The Devil's Crossing

by Hana Cole

  Agnes’s longing to talk to her son swells with her every breath, each inhalation an invite to release the stream of questions trapped inside her. How can she ever begin to explain, or to understand? All she has is a mother’s need to know her son’s ordeal, to share whatever it is she must. The good Lord has delivered a blessing, greater than any other she could name, but still she must wait before she can get to know this young man striding out ahead into the penumbra.

  ‘Nearly there,’ she whispers. ‘Can you see a stone bridge up ahead?’

  Etienne turns, the whites of his eyes picked out in the shimmer of the rising moon. Frowning in concentration, she sees a new angular slope to his nose, his brow, and it sends her heart into free fall. She could be looking at Gui. He cocks his head towards the stream, listening.

  ‘Over there.’ He raises his hand, sharp. ‘Quick!’ In the same moment he reaches for his mother there is a loud crack. Branches snap aside to reveal the bulk of a stallion and rider, his head covered by an elaborate chaperon. He paces the mount forward into their path. Agnes expels a primal cry as she finds herself looking into the distended, colourless eyes of a face that has haunted her ever since their only encounter: Amaury of Maintenon.

  ‘Run!’ She pushes her son aside. Maintenon cannot follow them both. The nobleman hesitates, the point of his sword moving from one to the other in a mock counting game. Agnes takes the start he has given her and flees towards a circle of silver ash whose tall, narrow trunks he will find hard to negotiate. But he is a skilled horseman, and he darts between the glinting poles, snapping at her heels. Abruptly she bolts to one side, turns to face him. His personal mores, she gambles, will not allow him to crush her with his horse. He paces his mount before her, lips puckered in a fleshy pout.

  Agnes’s heart is in her mouth as she watches her son from the corner of her eye, a grey shadow skimming over the soft forest floor behind Maintenon. She has no idea what her son’s experiences have made him capable of. The best she can do is be ready.

  Maintenon bears his teeth. Get off your horse you bastard, she wills, but the gloved hands stay laced over his pommel. Briefly their eyes lock. As much as she longs to engage this ancient enmity, she can do nothing that might expose Etienne, so she stares past him, a veil drawn over the hot brew of hate in her veins. A low hum escapes Maintenon, as though he were mulling over a number of appealing choices. He reaches for his saddle bag. Agnes’s blood freezes; if he looks up now he will see Etienne. But he does not. He is too intent on withdrawing a length of rope. Carefully he coils it over one hand, then he turns back to her with the same, silent grin. He is not going to dismount. He is going to rope her like an animal from where he sits.

  All at once Etienne strides forward, and with a battle cry, he punches the branding iron into Maintenon’s knee. Howling, he slumps forward, groping for his reins as mother and son tug furiously at his legs. His mount kicks out with a blow that unseats him and sends Etienne flying backwards as if struck by lightning. Snorting like a bull, Maintenon draws himself up and throws himself at Agnes. She calls out to Etienne, who lays motionless a few yards away, but there is no reply. Thrashing in a deep well of panic, she tries to free herself, but Maintenon asserts his weight and seals her mouth with his hand.

  ‘And to think poor old de Nogent wanted to burn you.’ The low grate of his voice is like a bed of worms in her gut. She wants to claw his eyes out. ‘But this is going to be much more fun.’

  The only weapon she has is her teeth, and as he nuzzles his face into her neck she sinks them into his cheek. The blow of retribution is still pounding inside her skull when suddenly Maintenon’s weight is peeled from her. She sits upright to see a wraith-like figure hurl him to the ground. Scrabbling backwards on her haunches, she reaches Etienne and presses her hand to his chest.

  Gui grinds his knee into Amaury of Maintenon’s throat. The protruding eyes and the strangulated cry pump hot satisfaction through his veins, as beneath him the big man thrashes with all his force for his life’s breath. Hampered by his injury, Gui knows he will not be able to contain his opponent like this for long. He glances up. Agnes is cradling Etienne’s head against her body, rocking him to and fro. The fury flows up through his core. With all the force he can muster, Gui lands a punch on the side of his enemy’s head. Momentarily, the body beneath him ceases its bucking. Snatching the length of rope, Gui loops it around Maintenon’s hands.

  ‘Father!’

  The sound of his son’s voice sparks through him like a charge from amber, and instinct turns his head. What happens next unfolds like a dream, a series of images flickering against the night to which he is helpless witness. Etienne rises to his knees, his mother’s hand hovering uncertain at his side. Agnes turns to Gui, her expression transformed by the light of recognition in her eyes. Stay where you are, he wants to shout out, but in the half-breath it takes to form the thought, it is too late. He feels the thrust of his opponent’s arms push up against him and then a searing pain in his belly that he knows is a blade. The grip of his knee begins to fail and he gropes for the dagger inside his belt like a drowning man. The next thing he knows he is on his back.

  ‘You know I had her when she was a girl?’ Maintenon rubs his neck, laughing as Gui’s face hollows. ‘She put up a lively fight then too.’

  The world is reduced to the rush of blood in his ears, the scalding laceration in his gut. He shakes his head, trying to throw off this madness like a rabid dog. But even as the edges of his world begin to darken, this red-eyed rage will not submit. It froths within him until it finds form, narrows to a single, inevitable point. Lungs releasing an animal cry, he rises up and plunges his dagger into Amaury of Maintenon’s heart. Every garment rolled in blood... A smile cracks on his lips. For unto us a child is born. And then the world falls black.

  *

  ‘Gui?’

  The hands on his face are cool. He nods. The soft warmth of a sigh kisses his cheek. Agnes presses her forehead to his. Time stalls. There is just the two of them, each one held in the world only by the other.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘And Etienne?’

  ‘Here, papà.’

  Etienne skids to his side. Gui tries to sit but he is beaten by a tide of nauseating pain.

  ‘We need a compress of garlic and thyme,’ Agnes says quickly. Gui winces as she peels away his tunic and he sees his son’s face fall. He looks down at the macerated flesh.

  ‘A compress and all will be well,’ he says, but his eyelids flicker. He knows the damage done is far beyond repair.

  ‘He will be well.’ Agnes reassures their son, but her big, blue eyes are full of tears. ‘I’m sorry.’ She brings his ice cold hand to her lips. ‘This is my fault. Maintenon…’

  ‘None of this is your fault,’ he whispers. ‘I know what Maintenon was.’

  ‘I tried to tell you so many times.’

  ‘Shhh.’ Gui puts his fingers to Agnes’s face. ‘We have our son. All the rest…It’s over.’

  He lifts his other hand, wrapped in the clammy warmth of Etienne’s grip. Tears spill fast down Agnes’s face as she fights to hold her smile. A breath later and she is laughing, laughing and crying at the same time.

  ‘Please stay with us,’ Etienne says, his voice beginning to falter. ‘I would like you to help me make a sword when you are well.’

  ‘That would be a fine thing. I should like that very much.’ The corners of Gui’s mouth lift, his breath suddenly buoyed. His son’s face opens with joy, and for a second he thinks he might be able to cheat this fate. But almost at once he can feel his chest straining to rise anew, and he realises it is not the surge of his breath returning, but the effort of summoning his last. He turns to Agnes. Her face is the same beatitude that met him in this house all those years ago. Now it is a halo of light. His Father’s house. He sighs. And his eyes are closed.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  His mother stands at the back door beneath a bower of ivy that drips from the mossy roof. A chemise hangs loo
se in her hand and it looks for all the world as if she is about to peg out the laundry. But he knows she is not. She has been standing in that same spot for at least as long as he has been chopping wood beneath the lean-to. Mostly she seems lost in thought as she absent-mindedly fingers the shirt, but now and then her eyes flit over to the spot where the boundary of her godmother’s dwelling merges with forest - to where the newly turned patch of earth marks his father’s resting place. It has been four days since they laid him in the ground and she has hardly been able to pass an hour without returning to it, as though she is frightened he might not be there. Or perhaps it is just to be near him, Etienne isn’t sure.

  They dug the grave the day after his passed away. He, the forester and Christophe, all sweating under the rays of the warm, spring sun, heads bowed in a silent commune of endeavour that gave consolation as well as any eulogy. At first Etienne swallowed down his own grief, tried to comfort his mother when he saw her out there, adrift in a sea of loss. The touch of his hand on her shoulder made her smile, but he could sense it was not enough. Unlike his father he had no words, no extreme unction at his fingertips.

  What she really wants, he knows he cannot give. All he can do is make himself useful, limit himself to the odd glance in his mother’s direction as he chops wood for seasoning. In this hidden refuge there are plenty of tasks; chopping wood, ripping out the damp timbers of the wheel house, cutting back the rampant foliage that fingers at the window frames and pokes its way in between the timbers of the house. These are the tasks that root him into the earth, allow him to think about his father without feeling as though his world is in free fall.

  He can’t yet make sense of the fact that Gui, the father he has only just found, has been taken from him. He is not sure if he ever will. The loss of his father is a riddle with no answer, a bottomless well that never returns the toss of a stone with a splash. How is it possible that the man who had been at his side since he was a babe is gone? The man who provided for him, who taught him so much, taught him how to read! Why had he never truly understood what a marvel that was? Who knows what might have happened to him that day in the slave market if he hadn’t been able to read the lines thrust before him.

  Etienne pushes the heel of his hand into his forehead. A thousand memories flood in; the little cottage in Montoire, that safe feeling he used to get as he came down the lane at the end of the day knowing he was going to find Gui frowning over his parchments. The steadfast ally who helped him shrug off the barbs and punches of other boys in a way that a mother’s worry never could.

  Etienne raises his hand axe, strikes ferociously at a log and watches the splintered pieces go spinning to the ground. He bends, retrieves another branch, strikes, and for a moment all his thoughts are lost to this easy rhythm. Then, unexpectedly, the tentacles of grief entwine themselves about him and he sways, heart quickening as the hurt pounds his solar plexus. Next, he is back on the scorching terrace of the governor’s palace, scalp prickling, looking into fierce, jet eyes that brim with remorse. You know I think I always knew, Father Gui, he remembers the mumbled response to his father’s helpless confession.

  For everything his father gave him, had he ever really let him know how thankful he was? More than anything in the world Etienne desperately wishes he could let Gui know. And the fact that he can’t feels like it is wringing the very soul from him. Grip loosened by the wave of emotion, he lets the hand axe fall and he sinks onto his haunches. You came for me, father. He wipes the blur from his eyes. I thought I was all alone, but you came for me.

  ‘Etienne. Someone’s here.’

  Etienne lifts his gaze to see a sad consolation in the round, freckly face of his friend. For a moment he burns with shame that Christophe has witnessed this private distress, but there is something about the kind way the boy presses his lips together and offers his hand. It reminds Etienne that his friend knows better than anyone what it is like to be exposed, unable to hide your despair. He allows Christophe to heave him up onto his feet and they exchange a look of camaraderie. An understanding that makes Etienne feel guilty about how transparent he has made his pity for the boy from La Rochelle.

  ‘Thanks,’ he begins. ‘I’m sorry…’

  ‘You don’t have to say anything,’ Christophe replies and they hover, uncertain, around the embrace that is asking to be exchanged, until the moment passes.

  ‘Who is it?’

  Christophe shrugs. ‘A lady.’

  Although she is wearing worn clothes there is no mistaking the tight, cushy weave of the fabric any more than there is her porcelain skin, or the meticulous way her hair is swept beneath a gossamer net. A lady indeed. The women clutch each other by the forearms and it isn’t at all obvious to Etienne whom is consoling whom, for they both grip each other with the same ferocity – the shipwrecked clinging to jetsam. Although it is his mother recently bereaved, large tears spill from the eyes of the other woman and Etienne is reluctant to interrupt their exchange of womanly intimacy.

  ‘Maybe we should go and make some cordial,’ Christophe says.

  They retreat indoors. ‘Do you know who she is?’ Christophe asks as he pouring out a jug of pressed fruit, one hand behind his back, deft as any butler.

  Since they have been home Etienne has noticed this about Christophe. There is a neat economy to everything he does; his bed sheets turned down just so, dinner plates whipped away to the washing tub before his mother even has a chance to stand, the way he jumps aside, as though he is dancing an estampie, to let her pass first. Unexpected mannerisms and quirks that Etienne has never noticed before give glimpses of the boy Christophe must have been before Cairo. All the relics of his courtly life, Etienne supposes, are his way of trying to restore some familiar order.

  ‘I’ve never seen her before.’

  ‘Maybe she’s something to do with Maintenon?’

  Etienne’s shoulders twitch. He has done all he can to shut out the stare of those lifeless fish eyes from his mind. But no matter the distractions he provides, they seem to find him, just like the wash of black blood that spread like tar over the ground, and days later still seeps into his dreams.

  He shakes off the visitation and replies, ‘I doubt it. She looks like a good woman.’

  Christophe nods sagely. ‘Perhaps she doesn’t know what he was. Would you believe me if you didn’t know better?’

  Etienne ponders the question and shrugs. For it had been Maintenon Christophe recognised instantly as the fine-robbed man from the docks at Saintes who had trapped him in the hold of a slave ship. If the truth be known, Etienne isn’t sure what he would have believed it, if someone had told him there were noblemen and clerics who turned profit in the sale of stolen children.

  If Christophe is right and the lady outside is connected to Maintenon, it begs another question, one he is not sure he wants to know the answer to: what business did Maintenon have with his mother in the first place? When the chatter of female voices ceases, his feet take him outside to the ivy bower where his mother still stands, watching the noble woman depart, as silently as a ship gliding over smooth waters.

  ‘Who is she?’

  Agnes looks back at him uncertainly. She doesn’t want to tell me, he thinks. Part of him wants to change the subject, find some urgent domestic task and duck the uncomfortable burden his mother now baulks at laying on his shoulders. He waits. His mother nods. A precise, downward stroke of the head that could be the end of the matter or the reluctant start to a long tale.

  ‘Lady Yolande de Coucy. Her daughter Margueritte was married to Maintenon.’

  ‘Was married?’

  ‘She was killed. By Maintenon.’ A ridge forms in the smooth space between her eyebrows, as though she is fighting with the words in her head. Etienne presses his lips together like a bather standing on the edge of an icy lake. The wind breathes over the bower, fledging blackbirds shrill in the ivy. Agnes sighs. Is it resignation, or an invitation? He can’t tell.

  ‘What has this got to do w
ith you?’

  The furrow deepens, and for a horrible moment Etienne thinks he has made his mother cry. But suddenly her face opens as if she has been struck by some revelation.

  ‘There are many things I should have told you.’ she says. ‘That we should have told you.’ A shadow of a smile passes her lips as she mentions his father. ‘First you were too young and then….Your father wanted you to know.’

  Softly, Etienne says, ‘So tell me now.’

  ‘My father was a merchant,’ Agnes begins. ‘He became a very wealthy man.’

  ‘He did?’ Etienne feels his eyes widen at the allure of a family fortune and he checks his enthusiasm with a studious frown that makes his mother laugh - the first genuine, unguarded laugh he has heard from her since he fell into her arms on the pathway.

  ‘He did. He began as a pannier in the south.’

  ‘Where aunt lives.’

  ‘Exactly. He started there and began to trade. Salt from the Camargue, from Saintes, up the Rhone, over the mountains to Piedmont. After twenty years of trade he had exclusive rights to sell to some of the highest tables in the land. He was wealthier in fact than my mother’s parents, the castellans of Gazeran.’

  ‘Castellans of Gazeran,’ Etienne pronounces the words with slow wonder as though he is trying on a vastly expensive robe.

  ‘After I inherited the castellany Maintenon asked for my hand. When papà refused, he denounced us to the inquisition.’

  ‘Why did he refuse?’

  ‘I didn’t know it then, but papà discovered Maintenon had been married before, to Margueritte, and that she had died. The villagers told him rumours that Maintenon had murdered her.’ Agnes exhales, a long, impossible sigh. ‘He discovered Margueritte’s body along with the bodies of several others. Moorish slave girls I think they were. Maintenon denounced us and shared the spoils with the inquisitor he used to condemn us.’