Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino (read with me TXT) 📕

your Orthodoxy, and I have my cask of wine, and . . .” He looked over his shoulder. “. . . Etienne has his inn and whatever women he can come up with to use and abuse.”

Chapter Seven

Yvonnet received the report from Bishop Alphonse's friar at about the same time as he heard of the reception that Aurverelle had accorded Etienne of Languedoc. He was nonplussed. On the one hand, Christopher's rejection of the first was a serious matter, especially since the friar had been sick and weak with traveling. On the other, Christopher had done to Etienne exactly what Yvonnet had always wanted to do to an arrogant churchman, and the baron of Hypprux was doubly delighted that his cousin's insults had been directed at an emissary from Avignon.

“Remarkable man, Christopher.” He propped his feet up on the heavy oak table in the council chamber. “Completely mad, of course, but really remarkable. Avignon won't like this at all.”

“And what about . . . ah . . . Rome and the friar?” said Lengram, who stood with folded, disapproving arms.

“Well, I suspect that the friar was not so holy a man as he pretended to be. You know that kind.”

Lengram was indignant. “He might well have had his weaknesses, Baron Yvonnet, but he was a man of God!”

Yvonnet grabbed a bowl of fruit and pawed through it until he found a pear. It must have come from far to the south, since the fruit of Adria was just now getting out of the flower stage. Expensive pears. He bit into it noisily anyway: baron's prerogative. That was what taxes were for. “Just as we all have our own weaknesses,” he said. “I doubt whether either of us expects to be dealt with any better at the gates of heaven.”

Lengram frowned, looked away.

Yvonnet continued with the pear, stuffing his mouth with large bites. “So it seems that—umm, umm—cousin Christopher is not quite so mad as he was made out to be—umm, umm—or perhaps is less mad now than he was.” He finished the pair and hurled the core at a servant. It struck the man square on the forehead. Well-schooled in the routines of the baron of Hypprux, the servant did not even flinch. “No matter.”

“No matter?” said Lengram.

“No . . . matter. . . .” Yvonnet licked his hands clean and clasped them behind his head. “We'll just have to think of something else.”

But what he was thinking of now was Martin, the lithe-loined lad from Shrinerock who was making his way home to Saint Blaise and dispensing greetings and gifts from his foster father at the same time. Yvonnet had put a close watch on the young man, and messengers in relays had been riding back and forth along the road through the dairylands of Adria with information as to his progress for the last several weeks.

Three years ago, it had been a wonderful party. Yvonnet had just come of age, he had just dismissed the troublesome and tiresome regents that had overseen him and his estate since his parents had died. He had been anticipating knighthood and, more important, money and lands and revenues enough to allow him to live as he wanted. Martin, a splendid gift on a splendid occasion, had been handsome and gay . . . and easily intimidated. In fact, Yvonnet was sure that the lad had come to enjoy their week of trysts, had come even to look forward to the occasional rough treatment to which his bedmate had subjected him.

Ah, such a fine piece of a man! And finer still, doubtless, now that he was grown up a little, was a little sturdier . . . and . . . yes, the bells of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Mercy were ringing nones. Martin would be arriving in Hypprux any time now.

“What did you . . . ah . . . have in mind?” said Lengram.

Yvonnet smiled. “Oh . . . quite a number of things. . . .”

“I meant about Aurverelle.”

“Oh, that.”

But a knock came to the door, and a servant brought word that Martin had arrived in the city and was even now being escorted to the baronial residence.

Yvonnet kicked the table away. The bowl of fruit clattered to the floor and unleashed a flood of tumbling apples, quinces, pears, and oranges. “I want him brought to the great hall,” he said. “Bring him there immediately. I want to see him.”

The servant bowed and turned to go.

“Wait,” said Yvonnet. “Is he alone?”

“There are two men at arms with him along with a captain of the Shrinerock guard, my lord baron.”

No problem, really. Yvonnet could easily send the soldiers off. They would relish a cup of ale and the barracks-room conversation of their peers. “Anyone else?”

“The messenger mentioned a young woman, my lord.”

“A woman?” Yvonnet was vexed. Had Martin married? It would not be at all surprising. But Paul delMari had had no eligible young women in his household, save, perhaps, for his sister. And everyone knew about her.

Marriage, however, was no real problem. Yvonnet himself was married . . . to a woman who knew her place. But in any case, his concerns evaporated a short time later in the great hall, for Martin was obviously not at all related either by blood or by matrimony to the woman—girl, rather—who was with him. She was but a peasant. Pretty enough, to be sure, with large brown eyes and long blond hair that she wore, according to custom, in twin braids, but a peasant nonetheless, one who was not even sophisticated enough to stand with her hips swayed forward. Martin's parents would never have approved. Yvonnet wondered why she was even in his company.

But Martin was terrified of being in the presence of the baron of Hypprux, and his dark eyes—still large, still, as Yvonnet remembered, with the look of a restless woman about them—were fixed on the floor, as though he feared that by looking into the face