The Stone Rose (47 page)

***

Holding up the lamp as he entered the cellar, Conan saw his sister was perched on a casket of salt beef, gently pressing her breasts. ‘Missing the babe, Johanna?’ he asked indifferently.

Johanna raised her head and looked listlessly at him. ‘I only gave him suck in the evenings. I was trying to wean him. It doesn’t hurt much. My milk will soon dry up.’ She wondered if Conan had been sent to pronounce sentence on her. Mary must have shown Malait the grave of the peasant baby by now. Had it convinced Malait that St Clair’s heir was dead? Conan’s face was impassive, it gave nothing away. Johanna wondered what her fate would be if Malait remained suspicious. Would they torture her to make her talk? Vikings were renowned for violence and cruelty throughout Christendom.

‘Well, Conan, what’s to do?’

‘You’re free.’

‘Free?’

‘You’re to come home with me. Here, you’ll be thirsty.’ Casually, the pedlar tossed a bulging waterskin onto her lap.

Johanna hid her astonishment behind as blank a front as she could summon. Ducking her head, she made a show of fumbling at the stopper. ‘What happened to Mary?’ she managed, and to give herself time to think, she put the bottle to her dry lips and drank.

‘Not much. The maid pointed out the infant’s grave to Malait, and now she’s on her way to Huelgastel.’

‘What...what made him believe us? I should have thought your captain would take some convincing.’

‘He verified that what you said was the truth.’

‘Verified? How?’

‘Captain Malait had the grave dug over and found a baby boy.’

‘No!’

Conan was amused by his sister’s revulsion. ‘Time we started back for Vannes, Johanna. Drink up.’

Johanna felt sick, with relief as well as revulsion. Thank Christ the grave had contained a boy. If it had been a girl, it would have been her death warrant.

She kept her head down as she walked through the hall and into the courtyard. The yard was become a charnel house, with the bodies of the slain stacked under sheeting like logs ready for winter. She averted her eyes, but not before she glimpsed a leg sticking out from underneath the table linen. She had only lived at Kermaria for a few months, and never expected to feel sympathy for the people here, but now, seeing them laid out like so much dead wood, Johanna discovered she’d stayed long enough for fellow feeling to have grown.

Anxious to shake the dust of Kermaria from her shoes, she turned her face to the bridge.

In the solar, conferring with Nicholas Warr, Otto watched from the high window. ‘There she goes, Warr.’

Nicholas Warr stared at Johanna’s retreating back. ‘You say she refused to administer poppy juice to the child?’

‘So her brother maintained.’

‘And you suspect she’s keeping something back?’

Otto bared discoloured teeth. ‘I’m as sure of that as I’m sure the sun will rise at tomorrow’s dawning.’

‘Then why let her go, Captain?’

Otto’s smile was tinged with triumph. ‘Because, my dear fellow, she’s as mutinous a wench as you could hope to meet, and now she’s released, she will be off her guard. Her brother will be able to worm whatever it is out of her faster than I could if I had her flayed alive.’

‘Do you trust the pedlar?’

Otto held up a chinking drawstring pouch. ‘He’s vermin. But as long as I hold this, I trust him. Conan will be back.’

***

‘You made me walk so far and so fast, Conan, my shoes are wearing out,’ Johanna said, stopping to sit on a milestone. A grey rat of a dog that had crawled out of the ground-elder by the Kermaria crossroads and had been shadowing them squatted in the road by her shoes and scratched a ragged ear. Conan had not slackened his pace, but Johanna picked up her feet and examined them. Blisters were forming – she was not used to walking. The mongrel’s stumpy tail gave a tentative wag. ‘Why is this thing following us, Conan?’

With a sigh, Conan stopped and frowned over his shoulder. ‘It’s a pest, a stray.’ Impatience was building up within him. They had not progressed above three miles; she walked painfully slowly, did his sister. ‘You should have shown some restraint at table, Johanna,’ he said. ‘There’s too much of you to carry about, that’s why your feet ache. You’re fatter than ever you were before you went to Kermaria.’

A shadow darkened Johanna’s plump countenance. Ned had preferred Gwenn Herevi over her, and Gwenn Herevi was skinny as a rake. She did not like to think that there might be some truth in her brother’s accusation. ‘It’s all very well for you to criticise, Conan, but how could I let all that food go to waste? They ate well at the manor. A saint on a Lenten fast would have been tempted. Besides, I was eating for two.’

‘Three more like,’ Conan responded sourly.

Johanna flexed her feet, counted another blister on one of her heels, and began massaging her toes.

‘Come on, do,’ Conan said, glancing at the sun. ‘I want to be back in Vannes before they lock the gates.’

‘Look, Conan, already there’s a hole in this shoe.’ Poking her finger through a rent in the leather where the upper had come away from the sole, Johanna waggled her shoe at him. The dog cocked its head on one side.

Conan prepared to walk on. ‘You can buy more shoes in Vannes, I’ve lodgings directly over the cobblers.’

‘Buy more shoes? But, Conan, I’ve no money.’

The pedlar stood still as a standing stone. ‘What, none?’

Johanna should have been warned by the set of her brother’s shoulders, but with her mind fixed on her feet, she did not notice. ‘Not a penny,’ she said, cheerfully. ‘I spent what I had on the material to make this dress.’

Conan turned. ‘I’d hoped for help with the rent. I can’t afford to keep you. I don’t need no bloody millstone.’

‘I should have thought you’ve feathered your nest enough on what I told you concerning Kermaria,’ Johanna said sharply. ‘You could help me out till I find...an alternative means of support.’

The pedlar gazed coldly at his sister. ‘I found you that position at Kermaria,’ he said, as if he’d gone out of his way to find her the job. He had indeed done well out of placing her with St Clair, but it didn’t suit him to admit that. ‘I owe you nothing. Plums like that can’t fall in your lap every day of the week.’

According to Otto Malait, the ungrateful wench was holding something back. Perhaps he could induce her to confide in him by trickery. Or fear. Fear would have to be a last resort, it might turn her away from him. However, a pinch of it would not go amiss. If Johanna was worried he might not take her in, it might spur her to talk freely.

Not for a moment did it occur to Conan to play on his sister’s affections. His life had never been enriched with family feeling, and he was Johanna’s brother only when it suited him. In the inn all those months ago when he had overheard Ned Fletcher and Raymond Herevi mention a wet nurse, he had remembered the Count’s interest in the St Clair family and had seen at once that there was gain for him in sending Johanna to Kermaria. His sister’s needs had not weighed with him at all. If the opportunity had not presented itself, he would just as happily have seen her reduced to beggary.

Now, on the long road to Vannes, he was irritable. Johanna was too slow, but he could not abandon her till he had the information Malait wanted. He cast his eyes up the road and saw, balanced on the rim of the horizon, a building which to an innocent eye resembled a hundred other wayside taverns. It had an unsavoury reputation. Honest women shunned the place, for inside, women of another stamp took the drinks to the customers’ trestles. And if, as often was the case, more intimate services were required of the women, they would lead their clients to an upstairs chamber where two rows of pallets were spread over the floorboards, each screened from the next by a series of dingy, moth-eaten curtains stretched out on poles. The tattered curtains made a mockery of privacy, but no one ever complained.

Following the direction of her brother’s gaze, and not knowing the reputation of the inn, Johanna’s eyes brightened. ‘Is that a hostelry, Conan? I’m hungry, I’ve not broken my fast. And despite that water you gave me, I could drink a well dry.’ Johanna was so invigorated by the sight of the inn that she jammed her shoes back on her swollen feet and hobbled towards him. The cur followed.

Conan opened his mouth to loose a scathing comment about gluttony, but inspiration struck and he held his peace. Perhaps if he indulged his sister and bought her wine, that would loosen her tongue. Maybe he should try persuasion on her instead of the threats he habitually used. Pinning a passable smile to his face, he held out his hand, ‘Come on, Johanna. If you step out a little, I’ll buy you some food when we reach the tavern.’

Johanna gave him a grateful smile and wondered silently what had persuaded him to offer her food instead of insults. She threaded her arm through his and limped steadily on.

Inside the hostelry, Johanna was at first too thirsty to take an account of her surroundings, and when Conan ordered a full jug of Gascon wine to be brought to their table – an expense she had never known him spare her before – it would have seemed churlish to have refused such untoward generosity and admit to a preference for a measure of small ale.

The wine was rich and heady and made her head spin. ‘Why, Conan!’ she exclaimed, when she had drained her cup. ‘You are good to me!’

Conan did not feel at all generous. Reluctantly, he topped up her cup. The mongrel had slunk under the table and to relieve his feelings, Conan tried to kick it, but the dog, used to this treatment, nimbly evaded his boot. Indeed, the expenditure rankled to such an extent that when the whore who was serving them demanded instant payment, Conan fumbled the coins, dropping them on the floor. He picked them up, and the brainless dog licked his hand. ‘You’ve had a hard time of it lately, sister,’ Conan said when the wench had disappeared with his money. And though the words stuck in his throat, he even managed to add, ‘If your brother cannot buy you a drink at a time of trial, who can?’

If Conan’s generosity was unexpected, his sympathy was doubly so, and the dim hostelry was lost in a sudden mist as Johanna counted her miseries and her eyes brimmed. Ned Fletcher’s bright, Saxon features wavered in her mind’s eye. Her feet throbbed. She had no money. She would never see the English captain again. Thrusting her nose into her cup, she emptied it like a trooper.

Trusting his money was well-spent, Conan had the bottle ready and poured bravely.

‘I’m hungry, Conan,’ Johanna said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand.

‘I’ll order in a minute, the servers are busy.’ The servers were not busy, but Conan wanted his sister well-oiled before she ate. If she ate before she drank, it would cost twice as much in wine to make her talk. He regarded her impartially while he waited for the wine to take effect.

Johanna had rolled her wide sleeves up to her elbows and her plump arms rested on the table. Her cheeks were round, rosy and shiny as two apples, for the walk had made her hot, and her face and forehead bore a film of perspiration. More downy hairs covered her upper lip. The dress that she had so improvidently wasted her money on, was of good quality fabric, but it was now stained with the dust of the road and there were unsightly sweat marks under her arms.

Last winter, it had been the fashion among noble women to leave the side seams of their over-gown, or bliaud, open, lacing them at intervals so that the coloured undergown was revealed. Conan had seen Countess Eleanor de Roncier wear such a bliaud. His sister had clearly aped this fashion, but she had failed to take into account the fullness of her figure. Johanna’s bliaud was in fact a replica of one of Gwenn Herevi’s, and Johanna, no needlewoman, had cobbled it together in the hope of attracting Ned Fletcher’s attention. But far from giving her the elegance that she was striving for, the effect was lumpy and messy. Conan grinned. Johanna bulged out of the sides of her gown like a sausage which was too fat for its casing. Controlling his expression, he replenished her cup. He had lost count of how much she had drunk, but the bottle was down to three fingers, and he had barely sipped from his own cup.

Johanna lifted a hand to her head and rubbed it wearily. The wine had numbed the pain in her feet, but it was having a depressing effect on her senses. She wished Conan would hurry and order food. Wine had a strange effect on an empty stomach, and the one Conan had chosen seemed stronger than usual. Johanna felt listless and tired, and her eyes were having difficulty in focusing.

‘It’s a shame you never did as I asked about the poppy juice,’ Conan opened, cautiously. Brown eyes blinked at him through plump fingers. ‘The babe was obviously cursed, and you lost a chance to make a coin or two.’ His sister removed her hand from her eyes and it flopped clumsily onto the table. Conan took this as a sign that the wine was doing its work.

‘What do you mean, the babe was obviously cursed?’ The whites of Johanna’s eyes had gone pink, as though she had been weeping.

‘He died, didn’t he?’

It was a struggle for Johanna to recollect the story she and Holy Mary had concocted between them. ‘Oh, aye. The babe died of the marsh fever.’

‘And as the infant’s death was so obviously fated, I was thinking it a pity that you had not profited by it. If you have given him the drug, you could have claimed de Roncier’s reward.’ He heaved a remorseful sigh. ‘As it is, the child is dead and you have nothing.’

‘I’m hungry.’

‘In a minute, Johanna.’

Johanna raised her cup and summoned a shaky smile. ‘I can wait. This wine takes the edge off my appetite.’ And my grief, she thought. She wondered how much distance there was between her and Ned Fletcher and her babe. She hoped Malait had called off his dogs.

Conan smiled, and held out a fresh bottle. ‘Have some more, sister.’

‘I might have been rich, Conan,’ Johanna said confidingly, watching the red stream pour into her cup.

‘Rich,’ he agreed.

‘Captain Malait did call his men off, didn’t he?’

‘Aye.’

Reassured that her captain was safely away, Johanna continued with her confession. It was wonderful to discover that she had a sympathetic brother. ‘I might have had anything I wanted.’ She paused to sip her wine. She had drunk too much to notice that this second bottle was a rougher, less dear, wine. Conan was not about to spend more than he had to.