The Chatelaine looked over the new recruits. Boys. Boys would be willing to do what she asked.
She had so little—not enough armour, not enough swords. She had to make what she had stretch farther. She needed to sow fear; she needed chimeras.
But these were the boys left over after wartime. The dregs. Cowards who used violence only in small mean ways, to feed off the women and children left behind. They looked at her resentfully, though she had given them no cause.
“You are my warriors,” she said to them in a loud clear voice like a horn of war blown across a battlefield. They shuffled their feet.
“You have a choice before you. You can choose any enhancement you like. But because you are strong, I will offer you a choice many never get. Would you like that?”
The biggest one nodded.
“Good. Now have any of you ever heard of the fire powder from the East? No? Let me demonstrate.”
She held out her hand and a Match-woman handed her a little sack full of black powder. She was one of a half-dozen Match-men and Match-women she had made a month before; she was the only one who had not yet blown herself up. Her left arm twisted and narrowed into a thin rope. She snapped the flinty fingers on her right hand and sparked the end of the rope a few times, until it caught and glowed orange.
“Stand back,” the Chatelaine told the boys.
The Match-woman’s rope-arm snaked into the air and she brought the glowing end down to the powder. A bang, a puff of dirty smoke. One of the boys yelled, but the Chatelaine thought it had something of a war-whoop in it, under the fear.
“Good,” she said. “Good. Now imagine what this powder could do, if we put one end at the bottom of a jar, and a crossbow bolt or a quarrel at the top. Imagine if you had such a weapon on your arm all the time, a weapon that could never slip or miss, a weapon that would obey you as easily as your own fingers and feet obey you now. Who would not fear you, from here to Prester John’s kingdom? You would be the most feared men in Christendom, maybe even the world. Are you ready for it, boys?”
She looked at their eager faces. Five. She’d lose two in the smithy, most likely, and perhaps another later. But that left two, which was two more than the King of France would have. Ha. Let him come. A few more days and she would be ready for him. She’d scare him away.
They bade farewell to Jacquemine early in the morning, while the children were still sleeping. Claude watched Margriet kiss their foreheads, and wondered. She was such a kind-hearted woman, really. She just husbanded that kindness, as if it would run out.
The walk to Hell was long. They avoided Ypres, turning south when they saw its spires on the horizon. Claude was in front, as he knew he would be, and he walked even faster so as not to think. Margriet was tripping over her feet, of course, and Beatrix walked like a puppy and Gertrude was fat. Gertrude swung her ersatz helmet as she walked.
In the thin sunlight, they found a copse where they could watch the road. Gertrude handed out bits of salt fish. Claude was so sick of salt fish and weak ale. It was long past time to get back to the countries of olives and wine.
He pulled something out of his pocket: a bundle of dried figs he had brought in Ypres to surprise them. It had been Margriet’s money, but he had saved that money by letting Monoceros buy him a meal and a drink, so it had seemed to even out.
Beatrix squealed. “Figs!”
“Who’s that?” Margriet hissed, as a merchant jingled past them on an ass. Life, normal life, after the war.
“The Queen of Sheba,” said Claude, and the others tittered.
In the distance, a church rang the bells for Nones. Nobody else came along the road.
As they trudged south, nobody spoke. It felt familiar, four fighters walking to battle. But his companions were not soldiers, only women dressed in fur and strange metal. And they were not going to battle but to a raid.
They stopped after an hour to rest and drink. Margriet struggled to pull her helmet off. Her fingers scrabbled at it uselessly until she finally used the heels of her hands to yank it off. A trickle of blood ran down her temple, which she seemed not to notice.
She looked very grey and very old.
“I want you to pledge something,” Margriet said, to Claude quietly, looking at the dirt. “If I am killed and you recover the sack.”
Claude nodded. “I will bring it to Beatrix, if I have it, and if I have breath in my body.”
Margriet looked at him balefully. “I believe you,” she said. “And I believe that you have a right to that mace. The key of Hell! To think of it. But you made it. You have a right to it. And I will see it on your arm.”
Claude nodded again. He owed Margriet nothing. But she was his friend, in the only way she knew how.
“My father was an arkwright,” Claude said slowly, remembering. “He made the most lovely little boxes, with gold and silver clasps. I used to love to open them with the little keys he made. I wonder what he would have thought, to learn that his child could open locks, any locks, the locks of Hell itself.”
“Where is your family now?” Gertrude asked, wide-eyed.
“Dead,” Claude said. “Long dead. Long after I ran away to become a man-at-arms. It was some years afterward that I heard what had happened. You remember, the Shepherd’s Crusade came down from the north. They killed the Jews in Cahors and in Toulouse.”
He had not even told Janos all of this, only bits and pieces here and there.
He could not interpret the way they looked at him. Some mixture of revulsion or pity, and something else. Admiration, perhaps? Hatred of his Jewishness?
He spit a soggy fig-stem into the dirt. There were only a few more hours of daylight left to them, and if they hoped to reach Hell before the revenants awoke, they would have to be on their way.
“No sense dallying,” said Margriet, and stood up.
He smiled. Margriet always had to be the leader.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Beatrix kissed her mother, who smelled the same as she always had: slightly sour, like old milk. She walked away with the wetness of her mother’s kiss on her lips, and forced herself not to look back.
Beatrix trudged with her distaff, away from the road and across an open field.
She needed to get well away of the others, well away of Hell. She could not call the revenants before sundown, so she knew she should be wishing the sun would hurry up and go to bed. But she wished the opposite: just one more breath of daylight, and another, and another, before she had to do it.
The sun was melting into the edge of the world and the shadows were long but Beatrix still didn’t feel she’d gone far enough. She finally stopped and looked back. All she could see was the horizon, without even the line of the road. But in the half-light it was difficult to know how far she had gone.
The field dipped down to a little stream, where willows grew, bending their pale arms in the dim. A good place to get a drink—she had not thought to bring a flask with her, of course, because she was stupid—and to keep herself hidden. A strange thought, since she was calling her enemy to her.
Beatrix clambered down and found a little rock, flat enough and dry enough, on the bank of the stream. She held her distaff high although she didn’t think it mattered; she had simply had it beside her, in her hand, when she’d called Baltazar. Still, it felt good to wield it, to pretend for a moment she had a weapon.
She shut her eyes and wished. She wished for all the creatures of night to vacate Hell. All the bats and the night moths, all the revenants. No shudder went through her distaff, no lightning crashed. There was nothing to tell her whether it had worked. So she kept wishing, imagining the horde of them. How many were there?
The bats came first, like swallows blackening the woad sky. She held her distaff high, her face wet with tears. Around her, they circled, chittering and swooping, confused as baited cockerels.
She stayed there, kneeling, holding her distaff, as the night grew darker. It would take longer for the revenants to walk here from Hell. She said all of her prayers. She told herself all of the stories of Reynard the Fox. She marked the passage of time with stories, each tale like a line marked on church candles.
The most frightening creature in the stories had always been Ysengrim the Wolf, despite his dull wits—or perhaps, because of them. Because he could be vicious without even knowing himself to be in the wrong. He could have done anything, and thought himself right, while Reynard knew himself to be a villain.
A figure stepped in front of her and she feared for a moment it was Baltazar, but it was Chaerephon, the advocate. He too was a night thing.
“What have you done?” he asked gruffly, in French.
She opened her mouth to respond and then remembered she did not need to tell him; she owed him nothing.
He reached for her distaff and she pulled it back, away from him.
She stumbled into Baltazar, who did grab the staff.
“Beatrix,” he said. “My wife.”
And Beatrix opened her mouth and laughed, a horrible laugh, hollow and rotten, spilling out punk and woodlice, decaying before it died.
“What do you want from us?” Baltazar asked.
“Yes, husband. Now it is my desire that matters, not yours. Now I want something. I am very surprised to learn that I want things, for myself, things that have nothing to do with you. I want many things, in fact. Do you know what I want? I want to eat some roast pork, first of all. And then I want to walk the Camino de Santiago on sore feet with a song on my lips. I would like to travel on a ship, also. And I would like to learn how to play dice.”
Father stepped between them, looking angry. She was shaking, but not with fear. With the cold air, with the hum of the distaff in her hand, with so much energy she wanted to run, run as the revenants had run.
“She wants the chest. Where is your mother?”
It took all of Beatrix’s will not to answer.
Instead, she thought of Ysengrim. She called him.
“The Chatelaine must be warned,” said Chaerephon, and put his hand out. A bat alighted on it, folding its wings, as if waiting for instructions.
“No,” said Beatrix, wresting the distaff away from Baltazar. It came toward her easily out of his grasp, but he pushed, so it knocked her in the face and she fell. Her cheek stung and she saw nothing but mud and bright blackness.
She could not best him with strength. But the distaff was a weapon in more ways than one.
Let me see, she prayed. Saint Catherine, show me a vision of time to come. Show everyone here the horrible sights that will pass.
For one long moment nothing happened. Perhaps it had not been the distaff after all, but the Grief, creeping into her mind with every sight of her husband. Oh God, how she wanted him, even now, to enfold her in his arms and take her away.
The air overhead filled with the screams of metal dragons and the thunder of fire. The earth beside her exploded and all the revenants were scattered. She lay in the mud, holding the distaff over her head, thinking only of the sights she must show.
“I will show you, my husband,” she screamed. “I will show you such awful sights that you will never wish to be near me again.”
She did not dare to look up but no one pulled at the distaff or bothered her. They were still near. The sounds of thunder and a rain of fire—what sights were they seeing? Not even Beatrix’s horrible visions could break a revenant’s heart, she suspected, but it might confuse them, distract them for a while.
Then she heard a sound, a howl on the air, and the vision shattered like glass.
The wolves came.
They ran almost silently and from all directions like shadows and fell snarling upon the revenants.
She looked up, holding the distaff out and began to stumble through the fray, outside it. But just as she was getting clear of the wolves, a revenant put his hand out and touched her shoulder.
Baltazar, looking at her as if he owned her. She expected him to say something, to protest that he would always want to be near her.
But he said nothing. His face was like stone. There was no need now for him to pretend for his mistress, to trick Beatrix into believing he still had love within him. He was a corpse.
Any moment now, a wolf would set upon them. She could stop that; she could control them. The distaff hummed in her hand.
Then something came flying around her like a grey rag on the wind, and plucked the distaff out of her hand, and took Baltazar up.
Chaerephon. Chaerephon, flying like a bat, his grey cloak fluttering, Baltazar by the hand as if he weighed nothing at all.
She jumped to grab for the distaff, to call Baltazar back, but they were gone. And now she was without her distaff, and could not call anyone, enemy or friend.
She rose to her feet and ran, praying that the wolves and the revenants would keep each other occupied, that neither would follow her.
Hell had its mouth shut tight like a child refusing to eat. Its great pale eyes looked out toward them as they approached. Margriet felt sure that this beast knew them for what they were. It saw through their disguises. But somehow she could not imagine that a beast who wore a bridle like that would share any secrets with the woman who held the reins. That bridle looked like it hurt.
“Hello beastie,” she whispered.
“What?” Claude asked.
Claude was wearing fur all over her face and hands, and a leather cap with the two drinking horns coming out of it. In the forge-mill, she had looked ridiculous. In the waning light, she looked like a demon.
“Ready?” Margriet asked.
“I have to piss,” Gertrude said.
Truth be told, Margriet did, too, and had merely added it to the list of complaints she would take with her into Hell, along with her palsied hands, her peeling skin, and her chin whiskers. The best Margriet could hope for, and truly it was unlikely, was that this death would come of Plague a few days hence, and not today, not here, at least not before she could get her daughter her due.
The dismantling of disguises took some time, with Claude watching the road and making impatient noises.
“You don’t have to go?” Margriet asked her.
“Soldiers piss in their pants,” said Claude. “Too much bother to take them off when you’ve got arrows raining down on you.”
She grinned, or at least it looked that way, although it was hard to tell with the fur. It was a joke, Margriet thought, but it was hard to tell with Claude. Everything was a joke with her, and nothing. Everything was on the surface and nothing was.
They arranged themselves again to watch the quiet road and the beast called Hell.
“I don’t like it,” said Gertrude. “I don’t like the look of it, just sitting there, staring. I’m sure it knows we’re here.”
With her weak eyes, Margriet could make out very little of the details of the Hellbeast’s face, but she could see the great eyes gleaming. Then they closed, and the great head heaved once or twice, as if it would vomit. Was the bridle a lock? Or was it only there to open the mouth when the beast wanted to keep it closed?
She soon had her answer. The beast opened its mouth and vomited blackness. The revenants screamed as they ran past.
To see the revenants running was a strange sight. Oh God, what had Beatrix brought upon herself?
Gertrude slammed her pot-helmet over her head. Margriet checked her helmet. She wore no disguise on her face but in her chausses and tunic, her helmet and breastplate and gauntlets, she doubted anyone would recognize her.
She tried to catch a glimpse of each revenant but they were too quick, and she was ducked down under the branches of a willow, so they would not see her.
Claude tugged on her sleeve. This was the moment; if they waited, the mou
th would close.
Margriet ran and stumbled right away and landed face first in the black mud. She heard Claude swear, “God’s blood,” and felt Claude’s hands under her armpits, lifting her.
She ran on again, trying not to think about it, letting the movement alone carry her forward as it had done for something like forty years. She had not run in a long time, not since the day at the gate of Bruges, which seemed an eternity ago now. The day she had contracted Helpest. The day she had started to die.
Margriet’s breastplate banged from side to side as she ran. She wanted to yell, with rage and purpose, but her breath was short. They dodged the revenants. She hoped they would see them only as chimeras coming home, not as raiders. How long would they have, after that? It depended on Beatrix, and on luck, and on God.
The Hellbeast was still vomiting as they neared the great lips, the great teeth reaching down and out. They had to push past the last of the revenants. There were so many. All of them running toward Beatrix. Margriet elbowed past a reeking, headless thing and grabbed on to one of the teeth. It did not look slippery but rather pitted like dull stone. But her fingers scrabbled and shook and could not grasp. She was pushed backward again, roughly, and then someone pressed her back more gently and she moved toward the mouth, and was inside.
It was damply warm inside, and still packed with fleeing revenants. Margriet could see nothing but flashes of red and here and there her friends, fighting their way through. Claude rushed by her, pulling Gertrude by the hand.
The tongue rolled beneath them and Margriet was down again, down on a surface like damp earth except it was warm. She wanted to cry like a child, to pound her fists against the Hellbeast’s tongue. But she could not act like anything other than a chimera now, now that the revenants were thinning around them.
A crowd of bats flew past them and they put up their hands. Behind them the mouth closed and it was dim, and they did not have to fight anyone off. But as they ran down the beast’s throat Claude pulled them into a branching off to the side, a warm wet room with heaving, sighing walls so close around them that Margriet could not help but lean against them. She was grateful for a chance to catch her breath, although the air was so close here it was like trying to breathe through a wet cloth.
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