leaping across the stonework at the passing of the smoky, sputtering tallow candle, he puzzled over John’s final words. Lady Marian Fitzwalter... Every time he thought he knew the man, John found new ways to surprise him. How could he have known about Lady Marian? Gisburne had told no one. Not that there was much to tell, of course; Marian had never returned Gisburne’s keener affections, nor even shown much interest in doing so. He wondered if John knew that too. She liked him, of course. They had always liked each other. She had even tolerated his later attempts at intimacy – tentative though they were – with good grace. But her tolerance, well-meant though it was, made him feel less like a man, and more like one of her dogs. Hatred would be better. At least then he would be the subject of some strong emotion.
Turning back on himself, he headed again into the store room with its ranks of stacked barrels. This, surely, was where the chamber should be – so his instincts told him, anyway. Then, just as he was about to abandon the place for a second time, the same instincts urged him to investigate a shadow deeper in the chamber. There, in a small archway, almost obscured by the barrels flanking it on either side, was a narrow door. He pushed on it. From inside, carried upon a heat like a desert wind, came the smell of sulphur and woodsmoke.
In one corner, a small furnace glowed. Before it stood an incongruously elaborate wooden chair – it almost deserved to be called a throne – and by its side a small rustic table bearing some scraps of cloth and broken pieces of charcoal. In the other, a huge flap of brown leather screened off a a tiny section of the room, its surface marked by silvery flecks of molten lead. Against one wall was a cluttered bench strewn with tools and pieces of shaped wood and beaten or cast metal; on the other, shelves packed from floor to ceiling with every kind of curiosity, from bottles of liquids and jars of coloured powders, to animal skulls, antlers and lengths of bone. And, in between, every inch of the cramped space was filled with sacks, barrels, boxes and chests.
“The crossbow worked, then,” said a gruff voice. Llewellyn of Newport stepped out from behind a ragged flap of the hanging partition. Gisburne fancied for a fleeting moment that he could see smoke rising from his grizzled hair and beard.
“And the Greek Fire,” replied Gisburne.
Llewellyn snorted in laughter, and slapped Gisburne on the arm. “I could tell that, even buried way down here. It has a distinct aroma. And it gets about.” He grunted in laughter again, waving his guest inside and closing the door behind him. “If you only knew what I’d been through to perfect that recipe. Speaking of which...” Crossing the room, avoiding every obstacle with practised ease, he stooped over a sturdy leather bag near the chair, and extricated an elegantly shaped glass bottle, stoppered with beeswax. A smile creased his face as he cradled it in his hands, blowing off a little dust.
“You know what this is?”
“Does it explode?” said Gisburne. He naturally assumed that nothing in Llewellyn’s possession was quite what it seemed.
“Monks made this. A heady brew. If ever you wondered why so many of them are unable to speak...” He chuckled, waving the bottle gently in Gisburne’s direction. “I’ve been waiting for some excuse to drink it. I had hoped for something momentous, but your arrival will have to do.” And with that, he placed the bottle on the little table by his chair and began rifling the shelves in a hunt for cups.
“My apologies for the mess,” he called, his head half buried amongst bottles. “The previous tenant was French.” He said this as if it provided the entire explanation. Gisburne thought better than to mention that it looked, if anything, slightly more ordered than Llewellyn’s own workshop in Nottingham. As he stood, wondering where to put himself in the mayhem, he idly picked up a complex wooden model from the cluttered bench – evidently some kind of variant on the trebuchet – pulling back its arm and watching in fascination as its tiny pulleys pulled and tiny gears meshed.
“Please don’t touch that,” snapped Llewellyn, extricating himself.
“Do we make war on mice now?” Gisburne said, putting a rivet in the trebuchet’s tiny bucket and firing it across the room. It clattered behind a long, low chest.
Crossing the room in two strides, Llewellyn snatched the device from him, slapped it back on the worktop irritably and threw a cloth over it. “The real one is bigger.” As he turned, he gestured to the big chair by the furnace. “Sit. Sit. You look ready to drop.”
Gisburne sat. Sure enough, as he did so a wave of fatigue suddenly broke over him. It was the familiar crash after the rush of battle. He didn’t fight it – the time for fighting was past, at least for now – and instead allowed his body to relax for what he realised was the first time in days.
“So,” Llewellyn said as he excavated a horn cup and blew into it. “I would imagine the prince has now revealed his mission, and you are in need of some tools to speed its successful completion. Correct?”
It was a fair summing up. “There is a catch,” said Gisburne. “I need them in my hands in two weeks.”
Llewellyn stopped for a moment, and looked at him steadily, a knowing look in his eye. “I might have one or two things that could be adapted to the purpose.”
Gisburne stared back. “Do you already know the mission?”
Llewellyn pulled a dented, tarnished silver vessel from a wooden box, knocked it upside down on the bench a few times and then rubbed the lip on his tunic. “I know only weights, tensions, tolerances and reactions. Anything else is for others to worry about.” He stood for a moment, a cup in each hand, an unconvincing look of feigned innocence on his face. Gisburne wondered if it had simply become a habit with Llewellyn to pretend to know far less than he actually did. “However,” he continued with a shrug, “in judging those tensions and tolerances, it might help if I were to know who you will be up against.”
“The King of France,” said Gisburne casually. “And the Templars.”
Llewellyn, who had now placed the cups upon the table and again taken up the cherished bottle, stopped as if struck by an arrow. He nodded slowly, his expression sombre. “A general piece of advice, then, from one friend to another... Templars are not like any other adversary. Oh, I know – I won’t lecture you about their dedication, their ruthless efficiency. I know you’ve seen those up close. Just be aware: they have the best enginers of anyone in this world, Christian or Saracen.”
“Better than you?”
Llewellyn did not succumb to the flattery. “Whatever ingenuities you may bring, whatever... surprises I can furnish, expect the same – and more – from them.”
“They’re still men.”
“Yes. Men with wealth greater than kings. Men driven by a religious zeal more fervent than popes. Men with political reach beyond that of any emperor. They have no nation, yet princes fear them. They have a network of loans and debts stretching from here to the Holy Land that makes the wealth of nations appear feeble and archaic – and upon which some of those nations depend. They are a web – everywhere and nowhere – and answerable only to God.”
“And yet, their flesh is no more resistant to the bite of a blade. Their blood flows no less freely. Their skulls are no thicker than any other man’s.” Gisburne thought for a moment. “All right, maybe their skulls are a little thicker...” But Llewellyn did not laugh. Not this time.
“Do you know of a knight named Tancred de Mercheval?” said Gisburne with a yawn, breaking the momentary silence. “John says he is a maverick.” He saw what he thought was a flicker of alarm in Llewellyn’s eyes, hastily suppressed. Then a smile creased the old man’s features.
“So, it’s ‘John’ now, is it...?” The smile faded away again, like a brief chink of sunlight peeking through cloud. “‘Maverick’ is one word for it. He was favoured by the old Grand Master, Gérard de Ridefort. The new one is less enamoured, and keeps him on a long leash for when he needs his dirty work done. But he controls him less and less.”
“He exceeds his orders?”
Llewellyn took a deep breath. “There was a case of a heretic monk in southern France, harboured by his community. Tancred was dispatched to bring him to justice, but ordered not to kill him. The monk had preached that the Almighty was the God of Peace – that all killing was a sin. Tancred determined to prove him wrong. Since the whole village had protected him, he had every man, woman and child in it put to death. Then he let the monk go to contemplate the consequences of his actions. The monk hanged himself under a bridge two days later. So yes, you could say he exceeds his orders, though he would perhaps disagree. His orders come direct from God.”
Gisburne considered Llewellyn’s words for a moment. “Another lunatic,” he sighed at length. “I’ve spent my life surrounded by them. Present company excepted.”
“He is a formidable adversary, Guy,” said Llewellyn softly. “One who plays by no rules but his own.”
He regarded the exhausted Gisburne for a moment, looked as if he was about to say something more, then seemed to dismiss it. Sighing deeply, he stared at the bottle in his hand.
“You know, I think I may save this a little longer. To toast your safe return.” And with that, he returned it carefully to his bag. Gisburne, by now too drowsy to appreciate the gesture, simply felt relief. He had already been plied with copious quantities of the good wine that Prince John had liberated from Longchamp. The fire in his blood from the assault on the Tower was now fully burnt out, and in its wake had left exhaustion. Now, with the heat from the furnace, his eyelids were drooping.
“We can’t let this occasion pass without wetting our whistles in some way, however...” said Llewellyn, diving between a pair of barrels. “I know I have some wine here. The good stuff, mind...”
There was a clatter. And a clink. After a moment of huffing and grunting, Llewellyn emerged again, a cobweb caught in his hair, a cylindrical earthenware bottle in his hands. He pulled the stopper, sniffed at the open top, and gave a growl of satisfaction. “Burgundy’s finest,” he said, and turned to his guest with a beaming smile.
But Guy of Gisburne was already asleep.