The Crusade of the Black Cross
(Genre: Short Story, Coming of Age, Historical Fantasy, Horror)
THE CRUSADE OF THE BLACK CROSS
by C.S. Humble
Sir Brandon of Bruderlin and his four squires marched across a depopulated country in quest of a holy relic of minor import. They were united in heart and much-tested gaiety, traveling under the knight’s white albatross pennon which curled and snapped against an iron hard wind. The bannerman, squire, and brother to Sir Brandon, Michael, trod alongside three others, who comprised the rest of the little company. Over hills and moors, through perilous, white-fanged mountain passes, the brothers of the albatross followed a crumbling map to the last known location of the “Black Cross.” Today’s march would offer the terminus of the map’s edge, to the place where an inked circle designated the castellated abbey of the sagacious Prince Prospero.
There were many abandoned homes along the road. A road which Cors the herald remarked had become overgrown in disuse. They had all of them noticed this. But such was Cors’s way, to proclaim in prophetic revelation that which all could see clearly.
Homes decaying at the outer edge of Prospero’s providence gave break to the wind and chill. The company scribe, Han, made the sign of the cross and gave thanks to God, for he above them all detested the bleak conditions and grave surroundings of their journey.
Godfried, the company cook, boiled a stew in the pot of a woman long dead, asking that Michael move her rotting corpse aside, so that he might feed his Lord and squire-brothers on a meager meal of mint, venison, and juniper berries.
Sir Brandon, typically a pedagogue of sobriety, passed around fortified wine against the autumn chill, allowing the boys to drink and drink until Godfried danced bare-bellied in the projected rays of firelight cast from the dead woman’s hearth. It was after their boyish revelry found its height that Sir Brandon sat at the table head and addressed his misty-eyed company. The black cross, he told them, had been loaned to Prospero by His Holiness, Urban VI, despite the support the Prince gave to Neapolitan heretics who had attempted to usurp the Pontiff. Many thought the gift a strange boon for the Pope to provide his detractor. But the cross brought to Prospero by papal officer was placed within the bowels of the happy Prince’s newly constructed abbey.
Not long after, a great pestilence poisoned the corpus of Prospero’s dominion. For months, no messenger or dove-lighted note flew from the abbey. Urban demanded the relic’s return to the bastion of all Catholic faith.
Cardinal summons for the object went unanswered. Thrice times papal messengers were commanded to make the journey to recover the artifact on Urban’s behalf and each time, each messenger chose potential excommunication over certain death.
Thus, the brothers of the albatross were chosen. Sir Brandon accepted valorously what others had refused.
At this, Han spat on the ground, denouncing the messengers as cowards. Cold-blooded pretenders growing the weed of apostasy in their hearts. Snatching the wineskin from Godfried’s hand, the scribe began to quote chapter and verse the biblical account of the Hebrew night of Passover. Fervently he oathed that with the blood of Christ painted across the doors of their hearts, the brothers of the albatross would travel unafraid of pestilent harm to exodus the black cross out of Prospero’s little egypt and return it to God’s own sanctuary. The company cheered at the short homily.
But it was Michael who cut through the cries of bravery and questioned the cross’s importance. Sir Brandon decried the squire’s impudent inquiry. For this was Michael’s greatest asset and also the aspect for which his friends and brother loathed him. Even in matters of faith, Michael was a questioner.
The wind howled through the closed shutters, sending the wooden slats clattering against one another as Sir Brandon gestured for the return of the wineskin, though he took no wine himself. Brandon, his face cowled in the wavering shadows of the fire, recounted unto his squires the tale of insolent Absalom, the son of King David of biblical infamy, who raised a mighty army to depose his father. He told this great tragedy of familial destruction earnestly, coming to the death of Absalom, whose grand curls became ensnared within the boughs of a mighty oak in the Wood of Ephraim. Helpless, Absalom was come upon by vengeful Joab, who pierced the King’s son with three arrows, and when this was not enough to end Absalom, Joab’s men annihilated with cudgel and sword that which the King himself, despite the war, still loved best.
David’s own god-seeking heart was destroyed that day, never again to kindle with the might and fervor it had known at the zenith of his youth.
The arrows which pierced Absalom's heart were taken by King David, and placed within the tomb of the memorialized prince. The oak tree itself was swiftly cut down, its roots pulled from the earth. All the oak ravaged, all of it burned. But the arrows which pierced the King’s son remained hidden away in the depths of David’s treasure house. And for a thousand and more years they remained there, undisturbed and stained with princely blood, until the treasure house was stumbled upon by crusader knights doing Christ’s work in the holy land.
Pope Urban II, the Voice of God and first among holy crusaders, was given the arrows. A terrible ecstasy fell upon Urban that very night. An angel, nameless and robed in winged power, revealed the name of the blood’s owner, and commanded the Holy See beat the iron arrows into oak, and fashion a cross black as sackcloth. It was known then as the black cross, and its sign was for the attrition of all heavenly traitors.
The truth of the cross laid bare, Sir Brandon looked upon his friends and told them that there was nothing for them to fear, for only a traitor should fear the cross’s fearsome wrath. After all, of what calamity should such men be afraid, for they had served the church faithful and true. And with this work accomplished, Brandon promised that with the cross returned, each squire would be given their own lands and titles, such as the knight of the albatross had earned.
That night, they slept, but none of them found true rest as bellowing wind and howling wolves cut through the night and their courage. Gloomy morning came, and so the brotherhood made their final ascent up the overgrown hillock where squatted the silent abbey of Prince Prospero.
What the odor of death promised at a distance the sight atop the hill delivered. To a man, their battle-tested nerve was unscrewed when they approached the abbey’s fortifications.
There, sprawled about the embattled walls were a hundred bodies at least. Crimson-skinned limbs shot skyward, frozen in harrowing rigor. Their faces, picked clean by carrion raptors, smiled wide skeleton smiles venting the putrid effluences of bloated stomachs.Cors made note that which all the company knew; Prospero’s serfs had died quickly.
And all of them died screaming.
Han made the sign of the cross in effort to banish away any demon or malevolent spirit drawn toward such a suffering. Godfried, though he had seen battles twelve times over, was unmanned and spewed venison, mint, and berries all onto the ground. Sir Brandon chided the cook, then knelt before a collective of bodies. Were that they had not been servants of a traitor prince their lives might have been spared. But Brandon considered himself a just man, and so his heart housed no pity for their lives or the apportioning of their fate.
But it was Michael who, stepping upon and stumbling over the mass of decaying flesh, came to the great gate which stood twice higher than any abandoned home the company had passed by. And towering five times higher than the gate, was the massive, bejeweled abbey whose edifice shone like the throne of heaven against a pearl cloudhead. An august titan of structure, the castellated abbey, though nowhere equal to Rome’s mighty expanse, was a marvel that rivaled in miniature the grandeur of the Papal City itself.
For a moment, just a moment and no longer, the brotherhood of the albatross stood among the mass of corpses, staring at the traitor Prince’s construction, their hearts fully convinced that Christ might descend to part the cloud rack and, transfigured, impart unto them the wisdom of the age.
But no such sign came.
Only the gawking laughter of crows and Michael’s discovery that the gates of the fortifications were welded shut. Much was made of the challenge of impasse, but Han, with his learned mind, quickly cut timbers to construct a ladder that would carry each member of the company over the top. A second ladder was made as well, to ensure that egress would be as simple as ingress. Sir Brandon bid his fellows first test Han’s ladder, and once the squires were all standing within the abbey’s waist high foliage the knight followed.
Peeping just above the shoots of grass, Cors caught sight of the abbey’s entrance. With a single, trembling finger the squire directed their attention to the empty, yawning darkness where the great oaken doors should have been. Two, long exhausted tripods stood sentinel before the aperture. Set between them, splayed on the stone and just within the light of the sun, lay still a hand gloved in scarlet.
Sir Brandon scoffed at the pause his squires showed, chastising them as he tramped through the grass toward the entrance of the abbey. And as quickly as he had brandished his courage it abandoned him when the hand suddenly slid back into the dark aperture, leaving upon the white stone threshold a quartet of crimson streaks.
With a tumble and clatter of armor, the Knight of the Albatross found himself standing behind not one of the squires, but all four. They huddled within the shadow of the abbey. Praying. Then, planning. And finally, they drew up their collective bravery to its height. As if predestined by the Heavenly Host, the sun suddenly shot through the clouds. The radiant beams fell upon the company and their drawn longswords so that the steel of each blade shone and rang clear in the noon-day light. Han made for each of them a torch from cloth and oil and wood. Cors blessed the oil. Michael prayed for the courage of David dwell among them as it had before the Philistine giant in ancient days. Godfried gazed unto Sir Brandon, who stood erect in the sunlight, appearing to be every inch the man Godfried believed him to be.
Han, with his spark stone, lighted each torch and gave one to each member of the company. Steel and fire in their hands, the brotherhood of the albatross stepped over the threshold and into the midnight darkness of the abbey. The stench of decay invaded their nostrils. Their mouths. But, following the slithering streaks of scarlet, Michael made his way to a massive brazier set at the center of the sun-shrouded hall. And dipping his flame into the center of the oily wood, there came a great whooshing sound carrying on its wings light enough for the whole hall.
And the truth of it all came into view.
What had befallen greater than a hundred serfs locked outside the welded gates proved only to be the preface in what tragedy came sweeping through the interior of the hall. Not one hundred or two, but ten times a hundred at least, estimated Michael. Bodies, rotting in the darkness, maggot-filled mouths were frozen open in silent screams and wide, empty sockets painted the clearest picture of sheer terror that had come over these prisoners whom Prospero had so lovingly named his guests. With the smaller braziers lit, the company saw among the dead an annihilated population of jesters and dancers, improvisatori and magicians, the costumed and the damned.
From down the strangely angled hall came a sound. No, not only a sound, more.
There came a song. A deep, grandiose melody that might have announced with its brazen lungs more than just the measure of time. And during its tune, only the eyes of the brotherhood moved, shooting back and forth to one another, uncertain. When the song completed its crawl over stone and the goose-pimpled skin of the squires it was Godfried who begged the pardon of his knight, for fear had seized his heart and with it came shame also. Shame and doubt and the stomach-churning desire to run. Run from this place. No matter if such an act would require a lie be reported to the Pope himself. For whatever had accomplished this dread feat, what could so violently destroy such a number in such a fashion, was a creature or aspect or sorcery far behind any weapon or power the brotherhood possessed. Certainly, Godfried protested, against such a peril, even the brotherhood could not succeed.
And it was for this yellow streak and the doubt within the cook that Sir Brandon marched to Godfried and put upon him a waylay that made a purple mask of his face. The other squires begged and tugged at Brandon’s surcoat, but the knight was more man than the collective of the boys accosting him. With a lion’s strength, he threw back the three squires, and enraged, took up his torch and cursed them. His chastisement and aims were clear, that whatever amount of ruin the black cross had brought to Prospero, Brandon would earn in acclaim for its recovery. For this was the oath, this was the calling: to perform whatever work Christ demanded by way of the lips of His chief servant on Earth.
To rise. To reach. To strive.
Until this truth blossomed in their hearts, Sir Brandon proclaimed, they would, no matter how their bodies grew in might, forever remain boys in heart, mind, and soul. And with a flourish of his blade, Sir Brandon turned and ventured forth, so that he vanished behind the angle of stone leading to the next passage.
The squires helped beaten Godfried to his feet. Michael took the cook by the arm, and reboasted, the brave and true Catholic squires had nothing to fear from the sign of the black cross. And just as his words, filled with faith, ferried themselves into a dying echo, did the oaken doors of the abbey’s entrance slam shut.
Michael looked to Cors. Cors to Godfried. Godfried to Han.
And it was Han who saw the first corpse begin to rise.
It was a woman, her flesh slathered in cold, black blood, who reached up to grasp the glowing hot edge of the fiery brazier. Though smoke rose from her burning flesh, she gave no sign of injury.
Han’s mouth opened to warn...to scream...to say something. But the scribe could only in wide-eyed terror point to that dark figure standing like a wraith in the wavering flames. A man and another, and another, and a dozen more began to rise alongside her.
Hot-hearted and brave Cors brandished his sword, loosing a war cry worthy of the knighthood he so desperately craved. Before he could charge the rising horde, a rotted hand slapped down hard across his shoulder from behind. At this the squire snapped around, only to see the half-masked, sundered face of a creature, who opened its mouth and keened a wild, bestial howl. The creature lifted a stiletto and plunged it down toward Cors’s throat.
Michael’s sword, proving faster than Cors’s assailer, cut the corpse’s hand free at the elbow, sending silken sleeve, hand, and stiletto into the shadows.
The ragged, one-armed corpse ceased his cry and turned to confront his assailant. Between Michael’s wide-eyed fellow squires and the rising horde of Prospero’s masquerade, all were silenced. For a measure of thundering heartbeats, a hush fell over the abbey hall. And it was in that silence that Michael found within the depths of himself the fire of his own valor. With a single slash and a roar, Michael cut the head from the corpse that had dared to lay a hand on his squire brother.
At the slash, Cors exhaled in adoration.
At the sound, Han hollered fearless.
At the sight, doubting Godfried believed.
And it was at this wound that the collective guests of Prince Prospero, reignited in animus, collected in front of the oaken doors and began to shuffle toward the squires.
So too did the squires come together to form a single body of defense. No matter what measure of attack they might muster against the masquerade horde, no path could be cut through the center of them.
Michael commanded. They would remain on their heels, slow in retreat, each squire slashing and stabbing, staying close so that their blades kept the costumed throng at bay. Back and back the squires of the albatross wove their way through passages of blue, purple, and green. Around the verdant corner, into a passage where the sun shot through the high-hanging orange curtains, the squires’s whirling blades burned like molten gold.
Disaster struck when Cors stumbled over Michael’s feet, sending them both flailing onto their backs. The mass of hungry, moaning corpses made a dive for the fallen squires. But it was ingenious Han who slashed the guyline holding the orange curtain in its lofty place. The massive sheet fell, blanketing the oppressive wave of bodies. Godfried, risking all, bodily bounded at the chance to help his friends to their feet. The horde, not put off by the obstruction, clambered over the writhing sheet and further pursued the squires.
They came to a white chamber then. And there, Cors made a stand worthy of a song. Slashing and rending, his blade sharp as a fork of lightning, Cors clove a man in twain from skull to groin. Blood, thick as oil, desecrated the wedding white walls. The squire, proving to be the most able blade among the able brotherhood, spun and reaved, rolled, leaped, and hacked.
Behind the squires came a harrowing scream, the unmistakable voice of proud and mighty Sir Brandon. The squires, without word or gesture, turned and rushed hurriedly through a violet chamber. And it was only then, upon the squires entering a chamber black, that the horde suddenly ceased its pursuit.
Michael gave a wild cry upon seeing the dark silhouette of his brother, held aloft in scarlet light by a singular phantasm. Set upon the ground near Brandon’s naked blade, and just above the knight’s flailing feet, lay the black cross for which they had dared make their journey.
The phantasm secured the knight of the albatross as if he weighed nothing, turning to look upon the interloping squires. “Who dares?” His voice like the sliding of many stones. “Who dares come to steal from the happy masquerade of Prospero?”
“The brotherhood of the albatross,” replied Michael, a bloody rage in his words. “We come to reclaim on behalf of the Vicar of Christ. Release my brother or you shall find a measure of destruction twice the suffering of whatever claimed you in the life before.”
The Prince Prospero tilted his head, a scarlet smile slashing wide within the shadow of his visage. And that smile, so terrible and so bloody a thing, cut every cord lashing together the bravery in the heart of each of the squires.
The strong hands of the squires became palsied and dropped their weapons upon the sable carpet. They fell to their knees. Overpowered by terror. Overwhelmed by intolerable dread, the squires of the albatross suffered the roiling, invisible power of ghostly Prince Prospero.
“The cross,” said the Prince, “I see now, was no gift from Rome’s Pontiff. But a scourge sent to punish and put to death my lands, my people, and my life. And now, your lives are forfeit, and so shall every life that dares set foot among any chamber of my marvelous creation. For as my terror was great, so shall I revisit it unto every holy crusader that dares attempt the cross’s reclamation.”
The flames of the tripods within the chamber suddenly burst to life, bringing into view the abomination of the prince’s death mask which he had worn in the final moments of life, and would now wear until the end of time. Godfried, Cors, and Han suddenly began to scream at the sight of the phantasm's flame lighted face.
But it was Michael, who upon seeing his brother’s flailing limbs ceasing their movements, spied upon the sable carpet a gleaming dagger. Then summoning the wild courage of fidelity, the squire threw himself into depth of the black apartment, and rushing the towering phantasm, buried the shining dagger down to its jeweled hilt.
There came a sharp cry-and there instantly afterward diminished into nothingness the Prince Prospero.
Sir Brandon, now free of the phantasm’s crushing grip, breathed the wind of life and threw his arms around his rescuing brother in the shadow of the ebony clock. Grasped in unassailable joy, the brothers of the albatross huddled together in triumph and gratitude at their survival.
And among them was acknowledged the sign of the black cross. It had come to the traitor prince in papal vengeance and wrought unspeakable destruction upon deserving Prospero, and also those blameless of his treachery. And there, in the black chamber, one by one, the brotherhood agreed to destroy the black cross and live in the sin of defying the Pope’s decree. And the knight and his squires set to flame the magnificent abbey of Prince Prospero. And the light of the razing fire burned away darkness and decay, and the painful death that once held illimitable dominion over all.