The young count of Flanders . . . declared he would never marry the daughter of the man who had killed his father . . . so he was placed under house arrest . . . twenty men followed him constantly, wherever he went, watching him so closely he could hardly go for a piss . . .
True Chronicles of Jean le Bel
After she opened the belly of the brothel-master, slashed her chest to ribbons and pulled her eyes out, Squelette left the siege camp.
It would have been easy to stay near and strike again. As long as there were English, there would be targets. Temptations. But she knew eventually she would be caught. She had now avenged many others. The time was coming to take revenge for herself.
The revenge she had in mind was too dangerous – and too difficult – to take in the English camp. So Squelette went away. Further than she had been from the English since they had come to her home in Valognes and taken everything she cared about. She went away, and she waited.
She followed the roads around Villeneuve. She drifted between towns. St Omer. Artois. Ghent. It was very cold everywhere and everything in the countryside was dead or asleep. So she begged and stole and found places to sleep at night where she would not freeze to death.
One day, she stole an old fur from a merchant’s house. It was grey, with a long white stripe running lengthways along it. It was large enough to wrap around her body, down to her knees.
She kept it rolled in her pack during the short winter days. But at night she wrapped it around her shoulders and imagined she was the animal that had once worn it. She went out into the bare, silent countryside and draped it about her then dropped to her hands and feet and howled. She howled so her breath made a cloud about her face and her voice carried into the blackness of the sky.
She howled and wished that the man she wanted would hear her. The man she had most reason to hate of all the English. Who had attacked her and hurt her the worst. The man she would kill last.
The prince.
She picked up his trail in Ghent just as the days had begun growing longer. For a time she did not see him, but she knew that he was near. She learned it from the chatter of the people.
‘The English king’s son is coming. His sister will marry Louis, the Count of Flanders. Against the young count’s will. The prince is here to see that it happens.’
She sniffed for him by day. By night, she howled at the moon. She told him she was coming for him. And eventually, as spring was arriving, she found him.
He was in a small town by the sea called Bergues.
She saw straight away that it would not be easy. The prince and his entourage moved houses often. He had at least a dozen men in his bodyguard, and often twice that number.
The guard was heavy because the prince was doing a difficult job of his own. He and an English lord they called Jacky were watching Louis, the Count of Flanders: the one who was to be married. Where the count went, the prince and Jacky went. In the guise of chaperones, but with the eyes of jailers.
As the wedding approached, the young lords went to the taverns and brothels much less. Most days, they went out to hunt the birds and beasts of the forest. They often bickered and squabbled, and the prince taunted the count about his marriage. Yet the prince also did his job well. He and his men made sure the count could go nowhere unseen. If the count even wandered from the hunt to piss among the trees, two guards stood no more than a yard from him, their backs turned but their eyes scanning, alert to any movement.
They made it hard for Squelette. There were so many of them, and only one of her. But the more she watched, the more she thought it could be done.
By watching the young count, she saw that, from time to time, the guards took their eyes from the prince.
It happened once or twice on every hunt.
So it could be done.
It had to be done.
It would be done.
Since the time to strike was when the lords went out to hunt, Squelette decided the way to strike was like a beast. A beast of the forest, who could creep unseen, at one with the trees.
That was easy. She was already living like an animal. After the winter, she was so thin she had almost disappeared. She stank like a beast. She found shadows and corners by second nature and she knew how to move through a forest unseen, as if she had been raised in one.
At night when she wrapped the grey fur robe around her, now full of fleas and with patches of the fur falling out, she felt like she was putting on her real skin.
She was transforming. She was preparing. She sharpened her knife. She carved her fingernails to points like claws.
Then her chance came.
A week before the wedding, the count and prince rode out to a chase beside a river to hunt. They wore thick gloves on their hands. Servants carried hawks. Fine birds with leather caps that covered their heads and eyes like executioners.
Squelette went with them.
She tracked them as they rode in their usual languid manner through the forest trails. Watched them laugh and swig wine, then argue and speak harshly to each other. She stayed in the forest when they emerged through it to a riverbank where there were ducks and doves and other good things for hawks to kill.
She stayed behind the tree line where it grew close by the river, moving to a point where the path was tight between the greenery and the water. She kept her eyes on the prince. Noticed the pursed lips and fine curls of hair on the crescent of his jaw and chin. Remembered what he had done to her.
She fastened the fur around her shoulders. She traced the inside of her arm with her sharpened claws. Decided she would use them first, before the knife.
She watched the lords stand around, letting the hawks soar and drop on weaker birds, pulling them out of the sky with their talons and ripping them to pieces with their beaks.
She waited for her moment, and was ready when it arrived.
The hawk the young count was flying spied some tasty prey of its own fancy a long way off upriver. It stretched its wings and disappeared until it was a dot in the sky. Among the men on the ground, this caused a commotion. Part laughter, part anger. The group spread out and tried to spot where the bird had gone.
Squelette shrank back into the bushes and let them go past her. The count, Louis, was at their head, his servant with his horse beside him and his guards following in single file along the path. They came so close to Squelette she could smell the leather of their boots.
Jacky went in the middle of the group. The prince loitered at the very back. He seemed bored. He called instructions ahead for his men to keep Louis in their sight.
When the prince passed her, Squelette growled. Then she retreated, rustling the undergrowth as she went.
The prince took the bait. He peered into the thick greenery. He caught a glimpse of her fur. He drew his sword and went in after her. ‘Jacky,’ he called. ‘There’s something in here.’
Squelette retreated again. The prince followed. She led him fifty paces through the forest, changing her direction and growling to make him follow. She saw him peering after her. She smelled his excitement and watched the way he held his sword, so she would know exactly how to pounce.
She drew up behind a thick tangle of bramble and led him on his final steps towards her with her voice.
She coiled herself, ready to leap. She bit her cheek in her excitement and her mouth watered at the taste of blood it released.
The prince’s boots crunched in the undergrowth. He was close enough for her to touch.
She stood up and snarled and leapt at him with her claws and teeth out.
From behind her, Jacky thrust his sword straight through her side.
Squelette gasped. She collapsed forward. Blood bubbled from her mouth.
She could not see. But she heard a voice say: ‘What in Christ’s name?’
Another say: ‘Some peasant girl. Dressed as a fucking wolf.’
Disbelieving laughter.
Then shouts from the direction of the river. ‘My lords,’ they said. ‘Come quickly! The count has escaped!’
Cursing and blaspheming. Angry yells. Men pushing and shoving one another in frustration.
The men’s voices receded. She was left alone in the clearing. She was bleeding so fast. The hole in her side was scalding hot. Everywhere else, she was colder than she had been even in the dead of winter.
She heard the screeching of the hawks and wondered if they would come down and feast on her.
She tried to say a prayer, but her lips were blue and still before the words formed.