A splash behind her and she turned her head. “Jaufre.” Her heart rose at the thought he might have followed them.
“Don’t go too far way from the others,” he said. “It might not be safe.”
North Wind nosed at her pocket and she smiled a little. “I think I’m safe enough.”
“Don’t forget, I’ve seen a time when even North Wind wasn’t enough to keep you from harm.”
“Jaufre,” she said when he turned. She splashed over to put her hands, a little shyly, on his shoulders. “Jaufre,” she said again. She leaned in to kiss him.
She felt a flash of undeniable awareness go through him, felt an instant of yielding, felt his hands on her arms tighten for a moment. And then he used them to push her away. Not roughly, but firmly, and with finality. “Not now, Johanna,” he said. “I can’t think of anything until Félicien is safe again.”
She stood for a long time, the water gurgling around her feet, staring before her at nothing in particular. Then North Wind snorted and she went to lean up against his vast, comforting bulk, before he nudged her again and she remembered she had a curry comb.
The inchoate jumble of city-states and personal fiefdoms and royal dominions that formed the chain of mostly Frankish states stretched from the Middle Sea north to wherever the Holy Roman Empire began. Mostly they spoke French, albeit with regional accents that tested everyone’s polyglot abilities to the maximum. It was fifty leagues from Mont Cenis to Lyon. The first half of it was mountainous, but they made up the distance on the rolling plan that succeeded the mountains and were taking the ferry across the Rhône three days later. Wu Company had about five minutes to appreciate the setting, a city crowded between two rivers and two hills, prosperous and bustling and ready to do business with anyone regardless of race, color, creed, nationality, gender or diet, before Jaufre called them together, his voice pitched low so as not to be overheard.
“Shasha, find us a place to stay. Firas, a place to stable the livestock. Johanna, find the Gradenigo agent. Alaric, you’re with me.”
“And where are you going?” Johanna said it but they were all thinking it.
“I want to see the inside of every inn and tavern and tour every market inside and outside the city walls. I want to know what people are saying. I want every scrap of news and gossip going. The rest of you keep your eyes and ears open. If you see two men talking to each other on a street corner, I want to know what they were saying. Drop Ambroise de L’Arête and l’Alouette du Sud into the conversation whenever you think you safely can, but don’t let it come back on us. I don’t want him to know we are coming.”
He and Alaric, his expression indicating he was anticipating the taverns, vanished into the crowds of people moving through the eastern gate.
“Good thing this seems like a nice place,” Johanna said, in not quite a growl.
Shasha raised an eyebrow at Firas.
“He is certainly focussed,” he said, and shrugged. “At least it’s warmer and drier than Venice.”
Alma was gazing at an edifice on a hill. “I wonder if that’s a university?”
Hari, standing next to her and gazing likewise, said, “Or perhaps a church?”
Tiphaine, who had disappeared from their train when they arrived at the outskirts of the city, came trotting up. “Did we want to stay inside or outside the walls?”
“Outside, I think,” Shasha said. She looked again at Firas. “I imagine our lord and master would not like to be locked behind gates if he wanted to leave in a hurry.”
Firas laughed.
“Very well,” Tiphaine said, impatient, “there is a large inn called The Sign of the Black Lion this side of the south gate. It is large enough for our party and it is spoken well of in the city. There is a stable nearby. I don’t know if it’s large enough for our needs. We’ll have to go see.”
“Is it indeed?” Firas said. “Very well, young miss, let us seek out this inn.” They went off, Tiphaine marching importantly at the assassin’s side.
Johanna slipped from North Wind’s back. “Evidently I’m off to find one Phillippe Imbert, Ser Gradenigo’s agent in Lyon. As I have been bid.” She tossed the reins to Shasha. “Don’t let him bite anyone.”
“Johanna.”
She looked over her shoulder, her jaw very tight.
“Try for some understanding.”
“Oh, I do understand,” Johanna said, and departed.
“Of course you do,” Shasha said, and warned Gradenigo’s stallieres to mind the pack animals and their merchandise carefully in this throng of people, and issued a dire warning as to what would happen if any of them slipped off to the Lyonnaise fleshpots before they were given leave to do so.
Phillippe Imbert was a smooth-talking Frank, his robes made from the finest fabrics in the richest colors and his beard clipped in the latest fashion. He had an eye for the ladies and he certainly had an eye for Johanna. It took a while to convince him that Gradenigo of Venice would send a woman to deal for him, even with Gradenigo’s letter in hand as evidence. “Ser Imbert,” Johanna had to say at last.
“No, no, Sieur Imbert on this side of Les Alpes,” he said, laughing.
“Sieur Imbert,” she said through her teeth, “while I’m flattered by your attentions, as what woman with blood in her veins wouldn’t be—” and fluttered her lashes, because after all it was nice when someone demonstrated appreciation for her feminine charms, even the wrong someone “—I speak truly when I say my companions and I are come to Lyon this day with goods new even to the wharves of Venice. Of course, if you are too busy—”
He was merchant enough to react immediately to the implied threat. “No, no, dear lady, heaven forfend, never too busy—”
But he didn’t entirely believe her until he met her the next morning at the warehouse Shasha and Firas had managed to secure for storage space. The quality and variety of the goods was wholeheartedly approved of. Sieur Imbert was anxious to receive the goods and since Johanna, but especially Jaufre, was anxious to be rid of them, matters proceeded apace. Afterward Jaufre said, “We should pay off the stallieres and send them home, and sell the pack animals.”
Johanna looked at him in surprise. “But Jaufre—”
“We don’t know how long we’ll be gone, once we go,” he said. “There’s no point in paying for five men and fifty beasts to sit around and eat their heads off.”
“We’re not returning to Venice, then,” she said.
“No, we’re going after Félicien. How many times do I have to say so?”
She stared at him, eyes narrowing. “Only one more time,” she said very gently, and turned and walked away.
Shasha, watching, saw him take a step after her and visibly make the decision not to. Instead he turned on his heel, collected Alaric, and headed back into the city. “I could kill them both with my bare hands,” she said meditatively.
Firas chuckled. “I’ll bury the bodies.”
“Done.”
Johanna and Shasha wrote out a statement of profit and loss for Gradenigo, to be left with Sieur Imbert along with the earnings they had accumulated along the way. Sieur Imbert made himself of further use by recommending a farmer a league from Lyon who would be willing to stable North Wind and the other Arabians, and Johanna worked off some of her temper by moving the horses there that afternoon. North Wind’s general magnificence had already raised some comment in Lyon and the sooner he was out of sight the better.
“L’Arête is a château fifty-five leagues south of here,” Firas said.
“Blade is what l’arête means in French,” Alaric said. “Or edge.”
They were in their sitting room at The Sign of the Black Lion, surrounded by the remnants of dinner. Their voices were pitched low in what Johanna thought an excess of caution. The noise from the common room downstairs was muted, and footsteps could be heard occasionally in the passage outside the door, but it was a solid door and Lyon was a town that took a group like theirs in stride.
&n
bsp; “It’s also what the Château L’Arête looks like,” Alma said. “In the library at the monastery, where Sister Eliane was kind enough to grant me entrance, there is a map of the region. I made a copy.” She produced a roll of vellum very much in the manner of a conjuror pulling a coin from an urchin’s ear, and it was greeted with the same kind of acclaim now. She unrolled it with a flourish and they weighted the corners and perused it with attention. Johanna felt instinctively for her father’s book, opened it to its furthest written page and began to scribble on the page after Lyon.
“It’s rudimentary, as you can see,” said Alma, “but here is Lyon and it is in the north—see the indicator here, that says that Paris is in this direction—which means that everything this way is south. Here is Le Puy, and Pradelles. Florac. Avignon where their grand imam lives. And here, east of Avignon, is L’Arête.”
They followed her finger as it traced the journey. “The river,” Jaufre said. “It goes almost all the way. We could hire a boat here in Lyon.”
“And get off in Avignon,” Shasha said, tapping her finger on the city.
“And walk the rest of the way,” Alaric said with a grimace.
“Easier to hide from view without horses,” Firas said.
“Look here,” Alma said. “These illustrations around the edges? They show the major cities and castles in the area of the map. This one? This one is L’Arête.”
The drawing was the size of Johanna’s palm, and it was clear that Alma had spent the most time on it of all the drawings. It showed an abrupt, skyward thrust of rock capped with towers and walls made of the same rock. One tiny road crept backwards and forwards up one side and the rest was given to sheer vertical cliff. “And how do we get inside that?” she said.
“It doesn’t show,” Alma said, “but Sister Eliane, who comes from Provins, says there is a village at the top, a village outside the castle walls.”
“So we could get that far,” Firas said. “And then, perhaps, reconnoiter.”
Be best if we didn’t get ourselves killed in the interim, Johanna thought. She glanced at Jaufre and left the thought unspoken.
“How far?” Jaufre said. His face looked hollowed out, almost haunted. “How far from Avignon?”
“As you can see, many of the distances are not marked, so I asked Sister Eliane.” Alma looked up and around at the circle of faces. “She said not more than seven leagues.”
Jaufre pored over the map. “It does not look to be rough country.”
“The Blade will be sure to make it rough enough if he catches us on his ground,” Alaric said.
“He won’t hurt Félicien, will he?” Tiphaine said in a small voice.
Shasha gave her a smile that she hoped was more reassuring than she felt. “No.”
“Why?”
“Because he needs her.” Shasha looked at Johanna.
“She’s the daughter of the last lord of L’Arête,” Johanna said. “Who was improvident enough not to have a son, and so when Ambroise started making incursions onto L’Arête lands the old lord bowed to the inevitable and married him to his daughter, his heir. The old lord died almost immediately thereafter. Some say naturally, some say by Ambroise’s design.” She shrugged. “But then his reputation is so bad, they would say almost anything.”
“You didn’t see him,” Jaufre said.
“And the daughter?” Shasha said quickly.
“Disappeared the day of the wedding.”
“How did she manage that?”
“There are a lot of stories,” Johanna said. “The one I liked best was that she escaped in the company of a band of troubadours who had been summoned to L’Arête to help celebrate the day.”
They all thought about that in silence for a few moments, remembering the slim young goliard in his rusty black robe, sitting cross-legged by a campfire, head thrown back in lusty song, his flat black cap open side up on the ground in front of him. He’d gone home coins to the good most nights. He could write songs as well as sing them, and accompany himself on almost any instrument that came to hand, lute, gitar, flute, hautboy, even the morin khuur, that odd instrument so loved by the Mongols, strung with horsehair and played by dragging more horsehair stung on a bow across the strings. It had always sounded like a cat in heat to Johanna.
“What was her name?” This from Alma. “The daughter’s?”
“Aceline Eléonor.” Johanna paused. “Félicienne.” She sighed. “Aceline Eléonor Félicienne de L’Arête.”
“It’s true then,” Hayat said, and at a look from Jaufre, added, “You have to admit, Jaufre, it is a tale fanciful enough to keep a sultan’s interest.”
He couldn’t deny it. Instead he said, “Ambroise?”
“He calls himself The Blade, which tells its own tale.” Firas’ lip curled. A man was frightening in and of oneself, and no fanciful name, no matter how exaggerated, would make him more so.
“His reputation with the church is bad as can be,” Hari said. “The priest of his church is one of his own choosing, and the monks say he is no priest, either. None of his people are obliged to attend services, and he, ah, redirects the church tithes into his own coffers.” He paused. “Which I must say is what they find most objectionable about him, although they say also that no woman’s virtue is safe within his borders, and any man’s life is forfeit. It is rumored that for fun he shoves people who have displeased him off the castle wall to see if they can fly.” He paused again. “One of the monks called Ambroise the devil on earth.”
There was a momentary silence, not untinged with respect. When these faith-ridden people called someone a devil, it was not a condemnation to be taken lightly.
“All right.” Jaufre stood up and began to pace back and forth. “Back to Ambroise. We know what he looks like, we know where he lives, we know he thinks he is a khan on the order of Ogodei.”
“What’s a khan?” Tiphaine said.
“A king,” Shasha said.
“A tyrant,” Jaufre said. “We can’t attack in force because we don’t have a force, so stealth is our only option.”
“There is some news lately from the south,” Hayat said. “In spite of the fact that people don’t like to talk about him, it is said in the marketplace that he has found his runaway wife—and the heir to L’Arête—and brought her home in triumph.”
“It is also said in the marketplace that the Lark of the South sings no more,” Tiphaine said.
There was a brief silence.
“People don’t mind so much talking about her,” Tiphaine said, with a cautious look at Jaufre, “at least about her before she married the Blade. She was famous for her beautiful voice. Her father hosted a great celebration of jongleurs and troubadours and minstrels every year at L’Arête, and she would sing with them.”
“There is a long and noble tradition of chansons de geste in Provins,” Alaric said, who had an eye on Jaufre himself, “going back before Queen Eleanor. Her son, Richard the Lionheart himself, wrote songs. I remember songs by a duke in Aquitaine, more by a countess in Die.”
“At any rate, our Félicien is definitely this same Aceline Eléonor Félicienne de L’Arête,” Jaufre said. “And is our friend and companion, and requires our help.” He removed the weights and rolled up the map. “I’m going down to the waterfront to find us a boat going south.”
10
Provins, October, 1325
“North Wind can’t come,” Jaufre said that evening. “He will draw attention. He always does.”
“The farm where they are now will suffice. I’ll ask Phillippe to keep an eye on them.” Johanna only hoped the big stallion wouldn’t come after her if he decided she’d been gone too long. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t done it before. “What about a boat?”
“I found one that will give us deck passage,” Jaufre said.
“For how many?” Firas said.
“What do you mean, how many?”
“Exactly what I said,” Firas said, unperturbed. “Alaric?”
“Certainly,” Alaric said with hauteur. “I would not allow my companions to travel into danger alone.”
“So three of us. Who else?”
“Me,” Shasha said.
Hayat and Alma exchanged long looks. “We’re going,” Hayat said.
“I don’t know how much use I will be, but I believe I must witness this story through to its end,” Hari said.
“You will have to put off your chughi robe, Hari. We need to draw as little attention as possible.”
Hari nodded agreeably. “Of course, young master.”
“I’m going,” Tiphaine said.
“No, you most certainly are not,” Johanna said.
Tiphaine glowered. “I most certainly am, and there is nothing you can do to stop me.”
“You think not?”
“I know not! If you leave me behind, I will follow you, and I will help rescue Félicien! She’s not just my friend, she’s a member of my compagnia! She wears my token!” Tiphaine pulled at her tunic to display the insignia of Wu Company on her right shoulder, brave in red and gold.
“Yes,” Johanna said. “Yes, of course she does.” She looked up to meet Jaufre’s eyes. “It’s unanimous, then. Nine passengers, then.”
But later, when the others had dispersed about various tasks and they were alone, Johanna said to Shasha, “What are we doing, Shasha? We’re not warriors, we’re merchant traders.”
Shasha looked at her with a serious expression. “You would leave your friend in such hands?”
“No, but marching into the middle her husband’s army wouldn’t be my first reaction, either.”
“We don’t know that he has an army.”
“We know he has a company of mounted spearmen. Some of us are going to get hurt, Shasha. Some of us may die.”
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