Page 14 of The Devils

Blessed is a Stretch

Every step was its own little ordeal.

You’d have thought, on a long march, the legs would hurt worst. And yes, all the usual niggles were there. The aches, the stings, the twinges. The right hip. The left knee his horse had rolled over in the desert. Both ankles, obviously. His foot where the troll’s club crushed it that time. And the toe, of course. Oh God, the toe.

But after the morning routine of groaning, testing, kneading, stretching, wishing for death, praying for death, then a mile or two of lurching torment, the waist-down discomfort settled to an almost manageable throb. Then, like the flames on that enchanter’s tower they’d burned near Wroclaw, the pain would spread upwards.

There was the lower back, the upper back, and the stretch of back between. That constant sawing at the bottom of the ribs from that bastard Swede’s axe. Three or four assorted stings in the neck. Some weird cramping under the right arm and that space between the shoulder blades that always felt twisted, however he wriggled. There was the ache in the lung from the Smiling Knight’s lance, neither quite in the back nor the front. But that only hurt when he breathed in. Or out. Then there were the latest wounds, from the inn, the arrows and the sword, still with that ugly sharpness of the new. The new ones were always worse than they deserved. Till they got settled into the routine. Further footnotes to a life of violence.

Every step was painful, but every step had been painful for two lifetimes, now. Jakob kept taking them. The paces don’t have to be quick, or long, or pretty. They just have to keep going.

Keep the steps coming. Someone had told him that, on the long retreat from Ryazan. So tired and hurt he couldn’t remember who. He remembered the smell of it, though. The shimmering sun hanging on the black horizon. The thirst and the flies. The parched steppe stretching into infinity. The faces of the men they left by the way. The endless terror, grinding as a mill wheel. The sudden panic, brutal as a flash of lightning.

He’d learned, then, what men are. He’d seen grand betrayal, towering folly, endless greed, and bottomless cowardice. But he’d seen tiny, stunning heroics, too. A crust shared. A cracked voice raised in song. One man carrying another on his back. Another refusing to be carried. A hand on the shoulder and a voice saying, Keep the steps coming.

Each man found out who he was, on that endless expanse of mud and torment.

Jakob found out who he was. And he hadn’t liked the bastard very much.

‘Your Excellency .’ Brother Diaz likely would’ve scraped the ground with his nose if he could’ve managed it while walking.

Bishop Apollonia of Acci, leader of their so-called Blessed Company, wore the smile of a woman who’d never had to beat a desperate retreat. She was a famed theologist, reputed to be marked out for future sainthood. Jakob had yet to see a theologist solve a problem they hadn’t themselves created. As for sainthood, he’d known four people beatified after death, and at least one had been an utter shit while alive, and at least one other an absolute lunatic.

‘To what do we owe the honour of your visit?’ wheedled Brother Diaz.

The bishop waved off his fawning. ‘While I am away from my diocese, I am but one humble pilgrim among many.’ To be fair to her, aside from a silver Circle of the Faith, she put on no airs, wearing the same filth-hemmed sackcloth as the rest of them. ‘I am introducing myself to everyone in the company. I can tell you from experience, this is a journey on which one can use every friend.’

‘You’ve been on pilgrimage before?’

‘This will be my third.’

‘Can’t stop sinning?’ muttered Jakob.

‘To be human is to sin,’ said the bishop, mildly. ‘To sin, and to strive for redemption.’

‘Amen to that!’ sang Brother Diaz. ‘Amen, amen, indeed.’

He was quite the kiss-arse, but that’s monks for you. Pay a man to grovel to God three times a day and he’ll soon be grovelling to everyone.

‘You are clearly suffering.’ Bishop Apollonia was considering Jakob with what could only be described as quiet concern. ‘Might I guess at a war wound?’

‘You might guess at several,’ grunted Jakob. He hated sympathy. He knew he didn’t deserve it.

‘You should visit the Shrine of Saint Stephen when we pass. He is a patron of warriors.’

‘Protectors, in particular,’ murmured Jakob. ‘I carried his likeness for many years. An icon, screwed to the back of my shield.’

‘But no longer?’

‘I buried it.’ Jakob winced. At his knee, or the memory, or both. ‘With a friend. Someone who deserved it more.’

Bishop Apollonia thoughtfully nodded. ‘Appropriate. Stephen was a fearsome fighter, but after a vision of the Saviour he chose to bury his sword and turn his talents to healing. His relics have been known to ease the pain of wounds.’

‘I fear my ills won’t be so easily cured.’

‘A wound to the body pales beside a wound to the soul.’

Jakob wasn’t sure he agreed. Borys Droba certainly wouldn’t have. He’d received a pike in the genitals in the press around the gates of Narva. Took him seven months to die of it, and not good months. But Jakob doubted that particular parable would be to the bishop’s taste. If he’d learned one thing during his many years on earth, it was that words are rarely better than silence. Particularly when it comes to genitals. So he gave a weary grunt, and left it at that.

By then, Bishop Apollonia was shading her eyes with one hand to glance back down the road. ‘Might I ask your opinion of our Blessed Company?’

Jakob had often been called on to judge the size of a body of people – sometimes while it charged at him with a blood-curdling war cry – and he reckoned this band at some two hundred souls. In the vanguard, accompanied by half a dozen soldiers and a disgruntled nun, was the bishop’s horse-drawn portable pulpit, an invention that might have impressed Brother Diaz even more than the bishop herself.

The wealthiest of the pilgrims followed, including two portraits, carried by servants, of a merchant of Anagni and her fourth husband. They’d yearned to tend to their immortal souls, apparently, but a bit less than they yearned to tend to business, so they’d bought dispensation to send likenesses in their place. The Saviour had said one could not buy one’s way into heaven, but most agreed that was just a negotiating tactic on her part.

Smallholders, craftsmen, and farmers made up the bulk of the fellowship, several labouring under some affliction. A blind couple was led by a little girl. A hollow-faced woman bounced groaning on a litter. All praying dutifully for a miracle at the many shrines along the way.

The poor were towards the rear, with fewer pack animals and worse footwear. There were several prisoners doing Church-mandated penance, some wearing fetters or signs proclaiming their offences. A shifting tail of hangers-on trailed behind: beggars and thieves, pimps and prostitutes, dealers in all manner of vices, including a tent set up every night from which music and laughter floated till dawn. There was even a softly spoken moneylender with a pawnshop in a wagon and several hard-eyed guards. A time-proven business plan, Jakob didn’t doubt. A group fixed on forgiveness must, after all, include a decent number of habitual sinners.

What did Jakob think of their Blessed Company? He thought it was society in miniature, with its mean and its mighty, its grand hopes and petty ambitions, its rivalry, privilege, greed, and exploitation, topped and tailed by a portable pulpit and a foldaway brothel.

‘I think blessed is a stretch,’ he said, and struggled on. Stop too long, you’ll never start again.

Brother Diaz glared towards the stragglers with pious disapproval. ‘There are some unsavoury elements in attendance … could your guards not encourage them to move on?’

‘Virtue is found in the resistance of temptation,’ said the bishop, ‘rather than its absence. And are not the lowly and abused in as much need of God’s grace as the privileged?’

‘It’s certainly a lot harder for them to afford it,’ grunted Jakob.

The bishop chuckled. ‘A warrior and a thinker? Two qualities all too rarely combined. Tell me, my son, what trespass are you atoning for?’

It was around this point Jakob usually regretted swearing a vow of honesty. Like murdering a count, marrying a witch, or accepting a post as the Pope’s Executioner, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. ‘Well …’ He stretched the word out as long as possible. ‘When it comes to atonement … it’s hard to settle on any one thing—’

‘Jarek doesn’t like to talk about it.’ Alex slung a friendly arm around Jakob’s crooked shoulders, looking earnestly up into the bishop’s face. ‘He’s one of those strong and silent types. Brooding away on a dark past, I daresay. Maybe he’ll break down and confess it all in tears, but I wouldn’t hold my breath, eh, Jarek?’

Jakob had sworn not to lie. He’d made no promises about others lying on his behalf. So he gave another weary grunt, and left it at that.

Bishop Apollonia opened her mouth but before she could make a sound Alex slung her other arm around Brother Diaz’s shoulders. ‘Brother Lopez has a special commission from Her Holiness the Pope!’

‘I do?’ muttered the monk, eyes wide.

Alex nodded towards the rest of the group. ‘To accompany these poor convicted sinners on pilgrimage and see them brought to the grace of our Saviour.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Brother Diaz looked over his flock with scant enthusiasm. ‘ That mission.’

‘We have Basil of Messina.’ Alex jerked a thumb at Balthazar. ‘A merchant of Sicily. Far as I can tell, his main sin is a gigantic opinion of himself. Though he also made a deal with pirates.’

Balthazar raised one brow at her. ‘In my line of work, one is sometimes forced into unsavoury company.’

‘Rikard is my name,’ said the baron, offering Bishop Apollonia his hand.

‘He has a …’ Alex narrowed her eyes slightly. ‘Drinking problem?’

Rikard displayed his pointed teeth. ‘You could say that.’

‘It is a powerful gesture of piety …’ The bishop raised her brows at Vigga’s bare feet, one tattooed around the toes with a snaking of runes, the other clearly marked beware . ‘To walk the road to redemption barefoot.’

‘Just like the feel of the mud between my toes.’ And Vigga gave a shiver and a giggle at once as she wriggled them, which could almost have been charming, had Jakob not seen her do the things he’d seen her do.

‘Vigga was a Viking,’ explained Alex.

‘Plainly,’ murmured Balthazar, with a look of scorn.

‘A pagan.’

‘Plainly,’ murmured Brother Diaz, with a look of regret.

‘A feared shield-maiden who went on raids against the English …’

‘Surely no one blames her for that,’ observed the bishop.

‘… but Brother Lopez has brought her to the light of the Saviour!’

‘Praise be,’ muttered Baron Rikard, rolling his eyes.

‘And you, my child?’ asked Apollonia, looking now at Alex. ‘For someone so talkative have you nothing to say for yourself?’

Alex ruefully hung her head. ‘It shames me to admit I was a thief, Your Excellency.’

‘Well. Saint Catherine was herself a thief, before she renounced all worldly things. By admitting your trespasses, you have taken a fine first step. Perhaps you, too, can claim redemption and turn your undoubted talents to higher purposes.’

Alex piously fluttered her lashes. ‘Who doesn’t hope for that?’

‘I have always felt hope to be the foremost of the Twelve Virtues.’

‘The one from which all others flow,’ said Brother Diaz, nodding along.

‘To turn such damaged souls towards grace?’ The bishop placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Truly, Brother Lopez, you are doing God’s work.’

‘I try, Your Excellency.’ He looked up to the heavens. ‘He does not make it easy.’

‘Where would be the value in prizes easily won? It must be close to lunch. We should halt for midday prayers.’ And she steered Brother Diaz towards the head of the column. ‘I thought perhaps you might like to give a reading to our virtuous legion! The tale of Jonah and the dragon, perhaps?’

‘One of my favourites!’

Vigga watched them go, scratching thoughtfully at her stretched-out throat with the backs of her fingernails. ‘I like the sound of shield-maiden.’

‘Shield-maiden, please.’ The baron snorted. ‘Axe-bitch, maybe.’

Vigga grinned. ‘I really like the sound of axe-bitch.’

‘Brother Diaz seems very taken with the bishop,’ said Alex, watching him strut off beside her.

‘Doubt she’ll fuck him,’ said Vigga.

Balthazar pressed at the bridge of his nose. ‘Not everything is about fucking.’

‘Course not.’ Vigga cheerfully sniffed up snot and spat it into the mud. ‘Only three-quarters of it.’

‘Hope it doesn’t end in tears,’ said Alex.

Jakob pressed at his aching shoulder with his thumb, then limped on.

‘Everything ends in tears,’ he muttered.