Gwenn began pushing to the door. She did not like the sound of that. She would not listen to another word. She would wait out in the sun and speak to Irene after his sermon was over. She’d not have her new friend being gulled by a man like that. Quietly, she left the church.
Leaning her back against the south wall of the cathedral, she closed her eyes. The sun was warm on her skin, the air blessedly fresh. The house martins twittered in the eaves, and Father Jerome’s scratchy voice was muffled, just a low, distant drone. Gwenn focused her mind on the martins and drifted into a pleasant daydream.
A sharp cry jerked her back to reality. She strained her ears and heard the sound again. ‘Get ‘em out!’ Gwenn frowned. That cry came from within the cathedral. Surely even Father Jerome would not permit...?
‘Out! Out! Out!’ The chorus of harsh voices came from the vicinity of the choir. A strange sermon, this.
‘Purge!’ someone screeched.
‘Purify!’ cried another.
The shouts floated out via the west door, the one Gwenn had left by. She ran her hand – it was trembling – along the rough grain of the wood until she found a knot-hole in the wall. Applying her ear to it, she could hear the congregation shuffling and mumbling inside. It was sounding more nasty by the minute.
A man’s screech overrode the general mutterings. ‘They’re naught but leeches.’
‘Aye!’ A woman’s dissonant howl took up the cry. ‘Leeches! Get rid of them. They prey on our men! They seduce them onto the Devil’s path, and rob them of hard-won silver! What does that leave for honest women?’
‘Kill! Kill! Kill!’
‘Brothers! Sisters!’ Father Jerome shrilled over the swelling clamour. The hole in the planking did not permit Gwenn to see the monk, but she could visualise him, holding his thin white hands up for silence. ‘The Church cannot condone murder. We must endeavour to turn our erring sisters back onto the True Path. We must purge them of their sins.’
‘Nay, Father. Get rid of them!’
‘Cast them out!’
‘Aye. God cast Adam and Eve out of Eden.’
‘Out! Out! Out!’ An ugly chanting began. Where was kind Father Mark?
The hairs lifted on the back of Gwenn’s neck, and her senses sharpened. She was being watched. Straightening slowly, she backed from the wall. The air in the Close seemed to pulse with menace.
One of the youths who had been squeezing into the porch had come back into the square. He was tall, with shining flaxen hair grown below his ears. He was slender and perhaps a couple of years older than her brother, Raymond. He wore a sword. A sword? Surely he should not have been wearing his sword in God’s house? As Gwenn stared at him, her mouth went dry. Was he the source of the evil she felt? He did not look evil. His leather military tunic looked wrong on him. He was surely a handsome young farmer wearing borrowed attire. A sheep in wolf’s clothing? She hesitated.
‘Get away, girl! Run!’ the young man hissed, in heavily accented French. He waved his arms frantically in her direction.
He could not be talking to her... Astonishment pinned her to the spot.
‘Get away!’ he repeated, and his blue eyes seemed to be pleading with her.
He had kind eyes. He was not evil, Gwenn decided, not with eyes like that. Definitely a sheep in wolf’s clothing. But with his soldier’s gambeson and his sword, he must be a mercenary. If the sense of threat had not emanated from him, from whom had it come?
The fair youth glanced over his shoulder into the porch, and when he looked back at her, his face registered desperation. He meant her no harm, but the air was thick with evil, Gwenn could all but see it.
‘Run!’ the young man begged. ‘Run!’
The urgency in his eyes communicated itself to Gwenn, but before she had time to move, someone else stepped out, and this man also wore a padded military gambeson. ‘What is it, Fletcher? Found something interesting?’ the newcomer asked, in a bored voice.
‘N...no, Al...I mean, Captain le Bret. Only a girl.’
‘A girl, eh?’
The man named le Bret looked at Gwenn, and the heat went out of the sun. His hair was thick and dark, long for a soldier like his companion’s, and swept back to one side. His skin was swarthy. He had steely grey eyes and the sardonic lines etched into his face told Gwenn that here was a man who looked at the world and found nothing in it that was pleasing. He was unshaven and in need of a wash. He terrified her.
Alan found himself scowling at a small doll of a girl, dressed up in a blue gown that the Duchess Constance would have been proud to call her own. ‘Fletcher,’ he rubbed his chin, ‘it’s the one. She answers the pedlar’s description.’
‘Let her go, Al...Captain!’ Ned gabbled. ‘Look at her – a child. She can’t be involved.’
Alan felt a stir in the porch behind him. The zealots were about to break out, and the girl did not seem to be aware of the danger she was in. With an oblique smile, Alan bent to pick up a stone. Ned grabbed his sleeve. ‘You’re impertinent, Fletcher.’ Coldly, Alan shook his cousin off, his tone a reminder of the differences in their status. ‘As it happens, I agree with you. That’s why this,’ Alan took careful aim, ‘will see her on her way and out of danger.’ The stone flew across the square, and hit the girl in her stomach. Alan heard her whimper, but his stone had served its purpose and goaded her out of that perilous immobility, for she picked up her skirts and turned tail, running like a doe in the chase.
No sooner was she darting towards the maze of streets than the vast oak doors burst outwards.
‘Here come the hounds,’ Alan murmured, as the townsfolk charged out of the cathedral. ‘Good, honest men all.’ His lip curled. His men had done their work. He waved them to one side. There was no need for them to waste wind chasing the girl. The good people of Vannes, whipped up by Father Jerome, would see the task completed.
It had been one of the easiest commissions he’d taken on. Who would have thought that it would take so little to stir peace-loving townsfolk into a frenzy? All he’d done was station a man here and there in the crowd and have them call out the odd phrase or two of encouragement. A shout here, a shout there, and their work was done. Naturally, as excommunicate mercenaries, none of them should have put a toe past the threshold of a church, but the congregation had been so taken with Father Jerome that not one of them had noticed. And if they had – his scorn grew – none of them would have had the backbone to object.
He propped a strong shoulder against a painted angel on a carved porch pillar. ‘Look, Fletcher, all we have to do is sit back and watch. The God-fearing townsfolk will finish the job. It couldn’t be better. De Roncier won’t be implicated. He’ll be delighted. And to think they miscall us–’
‘I’m disgusted.’
Alan had never seen Ned look so miserable. Smiling, he shook his head. ‘That’s humanity for you, my lad,’ he said, not unkindly. ‘We’re all rotten when it comes down to it. We all have our price.’
But his cousin stood dumb at his side, staring after the girl. Alan saw him swallow. There was a flash of blue, brief as a glimpse of a kingfisher, and the girl disappeared round the corner.
A howl went up from the mob that had lately been a pious congregation. ‘There! Did you see?’ A man pointed.
‘What? Where?’
‘That’s Herevi’s daughter! The whore’s daughter!’ The crowd surged down the street, trawling for missiles as they went.
Ned understood that guttural Breton all too well, and his hand inched to his sword hilt.
Alan sighed and moved to block his way.
‘But the girl, Alan!’ In his anxiety, Ned had forgotten his cousin was his commander. ‘They’ll tear her to shreds!’
‘I think not. She looked fleet and she had a head start.’