EQMM, February 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "I want to come too,” whispered Petronille, appearing at her elbow.

  "No. You must stay here.” The last thing Eleanor needed was a little sister tripping over tree roots and whining. “Grandmother may need you,” she said.

  Dangereuse had come down from her tower, of course, dressed to outshine them all, and loaded with face-paint and jewels. But she had growled about her lame foot and had not mounted the dais to sit with the other nobles. She perched instead near the open windows, with the duke's two spies, Marielle and Coustance, buzzing around her like flies at a honeypot.

  Eleanor's eyes searched among the flushed faces of the dancers. Joscelin was not among them. He might be laying his trap for her even now in the orchard, if Baudri had betrayed her. She drew a deep breath and straightened her shoulders, determined to make a fight of it, if need be.

  Suddenly a trumpet blew and a drum began to beat. There was a chorus of shouts, and a shaking of tambourines and wooden rattles, and a troupe of acrobats came prancing in, turning somersaults and juggling torches. Behind them came a company of mummers, and then a puppetmaster, his marionettes as brightly dressed as the great lords and ladies.

  At last came the moment Eleanor had chosen to make her escape. The servants, bearing silver basins and fine linen towels and ewers of water with spiced rose petals, began the usual washing of the guests’ hands before the meal was laid. Everyone began to drift to the tables, and when Petronille looked around again, her elder sister had gone.

  * * * *

  A quarter-hour later, a boy in a long homespun shirt, a snood cap, and a leather jerkin strode through the pear orchard. Beyond the trees, the river could be heard lapping softly against the stone pilings of the landing stair.

  "Boy!” said a hoarse voice from the herbarium beyond. “Have you seen Lady Eleanor?"

  "Who wants her?"

  "Ah, my lady. At last. It is I, Baudri, that unfortunate imbecile."

  She moved nearer. “I have no time to palter. Are you Ventadour's man, or mine?"

  "Yours, my lady, in my heart. But Joscelin discovered the Golden Fool in my possession, and he says he will see me hanged, and my aunt, too, if I don't help him secure you."

  "So you did steal the Fool, then."

  "No! It was there, in my saddlebag. How it came there, I don't know. Only—I have debts, and it seemed like a gift of God, so—I'm a sinner, but I tried to pawn it. There's a fellow in Masons Lane who does such business, legal or not. Ventadour was there on the same kind of errand. He knew the jewel—who does not? I fought, but his men took it from me."

  It explained the cut on his cheek she had noticed that morning.

  Baudri breathed heavily for a moment, as though he had been running. “My lady, he's—he's here now. Joscelin. I had to tell him you would meet me tonight. But I sent him to the landing stair by the river. You must go back to your father now, before you're discovered."

  She stood there, thinking hard thoughts. If she were taken tonight, her father would raise an army and attack Ventadour. If Joscelin were killed, it would be the same, except that Ventadour would attack Poitiers. There would be war, and it would go on until the poor were digging roots by the roadsides and living on rancid hazelnuts and dead mice.

  But was Petronille perhaps right? If you started considering the lot of the poor, you'd soon be joining them. Look at Jehane. No, it was a treacherous game, when you got as rich as the duke was, and only self-interest served it. Very well, then. Self-interest. If her father should be killed, the new Duchess Eleanor would be married off by a guardian to some witless fool with a crown or a coronet. Or she might, she thought ruefully, run away and marry a miller. No, no. A war must not be allowed.

  "What will you do, Baudri,” she said, “if I go inside now and hide behind a tapestry?"

  "I shall fight Joscelin, my lady, and recover the jewel. It's all I can think of."

  Eleanor smiled in the darkness. “Better say a prayer then. For if you fight as feebly as you think, we'll both be in Heaven by midnight."

  * * * *

  Dangereuse felt young again, quite a girl. She had thrown her stick away at the edge of the orchard, where the lanterns winked and sparkled in the branches. She had done it as an act of sheer will, but it amazed her to find that she could walk, even in the long grass between the trees, without tripping and without pain.

  There was still a clamor in the hall, and Petronille kept on wailing. Excellent, thought the old woman with a soft laugh. The child's only talent was at last proving useful.

  It had been an inspired maneuver. As Petronille passed on her way to her father's side, Dangereuse had pushed her stick neatly out in front of the child. Petronille had tripped and fallen—naturally—and half a dozen servants had collided with each other, their silver chargers of roast swan and peppered peacock clattering down. It was just the sort of chaos she had needed to escape the watchful eyes of Lady Coustance and Lady Marielle.

  For the countess had, of course, been warned. “Go to the pear orchard,” the note had said. “Joscelin will come to the landing stair after compline. He has the Fool.” She knew well enough the careful strokes of Jehane's pen, and she still trusted her implicitly, runaway servant or not.

  Stopping beneath an unlighted tree, Dangereuse drew from her sleeve a small, finely-wrought dagger, then pulled her veil across her face. She must be very near to the river now. She could hear it, running fast toward the invisible sea.

  Then a murmur of voices reached her. “If my bride doesn't come soon,” she heard Joscelin say, “then a plague on the little bitch. Besides, there's a new whore at Gigot's I've been wanting to sample."

  "Pig,” growled Eleanor. She and Baudri, flat on their bellies in the long river grass, could hear every word. Baudri, too, had a knife—broad-bladed, thick, strong enough to cut off a man's head.

  They began to crawl closer, but suddenly Baudri stopped, as a dark-clad, veiled figure came out of the thinning trees. “Is it your sister?” he whispered. “No, no. See, she limps."

  Dangereuse. Eleanor's heart felt as though it would burst. Had the old woman not threatened to hand her to Joscelin? Now here she was, come to strike her witch's bargain.

  There was a flare of light from a torch, and four men, one of them Joscelin, came up the stone stair from the riverbank. From where she lay, Eleanor could smell the wine on them, heavy and sour. The old woman stood her ground, her face still veiled.

  "Ah, ma petite!" sneered Joscelin, catching sight of her. “So you are come. That's it, no use to run. Raymonde, go and make the boat ready. You two, escort my lady Eleanor down to the landing!"

  It was exactly as Dangereuse had planned. Taking her for her granddaughter, the men overwhelmed her, but she remained silent and did not resist. At last, with a drunken laugh, one fellow lifted her in his arms, and as he did so, her veil fell away. Instead of the fresh features of a girl of twelve, they saw an old crone, grotesque as a gargoyle on a waterspout—the skin painted whiter than flour, the eyes ringed with black kohl and the lids colored a deep green, the shrivelled cheeks decorated with perfect circles of vermilion.

  "Christ save us!” cried the man, and he all but dropped her in his haste to cross himself. “Holy Mother,” murmured the second.

  "Ah,” said Dangereuse in her deep, sensual voice. “They swoon at my beauty. Come, bridegroom. Would you not like a kiss before you bed me?"

  Joscelin stared at her, livid. “I'd sooner bed a snake,” he said.

  "As no doubt you have. I've come for my jewel."

  "Burn in hell."

  "Give me my jewel and you shall have my granddaughter."

  He came a step closer. “Why shouldn't I kill you, take the girl, and keep the jewel, too?"

  There was a slight noise upriver, the thud of a boat striking the bank. Some hungry peasant out poaching eels. Dangereuse spat into the darkness. “I begin to believe you've never had the jewel at all. Such a mooncalf as you? Pah!"

  Joscelin reached into a leather sc
rip at his side and in a moment the great golden brooch glowed like a banked coal in the torchlight. “Well, old slut?” he jeered. “Here it is. Now where's the girl?"

  "I am here."

  Before Baudri could stop her, Eleanor stood up, a slim, boyish form in the deepening summer dark.

  "Take her!” commanded Joscelin, and his two henchmen dived after her. She ran well, but she was not used to the boy's shoes she wore, and they tripped her. She clawed the face of one man, and Baudri slashed at the other with his knife, cutting open the fellow's thigh. They threw Eleanor brutally aside, and her body rolled down and down and down the steep slope, till at last she caught herself on the root of a tree and lay still.

  "Idiot! Go after her!” she heard Joscelin shout.

  She lay still, hoping not to be seen. But the men did not come. At last, peering round the twisted trunk of the scrubby tree, she caught sight of still another woman, carefully mantled and veiled, just climbing the wet riverbank. She moved steadily, taking no pains to conceal herself. Something about her silence and the calm containment of her body was more than familiar.

  Jehane.

  * * * *

  The woman and the girl reached the top of the slope almost at the same moment, and found a battleground spread out before them. The man Baudri had wounded now lay dead, the great knife still in his heart. The other, stabbed in the eye with his own dagger, groaned away his last few breaths.

  They had dropped the torch onto a pile of grass and dead pear branches, and now a small fire burned there, smoking badly. The jewel lay on the ground beside it, the grinning mouth of the Golden Fool gaping wide with obscene laughter.

  On one side of the fire crouched Joscelin de Ventadour, his dagger slashing and plunging, fighting the smoke. On the other, dancing and feinting and coiled like a snake, was Dangereuse.

  Joscelin's hands were bleeding. Each time he reached for the jewel, she stabbed at him with her dagger, rarely missing her mark. When the smoke drifted aside for a moment, Eleanor could see that the old woman's face paint had begun to melt in the heat, and black tears ran down her red cheeks.

  Baudri, unarmed now, rolled in the grass with the one called Raymonde, the two so tightly entangled they might have been a pair of lovers tumbling there.

  Eleanor had brought a dagger of her own, but it was gone now, lost in the grass. She kicked once or twice at Raymonde to distract him, but it was useless.

  Then she went to the body of one of the dead men, hoping to get his short sword from the scabbard. But the dead are very heavy and she could not turn him over. Jehane, trembling like an overtightened lute string, came to help her.

  In a moment, it would be too late. Baudri was losing his battle. He lay spent, as Raymonde, standing over him, raised his own sword to finish it.

  In an instant, before Eleanor could pull her back, Jehane darted up. "Mon fils!" she cried. My son.

  Even if he had wanted to, Raymonde could not have stopped the blade from plunging downward. Jehane threw herself across Baudri's body, and the sword pierced her in a single stroke, pinning her body to that of her son. Blood was everywhere. From the distant hall came the rhythm of the dance drums, the rattle of tambourines through the dark.

  Raymonde had had enough. He ran for the boat, and they heard the splash of oars.

  Dangereuse stood silent, the paint bleeding from her face, now, in tears so compounded that it was not possible to tell which were real and which were not. Joscelin saw his advantage and reached for the Fool one last time, his dagger raised. "Grandmere!" cried Eleanor.

  The old countess looked up, dazed and confused. What war was this? Bah! There was only one, and it began at the hour of birth. She felt tired now, and when she stared at her hand, it shook as Jehane's had that morning. A matter of will, she thought vaguely. Everything is a matter of will.

  With her free hand, she picked up a burning branch from the fire. “Hah!” she cried, slashing at Joscelin with it. The wide sleeve of his velvet cote sparked, smouldered, and began to burn.

  "Christ!” he cried. “You're mad!” Then the other sleeve, too, was on fire. He ran for the landing stair, and Eleanor could see that his long curls were in flames.

  They heard the splash as he dived into the river to save himself. He might be scarred with burns, but he would live. And there would be no war.

  Dangereuse dropped the burning stick and threw her dagger into the darkness. She was limping badly now, as she made her way to Jehane's body. “I shall die soon, amie," she whispered, looking down at her friend.

  "Die later,” Eleanor said coldly. “Help me now."

  Together they pulled the sword from Jehane's thin body. They laid her gently aside and Dangereuse covered her face with her own veil.

  Eleanor made a packing of leaves around the wound in Baudri's chest. It was not much. Like Joscelin, he would live. “Would you really have given me to Ventadour?” the girl said as she worked.

  Dangereuse laughed softly. “I was bluffing, little duchess. At my age, it's all you have left."

  Eleanor picked the brooch up from the ground and polished it on her sleeve. “Here, then,” she said. “Take back your treasure. If it's been worth all this, keep it close."

  But the countess looked round instead, startled. "Hein! What's that?"

  There was a whining sound in the orchard behind them. The voice was unmistakable. “Petronille?” said Eleanor. “Little idiot! Come here at once!"

  The younger girl crept slowly out from among the pear trees, wiping her nose with the sleeve of her bliaut. “They weren't supposed to be dead,” she said, looking down at Jehane and the others. “But they're all peasants, so of course they don't really count.” She fingered the jewel Eleanor still held in her hand. “It was easy to take it. Jehane was out of the room for a moment, and nobody ever pays any attention to me. I thought Baudri would find it in his saddlebag and return it, and no one would ever know."

  Eleanor stared. "You took the Golden Fool? But why?"

  Petronille shrugged. “Because I wanted to. Is that not enough?"

  * * * *

  That night, as the feasting faded in the great hall, and the dogs gnawed the bones of peppered peacocks, Petronille—with a blackened eye—slept soundly between sheets scented with rosemary.

  But two other women, one old and one young, stood side by side at the opened casement of the Maubergeonne Tower. A deep laugh rang out in the darkness as something fell with a splash into the river below. It was gold, and it shone like the memory of old and faded loves.

  "Why throw it away now, Grandmere?" asked the girl.

  The old woman smiled in the moonlight. “Because,” she said, “I could."

  (c)2006 by Margaret Lawrence

  * * * *

  PEARLER by Cheryl Rogers

  * * * *

  Art by Mark Evan Walker

  * * * *

  Australian Cheryl Rogers has provided a few notes to accompany her new story. “Broome is a popular holiday destination two and a half hours’ flying time north of Perth, on Australia's west coast,” she says. “It's where the outback meets the ocean and it has a rich pearling history. Carnarvon is one of the northwest towns one must drive through en route to Broome from the south. A ‘roo bar’ is a cawcatcher” “Pearler” is Ms. Rogers's second story for us.

  Vi wanted a pearl.

  As Eric gunned the cruiser along the open road north of Carnarvon, she decided that she'd indulge herself when they reached Broome. If the marriage survived that far.

  Some keshi earrings, maybe, or a blister pearl ring. A strand was out of the question, of course, but her personal savings might just stretch to one cultured South Sea pearl set on a gold band. After fifteen weeks, six days, and—Vi glanced at her watch—seven hours caravaning with Eric, she deserved a treat.

  The lines etched in her weathered face deepened as her husband of thirty-five years slapped the radio console with the calloused flat of his hand. She felt something small and hard, like the seed of
a pearl itself, irritate the back of her throat as loud hillbilly music suddenly blared from twin speakers to fill the cab.

  "Think I'll buy myself a pearl pendant when we get to Broome,” she hollered above the strains of the banjo duel from Deliverance. She didn't glance at Eric. Didn't dare take her eyes off the road.

  But he heard. Oh, he heard!

  "Ya think that's wise?” he shouted back, settling round-shouldered over the steering wheel as the cruiser swallowed up the long road ahead of them. “Given the state of your neck?"

  It was then that Vi knew.

  She'd kill him.

  * * * *

  "Left hand down hard. Harder! Now BACK..."

  Vi, one lean brown arm gesturing wildly, the other hugging a coconut to her chest, was directing Eric's attempt to reverse their “de-luxe” caravan into the bay they'd been allocated at Cable Beach.

  He'd already clipped a coco-nut palm with the roo bar.

  She'd known he'd find it hard, given his lack of height and his frozen left shoulder. But then it had been his idea to do all the driving.

  "Driving's a man's job,” he'd said with finality, ignoring her unblemished thirty-eight-year driving record, when she'd offered to take the wheel.

  He'd been just as insistent about selling their unit in outer suburban Sydney to finance their back-to-nature, once-in-a-lifetime holiday around Australia.

  And about needing a thirty-five-foot caravan (with shower, toilet, and optional extras as standard) to do it in style.

  And about buying a top-of-the-range Land Cruiser with power-assist trailer brakes to pull it.

  A sigh escaped as the dust-caked vehicle kangaroo-hopped. And stalled.

  Then came Eric's frustrated bellow. “Chrissakes, stand where I can see you, woman!"

  Vi felt her cheeks flush crimson. And she knew it had nothing to do with the northern sun.