A Blood Red Horse (11 page)

The abbot nodded. “Then that is your answer,” he said, and called his monks to order.

“Oh well,” said Brother Andrew to himself as he helped the abbot chivy the monks into the cloister, “thank God I was born a man.”

When William and Ellie got back to Hartslove, the groom removing the panniers found that they were not quite empty. At the bottom of one was a tiny, sealed box wrapped in parchment. Puzzled, Ellie unwrapped it. On the parchment was a beautifully decorated letter
E
, and on the box some other letters and words.

“What is it?” asked William, leaning over her shoulder. “It is special ointment,” said Ellie, taking a wild guess. “It's for horses—or people—close to death.”

William looked disbelieving.

“How do you know?” he asked. “You can't read.”

“I can, a bit,” retorted Ellie. Then she added loftily, “Ointments like these are something only women know about. I am afraid you wouldn't understand.” With that, she opened her eyes very wide and gave him an innocent smile.

William stared hard at Ellie, but she said nothing more, just raised her eyebrows and sailed up the steps leading to the great hall. For one tiny moment a fleeting memory of his mother passed through the boy's mind.

Hartslove was alive with people assembling for the crusade. When William followed Ellie into the hall, it was to find that Gavin had returned from Richard's court.

After leaving Hartslove in disgrace just over two years earlier, he had conducted himself with commendable
bravery in the north before being summoned to help the new king stamp his own authority on a kingdom he knew almost nothing about. Gavin was thinner, and his face had lost its boyish roundness. He looked like a knight a father could be proud of.

Sir Thomas stood with Old Nurse to watch how the two brothers greeted each other.

“Gavin!” said William, taken by surprise.

“William,” said Gavin.

They shook hands. Then Gavin, shuffling slightly, asked to see Hosanna, and the brothers went down to the stables together. Sir Thomas did not know what was said, but an hour later both boys had come into the great hall looking a little easier in each other's company. Sir Thomas and Old Nurse exchanged glances. William was growing up, too.

At dinner that evening Sir Thomas was again struck by his sons' deep voices, and marveled at how Ellie, despite occasional lapses, was blossoming from a grubby urchin into a young lady.

“I have almost reached my allotted years on this earth,” he said to Sir Percy as he chewed on a leg of lamb and watched Ellie push back her hair to reveal a face of distinctive if rather unconventional beauty.

Sir Percy nodded. “Very likely, Thomas,” he said. “But you can be proud of your children. And that Ellie, well, orphaned she may have been, but she has lacked for nothing.”

Sir Thomas sighed. At the back of his mind was a growing certainty that he would not return from the crusade.

“I shan't see my grandchildren,” he confided as dinner drew to an end. “But in time, Ellie will make a fine mother for them.”

After dinner Gavin found himself standing in front of the fire with Ellie at his feet. She was playing with William's dog. Like his father, he, too, had been struck by her unconscious new elegance, and even though he had given her few thoughts when he was away, now he found himself suddenly in awe of her. In all his travels no other girl had had this effect on him. As a boy, Gavin had always enjoyed teasing Ellie. But now, an experienced knight, he found himself unable to think of anything appropriate to say. As Ellie murmured to the dog Gavin felt increasingly frustrated.

He coughed. Ellie took no notice. Gavin gave up. Even though he had been back only a short time, he could already see that she was going to find it harder than William to forgive his treatment of Hosanna. He stared down, not knowing how to put matters right between them. For half an hour he watched her play with the dog and did nothing at all. Eventually Ellie got up and, after exchanging a joke with William, slipped away.

Gavin gave one of the logs a vicious kick and sent sparks up the chimney.
Women!
he thought to himself, and decided to avoid Ellie if he could.

Ellie herself walked slowly up the steps to the women's quarters. After a frantic whispered chat with Will during dinner, she was quite prepared to forgive Gavin over Hosanna and even forget about her humiliation on the morning Gavin had left for the north. But the truth was, she found herself unable to treat him as she once had. Something was different. Instead of Gavin just being an ordinary part of Hartslove life, she found his presence disturbing. This was nothing to do with Hosanna. Ellie did not know what it
was
to do with. As Old Nurse brushed her hair and helped her with her nightgown she
was irritable. She needed somebody to talk to, and somehow William did not seem the right person. She briefly contemplated confiding in Old Nurse but dismissed the thought. Old Nurse was far too old to understand the feelings of a girl of fourteen. “When she was fourteen, if, indeed, she ever was,” Ellie muttered to herself, “it must have been during the time of the Barbarians.”

The following morning, running back from the stables, Ellie ran slap bang into Gavin in the courtyard.

“Heavens, Ellie!” he said as they disentangled themselves. Ellie said nothing, but to her acute embarrassment and fury, she knew she was blushing.

Gavin stood aside to let her pass, but as she did so, his resolution to avoid contact with her melted away. He touched her arm.

“Ellie,” he said awkwardly, not quite knowing what words were going to emerge, but feeling that anything was better than nothing. “I know you would prefer to end up with Will rather than me, but I'm the oldest, so we'll both have to make the best of it—unless a Saracen arrow meets its target, that is.”

Ellie could not think of a suitable reply, so they stared at each other for a bit before Gavin stepped aside and was gone. After that Ellie was in even more of a muddle than before.

There were several things still to do before the de Granvilles left for the Holy Land. William, now nearly seventeen, must be made a knight—“dubbed to knighthood” as he rather pompously told Hal. Then, Gavin and Ellie must be betrothed. They should really be married and a son conceived before Gavin went on crusade, but Sir Thomas somehow could not bear to think of Ellie facing all that with only Old Nurse for company.

“The de Granville inheritance is in God's hands,” he told himself. “God looks after crusaders and will surely keep at least one of my boys safe.”

It was decided that William's dubbing to knighthood would take place in July at Vezelay in France, where the king had arranged for all the crusaders to meet so that all the nobles from his huge empire, together with the king of France and his men, could set off together. This meant that Ellie could not witness it, and she was very disappointed. However, being dubbed to knighthood by the king himself was too powerful an opportunity to pass by just to please a girl.

Gavin and Ellie's betrothal was a simple affair conducted at Hartslove with the minimum of fuss. Everybody found it uncomfortable. Old Nurse cried, and Gavin and Ellie gabbled their responses. After the traditional feasting and dancing were over, William found himself filled with unfamiliar emotions that would not let him sleep. Until he saw them standing side by side and making their promises, he had never really thought seriously about Gavin and Ellie having a future together. It had always been a bit of a joke. Now that it was no longer a joke, William found he did not like it. After they all retired to bed, he tossed and turned, the picture of Ellie dancing with Gavin playing itself over and over in his mind. He found himself oddly affronted that she had not looked more unhappy. It was a relief, the next morning, to put Ellie out of his mind as he surveyed the crusading preparations.

Saddlers, fodder merchants, silversmiths, armorers, wheelwrights, farriers, and all manner of men and women were beginning to arrive and encamp in the castle courtyard. Over the next few weeks, so many turned up that they spilled outside the great curtain wall, creating a small,
busy village. Carts, both open and closed, together with horses of all shapes, sizes, colors, and temperaments, jostled for room in the Hartslove stables or were tethered in the jousting field. Grooms and squires set up home in pavilions and tents, attracting the usual crowd of entertainers, petty thieves, and those seeing the chance to make a quick shilling by offering every kind of service from laundry to tooth-pulling. The parish priest began performing a quick trade in confessions.

The clang of hammer on anvil echoed for miles. When the weather allowed, the noise was of trees being felled as thousands upon thousands of arrows were made and tipped with steel. Crossbows were strung together for the arbalesters. Swords, spears, lances, mallets, and clubs formed huge ugly piles, and horse equipment, from saddles, stirrups, and bits for bridles, to ropes and silken blankets, was strewn over every inch of the spring grass. Everybody got under everybody else's feet until by the beginning of Lent, Sir Thomas, losing patience, ordered the knights to take their squires and grooms and go hunting or hawking. Whatever they did, he begged them to be sure to stay out all day.

“Take advantage of the spring sunshine,” he told them. “Help yourself to Hartslove's game. Just GET OUT!”

In all this commotion Old Nurse was in her element. She organized thousands of meals, boxed the ears of those she found asleep in places she did not think fit, and made sure, in her own way, that life for Sir Thomas, despite the takeover of his home, was still tolerable. The knights, old, young, ragged, and rich, teased her, to which she responded with a steely glare and a fine line of oaths. She knew all about knights. They were supposed to be full of honor and glory. Why, then, did so many things
mysteriously disappear whenever they came to call, and who was it who had peed all over Sir Thomas's finest tapestry, made, with many tears and mistakes, by his late wife? Bad enough that King Richard was charging an extra tax, the Saladin tithe, to pay for this war. She was not having the knights make a pauper of Sir Thomas, as well as the monstrous Saladin, whom Old Nurse cursed daily in her prayers. She never seemed to sleep, and many was the knight who had his own rest disturbed by Old Nurse feeling under his blanket to see if anything had been secreted away. Nobody was too grand not to feel the sharp end of her tongue or her prying fingers. Sir Thomas, in a quiet moment, made sure that she knew of his appreciation by handing over a pouch of gold and one of his late wife's rings. He said nothing, but they understood each other very well.

Finally in mid-May, just when it seemed Hartslove could stand no more, and the crusading rhetoric from the priests was at its most fanciful, Sir Thomas declared that they were off.

The night before departure, Ellie and William snatched a moment or two together. Ellie, try as she did to hide it, was distraught at the thought of everybody leaving. This made William very uncomfortable, and he determined that their farewells would not be prolonged. He felt much too keyed up to be of any comfort to somebody being left behind. They arranged to meet after dinner in Hosanna's stable.

When Ellie arrived, William was already there, Hosanna's head over his shoulder. Ellie greeted the horse before she turned to William, hoping to keep control of her voice.

“So,” she said, “this is the moment everybody has been waiting for.”

William stroked Hosanna's nose with a hay stalk, which the horse tried to catch. Both William and Ellie laughed, but their laughter was not sincere. Ellie's soon turned into a sob, which she tried to hide by blowing her nose.

“It's dusty in here,” she said rather lamely.

There was an awkward silence, which William broke first.

“Take care of Sacramenta,” he said.

Ellie nodded. Hosanna moved back into his stable, and William and Ellie found themselves looking straight at each other. They stood in silence for a moment or two before William's heart melted. He took a deep breath and succumbed to an increasing and overwhelming desire to put his arms round her. He buried his face in her hair as they clung to each other as they had when they were children.

“I'll be back.” William's voice was muffled. “You'll see, Ellie. After the king has ridden into Jerusalem, I'll ride Hosanna back over the Hartslove drawbridge.”

Then he fled so that she should not see that his face was flaming as red as Hosanna's coat.

When Ellie eventually left Hosanna's stable, her cheeks were streaked with tears. She did not see Gavin standing by the door until he caught her arm. They had spoken little since their betrothal, for Gavin had been busy and Ellie had not sought him out. This evening, he had followed William into the stables and, while William and Ellie had been with Hosanna, had been sitting with Montlouis, trying to get his own thoughts in order.

Ellie suddenly felt quite weak.

Gavin stared at her. He swallowed before he spoke.

“Can I give you back this little dog?” he asked, producing, to Ellie's surprise, the wooden toy that she had dropped in the gutter when Gavin had left Hartslove in disgrace. “I would like you to have it again.”

Ellie, wishing her nose were not running, took it.

“I didn't know you'd picked it up,” she whispered. “I'll keep it in my pocket. Take care of …”

“Yes, I'll take care of my father and Will,” Gavin interrupted. “And I'll do my best for Hosanna, too. Now, I'd better go and find Sir Percy. Father wants to make sure he has everything he needs. Try to keep Old Nurse from emptying the cellar while we are away. Whoever returns from this adventure will be in need of a drink.”

Ellie smiled wanly and, clutching the wooden dog, watched him turn and disappear.

Early the following morning, the whole panoply of knights, grooms, soldiers, mechanics, farriers, cooks, laundresses, and baggage-masters required to keep the war machine going gathered together on the tournament field for Abbot Hugh to bless. Brother Ranulf, clutching the ring made of Hosanna's hair, prayed hard for the gleaming red stallion, who seemed to him to embody the noble essence of the crusade. Brother Andrew came, too, and slipped Hosanna a sweet cake fortified with mead as a farewell offering. Hosanna wrinkled his lips and made Brother Andrew laugh out loud.