The Champion (35 page)
William Marshal nodded and brushed his thumb back and forth across his bearded chin, his expression speculative. ‘Do you fight any more today?’
‘No, my lord.’ He gestured over his shoulder at Jankin, who was unashamedly eavesdropping. ‘My sword needs a new grip, and it will not be ready until tomorrow.’
‘Friday,’ Jankin contradicted, just to be awkward, and vanished into the depths of his booth.
‘Well then, come to my table and join my feast. You must be hungry and thirsty after your exertion.’ Marshal gave him a knowing grin. ‘I know that when I was young and rash enough to fight in these hastiludes, I was capable of eating an entire pig afterwards, and of sinking a gallon of wine!’
‘Reason enough for you not to want me at your board,’ Alexander replied, taking his lead from Marshal’s bantering tone.
Marshal laughed, displaying sound, square teeth. ‘I suppose it could be, but there are other reasons equally strong why I might.’ Raising his eyebrow to add emphasis to the hint, William Marshal went on his way.
‘Hah, you’ve just looked fortune in the eye,’ announced Jankin, advancing once more to his counter, a leather-worker’s needle pinched between forefinger and thumb. ‘I’d have charged you more if I’d known you was a friend of the lord of Chepstow.’
Alexander refused to rise to the bait. Besides, he was too stunned by what had just happened to be capable of a riposte. A vista of endless golden possibilities opened before his mind’s eye.
‘I’ll be back for the sword tomorrow,’ he said in a distracted voice, and went to picket Samson at his horse line. ‘Friday!’ Jankin yelled after him, and cackled.
Many young knights had been invited to sit at William Marshal’s board. Alexander had fought against some of them in the course of the tourney. One or two he had defeated; with others, the encounters had been less conclusive. There was high talk and boasting, there was bragging of blood lines and much name-dropping. Each diner tried to outdo the man beside or opposite him, and the level of noise increased as the wine in the flagons was drunk down to the lees.
Alexander sat amidst this social mêlée and realised that it was just as intense as the fighting had been in the afternoon, and the techniques were no different. The man who kept his head was the one who would win. And so he bit his tongue, and remained genial without voicing any boasts of his own.
‘They say the Marshal is recruiting knights to join his mesnie,’ confided Alexander’s neighbour, a youth called Julius, who was distantly related to the Earl of Chester.
‘Who is
they
?’
Julius shrugged and tucked the last corner of a chicken and almond pasty into his mouth. ‘Someone told me that he had heard it from one of the Marshal’s attendants.’
‘Then it is likely true,’ Alexander said politely, and used his eating knife to cut his own portion of food into bite-sized slivers. He did not want to appear too finicky, but he also wanted to show that he was aware of the manners of the court as well as those of the camp.
‘My father is a friend of the Marshal,’ Julius declared with a slight thrust of his jaw. ‘And my cousin is a knight in his service in the Forest of Dean.’
‘Indeed?’ Alexander’s gaze wandered. Over at the high table, a musician was playing a harp and singing to the diners. He recognised the song, and also that it was about to end. Probably fortunate, for the musician’s voice was high and tight, straining at the notes.
‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ His companion’s tone was belligerent as the wine took effect.
‘Oh, I believe every word,’ Alexander said neutrally. ‘It is true that a man’s connections count for much, but they are not everything.’ Making his excuses, he left the trestle and approached the musician, who by now had finished his song and was gargling with a mouthful of wine.
Alexander stooped and murmured to him. At first the man shook his head, but after some further discussion and the payment of a silver penny, yielded up his harp and sat off to one side with his wine.
Alexander turned to William Marshal where he presided at the head of the table with men fortunate enough to already be members of his household. ‘I ask your permission to sing for my supper, my lord,’ he said with a graceful bow.
The Marshal regarded him with a twinkle in his eyes, and amusement curving beneath his moustache. ‘For more than your supper, I think,’ he said. ‘Well then, Alexander de Montroi, show me what an accomplished courtier you are.’ He gestured to the harp.
For an instant Alexander was overcome by panic as all eyes on the high table fixed upon him and were joined by stares both hostile and curious from the other trestles. A false chord twanged from the harp, setting teeth on edge and raising scornful eyebrows.
Alexander cleared his throat and his mind, and willed himself to concentrate on the harmony of the harp and the song. It had to be right. Like the tourney field and the battle ground, there was no room for error. Judging his audience, he struck up a fighting tune about the joys of tourneying, written by the troubadour Bertran de Born. At first his throat was tight and he missed the occasional note, but as the song progressed and he gained confidence, the true, golden clarity of his voice shone through, and men ceased to exchange mocking glances. Before the applause had died down, he began another piece, this time bawdy, about a tourney champion suffering from ‘jouster’s wilt’ both on and off the field. The song was received with loud guffaws and cries that it be repeated. By the time Alexander had sung it again, twice over, his throat was aching, but he was riding on a tide of euphoria, for he knew he had carried the day.
To prove that he did have gentler sensibilities, he finished his debut on a poignant composition. The slight hoarseness of his throat gave his voice a smoky undertone, which rendered the song all the more compelling.
Give me my steed, companion of years,
Give me my hound, gentle in obedience,
Give me my quill, sanity from loss.
I will ride to foreign lands
Saddled with songs for gold,
Searching for the true-love to worship.
Feel the fire of Venus illuminate my soul
And step forth to take her hand.
He stroked the last notes from the harp and bent his head over it, while the applause beat around him. Then he looked up and smiled.
William Marshal gave him wine from his own cup, and there and then invited him to join his mesnie. ‘I need men of quick wit as well as prowess on the battlefield,’ he said. ‘If you desire to join me, then a place is yours.’
Alexander swallowed the rich Gascony wine to soothe his throat. ‘There is nothing I desire more, my lord,’ he said, knowing that this man would not suffer dissimulation. The Marshal was aware of the life that Alexander lived. There was no point in pretending that a better offer was waiting around the corner. This was his ladder out of the mire, and he had no intention of letting his feet slip.
‘Well then, kneel, do me fealty, and let the pact be sworn.’
And so, on a warm spring evening at Salisbury, Alexander was knighted and became William Marshal’s man.
‘Come on, girl, push as hard as you can. Harder, harder, yes, that’s it!’ the midwife encouraged, and peered intently between Monday’s widely parted thighs. Blood smeared the white flesh and the bed straw was soaked with birthing fluid. Monday sobbed between gritted teeth as the pain swelled down through her loins, became unbearable, and then retreated in a long, red scream.
‘Soon be over now,’ the midwife soothed. ‘I can see the head.’
‘I’m being split asunder!’ Monday panted, and took a sip from the cup that was put to her lips. It contained a tisane of dried raspberry leaves to promote the contractions, and was sweetened with honey to keep up her strength.
‘Oh, that’s just the head descending the birth passage,’ said the midwife cheerfully. ‘’Tis uncomfortable, I know, I’ve borne eight myself. Everything is as it should be, mark me.’
Monday grimaced. She had been in labour since dawn, and now the sun was sinking through the open casement window in the bower. Everything was open – doors, curtains, even coffer lids, and Monday’s hair had been unbraided and spread over the pillow so that there should be no hindrances to the birth of the babe. Aline said it was all superstition, but she had let the midwives have their way because superstition was also tradition, and there was comfort in the rituals.
Another contraction assaulted Monday without warning, and the urge to push overwhelmed her. She groped outwards with a scream, and Aline grasped her clutching fingers. ‘Push, Monday, push!’ she urged.
‘The head!’ the midwife cried in triumph. ‘The head is here!’
Monday closed her eyes. There was a terrible burning sensation between her legs, and then, on a sudden squelch and watery gush, the pressure eased and a baby’s indignant wail filled the space within the bed hangings.
‘A boy!’ the midwife declared with satisfaction. ‘You have a fine, lusty son, my dear,’ and she laid the bawling infant on Monday’s stomach. He was hot and slippery from the warmth of her body, bloody from her efforts to push him forth, and highly indignant at being thrust from his soft cocoon into the harshness of light and air.
Monday stared at him, experiencing shock and fear at the sight of this tiny, furious being newly emerged from her body. But there was also a sense of recognition. What had been communicated by touch alone before was now accessible to all other senses, and she was overwhelmed.
The midwife cut the cord and massaged Monday’s belly to promote delivery of the afterbirth. Her assistant took the baby, wrapped him in a warmed linen towel and presented him to his mother. Monday raised tentative arms and folded them around his little body. He had a mass of black hair and tiny, perfectly formed hands, the fingers the exact shape of Alexander’s in miniature. Tears brimmed in her eyes and she choked back a sob, wishing that Alexander was here to see him too.
‘I cried when Giles was born,’ Aline said by way of reassurance. ‘I think it is something that all women do. Babes are so small and vulnerable, and they change your life forever.’
The baby had ceased to bawl, and now lay quietly in Monday’s arms. His eyes were open and they met hers solemnly, as if he knew all the circumstances of her life, and how he came to be here.
Aline leaned over. ‘He is going to have dark eyes as well as dark hair,’ she murmured thoughtfully, but pursued her suspicions no further as the midwife interrupted with the instruction that Monday push to deliver the afterbirth.
‘How is he to be named?’ Aline asked instead. ‘Father Vitel will want to know for the baptism.’
Monday gave her a sideways glance. ‘Let him be called for his saint’s day, as I said before,’ she replied, and glanced towards the window where the sun had almost set, and the sky was streaked with deep bands of indigo, copper and a single strand of bright gold. ‘It is the eve of St Florian. Let that be his name.’
Alexander found Hervi in the abbey stables, attending to a packhorse with an inflamed tendon. The linen chemise and scapula of a novice monk clothed his brother’s large bones, and there was a simple girdle of knotted rope at his waist from which hung a small leather pouch and a knife scabbard. Hervi was seated on a stool, his back turned, rubbing liniment into the animal’s leg, and soothing the beast by murmuring to it in primitive Latin. The smell of the rub filled the air, pungent and oily.
Alexander leaned against the doorpost and cleared his throat. ‘So it is Brother Hervi in more than just fraternal blood now, is it?’ he asked, using humour to blanket the volatile emotions aroused in him by the sight of Hervi dressed in cloister garb.
Hervi had been totally absorbed in his task and visibly jumped as he spun on the stool to face his visitor. ‘Alex!’ A broad grin split his face. He wiped his hands on a rag, and reaching for his stick, levered himself upright. ‘Alex, lad, I’ve been praying that you’d come!’ He took two hobbling, uneven steps, and then no more, for Alexander crossed the space dividing them in two swift strides of his own, and threw his arms around his brother. The embrace was fervent, emotional, and then curtailed as Hervi almost lost his balance. His hands dug into Alexander’s upper arms, and Alexander gripped in return to support him.
‘I’m none too steady yet,’ Hervi said ruefully as he righted himself and took a careful back-step so that he could examine Alexander from crown to toe. ‘You look like a well-groomed young stallion perking his head over a stable door.’
‘Is that a compliment?’
‘No, just what my eyes see.’ Hervi hobbled away to wash his hands thoroughly in a bucket of water. ‘Here,’ he gestured, ‘empty this into the sluice for me.’
Alexander hefted the bucket with supple ease. ‘And you look remarkably like a novice monk,’ he retorted frostily as he tipped the water away, swilled out the pail in the nearest butt and set it to one side.
Hervi limped out into the yard and raised his face to the warm May sunshine. ‘Have you spoken to Brother Radulfus yet?’
‘No, The porter told me where you were, so I came straight to the stables.’
‘He said nothing to you?’
‘Should he have done?’
‘No, I suppose not.’
Alexander eyed his brother. It had been a shock to discover him clothed as a monk. A shock, too, to see how badly his leg had been damaged by the break. Despite the seriousness of the injury, Alexander had expected Hervi to be little different from the Hervi of old. To see him clad as a novice, his face remoulded in sharp bone and gaunt hollow, was disquieting to behold. ‘It is true, isn’t it?’ he demanded.