Pierre and Odette went upstairs. There was one bedroom and one bed. Until this moment, Pierre had not confronted the question of whether he would have normal sexual relations with his wife.
Odette lay down. "Oh, well, we're married now," she said. She threw up her dress to reveal her nakedness. "Come on, let's make the best of it."
Pierre was utterly revolted. The sheer vulgarity of her pose disgusted him beyond measure. He was appalled.
At that moment he knew he could not have sex with her, today or ever.
10
Barney Willard hated being in the army. The food was disgusting, he was cold all the time except when he was too hot, and for long periods the only women he saw were camp-following prostitutes, desperate and sad. The captain in charge of Barney's company, Gomez, was a big, vicious bully who enjoyed using his iron hand to punish breaches of discipline. Worst of all, no one had been paid for months.
Barney could not understand how King Felipe of Spain could have money troubles. He was the richest man in the world, yet he was always broke. Barney had seen the galleons loaded with silver from Peru sail into the harbor at Seville. Where did it all go? Not to the troops.
After leaving Seville, two years earlier, the Jose y Maria had sailed to a place called the Netherlands, a loose federation of seventeen provinces on the north coast of Europe between France and Germany. For historical reasons that Barney had never quite untangled, the Netherlands was ruled by the Spanish king. Felipe's army stationed there had fought in Spain's war against France.
Barney, Carlos, and Ebrima were expert metalworkers, and so they had been made gunners, maintaining and firing the big artillery pieces. Although they had seen some action, gunners did not usually become involved in hand-to-hand fighting, and all three had survived the war without suffering injury.
The peace treaty between Spain and France had been signed in April 1559, almost a year ago, and Felipe had gone home, but he had left his army behind. Barney guessed the king wanted to make sure that the incredibly prosperous Netherlanders paid their taxes. But the troops were bored, resentful, and mutinous.
Captain Gomez's company was garrisoned at the town of Kortrijk on the river Leie. The citizens did not like the soldiers. They were foreigners, they carried arms, they got noisily drunk, and, because they got no pay, they stole. The Netherlanders had a streak of obstinate insubordination. They wanted the Spanish army gone, and they let the soldiers know it.
The three friends wanted to get out of the army. Barney had a family and a comfortable home in Kingsbridge, and he wanted to see them again. Carlos had invented a new type of furnace that was going to make him a fortune one day, and he needed to get back into the ironmaking industry. What Ebrima saw in his future Barney was not sure, but it certainly was not a life of soldiering. However, escape was not easy. Men deserted every day, but if caught they could be shot. Barney had been alert for an opportunity for months, but none had offered itself, and he was beginning to wonder whether he was being too cautious.
Meanwhile, they spent too much time in taverns.
Ebrima was a gambler, obsessively risking what little money he had in a dream of getting more. Carlos drank wine whenever he could afford it. Barney's vice was girls. The tavern of St. Martin in the Old Market of Kortrijk had something for each of them: a card game, Spanish wine, and a pretty barmaid.
Barney was listening to the barmaid, Anouk, complaining in French about her husband while Carlos made a single glass last all afternoon. Ebrima was winning money from Ironhand Gomez and two other Spanish soldiers. The other players were drinking hard, shouting loudly when they won or lost, but Ebrima was quiet. He was a serious gambler, always careful, never betting very high or very low. Sometimes he lost, but often he won just because others took foolish risks. And today luck was with him.
Anouk disappeared into the kitchen, and Carlos said to Barney: "There should be standard sizes of cannonball throughout the Spanish army and navy. That's what the English do. Making a thousand iron balls the same size is cheaper than making twenty different sizes for twenty different guns." As usual, they spoke Spanish to one another.
Barney said: "And then you'd never find yourself trying to use a ball one inch too large for your barrel--as has happened to us more than once."
"Exactly."
Ebrima stood up from the table. "I'm through," he said to the other players. "Thank you for the game, gentlemen."
"Wait a minute," said Gomez bad-temperedly. "You have to give us a chance to win our money back."
The other two players agreed. One shouted: "Yes!" and the other banged the table with his fist.
"Tomorrow, maybe," said Ebrima. "We've been playing all afternoon, and I want a drink, now that I can afford one."
"Come on, one more hand, double or nothing."
"You don't have enough money left for that bet."
"I'll owe you."
"Debts make enemies."
"Come on!"
"No, Captain."
Gomez stood up, knocking the table over. He was six feet tall, and broad in proportion, and he was flushed with sherry wine. He raised his voice. "I say yes!"
The others in the tavern moved away, seeing what was coming.
Barney stepped toward Gomez and said in a quiet voice: "Captain, let me buy you another drink, yours has spilled."
"Go to hell, you English savage," Gomez roared. Spaniards considered Englishmen to be northern barbarians, just as the English regarded the Scots. "He has to play on."
"No, he doesn't." Barney spread his arms in a let's-be-reasonable gesture. "The game has to stop sometime, doesn't it?"
"I'll say when it stops. I'm the captain."
Carlos joined in. "That's not fair," he said indignantly. He was quick to be angered by injustice, perhaps because he had suffered so much himself. "We're all equal when the cards are dealt." He was right--it was the rule when officers gambled with enlisted men. "You know that, Captain Gomez, and you can't pretend you don't."
Ebrima said: "Thank you, Carlos," and he stepped away from the fallen table.
"Get back here, you black devil," said Gomez.
On the rare occasions when Ebrima got into an argument, sooner or later his antagonist would use skin color in an insult. It was tediously predictable. Fortunately, Ebrima's self-control was formidable, and he never took the bait. He did not respond to Gomez's jibe, except to turn his back.
Like all bullies, Gomez hated to be ignored. Furious, he hit Ebrima from behind. It was a wild, drunken punch, and it only clipped Ebrima's head, but the fist at the end of the arm was the iron artificial hand, and Ebrima staggered and fell to his knees.
Gomez came after Ebrima, obviously intending to hit him again. Carlos grabbed the captain from behind, trying to restrain him. Gomez was now enraged and out of control. He struggled. Carlos was strong, but Gomez was stronger, and he fought free of Carlos's grasp.
Then, with his good hand, he drew his dagger.
Barney now joined in. He and Carlos tried desperately to restrain Gomez while Ebrima struggled to his feet, still dazed. Gomez threw off both his assailants and stepped toward Ebrima, raising his knife arm high in the air.
Barney realized fearfully that this was no longer a mere tavern brawl: Gomez was intent on murder.
Carlos grabbed for Gomez's knife arm, but Gomez batted him sideways with a sweeping blow of his iron-handed arm.
But Carlos had delayed Gomez for two seconds, just enough time for Barney to draw his own weapon, the two-foot-long Spanish dagger with the disc-shaped hilt.
Gomez's knife arm was high in the air, his iron hand extended outward for balance. His front was undefended.
As Gomez brought his knife down, aiming for the exposed neck of the dazed Ebrima, Barney swung his dagger in a wide arc and stabbed Gomez in the left side of his chest.
It was a lucky stroke, or perhaps a very unlucky one. Although Barney had swung wildly, the sharp double-edged steel blade slipped neatly between Gomez's rib
s and penetrated deep into his chest. His roar of pain ended abruptly after half a second. Barney jerked out the blade, and a gush of bright red blood came out after it. He realized the blade had reached Gomez's heart. A moment later Gomez collapsed, his knife falling from limp fingers. He hit the floor like a felled tree.
Barney stared in horror. Carlos cursed. Ebrima, coming out of his daze, said: "What have we done?"
Barney knelt down and felt Gomez's neck for a pulse. There was none. The blood had stopped pumping from the wound. "Dead," Barney said.
Carlos said: "We've killed an officer."
Barney had stopped Gomez murdering Ebrima, but that would be difficult to prove. He looked around the room and saw that the witnesses were leaving as fast as they could go.
No one would bother to investigate the rights and wrongs of this. It was a tavern brawl and an enlisted man had killed an officer. The army would have no mercy.
Barney noticed the owner of the tavern giving instructions, in the West Flemish dialect, to a teenage boy who hurried away a moment later. "They'll be sending for the city guard," Barney said.
Carlos said: "The men are probably stationed in the city hall. In five minutes we'll be under arrest."
Barney said: "And I'll be as good as dead."
"Me, too," said Carlos. "I helped you."
Ebrima said: "There'll be scant justice for an African."
Without further discussion they ran to the door and out into the marketplace. Behind a cloudy sky, the sun was setting, Barney saw. That was good. Twilight was only a minute or two away.
He shouted: "Head for the waterfront!"
They dashed across the square and turned into Leiestraat, the street that ran down to the river. It was a busy thoroughfare in the heart of a prosperous city, full of people and horses, loaded handcarts, and porters struggling under heavy burdens. "Slow down," Barney said. "We don't want everyone to remember which way we went."
At a brisk walk they were still somewhat conspicuous. People would know they were soldiers by their swords. Their clothes were mismatched and unmemorable, but Barney was tall, with a bushy red beard, and Ebrima was African. But it would soon be night.
They reached the river. "We need a boat," Barney said. He could handle most types of craft: he had always loved sailing. There were plenty of vessels in sight, tied up at the water's edge or anchored in midriver. However, few people were foolish enough to leave a boat unprotected, especially in a city full of foreign troops. All the larger craft had watchmen, and even small rowing boats were chained up with their oars removed.
Ebrima said: "Get down. Whatever happens, we don't want people to see."
They knelt down in the mud.
Barney looked around desperately. They did not have much time. How long would it be before the city guard began to search the riverside?
They could free a small boat, breaking the attachment of chain to wood, but without oars they would be helpless, drifting downstream, unable to steer, easy to catch. It might be better to swim to a barge, overcome the watchman, and raise the anchor, but did they have time? And the more valuable the craft, the more intense would be the pursuit. He said: "I don't know, maybe we should cross the bridge and take the first road out of town."
Then he saw the raft.
It was an almost worthless vessel, just a dozen or so tree trunks roped together, with a low shed in which one man might sleep. Its owner stood on deck, letting the current carry him, using a long pole to steer. Beside him was a pile of gear that looked, in the twilight, like ropes and buckets that might have been used for fishing.
"That's our boat," said Barney. "Softly does it."
Still on his knees, he slipped into the river. The others followed.
The water got deeper quickly, and soon they were up to their necks. Then the raft was almost upon them. All three grabbed its edge and hauled themselves up. They heard the voice of the old man yelling in shock and fear. Then Carlos was on him, wrestling him to the deck, covering his mouth so that he could not call for help. Barney managed to grab the pole he had dropped before it was lost, and he steered the boat into midstream. He saw Ebrima rip off the man's shirt and stuff it in his mouth to silence him, then pick a length of rope from the tangle and bind the man's wrists and ankles. The three friends worked well as a team, Barney reflected, no doubt because of the time they had spent jointly managing and firing a heavy cannon.
Barney looked around. As far as he could see, no one had witnessed their hijack of the raft. What now?
Barney said: "We're going to have--"
"Shut up," said Ebrima.
"What?"
"Be careful what you say. Give nothing away. He may understand Spanish."
Barney saw what he meant. Sooner or later the old man was going to tell someone what had happened to him--unless they killed him, which none of them would want to do. He would be questioned about his captors. The less he knew, the better. Ebrima was twenty years older than the other two, and this was not the first time his wisdom had restrained their impulses.
Barney said: "But what will we do with him?"
"Keep him with us until we're out in the fields. Then dump him on the riverbank, bound and gagged. He'll be all right, but he won't be found until morning. By then we'll be well away."
Ebrima's plan made sense, Barney thought.
Then what would they do? Travel by night and hide in the daytime, he thought: every mile farther away from Kortrijk made it more difficult for the authorities to find them. And then what? If he remembered aright, this river flowed into the Scheldt, which went to Antwerp.
Barney had a relative in Antwerp: Jan Wolman, his late father's cousin. Come to think of it Carlos, too, was related to Jan Wolman. The trading nexus Melcombe-Antwerp-Calais-Seville had been set up by four cousins: Barney's father, Edmund Willard; Edmund's brother, Uncle Dick; Carlos's father; and Jan.
If the three fugitives could reach Antwerp they would probably be safe.
Darkness fell. Barney had blithely assumed they would travel by night, but steering the raft was difficult in the dark. The old man had no lantern, and anyway they would not want to show a flame for fear of being spotted. The faintest imaginable starlight penetrated the clouds. Sometimes Barney was able to see the river ahead, and sometimes he blindly ran the raft into the bank and had to push off again.
Barney felt strange, and wondered why, then remembered that he had killed a man. Odd how such a dreadful thing could fall from his consciousness, only to return as a shock. His mood was as dark as the night and he felt edgy. His mind returned to the way Gomez had fallen, as if life had left him even before he hit the floor.
It was not the first time Barney had killed. He had fired cannonballs from a distance into advancing troops, and had seen them fall by the dozen, dead or fatally wounded; but somehow that had not touched his soul, perhaps because he could not see their faces as they died. Killing Gomez, by contrast, had been a horribly intimate act. Barney could still feel the sensation in his wrist as the blade of his dagger first met and then penetrated Gomez's body. He could see the gush of bright blood from a living, beating heart. Gomez had been a hateful man, and his death was a blessing to the human race, but Barney could not feel good about it.
The moon rose, and shone fitfully through gaps in the clouds. During a period of better visibility they dumped the old man at a spot that seemed, as best they could judge, to be far from habitation. Ebrima carried him to a dry place well above the river, and made him comfortable. From the boat, Barney heard Ebrima speak to the man in low tones, perhaps apologizing. That was reasonable: the old fellow had done nothing to deserve this. Barney heard the chink of money.
Ebrima got back on board and Barney poled away.
Carlos said to Ebrima: "You gave him the money you won from Gomez, didn't you?"
Ebrima shrugged in the moonlight. "We stole his raft. It was his living."
"And now we're broke."
"You were broke already," Ebrima said sh
arply. "Now I'm broke too."
Barney thought some more about pursuit. He was not sure how energetically they would be chased. The city authorities did not like a murder, but victim and perpetrators were Spanish soldiers, and the Kortrijk town council would not spend much money chasing foreigners who had killed a foreigner. The Spanish army would execute them, given the chance, but once again Barney wondered whether they would care enough to organize a murder hunt. The army might well go through the motions and give up quite soon.
Ebrima was quiet and thoughtful for a while, then he spoke solemnly. "Carlos, there's something we need to get straight."
"What?"
"We've left the army now."
"If they don't catch us, yes."
"When we boarded the Jose y Maria, you told the officer I was a free man."
Carlos said: "I know."
Barney sensed the tension. For two years Ebrima had been treated as a regular soldier--an exotic-looking one, but no more a slave than the rest of them. What was his position now?
Ebrima said: "Am I a free man in your eyes, Carlos?"
Barney noted that phrase in your eyes. It meant that Ebrima was a free man in his own eyes.
Barney was not sure how Carlos felt about this. Ebrima's slavery had not been discussed since that moment on the Jose y Maria.
There was a long pause, then Carlos said: "You're a free man, Ebrima."
"Thank you. I'm glad we understand each other."
Barney wondered what Ebrima would have done if Carlos had said no.
The clouds began to break. In the better light, Barney was able to keep the raft in midstream, and they moved faster.
After a while Carlos said: "Where does this river lead, anyway?"
"Antwerp," said Barney. "We're going to Antwerp."
Ebrima did not know whether to believe Carlos. It was not wise to put your trust in friendly words from your owner: that was an article of faith among the Seville slaves. A man who was happy to keep you prisoner, force you to work for no pay, flog you for disobedience, and rape you any time he felt like it would not hesitate to lie to you. Carlos was different from the norm, but how different? The answer to that question would determine the course of the rest of Ebrima's life.