The Centurion's Empire (24 page)

"I pointed to the house of a knight who lived not far from town and told the crowd to burn and kill all gentry. They did
just that. We killed the knight and his family and burned their place to a shell. More flocked to us, and as the numbers
grew, so did my courage. I led my army to the castle of my former student's father. His guards fled at our approach, and
we took the place with not much trouble. We tied him to

a post and made him watch while his highborn daughters and wife were stripped and held down on the good soil of
Beauvais. This time I did sample the charms of my dainty little student, aye, and with all of my loyal villeins cheering.
As many villeins as felt inclined then bestrode the women of that family while the knight looked on and screamed
himself hoarse. Then we cut their throats. As the castle burned I was proclaimed King of the Jacques, and we went on to
burn, loot, kill, aye, and plough the furrow of many a lady of high birth."

The countess turned away, unable to face Guillaume any longer, but she caught sight of the braid and bangle in
Vitellan's hand. Her daughter was being held by the very men who had done those atrocities, and for all her rank and
authority she was powerless. Black specks gathered and swarmed before her eyes as she fainted. Lew, Guy, and Raymond
carried her to a bench against the wall.

"So she doesn't like my story," sneered Guillaume. "Well, what about one by another Guillaume, Guillaume de
Ju-mieges, for example? He wrote of a peasant uprising in Normandy two hundred years ago. Not a violent battle, just
honest men throwing off harsh laws. They elected deputies to speak with their duke, but he sent soldiers to scatter them
and seize the deputies. He had their hands and feet chopped off and returned them to their villages as a lesson in
obedience. Well? Was that any better? I could tell dozens more such tales from the years before and since."
The countess remained insensible. The others said nothing.

"My Jacques were unstoppable. We burned five dozen castles and great houses, we could have gone on to seize the whole
of France. Oh, the nobles came in force against us, yet they had no nerve and more villeins flocked to our ranks than
they could kill. We began to recruit men with military training, Guillaume Cale and even Etienne Marcel. We had a
hundred thousand men . . ." His voice trailed off, and he lowered his gaze to the straw at his feet.

"Yet the invincible Jacquerie were crushed at Meaux," Vitellan concluded for him.

"Silence!" bellowed Guillaume, looking up and clench-

ing his fists. Silence followed. He looked about the room, took a deep breath, then stared coldly at Vitellan. "Mind your
tongue, historian of the future. Lucretia's life hangs by my fingertips."

"If you try to leave in a mind to kill her, you will not leave here alive." Vitellan's voice was equally cold and emphatic.

"If the moon touches the peaks before I return she will die in any case. Jean, my deputy, has clear instructions."

"So, we had better ensure that you leave in a good humor. What do you want with me?"

"Meaux, Meaux," he muttered. "You want to know why I need your help, Roman? It's because God's judgment was
against me at Meaux. There was a miracle. We had the Dauphin's wife, sister, daughter, and three hundred other noble
ladies penned up in the Market of Meaux. The mayor, the magistrates, the citizens all came over to us and opened the
town. My Jacques were all ready to do a stout job of ploughing those noblewomen, and they were defended by scarcely
ten dozen fighting men. Then ... it was a miracle, there's no other accounting for it. Twenty-five knights and a mere
hundred men-at-arms against nine thousand Jacques, odds of seventy-five to one. They cut down our vanguard on the
bridge between the Market and the city, then began to advance. Suddenly men-at-arms who had been cowering in their
houses saw what was happening and came rushing down to rally behind them. It was God's judgment, and it was against
me."

He looked around the room, almost as if expecting sympathy.

"Hellfire cannot come too quickly for you," said the reviving countess as Raymond helped her to sit up.

"For what? Killing knights, nobles, and their whores? Nobles should protect their villeins, yet you treated us as cattle,
then abandoned us to the English Free Companies. Villeins who dared to even whimper were killed or mutilated, their
goods pillaged, their wives bent over the nearest wall and bulled, and their daughters carried off to be harlots. Where was
your justice for my people?"

"Your people?" shouted the countess. "You are a priest

and a scholar. The villeins are not your people, you should minister to them but not become one of them.
We
are your
people!"

"Oh ho, so now you want me back? Father Guillaume, Father Guillaume, please come back, it was all a mistake."

"Is Lucretia unharmed?" asked Vitellan, breaking a long, delicately balanced silence.

"Would I damage the walls that keep me safe? Of course she's unharmed. She's been forced to eat good peasant bread
and walk the road on her own two feet. She has wind and blisters, nothing more."

"What do you want in exchange for her?"

"The means to escape unpardonable sin and hellfire," Guillaume replied smoothly.

"There is no unpardonable sin," exclaimed the Marlenk priest, trying to sound magnanimous and reassuring. "Let me
confess you, give back the girl, then go your way."

"Fool! God performed a miracle to stop me, He sided with the nobles of France. I hate Him for that!" His voice had risen
to a scream, but he caught himself. He stood facing them, panting and shivering. "I despise divine justice, but I fear
hellfire. I could confess my sins, yet I'm not sorry for them so they cannot be forgiven. Centurion Vitellan, your noble
French patrons forced me into sin, so you must help me escape. I want your Frigidarium."

"You—want my Frigidarium? How could that help you?"

Although he was desperate, Guillaume's one means of escape clearly terrified him. His nostrils flared, his eyes
protruded like those of a terrified ox before the butcher's stall. At last he took a deep breath and began to explain.

"Were I a pagan Greek, I might have planned to steal Charon's boat and drop the anchor midstream in the River Styx,
suspending myself between life and death to escape punishment in the afterlife. Because I am a Christian I don't believe
in Charon, yet I have still devised a way to suspend myself between life and death. I'll freeze myself undead in your ice
chamber, with nobody knowing my location and nobody to revive me. The Day of Judgment will pass, and my immortal
soul will be suspended in ice for eternity. Your Frigidarium will let me cheat God Himself."
The Marlenk priest was appalled. "Blasphemy, heresy!" he cried. "God can see everything, he'll melt the ice. His
justice—"

"But God is lazy, and cares nothing for justice. He watches over nobles and ignores ciphers like me until our allotted
time is done. He'll not bother to melt all the ice of the Berner Alpen to catch me."

"The elixir will ravage your stomach unless you accus-tomize yourself to it for months," warned Vitellan. "To drink a
full dose means death within days, at most."

"What do 1 care for a stomach? I'll burn holes in it with your elixir, then freeze myself before death can claim me."

"And your Jacques? Surely they cannot all wish to be frozen for eternity?"

"They think that I'm here to steal an elixir of invisibility from you. I'll take them to the Frigidarium, and when they
drink your elixir we'll all be saved from eternal punishment together. My Jacques will never know what a favor I did
them."

Vitellan took out*the bottle and stared at it. "I do not know the method of making the elixir. What remains in this bottle
is the last that I have."

"Then your choice is more difficult. Those Jacques across the ravine have ravished more noblewomen and their
daughters than anyone in all the world, Centurion Vitellan. Choose between your Frigidarium and the girl. A scrap of
parchment and a bottle of poison for her virginity and life."

"Ho there Jean, he's back," called the lookout as the figure of the priest appeared in the moonlight.
The Jacques were edgy, and none of them were asleep. They tumbled out of their tents and stood waiting. There were ten
of them, the elite of the Jacques, all surly, confident villeins. Some were armed with axes and two had swords. The rest
had bound spear-blades to their pilgrim staffs. Lucretia was hobbled, and tethered to one of the Jacques by a length of
rope. She began to whimper as she was hauled after him.

"He's walkin' as brisk as always, so they can't have tortured him," Jean observed as the priest reached the bridge.

"Lord Bonhomme, did ye get the elixir to make men invisible?" called the lookout. The priest held up slim phials in
bpth hands, then reached down hurriedly as the bridge swayed under him.

"Fool!" shouted Jean as he backhanded the lookout across the face. "He nearly dropped 'em. Shut up and stand back
until he's safely over. All of ye!"

The moment that he stepped off the bridge they crowded anxiously around him—but the phials in his hands suddenly
became daggers as Vitellan reversed them and plunged one into Jean's throat, then backhanded the other into the
lookout's eye. A man holding a spear lunged forward, but the blade only scraped hidden chainmail before Vitellan
dropped one dagger to seize the shaft and pull him down onto the other. A sword thudded heavily onto the mail on his
back, sending him reeling, yet he lunged forward at the Jacque who was tethered to Lucretia, feinting an overhand blow
with the shaft of the spear before stabbing him in the abdomen with his dagger. He ripped upward as the man gave a
wheezing shriek, then dropped the dagger and faced the others with the spear.

Now luck came to the Roman's aid. One of the six remaining Jacques backed off too far. He lost his footing and tumbled
into the gorge with a piercing, echoing scream. At this the others broke and fled. One ran across the bridge, only to be
seized and hurled into the gorge by the sentries. Where the road followed a narrowing of the ravine the rest were cut
down by a shower of arrows that lashed across the gap from the hidden Marlenk militia.

Vitellan cut the girl free. She did not move, except to stare from one body to another as if unable to comprehend that her
long nightmare could have been ended so quickly.

"Are you the Roman soldier?" she asked in Latin.

Vitellan pushed back the hood and moonlight gleamed on his face.

"Yes, I am Vitellan. And are you Lucretia under all that grime?"

She threw her arms around his neck by way of reply, and did not let go until he had carried her across the bridge to the
countess.

Jacque Bonhomme had betrayed everyone. After Vitellan surrendered the sealed map and elixir to him he had cut the
lead tube open and studied Tom Greenhelm's directions. Then he left, telling them to stay where they were, and that the
girl would be sent across the bridge before it was destroyed to cover their retreat. They waited, but Lucretia did not come.
Lew crept out to check with the sentries at the bridge. They reported that nobody had crossed since sunset, and in the
moonlight Lew found fresh footprints in the snow leading off into the highlands behind Marlenk.
The moon was nearing the mountain peaks as Vitellan put on his mailshirt and borrowed robes from the Marlenk priest.
The Jacques would be expecting a priest to return across the bridge, and after that the odds would be merely ten to one.
That was still more than seven times better than the odds when he had faced the Jacquerie at Meaux beside the Count de
Foix and the Captal de Buch . . . and the Roman army had trained its officers exceptionally well.
Raymond and his squire helped Vitellan out of his chain-mail.

"God be praised that the girl is safe," said the knight. "Yet what a pity that the monster Jacque Bonhomme escaped all
punishment by using your Frigidarium."

"He has not escaped God's justice," Vitellan assured him. "Tom Greenhelm worked out an infallible means for my
revival in the final Frigidarium that he dug. His men hollowed out a great boulder, lowered it into a deep crevasse in a
glacier, then dug the boulder into the wall of the crevasse. Glaciers flow slowly to the lowlands, then melt. The boulder
with Jacque Bonhomme inside will be carried down until one day, centuries from now, it is freed of the ice in some warm
valley. If the gold coins that were dug into the ice around it do not attract people to revive him, then he will die and rot as
the boulder warms. If he is revived, the elixir's hurt to his stomach will kill him anyway. Whatever the path, he will be
judged by God. Whether hellfire follows is not for me to say."

"And if the Day of Judgment should come before then?"

"In a thousand years and more it's not happened."

The village militia was assembling to hunt down the Jacque king as Raymond sent his squire back to the inn
with the chainmail. Vitellan began walking toward the snowdrifts at the edge of Marlenk, and he beckoned the French
knight to follow.