The Champion (49 page)
Although winded, Alexander rolled over and scrambled to his feet. If he stayed down, someone was quite likely to trample him.
A group of spectators had gathered to watch and shout ribald comments and encouragement, their faces alight. Alexander made a rude gesture at the former, and with his hand pressed to his ribs, made off after the elusive flask. There was a tussle going on to one side, a tangle of arms and legs thrusting, kicking and punching. Alexander hovered on the periphery, but did not attempt to enter the knot and was rewarded. There came a moment when everyone had hold of each other and not the leather bottle. Alexander shot in a deft foot, tripped a knight, hooked the bottle from under, and was away down the field.
‘
À Montroi!
’ a voice howled in triumph from the crowd, as Alexander hurtled the flask and himself past the tunics, thereby earning a point for his team, and temporary immunity for himself.
‘Bastard!’ one of the opposing team bellowed. Alexander took no umbrage, merely grinned and blotted his brow on his forearm. The pungent smell of sweat assaulted his nostrils, reminding him that he would have to bathe before he served Lord William in any official capacity. Not that Lord William needed him at the moment. He was attending on King John in the royal rooms at the tower, with all the other great magnates of the land, discussing the first policies of the reign which had begun yesterday with John’s coronation at Westminster Abbey. Alexander knew that the brief respite, if such this hurly-burly could be called, would soon be replaced by more orders that would doubtless involve chasing hither and yon with writs and requests.
Picking up the flask, he trotted back to the agreed starting point, put it down, and gave it an almighty kick towards the tunics. All hell broke loose; there was a tun of wine riding on the outcome. Once more, as the game sallied up and down the field, the Montroi battle cry rang out from amongst the spectators. Alexander glanced, and saw a cowled figure leaning heavily on a stick.
‘Hervi?’ he mouthed incredulously. The flask slammed into his ribs and he staggered as one of the opposing team knocked him down, took possession, and ran off.
‘Hervi?’ Alexander said again, and struggled back to his feet, the game forgotten.
‘If you joust like you play football, then it’s a wonder you’re still alive,’ his brother admonished, limping forward, but not too far, a weather eye cocked on the mayhem further down the field.
‘What are you doing here?’ Alexander demanded.
‘Hah, watching you get flattened.’
‘You know what I mean.’ Alexander wiped his hands down his shirt and blotted his brow again. ‘Did you get my letter?’
‘What letter?’
Alexander gave up. Signalling that he was leaving the game, he collected his tunic from the goal pile and left the field to join his brother.
They embraced briefly. Hugging a monk in public was not particularly good for that monk’s image. ‘You haven’t abandoned the cloister?’ Alexander asked as he led Hervi to a bench beside a stone trough. Collaring someone’s page who was standing among the watchers, he sent the boy to buy wine.
Hervi’s eyes gleamed with amusement. ‘Not in the way you’re suggesting,’ he said. His face was bright with health, and he had put back some of the flesh that illness had stripped. He eased himself down on to the bench, and propped his stick between his knees.
‘In what way then … what are you doing in England?’
‘As a matter of fact, I’m with Hubert Walter’s household.’ Hervi tucked a satisfied smile into the corners of his cheeks.
‘The Archbishop of Canterbury?’ Alexander’s voice rose and almost squeaked. ‘You are attached to the Archbishop of Canterbury?’
‘Only in a very modest way, half by chance, half by my own endeavours.’
Alexander rubbed one hand over his face and wondered if he was dreaming. Last time he had visited his brother, Hervi had been striving to learn his Latin and perfecting the art of kneeling in church with the handicap of a wooden limb. Now, here he was, free of the cloister, brimming with life, and attached to the retinue of no less a man than the great Hubert Walter himself. ‘Tell me,’ he said.
The page arrived with the wine, and Alexander paid him half a penny and set the pitcher down on the bench. Hervi unhooked a drinking horn from his belt. ‘When Richard died, there was a regular ants’ nest of coming and going across his lands. Nearly every baron and prelate known to God must have stayed in our guest house by the time they buried him.’ Hervi paused to take a deep drink of the wine, grimacing as he did so. ‘I’ve tasted nothing so foul since I was forced to dine at Reginald’s table,’ he declared, and passed the horn to Alexander. ‘Sour as cat-piss.’
Alexander stifled a grin. A monk Hervi might be and a member of Hubert Walter’s retinue, but some things could not be changed. ‘English wine always is.’ Closing off his nose, he took several fast gulps because he was thirsty. ‘You were saying?’
‘Well,’ Hervi scratched his tonsure, which gleamed with mild, freckled sunburn, ‘Hubert Walter was in need of a chaplain to minister to the soldiers of his entourage – not the knights, you understand; they had their own, or were confessed by someone of their own rank, but the common men required a priest to whom they could relate – one who would accept their weaknesses, who knew their way of life.’
‘And you were chosen?’
‘No, I made them choose me; persuaded them that I was the man most suited for the task, and that even with one leg, I was the best they would ever find. Hubert Walter was convinced. He might be getting on in years, but he is still sharp as an awl.’ Hervi shook his head. ‘One moment I was mending a broken pair of shears, the next I was behind a curtain listening to the tale of some serjeant’s night of debauchery with a friend and three young women.’
Alexander’s mouth twitched. ‘What sort of penance did you mete for that?’
‘The usual,’ Hervi said with nonchalance. ‘Bread and water for a fortnight and a lecture about such sins not pleasing the eye of God.’ His eyelids crinkled at the memory. ‘I also told him that his male parts would shrivel and drop off if he persisted in lying with whores. I said I had seen such cases in the days before I became a monk, and advised him to wash his member in hot vinegar so as to prevent contracting crusader’s pox.’
Alexander spluttered. ‘Hot vinegar!’
‘A sovereign remedy,’ Hervi said, straight-faced.
‘A sovereign penance too.’ Alexander involuntarily shielded his genitals.
Despite the vileness of the wine, Hervi reclaimed his horn and poured another measure. ‘So I’m with the Archbishop’s household for the nonce, but in the fullness of time … well you know my plans for the future, and this is but a step closer to my goal.’
‘You really are determined, aren’t you?’
‘It was reason for living among all too many reasons to die,’ Hervi said, his gaze upon the players, skidding, thrashing, hurling themselves at life on two sound legs. He rested his horn upon his entire limb. ‘You said you sent me a letter, but I must have gone by the time it arrived. Was it of importance?’ He answered the question himself with a shrewd nod. ‘It must have been, or you would have waited until our next meeting.’
The humour engendered by the tale of the poor serjeant’s penance died from Alexander’s eyes. ‘I’ve found her, Hervi, I’ve found Monday.’
Hervi’s face lit up. ‘God praise you, lad, where?’
‘In Rouen.’ He told his brother about the chance encounter at the tower, and what had ensued from it.’ Christ, Hervi, I have a small son I cannot even acknowledge as mine because of her situation, and I dare not press my interest for fear of losing them both.’
Hervi’s first delight was quenched, but a spark of optimism remained. ‘At least she’s alive and you know where she is,’ he said. ‘Time was when I thought you a deluded fool for insisting that she still lived. I was convinced that she was dead in a ditch. And your son does not want for anything.’
‘Except a father,’ Alexander said bitterly. He remembered the small hand curled trustingly in his, the wistful way that Florian had looked at his sword, the giggle as the little boy threw the ball for Teasel. And further back, he remembered his own father, huge and Viking-fair, leading him around the stable yard on his first pony. ‘I have done what I can for the moment. I have to bide my time, but it’s hard. I want her, Hervi, and I want my son.’
Hervi frowned and rubbed his habit where wood met flesh. ‘Just be careful,’ he said.
‘I know what is at stake.’
‘Your life if you fail.’
A commotion beyond the sward caused the brothers to glance up from their conversation in time to see the new king and a group of barons and bishops emerging through an entrance protected by a heavily studded oaken door. William Marshal and Hubert Walter were among them.
‘I should be about my business.’ Hervi attached the horn to his belt. ‘And your lord will be needing you soon.’
Some women, gaudy as butterflies, drifted over to join the King’s party. John paused to speak to one of them and touched her arm in an intimate gesture. She answered him and he threw back his head and laughed.
Alexander watched the interplay. The woman’s gauzy wimple fluttered in the breeze and she raised her hand to hold it in place, her long blue sleeve knotted at the base and showing a flash of yellow lining. ‘I can see why he left Monday in Rouen,’ he said contemptuously.
Hervi levered himself to his feet. ‘If only half his reputation is true, he’s had more women than I’ve notched up paternosters,’ he commented drily. ‘Besides, you should give praise to God if his interest is waning.’ He pointed suddenly with his stick. ‘Isn’t that Thomas of Stafford lurking at the back?’
Alexander’s attention swept beyond John and the women to the magnates. Aside from the Marshal, Hubert Walter of Canterbury, and William de Braose, there were also the justiciar, FitzPeter, the young Ranulf of Chester, and beside him, the dour, white-haired figure of Thomas of Stafford. He was wearing his court robes – ankle-length wool in a shade of squirrel red with fur of the same colour at cuffs and hem. A habitual scowl dragged his features down. Alexander wondered if the old man had ever smiled in his life. ‘Yes, that’s Stafford,’ he said, and could not prevent the hostility from entering his voice.
‘If only he knew,’ Hervi murmured, his eyes narrowed the better to focus.
‘He would make Monday a pawn to his ambition. He’s like an old spider crouching in his web. Better that the Stafford lands should go to Chester or Derby in the fullness of time.’
‘But she is his granddaughter. It seems a pity that they cannot be reconciled,’ said Hervi. ‘I know he did great harm to her parents, but they harmed him too, and he is an old man now.’
‘Not so old as to be in his dotage,’ Alexander retorted. ‘The way he treated his son when he was alive; the way he spoke to me when I went to Stafford in search of Monday, I doubt that she would gain anything but woe from the encounter.’
‘But still, they are flesh and blood.’
‘Jesu, Hervi, you
are
beginning to sound like a priest. Clemence was his flesh and blood too. It was more than pride that caused him to disown her. I hazard that he could even teach John about malice.’
Hervi shrugged, accepting, but not conceding the point. ‘No one can be all shadow,’ he said. ‘There has to be light somewhere.’
Beside him, Alexander had gone rigid, his gaze not upon the baronial gathering, but on a soldier who had been beckoned to attend William de Braose. ‘Then tell me, where is the light in him?’ He stabbed a forefinger.
Once more, Hervi’s eyes narrowed. The soldier was tall and powerful, topping de Braose himself, which was no mean feat. There was no mistaking le Boucher’s scarred face, the deep eye sockets, the swagger. ‘I don’t know, but there must be a glimmer somewhere,’ he muttered, his conviction suddenly weightless.
Le Boucher saluted his employer and turned away to whatever task he had been commanded to perform, his path taking him directly towards Hervi and Alexander. The moment came when the black eyes settled on the brothers and widened. Le Boucher checked briefly in mid-stride, then ploughed forward with renewed ferocity. At first it appeared that he was going to march on past, but at the last moment he stopped, and dug into the pouch on his belt.
‘Alms for a cripple and a lack-wit,’ he said, and tossed a coin into the horn cup secured at Hervi’s waist.
Alexander clenched his fists, but managed to keep them at his sides. ‘And bestowed by the damned,’ he retorted.
Le Boucher gave a chequered grin. ‘Then I’ll meet you both in hell,’ he sneered, and went on his way.
‘Whoreson,’ Alexander muttered through his teeth.
Hervi tipped the coin from his horn. ‘A clipped penny,’ he said, referring to the bevelling around the edge of the silver which had all been pared off, thus making the money useless. ‘False coin. I take back what I said about light and shadow.’ He flipped the penny over. ‘As bad one side as the other.’
‘He’s not well.’ Monday laid her hand across the baby’s brow and felt his heat burn her palm. He had been grisly for the past two days, and despite being dosed with feverfew tisanes and having prayers said over him, had grown worse, not better.
John glanced impatiently at the crying infant, obviously seeing him as an obstacle, not his flesh-and-blood son. ‘Leave him,’ he said with a shrug. ‘Let the nurse earn her money for once. She does little enough but sit on her fat backside.’ He raised his voice so that it would carry to the store room where Hilda had retreated at John’s entrance.
Monday grimaced to herself. Since his return from England at the end of May, she had sensed a change in him. The mantle of power clothed his shoulders, and he had no time for the things of the past that had kept him from boredom while he waited to succeed, herself among them. She was no longer a novelty, and rumours of other women had become solid fact. ‘I am his mother, I won’t leave him.’ It took all her courage to defy John; she knew just how brutal the lash of his tongue could be, but she would not leave the baby when he was so sick in order to attend the court because of her lover’s whim.