Company of Liars (7 page)

‘No, please, I mean you no harm. It's my wife.’

Hands still raised, he gestured with his chin towards the
clump of trees from which he'd emerged. There was still just enough light to make out a woman sitting on the stump of a tree, her cloak wrapped tightly about her against the rain.

‘My wife,’ the young man began again. ‘She can't walk any further tonight. She's pregnant.’

‘So,’ growled Zophiel, ‘what are you telling me for? I didn't father her child.’

‘I thought you might let her ride in your wagon. Not me, of course, I can walk. I don't mind walking, I'm used to it, but Adela, she –’

‘Are you even more stupid than you appear? Does it look as if this wagon is going anywhere? Clear off.’

Zophiel walked around the wagon to his horse and began pulling on the halter, using his whip freely in a vain effort to get the poor beast to move forward. The boy followed him, keeping a safe distance from the whip.

‘Please, she can't spend the night in the open in this rain. I'll help you lift the wheel out, if you'll –’

‘You,’ Zophiel spat, ‘you couldn't lift the skin off a roast chicken.’

‘But we could,’ Rodrigo said, stepping forward.

The dagger was in Zophiel's hand again and he backed nervously up against the solid side of the wagon, his eyes darting all around, trying to see if there were any more of us hiding in the shadows. Jofre giggled. He was enjoying every minute of this.

Rodrigo gave his most courtly bow. ‘The minstrel Rodrigo at your service,
signore.
My pupil, Jofre, and our companion, a camelot.’

Zophiel peered closely at us.

‘You!’ he said, as his gaze alighted on Jofre. He swiftly backed away, his dagger sweeping from side to side in front
of him as if he were preparing to take us all on. ‘If you think you're going to get the boy's money back, you are mistaken, my friend. He was –’

‘Money?’ Rodrigo looked puzzled.

Jofre was carefully studying his mud-caked boots.

‘The price to see the merchild,’ I explained quickly.

Rodrigo nodded, apparently satisfied, then turned back to Zophiel and held his hands up in imitation of the young man. ‘Rest assured,
signore
, we have no intention of robbing you of your money. We were about to offer our help, one traveller to another, when this gentleman approached. But now he is here, between us we will soon get your wagon on the move.’

Zophiel continued to eye us suspiciously. ‘And how much do you want for your help?’

I answered for him. ‘These lads will shift the wagon, if you'll agree to give a ride to this man's wife.’ I looked around. Rain was streaming down our faces. We were so wet and muddy that we might have been dragged out of a river. ‘It's my guess that we're all in need of dry shelter tonight. There are no inns on this road, but I do know of a place that'll keep out the rain, if it's not already occupied.’

Zophiel glanced over to where, in the semi-darkness, we could just make out the smudge of the woman still huddled on the tree stump. ‘If I put her on the wagon, it will weigh it down into the mud again. Besides,’ he added petulantly, ‘there's no room, the wagon's full.’

‘Then let her ride where you sit. She can't weigh more than you. You walk and lead the horse. In the dark that would, in any case, be the safest course unless you want to end up overturned.’

‘And why should I walk when a woman rides? If her
husband drags her on some fool journey on foot in her condition, he only has himself to blame.’

The wind was getting up and lashing the rain against our faces, burning the skin already raw from wet and cold.

‘Come now, Zophiel,’ I said. ‘None of us would be on the road this night unless we were forced to be. Let's not waste any more time. We're all getting soaked to the skin and your wheels are settling deeper in the mud. It seems to me you have a simple choice: stay here all night in the rain with your wagon stuck fast and you prey to any cut-throat that comes along, or give the woman a ride and let us help you on your way. We'll all walk alongside you and put our shoulders to the wheel each time the wagon gets stuck, which it surely will in this mud with or without the woman. What do you say? If we help one another this night, we may all find a dry bed before dawn.’

4. Adela and Osmond

And so it was that the six of us found ourselves spending a night together, huddled round a fire in a cave listening to the river roaring over the boulders of its bed and the rain plashing down on the leaves of the trees. The cave was broad but low and shallow, like a fool's grin carved on the face of the rock. It was positioned about five or six feet up the cliff on the side of the gorge, but there were enough fallen boulders and ledges at the base to make it a comparatively easy climb even for me and the pregnant Adela. And it was unoccupied, as I hoped it would be, for even in daylight the cave was well concealed from the road behind a tangle of tall trees. In the dark it was impossible to see, unless you knew where to look for it, and it had even taken me a while to find it again.

The walls of the cave were smooth with long horizontal ridges as if a giant potter had run his fingertips along wet clay, and the floor sloped down towards the mouth, so that it was dry inside all year round. Years ago, a herdsman or hermit had built a low wall of rough stone across part of the entrance and over time dry vegetation and twigs had accumulated behind it, which provided good kindling for our fire. We soon had a fine blaze started and, within the
wall's shelter, the fire burned true, with only the occasional plume of smoke billowing back into the cave.

We'd each thrown what we had into the pot – beans, onions, herbs and a few strips of salted pork – to make a pottage. It was hot and filling and a deal better than you'd find in any of the inns in those parts. With our bellies full and limbs at last warming up, we were all beginning to relax.

I set stones to heat on the edge of the fire. Hot stones wrapped in a bit of sacking make good comforters for the feet in the chill hours of the night. It was a trick I learned years ago and I guessed Adela would be glad of a little comfort later. Something told me that our pair of turtle doves were not accustomed to spending a night in a cave.

They say like seeks like and if that is true, then these two were made for each other. They were both blond with wide Saxon faces and eyes as blue and bright as speedwell flowers. Osmond was a broad, stocky lad, well fleshed, with a smooth, clear complexion that many a girl would envy. Adela too had the big bones of her Saxon ancestry, but unlike Osmond she was thin, her cheeks stood out sharply as if she had lately gone hungry for many weeks and there were dark circles around her eyes. Some women suffer such sickness through their early months of pregnancy that they can scarcely keep a morsel down, but if that was the cause of her emaciation, she had plainly recovered from it, for there was little wrong with her appetite that night.

She recovered a little after her meal and lay propped against some of the packs, resting, while Osmond fussed round her checking that she was warm enough, not tired, not in pain, not hungry, not thirsty, until even she laughingly begged him to rest. But that he could not do, and asked me
again, though he had already done so a dozen times, if I thought there really were cut-throats or robbers living in this gorge.

That question hung heavy in Zophiel's mind also. We'd been forced to leave his wagon and horse at the base of the cliff and though we had covered the wagon well with branches and tethered his horse in the thick shrubbery where it could not be seen from the road, Zophiel would not rest until he had unloaded his boxes and stored them in the cave behind us. No one dared to enquire what the boxes contained; he was suspicious enough of us already, but whatever it was, it did not appear to be food, for although he contributed a generous quantity of dried beans to the pottage, he had to return to the wagon for them.

Jofre lay in the dark at the back of the cave wrapped in his cloak. Rodrigo had urged him to come closer to the fire and share its warmth with the rest of us, but he had made the excuse that he wanted to sleep, although I sensed he was still very much awake. I suspected he was faking sleep in order to avoid Zophiel, but it isn't easy to avoid someone when you're sharing a small cave with them.

Jofre had been as taut as a drawn bowstring ever since we'd pulled Zophiel's wagon out of the mud. I knew he was dreading Zophiel raising the subject of the wager again. I was as anxious as he was to prevent that particular word slipping out, for if Rodrigo found out just how much of their hard-earned money his pupil had lost, he'd be furious, and who could blame him? But if he tore a strip off the lad in front of everyone, Jofre was likely to storm off into the night, and if he didn't break his own neck in the dark, one of us would surely break ours if we had to go looking for him.

Up to then, Zophiel had been too preoccupied with his
boxes to concern himself with conversation, but now that everyone was settling in for the night, a diversion was called for, so I cast about for a subject that would lead us far away from wagers and magic tricks.

‘Adela, is this your first baby? I thought so, judging by the way your poor husband is clucking round. Make the most of it now, come the second one and he'll be lying down with a headache while you do the fetching and carrying.’

Adela, blushing, glanced at Osmond, but said nothing.

I tried again. ‘You'd best push it out early; his nerves won't stand a long confinement. When's it due?’

‘Around Christmas or a little before,’ she said shyly, glancing up at Osmond again.

He rubbed her hand and grimaced.

‘That's four months yet. If she can't manage to walk now, what's she going to be like come December?’ Zophiel said coldly, his gaze fixed on the darkness outside.

Osmond leaped to his wife's defence. ‘She can walk. It was the crowd of people all leaving the town so quickly, they were jostling her and she grew faint. She's strong usually, aren't you, Adela? And besides, we'll have our own house somewhere long before her baby's due.’

Zophiel turned to look at Osmond. ‘So you'll have your own house, will you, my young friend? You have property, do you? Money?’ He inclined his head in a mocking bow. ‘Do forgive me, my lord, I didn't realize I was travelling in the company of nobility.’

Osmond blushed furiously. ‘I'll earn money.’

‘Doing what exactly?’ Osmond's earnestness seemed to amuse Zophiel. He glanced over at their packs. ‘You're travelling light. So what are you, my friend, a merchant, a jester, a thief perhaps?’

Osmond's fists clenched and Adela's hand flew up to grab his shirt. He took a deep breath, evidently struggling to keep his reply civil.

‘I, sir, am a painter, an artist employed to paint the pictures of saints and martyrs on church walls. The Nativity, the Crucifixion, the Last Judgment, I can do them all.’

Zophiel raised his eyebrows. ‘Is that so? I've never heard of a married man in such employ, surely it's monks and lay brothers who undertake that holy task?’

Adela was biting her lip. She seemed on the point of saying something, but Osmond answered first.

‘I paint those churches which are too far away from the abbeys and monasteries to be visited by the artists in holy orders. I paint the poor ones.’

‘Then you will make a poor living.’

Osmond's fists clenched again. ‘I can earn enough to –’

‘What's that sound?’ Jofre was leaning forward, staring beyond the fire, all pretence of sleep abandoned.

Zophiel was on his feet in an instant, staring out into the darkness beyond the cave. We listened, but heard nothing except for the crackling of the wood on the fire, and the thunder of water in the river below. After a few minutes, Zophiel shook his head and settled down by the fire once more, but his eyes darted restlessly around as he continued to peer out into the impenetrable blackness.

Rodrigo, with a glance at Osmond's still furious expression, broke the heavy silence that followed. ‘And where will you go, Zophiel? You have plans?’

‘I had planned to go to Bristol to find passage on a ship. I have business in Ireland.’

‘You're too late,’ Osmond said. ‘If what they told us at the fair is right, you won't find any of the ports open anywhere between Bristol and Gloucester.’ The knowledge
that the great Zophiel's plans had been thwarted seemed to have cheered him up enormously.

Zophiel glared at him. ‘Bristol and Gloucester are not the only ports in England, or did your schoolmaster neglect to teach you that? I assume of course that you did have some kind of rudimentary schooling, though perhaps your poor master gave up on the attempt, and who can blame him?’

Once again Adela had to grab Osmond's arm. She glanced over at us with a timid smile. ‘Where will you all go now that they've closed the fair?’

‘The three of us are travelling north to the shrine of St John Shorne,’ Rodrigo told her before I could answer. ‘I have not been there myself, but Camelot says there are many inns there, many pilgrims. It is a good place to find work and lodgings. A good place to stay until the pestilence has burned itself out. And they will not close a shrine.’