The Miracle Thief

by Iris Anthony

  They did? I eyed the bushes with newfound suspicion.

  “And I am easy prey, for man or beast. I cannot move. They will wait as long as they have to.”

  “A knight like you can take care of himself.” And if I were about the wood in the day’s light, surely the beasts would not attack me…would they?

  With a grunt and a wince, he pulled his sword from his scabbard and offered it to me. “If you are going to leave, then you might as well finish the job: kill me now.”

  I shrank from him. “Kill you!”

  “Even if the beasts do not finish me, then I will come after you and I will find you and I will return you to your father. It is my death or your freedom.”

  “Then why should I stay? Why should I not seek asylum at the abbey, as I planned?”

  “And bring destruction and shame on the abbess at Chelles for sheltering you?”

  “Who says I am going to Chelles?”

  “Where else would you go? The abbeys here are controlled by Robert, and if you venture north of Chelles, you are in danger of encountering more Danes.”

  He was right. Those reasons were exactly why I had chosen Chelles. “The church must always provide a refuge to a virgin being forced to marry without her consent.”

  “Yes. But princesses are a different matter entirely.”

  “Once I take my vows, then who but God can claim me?”

  He broke his posture as he sagged against his horse. “Who would want to?”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, You’re as unlikely a princess as ever there has been.”

  As he stood there, hand clamped around the reins, I made my choice. I would stay with him one night more. It was the least I owed him, given it was my actions that had wounded him.

  ***

  We rode slowly that day. Andulf did not want the count’s men to lay claim to the honor of escorting me back to Rouen, so we kept ourselves hidden from other travelers upon the road. Neither of us wanted to stop at an inn for the night. So once more, despite misgivings, we headed for the wood.

  After handing me down from the horse, Andulf dismounted, though he groaned as his feet found the ground.

  “You have pain.”

  “Of course I have pain!” He fairly snapped at me. “I’ve been gored by a boar.”

  “And riding all this day cannot have helped you.” I reached a hand around him in support, but he brushed it away. “You must let me see your wounds.” I did not exactly know what to look for, but his hands had grown damp and his forehead sweaty, even though the winds had been cold and cruel. I put a hand to his chest.

  He looked down at it and then up into my eyes.

  “Please.”

  He dropped to the ground with a thump and flung his tunic to the side as if I were some goose to be concerned on his behalf.

  Even before I had knelt beside him, I could see his thigh had swollen to almost twice its size. And an evil-looking pus had coated the wound. “I don’t know if…”

  He took a look for himself. And then, as he probed at the wounds with his fingers, a line of perspiration bloomed above his lip. “Start a fire.”

  I found his fire-steel with trembling hands, and then gathered a pile of twigs and leaves.

  He gestured for the flint and the touchwood, using them to birth a spark. “Get my sword as well.”

  As I drew it from its sheath, I was startled by its great weight.

  He fanned the sparks with the hem of his mantle and roused them to a snapping flame. “Lay it in the fire.”

  “In…?”

  He held out his hand. When I gave him the sword, he placed the length of it on the fire himself, and then left it there for some time as I fed the flames more leaves and twigs.

  “Can you get my costrel?”

  I gave it to him.

  Taking up his mantle once more, he poured wine over it and then used it to scrub at his wounds. He did it so fiercely that drops of sweat broke from his brow to course down his neck. And in the process, he rubbed the scabs right off and set the gashes to bleeding once more.

  “Don’t—”

  “I want you to take the sword from the fire.”

  I lifted it, using both my hands.

  “Now place it on my leg.” He bared the wounds to me. “If I try to do it, I will like as stab myself.” He nodded toward the gashes. “You must do it for me.”

  I took a deep breath and knelt beside him. Lowering the sword… I could not do it.

  “Go on.”

  “I cannot.” I whispered the words, for courage had deserted me.

  “You must.”

  “It will hurt you.”

  “I must hurt in order to heal.”

  “I cannot do it.” As my hands faltered, he wrapped his own around them and, fighting my resistance, pressed the flat of his sword to his thigh. His skin sizzled as the stench of seared flesh rose from it, and still he left it there. I tried to move it away, but he only strengthened his grip on my hands and held the sword in place. He did not succumb to profanity this time, which I took to mean it hurt twice as much again as it had when I had scraped at his wounds earlier that morning.

  By the time he released my hands, tears were coursing down my face. All of it was my fault: the boar, his wounds, his sword-scarred flesh. I let the sword tumble from my grasp and pushed myself away from him. “If you had just let me go, none of this would have happened!”

  “I have sworn to protect you.”

  “Then let me go, and you won’t have to worry about me anymore.”

  “I have been entrusted by the king with your care.”

  “He could hardly fault you for not doing what he is not willing to do himself.”

  “His Majesty the king cares more for you than any father I’ve ever seen.”

  “If he did, then he would not have let the count and the archbishop pledge me to a pagan!”

  “Has your life been so good that you should fear to lose it, my lady?”

  “I do not know anything else. And how can anyone fault me for clinging to what I know? For not wanting to give it up for strange ways and pagan lands?”

  He grunted.

  “The archbishop spoke to me of sacrifice and the souls that may be won, but it is not a very great sacrifice if I am forced into it, is it? If I could go to the Dane willing, if I might be allowed to place my own self upon the altar instead of being bound to it, then perhaps I could find peace.” He did not seem to be swayed. “But what do you know of sacrifice?”

  “I was torn from my mother’s arms by my father when I was only three days old. I had not been baptized; I had not even been named. And once I was weaned, I was delivered up to King Carloman, to be raised in his court as a sort of ransom to ensure my father’s friendship. Our estates were on the borderlands in Aquitaine. My father had been a loyal retainer of King Carloman’s father and had kept the Saracens from crossing the mountains.”

  I knew this story, for it was partly my own. “But King Carloman never trusted his father’s friends.” He had been one of the pair of brothers who had stolen my father’s crown. Their father, King Louis, was my grandfather.

  “When I was old enough, the king placed me as a squire in the household of the Count of Bresse.”

  An evil and grasping man.

  He sent a wry look in my direction. “I see you must have heard of him. While I was in his service, King Carloman died, and then so did Charles the Fat. Then Odo came to hold the throne. While we were at court, the Count of Bresse impugned my father’s honor.”

  I could hardly bear to hear what had happened next.

  “My father was seized by Odo and held for many months before he was finally executed.”

  “I’m sorry. I did not—”

  “During his long absence, my mother took
on a great many debts to try and rescue him and to keep me in all of the horses and weapons a knight requires.” He spoke with much bitterness. “And after my father died, his estates were co-opted by the Count of Bresse for our protection.” He fairly spat the word.

  “And your lady-mother?”

  “She is yet in Aquitaine and threatened with penury, while our retainers languish under the count’s control. A man can fight, but my mother never did anything but wed herself to a man well liked by his king.”

  I did not know what to say.

  “I have not ever met my mother, but it is my hope I may one day do so, and that we can return together to my father’s lands.”

  My hand had found its way to my throat as I had listened, and now it lay clasped within my other.

  “I served King Carloman with great loyalty, and next I served King Charles the Fat, and Odo, and even the Count of Bresse. And finally I was called here. Your father, the king, being no admirer of Odo or of his brother, the Count of Paris, I have been hoping to gain his ear long enough to ask for our estates to be restored.”

  “But you must do it! Surely he would understand.”

  “I hope so, my lady. I pray it with all my heart. But first I must gain the honor of serving in his contingent.”

  His admission made me feel very humbled and quite small. “I am sorry.”

  “For what, my lady? Misfortunes befall us all.” He stared at me as though daring me to say anything at all about the tale he had just recounted.

  “Yes, but—”

  “I am afraid we have nothing for our meal this night but wine and a few crusts of bread.”

  How I longed to put a hand to his cheeks and smooth away his cares. How I wished I could carry, if only for a moment, the hurt and the bitterness that bent his brow. “I only meant that—”

  “If you will look in my bag, then you will find them.”

  I tried once more to extend to him my sympathies. “I wish the world were just.”

  He looked up at me then with great sorrow in his gaze. “But then what would be the use for faith?”

  ***

  We rode that next day between fields newly plowed and trees stripped of their leaves, disturbing vast flocks of birds that wheeled as they lifted into the sky. It was well past midday when we came up over the rise of a hill to find a group of men strung across the road at the bottom. It was too late to turn: they had already seen us.

  One lifted his pitchfork as another approached, brandishing the sharp edge of a hoe.

  Andulf stopped his courser some way off and called out to them. “What do you want?”

  “We’ve been asked by the Count of Paris to look for a pair: a knight and the princess.” The man approached, spiderlike, as he spoke.

  “And what are you to do with them?”

  “Send someone back to Rouen for the count’s men. Are you them?”

  I held my breath as I waited for Andulf to reply.

  CHAPTER 31

  “We are not the people you seek.”

  Another of the men had come over to peer up at us. “He hasn’t got the look of a knight about him.”

  “He’s got the horse.”

  “But she doesn’t look like a princess.”

  Andulf repeated his pronouncement with calm authority. “We are not the people you seek.”

  The first man squinted up at him. “Whose people are you then?”

  “I’m to deliver the girl to the abbey. She’s to take her vows.”

  “Which abbey?”

  There was barely a pause before he answered. “The one just down the road.”

  “You have papers then.”

  “I have.”

  He hadn’t. Not that I had seen. He would never have had need of them. Normally his horse and his weapons, as well as my father’s pennon, would tell any who saw him whose man he was. But his tunic was torn and bloodied and he had no standard. He looked to be an ordinary man.

  The peasant had reached out and grabbed at my leg with his hand.

  I kicked at him, trying to free myself, but he only cackled and held on, pulling at the reins of my horse. “You’re a comely lass, aren’t you?”

  Andulf swung his horse toward the man. “She’s to pledge herself to God. Leave her be.”

  “Maybe I can change her mind.”

  I cannot say what might have happened had they not stepped aside when a short, stout man came walking up. He touched a finger to his forehead as he came to stand before us. “Pardon us for the delay, but as mayor of these lands, I’ve been asked by the Count of Paris to intercept all travelers.”

  “I have already told these men we are not those you seek.”

  If only he could say who he was. If only I could say who I was! But then we would be collected by the count’s men. Andulf’s honor would be impugned, and I would be placed back into the tower to await marriage to the Dane.

  “Whose man are you then?”

  “I am bringing this woman to the abbey where she is to take the veil.”

  He turned a suspicious eye on me.

  I tried to look devout.

  “Not even the nuns at Chelles would want such an offering as that.”

  Pity I could not bring down upon his head the wrath of my father the king!

  The man seemed set on misbelieving us. “You have not told me whose man you are.”

  Andulf tensed, repositioning the reins in his hands.

  The others must have seen it as well, for they pointed their pitchforks at us in earnest.

  I spoke. “We’re on God’s business.”

  “You wear no habit. And he has no cowl.” A man stepped up to his side, glancing at me. “But, she cannot be the princess, so he cannot be her man.”

  “But they are not Danes, nor are they Saxons.” The short man glanced up at us. “Surely the king would want to know his people drift across the countryside like chaff blown before the wind.” He nodded toward the spiderlike man, who came forward. “We’ll keep them while we send out word. Whoever is missing this pair might be glad to hear of our tidings.”

  ***

  They confiscated our horses, as well as Andulf’s sword and his knife, and threw us into a barn, securing it with a bar thrown across the door.

  From the smell, the place had been lately used by goats. The walls let in shafts of light, and the roof gaped at the sky, but at least we would have plenty of hay to bed down on this night.

  I hobbled to a mound of hay that had been piled beside the walls of a stall, and sat upon it. Andulf strode to the door and struck it with his fist, rattling it against the frame. The bar held firm.

  The injustice of the situation incensed me. And so did the thought of Andulf’s mother, waiting for news from her son these many years. “How your mother would despair to see you imprisoned in a place like this, in service to a princess like me.”

  His mouth turned up in half a smile. “And what would your own mother think?”

  “I cannot care what she would think. One thing I have always known: that I would never be like her, consenting to be some man’s whore; only now I am to be forced to wed a man who already has a wife.”

  “I would not say the Dane is rightfully married.” He settled himself beside me and lounged against the wall as he examined his wounds.

  “I suppose that’s what people said about my mother as well. And that’s why she went off.” It must have been. “She was not rightfully married, and so she went and left me behind.”

  “You would that she had stayed? What kind of life would that have been?”

  “My life. It would have been what my life was destined to become.”

  “Then why should she have wanted it any more than you?”

  “Is the Dane all I am allowed to hope for? Will I forever and always be unworthy of anyth
ing else? Of anything more?” God must think me too mean a creation to be put to greater use. Perhaps becoming a martyr was the best I could hope for. “Was I born simply to save someone else, some other poor girl, from dying at the Dane’s hand?”

  “What is this you say?”

  I scrubbed my tears off onto my sleeve. “How else am I to make sense of all of this? My mother took herself away before I even had the chance to know her. My father abandoned me without a backward glance, for his beloved Lorraine. What else am I to think? What more could there be to know about me than this: there is within me something that does not deserve more. Some base, vile thing I will never be able to change.” I thought I was brave enough just then to look him in the eye, but I was not. Whenever my gaze was intersected by those gray eyes, they seemed to probe my very soul. “Why am I not enough?” My chin trembled. I tried my best to stop it, but my pain and the rage only dove deeper inside me, causing my shoulders to quake.

  There he sat, a knight so true and noble I did not deserve his regard either. Oh, God, was there ever any soul more wretched than mine?

  “My lady?” He opened up his arm to me.

  As I shoved off propriety and took the refuge he offered, I could not keep from weeping. That fact only added to my humiliation.

  He pulled my head to his chest and then let his hand linger on my hair. “Your mother loved you.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because I knew her.”

  “You—” He had known her?

  “The Count of Bresse was he who escorted her when she left the court, and I was the squire he took with him. You must believe she mourned you. Every night when she supposed us to be sleeping, she wept.”

  She had mourned me? “But, if she loved me, then why did she leave?”

  “Your grandmother drove her away.”

  “You know where she is then?”

  “I took her there myself.”

  I pulled myself from him. “Then can you take me there as well?”

  When he looked down at me, his brows were knitted in puzzlement. “I thought… I thought that’s why you wished to go.”

  My brow now mirrored his own. “Go where?”