Almost Innocent (52 page)

She could hear him behind her, could see the huge shadow of the raised sword on the steps above her. Her breath came in gasping sobs, and the child in her arms continued her dreadful, terrified screaming. She stumbled on the top step, lost her footing for one petrifying moment, could almost hear his breath behind her, recovered, staggering upright, leaping away from the steps as he rose, massive in his steel plating behind her. There was smoke everywhere. The men at the foot of the walls outside had lit their fires at the first sound of steel. The archers were firing down upon them, hurling rocks and pails of water to put out the fires. Black smoke rose, choking, obscuring. Magdalen found herself backed against a low break in the ramparts. She could feel the wall against her thighs, and the sense of the drop behind her left her back icily exposed as she stared at death in the shape of her cousin bearing down upon her, his gray eyes as cold and murderous as the steel upraised in his two hands. He ran at her, and she ducked sideways. The sword came down in an almighty sweep, meeting only air. Unbalanced, he tottered at the edge of the parapet, fighting the great cumbersome weight of his armor. Then, as she watched, numbed, he toppled very, very slowly over the edge, his sword pulling him down it seemed, down into the choking smoke, his cry lost in the deafening clamor around her.

“Holy mother, sweet Jesus.” She was murmuring the incantations over and over, standing immobile, holding the screaming child, then she was running back to the
steps, her only thought to get down to the court, to discover Guy and Edmund alive in all that death-dealing clamor. At first, she could make out nothing, identify no one. They were all on foot now, the huge war horses pulled aside by squires, where they blew through their great nostrils and pawed the earth, tossing their caparisoned heads.

There was fierce fighting at the gatehouse as Durand’s men fought for control of the portcullis. She knew she should somehow make her way around the fighting to the gates. Possibly the postern gate would be untended, and she and Zoe could slip out of this murderous havoc. But she did not do it. She stood, straining her eyes, desperately seeking the blue and silver standard of Gervais.

She saw him finally, hand to hand now with Bertrand, the dreadful clash of sword on sword resounding, so heavy it seemed impossible they could remain upright whether giving or receiving the blows. She felt sick and cursed her weakness, fighting the wash of nausea, standing rooted in dreadful apprehension as the two men, both massive-framed, both skilled and experienced at this horrendous art of murderous combat, battered each other with deadly ferocity. There was a moment when Guy seemed to stagger, unbalanced. Bertrand raised his mace with a cry of exultant savagery. The wickedly spiked ball came hurtling down. Magdalen could hear her own voice screaming incoherent incantations with a lunatic fervency, resounding in her ears, filling her head. Then miraculously Guy seemed to recover, to sidestep the brutal death embodied in the mace, and it was Bertrand who went down to the cobbles, his head at an odd angle, crimson blood pumping from his neck. Guy ignored his fallen enemy and simply turned back to the fray, and Magdalen realized on the periphery of her intelligence that his apparent stumble had been a feint, intended to catch Bertrand off guard, his shield lowered.

The urge to vomit threatened to overwhelm her in the weakness of relief, and only the need to hold tight to the still screaming Zoe kept her on her feet. She was shaking, her hair damp with the sweat of fear, when a triumphant shout came from the gates as the portcullis was raised and into the
place d’armes
poured the rest of Durand’s men. Her heart lifted with a sudden surge of exaltation as powerful as the terror that had gone before, matching the crowing of the invading herald’s trumpet. Arrows flew, and the archers on the ramparts turned from the besiegers outside to the intruders in the
place d’armes
, pouring down a hailstorm of feathered death . . .

Indiscriminate feathered death . . . One of those arrows found its way between the links of Edmund de Bresse’s gorget as he raised his head. Magdalen watched, disbelieving in this moment of triumph, as the black and gold jupon crumpled to the ground. Then she was running through the death and the arrows and the swords and the sweating, bleeding, screaming men to where he lay. She fell on her knees beside him, still holding the child. His page and squires were there, and somehow they managed to pull him to the side of the court, out of the melee.

“We have to get the arrow out, my lady,” the squire said, pushing up the wounded man’s visor. “Raymond must pull it while I hold his shoulders.”

Edmund’s eyes flickered, rolled up in his head, but he was still breathing. Magdalen began feverishly to unbuckle his armor, but she was still holding Zoe, and it was almost impossible to perform such a task with one hand. The squire had grasped his shoulders now, and Raymond, twelve years old and come to manhood that day in the blood-drenched courts of Carcassonne, seized the feathered arrow and pulled. It came out with a spurt of blood, and Edmund’s breath became a choked scream.

“Ah, no . . . not Edmund!” Guy was there beside
them, his voice a low moan of sorrow. “Quickly, we have to unbuckle him, then I can carry him out of here.” With the help of the other two, he went swiftly to work, and Magdalen knelt at Edmund’s head, her finger over the hole in his throat as if she could close the wound. But the blood pulsed against her finger, welled over the dike.

“He still lives,” she said, over and over, as if the constant repetition would ensure the continued state.

Around them the fighting continued, but Durand’s men were in the ascendancy, and the five of them seemed to occupy a space that had nothing to do with what was going on around them. At last they had Edmund out of the iron cocoon, and Guy was able to lift him. Magdalen had to take her finger from the wound, and she watched in despair as his lifeblood spurted forth.

Guy carried him out of the fortress and down through the silent, deserted streets of the town. The townspeople had fled their homes at the first fighting and were streaming across the plain, well aware of the carnage and plunder that would ensue if the brigands won the day.

In the encampment only the apothecaries, the priests, and the lads caring for the pack animals remained. Guy laid his burden gently upon the ground, and Magdalen set the baby down and again put her finger over the wound. The page ran for the apothecary, but Guy called swiftly, “Bring a priest, first, Raymond.”

“He still lives,” Magdalen said again.

Edmund’s eyes opened, and for a minute there was recognition in them. He tried to speak, but his voice was so faint she had to bend her ear to his mouth.

“I loved you,” he said.

“I know.” She clutched his hand. “And I loved you as I was able. Forgive me that it was not enough.”

Edmund’s eyes frantically sought Guy, who bent his head to catch the thread of breath that formed the
words. “It is right . . . right . . .” Magdalen wiped a trickle of blood from his mouth and tried to hush him, but he continued with a desperate effort. “Right that you . . . you have each other now.” Then his head fell back as the final effort took the last breath of his strength.

The priest was there, murmuring the words of absolution over the dying man. Magdalen held his hand as her tears poured heedlessly, uselessly. Then she felt the moment when Edmund’s spirit left him. She looked up at Guy and saw his own eyes filled with tears. Gently, she laid Edmund’s hands upon his breast and bent to kiss his cold face.

“Requiescat in pace.”
There was such finality in the priest’s benediction.

She picked up Zoe, who had fallen asleep on the grass, still sobbing in her confused fear, and she walked away, leaving Guy to his own vigil.

T
HEY BURIED
E
DMUND
in a grove of poplars. The clash of steel, screams of pain, cries of challenge or triumph continued to come from the fortress, and the air was blackened with smoke. Against the violent backdrop of his death, they wrapped Edmund in his standard and buried him with decency and honor and reverence, and when a mass had been said for his soul, there was no more the living could do for him.

In midafternoon, the standard of Beauregard came down from the donjon of Carcassonne and the men of Bresse and Gervais began streaming back to the brigand camp, leaving the mercenaries behind within the town and castle, at their reward of plunder and looting. There must be no implication that a vassal of the Duke of Lancaster had wantonly attacked a castle held in stewardship for the king of France during a truce between their two countries. The fortress of Carcassonne had been attacked by Durand’s brigand army in search of plunder and ransom. A daring attack, certainly, but no one would consider it extraordinary. Men like Durand scorned the need for righteous cause to underpin aggression, as if they were immune from the threat of hell’s torments, clearly choosing immediate gratification over the body’s eternal peace; and there was none to tell the tale of an abducted woman and child and a rescue that had brought full circle a bloody train of events begun at the woman’s birth.

So the men of Bresse and Gervais, their clandestine
and uneasy partnership with Durand’s brigands now over, gathered quietly around the dragon of Gervais and moved out on the north road as the sun dipped over the mountains.

By nightfall, they had put ten miles between themselves and Durand’s encampment. They made camp on the bank of a tributary of the Garonne, outside a small village. The villagers cowered fearfully as the armed troop of weary men rode through, faces blackened with the smoke of siege fires, blood spattering their tunics, their wounded on litters with the pack animals. But they left the village unmolested and lit their fires on land that was not good pasture and did not bear as yet unharvested crops.

Magdalen rode beside Guy, but neither of them had spoken beyond the merest commonplace. Edmund’s death lay heavy between them, unabsorbed, its significance unprobed. Her possessions had been retrieved from the fortress so she was able to care for Zoe when they made camp. The child seemed to have forgotten the terrors of the day, secure now in her mother’s arms and lulled by the horse’s gait as she had been during the long weeks of the journey from Bresse to Carcassonne.

Magdalen’s small tent had been pitched beside the much larger one flying the dragon of Gervais, and when she had fed and washed the baby, she carried her out into the soft, torch-lit dusk to where Guy sat at a small table, a wine cup in his hands, staring into some inner world. He was quite alone, his attendants at a discreet distance, and he did not appear to notice her immediately. She found she needed an invitation to sit beside him, so she hovered uncertainly at his elbow until Zoe gave a sudden squeal of delight as a firefly glowed abruptly in front of her face.

He looked up and smiled tiredly at the child. “Give her to me.” He took Zoe and sat her on his knee. She chuckled, and her fat fingers grabbed at the embossed dragon on his tunic. “How you’ve grown, little
pigeon,” he said, bending to kiss her, and she seized his hair, still chuckling.

Magdalen sat down on a low stool. “May I drink?”

He pushed his wine cup toward her and began to tickle the child’s stomach. She flung herself back against his supporting hand, laughing in unrestrained glee. Magdalen drank some wine and said, “What do we do now?”

“Return to Bresse,” he told her. “I must ensure that the fief remains secured for Lancaster after Durand’s attack. The garrison will have returned eventually, but I must see for myself. An empty nest makes fat pickings for predators.”

Magdalen made no immediate response. She had not been asking quite that question.

“Olivier has gone to England carrying the news of this day’s work to Lancaster,” Guy continued, absently stroking the baby’s cheek. “Riding alone, he can make perhaps a hundred miles a day. Allowing for inevitable delays and a few days’ wait in Calais for a ship, if the wind is fair, he should reach Southampton within three weeks.”

“Yes,” said Magdalen. She was at a loss, not knowing how to penetrate Guy’s mood, which, while not hostile, was certainly withdrawn from her.

Theo came quietly across the grass toward them. “Will you sup, my lord? All is prepared.”

“I will sup apart,” Guy said. “You may serve me here.”

Magdalen bit her lip, suddenly swamped with a desolate uncertainty at the conspicuous lack of invitation to share his meal.

“I’ll put Zoe to bed so that you may eat in peace,” she said, her voice sounding small. “Would you bring my supper to my tent, Theo?”

Guy made no demur, seemed not to notice what she had said. He simply relinquished the child and resumed his contemplative silence as she left him.

Magdalen tossed on her thin pallet throughout the hot summer night. She could not understand why they could not draw together in their shared sorrow over Edmund’s death. He had been a friend to both of them, and they could surely comfort each other. At dawn, she got up and went outside. Guy was still sitting at the table, and she could not tell whether he had been there all night or, like herself, had awakened early after a disturbed night.