OUTSIDE GRUISSAN—DECEMBER 1208
The bodies were burned beyond recognition. Raoul made out six shapes laid in a row. Some were merely a collection of pieces, and others had scraps of clothing clinging to their ravaged flesh and charred bones. It was impossible to tell if they had been men or women. Four were shrunken skeletons with tiny skulls. He knelt and grasped a foot that was bare of flesh, either burned away or picked clean by the crows circling overhead. Children. Just babies. Oh God, could they be mine? He sank to his knees.
A seventh mound lay apart from the row of corpses. Wrapped in a soot-covered blanket tied fast around the neck and the ankles, it was a body intact. Raoul, in a frenzy of fear, cut through the binding around the head and yanked back the covering. It was a fat young man, his skin unblemished by flame but bruised profoundly on one side. The wind teased through his hair, the tonsured cut indicating he’d been a monk. His eyes were closed and his face smooth; he looked as though he were enjoying an improbable siesta underneath the December sun. The right side of the covering, near his waist, was matted and soaked, nearly black. Raoul touched the fabric, and his fingers came away red. He returned to the burned bodies.
Wind roiled the clouds, and for a moment, the sun was revealed. Light pierced the haze and snatched at a silver chain half buried in the damp earth. One end hung from the blackened palm of a wretched corpse. Raoul brushed away the dirt, hooked the chain under a finger, and withdrew it carefully. The chain was fine and delicate as rain. Pendulating in the slight breeze was a single, squared cross, made by a silversmith in Carcassonne. Raoul had offered the necklace to his wife at the birth of their children. He enclosed the pendant in his fist. He touched the body before him, laying his hand on the blackened skull where tufts of yellow hair crumbled and scattered to the ground. Two small bodies were arranged on either side of his wife’s.
“Paloma,” he whispered. He ran a hand over the length of the skeleton, oblivious to the stench. He saw his Paloma’s sweet face, her halo of thick, golden hair spilling across bare shoulders as she wiped a damp, lavender-scented cloth down her arms and across the nape of her neck.
His keen ears caught the pounding of hooves. A single rider approached the gravesite on the road from Gruissan. Mirò stamped and neighed a question to Raoul, her withers twitching. He ran a hand down her muzzle and up to the white star on her forehead. “Hold steady, girl.” Hidden from view by a rise in the road, he removed the short sword strapped across his back. He stood in front of the terrible grave, his hands behind his back, his legs spread wide.
A cloaked rider appeared; he was mounted on a great black destrier that could have been the brother to his own Mirò. The horse and rider slowed as they neared Raoul. The man dismounted. The sun, already at its highest point on this short day, seemed to fade around him.
He wore no armor, but he was protected from the winter wind by a cloak of finely woven black wool lined with fur. His face was pale, drawn tightly over cheekbones that pushed ridges against his white skin, and his eyes were dull wells of black.
“On behalf of the Church, I have come to affirm the dead.” His head was bare, and he ran a hand through his long, dark-blond hair.
“The dead have nothing more to tell you,” said Raoul. He flexed one hand, then the other, and regripped the hilt of his sword. “The innocent cannot confess.”
The man dropped his steed’s reins and walked along the shallow pit, peering down at the bodies. Raoul shifted his stance to keep his eyes trained on the intruder.
“What a price you paid for your glory. Oh yes, I know who you are, Raoul d’Aran.” The man looked up, his face in shadow. “I loved your wife as you did. Did she never once mention me? Lucas Moisset?”
Raoul blinked but did not respond. His heart slammed to a halt, and his blood turned frigid in his veins.
“How little could these lives have meant to you?” asked Mauléon, sweeping an arm above the prone bodies. “You abandoned your wife and your children in the village, pretending they could live undetected while you played at being the savior of Languedoc.” He moved to the far side of the pit, where the body of the monk lay exposed to chill wind and weak sun.
Heedless of Raoul’s presence, the sénéchal dropped to his haunches and pulled the rough covering away from the monk’s body. Raoul saw the source of the blood he’d touched earlier: the man had been sliced from one side of his belly to the other. “And one more on my head,” said Mauléon. He tucked a thin leather pouch underneath the monk’s demurely folded hands. “May God save your soul, Bonafé. And mine,” he muttered before pulling the blanket back over the monk’s face.
Raoul drew his right hand to the front of his body, his knuckles white around the hilt of his short sword, while he soundlessly pulled free the simple mace hanging from his belt with his left. He stepped closer on silent feet, his mind registering the location of his shadow, which ran close to his body in the minutes before the sun began its westward creep. He gritted his teeth, his jaw working in fury.
There was an upward rush of air and black shadow, a blast of horses screaming, and a bite of pain so fierce Raoul thought his face had been cleaved in two. He spun back, blinded in his left eye by a curtain of red. He used the force of his momentum to pivot, his arm swinging out and around, his blade whistling as it whipped through the air. But Raoul wasn’t quick enough. His sword met a void. A booted foot slammed into his wrist and sent the sword flying. The sénéchal’s blade rushed toward him again, but lower and crossways, aiming for his belly.
Time stalled. Raoul saw and heard everything with the clarity of an eagle, even as blood streamed warm down his face. The sun glinted off Mauléon’s long, thin knife, Mirò pounded the earth behind him in a frenzy of agitation, and Mauléon’s battle-tested steed shifted but held his ground, waiting for some unknown signal to act. Beside them, the black bodies of the slain whispered in the wind.
Throwing his weight left, Raoul swung out his arm. The rounded bronze head of his mace landed with a dull crack on the side of the sénéchal’s skull, and he collapsed without a sound. Raoul bent forward, his hands on his knees as he gasped and spit into the ground. The blood poured from the gash in his face, and his mouth was coated with its iron tang. He grasped Mauléon and pulled him onto his back. The sénéchal’s eyes were closed and his chest was still.
As he yanked his short sword from the earth, Raoul felt rather than heard the pounding of hooves on the earth. Retrieving Mauléon’s blade from the grass where it had slipped as he fell, Raoul wiped it clean and returned it to the sénéchal’s hand. Without a second glance at Mauléon, Raoul pulled himself onto Mirò’s back, thrust his feet into the stirrups, and whispered into her flattened ear, “Run, girl.”
• • •
Lucas heard the falcon’s cry, which pulled him from a thick blackness that was filled with pounding drums, drums beating inside his head with such force his gorge rose. He turned his head, and the motion nearly sent him underneath the black again. He rolled despite the pain and released the vomit that filled his mouth.
“Thrown from that infernal horse at last, Mauléon?” Lucas opened his eyes just enough to see two pairs of armed men dismounting. Each man wore a hauberk of chain mail over a quilted wool gambeson, a conical helmet that covered the nose with a thin strip of metal, and boots of tanned leather. They formed a circle around Lucas, hands resting on the hilts of their swords. None wore a mantle to indicate allegiance, but he knew each man by name. Just as he knew they were no longer his to command. One kicked the knife from his hand, breaking his fingers. Lucas closed his eyes to receive the final blows. The falcon called once more.