assassins — no doubt he would be suitably impressed — and then I would curl up in the stern cabin under a blanket and sleep the sleep of the just while Adam and he crewed the big black sailing barge downstream towards home.
It was Hanno’s sharp eye that noticed it first: a wisp of grey smoke against a grey cloudy sky, just a tendril. When he drew my attention to it, I muttered something about a local peasant’s campfire, my mind split between happy thoughts of returning home and the need, given my exhausted state, to concentrate on putting one foot ahead of the other. But as we approached, the wisp of smoke thickened, fattened and grew darker until we both knew we were looking at a disaster. Hanno and I broke into a run at the same time, sprinting up the road towards the wharf as fast as we could under the weight of the heavy back-sacks. The column of smoke turned black and evil, twisting up into the sky like a fat snake, dark as sin and speckled with bright flecks of orange sparks that danced upward in the roiling stream.
We rounded a bend and blundered straight into the scene of a catastrophe: The Crow was blazing from stern to bow, its cargo of hardwood timber the perfect fodder for a holocaust. The heat from the flames was ferocious, and we could not approach closer than a dozen yards to the burning craft. But I could make out the body of a man through the smoke and flames, pierced many times, lying in a pool of sizzling blood at the prow of the barge, his blond hair frizzling, curling and blackening in the heat, and I could smell the pork-like stench of his roasting flesh. It was Adam. His face was turned towards me and his blue seafarer’s eyes stared into nothingness. I crossed myself and began to mutter the Ave Maria over and over to myself under my breath — for Adam’s dead body was not the worst sight that polluted our gaze on that cursed morning: on the wooden jetty, before the roaring boat, was a far worse sight.
Through the eddies of choking smoke, I could see the arms, legs and torso of a young man, and a yard or so away was his head: a snub-nosed, red-haired head. It had not been severed by a blade; from the neck protruded strands of tissue, ligament, veins, and a sharp dagger spike of white broken bone, while the skin of the neck was stretched and floppy. Perkin’s head had been ripped off by immensely powerful hands, much as one might decapitate a chicken. I felt the gorge rise in my throat, but fought back the urge to vomit. Rage consumed me: I was in no doubt as to who had done this.
Hanno, who had been questing around the beaten ground beyond the gusting veil of smoke, soon confirmed my opinion. ‘It is them,’ he said simply. And he indicated two sets of footprints: one set long and thin, the other huge and round, like the paw print of an enormous beast.
I pictured the two assassins as I had first set eyes on them by the light of Ralph Murdac’s fire, and found I was almost crying with fury at what they had done to my friends. My sword was in my hand and I felt an almost overpowering urge to kill, to hack and maim — to bring my blade against these two monsters in the name of justice.
‘They are not long gone,’ said Hanno. He was looking at me with searching, furious eyes. ‘We must catch them. Come, Alan, I can track them. They are not so far ahead of us. Come, let us go after them now.’
And I wanted nothing more than to do just that. God above knows how much it would have pleased me to strip off my back-sack, toss it down, and run these foul, misshapen creatures to earth so that I could hack them into gobbets. What I did next was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do in my life.
‘No, Hanno,’ I said. And I found I was breathing hard, almost panting. ‘No,’ I said again through gritted teeth. ‘We must see that these letters are delivered. If we were to catch them — as I earnestly pray to God and all the saints that I may do some day — one of us might be injured and that would lessen our chances of successfully carrying these precious messages back to England.’
Hanno looked at me, dumbfounded. Then he slowly nodded his round shaven head. ‘It is your duty, no?’
‘Yes,’ I sighed. ‘It is my duty. But I swear now, before you, my friend, that I shall have vengeance on these creatures before I see Heaven. I swear it on the name of the Virgin, and I call upon St Michael, the warrior’s saint, to witness my vow. You have heard me, they have heard me, and now we must get away from here as swiftly as we are able. We need a boat. Any kind of boat will do.’
For the second time in a matter of days, I was running from an encounter with these two murderous bastards. In the name of duty to my King, I was sacrificing my personal honour. But I felt slightly better for my vow of vengeance; not entirely comfortable, but calmer. There would be a reckoning one day: I was certain of it. And on that day I would carve them both into bloody lumps.
But in the meantime what we needed, what I prayed for, was a boat
…
And it seemed that God had been listening to my prayers, for within the hour — while I knelt by Perkin, straightening his dead limbs and placing his poor head as close to his neck as possible, my eyes burning from the smoke and barely able to breathe — Hanno reported that not ten yards from the smoke- and blood-stained jetty he had found a craft hidden in the reeds: a battered skiff just big enough to hold two heavily laden men.
‘It must belong to the white monk who tends this wharf,’ said Hanno. My friend’s words prompted another question: Where was the surly Premonstratensian canon?
We found him soon after, seated behind the hut that he used for shelter, an extra mouth gaping below his chin: his throat had been cut from ear to ear. I gazed at the man’s body, the front of his white habit sodden and scarlet with his blood, and a terrible weariness came over me. I had seen so much death, too much. Would there ever be an end to Man’s evil? Why did God allow his servants to be slaughtered like this by men who were clearly spawned by the Devil? I could find no answers. All I could do was repeat my vow to St Michael that I would take red vengeance for these foul acts before too long.
Leaving the dead where they lay, trusting that the monks of Tuckelhausen would bury them and say a Mass for their souls, Hanno and I clambered into the skiff. Setting our leather back-sacks in the middle of the vessel, and taking up two paddles that we found in the bilges, we set off downstream, rowing slowly and steadily, and letting the slow current do most of the work.
I passed the remainder of that day in a stupor, head wearily nodding on my breast as my muscles automatically worked the paddle, though my cracked ribs sent pain stabbing down my left side with each stroke. But with God’s help, and Hanno’s unflagging work, we reached Wurzburg that same evening. And while I was staggering with pain and exhaustion, Hanno arranged for us to occupy palliasses in the almshouse of the cathedral. I was asleep as soon as my head hit the thin, damp straw mattress.
For two days I slept, waking only occasionally to answer the calls of nature and to eat a little soup that Hanno brought to my palliasse. I was exhausted, worn thin in soul and body by the harrowing fall of events. And my ribs were hurting worse than ever. But while I was idle, Hanno was not. On the morning of the third day, he introduced me to a badly scarred, grinning rascal named Dolph who, for the princely sum of five shillings, was willing to take us in his trading galley all the way to Utrecht. It was an extortionate price for such a voyage, but I had the money — Queen Eleanor was paying, after all — and while the man looked to me like a pirate, Hanno, it seemed, trusted the fellow. I never did discover whether Dolph was truly a river pirate, but I did find that he was a man of his word. While I slept for most of the journey, nursing my aching ribs, Dolph took us quietly and efficiently down the rivers Main and Rhine, and seven days later, with a cheery nod and a hand clasp, he deposited Hanno and myself together with our precious back-sacks at the docks in Utrecht.
Three days later, I was standing in my salt-stained clothes in a private chamber of Westminster Palace, face to face with my King’s venerable mother, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Chapter Eleven
The Queen looked as lovely as ever, dressed in a burgundy gown with pearls at her throat, and her auburn hair caught up in a golden net. But looking closer, I could see that her fine features were a little worn with care, and for the first time I could begin to see her true age in the lines on her still beautiful face. Her reception of me was far warmer than at our last meeting, and she rose from her high-backed chair to greet me, ordering a servant to bring wine and asking after my health in a most considerate manner.
I handed over the letters which were addressed to her — I had dispatched Hanno to deliver the rest — and stood patiently while she read them, sipping from a silver-chased wooden cup of wine and admiring the gold- embroidered tapestries on the walls of the chamber. The Queen was not alone, of course. Walter de Coutances, the
