The Champion (65 page)
‘Only myself,’ Alexander said with self-mockery.
Osgar snorted and took another drink. ‘I must admit, I never expected you to amount to anything, especially after le Boucher almost killed you and Hervi.’
‘It was sink or swim,’ Alexander said, and smiled across the fire at Monday. ‘In a way, I suppose I should thank Eudo le Boucher for casting me into the deepest, blackest water of my life. It took a long, long time to reach the shore, but I’m content with the land I’ve found.’
Monday returned his smile, then leaned forward to reprimand Florian again. ‘He’s restless,’ she said to the men. ‘I’ll take him round the booths for a while.’
‘Can I see the sword-swallower again?’ Florian leaped to his feet, dusting his hands on his tunic.
‘Isn’t there someone who swallows noisy small boys?’ Alexander asked with a wooden expression. Florian pummelled him on the arm, and Alexander yelped and pretended to cower. ‘Save me!’ he implored of Monday.
Laughing, she prised Florian off his father. ‘We’ll bring you some gingerbread,’ she promised, and departed.
Alexander smoothed his rumpled tunic. ‘He’s an imp,’ he chuckled.
‘Like father like son,’ Osgar observed, and setting down his empty cup, hunched towards the heat of the flames. ‘Did you know that Eudo le Boucher is here for the tourney too?’ he asked once Monday and Florian were out of earshot.
Alexander sighed. ‘I had thought it a possibility, but I haven’t seen him as yet. We are not on friendly terms, to say the least. Last I knew of him, he was in the pay of Staff—’ The realisation hit him like a fist, and he muttered an obscene curse.
Osgar stared at him. ‘What is it?’
Alexander shook his head, his mind’s eye filled with the image of the ugly little hafter. ‘Nothing. I was warned earlier that I might have enemies here interested in attending my funeral.’ He looked at Osgar’s broad, corpulent form. For a man so large, he was fairly light on his feet, and if not the most skilled and deft of fighters, he was certainly experienced, and had managed to keep himself in one piece to the age of forty. That had to count for much.
‘Do you want a patron?’ he asked.
‘Why, do you know of one?’ A rueful smile curled Osgar’s lips. ‘The Marshal would take one look at me and throw me on the midden heap by the ear.’ He tugged at one swollen, misshapen lobe, the result of constant buffeting and injury down the years.
‘It’s not the Marshal who is seeking,’ Alexander replied gently, ‘it is me. Huw, my squire, is swift and light, I have no complaints, but I would feel better protected with a man of more substance at my back on the morrow. And if you want, if you can stave your wanderlust, there is a place at my hearth should I survive this tourney.’
Osgar blinked in bemusement. ‘I do not know what to say.’ He looked down at his beefy red hands and laughed. ‘Hearth knight to Hervi’s little brother, Jesu!’
‘Christ, I’m not offering out of charity or obligation, you dolt!’ Alexander snapped. ‘I need you to protect my hide from holes! If you refuse, then I’ll have to find someone else and in short order …’
Osgar wiped his hands on his tunic. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Be buggered to my esteem, I will do it, and in my heart, gladly. To be your man, I do so swear, let God be my witness.’ Clasping his palms he held them out to be pressed between Alexander’s in the ritual of fealty. They exchanged the kiss of peace, and once more settled by the fire.
‘What I do not understand,’ Osgar said, scratching his bald forehead, ‘is why you are competing at all. If I were you, I’d make myself scarce elsewhere.’
‘Lord William expects my presence on the field.’
‘Even if you tell him Eudo le Boucher is likely to come at you?’
‘If I avoid le Boucher on the tourney field, I will only be saving the confrontation until later. In the middle of a mock battle, strange though it may seem, I have more chance of emerging alive.’
‘So you actually want to meet him on the field?’
‘I don’t want to meet him anywhere,’ Alexander said wryly. ‘But if I have no choice but to do so, then better here than on a lonely road in the middle of nowhere, or down a blind city alley.’
Osgar nodded and puffed out his cheeks, making his face look as though it was about to burst. ‘I’ll see to it he doesn’t put in any foul blows,’ he said. ‘I owe it to Hervi too, after what that bastard did to him.’
Alexander fed another log to the fire beneath the cooking pot and mused that in a perverse way, Eudo le Boucher had changed Hervi’s and his own lives for the better. Without that fall from Soleil, Hervi would still be riding the tourney circuits, wenching and drinking more than he should in dubious company. Instead, he was an ordained priest in the household of Hubert of Canterbury, a soldier’s chaplain with fulfilment and purpose. And without le Boucher bringing him to nothing in the dust, Alexander knew that he too would have continued much as before. Whoring and drinking on the tourney route, his triumphs reaching a zenith with his physical strength, and then waning to leave him in the gutter. He spoke none of this to Osgar, however. In part it would have been cruel, for Osgar still travelled the tourney road like a plodding ox, and besides, he knew that the older knight would not even begin to comprehend the irony.
‘Have you seen Hervi since his fall?’
Osgar shook his head. ‘I thought about going to Pont l’Arche, to enquire after him, but I knew they would turn me away – a common mercenary.’
Alexander forbore to point out that the monks at Pont l’Arche had taken Hervi, a common mercenary. He understood Osgar’s reluctance. His own aversion to monks and monasteries had been hard to overcome, indeed still lurked in the background.
‘I didn’t want to see him lying there broken,’ Osgar added. ‘It would have been like looking at myself. There but for the grace of God who shuns all men like me …’ He knuckled his forehead as though it was literally hurting him to think.
‘He has made a life for himself out of the ruins of the old,’ Alexander said reassuringly. ‘If anything, a better life. The old Hervi is still there, but tempered by the new.’ He gave Osgar a light punch on the arm. ‘Just think, you know a priest now who will gladly listen to your confession and not give you a penance beyond your fulfilling.’
Osgar laughed, and his expression lightened. ‘Do you know his whereabouts?’
‘Not of this moment. I had half expected to see him here, but a wooden leg hasn’t confined him to one place. Hubert Walter often uses him as a messenger. You’ll meet him soon enough if you join my retinue. I … Jesu, is that Edmund One-eye?’
It was a question that did not require answering. Her arm linked through his, Monday was leading a familiar stocky figure towards their fire, and Florian appeared to be chewing a large slab of spiced bread.
Osgar swivelled on his stool, and followed Alexander’s gaze across the tourney ground. ‘The past always catches up with you in the end,’ he chuckled.
Alexander laughed with him, but there was an underlying irony to the curve of his lips.
Monday watched her husband run his hands over Samson, checking him for soundness. Florian sat on the destrier’s back, his legs scarcely straddling the high war saddle, and his small hands gripping the raised pommel.
In his full prime, the black stallion was magnificent, compact and powerful, but nimble as a wraith. He and Alexander had been partners for such a long time, the understanding between them so attuned, that there was scarce need for bridle or saddle, and Alexander rode with the lightest of hands.
The horse butted Alexander, seeking treats. With a laugh and a protest, the man dodged, and produced a stale end of bread from his pouch. Samson lipped it off him and gave a whicker of pleasure and triumph. ‘That’s your lot,’ he said. ‘Else you’ll be too stuffed to do your duty.’
Monday was not deceived by Alexander’s jesting. Something about the day’s sport was worrying him. They had been late to bed after an evening of reminiscence with Osgar and Edmund, and once there, they had made love with an intensity on Alexander’s part that surpassed even that time after they had been skating, and when it was finished, he held her, reluctant even at three of the clock to let her go. Less than four hours later he had been up with the dawn and tensely prowling. It was as if the coming tourney was not a piece of show for John’s queen, but a battle in truth. And yet she had caught no whiff of atmosphere from Countess Isabelle or the other women, who were all looking forward to the afternoon’s sport and the feast which was to follow it.
‘Do you think there will be any serious fighting?’ she probed.
He turned his back to run his hands down Samson’s forelegs.
‘Unlikely,’ he said. ‘Marshal and Salisbury are friends. It will be to prove valour and nought else.’
His tone was casual, but that meant nothing. It was his face she needed to see. ‘Something is gnawing at you,’ she said.
He checked hind leg, tapping Samson’s fetlock to make him lift his hoof for inspection. ‘It’s a long time since I fought in a proper tourney – those in Wales were mere games.’
‘I thought this one was a mere game too.’
There was a brief hesitation before he replied. ‘Well, yes, it is, but the setting is different. Instead of a wet meadow in the middle of nowhere with a handful of folk looking on, this will be before the entire court, and Lord Marshal will expect the best performance from all of his men. As you know, there is no one to match him. To do him justice, we’ll have to shine like stars.’ He set the stallion’s hind hoof down and dusted his hands. ‘Since he has bestowed a keep on me, I need to show myself worthy in the eyes of the world.’
Monday was more than half convinced. His words had the ring of truth. If only his expression were not so blank. ‘You look the very image of worthiness,’ she said with pride, and reached a possessive hand to smooth his linen surcoat. He wore the Marshal colours, and the Marshal rampant red lion appliquéd in silk on the breast of the surcoat. Beneath it his mail glittered, fresh from a burnishing with sand and vinegar.
‘God grant it goes deeper than looks,’ he said, and taking her hand, drew her against him.
His body was as taut as a wound bow, and their kiss seemed to wind his tension even further. It was as if he was going to war. On that disquieting thought, their embrace broke as Osgar arrived in his usual noisy fashion, demanding to know if Alexander was ready.
‘As ready as I’ll ever be.’ Alexander lifted Florian down from the saddle and gave him a hug. ‘Be a good boy for your mother. Don’t go straying off. There will be danger today with all those warhorses and soldiers.’
‘I’m not scared,’ Florian said with a thrust of his small chin.
‘No, and that is why I am.’ Alexander ruffled his son’s hair, kissed Monday again, and mounted up.
‘Good fortune.’ Of an impulse, she untied the plaited ribbons binding her wimple to her brow, and presented them to him in token of her wish.
He tucked them in his sword belt, saluted her, and touched Samson lightly with his heels.
‘Doesn’t your papa look magnificent?’ she said to Florian, as they waved him on his way, Osgar lumbering at his side.
Florian nodded. ‘I’m going to be a great knight when I grow up,’ he said. ‘And join in tourneys too.’
Monday’s smile was somewhat poignant. Silently she thanked God that such a time was more than ten years away. Proud though she was of her husband, it did not stop her feeling a pang of apprehension whenever he went out to fight, and today’s concern was exacerbated by Alexander’s behaviour.
Anxiety was put to the back of her mind, however, when she joined Countess Isabelle and the other members of the Marshal retinue on the trestle lodges that had been set up for the noble spectators. Isabelle was wearing her new blue dress with the full surcoat and looked radiant. Pregnancy had given a bloom to her skin and her green eyes were bright and clear. Her older sons, William and Gilbert, were helping to squire for their father, and only the younger ones sat in the lodges with her. Florian immediately joined Walter, the nearest to him in age, and they were soon engrossed in conversation, punctuated by a game of heads and tails using a clipped penny.
Monday sat among Isabelle’s women and gazed out over the tourney field. It was obvious that even from the favourable and raised position of the lodges, not all the sport would be seen, for the field was large and bordered by trees, but even so, the area was much smaller than the size usual for Normandy.
The knights were beginning to arrive and warm up. Small knots of them swirled and challenged each other, loosening stiff muscles, practising strokes. Others stood in groups talking, their squires holding their horses. A quintain post had been set up, and a party of the Marshal’s men were practising their skills by lifting a woman’s wire circlet off the peg with a lance. Alexander and Samson were among them, and Monday watched with a fresh surge of pride as her husband neatly lifted the circlet from its mounting without even checking Samson’s speed. Threaded through his belt were her plaited wimple ribbons. As if sensing her scrutiny, he raised his head towards the stands, and dipped her a salute with his lance. She waved in return. So did Florian, announcing to everyone within earshot that his papa was the best knight on the field. Walter took exception, and a minor brawl ensued, swiftly quelled by a nursemaid.
The King and Queen arrived and everyone rose. Isobel looked exquisite in her sapphire Christmas gown, a coronet of seed pearls securing a wimple of floaty cream silk, and a girdle of silver braid decorated with more pearls and amethysts encircling her tiny waist.
‘To think that I was once as slender as that,’ the Countess remarked with a wistful little sigh. ‘When I married William, he could span my waist with his two hands.’ She smoothed her own loose but still fetching garments. ‘Now he has to use both arms.’
‘But you have his faith,’ Monday murmured. ‘You know that he does not so much as look at another woman. If you were wed to the King, could you say the same?’