The Falcons of Montabard (22 page)

Annais clasped her hands at her waist. 'Thank you,' she said. 'I know I have asked much.'

Gerbert gave a wry smile. 'Indeed you have,' he said. 'It is certainly not a request I would have made of my own accord, but perhaps it will be to my advantage in the end. Your father emphasises FitzSimon's warrior skills. I can keep him gainfully employed and well away from trouble with women.' His lips compressed. 'Indeed, I intend to make sure that he has neither the time nor the energy for dalliance of any kind.'

'Have you spoken to Sabin?'

'Yes. He was in the stables grooming his horse and looked as if he had spent the night there.'

'What did he say?'

Gerbert shrugged. 'Little enough. Admitted that he had been a fool and offered to leave the moment we were out of sight of Tel Namir. I refused and told him that if I had perjured myself for him, the least he could do was repay me in service.'

'And he accepted?'

'If he hadn't, his honour would not have been worth a grain of dust. Not that I gave him much choice,' Gerbert added with grim satisfaction 'I told him what I wanted and I left him no

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space to disagree. Of course, he might have taken the coward's way out, and already have left behind my back, but I doubt it. I saw anger in his eyes, my love, but it was directed at himself, not me. If I were a gambling man, which I'm not, I would wager that he'll fight out of his skin to prove himself.'

'I would wager it too,' Annais murmured. 'It will truly be his last chance.'

Gerbert gave her a keen look. 'He told me when I first met him at court that he had fled some kind of tragedy at home -one concerning a woman. Is that true?'

She nodded. 'He was caught abed with one of King Henry's young mistresses. He was given a beating and she was sent home in disgrace aboard the
White Ship . . .
only it sank not long after it sailed and she was drowned. Then he was involved in a tavern brawl and a man died. His family reached the end of their patience. It wasn't the first time he'd been involved in scandal and fighting. He was entrusted to my father's keeping and sent to Outremer.'

Gerbert cupped elbow and chin. 'And yet you asked me to intervene?' There was surprise bordering on censure in his tone.

Annais made a small gesture. 'Not all of the trouble laid at his door was his fault,' she said.

'Like the most recent incident was not his fault?' Gerbert said with a flare of sarcasm.

She reddened. 'Exactly like that. I am trying to be fair.'

'So am I.' Gerbert uncupped his chin. 'He is to serve me for a year and a day as a wage-fief vassal. After that he is free to do as he chooses - and that to me seems decent recompense for my intervention.'

'It does,' Annais said, but without enthusiasm. She hoped that Gerbert would keep him busy and out of her sight. Being fair was a duty, so was forgiving, but the latter came much harder.

'I have seen nothing of your stepmother this morn,' Gerbert said as he rose to his feet.

'She is unwell,' Annais replied stiffly, 'and likely to remain

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so, I expect, until we leave. I have called her
nithing
and put her from my mind.'

'Nithing}'
Gerbert raised his brows.

'In English, it means a person who is worthless, who through their own actions has no place in the world. I know that Sabin does not think of my stepmother as
nithing.
He thinks of her as he used to think of the women of King Henry's court. I . . .' She turned her head as from outside the door came the sound of Lady Margaret discreetly clearing her throat to remind them of the passage of time.

"You are right.' Gerbert caressed the side of her cheek with his thumb and followed it with a kiss. 'Put it from your mind. Let it rest, even if it be in an unquiet grave for now. Come, we have our guests to attend and a journey to make.'

Sabin waited in the castle courtyard for the bridal party to emerge from the hall and mount their readied horses. He checked Lucifer's girths for the third time and performed a swift inventory of his own equipment. Beneath the blue silk surcoat, his mail had been scoured and oiled until it shone like black snakeskin, and his spurs, his scabbard mountings, the hilt of his sword, the decorated silver badges on his swordbelt winked with sunstars in the strengthening daylight. Last night he had cleaned them all, and cleaned them again, as if the oiled rag that wiped all trace of stain from his armour could do the same to his smirched conscience. It had helped a little at the time, but the effect had almost worn off now, and the waiting was beginning to make his skin prickle, as if tiny thorns were growing out through his pores.

Amalric was tending to the pack mule. That he had been permitted to go with Sabin owed much to the fact that his father had been assigned escort duty to the wedding party. Propped on the ground at the boy's feet were Sabin's shield and spear. Sabin would shoulder the former when he rode out; Amalric would bear the latter, his face shining with the pride that Sabin was doing his best to recover.

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Sabin glanced along the waiting line towards a knot of soldiers. He heard a burst of laughter as one told a joke and saw the playful punch of camaraderie. Two more came from the trough where they had been filling their water costrels and joined the group. He found himself wishing that he were one of their number, a common soldier with simple cares. But in such a position, a simple care might seem the most difficult thing on earth.

Sighing, Sabin squinted at the sky. The rags of dawn cloud had burned off, leaving a clear, fine blue. It was going to be hot at the zenith. Wearing armour would be uncomfortable . . . but a necessity on the road where every outcrop and turning might hold an ambush.

A solitary figure emerged from the forebuilding and walked towards the waiting train of soldiers and baggage beasts. The thorns prickling Sabin's flesh seemed to become the size of spearheads and suddenly he felt nauseous.

'My lord.' He bowed his head, acting in proper and formal fashion because it was all he could think of to do. How would he have reacted if Strongfist had caught him and Mariamne on the battlements last night? Bow and address him politely? It was such a ludicrous thought that amidst the feelings of shame, he felt a sickening desire to laugh.

Strongfist halted on the opposite side of Lucifer and stared over the decorated saddle cloth and padded high saddle. 'So, although you have not seen fit to address me on the matter, I understand that you desire to leave Tel Namir.' The morning light filled his eyes, turning them to the guileless bright blue of a child's.

Sabin gripped the bridle close to the headstall, taking comfort from the champing of the horse against the bit, and forced himself to meet them. Stare upon stare. Matching. Measuring. He drew breath to speak, but Strongfist raised his hand and forestalled him.

'I may look like an old fool and sometimes behave like one, but you should all credit me with at least a little experience.

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For your sake and my honour, it is for the best that you say nothing and that you leave. That way the illusion is preserved.' He walked around the front of the horse and thrust out his hand, the fingers strong, square and thick-skinned. 'I wish you Godspeed.'

After a hesitation, Sabin reached to take it. 'And may God keep you.' He made the formal response through a throat so dry that his voice cracked. Never again, he swore to himself grimly. Never again, even if all the carnal temptations of the world were heaped before him on a gilded trencher. 'I did not—'

'No words,' Strongfist said through clenched teeth. 'I expect you to guard my daughter and her husband with your life.'

'That is understood without words too,' Sabin said.

Their hands parted, although the imprint of the other's sweat remained on each man's palm.

The rest of the bridal party was emerging from the keep, booted and cloaked for the journey. Gerbert wore his mail, lighter in colour than Sabin's and ringed at the lower hem with a decorative edge of black rivets. His sword hilt protruded through a slit in the side of the mail, and his left hand rested lightly on the pommel. His right was given to Annais. Her dark braids were hidden beneath the full wimple that a married woman would have worn in England, but more, Sabin thought, for travelling than for modesty — unless of course it was a visual statement brought on by last night's incident. The last to emerge from the hall into the growing sunlight was Mariamne. Although pale and heavy-eyed as befitted someone suffering from a drink megrim, she bore no other outward signs of discomfort. If she did not kiss the bride in farewell, it was understood by all that the women had never been more than tepid with each other. After a single glance over the baggage train and its guardians, she lowered her gaze and stood in modest silence a little back from her husband. Sabin busied himself mounting Lucifer and accepting his shield from Amalric. The boy was all too prepared to stare at Mariamne

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until Sabin nudged him with the shield edge and hissed a warning through his teeth.

Strongfist squeezed his daughter in a bearhug. 'Have a care,' he said and, more gently, touched her cheek. His smile was broad and genuine, but there was a moist glitter in his eyes.

And you,' Annais responded and for a moment she laid her head on his breast. His broad, scarred hands touched the top swathe of her wimple in benediction. Then she stepped back and her husband's squire assisted her to the saddle. Surreptitiously she ran her knuckles beneath her eyes and sniffed.

'You must visit us soon,' Gerbert said, clasping Strongfist's arm.

Strongfist nodded vigorously. 'I promise I will.'

'My lady.' Gerbert performed a stiff and formal bow to Mariamne, his expression stony. She inclined her head, her own eyes devoid of warmth. Gerbert swung to his horse — a powerful bay and unusually tall, standing at almost sixteen hands. As he gathered the reins, he glanced at Sabin and a look passed between them: on Gerbert's part a silent statement of duty performed and debts that were now owed; on Sabin's, acknowledgement of those debts and determination to see them paid with interest.

The party rode out of Tel Namir and took the road north, towards Antioch. Glancing back, Annais waved to the diminishing figure of her father before resolutely drying her eyes and facing her new life. Although Sabin felt the urge to look over his shoulder, he paid it no heed, for there would have been no point except to fuel his guilt and regret.

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Chapter 13

Annais's first glimpse of Montabard was through the teeming rain of a thunderstorm. Milky purple lightning sheeted the sky behind the hills and was split by jagged whips that cracked from air to ground. The rumble of the thunder seemed to come from above and below, as if the mountains and the clouds were a part of each other and straining to touch. So loud was the noise, so full the vibration, that even had she screamed she would not have been heard. The gullies at the roadside had become gushing silver torrents and the road itself was fetlock-deep in mud.

Her cloak of light wool now weighed like a hauberk as the rain saturated through the fibres. Water streamed down her face. She felt it pooling in the hollow of her throat, running down the back of her neck and seeping into her garments. Gerbert had told her earlier in the day that they would reach Montabard in the late afternoon. It was that now, she thought, although the force of the storm had sucked all the natural light into its dark heart and they were riding by the eerie glow flickering through the clouds. She was awestruck and a little cowed by God's mightiness, her eyes stretched wide and her heart pounding with fear. But she felt the merest touch of exhilaration too.

Gerbert, who had been ahead with the scouts, returned to her, his large bay splashing through the downpour with a high, dished gait. Water dribbled steadily off the nasal bar of his

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helm, and his surcoat clung in sodden transparency to his mail.

'Just ahead!' he bellowed in between the growls of thunder. 'We have to climb! Shall I put you on a lead rein?'

She shook her head and motioned to say that she was all right. He nodded approval and, with face screwed up against the downpour, continued down the line.

Moments later, Sabin rode up and paused at her bridle. The grey shone like molten silver in the weird light, and Sabin's expression was blazing with joy.

'Is it not glorious?' he yelled.

Annais blinked at him through water-spiked lashes. 'Indeed!' she cried at the top of her lungs, but in order to be heard rather than out of elation. She blew a spray of rain from the crevice between her upper lip and her nose.

He laughed and dug in his heels. She watched the grey disappear into the deluge, like a creature created from cloud and rain. The path grew more slippery and treacherous as the ground began to rise, becoming increasingly steep. Hooves slithered in the mud. Small stones bounced away down the mountainside and the path became narrower, with no room for anyone to ride abreast and give her reassurance. Annais stared straight ahead. Although the rain obscured much of the view, she still did not want to look down and thanked God that her mare was placid. The thunder had made some of the horses skittish and difficult. As they continued to climb, Annais thought that she could see blocks of quarried and mortared stone rather than rough gouges of natural rock. At first, she thought it was an illusion of the rain, but, narrowing her eyes, found that she was indeed staring at a castle wall. It was so high that she had to crane her neck to see the battlements. It made Tel Namir look like a child's toy.

The sheet lightning flickered dementedly and a bird flew out from a niche in the stone, a dark shape against the swollen purple and silver. A rock dove, she thought, but the wings were like scythes and she realised that it was some kind of falcon. The sighting was brief, for the bird was swallowed up in the

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downpour and she had to concentrate on guiding the mare as the path narrowed yet again to what seemed no more than a goat track.