“Don’t touch me!”
Joan jumped away from her.
“Is something wrong, my lady?”
The friar turned toward the door. On the threshold stood a giant of a man. He was carrying a scythe and stared at him menacingly. Joan could see the little boy’s head poking out from behind his legs. The man was only a couple of feet from the friar, and seemed head and shoulders taller than him.
“Nothing is wrong,” said Joan, but the man came into the room, brushing him aside like a feather. “I’ve told you, there’s nothing wrong,” Joan insisted. “Go about your business.”
The little boy ran and hid behind the doorframe. Joan stopped looking in his direction, and when he turned to the others, he saw that the man with the scythe was kneeling in front of Mar, without touching her.
“Didn’t you hear me?” asked Joan. The man did not answer. “Do as you are told, and get about your business.”
This time the man did turn and look at him. “I take orders only from my mistress,” he said.
How many big, strong, proud men like him had fallen at Joan’s feet? How many had he seen sobbing and begging for forgiveness before he passed sentence? Joan’s eyes narrowed. He clenched his fists and took two steps toward the servant.
“How dare you disobey the Inquisition!” he cried.
Before he could even finish, Mar was on her feet. She was shaking again. The man with the scythe also stood up, but more slowly.
“Friar, how do you dare come into my house and threaten my servant? Inquisitor? Ha! You’re no more than a devil disguised as a friar. You were the one who raped me!” Joan could see the man’s fingers gripping the handle of the scythe. “You’ve admitted it!”
“I... ,” Joan stammered.
The servant came over to him and pushed the blunt edge of the scythe into his stomach.
“Nobody would find out, Mistress. He came on his own.”
Joan looked at Mar. There was no fear in her eyes, or compassion. There was only ... He turned as quickly as he could to make for the door, but the little boy slammed it shut and confronted him.
Behind his back, the man reached out with the scythe until it was hooked round Joan’s neck. This time it was the sharp edge he pressed against his throat. Joan did not move. The boy’s fearful expression had changed to mirror that of the two people near the hearth.
“What... what are you going to do, Mar?” As Joan spoke, he could feel the scythe cutting into his neck.
Mar said nothing for a few moments. Joan could hear her breathing.
“Shut him in the tower,” she ordered.
Mar had not been in there since the day the Barcelona host first made ready for its attack, then exploded in shouts of triumph. Ever since her husband had fallen at Calatayud, she had kept it locked.
50
THE WIDOW AND her two daughters crossed Plaza de la Llana to the Estanyer Inn. This was a tall, two-story building with the kitchen and the guests’ dining room on the ground floor and all the bedrooms on the first floor. The innkeeper greeted them. The kitchen lad was with him; when she saw him staring openmouthed at her, Aledis winked at him. “What are you staring at?” the innkeeper shouted, cuffing him round the head. The lad ran off to the back of the building. Teresa and Eulàlia had noticed the wink, and both smiled.
“You’re the ones who deserve a good slap,” Aledis whispered, taking advantage of a moment’s lack of attention by the innkeeper. “Stand still and stop scratching, will you? The next one who does will get...”
“These girdles are impossible ...”
“Be quiet,” Aledis ordered them, as the innkeeper turned his attention back to her.
He had a room where the three of them could sleep, although there were only two mattresses.
“Don’t worry, my man,” said Aledis. “My daughters are used to sharing a bed.”
“Did you see how that innkeeper looked at us when you told him we were used to sleeping together?” asked Teresa once they were safely in their room.
Two straw pallets and a small chest on which stood an oil lamp were all the furniture in the room.
“He was imagining lying between the two of us,” said Eulàlia with a laugh.
“And that was without him being able to appreciate any of your charms,” said Aledis. “I told you so.”
“We could work dressed like this. It seems to be successful.”
“It only works once,” Aledis said. “Or twice at most. Men like the idea of innocence, of virginity. But as soon as they’ve had it... We would have to go from place to place, practicing the deception, and we wouldn’t be able to ask them to pay.”
“There isn’t enough gold in all Catalonia that would make me wear this girdle or this...” Teresa started furiously scratching from her thighs to her breasts.
“Don’t scratch!”
“But no one can see us now,” the girl protested.
“The more you scratch, the more it will itch.”
“What about that wink you gave the scullion?”
Aledis stared at them. “That’s none of your business.”
“Did you ask him to pay?”
Aledis remembered the look on the lad’s face when he did not even have time to take off his hose, and the clumsy, violent way he had climbed on top of her. Not only men liked innocence, virginity ...
She smiled. “He gave me something.”
THEY WAITED IN their room until suppertime. Then they went down and sat at a rough table of unpolished wood. Soon afterward, Jaume de Bellera and Genis Puig made their appearance. From the moment they sat at their table on the far side of the room, they could not take their eyes off the two girls. There was no one else in the dining room. Aledis caught the girls’ attention. They both crossed themselves and began to make a start on the bowls of soup the innkeeper had brought.
“Wine? Only for me,” Aledis told him. “My daughters don’t drink.”
“It’s one jug of wine after the other for her ... since our father died,” Teresa said apologetically to the innkeeper.
“To get over her grief,” Eulàlia explained.
“Listen,” Aledis whispered to them some time later, “that makes three jugs of wine, and they have had their effect. In a moment I’m going to let my head drop on the table, and I’ll start snoring. From then on, you know what you have to do. We need to know why Francesca’s been arrested, and what they intend to do with her.”
Soon afterward, Aledis’s head drooped onto the table between her hands. But she was listening intently.
“Why not come over here?” came the sound of a man’s voice. Silence. “She’s drunk ... ,” the voice insisted.
“We won’t harm you,” said a second voice. “How could we, in a place like this, with the innkeeper as witness?”
Aledis thought of the innkeeper; he wouldn’t say a word, providing they let him lay his hands on something ...
“Don’t worry ... We are gentlemen...”
The two girls eventually gave in. Aledis heard them scraping their chairs back and standing up.
“You’re not snoring loudly enough,” Teresa whispered to her.
Aledis allowed herself a smile.
“A castle!”
Aledis could imagine Teresa and those incredible blue eyes of hers opening wide as she stared at the lord of Bellera, making sure he got an eyeful of all her charms.
“Did you hear that, Eulàlia? A castle. He’s a real nobleman. We’ve never talked with a noble before ...”
“Tell us about all your battles,” Aledis heard Eulàlia encouraging him. “Have you met King Pedro? Have you talked to him?”
“Who else do you know?” Teresa wanted to know.
The two girls pressed round Lord de Bellera. Aledis was tempted to open her eyes, just enough to see them at work ... but there was no point. Her girls knew what they were doing.