King of the Middle March (22 page)

I
WENT TO SEE SISTER CIKA THIS AFTERNOON, AND WE SAT IN
the spirit-garden, and she said I look less like a scarecrow than a month ago, and quite handsome considering I'm English, and the only true strength is inner strength.…She is witty, sometimes, and very calm, and visiting the nunnery is the only good thing that has happened today.

Downstairs, everyone is still so irritable and argumentative. That's why I asked Lord Stephen to excuse me after supper. At least I can write up here in my room.

Not long before we ate, Bertie came round for the first time since he was arrow-shot.

“Milon says you'll want to know what's been decided,” he began. “This afternoon, the French leaders and Marquis Boniface and the Doge accepted the offer of Prince Alexius Angelus and—”

“The fools!” shouted Sir William. “Disastrous!” And he hurled his beaker of wine at the wall.

“Milon says if you break your fast with us—”

“I'll break his head,” snarled Sir William. “What's wrong with them all?”

Long after Bertie had left, Sir William went on cursing and complaining, and Lord Stephen told Serle that if we have to go to Constantinople, he didn't see how we could get home for at least three more years, and Rhys reported there's something wrong
with all our horses, and one moment they're restless, the next listless.…

At supper we began to talk about Holt, and Rhys told us he wondered whether after three years he'd have anything to come back to.

“Why ever not?” Lord Stephen asked.

“Like that story,” Rhys said, “about the man who gave his son his croft and strip of land, and then his son threw him out with nothing but half a horse blanket.”

“He threw out his own father?” exclaimed Serle.

“My son's got my cottage and croft,” said Rhys.

“Disgraceful!” snorted Sir William. “You stablemen and cowherds, you're bloody animals!” He slurped down a whole beaker of wine, and turned to me. “Well, I'm not leaving anything to chance,” he announced loudly. “You needn't think you or Tom are getting anything from me. I'm not giving you a penny or an acre before I die.…”

I
HEARD SHOUTING IN THE HALL
.

I dropped my quill and picked up my candle and ran down. My soles slapped the stone steps.

Just before I reached the gallery there was a huge thump, then a crash.

The refectory table was lying on its side, and Sir William and Lord Stephen were facing one another across it. Jugs and beakers and spoons and knives were lying on the floor, and red wine was oozing across the stone slabs.

My father was sodden with wine, blind with anger.

“You worm!” he bawled. “You lump of filth! How dare you? Behind my back.”

Lord Stephen didn't reply, but Sir William's anger was fueling itself.

“She's worthless! Just a Welsh drudge. You grub! You meddlesome dwarf! What's it got to do with you? Or Arthur?”

My father kicked at a broken jug and advanced to the near end of the table. I could see his right eye glittering. Then he saw me.

“Talk of the devil!” he snapped, and he lurched towards me, waving. “When people start digging,” he said, and his voice grew cold as steel, “they may find their own bones. Isn't that what I told you, Arthur? Their own bones.”

My father belched, then he turned towards Lord Stephen again, and spat in his face. “Black bubbles!” he muttered.

Lord Stephen drew himself up a little. “No, Sir William,” he said. His voice was quiet and firm. “Not their own bones. The bones of a dead man.”

Sir William growled.

“I believe you threatened Arthur's mother. You forced her to bed with you, then you murdered her husband.”

My father drew his knife from his belt.

I clenched my fists.

My father stepped forward.

“No!” I yelled. “No!”

Sir William lumbered towards Lord Stephen and pulled back his right arm.

Lord Stephen just stood there, blinking. “Dear God!” he said in a surprised voice. He didn't even move.

I leaped down from the gallery.

I was too late.

Sir William stabbed him. I think he aimed for Lord Stephen's heart, but the blade went into his left shoulder, right up to the hilt, and then Sir William drew it out, dripping.

For a moment Lord Stephen still stood upright. Then he turned whey-pale and toppled backwards. His head cracked against the stone floor.

I threw myself at my father, howling. I grabbed him from behind and wrapped my arms around him.

We wrestled.

With my left hand I seized his right wrist. I squeezed it.

He bit my knuckle.

I tried to make him drop the knife. I could hear myself gasping.

“You bastard!” he panted. “You runt! I'll have you too.”

I squeezed, I squeezed. He filled his lungs with air. His whole body expanded and he heaven-bellowed. He roared.

My father leaned back, grunting. I still had his right wrist. He wrenched himself forward, and almost threw me over his head.

He reeled. He fell. He'll always be falling…

My father fell forward and I fell with him, still clutching his wrist; the stone floor smacked against his arm, and crushed it, and he drove his blood-blade deep into his body.

He buried the knife in his own heart.

I
DIDN'T KILL HIM
.

But I keep feeling as if I did. I hated him and once wrote that I wished he were dead.

But he was my father. I am his son.

I rushed to find Milon, and he came with me immediately.

Milon closed my father's eyes and made the sign of the cross over him. “May God welcome him!” he said hoarsely.

Then Milon told me to fetch Taddeo, the Doge's surgeon, as quickly as I could. I did, and by then Rhys and Turold had returned, and they carried my father down to the undercroft to prepare his body for burial. Taddeo bled Lord Stephen at once, and I sat beside him all night in his small chamber. I thought. I prayed. Sometimes I held his hand. I listened to his breathing. I didn't sleep at all.

Serle didn't come back until early this morning. He had been with Simona.

He found me with Lord Stephen and I told him what had happened. Serle looked stunned, and afraid, and he got onto his knees.

“I've been here all night,” I said.

“You get some rest,” he said. “I'll take over.”

I couldn't rest, though. I walked out, and as soon as I knocked on the ribbed door, Sister Cika was there, and she led me at once to the spirit-garden.

“I was expecting you,” she said. “Is it your father?”

My heart began to hammer.

“How did you know?” I asked.

“Things you've said and have not said,” replied Sister Cika. “Your eyes! By thinking, by looking, by—how do you say it?—intuition. There are many ways of knowing.”

She put both my hands between hers.

I began to sob then. Hot tears streamed down my cheeks. They kept dripping into my lap. I told her everything.

“Let them flow!” Sister Cika said warmly. “Wash away your pain, and your grief.”

We sat side by side for a long time.

I remember the nunnery doves singing their sweet, gulping songs.

“If I hadn't tried to find my mother,” I said, “Lord Stephen would never have become involved. And if I hadn't gone up to my room…”

“No,” said Sister Cika. “You've done nothing wrong.”

“But I held his wrist.”

Somehow Sister Cika knew what I was thinking. “It's not your fault,” she told me.

“He was my father, but he didn't care about me. He wanted to kill me.”

“But you were one blood,” Sister Cika said gently. “Who can see his father die and not die a little?”

“It's Lord Stephen who feels like my father,” I said. “I feel so lost.”

Sister Cika squeezed my hand softly. “Arthur,” she said, “you care and think and feel, you are awake to the world; and the more
awake we are, the more we hurt when those we love lie ill, or leave us. This is how God's children are. But He never allows us to hurt more than we can bear.”

Around us, the almond-blossom blinked and fluttered.

“I will pray for Lord Stephen. All will be well and all manner of things will be well,” said Sister Cika, almost as if she were bidding me farewell. “Take my words on your way. Living we die, but dying we live, Arthur.”

Sister Cika half-smiled at me, and she lifted her eyes.

When I got back to our tower-house, I found Taddeo bleeding Lord Stephen again to balance his fluids. He says he can do nothing more for him.

His knife wound is a clean one, but the lump where he cracked his skull is as large as my kneecap, and still oozing puce and purple. I have shaved the hair on the back of his head and am to apply a marjoram poultice twice each day. He has been asleep now for three days, and that's even longer than Bertie.

Lord Stephen. He is my almost-father. My heart will break if he dies.

N
O, GOD DID NOT WELCOME MY FATHER
.

Heaven spat into his grave, and a fierce wind blew from the northeast. It ripped off my rabbitskin cap, and skipped it across the graveyard, and I only just caught it before it rolled into the water.

We buried him right next to the grave Bertie and I dug for Giscard, the miner from Provins. I squeezed a clod of gritty earth in my left hand, and crumbled it, and trickled it into the grave. We all did. The earth whispered, it chuckled.

I didn't feel anything. Not sad, like I was when we buried little Luke. Not relieved. I mean, I just felt numb. I still do. I know I should care. Perhaps I will later.

After the burial, Serle embraced me and so did Simona and Gennaro and Bertie. Turold clasped my hands, and a number of Milon's knights and men bowed to me and expressed their sympathies. Not Wido and Giff and Godard, though—they weren't there, and Rhys was sitting with Lord Stephen. Then Milon grasped my right elbow, and led me out of the graveyard; we walked back through the Land Gate, and climbed up onto the walls.

The wind was pulling the clouds to pieces. They looked like wool before it has been carded.

“This is where I used to come with Lord Stephen,” I said.
“Quite often. He told me that one of God's greatest gifts to us is memory. Because it can console us.”

“You are a knight,” Milon began. “My knight.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And a good young knight.”

“I don't think I am.”

“Very good,” Milon said. He tapped his head and then his heart. “I watch you. You hope; you care…”

“Too much, sometimes,” I said.

“And you bravee,” said Milon. “You save Bertie. And in Soissons…” Milon tapped my arm. “You are a knight,” he repeated, “but you still have duties to Lord Stephen. Yes?”

“Oh yes!” I said.

“He will not fight no more.”

“What do you mean?” The nape of my neck tingled.

“He will not fight no more. Maybe not stand up no more.”

“No!” I said. “That's not right. I'm sure it's not.”

Milon said nothing.

“I've been sitting beside him the whole time, almost. Yesterday he moved his lips. He's starting to suck water from a sponge. And his eyelids flickered. They didn't before.”

Milon laid a hand on my left shoulder. “Maybe he die,” he said in a firm, warm voice.

“No!” I said. “He won't. I'm sure he won't.”

“Maybe he live,” said Milon. “But he will not heal for a long time.” He paused. “Your duty to Lord Stephen is to help him…home.”

“Home!”

Milon looked at me.

“But I can't! How can I? I've taken the Cross. I can't break my vow.”

For a while Milon waited. The wind was driving all the cloudshreds out to sea. He rubbed his nose.

“This crusade is bad and worse,” he said, and he sucked his right forefinger and held it up.

“But if we go home we'll never see the Holy Land. Sir William has wrecked our dream of journeying to Jerusalem.”

Milon blew on his forefinger. “Jerusalem and Saracens? No! Constantinople and Christians? Yes!
Désastre!
”

“That's what Sir William thought.”

“What is your dream, you?” Milon asked me. “To be young crusader knight? To fight? Or lead your people in your own manor?”

“Well…,” I said. “Both!”

Milon shook his head and smiled. “Which more difficult?” he said. “Not easy for you. Not easy for me without you! But I tell you, your duty is to care for Lord Stephen. You go home. Lord Stephen's wife…Lady Judith. Good woman. Strong woman.”

“Yes,” I said.

“You explain her. And Sir William's wife…”

“Lady Alice.”

“Yes, you talk to her.” Milon shook his head. “No way is easy way. But now you find Mair, your mother, yes?”

I drew in my breath. “You did know about her,” I said. “That's why you had that ring engraved on my sword.”

Milon smiled. “Lord Stephen,” he said. “He told me secret.”

“It's all because he helped me,” I began miserably, “because he tried to…”

For a while we sat on the wall, and questions began to race and chase each other in my head.

Alone? How? How do I find a boat to take us back across the Adriatic? And there'll still be snow in the Alps, won't there? In March? How long will I have to wait before we can cross them? I know Lord Stephen's going to get better, but what if he gets worse? If he dies…What are all the other questions I haven't thought of?

Milon smiled and nodded. He said of course I couldn't take Lord Stephen on my own.

“Rhys and Turold are Lord Stephen's men,” he said. “They go with you. Not good for me, but…” Milon shrugged.

“Thank you,” I said.

“And Simona,” Milon added. “Crusade bad for Simona. She go to Venice with you.”

“Does she know?” I asked.

“Gennaro tell her now.”

“What about Serle?”

“Serle? He come with me.”

“But he and Simona…”

Milon shrugged again. “Love-sorrows,” he said. “Many as seashells.”

After this, Milon told me that a merchant galley from Split docked here only last night and if the bora has blown itself out by then, she'll leave the day after tomorrow morning, and make a run straight across the Adriatic to Venice. “No pirates in winter,” Milon informed me.

“But that's too soon,” I said. “I can't get ready by then.”

“Must,” said Milon curtly.

“But I can't. Packing everything. I've got to talk to Serle and Bertie. And what about Bonamy? Rhys and I will both have to exercise him tomorrow, before such a long sea journey.”

“No horse on merchant ship,” Milon said slowly, not taking his eyes off me for a moment.

“What do you mean?”

Milon shook his head.

“But I must take Bonamy!” I cried. “I must!”

“Horse transports take horses,” Milon said, “not merchant galleys. No horse transports now to Venice.”

“I'll ride there, then,” I said fiercely. But even as I said it, I saw how impossible that would be.

“You, Turold, and Rhys buy horses in Venice,” Milon said. “I give you money, much money. Money to go home.”

“Poor Bonamy!” I cried.

But really, I meant poor me.

“Simona help you in Venice,” Milon said. “After crusade, Bertie and I come to England. Yes?”

“Yes, sir.”

It all seems so far away.

Milon punched me lightly on my chest. “We bring Bonamy,” he said.

I sniffed.

“Bertie…,” I began, “he's so…”

“I know,” Milon said warily. “My sister's son.”

“Sir, please take care of him.”

“You, Arthur. You take care Lord Stephen.”

“I will. I will,” I said.

I've sailed hundreds and hundreds of miles in my head and my heart today. In different directions.

Down into the dark earth with my father, Sir William de Gortanore.

And now this. This long journey…