Towns and villages came and went. The linen bales carried on the wagon formed a wall that kept out the worst of the weather, but even so, the constant jolting of the cart made her feel queasy and there was nothing Sir Talbot could do about that. It was thanks to his chivalry she wasn’t sitting in the wagon full of herring. The smell wafted strongly in the thin, clear air and it was best to travel upwind whenever possible.
Halfway through the morning Talbot swung up onto the wagon to sit beside her, bringing a couple of hot pies from one of the vendors who swarmed round them like flies at every town and custom post. ‘I was unkind to tease poor Pierrekyn so remorselessly over his little knife,’ he said. ‘I should have realised that it had a value beyond its practical use.’
‘Meaning?’
He grimaced. ‘I suspect it might have been a memento of some sort. There’s no other reason for him being so upset about it.’
‘Perhaps he just doesn’t like being teased?’
‘But it’s true I was cruel to him. I’m going to make amends.’
He showed her a dagger with a blade about five inches long, narrow and well sharpened, its handle smartly bound in red leather.
‘It’s pretty enough to appeal to him, don’t you think?’
Hildegard gave it a careful scrutiny. ‘I didn’t try to find him a replacement because I wasn’t confident he wouldn’t misuse it. Do you think he’s safe with a knife?’
‘I believe he lashed out without thought the other evening. At the back of his mind he knew such a thin blade would do no harm against my mail shirt.’ He noticed her uncertainty. ‘This is wild country, Sister. Everybody needs to be able to defend themselves.’
‘I hope your faith in him will be proven. It’s a kind gesture, one to be hoped he’ll appreciate.’
Pierrekyn was riding the hired mule exchanged for the horse Talbot had obtained earlier. Now the knight sprang down from the wagon and, loping with long strides beside the mule, suddenly flour – ished the knife in front of Pierrekyn to display its scarlet handle.
The boy’s expression changed. He smiled briefly and took the knife. Hildegard found herself praying that he would use it only for good.
Talbot came striding back to the wagon. ‘At least I’ve put things right.’ He threw Hildegard a puzzled glance. ‘What sort of boyhood has he had to make him take a bit of teasing so amiss?’
Hildegard did not tell him what little she knew. She did, however, mention the sapper’s accusation.
‘We’ve only Harry’s word. No one should be without a good knife these days. I’m prepared to give the lad the benefit of the doubt,’ Talbot added firmly.
The matter of the velvet turnshoe she kept to herself.
They were now somewhere in the Vaud, a territory ruled by the Count of Savoy. After their descent from the Jougne pass, the Jura had been left behind and they soon cleared the toll at Les Clées.
There had been no sign of Escrick Fitzjohn since Bruges if those fleeting shadows in Salins could be discounted.
Once through customs, their road joined several others on a run down to Vévey on the shore of Lake Geneva. It was much frequented by pilgrims travelling to and from Rome. The town was overflowing with travellers, the lake itself a windswept expanse of sharp-fanged waves. There they joined another road that ran along the upper Rhone to Martigny before at last beginning the steep ascent through St Branchier to Orsières.
Ahead were the towering heights of the Alps and the place they all feared, the dreaded Great St Bernard pass.
The last of the merchandise was offloaded at Martigny for shipment along the Rhone where it would again be loaded onto wagons at Brig for its final destination to Milan. Some, however, was put in store until the roads opened again in summer. The innkeepers along the route made a rich profit from offering guarantees to the merchants for the safe storage of what were often goods of high value. In summer the pack animals would continue through the pass and on into Tuscany.
This was the route to be followed by the de Hutton and Meaux woolpacks – except for the one bale that remained in Bruges, despoiled by the presence of a dead body.
By the time they reached Orsières near the entrance to the pass, their party was much depleted. It now consisted of Hildegard, Talbot, Pierrekyn, the three mercenaries, and half a dozen pilgrims who, for reasons of spiritual purity and not a little fear, kept themselves to themselves. Even Pierrekyn’s singing partner left.
While they were at the inn in Orsières, a courier arrived from the south. He was shivering despite his hard walking and, before he leaped onto the back of the mule waiting for him, warned them that snow was falling in the mountains. It was expected to get worse over the next few days.
After a brief, worried conference, Hildegard and Talbot decided to go on. If the courier had got through the pass with his leather satchel of mail, then they could do the same with their few belongings. It was, after all, only eight miles.
Pierrekyn looked disgruntled but offered no view of his own. Jack Black and his comrades, hardened to all weathers, were in a hurry to get to the lucrative fields of war and gave no thought to the trivial inconvenience of snow. They were prepared to hire guides to see them over the summit. It was what you did in these parts, they said. They would all keep together. There was no sense in waiting.
So now, with a handful of the more hardy pilgrims, their small group was ready to set out for the worst part of the journey.
Although only eight miles, a distance that could have been covered in a couple of hours’ brisk walking on the flat, it was the height of the climb, the roughness of the terrain, and the snakelike meanderings of the route that made it near enough a day’s climb.
They had been on the road since dawn. As they discovered, what made it difficult were the frequent slow traverses they had to make from one side of the mountain to the other. Sometimes there was nothing more than a few ropes to help them; at others there were frail cord bridges suspended over the ravines, which they could use only one at a time.
It was frightening. Hildegard felt her breath stop every time she set foot on the cordings set loosely on their net of ropes. From a distance the bridges looked no more substantial than a silken web. Close up they seemed little better. What made them more dangerous was the fact that ice clung to them, adding to their weight, and making them groan under the strain even before anybody set foot on them. A hundred times over, Hildegard imagined the ropes snapping under the strain and the unlucky traveller pitching down in a blitz of ice to the bottom of the chasm.
Apparently oblivious to danger, the mercenaries went doggedly ahead to dislodge the ice with great sweeps of their axes, hooting with glee every time the shards smashed on the rocks below.
When Harry saw Pierrekyn gingerly peering over the precipice after a particularly large block had fallen several hundred feet, shattering into a thousand pieces or more, he yelled, ‘Bet you’re glad that’s not your bloody ’ead!’ For once Pierrekyn held his tongue.
Sometimes they had to cross frozen brooks where the ice crackled under their tread. At the last halt they had hired overshoes studded with nails to stop them slipping on the ice and were encouraged to wear horn eye-pieces with narrow slits cut in them through which the world could be seen, elongated and somehow clearer.
Ulf had warned Hildegard what it would be like but no words could match the physical reality. Each step taken was a small victory against the elements. The wind pierced like a knife through every gap in their garments. Hildegard’s fingers turned into useless lumps despite her fur mittens. Even the beaver hat did not prevent ice cutting her face and forming a rime over the eye-piece.
By the time they reached the hospice on the summit they were exhausted, but there were smiles of satisfaction all round. They stamped their boots to dislodge the snow and jostled to get inside with a palpable sense of achievement.
What made it bearable for Hildegard was the thought that she would soon be in Florence. The thought had sustained her all d
ay. When the prior came down to greet them she saw it as one more waymark on the long journey to obtain the cross.
The prior and canons of St Bernard had been offering hospitality to pilgrims and other travellers for over three hundred years. Bernard himself was of royal descent, related to the counts of Savoy, and he had built the hospice on the site of a small monastery with endowments from his relatives. Nowadays an increasing number of pilgrims made the journey from the northern countries down to Rome on what was called the via Francigena and as a result a network of similar refuges had been set up. But the Great St Bernard hospice was the first.
Unlike the inns that had sprung up as trade increased, at intervals of a half-day’s journey, where travellers were charged as much as the market would bear, the hospices offered free accommodation to everyone. This, together with the fact that the buildings were expensive to maintain at such an altitude, made them perpetually short of money. The prior also offered the free services of maronniers whose job was to guide travellers through the pass, act as a rescue service, maintain the fixed ropes and bridges over the steepest part of the route and keep up the perches, the signposts without which anyone could become lost. On top of that each traveller was given a portion of bread and a measure of wine before leaving.
In order to do all this the place was run by a number of Augustinians. One of them fell into conversation with Hildegard once he knew she spoke French. He was helping a couple of lay brothers to arrange the implements for the evening meal.
‘I am,’ he told her, ‘a quêteur.’ When she asked him to explain, he said, ‘I’m usually out on a quest, begging, of course, as I’m a mendicant.’ He glanced round the hall. ‘It takes money to keep this place running. It’s a pity we can’t charge as the innkeepers do!’
‘There are many members of your Order in the towns close to my priory in the North of England,’ she told him. ‘They do a lot of good among the sick.’ They both moved on, he to finish his chores in the kitchens, Hildegard to feed her hounds.
Duchess and Bermonda had worn small leather pouches over their feet with nails to stand in lieu of claws but had not taken kindly to such an indignity. Now when she found them they looked at her with forlorn expressions. She ruffled their ears and spoke kindly to them to cheer them up, and in reply they leaned heavily against her legs as if to plead with her not to put them through such an ordeal again.
‘My poor creatures,’ she murmured. ‘Only one more day and then we’ll be over the mountains and you’ll be basking in sunshine and walking in marble halls.’
Quêteur, the canon had called himself, a quester. That was her own role too. In her case it was a quest to find the cross of Constantine and bring it home.
There was not much singing from Pierrekyn after supper that evening. Not that he was unwilling but his repertoire had to be tailored to suit the religious nature of their lodging.
Eventually he found a suitable song. It was another chanson about a lady in a bower. ‘The arrow of love has pierced my heart and now I bleed and die,’ he warbled in a mocking falsetto. Apparently he was quite revived from the day’s ordeal.
Hildegard closed her eyes. All day she had thrust aside every thought of Hubert de Courcy. Now weariness made the effort too much and he appeared before her, not as she had last seen him, cold and indifferent to her fate, but as he had been on that autumn afternoon in his garden. Banal as love often seems to outsiders, the song expressed her feelings with shaming accuracy: an arrow had pierced her heart, she bled, she died.
Chapter Eleven
WHILE THEY WERE recovering their strength before starting the next and worst leg of the journey, Hildegard came to a decision. It was no good taking risks.
The Augustinians had their own courier service. It was fast and efficient. The Order even had an English house in Beverley and no doubt exchanged correspondence with them but the message she wanted to send was not intended for them.
It would go to Bruges. Ulf would have been and gone by now but the Vitelli company ran their own courier service and would be able to pass a message on to Castle Hutton. It seemed prudent to inform the steward about her misgivings concerning Pierrekyn.
Nothing he had done in the days following his futile attack on Talbot gave her confidence that he wouldn’t erupt again. He was smouldering in a black and silent rage that would find its release soon, she was sure. Once Ulf knew what had transpired it would be up to him to determine a course of action. She would ask him what he expected her to do when she reached her destination. So far she had fulfilled his request but it would be the easiest thing in the world for Pierrekyn to vanish into thin air down some busy back street once they arrived. Ulf would have to send his instructions.
Borrowing ink from the friendly canon she had spoken to before supper, she found a quiet place where she could set pen to paper. The ink was frozen in the bottle. She warmed it at the fire until it ran freely and then began to write, finishing in time to be able to hand the letter to the courier before he left at dawn.
Her misgivings about Pierrekyn were justified not much later.
Shortly after the courier left she prepared to join the depleted group of travellers in the courtyard. Three maronniers had been provided to guide them down the glass-like precipice.
The air was crisp. Mont Joux stood over them in the blue sky. Sunlight glinted off the snow. Dazzled, they put on the horn eye-pieces again. Their breath issued in puffs of steam whenever anybody spoke. Already noses were pinched and fingers were throbbing with chilblains. They stamped their nailed boots, newly waterproofed with pig fat, throwing up small shards of ice as they waited to set out.
Emerging into this brilliance with her pack of bread and wine and her forlorn-looking hounds, Hildegard squinted round. At once she noticed an absence. ‘Where’s Pierrekyn, Sir Talbot?’
‘I thought he was with you.’
‘I haven’t seen him since compline yesterday.’
‘He told me he was coming to play his new tune to you to see how you liked it,’ he explained.
‘He didn’t do anything of the sort.’ Hildegard was puzzled. This was hardly the place from which to make his escape.
Nobody admitted to having seen him until one of the pilgrims, smiling, said, ‘Your knight’s young squire, Sister? I saw him going out after dining last night as soon as the snow stopped. He was heading for the rocks up yonder.’ He pointed back the way they had come. ‘I assumed it was a call of nature and thought nothing of it.’
‘When was this?’ asked Talbot.
‘Just after compline. I was called outside for the same reason,’ he added.
Grim-faced, Talbot turned to Hildegard. ‘He’s absconded.’ He took her to one side. ‘What do you suggest, Sister?’
She was uncertain. ‘I can’t see him surviving on the mountain by himself.’
‘He’s tougher than he looks. Nearly beat me at arm-wrestling the other day. And running away surely proves his guilt?’
‘It looks like it. Even so I’m worried for him.’
‘We certainly can’t set off in pursuit. We don’t know these mountains and we’ve no idea where he’s likely to be heading. And you have your own journey to consider.’
‘We’ll ask the prior to send his men after him. If they find him they can hold him until the steward from Castle Hutton instructs someone to take him back to England to face justice.’ She stifled her anger. ‘This is all my fault. I should have been less trusting.’
‘And I should have kept a better eye on him,’ replied Talbot gallantly.
She put a hand on his sleeve. ‘Let’s press on. I’ve already sent a letter to inform the steward of our doubts. Let him make of it what he will. The prior will send out his men when he knows the boy’s wanted. We have to go on. I can’t delay any longer.’
The prior was more than willing to send men out in pursuit of Pierrekyn when he heard what had happened. He also told them he would have prevented them going after him themselves if they had tried as t
hey knew nothing about the mountain trails nor which ones they could travel in safety in the present weather conditions.
They found their group of travelling companions had dwindled further by the time they went to rejoin them. Two of the more fainthearted had decided to stay on in the comfort of the hospice until they were convinced beyond doubt that the good weather would hold.
The descent was said to be more dangerous than the road up to the summit. As they set their faces towards the south they all agreed that it would be the toughest day yet.
It was hard going, there was no doubt of that. The path was all but obliterated by the snow and without the perches there would have been no knowing where they were. The guides, with felt hoods wrapped tightly over their heads, led the way with thrusts of their long poles deep into the snow at every step. Everyone followed in single file, first Sir Talbot, then Hildegard, then the three pilgrims, and finally Jack Black and his crew.
Progress was slow. At one point the wind had blown the surface snow off the rock, leaving a carapace of ice. It looked black like rock but this was deceptive as they discovered when an unwary pilgrim put one foot on it and went yelling and tumbling on his backside while everyone in front tried in vain to catch hold of him. Fortunately for him, he ended up in a drift at the brink of the cliff. There was much amusement as he was hauled out with his hood awry and a fringe of snow on his brow.
Whenever it was safe, the guides helped them slide down the ice on hides. Then they cried out with whoops of joy that were probably heard all over the mountainside.
The Red Velvet Turnshoe Page 10
