“You’ll pay, young one!” he roared when he could, straightening and waving an arm at Pinchon. “Outside in the yardway, with cold steel.”
Jean bowed. “I’ll fetch my blade at once.”
He moved into the hall and up the worn wooden stairs, triumph making him tread lightly. Within the hour Étienne Aymon would join his comrades of that long-ago night in death by his hand. There would be two left then, two out of the original seventeen. Those he himself had not accounted for had died by this time, and lay in graves from Ponthieu to Navarre.
His hand thrust open the door to their bedroom. Simone was standing in one of the three kirtles he had bought for her at a mercer’s stall in Soissons, head turned to study the drape of her long skirt in a hand mirror propped on a chest. Her thick yellow hair was piled carelessly atop her head. He paused to study her.
She laughed when she saw him and made a pirouette, the skirt flying above bare knees. “Am I not the lady of quality? Oh, I’ve never had anything as wonderful as these clothes!”
She ran to him, caught him in her arms and kissed him gratefully. Under the blue velvet she wore nothing at all, not even the thin linen camisa which most highborn ladies adopted as an undergarment. The low neckline exposed the upper slopes of pallid breasts. Jean had not made love to her as yet. Vengeance was an exacting taskmaster, he was discovering.
“Aymon’s challenged me,” he told her. “It took a bit of doing, but we’re meeting in the inn yard shortly. I’ve come for my sword.”
Fright gleamed in her slanted eyes. “Suppose he kills you? I’ll be left—no, that’s selfish of me.”
He removed the aumonière from his belt and pressed it into her fingers. “There’s a fortune in ecus in this purse. I won more from Aymon at dice. It’s all yours if what you fear comes true.”
“I don’t want your gold. I want you.”
He kissed the corners of her mouth, then moved her aside so he could cross the room and lift the plain scabbard that housed his Missiglia blade. He frowned.
“There’s always a chance those young men belowstairs may interfere if the swordplay grows too heated and I have Aymon on the run. If that happens, they may thirst for my blood as I thirst for Aymon’s.”
She waited, scarcely breathing. When he hesitated, she said, “Then we ought to be prepared to leave as soon as the duel begins.” Her peasant common sense made him grin.
“You understand, ma cherie,” he murmured.
Simone sighed and looked at her reflection in the little mirror. “I’ll pack and be ready in the stables. Peste! I knew I’d never get a chance to enjoy these gowns.”
She was slipping a white arm free of the downfalling kirtle as he paused in the doorway to stare. “You’ll have plenty of time to play the lady on the road to Neufchâteau, I promise. For now, dress for a fast ride. I may be starting at shadows, but I’d rather be prepared than be caught napping. Have the horses saddled just inside the livery stable so I’ll know where to find you in a hurry.”
Her ripe white breasts hung naked above the fallen bodice as she nodded. Simone caught the sudden longing in his eyes and smiled lazily. For the past two days, on the road to Montmirail, she’d begun to wonder about this young seigneur; most of the men she knew would have thrown her on her back in a roadside ditch long ago. She supposed noblemen did things differently than common folk, though.
Just the same, he might be a little more ambitious where she was concerned, she thought, watching the door close behind him. A woman liked to think she was desirable to a man, especially to such a man as Jean le Bâtard. Her hands pushed the dress down as she lifted a slim white leg from the pooling velvet. Almost without thought she turned her head to gaze at her reflection in the hand mirror. Simone giggled at what she saw.
Étienne Aymon and the others were waiting; beneath the wooden sign carved in the shape of a mule and hung on creaking, rusted chains. Behind them the yardway stretched for fifty feet, opening onto the coach-house apron. It made a good place for a duel. As he advanced toward his opponent, Jean reflected that a lot of hot blood had been cooled on this narrow stretch of ground.
Aymon was scowling, waving his sword back and forth as Jean faced him. “First blood or death?” he wanted to know.
Jean said, “You name it, seigneur.”
“First blood, then. I’ll be merciful to you.”
There were no rules of nicety to govern swordplay between two enemies in this year of 1425. It was flail away with the steel until arms grew weary and one man faltered. The heavy shields that were carried into battle were rarely available at these tavern quarrels, and a style of swordplay was beginning that made the blade point and shield at the same time. In Saxony and Bohemia, guilds of swordsmen were already banding together to teach this new style of fence.
One of these Germans, a member of the Marcusbruder guild in Frankfort, had tutored The Bastard in his formative years. A bond had grown up between the old soldier and the lonely child, a bond which, begun in the castle courtyard at Angers with cold steel, had flowered into a firm friendship. For more than a dozen years old Rodolf had taught Jean as much as he knew about the longswords.
Now as he faced Étienne Aymon—as he had faced Guillaume the Fleming and François of Anjou—Jean once again blessed old Rodolf for his painstaking thoroughness. In his big brown hand the sword was more than an inanimate length of steel. It flashed in the lamplight with seeming life as it touched the blade of his opponent, disengaged and came flying in with a sidewise slash at the older man’s unprotected flask.
Aymon managed to leap out of the way, but it was a near thing. Nervous sweat stood out of his forehead as he came stamping in, swinging his blade with overmuch gusto and little wisdom.
Jean caught the slicing blows, turned them aside with a twist of his strong wrist. He let Aymon expend his energy in a series of bull-like rushes before he took the attack, driving forward with a guile that made his darting blade seem a living thing as it parried and thrust and hurtled through the air in overhead molinellos.
The fear of death was clearly readable in Aymon’s eyes now. He gave ground swiftly, betraying the fact that fright was a nausea in his belly. He yelled aloud in his fear, his face pale and wet, mouth twisted into a caricature of terror.
“Raimond! Arnaud! Peleria! Aid me for sweet Jesu’s sake! He only plays with me. Pinchon was right. He’s in league with Satan!”
Jean laughed harshly. “As you were yourself when you slew my father, seigneur? Oui—Louis le duc! Ah, you remember it, do you? I’m glad because—”
His sword was swinging down at a defenseless face when three of the young men who had been in the common room came bounding from the shadows, swords bared. Jean was forced to turn from the older man in midstroke to catch their flying blades and deflect them. He backed away slowly, parrying and disengaging, listening to Étienne Aymon pant as he leaned a shoulder against the inn wall. Fury was a fire in his middle.
The murderer had escaped him! In his terror he’d called out to his young hotbloods, urging them to take over his quarrel. Blind anger fueled Jean’s arm. He cut and slashed until one of the three men facing him went down screaming in pain, his swordarm sliced to the bone.
The others drew back and stared at their kneeling friend. They had not counted on being hurt themselves. It was sheer sport to take up the Sieur Aymon’s quarrel, sport to bring this stranger to his death in the inn yard. Now, however—
Jean whirled and leaped for Étienne Aymon in this moment of their bemusement. The older man saw him coming just in time to stop the sword slash, which would have cloven his head from his body. As it was, the edge cut deep into his shoulder.
Étienne