I tugged my jelly-slick blade from his lolling head, plunged it into the turf to clean it, wiped it on my sleeve and shoved it back into the leather sheath in my left boot. I saw that in his death spasm he had bitten into the meat of the middle finger on my left hand, but I could feel no pain in that moment as I bound the finger tightly, quickly, with a scrap of linen torn from my undershirt. Then I pulled his corpse off the road and, with some difficulty, stripped the black-and-red surcoat from his dead weight and pulled it over my own sodden black clothes. I took off his helmet and gathered up his spear and sword and set them to one side. Then I recovered the bag from the lee of the stone wall and, peeling back the moist sacking, I pulled out a massive sticky lozenge of meat and bone, about a foot and a half long, complete with pointed ears and white, still eyeballs; it was the severed head of a wild moorland pony, cut from the neck below the animal’s square jawline, and very nearly drained of blood. I looked round anxiously at the sleeping camp; there was still nothing stirring.
Using the boy’s own sword, I hacked off his young head as neatly as I could, a difficult job in the dark with a long unwieldy blade, sawing and slicing through spine, windpipe and the muscles and tendons of his neck as quietly as possible. The sword was a cheap one, blunt, notched and with the wooden handle loose and rattling on the tang. It was not neatly done, and I was terrified that the wet sounds of my cack-handed butchery could be heard in the camp, but finally I finished my grisly work and, trying my best to avoid bloodying my clothes, I propped the headless corpse in a sitting position in the ditch by the side of the track and balanced the wild horse’s head on the trunk, between the shoulders, where the boy’s would have been. I secured the beast’s head in place with the thin muddy rope that had been attached to the sack; tied it over the equine crown in front of the ears and round under the boy’s armpits, then sat back and surveyed my handiwork with a shiver of satisfaction. It looked truly gruesome; eerie and unnatural — a man’s body with a long horse’s head atop. The boy’s own sightless poll I grasped by its lank hair and hurled as far as I could, away into the darkness. It might be recovered, eventually, but the terrifying animal-headed corpse would still do its work on the men who discovered it.
I made the sign of the cross over my gory confection to keep his spirit quiet, mumbled an apologetic prayer to St Michael, the sword-wielding archangel and patron saint of battle, and gathered up my victim’s helmet, sword-belt and spear. Then I began to trudge up the muddy track. My whole body was shaking, every step I took was unsteady, and suddenly the pain in my bitten hand came roaring out of nowhere like an angry bear. I switched the spear to my other hand and fought the reeling giddiness in my head. My victim had been slightly shorter than me, even before I hacked off his pimply head, and a shade thinner, but I calculated that on that dark night, from a distance of a hundred yards or so, if I walked in his tracks, I could pass as his double before an unsuspicious eye. I finally won control of my body and mind and banished the thoughts of the infernal deed I had just done; I slumped my shoulders a little and tried to emulate his resentful slack-kneed slouching as I walked away from his mutilated cadaver.
As I reached the brow of the hill, and paused, pretending to scour the area with my eyes like a dutiful sentry, I heard the mournful call of a barn owl hooting three times from the tree on the ridge away to my right. And for the first time in hours, I cracked a smile.
Hanno.
It was the signal, a message as warming to my heart as a hug from a loving mother.
If I had heard the sour barking screech of a mating vixen, the message would have been: Run for your life, the kill has been discovered. Run.
But Hanno’s skilful imitation of a hunting owl was telling me that, for the moment, I was safe. And in that moment, I loved him for it.
I could imagine his ugly round face, his stubbled, badly shaven head and wide grin, and hear his harsh foreign-accented words of praise at my completion of an unpleasant, difficult, bloody task, and I turned towards the tree where I knew he was concealed, a mere hundred and fifty yards away now that I was at the top of the track, and had to resist the urge to raise my hand to him in salute. Instead, I turned on my heel and, walking boldly, even jauntily, surcoat swishing around my shins, spear casually on my left shoulder, I made my way downhill, away from the muddy road, away from my friend Hanno, and plunged into the heart of the enemy encampment.
I walked with purpose, quietly but never stealthily, through the sleeping tents of my enemies, with what I hoped was a nonchalant grin fixed to my face — though it was, of course, too dark to see my expression. A few campfires were still smouldering between the tents, and a handful of men-at-arms dozed beside them wrapped in blankets, or sat slumped over jugs of ale. The September night still retained a little of the warmth of summer, but most of the men had retired to the large, low, saggy woollen tents that were dotted over almost all the surface of the open field.
Somewhere in the sleeping camp, I knew, was a friend and comrade, a strange middle-aged Norman woman named Elise. She had attached herself to our company on the way to the Holy Land, and had become the leader of the women who had joined our marching column. A healer of no little skill, she had undoubtedly saved many a life on the long journey to Outremer and back, tending the hurts of battle. Some whispered that she had other, darker skills and could read the future, but while I had found that her prophecies for the most part seemed to come true, they were always vague enough to be interpreted in several ways.
My master had sent Elise into the camp two days previously, to read the soldiers’ palms, tell wondrous and bone-chilling fireside tales — and to deliberately sow a particular fear among the enemy’s ranks. I hoped that she was safe: had she been captured and found to be a spy, she would have faced a slow and painful death.
I had half-overheard Robin give her orders the day before she left us to wander in the guise of a travelling seller of trinkets into the camp — to be honest, I had been hanging around him hoping to persuade him that I was not the right man for the task of dealing with the sentry; but I had the impression he knew this and was avoiding a conversation with me.
‘Elise, you are sure that you can do this; that you wish to do this?’ Robin said, fixing her with his strange silver eyes, his handsome face concerned and kindly. They were equals in height, but she was as thin as a straw, clad in a long shapeless dark dress that had once been green, her lined face topped with a mass of white fluffy hair. She looked like nothing so much as a giant seeding dandelion.
‘Oh yes, Master Robin, I can do this. It is but a small thing to spin a few tales at a campfire.’
‘And you know which tales you are to spin?’ asked my master.
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ she said impatiently, ‘the spirits of dead men are trapped inside the wild ponies hereabouts, and horse-headed monsters patrol the night stealing men’s souls for the Devil… Wooooooah! Hooooagh!’ She made a series of loud eerie noises in the back of her throat and waggled her fingers in the air like a madwoman. It should have been ridiculous, comical even, but on that warm September afternoon I felt my blood chill a little. ‘Don’t you worry, master, they will all have nightmares,’ this odd woman continued. ‘And don’t you concern yourself about me, sir; no harm will come to me. I have seen the shape of the future in a bubbling cauldron of blood soup, and all will be well; you shall have your victory, sir. Mark my words. A great victory after a night of fire and mortal fear.’