The Champion (25 page)

Over the following two weeks, between her other tasks, Monday applied herself to becoming lettered. She had made sewing look simplicity itself to Alexander, but he had discovered differently when he picked up a needle. Now, in her turn, she found that the fluid ease with which he wielded his quill was more difficult than it looked. She began with a wax tablet and a sharp wooden stylus, and when she had learned each letter of the alphabet in both its standard and capital forms, he transferred her lessons to pen and vellum.

The quill nib had to be trimmed precisely to give the correct edge and thickness to the ink, which in turn had to be ground and mixed to the right texture, neither too thick nor too runny. The vellum had to be lightly scored with guidelines for the writing, and pricked with a bradawl to give each letter its space. She had to learn how to erase her constant errors without damaging her writing surface. Although she made many mistakes, she was helped by her sempstress’s eye, and Alexander was as swift with his praise as he was with his hair-clutching impatience.

He made her write out one of his compositions and then read it back to him. Then he had her pen a short letter to an imaginary friend. Her confidence grew, and she drank in the knowledge with an avid thirst that she had not even been aware of possessing until now. Alexander was amused, delighted and very proud of both her progress and her determination; so much so that he curtailed his carousing with the other knights to give her extra tuition.

Hervi, however, was against the entire exercise.

‘It is not a woman’s place to own such knowledge,’ he remonstrated as he and Alexander groomed their horses one morning. ‘I don’t need those skills. Why should she?’

Alexander swept the grooming brush down Samson’s sloping hindquarters and smiled ruefully to himself. Hervi, like most illiterate men of his standing, viewed the ability to read and write with deep suspicion. The skill was slowly but surely becoming essential to a man’s political advancement, and those knights who clung stubbornly to the old ways were being left behind. Worse still, they were being left behind by merchants and artisans, by wealthy peasants and women.

‘I see nothing wrong in teaching her,’ Alexander replied mildly. ‘At least she will never be at the beck and call of some scribe.’

Hervi’s complexion darkened. ‘Nothing but grief will come of this knowledge,’ he said. ‘You will fill her head with all manner of strange notions that will ruin her when she comes to marry. You are showing her a land where it will be impossible for her to dwell.’

‘Oh, don’t be such a stone-head, Hervi. There are many women who are literate, and their husbands don’t beat them for it. Look at Duke Richard’s own mother, the Duchess Eleanor. Does he not owe his freedom to her? If not for her abilities, he would still be languishing in a German prison.’

‘Aye, and she herself was locked up for sixteen years by her own husband for fomenting rebellion,’ Hervi retorted. ‘A rebellion that would never have happened if she had known her place.’

The brothers glared at each other. ‘Then you tell Monday,’ Alexander said through his teeth with scorn, ‘you tell her that she may not continue to learn and better herself because of your pig-ignorance.’

Hervi raised his fist to flatten Alexander.

‘Yes,’ said the younger man contemptuously, ‘put me in my place too.’

Hervi looked at Alexander, then at his bunched fingers. Uttering a sound of disgust, he swung on his heel and stormed off. Alexander released the breath he had been holding and threw the grooming brush on the ground. It wasn’t just the reading and writing, he thought. Something else was eating at Hervi. He had been sour and distracted these past few weeks, but had not seen fit to share whatever was troubling him except by way of venting his spleen. That was as maybe, but Alexander had no intention of playing the compliant scapegoat.

He was kitting Samson in the new barding of blue and yellow when Hervi reappeared, dressed for the joust in his full tourney armour – ready to do battle an hour before battle was due to be joined. Alexander studied this portent with interest, but said nothing aloud, and returned his attention to harnessing the stallion.

Hervi cleared his throat. ‘He looks like a knight’s horse,’ he commented. ‘A pity there’s naught but a knave to ride him.’

Alexander flashed Hervi a look. Hervi returned it with a glower, but there was a hint of humour in the curve of his lips.

‘Little difference between a knight and a knave save the clothes on their backs,’ Alexander retorted with a nod at Hervi’s finery.

Hervi made a disparaging sound and turned away to begin saddling up Soleil.

‘What suddenly makes you such a stickler for the rule of a woman’s place?’ Alexander addressed his brother’s spine. ‘It has never concerned you before. Indeed, I remember you complaining to Arnaud that Monday had been made to wear a wimple.’

With an exasperated sigh, Hervi turned round. ‘You worry at a bone until it is bald of all meat and marrow,’ he growled.

‘I need to understand.’

‘It is very simple. I was not her guardian then; it was her father’s place to make the rules. Now it is mine.’ His right hand reached to tug at his hair. ‘Ah, Christ, you might as well know. I’ve had an offer of marriage for her from Eudo le Boucher.’

‘You have what?’ Alexander was horrified.

‘Some weeks ago he asked me. Said he felt responsible for her.’ Several strands of blond hair came away in Hervi’s hand and he stared at them blankly.

‘You refused him, of course.’

‘I told him that she would be wed to the man I deemed most suitable when the time came.’

‘Even if that man be him?’ Alexander’s voice was ripe with scorn.

‘Of course I won’t marry her to her own father’s killer!’ Hervi snapped indignantly. ‘You can climb down off your high horse before I drag you out of the saddle. But what he said set me to thinking. She is sixteen years old, and it is time that she was wed to someone – preferably a man with a secure livelihood.’

Alexander stared at his brother in dismay. What Hervi said was pragmatic and true. But he did not want to think of Monday married and dwelling elsewhere. ‘She doesn’t have to marry at all. We can protect her honour, and she has the coin from Arnaud’s estate as security.’

Hervi shook his head. ‘I am only her guardian. Men like le Boucher realise that they have a chance to make a greater claim. She is Stafford’s granddaughter, and she has a dowry of sorts. She is young, innocent and pretty. It needs little more in the company we keep to make her a shining prize.’ He turned abruptly to Soleil and continued harnessing the stallion.

‘Where are you going to find a man whose livelihood is secure?’ Alexander asked neutrally.

‘I don’t know.’ Hervi’s tone was peevish with worry. ‘But you stuffing her head with abstract notions and things not of the common world will not make my task any easier.’

‘She asked me to teach her. Of her own accord she desired to be lettered. To refuse never entered my head.’ On those words, Alexander mounted Samson and rode him away to warm up. He was profoundly disturbed at the thought of Monday leaving their company to take a husband. There was no one remotely suitable, least of all Eudo le Boucher. The very notion made him recoil. And yet Hervi was right about her being a shining prize. And that too was a thought that until now had never entered Alexander’s mind.

Monday poured wine into two cups and handed one of them to Alexander. Her mind was alive, fizzing with new knowledge. There was a lightness in her movements and in her head too, almost as if she were drunk. The tourney had gone well for the men that afternoon and they had taken several rich ransoms from French knights. They had celebrated around the communal fire with dancing and singing. Hervi had gone off into the darkness with one of the women, and Alexander had escorted Monday back to their tent. Then, with a strange, intent glitter in his eyes, he had taken out his inks and demonstrated to her the Arabic system of numerals.

Monday had found the concept intriguing, the symbols so much simpler to manipulate in calculation than the unwieldy Roman ones. ‘Did they teach you this at the monastery?’ she asked as she resumed her seat at his side.

He shook his head and drank down the wine fast, something he always did after a tourney. It usually took him the course of a full evening to slow the pace of his mind and body to normal. She could sense the feverish tension in him now, and her own emotions tingled in answering awareness.

‘I taught myself,’ he said. ‘We had a copied manuscript by a monk named Adelard of Bath. There was a treatise on the use of Arabic numerals. Some of the others thought that it smacked of devilry, but that only made me all the more determined to learn how to use it.’ He rose to collect the flagon, returned and refilled his cup. ‘Hervi believes I should not be teaching you all this. He says that it will give you ideas beyond the scope of your daily life.’

Monday laughed bitterly. ‘What you are showing me is what makes my daily life bearable,’ she declared with a toss of her head. ‘I suppose he thinks that I should have no concerns but my spindle and the cooking pot!’

‘He thinks you will be dissatisfied with your lot if you know there is more to life.’ He tilted back on his stool and moodily swung one leg.

Monday laughed again. She drained her cup and thrust its rim beneath the flagon he still held. ‘He is a little too late for that. How can I not know when I see it every day in the people who come to watch the tourneys – in the lords who have the coin to hire such as us to die for them? Of course there is more. We both know it.’

‘Hervi knows it too in his heart,’ Alexander said.

They finished the wine. Impatient with her wimple, feeling daring and rebellious, Monday pulled out the bone fastening pin and cast the square of linen aside. Her hair cascaded down to her hips, shimmering with hints of bronze and gold. She saw Alexander’s eyes widen.

‘What’s wrong?’ The words stumbled on her tongue and she decided it had not been wise to drink with Alexander measure for measure.

‘You do not often remove your wimple, even in front of me or Hervi.’

‘Do you object?’

He shook his head. ‘I thought it a great pity when you were made to wear one. You have lovely hair.’

Monday studied him through her lashes and wondered whether to take his words as a light-hearted compliment, or read more into them. For the moment, it was impossible to apply her mind or make a coherent judgement. ‘I suppose that a wimple acts as a protection,’ she said, forcing out her words with great care. ‘It makes me respectable in the eyes of men. I know that there is a growing fashion among high-born women to show their hair, but the life we lead, I dare not.’ She rose to her feet, intending to put her empty cup on a trestle, but the sudden motion from sitting to standing, and the potency of the wine in her blood, made her dizzy. She stumbled, then tripped over Alexander’s leg. Since he had been leaning back on the stool, he lost his balance and they both ended up in a tangle on the floor of the tent, the stool overturned and the wine flagon emptying its dregs into the beaten earth.

Alexander leaned on one elbow. ‘Are you all right?’

Monday stared owlishly back at him. ‘Yes,’ she heard herself say, although in actual fact her head was whirling. ‘I mean no,’ she giggled. A loud hiccup sent her hand flying to cup her mouth.

He stroked her hair away from her face. ‘You look so different without that head covering.’

‘Meaning?’ The timbre of his voice caused an immodest melting sensation between her thighs.

‘That instead of a staid matron in my arms, there is a girl who is lovelier than Iseult, Guinevere and every other woman ever immortalised by a troubadour.’ The stroking hand moved down the length of her hair and came to rest with the lightest of touches on her body.

Monday giggled again and nudged his arm, which fell as if by accident on to the outer curve of her breast. She felt hot and dizzy. ‘You … you’re just saying that.’

‘No, it’s true, I swear it on my heart. Feel.’ Taking her hand, he placed it on his breast. She felt the steady but swift beat beneath her touch. The pressure of his hand over hers was damp with sweat as he raised it from his chest to his lips and circled each fingertip with the point of his tongue. Monday shivered and gasped but she did not snatch her hand away, nor did she try to rise from the floor. Her body welcomed the pressure of his, the place between her legs was sensitive and leaden with heat. The rational part of her mind told her that here was danger, that she should make her escape while there was still time, but she discarded it with the same impatience that she had discarded her wimple. There was no harm in their playing. She could stop any time she chose.

He stroked her hair again, seemingly fascinated by its abundance. ‘You’ve gold hidden in here,’ he slurred, winding a hank around his fist, ‘and bronze and amber. Wealth beyond the riches of kings. Dear God, Hervi must be mad to even think of …’ He broke off, burying his face in the scented softness of her tresses.

‘Hervi must be mad to even think of what?’

‘Nothing,’ he muttered. ‘Nothing that matters.’

She opened her mouth to insist, but he covered her lips with his own, stealing her breath, and with it, the last of her reason.

The kiss, long and slow, was a demonstration that Alexander had learned much since that first clumsy embrace in Lavoux’s stable yard. His hands caressed with deliberate, sure intent. Even more than half inebriated, he knew where to put them and how much pressure to exert. When the kiss ended, Monday tried to draw a shaken breath, feeling as if her bones had been melted from her flesh, but he gave her no time, his lips reclaiming hers, while he gently unfastened the brooch at the neck of her gown.

This was the time to cry stop, to push him away, but what her mind knew, her body rejected with a fierce will of its own and arched towards his touch. The wine was singing in her head, the world was spinning, and the sensations he was invoking were utterly delicious. When he pushed up her skirts and unfastened her loincloth, she parted her thighs eagerly and raised her hips so that he could draw the garment from beneath her.