XXIX

 

 

HE HAD ADVANCED no more than two paces on the ship when he realised he was not alone. He froze, dripping on the deck, bare feet tensed against the boards. The snort sounded again, from his left, louder this time. He took another tentative step, and there he saw him. A Knight of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon, fully armed and mail clad, ready for battle – slumped, drunk and asleep. On one side of him, an opened earthenware bottle; on the other, a gnawed animal bone stripped of meat. The gentle purring rhythm of his snoring was broken by another snort and a splutter. He shifted, nudging the bottle, which toppled and rolled across the gently swaying deck. Gisburne stopped it with his foot, and righted it. Then he drew his shortsword and advanced towards the sleeping guardian.

In the flickering light of the flambeau upon the gunwale, he could see the man’s face. He looked as peaceful as a babe, a glistening trail of drool upon his short beard. Gisburne raised his weapon, and prodded the man firmly with its point. He spluttered and shifted again, but did not stir from sleep. Gisburne doubted whether the man would have been roused if a whole company had leapt aboard on horseback. He left him to his dreams.

The night air felt strangely warm now, the effect of emerging from the cold water. It would pass. He hoped to be back in the water by then. But there was one small thing to be achieved first.

Looking along the length of the deck, he spied a square hatch standing proud of the planking, some three-quarters of the way between him and the mast. On a ship of this size, there would be a hundred nooks to secrete the skull. But his gut told him – with the certainty of knowledge – that this was the place. He knew he was close – could smell it, taste it. Feel it in his bones. All these weeks of travel and hardship, and now, just yards away... Muscles tight, a strange thrill rising in his belly, he made towards it.

A shadow loomed suddenly before him: another knight, tall, armoured, sword drawn – not sleeping, not drunk. They stared at each other in silent amazement for a fleeting moment – but Gisburne was the more prepared. His blade swung and flashed in the firelight, the blunt back edge striking the man hard across the temple. He grunted, staggered, stumbled into the gunwale on the starboard side – and tipped right over the edge. There was a dull plash as his body hit the water.

Gisburne again stood tense, motionless, looking nervously to the still slumbering guard, then back at the shore. The knight had plunged overboard on the side facing shore. Even if they had not heard, anyone looking from the beach in that moment would have seen it.

But there were no voices raised. No sudden movements. The breeze brought only the familiar sounds of laughter, and the plaintive whine of the hurdy gurdy.

Gisburne hurried to the hatch. It appeared to have no lock. Llelwellyn’s words came back to him – warnings about the Templars’ ingenuity. Sheathing his shortsword, he gripped the edge and raised it, slowly, tentatively. It offered no resistance. He felt around its rim. There were no catches or wires. Nothing out of the ordinary. Could it really be they had simply put it in the hold of a ship, like a sack of flour or a barrel of salt pork?

He lifted the hatch completely. The impenetrable black of the hold’s interior stared back at him. Creeping to the port side, he released a flambeau from its bracket and again peered into the gloom.

The space was large, and but for one object, appeared entirely empty. Some twelve feet immediately below the opening, sitting in glorious isolation at the centre of the hold, was a solitary wooden chest, of the right proportions to contain a human head.

His flame glinted on its hasp and hinges. Gisburne felt his heart beat faster in his chest.

There was no ladder, no stair, no rope. No indication at all of any means of access. Could it be entered elsewhere, below the deck? There wasn’t time to find out. He freed one end of a line from the mast – the thickest he could find that wouldn’t bring the yard crashing down upon his head – and was about to lower it in to the gloom when something made him stop. At first, he thought it was a trick of the light – an illusion concocted by his straining eyes. He held the flambeau lower, and moved it from side to side. There was something in the air down there. Something between him and the box, barely reflecting in the light. Lines, or something, like...

A hand grabbed his hair and yanked him back from the opening. He sprawled. The flambeau skittered across the deck, its shadows jumping weirdly. Towering over him – still drunk, but fired up for the fight – was the slumbering guard, a heavy, spiked mace raised and ready to plunge down into Gisburne’s skull.

Gisburne launched himself head first and with all his weight at the knight’s unprotected midriff; the Templar gave a great wheeze as the impact knocked the wind out of him. He collided with the mast behind him, and then vomited several pints of hot, sour smelling liquid over Gisburne’s back. In a fury, Gisburne grabbed the knight by the surcoat and hauled him away from the mast. The material ripped, but the knight, still winded and now overbalanced, staggered awkwardly, fell to one knee then pitched forward right into the open hold.

The guard had made one fatal misjudgement, opting to take on Gisburne before raising the alarm. But it was not this that occupied Gisburne’s mind in those moments: it was the cry the knight had uttered as he fell – a cry not of pain, but of fear. And also the other, stranger sounds that had accompanied his plunge – a flurry of bursts within the hold, one after another, like a flapping or hissing, before the body hit the timbers with a bone-cracking thud.

Silence followed.

Gathering himself, Gisburne recovered the still-lit flambeau and crept towards the hatch. Then, he understood. Far below, curled around the box, lay the knight’s body, stone dead. It was bristling with crossbow bolts, and all about it, criss-crossing, caught up in his flailing limbs, was a tangle of fine threads – triggers for the deadly trap into which Gisburne had almost lowered himself.

So much for Templar complacency.

But there was now nothing between him and his prize. Lowering the rope into the gloom, he swung himself down, flambeau in hand, burning away what remained of the web of taut threads as he went.

His feet touched the floor. He knelt before the box, his pulse racing. The hasp was sturdy, but not impenetrable. It would yield. He looked around for somewhere to put the flambeau, and jammed it upright beneath the dead knight’s chin. Hardly dignified, but the man was past protesting. Then he drew out the crow, inserted its tip beneath the hasp, and pushed.

With a harsh metallic sound, the hasp broke.

Gisburne did not wait. He flung the lid of the box open. Nestled within was a bundle of blood-red silk. His fingertips went to it, felt the curved, cold mass inside the bundle, then impatiently parted the wrapping.

Gisburne had often heard of people gasping at the mere sight of something, but had never thought it real. It belonged to ballads and stories, or to play-acting children. But now he heard himself gasp – felt the involuntary intake of breath as the thing was revealed.

It was just as Albertus had described. Just as the manuscript had shown. But no description could do justice to its grim, otherworldy beauty. As he drew the flambeau closer, he felt his face light up with the warmth of reflected gold. Gemstones glistened and cast coloured light all about, as if not merely reflecting it, but magnifying it tenfold. And from the heart of this splendour, haloed by the wealth of centuries-old kings, the hollow, lifeless, bone-rimmed eyes of the Baptist stared up at him, into him – the eyes that had looked upon Christ, staring into his soul out of some timeless abyss.

A sound in the darkness made him start. A click. Then another, from his other side. And then a third – directly before him, this time.

Raising his torch, he saw in the fluttering light that the hold was not completely empty of other objects. There were several more boxes of wood and iron, spaced equally around the central one, and pushed back almost to the walls. Each was barely large enough to hold a cat, but those he could see appeared to have metal grilles at their fronts which were hinged open, like small doors. He thought, with an odd detachment, that whatever was meant to go inside must need air. There was a fourth click behind him. He whirled around just in time to see the grille of the last remaining box flip open.

A sudden feeling of dread gripped him. He felt a cold sweat condense upon his skin. A sound in the shadows – unidentifiable, almost imperceptible – made his flesh crawl as if in response to some deep instinct, some nameless horror. Every fibre of his being yelled at him to get out.

Then he knew why. In the light, he could see something moving... Glinting. Black, like obsidian. Almost too late, he recognised the shapes that scuttled towards him in the dark.

Scorpions. Hundreds of scorpions.

The floor darkened about him as they swarmed forward. Desperately, he heaved the skull out of the box and tried to shove it into his bag. The neck of the sack wouldn’t open. The metal resisted the wet material, sticking to it. He wrestled with the skull awkwardly, almost dropped it, finally forced it in and slung the bag over his shoulder.

Something touched his bare foot. He kicked it away with a shudder, slammed the lid of the box and climbed on top of it.

As he looked down, lowering the flame, he saw with horror that the horde of shiny creatures was flowing about it on every side, their legs clacking against the boards, against the box, against each other. He had recognised the type – an Arabian variety, highly venomous and extremely aggressive. Gisburne felt his toes clench and draw back from the edge of the box as they piled up against it and crawled over the arms, face and neck of the guard. They picked at the exposed flesh, began to devour it. As the blood flowed, more joined the frenzy. But the body on which they teemed was also slumped hard against the box upon which Gisburne’s naked feet stood.

One of the milling creatures had already found its way onto the box. It sensed him, stopped, arched its back, its sting quivering. Gisburne kicked it to the far wall with his big toe before it could move. But more were coming.

He had to get out. But now he could not reach the rope. It hung at least three feet distant from his outstretched hand – too far for him to reach even with his shortsword. Had he been wearing boots, he might risk stepping on them. He might survive one or two stings, but any more would paralyse him. Then they would eat him as he lay there, still alive, tearing off shreds of his flesh as the burning poison coursed through him like acid.

He had to jump. If his hands failed to meet the rope in the dark or slipped on it, he would fall among them. But he could not hesitate.

He gripped the flambeau between his teeth, crouched low, and sprang for the rope.

One hand caught it. The other flailed and grabbed. The rope gave under his weight. He lifted his feet as they dipped close to the writhing mass of horny, stinging tails.

He hauled himself back up the rope, the flambeau in his teeth, and flung himself onto the deck, panting. As he watched in silent horror, the starved creatures swarmed over the body of the guard, until every part of him was obscured by their clacking, black bodies. With a shudder, he dropped the torch into the open hatch, slipped over the port side and plunged back into the freezing water, leaving behind a rising trail of smoke, and the horrid sound of scorpion bodies popping in the flames.

He did not look back. He did not think beyond the need to keep swimming. The skull hung heavily about him, seemed to want to drag him under. But he kept swimming.

He was about a hundred yards from the shore when shouts went up in the Templar camp. Then he saw, reflected on the rocks, the glow of flames, and all Hell broke loose on the beach.

He tried to look around, swallowed water, gagged and coughed. Two boats were already in the water – but they were not heading his way. All their attention was now focused on the ship, on trying to rescue the skull which they believed was about to be consumed by fire. Little did they realise how far it was from that fate, submerged beneath the waves.

If he could just keep going... It felt as if the skull was pulling him down, sinking like an anchor, the strap of the bag dragging, cutting into his shoulder. He almost laughed at it – the idea of the Baptist pulling him under the water. It was strangely appropriate, but he wasn’t ready for that baptism just yet.

He grabbed at the rocks. A wave thrust him hard against them, and he felt the barnacles grate the skin off his elbow. The pain was distant – as if someone else’s. With his heart thumping, a new thrill rising in him, he scrambled ashore, the flames of the ship now leaping high into the night air.

The climb back was quicker than his descent. His limbs moved without thought, hand and foot moving from rock to rock. The skull no longer seemed to weigh upon him. Nothing did. He felt light as air – as if he could float up the cliff. It hardly seemed possible that the mission had succeeded. Yet it had. He had done it. And they would not catch him. He was not yet to safety, he knew, but they would not catch him. It was something that he felt, beyond conviction. It was a certainty. A fact.

Galfrid’s hand grasped his as he reached the top, and hauled him the last few feet.

“You really don’t like ships at all, do you?” said the squire, trying and failing to hide his relief.

Gisburne simply laughed – a full-throated, hearty laugh, such as he had not experienced in years. He did not stop to pull on his clothes, but flung himself upon his horse and thundered off with Prince John’s prize, closely followed by Galfrid, so buoyed by his success that he did not even pay heed to the single dark figure on horseback, some distance along the road.