No, he had decided. Let him remain a crossbowman. Let him go back to his company with a new name, a different colour of false beard, and without the weapon. The Chatelaine’s chimeras would not find him without it. They would not expect him to get rid of it.
He had had a devil of a time ripping the thing off his arm. Every pull in one direction hooked it deeper in the other. Finally he peeled the edges away from his skin with a dagger and tore it off. He screamed with pain, but the pain would pass, or so he thought.
He came upon a Flemish trader. Still wearing the tunic and hose they’d given him in Hell, Claude wanted new clothes to help him escape the Chatelaine’s spies. The trader was not the sort to ask questions.
He walked away in the trader’s clothes. The pain in his arm dulled.
But the itch had begun that night and had not subsided, and his arm felt weak without the mace on it. By the time he rejoined his company, by the time the battle of Cassel began, the arm was near useless.
“When that Margriet gets here, she’ll get the other end of a tongue lashing for once,” said Jacquemine Ooste, bouncing her baby on her knee and spooning pottage into its mouth. The baby was still fat. A strange sight in a besieged city. Jacquemine’s little daughter, Agatha, ate her soup hungrily.
A knock at the door. They all froze.
“That’ll be her,” said Jacquemine smoothly. “Get the door, Hans.”
The old servant looked at her under caterpillar eyebrows.
“The revenants don’t knock,” Jacquemine said. “They call.”
“We don’t know that they can’t knock, though,” said Hans.
They’d be here all night, listening to the knock, at this rate. And if it was the wet nurse, Willem’s wife, then Claude was finally getting near the mace. His arm itched as if his very skin knew it, too.
“God’s teeth, I’ll answer it,” said Claude, with a grin. He rose.
The cook squeezed her face into a sour rictus. There was one who did not approve of swearing. Well, so be it. A woman like her would find some cause to hate a man like Claude eventually. Better to push the righteous away from him quickly, before they could find cause to be disappointed. Much better to force people to choose at once, friend or foe, and then he knew where they stood.
But Jacquemine held her hand out, motioning Claude to stay. She took her knife from the table and held it in her hand, blade out, as she walked. Her baby bounced on her other hip.
Jacquemine Ooste was interesting. Part of it was the way she held herself like a figurehead in rough waters, with her wimple and veil and fine surcote never out of place. Part of it was that Claude had expected his own golden skin to be the darkest skin in most rooms in Flanders. The woman had spoken to Claude in French at first, but Claude had insisted on Flemish. This was how he had learned seven languages; he might as well improve his eighth. Claude did not like to be at a disadvantage.
Jacquemine went out into the little anteroom and came back with a woman older than herself—that must be the infamous prodigal wet nurse—and a young woman with a distaff as long as a poleaxe in her hand, to which a skinny strand of flax still clung.
“Margriet, you’ll feed the baby before you eat,” Jacquemine said sharply. “Your daughter is welcome to join us now. It’s good to see you, Beatrix. I hope you and your aunt and your grandfather are as well as can be hoped. God have mercy on us.”
The girl inclined her head. “Thank you for your welcome, Vrouwe Ooste.”
The older woman reached forward and plucked the baby from Jacquemine’s arms, cooing, “Oh, come here, little thing. Come here.”
She walked behind the carved screen with the child, and Jacquemine followed her.
Claude stood, at a loss. He needed to speak with Margriet de Vos. How long did it take to nurse a baby? Should he sit and wait?
The girl Beatrix rested her distaff against the wall and sat at the table. The daughter. Willem’s daughter? Claude smiled at her and she returned it, looking at him with some confusion. What must he look like, in his kirtle and his loose scraps of hair? Like an unkempt woman, he supposed. Certainly not like a man-at-arms. The wet nurse and her daughter both wore neat linen wimples.
Claude sat next to her.
“You are Willem de Vos’s daughter?”
The girl looked up, startled. She nodded. The cook came back from the kitchen with a bowl for Beatrix and she spooned it in to her mouth. Ravenous, like everyone else in Bruges.
From the far side of the screen came the voices of Jacquemine and Margriet, arguing.
“The baby’s been wanting you.”
“Oh, little thing, heavenly fat dumpling, don’t fuss, here you go. Vrouwe Ooste, I was delayed in part by my husband, who has come back to Bruges as a revenant.”
Several spoons clattered onto the table.
Willem de Vos was a revenant. But what of the mace?
The manservant, Hans, looked stricken. Beatrix’s mouth twisted as if she were about to cry. The little girl’s face fell and her eyes went pink and wet. Claude couldn’t have them all weeping. Claude waved his hand dramatically in front of the servant’s rheumy eyes, reached over and slid his bowl of pottage to his own place. He slurped it up noisily, looking at the little girl. She sniffed, then giggled a little.
“Margriet, I’m sorry,” Jacquemine said from beyond the screen. “You don’t mean you—you met him out on the street, I hope?”
“I would never invite him in, Vrouwe Ooste. But I must leave Bruges, I am afraid. Tonight.”
“Leave Bruges! I’d like to see you manage it!”
Claude put the spoon down and listened hard.
“I know a way,” the wet nurse was saying. “A small and secret way, a dangerous way. Vrouwe Ooste, I have been at the walls. I have seen the chimeras. They are going to attack Bruges. Soon. You must think of the children. If you will come with me, tonight, perhaps you can find some shelter in an abbey.”
Nobody spoke or caught each other’s eye. The manservant gripped the table. The little girl’s lip quivered.
“Let them come,” said Jacquemine Ooste. “We know how to deal with invaders, in Bruges. We will survive, Margriet. You and Beatrix can stay here with us. Surely it is at least as safe here as it is out on the road, or even at some abbey, in these times.”
“I am going to the Chatelaine, to lay a claim on my husband’s wealth. It seems I was married to a wealthy man after all. I learned as much from his revenant tonight.”
“Bah. A liar, in death as in life, I have no doubt.”
“I have seen it, Vrouwe Ooste. A great chest with real groats and florins, and a great silver ewer.”
“No golden spurs?”
Magriet chuckled. “No, but some war pelf, I think. There were weapons. I saw a sword, and some plate, and even a great mace with a hollow handle.”
Claude’s heart sped.
“But Willem has taken it all away, away in a sack.”
That trader. The wet nurse’s husband. A revenant now, on his way to Hell, with the mace.
“You would abandon us?” came Jacquemine’s voice, quiet as a feather on the air. “For the sake of some silver?”
“I have a right to it. My daughter does, too.”
“And my baby must starve so you can get your due?”
“The baby is nearly two. He only nurses twice a day now anyway. And I’m losing my milk, Vrouwe Ooste. I doubt I could nurse him much longer in any case.”
“Oh, I see you kept that knowledge to yourself until it suited you. Where will you go, Margriet? Do you even know where to find the Chatelaine?”
“I’ll follow my husband. Catch up to him. The revenants only move at night, don’t they? We never see them during the day. He must be on his way to Ypres. The Chatelaine has gone there to meet the French King.”