Maze of Moonlight (23 page)

“Ever hear of mice with fangs, cousin?” muttered Christopher. But he knew he was in trouble. He was separated from his guards, unfamiliar with the layout of the Château, and he did not even have a sword.

He turned and started back toward the servant's wing, but more footsteps were approaching from that direction. Hesitating only for an instant, he ducked behind a hanging just as a group of servants came in, picked up a load of dishes, and left. The sound of boots and mail grew louder.

Christopher stuck his head out from behind the hanging and was about to run when he heard someone else coming. He pulled his head back in as another servant entered the room . . . on tiptoe. As Christopher watched, unseen, the man looked about carefully, seized an uncut loaf of bread, and thrust it into his tunic. Suddenly aware of the approaching soldiers, he started, looked for some escape, and finding none, darted behind the same hanging that concealed the baron of Aurverelle.

He was unconscious in a moment. Christopher held him and kept him from crashing to the floor as the soldiers arrived.

Lengram was complaining. “Well, damn you,
look
for him.”

And to Christopher's horror, the soldiers broke up into twos and threes and spread out for a thorough search. One pair began to poke about the banquet room, their efforts obviously half-hearted. Christopher here? Nonsense.

And then one lifted the tapestry and found himself confronted with the unexpected sight of an unconscious man flying straight at him.

The servant was a clumsy projectile, but the soldier went down. Loudly. As his companions stared, then shouted for help, Christopher made for the stairwell, darted up a floor, then suddenly cursed himself when he realized that he was heading straight for the rooms that Yvonnet had given him. Of
course
they were going to be looking there.

Only one flight up, then, not two, and he darted into the corridor that presented itself. In the distance, he heard more footsteps, the clang of a sword against the wall. But he had been followed up the stairs by the second soldier, and the man was just sucking in a breath to call for help when Christopher spun, set his feet, and smashed his gloved fist into the mail at the man's throat. A muffled crunch of breaking cartilage, and the man fell, but the distant footsteps suddenly were not so distant. And now there was movement on the stairwell. A great deal of movement.

He grabbed the dying man's sword, shoved him into the shadows, and scurried for the marginal shelter of a window embrasure. He had been an idiot to come to Hypprux, but perhaps if he made an entirely glorious fight of it, people would tend to forget the idiocy.

“My lord,” came a soft voice from outside the window.

Christopher looked over his shoulder and saw a fair face framed by dark hair shot with silver. Blue eyes flashed.

Natil.

“What—?”

“Hurry, my lord.” And with a slender hand, she helped him out the window and onto a narrow ledge. Sixty feet away was the inner curtain wall. Forty feet down was the ground. Christopher tried hard not to look at the ground, but Natil, perched on the ledge, looked quite comfortable.

“What are you doing here, Natil?”

A smile. “Helping you, my lord.”

“How did you know where I was?”

The smile again: gracious, kind, but, inexplicably, a little sad. “I knew.”

And then he saw that she was clad in garments of green and gray—tunic and breeches and soft boots—that blended softly with the color of stone and night. She had tied back her hair and tucked it down the back of her collar, but her beloved harp was slung over her shoulder.

He shook his head, bewildered—only Natil would go climbing about on the outside of a castle with a harp—and was speculating about her probable life as a burglar when the two groups of Yvonnet's soldiers met in the corridor.

“Seen him?”

“No. Didn't he come this way?”

“Didn't see him.”

“Well, keep looking. And—“

The man Christopher had struck wheezed out his last breath with a rattling gurgle, and the soldiers gathered around him with oaths and ineffective help. “Run fetch the leech,” someone said at last.

“But he's dead.”

“Run fetch the leech anyway.”

“He'll just want to bleed him. And he's dead. It can't help.”

“Dammit, it can't hurt. Do what I say.”

Eventually, the physician showed up to recommend bleeding, and the body was hauled away. The soldiers turned once again to the task of hunting down the baron of Aurverelle. “Where's he gone?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn't be here now, would I?”

The corridor finally cleared, and Natil rose. “We have a few minutes before they search this hall again.”

“We have to get out of here,” said Christopher. “Yvonnet wants Aurverelle and he'd be very pleased if I suddenly disappeared. Or died. An accident, you know.”

“Of course.” Natil looked into the corridor, nodded. “We will have to escape.” With unnerving grace and silence, she swung into the corridor, then reached back and helped Christopher in. “And we have Ranulf and the men to think of, too.” She paused, considered, looked up and down the corridor. “Do you want to worry about the horses?”

Christopher gaped at her. The horses? “I'll be satisfied with our skins. Preferably intact.”

Natil nodded. “Then let us go.”

She moved with an uncanny surety, slipping along corridors, waiting for search parties to pass by stairwells and corridors as though she anticipated their movements, occasionally beckoning Christopher out onto a ledge to wait while servants and soldiers argued and exchanged reports a few feet away.

Somehow Natil was guiding him through the Château with complete impunity, as though she read the future movements of the soldiers even as those movements were being planned. Given her behavior at times, he wondered, too, whether she could also see in the dark.

Quite a thief. He shuddered. She probably could have carted away all of Aurverelle between compline and lauds without anyone noticing.

A short time later, she pulled him into a cul-de-sac. “My lord, you must choose. We can either escape, you and I, and leave Ranulf and the men—I doubt that Yvonnet would be harsh with them—or we can attempt to take them with us.”

Her eyes flashed even in the dark. Christopher heard, distantly, muffled voices, slamming doors. It was late, and the searchers were baffled and angry. He was not as sure as Natil that Ranulf and the men would be spared. But escape for fifteen was more of a distinct problem than escape for two, not to mention the fact that the Aurverelle men were more than likely sleeping in the barracks with Yvonnet's soldiers. “I don't know how on earth we'd get them out. Unless . . .”

It was an insane thought. But he was, after all, mad. And he was angry enough to consider further madness.

“ . . . we had Yvonnet with us.”

Natil nodded. “I believe that would be the only way.”

Christopher eyed her. Quite a thief. And, as far as he could tell, absolutely loyal to him. William of Normandy had conquered England with Taillefer at his side. What might he have done with Natil! “You can take me to him, can't you?”

“I can.”

Of course she could. For a moment, Christopher wished that his grandfather had had someone like Natil. Maybe things would have been better. Maybe Roger would not have been mad.

Inwardly, he shook his head. Madness was not only unpalatable, it was indigestible. He simply could not accept it. “Lead the way, harper,” he said. “I think it's about time I had a little chat with my dear cousin.”

Out a window then, and up the wall. Natil climbed like a monkey, her garb invisible in the moon shadow, the strings of her harp glinting a soft gold in the starlight. Christopher followed more slowly, his shoulders and arms aching as he felt for patches of old and crumbly mortar that would offer a finger-hold.

Across a roof, down a drain. A stone gargoyle stared into Christopher's face as he locked his legs around a pipe. “I imagine you're one of my relations, too,” he said.

“Shhh,” said Natil from below.

And a few minutes later, they were crouching to either side of a wide window. It was early September, but the weather was still warm, and the shutters and casements were open.

Natil nodded. Yvonnet's bedroom.

Christopher waved his thanks and stood up slowly, steadying himself with a hand on the shutters. He gestured at the room within, raised an eyebrow. Natil nodded again. Yvonnet was there. Christopher did not know how she knew, but he accepted that she did, just as he accepted that she had known about Yvonnet's plot and his own decision to look for Amos.

He wondered what else she knew. Probably too much. Damn, but she reminded him of Vanessa sometimes.

But now he was hearing a deep voice from the room. It was Yvonnet. At first, Christopher could not understand it, but then he realized that his cousin was crying: deep, mannish sobs, half muffled as though with cloth.

Startled, he glanced at Natil. She shook her head, sadness gleaming in her eyes. Natil, it seemed, could feel pity for anyone.

Christopher strained his ears, began to make out whispered words.

“I've done it, Lengram,” Yvonnet was saying. “I've done it. There's no going back. I can't help it. And what will God say to me when I die?”

Lengram's tone was that of a mother shushing a fretful child. “He'll say that you did well to preserve the Church of Rome. That will . . . ah . . . count for a great deal.”

“You and I are bad enough, Lengram. But fratricide? What will He say to that?”

“Christopher's not your brother.”

“He's close enough.”

Christopher wrinkled his nose. At present, even
cousin
was too close for him.

Yvonnet continued to sob, genuinely frightened. Sword in hand, with Natil behind him, Christopher eased into the bedroom. The spill of moonlight was faint, but it was enough for him to be able to see the tangle of sheets and lovers' limbs on the bed.

“And I can't stop it, Lengram,” said Yvonnet. “I can't. I couldn't stop with Martin, no matter how he pleaded—he wanted it anyway, I know—and I can't stop this with Christopher now.”

Natil was already slipping across the room to the door. Her pale hands went to the latch, made sure it was locked. She looked to Christopher, nodded.

“But you want Aurverelle, don't you, Yvonnet?” said Lengram.

“Of course I want it. But I don't want to do such a thing as . . . as . . .”

Christopher said it for him. “As kill your dear cousin, Yvonnet?”

Silence. Hoarse, labored breathing.

“Get up.” The contempt was loud in Christopher's voice. “Get up, you
damned
coward.”

Slowly, Yvonnet disentangled himself from Lengram and staggered to his feet. Strong but heavy, hirsute to the point of ursine shagginess, he held his big arms clutched against his chest like a woman caught in adultery. “Christopher,” he managed.

“
Dear Cousin
Christopher. As you so often reminded me.”

Lengram was sitting up, the sheet wrapped about him. “I will . . . ah . . . shout. You'll never get out of the Château alive.”

Unnoticed, Natil had slipped behind him, and the chamberlain's eyes widened when he felt her hand on his hair and the touch of a knife at his throat. “Say nothing,” whispered the harper. “Do nothing.” Her voice was calm, with just a touch of pity.

Yvonnet, trembling, hung his head. “What are you going to do?”

Christopher shook his head. “The question would be better put, dear cousin, as: 'What are
we
going to do?' And the answer is that
we
are going to take a little trip.” Yvonnet lifted his head. “Yes,” said Christopher. “A little hunting trip. We have to start early. Very early. And we're taking Ranulf and my men with us.”

Yvonnet started to speak.

“Shut up,” said Christopher. “You won't need any of those dandies you call attendants. Ranulf and the men will suffice. And . . .” He glanced at Natil, grinned without mirth. “And our horses, too.”

Yvonnet stared.

“Call off the search, dear cousin,” said Christopher. “And send word to my men that we're leaving immediately.”

Yvonnet was weeping.

Christopher stepped forward and laid the point of his sword against Yvonnet's naked chest. “Call,” he said, “or I swear that I'll put you on the floor with a hole in your heart.”

Shaking, with Christopher's sword at his back, Yvonnet went to the door and called.

Christopher returned to Aurverelle just ahead of an autumn storm that pelted the fields first with rain, then with hail, then with sleet, and quickly churned the just-sown earth into a sea of cold mud. Standing as they did on a high outcropping of rock, the castle and the town were relatively unaffected, but the bad weather continued for several weeks, and the lowlands—and the tenants and crofters who lived in them—were soon flooded.

Another baron might have holed up in his fortress and waited for sunshine, but not Christopher. He gathered castle folk and townsfolk and took them down to help; and together with the peasant farmers they labored in the pouring rain, dredging out canals, repairing dikes and hedges, scrambling through the mud with loads of reeds for the thatchers. It was brutal, cold work that demanded no skill, only endurance and will, but the baron of Aurverelle, mindful of his Kingdom, labored in the water and filth beside his people, as did his soldiers, his officers . . . and even his harper.

Despite bad weather and hard labor, Christopher felt rather good. He had evaded Yvonnet's clumsy attempt to seize Aurverelle, and he had done it in a manner so devastating to the baron of Hypprux that, before Christopher had released him some miles from his city, Yvonnet had, with frightened and shamefaced tears, pledged his support for the alliance.

Christopher knew that Yvonnet was a dubious ally. Fighting with his own cities over schismatic alignment, the baron of Hypprux could hardly be depended upon to keep his word. But he was a start, and since word of his pledge had already begun to spread throughout Adria, the lesser baronies that were aligned with him—Friex, Kirtel, Bomar, and others—had followed.