with demonic glee as the head fell off and rolled away leaving a trail of red in the sand.
I lost the ability to tell if I were awake or asleep: dead men came to my bedside in the dormitory that long night and spoke to me, and I raved and screamed at them, begging them leave me be. Malbete came up to me as I lay there with two severed children’s heads, one in each hand like monstrous bloody oranges, and told me I must eat them: ‘Fruit will cleanse the evil humours from your body,’ he said, but in Reuben’s voice. Then he laughed his deep mocking cackle.
There was a figure in the room; small, dark, dressed head to toe in black cloth, its face totally covered with a black veil. The figure came towards me, holding a single candle: as I shrank back, gibbering in fright, a small white hand came out and felt my forehead: it was cool and perfumed. And I knew with great relief that it was Nur, my lovely Nur had come back to me; my beautiful girl was beside me again. But I could not see her face. I reached out a hand, grasped the black veil and pulled. The veils slipped easily away from her head — and I screamed, screamed and screamed, yelling loud enough to rouse a thousand corpses from their coffins.
Instead of the fresh lovely face of my beloved was a monster, a caricature of the beauty of my girl. The lips had been hacked from the face, exposing teeth splintered to shards and pink gums in a skull’s permanent grimace; the hair had been shaved to black stubble; the nose had been sliced away, leaving nothing but a pink, blood-and- snot crusted hole; and those beautiful dark eyes were now red-veined with her suffering. She turned her head away and bent down, fumbling for the veil, which had fallen to the floor, and I saw that her ears, too, had been crudely hacked off, leaving a suspicion of an earlobe just hanging on below small bloody holes in the side of her head.
I gaped at my beloved Nur with astonishment and deep horror; she moved her head towards me, just a fraction, and I swear I could not help but cringe away from her hideousness. She saw me recoil and snatched at the veil with her small white hand, wrapped it around her head, dropped the candle to the floor and ran from the room, leaving me only the whisper of cloth as it brushed the stone in her passing, and a lingering smell of her perfume.
My screams had roused the dormitory and brought me a visit a few moments later from Sir Nicholas de Scras, a lantern in his hand, his cropped grey hair tousled from sleep.
‘Your young friend came to see you, then,’ he said. ‘I told her she should not visit until you were fully recovered. But I see that she disobeyed me. Did she frighten you?’
‘What happened to her? My God, she was so, so beautiful, so perfect…’
‘She would not tell me who inflicted those grievous wounds but I got the impression it was some of our knights — have you offended anyone recently? She had been raped, too, very brutally — our brother-physicians had to sew up her nether regions.’ He was entirely matter of fact about this most intimate of operations. ‘But there is nothing seriously wrong with her, Alan. She is a healthy girl and her injuries are mainly to her vanity. She should recover in time, with God’s mercy — and your loving care, of course.’
What the Hospitaller said was no doubt true. But for one who had been so beautiful, what sort of life would she have as a freak: a hideous curiosity that would have children running from her in terror? And what about me? I had sworn that I would always love her: could I love her so brutally stripped as she was of her beauty? I didn’t want to think about it.
I felt a white-hot wave of fury for Malbete; for I was certain it was he, or his minions, who had mutilated her. I could hear his words in my head: ‘It seems you have cut up another one of my people, singing boy. I think perhaps I shall now cut up one of yours.’ In that moment, I’m ashamed to say that I felt self-pity, too. He had taken away the one truly beautiful thing in my life, and perverted her into a monstrosity. And I felt guilt, too. Most of all guilt. If I had not tried to kill Malbete in that cack-handed fashion, she would not have been harmed.
More guilt, too, for in my secret heart, I knew I could never truly love Nur looking as she now did.
Chapter Seventeen
I awoke the next morning clear-headed but weak — knowing exactly what I must do. It would be humiliating, but I must go to Robin and beg his forgiveness. Without his help and protection I would have no chance of taking the fight to Malbete and revenging the awful hurt done to my poor girl.
There was no sign of Nur in the women’s quarters, and Elise told me that she had taken all of her belongings and left at some time during the night. Will Scarlet was with his wife when I spoke to her and they both seemed pleased to see me much recovered from my fever. However, I was shamefully relieved that Nur had fled. I had no idea what I would have said to her. I had promised to love her always, and to protect her, but I knew what the truth was: I could do neither. She was gone, and to be honest, a part of me was glad. Another part of me ached for the beautiful girl who had shared my bed these past few months; the first girl who ever truly owned a piece of my soul.
Elise knew the secrets of my heart, I don’t know how. Perhaps it was just ordinary women’s insight, maybe her special gift. ‘I grieve for your love, Alan,’ she said. ‘It entered by the eyes, as I said it would, and I see that it has flown the same way. But do not blame yourself, such is the fickle way of men; you cannot love truly, the way a woman loves, with the whole of your heart. But that is how God, in his great wisdom, has made you.’
I presented myself to Robin in his harbour-side palace, and went down on one knee before him. I had prepared my speech as I walked there, but when I delivered it to him, I realised that it was not half as eloquent as I had hoped, and not a quarter as sincere. I finished by begging his pardon for the things I had said during the attack on the camel train, and saying that if I had not been out of my head with fever I would never have said them.
‘I doubt that very much,’ said Robin coolly. ‘I think that fever or no, you meant every word you said. I think that you want me to help you to kill Sir Richard Malbete, and that is why you are here, on your knees, abjectly begging my pardon. But no matter. We shall call it the fever speaking, if you wish. But I tell you now that if you ever speak to me like that again — fevered or well — I shall have you roasted to death for your insolence. Now go and begin gathering your things; we leave tomorrow. This Great Pilgrimage’ — there was a hint of a sneer in his voice — ‘is taking the road to Jerusalem.’
I turned to go, but he stopped me, and said in a different, quieter voice: ‘Alan, I am truly sorry about what happened to Nur.’ I said nothing for I could feel tears forming behind my eyelids, a knot in my throat. ‘If there is anything I can do…’ he said and tailed off.
Then Robin sighed and said: ‘Alan, you said a while back that you thought you knew who it was that was trying to kill me. Of your goodness, tell me his name.’
I turned back and looked at my master. His silver eyes were boring into mine, willing me to reveal what I knew. I shrugged and wiped my wet face: ‘I thought it was Will Scarlet, with help from Elise, who is now his wife,’ I said, looking at the floor and sniffing loudly.
Robin considered for a while, tapping his chin with a finger. ‘Yes, I can see it,’ he said at last. ‘He resented being punished and demoted, although he deserved it. I humiliated him in front of his men, which was perhaps a mistake. And he has always had open access to my apartments. She loves him, and knows the countryside, the ways of serpents and poisonous plants. Yes, I can see them as my murderers.’
‘But it is neither Will nor Elise,’ I said flatly. Robin stared at me, his eyes glittering dangerously. ‘Do not make sport with me, Alan. I warn you.’
‘It cannot be Will or Elise because they were being married at noon on the day after we took Acre, the day that someone showered broken masonry around your head. I asked Elise for the exact day and time of her wedding, and I checked the truth of it with Father Simon, who performed the service. They were in the porch of a church in the southern part of Acre at the time you were attacked, with a dozen witnesses. It cannot be them.’
‘Very well,’ said Robin, disappointed. ‘But you will continue to make enquiries?’ I nodded. ‘If you give me the name of the guilty man, you will have my complete and utter forgiveness for your intemperate words the other day, and I will help you to destroy Malbete as swiftly as you like,’ he said. It was a good bargain and, as we clasped hands to seal the deal, I was surprised to find that I still felt some warmth towards the man, greedy, Godless, murdering monster that I now knew him to be.
