Armed in Her Fashion

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The bishop said he would pray on the problem and render his decision in the morning, after lauds.

The three women slept in the little guesthouse outside the gate. They were invited to the Michaelmas feast, but they chose not to go. Claude, accused of theft, was not invited to the feast, which was just as well. He stayed under guard with the Chatelaine’s lesser servants in the dormitory, but all night long he could hear Baltazar calling Beatrix’s name.

Was Beatrix covering her ears, or would she have let him in if Margriet and Jacquemine had not been there to stop her?

Claude wondered what he would do if he heard Janos’s voice on the wind, now, after all these years. It was an idle thought to torture himself with, for Janos had died before the Hellbeast broke the surface of the earth, before revenants became an ordinary sight.

Claude slept in shallow fits until Monoceros came to collect him at dawn. He found he was relieved to see the horned man. Was it merely that prisoners become fond of the wardens, after a time? Or that Claude recognized in the brigand-turned-marshal a man of the same sort of solitary honour as himself? Or was it only, if Claude were to admit it, that Monoceros’s kind eyes and strong shoulders were fair to look upon?

He smiled, despite himself, as they walked to the chapter house.

“You are confident, Claude Jouvenal,” murmured Monoceros.

“Not in the least,” Claude said. “I except I shall end this day in Hell, one way or another.”

“You had a chance to earn the Chatelaine’s mercy,” said Monoceros evenly. “You didn’t take it.”

“I never did expect mercy from anyone,” Claude said. He felt as if he were leaving his body behind already, as though he might as well be a revenant.

“Well,” said Monoceros, and stopped walking. He glanced around, as if to see whether anyone were in earshot, but the little clumps of people scurrying back to the trial were not close enough to hear. “It is not mercy, and not pity, but if you do find yourself free today, you will find something buried at the crossroads just south of here on the road to Lille.”

“Something?” he breathed, looking up into Monoceros’ face. It was a well-lined face, the grooves determined, engraved.

“My old armour,” said the horned man. “It doesn’t fit me anymore anyway.”

Claude had to take two breaths before he understood.

“You’re giving it to me?”

“Don’t tell anyone. A man has to have proper clothing. You can’t very well rejoin your company in a kirtle.”

Claude swallowed his only response, which threatened to be tears. He couldn’t very well rejoin his company anyway, not with his arm as it was.

At last he recovered his voice, and nodded.

“Will you do me another kindness, Monoceros? If it goes the other way. Will you try to make sure that my death is a clean one? Clean and quick?”

Monoceros did not smile. He closed his eyes for a moment, and gave a very small nod of his head, just enough to dip the horn a little.

Claude nodded, too, the movement of his head an anchor, keeping him from weeping, from pleading.

“My mistress is not cruel,” Monoceros said. “She is only … well, all great lords and princes do as they must. She will want to be rid of you, but I do not think she will want to see you suffer.”

But she might want to feed me to the Beast, Claude thought, and see me spit out as a revenant. She might relish that indeed, being able to order me hither and thither as if I were one of her dogs. There is no honour in that life, a life without will. If it comes to that, I could wrestle a knife off a guard and cut my throat.

In the chapter house, Margriet sat on the edge of the stone bench, her hands in her lap. Her face was grey. Her right leg trembled; impatience, Claude reasoned.

The bishop rose and said, “On the question of whether these so-called revenants can be said to be truly dead, on the question of the state of their souls, I am disinclined to rule.”

Disinclined to rule? Was that it, then?

Claude looked at Margriet. Her face was like stone. He looked to the king: he looked angry. Indeed he had wanted a particular outcome, then, and this was not it.

“I shall send a delegation to Avignon,” said the bishop, “to convey our evidence on this question to our Holy Father the Pope. As for the question before me, though, that is a narrower one. I do not need to rule on whether a revenant is truly dead, but whether his wife is a widow.”

Blood of Christ, this bishop could out-argue Chaerephon. Men who lived in their own heads were bloody dangerous.

“As to that,” the bishop continued, “It seems clear to me that the husband, whether he is dead or alive, is still able to work and provide for his family, and I see no obligation for the husband to hand over all his goods to his wife, no matter how vigorously she scolds him. However, I caution that this means Willem de Vos still has the care of his wife, and that God’s law requires him to keep her as a man would any wife, in the way he sees fit.”

Margriet. Her face was a mask of anger. He pitied her. She had very little to hold on to, this woman, and yet she held on with a warrior’s strength.

Still it was over, and there was nothing Margriet could do about it now. And Claude did not have the mace, or his freedom, or soon, very likely, his life.

“Do you understand this judgement?” asked the bishop of Margriet.

Margriet stood. “I understand it. I will go now a widow, although this court does not recognize me for what I am. But I wish to take my companion with me.”

She looked at Claude.

Claude looked back, frowning a question at her, until he remembered that she could probably not see his expression with her dim eyes, from that distance. Convenient for her. What was she thinking?

“Who, the girl soldier?” the king asked, after a silence.

“She is my prisoner,” snapped the Chatelaine.

“I thought she was your guest,” the king replied smoothly. “I am not satisfied she has stolen from you. She is no one’s man, as I understand it. She cannot be a man-at-arms, if she is not a man. She is free to go as well.”

A long moment. All eyes looked to Claude, and he was not sure, for a moment, what to do. Was this meant to be mercy? Was it a gift or his due? At last he stood, walked to the king and knelt, without looking at his face.

“Come here,” he said to Claude, and Claude stood, took a step. The king grabbed Claude by the shoulders and whispered in her ear, “Go with care. I know what you are, disgusting creature.”

Claude stumbled away, and did not remember to kneel again as he took his leave. He walked past Margriet and out the door.

Margriet knelt and walked to him, dragging Beatrix with her. Jacquemine walked next to Claude, saying nothing.

When they had put a little distance between them and the abbey, Claude said, “I owe you my life.”

“You owe me nothing,” Margriet snapped, whirling around. They all stopped walking. “I have repaid you for the bravery you showed in fighting my husband’s corpse, a week ago, when you might have left us to our fate. As for the mace and sword I promised, that is forfeit, your words in the trial notwithstanding. It is your fault that we failed. You brought the Chatelaine’s attention to us too soon. You hid from us the fact that you had stolen the mace in the first place. I do not even know from one moment to the next if you are man or woman, friend or foe. I am pleased now to be rid of you.”

Claude felt his gorge rise as if he had been slapped. His hand moved to his knife hilt, as though that would do any good against a woman.

Beatrix put her hand on his arm.

“Don’t listen to her—”

“Oh, the traitorous daughter speaks!” Margriet yelled.

Jacquemine said, “Margriet—”

“I never agreed to deny my husband,” said Beatrix, her voice low and shaking. “You demand that those who love you must harbour your grudges. You ask too much.”

“Is loyalty too much to ask of a daughter? None of this was for me in the first place! This is how you repay my love?”

“It is an impoverished, twisted love,” Beatrix retorted.

“You have impoverished yourself, you foolish girl. You will starve, if you do not contract the Grief first. How long will it be before you let him in to whatever hovel you inhabit? A day, a month, a year? You can no more close a door to him than you could close your legs. And now you have nothing, and you will die a pauper.”

“I am happy to have nothing,” Beatrix said in a small voice.

Jacquemine put her arms around Beatrix.

“Anyway, I can spin.” Beatrix raised her chin.

“Ha!” Margriet said. “And what will you spin? Cobwebs? And where will you spin it, where you can be safe from him? He will get you, Beatrix. He may already have started to get you.”

“She can come with us, Margriet,” whispered Jacquemine. “If we can get the money.”

Margriet shook her head. “We have no money for passage. And no time. We will go to Ypres, quickly, today, before sundown. And there we will take you to the beguinage because we cannot afford to buy you a place at a rich abbey. You will join the poor sisters, and work for your keep. You will need strong walls and strong women between you and your dead husband.”

She turned and walked away.

Jacquemine embraced Beatrix. “It will be all right.”

“And you?” Jacquemine turned to Claude.

“I’m going south,” Claude said, because it was what he had done every time he had been broken down into nothing, every time he had found himself alone and penniless. South where one did not need to worry about keeping warm, at least. “Italy, most likely.”

“So you’ll be a man again,” Jacquemine said, sadly.

Claude wanted to say: I will be a man still; I will be a man-at-arms again. But there was no point in it. And would he be a man-at-arms, without strength or weapons? He, who could barely hold his own against a corpse, stood no chance in a battle. He would have to find some other work; he would have to live in whatever way he could.

“Someone will need a labourer,” he said, putting on a smile. “And perhaps in time I can train my left arm to draw a crossbow.”

Jacquemine embraced Claude. She smelled of lavender; Claude smelled of sweat.

As Jacquemine walked toward Margriet on the road north to Ypres, Claude tore the nets off either side of his head and threw them to the ground. He shook his head like a dog, freeing his scraps of hair.

Then he thought better of it, and stooped and picked up the little nets, which were after all made of gold thread. They might fetch the price of a meal in Lille.

At the king’s invitation, the Chatelaine and her retinue stayed the night at the chateau in Ypres. She could hear her hounds circling under the window, whining, and she was ready to be gone with them. She turned Chaerephon away and paced the room.

This was the sort of place she would have, if she were Countess of Flanders. A big cold stone place, with tapestries and fireplaces. But it would not be for her, not most of the time. She would make Monoceros marshal, and let him stay in the stone chateaux, and she would stay in Hell where she could check on her husband.

He kept her there, even now, although he was the prisoner. She would never be rid of him, never be free. That was why the beast was Hell—not because it shat brimstone or belched poison, not because of the revenants, not because it burrowed under the earth. The beast was Hell because it was home to her husband.

She paced to clear her thoughts of him.

They had given her this room with a great stone fireplace, and a fire within it. Fireplaces were new to her. When she remembered her life before her husband, she remembered a warm country, where fires were outside.

The Chatelaine opened the chest and lifted out the mace. It gleamed in the firelight. Each of the irregular points on the flange caught the orange light like a jewel. Gobhan had wrought well. This would, she had no doubt, open Hell and all its rooms, even the deepest. That traitor, Gobhan. To think a twisted smith like that could leave her so vulnerable. If he had chosen to open her husband’s dungeon—she shook her head. The smith was dead now, and no more worry for her.

She could trust no one. Certainly not the half-wild Chaerephon, who was lying wrapped in his cloak in some dark hallway like a dog or a servant, waiting and watching, although he had been offered a good bed. She had never asked why Chaerephon had betrayed her husband. She had assumed—too much. She was learning, too slowly.

She was tempted to try the other mace on her left arm, but she needed her hand, and Hell could only have one key.

There came a knock at the door.

She put the false mace under a pillow. Then she opened the door.

King Philippe stood there, smiling. She hesitated. He was fully dressed still, his blue cotehardie to his knee embroidered with gold lilies. His face was stern.

“I have no designs on your person,” he said, as if in answer to her expression. “May I enter?”

She stood back and swept her left arm wide to let him in.

“Are you pleased with the judgement today?”

“Of course I am pleased that the treasonous thief was not rewarded, although she got away with her life,” said the Chatelaine, inclining her head.

“And to the larger question? Do you believe that those women were widows?”

She laughed. “Do you take me for a scholar, my lord?”

“I know you are no fool. I know you understand that what we have done here today will create fear, and not only among my enemies but also my friends. We have had a bishop declare that the revenants may keep their property, that their family may not inherit, for however long a revenant lasts.”

“A very long time,” said the Chatelaine softly.

“Indeed. And the revenants serve you, because they are creatures of Hell, and you are the mistress of Hell. If you may obtain a knight’s property simply by making him a revenant, all of France could be under your control without so much as a battle.”

He looked pleased. Had he designed this outcome?

“That is not my design,” she said. “I do not wish to control the land of others. I wish to have a demesne of my own, in my own right.”

“Yes, well, about that. I cannot be seen now to be giving you even more power. I have decided to let Count Louis keep Flanders. It would send the wrong message, if I used my strength to uproot him rather than support him. And now he is afraid, he will be a more useful idiot.”

She gaped. She had seen the blow coming, but it still hurt when it fell. Nothing for her, then, after all this.

“And what of my reward? What land shall be mine, then, if not Flanders?”

“I have one more task for you, and then if I am pleased, we shall find another count for you to marry. I am pleased with this bishop of Tournai. He did as I asked him today, although his conscience was against it. I like a man who can fight his conscience. I shall ask for his help in declaring your husband dead, and you a widow.”

She bit her lip against the answer she wanted to return. They called him Fortunate but there was no chance behind his success. He took what he wanted, and kept what he wanted. Well, she could do the same.

“And what is this task?”

“You must feed a man to the beast, and make him a revenant.”

“Which man?”

“Edward, the young king of England.”

“Ha!” she laughed, and put her hand over her mouth. “And shall we make war on him, then?”

“No, of course not. He is a boy of fifteen. Surely you can find a way to manage it. A revenant king would be unlikely to press his claim to the throne of France, don’t you think?”

She swallowed. This king would never give her what she wanted.

She must leave him, and find a new place. This time she would not seek an ally. This time she would take what she wanted. She had a few dozen grotesques now, not enough to fight, but she would make more. And she would make more gonners, who could use the black powder to frighten anyone into giving her a little land, a little place to begin anew.

“Tell me,” the king said, walking toward the fire, “how do you manage it? How did you wrest control of Hell?”

She stared into his back. “I have always been the Chatelaine of Hell, since my marriage. The keys of Hell are mine by right.”

Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would go to Hell, and close the mouth, and send the beast deep under the earth. They would go east, a very long way, and they would come up again, some place quiet, and begin to rebuild her army.

“And what does your husband say?”

“My husband is no longer able to speak to anyone.”

“He is old, then.”

“Yes,” she said through tight lips. “He is very old indeed.”