The Jester

“No.” I shook my head, at first numbly, then with rage. “You will not take anything else from me.”

I looked at Emilie. Her eyes bravely met mine.

I knew if I charged him, he would not kill her. It was me the Tafur needed. I was the path to his precious prize, not her. He would not risk leaving himself unguarded. I gripped my staff firmly in my palms. It was all I had, this stick against his sword. And my hands. And my will.

In the next breath, I screamed and charged the bastard.

Chapter 97

I SWUNG MY STAFF at him with everything I had.

In the same instant, Black Cross flung Emilie aside and readied himself for my blow. He was huge and agile, and blocked it easily with his sword.

“What is this prize,” I screamed, smashing and flailing my staff at all angles, “that you would murder people who had never even heard of it? Was it worth my wife, my little son? Or even the most worthless soul you stamped out in your way?” I swung at him again and again. For Sophie. For Phillipe. Each blow crashed harmlessly against his sword. I thought my staff would surely split, or that at any moment I would feel the sword run through my gut.

“Is this a pretend, jester? Do you mock me again to explain the meaning of the prize you stole?” He forced me backward and began advancing, swinging his sword with half strength and forcing me to block the blows with the staff, the wood rattling in my grasp.

“I do not have it,” I shouted. “I never have. You are mistaken.”

He swung at my legs and I darted back. His sword chipped slivers of wood off my staff. “You were there, jester. The church in Antioch. We all sought it out. Do you think these nobles were fighting for the souls of a few nuns? You were there for [293] what, jester, mass? You try to tell me you don’t know that the relic you fought the infidel for, which lay for centuries in that vault, was not the same used to sacrifice our Lord, and stained with His holy blood?”

I had no idea what he was talking about. He cut at my torso. I blocked it again, the blade slicing against my hand, but it was only a matter of time before he landed the blow that would do me in.

“Did you sell it? Have you profited by some Jew? If you have, your death will only be more warranted.” He swung again, this time knocking me backward to the ground, shattering another piece of my staff, which I barely held up now in defense.

My knuckles bled. My mind ricocheted back and forth. “I do not have it. I swear!”

He swung again, the brute force of his blow almost breaking the staff in two. I knew it could sustain only a few more hits.

I heard shouts behind me. Emilie was screaming. She tried to leap on him and ward him off, but he flung her across the ground as if she were a toy.

The Tafur’s eyes flashed. “Give it to me, thief, now. For in another minute you will surely be in Hell.”

“If I am,” I said, whacking my stick at him, “it will only be to welcome you.”

I was done. Out of breath and strength. I blocked his blows, but each one hacked a little farther into the staff. I wanted with all my heart to kill this man-for Sophie, for Phillipe-but I didn’t have the strength.

He kicked me into a ditch off the road. I looked about for a weapon, anything to fight him. He raised his sword above my head. “I give you this final chance,” he grunted. “Produce it. You can still go free.”

“I have nothing,” I yelled at him. “Can’t you see that?”

He came down with his sword. I think I closed my eyes, for I knew this last, desperate defense would not hold. A chunk of [294] my staff shattered. To my astonishment, a patch of metal showed through.

Black Cross slashed at me again and again, yet each time, the staff miraculously held. The wooden rod split open like a casing, revealing something underneath.

Iron.

My eyes clung to it. I was staring at the long, rusted shaft of an ancient spear.

The Tafur stopped, his gaze transfixed. The spear shaft led to a molding in the shape of an eagle, a Roman eagle. The blade that came from it-dark, blunt, rusted-was encrusted with a bloodlike stain.

Good Lord in Heaven. I heard myself gasp. I blinked, twice, to make sure I wasn’t in Heaven already.

My staff … the wooden staff I had taken from the church in Antioch, from the dying priest’s hands… It wasn’t a staff at all.

It was a lance.

Chapter 98

I DO NOT KNOW how to describe what happened next.

Time seemed to stand still. Neither of us moved, held by the incredible sight. Whatever this was, I could tell by the Tafur’s stupefied amazement that the lance was what he had sought all along. Now, miraculously, it was in front of him. His eyes were as large as moons. Though it was rusted and dulled, just a common thing, a glow seemed to emanate from it.

Suddenly he lunged for it! I yanked it out of his reach. He was still above me, with all the advantage. He reared back his sword. I had no defenses. He would surely split my chest this time.

I thrust with the only thing I had-the lance. The blade split his mail and pierced his ribs. Black Cross cried out, his dark eyes open wide, but even with the lance in him, he did not stop. He went to raise his sword again. I pushed the lance in deeper. This time his eyes rolled back in his head. He tried to lift the sword once more, his arms reaching the height of his head, hands squeezing the hilt.

But his arms suddenly dropped. He gasped, opened his mouth as if to speak, and blood leaked out.

I pushed hard on the lance again and he froze, upright, disbelieving, as if he could not lose now, not with his prize in [296] sight, so close. Then with a final grunt, Black Cross crumpled and fell onto his back.

I lay there for a second, stu

He did not answer. Only coughed: blood and bile.

“What is it?” I cried. “What is this thing? My wife and son died for it.”

I pulled the spear out of his body and held it close to the dying man’s face. He coughed again, but this time it wasn’t blood-he was laughing. “Do you not know?” His chest wheezed-and then, a thin smile. “All along… you were blind?”

“Tell me.” I pulled him by the mail. “Before you die.”

“You are a fool.” He coughed again and smiled. “You are the richest man in Christendom and do not know it. Do you not understand what lay in those tombs for a thousand years? Do you not recognize your own Savior’s blood?”

I stared at the ancient, bloodstained spear, my eyes almost bulging out of my head. The spear of Longinus, the centurion who had stabbed Christ while He was dying on the cross.

A numbness was in my chest. My hands began to tremble.

I was holding the holy lance.