Links of his hauberk hissed as Sir Guillaume dismounted, took off his helmet, and tucked it under his arm. “I go to war, lady but I leave my heart in your keeping. I beg a remembrance from you to be buried with me, should I die.”
“Ah, lady your gentle woman’s heart quails at the thought of war, as it should, yet how else may I be worthy of you but by showing my prowess in conflict? The neighing of mettlesome chargers, the clash of steel, the cry of battle… a remembrance, I beg.”
She gave him the last of Emma’s kerchiefs that she kept tucked in her belt-the others had gone for bandages. “God keep you, Sir Guillaume,” she said, and meant it; he was so young.
She watched him hiss happily away to join his fellow knights, tying the fine linen around his arm as he went.
To AVOID RIDING into conflict, they turned southwest into what was, as far as poor Locusta was concerned, unscouted territory, a wilder countryside of more steeply wooded hills, deeper, faster-flowing rivers.
It was also lonelier.
Captain Bolt didn’t like it and redoubled his outriders. “Suppose that Anglim fella ain’t being chased eastwards. Suppose he doubles back. The princess’d make a fine hostage, let alone the treasure chests, and I ain’t got enough men to hold off an army”
His nervousness transferred itself down the line. Cooks rode with roasting spits in their hands, laundresses grasped washing sticks, the morose blacksmith held a fearsome hammer. Archers had their bows across their saddles, quivers ready on their backs, and Captain Bolt clustered more of his men around the princess’s palanquin and the treasure chests.
Ulf worried about the content of his cross and added a spear to his equipment from one of the armory mules. “Any bugger who tries to get you-know-what off of me is going to get what-for.”
“I think it was more in danger when we were with Richard,” Adelia assured him.
“Crusade?”
She nodded. There wasn’t a land on the continent that didn’t have its own version of the Arthurian legend; flourishing Excalibur, most powerful of mythical weapons, would endow Richard with a symbol of leadership over the different nationalities of Christian knights gathered in the Holy Land almost as potent as the Cross in the fight against the pure black Al-Uqaab flag of Muhammad.
Ulf spat. “Well, he ain’t getting it and nobody else, neither. The king and Prior Geoffrey said as I was to take it to Sicily and to Sicily it’s bloody well goin’.”
Locusta did his best, riding ahead, searching for a hospice in a countryside without signposts, sometimes finding one, sometimes not.
Twice, they had to spend the night in the open under the pavilions and tents they carried with them, making little towns of canvas, their fires and lanterns the only glimmer in the darkness, listening to the hoot of owls and the bark of foxes.
Villages were few, tiny and invariably perched high away from the road, which was as empty as if the few occupants of the land had seen what must still appear a formidable procession coming and had shut themselves away like flowers curling up at the approach of night.
For good reason. With the prospect of having to feed the company themselves, the train’s sumpters fell like wolves on such sheep as they saw, requisitioning them in the name of King Henry and carrying them off to be roasted.
Luckily, the weather blessed them; by day they rode under skies of clear, forget-me-not blue. There were still hazelnuts and late blackberries in the hedges, and men and women stopped to gather them as they passed before hurrying back to the procession, unnerved by a quiet in which only birds twittered.
They were now in the Massif Centrale. Riders had to dismount, and mule drivers bellowed obscenities in order to encourage their animals up ever-steeper hills and then rein them in down the other side.
It took time.
AT THE RIVER LOT, they looked for the ferry that would take them over it. Except that there was no ferry
“What do you mean burned?” Locusta raved at the ferryman standing by what had once been a landing stage.
“I
“Three days ago that was. So as to stop the duke chasin’ him over the river. No bloody thought for my living, neither of ’em.”
“Where can we find other boats?”
“Ain’t any Lord Angouleme burned them an’ all.”
So much was obvious; a great river that should have been dotted with waterborne traffic was empty to a sky that smelled of ash.
“Then, what are we to do?”
The ferryman didn’t care; his employment was gone and so was his livelihood until a new ferry could be constructed-“always supposin’ the buggers don’t come back and burn that.”
He spat and pointed his thumb downriver. “Lord Richard went thataway You better go east to find another crossing; ain’t been any fighting in that direction, far as I know. Make for Figeres. Biggest town round here, Figeres.”
“How far is it?”
“Two days’ ride.” He gave them directions.
“At least we’ll be going east,” Locusta said to the Bishop of Saint Albans, as they rode back to rejoin the procession. “We’ve been going too far west.”
“I know, but we daren’t risk taking the princess into a war.”
“Another night in the open,” Locusta groaned. “And no baths. My lord, I’d be eternally grateful if you would break the news to the ladies-in-waiting.”
“That’s your job,” Rowley told him. “I’m not that brave.”
THE ROUTE TO Figeres meant taking a wide traverse through the mountains. Thus they came across the hilly little village of Sept-Glane…
It was a tiny hamlet, hardly worth razing to the ground, but its lord was Vulgrin of Angouleme, so Duke Richard, in passing, had made an example of it.
Nothing was left of cottages and cultivation except cinders. On its terraced pastures, dead animals were beginning to balloon. Its men had been taken away-for what purpose was unknown. Weeping women and children
