Bond of Blood (42 page)

Stephen of Blois was on his feet and over the rail in an instant, his face flaming with shame. In another instant the recall was sounding from every herald's trumpet, and the noise of the fighting died down slowly. The king was on horseback now, as pale with rage as he had been red with shame before.

"Where, Hereford? Where? If there is one alive I will have the author of this outrage out of him if I must choke it out with my bare hands."

Even to Hereford, boiling with anger and grief, Stephen's sincerity was patently obvious. He was a weak man, often a foolish one, but generous and forgiving to a fault and genuinely aghast at the breach of the knightly code which had taken place. Moreover Stephen liked Lord Radnor personally in spite of their political differences. With a generosity seldom found in human relationships, the king admired in his subject many of the qualities he lacked himself.

The more knowing eyes of the court did not follow the king; they were fixed upon the queen. At Hereford's announcement Maud had first turned pale and then almost purple with fury. Now she was pale again, her eyes fixed on the rail before her, seeking, seeking a way to squirm out of this accusation. She had no illusions about Hereford's ability to squeeze information out of her adherents; right now he could probably squeeze it out of a stone, and there was no way in which, without exposing herself further, she could block him.

How to twist the information to save herself and damn Pembroke was her problem. Tears of frustration rose to her eyes. How, knowing what she did, could she have been so stupid as to allow herself to become embroiled with that man? No matter how tempting the proposals Pembroke had made, she should have known better. In her wildest dreams, Maud would never have guessed that he could dare to arrange for foot soldiers to attack a knight at a tourney—a royal tourney.

By the time Stephen reached the scene, two of Chester's men were engaged in restraining and calming Beaufort. Most of Hereford's had disappeared with those assassins who could still talk, and the remainder were making sure that those who were not worth taking prisoner would not talk at all to anyone. The king dismounted and flung himself unarmed into the group of men, seeking for one who could tell him who had betrayed him, but neither Hereford nor Chester cared what Stephen did.

Hereford was beside himself. "How will I tell his wife?" he wept. "Merciful God, she will go mad."

"His father," Chester groaned in reply. "Gaunt's only son. How can I explain that his heir is dead and I was there and did nothing? If he tears me apart, I will not blame him."

"What would I not give to have him alive!" Hereford cried.

"Well, I am alive." Radnor's voice, considerably muffled and rather breathless but expressing irritation, came from the bleeding mound of men. "If you would get the rest of these bodies off me instead of indulging yourselves with useless lamentations I would better appreciate your display of affection."

"Praise God, a miracle," Hereford breathed, down on his knees in the slimy mixture of entrails, torn grass and earth, and horses' and men's blood.

"Gently, gently," Radnor gasped as Hereford pulled at him violently. "I think some of my ribs are gone, and there's a pike pinning my sword arm to the ground."

Once he was free, Radnor stubbornly rejected every offer of hospitality and attention from the king, Hereford, Chester, Gloucester, and everyone else. He insisted, more and more weakly, upon being carried home, until Hereford and Chester, afraid to excite him any more and terrified that he would bleed to death because they could not tell how badly he was wounded, acceded to his wishes. Away from the crowd of good Samaritans, Radnor seemed to recover a good deal of his strength.

"You have them, knights and foot soldiers, safe for me, Hereford?" His voice was low and speaking plainly caused him pain, but his eyes were clear and triumphant.

"Yes, yes—safe from the king and safe from Oxford, but be quiet."

"I am not so bad, I only wanted to be free of all those others and so pretended to fail. Can we go no faster? My poor Leah will be frantic, thinking me dead."

"She will soon recover. You cannot afford to be banged and jolted over these ruts. I dare not increase the pace lest you be dead in earnest. It is a miracle that you are alive."

"Nonsense! It is no miracle at all—"

The expression in the blue eyes that Hereford turned upon his friend stopped Radnor for a moment. "I tell you," the young earl said, "that if it was no miracle of God's, I do not desire to know how you escaped. No mortal man could live in such case, and I— How could you save yourself? Where were you when they fell on you?"

"Do not make me laugh, Hereford, it hurts me. If you would but think! I was half under and half inside the horse. Surely you do not think this was the first time I ever had a horse broached in battle. It is an old trick. Have you never played it yourself?"

It was just as well that they hit a particularly bad spot in the road at that point so that Radnor shut his eyes and gritted his teeth. He was spared the mingled expression of love and fear in Hereford's face; the desire to believe the explanation mixed with a brief terror that it was not true. The road grew worse and Radnor forgot Hereford's question, concentrating on maintaining his customary stoical attitude towards physical discomfort.

Mercifully Leah had lost sight of her husband soon after the melee began. She was very nervous, but William of Gloucester, who had found a position beside her, so irritated her by his assiduous attentions that the edge was taken from her fear. When Hereford galloped up to fling his distraught accusation at Stephen, however, Lord William had called to Giles, showing for an instant the steel of his will behind the softness of his face.

"Take your mistress home. That is my command and you may disregard anything she says. Use force if you must—the blame will be mine. My men will go with you. We will bring … him … as soon as possible."

He had gone off immediately, and Giles faced his mistress. Whether it was the note of command in Lord William's voice to which she responded automatically, or shock, or indifference, Giles could not decide, but she docilely left the field with him. Not only that, but once at home she did things that left him, as he guarded her from the doorway, agape with surprise.

First she had stripped the big bed and remade it with clean sheets—clean sheets for a dead man. She had made the bed with her own hands, rejecting offers of help from her maids in a courteous, indifferent tone of voice. Then she had ordered water to be heated for washing—why warm water to wash a corpse? Certainly, Giles thought, tears of grief rising to his old eyes, Lord Radnor would no longer feel the cold.

Ignoring Giles’s presence completely, she had changed her dove grey and blue clothing for a soft wool robe of greyish green and occupied herself with brushing and rebraiding her hair. Even now, when the sounds of the group bringing Radnor home were clear in the courtyard, she did not run to the window or to the stairs but stood calmly in the center of the room, looking about as if she were considering what household task to embark upon next. The only sign she gave that she was not deaf to the heavy treads on the stairs was a tremulous sigh.

"Even dead he shall lie nowhere but in his marriage bed," Leah was thinking, her eyes surveying the room and seeing that all was in its accustomed place. "Even dead he shall lie nowhere but in his marriage bed. Even dead—" Not another thought had crossed her mind in the entire period between seeing Hereford accuse the king of murder and this moment.

The task of conveying a man of Radnor's size and weight, who could not be overly bent or jostled, up a steep flight of stairs was no light one, but his retainers nearly trampled each other down for the privilege, every man being sure that he alone would be sufficiently careful and sufficiently gentle. Their excitement was so great that none had a thought to spare for Leah, and it was only Giles, seeing their care in handling Radnor, who gave her a few seconds' warning by his cry.

"He is alive!"

Then she ran to the antechamber to be brought up short by horror. There was not one spot from the helm to the shoes that was not dyed the sickening reddish brown of dried blood. Irrationally in that moment she thought, not of her husband, only that she would always hate Giles for awakening the hope that opened her dead emotions to pain. No man could bleed like that and live, not even Cain. She did not think he was conscious, although his eyes were open, and did not speak to him.

"Put him on the bed." The covers were already drawn back and now she swept the pillows to the floor so that he might lie flat. "Call the armorer—that mail must be cut off."

"No!"

Leah whirled to look at her husband who, stimulated by the fear that his precious mail shirt would be spoiled, had found the strength to protest even after the agony of that trip upstairs.

"Oh my love, oh my darling," she whispered, "but you bleed—"

The worst of the pain had passed again, and Radnor's lips quivered in an attempt to smile. "Most of it is the horse's—and other men's."

The words unstuck her brain as hope had unfrozen her heart; she began to think and to function once more. It had to be as he said, of course. If it were he who bled, it would have been the bright, wet red she would have seen. Now tears stung her eyes and she kissed the filthy face very, very gently, once on the cheek and once on the lips before she turned her energies and resources completely to the task of keeping her lord alive.

The worst agony, the removal of the mail shirt, was fortunately over the soonest. When that was done and the extent of Radnor's injuries could be ascertained, Chester and Hereford, who had been waiting in anxious attendance, sighed with relief and left to undertake the pressing business of hiding their prisoners even more securely and squeezing information out of them. Unless the wounds putrefied or he was seized by the mysterious and greatly feared stiffening sickness, the hurts he had would do him no great harm.

Leah was glad to be rid of them. Their anxious questions distracted her from her single-minded concentration on treating the wounds. What she wanted and needed were silent, efficient helpers like Giles and Sir Harry who would do her bidding without asking why. She cut off Cain's undergarments and, after a little consideration, slit his chausses around the ankles and left his feet alone. The tear at his waist and the slash above his left knee were already clotted. Aside from washing the area gently, Leah did not disturb the work of nature, but the pike-thrust in his right arm was more serious. This was still bleeding sluggishly and would need to be sewn. Several leeches had been called, but Leah could not bear the way her husband winced under their rough ministrations and she dismissed them in a fury. Now she was a little sorry. How she wished for her mother! Edwina had treated hundreds of wounds, many worse than Cain's, and although Leah had watched attentively she had no practical experience and was terrified of hurting him unnecessarily.

"Dear love," she said gently. Cain opened his eyes and turned his head slightly towards her. "I must sew up your arm. I—it will hurt you."

"Yes, no doubt." His voice was very normal except for its breathless quality, and his calm communicated itself to her. "Do not look so worried. I have lived through much worse. A little pain or a little weakness from blood-letting will do me no harm."

"Shall I call back the leech? Will you trust me to do it?"

"Whichever is easiest for you. So long as it be quickly done it makes no difference to me."

Radnor set his jaw and clenched his left hand on the bedclothes. He had endured this too often to fear it except that the pain might make him gasp and that would wake the nearly unendurable agony in his chest. Giles grasped his right wrist firmly so that he could not jerk his arm when the needle went in, and an elderly woman servant stood by to cut and tie thread. Sir Harry stood ready too—to hold his lord down, if need be, or to give him wine or aqua vit if he seemed to be failing. Leah, who had directed the arrangement, looked briefly at her hands to be sure that they were steady.

She planned to use a special technique her mother had showed her because it would not cause the scar to pucker, a factor of importance not for appearance but for flexibility of the arm after healing. A loop was left at the end of the thread which Leah caught with the tip of her fingernail. After she pushed the needle through the lips of the wound, she slid it through the loop and knotted the thread over on itself. The maid cut the thread and handed her a second needle and thread with loop prepared. While Leah set the second stitch, the maid tied another loop and the process could be repeated. This style of sewing could not be used on body wounds or anywhere that pressure would be exerted on the stitches, because they were easily pulled loose; for an arm wound, however, it would do perfectly.

That over, Leah covered her husband tenderly and let him alone. She had sense enough not to ask how he felt or what she could do to make him comfortable. Nothing could make him comfortable, and he was perfectly capable of asking for anything he wanted—she hoped. He lay with closed eyes, taking fast shallow breaths, which put the least strain on his broken ribs. About those, Leah could do nothing. If he had been unconscious, she would have bound him to prevent his breathing too deeply or driving the broken ends through his lungs by rolling over. As it was, he was best left in peace and handled as little as possible.

None of Cain's visible hurts was serious, although the ribs would keep him from any strenuous activity for several weeks, and only one thing caused Leah any anxiety. This was the simple fact that her husband was so quiet. Tears of pain had sparkled on his cheeks after she had stitched his arm, but not a groan nor a complaint had been wrung from him. Leah had no previous experience with a man who had been made ashamed to express physical anguish. Her father and his cohorts, like most other men, screamed for a splinter, bellowed for a hangover or a stomach ache, and had to be restrained from rolling about in agony when their wounds were dressed.