Chapter 16
In which an unlikely alliance brings the Marshall to an old acquaintance. There is carnage in the wreckage and funny goings on in the forest. Beowulf thinks (incorrectly) that he’s had an easy ride to victory. There is a threatening moment (or two) and, in a timely manner, Amarilla gets stuck in.
‘The hardest thing is staying resolute!’ declared the newly saved and more recently lapsed Cardinal Mascarpone to the trees. His experience in the fire had left him breathless and he had been unable to keep up in the frantic scramble after the Louis’.
‘If I were able to stay resolute then anything would be possible!’
He waved his recently plundered bottle of wine around and wondered if anyone was listening. He thought not. The forest was quiet.
‘I should have chased after the King, but, alas,’ he paused, in order to better recollect his reasons and avoid falling over; ‘I am not a runner! I am a man of God! I have a higher calling!’
At this point he looked guiltily around (in case God actually was listening) before carrying on,
‘I am not made for running; or for fighting, or for intriguing. I am prepared for the simple pleasures of the religious life; the wine, the food, the sleeping! Let Cardinal Bull go trotting about, deciding Kings and things, while all the time he is sucking up to the Pope. I’ll have none of it! I shall sit here and have a drink!’
Having temporarily and virtuously run out of breath, he did just as he had said; he sat down, righteously, yet rather heavily, on a tree stump and had a swig from his bottle. He was very shocked when he felt something hard and metallic against his back and heard a voice whisper,
‘Keep very still!’
After finding that the Marshall was still alive, but not very mobile, Emsie had tried to help the old man to walk, but they had not got very far. Emsie was convinced that this was only because the old soldier could not take orders from a girl. If they moved together, as she had endeavoured to explain, she could hold him up, but if he moved without co-ordinating with her, then she could not. He did not co-ordinate, however hard she tried to organise it, and so they fell down. He didn’t seem to mind this. In fact, he seemed to find it quite amusing and Emsie had begun to suspect that he had enjoyed a fair bit to drink at the party before the fire, escape and rescue. She was frustrated that he would not take things seriously; however, he was Amarilla’s Uncle and she had promised to rescue him. Even so, she did have half a mind to leave him to sober up in the forest and come back and get him in the morning.
‘Wait here,’ she had said, ‘I’ll see if I can find some help,’
‘Look out for the Cardinal’s men,’ he had replied, suddenly serious, ‘they will want to get Louie-Louie back in charge and they won’t be fussy how they do it.’
Emsie intended to be careful and she told him this. She then set off, creeping through the dark until she had spotted the Cardinal, who had obviously abandoned (or been abandoned by) the Royal pursuit, unsteadily making his way through the wood.
‘He could help move the Marshall,’ she thought, ‘with one of us on either side we could make our way to the chicken tent at the carnival and hide out there; Grandpa might even help, especially with it being the Marshall.’
She looked around the darkening forest for some kind of weapon with which to threaten Mascarpone; but then she remembered she had her comb. Clutching it tightly she had crept up behind him. It was this fine metal comb that was now held roughly against the Cardinal’s back.
‘I am a man of God,’ said Mascarpone, in what he hoped was a confident tone.
‘I think that is very much a matter of opinion,’ replied Emsie, ‘but if you’re right then you won’t be afraid to die.’
Mascarpone considered this.
‘I was recently, only this very night, spared from a fire. I think that God would rather I was alive, just for the moment, if you don’t mind. Perhaps I have a purpose.’
‘Perhaps you do,’ Emsie agreed, ‘how do you feel about helping the sick and injured?’
‘It would be an opportunity that I have not often fully availed myself of; I don’t have any medical knowledge and I’ve heard it said that I’m lacking in compassion.’
‘Come on then; there’s still time to improve.’
As the cart rolled over, Pedro was flung clear. Luckily, he landed at the edge of the slope, where he was able to watch the cart as it bounced and rolled down the rock strewn slope.
‘Ouch,’ he said, ‘That weel hurt tereeblee!’
Somehow Beowulf had tumbled into the body of the cart, together with the three Louis’, while Amarilla and Roscow had fallen out. They had each landed a little further down the slope from Pedro. They had both been fortunate enough to be flung from the cart before it had gone on to pick up speed. Pedro watched it somersaulting down the slope, with Grendel’s Mother still grasping its wooden frame tightly.
As it hit the road below with a colossal bang, she too was separated from the cart and fell face down on the roadway. The cart slowed. For a moment Pedro entertained the optimistic notion that the cart would come to a standstill on the path and there would be time to rescue those within, but this was clearly not the case. He watched helplessly as it slid over the edge and went crashing into the forest that lay just to the east of the village.
Pedro was going to get to his feet and go and help Roscow and Amarilla, when a black clad man, to whom he had earlier hired a mule, trotted up to him and stopped.
‘Do you think they could survive?’ he asked.
‘I don’t theenk so, but aneetheeng ees posseeble. Eef God weels eet; then, perhaps,’ Pedro said.
‘I shall go and see. It would be most unfortunate if they were all dead,’ said the man, who then trotted on down the road until he reached the point where the cart had gone into the forest; there he dismounted and, leaving the mule, set off into the woods on foot.
Pedro looked up the slope and saw that some of the guards who had survived the earlier crashes were now beginning to pick themselves up and regroup.
‘Oh oh,’ he said, ‘time to go!’
He set off down the slope to where Roscow was lying.
Inside the cart Beowulf and the three Louis’ were being shaken and battered. At each painful bounce they were thrown into each other and against the wooden body of the cart. To take his mind off the pain (and the possibility of imminent destruction, injury or death), Beowulf marvelled at the perseverance of Grendel’s Mother. He tried to say,
‘Vengeance across half a continent,’ to Lewis, but with the thumping of the falling cart it came out as,
‘Vung-cr-cross-hafcontent!’ to which the confused Lewis replied,
‘In English! Please!’
Beowulf laughed. The Louis’ shouted. The cart clattered on until with a final smash it hit a very stout tree and shattered to pieces, dropping Beowulf and the Louis’ on the forest floor.
Lewis was flung directly against the tree, hitting his head. He fell back into the clearing and lay still. Louis rolled over a number of times, hit his shoulder against a rock, cried out and then passed out. Louie-Louie and Beowulf landed in a ball. They rolled over each other until they came to a stop in a clump of thick ferns. Louie-Louie was out of breath and lay still, gasping for air. Beowulf, however, being fitter and shaped like a bowling ball, rolled over again, jumped to his feet and then surveyed the unconscious and semi conscious claimants of the French throne. He quickly checked himself for injury, looked up and down the forest for pursuers and, hardly believing his luck, checked the fallen Louis’ again. With a chuckle of surprised appreciation, which he could only dedicate to the curious nature of fate, he observed,
‘Perfection!’ and then he drew his knife.
Emsie, Mascarpone and Gney were in a heap again. Exasperated, Emsie pushed them aside and stood up. She observed the men, both of whom lay giggling on the floor.
‘You’re supposed to be a pillar of the church,’ said Gney, who had finished off Mascarpone’s bottle
, (‘for pain relief purposes’) ‘and yet you can’t stand up!’
Mascarpone laughed,
‘The Marshall is the right hand of the King. It’s lucky you aren’t his right leg; you can’t stand up!’
‘We both can’t stand up!’ they chorused happily.
Emsie was very patient, although the alcohol induced bonding of church and state was severely trying her tolerance.
‘We’ll try again,’ she said.
Amarilla meanwhile, was sitting up.
‘Are you hokay?’ asked Pedro, who had recaptured Banshee and climbed down towards her,
‘Hokay!’ laughed a semi conscious Roscow, who was lying a few feet away.
‘I think so,’ replied Amarilla and then she looked down at the path the cart had taken, and exclaimed, ‘Lewis!’
Pedro followed her gaze down the slope, across the road, past the prone body of Grendel’s Mother and into the trees.
‘He may be hokay too.’ Pedro said kindly, although he inadvertently shook his head as he spoke. He gestured at Roscow, ‘we weel take heem and go and look. Geeve me a hand.’
With Amarilla’s help, Pedro was able to pull Roscow across Banshee’s back. The big man seemed to be stunned, but every so often his eyes would open and he would say,
‘Hi ham hokay, how har you? Har you hokay?’
‘‘Ee ‘as ‘eet ‘ees ‘ead,’ said Pedro knowingly, ‘or ‘ee would not be speakeeng like thees.’
Amarilla nodded and they set off down the slope.
‘What are you going to do?’ Louie-Louie asked Beowulf nervously, looking warily at his knife.
‘Nothing to worry you!’ said Beowulf cheerfully.
‘But aren’t you going to kill me and replace me either with my brother or the large Briton,’ he said, ‘ that’s what the people who hired you want, isn’t it.’
‘That’s as maybe,’ conceded Beowulf, ‘my old friend Marshall Gney would like the world to be rid of you and for your brother to reassume his rightful place. The Britons have already paid heavily to have you and your brother removed, to be replaced by him.’ Beowulf gestured at the unconscious Lewis,
‘Even the vile old Duke of Jutland would like you dead; I’m not entirely sure why, but it seems that he would like to spite the Pope. So I could kill you and replace you with Louis, winning rewards from the Marshall and the Duke, or split you open to make way for Lewis and impress the Britons. I have options.’
Beowulf paused and Louie-Louie shuddered.
‘However,’ he continued, ‘I have decided, for reasons of my own, that even though it will please the Pope (which is a disappointment), and even though it will raise the enmity of the French, the Britons and the horribly dangerous Duke of Jutland, that what I will do is this: I will despatch Louis and Lewis and leave you alive, even if you are a chicken livered, reactionary, subservient, fundamentalist fool. Louie-Louie I will return you as the King of France!’
It took Louie-Louie a few seconds to take all this in.
‘You plan to kill them,’ he queried, ‘and spare me?’
‘Ridiculous isn’t it?’ said Beowulf, ‘who would have thought that spite was a better motive than avarice or expediency.’
‘Isn’t there a way with no killing?’ asked Louie-Louie timorously. He was suddenly aware of an impulse to stick up for his brothers; at the same time he also realised that he was most unwilling to contemplate changing places with them.
Beowulf looked Louie-Louie up and down in simple disbelief.
‘No killing?’ he laughed, ‘and you a King? Please!’
At that point Naiman, who had stealthily crept up on the pair sprang into the clearing,
‘Traitor!’ he shouted, ‘You are to spare Louis!’
Beowulf appeared to consider this,
‘Shan’t!’ he replied.
Naiman drew his knife.