by Ann Benson
“It’s getting pretty crowded in there.”
“You’ll do what you have to about that, Janie. I’m not going to try to convince you to abandon Bruce or come to me. That’s something you’ll decide, no matter what either of us does. I just want my chance, that’s all.”
“Look,” she said after a moment, “maybe I should go to stay with Caroline, or even at a hotel. That might make it easier for you and me to work this out.”
“Do that for yourself if you want to, but not for me. I’ve been holding all this inside for so long, and now it’s finally in the open, and it feels so good—I don’t think I can just shut it off again. Anywhere you go, I’m still going to love you.”
He got up out of the chair and came next to her. He rested one hand on her shoulder; the pressure was gentle and soothing. “I think you should stay here until you have a few more things straightened out in your life. You’re almost done with this work you’re doing with Kristina. It’ll just be easier.”
“I think I might feel like I was taking advantage.”
He gave her a brave smile. “And here I was thinking it was me taking advantage of you. Just goes to show you how people can see things very differently no matter how well they know each other. But I should warn you,” he said, his expression now a shameless grin, “that I plan to stand outside your bedroom door every night and whine like a puppy dog until you let me in.”
And with that, he picked up the tray. “Back to reality, I guess.”
“Reality’s always there, isn’t it?”
“It is,” he said. “Gets nastier every day too.” Then he nodded in the direction of the computer screen. “One of your orthopedists”—he balanced the tray with one hand and pointed to a long Eastern European–looking name with the other—“rings a bell. I think I might have known his son, back in my wild law school days.”
Every little detail seemed worth following to her. She touched the screen repeatedly until the man’s family information was displayed. A photograph of the man in question came up, and for a brief moment Janie wondered if she’d seen him somewhere before. But it wouldn’t come clear to her.
“I don’t see any mention of a lawyer son here,” she said.
“I don’t think he finished. He might have, later. I lost track. Happily. The guy was a jerk.”
She smiled. “Then he would’ve been a good lawyer.”
“Ha ha.”
They had slipped out of intimacy, and Janie missed it immediately. As she watched Tom leave the room, a sense of terrible loneliness came over her. But there was no time to wallow in it. She set aside her own little misery and turned back to the confusing, mute reality before her, wishing it would speak up, and speak clearly, because inside Big Dattie the DR SAM clock was ticking.
29
Navarre and Coucy stood on the castle wall and watched as Karle’s messenger rode off in the direction of Compiègne. “The man has raised a fighting force,” Charles said. The Navarrese king was subdued and worried-looking, not his usual fiery self. “An army. And if this lieutenant of his is any indication, a loyal army. Of men with some intelligence. This one was no dolt. There are likely to be more of the same.”
“He hinted at thousands,” the Baron de Coucy added in a sober voice. “How has he managed to do this?”
“Perhaps he has some secret ally.”
“No one of consequence remains undeclared,” Coucy countered.
“Then these thousands are indeed, as he said, all peasants.”
“In which case, you have nothing to fear, my lord.”
Navarre turned away from the wind. “He describes them as mounted troops with swords, foot archers, javelin throwers, and foot soldiers, just as we count ours.”
Coucy said, “He exaggerates. What he says can be true only if he has managed to transform them, and I do not believe that there are adequate magicians for such a task at the moment.” The baron tried to laugh, but the sound was unconvincing. “And swords—where will they find the materials, never mind the armorers? But perhaps he has an alchemist as an ally, making the necessary materials. Turning rocks into metal, no doubt.”
“Do not underestimate this man,” Navarre said. “It would be very unwise to do so. But you are right—he does exaggerate. What matters now is to find out how much. And to what end.”
“One cannot know the mind of these peasants,” Coucy commented.
“Perhaps to impress us? That is hardly to his advantage. He is supposed to be our ally. If the early reports of the Dauphin’s troop counts are correct, we will need him. Karle knows this.”
“And until we know for sure how many we face from the Dauphin, we must not offend him by sneering at his peasants. He has prepared them for an earnest charge, but he cannot think he will usurp you with his peasants when the battle against the Dauphin is done.”
“With the numbers he claims,” Navarre said soberly, “and if we are badly hit when we charge against the Dauphin, such a usurpation could be achieved. And since we are to lead the charge, we will be the worse hit, for certain.”
He left the wall and walked across the stone decking and back into the room in which he had received Karle’s lieutenant. “He is clever, this roi des Jacques. But we are clever too.” He summoned his page. “You are to ride out to Compiègne this afternoon and deliver Karle a message. Tell him we will meet him there three days hence at dawn, and join our troops together for attack. We will bring our soldiers up behind his to form a phalanx. Since he has amassed such an outstanding force, it is only fair that they have the honor of striking against the Dauphin first.”
The message set Karle’s lieutenants to arguing almost instantly, the subject of their discord being the nature of their response to Navarre’s message. All agreed that a reply was required; no two seemed to agree what it should be. So after an hour or so of heated discussion, Karle weighed what he had heard and made a decision.
He worked his way around the table, pointing at men and saying their names. “Tomorrow morning all of you shall go to visit Navarre and his puppet, Coucy. Go mounted on the best horses we have, carrying the finest swords we have, wearing the best armor we have purloined. Carry any standard you can find. Present yourselves as warriors. Tell him that it is my considered opinion that the most useful strategy would be for his troops and ours to intermix in the attack on the Dauphin. Tell him further that I believe this will confuse the Dauphin to the point where he will not know what to do. Say that we both know the Dauphin to be a man of weak will, and when faced with the dilemma we shall present him, he will lack the will to make an immediate, decisive attack. And that will be to our advantage.”
Then more quietly, he added, “Do not tell him that when our joint attack on the Dauphin is done, while we are still dispersed among his men, while the lust for blood still runs within us, we will turn upon them. We will slaughter them. They will not expect it. We are peasants, after all. Would we do something so audacious as to attack the fighting force of a king?”
Enthusiastic cheers and shouts filled the longhouse. Watching and listening from the hearth, where she was boiling flax bandages, Kate felt a shiver of dread run through her.
She found Alejandro making his way slowly along the edge of the meadow, tending to the myriad of small injuries that happened during war-play, the blisters and splinters and sore ankles that might, if untended, lessen the effectiveness of the men who bore them. They had amassed a good store of boots, torn along the way from corpses, given by widows, though few fit their recipients as they ought, and Alejandro knew that the feet of Guillaume Karle’s troops could well turn out to be like the heel of the Greek Achilles, the point of vulnerability that could bring them down. So he paid special attention to them, to see that none went to battle with bleeding, unbound sores.
“Ah, Kate,” he said when he saw her approach.
She walked toward him, treading lightly on the grassy spots, her skirts lifted in one hand to avoid the mud, the other hand full of the familiar
gray-white strips that had been her personal industry since settling into the longhouse. “I brought more bandages, Père. These are just now ready.”
“You work miracles, child. How shall this war be won without you?”
She smiled and handed over the bundle. “I am not a child, Père. I am now a married woman. Yet I think I shall always have to remind you of this.”
They worked alongside each other, and despite the grimness of their task and the horrors that surely lay ahead, Alejandro Canches knew more contentment in those moments than he had in many years. His daughter by his side, her happy situation with a fine man, the good work he did with his fingers and hands and mind, it was all the very stuff of contentment.
When the supply of bandages had been exhausted, Kate said to him, “Walk with me, Père. I would have some time alone with you.”
These were the sweetest words he had heard all day. “It would be my pleasure, Madame Karle.”
She laughed lightly as they walked through the forest behind the encampments. “It is such a good thing to have a name at last. I have never quite known what to say. Was I Plantagenet, or Hernandez, or Canches? Now I am Karle. ’Tis a very fine thing to say it aloud, without fear.”
He put an arm around her shoulders. “You are happy, daughter?” He laughed softly. “You will please make note that I did not call you child.”
“Happier than I thought possible, Père.” She ran a hand across her forehead, brushing back a stray blond strand that had come free of her headpiece. “But I think that soon I will know even greater happiness.”
He stopped walking and looked at her.
“My menses have ceased, Père.”
He stared. “But you have only been married—”
She quickly put a hand to his lips. “We shall not speak of the duration of my marriage. There is much of it yet to come. That is all we need concern ourselves with right now.”
He took her by the shoulders and looked into her eyes. “So you are certain of this.”
“I cannot be sure quite yet, but my suspicions run strong.”
“I do not know whether to curse God or thank Him.”
“For my sake, you must thank Him. For the sake of this child’s father, you must curse God for sending him into battle just now.”
“Does Karle know?”
She shook her head as it dropped slightly. “I fear that such knowledge will distract him from the task at hand. Weaken his resolve. And though I would give God half of my life to have Guillaume abandon this battle and run with me to someplace safe, he is too much of a man to do it. So I have not told him.”
He took her in his arms and embraced her. He rocked her back and forth, and shared her joy completely. I am to be a grandpère, he thought. And the child will have a name. He wished, achingly, that he could tell his own father.
When the six lieutenants set out the following morning, they looked like the bravest knights in their borrowed finery. Attired in the spoils of war, mounted on purloined steeds, brandishing polished weapons they could barely have lifted the month before, they rode up the hill to the Château de Coucy and delivered their proud news to Charles the Bad.
Navarre left them waiting in the courtyard for a while as he conferred with his underlords, principally the Baron de Coucy himself, who was barely more than a boy yet already had a reputation for the fierce savagery needed to run a protectorate as vast as the one he had inherited only a short time before. In comparison to their longhouse camp, the keep of the Château de Coucy was massive and fortified and almost luxurious in its appointments. Colorful flags flew everywhere, proclaiming both the wealth and influence of the owner. The hefty iron portcullis, were it not worked by pulleys, would have required a team of horses to raise it. It stood between the rest of the world and the inner keep, which was paved with flat stones and free of the mud that sucked at the ankles of horses and men all around the longhouse. The soldiers who practiced here had dry feet and full stomachs, and the might of the mightiest behind them. The lieutenants, as they waited, keenly felt the differences.
And when Navarre’s answer came back a sneering no, it was accompanied by a request, almost a command, that Guillaume Karle himself appear before Navarre and Coucy to discuss the terms of their alliance, and that the appearance be the following morning, or the alliance would not go forward. They gave no answer, for none would speak for Karle without first conferring with the man himself. And as each man rode under the rising portcullis, back to the roads and fields of mud, he knew that their fate rode on Karle’s answer.
They had taken to making their bed in the hayloft above the store of weapons, for there was no place else, save the deep forest, that would give them the privacy they hungered for, and Guillaume Karle did not wish to be so far away from the center of command with so much needing attention in the final hours of their preparation. And though the smell of oil and leather and fresh-smithed metal rose up to the loft and made Kate want to gag, she did not let it ruin the delight she felt in lying in the arms of her cherished husband.
That night they made love with tearful tenderness and consummate joy, for each one knew the unspoken truth: it might very well be the last time they lay together. Sometimes they writhed like lions, clutching at each other with near violence, and other times they lay in near stillness, with only the slightest movement, the simple fact of their joining enough to satisfy them. They whispered sweet promises to each other and shared their hopes of what they might establish in the world when it returned to sanity, after this battle was done.
And at the crowing of the cock, Alejandro found them asleep and peaceful. He gently shook Karle with one hand and whispered, “Karle, it is time to rise.”
He had decided to meet Navarre. “Though the thought of it makes me nearly retch,” he’d told Kate and Alejandro the night before, “not from fear, but from revulsion at the things he has done. I do not know how I shall speak with such a man without wanting to fall on him and slit his throat.”
And Kate had argued, “How can we be sure he will not fall on you and slit your throat, even before you’ve had a chance to retch?”
“We cannot.”
“Then do not go,” she’d pleaded.
“I must go. I am the leader of this army. Navarre is the leader of that army. There is business to be done between us. Even such scum as Navarre knows that to slay the leader of an ally is to make enemies of his troops. We have troops enough to guarantee his defeat of the Dauphin. He cannot make us his enemies.”
“Perhaps not yet,” Alejandro had said.
To which Karle had replied, “Perhaps not ever. But if I do not go, we shall shame ourselves before him. He will slay us with ridicule. We have come too far to let that happen.”
They sent all the lieutenants out into the encampment and began to prepare Karle for his encounter with Navarre. They stripped him of his peasant rags and washed him and combed him and scented him, then dressed him in the fine garments Alejandro had worn when he escaped from de Chauliac. From among the armor purloined by peasant rebels at Meaux from the nobles they had slain, they selected the best pieces. They strapped on a metal breastplate and scaled leg defenses, and as Kate tightened the buckle around each of her husband’s calves and adjusted the drape of his shirt, Alejandro thought to himself how ironic it was that she, born to this sort of activity, should have come to it at last, in such a roundabout way.
“I have no helmet,” he said when they were through.
“No matter,” Kate said. “No one will take you for anything less than a prince.”
He smiled and said, “Coming from a princess, I take that to be the truth.”
“I will always tell you the truth, husband,” she said, and she kissed him, her lips lingering on his cheek. He in turn pressed his lips upon her forehead, and then whispered a promise of eternal devotion. Alejandro turned away so they could not see the look of woe on his face.
Karle left the longhouse and mounted the horse that had been brought a
round for him, a big, sturdy black stallion with a lively step and a fiery eye. The animal too had been prepared: his mane plaited with strips of red and blue cloth, his back and flanks draped with a cream-colored, scalloped-edge cloth, emblazoned with a gold fleur-de-lis that had been set into a diamond of deep blue. Karle looked more a prince of the realm than le roi des Jacques, and his lieutenants cheered and shouted, “Vive Karle! Vivent les Jacques!” when he appeared before them.
He sat astride the horse and made an impassioned speech to those he had entrusted with command under him. It was a far cry from the street corner pleas he had made in the past, in villages and marketplaces. Those ragged calls to arms had been the seeds of the work that was now coming to full and fruitful bloom in Compiègne. “We are one battle away from realizing our dreams,” he said. “One battle. And that will happen on the morrow. We will join with the forces of Charles of Navarre in fighting against the Dauphin, we for our reasons, Navarre for his. And though we will be temporary allies, our alliance will stop when the battle is won. I will present Navarre with our demands for self-governance. And if he fails to comply with these demands, we shall fight for them, if need be, to the last man.”
There was somber silence after the last comment. Karle looked from man to man and said, “God willing, it shall not come to that.”
“God willing,” all murmured.
He urged the horse over to where Kate was standing next to Alejandro and reached down a hand to her. Beaming adoration, she reached up, and Alejandro hoisted her so she landed in the saddle in front of her husband, who wrapped one arm around her and rode off toward the meadow, his lieutenants close behind. They worked their way around the perimeter of their practice field, to the cheers and shouts of the motley army assembled there, waving and smiling, stirring all who saw them to rise up and beat the air with fists and swords and clubs and spears, and whatever other rudimentary implements they could lay quick hands upon. And when they came back to the longhouse again, Karle gave his final instructions.
