A Murderous Procession (26 page)

Off again, under a bleak sun that stared accusingly down at them, into the shade. No stopping, no stopping, up and down a landscape that reared around them to make progress more difficult. On until, whether they died in flames or not, they must stop, but were forbidden by the Irishman’s insistent: “Not yet. We’re not away yet.”

“We must,” Adelia whispered. “The baby” God knew if that child could bear any more of this—certainly Boggart couldn’t; the girl was only semiconscious.

“Not yet. We’re not away yet.”

Thirst. A scrabble in a mountain stream to scoop water into their mouths and let the horses and mule nuzzle it. Off again, bumping, holding on, O’Donnell and Deniz tirelessly dragging at horses that began to stumble.

Darkness, chill. The sound of dripping water. A cave. They were all inside. A stop—please God the last.

“This’ll do,” the O’Donnell said.

IT
WAS
A
WONDERFUL
CAVE
, once the escapees were fit enough to appreciate it—a process that took time, rest, food, and plenty of water from the clear, cold lake that lay within it.

The floor was of blackish earth embedded with big, round pebbles, and, though the entrance to it was narrow, the walls rose to something near cathedral height so that voices were returned in an echo that recalled to Adelia the tunnel outside their cells.

“A land of caves, the Languedoc,” the O’Donnell told them, “as riddled with holes as a weeviled cheese.”

But how,
she wondered,
had he known about this one?
There was little opportunity to ask him; as they recovered, Mansur, Rankin, and Ulf were full of questions….

“Well now, that five Cathars were claiming to have acquaintance with Princess Joanna struck me as strange when Peter—you remember Peter who usually served us when we dined? When he told me about Aveyron’s letter, I wanted to make sure it wasn’t the five of you, unlike some who didn’t care. I left word at Figeres that I was going ahead to Saint Gilles to arrange shipping. Instead, Deniz and me went to the cowshed to find it burned down, and the Ermengarde’s cottage with it. Well, a nod is as good as a wink to a blind man, my old granny used to say.”

“But how did you find us?”

“It was the odiferous mongrel,” the O’Donnell said. “What we did find, lying near the cottage, was one of her ladyship’s shoes. A good deal of time we’d have wasted but for that. Her scent would have faded after all this time but that dog’s could survive a sea gale, and his head was forever on her feet. I gave the shoe to my hounds to sniff, and right enough, didn’t it lead us straight over the mountains? And there was our little stinker whining to get in through the Aveyron palace gates. Thank him nicely, now.”

Adelia rubbed her cheek against the head of the dog in her arms. The mongrel had been much wasted by his vigil outside the palace, barely able to walk—he’d had to be put up on the mule amongst its packages during the escape. Though he was recovering now that he was being regularly fed, his mistress could hardly bear to let him go; as both of them were almost as filthy as each other, she could indulge in petting him as he deserved.

However, it was the Irishman the rest of them thanked with every grateful protestation they could think of. He and Deniz had scouted the palace, made their plan, used their rope craft—”Never venture forth without plenty of rope and a good mule to carry it”—to get in, and out.

“But how did you know where in the palace we were?” Ulf asked.

Affecting to preen, the man put his thumbs under his shirt collar. “We put up at an inn, Deniz and me, two innocent pilgrims on their way to the shrine at Rocamadour, and careless with their money.
“Isn’t this the grandest town with the grandest palace you’ve ever seen, Deniz?” “Sure and it is, master—I wonder what it’s like inside?”

He put his hands down. “We didn’t need even that stratagem. The town was still talking about Ermengarde, God rest her soul, and anticipating the burnings to come—without much enthusiasm, I may say. Not a popular man, Bishop of Aveyron. There was much discussion about whether you were in his cells—they’re not popular, either, I can tell you—or in the tower. By the time it had finished, we knew every mouse hole in the place.”

Who are you?
Adelia wondered. The fleeting reference to Ermengarde and burning had been made easily and it was as if his account of their rescue might have been a mere exploit carried out on a whim. Yet to do what he had done argued a ferocity of purpose to free them, which their previous acquaintance hardly merited. He had saved their lives at considerable risk to his own.

She asked what was, to her, the question: “Was it the Bishop of Saint Albans who sent you after us? Where is he?”

“In Italy, lady.” O’Donnell’s long eyes slid toward her. “Went straight on to Lombardy, as ordered by King Henry He’ll be joining up with us in Palermo, when he’s spared.”

Ulf said: “So he doesn’t even know … ?”

“About your abduction? No. Still thinking you’re on your way to England. And nobody likely to tell him different”—the eyes slid again—”though I’m sure, if they had, the dear man would have been posthaste over here to box Aveyron’s ears for him and get you out.”

Ulf was asking why the Bishop of Winchester hadn’t done it, why they’d been abandoned … Something like that; Adelia had stopped listening.

She got up and wandered over to the lake at the rear of the cave, took off her shoes—one of them was worn through now; both of them disgusting—to walk into its shallow, icy water.

The king, first and foremost. Never her.
I could have died.
This hideous resentment might be unfair—Rowley hadn’t even known of her danger—but she felt it, God, she felt it.

I could have died
—
and that I didn’t, nor the others, has been due to a virtual stranger.

She stood still so long that the ripples she’d brought to the surface of the water to become still and, dim though the light was, reflect her image in it.

A mess was what she saw; hair like a bramble bush—what had happened to the scarf Ermengarde had lent her?—and beneath it a face distorted with dirt and despair.

“Cheer up, now.” The Irishman stood at the edge of the lake, watching her. “We’ll have you to Palermo in a wink.”

Not Palermo. I want to go home to Allie.
Her eyes still on the water, she said: “I don’t know why you did what you did, but I thank you. For all of us, from the depths of my heart, I thank you.”

He turned away “You’ll be needing a new pair of shoes,” he said.

WOLF
IS
BARKING
inside Scarry’s head. “How did they escape? where did she go?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know. Stop it, my love, you’re hurting me.”

It’s the worms; they twist and squirm through holes in his brain so that he can’t think for pain.

“You promised.”

“Cathars must have rescued her.”

“Find her. Destroy her. I am you and you are me, forever.
Homo homini lupus.”

“I shall, I shall. will you give me peace, when I do?”

“Oh, yes, then we shall both have peace.”

But the worms keep up their squiggling, for all that Scarry can do in trying to take his head off and let them out.

DENIZ
MADE
HER
SHOES
. The burden his mule carried was a cornucopia from which the little Turk produced a huge needle, oiled thread, canvas, and a piece of leather.

While he was at work, the ex-prisoners did their best to become clean.

With the men standing dutifully outside the cave entrance, eyes averted, the two women stripped and used the lake as a washtub for themselves and their clothes. Adelia tried to persuade Boggart to immerse herself completely, as she was doing, but the girl stayed on the edge with Ward, laving herself and pleading her pregnancy. “Be a shock to the baby, missus.”

Perhaps she was right; the water was very cold, but, to Adelia, its bite was almost baptismal, taking away stain not only from her body but, in part, from her soul.

Whatever it was, she emerged tingling with a new determination.
I’m alive and, God dammit, I’ll stay alive. I’m going to get back to Allie.

The mule’s pack did not include soap, so laundering was less successful; even scrubbed and dried in the sun, the ex-prisoners’ clothes were poor excuses for garments. The O’Donnell’s sash, which he gave to Adelia to make a sling for her arm, looked positively resplendent against the rest of her once she was dressed.

He also produced an old cloak and hood so that Mansur’s ruin of a headdress—which the Arab insisted on still wearing—would be covered.

“So much the better for those who see us,” he said, when they were all inspected. “Tagrag pilgrims trying to find their way to Compostela and not so much as a cross in their pockets to keep the devil from dancing, as my old granny used to say.”

He wouldn’t let them stay in the cave longer than two days. “For if I’m aware of this one, maybe so are our pursuers.”

How
was
he aware of this one? Ulf, who’d spent a lot of time deep in conversation with O’Donnell and to whom Adelia posed the question, grinned and said: “He’s in the smuggling business, missus, ain’t you got that yet? There’s more goes into these caves than escaped prisoners.”

A man of diverse activities, then—fleet owner, transporter of crusaders, smuggler, killer, savior … He bewildered Adelia. Despite what she owed him, she still found herself uncomfortable in his company. The others didn’t; to them he was an angel only lacking the wings.

Mansur, who knew her too well, said softly: “He had to quiet those guards, ‘Delia. There was no other way than by a knife.”

“I know,” she said. “I just wish …”

She was leaving too many dead behind her.

Ulf inquired of the Irishman the details of what had taken place at Figeres and, after listening, came storming over to where Adelia was resting.

“Did you hear that? Hear
that?
They denied us. Bloody Judas Iscariots, the lot of ‘em. Sent a message to Aveyron saying we was none of theirs.
None of theirs.”
He was almost dancing with rage.
“Now
will you believe me? There’s someone doing dirty work somewhere.”

“They should have made sure, I suppose, but it’s understandable. They assumed Mansur and Boggart and I were on our way back to England. They couldn’t have expected …”

“Understandable? They near as a button got us all burned—
and
it was deliberate.”

“No,” she said firmly, “whatever it was, it wasn’t deliberate.”

The boy’s shoulders sagged. He gave a despairing glance in the direction of the others and left her alone.

On the second night they set off again, going by moonlight. Adelia would have preferred them to be able to rest up longer—for Boggart’s sake, if not her own—but O’Donnell insisted that Aveyron’s men might be searching every cave in the area.

“Our good bishop’ll not be lightly robbed of his human torches. He’s mounting a crusade all his own—setting an example to the Pope.”

“Where are we going?”

“A long way A village I know, not too far from the coast.”

Though they weren’t being dragged this time, and could take turns riding, the going was as heavy as it had been when tied to their captors’ ropes. The moonlight deceived them into taking false steps and the mountains became steeper.

Until she got used to them, Adelia found Deniz’s shoes difficult to walk in. Whilst the miracles of invention—a shaped sole of leather to which sailcloth was stitched and then tied up round the ankle so that her feet looked like two perambulating plum puddings—were serving her well, they were less than supple.

By day, they stayed under the cover of trees somewhere near a stream. Mansur, Ulf, and Rankin took turns keeping watch, while the Irishman, Deniz, and the hounds went hunting, and the women gathered wood and searched for late herbs with which to flavor a game stew. After this, they slept the sun down from the sky before starting afresh.

Eventually, the O’Donnell decided they were beyond Aveyron’s reach and could start traveling by day. “Time I ventured into civilization and got us more horses.”

“Civilization.” Adelia savored the word. “I can get us some new clothes.” And then remembered she had no money; her purse had been in Ermengarde’s cottage, along with her medical pack.

“I’m going alone,” he said. “Quicker. As for clothes, I’ll see what I can do, though I doubt the country market I’ve in mind will provide much in the way of fashion.”

“Thank you,” she said tersely She’d never been dependent on a man, even on Rowley, and she hating that she was dependent on this one who had done so much for her already.

He rode off the next morning, taking the other mount with him, and didn’t come back until evening, riding a shaggy black pony with six others like it on a leading rein behind him. “Merens stock,” he said of them, “nothing stronger for mountain going.” He’d also bought sacks of oats for horse feed, two shapeless, heavy woolen smocks for Adelia and Boggart—”all I could find”—and some equally thick cloaks, as shaggy as the ponies, for all of them. “We’ll be needing these. It’s going to be cold.”

It was. During the day they were kept warm by their cloaks and the steam rising from their laboring ponies, but by evening it was near to freezing. At least they were at liberty now to build roaring fires at night, for there was nobody to see them.

Adelia had not believed that there could be such a vast stretch of uninhabited country. Occasionally, in the distance, they spotted a shepherd and heard the tiny wail of a flute as he piped to his flock, but that was all.

The landscape became dramatic, plunging into deserted, isolated valleys before rearing toward the sky in chaotic formations of crags that grew out of the close-fitting grass that covered them like the top of a man’s bald head emerging from a fringe of hair. There were tarns, still little lakes trapped in a mountain scoop that reflected clouds and sky and circling eagles.

There was no stopping, except to let the ponies graze, and no roads, though it seemed as if they followed some track that now and then revealed itself in worn, close-set stones, and Adelia wondered if some ancient people had built themselves a way that led to the coast.