The Devil's Crossing

by Hana Cole

  Gui looked down. ‘Please. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…’

  ‘I know,’ Yalda replied. ‘Muslims are not supposed to enslave their fellow believers either. And yet they do. What is it your book says about money and a camel.’

  Gui laughter snagged on his bruised ribs. ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom Heaven.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it! Rich men. They are the same whatever faith they profess.’

  ‘You know who my assailant was?’

  Yalda wagged an elegant finger. ‘No. But someone wants you to go no further.’ She poured Gui a cup of warm lemon and aniseed.

  Gui delved into the leg of his hose and withdrew the papayri he had managed to grab at the Fondaco. ‘This man. This Roberto Sandolin,’ he said, ordering the pages. ‘Here it lists some slaves he declared to Venetian customs in his real name. Slaves from the Black Sea.’

  ‘Are there any from your land?’ She asked.

  Gui scanned the documents, allowing each page to float down to the floor as he finished. ‘No. All from Azov.’

  ‘Does it say where they were sold on?’

  Squinting to decipher the tiny script concertinaed at the margins of the pages, Gui hunted for a place name.

  ‘Here. Al Qa’hira.’

  ‘Cairo,’ Yalda said. ‘If your trader has links with the Cairo markets it’s likely most of his business is done there. Further away from the Venetian administrators.’ Her eyes brightened. ‘Your son, how is he?’

  ‘How do you mean? Physically?’

  ‘Physically, yes, tall, strong? But also in the mind?’ She pressed her index finger to her temple.

  ‘He is blond, average height for his age. I think. Not especially strong but determined, resourceful,’ Gui said, eyes wrinkling briefly in recollection, then falling solemn as he stared into the grave symmetry of the face before him.

  ‘He can read?’

  ‘He can,’ said Gui.

  ‘Ma’shallah.’ She clapped her hands like an enthusiastic tutor. ‘Then let us hope he has gone to the main market in Cairo. Sometimes the sultan and his govenors take Franks to teach their own children. They select the boys and girls when they arrive. The best ones go to the bigger markets for the highest prices.’

  ‘And the others?’ Gui swallowed hard on a sip of the astringent drink.

  Her eyelashes briefly covered her eyes. ‘Pray to your God he is as strong as you believe.’

  ‘I think he is. He is quick on his wits as well.’ Gui rubbed at the back of his neck, reluctant to ask for more charity. Yalda anticipated him.

  ‘When you get to the market in Cairo, you must check the ledgers. They record all the slaves sold there, the price, where they are from. A friend of mine can help you. Tariq, a eunuch. He is a free man now but he still works at the market as an administrator.’

  Hands supporting his ribs, Gui tried to stand, but the stab of his wounds took the air from his lungs.

  ‘Not yet. At least a day’s rest.’

  Yalda’s hand glanced his arm - a gentle touch such as he might have used himself to console the ailing. For a moment Gui hovered in the sea-green eyes, the urge to respond to her beauty building like a wave inside him. The only thing he had to stop himself from being dragged into its swell was the truth.

  ‘I was a priest,’ he said. ‘We are not permitted to marry but my son lived with me. And his mother.’

  ‘That is not so rare.’ Yalda raised a sculpted brow, closing her lips on a bite of sweetmeat. ‘Your priests live also in my land. Who knows why they do not convert to the Greek Church and take a wife?’ She paused. Gave half a smirk. ‘All this nonsense about the nature of Christ.’

  Gui exploded with laughter, delighting in her casual irreverence, and the possibility that he could lay down his conflict so easily.

  ‘You know he is a prophet in Islam?’ Yalda shrugged. ‘What difference does it really make to your church if the priests wed or not?

  ‘Because in my land you leave your land to your first born son,’ he said flatly, suddenly seized with ire at all it had cost him. ‘The church does not permit priests to wed. It would lose too much land to their children.’

  ‘And these were the people you worked for?’ Yalda smiled broadly. ‘I prefer my clients!’

  The heat of the day was spilling in through the shutters, filling the room with a heavy stillness. Swallowing down the pain, Gui swung his feet to the floor and leant forward, taking Yalda’s hand.

  ‘You have put yourself in danger and shown me kindness. I must repay you with something.’

  She leant forward to meet him, her hair brushing his cheek.

  ‘I have all that I need,’ she spoke softly. ‘Let us say this is personal. It would warm my heart to see your boy returned safe to you and his mother…if she..?’

  ‘Agnes.’ Gui smiled with relief to speak her name.

  Yalda nodded keenly. ‘She awaits you in France?’

  ‘She does.’ Gui pressed his palms together and brought his fingertips to his brow. ‘I pray.’

  The feline eyes fluttered and Yalda’s hands opened in prayer.

  ‘Alhamdulillah.’ Then, golden bracelets chinking, she reclined back onto her cushions and into silence.

  *

  The wind was like nothing she could remember. Surging in waves it battered the buildings and chopped at the legs of the pedlars and moneychangers, the messengers and soldiers all milling in a bottleneck outside the city gates. She had given Lady de Coucy four weeks to receive and deliberate upon her note. Now the appointed day had arrived and God had chosen to unleash his fury. If I were a lady of a noble house I would stay at home, she thought.

  It had taken her just over half a day to walk from the cottage at Houx. Dressed in her tunic and hose, one of Gaston’s woollen caps flopping over her brow, she kept mainly to the canal towpaths, as unremarkable as any bargeman’s boy. Now she lingered by the well-furrowed bridge at the city’s main gate and there were many more eyes to subject her to scrutiny. Her gaze stayed trained on her boots - she knew she did not have the eyes of a man. She would not be able to stay there for long.

  Noon, her note said, but noon was long past. As the wind billowed at her clothes and stole her breath, she realised how fanciful was the notion that her avenging angel would arrive in the form of Margueritte’s mother. I have been a fool. She scratched vigorously at her hip where the coarse belt was rubbing, enjoying the sharp relief of her nails and the freedom of this mannish etiquette. The pale grey disk of winter sun was falling behind the cathedral. How much longer could she wait? Or, more importantly, how long would it take before she was able to tear herself away from this thread of hope?

  ‘You walk well but your waist is too slender to be a man.’

  Agnes lifted her eyes from the speaker’s pointed footwear. A dark green cloak covered a velvet dress of the same colour. Well cut, elegant, but with no fur, it did not invite jealous stares. The elfin face wore its lines handsomely, kind, hazel eyes shone out from hooded lids.

  ‘Lady Yolande de Coucy?’

  ‘So you are Agnes.’

  ‘Madame, I am.’

  Lady Yolande nodded in approval and Agnes exhaled. The canny eyes flicked a sideways glance. ‘We should move from here.’

  They descended from the bridge and walked alongside the canal where the city’s tanners had shuttered their riverside workshops from the weather. The punts that were ordinarily loaded with bundles of wool, hides, honey, were shackled to the bank. Marguerrite’s mother stopped and pulled out the little emerald heart from her muffler.

  ‘It is hers,’ she said, voice betraying none of the emotion etched on her face. ‘It was part of an earring. A betrothal gift from her father.’ Lady Yolande was staring at it as though she expected it to speak. A gust of wind buffeted the pair and she clamped her fist protectively around the gemstone. Agnes could feel the weight of the other woman’s heart, long submerged in a well of grief.
The unaffected manner of the older woman encouraged Agnes to speak directly.

  ‘You don’t believe your daughter died of plague?’

  Lady Yolande smiled at Agnes but there was no mistaking the scrutiny in her face. ‘Your letter said you know where Margueritte is buried. But it did not tell me who you are.’

  Suddenly Agnes’s mind was racing. She had thought of little other than winning Lady Yolande’s support. For a moment she stared back, adrift in the realisation that she must dredge her past once again before a stranger.

  ‘Forgive me, Madame. There was much I feared to disclose in a letter.’

  Lady de Coucy listened, composed, as Agnes began her story, but the petite face soon crumpled before the horror, her eyes glassed over with tears for the fate her daughter did not escape.

  ‘I am sorry about your son. Some of our tenants lost children to this shepherd’s crusade,’ Margueritte’s mother said, accepting the coarse, hemp handkerchief Agnes offered. Whatever distinction of status there had been between the women was gone.

  ‘I never liked Maintenon,’ she said stiffly. ‘Margueritte’s letters home, they were… There are some things only a mother can know.’ She glanced down, momentarily bereft of words. ‘Maintenon said she died of plague, but we were offered no chance to see her body. ’ Lady de Coucy drew back her shoulders and set her jaw. ‘I would very much like to have her back home.’ She seemed to be throwing down a gauntlet to her years of incertitude, and Agnes allowed herself to take encouragement.

  ‘Your husband?’

  ‘He was on crusade with Maintenon. I am here without his knowledge.’ Lady de Coucy raised a resigned brow.

  ‘Even if you could show him Margueritte was slain?’

  ‘He believes in honour. He is not the sort of man to open sealed boxes. I would need cast iron proof before he would even consider a fellow crusader guilty of such a thing.’ She turned her head into the gusting wind, defiant. ‘If I go to her what will I find?’

  ‘There are some clothes, fragments…you may recognise them. ’ Agnes spoke with Gui’s soft tone of reverence. ‘But the rest…’

  Margueritte’s mother nodded, stalwart. ‘I will know if it’s her,’ she said. Lapsing into silence, she stared, hollow-cheeked, at the river. A gust of wind spat a plume of water at them, soaking Yolande, and she turned instinctively for the steps. Agnes could feel her chance slipping away. Her mind raced for a way to prolong the exchange.

  ‘There are others too, young children, buried with your daughter. If you were able to alert someone, we might be able to stop him,’ she blurted, willing the other woman to give her something more. ‘It might help you to find some peace.’

  ‘Young children?’ Lady Yolande raised her hand to her chest. She opened her mouth to speak but no words came.

  ‘My lady?’

  Yolande looked away. Her gaze seemed fixed upon a memory as she said, ‘In Margueritte’s letters to me she talked of house servants. Moorish boys and girls. How often they came and went...’ She sealed her fingertips over her mouth and Agnes knew she would say no more.

  ‘Merciful Lord,’ whispered Agnes. Just as Gaston had described. ‘You have to stop him!’ She had not meant to say the words aloud and she felt the other woman flinch beside her. The instinct to apologise for the unintended sting parted her lips, but she found she could not recant the sentiment. ‘If we don’t stop him…’ she said quietly.

  Yolande de Coucy studied Agnes. Her face seemed aged. Will that face be mine ten years gone? Agnes thought. A child lost, the will for justice ebbed too far from reach. There was a moment in the silent exchange that followed when Lady Yolande’s eyes seemed to catch fire, and Agnes thought she had changed her mind. All at once she straightened her back, business-like, and said simply, ‘Madame Agnes, if there were any way for justice to be done, please believe me when I say it would be.’

  Agnes tried to smile as they reach the road, but as she did she felt her lips tremble and she pressed them shut. Lady Yolande withdrew her hand from her muffler and folded it over Agnes’s forearm.

  ‘If you hoped for more, I am sorry,’ she said.

  Agnes managed to reply, ‘My godmother has a little dyer’s cottage on the bank of Eure, on the Courville side of the town. If you are able to help...I will be there.’

  Yolande halted abruptly as though she had forgotten something, and said, ‘I won’t forget you, Agnes Le Coudray.’ Then, Margueritte’s mother nodded grimly, and Agnes fancied she was thinking that she had not done as much as she ought.

  *

  Agnes found her godmother’s grave at the back of the little cottage half-covered by a mulch of leaves. Someone had laid a boulder and scratched a simple cross upon it. She knelt and brushed away the debris, closing her eyes as Marie’s copper ringlets filled her vision, bouncing gaily in defiance of a life that had delivered as many cruel blows as it had kindnesses. If she had any tears left to cry, Agnes would shed them for the woman whose kindness shielded her when the world was baying for her blood. But she did not. All she had is was the numb exhaustion of someone who had walked more miles than she could ever count only to find her final refuge was a desolate and forgotten past, her only companions ghosts. All that was left now was survival. Will there be no one left at the end? she asked of the woman beneath the earth.

  The room where Marie lived was coated with dust and leaves, long vacated.. From the accumulated dust and cobwebs, it looked to Agnes as though it had been several months since there had been anyone living there. A three-legged pot stood in the hearth with two clay bowls. There were three wooden vats and a stirring ladle in the eaves where Marie fixed her dyes. Apart from fabrics, succumbed to damp, her tools had been left as they were - a shrine to her godmother’s endeavour.

  It was near dark and there was no mattress in the house, no blanket. Agnes knew she must find a firesteel if she was to save herself from freezing. Tomorrow she could find some hawthorn for tea, set a trap, scrape at the earth where Marie grew her vegetables. Perhaps she would find some beets. The firesteel and flint were tucked inside the dry-stone oven with a pair of bellows. Agnes gathered some twigs and the driest leaves she could find and sparked a flame in the upstairs hearth. The room filled with the smell of burning dust and smoke from the part-blocked flue. Another job for the morrow. All she could do was hope she had pulled away enough debris to stop it catching fire.

  It crossed her mind that the smoke might alert someone to her presence. She would have preferred to wait until morning when she could investigate the woods, but she had no choice - it was too cold to forgo the fire. She curled up as tight as she could. There was nowhere else she could go and more importantly, this was the place she had told Margarida to send Gui and Etienne to, if ever they found their way back to her aunt’s hearth. Gui, she knew, would not return alone.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Etienne hasn’t slept since the night before his escape. Too scared to steal, he hasn’t eaten anything other than some stale bread and a rancid onion. He has spent the best part of the morning hiding among the market stalls, making sure he doesn’t linger anywhere long enough for someone to notice him. He needs to find Daniel. As much as his friend’s strange, far away stare troubles him, Etienne can’t quite believe the old Daniel isn’t in there somewhere, waiting for the right amount of hope and good fortune to throw off the circumstances the new Daniel decided to accept. The young man who kept them all together and led them with such calm can’t be lost. He just needs to find the right moment.

  Etienne winds his way through the market’s labyrinth with an air of business. By early afternoon the canvas awnings trap the day’s heat. It’s stifling. His mind turns to what he is going to eat. The fruit and vegetable stalls are closing now the sun has peaked, so he heads to the nearest square. There are always some good bits that get thrown away at the end of trading. He wanders along the channel between the vendors and their carts, selecting his target. Squeezed in between two well-manned stalls packed with br
ight citruses, plump squash and shiny legumes, is a wizened old man who sells only cucumber and tomatoes. If he can find some curd, there is a meal.

  ‘You risk too much.’

  The voice makes Etienne jump. He spins round to see Daniel, a pail of water balanced on his head and a thick length of rope in his hand.

  Etienne beams. ‘I went to that church to find Jean but…’

  ‘If they find you a beating will not be the worst of it.’ Daniel heaves the pail from his head onto the ground. Etienne can tell immediately from the grave look on his face that this isn’t the right time.

  ‘I don’t care,’ says Etienne defiantly. ‘We all came here together and now that we have found each other things will get better. Can you not see? I know you do. I know you can’t think it is an accident. Out of all the places in the city we found each other. There must be a way for us to find the others too. We can’t just leave them to… suffer.’

  Daniel takes the giant coil of rope from his arm and sits.

  ‘Etienne, I know you have a bold heart, that you want to believe in miracles. But you have to understand you have been lucky. Very lucky. You have no idea what you are risking.’

  Rivulets of sweat run down Daniel’s brow. ‘Curse this heat.’ He wipes his face with his hand and laughs, and for a moment Etienne sees a spark that is not only his old companion but the ardent, kind eye of Father Gui. Immediately he is cast back to his lost home. Out of nowhere, he remembers Father Gui’s gentle mocking when his mother’s cake didn’t rise. Unexpected tears sting his eyes. Daniel places a warm hand on his shoulder.

  ‘I am sorry that this has befallen you,’ he says. ‘But stay strong and you will be blessed. This is all Allah’s will.’

  ‘Allah’s will? I know you don’t believe that. Why won’t you help?’

  Daniel throws an anxious look around. ‘Be careful with what you say, Etienne. It is foolish to speak like that around here. I’m sorry. What you wish for is…it just isn’t possible. The sooner you accept that and make the best of it the better it will be.’ Daniel falls into silence and Etienne can sense his resignation. The cross weighted on his shoulder that he can no longer see.