by Andrea Japp
Pleading the lateness of the hour, Agnès ordered her daughter to be put to bed. Where was Clément? She had not seen him since Eudes de Larnay’s arrival.
Clairets Forest, May 1304
The massive torso bore down on him. A solid wall of rage. It seemed to the novice as though he had been standing for an eternity contemplating the perfect musculature rippling beneath the silky black skin slick with sweat. And yet the horse had only advanced a few paces towards him. The voice rang out again:
‘The letter. Where is the letter? Give it to me and I will spare your life.’
The hand holding the reins tapered off into a set of long gleaming metal talons. The novice was able to make out a pair of straps attaching the lethal glove to the wrist. He thought he saw blood on the metal tips.
His panting breath resounded in his ears. The clawed hand moved upwards, perhaps in a gesture of conciliation. The novice watched each infinitesimal movement as though it were fractured through a prism. The action had been swift and yet the hand appeared to be endlessly repeating the same gesture. He closed his eyes for a split second, hoping to drive away the image. His head was reeling, and a terrible thirst caused his tongue to stick to the roof of his mouth.
‘Give me the letter. You will live.’
From what dark depths did this voice emanate? It belonged to no ordinary mortal.
The novice turned his head, weighing up his chances of escape. Nearby, a thick clump of trees and shrubs shimmered in the setting sun. Their swaying branches were too tight for a horse to pass through. He made a dash for it. Careering like a madman, he nearly fell over twice and had to clutch the overhead branches to steady himself. His wheezing breath rose from his throat in loud gasps. He resisted the urge to collapse on the forest floor and lie there sobbing, waiting for his pursuer to catch up with him. Further to his right, the shrill echo of a magpie’s startled chatter pierced the young man’s eardrums. He ran on. A few more yards. Up ahead in a clearing, a tall bramble patch had colonised every inch of space. If he managed to hide there his pursuer might lose his trail. He leapt into the middle of the hellish undergrowth.
He clasped his hand over his mouth to stifle the cry that threatened to choke him. The blood throbbed in his throat, his ears and his temples.
There, motionless, silent, barely breathing. The brambles snagged his arms and legs and clung to his face. He watched their hooked claws creeping towards him. They quivered, stretching out and slackening, poised to tear into his flesh. They dug into his skin, twisting in order to snare their prey.
He tried hard to convince himself brambles were inanimate, yet they moved.
The night was crimson red when it fell. Even the trees turned crimson. The grass, the moss further off, the brambles, the mist, everything was tinged with crimson.
A terrible pain pulsed through his limbs as though he were being scorched by a flameless fire.
A faint noise. A noise like swirling water. If only he could put his hands over his ears to stop the rushing sound in his head. But he could not. The brambles clung to him with redoubled spite. The sound of approaching hooves.
The letter. It must not be found. He had promised to guard it with his life.
He tried to pray but stumbled over the words of his entreaty. They ran through his mind again and again like some meaningless litany. He clenched his jaw and pulled his right arm free of the spines that were crucifying him. He felt his skin ripping under the plant’s stubborn barbs. His whole hand had turned black. His fingers would barely move, and felt so numb all of a sudden that he found it difficult to push them inside his cape to seize the parchment.
The missive was brief. The hooves were drawing near. In a matter of seconds they would be upon him. He ripped up the small piece of paper and crammed the fragments into his mouth, chewing frantically in order to ingest what was written before the hooves appeared. When the novice finally managed to swallow and the ball moistened with saliva disappeared inside him, he had the impression that those few magnificent lines were ripping his throat apart.
Flat against the forest floor which was thick with blackberry bushes, all he could see at first were the black horse’s front legs. And yet it seemed to him they were multiplying, that suddenly there were four, six, eight animal’s legs.
He tried to stop his breathing – so loud it must be echoing through the forest.
‘The letter. Give me the letter.’
The voice was cavernous, distorted, as though it were coming from the depths of the earth. Could it be the devil?
The throbbing pain from the remorseless brambles disappeared as if by magic. God had heard his prayer at last. The young man rose up, emerging from the barbed snarl, indifferent to the scratches and gashes lacerating his skin. Blood was pouring down his face and from his hands, which he held out before him, red against the crimson night. Beads of it formed along the veins of his forearms as far as his elbows then vanished as quickly as they had come.
‘The letter!’ ordered the booming voice, resounding in his head.
He gazed down at his feet clad in sandals. They were so swollen he could no longer see the leather straps beneath the black blistered flesh.
He had sworn to guard the letter with his life. Was it not a crime then to have eaten it? He had given his word. Now he must give his life. He looked back at the ocean of brambles he had foolishly believed would be his salvation, and tried to judge its height. It stirred with a curious breathing motion, the blackberry branches rising, falling, rising again. Making the most of a long exhalation, he leapt over the hostile mass and ran in a straight line.
It felt as if he had been running for hours, or a few seconds, when the sound of galloping hooves caught up with him. He opened his lips wide and gulped a mouthful of air. The blood rushed to his throat and he burst into laughter. He was laughing so hard that he had to stop to catch his breath. He bent over and only then did he notice the long spike sticking out of his chest.
How did the broad spear come to be there? Who had run him through?
The young man slumped to his knees. A river of red flowed down his stomach and thighs and was soaked up by the crimson grass.
The horse pulled up a yard in front of the novice, and its rider, dressed in a long, hooded cape, dismounted. The spectre removed the lance swiftly and wiped its bloody shaft on the grass. He knelt down and searched the friar, cursing angrily as he did so.
Where was the letter?
The figure leapt up furiously and aimed a violent kick at the dying man. He was seized by a murderous rage just as the dried, shrivelled lips of the young man opened one last time to breathe:
‘Amen.’
His head fell back.
Five long shiny metal claws approached the dead man’s face and the spectre regretted only one thing: that his victim could no longer feel the pitiless destruction they were about to unleash upon his flesh.
Manoir de Souarcy-en-Perche, May 1304
Supper was a lengthy affair. The table manners of Agnès’s half-brother revolted her. Had he never heard of the eminent Parisian theologian Hugues de Saint-Victor, who over half a century before had explained the rules of table etiquette? In his work he specified that one should not ‘eat with one’s fingers but with a spoon, nor wipe one’s hands on one’s clothes, nor place half-eaten food or detritus from between one’s teeth on one’s plate’. Eudes gorged himself noisily, chewed with his mouth open and used his sleeve to wipe away the flecks of soup on his face. He belched profusely as he finished off the last crumbs of the fruit pudding. Sated by the supper Mabile had managed to make delicious despite the lack of meat – forbidden on this fast day – Eudes said all of a sudden:
‘And now … Gifts for my lamb and her little beloved. Send for Mathilde.’
‘She is surely sleeping, brother.’
‘Then let her be woken. I wish to perceive her joy.’ Agnès obeyed, curbing her irritation.
A few moments later, the girl, her clothes thrown on in haste, came
into the vast hall, her eyes glassy with sleep and with desire.
Eudes walked over to the big wooden box covered with hessian, which the page had carried in earlier. He relished carefully untying the ropes as his niece’s expectancy mounted. At last he pulled out an earthenware flask, declaring enticingly:
‘Naturally, for your toilet I have brought vinegar from Modena, ladies. They say its dark hue turns the skin pale and silky as a dew-covered petal. The finest Italian ladies use it in abundance.’
‘You spoil us, brother.’
‘And what of it? This is a mere trifle. Let us move on to more serious matters. Ah! What do I see next in my box … five ells+ of Genovese silk …’
It was a gift worthy of a princess. Agnès had to remind herself what lay behind her half-brother’s extravagance in order not to run over and feel the saffron-coloured fabric. But she could not stop herself from crying out:
‘What finery! My God! Whatever shall we use it for? Why, I would be afraid to spoil it with some clumsy gesture.’
‘Just imagine, Madame, that the dream of all silk is to caress your skin.’
The intensity of the look he gave her made her lower her eyes. He continued, however, in the same playful tone:
‘And what might this heavy crimson velvet pouch contain? What could give off such a heady fragrance? Do you know what it is, Mademoiselle?’ he teased, leaning towards his gaping niece.
‘I admit I do not, uncle.’
‘Well, let us open it then.’
He walked over to the table and spread out the blend of aniseed, coriander, fennel, ginger, juniper, almond, walnut and hazelnut, which the wealthy liked to sample before going to bed to freshen their breath and aid their digestion.
‘Épices de chambre,’ breathed the girl in an admiring, mesmerised voice.
‘Correct. And for my beloved what have we in our treasure trove? For I do believe your birthday is fast approaching, is it not, pretty young lady?’
Choked with emotion, the excited Mathilde pranced around her uncle, twittering:
‘In a few weeks’ time, uncle.’
‘Perfect! Then I shall be the first to congratulate you, and you’ll not object to my haste, will you?’
‘Oh no, uncle!’
‘Now then, what have we here that might make a birthday gift worthy of a young princess? Ah! A silver and turquoise filigree brooch fashioned by Flemish silversmiths. And from Constantinople a mother-of-pearl comb that will make her even prettier and the moon grow green with envy …’
The ecstatic child hardly dared touch the piece of jewellery shaped like a long pin. Her lower lip trembled as if she were about to burst into tears before such beauty, and Agnès thought again how the simplicity of their lives would soon become a burden to her daughter. But how would she explain to this girl, who was still a child, that in a few years’ time her charming uncle would see in his half-niece a new source of pleasure. Agnès knew that she would stop at nothing to avoid it. He would never touch her daughter’s soft skin with his filthy paws. Fortunately, as a boy, Clément was safe from such desires – and a lot more besides. Rumours concerning the strange tastes of other lords had reached Souarcy, but Eudes only liked girls, very young girls.
‘And lastly, this!’ he declaimed histrionically, as he pulled from the saddlebag a sack made of hide and fashioned in the shape of a long finger. He undid the thin piece of cord and took out a greyish phial.
Mathilde let out a cry of joy:
‘Oh my lady mother! Sweet salt! Oh, how wonderful! I have never seen any before. May I taste it?’
‘Presently. Show a little restraint, now, Mathilde! Take my daughter back to her room, will you, Mabile? It is late and she has already stayed up far too long.’
Before reluctantly following the servant, the little girl politely took her leave, first of her uncle, who kissed her hair, and then of her mother.
‘Well, brother, I admit to being no less impressed than my daughter. They say that Mahaut d’Artois, Comtesse de Bourgogne, is so partial to the stuff that she recently purchased fifteen bars of it at the Lagny fair.’
‘It is true.’
‘Yet I thought her poor. Sweet salt is said to be worth more than gold.’
‘The woman pleads poverty loudly while possessing great wealth. At two gold crowns and five pennies the pound, fifteen bars, each weighing twenty pounds, represents a small fortune. Have you ever tasted sweet salt, Agnès? The Arabs call it saccharon.’8
‘No. I only know that it is sap collected from a bamboo cane.’
‘Then let us rectify the situation at once. Here, lick this, my dear. You will be amazed by the spice. It is so smooth and combines well with pastries and beverages.’
He lifted a long grey finger up to her lips and a wave of revulsion that was difficult to control caused the young woman’s eyelids to close.
The evening stretched on. The stiff posture Agnès had obliged herself to maintain since her half-brother’s arrival, in order to discourage any familiarity on his part, was taking its toll on her shoulders. Her head was spinning from listening to Eudes’s endless stories, the sole aim of which was to show him in a good light. Without warning he exclaimed:
‘Is it true what they tell me, Madame, that you have built bee yards9 for the wild swarms where your land borders Souarcy Forest?’
For a while she had only been half listening to him, and his deceptively casual question almost threw her:
‘You have been correctly informed, brother. In accordance with common practice we hollowed out some old tree stumps with a red-hot iron, installing crossed sticks before depositing the wild colonies.’
‘But raising bees and harvesting honey is a man’s work!’
‘I have someone to assist me.’ Eudes’s eyes burned with curiosity.
‘Have you seen the king of the colony yet?’10
‘I confess I have not. The other bees guard him bravely and fiercely. Indeed, the idea of producing honey came to me when one of my farm hands was badly stung while helping himself to a free meal in the forest.’
‘Such petty theft is considered to be poaching and is punishable by death. I know that you are a sensitive soul, and it is a charming attribute of womanhood. All the same, you could at least have ordered his hands to be cut off.’
‘What use would I have for a farm hand with no hands?’
He responded to her remark with a hollow-sounding laugh, and she had the impression that he was trying to catch her out. Vassals were obliged to hand over two-thirds of their honey and a third of their wax to their lord – a levy Agnès had neglected to pay since she set up her bee yards two years before.
‘Let me sample this nectar, then, my beauty.’
‘Sadly, brother, we are still novices. Our very first harvest, last year, was a great disappointment. The continual rains turned the honey, making it unfit to eat. That is why I sent you none – for fear of making you and your servants ill. We fed it to our pigs, who tolerated it. On top of which I managed clumsily to spill one of the two pails. This year’s harvest only yielded three pounds of poor quality – barely good enough to flavour the wine dregs. Let us hope that the harvest will be better this summer, and that I shall have the pleasure of sharing it with you and your household,’ she said, feigning a sigh of despair before continuing, ‘Oh, my sweet brother Eudes, I do not know how we would survive without your continued goodwill. The soil at Souarcy is poor. Imagine, I have only been able to replace half our draught animals with plough horses – oxen being so slow and clumsy. These bee yards should allow us to supplement our meagre everyday fare. Hugues, my dear departed husband, didn’t … Well, he wasn’t …’
‘He was just a senile old man.’
‘As you will soon be,’ she muttered under her breath, and lowered her head as though out of embarrassment.
‘That was an unwise decision of my father’s if ever there was one. Marrying you to an old man of fifty, whose only claim to glory was a rash of battle scars! War
does not make a man, it betrays his true nature – striking down the coward who hitherto employed a wealth of cunning to escape the slightest wound.’
‘My father believed he was acting in my interests, Eudes.’
Since the beginning of their exchange she had attempted to adjust her speech, to emphasise their blood relationship – which he was at great pains to keep out of his own discourse, always addressing her as ‘my beauty’, ‘my Agnès’, ‘my lamb’, and occasionally as ‘Madame’.
Nonetheless, Eudes’s hesitation was palpable. Agnès cultivated it as best she could, in the knowledge that her only salvation lay in this final reticence. As long as he doubted his half-sister’s awareness, he would continue to paw at the ground without daring to take the last guilty leap. On the other hand, the day he discovered she was wise to his deplorable lechery … Well, she did not know how else she could try to stop him.
She stood up from the bench and with a smile offered him her hand.
‘Let us pray together to the Holy Virgin, brother. Nothing would give me greater pleasure, besides your presence here tonight. It would make Brother Bernard, my new chaplain, so happy to see us kneeling side by side. And afterwards you must rest. I regret being the motive for your undertaking such a long journey.’
He did not notice that she was taking leave of him, and was obliged reluctantly to do as she said.
When at last the following morning after terce+ she watched Eudes and his page disappear across a field, Agnès felt exhausted and her head was spinning. She decided to make an inspection of the outlying buildings, more as a way of dispelling her continual unrest than out of any real necessity. Mabile, who was staring mournfully down the empty track, mistook Agnès’s mood and remarked in a sorrowful voice:
