Читать книгу A Walk with Love and Death - Hans Koning - Страница 14

A week later on a rainy morning I was drying myself out in an inn at Abbéville, sitting in my stockings and drinking beer when that same soldier in the greenish quilted coat came shuffling in.

He was very sharp: he took a seat right near the door, with his back toward the wall, and he looked around carefully before he sat down, but he didn’t recognize me. I had waited two days for him in Senlis before giving up. I had walked north for five days through Ile de France and followed the Somme River into Picardy; the weather had broken and rain kept coming down in hard spring showers; three nights I had slept in the open in abandoned ruins. No wonder the soldier didn’t recognize me from the bathed and brushed gentleman who had given him a letter to take to Dammartin.

He was actually a nasty-looking fellow with a foxy yellow face, but I didn’t think he had played me a trick. “My courier!” I shouted, extremely pleased, and jumped up with a smile at him. He stared at me, then walked out of the inn. There was no time to put my boots back on; I ran after him in my stockings. When I came outside he was just mounting his horse. I slithered in the mud. I was bewildered; for a wild moment I imagined that he must have murdered Claudia to run away like that. I picked up a stone and threw it as hard as I could.

My throw met with unexpected success: I hit him square on the back of his head and he fell off his horse. I was on him before he stirred and got hold of his right arm; the left one was pinned behind his back. When he opened his eyes I had my knife out.

He looked at me without uttering a sound; then he made a gesture with his chin toward his breast. I put my knee on his arm and opened his moldy coat. Wound several times around his middle was a blue silk scarf. The scarf was so shiny, the man’s blouse so filthy, that just by looking at the two any judge would have hanged him for a thief. “Did the lady give you that for me?” I asked, and he nodded.

He carried a long knife in a sheath at his belt. I grabbed hold of it and jumped away from him, facing him with the two knives. Short of killing him on the spot with my own knife I didn’t quite see what else I could have done; luckily for me he wasn’t too much of a soldier. He stood up, unwound the scarf, tossed it to me without any expression on his face, and walked toward his horse which was grazing near the ditch.

I went back inside with the scarf. I was covered with mud but highly pleased with myself. I put it around my neck; one end almost touched the ground. Knights travel like that, wearing the scarves of their ladies; and blue is the color of fidelity.

Claudia was my lady now, and my journey would be in her honor. She couldn’t have a lover on foot, I decided. I had to buy a horse, even if I starved it.