Worlds That Weren't

For a second she did not understand what he had said.

His voice squeaked: adolescent. “I don’t understand it. I didn’t understand the first one.”

Yolande’s breath hitched in her throat. No. He’s lying. Obviously!

“Another dream for me?”

Another vision?

This is some kind of threat to strong-arm me into protecting his pigs and Muthari’s arse… Muthari. His master. His pigs.

He’s just trying to look after his own.

Without preamble, not stopping for cowardice, she demanded, “Give me this second vision, then!”

The wind blew the scent of rock-honey, and pigs, and she was close enough to the young man to smell his male sweat. Ric’s dark eyes met hers, and she saw for the first time that he was fractionally taller than she.

He said, “I have to! It’s God’s. If I could hold it back any longer, until you promise to help…I can’t. We have to go to the Green Chapel!”

There’s no time. I’m on duty again in an hour. And how can I sneak him in there to have a vision- if I do-with the captain’s guard on the place?

The next thought followed hard on that one, and she nodded to herself.

“Meet me outside the chapel. Two hours. Vespers. We’ll see if you’re lying or not.”

A young voice emerged from the depths of the dimly lit Green Chapel. “Christ up a Tree, it stinks in here!”

Guillaume grinned as he entered from checking the sentries. “Cassell, I think that’s the idea…”

Ukridge and Bressac snickered; Guillaume decided he could afford not to hear them. The more bitching they do about this duty, the less likely they are to slide off to the baggage-train trollops and make me put them up for punishment detail in the morning.

Bressac got up and paced around on the cold tiles, evidently hoping to gain warmth by the movement. He did not look as though he were succeeding. Now that it was past Vespers, it was cold. Guillaume pulled his heavy lined wool cloak more securely around him. The other Frenchman walked over to the woman’s body, where it lay swollen and chill in front of the altar, under a lamp and the face of Vir Viridianus.

“You’d think she wouldn’t smell so much in this cold.”

“This is nothing. You want real smell, you wait until tomorrow.” Guillaume, feeling the tip of his nose numb with cold, found it difficult to remember the blazing heat of the day. He kept it in his memory by a rational effort.

Bressac paced back to the group. “I went to an autopsy once. Up in Padua? Mind, that corpse was fresh; smelled better than this… They were doing it in a church. Poorbitch had her entrails spilled out in front of two hundred Dominican monks. And she was some shop owner’s wife: doubt she even showed an ankle in public before.”

“Some of those Italians…” Ukridge gave a shrill whistle at odds with his beef-and-bread English bulk. “Over in Venice, they wear their tits out on top of their gowns. I mean, shit, nipples and everything…”

“So that’s how you know the Italian for ‘get your tits out for the lads’?” Cassell’s chuckle spluttered off into laughs and yelps as the big man got him in a headlock and ruffled his coarse brown hair.

A voice over by the door exclaimed, “Viridianus! I prefer the company of real pigs to you guys.”

Yolande! Guillaume saw Bressac look up and chuckle with an air of familiarity as Lee and Wainwright, outside, passed the crossbow woman in. She certainly picks her moment.

Bressac called, “Come on in, ’Lande. Bring a bit of class to the occasion.”

Guillaume managed to stop himself from bristling at the other Frenchman’s informality. It was no more than the usual way of treating her: somewhere between a whore and a friend and a mother. For a moment he felt shame about his desire for the older woman.

A shorter figure emerged from the dark shadows behind the crossbow woman. Ric’s still alive, then, Guillaume thought sourly.

Not that much shorter, he abruptly realized. Is she really no taller than a youth?

“You ought to be pious,” the boy said, with an apparent calm that Guillaume found himself admiring. It took courage to face down heavily armed Frankish mercenaries. “If she’s your friend, this dead woman, you don’t want to disgrace her.”

“Little nun!” Ukridge jeered, but it was sotto voce.

Guillaume judged it time to speak. “The boy’s right. Rosso’s still one of the company. This is a dead-watch, no matter why the Boss put her here. Let’s have a little respect.”

There was muttering, but it seemed to be in general agreement, with no more than the normal soldiers’ dislike for being told to do something.

“She’s still working for the company,” Guillaume added. “Or she will be, when the sun comes up.”

Bressac snickered approvingly.

Guillaume nodded to Yolande, feeling awkwardly formal in his command role- even if it is only five grunts and the metaphorical dog…hardly company commander. He studied her as well as he could in the light of two pierced-iron lanterns. Even with the door of one lantern unlatched-he leaned over and unhooked the catch-it was difficult to read her expression by a tallow candle’s smoky, reeking light.