The Champion (20 page)

He found the lowest step and set his foot upon it, his every sense alert. No sound came from the world above, no voice or footfall. He moved up to the trap and set the palm of his hand to its surface. There was no movement, and for a second the panic returned. He could imagine Brother Alkmund creeping up behind him in the darkness and seizing him by the legs. Gritting his teeth, Alexander bent his arm and set his full force against the trap. It yielded to his push and slammed back on the upper room floor with a thump loud enough to rouse the household. Alexander hastened out of the cellar, the shirt on his back saturated in cold sweat.

He darted from the store room into the main chamber. A night candle burned on a tall iron pricket, and by its light and shadow, he could see Sara’s elderly maid sitting up on her straw pallet and staring at him as he crossed the room towards the barred iron door. She shook her head slowly in obvious disapproval but made no effort to raise a hue and cry. It was with more than a touch of shame and relief that he reached the door and raised the bar. Above him, he heard a man’s voice raised in question, and Sara’s throaty laugh cajoling him to come back to bed.

Outside, a fine drizzle had begun to fall, soft as cobwebs, and the air tasted of spring. Alexander inhaled with the relief of being free of the poky cellar, and if the truth were known, Sara’s bedchamber. Several lessons had been learned in the course of the last two hours – about pleasure and lust, about arousal and control. He raised his head to the damp kiss of the rain and stepped out into the darkened streets of the town. The gates were barred until morning, but he knew that the payment of a coin would secure him a passage through the postern gate to the camp fires of the tourney field beyond.

Monday huddled in her cloak and took the bowl of steaming meat broth that Edmund One-eye ladled out to her. ‘No charge, take it.’ He waved aside her attempt to pay. ‘You and your father are good customers, you’re entitled to the occasional free dish.’

Monday gave him a wan smile over the wooden rim of the bowl. ‘Do you mind if I drink it here?’

‘Don’t ask foolish questions. Here, come to the fire.’ He drew up a low stool and dusted it off with a large hand. Monday sat down gratefully and cradled the hot broth, letting the warmth seep into her hands, for the evening was cool and the fine rain clammy.

Edmund One-eye gave the broth a stir to keep the chopped meat and barley swirling through the simmering water, and returned to cutting up scraps of meat for the pies he was going to bake on the morrow. He said nothing, but Monday was glad of his solid, comforting presence in a world that seemed increasingly hostile.

She sipped her broth and wondered where to go when she had finished. Her father and Grisel were drinking themselves senseless in the tent that should have been her home and haven. Hervi was similarly occupied with one of the camp sluts, and Alexander was in the town with that shameless woman, whose invitation had been so blatant as to be indecent. Monday’s anger rose as she thought about it. Alexander’s response had been blatant too, and the other men had cheered him on, the way they might cheer a dog going after a bitch. Her face burned at the memory of some of the comments.

Edmund scraped the chopped pork meat and fat into a bowl and wiped his hands on a scrap of clean linen rag. ‘I daresay I’ll have some cinnamon bread for you tomorrow,’ he commented gruffly.

A lump tightened her throat at his kindness and the way he had time for her even when there were so many other concerns to pluck at his attention. Not all men were wastrels and idiots, she told herself, and thanked him with a quiver in her voice. For an instant she was tempted to confide in him, but pride bridled her tongue. He would have to be completely blind not to know about her father’s drinking and whoring, the black bitterness that no one could pierce. Cinnamon bread and unspoken sympathy would have to be enough.

Monday finished the broth, and then there was no reason to remain. She would have been welcome, but pride again would not let her stay beyond her excuse to do so.

Edmund squeezed her shoulder as she rose to leave. ‘I know most of what goes on in these camps,’ he said compassionately. ‘There is always a place for you at my fire if you have no hearth to call your own.’

This time she had no voice with which to thank him, and fled before she broke down in tears.

Hervi’s tent as she passed it was dark, but from within came the sound of muffled giggles and the soft rumble of Hervi’s voice. Monday bit her lip and hurried on. There was a treacherous undercurrent in his tone that set up a yearning in her own vitals, a curiosity about bodily pleasure. Lust might be a mortal sin, but it was evidently enjoyable too, or men … and women would not return to it time and again. It could not all be mere desperation to procreate in the face of death.

As Monday approached her own tent, her pace slowed and her feet dragged out each step. The churning in her belly turned to nausea and for a moment she almost turned away. She could not bear to think of her father and Grisel engaged in bed sport. But the sounds that came muffled through the canvas were thankfully of slumber. Compressing her lips, she laid her hand to the flap and entered the tent.

Her father was snoring on the floor where drink had felled him, his clothes marred by wine stains and the grease of pastry crumbs. Silverish beard stubble blurred the line of his jaw and his once taut, tanned skin was slack and yellow. ‘Oh, Papa,’ she whispered in a heartbroken voice, and knelt beside him. Grisel was not in the main part of the tent, but Monday’s relief at small mercies was short-lived. Almost immediately she realised that the curtain to her father’s pallet was drawn across, and from behind it came soft, stealthy sounds.

Rising, Monday tiptoed to the hanging. Now she heard the clink of metal, and shallow, rapid breathing, punctuated by indistinct, gloating whispers. The hair at Monday’s nape stood on end. Seizing the curtain in her fist, she dragged it rapidly aside.

Grisel stared up in shock from the open coffer she had been plundering. Clemence’s best silk gown lay in a crumpled heap, dried rose petals falling from the folds. It was Monday’s comfort to take the gown out of the chest, to bury her hands and her face in the cool, shimmering fabric and draw in her mother’s essence. Now her sacred relic had been violated and it was obvious that Grisel had been avariciously investigating the other items in the coffer – the combs and hair fillets, the delicate silk wimple that Clemence had brought from her other life as an earl’s daughter, the silver strap ends for sewing on to a belt. On Grisel’s wrist was a bracelet of Irish-worked silver that had been one of Clemence’s favourite pieces, and around her neck was a string of amber and garnet beads that Arnaud had bought only three years ago as a twelfth-night gift for his beloved wife. Monday saw all of this, and then she saw red. Grisel’s startled face dissolved before her eyes, and nothing was left but a blinding rage.

‘You whore!’ Monday screamed in rage and grief. ‘Take your filthy hands away from my mother’s things!’

‘They’re mine now!’ the woman retorted, her eyes glittering and feral. ‘Your father gave them to me. Your sainted mother has no need of them now she’s in the ground, does she?’

‘You lying bitch!’ Monday howled. ‘My father would never do that! Those things belong to me. Get out of here, you slut, get out!’ She hurled herself upon the woman, fastening her fingers in the frizzy hair and pulling with all her strength. A great clump tore away in her hand, for Grisel’s locks had been severely damaged by all the alchemist’s preparations she smothered on them to render herself a fashionable blonde.

Grisel shrieked in agony but responded with nails and teeth, raking a nasty gash down Monday’s throat and biting the side of her hand so that Monday was forced to let go of the frowsy hair. The girl kicked out and landed a blow in the whore’s soft abdomen, but it was a momentary success. Grisel recovered far too swiftly, punched Monday on the chin, knocked her flat, and straddled her.

Monday saw stars. The blow to her jaw had snapped her teeth on her tongue and her mouth was full of blood. Grisel squeezed her throat and forced her head down against the floor. ‘I am your father’s woman now!’ the whore spat. ‘Your sainted mama is dead, and he hates her for being dead. I can have whatever I want from him, because I’m alive, and he needs me.’

‘You slut, you whore!’ Monday sobbed through a mask of blood and tears. She tried to kick Grisel, but her legs were hampered by her gown.

‘Not any more,’ Grisel taunted, with a flash of yellow teeth. ‘You are going to learn to call me mother.’

‘Never, I’ll never do that!’

Grisel raised a clawed hand. ‘You’ll do as you’re told!’

The hand never descended, for it was seized and Grisel was wrenched backwards off her victim. ‘Stop!’ Alexander roared. ‘In God’s name, what goes forth here?’

Monday struggled to her feet. Her gown was torn at the throat, and she could feel the heat of blood trickling down her neck. Her wimple was trampled on the floor and her hair tumbled in wild straggles to her hips. In her fist, she held a clump of Grisel’s frizzy hair like a trophy. ‘I caught her stealing my things,’ she wept furiously. ‘Plundering my coffer like a vulture.’ Blood dribbled down her chin from her bitten tongue and her eyes were aglitter with rage and tears.

‘The girl’s mashed in her wits,’ Grisel retorted, rubbing her wrist where Alexander had dragged her away. ‘I have her father’s permission to use whatever I want, since he’s going to marry me. She’s naught but a jealous child!’

‘Jealous!’ Monday was so choked with emotion that she could utter no more than the single word.

Alexander flickered her a look, then returned his gaze to the whore. ‘You may indeed have Arnaud’s permission,’ he said, ‘but in what frame of mind it was given is less clear. Nor is he capable of telling us at the moment. Since Mistress Monday is his daughter and his heir, I suggest you strip that jewellery, take your cloak and go to another fire for the nonce.’

Her small eyes narrowed. ‘Who are you to meddle in my affairs?’ she sneered. ‘Keep your long nose out.’

‘You would not want to fight with me,’ Alexander said quietly, and tapped his fingers on his sword belt. Grisel tried to stare him out and failed.

He took a step forwards, invading her space. ‘Which is it to be – on your own two feet, or arse over ears into the mud?’ His voice was still quiet, but to a woman like Grisel, who was accustomed to men who bellowed, there was more threat in his soft tone than in an outright roar.

She drew herself up, but it was obvious that her battle was lost. ‘I will tell Arnaud the moment he awakes, and he will make you pay for this moment,’ she hissed.

Alexander said nothing, just took another step towards her, his hand going to the latch of his belt. She snatched the bracelet from her wrist, the beads from around her neck, and threw them on the floor at his feet. Then she spat, just missing the toe of his boot, and stalked from the tent.

‘Sweet Jesu, what a viper,’ Alexander muttered, and turned to Monday, then, with another muffled oath, strode over to her and engulfed her in his arms.

At first she resisted his offer of comfort, standing rigid within the circle of his embrace, hating him almost as much as she hated Grisel, but as he started to withdraw, she clutched his sleeves in a grip so tight that her knuckles blanched and the fabric of his tunic was imprinted with creases that would not drop out until the following day. She beat her head against his breast, and dry sobs racked her body.

‘He does not see!’ she wept. ‘And I cannot make him open his eyes. All he does is hate my mother for dying, and me for being a part of her!’

‘Hush, it’s all right,’ he murmured awkwardly, and stroked her hair with his open palm.

‘No, it’s not all right!’ She pushed herself furiously out of his arms. ‘What do you know? She gestured at the despoiled coffer. ‘You have your jewelled cross and your memories intact. You come from bedding that slut in the town, the smell of her perfume on your skin and you tell me that it’s all right! You are as ignorant as the rest of them!’ Whirling from him, she knelt by the coffer and began to replace the keepsakes. It gave her shaking hands a focus.

She could feel him standing behind her, could feel his eyes boring into her spine. She wanted to scream at him to go away, leave her in peace, but more than the want was the need not to be alone.

‘I know that I cannot understand your pain,’ he said awkwardly, ‘but I can see it, and irrespective of where I have been, I am here now. Rail at me if it will give you ease.’

She shook her head and sniffed. ‘Railing will only make me feel worse.’

He cleared his throat. ‘That scratch is nasty. Do you have some salve for it?’

She laid the silk gown in the coffer and smoothed it gently. ‘In the smaller chest,’ she said without looking round. ‘Unless she has plundered that too. A stonework jar with a wooden stopper.’

He threw back the coffer lid and delved among spare drop spindles, hanks of wool, twists of powdered herbs, until he found the jar. Removing the top, he sniffed at the yellowish unguent, and recoiled.

‘Goose-grease and herbs,’ she said. ‘It smells dreadful, but it works.’ She was quieter now, the rage and grief dampened down to a smoulder.

‘Sit still.’ He turned her to face the light from the candle-lantern, and dipping his forefinger, very gently applied a smearing of ointment to the long gouge on her throat.

She made a tiny movement as he hurt her, then held herself still. ‘If I had somewhere to run away, I would do so,’ she said bleakly.

Alexander’s fingers ceased their work. ‘That would be very foolish.’

‘You did,’ she challenged. ‘You ventured across the Narrow Sea on your own without so much as a bundle to your name.’

He shook his head. ‘I had a destination,’ he retorted. ‘And still I almost starved to death. I slept rough in the woods like an outlaw; for a time I even was one, if you count the henhouses I raided for eggs, and the eels out of someone’s trap.’ He resumed the delicate work of his fingertips. ‘Besides, I am male. It would be twice as hard for a woman to make her own way in the world. Belike you would be pounced upon and raped before you had travelled more than five miles, unless you had the money to hire the protection of servants. For all your misery, you are safer here.’