Between Two Fires (9781101611616) (33 page)

For the first time, Thomas allowed himself to think they might just get to Avignon, and that whatever the girl had come to do might just get done.

The raftsmen boarded two more vessels in the next three days: one a fishing boat manned by two frightened teenagers, both missing fingers, and their one-handed father, who surrendered their astonishing catch of pike without incident. The other was a shallow-hulled sailing boat that tried to run. Big-arms cranked the windlass while the younger oarsman and the captain shot bolt after bolt into the ship; a man with a parti-colored cowl took a quarrel in the hip, and he howled lamentably while the other two fought over the limited shelter provided by a wooden chest aft, one getting his scalp grazed so he bled awfully, though the wound was not serious. Neither bothered about the rudder, and the quick little boat ran aground at a bend in the river just as the distance was getting too great for real accuracy.

Big-arms and the younger oarsman searched the boat, the latter pitching the man with the hip wound into the shallows to stop his caterwauling; he managed to scramble onto the bank and limp away in great, loping spasms that made the captain laugh girlishly from where he sat his supervisory post cross-legged atop the cabin. He laughed harder yet when the man collapsed in a field of rotten squash.

The take was unimpressive.

A few coins, a small drum, some extra clothes, and three finches
in wooden cages; the oarsman put his foot exactly next to the foot of the wounded man and then made him remove his leather boots.

“You idiots fled to save this shit?” he said, trading shoes, handing the hurt man his worn-out slippers.

The other man, a paunchy youth with soft hands, said, “We did not wish to be harmed for our poverty. We were going to Avignon to seek work at the court of His Holiness—the man you pitched over is a great jester.”

“Well, he sure runs funny.”

The oarsman presented the cages to the captain, who had leapt down from the cabin.

He reached inside a cage, caught the panicked bird with some difficulty and wrung its neck, throwing it at soft-hands. He was reaching for another cage when Delphine ran forward, just escaping the grasp of the priest, who tried to stop her. She wrapped her arms around the cage and sat down, putting her hand over the door. The oarsman tried to yank the cage away, but she held tight, letting him jerk her halfway to her feet. The captain instinctively drew back to strike her, but checked himself, sensing that Thomas had taken a step in his direction, also having noted that big-arms was still on the other boat.

He changed what would have been a vicious backhand into a tousling of her hair, at which she grimaced, clutching the cage more tightly.

“Let her have the birds,” the walleyed man said, proud of his spontaneous magnanimity. “Her papa has been useful.”

“We thank you,” the priest said, as Delphine set the cages down and opened their doors, taking one docile bird and then the other into her hands. She kissed them both, then released them. One flew up into the sky; the other went toward the bank.

The captain turned his head toward Thomas.

“Happy?” he said.

Thomas pulled Delphine behind him.

“So happy I could shit,” he said, sheathing his sword.

Big-arms got back on the raft. The uninjured man tended his friend’s scalp.

Nobody saw the second finch fly into the squash field, where it stayed for a moment before flying up again and into the clouds.

Neither did they see the jester now get to his feet and run toward a farmhouse in the distance, no longer limping.

Big-arms, whose Christian name was Guillaume, had argued against it, but now it was happening.

The captain, seeing that the foolish priest was sleepy, had given him unwatered wine to put him under so he might peek at what their passengers were carrying. Once the priest was asleep, the captain had looked into the knight’s satchel even as the girl slept on it, and the sight of gold had maddened him. He took a chain and a few coins without waking her, but more lurked under her head. He called the others to the rear of the raft and told them the time had come to bid their passengers farewell.

Guillaume and the older oarsman wanted none of it; the oarsman was fine with piracy but felt that harming paying passengers was a kind of oath-breaking.

Guillaume, for his part, felt a deeper loyalty to the knight who had also faced the English at Crécy-en-Ponthieu than he now did to this captain, whose arrogance and madness were worsening by the day. He said it went against his conscience to rob their guests, who had been good and useful companions.

The captain had said, “The guild knows its own, and has no loyalty to any other. It also saw fit to make me captain of this raft, and master of you, even unto your life. We send them from this wicked world, and take upon ourselves the guilt of their wealth. That is my command.”

Guillaume nodded his assent but asked that the girl should be spared and brought to Avignon, if she would go with them after.

The captain had agreed, but Guillaume knew he was lying.

And now it had begun.

The oarsmen had their daggers out and were creeping toward Thomas as if toward a sleeping bear. The captain, holding a brutal, rusty falchion, was on his way to dispatch the priest where he snored sitting up near his empty wine bowl. The stars were very bright above them and the Rhône was creeping slowly, lulling with its mutter, leaving the raft a steady platform for murder. Guillaume had his crossbow at the ready, and two others at his feet. If the knight stirred, he was to shoot him.

The oarsman’s knife was almost at the knight’s throat.

Guillaume only knew he was going to do it a heartbeat before he did; the thought came to him and seemed so clear and correct that his fingers squeezed the lever almost on their own.

He shot the oarsman.

The man made a small gagging sound and jerked, reaching for the quarrel in his back.

He dropped his dagger pommel first, and the sound woke Thomas.

The younger oarsman looked back at Guillaume with wide, betrayed eyes, and at that moment Guillaume’s sight went black as the captain’s falchion struck him on the crown and he fell.

Thomas had been dreaming of his wife; she was crying, pounding the heel of her hand against the table and shaking with something between remorse and outrage. It seemed wrong that her small hand had made such a loud noise on the table, a noise like dropped metal, and Thomas opened his eyes to see two men standing over him, one of them twisting, grabbing at his own back, the other turning now to look behind him. Farther down the raft, big-arms went to his knees and the figure that had struck him moved toward Thomas.

He scooted forward on his butt and kicked the feet out from under the confused oarsman while the wounded one managed to touch the feathered part of the quarrel in him, the pain making him vomit all over himself. He fell suddenly, and then lay still.

Thomas just had time to get to his feet, taking a slash from the falchion that numbed his mailed forearm and then kicked the captain in the hip to push him back. He used his still-sheathed sword to slap the younger oarsman across the head, knocking him down, and then he drew his weapon.

The girl was awake now, howling, “Stop! Stop!” at the brawling men, shaking the priest to wake him.

The captain sprang back, sheathed his falchion, and grabbed up his long spear.

“Don’t kill him!” the girl yelled.

“I won’t if he jumps over!” Thomas answered.

Guillaume fell on his stomach, but then struggled up on all fours, panting like a dog, trying to make sense of the chaos around him, and of the blood pooling under his face.

The younger oarsman, also stunned, shook his head clear and dashed between Thomas and the captain. He grabbed the girl by her hair now and exposed her throat. The priest tried to grab his arm but was viciously elbowed in the nose and fell backward.

“Drop the sword or I’ll open her!” the oarsman said.

“Don’t kill them,
please
!” the girl yelled, as if she were not the one closest to death. Her hands were on the man’s knife arm, but they were little more use than a cat’s paws would have been.

Then she shut her eyes because she felt the oarsman’s arms tense and knew he was about to cut her throat.

Except that he didn’t.

Big-armed Guillaume, blinking blood out of his eyes, had crawled over and now held the oarsman’s arms from the outside, pulling them apart as slowly and irresistibly as a starfish opening a clam, clutching as hard as he could and hoping his blood-slick hands kept their grip; if he slipped, the other man’s knife would all but cut the girl’s head off.

“Don’t!”
she yelled again, still at Thomas, who was coming at the captain, ducking his spear slashes laterally, but unable to get inside because the other man circled so quickly.

Guillaume had the oarsman spread-armed now, and the priest hit
him in the face with his wooden bowl so hard he broke it; the oarsman dropped his knife. Guillaume let the man’s arms go, then heaved him over the side, passing out as he did so that one arm trailed in the cold water.

The girl got to her feet, as did the priest, and she stood behind him, wanting to jump between Thomas and the captain, but knowing the captain would kill her.

“Drop that whoring thing and jump if you want to live,” Thomas said to the walleyed man.

“I don’t need to live,” the captain said, “I’ve already seen the sea!” and, keeping his gaze deceptively on Thomas, he lashed out sideways with his spear, just missing the priest, whom he would have impaled.

The girl cried out in a startled squeak.

Thomas attacked the spear rather than the man now, driving it down with his sword and stepping through it, breaking off the first third. The captain, not missing a beat, whipped the remaining part of his shaft around and caught Thomas a glancing blow on the shoulder that also struck his head, rattling him even through his chain hood.

It wasn’t enough.

Thomas cut the man’s arm off just below the elbow.

He looked stupidly at it where it lay, and bent to pick it up with the remaining one.

“Thomas!” the girl yelled at him. “Thomas!”

She meant to make him spare the beaten man, if his life could still be saved at all, but her words had the opposite effect; the captain’s jab at the priest had clipped her below the mouth; not much, but enough to beard her chin in blood.

When Thomas saw that the girl was cut, he breathed out like a bull, grabbed the dazed captain’s hair, yanked his head back and cut his throat with the long, notched blade. He took his time about it.

The girl screamed, “Noooo!” and then she just said, “No,” and she let the priest take her in his arms even though the tears she thought herself about to shed didn’t come.

The captain fell so his head lolled back and his open throat bled into the river. Thomas watched this for a moment, then wiped his sword.

“I told you not to,” the girl said, but her face betrayed her relief that the hurtful man was gone.

“We’re going to pay for that,” she said.

“I’m ready,” said Thomas.

“I’m not,” she said, and looked at the water. Thomas rolled the captain’s limp body off the raft, and it sank as if pulled down.

A fucking hand!

The raft drifted sideways and into the darkness.

When the sky got light enough for the work that had to be done, Guillaume bowed his head and let Thomas stitch him. Thomas had sat with Guillaume through the last hours of darkness, holding the captain’s extra shirt to the wound as the big man shivered and swore. The bone needle and twine had also come from the captain’s trunk.

Guillaume was strong, and he lived.

For a time.

TWENTY-THREE

At first it was not easy for the knight and priest to control the raft, but the soldier told them what to do until he was strong enough to take an oar himself. On the second day after the fight, he and Thomas were bending their bodies into the effort of wagging the oars of the raft behind it, pushing it forward just that little bit faster than the current, telling stories and sharing jokes.