Longsword (5 page)

“With the monks? You?” She was incredulous.

“Is that so strange? I was tired of war, and thought it a better thing to sow the land with barley than with blood. I was nigh on throwing my sword away and taking the cloth at one time.”

“That would have been a great waste of your talents!”

“What talents? A talent for killing men efficiently? I have no other.”

She waved her hands in the air. “But you have! Hamo says you understand how estates are administered almost as well as he does … and there is your kindness … your giving of yourself to others, as you did to that sick family I foisted on you. …”

He laughed, but coloured up, flattered despite himself. He busied himself cutting a quill down to a point, while she took up her seat on his bed, her arms round her knees, and her chin tilted. He recognised the symptoms; she was feeling aggressive about something. Whatever it was, he was more than pleased to listen. Her eyes were critical, studying him. He turned his head away. He wore the full costume of the scholar now, and though he privately thought he cut a ridiculous figure, did not appear so to anyone else. A coif of white linen covered his tell-tale hair, but he had kept his beard, which was so much lighter in colour than his hair. The beard made his long chin seem broader, subtly altering the shape of his head. What with that beard, and his pockmarks, he thought it unlikely anyone who had known him before would recognise him now.

“What thought you of the monks?” she asked.

“I thought much of their penmanship, and little of their piety.”

“That is a harsh judgment.” Was she angry?

“It was the truth. I thought you wanted that rather than conventional platitudes.”

She was silent awhile, frowning at him. “You have no vocation, I think. What made you consider joining those you despise?”

“I was abandoned, penniless, in a foreign land, and they were kind to me. I had quarrelled with my uncle for the forty-fifth time – or may be it was the forty-sixth. I was sick of war; my uncle thought of nothing else. It seemed that I had been husbanding his resources for nine months of the year, only to have him squander the lot in a campaign every summer.”

“It is not impossible to win fortunes in war. My father did, and my brother has not done so badly, either.”

“My uncle was born without judgment. If he has to choose between two roads, he will make the wrong choice, always.”

“And you were his counsellor?”

“For my sins. I think I first tried to stop him doing something foolish when I was eight, and he was thirty-eight … that was the year my father died, and I was taken to live with my uncle. For the following eighteen years I continued in my folly, trying to correct his folly, and it ended in folly, as I ought to have known that it would.” The quill snapped beneath his fingers, and he set the pieces aside to start on another. ‘It is also folly to put pressure on something that will not withstand it.”

“You speak in riddles.”

He had not meant that she should understand him. She sat perched on his bed like a child, unselfconscious, innocent, offering him friendship and, perhaps, more than friendship. He wanted to ask her why her nurse did not accompany her when she visited him in the afternoons, but he did not. Her visits were the highlights of his life. She wanted to be told everything, to know everything that he had seen, or done, or heard about. Her mind was quick, her knowledge of life limited. She seemed to have lived as cloistered as a nun, as neglected as a bastard child. Yet she was the Lady Beata of Mailing, and herein was a riddle which he could not read.

She said, “Why did you not stay with the monks, then?”

“My uncle was foolish enough to get himself taken prisoner, and sent for me to return to England and raise his ransom. And so I did.” He sighed. “He was so badly shaken that he agreed we should go no more campaigning, but stay on the estates and build up our resources, which had been sadly depleted, what with the ransom, and so many years of campaigning. We had three years at home; two of the harvests were excellent, and one was fair … and I thought in my folly that with age he had outgrown folly.”

He looked at her again, to see if she had divined his secret, but she was frowning at the wall, twisting at a curl over her ear. He had told her his name was William of Leys, and that his uncle had had a small estate in the west country. She had seemed to accept this without question. But surely she must suspect that his tale bore a resemblance to that of her one-time suitor Gervase Escot of Ware? He had told her the truth in every other detail. He did not know whether he wanted her to guess or no. When she was with him he led the talk that way, and courted danger by telling her every day a little more here, a little more there … surely she must guess! But then, if she did guess, what would happen? Would he not be thrown out of Eden? Would there not be a dungeon and fetters for him, while messages were sent to Ware, or to the local sheriffs, that they had found the escaped criminal?

“And then?” she said. “What folly did your uncle commit to drive you from him this summer?”

“He married. He wed a youngish woman, who was perhaps not as young as she made out. A woman with calculating eyes, and thin fingers. A woman with a most attentive male cousin ever at her elbow. My uncle lavished presents on his new wife, and still she asked for more. She whispered in his ear, and he began to frown on me. Her cousin found fault with everything I did about the estates. My uncle said no word in my defence. If I had been wise, I should have gone there and then, but I thought … I hoped … I had been his heir so long … and then she became pregnant. …” He paused and looked sideways at the girl.

She snapped her fingers. “The child was not her husband's?”

“It seemed unlikely, since he had been with many of the bond-women about the place, and never sired a child before. Yes, I thought it; and many another said it. My aunt heard the gossip and was furious. She arranged to have me accused of stealing a ring, a valuable ring which my uncle always wore, and of which he thought a great deal. It was said that I had boasted of finding the ring, and intended to keep it to pay my uncle out for his marriage. I was searched, and the ring was found in my wallet, though I swear I had not touched it. It might have been only my word against that of a servant, but that servant also bore witness that I had jested behind my uncle's back, saying that he was incapable even of consummating the marriage, let alone siring a child. There was just enough truth in what she said to wound my uncle. He said … oh, many things; about ingratitude, and … that he disinherited me, and so on. He allowed my aunt's cousin to put me on trial. And what a trial! It was a mockery! I protested in vain. I foresaw a bleak future … but worse was to come.

‘The sentence of the court was that I was to be branded on the cheek as a thief. I was thrown into a cell for the night to await punishment … two men came to visit me in my cell, carrying a coil of rope … to make it look as though I had hanged myself … and so I fled.”

Her questions were shrewd. He told her he would have fared better if she had been the judge in charge of his trial, and then he changed the subject. Re-opening the wounds of the past was a painful matter.

“When were you made a knight? What happened on your first campaign in France? How many cattle do you slaughter each winter? Have you ever been to London … taken part in a tourney?”

She wanted to know everything about him, and he in turn learned something of her active, useful life from her comments. She came each afternoon when her nurse was asleep, and Anselm in the chapel. At last came the question he had been dreading. “What of women?”

He looked at her, and she looked back at him, and neither could tell what the other was thinking. He had determined at first to tell her nothing of Anne and then he had thought to tell her a little – and now he was tongue-tied.

She said, “Surely your uncle arranged for you to be initiated by some trustworthy bond-woman? Crispin was; I think he was never so happy as in that year … and then he had to marry Joan, and. …” She sighed, and shook her head, implying that the marriage had not turned out well.

“Yes, there was a woman, a bond-woman called Anne. She was fair, and had a lovely laugh, and she was kind.”

“Yes?” she prompted. “You loved her very much?”

“Yes and no. She was my comfort and joy for many years. She was older than me, and taught me … what a man should know. But she was unlettered, superstitious, an ignorant, and when I tried to tell her how I hated war, and about the waste that it creates of good land, she did not listen. She never paid attention when I tried to talk to her about serious matters.” Would Beata understand the compliment he was implying to her, who did listen? “But Anne was faithful to me and I to her, so long as it lasted. She bore me a child, a boy … but he died of a fever when he was eighteen months old. My uncle married her to one of the huntsmen when I was away one time – he always did such things in my absence. She said it was for the best, after all, since she wanted more children, children who would be legitimate. I suppose it
was
for the best, but it rankled for a long time.”

Your uncle should have arranged a marriage for you.” She nodded with an assumption of worldly wisdom that sat oddly on her.

He wanted to say that Ralph Escot had clone so, and that the marriage had been arranged with her, but he could not. He had a mighty desire to tell her the truth, but though the words hammered in his brain, he could not do so. She would turn from him in disgust, perhaps, or call the men-at-arms to have him thrown out of the castle … or if she believed his story, she might simply be so embarrassed that she would come to sit with him no more. At least this way, as her humble servant, he could see her and talk to her, and have her smile on him.

“What is it?” She put her head on one side like an inquisitive bird.

“I … the word is devotion,” he said. He had not meant to say that. He had not known that that was what he felt towards her. But now the word was out. He watched the colour go from her face, but her eyes did not drop from his, nor her hand cease to play with a wayward curl. That was the trouble with her. She was quick enough to have caught his meaning, yet too little schooled in the ways of men to turn the compliment aside. And there was another paradox, that the Queen of Beauty should be unable to flirt with a man. He always experienced a sense of shock when he thought of her as Queen of Beauty.

Why did she not, as other women would, turn his words aside as a pretty phrase, meaning nothing? Ah, but she was not like that, and one half of him rejoiced in her lack of sophistication, while the other half writhed with embarrassment. What, was he, too, embarrassed? Was his tongue not readier than most? Why then did he not diminish his avowal with some light phrase? He bowed his head. He had spoken the words, and they should remain, undiminished, meaning exactly what they said. She moved, and he was alert once more.

She swung her feet off the bed and sat upright, her hands pressed down on the bed one on either side of her. Her head was bent, so that he was not able to read her expression. A fever seized him lest she had not understood him … and yet he knew that she had.

She went to stand in the doorway, looking out to where the rain pattered down on the grass in the middle of the garth.

She said, “Thank you.” It was not at all what he had expected her to say. She turned to him, smiling – and yet her smile was not the carefree thing of an hour ago. Something trembled in her eye, at her lip: this smile was of joy and grief together. She said, “I did not know until you came – until you talked to me, and taught me – I see I was just a child, taking each day as it came, without thought of the future, accepting the rules laid down for me by others. I doubt you will find it easy to understand what you have done for me, you who have always been in the world and a part of the world. I have never left this castle, except twice in my life to ride to a manor of ours which lies two days' journey away. I have no-one to talk to but Hamo and Telfer, who is Master of the Hall … he attends to the running of the castle, you know … and they have their duties and little time to spare for an ignorant girl like me. My family are happy that I should occupy myself with the affairs of the infirmary, and of the home farm, and the giving of alms, for these things are considered suitable for such a one as I. But for the rest, I am not of the slightest importance to anybody. Occasionally a man or woman whom I have nursed back to health has expressed gratitude; and they meant it, and remembered me, perhaps for as long as they were in sight of the castle. But you. …” She fell silent, but he did not speak.

He did not understand her. Perhaps she had not realised he loved her? Did her innocence give her such protective armour that words of love meant nothing to her? He could well imagine that she must drive her suitors mad, if she turned away their declarations so lightly.

“It was not only that you came back,” she said, “but that you departed as you did, taking on you the burden of that poor woman and her children. I do not think there was another man whom I would have dared ask to escort them, knowing as I did that the child was sick.”

“I believe you were angry that I departed without seeing your father. Perhaps you understand now. I thought there would be pursuit … my motives in agreeing to escort that woman were not entirely. …”

“Think what it cost you!”

“I would do the same again.”

“Yes, I know.” She gave him a glowing look. “And then you returned.”

“The wonder is that you knew me!”

“Of course I knew you! How could I mistake you?” He thought she had been about to add something else, but if so, she decided against it. He contemplated his penniless, friendless state, and wondered that he had dared even to hint at his love. Her marriage to him had come to naught, but soon now her father would arrange another … probably had already arranged another … the thought left a bad taste in his mouth.