Stigmata (32 page)

In front of her, in a burned hollow at the base of a tree, was the tiny black effigy of a woman. Fresh candle grease was smeared down her makeshift altar and the flowers at her shrine were
fresh. She reached out to touch her and felt a familiar prickling of her skin, a cold, sticky tide that made her retch. She dropped on to all fours, her vision swimming, her body chill with a cold
sweat.

Philip could not credit that he had allowed himself to fall asleep in the open. It had never happened before. When he woke Fabricia was gone, though the impression she had left
in the grass was still warm. He panicked for a moment, but then heard the sound of her voice, close by. Who was she talking to? He jumped to his feet, his hand on his sword.

He found her kneeling among the bracken. She looked up at him, a dreamy look on her face.

‘Who is here?’ he said. ‘Who were you talking to?’

Someone had carved a small opening at the base of a beech tree. There was a mess of candle wax and flowers around it and inside was a statue, black and squat and ugly. It was clearly female,
with flat dugs and an outlandishly fertile belly.

‘I saw you dead,’ she said.

‘What?’

‘We were riding together, in the mountains. It was winter. You were hit in the chest with an arrow. I have dreamed it before.’

She was looking at him but her eyes were fixed on something else, behind him and very far away. Her skin was grey as a corpse. He lifted her to her feet and carried her away from the demon in
the tree, afraid.

A
N ABANDONED SHEPHERD
’
S
hut, a waning three-quarter moon. Fabricia straddling him, kissing
his mouth.

‘What happened today?’ he whispered.

‘I don’t want to talk about it any more.’ She worked the tunic off her shoulders and let it slide to her waist. Her eyes were like moons, her body valleys and shadows. She
found a scar on his thigh, tracing the jagged march of it with her fingers.

‘That is from Outremer,’ he said. ‘We were escorting some pilgrims to Akko and we were ambushed by Saracens.’

‘Have you killed many men?’

‘Until the other day in the forest – only Saracens.’

‘Saracens are men.’

‘Not as Christians are.’

Her hair tickled his face. ‘Their wives and children would tell you different, Philip. Men may be different but widows are the same. I feel like I am about to couple with the
Devil.’

‘Is that what you think? I have always thought myself a good man.’

She took his hands and put them on her breasts. He brushed his thumbs across her nipples and they stiffened at his touch. She closed her eyes, threw back her head and murmured something he did
not hear.

‘What is this?’ he said fingering the crucifix at her throat.

‘Father Marty gave it to me.’

‘Is it valuable?’

‘I don’t know. He says he has a brother across the mountains who will help me if I show this to him.’

‘It looks old.’

She bent over him and licked his neck. ‘Make me forget about all this.’

He wanted to make her forget; he wanted to forget, too. She took his face in her hands and kissed him again, then she drew back. ‘Do my hands disgust you?’

‘No,’ he said. Part truth, part lie; the wounds themselves did not bother him, he had seen much worse. But wounds they were; the Devil’s marks perhaps. He had heard stories
about demons taking on female form to ensnare men with their beauty and their sex, and once they had a man in their thrall they would change back into snarling beasts and carry their prize off to
hell.

Hadn’t he seen her praying to a devil today?

Well then, let her turn into a devil and damn me, for to stop now would be like turning back the sea.
Her fingers were around him, teasing. All the ways he had denied himself over these
last years came spilling out of him now. ‘It’s been so long,’ he whispered in apology as he felt himself pulsing in her hand. ‘Don’t stop. I don’t want to stop.
I never want to stop.’

‘I don’t want your seed in me, seigneur,’ she said. ‘I just want your touch, the warmth of you.’

‘You do not have to call me seigneur. My name is Philip.’

‘I do not know if I could call you that. I would feel I was being too familiar.’

He laughed at that. He rolled her on to her back, delighted in how she sighed and moaned at every little thing he did. Her body exhaled a scent of sweat and violets; her skin tasted of salt.

‘This is not my first time,’ she whispered.

‘You don’t have to tell me.’

‘I want to tell you. I’m not wanton. It was a priest. He forced himself on me.’

‘Even so, I think you would have made a very poor nun.’

‘They said I had a very good voice to sing the psalms.’ Then she gasped as he entered her. ‘Gently,’ she murmured.

He thought about what she had said; about dying with an arrow in his chest in the snow. At least a little more of life then, for it was not yet autumn. The prospect of his own
death had suddenly become fearsome. When did that happen? Somehow everything was easier when he had not cared to live; for a short time all seemed so simple. Now this rebel longing for more life
was in him again, and with it came all the old anxieties and uncertainties, as well as that traitor – hope.

He had seen the
crosatz
today, or thought he had, the glint of sunlight on a lance, the flash of colour through the trees. They did not have much time to reach Montaillet.

He kissed the valley between her breasts, ran his hand over her thighs, her belly, her hips. ‘You are so lovely,’ he said. ‘Why are you not married?’

‘My father wanted my dowry to go to another mason who might take over his work. But the man he wished me to marry died before he could make the match.’

‘There must have been other suitors?’

‘Who wants a
faitilhièr
– a witch – with holes in her hands? And a witch who is no longer a maiden, either?’

A wash of moonlight, slight as mercury, slipped on the clouds; dark, then light, then dark again. He explored her with his hands and it seemed to her that he knew her body better than she did.
She gasped, her stomach muscles quivering like the fluttering of a small bird. She cried out once, her head thrown back. For the longest time she could not catch her breath.

Finally she gave a boisterous laugh, not like a saint at all. ‘Oh, seigneur,’ she said. ‘You have made a poor stonemason’s daughter very happy.’

When she woke it was cold and he wasn’t there. ‘Seigneur?’ Then she heard his voice and went outside. She found him on his knees, his hands interlocked in an
attitude of prayer.‘What are you doing?’ she said.

He got to his feet, abashed. ‘I was praying.’

‘What were you praying for?’

He hesitated. ‘I was asking for a hundred times a hundred more dawns like this one. And that on each one I might find you asleep beside me.’

She smiled and kissed his cheek. Suddenly she thought: so this is what joy feels like? I wonder if I might hold on to this for a while.

P
HILIP CLIMBED UP
through feathered pines, leading Leyla by her bridle. Fabricia swayed in the saddle. Her feet were
bleeding again and she could barely stand. He could see Montaillet in the distance, its barbicans rising from the cliffs, silhouetted against a white sky. The heat of the afternoon was
draining.

He stopped suddenly and put his finger to his lips. He pointed down the valley. There were a dozen riders, in full armour, their visors up, the red cross emblazoned on their surcoats. The knight
at their head had a cross of gold on his right shoulder and his armour looked expensive.

He recognized the three pale blue eagles on their pennants and shields. They were the Normans he had tangled with at Saint-Ybars. Philip swore under his breath. The crusaders were following the
path of the river. The rushing of the stream drowned out their voices, though he could see them calling to each other as their horses picked their way through the shallows. Philip held his breath
and prayed that they would pass and not see them.

But then one of the chevaliers happened to glance up and he stopped and pointed at them, shouting a warning to his fellows.

‘Our luck has run out,’ Philip said to Fabricia. He jumped into the saddle behind her and spurred Leyla up the slope. Perhaps they could outride them, for the Normans were yet a
hundred paces further down the slope. He looked over his shoulder. The Norman horses were stumbling and sliding on the loose stones of the river-banks, they were not bred for pursuit. One shrieked
in panic as it lost its footing.

Two of the chevaliers loosed arrows at them but they fell far short.

He thought they were safe. But the best of men make mistakes; and with horses it was no different. Leyla lurched sideways and he immediately knew something was very wrong. She fought the bridle
and shrieked in pain. He leaped down from the saddle, pulling Fabricia after him.

‘Leyla!’ he shouted, ‘what is it, girl, what’s wrong?’

She was holding her right foreleg clear of the ground. Philip damned God’s eyes. Broken! He could see splintered white bone protruding through her fetlock and there was blood everywhere.
He clutched at the bridle to hold her still, whispered to her, his hand at the softest part of her throat. She calmed a little but her eyes were wild with agony. ‘Oh, Leyla,’ Philip
moaned, ‘what have you done?’ But he knew the answer to that. She had found a rabbit hole while he rode her at full tilt.

‘What are we going to do?’ Fabricia said.

Philip knelt down. ‘Help me get out of this armour! I can’t run in this.’

Fabricia fumbled with the ties that held the laces at the back of the hauberk. While she was doing that, he threw off his gauntlets and helmet. A small fortune lying there in the grass; it
couldn’t be helped. He would keep his sword though.

One of the ties was knotted and she couldn’t untangle it. He twisted around and cut it with the edge of his sword.

‘Will you kill me now?’ she said. ‘Isn’t that what you promised?’

‘For what reason?’

‘The captain said you should not let them take me alive.’

‘We are not taken yet.’

‘I cannot run! I can barely walk.’

‘I asked God for a hundred times a hundred mornings. This time he is not going to defy me!’ He shrugged off the hauberk and stood up. ‘If you cannot run then crawl up to the
top of the hill. Go!’

‘What about the horse?’

‘Just go! I will follow.’

Fabricia did what she thought she could not do; she half-stumbled, half-crawled almost to the crest of the wooded ridge, ignoring the agony in her feet. What good will it do? she thought. They
have horses. They will overrun us. Without Leyla, it’s hopeless.

She fell to her knees.
Mother Mary, blessed of women, help me now.
She turned and looked back through the trees. She could not see him, but she heard the death shriek of his horse.

She pushed herself to her feet and stumbled on and when she reached the ridgeline she fell again, rolling over and over down the slope on the far side. Finally she lay on her back, staring up at
the sky.

Where was Philip?

She pushed herself to her knees and gasped. She was just two paces from a dizzying drop. She realized she must be on the overhang of a cliff, for the water was directly beneath her, roaring
through a narrow defile.

God’s breath. It would be like dropping from the top of a cathedral to fall into that.

Something flashed past her face; she felt the draught of it as it passed. She turned around. There was a bowman perhaps two hundred paces further along the cliff, calmly reaching behind his back
for another arrow.

She jumped up and cried aloud at the agony in her feet. Her only hope to get away now was to jump, but she couldn’t do it. A hundred ways she would rather die, but not that way.

The bowman took careful aim. She closed her eyes and prepared to die.

She felt something slam into her and then she was hurtling forwards, could not stop herself, and she fell shrieking through the air, hitting the water far below.

F
ABRICIA CAME UP
choking and would have drowned but the current carried her swiftly towards the far bank. She stuck out an
arm and caught an overhanging branch. There were black spots in front of her eyes.
I have to hold on
. She felt her grip loosen but she summoned the strength to throw out her other arm and
cling on.

She realized it must have been Philip who had pushed her over the edge. With her first clean breath she called out his name. She could not see him anywhere. She worked her way arm over arm along
the tree limb, and dragged herself up the bank, and lay there, coughing water through her mouth and nose.

‘Philip!’

Now she could see what had saved her; a tree had toppled over near the bank, falling half into the water. Perhaps it came down during the same storm that had flooded the cave.

‘Seigneur!’ Finally she saw him, clinging to the bank further upriver. The flimsy branch he was holding could not bear his weight and the current picked him up and tossed him
downstream towards her.

Fabricia clambered back along the tree limb on her belly. She wrapped one arm around the fallen trunk, stretched out her other hand and screamed his name.

He twisted around in the water when he heard her and threw out his hand. She reached him but he was too heavy; she nearly lost him. Somehow she managed to slow him enough so that he could hold
on with his other hand. He pulled himself along the fallen tree, just as she had done, until he was free of the current and safe in the shallows.

He fell face first on the bank, coughing up water. He still held his sword in one hand. How had he done that? she wondered.

She knelt down beside him. ‘Are you all right, seigneur?’

‘Why didn’t you jump?’

‘I am afraid of heights.’