The Perfect Sinner. Will Davenport

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СКАЧАТЬ was three days later that I met the King face to face and in the oddest manner. My wish had come partly true. I had experienced battle, but not in any ordered way, not in a way covered by the rules. My first taste of combat consisted of waking abruptly, confused as men rushed over my legs in the night, shouting ‘Raiders! To arms!’ Searching desperately in the dark for my sword, I found it with the scabbard all caught up in the tent ropes and got it out, cutting my other hand in the process, just in time to take a wild slash at a man who appeared out of the darkness in front of me with an axe. I missed him completely and that was just as well as he turned out to be one of ours. We beat them off, or they chose to leave – a bold party barely three hundred strong, who left mounds of our men behind them. The next night had us all wide awake and jumpy, peering into the mist fearing a repeat, but when day dawned, we found we were looking up at what seemed once again to be an empty hillside. Had they gone? As I looked, a band of our men rode up from behind me on horses.

      ‘Are you armed and ready?’ said the nearest. ‘If you are, come with us and let’s see what’s up there.’

      I was about to question the man’s right to command me in that way when he half turned and I saw that he had every right. I had taken him for a full-grown man, because he was big but the face I now saw was younger than the body. My king, Edward, aged just fifteen, was a fine man and his face had a smile on it which would have inspired loyalty in a piece of solid rock. I climbed into my saddle to follow him, thrilled, repeating his words to myself so that I had them by heart, the first words my king spoke directly to me. Ten of us went carefully up that hill, all in plain armour with no surcoats, no crests. There were three riding ahead in case all was not what it seemed. I had spurred forward to join them, but was waved back to my proper place. They were hard men, those others, men you wouldn’t want to tangle with, and as I looked around, I saw that only Edward and myself did not yet fully fit that description, though it was plain from the look on his face and the way he held himself in the saddle that for him, it was only a matter of time.

      What a strange sight we found at the top. We rode through a band of mist which had us staring hard again and drawing swords, then it dispersed as we reached the summit so that we seemed to climb up into a place all of itself, remote from anything else I knew, floating in its own world. For a moment I thought we were the only living beings present, but then I heard a groan and saw ahead of me a slumped body, lashed to the trunk of a tree.

      ‘See to him,’ said the man next to me.

      ‘Who is he?’

      ‘He’s one of ours, snatched on a raid. Look to him.’

      At that stage of my life, I was no good at tending the wounded, scared to face the pain of others without the knowledge to ease it. This man hung from the ropes, naked, and his face was somewhere behind the blood which ran in crusted streaks down his body. Both his legs were splayed out at an angle which showed the bones were smashed, and he whimpered when I tried to support him while I cut him down.

      I gave him water and did what I could to wash the blood from his eyes.

      I’m Guy,’ I said. ‘Help is coming.’

      He croaked something in reply but it sounded more like a curse than a name. Laying him on the ground, with no idea what else to do I saw that beyond him there were four more, each lashed to another of the twisted mountain oaks. Three of them looked dead, but the fourth was tugging hard at his bonds as he saw us coming. Then he heard our voices and knew we were English and calmed down.

      I did all I could for my man, and as I cleaned him I realised the extent of his wounds was worse than I could ever have imagined. He stared at me with gratitude as I mopped away the blood, but my kerchief was soon so drenched that it could take no more. I was kneeling over him, calming him with a hand on his forehead, talking to him in his pain so that he would know he was not alone, when a hand came from behind me and roughly thrust me to one side. I overbalanced backwards and saw the man who had led the way up the hill. He was perhaps approaching thirty with sandy hair and small, reddened eyes, close together. For just a moment, I felt sharp relief that he had come to help me, then I saw the knife in his hand. He held the knife out so that the poor soul on the ground would see it and the injured man began to shake his head from side to side, trying to raise his arms to protect himself.

      ‘Don’t do…’ that, I was about to say, but before the word was out, the knife had slit his throat and the rest of his life was bubbling and spurting out into the grass.

      ‘Why did you do that?’ I said to the sandy-haired man, and he turned his head to look at me with a grin on his face.

      ‘To spare his pain.’ His voice was shriller than you would expect from a soldier.

      ‘If that was the reason, why did you show him the knife?’

      ‘Every man should have the chance to prepare himself for death.’

      ‘That wasn’t it. You enjoyed…’

      The next thing I knew, his left hand was clutching my throat and the knife in his right hand was pricking the skin just above my eyelid.

      He shot a quick look around, but there was nobody near us to see.

      ‘I am not bound by your rules,’ he said in a whispered hiss. ‘You will be dead in a second if I choose. I kill who I like, when I like. You have qualms. You’re a baby. You’re worthless. Learn to respect me, young man. I am a true soldier and I am worth a hundred of you.’ The knife dropped away out of my sight and I tensed my belly for its thrust, but a voice was calling. His other hand let go of my throat and he turned away.

      ‘You’re wanted,’ he said.

      I was sickened by the sight and the sound and the smell of him, but I couldn’t help staring at his face in fascination. I had no idea that I had just met the man who was to be the bane of so many years of my life.

      ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘The chief wants you.’

      I thought he meant the King, but the man who was waving his arm for me was much older. I had seen him in the camp with everyone paying him their respects, but I did not know who he was. Clearly of high rank, he wore a blue cape over gilded chain mail. Everyone except the King deferred to him and I should have asked his name of someone the first time I saw him. Now, I had left it too late and it would have seemed absurd.

      I ran to him and made an awkward bow.

      ‘The King wishes to stay behind here with his thoughts. You stay with him,’ he said in a deep and slightly slurred voice. ‘Escort him back down as soon as he is done,’ he added. ‘There is no danger. They are gone.’

      They all went off down the hill taking the surviving soldier with them and there we were, just me and the young King in unimaginable proximity. He looked at me, shrugged and turned his attention to the rest of that trampled hilltop, wandering through what had been left behind, with me close behind him. The horror of the last few minutes was still in me, but there was now more pressing business. I felt extremely important and kept my hand on my sword hilt, enjoying fantasies of an unexpected ambush and me gloriously saving my sovereign from a murderous Scot or two. No more than two I hoped.

      They had departed in a hurry. Dead cattle, partly butchered, lay in a row in the heather. Stewpots full of cooling water stood by them and further off were heaps of something I could not at first identify. The King knelt by one of these mounds and I stood back, studying him, expecting him to show signs of kingship, perhaps even of immortality. He got up, turned to me and held something out.

      ‘Shoes,’ he СКАЧАТЬ