Maze of Moonlight

ROC

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books USA Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane

London W8 5TZ, England

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood

Victoria, Australia

Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue

Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,

Auckland, 10, New Zealand

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

First published by Roc, an imprint of New American Library,

a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.

First Printing, March, 1993

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright © Gael Baudino, 1993

All rights reserved

Registered Trademark—Marca Registrada

Printed in the United States of America

Lors li commence a faire saus

Bas et petits et grans et haus

Primes deseur et puis desos,

Puis se remet sor ses genols,

Devers l'ymage, et si l'encline:

“He!” fait il, “tres douce reine

Par vo pitie, par vo francise,

Ne despisies pas mon servise!”

-Tombeor de Notre Dame

Massing in the east, dark above the restless and bare branches of Malvern Forest, roiling above the distant plains and mountains, redolent of storms, clouds surged westward across Adria like the cold hand of a miser greedy for another gold coin

Pytor leaned on the parapet of the curtain wall and squinted into the stiff wind. It had been a cold autumn, full of rain, and now, winter having sent in its vanguard of sleet and hail even before the crops had been gathered, the fields were damp, ragged with the marks of a harvest brought in hastily and in the midst of evil weather, turgid and muddy with the peasants' attempts at early sowing. The late afternoon sunlight held no warmth, and these clouds foretold yet another night of cold and damp, a night filled with rain and the drip of water from innumerable leaden gutters.

Worse than in Novgorod. At least there the boards in the street kept your feet dry.

But there was nothing in Novgorod for him save slavery and perhaps death, and if the streets were not boarded here in Aurverelle, he could at least afford good boots. Perhaps that was an improvement. Perhaps that was desirable. Perhaps not. God knew better than he. In any case, it was what he had, and he would have to be satisfied with it.

But he reminded himself that what he had might well not last for much longer, and as he had once walked from Russia to Adria, so he might well have to walk again: from Adria to other lands, other kingdoms. France, perhaps. Or Castile. Or even farther. For though Castle Aurverelle seemed solid and secure, its walls thick, its stores and its armories sufficient to equip and feed a thousand men and most of the surrounding town for a month, it was in actuality tottering precariously between one existence and another.

Castle Aurverelle had no master.

It would have been easier, perhaps, had Baron Christopher simply died in the carnage at Nicopolis. It certainly would have been understandable: most everyone had died, save for the French nobles who had organized the crusade, convinced the two rival popes to pause in their constant exchange of excommunications long enough to proclaim it, and finally led it to bloody defeat in distant Bulgaria. Christopher could have perished in the forest of sharpened stakes that had been planted by the wily Turks to foil the charge. Or fought to the death like Philippe de Bar and Odard de Chasseron.

But that had not happened. Christopher was, instead, missing, and had been so since the battle. Many had died, and a few had returned, but Christopher delAurvre had vanished, and the uncertainty of his fate had placed the entire estate of Aurverelle and everyone in it square in the weighing pan of teetering balances.

Pytor turned away from the battlements. God knew where Christopher was, but it obviously did not please Him to tell anyone. Pytor would have to be satisfied with that, too.

He had almost reached the entrance to the south tower when an apple core suddenly descended like a meteor and struck him squarely on the forehead. He looked up to see a mocking grin from the furry creature that was clinging to an upper crenel by a hand and a tail. Cursing in florid Russian, Pytor looked for something to throw, but the monkey had already vanished with a screech; and so the seneschal of Aurverelle was left to mop his face with a large hand and make his way down the stairs of the tower, plunking his heavy boots down deliberately on each tread, contemplating the satisfaction he would gain from stamping a certain apple-throwing monkey into jelly. If he could ever catch it.

He continued to murder the monkey down to the second floor, and then he gave up and entered the dark corridor that led along the inside of the curtain wall. The wind moaned in the shutters and doors, and he could not help but recall—with a shiver—the story of the village girl who had refused the marriage night privileges of the last baron but one. As a result, Baron Roger had chained her to a bed in an upper room, used her, and left her to starve to death. On days like this, Pytor fancied that he could hear her screaming . . . far away. . . .

Pytor shuddered, stopped at a door halfway along the corridor. Bright lamplight seeped out from beneath it. Did he hear moans? Screams? He banished them with a knock and a shout. “Jerome!”

“Come.”

The office of the bailiff of Aurverelle possessed the largest glass windows in the castle save for those in the rooms of the baron's residence, and the light they admitted, eked out this lowering afternoon by the lamps that flared brightly around the walls, gave Jerome the illumination he needed for his accounts, his tallies, and his records. Headless though Aurverelle was, it lived still, and living for a barony, like living for anything else, involved money, commerce, labor: the greasy and sweat-soaked components of mortal life.

Jerome was old and dry, a Franciscan who had fled a schism-torn monastery. True to the old ways, he kept his vows without equivocation, and his brown robe looked as shabby and worn as his face. “I was just finishing up, Pytor,” he said, looking up from his accounting tables. “Is there something you want?”

Pytor stumped over to the bench on the other side of the desk, sat down heavily. “Food,” he said.

Jerome's eyes crinkled up in what passed for laughter. “The kitchen, I think, would be more appropriate.”

Pytor was used to Jerome's gentle teases. “Not for me,” he said. “For our people. You are chief bailiff. You have the accounts. Will there be enough to eat this winter?”

Jerome cast a look at the window. The clouds were still massing, overspreading Aurverelle. “You've been out looking at the fields, haven't you?”

“I've been looking at them for weeks, Jerome. This has been the worst harvest since I took service with the master's grandfather. The fields are wretched, the rains are already washing out the seeds, and . . . well?”

“Messire Christopher's people are loyal,” said Jerome. He pulled a roll of parchment from the rack of pigeon holes behind him. “The taxes have come in on schedule, the laggards are few. I can tell you about taxes.”

“I don't want to know about what they have paid. I want to know what they have left.”

Jerome spread the parchment out to reveal rows of neat columns painstakingly added and totaled and summed into tables with monkish diligence. Here, inked onto the scraped skin of a sheep, were the lives of the commoners of the Aurverelle estate—merchant and farmer, peasant and artisan—their economic existence reduced to a set of figures.

But Pytor found himself thinking that perhaps all of life had become like that: figures, tables, money. The war between France and England had collapsed into a temporary truce not because of any new-found pacifism on the part of either party, but as a result of simple financial exhaustion. And the mercenaries who were no longer paid from belligerent coffers had—simple economics, really—turned to brigandage, plundering a comfortable living from fields and towns already gutted by taxes and tithes. Even the Church had mired itself in questions of profit and loss.

Pytor watched as Jerome passed a finger down a column of figures, mumbling to himself. Was God like that, too? Grace counted out in florins and ducats? Salvation measured by the kilderkin, diker, and cartload?

Item: one Pytor of Medno, escaped
stradnik,
now seneschal of Aurverelle. Devout enough, but payments seriously in arrears. Recommended action . . .

Pytor shuddered.
Few saved, many damned,
the saying went. Who could afford salvation these days?

“What is left?” said Jerome at last. “Probably just enough to squeak through. I've seen a season or two like this in my time. It was just like this two years before the big drought, if you recall, and . . .” He looked up, stared at Pytor, blinked, stared again. “You have bits of apple all over your hair, Pytor.”

Pytor drew a hand across his head. The fruit was wet and mealy, and he scraped it off and threw it into the rushes on the floor. “It was the monkey again.”

Jerome chuckled. “It got me the other day. Ranulf's boys are still trying to catch it.”

“They have been trying for two years now and they still haven't got it.”

“Well . . . yes. It's a clever one.”

Pytor half turned towards the window. The gathering darkness had dimmed the light. “I wish that the beast had followed its bitch of a mistress into the grave.”

Jerome pursed his lips and was silent. No one in the castle disputed Pytor's opinion of the late baroness.

“If it were not for her, the master would not have gone away.”

“Yes . . . yes,” said Jerome softly. “I know. But Anna was pious, and Christopher was looking for . . .” He lifted his hand, and the parchment rolled up with a dry rustle. He shrugged. “Looking for something. I don't know what.”

Pytor ruminated. Then finally: “Food,” he said.

Jerome nodded. “Enough. Just.”

“Thank you,” said Pytor. He stood up.

“I'll have the provosts make inquiries in the villages, Pytor,” said the friar. “If there is any distress this winter, we'll hear about it.”

“Will we be able to do anything about it?”

Jerome shrugged. “Well, there are no tourneys to finance, no squires to knight, no grand progresses to equip, no wars to be fought.” He turned reflective at this last. “At least not at present,” he added. “If there is insufficient food to be had from our fields, I daresay food can be bought.”

Pytor bowed and turned to go, but stopped at the door. “Have you . . . have you heard anything . . .?”

Jerome shook his gray head. “No, Pytor. Nothing.”

Pytor bent his head. “You know, I have stopped praying for master's return.”

Jerome looked startled. “Indeed? But, Pytor, you—”

“I pray now only that he is happy.” Pytor lifted his head. “One can be happy in death, you know.”

“A doubtful proposition,” said Jerome somberly. “You must recall Raymond Diocrès.”

“I am an unlearned peasant and a runaway slave,” said Pytor stiffly. “I believe my master can do no wrong.”

Jerome nodded silently. Pytor left the office and went back into the hall, his eyes aching. It was hard to have hope, harder still to give it up.

About him, Castle Aurverelle was quiet. Gone were the parties, the dancing, the troupes of tumblers who had, once upon a time, come down from the passes across the Aleser to find themselves given a warm place by the fire and a chance to perform before the haughty but gracious baron of Aurverelle. The squires sent for nurturing and training had departed months ago, likewise the girls sent to Lady Anna: those who had survived the outbreak of plague that had taken the baroness and much of the town had gone home.

Stones, mortar, and the cold slumber of an ancient keep. Endless battlements and towers and stairs. More armor and weapons than the remaining men-at-arms really needed. More fields than a depleted peasantry could work. More rain (yes, it was drumming on the roofs even now, and Raffalds was bawling for the few remaining maids and kitchen boys to run and fasten the shutters) than anyone could use.

God knew best. Florins and ducats.
Few saved, many damned.

Dark thoughts, Pytor,
he told himself.
Dark thoughts.
The master never liked that studied, Russian melancholy any more than he liked being addressed in the third person.

But the master was gone—there was now no reason to give up any of it—and the dark thoughts accompanied Pytor down the corridors of Aurverelle as he wondered about his master and considered the future.