“You don’t look as nervous as I expected,” said Turpin, leaning over and speaking softly. “Perhaps there’s more of your brother in you than I imagined.”
“I am not afraid, not of the fighting,” she said, keeping her voice low. “The Queen of Heaven has guided my steps and kept me safe, even when I doubted.”
“You should consider trying it on, then, fear,” Turpin said, his smile turning the tip of his beard up just slightly.
“I only want to be close enough to Olivier to help him, when I learn how I may do so.”
“Yes, so you said. The Queen of Heaven will be fighting on your side — who can be against you? You, an ugly girl in a monk’s habit.”
She said nothing and continued forward on her unhappy donkey.
The travel was treacherous and long. Aude had never been in the company of so many men, nor been privy to their strange practices. In the evening they sat together under the stars and sang hymns and drank wine. As the night deepened, the hymns turned to songs of a more lascivious nature. Roland was most often the instigator of such ribaldry, much to Aude’s embarrassment. He also drank more than he should, making a fool of himself in front of the other men. When the sun rose, it appeared that the previous night’s madness was forgotten, and Roland, while puffy in the face and ragged of voice, was back to his stalwart self.
One such morning, after four days of traveling down through Burgundy, Roland and Olivier’s voices rose without warning outside Turpin’s tent. Aude awoke from a dream where the Queen of Heaven was showing her something in a pool, a kind of scepter or stick, but she could not see it clearly. Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she looked for Turpin, but he was nowhere to be seen, having enjoyed himself overmuch the night before. Aude hid her face at the sound of the tent flap opening.
“Oh, it’s just the clerk,” said Roland, making to leave immediately.
“Wait. Perhaps he knows where Turpin’s gone off to,” Olivier said.
Aude had been prepared for such an occasion, and bowed her head so that the monk’s hood she wore obscured her face even further.
“Why is he flinching like that?” Roland asked Olivier, not quite quietly enough to be polite. “Show us your face, boy.”
“He’s disfigured, if I recall,” Olivier replied. “Twisted by God and cursed to walk scorned by man. But blessed to have been taken in by Bishop Turpin. No matter. Milo, is it?”
Aude nodded and muttered, “Yes, lord.”
“Do you know the whereabouts of your master?” Olivier pressed, poking his head further into the tent.
Aude shook her head. “No, sir.”
“Probably face down in some pretty tits —” Roland began.
Olivier cut him off. “If you see him, Milo, please let us know.”
Aude nodded her head vigorously and waited for them to leave. Roland owed so much to Olivier, and he never could see it. It made her wonder what it would be like when she was Roland’s wife.
She let out a long breath and tried to get a better look around the room for clues to the bishop’s whereabouts.
It was rare that Aude left the tent without Turpin, but when she glanced out the tent flap and noticed the soldiers tearing down and preparing for the next day’s march, she couldn’t help but take a look for herself. Immediately she was taken by just how dirty everything and everyone was. Having spent the majority of her life at court in Vienne, and until recently at Aachen, she was used to an existence that demanded a certain level of cleanliness. Clothing was spotless, faces were clean, manners were polished. Expressions were guarded and conversation was highly regulated.
But here, the men were not just dirty, but scarred and wounded. Their horses were scarred and wounded. They were loud, they spoke in Latin and all dialects of Frankish, and swore in even more tongues.
It was an exhilarating, terrifying world, especially without the guidance of Turpin.
“You’ll give yourself away if you gape at them,” came the bishop’s voice from behind Aude. He smelled of stale ale, and something fouler.
“Roland and my… and Olivier were looking for you,” Aude said under her breath. “They came in on me.”
“Beyond rude,” Turpin replied. He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his robe, then spat.
“If Olivier had seen me —”
“Your ruse would have been up. Smile, princess, and don’t look so dour. We’re due in Hispania in but a week’s time. And then you may enact whatever plan you’ve devised to dissuade your brother from fighting the giant. You do have a plan, do you not?”
Aude frowned and said nothing.
Turpin said, “Well, then go prepare the asses. We’ve a long road ahead. Use the time to think well upon your plan, so I can be free of my oath to you, you treacherous little mouse.”
The smooth green fields and woods of Burgundy grew steeper faster than Aude could believe. With the sea to the west, it had felt like an endless stretch of emerald, with breezy fields and farms. But within a day, mountains appeared to the south, great and jagged and dark against the horizon.
Turpin indicated that beyond those mountains was Hispania. But before they could reach it, they had to move through the treacherous mountains, not knowing when or where Balan’s forces would meet them.
Aude had imagined the meeting would be a great clashing of swords. She expected at any moment that out of the hills would pour a host of screaming pagans, eyes wide and faces covered with hideous markings. Such were the stories she had heard at court.
So it was with surprise that she heard there was not only a messenger from Balan within the camp, but that he was drinking with Roland and Olivier as they spoke of their plans for the next night. Turpin was hesitant to bring her along when he was summoned, but she insisted, pressing the point that she needed all the intelligence she could gather before confronting her brother.
It was stranger still when the messenger from Balan was not only a woman, but also his daughter, the princess Floripas. Aude imagined she would look much like the rest of the women she knew at court, but was shocked to see the tall, short-haired figure dressed fully in mail. The mail was narrower than a man’s armor, but it would have been difficult to deduce she was a woman by that alone. Only her face and the jewels at her ears gave her away.
The twelve peers greeted Floripas as if she were one of their own, embracing her and kissing her cheeks, even though she wore the colors of her pagan father and her surcoat was embroidered with idolatrous symbols.
“What news does Balan send us, then?” asked Roland, once they had all gathered in the king’s tent. Even though Charlemagne had not yet arrived — he was lagging two days behind his troops — it still felt a great sin to Aude to entertain a woman in his majesty’s quarters, and a pagan at that.
For the moment, Roland held the highest place around the table, and Olivier sat to his right, with Turpin on his left. Beside Olivier was Floripas, and Aude sat back behind the bishop, given simple gruel to eat from a wooden bowl. The other knights who joined them had better seats and a better supper, but it was just as well, because Aude still had a good ear to the conversation at the head of the table.
“My father, King Balan,” Floripas said, her voice tinged with only the slightest accent, “is well. But confident. He has a new regime around him, the one I wrote you about.”
“The yellow monks, you said,” Olivier replied. “The ones from the East.”
“I’m not convinced they are from the East,” Floripas said. “It seemed a little too convenient, especially considering father’s connection to Persia. But the more I’ve delved, the less I trust them. My father is enraptured by their words and promises, and Fierabras…”