Part I - The Road to Awe and Wonder

[twasadark]

 

In September, during a harvest moon, the plague came. It struck first in the home of a cloth merchant, and spread with deadly efficiency, jumping from child to adult in what seemed like hours. A headache and general feeling of weakness came first, followed by the sweats and tormenting body aches, and then, in the latter stages, fits of trembling, difficulty breathing, and the final stillness of death. One by one the villagers of his family’s estate died in agony, and the white-swathed corpses lined the pathways in increasing numbers until at last he directed them to cease digging individual graves and dig communal graves instead. All day and into the night the church bells tolled and weeping could be heard from the white-washed chapel.

When his family fell ill – his mother, father, and three brothers -- he nursed them as best as he could. By then the doctors with their potions and poultices and the wise-women with their herbs and infusions had all died off, the first of many. He watched in increasing horror as his dear ones writhed in pain, pleading for him to quench their thirst and cool their fevered brows, weeping and trembling even as he wept and trembled alongside them in grief. He waited for the symptoms to show up on his own body, the lethargy and the sweating, and the violent death. He waited, hollow with loss, moving slowly but surely as he tended the goats and cattle, ground the grain for bread, and made soup to quench the thirst that afflicted him. With some relief, he fell ill a week after his youngest brother died. He recovered quickly, to his astonishment.

Death had passed him by.

In October, Lord Jensen of Ackerley donned his armor, deeded his property and holdings to the church, and went wandering.

He did not return.

-*-

He moved like a sleepwalker across the face of the world, armor scuffed and dirty, undercoat ripped and stained, his stomach gnawing at his insides, always aching and twisted. Something had gone terribly wrong. The world had tilted precariously far on its axis and the moon turned to blood, a tumescent bulging thing that hung low in the sky as he journeyed across fields with peasants bent low and singing harvest songs. Somewhere, though, life had to be right, so he sought it down placid rivers and through mountain passes, across wide steppe-land and into dark, thick forests where wolves roamed in terrible ravening packs and people clustered together in struggling villages to hold off the night. He sailed on the barges of tradesmen, in the tight, well-heeled raiding ships of the Norsemen, and helped row on tiny fishing coracles. He caught rides on farmer’s carts and the backs of donkeys and mules and even oxen. Most of the way he walked, though, wearing through well-heeled pairs of boots one after the other, so that a cobbler’s shop was always on his itinerary.

Much of the world passed by in a haze, and much he forgot. Sometimes it seemed as though he passed through imaginary kingdoms of starlight and fairy-speak instead of real, living settlements. The build and speech of people changed, went from pure blond and willowy tall to dark-skinned and squat, from speech that was guttural and harsh to musical and bright. He saw wondrous sights – glittering jeweled icons in Byzantine cathedrals and dark-eyed Greek maidens swathed in black robes; curly-haired Cretan shepherd boys and Friesian rope makers.

The plague seemed everywhere at once, sweeping down trading routes and hunkering like some rag-swathed beggar woman in the fetid places of the old Roman cities. He nursed an old bottle maker in Corinth that he found sprawled in front of the city fountain, avoided by the respectable matrons and squinty-eyed thieves alike, and watched wildfire devour fields of wheat in Sardinia.

For a time, he wintered in the barn of a dairyman in Cologne, and when a holy order of flagellants in their white robes called to him, he joined them, pouring God’s wrath upon his own flesh. Eventually, it occurred to him to make better use of his sword arm, and use the talents that he had cultivated at home. He would fight for the church if they would have him, and for other honorable causes if they would not.

He roamed southwest to the muddy, cold, crowded blur of Paris. There, the cathedrals smelled of incense and smoke, of unwashed bodies and the hidden desperation of the poor and the many. The beggars who milled about the exit doors descended on him like ravenous things, claw-like hands outstretched. He didn’t like to be rough with them, to push them aside like so much human garbage, but they in their numbers left him little choice if he wished to pass with coin remaining to him.

The marketplace was thick with housewives and fishmongers and embroiderers hawking their wares. The bakers sold bread by the cartful, and oxen waited in weary stillness for their masters to hitch them up and send them trudging home. It was in a tavern off the southeast entrance to the marketplace that he drank frothy Frankish beer and listened to the duke’s men talk about the nobleman in Lyons – an Englishman named Sir Geoffrey Morden, who took hire of many in the spring.

-*-

He traveled steadily southward despite the frigid winter and the dampness, the gray skies and weeping forests. Sometimes he slept buried in dead leaves and woke to frost stiffening his jerkin and boots. Other times he presented himself at monasteries where they gave him a bare stone room and porridge at noon and night. He prayed with them every morning, and took mass with them each day.

Eventually, after many footsore miles, half-frozen and completely exhausted, he reached Lyons. Despite his dwindling supply of coin, he hired a room in an inn, and paid extra for a hot bath and the laundering of his clothes. The straw bed was comfortable and the wool blankets kept the chill from soaking into his bones. He slept like the dead, and rose in the morning to the smell of fresh-baked bread and thick meaty soup.

When he stepped outside, sunlight shone in bright patches through the sprawling oak tree in the yard and his boots crunched on the muddy frost-bitten ground. He took a bracing breath of the crisp air, and contemplated that he seemed to have come awake from a long sleep, a man again instead of an ever-moving, silent wraith.  

He headed toward the town square, dodging donkey-pulled charts filled with vegetables, and giggling young maidens on their way to morning mass. The streets were cobbled here, but slick with moisture from the night’s shower. As he approached the law courts a shout went up and a figure came barreling down the alleyway to Jensen’s right.

“Stop, thief!” a red-faced fishwife screamed.

Never one to let lawlessness thrive, Jensen extended his foot in time and at the precise angle to trip the fleeing thief. With a cry and a spectacular crash into the twig cages of a pigeon-seller, the thief tumbled to a halt. He looked up at Jensen in surprise, a large piece of salted cod protruding from his lips.

“He stole from me!” the fishwife shrieked, charging toward them and brandishing a butcher knife like she meant to take the price of the fish out of the thief’s hide.

The thief’s eyes grew wide at the oncoming woman and he chewed frantically, jamming the fish into his mouth with dirty hands, all the while rolling about with bended knees like they pained him.

Jensen regarded him. He was dirty, with dark hair snarled and knotted, cheeks hollow and frame lanky but painfully thin. Probably sixteen or thereabouts. He had the half-starved look of an orphan, the dirty fingers and smudged cheeks of a street dweller, homeless and hapless, and left to live on scraps and tossed coins and whatever else he could snatch or steal or rob from the fat rich men that drank too much in the dark, stinking taverns. Jensen had seen many such unfortunates on his travels. He did not know why this one interested him, just that he did.  

The fishwife was upon them, screeching like a crow. The thief scuttled backwards on his hands, crablike, but not fast enough to escape from the woman, who knotted her work-reddened hand in the front of his dirty tunic and brought the knife up to his throat.

“There, there,” Jensen intervened. “Surely he did not steal enough to warrant death, good wife. Tell me, what is the price of the fish?”

She halted immediately at the word “price.” “You would pay for this beggar’s crime?”

Jensen shrugged. “Consider it my alms for the day. He is clearly hungry. Come now, what is the cost?”

He pulled out his purse and counted the necessary coins. The fishwife left with one last shake of her fist at the thief.

“You needn’t have done that,” said the thief, scowling.

“You would rather I let her carve up that grimy neck of yours?” At the thief’s silence he continued, “I thought not. Tell me your name, youngster.”

The thief’s hazel eyes narrowed. “I’m no child, good sir. Do not call me such.”

Jensen couldn’t help himself. He smiled a little, whistled low. “You’re a feisty one, aren’t you, child?”

The boy sprang into an awkward crouch, his injured knee held askew, clearly bothering him. A small, dinged knife appeared in his fist, aimed at Jensen’s chest.

Jensen smiled, amused at the size of the knife. It looked fit only for peeling carrots. Still, he didn’t fancy being threatened, however unlikely that threat was. He kicked the knife from the thief’s hand lightning-quick, drawing a pained exclamation from the boy’s lips as the knife skittered across the cobblestones.

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s rude to stab the person who feeds you?”

The thief looked up, eyes burning with hatred, but when he spoke his voice was low. “Not as rude as mocking someone you don’t even know.”

“And how shall I get to know you if you won’t even give me your name?” Jensen asked.

The boy seemed to consider this for a moment before he said grudgingly, “Tristan.”

“Hail and well met, Tristan of Lyons.”

“Jare.”

“Tristan of Jare, then.”

A silent moment passed before Tristan said, “I’ll have your apology now, for mocking me.”

Jensen gave a shout of amazed laughter. The nerve of the cub!

“And that is your second offense against me, sir! I’ll have satisfaction, if you please.”  Tristan drew himself up to his full height – which Jensen had to admit, was daunting. He himself stood taller than most, but Tristan had several inches even on him. His gangly carriage and the fact that he was thin to the point of painfulness made him less impressive, however.

“You are set upon this course?” Jensen asked. “Do you have a death wish, chil—Tristan?”

For it was obvious that Jensen, a warrior full grown and possessed of training, arms, and armor, would best the stripling with scarcely an effort.

“Perhaps,” Tristan conceded.

Jensen regarded him, seeing of a sudden that he was trembling, his whole body thrumming with a desperate energy that made the smile slip from Jensen’s lips. This was not some jest to the boy. He was willing to throw his life away on the point of a sword, for whatever reason. Jensen thought of his long trip here, and the campaigns he had fought in before the plague came, the many trials of his 20-year-old-life, all of which had conspired to bring him here, to this moment.

“You are so proud that you cannot let even a minor offense slide?”

Tristan’s face was suddenly hard.  “Only yesterday was I banished from the holy shrine of Saint Mary, where I was to worship and purchase prayers for the soul of my mother, dead these many months. The only father I have known was stabbed to death in Toulouse by a king’s guard four years past. So you see, great warrior, I have nothing to gain by deferring to you and my hard-won pride to lose.”

Jensen thought of walking away, of cuffing the impertinent urchin in the face, leaving him broken in the mud. Many a warrior would do that and worse to the boy, but his stark honesty, and his orphaned state, made Jensen feel some measure of pity for the lad. Not that pity would do in this instance.

“Very well, then,” Jensen said briskly. “Your challenge is accepted.”

He began stripping his armor off and setting it against the wineseller’s shop. The urchin’s jaw hung open.

“What are you doing?”

“I cannot take undue advantage of you, now can I?”

The cub swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing and eyes wide.

“Are fists weapon enough, or will your pride only be satisfied with steel?” Jensen inquired.

“Fists will do.”

Jensen unbuckled the sheath with his heavy broadsword in it and set it aside. He bounced on his feet, the absence of the armor’s weight making him feel as light and agile as a young buck.

Tristan leaned over, gritted his teeth, and ran headlong toward Jensen’s stomach, trying to head-butt him and failing spectacularly, as Jensen simply jumped to one side, hooked a hand in the crease of Tristan’s elbow, and swung him about so that he tossed the boy into the wall of the wineseller’s shop. Tristan collided with it with a “whoof,” but dodged Jensen’s right cross with a backward scramble, kicking at Jensen and missing. Jensen snatched at the boy’s foot and yanked upward, causing him to fall to the street with a loud thwap.

Jensen danced backward, waiting for Tristan to pick himself up – which he did clumsily, holding his shoulders tight as though in obvious pain. His face burning, he threw himself at Jensen again, catching him around the midriff and trying to pummel him with his oversized paws. Jensen plucked the struggling thief back far enough for his knee to catch him under the chin, making his teeth clack together. He let out an involuntary exhalation of pain. Taking advantage of the boy’s distraction, Jensen swept his feet out from under him and pushed him over.

Really, this was scarcely a fight, it was so easy.

“I would stay down, were I you,” Jensen advised.

Tristan rolled back and forth in agony, face twisted and arms drawn close against what had to be an aching middle. He managed to make it to his knees, eyes still a thundercloud of rage. Jensen sighed, and delivered a crisp uppercut to his jaw. This time Tristan sprawled loosely, eyes shut and mouth slack. Out cold.

Jensen regarded the shabby, wounded figure for a moment before picking up his armor, re-sheathing his sword, and setting off for the western quarter of the city and Morden’s ancient Roman villa.

-*-

The brazier in the sitting room sat entirely too close to Lady Alona Morden’s brocade chair. It had just been stoked by the servants, and red coals glowed from the interior, causing her cheeks to burn and the stray hairs on her neck to curl further. She felt the pearls in her headdress heating as well. Trying to be unobtrusive, she shifted to the other side of the heavy oaken chair, felt small relief from the heat, and chastised herself for not having the servants light the brazier earlier, so that the heat might then be more evenly distributed through the room. As it was, her toes cramped from the cold stone floor beneath them. She smoothed her heavy, jade green gown on her lap, and the expensive cloth pooled on the floor around her.

Her husband was now questioning the latest applicant for her guardsman in his deep Saxon tones, and she forced herself to pay attention to the proceedings. After all, her life would likely depend on them before too long.

The candidate called himself Jensen of Ackerley and he was as tall as Geoffrey, an unusual happenstance, and finely built, even though his tunic was worn and his armor in need of polishing. His jaw was smooth and straight--freshly shaven--and his face was uncommonly handsome, very nearly as pretty as a maiden’s. The masculine curve of shoulders and spine told her that he was strong and healthy although a bit thin and strained looking about the eyes. Green eyes, she noted. Unusual and compelling.

He nodded respectfully to her upon arrival, and he deferred to Geoffrey as a vassal should to his lord, a trait which spoke well of his discipline and upbringing. She could tell by his posture that Geoffrey liked him, and recognized a fellow Saxon in the way he spoke Frankish.

“Now, then, Jensen of Ackerley, tell me of your experience at arms,” Geoffrey said once the introductions had been finished – blunt and impatient as he tended to be.

Jensen nodded and began explaining his military experience at length: the time he spent fighting border feuds and the summer campaigns that he had participated in, the responses he and his fellows had mounted to the raids by the Angles and Jutes, and the other quick and breathless affairs of the sword he had conducted over the years.

Fighting was a necessity for a man of Jensen’s class, something second-nature to him, bred into his bones and blood. Still, he did not boast of his achievements nor seem to take unusual glee in them, like several of the unwashed, shaggy-haired barbarians who had earlier responded to their call for guardsmen. She found that she liked that very much.

Geoffrey regarded the young man with an appraising stare, silent until Jensen finished reciting even the horsemanship training he had received as a youth. He seemed a bit flummoxed at Geoffrey’s blunt questioning of him, though rather than turn red and bluster for the meaning of such questions, he merely fell silent, waiting for answers that would surely come eventually. Geoffrey studied his face, his own contemplative and cupped by a well-worn hand, before glancing at Alona for her opinion, one dark brow raised inquisitively.  He did not like the idea of this endeavor, she knew – indeed, he had raged and argued with her for almost a week straight before relenting to her steadfast determination to go. She had an empty womb as evidence that something drastic must be done, and the Bishop’s blessing beside, but this was no easy task she had set upon herself.

It was early in the season still and they had not yet interviewed many men for the position, but nevertheless Alona felt certain that few would present such a picture of respect, experience, and honor as this knight before them. She inclined her head at Geoffrey, and he gave her a short, flat-lipped nod in acknowledgement.

“You have letters of introduction to show me?” asked Geoffrey.

“Yes, yes of course,” Jensen said, pawing through his rucksack to produce a small parcel wrapped in oilcloth and tied with a leather cord. Inside were several sheets of vellum. From her place on the chair Alona could see the dark scratchings of words on the letters, likely from the bishop of his home town, and perhaps a local magistrate or two. As he read, Geoffrey made little huffs and grunts of acknowledgement that she had come to learn, in her four years as his wife, meant that he was grudgingly pleased.

“Come,” Geoffrey said, leading Jensen to the sturdy oak table upon which the map of the world was laid out. “This is the task at hand: to guide my lady wife and her attendants on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, so that she might worship at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher at Jerusalem, and bring her home safely and innocent of the ravages of the barbarians that roam that land.” He pointed at the map, which showed trade routes crisscrossing the Mediterranean, and indicated the general direction of the pilgrimage.

Jensen looked at the map, then up again at Geoffrey, seeming too stunned to speak for a moment. He glanced at Alona, who did her best to appear calm, serious, and sane, and collected himself. “My lord, I do not know if you are aware of the challenges of this endeavor,” he began carefully.  “Aside from the hardships of travel in Frankish lands and the territory of the Lombards, where the roads are in ill repair, and bandits haunt the byways, there is the danger of shipwreck on a sea passage, and the closer we come to the Holy Land the more the dangers increase – the Byzantines are skirmishing with fierce desert tribesmen, they who are called Muslim and follow the teachings of Muhammad. And then there is the ever-present danger of disease and injury and ill luck …”

Geoffrey nodded, the gray in his short beard and the concern of his expression making him look grave. “You are well informed, young knight. All this I know. There are months of travel and great expense, and I am bound to stay here and see to my estates. I wish her not to go, but God wills otherwise, so she tells me, as does the bishop.”

There was more to it than that. So much more of tears and pleading with God and the fates. Four years had gone by without the quickening of a child in her womb, and all the physicians and wise women and the hawkers of potions in the marketplace had been unable to help. She had begged intercession from saints and clergy alike, until at last the bishop took her aside and suggested the pilgrimage to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where barren women went for healing. From the moment the words left the bishop’s lips she had known that such was the only solution for her.

Geoffrey went on, giving Jensen the specifics of the journey, the estimation of the time it would take and when they would depart – just as soon as the Easter holiday passed – and the numbers going: “You will lead a force of twenty warriors and their servants, and bring as many home as God sees fit. We will work together to create a suitable itinerary including papers, letters of introduction, supply depots, passage on seagoing vessels--“

“Pardon me, sir,” Jensen interrupted, alarm in his voice. “You wish me to lead this expedition?“

Geoffrey nodded, a small wry smile about his lips. “Yes, I do. Rather, we do. The responsibilities are great, I realize, as is the effort, but you will be well compensated with a half-dozen of my finest geldings.”

Surprise registered on Jensen’s face. Indeed, it was generous compensation. He seemed ill at ease still, though, so Geoffrey put a hand on his shoulder and spoke low and persuasively. “You are a fine choice – the finest I have yet encountered. Indeed, two separate astrologers in the marketplace predicted your arrival when I sought them last. Dare we question the stars? I think not.”

Jensen looked at him, seemed to search his eyes for some unknown guidance. At last he looked to her, his eyes luminous and clear. She lifted her chin and met his gaze fearlessly, her lips unsmiling but her resolve evident. He would say yes, she was sure of it.

In the end, she was right.

Part II