The Cross and the Dragon (25 page)

Four men, including Gerard, handed him their crosses. Leonhard used his knife to dig through the hardened dirt and placed four crosses at the corners of the site. Then, he knelt in the dirt and prayed in Latin at each cross, asking God to bless the ground.

After his prayers, Leonhard used his knife to carve a circle in the ground around the site. He scratched the soil, leaves, beech twigs, stones, and tree roots. He wrote the names of God, Jehovah, Light of Lights, and symbols of Jesus and the saints — the cross, the fish, the eagle of Saint John, the dragon of Saint Georg, the lion of Saint Mark.

He carved the ground with the effort a butcher used to get through a bone. His right arm ached. Still, he clutched the knife, sawing at the ground, inscribing the holy symbols. The shifting shadows of the forest made it difficult for a man to see them, but the words and symbols were not meant for men’s eyes. They were meant for those beings that wandered at dusk and midnight to prey on men’s bodies and souls. No demon would cross the line of this circle, ever, as long as the circle was unbroken.

The smell of Leonhard’s sweat mingled with the stench of rotting flesh, a stench that shoved its fingers up his nostrils, seeped into his hair and clothes and boots. He wondered if a bath would ever wash away this stink. He used his sleeve to wipe his forehead and left a smear of dirt. He heard the men hacking and digging at the hard ground, grunting as they used a large wooden stick to dislodge a heavy rock, trying to find some place among the tree roots and stones. It was slow work.

Leonhard finished his circle of protection as daylight started to fade. He sank to his knees near the shallow beginning of the mass grave. The men paused in their work and knelt with him. He said the vespers Mass at sunset and prayed for protection against demons, against bandits, against the Gascons.

“We commend Your soldiers to You,” he prayed in Latin. “Let them be at peace. Amen.”

He anointed himself and each man with holy water. Ganelon, like the other men covered with filth and gore, looked at the corpses and said, “Are you certain they will not harm us?”

Leonhard was surprised that Ganelon was more afraid of the dead than he. Ganelon was a muscular man, not as big as Beringar, but still strong enough to wield a sword and wear armor. “They know we are doing this for them,” Leonhard replied. “They will not harm us.”

The men moved the horses and carts into the circle. Their weapons were drawn. If the Gascons were going to ambush the party, this would be the ideal time. Someone familiar with the land would have just enough light to see, but a stranger would struggle.

Leonhard watched the trees and underbrush for motion and listened for rustling. He was weary but too afraid to sleep. He was hungry but had no desire to eat. He put a loaf of bread in a beech tree, out of reach of the dog, to appease restless spirits. The men lit fires to continue their work into the night. Leonhard found a thick fallen branch to use as a torch. He stroked his medals of Saint Peter and Saint Sebastian.

Leonhard approached the bodies outside the circle first, while daylight lingered. As he prayed over the bodies, he wished he had Hosts to put in their mouths. He recognized important men from Charles’s court, Anselm, the count of the palace, Eggihard, the seneschal.

When he found Alfihar, what was left of his body, Leonhard had to walk away for a moment. He did not want to collapse, sobbing. He stumbled over something solid and looked down. It was Alfihar’s dragon amulet. Picking it up, he saw the amulet’s chain had broken.

Leonhard took a deep breath, swallowed, and returned to Alfihar, who had been stabbed in the back. The Gascons had taken everything except Alfihar’s shirt. The strange birds and rats had eaten his flesh.

Leonhard told himself.
Alfihar needs prayers
,
Do not weep if you care about his soul.
Leonhard wiped his eyes with his hand. He slipped Alfihar’s dragon into his own pouch. Perhaps, the amulet had fallen off Alfihar during the fight, and the Gascons did not notice it.

“I shall give it to your son,” he managed to tell Alfihar, his voice cracking.

Most of the bodies were like Alfihar’s — looted by the Gascons, pecked and partially eaten by carrion birds and beasts. Leonhard had to pause several times and pray for the strength not to weep.

The graying twilight thickened into an opaque black, and the air became cool. Leonhard almost dropped the torch when he stumbled over a tree root or a twig grabbed at his robes or hair. He was glad to see the firelight, glad to see living men. He called to his brother.

When Beringar approached him, Leonhard said softly, “I found Alfihar.”

Beringar looked down and turned away from the fire. His immense shoulders shook with silent sobs. It was the first time Leonhard had seen any emotion in his older brother since they left the king’s army. Leonhard closed his eyes and felt tears run down his cheeks and into the stubble on his chin. How was he going to tell Alda and Theodelinda?

Leonhard dried his eyes with his sleeve and threw the branch he had been using as a torch into the fire. He led the compline Mass and reminded the men that they were doing the Lord’s work, that they should not be afraid.

Leonhard was beyond exhaustion. More than anything else, he wanted to leave this place. That desire drove him to go on, to say prayers for the dead, despite the howls of wolves, calls of insects, and rustling in the underbrush. Unable to find Hruodland after hours of searching, Gerard also knelt near the corpses and prayed for their souls. Leonhard noticed the hound had curled next to a body under a bush. He stumbled toward it and pushed back the brush.

“Hruodland,” he whispered.

Hruodland’s body had been untouched by ravens or rats. He looked like the living, a man who had been traveling for months — unshaven face, greasy, tangled dark hair, and skin coated with filth. Leonhard called to Gerard.

Gerard hurried through his prayer and staggered toward Leonhard. “Thank you,” he said, his voice ragged.

His lower lip trembling, Gerard crouched beside Leonhard. As they had discovered with the others, Hruodland’s sword and armor had been stolen. He was stripped to his leggings and a shirt stained with rust, blood, and dirt. Even his cross and medallion of Saint Sebastian were gone. Yet he still wore Alda’s iron dragon amulet. Although the Gascons had been bold enough to loot a dead man of sword and armor, Leonhard guessed they thought the dragon was cursed and feared it too much to touch it.

“Leonhard,” Gerard said softly in Latin, “tell me my eyes are not deceiving me. I think Hruodland is breathing.”

Leonhard thought it must be a trick of the light and his own fatigue. He rubbed his eyes, smearing dust and sweat, and looked at Hruodland again. “No, your eyes do not deceive you,” he said. “Hruodland
is
breathing.”

“Saints be praised. He lives.”

Leonhard then noticed odors of the living — sweat, urine, excrement. The stench of the corpses had masked it.
The Gascons must have left Hruodland for dead,
he thought, gazing at the large stain of dried blood on the shirt covering Hruodland’s chest.
But they stabbed him one last time, just to be sure
.

Hruodland’s left leg twisted at a strange angle. The dog licked Hruodland’s face, but Hruodland neither moved nor flinched.

The hound must have kept the rats and birds away,
Leonhard thought. He did not want to know what else the dog had eaten.

Gerard watched his brother breathe, then shook Hruodland’s shoulder. “Hruodland! Hruodland!”

Hruodland did not awaken.

“Your brother,” Leonhard stammered. He cleared his throat. “Your brother is not long for this world.”

“No!” Gerard cried. “No! I will not believe it.” He called to one of his servants in Roman and pointed at the closest campfire.

As Gerard and the servant carried Hruodland, Leonhard retrieved a vial of oil from his saddlebag. Returning the campfire, he knelt beside Gerard and Hruodland’s prone body.

“We have a duty to Hruodland’s soul,” Leonhard said. “I must anoint him before it is too late.”

After asking Hruodland for his confession, Leonhard traced the sign of the cross over Hruodland’s eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hands, feet, and loins, each time praying, “Through this holy unction and His most tender mercy, may the Lord pardon you whatever sins and faults you have committed.”

From the corner of his eye, Leonhard noticed that Ganelon was watching Hruodland intently. Leonhard tried to read Ganelon’s icy blue eyes. Was it fear of the corpses or anger at his old rival?

* * * * *

While Leonhard spent the night praying for the dead, the men scraped the ground, dislodged stones, and hacked tree roots with axes. Gerard held his brother’s head up as the physician, a monk who had seen perhaps forty years, trickled beer into Hruodland’s mouth. Gerard watched the physician make a poultice of comfrey and garlic. He held up Hruodland’s body as the monk lifted Hruodland’s shirt, applied the poultice to the gash in Hruodland’s chest, and wrapped the area in bandages.

The physician lowered the shirt, and Gerard gently laid Hruodland on the ground. Hruodland did not flinch when the physician removed the soiled leggings, set the broken bone in his leg, and applied the poultice and splint.

Perhaps, Leonhard is right,
Gerard thought as his eyes began to fill with tears. He swallowed and wiped his eyes with his sleeve.
I shall be the count soon
. He pressed his lips tight and shook his head, rebuking himself for thinking of his inheritance at a time like this.

“I… I must say prayers for dead,” he stammered to the physician in Frankish. He thought of his next words as he said them slowly, “I shall return to him, but if something changes, tell me.”

Nodding, the physician draped a blanket over Hruodland. As Gerard approached one of the fallen soldiers, he spied Leonhard looking toward Hruodland and shaking his head. A flush burned Gerard’s cheeks. Even if the effort was futile, the physician needed something to do, and someone needed to watch over Hruodland.

The men were sweating despite the chill in the night air. They finished digging the large, shallow grave, clawed and scraped and hacked among the trees, shortly before dawn. At sunrise, Leonhard said prime prayers. Afterward, the physician returned to Hruodland and gasped.

“Count Hruodland has opened his eyes,” he called out.

“A miracle!” Gerard cried. “Hruodland!”

Hruodland said nothing. His eyes did not acknowledge Gerard.

As the day wore on, Hruodland’s eyes did not follow Leonhard and Gerard moving from body to body, praying for the dead. His eyes did not follow the movement of men trying not to faint in the stench as they carried bodies and laid them in the grave. He did not flinch when the dog licked his face or nudged his arms.

Gerard returned to Hruodland as the physician trickled wine into Hruodland's mouth. No effect.

“This is like tending to a dead man,” the physician muttered.

* * * * *

Leonhard and the other men spent the rest of the day placing bodies in the grave. He did not care that such work was beneath him. He wanted to leave Roncevaux. He wanted to return to Francia and a bath smelling of lavender and mint.

Beringar bade his men to strip armor from his body, broad as a tree trunk. “Armor did not help them,” he told Leonhard. “Why are you carrying bodies?”

“I shall do anything to hasten our departure from this horrid place.”

“So shall I,” he said. He wiped his hand on his high forehead, which had been getting higher over the years, looked at the rust, and wiped his hand on his tunic. He held his sandy hair off his neck and fanned himself.

Ganelon, too, had his men remove his armor. The rust from his helmet left a line in his pale blond hair. Gerard, Beringar, and Ganelon joined Leonhard in carrying corpses to the grave while the physician attended to Hruodland. The men worked as quickly as they could, pausing only for beer or prayers. They spent the second night shoveling earth and piling rock, twigs, leaves — and anything else they could carry — into a mound over the dead. Leonhard again assured them the dead would do them no harm.

They finished when the sun, what Leonhard could see of it, was high in the sky the next day. He fashioned a larger cross from two fallen limbs of beech, and intoned a final prayer at the grave.

“Our work here is finished,” Leonhard said. “Let us rejoin the king.”

“What of Hruodland?” Ganelon asked, his voice sharp.

Gerard strode a few paces and knelt near his brother. Hruodland was staring at nothing again. “We take him with us,” he said in Frankish.