By Right of Arms (17 page)

“But, Sir Hyatt, you were generous at De la Noye, and now there are two hundred or more who silently despise you. They are subdued, but how do you know they will change their fealty? Would it not have been better to lay them down, once and for all, and remove the threat, finally?”

“And hang up my bridle and lance, to spend each hour working the soil so that I might eat? Nay, the very serfs who hate and fear me will feed me. This is not a tournament, but a war. That which is won in a single stab of my lance is useless to me. Fealty pledged in a weak and fearful moment will cut my throat when I sleep. I have more respect for a man who comes to his loyalties through long and careful consideration than one who surrenders in sheer fright and is spared, later to reconsider and decide he was hasty in his first decision.”

“Is that why you did not insist that the Sire de Pourvre’s men-at-arms swear fealty to you?”

“Their lord was not yet cold in his grave. Any oath to me would have been wrought of sheer survival. I spared them the punishment I would levy for betrayal. Yet … I did not give them their arms. When fealty comes from any of them, it will be a true oath. And from some it will come.”

“And those who will not swear to you?”

“Some will flee. Some will plot or attack and be caught. But in time, all will be accounted for.”

The younger knight shook his head, trying to assimilate so many crafty designs. “You must be certain of your plan, Sir Hyatt, for you take your rest at the side of the former lord’s woman.”

Hyatt nodded, but silently his thoughts were protesting such a statement. Someday, he thought, she will admit that she was never Giles’s woman.

* * *

Father Algernon had never confronted Lady Aurélie on any issue since her first arrival at De la Noye. There had never been reason, for Giles so strongly supported the Church and this priest that no other ally was necessary to him.

Aurélie had expected some words from the ecclesiastic, and was frankly surprised that he had waited so long. But then, he had been silent only until Hyatt and his large number had departed.

“I have not heard your confession and you have not taken communion, my lady,” he said to her as she was leaving the chapel after matins.

“I cannot partake of the Blood and Body without first atoning for my sins, and I cannot atone.”

“I will give you absolution when you name them.”

She felt a rueful smile touch her lips. “I have done nothing of which you or God is unaware. What is your penance?”

“My lady.” He bristled. His voice was a subdued whisper, but she could not miss the anger in his eyes. “You could begin by confessing your hatred for your priest, and atone for that.”

“It is not within my power to hate you, Father. I am pleased that you are unharmed, and that these English accept the mass and communion from you, though they know you were for Giles.”

“They do not pay me,” he complained.

“You have taken an oath of poverty,” she countered.

“My own poverty … not the poverty of the Church.”

“Ah,” she said, remembering the argument quite clearly. That had been the cause for such depletion of funds, as she recalled only too well. Since the great site of ecclesiastic pomp resided in the Avignon papacy, there had been a priority on the buying and selling of favors. Philip of Valois had raised substantial funds for his armies by keeping certain offices vacant and selling positions. This blasphemy had helped Giles, for he had not wanted to fight and could buy his absence quite easily from King Philip. Only the highest bishops might wear cloaks of greed in their actual threads, and Father Algernon might indeed be dressed as if impoverished, but Aurélie had always known that their true wealth was in the power of the promises they traded. Giles, like Father Algernon, had been filtering money into the fleshpot of the Church for many years, attaining the purity of spirit and rising within the political ranks of the Church to guarantee a high level of eternity in heaven. Or so he might have thought. Aurélie’s prayers were that her late husband had actually, finally, gotten some spiritual reward, for those left among the living had definitely paid the price.

Father Algernon did not fool her, and never had. But he was their only priest.

“Lady, do you mean to cut this castle free of the bonds of God and life eternal?”

“Nay, Father. We must continue to live as righteously as possible and pray for our salvation.”

“What of benefices? The dispensation of Holy Rights? The salvation of the dead?”

“One of those dead is the Sire de Pourvre. I do not doubt his salvation. Could you?”

Algernon’s face grew hard and dark. His shock of thick white hair stood like snow on a shady mountain. He did not like to argue with a woman. “He died unshriven. He died without a final prayer. Cannot you bring this Englishman to do the honorable thing and buy a final prayer for the dead?”

“Nay, Father, I think you are lucky he did not burn the chapel and turn you out. You will not find in Sir Hyatt what you had in Giles. He will give the Church only what he deems honest and fair, and he is little concerned about damnation. He has already made many harsh criticisms of Giles’s devotions.”

“And I imagine you agreed,” he said snidely.

“Nay,” she shot back. “Nor did I defend him, but I bid you remember that while some bishop in Avignon wears scarlet robes, we are now the captured serfs of an English warlord.”

“God will never forgive you,” the priest solemnly confided. “You have always resisted the tithe and many times you hid money from your husband so that it would not fall the way of the Church. I think you urge the English bastard to abstain. I shall pray for you, for it is my obligation to be generous with sinners. It is not too late for you to amend this blasphemy.”

“When I see the hand of God reach from the sky into the pocket of the Church, I shall change my mind. Now all I see is waste; had you urged Giles to spend his money on arms and food we would not be so helpless now. And you could have done it, Father. But instead you bought favors in the Church. If Sir Hyatt becomes angry and turns you out, will they take you in Avignon and make you a bishop?” When he did not answer, she smiled confidently.
“Homo mercator vix aut numquam potest Deo placere.”

The priest’s eyes grew round with wonder as he listened to her announce, in perfect Latin, the statement that had won so much power and money for the Church.
A man who is a merchant can seldom if ever please God.

“I think it does not matter what you are trading in God’s eyes, Father. Whether it is forgiveness, mercy, power, or divinity, God must surely frown on the sale of it.”

The priest was astonished at this ingratitude and it showed fiercely in his eyes. Aurélie almost laughed at the sight. “Could I have lived with him so many years and not know his rhetoric?”

“Giles was pure, but you are a whore to give yourself to the conqueror. Better you should take your own life and …”

“Even whoredom shines in the face of taking one’s own life, as the Book teaches. Yea, Giles schooled me well in scripture, for ’twas he who was so tormented by love of divinity that he wished to die, finally, to end his waiting and reach that sparkling realm you promised to sell him.”

“You take a very grave chance, woman, that you and every person in your demesne will be excommunicated.”

“I have lost everything else, Father. Why not that? But you would do well to keep your own losses small. There are still those here who will give you what you demand … some of them, I imagine, are among the conquerors. Tread carefully.”

She turned to go and heard his words at her back. “Your hatred finally shows. I wondered when it would. You were always jealous of the love and spiritual strength I shared with your husband.” The words caused her to stiffen as if slapped. Jealousy had never been the emotion she felt. Even though she had struggled with what it was she had felt, not knowing its name, she knew the feeling to be much deeper and more violent than that. “There is nothing more dangerous than to share learning with a woman. I warned him of that.”

She turned slowly. “Dangerous to whom, Father? A man in power … or just any man?”

“Why do you not urge Sir Hyatt to cast me out, if your heathenish sins can match his? Surely you would not miss me.”

“There are those here who do not know that they pay you for what would be theirs freely, if they but sought it. And though you accuse me of cardinal sins, I still need the power of divinity in the walls of this chapel to shed light on my own prayers for myself and my people. The place was built and blessed in good faith, and your greed has not yet darkened the spirit in which it was raised.” She smiled lazily. “My dower purse built it, which is why Giles urged his father to deal with mine for marriage. I was a child then and thought it was good to bring this, a holy place, as a marriage gift to my husband. I did not know what it would cost him.”

She moved from the chapel slowly, her hands clasped and her head down. She walked across the courtyard and was not questioned or halted as she moved through the gate to the outer bailey. At the farthest wall she was stopped by a youthful guard whose cheeks actually pinkened as he detained her.

“I should like to visit the graves,” she said quietly, keeping her eyes downcast to hide the rage that burned in them. “You should have no trouble watching me from the wall.”

He thought for a moment and then reluctantly had the door opened for her, keeping the bars back as she left. “Don’t be too long, my lady,” he urged, but she walked steadily away from him without reply.

The graves were too many and she shuddered, wishing that they had forced her to consent to a burning pyre rather than this remaining proof by the stone markers of the numbers lost. She found the central one, bearing no name as yet, and looked down at the dirt, trying to understand the emotion that rose to choke her throat.

Giles, she silently screamed. Why has this happened? Were you gentle and good, little knowing how Algernon used you? Did you mean to achieve something of righteous purity, of everlasting light, but instead descended into darkness to be ruined? I kept it all as your secret, your knowledge and prayers, but I was alone in knowing how tormented and troubled you were. The others saw you dressed in your monk’s habit, beating yourself in penance for sins you never committed and for which you should never have been forced to atone. If they do not scorn your memory now, they will soon, and they will speak of it more freely than in the past. And do you not see, now, from your place high on the wall of heaven, what it has cost? There is no de Pourvre son, no loyalty, or love. He came here
knowing,
Giles, that he could beat you because your only strength was that you longed to be weak.

“Oh Giles,” she sobbed aloud, falling to her knees at the end of his grave. “I have tried.” Her fists hit the dirt, which was already sprouting new grass. “I cannot pretend any longer. There was no value in what you did, yet I worked to hold together what you left untended, and even protected you from the slander that would surround your peculiar obsession. And now I work to hold your memory with a shred of respect, a small piece of decency. Dear God, let your soul be in peace. Let your years of pain and suffering have acquired you at least that much. Oh Giles, such lies. Such pain.”

She held her face in her hands, crouched there on her knees, and wept. She had not known the darkness she lived in until there was light. She had not known how to name the quiet, dull pain of Giles’s indifference, disguised as it was by impotent courtesy, a mien of kindness. She had always thought her husband selfless and pious, until Hyatt came and took their home as easily as one would bat a fly, and then finally, tragically, she could see Giles’s humility and submissiveness for what it was: an ugly, vile, sinful indulgence to serve only his own needs, sacrificing the lives and wills of all those people who depended upon him for strength. He had handed his life to a priest who promised him the very hand of God, but when the warriors came, God did not appear to save Giles’s people. But Giles was dead, and she missed him less every day.

It was not enough to see Giles’s weakness and reckon Hyatt’s strength. The battle cries may have dulled to whispers, but the war raged on. It was a hideous, secret war, a treacherous mistress who worked fervently to recapture her mate; deposed men-at-arms who carried hoes now, but in the fists of knights ready to fight and to set her home again on the battlefield; a conqueror in her bed who used her body with a troubadour’s smooth experience in his touch, and his devout promise never to love a woman. And there seemed nothing she could do. She could not slay the mistress, remove the hate from her soldiers’ eyes, bring Hyatt to love her … and even her prayers were made dirty by the silver that bribed the priest to buy them.

As she wept, she swore to do without even the costly prayers. If God could not hear her pleas without the tinkle of livres, then she would bear in darkest silence the agony of a deaf Savior. Yet, as if some inner spark of hope lay deep in her soul, she continued to pray as if God would hear. Save us from further tragedy. Let the end of pain come, dear God, let us live in peace and harmony …

She was unaware of any presence, divine or mortal. Girvin stood at the edge of the trees a short distance away. A stag that would feed a hearty number was curled lightly around his shoulders as if it weighed no more than a woolen shawl. He watched Lady Aurélie in silence, but the urge to go to her was strong. He had never before pitied a woman. And he doubted that anyone could give her the comfort and peace she needed, least of all Hyatt.

He turned and went back into the woods. It was better that she mourn in private. And he could not bring himself to let her see that his own eyes mirrored her pain.

* * *

“Come here,
slut,
and baste this meat.”

Aurélie stopped where she stood. The cruel, mocking sound of Faon’s demand sent prickles up her spine. She slowly turned from the bottom of the stair to assure herself that the command was issued to her, knowing full well that it was. Behind Faon, Aurélie saw the pained eyes of Perrine as she jostled Derek on her hip.