Dangerous Women

  “Not there! The back!” He followed Ian at a run, and sure enough, there was the Captain on his horse at the back of the troop, in the middle of a melee, a dozen strangers laying about with clubs and blades, all shouting.

  “Caisteal DHOON!” Ian bellowed, and swung his sword over his head and flat down on the head of an attacker. It hit the man a glancing blow, but he staggered and fell to his knees, where Big Georges seized him by the hair and kneed him viciously in the face.

  “Caisteal DHOON!” Jamie shouted as loud as he could, and Ian turned his head for an instant, a big grin flashing.

  It was a bit like a cattle raid, but lasting longer. Not a matter of hit hard and get away; he’d never been a defender before and found it heavy going. Still, the attackers were outnumbered, and began to give way, some glancing over their shoulders, plainly thinking of running back into the wood.

  They began to do just that, and Jamie stood panting, dripping sweat, his sword a hundredweight in his hand. He straightened, though, and caught the flash of movement from the corner of his eye.

  “Dhooon!” he shouted, and broke into a lumbering, gasping run. Another group of men had appeared near the wagon and were pulling the driver’s body quietly down from its seat, while one of their number grabbed at the lunging horses’ bridles, pulling their heads down. Two more had got the canvas loose and were dragging out a long rolled cylinder, one of the rugs, he supposed.

  He reached them in time to grab another man trying to mount the wagon, yanking him clumsily back onto the road. The man twisted, falling, and came to his feet like a cat, knife in hand. The blade flashed, bounced off the leather of his jerkin and cut upward, an inch from his face. Jamie squirmed back, off balance, narrowly keeping his feet, and two more of the bastards charged him.

  “On your right, man!” Ian’s voice came sudden at his shoulder, and without a moment’s hesitation he turned to take care of the man to his left, hearing Ian’s grunt of effort as he laid about himself.

  Then something changed; he couldn’t tell what, but the fight was suddenly over. The attackers melted away, leaving one or two of their number lying in the road.

  The driver wasn’t dead; Jamie saw him roll half over, an arm across his face. Then he himself was sitting in the dust, black spots dancing before his eyes. Ian bent over him, panting, hands braced on his knees. Sweat dripped from his chin, making dark spots in the dust that mingled with the buzzing spots that darkened Jamie’s vision.

  “All … right?” Ian asked.

  He opened his mouth to say yes, but the roaring in his ears drowned it out, and the spots merged suddenly into a solid sheet of black.

  He woke to find a priest kneeling over him, intoning the Lord’s Prayer in Latin. Not stopping, the priest took up a little bottle and poured oil into the palm of one hand, then dipped his thumb into the puddle and made a swift sign of the Cross on Jamie’s forehead.

  “I’m no dead, aye?” Jamie said, then repeated this information in French. The priest leaned closer, squinting nearsightedly.

  “Dying?” he asked.

  “Not that, either.” The priest made a small disgusted sound, but went ahead and made crosses on the palms of Jamie’s hands, his eyelids and his lips.

  “Ego te absolvo,” he said, making a final quick sign of the Cross over Jamie’s supine form. “Just in case you’ve killed anyone.” Then he rose swiftly to his feet and disappeared behind the wagon in a flurry of dark robes.

  “All right, are ye?” Ian reached down a hand and hauled him into a sitting position.

  “Aye, more or less. Who was that?” He nodded in the direction of the recent priest.

  “Père Renault. This is a verra well-equipped outfit,” Ian said, boosting him to his feet. “We’ve got our own priest, to shrive us before battle and give us extreme unction after.”

  “I noticed. A bit overeager, is he no?”

  “He’s blind as a bat,” Ian said, glancing over his shoulder to be sure the priest wasn’t close enough to hear. “Likely thinks better safe than sorry, aye?”

  “D’ye have a surgeon, too?” Jamie asked, glancing at the two attackers who had fallen. The bodies had been pulled to the side of the road; one was clearly dead, but the other was beginning to stir and moan.

  “Ah,” Ian said thoughtfully. “That would be the priest, as well.”

  “So if I’m wounded in battle, I’d best try to die of it, is that what ye’re sayin’?”

  “I am. Come on, let’s find some water.”

  They found a rock-lined irrigation ditch running between two fields, a little way off the road. Ian pulled Jamie into the shade of a tree and, rummaging in his rucksack, found a spare shirt, which he shoved into his friend’s hands.

  “Put it on,” he said, low voiced. “Ye can wash yours out; they’ll think the blood on it’s from the fightin’.” Jamie looked surprised but grateful and, with a nod, skimmed out of the leather jerkin and peeled the sweaty, stained shirt gingerly off his back. Ian grimaced; the bandages were filthy and coming loose, save where they stuck to Jamie’s skin, crusted black with old blood and dried pus.

  “Shall I pull them off?” he muttered in Jamie’s ear. “I’ll do it fast.”

  Jamie arched his back in refusal, shaking his head.

  “Nay, it’ll bleed more if ye do.” There wasn’t time to argue; several more of the men were coming. Jamie ducked hurriedly into the clean shirt and knelt to splash water on his face.

  “Hey, Scotsman!” Alexandre called to Jamie. “What’s that you two were shouting at each other?” He put his hands to his mouth and hooted, “Goooooon!” in a deep, echoing voice that made the others laugh.

  “Have ye never heard a war cry before?” Jamie asked, shaking his head at such ignorance. “Ye shout it in battle, to call your kin and your clan to your side.”

  “Does it mean anything?” Petit Phillipe asked, interested.

  “Aye, more or less,” Ian said. “Castle Dhuni’s the dwelling place of the chieftain of the Frasers of Lovat. Caisteal Dhuin is what ye call it in the Gàidhlig—that’s our own tongue.”

  “And that’s our clan,” Jamie clarified. “Clan Fraser, but there’s more than one branch, and each one will have its own war cry, and its own motto.” He pulled his shirt out of the cold water and wrang it out; the bloodstains were still visible, but faint brown marks now, Ian saw with approval. Then he saw Jamie’s mouth opening to say more.

  Don’t say it! he thought, but as usual, Jamie wasn’t reading his mind, and Ian closed his eyes in resignation, knowing what was coming.

  “Our clan motto’s in French, though,” Jamie said, with a small air of pride. “Je suis prest.”

  It meant “I am ready,” and was, as Ian had foreseen, greeted with gales of laughter, and a number of crude speculations as to just what the young Scots might be ready for. The men were in good humor from the fight, and it went on for a bit. Ian shrugged and smiled, but he could see Jamie’s ears turning red.

  “Where’s the rest of your queue, Georges?” Petit Phillipe demanded, seeing Big Georges shaking off after a piss. “Someone trim it for you?”

  “Your wife bit it off,” Georges replied, in a tranquil tone indicating that this was common badinage. “Mouth like a sucking pig, that one. And a cramouille like a—”

  This resulted in a further scatter of abuse, but it was clear from the sidelong glances that it was mostly performance for the benefit of the two Scots. Ian ignored it. Jamie had gone squiggle-eyed; Ian wasn’t sure his friend had ever heard the word cramouille before, but he likely figured what it meant.

  Before he could get them in more trouble, though, the conversation by the stream was stopped dead by a strangled scream beyond the scrim of trees that hid them from the roadside.

  “The prisoner,” Alexandre murmured, after a moment.

  Ian knelt by Jamie, water dripping from his cupped hands. He knew what was happening; it curdled his wame. He let the water fall and wiped his hands on his thighs.

/>   “The Captain,” he said softly to Jamie. “He’ll … need to know who they were. Where they came from.”

  “Aye.” Jamie’s lips pressed tight at the sound of muted voices, the sudden meaty smack of flesh and a loud grunt. “I know.” He splashed water fiercely onto his face.

  The jokes had stopped. There was little conversation now, though Alexandre and Josef-from-Alsace began a random argument, speaking loudly, trying to drown out the noises from the road. Most of the men finished their washing and drinking in silence and sat hunched in the shade, shoulders pulled in.

  “Père Renault!” The Captain’s voice rose, calling for the priest. Père Renault had been performing his own ablutions a discreet distance from the men, but rose at this summons, wiping his face on the hem of his robe. He crossed himself and headed for the road but, on the way, paused by Ian and motioned toward his drinking cup.

  “May I borrow this from you, my son? Only for a moment.”

  “Aye, of course, Father,” Ian said, baffled. The priest nodded, bent to scoop up a cup of water, and went on his way. Jamie looked after him, then at Ian, brows raised.

  “They saw he’s a Jew,” Juanito said nearby, very quietly. “They want to baptize him first.” He knelt by the water, fists curled tight against his thighs.

  Hot as the air was, Ian felt a spear of ice run right through his chest. He stood up fast, and made as though to follow the priest, but Big Georges snaked out a hand and caught him by the shoulder.

  “Leave it,” he said. He spoke quietly, too, but his fingers dug hard into Ian’s flesh. He didn’t pull away, but stayed standing, holding Georges’s eyes. He felt Jamie make a brief, convulsive movement, but said, “No!” under his breath, and Jamie stopped.

  They could hear French cursing from the road, mingled with Père Renault’s voice. “In nomine Patris, et Filii …” Then struggling, spluttering and shouting, the prisoner, the Captain and Mathieu, and even the priest all using such language as made Jamie blink. Ian might have laughed, if not for the sense of dread that froze every man by the water.

  “No!” shouted the prisoner, his voice rising above the others, anger lost in terror. “No, please! I told you all I—” There was a small sound, a hollow noise like a melon being kicked in, and the voice stopped.

  “Thrifty, our Captain,” Big Georges said, under his breath. “Why waste a bullet?” He took his hand off Ian’s shoulder, shook his head, and knelt down to wash his hands.

  There was a ghastly silence under the trees. From the road, they could hear low voices—the Captain and big Mathieu speaking to each other and, over that, Père Renault repeating “In nomine Patris, et Filii …” but in a very different tone. Ian saw the hairs on Jamie’s arms rise and he rubbed the palms of his hands against his kilt, maybe feeling a slick from the chrism oil still there.

  Jamie plainly couldn’t stand to listen, and turned to Big Georges at random.

  “Queue?” he said with a raised brow. “That what ye call it in these parts, is it?”

  Big Georges managed a crooked smile.

  “And what do you call it? In your tongue?”

  “Bot,” Ian said, shrugging. There were other words, but he wasn’t about to try one like clipeachd on them.

  “Mostly just cock,” Jamie said, shrugging, too.

  “Or ‘penis,’ if ye want to be all English about it,” Ian chimed in.

  Several of the men were listening now, willing to join in any sort of conversation to get away from the echo of the last scream, still hanging in the air like fog.

  “Ha,” Jamie said. “Penis isna even an English word, ye wee ignoramus. It’s Latin. And even in Latin, it doesna mean a man’s closest companion—it means ‘tail.’”

  Ian gave him a long, slow look.

  “Tail, is it? So ye canna even tell the difference between your cock and your arse, and ye’re preachin’ to me about Latin?”

  The men roared. Jamie’s face flamed up instantly, and Ian laughed and gave him a good nudge with his shoulder. Jamie snorted, but elbowed Ian back, and laughed, too, reluctantly.

  “Aye, all right, then.” He looked abashed; he didn’t usually throw his education in Ian’s face. Ian didn’t hold it against him; he’d floundered for a bit, too, his first days with the company, and that was the sort of thing you did, trying to get your feet under you by making a point of what you were good at. But if Jamie tried rubbing Mathieu’s or Big Georges’s face in his Latin and Greek, he’d be proving himself with his fists, and fast, too. Right this minute, he didn’t look as though he could fight a rabbit and win.

  The renewed murmur of conversation, subdued as it was, dried up at once with the appearance of Mathieu through the trees. Mathieu was a big man, though broad rather than tall, with a face like a mad boar and a character to match. Nobody called him “Pig-face” to his face.

  “You, cheese-rind—go bury that turd,” he said to Jamie, adding with a narrowing of red-rimmed eyes, “Far back in the wood. And go before I put a boot in your arse. Move!”

  Jamie got up—slowly—eyes fixed on Mathieu with a look Ian didn’t care for. He came up quick beside Jamie and gripped him by the arm.

  “I’ll help,” he said. “Come on.”

  “Why do they want this one buried?” Jamie muttered to Ian. “Giving him a Christian burial?” He drove one of the trenching spades Armand had lent them into the soft leaf mold with a violence that would have told Ian just how churned up his friend was, if he hadn’t known already.

  “Ye kent it’s no a verra civilized life, a charaid,” Ian said. He didn’t feel any better about it himself, after all, and spoke sharp. “Not like the Université.”

  The blood flamed up Jamie’s neck like tinder taking fire, and Ian held out a palm in hopes of quelling him. He didn’t want a fight, and Jamie couldn’t stand one.

  “We’re burying him because D’Eglise thinks his friends might come back to look for him, and it’s better they don’t see what was done to him, aye? Ye can see by looking that the other fellow was just killed fightin’. Business is one thing; revenge is another.”

  Jamie’s jaw worked for a bit, but gradually the hot flush faded and his clench on the shovel loosened.

  “Aye,” he muttered, and resumed digging. The sweat was running down his neck in minutes, and he was breathing hard. Ian nudged him out of the way with an elbow and finished the digging. Silent, they took the dead man by the oxters and ankles and dragged him into the shallow pit.

  “D’ye think D’Eglise found out anything?” Jamie asked as they scattered matted chunks of old leaves over the raw earth.

  “I hope so,” Ian replied, eyes on his work. “I wouldna like to think they did that for nothing.”

  He straightened up and they stood awkwardly for a moment, not quite looking at each other. It seemed wrong to leave a grave, even that of a stranger and a Jew, without a word of prayer. But it seemed worse to say a Christian prayer over the man—more insult than blessing, in the circumstances.

  At last Jamie grimaced and bending, dug about under the leaves, coming out with two small stones. He gave one to Ian, and one after the other, they squatted and placed the stones together atop the grave. It wasn’t much of a cairn, but it was something.

  It wasn’t the Captain’s way to make explanations, or to give more than brief, explicit orders to his men. He had come back into camp at evening, his face dark and his lips pressed tight. But three other men had heard the interrogation of the Jewish stranger, and by the usual metaphysical processes that happen around campfires, everyone in the troop knew by the next morning what he had said.

  “Ephraim bar-Sefer,” Ian said to Jamie, who had come back late to the fire after going off quietly to wash his shirt out again. “That was his name.” Ian was a bit worrit about the wean. His wounds weren’t healing as they should, and the way he’d passed out … He’d a fever now; Ian could feel the heat coming off his skin, but he shivered now and then, though the night wasn’t bitter.

  “
Is it better to know that?” Jamie asked bleakly.

  “We can pray for him by name,” Ian pointed out. “That’s better, is it not?”

  Jamie wrinkled up his brow, but after a moment nodded.

  “Aye, it is. What else did he say, then?”

  Ian rolled his eyes. Ephraim bar-Sefer had confessed that the band of attackers were professional thieves, mostly Jews, who—

  “Jews?” Jamie interrupted. “Jewish bandits?” For some reason, the thought struck him as funny, but Ian didn’t laugh.

  “Why not?” he asked briefly, and went on without waiting for an answer. The men gained advance knowledge of valuable shipments and made a practice of lying in wait, to ambush and rob.

  “It’s mostly other Jews they rob, so there’s nay much danger of being pursued by the French army or a local judge.”

  “Oh. And the advance knowledge—that’s easier come by, too, I suppose, if the folk they rob are Jews. Jews live close by each other in groups,” he explained, seeing the look of surprise on Ian’s face. “They all read and write, though, and they write letters all the time; there’s a good bit of information passed to and fro between the groups. Wouldna be that hard to learn who the moneylenders and merchants are and intercept their correspondence, would it?”

  “Maybe not,” Ian said, giving Jamie a look of respect. “Bar-Sefer said they got notice from someone—he didna ken who it was, himself—who kent a great deal about valuables comin’ and goin’. The person who knew wasna one of their group, though; it was someone outside, who got a percentage o’ the proceeds.”

  That, however, was the total of the information bar-Sefer had divulged. He wouldn’t give up the names of any of his associates—D’Eglise didn’t care so much about that—and had died stubbornly insisting that he knew nothing of future robberies planned.

  “D’ye think it might ha’ been one of ours?” Jamie asked, low voiced.

  “One of—oh, our Jews, ye mean?” Ian frowned at the thought. There were three Spanish Jews in D’Eglise’s band: Juanito, Big Georges, and Raoul, but all three were good men, and fairly popular with their fellows. “I doubt it. All three o’ them fought like fiends. When I noticed,” he added fairly.