Isavel turned a shade whiter.
“Why does Pierre love you?” Celeste demanded, clenching her teeth on the words.
“Because he knows I love him. Because I would never betray or abandon him, as long as I draw breath.”
Celeste drew back. Betray and abandon? Was that what the woman thought of her? She turned away. So be it.
“If you have little care for your husband, think of your brother!”
“This has nothing to do with him.”
“Nothing to do with him? How can you pretend to have no idea what Lord Bernard’s patronage means to Pierre?” Isavel cried. “There are many wine merchants in Lyon; not many as wealthy as Pierre, for no others have a sister married to nobility.”
“My marriage is convenient for you.”
“It is not inconvenient for you, either. But that is not my concern. Pierre is my concern.”
“Pierre? You pretend you did this for Pierre?” Celeste did not hide the scorn from her voice.
“You are so selfish you cannot see anything else in others.” Isavel glared at Celeste. “Any other woman would be pleased to know her marriage benefited her family. Any other woman in your situation would understand how much her relatives’ prosperity depended upon her Lord husband’s goodwill. She would not carelessly jeopardize that goodwill, as you are doing. Perhaps you do care for your brother, but you are so blinded by yourself that you will destroy him. And because of Pierre’s love for you, he will allow you to.” She straightened, breathing deeply. “But I will not allow it.”
“What will you do, Isavel?”
“Why did you marry him? Lord Bernard asked you if you were willing. He would not marry you otherwise.”
“You are lying. Just as you would have lied about sending a message to him if I had not caught you doing so.”
“Pierre told me, when he asked me the same question.”
Pierre said so? Had Lord Bernard asked if she was willing? She pictured him as she had seen him in Cluny, sitting tall and confident on his stallion, exuding power as the sun exudes light. Yet he had asked her permission. Her heart skipped. Could it be true?
She turned without a word and left Isavel standing in her stable.
***
The sun beat down on the grapevines as she walked between them, following the path she and Pierre had often walked. She had not considered what reprisal Lord Bernard might take against Pierre. Was he the kind of man who would destroy a brother-in-law for sheltering his sister without her husband’s knowledge? That did not sound like a man who would not marry without his bride’s consent. Which was true and which was the lie?
Sunlight and moonlight, she thought, remembering the garden at the abbey. Isavel called her selfish for not considering Pierre’s welfare. But Isavel’s fortunes were tied to Pierre’s, and she was not concerned about Celeste’s well-being. So which of them could call the other selfish?
Sunlight and moonlight. Was there a way to see people as they were, without one’s own concerns casting light or darkness over them? Isavel thought well of Lord Bernard; Marie feared him. Even if Celeste remembered how she had felt about her husband, even if she still felt it, too much had happened between them. They were in moonlight now and everything was changed.
What did it matter, after all? Whether it was Lord Bernard’s castle which filled her nightmares, or Lord Bernard himself whom she was fleeing, the result was the same. She would have to be gone before he came here, if she did not want to go back with him. There was no sanctuary for her here, or for the unfortunate babe, if there was one, trusting in her frail resourcefulness.
She went to the stable and ordered her horse saddled up.
The rain began as soon as he left the market grounds, and continued into the evening. Even under his cloak, huddled against a tree trunk between the donkey and the barrels, Jean was wet and shivering. Yet he dared not go further into the woods. Having left the market a day early, he was alone on the road. At least here, at the edge of the woods, he would be able to see anyone approaching.
Curse the old woman, and curse his foolishness! A moment of pity and here he was: wet, cold and alone by the side of the road.
Death with his sharpened sickle waited only for a momentary slip…
No! He was nothing like his mother and would not suffer her fate. He knew the worth of the coins that fed his family, the value of his life. He did not deserve to lose them.
It was the fault of that black-eyed girl. He had had no pity for her and now he was besieged by the useless sentiment. He knew there was something about her eyes as soon as he looked into them. She had done something to him, despite what the priest said. He crossed himself in the dark.
The motion calmed him. He had escaped. No one would remember the price of his handkerchiefs a year from now. Perhaps the old woman’s son would even recover.
Never look back. He was alone, but not without resources. He pulled his knife from his belt and held it in his left hand. In his right he gripped his strong walking staff. He had fought thieves off before. He would rather take his chances on the road than face a mob of angry townspeople convinced he had been cheating them, or a bailiff who would take his entire purse in exchange for his life and still order his left hand chopped off. He settled back against the tree, glaring into the darkness around him.
Halfway through the night, the rain stopped. Jean drifted into a cold, uncomfortable sleep.
The donkey woke him, braying and surging to its feet. Jean was up almost as quickly, straining to see in the darkness.
Several murky shadows crept between the trees, slightly darker than the surrounding gloom. He swung his staff up as the first one came at him, and heard a satisfying CRACK!
“Get the animal,” another one cried, rushing forward. The donkey brayed and kicked, struggling against the rope that tied it to the tree.
Jean raised his knife, swinging his staff toward a movement at the corner of his eye. A grunt, a curse, and then the staff was wrenched from his grip; they were upon him.
“Take the beast away!” someone shouted.
The donkey! His livelihood! Jean gave a strangled cry. He looked around wildly, saw its hindquarters disappearing into the woods and lunged in that direction, slashing at his captors with his knife. He felt it sink into soft flesh, began to pull it back out—
A flash of metal and his gut was on fire. He gripped his belly, feeling hot, sticky liquid between his fingers. He pitched forward.
***
It was far too bright. Why was the night so full of light? Jean opened his eyes a slit. The sun hovered directly overhead, as brilliant as the face of God staring down at him. Blinded by its radiance, he turned his head. Waves of pain and dizziness swept over him.
When they subsided he opened his eyes again. He was lying on his back on a grey pilgrim’s cloak tied between two long walking staffs. Four men in pilgrim’s tunics surrounded him, one holding the end of each staff. He swayed a little with the slow rhythm of their movement as they carried him forward.
It was too much. That he, Jean le Peddler, was being carried to heaven by four pilgrims. He closed his eyes, overwhelmed.
***
“Papa! Papa!” Jeanne’s thin little voice cries out to him, muffled by the thick fog. He runs toward it, his arms reaching, disappearing at the elbows into the clinging grey dampness.
“Papa!” Her voice is fainter now, coming from his left. He turns and stumbles blindly toward it.
“Papa, m’aidez!”
No, from the right. Why is he so disoriented? Her voice is only a whisper of terror in the distance, begging him to find her. “Jeanne!” he screams, charging into the fog.
“Papa…” Her sweet little voice pleads from the other direction.
“Jeanne! Jeanne!” He turns and runs to the left again, swinging his arms in front of him. “Jeanne! Where are you?”
Silence.
He falls to his knees, weeping as the fog closes in, blinding him completely.
A heavy weight settles into his arms. He looks down, squinting through the fog—
“Jeanne.” He bends over her. She is so still. Her face and arms are bruised and cut, crusted with blood. She has been hit, over and over…
“Jeanne,” he whispers. Why is she so cold? He hugs her against him. So cold and still, in the fog that curls around her. Not even a breath of movement. He shakes her gently. A stone falls out of her tangled hair. She begins to disappear, evaporating like smoke. He grasps for her, clutching wisps of air in his aching arms.
He should never have loved her so much. He should never have let himself love her…
***
Jean opened his eyes slowly, squinting in the bright daylight. A priest stood over him, his lips moving in quiet prayer.
“Ee-av-ees-ahh,” Jean mumbled. His head pounded, his entire body throbbed with pain.
“Confiteor deo omnipotent,” the priest said gently. His voice came from far away, although he was standing quite close. There was something familiar about him. Jean squinted up at him, and was immediately dizzy. He drew a breath. A bolt of pain lanced through his side.
“Beatae Mariae semper Virgini…”
The priest was saying the prayer of confession. What did he want Jean to confess? Had the bailiff from Lyon caught him? Was he receiving the last rites before his execution?
“I am not a thief.” He tried to speak clearly. The priest bent down as though he could not make out Jean’s words. He waited, bent over, for Jean to confess.
I am not a thief, Jean thought, willing the priest to understand. He closed his eyes.
“Quid quid deliquiste,” the priest murmured.
Jean felt the priest’s fingers touching his eyes, his ears, his nostrils…
“Libera nos, equisetums, Domine,”
…was comforted by the lingering coolness of the oil where the priest had touched him…
“Ab omnibus malis, praeteritis, presentibus, et futuris…”
The familiar words of the rite of extreme unction flowed over Jean.
“…perducat te ad vitam aeternam.”
I am dying, he thought.
***
The air is full of smoke, suffocating him. Waves of heat pour over him, radiating from his gut, burning his side, his eyes, his forehead.
The forest is on fire! The flames snap and roar all around him, like a wild beast. He opens his eyes, panting. A man in a pilgrim’s tunic stands over him, the beads on his rosary clacking together, his eyes closed in prayer. Behind him, Jean sees a wall of flames.
Fire! He has no breath to put behind the word. He tries to raise his head. A shower of burning embers flies toward him. “Mama!” he screams.
***
Someone has been wounded. The bitter smell of herbe au charpentier was very strong in the night. Jean heard heavy breathing nearby and tried to call out. A woman leaned out of the darkness, her mouth curving into a smile above him. He could not see if she was young or old. She reached behind her and brought a cup to his lips. The heady scent of poppies filled his nostrils. He gulped the hot tea down, desperately thirsty despite the vile taste, and fell asleep again.
***
Jean drifted awake to the sound of a bird singing nearby. It must be morning already, he thought wearily. He had slept past dawn beside the road, a foolish thing to do. For a while he did not think any further than that. He was too worn out to worry over his foolishness; and anyway, it was morning now. The night, and the dangers in it, were over. He lay with his eyes closed, listening to the bird, drifting in and out of sleep.
The birdsong stopped. Jean strained after it, letting his breath out with a sigh when it resumed.
Something was wrong. The smells were not right. Where was the clean scent of pine and walnut trees, and sweet wild lavender growing along the edge of the woods? He should have the dusty grit of the summer road in his nostrils and feel the early morning air moving over his face. He should hear the donkey pulling against its rope to graze a little further from the tree, swishing insects away with its tail. He should not feel so weary, as though he had come through a long ordeal, and his chest and side should not ache like this nor his head feel heavy and tight with the residue of pain.
The bird stopped singing.
Jean opened his eyes warily. He was not beside the road but lying in a narrow bed in a small room by himself. Daylight poured into the room through a window recessed into the wall adjacent to his bed. A small, brown sparrow perched on the stone ledge of the window.
The wooden door across the room creaked open. The sparrow shook out its wings and fell into the sunlit sky.
A serving woman entered with a bowl of gruel. Jean tried to sit up and gasped at the pain. A thick poultice covered his left side and half of his stomach. It was partially soaked with blood, but the blood was drying and cracked at the edges of the poultice.
“Where am I?” He wanted to ask how long he had been here, also, but it was hard enough to force out the first question.
“You are safe.” The woman tapped her finger lightly against his mouth. “Do not try to talk. Eat and rest.”
She reached behind his shoulders and raised him gently. The pain made him groan aloud. She let him rest before holding the bowl to his mouth. He gulped at the warm, thin gruel, suddenly famished. It needed salt to give it flavour, or the smallest pinch of cinnamon to hide the greasy aftertaste, but even without these it was delicious. He licked the edges of the bowl like a starving mongrel.
Later, when she left, his stomach ached as though he had gorged himself. The movement had caused his side and head to throb again. He closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
The tolling of church bells wakened him. They must be ringing vespers, judging by the fading light coming through the window. Other bells tolled in the distance, one from very far away. What towns were they ringing for, he wondered, and then, more urgently, where was he?
Several people had carried him for what seemed a long time. Was that real, or was it a dream? His memories were muddled, laced with pain and nightmare. He had thought he was being carried to heaven; he had imagined he was being robbed; he had seen Jeanne dead. But she was safe at home with Mathilde. Was anything he remembered true?
He looked around the room for his belongings. A single barrel stood in the corner, near the window. Perhaps the other barrel was in the stable, with his donkey. His donkey, braying as it was led away in the night…
A jolt of panic brought him upright in his bed. He was immediately dizzy and nearly blinded by the pain in his gut and side. He eased himself down again.
When the pain subsided, the panic was still there.
“Help!” he cried out. His voice was too weak to carry. No one could have heard him. He fell back against the thin mattress. Perhaps he had nothing to fear. Perhaps it was only nightmare or illness, playing with his mind.
Jean pushed the bedcovers down. He untied the poultice slowly, panting with the effort. A jagged cut began just above his belly button and ran down around his left side at the waist. The skin on either side had been roughly sewn together. The stitches were crusted with blood, but there were no black lines under the skin above or below the cut, so the poultice had done its job and drawn the poison out. The pain that left him breathless came from his side, above the wound. He probably had a broken rib or two.
Jean pushed the sheet down further. His legs were bruised and swollen, but did not appear to be broken. He wriggled his toes. It hurt all the way down his legs to do so, but he was satisfied with the response. He retied the poultice and pulled the sheet up again. The effort exhausted him. He lay back and closed his eyes.
***
Heavy, measured footsteps approaching his door wakened him just before it swung open. The tall priest he had met on the road entered his room. Jean closed his eyes quickly to hide his surprise.
How had the fellow got here? They had parted company in Lyon many days ago, or so it seemed. Was he dreaming again? Was he back in Lyon? He li
stened intently with his eyes shut.
The priest’s footsteps crossed the room and stopped beside his bed. “Are you awake?” he said.
Jean opened his eyes cautiously.
“You are recovering.”
He sounded relieved. He had not been told, then, about the handkerchiefs that were not really blessed. He would not be so friendly if he knew.
“We feared you would die, but God has chosen to spare you.”
It was the same voice that had said the last rites over him. So that had not been a dream.
“Would you like a drink of water?”
“Yes—” Jean’s voice came out thin and high, like a boy’s.
The priest did not seem as surprised by it as Jean was. He poured some water into a cup from a pitcher on the table beside Jean’s bed. The water was warm and slightly silty, and Jean had never drunk anything so good. He stole glances at the priest while he drank.
Someone in pilgrim’s robes had sat beside him, reading aloud from a Book of Hours. There had been only one person in the room, but the faces and voices had changed, sometimes a man, sometimes a woman. He had dreamed he was in heaven with them; that somehow, in the pilgrims’ company, he had bypassed purgatory, and he feared he would be caught out and sent back. He remembered trying to talk to them, to explain everything—the handkerchiefs, the woman who sold him her nail and her ring—but they ignored him, insisting on reading aloud the lives of the saints which so engrossed them. What might he have revealed to them in his fevered babblings and earnest confessions?
The Sorrow Stone Page 18