Pagan's Daughter (4 page)

Berthe gasps. ‘You talked! Babylonne, you talked!’

‘I’m going to tell Lady Blanche that you talked,’ Sybille hisses, like a snake.

‘Go ahead.’ You steaming heap of ripe pig’s offal. ‘And I’ll tell her that
you
drank water, last night, without saying the Lord’s Prayer first!’

Berthe stares at Sybille, wide-eyed. ‘Did you do that, Sybille?’

‘No! I did not!’

‘Yes, she did. And as for you, Berthe . . .’ This’ll shut your big, flapping mouth. ‘You ate the product of fornication, yesterday.’

‘No!’ Berthe jumps as if she’s been slapped. ‘No, I didn’t!’

‘Yes, you did. You ate wool. I saw the fluff on your bread and you ate it.’

Berthe’s bottom lip begins to tremble. Tears fill her eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to!’ she whimpers.

‘Anyway, it’s not a sin to eat wool.’ Sybille’s desperately trying to fight back. But she hasn’t a hope. She doesn’t know the meaning of the word ‘fight’.

Not like me.

‘Of course it’s a sin to eat wool.’ I’d better lower my voice, because there are people all around. Strangers. Monks. ‘Wool comes off sheep, doesn’t it? Sheep are animals.’

‘But there’s wool-fluff everywhere in that house, because of the spinning!’ Sybille protests feebly. ‘It’s hard
not
to eat wool!’

‘It’s hard not to eat eggs, either. But we’re still punished if we do.’ As I lean into her face, she flinches. I can see a pimple on her chin. ‘We’re
all
sinners, Sybille. Haven’t you heard Dulcie say that a thousand times? We’re all sinners.’ She swallows, so I drive the point home, drilling my finger into her breastbone. ‘I think you’d better remember that.’

There. I’ve shut her up, at long last. Now I can enjoy the bright morning: the gleaming red silk on that lady over there; the flock of little black goats scurrying past; the bunches of white tallow cylinders hanging from the yawning doorway of a candle maker’s shop. Over the rooftops rises the square spire of St Etienne—and it makes my heart turn over, thinking about what happened yesterday. In the cloister of that very church.

The market is awfully close to St Etienne. I hope I don’t bump into any priests who recognise me. Any
red-headed
priests who recognise me.

‘Listen.’ (I can talk freely to Sybille, now. She won’t dare tell Aunt Navarre about it.) ‘I don’t want you coming with me to buy the fish. Berthe looks too hungry, and you shouldn’t buy fish when you’re looking hungry. It’ll drive the price up.’

‘But—’

‘I want you to wait here. Right here.’ We’re at the entrance to the church of St George. All around us are surging crowds: men with sacks on their backs, women with legs of pork under their arms, and children scanning the ground for fallen nuts or rotten fruit. ‘Stay here, and I’ll come back for you.’

‘But—’

‘I know what I’m doing. I’ve done it before.’ (When I was allowed to take care of things by myself, without having the pair of you sent along to spy on me.) ‘Just stay here, all right? Don’t move.’

It’s all a lie, of course; Berthe doesn’t look any hungrier than I do. But I don’t want the pair of them hanging off my skirts while I talk to Master Vital. It would be like swimming in the river with chains on my feet.

‘Master Vital!’ There he is—big and round and bristling with curly hair. He’s always smiling, because his teeth are so good. The man beside him must be another fishmonger, judging from the silver scales all over his hands, and the nasty stains on his tunic. ‘Master Vital, I’ve come to buy some fish.’

‘Aha.’ Master Vital has very small, sharp eyes, like chips of black marble. ‘Been in the wars again, Little Hornet?’

‘What? Oh.’ That’s right. My bruises. Navarre gave them to me for stealing the egg. ‘Oh no. I fell over.’

‘A likely story.’ Master Vital turns to his fishmonger friend. ‘Eleven years ago, when Simon de Montfort was burning the city, I saw this little one throwing a stone at an armed knight after he split open some poor fellow’s head with an axe. She hasn’t changed since then.’

‘Yes I have. I’m taller.’

‘You think so? Well—maybe.’ Master Vital grins. ‘I remember your mother running after you, telling you to stop.’

‘It wasn’t my mother.’ I don’t want to get into this. ‘Simon de Montfort killed my mother.’

‘Ah?’ His grin fades, but his eyes remain bright and piercing. ‘Well, it was the women of Toulouse who killed that stinking spawn of Satan with a big, fat stone from their catapult, so your mother got her revenge. Now—you want fish? I have a very special fish for you today. I set it aside, with you in mind.’

‘This one? This is my fish?’

‘This one, yes.’

‘Yes, I think I recognise it. It’s the same fish you gave me last week.’

Master Vital’s friend laughs. Master Vital raises a shocked eyebrow. But I’m not going to yield.

‘Little Hornet, this fish is fresh,’ Master Vital insists. ‘It was pulled out of the Garonne this morning.’

‘It is not fresh. Look how milky its eye is!’

‘You won’t be eating the eye, Little Hornet.’

‘I won’t be eating the
fish
, Master Vital.’ How I love this kind of haggling! ‘Show me another, if you please, or I will go elsewhere.’

I will, too. I don’t mind. The longer I spend in this market, the better. I love it here.

‘Very well.’ Master Vital heaves an elaborate sigh, and reaches across the eels for something that gleams as bright as silver in the sun. I like the look of that fish. I like its clear eye and its clean smell. It feels good, too. Meaning that it will taste even better.

I’m so glad that we’re allowed to eat fish. It’s lucky that fish spring miraculously from the water, and don’t hatch out of eggs the way chickens do. ‘Yes, I’ll take this one.’ Even Navarre couldn’t complain about a fish like this. ‘And those ten others over there, as well. For one pourgeoise.’

Master Vital reels back. ‘One copper pourgeoise!’ he exclaims. ‘For all that good fish? Little Hornet, are you trying to sting me again?’ (He’s enjoying himself.) ‘I had a customer here this morning—for ten of those fish he gave me one livre tournois!’

What?
Oh, please. ‘One livre tournois!’ What do you think I am, a fool? ‘That must have been after you told him they were the fish Christ our Lord used, when He fed the five thousand.’

Master Vital’s friend laughs again. Even Master Vital’s lips twitch. But he recovers himself quickly.

‘Little Hornet,’ he says, in grave tones, ‘I would not be ashamed to feed these fish to our Lord. Only look how fat they are.’

And I’m opening my mouth when I see him. The priest.

The red-headed priest.

He’s over there, staring straight at me. White-faced. Long-nosed.

I think I’m going to be sick.

‘I’ll—I’ll have five, then.’ Quick!
Quick!
I have to get out of here! ‘Five fish for one pourgeoise.’

Master Vital looks surprised. He was expecting more of an argument.

‘Five?’ he rumbles. ‘Well, now . . .’

‘That’s reasonable. You
know
that’s reasonable.’ Come on, will you? Come on! ‘Just give them to me!’

Master Vital regards me for a moment, his expression blank. (Perhaps he’s a little offended?) But at last he shrugs, and begins to lay the fish in my bag. Where’s Sybille? There. Over there. I can glimpse her through the moving crowds, gaping at a man with a brace of dead hares.

Time to go.

Grab your bag, Babylonne. Keep your head low. Slap down the money. Duck behind the trestle. Scramble under it, past a barrel of pickled herring, a forest of shuffling legs, a puddle of fish guts. Scurrying along, bent double; weaving through clusters of gossiping women and bleating livestock. At last—a portico. The pillars are nice and thick.

Thick enough to hide behind.

God, I can hardly breathe. And here I am, pressed to the back of a pillar before the astonished stare of a snot-nosed, bare-bottomed afterthought of a child. What are
you
staring at, pigswill?

When I gnash my teeth, he toddles away.

But I’ll have to risk a look. I must find out if the priest saw me. What if he did? What if he learns who I am? Would they flog me, for stealing an egg?

Carefully . . . carefully . . . one peek around the smooth, stone shaft . . .

And there he is. Redhead. He’s so tall that he stands out like a torch in a crypt. I can see him craning over the milling heads, peering around, searching for me. He walks forward. Stops. Scans the square again. In the hard sunlight he looks paler than ever; his hair has drained all the colour and warmth from his skin. He has the coldest, longest, most immovable face I’ve ever seen. A face like the ones on the stone saints that are carved over the south door of St Etienne.

I have to get out of here.

Now.

CHAPTER FOUR

The beautiful princess draped the magic cloak about her, and was suddenly invisible. Though the evil sorcerer searched every corner of his lair, she slipped by him like the scent of lavender on an evening breeze ...

I’ll be safe now. I know I will. I’m out of the market. I’m almost out of the city quarter. Just a few more steps, past the town hall and the church of St Quentin, and I’ll be through the Portaria, into the Bourg.

Surely he won’t come looking for me in the Bourg?

It must have been a coincidence. What terrible luck! I hardly ever set foot outside the house, and when I do—boom! The priest is there, buying a nice trout for his dinner. Except that priests don’t buy trout. Not if they’re living together in a cloister. Their servants buy the food. Their servants cook it.

So what was that priest doing at the market? Was he passing through, on his way to back from one of the hospitals?

He can’t have been looking for me. He
can’t
have been. Ouch!

Get out of my way, pissbrain!

Well—at least I can protect myself now. At least I have more pepper. That was smart, to stop at the pepperer’s on Cervun Street. Smart girl, Babylonne. The trouble is, pepper costs so much. Two whole fish, for three pinches of pepper! Aunt Navarre will be suspicious. Very, very suspicious.

She might not let me buy fish ever again.

Here’s the Street of the Taur, and there’s the friars’ monastery. (Stay well clear of
that
.) I wonder if Sybille will find her way back? She doesn’t know Toulouse the way I do. She’s so feeble and whiny and useless—what if she gets lost?

If she does, I’ll be blamed for it. No matter what I say. Because I’m always blamed for everything. Who gets her ears boxed when the oats are mouldy? Babylonne. Who gets her backside kicked when someone steals the lamp oil? Babylonne.

If I had a weak skull, I would have turned into an idiot long ago. Navarre would have pounded my brain into soup. I wish that I had a livre for every time she’s cracked a broom across my face.

God curse her.

I can smell the river at last. (Not far now.) I can smell the tanneries. Around this corner, across the street and past the tavern—the Golden Crow. I might just slow down to see if there’s a fight going on in the tavern’s downstairs room. Or maybe a knot of strangely dressed, bleached-looking northerners on their way to Compostela. Or perhaps even a
jongleur
, singing or dancing or juggling cups. I’ve been praying for another
jongleur
. The last one I saw here had the voice of an angel. He sang about a beautiful princess, and a brave knight.

Pity I never found out what happened to the princess. When Aunt Navarre caught me dawdling in the street, listening to a sinful
jongleur
, she practically knocked my head off my shoulders.

No. There’s nothing to see in the Golden Crow. And now that I’m almost home, I don’t want to be here. I’m sweating like a coward. My mouth is dry.

She’s going to give me such hell about these fish.

‘Babylonne?’

There she is. Navarre. Leaning out the downstairs window, flanked by flapping wooden shutters.

‘Where’s Sybille?’ She’s scowling. ‘Where’s Berthe?’

All I can do is spread my hands. (Look—no tongue!)

‘Come in here!’ she scolds, and pulls back into the house. The shutters slam.

My feet don’t want to move.

They have to be dragged, step by step, over the threshold. Inside, I can see Gran, Arnaude and Dulcie, but no Sybille. No Berthe.