The Champion (51 page)
I give you farewell now,
M.
She signed the letter with a flourished initial capital, as she had done before, when she had run from him. Alexander swore between his teeth. If John had appeared in the courtyard then, king or no king, he would have taken his sword and run him through. He was tempted to rip the vellum across and across, but he forced himself to fold it up and place it in his pouch. He should have expected no less. At least she had taken the time and the risk to write to him. At least he had her letter, and although it brought no joy, there was a painful comfort in knowing that her hand had formed the words, and that she had used the quills he had given her.
From the courtyard, he went to the tilting ground and spent an hour with lance and shield, jousting at the quintain, pretending that the battered shield was John’s heart until his frustration eased. For the nonce meant for the moment, not forever.
August sweltered through Rouen like a hot sword blade. Wooden roof shingles warped and cracked, and the threat of fire was a constant anxiety. Everyone kept buckets of water to hand, dipped from the tidal river Seine, and woodwork was sluiced in an effort to limit the damage from the clear, burning air. Sickness simmered in the midden heaps and refuse ditches, and was borne on iridescent insect wings to the population. The old, the young and the vulnerable succumbed and died, as they did every year during the hottest and coldest seasons.
One of the victims was Monday’s youngest son, in the first week of the severe heat.
The mild fever that had been bedevilling him over the past two months had worsened. This time there was vomiting and purging too. Within a day and night of the onset, he was dead, his small, moistureless body lying still as a doll in his cradle. Monday had small time to grieve, for the rest of the household was stricken too. So great was her fear that Florian would be taken from her as well that she had no time to fret about the baby’s death, and when it was clear that Florian would survive, her own body succumbed.
By a supreme effort of will, she dragged herself from her bed to see her infant son buried in the precincts of the cathedral, but as the soil was cast down upon the tiny shrouded body, she collapsed, and had to be borne home incoherent with fever and hysteria. In the evening, the cramps started and she began to bleed.
*
In the palace of Rouen, Alexander sat over a game of merels with Walter, one of the Marshal’s chamberlains, or former chamberlains as of three days past. He was almost sixty years old, and even in fine weather such as this walked with a rheumatic limp. He had chosen to retire rather than die in harness, and was on his way home to his native Wiltshire. Alexander was in Rouen, overseeing the purchase and transport of wine, linen and wool for Lady Isabelle at Orbec. Once her steward had purchased the goods to his satisfaction, they had to be brought to their destination under armed escort. The Marshal himself was in the southern provinces with the King, but before he left had hinted that he might have another duty for Alexander as a custodian. It was no use asking Walter if he knew anything. The old man was used to warding off all enquiries, no matter how cunningly phrased.
‘Your move,’ Alexander said.
‘I know, I know.’ Walter rubbed his hands together and pondered the board with watery blue eyes. ‘
Vincit qui patitur
, young man.’ Walter had a tendency to quote Latin when he wanted to put the Marshal’s knights in their place. Some but few were literate, and their grasp of Latin almost nonexistent.
Alexander smiled. Walter had just told him that patience would win. ‘
Satis verborum
,’ he retorted. ‘
Adduces fortuna iuvat
,’ and his smile became a grin as Walter’s jaw dropped ‘Go on. Enough talk. Fortune favours the bold.’
The old man gave Alexander a hard look. ‘And those who are too bold find themselves cut to pieces on a battlefield,’ he growled, and refused to be hurried, finally making a solid, conservative move. ‘Where did you learn to speak Latin?’
‘In a monastery, where else?’ Alexander said with a shrug, and although he spoke defensively, the familiar shudder of dread was absent. Cranwell was beginning to fade in his memory as time thickened the skin over the scars. ‘I read and write it too … and fight with it if I must,’ he added, making a bold play with one of his own pieces.
Walter eyed him suspiciously, the way he might a docile hearth hound that suddenly turned out to be part wolf.
Alexander grinned amiably. He enjoyed sparring with Walter. Besides, there was little else to do. He could have made his way to one of the dockside taverns and filled his belly with mediocre wine at an exorbitant price, and then risked being robbed on the way home, or suffering a debilitating headache the next day when he needed his wits about him. He could have strolled the streets and taken in the sights and sounds of the great port, but they were familiar to him now, and the sights and sound were also accompanied by the stinks of high summer. He could have walked to a certain house beyond the cathedral and knocked upon the door in the purple dusk. The thought gnawed away at the back of his mind. She had bade him keep his distance, but it was hard to be so close, and yet so far. He might still leave the merels board and Walter’s crusty company.
Adduces fortuna iuvat
. His gaze wandered to his cloak where it lay over a stool, his saddlebag beside it. Surely, if he were to knock, she would not deny him entry?
‘Your move,’ Walter said, and waved a chunky hand back and forth in front of Alexander’s eyes. ‘Unless, of course, you want to concede the game?’
‘You think me so lacking in stamina?’ Alexander retorted. Tomorrow he would go, tomorrow while the steward was concluding his purchases. Broad daylight would ensure that there was no outrage to propriety. He picked up one of the bone counters, but never made his play, for just then another of the Marshal’s men, Thomas of Rochford, entered the hall. He was travelling to England in Walter’s company, and had gone out into the city earlier in search of a farrier for his horse. Now he strode up to them, his fair hair windblown, and news bursting on his lips.
Clapping Alexander on the shoulder, he leaned over the game. ‘Guess what I just heard in the city?’
‘Scandal and gossip, if business goes forth as usual,’ Walter grunted. ‘Go on, what?’
‘You’re not wrong; it is scandal and gossip,’ the knight said, relishing the moment. ‘No less than that King John has taken a bride. Wedded and bedded within days of their first meeting, so I heard.’
‘A bride?’ Alexander repeated, and set the merels piece haphazardly down.
Thomas nodded. ‘The daughter and sole heiress of Aymer of Angoulême. Her name’s Isobel, and she’s reputedly a beauty. John’s as hot for her as the fires of hell.’
‘He was bound to wed sooner or later,’ Walter said, his own eyes barely lighting up at the news. ‘I see no scandal.’
‘What about the fact that she’s only twelve years old?’
‘It is the age of consent, is it not?’
‘Well, yes, but most men wait if they take a girl of that age to their bed. Mind you, John likes them young and innocent; the fresher the better. I … Where are you off?’
Alexander had surged to his feet and was reaching for his cloak. ‘An errand, someone I have to see.’
Walter stared at him blankly. ‘You haven’t finished your game,’ he said.
‘Thomas will take my place.’
Thomas raised his eyebrows, but sat down on Alexander’s stool. ‘You owe me for this,’ he said.
But Alexander scarcely heard him and gave only a distracted nod in reply, his mind already far along the road that his feet were taking.
Two strands of thought turned and tangled in his mind. The first, an instinctive reaction to Thomas’s news of John’s marriage, was that now he could have Monday. If John was indeed as hot as the fires of hell for his bride, then his interest in his mistress would surely wane. The second was that he ought to tell Monday the news before she heard it from some street vendor. John was her provider; she had shared his bed and borne his child. Surely not all for the sake of profit?
Uncaring now if he was seen or not, Alexander strode through the streets and alleys of Rouen. The afterlight of dusk banded the western horizon with indigo, scarlet and pale green, but over the cathedral, the sky was the luminous deep blue of night, the first stars pricking out. Candle flame and the light from rush tapers gleamed through cracks in house doors, and the smell of cooking fires was pungent on the air. Light and drunken laughter spilled from a tavern, and two drunks staggered on to the street, arms around each other. Alexander skipped to avoid them, his heart hammering against his ribs, and his mind filled with a single purpose – Monday.
Her house was silent, the shutters closed, and for no reason that he could fathom, except his nervous anticipation, a shudder of unease rippled down his spine. He raised his fist and banged on the door. A dog growled, then began to bark sharply, and was silenced with a sharp word. Then Alexander heard a slow shuffling and laboured breathing. ‘Who’s there?’ the nurse’s voice demanded, a quaver to its edge.
‘It is Alexander de Montroi – I dined here in the spring, do you remember? I have to see your mistress on a matter most urgent.’
‘She is sleeping, master,’ the woman answered through the wood. ‘Best if you come back tomorrow.’
‘Sleeping at dusk? Is something the matter?’ The feeling of unease increased. ‘I need to see her now.’
The nurse did not reply, but he heard her stertorous breathing, and knew that she was wondering whether to let him in or keep him shut out. He could also hear the dog moving back and forth against the door and whining.
‘I have to be on the road tomorrow,’ he said, which was not quite the truth, but close enough. ‘What else would bring me here from the palace with dark falling?’
The breathing silence lingered, and then with a rush of relief and anxiety, he heard the bar being drawn. The door opened and Hilda’s face peered out at him through the crack. Her flesh hung in wasted folds on her bones, and her eyes were smudged, as if with recent weeping. Last time Alexander had set eyes on her, he had assessed her to be a little over thirty. Now she looked almost twice that age.
‘You have come from the palace?’ There was fear in her eyes.
‘Of my own accord; no one has sent me.’
She opened the door wider and gestured for him to enter. The dog sniffed his legs, the exciting scents on his cloak, and vigorously wagged its stump of a tail. Alexander fussed the animal without paying it much attention, while the woman reset the bar across the door.
Two candles burned on a spike in the corner, illuminating a wooden image of the Virgin Mary. The fire glowed in the hearth, and a jug of wine and herbs was simmering on one of the tiles. Against the wall, Florian was sound asleep in his truckle bed. Alexander went to the boy and stooped to look at him. The black hair, slightly damp with sweat, clung to Florian’s brow and his cheeks were flushed, but his breathing was slow and even. One hand was curled around a scrap of yellow woollen blanket. There was no sign of Monday or the baby, so he assumed they were sleeping upstairs.
‘We have all been sick,’ Hilda said before he could ask. ‘Terribly sick with the flux.’ She pressed her hand to her belly as if to emphasise the point. ‘I never want gripes like them again, so help me Jesu. None of us is right even now. My lady, she went to bed an hour since. I made some spiced wine in case she came down, but she hasn’t.’ The woman shook her head and sucked on her trembling lower lip. ‘We buried the little one today, you see. She ought not to be alone.’ Tears filled her eyes.
‘The little one?’ Alexander repeated, and stared at Hilda in shock. ‘The baby, you mean, the baby is dead?’
She gave a wordless nod and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. ‘He was too small, not strong enough.’
Alexander crossed his breast, half turning to the statue of the Virgin as he did so. ‘God rest his soul,’ he muttered, appalled, and at the same time thanking Christ that Florian had been spared. He wondered if John would grieve to know. John who was occupied in Angoulême with his twelve-year-old bride, still a baby herself. Bile rose in his throat. Monday had no one to comfort her in her grief, only the nursemaid, who was obviously sick and struggling to cope.
‘Has she sent word to the King?’ he asked.
Hilda shook her head. ‘I do not think so, sir. She did say that she would write as soon as she felt well enough.’ Sniffing, blinking through her tears, she wrapped a cloth around her hand and lifted the wine jug off the hearth to pour him a cup.
He took the steaming, fragrant drink in his hand, but instead of putting it to his lips, went to the stairs. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘She should not be alone.’
‘But, sir, it isn’t prop—’ Hilda began to say, then compressed her lips, wringing her hands in her gown. The dog whisked past him with a muscular thrust of its small body and clattered up the stairs, through the curtain and into the bedchamber. Steadying himself and stifling a curse, Alexander followed the animal through the heavy drape of wool across the archway.
Monday was standing in the middle of the floor, barefoot in her chemise, which reached to the middle of her shins. The fastening was unlaced, the cords hanging amidst her loosened glossy braids. But none of this fixed his attention, for he was staring at the blood that had soaked through her chemise at her crotch and thighs. The dog was snuffling there now, drawn by the odour.
‘Holy Christ, Monday,’ Alexander said hoarsely, and putting the cup down, started forward.
Her face was ice white, her eyes huge with fear and pain. ‘Help me,’ she whispered, her hand outstretched.