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

gold there, and people who respected us. Not these illiterate peasants who go and hole up in caves at the first sign of our approach.”

“Can you blame them?”

“They're peasants,” said Jehan. “They're there for us to use. It's very simple: they get in our way, we ride them down.”

Berard himself had been away form his peasant origins long enough that he did not feel as much rancor at Jehan's statements as he might have once. “Well, maybe we can use a few of them to unload this wool.”

“Commerce? Pah!”

“Well,” said Berard, “you can pah! Your way on over to the men and explain to them why we can't do anything with their hard-earned plunder.”

He pointed to the camp. Tents, horses, idle and irritated men. As much as Jehan had not counted on the commercial aspects of brigandage, so the men had not foreseen the lean periods.

And what was worse, most of France was a lean period. The Fellowship of Acquisition, for all its dignified and mercenary background, was but a gleaner left with a field that had been thoroughly picked over by wave after wave of free companies out to support themselves in the only way they knew: war and plunder.

That night, though, a company from Avignon rode into the camp, and its leader was Eustache de Cormeign, a representative of Bardi and Peruzzi. The firm, having failed as a banking house in Italy, had reestablished itself as a brokerage in France and, as a matter of course, had contacts with a wide assortment of clients. Bardi and Peruzzi dealt in everything. Arms, armor, jewels, clothing, grain . . .

“Wool?” said Berard.

Eustache blinked. “Wool?”

“Fifty-seven thousand pounds of wool,” said Jehan. He glanced at Berard. The captain read his eyes: The fruits of chivalry. Pah!

But Eustache had recovered from his surprise. He cleared his throat. “We can handle it. We can handle anything.”

Berard, already interested because of the wool, was suddenly more interested. “Anything?”

Eustache seemed affronted by the tacit doubt. “Anything.”

Anything, indeed. Eustache traveled with a secretary, a group of well-armed guards he jokingly called his kataphraktoi, and enough money for a down payment. They struck the bargain that night. The Fellowship of Acquisition had but to guard the wool for another week, and then, after tendering the rest of the gold, Bardi and Peruzzi would take possession of the troublesome cargo.

But a few days later, another man arrived, and not only did his words brighten the prospects of the Fellowship even more, but they also fired Berard's imagination far beyond that, for the messenger was from Adria, and he brought greetings and a tentative offer of employment from Yvonnet a'Verne of Hypprux.

Chapter Thirteen

An ass.

Precisely, Christopher thought, what he was. Having acted the proper fool in Aurverelle for months now, thereby sending Pytor and Jerome into fits and piquing Yvonnet's hopes of an eventual claim to the estate, he had compounded the idiocy by revealing his weakness to a female harper about whom he knew absolutely nothing.

Now it was evening, and Natil would play for him. Wearing the fashionable clothing that Vanessa's presence had encouraged him to take up, he sat in the great hall of the castle, occupying his official chair with the fringed canopy as though he were the perfect baron. In truth, he felt the perfect idiot, but as Natil entered, he saw not a shred of patronization or contempt in her demeanor. She stepped into the room as though she were royalty, true, but as she stood before him in her deep blue gown and her gray cloak, her eyes met his with a gaze as of a sympathetic equal.

“My lord,” she said softly, “you asked me to play this night. I am here.”

Christopher's hand was clasped about Vanessa's pendant, his only link to anything approaching hope. Here was the pendant, and there, somewhere else, was Vanessa. Yes, he would remember her, he would always remember her. He hoped that, among the maze of patterns that twined about her life, she would remember him.

He opened his hand and the pendant thumped down against his chest. Natil was suddenly looking at it, her flashing eyes intent. But she smiled warmly, as though she had just seen the best thing in the world.

“What would you have me play?” she said.

What indeed! What could counter Nicopolis? What his grandfather. “Anything, Natil,” he said, the bitterness a sharp edge among his words. “I'm sorry now that I asked. But I asked. So play.”

Natil was unruffled. Her eyes were still sympathetic. “Anything?”

“Anything.”

She curtsied and went to the stool that was waiting for her near the hearth. As she sat down and arranged her gown and cloak, Pytor, standing across the hall, shifted his feet. His head was lowered in discouragement. He had hoped that Natil would bring his master some cheer, but Christopher read in his posture that he was accepting his mistake and the disappointment that came with it.

Jerome, too, was here, and he was attentive, as were Ranulf, some of the senior men of the castle guard, and one or two ranking bailiffs and provosts. Raffalda was off in the corner, spinning, David was waiting expectantly. Whether or not the baron found what he was looking for, it was nice to have music in the castle again.

Natil's hands went to the strings, and a chord rang out—root, fifth, octave—a spare flash of crystalline brilliance that seemed to light the hall as brightly as the torches and the blaze on the hearth. For a few minutes, she played an intricate arrangement of a simple but vaguely familiar melody, weaving it in and out, now allowing it to shine forth majestically, now almost burying it in countermelody. Her eyes were lowered as though in thought, but her playing was such that when she lifted her head and took a breath, the baron found himself leaning forward in his chair, his hands clenched apprehensively about Vanessa's pendant.

And Natil sang, her voice pure, sweet, touched with an inflection that Christopher could not