The Miracle Thief (28 page)

“I do not know anything else. And how can anyone fault me for clinging to what I know? For not wanting to give it up for strange ways and pagan lands?”

He grunted.

“The archbishop spoke to me of sacrifice and the souls that may be won, but it is not a very great sacrifice if I am forced into it, is it? If I could go to the Dane willing, if I might be allowed to place my own self upon the altar instead of being bound to it, then perhaps I could find peace.” He did not seem to be swayed. “But what do you know of sacrifice?”

“I was torn from my mother's arms by my father when I was only three days old. I had not been baptized; I had not even been named. And once I was weaned, I was delivered up to King Carloman, to be raised in his court as a sort of ransom to ensure my father's friendship. Our estates were on the borderlands in Aquitaine. My father had been a loyal retainer of King Carloman's father and had kept the Saracens from crossing the mountains.”

I knew this story, for it was partly my own. “But King Carloman never trusted his father's friends.” He had been one of the pair of brothers who had stolen my father's crown. Their father, King Louis, was my grandfather.

“When I was old enough, the king placed me as a squire in the household of the Count of Bresse.”

An evil and grasping man.

He sent a wry look in my direction. “I see you must have heard of him. While I was in his service, King Carloman died, and then so did Charles the Fat. Then Odo came to hold the throne. While we were at court, the Count of Bresse impugned my father's honor.”

I could hardly bear to hear what had happened next.

“My father was seized by Odo and held for many months before he was finally executed.”

“I'm sorry. I did not—”

“During his long absence, my mother took on a great many debts to try and rescue him and to keep me in all of the horses and weapons a knight requires.” He spoke with much bitterness. “And after my father died, his estates were co-opted by the Count of Bresse for our
protection
.” He fairly spat the word.

“And your lady-mother?”

“She is yet in Aquitaine and threatened with penury, while our retainers languish under the count's control. A man can fight, but my mother never did anything but wed herself to a man well liked by his king.”

I did not know what to say.

“I have not ever met my mother, but it is my hope I may one day do so, and that we can return together to my father's lands.”

My hand had found its way to my throat as I had listened, and now it lay clasped within my other.

“I served King Carloman with great loyalty, and next I served King Charles the Fat, and Odo, and even the Count of Bresse. And finally I was called here. Your father, the king, being no admirer of Odo or of his brother, the Count of Paris, I have been hoping to gain his ear long enough to ask for our estates to be restored.”

“But you must do it! Surely he would understand.”

“I hope so, my lady. I pray it with all my heart. But first I must gain the honor of serving in his contingent.”

His admission made me feel very humbled and quite small. “I am sorry.”

“For what, my lady? Misfortunes befall us all.” He stared at me as though daring me to say anything at all about the tale he had just recounted.

“Yes, but—”

“I am afraid we have nothing for our meal this night but wine and a few crusts of bread.”

How I longed to put a hand to his cheeks and smooth away his cares. How I wished I could carry, if only for a moment, the hurt and the bitterness that bent his brow. “I only meant that—”

“If you will look in my bag, then you will find them.”

I tried once more to extend to him my sympathies. “I wish the world were just.”

He looked up at me then with great sorrow in his gaze. “But then what would be the use for faith?”

***

We rode that next day between fields newly plowed and trees stripped of their leaves, disturbing vast flocks of birds that wheeled as they lifted into the sky. It was well past midday when we came up over the rise of a hill to find a group of men strung across the road at the bottom. It was too late to turn: they had already seen us.

One lifted his pitchfork as another approached, brandishing the sharp edge of a hoe.

Andulf stopped his courser some way off and called out to them. “What do you want?”

“We've been asked by the Count of Paris to look for a pair: a knight and the princess.” The man approached, spiderlike, as he spoke.

“And what are you to do with them?”

“Send someone back to Rouen for the count's men. Are you them?”

I held my breath as I waited for Andulf to reply.

“We are not the people you seek.”

Another of the men had come over to peer up at us. “He hasn't got the look of a knight about him.”

“He's got the horse.”

“But she doesn't look like a princess.”

Andulf repeated his pronouncement with calm authority. “We are not the people you seek.”

The first man squinted up at him. “Whose people are you then?”

“I'm to deliver the girl to the abbey. She's to take her vows.”

“Which abbey?”

There was barely a pause before he answered. “The one just down the road.”

“You have papers then.”

“I have.”

He hadn't. Not that I had seen. He would never have had need of them. Normally his horse and his weapons, as well as my father's pennon, would tell any who saw him whose man he was. But his tunic was torn and bloodied and he had no standard. He looked to be an ordinary man.

The peasant had reached out and grabbed at my leg with his hand.

I kicked at him, trying to free myself, but he only cackled and held on, pulling at the reins of my horse. “You're a comely lass, aren't you?”

Andulf swung his horse toward the man. “She's to pledge herself to God. Leave her be.”

“Maybe I can change her mind.”

I cannot say what might have happened had they not stepped aside when a short, stout man came walking up. He touched a finger to his forehead as he came to stand before us. “Pardon us for the delay, but as mayor of these lands, I've been asked by the Count of Paris to intercept all travelers.”

“I have already told these men we are not those you seek.”

If only he could say who he was. If only I could say who I was! But then we would be collected by the count's men. Andulf's honor would be impugned, and I would be placed back into the tower to await marriage to the Dane.

“Whose man are you then?”

“I am bringing this woman to the abbey where she is to take the veil.”

He turned a suspicious eye on me.

I tried to look devout.

“Not even the nuns at Chelles would want such an offering as that.”

Pity I could not bring down upon his head the wrath of my father the king!

The man seemed set on misbelieving us. “You have not told me whose man you are.”

Andulf tensed, repositioning the reins in his hands.

The others must have seen it as well, for they pointed their pitchforks at us in earnest.

I spoke. “We're on God's business.”

“You wear no habit. And he has no cowl.” A man stepped up to his side, glancing at me. “But, she cannot be the princess, so he cannot be her man.”

“But they are not Danes, nor are they Saxons.” The short man glanced up at us. “Surely the king would want to know his people drift across the countryside like chaff blown before the wind.” He nodded toward the spiderlike man, who came forward. “We'll keep them while we send out word. Whoever is missing this pair might be glad to hear of our tidings.”

***

They confiscated our horses, as well as Andulf's sword and his knife, and threw us into a barn, securing it with a bar thrown across the door.

From the smell, the place had been lately used by goats. The walls let in shafts of light, and the roof gaped at the sky, but at least we would have plenty of hay to bed down on this night.

I hobbled to a mound of hay that had been piled beside the walls of a stall, and sat upon it. Andulf strode to the door and struck it with his fist, rattling it against the frame. The bar held firm.

The injustice of the situation incensed me. And so did the thought of Andulf's mother, waiting for news from her son these many years. “How your mother would despair to see you imprisoned in a place like this, in service to a princess like me.”

His mouth turned up in half a smile. “And what would your own mother think?”

“I cannot care what she would think. One thing I have always known: that I would never be like her, consenting to be some man's whore; only now I am to be forced to wed a man who already has a wife.”

“I would not say the Dane is
rightfully
married.” He settled himself beside me and lounged against the wall as he examined his wounds.

“I suppose that's what people said about my mother as well. And that's why she went off.” It must have been. “She was not rightfully married, and so she went and left me behind.”

“You would that she had stayed? What kind of life would that have been?”

“
My
life. It would have been what my life was destined to become.”

“Then why should she have wanted it any more than you?”

“Is the Dane all I am allowed to hope for? Will I forever and always be unworthy of anything else? Of anything more?” God must think me too mean a creation to be put to greater use. Perhaps becoming a martyr was the best I could hope for. “Was I born simply to save someone else, some other poor girl, from dying at the Dane's hand?”

“What is this you say?”

I scrubbed my tears off onto my sleeve. “How else am I to make sense of all of this? My mother took herself away before I even had the chance to know her. My father abandoned me without a backward glance, for his beloved Lorraine. What else am I to think? What more could there be to know about me than this: there is within me something that does not deserve more. Some base, vile thing I will never be able to change.” I thought I was brave enough just then to look him in the eye, but I was not. Whenever my gaze was intersected by those gray eyes, they seemed to probe my very soul. “Why am I not enough?” My chin trembled. I tried my best to stop it, but my pain and the rage only dove deeper inside me, causing my shoulders to quake.

There he sat, a knight so true and noble I did not deserve his regard either. Oh, God, was there ever any soul more wretched than mine?

“My lady?” He opened up his arm to me.

As I shoved off propriety and took the refuge he offered, I could not keep from weeping. That fact only added to my humiliation.

He pulled my head to his chest and then let his hand linger on my hair. “Your mother loved you.”

“How can you say that?”

“Because I knew her.”

“You—” He had
known
her?

“The Count of Bresse was he who escorted her when she left the court, and I was the squire he took with him. You must believe she mourned you. Every night when she supposed us to be sleeping, she wept.”

She had mourned me? “But, if she loved me, then why did she leave?”

“Your grandmother drove her away.”

“You know where she is then?”

“I took her there myself.”

I pulled myself from him. “Then can you take me there as well?”

When he looked down at me, his brows were knitted in puzzlement. “I thought… I thought that's why you wished to go.”

My brow now mirrored his own. “Go where?”

“To Rochemont. That's where she went. I thought that's why you wished to go there.”

My mother. At Rochemont.

Oh, God.

Oh, God!
I had sent the Danes to her. Sweet Jesus in heaven, have mercy on my soul. Have mercy on
her
soul.

I had worried to think myself a martyr, and all of this time I should have been worried for her sake instead. If she should be killed, or worse, because I sent the Danes to her…how could I ever forgive myself? But why had no one ever told me? Why had I not known?

“My lady?”

“I have murdered her.” I turned into myself, keening with guilt and regret.

He enfolded me within his arms. And when I thought I might go mad with the thought I had killed my own mother, he held me still.

“Stop that bellowing in there!” Someone, some man, banged against the door.

Leaving me, Andulf strode to it and kicked at it, rocking the frame.

The man only shouted again. “If you had not run away, you would not be in such a state!”

The truth of those words only made me cry the harder. I would not be here, Hugh would not have been harmed, Andulf would not have been wounded, and my mother would not have been placed in mortal danger if I had not been afraid. If I had not lacked faith. If I had trusted in Providence, as I had started out by doing, then none of those would have happened.

Andulf came back and sat beside me.

I leaned against him as my breathing slowed and my tears stopped. Through sorrow-glazed eyes, I watched as the light grew dim and the scents of food began to waft through the cracks in the barn. Though the people did not feed us, they did let the goats back in. And then they barred the door again.

Andulf shooed the animals away, and then he took up his place on the pile of straw once more. Lying down, his back against the side of the stall, he gestured for me to join him.

I hesitated, overcome by a sudden sense of propriety. But we had already slept side by side, and I had already helped to press the scar of a sword into his thigh. I lay down, pulling my knees up into my tunic and tucking it around my feet.

He reached out his great arm and pulled me to his chest, wrapping a side of his mantle around us both.

“I do not think—”

“Don't. Just sleep.” I tried to move from him, but his arm imprisoned me. “Do not think—”

I tried not to, but I could not help it. “What was my mother's name?” Had I met her when I had visited the abbey?

“Juliana.”

Juliana. Sister Juliana. Keeper of the relic. She who had once told me: Do not despise the life you have been given. But the only thing I had ever done was despise the woman who had given that life to me.

We lay there for some time as the goats settled themselves into the hay for sleep and the townspeople shut themselves up in their homes.

“I do not think I can do it. I cannot marry him.” I whispered the words. “Not even, God help me, for the winning of ten thousand souls.” Surely no one had ever been more lacking in faith than I. “I do not think I am brave enough.”

“There is not one other woman in the kingdom who would dare to do the things you have done. And I will be there at your side.”

“But I am not strong enough.”

“I will be strong when you cannot.”

“I do not have faith enough.”

“Then I will have faith when you have none.”

I glanced up at his hand, which he had wrapped around my forearm. “You would—you would come with me? When I marry the Dane?”

“I have pledged to serve the king wherever he would have me serve, and he gave me charge of you.”

“But what of your mother?”

“I can look after her interests as well as your own. I have done so these many years.”

“But—”

“She would tell you my first duty must be to my king.”

“I cannot think that—”

“Do not think. Sleep.”

He settled his chin atop my head and proceeded to do just that. And soon, lulled by his deep, slow breaths and comforted by his warmth, I surrendered to sleep as well.

***

The next morning, I listened to the fluttering of birds and the rustlings of goats for I could not say how long before I became aware that Andulf had wakened as well. I had held myself still for his sake, but now I relaxed against him.

His breathing stopped for a moment, and then it began again. My arm lay pinioned by his, neither tight enough that I felt bound to him, nor loose enough that I considered myself free of him. I could have reached out and taking hold of his arm, secured him to me, or I could just as easily have pushed him away, but I did neither.

Hold
me.

I could have sworn I had not given words to that thought, but slowly, gently, his arm enfolded me as he pulled me to himself. “I do not know what you wish, my lady.” He whispered the words in my ear.

Neither did I. And so I said nothing, and we lay there, together. The town was slow to wake, and I could not say I minded.

When we heard someone approach, his arm tensed, and he pushed up on his elbow. When the bar was withdrawn, he seized me and thrust me behind himself.

All the warmth we had accumulated between us wasted away into the fetid air. The chill that swept me was not unanticipated, but I had not known I would feel so bereft. They tossed some bread to us and then left us alone once more.

He retrieved it, handing half to me as he came back to sit beside me.

“How long can they keep us here?”

He sighed. “As long as they wish. They have no reason to let us free.”

“Then I must tell them who I am.”

He gripped my hand. “If you do, all hope of escape will be gone. As you are now, you could be any woman hoping to take the veil. If I can speak to the mayor alone, I can barter for your liberty. But if you tell them who you are, you can be no one but yourself and then they will have to summon the count's men.”

And all the trials and all of his wounds would have been for nothing. Except… “Then you will be able to take me back to the count with good reason for our delay, and no one will know what I had once wished to accomplish.” My hopes would have been lost, but his honor would be preserved, and he would retain my father's esteem. He would still be able to ask for the return of his family's estates.

“Do not do it. You once asked what kind of sacrifice it would be if you were forced to marry the Dane. You wanted the chance to decide for yourself. I am giving it to you.”

“But I am not forced to make this sacrifice. This one, I choose.” I pulled my hand from his, flung myself at the door, and beat upon it. “Come! I have something to say!” Andulf took me by the shoulders and swung me to face him. “Do not do it, my lady. I beg you. They think you are trying to take your vows. Their inquiry will yield nothing, and we will be freed, and then you can do as you wanted. If you tell them who you are, then you will be returned to the count, and there will be no hope of escape.”