Longsword (26 page)

“Is he worth so much to you?” The girl was bitter.

“At least I shall be able to save his marriage to Elaine. There will be that, at least.”

Beata went straight to the infirmary after leaving her father. She told her nurse to wait with Anselm while she made her way to the far end of the cloisters, where a glow showed that a fire had been lit in one of the cells. Varons was sitting with Gervase, in the room which had once been Hamo's. The captain rose with a muttered apology, and left the room when he saw Beata. Gervase drew a stool to the fire for her, and kneeling, chafed her cold hands.

She had fled to him meaning to pour out a complaint of her father to him, to say that she would do it all again if necessary … she had had some wild notion of urging him to fly with her, to rape her … but at the first touch of his hands, at the first glimpse of his smile she closed her eyes and her hands clasped around his, holding him to her.

She said, “Just once, I wish I could see you dressed as you should be. …”

He laughed. He took his hands away from hers, and went to sit on the far side of the fire from her. He had taken off his caped hood, and his hair gleamed rich and dark in the firelight. He wore the homespun tunic of a peasant, and his woollen stockings had been darned and patched by their previous owner. He had shaved his chin, but left a moustache, whitening it with flour, like his eyebrows.

She said, “Now I know how you will look when you grow old.” She felt as if something in her would break if she did not go into his arms. She would have started from her stool to go to him, but he lifted the fingers of one hand. It was the slightest of gestures, but it checked her.

“Varons is watching. And others, maybe. Your nurse of a certainty.”

“We are watched? How dare they!” Yet she sank back.

“I always know when I am being watched. And perhaps it is better so. One touch of your hand, one smile … it is like wine to a thirsty traveller … one step more, one incautious movement, and I am not sure I could hold myself back. …”

“Or I,” she said.

They sat unmoving, one on either side of the fire. She had had so much to say to him, but everything that came into her mind seemed either too trivial or too weighty to speak of, when this might be – must be – their last meeting.

“I can't believe that it will happen,” she told him at last. “That I should never see you grow old, never come to you in bed, never hold your child in my arms. …” Her hands made a groping movement, as if holding a small child against her shoulder, with its feet on her lap, setting her cheek against imaginary red curls.

“I had a dream, too. I dreamed of taking you home to Ware, and of your sitting beside me in the hall, and running to meet me when I came in from the hunt and the harvest. …”

“Now that I never dreamed,” she said. “I always saw you here at Malling in my dreams, in the hall, in my bed, presiding over the court.”

His smile was quizzical. “I suppose that is because you have never been anywhere else but Mailing. Yet even if everything had been different, you would have had to leave home to live with your husband's people.”

“Well, I shall soon be leaving Malling, shall I not? How it will enlarge my experience of life!” She tried to laugh. “Do you know, I keep thinking of the boy who loved nothing better than to roam the woods, and hunt and play with his little dog. And then he was sent to a monastery, never more to hunt and roam. So he used to climb the tower on the gatehouse of the monastery every day, to catch a glimpse of the woods in which he had once been happy. …” Her voice broke. He did not speak, but leaned forward to put another log on the fire.

She put her fingers to her temples, pressing on them, forbidding herself to give way. She said, “It was your one-time mistress Anne who put the ring in your wallet, wasn't it? You must have some idea of how it got there; I can think of no-one else whom you would have shielded.”

He sighed. “I suppose it was. The ring was wrapped in a fold of paper, and she might not have known what she was putting in my wallet. Once before she put a good-luck charm there – before I went on my third campaign to France – a charm she purchased of a wise woman, intended to bring me luck. I suppose she thought it was some such charm … and it is true she did have the opportunity to put it in my wallet, for I did visit her that day. She mended the neck-fastening of my tunic … that was her idea, not mine. Yes, I think she put it there, but I doubt she knew what it was when she did so.”

“But why did you not call her to give evidence?”

“Why, at first the charge seemed so ridiculous that I thought no-one would believe it. I thought that to have dragged her into the matter would merely bring her into undeserved trouble … she might have been accused of stealing it herself, and being a bond-woman, might have suffered dire penalties. Anyway, I had no time for second thoughts. The accusation was made, the ring discovered in my wallet, and I was judged guilty in less time than it takes to drink a mug of ale.”

“No jury? No waiting for the travelling judges?” He laughed, in derision. “Then … what will you do now? Father's mind is set against reopening the case.”

“I have been discussing the matter with Varons. He believes, and so does Telfer, that your father would be very happy if I could slip away from the castle before he has to hand me over to Sir Bertrand. So I will look out for a chance of leaving in the retinue of one of the visiting knights … or slip away with the kitchen hands, when they go out into the villages nearby for provender. We see no great difficulty in arranging that. Afterwards …” He shrugged. “Lady Escot is in possession at Ware, and though I am in law entitled to a certain proportion of the property, without influence or money – and as a fugitive from justice – I cannot take what is mine. No, I shall make my way. …”

“Not to the monks! I beg you! Is it not enough that one of us must lose his life?”

“Now I do not see it that way. But the answer to your question is ‘No'. If I have anything to give., then it is in the world, and not in the cloister. I have heard that there are hospitals in London, founded by this great man and that. I will make my way to one of those, and offer my services. I shall not be unhappy there.”

She struck her hands together, and was silent. How was it that he could feel so little, while she was in torment? He had gone beyond her, almost out of reach. When he had been taken from the cage, there had been a look on his face then, as now, of peace. She could not understand it. She did not wish to understand it. She guessed that such peace was attained not by railing against fate, but by accepting it.

“There is no God!” she declared.

“Is it not more comfortable to believe in God, than to deny Him?”

“Everything has gone awry!”

“You are so very like Crispin, and Jaclin. Do you know, I thought I disliked them both, and now that I am come to the point of leaving, I find I have grown to love them. Yes,” he said, nodding and smiling. “Even Crispin! And even Jaclin! Men are such odd creatures, and it seems I am even more odd than most. …”

Now tears did come to her, but silently. She wiped them away with the back of her hand.

He remarked, as if he had not noticed her tears, “Jaclin said he wanted me to act as his squire. Or so Varons tells me. I think I can trust Jaclin not to give me away if I go to his chamber in the morning, and give him what encouragement I may. He issued his challenge in fine style, did he not? Yet Varons says he is now drinking hard, being afraid of meeting Sir Bertrand, and also afraid of showing that he is afraid. Fear is natural enough. …”

He talked on, more or less at random, giving her time to recover. Presently they heard footsteps in the cloister.

“So soon?” she asked, hand to throat. Now he let her see how deeply he himself was suffering. “Gervase. …” She put out her hand, and it wavered near him, without touching him. Then her nurse stood in the doorway, and behind her nurse stood Varons. Beata and Gervase looked at one another, without smiling.

Then she turned and left him.

A pall of rain fell on the castle, and the sky was dark even though it was not yet noon. In the hall Lord Henry sat, surrounded by his guests, watching the antics of the peasants as they perspired and leaped in rustic games. Lord Henry still smiled, but the lines on his face appeared grey. The two doctors came and went between Crispin's chamber and the hall, and the news from the sick-room was not good. Now Lord Henry sent Father Anthony to lend his skill to that of the doctors, but frowned on Beata, when she petitioned once more to go too.

Beata and Elaine sat on either side of him, stiff in their gold dresses and wreaths. The one smiled little, and the other smiled not at all, for Gervase was not in the hall to watch her.

The weary hours passed at last, and a routine inspection of the sodden tiltyard by the Clerk of the Lists made it clear there would be no mock battle that day, either. The company would eat, and then remove to the tithe barn for the jousting. In the evening there would be the masque at which the two sisters would dance as maidens for the last time, before they were received by their respective bridegrooms.

Lord Henry honoured Sir Bertrand and his cousin Lady Escot with many courtesies and gifts, to show that he bore the man no ill-will for what had happened to Crispin.

Gervase was helping Anselm tend a peasant, who had dislocated his shoulder in the games, when Varons sought him out. With so many extra inhabitants in the castle, there had been a sudden influx of people with accidental sprains, cuts and burns into the infirmary, far more than Anselm could attend to unaided. Gervase had not forgotten his promise to attend on Jaclin, but had lost track of the time in helping the old man with his patients.

“Haste ye!” said Varons, rushing Gervase through the court. “They have finished with the games and are about to leave for the tithe barn and the jousting. There are a couple of bouts before Jaclin is due to go on, but he is far from sober, and we are having difficulty getting him into his armour. Crispin's squire … the one whose nose Jaclin bloodied a while back … he's attending Jaclin. Not a good choice; though the man seems honest, he bears Jaclin a grudge. Pray God the lad sits straight on his horse's back until Sir Bertrand's lance hits him. He would never live down the disgrace if he fell off, drunk, before he were even touched!”

“Could not someone keep him sober?”

Varons shrugged. Who cared enough about Jaclin to spend so much time and effort on him?

Gervase frowned. “I am sorry for the lad. If I had been free to move about. … Well, well. He is over-young and inexperienced for this kind of thing. His first tourney … he did well yesterday, did he not? A trifle wild, but that is no bad thing, if the control is there, underneath. A pity he sought to match himself against Sir Bertrand, when he had made such a good start. …”

“Haste ye, then! He may pay attention to you.”

But they were too late. When they burst into Jaclin's chamber they found Berit, the squire, leaning against the wall with folded arms, while Jaclin snored on the floor at his feet.

Berit shrugged, meeting their accusing eyes. “He sent me for hot water to wash in, and a razor that he might be shaved. When I got back he had a fresh bottle in his hand, almost empty. Then he fell down, trying to tell me how he would beat Sir Bertrand in the lists … and he may rot in hell, for all I care.”

Varons and Gervase lifted Jaclin to the bed, and tried to revive him, but he was too far gone.

“It is useless,” said Berit, not without satisfaction. “The boasts of the bastard brought home to roost … ha!”

“I am thinking of his father … that Crispin's champion should be too drunk to enter the lists!”

“Poor lad,” Gervase looked down on Jaclin. “Perhaps he would never have amounted to much, but this will surely finish him.”

“Unless. …!” said Varons, turning on Gervase.

“I would have liked him to have withstood a couple of charges from Sir Bertrand,” said Gervase. “I think he might have managed that, at least … though he could never have withstood the man on foot.”

“Jaclin said you should have your sword back, if he was vanquished,” Varons reminded him.

“So he did. Well, he had forgotten it would have to go to Sir Bertrand, if he lost.”

“Here!” Varons seized the bowl of hot water and the razor for which the squire had been sent. “Off with that moustache! Strip! You are taller than Jaclin, of course, but then you are not so broad in the shoulder. Will the mailed mittens fit, that is the question! Move, man! Move!”

Gervase took the razor which had been handed to him, looked at Varons, then at Berit, and put the razor down again. “You want me to take his place in the lists? I could not possibly. …”

“Why not? Wearing a closed helm over a chainmail hood, nothing can be seen of your face … especially if you take off that moustache. Surely you can withstand a couple of passes on horseback in order that our house be not disgraced … and that Crispin, whose ring you wear, be avenged … and that your enemy shall learn you are not a cipher!”

“Gerald might. …”

“Do you think Gerald would be able to withstand Sir Bertrand? I tell you, you are the only man who can do it, and you are here to hand. Haste, man! At any moment now they will be sending for Jaclin. If you wear his surcoat over your armour … Berit here will cover all enquiries, for you must not speak. …”

“No, this is folly! Such a deception is not honourable. If Lord Henry knew. …”

“There is no time for that!”

A wail from without took them by surprise. Varons and Gervase exchanged startled looks. That wail … from Crispin's chamber, which was directly below. … Berit dashed to the door and flung it open. They could hear him clattering down the stairs.