The Champion (50 page)

John prowled around the room, twitching his shoulders with irritation at the lack of space, his dark eyes fixing with disparagement on the small tunic left on a chair, the napkins airing by the fire, the pile of dyed wool in the corner with a drop spindle on top. Domesticity in which he no longer had an interest. ‘It won’t make any difference whether you go or stay,’ he said. ‘Either the brat will improve, or he won’t.’

‘He’s your son!’ she cried, appalled at his callousness.

‘And Richard was my brother,’ John sneered, but he came to look down at the wailing, flushed child. His expression softened slightly as he touched one burning red cheek. ‘Probably no more than a tooth coming through,’ he dismissed, and unfastened his cloak. ‘Very well, we’ll stay here. Where’s the other one?’

‘Ursula’s taken him out.’ Monday swallowed as John lowered his hands to his belt buckle.

‘Don’t refuse me,’ he warned in a voice all the more menacing for its softness. ‘Where shall it be? Here in the straw, or up the stairs?’ He glanced towards the loft.

Monday wondered why he was bothering when there were so many other women he could have; perfumed and pretty, without the complication of children at their skirts. Not for love, or even the greed of lust, she thought. They had last slept together in the week before he sailed to England, and he had been full of tension, wound as taut as a crossbow string. Then it had been for comfort and release. Now, something different bristled in the air. Hostility, contempt, covetousness. It was easier tonight to see the John who had commanded the beheading of Evreux’s garrison than the John who had given her smouldering looks across a picnic field at Lavoux.

‘John, I …’

‘I what, cannot wait?’

The look in his eyes was merciless. She called Hilda to attend the baby, and on weak legs climbed the stairs to the sleeping loft. Suddenly, the price that she had told Alexander was only small seemed set to beggar her.

John was not gentle; he was rough, and he took his time, leaving her sore and humiliated, her breasts bruised, her neck covered in purple marks, and a welt on her collar bone where he had torn her chemise from her body. He had been violent in his lovemaking before, but only in play, never with direct intention to hurt. She faced the wall. Below, she could hear the baby crying, and Hilda’s voice crooning as she tried to shush him.

John left the bed and slowly began to don his garments. ‘I hear that you had a visitor in April, one of William Marshal’s knights, no less.’ His tone was chillingly casual.

A cold shiver ran down Monday’s spine. She had known that John would find out, she had even said calmly to Alexander that she would placate him, but now that the time had come, she had less confidence. ‘We knew each other a long time ago,’ she said. ‘On the tourney circuit.’

‘I don’t pay you to entertain other men.’

‘He wasn’t “other men”.’ She rolled over to face him. Her bruises were beginning to smart and there was a dull ache in the pit of her belly where he had surged into her. ‘Florian was lost; he found him and brought him home. When I invited him to dine, it was for the sake of old times, and dine is all we did.’ She spoke evenly, and held his gaze with steadfast eyes, but her body was clenched so tight that she was trembling. ‘Surely whoever told you about my visitor also told you what passed between us?’

John sat down to attach his hose to his braies, his face inscrutable. ‘He is the father of your child, is he not?’

Monday swallowed. She felt sick, as much for Alexander’s sake as for her own. ‘It was a long time ago,’ she repeated. ‘I did not think our paths would ever cross again.’

‘But now they have, and it seems that you desire to renew your friendship.’

She remembered John once telling her that she could either be a victim or a pupil. At the moment, she was a victim, and he was making a meal of her, bloody of tooth and claw. ‘Why should you object?’ she asked. ‘In your exchequer I am paid as a sempstress. I have kept my body for you alone; and I have never been unfaithful. Am I forbidden to have a life outside yours?’

His face darkened as she spoke, and his movements became jerky. ‘Everything you have is at my whim, sweetheart. One command from me and you face ruin. Another, and your friend will find his career curtailed.’

Monday forced herself to think, to use reason above fear and loathing. ‘Where would be the profit in that?’ she asked, and made a conscious effort to keep her voice gentle and unchallenging. ‘I know you have the power to destroy us, but it would be like taking a siege engine to a house of straw, and for no better purpose than to prove you can do it because you are the King.’

John tugged on his tunic and said nothing, but she could almost see the thoughts mulling in his mind as he deliberated between being merciful and merciless.

‘Because I am the King,’ he repeated, and leaned over the bed to cup her face on his palm. ‘You would be surprised what people try to wheedle out of me because I am the King.’

‘Not me.’

He looked into her eyes, their faces so close that she could see the first grey hair glimmering in his black beard, and the slightly enlarged pores on the fleshy part of his nose. She wanted to recoil, but knew that if she flinched, she was lost.

‘Well, my little sempstress,’ he murmured, ‘you shouldn’t go sticking your needle into tender flesh, should you?’ He claimed her lips in a brief but probing kiss, and then released her. Standing up, he removed a pouch from his belt and tossed it on the bed. It fell against her shin with a heavy jink of coin. ‘For services rendered,’ he said, and a look of distaste crossed his face as he took in the sight of the bruises he had inflicted in his anger and his passion. ‘Have you salve for those marks?’

She nodded. ‘In my coffer.’

He nodded too. ‘Have a care how you spend your time, and with whom,’ he said, and turned on his heel. At the door, he paused and looked over his shoulder. ‘I will release you when
I
am ready.’

Monday lay in her bed until she heard the door thud shut. She felt terrible, nauseous, aching, wounded.
A small price to pay
. She thought of how foolishly she had raised her chin at Alexander. The pouch of coins lay on the bed like a manacle, chaining her to John. He would keep her out of spite, she knew; was quite capable as he said of ruining lives on a whim and with a single command.

Leaving the bed, she fetched the salve from her coffer. The smell of herbs and grease increased the feeling of nausea and she almost heaved. Lips compressed, she anointed her bruises, and put her garments back on.

As she was donning her wimple, the stairs thumped, and Florian burst into the room, full of chatter about his outing, and demanding that they buy a caged finch to hang in the window. Monday put him off with noncommittal murmurs, knowing full well that she could not bear to have such a symbol of imprisonment under their roof.

Ursula followed Florian into the room, and gave Monday the squares of vellum and the ink powder she had been sent out to purchase. ‘Hilda’s got the little one to sleep, mistress,’ she announced cheerfully. Her eyes went to the disordered bed, and without being commanded, she moved to straighten the covers.

‘Leave that,’ Monday said sharply. She could imagine Ursula’s gaze on the stained, damp bottom sheet. ‘Come here.’

Looking puzzled, but not worried, the young woman did so. There was a fine silver brooch at the throat of her gown, a new silk girdle at her slim hips, and her veil was crowned with a pretty fillet of brass and pink silk. Expensive touches, beyond the means of a serving girl. ‘Mistress?’ she lisped through her slightly prominent front teeth.

‘How much were you paid to spy on me?’

Ursula’s pale complexion burned with colour and her cow-brown eyes grew wide. ‘Mistress, I know not what you mean.’

‘I think you know right well. My business is mine alone, and I will answer for it personally to Lord John without you carrying tales and making trouble. If I want to speak to a friend, or buy vellum and ink to write out a recipe, it concerns no one but myself.’

‘Mistress, I wouldn’t tell anyone your business!’ The girl wrung her hands. One of them was adorned with a silver gimmal ring, bearing the motif of two clasped hands.

‘No?’ Monday nodded at the jewellery. ‘Either money grows on trees, or you have a fond admirer.’

It seemed impossible that Ursula could redden any further, but she did, and covered the ring with her other hand.

‘Who is he?’ Monday asked wearily.

‘I haven’t told him anything, mistress, I swear. He works with the King’s hounds, breeding them. He says that when he has enough put by we can get married. There’s no harm in him, mistress, I swear it. We met him today in the marketplace, and he promised Master Florian a greyhound pup!’

‘And you told him that you were buying vellum and ink for your mistress?’

Ursula looked at the floor.

‘And next time you see him, you will tell him that you came home to find the bed all unmade and your mistress with lover’s bruises on her throat? Then he will laugh and give you another present and a promise and a kiss to keep you sweet. Oh Ursula, you goose!’ Monday’s mood was now tinged with more irritation than anger. ‘Did you never stop to think that he was sweetening details out of you?’

‘He loves me, he’s not a spy!’ Ursula said desperately, and her lower lip trembled, her eyes sparkling on the verge of tears.

Monday sighed and handed the girl the pouch of money that John had given to her. ‘Take this,’ she said, ‘and go. If your swain still wants you, I will personally provide your dowry. If he suddenly seems less interested, then I will secure you a post in another household. But as from now, I do not want you in mine.’

The girl started to weep. Monday felt like a shrew, but she stood her ground. It was not as though she was casting Ursula out on her ear in nothing but the clothes she wore. Even so, it was on the tip of her tongue to relent, to fold the maid in her arms and forgive. Firmly throttling the impulse, she said, ‘Collect your things and go,’ and with tight lips, turned away, taking Florian in her arms instead.

Still crying, Ursula fled the room. The girl was hurt, and probably full of righteous anger that her employer could so malign her man, but Monday thought sadly that the hurt was soon going to seem as nothing compared to the raw pain of having love’s dazzle stripped from her eyes. She kissed Florian’s dark curls and with a sigh, set him down. A dull ache pounded at her temples, but she knew that lying down would be fruitless; sleep would never come, and her cares would only turn over and over in her mind, and grow out of all proportion until they smothered her.

With a sigh, she went downstairs to check upon the baby, saw that although restless he was at least sleeping and seemed less flushed than before. She fended off Hilda’s enquiries about Ursula, and the veiled grumbles about John, and retired again to the haven of her upper chamber. The vellum and pouch of powdered ink lay on the bed. Monday took Alexander’s wallet of quills from the coffer, and within a candle notch was seated by the window, the detached top of a three-legged stool for a rest, the ink mixed, and guidelines pricked out on one of the vellum sheets. She toyed with the green feathering on the quill in her hand, her eyes narrowed in thought. And finally, slowly, her tongue peeping between her teeth, she began to write.

‘A letter,’ said Isabelle of Pembroke, frank curiosity in her green eyes. ‘Usually you are busy delivering them to other people.’

Alexander smiled at the Marshal’s wife as she handed him a package. He was seated in the great hall of the Marshal keep at Orbec, taking a brief respite, having arrived with messages from Lord William to his wife and his constable late the previous evening. Now it was shortly after dawn, and the members of the Marshal household were breaking their fast on bread, cheese and buttermilk.

‘A Rouen merchant brought it here three days ago,’ Isabelle added. ‘There is no identifying device on the seal, but I thought it might be from your brother.’

‘No, Hervi’s in England,’ Alexander said, and turned the packet over, his hands suddenly clammy with anticipation. ‘There is someone I know in Rouen. My lady, I beg you to excuse me.’

Lady Marshal raised her brows, but inclined her head and let him go. She knew full well that the someone in Rouen was one of the King’s mistresses. William had told her as much one night in bed when they had been discussing plans for Alexander’s future career and she had remarked that he seemed little interested in women.

‘Even the quietest water has rocks beneath the surface,’ William had said. ‘And Alexander has been far from quiet in the past.’ And he had told her about the young knight’s former life, and how it meshed with that of John’s mistress. ‘It’s not that he has no interest in women, but that he cannot have the one he wants.’

Isabelle looked thoughtfully at the young man striding out of the hall. William was probably right about the rocks beneath the surface.

Alexander took the letter to a quiet corner of the courtyard and sat down on a barrel to break the seal and unfold the contents. The writing was large, the letters inexpertly formed, and the spelling somewhat arbitrary. Here and there the vellum was very thin where mistakes had been rubbed away with a pumice stone, and elsewhere blots and spatters decorated the words. ‘Oh, Monday,’ he said with a shake of his head and a poignant smile on his lips.

By the time the size of the writing had been taken into account, the contents of the letter were not large, and as he pored his way through it, the smile left his face. She told him that she was well, that Florian was thriving, and that the baby had a fever but seemed to be recovering. Then added:

My lord was wrath that you had been to visit me. I told him nothing, but my maid has a loose tongue, and he knows everything. I beg you to be careful and maintain your discretion, for he gave me to know how easily he could destroy us both. For the moment he is soothed, but we dare not meet again for the nonce, even in friendship.