Almost Innocent (50 page)

The town streets lapped the fortress walls, and the men had moved from the shadows of the former and under the overhang of the latter without venturing into the open. The watchmen at the fortress towers looked outward to the distant horizon for threat. They saw the dark huddle of the brigand encampment, the usual nighttime flares glowing in the dark, just as they had done for the last several days, since the brigand chieftain had delivered his captive to the fortress. They did not look immediately beneath them because they had no reason to do so. If the town had been threatened, the tocsin would have sounded. So they did not see the stealthy, creeping menace moving into position, preparing to bridge the moat and assail the fortress walls with their bombards, obscuring fires, and siege ladders.

But as the first faint lightening appeared over the mountains, the air was rent with the insolence of a dozen bugles, like so many barnyard cockerels throwing their challenge to the day. The pennons of the knights banneret were raised at the moment that the
standards of Bresse, Gervais, and Lancaster lifted to a gust of dawn wind from the mountains. The heralds blew their note again.

Within the fortress, there was utter confusion. Men ran to the battlements, staring down at the armed force massed at the walls. Bertrand de Beauregard was hauled from sleep by a white-faced squire—white-faced because of how his lord would react to what must have been someone’s incompetence.

The knight commander of the garrison followed hard on the heels of the squire and, as Bertrand was strapped into his armor, told him whose standards flew in challenge at their gates.

“God’s nails. You say the standard of Bresse flies?” Bertrand cursed his squire as he struggled with the steel greaves of his armor. “Fetch d’Auriac!”

Charles was already there, pale but resolute, as yet unarmored. “My lord.”

“You guaranteed his death!” his uncle spat.

“I still guarantee it,” Charles said steadily. “This time by my own hand.”

Bertrand looked at him, then shook his head impatiently. “The man has more lives than a cat!” He strode past his nephew into the outer ward of the fortress, and up to the battlements. “Call for identification and for the purpose of this challenge.” As if he didn’t know it!

The herald blew his note, and they watched as a herald from the opposing side rode up to the lifted drawbridge. His voice rose clear in the dawn: “The Lord de Bresse is come for his wife, the Lady Magdalen. The Lord de Gervais is come, as representative of John, Duke of Lancaster, for Lancaster’s daughter, the Lady Magdalen.”

Bertrand took the jeweled cup of wine proffered by his page and drained the contents before replying. “Tell them we will have an answer for them in an hour.”

The herald relayed the message, and Bertrand left the battlements. His sons and his nephew were gathered
in the outer ward. “Come,” he instructed curtly. “We must take counsel.” They followed him to the bastion room, where the early sun showed fingers of dust on the scarred table. Pages scurried with jugs of wine but were curtly dismissed.

“Well?” Bertrand said. “I await an explanation.”

All eyes turned to Charles d’Auriac. He was still a little pale but otherwise seemed unmoved. “It seems I was in error,” he said slowly.

“The woman was right, you mean,” Bertrand said. “If you had had the sense to do the job yourself . . . if your cousin had had the sense to do the job himself . . .” Here he glared at Gerard, who had been feeling a certain satisfaction that his cousin had also failed in his set task.

“This time I will,” Charles said again.

“Of course, you want the woman for yourself,” Marc said with a sly smile. “That is a powerful incentive, cousin.”

“So is pride,” Charles snapped back. “I do not fail.”

“So what do you suggest?” Bertrand sounded suddenly genial, as if this squabbling pleased him. He poured wine. “We have an army laying siege at our gates over a woman and a baby.”

“Durand is with them,” Philippe remarked. “The mind of the mercenary is most curious.”

“Hardly curious,” Bertrand said. “He has a nose to sniff out coin and cares not who pays or for what.”

“But can we withstand such a siege?” asked Gerard. “It is the devil’s own luck that we should all be gathered here together. There is none outside to bring reinforcements.”

“They are well equipped for assault,” Bertrand said. “And Durand has no difficulty in raising fresh troops whenever he needs them. We will be outnumbered soon enough, however heavy the losses we may inflict upon them.”

“There is no need to withstand a siege.” It was
Charles who spoke. Absently, he poured himself wine and spoke directly to his uncle. “We will use the woman. It will be her first task for her family.” He smiled. “She will bring her husband and her lover to their deaths.”

“You have broken her?” Bertrand frowned. “You believe she will obey you in this so soon? You believe you can compel her to betray de Gervais and de Bresse?” He shook his head. “You are overly optimistic, my friend. It is a fault of yours.”

But Charles continued to smile. “You forget the child. If the child’s life is in danger, she will betray anyone.” He stroked his chin. “I do not know why I did not think of it before.”

“But we want the child, too,” Marc said. “She will grow to be a de Beauregard more completely than the mother ever will be.”

“True enough, which is why I didn’t consider it before,” Charles agreed. “But in this instance, I believe the sacrifice will be worthwhile . . . not that I think for one minute we shall be obliged to make the sacrifice.”

Bertrand nodded. “Continue.”

“She will go out to them, and she must bring them within the fortress to parley. How she does so will be up to her, but she must be convinced that the child dies if she fails . . . She will not fail,” he concluded with quiet conviction. “I have seen her with the child.”

“Then I suggest we present our kinswoman with the alternatives without delay.”

Magdalen had heard the bugles’ challenge but could see nothing of the outside from the high slitted window. But the sound sent the blood coursing through her veins, embodying hope although she did not know why. It was always possible that if something beyond the walls was occupying her family, they would leave her alone for a while longer. She had not forgotten her cousin’s threat of the previous evening, and the long
hours of the night had failed to bring a new plan to mind.

Sister Therese came in, and for once her face showed some expression. “Come, you must hurry and dress,” she said. “You and the child are to go to the battlements.”

Magdalen made no response. Her performance of the previous day had worked well enough then and it was still all she had at the moment. She remained listless and silent, but offered no resistance to putting on the clothes thrust at her. Defiance must be saved for great matters. Taking up the wakeful Zoe, she followed Sister Therese from the chamber. The thought of fresh air and sunshine encouraged a spring to her step, and she had difficulty maintaining a dragging pace and lowered head as they emerged from the bleak gloom of the donjon into the inner ward. She looked up to where the standard of Beauregard fluttered with the lilies of France from the topmost rampart of the keep. Who was challenging that standard?

Her uncle and cousins were gathered on the outer battlements. Archers ranged along the ramparts, long-bowmen with arrows already to their bows, crossbow-men laboriously cranking the unwieldy bolts. Men were bringing pails of water to line the walls, ready to be poured upon the fires that the besiegers would light to provide smoke cover for the scaling ladders.

Magdalen recognized all these signs of a fortress preparing to withstand an assault. She had ordered the same herself a few weeks ago. But who would be attacking the de Beauregard stronghold of Carcassonne? Again a tiny spark of hope flickered crazily.

She climbed the steps, preserving a lethargic passivity of face and step, and walked toward the group waiting on the battlement. Zoe was waving her arms around and gurgling with pleasure in the balmy morning, the swooping rooks, the fluttering flags.

At the edge of the ramparts, Magdalen looked down. Her legs almost gave way beneath her. She could see Guy, astride his massive war horse, his red-gold head bare, his standard snapping. Joyous love, overwhelming relief that he was alive, safe, that he had come for her, flowed sweetly in her veins. All appearance of passivity vanished. She wanted to call out to him; she wanted to shout her love to the bright blue skies. She saw Edmund just behind him, and her relief at his safety was no less piercing. That they were both here, had both come for her, could only mean that some agreement had been reached between them. She would not be responsible for the death of one or both. Their blood would not be in her hand. In that moment, she knew that in gratitude for God’s mercy, she would put Guy de Gervais from her as all but a memory to lighten the soul’s darkness, and she would embrace her husband with what love she had left to give.

“Yes, cousin. It would seem your champions are come.” Charles spoke, dryly sardonic, shattering the intensity of her thoughts. “I see you have recovered your senses. That is fortunate because we have work for you to do.”

All her joy seeped away from her with the certainty that she was about to face a further ordeal. Her mother’s family was not going to yield her up without a fight.

“Stand up here and show yourself. Let them see what they have come for.” Bertrand indicated a step in the parapet. “No, do not take the child up there. It is dangerous.”

Somehow, she found she had relinquished Zoe to her cousin Philippe, whose hands took the child before she had time to think beyond her eagerness to see more clearly over the parapet. A hand went under her elbow, and she was standing on the step, exposed well above the rampart.

Guy saw her and, despite the distance between
them, some spirit flew between them, joined them in a moment of intense communion. Her hair was unbound, held back from her face by a simple wooden fillet at her brow, and the wind sent the rich sable mass swirling around her shoulders as it flattened her gown against the lissom lines of her body.

“Magdalen!” Edmund, less restrained than Guy, couldn’t resist calling to her, but the wind snatched at his voice. “Is she unharmed?” he said in desperate anxiety to his companion.

“I believe so,” Guy returned quietly. In that moment of communion he had felt that she was whole, but he had also felt something else, and he could not control his unease as she stood so exposed upon the parapet. He had felt her fear.

“You may stand down now.” Bertrand spoke behind her, and she stepped backward to the flat broad solidity of the battlement. She turned to take Zoe, but Philippe held the child away from her.

“Give her to me,” she said, trying to still the panic rushing dizzily to her head.

“No. You have a task to complete first,” Bertrand said. “When it is done to our satisfaction, the child will be returned to you.”

“What do you mean?” She now knew terror greater than that of the oubliette and a moan escaped her, her hands reached pathetically for her child.

“Charles will explain.”

She turned to d’Auriac, who was smiling his thin smile. “You will go to your husband and your lover, and you will invite them into the fortress to parley. When they pass through the gate, the child will be returned to you. If you fail. . . .” He reached over and touched the baby’s cheek with a negligent forefinger. “If you fail, she will die . . . A pike thrust, and you may fish her body out of the moat.”

“No! You could not—” But she knew they could. Her hand plucked at her throat. “Please . . .”

“Bring them within the fortress,” Charles said.

“And you will kill them?”

“Them or the child. The choice is yours.”

This was the abyss. She had been drawing ever closer to it, but each time she had thought she had reached it, she had been wrong. Now, she was there.

“How?” She could barely form the word. Her throat was as dry as leather, and there seemed to be no breath in her lungs.

Charles shrugged. “My dear cousin, that is for you to decide. You will know what arguments will serve best. You know those men, after all.” He was softly insulting. “Let us go down.”

They all left the battlement. In the court below, Sister Therese still stood. She accepted the child without surprise. “Take her away and keep her with you at all times,” Bertrand said. “Her mother has work to do.”

Magdalen watched, enwrapped in blackest despair, as the nun carried the child back to the donjon. If she could save them all with her own death, she knew at that minute that she would do so. But she had not been given that choice. She must entice Edmund and Guy to their deaths.

She must go to them with loving eyes and open arms, words of promise and appeal on her lips. She must call to the love they both bore her, and they would do what she asked. She would bring them to their deaths with the vow of love, just as her mother had condemned so many enemies of the de Beauregards. She was her mother’s daughter; she had her mother’s power.

Without a word, she began to walk toward the outer ward and the arched gate of the fortress.

“You have one hour, cousin,” Charles called softly, and she felt his words on her back like a knife in the night.

They let her out through the postern gate and lowered the drawbridge. She walked slowly across it, aware of the eyes of archers and pikers on the battlements,
aware of the eyes of her mother’s family, watching her every step. Guy and Edmund had dismounted and stood at the edge of the drawbridge as she came forward. They made no attempt to step upon it, governed as they were by the rules of chivalry ensuring that during parley no advantage must be taken of an enemy’s dropped defenses.

She stepped off the drawbridge onto the cool green grass of the bank along the moat. The two men stood very still. Oh, how she needed Guy’s arms around her at this moment! How she yearned for his body against hers, enfolding her with his love and his passion and his strength. And oh, how she felt Edmund’s burning need for her to turn to him, to take those things from him.