Armed in Her Fashion Read online

  Willem had caught up with Beatrix now, and bent to take the sack. It was over. They could not manage this, two women against two revenants. If God had given her a little more time to plan—

  Someone came crashing through the trees, a man in mail and helmet, swinging a sword. The sword flashed high in the moonlight and the man yelled and the sword thwacked Willem on the shoulder.

  The corpse that had been her husband stumbled back, with a great gash nearly clean through his upper arm. There was nothing on his face, no expression. The wound did not bleed. Whoever this man was, he must want the sack. Margriet had only the space of a moment while her husband reeled back and the man-at-arms lunged after him.

  The sack was no lighter the second time, and her fingers slipped on the rough cloth. But this time, Beatrix was at her side, and grasped a handful of cloth on one side and they ran with the sack between them.

  “Don’t look back,” she panted.

  “Do not speak to me, Mother,” Beatrix said. “Not one word.”

  The night breathed cold against Margriet’s hot cheek. What cause had Beatrix to be angry? What right? How dare she?

  Margriet glanced behind—if the revenants were not dogging their steps, the man-at-arms must be. But no—he somehow had Baltazar pinned to the ground under his knee and was slashing again at Willem’s arm.

  She cringed; it was hard to remember, when she saw the hand fall away from the arm, that this was not her husband. But it was in any case her husband’s body.

  “Don’t look back, Beatrix,” she muttered again, and tugged the sack, walking forward. Whoever the armed man was, he had business with Willem or Baltazar, it seemed. Her husband had made an enemy. The man who had killed him? People said a dead man would bleed, in the presence of his murderer, yet Willem did not bleed, not even when his flesh was hacked off.

  They were nearly out of the copse and into the open field. As the trees thinned, she could see that the eastern horizon was pink. Morning. Two nights and one day now, with only a few hours of sleep snatched here and there. By God, she was too old for this. She might vomit, the moment she got a moment to think.

  Over her shoulder, someone crashed through the bushes, coming closer. She whirled; it was the man in mail and helmet.

  Margriet put her free hand to her waist to pull her knife and with the other, thrust her end of the sack toward her daughter.

  “Run, now,” she yelled. “I don’t care if you say no masses in my name, I don’t care if you curse it. I’m a dead woman now and don’t you dare stop running.”

  But the man in the helmet reached out his empty hands, palms toward them. Then, panting and putting one hand to his side, he lifted his visor.

  “It’s me, you blind idiot,” said Claude.

  “By all the saints,” Margriet breathed. “Where did you—?”

  “No time,” Claude panted. “I’ve bound your husbands but that bit of rope won’t hold them long.”

  Margriet peered over Claude’s shoulder but could see nothing but dull shapes in the gloom beyond.

  “My arm’s killing me,” Claude said. “I could barely make a dent with this sword. But it did what it had to do. If you two can manage that sack a little farther, we need to find somewhere to hide. We passed a rotted sty a while back, at that burned cottage, you recall? We can rest there.”

  They stumbled forward. In the sickly daylight Margriet could see now that her daughter’s cheeks were stained with tears. She had not cried before Baltazar and Willem; she must have been crying as they were running. Poor girl. Let her have her anger. Margriet had never known her to be angry, not truly angry, not once in all her years. Come to think of it, if she had not pushed the child from her own womb she might have wondered whether Beatrix was her daughter; she had so little of Margriet in her.

  Claude put her arm across Margriet’s path to stop her.

  “Wait,” the girl hissed. “Something’s not—”

  At the edge of the trees, where the field began, the grasses were tall, and thick, all in among shrubs and saplings. From that grass rose a dozen monsters. She knew them for chimeras by how they moved, before she got close enough to see their abominations. Those three sprang from the grass with the smooth-jointed speed of insects; that other one came scampering out of the bush like a frightened partridge.

  And, then, out of the darkness of the woods, a line of hounds came running at them. Two-headed hounds, running in a circle around them, their human mouths laughing and their dog mouths snarling.

  “There is nowhere to run, Claude Jouvenal,” said the biggest of the chimeras, a brute with a horn jutting from his forehead like a unicorn. The horned man smiled at Claude as if he were greeting an old friend, but his right hand at his sword belt called him a liar.

  If the chimeras wanted them dead, surely they would be killing them by now.

  They had been nothing but threatening blurs a few moments ago, but they were becoming clear now as they drew closer, as she could see them better.

  The horned chimera stood a foot taller than any man Margriet had ever seen. Like a vine, the copper-coloured horn grew whorled and mottled with green, so thick at the base that it stretched from his brows to the beginning of his yellow hair. His skin was like leather, plated here and there with grafted armour, and he wore no tunic, only chausses and a belt.

  And then he spoke, startling her.

  “You took it off, you crazy woman,” shouted the horned man, in French. “You did not like the look of it?”

  Margriet had always spoken very good French. Her father had drilled it into her. One day you may find that someone wants you to say scilt ende vrient, he had said. She, being a know-it-all as usual, had informed him that it would be the other way around if the French were trying to test a Fleming, that it would be écu et ami, except that écu et ami wasn’t hard to say, so they would probably pick something with an r in it.

  In any case, she had not thought that when the moment came, the problem would be not that she didn’t understand the French, but that she just didn’t understand.

  She stared at the horned man, and opened her mouth as if some words might come out, some words that would work.

  “I got rid of it,” Claude said behind her, her French much smoother than her Flemish, perfect langue d’oc. “I sold it.”

  The creature’s smile grew broader. “The Chatelaine would have words with you.”

  “Take me if you like. But let these women go free. They are not mixed up in this business.”

  The horned man’s smile faded.

  “The whole world is mixed up in this business.”

  There was no daylight in Hell. It was difficult for newcomers to tell day from night, there, but after a few years its denizens became attuned to the groans and rumbles of the Beast’s digestive system, the telltale borborygmi of its waking moments.

  In the evenings it sighed and shuddered before it slept, and that, too, the Chatelaine could feel in her bones.

  In the stretches between, people relied mainly on the great clock that stood in the Hall, plunder from one of the Chatelaine’s husband’s trips to the surface a few hundred years before. Its system of tanks and tubes filled a bowl with oil every hour, when a float triggered a metal serpent to stick out its tongue and ring a small chime. The trouble was that the hours were all the same length; this had been no problem at all underground, but now that they were living on the surface the Chatelaine had a revenant reset the thing at Prime if they were within the sound of bells, and just after sunset if they were not. By the end of each day, to a degree depending on the season, the time in Hell was askew from the time outside.

  The Chatelaine was awake on this morning long before the Beast. She lay staring at the red ceiling; there may have been no daylight in Hell but it was never deeply dark, either, for the faint glow of the Beast’s blood lit every room.

  The
messenger had said that Bruges had fallen. And that Monoceros had gone, with a band of his best and a passel of hounds, looking for Claude Jouvenal. Today, perhaps, the Chatelaine would have her in chains, and would have the false mace, too, and all would be well. Bruges had fallen—at great cost, yes, but now Philippe could not deny her Flanders. She had conquered it. She would rule it, and she could build up her army again, chimera by chimera.

  There was a tap at the door. She rose and put her ermine over her shoulders as Chaerephon opened it and looked in. He looked relieved to see her awake.

  “Philippe is here,” he said. “He brought you a gift, he says.”

  “A gift?”

  Chaerephon shrugged, all the bones of his shoulders and neck moving under clothing like the levers in her husband’s clock. He wore very little now, only a tunic and breeches and, always, a long brown cloak. “Not a large wooden horse. A bird.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Claude rode behind the horned man, his hands tied around the chimera’s thick waist. Monoceros’s steel armour was grafted into his skin, so that its edges formed welds or cicatrices; it was hard to say exactly which. Claude felt a childish urge to run his fingers along their lumpy, shiny surfaces, an urge like running a tongue over a sore in the mouth, or picking a scab.

  The horned man’s skin, where it was exposed, was ruddy, but it was hard to say what colour it had been before the Chatelaine got to him. Her furnace had strange effects sometimes.

  It was, despite the lumpy joins, a much more attractive result than most. And Monoceros seemed happy enough to serve the Chatelaine.

  Monoceros pulled the rein to turn the horse onto the road. His armour shifted strangely over his muscles, pulling the skin taut against his spine. Claude wondered if it had hurt. Had the unicorn been wearing plate when it went into the fire with Monoceros? Or did the Chatelaine throw in a bit of plate to the mix, like a cook making pottage?

  At the thought, his stomach growled.

  Monoceros laughed. “Been a long time since your last meal, Claude Jouvenal?”

  The bite of bread in the camp. He’d meant to give the rest to Margriet and Beatrix. It was in his bundle now with his old clothes and the ill-fitting gauntlets and boots. The women must be hungry.

  He looked to his right, where Margriet was riding behind a Bird-man. She looked even more foul-tempered than usual.

  “Not as long for me as for my companions,” he said. “You only want me. Let them go.”

  Monoceros was quiet for a moment. “We found the mace in Willem de Vos’s sack. Those women were trying to get it. The Chatelaine will want to speak with them.”

  “Bah, they don’t know anything about it. She’s just a stubborn widow who wants every last sou she has coming to her. They are hungry, and footsore, and recently bereaved. Have pity, Monoceros.”

  “We’ll stop soon enough to eat,” Monoceros said.

  Claude was a mercenary; he could work for anyone if the pay was right. But the Chatelaine did not hire mercenaries. She made herself servants. Claude was his own master. This was his body, even now; and when he got the mace back that would be his, too. His muscles and bones were the only truth he could trust. The thought of being bound in service made him shudder.

  And now he was going back there, to the red place. In bonds. Once the Chatelaine had tortured him into scraps, she would kill him. She would never willingly let him take the mace-key back. He would have to steal it somehow, and his chances of doing that from within Hell’s oubliettes for a second time didn’t strike him as high.

  He had seen Monoceros there, the first time. Usually in the company of many others, but once alone, in the cell. The Chatelaine had sent him to try to persuade Claude to go into the fire. Monoceros had told Claude then a little of his own origin, but only a little. Only what the world already knew: that Monoceros had been the first of the Chatelaine’s chimeras, that a brigand and a unicorn had gone into the furnace and this great-shouldered, hulking, horned man had come out.

  People said that Monoceros could run, on his own two feet, faster than any horse. But whether that was true or not, today he rode.

  “You never told me your name,” he said to the horned man. He spoke more softly now, softly enough that none of the other chimeras riding could hear.

  “Monoceros. Have you forgotten?”

  “No,” he said. “Your real name.”

  “You first.”

  “My real name is Claude.”

  “My real name is Monoceros.”

  Claude smiled, knowing Monoceros was smiling, too, although neither of them could see the other’s face. They rode for a few moments in silence, Claude’s sword banging against both their thighs, Claude’s helmet and other things nearly spilling out of the saddlebag.

  “That’s my harness you’re wearing, as I suppose you know,” said the horned man.

  He hadn’t known.

  “This mail, and aketon, and helmet, and all? All yours? Well. You shouldn’t have left it lying around.”

  Monoceros raised an eyebrow; the horn moved. “I didn’t. How did you pick the lock?”

  Claude ignored the question. “Then that was you in the camp? Sleeping in the tent while I … while I was there?”

  He shook his head; Claude watched the horn coming into view, once twice. “Ha! I was in Bruges. If I had been there, things would have gone differently for you, I’m sure. I have been campaigning hither and yon and what I did not want to carry, I left in my tent, guarded. I had sore words for the guards.”

  “It wouldn’t fit you anymore anyway. What were you going to do, have a hole cut in the helmet?” He imagined the mail straining to fit over Monoceros’s armoured chest. He must have been much smaller, before he went through the Hellfire.

  “I planned to give it to a page, when I got around to getting one. Anyway, it doesn’t fit you either.” He picked his teeth. “I remember you, and not just from Hell. From before we captured you. When we fought together at Poperinge. The Genoa Company fought well.”

  “I don’t suppose you could tell me where they are now.”

  “Why?”

  “I fought with them for many years. They are my brothers.”

  Monoceros paused a long while, looking into the trees, away from him. Finally he said, “I heard they went to Scotland. The young English king is fighting there, you know.”

  “Indeed I do know. The Flemings had hoped he would fight for them instead, turn his attention south rather than north, and take down King Philippe. They whine about it in Bruges all the time.”

  “Fat chance of that. This parricide Edward will be just like his father, another Tumbledown King. Not dependable. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway, of course.”

  “No,” Claude said, but it might have. The chimeras were terrifying but few, and the French forces were divided, uncertain, and unwilling to fight with the chimeras. King Philippe had left the fight against the Flemings to the Chatelaine and to mercenaries like him. Poperinge had gone well for the Chatelaine but Cassel had been hard fought, as Claude knew too well.

  “Your company could have stayed on here to clean up,” Monoceros said. “They said they were done fighting for the French king because the pay was so bad.”

  “You sound like you don’t believe that.”

  “I don’t. I think they don’t want to fight alongside chimeras anymore. Alongside people like us.”

  Claude heard that the “us” included him, and he shivered.

  “I can tell you, the pay is indeed bad,” he said, but his voice was not as strong as he would like. “I argued against coming north, to fight in this war.”

  “Did you now? Well, I suppose your word wasn’t worth much, as a woman.”

  “They didn’t think I was a woman.”

  “Ah, yes. Tell me, how did you manage that?”

  How do you piss, how do
you fuck? Not how did you manage to sink seven crossbow bolts into the centre of a target in Toulouse, or how did you manage to fight off three brigands in Florence, half-drunk. No: how did you manage the stuffing and the pissing, Claude? Everyone wanted to peel Claude like a shrimp and see what was underneath now.

  “I killed everyone who asked me how I managed it.”

  Monoceros chuckled. The armour moved on the shoulders again.

  “What drove you to that life, anyway?”

  Claude opened his mouth to say something clever. Instead he found he was too tired. Too heartsore.

  “I wanted to be a man-at-arms,” he said simply.

  Monoceros reached up and scratched his ear, brushed one of his bright curls behind it.

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  They let Beatrix keep the distaff. Probably because it was an awkward thing to pack, and the only sumpter horse was already loaded down with Father’s sack. The thing they had come for, to stop the Chatelaine getting it, and now the Chatelaine was getting it anyway, and them, too. Mother never would learn to accept the will of God.

  Beatrix was pleased, for no good reason, that the distaff was strapped to her back, the bottom resting against the horse’s flank and the top over Beatrix’s shoulder. Probably the chimeras didn’t know it was a weapon, and certainly never expected someone who looked like Beatrix to wield one.

  That it was a weapon, she was sure, although not of the sort anyone might think. It had called the fireflies. It had called Baltazar. It had let her control him.

  She was a knight, a captured knight, riding off to negotiations with her weapon still strapped to her back. But bah, the dream popped like a bubble. What negotiations? What could the Chatelaine possibly want with Beatrix and Margriet, other than to feed them to the Beast and turn them into revenants, too?

  If she were truly in possession of a weapon, now would be the time to use it.

  Beatrix’s hands were tied around the waist of the chimera in front of her, a big woman with both arms made all of shining steel, not armour but the very shape of flesh.