The Elixir of Death

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

On Wednesday, Richard de Revelle could not plead the weather as an excuse to his sister. Though it was grey and overcast, the wind had dropped and it was marginally warmer. Reluctantly, he agreed to her demand to go riding with him the next morning, and Matilda heard with satisfaction the refusal of Lady Eleanor to accompany them.

'Why, by Holy Mary's name, should I want to leave my fireside and my tapestry to trudge through these miserable lanes for hours on end?' she said loftily. 'And might I ask what you are going to do with your sister while you attend to this mysterious business of yours?

Richard's wife was well aware of his many dubious dealings, but though she chose to ignore their doubtful legality as long as they increased their wealth, she could not resist an occasional dig at his furtive behaviour.

To save him answering, Matilda rose to the bait. 'Richard tells me that there is an ancient chapel near by, with a holy well claiming to offer healing powers. I would like to stop there and pray for a time, while he is conducting his affairs.'

She was careful not to enquire as to the nature of these affairs, in case the answer was not to her liking. Eleanor's supercilious sniff conveyed her opinion of Matilda's devoutness, and there was a guarded truce between them for the rest of the evening.

Soon after dawn the next morning, Matilda de Wolfe appeared in the bailey muffled in a heavy cloak of green serge, a wide hood pulled up over her wimple and coverchief. She wore fur-lined gloves and boots of fine leather. Her maid Lucille, sniffing back a head-cold that seemed to afflict her most of the time, followed reluctantly in a markedly thinner cloak, a brown woollen scarf tied tightly around her head.

With the aid of one of the menservants, she helped her mistress on to her horse before clambering awkwardly on to the side-saddle of her own pony. Richard, elegant as ever in a long mantle of yellow linen lined with ermine, waited impatiently on his own white gelding for the two women to settle down, then gave the signal for the small party to move off. He rode with Matilda, with Lucille behind and the two armed servants bringing up the rear. Almost half the journey would be on his own lands and he had little fear of outlaws or footpads there. Beyond that, the land belonged to the Count of Mortain, though that was no assurance against trouble, which was why he had brought the two experienced men, armed with ball-maces and long-handled fighting axes. He himself carried a short riding sword and a mace hung from his saddle, though he fervently hoped that he would not be called upon to use either of them.

For such a thickset, inactive woman, Matilda was a surprisingly good horsewoman, a legacy of her youth, when she had been more addicted to exercise than eating and praying. She sat on her palfrey with a confident ease, unlike her maid, who clung to the pommel of her saddle as if it were the mast of a ship in a storm.

They set off along the lanes, passing through the empty fields, the strips now being ploughed ready for winter sowing or allowed to lay fallow, exposed to the frosts until spring. Soon heathland appeared, and beyond that the trees closed in, though this near the sea they were low and stunted, except where the track dipped into more sheltered valleys and where they passed other villages, such as Battisborough and Holbeton. Though there was no actual frost, the mud beneath their horses' hoofs had dried into a firm paste and the going was fairly easy. Crossing the River Erme upstream at a low-tide ford caused them no more than a few splashes on their legs, and once through Kingston they were nearly at St Anne's Chapel.

'I will leave you with your maid at the shrine,' said Richard firmly.

'You can come to no harm there in a House of God — though from its size, it's more like His privy!'

Matilda scowled at her brother for his frivolous sacrilege, but she had to admit that when the chapel came into sight, his remark was apt enough. The tiny building looked sad and neglected, but her devotion to anything that had been consecrated overcame her disappointment. Richard sent one of the guards inside and a moment later the bandy curator, Ivo de Brun, appeared, head outstretched like that of a goose as he peered at the blurred images of the visitors.

'I am leaving this good lady and her maid in your care for a few hours, fellow,' called out Richard imperiously. 'Lady Matilda wishes to see the sacred well and then meditate in your chapel for a while. There will be a couple of pennies for you at the end of it.'

Ivo kept his thoughts to himself as he leaned on his staff and watched while Lucille and a servant helped Matilda dismount. The two horses were tied to a fence rail outside the chapel, then the two women followed Ivo into the building as Richard and his men moved off towards Bigbury.

A few minutes later, he led them off the track and after another half-mile ordered them to wait. They were the same pair as before, and were quite content to squat near their horses and while away the time with the food and drink from their saddlebags, on the promise of a couple of silver pence when they returned to Revelstoke.

Richard trotted his gelding along the remainder of the track through the trees, savouring the thought of actually seeing some gold, as those foreign devils had promised. Though the whole object of the exercise was to provide funds for Prince John's forces, if gold was to be generated at will, then de Revelle was determined that part of the proceeds would drop into his own purse. He had no definite views on the veracity of alchemists' claims to be able to transmute baser metals into gold, but being a relatively well-read man, thanks to a good education at the cathedral school in Wells, he knew a little about the mystique of alchemy, with its emphasis on mercury, sulphur and antimony and the rumours of the famous 'Red Powder' that could work the miracle of transmutation.

Pondering this took him within sight of the ruins of the old castle and priory, and moments later he was tying up his horse outside one of the dilapidated huts used as a stable, as Raymond de Blois came out to greet him.

'Have they succeeded yet?' were Richard's first words. 'They promised to show me gold today. If not there'll be trouble.'

'There'll be trouble all right, for all of us,' grunted the French knight. 'Alexander has threatened to leave for Bristol tomorrow if there are no results — and he's going to tell the Count of Mortain that these men are frauds. That will do no good at all to relations between the Prince and my king — nor will it do much for my reputation in Paris!'

He led the way across to the concealed doorway in the wall of the derelict priory, behind which the trees formed a dense green barrier.

'There's another complication, too,' he continued morosely. 'We've got some damned woman held prisoner here. The two Saxon thugs we have as sentinels found her snooping around in the woods and dragged her back here. The Moors wanted to kill her, for they're a callous bunch, but I thought it best to hold her until we're ready to leave.'

Local drabs were of no interest to de Revelle, who had his mind firmly fixed on yellow metal. He stalked ahead of de Blois, down the narrow steps to the crypt below, and saw that both the Scotsman and the Turks were working assiduously at their benches. The red light from the fire and the furnace still made the scene look like one of the depictions of Hell that the more fiery priests were fond of declaiming from their chancel steps.

One of the Mohammedans was busy reviving the furnace with a large pair of bellows, the other was grinding something in a large pestle and mortar, while his master Nizam held a pottery crucible with a pair of metal tongs. On the other side of the fireplace, the weird-looking Scot was muttering to himself as he adjusted the long stem of an alembic that was dripping dark fluid into a glass vessel. His clumsy-looking Flemish assistant was holding a large book open, the pages facing Alexander, who glanced at it at intervals as he fiddled with his equipment.

De Revelle watched for a moment, Raymond at his elbow.

'At least they are all doing something!' said de Blois in a low voice.

At this, Nizam turned around and stared across the room. The man at the bellows stopped pumping and his fellow Turk ceased his grinding, both looking over their shoulders at the new arrivals.

'I hope you have something to show me, as you promised,' called Richard, with something approaching false heartiness. He moved across the floor of the arched undercroft towards the alchemists, and now Alexander of Leith and his man also turned to look at them.

'The wee fellow showed me another nodule of what seems to be gold this morning,' volunteered Alexander. 'Though I still can't fathom how he did it.'

Nizam's sallow face was without expression as he stared at the lord of Revelstoke. With the tongs he held out the crucible towards the former sheriff. 'In a very short while, you will learn something new, Richard Revelle,' he said, in an accent that was much clearer than Raymond was used to hearing.

'I am very glad to hear it,' replied Richard ponderously. He turned back to the alchemists, concerned only with their news of success. 'What about you, Alexander of Leith? Have you made any progress?'

The diminutive man shook his strangely shaped head. 'I began to research transmutation much later than these Arabs claim to have done, for my main concern has been the Elixir of Life. Though the two are closely connected, I have a number of distillations to complete before I can say if success has been achieved.'

De Revelle was disconcerted to find the three Mohammedans staring at him with intense interest, as if he had just grown an extra pair of ears.

'Did you ride here alone? 'demanded Nizam, abruptly. 'Did you bring escorts with you?'

Uneasily, Richard said that he had left them some way behind, along the track. 'There is no need for common men to be made aware of our business,' he added. 'The same goes even for my sister, who rode out with me. I left her at St Anne's Chapel.'

This apparently trivial intelligence appeared to greatly interest the Arabs, as Nizam rapidly spoke to Abdul Latif and Malik Shah. They stared at each other, then at the manor-lord, before breaking out into excited speech, incomprehensible to all the others.

'You have a sister, but no brothers?' demanded Nizam. Frowning with annoyance at the man's impertinence, Richard nodded. 'My father was blessed with but one son,' he snapped.

This provoked another round of rapid-fire speech among the Saracens.

'What are you saying, man?' demanded Richard irritably. He turned to Raymond de Blois for enlightenment.

'Do you understand any of this heathen gibberish? Have they got gold to show me or not?'

Nizam, whose grasp of French was obviously far better than he had previously admitted, must have picked up the last words, for he beckoned to the two knights with a crooked finger as he placed the crucible on his bench and picked up the large stone pestle and mortar in which Abdul had been grinding something. The two Turkish acolytes crowded closer as their master offered the heavy bowl for Richard and Raymond to inspect.

'Here is your just reward, at last!' he said, triumphantly. As the two men bent to look into the mortar for their gold nuggets, Nizam suddenly lifted the club-shaped granite pestle and struck de Blois a heavy blow on the forehead. The Frenchman fell as if pole-axed, as Richard de Revelle was seized by the two assistants, who had sidled alongside him and now grabbed his arms in an iron grasp. As he struggled and yelled, Nizam drew out a wide, curved dagger from under his flowing robes and held the edge to Richard's throat, drawing a thin line of blood.

'Keep still or you die now!' hissed the Turk, his face contorted in hate. The victim's yells of mixed rage and terror were silenced as Abdul slipped a noose of plaited red silk over his head and tightened it around his neck. Richard's cries were transformed into gurgles and gasps and his face became red, then blue. He began to sink towards the floor. With an expert twist, the two men threw him down alongside de Blois, tying his wrists together with another length of the red cord.

As if long-rehearsed, de Revelle, now only half conscious, was dragged roughly across the floor and, under the horrified gaze of Alexander and his Fleming, thrown through the other small door at the end of the crypt. After further shouted instructions in their language, Abdul came out with de Revelle's sword and dagger, which he threw contemptuously into It corner, then they lashed the wrists of the inert Raymond de Blois and dragged him off to keep Richard company. Slamming the storeroom door shut, Malik Shah tossed the Frenchman's weapons on top of Richard's and padded with Abdul back to Nizam, to await further orders.

Hilda was dirty, dishevelled and despondent after a number of days locked in her dismal chamber. Once a day, she had been brought some food and water, and twice Alfred had taken her wooden bucket away to empty it. She attempted to ask him questions and offered him money to help her escape, but he refused to speak to her, even in their common tongue. It was obvious that he was afraid, because when she increased the number of silver pennies she would give him, his eyes revealed temptation, but then with vigorous shaking of his oafish head he would back out and look over his shoulder to see whether any of the Turks were within sight. There was no chance of her overcoming him, as he was built like an ox — and in any case, there was his fellow Saxon, Ulf, the Frenchman and the three Arabs between her and any dash for freedom, as well as the other two peculiar people she had glimpsed on her way in, whose role in this set-up was beyond her understanding.

Hilda had long given up kicking and screaming, as not the slightest notice had been taken of her. She now sat either on her mattress or the crate, sunk in despair. Her hair was matted with dirt and straw from the floor; she had lost weight after the sparse diet of rough bread and a few lumps of tough, cold meat that was grudgingly provided. Her only company was a large rat who lived behind the boxes and a few mice who rustled through the straw that had escaped from the crates.

Listening at the crack in the door had also become pointless, as the Saracens were away most of the time and the small man with the strange accent talked only of his experiments. He never received a reply and Hilda began to be convinced that the other man must be unable to speak. All this changed with dramatic suddenness when Sir Richard de Revelle appeared for the second time.

As he entered the crypt, Hilda crawled listlessly to the spyhole, expecting to hear nothing more than fragments of conversation about whatever they were doing with all the apparatus near the hearth. But within minutes there was a commotion outside, cries and shouts and the sounds of a scuffle. All this was outside her slit-like field of view, but protestations from the small man were drowned out by cries of fearful outrage from the former sheriff, and soon the sounds of a body being dragged came nearer. She heard another door being opened, then violently banged shut. Muffled shouts of protest went on for some time, and Hilda gained the impression that de Revelle must have been thrown into a nearby chamber similar to hers.

The stone walls were so thick that no sounds came directly; only a faint murmur of noise 'percolated through the two stout doors. Much later, when she judged that no one was in the crypt outside, she tried calling out to attract the attention of whoever was in the other dungeon, but there was no response.

Dejected and now almost resigned to dying in this foul chamber, Hilda lay down on her thin pallet and tried to sleep.

Richard de Revelle tired himself out shouting and kicking against the inside of the door. His arms were firmly pinioned behind his back, but he was able to get to his feet to assault the thick planks, which he soon accepted to be a waste of time, as there was no reaction from outside. His throat ached from the effects of the ligature, and though the cut on his neck was very shallow, he could feel the sting and the stickiness of the drying blood against the collar of his tunic.

The ghostly green light that managed to percolate down a narrow shaft was just enough for him to see that the small chamber was empty, apart from the form of Raymond de Blois lying in the centre of the mildewed floor. At first the Frenchman was breathing in short, noisy bursts, his lips puffing out at each exhalation, but after half an hour he became quieter, and de Revelle wondered whether he was dying. He had little sympathy to spare, as he was utterly fearful for his own life. Confused, frightened and furious by turns, he could make no sense of what had happened. Why had these strange foreigners turned against him? Could John de Wolfe be right in suggesting that this was some form of revenge for his father's actions in Outremer? He had supplied all that these men had asked for — food, horses, materials for their alchemy. They had been commissioned and presumably well rewarded by Prince John to come and perform their miracles with Devon tin, so why suddenly assault de Blois and himself? Richard, though a knight and a former sheriff, was no fighting man and often wished that he had been allowed to follow his inclinations as a youth, in becoming a lawyer or a court official. His father, however, an enthusiastic campaigner and Crusader, insisted on his only son following in his footsteps and a reluctant Richard was trained in all the martial arts, becoming a page, a squire and then a knight, and sent off to the Irish wars, where he was fortunate enough to avoid any serious fighting. He managed to ingratiate himself with several of old King Henry's ministers and eventually landed the post of sheriff, until his thrice-damned brother-in-law snapped at his heels until he was ousted.

His canny sense of politics had persuaded him that Richard the Lionheart was an eventual loser and so de Revelle had attached himself to the cause of Prince John — which had now led him into this unexpected and highly dangerous predicament.

Nervously biting his lip, he gave up shouting and hammering on the door and slumped to the floor, his back against the wall. Though it was cold, he was sweating with fear and trepidation. Spasms of shivering racked his body as he contemplated the end of his life at the hands of these Saracen maniacs. Would Eleanor mourn him? he wondered. He doubted that she would be crippled with grief, as their marriage had never been an affectionate one. In recent years, she had grown more and more impatient with him, content only when she was spending money on fine clothes and trinkets. He had more expectation of his sister Matilda grieving for him, even though her previous admiration had been tainted and diminished in recent months, thanks to the interference of her damned husband.

His self-pitying introspection was disturbed by a change in the noises coming from Raymond de Blois. His shallow breathing, almost as if he were asleep, became broken by grunts and then gargled sounds like attempted speech. From being as motionless as a tree trunk, he began to twitch. Again Richard almost indifferently wondered whether he was dying, but suddenly the Frenchman stirred and began moaning at the pain in his head, where dried blood had caked over a scalp wound in the centre of a patch of livid, bruised skin.

Soon, Raymond jerked himself up on to an elbow and began mumbling curses of which any quayside stevedore would have been proud. De Revelle decided that any live ally was worth cultivating and crawled to his side, to offer solicitous words.

'De Blois, are you recovered? What in Christ's name has happened to us?'

It took a few minutes for the other knight to gather his wits and push himself to a sitting position, still groaning at the pain in his head. He had no recollection of what had happened to him, and Richard explained that the three Arabs had suddenly turned on them and thrown them into this chamber.

Gradually Raymond's mind cleared, but the last thing he remembered was talking to the alchemists in the crypt outside. 'I thought this venture was doomed from the outset,' he muttered. 'I tried to dissuade the King's Chancellor from pursuing the idea, but he said that Philip had his mind set upon it.'

'What do these eastern devils want from us?' gabbled Richard desperately.

'Our lives, I suspect!' answered Raymond grimly. 'But there must be more to it than that. They have been up to no good ever since they arrived. Killing those poor bloody ship men should have warned me from the start that they verged on madness.'

'What about this crazy Scotsman and his dumb servant? Are they in this too?'

De Blois gave his Gallic shrug. 'I don't know. This Alexander seemed suspicious of the Turks all along. It seems that he was right!'

'What are we going to do? They've taken our swords and daggers, even my small eating knife.'

With more groans, de Blois dragged himself on his hands and bottom across to the wall and leaned his back against the damp stones.

'In the time that I have been with these evil bastards, I have several times seen how oddly they behave,' he said thickly. 'Often they chew some foul paste and I have also seen them sprinkling a dark powder on to that mess of crushed wheat that they call food. Afterwards, they appear either drunk or glassy eyed and sleepy. Sometimes, it makes them chatter madly among themselves and they become agitated and start some outlandish dancing.'

Time went by, and all they could do was sit on the floor, shivering from the cold — and in de Revelle's case, from bouts of terror. They discussed the possibility of jumping whoever opened the door, in spite of their tied hands, but as the hours went by and no one appeared, even this desperate plan seemed redundant.

'Perhaps they've gone and left us here to starve?' suggested Richard, fearfully.

Again de Blois shrugged. 'What would be the point of that? They could leave at any time, without attacking us first. In fact, they have been absent many times, that was one of the problems. When they should have been working at their flasks and furnace, they vanished for days at a time, God knows where.'

Before long, it would become quite clear to them what had taken Nizam and his men away from Bigbury.

Following the incarceration of the two knights, Nizam alDin led his pair of acolytes above ground, leaving a mystified and apprehensive Alexander down below with the stolid Fleming.

Striding to the kitchen hut, the leader marched in on the two Saxons, who were lounging on the floor, each with a hunk of bread and a piece of cheese in their hands.

'There has been trouble!' snapped Nizam. 'The lord with the pointed beard has attacked the Lord Blois. Both are locked next to that woman and now you will take orders from me!'

Even though his French was much better than theirs, it took several attempts and much waving of hands to get this through to Ulf and Alfred, but the display of a gold coin, a bezant from Constantinople, broke down all language barriers.

'Obey me and you will be given this,' he snapped. 'There are some of our enemies left on guard somewhere near. I want them found and then we will get rid of them, understand?'

The two Saxons nodded dumbly, their eyes still fascinated by the sight of the coin, the first gold they had ever seen, other than rings on the fingers of fat priests and noble lords. After more laborious explanation, they were sent off along the track and less than half an hour later returned to say with many gestures and a halting explanation that they had found two men-at-arms resting not far from where the forest track met the road to the village.

Nizam gave some rapid instructions to Abdul and Malik, who vanished into the sleeping shed and came out with a cross-bow. Beckoning to the Saxons to follow, they set off down the path. Nizam watched them go, then turned into the shed and began prostrating himself in an overdue prayer session, facing what he trusted was the general direction of Mecca. When he had finished, he went back to the entrance to the underground chamber and, with one hand on the hilt of the wicked dagger in his belt, went quietly down the stairs, where he saw that Alexander of Leith and his big, clumsy servant were standing near the hearth, looking extremely unhappy. The alchemist hurried across to him and demanded to know what was going on. Nizam regarded him calmly, holding up a hand to stem the flow of outraged recriminations.

'This is something that does not concern you,' he said harshly, in his thickly accented French. 'As a brother worker in the mysteries of our calling, I intend you no harm. What happens between myself and these other men is not your business.'

'Brother worker!' spluttered Alexander. 'You are no true alchemist, I should have known it all along! You are an impostor. God knows what you really are.'

The Mohammedan nodded gravely. 'Yes, my God does know who I am, but again that is none of your concern. You may leave here and do what you will in two days' time. I will not harm you, unless you dare to interefere in my mission.'

'Mission? What damned mission?'

'Again, that is not for you to know. You will stay here until I have completed my task. Tomorrow is my Sabbath, so I cannot act then until the fall of darkness. On Saturday, you may leave, as I will be gone.'

The little man glared at the Turk. 'And what if I decide to leave today?'

'My men and those two local peasants have orders to kill you if you try,' said Nizam in a flat, unemotional voice. 'What about those two men you have locked in there? One was injured, he may be dying. And what of the woman?'

'They must fend for themselves. The woman is of no account — she may leave when you go. The others will be dealt with when it pleases me.'

There was a sinister tone in the last few words which sent a shiver of dread up Alexander's spine, but the Saracen abruptly turned and strode away, leaving the Scot's clamour for answers unsatisfied.

As Nizam reached the bottom of the stairway, he pulled the heavy door behind him and the two men heard a bar being dropped into sockets on the other side. It was normally always left wide open and this final act of imprisonment impressed on them that their own lives dangled on the thin thread of Nizam's goodwill and perhaps sanity.