Free The Seal by Adriana Koulias

bordered by a meagre scattering of dying olive trees.
The beauty of an aquamarine ocean upon which the sun bent its rays winked at
him but it was lost on the Alexandrian, who dragged a
hand over his brow to hide from the sun. He did not like Cyprus. It was to his
mind a place hot and damned.
    He looked behind
him to the biggest of the Normans, Gideon, who was singing low a song in his
own vulgar language. A little ahead of the seneschal, the younger, whom they
called Aubert, was sweating inside the sleeveless skin he wore for a shirt.
Both men seemed of violent disposition with their twisted beards and jewellery
made of bones and teeth. Iterius shuddered. He would have as little to do with
them as he could. Well ahead of the group the tall dark-skinned Catalan,
Delgado, rode elegantly, adjusting maggots on a wound upon his arm and riding
as he did so, as if the horse were made of his own sinew and muscle. Next to
him rode the beautiful Captain Jourdain, with his hair the colour of wheat and
his long lashes, brown eyes and perfect mouth uttering verses from Plato or
Aristotle. He felt desire rise up and he made it ebb away since he must contrive.
    It was his guess
that the Catalan was more dangerous than the Normans, in the same way that
snakes are more dangerous than bulls. And Jourdain, while
beautiful to behold and gentle of voice, had been known to cut the face of a
Mameluk in two while reciting something poetic from Virgil. He grunted.
From the air descended sweet scents and the promise of swollen fruits. It
filled him with romantic notions and he gave a sigh and waited until he could
wait no more.
    ‘That galley,’
he said to the trees and the heat, ‘it seemed weighed down at the finish of it, something heavy in those barrels . . . something very
heavy.’
    The seneschal
stared ahead but his mount lagged behind until it was almost level with
Iterius’s horse. ‘Did you not keep your eyes to the road then, Egyptian?’ he
said to him.
    The sergeant
ignored this. ‘What could be so heavy, my lord? Not lead as ballast, surely?
Not lead but –’
    There was a
sudden sharp movement to his right, a blur of images
and Iterius felt himself upon the ground with his long face and nose smelling
dust, and his limbs having fallen into a complicated tangle with a withering
shrub. His head throbbed and from his right ear came the hot sensation of
blood.
    Beside that ear
came the sound of Etienne’s voice. ‘You do not observe the rule!’ he whispered.
‘There are ears in the bushes and in the olive trees, ears even in the wind!’
    Iterius gasped
and swallowed dirt, something at his back and something else pinning down his
arm. The voice came close to his ear again and made a heat in it. ‘Who sends
you?’
    The Egyptian now
observed the plain fact that the voice would have an answer and that even in
his state of discomfort he must do so or risk certain unpleasant consequences. ‘Who?’ he prevaricated.
    ‘Yes . . . by
all means!’ the voice said.
    ‘Who has sent
me?’ he said, emitting little gasps. ‘Yes . . . yes . . . I will tell.’ He
opened one eye and saw a snake before his nose going about its business. Snakes
made good poison, he thought; if only he had such a snake in his hand, one bite
could put this nuisance from his back and this voice from his ear. The snake
moved like a flash into the undergrowth and was gone. ‘I will tell, but ... Ah!
I ... am ... short of ... breath . . .’
    There was a
sudden relief of pressure that seemed to him twofold: upon his back, what must
have been a knee or an elbow was now released, and in front, upon the dry
earth, where his fingers drew under his sergeant’s cloak to push up with his
hands, there was a hot wetness – urine.
    But his lord
Etienne stood over him with his face full of danger. ‘Are we to find menace
upon the road ahead of us?’
    The sergeant
pushed himself up onto his knees, attempting to gather his wits. ‘Yes.’
    Having somewhat
recovered, he