The Champion (57 page)

‘You think so?’ He smiled amiably. ‘I am not sure that your husband-to-be would agree with you, but then he is bound to see the circumstances in a different light.’ He extended one hand in a gesture of benediction; the other held Isobel to his side. ‘My wife, the joy of my life, would have me give you a present. Your wedding feast on the morrow, I will provide that.’

Knowing that she could not refuse, Monday capitulated with a subdued thank you that went unremarked, for Isobel was clapping her hands again, her sapphire eyes sparkling with delight as she listed all the entertainments they would have. Glancing at her former lover, Monday saw from his indulgent expression that his generosity, for what it was worth, was quite genuine – even if it was barbed with his customary cruel humour, and motivated by indulgence toward his child wife.

It was also obvious to Monday that she and Alexander had small choice but to endure.

Since the King and Queen had taken an interest in Monday’s marriage, it was inevitable that others would follow, and although Hervi and Ambrose of Pont l’Arche had been set to represent the church at the nuptials, Godfrey de Lucy, Bishop of Winchester, insisted that he be the one to sanction the couple’s union. Hervi and Ambrose were to be witnesses instead, and there was nothing that Alexander and Monday could do in public but smile gracefully and agree.

It was dawn of her wedding day and Monday, still dressed in her chemise, was combing her hair and keeping a watchful eye on Florian, who was splashing noisily in the bathtub where she had earlier bathed herself in preparation for the marriage. Her wedding gown was laid out on her bed – not one of the beautiful dresses that John had given her during her time as his leman, but the russet silk bestowed on her by Aline de Lavoux. She had altered it slightly, sitting up until the small hours to add a trim of gold braid, and plaiting gold silk threads together to make a girdle. On her head she intended to wear a caul of jewelled net, secured with a brass circlet. It would be different from the wimple of tradition, but still provide the necessary head-covering that all women had to wear unless they were young virgins going to their first man. She smiled wistfully at the thought. Alexander was her first man, and she had been a young virgin.

In the tub, Florian surged back and forth, creating waves of water which sloshed over the side and drowned the floor.

‘Careful!’ Monday admonished.

‘I’m a sea monster, a fat-fish!’ Florian declared, making loud swishing noises.

Monday rolled her eyes. He had been obsessed with creatures of the deep ever since Alexander had taken him to see an enormous whale that had fetched up on the beach close to Southampton Water on the day they landed in England. ‘You will be a flat-fish if you don’t stop,’ she punned, smiling despite herself.

There was a peremptory knock on her door, and first her heart leaped, then it sank. It was still so early, too soon to put a smile on her face for intruders to whom this wedding was nothing more than a delightful diversion, an opportunity to stand on ceremony and show off their own fine clothes. She did not even have a maid to answer the door. Hilda had been afraid of crossing the Narrow Sea, and had opted to stay in Normandy. Isobel had promised to lend one of her own maids when the woman could be spared from her duties, but not until later. If this was her now, she had a bold knock for a refined royal attendant.

Setting down her comb, Monday swept her cloak around her shoulders and padded to the door. The knock came again, harder this time.

‘Monday, open up, it’s me!’

She raised the latch, and Alexander pushed into the room, followed by Hervi, Huw and Father Ambrose. The latter carried a garland of evergreen and mistletoe in one hand, and was robed in a sumptuous red and gold chasuble, with a contrasting stole of dark-blue embroidered silk. Hervi wore his customary habit, although the wool showed evidence of recent sprucing. Huw bore his master’s shield across his back on its long strap. Alexander’s hair was damp, just beginning to curl out of recently washed sleekness; his clothes were ordinary but clean, and there was an air of urgency to his movements.

Monday clutched the cloak to her throat. ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded. ‘It’s bad fortune for the groom to see the bride until they stand before the priest!’

‘What do you think we’re doing now?’ Alexander responded with a grin, and went to persuade his son from the bathtub.

‘I’m a fat-fish!’ Florian declared with a giggle.

‘No you’re not, you’re a minnow.’ Laughing, Alexander plucked him out and into a warmed linen towel. ‘Hurry up and dress, you have something special to do.’

‘What?’

‘Wait and see.’ He pressed a forefinger to Florian’s nose.

Monday set her hands to her hips and scowled at the four grinning men. ‘Will you tell me what is happening? I thought we were to be married this afternoon at the cathedral by the Bishop of Winchester?’

Alexander nodded. ‘With the entire royal court in attendance.’ He gestured Huw to help Florian dress, and going to Monday, took her by the shoulders. ‘But that is for them. Let them have their show. This is for us … unless I have misjudged you and you would rather wait?’

‘You mean marry here and now?’ She searched his face and saw the humour in his eyes, and the determination in the set of his jaw.

‘Neither prelate nor king of the realm can stop us.’

Monday took her lower lip between her teeth, but not out of consternation, rather from humour, and a mild irritation that the thing had been sprung on her.

‘Barefoot in my shift,’ she said. ‘Is that how you intend to have me?’

He stooped closer. ‘Stark naked on that bed would be even better,’ he murmured against her ear, ‘but I think Father Ambrose’s sensibilities would be outraged.’

She reached out from beneath the cloak to pinch his thigh, and he flinched with a muffled yelp. ‘You deserved it,’ she said, but she was smiling.

‘So what do you say?’

‘What bride would not leap at the chance to be married twice in one day?’ She stood on tiptoe and brushed a kiss over his lips, breaking away before the embrace could tighten.

‘Do you want to dress?’ he asked.

Monday shook her head. ‘No. I do indeed come to you barefoot and in my shift.’

‘You are worth a fortune,’ he countered softly, and touched her cheek.

Hervi cleared his throat. ‘Are we to have this wedding or not?’ he demanded gruffly. ‘Unless you make haste, you’re going to have more than just myself and Huw as witnesses.’

‘I am ready.’ With a tender look at Alexander, Monday laid her hand upon his sleeve.

‘What do I have to do, what do I have to do?’ Florian demanded, wriggling his tunic down over his small shirt, assisted by Huw.

Father Ambrose beckoned to the little boy. ‘Hold this sheet for me,’ he commanded, and gave Florian a folded square of bleached linen. ‘It is important, very important for your part in the ceremony.’

‘Why?’

Ambrose stooped to the child’s level. ‘Because your mother is going to be married, and part of the words I will say and the things I will do will make Alexander your papa in the eyes of the Church and the world. Do you understand?’

Florian’s gaze flickered to Alexander for reassurance, and when he received a nod and a smile, he passed it on to the priest. ‘Yes,’ he said stoutly. Actually, he was not certain that he did, but if holding this sheet was going to turn Alexander into his father, then he was willing not only to hold it, but guard it with his life.

‘Good,’ Father Ambrose encouraged. ‘Now then,’ and turning to Monday and Alexander, he took their hands and clasped them one over the other, right over right, left over left in the ancient hand-fasting tradition, and bound his purple silk stole over and around their joined hands. ‘You know the words?’

‘Yes.’ There was no rigid pattern to what had to be said, but Alexander knew enough of tradition and common usage to be aware of what was customary. But looking at Monday, standing at his side, her hair unbound like a virgin’s, her eyes holding the colours of smoke and silver and the wide grey ocean, he could barely speak. Clearing his throat, he said hoarsely, ‘Monday, here I take you as my wife, for better or worse, to have and to hold until the end of my life, and of this I give you my faith.’

Monday followed his every word, slightly moving her lips as she did so. And then it was her turn, and her hands tightened their grip on his. ‘Alexander, here I take you as my husband, for better or worse, to have and to hold until the end of my life, and of this I give you my faith.’

Father Ambrose solemnly unbound the stole and beckoned the squire to bring the shield and hold it horizontally like a table. Alexander unfastened the pouch at his belt, tipped three gold bezants and a faceted gold ring on to his palm, and laid them on the shield. Ambrose blessed both the ring and the coins, making the sign of the cross, and scattering holy water upon the former. Then Alexander took the money and put it in Monday’s left hand, saying, ‘With this gold I thee endow,’ and slid the ring on to the heart finger of her right: ‘With this ring, I thee wed, in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.’

‘Amen,’ Monday repeated on a whisper.

Ambrose bade them both kneel. Huw leaned the shield against the wall and stood at Monday’s side. Hervi positioned himself at Alexander’s. ‘Now, child,’ the priest said to Florian, ‘give the sheet to Father Hervi and go and kneel in front of Alexander and your mother.’

Florian gravely handed the embroidered bleached linen to Hervi, who winked at him, and did as Father Ambrose asked. Hervi unfolded the sheet, giving two ends to Huw, and between them they shook and spread the cloth until it covered the kneeling couple and their son. This was the act that legitimised any children born out of wedlock, giving them the same status as those born on the right side of the blanket. Ambrose spoke the appropriate words, and blessed all three of them, signing a cross in holy water upon each brow. Florian squirmed and wrinkled his nose at the cold touch, but uttered no verbal protest. The sheet was removed, and the three of them rose to their feet. Florian wiped his hand across his forehead where a drip of water was trickling down.

‘What God has ordained, let no man put asunder. You may now seal this marriage by exchanging a kiss through the garland,’ Ambrose said, and his solemn intonation dissolved into a beaming smile as he held up the wreath of holly and mistletoe by its grip of green ribbon binding. Holding hands, Monday and Alexander leaned forward and kissed through the hole in the garland’s centre, formally to complete the ceremony, and then again for themselves, until Florian pushed his way between them.

‘Are you my papa now?’ he demanded of Alexander.

Stooping, Alexander lifted his son. ‘Yes, I am. You belong to me.’ There was triumph in his voice, and fierce joy.

‘So when I grow up, I can have your sword.’

Hervi made a choking sound. ‘A de Montroi to the bone,’ he chuckled with a shake of his head, and embraced Monday in a warm bearhug. ‘Welcome to the family, sister.’

‘When you grow up, you can earn one of your own,’ Alexander told Florian, his eyes brimming with amusement. ‘I had to.’

‘You had to earn more than your sword,’ Hervi said as he released Monday. ‘And you haven’t finished yet. You’ve a wife and family to support now.’

Florian balanced in the crook of his arm, Alexander set his other around Monday’s waist. She looked up at him with lambent eyes, then at Hervi. ‘We will support each other,’ she said.

There was blood on the snow, spots of it melting the white crust and staining the ground a trampled, rusty pink where the boar had finally been overwhelmed. The sky was dead grey with the promise of more falls to come, and the air bitter on the lungs.

Thomas of Stafford watched his huntsmen whip the dogs into line and tie the pig across a pack pony to bear it home. Three hounds had been injured, one so severely that it had had to be destroyed; but a boar was not a beast to be hunted with impunity, and Thomas had known men to be hurt too. He handed his boar spear to his squire and turned his mount in the direction of home. His feet were freezing in the stirrups; his jaw ached with cold, his bones with age, and soon it would be dusk.

Wolves howled in the forests. The peasants were paid a mark for each pelt they presented at the sheriff’s door, but in bitter weather like this there was a fine dividing line between the hunter and the hunted. Last week, the body of a young man, a charcoal-burner from Wooton Montroi, had been found mauled by wolves in the woods beyond Cranwell Priory.

Thomas knew for a certainty that folk would be hugging their fires on an afternoon like this, telling tales, making and mending, preparing for the feast of Christmas and St Stephen, but three days hence. His own Christmas meal was to be wild boar, supped at a lonely table with only his knights and retainers for company. He could have travelled south to Winchester with Ranulf of Chester and Ferrars of Derby, but he could not abide the thought of John’s winter court. It would mean donning formal robes and being polite to men whose teeth he would rather kick down their throats. He had endured a surfeit of false posturing at the coronation of John’s queen in October. A man belonged on his lands … a man should have heirs to inherit those lands. If only Gervais had been virile enough to beget a son, or strong enough to fight off the ague. If only his accursed daughter had not run off with some landless wastrel and squandered her life among the Norman tourney camps.

Thomas’s stomach churned with a familiar, curdled heat. Too much black bile, his physician said; what did the old turnip-wit know? Besides, at eight and fifty, his bloodline barren, he was entitled to have an excess of black bile. He discovered suddenly that the killing of the boar had depressed him. There were too many similarities between himself and the enraged pig he had seen at bay. But he had no inclination to change direction. Let others change theirs.

The hunting party emerged from the forest on to the road. The wheel patterns of wains and carts tracked the snow, mingling with the half-moon bite of horseshoes, the cloven imprint of oxen and the mark of human passing. A pile of steaming dung revealed the recent passage of at least one horse, probably two, and animals larger than carrier ponies to judge from the size of the hoofprints leading from the dung.