The Falcons of Montabard (28 page)

Strongfist took a deep breath. 'Mariamne has left me,' he said, dropping the words like hot stones into a pool.

Sabin loudly swallowed his wine and somehow managed to avoid choking. He stared at the older man. 'I am truly sorry,' he said.

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'Are you? I'm not. . . nor even surprised.'

Sabin's flesh prickled beneath Strongfist's weighty stare. The thorns were back.

Strongfist drank down the wine and Sabin tipped a fresh measure into his cup, refilling his own at the same time. 'She ran off with a silk merchant soon after the Christmas feast. I sent a hunting party out after them, but they were long gone. If the truth be known, the only reason I wanted to find her was to lift her unfaithful hide with my whip.' He drank swiftly, forgetting to savour the bouquet. 'I do not expect she will be faithful to him,' he added with a curling lip. 'Another man will catch her eye and she will transfer her affections as easily as a whore going between customers. She had a reputation already . . . but with the land that was offered, I chose to ignore it.'

Sabin looked down. He would have walked away from the offer, but then his priorities were different and it was not fair to make a comparison.

'If the truth were known, I was infatuated with her at the beginning,' Strongfist said with a grimace. 'I could not believe my good fortune. Doubtless she was cursing her luck.' He tilted his gaze to Sabin. 'I think she was hoping that you might be given the custody of Tel Namir.'

'I would have run a league at the notion!' Sabin gave a humourless laugh. Although perhaps I did not run quite fast enough when it mattered.'

Strongfist shrugged. 'It is in the past,' he said gruffly and rubbed the back of his neck. 'I still have the land.' He lowered his arm. 'I am glad of this campaign. Being a soldier is always what I have done best.'

'So you will not pursue Mariamne and her lover further?'

'Where would be the point? They will eventually punish each other more than I could ever punish either of them. Let them lie in the bed they have made together.'

'And if she comes back to you?'

'Even on her knees, I would not have her,' Strongfist growled. 'The space she left has not been lonely; there are others

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keen to fill it even without a marriage contract. If I have no immediate heir for my lands, I have a daughter who is quick with a babe. When I die, my grandchild may have Tel Namir with my blessing.'

The squire returned with a loaf of fragrant bread, its top polished with honey and generously scattered with sesame seeds. There was also a wheel of goat's cheese, sticky dried dates, and another dish of cracked wheat flavoured with spices and bursting with raisins and small slivers of roasted lamb.

'I won't ask,' Sabin said with a smile as the boy laid down his haul on the small trestle beside Sabin's bed.

Amalric lifted his shoulders. 'I didn't steal it this time,' he said. 'The lady Annais caught me hanging around the kitchens, so I told her that you had sent me to fetch food for you and Lord Strongfist. She piled the bowls herself and wished you both good appetite . . .'

Grinning, Sabin drew his eating knife to cut the end off the loaf.

'And then she said that when you have finished and if you are not too drunk on her best wine, you had better come back to the hall because Lord Gerbert wants to speak to you about your command on the morrow.'

Strongfist chuckled richly at Sabin's arrested expression. 'I don't know how many women you've deceived in your career,' he said, 'but you'll never pull the wool over my daughter's eyes.'

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Chapter 17

Baldwin led his army across the Orontes to Zerdana and discovered that while the main fortification remained intact, the Saracens had succeeded in taking some of the outer defences. However, no battles were fought over the ground, for the Saracens prudently retreated from their small gains rather than face Baldwin in head-on battle. Not that their leader, Ilghazi, gave up immediately. There were several skirmishes. The Saracens tried to lure the Franks into folly by pretended flight, but Baldwin was accustomed to the tactics and paid no heed, merely matching their movements and standing off. It was a war of patience and nerves and finally it was Ilghazi who broke, standing down his warriors and sending them back to their homes, for it was obvious that with the Frankish army in the vicinity and at full strength, shadowing his every move, there was little to be accomplished. Satisfied that for the moment the trouble was over, Baldwin sent his army's standard back to Jerusalem and retired to Antioch to refresh himself and his men.

At Montabard, Sabin settled into the routine of lord and commander. He made sure that the guards on the walls were alert to their duty, he sent out patrols to scout the immediate vicinity. To keep the men from growing stale, he organised competitions — jousting, wrestling, weapon skills, archery. He set up mock raids where men had to scale ropes in the darkness and 'rescue' a pouch of silver in a guarded room without

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being caught. He had the more supple of them start to learn Saracen horse-riding skills, and joined in with joyous enthusiasm until he could fire a bow from the back of a galloping horse and hit the target. He trained them hard, and rewarded them well, and, like hounds, they answered with enthusiasm.

'For a man who claims not to want responsibility, you handle it well,' Annais remarked to him one evening when he found the time to dine in the hall rather than the guardroom.

'Needs must,' he said with a shrug. 'Even if I do not want it, I know what is required.' Stepping over the bench behind the high table, he sat down, diplomatically leaving the lord's great chair empty. Not once had he used it since Gerbert's absence.

'Rut you could have refused it and ridden out.'

'Could I?' His glance flickered to the loose robe swathing her belly, which was almost nine months' round.

'Not now, but you have had the summer to make your escape.'

'I promised your husband a year and a day of service.' He handed her a vellum packet. 'Messages from the field,' he said more brusquely than he had intended. 'The courier arrived as I was on my way to the hall.'

Annais flushed as she took her eating knife and broke her husband's seal. Within her, their child gave a wallowing kick. She had been experiencing a niggling pain in the small of her back for several days now. The Syrian midwife said that the child's head was lying well down, ready to be born and had seemed pleased, informing Annais by gestures that her hips were wide enough to permit the birth and that it would be soon.

'Do you want to read your letter alone?' Sabin gathered himself to rise.

'No,' she gestured him to stay. 'If I wanted solitude, I would seek my chamber. Besides,' she said ruefully, 'Gerbert does not write the kind of letters to make me blush in public. He's far too practical, God save him.'

The mingling of affection and exasperation in her tone sent a pang through Sabin that was almost envy. An attendant set

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down a bowl of pottage before him. Taking his silver spoon from his pouch he polished it on his sleeve and began to eat.

Annais swiftly scanned the lines of prose. They had been written by Father Jerome, her husband's chaplain, and were thus in Latin, but since she had been educated by nuns, she had no difficulty reading it. 'He writes to say that they are on their way home,' she said. 'Ilghazi has retreated from Zerdana and the True Cross is on its way back to Jerusalem.' There was a sheet of folded vellum beneath her own letter, which she opened and passed to Sabin. 'This one's for you ..." She gave a wry laugh. 'It's identical to mine.'

'Fortunate then that it's not a love letter,' he said, forcing a smile. 'If the courier came swiftly, that means he will be home in two days.'

'Then your purgatory is almost at an end.' She eyed him shrewdly over the sheet of vellum. Despite the defensive noises he made about not wanting so much responsibility, she rather thought that he had enjoyed these past few months. Even if he refused to take Gerbert's chair, he had risen to the challenges of being lord of Montabard, and there was little strain in him to suggest that he had been performing an onerous task. However, she said nothing and demurely took up her own spoon. She was ravenous and the spiced pottage was a speciality of Montabard's Syrian cook.

That evening, she began to think that eating two bowls of the soup, no matter how delicious, had not been wise. She was taken with cramps in the stomach and severe voiding of the bowels. And then the pains began in earnest. Letice went to find the midwife, only to discover that she had gone to visit her sister in the village.

Doing the rounds, talking to the guards on the wall walk and at the gate, Sabin saw Letice emerge from the hall, looking worried. Leaving the men, he strode to meet her and, with a look of relief on her face, she told him of her difficulty.

Til fetch the lady at once,' Sabin said, already turning to the

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stables. It couldn't be the pottage, for he had eaten two bowls himself without adverse reaction. He knew little of women in childbirth. The women of King Henry's court retired to their husband's estates long before their confinement was due. When his father's wife had been carrying, she had retreated to the inner sanctum of her chamber as the birth drew close.

He did know that women died in childbirth. There had been occasional mourning at court for such a happening, and one of Countess Matilda's serving women had died following three days of protracted labour. Nor had she been in poor health, but a robust lass, confident of birthing the babe that had killed her. Increasing his pace, he reached the stables. He should have sent one of the garrison, but he had to do something to uncoil the tension that was winding within him like the rope on a mangonel.

By the light of an oil lamp in the stables, he harnessed Lucifer and led him out. The night was clear and star-powdered, giving him sufficient illumination to guide the horse down to the village. Lucifer's hooves were loud on the stony path. His snorting breath cut the night and alerted any listeners that someone was out after curfew.

He found the midwife at the house of her sister as she had said. Most folk would cower at banging on their door after nightfall, but not she, for by her trade she was long accustomed to being summoned at all hours. Murmuring to the other members of the household, drawing her dark-coloured shawl around her head, she followed Sabin out into the night, and untethered her ancient donkey from the ramshackle stable at the side of the dwelling.

Sabin found it difficult to keep his impatience in check, but the woman was not to be chivvied. 'There is no rush, young lord,' she said. 'It's a first babe and they always take their time.' Her eyes gleamed in the darkness like night-lit water. 'From your worry, anyone would think you were the father, not just the messenger.'

Sabin tightened his fingers on the bridle and the horse jibbed as his tension was conveyed to the bit. 'I hope that your hands

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are cleaner than your tongue,' he answered coldly. 'It is my lady's first child. Every one of us is concerned.'

The woman clucked to herself and, with surprising dexterity for one of her years, heaved herself across the ass's back. 'But it is not usually the men who worry about women's business unless they have a vested interest.'

'The command of Montabard is my responsibility and I must do my best for all within its walls,' Sabin said tersely. He could not believe that he was justifying himself to a wizened old woman. Nor could he quite believe the words that he had actually spoken.
His responsibility.
Declared with authority and perhaps even a touch of hubris. Thoroughly discomforted, he tugged on the bridle and jabbed Lucifer sharply in the flanks.

The return was slower than the descent, for the midwife's donkey was even less disposed to rush than she was, and when he tried to chivvy them along, he received the peaceable reiteration that first babies were notoriously slow to make an appearance. It was almost midnight by the time they were admitted into Montabard's bailey. The midwife slipped from her mount and eased the small of her back. Tm getting too old,' she said with a little groan that did nothing to increase Sabin's confidence.

She refused to be hastened, but he brought her as swiftly as he could to the room above the hall. Letice was waiting to take charge, and she ushered the woman inside the chamber with words of relieved welcome. The latter closed the door in Sabin's face and he heard the latch clatter down with finality.

He went below and poured himself a measure of wine. It was ordinary household stuff and he had to remember to clench his teeth as he reached the dregs and hit the must. A second measure swiftly followed the first into his cup, but he stopped after one long swallow. The command of the keep was in his care. If he got drunk, he was abusing the trust Gerbert had put in him. The voice of rebellion said that he did not care, but it was the voice of a petulant child and Sabin thrust it aside with the same irritation that he deposited the goblet on the board.

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He took himself to the armoury to make a mental inventory of the sheaves of arrows and stacks of spears, but he already knew their number by heart. A diversion to the kitchens secured him a hunk of bread he did not really want and the sight of one of the castle's feral cats slinking into the shadows, an enormous dead rat dangling between its jaws. Small mewing sounds from a dark hollow beneath a storage shed revealed where her kittens were waiting.

Sabin finished the bread, which lay like a leaden weight in his stomach, and returned to the hall. Men slept along the perimeter on pallets of linen stuffed with straw. One or two were still awake around the fire, their faces uplit by the red glow at the heart of the banked coals. Some nights he would have joined them, but not now. An enquiry to the chambers above drew no reply except the terse repetition that it was a first child and therefore going to be long in coming.

Sabin retired, and for the rest of the night paced the wall walk, keeping vigil. The darkest hours of the watch slowly yielded to the paling of dawn and the sky became as still as a veil of stretched silk, shaded oyster to grey and tinged with the pink sheen of mother of pearl. In Damascus and Aleppo, in Shaizar and Masayef, the muezzins would be calling the people to prayer. Here, a single bell tolled a summons to the mass of a new day, and still there was no news from the women's chamber.