The Mongoliad: Book Two

5

It is always the sound of the tree falling that wakes him-a cracking and tearing as if the sky is being torn apart by God-and it snaps him upright, gasping like a fish thrown out of the sea. His heart is pounding so hard in his chest that his whole body quakes. He can’t see anything. God has hidden the world from his eyes. All he hears is the sound of wood splintering and shattering. When the bulk of the tree hits the ground, he feels the impact in his bones, and his heart skips.

What comes next, in the wake of the thunderous collapse of the tree, is always different, although he knows he is trapped in the same nightmare: sometimes it is rain, sticky and heavy like blood; sometimes it is a howling wind; sometimes thunderous echoes that roll back and forth like an approaching storm, one that never arrives.

The echoes are too rhythmic for thunder this time, too much like drums or hooves.

He sees them coming. At first, they are tiny dots of light, like fireflies in the distance. But they grow too large to be fireflies, the pinpricks of light blossoming into balls of dancing flame. He sees the faces next: mouths, leering and screaming; eyes, filled with distorted gleams of Hell. The ghosts ride short-legged horses, almost ponies, and the sight would be comical if it weren’t for their number and the death they bring.

Behind the riders looms the rest of the nightmare, a landscape that swells and opens like a malevolent flower blooming. It makes his stomach twist, seeing the world come back from nothing. It is like watching a parchment thrown into a fire come back to life, blackened ash transforming into a fire-gnawed page. The riders pass over him, the horses leap deftly over his supine form, and the world slams into him, not as ephemeral as the ghosts of the Mongol army.

He knows this place: the battlefield at Mohi, near the Sajo River, where the Mongol armies met King Bela’s forces. The Mongols sprang a trap on the Hungarian forces, crushing them between two lines, like a blacksmith crushing a fly between calloused palms. Around him, scattered in clumps and piles, are the bodies of the fallen. They aren’t dead; the field is twitching and writhing with the mortally wounded. He realizes that every one of those who fell at Mohi is trapped with him in this nightmarish limbo, caught between death and reality. All they crave is release from the pain.

Nearby, a man tries to hold his stomach closed, but he is missing the lower half of his left arm, and he doesn’t understand why he can get no grip on his skin with his left hand. On his left, two men who are both skewered on the same lance struggle to pull themselves free of the pole, but they keep moving in opposite directions. They bump each other or strain at the lance, and the motion only pulls at the other man. They haven’t come to blows, but they will soon. They don’t know any other way to free themselves. A man wanders by, the naked stump of his neck weeping a steady stream of blood down his back. He carries a head under his arm. It isn’t his, and it directs the body across the field, looking for its lost body.

What is he supposed to do? Is he supposed to save them all? The one with the missing hand-is he supposed to find it and return it, and would God’s grace reattach the hand to the arm? What about the mortal slash across the belly? How is he supposed to close that wound? He has no needle, nor any thread. His hands are empty, and his satchel is gone. All that he has is his robe and his rosary.

A man with his throat cut stares at him, and he looks away, unable to bear the sight of the soldier’s suffering, the desperate plea so plainly visible in his eyes. “I cannot help you,” he whispers. He walks away, his bare feet sticking to the damp ground. It is the only gesture of compassion that he can think of; any other action would give the wounded man hope, and he knows there is no hope in this nightmare.

On his left, he spots a bony ridge of crumbling rock that rises out of the bloodied plain. There are five horses standing there, and four of them-each a different color-are clumped together, standing shoulder to shoulder. Sprawling across their backs is an enormous figure, a man so wide his bulk overflows the quartet of horses. Black shapes crawl across his skin. A man in armor sits on the fifth horse, and his armor is untouched by battle, neither marred by blade nor discolored by blood. His visor is down, hiding his face. There is something in his hands-

A voice draws his attention away from the vision on the hill. Someone is shouting his name. There, on his right. “Rigo!” The figure gestures him over, and after a final glance back, he picks his way, stumbling, through the maze of bodies, to the man who knows his name.

“I do not know you,” he says when he gets close to the other man. He is both familiar and not, like a distant relative of a close friend.

The man smiles. He is young, though there are lines around his eyes and on his cheeks. His beard is neat and groomed, and his robes are unmarked by passage through the field. “Not like this,” he agrees. “No, you do not.”

“And how do you know my name?” Rodrigo asks. “Are you an angel?”

The man shakes his head. “No more than you.”

Rodrigo looks back over his shoulder. On the distant hill, the figure sprawling across the four horses seems larger, and the shadows flow off him now, coursing down the hill and onto the field like the tumultuous spring runoff of mountain streams. Rodrigo covers his face with his hands. “I am damned,” he says. “I cannot be saved.”

“Salus,” the young man says. He gestures for Rodrigo to come closer. “It is the secrets of your heart,” he whispers, ducking his head, when Rodrigo has taken three more steps, “that will save you, my friend. The burden asked of one man may seem impossible to bear, but God believes your heart is strong enough. He hears your pain; He hears all their pain. Is the burden He asks you to carry less than His?”

He looks past Rodrigo’s shoulder for an instant, his eyes losing their focus. “Remember, Rigo, we are all His children, and He welcomes all of us back into His embrace.” He returns his gaze to Rodrigo, and there is a deep sadness in his eyes now. “Regardless of how or when we might return to Him.”

A light flares behind Rodrigo, the sudden glow driving all the sorrow out of the young man’s face. His eyes vanish, and his smile transforms into a shining line. Rodrigo looks over his shoulder, squinting against the glare. A ramshackle hut appears behind him, and amber light floods from the open door and through the cracks and gaps in the walls.

“No,” Rodrigo says, shaking his head. The young man has turned into a phantom, a fading wisp of smoke that curls away from him as he tries to grab it. He doesn’t want to look at the hut again-he knows it too well-but he can’t help himself. Shoulders hunched, he peers around slowly.

There is someone standing in the doorway, blocking the light. The figure is small, a child, and it raises a hand to Rodrigo. Other figures appear behind the child. Taller figures, limned in red, and they drag the child inside. “No,” Rodrigo shouts, and when he tries to run toward the hut, his legs are bound. Hands have seized his feet and calves, hands of the dying. He struggles, loses his balance, and is pulled to his knees.

More of the dying grab him. “Save us,” they whimper and beg. “Save us all.”

“I can’t,” he sobs. He strains against the mob, trying to break free. The hut’s door is still open, but the light inside is flickering. Guttering. Going out. Hands tear his robe, and cold fingers scrabble against his skin.

When the light goes out, he’s fairly certain the scream that fills the void is his own.

The last thing Father Rodrigo could recall (other than this half-forgotten, fading dream) was sitting on his horse outside of Rome, looking down at the play of light across the rooftops of the city. Now everything was flush with shadows, lit only by the glitter of dust in the moonbeams. He lay on a ragged straw-filled pallet, though the straw was little more than chaff. The air was dry, choked with dust and the scent of something desiccated and moldering. He did not know where he was or how he’d gotten here…These were dangers, he knew, but he sensed there was some other danger, more sinister, that he could not consciously remember.

The knuckles of his outstretched hand brushed a stone wall, and he was reminded not of the safety that a stone wall can offer but of the dry darkness in the tombs beneath the churches in Paris, where the saints lay buried. A maze of narrow passages, with tiny niches carved out of the walls for the wrapped bodies. This place wasn’t cramped, and the ceiling was much higher than the close confines of the tomb-yet something about it was equally unsettling. Moonlight filtered through cracks and gaps in the ceiling. Rodrigo rolled onto his side to examine the rest of the room and realized he wasn’t alone.

A man sat slumped against the wall on the bench opposite, some ten paces away. At first, Rodrigo thought he was dead. His head was tilted back, and his mouth gaped open, as if he had died of a horrible thirst. A heavy book lay in his lap, open but forgotten. But then a breath hiccupped out of his chest, and his mouth snapped shut. He grimaced, tasting something foul on his tongue, and his eyes opened.

Rodrigo’s breath hissed noisily out of his mouth before he could clamp his lips shut. The figure heard him and leaned forward, peering into the cold gloom of Rodrigo’s corner. The motion moved his face into a streak of illuminating moonlight, and Rodrigo had to bite down on the inside of his cheek to keep from crying out.

It was the man from his dream.

Older, most of the gold in his hair was rust now, and there were more lines on his face, but the intensity of his gaze hadn’t faltered. If anything, it had only gained strength as the body had aged.

“You are awake,” he said. In the dream, Rodrigo hadn’t noticed an accent, but now he heard a rough edge to the man’s Latin, as if someone had taken a hammer to the ornate scrollwork of a building and knocked all the grace out of the marble.

“Perhaps,” Rodrigo replied warily. Again, some part of his mind whispered an alarm to him.

“This is disconcerting, I know,” the man continued. He noticed the book in his lap, and quietly closed it, running his hand over the thick leather and inlaid stones of the cover. “Please do not be frightened. You are safe. Well, relatively. More than you were a few hours ago, but…” He glanced up at the ceiling, and his mouth worked around the edges of a smile. Then he glanced back down at Rodrigo with an expression of weary compassion. “You are in Rome, my friend. Near the old temple known as the Septizodium. I am Robert, of Somercotes. Once I was the chaplain to the English king, Henry III. Now”-he shrugged-“just one of God’s devoted servants, I suppose.”

Rodrigo sat silently, growing accustomed to the dim light. His companion was apparently very used to it, for he did not have even a candle with him. Rodrigo pulled his robe snugger, absently worried the extra fabric near his heart, and leaned his weight onto his right hip. “I am Rodrigo Bendrito,” he said eventually. “Lately of Buda, at Bela’s court.” It was his turn to shrug. “Which is no more.”

Somercotes made the sign of the cross and left his fingertips at his lips. “Salvum fac servum tuum, Deus meus, sperantem in te,” he murmured. “Were you there?”

“Where the armies of Bela and Prince Frederick met the Mongol Horde?” Rodrigo said.

Somercotes nodded. “Yes,” he confirmed.

He shifted his weight again and realized what had been bothering him. His satchel was gone. Hoping he was not being too obvious, he released one hand from his cloak and felt around in the straw for it.

“You’ve come a long way,” Somercotes said, and Rodrigo grunted vacantly. “Not quite what you expected, is it?”

Rodrigo found the wall near his pallet and put his back to it. Still no sign of his satchel, but not far from the head of the straw-filled bed was a tray and small bowl.

“Please, eat,” Somercotes said, noting Rodrigo’s interest. Investigating the two containers, Rodrigo found water in the bowl and, on the tray, three small pieces of bread, a handful of nuts, and some round objects. Olives, he realized as he tentatively ate one. It was enough to wake up his stomach, and he proceeded to devour the food. His fever was gone, replaced by a ravenous hunger. The sort of hunger he hadn’t felt in a long time. I’m going to live, he thought with genuine surprise as he tipped back the bowl and drank the water noisily. God does save those who believe in Him. He felt a little twinge of guilt for having doubted, but that emotion was quickly set aside as his fingers scrabbled for the food on the tray, shoveling it toward his eager mouth.

“Thank you,” he said to his benefactor when he had finished the meal. His brain knew it had been a meager amount, but the handful of nuts and olives and bread filled his shrunken belly painfully full. The bowl of water had barely slaked his thirst-yet still it seemed like the best meal he had ever eaten.

Somercotes inclined his head. “A small repast does a great deal to restore a man, does it not? More so, perhaps, than a banquet.”

Rodrigo found a laugh in his chest, and he let it out as he eased himself against the wall, the straw-filled pallet beneath his legs. “I would have gorged myself,” he said. “I would have eaten like a starved dog until my stomach burst.”

“Hunger sharpens a man’s spirit.”

“And his curiosity,” Rodrigo noted. “Where am I? You called it-”

“The Septizodium,” Somercotes supplied. “It’s an old pagan temple, devoted to a number of the old gods. The only virtue remaining in its walls is their thickness. It is a simple yet effective prison. One that has the added benefit of its obscurity.”

“A prison? Why?”

“To keep us focused, to keep our spirits and minds hungry. We are fed, as you can see, but many other comforts have been taken from us.” Somercotes smiled. “It stays hot. All this stone. The walls soak up the sun during the day, and it takes so very long for the heat to fade. Some of us have had some experience with fasting and prayer. Being sequestered isn’t that much of a hardship. But the heat? The heat will break all of our spirits eventually.” Somercotes shifted on his makeshift bench. “But as to why we are here, is that not self-evident to you?”

Rodrigo shook his head. “Self-evident? No. Such truth is obscured both by these walls and the darkness in which I find myself.”

Somercotes was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again, his voice was much softer. Almost conspiratorial. “Why have you come to Rome?”

“I have a message for the Pope,” Rodrigo said. “As well as news from the north.”

“Which Pope?”

“The Christian Pope. The only Pope there is-Gregory IX,” Rodrigo replied. “I don’t-”

“Gregory is dead,” Somercotes interrupted. “There is no Pope in the Vatican.” He indicated the room around them. “And we are imprisoned here until we elect a successor.”