“How do you know that?”
Silence.
“Inheritance falls under canon law,” Jacquemine muttered. “It isn’t the Chatelaine’s to award it to you.”
“And how do I tell which diocese contains Hell, Vrouwe Ooste? Willem is her servant now, and he has stolen my due. If she is his lord, then let her chastise him. Perhaps she does not know the Flemish customs of inheritance. I will explain it to her.”
“And you will walk? Two women alone?”
“If I may, Vrouwe Ooste, I’ll take my pay now. Beatrix and I will not stay here tonight.”
“Mmm?”
“My sou, for the week. Today is Wednesday.”
There was a silence.
“Margriet de Vos, you are a wonder. At a time like this, you are thinking of your sou? I’ll have to go to the strongbox. Watch the children.”
Claude waited until Jacquemine Ooste had gone up stairs to the bedchamber. This was his chance. If he could catch up with Willem de Vos before the revenant reached the Chatelaine, he could take it from him. It was his, as much as it was anybody’s. He had a right to it. He’d need to avoid the chimeras; they’d take him back to Her. Perhaps it was a blessing, after all, to be disguised as a woman. To travel as a woman among women, to draw no unwanted attention to himself, until the mace was his again and he was strong again.
He rose, kicking his chair back, and darted around the screen.
“Who are you and what do you want?” the wet nurse asked.
“Take me with you,” he said. “I am a condotierre. I can be your guard.”
The wet nurse opened her eyes wide. “What sort of jest is this?”
“I am a man-at-arms, I tell you. A crossbowman. I know I don’t look like one now, but I am.”
“And I’m the pope.”
“Look,” Claude said, showing her his fingers on his weak right hand. “The callous from my crossbow string.”
The girl Beatrix joined them, looking from her mother’s face to Claude’s and back again.
“Hmpf. A callous from the loom or the spindle, more like,” said Margriet, examining his hand and then letting it drop. “You are some girl whom the good Vrouwe Ooste has taken in like a stray cat, and a liar, too. We eat stray cats now in Bruges, do not forget. Why on earth would you want to come with me, girl?”
His arm burned.
“I, too, have business with the Chatelaine,” he said softly. “You are hunting one of her revenants. You need someone who knows her ways.”
“Indeed? How do I know you won’t betray me, call the chimeras on me?”
“You can trust me.”
“But not your arm. What use is a guard with a useless sword arm?”
What good indeed? But even left-handed he could take care of himself. Claude circled around the screen back to the table, took his knife in his left hand, returned to Margriet and threw the knife hard at the wall. He hoped the mere surprise of it, and the sight of the blade quivering in the wall, would be enough to impress, that no one would wonder which part of the wall he had been aiming at.
“I’ll take my chances,” Margriet said, after a pause.
Claude burst out laughing despite himself.
“A rotten throw,” he said. “I’ll admit I am not the man I was. But you are going out of the city, where the chimeras roam. I know their ways. I fought alongside them. I will lay down my life for yours if we are attacked, if only you will show me your way out of this city and give me one small thing in payment.”
“Hmph. And what payment would you ask of me, besides the pleasure of my company, which is, of course, a blessing to all?”
He tried to speak as nonchalantly as he could. He did not want to answer questions about the mace, about why he wanted it.
“A share of the pelf if you recover it. I’ll take that funny weapon you mentioned, with the hollow handle. It has a heavy ball on one end, with points all around it? A strijdknots, I think you call it? What the French call a masse?”
“You can have that. God knows I wouldn’t know what to do with the thing and would have to sell it anyway. The sword, too; it’s yours. I have no need for arms, God help me. But if we don’t recover it for some reason, you get nothing, as I’ll have nothing to give. And we can’t carry any food. I have no right to anything here, and I can only hope that we receive hospitality at the religious houses on the way. If you can live on very little, and help us find what we can, you can come. If Vrouwe Ooste allows it.”
“She is a guest, not a prisoner,” said Jacquemine, standing in the doorway with a little bag in her hand.
“And she truly was a man-at-arms?”
“Dressed as one, anyway, the priest said.”
They spoke as if Claude were not there, as if his knife were not still quivering in the wall. He strode to it and pulled it out, sheathed it on his belt.
“Well,” said Margriet. “I don’t need a guard. But when I meet Willem, or the revenant made from his body, or whatever it is, well, I may need help getting the sack from him.”
“If you are determined to do this foolish thing, Margriet,” said Jacquemine, “you will take this copper pot and little bag of oats with you, and some waterskins. I would give you more if I had more to give.”
“That is more than I can take, Vrouwe Ooste,” Margriet said. “I will not take food out of the children’s mouths. I will only take what is my due.”
“Then let me give you this in place of that last sou, then, you stubborn thing.”
“A sou won’t be much good to you here in Bruges. Oats, though, you can eat.”
“And you think you will find a market outside these walls?” Jacquemine Ooste scoffed. “You will need something to eat, at least until you find the first religious house, and God only knows how many are yet standing.”
“Mother, take the oats and let’s be gone,” said the girl, poking her head around the corner. “And we thank you very much for your kindness, Vrouwe Ooste.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Beatrix was glad of the moon. It was just past full and dappled the streets with puddles of silver. Mother, though, insisted they keep to the shadows.
The bundle tied to her back was light: a few smallclothes, her spindle, and a wooden bowl. Her water flask was slung over one shoulder and banged on her right hip; on the other, her knife weighted her belt. Her fur-lined hood, her wedding gift from Baltazar, opened into a short cape to cover her shoulders.
Beatrix felt like a pilgrim, using her distaff as if it were a walking stick.
Mother carried the small bag of oats and the little copper pot in her bundle.
A revenant came walking toward them and Mother pulled Beatrix into an alley. They stood there, not quite hidden but of no interest to the revenant, who called “Alberic, Alberic, little Alberic.” He was a young man, about Baltazar’s age, and Beatrix could not help but stare at his skin, and wonder if it were the moonlight that made it so pallid.
As it passed, Beatrix looked sidelong at the mercenary beside her. Claude was taller than either of them and did not seem afraid. She was dressed like any other woman, although shabbily, and her hair was plain, undressed and uncovered under her hood. If she was telling the truth about having been a man-at-arms, those slender hands had killed, what, a dozen men, a hundred, a thousand? Had they all been at the end of a crossbow, or had Claude ever fought with her hands, with a knife?
It was the coldest part of night, and the air by the canal was damp. They walked on toward the south end of the city, and came at last to the open water called the Minnewater. It flashed like a battlefield in the moonlight. At the far side squatted the beguinage, silent and dark. Would any revenants dare knock on those doors? Would they have any names to call? Who loved those women, those poor sisters?