The Devil's Crossing

by Hana Cole

  Chapter Seven

  Gui was two leagues from Montoire when a voice came skimming ghostly on the wind. At first he took it for boys labouring in the fields, but the cry did not abate and as it drew closer he was able to decipher it. Shrill and urgent, it filled his guts with frantic dread. ‘Father Gui! Father Gui! ’

  ‘I am Gui,’ he cried out as he ran toward the small figure stumbling down the road.

  ‘Father Gui, you must come quickly.’ The boy panted out the words, legs buckling with exhaustion. Gui threw his arms forward to catch the messenger, his clothes instantly damp with sweat from the boy’s body.

  ‘You must come. They’ve taken Agnes.’

  Blood thumped in Gui’s ears. ‘What do you mean? Who has taken her?’

  ‘They came at dawn. The bishop’s guard. They took the old farrier and his wife, a labourer and Agnes.’

  Gui heard himself groan, a low, animal sigh. How could you have left her?You fool.

  Wide-eyed with panic, the boy continued. ‘They said they would do well to remember the fate of those fallen into falsehood. They said they would all burn the same.’

  Gui turned his face away, heart pounding with a rage that no man of God should harbour.

  ‘No-one will burn.’ He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Where are they held?’

  ‘At the old monastery on the road to Tours.’

  ‘What of Etienne?’

  The boy looked agitated. ‘He was not among them.’

  Gui hoisted the child onto his mount and they set off, jolting along the ruts of the spring-drenched road. The uneasy instinct that he had convinced himself to lay aside scoured his gut. How could you?

  The messenger boy’s arms were a sweaty band around Gui’s waist, and as they rattled down the pot-holed paths it put him in mind of Etienne as a small child - how hotly he clung to Agnes, even as he slept, hair pasted against his cherub face. Had those moments of grace really all been an illusion, his reassurance the necessary act of a desperate jongleur? Gui urged his old mount on, insides crawling with his worst imaginings.

  *

  The ragged silhouette of the monastery came into view from some distance across the plain. It had been abandoned centuries before as the ornamented Benedictine houses closed in the wake of reform. Weeds and brambles now chased their way around the carved stone capitals and through the vacant arches that had once housed windows and doors.

  The façade partly blocked by a horse and wagon, Gui scraped past the protruding axles of the carriage. He threw his weight at the great doors, the screech of the bolt along the floor penetrating his skull as it swung open. He raced up to the crossing between the nave and the choir.

  The villagers were knotted together on a bench. They seemed shrunken, like dolls slumped between the columns of the transept. Agnes was in the middle, sallow with exhaustion, her hair pulled loose from its pins. She cast her head down as his eyes met hers and suddenly the vaulted, echoing space felt vertiginous.

  The two guards lounging in the choir jumped up.

  ‘Who are you?’ They approached Gui, hands hovering at their belts.

  Gui shrugged off the challenge and dropped to a crouch before the prisoners. The story of their arraignment was clear from the dark shadows that circled their eyes. Gui took Agnes’s hand and it turned it over to reveal red welts where her wrist was tied. Now he was closer, he could see the sleeve of her dress was torn. He looked up into her face but her gaze was distant. His hands shook as he worked his finger under the rope and, taking his fruit knife, severed the knot.

  ‘What are you doing?’ The guard gripped Gui’s shoulder.

  Gui uncoiled to face him, close enough to see the blood vessels fractured in the yellow film of the man’s eyes.

  ‘I am priest of this parish.’ His tone was measured, but his eyes spoke differently. ‘Why are these people bound?’

  The guard lifted his chest. ‘They are to be held for questioning on the bishop’s orders.’

  ‘The bishop’s orders?’ Gui let his voice rise. ‘On what grounds?’

  ‘Suspicion of heresy by public rumour.’

  ‘Public rumour? Ridiculous. Release them.’

  The guards exchanged sniggers. The squat one, hands wedged triumphantly on his hips, shook his head. ‘An inquisitor is on the way.’

  A knot of alarm tightened in Gui’s gut. He pivoted back to the villagers. The farrier’s wife wiped her cheek with a sleeve, pulling her husband’s tethered arm up as she did so.

  ‘Do they look like they might be able overpower you?’ Gui made his way down the line, cutting them free from each other. Rubbing his wrists, the old farrier nodded in gratitude. His wife gave a sniffle as her husband put his arm around her and it rang in Gui’s head, loud as any parish bell.

  ‘Take courage. You will be released from this nonsense before the day is done.’

  Gui spoke to Agnes’s lowered head - the mat of pale golden yarn that she sometimes let him wash in the brook when it was warm enough. Pricks of perspiration lined his collar as his fingers lighted on her head.

  ‘I will wait here with you.’

  Agnes’s head snapped up, features sharpening. He dropped to his knees, beaming at the recognition. But she was shaking her head. Lips moving, just barely, Gui could not make out the whisper, but he could sense she was asking him to look to their son.

  At first Gui didn’t recognise the brittle limbs and sunken face that stalked into the church, but then the man removed his hood and there was no mistaking him - Bernard de Nogent. The black hair was flecked with grey now, hairline receded to emphasise darting, vulturine eyes. Heart in his throat, Gui was on his feet. The last time he had seen de Nogent was at the Cathedral hearing when he was expelled to Montoire. The inquisitor’s eyes, usually so impassive, had burned then in a covenant of revenge.

  Bernard de Nogent pursed his thin, lined lips. ‘Ah. The priest from Montoire,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you going to ask me how I fare?’

  ‘Well, it would seem from your robes.’

  ‘It is easier to find decent cloth in the city.’ The smile was triumphant. ‘I would return to your parish for now if I were you, Father.’

  The inquisitor walked away, fox-trimmed velvet swinging at his ankles. Gui felt his blood heat. How easy it would be to break it, he thought observing the fragile balance of de Nogent’s head atop his skinny neck. He closed his eyes for a moment, swallowing down the rage. The old couple on the bench were staring at him, murmuring a prayer. Agnes’s shoulders were hunched up high, her arms cradled across her chest. Gui lifted her face up in the cup of his hand. He brushed her cheek dry with his thumb.

  ‘Please don’t be afraid. Please trust in me.’

  The thought that she might not made him nauseous.

  De Nogent’s breath was at his collar. ‘Ah yes, could it be I recognise that lovely face?’ A bony hand extended from the wide, black sleeve to caress the air before Agnes.

  Gui pivoted, and met the inquisitor’s eyes with murder. Bernard pinched his face, as though he were considering laughter. Gui’s fingers gripped white around the inquisitor’s cassock.

  The inquisitor lent towards him and whispered,‘Return to your parish or you will be joining them on that bench.’

  Gui staggered out into the setting sun. The sky above his head was a penumbra of birds roosting against the remains of the light. He felt as though he had been drained of blood. Resting on his palfrey’s back, his head collapsed into his arms, the world reduced to the grate of his breath and the familiar smell of his animal’s coarse hair. After a few moments the horse whinnied as though it meant to rally him from his paralysis.

  He gave the old beast a pat on its haunches and mounted. Perhaps this was not punishment but deliverance - the liberating hand of God. There was no choice to it now, only necessity. One small transgression and he would return to wait for nightfall. The thought of Etienne at home alone tugged at his gut, but Gui knew it was too risky to return to his own church for t
his task. The neighbouring parish of Lavardin was closer than Montoire. Etienne must have heard the news by now. If he hadn’t taken himself off to one of his hiding places, he would have sense enough to wait for Gui’s return. In a matter of hours, God willing, they would all be together again.

  Gui let himself into the church via the sacristy door. Although many prelates guarded their trinkets jealously, Father Michel of Lavardin was a jovial soul who cared more for a hearty meal and good company than candlesticks and silver plate. Gui easily located the parchment he needed among the other parish records. He traced over the words a few times with a clean nib to get a feel for the hand, then took a new sheet and began to write. Barely breathing, he took his knife and slowly teased the bishop’s seal from the original document, attaching it to his forgery with a daub of candle wax.

  A strip of coloured light flooded the nave from the stained glass panel behind the altar. It fell across Gui’s shoulders as he knelt. On the central panel, the Supreme Commander wrestled with the Devil, foot upon his back. It took him back to Agnes, a prisoner on that bench. Determined not to waiver in the frailty of his mind, Gui pressed his hands together. Gathering his concentration, he set his gaze upon the raised hand of the Commander of Christ’s Army, then closed his eyes.

  ‘Lord save us, lest we perish.’

  *

  The walls of the crypt were green with slime. Much colder than the church above, the stink of mould choked the air. Agnes was curled up in a ball on the floor, her body trembling so violently she felt as though she were being shaken by some external force. She wanted to draw both her arms about her but one of her wrists was padlocked to a ventilation grille. There was no light in the sepulchral chamber. She craned for the sound of human voices, but all she could hear was the drip, drip of water as it slid down the walls.

  She was hungry or at least she had been, but the pangs of her stomach now paled against other torments – the raw skin of her wrist, the cramping paralysis of the cold and worst of all, the voice in her head that needed to believe someone would come and tell her this was all a terrible mistake.

  For the first few hours she had fought, contorting her body this way and that in the attempt to loosen the binds and find a position that offered her some relief. But they knew their job those guards. Strung tight enough to hurt, they had left some slack - the half inch of false hope they knew their captive must play with. As soon as she realised the game, she stopped and allowed her head to drop onto her arm, exhausted.

  Closing her eyes, her body breathed a juddering sigh. There has been worse pain, she thought. It had started as a few spots of dark crimson when she was carrying her second child. At first she had thought nothing of it until her nausea stopped. The spots became a trickle, then a flood of cardinal red as the spasms began, far worse than anything she had experienced birthing Etienne. How she had fought to hold back the crashing waves she knew were expelling her unborn child. It had taken two days.

  On the evening of the second day, she cried for God to take her along with the child back to the arms of her mother. Gui came into the bedroom. He wiped her brow and neck with a cool cloth, and placed a warm, firm hand on her belly. It felt like prayer, a commendation to the arms of the Father. She didn’t need to see his face. Nestled in beside her, she could feel his body radiating sorrow. His grief a salve to her own pain, it gave her permission to let go of the baby that was not to be hers. When it was done, she knew she would never be able to carry another child again.

  ‘Weep for me now’, she whispered, and out of the blackness came the troubled eyes of his departing glance. I know you will come back for me if you can, my love. But do what you must. Make Etienne safe. The inside of her upper arm warmed with her breath and she realised she had spoken the words aloud. For a moment it lifted her heart. Even in the midst of this evil, a bond they could never tarnish. Then, torchlight flared in the stairwell and the fist of dread bunched in her gut.

  The crack of footsteps echoed around the vault as the guard approached. Agnes blinked into the yellow flare. She could tell from the way the broad shoulders propelled his gait that there had been a change of guard. The man striding towards her was a trained soldier. Blood hot with alarm, she shook off the fog of reminiscence and braced her body.

  Standing over her, the guard’s face was a demon leer in the flame. He skimmed the mound in his trousers with a thick, calloused palm. Agnes felt the bile rise in the back of her throat. Laughing at the horror on her face, the guard stabbed the torch into a wall mount and unbuttoned his hose. Her skin felt like it was alive with parasites, muscles straining with the urge to wrench herself free. But this is what he wants, she thought. He wants to see your shame. Nausea swelled in her stomach as she realised the only thing she could do was deny him the pleasure of her struggle. She thought she would vomit if she opened her mouth, so instead she looked up at the guard, and from somewhere in the crucible of her imperative to survive, she forged a smile.

  The guard moistened his lips. Agnes forced her eyes down to swollen flesh peeping from his hose. Dig deep, she told herself, now you must touch him. The guard gripped himself with one hand and unbuckled his sword with the other. Eyes roving over Agnes, he sent the metal clattering across the stone with his foot. Agnes’s heart battered against her ribs. You must.

  His eyes were on her bosom, where her mother’s wedding ring rested.

  ‘Nice piece.’ He inserted the tip of his finger into the ring and pulled her towards him.

  Breath raking her chest, she parted her lips to slacken her jaw. ‘It will be easier if you untie me.’ Her steadiness of voice surprised her. ‘I can turn around then.’

  The guard cackled. ‘What did you just say you little whore? Want it do you?’

  Grabbing the rough, hemp cloth, she drew his hose down to ankles.

  ‘Yes.’ The whisper scraped her throat. ‘I want it.’

  The guard lent forward. His breath stank of the beer and meat that lined his stomach. Agnes blinked away the tears as she felt the key pull in the padlock that bound her wrist. You will never see my shame. The pressure of the cuff released, and the lock fell open an inch from her fingertips.

  ‘Up here.’ She hauled herself onto a sarcophagus and raised her skirt.

  The guard beamed. ‘You dirty little bitch.’

  She felt him grip her haunches. Then, blood pulsing acid in her veins, she turned and slammed the padlock into his groin. The guard paced backwards, bent double, and slipped. Arms windmilling the air, he grabbed for Agnes. A piece of her skirt glanced his fingertips but the mossy floor took his footing and he fell with a crack, his head against the tomb.

  Beckoned by the half light of freedom above, Agnes scrambled to the stairs, only to be halted by the realisation that there would be other guards at the top waiting for their friend. Waiting their turn. But she knew the panic that seized her could not afford the luxury of hesitation. Please, hear my prayer. Heart barely contained in her chest, she inched passed the stairwell door.

  There was no-one in sight as she padded behind the great columns of the transept. When she reached the portal she saw a small rectangle of twilight against the dark wood of the huge vaulted frame – the entrance door was ajar. A shout echoed behind her, the scrape of movement. Don’t look back. It felt as though she was falling through the air as she stumbled out in to the dusk, sobbing great, choking gulps of relief.

  Agnes filled her lungs with the cool, fresh air. Salt stung her wrist as she wiped her face and ran, damp grass beneath her feet. Once she reached the cover of the tree line she dared to cast a glance over her shoulder. Two guards burst from the abbey’s mouth, surveying the horse-shoe plain before them, then forked out towards the forest. Heart pattering, Agnes backed away, only to pivot into the restraint of a man’s arms, her scream muffled by a strong hand. Blindly she thrashed to free herself from the brace, sinking her teeth into the black-sleeved forearm. The man span her round to face his shining eyes.

  ‘Gui!’

>   A moment of relief soaked through her body as he cradled her into his chest. Then, raising her head, she looked into the kind, brown eyes said, ‘Run.’

  Gui peered through the trees towards the abbey.

  ‘Gui, we don’t have time. They’re right behind me.’ She agitated at his arm, but his intention was settled on the guards’ horses tethered at a water trough to the side of the building.

  ‘They’ll catch us if they are able to mount those horses. Mine is just beyond that thicket. Wait for me there.’

  ‘Gui!’ she hissed as he flew from the cover of the trees out onto the open grass.

  He made twenty yards before the first guard saw him and, waving his mate on to Agnes’s hiding place, he tacked to give chase. From the scrubland she watched Gui’s robed silhouette streak across the indigo fields ahead of his pursuer. Throwing his cloak over the larger rouncey, he sent the other cantering into the woods.

  ‘Come here you little bitch!’ The other guard came wading through the brambles, hollering into the shadows of the forest.

  Her skin shrank as she recognised the voice. You dirty little bitch. Grabbing the skirt of her dress she fled, ankles whipped by the branches and briars in her path, ankles scored by pine needles. She could hear her attacker thrashing his way through the scrub. Sweat stinging her eyes, she tumbled into the copse where Gui’s palfrey was tethered.

  ‘Agnes!’

  Hooves thundered over the turf.

  ‘Gui! Over here.’

  Her attacker, encumbered by drink, could only swing his sword blindly as she threw herself up into the saddle and yarred the beast towards Gui. In echelon they zigzagged through the forest until they spilled from its dark arms onto an open road that shone before them, a brilliant white rivulet under the moon. The ghostly choreography of the trees behind them, they slowed and came together. Heads bowed over one another’s shoulders, they caught their breath.

  ‘Thank god you’re safe.’ Gui took her face in his hands.