The Elixir of Death

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

It was many minutes before Lucille calmed down sufficiently to give any sort of coherent account of what had happened. Almost out of his mind with anxiety, the impatient coroner was inclined to slap the silly wench's face until she came to her senses, but it was Thomas who was best able to deal with her. He gave a meaningful glance and nod of his head at Gwyn, who took the hint and diverted John de Wolfe's attention, while Thomas led the maid aside and sat her on the old peoples' bench that ran along one wall of the chapel. Talking to her softly in her native French, for she came from the Vexin on the Seine, he soon reduced her hysterics to a steady snuffling sob, then began to extract the details of the recent tragic drama. As she haltingly mumbled and cried, Thomas beckoned to the others and they came nearer to listen.

'Poor Lucille here says that Mistress Matilda came here to pray and visit the holy well,' he explained. 'She rode out with her brother, who went off on some other business.'

'And what business would that be, out in this wilderness?' snapped de Wolfe.

Lucille looked up timorously at this stern, dark man. 'I know nothing of that, sir, but he told the mistress to wait a short while until he returned to collect us and take us back to Revelstoke.'

Gwyn looked at his master. 'So he must be somewhere fairly near, if they were waiting for him.'

'Then what happened, Lucille?' prompted Thomas gently. The skinny girl burst into tears once again and began shaking.

'Come on, girl, pull yourself together!' roared John de Wolfe. Though Thomas's softer approach seemed to have been successful, this outburst shocked the maid into lucidity.

'These three foreign devils burst in, sir! Terrible, they were! Huge men, dressed in long robes, cloths wound round their heads and waving great daggers.'

'What d'you mean, foreign?' snapped the coroner.

'Like Turks or Mussulmen. I saw some in a fair in Rouen once, jugglers and fire-eaters. Evil dark faces and hooked noses.'

'Then what? Tell us, quickly, for Christ's sake!'

'They seized Mistress Matilda — and I ran to bar myself in that room, otherwise they would have slain me as well. I saw them stab the old man, just as I was shutting the door.' She began shaking again and her eyes rolled wildly.

De Wolfe threw up his hands in desperation.

'What in hell is going on? These must be the same three Saracens. What do they want with my wife?'

Although none of them voiced the thought, it seemed unlikely that she was a target for ravishment, especially when Lucille, though skinny and unattractive, was a good twenty years younger.

'And where is Richard de Revelle, I wonder?' said Gwyn thoughtfully.

'I might have guessed that that bastard would be involved in anything underhand that was going on,' snarled de Wolfe.

'He would hardly want his own sister kidnapped,' Gwyn pointed out, reasonably.

John stalked to the open door, Gwyn and the bailiff behind him, leaving Thomas on the wall-seat with the snivelling maid.

'Where have they taken her, that's the thing?' he bawled, staring at the deserted road.

'And where's de Revelle?' repeated Gwyn. 'He can't have gone back to his manor without his sister!'

De Wolfe swung round to William Vado, who had been a silent and mystified observer of these strange events. 'Bailiff, you had better ride at once to Revelstoke, to make sure Sir Richard has not returned there. Then explain what has happened and get his steward to turn out with some armed men as fast as he can and come back here with them.'

'That will take a good few hours, sir. Where will you be when we return?'

The answer to all this mystery has to be somewhere near here. Gwyn and I will ride to Bigbury to see if anything is known there, so look for us along these roads.'

As Vado hurried to his horse, John called after him. 'You'd best take that damned girl with you on the back of your horse. We can't leave her here alone with that eyeless corpse. I'll attend to him later.'

Now that he had at least instigated some action, however futile it might prove to be, de Wolfe felt better. But two of his womenfolk were missing — he hoped to God that at least Nesta was safe in Exeter.

Matilda de Wolfe was a very self-sufficient, almost hard-bitten woman, but the shock of her recent experiences had caused her to dissolve into racking sobs as she slumped on the mattress in the dim chamber. Though she was exceptionally devout and firmly believed that she would eventually be received into heaven, she had no desire to go there just yet. Hilda crouched alongside her, speaking softly as she supported her shoulders and stroked the wiry curls of her hair, for the older woman's cover-chief and wimple had been lost when she was thrown across the horse.

As she gradually calmed down, Hilda's story slowly percolated into Matilda's brain. How she had vowed to seek out details of her husband's murder, then had been captured when she was following up the villagers' tales of strange activities in the forest. Though Matilda had long been aware of her husband's romance and adultery with the Saxon, she now felt a grudging admiration for her determination to track down her husband's killer. She had immediately recognised the handsome blonde, as she had seen her in Exeter a number of times and, in common with most of the population there, knew that she had been de Wolfe's mistress since before she herself had ever met him. Matilda also knew, through the grapevine of intelligence provided by her snobbish friends at the cathedral and St Olave's, that for some time John had not been dallying with the woman from Dawlish, being too besotted with the Welsh cow from the Bush tavern.

Their common peril, together with Hilda's tender concern and sympathy, prevented Matilda from voicing the scathing antipathy that she would have offered in any other circumstances.

'But why are we here?' she sobbed. 'Who are these terrible men? What is this place? Why does my brother not rescue me?'

Uneasily, Hilda felt that she could no longer delay telling Matilda another uncomfortable truth.

'I am afraid your brother is indeed here! But he is also a prisoner. He lies in the next room, beyond this wall.'

She explained to a dumbfounded Matilda that she had witnessed the attack by the Arabs upon Richard de Revelle and the French knight. 'But I have no notion of what it all signifies,' she concluded.

Perversely, the news seemed to have the effect of lessening Matilda's distress and strengthening her resolve. She stopped weeping and sat up on the mattress, drying her eyes with her sleeve. 'You are a resourceful woman, or you would not have come seeking your husband's killers. Surely there is something we can do between us?'

Hilda sighed, for she had spent several days trying to devise some plan, without success. 'I have tried knocking on the wall and shouting, but I can get no reply from your brother or the other man. The stonework is too thick — I doubt they even know we are here.'

She explained about the two loutish Saxons who seemed to be servants or guards and the two strange men in the crypt, one who appeared to be dumb. 'I do not think they are as evil as the Mohammedans — I cannot fathom who they are or what has been going on in this place. All we can do is wait, hope and pray.'

After the sparse explanations had been given, the two women relapsed into silence. Tacitly, neither mentioned John de Wolfe, who, as far as they knew, was far away in Exeter going about his business, oblivious to the fact that they were imprisoned and probably at risk of their lives.

Outside the cell, the crypt was in silence and the feeble illumination was even poorer, as some of the rush-lamps had run out of oil and no one had replenished them. Alexander sat on a stool near the hearth, Jan squatting near by, the flames from the fire casting a ruddy glow on his bizarre features. All pretence at work had ceased. The furnace had gone out and the spouts of the distillation flasks no longer dripped into their beakers.

'They were bloody frauds, I suspected it all along!' muttered the Scotsman, for the twentieth time. 'They must have seeded those crucibles with blobs of gold, just as so many impostors have done in the past.'

Jan made some throaty noises which signified agreement. Alexander could recognise about a dozen different noises that the Fleming made, which gave him some degree of communication with his faithful servant.

'We are in big trouble, Jan, my lad,' he carried on, in his habitual monologue. 'I don't trust them when they say they will let us go on our way on Saturday.' He spoke in Gaelic, which Jan had picked up in his years with the alchemist. It was useful when they wanted to keep their conversation private. Jan made some signs and grimaces, using his fingers to denote running away.

'I doubt we'll get the chance, Jan. But you are the stronger and faster, so if you see any opportunity, take it and run. Find that village that we were told to make for — it can't be more than a mile or two away, through the forest.'

The Fleming nodded and Alexander fell silent, regretting again that he had ever agreed to take the generous payment to come here and try to augment Prince John's diminished treasury. The transmutation of base metals had never been his prime interest — the Elixir of Life was his goal, and he thought that he had now succeeded. He had a small phial safe in his pouch, but it was difficult to know whether the contents were potent as, by definition, producing immortality or even longevity was hard to demonstrate.

The thought of his little phial sparked a new idea in his fertile brain and getting up, he went to his work table and began tipping some powders and liquids from various stock bottles into a small mortar. Grinding them up, he decanted them into another empty vial. Carefully stoppering this, he placed it in an inside pocket of his loose-fitting blouse and went to sit down again to await events.

Some time later, there were heavy footsteps on the stairs and the door was unbarred to admit Alfred. The ungainly outlaw, who carried a long battleaxe, scowled at the two occupants and jerked his head towards the entrance.

'The Mohammedan says you had better have something to eat,' he growled ungraciously. Alexander shot a knowing look at Jan, who gave an almost imperceptible nod.

'What about the people in those chambers?' demanded Alexander, as he moved warily past the big oaf with the vicious-looking weapon. They need something, especially the poor women!',

The Saxon prodded the alchemist with the blunt head of the axe. 'I don't know nothing about them, so get going and be thankful!' he snarled.

The Scot and his servant went out blinking into the daylight and crossed to the shack where they had their food, Alfred following them watchfully. Jan's eyes swivelled from side to side, but he decided that he had no chance of making a run into the trees with the guard so close behind.

In the hut, the three Turks were crouched in the centre, busy eating with their fingers from a common platter piled with a mush of boiled wheat and some unidentifiable vegetables. Ulf, the other local ruffian, motioned the pair to a low bench and dumped half a stale loaf and a wooden bowl of cold mutton stew between them. With some distaste, which was overcome by hunger, Alexander tore the bread in half and gave some to Jan, while he dipped his in the mess, in lieu of a spoon. The Fleming did the same, sucking at it with his toothless gums. When they had eaten, Ulf splashed some thin ale from a pitcher into a dirty pot and again slapped it down on the bench. The three Arabs continued to eat in silence and totally ignored the others, including the two Saxons lounging by the door.

Alexander took a deep draught from the pot, then offered it to his servant. As he did so, he caught a wink from his servant, who refused the ale, giving a series of loud belches. Then Jan groaned and bent forward, clutching his stomach and releasing several spectacular farts. This sudden activity caught the attention of Alfred, and even the Turks briefly raised their heads as the Fleming groaned again and made some retching sounds. He staggered to his feet and Ulf pushed himself from the door-post.

'What's the hell's the matter with you?' he demanded. Jan groaned, gargled and rolled his eyes, then held his grotesque nose with one hand and pointed towards his backside with the other, before gesturing at the door and then fumbling with his belt buckle.

Ulf guffawed coarsely, also pinching his nostrils in a parody of the Fleming's discomfort.

'The food's not that bad, you dirty bastard!' he sneered. 'But don't go crapping in here, get outside.'

Jan stumbled outside, the alchemist watching him anxiously, as it was obvious to him what his man was intending. Ulf followed him out, holding a bare dagger by his side, watching as the Fleming seemed ready to drop his breeches. But then, with lightning speed for such a large man, Jan thrust the Saxon hard in the chest and sent him flying backwards, to stumble and fall on the ground. Ulf's yell of rage brought Alfred out with his axe, but by then Jan was hammering across the old castle yard towards the trees.

Inside the shack, the three Arabs shot to their feet in alarm and Malik dived for his cross-bow, which was leaning against the wall. They ran out of the hut, Malik cranking the lever to draw back the bow-string and fitting a bolt on to the platform. Screaming at the two hulking guards who were blocking his shot as they pursued the Fleming, he raised the bow and fired his bolt between them, careless whether he hit them or not.

Jan was just at the edge of the trees when the short arrow struck him in the shoulder, but he crashed on and vanished at full speed. The two Saxons lumbered after him, but a cry from Nizam pulled them up short.

'Leave him, I need you here! He is of no account and will wander the forest until he dies of his wound. Who cares about some dumb servant?'

Crestfallen, the two guards trudged back, and the Saracens returned to the hut, where, after some rapid discussion in their own language, they impassively resumed their interrupted meal. With a smirk of satisfaction, Alexander surreptitiously slid an empty vial back into the folds of his blouse.

With Thomas following somewhat apprehensively behind, John de Wolfe and Gwyn rode down the track towards Bigbury, carefully scanning the land on either side for any signs of Richard de Revelle or the dastardly villains who had descended on St Anne's Chapel. It was now mid-afternoon and the sky still had its brooding grey appearance, though the threatened snow had held off.

'Not a damn thing to be seen, Crowner,' growled the Cornishman after they had covered almost a mile. 'Plenty of side tracks on to the heathland and into these bloody trees, but we can't explore them all.'

De Wolfe grunted his agreement. 'If it was wet, then we might see fresh hoof marks. But half-frozen ground like this is useless for such signs.'

He felt totally impotent and frustrated, knowing that Matilda and possibly Hilda might be in the clutches of these Turkish madmen, without any real notion of where they were.

Another mile brought them to Bigbury, the hamlet lurking at the edge of the forest that covered the plateau stretching from west of the chapel across to the banks of the Avon and up as far as Were Down, towards Aveton Giffard. As they rode down the track between the dozen tofts and cottages that made up the village, there was no sign of anything untoward. Across the road, an ox team was ploughing the hard soil to turn in the stubble of a meagre harvest, and at the side of the track a couple of men were repairing a dry-stone wall. De Wolfe reined in to ask them whether they had seen any strangers passing through that day, but received mystified shakes of the head.

'Few people come this way, sir,' said one, who recognised the coroner from his previous visit to Bigbury. 'The fisherfolk who go down to the river are all known to us. The only excitement we've had is that poor lady pilgrim who came and then disappeared a few days back.'

Thomas piped up for the first time since leaving Lucille. 'That means they must have gone either down to Ringmore or back towards Kingston.'

'Or vanished into the God-forsaken woods at any point,' muttered Gwyn, pulling ferociously at the ends of his bedraggled moustache. He was almost as worried about the situation as his master, even though he and Matilda could barely stand the sight of each other.

They rode on to the alehouse opposite the small church and confronted the clutch of people who came out to meet them, warned by the unfamiliar clatter of hoofs.

'Crowner, you're back again!' called Madge, the alewife. 'You'll be wanting food and drink?' she added hopefully.

There was nothing to be gained by refusing a short halt, as they had no definite plan of campaign. Inside the dim, smoky taproom, they drank ale and cider and chewed on some cold mutton chops, followed by bread and hard cheese. Urgently, John described the violent events at St Anne's Chapel that morning and explained that his own wife, sister to the lord of Revelstoke, had been abducted. Then he enquired about any strange events since the two ship-masters had come looking for Hilda.

Madge shook her head. 'Nothing at all, sir. Even our village scaremongers have seen no ghosts in the forest and we have neither seen nor heard anything strange in the woods.'

'Mind you, no one fancies entering there these days,' added the village smith, who sat watching them from a stool in the corner. 'Even the poachers have taken to going in the opposite direction, though the pickings are poorer there.'

'Where did the lady from Dawlish go, when she left here and never returned?' asked Thomas, sipping his cider cautiously.

The tavern-keeper held up her hands in bewilderment. 'I wish I knew, sir! I told her not to stray far, given the odd happenings here, but she was a wilful woman. She must have gone into the forest, for no one saw her on the roads.'

De Wolfe glared at Gwyn, as he slapped his empty pot down on the table.

'We'll just have to go in there ourselves and hope that we come across something. God knows when those men from Revelstoke will turn up, if they ever do. We need Ralph Morin and Gabriel and a posse of soldiers from Rougemont!'

'It would take at least three days to get them down here, if not four,' grunted Gwyn. 'It looks as if it's up to us, Crowner!'

The blacksmith, a large man in a leather apron scarred with burns from hot iron, stood up and offered himself. 'I'll go with you, sir. I know a few of the paths out there. A wife lost is a terrible thing. If the reeve was here, he'd come, but he's in Aveton today.'

Gratefully accepting his offer, John gave Madge a couple of pennies for the food and strode to the door. 'The sooner we get started, the better. It will be dark before long.'

Outside, one of the wall-repairers also volunteered his services and went off to get a hay-fork, a wicked-looking implement with two sharp prongs. The smith trusted to his hammer, a heavy-headed weapon with a long handle. John looked at these and then at his weedy little clerk, to whom non-violence was a way of life. 'Thomas, this may be a dangerous mission,' he said softly. 'You had better stay here and wait for the men from Revelstoke, if they ever come.'

The priest shook his head stubbornly. 'I will come with you master. I owe my life to you and will willingly give my own in exchange. I may be useless at fighting, but maybe I can stand in the path of an arrow meant for you.'

John felt an unfamiliar lump come into his throat and he put an arm around Thomas's skinny shoulders and squeezed wordlessly.

'Let's go, then! Smith, where do we enter these damned woods?

Jan the Fleming was an unusually strong and powerful man, but the effort of fleeing from the old ruins eventually reduced him to a gasping wreck, and he was forced to stop and sink to the ground, past caring whether he was recaptured. However, all was quiet behind him and he crawled behind a moss-covered tree to allow the bellows of his lungs time to calm down. He had hardly noticed the impact of the cross-bow bolt in the tempestuous panic of flight, but now he became aware of a sticky flow down the inside of his tunic and a burning pain in his left shoulder. It was the dragging of the short arrow against his skin which caused the most discomfort and when his heart had stopped pounding and he could breathe without gasping, he felt with his other hand and discovered that the missile had lodged in the skin at the extreme top edge of his shoulder. An inch or two lower and he would have suffered a mortal injury, but as it was, only the loss of blood was a danger. The ever present risk of suppuration loomed, but for now all he could do was tear off a strip from the bottom of his tunic and wad it under his clothing against the wound, to help stanch the bleeding.

Jan again listened intently for any sounds of pursuit.

All he could hear was a bird twittering and the soft sighing of the wind in the tops of the tall trees all around him. He had no chance of even guessing the direction in which he had been running. A trail of bent weeds and ferns told him how he had arrived at this spot, but that was of use only over a few yards. He might have been running in circles, and the danger was that he would go back towards the old castle and priory. Cautiously he got to his feet and started walking away from his former trail, looking back every few yards to try to ensure that he was at least going in a straight line.

He stopped every few minutes to listen for any Saxons or Moors crashing through the woods after him. Thankfully there was continued silence for the next half hour, then he heard something that made him freeze and crouch behind a fallen log that was slowly rotting under a tracery of thick ivy.

Ahead of him to his right, Jan heard a low voice calling out and an answering whistle from the left. He could not distinguish the words, but they were neither Arabic nor English. Then another voice came from farther to the left, more high pitched and certainly speaking Norman French. He shrank down even further to lie on the ground, ignoring the pounding throb in his shoulder in his fear of discovery.

A moment later, he was almost trodden on by a small priest, dressed in a black tunic with a short cloak around his shoulders. He sat up suddenly and the little man gave a shriek of terror at this ugly apparition that had bobbed up from under the ground.

'Thomas! Thomas, where are you?' came a deep bellow from near by. A moment later, a red-headed giant appeared, wielding a great sword. The sight of this apparition was almost enough to frighten the Fleming to death. With a roar, the new arrival dragged the priest out of harm's way and pointed the sword at Jan's throat.

'Who the bloody hell are you?' boomed the giant, as yet another figure appeared, this time a tall man dressed in black, also with a broadsword uplifted.

'He's no Turk, that's for sure,' snapped John, lowering his sword when he saw that the man was no threat. 'What an ugly bastard, though!'

The Fleming was used to such insults and was too glad to see someone other than his previous captors to take offence. He gargled his usual noises and pointed to his mouth.

'The poor fellow must be dumb,' said Thomas, always the most sympathetic to his fellow men. 'And he's wounded, too!'

The clerk dropped to his knees and gently lifted the end of the cross-bow bolt, which was hanging down behind Jan's shoulder, sticking out of the blood-stained fabric of his jerkin.

'He's been shot!' grunted Gwyn, now suddenly solicitous. He moved to bend over the man, but Jan held up a hand and, without help, climbed to his feet, grimacing now that the pain killing panic was wearing off.

'Hold on there, fellow,' said de Wolfe. 'We need to see how bad that wound is.'

They gently pulled down his jerkin and drew aside his tunic to expose the injury. Just caught under the skin, lucky chap,' announced Gwyn. 'This will hurt for a moment!'

With a quick snick with the point of his dagger, the coroner's officer cut through a small bridge of skin that was holding the head of the bolt and pulled it out. Even without a tongue, Jan gave a howl of agony, but the worst was over and Thomas slapped the bloody pad from the Fleming's tunic back over the wound to stem the fresh bleeding.

'Have we anything to hold this in place?' he demanded. Gwyn groped in the scrip on his belt and pulled out a length of red silk cord, which had been used to tie old Joel to the tree. As he gave it to Thomas to use to bind the pad around the shoulder and under the armpit, Jan became excited. Pointing to the cord, he motioned behind him, indicating distance, then pointed to the arrow that Gwyn was holding.

'The poor bugger is trying to tell us something! Thomas, you have the best brains here. Can you get some sense out of him?'

The clerk got the Fleming to sit on the tree trunk and perched alongside him.

'Can you understand what we say in French?' An eager nod led to the next question.

'You cannot speak?'

Jan pointed to his mouth and opened it to reveal the loss of his tongue. Then he performed a mime of running away and someone loosing a cross-bow at him.

'Ask him who did it,' snapped John impatiently, forgetting that Jan could understand him perfectly without Thomas's intervention. The man then went into a more complicated pantomime which left John and his officer bemused, but the sharp-wined clerk picked up the meaning.

'He's pointing to his head and winding it around, then at your sword and making a curving action. That could be a turban and a scimitar, eh?'

He looked at Jan, who nodded energetically, then did the turban mime again and held up three fingers. 'Three Saracens, is that it?' Again a nod, then he held up two more fingers, but shook his head while making the turban sign and pointed to them.

Three Turks and two English?' The query was met by another wag of the head.

De Wolfe looked almost triumphant at this unexpected news. 'Where are these people? How far away?'

This was a tougher proposition for Jan's miming powers. He pointed vaguely behind him, then shrugged when he found he had no means of conveying time or distance. He saw a patch of bare earth near his feet, however, and with a stick, he used his good arm to scratch a crude sketch in the dirt, of a castle with a battlement on a mound. Then he mimed it falling down.

'Some old ruin, I would guess, Crowner,' ventured Thomas, and the Fleming nodded.

By now, the smith and the other villager with the pitchfork had closed in on them and were staring in wonder at the apparition sitting on the log.

'Where the hell did you find him, sir?' grunted the smith. 'His face is enough to curdle milk!'

'Never mind that, the poor man is hurt,' snapped de Wolfe. 'Get him back to the alehouse and ask Madge to dress his wound and give him some sustenance.'

As the second villager led the Fleming away, the coroner threw one last question after him.

'Wherever this place is, did you see any women there?' Jan nodded and held up two fingers, then mimed the slamming of a door and the dropping of a bar. As a bonus, he also pantomimed by pointing at John and Gwyn, then at his bushy moustache to establish the sex, followed by the two fingers and the locking-up gestures.

'Two women and another two men, all imprisoned!' divined Thomas, unnecessarily.

'That's good enough for us!' shouted John. 'Come on, let's find this damned place. I don't know who that fellow was, but he was a godsend!'

The light was starting to fail in the women's prison chamber, as the short autumn day came to an end. The narrow shaft that was their only indication of the outside world was darkening, and Hilda roamed restlessly about, reluctant to sit while she could still see the dim shapes of the crates that littered the room. Matilda was slumped on the mattress, her head in her hands. She had been praying for several hours, but now seemed to have abandoned even that solace.

Hilda had already been through the contents of the boxes, looking for anything that might serve as a weapon. All she could find were bottles of strange-smelling powders, a crock of quicksilver and some scraps of metal, together with strange utensils that looked as if they belonged in an apothecary's shop. There were no knives or even heavy rods that could be used as bludgeons. In despair, she even tried to wield a glass vessel, a round flask with a long narrow spout, presumably used for distillation. It was far too light to be of any use as a club, especially as she then dropped it and it smashed on the floor. In the remaining light, however, she saw that one jagged fragment of the spout was at least as long as the span of her fingers and had a needle-sharp point at one end.

Tearing a strip of linen from the bottom of her kirtle, she wrapped this around the blunt end to form a crude hilt, so that she could grip it without cutting her fingers. Then she folded the whole thing in another piece of cloth and hid it in a pocket inside her cloak. Hilda was not sure what use this might be, beyond the half-formed thought that she might use it to kill herself and Matilda if they were threatened with rape or torture.

She went over to the older woman and put a comforting arm around her shoulders. 'Maybe they will let us go tomorrow,' she said, with a conviction that she did not feel in the slightest.

'I am well aware of who you are,' said Matilda suddenly, looking up at the blonde woman. 'But it doesn't seem to matter now. You have been kindness itself to me.'

Hilda was at a loss for words and merely squeezed Matilda's shoulder.

'I so wish my husband was here now,' murmured John's wife. 'With all his faults — and they are too many to speak of — he has a way of getting things done and never lets anything defeat him.'

She began sobbing quietly into her hands, but Hilda could think of nothing to comfort her. Suddenly, there was a clatter at the door, which had not been opened since Matilda had arrived the previous day. The bar was lifted from the outside and the door creaked open, yellow light from the crypt seeping in. The two Saxon outlaws were standing there, one with a heavy staff in his hands, the other with a bared dagger.

The younger one, Alfred, waved his knife at them. 'Come on, you two — out of there!' Again, Hilda tried her best, using her Saxon style of speech, to soften their hearts and persuade them to let them escape, but the two hulking peasants ignored her.

As they moved to the door, Ulf produced a length of thin rope and with a leer lashed it around their waists, so that they were joined together about four feet apart. He tugged on the long free end, pulling them like a carter with a pair of pack ponies.

'Move yourselves! We don't want you running off as well as that ugly Fleming bastard!'

As they stumbled fearfully towards the stairs, Hilda saw that the vaulted undercroft was empty — even the strange pair of men were absent. The fact that one of them seemed to have escaped, according to Ulf, raised a faint flicker of hope in Hilda's breast, but it soon faded. Outside, though it was getting dusk, the remaining light felt strange after the gloom of the chamber below. It was cold and both women shivered in spite of their mantles. Ulf tugged them across the weeds and nettles to the ruined bailey, and when they reached one of the huts he made them stand outside. The three Saracens appeared from within, and their leader stood in the doorway, rattling off a string of instructions to the other pair, their language mere gibberish in Hilda's ears. They loped off across the yard towards the crypt and vanished, leaving their chief to stare fixedly at Matilda. He ignored Hilda, but the older woman seemed to have a fascination for him.

'What do you want from us, man?' demanded Matilda, her voice quavering in spite of her best efforts to sound composed.

The black eyes of the Arab continued to bore into her. 'You will soon learn, woman. Now be silent!' he ordered, in heavily accented but easily understandable French.

'Where is my brother?' persisted Matilda, desperately frightened but stubbornly undeterred by this evil man. He ignored her, and she glared back at him, taking in his long white burnous with the dagger thrust through the belt and the green cloth wound around his head. The narrow black beard rimming his face helped to give him an even more evil, sinister appearance. He seemed to be swaying slightly, as if rhythmically dancing to some silent melody in his head.

Ulf, who still held the end of their rope, had taken up a position at one end of the hut and Alfred went to the other. They appeared to be waiting for something to happen. A few moments later, the taller of the two Turks emerged from the doorway to the crypt, pulling on another rope of red plaited silk. This was looped around the neck of a haggard but handsome man in early middle age, who Matilda had never seen before, but who Hilda recognised as someone she had seen briefly when she had first been captured. As with their own bonds, the long cord travelled from this man to the neck of another, slighter figure — Matilda's own brother!

'Richard! What's happening, for God's sake? Who are these terrible men?' she screamed at him. She had at least been forewarned by Hilda that her brother was a captive, but Richard was astounded to see his sister there, roped to a woman he did not recognise.

'Matilda! How did you come to be here? For Christ's sake, you should still be in that chapel!'

Any explanations were brutally cut short, as Nizam stepped forward and punched Richard in the belly, then spat in his face for good measure. As the wrists of the captives were bound together behind their backs, there was no chance of retaliation. Gasping from the blow, de Revelle became even more short of breath, as Malik yanked on his end of the cord, tightening the noose around Richard's neck. He dragged the pair along until they were standing in line with the two women.

Raymond de Blois was not lacking in courage and yelled at the Saracen at the top of his voice.

'Nizam, why are you doing this? Have I not led you here and looked after you these past weeks? What do you want from us?'

The Arab walked across to him and stared coldly into his face.

'What do I want? I want your lives! Though you are not part of my personal jihad, did you not go to Palestine as part of your Christian armies?'

The Frenchman scowled at him. 'I was there for a year, yes! I was with King Philip at the siege of Acre. What of it?'

Nizam stepped back a few paces and then began marching up and down the line of prisoners, in a jerky, agitated manner. Alexander, peering cautiously from the doorway of the eating hut, again wondered whether he was under the influence of some sort of stimulant drug. Then the Turk abruptly stopped his perambulations and turned to face the prisoners, almost like some general addressing his troops.

'I have sworn a great oath and nothing will stop me from fulfilling that!' His French, though spoken with a guttural accent, seemed to be improving by the minute, though emotion shook him.

'Hear me, you uncaring spawn of looters and murderers! My father, as he lay dying from wounds made by your kind, begged me to avenge him, my family and all those who died by the hand of your ancestors.'

His voice rose in a ranting tirade, and he began swaying again.

'Damascus! Hundreds of your brigands, both lords and knights and common killers, descended on our city. I was but a child but the cries, the smoke, the blood, the despair — they will remain with me for ever!'

Raymond de Blois, though the cord was cutting into his neck, croaked out a disclaimer.

'The siege of Damascus! It failed miserably — and it was over forty years ago, we were not even born then. What has that to do with us?'

Nizam continued as if the words had never been uttered.

'The siege failed, but your rabble turned against the villages near by in their frustration and burned them to the ground. But not before looting, raping, mutilating, killing! My mother was ravished, then her throat was cut, three of my small brothers and two of my sisters were burned alive when our dwelling was fired. My father had dragged me outside, bleeding from his belly and mouth, and I survived under his dying body.'

There was a silence, broken only by a low sobbing from Matilda, whether for the pathos of the Turk's story or her own mortal fear was not clear.

'We cannot be held responsible for these misdeeds of others!' shouted de Blois, but again Nizam ignored him. He seemed to be in a trance, his mind tracking back forty-seven years.

'Even as a boy, I swore to carry out my father's plea and seek vengeance, even if it took me the rest of my life. I have read that your own holy book says that the sins of the father may be visited unto the fourth generation. I cannot achieve that, so one or two generations must suffice!'

At last Richard de Revelle found his voice, even though the tight cord made his words even more hoarse than Raymond's.

'I have never set foot in Palestine! Why are you doing this to me?'

The Saracen seemed to notice him at last.

'De Revelle? Your father was a de Revelle, Gervaise de Revelle, who was at Damascus! Like this man le Calve, whose father was at Damascus! Like that Templar, Joel de Valle Torta, who was at Damascus!'

'How can you know this, after all this time?' croaked de Blois.

Nizam smiled, a twisted, sardonic smile.

'My father's dying demand to me, to avenge my family and my people, never left me. I have dedicated my life to it. It is my crusade, a far more worthy one than yours!'

He twitched his arms spasmodically and almost danced a couple of steps sideways, before continuing. 'When I was left an orphan in a burnt-out village, I wandered with a few other survivors until I was taken in by an imam of the Nizari sect of the Isma'ili. I grew up in their care and became a devoted servant of their master, Rashid el-din Sinan, in Syria. He learned of my unwavering desire for vengeance and fostered it. I became a fervent disciple of theirs and they put me to work, good practice for my vengeance. Many a Crusader has met his death at the end of my knife! Do you not recall Conrad de Montferrat, your so-called King of Jerusalem?'

'He was murdered in Tyre by two fanatics, dressed as Christian monks. Both of them were killed,' countered de Blois.

There were three, for I was waiting near by, in case the others failed. And in France this year, four more of your Frankish knights who were at Damascus — and two of their sons — died on our knives, like the rats they were!'

He gestured towards Abdul and Malik, but they stood impassively, unable to understand a word of what was going on.

'You cannot know that my father or le Calve or that Templar were involved in your tragedy in Damascus,' blustered Richard de Revelle, desperately.

'For years, our sect has sought information on who was present in that evil enterprise,' shouted Nizam. 'Gradually facts emerged, both in Palestine and in France. Those men were known to have been at the assault on Damascus and that is sufficient for us! They must die, and if death has already claimed them, then their sons and daughters must die, just as my father's sons and daughters died! After we have dealt with you, there are three more in your other counties who must be brought to account.'

Spittle appeared at the corners of his mouth and his eyes rolled wildly as a fanatical ecstasy possessed him. 'You can never return to your homeland — or even to France — without my help!' shouted Raymond. 'You are trapped here!'

The Arab gave an almost hysterical laugh. 'Escape! What care we about escape? We are dedicated to our task and will die joyfully at its end and pass into paradise! It is only because there were so many other rats to exterminate that we have not died with our victims, as is the usual way with our sect.'

His mood suddenly changed and he swung round to call out to his servants in his native tongue. Abdul dropped his end of the neck cord and vanished into the next hut, reappearing with a great armful of hay, which was stored there as fodder for the horses. He threw this into the dining shack, strewing it about as tinder. Then he came out again, holding a burning pitch brand which he had lit at the cooking fire. He held this high, the light of the yellow flame dancing over the desperate group, adding a macabre glow to the last remaining light of the dying day.

It was this light which finally guided de Wolfe to the old castle. After leaving the wounded Fleming to stumble with the villager back towards Bigbury, John, Gwyn and the smith, with Thomas trailing behind, tramped onward, trying to steer in the direction that Jan had indicated to the best of his ability. The light was fading fast, but there was enough to see the trail of crushed weeds and ferns, though where the trees were thicker there was more bare soil than undergrowth.

Every few minutes, John would raise a hand for them to stop and they would listen intently for any sound of voices, but all was silence, save for a few birds squabbling over a perch for the night.

After some twenty minutes, the coroner began to feel desperate. Both Matilda and Hilda were out there somewhere, but unless they could find this place that the dumb fellow had mimed, they might as well be back in Exeter.

'Shall we split up, Crowner?' suggested Gwyn in a low voice. 'Then we could cover a wider area than if we stick in a bunch like this.'

De Wolfe shook his head. 'If we get separated this near to dusk, we'll never find each other again, without a lot of shouting, which will give us away. Give it a few more minutes, walking straight ahead.'

The trail of bruised weeds had now petered out — or was invisible in the failing light — but the movement of clouds glimpsed dimly through the half-bare tree-tops gave them some idea of direction. At least they could prevent themselves from walking in circles.

A few minutes later, John was beginning to reconsider Gwyn's idea of splitting up when Thomas hissed a warning. His younger eyes had caught something away to the right.

'I saw a flicker, Crowner! A yellow light, very faint.' They all stopped to stare where his finger was pointing. 'There it is again!'

This time the others glimpsed a moving flare through the trees.

'Must be a pitch brand,' growled Gwyn. 'Someone is waving it around.'

With John in the lead, they carefully crept forward, agonising when a foot snapped a dried twig. Two hundred paces brought them to the remains of a tumbled stone wall, heavily overgrown with ivy and other weeds. Now the flicker of the torch was easily visible, reflected from trees on the other side of a large clearing. They peered cautiously over the wall and in the last light of the day, augmented by the dancing flame of the burning pitch brand, a macabre scene met their eyes.

Before some half-ruined huts, a pair of large, scruffy men stood, one with a staff, the other holding a mace. Near them, a Saracen in a voluminous belted robe held a flaming torch above his head, while another stood clutching a cross-bow, the string of which was cranked back ready to fire. But the centrepiece was the line of captives, two men lashed together by a rope joining their necks — and two women, tied at the waist.

In front of them was a thickset Saracen, with a green head cloth, holding high a wide, curved dagger, like a priest using a cross to exorcise demons. His voice came clearly across the narrow castle yard.

'This was my father's knife! He gave it to me as he was dying and made me swear to avenge him and our family. It has never left me. I have slain a score of unbelievers with it, both for Sinan and myself!'

De Wolfe's brain had been paralysed for a few seconds by the shock of what he was witnessing, but now a deep rumble of pure anger rolled in his chest and he started to rise above the tattered wall, his hand already drawing his sword.

Gwyn urgently dragged him down, clutching the sleeve of his tunic.

'Not yet, Crowner! For Christ's sake, wait!' he hissed. 'They could knife your wife and Hilda before you could get halfway across the bailey. And that cross-bow could kill you, too.'

Even as he spoke, however, Gwyn was drawing his own sword.

'We must do something!' whispered John, desperately. 'Distract them somehow.'

'There are five of them to our three — and all we have are two swords and a blacksmith's hammer. That crossbow is the problem.'

Frustrated beyond measure, they waited and watched the drama below. Nizam screamed some orders to his henchmen and the one with the cross-bow leaned into the hut and dragged out Alexander of Leith. He was pushed aside and the leader raised a finger, pointing at the alchemist.

'You I am sparing! Get yourself gone and thank your God, if you have one, that I am merciful to those who played no part in shameful events!'

The little Scotsman, whose appearance was another surprise to the watchers hidden behind the wall, sidled off and then ran on his short legs towards the track that led out of the bailey. He vanished from the view of the Saracens, but from his vantage point the coroner could see that he had hidden in the undergrowth where he could observe what was going on near the huts.

'Who the hell is that?' muttered Gwyn into de Wolfe's ear.

'God knows! And who is that tall fellow roped to de Revelle?'

There was no time for an answer, as events began to move fast. Nizam rattled off more instructions to his men, who closed in on the captives. He gesticulated at the two Saxons, who were now looking more than a little anxious, but they started to pull the captives towards the door of the hut.

Richard de Revelle struggled to get nearer his sister, bellowing a mixture of prayers, obscenities and supplication, but a prod with the tip of Ulf's mace kept him moving. Then Hilda decided to come to a dead stop and refused to move, even though she was being hauled by the rope around her waist. Matilda cannoned into the back of her and then sank to her knees, sobbing on the ground.

'Who killed my husband?' called out the blonde woman, in a high, clear voice. 'Who slew the ship-master? I am entitled to know that, even at the last, before I die!'

This seemed to startle the captors into momentary silence, then Nizam laughed and translated her words for his two acolytes. Abdul, the one with the cross-bow, laughed in his turn. He stepped towards Hilda and indicated himself by tapping his own chest with his free hand, before bending forwards to spit in her face.

A second later he reeled back, as a long sliver of glass, exquisitely sharp at its point, was thrust deep into his chest. He screamed, raising the cross-bow to discharge it at the woman who had stabbed him, but then a great gout of blood shot from his mouth and he fell forward, the bolt fired harmlessly into the ground.

Pandemonium broke out, as Raymond de Blois roared defiance and charged head down at Nizam, his hands still tied behind his back. It was a heroic but hopeless gesture, as his neck was still linked to de Revelle's. The rope brought him up short and the leader of the Arabs plunged his long dagger into his belly. As de Blois fell, dragging Richard to his knees, Nizam stabbed him repeatedly, then began kicking the twitching body as it lay on the ground.

He would have done better to look over his shoulder, as a warning cry from Malik and Ulf heralded the charge of two very large and very angry men brandishing long swords, followed by another swinging a huge hammer over his head.

Malik threw his pitch brand at Gwyn, who brushed it aside as if it were a fly and swung his heavy blade at the side of the Turk's neck, almost severing his head from his shoulders before the man could even attempt a thrust with his long curved knife. John had gone straight for Nizam, roaring with rage at this evil creature who had dared to abduct his wife, to say nothing of his former mistress.

The Saracen leader made no attempt to defend himself against this black shape that had appeared from nowhere, but in a desperate attempt to fulfil his father's oath, he launched himself at Richard de Revelle, who was still on the ground, crouching and still linked to the bloody corpse of Raymond de Blois. He put his dagger to Richard's throat, again drawing blood, as he screamed for his two Saxon mercenaries to come to his aid. But Ulf and Alfred were nowhere to be seen — they had melted away as soon as they saw how the battle was going and had vanished into the forest.

John raised his sword, ready to hack off Nizam's arms one by one, followed by his legs and head. But the Arab pressed his blade deeper into de Revelle's neck.

'Keep back or I will kill him!' he screamed, some vestige of hope suggesting that if he could stay alive long enough, he might get the sister as well. John stayed his sword-stroke in midair.

'Kill the bastard, for all I care!' he roared. 'I'm going to cut you into little pieces, whoever you are!'

'John, save him. Save my brother!' screamed Matilda, her tear-streaked face lifting from the crouch into which she had collapsed.

Indecision now clouded de Wolfe's mind as the red rage began to subside. Gwyn also moved cautiously towards Nizam, sword raised, but the Turk dug the point of his dagger into Richard's neck, making the victim utter a gurgling scream of terror. With a quick slash, Nizam cut through the cord around his neck, separating him from Raymond's corpse. Keeping the knife to his neck, he began to drag the manor-lord towards his sister.

'Stop him, Crowner!' yelled Gwyn. 'He wants her too!' But the warning was unnecessary. Suddenly, Nizam's eyes rolled upwards in their sockets, exposing the whites, and he began twitching. He dropped the dagger and fell to the ground, black blood appearing at his lips. Then he had a full-blown convulsion and a great gout of dark fluid erupted from his mouth, before he finally became still.

There was a flurry from behind and the strange figure of the little man in the kilt and blouse rushed down from where he had been concealed.

'It worked, thank God! I was beginning to think I was losing my touch!'