Girl In A Red Tunic (37 page)

     But whatever scene she was envisaging was never to be revealed. For just then, seizing the chance while the knife blade wavered and perhaps finally driven over the edge by the thought of accepting this desperate, driven man as his uncle, Leofgar acted.

     It was only to be expected, for Leofgar had suffered the most. He had seen his wife and his precious son traumatised by the villain that this man had sent to disturb their happiness. He had been forced to flee his home and seek the help of the Hawkenlye community; had been pursued there too and driven to hide himself away like an outcast.

     He had, for the past interminable time, been forced to kneel in the dirt with a dagger at his throat.

     He launched himself up off the floor as if his knees were springs and, spinning round as he rose, hurled himself on Arthur. At the same moment Josse leapt up from the bench and grabbed Sirida, who, the instant that Leofgar moved, had shot out her hand towards some object hidden on a shelf set high under the hut’s roof. She could not be allowed to grasp what she sought, Josse thought wildly, for it just might be a tool of magic and they had quite enough to contend with already  ...

     Leofgar and Arthur were struggling, Leofgar’s hand tight around Arthur’s right wrist, trying to twist it and squeeze it so that he dropped his knife. But Arthur had recovered swiftly from the shock of the attack and was resisting; suddenly he brought up his knee and caught Leofgar in the groin. With a groan, Leofgar doubled up and Arthur hit him hard with his left fist, knocking him back and to the side.

     Furious grey eyes on his adversary, Leofgar glared up at him with murder in his face. ‘You are no Warin,’ he gasped, contempt like poison in his voice, ‘and there is no letter from my grandfather stating otherwise. You’re a bastard, just as they—’

     With a howl of rage Arthur threw himself on Leofgar. But some precious instinct of preservation came to Leofgar’s aid and at the last possible instant he spun himself round, twisting out of the way, and Arthur’s momentum carried him on into the space where Leofgar had just been.

     He fell heavily.

     There was an instant’s silence. Then he gave a great cry and, rolling on to his side, put both hands to his chest.

     The handle of his own knife was sticking out from between his ribs.

     Sirida wriggled out of Josse’s arms and fell to her knees over her son, the Abbess crouching beside her. Arthur’s eyes seemed to roll up in his head and he fell quiet; Sirida unfastened his tunic and undershirt to reveal the knife and the wound.

     ‘It has not penetrated as deep as I feared,’ the Abbess said, ‘look, Sirida; the blade has gone in at an angle.’

     Sirida had her hand on the knife handle. ‘I will pull it out,’ she said.

     ‘
No!
’ Hastily Josse dropped down beside them. ‘No, leave it where it is, for I have seen men pull out the weapons that have wounded them and thereby release the fatal flow of blood that the blade holds back.’ Meeting the Abbess’s eyes, he said, ‘My lady, we must get him to Hawkenlye. We will put him up on the mare, with your leave, for she has the gentlest gait. You may ride with me on my horse, if you will.’

     She was nodding her agreement, already hurrying to get up. ‘Yes. Leofgar, are you fit to ride?’

     ‘I am.’ Leofgar spoke stiffly.

     ‘Go and collect your horses,’ the Abbess ordered. ‘Sir Josse, if you and Sirida will bear Arthur out of the hut, I will fetch Honey. But we must be swift and not waste a moment, for Arthur—’

     She did not finish her sentence – in truth, there was no need to do so – but, lifting her wide skirts, ran outside and across the open space to the corral. Sirida padded Arthur’s wound as best she could – she used some green mossy stuff from a wooden box on one of the shelves in the hut, fastening it in place with lengths of thin, grubby linen – and they got him outside and on to the mare. Leofgar returned with his horse and Horace and helped the Abbess on to the big horse’s broad back, where Josse got up behind her.

     Sirida stood looking up at them.

     ‘Will you not come with us?’ the Abbess asked her gently. ‘We will care for him to the best of our ability, you have my word. But do you not wish to be with him?’

     Sirida’s eyes were on her son as slowly she shook her head. ‘No, Helewise. I do not leave my hut any more. The source of what strength remains to me is here.’ She bowed her head. ‘Were I to leave, I would not get very far.’ She lifted her chin and gave a brave smile. ‘I have not left this place for twenty years.’

     Leofgar had hold of the mare’s reins but he was finding her hard to control; she sensed the burden on her back and must have been disturbed by the fact that Arthur, barely able to sit in the saddle, was clearly not in control. ‘We must go, Mother!’ Leofgar said urgently. ‘The mare smells the blood and she is uneasy. It will be better if I can get her moving.’

     ‘Yes, of course,’ the Abbess said. ‘Sir Josse?’ She half-turned to him. ‘Let us be on our way.’ Josse clicked his tongue to Horace and the horse set off down the track. As they left the glade, Leofgar riding ahead, the Abbess turned from her seat in front of Josse and looked back. She called, ‘Goodbye, Sirida.’

     The response came softly on the breeze that had come up with the dawn. ‘Farewell, Helewise.’ And, like a whisper that might or might not have been spoken, ‘You
will
find that letter  ...’

     In silence they set off along the track that would lead them to Hawkenlye.

They took Arthur straight to the infirmary. Sister Euphemia examined the knife wound and complimented whoever had had the wits to leave the blade in place. Josse would have modestly kept quiet but the Abbess was having none of it: ‘That was Sir Josse,’ she said.

     The infirmarer gave him a glance. ‘Old soldier,’ she remarked. ‘Maybe you should give me some lessons, not that we get many blade wounds here. Thank God,’ she added under her breath, for she had just extracted the knife and even as she spoke was pushing wadded lint into the wound to stop the blood.

     ‘Do you need us, Sister?’ the Abbess asked her.

     ‘No, my lady. I can manage here. The wound is long but not too deep and, provided I can stem the flow of blood, he’ll not die of it.’ Without looking up she said, ‘I’ll send word when he recovers his senses.’

     ‘Yes, please do. Thank you.’ Then the Abbess turned to Josse and said, ‘Sir Josse, let us go outside and find my son. There is something I must do.’

     Bowing his agreement, he followed her out of the infirmary. She beckoned to Leofgar, waiting outside, and in silence led them across the cloister and along to her room. She opened the door – someone had kept the brazier stoked and the heat was like a blessing – and went round the table to sit down in her chair.

     Then, looking at them both with a strange excitement in her eyes, she said, ‘I know where it is.’

     ‘What?’ Josse and Leofgar said together.

     ‘Benedict Warin’s proof.’ So eager that the words raced out of her, she said, ‘Benedict told Sirida that he would hide the document in his table and she told Arthur, who sent Walter Bell to the Old Manor. Walter looked but presumably could not find the hiding place.’

     ‘Neither could Arthur and neither could I,’ Josse agreed. ‘De Gifford and I searched every inch and came up with nothing.’

     Now the Abbess was smiling. ‘That was because,’ she said, ‘it was the wrong table.’ Patting the wide oak surface in front of her, she said, ‘
This
is Benedict Warin’s table. Benedict left it for Ivo’s use when he moved from the Old Manor to his new home, shortly before Ivo and I were wed. It became Ivo’s possession permanently after Benedict died, although in truth I had more use of it than ever did Ivo.’ She looked down fondly at the table and added softly, ‘I became rather attached to it, and it was the only item from my home that I brought here to Hawkenlye with me.’

     But neither Josse nor Leofgar were giving her their full attention; at her first words, both had shot forward to start examining the table, feeling over its surface, underneath it, up and down its stout legs. ‘Where’s the hiding place?’ Leofgar demanded. ‘
Where is it?
’

     Josse, his hands flat on the table top as he ran his fingers over the smooth wood, was watching the Abbess. Frowning, she murmured, ‘I am not sure ...’ Then she knelt down and her head disappeared under the table.

     Suddenly she exclaimed, ‘Yes! I do believe ...’ Grunting with effort, her voice coming from under the table and strangely muffled, she said, ‘Help me, Leofgar, the catch is stiff,’ and he too knelt down so that only his rump and legs were visible. There was a grating sound, then suddenly Leofgar shot backwards and sat down heavily.

     The Abbess straightened up. In her hands was a small wooden box, dusty and dirty. ‘It was fixed to the central support of the frame,’ she panted. ‘You would never have found it unless you knew where to look.’

     ‘And even then it did not come away without brute force,’ Leofgar added. Getting up, he came to stand beside Josse. Then, voicing the question that Josse burned to ask, he said, ‘Is there anything in it?’

     The Abbess had raised the lid, whose hinges gave a screech of protest. As Josse watched her face, she put her hand inside and extracted a piece of parchment, rolled up tightly and bound with frayed, faded ribbon.

     She put the box down and, resting the parchment on the table, gently began to unroll it. There were a few lines written in brownish ink in what Josse thought was a cleric’s hand; silently the Abbess read through them, moving her lips as she digested the words.

     Then slowly she raised her head and looked at her son. ‘Benedict Warin was not his father,’ she breathed. Then, joy spreading over her face, ‘Oh, dear God, but I am so relieved!’

     Leofgar was picking up the parchment. But Josse, still watching the Abbess, said softly, ‘Why such relief, my lady? It is not that rare for a man with a barren wife to lie with another woman and beget a child on her.’

     But she shook her head. ‘No, I know that. It is not the reason for my reaction.’ She paused as if weighing her words. Leofgar, Josse thought, casting a glance at the young man, was too enthralled in his inspection of the parchment to listen. Then the Abbess said, ‘Sir Josse, I loved my father-in-law. I knew him to be flawed, for he was in truth a womaniser. But had he known that Sirida had borne his child and yet done nothing to help her, that I should have found hard to forgive.’

     ‘Aye, and—’ Suddenly Josse caught sight of Leofgar’s face. ‘What is it, lad?’

     Leofgar looked at Josse, then at his mother. ‘Before you exonerate my grandfather,’ he said slowly, ‘I think you had better look at this.’ He held out the parchment. ‘There’s more written on the reverse side. My Latin is not as good as it should be and neither is my skill in reading’ – he gave the Abbess a swift and rueful grin – ‘so perhaps you would be kind enough to read it for us, Mother.’

     For all the courtesy of his words, Josse observed, there was authority in his voice; Leofgar was in truth very like his mother.

     The Abbess picked up the parchment again and read what was written on the other side. Her expression altered and hardened. When she had finished there was a short pause. Then she said, ‘So that is how it was.’ Glancing at Josse, she added, ‘The first side of the parchment states simply that Benedict is not the father of the child borne by the woman Sirida. But this,’ – she lightly tapped the other side – ‘this is rather more expansive.’

     Then she began to read.

     ‘“I, Benedict Warin, confess my sin and record it so that after my death the truth be known. Ivo, my legitimate son, is and remains the one true fruit of my loins, for the damage I suffered when I was dragged by my horse robbed me of my manhood and I was never more able to satisfy a woman. In my pride and my shame I told no man of my condition save my faithful Martin, who acted as my substitute in those actions that I could no longer perform for myself. Being full of pride at my reputation as a man who loved women, I could not bear for the shameful truth to be known and so I continued to pursue pretty girls and persuade them to come with me to my shelter in the forest. It was dark there and they did not know that it was not I but another who serviced them. It was of no great import; for Martin was a considerate and I believe a skilful lover and the girls were not heard to complain. The subterfuge was, I believed, harmless and it allowed me to retain that part of my former identity that I could not bear to give up.