Maze of Moonlight (13 page)

“
Aurverelle!
” Christopher could not see Etienne anymore, but his shout rang through the common room, and the Avignonese, startled, hesitated for an instant. It was all Christopher needed. Slashing across the face of one who was attacking the beleaguered Shrinerockers, he whirled the blinded man about with his free hand and let Baron Paul's man finish him off. His foot skidded in the blood that had pooled on the floor, but he let his loss of balance take the point of his sword straight through the chest of another assailant.

The man went down. So, almost, did Christopher, but one of the Shrinerock men caught him. “Christopher delAurvre,” Christopher shouted above the din. “Baron of Aurverelle. Pleased to meet you. Carry on!”

And leaving the astonished guard to face another of Etienne's men, eh threw himself on the group that was blocking the door. Clad in nondescript garments and therefore invisible amid the crowd of peasants and guests who were scrambling futilely against the Avignonese, Christopher went undetected until his sword found its first mark.

The man fell with an astonished look. “Back!” Christopher shouted. “Give me some room!”

The people of Aurverelle, hearing the voice of their baron, obeyed without question. But though Christopher had room now, so did Etienne's men, and there were six or seven of them to Christopher's single sword.

Pytor, get those guards in here.

He recalled the door. It was still barred. The Avignonese closed on him. He still had no idea where the legate had gone.

With an inward shrug, he stooped and cut through the legs of the first guard, crouched, and let him topple across his back, thereby shielding himself from the three or four swords that came crashing down simultaneously. He straightened, threw the now lifeless body onto two of his attackers, smashed a fist into the face of a third, and managed to kick the bar free of the door.

His foot throbbed. The bar had been heavy. He would be limping for a while.

An Avignonese thrust at him, but he sideslipped the blow and let the sword bury itself in the wall. With a leap, he threw his weight on the flat of the trapped weapon and broke it. Etienne's man was astonished, but Christopher sent him reeling back onto the waiting swords of the Shrinerockers.

Another battle cry split the smoky room. “
God and Saint Adrian!
”

“That's the spirit,” Christopher murmured. But the door was opening now, and he caught a glimpse of Pytor's broad face and sharp sword, and a score of Aurverelle guards. He waved them in, but as he did he saw Etienne making for the stairs.

Etienne saw Christopher, too. He ran.

Christopher caught up with him halfway up the first flight, grabbed his ankle, and jerked him back toward the common room. The churchman fell, his face clattering against the treads like an empty bucket, but he pushed off at the last moment, tumbled the baron to the floor, then rose and made for the upper rooms again. Perhaps he would try to climb down to the street, perhaps he thought he could leap to another roof. Christopher did not intend to give him the chance.

He pounded up the stairs, but when he reached the upper corridor, Etienne had a sword in his hand.

Christopher closed in. “I thought churchmen weren't supposed to carry weapons.”

Etienne was making a brave show, but his face, where it was not bloody, was pale. He backed down the hall. “We're not supposed to be attacked, either.”

Christopher stalked the legate as though he were a boar in a thicket. “Or perhaps you'd prefer to use a brass candlestick. You seem to do fairly well with such things—”

Etienne struck skillfully, but Christopher had been hardened by training and battle, and the disregard for orthodox tactics he had acquired in the course of the crusade was matched now by his contempt for his own life. In a moment, the legate's weapon had clattered to the floor.

Etienne backed up, staring. Christopher had knocked the blade aside with only a gloved fist.

“You're dealing with a delAurvre, Etienne,” Christopher said as he came on. “We're a slightly different breed. You're very lucky I'm not my grandfather. He would have served you up boiled for breakfast.” He was angry enough that he did not feel the pang: his grandfather had ended his days planting peach trees and bulbs in the garden.

“I am a man of God,” said Etienne suddenly. “You can't kill me. You have to allow me to be judged by a n ecclesiastical court.”

“You're in Aurverelle,” said Christopher. “
I'm
the court here.”

“You can't kill me in cold blood!”

“Why not? I'm giving you as much of a chance as you gave that girl.”

“But she struck me!”

Christopher nodded. Pluck. Determination. Yes, he would believe in that girl. But she had taken the abuse that rightly should have been directed at himself. “She was obviously very discerning.”

Etienne turned to run, but Christopher's sword caught him between the shoulder blades, and the legate's legs folded beneath him as though made of dried leaves. A quick backslash, and Etienne's head rolled free.

Christopher's foot was still throbbing, but that did not stop him from giving a sharp kick. The head spun down the hall, thumping hollowly, trailing a fountain of blood.

He leaned against the wall. “And that's the way it should be, you bastard,” he said. “Leave the peasants out of it. Leave everyone out of it. Let them live without any parasites like you or me to bother them.”

Feet were thudding up the stairs. Pytor appeared. “Master!”

“I'm all right,” said Christopher, breathing heavily. He tried to put weight on his right foot, winced. “Someone take care of that girl. Call Guillaume. Call anyone. I want her alive.”

“Her name's Vanessa.”

The guard from Shrinerock sat on a stool in the great hall, holding a cold compress to his bruised head. He was the picture of dejection, and Christopher could not blame him for that. His captain was dead, his master was critically wounded, and he and his surviving comrade were battered, cut, and exhausted.

Christopher, though, was not inclined to be merciful. He had fought at the Green Man Inn, but he had not fought because of duty or honor. He had fought for the girl named Vanessa, who now lay in a castle bedroom.

“What was she doing with Martin Osmore?”

“Going to Saint Blaise. Master Martin wa' her escort.”

And Master Martin, too, was in a castle bed, writhing and screaming from a sword thrust to his stomach. But Martin seemed tormented by a little more than his wound. Christopher had heard him even from down the hall: “
Don't send me to hell, Yvonnet!
”

Interesting. There were rumors about Yvonnet. This confirmed them. But Christopher was more interested in Vanessa. “What was she going to do in Saint Blaise?”

“I dan know. I think Master Martin said sa'thing about her being an apprentice.”

“Did you ever talk to her?”

The soldier looked up, met Christopher's eyes, and the baron saw fear in his face. “I dan't talk to her at all, m'lord.”

Fear? “Why not?”

“She's . . .” The soldier dropped his eyes, clutched the cloth to his head. Trickles of water wound down his face and dripped to the flagstone floor. “I think she's possessed. I think her ma and da sent her to Saint Blaise to be rid o' her.”

Possessed? Nonsense. A fighter, rather. But, like Christopher himself, a reject.

He could understand that. As much as he had turned his back on the virtues and questions of honor that impelled his society, his action had been but an echo of their rejection of him. “Thank you, sir,” he said, standing. “I'll leave you now. Master Pytor will see to a room for you and your friend.”

The man looked up. “An' Thomas?”

“Efram is looking after him. We can bury him here, or we can send him back to Shrinerock. I'll send messengers to Baron Paul and Mayor Matthew in the morning.”

Odd. All of a sudden, Christopher was breaking his isolation. He had brought strangers into the castle—commoners at that—and now he was going to be sending messages not only to Paul delMari, whose grandfather, as he now recalled, had been murdered by old Roger himself, but also the the Free Towns, against which Roger had plotted.

Shaking his head, Christopher mounted the stairs tot he upper floor of the residence, wincing slightly at the pain in his right foot.

But he forgot about the pain when he entered Vanessa's room. She lay quietly, swathed in the linen bandages that Guillaume and Jerome had applied, but Christopher had already seen the extent of the damage inflicted upon her. Broken arms, broken wrists, broken legs from the fall. Ribs caved in. A smashed skull . . . and probably damage to her brain. Her blond hair, matted with seeping blood, wicked the fluid away form her wounds and stained her pillow.

From down the hall, Christopher could hear Martin screaming: “Don't send me to hell. Yvonnet! No! Again, please . . . yesyesyes . . .”

Guillaume stood up from tying a last strip of linen in place, cocked an ear at the screams. “He'll live,” he said. “Seen it before. The boy's young. Strong as a destrier. Take more than a single thrust to do him in. Hurt himself if he keeps on like that.”

Christopher folded his arms. “So he'll live. Tie him up if you're worried about his wet dreams.”

“Tie him up?”

“You tied
me
up. What about Vanessa?”

“The girl . . .” Guillaume shook his head, the seams of his old face growing deeper. “She's dead, I'm afraid.”

This was not what Christopher wanted to hear. “She's still breathing.”

“Not by much.”

And, true, Vanessa's breaths were shallow, with long spaces between exhalation and intake.

“She won't last much longer,” said Guillaume. “It's sad. True, though.”

But though Guillaume did not know it, the girl on the bed was not simply Vanessa of Furze Hamlet. She had come to be also Baron Christopher delAurvre and whatever shreds of hope and belief might have been left to him. A fighter . . .

He would not let her go.

“Fix her,” he said.

“Can't be done.”

“Fix her. Do whatever you can. If you can't do it, then get help.”

“My lord—”

“
Do it!
”

Christopher turned and left the room, straining to hear, as he stepped down the corridor, the sound of Vanessa's next breath.

***

Guillaume did what he could, and when, in spite of his art and science, Vanessa continued to sink, he shook his old head and sent for aid. At his request, Peter of Maris made the journey down from the coast; but after a cursory examination, he advised bleeding the girl—and was thrown bodily out of the castle by Christopher himself. Carl of Vienna arrived a few days later with am ore cautious approach, and Jakob ben Yuzef of Belroi came with his knowledge and skill and his willingness to touch even Gentile flesh if by doing so he might bring comfort. Together with Guillaume, they labored throughout many nights, changing dressings, noting symptoms, spooning as much broth into the girl's unconscious mouth as she could be made to swallow without choking.

They tried herbs, poultices, even prayer; and once, yes, Vanessa actually seemed to rally. Her eyes flickered half open, and she peered glassily at the faces above her. Christopher, who knelt beside the bed, peered back, hoping for some sound, perhaps a word. “Vanessa,” he called softly.

Her eyes focused for an instant, and the baron saw a light in them. Not a mad light, not a sick light. It was, instead, as of someone who had seen . . . too much, and who was even now seeing. It was a frightening look, and its terror was magnified by the fact that it came from a face so broken that it was hardly recognizable as belonging to a woman.

Jerome murmured a prayer, and Guillaume sat back, shaken, but Christopher met Vanessa's eyes levelly. He, too, had seen too much. He, too, was even now seeing. “I know,” he said softly. He touched her bandaged hand. “I know.”

But then Vanessa's eyes closed, and she lapsed back into fevered dreams.

“Can't believe it,” said Guillaume at the end of the second week. “Amazing. She's still holding on.”

“Is she getting better?” said Christopher.

Guillaume dropped his eyes. “She's getting worse, my lord.”

Martin, on the other hand, was improving. Though he was still in pain, his fever had left him, and he was eating. He drooped, though, and his blackened eyes and bruised wrists—emblems of an encounter, Christopher knew, that had nothing to do with the fray at the inn—were stark against a dark face that pain and fever had left the color of old ashes.

“Tell me about Vanessa,” said Christopher, perching on a stool by his bed.

Martin looked frightened, and Christopher read his fear. Here was the famous baron of Aurverelle, the one who was mad. And not only was Martin a commoner, he was also a sodomite, a practitioner of a secret vice considered worse even than murder or adultery.

Christopher found himself rather unconcerned. Compared to Nicopolis—or, for that matter, Vanessa's wounds—Martin's choice of recreation seemed a paltry thing. But, yes, he was the baron of Aurverelle, and, yes, he was mad—if madness lay in seeing too much, in having no illusions.

“What . . . what do you want to know?” said Martin.

“Why did her parents send her away.”

“She's . . . different.”

Christopher nearly laughed. “You're different, too . . .”

Martin turned white.

“. . . and I didn't notice that Baron Paul was sending you to the stake for it.”

Stripped, vulnerable, Martin scrambled for some security. “He doesn't . . . he doesn't know.”

“Don't be so sure,” said Christopher. “Baron Paul only pretends to be an idiot.”

Martin looked worse. “You want to know about Vanessa, not about me.”

Christopher planted his elbows on his knees, settled his chin in his hands. “I already know about you. If it reassures you, I don't give a damn. You can stick your prick down the throats of breeding herons if you want. I don't care. Tell me about Vanessa.”

Martin shrugged. “I don't know her very well. I don't think that anyone can. Her father told Baron Paul that he wanted her to be able to better herself, but I don't believe that. I think he was afraid.”