Armed in Her Fashion Read online

“I see I’ve brought a wise-ass along. Lovely.”

  Beatrix, thinking of her stomach of usual, gathered a pile of beechnuts, peeled and ate a few, then put her head down on the ground and went to sleep, her arm around her distaff.

  Claude looked as fresh as a flower, idly testing her knife on the pad of her finger and staring out into the grey morning.

  What unthinking insults these girls were to Margriet, both of them: one who could fall sweetly asleep on the cold damp ground and one who did not even care to. Young women. They did not even know to be grateful for their youth, and would not know until it had gone.

  Claude turned to her and grimaced.

  “Why are you looking at me as if I were a chimera?”

  Margriet hadn’t realized she had been. She was in the habit of frowning, largely because she was in the habit of squinting. It was not her fault her eyes were dim.

  “I’m wondering why the hell I chose a child for my bodyguard,” she answered.

  “I’m well past twenty.” The girl paused, and then continued with a little bark of a laugh: “At least, I think I must be.”

  “I’ve lived two of your lives.”

  “I’ve known children who’ve lived several lives, and old men who’ve yet to live a single life that counted.”

  “Years are all that matter,” Margriet sighed. “Years are a standard measure. They weigh the same in France as they do in Abyssinia.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  The face was a child’s face, young and fresh, but Claude had a scar over one eye and there was something tough in her. There would have to be. What on God’s earth could have sent the girl off to that life, the life of a man-at-arms?

  “If you’re not going to sleep, you can build a fire. You have a tinderbox, I hope? If not, you can use mine.”

  “You want to risk a fire?” Claude asked. “There could be chimeras about.”

  “You and the chimeras. I almost hope they catch us. It would be a relief. If you can build one without smoke, we should be fine. We need to eat. It’s another long march to the abbey.”

  Margriet gave up on sleep, and found a large flat rock and a small one while Claude built the fire. Margriet peeled and ground the beechnuts, set the meal to soak for a little while, then mixed it in with a little of Vrouwe Ooste’s oats. She spread the dough on the flat rock and set it near the fire.

  She stretched out on the grass next to her daughter. Already the September sun was baking some of the dampness out of the ground. Beatrix was snoring gently, her distaff by her side, her bundle under her wimpled head.

  Margriet wanted nothing more than to close her eyes, if only for a few minutes. She did not like the thought of sleeping with the mercenary watching over her. This wench had taken money to fight for the Chatelaine, had shot her crossbow’s quarrels into many good citizens of Bruges. She had probably killed many of Margriet’s neighbours, men she had known her whole life. She might have killed Jacquemine Ooste’s husband. Or Beatrix’s. It might even have been Claude who killed Willem, come to that, although that hole in Willem’s back looked as though it had been made by something bigger than a crossbow quarrel.

  But she had made the decision to take this girl along in Bruges, and there was no going back on it now, here, out in the open.

  “Keep watch on that bread or whatever we can call it,” she muttered to Claude, “and wake me when it’s done, if I fall asleep.”

  She rubbed her fingertips together, to make sure they could still feel, that there was no numbness coming upon her. You are marked by death, Willem had said, but Margriet could not quite believe it. No, she did not have the Plague. Surely not. It had been a trick, and she felt nothing.

  “Do you always imitate a cricket before you sleep?” Claude asked with one of her shameless grins.

  “Bah,” Margriet said. “Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. And don’t let me sleep too long. We must catch Willem.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Before dawn, the Chatelaine performed her ablutions. What glory to have her own room, with these oils and perfumes given to her by all the kings of Europe and Asia, these caskets of sandalwood and cloves, the bottles of rose water and jasmine water and orange water, the ointments of bay and hyssop and cowslip and myrtle and rue, these powders of brimstone and oils of lavender. The ambergris given to her by the Doge of Venice, the musk from the King of Cyprus.

  And best of all gifts, the gift she gave herself: the knowledge that this day would be a day without her husband in it, that tonight would be a night in which her husband would not come to her bed. She stroked her mace-arm. In the early days she had taken it off at night while leaving it beside her in the bed; now she slept with it on, and found that more comfortable.

  At dawn she was at the open Hellmouth, waiting.

  The revenants came home in the morning. They sought the shelter of the Hellbeast, those who were close enough. The others, the ones scattered out across Flanders searching for their loved ones, would be hiding in caves or other dark places by dawn, whimpering.

  The Chatelaine liked to watch them walk in, on mornings like this when she had woken early and been unable to go back to sleep. Around the mouth of Hell bats were swooping, impatient to be home, disturbed by the stretch-armed chimera who stood on a ladder and scraped the guano out. Below him one chimera held the ladder and another caught the scrapings in a basket, to be soaked and made into saltpeter for the Chatelaine’s black powder.

  The Hellbeast, annoyed too, but eager for its food, opened its red jaws to receive the revenants from the blue twilight. In they walked, her bleak hundreds. In the depth of the great Beast a rumble of hunger, or of hunger satisfied.

  There was a room, deep inside the Beast, where great spurs of bone jutted out of the red walls like broken teeth on bloody gums. Each of those spurs carried venom. That was where the Beast’s own victims went: not to the forges that had been her husband’s torture chamber, which was always and still for the living. Once the Beast claimed someone for its own, that someone was as good as dead. The venom took a person to the very point of death, to that one liminal moment, after the last breath, when the eyes dimmed and the mouth went slack.

  In that moment, the mind of the dying one reached out with one last human desire. A powerful wish. Usually it was the desire for someone they loved.

  In that moment, the Beast gloried, for long years.

  The revenants did not last forever—she had seen some of them crumble into nothing—but they lasted a very long time, becoming ever more skeletal as the Beast consumed them. A long slow descent into death.

  The Beast always needed more.

  Chaerephon, now, Chaerephon was a puzzle. Not quite a revenant; he had never had the venom. But he had started to act like one. He was skin and bone. She wondered about that; yes, she wondered. She was not easy in her mind about it. He had been in Hell so long.

  The Chatelaine stood to greet each of her returning revenants by name, for that knowledge came with the keys to Hell. Jehan, she said. Your labours are over. Fatima, good hunting? Baltazar, she said. You look disappointed, pet.

  Do not fear, Baltazar. You will find her soon. You will all find them soon, and bring them here with you.

  Beatrix’s legs ached wonderfully. What a gift to walk in the open country on a bright morning, after being cooped up in the city for weeks.

  The last time Bruges was under siege, she’d been, what, ten years old? A damp spring came and all the food prices went up. It was so wet that year that when the king of France—the old king, dead now—had tried to invade Flanders, his army got bogged down in the mud. The people cheered but they were still hungry. Beatrix had lost most of her playmates, one by one. She asked her mother why none of the other children had taken her with them to heaven.

  “Because I told God I would not give you up,” said Mother. “And he agreed, because H
e owed me. He has all your little sisters and brothers already. He won’t take you, too.”

  The de Vos family went down to one meal a day, at noon, and Beatrix left the table hungry every time.

  At her wedding feast eight years later, she stuffed herself, and she swore to Baltazar that they would never go hungry, never let their children go hungry. By then the famine was over but Baltazar remembered it, too.

  “I hope not,” he said, with his eyes bright.

  She shook her head to show how serious she was. “I swear it, Baltazar, by my love for you.”

  “Do you have the keys to the land of Cockaigne? Will there be roast pigs wandering around our house with forks sticking out of their backs?”

  She slapped him playfully. “I can spin faster and better than anyone. People will always need clothing. We may never be wealthy but I will always be able to spin enough to keep food on our table. That I promise.”

  He kissed her, and said that was supposed to be his promise, not hers.

  And now here she was, walking the earth with her belly groaning, and Baltazar was probably dead.

  No, this blue sky was too beautiful for that to be true. This world beyond the walls of Bruges, which she had nearly but not quite despaired of seeing again. The smell of decaying leaves and woodfires under a lapis lazuli sky. It made her want to spring up again and walk, no, run. Run to Baltazar on sore legs, in whatever realm of earth or heaven he might be.

  If they found her father, or whatever her father was now, Beatrix would ask him about Baltazar. She would know, then, whether she was wife or widow.

  If God restored her husband to her, she would go on a pilgrimage of thanksgiving.

  Yes, and if Baltazar were dead, she would go on a pilgrimage to free his soul from purgatory, to absolve him of whatever sins he might have committed in war, a war he fought to keep her safe and fed, to keep the people of Bruges from the poverty the French king would impose. She would do whatever she could to help Baltazar into Paradise, where he would wait for her at a table laden with delights.

  The sun was a pale groat, up past noon in the sky, when they saw the squat outline of the Abbey of Saint Agatha on the horizon. It would be a relief to feel the beaten earth under her soles. This rolling field had been burnt; scorched stubble pricked right through the leather of her shoes. The whole world smelled of fire.

  Mother squinted. “It doesn’t look right. Bits are missing, aren’t they? The shape is wrong.”

  Claude was a few steps in front and her eyes must have been sharper than Mother’s. “It’s been burned. Someone made the chimeras angry. You should stay here. Let me go and see what I can find out.”

  “Ha,” Mother said. “My road goes through that abbey, unless I go around, which I have no intention of doing. My thighs are killing me.”

  They trudged toward it. A thin skein of smoke rose still from one of the outbuildings. The guest house, where once Beatrix had stayed with her parents as they travelled this country, Willem trying to sell off-quality wool in one of the hard years. One of the nuns had admired Beatrix’s spinning.

  “If there’s a joint of meat left in this place I’ll be a Spanish princess,” said Claude. “Or anyone left alive.”

  Most of the stone walls were still intact but the roofs had collapsed, and some of the smaller wooden buildings were gone altogether. There was a gaping black wound where the west range had been. They walked through the gap and into the cloister.

  Inside the muddy garth, dotted on the dark earth, there were bodies of nuns, lying with their faces up to heaven.

  Beatrix went to each one and arranged their clothing, covering their legs where they were bare. She spoke a small prayer over each. Why would the chimeras do such a thing? They had nothing to gain from burning this place.

  “I’m off to the sacristy,” Claude said at last, when Beatrix had done and they had each had their moment of silent prayer. “Coming?”

  “And what will you do if you find it full of treasure?” Mother asked.

  Claude turned and strode away to the burned walls.

  Away beyond the last nun’s corpse, something glittered. Bits of coloured glass. Beatrix knelt and picked it up. Mother came and stood over her.

  “It doesn’t seem right to leave it in the mud,” Beatrix said.

  She had never seen coloured glass close up before; it had always been high above in a church window. There was an irregular square in blue and a teardrop in yellow, and a few small shards of red. Mother stretched out her hand for them and held them up to the light.

  “No good to us,” she said, handing it back to Beatrix.

  Claude came back with a dead chicken in her left hand.

  “Found it wandering,” she said. “Stupid creatures always want company.”

  “It isn’t ours,” Mother said.

  “It isn’t anyone’s now, except perhaps the Chatelaine’s, and she owes me more than the cost of one chicken. The sacristy is bare. Is there a well?” Claude asked.

  “A stream,” Mother said. “A millrace. Toward the south.”

  They filled their flasks at the stream, then they made another fire and sharpened a stick. They took turns plucking and cleaning the chicken.

  When the meat was done, Mother pulled it off the stick and broke up the pieces in her hands.

  Claude took her piece and then let it drop.

  “God’s bleeding body, it’s hot!” she swore. She always managed to make the nastiest oaths sound almost charming; perhaps it was her funny accent, not quite French, not quite Italian. “Your fingers must be made of steel, Margriet de Vos.”

  Mother looked down at her hands. They shook a little, but they were the same mother’s hands Beatrix had known her whole life: a little knobby around the knuckles, shiny and pink in places, the nails pared to the quick.

  “Years of hard work,” Mother grumbled.

  But Claude was looking off toward the smoke that still rose into the blue.

  “The chimeras can’t be far,” said Claude. “There is probably a camp nearby. We should be careful. This fire should be our last.”

  “If we don’t find Willem tonight,” Mother said slowly, “they may have word of him in the camp.”

  “No,” Claude said with his mouth full of chicken. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “Bah. It’s dangerous to be alive, girl. And it’s dangerous to wander Flanders day and night looking for a revenant who is leading us ever closer to Hell. The faster we find him, the safer we’ll be. If you want your reward, we need to be shrewd and quick about it.”

  Claude frowned. “You’re right, by God’s teeth. But if anyone goes to the chimera camp, it’ll be me. Me alone. I know their ways. I can pass among them.”

  “Have you forgotten that you’re wearing a kirtle now?”

  Claude put her hands on her hips. “I have not. But perhaps you have never been to a soldiers’ camp. There are plenty of kirtles there.”

  Mother glanced at Beatrix. It was a look she knew well, the look that meant Mother was trying to protect her from some knowledge. Beatrix was two dozen years old or close to it, and married, and still her mother was acting as if she were a child, and a slow one.

  Beatrix swallowed her food.

  “May I ask you something, Claude?”

  Claude turned to her. “Anything you like.”

  “How long were you pretending to be a man?”

  Claude’s smiled dropped. “A very long time. Since I was a child. I have never—never been a woman.”

  “It must have been strange.”

  “Not really,” said Claude. “This is strange to me now, you see.”

  “Why on earth would you do such a thing?” Mother asked.

  Claude’s face clouded. “I am who I am.”

  Mother raised her eyebrows. Beatrix stretched and yawned, enjoying fo
r a moment the feeling of being not quite full, but fed.

  “We can rest for an hour, then we should get on,” Claude said. “Willem had at least three hours’ head start. We have walked for that long today, while he could not, but I don’t doubt he walks quickly when he walks. The revenants are quick, when they’re speeding their way back to Hell.”

  Mother turned away. To think of Father being a creature of the night, a ghost-man; it was ridiculous and strange. And yet she would like to see him, to say goodbye, as any daughter should, to tell him—what? To tell him that she liked the toys he gave her every year on her name day. To ask him if he had any news of Baltazar.

  “Where is Father right now, do you think?” Beatrix asked. “Where do … they go during the day?”

  She lay down on the cold ground, wrapped her cloak around her.

  “Caves, and dark places,” said Claude. “They are always, always yearning to be inside the Hellbeast, you see. If they’re out of the Hellbeast at all, it’s because some other yearning has pulled them. Love, for most of them.”

  “Willem walked all the way back to Bruges not for me, not for us, but for a sack full of coin and plate,” said Mother with a twisted smile. “Even in death, he’s a blackguard.”

  Beatrix shut her eyes and said a little prayer for her father’s soul, for all the souls taking the long road to heaven.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Monoceros knelt by the side of the lazy Bruges canal and dipped his bloodied horn into the water. When he raised it again there were little clouds of dark blood in the clear green water, just for a moment, and then the water was clear again. Clear save the debris: the cracked planks and tiles floating on the surface, and here and there a body.

  The assault had cost them dearly. This city had better be worth its price.

  Poor Adolfo. He had been such a bully in his human life, a hard-headed weak-hearted thug. He had asked for the head of a ram and the Chatelaine’s artificers had given him one: two great horns, almost as beautiful as Monoceros’ own, whorled and graven, curling down past his thick neck, and joined to a plate of bone on his forehead. It had been such a lovely surprise that he lost his thuggishness when he gained his horns, and became melancholy, listless, brooding like a poet though he could give no cause for it.