Read Chapter 8: The Spider's Web

The warehouse stank of fish oil and damp wool. Claude pressed himself against the splintered timber of its river-facing wall, breathing shallow, and watched the last of the evening light die on the water. The loom's shadow. Vaux had written those words with his last breath, and Claude had spent three days circling Compiègne like a man chasing his own shadow before he understood: the weavers' quarter hugged the river, and the only building with a loom frame visible through its broken shutter was this one—a forgotten storehouse for cloth that would never be sold.

He slipped through the gap where the door had rotted from its hinges. Inside, the dark was thick enough to drink. Claude waited until his eyes adjusted, then moved by memory of the building's outline from outside: pressed earth floor, beams low overhead, looms stacked against the far wall like sleeping beasts.

It wasn't the looms that mattered. It was what hung beneath them.

He crouched and ran his hand along the underside of the nearest frame until his fingers caught the edge of a oilcloth bundle, tied with twine. He cut the binding with his belt knife and unrolled the cloth. Letters. Dozens of them, folded tight, sealed with the red wax of the French dauphin's household. His pulse quickened as he lifted the first one toward the faint light leaking through the shutter.

*"...the road from Senlis remains open. Supply wagons will move at night, six leagues per hour, carrying grain and saltpeter to the siege lines before Orléans..."*

Saltpeter. Gunpowder. Claude's hands shook. He knew the Chancellor would trade his right arm for this. He set the letter aside, pulled out another, another—supply routes, troop movements, the names of quartermasters who had turned coat and secretly provisioned the Armagnac cause.

He had to copy them. All of them.

Time moved in stolen breaths. Claude worked by touch, flattening each letter against his knee and transcribing the essentials onto the wax tablets he carried in his scrip. Names. Dates. Routes. His fingers cramped. Sweat slid down his spine despite the autumn chill off the river. Beyond the warehouse walls, Compiègne settled into its evening quiet—shutters banged closed, a dog barked once and fell silent.

He was on the twelfth letter when he heard it. A footstep. Soft, deliberate, not the scuff of a rat. Claude froze, the letter still open in his hands. The footstep came again, closer, from the direction of the door.

He had planned for this. A small tin of lamp oil sat at his feet, and beside it a striker.

He did not hesitate. He tipped the oil across the bundle of letters, struck the flint, and threw the whole burning mass toward the far corner of the warehouse where the oldest, dustiest cloth was stacked. The flames caught with a hungry whoosh, and in the sudden orange light, Claude saw two men—not soldiers, but hard-faced men in plain wool tunics, knives drawn.

The Spider's agents. He had no doubt.

Claude ran. Not toward the door—that was theirs. He ran deeper into the warehouse, leaping over stacked bolts of cloth, heading for a second opening he had glimpsed from the river side, a loading hatch that faced the water. The fire crackled behind him, smoke beginning to thread through the rafters.

His foot caught a coil of rope. He went down hard, his scrip flying, wax tablets scattering across the floor. The leather-wrapped bag that held Vaux's list and his final note dug into his boot. He scrambled up, lungs burning, and heard one of the men shout: "He's by the hatch!"

Claude threw his shoulder against the wooden hatch. It did not move. Locked from the outside. He turned, knife out, back to the wall. The two agents had spread out, blocking his path to the door. The fire had caught a stack of finished cloth now, and smoke rolled across the ceiling in black waves.

The taller agent smiled. "The provost will want to meet you, little monk."

Claude lunged—not at the man, but at the burning cloth. He grabbed a length of blazing fabric with his sleeve-wrapped hand and hurled it at the speaker. The man cursed and jumped back, and for one breath Claude saw the path.

A third figure appeared in the doorway, outlined against the fire. Tall, hooded, face hidden behind a grey mask of stiffened leather. For a heartbeat Claude thought it was her—Marguerite, the Spider, come to finish him herself.

But the figure did not move like a woman. The movement was broader, the stance heavier. The masked figure raised one hand, and in it was a crossbow, loaded and level.

The Spider's agents turned at the sound of the bolt clicking into place.

"Leave him," the masked figure said. The voice was low, distorted by the mask, but carried authority like a whip crack. "The fire spreads. It will bring the watch in minutes."

The tall agent spat. "She wants him alive."

"She wants him gone." The crossbow did not waver. "You will be gone first, if you argue."

A long, burning moment. The air grew hot enough to hurt. Then the tall agent cursed again, grabbed his companion's arm, and the two of them fled through the door into the night.

The masked figure lowered the crossbow and turned to Claude. Through the holes in the mask, eyes glinted—grey, perhaps, or blue. Impossible to tell in the firelight.

"Get out of Compiègne," the figure said. "Tonight. The Spider knows you are here. She knows your face. She knows your name, Clerk."

The word landed like a blow. Clerk. Not brother, not monk. Clerk—his old title from the Burgundian chancery.

Claude found his voice. "Who are you? Why help me?"

The masked figure reached into its cloak and tossed something at Claude's feet. A wax tablet, small and square. Claude bent and picked it up. On it, scratched in a woman's hand, was a single word:

*Marguerite.*

"You think you understand the web you are in," the figure said. "You do not. You are not the first thread she has cut, and you will not be the last. But your sister—" The voice paused, and something almost like pity crept into it. "Your sister is not the Spider."

The figure was gone before Claude could speak. Through the open door he heard the distant clang of the watch bell. The fire had taken hold of the warehouse roof now, and sparks spiraled into the black sky.

Claude shoved the wax tablet into his scrip, gathered what tablets he could find, and fled into the night with Vaux's stolen letters burning brighter in his memory than the flames behind him.