More whispering. Chris could not hear any of it.
Arnaut said, “Good Lady, I have already decided.”
Still more whispering.
Finally, shaking his head, Arnaut came back to them. “The Lady seeks safe passage from me to Bordeaux. She says that she knows you, and that you are honest men.” He paused. “She says that I should release you.”
Claire said, “Only if it please you, my Lord. For it is well known the English are indiscriminate in killing, while the French are not. The French show the mercy that comes of intelligence and breeding.”
“This is so,” he said. “It is true that we French are civilized men. And if these two know nothing of Brother Marcel and the passage, then I have no further use of them. And so I say, give them horses and food and send them on their way. I would be in the good graces of your Magister Edwardus, and so I commend myself to him, and wish God grant you safe journey to join him at his side. And so depart.”
Lady Claire bowed.
Chris and Kate bowed.
The handsome knight cut Chris’s bonds and led them back outside. Chris and Kate were so stunned by this reversal that they said nothing at all as they walked back toward the river. Chris was feeling wobbly and lightheaded. Kate kept rubbing her face, as if she were trying to wake up.
Finally, the knight said, “You owe your lives to a clever lady.”
Chris said, “Certes. . . .”
The handsome knight smiled thinly.
“God smiles upon you,” he said.
He didn’t sound happy about it.
:
The scene at the river was entirely transformed. Arnaut’s men had taken the mill bridge, which now flew the green-and-black banner from the battlements. Both sides of the river were occupied by Arnaut’s mounted knights. And now a river of men and matériel marched up the road toward La Roque, raising clouds of dust. There were men with horse-drawn wagons laden with supplies, carts of chattering women, ragtag children, and other wagons loaded with enormous wooden beams — disassembled giant catapults, to fling stones and burning pitch over the castle walls.
The knight had found a pair of horses for them — two ragged nags, bearing marks of the plow collar. Leading the animals, he guided them past the toll checkpoint.
A sudden commotion on the river made Chris look back. He saw a dozen men knee-deep in the water, struggling with a breech-loading cannon, cast of iron, with a wooden block as a mount. Chris stared, fascinated. No cannon this early had survived, or even been described.
Everyone knew primitive artillery had been used at this time; archaeologists had dug up cannonballs from the site of the Battle of Poitiers. But historians believed that cannon were rare, and primarily for show — a matter of prestige. But as Chris watched the men struggling in the river to lift the cylinder and hoist it back on a cart, it was clear to him that such effort would never be wasted on a purely symbolic device. The cannon was heavy; it slowed the progress of the entire army, which surely wanted to reach the walls of La Roque by nightfall; there was no reason why the cannon could not be brought up later. The present effort could only mean the cannon would be important in the attack.
But in what way? He wondered. The walls of La Roque were ten feet thick. A cannonball would never penetrate them.
The handsome knight gave a brief salute and said, “God bring you grace and safety.”
“God bless you and grant you increase,” Chris replied, and then the knight slapped the horses on their rumps, and they were riding off, toward La Roque.
:
As they rode, Kate told him about what they had found in Marcel’s room, and about the green chapel.
“Do you know where this chapel is?” Chris said.
“Yes. I saw it on one of the survey maps. It’s about half a mile east of La Roque. There’s a path through the forest that takes you there.”
Chris sighed. “So we know where the passage is,” he said, “but André had the ceramic, and now he’s dead, which means we can’t ever leave, anyway.”
“No,” she said. “I have the ceramic.”
“You do?”
“André gave it to me, on the bridge. I think he knew he’d never get out alive. He could have run and saved himself. But he didn’t. He stayed and saved me instead.”
She started to cry softly.
Chris rode in silence, saying nothing. He remembered how Marek’s intensity had always amused the other graduate students — “Can you imagine? He really believes this chivalry shit!” — and how they had assumed his behavior was some kind of weird posturing. A role he was playing, an affectation. Because in the late twentieth century, you couldn’t seriously ask other people to think that you believed in honor and truth, and the purity of the body, the defense of women, the sanctity of true love, and all the rest of it.
But apparently, André really had believed it.
:
They moved through a nightmare landscape. The sun was weak and pale in the dust and smoke. Here there were vineyards, but all the vines were burned, leaving gnarled gnome stumps, with smoke rising into the air. The orchards, too, were black and desolate, skeletal trees. Everything had been burned.
All around them, they heard the pitiful cries of wounded soldiers. Many retreating soldiers had fallen beside the road itself. Some were still breathing; others were gray with death.
Chris had paused to take weapons from one of the dead men, when a nearby soldier raised his hand and cried pitifully, “Secors, secors!” Chris went over to him. He had an arrow embedded deep in his abdomen, and another in his chest. The soldier was in his early twenties, and he seemed to know he was dying. As he lay on his back, he looked pleadingly at Chris, saying words Chris couldn’t understand. Finally, the soldier began to point to his mouth, saying, “Aquam. Da mihi aquam.” He was thirsty; he wanted water. Chris shrugged helplessly. He had no water. The man looked angry, winced, closed his eyes, turned away. Chris moved off. Later, when they passed men crying for help, he continued on without stopping. There was nothing he could do.
They could see La Roque in the distance, standing high and impregnable atop the Dordogne cliffs. And they would reach the fortress in less than an hour.
:
In a dark corner of the church of Sainte-Mère, the handsome knight helped André Marek to his feet. He said, “Your friends have departed.”
Marek coughed, and grabbed the knight’s arm to steady himself as a wave of pain shot up his leg. The handsome knight smiled. He had captured Marek just after the explosion at the mill.
When Marek had climbed out the mill window, by sheer luck he fell into a small pool so deep that he did not hurt himself. And when he came to the surface again, he found he was still beneath the bridge. The pool produced a swirling eddy, so the current hadn’t taken him downstream.
Marek had stripped off his monk’s habit and thrown it downstream when the flour mill exploded, timbers and bodies flying in all directions. A soldier splashed into the water near him, his body turning in the eddy. Marek started to scramble up onto the bank — and a handsome knight put a sword point at his throat and beckoned for him to come forward. Marek was still wearing the maroon and gray colors of Oliver, and he began to babble in Occitan, pleading innocence, begging for mercy.
The knight said simply, “Be silent. I saw you.” He had seen Marek climb out the window, and discard his monk’s garb. He took Marek to the church, where he found Claire and Arnaut. The Archpriest was in a sullen and dangerous mood, but Claire seemed to have some ability to influence him, if only by contradiction. It was Claire who had ordered Marek to sit silently in the darkness when Chris and Kate came in. “If Arnaut can set you against the other two, he may yet spare you and your friends. If you are three united before him, he will in rage kill you all.” Claire had stage-managed the subsequent events. And all had turned out reasonably well.
So far.
Now Arnaut eyed him skeptically. “So: your friends know the location of this passage?”
“They do,” Marek said. “I swear it.”
“On your word, I have spared their lives,” Arnaut said. “Yours, and the word of this Lady, who vouches for you.” He gave a small nod to the Lady Claire, who allowed a faint smile to cross her lips.
“My Lord, you are wise,” Claire said, “for to hang one man may loosen the tongue of his friend who watches. But as often, it may harden his resolve, so that the friend takes his secret to the grave. And this secret is so important that I would your Lordship have it for certain in his grasp.”