Ladyhawke (20 page)

The guardsman rode down the alley and into the cul-de-sac, unexpectedly finding it occupied by an old man in a cowled robe.

“Oh, thank goodness!” the old monk said, smiling at him in apparent relief. “Which way is it to the cathedral, my son?”

The guard’s suspicious glance took in the monk standing with a hunting bird perched incongruously on his arm, the saddled, riderless war horse . . . the cart draped with a blanket. He rode directly to the cart, ignoring the monk, and jerked the blanket aside.

Navarre lay waiting for him with a loaded crossbow. The guard reached for his sword, and Navarre fired. The guardsman toppled from his horse with the arrow through his heart.

Navarre leaped down from the cart, went to the body to pick up the guard’s fallen sword. He hefted it, testing its balance; felt its edge with his thumb and swung it again experimentally. Imperius was wrong—just as he had known all along that the old man had to be. He had waited long enough; there was no use in denying fate any longer. He turned back, crossing to the stallion again with the sword in his hand.

Imperius blocked his path suddenly. “Navarre, don’t be a fool! This chance will never come again!”

Navarre looked at him bleakly. “You’re right, old man. The Mass will be over soon. If Phillipe has done his job, I can kill the Bishop now—or never.” He raised his arm, and the hawk flew from Imperius’s wrist to his own. He pushed past the monk to the stallion’s side. Reaching into a saddlebag, he took out a small leather hood and jesses. He fitted the hood over the bird’s head. The hawk cried out, suddenly blind, and dug her talons more deeply into his gauntlet for support.

Navarre turned back to the monk. “If the Mass ends peacefully and the cathedral bells begin to toll again—you will know I have failed.”

“And . . . if I hear the warning bells?” Imperius asked.

“Either way—I’m a dead man.”

“And . . . what then?” Imperius said carefully.

Navarre walked back to him, carrying the hawk; he handed him the jesses and Isabeau’s dagger. “Take her life,” he said. “Make it quick and painless.”

Imperius drew back, appalled. “I can’t do that,” he whispered.

“Don’t, then!” Navarre said furiously. “Let her live without me, and damn her to a half-life of eternal pain and misery!”

Imperius stared at him, stunned by the realization that the end had finally come, in spite of all his prayers, in spite of everything he had tried to do to stop it.

Navarre looked up at the clouds, and back at him again. “Have you ever considered, old man, that this was what God intended all along?” He handed the hawk to Imperius and turned away abruptly. Crossing to the stallion, he reached into a saddlebag again and pulled out his captain’s helmet. He touched the golden wings briefly with his fingertips before he settled the helmet onto his head. Then he drew out Isabeau’s blue silk dress, which he had carried with him for so long, a futile promise. Within its folds he found the lock of her hair that he had kept as well. He tore a strip of fragile cloth from the dress’s hem; he tied the ribbon of cloth gently about the ringlet of her hair. And then he bound it to his left arm, next to his heart. He swung up into the saddle. Turning Goliath, he rode out of the alley without looking back.

Behind him, the hawk gave an anguished shriek as she sensed his departure. Navarre winced, feeling as if his heart were being torn out of him. He reached the alley end and turned into the street, heading for the cathedral.

Standing alone in the alley, Imperius bowed his head as Navarre disappeared. Remembering that this was the holy day of confession and repentance, he crossed himself and murmured, “Oh, Holy Father, deliver me from my sins, and these good people from the curse which afflicts them. You have seen fit to bring us all this far, and we humbly place our lives in the infinite mercy of Your everlasting grace.”

C H A P T E R
Nineteen

T
he congregation of clergy stood in place at last in the great cathedral hall. A thousand small rustlings and shiftings filled the expectant silence as two acolytes slowly pushed the great doors shut. The Bishop’s bodyguard fitted a heavy key into the gold-plated lock.

The recitation of the Mass began. As Phillipe heard the cathedral’s hall fill with chanting voices, he pushed upward on the grating again. This time it did not budge. Startled, he sank back, peering up through the opening. A pair of knobby legs clad in bright red stockings, a cassock, and a walking stick were all that he could see. The Bishop’s secretary was standing on top of the grate.

Phillipe pressed back against the sloping wall, his fist tapping nervously on his drawn-up knees. How long had it been? How long could he stand to hang on here, waiting for this oaf to grow restless and move? He wiped his face with a grimy hand. What if Navarre was already on his way?

Silently he drew his dagger and pushed the blade up through the grate. Twisting it, he pricked the Bishop’s secretary on the foot. One red-stockinged leg rose out of sight as the secretary scratched his ankle. The foot settled back onto the grating. Phillipe jabbed again, harder.

The secretary hopped aside with a yelp of pain and horror. Another pair of feet, sandals and a friar’s white robe, rushed to his aid. “Sir! What is it?” the friar gasped.

“Rats!” the secretary said shrilly. He drove his walking stick down through the grate. Phillipe jerked back as it missed his face by a fraction of an inch.

“A scandal,” the friar murmured. Phillipe listened to the sound of retreating footsteps with a sigh of profound relief. He looked up once more; his view of the rose window was completely clear. He pushed the grating aside and wriggled through into the unoccupied side chapel.

Crouching down, he looked toward the great doors at the rear of the cathedral, and frowned. It was too far away—he would never get that far unnoticed, looking and smelling the way he did. He glanced around the chapel nervously; his eyes fell on a coarse white robe and a pile of baskets left in a corner by some hurried acolyte. He slipped quietly across the room and pulled the robe on over his muddy rags.

Picking up a basket, he drifted out into the gathering of clergy who stood patiently in the back of the crowded hall. Keeping his head bowed and holding the basket before him, he murmured softly, “Alms for the poor . . . God is watching . . . alms for the poor . . .” Most of the clerics recoiled from him in mild disgust, but one priest flipped a coin into his empty basket.

Phillipe started in pleasant surprise. “Thank you, Father,” he muttered. “Make a note of him, Lord . . . Alms for the poor . . .” He moved on toward the door, biting the coin speculatively.

Outside in the square, Marquet looked up at the cloud-filled sky, trying without success to guess the hour, and whether it would rain. He sat with his troop before the cathedral, waiting. Navarre still had not come; and yet he was certain that his enemy was in the city. He felt it in his bones.

He glanced down as another of his guardsmen rode into the square to report on their search of the city. He returned the guard’s salute impatiently.

“All the men have reported in, sir. Except Jouvet.” The guard looked away uneasily. “We . . . can’t find him.”

Marquet frowned as his own unease increased tenfold. He turned to his lieutenant, a youth he had promoted into Jehan’s position because he knew how to obey orders—and because he had never served under Navarre. “No one enters or leaves this cathedral until the Mass is ended, Lieutenant,” he ordered. “You’re in command now.” The lieutenant saluted eagerly. Marquet turned his back on the young officer’s enthusiasm and rode out of the square at a gallop.

Marquet cantered his stallion through the streets, searching rooftops and doorways and alleys as he rode toward the place where Jouvet had last been seen.

And as Marquet rode away from the cathedral square, Navarre turned another corner; that much closer to his meeting with destiny.

Inside the cathedral, Phillipe wove his way through the last of the clergy at the back of the hall. He slipped quietly behind a pillar, looking toward the heavy doors. Beside his knee on the pillar’s base a stone wolf stood on its hind legs, peering eternally at something above his head. Phillipe looked up curiously, and saw the hawk carved on the pillar’s capital, its wings spread for flight, frozen in stone. Glancing away down the hall, he realized that all the columns in the vast cathedral were ringed with wolves gazing up in eternal longing at flightless hawks. Holy-day pennants of black-and-white silk splashed with crimson hung suspended before the pillars—the colors of the Church, the colors of life and death.

He shuddered, and looked back again at the heavy cathedral doors, his face set with determination. The carven faces of nameless saints watched him silently from niches along the walls. For the first time he actually saw the lock that he was here to open—gleaming gold, as massive and as solid-looking as the doors themselves. And just as exposed. He let his head fall back against the pillar, shutting his eyes for a long moment. Then, bending down, he pulled his dagger from his boot again with a sigh of resignation. Behind him, the entire congregation knelt down in a responsive prayer. Crouched low, he darted across the open space to the door. He stuck the dagger’s tip into the keyhole and began to feel for the mechanism inside.

Meanwhile, Marquet rode slowly down another city street, nearing the place where Jouvet had last been seen. He glanced into one more of the endless alleyways as he passed; suddenly pulled his horse up short, frowning, and turned in. At its end he found the abandoned cart that had caught his eye, and the dead body of Jouvet. He dismounted and yanked the arrow from the dead man’s chest. He studied the fletching and the bloody tip. Then he vaulted back into his saddle and galloped out of the alleyway, heading toward the cathedral, his gut feeling now a deadly certainty.

Behind him in the empty alley, Imperius peered out of a shadowed doorway with the hawk on his arm, his face lined with concern.

Phillipe worked desperately at the lock, getting nowhere. The mechanism was too large and stiff for the slim blade of his dagger to budge. But he couldn’t fail now . . . he didn’t dare. If he could only have a few more minutes, uninterrupted . . .

Behind him the congregation rose to its feet as the prayer ended. He straightened up and turned around, pressing back against the door. The clerics all still faced the altar, even the Bishop. He wiped his sweating face on his sleeve and turned back, probing the lock more mercilessly.

But one man in the congregation was not facing the altar. The Bishop’s bodyguard stood discreetly to one side, his short sword hidden beneath his robes, his gaze scanning the crowd. His eyes widened with sudden interest at the unexpected sight of someone standing in the shadows by the doors. The figure was only dimly lit, but he could see enough to realize that whoever stood there had his back turned to the altar. The bodyguard put a hand on his sword hilt and began to drift slowly and unobtrusively through the edge of the murmuring crowd, heading for the rear of the cathedral.

Navarre rode out of the side street into the cathedral square. He reined in the stallion; he sat motionless, studying the familiar view of the cathedral’s arched and curving walls of stone, the elite troop of mounted guardsmen fanned out across the square before him. He watched their faces freeze with disbelief as they spotted him; saw them glance at each other in sudden uncertainty. He knew most of the faces as well as they knew his.
“Navarre . . . Navarre . . .”
He heard his name spread from man to man like a sigh.

Marquet was nowhere in sight, Navarre noted, with fleeting disappointment. The lieutenant in charge, a fresh-faced youth he did not recognize, looked right and left in open distress as he searched in vain for his captain.

Navarre started forward, Isabeau’s token fluttering brightly against his black sleeve as he rode across the silent square. He halted the stallion again when less than twenty feet separated him from the line of guards.

The lieutenant swallowed visibly, his eyes riveted on Navarre’s winged helmet. “Put away your sword, Navarre,” he said, with creditable determination, meeting Navarre’s gaze at last. “Then dismount. You are . . . my prisoner,” he finished weakly, as Navarre stared at him, unmoving. The lieutenant glanced back over his shoulder, as if he were unsure even of how his men would respond to his orders.

Navarre searched the line of guardsmen with his own eyes, found them all staring at him, their faces tight with indecision. Navarre took a deep breath. “As your captain who was,” he said, “and through God’s Grace will be once again—as a man who treated each one of you with respect—I ask you to let me pass.”

The line of men did not move; but he saw swords quietly lowered, and the tension ease in face after face. He started forward again.

“Stop where you are!” the young lieutenant shouted hoarsely.

Navarre did not stop.

The lieutenant’s jaw muscles twitched. “I have my orders!”

Navarre kept riding. All at once the lieutenant raised his sword, spurring his horse forward. Navarre swung his own sword as the other man charged him and parried the lieutenant’s clumsy blow easily. He jammed the hilt of his sword into the young officer’s stomach, knocking him from the saddle; his free hand wrenched the sword from the lieutenant’s grasp as he fell. The guardsman sprawled on the hard pavement, lay moaning with pain and surprise.

Navarre slung the captured sword out across the square toward the line of guards. He sat waiting, his head high, his eyes burning.

The line of guards parted silently, clearing his path to the cathedral doors. Looking straight ahead, Navarre urged Goliath forward toward the waiting entrance.

Behind the doors Phillipe worked frantically on the lock, as the muted sounds of challenge and battle reached him from out in the square. He heard the sound of iron-shod hooves ringing on the stone steps of the cathedral—heard the soft scrape of a sword being drawn behind him. He turned, and gasped as he saw the Bishop’s hulking bodyguard almost on top of him, saw the bodyguard’s sword rising above his head. He jammed his blade into the lock with a last desperate thrust.