“We used to call him Crip,” Guillaume said. “He limped. And he was a girl? That girl-that woman-we carried into the chapel…? That’s Crip Rosso, and he was female?”
“She wouldn’t marry the man her parents picked out for her. Her mother locked her in her room and beat her with a stick until she couldn’t stand. That’s where she got the limp.” Yolande stared past him, into the darkness of the pig shed, apparently seeing pictures in her mind. “She limped to the altar on her bridal day. When she’d had a couple of children that lived, her husband said he’d let her go to a nunnery, because she was a bad influence on them. She ran away before she got there.”
Guillaume whistled quietly.
“He-she-always seemed so cheerful.”
“Yes. Well.” Out of the silver shadows, Yolande’s voice was dry. That was not so disconcerting as the feeling of withdrawal in all the flesh she pressed against him: skin and muscle tensing away from his body. “Wouldn’t she be? Misery gets no company.”
“Uh-yeah.” He reached over to touch her cheek and got her mouth instead. Wet saliva, the sharpness of a tooth. She grunted in discomfort. He blushed, the color hidden by the dark, but the heat of it probably perfectly apparent to her.
Does she think I’m a boy? he wondered. Or is she-I don’t know-Is this it: over and done with? Do I care, if it is?
“’Lande…”
“What?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I’m awake now.” She rummaged about in the dark, and he felt her haul at something. She pulled the woolen cloak that covered them up around her own shoulders, uncovering Guillaume’s feet to the cold. He said nothing.
The moon rose on up the sky. The strip of white light shining in between the hut’s walls and roof now barely let him see the shine of her naked flesh in the darkness. He put his hand on her, stroking the skin from thigh, buttock, belly, up to her ribs. Warm. Soft. And hard, under the soft surface.
“So Crip joined the company because no man would have her?” He hesitated. “Oh… shit. That was meant to come out as a joke.”
He couldn’t distinguish her expression. He didn’t know if Yolande heard his rueful truthfulness and credited it.
After a second, she spoke again. “Margie told me she ran away on the journey to the nuns. I don’t know how she got as far south as Constantinople, but she was already dressing as a man. That’s why she got raped, before she joined the company. Revenge thing, you know?”
Guillaume froze, his fingers pressing against her warm skin. He heard her voice falter.
“They had the fucking nerve to tell her she was ugly, while they were doing it. ‘Crip.’”
The bracken moved under him and crackled. There was a grunt from the next shed over. One of the sows rising, with a thrash of her trotters, and then settling again.
Guillaume winced. “Nothing I could say would be right. So I’ll say nothing.”
There was the merest nod of her head visible in the dim light. Yolande’s muscles became tense. “The name stuck, after she signed on with the company.”
“Stuck?” He felt as if his pause went on for a whole minute. His heart thumped. Incredulous, he said, “It was one of us who raped her?”
“More than one.” She kept her voice deliberately bland. Still she shook, held within his arms.
Guillaume felt cold. “Do I know the guys that did it?”
“I don’t know their names. She wouldn’t tell me.”
“Do you think you know?”
“How could I tell?”
He almost burst out, Of course you can tell the difference between one of us and a rapist! But recalling what she would have seen at sacks of towns, he thought, Perhaps she has cause to doubt.
“We wouldn’t have treated her like that,” he said. “Not when she was one of us.”
Not out of morality-lives depend on loyalty. Men-at-arms and archers together, each protecting the other, and the bows bringing down cavalry before it could ever reach the foot soldiers. And the billmen keeping the archers safe from being ridden down. Safe.
Yolande’s voice came quietly as her body leaned back against him. “I guess she didn’t think about the rape much, later. We could all die any time, the next skirmish, field of battle, whatever. What’s the point of remembering old hurts if you don’t have to?”
An obscure guilt filled him. Guillaume felt angry. Why must women always talk at moments like this? And then, on the heels of that, he felt an immense sadness.
“Tell that to your Ric,” he said. “When his master’s dead.”
She was silent momentarily. He was fairly sure she thought he had not been listening to her recounting the day’s happenings. She confirmed it, a note of surprise in her voice.
“I didn’t think you were paying attention.”
“Ah, well. Full of surprises.”
A small, spluttered chuckle; her relief apparent. “Evidently. You’re-not quite what I expected you to be.”
He didn’t stop to work out what that might mean. Guillaume hitched his freezing feet up under his cloak. “His pigs are safe. But…Spessart might not kill Ric, but I’d take a bet with you that Muthari won’t make it-or I would, if I had any money.”
She gave him a look he couldn’t interpret at money.
“Yeah. At least the pigs won’t die.” She sounded surprised by her own thought. “These pigs, I mean…more like dogs than pigs.”
“All pigs are.” Guillaume could just see surprise on her face. He shrugged. “We had pigs. My dad always got in a hell of a black mood when it came to slaughtering day. Loved his pigs, he did. Hated his sons but loved his pigs…”
“So what happened to you and Pere Arnisout and the pigs?”
“What always happens in a war. Soldiers killed my father, raped my mother, and took me away to be their servant. They burned the house down. I would guess they ate the pigs and oxen; it was a bad winter…”
Her arms came around him. Not to comfort him, he realized after a second of distaste. To share closeness.
She said dispassionately, “And now you’re on this side of the fence.”
He put his hand up past his head, where his sword lay in the bracken, and touched the cross-hilt. “Aren’t we all…”
“I’ll have to see Ric again.” The moonlight was gone now, her face invisible; but her voice was sharp and determined.
“About Muthari?”
“About the visions.” Her hands sought his arms, closing over his muscles. “Two of them, Gil. And I don’t understand either. Maybe things would be clearer if I had another.” Her tone changed. He felt her laugh. “Third time lucky, right? Maybe God believes things come in threes, too.”
“Well, fuck, ask him, then-the pig-boy,” Guillaume clarified. “Maybe he can tell you when the enemy’s going to drop on us from a great height. I’d also give money to know who’ll turn up first, Huseyin Bey or the Carthaginian navy. If I had any money.” He grinned. “Poverty doesn’t encourage oracles, I find.”
She sounded amused in the dark. “ And he might know why God bothers to send visions to some mercenary soldier…”
“Or not.”
“Or not…”
He depended on sensation-the softness of her waist under his hand, the heat of her skin against him. The smooth, cool wool that sheltered them from the night’s cold. The scent of her body, that had been all day in the open air.
He felt his way carefully, as if speech could be tactile. “What we were saying-about Crip Rosso?”
“Yes.” No hint of emotion in her voice.
“I was going to ask…were you ever raped?” Guillaume was suddenly full of raw hatred that he could not express. “I-hope not. Just the thought’s made my prick wilt, and talking about that isn’t the way to bring it up again. Not in my case. Though I’ve soldiered with men who would come to attention instantly at the thought.”