The Champion (69 page)

Monday gave him a withering look, and with her head carried high, walked down the nave and out of the elaborately carved church doorway. The young guard walked so close behind that he almost trod on the hem of her gown.

At their horse line, her grandfather was still arguing with Eudo le Boucher even in the act of counting out the silver. The mercenary was insisting on checking the contents of every single pouch, and the money flashed in the moonlight as each bag was examined.

Monday moved in the opposite direction, towards three gnarled apple trees, their branches gleaming as the moon rose.

‘I’ll go behind these,’ she whispered to the soldier.

He followed her.

‘At least turn your back,’ she hissed as if in outrage. ‘How far do you think I’m going to get if I run?’

He shook his head, rubbed the back of his neck in perplexity, but reluctantly did as she requested.

Immediately Monday removed her cloak, unfastened her belt, and with feverish speed tore off her tunic and underdress, leaving only her thin linen chemise. It had a drawstring neck and sleeves, was pleated and full in the body, but the hem finished just below her knees. Now her legs were unhampered.

The guard started to turn his head.

‘Don’t look!’ Monday gasped. He continued to turn. She seized her cloak off the ground and threw it over his head, at the same time hooking her leg behind his ankle. He went down hard, his shout muffled by the good, thick wool of the cloak. Monday tugged the dagger out of his belt. Unable to bring herself to stab him, but desiring to render him
hors de combat
, she stamped as hard as she could on his genitals.

He doubled up, writhing, the cloak still engulfing his head, and she took to her heels.

She sped through the priest’s orchard and across his glebe land. There was light enough to see, but only just, and given a strange bluish cast by the moon. At first she ran blindly, her only goal to put distance between herself and her captors, but as her breath began to scrape in her lungs, she realised that she would soon and easily be caught. They had horses, and the light that enabled her to run would guide them too.

To the right of the glebe land, she could see the small glimmers of rush dips and candles from the village houses, and the occasional glow of an outdoor firepit. To the left were more open fields, stretching away to woodland more than two miles distant. Briefly she dithered before deciding on the village, where at least there would be witnesses to her capture should she fail to escape. She did not for one moment expect the villagers to put up any resistance on her behalf to armed men.

At first as she ran, her hand pressed to her side, there was only the sound of her own breath tearing in her throat, and the light thud of her footfalls. But then her straining ears caught the sound of pursuit, and she could not prevent the whimper that rose in her throat. If they captured her, they would tie more than her wrists this time.

She snatched a look over her shoulder, and saw the lights of torches bobbing up and down to the motion of cantering horses. Their closeness terrified her and she redoubled her efforts, with the result that she measured her length on the grass of the common grazing land. As she fell, she saw that the lights of the village were closer too, perhaps even reachable. She scrambled to her feet, and ran on. Three tethered goats loomed out of the dusk. Monday screamed at their sudden appearance, and they scattered, bleating, in mutual shock. The darker line of a stream obstructed her path on the village boundary. Behind her, she heard a shout. The drum of hoofbeats was much closer now. She dared not turn around to look, but kept on running, one foot in front of the other, her legs tight with pain and her chest on fire.

The shout was repeated and mingled with the drum of hoof-beats.

‘Run, Monday, Christ, run!’

She splashed into the water, which was icy cold, and although only shin-deep, sprayed up around her thighs as she plunged through it and scrambled up the far bank. ‘Alexander?’ she shrieked, and turned in time to see the flame-lit figure of Eudo le Boucher slew his horse round on the edge of the stream and fling his lighted torch at another horseman coming up hard behind.

‘Alexander!’ Monday screamed.

‘Get into the village, stay there!’ he bellowed at her. Light flashed off a shield boss and along the edge of a drawn sword. She heard le Boucher’s weapon rasp from the scabbard.

‘Go!’ Alexander roared.

Her legs almost buckled but she did as he bade her. There was nothing she could do if she stayed but hamper him, but she could return with witnesses.

The shriek of sword meeting sword split the night. Sparks flashed and splinters of metal flew off the blades. No knight ever fought sword to sword unless he was forced, for the damage done to the steel was terrible. But Eudo le Boucher had no shield, and Alexander was determined to win past the guard of that slender bar of iron and destroy the man behind it.

He and his troop had reached the village as dusk darkened into night, and discovered chaos and consternation among the abductors, who were spread out in search of their escaped captive. Alexander had left half his troop to deal with Stafford’s men still in the vicinity of the church and with the other half had set off in pursuit of the flaming torches, across the glebe and grazing land.

‘I should have killed you in France, Montroi,’ le Boucher panted as their horses circled on the edge of the stream.

Alexander did not waste his breath. There was nothing to be said that would encompass the weight of his emotions. Actions spoke the louder, so Hervi was always saying, with a pious look on his face. The blows he was swinging were for Hervi, for Arnaud de Cerizay, for Monday, and for himself.

The dark made it difficult to see. The gleam of metal just before it struck, the shimmer of hauberk rings were the only warning. Alexander was swift, but le Boucher was heavier, and although Alexander had won past le Boucher’s guard a couple of times, the triple-linked hauberk beneath had turned the blows.

Both men drew back to gain their breath. Alexander listened to le Boucher’s lungs between the roaring of his own, and decided that the older man was more spent than he was. Taking a gamble, he touched Samson with the spur. The horse lunged towards le Boucher’s bay. Alexander struck rapidly, aiming low, and slashed a stirrup leather. Le Boucher uttered a bellow of fury, and threw off Alexander’s sword with his own, but his balance had been seriously affected and he wavered in the saddle. Alexander attacked again. Le Boucher kicked his other foot out of the stirrup, clung tightly with his thighs, and smacked his horse on the rump with the flat of his sword.

The bay hurled forward against Samson, rearing and striking. Samson went back on his haunches, almost lost his footing in the soft soil, and had to plunge and skitter sideways to stay upright. This led him straight into the stream. Icy water showered up around man and horse. Samson floundered to gain purchase on the gravel bottom with his hind hooves. His mane was in Alexander’s mouth, and the stallion’s lurching made it impossible for him to do anything but grip in the saddle and keep his shield high.

He felt le Boucher’s sword slam down on the painted lime-wood, felt the surge of the stallion as he cleared the bank, and then the shock as the two animals clashed again. He prodded Samson with the spur and the destrier reared and struck with his forehooves, cutting open the bay’s shoulder. The bay shied away and was reined around by le Boucher. Once more the destriers pounded together and sword met sword in a diagonal cross of blue light, smaller sparks shivering off as the steel was damaged. Alexander’s wrist bent over and his tendons strained. He did not have the brute strength to match le Boucher, and there was nothing he could do to prevent the sword from being torn from his hand to fall in the trampled mud.

On the offensive now, with the scent of victory tantalising, le Boucher went at Alexander full hammer. Alexander braced his shielded left arm to withstand the onslaught and tried to reach the dagger at his right hip. Le Boucher rose in the saddle and brought an almighty blow down on Alexander’s shield. The blade caught on the iron boss. Alexander struggled to heave him off, and for a moment the two men strained. There was an abrupt snapping sound and the pressure on Alexander was suddenly released, jerking him backwards and bruising his spine against the cantle.

Le Boucher roared out in terror and anguish. Twice, three times, the sound split the night, and ended on a breathless crow. He lost control of the horse and toppled from the saddle, hit the ground, and lay weakly writhing.

Alexander stared in blank surprise. He dismounted, but remembering their joust beneath the walls of Vaudreuil, drew his dagger and circled him, well out of assault distance. There was blood, more blood than Alexander had ever seen, as black and shiny as a river of pitch in the moonlight. The broken, jagged hilt of the mercenary’s sword protruded from a deep wound on his upper thigh near his crotch, the hilt still quivering. Even as Alexander looked on in wincing horror, le Boucher’s shaking hand reached to the hilt, grasped it as if to pull it out, then went into spasm, made a claw, and fell away.

Still, even knowing that he was dead, Alexander circled a moment longer before approaching le Boucher, and kept the dagger to hand as he stooped over the body and unlaced the neck opening of the mail coif. There was no pulse beat in the powerful corded throat, and only the glimmer of darkness in the eyes.

Alexander eased his fingers inside the tunic, and against the hot skin found a greasy leather cord. He tugged it up and out, and the gold and amethyst cross sparkled into his vision. The tip of the dagger sliced it free, and Alexander closed his palm over the warm metal.

‘Now you have nothing,’ he said to le Boucher. ‘
Requiescat in pace
.’ He made the sign of the cross, and turning his back on the corpse, remounted Samson, who was patiently standing. Le Boucher’s bay circled nervously at a distance. Alexander left him for the others of his troop to find, and urged the black across the stream towards the village, intent on finding Monday.

The alehouse was the second most visited dwelling in the village, the first being the church, and that was only because of the priest’s perseverance. The brewster, Widow Aggie, was renowned for her skills, and the news of a fresh batch of ale brought customers from miles around. This particular fine, moonlit evening, a bush of green willow leaves had been hung on the pole thrusting out from her eaves, informing her clients that there was another brew of ale to be consumed, the sooner the better to preserve its quality.

In consequence of this, and the fact that folk wanted to gossip about the presence of soldiers in the village, there was a sizeable crowd gathered at Dame Aggie’s when Monday staggered into their enclave, and stood panting and dripping in the middle of the alehouse floor. Her shift clung to her body, leaving very little to the imagination, her hair was loose to her hips and her eyes were wild.

Several of the more superstitious folk crossed themselves and muttered charms against spirits and fairy folk.

The priest, however, immediately disabused them of the notion. ‘’Tis the young woman who was with the soldiers,’ he said, rising from his place near the fire, a thin line of foam gracing his upper lip. ‘They said she was out of her wits. They’d taken her to Canterbury to the shrine o’ St Thomas to pray for a cure.’ He spoke in English, of which Monday understood very little.

She looked from one to the other of the gathered villagers. Their stares were frankly curious, but none would meet her eyes. ‘You have to help me,’ she implored the priest, knowing that he spoke French. ‘I have been abducted against my will. Come with me, quickly, can’t you hear the fighting?’ She gestured towards the door, where the faint sounds of a brawl could indeed be heard now that the alehouse was silent.

The priest opened his mouth. ‘Daughter …’ he began, then fell silent, his eyes on the entrance.

Thomas of Stafford strode into the alehouse, a drawn sword in his hand. His face was a grim mask, the effort of control obvious in the bunched muscles of his jaw. ‘Pay her no attention, priest,’ he growled. ‘She is wood-wild, as I told you.’

‘But she says that …’

‘I know what she says, but is there not a full moon outside? Look at her; would any sane person cast off their clothes and run amok in the night?’

Monday backed, until the heat of the central hearth scorched her spine. She sidestepped. ‘Keep away from me,’ she spat. ‘It is you who is suffering from moon-madness. If there was a single sane bone in your body, you would ride away now, before it is too late.’

‘Come here, girl.’

‘I will not,’ Monday hissed.

Stafford advanced. The look in his eyes was terrifying, but it had little effect on Monday. If Alexander was killed out there then she did not care to live either, and if he survived, she was determined to survive with him. Either way, she faced her grandfather with blazing eyes and a complete lack of fear.

The customers watched the entertainment in bemused astonishment. No one tried to intervene, not even the priest, for it was beyond them.

Stafford loomed. He was close now, almost close enough to strike with his sword if he chose. Monday had a premonition that he would do so, out of sheer vindictiveness. Her eyes flickered, seeking a way out.

Then, beyond him, in the doorway, she saw Alexander. There were splashes of blood on his surcoat, and a swipe of it on his cheek. His shoulders were rising and falling rapidly with exertion. He began to raise his sword, and she saw the effort involved.

Stafford took another step.

Monday darted to one side, seized someone’s precious mug of ale and flung it at her grandfather. He recoiled, spluttering, and she ducked under his sword arm, giving him a hefty push as she did so. He tottered on one heel, overbalanced, and sat down heavily on the fire, the sword flying out of his hand. Smoke gushed and sparks flew. The stink of burning wool filled the air. Coughing and choking, two of the customers intervened to pull