Pagan's Daughter (18 page)
There are two stone structures, and one made of wood and daub. But the mud has almost washed away; the wood is split and sun-blistered; the stone is scattered and crumbling. Thorny plants have grown up inside former rooms, which are now open to the sky; I can even see black scorch marks on the walls, so it’s not hard to guess what happened to the thatch. Or to the vanished inhabitants.
‘A deserted village?’ Isidore speculates, in a low voice.
‘No. Too small.’ Someone’s been grazing his sheep here recently. There are pellets all over the ground. ‘See those stone fences? Those mark the boundary. This looks like a
forcia
to me. A fortified farm.’
‘Not fortified enough, apparently,’ says Isidore, his gaze fixed on the scorch marks.
‘No.’ Someone went through this place, all right— went through it like a thunderstorm. Could have been anyone. Any time in the last twenty years. ‘There’s a well, though, see? Do you think it’s been filled with dirt?’
‘We can always check.’ Isidore squints around, shading his eyes from the hot afternoon sun. Nothing stirs. Even the air is still. ‘Perhaps we might rest here for a short time,’ he adds. ‘Refresh ourselves. The Abbot gave me bread and cheese, and some pickled olives.’
Pickled olives! Mmmm. But let me just have a look at this well first, because there’s something about it . . .
There. I thought so.
‘Father!’ When I start hauling on the rope, it comes up so quickly that there can’t be anything on the end of it. No. No bucket. Even so, it’s in a suspiciously pristine state. ‘Father, this rope’s almost new. Someone’s been here very recently.’ Sure enough, the end of the rope is wet. ‘We can use this ourselves. To water the horses. Is there anything we can use as a bucket?’
‘We could finish the wine in the first wine-skin,’ Isidore suggests, joining me at the rim of the well. ‘Tie that to the end of this rope.’
‘I suppose we could even soak a piece of clothing. Soak it and wring it out.’
‘Into what?’
‘I don’t know. Is there an old trough anywhere?’ Scanning the ruins to our left, I can see nothing that resembles a trough. Or a pot. Or even a hollowed-out stone. But that overgrown patch in the corner—could that be what I think it is?
‘Look!’ Of course. I should have been keeping an eye out for lush greenery. Every farm must have its kitchen garden, and every kitchen garden must be fed with manure. It’s the kind of treatment that bears fruit for years, even without constant tendance. ‘Look, Father, beans!’
‘Beans?’
‘We can pick them!’
But some have been picked already. There’s been a bit of weeding, too. Not much: just a little space cleared around the roots of the beanstalks.
By passing shepherds, perhaps?
‘Here. Hold out your skirts. Like this.’ I’d better demonstrate, because he seems confused. ‘To put the beans in. We can take them with us.’
‘To eat?’
‘Why not?’ You’d think I was suggesting that we stick them up our noses. ‘Nobody owns them.’
‘Babylonne, it’s not safe to eat things fresh from the ground.’ He’s still speaking quietly, as if he’s afraid of being overheard. ‘You can make yourself very sick, doing that.’
‘We’ll cook them, then. It’s better than letting them go to waste.’ They’re a little spindly, but they’re a good colour. (And they snap when they break, too.) I wonder why the sheep didn’t get to them. Because the garden’s tucked away behind a stone wall? ‘Come closer, please. I can’t reach you.’
They must have sown other crops, the people who tilled this garden. Turnips, perhaps? Cabbages? I can’t see a trace of either. Everything’s so choked with weeds, I wouldn’t expect to find more. The beans are miracle enough.
What’s that?
Isidore catches his breath. My muscles seize up; I can’t move.
Someone’s having a muted discussion nearby.
God save us! The horses!
Beans scatter as Isidore drops his skirt. Before I can catch him, he strides out to confront whatever lies beyond the ruinous wall that shields us. (Wait, you fool! It could be anyone! Brigands! Frenchmen!)
Ah.
But we’re lucky.
‘Who are you?’ says Isidore. The two men by the horses stare at him like rats trapped in a corn-bin. They wear dark robes and sandals.
One of them carries a bucket.
‘Well?’ says Isidore, imperiously. He sounds like a bishop questioning a cow-herd. ‘Who are you? Do you live here?’
‘It’s all right.’ Let’s calm down, everyone. There’s no need to panic. ‘They won’t kill us, Father, they can’t. They’re not allowed to kill anything.’ And to demonstrate our goodwill, here’s the full
melioramentum:
hands clasped, knees bent, head to the ground, three full bows. ‘Bless us, bless us, bless us. Good Christians, give us God’s blessing and yours. Pray the Lord for us that God may keep us from an evil death and bring us to a good end or into the hands of faithful Christians.’
‘Uh . . . from God and from us you have the benediction.’ The older Perfect has a faint, feeble voice like a lamb’s fart. ‘And may God bless you and save your soul from an evil death, and bring you to a good end.’
I don’t recognise him. I don’t recognise either of them, thank God. The older one is a sad sight: a burned-out candle of a man, all waxy skin and guttering strength. His hair is silver, his back is bent; his hands shake as he makes the sign of the benediction. His friend is about Isidore’s age, but much smaller. He has the worst case of boils I’ve ever seen: great open sores, seeping scabs, oozing pus . . . He looks like a pile of offal left to breed maggots in a slaughterman’s yard. There’s even a sore on his bottom lip.
‘You’re a believer?’ he says hoarsely, fixing me with a red-rimmed gaze. ‘From where?’
‘Uh—from Castelnaudary.’ I must remember to keep my own voice hoarse and low. ‘My name is Benoit. This is Father Isidore.’
They both stare at him, horrified, as he pushes back his hood. (A Roman priest! In the flesh!) The look on their faces—it almost makes me laugh.
‘Father Isidore is no bent stick.’ Good work, Babylonne. You don’t sound like yourself
at all
. ‘He is my good master. We are both running from the French army, because it’s coming this way. And no one is safe from an army.’
‘That is true,’ wheezes the older Perfect. ‘No one is safe. They tear up vines and burn houses . . .’
‘We have heard the drums,’ his friend interrupts. ‘You saw it yourself, this force?’
‘Taking the road from Saverdun,’ Isidore replies, before I can open my mouth. He touches my shoulder gently. ‘But it cannot keep to the road. It’s too big for that.’
‘You’re right. There will be scouts. Looking for food and women.’ Boil-face turns to his waxy friend. ‘We must hide. At once.’
‘Hide?’ says Isidore. ‘Hide where?’
The two Perfects look at him. They remind me of two fledglings, fallen from a nest. As they blink and sway, a horn bleats in the distance.
The four of us turn as one.
‘There!’ the old man squeaks. ‘It’s coming! The army of Satan!’
‘We must go,’ says Isidore. He reaches for his palfrey’s bridle. ‘We must be quick. Can you ride, Benoit?’
‘I—I . . .’ I don’t know. Perhaps. I can certainly try.
As I hesitate, the Perfects begin to steal away, kicking up dust with their sandals. Isidore calls after them.
‘Wait!’ If he had cracked a whip, it would have had the same effect. Both Perfects halt. And turn. ‘Wait,’ Isidore continues. ‘Where are you hiding? Will you show us? Will you hide our horses too?’
The Perfects exchange glances. They don’t like Isidore. I can tell.
‘Please, Holy Fathers.’ If I have to kiss their pustulant feet, I’ll do it. ‘Please let us come with you. We have food here, and wine.’
‘We cannot hide the horses,’ Boil-face replies. ‘There is no place for them.’
‘Are you sure?’ We can’t leave the horses. It would be like leaving fresh tracks in snow. ‘Is there no thicket? No hidden byre?’
‘If by chance we are discovered,’ Isidore adds, ‘these horses will bear two men apiece. With the horses, we might escape. Without them, we’ll have no hope.’
That’s a good point. It certainly impresses Boil-face. He strikes me as the sharper of the two.
‘All right,’ he says at last. ‘You can come. And you can bring the horses. There is a place . . . it might work . . .’
Praise the Lord and all his angels. This is a lucky chance. As we begin to move, the horn sounds again— closer, this time. The old man whimpers.
‘Courage, Brother,’ his friend says softly. ‘We are in God’s hands.’
I certainly hope so. Beyond the northern wall of the
forcia
, the land drops away quite steeply into a tangle of brush and thorn and vine that looks impenetrable, from up here: a dense, silvery grove at the bottom of a cleft. This cleft, I feel certain, marks the passage of a watercourse, though not one that flows in the heat of high summer.
‘There.’ Boil-face points at a goat’s track that careens down into the cleft. (I hope our horses can manage it.) ‘We take this trail.’
‘Before we do, would you object to giving us your name, fellow traveller?’ Isidore inquires. ‘Since we have given you ours.’
Boil-face looks wary, but finds the courage to speak. ‘I am Gui. This is Imbert,’ he replies. ‘We must hurry.’
Easier said than done, my friend. It’s a tricky descent, made even trickier by the horses, which refuse to be rushed on such a narrow, winding, unstable path. My mount, in particular, baulks at the task expected of it; I can sense that it’s a beast of the river flats. It snorts and jibes at the bit.
‘Shh!’ says Gui—as if I have it in my power to stop a horse from snorting. (What does he want me to do, stick rocks in its nostrils?) Imbert moves more quickly than I would ever have imagined. He takes the lead, disappearing suddenly beneath a canopy of greyish leaves, bucket in hand.
‘There is no water down here,’ Gui murmurs, tossing the remark over his shoulder as he reaches the bottom of the cleft, where a dry watercourse is all but choked with eager plants. ‘Not in the summer. That is why we must use the well.’
And the garden, presumably. But how long have they been here, these Perfects, hiding like mice in the undergrowth? Are they using this place as an inn, or have they made themselves a permanent home? I remember how Arnaude used to talk about the four months she spent in somebody’s cellar during one of the summer campaigns, when Simon de Montfort seemed to be everywhere at once, and no Perfect within his reach was safe from burning.
These two look as if they’ve been doing the same thing. They have the scurrying, sun-dazed appearance of men who have spent far too much time crawling around rocks like lizards. They’re skinny and dirty and weathered and worried. Not like Isidore, who strides along with a firm tread, his pale face smooth and almost luminous above the darkness of his robe.
But the Perfects are more holy. I have to remember that. You don’t get close to God by eating pickled olives and reading expensive books. You do it by fasting, and praying, and not washing very much.
Ahead of me, Gui has followed the creek-bed to a thick hedge of wild oak and nettles, which suddenly rises up like a wall in his face. The creek-bed disappears straight into it, under overhanging branches. ‘Here,’ he says. ‘The entrance is here.’
‘We’ll never get the horses through that,’ Isidore observes, from behind me.
‘The horses aren’t going in there,’ Gui rejoins. ‘They must go around, and up again. I’ll show you.’
Whereupon he moves off to the left of the watercourse, plunging into a patch of waist-high grass. Isidore and I exchange glances.
‘I can’t lead both horses,’ Isidore mutters. ‘Not through that.’
‘Then I’ll come with you.’
‘But let me go first, Benoit.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Hurry, or we’ll lose Gui. He’s already vanished into the bushes, though I can hear his footsteps—
crunch, crunch, crunch
. Our valley is very narrow, by now; there are low, crumbling cliffs closing in on both sides, converging ahead of us behind the screen of wild oak and nettles. Old Imbert seems to have gone to ground somewhere beyond that tangle of growth. But Gui has managed to skirt it, plotting a narrow course between the left-hand wall of the cleft and the reaching, clawing branches of wild oak to his right.
It’s a matter of dodging the ones that slap back after being pushed aside by Isidore’s palfrey—ouch! You really have to keep your wits about you.
And there’s Gui again. He’s climbed out of the scrub in front of us, slowly mounting the tumble of rocks and earth that marks the end of our cleft, and the beginning of higher ground. It seems to me that we’re standing at the base of what might, in heavy rains, become a waterfall; the actual cascade would largely be hidden by all that wild oak to my right. Unless I’m mistaken, Imbert must be hiding in the cliff face somewhere—perhaps there’s a cave behind the waterfall (or where the waterfall should be, at least). And the path to the top of the falls has been picked out along a slightly gentler slope, directly ahead of Isidore, to the left of the non-existent cascade.
Of course, though it might be a gentler slope than the sheer drop of the waterfall, it’s not exactly a river-wharf either.
‘We’ll never get the horses up there.’ What does Gui think they are—goats? ‘It’s too steep.’
‘We must try,’ says Isidore.
‘But—’
‘There’s no time to go back.’
Did you hear that, horse? There’s no time to go back. And it’s no good rolling your eyes at me, because I’m not in charge here. I’m just doing what I’m told.
Gui is already at the top, peering down at us. The path isn’t
quite
as bad as I expected. It’s more like a set of stairs than anything else. The rocks are fixed hard in the baked earth, not rolling around underfoot. And with Isidore’s beast leading the way, my own seems more amenable.
Yeow!
God! Except when he steps on my foot!
‘What is it?’ says Isidore, trying to look back.
‘Nothing.’ It comes out sounding like the creak of a hinge.
‘What happened? Are you hurt?’
‘No.’ As far as I can tell, I’m not about to lose any toes. ‘Quick. Hurry.’