That morning, Reyn wakes up with a hangover and an empty feeling in the pit of his stomach. Ada has been missing for over a month and still has no sign of life. Day after day, the young seneschal's hatred for the count of Provence continues to grow.
Barral of Baux fears that his friend will lose his fiefs, his freedom, and probably his life in a conflict with the Capetian. Therefore, a thousand times, he warned Reyn that attacking the king's brother was a crime of lèse-majesté.
The king could choose to have him quartered by four horses, despite all services rendered in the Holy Land.
Barral also objects that sweet Ada wouldn't want such a sacrifice.
Alas, Reyn doesn't care for sound advice and frequently visits taverns where he drinks more and more. But the slim hope of finding his Ada alive keeps him from gutting the Capetian. And he clings like a poor shipwrecked man to the idea that his love still breathes.
Somewhere!
In a very distant place, perhaps inaccessible!
Unfortunately, just that morning, a macabre discovery will cruelly shatter the young man's last hopes and those of the king's brother.
Waves carried a corpse to the beach, where Reyn and Barral had long searched for Ada's tracks. Waters have left only a few shreds of clothing on the drowned woman. Her neck seems broken, and her face is already in a state of putrefaction. Her skin is of an ugly greenish hue, even blackish for the parts most exposed to the air.
These are the pitiful remains of a woman who may have been gorgeous.
The body is thin and shows the bite marks of hungry marine predators. The abdomen is abnormally swollen, a sign of advanced decomposition. The dead woman's hair has kept a beautiful golden color, but the back of her skull is bare due to the rubbing on the deep seabed. The epidermis hangs in shreds; fingernails and toenails have mostly fallen off.
We notice around the neck, or rather what remains of it, a flap of silk with some precious stones attached.
The smell around the dead woman is unbearable.
The count of Provence had his share of cadavers during the expedition in Egypt. Warned of the awful find, he took an anxious eye on the corpse and recognized the scarf offered to Ada of Chasseney. He sadly notes that there's not much else to identify except the magnificent mane of the young woman.
The Capetian commands that the body be placed in the chapel surrounded by vineyards and gardens, then he kneels and prays fervently.
Reyn of Chasseney has been told that his wife has just been found dead and that she lies in this wind-battered chapel on Marseille's highest cliffs.
Reyn and Barral ruthlessly spurred their horses.
When the young seneschal violently opens the modest rough wooden doors, he's not so drunk despite his wobbly gait.
The count is still busy chanting his prayers.
A corpse is supposed to be there, under a large shroud hastily laid. Slowly, Reyn lifts the mortuary cloth, but he sees nothing of Ada on this pitiful carcass. Then, the look almost mad, he challenges the Capetian with a stern voice:
"What right do you have to claim that it's her?"
"The scarf around her neck was a gift from me, just like the ermine-lined cloak," the count roars, exasperated by so much arrogance from an inferior.
And he adds with a disgusting smile:
"She loved my presents! She wore them until her last breath."
The king's brother would like to hurt the little Champagne lord, to detail that night in Egypt where he had possessed Ada several times during her sleep and enjoyed an intense voluptuousness. He would like to spit in his face the obsessive desire to start his misdeeds again if it was possible.
That's what he's praying for today and the salvation of his tortured soul.
"Reyn!"
In vain, Barral tried to stop his friend's attack.
The count receives a powerful punch in the gums, followed very quickly by a second one, then a tornado of blows.
And the royal scion collapses.
Barral observed the fight, surprised by the Capetian's ability to resist Reyn's impressive musculature. The lord of Baux is relieved that the swords didn't clash mortally and that the adversaries prefer to face each other with bare hands.
The battle was bitter and resounding.
Half satisfied, Reyn contemplates the Capetian groaning on the ground and thinks of finishing him once and for all.
He sends the last punch hoping to fracture the scoundrel's jaw, who answers with a long squeal of pain.
Some sergeants suddenly entered the chapel, alerted by the noise.
But Reyn has a macabre duty to accomplish.
"I'm leaving your service! And I'm taking my wife back to Champagne," he announced in a broken voice, under the threatening eye of the sergeants waiting for an order from their master.
The young man needs all his courage to remove from the corpse the remains of the scarf decorated with precious stones and throw it on the count's bloody face.
Very badly in state and undoubtedly respectful of funerals, the Capetian lets leave the Champenois free.
Still trembling from witnessing such fury in his chapel, the priest quickly wrapped the dead woman, not without putting in the shroud a few large stems of mint with a powerful aroma and some walnut, known to favor the conservation of bodies.
Reyn will refuse any other hazardous manipulations to preserve the deceased for a long journey to Champagne.
***
YOU ARE READING
The Wolf and the Snake (English version)
Historical FictionIn 1099, a mysterious child of noble origin was taken in by Jews who had fled the Crusaders' arrival in front of Jerusalem. Years later, Ada, the descendant of this child, travels through Palestine with her father. He's a merchant and knows medicin...
