Кейт Хартфилд - Armed in Her Fashion

Katharina put a hand to her heart. “But where? What sort of fortune?”

“He was a usurer, and God knows what else besides. A man may make a fortune during wartime, even a man as gormless as my husband. Now he has taken his fortune off to Hell, but it is ours by right, Beatrix. Widows are entitled to one-third, and children to the rest, by custom.”

“When the siege is over, will you go to the bailiff?” Grandfather asked.

“The bailiff is dead.”

“The Count, then,” said Beatrix.

“Bah,” Grandfather said.

“Count Louis is no longer in control of Bruges, not really,” Mother said. “Besides, he is the king of France’s man, and doubtless he would try to apply some barbaric French law.”

“But King Philippe—” Katharina broke in.

“Philippe is no true king,” Grandfather snapped. “He came by it through trickery.”

“What does it matter?” Beatrix asked. “There is no one to give us back what Father has taken. We did not even know we had a fortune, and now it has gone. Let us say a prayer for Father’s soul and for all the souls not yet at rest.”

“I’ll say a prayer for him,” Mother said, “after he gives me my due. If we leave tonight, we will catch him before long. The revenants only walk at night. I can walk until my feet fall off.”

“And if you catch him and he refuses?” Katharina asked. “What will you do, then, Margriet? Beat him about the head with your apron?”

It was then, for some mysterious reason, that the grief and worry burst up out of Beatrix’s throat and a sound like a sob crossed with a hiccup escaped her throat. Beatrix clapped her hand over her mouth.

Mother squatted down to look into her face. Weeds poked out of her apron. Heaven knew where she had been gathering weeds, what garden within Bruges’ walls still boasted a few stalks of anything that could be boiled or beaten.

“I must,” she whispered. “What does Willem need now with silver and gold? It is all going to the Chatelaine and her ally, that pustule. I can’t let the Chatelaine and the French king take what is yours by right, Beatrix.”

“It is suicide,” Katharina said. “How would you even get out of the city walls? What about the chimeras? They will surely kill you if they find you out in the country.”

“Bah. They’re only people. You know who’s a chimera now? Young Julius, you remember, the boy who was soft in the head. Well he’s got a new head now, but he’s still Julius. They’re only soldiers, and I killed my first French soldier when I was younger than Beatrix is now. A rock to the head is as good as an axe, if you aim it properly. There is no more danger outside the city walls than within, especially now that the chimeras are trying to take those walls down. That’s why Beatrix, at least, must come with me, if you and Father will not.”

“Beatrix!” Katharina’s eyes went wide.

Her place was here, in Bruges. Once the siege lifted, Baltazar might come home, wounded and hungry, and find her gone.

But perhaps, if she went out there into the world, she would find word of him. Perhaps Father, or whatever was left of Father, would tell her what had befallen her husband. Or she could ask the Chatelaine herself!

“Margriet, you must not drag Beatrix into this foolishness,” Katharina said.

“You go with your mother,” said Grandfather, unexpectedly. They all looked at him. “It is your wealth, too. The claim is two-thirds yours. You must be there to make it. Perhaps there is enough left of the father in him that the sight of you will soften his heart. There is nothing here for you, nothing to eat and nothing to spin.”

“I cannot leave you here, Grandfather.”

“I cannot come with you, old as I am. I will be fine with Katharina. There will be more food for us with you gone, you little glutton.”

Beatrix laughed. That was true, at least. But to go out there! To go to Hell! She could not imagine it.

Saint Catherine, she prayed in silence, what shall I do?

Grandfather leaned over the table and whispered. “A week ago, it was safer inside these walls than outside them,” he said. “Not so now. We are near starvation, Beatrix, and I will go more happily to my grave if I know you two have some chance. Your mother is right: I can aim a rock, at least, once they come in. Take care of her. Be her better judgement.”

Mother was stubborn. She would go alone, if Beatrix did not go with her. Beatrix might at least be able to prevent her from getting herself killed. Mother was too sharp, too sure of herself.

“The apples are ripening out there, somewhere,” Beatrix said to her grandfather quietly. “I will bring you back a bushel.”

“Keep your apples. I want honey. And figs, oh, fine figs like we used to get, do you remember?”

Beatrix insisted on taking her distaff and spindle, although Mother rolled her eyes. She did not want to be without them, and perhaps, she told her mother, they would find something to spin on the journey, and make a little money to buy food. They did not take any food from Grandfather’s small store, but they took two leather water flasks, the flasks Mother and Father used to take when they travelled on Father’s business, or what everyone thought was Father’s business.

They hurried through the dark streets, back to the Ooste house so Mother could take her leave. They filled the flasks at the conduit.

“Do you remember,” Beatrix huffed as they walked, “what happened when the baker put that mouldy bread in the bottom of the basket, years ago?”

“Hmph,” said Mother.

“You demanded your money back, as was proper. You had every right to that sou. You argued for it until the sun set, and finally you got the sou back.”

“Indeed. That squinting blackguard.”

“And then for five years, we had to walk three streets further to buy our bread. For the sake of a sou.”

“Yes? What is your point, Beatrix?”

“I just wanted to know if you remembered,” she said with a sigh, and hitched up her little bundle of spare linen.

Claude sat at the Ooste table and ate the thin pottage they gave him. Dark, greasy bits of meat—rat, probably—floated in it. No worse fare than he’d had on the Modena campaign, but the company then had made up for it. He and Janos had won six ducats at dice and got drunk on crisp Vernaccia wine. He could still feel the smack of it between his eyebrows.

Claude glanced up at the table. No dice here. Certainly no wine. The dour-faced little girl stuck out her tongue, taking advantage of the fact that her mother was pacing behind her with a mewling baby. The old manservant and the even older cook would not even look at him.

Damn it, all this for a mace, a weapon he barely knew how to wield. But what choice had Claude had? He had not known how it would attach itself to him, how it would worm its way in to his flesh.

What would he take back now, of his choices? Claude had been desperate for a way out of Hell. But the Chatelaine would not relent. Every day she asked him to submit to the fire, to become one of her grotesques. And Claude might have given in, if the Chatelaine had not been so fascinated by him, had not called him a natural born chimera. Claude did not like to be teased.

When he learned that the Chatelaine’s mace worked as a key, that it even opened the mouth of Hell itself, he saw his way out. That angry smith was just waiting for a chance for treason.

The smith had not warned Claude. Claude had not known what the mace would do.

As he ran to rejoin his company, he had considered keeping the thing. It was heavy but he liked the feel of it on his arm.

But it would have made him too easy to find, once the Chatelaine sent someone to look for him, as she would. The Chatelaine did not seem the kind to let a grudge go easily. Besides, Claude was a crossbowman. A mace was good for close combat with armour: a knight’s weapon, or at least a squire’s. That weapon, if it was to be a weapon and not a mere encumbrance, would reinvent him. He’d need to get a full harness of armour, and a warhorse, and a squire or attendants he could trust to clean out his clothes—clothes that would sometimes have the wrong kind of blood in the wrong places. And knights and squires would be married off; they had obligations to their lords.