Defiant Unto Death (28 page)

She nodded in gratitude and joy. He understood why she had broken her promise and had risked everything to save her. ‘You had good cause to try to help William. Is he well?'

‘The same man who hunted you on these streets tortured and killed him,' he told her and watched as the blood drained from her face. ‘Listen to me, Christiana. We've gone through worse together. Right now they're searching the streets for us, but we'll be home in a few days, once we're through the wall and across the marsh.'

‘But the river … you told Guy.'

‘No, we'll go across country. They'll have the barges watched and if they make any connection between Guy and us then it won't take much to get information from him.'

She realized he had thought it through and that if anyone could get them home it would be her husband. They had once forded a swollen river pursued by horsemen determined to kill them, but they had clung to each other and survived.

‘I'm ready,' she said.

A work party of thirty men were encamped at a section of the north-west wall. Women cooked over open fires, mortar was mixed and there were piles of rubble that would be sorted and handed to the masons. Blackstone recognized these men, who wore the same apron and tools that he had once carried as a young man. Guards were sitting on the rubble in the broken gap as Blackstone and Christiana edged closer, approaching from behind the canopied work places where men cut and shaped the stone as labourers laid them into hods.

‘They will have alerted the main gates from the city,' Blackstone said, ‘but those two guards won't have been told yet, I'm sure of it. This work party is too far from the main thoroughfares.'

‘You!' a voice challenged from beside one of the tented areas. ‘What's your business?'

Blackstone took the man to be a works official of some kind. ‘I'm a mason. The Provost of Merchants' office sent me here to work.'

‘And your tools?' said the man suspiciously. There were always men trying to be paid for work who lacked the proper skills.

‘Stolen last night. We were set upon when we slept.'

The man eyed them both. It was not unusual for itinerant workers to bring their women into the city to wash and cook, and sometimes to help carry the loads of stone.

‘Colard!' he shouted to a mason who was working beneath an awning twenty paces away. ‘Come here!'

The dust-covered man approached them and looked Blackstone up and down.

‘Says he's a mason,' said the official. ‘Had his tools filched.'

The man seemed indifferent and took Blackstone's hands in his own, turning and feeling the callouses and ridges of rough skin with his own coarse hands. ‘Could be. God knows we could use more men.'

Blackstone waited subserviently, letting the man make his judgement.

‘What tools?' asked the mason.

‘Half a dozen chisels, lump hammer and mallet,' Blackstone answered.

The man grunted. ‘This way,' he said and turned back to where he had been working. A set of tools lay across a bench. ‘You'll have your arse kicked from here to the Châtelet if you're wasting my time,' he said and pointed at one of the chisels. ‘This?'

‘Punch chisel,' Blackstone answered.

The mason's finger went down the row, and Blackstone answered each time.

‘Claw – straight – pitcher.'

‘Make your mark,' the mason said, indicating a flat slab of stone. A genuine mason would not hesitate to pick up the straight chisel and mallet and etch his initials or mark to show the work he had done. Blackstone chose a name at random and notched the stone with expert ease.

‘T.B.?' said the official.

‘Tassart Bazin,' answered Blackstone. He gave a knowing look to Christiana, who averted her eyes. Thomas Blackstone had left his mark in Paris.

‘Good enough,' the mason said. ‘He'll do,' he said to the official. ‘We'll scrounge tools for him.'

The mason ignored them and went back to his work.

‘What guild?'

‘Rouen,' Blackstone lied, that being the nearest city to his home.

The official nodded. ‘You'll be put on my work roster. Find yourself a place to sleep.'

Blackstone bowed his head, cupping his hands in gratitude, as did Christiana. ‘Our deepest thanks, M'sieu …?'

‘Rancé,' the official answered and turned his back on another grateful stonecutter who could always have his earnings squeezed for the favour of employment.

Blackstone straightened and stepped towards a vacant mason's work area. A plan lay spread across the worktop. Blackstone lifted the two stones that held it and let it roll into his hand.

‘Thomas?' said Christiana.

‘I'm not here to build a wall, but one day I'll tear it down if I have the chance,' he said and guided her towards the breach in the wall where the guards stood their watch.

‘Keep walking. They might not stop us,' he told Christiana.

As they were about to pass through the gap in the wall, one of the guards called out. ‘And where do you think you're going?'

Blackstone behaved as if he belonged on the building site. ‘The earthworks. The foundations for the new wall over there. I'm a specialist mason,' he said, tapping the rolled-up drawings.

‘On whose authority?'

‘M'sieu Rancé,' Blackstone answered.

The two soldiers looked at each other; the one shrugged and the other waved him through. ‘And who's she?' the sentry asked.

‘Oh, she's my assistant,' Blackstone said, and smiled. ‘She's there to hold my mallet,' he added suggestively.

The men laughed as Christiana lowered her head in feigned embarrassment. They made a crude suggestion between themselves, and then ignored the man whose capture would have brought them a King's ransom. Blackstone gripped her arm, his strength soothing her trembling limbs. ‘We get across these fields to those hills and we'll be safe,' he assured her.

There was mist gathering in the distance to his left and he sensed the river lay in that direction. The gallows he saw when he came upriver would be close to the bend in the Seine and they stood at the base of the plain that now faced them. Over his right shoulder he could see the abbey that de Ruymont had spoken of, but the vast open space lying before them would prove the most dangerous for them to cross. How long could it be before word reached every city perimeter guard post? He needed to find sanctuary in the forests on the hills. Stray swirls of smoke curled in the breeze from campfires belonging to itinerants who were forced to settle on this inhospitable plain beyond the city walls.

The marshland stench came from more than the fetid bog. The stream that ran through it was an open sewer. They struggled across the plain, but too slowly for Blackstone's liking. The city walls seemed not to diminish no matter how hard they pressed on. Christiana stumbled again, and he could see she would not be able to continue much longer. Her dress was soaked and stank of the foul water. Strands of matted hair clung to her face where the coif had fallen free. He wrapped an arm around her waist and took much of her weight, and cleared the hair away.

‘We have to keep going. They'll see us soon enough.'

‘I'm all right,' she said bravely with gasping breath.

He knew she wouldn't last the distance and turned towards the road that led from the city's northern gate into the distance. If they could make firm ground without being seen then there was a chance they could pay a wagoner returning from the city to carry them into the forests. Clouds were coming from the sea, as if guided by the twisting river, and would soon shroud the city rooftops. The rain they carried would help obscure their movement, but it would also make the going harder, and its chill would stiffen muscles. They were racing the storm and by the time they reached the roadway the first splashes of rain were swept in by the strengthening breeze. Christiana grunted with effort as Blackstone encouraged her to keep going. To stop would make it more difficult to start again.

‘You can't rest, you must keep going,' he urged her. The city gates were plainly in sight and when traffic came through they would be seen. They needed to make another three or four hundred paces along this road before they could stop and take refuge in the huts that spread out from the road.

The going was easier now and she staggered as fast as she could towards the low-roofed hovels. Smoke seeped through the houses' thatched roofs, but there was little sign of life. Without warning Blackstone pulled her down into the mud behind a chicken house as two riders clattered down the road towards the city gates. They were soldiers, perhaps returning from a patrol, but they slowed their horses from a canter to a trot when they passed by. Blackstone gauged the distance between himself and them, preparing for action should they stop. If he could kill them quickly enough he could seize their horses. The decision was taken out of his hands as the men spurred their mounts away.

‘I think they saw us,' he told her. ‘We have to run.'

He hauled her to her feet, dragging her between the hovels and back onto the road. Blackstone forced the pace, his long strides making her punish her body to keep going. Looking back he saw that the rain squall had obscured most of the walls, but the men on horseback were shouting to others on the wall. And then they turned their horses back onto the road. They had been told of the fugitives. The rain chased Thomas and Christiana faster than the horsemen and she fell headlong, her legs finally giving way. He gathered her in his arms and carried her between the houses, searching for a place to hide. A hunched figure, a woman whose face was half covered by a veil of cloth, stood back from the entrance of one of the huts. She made no gesture of welcome or invitation to enter the house, but by standing aside she seemed to convey that they should.

The gloomy interior was lit only by the fire's embers, and the sodden reed flooring did little to keep the mud from squelching beneath his feet. He laid Christiana down next to the doorway, and let his eyes adjust to the inside of the hut. The woman entered and moved to the fire, whose bed of embers were confined by river stones that supported a cooking pot. She bent over and dropped in a handful of what looked to be herbs into the steam. Blackstone realized that, hunched against the far wall, there were others similarly clothed. Blackstone glanced outside at the sound of horses on the road and saw that the riders had reined them in near the chicken house where he had first sheltered. There were others running from the city gate, but the horsemen seemed reluctant to bring their mounts among the houses. Blackstone looked back at those huddled in the hut. The stench of rotting flesh finally overcame that of his fouled clothing. They were lepers. That explained his pursuers' reluctance to come into the settlement. Christiana opened her eyes and Blackstone laid a restraining hand on her.

‘There are men outside,' he told her quietly. ‘Don't be afraid, but we have stumbled into the leper colony.'

Christiana was shivering, fear and exhaustion mixing their own apothecary's brew. She crossed herself, eyes widening in horror.

‘If we run from this place they'll have us. If we stay until they give up the search we can be on our way,' he told her, and took her trembling hands in his own. ‘These people are the living dead, but they can save us.'

She looked up at him and nodded, holding her hand across her mouth and nostrils to filter some of the smell from those confined within the hut. Blackstone watched the soldiers milling on the road, going up and down looking towards the leper colony, not daring to venture within. He heard someone shout a command, ordering the soldiers to spread out into the marshland and see if those they hunted had sought shelter among the itinerants' camps. No one in their right mind would go into a leper colony. Half a dozen formed a picket line along the road with twenty paces between each man, as the others spread out in an extended line and made their way towards the campfires in the marshland. The rain became more persistent, forcing the men to hunch up against the water trickling down their necks. These were not the Savage Priest's men; they were garrison soldiers reluctantly carrying out their orders to search for whoever had been seen running across the open plain and hiding behind a chicken hutch. There was no certainty that it was the fugitives. Blackstone guessed they would do as much as they were obliged to, and then get back to the shelter beneath the city walls.

No one in the hut spoke and no one made any approach towards Blackstone and Christiana, who still shivered despite Blackstone covering her with his jerkin. All they could do was wait until the men in the picket line moved away and the search was called off. The abbey's bells rang in the distance; Blackstone guessed it was mid-afternoon and daylight would soon be fading. Cold and hungry, they would be unable to travel on a moonless night, but the thought of the alternative – spending the night in the lepers' hut – made him even more uneasy. The huddled lepers wore rough, black cloaks and hoods over their clothes, all were shod in leather shoes and, as desperately poor as the room appeared to be, Blackstone could see that each had a cot and bedding. All carried a wooden clapper hung by a cord around their necks. No leper was allowed to get close to the public without signalling their approach. The old woman moved towards them and Blackstone felt Christiana flinch, but the leper kept her distance and extended her diseased and disfigured hands towards them. She was offering a bowl of broth from the pot Blackstone had seen her drop the herbs into. He felt an involuntary gag at the back of his throat at the thought of the leper's hands touching the food. He eased himself forward and took the bowl from the woman's hands. He could see that the last thing Christiana wanted to do was drink from it, but the hot broth would give them strength. Blackstone lifted the bowl to his lips; the vegetables in the watery liquid and another smell of some kind of herb made the tasting easier, as it took away the odour in the hut. As he swallowed the broth he felt its warmth seep into his muscles. Then he held the bowl for Christiana and nodded that she should drink from it.