Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures

Black Margot of Avignon. A true sword-woman is worth a score of men. Would you still march with me?”

“As a companion-in-arms,” I answered. “I’m mistress to none.”

“None save Death,” he answered, glancing at the corpses.

IV

Her sisters bend above their looms   And gnaw their moldy crumbs: But she rides forth in silk and steel   To follow the phantom drums.– The Ballad of Dark Agnes          

A week after the fight in Etienne’s chamber, Guiscard de Clisson and I rode from the tavern of the Red Boar and took the road to the east. I bestrode a mettlesome destrier and was clad as became a comrade of de Clisson. Velvet doublet and silk trunk-hose I wore, with long Spanish boots; beneath my doublet pliant steel mail guarded my body, and a polished morion perched on my red locks. Pistols were in my girdle, and a sword hung from a richly-worked baldric. Over all was flung a cloak of crimson silk. These things Guiscard had purchased for me, swearing when I protested at his lavishness.

“Canst pay me back from the loot we take in Italy,” said he. “But a comrade of Guiscard de Clisson must go bravely clad!”

Sometimes I misdoubt me that Guiscard’s acceptance of me as a man was as complete as he would have had me think. Perchance he still secretly cherished his original idea – no matter.

That week had been a crowded one. For hours each day Guiscard had instructed me in the art of swordsmanship. He himself was accounted the finest blade in France, and he swore that he had never encountered apter pupil than I. I learned the rogueries of the blade as if I had been born to it, and the speed of my eye and hand often brought amazed oaths from his lips. For the rest, he had me shoot at marks with pistol and match-lock, and showed me many crafty and savage tricks of hand to hand fighting. No novice had ever more able teacher; no teacher had ever more eager pupil. I was afire with the urge to learn all pertaining to the trade. I seemed to have been born into a new world, and yet a world for which I was intended from birth. My former life seemed like a dream, soon to be forgotten.

So that early morning, the sun not yet up, we swung onto our horses in the courtyard of the Red Boar, while Perducas bade us God-speed. As we reined around, a voice called my name, and I perceived a white face at an upper casement.

“Agnes!” cried Etienne. “Are you leaving without so much as bidding me farewell?”

“Why should there be such ceremony between us?” I asked. “There is no debt on either side. There should be no friendship, as far as I can see. You are well enough to tend yourself, and need my care no longer.”

And saying no more, I reined away and rode with Guiscard up the winding forest road. He looked at me sidewise and shrugged his shoulders.

“A strange woman you are, Dark Agnes,” quoth he. “You seem to move through life like one of the Fates, unmoved, unchangeable, potent with tragedy and doom. I think men who ride with you will not live long.”

I did not reply, and so we rode on through the green wood. The sun came up, flooding the leaves with gold as they swayed in the morning wind; a deer flashed across the path ahead of us, and the birds were chanting their joy of Life.

We were following the road over which I had carried Etienne after the fight in the Knave’s Fingers, but toward midday we turned off on another, broader road which slanted southeastward. Nor had we ridden far, after the turn, when: “Where man is not ’tis peaceful enough,” quoth Guiscard, then: “What now?”

A fellow snoozing beneath a tree had woken, started up, stared at us, and then turning quickly aside, plunged among the great oaks which lined the road, and vanished. I had but a glimpse of him, seeing that he was an ill- visaged rogue, wearing the hood and smock of a wood-cutter.

“Our martial appearance frightened the clown,” laughed Guiscard, but a strange uneasiness possessed me, causing me to stare nervously at the green forest walls that hemmed us in.

“There are no bandits in this forest,” I muttered. “He had no cause to flee from us. I like it not. Hark!”

A high, shrill, quavering whistle rose in the air, from somewhere out among the trees. After a few seconds it was answered by another, far to the east, faint with distance. Straining my ears, I seemed to catch yet a third response, still further on.

“I like it not,” I repeated.

“A bird calling its mate,” he scoffed.

“I was born and raised in the forest,” I answered impatiently. “Yonder was no bird. Men are signalling one another out there in the forest. Somehow I believe ’tis connected with that rogue who fled from the path.”

“You have the instincts of an old soldier,” laughed Guiscard, doffing his helmet for the coolness and hanging it on his saddle bow. “Suspicious – alert – ’tis well enough. But your wariness is wasted in this wood, Agnes. I have no enemies hereabouts. Nay, I am well known and friend to all. And since there are no robbers nigh, it follows that we have naught to fear from anyone.”

“I tell you,” I protested as we rode on, “I have a haunting presentment that all is not well. Why should that rogue run from us, and then whistle to some hidden mate as we passed? Let us leave the road and take to a path.”

By this time we had passed some distance beyond where we had heard the first whistle, and had entered a broken region traversed by a shallow river. Here the road broadened out somewhat, though still walled by thick trees and bushes. On the left hand the bushes grew densely, close to the road. On the right hand they were straggling, bordering a shallow stream whose opposite bank rose in sheer cliffs. The brush-grown space between road and stream was perhaps a hundred paces broad.

“Agnes, girl,” Guiscard was saying, “I tell thee, we are as safe as – ”

Crash! A thundering volley ripped out of the bushes on the left, masking the road with whirling smoke. My horse screamed and I felt him stagger. I saw Guiscard de Clisson throw up his hands and sway backward in his saddle, then his horse reared and fell with him. All this I saw in a brief instant, for my horse bolted, crashing frantically through the bushes on the right hand side of the road, and a branch knocked me from the saddle, to lie half stunned among the bushes.

As I lay there, unable to see the road for the denseness of the covert, I heard loud rough voices, and the sound of men coming out of their ambush into the road.

“Dead as Judas Iscariot!” bawled one. “Where did the wench go?”

“Yonder goes her horse, splashing across the stream, gushing blood, and with empty saddle,” quoth another. “She fell among the bushes somewhere.”

“Would we could have taken her alive,” said yet another. “She would have furnished rare sport. But take no chances, the Duke said. Ah, here is Captain de Valence!”

There was a drumming of hoofs up the road, and the rider shouted: “I heard the volley; where is the girl?”

“Lying dead among the bushes somewhere,” he was answered. “Here is the man.”

An instant’s silence, then: “Thunders of hell!” roared the captain. “Fools! Bunglers! Dogs! This is not Etienne Villiers! You’ve murdered Guiscard de Clisson!”

A babble of confusion rose, curses, accusations and denials, dominated by the voice of him they called de Valence.

“I tell you, I would know de Clisson in hell, and this is he, for all his head is a mass of blood. Oh, you fools!”

“We but obeyed orders,” another growled. “When you heard the signal, you put us in ambush and bade us shoot who ever came down the road. How did we know who it was we were to murder? You never spoke his name; our business was but to shoot the man you should designate. Why did you not remain with us and see it well done?”

“Because this is the Duke’s service, fool!” snapped de Valence. “I am too well known. I could not take the chance of being seen and recognized, if the ambush failed.”

They then turned on someone else. There was the sound of a blow, and a yelp of pain.