Girl In A Red Tunic (32 page)

     This man lived
here
?

     She turned her head to look at him. He had paced the length and breadth of the small room almost as if looking for something and, from the way he darted back to the door and peered outside, she wondered if he had expected to find someone here waiting for him.

     Oh, had it only been Josse!

     She was afraid. But I shall not show it, she resolved firmly; seizing the initiative, she said frostily, ‘You are not who you pretend to be. Why have you brought me here?’

     He spun round and stared at her. He was slightly shorter than she was and she felt a moment’s pride at this small advantage. Not that it would do her any good, she realised, for he would no doubt prove the stronger if she tried to wrestle with him and make a break for freedom.

     He did not answer her question. But, after a moment’s scrutiny, he said, ‘No, my lady Abbess, I am not a sheriff’s man. I serve nobody but myself.’

     ‘Who are you?’ she demanded.

     ‘You do not know?’ He looked amused. ‘You are an intelligent woman, I have been given to understand; I had thought that you might have guessed my identity.’

     Swiftly she thought. Someone was threatening her son, someone who seemed to know that he
was
her son and who had sent a vicious man to Leofgar’s house to search for something that had not been found. This someone was presumably still desperate to finish what he had set out to do and must feel that taking captive the Abbess of Hawkenlye was in some way going to help ... There was really only one person who this man could be.

     ‘You are Arthur Fitzurse,’ she said coldly.

     He pulled off his dirty cloak, revealing an expensive-looking tunic whose braid, she noticed when the light briefly caught it, was actually of poor quality and beginning to fray. And now he has brought me to this – this
place
, she thought, which, even if not his home, must be the best that he can find to fill his need, lowly and foul though it is. This man, she thought, with what felt like a surprising stab of compassion, tries too hard to achieve his illusion of respectability, education and wealth.

     She wondered why. She thought she could probably guess.

     ‘Please, my lady, be seated.’ He stepped forward and flicked at the surface of the narrow bench and she moved towards it and sat down as elegantly as she could manage, back straight and head held high, spreading her wide skirts gracefully around her.

     He watched her closely for a moment. Then he said, ‘I would tell you a tale, my lady, if you have ears to hear it?’

     He sounded as if he could only just control his eagerness. Feeling again that strange impulse of pity, she inclined her head and said, ‘You have employed deception to bring me here, from which discourtesy I deduce that your motive, whatever it may be, is of great importance to you. Very well, I will listen. What would you say to me?’

     He watched her for a moment longer then, as if he needed to concentrate and the sight of her was a distraction, turned away and, staring out through the mean little door, began to speak.

     ‘I am the only child of my mother,’ he said, ‘and for much of my life believed my father to have been a soldier killed in battle before I was born. As young fatherless children are wont to do, particularly if they are imaginative and male, I formed a secret picture of this man. He became in my eyes a hero, an Achilles, a Lionheart, and I told myself tales of his exploits in the Crusades and before the gates of Troy. I saw him as very tall, broad of shoulder, deep of chest, with a noble face like a Greek god. He was honourable, brave, modest in victory and considerate of his enemies and, naturally, he never lost a battle in his life.’ Arthur smiled briefly. ‘You will appreciate how childish was the mind that made up this comforting story, for had my soldier father truly never lost a fight, how was it that he came to die before I was born? I revised my tale as I grew older and decided that he had died of a single and totally painless sword thrust through the heart while in the act of saving the lives of an entire company of his loyal men, and that they gave him a hero’s funeral out in some beautiful oasis where the soft wind sighed in the trees and a huge moon rose over a flat plain.’

     He paused. Then, his voice tight, went on, ‘I took great comfort from these imaginary scenes, for in truth my childhood was wretched. What paltry wealth there was soon disappeared and the triple spectres of poverty, hunger and disease stalked me constantly. There was never enough to eat and we – I did not spend my youth as do other boys, for I was a solitary child and had no friends other than the creatures of the wild.’

     Again he paused. Helewise burned to question him – who looked after him? Where did they live? Surely not here! – but she held back. Intuitively she knew that the telling of his story caused him pain and she was loath to interrupt and perhaps risk irrevocably halting the flow of words.

     Presently he resumed his tale. ‘This is an unwholesome place, for it is permanently damp and the river seeps underground, turning firm green grass to a quagmire whenever there is rain; and rain, it seems, falls ever more frequently here than elsewhere. The mists creep about like living things and the very air is wet and foul, bringing phlegm to the throat and rheum to the chest. One’s bones ache, my lady, almost all the time. But this place has one advantage: nobody comes here unless they must. For certain, nobody but the outcast and the desperate would choose to live here.’ He sighed. ‘For those like me who are both, it is ... convenient.’

     ‘Then this is indeed where you live?’ she whispered.

     He turned to consider her. ‘It touches you, that this might be so?’ he asked.

     ‘I – it is an unwelcome thought to think of anyone making their home here,’ she replied guardedly.

     He smiled faintly. ‘It is, isn’t it? Well then, my lady, be assured that I do not in fact live here; not all the time, at least, although it is, as I have implied, a most convenient place when one is concerned with matters of a clandestine nature.’ Again, she observed, that careful use of words and of grammatical constructions, as if he were very keen to demonstrate that he was – or was pretending to be – an educated man. ‘Which, of course,’ he was saying, ‘brings us to my purpose in bringing you here.’

     ‘It does,’ she agreed, ice in her voice.

     ‘Soon, my lady, soon,’ he soothed. ‘Let me first continue my story.’

     She seemed to have no choice but to listen and so she gave him a curt nod of encouragement. Smiling again, he turned back to his contemplation of the dismal scene through the door and picked up the thread of his narrative.

     ‘The word that was most often used to describe my lot in life,’ he said slowly, ‘was
unjust
. I certainly employed it myself in my thoughts, for I was the son of a soldier, a hero, was I not? Did I not deserve better than to live in wretchedness on the very fringes of society? Yet there I was, dressed in rags, sleeping on mouldy straw, always hungry, frequently verm inous and usually dirty unless I saw to my cleanliness myself which, I might tell you, I began to do as soon as I was able.’ With what appeared to be an almost unconscious gesture he smoothed his tunic and ran a hand over his hair. ‘By making myself presentable, I was able, as I grew out of childhood, to find myself employment. Nothing much – never the sort of task for which I believed myself fitted – but at least I earned a little money and, by spending it wisely, steadily I improved my lot.’ He turned to look at her briefly, then said, ‘Not all of my dealings were strictly honest, my lady, for I burned with resentment and did not hesitate to take from those who had plenty. They were living the life that I should have had and I saw no reason why they should not donate to my cause, even though they might not know that was what they did.’

     He is a thief, Helewise thought, although it would seem an honest one, for here he is confessing to me his past misdeeds.

     ‘I might have satisfied myself with what I managed to achieve,’ he went on, ‘for I reckoned that, for a boy of my upbringing and with my disadvantages, I had done pretty well. But ...’ He paused. Then, as if he had thought about it and had, after consideration, decided to go on, said quickly, ‘But my own thoughts and opinions were not all that I had to cope with. Whenever the edge wore off my hunger for advancement, I was instantly reminded of the place – the position – which I ought to occupy, which it was my
right
to occupy. I was never allowed to forget!’ His suddenly raised voice startled her. As if he realised it, he turned and said, ‘I apologise, my lady. An honourable and courteous man does not shout.’

     She inclined her head briefly but did not speak; she felt that he was on the brink of a further revelation.

     After a moment he spoke again, and his voice was now distant and cool as if he needed to detach himself from some strong emotion. ‘When I was sixteen I learned the truth about my past. I was not the posthumous son of a soldier. My mother had not even been married to my father; I was the result of a quick and animal mating when a lascivious man’s blood ran too hot for him to control himself and he grabbed the nearest compliant female. My mother,’ he added, very quietly, ‘enjoyed sex.’ He shot Helewise a swift and somehow sly glance, as if he knew he spoke of forbidden things. ‘Or so they took pleasure in telling me.’ Flinging out a hand in a despairing gesture, he said passionately, ‘From the taunts and the beatings I received because of who and what my mother was, you’d think she was the first woman who ever sold her body in order to feed herself. But she would not have been driven to it if those who stood in judgement over her had had the smallest drop of compassion in their cold and stony hearts! She had other skills but they persecuted her for those too because they were afraid, and their fear served to increase their cruelty.’

     Other skills? Helewise thought. Skills that frightened people? Dear God, could Arthur mean what she thought he meant?

     He had brought himself under control. After a moment he went on in a quieter tone, ‘But all of that was afterwards. I speak of her coupling with the man who fathered me.’ He paused again, and then said, ‘She would have welcomed him, I am sure, for even as he entered her, brought her to a climax and sowed his seed, she would have been thinking how she could turn his lust to her future advantage.’

     A dark suspicion was filling Helewise’s mind. No, more than a suspicion, for was this not what she had feared all along? But to have it confirmed by this man whose resentment had been burning in him for twenty years turned it from a worrying fear to a dread: what did he propose to do? And, even more frightening, how would it affect those that she loved?

     ‘Unfortunately for my mother,’ Arthur said, ‘the man who fathered me was as unscrupulous as she was. When she told him she was pregnant and stated her modest demands – somewhere to live, an income to support herself and the baby, recognition of the child as his – he laughed in her face and said that since she slept with anyone who asked, what proof was there that it was he who had got her pregnant?’ Hot eyes suddenly fixed on Helewise’s, he cried, ‘He lied! My mother swore that at the time of my conception she had lain with nobody but him and I believed her!’

     Helewise held his stare. For reasons of her own she yearned to support the father’s version. But there was a hint of fanaticism in Arthur’s dark eyes and she feared what he might do if she appeared to doubt his mother’s word. So she said, ‘Was no helping hand extended?’

     ‘No,’ he said sharply. ‘On the contrary, my mother’s seducer saw to it that she was shunned by so-called
decent
people.’ He laid heavy emphasis on the word. ‘And when she fought back, my mother was maligned and ridiculed. They called her a whore and threw filth at her. When she took her revenge on her tormentors – and she was very good at that – they said she was a witch who killed their cows with a glance of her black eyes and made their children cry all night with inexplicable fevers and terrifying nightmares. We were driven out!’ His voice rose to a shout. ‘She came here, and she’s been here ever since.’

     ‘She – your mother is still alive?’ Helewise was amazed. If Arthur were indeed the age that Josse had guessed, around the mid-thirties – and now that she was face to face with the man, she was inclined to agree with the estimate – then his mother, even if she had been little more than a girl when she bore him, must be fifty at the least. To have lived for more than thirty cold and hungry years in this damp and fog-ridden hovel was some achievement.

     As if Arthur followed the line of her thoughts, he said softly, ‘It is her resentment that keeps her going, my lady. Such is her desire for revenge that, even when she feeds on it alone, she claims to feel as satiated as if she had attended a banquet.’