I could see him go high with his blade and met his blow, our weapons colliding with a loud clang. We stood there eye to eye, each trying to drive his blade into the other’s neck, muscles straining to the limit. All of a sudden the Tafur jerked his knee into my groin. The air rushed out of me. I gasped and bent in two. In the same instant, he swept his sword toward my knees, and I summoned every sliver of strength to counter with the ax.
Again we faced each other, eyes blazing. He tried to head-butt me with the crown of his helmet, but I threw myself back. I stumbled, and the Tafur leaped at me, swinging his blade back and forth with a maniacal fury.
The Tafur saw that I was slowed. He laughed. “Come here, fairy. You look like you might want to feel a set of real balls.”
I crouched back warily. His sword was too quick. In this form of fighting, I was no match for him. The ax was clumsy and heavy in my weakened grasp.
“Come . . .” He blew me a kiss.
I looked him in the eye, panting heavily. I knew I would not be able to ward off the blows much longer. I felt my legs wobble; I was out of strength. I searched my mind for any form of skill or trickery I had seen in the wars. Then one clicked in. It was crazy, desperate, not a soldier’s but a jester’s trick.
“Why wait?” I said, lowering the ax, pretending to be beaten, out of fight. “What’s wrong with now?”
I turned my back to him. I hoped I wasn’t insane.
I bent into a deep crouch, flipped up my tunic, and let him see my rear. “C’mon . . .” I said. “I’d wait for a real man, but you’re the only one here.” I tossed the ax about four feet ahead of me.
In my crouch, I saw him raise his sword and come. Just as he was set to run me through, I sprang into a forward flip. The Tafur sliced at the air where suddenly there was no person. His sword stuck in the soggy earth.
I landed on my feet and in the same movement pivoted and grabbed the handle of the ax. I sprang back around as the surprised Tafur struggled to free his sword.
A look of panic spread over his face. This time it was I who laughed and blew him a kiss.
I swung with all my might and sent the Tafur’s head hurtling like a kicked ball.
I sank to my knees, out of breath. Every muscle in my body felt as if it were about to explode. I dropped the ax, sucking precious air into my lungs.
Then I rose and picked up my staff. As I did so, a snickering voice intoned, “Well done, innkeeper. But you must conserve your kisses. You may need one or two over here. . . .”
I turned. There was another Tafur. He had a black cross painted on his helmet, but his visor was up, revealing a cold, scarred face that I thought I had seen before.
But it was not the face I was focused on.
The bastard was holding Emilie.
Chapter 96
“LET HER GO,” I TOLD HIM. “This isn’t her fight.”
The Tafur was large and strong, and he twisted Emilie roughly by the hair with his sword edged into her neck. His dark hair was long and greasy and fell over his scarred face. A cross was burned into his neck.
“Let her go?” He laughed. The Tafur twisted Emilie harder. “But she is so pretty and sweet. What a treat she’ll make for me.” He inhaled her hair. “Like you, I am not used to sifting my pole through such highborn trash.”
I took a step toward him. “What is it you want from me?”
“I think you know, innkeeper. . . . I think you know where we have met once before too.”
I focused on his hard, laughing eyes. Suddenly the past rocketed through me. The church in Antioch.
He was the bastard who had killed the Turk.
“You are the one doing these terrible deeds?”
The Tafur grinned in recognition. “‘You are free’ . . . innkeeper. Do you not remember? When I saw you last you had an infidel about to plow your ass. But enough of old times.” He forced Emilie to her knees. “I would be happy to let her go. You only have to hand over what is mine.”
“Tell me what you want!” I shouted. “You’ve already taken everything I have.”
“Not all, innkeeper.” He forced Emilie’s chin up and edged his silvery blade along her neck. She sucked in a gasp. “Where is it? Her future awaits.”
“Where is what?” I screamed. I looked at Emilie, so helpless there. Anger flared in my blood.
“Do not toy with me, Red.” The Tafur glared. “You were there in Antioch, the church. I saw you. You were no more praying than I was. Quick now, or I will ram my blade through her pretty skull.”
I was there . . . Suddenly it came clear to me. The cross. The gold cross I had stolen from the church. That is what this was all about. Why so many people had died. “It is buried on the hill,” I said. “Let her go. It is yours.”
“I will not barter with you.” The Tafur’s face began to twitch with rage. “Hand me what I want, or she will be pig slop, and you next.”
“Then take it. I stole it from the church. It was just a trinket to me. I don’t even know what it is, what it signifies. Just let her go and I will bring the gold cross to you. Just let her go.”
“Cross . . . ?” I could not tell if it was confusion or rage that shook his lips. He dug the blade into Emilie and spat, “I do not want your fucking cross, not if you took it from Saint Peter’s ass. You know very well what prize you hold.”
“I don’t know!” My head was spinning. Panic shot through me. “I do not have anything else.”
“You must.” He jerked Emilie’s head back.
“No!” I cried. What else could it be? I looked at this monster. Black Cross. He had killed Sophie. He had tossed my son into the flames. He had taken from me everything I loved. And now he would do it again. For what? For a thing I did not have!
“Whatever it is, is it worth following me all the way back from the Holy Land? Slaughtering innocent villages and children? My wife and child?”
“It is!” His eyes lit up. “Those souls are meaningless compared to it, and a thousand more like your wife and seed. Now, innkeeper!” he yelled. “Or I will rid the world of yet another you claim to love.”
“No.” I shook my head, at first numbly, then with rage. “You will not take anything else from me.”
I looked at Emilie. Her eyes bravely met mine.
I knew if I charged him, he would not kill her. It was me the Tafur needed. I was the path to his precious prize, not her. He would not risk leaving himself unguarded. I gripped my staff firmly in my palms. It was all I had, this stick against his sword. And my hands. And my will.
In the next breath, I screamed and charged the bastard.
Chapter 97
I SWUNG MY STAFF at him with everything I had.
In the same instant, Black Cross flung Emilie aside and readied himself for my blow. He was huge and agile, and blocked it easily with his sword.
“What is this prize,” I screamed, smashing and flailing my staff at all angles, “that you would murder people who had never even heard of it? Was it worth my wife, my little son? Or even the most worthless soul you stamped out in your way?” I swung at him again and again. For Sophie. For Phillipe. Each blow crashed harmlessly against his sword. I thought my staff would surely split, or that at any moment I would feel the sword run through my gut.
“Is this a pretend, jester? Do you mock me again to explain the meaning of the prize you stole?” He forced me backward and began advancing, swinging his sword with half strength and forcing me to block the blows with the staff, the wood rattling in my grasp.
“I do not have it,” I shouted. “I never have. You are mistaken.”
He swung at my legs and I darted back. His sword chipped slivers of wood off my staff. “You were there, jester. The church in Antioch. We all sought it out. Do you think these nobles were fighting for the souls of a few nuns? You were there for what, jester, mass? You try to tell me you don’t know that the relic you fought the infidel for, which lay for centuries in that vault, was not the same used to sacrifice our Lord, and
stained with His holy blood?”
I had no idea what he was talking about. He cut at my torso. I blocked it again, the blade slicing against my hand, but it was only a matter of time before he landed the blow that would do me in.
“Did you sell it? Have you profited by some Jew? If you have, your death will only be more warranted.” He swung again, this time knocking me backward to the ground, shattering another piece of my staff, which I barely held up now in defense.
My knuckles bled. My mind ricocheted back and forth. “I do not have it. I swear!”
He swung again, the brute force of his blow almost breaking the staff in two. I knew it could sustain only a few more hits.
I heard shouts behind me. Emilie was screaming. She tried to leap on him and ward him off, but he flung her across the ground as if she were a toy.
The Tafur’s eyes flashed. “Give it to me, thief, now. For in another minute you will surely be in Hell.”
“If I am,” I said, whacking my stick at him, “it will only be to welcome you.”
I was done. Out of breath and strength. I blocked his blows, but each one hacked a little farther into the staff. I wanted with all my heart to kill this man — for Sophie, for Phillipe — but I didn’t have the strength.
He kicked me into a ditch off the road. I looked about for a weapon, anything to fight him. He raised his sword above my head. “I give you this final chance,” he grunted. “Produce it. You can still go free.”
“I have nothing,” I yelled at him. “Can’t you see that?”
He came down with his sword. I think I closed my eyes, for I knew this last, desperate defense would not hold. A chunk of my staff shattered. To my astonishment, a patch of metal showed through.
Black Cross slashed at me again and again, yet each time, the staff miraculously held. The wooden rod split open like a casing, revealing something underneath.
Iron.
My eyes clung to it. I was staring at the long, rusted shaft of an ancient spear.
The Tafur stopped, his gaze transfixed. The spear shaft led to a molding in the shape of an eagle, a Roman eagle. The blade that came from it — dark, blunt, rusted — was encrusted with a bloodlike stain.
Good Lord in Heaven. I heard myself gasp. I blinked, twice, to make sure I wasn’t in Heaven already.
My staff . . . the wooden staff I had taken from the church in Antioch, from the dying priest’s hands . . . It wasn’t a staff at all.
It was a lance.
Chapter 98
I DO NOT KNOW how to describe what happened next.
Time seemed to stand still. Neither of us moved, held by the incredible sight. Whatever this was, I could tell by the Tafur’s stupefied amazement that the lance was what he had sought all along. Now, miraculously, it was in front of him. His eyes were as large as moons. Though it was rusted and dulled, just a common thing, a glow seemed to emanate from it.
Suddenly he lunged for it! I yanked it out of his reach. He was still above me, with all the advantage. He reared back his sword. I had no defenses. He would surely split my chest this time.
I thrust with the only thing I had — the lance. The blade split his mail and pierced his ribs. Black Cross cried out, his dark eyes open wide, but even with the lance in him, he did not stop. He went to raise his sword again. I pushed the lance in deeper. This time his eyes rolled back in his head. He tried to lift the sword once more, his arms reaching the height of his head, hands squeezing the hilt.
But his arms suddenly dropped. He gasped, opened his mouth as if to speak, and blood leaked out.
I pushed hard on the lance again and he froze, upright, disbelieving, as if he could not lose now, not with his prize in sight, so close. Then with a final grunt, Black Cross crumpled and fell onto his back.
I lay there for a second, stunned that I was alive. I forced myself to my knees and crawled to the dying man, his hands wrapped around the shaft of the lance. “What is it?” I asked.
He did not answer. Only coughed: blood and bile.
“What is it?” I cried. “What is this thing? My wife and son died for it.”
I pulled the spear out of his body and held it close to the dying man’s face. He coughed again, but this time it wasn’t blood — he was laughing. “Do you not know?” His chest wheezed — and then, a thin smile. “All along . . . you were blind?”
“Tell me.” I pulled him by the mail. “Before you die.”
“You are a fool.” He coughed again and smiled. “You are the richest man in Christendom and do not know it. Do you not understand what lay in those tombs for a thousand years? Do you not recognize your own Savior’s blood?”
I stared at the ancient, bloodstained spear, my eyes almost bulging out of my head. The spear of Longinus, the centurion who had stabbed Christ while He was dying on the cross.
A numbness was in my chest. My hands began to tremble.
I was holding the holy lance.
Chapter 99
I STAGGERED TO MY FEET, cradling the precious relic in my hands. Emilie rushed up first and threw her arms around my neck. The battle had ended and we had won. Georges, Odo, and Father Leo came running toward me.
Other people approached, cheering, dancing with joy, but I could not take my eyes from the lance. “My staff . . .” I was barely able to speak. “All along, it was the holy lance.”
Everyone stopped, converged. A hush fell over the crowd.
“The holy lance . . . ?” someone repeated. A ring formed around us. Murmurs of exclamation and joy. All eyes fell on the rusted blade, the tip slightly broken.
“Mother of God.” Georges stepped forward, his tunic splattered with blood. “Hugh has the holy lance.”
Finally everyone knelt, myself included.
Father Leo examined the lance without touching it, fixing on the old, hardened blood upon the blade. “God’s grace.” He shook his head with a look of wonderment in his eyes. He recited scripture from memory: “But one of the soldiers with a spear pierced His side, and forthwith came there out blood and water.”
“It’s a miracle,” someone shouted.
“It’s a sign,” I said.
Odo spoke, his coarse voice on the verge of laughter: “Jesus, Hugh, were you trying to save this thing until we really needed it?”
I could not speak. People were shouting my name. Stephen’s henchmen were dead. I did not know whether it was our will or the lance that was responsible, but either way, we had beaten them back.
I looked at Emilie. What a knowing smile she had, as if to say, I knew, I knew. . . . I reached for her hand.
Everyone whooped and shouted. “Hugh. Lancea Dei.” Lance of God.
I had been saved. Not once but many times. Who could understand it? What had been entrusted to me? What did God want with an innkeeper? With a jester?
“The holy lance!” everyone shouted, and I finally threw my fist in the air.
But inside I was thinking, Good Lord, Hugh, what is next?
Chapter 100
WHAT WAS NEXT was bolder and more amazing than anything I could have imagined.
Our victory was complete, but it came at a great cost. Thirteen of Stephen’s mercenaries lay on the ground, but we had lost four of our own: Apples; Jacqui, the stout and cheery milk woman; a farmer, Henri; and Martin, the tailor. Many others, like Georges and Alphonse, nursed messy wounds.
When the smoke cleared, the body of the Tafur I had fought with the lance was nowhere to be found. He had not died after all.
In the ensuing days, we extinguished the fires and bade good-bye to our brave fallen friends. For the first time in anyone’s memory, bondmen had stood up to a noble. And to the fear that we could not defend ourselves simply because they were rightly born and we weren’t.
Word spread fast. Of the fight and the lance. People from neighboring towns came to see. No one could believe it at first. Farmers and tradesmen had stood up against a noble and his men.
Yet I did not join much in the celebration. I sp
ent the next several days in a troubled state atop the hill. I couldn’t work on the inn. I had to make sense of what had happened. That I had picked up the lance from the dying priest’s hand in Antioch. That, penniless, I now held a prize worth kingdoms. Why had I been chosen? What did God want of me?
And a deeper dread hung over me. What would happen next — when news of the battle reached Stephen’s ears? When he learned that we possessed the prize he so desperately coveted. Or when word reached Baldwin in Treille.
Had the poor tailor been right? Had I saved them from one slaughter only to lead them to another?
Emilie stayed with me the whole while. I looked at the lance and did not know what to do, but to her, the answer was clear. She understood what I resisted. “You have to lead them, Hugh.”
“Lead them? Lead them where?” I asked.
“I think you know where. When Stephen hears of this he will send more men. And Baldwin . . . your village is pledged to him. He will not permit such rebellion in his domain. The stone has been pushed, Hugh. You’ve sought a higher destiny. Here it is. It’s in your hands.”
“I’m just a lucky fool,” I said, “who picked up a silly antique, a souvenir. I’ll end up the biggest fool of all time.”
“I saw you in that costume many times, Hugh De Luc.” Emilie’s eyes shone brightly. “And never once thought you a fool. A while back, you left this town on a quest to make yourself free. Now, leave it again and free them all.”
I picked up the lance, weighed it like a measure in my hands.
Lead them against Baldwin? Would anyone follow? Emilie was right on one thing. We could not remain here. Baldwin would burst a vein when he heard the news. Stephen would send more troops, this time hundreds. Something had been started that could not be drawn back.
“You will be by me?” I took her hand, searched her eyes. “You will not change your mind when we are standing against Baldwin’s army and it is just us two?”
“It will not just be us two,” she said, crouching beside me. “I think you know that, Hugh.”