The Falcons of Montabard (46 page)

He felt her stiffen. She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder.

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'I do not like to think of either of you in battle,' she murmured.

Sabin said nothing. There was no comfort to offer her except to say that he and her father had been trained to the sword from birth and that their equipment was of the best. She knew those things already. She also knew that they had not been enough to save Gerbert from a drawn-out and painful death.

'I hold Guillaume in my arms,' she said, her voice muffled against his flesh. 'I have fed him at my breast and watched him fall asleep. I have tended his hurts when he has fallen over, and protected him as fiercely as a lioness protecting her cub. But how will I protect him when he is a young man stepping out in the world with a sword at his hip?'

'You can't,' Sabin said. 'And that is your burden to bear. All you can do is fit him for what the world will throw at him. That will be his protection.' He grimaced. 'My life might have been easier if that had been done for me.'

'Did not the Countess Matilda care for you?'

'She did her best to be fair,' he said neutrally.

She rubbed her forefinger against the smooth curve of his bicep. 'But fairness is not love.'

'No.'

'What of your mother?'

He shrugged. 'She chose to serve God. My father never held anything back from me. I know that I was conceived in the town of Durazzo on his way home from the great crusade. My mother was travelling under his protection and she had nursed him back from the brink of death when an old injury festered. They were not habitual lovers and they lay together but once. By the time she realised she was with child, their ways had parted. Since a nun cannot keep a baby, and since the only other recourse open to her was to give me to the Church or renounce her vows, she sent for my father and I was brought into his household.'

Annais paused in her stroking. 'I could not have given up Guillaume for a life in Holy Orders,' she murmured. 'Indeed, I would kill anyone who tried to take him from me.'

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'But then you have no vocation and no difficult choices to make,' he said softly. 'If my mother had left the cloister, she would have had to live as my father's mistress. If anything happened to him - which it did - she would have been left to fend for herself.'

Annais made a sound that said she understood, but was not happy with the verdict. 'Does she still live?'

He shook his head. 'She died when I was a small child. The Abbess at her convent wrote to my father to tell him. I visited her grave when I was in Normandy with the court, but it looked like all the others and there was nothing it could tell me that I did not already know.'

She made a small, comforting sound in her throat.

Sabin looked at her and smiled, albeit wryly. 'It is all right,' he said. 'I can view it from a distance these days and without too much pain. My father told me that my mother was the daughter of King William the Conqueror's chief falconer. I was thinking how fitting it is that I should have come to Montabard with its shahins. Here, for the first time, I feel as if I belong.'

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Chapter 29

Spring 1124

Princess Joveta had a fever. Rubbing her eyes, grizzling to herself, she lay on a settle in the women's room, covered by a light woollen blanket. She had spent the night shivering and vomiting and, at first light, her mother had sent for the royal physician. He had dosed the child with a tisane of feverfew and given instructions that she was to sip water lightly sweetened with honey.

Annais sat with the child while the Queen was absent in conference with her ministers. Joveta preferred Annais above all Morphia's women and was so frequently at Annais's side that newcomers to the court sometimes mistook them for mother and daughter, although their only resemblance was the colour of their eyes.

'Hush, sweetheart, hush,' Annais soothed, stroking the little girl's flushed brow. She hoped that the fever was caused by something Joveta had eaten and was not going to sweep through the rest of the royal nursery. Infants were so vulnerable, and bouts such as this were responsible for many a child's death. Guillaume was only eighteen months old, Joscelin's daughter Stephanie even younger. Nor was it wise to be complacent about the older children, Joscelin's heir and namesake, aged eleven, or Joveta's three sisters.

'My head hurts.'

'That's because you didn't sleep last night. Master Gregorio has given you a potion to make you better. It will begin to work

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very soon.' At least, she thought, Joveta had not vomited it back up. That had to be a good sign. 'Here, take a sip for me, sweetheart, and I'll play you a magic tune on my harp.'

Joveta allowed herself to be propped up and obediently took a couple of swallows from the goblet of honey and water. The goblet itself was made from green chalcedony, purported to ward off poison. 'Why is it magic?' Joveta's little voice was rough and cracked.

'Because it comes all the way from Scotland,' Annais said in a soft voice. 'From the Eildon hills where the Fairy Queen dwells with her court. Sometimes, if you are in that country and you listen hard, you can hear the sound of her silver bridle bells as she rides by with her knights and squires.'

Joveta's gaze widened. 'Have you heard them?'

Annais smiled and shook her head. 'I grew up in a nunnery and walls will stop such sounds. But sometimes, when I had been riding in the cold, windy air, perhaps what I mistook for the call of the bird was the chime of a fairy bell.'

She fetched her harp and drew it carefully from its leather carrying case, noting that Joveta, although heavy-eyed, had forgotten her tears. Having spent a few moments tuning the strings, Annais began to stir them with her fingers, creating a gentle breeze of notes. 'Imagine you are standing on a hillside,' she murmured. 'Cool green grass beneath your feet and white daisies scattered about. A breeze strokes the heat from your body and you feel as light as air ... There is a stream running down the hillside and you can hear it bubbling over the stones . . .' She made the harp suit the words.

'Can I hear the fairy bells?'

'You have to go higher up the hill for that... to the very top where no one goes except sometimes a shepherd and his sheep. Close your eyes the better to hear . . . no, not tightly, just let your lids lie like petals over your eyes . . . that's it.'

Annais continued to pluck the harp, picking out sweet, individual notes. Joveta's breathing slowed and the flush left her cheeks. When Annais ceased playing and held her hand above

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the child's body, the furnace-like heat was much reduced. The feverfew was doing its work. Feeling less anxious, Annais continued to play until she was certain that the little girl was asleep.

Finally she set her harp aside and rose from the couch. A little distance from Joveta's sickbed, some of the other women were sewing and talking quietly. The nurses had taken the rest of the children out to play and, for the moment, the room was peaceful. She sat down beside Letice and picked up the edge of the embroidery on which the older woman was competently working.

Letice cast a glance towards the couch. 'How is she?'

'Improving. I hope the worst is over.' Annais drew an ivory needle case from the pouch at her belt, selected a fine silver needle and searched among the skeins of thread for the right colour.

'Aye, it is always a cause for anxiety when they are so young.'

Annais gave a wry smile as she threaded the needle and set it into the bleached cotton. 'It is the common lot of women to worry their nails down to the quick.'

'Indeed so,' Letice said. Her stitches were swift and neat. Annais watched her hands for a moment. They were large for a woman's, but surprisingly deft at the delicate work.

'I hope there is news soon,' Annais murmured.

Letice gave her a keen look from beneath her plucked brows. One of the competent hands reached to squeeze Annais's slender one. 'Bless you, of course there will be. Lord Joscelin's courier service to the Queen is second to none. He's a competent commander, and those are skilled men he has with him.'

Annais tilted her head in acknowledgement and did not add the obvious detail that Balak was a competent commander too, with seasoned troops at his back. There had been a rebellion against his authority in the city of Membij and the rebels had appealed to Joscelin for help. Joscelin had leaped at the opportunity to poke Balak in the eye and ridden out in haste to Membij's aid. Now came the waiting: the dragging minutes,

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hours and days of silence while her father and Sabin gambled their lives.

'Are you not concerned?' she asked Letice.

'Of course I am . . . although my anxiety is bound to be less than yours.'

Annais sewed in silence.

Letice said, 'I know that you and Sabin have been quietly building a marriage bed for your father and me.' She raised her hand as Annais drew breath. 'No, do not deny it. Age has the advantage of conferring experience, if naught else.'

Annais flushed with chagrin, but Letice's eyes were bright with humour.

'Oh, I do not blame you. Indeed I am flattered that you would choose to consider calling me mother, but I am not sure it is the right thing - and neither is your father.'

Annais's gaze widened. 'You have discussed it with him?'

Letice shook her head. 'No, but I have seen his awkwardness. He is still in mourning for the wife he lost at Kharpurt -or so it seems to me.'

Annais stabbed the needle into the fabric and took several hard, angry stitches, which she had then to undo. 'Then perhaps he needs a new interest - beyond war - to help him forget. She is not worth the depth of his grief.'

'And I need a husband, poor dried-up stick that I am.'

'No! I never thought like that, I swear I did not!' Annais was mortified and Letice swiftly patted her again.

'I know that, child,' she said. 'And indeed I do like your father. He is a good man . . . but you can only help matters so far. The dish has to cook by itself.'

Their conversation ceased then, because the Queen returned from conferring with her ministers and hearing the day's news. There was little to report, except that the siege of Tyre was progressing slowly but steadily in Frankish favour. There had been alarm when the Egyptian army had come marauding in the south, but the danger had faded away like mountain mist under the burn of a summer sun. A threat to Tyre from the

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Egyptian fleet had been dealt with by the Venetian galleys, which had positioned themselves to intercept any invasion from that quarter.

The Queen briefly relayed her tale to her women and went to check on her youngest daughter who was now sound asleep, her thumb in her mouth.

'You see,' Letice said with a smile and a mischievous eyebrow. 'All is well with the world . . . unless you happen to be a citizen of Tyre.'

'Shall I sit behind your saddle and support you?' Sabin asked.

Strongfist raised his head, which had been bowed over his horse's mane. He was hunched over his saddle, his fingers gripping the reins by instinct rather than conscious effort. They had been clenched around the leather for so long that they were set and cramped with a corpse-like stiffness that was not far from being the truth. 'I am not a puling infant to need a nursemaid to hold me in the saddle,' he snarled. 'When I need your aid, be assured that I will ask for it.'

Sabin frowned at his father-by-marriage. Strongfist had taken a spear in the side during a disastrous skirmish outside Membij. The tip had broken bone, but damaged no vital organs. However, the wound was in danger of going sour, and the hard ride of their retreat had done more damage and caused Strongfist considerable pain. Strongfist was not the kind to cry out, yet Sabin had heard the sounds suppressed in his throat and seen the clenched jaw. He had been alarmed to see blood at the corner of Strongfist's mouth, but it turned out to be the result of a bitten cheek, not a punctured lung. But should a splinter of bone work its way inwards or riding put too much strain on the damaged area, then the danger became mortal. He tried not to think about that, but it hovered at his shoulder like a cold shadow. Last year he had returned Gerbert to Montabard, injured but alive, only to watch him die of a protracted bout of wound fever. Annais had watched him die too, her husband, the father of her son. Time was a healer, but

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he knew that she would always remember the manner of Gerbert's homecoming. Now Sabin was bringing her another wounded man, beloved to her heart, and the image within her mind would be strengthened. He felt like a messenger of doom.

'Turbessel is not far,' he said. 'We'll be there before dusk and you'll receive all the succour you need ... a soft bed and syrup of poppy for your injuries.'

Strongfist glared at Sabin. 'I know how far we've to ride.' He caught his breath as his horse jolted him. Sabin winced in sympathy, and turned his head for a moment, giving Strongfist time to adjust. The battle for Membij had been a sound defeat, but not a disaster. Once they had licked their wounds, they still had the wherewithal to go back and try again, but he wondered if they had the heart. Joscelin's deputy, Geoffrey the Monk, who had been his regent at Edessa, had taken an arrow in the throat. Several fine and experienced knights had either been killed or badly injured. Balak was a formidable commander, but his abilities were no greater than Joscelin's. What he had at the moment were luck and confidence.

By the time they approached the walls of Turbessel, the spring sun had passed its zenith and a chill breeze had begun to pry its way through openings in cloaks and tunics. Two wounded knights had died on the last part of the journey and men and horses were stumbling with weariness. Joscelin called a halt to muster the straggling army and gave instructions that they were to march into the city in good order. No dispirited slumping, no bowed heads, no dusty, blood-spattered armour. Even if his army had been defeated, Joscelin had no intention of riding into his capital city like a whipped cur.