Colder than the rain pouring down on her was the terror of being torn
from the few friends she had, to be used for pleasure by a man who could
not even speak to her. She put her hands to her face and started to sob
heavily.
A burst of loud laughter from John made her look up. At first she
thought he was laughing at her tears, but he was pointing at Cassio's
dangling body. Still chuckling, he said something to Friar Mathieu.
"He says that man used to be the stud bull hereabouts. Now he is dead
beef."
Rachel shook her head. "He has no pity for Cassio--nor for me." Filled
with revulsion, she thought she would rather die than spend the rest of
her life with that brute.
Friar Mathieu looked off into the distance. "That is how it is with the
Tartars."
Rachel shuddered. To John, Cassio was just a bundle of rags to be
laughed at, and she was a plaything to be dragged through the world.
"Please help me get away," she begged Friar Mathieu. "I think I will
kill myself if I have to stay with him."
Friar Mathieu closed his eyes in pain. "Do not talk that way, my child.
Every person's life belongs to God."
Another voice boomed down at them from above, speaking a language Rachel
had heard before but did not know. The sour-faced man with the big nose
peered at them out of a cavernous hood. The French cardinal. He towered
over them on a great black horse. Rachel shuddered at the sight of him.
"Pardonnez-moi, votr'Eminence," said Friar Mathieu calmly. He went on,
in what must have been French, to say something which she supposed from
his gestures was about John and her.
The cardinal's reply seemed as loud as thunder. He pointed at Rachel,
and she cringed away. What was he saying, that she belonged to John?
Feeling hopeless, Rachel stood weeping silently while the priest and the
cardinal argued what was to become of her in a language she did not
understand.
_Has God abandoned me because I have sinned?_
She looked at Tilia's house, at the horrid sight of the hanged man above
the door, cries of women barely audible over the rumble of thunder and
the pounding of rain on the pavement. She saw men carrying boxes and
bundles of cloth out the front door and realized that they were
ransacking the place.
Cold horror swept her as she realized she was going to lose everything.
Everything she had earned by her shame was in a chest in Tilia's room.
Friar Mathieu cried out something in French. In the midst of her misery,
Rachel was shocked to see a beggar-priest publicly chastising a
cardinal.
The cardinal stared at the friar, seemingly also shocked. He blinked as
lightning flashed overhead.