The Gallows Curse (75 page)

    'By
nightfall every Saracen in the town was dead, save for the prostitutes. Some
three thousand died that day, so they said. Gerard finally reported to Osborn
that the town was cleared. He told him of the many bodies he'd found inside:
men who'd poisoned their own children rather than leave them to the mercy of
Richard's soldiers; girls who'd jumped to their own deaths, women with their
babies in their arms who'd thrown themselves down wells rather than be taken
alive.

    'All
this he told Osborn, and Osborn laughed ... he just laughed . . . I've never
been able to forgive him for that. It was at that moment I understood what a
truly good man Gerard was. He cared about what he'd done. He remembered it. He
condemned himself for it. But Osborn, with the murder of hundreds on his hands,
had only laughed. He regretted not one moment of the pain he had caused, nor
one drop of blood he had shed.

    'That
night the priests who travelled with Richard's army came round blessing the men
and trying to cheer them, assuring them that all their sins had been washed
away that day, and that they had done God's glorious work, for these pagan
cattle were doomed to hell. They stood on any mound they could find and shouted
the words of St Bernard of Clairvaux into the sweltering night — "The
Christian glories in the death of a pagan, because thereby Christ himself is
glorified."'

    Raffaele
was staring at the wall in Ma's chamber. He seemed to have forgotten where he
was or that Elena was even there. She felt sick. She had been there. She had
seen the girl hurl herself down into the courtyard. She had seen Gerard murder
that innocent baby, just as Raffaele had watched it, except that Gerard's hands
had become her hands. It was her own fingers that dripped red with that
infant's blood.

    She
flinched as Raffaele suddenly began to speak again, distantly, as if he was
explaining something to himself rather than to her.

    'But
I could never bring myself to tell Gerard the truth about what else I
discovered in Ayaz's house. It would have destroyed him. And I couldn't add to
his pain.

    'You
see, after he killed the baby, Gerard ran from the house. He was violently
sick, but he didn't want any man to see him vomit in case they thought him a
coward. I was about to leave too, when I noticed a low door that we had
overlooked before. I discovered it led to some kind of chamber, shaped like a
giant pot, with a channel running into it from the flat roof above. I took it
to be some kind of cistern. In the winter rains, it would fill with water, but
it was summer then and the siege had been a long one. Every drop of water was
gone. But the cistern was not empty.

    'There
was a man inside. He lay curled up at the bottom, under a blanket. As I entered
he cried out in alarm and I knew at once by his words he was a Christian
prisoner. There was something familiar about his face and I guessed he was one
of the soldiers I had met when we'd first arrived, though I couldn't recall his
name. I scrambled into the cistern to help him up, telling him I would take him
to safety at once, but to my astonishment, instead of being delighted to be
rescued, he begged me to kill him.

    'I
was astounded. I told him the siege was over. Richard was the victor and he was
safe, but still he pleaded with me to end his life. I couldn't understand it.
He threw off the blanket and then I saw why he wanted me to grant him the mercy
of death. His feet and hands had been lopped off. No man on God's earth would
want to live out his days like that.

    'He
told me that he had a son and wife at home whom he adored. He couldn't bear to
return home to them, unable to do the smallest task for himself, not able to
feed himself or even clean the shit from his own backside. Better his son
believed that his father died a noble death on the battlefield than that he
lived on as a useless mockery of a man. How could he be a father to his son, or
husband to his wife like this, he asked me, with tears streaming down his face.
He was humiliated to weep in front of me, and he couldn't even wipe away his
own tears.

    'I
felt as if all the breath had been sucked out of me, for as he spoke of his
home, I knew at once where I had seen his face before, or rather, a younger
version of it. I told him that his son, Gerard, was here in this city. That he
had been in this very house not minutes before. But he begged me not to tell
Gerard he was alive.

    'And then
. . . and then he asked me to do all in my power to protect Ayaz and his
family. He told me how he had been captured by one of the raiding parties from
the city and dragged back through the tunnels into Acre itself. The city
leaders had mutilated their captives and left them to die. But that night Ayaz
had found Gerard's father crawling among the dead and dying prisoners. He'd
smuggled him home, tended to his wounds, fed him with what little they had, and
sheltered him.

    'You
see, like many in the city, Ayaz's own father had fought in the last Holy War,
not as a Saracen, but against them, as a Christian. Ayaz's father had been
taken prisoner and forced to convert to the Muslim faith in exchange for his
life. He had married a local Muslim woman, and their son Ayaz, like so many
others in the city, now found himself fighting against his own Christian
cousins. Ayaz had tried to save the life of Gerard's father out of honour and
respect for his own father who had once been a Christian.'

    Elena
had hardly dared breathe in case she interrupted Raffaele's tale, but now she
couldn't help blurting out the question, 'Did you do what the poor man asked?
Did you kill Gerard's father?'

    'I
couldn't do it.'

    The
words were spoken so softly and with so much grief that despite her anger,
Elena wanted to throw her arms about him and comfort him.

    'I
was a coward. I couldn't kill him, not once I knew who he was. I made
arrangements for him to be brought back to England ... I think ... I hoped that
in time, when he had learned to live with what he now was, he might want to see
his son again.

    'But
the more I got to know Gerard, the more I realized what the knowledge would do
to him ... do to them both.

    Gerard
had slaughtered the man who'd saved his own father's life and, worse still, he
had murdered Ayaz's only son, a helpless infant. Gerard couldn't have borne
that knowledge. And if I had reunited them, then his father would also come to
know what Gerard had done in his name. How could I add to the pain of either
one of them? Weren't they suffering enough?'

    Elena
pressed her hands over her mouth to stop a scream escaping. 'That man . . .
that poor man in the cage in Ma's cellar, that is Gerard's father!'

    Raffaele
raised his head and looked at her, his face distorted in misery. There was no
need for him to say anything.

    'How
could you leave him like that in the cage?'

    'What
else could I do?' Raffaele sank his head in his hands. 'I had to keep him safe
and hidden. I didn't have the money to pay for lodgings for him and someone to
take care of him, not for all the years he might live. How was he to survive,
by begging on the streets? Ma took him in when I didn't know where else to take
him. She was grateful to me for saving the life of her brother Ta . . . a
brother she had not seen since she was an infant. She agreed to take him. A
life for a life, she said. And at least in here he is not forced to endure the
contempt or pity of the world, for Ma pities no one.'

    Elena
couldn't look at him. She closed her eyes, trying to piece together all the
fragments of her thoughts that lay shattered around her. The dreams had not
been about her. She was never going to harm her baby. All that had happened,
her arrest, Athan's death, what Raoul and Hugh had done to her and now tonight,
attacking Osborn, none of this would have had happened, had it not been for a
single dream, a dream which was not even her own, but one that Raffaele had
forced on her.

    'Why?'
she screamed at Raffaele. Why did you choose me? You could have chosen anyone
as the sin-eater — a beggar, a thief, a stranger, anyone. Why me? Why punish
me? What had I ever done to hurt you?'

    He
stared at her. 'But don't you understand? It was never to be a punishment. I
couldn't carry this alone. While Gerard lived we bore it together. It was our
burden, but also our bond that made us closer than any blood brothers. Once
he'd gone I couldn't give that to a stranger. This is my past, my memories, my
whole self, and I wanted you to share it. You were the only person in the world
I could give this to, because ... because I love you.'

    Elena
froze in horror, staring at the pathetic wretch of a man in front of her. Tears
were running down his sagging cheeks. He held his great hands out in a useless
gesture of a child seeking comfort, and then let them drop as if he knew they
would never be grasped.

    The
door banged open and Ma scurried into the chamber. Raffaele turned abruptly
away, scrubbing the wetness from his face. Elena couldn't move. She could only
continue to stare at him in utter disbelief.

    Ma
glanced from one to the other, sensing the atmosphere, but there was no time to
pander to it. She snorted impatiently.

    'On
your feet, the pair of you. There's a boat waiting for you down river. He can't
risk coming closer to the town for fear of being stopped and searched. I'll
take you there myself. I need Talbot here in case the soldiers come. Hurry,
it'll soon be dawn and we want you safely out of sight of Norwich by then.
Here's your bundle, my darling. Now, give me that cloak and amulet, case any
sees it.' She thrust a darker, shabbier cloak trimmed with grey rabbit's fur
into Elena's arms. 'This'll keep you warm on the water.'

    'Water?'
Elena repeated dumbly.

    'Haven't
you told her yet?' Ma scolded Raffaele. 'What on earth have you two been
talking about? Master Raffe's come to take you with him.'

    Elena
flung the cloak off, her eyes blazing with fury. 'Go with him? I can't go with
him! I won't! You don't know what he's done.'

    Ma
just as firmly thrust the cloak back at Elena again. 'So you are going to stay
here, are you? You've just attacked the most powerful man in these parts,
wounded him and let him recognize you, and now you think you're going to sit
and wait for him to find you? Well, you're not waiting here, my darling. You
may not be fond of your own head, but I'm planning to keep mine on my shoulders
for a good few years yet, if the Devil can spare me.'

    'You
needn't fret, I won't put you in danger,' Elena said, jerking her chin up
defiantly. 'I'll leave this place, but I'll leave it alone. Not with him, never
with him.'

    'Brave
words, my darling. And what exactly will you do alone? Even supposing you
manage to evade capture with half the country looking for you and a wolf's
bounty on your head, how do you imagine you're going to live? Begging, or
whoring in the alleys of some filthy little town? You think the girls here are
hard done by, but you wait until you're forced to service the stinking drunks
and poxy rogues who can't afford a girl from a whorehouse. When they fuck you
against a wall and give you a punch instead of a coin, when you have to spend
what's left of the night sleeping hungry in a graveyard, then you'll understand
what it really means to be alone.'

    Ma's
words were brutal, but they did what she intended them to do and slapped Elena
into understanding the reality of her situation. For the moment she felt
herself sinking in despair, but then she remembered what had been floating
somewhere beneath the surface of her mind. She clutched at it desperately.

    'We
can tell them,' Elena said, 'tell them what Osborn did. Then they'll arrest him
not me.'

    Raffaele
and Ma glanced at each other as if her wits were wandering.

    Elena
turned to Raffaele. 'Remember I told you what I overheard in the manor about a
ship and the French? I know now who it was who was talking in the bedchamber.'

    Raffaele
said wearily, 'I already know. It was Hugh, but —'

    'No,
no, it wasn't. It was Osborn. I should have recognized his voice at the trial
when my son . . . but I was too upset to even think of it.'

    Raffaele
stared at her. 'You're wrong. Osborn is the king's man. It was Hugh who was the
traitor. After all these months, you couldn't possibly remember his voice.'

    'I
didn't,' Elena said. 'But tonight when he realized that I was his villein, he
told me he knew I was the girl who he'd seen running away from the door. He
thought I'd come to ask him for money to keep quiet about what I heard.'

    Raffaele
looked stunned. 'All this time I thought. . . but it was the wrong brother.'