Catherine: One Love is Enough (Catherine Series Book 1) (25 page)

‘Help me to dress then!’

Catherine had just remembered the advice the young beggar had given her – to seek him out at the entrance to St Benigne if she should ever need him. This was the moment, if any! In a flash she was dressed and her hair arranged. As the whole house was in an uproar she decided to go out without making too many excuses. The news that Garin had been the victim of an attack had spread like wildfire through the town, with everyone adding something to it in the telling. Catherine had only to say that she was going to the churches in the town to offer up thanks to God for having spared her fiancé’s life for Marie de Champdivers to give her permission to go out with Sara.

As they hurried through the Bourg, they saw the housewives calling from window to window across the street, or gathering in little groups in the shadow of the painted metal shop signs to discuss the latest rumours. No-one seemed really surprised by the news about Garin. The Lord Treasurer’s rise to wealth and power had been too rapid and his delight in ostentation too obvious for him not to have made many enemies. But Catherine and Sara did not stop to listen to the gossip. They were approaching the town ramparts and the immense buildings comprising the Abbey of St Benigne, one of the largest in France. Catherine could think of nothing but what she was about to learn from Jehan des Écus. Her heart ached.

There were few people about in the square outside the church and the entrance to the abbey. A handful of people were going into the church. High up in the tall octagonal towers built of new stone the colour of thick cream, the bells were tolling the funeral knell. The two women had to wait while a funeral procession wound its way slowly across the square into the church. Monks in black serge robes carried a litter on which the dead man lay, his face exposed. The family and a few mourners followed behind: not many people in all, since this was not an important funeral.

‘I can’t see Jehan,’ Catherine whispered behind her veil. ‘Yes, there he is! In the entrance … That monk in a brown habit …’

The beggar had donned the brown habit of a mendicant friar and, with his bag slung over one shoulder and staff in hand, was soliciting alms for his monastery in a nasal, singsong voice. As Catherine went up to him, she saw that he had recognised her by the way his eyes sharpened under the dusty hood. She went close to him, placed a coin in his outstretched hand and murmured rapidly, ‘I must speak to you, at once.’

‘As soon as these loudmouths have gone into the church,’ said the fake monk in the same way. ‘
De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine
!’

Once the funeral cortege had gone into the church he drew the two women under the shadow of the large porch.

‘What do you want to know?’ he asked.

‘What happened!’

‘That’s simple enough! Barnaby wanted to do the job by himself – it was a private matter, he said, and far too risky to involve any of the other lads. Not that it mightn’t have been worth the risk to us, considering how much jewellery the Treasurer usually has about his person! But that’s Barnaby for you! All he would allow me to do was keep an eye open for him. I tried to persuade him to take l’Assommeur with him, to be on the safe side, you understand? Brazey is still a young man and Barnaby is getting on a bit. But you might as well try to reason with a stone wall! He is as stubborn as a bishop’s mule. So we had to do as he said. My job was to keep watch over toward the Bourg while he hid behind the fountain at the street corner. I saw a man coming, with one groom behind. I whistled to warn Barnaby and then hid myself. As the Treasurer rode by the fountain Barnaby leapt upon him with such force that he knocked him off his horse. They wrestled on the ground for a bit while I kept an eye on the groom. But the groom wasn’t a brave fellow. Poor coward that he was, he took to his heels at once crying out for mercy! Then I saw someone rise from the struggle. I was just about to step forward to help Barnaby throw the body into the Ouche. I had even collected some large stones together. Then I saw that it was the other man, Garin, who had gained the upper hand – Barnaby was still lying there on the ground, moaning away like a woman in labour.’

‘It seems to me that
that
was the moment to come to his assistance, if any,’ Catherine cut in dryly.

‘I was just about to, certainly! Only, just as I was getting out my knife to fight it out with Garin, the Watch came marching out of the Rue Tatepoire. Brazey called out to them and they came pelting toward us. I only just had time to make myself scarce. There were rather too many of them for one poor solitary beggar to take on,’ he finished with a contrite smile.

‘What have they done with Barnaby?’

‘I saw a couple of fellows pick him up and drag him away, none too ceremoniously. He was as quiet and still as a dead pig, but he wasn’t dead – I could hear him breathing! Anyway, I heard the officer of the Watch order them to take him to prison. That’s where he is now – in the Château of the Gens d’Armes. You know the one I mean?’

Catherine nodded. She was nervously twisting the corner of her velvet-covered book of hours between her fingers, feverishly searching her mind for some solution to the most pressing problem – how to get her old friend out of prison.

‘We must get him out of there!’ she said. ‘He must be freed somehow.’

A mirthless smile raised one corner of the sham monk’s twisted mouth. He shook his wooden pan in the direction of three housewives who were passing by, in bonnets and aprons. They looked like three stallholders from the Bourg marketplace who had come to say a prayer or two between sales.

‘He’ll get out of there all right, but perhaps not the way you mean! They’ll take him for a stroll to the Morimont for a nice chat with Monseigneur’s chief butcher!’

The action with which Jehan accompanied this last remark was singularly explicit: with his forefinger he went through the motion of slitting his throat. Catherine turned pale.

‘If anyone is responsible for this affair, it is I,’ she said decisively. ‘I can’t let Barnaby die like that in my place! Is there any way we can help him to escape … with money? Lots of money?’

She was thinking of the jewels Garin had given her, which she would gladly sacrifice. The word ‘money’ had an instant effect on Jehan. His eyes started to sparkle like flames.

‘That might be possible! Only I don’t think Jacquot-de-la-Mer will be much help to you, fair Catherine. You are not very popular with him at the moment! His crowd are saying that you have got one of their best men into trouble and all for some silly woman’s nonsense! In other words, I suggest you keep well out of their way for the time being. Nobody would listen to your explanations and you might come to harm. Jacquot’s not the gentlest of men when he’s rubbed up the wrong way!’

‘But what about you?’ Catherine begged. ‘Won’t you help me?’

Jehan did not answer at once. He thought for a moment, then shrugged:

‘Yes. I’ll help you. Because I’m the sort of fool who could never say no to a pretty girl! But what can you and I do between us?’

Speechlessly, Catherine bent her head to hide the tears that filled her eyes. Sara tugged her sleeve and discreetly drew her attention to three women who were just then entering the church, and were staring curiously at the odd trio they made. Jehan shook his pan at them and begged for alms in a nasal whine. Once the women had gone he whispered:

‘You had better not stay here … I’ll think it over and see if I can’t come up with something. After all, they haven’t executed Barnaby yet … and that accursed Treasurer is still alive …’

The reference to Garin suddenly checked Catherine’s tears. An idea had come to her. A crazy idea perhaps, or at least a desperate one, which often amounts to the same thing. She took Sara’s arm.

‘Come,’ she said, in such a decisive voice that the gypsy was startled.

‘Where, my love?’

‘To see Messire de Brazey. I must speak to him …’

Without giving Sara time to protest, Catherine turned and left St Benigne. When she came to any decision she always acted upon it at once, without stopping to weigh up the pros and cons. Hurrying along behind her, Sara breathlessly tried to persuade her that such a visit, on the part of a young, unmarried girl, was not at all seemly, that the Dame de Champdivers would undoubtedly scold her severely, and that Catherine was endangering her reputation by visiting a man, even if he were her fiancé. Catherine hurried on without listening, her eyes fixed on the ground and a worried frown creasing her brow.

Leaving the church of St Jean behind on her right, she turned down into the narrow Rue Poulaillerie, where the air was loud with the cackling and squawking of hundreds of hens, geese and ducks. The low, picturesque houses with their brightly daubed signs and ancient Hebraic emblems harked back to the days when this street was part of the Jewish quarter. Garin Brazey lived at the far end of the town, in a large and imposing mansion, surrounded by high walls, which stood on the corner of the Rue Portelle, where the goldsmiths had their glittering, enticing shops.

As Catherine came out into the marketplace the tripe-sellers’ cauldrons were bubbling away on all sides. She held her nose to shut out the nauseating smell of blood and fat. The market was in full cry, and it was hard work pushing one’s way between the butchers’ stalls that spread out over half the street and the peasant women’s baskets overflowing with vegetables and fruit. There was a festive atmosphere about the place, which usually delighted Catherine. But this particular morning she found that the noisy, lively scene irritated her unendurably.

She was just about to turn into the Rue de la Parcheminerie when the figure of a man caught her eye. He was large and powerfully built, with long arms and a slightly crouching walk so that he looked rather like a big monkey. His grey hair, cut in a square bob, showed beneath a red frieze hood. He was dressed entirely in reddish leather. He moved slowly forward, pointing with a long white stick to the goods he wished to buy; and the merchants, in nervous haste, hurried to place them in the basket carried by a servant who followed behind. The sight of this man made Catherine shudder, but it was Sara who suddenly gave expression to the thought in both their minds.

‘Maître Joseph Blaigny,’ she whispered.

Catherine did not answer and turned her head away. For it was indeed the public executioner of Dijon doing his buying …

The injured man’s face was a pale dot at the far end of the chamber, which seemed enormous and very dark to Catherine. Tall shutters of painted oak were half drawn across the high, mullioned windows set with panes of glass, and they shut out almost all the sunlight. When she first entered the room, behind a valet, she had to pause for a moment to let her eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. A faraway voice addressed her, slowly:

‘What an unexpected pleasure, my dear! I would not have dared hope for such solicitude on your part …’

His voice expressed irony, surprise and a little contempt, all at once, but Catherine did not stop to consider what the master of the house might be thinking of her visit. Now she had arrived, the main thing was to carry out the strange mission that had brought her there. She took a few steps forward. As she did so she found she was better able to distinguish the things around her, and she began to take in the details of the plain but sumptuous decor. Garin was lying in a large bed that stood in the farthermost corner of the room, opposite the windows. The bed was entirely hung with purple velvet, quite plain and unadorned, save for the silver cords that held back the heavy curtains. The Seigneur de Brazey’s arms were emblazoned above the bed-head, together with his enigmatic motto, ‘Never’, repeated several times over.
A motto that seems to refuse something or someone, but who and what?
thought Catherine.

Garin watched her approach in silence. He wore a robe of the same colour as the bed, as much of it as could be seen under the bedcovers, and a large throw of black fur. He was bareheaded apart from a small bandage on his forehead. It was the first time Catherine had seen him without a hood, and she felt as though she were face to face with a complete stranger. Against his pale face and short, silver-streaked brown hair, his black eye-patch stood out more starkly and noticeably than it did under the shadow of a voluminous hood. Catherine felt her confidence ebbing as she crossed the slippery black marble floor, stepping wherever she could on the little islands of safety provided by an archipelago of luxurious rugs in muted colours, into which her feet sank deeply without making a sound. There were few pieces of furniture in this room, the stone walls of which were hung with purple velvet like the bed. They included an ebony credence that held a collection of exquisite and finely-carved ivory statuettes; a table stood between two X-shaped chairs drawn up near a window, on which a chessboard of amethyst and silver sparkled in the light; and, most striking of all, a large ornate chair made entirely of solid silver and crystal. The chair stood slightly raised above floor level on a dais, the two steps leading up to which were covered with carpet. A veritable throne …

It was this lordly chair, the raised platform of which brought it to the height of the bed, that Garin motioned to the girl to sit in. She went up to it with slow, hesitant steps, but her courage returned a little when she sat down and could grip the two silver arms firmly with both hands. She coughed to clear her throat and asked:

‘Are you badly hurt?’