The Champion (33 page)
‘You did not stay with him?’
‘There were reasons why not.’ Alexander avoided Reginald’s scornful stare.
‘And you are not going to tell me what they are?’
‘No.’ Alexander gazed around the gloomy ill-kempt hall and wished that he had not come. It had seemed obligatory at the time, but first there had been that unsettling encounter with Subprior Alkmund, and now this stilted, awkward conversation with a brother who had always been a stranger to him.
There was an uncomfortable silence. Reginald muttered something about having prayers said for Hervi, it being the decent thing. ‘I know the prior at Cranwell will be only too pleased to undertake the duty,’ he said, hunching over his cup. ‘Despite the fact that you did not settle there, indeed, caused them a great deal of trouble, the relationship between us is still cordial. Indeed, I am considering having our father’s tomb removed to their chapel.’
‘You are what?’ Alexander had taken another mouthful of wine, and now he almost gagged on it.
‘The church in the village is no fitting place for the de Montrois to lie. It is too small, and it lets in rain. I have spoken to the prior and he agrees with me.’
‘The prior!’ Alexander half choked. ‘I do not believe it! He couldn’t see the nose in front of his face, let alone make plans for the future of Cranwell!’
‘Not prior Guiscard!’ Reginald snapped impatiently. ‘He died last year of a chest ague. No, I mean Prior Alkmund. He was elected to the office at the feast of St Giles.’
This time Alexander did retch, and had to turn aside to spit into the rushes. ‘How could anyone be so foolish as to elect him prior?’ he demanded in a strangled voice.
Reginald frowned. ‘He was judged the best man for the task, an able administrator, an eloquent speaker, a man of God …’
‘Of the devil!’ Alexander interrupted fiercely. ‘Do you know why I ran away the last time?’
‘You were insubordinate to the rule, and you faced serious punishment,’ Reginald said coldly. ‘I have no cause to doubt the word of the monks.’
Alexander shook his head and exhaled angrily. ‘Of course you have no cause,’ he spat. ‘What is my word against theirs? Your able, eloquent man of God fondled me on the dorter stairs on the way to matins, and when I hit him in self-defence and he fell down the stairs, they bound my wrists and threw me in the cells as if I were the one to blame.’ He stared Reginald in the eyes, and for a moment Reginald met him, but then looked away, his jaw tightening. Alexander saw that his brother did not want to believe. It was easier to turn aside.
‘I loved our father,’ Alexander said, not only sick, but sickened. ‘To think of Alkmund praying over his tomb fills me with abhorrence. It will be as if my back is laid bare for him again.’
‘You are making a dunghill out of a single pile of straw,’ Reginald said harshly. ‘Prior Alkmund is part of the strength of our community. What have you ever given to Wooton Montroi?’
‘What have you?’ Alexander retorted, and jerked to his feet, leaving the remainder of his wine untouched.
‘Where do you think you are going?’
‘To see my parents. I have a preference for their company,’ he said viciously. ‘They make better listeners than you.’
The interior of the small village church of Wooton Montroi was bitterly cold. Bird dropping stained the rafters, and a row of sparrows perched on the arms of the olive wood cross upon the altar, their feathers so fluffed up that their heads had almost disappeared. Breath misting in the chill air, Alexander genuflected to the altar and the sparrows, then lit candles for the souls of his mother and father, for Hervi and for Monday.
The tomb of Adam de Montroi lay in the chancel, the feet of the wooden effigy resting on a lion to show that the deceased had been on crusade. The hands, over-large in proportion to the rest of the figure, were pressed palms together in prayer, and a sword was girded across the pleated surcoat. The effigy’s face, framed in a mail coif, was bland and smooth, revealing nothing of the heavy-set blond and hearty man of Alexander’s memory. His father had respected the Church, but his bones would not rest easily in Cranwell Priory when Wooton Montroi was his true home.
Alexander touched the cold wooden hands, and realised that he had not thought to ask Reginald if his father’s wives were to be taken too. Either side of him they lay, the lady Ermengarde, a hint of woodworm disturbing her wimple, for she had been there the longest, and his mother, the lady Anna. She would not sleep well among monks, but he doubted they would accept her into their midst.
The craftsman had carved her gown to his father’s instructions, and over her tunic, she wore a slit-sided dalmatic with a wide embroidered border. As he looked at her, Alexander almost seemed to catch a drift of the exotic, rose-scented perfume she had been wont to dab on her wrists and throat. Her hair had possessed the colour and shine of pitch – black, with a sheen of gold – and she had accentuated her deep-brown eyes with cosmetics. He could remember too, the cross of gold and amethysts twinkling on her breast, and his own small fingers playing with the jewel. Without thinking, he reached for it, only to touch its plain silver replacement.
In a silent speech of thought, he vowed to regain the Byzantine cross and asked his mother and father for their forgiveness and their blessing. With a deep regret that stung the back of his eyes, he wished that he could have asked their advice too.
Leaving the church, he crossed the snow-covered village track to the alehouse, deciding to fortify himself before he returned to the keep. He was in no haste to go back. Better the village than Reginald’s cold hospitality and unpalatable wine.
A new brew had recently emerged from the ale-wife’s cauldron, and her customers were supping with dedication, It was not as though the stuff could be stored for more than a few days. There was silence when Alexander ducked beneath the low door and entered the tiny, smoky room, but when he held up a silver penny and asked in halting English for food and drink, the ale-wife herself bustled forward, wiping her hands on her apron, and guided him to a three-legged stool at the firepit. A cheap clay beaker was put in his hand and a measure of yeasty golden ale poured into it. He was furnished with a hunk of half-stale bread and some sliced smoked sausage.
Conversation resumed, but Alexander could feel the unease of the other occupants. He did not belong among them; he was a stranger, a member of the nobility with a sword at his hip. But even less did he belong with Reginald.
The alehouse door banged open again, and once more there was a momentary silence, not so much wary this time, as disapproving. Chewing his bread and sausage, Alexander glanced at the young man who stood on the threshold, stamping snow from his shoes. Curly bronze hair tumbled to his shoulders, and his fine, almost feminine features were pinched with cold. An enormous silver brooch pinned his cloak at the shoulder, which was thrown back a little to reveal a lining of tabby catskins.
‘Wine,’ said the young man in broad English. ‘Godfreda, give me wine.’ He delved in the pouch at his belt, and as Alexander had done, held up a silver penny.
‘My ale not good enough for you now?’ the woman sniffed, but took the money from him.
‘I need something stronger to warm my belly,’ he replied with a shiver, and edged his way towards the hearth.
‘Your fault for bending over to a monk,’ she said, and with her nose in the air went out of the room, returning moments later with a stone jar of wine. ‘You need not look at me like that, Jolin, you’ve not been seeing to your charcoal clamps on a night like this.’
‘’Tis non o’ your business what I been doing,’ the young man retorted, and having gulped down the first measure, took a second, slower drink and held out his hands to the fire. His eyes, heavy-lidded with fatigue, slid to Alexander.
‘Stranger in our midst,’ he said, and a mocking smile curved his narrow lips. ‘Have you been out in the wild wood too?’
There was a recent lover’s bruise on the Saxon’s throat, where someone had bitten and sucked, and the red imprint of fingermarks marred the fine line of his jaw. Alexander linked the young man’s appearance with the ale-wife’s comments and his own earlier meeting with Brother … nay, Father Alkmund. He had his answer to what the monk had been doing out alone.
‘I saw the wolves,’ he replied in accented English. ‘You are a charcoal-burner?’
‘I am.’ The young man drank his wine.
‘And Prior Alkmund came all the way from Cranwell alone, braving the wolves to buy charcoal?’
The delicate skin flushed with more than just the effects of wine. ‘How did you know … Who are you?’
Alexander grimaced. ‘Once I was a novice at the priory.’ He finished his food and dusted his hands on his cloak. ‘A word of warning to you. A wolf will bite off your hand if you come too close. Either strike first, or keep your distance. The silver in your pouch, the brooch at your shoulder. Are they worth your troubled sleep?’
‘What would you know?’ the young man sneered, his face bright red by now.
‘More than you,’ Alexander replied wearily, and draining his cup, rose to leave. ‘A lifetime more than you.’
There were buds on the trees. Hervi could see them from the infirmary window as he dressed himself. Tiny tippets of green edged the stark branches of winter, and birds had begun to court and build their nests. The sun was warmer too, deepening the monastery walls to a rich, buttery yellow.
Hervi glanced from the sight of all this bursting regeneration to his own body. Nothing was going to regenerate the limb he had lost. Below his left knee was thin air. Frequently, in his sleep, he dreamed that he could walk and run, could ride a horse, and God’s life, even take a piss without finding a wall against which to lean. When he was awake, the ghost of the severed member persistently haunted him. Sometimes he could feel the illusion of solid bone and muscle so powerfully that he would reach down, and be flooded with disappointment to find nothing but a stump. How could a limb that did not exist ache so badly?
There were days when Hervi could not bear to face the world, and in a black depression, wished that he had died, but there were days too, like this one, when he thanked God that Brother Radulfus had ignored his pleas to die, and saved his life at the expense of his leg. He could easily have felt bitter at the turning of the world towards spring, but the brightening weather filled him instead with optimism. He could not help but take pleasure in the greening of the season. It was his leg that had been maimed, not his senses.
Hervi finished dressing. The left leg of his chausses had been cut short and a ribbon threaded through to secure it around his stump. In the monastery workshops, one of the brethren was fashioning a wooden peg for him, so that he would be able to walk with the aid of a stick rather than the crutch he had perforce to use at the moment. Hervi was pleased at the prospect, although he had become a master at propelling himself along on his crutch. He could keep pace with most of the monks when they took their recreation in the cloister. Stairs, of course, were a bane, and best negotiated on his buttocks, but in the months since his arrival at Pont l’Arche, he had learned to swallow his pride.
Brother Radulfus and his assistants were attending the prime service in the chapel, and apart from two other patients, the infirmary was deserted. Hervi tucked his prop beneath his arm and made his way outside in swinging strides, crutch, leg, crutch, leg, building a rhythm that led him behind the infirmary and past the latrines to the abbey gardens attached to the guest hall.
This too was empty, for the monks who tended the soil were all at prayer in the chapel, and from there, they would go to the refectory to break their fast. Hervi inhaled the moist scents of burgeoning life and made his way from bed to bed, studying what was being done, taking pleasure in the gold and purple crocus buds and the white clusters of dainty galanthus flowers. In his days as a warrior, he had been too busy living for the moment to pause and look at the world around him. Now, forced to a slower, more reflective pace, each day brought new discoveries that filled him with a sense of wonder, and a regret for time wasted.
Despite the mellowing of the sun and the budding shoots, the wind was still winter-sharp, and Hervi repaired to the gardener’s tool shed. The thatched wooden hut was filled with a tidy clutter of linen sacks, trugs, axes, a mattock and a pruning saw, stacks of osiers, string, knives, wooden buckets, and a large brass cooking pot.
He noticed that a spade had been set aside for mending, and looked around until he located a hammer, pliers and a small wooden box of nails. Then he eased himself down on to a three-legged stool for which there was just room in the corner, and relinquishing his crutch, set about repairing the implement. He had always been good with his hands, had a feel for objects, a tactile intelligence. Besides, it gave him satisfaction to mend something that had gone awry and see it made whole once more.
If he could not have his old life or his leg again, at least he could restore other things that the world had broken.
Hervi whistled softly through his teeth as he worked. On the tourney circuit, the song would have been profane – ‘
Renard the Fox
’, or ‘
Summer is iccumen in
’, but here, in the abbey gardens, with six months of nothing but plainchant to fill his ears, he was happy to sing about the glories of nature as seen through spiritual eyes, and in passable Latin, composed by an abbess called Hildegard. Time flew, marked by the passage of light on the sun dial.
A shadow filled the hut entrance. ‘We’ll make a monk of you yet,’ said Brother Radulfus, amusement in his grey eyes.
Hervi snorted, but other than that made no comment against the remark. ‘Good as new,’ he said instead, indicating the mended spade.
‘You have a rare talent with your hands,’ Radulfus said with sincerity. He had been holding a cup of milk and a piece of bread, and now passed them to Hervi. ‘You missed the breaking of fast, but I knew where you would be.’