Armed in Her Fashion

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

They spoke little and walked fast. Beatrix was sullen. Margriet had nothing to say to anyone and besides, her bowels were clenching and griping. She had to stop three times on the way to relieve them and was glad she’d had nothing but water for hours.

She blamed the abbey food but it was the Plague, she knew. She had seen it before: the bowels went, and the skin, and then the brains.

Jacquemine was eager to get her children at Gertrude’s mill, but she agreed to walk to Ypres with them first. She had a few things she wanted to barter for, without the children clinging to her skirt, she said. A rich woman, unused to having no servants, unused to having children at her ankles all the time.

Probably she also wanted to be there with Margriet when Margriet delivered her daughter to the nuns. Jacquemine Ooste was kind in a way that drew no attention to itself, and Margriet was grateful, although she did not know how to say so. After Ypres, Margriet would walk with Jacquemine to Gertrude’s, for two were better than one on the road. And then—then she would find some solitude, like a dog finding a quiet corner of the yard, in which to die.

“Margriet,” said Jacquemine, as if reading her thoughts, “will you come with us? To Dunkirk and England?”

“You have no need of a wet nurse now,” said Margriet dully. She had a dry headache now to go with the wrench in her guts.

“We cannot pay a servant, until we find some work, or some man to marry me.”

“I am surprised you do not return to Bruges, where people know you, and some would help you.”

“Yes, but in Bruges I will fear the Count’s retribution for my husband’s actions,” said Jacquemine with a sigh. “And now I have made an enemy of the Chatelaine, too. I will never feel safe, not until I put the channel between my children and Flanders.”

At that, Beatrix walked faster, putting more strides between them as if she did not want to listen.

The streets of Ypres were strongly shadowed. A dog barked and Margriet started. She was still unused to the sound of dogs; in Bruges they had all been dead for weeks, along with everything else on four legs.

Two chimeras approached, of the kind called Men of Arms, with bits of armour breaking through their skin—but no, as they passed, Margriet could see they were men of about their own age, with pieces of metal sewn into their leather aketons and caps. To hell with her dim eyesight.

“They would have fooled the Chatelaine herself,” said Jacquemine.

Margriet was startled. It had not been her eyesight alone that had created the illusion. Would the Chatelaine have been fooled? Could she be?

She stopped walking.

“What is it?” Jacquemine asked.

“I need one more favour, Vrouwe Ooste,” Margriet said. “Before we part ways.”

“If it is within my power, name it.”

Margriet thought as quickly as she could through her raging headache. If men could be made to look like the Chatelaine’s chimeras, could not a group of women? The helmets would disguise them perfectly. They could be in and out of the Hellbeast without anyone knowing. They could recover what was stolen from them.

Was it madness? Was her brain Plague-addled already?

They would need someone with an ability to get past locked doors, and to fight their way past guards. Claude.

“Margriet, what is it?”

Beatrix turned at last, and frowned at her.

“I need—I need to get a message to Claude.”

Jacquemine’s eyebrows raised. “Claude! Is this to salve your conscience?”

Margriet nodded. “After a fashion.”

“Mother—”

Margriet took three long steps toward her, the world reeling as she did so. She grabbed on to her daughter’s shoulders, in part to keep herself upright.

“Beatrix, what if I did not have to lock you away after all. What if there were another way to get your inheritance?”

Beatrix’s brown eyes were brim-full of sadness, and yet there was a gleam in them, too. A glimmer of a future without a husband, if the girl would but let herself see it.

“Mother, you’re mad.”

“Yes, but listen,” said Margriet absently. She scratched her neck under her wimple.

A long piece of grey skin came off in her hands.

Beatrix stared and Margriet saw the understanding in her daughter’s face. A worse sentence than death itself, to see her daughter grieve again.

Jacquemine grasped the edge of Margriet’s wimple and pulled it away, yanked it off her body.

“Dear God,” she said. “Dear God in heaven, Margriet. The skin—your neck—”

Margriet swallowed. “Is it bad?”

“It is the Plague!” Jacquemine hissed.

Beatrix took Margriet’s hands and looked in her eyes. It had been a long time since Margriet had looked in her daughter’s eyes for more than a moment, years perhaps. This, more than anything, made Margriet want to weep.

“It’s true,” she said. “I have the Plague. I am in no pain. Well, not much pain. But I need your help. God has given me an idea. We are going to recover the chest, and you will have your inheritance, Beatrix. I will see you safe and provided for, before I go. I will have my rights before I go. God has shown me how to do it.”

Jacquemine put her hands on her hips.

“But when—Margriet de Vos, where did you see your husband in Bruges? Where was it?”

There was to be no more denying it, then. She was a dying woman now. Margriet took a long, painful breath.

“He tricked me. He entered a house, taking my words as permission although I did not mean them that way. A villain, even in death.”

“Before you came to me? Before you nursed my child?”

Margriet frowned. “It does not pass to the child.”

“How could you know? How many wet nurses have you known who contracted the Plague from a revenant and then watched to see how the curse would manifest in the child in the months, the years afterward?” Jacquemine’s voice was shrill; she put her hand to her mouth.

“I did not mean any harm to Jacob. You know I love him as if her were my own.”

“I have seen how you love your own,” Jacquemine said more quietly, her eyes flashing. “I should have known better than to listen to one word from you. You have always been a stubborn fool and you have brought me great misfortune. When we get to the mill I will take my children and go, and you will not come near them, lest you—lest you frighten the wits out of them.”

The gorge rose in Margriet’s mouth and she managed nothing better than a nod.

They found a messenger at the Deer. He charged twice what he ought to have, but these were dangerous times.

“Find Claude Jouvenel, in Lille, who may be a woman or may be a man.”

“You don’t know which?” the messenger asked. He was barely more than a boy, and smirked.

“I don’t know which at the moment,” Margriet snapped. “The name ought to be enough, if you are not a fool. I know Claude is in Lille.”

“And what shall I tell him or her?”

“To come to Ypres, to meet me at the Deer tomorrow.”

“No,” said Jacquemine. “Tell Claude to meet us at the mill. Beatrix will know which one.”

Margriet nodded. “All right. Yes. At the mill. Bring Claude there and I will pay you the same again.”

“And if this person will not come?” the messenger asked.

“Tell Claude—” Margriet rubbed her tingling hands together. “Tell Claude I am dying. And I need help, urgently. Tell Claude there is another chance at the reward. Go!”

The messenger rode off, not fast enough for Margriet’s wishes.

They decided to stay at the Deer for a night after all, for the sake of Margriet’s tired legs, and because Claude would not get the message until that night anyway. Beatrix and Jacquemine asked Margriet for her plan but she begged them to wait until the morning, said she did not have the strength to talk now, which was mostly true. She wanted to think, first.

At the Deer she ate nothing but a bit of bread and water, and slept sitting on the privy, leaning against the wall in the cold. Jacquemine did not want her in the bed with her, and Margriet did not have the strength to go up and down the stairs to the privy with each clench of her guts.

Beatrix thought she heard, from time to time, the roar of a metal dragon, the squelch of mud erupting, the boom of thunder deep in the earth. Her distaff was still at Gertrude’s and yet with each step they took toward it, she relived the visions it had shown her.

These visions were true, in some way. They were not true now. But she had asked the Nix to tell her what would come for them, and so the distaff was showing her—some future. Must it come to pass? Surely God had ordained all things—and yet, if that were so, he had also ordained that Beatrix should see these sights, and do what she could to prevent them.

She shook her head. What could she do? She could not even stop her own mother from dying. Mother, whose brain was clearly addled already, who was convinced that she could get the inheritance back. Beatrix could not care less about her father’s sack of goods if it were a sack of offal. She hated to think of good people like Gertrude Vermeulin, cowering in fear when the metal dragon came. And all this beautiful country, which Beatrix had only started to see!

She was grateful, yes, in spite of everything, that she had at least this one day to walk this beautiful country, that she was not shut up in the beguinage. She was—dear God, she was happy to be alive.

They bought bread, meat, and apples from the Deer, and bought a new flask to share between them and filled it with ale. Margriet’s purse was getting light. But if God smiled upon her enterprise, she would have plenty in a few days’ time. Of course, in a few days’ time she would also be dead, or close to it.

Her stomach took a bit of bread and small ale without complaining, which she counted as a good omen. Her hands and feet tingled, and she itched everywhere. For now at least, all the patches of dead skin were hidden, under her wimple or her kirtle (there was a fresh patch on her ribcage), which was a mercy. Jacquemine and Beatrix knew, though.

Margriet on her weak legs struggled to stay abreast with them. It had rained in the night and the road clung to their shoes.

The millrace gurgled merrily down the slope toward the little dark building where Gertrude and the children waited. It was otherwise quiet as they approached, and Margriet almost expected another pot to fly from the window. The quiet annoyed her, and she called, “Gertrude! We are here!”

They took a few more steps and the door creaked open. Gertrude put her face to the crack, then opened the door.

“Thank God and all His Saints,” she said. “I was beginning to think you would be gone a week.”

“What’s happened?” Jacquemine asked sharply. “Where are the children?”

“They’re fine, fine,” Gertrude said, but tears welled in her eyes and she began to blubber and fell, hanging on the door.

“Saints save us,” Jacquemine muttered, and elbowed her way past Gertrude, into the mill. “Agatha? Jacob?”

Beatrix gave Gertrude her hand and helped her up.

“Come on,” she said, and pulled her into the mill.

“Where are they?” Jacquemine shrieked.

Gertrude pointed toward the back of the mill.

“In the privy,” she blubbered.

“What, both of them?” Margriet asked. “Jacob, too?”

Jacquemine darted back out the door.

She returned a moment with a child under each arm, both of them blubbering like Gertrude. “She put them both in and barred the door with a rock,” Jacquemine muttered.

“What in the name of Christ were you thinking, foolish woman?” Margriet asked.

Gertrude put her head in her hands. “I wanted to keep them safe. I kept thinking I heard the hounds coming, and that’s where I was, and I was safe. I stayed in with them at first, but then I thought I should stay here to distract the hounds when they came. I was going to run off so they would chase me. And so I just went in every now and again to bring them food and water and cuddle them a little. I was so afraid.”

“God have mercy on you, Gertrude, for I cannot,” Jacquemine said, but there was nothing more to say, and her voice had gentled now that she had her two children, one on either side, an arm over each.

Beatrix put her arm around Gertrude.

Margriet wanted desperately to kiss each of the children on their foreheads, on this the last day she would ever see them. These children who had nursed from her breasts, these children she knew like her own mind, from their eyelashes to their toenails. Lost to her now, like all else. Would she see them in Paradise? She might not recognize them; they would doubtless be grown, then, perhaps even old.

Margriet told Gertrude about the trial while Jacquemine gave the children apples and rocked them until they both fell asleep. She leaned against the wall of the mill, her face wan.

“We’ll wait here until they wake,” she whispered.

“And then you’re all going again,” said Gertrude.

Margriet shook her head. “Vrouwe Ooste is going to Dunkirk, with the children. But Beatrix and I will wait here for Claude for another day or two, if you are willing.”

As if summoned by the thought, someone halloed outside the door. Gertrude flinched.

“That’s Claude’s voice,” Margriet said, and pushed herself onto her unsteady feet. She opened the door to Claude and the messenger.

“You came,” she said, and tossed the messenger his coin. “Come in, Claude, and have some food. But softly. The children are sleeping.”

Claude grabbed her arm. “Margriet. What did you mean by your message?”

Margriet pulled away, walked in to the mill where it was dim. The sun was shining today; it made her head hurt.

“I wanted to get you here, that’s all,” she said.

“Margriet,” hissed Jacquemine. “You will tell her. There is no point now in lying.”

Margriet shut her eyes. Jacquemine was right. Claude would see it for herself soon enough. Margriet might start to gibber and screech at imaginings, or fall to the floor and shake. What did it matter if the whole world knew? Beatrix knew, and that was the hardest thing, and it was done.

“You have the Plague,” said Claude.

Margriet looked up, caught Claude’s eye. It had not been a question.

“Yes,” Margriet whispered. “Keep your voice low. No need to wake the children.”

“I should have guessed earlier,” said Claude. “I saw you touch a hot cake and not notice it. Since Bruges, then?”

Margriet nodded. All was made plain now. It was her last judgement among women, among living women.