Blood 20 Read online

  WINTER FLOWERS

  Pierre was burned at Bethelmai; I helped them light the fire.

  Parts of the town were already burning, and under cover of that, and the general sack, we had gone about our own business. There had been no real pay for months and Bethelmai was full of trinkets, particularly in the houses around the church, and there were the cellars of wine and the kitchens that still had chickens and loaves despite five weeks of siege. And there were the plump, cream-fed women. Duke Waif’s boys were well occupied. There should have been room enough for anything.

  I had found an old narrow house in a byway that the onslaught had either missed or else run over and left behind. Probably not the latter, for though there were signs of upset, broken pots, a few coins scattered from a chest, the hurried household may have made a mess in getting out. Upstairs someone was moving, or maybe only breathing. I climbed the stair and pushed open the door. Into the gloom of the chamber from a slit of window a light ray fell from the smoking town, and lit a pair of brown-amber eyes wide with fright.

  ‘Don’t rape me,’ she said, and then a fragment of bad Latin, the kind you hear all over a camp before the assault, prayer in pieces. She was obviously a servant, abandoned, only about 14 years old.

  ‘No, I won’t do that.’

  I went right over and sat beside her on the wooden bed of her deserting master and mistress. I took her hand. Of course I reeked of the fight, metal and blood and smoke, but not of lust. I was only thirsty.

  There was a tiny silver ring on her wrist.

  ‘Don’t take it,’ she said. ‘It’s all I’ve got.’

  ‘No, I won’t take it.’

  I raised her hand to my mouth, and moved the ring up a little, away from the vein. I put my mouth there, and sucked at the flesh, letting my saliva numb her, the way it does. And I crooned in my throat. She became still and soft, and when I bit into the vein she never flinched, only sighed once.

  It was some while since I had had blood. That is the way of it. The campaigns are often long and it will be difficult to get anything. The battles make up for this, affording as they usually do so many opportunities.

  The nourishment went into me and I could feel it doing me good, better than wine and meat. But I did not take too much, and when I finished I tore her sleeve and bound up the wound. They rarely remember.

  She was drowsy, and I kissed her forehead and put some of the coins from the chest downstairs into her hand.

  ‘Stay up here till nightfall. Then go carefully, and you might sneak away.’ There was nowhere much for her to fly to, in fact, for the countryside had been shaved bald by Waif’s hungry vicious troops. Still, she must take her chance. It is all any of us can do.

  Downstairs I worked a touch more damage on the hall, and gathered up the last coins from the chest, the lock of which I smashed with my dagger-hilt for good measure. It now looked for sure as though the soldiers had already been through and there would be nothing remaining to filch.

  Outside I went looking for a drink of wine. I felt strong, alert, and clean now, the way we do after living blood. With bright clear eyes I viewed the smouldered roofs, and on the ground the occasional corpse, and many looted objects cast aside. Waif’s happy men were throwing down treasures from upper windows and over walls. The mailed soldiers swaggered, drunk, round the streets, toast­ing the Duke, and now and then some of the captains rode by on their steaming horses, trailing Waif’s colours proudly, as if something wonderful had been done. Dim intermittent thuds and crashes, shouts, and the continual high cries of women, thickened the air like the smirch.

  Bethelmai was hot from the fires, although outside winter had set in on the plains and hills. Bollo had said it would snow before the week was out and he was seldom wrong. God help them then, all the towns and villages Duke Waif had cracked. Where next? There had been talk of Pax Pontis to the north. That was greater than Bethel­mai and might require some months of siege. From somewhere Waif would have to get more cash and further provisions, or his toasting proud army would desert him. So I was thinking, idling along with a wine-skin I had pulled off an addled soldier, not realising that none of this would pres­ently concern me.

  It was when I came out into the square before the church that I beheld a secondary commotion was going on, and Pierre was in the midst of it. Waif’s men had him by both arms, and all across the distance I could see the scarlet marker, like the kiss of a rose, on his mouth.

  Up on the church steps, before the broken gaping door, some of Waif’s officers were stood, looking on. But all around the pillaging soldiers scurried, not notic­ing what happened with Pierre, supposing it possibly some breach of petty discipline peculiarly upheld, as often happens, in the middle of a riot.

  Then big-bellied Captain Rotlam came at me, push­ing his beaked, scarred and scowling face forward like an angry, oddly-neckless goose.

  ‘You, Maurs. That’s your man there. You see, the one my fellows have got.’

  ‘I see, Captain. Yes, he’s one of mine.’

  ‘Stinking mercenaries,’ said Rotlam. He spat at my boot. No matter. It had had worse on it today, and several times. ‘You God-cursed filthy thieves,’ he enlarged. ‘Taking the Duke’s pay –’ I wondered what pay he meant – ‘skulking – have you even killed anything this morning, aside from your own fleas? Any enemy?’

  I said, ‘Shall I bring you their severed hands?’

  ‘Eh? Shut your mouth. That bastard there. Your scum. Do you know what we caught him at?’

  I knew. Already and quite well I knew, and my heart, which had been high, was growing cold. It had happened before, and when it did, there was not much that could be done. We all understood that. Even Arpad the hothead, and Yens the grumbler, and melancholy, colicky Festus. You must take your chance. All luck runs dry at last, like every river, now or tomorrow or at World’s End.

  But I said, scowling back, ‘What’s Pierre done?’

  ‘Pierre is it? Don’t you know he’s a stinking blasphemous witch?’

  I crossed myself. I make my mistakes but am not a fool.

  ‘Yes, God guard us –’ Rotlam gestured at his men to bring my one forward, and they dragged Pierre, pulling him off his feet, so by the time they reached us he was kneeling.

  His dark eyes moved up to mine above the red mouth. Poor lost Pierre. Dead brother to be. But I had my other brothers to consider, and my own damnable skin.

  ‘Well,’ I said roughly, ‘what’s this? What have you been doing, in God’s name?’

  ‘Nothing, Maurs,’ said Pierre. He added expertly, and hopelessly, ‘There was this boy, he had a gold chain hidden, and when I tried to get it off him, he went for me like a mad dog. I fought him off but I couldn’t get my knife – so I bit him. In the neck. It stopped him. Then the Captain’s soldiers found us, and for some reason –’

  ‘He was drinking the boy’s blood,’ broke in the man who had Pierre by the left arm. He shook the arm as if to get it free of the socket, and Pierre yelped. ‘Accursed demon shit!’ the soldier shouted. He was terrified, all the drink gone to venom.

  ‘He wanted to kill this bastard on the spot,’ said the other man, ‘but I said, bring him to the Captain.’

  ‘Oh, by God,’ I said, sounding amused, amazed, my heart like the snow Bollo had told me was coming.

  ‘By God, can’t my fellow defend himself without –’

  ‘He drank the boy’s blood,’ said the calm soldier stolidly, staring at me. ‘If you’d seen, you’d believe. Or have you seen, sometime, and not minded?’

  At that Rotlam punched me in the chest. ‘Eh? Answer that, Maurs, you bit of muck.’

  I straightened up and shrugged. ‘These two are drunk out of their wits. What do they know?’

  There was some shouting then, and the calmer of the soldiers drew his sword on me and I knocked him flat. Then Rotlam hit me and I had to take it, since he was one of the marvellous Duke’s astounding captains. Pierre by this time had lowered his head. When the noise less
ened, I heard him murmur, ‘Let me go, Maurs. My fault. Who cares? I’ve had enough.’

  ‘What’s the devil say?’ roared goose-face Rotlam, hissing and bubbling.

  ‘God hears, not I,’ I said. ‘I don’t know this man well. You’d better get a priest. See what he says.’

  So, like Peter before Cockcrow, I gave my friend over to oblivion. And like Peter I sweated chill and was full of darkness.

  They made quite a show of it, calling all the troops they could prise from the sack, setting up a sort of court. Examining Pierre. There were three greasy priests, rats who had been busy enough themselves on Bethelmai’s carcass until called off. The Duke’s bastard looked in upon the ‘trial’, but did not bother to stay. Bollo and I were asked questions, and Johan, who had been Pierre’s companion on various forays, and Festus and Lutgeri, who had been with Pierre getting in over the fallen gates of the town. We all said we did not know Pierre that well, for he had not been with us very long. He had come out of the night to our fire that summer, just before we offered our swords to the Duke. And as we said this rubbish, I watched Pierre slightly nodding to himself. Once, long, long ago, at a similar scene, I had wept, and nearly implicated myself. But the tears dry like the luck and the fucking rivers.

  In the end, Pierre was pronounced demon-possessed, a witch. He admitted it, because otherwise they would have broken his fingers, lashed him, done other choice things. They made up a makeshift but efficient pyre, with a pole in the centre that had been a cross-beam of some house. They pushed Pierre up and bound him. He looked at me, and his eyes said Curse me now. So we cursed him, and asked the priests for help and penances, and what prayers to say, since we had been all summer and fall in Pierre’s deadly company. The priests were sweet. They took our spoils of gold from Bethelmai and instructed us to abstain from wine and women, and meat. To beg from God morning and evening. And such clever meth­ods.

  When they set fire to the wood, I ran and flung a torch into the sticks, howling. My men cheered and spat upon Pierre. He looked down at us from beyond the smoke. He was a beautiful boy, seeming not more than twenty, with a face to charm the girls, and, come to that, the Dukes of this Earth. He knew every foul name we called him was a prayer, and every gob of spit a cry for his forgiveness.

  In the end he screamed in agony, and forgot us all.

  They say the fire is cold. I heard it once – So cold! So cold!

  It would be easy to abstain from meat after all.

  When he was gone and the flames sank and gave way, and they had raked about and made sure that nothing lived in them, they sprinkled the place with holy water.

  Soon after, Rotlam the goose told us to get going. We were to have no pay – what pay? – and to take nothing from the town – the priests had had most of it. I argued, since not to do so would seem strange and perhaps suspicious. ‘We fought hard and well for Duke Waif.’ But Rotlam laughed, and that in a ring of swords.

  From the hills above the plain we glanced back, but Bethelmai was still burning, although Pierre had finished.

  ‘May they eat their own flesh and vomit their own guts,’ said Arpad.

  ‘They will,’ said Lutgeri. ‘They all do in the end.’

  I thought of the girl with a fawn’s amber eyes, and if she would escape the town. To think of Pierre was a more terrible thing I must come to softly. For he was all the others who had died, and he was also all of us. No-one spoke to me as we tramped across the hills, with the smut of Bethelmai upon our hides and the blood of Bethelmai in our bellies, and Pierre’s death our banner.

  Bollo had been right about the snow. It came like a great grey bird from the heart of the sky. The whiteness fell like petals. So cold. So cold.

  ‘There’ll be wolves,’ said Gilles.

  ‘So, wolves are nothing,’ said Johan stoically.

  There are always two schools of thought with wolves. One says they are fiends who will tear you up as you sleep and chew your genitals till you wake shrieking. The other school, which from experience is mine, will tell that wolves seldom attack a moving man, or a sleeping man for that matter. Once, Johan was relieving himself in a winter field and a wolf appeared and stared at him. The eyes of wolves are human, and Johan was costive for three days. But when he shouted at the wolf it fled.

  In any case, we did not hear their song, up on the lean white hills. We heard nothing. The world had died. Good riddance.

  Once, from a height, we saw a town far off, walls and towers, and when the dark began, that buzz of half-seen light, all the candles, torches, hearths, all the dreams and desires of the hive. Yens said that he thought the town was Musen, but we did not know, and hated it only dimly, like the distance.

  After about two days, we began to talk of Pierre. We recalled things he had said and done, how he had been a friend, how he had enraged us. Those of us who recoll­ected the first meeting between us spoke of that. It was true he had come to the campfire in the night, but that was a century ago. He found us by stealth and the magic of our kind. Our brotherhood of blood is old and uncanny, but we are like the wolves. Timid, lonely. Our pack cleaves to itself. We prey only where we can. And we too have human eyes.

  In the dark white of the snow, Johan said to me, ‘You talked about bringing Rotlam the severed hands of those you killed. Was that unwise? Does it give away something? The Egyptians by the Nilus did that. Suppose you chatter to a scholar.’

  ‘Then I’m done for, Johan. One day.’

  Yes, no fool, but I make mistakes, and who does not?

  Pierre …

  It was not like he had been my lover, or some son I had never seen. He was myself. And to each of us, he was that.

  Lutgeri may be the oldest of us. Sometimes he dreams of painted icons in a hut of logs, and smoke, and a hymn that brought the light.

  As we age, we lose the nearer past a little, as any old man does.

  For the rest, it is lies. The sun does not smite us, nor the moon by night. Garlic is a fine flavour. Thorns rip but that is all. Iron and silver – we have had both, and lost both. And for the cross of the Christ? Well, He was one of us, or so Pierre once said. Did they not drink blood?

  But kill us, we die. Burn us, we are ashes.

  Ah, Pierre …

  And so, through the death of Pierre, we wandered, a band of mercenaries without a lord, scavengers on the winter land, wolves, crows. And so, we saw the castle.

  Maybe we would have turned to it our shoulders, but the hour was sunset, and in the sunset we saw this place, on a sky as red as blood and threaded with gold like the robe of a priest.

  The castle looked black. Not a light, not a glim to be glimpsed.

  ‘Perhaps there is some count or duke there,’ said Arpad, ‘who wants men to serve him. Wants to take some city in the spring. The rotten old bastard. He’ll feed us.’

  ‘And women,’ said Festus.

  ‘Gorgeous women, white as the snow, with sweets for tits and cores of roses.’ This, Gilles.

  We scanned the landscape for a village or town, some settlement to support the castle, and there was none. Under the snow, and the blood of crimson dying sun, nothing moved.

  ‘A ruin,’ said Yens. ‘Taken, despoiled. Empty.’

  ‘We’ll go and see.’ Arpad.

  ‘Winter in a ruin. Not for the first.’ Johan.

  But we sat on the hill, slept by the fire. In the dawn we looked down again, and now the castle was not black but warm, the sun’s rays on it over the cloth of the snow.

  If we had had his body, we would have buried him here, at this castle, our brother Pierre. But we did not have a mote of black dust.

  Lutgeri said, ‘Pierre would have liked that place. He’d have waxed lyrical. Remember how well he sang. A troubadour.’

  We thought of Pierre under the long thin windows of the castle, singing to some princess of story.

  As we descended we found the snow was deep. We were pulled in and hacked our way out. It was another battle. Under the snow, Hades, a Hell
of ice.

  When we began to get level with the castle, we looked it over again. It was not so large. Some big towers with crenelations, and an inner block, high-roofed and capped by snow, with one slender squinnying tower all its own. Up there, a stab of light went through a window, rose-red, deathly green as a dying thorn.

  ‘By the Christ,’ said Johan.

  We stopped.

  ‘What’s that, by the Mass?’

  ‘Flowers,’ said Gilles.

  ‘No.’

  There could be no flower in the snowlands.

  ‘Remember –’ said Arpad – ‘remember what Pierre called it – the battlefield –’

  Memory again. We had once come to a place, the plain of a war, in the snow, years back. And on the plain, left to God and the carrion birds, were the dying men, and the blood leaking from their bodies, red on the white. A feast. A horrible and cursed feast we were then too desp­erate to ignore.

  And Pierre had named the sight.

  ‘The blood in the sunlight on the snow,’ he said. ‘Red roses. Winter flowers.’

  ‘Flowers in winter,’ said Arpad now, so low only we could have heard him, and we did.

  There was something blooming along the walls of the castle, and it looked like flowers. Winter flowers. Roses.

  ‘There’s nothing like that,’ said Johan. ‘We – we are the legend.’

  We laughed.

  We forced our way on toward the castle.

  There is a tradition of Maryam, the Virgin Mother of the Christ: that she has a garden enclosed by high walls. And in the garden it is always summer and the flowers grow.

  Had we come to the Garden of Maryam?

  As the castle’s barriers loomed up over us, we searched walks and towers with our gaze. But there was no sentry. No-one called a challenge. We came up to the doors – and they stood ajar. This was curious and fore­boding in itself, but we had seen such things; the bizarre is not always dangerous, just as sometimes, the ordinary is.