Free Death and the Lady by Judith Tarr Page B

gracious as a queen in a story.
She murmured in Francha’s ear. Francha’s grip loosened on her neck. She set the
child down in front of me—Francha all eyes and wordless reluctance—and followed
Mère Adele through the field. None of the children went after her, even Perrin.
They were meeker than I had ever seen them, and quieter; though they came to
themselves soon enough, once I had them back under the May tree.
    oOo
    Her name, she said, was Lys. She offered no more than
that, that night, sitting by the fire in the mown field, eating bread and
cheese and drinking the ale that was all we had. In the day’s heat she had
taken off her hood and her outer robe and worked as the rest did, in a shift of
fine linen that was almost new. She was bearing for a fact, two seasons gone, I
judged, and looking the bigger for that she was so thin. She had bones like a
bird’s, and skin so white one could see the tracks of veins beneath, and hair
as black as her skin was white, hacked off as short as a nun’s.
    She was not that, she said. Swore to it and signed herself,
lowering the lids over the great grey eyes. Have I said that she was beautiful?
Oh, she was, like a white lily, with her sweet low voice and her long fair
hands. Francha held her lap against all comers, but Perrin was bewitched, and
Celine, and the rest of the children whose mothers had not herded them home.
    “No nun,” she said, “and a great sinner, who does penance
for her sins in this long wandering.”
    We nodded round the fire. Pilgrimages we understood; and
pilgrims, even noble ones, alone and afoot and tonsured, treading out the
leagues of their salvation. Guillemette, who was pretty and very silly, sighed
and clasped her hands to her breast. “How sad,” she said, “and how brave, to
leave your lord and your castle—for castle you had, surely; you are much too
beautiful to be a plain man’s wife—and go out on the long road.”
    “My lord is dead,” the lady said.
    Guillemette blinked. Her eyes were full of easy tears. “Oh,
how terrible! Was it the war?”
    “It was the plague,” said Lys. “And that was six months ago
now, by his daughter in my belly, and you may weep as you choose, but I have no
tears left.”
    She sounded it: dry and quiet. No anger in her, but no
softness either. In the silence she stood up. “If there is a bed for me, I will
take it. In the morning I will go.”
    “Where?” That was Mère Adele, abrupt as always, and cutting
to the heart of things.
    Lys stood still. She was tall; taller in the firelight. “My
vow takes me west,” she said.
    “But there is nothing in the west,” said Mère Adele.
    “But,” said Lys, “there is a whole kingdom, leagues of it,
from these marches to the sea.”
    “Ah,” said Mère Adele, sharp and short. “That’s not west,
that’s Armorica. West is nothing that a human creature should meddle with. If
it’s Armorica that you’re aiming for, you’d best go south first, and then west,
on the king’s road.”
    “We have another name for that kingdom,” said Lys, “where I
was born.” She shook herself; she sighed. “In the morning I will go.”
    oOo
    She slept in the house I had come to when I married
Claudel, in my bed next to me with the children in a warm nest, Celine and
Perrin and Francha, and the cats wherever they found room. That was Francha’s
doing, holding to her like grim death when she would have made her bed in the
nuns’ barn, until my tongue spoke for me and offered her what I had.
    I did not sleep overmuch. Nor, I thought, did she. She was
still all the night long, coiled on her side with Francha in the hollow of her.
The children made their night-noises, the cats purred, Mamère Mondine snored in
her bed by the fire. I listened to them, and to the lady’s silence.
    Claudel’s absence was an ache still. It was worse tonight,
with this stranger in his place. My hand kept trying to creep toward the warmth
and the sound of her breathing, as if a touch