The Champion (12 page)

Hervi glowered at him. ‘That is no excuse. You’re like a man who sleeps with a whore, and as soon as his urgency is satisfied, he despises her.’

Alexander’s face burned at his brother’s more than accurate sally. ‘Well, do you think we should be doing this?’

‘I do as lord Bertran commands. That way I receive my wages and keep a roof over my head. If you don’t have the stomach to digest what you eat, then stick to your scribing.’ Hervi’s voice developed a snarl, and he kicked his horse on ahead, making it clear that the conversation was at an end.

Alexander was left to ride with Arnaud de Cerizay. The other man wore a blank expression beneath his open-face helm. Since his wife’s traumatic death five months ago, he seemed not to care if he lived or died. Dull-eyed, grim-featured, he went through the motions of living without being alive. If food was set before him, he ate it; when spoken to, he replied, but it was an instinctive response to stimulus. If left to his own devices, he would drink away most of his wages, and no one could reach him. Not Hervi, not even his own daughter, although they shared a common grief.

‘What will happen when Richard Coeur de Lion is released?’ Alexander asked his taciturn companion. ‘They cannot keep him a prisoner for ever.’

The mailed shoulders twitched as if at some minor irritation. ‘I suppose that he will try and bring all his rebellious vassals to heel,’ Arnaud said indifferently.

‘Surely Lord Bertran is taking a great risk by swearing his allegiance to the King of France?’

‘Perhaps.’ Arnaud turned, revealing to Alexander an unshaven jaw, the bones sharp beneath the flesh. ‘But no greater than holding loyal to an overlord who may well have had his day. He is not the only baron to turn away from Richard. Hervi is right. Bertran de Lavoux pays our wages. It is best not to question.’ And he too drew his horse away, leaving Alexander frustrated and edgy.

When they arrived at Lavoux with their prize, Lord Bertran announced with triumph that he would slaughter one of the cattle and hold a victory feast that night. The declaration was greeted with cheers by the soldiers milling in the great hall, their tension still strung high with battle nerves.

‘A song, Alexander, I want a song to celebrate!’ Bertran crowed, slapping the young man on his back as he tried to make his unobtrusive way out of the press. ‘Something to honour our daring and valour!’

Alexander clenched his fists. ‘Yes, my lord,’ he said woodenly. From the corner of his eye, he caught Hervi’s warning glare. The lord of Lavoux delved in his pouch and presented Alexander with three silver coins.

‘Earn them well, lad,’ he said, dismissing him with another hefty slap.

Alexander headed for the door to the forebuilding, brushing past Hervi as he did so. ‘A man who sleeps with a whore, eh?’ he said viciously.

Hervi winced. ‘It’s only a song.’

Alexander gave him a narrow look. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s only a song.’

Hervi rolled his eyes heavenwards. Alexander strode from the hall, his blood simmering with guilt and resentment. He was tempted to hurl the silver down the nearest well, but the need to have coin between himself and poverty kept his fist clenched at his side. He trod across the bailey, past the gleam of the penned white cattle, and gave them a swift glance. What made him feel smirched and ashamed was knowing that Bertran de Lavoux had given his loyalty to the King of France in order to have an excuse for making war on his neighbour, who was holding firm for Richard. Greed was the key. In the five months since arriving at Lavoux, Alexander had discovered that Bertran was affable, generous and totally unprincipled, his word not worth the stale air expended in giving it. Alexander did not want to serve such a man, but was constrained to do so by his own loyalty to Hervi.

He was so immersed in his fulmination that he did not see Monday until she touched his arm. He jumped, then apologised with a distracted air.

She smiled, but the expression did not reach her eyes, which were worried. ‘Have you seen my father? Is he safe?’

‘He was in the hall not long since.’ Alexander gestured over his shoulder. ‘And we all came home unscathed.’ His mouth tightened.

Monday sighed. ‘I worry about him. It is as though he has fallen into a deep pit from which no one can reach him. Every time he rides out, I fear he will do something foolish, that he will not come back.’

The pain in her voice jolted Alexander out of his self-centred irritation. ‘It is not long since your mother’s death,’ he said awkwardly. ‘The winter season always darkens the soul. Perhaps in the spring …‘

She cut across his words brusquely. ‘I lost her too, he doesn’t seem to understand that.’

‘I am sure he does …’

‘He knows nothing but his own pain. Sometimes I think he even forgets that I exist.’ She swallowed and forced her chin up. ‘I did not stop you to complain,’ she said, a quaver in her voice. ‘Lady Aline asks that you attend her in her chamber. She desires you to write a letter to her sister.’

‘I’ll come as soon as I’ve tended the horses.’ He squeezed her arm, trying to impart comfort.

She nodded and forced a smile, returned his squeeze, and hurried away across the bailey.

Watching the retreat of her slender form, he was filled with pity and made a resolution to find more time to seek her out and talk. Then he went on his own way, his mind occupied with the problem of a song he had no enthusiasm to compose.

Monday found her father in the crowded guard room with Hervi, a flagon of wine between them, and also a flask of ginevra. Her heart sank, for she could see that her father was drinking with the cold efficiency of a man determined to find oblivion in the bottom of his cup. Hervi, at least, was not matching him measure for measure, but neither was he doing anything to prevent his companion from sinking into a drunken stupor.

‘Papa?’ Monday sat down beside her father on the bench. She kissed his cheek and felt the scratch of unshaven stubble against her lips. His face was sunken and gaunt, broken veins spidering the skin.

He set his empty cup down on the trestle with deliberation and looked at his daughter. His gaze was steady, but already his focus was clouded. ‘You should not be here in a room full of rough men,’ he said.

‘I came to see you, to make sure you are all right.’

A wintery smile creased his cheeks but failed to reach his eyes. ‘Yes, I’m all right,’ he said gruffly, and clasped her hand, his grip cold and dry. ‘We weren’t challenged even once, were we, Hervi?’

‘Except by that bull,’ Hervi said, with a cheerful shake of his head. ‘Acelin fisted it between the eyes and it behaved after that.’ He gave Monday a wink, and then launched himself in pursuit of a basket of hot bread that a servant was bringing through the door.

Monday watched her father reach for the flagon and tip more wine into his cup. ‘I don’t like it when you drink,’ she said in a small, forlorn voice.

He shrugged and tilted the rim to his lips. ‘I will do as I choose. It brings me ease.’ Almost in defiance, he swallowed deeply, draining the contents.

‘Papa, don’t!’ Monday beseeched, a lump of panic and misery swelling in her throat. ‘You will ruin yourself!’

‘Christ, do you think I care?’ he snarled. ‘I was ruined the day that I first set eyes on your mother. The devil’s eel-trap. Once you’ve entered, you can never escape, and if you try, your soul is ripped out on the spines!’ He reached a shaking hand towards the flagon, his face flushed with the bitter fury imbued by the wine.

Monday snatched the flagon from his hand and dashed it to the floor. The glazed pottery smashed into a dozen shards and the wine drenched the hem of her gown and splattered her father’s boots and chausses. Heads turned. A momentary silence descended.

‘The only mercy is that my mother cannot hear you!’ Monday sobbed at him, and turning on her heel, stumbled from the crowded guard room, pushing past an astonished Hervi, his mouth full of hot bread. Behind her a babble of voices rose like froth in a brewer’s vat. Arnaud de Cerizay put his head in his hands, and then, with a fluent curse, grabbed the flask of ginevra and upended its contents down his throat until he choked.

Weeping, Monday fled, and did not stop even when she heard Hervi bellowing after her to come back. Even if it had been her father, she would not have turned around, for the wound he had inflicted was too deep. He was killing himself before her eyes, and worse than that, he was killing her love for him too.

Monday sat at a trestle bench in the bower, a mound of sewing in front of her. A thick white candle burned on an iron pricket, shedding light on the fabric as she selected a needle from her wooden case. Now and then she gave a little sniff, and reached in her sleeve for a square of linen to dab at her eyes. She had done with crying she told herself, but it made no difference. She could not put her troubles from her mind, and at each surge of thought, a new film of moisture would blur her vision, making needlework impossible.

In a rustle of silk and a waft of spicy perfume, Bertran’s young wife Aline sat down beside her on the trestle. ‘Something has upset you,’ she said gently.

‘It is nothing, my lady.’ Monday compressed her lips and strove without success to thread her needle.

‘Ah, nothing you want to talk about.’ Aline took Monday’s needle case and selected one for herself.

Monday shook her head. She could not imagine the lady of Lavoux being interested in her woes. Aline had masses of silky flaxen hair and eyes of moss-agate green, given emphasis by the subtle use of cosmetics. She was four and twenty, and Bertran was her second husband, her first having died on crusade. She was elegant, sophisticated and alluring. Monday admired her and felt dull and inadequate by comparison.

Aline deftly poked a length of green thread through the eye of her own needle. Monday looked at her companion’s hands. She wore two rings, a simple one of twisted gold on her left, and a heavy, ruby-set signet ring on the middle finger of her right.

‘It belonged to my first husband,’ she said as she noticed Monday’s scrutiny and spread her fingers to display the heavier jewel. ‘He went on crusade with Duke Richard and succumbed to the bloody flux. He was too old to go on such a venture, the fool.’

There was a brief silence, but Monday’s curiosity won out over her reserve. ‘How old was he?’ she asked as she finally managed to thread her needle.

‘Nigh on fifty years, with more scars than an old bear,’ Aline said neutrally. ‘He stank like one too. Soldiering had been the main part of his life. He only took a wife because he decided it was time he begot an heir for his lands. I was fifteen years old when I married him, a terrified virgin.’ She glanced up at Monday. ‘I never quickened. For all he wanted to breed an heir, his manly equipment was not up to the deed. And then he left me to take the Cross. I was almost a virgin when Bertran contracted to wed me, and very little has changed!’ she added with a bitter, rueful laugh and a shake of her head. She laid a smooth white hand on Monday’s sleeve. ‘A word of advice. When the time comes, you make sure you choose your own mate. Don’t let your family have any say whatsoever.’

Monday was surprised, even a little bemused by the revelations. But Aline’s openness encouraged her to speak. ‘My own mother fled from an arranged marriage,’ she murmured. ‘She was the daughter of a powerful English baron, contracted to wed with a man full thirty years older than herself. But before the nuptials could be arranged, she eloped with my father, a household knight.’

Aline’s carefully plucked brows arched towards her wimple. ‘Truly … you are not spinning me some troubadour’s tale?’

‘Truly.’ Monday stabbed the needle into the fabric as if she were plunging a dagger into flesh. ‘And now my mother is dead, and my father is killing himself with bitterness and grief.’ Those were not the words she had intended to say, but they emerged of their own accord like blood from an open wound. Her chin trembled, and the tears that she had been fighting threatened to overwhelm her. It became impossible to sew, and she had to put her needle down and reach for the kerchief in her sleeve.

Aline set aside her own sewing and curved a consoling arm around Monday’s shoulders. ‘How long ago did she die?’

‘At Lammastide, in childbirth, on the eve of coming to Lavoux. It was all too late, all for nothing.’ And the tears poured out in a scalding flood while Aline soothed and rocked her. The smell of attar of roses filled Monday’s nostrils, heavy and sweet, so unlike the woodsmoke pungence of her mother’s embrace, but comforting nevertheless because no one had held her thus for a long, long time.

At last she was able to sit up and dry her eyes. They felt heavy and hot, and she was still shaken by small, convulsive tremors.

Aline fetched her a cup of sweet spiced wine and made her take several swallows. ‘I never knew my own mother,’ she said softly. ‘She died whilst I was still in the cradle. I was reared by an assortment of nurses and attendants until my father sold me in marriage to my first husband, and then again to Bertran. I am sorry for your grief, I would ease it if I could.’

‘You are very kind, my lady.’ Monday sniffed and wiped her nose. She continued to sip the aromatic wine and felt it warm its way to her belly and then into her veins.

Aline resumed her sewing. ‘I do not know about that,’ she said. ‘If I am, it is because I feel sympathy for you, and it costs me nothing.’

Monday gave her a startled look, and Aline smiled wryly. ‘God helps those who help themselves,’ she said, ‘and most of the time it is men who help themselves to whatever they desire, women included. So, I play them at their own game.’ She tilted her head to examine her line of stitches. Then she looked from the sewing to Monday, her green eyes shrewd and hard. ‘They see an attractive young woman, sweet and pliant of nature. Flirtatious but never beyond propriety, a gracious hostess who will hang on their every word, treat them like kings. But it is only what I want them to see, and not necessarily the truth. Do you understand?’

‘I …’ Monday frowned. ‘You let them believe that they are having their own way, when all the time you are having yours.’