Catherine: One Love is Enough (Catherine Series Book 1) by Juliette Benzoni Page A

a Cockleshell Man. It’s time for me to join my leader. The Shell King has summoned me to Dijon. We will travel together.’ He then outlined the plan he had worked out with Mâchefer.
    They would wait till a disturbance in some distant part of the town had attracted most of the local people away, and then find some pretext for bringing old Mère Caboche out into the street, or at least making her open the door. Then, with the help of a few trusty companions, it would be child’s play to kidnap Loyse. They would hurry to a warehouse beside the river and board a boat there, which would take them up the Seine and Yonne rivers into Burgundy.
    ‘I shall need your help till then, Sara,’ Barnaby added. ‘But afterwards you will be free to return …’
    The gypsy shrugged:
    ‘I will stay with them if they want me to. It wouldn’t be a great sacrifice. I’ve had enough of Maillet-le-Loup. He has got it into his head that he wants to sleep with me now, and I have to fight him off every night. He gets more and more angry, and now he has started threatening to make me dance for Mâchefer. You know what that means …’
    Barnaby nodded, and Catherine just stopped herself doing the same. She felt a righteous anger surge up in her. She had grown very attached to this strange doctor of hers, and she realised that, for all her dark skin, Sara was beautiful enough for Mâchefer to want to add her to his harem. Slipping her hand into her friend’s, she turned a gaze on her as warm and golden as a summer day.
    ‘You will never leave us, Sara? You will come with us to Uncle Mathieu’s? Won’t she, Maman?’
    Jacquette smiled sadly. It seemed such a short while back that she had been carefree and lively. Now the plump Burgundian woman seemed to grow more transparent-looking every day. Her cheeks were losing their colour and bloom and deep lines had appeared in her face, which had been so smooth and fresh till tragedy had struck her. Her laced bodice hung loosely over a shrunken bosom.
    ‘Sara knows that wherever we are there will always be a place for her. Don’t I owe my life to her?’
    With one accord the two women, so different in every way, threw themselves into each other’s arms and wept for each other’s sorrows. Misfortune had made them akin. The solid bourgeoise felt as up-rooted as the child of the wind and great open spaces, the nomad of the world’s great travel routes whose ancestors had followed the hordes of Genghis Khan. Feminine solidarity, which can be such a powerful force when there is no question of rivalry, was movingly demonstrated by these two women. Jacquette would gladly have welcomed Sara as a sister.
    ‘That’s enough tears and pretty speeches for one day!’ said Barnaby. ‘I’m hungry. And since we are all one big family now, let’s sup as a family. I stole some cakes off Ysabeau-la-Gourmande. They are for you, my pretty,’ he added to Catherine, taking some appetising golden cakes out of his pocket. It was a long time since Catherine, who was quite as greedy as the celebrated Ysabeau, had seen any like them. She bit into one eagerly, then swiftly pressed Barnaby’s unshaven cheek with her honey-smeared lips.
    ‘Thank you, Barnaby.’
    The old fellow was so astonished by this gesture that he almost dropped Catherine. He put her down and hurried across to the dark corner where he kept his fake relics. He was heard to snort frequently …
    ‘Tomorrow,’ he said eventually, ‘they are taking the former Provost of Paris, Pierre des Essarts, to the gallows. The whole town will go to Montfaucon. That will be the moment …’
    Mâchefer’s shaggy head, without the false boils, poked round Barnaby’s door. The Cockleshell Man was busy wrapping fragments of bone and putting scraps of paper with a few gothic characters on them into little brass boxes.
    ‘Come in,’ he said. Catherine was stood beside him, fascinatedly watching him at work. It was too late to hide her. Mâchefer had seen