The Stone Rose (61 page)

A murmur of excitement ran through the ladies on the Duchess’s dais, dragging Gwenn from her abstractions. Wearily, she looked at the field.

At the far end of the lists, the King had climbed onto a grey charger that was richly caparisoned in azure and gold. A wooden replica of his shield had been set up on the central dividing barrier. After a token pass at his friend, Duke Geoffrey of Brittany, King Philip was to give the signal for the single combat to finish, and the day’s mêlée would begin. Penned in like cattle behind the gates, the chivalry of Christendom waited for this charge to be done. When the King’s baton fell, their turn would come. Dreaming of glittering prizes, and held back by a flimsy wooden bar, the knights were a mass of shifting helms.

Casually, smiling, King Philip of France tossed a jewel-encrusted gauntlet into the sand. The princes were to use spears. Confronting the King, at the near end of the field, was Duke Geoffrey. The Duke was astride a fearsome charger, black as sin. Decked in the Duke’s fluttering white and black colours, the Duke’s warhorse looked brash and bold enough to terrify his Royal opponent into submission. He twitched his flowing tail and tossed his plaited mane. The beast’s nostrils were flared and he was foaming at the bit. The sight unlocked a recollection of Waldin swearing to Ned that horses loved tournies as much as men. The black charger was as eager as the knights held in check behind the fence. Gwenn’s heart sat heavy in her breast.

Alan was at his Duke’s side. She saw him lift the Duke’s helm from his squire and hand it to him. She saw the Duke smile, address Alan, and then Alan stood aside while the Duke prepared to gallop at the King of France. A shield bearing the arms of Brittany was set up at his end of the lists. Everyone fell quiet, waiting for the trumpets to blare.

A huge white bird chose that moment to pass overhead and the flapping of the snowy wings came loudly through the expectant hush. The bird’s bill was wicked as a knife, its tail a pointed diamond. Oblivious of its audience, the bird beat upwards through a cloudless sky and circled in the heights. As the crowd turned their attention back to the princes in the arena, the bird began to lose height.

The princes’ charge was more of a show than the previous ones. A bond of friendship tied Brittany and France, and it was a mark of their trust for one another that they consented to take to the field. Not a drop of royal blood was to be shed, and to this end they must hold a spear, not a lance, and aim for their opponent’s shield on the fence.

The huge white bird dropped out of the sky and landed on the central fence, on Brittany’s shield. On the Duchess’s dais, a waiting-woman gasped. ‘It’s a raven, my lady! On your lord’s shield! Christ save him!’ Ravens were associated with death.

The Duchess looked on, impassively. ‘It’s a
white
raven,’ she said, sedately, ‘only black ones are evil.’

The trumpets sounded. Spurs flashed. Hoofs ripped through the sand.

The Duchess of Brittany’s waiting-woman gulped. ‘If you say so, my lady.’

‘I do.’ With inflexible calm, the Duchess shifted her eyes to where her husband was thundering full tilt across the lists.

The warhorses were closing on each other. It would have been all too easy for one of the princes to break their word and aim for the heart, but as they had arranged, they turned their spears aside at the last moment and hurled them into the wooden shields marked with their arms. Brittany’s spear hung, quivering in France’s colours. The crowd shrieked their appreciation. France’s spear thudded into the sand, the great white raven impaled on its point. Blood and feathers were everywhere. A wing flapped, once. There was a second’s silence before the crowd went wild. Gwenn felt sick.

The trumpets let out a clarion blast and one of the King’s heralds ran onto the field with the baton. The King threw it down. The gates opened at either end of the field and, pennons flying, the army of knights roared onto the sand.

The mêlée had begun.

Swirls of dust and sand lifted into the hot air, it was like looking into a sandstorm. There were so many twisting, fighting men, so many screaming, biting horses, that it was impossible to tell one combatant from another. Slowly the knights spread over the field. Some were down, and as the field began to clear, Gwenn was able to distinguish individuals.

There was Sir Raoul, she knew his colours now. Not content with losing one horse to his opponent at the jousting earlier, he was trying his arm in the mêlée. Gwenn did not think that his luck had changed, for his elaborate green and white caparison had been slashed to tatters and hung raggedly from his steed’s back. Sir Raoul kicked his mount into the press, and Gwenn lost sight of him. The King of France had judiciously left the field, no doubt holding the view that an army’s commander should never be put at risk. A dark flash caught Gwenn’s eyes. She saw the ermine, and a warhorse’s wide flaring nostrils, and an ebony tail streaming like a banner. Duke Geoffrey was in the thick of it – not for him the strategic withdrawal. She watched as he unhorsed a man and crimson blood mingled with the sand. The ducal sword waved in triumph and, with either supreme arrogance or supreme folly, Duke Geoffrey lifted his helmet in the air and grinned at his Duchess seated primly on her dais. The Duchess inclined her head. The Duke jammed his helm back on, dug his spurs in his mount’s flanks, and was off again.

Ned had gone from his place on the sidelines, but Gwenn picked out Alan. He was stationed by the palisade where the Duke’s arms were laid out. As the two cousins were not of the knightly class they were forbidden to venture onto the field of combat. Alan was watching intently, dark brows frowning with concentration, and knowing that he had to stay on the boundary, Gwenn was surprised when she saw him take a step forward as though he would enter the fray. Where was Ned?

Suddenly, gripped by a hideous premonition, Gwenn forgot about the heat. She forgot about the cramp in her thigh and stood up. Alan’s face was paler than the field of the Duke’s shield. He was tugging his sword out. He was shouting. He ran between two horsemen fighting it out centre field and was swallowed up by thrashing limbs. Where was Ned?

‘Sit down, Mistress Fletcher!’ Lady Juliana hissed. ‘You mar the view.’

But Gwenn couldn’t sit down. She stood, with her heart in her mouth, staring at the spot where Alan had been. ‘No, no,’ she muttered, in a daze. ‘Something...something dreadful is happening.’

‘Mistress Fletcher,’ the Lady Juliana spoke sharply, ‘if you’re ailing, you may withdraw.’

‘I’m not ailing. It’s...’ Gwenn gasped. Alan was in the middle of the action. He had sheathed his sword and was crouching, dragging the body of a man by the belt. The man’s flaxen hair was uncovered, and mired with sand and dust. There was blood on his chest. As Alan neared the northern gate, the gate nearest Gwenn, he bellowed. A marshal raced to assist him.

It was no knight that Alan was succouring.

Impossibly, it was Ned.

Lady Juliana had seen what was happening. She rose gracefully. ‘Come, Mistress Fletcher,’ she said, with the unruffled assurance of a woman who had tended men’s hurts on such occasions a thousand times before. When Gwenn made no move, she gently took her arm. ‘We’ll go to Sir Raoul’s pavilion and see what needs to be done.’

***

Alan had barely had time to lay Ned down on a pallet when Duchess Constance’s messenger arrived, chest heaving, at Sir Raoul’s pavilion. ‘Lady Juliana!’ the messenger panted, shoving his head unceremoniously through the tent flap. ‘The Duchess is calling for you, there’s been another accident!’

‘Another?’ Lady Juliana lifted her eyes from the bloody mess that had been Ned Fletcher’s chest and avoided looking at Gwenn.

‘My lady, you’re to come at once!’

Lady Juliana rocked back on her heels, secretly relieved at her timely reprieve. As God was her witness, she didn’t mind helping when a man had a chance. But Ned Fletcher was a doomed man and she did not want to be the one to tell his young, pregnant wife. ‘One moment, my man.’ She stared at Gwenn’s jawline. ‘Can you cope, my dear?’

‘I...I think so.’ Trembling fingers reached for Ned Fletcher’s slashed gambeson. ‘But there’s not much we can do, is there?’

Lady Juliana squirmed, unable to avoid such a direct question. ‘My dear, I’m afraid it’s only a matter of time. It’s tragic, such an unlucky blow. Both lungs are affected.’

‘
Both
?’ This from Alan.

‘Aye. With lungs, if one only is damaged, it is not necessarily a mortal blow. But two... It’s tragic. And when the bubbles of blood come to the mouth, you know the end is near.’ Lady Juliana pressed a linen cloth to Ned’s mouth, and displayed the stained cloth to the injured man’s wife and cousin.

Gwenn fixed her with agonised dark eyes. ‘You’re saying he’s going? That it’s only a matter of time?’

‘Yes.’

‘But there must be something we can do! We’ll try anything, won’t we, Alan?’

‘Anything. My lady, are you certain we can do nothing?’ Iron fingers sunk into Lady Juliana’s arm.

‘I’m sorry, Captain. He’s drowning–’

His wife stirred. ‘Ned’s drowning in his own blood. Oh, sweet Jesus. Ned.
Ned
.’

Gwenn felt Ned’s pain as if it were her own. If only there was something she could do to help him. She would sell her soul if it kept Ned alive. That morning Ned had been so happy, so excited. Ned was young. Ned was strong. He should not be dying. How could God destroy someone as kind and selfless as Ned? Where was the divine purpose in his death? And why had it been Ned who had stopped that lance? It might just as easily have been someone else. Why Ned? Why?

The ducal messenger was wringing his hands. ‘My lady, you
must
come,’ he said. ‘The Duchess has need of you.’

‘Yes, you’re needed elsewhere,’ Gwenn said, dully. ‘Thank you, Lady Juliana. We’ll manage.’

‘Good girl,’ Lady Juliana approved, briskly. She shook herself free of Alan’s grip, faltering only when she saw the impotent rage in his eyes. ‘I...I’ll see a priest is sent, so he doesn’t die unshriven.’ Lady Juliana picked up her skirts and fled.

She kept her word, and soon one of Duke Geoffrey’s chaplains arrived at Sir Raoul’s pavilion. He took one look at Ned and efficiently administered the last rites. This done, he hovered near the entrance, unwilling to leave until Sir Raoul’s squire had gone to God.

The pain in Ned’s chest had expanded and taken over the whole of his body. He couldn’t move. He could barely see for the black shapes which floated like dark wraiths across his sight. But he could hear. He could hear a sawing noise. It was very loud. He could also hear voices – Gwenn and Alan and someone else.

Ned wanted to speak to his wife. The sawing noise faded. He managed a pathetic gasp. ‘Gwenn?’ Was that him? He tried again. ‘Gwenn?’ When he had done, he was desperate for air, and as he laboured to drag in a breath the sawing noise recommenced, and he made the chilling discovery that the sawing noise wasn’t sawing at all – it was his lungs fighting for air.

‘Hush, Ned.’ Gwenn’s voice had a break in it, as though she were forcing back tears. ‘Try to rest. Try to regain your strength.’

Something light brushed across Ned’s brow. Her hand? A cloth? His senses were disordered and it was difficult to make the distinction. He couldn’t even tell whether he was lying on a palliasse or the bare earth.

‘Gwenn?’ He coughed, and pain shrieked along every nerve. Immediately that soft something feathered across his lips. He heard a sob, a smothered gasp, and dimly made out what she said.

‘Look, Alan, more blood. Ned, don’t leave me.’ Her voice dropped. ‘You’re all I’ve got. Without you...’

Ned tried to sit up, but his limbs were sleeping. He tried to make his lips give Gwenn the reassurance that she was asking for, but they would not work either. He gave up the struggle, resolving to rest as she had suggested, for then he would be able to tell her. In a moment he would have conserved the strength to remind her that he would never leave her. Never. Had he not sworn it?

For a time, the only sound in the tent was the harsh rasping of his breathing.

‘I don’t understand it,’ the priest murmured in an undertone to Alan, whom he recognised. ‘By rights your countryman should be dead already. He’s suffering greatly. If only we could ease his passage.’

Numb with grief, Alan watched Gwenn kneeling by his cousin’s bed, grasping those solid, waxen hands. He knew what was holding Ned from the brink of death. Gwenn was, with the tears in her eyes, and the catch in her voice, and the loving touch of her hand. It was Gwenn who was making Ned cling to life, and in so doing she was prolonging his agony, for Ned would never leave this earth while she was at his side, pleading for him to stay. Ned’s face had been blue when they had brought him here. Now it was like a death-mask, and yet he lived. It was cruel that his last moments should be tortured ones. Ned had never in all his young life tormented anyone. Alan thought he knew how he could ease his cousin’s passage to death. Yet he hesitated. ‘You swear there’s no hope?’ he whispered.

‘None. God is waiting for him.’

Alan nodded. He walked to the bed and held out his hand. ‘Gwenn? Come with me.’

Gwenn looked at him from a world of sorrow, eyelids swollen and red.

A cold stone lay in Alan’s belly. ‘Come.’ He bent, and taking her hand from Ned’s, enfolded it in his own. Ruthlessly ignoring her reluctance, he drew her into dazzling sunlight. ‘We’ll walk awhile.’

‘But, Alan, I want to be with him.’

‘No. It’s better for Ned if you come with me.’

In the shadowy pavilion, Ned stirred, and stretched his hand after his wife, while sooty flakes swirled in his vision. Weakly, his hand sank back. The pain was unendurable. God help me, Ned thought. Where’s Gwenn? He strained to see her, but impenetrable grey veils screened her from his sight. Ned’s search was not completely fruitless, for in a small recess of his fragmented consciousness he found a space, a heavenly space that was not all pain.

Gwenn? Gwenn?

The space was dark, but welcoming, because it contained no pain. Ned reached towards it, but his body and the pain he was enduring were weighing him down. Tentatively, he pushed his pain aside.