We three – four, with my horse – stood like a painting of saints for a long time. Di Heredia had his sword drawn.
That’s how it was.
Finally, he sheathed it. ‘I voted for you to enter the Order. I saved your little whore. If you betray Father Pierre and our Order, I will kill you if it’s the last thing I do.’
This did not sound like an empty threat from the Spaniard.
I went down on one knee in the straw. ‘I swear on the Emperor’s sword and on the wounds of Christ that I will not betray Father Pierre. Or you.’
Fra Juan raised me and gave me a squeeze. ‘Go with God, then. I will not ask who this Madame d’Herblay is. But I will ask you to carry the order’s letters to the legate. And a letter of passage.’
When I looked sullen, he slapped my arm. ‘You may do all the errantry you like, my young ingrate, but I suspect you’ll find a letter of passage helpful.’ He looked at me. ‘You know the Count d’Herblay’s wife?’
I was angry and afraid. My face was as red as my hair. ‘I do,’ I admitted.
‘God save us all,’ di Heredia said.
Marc-Antonio and I rode out through the most vicious of autumn weather, and if I say we were not faster than the wind, it is only because it blew as if all the devils in hell wished to slow us.
In truth, I didn’t know where I was going. My love owned vast estates in Burgundy and I knew from making war there that Burgundy extended over half a continent. Further, I knew her husband had ridden in the van of the army of Savoy at Brignais, and Emile had described herself as a Savoyard.
The obvious place to start was Turin, and I went there. I knew the road, and I knew the inns.
The first night on the road, we were in the steep hills east of Avignon and we stopped in a tiny town, Saint-Marie d’en-Haut, or some such. Marc-Antonio was so scared he didn’t even want to go to Mass, but the church supposedly had the relics of Mary Magdalene and we went to see them, armed as if for war, and we heard the sermon and took communion too, rare enough even then and probably the only reason I remember it,
After Mass I hired a linkboy on the church steps and we were still on the steps when I saw a man’s head appear around the corner of the convent that fronted the tiny square. He put me on high alert: he was watching for someone, and I assumed it was me.
We made our way back through streets so narrow they were more like goat tracks, so sloped that you could lose a shoe going uphill and the streets were already dark. Twice at turnings, I glimpsed men moving parallel on other streets.
I tapped Marc-Antonio and gave him the Order’s ‘danger’ sign.
He flushed and drew his dagger. The linkboy turned to see why we were stopped – and the sword bit deeply into his neck, and blood sprayed. He dropped his torch and screamed.
They were coming from both ends of the alley.
The closest man was one long pace behind me and coming fast. I raised my scabbarded sword, blocking the first downward blow of a club, and stabbed overhand, putting the gilded iron point of my beautiful red scabbard into the first man’s face. In fact, I got his eye more by luck than skill, and killed him instantly. I pulled the scabbard off the sword with my left hand and threw it in the second man’s face as he tripped over his dead comrade, turned on my hips without changing the placement of my feet, which can be chancy as hell in the dark, and thrust over Marc-Antonio’s shoulder one-handed. I hit his adversary, pivoted back and ripped the sword out of my second kill and powered it forward in a strong overhand cut at the man who had tangled with my scabbard.
It’s very, very hard to face a longsword in the dark. I had no compunction about killing these men – the odds were too long. They could only come at me from two directions, and I had the reach. And the training. I don’t remember having a thought in my head, either: I killed, turned and killed, pivoted back and cut. My cut landed on a dagger and my blow blew through the man’s guard and into his head.