Here on the ground he found himself battered and pounded by the legs of the broad-bodied horses. Hot liquid blinded him, he wiped it away – blood – and still he saw nothing. The horses panted, their neighing was all passion. Crouching between blows, Etienne reached out to the hilt and pulled. The stubborn weapon would not come. Now something fell over him and he was thrown away from the body with his sword stuck in it and down upon his face. In that space above he could hear the grunts and cries and blows muffled by the bulk of what had laid itself over him, and realised with a certain equanimity that he was not only being crushed but drowned also, since his mouth and nose took up more snow-turned-mud than air.
He pulled up, coughing, and reached with a free hand, panting, groaning, spitting, and fumbled behind him. Something grabbed his hair and pushed his face down into the mud again. In his ears the activity of the horses grew dull. Stars began to lift upwards into the dome of his mind. The weight on his back would force him to rest a while, sheltered from the noise and the blood.
In the day of evil he will protect me in the secret of his Tabernacle. I thank thee, oh Lord! I thank thee!
Of a sudden he was lighter.
He felt a pulling at his belt and found that he was heaved half sitting half lying on his side, vomiting mud next to the weight that had fettered him, now stabbed in the back of the neck. His saviour had been, from what he could make of it, Jourdain, who was moving over the killing field of carcasses that had been cut down and were fallen all around. Etienne wiped the bloody dirt from his eyes. The horses were moved away, he could hear their grunts. He looked with his hands for the corpse wearing his sword; when he found it he gave a heave that caused his hurts to burst into a thousand darted lights that coursed through his head. He pulled with all his strength – since this must surely be the last time he would do so before he died – and it came away; he stood, dizzy, soaked in the other man’s blood, more blood dripping from his hand and his nose.
The Norman was at his work of killing a dark figure that threw itself down screaming. Etienne could not make out Delgado, but he could hear the Catalan laughing to his right and a hint of movement and a groan, then he heard a shout of ‘Again!’; it was Jourdain.
Sleet and night all around.
He heard a call, ‘Etienne!’ And it struck him as he stood twisting and turning with his blade extended outward into black. At that moment the sky dropped its stars and he tasted blood on his lips. That was when the pain swelled through him like a sunrise, to a place beyond him so that his eyes rolled upward and he was gone out of his head.
26
THE ENGLISH GALLEY
There gloom the dark, broad seas.
Alfred Lord Tennyson, ‘Ulysses’
Ireland, December 1307
The Eagle made good journey under oars, rounding the north coast of Ireland and heading upwards of the north channel towards Scotland one month after their departure from Portugal. For the most part the journey had been without incident. The gold had been secreted into the bilges and used as ballast and, though she lay low in the water, the breezes had been strong in her sail and the old galley had cut through the rising and falling of the vast grey expanse as if it were short work.
Marcus at the foredeck looked outward to the horizon of land touching the lip of the sea, now reddening and purpling in deference to a setting sun.
These days Marcus had no words. He looked at the ground or the sky, or even the sea, and saw nothing of his soul, nor did he wish to see it, since to see his soul was to recognise that in that dwelling he would find nothing but a vast emptiness, a place heartless and doomed.
A chill breeze rose upward to the lateen sail. This breeze did not bring to him the smell of jasmine; it did not bring the farms and orchards, the stables and granaries of the Christian kingdom. It brought him nothing of the struggles of his Order and victories fought for the greatness of the Lord and the grave of His Holy Son. It was a foreign breeze, full of misgivings.
He was roused from his concerns by the gong. The sail was flapping. He turned around and saw Roger de Flor calling out to the overseer to pick up the pace and for the steer master to steer two points away from the island.
The great gong sounded again. Wood groaned and the slaves grunted in response as the oars hit the water in time to the mounting beat. The hull creaked and the cordage strained as one hundred and fifty slaves pulled and fell forward, pulled and fell forward, bones and muscles stretching. The wind brought forth the smell of their stale sweat and urine. Marcus made his way over the catwalk to the poop where stood Roger de Flor, contented and singing to himself, holding one tiller and calling out to his steersman at the other.