Longsword (6 page)

She said, in a soft, dreamy voice, “I suppose you will leave us soon.”

He flinched. He had not thought of going. He supposed he would have to do so. There was pain in the thought of leaving her, such pain as he had not thought it possible to bear without crying out. She moved close to him, setting her hand on his sleeve, looking up into his face.

“I will give you money with which to redeem your sword, and you may choose what clothing you wish from the store; chainmail too, if you wish. You are a knight, and as a knight you shall go from us.”

“A knight without a sword. I have done with killing,” he said, and his voice was as harsh as hers was soft.

“It is best you go – and what else can you do?”

“I would prefer to stay and serve you. Hamo will give me a clerk's position, I think.”

“Ah, you do not know, then. I wondered. Then I thought that it could not make any difference to you … and then I thought someone else would surely tell you, so that I need not. …” She put her hand on the neck of her gown, pressing at her throat. Her eyes flickered away from his, and then returned. “My mother nearly died when she gave birth to twin daughters. …”

“You have a sister? Then it is she who is known as the Queen of Beauty?”

“You know of that, and not of …? No, I can see you know nothing of it. Yes, Elaine and I were born at one birth, nineteen years ago come Christmas. As I say, they despaired of my mother's life, and so my father swore that if she lived, he would dedicate the child – if it was a girl – to the church. Elaine was the eldest but even as a baby she was beautiful, and I was not. So he chose me.”

He fell back a pace. “You, to take vows? To become a nun?”

“Say no more,” she said. “I beg you, say no more!”

“You have no vocation! You were meant to be a wife and mother, to oversee the affairs of a busy household, not to spend endless hours in prayer.”

“I know it,” she said, in a curiously dry voice. He had been about to protest further, but something in her tone stopped him, some note of authority, something he had not expected from her. She said, “I have no choice in the matter. It was settled for me at birth. At Christmas I am to go to the nuns at Reading, unless perchance my father has another relapse and needs me for a little longer. I was supposed to have gone on my eighteenth birthday, but he was ill. …”

“No child can be forced to take vows nowadays.”

“I know that. Every year from the time I was old enough to repeat the words, I have been led to the altar on my birthday, my hair has been cut short, and I have given the required promise. I gave it again on my eighteenth birthday when it had been planned that I should leave … only the promise was waived by the bishop until such time as my father had recovered from a low fever … but he is better now, and unless something else happens, I must go this Christmas. That is why you must go, and go soon.”

She had understood, then. She had understood that he loved her, and accepted his love, and was thankful for it. He was numbed with the drop from hope to despair. She opened her mouth as if she would say more, checked herself yet again, looked at him with a tender yet anxious glance, and disappeared. He sank onto the bed and put his head in his hands.

She had not been near him for two days. Gervase helped the dog out into the cloisters, where the warm sun belied the date on the calendar. The rain had gone, the clammy cold had gone, and the sky – what he could see of it – was as blue and as free of cloud as a man could wish. Gervase sank onto a convenient bench and closed his eyes. He hoped the warmth of the sun would help him in more ways than one. The chill of his unheated cell seemed to have seeped through to his bones.

She had not been near him since the day she had told him she was destined for the nunnery. Perhaps it was as well. She had passed his cell three or four times today, to see how Hamo did … did he not know her step by now, and every inflection of her voice as she talked with the old man?

Well, this was just one more battle he could not win. There were other women in the world … he checked himself on a sigh. No, there were no other women like her. He thought of the women he had known. He had seen many noble and beautiful women in his time, and he knew that none of them could hold a candle to her. He knew it, and the knowledge was a dead weight inside his breast.

He moved restlessly on the bench. Flash whined, and thrust his nose into Gervase's, hand. He pulled on the dog's ears, and the creature moved to sit on Gervase's feet – a trick he had developed of late, to attract attention.

If she had not been destined for the cloister … but that line of thought was painful.

What was he to do? She said he must leave, and he supposed he ought to do so. Should he redeem his sword – seek a living as a mercenary? No, he had turned his back on that life. Everyone at Mailing assumed he was a discharged soldier, and unable to give the true explanation, Gervase had allowed the tale to pass. It was true that every year he had been duty bound to don armour and follow his uncle into the field, yet Gervase had always thought of this as a very small part of his life. For the rest, he had been absorbed in the care of his uncle's fields and farms.

Well, all that was gone, and it was no use thinking about it.

What remained to him? A clerk's position? He could probably perform such duties, but the pay was poor, the prospects nil, and the work tedious.

Could he seek a position as a bailiff? That would indeed be better. Yet who would employ a man with no name, and no influence?

Someone tugged at the sleeve of his gown, and he looked up to see a boy of about nine years old, with a great rent in his tunic, and a broken toy in his hand. By his fine-drawn, not to say tearful appearance, and the good quality of his clothing, Gervase guessed the lad to be one of the pages about the castle. The boy held out his cup and ball, which should have been joined together with a leather thong, and was in two separate parts.

“The Lady Beata said you would mend this for me.”

Gervase felt as if she had laid her warm, capable hands on his heart. She had not forgotten him! The page was young, and his nose needed wiping. Doubtless he had but newly come to the castle, and was still homesick. Gervase remembered only too well what it was like to be young and far from home. He also remembered – just in time – not to address the boy as an equal.

He said, “Let us see what we can do. What is your name, young master?”

He had not yet left the cloister, but already he knew a great deal about the castle and its inhabitants. Pages, serving-men, clerks: as they passed through the cloisters on business, or visiting their friends, they stopped to pass the time of day with him. Telfer, the Master of the Hall, gave him a kindly word now and then on his way to sit with Hamo; Telfer was a stoutly-built man with thinning hair spread with care over a large-domed head. Gervase was surprised that such an important man as Telfer, with all the cares of running the castle on his shoulders, should stop to pass the time of day with a penniless invalid, but he supposed that Hamo had put in a good word for him.

As his health improved, and the emaciated look began to pass from his face, he found himself taking an interest in what went on around him, even though he knew that soon he must leave Mailing. There were tantalising glimpses of quarrels in high places, glimpsed in the reports and letters he wrote for Hamo … his little friend the page told him tales of the Lady Joan and her son … convalescent men crept out of their cells and became expansive in the presence of a good listener.

He learned that Henry de la Boxe, Lord of Mailing, had been a widower for seven years, and had apparently no intention of marrying again. He was a hard man with a reserved manner, who spent half his time in litigation and the other half consulting physicians about cures … not that he was a sick man, said his men, but he was interested in such things. Lord Henry was seldom seen at Malling, but his son and heir Christopher – commonly known as Crispin – usually resided there.

Voices were lowered and glances were cast over shoulders when the men spoke of Crispin, for his temper was sharp and his hand heavy. Crispin had two aims in life, and in both things his father opposed him. Crispin wanted control of at least some of the Mailing estates, and he wanted to divorce his wife Joan. On neither question would Lord Henry give in to his son, and therefore the Mailing men were divided in their loyalty, some holding to the old lord whose temper, though cold, was inclined to justice, and others gathering to the rising sun of the heir, saying that the old man could not last much longer, anyway. As far as Gervase could tell, Beata held to her father's side, as witness her bringing the dog to him; an action which now took on the light of courage amounting to foolhardiness. The servants hissed and shook their heads when they saw Gervase fondling the dog, and said that if my lord Crispin but knew …!

Between these two parties, the old and the new, there existed another powerful group in the castle, and Gervase spent more time thinking about this group than about both the others put together. Great estates do not govern themselves; farms do not produce a harvest without direction, nor do servants produce horses, linen or food as required without someone to oversee them. In the beginning Gervase had wondered at the attention rendered to that elderly and irascible old man Hamo, but now he wondered no longer. The great castle, with its many courts, storehouses, stable and gardens, its keep and towers and quarters for the men-at-arms, might be administered by Telfer, but the lands whose revenues supported the castle were administered by Hamo. To Gervase, Hamo seemed like a giant spider, sitting in the centre of the web of Malling, twitching a line here, spinning an extra length there, sending out reports and receiving them.

In her own way, Beata was also something of a spider, though her territory was confined, within the greater web woven by Hamo, to the infirmary, the home farm and the giving of alms at the gate. She did undertake other duties within the household itself – duties which ought by rights to have been carried out by Crispin's wife Joan – but these seemed spasmodic rather than routine. Only it was surprising how often someone would say, “I will ask the Lady Beata about …” whatever it was.

Neither Beata nor Hamo were responsible for the maintenance of law and order about the castle, though Telfer had some privileges in that direction, but a certain Captain Varons came frequently to see Hamo, and expressed his concern for the old man's health with such friendliness that Gervase deduced Varons to be at one with Hamo in all matters of importance.

This same Captain Varons would pass Gervase by without speaking to him, yet when he had gone Gervase would rub his forehead, and frown. He thought he had seen Varons somewhere before, but could not for the life of him recall where. Varons was not a man whom one could easily forget, for he had a thatch of hair so thick it would seem no rain could ever penetrate it; this thatch was prematurely grey, while his moustache was still black. He was a well-set up man, with an eye that missed little – or so said the servants.

And then there was Jaclin. Jaclin was; not to put too fine a point on it, a nuisance. He was a nuisance to himself, and a nuisance to everyone around him. He was reputed to be the natural son of a distant connection of Lord Henry's, and liked to speak of his cousin Crispin – though not within Crispin's hearing. Jaclin was aggressive but clumsy; handsome but slovenly in dress and deportment. He was somewhat younger than Crispin, and though he had received a smattering of education, was neither warrior enough to earn a fortune for himself in the lists, nor intelligent enough to make himself useful in matters of business. Lord Henry found the lad so irritating that he had refused to take him with him to London, and Crispin openly despised his base-born cousin, and laughed aloud when it was suggested that Jaclin accompany Crispin when next he went to a tourney. So Jaclin, like Beata, stayed at home, and unlike Beata, found nothing to do but drink, and bully whatever servants were unluckly enough to cross his path.

It was not long before he also tried to bully Gervase.

Gervase was busy carving a new top for the son of one of the men-at-arms when someone kicked him on the ankle.

“You, there! Cutpurse! Pigsmeat! Are you the scarecrow with whom my cousin Beata has been spending so much of her time?” Gervase raised his eyes without setting his work aside, and recognised Jaclin from what he had heard about him. Thick curly hair, like and yet unlike Beata's, hung around the lad's ears and over his left eye. His eye was restless, bold and overbright. His colour was high, his jaw set for a fight. “To your feet, scum!”

Holding onto his temper, Gervase did as he was bid. Now Gervase was a tall man, and topped Jaclin by some two inches, even though the youth had the advantage of him in weight.

Jaclin surveyed Gervase with disfavour. “Not much of the soldier about you, is there, scarecrow! Well, what have you to say for yourself?”

Gervase noted the well-shaped hands and muscular power of Jaclin's shoulders and legs; also the nails bitten to the quick, and the stains on the costly surcoat. “The Lady Beata was kind to me when I was sick, and I shall forever be grateful to her.”

“She spends too much of her time here.” It was a challenge which Gervase did not dare take up. The lad suspected something; not much, perhaps – but he was not thick-witted, whatever else he was. Gervase felt a stir of sympathy for Jaclin, remembering his own years of patient endurance before he had been old enough, or skilled enough, to have been treated as an equal by his uncle. Jaclin was still young enough to learn; a pity he was too old and too well-connected to be beaten for his bad manners.

“They say you used to own a long sword, a very good extra-long sword,” said Jaclin, with an air of doubt. “You don't look as if you could handle a long sword, or any other sort of weapon, for that matter. I doubt not you stole it somewhere … eh?”