The Stone Rose Read online

  A draught from the window sent a superstitious shiver racing down Yolande’s neck. Instinctively, she made the sign of the cross.

  In the next chamber, Katarin, her youngest, began to cry. Yolande’s face softened. Katarin must come first. She’d deal with her mother later. She moved towards the door.

  ‘If only I’d known,’ Izabel whispered. ‘If only I could have foreseen...’

  Yolande froze mid-stride. ‘I’m surprised you stayed with me, Maman, if it stuck in your gullet so. I always wondered why you never went back to the convent. You would have liked it there. No one forced you to stay with me.’

  The veiled head jerked. Izabel’s faded eyes flashed with hurt and indignation. ‘You’re my daughter!’

  Yolande smiled her sweetest smile. ‘And Gwenn is mine, or had you forgotten?’

  ‘She’s my granddaughter. She’ll think badly of you, and of me. I pray you, don’t tell her.’

  ‘Whining doesn’t suit you, Maman. And I flatter myself that Gwenn would try to understand.’

  Katarin had stopped wailing. The chamber door rattled, and the child began a new chant. ‘Mama. Mama. Mama.’

  Yolande reached for the latch.

  ‘Please, Yolande. Promise me.’

  Izabel’s fingers clutched at the silk of Yolande’s elongated sleeve. Yolande had spent years protecting her mother from hardship and hurt and the habit was hard to break. She compromised. ‘I’ll do my best to avoid telling her.’

  ‘Swear it.’

  Katarin’s litany increased in volume. ‘Mama. Mama. Mama.’

  ‘I’ll try. Ma mère, allow me to see to Katarin.’ Suffocated, Yolande prised Izabel’s fingers from the material of her gown, and stalked to the door. She seemed to have spent a lifetime failing to satisfy her mother. She was glad that her children’s wants were more easily met.

  ***

  In the dusty street, Gwenn noticed that the pedlar who had recently taken up a position outside her house was staring at her. She had no money, but nonetheless she glanced briefly at his merchandise. It was tawdry stuff, cheap ribbons and stale-looking honey cakes, and of no interest to her.

  A half-starved mongrel cur, whose wiry white fur was worn away with the mange so you could see his ribs, sidled towards the pedlar, and sat down in the earth. His eyes were riveted on the pedlar’s tray. The dog’s black nose twitched and his stumpy tail wagged hopefully. The animal could smell the huckster’s sweetmeats.

  ‘Piss off!’ the pedlar hissed, aiming a worn boot at the dog, but whether by accident or design the animal sat just outside his reach.

  Gwenn grinned. Having satisfied herself that her unauthorised departure had not been noticed, she remembered that her grandmother had drummed into her that a lady should never, never walk abroad unveiled. She twitched the blue silk veil from her belt and fastened it on. She’d be in hot water if they discovered she’d gone out alone, there was no point making matters worse.

  The street was busy. A peel of bells rang out the hour and a fluster of pigeons hurtled skywards. Gwenn did not want to be late. She threaded her way through the growing crowd of people in the direction of St Peter’s. The pigeons fluttered down again.

  Someone grasped her arm. The pedlar. He waved a fistful of garish ribbon under her nose. ‘You buy, pretty lady?’ he whined, in the local Breton dialect. His fingernails were filthy, and even over the stink of fish and rotting debris which carpeted the cramped thoroughfare, Gwenn could smell him, a sour, unwashed smell.

  ‘I’ve no money,’ she answered, peeping through her veil as her grandmother had taught her. She read disbelief in the pedlar’s eyes and knew her clothes proclaimed her a liar. The silk her gown was fashioned from had come from Constantinople. She had a real gold ring on her finger. Only last week her mother’s friend, Jean St Clair, had given it to her. Gwenn liked Sir Jean, and wondered if he was her father. But any questions she had posed on that score were invariably parried. Eventually Gwenn had learned not to ask. And because she suspected Sir Jean was her father, she had worn the ring ever since. But it was true that she had no money. Up till now she’d only managed to escape once or twice on her own. Her grandmother who usually accompanied her carried the money. The pedlar’s eyes were cold, they made Gwenn shiver. His clothes were threadbare and shiny with grease, and his hose had need of a darning needle. The sour stench of him was overpowering. Cursing the vanity and thoughtlessness that had made her pick out this particularly opulent dress, Gwenn shook free of the roughened hands and scurried on.

  Conan stared after the concubine’s daughter, guilt gnawing at his innards. Why did the wench have to be so young? She could not possibly have hurt anyone. The mongrel was back, its optimistic whine a triumph of hope over experience. ‘Damn you, le Bret,’ Conan muttered. ‘And damn your paymaster.’ The freshness of the girl seemed to cling to Conan’s fingers, but he was too old to start nurturing a tender conscience. His face contorted. Wiping his fingers on breeches that had not seen water since the previous spring, Conan lashed out at the mongrel. This time his boot connected with the dog’s rump, and with a whimper it hopped out of range. Conan spat into the dirt, counted to ten, and then, keeping the girl’s back in sight, he followed at a discreet distance.

  Walking quickly, and happily oblivious of her shadow, Gwenn noticed the house martins were back. Last years’ nests had waited out the winter, strung out under the eaves along the whole length of her route, like clumsy grey beads on a string. The birds even nested on St Peter’s Cathedral – known as St Per’s to the local Bretons. The nests faced west, so that the martins’ young, when they hatched, could bask in the glow of the evening sun. The birds’ high-pitched twitterings overrode the hum of human voices below them in the street, a sure sign that more clement weather was on the way.

  Ahead of her, St Peter’s bell tower loomed over the untidy rows of houses. The martins were there too, high in the sky, tiny black and white arrows diving and darting over Vannes. They would be able to see the whole of the port from up there.

  Once, before the stiffness had crept into her bones, Izabel had taken Gwenn to the top of the wooden bell tower. The view it gave out over the town was extraordinary, and Gwenn would never forget it. To the south, the shadow of the tower pointed towards the port. She had seen the harbour, a long, dark finger of water which shone in the sunlight and teemed with boats reduced by the distance to a child’s toy flotilla. And beyond the harbour was the more distant glimmer of the Small Sea. Nearer to hand – to north, and west, and east – Gwenn had looked down on line after wiggly line of ramshackle wooden houses hugging the Cathedral Close. Vannes was a beehive of a town. From the vantage point of the tower, it looked as though a giant hand had reached down from heaven and squashed everything together, but the hand had done its work badly, for there was not a straight line or angle in the whole town. Many dwellings were little more than decaying hovels. Many needed rethatching. Doors swung at improbable angles, and the sea breeze rattled shutters dangling precariously on rust-eaten hinges. All the buildings, shabby and otherwise, buzzed with activity. Most of the streets were narrow, cramped and crooked, an unplanned cluster of alleys reeking with the stench of fish, but a few were marginally broader and grander; and these radiated out from the cathedral. La Rue de la Monnaie, on which Gwenn lived, was one of these more prosperous streets. She did not have far to go to reach St Peter’s, there to await the preaching of Father Jerome, the Black Monk.

  Chapter Two

  Duke’s Tavern sat across the square from St Peter’s Cathedral. Trade was so brisk that the innkeeper, Mikael Brasher, was beginning to worry. His inn was bursting at the seams with unruly strangers, wine was being quaffed as though it were water and violence of some sort seemed inevitable.

  Uneasy, he scratched the back of his neck and blinked through the smoke haze which spiralled out from the cooking fire. Over the years, Mikael had developed an instinct for trouble, and he recognised that itch as a warning signal. A bench crashed to the ground. I
t was not the first that morning. Someone let out a bellow worthy of a prize bull.

  ‘More wine!’ Mikael cried, grabbing a flagon and donning his most genial smile. In spite of his broad girth, the innkeeper could be nimble as a dancer when he chose. Double chins wobbling, he slid swiftly between the rough-hewn tables to the source of the noise and signalled to the potboy, Tristan, to set the bench to rights. If anyone in Vannes could stop a riot it was Mikael Brasher. The trick was to sniff out the troublemakers before they had time to brew up a riot. Sniff them out and disarm them.

  Two men, red-faced with wine and anger, confronted each other across a table. Mikael waved the wine flask like a flag of truce between them. They were ugly customers these, with calloused hands already clawing out their daggers, they looked like mercenaries. Professional killers. Professional swillers. French mostly. Scum. They drove away good, honest Breton locals. Mikael did not have time to ponder on their being in his tavern.

  ‘It’s on the house!’ he bawled over the din. The bellowing subsided and an astonished silence gripped his auditors. Four drink-hazed eyes locked onto the flask as though it was the Holy Grail. Mikael’s lips twitched. His supposition had been correct. They were mercenaries. And the mercenary had not been born that would turn down an offer of free wine. Daggers clicked back into sheaths, the flagon vanished from his hand and the two mercenaries flopped back onto their benches. The regular hum of conversation resumed. Mikael rolled his eyes to the rafters, and suppressed a grin. The free wine trick worked every time. It was like pouring oil on troubled waters. Jesu, but it was busier than market day, Mikael thought, squinting at the ungovernable crew filling his benches.

  Tristan was at his elbow, a worried crease wrinkling his forehead. ‘It’s noisy, sir,’ Tristan said.

  Mikael nodded brusquely. ‘Aye. And hot.’ He waited for Tristan to go about his business, but the lad fixed him with a peculiarly intense stare and didn’t budge. ‘Tristan?’

  ‘Shall I fetch help? We...we’re a bit short of it this morning, I think.’ Again that intense, meaningful stare.

  Mikael grinned and gave the boy a playful punch in the stomach. ‘A kind thought, but there’s no need. I’m not in my dotage yet. We can handle them. Go and tap that new barrel in the yard.’

  Tristan gazed at his employer a moment longer, then he nodded and turned away.

  The boy was right about the noise. It was reaching unbearable levels. And the lack of air was stifling. Using the cloth wrapped round his waist, Mikael scrubbed the sweat from his brow. It was not the first time that the advent of a preacher at the Cathedral had doubled his business overnight, but these foreigners – Mikael grimaced – were not the usual run of the mill. He’d take his oath that they’d not a spiritual bone in their bodies. Their kind would sooner die than see the inside of a church. As for their coming to hear the Black Monk – it simply did not tally.

  He edged through the door for a breather. It was curious how his regulars had given Duke’s a miss this morning; he hardly recognised a soul. Perhaps they had itches at the backs of their necks, too. Hardly a Breton in sight. His sweat-beaded brow furrowed as he scowled up at his upstairs window. That Frenchman closeted up there had to be paymaster for the rabble below. He racked his brains for the foreigner’s name. Ah! he had it now, François de Roncier. A French count.

  The innkeeper cocked a weather eye at the sun. He made it to be after noon. A crowd was gathering round the church porch. Now there were the folk he knew. He caught sight of his daughter, Irene, in her pink bliaud, her over-gown, with a basket hanging on arm. If Irene was waiting, the monk would be spouting soon. Irene never wasted time. She was a good girl, was his Irene.

  Irene had seen him standing in the doorway. She crossed the square. ‘Why so glum, Father? Custom looks good today.’

  Mikael smiled resignedly. ‘Too good, my sweet. Too good. I’d wish them in Hell if I thought it would get rid of them.’

  ‘Father?’

  ‘Don’t trouble your head over it, daughter.’

  Irene’s red lips curved. ‘I begin to comprehend. Your customers must be French.’

  Mikael spared her a startled look. She understood more than he gave her credit for. ‘They are. And I can’t help wondering what Devil’s draught they’re brewing.’

  ‘Why do you dislike the French so, Father? I’ve always wondered.’

  Mikael swiftly ran his mind over the countless border disputes and wrangles that had disrupted the peace in recent years and gave as an honest an answer as he could. ‘It’s not just the French. It’s foreigners in general. They’re all greedy and quarrelsome. Look at the French and English kings; they fight over Brittany like dogs scrapping over a bone. Whenever foreigners appear, Irene, you can bet your last penny that trouble isn’t far behind them.’

  Irene digested this. ‘Why are they here this time?’

  ‘Christ knows. Nothing springs to mind, it’s been quiet of late. The two foreign kings must have been snarling over other bones.’ The innkeeper shot another glance of acute dislike at the upstairs window. ‘I can think of no reason for a French count to be skulking in our private chamber with his pack of hell-hounds straining at the leash.’ Seeing his daughter’s brows twitch together, the innkeeper hastened to reassure her. ‘It’s probably some petty personal feud, my sweet. Though why in God’s name the nobility don’t learn to keep their quarrels to themselves, I don’t know. They’ve no cause to bring chaos to Brittany as well as their own lands.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  Mikael shrugged philosophically. ‘There’s nothing I can do, Irene, except put up with them, fill their bladders with wine and pray they’ll be on their way soon. Don’t you fret. Run along and listen to the monk. All I want you to worry about is fetching those eggs from Stefan after the sermon.’

  Irene’s cheeks went the colour of a wild rose. ‘I’m not likely to forget.’

  Mikael grinned. His daughter had a liking for young Stefan.

  ‘But, Father–’

  ‘The eggs, my girl. Just remember those eggs.’

  ‘Aye, Father.’

  Fondly, the innkeeper watched his daughter walk back to the crowd filing through the Cathedral porch. Like locusts, routiers never stayed long in one place. He grimaced, and wished he’d chosen a more appropriate simile. Locusts only moved on when they’d stripped a place bare.

  Mikael didn’t hold with fanciful notions. There was nothing for these men in Vannes. He should find it in his heart to pity them. Mercenaries were only men, flesh and blood like anyone else. Lost souls. A name sprang unbidden to the forefront of his brain. ‘Alan le Bret,’ he muttered. One of de Roncier’s captains had answered to that name. The man must be of Breton origin. ‘Alan le Bret,’ he repeated, shaking his head in disgust. The man was doubly damned in Mikael’s eyes; a Breton hiring himself to a Frenchman – obviously he didn’t have a grain of decency left in him.

  He was halfway through the inn door when out of the tail of his eye, Mikael saw a flash of blue. He stiffened, recognising the concubine’s daughter in her silken plumage. The girl danced up to the porch. Only last week she had attempted to befriend his Irene. Mikael did not want his daughter to mix with St Clair’s by-blow, even though it was rumoured her father doted on her. Hesitating, he chewed the inside of his cheek. The maid looked harmless, and he was busy. The girl’s veil had slipped and Mikael caught a glimpse of lively, sparkling eyes and an open, honest face. If truth be told, she looked more like a wealthy merchant’s daughter than a concubine’s bastard; pretty, spoilt, over-fond of silks and satins, full of mischief, but perfectly respectable. The irony of it never ceased to amaze him.

  Dubiously, he eyed the girl smiling at Irene. He took a step towards them. Then he stopped. Nay. As an innkeeper he had learned the value of tolerance and though the child’s birth caused her to be shunned by most reputable folk, Mikael would take his oath there was no wickedness in her. She went to St Peter’s with her stiff-necked grandmother often enough.
Let her make friends where she could.

  A roar from inside the tavern drew Mikael’s gaze. He sighed. He had some real riffraff to worry about this morning. At least the concubine’s daughter had Breton blood in her veins, not like most of the dregs that had drifted into his tavern. With luck it would not be long before his inn was clear of them. Mikael prayed that his stocks of wine and cider would last. He did not want to be the one to have to tell this lawless pack of thieves their fun was over.

  A down-at-heel pedlar slid past Mikael, silent as a wraith, while a crusty voice bawled from within. ‘Hey! Landlord! More wine!’

  Regretfully, Mikael exchanged the cool air of the street for the stuffy atmosphere of his tavern, and left his musings for a less fraught day.

  ***

  In the upper chamber of the tavern, Count François de Roncier was conferring in his native tongue with his two mercenary captains. His bulky frame was sprawled untidily over the only chair. A table stood before him. Le Bret and Malait, the captains in question, were perched opposite the Frenchman on three-legged stools designed to stand firm however uneven the floor.

  Captain Malait bore the clear stamp of his Nordic ancestors; a handsome, bearded giant in his third decade, he had straggling corn-coloured hair tied back with a length of sheepskin ribbon. Almost beautiful, he was far from effete, with bulging biceps that his short-sleeved tunic was unable to cover. Otto Malait was larger even than his lord, and valued because the power built into his sinews looked ready to burst out at any moment; and as the Norseman was short-tempered, it often did. This had a most salutary effect even on the more hardened routiers in his troop.

  By contrast, Captain Alan le Bret – who must have inherited his dark colouring from his Breton forbears – was neat and compact, for all that he was judged exceptionally tall for one of the Breton race. Le Bret’s slender strength would never have the driving force of the Viking’s, but a glance at his cool grey eyes told one that here was a man who had learned the value of total self-control. Half a dozen years younger than Captain Malait, and of a more thoughtful cast of mind, le Bret was not one to mindlessly squander resources – his own, or anyone else’s. Taciturn by nature, he kept his thoughts to himself, yet gave the impression that here was a man with a steel will, with hidden talents held in reserve. For these albeit very different reasons, Alan le Bret’s value to the Count equalled that of the burly Norseman’s. Each was a foil for the other.