Death and the Lady (3 page)

I stopped myself before I could touch her. If she was
scrying her lover, then she was calling him up from the dead.

I shuddered. I made no sound, but she started and wheeled.
Her face was white as death. Her eyes—

She lidded them. Her body eased by degrees. She did not seem
surprised or angered, or anything but tired. “Jeannette,” she said.

“You left,” I said. “Francha cried all night.”

Her face tightened. “I had to go.”

“Here?”

She looked about. She might have laughed, maybe, if she had
had the strength. “It was to be here first,” she said. “Now it seems that it will
be here last and always. And never.”

I looked at her.

She shook her head. “You don’t understand. How can you?”

“I can try,” I said. “I’m no lady, I grant you that, but I’ve
wits enough for a peasant’s brat.”

“Of course you have.” She seemed surprised. As if I had been
doing the doubting, and not she. “Very well. I’ll tell you. He won’t let me back.”

“He?”

“He,” said Lys, pointing at the font. There was nothing in
it but water. No face. No image of a lover that would be. “My lord of the Wood.
The cold king.”

I shivered. “We don’t name him here.”

“Wise,” said Lys.

“He won’t let you pass?” I asked. “Then go around. Go south,
as Mère Adele told you. It’s a long way, but it’s safe, and it takes you west
eventually.”

“I don’t want to go around,” said Lys. “I want to go in.”

“You’re mad,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “He won’t let me in. I walked, you see. I
passed this place. I went where the trees are old, old, and where the sun seldom
comes, even at high noon. Little by little they closed in front of me. Then at
last I could go no farther.
Go back,
the trees said to me.
Go back and let us
be
.”

“You were wise to do it,” I said.

“Mad,” she said, “and wise.” Her smile was crooked. “Oh,
yes. So I came back to this place, which is the gate and the guard. And he
spoke to me in the water.
Go back
, he
said, as the trees had. I laughed at him. Had he no better word to offer me?
Only this
, he said.
The way is shut. If you would open it, if you can—then you may. It is
not mine to do
.”

I looked at her. She was thinner than ever, the weight of
her belly dragging her down. “Why?” I asked. “Why do you want to get in? It’s madness
there. Every story says so.”

“So it is,” Lys said. “That was why I left.”

There was a silence. It rang.

“You don’t look like a devil,” I said. “Or a devil’s minion.”

She laughed. It was a sweet, awful sound. “But, my good
woman, I am. I am everything that is black and terrible.”

“You are about to drop where you stand.” I got my arm around
her before she did it, and sat her down on the font’s rim. I could not help a
glance at the water. It was still only water.

“We are going to rest,” I said, “because I need it. And eat,
because I’m hungry. Then we’re going back to Sency.”

“Not I,” said Lys.

I paid her no mind. I untied my kerchief and spread out what
I had, and put in a fistful of mushrooms, too; promising myself that I would
stop when I went back, and fill my apron again.

There was nothing to drink but water, but it would do. Lys
would not drink from the font, but from the spring above it. I did as she did,
to keep the peace.

The cat came to share the cheese and a nibble or two of the
bread. She turned up her nose at the mushrooms. “All the more for us,” I said
to her. She filliped her tail and went in search of better prey.

We ate without speaking. Lys was hungry: she ate as
delicately and fiercely as a cat. A cat was what I thought of when I looked at
her, a white she-cat who would not meet my eyes.

When we were done I gathered the crumbs in my skirt and went
out to the porch and scattered them for the birds. I slanted an eye at the sun.
A bit past noon. I had thought it would be later.

Lys came up behind me. Her step was soundless but her shadow
fell cool across me, making me shiver.

“There is another reason,” she said, “why I should stay and
you should leave. My lord who is dead: he had a brother. That one lives, and
hunts me.”

I turned to face her.

“He wants me for what I am,” she said, “and for what he
thinks I can give him. For myself, too, maybe. A little. I tricked him in
Rouen: cut my hair and put on a nun’s habit and walked out peacefully in the
abbess’ train. He will have learned of that long since, and begun his tracking
of me.”

I shrugged. “What’s one man in the whole of Normandy—or one woman,
for the matter of that? Chance is he’ll never find you.”

“He’ll find me,” Lys said with quelling certainty.

“So let him.” I shook my skirts one last time and stepped
down off the porch.

I was not at all sure that she would follow. But when I came
to the trees, she was behind me. “You don’t know who he is. He’ll come armed,
Jeannette, and with his men at his back.”

That gave me pause, but I was not about to let her see that.
“We have walls,” I said. “If he comes. Better he find you there than in a
broken chapel, beating on a door that stays fast shut.”

“Walls can break,” said Lys.

“And doors?”

She did not answer that. Neither did she leave me.

After a while she asked it. “Why?”

“You’re my guest,” I said.

“Not once I left you.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

She started to speak. Stopped. Started again. One word. “Francha.”

“Francha.” I let some of the anger show. “God knows why, God
knows how, but she has decided that she belongs to you. You went off and left
her. Her mother is dead, her father died on top of her; we found her so, mute
as she is now, and he begun to rot.” I could not see her, to know if she
flinched. I hoped that she did. “I took her in. I coaxed her to eat, to face
the world, to live. Then you came. She fixed the whole of herself on you. And
you left her.”

“I had no choice.’

“Of course you did,” I said. “You had to have known that the
way was shut. He exiled you, didn’t he? your cold king.”

“I exiled myself.”

Her voice was stiff with pride. I snorted at it. “I believe
you, you know. That you’re one of Them. No one but a soulless thing would do
what you did to Francha.”

“Would a soulless thing go back? Would it admit that it had
erred?”

“Have you done either?”

She seized my sleeve and spun me about. She was strong; her
fingers were cruel, digging into my arm. She glared into my face.

I glared back. I was not afraid, not at all. Even when I saw
her true. Cat, had I thought, back in the chapel? Cat, yes, and cat-eyed, and
nothing human in her at all.

Except the voice, raw and roughened with anger. “Now you
see. Now you know.”

I crossed myself, to be safe. She did not go up in a cloud
of smoke. I had not honestly expected her to. That was a cross she wore at her throat,
glimmering under the robe.

“So they’re true,” I said. “The stories.”

“Some of them.” She let me go. “He wants that, my lord
Giscard. He wants the child I carry, that he thinks will be the making of his
house.”

“Then maybe you should face him,” I said, “and call the
lightnings down on him.”

She looked as shocked as if I had done as much myself. “That
is the Sin! How can you speak so lightly of it?”

“Sin?” I asked. “Among the soulless ones of the Wood?”

“We are as Christian as you,” she said.

That was so improbable that it could only be true. I turned
my back on her—not without a pricking in my nape—and went on down the path. In
a little while she followed me.

When the threshing was done and the granaries full, the
apples in and the windfalls pressed for cider, my lone proud grapevine
harvested and its fruit dried in the sun, and all of Sency made fast against a
winter that had not yet come, a company of men rode up to our gate.

We had been expecting them, Lys and I and Mère Adele, since
the leaves began to fall. We kept a boy by the gate, most days, and shut and
barred it at night. Weapons we had none of, except our scythes and our pruning
hooks, and an ancient, rusted sword that the smith’s widow had unearthed from
the forge.

Pierre Allard was at the gate the day milord Giscard came,
and Celine tagging after him as she too often did. It was she who came running
to find me.

I was nearly there already. All that day Lys had been as
twitchy as a cat. Suddenly in the middle of mending Francha’s shirt, she sprang
up and bolted.

I nearly ran her down just past the well, where she stood
rigid and staring, the needle still in one hand, and the shirt dangling from
the other. I shook her hard.

She came to herself, a little. “If he sees me,” she said, “if
he knows I’m here . . .”

“So,” I said. “You’re a coward, then.”

“No!” She glared at me, all Lys again, and touchy-proud as
ever she could be. “I’m a coward for your sake. He’ll burn the village about
your ears, for harboring me.”

“Not,” I said, “if we have anything to say about it.”

I tucked up my skirt and climbed the gate. Pierre was up
there, and Mère Adele come from who knew where; it was a good long run from the
priory, and she was barely breathing hard. She had her best wimple on, I
noticed, and her jeweled cross. The sun struck dazzles on the stones, white and
red and one as green as new grass. She greeted me with a grunt and Lys with a
nod, but kept her eyes on the men below.

They were a pretty company. Much like the one that had taken
Claudel away: men in grey mail with bright surcoats, and one with a banner—red,
this, like blood, with something gold on it.

“Lion rampant,” said Lys. She was still on the stair below
the parapet. She could hardly have seen the banner. But she would know what it
was. “Arms of Montsalvat.”

The lord was in mail like his men. There was a mule behind
him, with what I supposed was his armor on it. He rode a tall red horse, and he
was tall himself, as far as I could tell. I was not so much above him, standing
on the gate.

He turned his face up to me. It was a surprising face, after
all that I had heard. Younger, much, than I had expected, and shaven clean. Not
that he would have much beard, I thought. His hair was barley-fair.

He smiled at me. His teeth were white and almost even. His
eyes were pure guileless blue. “Now here’s a handsome guardsman!” he said
laughing, sweeping a bow in his high saddle. “Fair lady, will you have mercy on
poor travelers, and let us into your bower?”

Mère Adele snorted. “I’d sooner let a bull in with the cows.
Are you here to take what’s left of our men? Or will you believe that we’re
drained dry?”

“That,” said Lys behind, still on the stair, “was hardly
wise.”

“Let me judge that,” said Mère Adele without turning. She folded
her arms on the parapet and leaned over, for all the world like a goodwife at
her window. “That’s not a device from hereabouts,” she said, cocking her head
at the banner. “What interest has Montsalvat in poor Sency?”

“Why, none,” said milord, still smiling. “Nor in your men,
indeed, reverend lady. We’re looking for one of our own who was lost to us.
Maybe you’ve seen her? She would seem to be on pilgrimage.”

“We see a pilgrim now and then,” said Mère Adele. “This
would be an old woman, then? With a boy to look after her, and a little dog,
and a fat white mule?”

I struggled not to laugh. My lord Giscard—for that he was,
no doubt of it—blinked his wide blue eyes and looked a perfect fool. “Why, no,
madam, nothing so memorable. She is young, our cousin, and alone.” He lowered
his voice. “And not . . . not quite, if you understand me. She
was my brother’s mistress, you see. He died, and she went mad with grief, and
ran away.”

“Poor thing,” said Mère Adele. Her tone lacked somewhat of
sympathy.

“Oh,” he said, and if he did not shed a tear, he wept quite
adequately with his voice. “Oh, poor Alys! She was full of terrible fancies. We
had to bind her lest she harm herself; but that only made her worse. Hardly had
we let her go when she escaped.”

“Commendable of you,” said Mère Adele, “to care so much for
a brother’s kept woman that you’ll cross the width of Normandy to find her.
Unless she took somewhat of the family jewels with her?”

Lys hissed behind me. Mère Adele took no notice. Milord
Giscard shook his head. “No. No, of course not! Her wits were all we lost, and those
were hers to begin with.”

“So,” said Mère Adele. “Why do you want to find her?”

His eyes narrowed. He did not look so pretty now, or so much
the fool. “She’s here, then?”

“Yes, I am here.” Lys came up beside me. She had lost a little
of her thinness, living with us. The weight of the child did nothing to hamper
her grace. Her hands cradled it, I noticed, below the parapet where he could
not see.

She looked down into his face. For a moment I thought that
she would spit. “Where were you? I looked for you at Michaelmas, and here it’s
nigh All Hallows.”

He looked somewhat disconcerted, but he answered readily
enough. “There was trouble on the road,” he said: “English, and Normans riding with
them.”

“You won,” she said. It was not a question.

“We talked our way out of it.” He studied her. “You look
well.”

“I am well,” she said.

“The baby?”

“Well.”

I saw the hunger in him then, a dark, yearning thing, so
much at odds with his face that I shut my eyes against it. When I opened them
again, it was gone. He was smiling. “Good news, my lady. Good news, indeed.”

“She is not for you,” said Lys, hard and cold and still.

“If it is a son, it is an heir to Montsalvat.”

“It is a daughter,” said Lys. “You know how I know it.”