Armed in Her Fashion

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Margriet woke in a small, dim chamber. She was lying on a bed and a monk was tutting over her with a sharp-smelling cloth in his hand.

“Brother Infirmerer, she has come around,” murmured a voice.

She turned her head. There was the bishop. Close up, she could see his face at last. An ordinary face, within all that finery. Not a kind face, but not a cruel one either. The face of an alderman or a lawyer. Solid and weary, pale and fleshy about the neck.

“I am better,” she said, propping herself on an elbow. The world lurched.

“It is taxing, for a woman to occupy herself with the arguments of churchmen and lawyers,” said the bishop. “We understand. Take some rest, here.”

“I can continue now.”

The bishop shook his head. “We have an office to keep, in any case. We will continue in an hour’s time, if you are well enough.”

The bishop and the monk slipped out through the plain wooden door. Where was Beatrix? She would be beside herself with worry.

Margriet sat up, to see whether she could. Her head was light but she thought she could manage to stand again, perhaps.

The door opened again and a man came in. The tall, thin servant who always stood near the Chatelaine.

“You have nothing to fear,” he said, holding up one bony hand. “My name is Chaerephon. I am in the Chatelaine’s service. I have come to see whether you wish to put a stop to this madness.”

She swallowed. Had the monks let him in? Kept her daughter from her, and let this ghoul in to harry her?

She shook her head. “Please leave me be. We will argue before the bishop, when it is time.”

“But you are unwell.” He stepped closer to her, cocked his head.

“It has been a difficult time, as I am sure you appreciate, sir.”

“Difficult, indeed, for one who has the Plague. Oh, there is no point in hiding it from me. I have lived in Hell so long I know its marks, when I see them. When you collapsed, and I rushed to your aid with so many others, I took a moment to look at your hands.”

She looked at them: her fingers blotched with black, and shaking.

“I have only a very little time,” she whispered. “I wish to have my right, before I meet God. I wish to see my daughter safe and provided for.”

He nodded. “Of course. We would be happy to provide for her, if you were to withdraw your claim. We would compensate you, with twice the worth of your husband’s goods.”

She frowned. “Why, in heaven’s name?”

He turned from her. “If you win, that creates some … difficulties for us. If you lose, that creates difficulties of its own. We would much rather leave the status of the goods owned by revenants as a … political question, not a legal one.”

“You speak to me as if I have a brain, sir,” she muttered. “Not like the bishop.”

“Because you do have a brain, Margriet de Vos. That much is evident. But not for much longer. It will be as useless as a bowl of tripe before All Souls’ Day. And if you lose this trial, as well you might, your daughter will be alone, and penniless. One hates to think what will come of a girl, alone and penniless, in time of war.”

Margriet drew a long, ugly breath.

“If I take your offer, will you declare her right to it?”

“To the payment? No, I am afraid it must be done in secret, or it would be taken as evidence that we believe it to be her due.”

Margriet shook her head. “Then I must refuse. How do I know you will not take it away from her, after I am dead? How do I know you will not pursue her with your hounds, as you pursued Claude? No, I want the world to know it is her right. I want my due, sir, and nothing else.”

He threw up his hands, turned away from her, and paced a bit.

Then he turned his face back to her. Such an old face, and yet there were hardly any wrinkles in it. Smooth as a skull.

“There can be no way to know she is safe, Margriet de Vos, whether you wrench some declaration from us or not. After you are dead, anything could befall her. Ruffians could steal it all from her. As for that, if you mistrust us so, what prevents our hounds from pursuing her even if you win the trial? Of course they would never be directed to do so, of course not, but mistakes do happen. The only way for you to watch over her, would be for you to live, and to be stronger.”

She snorted. “But no one lives, once they have contracted the Plague.”

He had no eyebrows, but if he had, they would have gone up in the middle.

“Not someone who has gone through the fires of hell, and been bonded with something that cannot be killed by the Plague.”

She gasped, and then coughed at the intake of breath in her ragged throat. “You are asking me to become a chimera?”

He spread his arms wide in their mouse-coloured cloak. “I say it is an offer we are willing to make. You are intelligent, and you fight. These are the qualities the Chatelaine seeks in her chimeras. Your disease is as nothing to us. We will give you new fingers—claws, perhaps. And new eyes—yes, I have seen you squinting—something far-seeing. Would you like to be an eagle, Margriet de Vos? Armoured with steel, so that nothing could harm you? You could watch over Beatrix every night, and keep her safe not only from ruffians and hounds, but also from … well, I believe her husband is a revenant, is he not?”

Blood beat in her ears. If only she could think properly! She wanted to vomit at the thought of being mixed with something inhuman, of claws and feathers and armour in her skin. She had a right to her own body, riddled with Plague as it might be, at the end. She had a right to go into the ground sole, and whole.

But to see clearly, to be strong again. To live. To live.

To live as someone else’s beast—who could say what will would enter her mind, once she went through those fires? Would she be the Chatelaine’s creature, then, like the horned man, like this bag o’ bones in front of her?

To live …

Margriet shook her head until the world rang.

“I want none of it, Monsieur Chaerephon, none at all. I will not hear any more of it. Get out of my way, if you don’t mind. I do not wish to be late when the bishop reconvenes.”

The bishop asked if Margriet had anyone to testify to her marriage, to whether she had indeed been the wife of this Willem.

Jacquemine stood by Margriet’s side.

“And you are? A Moor, by your skin.”

“Jacquemine Ooste. My father was indeed a Moor. I am a Christian woman, wife to the late Jan Ooste, alderman of Bruges.”

More rustling, as the men wondered if he were one of the aldermen of Bruges murdered by the king’s henchmen. Jan had been an alderman, yes, but he had died at the Battle of Cassel, mercifully. Died and been buried in the ground, not fed half-dead to the Hellbeast and turned into a revenant like some women’s husbands.

A good man, Jan Ooste had been, always kind to Margriet.

“Say your piece, then, for pity’s sake,” huffed the bishop, “and let this de Vos woman’s tongue rest in its sheath a while.”

More chuckles. Margriet felt herself swaying. She stared at Jacquemine to keep herself anchored. Jacquemine stood tall, her wimple neat and a lovely white veil falling over her shoulders. She looked none the worse for the walk from the mill, at least if one did not look at her shoes.

It was not in Margriet’s nature to ask a favour from her employer. She owed Jacquemine a debt for this, one she would repay out of the goods she was owed, for that was the only repayment she could offer. Her small bag of coins was nearly empty. But Willem’s sack would ensure a full belly and a safe roof for not only Beatrix but for little Jacob and Agatha too, for all the children who had drunk the milk out of Margriet’s body.

“Margriet de Vos is a virtuous and respected woman of Bruges. She has been in my employ as a wet nurse for several years. Yes, she is known in the cloth hall and throughout the city for her honest and forthright ways, but she is no scold. I know her to have been married to Willem de Vos since the twenty-third year of Philippe le Bel’s reign. It would have been twenty years for them soon.”

“We shall consider these matters,” said the bishop. “If a wife is not a good wife, that seems to me it does not dissolve the marriage, nor her husband’s obligation to her. Does the Chatelaine wish to speak about these questions of marriage, or about the Flemish customs of widowhood?”

Margriet felt a dull pressure against her left hand, a pressure with purpose, with insistence. She glanced down and saw that Jacquemine was taking her hand in her own, to offer comfort. Margriet did not trust her fingers to grasp so she smiled a little and hoped that was enough. She needed nothing from Jacquemine, who had already given her more than she needed. Indeed Margriet was already in debt to her. She would never have asked this of her employer had it not been for Beatrix, had it not been for the war and hunger in this world she was leaving her daughter in alone.

The Chatelaine stood and all the men turned to her. She was a sight, indeed. Unlike Claude’s, the elaborate netting in her hair did not look ridiculous.

“We find it a very simple argument,” said Chaerephon, standing just out of the sunlight. “It is untrue that this woman Margriet de Vos is a widow. Her husband is not dead.”