Fire Song (34 page)

Fenice guessed that if they traveled alone, Aubery would want to move as quickly as possible, but if she admitted to fatigue, he might feel it was better to remain with the large English party for safety’s sake. Thus, she was actually glad to have a few hours to herself so that she could rest, even sleep, which she would not have dared to do if Aubery had been with her, and after her meal was served, she lay down on the bed.

On his arrival at the guildhall, Aubery was divided between amusement and anxiety when he was ceremoniously led to the table of honor. It was, he realized, a natural result of his arrival in Warwick’s party and the grand clothing he was wearing. Since he did not wish to suffer the embarrassment of having the highborn guests already seated there reject his company, he was about to protest. However, he was welcomed warmly by Warwick and William Mauduit and introduced to Philip Marmim, who nodded cordially enough, although he was using his mouth to take in a huge swallow of wine.

Aubery politely seated himself at one end of the short, cushioned bench to Warwick’s left—the place of least consequence—leaving room for one or two other men on that bench and two or three more on the bench closest to Warwick’s chair. There was another chair next to Warwick for the mayor, who was not yet present. Aubery wondered, again with mingled amusement and anxiety, whether Warwick knew who his dinner partner was to be. He hoped the proud earl had been warned in advance and had come to accept the situation since he did not relish the thought of insulting his hosts by argument or withdrawal.

Then it struck Aubery as very odd that the chief host was not already present to welcome his guests. Nor, he saw, glancing up the table, were the places of the other, more important town officials filled. He was about to remark on this peculiar circumstance when Seagrave was shown to the table by the same man who had escorted Aubery. While Seagrave was being greeted and seated, the mayor and the others arrived. They seemed a trifle breathless and harried, and although Aubery kept his face expressionless, he was amused once more. Probably, he thought, they were not accustomed to such exalted guests and had been running about to see that the dinner and service would be properly grand.

The mild, private sense of fun put Aubery in a good humor, which was reinforced when he found that only one other man would share his bench. Three diners would have put them in rather close quarters, and as the meal progressed he would almost certainly have been splashed with wine or gravy. Now, unless the servers were particularly inept, he need only take care with his own food, and right on the heels of his thought the first course arrived.

Usually the host was expected to begin the talk, but since Aubery’s table companion was silent, he remarked politely on the cordiality with which he and his fellow travelers had been welcomed by the commune of Pons. To his surprise, the official cast him a most peculiar look before he mumbled an appropriate reply. Feeling sorry for the man’s evident embarrassment at being in elevated company, Aubery tried again, making what he thought would be a soothingly inane comment on the probability of fair weather for traveling over the next few days.

This time the glance flashed at him was frightened, and the man’s voice was just a shade too loud as he replied, “Yes, yes, of course. I hope so.”

Since his attempts at conversation only seemed to be making his dinner partner more uncomfortable, Aubery desisted and addressed his full attention to the food, which was very good. The wine was excellent also, and it flowed unceasingly. Every time Aubery reached for his cup, it was full. Had his companion been more interesting—for the official did, as the meal progressed, offer a few stilted comments—Aubery would have enjoyed himself completely.

However, by the time the second course was served, Aubery began to wish the server would give him a chance to water his wine. The highly spiced food made frequent recourse to the wine necessary, and since Aubery was not a heavy drinker, he was beginning to feel the effects despite the substantial quantity of food he was eating. Once or twice Aubery put his hand over his cup after he drank from it to prevent its being refilled, but that did not solve the problem because there was no water on the table with which to fill the cup. And since he did not yet wish to mention to Warwick his plan of going on alone, he preferred not to ask for water and raise questions about why he was eager to be more sober than his companions.

Having accepted the inevitability of a miserable morning, Aubery resolved to enjoy the preceding potations—and he did. As the tide of wine rose higher, merry talk was shouted up and down the table among the English gentlemen, without regard to the officials of Pons who sat between them. Then, some time after the third course had been placed on the table, Aubery noticed that a different server was filling the cup of the man beside him. He laughed, drunkenly assuming that the commune was pinching pennies by providing cheap wine for themselves, but just as he was about to point out this mean-spirited parsimony to his noble companions, the great doors at each end of the hall burst open to admit a flood of armed men.

The lesser English knights at the tables closest to the ends of the hall were overwhelmed before they realized there was a threat. Surprise prevented even a shadow of resistance. At the more central tables, men began to strike out against their attackers, but they were all without any weapon more effective than an eating knife, and their assailants were not only armed but armored in habergeons and steel helmets.

Aubery sat watching, goggle-eyed, for as long as a minute before what he was seeing penetrated his drink-befuddled brain. But he was not as far gone as his companions, and he finally leapt to his feet, roaring, “They are taking only the English!”

“What does this mean?” Warwick shouted, trying to push his heavy chair back from the table and turning toward the mayor.

But the mayor had already slipped away, out of reach, and the armed men were advancing on the high table. With a single furious blow from his fist, Aubery felled the official who had been sitting beside him and had been unable to escape when Aubery rose, blocking his way. Aubery then seized the table and heaved with all his strength. The trestle top flew up and out, knocking down the few men-at-arms who were closest, and scattering food and liquid far and wide so that others slid and tripped on the unexpected obstacles. This gave Aubery time to seize the bench on which he had been sitting.

It was a well-made, heavy piece of furniture, but the outrage Aubery felt at the treachery of the commune of Pons let him handle it with ease. He swung in at those nearest him, legs forward, with all the power that fury lent his arms, and he bellowed in satisfaction as two men fell, one with the side of his face crushed to a bloody ruin. His backswing with the flat of the bench caught three more, and he let the weight of the bench pull him round to catch one attacker who had run around to take him from behind.

A blow struck him on the shoulder, but his grip on the bench did not loosen, and he paid the man who had hit him full measure for his temerity. That blow was so fierce that the legs broke, but Aubery turned the bench so that the edge was forward and swung again, shouting for Warwick and the others to join him. As a group, they could fight their way free. He had cleared a space around himself by then and realized that it was too late. Marmim, insensible from drink, was being carried out, and the others were being dragged off, staggering either from blows they were too slow to ward off or from drunkenness.

The brief respite showed Aubery that he was nearly alone in his resistance and could not win, but that only increased his fury—and he had one hope. If he were too hard a nut to crack, they might give up on him. Unfortunately, that hope was groundless. In the next moment, he was charged from all sides. The bench splintered against the steel blades of his opponents, and he dropped it, running at the nearest men with his bare fists. He would have been spitted had the men-at-arms not had strict instructions that they were to take prisoners and take them without wounds, for dead men brought no ransoms. It took five of them to subdue him, and even then he struggled, throwing them off until one man brought his weapon down on the side of Aubery’s head and knocked him unconscious.

More tired than she had acknowledged even to herself, Fenice slept away the entire afternoon, waking only after dusk as the room grew colder and colder because she had failed to feed the fire. She was frightened and confused for a few minutes but eventually remembered where she was and why she was alone. Fortunately, a few embers remained in the fireplace, and Fenice was able to light a candle from them. Once she had light, she rebuilt the fire, not wishing to summon a servant lest word somehow came to Aubery that she had slept so long.

Having thought of Aubery, she was seized by a qualm of doubt. Surely even a very elaborate dinner should not have lasted until dark. Then she shook her head at her foolishness. Naturally once her husband was caught up in the company of a large group of men without women, he would not wish to make himself a laughingstock by saying he must return to his wife. He would, of course, join the men in any amusement they proposed to fill in the hours until bedtime. Fenice hoped they would choose to drink and gamble rather than go whoring, but she knew she had no right to complain about whatever Aubery did. He was a miracle of constancy compared to Delmar.

Still, she was very disappointed as the evening wore on and Aubery did not come back. She had been a little surprised when the man-at-arms guarding the door had brought her evening meal to her himself, but she assumed those were Aubery’s orders and did not ask questions. Eventually, after playing her lute to amuse herself and embroidering for a while, she went to bed rather sadly. Every man, she told herself, must desire a little variety, even Aubery, and she must not act like a shrew, waiting up for him as if she, rather than God, was the arbiter of his conscience.

Fenice slept uneasily, waking periodically, each time more disappointed that her husband had not returned. When the sky was graying with dawn, she could lie abed no longer, and she rose and dressed, taking as long as she could over such details of her toilet as rubbing her teeth with green hazel and then wiping them with a woolen cloth, combing her hair into an unusually intricate coil before netting it, and buffing her nails until they shone. But still Aubery did not come, and she could only tell herself that he must have been tired enough, or drunk enough, to remain wherever he had come to rest. She would not permit herself to entertain the thought that any whore he had found could hold him so long.

But time passed. The gray dawn gave way to sunrise, and for the first time a fear other than that of Aubery’s possible preference for the pleasure a whore could give him began to creep into Fenice’s mind. She was certain he would not have stayed to break his fast with a whore. At first that notion was pleasant because it implied that he had shared quarters with a drinking companion rather than a woman when he decided it was too late to go back to his own lodgings. And perhaps he was sick from too much drink, she told herself. That might make him late in rising and slow to dress and leave.

The satisfaction she felt with this idea restored her appetite, and she went to the door to tell her guard to have bread and cheese and wine sent up to her and someone to empty the chamber pot. A ragged, filthy creature with a bucket that smelled to high heaven crept into the room in a few minutes to perform the latter task. Fenice stepped out of the way mechanically, without even noticing whether the servant was male or female, young or old. A few minutes later the man-at-arms again brought the food and drink to her himself, but this time he hesitated after setting down the tray.

“Have you a message from your master?” Fenice asked eagerly, and then, seeing that the man looked anxious, repeated herself more slowly in French and then tried to ask the question in English.

Apparently one of the three attempts, or part of each, got across to him because he shook his head and then slowly began to tell her something. It took several repetitions—again in a mixture of the two languages, for the man-at-arms knew only a few words of French—but he managed to tell her that there had been serious trouble in the town the previous afternoon while she had been sleeping. Several other English men-at-arms had taken refuge in the inn and told them that the wild behavior of the undisciplined mercenaries had provoked a riot. Toward the end of the tale, despite her growing anxiety, Fenice found it easier to make out what he was saying. The English words Arnald had taught her were coming back to her.

Although she felt more and more frightened by the moment, Fenice
knew that she must not show her fear. If she wept or acted hysterical, the men would not obey her. Lady Alys had explained that the lady of a manor could only hold the servants and men-at-arms to their work or the defense of the property if they respected her courage and judgment.

Thus, she said with spurious calm, “What is your name?” and when he had told her Oswald, she continued, “Very well, Oswald, go down and tell all the Englishmen in the inn to arm themselves and make sure they cannot be overpowered by the servants. Be quiet about it. Do not offer any threat to any person here, and tell the men to be watchful that the landlord does not send for the militia or anyone else to do us harm, and let a special watch be kept on the horses. After that, ask the landlord to come up to me. Leave the door open while he is in the room.”

When she was sure the man understood, which was not difficult to determine because an expression of great relief replaced his previous one of tense worry, Fenice waved him on his way, then drank some of the wine on the tray. She felt in urgent need of whatever strength the wine could give her. Her mind scurried in terrified circles.