If the Moors did know what was happening, the brick tunnels would be a good place to wait in ambush. They wouldn’t even need to countermine.
“Well,” John said. “we ‘protectors’ are here. You miners might as well get some actual use out of us. I’ll scout ahead, and the rest of you wait here.” He set down the pick, stooped to retrieve the lantern he’d used before, and Amadour took hold of the shoulder.
“You don’t mean to go alone,” the big Norman said.
“If the Moors are lying in wait,” said John, “a lone scout has some chance of spotting the ambush and retreating undetected. This whole crew certainly could not.”
“A smaller group makes sense,” Amadour said, “but it’s reckless for one lone man to go. It needs to be the four of us, just like it was before.” He lowered his voice. “However you’re feeling, you know I’m right.”
John drew breath for an angry retort but then thought better of it. He wished he’d never gotten drunk and told his friend how Elizabeth had died of a fever two weeks before what was to be their wedding day, and disliked the Norman referring to it even obliquely. Still, the big man had a point.
“Very well,” he said. “You, Pascal, and Colm will go with me. Everyone else, wait here. If you see a company of Moors coming, run.”
The four Crusaders slipped into the brick passage. John and Colm carried lanterns, Amadour had held on to his pick, and Pascal had borrowed a shovel, just in case further digging was required after all. Everyone wore a sword, though no one excavating a tunnel burdened himself with mail or a shield.
Discerning no reason to prefer one direction over the other, John arbitrarily led his companions to the right. As he stalked along, he counted his steps and bade himself commit any turns to memory. That should facilitate the scouts’ eventual return to their companions and even give him some crude notion of where he was in relation to the enemy city overhead.
For a time, there was nothing to see but lantern-shine sliding over brickwork and the darkness ahead endlessly slipping from its grasp. Despite the need to stay vigilant, the gloom and the quiet lulled him. Perhaps, now that the air was free of grit and there was no need to pound and scrape through hard-packed earth for every inch of progress, it eased him even more than before.
Until, faintly, metal clashed, a shivery sound that took a moment to dwindle away to nothing. John jerked as though the noise had startled him from a doze, and around him, his companions did the same. The lanterns swung at the ends of their handles and set shadows rocking as though laughing at the men who cast them.
“What was that?” whispered Pascal, peering about. He was as short and scrawny as Amadour, his fellow Norman, was tall and burly, and had a knack for mending damaged gear that made his comrades prize him. He’d been a tinker before the preaching of Bernard of Clairvaux inspired him to take the cross.
“Somebody in armor?” asked Colm. He was rawboned and lantern-jawed, his shock of hair the yellow of straw and his skin waxy pale where the dirt of mining didn’t darken them.
“I don’t think so,” John replied. It hadn’t sounded like the clink of mail or even the clatter that might result from some lummox dropping a shield. It had been more like the clash of a cymbal, peculiar as that seemed. “Whatever it was, it didn’t sound especially close. We’ll keep moving. Just stay alert.”
As they prowled onward, though, John found it difficult to follow his own order. Perhaps because of the River Tagus flowing nearby, the air was dank, but paradoxically, it affected him like the warmth in a stuffy room. His eyelids drooped, and his limbs grew heavy.
At some point, the cymbal — if that was what it was — resumed its clashing. For a moment, that seemed ominous, but the sound was still soft and likely no closer than before. It was even possible John and his companions were moving away from the source, in which case, it would be foolish to become alarmed.
The cymbal sounded half a dozen times, long enough for him to start pacing in time to the beat. When it fell silent again, the sudden absence made him stumble.
Later, the lantern light washed over the ghost of a child floating partway up the wall. The apparition jolted John out of his dulled complacency. Snatching for his sword, he squinted in an effort to determine if he was truly seeing what he thought he was. His companions exclaimed and recoiled.
Then Pascal laughed a shaky laugh.
Amadour turned to him. “What’s funny?”
The scrawny tinker grinned. “If you lot weren’t a pack of wretched sinners, maybe you’d recognize the Virgin when you see her.”
Or if we had eyes as keen as yours, thought John, for the thing he’d taken for a pale phantom was in fact a white stone statue of a female figure set in an alcove in the wall.
A sensible man, or a leader concerned with fulfilling his responsibilities, should be glad it had startled him out of the half-stupor that had crept over him. Still, John felt the ache of loss, as though something precious had slipped from his hand
He advanced to examine the statue, and his companions followed. Despite Pascal’s initial impression, the figure wasn’t an image of Mary after all. Pregnant and enthroned, the woman the sculptor had depicted wore a crown made of towers and clasped a horn overflowing with fruit and flowers in her lap. A lion gazed up at her like an adoring hound.
“Shit,” Pascal said. He actually sounded upset, as though the statue had played a cruel prank on him.
“Is it an idol the Moors worship?” asked Colm.
“Perhaps,” said John. None of them knew much about the enemy’s faith except that it was false and pernicious. “But Lisbon is an old city. She could be some pagan goddess from Roman times.”
“Moorish or pagan,” Pascal said, “it makes no difference.” He lifted his spade and aimed it at the statue’s face.
“No!” snapped John.
The little Norman glowered. “Why not?”
John had reacted by instinct. It took thought a moment to catch up. When it did, he discovered he feared it would be bad luck to disrespect the statue. Besides, he simply didn’t want to see it disfigured.
None of that would sway Pascal. Fortunately, there was a more rational consideration as welclass="underline" “If you smash the figure, and there are Moors nearby, they might hear.”
“But they didn’t hear us knock a hole in the wall?” Pascal replied.
“We’ve walked a ways since then,” Amadour said. “Anyway, you need to follow orders.”
Pascal made a disgusted spitting sound, but he also lowered the shovel.
Colm ran his hand over his temple and the top of his head, smearing the dirt that clung there. “Speaking of noise,” he said, “I heard the metal sound again a while back. I… I don’t know why I didn’t say anything before.”
“I heard it, too,” said John. “I think we all did. It just didn’t bother us this time.”
“What is it?” Colm asked.
“Definitely not Moors lying in wait,” John said. “They wouldn’t make a racket if they wanted to ambush us.”
The lanky Englishman grunted. “I suppose that’s something to be thankful for, but I still don’t like it.”
“Nor do I,” Amadour said, “and we’ve been exploring for a while. Let’s head back.”
John’s immediate reaction was that this too was a bad idea, or if not that, an unpalatable one. “Somewhere, there has to be a stairway up or some sort of access to the city.”
“Maybe,” Amadour said, “but if we’re no longer worried about stumbling into a Moorish ambush, the fastest way to find such a thing is to get the whole crew searching.”
John realized that was true. “Fine,” he sighed. “We’ll fetch the others.”