“Your mistress is dead,” Claude said. “You have no more business with me.”
“I’m not sure she is,” Monoceros answered. “But Hell seems to be going beneath the earth without me in it.”
“Then let us pass,” he said gruffly.
“I am not here to stop you. I am here to walk beside you, if you will allow it.”
Claude squinted at him.
“Come over here,” he said, and pulled Monoceros by the hand, away from Gertrude and Beatrix.
They stood close to each other in the cold night, with the bleak little trees still burning on the horizon. He felt as if he could not see Monoceros very well, that he needed to see him in better light, but there was no better light to be had.
“Why?” Claude asked. “Why did you let me go? You saw me. You knew who I was.”
“I am not sure I know who you are,” Monoceros said slowly. “But I know you are an honourable man.”
Claude stepped back, thinking hard. Monoceros knew the shape of his body. He had looked it over often enough, when he was crouched in the cell wearing nothing but a tunic.
“Yes,” Claude said simply. “A man who failed to become a chimera.”
He held up his right hand with Margriet’s gauntlet still chafing it.
Monoceros, in answer, put his hand to it, and pressed it down to Claude’s side, and in that moment he moved closer to him and kissed him on the mouth. It was a hard kiss, a soldier’s kiss. He smelled of brimstone.
“You are trying to trick me,” Claude said after a moment. He let his hands linger on the skin like armour.
“No,” Monoceros said. “Yes. I am a brigand. I can’t be trusted. And I am a unicorn. The noblest of creatures.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Then let me walk beside you for a while, and we’ll see if we understand each other then.”
Claude glanced behind his shoulder, at Beatrix and Gertrude.
“I have to see her to the coast, to get a ship for England. It’s what Margriet wanted.”
“No,” said Beatrix, stepping forward. He had not known she could hear. “We’re going to Spain. As pilgrims. But we’ll walk with you as far as Paris, and farther, if you’re going south.”
The Chatelaine lay dying. She knew she was dying, she knew from the froth of blood in her own mouth, the bubbles of blood pushing at the packed dirt in her nostrils. From the sense that she was distant from her own body.
At the edges of her vision she saw eggs running on spindly legs. The beast’s spawn. The reason she was dying. The beast screamed, and opened its mouth wider than it ever had before. The egg-creatures scampered inside and down came those jaws, clamped tight. The Hellbeast slid into its burrow, back beneath the Earth.
Carrying her husband in its belly, her husband locked away with a key that only she held. She sobbed and turned her face into the cold mud.
They would find her body, and her mace-key on it.
A tree was afire, a little way into the distance. If she could get to that fire, she could thrust the mace into it, and hope to destroy it. No one should have the key to Hell.
And the other mace? The one she had given Monoceros to destroy? Her loyal Monoceros. He had said he would destroy it, and no doubt he had.
She crawled in her torn kirtle and surcote through the mud. Every movement was a dagger in her breast. She crawled under the burning tree and when a flaming limb fell she lifted her arm and slammed her arm, the one bearing the mace, into the fire. A small fire, but perhaps it would be enough.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
In the year of our Lord 1328, the beast called Hell was driven under the Earth. No one knew what became of its mistress. Some say she walks the Earth, still, and some claim to have seen the Hellspawn, scrawny creatures hatched from the eggs of the beast.
Nine years later, the King of England challenged the right of Philippe of Valois to the throne of France, and those two countries began a war that would last a hundred years and more. A new plague came to the world, and at first many feared that it was a return of the Hell-Plague, but it was instead something far worse.
There were many stories born during this time, as the people were afraid. People told stories of a band of women, led by a Flemish widow, who donned armour made of pots and pans, and raided Hell itself. People called this woman Dulle Griet in the Flemish tongue, or Margot-la-Folle in French, or Mad Meg in English. The city of Ghent constructed a great bombard and named it Dulle Griet.
From time to time there were stories of revenants left wandering, the remnants of the brief sojourn of Hell on the surface of the earth.
The wise say the creature was not Hell, but only some chthonic creature, whose doings have been so confused in the imagination of ordinary folk that it might as well have been. The wicked say that this beast must have emerged from time to time in the story of the world, and that it might one day rise again to trouble us.
Acknowledgements
One of my late grandfathers was named Claude, like one of the main characters in this book, and his ancestors came from France. The other was one of the British Expeditionary Force soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk at the beginning of the Second World War. His account of a desperate journey west from Belgium was in my mind as I wrote this book.
No one in my family—including my two very practical grandmothers, each of them armed in her fashion—ever doubted my writing. My dad’s always there to read a draft or help me research or lend confidence. My mom, the most thoughtful reader and dedicated fan a writer could want, has taken many tasks off my shoulders to give me more time to write. I thank Shirley Warren for her unwavering pride and support. The indomitable Linda Nicholson-Brown’s enthusiasm and affection have been a gift to me and to my writing. My siblings, and their families, multiply every joy.
My partner and first reader, Brent Warren, has had more cause than anyone to question all the hours I spend writing fiction. He never has. I owe him, and our son Xavier, all my thanks.
Jennie Goloboy, my agent, is the sharpest reader I know and a true partner in my writing career.
Thanks as well to Dawn Frederick at Red Sofa Literary for her work to bring this book into the world.
I’m grateful to everyone at the creative powerhouse that is ChiZine Publications, but especially to Sandra Kasturi and S.M. Beiko for believing in this book, to S.M. Beiko for editing and layout, and to Erik Mohr for the perfect cover.
Those who read and commented on early drafts, in whole or in part, include Michal Wojcik, Michel Schellekens, Merc Rustad, Effie Seiberg, Gwen Phua, Beth Tanner, Jared Oliver Adams, Derek Künsken, Paul Krueger and Kat Howard. Any remaining errors or oversights are entirely mine.
I have had many teachers over the years, but I must mention the late Paul Quarrington, whose mentorship through the Humber School for Writers in 2007 continues to guide my work. I wish I could hand him a copy of this novel. More, I wish I could read the novels he had yet to write.
Thanks to the Ottawa writing community, especially the members of the East Block Irregulars, and to the members of Codex, especially the participants in the Codex Novel Contest.
I thank Claude Lalumière and Alexandra Renwick for opening their home to writers as a place to work, to chat and, occasionally, to receive exciting email.
The list of books and articles that informed this book is long. Here are a few I found invaluable: Bruges, Cradle of Capitalism, 1280–1390 by James M. Murray. Of Reynaert the Fox: Text and Facing Translation of the Middle Dutch Beast Epic, edited by André Bouwman and Bart Besamusca. Transgender Warriors by Leslie Feinberg. A Plague of Insurrection: Popular Politics and Peasant Revolt in Flanders, 1323–1328 by William H. TeBrake. Medieval Handgonnes by Sean McLachlan.