The Gallows Curse (44 page)

    Besides,
as his father confided when they were alone, 'I would not have your poor mother
lose a son and husband in the same battle, if it should come to it, and it
likely would, for I should be so distracted by marking your progress in the
fight, I would surely fail to protect myself.'

    'So
why do you ride to the Holy Land now?' Raffe asked. 'Your mother, is she dead?'

    Gerard
shook his head, then hesitated. 'There is a woman in our village. I was . . .
fond of her once. She has a gift of second sight. She told me that my father
would soon find himself in mortal danger. His thoughts would turn to me and he
would desperately need my help.'

    You
trust this woman?' Raffe asked him.

    Gerard
stared up at the bright stars for a long time without answering. 'Did you know
that men call the stars by different names? Some look at the same sky, but see
quite different shapes and creatures in it? I thought once that the names I
knew were the true names of the stars, but if all men have different names for
the same objects, how shall we know which of them is their real name? Do you
suppose the stars have names that only they know?'

    He
turned and fiercely grasped Raffe's arm. 'My father needs me and I have to go
to him. I could never forgive myself if I discovered that I might have saved
him, but I did not. If there is any chance I can help him, I must do it, do you
see?'

    Raffe
nodded, but in truth he didn't see at all. At seventeen he could not imagine
feeling such love or loyalty for any man, certainly not for his own father. But
now, after all these years, he finally understood what a man will do for love.

    In
the end, it had all been in vain. Gerard had arrived at Acre too late to save
his father, but that night, that gloriously starry night, it seemed impossible
to those two young men that they could ever fail. He and Gerard had sat together
under the olive trees. The darkness throbbed with the rasping of the cicadas.
The warm air rose from the earth around them, anointing them with scented oils
of wild thyme and summer. And all the while they sat there, they talked and
talked of nothing and everything, till weariness overcame them and they slept
like infants cradled upon the moon-washed earth.

    The
Crusaders left the next morning, Raffe riding upon a mule until a better mount
could be bought for him. Raffe's father had managed, if not exactly a blessing,
at least a mumbled,
Take care of yourself, bay.
Raffe had not looked
back as they trotted away; there would be nothing to see. His mother was
already inside her house, trying to repair the devastation the unruly knights
had brought to her home. When she and Raffe had said their curt goodbyes to
each other, her eyes had been as dry and lifeless as the sun-scorched grass.
She had finished weeping over the chickens. They were just bones in her stock
pot now. What was the point of any more tears?

    A
shrill whistle startled Raffe out of his reverie, and he saw the black smudge
of a low craft sculling towards him across the river. He rose and almost fell
over as his legs were seized by a cramp. He jiggled them, trying to shake the
feeling back into them. God curse the English weather.

    The
marsh-boy had borrowed a longer craft than his own light coracle, and despite
the chill night his fingers were sweaty as he passed Raffe the rope. His
passenger had evidently not helped him to scull the boat. But as Raffe grasped
the priest's cold hand to pull him ashore, he realized that he would have been
more a hindrance than help, for such soft delicate little fingers as these
would have blistered before he'd made half a dozen strokes.

    'The
boy says you've got me passage on a ship. Where is it?' The priest shivered,
and glanced around him as if he really thought some great sea-going vessel
would be moored up in the river.

    Raffe
ignored the question and addressed the boy. 'Hide the boat on the other side of
the islet. I'll bring the priest back as soon as he's done and I'll make an
owl's cry. When you hear it, bring the boat back.'

    He
handed the boy the basket of food, which the lad had been gazing at longingly
from the moment he moored up.

    'Try
not to eat it all, the priest'll want some of it for the journey.'

    The
lad nodded, but Raffe had no great faith there'd be anything but crumbs left by
the time they returned. He smiled and patted the boy's shoulder. He remembered
what it felt like to be constantly hungry as a lad and didn't begrudge him a
mouthful, though the priest undoubtedly would.

    'This
way, Father. And keep your hood pulled up; though your hair's grown long, it
still has the faint shadow of a tonsure for those with eyes to see.'

    He
helped the priest up the bank and on to the track that led to the manor.

    'But
where is the ship?' the priest repeated, peering nervously at every tree and
bush as if he expected them to be bristling with soldiers.

    'When
we are done here, we'll return to the boat and get you to the ship.'

    The
priest stopped dead. 'We must go now, at once, we might miss it.'

    'I
told you that you will not be going anywhere until you've anointed Gerard's
body.'

    Seeing
the priest was again about to protest, Raffe seized the little man's arm and
hurried him forward, growling in his ear, 'Without me, you'll not get to your
ship, so unless you want to spend the winter hiding on the freezing marshes or
lying chained in some sodden, stinking dungeon I suggest you come with me, and
quietly at that.'

    He
felt the priest resisting every step as he hurried him along, but Raffe pulled
him as easily as a child might drag a rag doll. At the manor gate he stopped
and opened the wicket gate as silently as he could, peering in to see if the
courtyard was empty. It was. He pulled the priest inside and hurried him across
to the vaulted arches under the Great Hall.

    Raffe
had taken the precaution of finding a woman to occupy the gatekeeper, promising
to keep the watch for Walter in return for some invented favour he'd asked the
gatekeeper to do for him. The woman was well past her prime, with straggly grey
hair and a face ravaged by the pox, but Walter would not be looking at her
face. The gatekeeper had gone off towards the village with a grin broad enough
to split his wrinkled old face in two.

    Walter
in turn had assured Raffe that he could sleep soundly in the gatehouse, for the
pair of hounds would bark loud enough to rouse him from his grave if any should
approach the gate. And so they would have done, had Raffe not slipped them each
a tasty piece of mutton with a pelt of poppy paste in each one. Now the only
sounds which came from the hounds were deep and drooling snores.

    Raffe
led the priest to the back of the undercroft and lifted up the trapdoor and
then the grid which covered the prisoner hole. As soon as the wooden trapdoor
was raised, a stench rose up from the hole which was enough to make even a
battle-hardened warrior retch. The priest drew the neck of his hood over his
mouth and nose.

    'I've
unsealed the wall and opened the coffin ready for you,' Raffe informed him.

    The
priest shuddered in disgust. 'I can smell that. But it was unnecessary.'

    The
little man glanced uneasily round the dark and silent courtyard, his nose
twitching like a frightened mouse that fears danger from all quarters.

    'I'll
say the prayers for the dead, but we must make haste,' he said, crossing
himself rapidly as he knelt down.

    But
his callused knees had scarcely touched the flags when Raffe seized him by the
arm and hauled him up again.

    'What
do you think I opened the coffin for?' Raffe whispered. 'Go down and give him
the unction of God.'

    The
priest's jaw went as slack as a hanged man's. 'No! No! Holy unction is for the
sick. If he were newly dead and the spirit might yet be lingering near the
body, it is permitted.

    But
that man has been dead for months, you admitted as much yourself, and even if
you hadn't, my nose would testify to the fact. Besides, unction is only
permitted once confession has been heard and the sacrament of penance given,
or, if a man is too ill to confess, that the priest is assured he has at least
undertaken an act of sorrow for his sins.'

    'Gerard
lived in constant horror of his sins. Never did a man feel so much sorrow for
what he had done.'

    'That's
all very well for you to say,' the priest protested, 'but how am I to know
that?' Then he added petulantly, 'In any case, it is far too late to anoint a
corpse that long dead and . . . and besides, I have no holy oil left.'

    Raffe
was gripped by such a rage that it was all he could do to stop himself wringing
that scrawny, lying throat.

    'Give
me your scrip,' he ordered.

    The
man instinctively clutched tightly at the small leather bag that hung from his
belt, but the look of fury on Raffe's face was so terrifying that when Raffe
held out his great hand, the priest, with trembling fingers, unbuckled his belt
as meekly as a bride disrobing for her husband. Raffe reached inside and pulled
out a tiny flask of finely wrought silver, inscribed with an image of the
crucifixion. He opened it and sniffed, holding the open flask in his hand.

    'A
miracle, is it not, Father? God has filled your flask with oil while you lay
sleeping'

    'But
that is all I have,' the priest wailed. 'And if I should come across the sick
and dying, what would I have to anoint them with? It's too late for your
friend, but surely you would not condemn other souls to torment? Suppose it was
your wife or child . . .' He gulped, plainly realizing too late that mention of
wife or child to a man such as Raffe was like jabbing a stick at a roaring
bear.

    'Don't
give me that,' Raffe snarled. 'You have no more concern for the souls of others
than a dog has for its fleas. You just want to make sure you have oil enough to
anoint yourself before death. Thought of a sea voyage scares you, does it, or
worse, burning up with fever in one of King John's filthy cells?'

    Raffe
took a step nearer the prisoner hole. He held the flask above it.

    'Anoint
him properly and you will have some drops left for yourself. Or I shall do it
by pouring the whole flask into his coffin.'

    'No,
please!' the priest whispered frantically. 'God in heaven, don't! I'll do it.
I'll do it!'

    Raffe
closed the flask and placed it back in the shaking hands of the priest, who
grasped it, pressing it tightly to his lips and kissing it fervently.

    You'd
better get on with it then,' Raffe urged. 'Ship sails with the tide and waits
for no man.'

    The
little man fumbled hopelessly as he put the flask back in his scrip, rebuckled
it about his waist and set one foot on the rung of the ladder. He paused,
casting one more beseeching glance up at Raffe, but his expression was as
implacable as granite. Slowly the priest descended into the stench of hell.

    Raffe
crouched on the edge of the hole, holding the lantern down inside. The priest
stood in the damp earth, peering into the hole in the side of the wall in which
the exposed coffin lay. His body shuddered convulsively as he retched and
whimpered like a wounded dog.

    He
lifted his pale face to Raffe. There's... nothing to anoint. Just bones and
bits of putrefying flesh and . .. and most of it is already melted to liquid. I
can't touch him.' Tears ran down the man's face. 'Please, please, don't make me
do this,' he begged.

    'If
he has bones you can tell where his lips were, his private parts, his hands,'
Raffe said with a coldness he didn't feel.

    It
was taking every drop of self-control he had not to burst out screaming and
sobbing at the sight of the foul, stinking abomination that had taken the place
of his dearest friend's face.

    'Do
it, Father. Do it now or by God, I shall close these bars and leave you down
there to rot until you look just like him.'

    The
priest bowed his head. Then, as a palsied man struggles to move a deadened
limb, he stretched out his shaking hand into the darkness of the coffin. His
fingers coated in the precious drops of holy oil, he made the three-times-five
crosses — three for the Trinity, five for the senses — anointing eyes, ears,
nostrils, lips, hands, feet and genitals, or at least the places on the rotting
flesh where these organs which cause a man to sin had once existed.