Maze of Moonlight (12 page)

A liveried servant was approaching, his tunic figured with the papal crest. He ignored Otto, bowed dismissively to Martin, smiled at Vanessa . . . and appeared shaken when Vanessa stared back at him. “Ah . . .”

“Speak up, my man,” said Martin. The bruises on his face gave him the grotesque look of a jester.

The servant struggled back to composure. “Mistress,” he said to Vanessa, keeping his eyes averted, “my master, Monsignor Etienne of Languedoc, could not help but note your great beauty and noble bearing. He greatly desires you r acquaintance and craves your company.”

Otto shook his head, frustrated. He wished that Baron Christopher would do something. Etienne's treatment of the servants and the girls was bad enough, but now the churchman seemed bent on the other patrons.

“Amazing,” said Martin. “He's not even going to ask if she's married.”

But Vanessa turned to him with those enormous eyes. “But, Martin, Yvonnet didn't care if you were married, either.”

Martin looked away quickly. Otto suppressed a profound desire to flee.

Etienne's servant was glaring at Martin. “Well,
is
she?”

Vanessa answered . . . in her own way. “He can't ha' me,” she said. “Na tonight. No one can ha' me tonight. It's na time.”

“I assure you, mistress . . .”

“The patterns dan say it yet.” But the girl's face turned puzzled, then agitated. “An' the patterns can't change, can they? They never change. An' . . .” She stood, shaking, for a moment, then pushed past Martin and Otto and fled into the rooms.

“We're tired,” Martin said to the servant. “And you're tedious. Go away.” He handed a bag of money to Otto. “We'll be leaving tomorrow morning,” he said. “Please have our horses ready.”

The innkeeper found the weight of the sack reassuring. It made him feel satisfied, even friendly. Good people, these. A little odd, perhaps, but good people.

And for that reason, he watched uneasily as, in the common room that evening, Etienne rose from the long table he had commandeered and swaggered over to the nook where Martin and Vanessa were eating supper. His clothing as sumptuous as that of the most excessive of the French dukes, his bearing as haughty, he stood before their table, his hand on the pommel of his sword. His pose, Otto thought, was a little too studied—rather like a monkey, save that monkeys were not supposed to wear swords. With a deeper sense of imminent disaster, Otto recalled that churchmen were not supposed to, either.

Vanessa regarded Etienne with wide, incredible eyes, but he did not seem to notice. Otto doubted that he noticed anything more than her breasts and the curve of her waist. “Fair maiden,” said Etienne softly. “Such a lovely little butterfly has been blown into Aurverelle. What storm brought you here?”

What had Vanessa talked about? Patterns? What kind of patterns was she seeing in the papal legate? Otto started to ease around the end of the counter, though in truth he had not the faintest idea what he could do against either the legate or his score of armed guards and servants. The latter had stopped eating and drinking . . . and were now watching.

“I'm on my way t' Saint Blaise, messire,” said Vanessa. “I ha' employment waiting for me there.”

“Ah . . . employment,” said Etienne. “I might have some . . . employment . . . for you myself. May I ask your name?”

Vanessa's eyes widened, and she turned to Martin. “Nay!”

Martin looked at her, startled, but he spoke. “Her name is Vanessa, sir. And mine is Martin Osmore. My father is the mayor of Saint Blaise. Kindly leave us alone now.”

Etienne's expression did not change. It remained at once determined and predatory. “You should learn your manners better, little boy.”

Vanessa was still looking at Martin. “Martin, dan do it. They're . . .” She blinked. “Changing . . .” She whirled to face Etienne just as the legate's fist lashed out and caught Martin in the throat. The lad's eyes widened for an instant, and then he toppled to the floor.

One of the Shrinerock guards was already charging across the common room, overturning tables, kicking chairs out of the way. His men were not far behind him. But as Vanessa shrank back—from whatever it was that she saw with those frightening eyes or from the legate, Otto could not be sure—Etienne signaled to his attendant, and the Shrinerockers found their way suddenly barred by a dozen men in mail.

Martin floundered on the floor. Otto glanced at Ernest, the tapster. Ernest looked at the swords that were suddenly starting from their sheaths. “Run and fetch the guards from the castle,” said Otto. “I'll see what I can do.”

“Come, my maid,” Etienne was saying as Shrinerocker steel met Avignonese. “I always get what I want.” He grabbed the girl by the arm and hauled her out of her seat. “And tonight I want you. Do you understand?”

Vanessa, unaccountably bewildered, stared, her eyes filled with strange light, her lips moving soundlessly.

“Come now, girl. Much better this be pleasant, eh?”

Ernest vaulted the counter and made for the door just as Martin staggered to his feet, a dagger in his hand. With a casual gesture, the churchman drew his sword and dropped Martin with a single thrust, and Ernest was met at the door by two Avignonese who bore him backwards and over one of the tables. A heavy, mailed fist smashed into his jaw.

Vanessa began to scream: the sustained, mindless wail of an animal in a trap. One of the Shrinerockers broke free of the guards and lunged for Etienne, but, cut down form behind, fell face forward across a table full of beer mugs. Blood and froth went everywhere. People ran for the door, but Etienne's men had blocked it.

Frightened, looking for a place to hide in a room that no longer seemed to have any, Otto sidled into one of the darker corners as Etienne dragged Vanessa up against his body. “
Now!
I'll see you at the stake before I let you go!”

“You'll . . .” Vanessa was staring beyond Etienne. “You'll see me a' the stake anywa'!”

For an instant, Etienne stared at her, perplexed by her strange reply; and with a sudden jerk, Vanessa lifted a leg and kneed the churchman in the groin. His grip loosened for a moment, and she broke free and made for the stairs to the upper floors. Etienne was right behind her.

So was Otto. Fevered with worry about his inn, confused because all courses of action seemed blocked, the innkeeper scuffed up the steps as quickly as he could. From below came the sound of struggles and screams. Someone was shouting for castle guards, someone else for the bailiffs, but Otto could do nothing. He was not even sure what he could do for Vanessa.

He reached her room just in time to see the girl come up with a heavy brass candlestick and smash it into Etienne's face. The legate staggered back, bleeding badly. “You . . .
dare
! You little swine of a serf!”

“It's na time yet!” she was crying. “It's na time! I dan see wha's happened! E'erything's changed!” Vanessa swung again, putting her shoulders behind her stroke as though she were forking hay, but the effort lessened her precision, and Etienne caught her arm and twisted her wrist. Otto heard the crunch of breaking bones. Vanessa screamed and dropped the candlestick.

Not satisfied, Etienne picked it up and backhanded her across the face with it. In an instant, Vanessa's features turned into a ruin of pulped, red flesh and the stark whiteness of bone fragments. Her huge eyes still staring out from a welter of blood, she lifted an arm to ward off Etienne's return stroke, but, battered away, it dropped limply to her side, bent at a crazy angle.

More blows. Vanessa's face was unrecognizable now, and Etienne, still raging, started on her chest. Her ribs caved in first on one side, then the other. Otto could stand no more. Old and unarmed though he was, he tottered forward and seized Etienne's arm from behind.

He was immediately flattened by a fist to his face. Etienne turned back to finish with Vanessa, but the girl, scrambling with the blank urgency of a wounded bird, had used the churchman's momentary distraction to turn for the windowsill, drag herself up, and leap.

***

This late, the town of Aurverelle was quiet, its streets deserted. The night was warm, the stars were very, very bright, and when the Green Man Inn came into view, upper windows open and glowing with lamplight, Christopher stared at it hungrily. Here were people—not nobles, not churchmen, not anyone important—just people. People trying to get along. People trying to live as best they could. People trying to snatch some sleep. People traveling. People fornicating, gambling, blaspheming . . . or maybe praying. Christopher himself, though, a ghost, lapped futilely at the flow of life about him, craving desperately the substance that he had lost—by death or by Nicopolis, it was all the same.

He lived at arm's length. And had he not, in refusing to deal immediately and directly with Etienne, moved even further away from connection and reconciliation? A ghost of a ghost.

He had spent the last several days raging at himself, raging at Etienne, raging at a society and a land that allowed slimy little things like barons and monsignors to prolong their existence at the expense of others. But, in the end, his oath had won out. Slimy little thing he might be, but he had Etienne to deal with. This had gone on long enough.

“It's always like this, isn't it, Pytor?” he said as they went towards the inn that shimmered in the heat waves coming off the street. “The nobles fight, but the peasants suffer. Etienne can't get back at me, so he'll take it out on my people.”

Pytor was nodding. “As master has said.”

But out of the glowing windows of the inn came a scream. It was a cry of fright, of pain, of utter despair.

Pytor crossed himself. “God of my fathers.”

“No,” said Christopher, running for the inn, “it's Etienne. Come on.”

The door was barred, as were the lower windows. From within came stamps, scuffles, frightened screams and shouts:

“Let us out!
Let us out!
”

“Castle guards! Help! For the love of God!”

Swords clashed within as Pytor tried the door once more. No use. “It would be better if master perhaps called for his men.”

A sudden flurry at a second floor window. A cry as if from a mouth that had lost all connection with its brain. With a rush and a thump, a body dropped, struck the roof above the inn's porch with a wet sound, and fell to the ground at Christopher's feet.

The baron bent over it, horrified. It was apparently a young woman, but her features had been pulped into shapelessness. Blond hair, blood, broken bones. She was breathing, but barely.

Pytor turned towards the castle. “Guards of Aurverelle!” he shouted. “To the Green Man Inn!”

A horn answered him. On the other side of the door, the fight continued. At his feet, the girl's breath frothed and bubbled through a smashed larynx.

Christopher's anger at Etienne had turned white-hot. There was little that he could do for the girl right now. There might be nothing that anyone could do. But he could deal with the legate. “No peasants, no guards, no soldiers,” he muttered. “Just you and me.”

“Master . . .”

“Take care of her, Pytor. Wait for the guards. I'll have the door open by the time they get here, one way or another.” And without waiting for a reply, Christopher caught hold of the end of a projecting beam and swung up to the porch roof. His simple clothing did not hamper him, and he sprang in through the open shutters of the second floor window just as Etienne was turning to aim a kick at the head of the fallen innkeeper.

Christopher hit the churchman soundly with his shoulder, smashing him back against the wall. Etienne slid to the floor, dazed. As Christopher drew his knife, he saw a bloody candlestick lying nearby, and he noticed that Etienne was disheveled and bleeding. The girl, whoever she was, had obviously put up a fight.

The hungry ghost in him smiled. A fighter. He liked that.

But Etienne was getting to his feet. “You wanted to speak with me, dog?” said Christopher. “Well, start talking.”

His face gashed from chin to cheek, Etienne shrugged. “About what?”

“You can start with that girl down in the street.”

More shouts from below. Edged metal rang, and Christopher heard the distinctive sound of a mail-clad body crashing to a wooden floor. Otto, dazed, scrambled uselessly.

Etienne shrugged again. “She struck me.”

“You womanizing lout!”

“What then? Did you think Frenchmen were eunuchs?”

Dagger in hand, Christopher lunged, but Etienne ducked the blow, darted out the open door, and fled down the hall. Christopher followed, angry enough for the moment to give no thought to the fact that the legate had brought numerous attendants with him, most of whom, from the sound of it, were downstairs at present, armed and fighting.

With Etienne just ahead of him, Christopher plunged down the stairs, but when he reached the common room, he stopped for a moment, bewildered by the confusion. Etienne's men were barring the doors against guests and townspeople who were milling before them, struggling to get out, screaming for bailiffs and guards who did not come. A few feet from him, two men in light mail that bore the Shrinerock arms were standing over the body of a third, battling against four more Avignonese. Tables were scattered and smashed, overturned lamps were beginning to smolder in the straw and rushes, and panic was as much an acrid presence as sweat, blood, and smoke.

Christopher debated. Some French knights, motivated by hazy but impelling thoughts of chivalry and honor, would have plunged unhesitatingly into the fray armed with no more than a bent twig. But Christopher had lost faith in chivalry and honor. Chivalry was a sham. Honor was a word exalted more in ballads and poems than in life.

But that girl out there. A fighter. That was good. Christopher could not believe in chivalry and honor, but he decided that he would believe in that girl.

One of the Shrinerock men, fighting like three, lifted a foot against an adversary and kicked him away. Etienne's man lost his balance and fell towards Christopher. The baron stepped aside and let him slam into the wall.

The man reeled. Christopher pounced, slipping his dagger beneath the mail at the man's throat and gouging deep. The soldier's scream was drowned in a gurgle. Christopher grabbed his sword and then, with a good kick, sent him directly into the big fire that blazed on the open hearth. He floundered among the flames and glowing coals.