“Vrouwe Ooste,” Margriet said quietly, “you know how lords and ladies talk, how they think. I wonder, would you come to the trial, and speak for me? If I argue for myself, God knows, my tongue will only get me into trouble.”
“Ha. I have listened to my husband argue with Count Louis about taxes,” said Jacquemine. “That does not make me fit to argue with lawyers, and on a matter of canon law!”
“But you are a widow, as I am. A widow whose husband is in the ground where he ought to be, God rest his soul. Who will stand for the rights of widows if not the widows themselves?”
“Can my children eat rights? Does justice make a dowry? My house is burned to the ground. My children are ruined.”
Jacquemine’s mouth hitched up in a strange half-smile, half-grimace, as if she were trying to use the habit of smiling to keep her face from falling into sobs.
Was Beatrix sleeping? Her voice had fallen to silence.
Margriet stood and took a few steps on the creaky floor to where Beatrix and the children lay, all three of them sleeping. She put her hand to little Agatha’s forehead, before remembering that her hands were no longer reliable guides to temperature. She snatched her fingers away, even though the Plague did not spread from the living to the living.
“Beatrix,” she whispered, testing that her daughter was asleep. There was no answer.
Even so, Margriet spoke quietly. She approached Jacquemine, who sat on the edge of the bench at Gertrude’s family table, sewing a small stocking by the waning light, bodkin flashing.
“Agatha?” Jacquemine asked.
“Sleeping peacefully. Vrouwe Ooste, you want a future for your children, and so do I. It would be my honour and my duty to compensate you, if you will help me at my trial.”
“Compensate me?” Jacquemine snorted. “With what?”
“With my share of the inheritance. Beatrix takes two-thirds. If Claude gets her freedom back, she gets two weapons: a strange mace like one the Chatelaine wears, and a sword. I’d take that out of my third, but the rest is mine. If you help me, it is yours. Not a great deal of money, but enough, perhaps, to make a new start.”
“Why on earth?”
Margriet resisted the urge to rub her numb fingers. Soon everyone would see that she was dying of the Helpest. But she hoped that would not happen until after Michaelmas, when she could be sure of her daughter’s future, when she could crawl off somewhere to die in peace.
“Because I nursed your children as my own, and I do not wish to see them starve.”
“And for them you would give up all your own inheritance? You said the chest was filled with groats and florins and fine things. Even one-third of that would be a great gift.”
“Not a gift. Payment. For all your kindness to me, and for this last one.”
“And how will you live, thereafter? Will you live with your daughter?”
“Perhaps I shall go into orders,” said Margriet.
Jacquemine put her hand to her mouth to stifle a laugh.
“Come, can you not imagine me as an anchorite? Silent for years on end?”
“I can imagine you shouting at the walls.”
“So long as they do not shout back. Have we an understanding, Vrouwe Ooste?”
Jacquemine looked over to her sleeping children. “I can do only what any merchant’s wife could do. But I will do my best.”
“Thank you,” said Margriet, and to her great surprise and shame, tears spilled out of her eyes.
Claude woke to darkness.
God’s nails, he would go mad in this place.
The last time the Chatelaine had held Claude, she had let him have more food and drink, more human company. In those days Claude was a mere project, a recruit, a chimera in the making. This time, though, there was nothing. And in that nothingness, nightmares.
His panicked throat pushed involuntary sounds into the silence: a cough, a yelp, a choking gasp. He knew one thing about dungeons: there were always spies and traitors listening within them, even when they held only one prisoner. He wanted to talk, to hear the sound of a voice in the darkness, but he could not trust himself to tell only lies. He was a rotten liar.
The great round door opened and red light flooded his vision.
The Chatelaine stood, not dressed in ermine now but in a simple blue kirtle, like the one Claude wore now. They had taken his chausses and aketon. Whenever he lost his freedom, he lost his clothes.
She held a torch at her left side and her hair hung down her back in one long dark twist, netted in gold.
From her right hand hung the mace. So very like his own. The key to Hell, but more than that, the key to ending this everlasting pain in his arm, the key to strength of body and clarity of mind.
Claude tried to imagine putting his hands around the woman’s throat, pushing her down, aside, out of the way so Claude could go out into the sunlight. A glint caught the mace that swung gently at the end of the Chatelaine’s right hand.
“Good evening,” said Claude, in the language of Hell.
The Chatelaine hissed and the door closed behind her. They were alone in the oubliette, made smaller by the light of the Chatelaine’s torch.
“Where did you learn that?” She spoke French.
“I picked it up the last time I was here,” Claude said, still speaking in the tongue of Hell. This was true. He had picked it up quickly enough, because it had elements of so many other languages in it. The difficulty was in remembering which words were borrowed from where, and which had shifted meaning. And the grammar was a bit strange.
“Impossible. No one here speaks that tongue now. It is forbidden.”
Claude grinned. “Then I must be a magician.” He said this in French, because he did not know the word for magician in the language of Hell.
The Chatelaine sighed. She swung the mace on her arm back and forth slightly, like a pendulum, so that torchlight ran like golden water up and down its length.
“Monoceros tells me you are playing for time,” she said. “I don’t have time.”
“Can you blame me? You wish me to damn myself, willingly,” Claude said.
The Chatelaine spread her left hand wide. “You’re in the right place for it.”
“I’ll swing from a gallows if I admit to theft.”
“Perhaps not. I will argue for your life.”
“And what assurance can I have that you are telling the truth?”
“None.”
Claude wanted to ask for water.
Instead, he said through cracked lips, “You want the mace to stay here, under your control. I understand that. Concede it to Margriet and it will come to me; that is the arrangement we made, Margriet and I.”
“Ah, yes, Margriet. You know, she was supposed to go to Zonnebeke Abbey. But do you want to know a strange thing? I sent my Chaerephon there, with the revenant Baltazar, and they returned saying that the de Vos women were not at the Abbey at all. Do you think they have chosen to give up their claim?”
Claude shook his head. “Margriet de Vos would not give up a crumb to a mouse.”
“And you believe she’ll win the mace, and give it to you? You are soft in the head.”
“Let me wear it, my lady, and I will fight for you. That is what you wanted all along.”
“What I wanted all along? Tell me, did I want you to trick my smith? To forge my keys? To steal from me?”
“You wanted me to become a chimera.”
And so I have, Claude thought, saying it in his own mind for the first time. He had not gone through the Hellfire but the weapon had, and it had altered him. He was altered.
“You are a fool if you think I will let you hold the key to Hell.”
“Can we not alter the mace in some way? Let me wear it, but have one of the smiths change the flanges so they will no longer fit the locks.”
/> He winced as he said it. He wanted it the way it was, whole.
“Whether the mace worked or not, I cannot have you walking around Hell as if you owned it. You will not wear that mace. Give up that foolish hope and think of the matter before you, which is life or death.”
“If you kill me, before the trial, what will the king say then?”
“People die all the time. It is unfortunate but I cannot be held responsible for a prisoner who dies of dysentery. Very common among soldiers.”
They stared at each other for a moment longer, and then the Chatelaine approached him. She squatted next to him. The torch was hot.
“I am giving you a chance at life. Agree to this now and you will stay here as my guest until the trial is over, at which time I will have the Horned Man accompany you to a place of your choosing, within seven days’ ride in any direction.”
“Where he will gore me to death.”
The Chatelaine smiled indulgently. “How would it be, then, if I gave you reason to know you could fight even Monoceros, naked and alone, and win? Tell the story at the trial exactly as we have given it you, and I will take you to the smithy. I will give you a new weapon for that arm. I will make you into a god. What sort of armour would you like? What sort of body? Would you like it so you never had to bind those breasts again? Would you like me to turn you into a real soldier?”
Claude blinked from the torchlight on his eyes, from the glimmering, shadowy image on his mind’s eye of himself as he ought to be.
She whispered sweetly as she spoke. Yes, Claude could have put his hands around her throat. And what then? What would the Beast do, if its mistress were attacked? What of the chimeras? He was not afraid of them but he was afraid, afraid of himself. Afraid that what he wanted was within his grasp, and that if he lost it, he would live with the loss the rest of his life, like a missing limb, like his arm that itched.
“I will consider your offer,” he croaked.
The Chatelaine stood. “Truly?”
Claude nodded. “I am not a good liar. If I were lying, you would probably know it.”
The Chatelaine laughed. “It is lucky for us both, then, that I do not require you to lie. Only to tell one part of the truth. In the meantime, I shall send food and water, and you may move to a room with a little more light.”
Claude inclined his head in thanks, so that she could not see his face.
Gertrude eased herself down onto the floor beside Beatrix. She looked at the distaff, leaning against the wall.
“Did you bring your spindle as well?” she asked.
Beatrix nodded. It was in her now much-jumbled, much-stained bundle.
“Ah, that’s lucky, then. I have some wool that needs spinning, and I have never been very quick with my spindle, myself. I would be most grateful to have it spun. Later. If you feel you can.”
Beatrix smiled a little. “I would be so happy to spin again. Thank you. Would you bring it now? I feel I need some occupation.”
Beatrix tried to envy Gertrude, but she could not. To know one’s husband was dead, to be free and able to claim the rights of a widow, such as they were, was evidently better than being a widow in reality but not in name. She ought to envy Gertrude. And yet she did not.
She was glad, yes, glad, that Baltazar still walked the world. She did not have to tax her mind to preserve the shape of him, she was not guardian of that memory. So she could give over all her thoughts to preserve the sound of his laugh the night they were married, or the feel of his dry lips the night before that.
He had not visited her at Ypres or at the mill, and she had not called him. But last night she had desperately wanted to.
“Today is Monday,” said Margriet. “Michaelmas is Thursday. While you’re spinning, take some thought for our enterprise, Beatrix. We’ll need to spin some fine words for the bishop, too.”
Gertrude shook her head, walking back toward them with the basket of wool. “I don’t understand this matter at all. It seems to me you’ve lost your husbands, one way or the other, whether their bodies roam at night or not. A widow is a woman bereft of her husband, and so you’re widows.”
“Obviously,” said Mother, sharply. “But they want a trial. They won’t be satisfied with a truth that can be said quickly. These are not millers’ matters—no, not burghers’ matters either.”
Gertrude rose, her lips tight, hands on her hips.
“There is one thing you could do to help us,” Mother said, more softly. “Vrouwe Ooste is to come with us, to argue for us. She can’t be troubled with the care of the children. We’ll leave them here with you.”
Gertrude went pale as a revenant. “They cannot. You must not.”
“I thought you hated to be here alone, anyway?”
“But it would be even worse with children here. Oh no. No.”
Mother sighed. “Then you’ll have to come with us, and mind the children at the abbey.”
Gertrude swallowed. “If I leave … I cannot leave. I cannot.”
“And why not?”
Gertrude paused, wrung her hands. No, Beatrix could not quite envy this woman. Her face was not meant to be so sad; it was a merry face, freckled and broad, pulled now in all the wrong directions.
“The abbot. He owns this mill, and all the land around here. I do not wish to remind him that my husband is dead and the mill is idle. Not yet.”
“Oh, come now.”
Gertrude whispered, “I am so afraid, Margriet.”
“You have two days to find your courage.”
Beatrix spun.
She propped the distaff awkwardly beside her, for fear that if she was holding it, her heart might wish for something, or wish to know something.
“We are out of bread, and flour,” Gertrude said.
“Just our luck,” Mother muttered. “We come to a mill, and it is a forge-mill. We can’t eat iron.”
“There are fish in the millpond,” Jacquemine said, and they all looked at the children, playing with the wooden dice that Claude had made and handed to Beatrix when Mother wasn’t looking. A bit of weak ale and fish pottage was barely enough to keep body and soul together, and the children were listless, dark-eyed, sniping at each other as they played. Agatha was doing so much better but she needed proper food, poor thing.
“There is a field to the south, about a half a morning’s walk, with a large oak in the middle of it. That field often gets mushrooms. Nice big ceps sometimes,” Gertrude said. “And there is a hedge of blackberries.”
Gertrude looked wistful. She never wanted to leave the mill. Beatrix could almost taste the blackberries, with fresh cream.
“Vrouwe Ooste, will you go with me?” Mother asked. “I don’t suppose you would bestir yourself to show us, Gertrude.”
“It’s not hard to find,” Gertrude pleaded. “The children might have a game of it.”
But Jacob and Agatha were in evil temper. Little Jacob, still chubby, was soon red eyed and gulping with tears, and Agatha burst into angry tears herself when her mother told her to put her shoes on as they were going to hunt for mushrooms.
“Come on, sweetheart,” said Mother, in the soft tones she could muster only for children.
“Mind Margriet,” said Jacquemine, exasperated. “Mind her, Agatha, or the switch for you.”
Agatha did not stint; Beatrix suspected the switch was not often in use at the Ooste house, as it had not been in hers.
“Why don’t they stay here, with Gertrude and me?” Beatrix said.
“Yes, let them stay,” said Gertrude, her voice booming. “You’ll be faster without them. Would you like to see the giant’s hammer, Agatha? Would you like to see it pound?”
Mother frowned. “Don’t let them near that thing. Have you got anything for the berries and mushrooms, should we find any?”
Gertrude tumbled chunks of iron or
e out of two big baskets that stood near the wall in the ground floor of the mill.
“We’ll have to rinse these,” Mother grumbled.
“It is fortunate that the millstream is just outside the door!” Gertrude grinned. Beatrix could not quite tell whether Gertrude’s fierce good humour was put on, but it seemed as good a defence as any against Mother’s frowns.
She also wondered whether Gertrude’s loudness came as a consequence of living in the mill. The roar of the water was constant.
When Gertrude connected the cam and let the hammer rise and fall, the clanging made Beatrix and Agatha clap their hands over their ears. Beatrix worried about the baby, but he merely clapped his hands together in delight.
The inner wheel moved faster than Beatrix expected. Every time the hammer’s back end dropped, one of the wheel’s teeth lifted it, and the hammerhead hit the anvil with a ringing clang. The hammer shaft was a huge piece of oak, about the size of a man or bigger, all wrapped in leather strapping. Its great steel head was relentless.
“We mainly use this on heated bloom,” Gertrude shouted to Agatha. “That’s the raw iron. We bang it and bang it over and over, to make it stronger.”
“How does it get stronger by being beaten?” Beatrix asked.
“What?” Gertrude turned to her.
“Why does beating it make it stronger?” Beatrix asked, louder. Her throat felt weak, constricted from grief.
“I suppose the iron knits together. To protect itself from the blows.” Gertrude turned again to Agatha. “We use another wheel, downstairs, to run the shaft of the bellows. That shaft, you’ve seen it? It runs right out to the wall to the bellows outside and the bloomery, where we cook the iron. Would you like to eat iron for supper?”
Agatha giggled and shook her head. She said something too soft for Beatrix to hear over the ringing of the hammer. Gertrude bent in and asked her to say it in her ear. Then Gertrude straightened up.
“Yes, we can put something on it, little chicken. If you like. Let’s see. Would you like me to make you a sword?”
Agatha nodded, her eyes still red but clearing.
Armed in Her Fashion Page 18