The Codex Lacrimae: The Book of Tears

Chapter 4: The Orphans of Mecina

After Ríg and the other knights departed in haste to pursue the intruders at the gate, Father Arcadian, his brother, Mercedier, and Khajen ibn-Khaldun found themselves alone in the Grand Master's quarters.

"Ahh— that's it!" Mercedier groaned, when Ibn-Khaldun examined the old soldier's side.

Ibn-Khaldun nodded, replacing the coverlet over the man. He looked at Arcadian. "Let's have a drink, shall we?"

"Mon Dieu— a farewell toast? Am I dying, Khajen?" Mercedier asked.

"No, we just need a moment of rest," Ibn-Khaldun said. Arcadian motioned that he'd get the drinks and Ibn-Khaldun returned to his seat. "I'll have to go back inside, but I don't think that this is the poisoning I feared. I felt a slight protrusion just under the surface." He pointed at Mercedier's abdomen. "At your age, you're lucky to be alive after that battle and a fall like that."

"I know it," Mercedier watched Arcadian poured two goblets of wine and a cup of cold, saffron-laced tea. "Why go back inside, though? What about a magic potion? That made me sleep before."

"Let's try these drinks first, eh?" Ibn-Khaldun raised his cup. "To surviving another siege."

The brothers seconded him, and all took long, thoughtful sips.

Arcadian put his drink on the night table. "Well, I'll say it if no one else will," the Grand Master said. "There are too many similarities here to Mecina for my liking."

"Except," Mercedier qualified, "we've five times the castle and twenty times the people compared to back then."

"I'd add a small point," Ibn-Khaldun added, "but it's a point, nevertheless. In this instance, we'rethe ones besieged and not serving as a relief force, and there are twoarmies outside the walls, not one."

"Then, you add your own bit of mystery to the danger by arriving with a ‛magic book' meant for young Santini," Arcadian said, thoughtfully appraising the scholar. "No, old friend, no. There's too much similarity here for coincidence, and too many coincidences with the prophecies we heard at Mecina."

"What?" Mercedier asked. "That troubadour's song?" He shook his head and grimaced at the pain. "Nonsense, Arcadian. Soothsayer or non, Eric the Mariner was a gibbering idiot. I said it back then, and I repeat it now: absurde."

Ibn-Khaldun recalled the dawn of that morning five years ago at Mecina, when he, Arcadian, and Mercedier had approached the scored limestone of the demolished curtain wall.

* * *

Against a backdrop of fires blazing high from the castle, a colorfully dressed jester sat playing a fiddle on a pile of rubble. The music drifted, hauntingly beautiful over a ruined landscape still filled with the sounds of injured and dying people, the shouts of rescue personnel, burning buildings, and even the hastening clip-clop of horses being led to safer pastures.

The musician turned to the approaching Hospitallers, and the small contingent saw that he seemed blind, the shadows cast by a foppish hat didn't conceal a linen rag across his left eye. Moreover, the performer radiated pain. He appeared to be a person completely shattered by war, whose pockmarked and thinly black-bearded face, ragged clothing, and haggard aspect made for an altogether strange counterpoint to the exquisite melodies flowing from the strings of his Hardanger fiddle.

The trio dismounted the stallions and hiked up the pile of rubble.

"Bonjour, messieurs!" The jester said with a flourishing bow. He grandiosely doffed the fancy hat, but overthrew and lost it into a nearby fire. He frowned as the article briefly blazed, then shrugged and spread his hands.