The Morning Gift

by The Morning Gift (retail) (epub)

  He gave orders. His men hoisted the peacock which had displayed to Matilda to the roof of the hall and tied it to the weather-vane. Fitz Payn stood with his arm protectively round Matilda’s shoulders while his men used it for target practice. The bird squawked and flapped, scrabbling with its pointed toes at an arrow in its wing. The stone-slingers ran round the bailey working their arms like birds and trying to imitate its mating cry. A bad shot finally went straight into the centre of the mess and killed it.

  The other birds were served up at dinner. Fitz Payn had the cook beaten because they were tough. “But they never do eat as well as they look, do they, my dear?”

  * * *

  “A fine time to end a contract, Willem,” said Ypres.

  “It’s not a bad time. The war’s as good as over.” He gestured in the direction of the castle. “The Empress can’t hold out much longer in there. What’ll the king do with her? Imprison her?”

  “He can hang the bitch for me,” said Ypres. “Sod all women. You, of all people.”

  Willem shrugged. “And you can have a new contract with Jacopo. I’ve told him our terms, by the way, so you can’t undercut him.” He shifted to be off. “Well…”

  His commander surprised him by coming round the desk to hug him. “I’ll tell the king you’re putting down rats for him.”

  “I am.”

  Outside in the street it was black cold; the river had frozen over and snow lay on the ice. It would take some time to get there. At the inn his band waited for him.

  “Have you got the boots?”

  “Certainly, boots,” said Jacopo. “I don’t know the size but a lady of my acquaintance…”

  “Clothes? Rope?”

  “Oh, my God,” said Jacopo, “are we taking an inventory? Everything. Except maybe somebody to go in with you.”

  “He’ll be less suspicious of one.”

  “He can kill one easier as well.”

  “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  This night he’d brought her down to the hall so that he could play the part of the long-married man who valued conversation with his wife. He and Matilda sat at a table on the dais with a chessboard between them. Fitz Payn didn’t know how to play chess, but he moved the pieces with the gravity of an expert then, when she didn’t respond, moved her pieces in reply.

  “You see, my dear, we must consider our position now that our benefactress is finished.” It was the first she’d heard of the Empress’ predicament, but who won and who lost no longer mattered to her. It mattered to Fitz Payn, who’d backed the wrong horse yet again. “This is a time of opportunity for men of courage. We must grasp it.” He jumped a pawn over the queen and then the king, picked them up and dropped them on the floor.

  He stood up and faced the noisy hall. He shouted: “We’ll have our own kingdom.” The company cheered. Vladi began dancing with Dyrika. Fitz Payn sat down again, peevish. “I need better men. These have no quality.” He looked across at her quietly. “Give me the seal, please. Or I’ll make one from Edmund’s little spine. He’s upstairs in the room below ours.”

  Her face remained blank and her hands clenched in her lap. She gripped one fact: it was snowing, blessedly and tenderly snowing, softening the outline of the keep and putting ridiculous caps on the heads of the corpses still hanging from the walls. And silting up the tracks. It was impossible to get to London and back, let alone to Normandy where Edmund was.

  Nevertheless he’d sketched her son, small, chubby and frightened, still trusting her. A nerve twitched by the side of her eye. Fitz Payn saw it and his good humour returned. He didn’t know chess, but in the game he was playing he was a master.

  When he locked her in that night he didn’t accompany her. She wrapped herself up and went to the window. “I mustn’t be frightened.” White, jagged panes of ice from upriver floated on the water; from here they looked like mutant fish. “He giveth snow like wool; He scattereth hoarfrost like ashes. He casteth forth His ice like morsels. Who can stand before His cold?”

  The door unlocked and opened, but not enough to admit a human. A tabby cat came in. It was Fitz Payn; she could tell by the teeth. She broke. She ran for the highest point of the room which was the bed and the cat circled it below, rubbing itself against the hangings. Matilda whimpered.

  The door opened to let in Fitz Payn. He smiled at her and saw she was ripe at last. He picked up the cat, walked to the window and dropped it down to the river. He turned and the moonlight outlined him in silver. “Now.”

  Matilda screamed. He began to punch her, crashing his fist into her face and breast. She fell off the bed, astonished even while she cried out by the violence. She tried to crawl under it but he dragged her out by her hair, stood her up and knocked her against the wall so he could hit her again. He was shouting but she couldn’t hear what through her own noise.

  He dragged her back to the bed and jerked her on to it. He crashed his fist into her mouth. He was wrenching her clothes off with one hand and punching her with the other, kneeling on her legs.

  If he’d given her the chance she would have pleaded, abased herself, signed away her estates, anything to stop him. Time opened and closed, swelling to make every detail clear and then dwindling into a blur. The mercenary had multiplied so that there were a dozen men attacking her and howling. There were two female entities in the room: Matilda and Matilda’s fear, a huge wobbling amoeba. He didn’t enter the physical Matilda, though he pushed the hilt of his dagger into her vagina. It was Matilda’s fear with whom he had sex, murmuring obscenities to it, fondling it, ejaculating into it, telling it how lovely it was.

  Time closed and opened again. The mercenary had dwindled down into one gasping, pettish man. “Cover yourself up. You’re disgusting. Why are you all so disgusting?”

  Her split lips hurt but she moved them. “I’m sorry.”

  He’d gone. She was alone and disgusting. She was sticky and she smelled. She bled from the mouth and the vagina where the handle had ripped the membrane. She got off the bed and fell down, so she crawled to the window. The river would be clean.

  She hauled herself up into the window. The view was beautiful, uncaring, sexless, inhuman. The snow was still falling. The river hadn’t stopped. She took away her supporting hands to let herself go into it. She was pushed back. She leaned forward again – was held back again. She was between an unstoppable compulsion and an immovable prohibition. She was in a vortex formed by Hell past and Hell future. She became brittle.

  There was a whirring, clicking sound as her feet began to revolve at the ankle and her arms to unscrew from their sockets. They unthreaded faster and faster so that any moment now they would fly out and drop out of the window and her trunk would fall on to the stumps of her legs and fracture into shards.

  Just in time the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene stepped out of the garderobe. “Now stop that,” said the Mother of God sharply. Matilda’s feet screwed themselves into her legs again and her arms tightened into place. “And come down. You’ll get your death of cold.”

  “It seemed the best thing.” Matilda stepped back.

  “Well, it isn’t.”

  They led her back to the bed and snuggled her into it. They stroked her face and she could tell her lip and her eye stuck out to an unaccustomed distance. They smelled of holiness. She showed them where her lower incisor had been knocked out. “Shocking,” said Mary Magdalene. She was a busty, pretty woman wearing the tall hat of a town prostitute balanced on her red-gold curls. “We used to get types like that at the whorehouse.”

  “Did you?” Matilda was interested. “As bad as that?”

  “Worse,” said the Magdalene, “the stories I could tell you…”

  Matilda turned to the Virgin. “I couldn’t help it.”

  “Nobody blames you,” said the Mother, comfortingly. She too was on the plump side, something on the lines of Berte, but with bluer eyes. “Well, men will, of course, but they blame women for being women.”

 
“And you did have babies normally after Jesus, didn’t you?”

  “Lord yes,” said the Mother. “Joseph was a good, normal man, a bit like your Sigward.”

  “What shall I do?”

  “The first thing” said the Mother, “is to go to sleep.”

  “You won’t go away?”

  The Magdalene kissed her. “We’ll be here as long as you want us.” She went off to sleep as they held her hands and gossiped quietly over her head.

  Dyrika took one look at Matilda’s face and ran for warm water and ointment. She washed her all over and salved her cuts and bruises. All the time Matilda chattered to her saints.

  Dyrika went downstairs and told Vladi: “She’s gone mad. She’s talking to demons and she laughs. Shall I bring her down?”

  Vladi looked towards his captain, slumped and unmoving in his chair. He’d seen Fitz Payn like this before. “She’s lucky she’s still alive.” He called: “Shall the lady come down?” There was no answer. Vladi shrugged. “Get her down, then.”

  Dyrika stood outside the door of the chamber, reluctant to go in. “Lady, oh lady, come and eat.”

  “Shall I?”

  “Got to keep your strength up,” said the Magdalene. “What’s the food like here?”

  “Dreadful.”

  At the top of the stairs Matilda paused: “I’m mad, aren’t I?”

  “You are and you aren’t,” said the Mother. “You could stop if you wanted to, but in these circumstances I wouldn’t want to.”

  They went ahead of her, arm in arm, while Dyrika supported her waist from the back in case she fell on her unsteady legs. Dyrika chattered kindly. “There is a new man come. To offer help he comes. To join us. A nice man I knew long, long time. He is goet.”

  “Sex mad, these Flemings,” said the Magdalene.

  If there was a new face among the company Matilda didn’t see it, nor would she have recognised it. She was too busy talking to her friends. Her head turned from side to side and her poor mouth moved in light conversation. She saw Fitz Payn glance at her and look away. This time it was Matilda who smiled.

  Vladi confided in Willem of Ghent. “We should be making a move before we’re snowed up in this dump and besieged by one side or the other. Get the rest of our band and seize the woman’s estates and form this kingdom, if that’s what he wants. But he’s had one of his fits and won’t move. Talk to him, for God’s sake.”

  Over dinner Fitz Payn regained awareness. He stood up and raised a beaker to Willem. “Welcome to our new colleague. Your reputation goes before you.” He beckoned Willem to join him on the dais. “How many men can you bring with you?”

  “Thirty. All master-arbalists.”

  “I’ve heard. Well, I need a new lieutenant. Vladi has no quality.” His honest blue eyes looked straight into Willem’s. “Why did you break your contract with the king?”

  “He’s weak and he’s treacherous. And he treats mercenaries like scum.”

  Fitz Payn banged the table. “They all treat us like scum. They think because we’re businessmen we have no honour.” He leaned back in his chair and became the generous host. “Bring your men tomorrow, but tonight share our hospitality. Rough, simple soldiers’ fare, but you’ve had worse. We do our best. Sometimes I play chess with my wife. And that lady there” – he pointed at Dyrika – “sings for us.”

  “I remember. She’s an old friend of mine.”

  Fitz Payn smiled. “She’s an old friend of everybody’s.”

  When the men went outside to urinate, Willem estimated the time by the moon. Ibber was badly guarded. There was only one sentry in the gatehouse and two more resentfully patrolling the walls. The tollhouse across the river was deserted because the keep was virtually invulnerable from that side.

  He knew they didn’t trust him. They sniffed him like a new dog in a pack. When he’d renewed his acquaintance with Dyrika he’d felt their resentment at his appropriation of one of their women. But Dyrika was his passport to get close to Matilda without suspicion.

  It hadn’t been hard. Dyrika threw herself at him at the first smile. Now as he went up to her she did it again. “Willem, do you remember?”

  He smacked kisses on her cheek and they reminisced. As soon as he could he nodded at Matilda. “What’s the matter with the lady’s face?”

  “Wielden dieren.” Wild beasts. “Gone mad, poor vrouw.”

  “Let’s go and cheer her up.”

  Matilda stood alone in the shadow of one of the hall bays, cordoned off by her madness. The lids of one eye had puffed together, her jaw was swollen on one side and her lips and eyebrows were cut. She seemed amused at something.

  His arm round Dyrika’s waist, Willem spoke low: “You can hear me. In a little while I want you to go out into the bailey. Matilda, listen to me.”

  “What are you saying?” Dyrika’s French was still basic. “Why do you look at her like that? She’s no good now. I’m better.”

  “What’s he saying?” asked the Virgin Mary. “Who is he?”

  “Another mercenary.”

  “Ignore him.”

  Willem nuzzled Dyrika’s neck. “Just go outside to the bailey.” He had two contingency plans but they both depended on getting her out of the hall. “Take her out, D’ika, if you love me.”

  “You don’t want her, Willem, she’s not nice…” Willem kissed her. Fitz Payn was coming towards them.

  “I allow nobody to speak to my wife.”

  “I was paying my respects. I thought it was the done thing.”

  Immediately Fitz Payn was the grand seigneur. “Living this rough soldiers’ life we forget the courtesies. But we are not barbarians. We shall have music. Dyrika shall sing.”

  He led them away. Dyrika’s voice was strong, a crowd-singer’s voice. She was a kind woman but her reactions were self-indulgent and at the moment she was jealous. Willem was one of the few men who had been gentle in her life and she was convinced he was her great love. She didn’t want to get him into trouble, but she couldn’t resist teasing him. She chose to sing the song of Ghengolf and as the first line “Nu hadde die Ghengolf ene vrouw,” vibrated through the hall Willem winced. “Now had Ghengolf a wife and to him she was untrue…” The bloody woman was flirting her eyes back and forth between him and Matilda. She’d wink any moment: she had. He tapped his foot as if in enjoyment while Ghengolf’s wife picked out a lover “mitten te spelne in hermichede”, with whom to play in secrecy.

  He could feel Fitz Payn’s antennae wave into the situation to smell and evaluate. Where the hell was Jacopo? The attack should have started by now.

  Fitz Payn’s attention never left Dyrika as she drew with every gesture a connection between Matilda and Willem. Ghengolf’s wife made the acquaintance of the serpent and her lover’s honeyed body. Vladi, responsive to the currents crisscrossing the hall, came to Fitz Payn’s side. The man might not have quality but at that moment Willem would have swopped him for Jacopo.

  The song ended throatily in Ghengolf’s terrible revenge. In the silence before the applause began Fitz Payn spoke to Vladi. “Find out what she knows.” He turned to Willem and became charming. “Advise me on my barony…” Willem had to listen to his plans to carve out a piece of England from the war, as Vladi led Dyrika outside. He came back alone after a few minutes, walking nonchalantly, avoiding Willem’s eyes. Fitz Payn excused himself and went to meet him.

  The knowledge that he would die painfully was overridden by humiliation. He would die looking a fool who’d made a plan that hadn’t worked.

  He got up and began walking down the hall, which had gone quiet. The company had immobilised into a frieze of rustic carving. He was level with Matilda now. Casually he took her hand and began running. It was worth the chance that Jacopo would attack at this one moment.

  At a shout from Fitz Payn an arrow went into the ground in front of them from the guard on the wall. He pulled up. Matilda was muttering disgruntledly.

  They were taken to the room known as th
e Malemit, below Matilda’s in the keep. Fitz Payn was proper. Torture was for torture chambers.

  The room was the same size and shape as the one above except that its window was an arrow slit and its bed was stone and not for sleeping on. Manacles stuck out of the walls at varying heights and chains hung on pulleys. Three feet away from the river window a grid was set in the floor covering a drain which ran down at a steep angle to join the corbelled vertical garderobe chute and ended thirty feet above the river. It was a combination of sewer and oubliette down which the ordure of prisoners could be sluiced away and down which their bodies were dropped when they were dead or, as Fitz Payn explained, “what is left of their bodies”.

  His hands were strapped to a hook and he was lifted up until his feet dangled above the floor. The band of mercenaries and women crowded excitedly into the room. Matilda was sat on the stone bed to watch.

  Fitz Payn was almost fond. “Did you want her for yourself? Or does the Empress want her back?” He was shaking and exhilarated.

  At that point, much too late, the attack began. They could hear shouting and the boom of the gate being rammed. Somebody shouted: “Attack, captain. Captain.”

  Fitz Payn jabbed his dagger twice into Willem’s shoulder, not so much in anger but in frustration at being interrupted. “Why do they always thwart me?” He moved to the door, giving orders.

  “What about these two?” Vladi shouted.

  Fitz Payn looked back over his shoulder. “Get rid of him. Keep her locked in. If they try and rescue her I’ll kill her myself.”

  Vladi was left alone with the prisoners. He was a literal man. “Get rid of him,” he said. “Lock her up.” He twisted the catches of the grid and lifted it. Then he ran the pulley Willem was hooked on until it was over the oubliette. He lowered the chain. He had trouble getting Willem’s kicking legs down the chute but eventually he managed it. He cut the straps which held Willem up. Willem dropped. Vladi replaced the grid, turned its catches and went to join the fight, locking the door carefully behind him.