Demigius faked another jab. Raphael flinched, almost slipping on the edge of the crumbling rock.
“Woman, have you run yet?” Demigius taunted without looking back at Juliana. “Or do you wish to witness his death?”
Raphael’s eyes were riveted on the sword blade. A part of Juliana’s mind observed that in his final moments before death, Raphael did not beg or cry.
The other part of her mind, however, was forcing her into thoughts of action. Juliana contained herself no longer. She rushed forward to slam herself into the killer’s back.
He heard the movement of her feet and with speed incredible for a man of his bulk, twisted and used his free hand to grab her hair. He spun with her and allowed her momentum to carry her past him into Raphael’s arms.
For a moment, they both tottered at the cliff’s edge. Only Raphael’s strength kept them from disappearing into the darkness of the night air. They stood together, briefly in each other’s arms, and then found their balance and faced Demigius.
“This is rich,” Demigius chortled. He waved his sword at both of them. “You die together. I need not chase a quarrelsome woman through the garden.”
Raphael stepped in front of Juliana, an act of useless defiance.
Juliana’s heart raced in disbelief. Had the potion aged and lost all power?
A sudden gurgle from the killer finally told her otherwise. “What… strangeness… is… this…”
His voice trailed into weakness, and he lurched toward them. Demigius dropped to his knees at their feet then fell to his side. The sword tumbled from his fingers and clattered on the rocks.
Raphael snatched up the sword and stood above the huge man, ready to swing downward, as if he could not believe such good fortune. Juliana let herself breathe again and moved past both of them away from the cliff’s edge to the safety of the garden.
“Jester,” she called softly. “He will not rise soon. I promise you.”
Raphael lifted his eyes from Demigius. “The dart?”
She nodded. “A potion.”
Raphael backed away from the fallen man, reluctant to accept what his eyes and Juliana’s words were telling him. Even at her side, he kept glancing at Demigius.
“Is he dead?” Raphael asked.
“No,” she told him. “A deep sleep. It will leave him with an aching head.”
“I thank you, then, m’lady,” he said gravely. “Had you not gone for a moonlit stroll —”
He stopped. And stared into her face. “A moonlight stroll? In the remotest part of the garden?” His voice hardened. “Armed with a mysterious weapon?”
He stepped back from her.
“What is it?” Juliana whispered. His smile had turned to suspicion.
“Too much strange has happened in this day. Now I am to believe it was coincidence that brought you here?”
Juliana shook her head. “You think not?”
“No.” Bitterness entered his accusation. “Had you but spoken earlier in the pope’s presence, it would have cleared my name. My family’s name. But in front of Clement VI, you condemned me to death. Along with my father, mother and two sisters.”
Juliana said nothing, but not for lack of words. Reply after reply raced through her mind. All the things she might say about why she was here on this night, about why she’d been brought here to Avignon.
Raphael took her silence as a lack of concern. “I was a fool to hope for more. What now? A dart for me too?” He swept his arm in a circle that took in most of the darkness of the garden beyond them. “Or have you saved me for a worse fate?”
This she could answer. “No. You are free.”
He snorted a laugh of resignation. “Free? Only until my empty dungeon cell is discovered and every soldier in the land hunts for me. I shall be no better than a fleeing dog.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” She studied Raphael intently, remembering how he had stepped in front of her to protect her from the sword of Demigius, determined to delay her death as long as possible. In his anger now, he was magnificent. The wave of confused joy and bewilderment from their first brief meeting hit her again. If only she could tell him what she knew. Instead she would have to hide behind a mask of cool indifference.
“Find your way to the first arch of the stone bridge,” she said. “There you will discover a rowboat tied to the bank. Let the river take you downstream to the town of Tarascon. At the Church of Sainte Marthe, ask for Father Sebastian. He will hide you until this matter has ended.”
Raphael shook his head. “You betrayed me once. Why should I believe you now?”
“Because you must.” Juliana tried to keep her voice calm.
“What is your involvement in this? How did you know I would be led from the dungeon to the garden at this hour? Who placed the boat there?” Raphael stopped for breath from his rapid questions. “And why? Why all of this? Why did you betray me in the first place?”
Juliana looked at the ground.
In a flash, Raphael was upon her. He clenched his hand around her throat and tightened his fingers slightly. “Tell me. Or die.”
She stared him in the eyes, their faces so close together she could feel the heat of his breath.
He dropped his hand. “Go. It shames me to think that I would even threaten you.”
“You will follow my directions?”
“I will stand here until this Demigius awakes. Then I will threaten him with death for the answers I need.”
“No,” she pleaded. Reynold had made it clear. This jester’s part had already been played; he must be gone before the rest might unfold.
“No?” Raphael asked.
The answer to his question came from elsewhere. Shouts from the direction of the palace broke the quiet of the night. Then came the sound to chill any fugitive — the baying of hounds.
“You have no time!” she said. “Your safely lies in escape. Take the boat.”
Raphael ignored her. He was already moving toward Demigius. He spared no roughness as he turned the fallen man to pull his rough-hewn coat from him.
Juliana understood immediately. Disguise. The jester needed to cover his dirt-smeared court costume.
Moonlight showed the skin of his upper body a gleam of ghost white as Raphael stripped off his vest and jester’s shirt. Juliana turned her head in modesty, and when he spoke again, he was almost at her side, covered by the coat he had stolen from Demigius.
“Drag my clothing behind you as you go,” Raphael told her. “The scent will confuse the hounds into following you. You will do that?”
“Yes. Gladly,” she said.
He leaned forward.
Before she knew what was happening, he had taken her hand in his and had gently kissed it.
“Whoever you are,” he said. “You did save my life just now, even though you earlier condemned it. For that, you have my gratitude.”
That is how he left her. With the warmth on the back of her hand where he had softly kissed. And with a deep sadness. She had sent him away. His part in this was now finished, and she would never see him again.
Chapter Nine
How far to Tarascon?
Raphael had been as close as Beaucaire, the town directly across from Tarascon on other bank of the Rhone River. Beaucaire, while without a castle as famed at the one that guarded Tarascon, had something much more important to a young jester — the renowned July fair.
Despite his situation in the rowboat, Raphael almost smiled. The July fair, with its merchants, trained dogs, monkeys, bearded women, dwarfs, lion tamers. All were there to please the vast crowds, who thronged in such great numbers that many were forced to sleep in docked boats at night. The previous summer, Raphael had competed there against acrobats and jugglers who toured the rest of Europe. There he had begun to dream of leaving the quiet courts of Avignon. He had not once imagined fleeing for his life would take him toward Beaucaire, to take refuge in its enemy town across the waters, Tarascon.
How far to finally get there?
Last summer Raphael had travelled by land to Beaucaire, more than a half day’s journey through the hills. Perhaps 15 miles. Here on the river, surely the journey would end sooner. The speed of the swirling black waters beneath the rowboat’s hull dizzied him with fear.
A jester could juggle, walk a tightrope, throw knives. But swim?
Raphael clung to the edge of the boat, careful not to quickly shift his weight on the occasions he needed to row the oars. He felt as if he floated on a leaf, the boat was so small and unbalanced, the river so powerful.
How far to Tarascon?
He had already drifted an hour and had not enjoyed a single minute. When clouds curtained the moon, the river became even more sinister, the shore a menacing hulk of darkness. Yet when the clouds parted to let the moon bounce white off the waters, he realized anew the frailness of his boat on the mighty Rhone. During the precious few moments he forgot those fears, his mind would return to the events that had put him into the rowboat.
It had been only the previous dawn when he had first seen the assassin on the rooftop. Since then he had been sentenced to death, rescued to face another death, saved, and sent fleeing. He felt like an actor flung into a play, as if he had been put unawares among the minstrels and storytellers who all knew where the ballad began and ended.
Others, he thought with sudden anger, knew the parts they played, and why. Juliana. Demigius. The assassin. Almost as if it all had been planned…
Until that moment in the rowboat, Raphael had not once considered the strangeness of the first event that had led him into this trouble. His mind had churned with fear for his own life, his family’s lives. Anger at Juliana’s betrayal had consumed him. Bewilderment at the stable master’s lie about the silver coins and clothing and purchased horse had added to the confusion. Others knew the parts they played, and why. Juliana. Demigius. The assassin. Almost as if it all had been planned…
Raphael wanted the boat to stop rocking in the currents so that he could concentrate on where his thoughts were leading. Jesters delight in action — logic and thinking took fierce concentration.
He ignored the lurching of the boat as the current swept him along, for in his mind he was on the rooftop again, running across the beam, seeing in his mind the events that led to his capture.
Yes…the assassin had acted strangely. He had deliberately fired the crossbow bolt over the pope and then set the crossbow down before fleeing. And…
Raphael frowned at a new thought.
The assassin had addressed him by name! Yet how could he have known his name? Raphael was certain they had not met each other before.
Could this man know Raphael by reputation? Doubtful. The dark-haired stranger was neither part of the royal court nor a servant. Not likely, then, one outside the papal palace should know of Raphael, let alone recognize him.
And if Raphael believed someone unseen and unknown had thrown him into this story, it might give reason too for why Demigius had been paid to lead him to his death. And reason for Juliana’s timely appearance.
Perhaps five minutes passed as Raphael gnawed at those thoughts. Five minutes as the tiny boat tossed on the currents. Five minutes as the shoreline slid past. Five minutes until Raphael grinned in triumph at the moon.
He was not a thinker, and yet he had been able to come to a conclusion he could accept.
Yes, he could believe a master storyteller had begun all of this, writing parts for each of the players. That, at least, gave him an opponent to fight, even if the opponent had no face or name at this point. That, at least, let him take action instead of fleeing helplessly.
With new determination, he began to row toward shore. He would find this master storyteller. But first, Raphael told himself, he needed to arrange his own death.
Chapter Ten
Raphael stood upon a sharp-edged boulder and looked down on the small broken boat with satisfaction. The moon’s glow — all the clouds had finally blown clear of the cold night sky — showed the boat in a pool of water where the river eddied at the base of that boulder.
It had taken Raphael a half hour of steady battering with fist-sized rocks to finally punch a splintered gap in the hull of the boat. It now lay upside down, the slime of the hull above the surface of the water, and the hole obvious even in the dim light of moon and stars.
Raphael had no doubt the boat would be discovered soon. His pounding of rock against wood had brought forth a curious audience — a herd of cows that had wandered closer to stare as they chewed their cuds. Cows meant farmers. And farmers meant someone would be along the river here in the next day or two. And that someone would turn the boat over to discover the jester’s cap trapped beneath.
The way word moved through the countryside, it would take less than a day for it to be known in Avignon that the jester had drowned trying to escape. This might fool the master storyteller into relaxing his search for Raphael; it might not. But at least Raphael had taken counteraction, something that had already cheered him considerably.
He did not know who the master storyteller was. Nor why the events had been thrust upon him, the story written around him. To this point it mattered little, for simply this action of arranging the boat to make it appear he had drowned had let Raphael feel he had taken a tiny portion of control over the confusing events that had brought him here.
It also gave him a chance for purposeful action. It was a small chance, to be sure, and Raphael knew well that he had nothing but the clothes on his back and his guess that a master storyteller did exist.
Yet while Raphael had been pounding the boat’s hull, he had let his mind ponder further. With what little he did know for certain, perhaps he could begin to unravel how the events had been arranged. Those threads might very well lead him to the mysterious person who had arranged to have Raphael falsely accused of treason and at the same time imposed the penalty of death on his family.
The prospect of action filled Raphael with enough hope that he did not mind, an hour later, the need to seek sleep in a hay pile several miles inland from the river.
He told himself that he would simply doze until dawn.
But exhausted as he was, sleep did not come easily.
Raphael burrowed into the hay as deep as he could, shifting and squirming like a restless baby. Yet whenever he laid his weight fully into the hay, he felt as if he were lying on small rocks.
Not until just before dawn did Raphael discover the reason for his discomfort. He truly had been sleeping on small hard objects — pieces of silver sewn into the lining of the coat he had taken from Demigius.
Chapter Eleven
Silver?
Raphael hardly dared to trust what his fingers told him. At the bottom edge of the coat, he could feel objects sewn into a fold of the cloth — objects small, flat, circular, and hard.
Silver?
Earlier, during his shivering walk from the Rhone River inland, Raphael had puzzled again and again on how he might return unnoticed to Avignon. After all, no matter how dirty and ragged his clothes had become, passersby would note that he wore jester’s tights on his legs. He’d wondered if somehow he might be able to barter with a tailor for regular trousers to let him blend in with the crowds. Yet what did he have to barter? He had even considered as desperate an act as ambushing an unwary traveler, and stealing his trousers to hide his jester’s colors.
Even had he been able to solve the first problem, Raphael had wondered too how he might pay for food or lodging over the next days in Avignon. He could entertain passersby with his juggling and acrobats to collect coins, but if he did that, he might as well have trumpets and banners proclaim his entrance into Avignon.
But silver? Could this truly be silver in lining of the coat?
Covered with coarse grass clinging to his hair and clothes, Raphael rose from the pile of hay and fumbled with the coat. At regular intervals along the bottom edge of the coat he felt the solid round outlines of a coin…then another…and another…until he had
counted seven.
Seven silver coins? A half year’s wages!
Raphael brought the bottom of the coat up to his mouth and used his teeth to snip a strand of thread. With trembling fingers, he pulled at the thread until he had loosened enough to gain grip on the fold of cloth that wrapped the first object he hoped and prayed truly was a piece of silver.
Yes!
Raphael grinned at the coin in the center of his palm.
Silver!
He brought the bottom of the coat up to his mouth again to snip the next thread, then paused, mouth half open.
Why not leave the rest of the silver hidden in the coat? It had taken him hours to discover the coins, and he had been wearing the coat. How much more difficult for anyone else to discover the wealth he now carried? It would be much safer for him not to have the jingle of coin obvious on him as he moved through the crowds of Avignon.
Satisfied at his decision and what he’d found, Raphael finally brushed the grass off himself.
He’d almost been thrown to his death from a cliff, he’d endured the terror of floating down the Rhone, he’d walked several hours in the chill of the night, and he’d barely slept any in this pile of hay. Yet now as he brushed himself clean, he whistled. He had money and hope, while yesterday he’d had nothing but the fear of torture and death for himself and his family.
With the sun bright above the horizon, the future was now indeed something to be faced with considerable more cheer than he could have expected…
Raphael let his whistled tune trail away.
What good did this newfound wealth do if he could not spend it? For unless he got rid of his colorful tights, any shopkeeper would see them and pass along word of a young jester seeking new clothes, especially in the face of whatever rumors of his death might arise from the discovery of the overturned boat.
Raphael groaned. His plans were getting complicated. What he would give for the simpler days when all he need worry about was how many balls he could juggle, how far to walk the tightrope, how many standing flips it would take to bring a smile from the patrons of the court.
The Angel and the Sword Page 5
