Almost Innocent (49 page)

Sister Therese was there, holding a wailing, desperately hungry Zoe. Charles d’Auriac lounged against the far wall. His eyes read and understood every terror-filled moment she had spent, and the cold gray gaze was touched with satisfaction.

“The child is hungry,” the nun said, holding out the baby.

Magdalen looked at her hands. She could not touch her child with the indescribable filth of the oubliette upon them. Without a word, she went into the garderobe. The water in the pitcher was cold, but she scrubbed her hands with a vigor that belied her absolute exhaustion . . . the exhaustion of a spirit that has clung to sanity by a merest thread. Satisfied, she took Zoe and sat down, heedless of her wet and filthy hem and slippers. As the child suckled, some element of peace entered her. She would not look at her cousin, who remained by the wall watching, but as her body responded to the baby’s elemental needs, she began to feel her own hold on reality reassert itself.

But when the child was fed and comfortable once more, Charles d’Auriac went again to the door. “Take her down.”

The two men-at-arms entered the room.

“No . . . please . . . I cannot . . .” She heard her plea, would have given anything not to have made it, but could not help herself.

Her cousin touched his cheek, touched the raw striations made by her nails, and said nothing.

They took her back, down and down, and they locked her again in the impenetrable timeless darkness.

Ten miles outside Orleans lay the decomposing body of the courier who’d been sent to discover and bring report to Carcassonne upon the outcome of the combat between Edmund de Bresse and Guy de Gervais. The body lay tumbled in the ditch where the band of thieves
had left it, its news locked forever in the whitening skull.

G
UY DE
G
ERVAIS
, E
DMUND
de Bresse, and Courtney Durand met in the shadow of the fortress, their forces melding without ceremony or insignia, offering no apparent threat to the watchmen of Carcassonne, who saw only the brigand army so recently in the fee of the de Beauregards.

T
HE ACHE IN
her legs mercifully passed, a deep numbness taking its place. Long before then, she had lost all sensation in her feet, finally deadened by the icy water in which she stood. No longer able to feel anything, she could only imagine what was crawling around her ankles, clinging to her skirts. But this time even terror had its limits, and finally she drifted into an almost trancelike state, retreating from hell by removing herself from her body, physically aware only of her fingers curled around the steel ring, holding her upright. When they lifted the trap door, she could not move, and they had to reach down and prise her cramped fingers loose before hauling her up into the light.

Her legs would not hold her, and she crumpled in the passage, uncaring. One of the men-at-arms picked her up without comment and she lay limply in his hold, her mind and spirit still somehow floating above her inert bodily shape.

It was full daylight, and she closed her eyes tightly against a brightness that yesterday she had found dim and gloomy. She heard Zoe’s cries before they reached the chamber, and abruptly mind and body became one again. With the fusion came the resurgence of fear and the dread knowledge that she could not preserve her reason through another such period of incarceration. Following instinct, she gave no indication of her return to full awareness and stayed limp and unresponsive in
her bearer’s arms. When he carried her into the chamber, she remained inert.

Sister Therese was holding Zoe, rocking her back and forth in a futile effort to still the frantic screams, so piercing they seemed to go straight through one’s head. No one else was in the room.

The trooper set Magdalen on her feet, and deliberately she crumpled to the ground again.

“Put her on the bed,” the nun said. “She has to feed the child.”

They picked her up and put her on the bed, where she lay unmoving. Sister Therese put the screaming Zoe into her lap and hastily pulled up the pillows behind her. “Sit up, now,” the nun said with anxious impatience. “Your child is hungry.”

With a supreme effort of will, Magdalen made no attempt to soothe Zoe, but lay as if she still inhabited the trancelike world of her imprisonment, her eyes closed.

The troopers left the chamber, and the nun stood looking down at the immobile woman and the screeching baby. Then with an almost imperceptible shrug, as if to say she had done all she could, she turned and left the chamber.

Magdalen heard the heavy wooden bar fall into place with a dull thud. She lay still for a further minute, then caught the child to her breast. Zoe was not impressed with her mother’s desperate kisses and nuzzled frantically. Magdalen unfastened her bodice, the screams died on a gulping sob, and a deep quiet entered the dim chamber.

Magdalen found that her mind had a bell-like clarity. As the blood returned to her feet, the pain was excruciating. The muscles in her legs cramped violently with the renewal of sensation, but the pain served to concentrate her mind. If, apart from feeding Zoe, she preserved the appearance of one physically and spiritually
broken by the oubliette, then surely nothing would be gained by returning her there. The last two periods had been punitive as well as coercive, she was in no doubt, but if her cousin saw her in this broken state, he would surely feel adequately avenged for the raking marks of her nails. And for as long as she remained apparently physically incapable of anything but feeding the child, the matter of her compliance would have to be postponed.

She would not be able to convince them for long, but it would buy her some time, and at the moment, she could only think ahead an hour or two at a time. She was abruptly overtaken by an invincible weariness, like a great black blanket dropping over her. Her eyes closed while she still held the child at her breast.

Sister Therese, coming in an hour later, found the woman still asleep and the baby lying placidly at her side. She had brought a tray of food and bent to wake the sleeping woman, who she knew had not eaten since the previous midmorning.

Magdalen woke but turned her head from the food. She refused to speak, but staggered off the bed to wash and change Zoe, put the child in her cradle, and drag herself to the latrine behind the garderobe. She exaggerated the pain and effort of her movements, and finally tumbled back on the bed, closing her eyes. Uneasy, but uncertain what else she should do, the nun left her.

Alone again, Magdalen ate a little of the venison pasty on the tray and drank some of the wine. She was feeling much stronger, although she dared not let her mind return to the timeless terror of her imprisonment. She knew only that she could not endure more of it. Curiously, she did not entertain the obvious means of avoiding further coercion. She would not yield.

She slept fitfully throughout the day, closing her eyes tightly whenever she heard the door open as it did several times. The visitor did not come into the room,
however, merely checked on its occupant and left again. She looked after Zoe but deliberately left herself unwashed and uncombed.

Charles d’Auriac came in at the end of the afternoon. He had planned to leave her alone all day, alone to recover her strength and to allow herself to feel that her ordeal was finished. The shock of being taken down again, to spend the hours of the night in the oubliette, would be so much the greater after the day’s respite that he had every expectation of achieving her submission by first light on the morrow.

He was not prepared for what he found, however. She lay on the bed exactly as she had been brought up that morning, the filth of the dungeon on her clothes, her hair matted, her face streaked. Her eyes looked blankly at him, almost through him.

“Sweet Jesus! Why have you not cleaned yourself?”

She made no response, not even a flicker of an eyelid. He crossed to the bed and took her chin between thumb and forefinger, staring down into her face. The blankness of her eyes did not alter. Had he miscalculated? Believed her stronger than she was? There came a point, he knew, when physical coercion ceased to be fruitful, a point when the victim withdrew from the pain into a private world of illusion and thus from the power of the interrogator. But it could not have happened so soon. He went to the door and bellowed for Sister Therese.

“How long has she been like this?”

“Since they brought her back this morning. She has fed the child, but little else.”

“Has she spoken?”

“No, my lord.”

He turned back to the bed. It was as if she did not know they were talking about her . . . as if she did not know they were in the room. “Get her cleaned up,” he said. “I will return later.”

Magdalen offered neither resistance nor assistance
as the nun and a serving wench took off her filth-encrusted clothes. She let them wash her, comb out the matted tangles of her hair, dress her in a linen shift and a loose robe. She gave no indication of her relief at being thus rid of the reek and mire of the dungeon. They encouraged her into a chair beside the empty hearth, brought her the baby, offered her broth and wine. Passively, silently, she submitted.

It was dark when her cousin returned. She was still sitting in the chair, her hands clasped loosely in her lap, the candles unlit upon the table. It was as if she were unaware of the darkness.

He struck flint, and light flared from the candles. She did not look toward the light or acknowledge his presence in the slightest way.

“So, cousin,” he said, approaching her, holding the candle high so that its light fell upon her face, as desirable in its pale stillness as ever it was in the glowing vibrancy of health and happiness. “I wonder how you will respond to my kiss tonight.” He held her face with one hand and brought his lips to hers. She endured, still and cold as a marble effigy. Abruptly, he released her and went to the door.

“Take her down!”

Scalding terror filled her. She had failed. But she somehow remained immobile, her eyes fixed on a dip in the flagstones at her feet. Her neck ached unbearably with the strain.

He looked at her closely for some sign that his instruction to the two troopers had pierced her absorption. He could detect no change in posture or expression. As the two men moved toward her, he gestured to them to stop. If it was genuine, her present state of mind bordered on madness, and if he had her confined again so soon, she might well slip over the edge. She would be no good to them then, and he could not afford to risk all by being overzealous.

“Get out.”

The men left, and he put the candle on the table again. “In the morning I will have your submission, cousin, and you will give your allegiance to Bertrand. If I do not have it, you will rot in the oubliette, and your child with you.” She gave no indication that she had heard him, and with a wash of frustration he caught her under the arms and pulled her to her feet. “Do you hear me, cousin? You
and
the child.”

She must not respond. She would not respond. Over and over in her head she said the words until the internal chant obscured all else. She fell back in the chair as he pushed her away from him, and she let herself fall and lie as limp as any doll.

The door banged on his departure and she began to shake, but she had won herself a night’s respite.

G
UY DE
G
ERVAIS LOOKED
up at the sky. It was heavy and overcast, the air sultry, as if a summer storm were brewing over the Pyrenees. But the lack of moon or starshine couldn’t be better for their purpose.

“Do you think she is asleep?” Edmund’s voice came softly through the darkness. “Do you think they have harmed her?”

Guy turned, making out the dark bulk of the other man. Like himself, Edmund wore chainmail and carried his great sword and shield. Their suits of full plate armor would not be needed until the fighting began. First they would parley. “Do not think about Magdalen,” he counseled, as he had counseled himself countless times during the weeks of their pursuit. “You cannot serve her by worrying over her.”

“But she has such fear of her cousin.”

“Fear will not kill her,” Guy said shortly. “She has courage and nimble wits.” But the thought of her alone and afraid at times tormented him beyond endurance.

“All is ready.” Courtney Durand loomed out of the shadows. “The town watchtower has been taken, and there’ll be none to sound the tocsin.” There was no intensity
in his voice or expression. He had no interest beyond amusement and coin in the present enterprise. Any interest he might have had in the Lady Magdalen was surpassed by too many men, he realized, for it to be worth pursuing. “We will leave the fires and torches burning in the camp so all looks undisturbed, and we will be in position by first light.”

Through the dark, shadowed, sleeping town, forty lancers moved almost soundlessly, horses’ hooves muffled with sacking on the cobbles, only an occasional jingle of a bridle to betray them. Behind them came pikers and archers, troopers bearing great bundles of faggots and the long siege ladders. Those townsmen who heard them cowered behind their shuttered windows. In the absence of the tocsin, the only sensible course was to mind one’s own business and be thankful that the armed men showed no interest in the town or its inhabitants.