She tried to catch a glimpse of each revenant but they were too quick, and she was ducked down under the branches of a willow, so they would not see her.
Claude tugged on her sleeve. This was the moment; if they waited, the mouth would close.
Margriet ran and stumbled right away and landed face first in the black mud. She heard Claude swear, “God’s blood,” and felt Claude’s hands under her armpits, lifting her.
She ran on again, trying not to think about it, letting the movement alone carry her forward as it had done for something like forty years. She had not run in a long time, not since the day at the gate of Bruges, which seemed an eternity ago now. The day she had contracted Helpest. The day she had started to die.
Margriet’s breastplate banged from side to side as she ran. She wanted to yell, with rage and purpose, but her breath was short. They dodged the revenants. She hoped they would see them only as chimeras coming home, not as raiders. How long would they have, after that? It depended on Beatrix, and on luck, and on God.
The Hellbeast was still vomiting as they neared the great lips, the great teeth reaching down and out. They had to push past the last of the revenants. There were so many. All of them running toward Beatrix. Margriet elbowed past a reeking, headless thing and grabbed on to one of the teeth. It did not look slippery but rather pitted like dull stone. But her fingers scrabbled and shook and could not grasp. She was pushed backward again, roughly, and then someone pressed her back more gently and she moved toward the mouth, and was inside.
It was damply warm inside, and still packed with fleeing revenants. Margriet could see nothing but flashes of red and here and there her friends, fighting their way through. Claude rushed by her, pulling Gertrude by the hand.
The tongue rolled beneath them and Margriet was down again, down on a surface like damp earth except it was warm. She wanted to cry like a child, to pound her fists against the Hellbeast’s tongue. But she could not act like anything other than a chimera now, now that the revenants were thinning around them.
A crowd of bats flew past them and they put up their hands. Behind them the mouth closed and it was dim, and they did not have to fight anyone off. But as they ran down the beast’s throat Claude pulled them into a branching off to the side, a warm wet room with heaving, sighing walls so close around them that Margriet could not help but lean against them. She was grateful for a chance to catch her breath, although the air was so close here it was like trying to breathe through a wet cloth.
Three chimeras went running past them. They heard one of them shouting in French, wondering why all the revenants were leaving at once.
“There must have been orders,” one of them said.
“There were no orders,” said Monoceros. Margriet saw him, standing just opposite them. Claude tensed beside her. “All the orders come through me.”
“Then what? What made them leave?”
“I don’t know,” said Monoceros. “Where’s Chaerephon? Still sleeping?”
“He left with them.”
“With the revenants? Where has he taken them? Come on. You stay at the mouth, Oplo and Mantis, and if they come back, one of you come and tell me. I’ll be in the Chatelaine’s chambers.”
Monoceros and the two with him ran down the throat. Claude pulled them out and whispered, “Don’t sneak. Walk like you’re angry. Walk like they were walking.”
The passages of the beast opened into a chamber and there were chimeras gathered there, talking among themselves. There were fires bursting up now and then from the floor like guttering candles.
The chimeras looked up when the women came in but no one seemed to take much notice. The idea that these cobbled together bits of metal and fur could make them pass for ordinary here made Margriet want to laugh; she could not think of the last thing that had made her want to laugh. Perhaps it was the Plague, eroding her mind.
“This is the smithy,” Claude whispered.
They strode through to the other side, into another corridor.
They kept walking until Claude told them to stop, hissing that here was the entrance to the Chatelaine’s chambers in time to see Monoceros go in, alone. Where the other two had gone they did not know.
“The Chatelaine will be leaving, no doubt,” Claude said as they crouched and watched the entrance. “She’ll want to know where they have gone. She’ll go after Chaerephon herself, perhaps.”
But as they waited they heard behind them the mouth of Hell opening again.
“If it’s opening without the Chatelaine working the bridle, that must be the revenants returning,” Claude said. “The beast always takes them back. God’s nails. We’ve lost. They’ll tell her.”
Margriet pulled her around and looked into her face.
“I’m trying something. As soon as you see the Chatelaine leave her chambers, as soon as she is well gone, you get the chest and get out of here. And keep Beatrix safe, or I’ll haunt you when I’m dead.”
“Don’t be a fool,” said Claude.
But Margriet was already creeping away from them. She thought of Beatrix’s sweet face, the lovely rosebud mouth that had sucked at her breast, the round blue eyes. She was a good girl and she would get herself a proper husband and a baby. She would be fine.
Margriet walked as quickly as she could back toward the large chamber where the smiths were hammering at their forges. She winced. No matter where she went, someone was hammering. The furnaces blew and she felt for a moment like what she was: a small creature inside the bellows belly of a great beast.
She walked to the middle of the room and pulled off her goggle-helm.
“Call the Chatelaine!” she screamed. “Call the hellkite! Tell her Margriet de Vos has come to be transformed!”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Claude heard Margriet scream. Gertrude darted forward but Claude pushed her back, despite the fact that he wanted to run down the hall himself. But there was no point in trying to save the dying.
“Walk,” he muttered, and he and Gertrude walked deeper into the beast, past the Chatelaine’s door. As they walked he heard the Chatelaine’s voice, behind them, giving orders to someone.
“Go to the mouth and see what Chaerephon is about, and bring him back to me. Bring me his head if he answers back anything but ‘yes, Monoceros.’”
Monoceros was there, then, behind them. Claude’s face flushed. Would he recognize him from behind? Claude kept walking away. They must look like two chimeras on their way somewhere. They must keep up that pretense.
At last after they had heard nothing for several long moments he stopped, and put his hands out to Gertrude, and looked behind.
Too soon; he had miscalculated. There was the back of the Chatelaine, her dress sweeping behind, and a step or two behind, Monoceros, glancing back over his enormous bare shoulder.
Monoceros looked back at Claude, and knew him for who he was.
Claude was sure of it. The golden eyes widened and the pupils within narrowed, and Monoceros stood taller for a moment, like a beast ready to spring.
Claude’s right arm shuddered with instinct but it was no good to him so he reached his left over to his dagger.
And then the lids dropped a little over those eyes, and Monoceros’s head drooped and he shook his head a little. His expression reminded Claude of the time a general had told the crossbowmen to hold their fire, and one had not heard, and had shot and alerted the enemy to their position. Monoceros looked as if he were mourning someone yet alive.
Without looking at him again, Monoceros turned and walked away, following behind the Chatelaine.
It all happened while Gertrude was still turning; she did not see.
“All clear?” Gertrude whispered.
Were they? Would Monoceros betray them? Was he playing some game? For now Claude could only hope that he would not give them away.
Claude did not answer but crept forward towards the door of the Chatelaine’s chambers. He had been inside them once before. It seemed a lifetime ago; he was different now. Desperate. Let me have desperate men, Janos had said, once. Desperate men can be trusted. He pulled his knife out. The last time he was here, there had been a porter in the antechamber. If the forged mace-key were in those chambers, there would no doubt be a porter there now, perhaps more than one.
But the main thing he was worried about was the lock. He made a fist of his weak right hand, and winced in pain.
The interior doors of hell all opened to one key only, and it was on the Chatelaine’s arm. It was certain that she had locked her own chamber, if the treasure were inside. But Claude hoped for only one thing, that the locked door was on the inside of the antechamber, after the guards, where he could pick the lock in peace—having first dispatched the guards.
He was not so lucky.
The outside door had a great lock on it, a shining scar set into the flesh of the beast. It matched the pattern of the flanges, like a cruel reminder of what Claude did not have.
He pulled Gertrude toward him and whispered in her ear.
“I’ve got to get that door open but I can’t make a sound. You stand here and cough or something if someone comes.”
Gertrude nodded like a frightened coney. It was strange to see her quiet, for once.
Claude crept to the door and put his withered right hand out, felt the flesh of the beast meet his own flesh. Between them there should have been a key, and he felt the lack of it, and the beast felt the lack of it, too. A shudder went through the skin of the door.
“Shh,” Claude said softly.
He moved his fingers against the scar, feeling the polished uneven surface against the skin of his fingertips. Pain lanced through each of his fingers. He sheathed his dagger, gritted his teeth and used his left hand to prop up his right arm, under the elbow. He could feel the scar tissue shifting, closing in on itself, the keyholes tightening against his efforts. He gritted his teeth so as not to swear.
It wasn’t working. The beast knew what he was doing, and was working against him. And what would it do if he kept at it? Bellow? Vomit him out? Claude had never been quite sure whose side Hell was on, and this seemed like the worst possible way to find out.
Gertrude came to his side.
“Not working?” she whispered, not quietly enough.
“You’re supposed to be on watch,” he said.
“Can’t we cut our way through or something? It’s not like wood or stone, is it?”
Bloodthirsty woman.
“Not without letting the guard on the other side know we’re here.”
Gertrude looked at him.
“There’s a guard on the other side?”
He nodded.
“Then why not let him open the door?”
Claude shook his head. He wanted a quick, silent throat-cutting in the antechamber, not a fight out here in the hall that would call all the chimeras to them.
He concentrated again on the lock but it was even worse with Gertrude looking over his shoulder. Hadn’t he told her to keep watch? He should have come on his own. He should never have made common cause with these women.
Gertrude coughed.
The lock moved and the door started to swing open.
“Speak,” came a voice in French. “Friend or foe?”
Claude’s dagger was already in his left hand and he thrust it up into the place where he expected the throat to be, but it was a Mantis-Man, and the throat was higher than Claude’s head. So instead of shutting up the guard, it made a sound like a great chittering insect as black blood bubbled out of the wound.
“God’s nails,” Claude muttered, but Gertrude was down on the ground, pulling the legs of the Mantis-man. The Mantis-man fell backwards, and Claude pounced on its narrow green chest and felt something chitinous snap beneath his weight. A poor choice of guard. The Chatelaine should have left someone like Monoceros behind; but she had probably thought the danger was above, not below. And Margriet now was doubtless caught, and soon they would be bringing her down, deeper, for questioning.
The Mantis-man was struggling; its razor pincers snapped. Claude slit the Mantis-man’s throat and rolled off him, through the door, Gertrude crawling behind him.