Well people at the time that I wrote this I presume that I might have a couple of fans but I know that many think that I don't finish my stories and that is kind of true in some extent but I'm a preoccupied with reality at the moment trying to keep up with a few details.
So please read this one, I've already completed this so you just review and I'll put the next one up. if you don't well then I'll keep the chapters anyways and wait.
Enjoy
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Disclaimer:- I don't own Beyblades or the characters but I do own my ocs and this story
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Chapter 6
She rode a length behind him along the lane. There was frost that covered the hedges like mist, such a living coldness. The snow itself hung in the branches of the thorn trees and dressed them with ice glitter. Only the sky and their horses were black.
February, midnight and the road between Heaven knew where and nowhere. Adele had long stopped questioned where they rode or why. She only knew that the sea and the marshes lay behind them and that it was only a straight road that they could travel. They hadn't eaten since midday and have travelled a long time through forest and twice passed by lit houses without stopping. Houses? Huts really but there had been the signs of fires and the promise of warmth and food.
That had been hours ago and Tala Valkov rode without turning his head, without speaking and his shoulders back through the cold. They had an unspoken bargain, she wouldn't complain and he would never ask if she was tired or treat her in any other way than a companion. She rode in men's clothes more to seal the deal with him than for necessity. Although often it made things easier, for riding for one thing and in the rain or snow a man's breeches and high boots were better protection than skirts. if they were stopped or questioned by a republican soldier, a tall man servant who didn't talk much caused no comment where as a woman riding abroad with a man was another story entirely.
That was part of the bargain too, that she should ride with him and that where he went she would go without a comment. Adele refused to say with her father, Loretta and Ester in the manor at Mevent. She had listened to her father's protests as if he was talking about someone else.
"Papa I love him as I love you but I love Tala as my own self." talking to him as if he was a child who must be comforted and as for riding with him, "He needs me."
From the day of their marriage; that hurried illicit ceremony, their blessing by a refractory priest disguised as a peasant in sabots and fustian, she had ridden with him. Adele had never shown by a look or word that she was ready to fall from the saddle or that she was fainting with hunger. although she learned very soon always to carry a loaf of bread and a lump of cheese in her saddle bag and a skin of sour milk, thus giving her the chance to eat as they rode.
Now in the second half of February, after two months of it, she could ride for ten hours on end without thinking it extraordinary. There were many days that they covered sixty miles, up north into the realms of Fargira, along the coast where they had seen sails that might be Talmish men of war and camping all night on the beach. A longboat had come in at dawn and two men had landed. They brought documents and without talk handed them to other guides who were to bring them to into Serandisis or so she imagined. Tala told her to bring her none of that part of their business but only to remember roads, people and houses.
Often they stayed all day without talking as if she really a man, a comrade and there was nothing that needed saying. When they made love, it was like the completion of comradeship and the day. At times, like that he seemed to belong to her even more closely than when they were lovers in the ordinary sense. She would smooth his mouth and his forehead with her fingers, smoothing away the day's exhaustion then resting her face against his. Usually Adele woke up first in the morning and looked at him before he opened his own eyes. In that moment, his eyes still shut and sleeping said that he was completely hers, mind body and soul. Sometimes she wished that he would sleep forever if she could only watch over him.
it was like an image of her love for him, the blue haired woman didn't ask herself, "Why do I love him?" or "Does he truly love me as I love him?" she only said, "He's mine and I'm his and we must be together so long as we both live."
That was now but a few months ago, her determination had borne down her father's 'sick man' objection since he was imprisoned those weeks ago. One Thursday the evening she had gone back to the rue de Martinique from Tala's hiding place she found him in bed. Quiet and limp, not able to move properly and not really knowing whom she was. It seemed to have happened ten minuets before she came. Ester was with him, he fell so Loretta and she carried him back to his bed.
It was mid October before he was anything like himself again and could move about. One foot dragged a little, one of the pale green eyes seemed to stare and moved slower than the other. Those weeks in the prison were blotted away, vanished. Tala had gone within 3 days of that Thursday afternoon in the courtyard but she had scarcely minded. Adele would find him again, she knew it. Even though his letter sent to her by means of Citizen Bryan hadn't arrived and never arrived.
"Don't trust him," Tala said taking leave of her. "I could just this time, but not again." he didn't say, "I'll write to you." or "I love you." or even "Do you love me?" Nothing, he held her hand for a moment and then gone into the carriage. two days later the Citizen Bryan had called to the rue de Martinique or make inquiries that looked and sounded like sneers as to the health of the esteemed friend of Aserythe, Monsieur Baltimore.
As he, left he said to Adele, "Oh out mutual friend Monsieur Valkov. I shall not wrong him by calling him citizen has left some papers behind. Can you tell me where I may forward them to? Or-" hie eyes fixed on hers not casually at all, "-you'll no doubt be seeing him soon yourself. Perhaps-?"
"I have no address for him citizen. It was you who were his friend and no doubt that he'll write to you."
Afterwards when she thought of what she hated most in the revolution, he was its symbol, not Cruesole with his madman's eyes and his twitching body or Pierre or even the mindless creatures who had done the killing. How had he ever become Tala's friend?
It was almost the first question that she had asked Tala when they were together again, in Mevant near the end of October. She had got their passports herself through the Mayor Pierre who had shown himself charmed and delighted oh how relieved. "Citizeness how nice to see you still alive and your good father how is he? He has been ill? What a shame! But with such a daughter to nurse him is a great fortune." smiling with his baby lips and his gentleman's charm but he had got them their passports. At last they hired a carriage to the manor near Mervant where Loretta turned from guest into hostess, and became for the peasants their countess and proprietor. Although no titles were in dispute.
That was why Mr Baltimore as soon as he was stronger had document to look at and the lawyers to talk to and visits to Nalalia to plan and carry out. The Count de Martinique called on the rent rolls to examine and have translated and various accounts to verify. There were business letters to write to Loretta's father, not to speak of dutiful ones to Mrs Baltimore and his own steward and Uncle George telling them of progress and giving instructions and promises that within a month all must be completed. Then they can finally go home but for Adele there was nothing to do at all except remember and think and she wanted to do neither.
She wasn't even needed as an interpreter, in the matter of her own estates and farm Loretta showed a side of her character that nothing had revealed before. It was the will to spend hours over documents or interviewing tenants or talking to lawyers and accountants. As if her brain only woke up at the link of money and she would sit to dinner after a long morning of business with the air of a cat that has fed on cream to someone who has made love.
"How lucky we are to have such loyal peasants," she said. "Everywhere else they have burned the rent rolls and all the feudal documents and seized the best land. Here everything is as it was." Loretta had spoken as it God himself arranged the situation for her benefit.
It was not completely true, the newly proclaimed Republic controlled the Vendee as it controlled everywhere else. There were rumours of a new conscription law and men sore that they wouldn't go. Young men gathering and threatening patriots with a ducking, stoning or houses burned.
The priests who had been dispossessed came back into their churches in defiance of the Law, to baptise, to marry, to say Mass, to preach against the Republic and against the oath priests and anyone who gave their support to the new order in Church or state Missionaries came by night to houses and one even came to the manor, talking to the servants about the Sacred Heart, that was bleeding for Aserythe and for his Vendee. He gave Loretta a red velvet heart, surmounted by a cross and a crown of thorns, stitched onto a white silk flag. He begged her to keep it safely hidden.
"What a sweet thing," Loretta said when he was gone and made it into a cushion cover.
Tala came in mid November. He rode up at dark and it was as if they had left another yesterday. His eyes amused as he took Adele's hands, his face lean and slightly tanned again with the weather. Adele still wondered why he always remained quiet pale even though he spends a lot of time in all weathers. His cloak was shabby and the hat was fit for a scarecrow in the fields while his boots and breeches were thick with the November mud. What remained the same were his hands, like her own. Adele knew then that she would marry him. As if she knew before he came, and didn't need to think about it.
Afterwards she couldn't be sure how they had arranged it. He claimed that it was she who had asked him to marry her and perhaps it was true but it didn't really matter. It was arranged and she bore down her poor, beloved, bewildered, papa's objections. The pretence that her mother would had objected swept Loretta's cries of incredulity and prepared herself to battle with country priest bigotry against a Protestant, and that he might be pleased to call a mixed marriage.
Luckily there was no bigotry as such, only a hunted man with his eyes on more distant battles much greater arguments than how she said her Creed. Adele Baltimore became Madame Valkov at 3 o'clock of a dark afternoon, they drank a glass of wine together and the priest vanished like a shadow among shadows, a gaunt bony peasant of a priest in peasant's clothes no older than Tala.
Then came to renewed arguments with Mr Baltimore that her place was with Tala, "Where he goes, I'll go."
Tala accepted that without question and with that unspoken bargain that she came as a comrade. Not complaining about hardships, no claim to a woman's privileges let alone a wife's and should expect nothing but long journeys and cold nights on the roads.
"I've work to do," he said, "And if you want to join me in it-" That was as near as they came to setting out terms. Now after eight, nine weeks of it Adele rode as soldiers rode without effort and thought of the ancient times when she was admired for the way she rode in a lady's side saddle wearing Diana's hunting skirts and a velvet cap with a feather, stirrup cps and compliments with an amazed pity for so much ignorance. Her hands were like a man's brown and hard, calloused from wet leather reins that soaked her gauntlets and made it preferable to ride bare handed even in the snow. Her muscles were lean as Tala's and as strong as most men's, or stronger. Her face had grown lean as well bronzed with the weather. She looked like a tall young man, the eyes of the maids and the younger women in the farm houses where they stopped overnight or spent a day in told Adele that she was still handsome and when she let down the mass of blue threads to dry it by the fire. She was better than handsome, and sometimes she was pleased at the thought and other time too tired to do more than accept it like a hunk of bread and a draught of milk.
She would sit in the darkest corner eating or resting or sleeping on her stool with her back against the wall or taking in the company through half closed lids. The faces, voices and tricks of the movement.
"A time will come when all this'll matter," Tala said. "I'll need to send you where I cant be spared to go and you'll have to know you're talking to the right man. The cowman last Tuesday, in Dilliard's farm. Tell me how you'd recognise him?"
"Last Tuesday? Dilliard's?"
"Tell me; don't just repeat what I ask you! Tell me!"
"He had a slight squint in the left eye and his lower lip dropped down. It was very red and wet."
"Ah."
Sometimes where the farm women were inquisitive, she was recognised as a woman and there would be gasps of astonishment, a few down drawn eyebrows and tightened mouths were the result. Then they would cluster and stare at her wanting to ask questions to make sure. That happened once when thee was a priest there, the same who married them. He heard that two of the older women with their heads together, whispering condemnations and he lifted his oak staff and brought it down on the massive table filling the kitchen with a crash of echoes.
"She's a man's wife and they are riding on God's business. May God burn the tongues of those who speak ill of her." He had gone and left the echoes to settle. That had been a fortnight ago, Adele though of it as she swayed with the tired walk of her horse. She knew that they were helping to prepare a rising and that it was close to the beginning in spite of the death of the 'Colonel Aracand' who had long ago begun the planning. He had died during the winter last month. Like the King that vacant looking man she had seem leaving the palace for ever and had seen again in that low ceiling room like cage behind the president's tribute in the Manege.
He had been taken in a coach to the Place of the Revolution that used to be the place of his grandfather, Robert Nicolas XV and had been guillotined like a criminal.
"He deserved it," was all that Tala had said when they heard the news, at least all they he said to her. "How many men died for him because he couldn't make up his mind to fight? I'll keep my tears dor them but not him." He spoke a different clergy to the peasants that their King was killed like God's son by wicked men.
Reading the King's testament to them, his voice with passion; "I Robert the sixteenth, imprisoned these last four months with my family in the Tower of the Temple by those who were my subjects-"
Men wept who wouldn't have if it was their won father who had died.
"I recommend to God my wife, my children-I beg my son if he has the happiness to become King to devote his heart and soul to all his fellow citizens; to forget all hatreds and resentment above all against those who have had any share in my misfortunes."
When the reading was over, a priest in the audience would preach the Sacred Heart like a crusade. "Our King died for us like God's sone died. His blood lies on the soil of Aserythe! How can we sleep until he is avenged!"
Tala would draw her out of hearing and they would be on their way again. 'Did he believe any of this?' she thought that now she knew less of his true nature when they had begun. Adele didn't care, it was enough to be with him, he's mine, her heart said. Mine mine mine. The blue haired woman imagined being warm with him and laying down by a fire with a blanket over them. The thought of warmth made her shiver and remember how hungry she was. She had a crust left in her bag and began to eat it slowly to make it last.
"We'll be there soon," Tala said without turning his head. There were trees ahead and the darkness of the wood. Outside ti the snow light, a soft haze of whiteness filtering from the thick roof of the snow laden branches above their heads. They followed a narrow path where branches raked their cloaks and knees. Then without warning they were in a clearing, the trees fallen back, snow on the bare ground. By the reflected light of the snow she could make out a house, no a cottage. A head forester's, or a gamekeeper's. No lights , dogs nothing at all. Tala dismounted and moved quickly towards the door. He knocked two, three times before it opened and there was candlelight. The dark shape of a man whispering.
Tala nodded to her and went in, she spread out the saddle blankets over both horses and led them round the cottage looking for shelter for them. There were no stables but a kind of lean to shed had some promise and Adele felt her way into it stumbling over a chopping block. There was a stack of firewood and a trestle to hold logs for cutting. The blue haired woman looped the reins around an upright post that supported the roof.
"When will you eat, poor creature?" she said aloud.
Something was there? A sense of-someone? She wasn't alone in the shed. Adele stood as she'd been standing still stroking the harsh frosted manes of the horses. A soft frightening outletting of a long held breathe was heard.
"Who's there?"
No answer but the stillness had a tension about it and the dark seemed to thicken there beyond the piled logs. Adele thought of calling her husband and heard his voice almost close to her but muffled by the wall. The wall of the shed that was also the wall of the cottage.
"Tala! Here, quickly there's someone here!"
There was a knife flash in the dark and she flung up her coat for protection, the cloth ripping and tugging on her forearm in the rushing darkness. She struck out her boot and the darkness lurched, tripping over her outstretched foot. She bent and caught hold of the man. A man writhing and kicking. He must have dropped the knife as he fell. She had to let go of him with one hand and struck where he head ought to be. She though that she had broken her wrist but the man hung slack and she let him fall to the ground. Tala was there with a hooded lantern and three other men. They turned the eye of the lantern on the heap of shadow in the ground. A dark unshaven face staring eyes, crow cropped hair, dusty feathers and a mouth already begging for mercy.
"Don't hit me. I'm only a poor beggar, looking for shelter, please monsieur, messieurs citizens, I was-"
They hauled him upright and around to the door of the cottage.
"Show me your hands," Tala said.
Earth stains under the broken finger nails and calluses on the palms.
"These aren't beggar's hands." Tala slipped his own knife out of his pocket and snapped the blade. "They'd look worse still with a finger missing. Bring him inside and stick his hands on the table."
Adele walked away into the dark then after a minuet or so there was a high wailing scream. She put her fists over his ears to prevent the cry penetrating her mind. "Christ have mercy on us all." thinking of the prison, the old priests and the two boy's with their angel faces and their longing for martyrdom. A few more minuets Tala called her, the prisoner had his left hand wrapped in a bloody rag. Around the long table that occupied the room, six men besides the prisoner and Tala. Adele recognised three of them as Mulotins, she had seen them before. Missionaries who had already spent half a lifetime tramping the roads of Talmond, Aenslad, Fargira and even as far as Selasia and the Vendee rooting out the last of the Calvinism that still lay dormant in the East. Now their journeys were more urgent than ever.
The other three she didn't know, one was a miller from his apron as if he came straight from work. There were traces of flour on his hands and hair. Young but already thickset, ruddy, dark yellow curls over a bull's forehead and a short thick powerful nose, broad mouth and cheeks. The other two were older, with an air of long authority, the metayers of farms, leaders of their parish or district. In the few weeks she had been riding Adele had learned to recognise types and characters. She could pick out a master from a man fifty yards away without needing to think about their clothes. The way a man walked and held himself was also a good indication. She could tell a villager from a farm worker, a weaver from a carpenter, merely by seeing them walk away from her. She imagined she could almost tell their politics in the same way. Patriots from Royalists, sometimes it was easy. The townsmen patriots and republicans while the countrymen royalist almost to the soul.
But this man? A casual labourer, getting day word here and there, a weak sickly face. A man who had never his life long had enough to eat. Nor his father nor his grandfather before him. He stared at her as she came in with a new terror. She forced herself not to look at his hand in the bloody rag.
"Look at him!" Tala said, "Judas got thirty pieces of silver, but this rat did it for paper money! Ten Livres! Ten Livres to sell your God, your King, your people! It wont pay for the rope to hang you."
The miller and one of the farmers had a length of cord and they roped him like a pig for slaughter, heels to wrists then took him outside. Adele expected the hear him scream again but there wasn't a sound. Tala pushed a bowl of soup towards her across the table. She shook her head, Tala thumped his fist softly and angrily on the heavy timber.
"Eat! Do you think that this is charades? What would he have done to us?
"Are they -?" she found that the question was stuck in her throat but he understood it.
"No. He'll be trialled. He'll have his chance. Now eat."
Adele was so hungry that she found after the first mouthful she couldn't stop and was astonished to find it empty. There was a fire and she took a three legged stool and sat by it while the men talked.
The blue haired woman shook herself awake and went out into the cold darkness. They had tied the man to a tree away from the cottage and his shivering and whimpering could be still heard as Adele approached. They had gagged him and the whimpers cam muffled through the twisted cloth. When she came close, his eyes grew wide and white in terror and the whimpering stopped. She went behind him to look at the bandaged hand. Another cloth twisted around it sodden with blood. She made herself undo his wrists so that he could bring hand round to the front so that she could examine it. The small finger was gone from the knuckle. In the fierce cold the bleeding had almost stopped as if the blood was frozen.
When she let go of his wrist he put his hands together in prayer to her, his eyes begging. Mumbling and retching deep in his throat like a dumb man trying to talk. Adele loosened the gag.
"Monsieur from the goodness of your heart don't kill me! I've a wife and children, look at my and, look what they've don't to me! What will my children do if I'm killed? Please in the name of Jesus, have mercy on me! You have a kind face, you're not like them, and you're young. We hadn't had bread for three days and they tempted me! Ten livres and work. To feed my children! I'll say I couldn't find the way here, I saw nothing and heard nothing. I swear it, on my mother's soul I swear it please!"
In spite of his bound legs he had managed to go down on his knees and clasp her boots with his hands.
"Stand up," she said, "They'll give you a fair trial. Tell them what you've told me."
"A fair trial?" He stank of terror, he must have soiled himself. There had been the same stench at the massacre, men emptying themselves in terror. It made her feel sick remembering.
"They'll shoot me in the back like a dog, they've no mercy in them. Look at my hand."
Something about her face, the few words se had spoken, the way she stood, that woman scents that no man has made him flare his nostrils like an animal. "You're a woman!" He sank down onto his knees again. "How can a woman see me murdered? I must feed my children! As you love someone pity me!" A bloody hand grasped for hers, his wet mouth kissing it as tears streamed down his rugged face.
Adele couldn't touch him, "Untie your legs," she said. "Can you? I'll walk to the trees and back again."
She went slowly and when her back was turned he was already gone. A moment later there was a shot among the trees. She stayed still, Tala had come out of the wood into the snow light of the clearing. He had a pistol in his hand and she imagined she could see a wisp of smoke still coiling out of the barrel. He came towards her, his face savage. "If there were two barrels I'd empty the other into you. You great stupid bitch, what were you dreaming about?"
He hand lifted to hit her.
'If he hits me,' she thought, 'that is the end of us.'
The other men were pouring out of the house, jostling in the narrow doorway before they could free themselves. "What- what is it? Who-"
They saw Tala and Adele together. Tala turned towards them putting his pistol into his belt. "Our prisoner was escaping, that's all," he said. "We stopped him." he jerked his head to where the body must be. Then men went to look and bring it back with them. Tala dug his fingers into her arm like hooks
"I can guess why you did It." he whispered, "But I've told you this isn't charades. IF you ever do anything like that again, if I so much as think you're going to , I'll kill you. Understand?"
'I'm looking at a stranger,' she thought. Adele no longer felt anger but sadness and then disappointed as the death would always lie between them. Perhaps he saw that in her eyes.
"Have you already forgotten the Abbaye?" he said. "Those two boys? The priests?"
"No," she whispered.
"But you owe me your life. If I'd asked you for his life in exchange would you refuse me?"
'That-that Judas rat?' she thought again that he would hit her so she shut her eyes in preparation. He didn't do anything but walk away as the men returned with the body.
"The ground's too hard to bury him easy," one of the farmers said, "But I know a safe place."
The men went inside as the dead spy looked up from the ground with shocked eyes at her and the black sky.
'I've destroyed everything,' she thought, 'to save this and instead I killed him. If I'd done nothing then he would still be alive and have his chance for mercy. Now he's dead.'
Adele didn't feel anything but tiredness like iron weights bound to her. Like an ill sharpened mass inside her body, hard and painful. Ten minuets later Tala came out alone.
"We're riding back," he said nothing else. She followed him around the cottage to the shed and the horses. They mounted without another word and she followed him across the clearing back the way they came.
'There's nothing left,' she thought.
Half an hour then another hour Adele slept while she rode. Forgetting about hunger, the cold and her tiredness.
They came to a farmhouse they'd passed an eternity ago. That she sensed had rather than seen. Now the sky had cleared as the cold grew fiercer, there was starlight and the farm buildings were a dark hammock of a man's presence among trees and hedges. Tala turned his horse's head up to whiteness of what might be a track to a farm. Then round to the stables, with the dogs at bay and the hens in a poultry house woken up fluttering and fearing death. A shutter opened and the muzzle of a gun caught the starlight, metal clinked against the metal of the latch.
"Who's there?"
"Two of the harvesters," Tala said. "We want to sleep in the stable loft."
"Sleep well," the shutter closed.
When she got down from the saddle she could hardly stand and had to support herself again her horse. Tala said nothing and began opening the stable door. She led the two horses in and made herself see to them. Water and hay torn from the bale. Tala had lit a lantern with his flint, tinder and straw. He hung it on a nail and went up a ladder into the loft above. She made her business with the horses last longer than was necessary, until at last it became cowardice and she must go up to him.
He was lying down under his cloak. She expected him to be asleep or pretending to be. To have his back towards her but his eyes were watching her, bright points reflecting the lantern light. She set the lantern down and began to undress. Adele had always hated sleeping in her clothes no matter how cold it was and she wasn't going to change her habits now over a quarrel. Quarrel? What a stupid word for it. She felt sic and empty as she stripped off her shirt and boots and finally her breeches to eventually stand naked. He watched her not saying anything.
The blue haired woman knelt down to make herself a bed of straw but found that he had already done that for her and himself. She began to spread her cloak to lie on and then roll her clothes into a pillow but Tala was lifting the edge of his own cloak.
"Here," he said. "What a great fool you are."
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The eleventh of March, riding south from Phornic towards Legesh, and beyond it to the manor. They rode through countryside already in rebellion through small towns where fear hung in the streets like fog. The news of the men to be conscripted, ordered by the Convention of Ishe - the word of that had run through the countryside like fire. Five thousand men to be torn from the farms and villages of the Vendee, because almost all the townsmen would escape the net. Five thousand families to be robbed of their strongest pairs of arms. Five thousand young men to be marched away from their field, woods and families, to defend a government they hated, that had wronged their faith. Driving out the priests and killing the King.
In Chalaret and St Flourante and half a dozen other places they'd already rioted against the drawing of lots and attacked the Elite guard. The Republicans' hunting of the true priests became more savage. The coming revolt hung in the air like a gathering storm.
Tala and Adele had ridden west towards the sea and north to Phornic to get and give the new and arrange things there. Now they travelled south and homeward through boarders to wait in Loretta's manor until final orders were sent. They would have to come earlier than first planned because of the news of the conscription. It wouldn't be possible to hold things back.
It was already dark and ahead of them the huddled mass of lights from the town could be seen. More than there should be as if there were lanterns in the streets, windows lit by candles and movement. They stopped riding and sat quiet to rest the horses, as they sat observing, listening the sea could be faintly heard. Adele thought nothing of it for a moment. Waves breaking and rushing against the shore. Until she remembered that the sea was ten, twelve miles behind them and there was no possibility of hearing it. The sound was coming from the east and not the west.
Tala was also listening, lifting his hand to silence any questions from her. Growling, rushing and rustling were very distinct. She shut her eyes to listen turning her head slowly.
"The moutons niors," Tala whispered. "Dunga is coming."
Adele shivered in her seat as the marsh men dressed in filthy blackened sheepskins that gave them their nickname of 'Black rams'. Gaunt savages armed with scythes turned into weapons promising one another loot and murder, rich townsmen to hang up by their heels while the gold fell out of their pockets. Axes, billhooks, massive iron bound clubs and hunting guns, in all enough weapons to kill a large city. Dunga, their leader, like a mad butcher. How many were there, to make that much noise? A lot which outmatches two.
As they sat listening the sound took shape. Shadows. A great arc of shadows ahead of them, between them and the restless town. Voices were whispering, a thousand whispers joined together, like a sea. A thousand? Five thousand, ten, like the marsh water rising and drowning the land. The lights in the town grew agitated as men came running in the streets.
They sat for half an hour as the unconscious wind felt cold against their faces. The horses stamped their feet and shivered. The shadows had reached the town as the first screams came in moments later. Tala began riding away to their right.
"We'll ride around," he said. The noise followed them for an hour until they were well to the southeast of the town. Volleys of musket fire cackled as hunting guns crashed loaded with nails and heavy shot. The women and children shrieking. Adele found herself praying as she rode, "Our Father." she would've liked to pray to the Virgin if she knew how.
The next day they were resting in Loretta's manor, log fires, meals that lasted for two hours, Papa. Papa was unaware of anything. Though the full documents, plans for the lawyers, a dispute over where a boundary line should run and fishing, hunting rights in a marsh and some woods he knew about. A half a dozen disputes with neighbours which took nearly all his strength to fight.
"But we'll have your rights my dear. Depend on it. They shant wear me down" As if he'd been born to be a lawyer, his conversation full of legal terms, feudal rights and antique dues owed to the estates since the time of the Capets. One document claimed twelve swans a year from Loretta every Christmas by a grant given to the mistress of one of Westington's sons. In her turn she had the right to take them from the marsh.
"A thousand years!" Mr Baltimore cried. "I'll not let such a great tradition be broken!" As if the whole world wasn't breaking around him. He'd begun to treat Loretta as his own daughter and Adele - not so as he once treated Loretta but with an unspoken reproach, for her marriage, her way of life, the way she looked and dressed. In the manor she dressed as a woman but as she couldn't think like the woman he father wanted her to be, or that Loretta would've approved; concerned with fashions, recipes, children, talk of love and romance. Adele sat at the table and in the drawing room after dinner pretending to listen to Loretta ramble o to the talks of rents and dues and law cases when her father came in with Tala from the dining room to take coffee with them. Though the blue haired woman was pretending to listen while her mind was on Tala. On what they'd done, would do.
She want really thinking at such times. Only seeing, his face, the movement of his hands. A wood they'd ridden through, a farmhouse where they'd met others of the leaders or couriers or Mulotins. She saw barns, the empty huts where they'd slept a night. The sometimes comfort of a farmhouse bedroom, shown up to it by the farmer's wife, daughter, or a maid. Their eyes rounded at Adele's appearance as if they knew her to be a woman or astute if the blue haired woman were a handsome man. Lying with Tala in the luxury of a warm bed, a fire burning and candlelight and making love in the shadows as if to recover that first ecstasy in Ishe.
More than recovering it but more building on it as their bodies grew use to one another, fitting together like two halves of one being. He still laughed but with a difference, a tremendous joy when he held her as if he couldn't believe in his fortune to have such a person. He'd never told her about other women but she knew that he had many. Must have by the way he made love but she wasn't jealous of the past and since the night that the spy died they had seemed to grow closer. They had each accepted something about the other, respected something unbreakable.
'One must.' She thought, 'Bring to marriage something that cant be broken even for the safe of the marriage. If one doesn't then one isn't a wife or partner. They would only be a slave to lie in bed. If a man cant accept that then he isn't worthy of being loved.'
The thought of slavery made Adele look at Ester. The pallid girl sat on a stool beside her Loretta's chair doing her embroidery for her, the slender fingers and coloured wools making patterns by the firelight. The contrast of the golden light warmed the girl's face as she bent over her work, the scarlet bodice and the fanning of red skirts and petticoats reminded one of the sunsets full of blood. For a second Adele saw herself, saw Tala, saw men fighting and falling to their deaths. She had such a sense of disaster coming that the green eyed woman had to look into the fire to break up the imaginary vision. It was no use, in front of her eyes Adele could see a man being hanged by his throat above the fire.
It was gone and Adele looked at the dark haired girl, head bent and fingers busy. Ester turned her head to look at her mistress' cousin, not with malice and not tragically; not as if she shared the vision and found it as terrible as Adele did but the delicate nostrils slightly flared in disdain for the things she saw, the people who took part in them.
'What did you make me see?' Adele wanted to shout at her. 'What have I ever done to you?'
There was an alteration in Ester's expression, polite inquiry and a hint of mockery behind those dark eyes. They gave an invitation to go out of the room. Adele couldn't tell how it was done but she know that she had to go out and wait. The blue haired woman made an excuse after another minuet or two and waited outside. Ester joined her, going ahead of her upstairs into a small room that Ester had adopted as he own. Her trunk was there over flowing with her own clothes and those that Loretta gave her as presents. The smell of musk and herbs, now sweet then slightly pungent heavy and tropical, as if they were in a rainforest. The curtains were drawn as a fire was burning. Ester didn't look at Adele but into the fire.
"You're leaving tomorrow," she said.
"How do you know that?"
"Oh Madame, Madame Adele, we've only a minute. My mistress will call for me soon. Beg your father, order him, make him go to Nalalia, and bring my mistress and myself with him. Tomorrow or the next day at the latest."
"But I can't order any such thing. Your mistress orders everything here. Tell her to do as you say."
"She wont listen to me, she use to but sine we've come here she thinks of nothing except how great she is in this place. Even greater than she could've been with her parents, she's like a little girl with new dolls, I can't make her listen without doing things that I don't want to do."
She turned and with nothing careless or unthinking about the gesture, laid her hand on Adele's like a declaration of equality and acceptance. Ester was no longer a slave and no longer a servant.
"My mother gave me charge of Loretta when I was seven years old. We have been friends that long but I still have no power over her. You must help me, please Madame Adele"
"You don't understand," Adele said. "Even if I could give such orders or persuade my father and your mistress, it wold be dangerous to go. More dangerous still in Nalalia. I can't tell you about it-"
"I can tell you!" Ester gripped Adele's fingers, thrusting her head forward so like a snake striking that the green eyed woman drew back, "I know."
"What do you know?"
Ester let go of her and turned to the fire. She sat stoop over like a witch, her face suddenly old, like an old woman, toothless, all bones shrunken and wrinkled yellowness.
"I know what must happen. What I'm to make happen but not how. Tell me!" she whispered into the fire. "Tell me!" Her voice commanding and pleading. Ester put down her hand into the fire and picked up a burning log, rearranged it slowly not hurrying but carefully.
"What are you?" Adele whispered under her breath. She thought she might see the hand burn and the flesh crack.
"I'm a poor slave," Ester cried in her pure Aserythian accent. "I'm Ester. How honoured I am to have Madame Valkov come to my room. So you won't do what I ask? Very well ride away tomorrow and I'll see you here again."
She made to get up but Adele caught her by the arms and held her loosely. "Tell me what you are!"
"Madame," Ester said, as if she was talking to a child. "Madame Adele." Like trying to hold smoke. Ester was by the door waiting for Adele to go out first.
In the drawing room they were getting ready to go to supper. Tala beckoned her. "Come and see to the horses," he said as she came in and went together. Her father was trying to conceal his disapproval, saying in a loud voice long before they were out of earshot, "What are they at now? They can't sit still for a moment"
Loretta laughed, saying, "But Uncle, they're lovers, lovers must make excuses to be together, is it not so in Talmond too?"
The next morning they rode away very early towards Chalaret. Overhead the sky was bright; the fields were green with spring. They came to Mauliereve that night. A dozen leaders crowded into a small cottage, all shouting at once, as if the time for whispering was ended. The huntsman Spencer at the head of the table, hard featured and slightly older than the others. Adele sat in a half hidden corner as always, while Tala made his reports, recited lists, of men, weapons, supplies, horses and carts.
When he was finished Spencer laid his hand palm down on the table. "That's good, now go to sleep everyone, we ride to meet Ozuma early 4 o'clock tomorrow."
They started in the cold darkness as a column of two hundred men. By dawn they had become 500, like a river that gathers tributaries from every valley, every hillside. Men riding by twos and dozens to join them, out of a wood, a field or farm. Tala rode close to Spencer, and Adele behind him. Men spoke to her and she answered with a half nod or word. They were going to take Chalaret. She felt her heart and muscles tighten, not with fear, but a kind of astonishment that she was there, that Tala was there, that their solitary riding had ended. They were part of an army.
They ate as they rode, beside Adele was a man praying under his breathe. When she looked sideways at him he was very young, possibly sixteen at the least and twenty two at the most. He wasn't praying because he was afraid. She could see that in his eyes, the set of his half childish mouth as though it was burning to serve, to fight for his cause.
"Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners-" A man beyond him took up the prayer, and within momenta twenty riders near her were saying the rosary in unison. A priest rode up and smiled at the blue haired woman. He rode like a soldier but he had no weapons.
She thought suddenly, 'the priest and I are the only two who are unarmed." She had expected at every moment that Tala would turn back to her and try to send her away, make a rendezvous with her for when the battle was over but he didn't.
They halted at midday and sent out messengers to find Ozuma and his men. The priest said prayers and preached about justice of their cause. He told them the story of Deborah and Barak, son of Abinoam, and the 10000 who threw down the might against the enemy general.
"As we shall throw down the wickedness that comes against us. A woman's hand, a weak woman's hand, was sufficient to slay great general, to nail him to the ground where he slept. Shall we who are men, blessed do as greatly?"
The sound of men singing, far away and yet tremendous, five hundred, a thousand voices singing a chorus and now a thousand and Ozuma's men began to answer.
"Vexilla Regais prodeunt."
"The banner of the King."
Adele felt tears coming without reason, the son rising and thundering as birds flew from the woods as if they meant to carry to words to the skies. Men were full of joy, lifting their weapons in promises of loyalty to their cause. Axes and billhooks, scythe blades turned and reset on wooden poles to make spears, curved and terrible. "Fulget cruces mysterium," 'the shining mystery of the cross'.
The men from the northern territories, Ozuma's army, came rushing towards them crying, "Welcome! Welcome to our brothers!" peasants in wooden sabot and ragged clothes, their legs bound with strips of cloth.
Across the other side were long blue serge coats with broad brimmed had and equipped with hunting guns and muskets as they ran forward, opening their ranks for a cannon. Drawn by six cart horses and a cart with ammunition following. It became the centre of everything was a cannon, a cannon with its long threatening muzzle of massive iron.
"The missionary, our missionary! And here are the sermons for him to preach!" hands smacking iron cannon balls heaped in the cart, the barrels of powder, the coil of slow match and the sack of wadding. They'd captured the cannon in Jallaisis, on their march south.
"Form ranks! Form ranks! Order one hour's halt."
"They've got two prisoners," someone said. "They're sending them into Chalaret to tell them to surrender or else we'll burn it over their heads."
"Give them warning? Are we mad? Why aren't we attacking now?" A field of men in the spring sunlight with all the woods surrounding and the sky. Two thousand voices talking, laughing and praying. Men ate and drank their fill as they squatted on their haunches, grouped by company and troop with a commander. Only Adele had none, she sat slightly apart from the men she had ridden beside and finished her bread and wine. She must see to the horses, suddenly she was frightened that Tala would take her horse away and give it to a man on foot.
It was still cold enough in spite of the sun. She led their two horses up and down the field so that their legs wouldn't stiffen. As she passed near him, Tala beckoned her from where he was standing with Spencer and Ozuma. A group of men on a small mound in the field likes a dais or a grave mound. He came towards her with long impatient strides as his mind was far away from her.
"I didn't think we would fight so soon," he said. "But it's going to be now. We're marching on Chalaret in another quarter of an hour. You stay here and give me your horse. I'll send back for you when it's over. It won't be long but however long it is don move from here."
Adele was going to protest but she saw his face and stayed silent. Tala lifted down her saddlebag and gave it to her. There was nothing beyond a clean shirt and stockings and a knife for her bread and cheese. He went away without saying another word or even touching her shoulder. The green eyed woman didn't know if that was because he dared not for fear of showing emotion or because he didn't think if it and his mind were full on other things elsewhere.
'My horse is going to be killed." She thought and then suppose-suppose Tala is-couldn't allow herself to think of the word and instead say his body lying on the ground. She sat on the grass and covered her face with her hands. The boy she had ridden beside came up to her and said, "Courage friend. You're not afraid when we go into the battle."
"He had taken my horse." She said.
"Then you can hold my stirrup," he sat down by her and clapped his hand on her knee. "I'm longing for it to begin." And as he said it, the battle had already started. Shouting, men jumping to their feet, running, someone firing a shot as their commanders were shouting and roaring orders to hold steady, "Hold steady damn you!"
She ran with the boy to where he had tethered his plough horse to a bush. He clambered onto its back as if he was more used to trudging behind it and she gripped his stirrup leather. Adele couldn't see why they were running nor what was happening. The whole world shouting and ranks form, jostling me stumbling against one another and from the direction of the town other voices were shouting and hurrahing. Horsemen rode towards them, soldiers in blue uniforms and sabres glistening and muskets shooting. Men were trying to swing the Missionary with its muzzle forward and then abandoning the cannon altogether as the peasant army, Spencer's men and Ozuma's together rushed towards the republicans shouting, "Christ the King!" getting themselves between the cannon and the enemy so that it was useless to think of firing it.
Adele saw that only with the tail of her eyes a fragment of her reason. The boy was riding dragging her along that she had to run with great strides, half flying as there were horses everywhere. Many men were running like herself with a left hand gripping the stirrup and swing an axe with their right. Adele's right hand only held her saddlebag which she ought to let go and fall back before being ridden down and trampled into the ground. Ahead of her she saw Tala out far in front with Spencer and Ozuma and half a dozen others carrying a sword he must have commandeered from someone.
"Faster," she cried to the boy. "Gallop!"
"Christ the King!" the two lines, two masses of men, the greater mass of peasants, the small, ordered troop of soldiers which were more than fifty, a hundred horsemen, another hundred or two of infantry behind them. They crashed like sea rocks and the blue haired woman say men falling, jumping over a dead body; a blue uniform with a white face, a republican. The horses around were bolting, flying riderless as they screamed at the sight of a scythe blade into a man like a sheaf of corn.
"Christ the King! Ride them down!" the blues breaking, running and reeling away in panic. Men were racing for their lives on the stretched flat of their horse's long necks. Falling like Calvary where Christ was crucified. Flowers around the stone at the foot of the cross and as the first line of peasant army reached the Calvary and the old man's body, they threw themselves from their horses and knelt down. The men on foot joined them, pulling off the broad brimmed hats to kneel and pray. The whole army kneeling while torn splinters of the republicans found refuge in town.
Reforming and advancing out of the town were three men waving a white flag. Ozuma went forward to meet them with half a dozen of his own men. The boy who had remounted gripped Adele's shoulder. "We've won, comrade! We have been given victory."
They entered Chalaret as if they were going to Mass, marching in quietly without shouting, without threats or triumph. Men were going from house to house to arrest known republicans and officials. To requisition arms, food and give receipts for everything. She found Tala in a house organising that. He looked at her and said nothing then went on signing receipts, "To be presented to the authorities of the catholic army for payment."
She was afraid to meet his eyes and went to look out of the window at the market square. A man was being led across it and tied to the wheel of a cart. One of the cannon operators who was with the cannon, the Missionary, levelled his pistol and shot him in the back of the head.
"Tell him we're paying ten livres for a four pound loaf. Does he think this is Ishe? Ten livres, and I wasn't a hundred loaves from him by morning. You, go to every butcher and clear him out. Twelve livres a pound for everything, beef, pork, mutton and if anyone argues just shoot him."
There were no more executions in the square. Someone said the man who had been shot was a priest hunter, the worst in Chalaret. Adele lay down on a bench and fell asleep listening to the tallies of the bread and meat, wine and requisition horses and captured weapons.
Tala woke her at midnight and brought her up the stairs, still half asleep. He pushed her onto the bed a fitted his hand around her throat, "Why did you disobey me?"
She said nothing as the blue eyed man shook his head softly from side to side tightening his fingers.
"You're a great fool," he whispered, "suppose that you were killed?"
"And you?" she said.
He undid her coat and shirt, and put his hand on her breast. "What shall I do with you?"
Outside there was still noise in the streets, men trampling, carts, the glare of a bonfire in the square which threw a red light in the white ceiling of the room. Tala pulled off her boots and then his and laid himself beside her. "What shall I do with you?"
She pressed her forehead against his, "I shall stay with you, you cant make me leave you because I wont go."
He held her close and they were too tired to do anything. Adele had the fear that at any moment a messenger would coming bursting into the room or one of the commanders, or simply men who were looking for a place to sleep. They lay together in their clothes on the narrow uncomfortable bed. He pulled a cloak over them and she kissed him gently as if she'd found him again after a long time. His hand was under her shirt still, warm yet cold and hard against the hollow of her back.
"We're one," she thought, "this more than making love and nothing shall ever separate us."
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I know that i made the king not a really nice person and Robert wasn't a good choice of character to use but he was one of the people who i wanted to stay in royalty and all that stuff. He doesn't play that much of a role and i don't hate him as a character but i just wanted to mention him somewhere, he's an okay guy. So sorry to those who want to burn me for portraying him in an ill manner.
One more thing I'm not being rude to Christianity but to my understanding during the French revolution there was a fight about beliefs and all that stuff so there was prejudice towards religion.
ikl wings