The Accursed Tower Read online

  THE CRUSADER

  BOOK I:

  THE ACCURSED TOWER

  John Cleve

  © John Cleve 1974

  John Cleve has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1974 by Dell Publishing Co.

  This edition published in 2018 by Lume Books.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One – The Night-Stalker

  Chapter Two – The Night Visitor

  Chapter Three – Bride of the King

  Chapter Four – Mistress of the King

  Chapter Five – Luisa’s Mouth

  Chapter Six – The Copper Tower

  Chapter Seven – A Woman for Guy

  Chapter Eight – Geldemar the Bastard

  Chapter Nine – Hero’s Reward

  Chapter Ten – Into Rosamonde

  Chapter Eleven – The Noble Slut

  Chapter Twelve – The Accursed Tower

  Chapter Thirteen – A Saracen’s Slut

  Chapter Fourteen – Punishment for a Spy

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen – The Girl in the Palace

  Chapter Seventeen – A Prize for the Conqueror

  Chapter One – The Night-Stalker

  The moon hung round and white as a buxom maiden’s breast over the stable. A gentle breeze rustled through tall pines and cypresses standing about the building like dark sentinels.

  Within were a man and a maid, playing the ancient game of love—though between these two the term was lust, not love. The man was red of hair and brawny of build, and his big body covered hers fully. She writhed in pleasure, a sun-bronzed country girl who was still partially clothed. Her moans rose along with sighs and gasps, accompanied by the sound of the hay rustling beneath her.

  Neither of them knew that they were being watched.

  Outside were two men, one’s presence unknown to the other. One, helmeted, armored, armed—set to guard his liege-lord and commander while that fortunate rogue tupped the fullblown peasant in the stable. But the guard was remiss in his duties; he was watching the couple through a crack between two of the planks forming the stable’s outer wall. At his hip, his great Norman sword hung unused, unneeded and forgotten.

  But the guard, too, is being watched.

  The third man, his presence unknown to any of the others, is but a few feet behind. He is darkly dressed, cloak muffled. His feet are shod in soft-soled leather boots and make only the faintest whispering sounds as he moves forward, slowly and quietly and with great care for sound and shadow. The little breeze murmuring in the trees plucks at his dark cloak. He moves another gliding step forward, his eyes on the back of the helmeted guard. Even seen from behind, the negligent sentinel’s activity is obvious, and a sneer twitches the black mustache and twists the full lips of the skulking stalker.

  Another slow gliding step, foot planted carefully. Now he is but two paces behind the entranced guard, who continues stripping his shaft with long firm strokes, oblivious to all but the sight before his staring eyes—and the sensation in his guts.

  From inside the dark cloak of the man behind him steals a pair of hands, dark gloved. The left is empty, leathered fingers curling restlessly. The right is fisted, and the moon strikes a silvery glint from the long dagger enclosed in that leather-gloved fist.

  The moon watches, uncaring. The wind sighs and tickles the leaves of the guardian trees . . . while the real guardian is no more watchful than a tree, staring. The stalker draws a slow, quiet breath. His right hand rises, measuring, upper arm held well out from his body, forearm curved in from the elbow, the dagger held horizontally. His left is similarly poised, gloved fingers spread.

  “Ah . . . ah, sweet Savior,” the girl’s voice comes from within the stable, in sighing little cries. “Ah, oh, oh my lord . . . ah, ah!”

  The unguarding guard has one fleeting instant’s awareness of movement beside him, the sudden manifestation of a shadow on the building behind him. All in one brief hurtling instant, never to be repeated. Then everything happens at once.

  Something harsh, a leather-covered vise, whips around his neck from behind, coming from leftward, and clamps hard and coarse over his mouth and chin. At the same instant it yanks, snapping his head up and back until he is looking at the stars with bulging eyes.

  And still more fills that crowded moment, for there is a swift icy sensation across his throat. It becomes a stinging pain.

  Then his severed jugular vein begins to spurt great fountaining streams of thick warm scarlet. The same thick red fluid flows over his leather-covered chest and the hand he slapped instinctively over his throat—and jerks away, for the sweaty fingers sting the raw gaping second mouth he has been provided with.

  The negligent guard sags, growing weaker and weaker and less and less aware of sensation, visual and auditory and tactile. There is only the spreading, deepening mist before his eyes, and the humming in his ears, inside his skull. Pain fades. He has stood his last watch. He is past resistance or outcry, and his killer lowers him carefully and quietly to the ground. There must be no thud to alert the womanizing foreigner inside, no clank of arms or armor against the ground.

  The man becoming corpse is still twitching while the murderer wipes his blooded dagger on the long homespun smock that covers the other man from collar to knee.

  The night-killer crouches there, listening, ears and eyes straining, attuned to every sound. The wind . . . a barking dog . . . the soughing of the wind in the trees, leaves stirring . . . the tenor bleat of a tit-hungry lamb . . . the nearby sounds of a woman and the grunts of a man. Nothing out of the ordinary. All is peaceful. None suspects his presence. Life is cheap, and another is gone, and none the wiser, and soon another will pump out its blood, and then the night-slayer will return to his employer to collect the other half of his reward, paid in good German marks.

  Dagger cleaned and again gleaming, he rises and draws his cloak around his dark-clad form as he steps across his victim. And replaces him, peering through the crack into the hay-piled straw where the foreign invader lies in adulterous embrace with a local blowze, all too delighted to yield her squirming body to the new conqueror of her island people.

  The night-stalker’s lip curls in a sneer as he peers in at them. Her he will soon send off to hell without recompense or remorse, and right gladly! But not now; they are still making the beast with two backs, and he watches and listens.

  The giant of a man was panting, his breath hot and harsh on her face and his chest pressing down with each swift breath on her heaving bosom. She could only groan gratefully at the inner sensation of that great flesh-spear from across the waters.

  What a man! He had been thus making love to her for many long minutes, to her delight, one turn of the glass perhaps, an entire hour. Could it be true? Could this great man be so fantastically vigorous—or had it been only a few seconds, a few minutes perhaps?

  Of course there was this: he had been married less than a month, and perhaps his pot of love’s juices was kept constantly emptied by his new wife’s newly-initiated lust. Perhaps, the girl thought smiling. In which case I thank thee, Mother of God, for my great and food fortune.

  “Now,” he said abruptly, almost growling.

  But she did not understand him, and he had to slide his big hands under her and exert an upward pressure to convey his meaning. She smiled then, and hoisted herself high.

  Then: “Ah—ah!” he gasped, and at last it was happening.

  Outside, the night-killer smiled. Soon, now.

  Inside, the red-headed giant flopped limply off the sighing, gasping girl. He slapped a big hand down onto one of the massy melons juddering on her
chest. He squeezed it callously, in a way that brought a sudden squeal from her lips.

  “Ah, by Holy Rood you are a good tumble, girl! Now get you back to your scullery and pray that your belly grows fat with my seed!” And he turned her over, landed a smack on her broad round backside, and thrust her forcefully away.

  The girl rose, tugging her bodice back up over her breasts. Her skirt fell down over her legs. She smiled down at him, then dropped a curtsey to the sprawled, grinning giant.

  “Thank you, milord,” she said, smiling and bobbing her head, and then the girl turned and hurried from the stall and then from the stable, smiling brightly.

  Her heart was full, not of love, but of joy, for after all, how many poor peasant girls of tiny, unimportant Cyprus could even dream of being topped and tupped by—

  Her thoughts and her life were swiftly shut off as one gloved hand clapped over her mouth and another drove a razor-honed and needle-pointed sliver of cold, cold steel into the roundling bulge of her left breast. The slender blade slid into her as easily as into a ripe pear.

  Then the night-killer gave his dagger a swift, back and forth twist, deep inside the resilient flesh . . . and inside the heart that pulsed beneath.

  She died, like the guard.

  The dark-cloaked night-slayer slipped swiftly, ever silently into the stable. Behind him, a leafless crimson flower bloomed ever larger on the bulging cloth covering the sprawled girl’s bosom. Her eyes stared at the sky. The moon stared back. Neither saw.

  The night-stalker stood in the dark aisleway that ran between the stalls, but he was not interested in the mingled scents of leather and manure and hay and the heavy, sour odor of horse sweat. His interest, with his gaze, was focused on the open doorway of the stall that contained no animal but was rather half filled with hay. On the broad shelf a few feet below and to the left of the square hole through which the hay was dropped from the loft above, a lantern flickered.

  The lordly lover could afford such luxuries; he had conquered Messina because Sicily’s King Tancred had offended him—and then sold it back to Tancred for two and a half thousand pounds of gold!

  Now he lay sprawled on the hay, still limp and leaden, swathed in the peaceful aftermath of his orgasm. His feet looked small from this position; the night-stalker was looking at the crown of the supine man’s carrot-haired head. Just beyond, the twinned plates of his massive athlete’s chest were plainly visible, rising and falling, very evenly. Very visibly—and very temptingly.

  A perfectly superb target, by God’s blood, the night-killer thought. The great left pectoral. That chest would be heavily layered and banded with muscle, of course, for the man was one of the most powerful warriors of his time; of any time. A hard-swung, crossover blow, striking straight down into that left chest lobe—and into the heart that throbbed inside.

  The assassin hesitated, chewing a few hairs at the right edge of his drooping mustache. Within his glove, his fingers sweated as they clutched his dagger. Perhaps, if he waited, the big man would drift off to sleep. How much easier that, killing a sleeping man—particularly such a man!

  But . . . on the other hand, he might well rouse himself at any second and rise, and then it would be too late. The night-killer must then either flee—and fast, and far—or die, for he knew he could not stand up against this conqueror of Messina and Cyprus, this man who had secured his own estates by warring with his brothers and battling with his own father—and even the King of France—and had, one way or another, bested them all.

  No. The night-stalker dared not chance it. He had to strike, and as soon as possible. There, beside the resting giant and near to hand, was his great sword. If the dagger in the chest failed to end it, then, another swift movement would: the whoreson invader would die by his own broad blade! Aye, by heaven! With his own blood-crusted blade!

  And then, slowly and carefully, mindful of hay that might hiss or crackle underfoot, the night-killer began moving forward to claim his third victim—the one for which he had already received good silver coin and would soon be paid more, in the very hand now holding the dagger, the hand that had already drunk twice of the rich red juice of life.

  Up, up rose the arm that wielded that thirsty blade of steel. The night-killer steadied himself and prepared for the swift, hard downward blow. . . .

  . . . and down from the loft dropped him who had been still another unseen watcher of the royal fuckery, down with his wooden pitchfork clutched before him in both hands. The tines drove several, inches into the lower chest of the night-killer with a terrible chunking sound that came as one with the sound of the stable boy’s feet striking the hay-strewn floor.

  The red-headed giant on the hay was on his feet and had sword in hand before his would-be slayer was fully down, with blood bubbling up around the three pitchfork tines buried in his entrails. Burning hawk’s eyes took in the dark clothing, the gloved hands, the dagger. A swift warrior’s brain recalled that he had heard nothing of this man’s entry, while the other, the muscular youngster, had obviously dropped from the loft above.

  Their eyes met, youth and naked, sword-gripping man.

  “Now by God’s balls—that whoreson hen’s piss meant to slay me, did he?”

  “Aye, my lord,” the young Cypriot said, nodding nervously. He was nothing; before him stood one of the greatest knights in the world. No less formidable because of his nakedness, and holding besides his great broad sword. The young man wondered how many souls that sword had separated from their earthbound bodies.

  “Well, lad,” the naked knight said, “ye seem to have saved my life. Some would not thank you for such an act, but I assure you I look kindly on it and deem it a great service, indeed! Oh—just lean on that three-pronged lance of yours a bit, won’t you? The blood bubbling up from his mouth flows as if he yet clings to his stinking life.”

  The youth did, impressing the man with his lack of qualm in leaning on the pitchfork with both hands, and giving it a slow twist before he wrenched it free to liberate the night-stalker’s blood. It flowed freely forth to stain the hay, and the assassin’s eyes glazed.

  The naked man, almost a giant and more powerfully built than most men even in this age of necessarily great physical strength, gazed at his youthful savior. Boys were men at twelve or thirteen, because they must be. This one might have been that or a bit older, but what a youth! He was rising six feet in height already, and must have weighed full seventy or more pounds over a hundred, without an ounce of fat anywhere on him. Not only big, but stout and strong, and loyal enough, withal, to slay a would-be hired murderer. Pursing his lips under his orange-red mustache, the even taller and thicker man nodded thoughtfully.

  He smiled. “And what might your name be, who has saved my life this night of treachery?”

  “Guy, my lord, son of Peter of Messaria.”

  “And know you who I am, Guy of Messaria?”

  “Aye, Sir. Ye be Richard, him who is called the Lion-Hearted, King of England and Normandy and now ruler, too, of all Cyprus.”

  Nodding, King Richard chuckled. “Aye, all of Cyprus,” he said, and Guy knew for certain what he had begun to realize of late: that Cyprus was but a flyspeck on the surface of this broad world whose boundaries were measured—and fought over—by men like Richard coeur-de-lion.

  “I owe you much, Guy,” King Richard said, “and I have need of strong men about me, and aye, of a squire—especially, by God’s balls, one who is so swift to defend and obey his lord!”

  Thus began the long and adventurous career of Guy of Messaria, The Crusader.

  Chapter Two – The Night Visitor

  “Shit!” Richard the Lion-heart said, straightening up from the would-be assassin. “Sometimes I just do not think. The whoreson is dead, and us without knowing who sent him. Philip of France . . . Saladin . . . Isaac?” He shrugged his massive shoulders. “No, surely not. Well, come along, lad. I feel in need of a tankard of ale at very least, and I’ll warrant you’d not turn one down, eh?”
br />   “My lord—”

  “Yes, yes I know, so you’ve never set foot in a castle. Come along anyhow, Guy of Messaria. The King commands it!” And smiling, Richard ushered the young cypriot out of the stable.

  A few moments later he was cursing, having discovered the bodies of both his recent paramour and his supposed guard. Guy noted that the King showed far more concern over the loss of the man-at-arms, which was only natural. Swords and arms to wield them, after all, were valuable; women were easily come by and as easily replaced.

  Guy stood by, impressed and more than a little nervous, while the Lion-heart cursed and railed at an assortment of men, sending them down to the stable in the night to do something about the bodies, telling them in no uncertain terms what a bunch of incompetents they were and how he thanked God and the Mother of Jesus for the valor of a Cypriot stable-boy. And then Guy followed him into the great pile of stone that was the castle, receiving odd looks but no lip, for he was, after all, with the conqueror of Normandy, of Sicily, of Cyprus, of the hearts of all his followers; Richard coeur-de-lion, third son of Henry of England but King anyhow, with both older brothers and his father now mouldering below ground.

  They sat alone in high-backed chairs at a long trestle table, served mulled ale by a page of twelve or so, a boy in what Guy considered magnificent garb. Noticing the Cypriot’s fascination with the boy’s outfit of crimson and yellow, Richard laughed and ordered the page to bring Guy some clothing, and to make sure it was of sufficient size.

  “My lord King,” Guy began when the impressed page had left.

  Richard’s blue eyes twinkled at him. “Aye, I understand, Guy of Cyprus. But now ye’re entered into my service, and you must needs be better attired than you are. Tell me, what think you of your former king, Isaac Comnenus?”

  The King of England saw the youthful face tighten, its beardless lines arranging themselves into an expression of distaste. A line appeared on the smooth young forehead beneath short-cropped hair the color of a bay horse. A new darkness, almost an ugliness, appeared in the brown eyes. And Richard nodded.