Maze of Moonlight (29 page)

“Oh . . . I see. . . .” Berard nodded as he refilled Jehan's cup. “But you see what I mean. You go behind the waterfall, climb the ladder . . .” Jehan was looking at him with an impatient expression. “But . . . I'm getting it all wrong, aren't I?”

“There's no ladder involved.” Jehan's voice was slurring, his eyes drooping. “The cave comes out at the well in the courtyard.”

“Ah, yes.”

“The Elves used it all the time.”

Berard was suddenly speechless. Elves?

“They'd come late at night,” Jehan continued. “It was amazing: you couldn't even see them in the moonlight. Their clothes, you know. Green and gray. Blended in with the stones. Father and Aunt Catherine liked them. Mother didn't, but she went along with it.

Berard was staring. If Jehan was raving like this, then how much of what he had said about the secret passage could be correct? “They . . . ah . . . used the tunnel?”

Jehan chuckled. “All the time.”

“And the tunnel . . .”

“Goes up from the spring. They were nice people, really. Natil could certainly play the harp. . . .” He stared gloomily at the torchlight as cheering broke out among the men gathered outside. “
They
probably don't approve of me, either.”

Berard groped. “I'm sure that . . .their feelings are in keeping with . . . ah . . . their feelings . . .”

“I suppose so.” Jehan finished the wine in his cup. Berard did not offer a refill. The lad had obviously had too much already. Elves, of all things!

“Why don't you go to bed, Jehan?” he said. “I think sleep will do you world of good.”

“Yes . . . bed . . .” Jehan eyed Joanna. The girl gave him an anxious look and curled up even more tightly.

He left the tent, staggering. Berard watched as he wandered drunkenly away, threw up several times, and finally crawled into his own tent. Did he have a girl in there? Maybe. But if he did, she would be cleaning up after him for a while.

Joanna uncurled at a word and a slap, and Berard smiled as he nestled between her thighs. “Ah, my little sweet,” he said, sliding his hands beneath her smooth shoulders, “you shouldn't be so frightened. It turns out that you've come to be among religious men.” He listened to the singing and the clapping that came from the roistering men of the Fellowship. “Pilgrims, in fact.”

***

Ruprecht insisted that Christopher take a sizable escort when he went to see Yvonnet. Christopher countered that anything that looked remotely like a threat would ensure that Yvonnet would stay safe within the Château. They compromised: a small party, but large enough to befit Christopher's status as a leading baron of Adria.

Christopher needed clothes, too, as did Natil. And though the baron of Aurverelle fretted over the resulting delay, he saw the wisdom in Ruprecht's counsel. As much as Yvonnet would be terrified by a show of force, he would be equally unimpressed by a ragged beggar of a nobleman and an equally bedraggled harper—though Christopher doubted that Natil could ever look bedraggled, even in sackcloth.

It was after a week had passed, therefore, that the party left Maris, and four more days before they took over an inn two miles from the north gate of Hypprux and sent the frightened host to the Château to request the honor of entertaining the baron Yvonnet a'Verne. Christopher made sure the invitation was polite, but he also made sure to include enough of a veiled reference to the status of Lengram a'Lowins vis-à-vis the baronial bed to ensure that Yvonnet lost no time granting such a . . . polite request.

The business was delicate and of extreme urgency. Alone with Yvonnet in an upper chamber, then, without secretaries or witnesses of any kind, Christopher first casually made sure that the door was barred, then turned and smashed a jeweled dagger into the tabletop directly in front of Yvonnet's face. “
You damned idiot!
”

His unexpected action, coupled with his reputation for madness, produced the desired effect. Yvonnet was terrified. Mutely, he stared at the dagger as the jeweled hilt quivered in the afternoon light.

“What have I done/” he said, his basso dwindling of a sudden to a whisper.

Christopher kept his rage firmly in place, gesturing widely, stomping up and down the room. “I was asking myself the same question! Just when I think I'm dragging your little promiscuous prick into some semblance of family honor, you have to go and stick it somewhere else!” Weighing his actions carefully, Christopher decided to kick a chair across the room. It tumbled and cracked in two quite satisfactorily when it hit the opposite wall.

“I . . . have soldiers . . . downstairs. . . .” Yvonnet's basso dwindled even more.

Christopher leaned across the table, flicked the dagger with his finger. It quivered again. “So do I.”

“What . . . do you want me to do?”

Christopher told him. The companies of mercenaries were to be gotten out of Adria as quickly as possible, regardless of costs, promises, or humiliation. Maris and Aurverelle would help. Shrinerock, doubtless, could also be counted on.

“You'll have to work fast,” said Christopher. “They're not going to be satisfied with Ypris for long. They'll start to splinter, and then we'll have different companies going off in different directions . . .”
Saint Blaise! Dear Lady, Vanessa is in Saint Blaise!
“. . . raping and pillaging and leveling towns. Did you know that they sometimes break up mills and ovens and tools just for the pleasure of destroying them? What in heaven's name were you thinking of when you dragged twenty-four companies right up to your doorstep?”

Yvonnet suddenly glared at him. “I was thinking of my soul, Christopher. Perhaps you ought to think of yours.”

“And what's that supposed to mean?”

“I saw the Maris livery on your men. You've been dealing with Ruprecht.”

Christopher sighed, passed a hand over his face. “Yes, yes . . . the Antichrist. Excuse me, I forgot.”

Yvonnet's face was rapidly giving way to anger. “
I
don't forget,” he said. “The schism is the greatest challenge to the Church of Christ in all of recorded time. The Devil is triumphing while people like you go about . . .” He pulled the dagger out of the table, sneered, tossed it away. “. . . playing with knives.”

Christopher's initiative was slipping. He let it go, dropping one weapon for another. “I imagine you don't forget something else, too,” he said. “Like who sleeps in your bed.”

Yvonnet went white, then red. “You wouldn't dare!”

Christopher let the silence grow, let it lengthen painfully. Yvonnet began to look uncomfortable. Christopher said nothing. Finally: “I'm mad. Remember?”

Yvonnet groped for a suitable counter. “No one would believe you.”

“Do you really depend on that, dear cousin?”

“I—”

“Your immortal
soul
, dear cousin?”

“I—”

“Rome might not be overly enthused at being supported by someone who is a—”

“Stop it.”

“Let's see. What shall we call it?”

“Stop, please.”

“Something delicate?”

“Not so loud . . . please . . .”

“Delicate and flowery?” Christopher leaned across the table. “Or something gross and putrescent, like the smell you get when you've been sticking your—”

“
Stop it!
”

Christopher stopped.

Yvonnet was pale, shaking, breathing heavily. He collapsed back in his chair, fanning himself. “It's bloody hot in here.”

“Yes,” said Christopher. “It's unseasonably warm.”

“You're an evil man, Christopher.”

Christopher folded his arms. Evil? Compared to what? Given the inanities he was seeing from Ruprecht and Yvonnet, Natil's heterodoxy, whatever it was, was looking more and more attractive.
Lady,
he thought,
would you entertain devotion from a madman who's lost his faith?

Yvonnet, thoroughly broken, was still fanning himself. “But it's too late. Most of the companies have already dispersed. I don't know where they've gone.”

The battle had been against time, and time had won. Christopher thought of what could happen, of what was now almost inevitable. His temper snapped. “And you didn't even think to find out, did you? You didn't care at all, did you?” He grabbed Yvonnet by the front of his tunic, hauled him, large as he was, half out of his chair, shook him until his eyes glazed. “You were just worried about your soul. That's what's important, isn't it? No one and nothing else, just your
filthy . . . little . . . goddam . . . soul
!”

He flung the big man back into the chair, turned, and stalked towards the door. Yvonnet struggled with his wits. “What . . . what are you going to do?” he said.

Christopher flung the bar out of its holders and threw the door open. “The Lady help me,” he said, “I'm going to try to clean up your mess. And when I do, I'm going to make sure that you never forget what it means to be a delAurvre.”

Yvonnet goggled. “But I'm not a delAurvre.”

Christopher was already stomping down the stairs. “That's all right,” he shouted over his shoulder. “
I
am.”

Christopher reached out with a booted foot and prodded a charred beam—all that was recognizably left of the north gate of Ypris. “They were thorough,” he said. “I'll grant them that.”

The morning air was still. Crows called harshly from somewhere nearby. Natil stood mutely, her harp in her hands. On her face was a mixture of tragedy and sorrow. “It is the work of men.”

It was an odd choice of words, but Christopher agreed with her. Beyond the beam lay a motionless sea of blackened ruins, crumbling walls, rubble-choked streets; and the clinging odor of charred and smoldering wood hung in the warm air . . . along with the sweet stench of death and decay. The free companies did not appear to have been overly concerned with such things as Christian burial.

Christopher was reminded of Nicopolis: the same futility, the same wanton destruction. But the plateaux to the south of the Danube had been strewn with the bodies of men who—whether their reasons had been foolish or altruistic—had come to fight willingly. Here it was different.

Angry, Christopher kicked the beam. It turned over once and then lay still. “They didn't have to level it,” he said.

Natil's voice was hollow. “The companies doubtless acted under orders.”

“From Yvonnet.” If the baron of Hypprux had not counted for nearly a third of the alliance, Christopher would have simply killed him at the inn. “Cesena had Robert of Geneva, and now Ypris has Yvonnet a'Verne.”

There was not much to examine in the city. There was not much of the city left. A few shacks that had managed to survive the flames, one or two plazas that were not completely filled with tumbled plaster and stone . . . that was all. The festering bodies that lay everywhere—picked at by crows and ravens—soon, though individually horrific, blended
en masse
into a numbing sense of general devastation.

Christopher gave up on the town and turned to the trampled fields that surrounded it. Here lay the marks of the free company encampments, and together with Natil and Ruprecht's soldiers, he examined tracks, fire pits, dropping-covered patches that had obviously been used for stabling horses, a few scattered pegs and discarded ropes left from tents and pavilions.

At least one rope appeared to be made of silk. Yvonnet had hired the best.

The tracks, however, were mostly too muddled and trampled to give any indication whether they had been made coming or going. One sizable group, though, had clearly headed to the south.

“Belroi?” said Christopher.

“It is likely, messire,” said the captain of the guards. “Belroi is a wealthy city.”

“Too wealthy,” said Christopher. “If I recall aright, it has quite a wall about it, and good men to defend it.”

“That is true, messire.”

“We should probably notify them in any case. Though I don't doubt that they've already noticed this little affair.”

“I can send some of my men, messire.”

“Yes. Do that.” Christopher watched Natil as she touched, sadly, a felled willow tree. Well away from both the fighting and the encampment, it had apparently been hewn down simply because it was living and because it was there.

The harper's calm face was troubled.
It is the work of men.

“I'll send word to Baron Paul delMari when I get back to Aurverelle,” said Christopher.

“As you wish, messire.”

In a few minutes, two of the men galloped off to the south. Christopher hoped that they would reach Belroi without incident, but with the countryside now harboring the scattered free companies, hope was about all he could do.

He sent the remaining guards back to Maris with a message to Ruprecht to prepare for sudden action, and he and Natil struck off to the southwest, cutting across the trampled flax fields. Aurverelle was comparatively close, and Christopher wanted to reach it as soon as possible. He had his own preparations to make.

Time was the enemy. The free companies had no plans other than looting, no objective beyond profit. They could strike anywhere, at any time, and then be gone within days. Holding a counterforce in constant readiness under such circumstances was useless: the normal period of feudal service for vassals and tenants was only forty days per year. Hence, the alliance had to identify a stricken region quickly, call up its forces, and strike before the companies could disperse. Not an easy task at all, even without the problem of Yvonnet's instability.

But while Yvonnet was unstable, Ruprecht was suspicious, and the papal schism lay waiting like a flock of crows at the edge of a battlefield. Christopher was doing his best, but he could not shake the feeling that his best was not even remotely enough. He had, after all, done his best at Nicopolis, too.

Night was falling as he and Natil skirted the north edge of Malvern Forest. “We'll have to stop for the night,” said Christopher. “I think there's a village ahead, but it won't be very large. We have a choice: vermin, or ditches.”

Natil's face was shadowed by the dusk and by what she had seen that day. “Vermin live as they live,” she said, “just like people. But piles of bracken and sheltering trees are far better.”