Heretic by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780060748289
Publisher: HarperTorch
Published: 2003-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

SIR GUILLAUME HAD SENT one of the captured men-at-arms to Berat to inform the Count that Joscelyn and thirteen other men were prisoners and that ransoms needed to be negotiated. Joscelyn had reported that his uncle had been at Astarac, but Sir Guillaume assumed the old man must have returned to his castle.

Yet it seemed he had not, for four days after Thomas and Genevieve had left, a peddler came to Castillon d’Arbizon and said that the Count of Berat was sick with the fever, perhaps dying, and that he was in the infirmary of Saint Sever’s monastery. The man-at-arms sent to Berat returned the next day with the same news and added that no one in Berat possessed the authority to negotiate Joscelyn’s freedom. All that Sir Henri Courtois, the garrison commander, could do for Joscelyn was send a message to Astarac and hope that the Count was well enough to cope with the news.

“Now what do we do?” Robbie asked. He sounded aggrieved for he was eager to see the ransom’s gold. He and Joscelyn sat in the great hall. They were alone. It was night. A fire burned in the hearth.

Joscelyn said nothing.

Robbie frowned. “I could sell you on,” he suggested. That was done often enough. A man took a prisoner whose ransom would be considerable, but rather than wait for the money he would sell the prisoner to a richer man who would pay a lesser sum and then endure the long negotiations before realizing his profit.

Joscelyn nodded. “You could,” he agreed, “but you won’t make much money.”

“The heir to Berat and Lord of Béziers?” Robbie asked scornfully. “You’re worth a big ransom.”

“Béziers is a pig field,” Joscelyn said scornfully, “and the heir to Berat is worth nothing, but Berat itself is worth a fortune. A fortune.” He stared at Robbie in silence for a few heartbeats. “My uncle is a fool,” he went on, “but a very rich one. He keeps coins in his cellars. Barrel after barrel of coins, filled to the top, and two of those barrels are crammed with nothing but genoins.”

Robbie savored the thought. He imagined the money sitting in the dark, the two barrels filled with the marvellous coins of Genoa, coins made of pure gold, each tiny genoin sufficient to keep a man fed and clothed and armed for a year. Two barrels!

“But my uncle,” Joscelyn went on, “is also a mean man. He won’t spend money except on the Church. If he had a choice then he would rather that I was dead, that one of my brothers was his heir and that his coins were un-diminished. At night, sometimes, he takes a lantern down to the castle cellars and stares at his money. Just stares at it.”

“You’re telling me,” Robbie said bitterly, “that you won’t be ransomed?”

“I’m telling you,” Joscelyn said, “that so long as my uncle is the Count, then so long will I be your prisoner. But if I was the Count?”

“You?” Robbie was not sure where the conversation was going and sounded puzzled.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.