Armed in Her Fashion

by Kate Heartfield

  The chausses were too big. As he had walked in the grey, drizzly pre-dawn from Lille, following the surly messenger, the blue wool had gapped and flapped around Claude’s thighs. Worse than that, the chausses were much too long. He had to roll the tops, which meant he was walking around with extra rolls of itchy, sweaty fabric near his crotch. And the laces at the tops didn’t fasten properly, so the whole contraption kept slipping down.

  He was hungry. His legs were wet with this clinging cold mist, and his wounded foot ached, and his arm itched. By the time he had arrived at the mill, his initial surprise and delight at Monoceros’s gift had vanished, and he was in a foul temper.

  Strange to say, his mood had lifted. Yes, it was suicide, this plan of Margriet’s. But it was a plan. There was something familiar about preparing for a raid. He had never quite agreed to Margriet’s plan, never quite said yes. He didn’t need to. Margriet knew, well enough, that he would not refuse.

  Claude borrowed a bone needle from Jacquemine Ooste and sat, stitching the chausses, making them fit.

  The first law of going into battle: Make sure your underthings don’t ride up.

  He smiled. Janos would have liked that.

  The true first law, of course, was to make sure you weren’t bringing your own death with you, because death had a way of spreading to one’s comrades.

  He stretched out his weak right hand, the hand that shook with the needle in it.

  “I can mend them for you,” Beatrix said.

  Claude shook his head. “A man-at-arms knows perfectly well how to handle a needle.”

  His foul mood was still there, lurking.

  Of everything Monoceros had given him, perhaps only half of it fit. The chausses were only the beginning.

  He put the needle in its case, sighed. Then he rummaged through his bundle.

  “Listen,” Claude said, and tossed the heavy gauntlets to where Margriet and Beatrix sat, drawing with bits of charcoal on the floor, trying to think of what they could wear to look like chimeras. “These gauntlets don’t fit me at all. You have bigger hands, Margriet. Would you like them? Or you could sell them.”

  Margriet ran her knobby fingers over them. They were steel, with little brass gadlings on the knuckles in the shapes of beasts.

  “What are these?” Margriet asked, running a fingertip over them.

  “They’re to protect your hand, mainly. They’re called gadlings. Usually they are just little knobs or bits of steel. Sometimes they make them in shapes, animals and whatnot. A bit showy, aren’t they?”

  “They aren’t even real beasts. This one is a leopard or something with wings. This bird—well, I’ve never seen any bird like this.”

  “Are you saying you want me to steal you gauntlets with gadlings that resemble the courtyard chickens of Bruges, or some other animal with which your vast experience has made you familiar?”

  That seemed to quiet her, for a moment at least. Margriet put the gauntlets on slowly and stretched out her fingers in them.

  “They fit well,” she said. “They looked far too big but they fit rather well.”

  Claude had been sure at first that Margriet’s message was at least part lie, and then on the road he had begun to remember things like the hot cake, and to wonder. Although even if Margriet were dying, he did not know what she wanted him for. But truth be told, he was curious, and Italy would wait.

  Of all the things he had thought Margriet might tell them, he had never considered it might be a plan to raid Hell. And now they were sitting on the floor drawing disguises, like monks drawing monsters in the margins of books.

  He looked down at the scratched drawing of a stick figure with a cauldron on its head, and grimaced.

  “It’ll be a bear to wear, unless we can make it lighter than it looks,” Claude said. “Talking of beards has given me an idea. Have you seen some of the animal chimeras? If I can get some fur and fix it on my face and hands, and wear my mail and aketon—”

  “Not strange enough,” said Margriet.

  “I don’t know if you have forgotten, but we do not actually have access to the forges of Hell,” Claude snapped.

  “We have brains,” Margriet snapped back. “What could you wear on your head other than a helmet?”

  “What about horns?” asked Gertrude. “There are two drinking horns in the little church across the field. I am sure even now they are in the sacristy.”

  “You would steal from a church?” Beatrix asked.

  “Not steal. Borrow. I know the priest. Or I did, when we were young.” Gertrude smiled, and Margriet raised her eyebrows. “They have silver work but only on the edges, and I think it could be hidden.”

  “All right,” Claude said. If Gertrude got talking about her romances, they would be here an hour. “Then where shall I put them? If I can get a leather coif, we could make two holes and poke them through.”

  “But how will you affix the fur?” Beatrix asked. “We don’t have pitch in spirits.”

  “I have some birdlime,” Gertrude said. “Perhaps—”

  Claude shook his head. He had tried birdlime, with his first false beard, at fourteen. It had been a messy business, and the hair had come off when he sweated. “I should be able to get pitch in spirits in Ypres, at the apothecary.”

  “In Ypres?” Margriet asked.

  Claude nodded. “I won’t be long, and can get anything else we need, while two of you fetch the horns. I’ll need money, or something to trade.”

  “Have your food first,” said Gertrude.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  The Chatelaine stood and everyone else in Hell’s great Hall stood as well, if they had legs to stand upon.

  “Let us eat and drink, and give thanks for our victories,” she said.

  The chimeras cheered, if they had mouths to cheer with. The revenants flitted around the edges of the Hall; they required no food but it was night and they were restless. She had called them home. They all looked at nothing, their faces blank. There were Willem and Baltazar; she would have liked to give them some reward, not because it would mean anything to them, but because it would remind Chaerephon how close they had come to losing, and what they had lost by winning.

  A woman, small-bodied, knelt before her. Her torso was a piece of wood, the sides undulating voluptuously. Three strings and a bar of wood ran down her middle.

  Beside her stood a tall man with a long pipe where his nose ought to be, running down to his waist, and another sticking out his back from between his shoulder blades. As he breathed, his chest wheezed, his abdomen puffing and collapsing like an enormous bladder.

  “Fresh from the smithy, I see,” the Chatelaine said. “You’re the two who wanted to play music.”

  The woman nodded. Little mouse. They had both been rotted in the lungs when they came to her, and near death. Small good she would have been in battle anyway. It was an annoyance that the Hell-forges would not work on unwilling subjects, but perhaps there was a wisdom in it.

  “Go ahead and play for me, then,” the Chatelaine said, waving her hand. “Be good for something, before you die.”

  A Monkey-man ran around the room as they played a quick tune, wheezy and uneven. He was too conscious of himself. He was hoping to be made her Fool, but what need had she for another fool? She was surrounded by them and she was disinclined to laugh.

  Monoceros came and knelt at her side.

  “I am sorry for being late,” he said. “I was bringing in the last of the grotesques from Bruges. There may be a few strays about the countryside but the good ones, the sound ones, are all in. We could leave now any time.”

  “Oh, could we?” she said sweetly. “Could we leave? Do you give your consent?”

  Monoceros knew better than to say anything. He tried to bow his head, giving only a hint of a movement before he checked himself, and kept his head high so as n
ot to gore her. Even on his knee he was as tall as she was sitting in her great chair made of the carved bones of extinct beasts, the chair that had belonged to her husband.

  She pitied Monoceros a little, the first and most loyal of all her creatures.

  “I am peevish,” she said. “Here, sit next to me and I’ll tell you the reason.”

  Monoceros took his chair, an ordinary wooden chair with its bars and finials and roundels painted blue and red, like you might find in any chateau. He leaned close to her.

  “The Beast will not move,” she said softly, holding a goblet in front of her mouth. “It refuses. It has laid eggs.”

  “Eggs?” He raised his eyebrow, making the horn shudder.

  “Chaerephon did not want me to smash them but I am not so sure. I do not trust him, Monoceros. He is not mine, you see.”

  “I am,” he said. “You know that I am.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You are my very first. And best, still.”

  She reached her hand out and patted his huge shoulder, his skin like smooth and burnished bronze. She almost expected him to purr like his great cat.

  “I need more chimeras and better,” she said. “Chaerephon is getting me black powder. I need you to find me some people who want to be weapons. Strong young people.”

  He nodded.

  “And Monoceros—”

  “Yes?”

  He leaned closer, understanding that this was a secret. She swallowed and spoke as quietly as she could, holding out a small iron key.

  “Go into my chamber. I have kept everything that came from Willem de Vos there in a chest. Open it and take the counterfeit mace. Destroy it.”

  He nodded.

  Claude then went in search of what he needed. Margriet had given him some of the contents of her dwindling purse.

  He bought a bit of pitch-in-spirits from an apothecary, and three skinny rabbits from a hunter. Fur, and meat. It was not a market day, but the ragman had some bits of leather and wire that might come in handy when making their disguises. He even had the beak of a giant bird, and a long bit of metal that looked like a bone. The people of Ypres were doing a brisk trade in chimera fashion.

  It felt good to walk the streets in chausses and aketon again, to have people call him sir. He strode into a tavern.

  The moment his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw Monoceros.

  The horned man was sitting around a table, talking with three boys. They looked terrified, and they looked as if they were trying not to look terrified. New recruits.

  Monoceros looked up, caught Claude’s eye, and smiled. He stood. His horn nearly scraped the ceiling.

  “In men’s clothes again,” he said quietly, coming closer.

  Claude nodded. He reminded himself that he was free, that the Chatelaine had no hold on him.

  “I thank you,” he said. “It was a great kindness.”

  “I was impressed by your testimony,” Monoceros said. “You are an honourable … man.”

  Claude’s heart beat faster. “An honourable man in stained clothing and without a denier to his name,” he answered.

  Monoceros glanced down at his clothing—a mistake, for his eyes lit on the bundle of leather and cloth scraps and the little bottle in Claude’s left hand.

  “Then you must let me buy you a drink,” Monoceros said. “Let us tell our best war stories, and see how strong the hearts beat in these whelps before I let them become chimeras.”

  “I would rather a sturdy crossbow and passage to new lands, but if a drink is all that is on offer, I will not say no,” Claude said.

  Monoceros laughed.

  Beatrix and Gertrude walked in silence to the church to fetch the horns. Gertrude seemed to sense that Beatrix needed to be silent, needed to have an argument with her mother in her head, which was the only place it was possible to have an argument with Margriet de Vos.

  As they were leaving, Beatrix had tried to be light and joyful with her mother.

  “We will have to give your gold to the Church,” said Beatrix to Mother. “If we even get it.”

  “The Church took my brother,” Mother snapped. “Now the score is even.”

  “Do you really think you can settle scores with God?” she had asked quietly.

  “I do not, of course, my daughter,” Margriet said. “But if I can raid at the gates of Hell, surely I can ask for a small dispensation at the gate of Paradise, where I shall be shortly, so let’s finish this business.”

  She never thought about Beatrix, never thought to apologize to her, or ask her opinion. Stubborn to the last. And she would be in her grave soon, and there was no point in trying to change her now, but Beatrix wanted to all the same.

  The ground was cold but firm and she and Gertrude went quickly.

  “I should just keep walking,” Beatrix said out loud, to have it said, out in the cold air.

  “You know, I have always been a good walker,” Gertrude said. “I wanted to go on pilgrimage.”

  “So have I!” Beatrix said. “Well, Baltazar and I spoke about it, often. We were going to go together, one day.”

  “And why not go without him?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Beatrix said. “I never thought of it. Every time I thought of the future, Baltazar was in it.”

  “Let’s walk there now,” said Gertrude and took her hand. It was warmer than her own, despite the cold air, as if Gertrude were more alive than she was.

  They swung their arms like children.

  “We’ll walk for three days to Paris,” said Gertrude, “then on to Spain.”

  But their feet took them to the little tumbledown church, where Gertrude said a prayer and smashed a window.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Late into the night, they worked. Gertrude used the forge-hammer to shape metal. Beatrix and Jacquemine sewed and wired.

  They armed themselves in the morning.

  Claude was cutting rabbit skin. Gertrude had stamped the holes in her copper cauldron with her forge-hammer and a sharp bit of twisted scrap iron. She put it on and looked ridiculous; she had meant it to look like a helm, but it looked like a cauldron with holes in it.

  “I am not wearing that,” Margriet said.

  “Good,” said Gertrude, taking it off. Her face was even redder than usual. “I’ll wear it. I’ll die the same with a cauldron on my head as I would with a great steel helm with an ostrich feather.”

  Margriet had picked up a stone at the age of eleven, and clambered up onto the rooftops of burning Bruges, and hurled her stone down at the first lurching, bleeding figure who came into sight. That stone had missed but the next brick hadn’t. She had brained him, a killer at eleven, her first blood before her first blood. It did not require a fancy blade or a plumed helmet to be a fighter.

  “How would you all like to die?” Margriet asked. She had been thinking about death, when she was alone, in the night, retching her bloody guts up in the privy.

  There was a long moment when no one spoke. They were all thinking of her Plague, of the fact that she would be dead in a moment. Damn her loose tongue. They were pitying her.

  “Is that a threat?” asked Claude at last, a little too lightly.

  “I suppose I’d want to go painlessly,” said Gertrude after a moment, with a world of pain in her voice. Margriet wondered what she had watched, her children. Margriet had watched her own children die, one after another, little blue dolls curdy and bloody.

  “You know,” Margriet said, remembering childbirth, “I don’t want a painless death. I would rather have pain, and no fear.”

  “It isn’t one or the other,” said Gertrude.

  “It is,” Margriet retorted. “I remember with my third baby, the pain and blood would not stop. I got so cold, and all I could think about was the pain. I did not care whether I lived or died; my sister was there to w
atch over Beatrix. And a few days later when I had recovered I took comfort, and that moment I knew I would not fear death, so long as it came when I was in pain, because then I would welcome it, and so I would not be afraid.”

  Beatrix said, “You need not fear anyway, Gertrude, because you will live again in paradise.”

  “Yes,” said Gertrude with a sigh, “but I won’t be here, will I? And what if there is something I’ll miss? What if there are no figs?”

  “I think there are figs,” said Beatrix with a smile, a smile that faded to a look of horror. She was remembering, no doubt, how she had promised to bring figs home for her grandfather. Remembering that her grandfather and her aunt were dead, that she would have been, too, if Margriet had let her stay in Bruges.

  Gertrude had made a smaller helmet out of a piece of iron, hammering it over and over again, shaping it into something like a bowl.

  “I’ll take that,” Margriet said. She put it on her head. “I don’t need much. I have my gauntlets. I’ll wear those. And a breastplate, Gertrude, if you can make me one. Punch a couple of holes in that silver plate from the church, for a leather strap.”

  “What would you ask for, if you were going to be a chimera?” Claude asked.

  Margriet looked sharply at her.

  “Why?”

  “Well, why not?”

  Margriet thought. “There was an alderman of Bruges, dead now, who had a pair of spectacles. He was insufferable about them. Every time the boys would play outside his house, he would tut and hold his spectacles up high. Folding things, you know, bits of glass in bone.”

  “You want a set of spectacles?” Jacquemine asked.

  “I did not know your vision was so poor,” Beatrix said.

  “It isn’t,” Margriet snapped. “Not for things that are close up. But sometimes I want to look at things that are far away.”