Silk and Song

by Dana Stabenow

  “The sergeant will never consent to us staying another night,” Alaric said.

  “And he would be right not to,” Hari said. “Ambroise could return at any time.”

  “The spearmen he left behind could return at any time, too.”

  “She has to come to us,” Johanna said.

  Jaufre shot her a look but said nothing.

  There were still some villagers moving around the square, extinguishing braziers and packing up vending carts for the night. Several of them drifted over to offer thanks for the show. A slight woman in gray hovered in the background until the rest had left. She kept casting nervous glances at the guards, as if the moment they looked her way they would arrest her just on general principles. “Alma,” Johanna said in a low voice. “Hayat.”

  Hayat picked up a jug of watered wine and Alma four cups and they sauntered over to the gate and engaged the two guards in conversation. The massive wooden gates were closed now, and undoubtedly barred from the inside. There was a smaller door, sized for one person, in one of the larger doors, but no one could use it without being challenged by the guards, two more of which were very probably stationed on the inside.

  The woman in gray came closer, her manner tentative, if not outright terrified. The hood of her cloak was pushed back enough that they could see her face. Her features were fine but lined and drawn, her figure thin to the point of emaciation. “Who is the one called Jaufre?” she said in a voice barely above a whisper.

  No one could move or say anything for a moment, and then Jaufre began to surge to his feet. Firas’ hand on his shoulder pressed him firmly back down. “And who asks, milady?”

  The woman cast another look over her shoulder and stepped forward to speak rapidly in so low a voice she could barely be heard. “It is not safe for you here. The lord is expected back at any moment. You must go.” She half-turned, as if to leave.

  “Who says this, lady?” Jaufre said, straining against Firas’ hand.

  She cast another glance at the gate. All the guards’ attention was on Hayat and Alma. She turned back to Jaufre and spoke quickly. “The one who wrote your song. You are in grave danger. You must go.”

  “Lady, tell us only this. Does she truly wish to stay? In her own heart?” Alaric stirred and Jaufre quelled him with a single, ferocious glare. “Please speak truly. We have come a great distance to see to her well-being.”

  “You must go,” the woman said. “You must go, and she must stay. It is the way of things.”

  “Tell her,” Jaufre said, “tell her that we won’t leave without her.” He shove Firas’ hand off his shoulder and came to his feet, the better position from which to issue edicts. “She must come with us when we leave tomorrow morning.”

  “If she doesn’t come, we won’t leave, and then we will all die here together,” Johanna said. She met Jaufre’s glare without flinching. “Tell her that, milady.”

  “I must return before someone notices I’m gone,” the woman said, a panicked look on her face.

  “Return?” Firas said. “How? The gates are locked and barred for the night.”

  Johanna looked at the gates dwarfing the figures of Alma and Hayat and the guards. “Milady? Is there another way out of the castle?”

  The morning dawned bright and a little chilly, a welcome relief from the heat of the day before, but it wouldn’t last. From the heights of L’Arête one could see a layer of insubstantial mist collecting in the hills and hollows of the mountains west and north of the castle, making the weird shapes of the rocky spires look horrifyingly animate and inherently evil. The farmlands to the east disappeared into an accumulating haze.

  The troupe, packs shouldered, had arrived at the gate just as it opened and were taken fond leave of by the guard stationed there. One pulled Jaufre aside and confided a new joke that might make it into the next show, and he laughed and slapped the fellow’s back and slid a penny into his hand. He hailed the other guard and retold the joke, with embellishments, and the three of them roared with more laughter.

  The two guards did not notice that the troupe had increased by one, a slender figure wrapped in a gray cloak emerging from the morning shadows to mingle with them as they passed through the last gate. Hayat slipped an arm around her waist and pretended to be whispering something in her ear. Tiphaine skipped along on her other side, juggling her rag balls, and the rest of them moved back and forth, changing places continuously to create a confusion to the eyes. Alaric took the lead with Pascau firmly in tow, so the boatman noticed nothing untoward, not at first.

  They moved down the little road that switched back and forth across the face of the mountain. “More slowly, if you please,” Firas said, waving over his shoulder at a group of children hanging over the village wall. Everyone tried to but it was difficult not to break into a run. The lack of cover made them imagine arrows trained on their backs from every direction. It was a positive relief when they reached the top of the hill across the valley and turned to wave their goodbyes for the last time before disappearing around a corner and down the other side.

  “Félicien, what—”

  “Not now!”

  “She’s right,” Shasha said. “To the river as fast as ever we can.”

  “Who is that?” Pascau said, noticing for the first time that they were now eleven, not ten.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jaufre said. “Lead us back to the boat and get us across to Avignon.”

  Pascau looked alarmed, as one who lived seven leagues from L’Arête might well be. “A gold florin over and above your pay and you’ll never see us again,” Firas said.

  The mention of gold was enough to soothe the boatman’s anxiety, at least for the moment, but Johanna thought that the sooner they were out of Avignon the better.

  They force marched all that day and all of that night, again keeping to the shadows beneath the trees, this time in fear of meeting Ambroise on the road coming back. They stopped only to eat of their remaining meager rations and relieve themselves, and reached the river before noon the next day. Pascau, possibly motivated by the thought of the gold florin that waited for him on the other side, possibly just wanting to be well rid of these dangerous passengers, rowed them across with a will.

  “Find us a boat going upriver,” Jaufre said. “Preferably one leaving today.” Tiphaine, Firas and Alaric scattered. The rest of them repaired to an inn with a common room large enough to lose themselves in and ate the first hot meal they’d had in days. Johanna, eyes adjusting from the blazing sun to the cool darkness, saw the servants bustling round with laden trays and slopping pitchers through a faint veil of incredulity. They’d done it. They had penetrated the defenses of L’Arête itself and come off scathless. She turned her head to look at Félicien. And they had rescued their comrade.

  Félicien leaned back against the wall, the gray hood drooping around her face. Johanna thought she had her eyes closed but couldn’t be sure. Everyone else was looking at Félicien, too. Félicien had yet to say how she had come to join them and they had no idea how soon the alarm would be raised in L’Arête. Perhaps it already had been. Perhaps a guard was even now galloping for Avignon with the news for his lord.

  Meanwhile, they were back in Avignon, and in a room full of loud conversation they were an oasis of silence. It was occasioning a few looks. Johanna cleared her throat and smiled. “This is good bread, isn’t it,” she said, tearing into a piece with her teeth. “And excellent small beer.”

  “I, uh, don’t know when I’ve tasted better,” Hayat said.

  “We should ask for the name of their brewer,” Hari said, a man who to Johanna’s certain knowledge had never touched alcohol of any kind.

  “Do you think it will rain tomorrow?” Alma said brightly.

  It was Tiphaine, of course, who found them a boat going in the right direction, departing the following morning. They took a room and spent a tense night during which no one got any sleep.

  Ambroise de L’Arête was still in Avignon. “H
e’s staying in a house near the palace,” Tiphaine said. “On the rue Pey—” She stumbled over the word.

  “The Rue Peyrollerie,” Johanna said.

  “That’s right,” Tiphaine said, surprised. “How did you know?”

  “He mentioned it,” Johanna said. “When he came for the boys.”

  “You’ve seen him, then,” Félicien said. She was curled in a corner, as much apart from the rest of them as possible in the cramped space. It was the first time she had spoken since they had left L’Arête.

  “Yes,” Johanna said. “Here, in Avignon, before we left for L’Arête. I, uh, met his pages, and I was still with them when he came for them.”

  Félicien gave a sound that was nothing like the lighthearted laugh they were used to hear from her. “Pages,” she said.

  “Yes,” Johanna said slowly. “The four boys who wear his livery. Guilham. Bernart. I don’t remember the names of the other two.”

  She waited, they all did, but Félicien said nothing more.

  The next morning they waited in their room until there was just enough time to get from the inn to the quayside before debarking, and slipped outside in twos and threes so as to attract less attention. It was a market day and the streets were already crowded with carts and stalls and it seemed the entire city of Avignon had come outside the walls, determined to enjoy the unseasonal weather while it lasted. All the better to be lost in a crowd, Johanna thought.

  They had reverted to their travel clothes, tucking away all vestiges of the troubadours who had entertained L’Arête so well. They moved at a slow, steady pace, determined to avoid attention and keeping their eyes on the ground except when necessary to navigation.

  Which was why they almost walked straight into Ambroise de L’Arête. Walking with Jaufre and Félicien, all the warning Johanna got was a glimpse of black and silver. She stopped dead in her tracks. The bullish body dressed in incongruously elegant attire, topped by that leonine head, moved through a crowd that knew instinctively to give way before it. The four pages followed, towed irresistibly in his wake, but Johanna wasn’t looking at them. She was looking at Pascau, whose arm was grasped firmly in Ambroise’s hand, and who looked like already regretting his bargain.

  They were headed in the direction of the quay. Johanna caught the arms of her companions and began to steer them around Ambroise’s route and on toward their destination.

  “What?” Jaufre said. He’d felt the tension in her grasp.

  “Ambroise,” she said, breathing the name through stiff lips.

  Félicien started, but she said nothing and she didn’t faint.

  They made their way forward, the crowd thinning as they reached the wharf, not daring to look behind them, although there was a spot between Johanna’s shoulder blades that had commenced a furious itching, one she was sure that both her companions were experiencing, too. She wondered where the others were and if they’d seen Ambroise. So far of them he knew only Jaufre, Alaric, Félicien and, perhaps, Johanna herself, although she had effaced herself that day in the Place des Papes as soon as humanly possible. But Pascau knew them all. Her step quickened in spite of herself. She had no desire for flying lessons from the Lord of L’Arête.

  “There,” Jaufre said, and she looked and to see the mast that Tiphaine had told them to look for. She was a little river freighter, with a broad, shallow hold and a single mast. The square brown sail was being hauled up as they approached, and she saw with relief Shasha’s face peering anxiously over the rail, Firas at her shoulder. They allowed their pace to quicken. When they got to the boat they didn’t bother with the ladder, Jaufre caught up Félicien and tossed her up into Firas’ waiting arms. Johanna was already halfway up the ladder when Firas was setting Félicien on her feet, with Jaufre close behind her.

  As they achieved the deck a rotund, authoritative individual cracked out orders, lines were loosed and they slipped from the quay into the current.

  “This way,” Shasha said, and led the way forward to the bow. The rest of their companions were already there. No one, wisely, was hanging over the gunnel to see if Ambroise was in sight on the dock.

  Félicien subsided to the deck with her back to the mast. She kept her head down and her face covered by her hood.

  “Félicien—” Jaufre said.

  “Not now,” she said, and such was the urgency in her voice that they left her alone.

  “Give her time,” Shasha said, patting Jaufre’s shoulder.

  The sail luffed and then caught the mistrau and billowed out with a crack, to be quickly close-hauled by the crew. Downriver traffic adhered to the western side of the river, leaving the center and the eastern side to the upriver traffic. Their course was a series of short tacks, a continual back and forth against the wind. The ship’s crew was kept constantly on the hop, and Wu Company stayed in the bow and kept out of their way.

  Between the current and the mistrau, their speed upriver was kept to not much more than their speed downriver had been, but they were away, blessedly out of Ambroise’s reach. With the relaxation of tension they were overtaken by a sense of extreme fatigue and spent most of that first day dozing with their heads pillowed on their packs. Except to relieve herself in the half barrel provided for deck passengers, Félicien kept to her position at the mast. No one had much to say. Alaric sat facing forward in the bow, his back to the rest of them, stiff with disapproval.

  “But at least we could count on him when we needed to,” Shasha said to Firas. It was late the third evening.

  Firas grunted. They were laying on her cloak and wrapped in his, looking up at the stars in the night sky. Night showed fall’s true colors with a considerable drop in temperature and everyone was wearing all the clothes they had brought with them.

  Someone moved and Shasha raised her head. “It’s Félicien.”

  “Shasha—”

  She patted his arm and followed the girl. Alaric had rolled himself into his bedroll and was snoring slightly. Félicien was standing in his place in the bow. Shasha came up to stand behind her. “Félicien.”

  “Shasha.”

  So hard and cold was her voice that Shasha was at something of a loss as what to say next. “Are you well?”

  A brittle laugh. “As well as can be expected.” A pause. “Why did you come?”

  Shasha smiled a little. She could smile, now that they had satisfied Jaufre’s mad obsession, and now that they were all safe. “Jaufre would not allow us to rest until you were free once more.”

  “The fool!” Félician whispered. “All of you, such rash and reckless fools!” She turned and put back her head, and the same moon that had shone down on them in the courtyard before the castle of L’Arête shone down on her face now. She looked as if she had aged twenty years in the months they had been apart. “I traded myself for you, Shasha. For all of you. The only thing that kept me in L’Arête was the thought that you were free.”

  “He understood that, Félicien. But he could not accept it. And neither could we.”

  “He will come for me,” Félicien said, and then she gave that humorless laugh. “Ambroise. He will come for it.”

  “And we will deal with that when it happens,” Shasha said.

  “Fools,” Félicien whispered. “You are all fools. And soon to be dead fools.”

  “How did you get out?”

  Félicien sighed. “The same way I did before. There is a secret passage from a place hidden near the kitchen. It exits in the shrubbery near the outer gate, very close to where I joined you. My father said it was built by his grandfather. Ambroise knows nothing of it.”

  “It’s how you joined the troubadours?”

  “I didn’t leave with them. I just left at the same time they did. I hoped Ambroise would think to follow them instead of looking for me.”

  Shasha wondered what had happened to the troubadours. “And the woman who came to us?”

  “Laloun? She is my maid. She was still at L’Arête when I—when I returned. I tried t
o make her come with me but she said where the guards might not notice one, they would be sure to notice two. She’s pretending to be me, keeping to my room until someone discovers her.”

  Shasha thought of the thin, terrified woman in the courtyard of L’Arête. “She must love you very much.”

  Félicien made no reply.

  “I see that you have need to relieve yourself quite often, and that you have been sick over the side, more than once,” Shasha said. “Are you with child?”

  Félicien shuddered. “Laloun believes so,” she said, the hard, cold note back in her voice. She looked at Shasha, eyes black as the night around them. “Can you get rid of it for me?”

  Shasha was silent for a moment, and not because the question was unexpected. “There are certain herbs,” she said. “They are very dangerous, and they don’t always work.”

  “I don’t care if they kill me,” Félicien said. “I want this devil’s spawn out of my body as soon as ever you can help me to do so. Or I want to be dead.” That cold, bitter laugh again. “Either will do, and perhaps the one is more attractive than the other.”

  There was nothing to be said to that, at least not at present. “The pages,” Shasha said. “What did you mean when you spoke of them in that way?”

  “Ambroise doesn’t like women but he needs an heir to secure his position as lord of L’Arête,” Félicien said. “He likes boys. Little boys. His pages are all chosen for looks and age. The instant one turns thirteen he is dismissed back to his family with a handsome reward.”

  She choked and clapped her hand to her mouth. She turned abruptly to face forward again, taking in deep, cleansing breaths of air. Behind them, Shasha sensed an alertness in the company, although they neither moved nor spoke. Alaric had stopped snoring. They were all awake, and listening. It was as well, because Shasha didn’t think Félicien could have told her story twice.

  “He couldn’t—he could barely—he had to bring in one of the boys and—God, I hate him. I hated him touching me. It makes me ill. The very thought of it disgusts me. It always has. I don’t know how any woman can bear it.”