by Hana Cole
Yalda’s silence was all he needed to lift his eyes to the walls, where there hung embroideries of Arabic caligraphy. The designs he recognised from the Muslim quarters of Messina - prayers to Allah. He closed his eyes, cringing inwardly as the first sounds of the early evening Adhan rang out.
Yalda shook her head. Gui saw regret in her resigned smile. ‘I suppose you have never seen the slave markets of Genova or Barcelona,’ she said.
Gui swallowed on the prickle in his throat. When Yalda first opened her door for him, he had dared to hope that he might win himself an ally. Now, as the intonations of foreign prayer filtered into the room from the minarets outside, he felt the estrangement keenly.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘I have been a poor guest.’
As Yalda rose he noticed how diminutive she was, how slight her bones. She placed her hand over her heart.
‘I am sorry. Truly I am. I pray that your son is returned to you.’
‘I will find him,’ he said.
Chapter Twenty-one
The low, reedy voice of an old woman was singing a lament of the peasant’s lot. Agnes inhaled the smell of earth and horsehair. There was a hearth in the centre of the room. A vent above drew up the smoke through gossamer filaments of rain. No sooner had she opened her eyes than the old woman turned around.
‘We found you out in the wet,’ she said in a dialect Agnes could barely understand.
Agnes sat and looked into the ancient face. Watery eyes, fogged by time, stared unjudging from the deep creases of leathery skin.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘She is awake?’ A younger man stood at the threshold of the hovel, his face obscured by a full beard and a cap pulled down to his brow. Despite the cold he wore only a leather gilet over a shirt.
‘Just now,’ the crone replied.
The man came to stand by the fire, rubbing his hands until she shooed him away to fetch some water and fill the log basket. Agnes cast off her blanket. Instantly a chill air gnawed at her. The old woman tutted for her to cover herself.
‘Where am I?’
‘Near Houx. Three leagues from Maintenon.’
Agnes clenched her chattering teeth. She watched the old woman shuffle about the room, pushing at cinders with a broom, wiping out a pot with a greying rag. She longed to release the pressure of the silence, but the old lady seemed so self-contained, her chores a barrier of ordinariness against the torrent of all that Agnes might say. Silence settled upon them like layers of ash until the woman paused, breathless, against her broom.
‘Have I been here long?’ Agnes asked.
‘We found you this morning. Your lips were blue.’
‘I remember it was raining at dawn,’ she said.
‘Are you with child?’ The crone asked. The question felt like a blade. Agnes shook her head in place of the reply that pricked her windpipe. The old woman approached her and squatted down. For all her years, her heels rested comfortably on the ground. She has ground wheat in that same position for decades, thought Agnes. The same grain that made the bread for my grandparents’ table. The old woman looked into Agnes’s eyes like a soothsayer looking into an obsidian tablet.
‘Did you escape him, my child?’
Agnes’s blood froze. Her lips parted, the truth upon them, but she could feel the sting of shame in her throat. ‘Who?’
The old woman said nothing, rheumy eyes drooping sadly. She knows, thought Agnes. Moments passed like hours, until Agnes whispered, ‘What is his name?’
‘Amaury de Maintenon,’ the crone said and another aeon of silence descended.
Several times Agnes drew breath, but each time she was defeated by the chasm that lay beyond. All the times she had lain beside Gui, close enough to hear his heart, longing to share this dread intimacy. Sometimes he noticed, a gentle query in his eyes, so full of adoration. Will he still look at me this way if I tell him? It was the thought that always turned the words to thorns.
The peasant woman was humming softly the way a mother hums to a babe after it has fallen asleep, fearful that silence will wake her child. If I don’t speak now, Agnes thought, this malignancy will corrode my soul. Her heart quickened. The old woman’s head nodded, almost imperceptibly. An invitation.
‘It was a long time ago,’ Agnes said suddenly.
‘You’re the old castellan’s kin, aren’t you?’ She drew a circle around her face. ‘I remember you. You came once or twice with the salt merchant.’
Agnes felt as though she was falling. ‘My father. When my granparents died, the castellany of Gazeran came to me... for my father to hold until I was wed.’
The old woman gave a sad shake of her head and muttered, ‘And that’s when he came?’
The air felt like tar as Agnes forced in a breath.
‘My father’s trade made him a rich man. After I inherited the castellany he was arrested, accused of heresy. The night after he was taken a man came to me. He didn’t tell me his name. He told me that if I agreed to be his bride he would have my father released and I would know no suffering.’ Tears ran down her face but Agnes’s voice was steady. ‘But I couldn’t. I was so frightened, I just stood there. And he…’ Now, she faltered. The old woman sat motionless beside her, an affinity in her eyes that said, you don’t have to go on. But the dam was breached. The only way through the flood was to wade on.
‘He took his pleasure with me. I fled to beg for my father’s life, but the Inquisition arrested me... They said they had witnesses against me. That I loved the Devil…’
The old woman patted her hand with a rough, icy palm.
‘If only I had said yes to Maintenon, I could have saved him.’ Agnes wiped her face with the back of her sleeve. ‘I could have saved papà.’
The peasant woman took Agnes in her arms and said, ‘Don’t you believe that. Maintenon meant only to torment you with those words.’ She cast a finger in the direction of her grandparents’ house. ‘We know what he is. There is no inch of mercy in that black soul.’
‘You know about the others?’ Agnes asked quietly. Her father’s map was scratching her skin. She knew the written word would be meaningless to the old woman, but the need to share her proof was stronger. She took out the parchment. ‘My father sent this for my aunt to keep. I don’t know how he found that place.’
‘The old chapel? Gaston saw him arrive one night with a cart. There were three or four bodies. Girls. Dark-skinned.’ There was a pause. ‘What can we do? We barely survive.’
The old woman’s admission relieved the tightness in her chest. She was believed. ‘Saracens,’ Agnes whispered, eyes on her father’s note. ‘There are others down there too. More than four. He wrote a name here, too. De Coucy.’
‘The de Coucys married into the county of Dreux. Yolande de Coucy married one of the count’s sons I believe, but my memory fades. Gaston will remember better than I.’
The old woman called out and her son appeared at the door, a basket of logs under his arm. A question lined his brow.
‘Maintenon.’ The old woman rushed the name from her lips as though it was an incubus she did not want to invoke. ‘This woman is the Castellan of Gazeran’s kin.’
The man poked his cap up and gave a nod. ‘I remember them. They used to come here in the summer after harvest.’
‘Her father found the old chapel. Reckoned one of those souls might be the de Coucy girl.’
‘Could be. Margueritte was Lady Yolande’s youngest. Maintenon took her for his bride. Came with a fine dowry. She died of plague that winter. Or so he said.’ Gaston laid down the logs. ‘Maintenon went on crusade in the Count of Dreux’s retinue. Men like that don’t doubt the word of a loyal vassal.’
‘What of the other girls? The Saracens?’
‘Maintenon gambled his wealth on crusade, returned with nothing. Rumour went round he liked the dark-skins for himself. We’d see ‘em by and by, faces pressed up against the gaps in the coach. Young girls.’
‘He trades Saracen sla
ves?’
‘No. He don’t trade the heathen ones around here. They’re for his amusement.’ He exchanged a look with the old woman – shall I tell her more?
A single nod of the head.
‘Round here, he takes them what won’t be missed – orphans, foundlings, destitutes. Children of serfs who can’t pay their rent. The wagons come and go by night.’
Both of their eyes travel to the ground. The shame of their poverty. Their powerlessness. Agnes marked herself with the sign of the cross. ‘Dear God, can no one stop him?’
The old lady seemed to be staring at some distant vision. Agnes could feel the power radiating from her shrunken frame. ‘We may not live to see it, but one day the righteous of this country will rise up. Men like Maintenon will be skinned and pegged out in the fields like goats.’
‘Amen,’ said Gaston.
‘But what if we could do something to stop him now? Prove Margueritte de Coucy was murdered and buried here? We could go back to the chapel, see if we can find something. I might be able to gain the trust of Margueritte’s family. Would they not want to know that the lands of her dowry were as good as stolen? That she was slain by their trusted vassal? With people of such high standing, even the court of France would listen.’
The way the old woman and her son were staring at her made her feel like a madwoman, one of the wild-haired ascetics who roamed the byways of Christendom, eyes rolled back in prophetic ecstasy. Softening the edge in her voice, she continued, ‘My father lost his reputation and his life trying to protect me. How many others have there been? There must be some way to end it.’
‘Rest here for now, child. Wait for the shock to pass. Gaston will get you a fur. I’ll put a pan of water on.’
‘Let me.’ Agnes stood. The top of the old woman’s head barely reached her breast, but the time-twisted hands guided Agnes back down to sit. For the first time, the ancient face cracked with a smile.
‘If events had not been so turned by the Devil, we would be your tenants.’
Agnes pushed the matted hair from her face, nodded in acknowledgement of her predicament. Exhausted and penniless, a wanted heretic- this tiny, smoke-filled hovel was her only refuge.
‘The power of the Evil One grows every day. What can we do but till the land until God’s hand returns to free us?’
‘What can we do?’ Agnes said as the old woman poured the water from the bucket into the pan and hoisted it over the spitting fire. Sit for now, that’s what you can do she thought. Tomorrow you can stand.
*
Bernard de Nogent swallowed the humiliation that was burning, bottled at the base of his sternum. The young man before him was dressed in the livery of the Le Bar household. It would have been insult enough for the bishop not to meet the man who had made such a generous donation, but to send this pimpled youth was a well-calculated outrage.
‘His Grace, Bishop Reginald sends his utmost apologies and gratitude, Bernard.’
Bernard! The inquisitor felt his teeth grind.
‘But I am sure you understand the campaign is at a very delicate stage. There has been such a backlash after the events at Béziers and we cannot risk a revanchement,’ said Hugh. A former junior canon at Chartres, he was two decades younger than de Nogent, and did not have the natural merit to make inquisitor, let alone anything greater. But he did have one thing that all the merit in the kingdom could never buy: he was fourth son of Count Reginald II Le Bar, and his mother was the king’s cousin. His eldest brother was Bishop Reginald of Chartres. In all likelihood, he would one day inherit the bishopric, and he knew it.
‘Your reverence, the bishop wants you to be assured that anything you wish to say to him you may entrust to me.’ The sallow, beardless cheeks broadened into an exaggerated grin. He hadn’t even offered de Nogent any refreshment.
Struggling to keep the conflict from his face, de Nogent considered it almost too great an insult to convey his wish to this idiotic upstart, but he had travelled two days to get here and sent a thousand livres in charity as a sweetner. With all he had at stake, it seemed churlish to turn back now. Could it be this was a final test? He knew his faults well enough to know that if he had any failing in his virtue it was the sin of pride.
‘My visit is with regard to the abbey at Maintenon,’ he began, head inclined in respectful attitude. ‘I have spoken with his Grace on this matter before. I believe that Lord Amaury is now in a position to complete the foundation. He may have mentioned my name in regard to the abbacy, it was my intention to discuss my plans to use it as a hub for fighting heresy in and around the Île de France.’
‘Oh, yes, of course.’ The youth smirked. ‘Lord Amaury has indeed spoken to His Grace on the matter of the abbey’s foundation.
‘Excellent.’ De Nogent beamed. So, money does talk, he thought. A moment of humbling himself was about to be rewarded.
‘The thing is.’ The youth pulled at his ear and de Nogent felt a knot bunch in the pit of his stomach. ‘Lord Amaury also came to ask the bishop to bless his nuptials with Alice St Pol.’
‘Nuptuals?’ The knot was a stone.
The youth nodded blithely. ‘An excellent family, you’ll agree. You may have heard, quite wicked fortune, but the youngest boy is an imbecile. Maintenon has offered the abbacy to him as a gesture to the count. Such a weight off his mind. I’m sure a man of your depth and virtue will understand.’ Hugh Le Bar folded both his hands over his heart. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit.’
Chapter Twenty-two
The heat of the late morning about him like a cloak, Gui squatted, short of breath. A line of boys, stripped to their loin cloths, bunched together under the coiled whips of the market slavers. Beside them a small boy with soft, chestnut ringlets lay curled at the feet of an elderly man. He was chained at his ankle to a stick. Gui’s skin burned as though it were being scourged.
Swiping away the flies, he threw his head back and took a gulp of air. Although his church held otherwise, he could not have children capable of sin, let alone sin great enough to explain this hell. Perhaps the Dualists of the East were right and he wrong. Perhaps the power of the Devil was equal to that of the Lord.
The market was vast. How will I ever find my son in all this? He surveyed the porticos where buyers crowded around platforms or took rest beneath makeshift awnings. Another sip of the navigator’s plum wine and he threw himself into the tide of bodies. He shouldered his way through the huddles of human chattle, palming away salesmen who pushed almond-eyed children into his path. Eyes peeled for a fair-haired child, he tried not to see the forlorn looks of the others as they rubbed tired faces with chubby hands.
Taking two steps at a time, he entered the main building, passed the market administrators hunched over their ledgers like vultures.The roofless building was shielded from the sun by swathes of fabrics poled up into the sky like sails. They rippled when the air moved, dappling the heads below with flashes of yellow that made his heart skip a beat only to fall as the shadows closed in to reveal another olive- skinned youth blinking into the clamour of bidders.
Hours past and the sun moved from its position overhead. There had not been one white-skinned slave for sale. Was Etienne ever here? Heartsick, Gui withdrew from the gallery. Dragging his feet back onto the main thoroughfare, he took a pocket of flatbread and some spiced beans from the most insistent hand. The mixture burned on his tongue for a few moments, but was not dissimilar to the hearty dishes of home. French children would not be so fond of such highly spiced food though, unless they were hungry enough. His appetite died with the thought and he handed the cup of beans to one of the hot little hands that reached up, calling for his charity.
From the corner of his eye he caught a glow of white skin, the golden head of a child. His lungs purged themselves of air. From the depths of his guts he pulled out a hoarse cry. ‘Etienne!’
The boy turned around and Gui’s heart cracked. His only thought had been Etienne. Despite all he had seen, he hadn’t considered a dif
ferent possibility, and the sight of the sun-bronzed child, crowned with a halo of angel’s hair, numbed him. The ice blue eyes squinted cautiously at Gui. The boy looked about eight years old and there was a bleak resignation in his regard that hollowed the pit of Gui’s stomach.
‘Do you speak French?’
The boy gave a solitary nod. His grimy hand was covered with calloused nodes. It was a hand that belonged to a carpenter or a mason, not a child. Gui dropped to a squat. ‘Where are you from, son?’
‘I have to go.’
Gui felt the boy shrink from him. ‘I mean you no harm,’ he said. ‘Will you tell me how long have you been here? You were taken away from your home?’
The boy’s response was a silence as thick and oppressive as the market’s air.
‘My son was taken, just like you. Have you seen boys from France? Perhaps you know my son? His name is…’
‘I do not know your son.’ The boy’s eyes darted over Gui’s shoulder. ‘I have to go.’
‘Please talk to me. Were you among the shepherd crusaders?’ Gui placed his hand gently on the boy’s shoulder.
‘Leave me alone.’ The terror in his eyes scalded Gui as the child pulled away and scurried off, gaze fixed upon the dirt path.
‘Wait, please,’ Gui called after him. ‘I have to find my boy…’ Sitting on his heels in the dust he watched the golden head bob and weave through the crowds, a Willo’-the-Wisp flickering through the press of souq, carrying away with him the hope that for a brief moment had lit Gui’s soul.
‘I have to let him know,’ he whispered, and for a heart beat the world stalled. Nothing seemed to move, although the sounds of hundreds of voices, of the beasts of burden and the clang of construction work bore down on him. Gui looked up. He still had sight of the little boy, swerving the obstacles of the grown-ups’s world . He has a father who loves him more than anything on this earth and I have to let him know.
