The Leopard Sword Read online

“Lash the sword into my hand,” he was saying, in the same tone of voice in which he would have ordered another cup of wine.

  I did as I was commanded, although I knew each knot caused him agony, until the broadsword was tied into his grip. I prayed that no fighting would be necessary, that fatigue would weaken the Saracen oarsmen. And I understood that my master wanted to die fighting, sword in hand, rather than return to England a crippled warrior.

  Two long, sleek galleys, each swifter and narrower than the San Raffaello, shot along on either side of us now, water rushing under our keel. Our own men were well advanced in breaking out helmets, shaking sword belts free of entanglements, arms working into the chain mail mittens many knights wore instead of gauntlets.

  Sir Rannulf approached us, already garbed in mail, his sword at his side.The battle had drained Sir Rannulf, and for many days he had been leaning on a staff. Now the weary knight he had been was suddenly gone, replaced by a man eager once again to test an enemy.

  “They carry hooked pikes and halberds,” said Rannulf through his scarred lips.“With braziers to set us alight. Sir Jean of Chartres and his squire are setting up a line of pikemen along our rail, with crossbowmen in the castles fore and aft.”

  He said this with an air of quiet assessment, always a man to comment on the balance of a lance, or the enemy’s formation, as though he himself could not bleed. But while Sir Nigel impressed me with his cheer, even now sniffing the sea breeze with a show of spirit, Rannulf’s calculating coolness stirred no love in me. During the massacre of two thousand prisoners Rannulf had joined in, showing our footmen how to cut out the guts of unarmed folk.

  “The brave Jean of Chartres, able to fight at last,” said Nigel.“We should have sorted sergeants from squires before this.”

  We should have decided which knight would command in a battle, he meant, and which fighters would be subordinate. Sir Nigel and Sir Rannulf had ordered much of the camp, and even footmen who could not understand a word of English would jump to Sir Nigel’s commands.

  Now an arrow lifted from the enemy galley, high into the fading blue sky.

  And splintered on the deck.

  THREE

  Arrows hummed.

  Such missiles in flight can be things of beauty. But a recent and just-forgotten hatred of such objects stirred in me, awakened from the long hours of siege, the heat and suffocating dust of the battle. I was not alone in this feeling. Arrows clattered on the deck, and angry feet kicked at them, sending them spinning along the planks.

  Osbert scrambled for one, and seized it—a pale, goose-feathered arrow with a black iron tip—a Norman arrow, now returned to us by the Infidel archers.

  Sir Nigel would have clapped a reassuring hand on my shoulder, but in his injured state he rested his hand gently on my arm. “No knight loves a sea fight, but we’ll sweat them, Hubert.”

  As the two enemy galleys drew close, the hiss of the racing water was nearly louder than my own thoughts. I believed that all of us would join Nigel in Heaven, and I wished my parents could see me as I was then, hale and unhurt, before the fighting cut me down.

  Our galley was longer, with stouter timbers than her opponents’.

  This meant that she was strong, but heavy, and our rowers could not keep this pace. With a shouted command, the oars on one side of the vessel were shipped, dripping and gleaming, and withdrawn in a breathtaking show of sea training, each oar run in while the oars on the opposite side lashed the water.

  We braced for what was coming.

  The collision knocked most of us off our feet.

  Edmund gave me a hand, pulling me upright from the deck. Our crossbowmen climbed to any perch they could reach and sent a rain of missiles down into the gallea. I had no sight of attacking boarders, only the working shoulders and heads of our own pikemen and knights as they stabbed forward with their weapons, their cries a low rumble, curses and battle exhortations in a dozen languages.

  Osbert climbed to a high point on the galley castle and balanced himself as he drew a bow and sent the Norman arrow down into the attackers. Other archers joined him, and ship’s boys shot unidentifiable objects, pork bones, and leaden sling-slugs down into the enemy. Sleek as they were, the Saracen ships were lower in the water, and our men could strike downward, into the faces of the attackers.

  Rannulf tapped my shoulder, and in the heavy surge of cries and involuntary groans I could not hear what he was saying. I followed his glance. The vessel on our seaward side had shot ahead and was backing oars, laboring furiously to close on us.

  Crusaders not yet engaged in fighting now made a great display of courage for the benefit of this new attacker, slashing at the air with swords, gesturing with axes and battle hammers. I knew how much of this was, for many, empty show, injured and disease-wasted men acting as though what they wanted most was to wet their swords in enemy blood. We yelled and shook our weapons, voices muffled by helmets.

  The approaching gallea seemed to be a many-legged creature unable to decide its course of attack. Too close to gain momentum to spike us with her rams, too far off to grapple with us and trade blows, the attacker’s oars clashed with ours. Enemy oars snapped, splinters spinning high into the air. Most of our own, much stouter oars remained straight out from the ship, keeping the enemy from closing on us.

  I stayed beside Sir Nigel, to keep him from taking the brunt of any outthrust weapon, and to his right was Rannulf, ready, likewise, to fend off blows. Sir Nigel climbed onto the rail, and as I clung to the skirt of the chain mail to keep him steady, fear made my breath come in tight-throated gasps. I know of no one who can swim—the art is not taught in England—and I dreaded lest I or one of my companions tumble over the side.

  His example encouraged the others. Edmund brandished his war hammer in the faces of the enemy, bearded men, their heads swathed in white fabric. A few of the Saracen halberds reached across the gap, long weapons, half ax and half pike, made for smashing helmeted heads. Even at this awkward distance the weapons found targets, and my feet slipped twice, until at last I went down hard. In the dimming light I caught the gleam of shiny darkness spreading underfoot as I lay on the deck.

  Glowing coals snapped through the air, delivered by a catapult somewhere on the enemy deck, and the ship’s mates were busy, dumping buckets of water over the sizzling embers and spreading sand to soak up the blood.

  I felt a strong grip on my arm, and Edmund helped me to my feet.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked anxiously.

  I murmured that I had slipped, nothing more than that.

  “Thank God!” said Edmund fervently, and, as so often before, I was grateful to have such a friend.

  The darkness became more perfect, the last dull glow of vanishing sun reflected on our weapons, and even as knights and squires began to crumple, unable to stand against the assault, some rhythm changed in the urgency of the fighting, Crusaders no longer calling out for Our Lord’s help.

  The galley’s timbers groaned as we freed ourselves from one attacking vessel. Pikemen shoved off the other craft.The enemy’s taunts continued to sound menacing, but a new tone had entered the engagement. Our vessel was moving. Edmund had to take care to keep his balance, putting one hand out to the rail, and two armored bodies crashed to the deck with the distinctive chiming thud of chain-mailed men.

  The sea was gliding under us as we left our attackers behind.

  The Sint Markt was aflame far off.

  The burning ship reflected in the black water, and even as our captain ordered sails set, I heard Edmund say that we could not leave so many behind.

  “We leave them to Heaven’s embrace,” said Sir Nigel, his voice a rasp.

  We were not free yet. While our former pursuers fell away, new ones arrived, judging by the sound and the white flash of sea around distant oars, the pace of the rowers steady.

  Sailors mopped up the red plaster at our feet, a paste of blood and sand.

  Enemy galleys were keeping our pace, and I kept t
he sword in my hand.

  FOUR

  We stayed ready all night.

  By dawn the wind behind us was stiff, and two enemy galleys followed us against the rising sun. Our oars remained inactive, the weather-bleached lateen sail driving the ship, buckets of bread and wine lowered down through the hatches to the rowers. They lounged about below, laughing and talking like any group of laborers.

  The seamen adjusted sail, coiled rope, all with a show of carelessness, but every one of us observed the enemy craft, indistinct shapes on the gray sea. A few men had died of wounds during the night, and a priest’s clerk, the holiest person on the ship, spoke the appropriate Latin as the linen-draped bodies were eased into the water. The clerk himself coughed between prayers and had to support himself against the freeboard long after the dead had vanished beneath the white-capped swells.

  Edmund had suffered seasickness on his earliest voyage, but he seemed immune to the ailment now. A few men coughed up the ship’s bread and pale wine they had taken in, but most were sound enough, perhaps because menace concentrated their thoughts. One enemy vessel dropped away, into the silver horizon, but the other crept closer.

  “A ship is no place for my sort of fight,” said Rannulf, taking a swallow of his morning wine. “There’s no place for the lance—”

  “And certainly no place for a horse,” said Sir Nigel.

  Sir Nigel said this without a trace of amusement, but I could not keep the picture from my mind—a knight trying to aim a lance onboard a tossing galley while his nervous mount spilled him. I stifled my laugh, making a single inward cluck, sounding, I am afraid, like a brood hen, and Edmund’s cheeks reddened slightly. We avoided looking at each other. I was sure that, spurred by our relief at being alive, we would burst into unseemly laughter.

  Sir Nigel gave us a friendly frown. “What do you two know of lance work?” he chided gently.

  “My lord, too little, indeed,” said Edmund earnestly. Too lytle, sertayn.

  Edmund was coarser born than I, the son of a staver, a man who cut slats and sold them to coopers to be made into barrels. Edmund had been apprenticed to the once much-respected Otto, royal moneyer, who had been arrested and killed for coining debased silver. Edmund himself had barely escaped brutal punishment. Throughout our journeys together, an inner seriousness kept Edmund eager to learn, as though he might fail in his duties as squire and find himself in prison again. It was not impossible. If Edmund returned to England with reports that he had not fought with honor, the king’s men could order him into chains.

  Edmund lacked a family name. I, on the other hand, was known as Hubert of Bakewell, and sometimes Hubert Simon-son, although I would have loved to have a more legendary-sounding name. Knights and even squires were honored by surnames endowed by their masters or fellow knights, like the well-known warriors William Sans Peur—“without fear”—Alan Dur de Main, and Harold Longsword. Men did not give themselves such names, except, perhaps, within their own hearts. Otherwise an army would be filled with names like Tom Striketerror or Hubert Fearnaught.

  “You think yourselves the stuff of knights,” said Sir Nigel, laughing gently, “but you two both are upstart fledglings.”

  “Give us lances, my lord,” I said, speaking for the two of us, “and let us meet any enemy.”

  Sir Nigel gave me a good-natured smile, but there was a sadness about him.We had all left friends behind in the Holy Land, and perhaps Nigel felt a lingering sorrow that battle had not claimed his soul during the night.

  But this was the first time that Sir Nigel had put into words the hope Edmund and I shared—that we were, in truth, the stuff of knighthood. Surely fledglings grow into full-feathered cocks. It was true that Edmund knew too little about weapons. Knights practice lance work by tilting at the quintain—charging into a span of wood from which hung, on one end, a shield, and on the other a weighted sack. I had practiced the skill myself in England, and during my many months of training as a squire. Edmund had been named a squire just before we all left on the Crusade, and such training, and much else, would be required for Edmund to ripen into knighthood.

  “If Heaven wills it,” Sir Nigel was saying, “Rannulf will teach Edmund how to carry a lance, and train Hubert in how to hold his tongue.”

  “With pleasure,” said Rannulf, without the trace of a smile. Edmund had attended this famous knight, while I counted myself fortunate to have served Nigel.

  I liked to imitate Rannulf behind his back sometimes, forcing Edmund to laugh at his master despite himself. Rannulf ’s stony expressions were legendary, and I doubted he took pleasure in food or drink, or passing water, or even attending to an itch.

  While most fighting men are close-cropped and clean shaven, Rannulf was bearded, his mouth sword-scarred. He was called Rannulf of Josselin, after the famous joust in that city where he killed six men. Both Rannulf and Nigel were bachelor knights who owned no or little land, and lived well and honorably by hiring themselves to noblemen.

  Sir Nigel’s reputation convinced my father to pay him to school me in the ways of knighthood. My father would never have struck such an arrangement with Sir Rannulf. Now that Edmund had battle trove in the chest, along with the rest of us, it was truly possible that both of us had gold enough to complete the training someday, and purchase the war-kit needed to become men-at-arms.

  But then my thoughts were interrupted by Sir Jean and Nicholas, dragging a third man between them.

  “Your manservant,” said Nicholas, looking Edmund in the eye, “is a thief.”

  Nicholas held Osbert by the arm. Edmund’s servant tried to look as dignified as he could, forced as he was into a crab-like stoop.

  “Nay, my lord Edmund,” protested Osbert, “I am no such creature.”

  “His hand was in my gipser,” said Nicholas, indicating the leather purse on his belt. Such gipser purses are usually carried by franklins and town worthies with enough coin to make them necessary—most squires would find a belt purse inconvenient in the rough-and-tumble of a voyage.

  Squires and shield bearers glanced our way, and a few gathered, but most of the ship’s passengers drowsed, drank wine, or sweated off fever.

  “Osbert is a worthy servant,” said Edmund formally, “and no thief, on my honor.”

  “On your honor,” echoed Nicholas.

  Edmund had spoken well, but hastily. Osbert had joined Edmund since the battle, and none of us knew his past.

  But the assertion having been made, I stepped to Osbert and took his other arm. “And on mine,” I added, trying to keep my voice steady.

  This was all hyg speche, high speech, artificial and courtly. It was also, I thought, a little foolish. Osbert had quick hands, and an eager-to-please manner I did not trust.

  Sir Nigel and Sir Rannulf looked on, their mouths set. Knights did not involve themselves in disagreements among squires, unless to protect a valued squire’s life, but neither did our two masters absent themselves, as many would have done. They remained, aloof but very much a presence, witnessing what was said.

  “I saw the thief at work,” said Sir Jean.

  Sir Jean’s surcoat had been stained with old blood along the hem, but now it was spattered with drying gore—and worse.

  “Anyone, my lord, would run from a sight such as yourself,” I offered, hoping I struck the proper joking tone.

  Sir Jean had a heavy glance. My teachers had explained to me that vision originates in our eyes, sight emitting from our eyeballs the way rays of light beam outward from a lantern. I had asked Father Giles what happened when we closed our eyes—did the sunny world go dark?

  But under the gaze of Sir Jean it was easy to believe, once again, that Father Giles was right. The eye is a source of power—in this case, withering my will. I summoned a glance of my own, and breathed an inward prayer for Heaven’s strength.

  “What was taken by this thief, good Sir Jean?” asked Sir Nigel.

  I wanted to protest.

  But Sir Nigel gave me a small s
ignal I had learned to watch for—a tiny dip of his chin, a slight shift of his eye, all directed at me. Sometimes I speak when I should not, unable to rein in my breath. But now I proved my worth by keeping silent.

  “It was the attempt that gives offense,” said Sir Jean.

  “Leave the servant to us,” said Sir Rannulf carefully through his sword-scarred lips. It was easy to see why man and knight both respected such a voice, as though a gnarled, storm-lashed tree had been given the power of speech.

  The serving man rolled his eyes and grimaced in purest terror.

  “We’ll work a confession out of him,” said Rannulf,“if he hides any sin. And feed him justice.”

  “You’ll see that he confesses?” asked Sir Jean.

  “With cord and sticks,” said Sir Rannulf.

  This referred to a simple device, and an effective torture, one I had seen at work in Nottingham, where the town executioner is an adept at separating men from their secrets. Two sticks are connected by a leather thong. The cord circles the offender’s head, and the twin sticks are twisted tight until, if no confession starts, the leather cinch compresses the bones of the head.

  Edmund and I were livid, quivering with silent protest, kept from blurting a word by a cool look from Sir Nigel.

  Osbert sobbed.

  Squire Nicholas leaned toward Sir Jean, murmuring into his ear.

  Sir Jean looked Edmund up and down, like a man doubtful of the value of a dray mare. “I hear this squire was a counterfeiter’s apprentice.”

  Sir Rannulf tossed the last of his wine overboard, and let the cup fall to the deck.

  He put his hand on his sword.

  FIVE

  “Edmund Strongarm served God with King Richard’s army,” said Rannulf, speaking slowly and emphatically.

  Edmund Strongarm.

  I thrilled at the sound of this—the first time anyone had called my friend such a glorious name. Edmund himself showed no outward emotion, but prickles of pink appeared on his cheek.