Master of Shadows Read online

  ‘I am sure you would have put yourself in harm’s way for me, Badr – but I doubt even you could have shielded me from …’

  ‘From what?’ asked Badr.

  Patrick looked him in the eye before answering.

  ‘From love,’ he said.

  They were not in the habit of discussing such things, and the spoken truth of it sat between them like an uncomfortable stranger.

  Badr grunted, to fill the silence.

  ‘I loved her,’ said Patrick. ‘I doubt even your skill on the battlefield would have spared me such wounds.’

  Badr sighed and clapped a big hand on his friend’s shoulder.

  ‘But if she believes, as you say she does, in a loving God, why does she think he would want her to be unhappy and alone?’ he asked. ‘How could she believe he would want her own flesh and blood to grow up without a mother’s love?’

  Patrick Grant began walking towards a gangplank leading up to the side of a ship moored alongside the harbour wall, the boy-child cradled in one arm. The ship, a three-masted and lateen-rigged carrack bearing the name Fuwalda, creaked and groaned like a tethered beast. Among other people on the deck, a young woman, plump and with strawberry-blonde hair, stood by the base of the mizzenmast, her face turned towards Patrick and his son. Badr stooped and picked up the baby’s basket before following.

  ‘He will not grow up without a mother,’ said Patrick. ‘I promise you that. I promise him that, here and now …’

  Back in the cave once more, the vision ended, Badr looked away from the shaft of sunlight and up at John Grant’s profile.

  ‘Tell me about my mother,’ said John Grant a second time – for to him, only a moment had passed while Badr had breathed twice and mumbled once.

  ‘She was a lost soul, I think,’ said Badr, struggling to hold on to the present.

  John Grant looked down at his friend. His need to press him for more, to know more, was almost overwhelming. But he saw the man was drifting like a ship that had slipped its mooring. From moment to moment he came close, then floated out of reach once more, pulled by a dark tide.

  He was lying in a slick of blood that seeped slowly from his wounds, a slow but enervating flow that John Grant was powerless to staunch.

  ‘I am thirsty,’ he said.

  John Grant reached for a water bottle by his side. The rivulet that entered the cave from above and pooled in a shallow dish of rock before spilling forwards and on towards the daylight was perfectly drinkable. He cradled the Moor’s head as he held the opened bottle to his lips and let a trickle of water into his mouth. Badr was able to swallow without coughing or choking and John Grant let him have a little more.

  ‘Not too much, Bear,’ he said, pulling the bottle back from the big man’s lips.

  ‘What difference will it make?’ whispered Badr, and John Grant returned it, and let him have a few more sips.

  This time, there was a tightening in Badr’s chest and he was convulsed with coughing. John Grant held him, turning his head towards the floor for fear he might choke. He spat to clear his mouth and there was dark blood mixed with the water. He gazed at the gobbet and his eyes lost focus.

  ‘Proclaim: in the name of thy Lord who created …’ he said, ‘who created man from a blood clot.’

  ‘What?’ asked John Grant, gently stroking his long dark hair, but the Moor, at peace once more, had drifted beyond his reach …

  Badr was a little boy again and seated with others like him at a wooden table covered with books. They were learning the literal word of God, as was their duty as Muslim converts. They were learning the Quran (which meant recitation) by rote, and in Arabic.

  A bearded man, his head wound around with a long white cloth, was reciting the verses one by one, and Badr and the rest of the boys repeated them, for fear of punishment.

  ‘Proclaim! And thy Lord is the most generous, who teaches by the pen,’ he said, his voice still unbroken, the voice of a child. ‘Teaches man what he knew not.’

  Young Badr kept his head down, careful to avoid the teacher’s gaze.

  When he raised it once more, it was into Izzi’s face that he looked. She was telling him that she loved him.

  ‘So kiss me,’ she said. Her hair, long and dark blonde, like honey, was loose around her shoulders. He stepped towards her and ran his fingers into that waterfall of thick tresses. He held her head and felt how fragile she was, like a figure made of blown glass. How was he to keep her safe when the touch of his own hands might break her?

  ‘Kiss me,’ she said again, and closed her eyes. Her lips were soft and slightly parted. He glimpsed the tips of white teeth. And he kissed her and reached his arms around her and pulled her to him as though to make her part of him.

  When he opened his eyes he was looking only at the clot of blood, suspended in the gobbet of water and mucus he had coughed on to the floor of the cave.

  ‘The scallop shell,’ he said. His words were faint, ghostly.

  John Grant had forgotten all about the keepsake and looked around for it. It lay upon his own folded cloak, where he had placed it before rushing out in search of Angus Armstrong. He reached over and picked it up, along with the scarf. Sitting down by Badr, he ran one finger around the edge of the shell. It felt old and dry and brittle.

  ‘Do you know what it means?’ asked Badr.

  ‘Means?’ asked John Grant. ‘No.’

  Badr coughed again – but out of frustration rather than pain.

  ‘I never did think I would have time to educate you properly,’ he said. ‘And it seems certain I was right.’

  He looked at the young man and was struck again by how much he was his father’s son.

  ‘The scallop shell is the symbol …’ he paused for breath, ‘of the Great Shrine of St James in Galicia. Pilgrims carry the shells as mementoes of their journey.’

  ‘And this was my mother’s?’ asked John Grant.

  ‘That’s where your father took her,’ said Badr. ‘After he saved her life, he took her to the shrine in hopes she would be safe there. Out of sight.’

  ‘Out of sight of what?’ asked John Grant. ‘Of who?’

  Badr looked into the young man’s eyes and smiled.

  ‘Out of sight of the world,’ he said. ‘Out of sight of Robert Jardine and Angus Amstrong and the rest of them. I would prefer you to hear it all from her one day.’

  ‘How do they know about her?’ asked John Grant. ‘What is she to them? Why do you leave it until now to tell me these things?’

  Badr sighed, and then coughed long and hard.

  ‘I thought I would have more time,’ he said at last.

  He breathed in deeply, a rattling draught that filled John Grant with fear.

  Badr was walking hand in hand with Izzi. He did not need to look at her to know it was she. The touch of her hand was enough. They were walking towards a setting sun, and skipping along in front of them was a boy of about eight or nine years. Badr did not need to see his face, either, to know that it was John Grant.

  It was a time that had never been, in a place he had never known. A dream of a might-have-been. He felt tears stinging his eyes and blinked to clear his vision.

  ‘My son,’ he said.

  John Grant reached for him once more, positioned himself so that Badr’s head was cradled in his lap. He brushed tears from Badr’s face and leaned back, closing his eyes against his own grief.

  Blindly he reached for the scarf and began running the fabric through his fingers.

  He felt something solid knock against the heel of one hand. Looking down, he saw that one end of the scarf had been pulled through a little gold ring, and knotted. He worked at the knot until it came loose, and the ring fell into the palm of his hand. It was small, wrought for a woman’s finger rather than a man’s.

  ‘It is one of a kind,’ said Badr. ‘Like the woman it was made for.’

  John Grant looked at him through the circle of gold.

  ‘Your father had it made as a gift for y
our mother,’ Badr said. ‘A keepsake.’

  John Grant rolled it between thumb and index finger and then held it closer to his eye. It had been fashioned to look like a little belt, but with the buckle undone in a gesture of submission. On the inner circumference was an inscription – words he could read but not understand.

  ‘No tengo mas que darte,’ he said.

  ‘I have nothing more to give thee,’ said Badr.

  PART TWO

  Lẽna

  16

  Galicia, 1452

  ‘Lẽna … Lẽna …’

  The sound of her name, repeated over and over, drifted up from a courtyard in the valley below.

  ‘Lẽna … Lẽna …’

  Like smoke, the word reached her through the leaves and branches of the forest, dispersed and diminished, but unmistakable. It was the nuns’ name for her and also the local word for firewood. Since it was she who provided the kindling and logs for their fires, it was appropriate, and the thought of it always made her smile.

  She was seated on the stump of a large pine tree she had felled years before, at the centre of a clearing that was altogether the result of her own labour. Her axe was at her feet, and as she looked at it, listening to the girl’s voice calling her name, she realised she had rested long enough to get cold. The chill of the dying of the day had raised goose bumps on the exposed skin of her arms. She rubbed them with both hands and stood to get the blood moving, stamping her feet to speed the process.

  A stranger happening upon her there and then might have mistaken her for a man. Her hair was dark, almost black, and though silver threads were plentiful now, it was thick and unruly as always, soft sleek curls like the fleece of a newborn lamb.

  She always cut her hair herself, short all over. Whenever anyone questioned the style – and those occasions were rare – she either gave no reply or explained that long hair was only a hindrance to one who spent her days working in the woods with axes, hammers and wedges.

  She was tall for a woman, and while her build was slim and light, years of hard work had toned her muscles and broadened her back. Veins stood proud on the backs of both hands and on her forearms, and taut tendons and hard muscles defined her upper arms and shoulders.

  Her movements too belied her gender. Years of practice with the axe and hammer had given her a physical confidence more suggestive of a male than a female. Her ease with the tools of her trade was impressive too, allowing the weight of the steel and the length of the axe shaft to do most of the work, so that to an observer it seemed effortless.

  More than anything, from a distance at least, it was her clothing that was most masculine. Always she had favoured trousers over skirts, and her tunics and cloaks of rough linen and wool were of a sort normally worn by men. Her trousers were tucked into knee-high leather boots tipped with steel plates at heel and toe, much worn but well cared for like all of her few possessions.

  Despite the effect the years of woodcutting had had on her body, up close there was no mistaking the truth of her. Now forty years old, she was still an arresting sight, even more so than in her youth. When she smiled or laughed, it seemed every other year had passed her by. Her complexion was dark, in part from years spent outdoors in all weathers, making her pale blue eyes all the more startling. The skin of her hands and arms was tanned too, so that when she stripped to bathe, the contrast with the milk-white paleness of her narrow-waisted torso and long legs made her wince. There was white too in the many scars that marked the skin of her hands and arms, and that took no colour from the sun.

  ‘Lẽna!’

  They often called to her rather than trek up the steep hill into the woods to find her, but now she noticed something unfamiliar in the tone. There was urgency in the cry. The feeling of cold was gone from her body now. She turned to face in the direction of the call and reached down for her axe with her right hand. Not once in all the years in the woods had she felt the need of a weapon, but her actions were without conscious thought. Instead it was reflex that moved her arms and legs.

  She was walking towards the sound of her name, and as she did so she passed the axe to her left hand, her good hand. If needs be it would be wielded by both, but it was her left that ran the show, and she raised the tool so that the weight of the head made the shaft slip easily downwards, through her fingers, until the cold steel rested against her thumb and index finger. The heft, the hardness and certainty of the metal, brought comfort as she weighed the situation.

  Whoever had been calling for her – and it had sounded like Osana, one of the young initiates – was silent now.

  The forest too was silent, unnaturally so. No birdsong, no insects. A breath held.

  It was a small sound, a misplaced step close behind her, that opened a door into the memories stored like wisdom in her muscles and had her drop and turn and swing her axe in a long arc parallel to the ground. It was only at the moment that the carefully sharpened edge of the axe head met the steel of a sword blade that she caught sight of her enemy for the first time. For a fraction of a heartbeat she reproached herself – how had he got so close?

  A look of astonishment flashed across the man’s features as he realised that his sword – held in front of him as he advanced through the trees towards her – was now out of his hand and spinning away to his left. It landed heavily, disappearing into the brown pine needles that thickly carpeted the forest floor.

  Not that she could have known it, but he had not meant to harm the woman. Their job was only to find her and take her captive – indeed, any permanent damage inflicted upon their target would likely be followed by their own deaths at the hands of their master – but suddenly the task had taken on an unexpected air of physical danger. He looked into her eyes as he backed smartly away, arms stretched out in front of him in a gesture of submission.

  ‘Who are you?’ she said evenly, her pale eyes unblinking as she crabbed sideways in the first steps of a wide circle around him. ‘What do you want?’

  Whatever he wanted and whoever he was, he stayed quiet. His silence was not his undoing. Rather it was a glance beyond her, over her left shoulder, that betrayed his companion. He realised his mistake at once and bared his teeth in a grimace as she turned to locate whoever was behind her.

  It was a second man, older and bigger than the first but quieter over the ground. He was perhaps a dozen paces away, but as soon as she spied him he stopped his approach – apparently no more keen than his accomplice to come within reach of the axe.

  There was a moment of perfect stillness then, while no one breathed or blinked or flexed so much as a finger. And then the world turned and a breeze blew through the treetops and she smiled an ancient smile as she shifted both hands to the base of her axe shaft, reached way back over her head with it and pulled forward to send it whirling towards the younger man.

  He had the reactions of youth sure enough, but they were not enough, not by a long chalk. In the moment she had raised her weapon she read his body, saw him flinch towards his left and made a minute adjustment to her aim so that the heavy blade, lethally sharp, struck him on the side of his head just in front of his right ear. Two pounds of steel sent on their way by practised muscles and backed by the momentum provided by nearly four feet of spinning ash shaft ensured his skull was split open like a watermelon. The impact smacked him off his feet and he was dead before he hit the ground.

  Certain of where the axe’s journey would end, even before she let go of it, she had turned from the throw to face the second man, stooping low as she did so and slipping both hands into the loose tops of her boots. When she straightened, still moving towards her target, she had a long-bladed knife in each hand. She could smell him now as well, an animal stink that spoke of weeks and months in the same clothes, and perhaps fresh fear.

  The older man, after a startled glance in the direction of his felled companion, returned his attention to his erstwhile prey. They had been told she was no stranger to the fight, but none of it had prepared him
for this last handful of moments among the trees. She crouched low then and moved towards him like a hunting dog, without any visible trace of hesitation, far less the fear to which his trade in the pursuit of hostages had made him more accustomed. He backed away quickly, sword raised in his right hand and with his left outstretched for balance.

  If the third man had played fair she would have allowed for him too – even dealt with him, given a few more seconds. But while his companions were usually effective enough in their own, direct way, he was an ambush predator. As the others advanced upon her, he had buried himself beneath a mound of undergrowth at the base of a towering pine tree. So well concealed was he, so still, that when he leapt to his feet the woman was already past him and wholly focused on the only other person she knew to be in her territory.

  Even so, she registered his appearance and was turning her face towards him as he brought the lead-weighted cosh down towards her temple. In the heartbeat of time before the blow landed, she flexed her left arm backwards and down.

  She was conscious just long enough to feel her blade penetrate his right leg, above the knee. The lights were out in those unforgettable eyes, however, before she could be rewarded with the sound of his squeal.

  17

  It was dark when she regained consciousness. She was lying on her side, wrists and ankles bound behind her back with what felt like leather ties. She had no idea where she was, and while she allowed her thoughts to reassemble, she gazed into the campfire that burned some yards in front of her.

  While her face and front were warmed by the flames, her back was chilled and stiff. Worse than any other discomfort, however, was the sickening pain in her head. She remembered the blow that had dropped her, and all at once the events of the attack returned. She played them through calmly, assessing her movements and mistakes. The dancing flames became her focus, allowing her mind to work freely.

  ‘How is it?’