Armed in Her Fashion

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Beatrix watched Mother and Jacquemine, and clasped her hands tightly together. What was it about Jacquemine Ooste that she always looked like one of the fine ladies of Bruges, even when there was no more time or space for finery? She wore no brocade or silk today, only her deep blue velvet surcote and a red linen kirtle, and she looked like a woman out of a church window as she stood in the slanting sunlight.

“What evidence do you have of your husband’s death?” asked the bishop.

“I have seen him, your excellency,” said Mother. “With a great gaping hole through his chest. No man can have that much air whistle through him and live, excepting our Saviour, of course.”

Beatrix winced. The pain that must have caused Father, before he died. He had never been good with pain; he used to have Beatrix pull his splinters out.

“May I speak, your excellency?” asked the thin man who stood near the Chatelaine.

“Chaerephon, your reponse would be most welcome.”

“I have seen Willem de Vos walking the earth,” said Chaerephon, walking to the centre of the chapter house. “Dead men do not walk.”

“He has no breath in his body,” said Mother.

“Yet he speaks,” said Chaerephon.

Jacquemine put her hand out to stop Mother from answering. “I have heard that a murdered man will speak the name of his killer, if the killer approaches. Yet the murdered man is no less dead for this miracle.”

“The revenants are not dead,” said Chaerephon. “The bodies of the dead rot in the ground.”

“Until the last judgement,” said the bishop.

“Indeed,” answered Chaerephon. “Yes. Where they await the last judgement. But you have seen that this Willem is not rotting in the ground, although the judgement is not yet upon us.”

“Some have seen the bodies of saints, preserved whole,” said Jacquemine.

“Surely this woman does not mean to imply that this Willem de Vos was a saint.”

A titter circled the walls like a drunken swallow and rose up into the rafters, and drifted out the windows to where the gargoyles watched the world.

“Father bishop,” Mother said, in her chastened voice, which was never a good sign, “my husband is no saint, certainly, and I am no scholar of religion. But help me to understand. If my husband is not dead, why can he only walk at night, with bats and other evil creatures? I do not claim to understand these revenants, or anything about the state of their souls, but I do know that the man I knew all my life as Willem de Vos no longer inhabits that body.”

“A man may be greatly changed,” said the Chatelaine, standing, “and in that way his family may consider him as one dead. But that does not mean the law regards his wife as a widow.”

The bishop considered. “Is there anyone else here who has had dealings with this Willem de Vos, in the days since he went to Hell?”

Mother turned to her with an apology in her face. Beatrix wished she could crawl into the earth and lie there until the nightmare was ended. It was warm in the hall. Her damp shoes were warm now, warm and still wet, and she could smell the tang of wet leather and wet wool.

She stood.

“I have seen my father.”

“And was he alive or dead?”

Beatrix looked at her mother. She spoke slowly. “I do not understand how he could be alive.”

The bishop leaned back.

“No,” he said. “Indeed, it would be a wonder. Then again, it is a wonder if the dead walk the earth. It is a difficult question for one humble man to answer, but the king has tasked me with deciding this case.”

The Chatelaine pulled Chaerephon aside and conferred with him. Then she addressed the bishop.

“Your Excellency, I fear we tax your time and delay the Michaelmas feast already, but there is another matter to decide. Not all of the wealth she claims was lawfully her husband’s. What a man does not own he cannot bequeath. Part of it was stolen from me. Indeed I would not be surprised to learn that much of it was stolen.”

She smiled, but the bishop did not. The room was silent, the word “stolen” echoing.

“Indeed? Which part do you claim?”

The Chatelaine gestured to Claude. “This woman stole a weapon from me, and later sold it to Willem de Vos.”

“Stand, then, and give your name and your account.”

Claude stood.

“I am Claude Jouvenal, formerly of the Genoa Company, and I have never stolen anything,” said Claude in his deepest voice. “I have raided, I have taken my due after battle, I have bought and I have bartered. I know who I am. I am not a thief.”

The Chatelaine gave him a look like a basilisk.

If the Chatelaine wanted to hunt him, let her call her dogs. Claude would look after himself. He would not step into a trap.

“She is lying,” said the Chatelaine. “She admitted her guilt to me, and now she denies it.”

Claude smiled indulgently.

Chaerephon coughed and stood. He was cloaked, even in the warm hall, as though the heat of the sun could not touch his skinny body.

“If I may add, this woman is, as she has admitted here, a liar of long habit. She pretended to be a man, and took up arms, against all of God’s laws and man’s custom.”

“Is this true?” the bishop asked, looking Claude up and down, as though he might see a mark on his body, as if he might see something dangling between his legs.

“I was a member of a company and bore arms, Your Excellency.”

“And have you put aside this sinful practice, and confessed?”

Claude swallowed. This was a dangerous moment. The Church could put him on trial for heresy if he wasn’t careful.

“I confessed my sins not long ago, to a priest in Bruges,” he said truthfully. It had not been his idea. He had not had much to say. “I am here today as you see me, in woman’s clothing.”

There was a long moment, a moment with all sort of possibilities in it, none of them very good. He should have known not to get himself into this mess, to get himself into a place where people stood around him and peered at him and judged him by his body. Was this not his own idea of Hell, from a young age? And here he was, because he had got himself wounded by his own weapon, somehow, and lost his company, lost himself.

“Are there any witnesses who can speak to the manner of this crime, then?” the bishop asked.

Claude blinked. Crime? The bishop meant the mace. It was over, then; the question of Claude’s sex was done with. Oh, let it be done with.

“I shall,” said the Chatelaine. “She was a guest in Hell, and many saw how she greatly admired my arsenal, in particular this mace I wear myself. Then one day she was gone, and with her she took a mace, forged by one of my smiths in copy of mine. She sold the mace to Willem de Vos, the husband of this woman Margriet. That is how the mace came to be among this wealth that she claims, but the mace is mine by right. It was forged by my smith in my fire. It is mine.”

The bishop sighed. “We shall have to see it.”

The Chatelaine inclined her head and lifted her hand.

The Mantis-man brought her a long casket of fresh wood and opened it, holding it out to her. The Chatelaine reached in with her left hand and pulled it out with a triumphant snarl, so that she held one mace in her left hand that was an exact copy of the one she wore on her right.

An intake of breath echoed round the chapter house. Claude’s arm jumped and quivered. It called out to him. It was his.

“Your Excellency, if I may?” the king asked.

The bishop nodded.

“Come here,” said King Philippe to Claude, “so I may question you.”

Claude knelt to one knee, then stood and walked toward him.

“Closer.”

He did not like the king’s smell, perfumed and oily. Claude had known men like him before. Vainglorious. There was a kind of violence that went with such vanity, an unwillingness to let anything else in the world be beautiful. The King grabbed his kirtled arm and felt it up and down. He took his chin in his hands and looked into his eyes.

“You are a twisted thing,” he said. “Unnatural. What did you want with the Chatelaine’s weapon?”

“I wanted to use it to escape,” Claude said, the full truth rolling from his mouth like a ball of fire. “I knew that the mace could open the mouth of Hell.”

This time it was not a mere intake of breath but a gasp.

The Chatelaine blanched, but there was nothing she could do. A servant opened the chest and brought the mace to the king. He turned it over in his hands, and peering into the hollow end that had fit over Claude’s arm. It was all Claude could do to stop from grabbing it from him.

“God be praised, this is a marvel in truth,” said the king. “Not quite as beautiful as the one my lady the Chatelaine wears, of course, but a marvel. And who was the one who made this weapon for you?”

The Chatelaine whirled to Chaerephon, who stood beside her. He stood, putting out a hand toward her, as if in reassurance.

“His name was Gobhan Og. An angry man with a long forked beard. He made it for me as a gift, in the hours he was given to rest. He was in the habit of making small secret items, as a sort of practice, I imagine. As my lord, the king, has said, my mace is not nearly as beautiful as the Chatelaine’s. It is rougher at the ends, and has no adornment. If he gave away some of his practice-work that would make him no different than any smith I have known, and it does not make me a thief. You cannot ask him, because now he is dead. Perhaps the Chatelaine would like to explain how he came to be that way.”

Claude almost laughed as the truth, like a cat o’ nine tails, whipped where it was least expected. It had been a gift, of a sort, although given in exchange for the gift of Claude’s silence about the little arsenal Gobhan Og had been making for himself. Claude had not yet decided whether to tell that part of the truth, or to hold it back, and had not yet decided which would be the mercy to the Chatelaine.

“Ah,” said the king. “Now I begin to see. The question, it seems, is whether this armourer was free to make and give the piece, what his terms were as he saw them. What a pity he is dead and cannot speak about it.”

“The mace itself is a small matter,” said the Chatelaine, her voice sharp, “I use it only to make the point that this Willem de Vos was like a magpie, picking up things of unknown provenance. All of it could have been stolen.”

“But who can ever say, with coins and cups and even weapons?” said the king. “It was all in his possession, and it seems the task before me is to decide which woman should leave here with this chest. That is the reason I called for this trial. After that, if anyone wishes to make a claim on a particular piece, let them bring it to whatever local bailiff or petty lord they wish.”

The Chatelaine inclined her head. Claude could see her breast rise and fall a few times, and her right hand clenched. Then she raised her head and smiled.

“As you say, of course. We have made our argument.”

“Good bishop, do you have enough evidence to make your decision?” said the king.

Claude watched the bishop’s face. He looked strangely nervous, and would not meet the king’s eye. Ah, then the king had ordered an outcome—which?—and the bishop was not easy about delivering it.

“I believe we need to devise some sort of test,” said the bishop. “Some way for all to witness the truth, rather than the opinion of one man, no matter how humble and prayerful.”

Chaerephon coughed. “As it happens, we have already devised just such a test,” he said.

The bishop smiled at him. An arrangement, or a happy accident for this bishop? And what sort of test?

Charephon stood. “It remains to be proven that these women are truly widows, and that their husbands are truly dead. So we must see a revenant, and then all can judge.”

A murmur spread around the chapter house.

The bishop raised his monumental eyebrows. “Then let us pause for the noon meal and take some time for prayer, for I suspect this procedure will have to go on past Vigils, if we are to question revenants.”

Claude looked for the first time to Margriet and Beatrix, to the faces that he knew. And he almost smiled because the weight was off him, because he was an honest man, still. But his smile died when he saw the pallor on Beatrix’s face.

Mother insisted they eat not in the refectory but eat their own food, outside, away from prying ears. Jacquemine and Mother muttered together while Beatrix nibbled an apple.

Soon she would be asked to deny her father. And then that would be it, over, the last time she would see him. And Baltazar? Would he come to her again, after all this was done? Would he know that she still loved him, would always love him, even after death?

The sun was nearly setting when they gathered outside the chapter house, where they could see a revenant without bringing the Plague upon anyone.

Monks brought torches and they stood in a circle: the king, the Chatelaine, Chaerephon, Margriet, Jacquemine, and Beatrix. And Claude. The knights and squires, dressed in velvet, stood near the king, looking all around as if they hoped to see a wonder. Did they not know to be frightened? Had they not seen what the Grief would do?

Beatrix was grateful she had left her distaff at the millhouse. No one could blame her now for what came in the night, be it fireflies or apparitions.

Someone took Beatrix’s hand, with cold fingers.

She turned to see the face of her husband, and screamed.

He looked even more battered now. Some of that was her doing: long scratches down his head and face.

“Oh my love,” she whispered.

Everyone had moved away from them

Mother took her shoulders, pulled her away and said, “That’s the wrong one. That’s Baltazar.”

Beatrix let her mother move her into the crowd of people, leaving Baltazar standing alone.

“You call him by name,” said the Chatelaine.

“This is the wrong one,” said Margriet.

The bishop strode forward and looked at Baltazar in the torchlight. He stood impassive, staring at Beatrix. He only wanted her. He wanted her, and nothing else, just as he always had. And yet she had spurned him, had called an owl upon him.

She thought she could see, around him like a golden miasma, all his love for her.

“This is your husband, I believe?”

Beatrix nodded.

“Beatrix!” Mother hissed.

“It was,” she managed.

“Speak, then,” said the bishop. “Are you alive?”

Baltazar looked at the Chatelaine and back to the bishop. “I am.”

“This is not the man in question,” said Jacquemine.

“One is as good as another,” said the Chatelaine.

“If one revenant is not dead, none of them are,” said Chaerephon.

“Is he your husband?” the king asked Beatrix. “What do you say? Look at him, and tell us the truth.”

Beatrix turned to see him. The wounds on his face and head were as fresh as the day she gave them to him. His gaze was on her.

“Come closer,” Baltazar said.

Mother’s grip was strong but Beatrix pulled her arm away and stepped to him.

“Are you the man I married?” she whispered, so quietly she could barely hear the words herself.

He put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her to him. When he whispered in her ear there was no breath, no warmth in it.

He whispered, “I remember all of it. Every word we spoke outside the church door. Every bite of pigeon pie, including the one that fell on your kirtle, and the way you blushed. Every touch of my fingers that night, and how all we did was use our hands on each other, and kiss, that night. I remember all of it. I am very much changed and for that I am sorry but if you deny me you deny those memories.”

She pulled away and looked at him. His eyes were so dull, his face like stone. He might have been reciting the month’s cloth sales. He knew, he knew it all. But did he still care? And did that matter? She had sworn a vow to him before God.

“Deny me and I will pester you no more,” he whispered, and his lips quivered as if he were trying to remember how to smile.

Of course he cared. It was his only care now. Everything else had been stripped away.

“Do you deny him?” asked the Chatelaine. “Do you deny that this is your husband?”

If she said yes, she might never see him again. Mother would take her across the ocean, where, people thought, the revenants would not walk. Mother wanted to give her a chest full of gold and a new husband. Beatrix did not want a new husband. She would rather live a pauper, shut away in some hut, like Heloise, clutching to her heart the precious scraps of the love-promises her husband had made. The ghost of Baltazar was worth ten living men.

“Do you deny him?”

“I don’t know,” said Beatrix desperately. “I don’t know.”

“Then you are no widow,” said the Chatelaine gleefully.