LIV

 

 

TANCRED DE MERCHEVAL had reached the third step of the wooden stair when Aldric’s voice stopped him.

“My lord...” Tancred turned.

He was not used to being stopped or summoned. It did not please him. There had been a time when he had been a dutiful servant, what he would now call a “lackey”. He had jumped to all commands, had respected all in authority. His superiors had been many – his knight, his Baron, his Count, his Duke, his King. Then his Temple Master, the Grand Master, his Holiness the Pope. For years he had done their bidding without question – even with good cheer – safe in the knowledge that he was promoting the cause of order – of good – in his small corner of the universe. He had been an optimist, but not a blind one. He was well-read in philosophy, and had arrived at his point of view based on both his own experience and the accumulated wisdom of the ages. He fervently believed that if each performed their duties well, in however small a way, then all their small efforts could come together to create something wonderful. A better world, in which each contributed his carefully-shaped stone to the construction of the great cathedral. In this way, the honest peasant toiling in the field was as worthy of respect – and as important to the harmony of the cosmos – as any prince or bishop.

Young Tancred was well liked, and well rewarded for his services, and proved himself a bold and fearless fighter. But while he had always revelled in the physical challenges, discipline and camaraderie inherent in training for combat, he was nonetheless troubled by the use of force. As a good Christian, he questioned it constantly. And yet, he also saw the necessity – the goodness – of protecting those who could not protect themselves. And had not Christ himself violently ejected the money-changers from the temple? The young Tancred respected his Saviour all the more for this moment of pragmatism – of humanity. It seemed to him a guiding principle; violence was always regrettable, but sometimes necessary, if the cause was just. That meant it should always be questioned, the justice of the cause weighed up. Many there were who admired the combination of valour, wisdom and moral rigour in one so young. Admission to the Knights Templar had followed naturally.

Then he had been struck down. For days, he had been as one dead. But he did not die. God would not let him.

Afterwards, everything changed. He had suffered wild swings of mood. There were bursts of terrible anger – at himself, at mankind, and yes, even at God. He admitted now that he had been raving – a temporary vessel, in his weakened state, for the whims of the Devil. But he had resisted. He had seen his foe up close – felt his cold fingers clutch at his soul – and he had wrestled himself free. He had been reborn. He had also begun to realise the terrible folly that had afflicted him his whole life.

Compassion no longer troubled him. God had freed him from its tyranny. And he saw now that it was those such as him – such as he had been – who were the problem. The reasonable, the merciful. The “fair”. The world was not reasonable or merciful or fair. They simply allowed the Devil to have his way.

Friends drifted away, but it was no loss. He did not need them. They were a distraction from his new purpose. He heard some whisper, darkly, that he had changed, and knew this was true; but he was glad of it. He’d been blind, and now he could see. That was all there was to it. They said he had lost his good humour, that he had turned to stone. But he was glad of that, too. He found nothing to laugh at in the world. Laughter was delusion, and stone was strong. Incorruptible.

Gradually, he understood that many of those he had admired and served were not worthy of his respect. One by one the idols fell. Everywhere he looked he saw flawed humanity, corrupt flesh. He cut it away. Discarded it. It would infect him no longer.

A Templar was bound to no king – only his superiors within the Order: his Master; his Grand Master; the Pope. For a long time, Tancred had continued to do his duty by them.

Of late, he had come to know that even they were fallible. Weak. Now God spoke directly to him, what need had he of them? They were the reason for the disaster – the punishment – of Hattin. But it was also at Hattin that he had been awakened from his long slumber. Now, while they were distracted by their quest for redemption in the Holy Land, he could get on with the real tasks.

He had finally risen to where he belonged. Nothing now stood between him and his work. Nothing stood between him and God. And he took orders from no one.

It was the note of incredulity in Aldric’s tone that stopped him, that inspired a strange, uneven frown on his pale brow.

“What is it?”

Aldric – still staring out over the battlements – opened his mouth to speak, but no word came out. He simply stood there, mute, gaping like a fish.

“Well?” snapped Tancred.

Aldric stared at him, dumbfounded. Somewhere nearby, someone on the parapet muttered “My God...”

Tancred hissed in boiling rage as he charged back up the rampart. In most of Christendom, a man who cursed in the name of God might be fined or flogged; here, far harsher rules were observed. Tancred would personally rip out the tongue of any guilty of even the mildest blasphemy. Aldric had seen him do it. But this time, before he could act upon it, he was stopped in his tracks – his attention seized by what was happening on the rock.

Slowly but surely, Gisburne was rising to his feet. At first, Aldric had thought it the last gasp of a dying man – the final flourish of defiant spirit before it departed the flesh. But as Gisburne rose, the two crossbow bolts still sticking out of him like the appendages of some black beetle, he seemed to gather strength. To rally. To grow.

Aldric – the hair on his neck standing on end – could feel the shock and disquiet of every man watching along that rampart. Finally, the twice-killed apparition stood fully upright – a bizarre, impossible figure – shoulders thrown back, hands clenched into fists at his sides, crow-black hide coat whipping about him in the winter wind. As if in sympathy, the sky darkened, the leaden clouds seeming to press down upon those below.

Tancred’s face was now twisted into a bitter mask of anger and hatred. But there was something else – something that Aldric had never seen upon that warped visage before – something which, for the first time, made the grim master of Castel Mercheval seem vulnerable.

Disbelief.

Gisburne’s eyes scanned the parapet, fixing on Tancred. He raised his right hand, its finger pointing at his adversary as if he were passing judgement, or casting a spell.

“Your men believe there is a curse upon that box,” he called, his voice echoing off the castle wall. “They’re right. It’s me.”

At the words, a shudder seemed to pass along the battlements, as if all upon it had been struck by an icy blast.

“Shoot him!” spat Tancred. “Someone shoot him down!” But no one now had a crossbow cocked, half the men still in a state of petrified shock. Tancred wrestled Gaston’s weapon from him, made to draw the string, then flung it down as the better option dawned upon him.

“Scorpion!” he yelled, pointing a bony finger at the gatehouse tower. On its battlements, the operator of the scorpion – a huge sniper crossbow that was Lucatz the Enginer’s crowning achievement – jumped out of his stupor. At the cry of alarm, all main weapons had begun to be readied, and the scorpion – lighter than its fellow war machines – stood ready to fire. But its operator had been standing idle, apparently transfixed by Gisburne’s uncanny resurrection. It was a failing for which the man would later pay.

Now, in haste, flushed with mortification, he swung the weapon around upon its axis, the point of the arrow projecting over the parapet like the sting of some huge insect. Aldric saw him steady himself and take a deep breath.

The bolt flew. Its aim was good. But the man behind it had been too slow – Gisburne was now moving, stooping to snatch up his bow. The bolt roared through the empty air, striking a yew tree at the forest’s edge with a great crack, its still-green, spiny leaves shuddering at the impact, the iron point splitting the bough and sending splinters of wood and fragments of bark flying.

The dark, hooded ghoul on the rock straightened. “See you in Hell, Tancred,” he boomed.

And with that he turned and ran – yes, ran – until the dark maw of the forest swallowed him.