Autumn, 1506
Béarn
Amadina
The wood and iron chest was snug between Amadina’s feet, hidden under her skirts. Her wounded servant sat on the bench next to her, his head drooping on his thick neck, the mules’ reins clutched in his meaty hands. She looked over her shoulder at the two men riding in the cart bed who would serve as guards during the journey. They were young and strong and, most importantly, beholden to her.
There had been an unforeseen benefit to Carlo’s habit of taking in poor boys. If they had sisters, he sent the girls to Amadina’s convent, where they became servants or, occasionally, nuns. Ever since Amadina took the helm of Carlo’s household and selected young men to do unsavory errands for her, she always threatened to punish their sisters if they did not comply.
It was sunny and crisp, perfect traveling weather. When they rolled over the bridge into Pau, they barely had to pause at the city gates. With little to inspect in the cart—and Amadina’s generous sprinkling of coins—the guards waved them in without delay.
After inquiring at the river harbor, the men carried back to her the news that Arnaud was gone. The barge carrying Arnaud and his load had barely made it out of the city, and a dozen helpers had been required to pole it through muddy shallows.
Amadina marched to the harbor and talked herself hoarse, trying to convince someone to take her west on the river, too. But the sight of Arnaud’s load of oak making its precarious journey downstream had convinced all the other bargemasters in the harbor to cease navigating the river until more rain arrived. One after the next, the men declared they would not launch a vessel until the water level rose. Not even for a wealthy widow who longed to grease their palms with gold.
She prayed for rain and considered her options. Arnaud had likely already approached the authorities in Pau and spun them a tale about her misdeeds. It was best to leave Béarn quietly and not return for a time. A season or more.
No, the better course, the wiser course, was to continue west in the wagon to Bayonne.
For she was certain Arnaud’s final destination lay there, where his wife and child awaited.
Amadina began to dispense instructions to her manservants.
Within a few days they were far enough from Pau that the anxiety squeezing Amadina’s chest began to dissipate. Amadina disliked inns, but she did not dare stay in convents. Masquerading as a widow was well and good in the secular world, but in a religious house? The idea gripped her with panic anew. The sight of a steeple flattened out her lungs like a bellows that has been emptied of air.
A week or so into the journey, they came across a manor house, set back a little from the road. A sign reading ‘lodging’ hung from the iron gates.
“Oh, God be praised,” Amadina said. “This will be a welcome change. Turn here,” she instructed her driver.
He complied, pulling sharply on the reins. She stared absently at his battered hands. Each scar had been placed there by her. Layered like autumn leaves on the forest floor, she mused. She knew he resented her, but he also loved the coins she pressed upon him at odd hours. She often summoned him to her bedchamber to relieve the torment of her loins. He was only too eager to do her bidding in those hours before dawn.
Amadina knew his loyalty was to her purse, not her person, and she did not care one whit. That was the beauty of wealth. It was so easy to control people with gold. They were puppets on strings to her, just as she had been to her brother.
Now that Carlo was gone, she told herself, no one could force her to bow and dance and mince like a mindless marionette. She held the puppet strings. Each and every one.
The cart rattled into the courtyard of the manor home. Chickens strutted under fluttering linens strung up on flax ropes. An elderly manservant opened the door and greeted her. Amadina was overcome by a heady sense of relief. She would rest well here, away from the bawdy inns and taverns of the market towns they had encountered. She would find comfort and sustenance within these walls. Perhaps her racing heart, her weak lungs, would regain their balance here. She would find strength again. Strength enough to complete her task.
At the supper table, Amadina sat across from the manor’s owner and his wife, a noble couple who had fallen on hard times and now rented out rooms to keep the roof from falling in. The wife watched Amadina eat, her eyes full of judgement. She had set out meager portions of food, a scant helping for each of them. Still hungry, Amadina asked for more.
The woman gave her a hard look, then sent the ancient servant to the kitchens in search of more meat.
“So. You are Aragónese by birth?” her husband said, peering across the table at Amadina. “I hear the lilt of it on your tongue.”
“Yes,” Amadina said. “I was born in Aragón, but my dear deceased husband was from Béarn.”
“We rarely see travelers from Aragón,” he said. “My sister rode away from here as a girl, betrothed to an Aragónese baron. We never saw her again.”
“Which part of Aragón did she travel to?” Amadina asked.
He shrugged. “Somewhere in the mountains. I do not recall exactly, as I was a boy at the time.”
The servant shuffled in, carrying the mutton.
“You knew Marguerite!” the master of the house exclaimed, pointing at him.
“That I did, my lord,” the servant replied in a reedy voice. “She was always at her mother’s elbow, learning how to run a household. I remember well the talk in the kitchens about her betrothal. She married into a rich and powerful family. The Barons of Oto, they were called. Favored by the kings of Aragón.”
The mistress of the house eyed Amadina.
“Is something the matter?” she asked.
Amadina struggled to take a breath. “I felt a moment’s dizziness, that is all,” she gasped. “The hardships of travel, you see.”
She lay awake that evening, wondering if this was the very room Marguerite de Oto had slept in as a girl, perhaps the very bed. The air was close and stale, shot through with the faintest whiff of lavender. A scent Amadina had always hated. She veered closer and closer to panic, imagining her lungs clamping shut like oyster shells.
Just before dawn Amadina slipped into unconsciousness. A short time later she awoke, sweating, startled by a nightmare. She had been on a stage, dressed in her abbess’s costume of habit and wimple, before a jeering crowd. Every joint in her body was fastened to long silken threads that floated up into the inky night, operated by some invisible power. The threads yanked hard, making Amadina’s limbs jerk and twitch in a strange dance, leading her across the stage, forcing her to lunge and twist and sag against her will.
Heart pounding, eyes stinging from sweat and tears, Amadina gulped for air.
She had to escape these walls.