The Devil's Crossing

by Hana Cole

  ‘I will find him and I will return him to you.’ He caressed her face. ‘And you will be waiting .’

  She nodded. ‘I will be waiting.’

  He emptied the contents of his money pouch onto the bedside table, then he reached for his rosary and folded it into her palm along with the coins.

  ‘Don’t sell it for less than five livres.’

  ‘Please,’ she offered it back. ‘I would sooner take a finger from you.’

  He stared at the miniature crucified Christ lying on a bed of coral beads - his mother’s deathbed.

  ‘If you don’t take it back now Gui, I will think you don’t mean to return.’

  He picked up the beads.

  ‘This aunt that you spoke of, have you sent for her? You will need help.’ He smiled. ‘And I will need a place to bring Etienne back to.’

  ‘The keeper here sent a message, he can tell you where she lives. He is a good man.’

  Gui looked around the room for something to do, some distraction that would stall him there.

  ‘Gui, you must go. I will be well,’ she said, but Gui saw her eyelids flicker briefly downwards.

  ‘I know.’

  Every moment he spent looking at her ebbed his resolve, so, suddenly, decisively, he picked up his bag. ‘I love you,’ he said.

  ‘I love you, too.’

  And he closed the door behind him.

  *

  Shrouded in a black cloak, the prelate stood on the harbour and watched the sun melt into the sea. Hand of God notwithstanding, the cargo would be well on its way by now, although you never could be sure what would happen at sea. Irritation needled his skin. Over five hundred miles, dispatched like an errand boy. He was a man of high standing not some roadside pedlar. He bit at the skin of his nail bed. The Venetian trader was late. May God grant the day when he no longer had to deal with middlemen. Calling in more favours than he wanted to and all for the acquaintance of a fat little fix-it man with bug eyes and grasping fingers.

  He narrowed his eyes at the galley preparing to depart. A vessel of the military orders - he couldn’t touch it. On the ship’s prow, gaze cast out to the horizon, a black mop of hair caught bronze in the evening sun. The corrosive bile of hatred gnawed at his insides.

  ‘Sorry.’ The portly trader was sweating. ‘I lost a Pisan cog and Hulk full of oil.’

  The inquisitor blinked slowly, swallowing down the vitriol he wished to direct at the Italian.

  ‘It was not my fault your men identified to wrong boy,’ Zonta said reproachfully.

  De Nogent inhaled deeply. He had sent two guards who claimed to be from Montoire to identify Le Coudray’s bastard, but the brat they delivered turned out to be a Breton rag seller and completely worthless to him. Narrow is the way, he reminded himself. There would be other ways to lure Le Coudray to him.

  ‘Please do not tax me any further, Signor Zonta,’ he said.

  ‘Easy to say when it’s not your money,’ Zonta retorted. ‘You think you can get your cargo to market without me?’

  There are always people like you, thought de Nogent, summoning a sneer.

  ‘Unfortunately, there is someone else wants a piece of our merchandise,’ he fingered towards the galley. ‘And I need you to ensure that he never finds it.’

  ‘I am not an assassin,’ said the middleman, eyes round in mock offense.

  ‘Deal with it as you wish.’ The inquisitor gave a dismissive wave as a dozen seabirds took screeching to the air in the wake of the war galley reaming away from its mooring.

  ‘Our target is the man with the black hair on the prow. Don’t worry, he isn’t a knight.’

  ‘The one looking back to shore?’

  On the deck, a man with black curly hair was staring out from under a shielded brow, as though he were scanning for a familiar face.

  ‘Yes,’ said the prelate. ‘That’s the one.’

  PART TWO - The Banners of Hell’s Monarch

  Chapter Fifteen

  ‘My poor child,’ the voice said, placing a cool palm against Agnes’s forehead. ‘What is this ailment?’ Without strain, the arms, strong from decades of supporting whatever burdens had fallen to them, worked their way under her back and lifted her up. The woman’s face she had not seen since she was child, but as she peered over her, Agnes recognised her without hesitation. For all the weather and toil it had seen, her aunt’s cheeks were still as plump and content as she remembered.

  ‘How weak you are,’ she heard the voice say, although it seemed more distant now.

  Agnes tried to reply, but the sound that came out was a groan, carried away on a tide of relief that washed over her body.

  Aunt Margarida was the eldest of Estève’s sisters and she had lived on a smallholding with her husband since they were wed, forty years gone. Slight and sinewy, Arnaud was dwarfed by Margarida. Toiling content in the background, he reminded Agnes of one of the small figures in a grand wall painting, towing a handcart or scything wheat - he was always there, but you didn’t always see him the first time you looked.

  Forty years together and six children, two buried before them; little about their lives seemed changed to Agnes. For two weeks she had lain hidden under a mound of blankets while Margarida spooned her broth and angelica root to break the fever. In and out of the earthly realm she tumbled, rolling on waves of delirium.

  Twice she saw them standing at the foot of her pallet, their shadows blanched by a halo of light. Gui’s arm was around their son. ‘Come with us,’ they said. Extending her arm she tried to rise like Tabitha, only to find herself wrestling the staying hand of Margarida, who dragged her back down to her sickbed – and into the world of pain.

  The fever passed, sobriety returned, and with it demons of the lower spheres. Announced by a terrible ache in her bones, they rode on the leaden weariness of her soul until she was paralysed. Her loved ones, far beyond her reach, were lost to the vicissitudes of Fortune. All she could do was pray. Around her, a lifetime of clutter and a warm hearth gave the living room a cosiness that seemed to stall time. The Sirens of a soporific eternity called her to yield - a deceit from which she knew she had to wrench herself free if she were ever to see her family again. What use is a sickbed? If pray is all you can do, then best you pray harder, Agnes Le Coudray.

  Weeks later, when Aunt Margarida was certain of her recovery, she placed the walnut box before Agnes. It was enough to blanket the fatigue that still lingered from her illness. Decorated with brass and mother of pearl lattice, a neat cursive inscribed inside the lid - For Agnes. One of the many birthday gifts from her father that had faded from her memory. Now, as she fingered the engraving, it seemed to radiate a talismanic power. Conjuring her father’s beaming face in her mind’s eye, she felt the warmth of his hand on her shoulder, as real as the box before her. A breath of wind cooled her face. Papà.

  ‘By the time it reached us we knew he was gone.’ Margarida rubbed a venous calf. ‘We prayed for you but we feared the worst.’

  ‘Someone was listening.’ Agnes nodded to the statue of Mary Magdalene, garlanded with small, white flowers on a plinth by the door. Margarida’s eyes twinkled, and kissing her knuckle, she crossed herself.

  ‘Holy mother is always listening.’

  Agnes lifted out the contents with the reverent awe of a child opening a Christmas box. What was this message she had travelled a thousand miles and a sea of heartbreak to receive? The scrolls looked almost new, their browning ink the only clue of the time that had past since they were penned. She untied the ribbons and laid the curled parchments on the table before her - little shavings of a past forever snapping at her heels. They contained her father’s will and the title deeds of his land holdings, along with pages roughly torn from his business ledgers - all of it long since carried off by the Church, she supposed. In addition there was a map, crudely sketched, its margins annotated in a scratchy hand that told Agnes of the pressure her father was under when he wrote it: Six young ones. Saracens. De Coucy ?

/>   ‘Six young ones? It’s so strange. There was nothing more?’

  Aunt Margarida gave a soft tut.

  ‘The map looks like the back of my grandparents’ summer house. I only went there a few times, but I think this is it. It was part of my mother’s castellany.’

  ‘They left it to a woman?’ Aunt’s voice lifted in surprise.

  ‘Her brother Geoffroi never saw adulthood. A cousin claimed it, but papà had word he died without heir. So it came to us.’ Agnes shrugged. ‘To me.’

  A low susurration escaped the old woman’s lips. ‘Nearly ten thousand acres.’

  ‘The yield didn’t even match father’s business…’ Agnes rubbed at the base of her throat, her sentence choked off by the knotted vines of the past.

  ‘But it made you a Lady,’ Aunt said with a slow nod that seemed to Agnes to be an acknowledgment of what that really meant - a woman with a title was little more than chattel to be bartered for like livestock on market day. ‘And we all know how those Northern lords love their titles.’ The old lady burrowed a finger inside her bulky bun of hair and gave the back of her skull a considered scratch. Her shoulders dropped with a sigh, and Agnes could feel their communion of hurt spanning the silence.

  She blinked back the sting of tears. ‘I’m sorry…’

  ‘Whatever for, my child?’

  All Agnes could do was shake her head. I could have saved him, were the words she could not pronounce.

  ‘There now, child, we are all better off without such false friends as riches.’

  Agnes patted the damp from her cheeks. ‘I know that, aunt. But there is more.’ She traced the words Estève had scrawled onto the parchment. Six young ones. ‘Father meant to tell me something with this. I know he did.’

  Aunt Margarida raised her shoulders in long, elaborate consideration that Agnes knew was Occitan for a concession, reluctantly given.

  ‘Who are these young ones?’ Agnes’s eyes returned to the parchment. She leant forward, her father’s call from the grave kindling urgency. ‘What if papà wanted me to do something?’

  ‘The jealousy and greed of lesser men killed your father, my love. Lesser men, but better protected. How I wish it was not so. Your uncle Raimond told us they took Estève’s holdings around here. Gave them to a Northern crusader. Raimond petitioned the Count of Toulouse, but….’ Her brow drifted up.

  ‘Count Raimond has bigger battles to fight.’

  ‘Crusaders they call themselves, yet they slaughter God’s children.’ Aunt flicked her hand in disgust. ‘What can the count do but fight? What can any of us do less we renounce our kin, our way of life? Rome sends inquisitors to denounce us as heretics, then they call in their French dogs to spill our blood and reward them with our land. It won’t be long and our ways will be stamped out for good.’

  The fire hissed as boiling water overflowed from the pan. Aunt leapt up and unflinching, lifted the pot from the flame with her bare hands.

  ‘There is a new foundling house on your father’s old estate now,’ she continued, pouring the bubbling water into a bucket of nettles. ‘Built by Rome for the orphans of those they burn as heretics.’

  ‘Dear Lord. Those poor children.’ The young ones.

  ‘Let us be thankful at least that your father never learned of the evil they have turned it to.’ Margarida placed her hands on her hips. ‘With wealth comes power. And with power comes enemies.’ She picked up the box, studying the lattice work as though there were something to be read in the pattern. ‘Doesn’t your Gui hail from the same place as your mother? When he returns, perhaps he…’

  ‘Gui doesn’t know everything,’ Agnes blurted, heat colouring her neck. ‘About the past. I mean there are some things…’

  ‘Then who is there to tell him?’ The old lady’s wide-set eyes closed with a resigned smile.

  ‘No one.’ A dull ache spread in Agnes’s chest, companion to her guilty heart.

  ‘What is it, little one? You want to tell me something but you are afraid.’

  Agnes longed to confess to aunt what no other living soul knew. Her lungs felt as though they were being crushed by the weight of what she would say, making it impossible to speak. The casket of shame had been locked too well, even for someone with the kind heart of Aunt Margarida to prise open.

  ‘It’s nothing.’ She softened her brow and smiled for the old woman who would happily have hidden her and her box of secrets until they were all dead and long forgotten.

  More than ever though, Agnes could feel the gnawing certainty in her gut that those secrets would not lie. That they would hunt her down, dogged as her pursuers. She also knew that if she did not leave soon, her presence here would bring the inquisition to aunt’s door. And she could no more repay Margarida’s loyalty with such risk than she could wipe the faces of Gui and Etienne from her mind.

  The faces of those beloved she kept in close recall. In a blink of an eye she could walk in the woods outside Montoire with the cold mulch of leaves beneath her feet, feel the warmth of Gui’s body as she slipped her arms under his cloak, or smile at her boy as he stoked the fire, his face the same look of studied concentration as his father’s.

  Perhaps that had been the real cause of her illness, she considered. Everything she could not forget. The idea that she might never hold them to her again flooded her with panic. Was their future in her hands? She cannot have come all this way, endured as she had for no purpose. What if this was the reason the Gui and Etienne had been separated from her? A test of her worth. A demand for action pit against an oppressive enemy whose name she knew was Fear.

  She enclosed her face in her hands then peeled them away, seeking a new window on the world. A world away from Montoire. Why had it taken this for her to see? For too long she had allowed her family to shelter in the safety of Gui’s office. The office that kept them all bound. The thump of her heart in the pit of her stomach told her that she and she alone could complete this task. She glanced over to the statue, then bowed her head in silent prayer that she find the strength to drink from the cup of courage. Holy mother is always listening.

  Just a day or two more of rest was all she could allow. The longer she stayed, the more likely she would bring her troubles upon aunt. She had to uncover whatever it was the little map concealed. It contained the key to their freedom she could feel it. Whatever it was it had been important enough for her father to consign it to parchment and dispatch it to the future. Now, as the last rays of the sun’s light dappled the table before her, she felt her blood stir with the hope that here would be the explanation for all that had befallen them. Something that, God willing, might recover her father’s good name and set her family on a path to a surer future. She knew she had to find a way to lift the dark shroud of the past if she was ever to quieten the voice that told her the more righteous course would be to give herself up to the inquisition and set everybody else free. Perhaps the power to redeem the future for them all was in her hands after all. Perhaps then, God willing, her boys would be returned to her.

  *

  The messenger shrugged. ‘We did everything we could.’ He cast an eye to his colleague, but receiving no exchange of confraternity, jabbered on alone.

  ‘The innkeeper said an old woman came to take her the day before. We couldn’t find out who she was. It’s Cathar territory.’

  The other man shook his head sagely. ‘They don’t talk.’

  ‘I am aware of the difficulties.’ The inquisitor tapped his bony fingers sharply on the desk. ‘Rest assured the armies of the Church are working as we speak to exterminate their contamination from the Provence.’

  The two soldiers nodded stiffly.

  ‘So we have two possibilities, don’t we?’ said de Nogent. ‘Either she is still with this old woman. Or she has returned north.’

  ‘Right.’ They nodded keenly. ‘We’ll start asking around the Chartraine. We’ll find out soon enough if she’s come back north.’

  The inquisitor forced a stretched sm
ile. ‘If we can avoid making our inquiries a public event.’

  Both men gave a confused frown. ‘But how are we going to find her if we don’t ask about?’

  The skinny fingers drummed.

  ‘The arraignment of this woman is of the utmost importance.’ A deeper sigh this time. ‘Let us just say that it will be personally very unfortunate for me and personally very unfortunate for you were I to be forced to explain that she is lost.’

  Nods of understanding. ‘Right. Leave it to us, your reverence. If she’s back in the Chartraine we’ll find her, quiet as mice.’

  Bernard de Nogent folded his hands together in an attitude of long-suffering patience. With Courville’s bastard beyond his grasp for now, Le Coudray was the only leverage he had over Maintenon. That she was harbouring his secrets, wittingly or otherwise, he had no doubt. And if anyone had the techniques to prise such information from a person, it was he.

  ‘Remember the Le Coudray girl is to come to me unharmed,’ he said pleasantly.

  ‘Unharmed. For questioning.’

  De Nogent nodded slowly as his butler tapped on the open door.

  ‘The wagon, your reverence.’

  ‘Excellent. Unload it into the library. I will come immediately.’

  The manservant dropped his head even lower.

  ‘Gentlemen, other matters call.’

  The retainers sloped off behind the hunch-backed butler, their path crossed by two coachmen, struggling with a large chest. The inquisitor cast a half smile.

  ‘Excellent, bring it through,’ he gesticulating keenly to the spot next to his desk.

  Prising open the treasure chest he let out a grunt of delight. The first returns from his new venture. Delving his hand into the chest he picked up a fistful of coins. Fruits to be picked from the darkness and transformed into His light.

  Bernard de Nogent placed his eyeglass down on the desk with utmost care and rubbed the bridge of his nose where the wooden frame had left an imprint.