The Champion (58 page)
Thomas rode on, following those particular tracks with bored curiosity. Two sets definitely, of approximately the same size, but one biting deeper than the other, as if more weight was carried. A rider and a pack animal, he surmised, and felt a small glow of satisfaction when he rounded a turn in the track and came upon a soldier with two horses.
The man had dismounted from a chestnut ambler and was adjusting a loose girth. Attached to his saddle by a leading rein was a bay destrier with deep chest and powerful rump. Thomas admired both horses with a professional eye, and cast his gaze over the soldier in the same way that he had observed and judged his tracks.
The animals were large because the man was large. Over two yards high, with wide shoulders and narrow hips. A quilted gambeson showed a flash of blue tunic at the leg slits, denoting that the stranger was wealthy enough to afford such a colour. The hands were those of a seasoned warrior, scarred and ring-less, and the face which might have been handsome once was badly disfigured. A mercenary who had lived to be successful, Thomas thought, also noting the large sword at the man’s hip, the morning star strapped across his saddle roll, and the shield hanging at his mount’s withers. A useful man, but probably a dangerous one. No danger now, though, with his hands occupied by a girth strap, and outnumbered by the hunting party a dozen to one.
Normally, Thomas would have ridden on by without speaking, but his curiosity had broken the mould, and drawing rein, he gave a gruff greeting.
The soldier returned it with equal but civil brevity.
‘Where are you bound, stranger?’
‘To Stafford, my lord, to seek audience with yourself.’
‘You know me?’ Thomas’s heavy lids widened. He wiped a drip from his nose on a horizontal forefinger and felt slightly discomforted.
‘I saw you in London, my lord, at the young queen’s coronation.’
‘What were you doing there?’ Thomas hated the thought that he had been observed without being aware. It smacked too much of his earlier thoughts about the hunter becoming the hunted.
‘I was in the service of William de Braose, my lord.’
‘And now you are not?’
‘That depends on you, my lord.’ He set his foot in the stirrup and regained the saddle, thereby towering over Lord Thomas. The chestnut snorted and pawed the ground.
‘Why should it depend on me? De Braose has twice as much land and influence. He can afford to pay you.’
‘I was thinking more in the way of a reward, my lord.’
‘A reward? For what?’ Thomas’s voice developed a belligerent note. He was accustomed to controlling the lie of the land, and was beginning to wish that he had not followed the rash impulse to stop and speak to this stranger.
‘Information.’ The soldier drew the reins through his fingers and kicked his mount into motion, so that Thomas had perforce to follow.
‘What sort of information?’
‘About your granddaughter, Monday de Cerizay. I might be able to help you find her.’
Cold fingers walked down Thomas’s spine. He wondered what this soldier knew that he did not. Then he thought of the young man who had upbraided him in his own keep several years ago about the missing girl, and inevitably of Gervais, his son, three winters dead. ‘If your best is might, then you need not bother riding on to Stafford,’ he replied, showing that there was no soft underbelly in which to pin a spear. ‘Either you can and we will talk, or you cannot and you are wasting my time.’
The scars seemed to writhe on the soldier’s face as his jaw tightened. ‘I can, my lord, that I promise you. Only last week I saw and spoke to her.’
‘Last week?’ Thomas stared at him with narrowed eyes. ‘Then she is here, in England?’
‘I will tell you what I know when we have negotiated the reward.’
Grudgingly Thomas agreed. ‘But before that, I would know who you are, and what your interest is,’ he said. ‘Otherwise, I will pay you nothing.’
Equally grudging, his companion shrugged. ‘My name is Eudo le Boucher, and I have served in the wars in Normandy beneath King Richard and King John. I was negotiating to wed with your granddaughter, but the agreement was reneged by her guardian, and then she vanished.’
Thomas stared at the man. No ancestors had been invoked, thereby revealing that le Boucher was of common stock. Most men threw in a couple of ‘son ofs’ to emphasise the glory of their bloodline. ‘You say ‘negotiating’. Do I understand that no contract was made?’
‘Unfortunately not, except by word of mouth, and that I cannot prove.’
‘You surely do not expect me to agree to your claim?’ Thomas’s voice was husky with unconcealed revulsion. His daughter had run off with a tourney knight, but at least the man had possessed some breeding, being the youngest son of a noble Norman house. It was the first good thought he had ever harboured about Arnaud de Cerizay.
‘No, my lord. But I thought that the amount of the reward might reflect my loss. I know that you will wish to betroth her elsewhere.’
They had reached the sunken, rutted road that led to the castle’s great wooden gates. Thomas stared at the towers and walls that dominated the landscape, symbol of his power. ‘Your loss,’ he said with a curled lip. ‘You want money for what was never yours.’
‘I need only hold my silence, and it will never be yours either … my lord.’ Le Boucher inclined his head in mocking deference. ‘But that would be of benefit to neither of us.’
‘You forget your place,’ Thomas said coldly, but made no move to dismiss the man. He needed him, and they were both aware of the fact.
Le Boucher gave a cold half-smile. ‘Oh no, that I have always known.’
The salt wind that had blown
The Argos
across the Irish Sea from Wexford to Pembroke howled through the scaffolding and beat against the new stone walls of curtain and keep that were being built to replace the old timber fortifications. Now
The Argos
rolled at anchor in the Pembroke river, battered but intact. The Irish Sea had been kind by its lights and mauled her but slightly. On the outward journey, the vessel had almost foundered in high seas and lashing rain. Only the intervention of God had brought her and the Marshal household safely to Wexford, and Lord William had made the vow to found a religious house in Leinster in gratitude for his life.
‘I really thought we were going to die,’ Alexander said to Monday, and closed his eyes, his body embalmed by the hot luxury of bath water for the first time in almost two months. ‘I’ve never seen waves so big – higher than that stone wall out there, and our ship as tiny as a beetle crawling up its side. I’ve never been so sick either … or so terrified.’
Monday shivered and wished that Alexander did not have such a descriptive turn of phrase. She could imagine it all too clearly. How close she had come to being a widow, within eight weeks of being married. Although from the amount of time they had spent together thus far, she could scarcely believe that they were husband and wife at all. ‘To have and to hold’ had been in very short evidence. ‘But you’re home now,’ she said, and knelt by the hearth to prepare him a cup of hot wine.
There were several wooden houses in the bailey, and Monday and Florian had been given one to occupy during Alexander’s absence. The Countess had followed her husband to Ireland with a very limited entourage. There was no room on the ship for the knight’s wives and their children, and Ireland was neither a tame nor a safe land. William Marshal had gone to visit his vassals and take their oaths of allegiance. Isabelle had travelled with him because it was through her that Marshal held the Irish lands, but it was very much a military visit, not one that required a sempstress.
The Argos
had sailed in the New Year, just two weeks after Monday and Alexander were married. For the last six, Monday had been living an industrious nun’s life at Pembroke in a stark white winter landscape. Her needle had never been so busy.
The spices steeped in the wine gave the steam an aromatic fragrance. She brought it to him, and touched the back of his neck, where his hair was curling in the hot vapour from the tub. A sweet-sharp pang arrowed through her loins, and the touch became a caress.
He took a drink, his free hand rising to cover hers. ‘Home,’ he sighed with pleasurable agreement. ‘You do not know how much I have missed you.’
‘I can guess,’ she said mischievously, her eyes on the bath water at the juncture of his thighs.
He followed the direction of her gaze and laughed. ‘That’s only the half of it.’
Her eyes widened as she feigned maidenly shock. Then with a giggle, she stooped over and kissed him on the mouth, her hands roving lower over his chest, a molten heat at her core.
Monday propped herself upon one elbow and trailed the fingers of her other hand over Alexander’s ribs and abdomen in a light caress. He lay with eyes closed, the thunder of his heartbeat slowing in the aftermath of their urgent lovemaking.
She was glad that
The Argos
had docked at compline. It meant that they had all the night together without intrusion. Florian was sound asleep in his small bench bed against the wall. Although a hellion during the day, he slept like an angel at night. There would be no stopping his exuberance in the morning, she thought, when he discovered his father had returned.
‘We won’t be staying at Pembroke much above a week,’ Alexander murmured, as she toyed with the sprinkling of wiry hairs on his breastbone. ‘Lord Marshal is set to meet with the King and spend Easter with him at court.’
Monday grimaced. She would lief as not spend any more time in proximity to John. He had provided her wedding feast and the entertainments, had been at his most charming, but she had only been able to enjoy the second ceremony and the celebrations because of Alexander’s thoughtfulness and foresight in providing the first. John had also claimed the right of kissing the bride beneath a sprig of mistletoe for luck, and his salute had gone beyond all bounds of propriety. She could still recall the feel of his tongue in her mouth, the taste of him, the grip of his fingers on her spine, and the taunting look he had cast at Alexander.
‘You do not have to come. I will understand if you do not,’ Alexander said neutrally.
‘And not see you again for weeks, perhaps months on end? I can endure John if I must, but not the parting.’
‘I do not believe you will have to endure him for long. My lord has hinted about giving me custody of one of his keeps or a feudal tenancy in the near future. “Now that you have a family,” he told me, “a son to provide for.”’
‘Countess Isabelle said as much to me before you sailed,’ Monday murmured. ‘And I agreed with her that you were not only ripe for promotion, but eager to settle down to the yoke of government.’
‘You did, did you?’
‘Of course I did. Men might think that they move the wheels of progress but frequently it is their womenfolk who grease them for ease. Now Isabelle will speak to William in the leisure of their own chamber, as I am speaking to you. And he will be in a good mood and agree with her that yes, Alexander de Montroi should have a tenancy of his own as soon as possible. Her thoughts enforce his own and make him all the more likely to set the wheels in motion.’
He raised one eyebrow, but there was a half-smile on his lips. ‘God preserve all men from the manipulations of women!’ he laughed.
‘I thought that was what brought you to the bed in the first place … my manipulations,’ she said throatily, and ran her fingers down his chest, over the line of his lower ribs and into the hollow of his diaphragm. He gave a sudden flinch and a hiss of pain was forced through his teeth. Monday snatched her hand away, her expression filled with consternation. ‘What is it, what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing … or at least nothing now. We were jousting for sport at Waterford and I took a shield rim in the side, probably cracked a bone. It’s only sore if touched in the wrong place. In truth, I had forgotten about it.’ He felt the injury himself with tentative fingers. ‘Still, I won the bout. There’s a pouch of silver in my coffer for you.’
‘I would rather have you whole than any amount of silver,’ she said, and smoothed her hand down over the stripe of hair below his navel.
‘That is why I practise.’ He cupped his hand in her hair and pulled her down to kiss him, and beneath her hand, his flesh stirred with renewed vigour. ‘Rather a false move on the tourney field than that of battle.’
Monday shivered. ‘I know that they are both a part of you,’ she said, ‘but I would rather have Alexander the scribe and poet than Alexander the warrior.’
‘What about Alexander the lover?’ he cajoled.
Monday shivered again, this time in response to what he was doing with his hands. ‘Oh, him most of all,’ she sighed.
The luxury of lying abed in a loved one’s arms, of leisure and pleasure, did not last beyond a day. Lord William declared his intention of visiting his castles within the earldom of Pembroke, and summoned his escort to be ready to ride at dawn on the second morning for his keep at Haverford.
‘I’m sorry, love,’ Alexander whispered as he dressed in the freezing dark by the light of a single candle. ‘After Haverford it’s Cardigan, then Cilgerran. We’ll be a week at least.’
Monday sighed inwardly, but kept too much disappointment from showing on her face. ‘But I’ll have you for the journey to court,’ she said. Wearing her chemise, and wrapped in her cloak for warmth, she tightened the laces in Alexander’s quilted gambeson, acting as his squire. Huw was out in the stables, preparing the horses, and this was a last moment of intimacy. ‘And that too will be at least a week.’ Finished with the laces, she fetched his mail hauberk, staggering slightly beneath its weight, which lay in excess of thirty pounds. Alexander stooped into it, carefully sliding his arms into the sleeves and easing his head through the neck hole so that none of the rivets or a sharp edge on a ring joint should tear his flesh. Then he stood straight and jumped up and down. Jingling musically, the hauberk swished down into place over his body, reaching below the knee and slit front and back to the groin to allow for horse-riding. He had not donned his mail leggings, but sported plain chausses and hose. Full armour was only worn to war. The mail shirt was a symbol of his knighthood today, rather than a protection against enemy weapons. Monday supposed that she ought to be glad for small mercies.