“You have. Many times,” I said.
I took a breath and recounted the horror of my trip to St. Cécile. I told it in detail: the charred mounds, the eviscerated knight, the most graphic images sticking in my throat like memories that did not want to come out.
I told her of Adhémar, whose similar fate I had heard of at Baldwin’s court. Both knights were slaughtered, their villages razed. Both had recently returned from the Crusade. Just as I had.
“Why do you tell this to me?” she finally asked.
“You have not heard of such deeds? At court? Around the castle?”
“No. They are vile. Why should I?”
“Knights who disappear and return? Or talk of sacred relics from the Holy Land? Things more valuable than a simple fool like me would know.”
“You are my only relic from the Holy Land.” She smiled, trying to shift the mood.
I could see her trying to put the puzzle together. Why these horrible murders? Why now?
She took a wary breath. “I did not know of any such violence. Only that word has spread that Stephen has sent an advance guard to conduct his affairs before he returns.”
My blood lit. “This guard — they are here? At the castle?”
“I overheard the chatelain speaking of them with some contempt. He has served the duke loyally for years, yet these men are charged with some horrid mission. He feels they are ill-trained for knights.”
“Ill-trained?”
“‘Beyond honor,’ he said. Owing no allegiance. He says it is fitting that they sleep with the pigs, since they have the hearts of them. Why do you ask me this, Hugh?” Emilie looked into my eyes. I could see fear and I felt awful for causing it.
“These men are hunting for something, Emilie. I do not know what. But your mistress . . . she is not innocent in this herself. These might be Stephen’s men, but Anne knows what they do.”
“I cannot believe that.” Emilie shot upright. “You say this is a matter more important than any in the world to you. I hear it in your voice. These things you describe . . . they are most vile, and if they are Stephen’s work or Anne’s, they will have to answer to God for what has been done. But why is this so urgent for you? Why do you put yourself at risk?”
“It is not for Anne or Stephen,” I said, swallowing. “It is for my wife and child. I am sure, Emilie, their killers are these same men.”
I leaned back, trying to let the pieces fit together in my mind. This guard, doing the duke’s bidding. They had come from the Crusade. As had Adhémar. And Arnaud. And I.
“I must confront her,” Emilie said. “If Anne is behind such acts, I cannot serve here any longer.”
“You must not say a word! These men are vicious. They kill without a thought to God’s judgment.”
“It is too late.” Emilie stared at me glassily. Her look was not anxious but perplexed. “The truth is, when you were away, Hugh, I may have seen something too.”
Chapter 67
ANNE FLINCHED IN THE MAZE OF HEDGES under the balcony as she heard footsteps creeping up on her. A stealthy presence, most foul, like a shift in the wind. She turned and he was there.
His frame was large, his face ruined with scars from battle. But it was not these things that made her shiver. It was his eyes. Their remoteness — rigid, dark pools. His face was buried deep in his dark hood. On the hood, a small black cross.
“Not in church, knight?” She scowled, her words stabbing with irony.
“Do not worry for me.” His cold voice crept out from the drawn hood. “I make peace with God in my own way.”
He came before her as a supplicant, yet he was possessed of the harshest cruelty. The tunic of a knight, but a disgraced one, dressed in rags. Still, she was forced to deal with him.
“I do worry for you, Morgaine,” Anne said scornfully, “for I think you will burn in Hell. Your methods are evil. They pervert the goal you aim to achieve.”
“I may burn, lady, but I will light the way for others to rest next to God. Perhaps even you . . .”
“Do not flatter yourself that you are God’s agent.” Anne sneered. “You make my skin crawl that you do my husband’s work.”
He bowed, unoffended. “You need not bother with my work, madame. Just know that it goes well.”
“I saw how well it goes, knight. I was there.”
“There, madame?” The knight’s eyes narrowed.
“St. Cécile . . . I saw what you did. Such cruelty even beasts from Hell would find shame in. I saw how you left that town.”
“It was left a better place than when we arrived. Closer to God.”
“Closer to God?” She stepped up to him, looked into his depthless eyes. “The knight, Arnaud. I saw him flayed apart.”
“He would not bend, my lady.”
“And the children . . . they would not bend as well? Tell me, Morgaine. For what precious prize did these innocents roast like cattle?”
“Just this,” the hooded knight said plainly.
He reached under his cloak. His hand emerged with a small wooden cross in it the size of his palm. He placed it gently in Anne’s hand.
Though she wanted to spit on it and hurl it far into the bushes, Anne’s breath froze.
“It has journeyed far, my lady, this simple trinket. From Rome to Byzantium. A thousand years. And now you hold it here. For three hundred of them it slept in a coffin, the coffin of Saint Paul himself, word of our Lord. Until it was unearthed by Emperor Constantius. This cross has changed the tide of history.” A smile crept across his face. “That’s why your prayers for me are not needed, good lady.”
Anne’s hands trembled holding the relic. Her mouth went dry. “My husband will no doubt be honored,” she said. “Yet you know this is just the appetizer to what he hungers for. How does the real quest go?”
“We are working.” The dark knight nodded.
“You’d better work faster, knight. All the rest is just decoration. Even this piece is a bauble compared to the real prize. He is in Nîmes, only days away. If Stephen finds you have failed him, it will be your head we’ll be looking at on a stake.”
“Then I will be smiling, lady, knowing that I will have everlasting life.”
“The smile will be mine, Morgaine, most assuredly.” Anne wrapped herself in her cloak and turned back to the castle. “Thinking of you rotting in Hell.”
Chapter 68
I FOUND NO TRACE OF THE UNHOLY SOLDIERS I was seeking, or anyone who knew of mysterious knights in dark robes. Nor was I able to gain access to the barracks. Time was growing short. Stephen was due back at the castle in days. Once he returned, it would be too dangerous to press my case.
Two days later, Emilie took me aside as I was playing jackstraws with Anne’s son, William. She saw my demeanor was glum.
“Do not be so sad, jester,” she said with a smile. “I have a job for you. And a new pretext.”
There was to be a celebration that evening in the chatelain’s hall, she explained. A bachelor party. Gilles, the captain of the guard, was to be married in the next few days. There would be knights, soldiers, members of the guard. Lots of speeches and drink. Their guard would be down, so to speak.
“I have arranged for you to be the entertainment,” Emilie announced.
“You seem to have a skill at this sort of thing, my lady. Once again I owe you thanks.”
“Thank me by finding what you seek,” she said, and touched my hand. “And, Hugh, be careful. Please.”
That night there was lots of wine and awful singing. Gilles’s buddies stood and made bold and mocking speeches until they slurred their words and fell back onto their benches. I was to be the last act before they dragged Gilles down to a brothel in town.
I had to make them laugh, and yet my eyes kept searching for the rogue knights. I did sleight-of-hand tricks to warm them up, simple stuff Norbert had shown me, pulling objects out of tunics to their drunken awe.
Then it was on to the jokes. “I know this man,” I an
nounced, sliding to a stop on the tabletop in front of the groom to be, “whose cock was permanently engorged.”
“You flatter me.” Gilles pretended to blush. “But, joker, must you betray my secret to all?”
“Try as he could,” I went on, “he could not get the damn thing to go down. Finally he sought out his local apothecary. There, he encountered a stunning young woman. ‘I’d like to speak to your father,’ the man with the problem said.
“‘My father is dead,’ she answered. ‘I run this apothecary with my sister. Anything you can tell a man, you can tell us.’ ‘All right,’ he agreed. In dire need, he pulled down his leggings. ‘Look, I have a permanent erection. Like a fucking horse. What can you give me for it?’
“‘Hmmm,’” the lady apothecary replied. ‘Let me go and confer with my sister.’ After a minute she returned with a small pouch and said, ‘How is one hundred gold coins and half the business?’”
The room roared with laughter. “Tell us more. . . .”
I had begun another — the one about the priest and the talking crow — when from outside the walls, a terrible shout pierced the celebration. There was the clop of horses drawn to a stop. Then once again a man’s scream. “Please, God help me. I am being killed!”
The drunken laughter ceased. Several of the party rushed to a window overlooking the courtyard. I followed close behind. Through the narrow opening I saw two men dragging a third by the arms across the courtyard.
I recognized them instantly! They wore slitted helmets and carried war swords strapped to their belts. It was just as Emilie had described. They wore no armor but robes. On their feet were worn sandals.
The prisoner hollered defiantly, his shouts for help echoing off the stone walls.
Then I caught a look at his face. My own twisted in horror.
It was the mayor of St. Cécile — who had stood up to Anne only a few days before.
They dragged the poor mayor toward the keep. “Who are these men?” I asked one of the soldiers at my side.
“These dogs? The duke’s new business partners. Les Retournés . . .”
“Retournés . . . ?” I muttered.
My eyes followed the soldiers and the poor mayor until they dragged him through a heavy wooden door and into the keep. The dying shouts of the prisoner faded in the night.
“Not our worry.” Bertrand, the chatelain, sighed. He stepped back from the window. “Come, Gilles, beauties await in town. How ’bout we get that blade of yours wiped one last time?”
Meanwhile, my heart was beating at a gallop. I had to talk to the mayor of St. Cécile. He might know why knights were being murdered and villages burned. And these awful killers . . . Les Retournés . . . I thought that I had seen them before.
But where?
Chapter 69
THE FOLLOWING NIGHT I WAITED until long after dark. Norbert lay snoring on his bed. I crept off my mat and tucked a knife under my leggings.
I sneaked out of Norbert’s chamber, hurrying up the back stairs behind the kitchen to the main floor. I had to traverse the entire castle from the large rooms of the court to the military end. And talk my way past anyone who would stop me. Well, I was the jester after all.
The halls were dark and drafty; shadows danced on the walls from waning candle flames. I hurried past the huge doors of the great hall. A few knights still lounged at tables there, drinking, conversing, while others, too far gone, snored curled up on their cloaks. Occasionally there was a guard. But no one stopped me. I was their lady’s fool.
The castle was a squared-off U shape, with a loggia of stone arches around the courtyard. Across from it were the duke’s garrison, the officers’ quarters, the barracks, and the keep. I successfully wound my way around the entire main floor. As I passed outside, I saw the tower above me where the mysterious knights had dragged their prisoner, lit up by the moon. I hurried that way, then slipped inside.
I was in the tower, all right, but I didn’t know where to go or who might try to stop me. My stomach churned; the breath clung tight in my chest.
A draft followed me up the stairs. At each floor, the odor grew more foul. The smell of death I knew all too well.
On the third landing, two guards slouched around an open archway. One was tall and lazy looking, the other short and squat with mean eyes. Not exactly the duke’s crack troops, I thought, just keeping an eye on a few cursed souls in the middle of the night.
“Are you lost, strawberry?” the mean-looking one growled at me.
“Never been up here before,” I said. “Mind if I take a quick peek?”
“Tour’s over.” He stood up. “Go back the way you came.”
I went up to him, my eyes wide. As if yanking something out of his ear, from my closed fist I produced a long silk scarf. “Come on . . . even a damned soul could use a last laugh.”
To my delight, the oaf reached out and felt the scarf. Then he took it, my bribe for him. He looked down the hall and, finding the coast clear, stuffed it into his uniform. “One look,” he said. “There’s nothin’ in there anyway but the pox. Then juggle your ass back where you belong.”
“Thank you, sire,” I clucked. “A lifetime of stiff manhood to you.”
I darted through the archway behind him and up the stairs. A row of narrow stone cells stretched out before me. The putrid stench made me hold my breath. I hoped the man I was seeking was in here.
I hoped the mayor of St. Cécile was still alive.
Chapter 70
I CREPT INSIDE THE HELLHOLE. The prison was dank and humid. A flickering torch spat its dim light on a row of narrow cells. They were barely four feet high, enclosed by rusted iron bars, tight as coffins. Prisoners curled on the floor like dogs.
Driven by the awful smell and my worry that the guards would come, I hurried down the row of cells, searching for the man I had seen dragged in the night before. I prayed he was still here.
In the first cell, a man with a long dark beard, naked, barely more than a skeleton, lay on his back amid his own waste. In the next, a large dark-skinned man — swarthy as a Turk — curled under a tattered white robe. Neither raised an eye. The cells reeked. A rat licked the inside of a bowl right in front of me.
The third cell contained the person I was seeking: the mayor of St. Cécile. The poor man lay crumpled in a ball, with blotches of blood and bruises on his face and arms. To my alarm, I could not tell if he was alive or dead.
“Sir . . .” I crept close. I had to know. What did these dark knights want? What had they razed his entire village to find? What treasure was worth so many lives?
I crept up close to his cell. “Please . . .” I whispered again, almost begging. Would he recognize me? Would he speak or call out?
Suddenly a whimpering moan from the next cell caught my attention. I stepped over and saw a pathetic creature — a woman, her skin as white as a ghost, her hair dry as rotted hemp, muttering under her breath like a deranged witch. Her skin was spotted with oozing sores.
I cringed. What a sight! What heresy had she done to be left to rot away like this?
I turned back to the mayor. Time was short. “Do you remember me, sir? I saw you in St. Cécile,” I whispered.
But the witch’s muttering grew louder. I shushed her to stop. Then a jolt froze my body.
The words she moaned — at first softly, almost inaudibly, into her bony hands. Then louder. My God! I could not believe what I was hearing:
“A maiden met a wandering man in the light of the moon’s pure cheer.”
Chapter 71
MY HEART SLAMMED AGAINST MY RIBS. This could not be! Could not, could not.
I ran to her cell and pressed against the bars, straining to distinguish her features amid the shadows.
Nothing could ever have prepared me for what I saw. . . . Not the sight of Nico plunging from my grasp. Or poor Robert gazing at his own body as it was hacked in two. Not even the Turk looming over me, his blade raised in the air.
I was staring at my wi
fe.
“Sophie . . . ?” I whispered, the word catching in my throat.
She did not move or speak.
“Sophie!”’ I called, feeling my heart start to crumble. Part of me prayed she would not turn.
Then she tilted her face toward me.
“Sophie, is that you?”
She lay huddled in shadow and I still could not tell for certain if it was her. The scant light from a nearby torch traced her bony face. Her hair, which once had smelled like honey, hung wildly from her head, pulled out in spots, and white. Her sunken eyes, glazed and distant, were runny with yellow pus. Yet the nose . . . the soft line of her chin as it met her delicate neck . . . they were the same, unmistakably, though she cowered before me as a fevered wretch, pocked with sores.
It was her! I was sure of it.
“Sophie?” I cried, my hands reaching desperately through the bars.
She finally turned toward the sound, sallow light spreading across her face. I simply could not believe what I was seeing! How could she be here? How could she be alive after all this time?
Grateful tears welled in my eyes. I reached for her, her emaciated bones covered with a filthy rag. I tried to speak, but I was too overcome. It was Sophie. She was not dead. At last I knew that much for sure.
“Sophie . . . look . . . It’s me, Hugh.”
Slowly she lifted her face fully into the light. She was like an artist’s disfigured re-creation of the beautiful image I held in my mind: gaunt, ghostly, covered in sores. Her eyes flickered at the sound of my voice. I could see that she was sick, that she barely clung to this rotting existence. I wasn’t sure she knew who I was.
“We have to give it back to them,” she finally said. “Please, I beg you. Give them back what’s theirs.”
“Sophie,” I was shouting now, “look. I am here . . . Hugh!” What had they done to her? Anger surged through me. I could see her suffering and I felt it too. “You are alive. Sweet God, you’re alive. . . .” Tears streamed down my face.
“Hugh . . . ?” She blinked. Then she almost seemed to smile. “Hugh’ll be back. He’s in the East, fighting. . . . But I’ll see him again, my baby. He promised.”