Kate Mosse - Labyrinth

Bending down to the girl’s level, Viscount Trencavel pulled a linen handkerchief from his belt and offered it to her. Even Pelletier smiled as the tiny fingers reached out timidly and took the crisp white square of cloth.

“And what is your name, Madomaisela ,” he asked.

“Ernestine, Messire ,” she whispered.

Trencavel nodded. “Well, Madomaisela Ernestine,” he said, plucking a pink bloom from the bunch of flowers and fixing it to his tunic, “I shall wear this for good luck. And to remind me of the kindness of the people of Puicheric.”

Only when the last of the visitors had left the camp, did Raymond-Roger Trencavel unbuckle his sword and sit down to eat. When hunger was satisfied, one by one, man and boy stretched out on the soft grass or leaned back against the trunk of a tree and dozed, their bellies full of wine and their heads thick with the afternoon heat.

Pelletier alone did not settle. Once he was certain Viscount Trencavel had no need of him for the time being, he set off to walk by the stream, desiring solitude.

Waterboatmen skated over the water and brightly colored dragon-flies skimmed the surface, shimmering, darting and slipping through the heavy air.

As soon as he was out of sight of the camp, Pelletier sat down on a blackened trunk of a fallen tree and took Harif’s letter from his pocket. He didn’t read it. He didn’t even open it, just held it tight between his forefinger and thumb, like a talisman.

He could not stop thinking of Alai’s. His thoughts rocked backward and forward like a balance. At one moment he regretted confiding in her at all. But if not Alai’s, then who? There was no one else he could trust. The next moment, he feared he had told her too little.

God willing, all would be well. If their petition to the count of Toulouse was favorably received, before the month was out, they would be returning to Carcassonne in triumph without a drop of blood being spilled. For Pelletier’s own part, he would find Simeon in Beziers and learn the identity of the “sister” of whom Harif had written.

If destiny willed it so.

Pelletier sighed. He looked out over the tranquil scene spread out before him and saw in his imagination the opposite. Instead of the old world, unchanged and unchanging, he saw chaos and devastation and destruction. The end of all things.

He bowed his head. He could not have done other than he had. If he did not return to Carcassonne, then at least he would die in the knowledge that he had done his best to protect the Trilogy. Alai’s would fulfill his obligations. His vows would become her vows. The secret would not be lost in the pandemonium of battle or left to rot in a French gaol.

The sounds of the camp stirring brought Pelletier back to the present. It was time to move on. There were many more hours of riding before sunset.

Pelletier returned Harif’s letter to his pouch and walked quickly back to the camp, aware that such moments of peace and quiet contemplation might be in short supply in the days ahead.

When Alai’s woke again, she was lying between linen sheets, not on grass. There was a low, dull whistling in her ears, like an autumn wind echoing through the trees. Her body felt curiously heavy and weighted down, as if it didn’t belong to her. She had been dreaming that Esclarmonde was there with her, putting her cool hand on her brow to draw the fever out.

Her eyes fluttered open. Above her head was the familiar wooden canopy of her own bed, the dark blue night-curtains tied back. The chamber was suffused with the soft, golden light of dusk. The air, although still hot and heavy, carried in it the promise of night. She caught the faint aroma of freshly burned herbs. Rosemary and the scent of lavender.

She could hear women’s voices too, coarse and low, somewhere close by. They were whispering as if trying not to disturb her. Their words hissed like fat dripping from a spit onto a fire. Slowly, Alai’s turned her head on her pillow toward the noise. Alziette, the unpopular wife of the head groom, and Ranier, a sly and spiteful gossip with an uncouth, boorish husband, both troublemakers, were sitting by the empty fireplace like a pair of old crows. Her sister, Oriane, used them often for errands, but Alai’s mistrusted them and could not account for how they came to be in her room. Her father would never have allowed it.

Then she remembered. He was not here. He had gone to Saint-Gilles or Montpellier, she couldn’t quite remember. Guilhem too.

“So where were they?” Ranier hissed, her voice greedy for scandal.

“In the orchard, right down by the brook by the willow trees,” replied Alziette. “Mazelle’s oldest girl saw them go down there. Bitch that she is, she rushed straight back to her mother. Then Mazelle herself came flying into the courtyard, wringing her hands at the shame of it and how she didn’t want to be the one to tell me.”

“She’s always been jealous of your girl, e. Her daughters are all fat as hogs and pockmarked. The whole lot of them, as plain as pikes.” Ranier bent her head closer. “So what did you do?”

“What could I do but go and see for myself. I spotted them the moment got down there. It’s not as if they’d made much effort to conceal them-elves. I got hold of Raoul by his hair-nasty coarse brown hair he’s got- and boxed his ears. All the while he was pulling at his belt with one hand, his face red from the shame of being caught. When I turned on Jeannette, he wriggled out of my grasp and ran off without even so much as a backward glance.”

Ranier tutted.

“All the while Jeannette was wailing, carrying on, saying how Raoul loved her and wants to marry her. To hear her talk, you’d think no girl had ever had her head turned by pretty words before.”

“Perhaps his intentions are honest?”

Alziette snorted. “He’s in no position to marry,” she complained. “Five older brothers and only two of them wed. His father’s in the tavern day and night. Every last sol they’ve got goes straight into Gaston’s pocket.”

Alais tried to close her ears to the women’s mundane gossip. They were like vultures picking over carrion.

“But then again,” Alziette said slyly, “it was fortunate, as it turned out. if circumstances had not taken you down there, then you wouldn’t have found her.”

Alai’s tensed, sensing the two heads turn toward the bed.

“That’s so,” agreed Ranier. “And I dare say I’ll be well rewarded when her father returns.”

Alais listened, but learned nothing more. The shadows lengthened. She drifted in and out of sleep.

By and by, a night nurse came to replace Alziette and Ranier, another of her sister’s favored servants. The noise of the woman dragging the cracked wooden pallet out from under the bed woke Alais. She heard a soft whump as the nurse lowered herself down on to the lumpy mattress, the weight of her body pushing the air out from between the dry straw stuffing. Within moments, the grunts and labored snoring, wheezing and snuffling from the foot of the bed announced she was asleep.

Alais was suddenly wide awake. Her head was full of her father’s last instruction to her. To keep safe the labyrinth board. She eased herself up into a sitting position and looked among the fragments of material and candles.

The board was no longer there.

Careful not to wake the nurse, Alais tugged open the door of the bed-side table. Its hinge was stiff from lack of use and it creaked as she eased it open. Alais ran her fingers around the edge of the bed, in case the board had slipped between the mattress and wooden frame of her bed. It was not there either.

Res . Nothing.

She didn’t like the way her thoughts were tending. Her father had dismissed her suggestion that his identity had been discovered, but was he right? Both the merel and the board had gone.