The Champion (48 page)
The same went for her clothes. She shunned the temptation to don her aquamarine silk, all shimmering with pearls and gold embroidery, and chose instead a simple gown of lavender wool that enhanced her grey eyes with blue lights. It was full in the skirt, the panels held flat at the hem with embroidery, the sleeves tight at the wrist. She tied a girdle of woven silver and lavender thread around her waist, and donned a short cream silk wimple, securing it with a fillet of lilac braid. Beneath it, she had plaited her hair for half its length, the other half waterfalling from the end of the silk binding. Monday knew that the style flattered her.
Although not the blonde so lauded in songs and romances, her bronze-brown hair was lustrous and thick. Once Alexander had held it to his face and … With a hiss of self-exasperation, she cast the thought from her mind. She could not afford to think in such a fashion. All they were going to do was talk.
Downstairs, Teasel began to yap. She heard a thump on the house door, the sound of the bolt being drawn, and then Alexander’s voice speaking to the maid as she bade him enter. Florian’s voice chimed too, squeaky with excitement. For an instant she was assaulted by blind panic, and thought about barring her bedchamber door and refusing to come out. The self-exasperation increased. She clucked her tongue against the roof of her mouth, shook her head at herself, and descended the open wooden stairs to greet her guest.
He stood just within the doorway, his cloak sparkling with jewels of rain as he gave it to Hilda. His lean frame was enhanced by a tunic of dark-green linen. Around his neck there was a simple silver cross on a leather cord. Unbuckling his scabbard, he leaned his sword against the closed door. Florian did not so much as eye Alexander’s weapon, because his attention was all given to the miniature shield he was sliding on to his own left arm. It was a replica of the full-sized thing, with leather hand grips and an enamelled face. There was no device, but the background was parti-coloured blue and gold, the de Montroi colours.
‘Look, Mama, look!’ Florian danced from foot to foot in excitement. ‘A shield, my own shield!’
‘Let me see.’ Monday stooped to examine and admire it.
‘I hope you don’t mind,’ Alexander said. ‘One of the garrison soldiers makes them to eke out his pay.’
She shook her head mutely. Her son’s face was aglow. It would have been mean to object, and although the shield bore the de Montroi colours, it was not marked with the family device of three spearheads. There was no significance here except to herself. What did unsettle her was the thought that the gift was a form of claim on the child.
‘I brought you something too,’ he said as she straightened, and held out to her a small roll of stitched leather, about a handspan long.
She stared at it, then at him, but did not take it.
‘It is nothing to which your … landlord could object,’ he said, with a wry gesture, as if he had read her mind. ‘Just a gift from a guest to his hostess in appreciation for his dinner. Please.’
Still unsure that she should, Monday accepted his gift, and unrolling the leather, found herself looking not at a piece of jewellery, as she had half expected, but at a wallet of expertly trimmed quills, the goose-feather shafts dyed green and red. It was a gift harking back to the days of friendship when there had been a pleasurable spark between them, not a conflagration.
‘You do not know my landlord,’ she said, but did not attempt to return the wallet to him; rather, her fingers closed upon it possessively. ‘But thank you. I suppose such a present is appropriate if we are about to weave tales of our past years.’
He had watched her open the wallet with eagerness and tension in his eyes, and had only relaxed when her fingers had tightened and she had drawn the package closer to her body. Now his eyelids narrowed again. ‘No tales,’ he said, ‘just the truth.’
Her pleasure at the quills was mirrored in his face when she placed a wooden bowl before him and filled it with pottage from the cauldron, together with a chunk of dark bread – the fare of the tourney field and the battle camp. Florian wrinkled his nose, refused the pottage with a firm shake of his head, and made do with a piece of the coarse bread smeared with honey, and then a small bowl of fruit compote.
‘How much does John know?’ Alexander queried some time later, when Florian had been indulged, played with, and finally carried off to bed with drooping lids.
‘About what?’ Monday poured the last of the wine into Alexander’s cup, her cheeks slightly flushed. The associations of pottage and wine, evening and firelight, evoked potent memories, bittersweet and dangerous. Perhaps she ought to have made the meal more formal. ‘He knows that Florian’s father is a tourney knight, but not his identity; nor has he ever sought to be better informed.’ She set the flagon down on the trestle, and frowned as she searched for the words to make him understand. ‘John has a suspicious nature; he thinks everyone is waiting to thrust a knife in his back. He also needs to be the centre of attention; to be the only person that matters, and if he cannot make his audience love him, then he makes them obey through fear.’ She looked across the table at Alexander, her grey eyes sombre. ‘He would not want to know about you unless the tale brought you low, or cast slurs on your reputation. As it is, he will hear that I have had a male visitor, and his mood will not be of the best.’ Her glance flickered towards Ursula, who was quietly tidying in the background.
Alexander lifted his cup and swirled the dark wine. He too looked at Ursula. ‘And you will placate him?’
‘Of course I will.’
His lip curled. ‘I never imagined you as some man’s puppet.’
‘I’m not.’ Her flush deepened. ‘It is of my own choosing that I yield to him. As I told you, the price is small for what I receive in exchange.’
‘Then if you are happy to pay it, who am I to interfere?’ he said with a gesture of dismissal, but there was sarcasm in his tone. ‘Obviously my price was too high.’
She clenched her fists in her lap and felt the bite of the gold rings upon her fingers, proclaiming John’s payment. With an effort she kept her temper, her words emerging stiff with control. ‘I don’t want to quarrel.’
He set his cup down on the board with a small thud, and breathed out with a sigh. ‘Neither do I,’ he said, ‘and after all, I was the one who said there should be truth, not tales. When I asked if John knew, I was not entirely referring to the times we shared on the tourney field and the child we got between us.’
‘Then what else?’
‘I wondered if you had told him who you were – that your grandfather is Thomas of Stafford?’
‘Dear God, no!’ This time she did not hold back. ‘That would be like giving a lighted torch to a mischievous child. I have told him nothing about my past, save that my parents travelled the tourney road.’
He nodded agreement. ‘As Stafford’s granddaughter, many a baron would see you as a catch for his younger son. John is not known for keeping the faith. If he tires of you, he might well sell you to the highest bidder – perhaps your own grandfather, now that you are his sole descendant.’
Monday threw him a startled look. ‘My grandfather has a son, I know he does.’
‘Not any more. Gervais died childless two winters ago. Your grandfather has no immediate heir, and I know that he is interested in finding you.’ He told her about his visit to Stafford when she first vanished, and then his talk at Chepstow with the sick Gervais FitzParnell. ‘You have become a prize, Monday,’ he said gravely, ‘a rare prize, the heiress you dreamed of being.’
Monday was filled with nothing but dismay at his words. She borrowed his cup and tilted the wine to her lips, but its taste, sweet and rich on her tongue, brought no comfort. ‘I should have stayed at Lavoux,’ she said bleakly.
There was a silence, broken only by the crackle of the logs in the hearth and the whisper of the rain against the shutters. ‘I am glad you did not,’ Alexander said at length. ‘I might never have seen you again, or our son … and that would have troubled me just as much.’
‘You can make no claim on him,’ she said, with a surge of panic.
‘Not officially, no … unless of course you were to marry me.’
Her stomach plummeted, taking lungs and heart with it. She stared at him, mute with shock.
‘But I won’t ask, because last time you ran away faster than a scalded cat.’ Rising to his feet, he went to the shutters, and released the catch.
The cool April night entered in, drawing layers of hearth smoke into the open air and washing the room with the perfumes of burgeoning spring. He leaned against the wall and gazed into the night, as if he could see through it. ‘Besides,’ he said to the rainy darkness, ‘we are strangers now, and though I may be a knight in the service of the great William Marshal, I have no home to call my own. I could still offer you no better than the open road and a few months here and there in a castle while I played the role of temporary custodian. Not to mention what John would do to me,’ he added ruefully.
She studied him, trying to see beyond the self-deprecating humour. ‘Then why make mention of marriage at all?’
He shrugged. ‘To say that I am here if you have need of me. That I would rather you sought me out than ran away again. That was why I gave you those quills – as a symbol, if you like.’
Monday gnawed her lower lip. ‘I won’t run away,’ she said at length.
‘You promise?’ He glanced round, and she saw a flash of eagerness in his eyes before he quenched the look behind lowered lids.
‘I promise,’ she said, wondering if she was wise, but not having the heart, or indeed, the inclination to refuse. That flash of eagerness, fierce and bright, evoked powerful feelings and memories.
He nodded. ‘Then that is as far as I will dare tonight.’ His hand went to the plain silver cross on his breast, and moved it back and forth on its leather cord.
‘What happened to your mother’s cross?’ she asked, to divert the conversation into less dangerous waters.
He looked down at the one in his hand, ran his thumb over it, then let it go. ‘I lost that one to Eudo le Boucher the night that Hervi was wounded. We fought about what he had done, and I lost.’
‘I’m sorry, I know what it meant to you.’
‘At least I came away with my life. I haven’t seen le Boucher since, but I have heard that he has joined the retinue of William de Braose – like master, like servant.’ He pulled an eloquent face. ‘De Braose would sell his own grandmother if he thought there was profit in it. I wear a plain cross to remind me not of what I lost, but why. Do you mind if I write to Hervi at Pont l’Arche, and tell him that you are found?’
‘No, I …’
She stopped speaking as Alexander suddenly recoiled from the window, then just as suddenly leaned forward again, his eyebrows rising to meet his hairline. ‘Huw?’
His squire appeared at the opening, his damp hair curling at his brow and his features taut with excitement and anxiety. ‘I was on my way to the door, sir, but I saw the open shutters and you standing there. Lord William summons you back to the tower immediately. King Richard is dead, the news has just arrived, and Lord William is in need of messengers.’
‘All right, Huw, go round to the door, I’ll be there directly.’
‘Sir.’ The squire’s face disappeared, and Alexander turned from the window.
‘I heard,’ Monday said, forestalling his need to speak. She was already on her feet and fetching his cloak, which had been put to dry near the fire. The news was not unexpected, but still it came as a shock to hear the words actually spoken, to know that her lover was now not just the heir to the Angevin empire, but its ruler.
Alexander took the cloak from her hands, and swinging it around his shoulders, secured the clasp.
‘No peace for the wicked,’ he said with a heartfelt sigh. ‘I won’t know my head from my heels for the next few days. At least we were able to talk first. I have to go. Thank you for tonight.’ He took her hands, leaned over them and kissed her, one cheek then the other, but she could tell that his mind was already racing to the tune of his squire’s news.
‘God speed you, take care,’ she said.
‘God keep you.’ He squeezed her hands, released them, and was gone into the rainy April night.
Monday closed the door after him, but she left the shutters wide, and for a long time remained beside them, staring out.
‘To me, to me!’ Alexander roared.
In response to his cry, a stout leather drinking flask sailed through the air and thumped down at his feet, showering his hose with mud and spattering his linen shirt. His tunic was heaped on the ground amidst a pile of other tunics, which made up the goalposts, and his sword belt was being watched over by someone’s squire, excluded from the boisterous game by a twisted ankle.
The younger men of William Marshal’s household had challenged the justiciar’s knights to an impromptu, not to say rough game of football on a piece of greensward within the precincts of the Tower of London. The sport usually had much broader horizons than the field on which it was currently being played – an entire village street was not unusual – but the men were making do with what they had, including someone’s water bottle in lieu of a ball.
Alexander headed up the field towards the pile of tunics, kicking the bottle along the side of his foot as he ran. A huge knight on the opposing team barged him from the side. Alexander chopped the bottle frantically towards Hugh of Sandford, and went down, the air tearing from his lungs. The man who had felled him whirled in pursuit of the ball. There were no rules except that it was not to be carried, and the only enforcement of this was force itself. The game was marginally less brutal than a tourney, but certainly not as courteous.