The Champion (36 page)
Hervi began to walk again, his gait a laborious seesaw, in the direction of the guest house. ‘Yes, it’s true,’ he confirmed. ‘And before you ask, the brethren here were not responsible for my decision. I made it myself, and in the months since then, I have not changed my mind.’
Alexander was stunned. ‘You suddenly discovered a vocation?’ he said incredulously.
‘You might say that.’ Hervi held up the forefinger and thumb of his free hand and brought them together. ‘I was this close to death. It breathed on me, and then passed over. I reasoned that I must have been allowed to live for some purpose other than becoming a sore-ridden beggar at the gates of Rouen. Look at me, I can no longer earn a living by the sword. Look at what these garments conceal.’ At the entrance to the guest house, he paused on the path and raised the scapula and robe.
Appalled, Alexander stared at the shaped wooden stump, attached by leather straps to Hervi’s upper leg.
‘It was either that or die,’ Hervi said grimly. ‘At first I chose to die, but Radulfus persuaded me otherwise. I am glad that he did … most days.’
‘And because of this … this mercy, you have chosen to become a priest?’ Alexander could not prevent the shudder of revulsion in his voice.
Hervi tightened his lips. ‘It was one of the reasons, but not the one that made me decide. You abandoned the cloister, but that does not mean I must reject it too.’ Hervi lowered his garments and entered the guest house.
Now that Alexander knew Hervi had lost his lower leg, his gaze was irresistibly drawn to the wooden stump. ‘So what was your main reason?’ he asked. He could not prevent the hostility in his tone.
Hervi eased himself down on to a cushioned bench in the window recess. Sunlight streaked the rushes on the floor and shone upon the tiles surrounding the central hearth, the logs laid ready but unkindled. ‘You would not believe me if I told you,’ he said, and laughed in self-mockery. ‘Indeed, I am not even sure if I believe myself.’
‘I want to hear it anyway.’
Hervi pointed to the oak sideboard, carved with a relief of dog roses and vine leaves. ‘There should be wine in that flagon,’ he said.
‘Are you permitted to drink it?’ Alexander gave him a look over his shoulder and went to pour two cups.
‘For medicinal purposes, yes,’ Hervi answered gravely. ‘In the early days, they kept me drunker than Brother Rousseau.’
Alexander brought two cups to the recess and sat down at Hervi’s side. ‘Tell me,’ he said.
Hervi stared at the dark surface of his wine. ‘It was your letter that set me on the path – what you wrote about Brother Alkmund being elevated to the position of prior at Cranwell.’
‘Why should that make you desire to take the tonsure?’ Alexander said, justifiably baffled. ‘It only goes to show how corrupt the clergy is.’
‘They are not all corrupt,’ Hervi objected. ‘I have encountered nothing but kindness and encouragement here. The best way to remove the rot is from within. I can no longer fight with sword and lance, but once I was good with them, very good. Now I shall learn to fight with different weapons and then I will oust Prior Alkmund from Cranwell and see him defrocked.’
Alexander was almost tempted to laugh in his brother’s face, but the determination burning there stopped him, as did the second thoughts following hard on his initial gut reaction. At first glance, Hervi was not the stuff of which a monk of rank was made. He had no learning and his nature was simple and to the point. He was also disabled, with a past life that was decidedly unsavoury, but that was only the first glance. Simple and to the point did not mean lacking in intelligence or ambition. Despite his jaundiced view of the priesthood, Alexander knew that there were moves afoot to root out the canker of worldliness that was devouring the Church’s integrity. Hervi could be just the candidate to refresh jaded pallets, and in that case, his handicap might be an advantage, rather than a stumbling block.
‘Have you nothing to say?’ Hervi enquired as the silence drew out. ‘Do you think I am mad, or a fool?’
Alexander sighed and shook his head. ‘I think that you know what you are doing, but that it is a very large mouthful you have bitten off to chew.’
Hervi shrugged. ‘Once, not so long ago, I watched a boy, all skin and bone, swing a sword at a straw dummy and swear that one day he was going to be a tourney champion as great as William Marshal.’
That brought a smile to Alexander’s face, albeit wry. ‘I am still swinging my sword at straw dummies,’ he said, ‘and I will never be as great as the Marshal.’
‘But you have come a long way in a short time.’ Hervi’s glance sharpened on the smile that lingered on Alexander’s face. ‘Are you still following the tourneys?’
‘I’ve attended a few, seeking news of Monday and paying my debts, but no. Speaking of William Marshal, I have been granted a place in his retinue. He saw me at a tourney in Salisbury last month, and offered me a position. From here, I ride to Longueville to join him.’
Hervi’s eyes lit up and revealed how much of his warrior nature remained as he gave Alexander a hefty secular punch on the shoulder. ‘The household of the Marshal himself! God’s teeth, you lucky bastard!’
‘Do you talk like that in front of the abbot?’ Alexander asked innocently, and rubbed his abused shoulder.
‘He isn’t here,’ Hervi dismissed with a perfunctory wave, and shook his head. ‘William Marshal, I do not believe it.’
‘Neither did I at first.’ Alexander grinned. ‘But it was more than just luck.’ He told Hervi about the Salisbury tourney and the feast that had followed the fighting. He also told him about the more distant past, the disastrous joust against le Boucher, and Osgar’s generosity.
‘I have paid him back, but I think he was astonished to see me. It was money he thought had gone forever.’ Alexander rubbed his hand over his face. ‘He had no news about Monday. She is not in any camp that he has visited, and no one of the women knew anything either. It is as though she has vanished from the face of the earth. I have said prayers for her safety; time and again I have done penance, but it brings me no ease.’
Hervi grunted. ‘You were a fool, a lustful, stupid fool,’ he said, but without rancour. ‘I was no better. If I had not been carousing with some woman of the camp, I would have been there to prevent it from ever happening.’
Alexander drank his wine. ‘I believe that she is still alive,’ he murmured, ‘and that she does not want to be found. She wrote as much in her farewell note. Once she told me that she would be a great lady with a silk train and hordes of servants. Who knows but that she has not attained her wish.’ He swished the wine in his cup and drank it down.
‘The pity is that every wish carries a price,’ Hervi said, rubbing the stump of his leg. ‘And every price has to be paid.’
The first bitter wind of autumn hurled stinging drops of rain into Alexander’s face and buffeted him in the saddle. Head down, tail streaming between his hind legs, Samson ploughed into the growing storm. When they had started out from Thornbury that morning, the weather had been merely brisk – an invigorating breeze chasing patchy cloud across a pale blue sky, and chopping across the waters of the Severn estuary. Now, at dusk, all blue had been swallowed to black, and the breeze had become a wind that was now threatening to turn into a gale. It roared through the trees on either side of the road like a wild beast, tearing battalions of dying leaves from the branches and scattering them wantonly abroad.
It had crossed Alexander’s mind to stop and make a shelter among the trees, but after a brief deliberation, he had decided to press on to Chepstow. Even if he arrived after dark, he would be assured a decent meal and a place to sleep by the fire. Chepstow was part of William Marshal’s domain, and Alexander had messages from the earl to his castellan. Lord William had given Alexander the task of courier in the late summer, and Chepstow was only one of the places on his itinerary. There had been the rich southern manors of Caversham and Oxon, basking in the last of the harvest sunshine. From there he had ridden to the dower lands of the Marshal’s mother-in-law at Weston to deliver family letters to the Countess Eve, and after a brief sojourn to rest himself and Samson, had made his way west to Bristol, and across the Severn towards Chepstow. From there he was bound for Usk and Pembroke, then back to the Marshal in Normandy.
Alexander’s life in the Marshal household was varied, never dull, and filled from dawn to dusk with tasks and demands. A workhorse himself, unable to sit still, Lord William required the same of his knights. If Alexander was not performing escort duties, providing protection, or riding as a messenger, then he was occupied with quill and vellum, acting as an extra scribe in the Marshal’s busy administration. Even in his supposed leisure time, Alexander was in demand to play and sing his music, or the Marshal’s small sons would want to be given rides on Samson’s back and attack him with their wooden swords and shields. The days were not long enough. Alexander glanced at the darkling sky and pulled a face. Not long enough at all.
And yet, even in the act of grimacing, cold, wet and hungry as he was, Alexander had never been so content in his life. He had purposes and goals, worthy ones that bore the fruit of Marshal’s approval, and gave him pride in tasks well done. At two and twenty, the roads he had travelled, both physically and mentally, set him at a far distance from the frightened, defiant boy who had absconded over a monastery wall. That boy was still with him, but his features were indistinct, and the raw edge of those former emotions was felt as nothing more than an occasional twinge.
Other walls came into view now, streaked, limewashed stone against a backdrop of heavy cloud. Perched on a narrow ridge above the river Wye, the rectangular stone keep of Chepstow was almost a hundred and thirty years old. Built by a follower of the Conqueror, as part of a line of defences to keep the Welsh at bay, it had performed its function so well that it had never been seriously challenged. The steep gully on one side and the sheer drop to the river on the other ensured its impregnability. It might never rival Richard’s Chateau Gaillard for magnificence and modern devices, but dour, solid Chepstow was an irrevocable part of the landscape.
Alexander clicked his tongue to Samson, encouraging the horse from a plod to a brisker trot. Behind him, the packhorse dragged for a moment and then picked up the pace. The road widened, but its surface was a hock-deep soup of mud. The smell of smoke from the castle cooking fires came and went in damp, acrid drifts, and there was an underlying scent of mutton fat and onions.
The guards on duty emerged from their shelters to challenge him as he rode through the gates and entered the lower bailey. Although he was a knight alone, he could have accomplices lurking in the darkness beyond, and since this was a border fortress, at uneasy peace with its Welsh neighbours, no chances were taken. Satisfied by the green and yellow Marshal shield he carried, and his seal of authorisation, they directed him to the stables. No grooms came forth to help him see to his horses, for they were already employed in attending half a dozen other newcomers, removing their tack and rubbing them down.
Alexander eyed the horseflesh. They were quality beasts, obviously belonging to a person of standing. There had been no one on the road in front of him, so they must have come from the opposite direction. He wondered who else was mad enough to be abroad on an evening like this, and made the enquiry of a harassed groom.
‘The lord Gervais FitzParnell,’ the man said, not even pausing in his stride as he brought a net of hay to a handsome dark bay stallion.
‘He’s a long way from Stafford,’ Alexander said with surprise, and thought of the sullen young man he had encountered two years ago during his search for Monday.
The groom shrugged. ‘On his father’s business, so I heard – whatever that might be,’ he said, and moved on to the next horse.
Alexander pondered on the matter as he saw to Samson and the pack pony, but was still no closer to a solution as he took his satchel of letters and repaired to the solid building of the hall in search of Ralph de Bloet, the seneschal. The custodian of Chepstow was not in the great hall, where diners were still picking over fruit and nuts at the end of their meal. Nor was there any sign of Gervais FitzParnell, and the high table was deserted. Children ran among the trestles, playing a boisterous game of tag, and the scraps of earlier courses were being removed to be sorted into swill for the pigs and sustenance for the poor. Alexander’s stomach growled, reminding him that he had not eaten since a scant meal of bread and cheese in the saddle at noon.
He rescued a chunk of bread from a table not yet cleared, added a firm, tawny apple from the same, and devoured them both speedily, knowing that his first priority ought to be delivering the lord Marshal’s letters to his seneschal.
A group of household knights were playing dice by the fire, whilst to one side their womenfolk chattered over their mending. Alexander approached them with his query, and a cheerful young man detached himself from the players to take Alexander to the second storey of the hall, where de Bloet had his private chambers.
‘Now he’s getting older, he doesn’t sit in the hall for long after supper,’ the knight said, ‘and his guest was not up to lingering either. He’d taken a drenching on the road, and was complaining of the ague.’