Armed in Her Fashion Read online

  “How does it go with Bruges?” Philippe asked, low enough that people would not hear above the noise of eating and talking.

  He ate only a little of his stinking food, a little of each dish, as if he owed each one a favour.

  “It would go better if I had a few trebuchets and ballistas, and a company of knights.”

  “It’s a city of women!”

  “Women can throw rocks and boiling water.”

  “It could be worse. It could be Greek fire.”

  “When we bring a ram to the gate, they throw down rocks and burning branches and boiling water and kill the men. I don’t have enough archers to take them off the walls. When we put up ladders, the women throw them down.”

  “But the revenants get in.”

  “Yes. The revenants get in. If we leave it to the revenants, it will be a charnel city by the time we take it.”

  “All the better for you, since you find the burghers such an obstacle. If you can’t control Bruges, you can’t control Flanders,” said Philippe. “Before I was born, the people of that accursed city killed the flower of French nobility. When I was a child, the people of Bruges ambushed Frenchmen in the streets and stoned them to death—the men, women, children all. If you hope to be countess of these vicious people, you must be able to keep them in check without running to me every year, as Count Louis did. If you can’t, I shall return poor Louis to his rightful place.”

  The Chatelaine bit her tongue. Louis had men, and machines. All she had were ghosts and chimeras. The ghosts worked slowly and strangely, and the chimeras now were few. She would need proper weapons and knights, and if Philippe would not give her them, she would need to make them herself. But it was not so easily done. The forges of Hell only worked on the willing. It took time to convince people, one by one, to become chimeras. And there were losses; there were mistakes.

  At the far end of the hall, Monoceros ambled alongside a young man on crutches. A recruit! Missing one leg, but he seemed sound in body otherwise.

  She beckoned to Monoceros, who came and knelt by her side, opposite Philippe.

  “Do you come from Bruges?” she whispered to him as they exchanged kisses. “You ran, I think. You stink to heaven.”

  Monoceros had gained the speed of the unicorn who had all but disappeared within his man’s body when the two went into the forges together.

  “The gonner-chimeras are lost,” he muttered. “They blew themselves to bits and did not breach the walls. The powder must have been too strong.”

  She froze, still embracing him. Her nails dug into the leathery skin of his bare shoulder.

  “But the last time it was too weak,” she whispered.

  Monoceros said nothing. She thrust him from her and turned back to her place.

  She wanted nothing but to run, far from here, to a quiet corner of the Beast where she could think. They had been working with various recipes for the black powder for months, but none seemed quite right. They refined the saltpeter from the bat droppings in the Beast’s nostrils; they took the fuming yellow brimstone from the Beast’s innards. But somehow the recipes never came out right; perhaps there was something about the sulphur that was not the same as the stuff on the surface. And each experiment cost them more in charcoal, which they had to buy or steal, and which was not cheap in this country, with its little woods and far between.

  “Is anything amiss?” Philippe asked smoothly.

  She smiled at him, shook her head.

  She looked over the heads of the chimeras assembled at the tables all around the hall. It had been much emptier in her husband’s day; he had left most of his guests in the oubliettes or the torture chamber.

  So she had shared many meals with her husband here alone, or nearly alone; often in later centuries Chaerephon was there, and anyway no one was ever alone in Hell. Her husband had bought her a throne in Samarkand: lacquered red, wide enough for her to sit cross-legged on a silk cushion, and with two great dragons leaping out on the armrest. She had that throne cast into the furnaces after she cast her husband down into his private hell. She sat now on what had been his throne: a chair made of the carved and polished bones of some unnamed beast.

  The noise in the hall was strange and satisfying, even if it did distract her, when she could not afford to be distracted. King Philippe required unstinting watchfulness.

  She needed to show him she could manage Flanders. She needed more chimeras, better chimeras.

  The Chatelaine turned back to her dear Monoceros, who crouched as though he were trying to make himself small. Dear thing. Dear loyal thing. The very first thing she had made for her very own.

  Let Philippe see what soldiers she could make, out of nothing but peasants and fire. Let him see his chance to buy her friendship now, while it was cheap.

  “Bring me that man with the missing leg,” she said.

  Monoceros went silently. Good Monoceros. The pure expression of her will.

  She let the young man go down upon his only knee, let him pull himself back up again, red-faced, before she spoke. The Chatelaine showed mercy in her own way and her own time, and the mercy she would show this young man would be subjection to her.

  “You have come here because you wish to be transformed?” she asked.

  He nodded. “I ask you for a leg. I am a farmer, my lady. Since I lost my leg, my family has had to pay for help. I have three children.”

  “And in return? I must put something into the fire, you see, along with you. What will you will give me for my pains?”

  He set his jaw. “I can work. Set me a task and I will do it.”

  “Bah, I have no need of peasant labour. Can you fight?”

  He bit his lip and inclined his head.

  She glanced at Philippe but could read nothing in his expression. Did he not see? Did he expect her to make an army of men such as this? A farmer who had never wielded anything but his fists?

  If only she had the use of those mercenary bands that Philippe used, then she would show him what she could do. But they had gone to England, to fight the Scots for the boy king. They refused to fight alongside the chimeras any longer. It was true that her centaurs had trampled through a line of Genoese crossbowmen but the crossbowmen had been taking too long.

  Her poor centaurs, all dead now.

  And here was a young man in want of a gait.

  “One can never be sure how the fire will do its work,” she said, smiling at the young man. “When I put Monoceros in with a unicorn I thought he would come out with four legs, like a centaur. Instead, he barely seems equine at all, does he? The unicorn in him went … elsewise. But horses, now, they are more predictable. Every time I have put a man in with a horse, he’s come out with four strong legs to gallop and two strong arms for swords.”

  The man’s red face drained to white.

  “And what else of them is horse-like?” Philippe asked with a straight face. “Always distracted by curious camp followers, I imagine. Give me a knight any day.”

  Yes, you son of a whore, give me a knight, she thought. Give me all the knights who owe their allegiance to the useless Count Louis of Flanders, whose battle I just fought. Give me my due.

  But she said, “Knights cost a fortune to harness, and they need squires and destriers, and after the battle they go home. My chimeras live within their harness, and they are loyal to me, always.”

  The man cleared his throat. “I do not wish to be a centaur. I am no knight, either. I only want something to help me walk the fields.”

  “But I can make you better than you ever were, even with your leg! I can do more than fit a new part on you. I can make you whole!”

  He said very quietly, “I am whole.”

  She threw up her hands. “Go, then,” she said. “The fires only take willing men, and you are unwilling. You have wasted my time. Pray this is the last time
you see the inside of Hell.”

  She called a Mantis-man to take him away. She did not look at Philippe, at his smug face.

  But when his Fool began to perform for her, tumbling and farting and juggling coloured balls, she called Monoceros to her side and beckoned so he bent low, so close she could smell his coppery skin.

  “We bring down the walls of Bruges tomorrow,” she whispered. “I cannot wait longer.”

  “We will lose many men,” said Chaerephon, leaning in.

  She had forgotten Chaerephon was listening; of course he was listening. He listened to every report from Monoceros. He had even given Monoceros his name.

  “Then lose them,” she snapped. “What good are men to me, if they cannot take a city of women? Use all the remaining black powder and blow the gate to heaven.”

  “Suicide for whoever carries the powder,” said Chaerephon. “We could dig mines, if we can get under the moat.”

  “No time,” she snapped.

  The king turned toward them.

  “Go now,” she whispered, leaning closer in to Monoceros, so that his horn nearly rested on her shoulder. “Ride back to Bruges, my pet. My remaining chimeras are encamped and waiting to take Bruges; let them wait no longer. Do not fail me.”

  “I am yours to command.”

  “And when you get inside the city,” she said, “show them mercy, but show them we are not to be trifled with. If you meet any resistance, slaughter to your heart’s content.”

  Monoceros smiled. “What low regard you must have for my heart, my lady.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  It was pointless to negotiate with the Nix. The creature was as stubborn as an ox, always had been, and if anything it was getting worse. Still, Margriet spoke in its ear, in as kindly a tone as she could muster, whispering so Claude and Beatrix would not hear.

  “Carry us down the stream, as near as you can to the abbey of Saint Agatha. It isn’t far.”

  “If it isn’t far then you can walk,” the Nix rumbled.

  “You must do as I ask.” She made a clicking sound as if urging on a horse. One must speak the language of boats with boats, the language of beasts with beasts, and the language of bullies with bullies, her father used to say.

  “My demesne ends at the outer moat of Bruges. You know that, girl. You asked me to take you to Ethiopia when you were a child, don’t you remember? Has your brain gone soft?”

  Margriet snorted. Were Claude and Beatrix listening? Beatrix would be astonished, no doubt. But then her daughter was so easily astonished. So susceptible to dreams and wonders, so ready to clap her hands in delight. She had stood no chance against Baltazar and his burning gaze, when he was alive. She stood no chance now against his revenant. Margriet must keep her eyes open.

  Everything seemed so quiet out here beyond the city walls; the Nix swam nearly silently. But at any moment the chimeras might appear—or worse, Baltazar. Margriet could only hope her son-in-law’s shade was walking the streets of Bruges now, looking for Beatrix in vain.

  “We’ll walk, then,” she said at last to the Nix. “And no thanks to you. If the chimeras catch me I’ll tell them to fit me with a dragon’s head, and then I’ll be back to tell you what I think of you.”

  “Believe me,” the Nix muttered, “I devoutly hope that you find a swift road under your feet.”

  As soon as the Nix deposited them on the bank of the second moat, with a small unnecessary splash of a tail, they filled their flasks. Then Margriet hurried the young women away from the water, into the bushes.

  “We walk west,” said Margriet as they trudged. “Toward Ypres.”

  “How do you know?” asked Claude.

  Damn it, she might have cause to regret bringing this young mercenary and her delusions of power along.

  But now there was no need to hide the fact that she’d gone out before, beyond the city walls. Her secret of the Nix was exposed. And yet it still hurt a bit to speak about it, as if she’d locked the secret away so long away that the key had gone rusty.

  “I heard some chimeras talking,” Margriet said, slowly. “I had an errand, outside the walls. I heard them. They said the Hellbeast is in Ypres.”

  “Mother!”

  “What chimeras? What did they look like?”

  “One had a helmet for a head, and nothing within it—a great void. That was one I knew as a boy. He used to hang about my husband’s shop. And the others had metal arms that shot fire.”

  “Gonners,” said Claude. “She’s been working on them for a long time. Yet the walls still stand, are still guarded.”

  “The fire engulfed them. Is it possible, then? That the Chatelaine of Hell could make arrows of fire shoot out of a man’s arm?”

  The mercenary shrugged. “Anything is possible, or almost anything, in her forges. I have seen centaurs and lion-men and a trebuchet with arms. I have seen her forge a visor of glass and steel onto a man’s head to give him the keen sight of an eagle. And I have seen the many, many mistakes she cast aside. The human slag that oozes out of her furnace and then goes somewhere to die.”

  “A man with the sight of an eagle!”

  “He had been blind, before.”

  “A miracle, then.”

  Margriet looked at the girl’s face, which was only a few paces from her and yet not quite clear. Nothing had been quite clear to her eyes, since Margriet was a girl. How wonderful, to be given the sight of an eagle!

  “I don’t think so,” said the girl. “And you wouldn’t think them miracles, either, if you had dealings with them. We must remember that while we are hunting Willem, they are hunting us.”

  “Why?” Margriet asked. “They have no cause. How should they even know we exist?”

  “The chimeras hunt everything,” the girl said, after a pause that made Margriet frown. “Some of them are hounds. Hunting is what they do. Once we left the city walls, we became their prey.”

  Beatrix looked back. Margriet rolled her eyes so her daughter could see she was not frightened by this girl and her talk.

  “Anyway, I am no authority on miracles,” Claude continued more brightly. “You can ask the nuns what they think, when we reach Saint Agatha’s. That is on the way to Ypres, isn’t it? We might try to find out from them if there is a band of chimeras near, find out which roads to avoid. Nuns always know a good deal about the comings and goings of armies, in my experience.”

  Margriet frowned at the girl. She had not been brought up properly, no doubt about that, but that was no excuse for her manner. Claude was tall but scrawny—that must have helped her pass for a man. Very little there to hide. If she thought she was going to act the man in Margriet’s company, though, she’d soon learn different. The girl was no older than Beatrix.

  “Will we catch up with Father tonight?” Beatrix whispered.

  “I don’t think so,” Claude broke in. Know-it-all. “He’s been walking longer than we have, and is no doubt long past Saint Agatha’s abbey by now. But we can walk during the day, and he can’t. It will be a long day, tomorrow, but then tomorrow night we should find him if our course is the same.”

  The brook ran due south from Bruges, so they walked perpendicular to it, due west or as near as Margriet could figure, though Claude kept arguing with her, pointing at stars Margriet could not see, and babbling. Margriet had covered this patch of the world several times in the course of her life and needed no stars to guide her. But they were off the road, and she was loath to admit that in the moonlight, every blurry patch of forest on the horizon looked the same.

  Then a road cut across their path at an angle.

  “The road to Torhout,” Margriet said with some relief. “If we follow it, we’ll be on the right path, and should make the abbey by noon. They’ll give us shelter and food.”

  “But we must take care when we get there,” Claude said. “I don’t think ther
e are likely to be chimeras at such a small abbey, but if there are any signs of them, we must not go in.”

  “Why are you so eager to avoid the chimeras?” Margriet asked. “We are walking to Hell after all. We’ll see them sooner or later.”

  “Your faith in my skills as a bodyguard is flattering,” the girl said. “But upon the road, the chimeras will do to two women travelling what all soldiers do when they come upon women travelling, and I do not wish to test my skills alone against a band of them, if I can help it.”

  Margriet only looked at her dumbly for a moment. Claude truly did act like a man sometimes.

  “If we were going to stay inside any time we might meet a band of soldiers eager to celebrate a victory upon our bodies, or take their vengeance thereupon, we women would never leave the house.”

  Claude shrugged. “As you like. To the abbey we go, but I say we stay a bit off the road and keep our eyes and wits sharp, that’s all.”

  “Obviously,” Margriet snapped.

  After a few hours, as the sky grew silver-pink to the east, she noticed that the mercenary had a slight limp, although she walked in front. Stubborn thing.

  “You need to rest?” Margriet called.

  The girl turned. “No. But if you need to—”

  “We’ll stop to rest in that clump of oaks, there,” Margriet said.

  “That’s beech,” Claude said. “But it’s a good place to stop.”

  “All the better,” Beatrix said brightly. “Nuts.”

  After they found a place to piss they sat down in the copse together, huddled under their cloaks. Margriet wished the Nix’s darkness could cover them still.

  Her nose was running and she was feeling, now, the lack of sleep. There was a time when she could stay up late, with a baby, and not feel it in her bones and her brain. That time had long passed. She felt drunk, ill in the head and the gut. The grey morning light made her sick.

  “We can only rest a little,” Margriet said. “Until we get our bearings.”

  “That way’s east,” said Claude, pointing at the dawn with a grin.