Adrienne Martine-Barnes - [Sword 02]

by The Crystal Sword (v0. 9) (epub)

  One, braver or drunker than the rest, poked the bear with a cudgel while several others ran down the narrow street. The beast knocked the pole aside and the man fell down screaming. The bear lifted him up with great paws and dashed him down again to the paving stones. Then it turned and lumbered over to Dylan and groveled at his feet like a dog.

  “Kill it! Kill it!” screamed the customers who remained.

  Dylan felt his skull throb where the stag wore antlers, and he was almost blind with rage and pain. He looked at the bear’s tormentors and they shrank back, mindless of the fire behind them. A pitiful bucket brigade swelled the crowd, but the alehouse was beyond saving. They splashed filthy river water on the flames in a halfhearted way and scurried away.

  Dylan bent down and removed the muzzle and the collar. “Poor little brother,” he murmured. The bear rolled brown eyes at him and growled in what passed for a friendly way in such a beast. Dylan stroked its rough head. For the first time he began to understand the power of the Stag Lord he had become, and it was not an easy thing. The bear had somehow sensed his presence and come to pay him homage. Otherwise it would have borne the teasings and abuse of its tormentors until it died in the mute agony of the beast.

  Dylan looked disgustedly at the faces of the little crowd, sickened by the pointless cruelty of his own kind. They were avid for some excitement, some occasion to forget their own misery and pain. He remembered his mother’s strange tales of Prince Siddhartha, who was quite happy until one day he saw hunger and death, disease and old age, and had then left his beautiful palace to seek an answer to these terrible curses. The Prince, Dylan remembered, had become a great holy man, and he almost regreted that he had no gift for contemplation. He could abandon his quest and return to the forest and live out his years among the beasts, but that would not change anything.

  “Go back to the woods, little brother,” he told the bear. The animal stood on its hind legs and gave a bellow, then turned on all fours and lumbered down the crooked street with amazing speed for such an ungainly beast. The crowd parted as he passed.

  “That was my bear,” said a fat man with a ruddy complexion. “Who gave you the right to turn him loose? He was very valuable. Give me—”

  “Piss on yourself,” Dylan said succinctly. He turned away from the fat man, and the crowd snickered and elbowed the ribs of their fellows. If they could not have a bearbaiting, a brawl would do as well.

  The man grabbed at Dylan’s shoulder, and Dylan felt the fury rise. He twisted around, picked the man up by his underarms, and tossed him back into the cackling gaggle. They parted like wheat before the wind, and the man hit the paving stones with a guttural grunt. A couple of other men sprang forward to defend their friend, and one landed a glancing blow with a short stick on Dylan’s brow.

  He was dazed for a second. Then something filled him; a wild, singing rage, a storm of mind that rushed into his blood. Dylan snarled. He caught the man’s stick as it descended again and twisted it away. Then he grabbed a wrist and turned the arm up in the socket behind the man until there was an audible pop. The man screamed as he fell, and the crowd decided to find other amusement. They vanished, abandoning the fat man and his friends—one fallen, one standing—in front of the burning alehouse. The one standing eyed Dylan, then his cronies, shrugged and slipped away.

  “So much for loyalty,” Dylan muttered as he bent to pick up his fallen packs. He heartily wished he had never come to this miserable city. He wondered why the Seine did not overflow its banks and wash the place away. “Monsieur,” came a quiet voice.

  He looked for the speaker and found the pretty little boy he had been offered further down the street. He was crouched in the shadow of a broken wagon, boney hands clutching the shattered wheel.

  “Yes. What is it? Do not be afraid. I will not harm you.”

  “I do not want Jacques to see me.”

  “Is he your master?”

  “Yes, sieur. Please, take me with you. He stole me. I want to go home.”

  “Do you know where your home is?”

  “No, monsieur. It has been two years.”

  “Your name then.”

  “Philippe. Philippe Sangrael.”

  “Why have you not run away?” Dylan was not sure if he should believe the child.

  “He beat me.” The boy lifted his tattered shirt and displayed a collection of welts and sores. “I was afraid.” “And the girl. Is she your sister?”

  “No, no, monsieur. She is very wicked. She beats me too.”

  Dylan found that difficult to believe. The girl had looked so weak and listless. He studied the boy for a long moment. There was something subtly wrong about the child, a glitter in the eyes, a tension in the fingers. He wondered at himself, that he would nearly kill a man over a bear yet hesitate over a small boy. Then he realized that within the shadow of the wagon Philippe’s body showed no light, no aura. The Darkness did not always deform the body. Sometimes it merely twisted the soul into a pit of evil. And like his mother, Dylan had a gift for perceiving the difference. With a deep sense of regret he realized he could not save everyone.

  He shifted his packs into a more comfortable position on his shoulder and started up the street. The boy followed him, clinging to the shadows. Dylan ignored him, trying to make some sense out of the tangle of alleys and streets that made up the district. After several turns he came into a wider street—one where he could not touch both sides with outstretched arms and a swords length—with sturdier houses. The steady clack of heddles from several open doors told him this was a weaver’s enclave, and he paused for a moment just to savor the simple domesticity of the sound. It reminded him of home, of cleanliness and security.

  Then he noticed the avid little face of the boy Philippe peering at him from the shadow of a doorway, and he wondered if the boy’s master had sent him to spy on Dylan. Shabby as his garments were after several days in the wild, Dylan was still better dressed than the miserable beggars near the gate, and that alone was sufficient to attract the attention of thieves. The sale of his sword would feed a large family for a week or more.

  “Please, monsieur, I will do anything you wish,” the boy began to whine. He continued in graphic detail all of the services he would perform, reeling off unspeakable acts in a little singsong voice, until Dylan had gone beyond

  shock into outrage. He had an urge to clamp a hand around the child’s throat and throttle the life out of him and to run back across the nearest bridge and away from the city. “Go back to your master, brat!”

  “But, monsieur, he will beat me.” The boy crawled towards Dylan’s feet and touched his boot. Dylan pulled his foot away, but the child grabbed his other leg and cried piteously. He swarmed up the leg and embraced the man’s waist, so his fair head rested against Dylan’s pouch.

  A second later Philippe howled and jerked himself away, clutching his head and dancing on the paving stones like one possessed. Heads popped out of doors and windows to see what was causing the ruckus, and one sturdy woman advanced on Dylan with a stem expression on her plain face.

  “He’s got a demon in his belt,” shrieked Philippe. “It made me feel . . . light! Oh, it hurts. Make it stop.” “He’s a thief, and I cuffed him when he tried to steal my pouch,” Dylan said, improvising something he hoped would be believed.

  The woman grabbed the boy’s hair and peered at his face. “Stop this racket! There is not a mark upon you!” Philippe gave a strangled sound and opened his mouth. A tangle of dark, slimy worms hung out, then slithered down to the street. The boy vomited more things up while the woman moved hastily away. A stench that overcame the persistent odor of the Seine rose from the mess, and the boy tried desperately to push the dreadful things back into his mouth. Finally, he fell moaning into the pile of his own making and his blue eyes fluttered and he died.

  There was a silence in the street, and then a small man came from one of the houses. He carried a handful of rages dripping oil and a burning brand. He dropped the cl
oth on the still-twitching body and set it alight. The fire blazed, first on the rags, then on the tattered fabric of Philippe’s poor garments and finally spread to the flesh of child and worms alike.

  A huddle of weavers stood around the body and watched in quiet.

  The woman studied Dylan, who watched the whole proceeding in horror, and patted his hand in a friendly way. “The priest says to bum them, for they have no souls and cannot lie in sacred ground. I can see you are a stranger. You are very pale, monsignor. Perhaps you will come into my house for a cup of wine and a bit of bread and cheese.”

  Dylan nodded dumbly, and she led him into a doorway. It was dim inside, for the shutters on the window where the weavers set out their goods on market days were closed, but he could see it was tolerably clean. There was a tiny fire in the grate and a bench against the wall beside it. The trestles and tabletop used for meals were stacked opposite, and a few bolts of cloth stood in the comer, their edges oddly unfinished.

  The woman cocked her head, then shouted. “Marie-Louise, get to work, you lazy girl.” He heard footsteps on the floor above and a few moments later the thump of a loom. She shook her head and clacked her tongue, then bustled through a small doorway into the larder. Dylan could just make out jugs of wine and a large, pale cheese in the dimness. She returned after a minute with a small cup of wine and a plate with bread and cheese.

  “I thank you for your kindness, madame,” he said, remembering his manners.

  She chuckled. “My neighbors will no doubt think I have invited you in to warm my bed—the gossips—for I am a widow now. But you looked so dazed, my heart went out to you. And the church tells us that it is right to be kind and generous, though the priest takes more than he gives. Sit, sit. You are from the south, perhaps?”

  She was obviously puzzled by his accent and curious as well. “No, I am from Albion.”

  The woman goggled. “Albion! Why, no one has come from there for a long time. My cousin Denise was a servant in the ambassador’s house. Perhaps you have come to . . . see him?” She looked doubtfully at his travel-stained clothing.

  Dylan scratched his jaw, for he had several day’s growth of beard and realized he must look like a wild man. He had a letter in his pack for the ambassador, one Giles de Cambridge, signed by Arthur’s own hand, but he had been so intent upon just reaching Paris he had forgotten it until this moment. He sipped the vinegary wine, then set the cup on the bench beside him and picked up the bread and cheese. He had eaten little besides nuts and apples for three days, and had almost forgotten how good reasonably fresh bread could taste.

  “Or did you come about the King?” the woman persisted. “The King?” he asked, his mouth half full.

  “He’s dying, you know. Been at it for three months,” she added, disapproving of such a laggardly departure. “The priests have been around him like a swarm of bees.” Dylan swallowed and took more wine. “I am sorry to hear that.” He wasn’t really, for the little he knew about Louis VIII was that he was both proud and ineffectual, but it seemed a good idea to be polite.

  “Pah! Do not waste your sympathy. Paris will be well rid of him, for he taxes us to pieces.” She gestured towards the cloth. “See those. I cannot sell them until I have sent them to the selvedger, but I cannot pay the tax of one sou on each ten ells, and that I do not have—unless 1 rob it from my daughter’s dowry. Paris goes in rags from Louis’ taxes. And it will be no better when that pious son of his sits upon the throne, for even as his father' wastes away, he prepares a holy army to take against the Shadow. He will tax us for God as his father taxed us for glory. Still, if he can do it, I shall be glad to be rid of creatures like that boy.” She paused for a moment. “I cannot understand what you did to make his evil leave him, monsignor. Are you a monk?”

  Dylan had to laugh and found it felt wonderful. He had finished the bread and cheese and his stomach was so shrunk that he had no desire for more. The wine and the company of the woman had warmed him, and the horrible feeling of alienation from his own kind had diminished.

  “No, madame, I am no monk. Besides, if sanctity could cure the evils of the world, the Shadow would not be amongst us. We would drink holy water instead of wine and sing like angels.”

  She roared with merriment. “How true, how true. But most priests are like dogs whining under the table for the scraps and growling when you do not give them the whole roast. I pray to the Blessed Mother, but she does not answer. Perhaps she is too busy. But I pray she will deliver me from priests and tax collectors, and perhaps that is wrong. The priests say to pray for goodness, but I am already a good woman, you see.”

  “Indeed you are. And generous as well. I do not know what I did to that boy. He put his head against my pouch and started screaming.”

  “Ah! You have a relic there, no? You are a pilgrim, perhaps?’ ’

  He liked her lively mixture of practicality and curiosity, all leavened with superstition. “No, madame. Just some hairs from my steed’s tail and a pretty leaf I found in the forest. And I came to Franconia to find the woman of my dreams.” His admission surprised him, and he wondered why he had said it. Had he come for the sleeping woman, or for the sword which lay upon her breast, or simply to escape his mother’s apron ties?

  “Ah ha! I always heard the women of Albion were rather plain. It is a quest of love. You better wash your face first though.”

  “Madame, if the Seine weren’t little better than a sewer, I would jump in clothes and all.”

  “This is nothing. Wait until the summer really comes. All who can, leave the city, for the fever comes and we die like flies. That is how I lost my husband. By the end of

  September there was hardly a weaver in the street with the strength to lift a shuttle and there were three funerals every day. Come, I will heat a pot of water and you will wash the dirt off your face. You have eyes like my Jean when he courted me. The Blessed Mother knows I miss him. Do you have a clean tunic? I can wash the one you have on and we can dry it before the fire, though the taxes I pay on wood will beggar me.”

  “You are too kind. I have a clean tunic, yes, but if you use more wood, you must let me . . . contribute to your daughter’s dowry.”

  “I knew there was a gentleman beneath all that dirt and hair.” She bustled away and Dylan realized they did not even know each other’s names. While the water heated he removed his leather jerkin, the mail and the sweat-stained tunic beneath it. His chest and shoulders were covered with curly black hair, and he looked down at himself in surprise. He smelled different too, not the acrid scent of a man but a muskier odor.

  The widow regarded his half-naked body with awe, and, indeed, his muscles seemed stronger and more prominent to him. Dylan pulled out his clean tunic and shook it to remove the creases. The widow snatched it from him and peered at the cloth.

  “Good wool.” She rubbed it between her fingers. “Albionese wool is fine stuff. In my father’s time, we still could get it. Now we have to make do with Flemish. Or Iberian!” Her words left him no doubt of the inferiority of Spanish sheep. She turned it inside out and looked at the sewing on the seams. “Fine stitching,” she commented.

  “My mother wove the cloth and my sister Rowena sewed it and did the embroidery. But I think it will be a little warm. I did not know Paris would be so . . . hot and damp.”

  “It is not so bad away from the river, but you had best go to a tailor and get some linen made up.” She cast a knowledgeable eye across his wide shoulders. “Two ells if it’s an inch. Do not let them charge you for three. Those linen people are all Flems—and they would cheat then-own grandmothers.”

  “Our prince just married a Flem,” he began.

  “Fat and stupid and pink and yellow, no doubt. They are all the same.”

  He smiled. It was a very accurate description of Isabeau. “She is not fat precisely, but she eats a great deal and will probably become so.”

  “Did you go to the wedding?”

  “Yes, I did.”

 
“Tell me. We have not had a wedding here—well, young Louis did marry, after his father dragged him out of the monastery, but it was a shabby affair. My cousin—the one who worked for the ambassador—invited me there to sit in the window and watch the procession, but I could have stayed home. Prince Louis was dressed more like a monk than a future king, and his bride was a drab little

  thing. It was more like a funeral than a wedding. Why,

  even the horses drooped their heads, they were so ashamed. I was not surprised. The King never spends a sou on anyone but himself.”

  As he told her all he could recall about the manner of dress of Prince Geoffrey and his bride, Dylan wondered if the burghers of London were as critical of their monarch as this woman. He had never considered the burden of taxes before. Still, he could remember no complaint and thought perhaps that Arthur was a better King than Louis. Certainly London had fewer beggars and they were not as miserable as the people near the gate.

  “My mother wore a gown of blue with silver crescent moons woven into it, and my sisters wore green and white. They are all dark-haired, and looked very lovely.” He smiled fondly. “But I think my sisters are lovely at any time.”

  “I can see you are a good son and brother. Here. The water is warm.”

  Dylan washed before the fire, enjoying the sensation and feeling the dirt leave his skin. The woman handed him a rough cloth to dry himself and he re-dressed. He would have liked to strip off his filthy hose, but he felt a bit modest.

  He stuffed his mail and jerkin into one of his packs and put his belt back in place. Settling his sword on his hip, he reached into his pouch and removed a coin. He held it out to her.