Michael Spradlin - Trail of Fate

She held up her hand again. I was becoming very familiar with the hand. At least it didn’t have a dagger in it.

“Let’s go,” she said with disgust. She pushed past me and made her way back to the stream, turning north. She said nothing for a long while as I stumbled along behind her.

“How are we even going to find her?” she finally asked, her voice still dripping with anger.

A good question. A very good question.

And in truth I had absolutely no idea.

We hiked along for several leagues. Before leaving the campsite, I’d found more wild grapes, so at least we had something to eat. With the sun high in the sky we paused to rest awhile. After catching our breath, we kept to the stream, and I kept careful watch for the spot where Celia and her followers had left its shallows. I was no forester, and truly missed Robard then, but studied the ground as closely as I could. Drawing on my memory of conversations with Celia and her group, I knew only that their base lay somewhere north. Without some kind of trail to follow I would most likely miss it completely.

A few leagues farther north, I found a spot where several horses had climbed the bank. The tracks kept to a trail through the woods, and so we followed. A few hours later, twilight approached, and the woods opened into a wide meadow. The countryside had gotten hilly, and from the clearing, I could see mountains far off in the distance. No one had said anything about mountains. I guess since Mont meant “mountain” in French, the name of her fortress, Montsegur, should have warned me.

“We should rest here for the night,” Maryam suggested, and I agreed. We had journeyed far and were weary. Angel ate a few grapes from my hand, then dropped immediately to the ground and was asleep instantly, her tongue lolling gently out of her mouth. I gave Maryam some grapes as well, and we found comfortable spots on the ground to sleep through the night.

The next day as we crossed the meadow, the tracks joined up with a dirt road that wound through the forest. The hoofprints of Celia’s horses soon mixed with the signs of other travelers, including carts and wagons. After another hour of walking we entered a small village. It was little more than a wide spot along the trail, with a tiny chapel, an inn and a few other buildings lining the crossroads.

“Tristan, I don’t know about you, but I’m starving,” Maryam said. “Do you think we might be able to find something to eat here besides grapes?”

We stood off to the side of the trail and watched what few people there were in the village milling about. The church looked deserted, and we were too late in the day for morning mass. A small blacksmith shop was busy, and a few women gathered near a well across the path from the inn.

“Let’s give it a try,” I said, heading toward the inn.

Angel waited, curled up in a bed of grass a few steps off the trail. Maryam and I crossed through the center of the village and entered the front door. It was dark inside, with only one window at the front letting in any light, and smelled like wet dirt and wood smoke. A small fireplace with a sputtering flame took up one end of the room, and a doorway covered by a cloth curtain led away to the back. No one was in the main room, but we heard the sounds of activity beyond the curtained door.

“Salut?” I called out. Hello.

The curtain was pulled back and a woman of indeterminate age emerged. She wore a simple peasant frock of gray cloth, and a brown head scarf. She eyed us suspiciously, and for an instant a tremendous weight pressed down on me. I had a vision of Sir Hugh riding into the village and questioning this woman. She would tell him how we’d stopped here just a few short days ago and which direction we’d headed. But we needed food. There was no way around it.

This was never going to work. I was stuck here, and could speak enough French to get by, but Maryam and I could never pass as natives. As soon as I asked for food, she would know I was an outsider. Sir Hugh would be able to find us easily.

I spoke to the woman in the best French I could muster, silently cursing myself for not paying closer attention when Brother Rupert had sought to teach me his native tongue.

“Aliments, s’il vous plait?” I asked, pointing to Maryam and myself.

She said nothing, moving to the fireplace where an iron pot hung on a hook over the coals. Using the front of her smock, she lifted the kettle off the hook and brought it to the table, motioning for us to sit. I peered into the kettle and saw some type of still-bubbling pottage.

The woman went through the curtain and returned seconds later with two wooden bowls and spoons, a small loaf of bread and an earthen jug. She sat it all on the table before us and made motions for us to fill the bowls and eat. So we did.

The pottage tasted far better than it looked. Maryam smiled and concentrated on eating. The woman reappeared with two cups and poured wine from the jug, and Maryam’s eyes went wide.

“Tristan,” she whispered. “I’m forbidden to drink wine.”

“Give me a minute. I’ll try to distract her somehow,” I said.

The woman stood a few paces away, watching us. I lifted my mug and raised it in her direction.

“Croises!” I said, letting her know we were Crusaders. Perhaps I could win us some points by appealing to the woman’s sense of Christian duty. She smiled and nodded, then left for the back room again. I drank down a large gulp of wine and quickly poured what was in Maryam’s cup into my own. A few seconds later the woman emerged with a small wheel of cheese, setting it on the table before us.

My mouth watered at the sight of it, and I took a proffered slice. I placed it on a slice of bread and bit into it. What a delight. After many days of nothing but dates, grapes and figs, and whatever we could scrounge up, it tasted wonderful.

A familiar barking sounded from just outside the door. I thought Angel might have smelled the food and was hungry herself. Wearily I rose to my feet and took a small chunk of cheese. I was about to open the door when she growled, and I froze. I then stepped to the dirty window and peered out at the crossroads.

The High Counsel and his fifty men rode into the village, reining their horses up at the well. Angel whined, and I cracked open the door. She darted inside.

“Trouble,” I said to Maryam. She joined me at the window and gasped.

“What are we going to do?” she asked.

By then the woman had joined us at the window. She looked out at the High Counsel and his troop, some of whom had dismounted and were standing about looking menacing. The arrival had cleared the village, as the women we had seen earlier at the well had vanished and the blacksmith had made himself scarce.

The woman muttered something in French under her breath that I didn’t quite catch but was fairly certain was a curse. She vanished behind the curtain.

“It looks like the High Counsel has uncovered my deception. They must be headed toward Celia’s fortress. We need to get out of here. I don’t suppose you have any ideas, do you?” I asked.

Maryam shook her head and continued to study the scene at the well. “No. You’re the one with the ideas ,” she said smugly.

Angel whined nervously, and to quiet her I tossed her the small chunk of cheese I still held in my hand. She snatched it out of the air and swallowed it whole.

“All right,” I said. “Maybe we can sneak out the back and. .”

Just then the woman pulled back the curtain from the back room and waved to us.

We followed and found another room, nearly equal in size to the one we’d been eating in but with a back entrance. The wooden door swung open, and there stood a boy about ten or twelve years old, waiting next to a small wagon with a pony hitched to it. The back of the wagon was full of hay.