The Nameless Day

Johan flinched as if he’d been struck, and he mumbled something inaudible to which Marcel replied equally inaudibly, and the group continued to struggle onwards.

And so, inch by inch, harsh breath by harsh breath, and sweaty hand clinging to rock after rock, they moved forwards through the day, and through the Brenner Pass.

There was no relief, save for brief rest periods, until mid-afternoon, and by that time Thomas thought his muscles would never manage to unclench themselves from their knots of fear and effort. He had believed himself a relatively courageous man, but this trail…

He, as everyone else, let out a sigh of deeply felt relief as the lead ox cart suddenly moved forward far more confidently into a small plateau carved into the side of the cliff.

“We will halt here,” Marcel said. “It is the only place where we can camp safely before the end of the pass.”

“We don’t push on through this evening?” Thomas said.

Marcel gave him an exasperated look. “And you think that you could push through another eight or nine hours of what we’ve just endured?”

Thomas’ mouth twisted in a wry grin, and he shook his head. “I thank God I have made it safe this far. You must have needed to travel very fast very badly to dare this pass.”

Marcel glanced at Marcoaldi and Bierman climbing unsteadily out of the cart. “We all had pressing business, my friend.”

He moved off and Thomas sank down in a relatively dry spot. He leaned his back against the rock of the cliff face and tried to relax his cramped muscles.

Lord God, Wynkyn had done this four times a year? May Saint Michael grant me such courage.

Then he sighed and let his thoughts drift, and, as the guides helped the guards unpack provisions and firewood from the lead cart, drifted into a grateful doze.

They ate about the roaring campfire, talked, ate some more, and then Thomas led the entire group in evening prayers before they retired for as much sleep as they could get on the cold, hard ground. The older men slept in the carts, but Thomas took the blanket offered by one of the guides, and rolled himself up in it, lying down close to the fire. He lay awake a while, cold and uncomfortable, but very gradually he felt himself drifting into sleep, and his last conscious sight was of one of the guards moving among the horses, making sure their hobbles and tethers were secure.

He woke sometime so deep in the night that the fire had burned down into glowing coals. There was complete stillness in the camp—not even the horses moved or snuffled.

He blinked, not otherwise moving, and wondered if this was a dream. The night had such an ethereal quality…

Something moved to one side, and Thomas lazily turned his head.

And then stared wildly as a shadow leaped out from under the rock face and thudded down on his body.

Thomas opened his mouth, although he was so winded—and so agonised—by the weight of the creature atop him that he did not think he could—

“Make a sound, you black-robed abomination, and I will gut you here and now!”

Thomas stilled, his mouth still open, and stared at the face only a few handspans above his.

It was incomparably vile, if only because the creature had thought to assume the face of an angel, but had been unable to accomplish the unearthly beauty of one of the heavenly creatures. The face was vaguely manlike, although the eyes were much larger and were such a pale blue they almost glowed in the fading firelight. Its chin was more pointed than a man’s, and its forehead far broader and higher. Its skin was perfection: pale, creamy, flawless.

But there the beauty ended. At the hairline, among the tight silvery curls, curled the horns of a mountain goat, and when the creature smiled, it revealed tiny, pointed teeth.

“You see only what you want to see,” it hissed, and then shifted its weight slightly. Thomas groaned, for one of the creature’s—the demon’s!—clawed feet was digging into his belly, and another cut through both blanket and robes and pinned his right upper arm so agonisingly to the rocky ground that Thomas thought it might be broken.

“Uncomfortable, friar?” the demon said, and laughed softly. “Waiting for an angel to save you? Well, where is your blessed archangel now, priest? Where?”

“Get you gone, you hound from hell!” Thomas whispered, and the creature lifted its head and tilted its face to the moon, shaking with silent laughter.

As it did so, its features blurred slightly, as if the demon only wore a pretty mask to tease Thomas.

Thomas realised that something truly frightful writhed under that facade.

Suddenly the demon dropped its head so close that its lips touched Thomas’ forehead. “Your God and all your bright collection of saints and angels will not help you now, priest. It is just you and I—”

Thomas fought back equal amounts of nausea and fear, and managed to speak. “In the name of the Father, and the—”

The demon lifted the clawed hand holding down Thomas’ right arm and slammed it over Thomas’ throat, making him gag mid-sentence. He twisted his head from side to side, desperately trying to breathe.

“I ordered you not to speak!” the demon said.

Thomas managed to lift his right arm—Lord God, the pain!—and grabbed at the clawed fingers over his throat, but the demon was the size and weight of a pony, and he could not shift it. Instead, he felt the demon shift its weight so that more of it bore down on the leg on Thomas’ belly, and he almost passed out from the torment.

The demon snarled, and shifted its weight again, easing the pressure on both Thomas’ neck and belly.

“I know what you are doing,” the demon said. “We all know! You think to take Wynkyn’s burden on your shoulders, you think to take his place. You pitiful creature! We have been free too long now to submit again to the seductive songs of the Keeper—”

“Who are you?” Thomas croaked. “Who?”

“Who? Who?” The demon hissed with laughter again. “I, as mine, are your future, Thomas. One day you will embrace us, and throw your God—” he spoke the word as the most foulest of curses “—onto the dungheap that He deserves!”

“I will never betray my God!”

The demon’s mouth slid open in a wide grin. “Ah, Thomas, but will you be able to recognise the manner of temptation we will place in your way?”

“I will never betray my God!”

“You think to hunt us down, Thomas,” the demon said, very softly now, “but one day…one day…you will embrace us.”

Suddenly the demon lifted its head, and stared across the rock plateau as if something, or someone, had caught its attention.

It blinked, and cocked its head, its horns catching a shimmer of moonlight.

Then it looked back at Thomas. “You think to lead the armies of righteousness against us, Thomas. You think to be God’s General. Well, one day, one wicked black day, you will crucify righteousness for the sake of evil!”

Then the fingers still about Thomas’ neck tightened to impossible cruelties, and Thomas blacked out.

“Thomas? Thomas? Good brother, only a friar used to the hard couches of his priesthood could possibly sleep so well on this stony ground!”

Thomas opened his eyes, felt the hand on his shoulder, then jerked up into a sitting position, making Marcel reel backwards onto his haunches.

“My God, brother, do you always wake this anxious? It must be the shock of hearing the bells for Matins in the middle of every night!”

Marcel was trying to make a jest of Thomas’ reaction, but Thomas was in no mood for jests. He got to his feet, wincing at the pain in his arm and belly, his eyes skittering about the campsite.

“Thomas?” Marcel half reached out a hand, then thought better of it.

Some of the others, including the two Biermans and several of the German guards had stopped what they were doing to watch Thomas.

Everything seemed usual; there was nothing to indicate what had happened to him last night.

Thomas looked back to Marcel, who was staring at him with a concerned face.

“Thomas…Thomas, what is wrong?”

Thomas took a deep breath and calmed himself. “A demon haunted this camp last night, Marcel.”

“What?”

“It taunted me with failure, and told me I would betray my God.”

“Lord Christ Saviour, Thomas! Are you certain? This was not a dream?”

Thomas tore back his right sleeve and exposed his upper arm. “Is this a dream?”

Marcel looked at Thomas’ arm, then gasped in shock. It was covered in blue and black bruises, etched here and there with deep abrasions.

He crossed himself. “A demon? Lord Christ save me! Save me!”

He closed his eyes, steadied himself, then hesitantly took Thomas’ hand. “You beat him off with the strength of your faith. This is ungodly territory, but you were strong, and you prevailed. You are a good man, Thomas. A good man.”

Thomas let Marcel’s words and touch comfort him, but he knew that the demon had been in no danger from Thomas. It had left of its own accord, or obeying whatever had called to it, rather than being beaten back by the strength of Thomas’ will…but, as Marcel’s grip tightened slightly, Thomas persuaded himself that the demon had known its cause was hopeless, and so left him alone.

“And your neck,” Marcel said softly. “You have been ill-used indeed, brother. Come, one of the guides has some skill in healing, and has some pouches of salves that ease the worst of rock sprains and bruises.”

Thomas smiled slightly to thank Marcel for his concern. “And let us hope that they ease demon strains and burns, my friend.”

Marcel took Thomas over to one of the guards, leaving him sitting on a rock as the guard rummaged about in a pack for his salves.

Thomas saw Marcel walk over to his companions, and lean down to speak to Marcoaldi who was still wrapped up in his blankets on the ground. Unheard words passed between them, and then Thomas saw Marcel harangue Marcoaldi angrily. Thomas frowned, wondering what the banker had done to earn Marcel’s ire, when the guide drew back his sleeve to inspect the abrasions and bruises.

The man laughed, his tongue running about his thick lips, and he looked slyly at Thomas. “I hope she was worth the sport,” he said, and made an obscene gesture with one of his hands “and that your loving left her unable to walk for the next three days.”

He roared with laughter, and Thomas, furious, pulled himself out of the man’s grip and stalked away.

Peasant!

Marcel kept close to him for the day’s nightmare journey through the last part of the pass. The trail was not appreciably narrower or steeper, but what made this section so dangerous were the constant waterfalls that roared down the cliff making the footing so treacherous that the guides insisted that everyone be roped together. It saved Thomas’ life on three occasions.

Once he fell so badly he slipped entirely over the edge of the path, leaving Marcel and one of the guides to haul him back to safety.

When he finally stood on his feet again, shivering with terror, he looked up to see Marcoaldi staring at him with eyes filled with bitterness and grief, and perhaps a little regret that Thomas had not also fallen to a lonely and unshriven death. The banker seemed unwell, as if he had caught an ague from his night spent on the cold ground.

But perhaps he was only discomforted because Marcel had so berated him for some unknown misdeed.

When Thomas finally began to move along the trail again, his hands and legs uncomfortably wobbly, he forced himself to look over the edge.

The precipice fell away with no slope at all, but occasionally a rock or two jutted out from the rock face; on these rocks hung bleached bones, sometimes held together by a strip of skin or tendon.

Thomas leaned back, shut his eyes briefly, and fought to forget what he’d seen.

All the men made it safely through the pass, but four of the horses had, in that final horrific stretch, fallen screaming to their deaths. Gratefully, Thomas’ own mount was safe, but he found himself hoping ungraciously that one of the doomed horses had been the pack animal carrying Marcoaldi’s precious chests. But it was not so, and once on relatively flat ground the banker was reunited with his chests and also, it appeared, with his good temper, for he greeted Thomas cheerfully as the friar walked past.

“And now,” Marcel said as they bid the guides farewell and remounted their horses, “Nuremberg.”

III

Vigil of the Feast of St Swithin

In the fifty-first year of the reign of Edward III

(Wednesday 14th July 1378)

For over two weeks they rode north from the Brenner Pass, making the best speed they could. The mood of the group had changed since the passage through the Brenner. Outwardly as cheerful as it had been previously, there was nevertheless a sombre undertone to the banter of the day’s rides and the evening discussions about the campfire or tavern table. Marcel and Karle appeared preoccupied with their need to travel as fast as possible. While this suited Thomas, it nevertheless added a degree of tenseness to both travel and relations within the group.

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