Heart of Ice

Prologue

In the port of Boulogne, the enemy lay hidden. The journey — by land and by sea over thousands of miles — was almost at an end; all that remained was the narrow band of water that separated continental Europe from England.

And that would be crossed tonight. .

The epic voyage had begun in an obscure land far to the south, in the dark heart of a steamy river basin whose few inhabitants were utterly ignorant of the races and the civilisations of Western Europe; as, indeed, most people in those temperate latitudes were ignorant of them, few even knowing that the vast and secretive continent of Africa existed. The enemy was born there in the heat and the humidity and its first hiding place was not with humans but with a troupe of monkeys. Unwittingly carrying the foe with them, the monkeys travelled slowly north-eastwards until one of their number, weakened and falling behind the rest, was caught in a hunter’s trap. The hunter butchered the little creature and smoked its flesh, later enjoying it as a rare delicacy and savouring each slow mouthful.

The hunter went on his way. At first all was well, although he was increasingly troubled by a wound on his hand. He had nicked the flesh of his left forefinger as he stripped the monkey’s flesh from its bones and now the cut was weeping and pus-filled; its painful throbbing kept the hunter awake at night. But such inconveniences were quite normal in his hard life and the handicap did not prevent him from proceeding on his way. He had a small cargo of slaves to trade with one of his usual contacts but he was one short: as he approached the coast and entered more populous regions, he kept his eyes and ears open and soon came across what he was looking for.

She was young — perhaps thirteen or fourteen — and exquisitely lovely. Tall, lithe, well-muscled but slender, she had put on a clean robe in a bright pattern of red and yellow and wound her hair into an intricate braid; she had to fetch water from the spring and there was a fair chance that the young man she liked might be there too. Sadly for the girl, he was not; instead the slave trader lay in wait for her and, as she bent to fill her calabash, he leapt on her, threw a heavy piece of sacking over her head and had her bound, gagged and helpless before she could even draw breath.

When at long last the sack was removed, she found herself in a small and stinking hut chained to four other women. Dazed and in deep shock — the slave trader had raped her twice on the journey and she was bleeding from the wounds he had inflicted — she sat slumped in a corner with no will left to care about what might happen to her next.

Soon afterwards — perhaps four or five days, she did not know — the girl and her companions were sold to a Muslim spice trader for shipment up the Red Sea to Eilat. Despite the girl’s filthy and bloodstained appearance and her catatonic state, she was still beautiful; the merchant had her hosed down and he took her to his narrow cabin where he too raped her.

By now she was very sick. As the merchant’s lust was sated his sense returned and suddenly he was very afraid. Observing the girl, he listened to her moans and noted the shivering, the bright flush of high fever, the vomiting, the passage of bloody and watery faeces. He made an attempt to rouse her and demand to know what ailed her but she was too far gone to respond. She was deeply unconscious but not quite dead; the merchant hastened the inevitable by throwing her over the side.

The Muslim merchant fell sick as he sailed into Eilat. He made haste to unload and sell his cargo; the remaining slaves were bound for Egypt and the spices were to be traded with a regular contact of the Muslim, a Levantine whose caravans trudged the overland route from the Red Sea to Petra and Gaza. The Levantine cared for his Muslim associate, taking the sick man into his own home and tending him, trying to spoon cool lemon water into his parched mouth and washing him when he soiled himself. When the Muslim died, the Levantine was careful to have him buried according to the rites of the man’s own faith.

The Levantine set off for Petra and the coast, where he had an appointment to meet a Venetian who would buy his myrrh and ship it to Europe. The Venetian put in to Gaza having sailed from Tyre, where he had just picked up a cargo of silk. He and the Levantine celebrated the satisfactory completion of their business by eating a meal together, in the course of which the Levantine handed the Venetian a piece of bread. Neither man noticed the strange little blister on the Levantine’s hand, which had just burst and which weeped two or three minute droplets of clear fluid on to the bread.

In the cramped quarters of his ship, the Venetian’s sickness took hold swiftly and raced through his system. He had been at sea for months and his diet had been typically poor throughout that time; his resistance was low. By the time the ship put in at Genoa, the Venetian and several of the crew were dead and more were sick. But his associates hushed up the deaths; such things were terrible for business and, God knew, times were hard enough, what with so many ships now muscling in on the highly lucrative spice trade between the East and Europe. The death ship was unloaded with all haste and the various consignments of its cargo were hurried on their way. Among the items were crates of spices bound for Montpellier, Barcelona, Almeria, Lisbon, Bordeaux; there was also a crate of ivory and a large wooden box of frankincense, musk and myrrh that were destined for Boulogne for onward shipment to England. The Genoese captain, unaware of what had happened on the voyage from Gaza, sailed out of the port and set a course for Montpellier.

Two of the Genoese captain’s sailors had come up from Gaza on the death ship. It had not been a deliberate act to infect the Genoese ship: they had seen their former shipmates fall sick and die but, still healthy themselves (or, at least, as healthy as any other sailor of the age), they believed themselves to have been spared.

They were wrong.

As the Genoese ship left Barcelona, one of the two became ill. Fearing the worst, his shipmate from the death ship fell into a panic and was quickly brought before the captain. An enlightened man, the Genoese captain had the good sense to isolate the sick man and, within his limited powers, he did his best to have the wretch cared for.

Days passed. The dreaded rapid progression of the disease failed to happen; perhaps because the weather was stormy and cooler now as the ship sailed towards the Pillars of Hercules; perhaps because the Genoese captain was a stickler for cleanliness. It was his habit to insist that his crew and their quarters were regularly doused in sea water and in addition he used some of the spices that made up the majority of his cargo to burn as purifying incense and to scent the water with which he made his companions wash their hands and faces before eating.

Nevertheless, the disease continued to spread.

The captain and his senior crew remained well but below, in the crowded conditions where the crew lived, ate, urinated, defecated and slept so close together, men continued to fall sick. The captain was a devout man as well as a clean and enlightened one; he made up his mind that, whatever the cost to himself and his crew, they must keep themselves apart from other men while the sickness lasted. He decided to drop the last of his cargo at the final destination — Boulogne — and then sail back to Genoa in ballast and hope that the disease would have burned itself out by the time he reached home. It was a sound and conscientious plan and it ought to have worked; unfortunately, despite the captain’s best efforts, one of the men slipped ashore at Boulogne.

The captain faced a dilemma. Did he send other men to hunt for the fugitive and bring him back on board into the captain’s self-imposed quarantine? Or did he sail off and, praying that the man was not infected, leave him behind? After much agonised thought, the captain decided that to send more men ashore to search for the missing man would only increase the risk of infection. With a heavy heart and a guilty conscience, he ordered the ship to be prepared for sea and set sail for home.

The fugitive watched his ship disappear into the misty night. Silently rejoicing — wasn’t he the clever one, getting away from both the ship and the awful secret it carried? — but his happiness was short lived. Soon he began to feel ill, and the faint symptoms escalated so quickly that he was unable to fool himself that it was merely a matter of his body adjusting to dry land after so long at sea. He tried to find help, knocking on door after door, but the people of Boulogne were used to importunate sailors begging for their help and they firmly turned him away.

The sick man crawled off to die.

He was found by a kindly Hastings merchant staying in the port while he waited to take ship back home to England with the large consignment of myrrh and frankincense which he had just bought. For a day or two the merchant tended the sick sailor as best he could, in his anxiety biting his nails and tearing at his cuticles until they bled, but any help he offered came far too late and the sailor died. The merchant, aware that the ship that would take him across the Channel had just docked and that he needed to make haste to see her captain, gave a local lad a few coins and ordered him to dispose of the sailor’s corpse. Then he hurried away. (The lad pocketed the coins and, as soon as the Hastings merchant had gone, tipped the body into the harbour.)

The merchant made his way to an inn where he washed his hands (the sailor had been steeped in his own filth) and ordered food and drink for a swiftly consumed meal before joining his ship. Then he walked down to the quay, where, boarding the ship, he met up with a young man who was also returning to England. This man was the assistant and apprentice of a rich Newenden apothecary and he was on his way home with a parcel of rare ingredients that his master had ordered from the great fair at Troyes, in the Champagne country south of Paris. Believing themselves to be the only passengers, the two men settled down together to pass the voyage as comfortably as they could. It seemed to the Hastings merchant that the young man was scared out of his wits; kind-hearted soul that he was, he made up his mind to encourage his companion to unburden himself in the hope that he might be able to offer the younger man his help.

Unseen by either man, nor by the captain or the crew of the small vessel, someone else crept aboard just as the ship slipped her moorings.

Elsewhere, the disease was already beginning to die out. The inhabitants of Eilat and Gaza, accustomed to plague and possessing the knowledge of how to restrict its spread, had quickly taken the necessary measures. In Genoa too, they had managed to contain the disease and only a handful had sickened and died; a lucky half dozen had fallen ill and later recovered. On board the Genoese ship, now sailing across the Bay of Biscay, there had been no new cases. The sailor who had jumped ship in Boulogne was dead and his body was at the bottom of the sea.

But the well-meaning Hastings merchant had touched the sailor’s sores and blisters in his vain attempts to help the man’s pain; both the blood and the bodily fluids of the dying man had entered the merchant’s body through the small cut that he had made with his own teeth in the cuticle of his forefinger. Unbeknownst to the merchant, the deadly virus was even now multiplying in his system and soon it would make its presence felt.

The terrible enemy was on its way to England.

Back in his comfortable home in Hastings, the merchant developed a high fever and a raging headache. His nervous and reclusive spinster sister took fright and locked herself away, ordering the household’s overworked maidservant to take care of the merchant as best she could. What care she was able to provide did the poor man no good whatsoever and he died within a matter of days.

The apothecary’s assistant sickened four days after returning to Newenden, suffering from excruciating pains in the joints and a fluctuating fever. His master offered one or two remedies but soon came to the alarming realisation that this ailment, whatever it might be, was beyond his considerable skill. Lending the assistant his horse, he ordered the young man to get himself over to Hawkenlye and see what the good sisters and brothers made of him; the apothecary had a scientist’s scepticism about the benefits of the famous holy water spring at Hawkenlye Abbey but considered it was probably worth a try.

And, he reassured himself, if his assistant went to Hawkenlye, the sickness would leave with him.

The apothecary’s assistant knew all about Hawkenlye. He had heard the tale of the dying merchant who saw a vision of the Blessed Virgin and, drinking from the spring that she indicated, promptly regained his health. As he rode, slipping in and out of consciousness, his head aching as if a fiend were hammering inside it with a red-hot hammer and his back so painful that he moaned at any variation in his horse’s gait, the young man prayed fervently that the Virgin would help him too. The weather was deadly cold; he had wrapped himself in his warmest cloak but sometimes, despite its thickness, found himself shivering so violently that it was all he could do to remain in the saddle. Then suddenly he would be hot, sweating, gasping for air that, when it entered his lungs, seemed to burn like fire.

He rode down into Hawkenlye Vale as the short January light was failing. The path wound along beside what seemed to be a lake or a pond, presently covered with a thin layer of ice that he thought he could hear creaking, as if complaining about the steady increase in its own weight. His sight was fading but he could just make out what seemed to be a huddle of low buildings some distance off. One of them, he fancied, had a cross on its roof.

He slipped off the horse’s back and tried to run towards the little chapel. Stumbling, he cried out in what he thought was a loud voice to the Blessed Virgin to come out and find him, take him in her loving arms, give him her healing waters.

His prayers were answered.

Ahead of him a figure stepped out on to the path. His fever-filled mind made his eyes see what he wanted to see and he thought the figure was a woman in a blue robe with a kindly smile on her beautiful face. Lurching towards her, he said the words of her special prayer, eager, hands held out to her, confident that she would help him, heal him.

But the dark figure was not smiling. Was not, indeed, a woman and as far away from being the mother of God as it was possible to be.

The apothecary’s assistant had no time to be afraid. A blissful expression on his face, he knelt with open arms before the figure in expectation of a cool hand descending on his hot forehead in blessing.

It was not a cool hand. It was a club, wielded with such force and such skill that one swift blow was all that was necessary to end the young man’s life.

After checking to make sure he was dead, the dark figure quickly went through the contents of the pouch attached to the young man’s belt, then rolled him across the path and over the frosty grass that edged the pond. Breaking the ice with the heel of his boot, he slid the corpse into the black water. Then he mounted the apothecary’s horse and rode away.

The temperature plummeted that night. By morning, the pond and its deadly secret were covered in a thick sheet of ice.