The Champion (24 page)
‘Bring the horse through to the back and tie him up in the yard,’ she said to Hervi. ‘If they knock on my door, I’ll put them off the scent.’
Once more, Alexander encountered the dour maidservant and was given a look. Her rheumy eyes widened at the sight of a woman, another man and finally a bay horse tramping past her pallet in the dead of night. She made the sign of the cross, and stared after them in disbelief.
‘You can stay in here,’ Sara said as they reached the store room. She smiled at Alexander. ‘You know where the trap door is, should you need to hide in the cellar.’
‘Yes, my lady.’ He could not help the small shudder that ran through him.
‘
My lady?
’ She sucked her cheeks. ‘I have risen in the world, haven’t I?’ Mischief danced in the violet eyes.
Alexander reddened. Hervi said, ‘Just now, I would even kneel to you as queen for what you have done for us.’
She bit her lower lip engagingly and batted her lashes at Hervi. ‘Oh, it is nothing,’ she cooed. Her glance flickered to Alexander and she gave a mischievous giggle. ‘Myself and the captain of the watch are old friends. He will believe anything I tell him.’
In the months that followed, Monday often thought back to the night of her father’s burial. The memory possessed a dream-like quality, the kind induced by eating too much cinnamon bread close to retiring. The more she tried to unravel the various strands, the more tangled they became, leaving her with an impossible knot at the centre.
The only thread that she had managed to loosen was the one that kept drawing her back into the heart of the tangle – that of controlling her own destiny in a world dominated by the egos and suspicions of men. She had seen that, despite all the barriers, a woman could do so. The lady Aline de Lavoux had risen above the vagaries of siege warfare and the machinations of her small-minded, big-headed husband, while Sara, the merchant’s widow, lived her own life and made her own decisions with remarkable daring and aplomb. The most important thing, Monday had concluded, was to keep the spark of will alive despite all attempts to trample it from existence.
Not that Hervi or Alexander deliberately trampled, she thought, as she spread out the bolt of yellow linen purchased yesterday and prepared to cut it. It was just that they took her for granted. She was their wife, their sister, their servant. She cooked and cleaned, mended and tended. In return they protected her, gave her a secure place to sleep, their honour hers, but sometimes she found herself wearying of the bargain.
As she knelt over the fabric and made the first decisive cut with the shears, Alexander returned to the tent for a fresh lance. He walked with an assured, athletic stride, and the quilted gambeson he wore was of the highest quality. They had enough silver these days to afford the best equipment. Alexander and Hervi were an effective partnership on the field, one steady as a rock, the other as fast and mercurial as a shooting star. Sometimes Monday imagined her father riding with them, a ghostly third companion, and she was sure that Hervi and Alexander felt his presence too. Little enough was said, but the first cup they raised after any success they always drank in silence to honour him.
Employment for the winter season was assured. Their skill and the continuing warfare between Richard and Philip of France made it a certainty. Monday had forgotten the number of castles they had helped to besiege between, or even during, tourneys. Several times, Hervi and Alexander had fought beneath the banner of the lord John, Count of Mortain, Richard’s youngest brother. He had been something of a black sheep during Richard’s absence on crusade, when he had seized more than his due and plotted to take his brother’s empty throne, but since begging Richard’s forgiveness on bended knees he was now a staunch ally. He had to be, for there was no guarantee that the childless Richard would name him his successor.
‘How goes it?’ Alexander enquired with a half-smile, and tilted his head to watch her cut through the fabric with unerring strokes.
‘Ask me that in a couple of days,’ she answered with a smile of her own and a little shake of her head. She was embarking upon a new set of barding for the two destriers in the de Montroi colours of blue and yellow. ‘Of course, they will be ready the sooner if you want to help me lay the seams.’
‘I could think of no greater purgatory,’ Alexander said with a grimace of mock-horror.
‘You could always stir the cooking pot then, and leave me more time to sew,’ she said mischievously.
He gave her a look sidelong to see if she was jesting. With an effort, Monday kept her face straight, and when her mouth threatened to betray her, bent conscientiously over her task.
‘If I have time when I’ve finished my practice and written a letter for one of the men, I’ll come,’ he said with a martyred air.
Monday nodded as if she believed him. He made himself scarce with alacrity, leaving her with a laugh on her lips and exasperation knitting her brows.
Hervi was sitting on the ground eating a chunk of bread and dry salt sausage when Eudo le Boucher joined him with a flask of wine and his own meal of half a fowl and a handful of dried fruit. Before the two men, the tourney field of Gournai was the dusty brown of summer’s end, and beyond it lay other fields heavy with wheat and populated by harvesting villagers. Thus far their crops had been spared the burning of war.
‘So,’ said le Boucher between rotations of his jaw. ‘Where are you bound next, Montroi?’
Hervi wondered why le Boucher wanted to know. The man was a thorn in his side, and he bore no love for his company, and yet, ever since Arnaud’s death, le Boucher persisted in seeking him out. In another man, Hervi would have suspected the emotion of guilt, but he knew le Boucher incapable of such finer feeling.
‘I have heard that the Count of Mortain has need of troops,’ he said cautiously. ‘I might seek his recruiting officer.’
‘You would take John above Richard?’ There was a note of genuine surprise in le Boucher’s voice.
Hervi attended to his meal and did not reply, except to shrug. He was not about to tell le Boucher why he and Alexander preferred to avoid Coeur de Lion.
‘Richard’s the better soldier,’ le Boucher said.
‘Is that where you intend to go then, to Richard?’
‘Haven’t decided yet.’ Le Boucher cleaned his teeth with his tongue and tugged crumbs from his beard. ‘Depends what offers I get.’
They finished their meal in silence. Hervi was just about to rise and make his escape when le Boucher spoke again, his tone casual, his dark eyes narrow and calculating. ‘Have you thought about seeking a husband for the de Cerizay girl?’
The hair at Hervi’s nape stood on end. ‘No,’ he said more sharply than he had intended. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I’m curious. She is not a child any more. Most girls of her age have been well wedded and bedded by now.’
‘Arnaud left her in my care. I won’t give her into another’s unless I’m very sure of him.’
Le Boucher nodded thoughtfully. ‘You don’t want her for yourself then?’
Hervi choked. Le Boucher solicitously thumped his back and offered him a swig of his own wine. Red-eyed, Hervi glared at him. ‘I ought to knock that notion from your skull with a war hammer,’ he snarled, before being taken with another fit of coughing.
‘I’d like to see you try,’ le Boucher retorted scornfully. ‘Your own skull is full of strange notions. Why should you object to my question?’
Hervi drew a strangled breath over his larynx. ‘Monday de Cerizay is like a daughter to me, or a niece. I have known her since she stood no higher than my knee. To wed her would be like committing incest!’ Now Hervi did rise, thoroughly upset and ruffled.
‘But how should I know such a thing unless I asked?’
‘Why should you want to ask?’
Le Boucher sighed. ‘Why do you think? I myself feel that I have a responsibility for the girl’s welfare, since it was my sword with which her father chose to end his life. Pending the state of her dowry, I am willing to offer to take her to wife. I have coin to my name and I’m a good provider, better by far than Arnaud de Cerizay ever was.’
Hervi’s scalp positively seethed with horror at the notion. ‘I have no intention of arranging a match for her,’ he croaked. ‘And the girl herself has given no indication that she desires matters to change.’
‘But surely she will not challenge your authority if you make a decision?’
‘I would never force her into anything she did not want.’
Le Boucher gave him a peculiar, almost pitying look. ‘It is a man’s right to govern his womenfolk, and their duty to obey,’ he said.
‘I know that, you don’t have to lecture me,’ Hervi snapped. ‘I told you, I have no intention of seeing her wed yet.’
‘But now I have spoken you will give it some thought?’
Hervi felt as if he had been pushed into a corner. Alexander would have known what to say, but Hervi’s wits were not so fly. He could speak with a sword and a gesture far more easily than with words, but neither of the latter were advisable at the moment. He managed a brusque nod and a grunt of acquiescence, and made his escape.
Le Boucher remained where he was, finishing his wine, gazing out over the quiet, pastoral scene, but his eyes remained narrow, and there was no tranquillity in the harsh lines of his face.
‘Like this, you mean?’ Alexander pushed the silver needle into the fabric and drew out the shining yellow thread.
Monday chewed her lip at the enormous stitch. ‘At least you are sewing in a straight line now,’ she said kindly. Alexander had returned from his various military pursuits earlier than either of them had expected, and so she had challenged him to pick up a needle. ‘If you persevere, one day you’ll be able to sew as fine a seam as any dainty lady shut in her bower,’ she teased.
‘By which time my hands will have more holes than a sieve and my eyes will see nothing but rows and rows of tiny stitches for ever amen!’ he retorted, screwing up his face.
‘So you admit defeat?’
Alexander laughed. ‘Part of learning how to fight is knowing when to acknowledge you are beaten and make a graceful retreat.’ He handed her the yellow fabric. ‘You sew. I’ll cook.’
‘Coward,’ she accused in a bantering tone, and watched him busy himself with the evening meal. She had to admit that he had a certain flair with the cooking pot when he could be bothered. A gleam of devilry in his eyes, he fetched Hervi’s wine flask and poured more than half the contents into the cauldron set on a tripod over the fire.
‘He won’t love you for that,’ she warned laughingly.
‘He can soon buy some more. Besides, he’s not here. He’s at the washerwomen’s camp fire with Osgar and Alys and another girl, so I doubt he’ll be back this side of midnight.’ Drawing his knife, Alexander set about preparing the vegetables. Monday’s needle flew in and out of the fabric and a companionable silence descended. This was the kind of evening she would commit to memory and cling to on the occasions when Alexander as well as Hervi chose absence over hearth.
Alexander swept the chopped ingredients into the pot of wine stock, gave it a stir, then fetched his lectern and set out his writing equipment. Monday glanced at him over her sewing and a pang surged through her, part affection, part something deeper and wilder that she had no experience to name. She only knew that it gave her pleasure to be with Alexander, and that her breath grew short and her skin hot whenever he looked at her. He was not looking now, however, for all his concentration was bent upon the exquisite forming of the letters in brown-black oak gall ink.
A delicious aroma began to waft from the cooking pot, the steam and smoke mingling in a haze on the golden evening air. We could be a contented married couple, Monday thought, and for a moment took pleasure in the dream. But even as she embellished the moment like a scribe illuminating a capital, she knew that it could not be. No couple had been more devoted than her parents, and look what had become of them. In a way they had killed each other.
Alexander had a swift, restless nature. Just now he was doing no more than taking a brief respite from hurling himself at life, and she wanted more than a canvas tent, a straw pallet and an absent husband. Her fantasies took another turn and she imagined herself dressed in finery, a great and pampered lady without a care in the world. But that too left her dissatisfied. Great ladies were born, seldom made, and for all their finery they possessed little freedom. Probably they did have cares, small and petty and corrosive.
As Monday sewed, she arrived at the conclusion that the source of freedom was to have power over her own life. The source of that power lay in the seed of the notion, and then its germination into a deed. Unless the former was actively nurtured, the latter would never grow. Monday frowned as she wrestled with the thought. Her eye fell once more on Alexander who had now finished the letter and was sanding the ink to dry it. He had turned his notions, his dreams and ideas into deeds, and was still forcing his way into the sunlight with undiminished vigour.
‘Would you teach me to do that?’ she asked of an impulse born of her thoughts.
‘What?’ He looked round.
‘To read and write – like you.’ She waited for him to say that it was difficult, that it was not a woman’s place, or that he did not have the time.
With great care he rolled the sheet of vellum into a cylinder and tied it with a narrow strip of ribbon. ‘I could if you had the determination,’ he said. ‘But it is not something you can learn in the course of a single evening.’
‘I am willing to persevere.’
Alexander pursed his lips and rubbed his forefinger across them in a habitual gesture of puzzlement or thought. ‘Why the sudden interest?’
Monday coloured. ‘I want knowledge,’ she said defensively. ‘Nothing comes from nothing. I watch you grind up your inks, trim your quill and form those beautiful letters. I want to be able to do the same.’
He listened to her explanation thoughtfully, and a slow smile lit in the depths of his eyes. ‘Very well, I will show you,’ he said. ‘But I hope you make a better scribe than I do a tailor!’
