12 - Nine Men Dancing (19 page)

Just for a second, I saw his eyes flicker shiftily from side to side. But, to his credit, Tom wasn’t prepared to act the coward in front of his lady, in spite of Rosamund adding her entreaties to mine.

‘For mercy’s sake, go!’ she exclaimed, giving him a little push. ‘Go on! Before they get here! You’ve suffered enough in the last two days. You’ll be nothing but a jelly if Lambert sets about you again.’

It was, of course, the worst argument she could have used. Perhaps she knew that. Perhaps she was testing him. You can never tell with women.

‘I’m not afraid of Lambert Miller!’ Tom said with, I suspected, more bravado than truth. Nevertheless, he was determined to stand his ground, declining to budge when Rosamund gave him another exasperated shove. ‘If you’ll let us pass, chapman, we’ll be on our way.’

I could see it was useless to argue with him further and stepped aside into the long grass that bordered the track. Now it was Rosamund who refused to move, her body shielding Tom’s, but he simply stepped around her, skilfully avoiding her detaining hands, and walked rapidly and determinedly ahead. Rosamund ran after him, almost tripping over the hem of her cloak in her agitation. I followed with Hercules nipping in and out of all our legs and threatening to bring at least one of us down.

We reached the clearing that had been the courtyard of Upper Brockhurst Hall, and there, beside the well, Tom slowed to a halt.

‘I’ll wait for them here,’ he said.

‘For pity’s sake, get in amongst the trees,’ I urged him. ‘A man can’t swing either a stick or his fists effectively when he’s hampered by trunks and branches.’ I offered him my own cudgel. ‘Take this! I’m assuming you know how to use it.’

‘Of course, I know to use it!’ He was indignant. ‘But I don’t want it. I’ve done nothing wrong, as Rosamund will testify.’ She gave him an odd look, grim and white-faced. Tom went on violently, ‘I’m sick and tired of defending myself against accusations that aren’t true. The only thing I’ve been guilty of is the crass stupidity of ever believing myself in love with Eris Lilywhite. But that’s nobody’s concern except mine and Rosamund’s. It has nothing to do with Lambert Miller!’

‘What has nothing to do with me?’ Lambert demanded, bursting into the clearing, panting heavily and red in the face from the exertion of running uphill. He paused for a moment to get his second wind, then lifted his stick and took a swipe at Tom Rawbone, which the latter dodged easily. It would be a minute or two before the miller recovered himself sufficiently to pose any real threat.

‘Stop it, Lambert! Stop it at once!’ Rosamund, hands clenched, stepped between her warring swains. ‘I agreed to meet Tom to listen to what he had to say. This has nothing to do with you!’

I doubt if the miller even heard her. He simply reached out and pushed her to one side as easily as if she had been a feather, before raising his cudgel again. This time, his aim was truer, but not by much, and he caught his rival a glancing blow on his left arm. Enraged by this lack of success, Lambert seized the stick with both hands and swung it straight at Tom’s head. Had I not moved almost instinctively to parry the stroke, it might well have cracked his opponent’s skull wide open.

With a furious roar, the miller turned on me, playing dirty and lowering his stick to strike me a wicked blow across both legs; a blow which knocked me off my feet and left me rubbing my shins in agony. He now had Tom at his mercy, but that was the last thing he intended to show. He dealt him a buffet that felled Tom, then started belabouring him about the head and body just as, by God’s good grace, Ned Rawbone and William Bush arrived on the scene. They took in the situation at a glance and threw themselves at the miller – the landlord, with a bravery and agility I wouldn’t have expected of him, jumping on Lambert’s back, while Ned stooped and grasped his brother’s assailant around the knees, tripping him up. The fact that Lambert and William Bush then toppled, with a sickening thud, on top of Tom Rawbone, in no wise detracted from Ned’s resourcefulness; not, at least, in my opinion. It was the lesser of two evils.

Tom, however, was disinclined to see it that way, and dragged himself to his feet, cursing his brother and the miller in equal measure. Lambert, too, was yelling and swearing as he tried vainly to free himself from the restraining clutches of William Bush. I had by now recovered sufficiently to assist by sitting firmly on the miller’s chest while Ned straddled his feet. As for Rosamund, she was standing a little apart, looking down her nose and surveying us all as if we were a bad smell that had just come to her attention. Then, in scathing accents, she uttered the one word ‘Men!’ before stomping off through the trees, obviously washing her hands of the lot of us. A very sensible young woman.

With her departure, we picked ourselves up and sorted ourselves out. William Bush hurried after his daughter, anxiously calling her name. The two protagonists, with no one to impress, contented themselves with glaring and snarling at one another.

‘Leave Mistress Rosamund alone in future,’ Lambert warned Tom between clenched teeth. ‘Or you’ll get more of the same.’

Tom rubbed at various batches of new bruises – I could guess at them, even if I couldn’t see them – and glared at his rival for a moment or two without responding. Then he said in a low tone, charged with menace, ‘You’ll be sorry for this, Miller. It’s the second time in as many days that you’ve attacked me. I’ll get my own back, just you see if I don’t!’

Lambert sneered. ‘Do you think I’m afraid of you and your threats? Just remember what I’ve told you. Leave Rosamund alone, if you value your hide. Next time, you might not have your bodyguard with you.’

He didn’t wait for Tom’s reply, but set off after Rosamund and her father, hoping, I supposed, to catch them up. But if he was expecting the lady’s thanks for rescuing her, I felt sure he was doomed to disappointment.

I whistled for Hercules, who had been cowering in the long grass during the recent pleasantries, and now came crawling warily out from his hiding place, sizing up the situation before running to greet me, wagging his stump of a tail. I picked him up and looked into his eyes.

‘Where were you when I needed you?’ I reproached him. ‘You could have sunk your teeth into the miller for me again.’ But he wasn’t a fool, that dog: he knew when the odds were stacked against him.

A sudden flurry of movement, seen out of the corner of one eye, made me turn, just in time to help Ned Rawbone catch his brother’s sagging form. Three beatings in three days had finally proved too much for Tom and, for a few seconds, he had almost lost consciousness.

He recovered a little, but it was plain that he would need assistance to get home. He was leaning heavily on Ned, who had one arm around his brother’s waist and the other supporting Tom’s left elbow. They were strong men, these Rawbones, and it never really occurred to me that Ned couldn’t manage on his own, even on the difficult downhill slope to Dragonswick Farm. But I saw an opportunity that I could not afford to miss. I put a steadying hand beneath Tom’s other elbow.

‘Let me help,’ I offered. ‘He may pass out again and he’s no light weight.’

Somewhat to my surprise, for I had anticipated opposition, the elder Rawbone nodded.

‘Very well,’ Ned agreed. I judged him to be a naturally taciturn man, and so was surprised, after we had gone a hundred yards or so along the path, when he burst into a low-voiced tirade against his brother. ‘The boy’s a bloody fool! He’s made an ass of himself once over Eris Lilywhite, now he’s making a bigger fool of himself trying to win back Rosamund Bush. And threatening Lambert Miller like that! In front of witnesses, too!’

‘Is he likely to do what he threatened?’ I asked, taking my cue from the elder Rawbone; ignoring the semi-conscious figure between us and talking over Tom’s head. ‘I should have thought he’d had enough punishment these past three days.’

‘Oh, he’s quite capable!’ Ned snorted disgustedly. ‘He’s been a hothead all his life. Father and I will just have to keep a close watch on him, that’s all.’

He lapsed into silence, which lasted until we finally arrived at the farm. As I released my share of the burden, I was afraid that that might be the end of it; that I would be dismissed with a curt nod of thanks. But perhaps something in the way I stooped to rub my bruised shins, where Lambert had hit me, and also in the way I shivered and huddled into my cloak, convinced Ned that I was in need of refreshment.

‘You’d better come inside,’ he said grudgingly. ‘You look as though you could do with a cup of ale or a mazer of wine.’

I didn’t wait for a second invitation.

Not for Ned Rawbone the servants’ entrance and the kitchen quarters. Supporting Tom between us, we walked round to the front of the house and went in by the door to the great hall, where our appearance was met with a flurry of women’s skirts and an outpouring of feminine concern.

‘Tom! What’s happened? Are you badly hurt?’ That was Petronelle.

‘Stupid boy! You haven’t been in yet another fight, have you? Sweet heaven! What a fool!’ But Dame Jacquetta’s anxious looks belied the harshness of her words. ‘Sit in my chair by the fire.’

The housekeeper said nothing, but tuttutted loudly and hurried away to the sideboard to pour a mazer of wine.

Her presence in the hall was explained as soon as I saw that Nathaniel Rawbone was seated in the chair facing his sister’s, on the opposite side of the hearth. He had removed his shoes and hose, and a bowl of water and a bottle of salve lay on a footstool alongside him. Elvina Merryman was evidently in the process of bathing and anointing his badly chilblained feet.

As Ned and I tenderly lowered Tom into Dame Jacquetta’s abandoned armchair, Nathaniel took one look at his younger son and let out a roar.

‘You quarrelsome young idiot! Who have you been laying into this time, eh? Answer me this minute, sir!’

‘Leave him be, Father,’ Ned advised quietly. ‘He’s taken enough punishment these last three days, without you yelling at him. And he wasn’t laying into anybody, as Master Chapman here will confirm. Lambert Miller set about Tom.’

The housekeeper came back with a tray on which reposed three beakers of wine, handing one to each of the Rawbone brothers and one to me. I savoured mine slowly, hoping that no one would realize that it was far too fine a vintage to be wasted on an itinerant pedlar. But they were all too preoccupied to give it a moment’s thought, the women fussing over Tom, and Nathaniel listening with a scowling countenance to Ned’s account of the day’s events as far as he knew them.

While Ned was speaking, the twins entered through the front door, their young faces healthily aglow from the cold and the wind, shedding their good frieze cloaks for their mother to pick up and tidy away, rubbing their hands and shouldering their way to the fire. They would have plunged immediately into an account of their afternoon’s activities, but were hushed by the simple expedient of their grandfather striking them across the buttocks with the stick he kept propped against his chair.

‘Silence!’ he yelled. ‘Your father’s talking!’

Hercules crouched, shivering, between my feet. I wondered if Nathaniel ever spoke in a moderate tone of voice.

While Ned finished his story, I took stock of the eldest and the two youngest members of the Rawbone family. The latter, Jocelyn and Christopher, were pretty much what I imagined fourteen-year-old boys to be all over the world, in any age and time: self-centred, self-absorbed, loutish young puppies, constantly on the lookout – at least, if they followed my example – for the chance to bed a girl. Any girl, anywhere; but not as yet absolutely sure what to do about it if and when the opportunity offered. (But, of course, the girls would know. They always did.) They were big, handsome lads, more like their uncle in appearance and manner than their father. And there seemed to be nothing of the whey-faced Petronelle in either of them until I looked more closely, when I could see that they had her eyes; eyes of a very much paler blue than the intense colour of their grandfather’s.

Nathaniel, himself, in spite of his fifty-nine years, was still of an upright, broad-shouldered physique, as I had noted in church the previous morning. I could see that Eris Lilywhite might well have been attracted to him, quite apart from the lure of his money and the status of being mistress of Dragonswick Farm. She could have found his high-handed, autocratic ways something of a thrill after Tom’s slavering devotion. But what had been Nathaniel’s feelings for Eris? Had he truly been fond of her or had he simply seen her as a way to demonstrate to his family that he was still the master? That he could make them all dance to his piping at any time he chose? More importantly, what had he felt when Eris disappeared?

‘What are you staring at, chapman?’ His voice cut across my wandering thoughts, making me jump.

I realized that Ned had finished speaking and that everyone was looking at me.

‘I-I’m sorry,’ I stammered. ‘I wasn’t meaning to be rude.’

Nathaniel snorted and turned back to Tom, first signalling impatiently to Elvina Merryman that she should continue bathing his feet.

‘You randy young fool!’ he exclaimed bitterly to his younger son. ‘Leave Rosamund Bush alone. You won’t do yourself any good. She’ll string you along for a while, just for the pleasure of knowing she has the upper hand again, and to annoy that great hunk, Lambert Miller. But you won’t win her back. Not now. Not ever. So don’t you think it! Use your common sense, boy!’

I wasn’t so sure that he was right, but felt obliged to hold my tongue. It was none of my affair. Besides, I was too busy wondering how I could have a private word with those two budding young bravos, the Rawbone twins. I suspected that they might have a productive line in indiscreet chatter if only I could get them on their own.

For once, fate played into my hands. Petronelle suggested to her husband that they take Tom, who still looked extremely green about the gills, upstairs to lie down. Ned agreed and she had to push past her sons in order to reach her brother-in-law’s side. The contact obviously reminded her of something she wished to say.