“Taking the others with them, one supposes,” Dr. Arnulf said.
“Also, they would be taking the direct route back to England; they cannot have wandered so far off it as to encroach on Aveyron territory.”
“Nor would they be dressed as Cathars.”
The chaplain and doctor were topping each other, and doing it well, though they avoided each other’s eyes like secret lovers. Father Adalburt watched them, smiling his vacant smile.
The Saracen, thought the Bishop of Winchester wearily. The Saracen and his woman-what was her name? They had blighted with ill luck a journey already hard enough for an old man; he was dreading its recommencement. “I wish the Bishop of Saint Albans were here,” he said. “He would know, but, alas, we shan’t have his company now until we reach Sicily.”
Father Guy in no way regretted my lord of Saint Albans’s absence. “My lord, why should we concern ourselves over a faraway group of unbelievers?”
Dr. Arnulf didn’t regret it, either. “Totally unnecessary.”
They kept quiet while their bishop mused. He was roused by the return of Peter, who began clearing the table; like most of the servants, the man was wearing the Plantagenet leopards on his tunic.
Plantagenet. The word jolted the bishop out of his reverie. Troublesome and unlucky as the Saracen and his woman had proved to be, King Henry had stressed their importance. Perhaps all pains should be taken to ensure that they were safe-the king’s toes, if stepped on, could deliver a devastating kick.
“Should we not send someone back to Aveyron… to see if there has been some unfortunate mistake… ensure that the bishop’s prisoners do not include our people?”
Father Guy put out a hand to quell a hiss from Dr. Arnulf. “My lord, if I may say so, that would be an error reflecting badly on yourself. It would indicate to this foreign bishop that you have allowed Princess Joanna’s train to be riddled with heretics, or why else should you even inquire for these?”
“Oh, dear, yes. No, we mustn’t do that.”
“I don’t see why your lordship is even troubling yourself with the matter,” Dr. Arnulf said. “The bishop’s prisoners are dressed as Cathars, therefore they must be Cathars.”
The old man sighed. “Very well, then, I suppose we must send a letter to Aveyron tomorrow disclaiming any knowledge of these people.”
Doctor and chaplain took in a breath and then dispelled it.
The thing that Aveyron’s letter had brought into the room’s shadows grew in size, vibrating slightly
Father Guy said swiftly: “Allow me to pen it, my lord. Best it were done right away If you will retire, I’ll bring the letter to your room for your signature.”
“Thank you, my son.” My lord of Winchester raised himself from his chair, making gratefully for his bed, a tired man made more tired by the uneasy feeling that something had got away from him.
As the door closed behind him, Father Guy’s eyes at last met those of Dr. Arnulf.
The doctor nodded. “Write the letter, then,” he said.
OUTSIDE ONE OF the tents surrounding the château, Admiral O’Donnell was playing chess with Locusta by the light of a fire.
“Ah, Peter,” he called as the servant passed him. “Who’s our visitor? The one with a look that would perish the Danes?”
“Brought a message from the Bishop of Aveyron, my lord.”
“Did he, now?” The Irishman moved his queen. “And what was the letter about?”
Peter told him.
“Cathars,” said the O‘Donnell, nodding. “Bad cess to ’em.”
“Checkmate.” Locusta grinned. “You’re off your game tonight, my lord.”
“To you the glory.” He stretched and yawned. “And me for me bed. Good night, gentlemen.”
SINCE LIFE, even in despair, had to be lived, the prisoners made the best of it.
They established their own routine. Every morning-if it was morning-they took turns to press their faces to the doors’ bars and talk to one another. This was harder on Adelia and Boggart than the men since, to reach the aperture, both women had to stand on tiptoe, a stance that couldn’t be maintained for too long.
Then, at Adelia’s insistence, they all took exercise by walking twenty times round the walls of the cells. These were of stone and extensive, something their occupants were forced to establish by pace and feel. Rankin, during one of his conversations with Adelia through their door bars, shouted: “For what wud a man o’ God want wi’ sic space for his paiks, lessen he’s a black-avised, messan-dog o’ a limmer?”
Which, interpreted, was a good question. Had the bishops of Aveyron who’d built this place so distrusted their flock that they envisaged incarcerating the hundreds these cells could hold? Was the present incumbent expecting to fill them with Cathars?
In the afternoon-if it was afternoon-they kept up their spirits by singing or reciting, each taking it in turn to stand near the door so that his or her voice could reach the others. In the case of Adelia this was a penance, for her as well as everybody else; she had the singing voice of an off-key crow and restricted herself to chanting nursery rhymes her childhood English nurse had taught her in Sicily
Ulf’s voice was little better so he chose to recount tales of Hereward the Wake and the fight that fenland hero had put up against William the Conqueror. Mansur’s high, clear treble sent songs of the Tigris-Euphrates marshland into which he’d been born ringing down the tunnel. Boggart sang pretty ballads she’d picked up from marketplace minstrels. Rankin, in a tuneful and deep bass, rendered incomprehensible but heart-stirring airs from the Highlands and bewailed the fact that he hadn’t his peeps with which he could have kept up their spirits even further.
“Er, ‘peeps’?”
“Bagpipes,” came the gloomy explanation in Ulf’s voice. “We been spared them at least.”
This was their defiance: no hymns, never hymns; in this place they would not give voice to the God worshipped by the Bishop of Aveyron.
But they became more and more tired; their scraps of food were leftovers from the palace kitchens and, always supposing the cook hadn’t spat in them, were of good quality but too meager to be sustaining. Adelia, her shoulder aching badly, berated the guards on behalf of Boggart who, as she pointed out, should be eating for two, but the rations weren’t increased so she went without herself.
And still Rowley didn’t come for them.
Eventually, they stopped singing; emaciation does not lend itself to song. Mostly they sat quietly Even Adelia had given up pointing out that the length of their incarceration proved that Aveyron was waiting for word from Figères before he took any action-there had been time for it to come many times over.
It was Ulf, next door, who tired her even more. His youth gave him the energy to be furious at what, he had now contrived to believe, was treachery to Adelia, not Ermengarde, a theory he kept putting forward to her through the bars of his cell.
“They was after you,” he insisted.
“They were after Ermengarde,” she said wearily “They just happened to capture us with her and thought we were Cathars.”
“Oh, I grant you the bastards were after Ermengarde, but who told them where she was knowíng we were with her and they’d take us for Cathars? Eh? Tell me that. She and Aelith had been refugin’ in that cottage for months, why did the bastards come for her when we were there? Eh? Too much of a coincidence if you ask me.”
There was a simpler explanation and Adelia had pressed her face closer to the bars of her door so that she could voice it quietly because it was too awful to be spoken out loud.
“Ulf, it was us. Rowley and Locusta were riding back and forth to the cowshed every day. Two well-dressed men like that-they were bound to attract the attention of people on the road. They made somebody curious; perhaps he crept up the hill to find out where they were going, saw the Cathar women, spread the word. God forgive us, it was us. We led Aveyron’s men to her…” She couldn’t finish.
But Ulf equat
ed their misfortune to others that had marred Adelia’s progress on the journey: the death of the horse that had thrown her, the murder of Brune who had railed against her. “I tell you, some bugger was out to bring you down. You, not her.”
Hunger and her aching collarbone brought on a terrible irritation. “Well, they’ve done it, haven’t they?” she shouted. “And all of you with me.” She heard her voice rippling along the tunnel, carrying defeat with it, and tried to make amends: “But Rowley will come, I know it.”
She no longer knew it, and after that she gave up saying so.
THE RATTLE OF KEYS coming down the steps from the guardroom brought the prisoners’ bodies to attention and slaver to their mouths, but bewilderment to their minds. Had another twenty-four hours gone by? It wasn’t time for their meal yet.
Though light came into the tunnel, their doors remained locked. Hauling herself up so that she could look through the bars, Adelia saw Father Gerhardt standing outside Mansur, Ulf, and Rankin’s cell. There was a scroll in his hands, and his teeth were showing in the glare of torchlight held for him by one of the guards. “Can all of you hear me?”
Nobody answered; they could hear him.
He began reading. “Hereby is notification from our good and saintly Bishop of Aveyron that the five Cathars in his custody have been found guilty of the most foul sin of heresy. Whereof it has been witnessed that they did congregate in a hut in the hills to perform wicked acts, the devil manifesting himself to them in the shape of a black dog, the Cathars prostrating themselves before it and performing lewd dances…”
There was uproar from the men’s cell; Mansur was shouting in Arabic, Rankin in Gaelic. Above them both rose Ulf’s voice: “Witnessed? Who witnessed that? Give us his name, you bastard.”
“… after which each applied his and her lips to the creature’s rear end in a kiss and did begin copulating with one another…”
“Dog?” asked Boggart, trying to hear. “Only dog we got was Ward.”
Adelia shook her head. Inevitably a dog. Or a goat. Sometimes a cat or toad. And always the osculum infame, the obscene kiss. It was the age-old accusation made against Jews, supposed witches, heretics; never varying except in small detail. God, how tired she was.
Ulf was continuing to demand the name of their accuser. “You bastard, we ain’t even had a trial.”
Stop it, she thought. Darling boy, save your breath. Were not under Henry Plantagenet’s justice now. No trial here, no defense, just sentence.
Father Gerhardt went steadily on, his rising staccato drowning Ulf’s shouts like a hammer. “In accord with which acts, it has been agreed that such wickedness has proved these heretics barred from the mercy of Christ and that their bodies must suffer the penalty of burning that their souls might appear before God’s great Judgment Seat in some part purified cf theír great sins. The sentence to be carried out at twelve noon tomorrow.”
The priest rolled up the scroll and signaled to the guards to light him back to the steps.
Ulf’s voice became a scream. “In the name o’ God, send to Carcassonne, ask the Bishop of Saint Albans. We ain’t Cathars, he’ll tell you.”
“Your bishop is no longer at Carcassonne; he has gone down into Italy”
“Send to Figères, then.”
The priest paused and turned. His smile, if it was a smile, widened. “We have sent,” he said, “and received a reply They don’t know you.”
Adelia let go of the bars and slid down to the floor. A small hand felt for hers in the darkness. There was a whisper. “Burn us? They going to burn us?”
She was dumb.
“Cut me,” Boggart said urgently. “You got to cut me.”
Adelia held her close. “Shhh.”
“Get the baby out. Don’t let ’em burn my baby Cut my belly open, get the baby out. Pull it. You can do that.”
“Sweetheart, I can’t. I can’t. Almighty God help us, I can’t do anything.”
“IT IS DONE, Wolf, my love. The long plan, all our wiles and stratagems have borne their fruit. She’ll die screaming. And, yes, we shall be there, you and I. We will creep away to watch her burn, sniff the smell of roasting pig, see her pork form a rich crackling before she crumbles to cinders. Quae vide, my Lupus. See what I have achieved in your name and be proud of me.”
BOGGART WAS QUIET NOW. They were all quiet. Adelia’s cell was full of Allie and music. She watched her child dance, the little hands waving.
The notes became discordant, changing into the rattle of keys.
God, they’re here. Allie. Not yet, not yet. Jesus, I’m so afraid.
They were opening the men’s door. A kerfuffle-bless them, they won’t go without a fight. Me, too. I’ll run on their spears. God be with me in this, the hour of my death.
She was so deaf and blind with terror that she didn’t hear her own cell door opening, nor see the light as it shone on where she crouched, clutching Boggart in her arms.
And then Mansur was in front of her, holding out his hand. Yes, my dear, I’ll go with you. Just stay close, promise to stay close.
Ulf and Rankin, they were all there. And, behind them, somebody else, telling her something… about shoes?
“Take them off,” he was saying. “Tuck them in your belt. Is the woman sensible? And the Boggart’s. Quiet as mice, now.”
She’d heard the voice before, seen the man; couldn’t put a name to him. But now here was Ulf’s face, alight and eager. “Come on, missus, ups-a-daisy.” He leaned down and snatched off her shoe, the only one she had.
They were out in the tunnel, following a torch held by the strange familiar man.
Up the stairs to the guardroom, where a figure in Aveyron uniform was lying on the noor-his throat cut.
The man put the torch he was holding into a wall sconce and left it there, so that its light shone wetly on the blood of the guard he’d killed.
Up again, into the palace hall. Darkish, lit by a single flambeau; bodies lying in the shadows of the niches. Dead, too?
No, asleep. Servants. She could hear snores. It was night, then. The floor seemed to spread for miles, like a lake, before it reached the outer doors leading to the square; impossible to cross without waking the sleepers.
She was gathering herself now, terror replaced by another comprising wild fear and hope as their bare feet hurried soundlessly over the tiles, following the man… it was the Irishman. The O’Donnell was helping them escape. Rowley had sent him to get them out of here.
But he wasn’t getting them out. Instead of heading for the main doors, the man was taking them toward the entrance to the tower in which they’d first been imprisoned. Its door was open. He stood beside it, waving them to start the ascent ahead of him. We’ve been up there, she thought. There’s no way out that way. I don’t trust him, I don’t trust him.
She could hardly stand and argue; one of the sleeping bodies against the nearer wall was muttering and stirring. Mansur, Ulf, and Rankin were already at the foot of the tower steps, looking back to make sure she and Boggart were following. Quickly pushing Boggart into the turret, Adelia went in after her, the Irishman at her back. As he closed the door behind them, its hinges squeaked-and her nerves with them, so that she stood still, frozen, waiting for discovery. Instead she got a shove and a hissed: “Mother of God, will you move?”
With the door shut, they were in blackness. Up, then, up the winding thread of steps, feeling their way, up past doors leading to store cupboards, some of them open, others shut, none of them apparently occupied. Adelia gave a fractious whisper over her shoulder: “Why are we going up, not out?”
“This is out. Get on.”
It cost her, it cost all the prisoners, weak as they were, to keep climbing. Sobbing for breath, Boggart was beginning to lumber and Adelia had to reach up until, with her one good arm, she located the girl’s backside and she could push.
An unencumbered moon shone into the top room; better still, night air came in through the windows smelling of field
s and distance; their laboring lungs sucked it in.
Boggart sank down on the floor, exhausted, but the Irishman pulled her to her feet. “Not yet, missus. Now we go down.”
The mullion of the window overlooking the rear roofs of the palace had ropes tied round it in complicated knotting; a grappling hook by which they’d been thrown up in order to catch round it was on the floor.
“Who goes first?” the O’Donnell said. “Easy as kiss-me-hand and the good Deniz down there ready to catch you.”
He looked toward Adelia. She shook her head at him; if it was as easy as kiss-me-hand, then Boggart must have the first chance of escape. But the maid shrank back, frightened, and Adelia wasn’t going without her. Probably, she thought, I’m not going at all, not with this bloody shoulder.
“I’ll go,” came Ulf’s voice.
Was that Ulf, that stick of a boy with hollow eyes and cheeks? Was the bearded scarecrow Rankin?
The others watched as the Irishman put a loop round the boy’s left foot and made sure his hands were firmly grasping another length of rope. “I’ll ease you down, lad. Just keep hold.” He leaned out of the window and, cupping his own hands, hooted like an owl.
There was an answering hoot from far below. “Off you go now, as my old granny said when she kicked the peddler over the cliff.”
Leaning out, Adelia saw the moonlight touching Ulf’s tow-colored hair and the white of his knuckles around the rope as he went down with the O’Donnell above paying it out, using the mullion as a fulcrum. The black depth below rushed up at her so that she flinched back before forcing herself to lean out again.
Ulf had stopped, he was stuck; he was struggling with a shadowy figure.
“They’ve got him.”
“Who has?” The O’Donnell stuck his head through the window. “No, that’s Deniz. Your boy’s just made the first of the descents, that’s all.”
There were two? Yes, of course, this was the window at the back of the turret, but after the roofs below it lay another drop of at least fifty feet. Again, Adelia felt the helpless irritation of hunger and fear. This was overelaborate and dangerous; Boggart wouldn’t be able to do it; she didn’t think she could. “Why couldn’t we go out through the doors?”
A Murderous Procession aka The Assassin Page 19
