Rogue Sword Page 16

  “No!” she cried.

  He slapped the dear face. “Do as I say! I command you! Your silence won’t help me. You’ll only be tortured till you lose the child. D’you hear me? Till you lose the child!” They dosed in and dragged him away. Djansha tried to follow, but others held her fast. She called his name, once, before they put a gag on her spell-casting mouth.

  “What did you tell her?” snapped the monk.

  “Lucas, Lucas,” said En Jaime, “don’t you know how much worse you’re making this for yourself?”

  Lucas drew a long breath. And another. There was no peace in him, not yet, but the calm of Cathay descended. “I told her to admit the truth,” he said.

  “What?” The wrinkled mouth pursed in disbelief. “Question her tomorrow and see. But only with words, you devil!” Lucas turned to En Jaime. “Friend--”

  Some of the men looked askance at the rich hom, as the sorcerer addressed him thus. But he answered firmly, “Yes, what would you?”

  “I’d remind you, Jaime, that Djansha is still a pagan,” said Lucas. “Therefore she does not come under the authority of the Holy Office, which exists to stamp out heresy. They have no right to try or condemn her. If she did wrong, it was in ignorance, and she must be taught rather than punished. I’ve ordered her to admit freely what the brothers seem determined to find out. What more can they want?”

  “Your own confession,” said En Jaime. “And then you will burn.”

  He reached out, not quite able to touch Lucas. “You know not what you do!” he begged. “Violante’s testimony, by itself, might well be upset. But thus corroborated--Lucas, hold fast, in God’s name! “

  “You seem most anxious to help a man arrested for witchcraft, En Jaime,” said Frey Arnaldo.

  The knight looked from man to man. Every face, half-visible in the twilight, had become hostile to him.

  “If you are my friend, Jaime,” said Lucas, “protect my lady and my child for me.”

  The knight studied him for an entire minute. At last: “I shall.”

  He turned back to the monk. Suddenly he looked old. “There’s an unused shed outside,” he said. “It will do to confine the prisoner overnight.”

  “As for her?” Frey Arnaldo pointed to Djansha’s huddled figure.

  “She is a woman, and to be respected as such. Let her be kept in a bedroom, under guard. Goodnight.”

  “Goodnight,” said Lucas.

  They led him from the house. Outside was a cold greenish dusk with yellow smears lingering in the west. The courtyard flags rang underfoot as the squad went toward the long low building that held stables and mews. Several household servants and troopers of En Jaime’s personal entourage stood watching, motionless, except to cross themselves.

  Lucas felt oddly light-headed. They were going to question him. It would be under torture. He did not know if he should resist confession. It would only prolong the racking and thumbscrewing. Perhaps En Jaime could find proof of his innocence. Though that search would be a friendless one. Every man’s hand was against those whom the Church had accused.

  It might be simplest, after all, to admit consorting with Belial. Surely En Jaime’s influence could then win for him, from the secular arm which carried out the execution, a fire of the humane sort. One that produced fumes the victim might breathe and pass into unconsciousness before he seared.

  But you could be as brave as you wished, as smug as you wished about saving an innocent girl from torture and death; the prospect for yourself remained just as vile. Lucas struggled for self-mastery.

  A short plump man burst from the spectators. “I heard!” he screamed in broken Catalonian. “I heard! You a sorcerer! A devil man!”

  “Get back, Greek,” ordered a soldier.

  Alexios danced about, shaking his fists. “Listen-a me! I his retainer. I live in his house. I know he a sorcerer! Trouble, all he make is trouble. I hate-a dirty sorcerer!” He evaded the guards, ran up to Lucas, and pummeled him. “Traitor to God!”

  “That will do,” said Frey Arnaldo. “We shall take your evidence tomorrow.”

  Alexios ripped at Lucas’ tunic and spat in his face. “One side, you!” A pike butt thumped into the valet’s round stomach. He fell over backward, retching. The Catalan laughter barked loud and uneasy.

  The shed was built at the end of the stables. Someone brought a forkful of straw for the dirt floor. Lucas’ hands were tied behind his back, his ankles lashed together. He was shoved inside. The door slammed shut, the bolt was fastened. Lying in pit blackness, he heard voices and hammerings as a crucifix was nailed above the entrance.

  He rolled over prone and wriggled until he worked out the thing Alexios had slipped inside his tunic. His tongue confirmed its nature. A sheathed knife.

  He began to tremble.

  When that fit had passed, the resurgence of strength and clarity was like a rebirth. Laboriously, with his bound hands, he drew the knife and caught the haft between his heels. God be praised for his litheness--and for no one’s having thought to bring real manacles. Even so, sawing the bonds on his wrists across the edge of the blade was slow work. Often the knife slipped loose, and he had to wedge it back in place. But when his hands were free (after several hundred years, it seemed) he slashed the rope on his ankles with three vicious motions.

  Rising, he took stock of his situation. The shed was sturdily constructed. Only a few chinks under the roof showed starlight. Feet tramped back and forth in front of the door. Now and then the two guards spoke, comforting each other. One of them swore he heard devils buzzing around the roof like mosquitoes. Both began loudly reciting Paternosters.

  Lucas felt his way to the opposite wall. What would they think when they found him gone? If they did; escape would be precarious at best. Would they suppose the Old Serpent had come to rescue his own? No, hardly. They were not fools of that particular sort. They’d see plain enough, the prisoner had dug his way out with a very mundane tool. Someone would remember Alexios, but undoubtedly the little Greek was even now pattering through the night. With ordinary luck, he could lose himself among his anonymous countrymen and make his way to Constantinople. Well, God be with you, Alexios. I gave you a few kind words, and you gave me back my life.

  Djansha? Oh, she was safer with Lucas absent. His flight would provide the final evidence of his guilt, leaving no reason to interrogate the girl--as En Jaime could be trusted to emphasize, with all his well-known piety and secular authority. No one cared if an unbaptized slave did a little magic. Even in Europe, every village had some old granny who mixed love potions and cast spells against cattle bloat. The Church was not concerned with such peccadillos of poverty and ignorance.

  But an officer, an educated, widely traveled, wealthy man, who practiced the forbidden arts . . . that was something else again. He must have done so knowingly, for grandiose reasons. He must, in short, be leagued with Satan.

  Violante’s sick imagination could manufacture proof enough. If the mansion stood unwatched, as was likely (Lucas remembered how careful the police of Cambaluc were to guard the scene of a crime until everything had been studied; but this was Christendom)--she might well be planting more diabolisms at this moment.

  Lucas dug his knife into the floor.

  With so small a pick, hands for shovels, eyes blinded, the work went slowly. After a while he lost all hold on time. Nothing existed but sweat, aches, soft heavy earth, the heart-stopping instants when silence outside brought a conviction that the sentries had heard something, renewed resolve and renewed labor. . . . When finally his blade grated on a flagstone, he needed many seconds to realize what that meant.

  The vision of flames revived him. He undercut, toiling for air as he lay beneath the shed wall. Dirt collapsed over legs and hips. He wondered if it would fill his nostrils and bury him. With slow care, muscles shuddering from the effort, he eased the stone loose and let it down in the pit. Stars leaped amazingly into view.

  He freed himself and crouched against the wall,
listening through his own pulse beat. Back and forth on the other side, the sentries went. The house was a blur against lightlessness. But the east was pale. Dear Jesus, had he been working all night? They’d come for him in an hour.

  He stuck his blunted knife back in the sheath, which he hung at his belt. On hands and knees, he glided from the shed. It was backed up almost against the estate wall. To reach the garden he must cross an open space, in full view of the guards.

  Good saints, he thought, I am not a pious man. I own to doubting, even now, if you truly intervene in human affairs; for the philosophers of Cathay told me Heaven had more dignity than that. But if you do . . . watch over Djansha, you saints. And if you will hearten me in this my fear, I shall always be grateful.

  Keeping close to the wall, he moved forward.

  It seemed impossible that he should not be spied. The sleepiest men, in the worst of light, with a bare few seconds to notice a shape black with dirt, must still do so. For all the stars flung their rays down to tinkle on his head, and all the trees pointed their twigs at him, and the first awakening birds shouted, “Look! Look! Look!”

  Yet somehow he was behind a hedge, down a path, gripping ivy at a part of the wall screened by trees. He crawled to the top, dropped on the farther side, and loped off westward.

  The revelation came slowly, but in the end it stunned him. He was free.

  He was not going to burn.

  “Unless they catch me,” he added between his teeth.

  On the crest of a hill, he paused to consider his next move. The estate was already hidden; he saw only darkling copses and wet meadows. He wondered if he could double back to En Jaime’s landing and steal the boat he knew was there. No. It was too big. He could never row it himself, and if he tried to step the mast he’d make enough noise that Emperor Andronicus in Constantinople would buy earplugs.

  The idea brought a tired grin to his mouth. In a way, this was a happy moment. He had lost Djansha, but refused to admit he could never get her back. Meanwhile, he had broken out of the invisible net. No stolen treasure, no murderer friends, no helpless underlings, only his fugitive self. Who must, however, be kept alive.

  And was trapped on a peninsula.

  Though a man might hide a long time in this hillscape. Or . . . hoy! . . . why not seek refuge among the Byzantines? The commandant of Maditos castle would gladly receive a turncoat, who could give information.

  The boyish sense of freedom slumped in Lucas. He remembered all the Greeks driven by misgovernment to call themselves Turks. What would he gain, springing from Catalans to Byzantines, except his own shabby life?

  “Of which I’m rather fond, though,” he told himself, and started walking.

  Full daylight found him in neglected plowland going back to weeds. He was faint with hunger and abominably thirsty. No help for that till darkness returned. He needed a hiding place. A thicket surrounded a tall elm, which still had most of its leaves. He climbed up to a crotch from where he could look widely over land and water. Some distance off lay a tiny Stubblefield. A few people must still be left hereabouts, to do their cultivation in fear and trembling.

  Weariness surged downward through Lucas. He did not fall truly asleep, but he dozed, two minutes nodding and one minute awake. Nightmarish visions harried him.

  That ended about noon. Peering back toward hidden Gallipoli, he saw sunlight flash on corselets. The' day was clear and chill, with a breeze from the northeast. Across miles he discerned the antlike riders. They moved straight overland as he had; yes, Catalans beyond a doubt, and what could they be searching for except him?

  What were those dots crawling just ahead of the troop?

  The wind brought him an answer. At this distance it was the ghostliest murmur. He knew not if he heard it with his ears or with his soul. But the knowledge stabbed him.

  Hounds!

  The hunters had gone back to the city and obtained hounds.

  Lucas was down from the tree, sprinting across the field, before he noticed how he had skinned hands and thighs. Only when he had broken through a hedge did he think how plain a trail he was leaving.

  He forced himself toward coolness, eased his breath, pressed elbows against sides and slowed his dash to a long, swinging trot. His fear whetted his senses as he considered the. lay of the land, hues of yellow and brown and faded green. A brook might run yonder . . . no? . . . well, this downslope afforded a quick way to the strait. If need be, he could swim--

  Thirst crowded out all else. His tongue was a block of wood. If he did not drink soon, he would fall down unconscious.

  A cleft in the hills opened before him. A single poor cottage lay at its near end, the remnant of a hamlet which otherwise was sooted wall stumps and sour ash heaps. The door stood closed and the single window shuttered, but smoke curled from the sod roof.

  Lucas halted and knocked. There was no answer. “Hallo!” he croaked in Greek. “Where’s your well?”

  “At the rear,” called a woman’s frightened voice. Lucas found it behind a plane tree which overshadowed the earthen hovel.

  “My thanks,” he said, when he had drawn a bucketful and slaked himself as much as he dared.

  “If ... if you would thank me . . . then go,” she stammered from within.

  He tried the door. Bolted, of course. “Give me a loaf of bread and I’ll ask God’s blessing for you,” he said. “The Franks are after me.”

  “Go!” she shrieked. “Isn’t it enough they’ve burned the other houses and dragged my kin off to the slave marts? Would you bring them down on me and my baby too? Go!”

  More loudly down the wind came the clamor of the hounds.

  Lucas’ eyes went from the well to the tree to the house, and on along the cleft. Its farther end opened on a zigzag path which must lead to the water. This had been a settlement of tenants, who worked the plowland and did some fishing. Evidently a few survivors who had hidden from the first Catalan onrush had crept back to resume a furtive life. They dwelt widely apart, lest they draw a fresh raid by their numbers. This woman and her child were quite alone here, meeting the others only to till the soil. At night?

  “I’ll go,” said Lucas.

  “The saints be with you,” she sobbed beyond the door. “If I let you in, the Franks would kill us all. I have a baby. They caught my husband--”

  He bounded off, down the path to a landing slip and shed under the cliffs. The only other trace of life was a gull, wheeling above empty waters.

  Lucas turned at the shoreline and retraced his steps upward. Now he must act swiftly. He need not climb the trunk of the plane tree, leaving his scent on the bark; a limb drooped low enough for him to catch. He chinned himself onto it, worked his way upward, and sprang across to the roof. At the vent’s edge he hooked fingers in the sod and lowered himself into choking, stinging smoke. A tiny fire burned immediately beneath. He swung like a bell clapper, let go, thudded to a dirt floor, and whipped about with the knife in his hand.

  The woman screamed. She was young, he saw, and must have been pretty in better days. Even gaunted by hunger, in a tattered black dress, she was not ill looking. The hut was single-roomed, gloomy, bare of all except the rudest furnishings. An infant lay in a cradle.

  “Be still!” hissed Lucas. “No harm will come to you. Tell the Catalans I went on when you refused me admittance.” She snatched up the baby. Her wail gurgled to silence. “That’s better,” said Lucas. He found a heel of stale bread and began devouring it.

  Horses clattered hoofs, metal rang, dogs bayed. A voice shouted, “Open up in there!”

  “Ah, no,” moaned the woman. “I dare not. I ... I am alone--”

  “Open up or I’ll beat your door in! We’re trailing a sorcerer. He came to this threshold.”

  “Don’t argue in that Greek pig-lingo, Simon,” said another man, speaking Catalonian. “Break in and we’ll see.” Lasciviously: “The woman might be worth the trouble by herself.”

  “With a warlock abroad?” snorted Simon.
“Are you mad?”

  “S-s-s-someone came here,” the woman chattered. “He asked me ... for water ... he said the F-f-franks were pursuing him. ... I didn’t let him in.”

  The hounds, which had been questing over the ground, broke into a full-throated belling. “This way!” called a soldier. “He went down yonder trail!”

  Simon cursed. “No doubt the wretch has swum off, meaning to come ashore elsewhere. Now we must cast up and down the clifftops all day, trying to pick up his scent again. Come!”

  The noise dwindled into silence.

  Lucas sat down, leaning his back against the wall. “I don’t think they’ll return this way,” he said. “Of course, now they know you’re here, you’d best find another dwelling. I’m sorry about that, but need forced me.”

  Light seeped through the smokehole, down onto the woman. Her face was shiny with sweat. “When will you go?” she pleaded.

  “After dark. No harm shall come to you meanwhile.” He fumbled at his belt. “Oh, bah! I wanted to pay for my lodging and the trouble I’ve caused, but now I remember they took my purse as well as my sword.” He attempted a smile. “You must be repaid, then, in thanks and prayers.” She watched him mutely, trembling. He found water in a jug and washed the worst filth off his exposed skin. “I’ll not dismay your Eastern sensibilities by taking a real bath,” he said. “Ahhh!” He lay down on the floor. “I’m going to sleep. Don’t come near me. I might wake in a panic, stabbing with this knife in my hand. But otherwise, be not afraid. I’m much too weary to harm anything fiercer than a cockroach.”

  His eyelids drooped.

  “Are you really a magician?” she asked.

  “Eh?” He jittered awake. “What? A wizard? Oh, God, no. A canard invented by my enemies. If I had diabolic powers, I’d not be here!”

  “I thought so,” she said bitterly.

  After a while, rousing him again from the edge of sleep: “You must know how things are in the world. Do you expect the Turks will conquer this land? Each night since they took Nicholas away, half a year ago, each night I’ve prayed the Turks will come.”