Clutching a candle in one hand and her sandals in the other, Arzhela joined the others. The mud was cold against the bare soles of her feet, the water even colder, but as she raised her eyes to the distant Mont, she forgot about her physical discomfort. The church spires seemed to be scraping the clouds and the last rays of the dying sun bathed the abbey in a golden glow. It was like gazing upon the glory of God, and Arzhela stared up at it in wonder, as if seeing it for the first time. The sense of peace that she’d experienced at St Michael’s shrine came flooding back. Some of the other pilgrims had begun to weep and Arzhela wept, too, for sheer joy. Why had she been so slow to understand what the Almighty wanted of her?
Upon the beach at Genêts, a lone figure stood at the water’s edge. The wind whipped Brother Bernard’s cowl back, blew sand into his face, and chilled his body and soul. He did not move, though, never taking his eyes from the pilgrims wading toward the Mont.
XI
February 1194
Antrain, Brittany
The flat tombstones were overgrown with moss, and white with hoarfrost, as cold as ice, offering little comfort to aching bodies and weary bones. But Morgan and the men-at-arms sprawled upon them as if they were cushions, glad for a respite, however brief, from too many hours in the saddle. The churchyard was empty, save for them and the dead. The church itself was not welcoming, small, shuttered, and precariously perched on the heights above a wooded valley where two rivers merged. There was no castle, just the church and a scattering of dilapidated, unsightly cottages. Poverty stalked this Breton village, where suspicion of strangers was a lesson learned in the cradle, and hope always rode on by, never even dismounting.
The men were not fanciful. With the exception of Morgan, their imaginations were not so much underused as undiscovered. Still, they dimly sensed the isolation and the melancholy of these unseen, reclusive villagers, and they kept their hands upon their weapons, kept casting glances over their shoulders. They did not like this Bretagne, this land of fog and legends and sunless, tangled woods where demons and bandits lurked. This was not a good place to be, not a good place to die.
“How much longer, you think?” Jaspaer’s English was serviceable, although the echoes of his native Flanders were never far from the surface. He was more comfortable speaking Flemish or French, but his companions were English and he used their tongue as a courtesy.
Unlike Jaspaer, whose sword was for hire to any lord with money to pay, be he French, Danish, or Swabian, Rufus and Crispin were English lads, born and bred in Shropshire, and not happy to be so far from home. So Morgan responded in English, too, although French was his first language. “Soon, I’d expect,” he said reassuringly. “How long does it take to replace a shoe, after all?”
“In this godforsaken land, who knows?” Rufus muttered darkly, his thoughts bleak enough to warrant making a quick sign of the Cross.
“We could wager whilst we wait,” Morgan suggested, and succeeded in stirring a flicker of interest.
“On what?” Crispin asked, patting the scrip that dangled from his belt. “I lost the dice at Laval.”
“See those two birds in that yew tree yonder? We could wager which one will fly away first. Or... when our good lords will get back from the farrier’s. Or if they’ll make it to Mont St Michel ere they kill each other.”
They all grinned at that, even the morose Rufus, for Durand and Justin had been quarreling like tomcats ever since they’d left Fougères—clashing over which road to take, how fast a pace to set, whose fault it was that they’d not been able to ride out as early as they’d hoped, who was to blame for this latest delay.
“I’d best go see if the farrier has got bone-sick of their yammering and tossed them both into his horse trough,” Morgan said, and they all grinned again, for the Breton blacksmith was the biggest man any of them had ever seen, with legs like tree trunks and hands like hams. Rising stiffly, Morgan stretched and winced and then halted, gazing toward the north. “Riders,” he said, and the other men scrambled to their feet, too, wary and watchful.
At the farrier’s shed, Durand had made such a pest of himself, hovering close at hand and peering over the blacksmith’s shoulder, that the Breton at last rose to his full, formidable height, pointed to the door and told him to get out. Durand spoke no Breton, but the man’s gesture did not need translation.
Outside, Justin was pacing back and forth, unable to stand still for more than a heartbeat. He turned swiftly as Durand emerged from the shed. “How much longer?”
“You speak this accursed tongue of theirs,” Durand snapped. “Ask him yourself.”
“I’ve already told you that I do not speak Breton,” Justin snapped back. “I understand a bit because I know some Welsh.”
“Well, you still get more than I do.” Durand glowered at Justin, as if his language lack were the younger man’s fault. “Go ask him, not me!”
Justin silently counted to ten. It did not help. “If you’d checked your horse’s hooves ere we left Fougères, you might have noticed that a shoe was loose. But of course you could not be bothered—”
Justin stopped for Durand was no longer listening, staring over Justin’s shoulder with such intensity that he spun about. Morgan and their men-at-arms were hastening toward them, and now he and Durand could see it, too—the rising dust of approaching riders, coming from the north, from Mont St Michel.
“I know him!” Durand exclaimed as the newcomers rode into the village. Stepping quickly into the road, he called out, “My lord abbot! A moment, if you please!”
The abbot reined in, gazing down impassively at Durand. His guards urged their mounts closer, but Durand did not appear threatening. At his most courtly, he bowed gracefully. “We met in Paris last year, at the court of the king of the French. I am Sir Durand de Curzon.”
The name meant nothing to Abbot Jourdain, but the man before him was well-dressed, well-spoken, and well-armed, clearly a member of the gentry. “Ah, yes,” he said politely. “Sir... Durand, God’s blessings upon you... and your traveling companions,” he added, glancing toward Justin, Morgan, and the men-at-arms.
“They are my servants,” Durand said dismissively. “A man would be foolish to ride alone in these dangerous times. It is indeed fortuitous that we’ve met on the road like this, my lord abbot, for I am heading to Mont St Michel. I would not have wanted to miss the opportunity to pay my respects to you.”
The abbot responded with a courtesy of his own. He’d had much practice at extricating himself from tiresome social situations, and he said, kindly but firmly, “Alas, I cannot tarry, much as I would enjoy renewing acquaintance with you, Sir Durand. We must reach Fougères by dark.”
Durand did not move from the center of the road. “Indeed? I have just come from Fougères myself, where I had the honor of performing a service for the Duchess Constance and Lord Raoul, her liege man.”
Influenced, perhaps, by the names Durand was dropping with such abandon, the abbot curbed his impatience and mustered up a polite smile. Before he could make another attempt to end the conversation, Durand stepped closer. “I believe that a lady dear to my heart is currently enjoying the hospitality of your abbey, my lord. Not that I would imply there is anything improper between us,” he said with a smile that suggested just that, “for she is of the blood royal of Brittany. Lady Arzhela de Dinan... I trust she is well?”
The abbot bit his lip, hesitated, and then said, “I assume so,” with such obvious discomfort that Justin felt a chill of foreboding.
Shouldering his way forward, he demanded, “Has evil befallen her?”
The abbot looked annoyed now, as well as uneasy. “Your servant could do with a lesson in manners, Sir Durand.”
“He is not my servant,” Durand said grudgingly, glaring at Justin.
“I could be his baseborn son for all it matters! My lord, what of Lady Arzhela?”
“I do not know you,” the abbot responded icily, “and I am not in the habit of being accosted by strangers
.” He included Durand in that rebuke, glancing from one to the other suspiciously, and Justin hastily knelt in the road.
“Forgive me, my lord abbot,” he said humbly. “I did indeed misspeak myself. But we have reason to fear for Lady Arzhela’s safety. Can you at least assure us that she has come to no harm?”
Mollified somewhat by Justin’s penitent demeanor, the abbot was silent for a moment, considering. “I need to know your identity,” he said at last.
Justin’s brain was racing, weighing his options. They dare not mention Lord John’s name, not in Brittany. But the abbey lay within King Richard’s domains, within Normandy. Why, though, would King Richard’s men be seeking the Lady Arzhela? If that got back to Constance, there’d be hell to pay.
“I am Sir Luke de Marston,” he said, going with the first name to pop into his head. “I am foster brother to Simon de Lusignan.” He was gambling now that Arzhela’s liaison with de Lusignan was an open secret, and gambling, too, that she’d much rather be called to account for her sexual sins than for her political ones. “Simon and Lady Arzhela... they quarreled a fortnight ago. She has refused to see Simon since then, and he hoped that if we told her how very sorry he was, her heart might soften toward him...”
“That is the truth, my lord abbot,” Durand chimed in, shooting Justin a glance of surprised approval. “We are on a mission of mercy, if you will. We promised Simon that we’d put in a good word for him with his lady. The poor sod has been so lovesick that we could endure his lamenting and moaning for not another day!”
The abbot was regarding them with an odd expression, not easy to decipher. Justin was trying to come up with a plausible answer for the question he was dreading: Why is the Lady Arzhela in danger? To his astonishment, it was not asked. Instead, Abbot Jourdain said, choosing his words with conspicuous care, “Is it possible that Simon could not wait, that he acted on his own to mend this breach between them?”
“I suppose so,” Durand acknowledged cautiously, and both he and Justin were taken aback by the abbot’s emotional reaction. He closed his eyes for a moment, embracing hope like a drowning man might grab for a lifeline.
“That would explain it,” he cried. “Thanks be to the Almighty and Blessed St Michael! She must have gone off with de Lusignan!”
“Are you saying she is missing?”
The abbot was so relieved that he did not even notice the terseness of the question. “So we thought. She rode over to Genêts yesterday and told her servant that she’d be staying the night. But when he went to the priory guesthouse this morn, she was not there. Her mare was still in the stable, and a search turned up a mantle that her man claimed as hers. None had seen her, though, since yesterday, none knew where she might have gone... I felt I had no choice but to inform the duchess, for the Lady Arzhela is her cousin. But now there is no need, for if it was a lover’s quarrel... We all know how foolish women can be at such times...”
He got no further, his words trailing off and his smile fading, for Simon de Lusignan’s friends had whirled and were running for their horses. As the blacksmith led a grey stallion out, the man who called himself Durand de Curzon vaulted up onto the animal’s back and spurred after the others. The blacksmith was shouting that they owed him money, village dogs had begun to bark, and the abbot’s escort milled about in confusion, uncertain what was expected of them.
“My lord abbot? Shall we go after them?”
Abbot Jourdain’s shoulders slumped and he rubbed his fingers gingerly against his temples, like a man stricken with a sudden, sharp headache. By now the riders were already out of sight, the dust beginning to settle. “No,” he said slowly. “I shall have to continue on to Fougères, after all.”
They reached Mont St Michel as the late-afternoon shadows were lengthening. In spite of his fear for Arzhela, Justin was awestruck at sight of the abbey. At first glance, it looked to be a castle carved from the very rocks of the isle, its towering spires reaching halfway to Heaven, the last bastion of Christian faith in a world of denial and disbelief. A fragment of religious lore came back to him, that St Michael was known as the guardian of the threshold between life and eternity, and that seemed the perfect description for his abbey, too, a bridge between the land of the living and the sea of the dead.
Durand had reined in beside him, revealing by a muttered exclamation that was both involuntary and irreverent that this was his first sight of Mont St Michel, too: “Holy Lucifer!”
By now their men had caught up with them. Justin turned in the saddle as a local Breton approached and offered to guide them across the mudflats. Durand did not wait, though, and spurred his stallion out onto the wet sand. Justin called Durand an uncomplimentary name and then plunged after him. Much more reluctantly, so did the others.
While Justin and Durand climbed up the cliff to the abbey, Morgan went about finding lodgings for them in the village on the slope below. It was an easy task, for virtually every house offered bed and food; fishing was the primary occupation of the Montois, and more fished for pilgrims than for mullet or shrimp. They were soon settled in an ancient hostel called La Sirène, flirting with a sarcastic serving maid who claimed the unlikely name of Salomé. Yearning for their daily ration of English ale, Crispin and Rufus had been thirsty enough in Paris to try cervoise, a French beer, but they hadn’t been able to get even that once they’d left the Île de France. Now they stared dubiously at the cups of hard cider brought by Salomé, but she brooked no refusals, pausing only long enough to slap Crispin’s hand away from her hip.
They were dunking bread in steaming bowls of soup when Justin and Durand returned, looking so somber that Morgan pushed back from the table and moved to meet them. Unlike the men-at-arms, who were surprisingly incurious about their mission, Morgan had done some judicious eavesdropping and he knew at once that they’d not found the lady they sought.
“We’ve ordered food,” he said, “and a Norman cider strong enough to peel paint off a wall. Would you eat?”
Justin shook his head. “It is a madhouse up there. No rumor is too ridiculous to be believed. The monks are like dogs chasing their tails, all going in different directions. They could tell us little more than we learned from Abbot Jourdain. But since she was last seen in Genêts, that is where we go next.”
“Now?” Morgan blinked, unable to conceal his dismay. The men-at-arms had heard enough to alarm them, too, and they were staring at Justin and Durand as if they had suddenly revealed themselves to have horns and forked tails.
“Yes, now,” Durand said curtly, reaching down to help himself to one of the ciders while Justin beckoned to Salomé. After a brief exchange, Justin turned toward a customer at a nearby table, a sparse, shriveled man of indeterminate years, with the deeply creased wrinkles and pale eyes of one who’d spent most of his life exposed to nature at its worst.
Morgan seized the opportunity to argue, even though he suspected that Durand was about as flexible as the granite stones of St Michel. “Sir Durand, we’ve been talking to some of the villagers and they say the tides are as treacherous here as anywhere in Christendom. Salomé told us that they’ve lost count of the unwary souls drowned as they tried to cross the bay, and the Genêts crossing is much longer than the one we made, nigh on three miles—”
“That is why we are hiring a guide,” Durand cut in. Justin was coming back to their table, and Durand raised his eyebrows in a wordless question. When Justin nodded, he jerked his thumb toward their men-at-arms, saying, “We may have a rebellion on our hands. These stouthearted cocks are loath to get their feet wet.”
That did not endear him to either Morgan or the men-at-arms, but his gibe was wasted upon Justin, who had thoughts only for the missing Arzhela. “Let them await us here, then,” he said impatiently. “I’ve found us a guide, but he does not come cheap, not for a crossing at this time of day.”
Durand shrugged; they were spending John’s money, after all. Draining the last of the cider, he started toward the door. When Justin would hav
e followed, Morgan stepped forward. “Godspeed, Justin. I hope you find her.”
“So do I, Morgan.” As their eyes met, though, Justin could see that they both feared it was too late.
There were no pilgrims crossing to the Mont that late in the day, and those already at the abbey were spending the night there. So Justin, Durand, and their guide had the bay to themselves, encountering only a large seal napping on a flat rock. Dusk was dimming the sky and blurring the horizon as they reached the beach at Genêts.
They knew at once that something was very wrong. People were gathered in clots before the priory walls, strangely subdued and silent. The priory gate was shut, and there was no response when they banged on the door. Vespers was being rung from somewhere in the town, but oddly enough, the bells of Notre Dame and Saint-Sebastien were not pealing out the hour. An unnatural stillness overhung the priory, and they knew instinctively that it had nothing to do with the disappearance of a Breton noblewoman.
They continued to pound upon the gate until footsteps sounded on the other side and the door slowly creaked open. They glimpsed hollow eyes and blanched skin before a tremulous voice instructed them to come back later. Durand lunged forward to wedge his boot in the door, but it was already swinging shut. “Wait,” Justin cried out. “Wait! We come from the abbey—”
The door opened so fast that Durand was caught off balance and stumbled against the post. With a choked cry of “Deo gratias,” the gatekeeper grabbed their arms and pulled them inside. He was tonsured and clad in a monk’s habit, but they decided he was most likely a novice, for he looked barely old enough to shave, much less take final vows. “I am Brother Briag.” His French was flavored with a strong Breton accent. His eyes darted from one to the other. “But you are not brethren. Who are you? Why did you lie?”
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