The Champion (27 page)

‘Her father entrusted her well-being to me. Sweet Christ, he will be calling out from his grave for vengeance!’ Hervi shook Alexander like a terrier with a rat. ‘What in God’s name possessed you?’

A crowd had gathered to watch the altercation, although no one as yet knew what it was about. Osgar le Gros slouched on one hip, his arms folded. ‘Ah,’ he grinned, ‘brotherly love.’

Hervi’s eyes flickered to the growing audience. ‘Piss off and bother someone else,’ he snarled.

Osgar shrugged. ‘More fun watching you.’

Hervi tossed Alexander back on the ground and rounded on the spectators. ‘There’s nothing to watch,’ he said roughly, his chest heaving and his legs planted wide. ‘Go on, you vultures, bugger off!’ He gesticulated graphically.

With much laughter and slow sauntering, the onlookers melted away, Osgar predictably the last to leave, with a rude gesture of his own. Alexander had silent cause to thank him, for his intervention had deflected the worst of Hervi’s fury.

‘If I could undo the deed, I would,’ he said from the ground. ‘Since I can’t, I’ll make amends as best I can. There is no point in beating me to a pulp; I won’t make a very presentable bridegroom.’

Hervi bared his teeth. ‘You’ll make no sort of bridegroom,’ he growled, but the dusky colour had drained from his face and his eyes no longer threatened to pop from his skull. ‘How could you be so stupid?’

‘I was drunk, and if the truth were known, greatly disturbed at the thought of Eudo le Boucher offering for her. I didn’t realise how disturbed until it was too late.’

‘So you ruined her for all but yourself.’

‘That wasn’t my intention. I … I just wasn’t thinking at the time.’

‘Except with your loins,’ Hervi said contemptuously. ‘Oh, get up. You look like a cur waiting to be kicked.’

Which was precisely how Alexander felt. Warily he rose to his feet and dusted himself down. His lip was throbbing and he knew from the hot pain beneath his left eye that he was going to have a spectacular bruise. He also knew that he had emerged very lightly from the storm of Hervi’s wrath.

‘Where’s Monday?’ Hervi demanded.

‘She said she wanted a moment alone to collect her thoughts. I finished grooming our horses and came to find you.’ He glanced at their surroundings – the service camp of the Angevin brothers’ army, a rearguard of washerwomen, petty servants, labourers and whores. This was the ground where Hervi spent his leisure hours. Alexander, usually more discerning, knew that he would have given anything to have been with his brother last night.

‘I’ll find a priest,’ he said to Hervi, adding quickly as he saw his brother’s face, ‘a proper priest to join us in marriage. Count John or one of his commanders is bound to have a chaplain willing to witness the ceremony.’

‘Oh yes,’ Hervi said sarcastically, ‘by all means let us observe the proprieties.’

Alexander found his priest, a fresh-faced Benedictine, newly launched from the cloister and serving as an assistant and scribe to the Count of Mortain’s senior chaplain. The young Father Ambrose had never performed a wedding before and was eager to do so to add the experience to his career.

The priest secured, Alexander went in search of Monday to bear her the glad tidings of their forthcoming nuptials. Hervi chose to work off the dregs of his anger and tension in a bout of exercise.

To while away the time beneath the walls of Vaudreuil, the besiegers were practising their arms by holding individual jousts and small tourneys. Hervi mounted Soleil and rode to join the sport. It was not so disastrous he told himself. Alexander and Monday knew and liked each other. With the yoke of a marriage vow and a gold ring, there was no reason why they could not settle to plough a straight furrow side by side. But he was still angry that it had happened the way it did. He should have seen what was beneath his nose. Dear God, he was a man himself, with a man’s desires. He had been so busy fostering father-and-daughter feelings about Monday that it had never occurred to him that Alexander might view her in a different light, and he was chagrined at his own lack of vision.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a familiar red and yellow surcoat and shield, and he turned Soleil to evade the oncoming horse and rider. Hervi had no desire to keep the company of Eudo le Boucher this day. Le Boucher, however, had other ideas, and he too changed direction, spurring his battle-scarred bay to cover the ground between them so that Hervi had no choice but to turn and face him.

‘You son of a whore!’ le Boucher snarled as he drew level.

Hervi stared at him and tightened his fist on the lance shaft. He did not need to ask the reason for le Boucher’s fury; he feared that he already knew.

Le Boucher’s forefinger stabbed. ‘You never had any intention of bestowing that girl outside your own family,’ he attacked. ‘I have just spoken to Mortain’s wet-faced priest and he was only too delighted to regale me with the details. You made a fool of me, de Montroi, and no one does that!’ Le Boucher’s bay sidled, its eyes rolling as it was simultaneously spurred and reined back.

‘You have made a fool of yourself. I gave you no commitment,’ Hervi retorted, a hot wave of anger mingling with the fear in his gut. ‘If you have spoken to the priest as you say, you will know that it is a matter of honour, nothing more, nothing less.’

‘Then let honour be satisfied!’ le Boucher spat, and drew his sword from his saddle scabbard.

Hervi swallowed. ‘Christ, don’t be an idiot,’ he said huskily.

‘Why not, I am already a fool.’ The sword flashed.

Hervi touched Soleil’s neck and the stallion reared, forehooves striking. Le Boucher’s bay flinched sideways to escape the hooves, and the knight’s blow went wide, giving Hervi time to draw his own weapon and drag his shield into position. He deliberated whether to spur for the safety of the other soldiers beneath the walls, or stay and fight it out. He parried the next blow and got in a useful counterstrike of his own that sent slivers of wood flying from le Boucher’s shield.

What a stupid way to die, Hervi thought as his arm took the shock of the next assault and he found himself outmanoeuvred and forced on to the defensive. It but needed that sword edge to connect once and he was a dead man. He was only clad in his quilted gambeson, not his mail, and the weight of a sharpened edge would fillet him like a herring.

Beneath the deadly glitter of le Boucher’s blade, Hervi managed to turn Soleil and dug in his spurs. The stallion burst into a hard gallop and tore towards the other soldiers on siege duty. Hervi heard the thunder of hooves in pursuit and lashed the reins down on the dun’s neck. He could see the faces turned towards him, the looks of surprise and consternation; the frown of a commander. Without slackening the reins, he headed directly for their midst.

And then Soleil’s leading forehoof struck the powdered earth of an old molehill and the horse pitched forward, tail over teeth. The stallion’s neck struck the ground at the wrong angle and there was a sickening crack. Hervi tried to throw himself clear, but he was not swift enough and one leg was pinned beneath the dun’s falling weight. He heard and felt a second crack hard upon the first as his shin bone snapped. Agony filled the space where the sound had been. Hervi heard himself scream, the sound thin and high-pitched. There was nothing in the world but the white heat of pain. Suddenly he did not care if le Boucher killed him. Indeed, he heard himself crying out for that mercy.

Alexander had searched throughout the siege encampment for Monday and discovered not a trace. He visited all her usual haunts, but the closest he came to her presence was encountering a washerwoman who told him that she had seen Monday vigorously scrubbing a linen sheet at the riverside earlier that morning. Her information sent a guilty pang through him, for he knew why Monday had been washing that sheet. Irritated and anxious, he redoubled his efforts, but without success.

Finally, back at the tent, he sat down on the stripped pallet which they had shared last night, and put his head in his hands. He did not know where else to look and was beginning to feel afraid. She had to be here somewhere, he told himself. Someone must have seen her. He kicked in frustration at the side of the coffer near his heels and the brass latch rattled at him. He saw that it was not secured, and frowned, knowing that since the incident with Grisel she kept it firmly locked. With a growing apprehension, he went down on his knees and flipped back the crudely carved lid.

Monday’s effects were stored within, but they were in a state of disarray quite alien to their usual tidiness. He rummaged among them and saw with alarm and a sinking in his gut that her needles and sewing threads were no longer there. Perhaps she had gone to sit somewhere quiet to do her thinking and sew at the same time. The thought was comforting, but it held no substance. He explored further, and his worst fears were confirmed when he prised open the false bottom of the chest and found its concealed space empty.

Swearing, he closed the lid and rose to his feet. His shoe caught in the folds of his cloak and he picked up the garment to toss it on the pallet. Then he saw the strip of vellum and the smudged, inexperienced lettering. He stared at it with shortening breath, then stooped to grab it and read the words in one rapid flicker of his eyes.

…
better this way … God keep you. M
. Alexander crushed the writing in his fist and swore again, with virulence. Her time to think had been time to make her escape; he should have realised. Stupid, stupid. He cursed himself and he cursed Monday. Assuming that she had returned to the tent and packed straight away, she had almost half a day’s start on any pursuit, and there was no inkling in her brief message as to where she was bound. She had sufficient funds to take her as far as she chose to go … sufficient funds to make her a victim of robbery or worse on the open roads, a young woman alone.

Perhaps she would go to her grandfather, Thomas of Stafford, as she had once contemplated. He opened his fist and smoothed out the crumpled vellum to gaze upon her handwriting. A surge of grief joined the broil of guilt and anger in his breast. She was so bright, so spirited, and he had ruined it all. He folded the note carefully this time and tucked it down inside his tunic.

He had only taken one step outside the tent when he was accosted by the young priest, Father Ambrose, who had promised to set the seal on the marriage. His earnest face was deep pink, for the heat was cooking him in his dark woollen robe, and he looked flustered.

‘I am sorry, I haven’t found her yet,’ Alexander said, thinking it the reason for the priest’s approach. ‘Indeed, I believe that she has run away.’

The monk looked more worried than ever, and wrung his hands within the voluminous folds of his overlong sleeves. ‘That is indeed grave news,’ he murmured, ‘and I am afraid that I am the bearer of no better tidings myself.’

‘Why, what has happened? Have you found her?’ Alexander stared at the monk in alarm. Images of Monday’s corpse floating in the river filled his mind’s eye. Last time she had been seen, it had been near the water.

‘No, no, nothing like that,’ Father Ambrose said, but his expression remained grim. ‘It is your brother. There has been an accident beneath the castle walls and he has broken his leg.’

‘What?’ Alexander had heard the words perfectly well, but they slid over him without being absorbed.

‘Come, I will bring you to him.’ Ambrose made an ushering gesture. ‘His horse put its hoof in a molehill and fell badly. The poor beast is dead and your brother injured. It’s a difficult break, right across the shin bone.’

Alexander shook his head. ‘Hervi’s never been thrown in his life,’ he said, and numbly followed the young Benedictine through the camp. ‘Soleil’s as sure-footed as a mountain goat.’

‘Even a mountain goat can stumble over a molehill.’

‘Hervi would have ridden around it, he was no fool,’ Alexander argued, still shaking his head, still denying.

‘Nevertheless, it has happened,’ Ambrose said, his voice gentle but implacable.

Alexander tightened his lips. He was filled with an unjust loathing for the young priest, purely because he was the bearer of ill tidings. The clergy had never brought anything but misery into his life.

Beneath the walls of Vaudreuil, Hervi lay on the grass, a chirurgeon and his assistant bending over him, a couple of knights hovering close by. Alexander sprinted the final distance, outrunning the pink-faced monk, and flung himself down at his brother’s side.

Hervi was fully conscious, his features white with pain. He was biting down on a block of wood as the chirurgeon bound the broken limb with tight bandages and ash-wood splints.

‘What in God’s name happened?’ Alexander demanded, filled with horror at the sight of Hervi in such agony. A broken bone was always a threat to livelihood and mobility. More than that, it was a threat to life itself if the rot took hold.

The chirurgeon shrugged. ‘A fall from a horse,’ he said without raising his head from his handiwork. He had firm, chunky hands with clean, trimmed nails. An elaborate brown felt hat had been discarded on the grass at his side, its brim decorated with pilgrim badges from Rome, Canterbury and Compostela.

Hervi spat out the block of wood. ‘I was running away from Eudo le Boucher’s sword,’ he groaned. ‘Soleil put his hoof in a molehill and we went down … Ah, Christ!’ His voice rose and split on a scream that sent slivers of ice down Alexander’s spine.

‘It is a bad break but I have set the bone as well as I can,’ the chirurgeon said grimly. ‘The rest is in God’s hands.’ He glanced up briefly at Alexander, and then beyond him to the panting Father Ambrose.

‘As his fall was in God’s hands too?’ Alexander asked bitterly. He knew what such a wound presaged. If Hervi healed, he would have one leg shorter than the other, be less balanced and fluid on foot and even in the saddle. No one would want to employ him. ‘If God had any sense of justice, he would have punished me!’

His own words struck him like a slap in the face. God was punishing him. A physical wound would have been easier to bear than the guilt assaulting him now.