Chapter Ten
Even in the dark, he could see the tournament in the distance.
The Welsh marches were historically a brutal and mysterious place, lands that were both Welsh and English, lands that had seen more battles than most. There was a certain aura that settled over the area, an aura that conveyed ancient tribes and great passion.
There were two kinds of people who loved these lands and loved them enough to fight to the death for them.
Those battles had been going on for centuries for reasons that probably would not be decided in his lifetime.
Truthfully, he’d never been to the Welsh marches before, but here he was.
He was seeking something.
But finding it was difficult. It had all started on a ship sailing for Calais, one that had caught fire when they were in sight of the shore.
It had started when the stove on the ship’s middeck used for cooking and heat ignited some nearby bed fodder.
After that, everything went up like a torch.
He didn’t even remember why he’d been on the ship, only that he had, and the one thing he had managed to take with him was a small gold cross pendant.
The front of the cross had semiprecious carnelian stones on it, and on the back there was an inscription.
It read Allez avec Dieu. Go with God. He remembered stealing the cross off someone as the ship went up in flames, a man who was already dead.
A friend of his, he’d remembered later. Al.
Al with the expensive gold cross he liked to flash around.
He’d been flashing it around that night.
That was how he’d remembered to take it.
But that fire, for him, had been the first step in a journey where God was not present.
That little cross with its inscription mocked him, because he’d stolen it and God did not reward thieves.
When he’d grabbed it off Al’s neck, it had been searing hot, so the imprint of it was on his right palm.
The fire had been so hot and so terrible that it had damaged most of the skin on his body, including his nose and most of his hair.
Men still cringed when they looked at him, and women still fainted, so he’d quickly learned to cover himself up so no one would see the horror he had become.
A caricature of his former self.
A man with no name, no past, and no future.
Along with the external damage had come the internal.
The fire had also scorched his lungs and prevented him from breathing properly, so he’d been deprived of enough oxygen that his memory was gone and his way of thinking was rudimentary at best. He could speak still, but the words were slow and simple.
He could walk, but it was stilted. He could dress himself and feed himself, but barely.
That damnable fire had taken everything from him.
It had taken him a full year to recover, enough so that he could function without assistance.
He, and the few others who had survived the blaze, were tended by the priests at St. Joseph’s church in Calais.
His memory was so damaged that he didn’t even remember why he’d been on that ship until someone at the church mentioned that it was a ship belonging to a Flemish warlord.
It had been going to Calais and carried one hundred soldiers, but that information didn’t really help him.
He still didn’t know who, or what, he was.
All he had was that little cross.
And then, one day, it came to him.
Eckington.
Al had mentioned the name Eckington, though he didn’t know what it meant until he spoke to a man from England who happened to be at the church one day when he was strong enough to sweep off the steps.
They got to speaking, mostly about the fire that had burned him so badly, and the man told him that he was from the West Country and Eckington was a town in Herefordshire.
That led him to believe that Eckington was where Al was from or, at the very least, where he could seek answers.
Perhaps Al had a wife who would welcome her husband home.
The man who carried the cross.
With his features burned so badly, she would never know the truth.
Armed with the name, and that gold cross, he’d decided to go to Eckington and see what he could discover about Al’s past.
And his future.
But traveling to the Welsh marches wasn’t without peril.
From doing odd jobs around the church, he’d had enough money for passage to England, but he needed a horse once he got there.
Because he was so horrific to look at, the first two livery stables had turned him down.
They basically told him to go away and not come back.
At the third livery stable, the man did the same thing, so the man now calling himself Al had killed him and stolen one of the horses.
He didn’t much have a sense of morality, so killing and stealing seemed to come naturally.
He headed west, following the main road and keeping an eye out for anyone who might be looking for a murderer.
Perhaps the family of the man he’d killed would come after him, but he couldn’t be sure.
He couldn’t be sure and he didn’t much care.
All he knew was that he had to go west.
That apathy kept him on the main road, making his way east and really having no idea where he was going.
He just kept going west. He would stop at taverns at nighttime, letting a bed or finding a warm corner to sleep in.
He’d long learned to keep his face covered up, so he wore a scarf that covered his head and his face so that only his eyes were showing.
By doing that, people would just focus on his eyes and not on the horrific scars all over his face and head.
By traveling that way, he could keep himself relatively unseen.
No one bothered him as he traveled from town to town on his stolen horse.
The night before he reached Eckington, the tavern keep in a tiny village just south of his destination told him of Harald de Efford, Lord Eckington, and how the man had traveled to Lioncross Abbey Castle on the Welsh marches for a great tournament.
Everybody in the shire was talking about the tournament and many had traveled to see it, including de Efford.
The same tavern keep mentioned Lord Eckington’s widowed daughter and her two children in the course of gossiping about Harald de Efford, as well as a local farmer’s wife that de Efford evidently bedded on occasion.
The rumormonger was quite gleeful about it.
Al didn’t care about the farmer’s wife, but he was quite interested in Eckington’s daughter.
Somehow, he didn’t even have to ask her name.
He already knew.
Catalina.
The real Al had told him that.
That realization had him heading for the Welsh marches and the tournament at Lioncross Abbey.
It hadn’t been difficult to find, and now he was finally here.
Riding on a damp night, with the moon high overhead and listening to the sounds of the darkness around him, he was focused on the glowing settlement ahead.
He would find Lord Eckington, and Catalina, and show them the cross he still kept in his pocket.
Perhaps then they would accept him as Al returned.
Perhaps they would even welcome him with open arms.
That was the hope, anyway.
In the darkness, he pushed on.