The Falcons of Montabard (26 page)

'They will find no weaknesses at Montabard,' Gerbert said grimly.

'God help you if they do,' Joscelin replied. 'It is never wise to be complacent, but from what I have seen, you have strong defences and fine men to guard them.' He gave Sabin a soldierly belt on the shoulder. 'I won't keep you,' he said. 'I know you have duties to attend to and you look as if you're almost asleep on your feet.'

Sabin straightened. 'I can manage, my lord.'

The Count's full beard bristled as he smiled. 'No doubt, but every man should know his limits and when to let go ... and I say that as one who is frequently castigated for not doing so.'

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'Then if you will excuse me, my lords.' Sabin bowed again. His injury had set while he stood and it was agony to walk, but pride made him set one foot in front of the other. There was still much to do. Comrades to tend, a dead man in the chapel to be prayed for. Had he not been so tired he would have laughed at the notion that he thought he could ever flee responsibility. It had flung itself over his head like a kidnapper flinging a sack over a victim and it wasn't going to let him escape.

It had been moonrise when he arrived at Montabard. It was dawn by the time he dragged himself up the guardroom stairs, tottered to his pallet, and fell face down on it in a stupor.

Annais laid down her sewing and pressed her hand to her belly. There it was again, that tiny quiver of motion, not sufficiently strong to be seen or felt externally, but a distinct fluttering low down inside her. 'It moved again,' she said in a wondering voice.

Letice smiled. 'Aye, first babes usually do quicken in the fifth month,' she said. 'You are carrying well, my lady.'

Annais returned her smile. She had been swift to conceive; her flux had come once and then not again. Although she had heard that women suffered terrible sickness in the early months, her own experience had been of mild nausea. Indeed, if anything her appetite had increased, and she had already abandoned wearing the fitted gowns she had brought with her to Montabard. Her skin glowed, her hair was as glossy as satin and after initial feelings of tiredness she now possessed a boundless energy. Her air of wellbeing astonished Gerbert. His first wife had retired to bed at the missing of her first flux and had been desperately ill throughout her pregnancy. He had expected similar behaviour from Annais and when he found her turfing out coffers and supervising all manner of domestic sprucing he tried to make her rest. She might do herself harm, he said, she might miscarry. Sensible of his earlier experience, Annais indulged him to a degree, but could only sit for so long without becoming bored. Her sewing skills had improved beyond

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measure and the infant, when it was born, would have enough swaddling bands and cradle linen to see it through a dozen changes. She had devoted time to her harp playing and even composed several tunes with which she was well pleased. But in between humouring her anxious husband, she had employed herself with a couple of projects. 'Nest building' as Letice had said.

The bedchamber now boasted hangings of heavy Damascus cloth. The walls had received a fresh coat of limewash and Bedouin rugs in opulent colours relieved the whiteness. The plain coffers were mellow with beeswax polish and a colourful enamelled bridal chest stood beneath the window, its lid strewn with silk cushions. The original dinginess had yielded to a room that was bright and welcoming. She had recently set about doing the same for the guest hall, which had received no attention at all during the reign of her predecessor. Here too she had repeated the pattern of limewashed walls and rug hangings. When Gerbert questioned her bustle, she had told him that since she was overseeing, and not actually toiling, there could be no danger. The danger was that she would go mad with naught to do but contemplate her thickening waistline.

She was glad that she had taken a stand, and so was Gerbert after yesterday's visit. Joscelin of Edessa was a great lord, and at least they had had a guest hall worthy to house him. He had ridden out this morning with his entourage of Frankish and Armenian knights - after the corpses of the raiders had been hung in chains from the west wall of the castle. Annais had a strong stomach, but had preferred not to watch the bodies being strung up. Even so, the kites circling in the arches of sky through the open shutters were a grim reminder of what dangled there. By God's mercy and the birds' hunger, not for long. It had to be done; she understood that in a harsh land harsh measures were necessary, but still her heart was soft and she flinched. While Gerbert and Joscelin supervised the grisly duty, she had busied herself amongst the wounded. They had all been tended the previous evening when the patrol had ridden

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in, but there were bandages to change, stitches to check, tisanes to be administered. There had been no sign of Sabin, which was strange. She would have expected him present to witness the hanging of raiders . . . unless like her he had no desire to see the bodies dangled for the kites to pick clean.

She resumed her sewing. Within her womb, the child fluttered again, as if it had soft wings instead of limbs. 'Gerbert thinks that there is going to be trouble,' she murmured. 'He tries to keep it from me because I am with child, but I have seen the way he bites his nails when he thinks I am not looking.'

'I have heard nothing.' Letice focused intently on her own piece of sewing but Annais was not fooled.

'Oh come now.' She tossed her head. 'The knights talk freely in your presence . . . more treely than they do in mine.'

'Naught but rumours,' Letice said firmly. 'There is always trouble of one kind or another on these borders. You know yourself that Lord Gerbert worries small hills into great mountains.'

Annais frowned. 'Indeed he does, but I would like to know what manner of small hill he has worried into a mountain this time?'

'The Emir Balak has broken the truce made with King Baldwin earlier this year. There has been fighting around Zerdana which lies just outside our territory.'

'Is that why Count Joscelin is here?'

'Part of the reason. The other is that he is genuinely passing through on his way elsewhere.'

Annais continued to sew and tried to stem her irritation. It was not Letice's fault that Gerbert saw fit to leave his wife in ignorance. It was useless telling him that she worried more for not knowing, because he wouldn't listen. 'So that is why those men were hanged from the walls - as a sign to others of the fate of all who raid Montabard's lands.'

'I think so,' Letice said. 'And it reassured Count Joscelin. He needs to know that his allies have the strength and stomach for war if it comes.'

'I...' Annais glanced up at a loud knock on the door. Soraya,

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Durand's wife, went to answer it and found Sabin's young squire Amalric standing on the threshold. His fair hair stuck up in spikes as if he had just risen from his bed and his tunic was festooned with stalks of straw. Obviously he had been sleeping in the stables.

Annais beckoned him into the room and, when she saw the look on his face, was filled with concern. 'What is the matter?'

The youth shuffled his feet. 'My lady, could you look at Sir Sabin? I think he is sick. I brought him a cup of wine to waken him, but he would not rouse, and he was hot to the touch.'

The women exchanged glances. 'I'll come at once,' Annais said, beckoning her women and directing Letice to fetch the satchel of nostrums. As they left the bower and descended the stairs, Annais questioned the youth.

Amalric screwed up his face. 'Sir Sabin was very tired when he returned last night, and, yes, I think he was injured because he was limping. He left me to tend to Lucifer and said he had to speak to some of the men. When I went to rouse him this morn, I could not.'

'Mayhap it is just exhaustion,' said Letice. 'He constantly pushes himself to his limits.'

'I hope you are right,' Annais replied grimly.

She was panting by the time she had climbed the stairs to his chamber. Amalric had left the door open and the shutters wide to admit light and air to the room. Clutching the stitch in her side, Annais walked slowly to the bed. Sabin was sprawled face down and head turned slightly to one side on the heavy cotton coverlet. His tanned skin was flushed and sweat gleamed in the hollow of his throat. He had not shaved while on patrol and thick beard stubble outlined his jaw, chin and upper lip. He was still clothed in his gambeson, although swordbelt and mail had been removed and draped across his coffer. The smell of sweat and clothes that had been lived in for far too long rose from him in miasmic wafts - as did the heat. Amalric was right: Sabin was feverish.

She shook his shoulder and called to him. At first, he did not

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respond, but, finally, she was rewarded with a groan and a fluttering of groggy lids. It was pointless asking him if he was all right, for it was obvious he wasn't. His eyes, which were usually a clear green-gold, were now as opaque as muddy stones.

'Let me be,' he growled.

'You are sick; we have come to tend you.' She laid her palm to his brow, then felt the beating of his pulse, steady but as swift as a hurrying river.

'Tend or torture . . . both the same.' He rolled on his back. Blood had saturated the right cuff of his gambeson and dried to a dirty brown almost as far as the elbow. Horrified at the sight, she took his wrist and examined it for a deep cut, but, although there were bruises, the skin was unbroken.

'Not mine,' Sabin slurred.

Annais recalled Amalric saying that Sabin had been limping. She turned her attention to his legs, but there was no sign of blood here either. When she raised his gambeson and tunic to inspect above his knees, he gave a cracked laugh.

'Jesu, the best offer I have ever had from you and I'm in no case to take advantage.'

Annais glared at him. 'If you were not delirious with fever, I would slap you,' she said. 'Where are you wounded?'

'I took a spear in the foot.' He raised himself up to look down his body. He was more awake now, but it was not an improvement.

'And you haven't had it seen to?'

'No time at first, and when there was, I didn't care.' He slumped back on the bolster.

Clucking her tongue, Annais went to the end of the bed and looked at his boots, which he hadn't removed. The right one was intact. The left one bore a sliced incision. Dust and dirt had caked over the blood that had soaked through the tough leather. Her stomach turned and she felt the first roll of queasi-ness for a month. The boot would have to be eased off to discover what lay beneath, but she did not want to see a disabling injury.

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'You are looking at me as if I'm your favourite horse with a broken leg,' Sabin said huskily. 'I give you permission to dispatch me if it's unmendable . . . although I might still be good for stud duties.'

'If you were not babbling and out of your wits, I would gag you with your own leg bindings,' Annais snapped.

'Hah, I'm sure you can think of better ways to get your revenge.'

Annais opened her mouth, looked at him, and changed her mind. She could see him clearly as a small boy, as an adolescent, as a fledgling adult, holding brazen against fear and pain. It was a shield, she thought, and he would rather die than let anyone pierce through to his vulnerable core. What he needed the most - and the least - was mothering.

'Indeed I can,' she said and, kneeling, unfastened the horn toggle at the side of his boot, cupped his heel and gently tugged. She felt him stiffen and heard his breath hiss through clenched teeth, but he did not cry out. There was a slicing wound to the ball of his foot and the fleshy cushion of his largest toe. It was ingrained with dirt and in need of cleaning and stitching but, as far as Annais could tell and providing his fever did not worsen, it did not threaten his life.

'Bring water,' she said to a maid, 'as hot as your hands can bear. And a crock of honey from the kitchen stores.'

'Honey?' Letice looked at her.

'Mother Prioress at Coldingham always swore by honey as a healing ointment for wounds, and it worked. Even those with badly inflamed cuts used to mend swiftly.' She told another maid to have two men haul a wooden bathtub up to the room and set about divesting Sabin of his other boot. 'You should have had yourself tended last night,' she reproached him. 'Surely you have seen how swiftly injuries can fester in this climate?'

'Do you nag Gerbert too?'

Compressing her lips, Annais rose from her knees and bade the two remaining maids undress him. 'Gerbert has more sense

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in his little finger than you have in your entire body,' she muttered as she rummaged in the nostrum satchel for the feverfew and willowbark that would cool his body and eventually dull the edge of his pain. There was tincture of white poppy too, if necessary, and leaves of the hemp plant - a substance favoured by the Saracens.

'Likely you are right.' He surrendered to the ministrations of the women who stripped him of all save his braies. The bathtub arrived, was filled with water at a little below blood-heat and the two male attendants removed Sabin's braies and helped him into it. The maids set to with olive-oil soap, while Sabin leaned his head against the edge of the tub and endured with taut jaw and closed eyes.

'Drink this.' Annais pushed a steaming cup into his hands.

Sabin gave her a look through heavy lids. 'Does your child know what a formidable mother it is going to have?'

She turned her back on him, ostensibly to kneel at the other end of the long, oval tub and examine his injury now that it had been cleaned by the water, but also so that she would not be tempted to enter into a sparring contest with him. It was his defence, she reminded herself; and he would have to be dying before he let her through.

She heard him drinking the brew, and the mutter beneath his breath at the bitter taste. She supposed she should have sweetened it with some of the honey reserved for his wound, but then decided he didn't deserve it. With grim thoroughness, she cleaned the cut. His body went rigid, but he did not complain or make a sound; however, it was telling, she thought, that he also omitted to make any flippant remarks. She suspected that for the nonce they were beyond him.