Armed in Her Fashion

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

A dark hill—that’s all it was, from a distance, to Margriet’s eyes. But this was flat country and Hell was a big beast. As they neared in the grey morning light, she saw two great circles gleaming like white eggs or blisters on the top of its head. Eyes, she realized with a shock. Unblinking eyes that stared not at the chimeras and their captives approaching on the ground but off into the distance, into the sky.

She was so tired that her head felt like a rotten turnip, and her ears felt as if they were filled with water whenever she moved her head.

The chimeras paused and unbound the captives and let them slide off the saddles. Margriet’s ass was numb, and so were her fingers, for different reasons. When her feet touched the ground they felt odd, too. The Plague was progressing.

She stood with Beatrix on her left and Claude on her right. Claude was breathing hard. Beatrix was muttering: prayers, probably.

The great mouth yawned open and Margriet gasped. A row of long ivory teeth gleamed, each one of them pointed like an incisor. One side of the nose was pierced by a copper ring that could have bounded Margriet and Beatrix both with room to spare.

A lick of the lips with a great red tongue, and then the mouth closed.

The horned man walked to the Beast and said something softly, so softly Margriet could not hear.

Was there a password? The equivalent of scilt ende vrient in whatever language this beast spoke?

The Hellbeast opened its mouth slowly, as though someone were cranking a portcullis, and out came a Mantis-man. He went on his knee.

“Here comes King Philippe,” breathed Beatrix.

“Can you see him so sharply?”

“I wouldn’t know his face. But look how the man goes on his knee. And look how the king stands. It’s him, I know it’s him.”

“False-dealing, arrogant, unnatural knave,” said Margriet.

“What shall we do?”

“What can we do?”

The answer rang like a horn in her mind: They could change tack, appeal to the king’s mercy as well as the Chatelaine’s—or at least his curiosity. His sense of justice? That was a laugh. The man had no right to be king, and no right to impose the rule of a rotten count over the will of the people of Flanders. And yet he had done so, and made a deal with Hell to do it. Could she truly appeal to such a king?

Beatrix grabbed her arm. “Look.”

Two figures had come to the door of Hell. One was tall and thin, a man, she thought. The other, by the shape of the white gown and the headdress, was a woman.

“Is it her?” Margriet asked. “What does she look like? Her skin is dark, that much I can see.”

“Darker than Jacquemine Ooste’s. And her hair is black and fuzzy, and coiled up on two sides of her head in horns, and all wrapped in gold threads with gold cloth over it. She is not wearing a wimple. She is very beautiful of face.”

“It’s her, then. This is our chance.”

Claude snorted.

It seemed incredible that a human could walk inside and come out again unchanged, but if Jonah could go into the whale, the king of France could visit Hell.

If she was honest, and Margriet could not help but be honest, there was one small part of her mind that held back out of fear, not out of fear of the king’s knights or even of the Chatelaine’s chimeras but of what she, Margriet, would say. She had practised her speech as they rode but it was hiding from her mind now, laughing at her like an unruly urchin, daring her to speak what she truly wished to say.

In all her years, she had never had to speak to anyone higher than a city alderman, and that had usually not gone well. She did not have the gift of smiling speech; that had always been Willem’s job, though he did it poorly.

Willem, though, was dead. And Margriet would be dead of the Plague soon, and Beatrix would be left with nothing.

By heaven, Margriet was hungry. Beatrix must be starving; that girl could eat at the worst of times.

The Chatelaine walked out onto a great red tongue that lolled out over the iron-clad teeth and dropped slavering onto the mud. A neat trick. Margriet was close enough to see her better now. She was dressed in white velvet but she looked desperate like a young market-woman, old before her time and skinny, hair scraped up at the temples, skin dark, flushed darker and shining on the cheeks. It must be hot in Hell under that fur cloak.

And what was that? A bronze-coloured mace swung from the end of one arm, as though it were part of her body. So the queen of Hell was a chimera herself, or something like one.

The chimeras knelt. Margriet, remembering she was a petitioner, knelt, too, awkwardly going down on one knee. The ground was cold and damp.

The Chatelaine took the horned man by his giant hand and pulled him up to standing and kissed him once on each cheek. He had to stoop for her to do it, squatting a bit so as to keep his back straight and the horn out of the way. Somehow he made that look elegant. Then the Chatelaine swept her gaze over Claude and Margriet and Beatrix.

King Philippe raised his hand, and everyone stood. The Chatelaine looked miffed, turning to him and turning back again to the assembled monsters and prisoners.

“Where is it?” she snapped, looking at Claude.

Claude sighed heavily. “My lady, if you think I have a mace secreted on my person, I shall have to disappoint you.”

A mace? The weapon on the Chatelaine’s arm looked very like the one Margriet had seen in Willem’s strongbox. There was a riddle in all this, and by heaven Margriet would have the answer out of Claude if ever she got the chance, which seemed unlikely now.

“This insolent child is known to me already,” said the Chatelaine, looking at Claude. “But I do not believe I have seen these women before.”

“We are Margriet de Vos and Beatrix Claes, from Bruges, my lady,” Margriet said, looking her in the eye.

“You’ll speak when asked,” growled the horned man.

The Chatelaine raised a hand to him, and smiled at Margriet.

“You were travelling with Claude Jouvenal?”

Margriet nodded. “She is my guard,” she said. There were titters. “I bring a petition.”

“A petition! Ah, you pray mercy for your town.”

“No, my lady. That is, of course, yes, I would like you to stop the siege of Bruges. But my petition concerns another matter. I thought to bring it to Count Louis, but I heard people say that you were now lord in Flanders, and in any case I thought that you, as a woman, might understand my cause all the better.”

“You interest me greatly.”

Margriet took that as encouragement to speak.

“My husband amassed great wealth when he was alive, and by Flemish law that wealth must now come to me and to my daughter. One third to me, and the rest to her.”

The Chatelaine glanced back at King Philippe. Next to him stood an ordinary looking varlet, and the tall thin man in a grey-brown cloak.

“Is that so?” the Chatelaine responded, turning back. “I am afraid my knowledge of the intricacies of Flemish law is not what it ought to be. And who is keeping you from your inheritance?”

“He is,” Beatrix said. “Father is.”

“My husband,” Margriet added.

“Ah,” said the Chatelaine, pursing her lips. “A revenant?”

“Yes.”

“Your husband’s name?”

The Chatelaine focused on her like a cat on its prey.

“Willem de Vos.”

“Ah,” said the Chatelaine, looking unhappy. “I thought it was so.”

“You know him, then, my lady.”

“I know the names and hearts of every one of the Beast’s denizens. But you are mistaken when you call yourself a widow, Vrouwe de Vos. The dead are dead. The priests tell me they lie in the earth until the last judgement. They do not walk. Your husband is a revenant; he walks upon the earth, he speaks.”

Margriet swallowed.

“He has a great hole in his body. A man cannot bear such a wound and live.”

“There are many miracles upon this Earth.”

“He is a denizen of Hell. You said so yourself. Only the dead live in Hell.”

The Chatelaine stepped backward, waving her hand at the great red tongue and the darkness beyond. “Have you been inside?”

Margriet shook her head. “But I have met my husband since he took that wound, since he was made a revenant. And I can tell you without fear of lying that he is not the same man. That creature may use his body but my husband, William de Vos, is dead. I am his widow. I have my rights.”

“And what form does your husband’s wealth take?” said the king, stepping forward. “Land? Gold? English wool? Or that homely cloth you people weave?”

Margriet pointed at the sumpter horse. “That bag. We had just taken it back from the revenant when your servants attacked us.”

“Attacked!” the Chatelaine said. “Really. I don’t like the sound of that, at all. Did you attack these women, Monoceros?”

“I invited them to come and meet you, my lady.”

“Indeed. Well, and what’s in the bag?

“All sorts of things: silver cups and lots of clinking money. A sword, and a mace very like the one you wear, my lady. I would have thought there could not be two maces like it in the world.”

The Chatelaine’s head snapped around to look at Claude.

“Oh but there are,” said Claude, her voice strangled by laughter or something else. “Yes, there it is. That mace that once belonged to me. Shall I tell everyone how I came by it and what it did?”

“You stole it,” said the Chatelaine icily. “You, Claude Jouvenal, are a treacherous liar in every part, a mercenary with no loyalty and no one shall believe a word you say.”

“Stole it!” said the king. “From you? She stole a weapon from Hell?”

The Chatelaine closed her eyes for a moment, just a moment. When she opened them again she was smiling. “Not a true weapon of Hell. A poor copy, made to look like one of my weapons. Still, it is the principle.”

“A copy?”

“A copy I had made,” said Claude. “And not a poor copy at all. Shall I tell how I bought it?”

“It seems to me that ought to wait for the trial,” said the king, interrupting the Chatelaine.

“The trial!” the Chatelaine said.

“It is an interesting case,” said the king. “A case for lawyers, I should say.”

The Chatelaine whirled to him. “Sire, it seems simple enough to me.”

It was simple, indeed. And Margriet had no time for lawyers.

“Does it? Well then perhaps you should argue it. It seems the inheritance is the central issue, and while Flemish custom is all well and good, inheritance is canon law, so we must have a bishop to decide it who owns the goods in this sack, and what parts they receive.”

“Surely, my king, the princes of the church have other matters to occupy them.”

“I am most interested in this case. As you say, madame, it is the principle. The bishop of Tournai is coming to Zonnebeke for Michaelmas. My lawyers will assist him. Both sides may have their pick of one my lawyers to help them argue.”

Michaelmas—less than a week’s time. Margriet would still be alive, in a week’s time, if the Plague progressed in her as it had in others. But what wreck of a thing would she be?

Well, if it came to it, she would tell Beatrix what to say.

The Chatelaine inclined her head. “That will not be necessary. Chaerephon will argue for me.”

“And you, Madame de Vos? You and your companions may stay at Ypres, where I am a guest in the castle. You need fear no harm. And I shall provide a lawyer.”

Margriet did not like the look of him. She had imagined every king must look like a lion, so wise, so fond, that he was nearly foolish; but Philippe looked nothing like she had ever imagined King Nobel to look. He looked like the wolf Ysengrim, conspiring at death, gleeful. She wanted to get away to somewhere where she could think.

“My king,” she said, bowing down onto one knee again. “I am most grateful. But I have a young daughter, as you see, and we will happily lodge at the abbey in quiet reflection until the appointed day. I have no need of learned men and fine words. God will make the truth of my cause evident, I am sure. No one could dispute it.”

“What of the thief, Claude Jouvenal?” the Chatelaine asked tightly. “Is her fate to be decided by the bishop of Tournai as well?”

“At the very least she is a witness,” said the king. “And she may have a claim. I commend her to your custody, but I expect to see her hale at the Michaelmas feast.”

Claude, still standing in mail and aketon, crossed her arms. “What cause is there for imprisoning me?”

“The charge of theft,” said the Chatelaine.

She walked over to Claude, and grabbed the girl’s right hand, pushed up the sleeve of the aketon.

“Scarred, I see,” she said, so softly that while Margriet could hear, probably few others could. “You miss it, don’t you?”

Claude pulled her hand out of the Chatelaine’s grasp.

“Michaelmas is in six days’ time,” said the king slowly and looking directly at Margriet, as if he thought the concept of six days to be beyond the calculating of a trader’s wife from Bruges, a woman who had kept track of payments owing in sous and groats and shillings and florins, a woman who had kept count of the feedings of two babies at once, who had counted the hours of long nights of grief over the children who had never sought her breast. “You will present yourself to Zonnebeke Abbey on Michaelmas morning. Good timing, I think. We shall entreat the intercession of Saint Michael the judge, who cast down the devil.”