“Arnoul?” Guillot said. He looked about the crowd. “Which one of you is Arnoul?”
The townsman pointed to one of the men holding the robed woman.
“You saw her do magic?” Guillot said.
The man—Arnoul—nodded.
“What magic?”
The crowd grew silent.
“I, I saw her…” Arnoul’s voice was low and hesitant. He looked around for support, but received none. He took a deep breath. “I saw her turn into a goat!”
The crowd gasped.
“A goat?” Guillot said, with as much disdain as he could muster.
“A goat,” Arnoul said, more confident now.
“Has anyone else seen her do magic?” Guillot said.
Silence.
“This woman’s family?” Guillot said. “Where are they? Where is her husband?”
“She only moved to Trelain a few months ago. No husband or family,” the townsman said.
“I see. And Arnoul is a long and upstanding member of the community?”
The townsman nodded. “Master of the Tanners’ Guild.”
Guillot shook his head in exaggerated disgust. “Draw back her hood.”
“We can’t, my Lord,” the townsman said. “She’ll hex the whole town. Put the evil eye on us.”
“Rubbish,” Guillot said. “Show me her face.”
The man hesitated for a moment before walking over and drawing back the woman’s hood. There was a collective gasp and some of the people in the crowd flinched. Revealed, the woman seemed to be in her late twenties, with burnished copper hair. Her pale skin was lightly freckled and her eyes were crystal blue. She was beautiful. Guillot wondered how many times the woman had rejected Arnoul’s advances before he’d levelled these claims against her.
“Let me summarise,” Guillot said. “On the word of one man, a man with a face like a dog’s arse…” He paused for the crowd’s laughter—a crowd rarely failed to laugh at a nobleman’s joke—and took a moment to enjoy seeing Arnoul squirm. He wanted to make sure the mood was cheerful. “… you are willing to burn a young woman to death. That doesn’t sound like the king’s work to me. That sounds like murder.” He looked around. None of the men seemed quite so confident now.
“There’s only one way to deal with murderers,” Guillot said. “And the king expects me to carry out that task in his name.” He rested his hand on the pommel of his sword.
Arnoul looked around at the others, most of whom refused to meet his eye, then back at Guillot. Guillot ignored him, looking instead at the woman, whose face now displayed the hope that she might live. Finally, Guillot looked back to the townsman.
“Well? What will it be?”
“What would you have us do, my Lord?”
Guillot’s heart raced. If the crowd turned ugly, no amount of titles would save him and dal Sason from the same fate the young woman faced. Many in the crowd—perhaps all of them—still believed Arnoul, but were afraid to speak out. They thought she was a witch, and they wanted justice, so he had to give them something to ensure an easy escape.
“Release her to my custody,” Guillot said. “My companion and I are on our way to Mirabay. We’ll hand her over to the Intelligenciers there. If she’s a witch, you can be certain they’ll find her out. She will see justice—on that, you have my word.”
There were some murmurs in the crowd, but Guillot could not tell if they were favourable. For the time being, however, he was a lord, and his word was law. They were too conditioned to take orders from their betters to immediately question him. They might, eventually.
“Very well, my Lord,” the townsman said.
Arnoul’s face turned puce, and Guillot knew that as soon as he was out of earshot, the scorned man would start to agitate against him. Then things would get dangerous.
“We’re leaving directly,” Guillot said. “We need a horse for the prisoner and the keys to her shackles. My man will see you’re well paid for the horse. Quickly now. I don’t have all day.” He gestured to dal Sason and let out a discreet sigh of relief.
“That was a stroke of luck,” dal Sason whispered.
Guillot didn’t respond. There was a time when doing things like that was a regular feature in his life. When he hadn’t needed to rely on luck to get through them.
“Pay for the horse quickly,” he said softly to dal Sason. “I don’t care if it only has three legs. We need to get out of here fast. We need to put as much distance between us and Trelain as we can before this lot start to think about what’s just happened.”
CHAPTER 10
They rode through the day, only stopping when they had to rest the horses for as short a time as possible. As evening drew near, Gill decided they had gone far enough and declared it time to venture off the road and find somewhere to camp for the night. They looked around for a while, Gill’s primary focus being that they were far enough from the road to light a fire without being seen. When they finally found somewhere he liked, they began settling in. The fire was lit, the horses fed, watered, and secured. All that remained was the awkwardness of trying to make small talk with the woman he had rescued.
“What are you going to do with me?” the woman said, finally breaking the silence.
Guillot looked at her over the flames of a fire that had taken him far more effort to start than it should have. “I’m going to take you another twenty or thirty miles along the road, and then I’m going to let you go.”
Her eyes widened in surprise, as did dal Sason’s.
“Are you sure that’s wise, Lord Villerauvais?” dal Sason said.
“You might as well call me Gill. Everyone else does, and no, I’m not sure, but I’m going to do it anyway.”
The woman cast dal Sason a filthy look. “Why have you left these on, then?” she said to Gill, holding up her manacled hands.
“Truthfully?”
She nodded.
“I forgot about them.”
She rattled the chains.
“Yes, of course,” Guillot said. He stood and made his way over to her, fumbling in his purse for the key.
“My Lord. Gill,” dal Sason said. “I really don’t think this is a good idea.”
“I’ve had plenty of bad ideas,” Gill said, “and none of them have killed me yet.”
“You said we were going to preserve her for a proper trial, not to simply let her go. What if the people were telling the truth?”
“Come on, did you see the man who accused her? I’m under no illusions of what happened there. Am I correct?”
The woman shrugged. “He tried to get into my skirt. He wasn’t going to take no for an answer. I hit him with a brick and got away.”
“And thus a woman becomes a witch,” Guillot said. “I’ve seen it before. The duke needs to keep a tighter hand on his subjects. Spending more time in Trelain would be a good start.” He unlocked the manacles, which she removed; she began to rub her red, raw wrists. Gill grimaced at the sight. He’d been so preoccupied with getting away from Trelain, the bonds had genuinely slipped his mind. The woman hadn’t complained once all day.
Well, it was his first rescue in many years. He couldn’t be expected to get everything right the first time back.
“What’s your name?” he said.
“Solène.”
“You don’t sound like you’re from Trelain,” Guillot said.
She shook her head. “No, I’m not from anywhere you’d have heard of.”
Guillot nodded. “Fine, there’s no need to tell us. I’m Guillot dal Villerauvais. This is my … This is Banneret of the White Nicholas dal Sason. Until we part tomorrow, you can consider yourself under my protection, and completely safe.” It had been a very long time since he had played the gallant knight-errant, but it came to him more easily than he had expected. Certainly more easily than lighting the fire.