Murderous Procession by Ariana Franklin

Author:Ariana Franklin [Franklin, Ariana]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780425238868
Google: boqnlEp8_ucC
Amazon: B0054U5G7I
Publisher: Berkley Trade
Published: 2010-04-19T22:00:00+00:00

Nine

BOTH COWSHED AND COTTAGE were put to the flame. “Like you fucking Cathars when we get where we’re going,” the leader of their captors assured them.

“We are not Cathars,” Adelia told him, struggling for calm, aware that she and Boggart had their hair bound up like any Cathar women and were wearing the black robes Aelith had lent them.

If she was distancing herself from Ermengarde, she was sorry, but so be it; she was only telling the truth, and there were the others to think of.

She said: “We are the servants of King Henry Plantagenet, and he’ll be mightily displeased if we’re harmed.”

“You’re fucking Cathars, that’s what you are,” he’d said, and spat. “And where we’re going ain’t Plantagenet land.”

At that point there’d been no sign of Mansur nor Ulf nor Rankin, and she was in terror in case they’d been killed. Then some more men came up the hill, and from their midst she heard the multilingual oaths of Mansur’s Arabic, Rankin’s Gaelic, and the good fenland English of Ulf—the latter cursing his captors and demanding in God’s name that his wooden cross be returned to him.

The captives’ hands were bound with ropes, each of which was tied to a saddle of a captor’s mule.

It was difficult to tell how many soldiers there had been during the assault because their leader immediately sent some of them off to pursue Aelith. Of the seven who were left when the others rode away, the torchlight showed rough, country faces and tunics bearing what looked like an ecclesiastical blazon. They addressed their leader, who, like them, spoke with a strong Occitan accent as Arnaud.

Adelia asked again and again where they were to be taken and why, but received no more reply than did Ulf’s threats that Henry II would spill their captors’ guts when they got there—the men didn’t understand them anyway

Arnaud gave a signal, the ropes around the prisoners’ hands tightened as the mules moved forward, and the march began.

The mountains were too rough even for mules to go at anything except walking pace, but every pull on the rope sent pain through Adelia’s broken collarbone. Also, she’d lost a shoe in the struggle and her right foot was being pierced by thorns.

An occasional reassuring whiff told her that Ward was sticking, unnoticed, to her heels. Yet who was there to follow the scent? Rowley had gone to Carcassonne.

“Are we going to Carcassonne?” she asked.

Nobody answered her; Arnaud had ordered silence.

Betrayed. Somebody had told the authorities where Ermengarde and Aelith were staying. It could have been anybody, a peasant looking for reward, a Cathar hater. And he or she had entangled the rest of them in the betrayal.

Whoever the mercenaries were, they knew these mountains well; they followed wide tracks mostly, but now and then diverged from them so that the prisoners’ legs were torn by prickly brush that sent up the smell of thyme and fennel as they went.

The sound of hoofbeats announced the arrival of the men who’d gone hunting the escapee.

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