The Stone Rose (5 page)

Leaning her back against the south wall of the cathedral, she closed her eyes. The sun was warm on her skin, the air blessedly fresh. The house martins twittered in the eaves, and Father Jerome’s scratchy voice was muffled, just a low, distant drone. Gwenn focused her mind on the martins and drifted into a pleasant daydream.

A sharp cry jerked her back to reality. She strained her ears and heard the sound again. ‘Get ‘em out!’ Gwenn frowned. That cry came from within the cathedral. Surely even Father Jerome would not permit...?

‘Out! Out! Out!’ The chorus of harsh voices came from the vicinity of the choir. A strange sermon, this.

‘Purge!’ someone screeched.

‘Purify!’ cried another.

The shouts floated out via the west door, the one Gwenn had left by. She ran her hand – it was trembling – along the rough grain of the wood until she found a knot-hole in the wall. Applying her ear to it, she could hear the congregation shuffling and mumbling inside. It was sounding more nasty by the minute.

A man’s screech overrode the general mutterings. ‘They’re naught but leeches.’

‘Aye!’ A woman’s dissonant howl took up the cry. ‘Leeches! Get rid of them. They prey on our men! They seduce them onto the Devil’s path, and rob them of hard-won silver! What does that leave for
honest
women?’

‘Kill! Kill! Kill!’

‘Brothers! Sisters!’ Father Jerome shrilled over the swelling clamour. The hole in the planking did not permit Gwenn to see the monk, but she could visualise him, holding his thin white hands up for silence. ‘The Church cannot condone murder. We must endeavour to turn our erring sisters back onto the True Path. We must purge them of their sins.’

‘Nay, Father. Get rid of them!’

‘Cast them out!’

‘Aye. God cast Adam and Eve out of Eden.’

‘Out! Out! Out!’ An ugly chanting began. Where was kind Father Mark?

The hairs lifted on the back of Gwenn’s neck, and her senses sharpened. She was being watched. Straightening slowly, she backed from the wall. The air in the Close seemed to pulse with menace.

One of the youths who had been squeezing into the porch had come back into the square. He was tall, with shining flaxen hair grown below his ears. He was slender and perhaps a couple of years older than her brother, Raymond. He wore a sword. A sword? Surely he should not have been wearing his sword in God’s house? As Gwenn stared at him, her mouth went dry. Was he the source of the evil she felt? He did not
look
evil. His leather military tunic looked wrong on him. He was surely a handsome young farmer wearing borrowed attire. A sheep in wolf’s clothing? She hesitated.

‘Get away, girl! Run!’ the young man hissed, in heavily accented French. He waved his arms frantically in her direction.

He could not be talking to her... Astonishment pinned her to the spot.

‘Get away!’ he repeated, and his blue eyes seemed to be pleading with her.

He had kind eyes. He was not evil, Gwenn decided, not with eyes like that. Definitely a sheep in wolf’s clothing. But with his soldier’s gambeson and his sword, he must be a mercenary. If the sense of threat had not emanated from him, from whom had it come?

The fair youth glanced over his shoulder into the porch, and when he looked back at her, his face registered desperation. He meant her no harm, but the air was thick with evil, Gwenn could all but see it.

‘Run!’ the young man begged. ‘Run!’

The urgency in his eyes communicated itself to Gwenn, but before she had time to move, someone else stepped out, and this man also wore a padded military gambeson. ‘What is it, Fletcher? Found something interesting?’ the newcomer asked, in a bored voice.

‘N...no, Al...I mean, Captain le Bret. Only a girl.’

‘A girl, eh?’

The man named le Bret looked at Gwenn, and the heat went out of the sun. His hair was thick and dark, long for a soldier like his companion’s, and swept back to one side. His skin was swarthy. He had steely grey eyes and the sardonic lines etched into his face told Gwenn that here was a man who looked at the world and found nothing in it that was pleasing. He was unshaven and in need of a wash. He terrified her.

Alan found himself scowling at a small doll of a girl, dressed up in a blue gown that the Duchess Constance would have been proud to call her own. ‘Fletcher,’ he rubbed his chin, ‘it’s the one. She answers the pedlar’s description.’

‘Let her go, Al...Captain!’ Ned gabbled. ‘Look at her – a child. She can’t be involved.’

Alan felt a stir in the porch behind him. The zealots were about to break out, and the girl did not seem to be aware of the danger she was in. With an oblique smile, Alan bent to pick up a stone. Ned grabbed his sleeve. ‘You’re impertinent, Fletcher.’ Coldly, Alan shook his cousin off, his tone a reminder of the differences in their status. ‘As it happens, I agree with you. That’s why this,’ Alan took careful aim, ‘will see her on her way and out of danger.’ The stone flew across the square, and hit the girl in her stomach. Alan heard her whimper, but his stone had served its purpose and goaded her out of that perilous immobility, for she picked up her skirts and turned tail, running like a doe in the chase.

No sooner was she darting towards the maze of streets than the vast oak doors burst outwards.

‘Here come the hounds,’ Alan murmured, as the townsfolk charged out of the cathedral. ‘Good, honest men all.’ His lip curled. His men had done their work. He waved them to one side. There was no need for them to waste wind chasing the girl. The good people of Vannes, whipped up by Father Jerome, would see the task completed.

It had been one of the easiest commissions he’d taken on. Who would have thought that it would take so little to stir peace-loving townsfolk into a frenzy? All he’d done was station a man here and there in the crowd and have them call out the odd phrase or two of encouragement. A shout here, a shout there, and their work was done. Naturally, as excommunicate mercenaries, none of them should have put a toe past the threshold of a church, but the congregation had been so taken with Father Jerome that not one of them had noticed. And if they had – his scorn grew – none of them would have had the backbone to object.

He propped a strong shoulder against a painted angel on a carved porch pillar. ‘Look, Fletcher, all we have to do is sit back and watch. The God-fearing townsfolk will finish the job. It couldn’t be better. De Roncier won’t be implicated. He’ll be delighted. And to think they miscall us–’

‘I’m disgusted.’

Alan had never seen Ned look so miserable. Smiling, he shook his head. ‘That’s humanity for you, my lad,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘We’re all rotten when it comes down to it. We all have our price.’

But his cousin stood dumb at his side, staring after the girl. Alan saw him swallow. There was a flash of blue, brief as a glimpse of a kingfisher, and the girl disappeared round the corner.

A howl went up from the mob that had lately been a pious congregation. ‘There! Did you see?’ A man pointed.

‘What? Where?’

‘That’s Herevi’s daughter! The whore’s daughter!’ The crowd surged down the street, trawling for missiles as they went.

Ned understood that guttural Breton all too well, and his hand inched to his sword hilt.

Alan sighed and moved to block his way.

‘But the girl, Alan!’ In his anxiety, Ned had forgotten his cousin was his commander. ‘They’ll tear her to shreds!’

‘I think not. She looked fleet and she had a head start.’

‘I want to make sure she’s safe.’

‘You make one move after her, Edward, my lad, and I’ll see to it you forfeit every penny de Roncier owes you.’

Alan took Ned’s slack-jawed look of disbelief without a flinching. ‘You b...bastard!’ Ned got out, tripping over his tongue. ‘You bastard!’

Alan shrugged. The more enraged Ned became, the easier it was for him to maintain his distance. Long ago, Alan had discovered that an ability to remain unmoved in the face of other people’s anger was a great strength. ‘Aye,’ he agreed, blandly, ‘and you’d do best to remember that.’

The anger was slow to fade from the young trooper’s face. ‘My mother told me you were like this,’ he said, when he had calmed enough to speak coherently, ‘before we left England. She was against my going with you. But I admired my clever older cousin; I was envious of the skills your father had taught you, and longed to be as deft with the sword. God help me, I longed for your
sang-froid
. I looked up to you, and I thought my mother was wrong. I took your coldness for a mask which you chose to hide behind. But my mother was not wrong, was she, Alan? It’s more than a mask. It goes right through.’

Alan simply looked at Ned.

‘Jesu, Alan! You’ve a heart of stone!’

Alan let a corner of his mouth twitch upwards. ‘But I survive, Ned. And that’s the beginning and the end of it.’

Ned snorted.

Alan turned on his heel. ‘We should leave before St Clair hears about this. De Roncier doesn’t want a full-blown war on his hands. For God’s sake, pull yourself together, Ned. You’ve the makings of a good soldier if you don’t let your emotions master you.’

Though Alan would never confess it, he was relieved this distasteful business was concluded. With luck the townsfolk would scare the women witless, and they would fly Vannes. He wondered what they had done to incur de Roncier’s wrath; but when a few moments’ thought did not throw up a satisfactory answer, he fell to wondering what his next commission would entail. He hoped it would be a good, straight fight. Of course he’d do anything as long as he was paid for it – he was a professional – but affairs like this left him with a sour taste in his mouth for all that he affected otherwise. Privately, he agreed with Ned, it
was
a shabby affair. They had been setting a mob on a defenceless girl. She’d be bound to outrun them, but whatever angle you viewed it from, it remained a dirty business. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. A good, straight fight, that’s what he wanted. There was nothing quite like pitting yourself against an equal and winning.

A happy thought came to him. ‘Fletcher?’

‘Sir?’

‘Didn’t the good monk say today was Lady Day?’

‘He did. What of it?’

‘Lady Day is a Quarter Day.’ Alan signalled to his men to fall in behind him.

‘Pay day!’

‘Quite so. Remind me to have a word in my lord’s ear. We can’t have de Roncier neglecting his obligations, when we’re so efficient, eh?’

‘N...no, sir.’

With Ned toeing the line again, Alan turned his mind to de Roncier. De Roncier had a bad name when it came to paying his dues, and when Alan and Ned had enlisted, Alan knew there was a chance they might never get paid. But work for inexperienced soldiers was hard to find, and when they’d
both
been accepted, he’d jumped at the chance, being unwilling at that stage to leave young Ned to fend for himself. Alan might well have become a cold-blooded mercenary as his cousin claimed, but of all de Roncier’s officers he prided himself on the fact that Captain Alan le Bret saw his men got paid first. Impatiently, Alan pushed Ned’s disapproval to one side. Ned could do a lot worse, and he knew it.

***

Gwenn pelted the full length of La Rue des Vierges in an attempt to shake off the mob, but she could still hear them and knew that she had failed.

It was the worst of nightmares.

Burned into her brain was the image of the dark mercenary bending to scoop up the stone. Over and over in her mind’s eye she saw his cold eyes narrow as he took aim. The bruise on her stomach throbbed in time with the thumping of her heart; but despite this proof that this was no nightmare but grim reality, Gwenn’s disbelieving mind was frozen with shock. She could not believe that this was happening to her. Why should someone she had never seen before set a mob on her? Why? The question echoed back and forth in her head.

Fortunately, her legs worked independently of her stunned brain, and Gwenn flew to the crossroads where La Rue des Vierges and La Rue de la Monnaie met. Her veil slipped from her head. She left it behind. She ran on up the street, towards safety. She slipped in some mud, lost a shoe, and staggered on without it. The street had never seemed so long before.

Clutching her chest to keep her heart from bursting, she skidded to a halt and dragged in a lungful of air. Ten dwellings away, her mother’s house beckoned. Safety. Gwenn balked. Safety? Frozen no longer, her thoughts whirled. What was she to do? Lead the mob to the doorstep of her home? What would they do if they followed her there?

It made no sense. None of this made any sense. There had been people she knew in St Peter’s, people who yesterday, while they had not been friendly, had at least had exchanged the time of day with her and her grandmother. Why was this happening? Why? If Father Jerome’s words had wrought this change in the townsfolk, then his words must issue from the mouth of the Devil. This was not the work of God.

Gwenn sucked in another lungful of air and glanced back the way she had come. ‘Sweet Mary, let them not have seen me come down this street.’ And then her heart leaped into her throat, for her veil was fluttering from a nail on a post, as bright and as brash as a knight’s pennon at a joust. Her blue silk slipper betrayed her too; it sat glowing like a jewel in a dark muddy patch. She couldn’t have left a more obvious track if she’d tried. She must retrieve her possessions before they were seen.

Two people hurtled into view. There was no sign of the soldier who had thrown the first stone, but an exultant howl rose on the warm spring air. ‘The whore’s bastard! Get her!’

More people appeared, and more. They stopped at the head of the street. They looked at her. They seemed to be waiting, and all of the time more of them came, and more, like floodwater building up behind a beaver’s dam that must give way at any moment.

Gwenn let out a whimper and was off again. No time to retrieve either veil or shoe. It was too late anyway, they’d seen her. No time to think what they’d do when she got home. She must run, run, run. Something stung the back of her head. She ignored it. Something struck her shoulder. She missed her footing. All but blind with panic, she found her feet and charged on.