Margriet. Her face was a mask of anger. He pitied her. She had very little to hold on to, this woman, and yet she held on with a warrior’s strength.
Still it was over, and there was nothing Margriet could do about it now. And Claude did not have the mace, or his freedom, or soon, very likely, his life.
“Do you understand this judgement?” asked the bishop of Margriet.
Margriet stood. “I understand it. I will go now a widow, although this court does not recognize me for what I am. But I wish to take my companion with me.”
She looked at Claude.
Claude looked back, frowning a question at her, until he remembered that she could probably not see his expression with her dim eyes, from that distance. Convenient for her. What was she thinking?
“Who, the girl soldier?” the king asked, after a silence.
“She is my prisoner,” snapped the Chatelaine.
“I thought she was your guest,” the king replied smoothly. “I am not satisfied she has stolen from you. She is no one’s man, as I understand it. She cannot be a man-at-arms, if she is not a man. She is free to go as well.”
A long moment. All eyes looked to Claude, and he was not sure, for a moment, what to do. Was this meant to be mercy? Was it a gift or his due? At last he stood, walked to the king and knelt, without looking at his face.
“Come here,” he said to Claude, and Claude stood, took a step. The king grabbed Claude by the shoulders and whispered in her ear, “Go with care. I know what you are, disgusting creature.”
Claude stumbled away, and did not remember to kneel again as he took his leave. He walked past Margriet and out the door.
Margriet knelt and walked to him, dragging Beatrix with her. Jacquemine walked next to Claude, saying nothing.
When they had put a little distance between them and the abbey, Claude said, “I owe you my life.”
“You owe me nothing,” Margriet snapped, whirling around. They all stopped walking. “I have repaid you for the bravery you showed in fighting my husband’s corpse, a week ago, when you might have left us to our fate. As for the mace and sword I promised, that is forfeit, your words in the trial notwithstanding. It is your fault that we failed. You brought the Chatelaine’s attention to us too soon. You hid from us the fact that you had stolen the mace in the first place. I do not even know from one moment to the next if you are man or woman, friend or foe. I am pleased now to be rid of you.”
Claude felt his gorge rise as if he had been slapped. His hand moved to his knife hilt, as though that would do any good against a woman.
Beatrix put her hand on his arm.
“Don’t listen to her—”
“Oh, the traitorous daughter speaks!” Margriet yelled.
Jacquemine said, “Margriet—”
“I never agreed to deny my husband,” said Beatrix, her voice low and shaking. “You demand that those who love you must harbour your grudges. You ask too much.”
“Is loyalty too much to ask of a daughter? None of this was for me in the first place! This is how you repay my love?”
“It is an impoverished, twisted love,” Beatrix retorted.
“You have impoverished yourself, you foolish girl. You will starve, if you do not contract the Grief first. How long will it be before you let him in to whatever hovel you inhabit? A day, a month, a year? You can no more close a door to him than you could close your legs. And now you have nothing, and you will die a pauper.”
“I am happy to have nothing,” Beatrix said in a small voice.
Jacquemine put her arms around Beatrix.
“Anyway, I can spin.” Beatrix raised her chin.
“Ha!” Margriet said. “And what will you spin? Cobwebs? And where will you spin it, where you can be safe from him? He will get you, Beatrix. He may already have started to get you.”
“She can come with us, Margriet,” whispered Jacquemine. “If we can get the money.”
Margriet shook her head. “We have no money for passage. And no time. We will go to Ypres, quickly, today, before sundown. And there we will take you to the beguinage because we cannot afford to buy you a place at a rich abbey. You will join the poor sisters, and work for your keep. You will need strong walls and strong women between you and your dead husband.”
She turned and walked away.
Jacquemine embraced Beatrix. “It will be all right.”
“And you?” Jacquemine turned to Claude.
“I’m going south,” Claude said, because it was what he had done every time he had been broken down into nothing, every time he had found himself alone and penniless. South where one did not need to worry about keeping warm, at least. “Italy, most likely.”
“So you’ll be a man again,” Jacquemine said, sadly.
Claude wanted to say: I will be a man still; I will be a man-at-arms again. But there was no point in it. And would he be a man-at-arms, without strength or weapons? He, who could barely hold his own against a corpse, stood no chance in a battle. He would have to find some other work; he would have to live in whatever way he could.
“Someone will need a labourer,” he said, putting on a smile. “And perhaps in time I can train my left arm to draw a crossbow.”
Jacquemine embraced Claude. She smelled of lavender; Claude smelled of sweat.
As Jacquemine walked toward Margriet on the road north to Ypres, Claude tore the nets off either side of his head and threw them to the ground. He shook his head like a dog, freeing his scraps of hair.
Then he thought better of it, and stooped and picked up the little nets, which were after all made of gold thread. They might fetch the price of a meal in Lille.
At the king’s invitation, the Chatelaine and her retinue stayed the night at the chateau in Ypres. She could hear her hounds circling under the window, whining, and she was ready to be gone with them. She turned Chaerephon away and paced the room.
This was the sort of place she would have, if she were Countess of Flanders. A big cold stone place, with tapestries and fireplaces. But it would not be for her, not most of the time. She would make Monoceros marshal, and let him stay in the stone chateaux, and she would stay in Hell where she could check on her husband.
He kept her there, even now, although he was the prisoner. She would never be rid of him, never be free. That was why the beast was Hell—not because it shat brimstone or belched poison, not because of the revenants, not because it burrowed under the earth. The beast was Hell because it was home to her husband.
She paced to clear her thoughts of him.
They had given her this room with a great stone fireplace, and a fire within it. Fireplaces were new to her. When she remembered her life before her husband, she remembered a warm country, where fires were outside.
The Chatelaine opened the chest and lifted out the mace. It gleamed in the firelight. Each of the irregular points on the flange caught the orange light like a jewel. Gobhan had wrought well. This would, she had no doubt, open Hell and all its rooms, even the deepest. That traitor, Gobhan. To think a twisted smith like that could leave her so vulnerable. If he had chosen to open her husband’s dungeon—she shook her head. The smith was dead now, and no more worry for her.
She could trust no one. Certainly not the half-wild Chaerephon, who was lying wrapped in his cloak in some dark hallway like a dog or a servant, waiting and watching, although he had been offered a good bed. She had never asked why Chaerephon had betrayed her husband. She had assumed—too much. She was learning, too slowly.
She was tempted to try the other mace on her left arm, but she needed her hand, and Hell could only have one key.
There came a knock at the door.
She put the false mace under a pillow. Then she opened the door.
King Philippe stood there, smiling. She hesitated. He was fully dressed still, his blue cotehardie to his knee embr
oidered with gold lilies. His face was stern.
“I have no designs on your person,” he said, as if in answer to her expression. “May I enter?”
She stood back and swept her left arm wide to let him in.
“Are you pleased with the judgement today?”
“Of course I am pleased that the treasonous thief was not rewarded, although she got away with her life,” said the Chatelaine, inclining her head.
“And to the larger question? Do you believe that those women were widows?”
She laughed. “Do you take me for a scholar, my lord?”
“I know you are no fool. I know you understand that what we have done here today will create fear, and not only among my enemies but also my friends. We have had a bishop declare that the revenants may keep their property, that their family may not inherit, for however long a revenant lasts.”
“A very long time,” said the Chatelaine softly.
“Indeed. And the revenants serve you, because they are creatures of Hell, and you are the mistress of Hell. If you may obtain a knight’s property simply by making him a revenant, all of France could be under your control without so much as a battle.”
He looked pleased. Had he designed this outcome?
“That is not my design,” she said. “I do not wish to control the land of others. I wish to have a demesne of my own, in my own right.”
“Yes, well, about that. I cannot be seen now to be giving you even more power. I have decided to let Count Louis keep Flanders. It would send the wrong message, if I used my strength to uproot him rather than support him. And now he is afraid, he will be a more useful idiot.”
She gaped. She had seen the blow coming, but it still hurt when it fell. Nothing for her, then, after all this.
“And what of my reward? What land shall be mine, then, if not Flanders?”
“I have one more task for you, and then if I am pleased, we shall find another count for you to marry. I am pleased with this bishop of Tournai. He did as I asked him today, although his conscience was against it. I like a man who can fight his conscience. I shall ask for his help in declaring your husband dead, and you a widow.”
She bit her lip against the answer she wanted to return. They called him Fortunate but there was no chance behind his success. He took what he wanted, and kept what he wanted. Well, she could do the same.
“And what is this task?”
“You must feed a man to the beast, and make him a revenant.”
“Which man?”
“Edward, the young king of England.”
“Ha!” she laughed, and put her hand over her mouth. “And shall we make war on him, then?”
“No, of course not. He is a boy of fifteen. Surely you can find a way to manage it. A revenant king would be unlikely to press his claim to the throne of France, don’t you think?”
She swallowed. This king would never give her what she wanted.
She must leave him, and find a new place. This time she would not seek an ally. This time she would take what she wanted. She had a few dozen grotesques now, not enough to fight, but she would make more. And she would make more gonners, who could use the black powder to frighten anyone into giving her a little land, a little place to begin anew.
“Tell me,” the king said, walking toward the fire, “how do you manage it? How did you wrest control of Hell?”
She stared into his back. “I have always been the Chatelaine of Hell, since my marriage. The keys of Hell are mine by right.”
Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would go to Hell, and close the mouth, and send the beast deep under the earth. They would go east, a very long way, and they would come up again, some place quiet, and begin to rebuild her army.
“And what does your husband say?”
“My husband is no longer able to speak to anyone.”
“He is old, then.”
“Yes,” she said through tight lips. “He is very old indeed.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
They spoke little and walked fast. Beatrix was sullen. Margriet had nothing to say to anyone and besides, her bowels were clenching and griping. She had to stop three times on the way to relieve them and was glad she’d had nothing but water for hours.
She blamed the abbey food but it was the Plague, she knew. She had seen it before: the bowels went, and the skin, and then the brains.
Jacquemine was eager to get her children at Gertrude’s mill, but she agreed to walk to Ypres with them first. She had a few things she wanted to barter for, without the children clinging to her skirt, she said. A rich woman, unused to having no servants, unused to having children at her ankles all the time.
Probably she also wanted to be there with Margriet when Margriet delivered her daughter to the nuns. Jacquemine Ooste was kind in a way that drew no attention to itself, and Margriet was grateful, although she did not know how to say so. After Ypres, Margriet would walk with Jacquemine to Gertrude’s, for two were better than one on the road. And then—then she would find some solitude, like a dog finding a quiet corner of the yard, in which to die.
“Margriet,” said Jacquemine, as if reading her thoughts, “will you come with us? To Dunkirk and England?”
“You have no need of a wet nurse now,” said Margriet dully. She had a dry headache now to go with the wrench in her guts.
“We cannot pay a servant, until we find some work, or some man to marry me.”
“I am surprised you do not return to Bruges, where people know you, and some would help you.”
“Yes, but in Bruges I will fear the Count’s retribution for my husband’s actions,” said Jacquemine with a sigh. “And now I have made an enemy of the Chatelaine, too. I will never feel safe, not until I put the channel between my children and Flanders.”
At that, Beatrix walked faster, putting more strides between them as if she did not want to listen.
The streets of Ypres were strongly shadowed. A dog barked and Margriet started. She was still unused to the sound of dogs; in Bruges they had all been dead for weeks, along with everything else on four legs.
Two chimeras approached, of the kind called Men of Arms, with bits of armour breaking through their skin—but no, as they passed, Margriet could see they were men of about their own age, with pieces of metal sewn into their leather aketons and caps. To hell with her dim eyesight.
“They would have fooled the Chatelaine herself,” said Jacquemine.
Margriet was startled. It had not been her eyesight alone that had created the illusion. Would the Chatelaine have been fooled? Could she be?
She stopped walking.
“What is it?” Jacquemine asked.
“I need one more favour, Vrouwe Ooste,” Margriet said. “Before we part ways.”
“If it is within my power, name it.”
Margriet thought as quickly as she could through her raging headache. If men could be made to look like the Chatelaine’s chimeras, could not a group of women? The helmets would disguise them perfectly. They could be in and out of the Hellbeast without anyone knowing. They could recover what was stolen from them.
Was it madness? Was her brain Plague-addled already?
They would need someone with an ability to get past locked doors, and to fight their way past guards. Claude.
“Margriet, what is it?”
Beatrix turned at last, and frowned at her.
“I need—I need to get a message to Claude.”
Jacquemine’s eyebrows raised. “Claude! Is this to salve your conscience?”
Margriet nodded. “After a fashion.”
“Mother—”
Margriet took three long steps toward her, the world reeling as she did so. She grabbed on to her daughter’s shoulders, in part to keep herself upright.
“Beatrix, what if I did not have to lock you away after all. What if th
ere were another way to get your inheritance?”
Beatrix’s brown eyes were brim-full of sadness, and yet there was a gleam in them, too. A glimmer of a future without a husband, if the girl would but let herself see it.
“Mother, you’re mad.”
“Yes, but listen,” said Margriet absently. She scratched her neck under her wimple.
A long piece of grey skin came off in her hands.
Beatrix stared and Margriet saw the understanding in her daughter’s face. A worse sentence than death itself, to see her daughter grieve again.
Jacquemine grasped the edge of Margriet’s wimple and pulled it away, yanked it off her body.
“Dear God,” she said. “Dear God in heaven, Margriet. The skin—your neck—”
Margriet swallowed. “Is it bad?”
“It is the Plague!” Jacquemine hissed.
Beatrix took Margriet’s hands and looked in her eyes. It had been a long time since Margriet had looked in her daughter’s eyes for more than a moment, years perhaps. This, more than anything, made Margriet want to weep.
“It’s true,” she said. “I have the Plague. I am in no pain. Well, not much pain. But I need your help. God has given me an idea. We are going to recover the chest, and you will have your inheritance, Beatrix. I will see you safe and provided for, before I go. I will have my rights before I go. God has shown me how to do it.”
Jacquemine put her hands on her hips.
“But when—Margriet de Vos, where did you see your husband in Bruges? Where was it?”
There was to be no more denying it, then. She was a dying woman now. Margriet took a long, painful breath.
“He tricked me. He entered a house, taking my words as permission although I did not mean them that way. A villain, even in death.”
“Before you came to me? Before you nursed my child?”
Margriet frowned. “It does not pass to the child.”
“How could you know? How many wet nurses have you known who contracted the Plague from a revenant and then watched to see how the curse would manifest in the child in the months, the years afterward?” Jacquemine’s voice was shrill; she put her hand to her mouth.
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