“Take them off,” he was saying. “Tuck them in your belt. Is the woman sensible? And the Boggart’s. Quiet as mice, now.”
She’d heard the voice before, seen the man; couldn’t put a name to him. But now here was Ulf’s face, alight and eager. “Come on, missus, ups-a-daisy.” He leaned down and snatched off her shoe, the only one she had.
They were out in the tunnel, following a torch held by the strange familiar man.
Up the stairs to the guardroom, where a figure in Aveyron uniform was lying on the noor—his throat cut.
The man put the torch he was holding into a wall sconce and left it there, so that its light shone wetly on the blood of the guard he’d killed.
Up again, into the palace hall. Darkish, lit by a single flambeau; bodies lying in the shadows of the niches. Dead, too?
No, asleep. Servants. She could hear snores. It was night, then. The floor seemed to spread for miles, like a lake, before it reached the outer doors leading to the square; impossible to cross without waking the sleepers.
She was gathering herself now, terror replaced by another comprising wild fear and hope as their bare feet hurried soundlessly over the tiles, following the man ... it was the Irishman. The O’Donnell was helping them escape. Rowley had sent him to get them out of here.
But he wasn’t getting them out. Instead of heading for the main doors, the man was taking them toward the entrance to the tower in which they’d first been imprisoned. Its door was open. He stood beside it, waving them to start the ascent ahead of him. We’ve been up there, she thought. There’s no way out that way. I don’t trust him, I don’t trust him.
She could hardly stand and argue; one of the sleeping bodies against the nearer wall was muttering and stirring. Mansur, Ulf, and Rankin were already at the foot of the tower steps, looking back to make sure she and Boggart were following. Quickly pushing Boggart into the turret, Adelia went in after her, the Irishman at her back. As he closed the door behind them, its hinges squeaked—and her nerves with them, so that she stood still, frozen, waiting for discovery. Instead she got a shove and a hissed: “Mother of God, will you move?”
With the door shut, they were in blackness. Up, then, up the winding thread of steps, feeling their way, up past doors leading to store cupboards, some of them open, others shut, none of them apparently occupied. Adelia gave a fractious whisper over her shoulder: “Why are we going up, not out?”
“This is out. Get on.”
It cost her, it cost all the prisoners, weak as they were, to keep climbing. Sobbing for breath, Boggart was beginning to lumber and Adelia had to reach up until, with her one good arm, she located the girl’s backside and she could push.
An unencumbered moon shone into the top room; better still, night air came in through the windows smelling of fields and distance; their laboring lungs sucked it in.
Boggart sank down on the floor, exhausted, but the Irishman pulled her to her feet. “Not yet, missus. Now we go down.”
The mullion of the window overlooking the rear roofs of the palace had ropes tied round it in complicated knotting; a grappling hook by which they’d been thrown up in order to catch round it was on the floor.
“Who goes first?” the O’Donnell said. “Easy as kiss-me-hand and the good Deniz down there ready to catch you.”
He looked toward Adelia. She shook her head at him; if it was as easy as kiss-me-hand, then Boggart must have the first chance of escape. But the maid shrank back, frightened, and Adelia wasn’t going without her. Probably, she thought, I’m not going at all, not with this bloody shoulder.
“I’ll go,” came Ulf’s voice.
Was that Ulf, that stick of a boy with hollow eyes and cheeks? Was the bearded scarecrow Rankin?
The others watched as the Irishman put a loop round the boy’s left foot and made sure his hands were firmly grasping another length of rope. “I’ll ease you down, lad. Just keep hold.” He leaned out of the window and, cupping his own hands, hooted like an owl.
There was an answering hoot from far below. “Off you go now, as my old granny said when she kicked the peddler over the cliff.”
Leaning out, Adelia saw the moonlight touching Ulf’s tow-colored hair and the white of his knuckles around the rope as he went down with the O’Donnell above paying it out, using the mullion as a fulcrum. The black depth below rushed up at her so that she flinched back before forcing herself to lean out again.
Ulf had stopped, he was stuck; he was struggling with a shadowy figure.
“They’ve got him.”
“Who has?” The O’Donnell stuck his head through the window. “No, that’s Deniz. Your boy’s just made the first of the descents, that’s all.”
There were two? Yes, of course, this was the window at the back of the turret, but after the roofs below it lay another drop of at least fifty feet. Again, Adelia felt the helpless irritation of hunger and fear. This was overelaborate and dangerous; Boggart wouldn’t be able to do it; she didn’t think she could. “Why couldn’t we go out through the doors?”
O’Donnell raised an eyebrow. “Well now, I don’t think the guards outside would’ve liked it. They’ll not be as sleepy as the lad downstairs.”
Whom he’d killed.
Outside an owl hooted.
“He’s down,” the Irishman said, pulling the rope back up. “Next.”
Rankin went, breathing hard. After an age, the owl hooted again.
Mansur was next; he didn’t want to go before the women, but Boggart was panicking and Adelia wouldn’t leave her. As the Arab clambered out into the moonlight, Adelia saw that his robe was filthy he who’d always been immaculate.
We stink, she thought, all of us. Except him. From what could be seen in the moonlight, O’Donnell looked neat and contained; he was insouciant, as if unloading cargo from one of his boats, whistling quietly to himself when he took the strain, his muscles stretched against his shirt which, she knew, was splashed at the front with the blood of the guard downstairs.
Mansur’s descent seemed to take longer than Rankin’s, which had taken longer than Ulf’s. Over the noise of her own breathing, Adelia listened desperately for an outbreak of shouts from outside or from the base of the turret when it was discovered that their cells were empty ... They couldn’t be so lucky; this was a big palace, heavily populated baby...
“Now, then, ladies.”
“I can’t,” Boggart said. “The baby . . .”
“Just the thing for him,” the Irishman told her firmly “Dandling in the air? He’ll love it. Come on now.”
Between them, he and Adelia persuaded Boggart to put her foot in the loop. Getting her squeezed through the window’s frame and its mullion was more difficult—Adelia gritted her teeth at the thought of what the constriction might be doing to the fetus in that extended belly—but at last the girl was out. Her agonized face went down into the darkness.
When the owl hoot came, O’Donnell hauled in the rope again. “Come on, missus.”
Adelia gritted her teeth. “My collarbone is broken.”
“Which side?” There was no sympathy
“The right.”
“Hold on with your left hand, then.”
Her foot was put into a loop, an extra swath of rope wound around her body and tied with another complicated knot.
“Don’t look down,” the Irishman said. “Keep your eyes on me.”
She didn’t; she looked firmly at the stones that went sliding just beyond her nose.
Actually, with her good hand clinging onto the rope, her left foot braced against her own weight, and her right pushing herself away from the turret wall, the descent wasn’t as horrendous as she’d thought.
When at last her feet touched tiles, she was enveloped in a strong smell of sweat as the waiting Turkish squire released her from the harness and put his little hands to his mouth to give a final hoot. Her rope went snaking upward.
She was on a flat roof of some building. At last she saw what they were about;
on this side the turret towered over a building that formed part of the palace’s rear wall and the wall gave onto wasteland that, in turn, gave way to a hill.
Above her, the O’Donnell slid down easily with the grappling hook under his arm. He gave it to Deniz and shook his head at the rope still dangling from the window. “It’s a sad thing to leave all that fine hemp. Ah, well, maybe the good bishop’ll hang himself with it.”
Taking her left arm, he hurried her over the roof to where a rope ladder was tied to a stanchion. “Can you manage, missus?”
She didn’t know if she could; there’d be fifty feet or more to go. Peeping over the edge, she could see only blackness.
As she hesitated, he got onto the rope ladder himself, curving his body outward so that it could form a cradle for her own. “Manage now?”
“Yes.”
It was still difficult; the ladder swung outward and from side to side and she could only hold on with her left hand, but with the fear of falling negated by the Irishman’s arms forming a protective circle, she managed it. Deniz slid down after them in one movement.
They were outside the palace—out. In the shadow of its retaining wall what seemed to be a large company was shifting about nervously: two horses, two hounds, the laden mule that had always carried O’Donnell’s equipment, Mansur, Boggart, Rankin, Ulf—and the recumbent body of a man.
Instinctively Adelia bent over it. O‘Donnell nudged her with his boot. “Sentry. Leave him.” He looked toward the others and spoke in Arabic. “Get ’em mounted, Deniz.” Turning back, he handed Adelia the shoe she’d lost outside Ermengarde’s cottage. “You’ll be needing this.”
From somewhere in the depths of the palace, an alarm bell began clanging. The empty cells had been discovered.
Already, the darkness of the fields ahead of them was beginning to lighten. Deniz and the O‘Donnell were shoving Boggart onto one of the horses, Mansur was commanding her to move. “’Delia, now.”
Unable to help herself, Adelia touched the recumbent sentry’s neck. He was dead. As her hand withdrew, something squirmed toward her and licked it.
It was Ward.
She gathered him up, hugging his thin, dirty body to her own, before she was dragged away and, still clutching her dog, was thrown up on the horse carrying Boggart. Ulf scrambled up behind her. Rankin and Mansur were already on the other mount.
Then they were off, hounds, horses, mule, the O’Donnell and Deniz loping beside them with reins in their hands.
Not fast enough, she thought. The bare hill ahead was brightening by the second; they would be as obvious on it as a cluster of running deer, but not as speedy. She heard the Irishman puffing at Deniz: “They’ll . . . look to the square first. Minute or two ... before they think of the tower.”
A minute or two. A minute or two to cover acres of open ground. Not enough. She could hear shouting coming from the palace, orders being given, the bell clanging and clanging.
They were reaching the top of the hill, disturbed larks rising up, fluttering and twittering as if to warn Aveyron that the heretics were loose. Were over it. Into trees. No slowing down. Lord, dear Lord, forgive my sins. Don’t let us burn, don’t let us burn. Have mercy on us.
They snaked through woods, they splashed along streams to throw off the scenting hounds yelping in the distance behind them; they jolted up gradients of scree that gave way with loud rattling beneath cantering hooves and the running men’s feet. No stopping, no stopping. Except once when, under the shelter of a mountain’s overhang, they watched a file of mounted men on the skyline encouraging their dogs to search, O’Donnell and Deniz with their hands clasped round the muzzles of their own two hounds to stop answering yelps.
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 Figères 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 a
ccount 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 Allíe. 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.”