The Rebel Princess (27 page)

We crept along the side of the trees, and I could hear my own heart beating. To be so close now was excruciating. We must not fail.

True to plan the younger women cut off from us a short distance from the third guesthouse, and made their way to the back of the building. Geralda and I waited with bated breath.

Suddenly a horse whinnied, and then another. Sheep began baying and we saw our friends dashing across the meadow, a torch held in Fabrisse’s hands, their forms scarcely visible under the melting light of the rising moon. A flare rose from behind the small house. They had been successful in lighting the hay! Smoke began to rise.

A moment later a great commotion could be heard. One of the men must have gone to see what the animals were bellowing about. A second voice joined the first, and though we could not make out their figures, we knew they were outside.

I nodded and Geralda and I streaked across the ground, glad to have our legs freed from skirts. In the blink of an eye we had achieved the door and, to our amazement, it gave when I applied my shoulder to it. What we saw inside made us pause fully a moment on the threshold.

T
wo torches on the far wall threw enough light to allow us to observe the scene. No guards were visible, I noted immediately, and thus our first hurdle had been achieved. But a noxious odor pervaded the room and it hit us as we crossed the threshold.

Then I saw two large sides of beef hanging in one corner, and what looked like the carcass of a pig as well. The room stank of curing meat, almost overwhelming us as we moved into the space. I could see flies, despite the late autumn coolness, clinging to the sides of meat.

Francis lay prone on a pallet in the corner opposite the butcher’s wall, his hands bound behind him. He was turned toward us and he showed both fear and resolve in his expression as we burst through the door. His grimy face and his tattered clothes could not hide the noble courage with which he met our surprise
entrance.

“Who comes?” he asked, in a voice parched with thirst. “How dare you enter without permission?”

His face was the dearest in all Christendom to me, and the relief that flooded through me when I saw him was like a wave. It was a sight I had thought I might never see again and yet now he was here, in front of me. I could feel the sting of tears and blinked them back firmly. All that mattered now was to set him free. Later, I could indulge my heart.

I came quickly toward him. He squinted for a moment and suddenly a look of pure astonishment crossed his handsome features. Something resembling a smile lit his face.

“Princesse,” he said weakly, “is it really you?” His voice was hoarse, as if he had not enough water, and I could see by the light of my small torch that his lips were swollen and cracked.

“Indeed it is, Sir Francis,” I responded gravely. “And I have sturdy companions who will help me free you.”

“Come quickly, no time for talk,” Geralda hissed from the door, where she watched the corners of the outside of the house.

I helped the young man to his feet. I could feel that he was almost too frail to walk as he leaned heavily on me.

“Your leg, it is wounded?” I said as I felt him buckle slightly.

“No, it is nothing,” he said.

We hurried to the door as best we could, while hampered by his limp. Geralda had moved outside, her outline visible against the trees in the soft moonlight. She flagged us forward with her long arm. We made the dash to the woods, both of us supporting our prize. Meanwhile, the hue and cry over the fire had been passed to the abbey proper, and we could see a horde of monks coming over the hill, carrying buckets of water on each hand. We made the cover of the woods just in time, as the vanguard of that group was reaching the back side of the house.

It was fortunate that a stream ran just behind the structure, so further water would be readily available. I had no doubt that the fire would be contained soon. And then the guards would notice that Francis was missing.

Within a short span of time we had obtained our little guesthouse. We entered quickly and doused our torches.

Grazide and Fabrisse were already on their pallets, and looked for all the world as if they had been sleeping since the noon Angelus. But at our entrance, they both sat up and scrambled to their feet, ready to hear the tale of our part of the adventure.

“Help me with Francis. No doubt they will search our dwelling here, as soon as they find him missing.” I was tense, and they responded. Fortunately there was moonlight filling the hut, and we could pull the tiles and the heavy oak door back without aid of a candle, light that might attract attention from the outside.

“Here, lad, hold my hand while you descend. It is not far, only a few steps down the ladder. There is air below, and a pallet in the corner for you to rest. We must return to our beds until someone comes to question us, as surely they will do. After that event has passed, and it is safe, I’ll come to you with water and food, and we will talk.”

I saw with concern how Francis’s hand shook as he lowered himself on the ladder, feeling his way. The moonlight caught glints of his auburn hair, the red hair of the Plantagenets, of his father King Henry. When his foot had touched bottom, he called up softly: “I am here, and I see the pallet. Replace the door now. I mind not the dark as long as I am safe.”

Brave lad, I thought, while my fury at Amaury mounted for the injury done my son. We worked quickly, dragging the oak piece over the opening, replacing the tiles, and quickly kicking rushes to hide them.

We all leaped into bed, for there were loud voices throughout the meadows, and some cursing, which I took to be the guards’ expression
of dismay when they found their charge gone.

It was some time later when the voices came near our little house, and I pretended sleep as they hovered outside. There seemed to be an argument about whether to disturb us, but I couldn’t see the sense of that, since they would have woken us with their noise already!

Geralda rose at the peremptory sound of the knocking, and went to the door, doing her best to insert sleep into her voice. It was well that the moonlight had shifted, for the questioners surely would have noted the sheen on her face from her recent exertions.

“Sirs, who comes at this time? We’ve scarce another hour till Matins bells, and we would have our rest.”

“Good Sister, we seek to know if you have heard anything this evening. There has been a fire near the barn where meat is cured, and of the three men living there, one is missing.”

“Men living in the place where meat is hung?” Geralda sounded outraged. I stifled a chuckle. She knew the value of distraction. “I am astonished that the abbey would permit such a thing. Living with live animals is one thing; living with dead ones quite another.”

“Sister, we are not come to debate these issues.” A new and deeper voice, more commanding. This must be the master of the two thugs we saw earlier guarding my son. No doubt he had a comfortable bed somewhere in the abbey proper. “We need to know if you heard any disturbance this night along the path by your hut.”

“No, good sirs. We have heard nothing. I see a fire in the distance. Should we be concerned about our welfare here?”

“No, the fire has been contained and the monks are bringing more water. Forgive the interruption,” the man said gruffly, as he hustled his men down the path. We made our way back to our pallets on the floor, and with a collective sigh we lay down. For a long time I could hear only breathing as none of us dared speak. After a while, the measured sounds coming from the younger women signaled that they slept. But I knew Geralda was as wakeful as I.

“I am going to visit Francis,” I whispered finally, swinging my feet to the floor. Just then the bells for Matins began tolling and I groaned. We were all called to chapel for the predawn prayers that marked the beginning of the day.

“Princesse, I advise you to come with us to chapel,” Geralda said. “We cannot afford to draw attention. If anyone is watching us, we must continue with our usual life.”

I paused. More than anything I wanted to see Francis. But I saw the wisdom of what she said. With a sigh, I acquiesced, and gently bent to shake Fabrisse, and encourage Grazide, who was having trouble rousing herself.

So we put our black cloaks around our habits, wound our wimples quickly around our heads, and pinned on the veils and made our way across the meadow we had traversed in the opposite direction and with an entirely different purpose only a few hours earlier.

The church was chill and drafty so there was little danger of dozing during prayers. The monk leading us this morn was as cold as his followers, and so he was efficient in dispatching his duties. We were soon bound for the refectory and the first, and I might add meager, meal of the day. I listened to the lector at the front of the refectory with half a heart as I nibbled my brown bread, and afterward could not have told which epistle of St. Paul was read, nor what the good saint’s advice was on this day.

But I dared not absent myself, for we did not want anything to look amiss in our little group. I noted that neither Amaury nor the current abbot of Fontfroide had been present for the morning prayer, and I wondered what the conversation was in the abbot’s quarters at this hour.

Finally we made our escape back to our hut, and I was grateful for the late autumn season which allowed still the cover of darkness. We were silent as we walked. When we arrived at our quarters, we all clustered around the hearth again.

“We will move the door and after I descend you must replace it.
Give me part of an hour. Then move it again, and I will come up. If the dawn begins to break meanwhile, use this loose stone to tap the oak door, and I will make ready.”

Geralda nodded, and we all shifted the tiles and, grunting with effort, managed again to move the heaving oak piece over the opening. The Sheila-na-gig appeared to me to be grinning, but I couldn’t swear to it. The dancing candlelight and my fatigued imagination could have caused the vision.

I descended carefully, slowed by the use of only one hand. I carried a gourd of water slung round my neck on a leather strap. When I was nearly on the ground Fabrisse leaned over and passed to me a candle, a torch being too much flame for this small space.

I heard the clanking of the iron corners of the oak piece as it was laid over the opening, and thought what courage young Francis had, tired and bruised as he was, to accept his assignment to this closed space so readily.

He was sleeping now, and I crept over to him and gently shook his shoulder. When he mumbled something and stirred, I sat on the floor beside his bed. He opened his eyes sleepily and propped himself up on his forearm, his other fist rubbing his eyes as a child would. I felt a stab of fear for his safety, as if he had no more than eight summers.

“How now, Princesse,” he said, some irony in his parched voice. “It appears I have merely exchanged one confinement for another.”

“Only for the moment, Francis. I promise you that,” I said, placing my hand on his arm. “Here. I have brought you water for your thirst. My friends are even now assembling a basket of food for you.”

The young knight rose on one elbow and drank greedily.

I continued: “We have very little time, for I must not appear to be missing. If Amaury asks questions, and discovers there is a group of Benedictine nuns here from a northern abbey, he will surely want to see us. And that would be the end of everyone.”

“And I would rot in here, if that happens,” Francis said. The bit
terness of his tone sent a chill through me.

“I will not let you,” I said fiercely.

In return, he gave me a thin smile, but nodded his head to acknowledge my words.

“Tell me what happened in Paris,” I said, pushing away the image of Francis trapped in an underground prison. “William said there were signs of a struggle in your chambers. He was certain you had been abducted.”

“I put up as much of a fight as I could, so that Lord William would see the disarray in my chamber and know I had not simply gone off on my own. But there were three men, and in the end I was no match for them.” He shrugged, as if it had been one more joust in a tourney.

“Were you not fearful?”

“I could see that they wanted me alive. They were rough, but they knew how to use their fists and feet without killing. That gave me some reassurance.”

“Did you leave Paris immediately?”

“No, they hid me somewhere on the Île de la Cité, probably within shouting distance of the palace. I think I was in the lower part of the Tour Dagobert, near the cathedral building site.” Francis heaved himself upward, and sat with crossed legs, his back resting against the damp wall. We were facing each other, the candle between us throwing light on each other’s face. I took in his features, so like his father’s, and the strong jut of his jaw. He was, indeed, a survivor. After all, the blood of kings ran in his veins. “They questioned me for hours. They thought I knew the whereabouts of some chalice, some sacred cup. What would I be doing with such a thing?”

“The Saint John Cup.” I ran my hands through my hair. “A number of people want that cup. But why did they think you would know the whereabouts?”

“One of the men let slip something about Constance of Toulouse. They had seen me in her retinue in the past week, and they thought I
was her confidant.”

I had to chuckle. “I also noticed you with her coterie quite often. But it was usually at the side of the fair Esclarmonde of Foix.”

“Yes, that is clever of you.” His voice was good-natured. “Apparently the abbot does not have your acute powers of observation.”

Or the abbot is not a mother, I thought, but I held my tongue. This was neither the time nor the place for that revelation.

Instead I remarked: “William found a map that had been dropped in your chambers when they took you. It showed the area around Toulouse. I was not certain the map was dropped accidentally, but William was convinced it was where your abductors planned to hide you.”

“That was left to throw you off their track. They hoped you would find the map and be distracted, searching for me in the Toulouse area,” Francis said. “But it was at least a full day before we set out from Paris. And it was not for Toulouse at all, but for this place.”

“Do you know who was responsible for this?” I asked, remembering the threat of death I had heard Amaury utter in the chapel, only the day before.

“They kept me in the back of the train, and my eyes were bound much of the time.” He smiled. “But it would have been hard to not see the colors, or glimpse the standard as we traveled. Of course I knew it was the Abbé Amaury’s train.”

“If he thought you knew that, your life would be forfeit.” I could feel the pulse in my throat as I said this, wanting the young knight to take this seriously, yet not wanting him immobilized by fear.

“But he would have to find me first, would he not?” Francis almost managed a grin in the flickering light.

“You did not seem overly surprised to see me in the dead of night, in that butcher’s building,” I said. “Did you know I was at the abbey? Did you drop my scarf deliberately?”

Again that impish expression took over his face. “I heard the
guards talking about some nuns taking the second guesthouse, and the danger that someone would be nearer to our barn, which is also called a guesthouse.” He gave a snort. “Perhaps it was a guesthouse at one time, but now it is used to cure meat.”