A quaver went through her at the thought that if they asked her outright about where such and such happened, and how—or God forbid if they asked about Willem—then everyone would know she had the Plague, and no one would need to listen to her or give her her due, for they would know that she was walking into her grave. Stumbling, more like.
“You did not know your husband had collected such wealth?”
She shook her head, and tried to speak but coughed first.
“Someone bring this woman water,” someone said.
Margriet waved it off and recovered her voice.
“When we were married, the priest asked if he would share his body and his belongings—and his belongings, mark—and treat me in all ways as a husband should treat his wife. He said yes. And instead he hid his goods from me, and kept them from me, so that I had to go out as a wet nurse, and our daughter, Beatrix, there, had to spin her poor fingers red and raw.”
Vroom stood. Margriet squinted to see if she could recognize his face. She had known a few Vrooms but could not place this one. He spoke French with a Paris accent.
“You speak of wedding vows, but what of your vow to treat him as a woman ought to treat her husband?”
Margriet blinked. “I do not understand.”
A few of the men chuckled unpleasantly.
“We have made inquiries,” said Vroom, “among the people of Bruges. We have heard that this woman is a notorious shrew, eager to revenge any slight, even perhaps an invented one. We have heard that she mistreated her husband, giving him both sides of her tongue even in the public market.”
“If I argued when he gave me cause to argue, then I was no different than any other wife saddled with an oaf for a husband.”
A few titters among the king’s men.
“And did you share your belongings with him? When you were paid for nursing? Did you share every sou?”
Margriet shook her head. “That was to keep my body and soul together and my daughter’s, too. It was all I had. He gave me nothing. He said he had nothing to give. He lied.”
“Then we have established that you were not treating him as a wife should, if you were a scold to him and withheld your belongings.”
Margriet’s mouth was sour. She should have eaten more on the road but she was in the habit now of saving food, and anyway what good was food to a dying body, beyond what it needed to keep stumbling from today into tomorrow?
She did not know how to answer them, when they asked if she had been a good wife. She had been the only wife she knew how to be. In the early days, she had tried to be something other than she was, to dull her tongue and wait upon Willem. But then Beatrix had arrived, and then it was a never-ending cycle of pregnancies and confinements, and she did her duty by him in bed, and she gave birth to his dead babies, and she lost the will or the strength to be anything but a mother to Beatrix.
“You may say it is a woman’s duty to be kind to her husband, but what is the duty of a mother? When I was a child I trod the treadmill with the other children to work the crane that lifted the barrels for the boatmen. When my Beatrix was a girl, she broke her ankle walking that treadmill and I paid for the bonesetter out of my savings. And when she could not walk it any longer because it made her ankle ache, I went out to wet nurse, for my husband told me we were destitute. When Beatrix was married, she had for her dowry a silver ewer that I bought for her with the money I had set aside from double-watering our wine and eating the day-old crusts from the worst baker in Bruges. When the Devil puts up walls, men smash them, and if they cannot smash them, they despair, or they walk away. But women must trickle through the cracks, they find a way through because they have no choice, because they have nowhere to go, and nothing to smash with. No one would feed my daughter but me and so I fed her, with whatever sous I could earn as an honest woman. I have been a faithful wife to Willem de Vos and served him in the truest way I know: I have born his children, all six of them, though five are in limbo now, where I pray for their souls every day.”
She would have said more but she ran out of breath and drowned from the lack of it. Her eyes went dark and she only dimly felt herself hitting the tile floor.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Margriet woke in a small, dim chamber. She was lying on a bed and a monk was tutting over her with a sharp-smelling cloth in his hand.
“Brother Infirmerer, she has come around,” murmured a voice.
She turned her head. There was the bishop. Close up, she could see his face at last. An ordinary face, within all that finery. Not a kind face, but not a cruel one either. The face of an alderman or a lawyer. Solid and weary, pale and fleshy about the neck.
“I am better,” she said, propping herself on an elbow. The world lurched.
“It is taxing, for a woman to occupy herself with the arguments of churchmen and lawyers,” said the bishop. “We understand. Take some rest, here.”
“I can continue now.”
The bishop shook his head. “We have an office to keep, in any case. We will continue in an hour’s time, if you are well enough.”
The bishop and the monk slipped out through the plain wooden door. Where was Beatrix? She would be beside herself with worry.
Margriet sat up, to see whether she could. Her head was light but she thought she could manage to stand again, perhaps.
The door opened again and a man came in. The tall, thin servant who always stood near the Chatelaine.
“You have nothing to fear,” he said, holding up one bony hand. “My name is Chaerephon. I am in the Chatelaine’s service. I have come to see whether you wish to put a stop to this madness.”
She swallowed. Had the monks let him in? Kept her daughter from her, and let this ghoul in to harry her?
She shook her head. “Please leave me be. We will argue before the bishop, when it is time.”
“But you are unwell.” He stepped closer to her, cocked his head.
“It has been a difficult time, as I am sure you appreciate, sir.”
“Difficult, indeed, for one who has the Plague. Oh, there is no point in hiding it from me. I have lived in Hell so long I know its marks, when I see them. When you collapsed, and I rushed to your aid with so many others, I took a moment to look at your hands.”
She looked at them: her fingers blotched with black, and shaking.
“I have only a very little time,” she whispered. “I wish to have my right, before I meet God. I wish to see my daughter safe and provided for.”
He nodded. “Of course. We would be happy to provide for her, if you were to withdraw your claim. We would compensate you, with twice the worth of your husband’s goods.”
She frowned. “Why, in heaven’s name?”
He turned from her. “If you win, that creates some … difficulties for us. If you lose, that creates difficulties of its own. We would much rather leave the status of the goods owned by revenants as a … political question, not a legal one.”
“You speak to me as if I have a brain, sir,” she muttered. “Not like the bishop.”
“Because you do have a brain, Margriet de Vos. That much is evident. But not for much longer. It will be as useless as a bowl of tripe before All Souls’ Day. And if you lose this trial, as well you might, your daughter will be alone, and penniless. One hates to think what will come of a girl, alone and penniless, in time of war.”
Margriet drew a long, ugly breath.
“If I take your offer, will you declare her right to it?”
“To the payment? No, I am afraid it must be done in secret, or it would be taken as evidence that we believe it to be her due.”
Margriet shook her head. “Then I must refuse. How do I know you will not take it away from her, after I am dead? How do I know you will not pursue her with your hounds, as you pursued Claude? No, I want the world to know it is her right. I want my due, sir,
and nothing else.”
He threw up his hands, turned away from her, and paced a bit.
Then he turned his face back to her. Such an old face, and yet there were hardly any wrinkles in it. Smooth as a skull.
“There can be no way to know she is safe, Margriet de Vos, whether you wrench some declaration from us or not. After you are dead, anything could befall her. Ruffians could steal it all from her. As for that, if you mistrust us so, what prevents our hounds from pursuing her even if you win the trial? Of course they would never be directed to do so, of course not, but mistakes do happen. The only way for you to watch over her, would be for you to live, and to be stronger.”
She snorted. “But no one lives, once they have contracted the Plague.”
He had no eyebrows, but if he had, they would have gone up in the middle.
“Not someone who has gone through the fires of hell, and been bonded with something that cannot be killed by the Plague.”
She gasped, and then coughed at the intake of breath in her ragged throat. “You are asking me to become a chimera?”
He spread his arms wide in their mouse-coloured cloak. “I say it is an offer we are willing to make. You are intelligent, and you fight. These are the qualities the Chatelaine seeks in her chimeras. Your disease is as nothing to us. We will give you new fingers—claws, perhaps. And new eyes—yes, I have seen you squinting—something far-seeing. Would you like to be an eagle, Margriet de Vos? Armoured with steel, so that nothing could harm you? You could watch over Beatrix every night, and keep her safe not only from ruffians and hounds, but also from … well, I believe her husband is a revenant, is he not?”
Blood beat in her ears. If only she could think properly! She wanted to vomit at the thought of being mixed with something inhuman, of claws and feathers and armour in her skin. She had a right to her own body, riddled with Plague as it might be, at the end. She had a right to go into the ground sole, and whole.
But to see clearly, to be strong again. To live. To live.
To live as someone else’s beast—who could say what will would enter her mind, once she went through those fires? Would she be the Chatelaine’s creature, then, like the horned man, like this bag o’ bones in front of her?
To live …
Margriet shook her head until the world rang.
“I want none of it, Monsieur Chaerephon, none at all. I will not hear any more of it. Get out of my way, if you don’t mind. I do not wish to be late when the bishop reconvenes.”
The bishop asked if Margriet had anyone to testify to her marriage, to whether she had indeed been the wife of this Willem.
Jacquemine stood by Margriet’s side.
“And you are? A Moor, by your skin.”
“Jacquemine Ooste. My father was indeed a Moor. I am a Christian woman, wife to the late Jan Ooste, alderman of Bruges.”
More rustling, as the men wondered if he were one of the aldermen of Bruges murdered by the king’s henchmen. Jan had been an alderman, yes, but he had died at the Battle of Cassel, mercifully. Died and been buried in the ground, not fed half-dead to the Hellbeast and turned into a revenant like some women’s husbands.
A good man, Jan Ooste had been, always kind to Margriet.
“Say your piece, then, for pity’s sake,” huffed the bishop, “and let this de Vos woman’s tongue rest in its sheath a while.”
More chuckles. Margriet felt herself swaying. She stared at Jacquemine to keep herself anchored. Jacquemine stood tall, her wimple neat and a lovely white veil falling over her shoulders. She looked none the worse for the walk from the mill, at least if one did not look at her shoes.
It was not in Margriet’s nature to ask a favour from her employer. She owed Jacquemine a debt for this, one she would repay out of the goods she was owed, for that was the only repayment she could offer. Her small bag of coins was nearly empty. But Willem’s sack would ensure a full belly and a safe roof for not only Beatrix but for little Jacob and Agatha too, for all the children who had drunk the milk out of Margriet’s body.
“Margriet de Vos is a virtuous and respected woman of Bruges. She has been in my employ as a wet nurse for several years. Yes, she is known in the cloth hall and throughout the city for her honest and forthright ways, but she is no scold. I know her to have been married to Willem de Vos since the twenty-third year of Philippe le Bel’s reign. It would have been twenty years for them soon.”
“We shall consider these matters,” said the bishop. “If a wife is not a good wife, that seems to me it does not dissolve the marriage, nor her husband’s obligation to her. Does the Chatelaine wish to speak about these questions of marriage, or about the Flemish customs of widowhood?”
Margriet felt a dull pressure against her left hand, a pressure with purpose, with insistence. She glanced down and saw that Jacquemine was taking her hand in her own, to offer comfort. Margriet did not trust her fingers to grasp so she smiled a little and hoped that was enough. She needed nothing from Jacquemine, who had already given her more than she needed. Indeed Margriet was already in debt to her. She would never have asked this of her employer had it not been for Beatrix, had it not been for the war and hunger in this world she was leaving her daughter in alone.
The Chatelaine stood and all the men turned to her. She was a sight, indeed. Unlike Claude’s, the elaborate netting in her hair did not look ridiculous.
“We find it a very simple argument,” said Chaerephon, standing just out of the sunlight. “It is untrue that this woman Margriet de Vos is a widow. Her husband is not dead.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Beatrix watched Mother and Jacquemine, and clasped her hands tightly together. What was it about Jacquemine Ooste that she always looked like one of the fine ladies of Bruges, even when there was no more time or space for finery? She wore no brocade or silk today, only her deep blue velvet surcote and a red linen kirtle, and she looked like a woman out of a church window as she stood in the slanting sunlight.
“What evidence do you have of your husband’s death?” asked the bishop.
“I have seen him, your excellency,” said Mother. “With a great gaping hole through his chest. No man can have that much air whistle through him and live, excepting our Saviour, of course.”
Beatrix winced. The pain that must have caused Father, before he died. He had never been good with pain; he used to have Beatrix pull his splinters out.
“May I speak, your excellency?” asked the thin man who stood near the Chatelaine.
“Chaerephon, your reponse would be most welcome.”
“I have seen Willem de Vos walking the earth,” said Chaerephon, walking to the centre of the chapter house. “Dead men do not walk.”
“He has no breath in his body,” said Mother.
“Yet he speaks,” said Chaerephon.
Jacquemine put her hand out to stop Mother from answering. “I have heard that a murdered man will speak the name of his killer, if the killer approaches. Yet the murdered man is no less dead for this miracle.”
“The revenants are not dead,” said Chaerephon. “The bodies of the dead rot in the ground.”
“Until the last judgement,” said the bishop.
“Indeed,” answered Chaerephon. “Yes. Where they await the last judgement. But you have seen that this Willem is not rotting in the ground, although the judgement is not yet upon us.”
“Some have seen the bodies of saints, preserved whole,” said Jacquemine.
“Surely this woman does not mean to imply that this Willem de Vos was a saint.”
A titter circled the walls like a drunken swallow and rose up into the rafters, and drifted out the windows to where the gargoyles watched the world.
“Father bishop,” Mother said, in her chastened voice, which was never a good sign, “my husband is no saint, certainly, and I am no scholar of religion. But help me to understand. If
my husband is not dead, why can he only walk at night, with bats and other evil creatures? I do not claim to understand these revenants, or anything about the state of their souls, but I do know that the man I knew all my life as Willem de Vos no longer inhabits that body.”
“A man may be greatly changed,” said the Chatelaine, standing, “and in that way his family may consider him as one dead. But that does not mean the law regards his wife as a widow.”
The bishop considered. “Is there anyone else here who has had dealings with this Willem de Vos, in the days since he went to Hell?”
Mother turned to her with an apology in her face. Beatrix wished she could crawl into the earth and lie there until the nightmare was ended. It was warm in the hall. Her damp shoes were warm now, warm and still wet, and she could smell the tang of wet leather and wet wool.
She stood.
“I have seen my father.”
“And was he alive or dead?”
Beatrix looked at her mother. She spoke slowly. “I do not understand how he could be alive.”
The bishop leaned back.
“No,” he said. “Indeed, it would be a wonder. Then again, it is a wonder if the dead walk the earth. It is a difficult question for one humble man to answer, but the king has tasked me with deciding this case.”
The Chatelaine pulled Chaerephon aside and conferred with him. Then she addressed the bishop.
“Your Excellency, I fear we tax your time and delay the Michaelmas feast already, but there is another matter to decide. Not all of the wealth she claims was lawfully her husband’s. What a man does not own he cannot bequeath. Part of it was stolen from me. Indeed I would not be surprised to learn that much of it was stolen.”
She smiled, but the bishop did not. The room was silent, the word “stolen” echoing.
“Indeed? Which part do you claim?”
The Chatelaine gestured to Claude. “This woman stole a weapon from me, and later sold it to Willem de Vos.”
Armed in Her Fashion Page 20
