Harlequin

by Bernard Cornwell

  The Duke steepled his fingers. To Jeanette it seemed he never blinked and that was as unsettling as his silence.

  'His grace would like to see the armour,' the priest announced, though the Duke had shown no sign of wishing anything at all. The priest snapped his fingers and one of the clerks left the room. The second clerk, armed with a small pair of scissors, went round the big chamber trimming the wicks of the many candles in their tall iron holders. The Duke and the priest ignored him.

  'You say,' the priest spoke again, 'that you wrote letters to his grace. Concerning what?'

  'I wrote about the new defences at La Roche-Derrien, father, and I warned his grace of the English attack on Lannion.'

  'So you say,' the priest said, 'so you say.' Charles was still crying and Jeanette jerked his hand hard in the hope of stilling him, but he just whined more. The clerk, head averted from the Duke, went from candle to candle. The scissors snipped, a puff of smoke would writhe for a heartbeat, then the flame would brighten and settle. Charles began crying louder.

  'His grace,' the priest said, 'does not like snivelling infants.'

  'He is hungry, father,' Jeanette explained nervously.

  'You came with two servants?'

  'Yes, father,' Jeanette said.

  'They can eat with the boy in the kitchens,' the priest said, and snapped his fingers towards the candle-trimming clerk, who, abandoning his scissors on a rug, took the frightened Charles by the hand. The boy did not want to leave his mother, but he was dragged away and Jeanette flinched as the sound of his crying receded down the stairs.

  The Duke, other than steepling his fingers, had not moved. He just watched Jeanette with an unreadable expression.

  'You say,' the priest took up the questioning again, 'that the English left you with nothing?'

  'They stole all I had!'

  The priest flinched at the passion in her voice. 'If they left you destitute, madame, then why did you not come for our help earlier?'

  'I did not wish to be a burden, father.'

  'But now you do wish to become a burden?'

  Jeanette frowned. 'I have brought his grace's nephew, the Lord of Plabennec. Or would you rather that he grew up among the English?'

  'Do not be impertinent, child,' the priest said placidly. The first clerk re-entered the room carrying the sack, which he emptied on the deerskins in front of the Duke's table. The Duke gazed at the armour for a few seconds, then settled back in his high carved chair.

  'It is very fine,' the priest declared.

  'It is most precious,' Jeanette agreed.

  The Duke peered again at the armour. Not a muscle of his face moved.

  'His grace approves,' the priest said, then gestured with a long white hand and the clerk, who seemed to understand what was wanted without words, gathered up the sword and armour and carried them from the room.

  'I am glad your grace approves,' Jeanette said, and dropped another curtsy. She had a confused idea that the Duke, despite her earlier words, had assumed the armour and sword were a gift, but she did not want to enquire. It could all be cleared up later. A gust of cold wind came through the arrow slits to bring spots of rain and to flicker the candles in wild shudders.

  'So what,' the priest asked, 'do you require of us?'

  'My son needs shelter, father,' Jeanette said nervously. 'He needs a house, a place to grow and learn to be a warrior.'

  'His grace is pleased to grant that request,' the priest said.

  Jeanette felt a great wash of relief. The atmosphere in the room was so unfriendly that she had feared she would be thrown out as destitute as she had arrived, but the priest's words, though coldly stated, told her that she need not have worried. The Duke was taking his responsibility and she curtsied for a third time. 'I am grateful, your grace.'

  The priest was about to respond, but, to Jeanette's surprise, the Duke held up one long white hand and the priest bowed. 'It is our pleasure,' the Duke said in an oddly high-pitched voice, 'for your son is dear to us and it is our desire that he grows to become a warrior like his father.' He turned to the priest and inclined his head, and the priest gave another stately bow then left the room.

  The Duke stood and walked to the fire where he held his hands to the small flames. 'It has come to our notice,' he said distantly, 'that the rents of Plabennec have not been paid these twelve quarters.'

  'The English are in possession of the domain, your grace.'

  'And you are in debt to me,' the Duke said, frowning at the flames.

  'If you protect my son, your grace, then I shall be for ever in your debt,' Jeanette said humbly.

  The Duke took off his cap and ran a hand through his fair hair. Jeanette thought he looked younger and kinder without the hat, but his next words chilled her. 'I did not want Henri to marry you.' He stopped abruptly.

  For a heartbeat Jeanette was struck dumb by his frankness. 'My husband regretted your grace's disapproval,' she finally said in a small voice.

  The Duke ignored Jeanette's words. 'He should have married Lisette of Picard. She had money, lands, tenants. She would have brought our family great wealth. In times of trouble wealth is a…' he paused, trying to find the right word, 'it is a cushion. You, madame, have no cushion.'

  'Only your grace's kindness,' Jeanette said.

  'Your son is my charge,' the Duke said. 'He will be raised in my household and trained in the arts of war and civilization as befits his rank.'

  'I am grateful.' Jeanette was tired of grovelling. She wanted some sign of affection from the Duke, but ever since he had walked to the hearth he would not meet her eyes.

  Now, suddenly, he turned on her. 'There is a lawyer called Belas in La Roche-Derrien?'

  'Indeed, your grace.'

  'He tells me your mother was a Jewess.' He spat the last word.

  Jeanette gaped at him. For a few heartbeats she was unable to speak. Her mind was reeling with disbelief that Belas would say such a thing, but at last she managed to shake her head. 'She was not!' she protested.

  'He tells us, too,' the Duke went on, 'that you petitioned Edward of England for the rents of Plabennec?'

  'What choice did I have?'

  'And that your son was made a ward of Edward's?' the Duke asked pointedly.

  Jeanette opened and closed her mouth. The accusations were coming so thick and fast she did not know how to defend herself. It was true that her son had been named a ward of King Edward's, but it had not been Jeanette's doing; indeed, she had not even been present when the Earl of Northampton made that decision, but before she could protest or explain the Duke spoke again.

  'Belas tells us,' he said, 'that many in the town of La Roche-Derrien have expressed satisfaction with the English occupiers?'

  'Some have,' Jeanette admitted.

  'And that you, madame, have English soldiers in your own house, guarding you.'

  'They forced themselves on my house!' she said indignantly. 'Your grace must believe me! I did not want them there!'

  The Duke shook his head. 'It seems to us, madame, that you have given a welcome to our enemies. Your father was a vintner, was he not?'

  Jeanette was too astonished to say anything. It was slowly dawning on her that Belas had betrayed her utterly, yet she still clung to the hope that the Duke would be convinced of her innocence. 'I offered them no welcome,' she insisted. 'I fought against them!'

  'Merchants,' the Duke said, 'have no loyalties other than to money. They have no honour. Honour is not learned, madame. It is bred. Just as you breed a horse for bravery and speed, or a hound for agility and ferocity, so you breed a nobleman for honour. You cannot turn a plough-horse into a destrier, nor a merchant into a gentleman. It is against nature and the laws of God.' He made the sign of the cross. 'Your son is Count of Armorica, and we shall raise him in honour, but you, madame, are the daughter of a merchant and a Jewess.'

  'It is not true!' Jeanette protested.

  'Do not shout at me, madame,' the Duke said icily. 'You are a burde
n on me. You dare to come here, tricked out in fox fur, expecting me to give you shelter? What else? Money? I will give your son a home, but you, madame, I shall give you a husband.' He walked towards her, his feet silent on the deerskin rugs. 'You are not fit to be the Count of Armorica's mother. You have offered comfort to the enemy, you have no honour.'

  'I—' Jeanette began to protest again, but the Duke slapped her hard across the cheek.

  'You will be silent, madame,' he commanded, 'silent.' He pulled at the laces of her bodice and, when she dared to resist, he slapped her again. 'You are a whore, madame,' the Duke said, then lost patience with the intricate cross-laces, retrieved the discarded scissors from the rug and used them to cut through the laces to expose Jeanette's breasts. She was so astonished, stunned and horrified that she made no attempt to protect herself. This was not Sir Simon Jekyll, but her liege lord, the King's nephew and her husband's uncle. 'You are a pretty whore, madame,' the Duke said with a sneer. 'How did you enchant Henri? Was it Jewish witchcraft?'

  'No,' Jeanette whimpered, 'please, no!'

  The Duke unhooked his gown and Jeanette saw he was naked beneath.

  'No,' she said again, 'please, no.'

  The Duke pushed her hard so that she fell on the bed. His face still showed no emotion — not lust, not pleasure, not anger. He hauled her skirts up, then knelt on the bed and raped her with no sign of enjoyment. He seemed, if anything, angry, and when he was done he collapsed on her, then shuddered. Jeanette was weeping. He wiped himself on her velvet skirt. 'I shall take that experience,' he said, 'as payment of the missing rents from Plabennec' He crawled off her, stood and hooked the ermine edges of his gown. 'You will be placed in a chamber here, madame, and tomorrow I shall give you in marriage to one of my men-at-arms. Your son will stay here, but you will go wherever your new husband is posted.'

  Jeanette was whimpering on the bed. The Duke grimaced with distaste, then crossed the room and kneeled on the prie-dieu. 'Arrange your gown, madame,' he said coldly, 'and compose yourself.'

  Jeanette rescued enough of the cut laces to tie her bodice into place, then looked at the Duke through the candle flames. 'You have no honour,' she hissed, 'you have no honour.'

  The Duke ignored her. He rang a small handbell, then clasped his hands and closed his eyes in prayer. He was still praying when the priest and a servant came and, without a word, took Jeanette by her arms and walked her to a small room on the floor beneath the Duke's chamber. They thrust her inside, shut the door and she heard a bolt slide into place on the far side. There was a straw-filled mattress and a stack of brooms in the makeshift cell, but no other furnishing.

  She lay on the mattress and sobbed till her broken heart was raw.

  The wind howled at the window and rain beat on its shutters, and Jeanette wished she was dead.

  Chapter 6

  The city's cockerels woke Thomas to a brisk wind and pouring rain that beat on the cart's leaking cover. He opened the flap and sat watching the puddles spread across the cobbles of the inn yard. No message had come from Jeanette, nor, he thought, would there be one. Will Skeat had been right. She was as hard as mail and, now she was in her proper place — which, in this cold, wet dawn, was probably a deep bed in a room warmed by a fire tended by the Duke's servants — she would have forgotten Thomas.

  And what message, Thomas asked himself, had he been expecting? A declaration of affection? He knew that was what he wanted, but he persuaded himself he merely waited so Jeanette could send him the pass signed by the Duke, yet he knew he did not need a pass. He must just walk east and north, and trust that the Dominican's robe protected him. He had little idea how to reach Flanders, but had a notion that Paris lay somewhere close to that region so he reckoned he would start by following the River Seine, which would lead him from Rennes to Paris. His biggest worry was that he would meet some real Dominican on the road, who would quickly discover Thomas had only the haziest notion of the brotherhood's rules and no knowledge at all of their hierarchy, but he consoled himself that Scottish Dominicans were probably so far from civilization that such ignorance would be expected of them. He would survive, he told himself.

  He stared at the rain spattering in the puddles. Expect nothing from Jeanette, he told himself, and to prove that he believed that bleak prophecy he readied his small baggage. It irked him to leave the mail coat behind, but it weighed too much, so he stowed it in the wagon, then put the three sheaves of arrows into a sack. The seventy-two arrows were heavy and their points threatened to tear open the sack, but he was reluctant to travel without the sheaves that were wrapped in hempen bowstring cord and he used one cord to tie his knife to his left leg where, like his money pouch, it was hidden by the black robe.

  He was ready to go, but the rain was now hammering the city like an arrow storm. Thunder crackled to the west, the rain pelted on the thatch, poured off the roofs and overflowed the water butts to wash the inn's night-soil out of the yard. Midday came, heralded by the city's rain-muffled bells, and still the city drowned. Wind-driven dark clouds wreathed the cathedral's towers and Thomas told himself he would leave the moment the rain slackened, but the storm just became fiercer. Lightning flickered above the cathedral and a clap of thunder rocked the city. Thomas shivered, awed by the sky's fury. He watched the lightning reflected in the cathedral's great west window and was amazed by the sight. So much glass! Still it rained and he began to fear that he would be trapped in the cart till the next day. And then, just after a peal of thunder seemed to stun the whole city with its violence, he saw Jeanette.

  He did not know her at first. He just saw a woman standing in the arched entrance to the inn's yard with the water flowing about her shoes. Everyone else in Rennes was huddling in shelter, but this woman suddenly appeared, soaked and miserable. Her hair, which had been looped so carefully over her ears, hung lank and black down the sopping red velvet dress, and it was that dress that Thomas recognized, then he saw the grief on her face. He clambered out of the wagon.

  'Jeanette!'

  She was weeping, her mouth distorted by grief. She seemed incapable of speaking, but just stood and cried.

  'My lady!' Thomas said. 'Jeanette!'

  'We must go,' she managed to say, 'we must go.' She had used soot as a cosmetic about her eyes and it had run to make grey streaks down her face.

  'We can't go in this!' Thomas said.

  'We must go!' she screamed at him angrily. 'We must go!'

  'I'll get the horse,' Thomas said.

  'There's no time! There's no time!' She plucked at his robe. 'We must go. Now!' She tried to tug him through the arch into the street.

  Thomas pulled away from her and ran to the wagon where he retrieved his disguised bow and the heavy sack. There was a cloak of Jeanette's there and he took that too and wrapped it about her shoulders, though she did not seem to notice.

  'What's happening?' Thomas demanded.

  'They'll find me here, they'll find me!' Jeanette declared in a panic, and she pulled him blindly out of the tavern's archway. Thomas turned her eastwards onto a crooked street that led to a fine stone bridge across the Seine and then to a city gate. The big gates were barred, but a small door in one of the gates was open and the guards in the tower did not care if some fool of a drenched friar wanted to take a madly sobbing woman out of the city. Jeanette kept looking back, fearing pursuit, but still did not explain her panic or her tears to Thomas. She just hurried eastwards, insensible to the rain, wind and thunder.

  The storm eased towards dusk, by which time they were close to a village that had a poor excuse for a tavern. Thomas ducked under the low doorway and asked for shelter. He put coins on a table.

  'I need shelter for my sister,' he said, reckoning that anyone would be suspicious of a friar travelling with a woman. 'Shelter, food and a fire,' he said, adding another coin.

  'Your sister?' The tavern-keeper, a small man with a face scarred by the pox and bulbous with wens, peered at Jeanette, who was crouched in the tavern's porch.


  Thomas touched his head, suggesting she was mad. 'I am taking her to the shrine of St Guinefort,' he explained.

  The tavern-keeper looked at the coins, glanced again at Jeanette, then decided the strange pair could have the use of an empty cattle byre. 'You can put a fire there,' he said grudgingly, 'but don't burn the thatch.'

  Thomas lit a fire with embers from, the tavern's kitchen, then fetched food and ale. He forced Jeanette to eat some of the soup and bread, then made her go close to the fire. It took over two hours of coaxing before she would tell him the story, and telling it only made her cry again. Thomas listened, appalled.

  'So how did you escape?' he asked when she was finished.

  A woman had unbolted the room, Jeanette said, to fetch a broom. The woman had been astonished to see Jeanette there, and even more astonished when Jeanette ran past her. Jeanette had fled the citadel, fearing the soldiers would stop her, but no one had taken any notice of her and now she was running away. Like Thomas she was a fugitive, but she had lost far more than he. She had lost her son, her honour and her future.

  'I hate men,' she said. She shivered, for the miserable fire of damp straw and rotted wood had scarcely dried her clothes. 'I hate men,' she said again, then looked at Thomas. 'What are we going to do?'

  'You must sleep,' he said, 'and tomorrow we'll go north.'

  She nodded, but he did not think she had understood his words. She was in despair. The wheel of fortune that had once raised her so high had taken her into the utter depths.

  She slept for a time, but when Thomas woke in the grey dawn he saw she was crying softly and he did not know what to do or say, so he just lay in the straw until he heard the tavern door creak open, then went to fetch some food and water. The tavern-keeper's wife cut some bread and cheese while her husband asked Thomas how far he had to walk.

  'St Guinefort's shrine is in Flanders,' Thomas said.

  'Flanders!' the man said, as though it was on the far side of the moon.