Almost Innocent

by Jane Feather

  Cold dread at this calm statement was followed immediately by sweet relief. The two emotions turned her joints to butter, her gut to water, and she had to hold unobtrusively to the edge of the table until the weakness left her legs and belly.

  “Why would they wait two hours?” Marc asked. “They are positioned outside the gates. They could ride in without such delay.”

  “I think they wished the priests to celebrate a mass,” Magdalen improvised. “Lord de Gervais does little without prayer beforehand.”

  Bertrand grunted. It was common enough. “Very well. You and the child will show yourselves upon the ramparts.”

  “And when they ride in,” Charles said softly, “you will be in the place d’armes to welcome them, cousin. So that you may see the welcome we accord them.”

  She shuddered. They would force her to watch as the two men she had betrayed were cut to pieces under the flag of parley. They all saw her shudder, and the horror in her eyes was genuine enough to encourage the belief that she did not doubt such an outcome.

  Durand, with thirty men, followed the agile, speedy Olivier through the earth corridor. They carried no light. The fire of a torch would have been impossible to carry, bent double as they were, and would have reduced what little air they had. They were armed only with knives and wore only leather gambesons as protection against whatever weapons they might face when the fighting began. But there was no choice for a man who must make his approach on his hands and knees.

  Outside the walls, Durand’s brigands in flat-brimmed siege hats, hide shields strapped to their backs as protection against missiles and arrows from the ramparts above, milled around in apparent idleness, yet they were prepared to run to the walls and light their faggot fires once the call to arms was blown from within. The men on the ramparts watched impassively. In the present state of parley, neither side would make overtly aggressive moves, but each was ready for the moment when, or if, they were called for.

  Guy and Edmund sat their war horses, waiting to ride to the drawbridge. They were now in full ceremonial armor, lances fixed in the sockets to the right of their breastplates, visors up for the moment. Their escort, also armed, squires carrying the standards, gathered around, horses shifting on the moat’s narrow bank, scenting the possibility of battle. They all knew the trap into which they were about to ride. Guy watched the sun, waiting for the second hour to be up. The great ball of midmorning heat lifted above the far rampart. He signaled, and the herald raised his trumpet and blew the note of parley.

  They dropped their visors and rode forward as the portcullis was lifted, the drawbridge lowered. Within the place d’armes, Charles d’Auriac let his hand rest on his great sword. His uncle and cousins, also fully armed and mounted, did the same. A troop of pikers circled the court. Magdalen, holding the baby, began to step by inches into the sheltering darkness beneath the walls. So intently were they all watching and waiting, the small steps passed unnoticed.

  A deep hush enveloped the court, as deep as the shadows cast by the fortress walls. Beyond the walls, sun shone and ordinary things were happening. Within, there was only the expectant hush before treachery. The clanging drop of the portcullis behind the entering men signaled the end both of silence and of waiting. Charles d’Auriac drew his sword with a great cry of challenge, but Guy de Gervais had his lance poised in the same moment and rode at him with his own war cry, savage and exultant, bursting from his lips. The lance hit true, toppling d’Auriac from his horse. His squires were hauling him to his feet as confusion erupted. Thirty men leaped from the shadows of the garrison court, knives in hand, their challenging cries mingling now with the clash of steel as the armed men in the center of the court engaged in combat. Guy was off his horse now, intending to pursue d’Auriac with sword and on foot, but before he could do so, Philippe was riding down upon him.

  Magdalen screamed and Charles turned. He had pushed up his visor, and there was murder in his eyes as he saw her with the baby, clinging to the shadows. He came toward her, a hulking armored figure, sword gripped in his two hands, raised to cleave her in two.

  “Treacherous whore!” The accusation rang out above the battle noise, a mad, wild fury behind it. For precious seconds Magdalen was paralyzed by the sight of that great cleaving blade. Zoe was screaming against her ear. Then she turned and ran. Tripping over the cobbles, stumbling against the wall, clutching the child, she ran frantically as the massive figure lumbered behind her. She ran for the battlement steps, not thinking beyond the need to escape the clamorous murky confines of the court, up into air and space and sunlight.

  She could hear him behind her, could see the huge shadow of the raised sword on the steps above her. Her breath came in gasping sobs, and the child in her arms continued her dreadful, terrified screaming. She stumbled on the top step, lost her footing for one petrifying moment, could almost hear his breath behind her, recovered, staggering upright, leaping away from the steps as he rose, massive in his steel plating behind her. There was smoke everywhere. The men at the foot of the walls outside had lit their fires at the first sound of steel. The archers were firing down upon them, hurling rocks and pails of water to put out the fires. Black smoke rose, choking, obscuring. Magdalen found herself backed against a low break in the ramparts. She could feel the wall against her thighs, and the sense of the drop behind her left her back icily exposed as she stared at death in the shape of her cousin bearing down upon her, his gray eyes as cold and murderous as the steel upraised in his two hands. He ran at her, and she ducked sideways. The sword came down in an almighty sweep, meeting only air. Unbalanced, he tottered at the edge of the parapet, fighting the great cumbersome weight of his armor. Then, as she watched, numbed, he toppled very, very slowly over the edge, his sword pulling him down it seemed, down into the choking smoke, his cry lost in the deafening clamor around her.

  “Holy mother, sweet Jesus.” She was murmuring the incantations over and over, standing immobile, holding the screaming child, then she was running back to the steps, her only thought to get down to the court, to discover Guy and Edmund alive in all that death-dealing clamor. At first, she could make out nothing, identify no one. They were all on foot now, the huge war horses pulled aside by squires, where they blew through their great nostrils and pawed the earth, tossing their caparisoned heads.

  There was fierce fighting at the gatehouse as Durand’s men fought for control of the portcullis. She knew she should somehow make her way around the fighting to the gates. Possibly the postern gate would be untended, and she and Zoe could slip out of this murderous havoc. But she did not do it. She stood, straining her eyes, desperately seeking the blue and silver standard of Gervais.

  She saw him finally, hand to hand now with Bertrand, the dreadful clash of sword on sword resounding, so heavy it seemed impossible they could remain upright whether giving or receiving the blows. She felt sick and cursed her weakness, fighting the wash of nausea, standing rooted in dreadful apprehension as the two men, both massive-framed, both skilled and experienced at this horrendous art of murderous combat, battered each other with deadly ferocity. There was a moment when Guy seemed to stagger, unbalanced. Bertrand raised his mace with a cry of exultant savagery. The wickedly spiked ball came hurtling down. Magdalen could hear her own voice screaming incoherent incantations with a lunatic fervency, resounding in her ears, filling her head. Then miraculously Guy seemed to recover, to sidestep the brutal death embodied in the mace, and it was Bertrand who went down to the cobbles, his head at an odd angle, crimson blood pumping from his neck. Guy ignored his fallen enemy and simply turned back to the fray, and Magdalen realized on the periphery of her intelligence that his apparent stumble had been a feint, intended to catch Bertrand off guard, his shield lowered.

  The urge to vomit threatened to overwhelm her in the weakness of relief, and only the need to hold tight to the still screaming Zoe kept her on her feet. She was shaking, her hair damp with the sweat of fear, when a triumphant shout came from the gates as the
portcullis was raised and into the place d’armes poured the rest of Durand’s men. Her heart lifted with a sudden surge of exaltation as powerful as the terror that had gone before, matching the crowing of the invading herald’s trumpet. Arrows flew, and the archers on the ramparts turned from the besiegers outside to the intruders in the place d’armes, pouring down a hailstorm of feathered death …

  Indiscriminate feathered death … One of those arrows found its way between the links of Edmund de Bresse’s gorget as he raised his head. Magdalen watched, disbelieving in this moment of triumph, as the black and gold jupon crumpled to the ground. Then she was running through the death and the arrows and the swords and the sweating, bleeding, screaming men to where he lay. She fell on her knees beside him, still holding the child. His page and squires were there, and somehow they managed to pull him to the side of the court, out of the melee.

  “We have to get the arrow out, my lady,” the squire said, pushing up the wounded man’s visor. “Raymond must pull it while I hold his shoulders.”

  Edmund’s eyes flickered, rolled up in his head, but he was still breathing. Magdalen began feverishly to unbuckle his armor, but she was still holding Zoe, and it was almost impossible to perform such a task with one hand. The squire had grasped his shoulders now, and Raymond, twelve years old and come to manhood that day in the blood-drenched courts of Carcassonne, seized the feathered arrow and pulled. It came out with a spurt of blood, and Edmund’s breath became a choked scream.

  “Ah, no … not Edmund!” Guy was there beside them, his voice a low moan of sorrow. “Quickly, we have to unbuckle him, then I can carry him out of here.” With the help of the other two, he went swiftly to work, and Magdalen knelt at Edmund’s head, her finger over the hole in his throat as if she could close the wound. But the blood pulsed against her finger, welled over the dike.

  “He still lives,” she said, over and over, as if the constant repetition would ensure the continued state.

  Around them the fighting continued, but Durand’s men were in the ascendancy, and the five of them seemed to occupy a space that had nothing to do with what was going on around them. At last they had Edmund out of the iron cocoon, and Guy was able to lift him. Magdalen had to take her finger from the wound, and she watched in despair as his lifeblood spurted forth.

  Guy carried him out of the fortress and down through the silent, deserted streets of the town. The townspeople had fled their homes at the first fighting and were streaming across the plain, well aware of the carnage and plunder that would ensue if the brigands won the day.

  In the encampment only the apothecaries, the priests, and the lads caring for the pack animals remained. Guy laid his burden gently upon the ground, and Magdalen set the baby down and again put her finger over the wound. The page ran for the apothecary, but Guy called swiftly, “Bring a priest, first, Raymond.”

  “He still lives,” Magdalen said again.

  Edmund’s eyes opened, and for a minute there was recognition in them. He tried to speak, but his voice was so faint she had to bend her ear to his mouth.

  “I loved you,” he said.

  “I know.” She clutched his hand. “And I loved you as I was able. Forgive me that it was not enough.”

  Edmund’s eyes frantically sought Guy, who bent his head to catch the thread of breath that formed the words. “It is right … right …” Magdalen wiped a trickle of blood from his mouth and tried to hush him, but he continued with a desperate effort. “Right that you … you have each other now.” Then his head fell back as the final effort took the last breath of his strength.

  The priest was there, murmuring the words of absolution over the dying man. Magdalen held his hand as her tears poured heedlessly, uselessly. Then she felt the moment when Edmund’s spirit left him. She looked up at Guy and saw his own eyes filled with tears. Gently, she laid Edmund’s hands upon his breast and bent to kiss his cold face.

  “Requiescat in pace.” There was such finality in the priest’s benediction.

  She picked up Zoe, who had fallen asleep on the grass, still sobbing in her confused fear, and she walked away, leaving Guy to his own vigil.

  Chapter Eighteen

  They buried Edmund in a grove of poplars. The clash of steel, screams of pain, cries of challenge or triumph continued to come from the fortress, and the air was blackened with smoke. Against the violent backdrop of his death, they wrapped Edmund in his standard and buried him with decency and honor and reverence, and when a mass had been said for his soul, there was no more the living could do for him.

  In midafternoon, the standard of Beauregard came down from the donjon of Carcassonne and the men of Bresse and Gervais began streaming back to the brigand camp, leaving the mercenaries behind within the town and castle, at their reward of plunder and looting. There must be no implication that a vassal of the Duke of Lancaster had wantonly attacked a castle held in stewardship for the king of France during a truce between their two countries. The fortress of Carcassonne had been attacked by Durand’s brigand army in search of plunder and ransom. A daring attack, certainly, but no one would consider it extraordinary. Men like Durand scorned the need for righteous cause to underpin aggression, as if they were immune from the threat of hell’s torments, clearly choosing immediate gratification over the body’s eternal peace; and there was none to tell the tale of an abducted woman and child and a rescue that had brought full circle a bloody train of events begun at the woman’s birth.

  So the men of Bresse and Gervais, their clandestine and uneasy partnership with Durand’s brigands now over, gathered quietly around the dragon of Gervais and moved out on the north road as the sun dipped over the mountains.

  By nightfall, they had put ten miles between themselves and Durand’s encampment. They made camp on the bank of a tributary of the Garonne, outside a small village. The villagers cowered fearfully as the armed troop of weary men rode through, faces blackened with the smoke of siege fires, blood spattering their tunics, their wounded on litters with the pack animals. But they left the village unmolested and lit their fires on land that was not good pasture and did not bear as yet unharvested crops.

  Magdalen rode beside Guy, but neither of them had spoken beyond the merest commonplace. Edmund’s death lay heavy between them, unabsorbed, its significance unprobed. Her possessions had been retrieved from the fortress so she was able to care for Zoe when they made camp. The child seemed to have forgotten the terrors of the day, secure now in her mother’s arms and lulled by the horse’s gait as she had been during the long weeks of the journey from Bresse to Carcassonne.

  Magdalen’s small tent had been pitched beside the much larger one flying the dragon of Gervais, and when she had fed and washed the baby, she carried her out into the soft, torch-lit dusk to where Guy sat at a small table, a wine cup in his hands, staring into some inner world. He was quite alone, his attendants at a discreet distance, and he did not appear to notice her immediately. She found she needed an invitation to sit beside him, so she hovered uncertainly at his elbow until Zoe gave a sudden squeal of delight as a firefly glowed abruptly in front of her face.

  He looked up and smiled tiredly at the child. “Give her to me.” He took Zoe and sat her on his knee. She chuckled, and her fat fingers grabbed at the embossed dragon on his tunic. “How you’ve grown, little pigeon,” he said, bending to kiss her, and she seized his hair, still chuckling.

  Magdalen sat down on a low stool. “May I drink?”

  He pushed his wine cup toward her and began to tickle the child’s stomach. She flung herself back against his supporting hand, laughing in unrestrained glee. Magdalen drank some wine and said, “What do we do now?”

  “Return to Bresse,” he told her. “I must ensure that the fief remains secured for Lancaster after Durand’s attack. The garrison will have returned eventually, but I must see for myself. An empty nest makes fat pickings for predators.”

  Magdalen made no immediate response. She had not been asking quite that questi
on.

  “Olivier has gone to England carrying the news of this day’s work to Lancaster,” Guy continued, absently stroking the baby’s cheek. “Riding alone, he can make perhaps a hundred miles a day. Allowing for inevitable delays and a few days’ wait in Calais for a ship, if the wind is fair, he should reach Southampton within three weeks.”

  “Yes,” said Magdalen. She was at a loss, not knowing how to penetrate Guy’s mood, which, while not hostile, was certainly withdrawn from her.

  Theo came quietly across the grass toward them. “Will you sup, my lord? All is prepared.”

  “I will sup apart,” Guy said. “You may serve me here.”

  Magdalen bit her lip, suddenly swamped with a desolate uncertainty at the conspicuous lack of invitation to share his meal.

  “I’ll put Zoe to bed so that you may eat in peace,” she said, her voice sounding small. “Would you bring my supper to my tent, Theo?”

  Guy made no demur, seemed not to notice what she had said. He simply relinquished the child and resumed his contemplative silence as she left him.

  Magdalen tossed on her thin pallet throughout the hot summer night. She could not understand why they could not draw together in their shared sorrow over Edmund’s death. He had been a friend to both of them, and they could surely comfort each other. At dawn, she got up and went outside. Guy was still sitting at the table, and she could not tell whether he had been there all night or, like herself, had awakened early after a disturbed night.

  “Good morrow, my lord.” The dew-wet grass soaked her slippers and dampened her ankles as she went toward him.

  He looked up, frowning slightly. “You are awake betimes, Magdalen.”

  “As are you, sir.” She stood at the table, her knuckles resting lightly on the edge. “We are both unhappy. Can we not help each other?” Her voice was very soft.

  The frown in his blue eyes deepened. “How? Edmund died because of us. How can we assuage each other’s guilt in that?”