The Champion (53 page)

Alexander and Monday exchanged a rueful glance. Leaning over, he kissed her damp cheek. ‘Lord, what a mother-in-law she would make,’ he muttered.

‘What was that?’ Dame Hortense poked her head forward, eyes bright with suspicion.

‘I said I had best leave for Monday’s sake,’ Alexander replied with the most innocent of expressions. Turning, he stooped even further and kissed the old woman’s leathery, withered cheek too. ‘My lady,’ he said, and went to the curtain. On the threshold he looked over his shoulder. ‘I have to leave for Orbec tomorrow, but I’ll be back to fetch you before the feast of St Michael … a promise.’ Then he bowed and was gone.

The women listened to the sound of his footsteps on the stairs, and then his voice as he spoke to Florian. Hortense gently rubbed the side of her face.

‘Last time a young man kissed me was at a festival when I was five and thirty,’ she said. ‘And he wasn’t as handsome as yours.’ She lowered her hand and hobbled over to the bedside. ‘You’re going to stay with him, aren’t you?’

Monday gnawed her lower lip. ‘I think so.’

‘Shouldn’t be no think about it,’ Hortense opined and drew down the sheets. ‘Can’t see why you aren’t together now, the two of ye. Now, let’s have a look.’

While Hortense examined the amount of blood lost, Monday told her briefly about her life on the tourney circuit, her meeting with Alexander, and the reason they had parted.

Hortense sucked her gums. ‘Aye, well, trust is easily betrayed,’ she said shrewdly, ‘and once betrayed, hard to mend or forgive. But you were both too young, with too many lessons still to learn.’

‘He says he hasn’t touched another woman since.’

‘Do you believe him?’

Monday frowned, picking through the confusion of her thoughts. ‘Yes,’ she said after a moment. ‘Alexander has never lied to me. Stretched the truth on occasion, perhaps, or held his tongue and looked innocent, but never lied.’ She looked at the old woman. ‘I would be a fool to think that he has been celibate because no other woman could satisfy him. It is out of guilt. Neither of us had the control to stop when the moment came, and I was the more innocent. He knew where it would lead.’

‘Aye, well, it seems to me you have both paid the price,’ Dame Hortense said. ‘Time to let the scars thicken over old wounds. The girdle can come off now. You shouldn’t bleed any more than you would at the time of your normal flux.’ She reached to the knot on the tablet-woven braid and began to unfasten the complex loops and folds which had been tied in the belief that they would lessen the flow of blood.

Monday grimaced at Hortense’s mention of paying a price. The words kept returning to mock her.

The midwife removed the girdle, doubled it in half, then in half again, and secured it with the ends, once more tied in a complex knot. Making the sign of the cross over it, she set the girdle to one side, and from a woven pouch slung upon her shoulder produced a variety of objects. ‘You’ll not be wanting to conceive again until you’ve healed. Now I know you have no intention of letting a man enter your bed or your body, even one as dear to you as that young man downstairs, but as you said to me yourself, you did not have the control when the moment came. And certainly no man alive can be trusted to pull out at the moment of pleasure.’

Monday was too startled at the dame’s words to protest against them, and the sight of the items presented for her scrutiny completed her astonishment. There was a piece of washed raw fleece, the cut half of what she knew to be a lemon, since such fruits were occasionally used as a garnish for the finger bowls at the royal table. There was also a string of wooden beads stained in three colours following on from one another, red, yellow and blue. Staring, she wondered if they were the components of some obscure spell. Certainly Dame Hortense had the appearance of a witch.

The old woman picked up the fleece first. ‘When a child is conceived, the male seed has to mix with the female seed,’ she said authoritatively. ‘If you do not want to quicken when you lie with a man, you must soak a piece of raw fleece in vinegar, or ass’s milk, and insert it within your body as high as you can, so that your seed will not mingle with his. The lemon will perform the same task. Washing your passage in vinegar alone sometimes works, but not as well.’

Monday screwed up her face at the thought, but nodded to show that she understood. Dame Hortense eyed her narrowly. ‘All for a small discomfort, it could save your life,’ she said.

‘Yes, I know. I’m listening,’ Monday said guiltily.

‘Hah, it’s what you do about it,’ the midwife sniffed.

Monday pointed to the string of beads, which looked similar in a way to the ones now becoming popular for the memorising of holy catechisms and rituals. ‘What are they?’

Dame Hortense smacked her lips together, then gave a toothless smile. ‘They,’ she said, lifting the beads in her gnarled fingers, ‘are the real power, young woman.’

‘What do you do, then?’ Monday frowned, for she could not imagine a use for them except in prayer.

‘Look, three colours, eight and twenty beads, each representing a single day in the cycle of a woman’s flux. Seven red ones for the days of her monthly bleed when she is impure and no man should touch her.’ Dame Hortense counted the seven along the string. ‘Now there are yellow and blue ones left. The yellow represent the days when it is safe to lie with a man and not conceive. Lie with him on a blue bead day and you will assuredly quicken. As long as you keep count, and your fluxes are regular each month, you can decide whether you conceive or not.’ She handed Monday the string. ‘It’s women’s magic though,’ she warned. ‘You have to be very sure your man will understand. Some take strong umbrage to such power.’

Monday ran the stained, polished wood through her fingers and gazed at the beads with growing comprehension. It was simple, devastatingly so, almost too simple to be true. ‘How do you know it will work?’

The midwife shrugged. ‘You don’t reach my years without learning a trick or two.’ She gave a little cackle and hugged herself. ‘But I promise you it does work. I was told about it by a bishop’s mistress, and she was told about it by the bishop, who did not want any bastards sullying his reputation. He came across it, so she told me, in a manuscript of the ancients.’

Monday nodded slowly. ‘Like Arabic numerals,’ she murmured.

‘Eh?’

‘Nothing,’ Monday said, and moved the beads gently along their leather cord.

John had taken a brief time away from his child bride’s bed to indulge in the parallel sport of hunting. A speckled silver gyrfalcon perched on his gauntlet, its fierce eyes covered by a plumed hood of purple silk. Sharp talons and cruel beak reflected the crisp light. John stroked its glossy feathers, soothing it with a bejewelled forefinger. There was a jewel in his cap too, a large amethyst securing a blue jay’s feather. Complacent, well-fed satisfaction gleamed in every fold of skin, each nuance of expression. For the nonce, John was well pleased with life. He was the ruler of an empire, had stolen a march on his rivals with political cunning, and was the husband of a saucer-eyed kitten of a girl who delighted in playing all his games. The weather was superb, a fine day to fly the hawks and feel his earthbound body soar and exult with them.

Heron and crane were the intended prey of John’s hawk – the most dangerous, the most difficult to bring down – and the hunting party was riding towards the river in search of their sport. From the corner of his eye John glanced at the young knight who had arrived that morning with dispatches from William Marshal, and a request for an audience of his own. John thought he knew why, and with a glint of scornful amusement had invited him along on the hunt. He was feeling indulgent, and in such a mood, his malice was tempered with humour. The young man himself seemed acutely uncomfortable, as if a thorn was sticking in his buttocks. And well he might have reason for anxiety. Even if John had not made it his business to discover the name of Monday’s visitor back in the spring, the resemblance between Alexander de Montroi and the little boy was too strong to be coincidence.

John pondered whether or not to grant him audience or let him stew. He looked at the hawk perched on his leather gauntlet. It would be interesting to hear what the knight had to say, and John enjoyed piquant diversions. His lips pursed in a smile, and he crooned softly to the bird. But not yet. Draw out the thread a little longer, spin and twist it a little tighter, daring it to snap.

Alexander was finally granted his audience at the end of a long morning. The silver gyrfalcon had brought down two cranes in spectacular clashes of ferocity and desperation, and John’s mood had risen from good to excellent.

The cranes were trussed together and tied across a pack pony to be borne home to the table in triumph, and the hunters sat down to break the sport with a picnic of lavish proportions. The hawks were settled in the shade and attached to bow perches by leashes, where they dozed, their hoods secured.

John popped a sliver of honey-roasted swan into his mouth and looked at Alexander with an expression so benevolent that it could have concealed even the blackest murder. ‘So,’ he said, ‘you have your audience. What is it you want of me?’ He gestured. ‘You have my permission to sit.’

Alexander straightened from his bow and folded himself down on the tasselled wool blanket which was protecting the royal posterior from the prickle of the grass. He knew that John had been toying with him all morning, waiting his moment like an epicure with a poised spoon. Alexander was nervous but determined. He knew what John expected to be told, could see the smile in the other man’s dark-hazel eyes as he waited with feline confidence.

‘Sire, I wish I could have spoken with you the sooner, for I am the bearer of sad tidings,’ he said formally, and through lowered lids saw the scowl that twitched across John’s brow. Hastily he cleared his throat and continued, ‘As you must know already, I am acquainted with your sempstress, Mistress Monday de Cerizay. Indeed, I think you must also be aware that I am Florian’s father.’

‘I am aware of many things, one of them being that you have a bold tongue,’ John retorted, and washed down the meat with a swallow of wine. ‘What of your tidings?’

‘I was in Rouen, on business for my lord Marshal, and there was pestilence in the city. I went to make sure that Monday was safe, and …’

‘You went to make sure,’ John mocked, arching a sardonic brow. ‘How thoughtful of you, especially in my absence.’

Alexander flushed beneath the barb of John’s sarcasm. He fought the urge to strike the curl from the other man’s lips. ‘I discovered that the baby had died of the flux, and Monday herself was sick … sire,’ he said stiffly.

John gave him a sharp look over the rim of the cup. ‘Christ, she isn’t dead?’ A note of concern in his voice seemed to fill him with as much surprise as it did Alexander, who had marked him down for a callous, careless bastard.

‘No, sire, by God’s grace and that of a skilled midwife, she is recovering.’

‘A midwife?’ John’s brows rose.

‘She miscarried of another child, sire.’

John was silent. He tossed back his wine and held out his cup for a squire to refill. ‘Whose?’ he demanded savagely.

Alexander swallowed both his gorge and his temper. It was a cheap insult, far too cheap to be paid for with the coin of his life and Monday’s misery. ‘I would not be here if that answer was the wrong one, sire,’ he said with dignity. ‘Indeed, I would have taken Monday and my son and fled across the French border.’

John studied him through narrowed eyes and sucked his cheeks. Alexander could discern not a trace of regret or grief on his face. That one exclamation had been his only show of care. After a while John took another slice of roast swan from the platter and bit into it. He had excellent teeth, white, even and strong. ‘So why are you here?’ he demanded. ‘Laudable as it is of you to bring me these tidings in person, any messenger would have sufficed. There must be more for you to dare this meeting.’

‘Sire, I want Monday to wife.’ There, it was spoken boldly in the September sunshine, with the court eavesdropping for all they were worth and John sitting on the tasselled rug, eating roast swan with a delicate precision that sat incongruously with the squat, powerful fingers. ‘I want … I ask you to release her.’

John wiped his hands and his lips on a napkin. ‘And you think that now I have a new wife and a kingdom to occupy my time, I might be amenable,’ he said, and ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth.

‘Yes, sire.’ There was no point in denying the fact. To have done so would only have meant further wriggling on John’s barbed hook.

More wine trickled into John’s cup. He took a sip, then indicated that the squire should also pour for Alexander. ‘As you say, you could elope across the French border and I would have small power to touch you. But am I to see your coming to me as genuine honesty and concern for my approval, or a bluff?’

Alexander took the question as rhetorical and said nothing. It was for John to decide which way the wind blew, for whatever the reply, John’s mind was the final judge.

‘You are bold,’ John said again. ‘I could have you killed, you know that, don’t you?’

‘Yes, sire.’

John pondered, turning his cup slowly round in his hands and staring at the darkness of the wine through the semi-transparent rock crystal. ‘She is employed by me in an official capacity as a sempstress,’ he said. ‘And indeed, she is the best I have ever seen – not for the sewing itself, but for the design and the cut of the cloth.’ He lowered the cup and looked at Alexander with narrow dark eyes in which there was no warmth. ‘As to her other services,’ his mouth twisted in a cruel smile, ‘I’ve had better fucks with my own hand. You can have her body, as long as I retain the services of her needle. Tell her I want coronation gowns for myself and my wife. You can obtain the measurements from one of Isobel’s ladies when we return from the hunt.’

Alexander swallowed the urge to leap upon John and throttle him out of hand for the contemptuous way he had spoken of Monday. She was inanimate to him, a means to an end, one satisfactory, one not. It was on the tip of his tongue to say that John must love his own hand best of all, because he could give to no one except himself, but he clenched his teeth on the words and smiled with false gratitude, and clung to the thought that he had the main part of his reason for baiting the wolf in his lair.