The Champion (62 page)

Hervi’s face suffused with dusky colour, and his eyes watered with the effort of controlling his rage. He could not speak, knew that if he moved, it would be to snap Prior Alkmund’s elegant throat.

Alkmund appeared not to notice Hervi’s immobility, his attention all centred upon the unpalatable tidings in the two letters. ‘Let them come,’ he said through his teeth. ‘They will find nothing untoward at this priory.’

‘That remains to be seen,’ Hervi said, and rose stiffly to his feet, knowing that he had to breathe clean air. Outside a bell was tolling, calling the brothers to the service of lauds. ‘You will excuse me. I need to wash before prayers.’

Alkmund inclined his head. ‘Whatever we have is yours,’ he said in a tone that declared the opposite.

Hervi banged out of the room. The raw February air hit the cold sweat on his body and turned it to ice. There was rage in his veins, and because he had to control it, it made him sick. Clamping his jaw, ignoring the nausea in his stomach, he limped back to the priory guest house, washed his face and hands in the ewer provided, and went to join the monks in prayer. And when prayer was finished, he started asking questions, and he began to look around.

It was late afternoon, the sky fading to dusk, when, a cresset lamp in his hand, Hervi followed the dark, evil-smelling stairway down past the latrine shaft and came to the cells which had featured so vividly in Alexander’s dreams. A heavy oak door faced him, its surface pitted with black iron studs. Hervi slid aside the grille and peered into the depths. There was a rustling of straw, a scurry and a squeak, but no larger movement. He set his hand to the latch and pushed. At first nothing happened. He used the weight of his good side, and the door moved a few inches, prevented from widening further by a clump of straw wedged behind. Holding the lamp on high, he eased into the room, and gazed around in the gigantic flares of light and shadow. Rank straw carpeted the floor of beaten earth, and as Hervi walked, blue mould puffed upwards from each footstep. He coughed on the smell and buried his nose and mouth in his habit. Somewhere water was dripping, and the place possessed a bone-deep chill. As he trod forward, he encountered a soft lump in the straw, and he recoiled with a hiss of disgust, thinking that he had set his foot upon a dead rat. The cresset lamp flared wildly and almost blew out. Drip, drip, went the water, the sound echoing until he could almost fancy he heard voices in the walls.

The dead rat proved to be a hunk of bread, stale but not as yet tainted with the mould. Hervi picked it up and turned it over in his hands, noting the marks of teeth other than rodent.

‘You will not find anyone in here.’

His heart thumping, Hervi whirled round, and found himself facing not Father Alkmund, as he had expected, but a smaller monk, with a dapper silver tonsure and sharp, neat features. A hoop of large iron keys hung on the rope belt at his waist. ‘Who are you?’ Hervi’s demand was brusque with the tension that was crawling over his flesh.

‘I am Brother Willelm, the preceptor.’ He cocked his head slightly to one side like a bird. ‘Are you lost?’

It would have been face-saving and diplomatic to say that he was, but Hervi had heard of Brother Willelm before. ‘You are the one who let the novice, Alexander de Montroi, escape, aren’t you?’ he said.

The monk stiffened and drew back a little. His glance flickered towards the musty draught fingering through the wedged door. ‘What do you know about that?’

‘Everything.’ Hervi turned the hunk of bread over in his hand. ‘You say that I will not find anyone here, but I seem to have found his breakfast.’ He tossed the piece of loaf, and Brother Willelm instinctively put out his hand to catch it.

‘Are you here to investigate us?’ he demanded.

‘No, just to make a preliminary report to my superiors about the way matters stand at Cranwell.’ Hervi stirred his toe in the mouldy straw. ‘What do you think of the rule here?’

‘It is not for me to say.’ Once again the preceptor looked over his shoulder.

‘Then who am I to ask … the novices?’

He saw the slight twitch of flesh along Brother Willelm’s cheekbone and knew that he had struck a telling blow. ‘Where is the last occupant of this cell?’

‘Prior Alkmund is strict about discipline,’ Willelm said reluctantly. ‘He will tolerate no deviation from the rule, and is swift to punish those who stray.’

‘I had heard that he was a saint who ventures out alone in the teeth of danger to bring comfort to the poor and the sick,’ Hervi said without inflection.

Brother Willelm winced again.

‘Is it true?’

‘Indeed he does go abroad as you say.’ The monk looked down at the bread in his hand and then back at Hervi. ‘How do you know about Alexander de Montroi?’

Hervi shrugged. ‘I have not always led the life of a monk,’ he said, choosing his words carefully, knowing that they might well be reported back to the prior. ‘Alexander lodged with me for some time, and told me what had happened at Cranwell.’

‘He was a troublemaker,’ Willelm said.

‘Yes, I saw the stripes across his back. He still bears the scars almost ten years on.’ Hervi turned to pace the dank and loathsome cell. ‘Night after night he would awaken screaming about skeletons appearing out of the walls. If he so much as saw a priest he would flinch in fear.’ Coming full circle, he stopped again before the agitated preceptor. ‘You saved his life when you “forgot” to lock this door, even if your reasons were selfish.’

The preceptor rose in Hervi’s estimation when he did not attempt to deny the truth of the statement, and proved his troubled conscience by asking, ‘What … what became of him?’

‘He is a hearth knight of William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, and is wed to a lady who has connections with the King himself. They have a young son and great hopes of future prosperity.’ There was deep satisfaction in Hervi’s voice, and it kindled a spark of relief in Brother Willelm’s expression.

‘I was worried for his person as well as his soul,’ he admitted. ‘And I did pray that God would bring him to a safe harbour.’

Hervi’s mouth curved wryly. He would hardly call the tourney route a safe harbour.

‘There was a novice in here,’ Brother Willelm volunteered in a voice filled with shame and not a little distaste. ‘He was moved two hours since to the infirmary. Prior Alkmund decided that he had learned his lesson.’

‘What was his crime?’

‘Running down the dorter stairs and being late for offices.’

‘And for that he was locked up in here?’

‘As I said, Father Alkmund’s regime is strict.’ The preceptor avoided Hervi’s gaze.

‘In the infirmary, you say?’ Hervi turned towards the door.

‘Yes, but I don’t think that you should …’ Willelm began, then broke off with a distressed, helpless gesture of his hands.

‘Even more reason to do so, then,’ Hervi said grimly, and stumped up the stairs.

There were four monks in the infirmary, and three of them were elderly. The fourth lay on his stomach at the far end, a youngster of fourteen or fifteen with blond, untonsured hair and fine, regular features. He had not been tied, there were no marks on his wrists, but from the way he was lying, he had obviously been whipped. His face was pale and bleached of expression. Reminded of Alexander, Hervi was filled with tender rage.

‘Let me see your injuries,’ Hervi said, and drawing down the sheet, gently eased the linen alb off the novice’s shoulders. Deep pink welts crisscrossed the white skin, the blows skilfully laid so as not to draw blood. Hervi’s lips tightened. He swore a soldier’s oath beneath his breath.

The youth turned his head and gazed at Hervi out of wounded dark-blue eyes. ‘I was running when I should have walked,’ he said, and his throat bobbled up and down. ‘And I was late for vespers.’

‘Those are not causes for this kind of punishment,’ Hervi said. ‘Has this ever happened before?’

‘Only once, in the autumn, when I dropped a basket of apples during the harvest and they were all ruined.’

‘Son, I swear to you it will not happen again, whatever the cause,’ Hervi said grimly, and gently covered the youth again. ‘There are going to be changes here, and very, very soon.’

Hervi attended early-evening prayers with the other monks in the chapel, stiffly declined Alkmund’s offer of supper in his private chamber, and opted to dine in the refectory with everyone else and then sleep on a spare pallet in the dorter. Hervi was not by nature fanciful, but a feeling of oppression crept over him. Alexander’s skeletons were too close for comfort. He dozed, but his body was as alert as it had been in his soldiering days, ready for the slightest move to be made upon him.

But nothing happened. The monks descended to their evening prayers. Routine was smoothly observed, and no sinister dark shadows attempted to part Hervi from his life. He rose at dawn, prayed with the others, then went to saddle his horse.

‘God speed you on your way and grant you a safe journey,’ said Prior Alkmund, his manner icy. Their first interview, coupled with Hervi’s snub of the previous evening, had shown which way the wind was blowing.

‘I am sure God will,’ Hervi responded as he eased his position in the saddle to make his damaged leg more comfortable. ‘I will pray for your soul.’ With a curt nod and a click of his tongue, he urged the horse into a trot.

Alkmund watched him ride out of the priory gates, but did not delay beyond the last sight of bay rump and black tail. Fetching his cloak, he saddled up his own grey cob, told the almoner and gatekeeper he was going out on one of his visits, and took the same path as Hervi.

Hervi breathed deeply of the sharp winter air. It cleansed his lungs of the miasma of Cranwell, and his soul stretched itself like a tree towards the light. The priory should be torn down stone by stone, he thought, and each stone piled on top of Alkmund to make his grave. When Hubert Walter of Canterbury heard what was happening at Cranwell, Alkmund would be disgraced and defrocked. Hervi hung on to the thought, knowing that for two pins he would have spared the Church the necessity of investigation by dealing with Alkmund himself.

There had been a fresh sifting of snow overnight, and his horse moved silently along the forest path. Spring was on the horizon, but it was impossible to imagine this wood filled with bluebells and thrusting, budding greenery. Yet there was beauty in the starkness too, Hervi thought, and glanced around, appreciating nature in order to soothe his mind.

Something flickered in the corner of his eye – as if the woods had moved, for the colours were the same. But when he looked round, he saw nothing. All that rose in the air was the vapour of his own breath. He was alone … completely. Prickles of apprehension ran down his spine. Thoughts of wolves came to mind, but his horse seemed equable enough; calm gelding though it was, it would have taken to its heels with a vengeance at the first scent of danger. All the same, Hervi felt for the security of the eating knife thrust through his rope girdle, and put down his cowl so that he had a wider range of vision

There it was again. Hervi whipped round, and saw the grey horse moving between the trees, its hoofbeats muffled to silence by the snow, the prior on its back. Realising that Hervi had seen him, Alkmund urged the grey on to the road, waving for him to wait.

Hervi had a strong impulse to kick the bay into a canter and ignore the gesture, but against his better judgement, he drew rein. Forcing a horse to speed on this kind of terrain was dangerous, and he still had nightmares of Soleil going down, and the awful crack of shattering bone.

Alkmund caught up, and Hervi saw that his chest was heaving and his eyes fever-bright, but their blueness was of ice, not incandescence.

‘I must talk to you,’ Alkmund said. ‘I very much fear you have received the wrong impression of Cranwell.’

‘Oh, not in the least. It is everything I expected,’ Hervi replied. ‘You need not waste your breath in persuasion.’ He clicked his tongue to the horse and kicked its flanks. Then, as the gelding moved off, Hervi decided to tell Alkmund that he would owe his downfall to the de Montrois. He knew that it was being unnecessarily vindictive, but he could not prevent himself. The glance over his shoulder as he drew breath to speak saved his life. The club which Alkmund had swung at his skull caught him a grazing blow down the side of the face, bruising flesh instead of crushing bone.

Hervi cried out at the suddenness of the assault. It was on his bad side, and it unbalanced him. The gelding circled and plunged, eyes showing a rim of white. Hervi struggled to maintain control of the horse as Alkmund swung at him again. He had to raise his arm to block the blow and the club smashed down. There was heat and pain, and a flowering numbness. He is going to kill me, Hervi thought. If I do not stop him, he is going to kill me, and who will know?

The thought of his corpse being left in the forest to be devoured by wolves, or to rot unsought in a shallow grave until the village pigs dug him up, sent a surge of panic through him, swiftly followed by one of rage and indignation. Christ, he had been a soldier before he became a monk. He wasn’t going to let a creature like this murder him.

Dragging hard on the rein, he curved the gelding to one side to avoid the next strike of the club, ducked in under the swing, and seizing Alkmund’s wrist in his good hand, twisted with all his might. Alkmund screamed and dropped the club. Hervi’s move fetched both men off their horses and they crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs.

Sobbing through his teeth, Alkmund threshed to his feet and tugged his eating knife from its sheath on his belt. Snow crystals gleamed on his scalp, melting to water on his tonsured skin. Lips writhed back from his teeth, he hung over the winded Hervi.

‘They will come looking for me,’ Hervi said. His bowels were loose with fear, but on the edge of death, his mind was sharp.

‘And find nothing. These woods are notorious for the danger they hold.’

‘The Archbishop will not let matters rest, let alone my body. And even if you should cover your tracks, there are still those who will testify against you, those whom you can no longer reach with your whip.’ Beneath the cover of his habit, Hervi fumbled with the fastening of his wooden limb. The stump was doubled beneath him, one strap broken in the fall.