LI

 

 

Forêt de Boulogne – December, 1191

 

SINGING WAS THE usual way Lucatz the Enginer kept his spirits up. It didn’t really matter what the tune – anything was grist to Lucatz’s mill. A ballad. A hymn. A bawdy song, if there was no one about. Then, he would raise his voice to the heavens until it cracked with laughter at the fate of the squire and the randy milkmaid, or the bibulous monk and his ass.

Today it was different. Today, he made do with murmuring under his breath, or kept his lip buttoned altogether. Not that he couldn’t do with his spirits being raised. For the past few hours he had been lashed by freezing rain, and in that time had also discovered that the urgency with which he had set out had made him forget to pack either his leather cloak or a change of clothes. He was also peeved by the need to travel so far at such short notice, and unnerved by his destination: Castel Mercheval.

He’d had dealings with its lord before – that, presumably, was why it was he who had been summoned. Lucatz had designed and built many of the siege engines (technically counter-siege engines, but he hadn’t pressed the point) that bristled Castel Mercheval’s battlements. Trebuchets, ballistas, mangonels. Mechanisms for delivering boulders, dead bodies, scalding sand and gravel and a variety of hot, noxious or flaming liquids. He had even persuaded Tancred to let him experiment with a “scorpion”. Tancred’s own inspiration – a kind of ballista meant to fire a spinning, seven-bladed star the size of a meat dish – proved beyond his capabilities to realise, despite Tancred’s chillingly intense explanation of the necessity for, and holy significance of, each one of those seven blades.

Why the master of Castel Mercheval required quite so many devices, beyond feeding his own obsession, Lucatz could not guess. But he wasn’t one to complain. At least, not at first. It had meant two years work, after all. But then there had been the other mechanisms – the ones meant for restraint and torture. Even these weren’t normal. They were for special kinds of torture – things he had never seen before. It was a world that was alien to him, and he liked it that way. At Castel Mercheval he’d been forced to think about it too much, for too long, and in far too much detail. Death and pain at a distance he could cope with, but that... And there had been Tancred himself. And his torturer – that odious man. With any luck he had since died. Lucatz imagined him having been eaten up and spat out by one of his own devices, rebelling against the tasks it had been called upon to perform. By the end of it, Lucatz had crept away, far wealthier, unsure quite what he had contributed to the sum of human happiness, and sincerely hoping he would never see or hear from the White Devil again. He still did, from time to time, in his nightmares.

He supposed he should be flattered that such a forbidding master thought him the best man for this job. And the pay would certainly be good. Tancred was generous in that one way – though even as he thought it, the words forming in his head, he felt their ghastly incongruity: Tancred. Generous. Like a cat was merciful to a mouse in not killing it straight away. Well, this job was straightforward, at least. And it would not bring him up against those things – that man. But at this moment he’d swap all the world’s money and respect to be home by his own fire with a mug of hot, spiced cider.

This forest also made him nervous. Maybe for some bumpkin, this place was bliss, but he hated the stillness of it – yearned for the human stink, and noise, and bustle of Amiens. The open countryside around the city was perfectly fine, too. It was peaceful, but still orderly – nature shaped by honest human toil. But this...

He felt anxious when completely separated from the influence of man. The dark and disorder of this forest – the thick, unrelenting profusion of it, evident even in the wintery ghosts that now loomed resentfully on every side – oppressed him. There were no human voices to be heard here, and probably only slinking, lank-furred creatures to hear his (the thought made him shudder; he pictured weird whiskered things with long, moist, snuffling noses and matted coats like wet blankets). God knew the sound of a human voice would be a welcome thing, even if it were his own. But something in the forest’s mute, brooding presence kept him silent. Thus, no sound accompanied his passing but the wheels of the wagon and the hooves of the horses, the cold drip of the rain and the groan of the trees in the bitter wind.

As the forest had gone on and on, he had begun to understand the source of his disquiet. This ancient, dark place offered nothing distinct, nothing known or knowable. Just shadow. Who knew what it hid? This was a thought he had struggled not to acknowledge – to keep at bay, in dread of what his imagination might summon up. For it was not just the rational fear of announcing himself to bears, or wolves, or outlaws that made him bite his tongue. It was a deeper terror of foul things that had no place in God’s creation, that crept in through the dark places – whether in the mind or the forest – and filled up those potent, waiting shadows with their unearthly, infectious forms.

He shook his head, drips flying from his hood. Think of something else... Work. Processes. Yes, that was it. In his mind – for perhaps the third time that journey – he began to make an inventory of the contents of the wagon. The long wooden chest containing his tools. A small cauldron of pitch and a number of pitch sticks. The second smallest of his anvils. Several lengths of rope, gauges various. Ditto chains. A barrel of hinges, catches and sundry parts. A box of nails and rivets. Parchments, quills and black gall ink. A leather apron and gauntlets. Lenses. A wide, segmented case containing jars of a variety of powders and solutions, mostly combustible or caustic.

A sound turned his head. Something falling in the forest, echoing weirdly amongst the wet trees. He sighed, shuddered and turned back. Well, anyway... There was hardly any eventuality for which he wasn’t prepared. He’d packed in haste, starting with the things he knew he was likely to need – but in the end had simply loaded almost everything he had. It was quicker and easier to bring the lot. He certainly didn’t want to be found wanting. Not after this long trek, and with the eyes of Tancred and his knights upon him. The thought of those eyes – Tancred’s eyes, that face – chilled him to the bone.

Another sound made him start. A crack. One of his horses shied and whinnied. This was not something falling. It was something moving. A branch snapping under its weight. The horse settled quickly – they were placid beasts – but as it did so, something on the winding path ahead came into view. A dark, vertical shape in the road.

Lucatz felt his throat tighten. It was a figure. Or at least, a kind of figure. It stood motionless, strangely hunched, its limbs twisted and uneven and – now he could see – unnaturally long. His first thought – to reach for his knife – died in him as he stared.

It was not human. He did not even believe it was alive. It could not be. Steeling himself, he urged his animals on. As he neared, the weird shape resolved into a crude construction of branches and twigs, bunched and lashed together to create a life-sized mockery of the human form. The horses balked before the primitive mannequin before he had need to stop them. He supposed he should have been relieved. Had it been a man in the road – a man bent on his destruction – he might now be fighting for his life.

Yet somehow – and this was the irrational part of it – this was worse.

In asking himself who had put this here, and why, he had begun to reach horrible conclusions. He had begun to believe, with creeping unease, that it was put here for him – that the horrid form was a symbol for what was to come; a warning of some imminent, terrible fate.

Close by, to his right, there was a creak. A groan of wood. Another crack. Startled, his eyes flew to the trees.

And there, in the flicker of a moment, he saw it. Dark and bat-like, as big as a man, it flapped its leathery, winged body and was gone. Most horrid of all, however, was the blackened human face that grinned from its head. His mouth dry, his heart pounding, Lucatz had a brief moment to stare into the vacant shadows beyond the spiked branches before a great weight smashed into him with the force of a horse’s kick.

The last thing he remembered as he fell was the smell of damp wood. Then all was black.