“The giant,” Olivier said.
Aude felt her heart in her throat and she shoved down another mouthful of gruel. It had burned in the cauldron but the acrid taste distracted her from her fear.
Floripas frowned and shook her head. “My brother was a fosterling. He was raised in the house of my uncle Monar, a duke of some wealth and standing in the Cordova. I haven’t seen him directly, but we exchange letters, and I have heard the tales.”
“Olivier will best him, I have no doubt,” Turpin said, shoving a large chunk of venison into his mouth. It dribbled down one side of his face and into his bushy beard. “Giant or no.”
“Some things can be worse than giants,” said Floripas. “I shouldn’t be saying as much, and really it is only because of my love and affection for Gui…” She gazed down the table to where Sir Gui of Bourgogne, her paramour, sat with eyes burning with adoration. Theirs was a star-crossed love, indeed. “But the last correspondence I had with my brother Fierabras, he was frightened. He is but a boy, really, but he is intelligent, logical. He spoke of the yellow monks, of their strange hold on him, their rituals. Like you Christians, we are a god-fearing people, and the way he sounded…”
“Surely no monk could frighten a giant,” said Roland, his tone dismissive and unimpressed, as it so often was among those he deemed beneath him.
“But that’s the thing of it,” Floripas said. “My brother was not born a giant. He is cursed, and it is a dark, strange magic. I know the yellow monks are somehow involved. I am ordered to come to you here and throw down our challenge. The danger is greater than you or I can even understand.”
That night, Turpin was late again to the tent. Aude was waiting up for him, as she usually did, reading her psalter and doing her best to open herself to the Heavenly Mother’s understanding.
“Do you believe the Queen of Heaven can abandon us?” Aude asked Turpin, as he ruffled around in his bedroll for something. A bottle, most likely.
The bishop snorted. “That presumes that she gives a shit about us in the first place.”
Aude stared at him, unable to form any cohesive response. “I mean… when I left court. When I bribed you. I felt as if the Queen of Heaven had given me a gift, for once. She had not done so when Charlemagne took Vienne, nor when Roland took my brother. I expected the way to be… clearer.”
“You could talk to your brother, Aude,” Turpin said. He found his bottle, and sampling its contents, belched. “Isn’t that what you came here for? To get time with him alone? To convince him to let Roland do it instead?”
“I thought the Queen of Heaven would give me a sign. But being here, seeing all this… ”
“I warned you, Aude, did I not?”
“How is your lie worse than all these lies?” asked Aude.
“Because God has cursed me beyond those stinking men out there. He has found it fit to burden me with a need for blood, just as He has cursed me with my desires,” Turpin spat. Then he buried his head in his hands. “I can no more stop fighting than I can stop loving him, Aude. And since I cannot, I am yoked to this. This! You and your skulking have put me here in a position subservient to a woman. A woman so ugly she can pass for a scrawny boy — a woman so meek and mild, she can’t formulate a damned plan to speak with her damned brother after being given nothing but time for a fortnight!”
He had never shouted at her so, and Aude shrank back into the corner. When she had confronted Turpin about his affair with Maugris, the enchanter, he had been aloof and surprisingly even-tempered, only taking a little coaxing to allow her to accompany him to Balan’s lands. But now she could see what he had been hiding beneath all along.
Either the bishop did not remember the harsh words he’d paid her the night before, or he pretended the same, for the next morning it was as if nothing had transpired between them. After they had washed and prepared for the day, Turpin indicated that they were expected to ride along the perimeter and survey the sparring ring for the next day, when Olivier would fight against Fierabras.
Reluctantly, Aude saddled her donkey and took up behind Turpin. Roland was at the front, addressing everyone in his strong, high voice, while the rest of the peers took up their ranks. Floripas had left at some point in the night, and Aude tried not to think what might have caused Gui to smile so broadly in spite of the austere news and impending doom of their beloved Olivier. She blushed in spite of herself, though.
The scarlet tents of Balan’s army were visible even without much in the way of travel. They had taken up on the opposite bank of the Deva River, their neat tents more square than the rounder sort favored by Charlemagne and his paladins. Aude thought they looked like blood streaking across the foothills.
“You don’t speak much,” said a familiar voice behind her. It was her brother, Olivier, resplendent in his armor and smiling in the cool morning air.
Aude glanced up at him, just out of the corner of her cowl. “No, sir.”
“Well, for what it’s worth, I’m glad that Turpin has someone to watch out for him. Though I daresay you probably didn’t get what you signed up for,” Olivier said with a laugh.
That laugh. It took her a great deal of resolve to focus on the task at hand and not reveal herself to him.
“You’re not afraid?” she asked him, keeping her voice as low as possible. “About tomorrow?”
Olivier glanced behind him, and then looked forward, his shoulders falling. Aude knew what that meant. He was indeed afraid, but he had no desire to admit such shameful thoughts.
“I will do what my king requests of me,” he said at last. “Good day to you, Milo. And thank you again for your service to Turpin. I hope I see you back at court when we are all better rested and once again in the world of sense.”
Turpin did not return the next night, and after two hours of unanswered prayers Aude rose to leave the tent and look at the stars. She was cold and afraid, and the words of Floripas lingered with her. She envisioned little yellow monks hoisting bloody spears, goading forward a giant that was not always a giant.
It was unusually still in the camp. Most nights the ribaldry was palpable in the air. But perhaps now that the paladins and warriors had reached their goal, they were simply preparing in ways she could not imagine. There would be a great battle of brawn on the morn, a champion on each side of the Deva River, and only one could be victorious.
The thought of her brother dying made her cut short her muttering prayers. She rifled through Turpin’s things nervously, hoping he wouldn’t return drunk and irate, and then she finally came across what she was looking for: a small box filled with clay bottles. Poison. Turpin claimed it was a coward’s weapon, and that he only used it to coat the mace he fought with. But Aude knew if she was going to kill someone, she couldn’t do it with steel.
She took a small vessel with a mushroom pressed into the clay and tucked it into the folds of her habit before stealing out into the night.
Aude walked silently through the shadows, toward Olivier’s tent. She wanted one last look at him before she committed to this madness. She pressed her eye to the gap in the flap of his tent… and gasped.
Her brother sprawled across the bare chest of a tall woman. It was a tableau she never could have imagined. But there Olivier was, naked to the skin, one hand still curled around the woman’s ample breast. His lashes were dark against his cheeks, and there was much more hair upon him than the last time Aude had seen him out of his armor. The dying embers of the brazier lit their skin every now and again, but they slept in the sated way of lovers… or so she supposed.