Armed in Her Fashion Read online

  She inclined her head and led him to the next room, the wet room.

  Water spilled over the top of a large wooden tank, into a second smaller tank, and then again into a third, like three ponds connected by small waterfalls. It was a clever design of her own, run by tubes and floats much like the great clock. It kept the water fairly fresh. Even so it did not smell fresh in here; it smelled like wet fur and mold.

  “God save me, is that a beaver?” the king said, putting his hands on his knees and bending forward to get a better look. Philippe’s varlet was holding a torch; he walked closer. The beaver stared at them balefully, then slid into the water with a light splash.

  “Is it true that they bite off their own balls and throw them at attackers to save themselves?” the king turned to ask her, with a wink.

  She knew what he was doing; he was unbalancing her by bringing her close. And it was working despite her wariness. She wanted to show him she could be a friend to him, that she could keep up with his mind. She resisted the temptation.

  “Why would it not matter if I had the pedigree to entitle me to Flanders?” she asked doggedly.

  He straightened, and sighed.

  “My very clever clerks cannot find you to be the heir to Flanders, because my very clever clerks have already determined that a woman cannot inherit in any of the Salic Lands, which includes Flanders. A very important point of law, that. If it were not the case, I would not be king. The she-wolf Isabella would have a better claim than mine, and her patricide son would be king of France as well as of England.”

  He was false. He was a traitor. He had never intended to give her her due. She looked at Chaerephon, not a plea but a hard look of command. If Philippe was going to chop law, well, she had just the man for the purpose.

  And Chaerephon did speak, but he said, “Sire, perhaps you could solve a riddle that has long puzzled me. How would you classify a creature with a bill that lays eggs? Would you call it a bird?”

  “Indeed,” said the king.

  “What about a creature with fur that feeds its young milk from its body. A beast, yes? Like a bull or a dog?”

  “Of course.”

  “And if you will indulge me, what about an animal that poisons its enemies with venom?”

  “A snake.”

  “Would you like to see the strangest animal in the world?”

  Philippe laughed. “Do you have anything here stranger than man?”

  Chaerephon smiled thinly. “Perhaps not. The strangest animal in our collection, then.”

  He pulled the goad off the wall and fished around in the lowest tank until the creature scrambled out unhappily. She was old and her beady fishwife eyes were rheumy. But the king barked with laughter at the sight of the black duckbill, the glistening fur. He circled around it as Chaerephon kept it in place with the goad.

  “One of your chimeras?” he asked the Chatelaine.

  “No,” she said softly. “They are born this way. We got a pair of them off a trader in China. He had them in a cage. They cost us a fortune. I bred them and she laid two eggs. One was this creature, which has never lived anywhere but Hell. The other never hatched. I have it in my rooms, still uncracked.”

  “Astounding. And what is it called?”

  The Chatelaine was silent, not looking at Chaerephon. She had given it a name in the language of Hell, her husband’s language, but that tongue was forbidden now, by the Chatelaine’s own command. Everyone in Hell was told to speak French.

  “It has no name, so far as I know,” she said. “Perhaps you would like to name it?”

  “Me?”

  She nodded. “Who better than a king, to give the animals their names?”

  He barked a short laugh. “I can’t think of anything except that the poor thing looks as if God had a few odds and ends left over and couldn’t think of a use for them. So I’ll call it Hochepot.”

  Chaerephon coughed.

  “Sire, had you ever heard of a creature of fur that lays eggs, before this?”

  The king shook his head. “Indeed I had not.”

  “So when we say, a woman cannot inherit, we are speaking in generalities, just as when we say that birds lay eggs. But in certain circumstances, just as God sees fit to fit a bill and webbed feet on a furred creature, a woman can take on some of the characteristics of a man to suit the needs of the people. Your cousin Joan is Queen of Navarre in her own right.”

  “And yet she was barred from the throne of France. Different lands, different laws,” he said, as if he were speaking of some far-off and mythical kingdom where monopods and griffins roamed. “I had no claim on that throne anyway.”

  Tread carefully, Chaerephon, the Chatelaine thought. This was not going to work.

  “Yes,” Chaerephon continued smoothly, “but here in Flanders, a hundred years ago, Joan of Constantinople became Countess of Flanders after the death of her father in the Holy Land. Is that not so?”

  “Indeed. And there is a man named Pietro Rainalducci in Italy who calls himself Pope, and any knave or emperor who does not like my pope in Avignon calls this man Pietro Pope, too. But they are not right. A woman may put on the mask of a man but it does not turn her into one. The law is the law.”

  “You are right, of course,” she said, impatient now with Chaerephon’s attempt at sophistry. “The path of inheritance is closed to me. But the path of simple force of arms is not. This land is mine because I have taken it. If Isabella could take England, if the Empress Matilda could do so before her—”

  “It is not right that a woman should rule,” he said angrily, the mask slipping at last. “It is not God’s will. You can command an army, certainly. You cannot be the father of your people. You cannot dispense the law.”

  She could command her army indeed; she could command it to fight for the throne of France, and then let Philippe of Valois, Philippe the fortunate, tell her what God intended. But not yet, not yet. It was too risky still. She could not command any knights; then she needed better weapons, bigger weapons. She needed a fortress on the surface that she could hold, and from there she could grow.

  A Roach-man scuffled to her side.

  “Monoceros is here,” he hissed. “He has returned.”

  He looked nervous, and for a moment the Chatelaine thought something had befallen her army. They had found a way to break them, to destroy them all. She would be left without friends. She would be cast into Hell’s depths, in place of her husband. Or worse: with her husband.

  But it was merely the way of the Roach-man to look nervous. It was his gift, the gift of anxiety. All her insects had it. They made good messengers but horrible spies.

  “Monoceros is here?”

  “At the mouth. He has brought prisoners.”

  She looked back at Philippe, who was watching her, not even pretending not to be listening.

  “Monoceros said,” said the Roach-man, with something like an insect smile, or perhaps an insect grimace, “you would want to see them outside, that he did not wish to bring her in without your judgement. Shall I tell him he was wrong?”

  It looked like the prospect gave the Roach-man some satisfaction. There was something mutinous in him. She would have to watch this one. She would have to watch them all. She had been a fool not to see it in Gobhan Og, but any one of them might harbour a secret ambition, a hatred, a desire. Oh for a Hell peopled only with shades, without desires of their own. But the revenants were weapons, and imprecise ones; they were not soldiers.

  “Monoceros speaks with my voice. I will deal with her, but briefly, after my audience with the king.”

  “Do not delay on my account,” the king said. “Your men are no doubt tired. I shall come with you. To see how a woman dispenses justice to prisoners.”

  The Chatelaine could think of no way to refuse. She walked behind him, as he led the way as if Hell were his.r />
  Even when Hell was at the surface, it kept most of its great body under the earth. When she rode it, the Chatelaine stood in its mouth, holding her mace-key in the mechanism of the scold’s bridle that kept its mouth open, that forced it up to the surface.

  So the mouth of Hell when it opened looked like a great cave opening out of the earth, like a hill broken open to reveal a sanguine gullet. The great teeth like rocks were wrapped in the bridle of iron, and two great iron chains like columns stretched from top to bottom on either side. She knew how it must look to the king and his men, how it frightened them, no matter which way they approached those rows of teeth. Let them be frightened.

  To that great door the Chatelaine walked, robed in ermine, with her black hair coiled and netted in gold in two points at the sides of her head, very like horns.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A dark hill—that’s all it was, from a distance, to Margriet’s eyes. But this was flat country and Hell was a big beast. As they neared in the grey morning light, she saw two great circles gleaming like white eggs or blisters on the top of its head. Eyes, she realized with a shock. Unblinking eyes that stared not at the chimeras and their captives approaching on the ground but off into the distance, into the sky.

  She was so tired that her head felt like a rotten turnip, and her ears felt as if they were filled with water whenever she moved her head.

  The chimeras paused and unbound the captives and let them slide off the saddles. Margriet’s ass was numb, and so were her fingers, for different reasons. When her feet touched the ground they felt odd, too. The Plague was progressing.

  She stood with Beatrix on her left and Claude on her right. Claude was breathing hard. Beatrix was muttering: prayers, probably.

  The great mouth yawned open and Margriet gasped. A row of long ivory teeth gleamed, each one of them pointed like an incisor. One side of the nose was pierced by a copper ring that could have bounded Margriet and Beatrix both with room to spare.

  A lick of the lips with a great red tongue, and then the mouth closed.

  The horned man walked to the Beast and said something softly, so softly Margriet could not hear.

  Was there a password? The equivalent of scilt ende vrient in whatever language this beast spoke?

  The Hellbeast opened its mouth slowly, as though someone were cranking a portcullis, and out came a Mantis-man. He went on his knee.

  “Here comes King Philippe,” breathed Beatrix.

  “Can you see him so sharply?”

  “I wouldn’t know his face. But look how the man goes on his knee. And look how the king stands. It’s him, I know it’s him.”

  “False-dealing, arrogant, unnatural knave,” said Margriet.

  “What shall we do?”

  “What can we do?”

  The answer rang like a horn in her mind: They could change tack, appeal to the king’s mercy as well as the Chatelaine’s—or at least his curiosity. His sense of justice? That was a laugh. The man had no right to be king, and no right to impose the rule of a rotten count over the will of the people of Flanders. And yet he had done so, and made a deal with Hell to do it. Could she truly appeal to such a king?

  Beatrix grabbed her arm. “Look.”

  Two figures had come to the door of Hell. One was tall and thin, a man, she thought. The other, by the shape of the white gown and the headdress, was a woman.

  “Is it her?” Margriet asked. “What does she look like? Her skin is dark, that much I can see.”

  “Darker than Jacquemine Ooste’s. And her hair is black and fuzzy, and coiled up on two sides of her head in horns, and all wrapped in gold threads with gold cloth over it. She is not wearing a wimple. She is very beautiful of face.”

  “It’s her, then. This is our chance.”

  Claude snorted.

  It seemed incredible that a human could walk inside and come out again unchanged, but if Jonah could go into the whale, the king of France could visit Hell.

  If she was honest, and Margriet could not help but be honest, there was one small part of her mind that held back out of fear, not out of fear of the king’s knights or even of the Chatelaine’s chimeras but of what she, Margriet, would say. She had practised her speech as they rode but it was hiding from her mind now, laughing at her like an unruly urchin, daring her to speak what she truly wished to say.

  In all her years, she had never had to speak to anyone higher than a city alderman, and that had usually not gone well. She did not have the gift of smiling speech; that had always been Willem’s job, though he did it poorly.

  Willem, though, was dead. And Margriet would be dead of the Plague soon, and Beatrix would be left with nothing.

  By heaven, Margriet was hungry. Beatrix must be starving; that girl could eat at the worst of times.

  The Chatelaine walked out onto a great red tongue that lolled out over the iron-clad teeth and dropped slavering onto the mud. A neat trick. Margriet was close enough to see her better now. She was dressed in white velvet but she looked desperate like a young market-woman, old before her time and skinny, hair scraped up at the temples, skin dark, flushed darker and shining on the cheeks. It must be hot in Hell under that fur cloak.

  And what was that? A bronze-coloured mace swung from the end of one arm, as though it were part of her body. So the queen of Hell was a chimera herself, or something like one.

  The chimeras knelt. Margriet, remembering she was a petitioner, knelt, too, awkwardly going down on one knee. The ground was cold and damp.

  The Chatelaine took the horned man by his giant hand and pulled him up to standing and kissed him once on each cheek. He had to stoop for her to do it, squatting a bit so as to keep his back straight and the horn out of the way. Somehow he made that look elegant. Then the Chatelaine swept her gaze over Claude and Margriet and Beatrix.

  King Philippe raised his hand, and everyone stood. The Chatelaine looked miffed, turning to him and turning back again to the assembled monsters and prisoners.

  “Where is it?” she snapped, looking at Claude.

  Claude sighed heavily. “My lady, if you think I have a mace secreted on my person, I shall have to disappoint you.”

  A mace? The weapon on the Chatelaine’s arm looked very like the one Margriet had seen in Willem’s strongbox. There was a riddle in all this, and by heaven Margriet would have the answer out of Claude if ever she got the chance, which seemed unlikely now.

  “This insolent child is known to me already,” said the Chatelaine, looking at Claude. “But I do not believe I have seen these women before.”

  “We are Margriet de Vos and Beatrix Claes, from Bruges, my lady,” Margriet said, looking her in the eye.

  “You’ll speak when asked,” growled the horned man.

  The Chatelaine raised a hand to him, and smiled at Margriet.

  “You were travelling with Claude Jouvenal?”

  Margriet nodded. “She is my guard,” she said. There were titters. “I bring a petition.”

  “A petition! Ah, you pray mercy for your town.”

  “No, my lady. That is, of course, yes, I would like you to stop the siege of Bruges. But my petition concerns another matter. I thought to bring it to Count Louis, but I heard people say that you were now lord in Flanders, and in any case I thought that you, as a woman, might understand my cause all the better.”

  “You interest me greatly.”

  Margriet took that as encouragement to speak.

  “My husband amassed great wealth when he was alive, and by Flemish law that wealth must now come to me and to my daughter. One third to me, and the rest to her.”

  The Chatelaine glanced back at King Philippe. Next to him stood an ordinary looking varlet, and the tall thin man in a grey-brown cloak.

  “Is that so?” the Chatelaine responded, turning back. “I am afraid my knowledge of the intricacies of Fl
emish law is not what it ought to be. And who is keeping you from your inheritance?”

  “He is,” Beatrix said. “Father is.”

  “My husband,” Margriet added.

  “Ah,” said the Chatelaine, pursing her lips. “A revenant?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your husband’s name?”

  The Chatelaine focused on her like a cat on its prey.

  “Willem de Vos.”

  “Ah,” said the Chatelaine, looking unhappy. “I thought it was so.”

  “You know him, then, my lady.”

  “I know the names and hearts of every one of the Beast’s denizens. But you are mistaken when you call yourself a widow, Vrouwe de Vos. The dead are dead. The priests tell me they lie in the earth until the last judgement. They do not walk. Your husband is a revenant; he walks upon the earth, he speaks.”

  Margriet swallowed.

  “He has a great hole in his body. A man cannot bear such a wound and live.”

  “There are many miracles upon this Earth.”

  “He is a denizen of Hell. You said so yourself. Only the dead live in Hell.”

  The Chatelaine stepped backward, waving her hand at the great red tongue and the darkness beyond. “Have you been inside?”

  Margriet shook her head. “But I have met my husband since he took that wound, since he was made a revenant. And I can tell you without fear of lying that he is not the same man. That creature may use his body but my husband, William de Vos, is dead. I am his widow. I have my rights.”

  “And what form does your husband’s wealth take?” said the king, stepping forward. “Land? Gold? English wool? Or that homely cloth you people weave?”

  Margriet pointed at the sumpter horse. “That bag. We had just taken it back from the revenant when your servants attacked us.”

  “Attacked!” the Chatelaine said. “Really. I don’t like the sound of that, at all. Did you attack these women, Monoceros?”

  “I invited them to come and meet you, my lady.”

  “Indeed. Well, and what’s in the bag?