Chapter Thirty-nine

 

 

A Man Named DeFarge

 

 

As instructed, upon leaving Dijon, Tristan turned command of the caravan over to Guillaume and the Danes who were much more adept at managing the movement of troops and equipment. In all there were twenty wagons loaded to brimming with replacement arms and armor, two wagons loaded with gold, silver, coin, gems, and precious objects to be used to finance Mathilda’s new offensive, and thirty-four wagons loaded with food and supplies for those making the long overland trip over the mountains to Tuscany. Captain Rousseau, in addition to his Burgunians and the hundred knights he had collected in Dijon, had also recruited another two hundred knights and five hundred footmen and archers from the Dijon area who would fight for pay beneath Mathilda’s banner.

It was a massive caravan then of nearly sixty wagons and a thousand men that set out from Dijon during the last week of August, and at this point there was no way to conceal its movement. Nevertheless, with so much manpower at hand, there was little concern for security until crossing the Alps into Italy. Even upon reaching that point, Mathilda would be sending Balducci and a large force of Tuscans to meet the wagon train in the Apennines to escort it to her stronghold in Canossa.

“You’ve done well, Tristan,” said Guillaume, as the wagon train moved out of Dijon, “especially with contribu-tions from the nobles.”

Tristan thanked his brother, but said little else. His mind was on Mala, still wondering why she had left so unexpec-tedly and where she might have gone. While at Cluny and Dijon he had hoped he might receive a reply from the messages he had dispatched to other Benedictine agents, but he had received nothing.

“I’ve never known you to show your hand, so I certainly don’t expect you to tell me your secrets now, of course,” Guillaume chuckled, “but I see that something still distracts you, Brother. And I’ve witnessed first-hand how good you are at what you do, so I hardly think that whatever bothers you has anything to do with politics or diplomacy, eh?”

“Ah, Guillaume, it is not any one thing that bothers me,” he said. “It’s the culmination of many, many little things.” This, of course, though not entirely true, was partially true. In addition to Mala, of late he had been questioning the Church, the ethics of the Benedictine underground, and his own personal motives. “Have you never had complicated little things stack themselves in your head, Guillaume, until you fear they will eventually topple you?”

Guillaume thought a moment. “No, not really. Tristan, you’ve always been the thinker, not me. I live a more simple existence, content to fight like the Danes. In war, it’s simple: fight or be killed.”

“Ho there!” cried Orla, pulling his horse next to the brothers. “Are you talking about us, Guillaume? I heard you say “the Danes”."

“I was saying that I’m content to fight, like you Danes, whereas Tristan was born the thinker.”

“Aha! Yes, thinking, it’s always given me headaches! Crowbones, too. Guthroth, now there’s another thinker. He says little because his tongue gets twisted, but he’s always watching, always listening, and always thinking.”

“I’ll vouch for that,” said Guillaume.

“Me too!” shouted Hroc who was sitting beside the driver in the wagon next to them and had been listening to every word. “And what about me, Father? Am I a thinker?”

“Ha! Hardly! No, you’re just nosey, lad,” Orla replied. “Now mind your business, Hroc.”

Hroc was hoping, of course, that his father was going to say, “Yes, lad, you’re nearly as clever as your Uncle Tristan and Uncle Guillaume!” Hearing his father’s reply, he propped his elbows upright upon his knees and settled his chin into his palms with disappointment. Nevertheless, he was not completely unhappy. Since the death of his mother during the escape from England, life had turned for him into a grand adventure, moving here and there with the ebb and flow of battle, living out in the open, and helping maintain arms and armor for the Danish Guard. Whereas he had once been confined to the company of his mother and the other women and children in England, he had been thrown into the company of his father, the other Danes, and Sir Guillaume; men whom he worshipped and emulated. Oh yes, he thought as the wagon hobbled along the rocky landscape, I’m going to be exactly like them and my brave brother, Knud.

“So, Tristan,” said Guillaume, “It’s been a profitable mission. Auntie Mathilda will be very pleased to see the wagons, and you, too.”

“I look forward to seeing her also,” Tristan replied, still trying to dispel the image of Mala from his thoughts. “Auntie has been a great influence on our lives, especially yours. So generous of her to take you in when Cardinal Odo and I moved to Rome.”

“Yes, with your intelligence and Cardinal Odo’s mentorship you were assured of rising within the Church, but without Auntie Mathilda I would have had nothing after Mother abandoned us.”

“Guillaume,” Tristan sighed with slight irritation, “I’ve tried to explain to you before that Mother did not truly abandon us. After the execution of our father, she had two choices: either marry Uncle Desmond, or become destitute, which would have meant that you and I also would be destitute. Would it have made you happier if she had kept us so we could scrap about in the streets for crumbs like a family of beggars? Where do you think we would be now had she allowed that to happen instead of sending us to the Black Monks? And that took money, you know, which she got from Uncle DuLac. That’s the only reason she married him, to spare us.”

“Look,” said Guillaume, “I was four-years-old when she sent us away and have only seen her twice since then, the second time being weeks ago as we stopped in Marcigny.” As Guillaume spoke, his expression began to darken. This topic was one he and Tristan had disputed before, and it seemed that Tristan always became agitated when Guillaume spoke honestly of his feelings toward their mother, Asta. “As for you, you were seven-years-old and retained some fond memories of her and Saint-Germain-en-Laye. I have no memories of either. My fond memories are stored with Auntie Mathilda and I look to her as my mother, not Asta.”

“Very well then, Guillaume, consider Mathilda your mother if it pleases you. Let’s change the subject,” Tristan sighed, not wishing to rehash this particular argument in light of the fact he was already distraught about the Mala situation.

Nor did Guillaume really wish to argue, so to shift the conversation he said, “Quite an armed escort we have behind us. So other than the difficulty of crossing the mountains, our journey should be without incident, eh?”

“Hopefully, but I am still wondering about the little man you encountered at the convent. Then, too, this wagon train is attracting attention so I am sure other eyes are upon us by now also. Sure, I expect no problems traveling through France, Heinrich would not dare stir that hornet nest while at war in Italy, but once we near the frontier and begin traveling the Via Francigena through the Alps, we could be attacked if the Germans figure out what we are doing. Even though Commander Balducci is to meet us in the Apennines, we have a long stretch in the Alps before reaching Balducci’s rendez-vous point.”

That night after the wagon train had pitched camp, Tristan and Guillaume were speaking to Orla and Crowbones outside the command tent when they heard a stir approaching their direction. Then Guthroth appeared out of the darkness in a fury, dragging a soldier by the collar of his hauberk. “L-look h-here!” he shouted to Orla and Crowbones, flinging the man to the ground into the circle of light afforded by the campfire.

Knowing that Guthroth the Quiet rarely lost his temper, Guillaume stepped forward and asked, “Guthroth, what’s happening here?”

Guthroth tried to answer, but was so angry that he could only mutter a string of unintelligible sounds. Orla, realizing who the man was, charged forward and kicked him in the side of the head, then attacked him with his fists. Within seconds Crowbones joined him. Soon the man’s face became a bloody mass of gore and tissue.

“Mercy!” the man screamed. Don’t kill me!”

Surprised by this inexplicable outbreak of violence, Tristan and Guillaume attempted to restrain the two huge Danes, but they easily broke free and attacked the man again.

“Stop it! That’s an order, dammit!” shouted Guillaume.

Orla and Crowbones hesitated, then backed away. Orla’s hands were still balled into fists, but Crowbones pointed at the man with his lone hand, and cried, “Oh, DeFarge, you filthy bastard!”

“Who is this man,” said Tristan, “and what has he done to earn such abuse?”

“What has he done?” shouted Orla, the veins of his neck protruding like purple roots. “Why nothing but cause the execution of your father, Lord Roger de Saint-Germain!”

“What?” asked Guillaume.

“Ja,” said Crowbones, “this snake DeFarge was one of your father’s trusted men. For a fistful of coin, he snitched to Lord Letellier and your uncle Desmond DuLac about your father’s conspiracy against William the Bastard. They then informed the Bastard, which is how DuLac got his Saxon estate and Letellier got title to the Saint-Germain fiefdom, while your father was beheaded and led to all of us being exiled from France and ending up in goddamn England!”

“Ay,” growled Orla, pulling his ax from his belt, “and had we never been exiled my wife would have never been killed trying to escape England, nor would my son, Knud, have lost his life in Tuscany!”

“Wait a moment!” cried Tristan, stepping in front of Orla and looking down at the blood-covered man named DeFarge. “You there, is all this true?”

“Yes!” the man bawled, not daring to lie with Orla standing a mere four feet away with ax in hand. “Mercy! It was the greatest mistake of my life and God has punished me with hard times since that fateful day!”

“What are you doing here in my camp?” said Guillaume.

“I enlisted with Captain Rousseau in Dijon to fight for Mathilda in Italy. I have not worked in months and my wife and children are starving. I...”

“Oh, DeFarge, life has definitely taken a turn, you worm!” Orla shouted, glaring over Tristan’s shoulder. Then he pointed to Guillaume and Tristan. “Do you know who these two are, DeFarge? They’re the very two little Saint-Germain boys you orphaned by turning in your master!”

“What!” cried DeFarge, shocked. Then, wiping blood and goo from his eyes, he stared up at Tristan and Guillaume, struggling to remember Lord Roger de Saint-Germain’s children. “Yes, that’s…T-r-is-tan? And that one there, must be little Guillaume,” he muttered, but he had the names crossed, mistakenly thinking that the bigger of the two, Guillaume, was the older brother. Nevertheless, by remembering their names DeFarge hoped that he might have struck a soft vein in the two men. “I didn’t mean to bring misfortune to you two boys! Forgive me!” Then he scrambled to his knees, clasped his palms in prayer, and shot his eyes to the stars crying, “Oh God in Heaven, my Savior, spare me I pray!”

Beholding this prayerful stance and pleading for divine intervention, Tristan shot his eyes toward Guillaume while holding a hand up to Orla. “Guillaume, I seldom ask anything of you in life, yet I now ask that you spare this man for what he did was many years ago. We both know that our father was a vermin of a man.”

Guillaume looked at Tristan, then at the seething Danes, then back at Tristan, and felt torn. “Brother, this fellow DeFarge caused our family’s downfall, the exile of Asta and the Danes, and even you and I being sent away. How can I possibly justify sparing him?”

“You can justify it in the name of God’s mercy,” said Tristan, “and in the name of our Aunt Mathilda, la Gran Contessa of Tuscany, that most pious and merciful saint of a woman whom you hold in your heart as your own mother. It was in the name of generosity and mercy that she adopted us years ago, Guillaume. Honor her by being merciful yourself now. We are better off now than we would have ever been even had father lived!”

Considering all that Tristan had said, DeFarge stiffened with hope. “Ay, God has countered my wrongdoing with his own mercy, thereby balancing the scales! If indeed you two were adopted by the great Countess Mathilda of Tuscany, then God has blessed you with both fortune and a bright future. Spare me, then, to repay God!”

“You’ll receive no such mercy, you bastard!” snarled Orla, waving his ax back and forth. “Ha! How interesting that you destroyed the life of these two lads, only for fortune to then shine on them so brightly. Yes, Sir Guillaume here is a high noble now and will end being a great general! And our lad Tristan there, with the help of Mathilda and Cardinal Odo de Lagery, is destined to perhaps even become Pope one…”

“Enough, Orla,” interrupted Tristan. Then he looked at his brother and said, “Please, Guillaume, allow this man to live.”

Guillaume looked one more time at Orla, then nodded reluctantly. “Very well, Brother.” Then he flagged Orla off and said, “This man shall leave our camp with his life, Orla.”

Orla stepped forward, shoving Tristan aside. “Indeed then, DeFarge shall leave our camp with his life.” Then he swept his ax downward in the blink of an eye, cleanly severing DeFarge’s right hand from his wrist in one swift motion exclaiming, “But he shall also leave our camp with a reminder of what he did to all of us standing here this night!”

Guillaume fired Orla a glance of disapproval, but it did not hold for long because Guillaume understood Orla’s fury. Tristan, aghast as DeFarge shrieked in agony, fell to his knees and tried to block the blood erupting from DeFarge’s wound with his bare hands, but DeFarge was rolling and flopping about so wildly that his spurting blood quickly covered Tristan’s eyes and face, obstructing his vision completely. Meanwhile, DeFarge somehow found his feet and fled screaming into the darkness, his wailing voice fading into the night.

“God in Heaven, Orla!” cried Tristan, swiping blood from his eyes as he stumbled about in an effort to stand. “You should not have done such a thing!”

Loyal Crowbones stepped forward, patting Orla upon the shoulders with his stub. “Nay, Boy,” he said, “my brother should have done more, much more.”