The Sixth Surrender

On the still half-frozen field Lasalle knocked le Roux’s sword out of his hand in two vicious swipes, and booted him into the mud. Vaudreuil swore under his breath and tried to catch Lasalle’s eye. Lasalle removed the sword’s point from le Roux’s neck. The rest of the men, silent through the whole thing, went to hoist le Roux to his feet. There was no other way around it. “She is gone,” Vaudreuil said, blowing on his cold-stiffened hands.

Lasalle swung his gaze toward the battlements. “How in the blazes could she?” He was striding toward the drawbridge, Vaudreuil behind him. “She can’t be. Where is the serjeant ? I’ll cut off his ears. Mount up the men and spread out. She’ll head for Pontde-l’Arche.”

A few short moments later, wearing cloaks against the drizzling fog, they burst across the drawbridge, Brissard and two men down one path; Lasalle, Vaudreuil, and Saez on the other trail. Rosamond quickly outdistanced the others to reach the slush-filled path into the forest. A tunnel of moss-draped trees swallowed them. Surely the mother abbess could not have got very far?

He heard it before he felt it—the whistling rush and the bone-shattering impact. Rosamond’s front legs splayed like a broken hobbyhorse’s. She went down and he with her. Something smashed against the side of his face, turning the world red.

Experience had taught him that surrendering to pain in front of one’s men was not a judicious thing to do, so he locked his teeth and tasted blood. He felt it too, spreading under his hauberk. Vaudreuil’s face, upside down, looked bleached. He tried to grip Vaudreuil’s cloak. “Ju-li . . .”

They caught up with her far enough from Rivefort that she had begun to think she would make it. She could not hope to outrun them on her nag, so she reined in and waited. They surrounded her, Rannulf de Brissard and two men she did not know. Brissard took hold of her reins. “You are coming back, my lady—my lord’s orders!”

And back they went, galloping into Rivefort’s bailey and into a chaos of running men and servants, barking dogs, shouts from the grooms, and steaming horses without riders, including a bedraggled Rosamond.

“Sacre Dieu!” Brissard lifted Juliana from the saddle and pushed her ahead of him. In the doorway she collided with Kadolt. He stepped aside when he recognized his lady in that indecent attire and waved toward her chamber, shouting something at Brissard. She tried to dig in her heels, but the old fighter propelled her ahead of him into her room—a room someone had transformed into a slaughter pen.

The source of all that bloody grime thrashed like a speared eel on what used to be her immaculate bed, against all efforts to restrain it. She saw it all, but it was a half-forgotten vision that caused her to cross herself. Her mother on that bed, a thick red pool spreading under her hips, sweat-heavy hair trailing across her breast. She had seen it before Edith had whisked her away, a sight her eight-year-old eyes did not comprehend until years later. But that was not her mother on that bed.

Her first thought was that a horse had trampled him. And then she saw it: a crossbow quarrel driven into his flank, the blood from the wound soaking her bed linen and ruining her mattress.

“He’ll die if we don’t stop the bleeding!” It was Vaudreuil again. His voice had an edge she had never heard before. It was fear.

He will die. He will die . . . and she would be free of him. In one morning, the hand of Divine Providence had raised her from a pit of despair and restored her to her rightful position as Rivefort’s gubernatrix, the liege lady of that man’s stiff-necked garrison. And as such, she would leave to them that mangled thing on her bed.

She took a step backward, and another. Two men held his arms; two others flung themselves across him. It did not work. Pain and shock fueled his strength.

“Get her . . . out!” He nearly wrenched from their grasp. Blood sprayed the headboard. Juliana clamped her hands over her mouth. Lasalle howled.

“You,” Vaudreuil shouted at the men, “find more sheets. Bring wine, vinegar, and splints.” Juliana opted to make herself scarce along with them, but Vaudreuil snagged her by the scruff of her neck, stuffed a fistful of wadding against Lasalle’s side, and slapped her hand on top of it. “You press, hard.”

She did. Blood instantly soaked the wadding. The crossbow bolt was as thick as a man’s thumb, two hand spans long, the leather flight wings decorated with blue dots. Under her hand, Lasalle quivered like a spooked horse.

Vaudreuil worked fast, unbuckling Lasalle’s sword belt and pulling it from under him. “Where are the sheets? Spread those covers on the floor. You,” he shouted at the men taking up the doorway, “get him on the floor.” They did, with dispatch. The back of Lasalle’s head cracked against the planks. “Gently, you oafs. Will you make yourself useful, woman?” he yelled at her.

She tried to keep Lasalle’s head from sweeping the floorboards. His hair was stiff with blood. When they lowered him to the floor, she ended up on her knees, trapped by his dead weight. She would have extricated herself, but Vaudreuil shoved her back. “Stay where you are. I don’t want him fighting me like that again.”

“Pride? I know all about your pride. You have your pride; we bear the consequences!” There, she said it in front of a room full of—them.

“You know nothing, Lady.” Vaudreuil wrung out a rag and pressed it against Lasalle’s oozing cheek. “Guérin? Guérin! Look, Juliana is here. We have to cut out the barb.”

She looked too—at Brissard, for help, for something. He scowled at her. Cowed, Juliana did as told, praying that her revulsion would not show on her face. Good Lord, this was not her fault—none of it.

Lasalle sucked in his breath, his body jammed up against her, rills of blood and sweat coursing down his face and throat, his eyes fastened on her as if she were his salvation. She sat there, holding on to him until her arms went numb. Lasalle did not struggle; except for the labored rasps, he did not make a sound. Somewhere into the ordeal he mercifully lost consciousness, his body slumping from her.

The men shuffled out of the room. Vaudreuil mopped the blood that had pooled in the vale of Lasalle’s belly, folded more cloth, and pressed it against the gaping wound. Mother of God, surely there was not a drop of blood left in my lord Lasalle? With her numb-fingered assistance they secured the linen with several windings of a torn sheet around their patient’s middle.

Juliana got to her feet. Her eyes smarted. Giving her a silent look, Vaudreuil held out something to her. It was a blood-caked quarrel with a wickedly barbed tip still attached. “This is a bodkin arrow. It is meant to kill.”

She bit her lip and looked away. Vaudreuil opened the door and called for the servants. They stumbled out with the ruined bedding and brought fresh sheets. Brissard came back with a couple of men, and this time they very carefully replaced their master on her bed. Vaudreuil returned to his usual collected self, sending the men to reassure Rivefort that its lord was still alive and to prepare to leave as soon as the horses were ready.

She stood herself upright. “Perhaps it was an accident. Perhaps a poacher . . . or revenge. Or Hesse’s friends. Or the Count of Rancon.”

“Now, there is a difference,” he said, spacing out each word, “between not knowing what to do and not wanting to do it. And since you are his wife, he’s all yours—pride, vice, and warts.”

Vaudreuil looked at her with no particular surprise and piled the bedcovers on the unconscious man. “Then it is time you did something about that.”

Blood rose to her cheeks. Mary, was there no end to this? First Anne and now Vaudreuil. Their patient whimpered, eyes half open. Vaudreuil ignored him and instructed her how to tie the splints. He stepped back to examine their handiwork. “That should do it. We’ll be back in two or three days.”

“Days? You won’t find anything in this weather. Good Lord, he didn’t search that long for Gwenllian and Jourdain. He could have. You all could have! I am not going to—”

“Clean him up. When the wound scabs, soak a towel in hot wine and keep it on the scab until it loosens, then wash it with more wine. Don’t let the wound close over. If it starts to bleed, press hard until it stops, like you did before. Give him some broth when he wakes up. Force him if you have to. If it gets bad, tie him down or get him drunk, but don’t dose him with anything. And be careful about that arm. The rest you can figure out yourself.”

Vaudreuil’s hands came on her shoulders, hard, drawing her closer, his eyes as black as the Devil’s. He was not teasing her. “If you don’t do exactly as I tell you, your husband’s wound will fester and he’ll die. And if I come back and see you’ve let it happen, I swear that I will hang you from the donjon for all of Tillières to see, and then I will let the routiers have their run of this place till there is not enough left to wall up a privy. I’m leaving Brissard here. He has orders not to let you set foot outside this room. Do you understand, Juliana?”

In the bailey, confused and glum-faced men waited for him. Behind them, the servants pressed in a silent circle. Peyrac brought Vaudreuil’s horse. Vaudreuil swung up and lowered his voice. “Take le Roux and find the Countess de Valence. Tell her to hurry to Rivefort and to wear something fetching. She is coming to a funeral.”

Juliana’s first thought was that men in the knightly ranks seldom lived to a ripe old age. Lasalle could have died in a tourney, a border raid in Wales or Scotland, in Poitou or Normandy, in a brawl over a toothsome tavern wench, or he could have become the casualty of a broken saddle girth. Of course, the man had other ideas, which was characteristic of his bloody-mindedness. He had decided to die right here, in her bed. And if he did so because she had failed to succor him, they would murder her and waste her viscounty. The irony of it did not escape her.

In what followed, at least Lasalle was cooperative. And even that, Juliana noted bitterly, was not his doing. He was barely conscious, and far too weak to resist. After a few timid dabs she discovered that congealed blood and mud acquire all the properties of horse glue. Concluding that more forceful means were necessary, she brought her soap bowl from her strong room and, teeth set, proceeded to scrub Lasalle’s inert, grimy body as if it were already a corpse. It helped to think of it that way.

By the evening, with the candles flickering, she unwrapped the bandage and, wincing, pulled off the wadding. She did exactly as Vaudreuil had told her, pressing a rag soaked in heated wine against the wound. The scab dissolved and the bleeding resumed. She stanched it with more wadding, to her unutterable relief. He was still too lost in a fog of pain to give her trouble, but by the morning that had changed.

She attempted to get some wine into her delirious patient, and worrying that he would break open the wound, she called Catalena to find her mother, who was known for her nursing and midwifery. Goodwife Margaret arrived with Rannulf de Brissard. They held Lasalle while Juliana sacrificed another sheet and, with a ruthlessness that would have made him proud, tied him down. After they were done, Goodwife Margaret brushed back Lasalle’s wet, matted hair with a gesture more tender than Juliana would have expected. Brissard peered over Margaret’s shoulder, his mouth in a grim line. Catalena was wiping her nose on her apron. They looked like the three Fates.

Goodwife Margaret curtsied to Juliana. “I don’t wish to meddle, my lady, but if he goes on like this he will wear himself to death; I am certain of it. I’ve nursed enough men as bad as this.” She sought confirmation from Rannulf de Brissard.

Juliana looked wildly at the portentous faces. “He can’t die! I swear by the Virgin that I have done everything Sir Jehan told me.”

Margaret picked up a towel and patted Lasalle’s streaming face. “We can try, my lady. Sleep heals. I have my own recipe; it will have his lordship sleeping like a babe. Jourdain used to—” She crossed herself. “Well, it is in the hands of the Almighty.”

It took some effort to get Goodwife Margaret’s recipe into Lasalle, but they did. Pleased with the results, she assured everyone that the dose would put the entire garrison to sleep. When they left, Juliana dragged her chair to the bed and rested her head on her folded arms. She ached as if she had been stretched on the rack.

Although it seemed only an instant later, she was awakened in the middle of the night by a raving maniac in her bed fighting against the restraints as if possessed by a demon. Good Lord, she had forgotten! Vaudreuil had told her not to dose him with anything.

Jourdain had sounded like that once, lost and terrified, when she left him alone for a moment. She could not imagine Guérin de Lasalle as a child. To her, he had sprung fully grown, like Pegasus from Medusa’s severed head. She drew closer. “Shhh. I am here.”

She touched his cheek to comfort him. With a sob of terror, he jerked away as far as the bonds allowed. Something was very wrong. She did not try again, but she could not resist asking, “Who will be back?”

Much like her previous questions to him, this one went unanswered. But raging fever and a brew of poppy, henbane, belladonna, and Lord only knew what else had undermined the carefully built bastions of lies and deceit. By dawn his voice had worn down to a barely audible whisper, for which Juliana was eternally grateful. Still afraid that he would remain floundering in a world of phantoms and macabre hallucinations, she searched Hermine’s stores, found her cache of raisin wine, and made him swallow a good deal of it.

Guérin de Lasalle spent four days tossing in a sweat-drenched delirium, and Juliana spent them in sheer panic. She kept everyone away until the effects of Goodwife Margaret’s nostrum wore off, then gratefully accepted assistance in looking after her patient, but firmly turned down offers of more of Margaret’s recipe.

Vaudreuil and his men returned, without their quarry. Vaudreuil was in a foul mood. Wringing her hands, Juliana backed into a corner and prepared herself for the verdict. “Sweet Jesus.” Vaudreuil wrinkled his nose. “He smells like the inside of a tun. What did you give him?”

“Die?” Vaudreuil wiped something from his eyes. “He is not going to die. Not now, anyway. The wound drains clear. Cheer up, Lady Juliana. Your husband will be back on his feet in a score and you’ll wish you could keep him strapped down and soused.” He pointed to the window. “Look there, Peyrac found new troops.”

In the bailey below, a fair-haired lady in a fox-trimmed riding cloak was dismounting from a white palfrey with the entire Rivefort garrison surrounding her, all agog. A moment later, she held Juliana in a perfumed embrace. After that, she cast a quick glance at Jehan de Vaudreuil, who returned a soldierly bow, and turned her attention to the black-stubbled, hollow-cheeked occupant of the bed.

Lasalle opened his eyes. When he could focus them, two faces greeted him. On one side of the bed stood Juliana de Charnais, hands clasped to her flat front, fear, relief, and resentment on her thin, sallow face. On the other side were the snowflake-dusted, pink cheeks of the Countess de Valence. He closed his eyes. Dear God, he had died and gone to Hell after all.