The Champion (28 page)

‘If God had any sense of justice, it would have been le Boucher’s horse which foundered,’ Hervi croaked, opening pain-glazed eyes. ‘Never mind the wherefore and the why. Just get me to my tent. I feel like a corpse on a battlefield stretched out here with all you vultures standing around me.’

As an attempt both at bravery and a jest, it fell flat. Everyone knew that Hervi might well die of the injury. His eyes dull with worry, Alexander paid the chirurgeon and his assistant their fee, and saw his brother borne gently back to their tent.

‘I have some small knowledge of leechdom,’ Ambrose said as they laid Hervi down on his pallet. ‘A tincture of white poppy in wine will dull the pain. I have a phial among my effects.’ Without further ado, he departed to fetch it.

Hervi lay on his pallet, his injured leg held rigid in the splints, and stared around the familiarity of the tent which he had departed an hour since in perfect, robust health. ‘The only reason le Boucher did not kill me,’ he said, ‘was that Soleil went down and he judged his death and my injury payment enough. But it is not finished. He will come after you and Monday.’ He turned his head on the pillow and glanced around the tent. ‘Where is the lass? Best be wed and on your way.’

Alexander swallowed. There was no point in keeping the truth from Hervi. His leg might be broken, but his wits were still about him. ‘I do not know, save that she is likely more than half a day’s journey from us by now.’ He removed the note from his tunic and unfolding it, read it out to his brother. ‘She took her dowry silver and her sewing equipment,’ he said over the top of the vellum. ‘I fear she does not intend returning.’

Hervi took the note in his hands and looked at the brown lettering which to him was just so much scribble. ‘A fine guardian I have made,’ he said with self-disgust, and raised his eyes to Alexander. ‘And you have no inkling where she might have gone?’

‘She did once speak of her grandfather in England, Thomas FitzParnell of Stafford. She wondered what he was like and told me that it was a secret yearning of hers to live the life of a lady of rank as her mother had once done. Perhaps she might go to him … It is no more than a guess.’

‘You must go and find her,’ Hervi said. He was grey with pain, and each word was an obvious effort to force his reason through it. ‘A woman alone on the road is easy prey, and although she has the wisdom of the battle camp in her veins, she is still vulnerable.’

Alexander stared at his brother in dawning consternation as he realised the choice being set out before him. ‘But I cannot leave you in this state!’ he protested. ‘Who will tend you?’

‘I will do well enough … I have friends, and some silver laid by.’

‘Friends like Alys and Osgar?’ Alexander gazed down at Hervi, utterly horrified at the thought of leaving him in such company.

‘Don’t argue with me, whelp. I haven’t the strength. Just go.’

Alexander frowned. ‘You heard what she said in this note. I might not find her even if I go, and then I would have obeyed you for nothing. I don’t want to lose you both.’

‘Damn your hide Alex …’ Hervi began, then desisted as the pain in his broken leg surged over and defeated him.

Father Ambrose returned with the phial of poppy syrup and set about administering a drugged measure of wine to the wounded man. As Hervi fell into a restless doze, the young priest sighed. ‘He will need constant care over the next few days,’ he said doubtfully.

Alexander gnawed his lower lip. ‘He wants me to go and search for the girl. I know that I should, but I cannot leave him like this. If he is looked after at all, it will be in a rough and ready fashion that will surely lead to his death. There is no one I can trust.’

Ambrose eyed him sidelong. ‘There is always the abbey at Pont l’Arche. The infirmarian there is excellent.’

‘No!’ A white-hot streak of fury and fear shot through Alexander.

Ambrose raised his brows in surprise and not a little consternation. ‘It is less than an hour’s ride – perhaps two or three by slow litter – and I promise you that they would care for him well. I served my novitiate there. The Abbot is strict, but he is just, and compassionate. ‘

‘Not the church,’ Alexander repeated, feeling as if dark walls were closing around him.

‘May I ask why not?’

Alexander wanted to snarl a denial at Father Ambrose, but the monk looked so earnestly bewildered that he curbed his tongue. ‘Before I joined Hervi, I served part of my novitiate at a small Benedictine priory in England. The prior there was in his dotage and the sub-prior had command of all our lives …’ He broke off with a grimace. ‘I ran away when my life became intolerable.’

Ambrose looked from Alexander to the man on the pallet, who was beginning to breathe with the heaviness of slumber. ‘The abbey is not the same place as your priory, and one bad fish does not mean that every shoal in the ocean is rotten, does it?’

‘No,’ Alexander admitted, his shoulders stiff with rejection.

‘It seems to me that you have small choice but to take your brother to Pont l’Arche,’ Ambrose said quietly. ‘I promise you, not a monk’s promise, but a friend’s, that he will be in safe hands.’

Brother Radulfus examined the wounded man with deft and gentle hands. He could see no injury other than the severely broken lower limb, although there were numerous small scars that spoke of a turbulent life. Radulfus had his own share, concealed from view by the coarse Benedictine habit that had been his since his ordination ten years ago. Now he was Brother Radulfus, infirmarian and humble monk. Then he had been Radulf de Villefranche, younger son of a minor noble and earning his bread by the sword, much as these two brothers in his presence now. The injured one was in the prime of manhood, smoothly fleshed with a taut, powerful musculature. His companion still bore the reed slenderness of youth and was both lighter of build and more refined of feature. At the moment he was studying Radulfus with wary amber-hazel eyes and more than reminded the monk of a young wolf gazing out on the world from the edge of the forest.

‘Well,’ said Ambrose eagerly from the background, ‘can you heal him?’

Radulfus raised his greying tonsure from his drugged patient and frowned slightly at the ebullient chaplain. Ambrose’s all-embracing enthusiasm had been both his downfall and his redemption during his time in the novitiate here. He was a committed supporter of lame dogs, waifs and strays. If someone did not martyr him first in order to have peace, he might become the stuff of which popular saints were made. ‘That is in the hands of the Almighty,’ Radulfus reproved. ‘The limb is badly broken, but he is strong and otherwise healthy. With tending and prayer, he may live to walk again.’ He looked at the younger man and addressed him directly. ‘I make no promises, but I will do what I can.’

‘Thank you.’ The reply was murmured through stiff lips, the tension palpable.

‘May I trouble you, Father Ambrose, to fetch some more charcoal for the brazier?’ Radulfus requested gently with a lift and drop of his silver thicket eyebrows.

‘Of course.’ Ambrose cleared his throat, and rubbing his hands within his habit, vanished out of the door.

‘I do not think that you want to thank me,’ Radulfus said when he was sure they were alone. ‘Indeed, I receive the impression that you are here under duress.’

‘All I care is that you save his life, and if it be in your power, prevent him from being a cripple. I have silver, I can pay.’

There was more power in the voice now, the French bearing a distinct trace of an English accent to Radulfus’s keen ears. ‘As I said, with God’s aid I will do my best. Whatever alms you give to our church are welcome, but they are not a prerequisite of your brother’s place here.’

‘Are they not?’

The hint of a sneer now. Someone had burned the lad and badly. ‘Remind me of your name,’ Radulfus said. ‘Brother Ambrose told me, but I was too busy settling your brother without jolting his leg or rousing him to awareness.’

‘Alexander … Alexander de Montroi.’ The wariness did not thaw.

Radulfus folded his arms. ‘I have been a monk for ten years, Alexander, and most fulfilled and content I am to live out my time in the praise and service of God, but it was not always so. I was a soldier before I took the cowl. I drank and whored and fought my way across Christendom in the pay of warring barons and gave nary a thought to the well-being of my soul.’

He saw the spark of curiosity flare in the guarded countenance. ‘Then what changed your mind?’

Radulfus shrugged down his habit, and Alexander leaped backwards, his hand going to his knife and fear widening his eyes. ‘No,’ said the monk quickly. ‘Don’t worry, I have not lost my wits. I want to show you the first change in my life.’ He pointed to a long silvery scar running from the base of his throat to his navel. ‘Someone tried to split me like a bacon pig and almost succeeded. I was brought here to be tended – like your brother – and for the first time in my life I had the opportunity to listen to the still, small voice of God. I recovered, I stayed, and finally I took my vows. Nor have I ever regretted doing so.’ He pulled his habit back over his shoulders. ‘Your brother will be safe with us, I promise you, whether he has silver or not.’ Radulfus eyed Alexander thoughtfully. ‘You do not trust me,’ he said.

Alexander breathed out and his right hand dropped from his scabbard. ‘I was given to the Church when I was eleven. My father was dead and my eldest brother wanted rid of me.’

‘Ah.’ Radulfus nodded. ‘So you did not enter the novitiate of your own free will?’

The young man shrugged. ‘I would have borne with it. They taught me to read and write, and I have something of a talent with ink and quill. If they had left me in the peace of the scriptorium, I might have one day been an asset to their priory.’

‘But they didn’t?’ Radulfus studied Alexander. So many children were vowed to the monastic life by their parents and siblings. Frequently the youngsters were miserable and homesick. Many of them were totally unsuited to a life in the cloister. Some adapted in bitter silence. Others rebelled.

‘No,’ Alexander said bleakly, ‘they didn’t. I have more scars on my body from my days as a novice than I have as a mercenary on the battlefield.’ He swallowed and made a dismissive gesture. ‘It is in the past. Let it be.’

‘I am sorry. I can see in your face that you are not ready to forgive or forget, but I promise you that I will do everything in my power to help your brother. Once it was me lying there. What we are given in compassion, we have a sacred duty to pass on.’

Alexander was still mistrustful: his own experiences dictated caution, but Radulfus’s air of placid confidence was reassuring, as was the information that he had once served as a soldier.

Father Ambrose returned, puffing beneath the weight of a wicker basket brimming with lumps of charcoal. Alexander wondered how different his own life would have been had he entered the novitiate in a place like this instead of Cranwell. Perhaps he would have been ordained by now, his hair clipped in a neat tonsure, and his hands unmarked by the grip of shield strap, sword and rein. As of now, he was adrift in the world, his anchor lying unconscious and torn up from its grounding.

Reaching to the pouch on his belt, Alexander brought forth a small draw-cord purse. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘To help pay for his care. I will leave his packhorse too for your use to do as you see fit. When he wakes, tell him that I have gone in search of Monday. He will know what you mean.’

Brother Radulfus took the coins with dignity and inclined his head. ‘I will do so,’ he said. ‘God go with you, and lighten your burdens.’

‘God remain here, and guide your healing hands,’ Alexander responded, and after a final look at Hervi, strode from the room before he was overcome by the surfeit of dammed emotion which the abbey walls were too small to hold.

By the time Alexander and Ambrose returned to Vaudreuil, it was full dark, and the camp fires of the Angevin army scattered the field before the castle like flowers in a spring meadow. An impromptu joust was taking place between the Normans and French on a flat piece of land outside the disputed castle walls, and the shouts of encouragement, the clack of lances and thunder of hooves echoed their ghosts on Alexander’s mind.

Ambrose bade him farewell and returned to his official post from which he had been absent for long enough, leaving a weary Alexander to dismount alone outside his tent. All he wanted to do was stagger inside and throw himself down on his pallet, but first he had the horse to tend. With clumsy fingers he began unsaddling Samson. His mind was numb, his awareness dulled by exhaustion, both physical and mental, and when Eudo le Boucher stepped out of the shadows, he was taken entirely by surprise.

‘I have been waiting for your return,’ le Boucher said. ‘Indeed, I was beginning to think that you had turned coward and fled.’

Alexander faced le Boucher, his heart pounding in solid, swift strokes, the numbness giving way to a potent mixture of fury and fear. ‘If you have been waiting in order to atone for what you did to my brother, then I will speak to you. If not, I have nothing to say,’ he answered through his teeth.

‘Atone?’ Le Boucher’s jaw dropped. His surprise was almost comical to behold, except that there was no humour in the situation whatsoever. ‘You want me to atone?’ Rage thickened his voice.

‘Hervi made you no promises. Any slights are all in your own mind,’ Alexander said, breathing hard. ‘And for your overweening self-conceit, you almost killed him!’

‘Hah, so I suppose I imagine that you have deflowered the woman for whom I was negotiating in marriage?’ Le Boucher’s clenched fist shot out and punched Alexander to the ground. ‘Then imagine this too, renegade monk!’ A boot connected with Alexander’s ribs and he doubled up, protecting his head with his arms and the soft parts of his body with his folded knees.

‘Where is she, where have you hidden her?’ le Boucher demanded between each kick and blow.

‘I do not know!’ Alexander choked, and straightened his legs in a sudden kick, attempting to trip le Boucher and bring him down. One shoe connected with bone and drew an involuntary yelp from the man above him. Alexander flashed over, leaped to his feet and out of le Boucher’s reach. He knew that his only advantage lay in his greater speed, his ability to weave and duck until the knight tired.