The Champion (63 page)
‘You are lying,’ Alkmund dismissed, but there was a glimmer of consternation in his eyes.
‘You know that I am not. Why else should Canterbury decide to meddle in Cranwell’s affairs?’
‘Who then?’ The knife menaced closer, bleak light gleaming along the blade.
Hervi gently freed the second strap and curled his fingers around the shaped crown of the stump. All the time he looked at Alkmund, willing him not to see the motion of his fingers, willing him not to strike. ‘Do you remember Alexander de Montroi?’
The consternation sharpened, turning almost to fear. ‘Of course I remember him,’ Alkmund snarled. ‘A half-infidel brat with the stink of hell about him. If he is your witness, you are a fool.’
‘He is now one of William Marshal’s knights and stepping high on fortune’s ladder,’ Hervi said softly, watching his moment, his fingers tightening. ‘And I can vouch for his character with Hubert Walter of Canterbury, since I know everything about him. You see, I am Hervi de Montroi, his brother.’
Alkmund’s eyes widened. The dagger flashed, and Hervi surged. Steel met wood as the knife stuck in the oak of Hervi’s peg leg. Hervi wrenched the limb away, the weapon still embedded, and returned it back-handed against the side of Alkmund’s head, with all the force that had once made him so powerful a swordsman. A look of utter shock on his face, Alkmund collapsed. Despite the strength of the blow, the knife remained embedded in the wood, testament to Alkmund’s own fury.
The makeshift weapon poised, Hervi crawled on one knee to the prior. Alkmund stared at him. Blood ran from his nostrils and one ear, and there was a soft dent in the side of his head like a giant thumbprint.
‘Dear Christ,’ Hervi whispered, feeling both relief and nausea.
He had long thought about killing Alkmund of Cranwell, but it had been a suppressed desire, something that he kept caged in the darkest part of his mind. His goal had been to depose the man, rob him of his power. Now he had done both, and no blame to his soul, for he had only been defending himself against certain death.
Crossing himself, making the same sign over the body in the snow, he muttered the appropriate words and closed the staring blue eyes. Then, turning aside, he retched until his stomach ached as fiercely as the rest of his bruised body.
When he had recovered, he worked the knife from his wooden limb, noting that he would require a replacement as soon as he could find a carpenter to shape one. With tremors of cold and shock in his hands, he managed to fasten it back on after a fashion. It was not sound enough to enable him to drag a body any distance. A whistle brought his bay gelding trotting out of the trees, its ears pricked.
Now he unfastened his rope girdle, removed the corpse’s too, and tied them both together. Then he joined Alkmund’s wrists and knotted the rope firmly around them, and lashed the other end to the saddle. With soothing words as much for himself as the gelding, he set his good leg in the stirrup and mounted up. Then he turned into the trees, Alkmund’s body dragging and bumping behind.
He drew rein in a thicket about two miles from the main track, and here he cut the rope with Alkmund’s knife. Dismounting, he rolled the body into the deepest, darkest covering of trees and low bushes until there was nothing to see.
The forest had claimed another victim, and in so doing was now a safer place.
His thoughts sombre, but the weight lifting from his heart with each step the gelding took, Hervi rode towards the light leading out of the trees.
‘Your granddaughter?’ John’s look was one of utter astonishment. Then he laughed and waved his hand as if shooing a fly. ‘I do not believe it!’ He glanced round at his close circle of officials and barons, sharing the jest with them.
Thomas of Stafford reddened beneath their amusement, but with more anger than chagrin. ‘Sire, it is true. I have at least one witness to swear, and others can be found. The girl herself admits to being of my blood.’ Thomas had followed the court to Canterbury for the Easter festival, hoping for an audience with the King, and his dogged persistence in refusing to move from the royal antechamber had paid off. John had agreed to see him. That it was only the better to be rid of him did not bother Thomas. What he had to say would give him the attention he required.
John rubbed his jaw, his beard badgered with silver. ‘Then what is your complaint?’ he demanded. ‘Why seek audience of me for what is a matter of your own family?’
‘Sire, I want her marriage annulled, and I know that you have influence with her.’
John laughed, then ceased abruptly. ‘Had you come to me earlier, I would have been able to help,’ he said, ‘but it is too late now. She is wedded and bedded, the proceedings overseen by the Bishop of Winchester himself. I myself bestowed the bride upon her husband, and paid for their wedding feast. There is nothing to be done.’
Stafford tightened his fists against the prickly embroidered wool of his blue court robe. ‘Nothing?’ he repeated angrily, and looked at the handsome, dark-eyed man slouched in the carved chair, the crown of England dangling from an indolent forefinger. Green and red stones winked in the candlelight. Gold shimmered. It was all dross. ‘I gave no consent to the match, and I am her only living kin. I have been seeking her for more than five years, but that infidel she married kept her whereabouts from me until he had her safely at the church door. He has denied me my granddaughter!’
John sucked his teeth. ‘I think you overstate your case, my lord. Is it not true that you disowned the girl’s mother for running away with a tourney knight?’
‘That was while I still had a son and the hope of grandchildren of his loins,’ Thomas replied, breathing heavily. ‘Now I have only the girl, and Alexander de Montroi is no suitable husband for her.’
‘A tourney knight,’ John mused, rubbing salt into the wound, his eyes shrewd. ‘One generation begets another, eh?’
Behind tight lips and lowered brows, Thomas fumed. ‘I want the wench to marry the man of my choice; to be in my wardship, and under my control. And I am prepared to pay for it.’
John swung the crown gently on his finger, and swung his leg too, echoing the rhythm. ‘I repeat, there is nothing I can do,’ he murmured, gazing at the crown. ‘Your granddaughter and Alexander de Montroi are married … until death do them part.’ The dark eyes flashed from beneath the saturnine brows, then returned to admiring the gold.
Thomas sucked a sharp breath through his teeth and wondered if he had understood aright. Was John suggesting that de Montroi should die? Was he giving implicit permission? Or was it just an unfortunate turn of phrase?
‘William Marshal is here in Canterbury with his entourage,’ John continued smoothly. ‘I am going to ask him to hold a tourney for the younger knights, and give a fine warhorse and all its trappings as the prize. I have no interest myself, but I know that it will amuse the Queen, and other men are fond of the sport.’ He rubbed the side of his nose. ‘It might be worth staying to watch.’
Given a normal audience, Thomas would have snarled that tourneys were for fortune-seekers and gutter-sweepings, but the fact that this was the King, and his statement highly open to interpretation, held him silent.
‘If your granddaughter should ever become a widow, we could come to some arrangement,’ John added nonchalantly. ‘Although I could never wish more for Alexander de Montroi than a long and prosperous life.’ And he exposed his beautiful white teeth in a smile that was just a shade too lupine.
A glimmer of understanding shed a bleak light in Thomas’s mind. It was about control, about having and losing, resentment and jealousy … and perhaps even revenge. He met the King’s eyes briefly with his own. Both men guarded the deeper thoughts, but the exchange was enough, and a kindred intent recognised.
‘Perhaps, sire, I will take your advice and remain for the tourney,’ murmured Thomas, inclining his head.
John shrugged. ‘It is your decision,’ he said, and turned to speak to one of his clerks, indicating that the audience was at an end.
Deep in thought, Thomas of Stafford left the palace and returned to his lodgings.
Jankin the hafter sucked his few remaining chipped teeth, and folding his arms against the pole of his booth, considered Alexander with his customary jaundiced eye.
‘I’d credited you with more sense than returning to the tourney life,’ he scoffed. ‘Mashed in the wits like the rest of them, you are.’
Alexander smothered a grin inside his mouth. Many things changed in the world, but Jankin’s crusty demeanour was a constant. ‘It’s only for three days,’ he said. ‘My lord, William Marshal, is taking part, and I am fighting behind his banner. Besides, it will be more show than genuine battle.’ He looked out across the tourney field, where carpenters were busy erecting tiered stands for the spectators to sit upon. Such comfort was an innovation. Usually competitors fought to please themselves, not their audience.
‘If you think that, then you truly do have mashed turnip where your brains should be,’ Jankin said scathingly. ‘There’ll be more grudge fights than a few out there on that field. No one’s going to draw their blows just because the Queen and her ladies are watching.’
Alexander shook his head. ‘I don’t know why I talk to you,’ he said with disgust.
‘Because I tell you the truth, no matter that it sticks in your craw, and because I’m the best hafter and sword-mender this side of Jerusalem.’
Alexander could argue with neither statement. In point of fact, he was rather fond of the old rogue. ‘Do you have employment come the winter season?’ he asked.
‘Might have.’ Jankin shrugged. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I thought you could make yourself useful for once. I’ve been given custody of a Welsh border keep as from Pentecost, and I could use a man of your unmatched skills.’
‘Have to think about it,’ Jankin growled. ‘If I had a castle waiting my attention, I’d not risk my neck in a tourney. I’d ride away from here while I still had two arms, two legs and a head on my shoulders.’
‘Do you know something that I do not?’
Jankin shrugged. ‘I’ve got ears,’ he said. ‘I hear rumours.’
‘Such as?’ With difficulty, Alexander controlled the urge to pick up Jankin by those very ears and shake the information out of him.
The hafter eyed him, drawing the moment out, and Alexander could have sworn that there was relish in the rheumy old eyes. ‘Such as that you are a married man with a wife related to Thomas of Stafford.’
‘Indeed I am, and proudly so. What of it?’
‘I also heard that Thomas of Stafford is not so proud. In fact, he even approached the King about the possibility of getting the match annulled.’
Alexander gaped at the ancient little weasel of a man in front of him. Bad-tempered, smelly, ugly. It was beyond comprehension. ‘How in the name of hell do you acquire such information?’ he demanded incredulously.
‘Told you, I use me lugs.’ He poked his finger in his ear and waggled it around. ‘Overheard one of John’s clerks talking to a friend when they was standing outside me workshop. They never think that an old husk like me can hear every word they says.’ He removed his finger, examined it, then wiped it down his tunic.
‘Even if you’re only going to play at tourneys these next three days, you guard your back, lad. Wouldn’t surprise me to see treachery afoot.’
‘What did the King say?’ A feeling of cold surged in the pit of Alexander’s belly. His own code was to treat men honourably and hope they would deal honourably with him in return. In William Marshal, that hope was fulfilled, but other men had different values.
‘I don’t know the exact words, but he said that an annulment was out of the question – that marriage was a commitment unto death, and that there was nothing to be done. But Stafford hasn’t ridden out in high dudgeon. He’s still here, and intends visiting the tourney. Strange, would you not say, for a man who has cause to hate the very sight of jousting knights.’ Jankin investigated the other ear. ‘So, if I were you, I’d watch my back until I could rest it against my keep wall.’
‘You think Stafford would plot my death?’
‘Certainly less difficult than arranging an annulment.’ Jankin eyed him shrewdly. ‘Course, I could be wrong, but I’ve spent too many years seeing the worst in people, and eleven times out o’ a dozen, I’m right. If you’ve the smallest lick o’ sense, you’ll find reason not to take part.’
Alexander shook his head. ‘I cannot do that.’
‘It’s your hide. Is this your wife now?’ Licking his palm, he slicked it across his hair. ‘Doesn’t bear much resemblance to Thomas of Stafford, do she?’
Alexander turned and saw Monday approaching him, one hand occupied by Florian’s, the other by a long basket. Bright-gold fabric peeped over the top. She moved with a lissom sway, and she was smiling at life.
‘If you say a single word to her, I swear I will kill you with my own hands,’ Alexander growled.
‘No need to be jealous of me, I’m just an old man.’
‘You know what I mean.’ Alexander fixed him with a warning stare.
Jankin shrugged. ‘Aye, reckon as I do,’ he capitulated, and held up the knife that Alexander had given him. ‘Be ready by noon tomorrow. Does the offer of employment still stand?’
‘I never go back on my word, no matter how rashly given,’ Alexander said wryly, and braced himself as Florian pounced upon him.
‘Papa, Papa, guess what, I’ve just seen a man who can swallow swords!’
‘Have you now? Well, there’s a useful trick.’
‘I have warned him about trying the same himself,’ Monday laughed, and folded her arm around her husband’s. She glanced briefly at the hafter, who nodded and bowed, before resuming the mining of his ears.
Alexander led his small family away from Jankin’s unsettling proximity, and across the burgeoning tourney field. The old sights, sounds and scents, the anticipation, were joined now by apprehension.
‘What was that about giving your word?’ Monday asked.
