A Murderous Procession (27 page)

They became hardened, surprisingly fit, even Ward. Rankin especially was a man reborn, whistling and singing songs from the Highlands of which this country reminded him. “It suits me well,” he’d say. “Ay, it suits me well. A drap of
usquebaugh
and I’d call the king my uncle.”

“Some rotgut they drink in Scotland, so he says,” Ulf explained to Adelia. “Made from peat water, Gawd help us.”

Adelia’s worry was for Boggart who, when it was time to rest the ponies by dismounting and leading them, had developed the slight waddle of a woman in late pregnancy

The Irishman noticed it. “When’s the baby due?” he asked when the two of them were walking together alongside Ulf.

“I don’t know, she doesn’t know, either. Could be this month, could be next.” Adelia realized she’d lost track of time. “What’s the date?”

He pushed back his cap and ran his fingers through his hair, calculating. “Must be Saint Cecilia’s Day as near as dammit.”

Nearly the end of November. And going south, farther and farther away from Allie. She panicked: “Why can’t we use a decent, fast road? Why do we have to stick to these bloody mountains?”

He shrugged. “For one thing, your ladyship, there’s only one road round here and that leads to Toulouse, which, I may tell you, we’re bypassing because if Princess Joanna’s procession has left Figeres, which it will have by now, that’s where it will be passing through and I’ve no wish to bump into it. For another, where we’re going is
in
the mountains, and the track we’re on is as quick a way to get to it as any.”

“What does it
matter
if we bump into the others? Why can’t we rejoin the procession?”

“Acause,” Ulf intervened, patiently, “you got an enemy in the undergrowth and until he’s flushed out we ain’t taking no more risks, are we, Admiral?”

“He’s right, lady,” O’Donnell said. “There’s been too many nasty coincidences, so Master Ulf’s been telling me, and a good run is better than a bad stand, as my old granny used to say. In the name of God, what are you
doing,
woman … ?”

Adelia had fallen over again. “Lying down with my face in the grass,” she hissed. “What are
you
doing?”

She saw a flash of his white teeth as he extended a hand to help her up, but suddenly she’d had enough. She was lost in this limbo on top of the world; they were all lost; they would wander it forever, die in it.

Hammering her fists on the ground, she gave way to a temper tantrum. “I don’t know where we are. I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t want to be here. I hate this bloody country it’s cruel and I
hate
it. I hate everything. I want my daughter, oh God, what am I doing in this place?
I want to go home.”

It was Mansur who lifted her up and led her away He sat her on a rock, knelt down, wiping her face with his sleeve, and chastising her.

“You are rude to him. None of us want to be here, yet we are in the merciful hand of Allah who sent this man to us. Without him, we would have followed Ermengarde to the fire.”

She leaned forward so that she could bury her face in the rough, strong-smelling wool of his cloak. “I want to go home, Mansur.”

“I know.” He let her cry herself out, patting and soothing her like she patted and soothed Ward when he was frightened.

At last she raised her head. Over the Arab’s shoulder, she could see Rankin staring at the sky as if it was of absorbing interest. Deniz had taken feeding bags from the mule’s pack so that the ponies could have some oats. The O’Donnell was watching him, chewing on a piece of grass.

Boggart and Ulf were staring after her in alarm, and she thought how good they were; apart from Ulf’s lament for Excalibur, there’d been no whining from either of them. They made her ashamed.

Still sniveling she said: “I’m sorry.”

He patted her again. “If you break, we all break.”

Wearily, she kissed him and stood up. “I’m not broken, just a bit creased.”

She walked over to the O’Donnell. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It won’t happen again.”

He took the piece of grass out of his mouth. “I’ll get you home,” he said quietly “but first I fulfill my obligation to Henry and his daughter, for that’s my duty.”

“I understand.”

“Now here’s the plan. I lodge the five of you in this village I know whilst Deniz and I go on to Saint Gilles. My ships are there, but my captains’ll not sail without I tell them to.”

She nodded.

He went on: “If Joanna’s arrived, I launch her and her party off to Palermo. If she’s not there yet, I give my captains their sailing orders for when she
does
come. Either way, I’ll be back for you. How’ll that be?”

The sky was all at once brighter; somewhere a chaffinch was trilling as it did in England; the world had righted itself.

She smiled at him. “I am ashamed,” she said.

“No need.” Abruptly, he got up and went to help Deniz with the ponies.

“Ain’t he a marvel, missus?” Boggart whispered.

“Yes,” Adelia said, and meant it. Suddenly she grinned. “But if he mentions his old granny again I’m going to kill him.”

THE
CASTLE
OF
CARONNE
gave the impression that a dragon had landed on a jagged mountaintop, had fancied its effect against the limitless sky, furled its wings, and turned to stone. Then, as if the dragon could afford it protection, a village had snuggled itself into the forest just below, forming a horseshoe of houses edged with fields so steep that the sheep and goats grazing on them appeared lopsided. At the very bottom was a little church.

Away in the long way distance but still visible were the Pyrenees, the snow-topped range of mountains over which lay Spain.

“That’s where we’re going?” Adelia asked the O’Donnell. “That castle?”

“That’s where we’re going. You’ll be safe there. Even Cathars are safe there.”

She nodded. A stronghold. But it had become embedded in her that Cathars were safe nowhere, and this prominence was visible for miles. She saw the all-encompassing eye of the Cathar-hating Church swiveling toward it, marking it, watching its victims as they crawled up to it—and wrinkling in a foreboding wink.

Perhaps it was strongly defended.

It didn’t help that they arrived at dawn, reminding the five ex-prisoners of their entry into Aveyron; the village’s cocks crowing, shutters opening, people calling to one another to come out and see.

But this time the calls turned to welcome. “Don Patricio. Look, it’s Don Patricio.” Children, shouting the name, ran ahead as the Irishman, waving to his admirers, led his little cavalcade up the main street, and up again over chasm-crossing bridges, through mossy, crumbling archways until they reached half-open doors and the dim interior of the castle’s hall.

“It’s Don Patricio. Don Patricio.”

In response to the children’s noise, a woman whose bare breasts were concealed only by her long and beautiful dark hair came out of an upper room to lean over a balcony and smile at the Irishman. “Is it you, Patrick? Where’s my silk?”

“Not this trip, my lady Where’s your husband?”

From the language both were using—an individualistic and just understandable version of Occitan—Adelia realized that they were amongst Catalans, who populated both sides of the Pyrenees as well as the mountains themselves. These were a people who regarded themselves as a separate nation from the French, Spanish, or Plantagenet kingdoms—disliking the French most of all.

“Dead last Michaelmas, alas,” the woman said.

Widowhood didn’t seem to be overburdening her with grief—a young man was emerging from the room behind her, hastily buttoning himself into a priest’s cassock.

O’Donnell called: “Come down, then, Fabrisse. I have some refugees for you.”

While she went back to fetch some covering, the priest sidled quickly down the stairs, his hand flicking embarrassed blessings toward the newcomers before he disappeared through the entrance.

The woman came down in a more leisurely fashion, making the most of it, her superb legs showing through the gap of the cloak she’d wrapped herself in.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Countess of Caronne,” said O’Donnell.

“The
Dowager
Countess,” she corrected. “And any friends of Don Patricio’s are welcome here. You’ll forgive the count himself not making an appearance. At the moment he’s asleep in his cradle.”

She had a lovely, dangerous face; high cheekbones; dark, slanted, amused eyes that studied each of her ragged guests while the introductions were made, raising her eyebrows at the unprepossessing dog they had brought with them, taking in Boggart’s pregnancy with approval, dwelling particularly on Adelia.

“You have luggage?” she asked and was told they had not. “Then we must see what we can do in the way of clothes—they will have to be of hemp, unfortunately, this man”—she bared little white teeth at the Irishman in a snarl—”having neglected to bring what I ordered. But breakfast first.” She let out a screech.
“Thomassia.”

There was an answering screech from somewhere to the left.
“What?”

“Breakfast for seven, two of them to be taken up to the solar . . .” Her eyelashes fluttered at the O’Donnell. “. . . where you can tell me all about it.”

They’re lovers,
Adelia thought, and felt a curious sense of relief, though she wasn’t sure why Adding the title of “philanderer” to the man’s many facets placed him for her; putting him in a category that was recognizable, an adventurer with, quite probably, a woman in every port—this sort of woman; lovely, careless with her favors.

I can be easy with him now.

Breakfast was generous; goat’s cheese, goat’s milk, ham, sausage, smoked trout, fresh bread fetched from the village with a strong olive oil to dip it into, herb-flavored wine, some preserved figs that had been picked from a tree that rambled around and into the kitchen’s window slit, all of it served by Thomassia, a stubby young woman, whose nonstop instructions in a Catalan patois made her sound bad-tempered but which, from the way in which she kept nudging her guests’ arms toward their wooden plates, seemed to be urges to keep them eating. Ward, a type of dog she’d not seen before-who had?—made her laugh and was thrown scraps until he could eat no more.

Thomassia was especially solicitous toward Mansur, frequently extending her hand to him.
“S endevi
—
ina, s endevi
—
ina, el contacontes.”

“What does the bint want of me?”

“I think,” Adelia said. “I
think
she’s asking you to tell her fortune.”

Mansur was offended. “I am no cup reader.”

“I’ll tell the lassie her fortune.” Rankin leaned over the table to grab Thomassia’s hand. Even while cramming food into his mouth, he hadn’t taken his eyes off her. “Tell her she’s a wee angel, so she is, and all this feast lacks is parritch. Tell her she’s destined for a fine husband.”

Adelia did her best. “What’s parritch?” she muttered at Ulf.

“A mess of cracked oats. He made me eat some once. Never again.”

Finally replete, they were returned to the hall and saw what, because they’d been so grateful for its immediate protection, they’d missed at first—a poverty that had not been reflected in their meal. The furniture was sparse and worn, some of it battered. The stones of the floor showed grass growing through cracks. Other cracks in the walls had either been roughly repaired or not repaired at all, letting in long bars of sunlight.

It occurred to them that the stables they’d passed on their way in had been empty, nor had there been any sign of servants other than Thomassia.

Hardly what was to be expected of a comital palace.

Adelia remembered Henry Plantagenet’s contempt for countries which, as this one did here, maintained a system of partible inheritance, by which land and property were divided equally between heirs.

In England, under Henry II, Norman law insisted instead on primogeniture, whereby the eldest legitimate son inherited everything. “Primogeniture forces younger brothers to go out and work for their bloody living,” the king had told her. “It leaves estates intact, keeps a proper aristocratic structure, it means alord is alord.” He’d added what was of more importance to him: “And he’s easier to tax.”

Dividing property, subdividing it for the next generation, then for the next
ad infinitum
, meant, he’d said, “that some poor sod ends up with a title, a few fields, and not so much as a clout to wipe his arse on.”

Presumably, the baby Count of Caronne asleep in his cradle upstairs was such a one.

So we’re vulnerable, Adelia thought, because these mountain people in their poverty are vulnerable.

There could be no protection for the Cathars here, not even the Catholics who tolerated them; no true asylum here from the rich, omnipotent enemy that surrounded them. They might think themselves secure, but Adelia knew they were not.

IN
THE
ROOM
UPSTAIRS
, where the arms of Caronne were carved into one of its thick stone walls, the Countess of Caronne sat on her rumpled bed, listening, her eyes watching the O’Donnell where he stood at the window looking out over its colossal view as he told his tale.

When he’d finished, she said: “That was a risk you took rescuing her, Patrick.”

He didn’t turn round. “That was a risk I took rescuing them
all.”

“Her.”

He gave a grunt that was half a laugh. “So obvious?”

“To me, yes.”

He slammed his fist on a sill two feet thick. “Why? Will you tell me that? Why? Of all the women … she’s nothing to look at, stubborn as a Munster heifer, and all she can see is her
fokking
bishop.”

The countess shrugged her white shoulders. “It happens. Not to me, Blessed Mother be thanked, but it happens.”

“I never thought it.” He went and sat beside her on the bed. “Look after her for me, Fabrisse. Deniz and I will have to leave tomorrow.”

“I will.”

He gave her a kiss. “She’s a useful doctor, should you be ill. There’s thirty of Joanna’s household wouldn’t be alive today if she hadn’t dragged them back from their coffins. And a smile on her to light up the sun.”