Knight's Fee

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  Reynfrey and half the men of the Manor were away in pursuit of de Coucy, but Randal had just sense enough to know that he could not at the moment join in any chase. If he could be any use anywhere, it would be back in the Hall. He dragged himself back to the doorway, his dagger still naked and red in his hand, heaving aside with his foot the body of a respectable Steyning wool merchant that blocked his way. Then he turned on the threshold, without knowing why, and looking up, saw the pale sliver of the new moon that he had known would be here later, caught like a white feather in the branches of the tallest cider tree at the head of the garth.

  12

  De Braose’s Banner

  D’AGUILLON LAY JUST within the doorway, with the hounds crouching about his feet, his head on Bevis’s knee, and Ancret kneeling beside him, busy by the light of a brand pulled from the fire that one of the remaining men was holding for her. And Randal, pushing through the throng to his Lord’s side, felt a shock of sudden hope. He had thought that d’Aguillon was surely dead, but if he were dead, they would not be cutting away the sodden cloth over the wound and hurrying to staunch the blood like that. Still sweating and sick, he dropped to one knee at the old knight’s other side, thrusting away Matilda’s anxious white muzzle, and fixed his eyes on Ancret.

  She had uncovered the wound now, a stab wound just under the collar-bone, not wide, but deep, with the bright heart-blood welling up from it. A hoarse, inarticulate murmur that was like a groan ran through the Manor folk pressing about them, and Ancret looked up.

  ‘Back! Get back now and give him air to breathe.’

  Bevis, with very straight lips, said, ‘Is it mortal?’

  She shook her head. ‘How can I tell? Even I? Sometimes the pictures come, the pictures of what will be, but never for any looking of mine. If anyone can save him, then I can, and if I can, then I will . . . Bring me clean linen for the wound, and rugs to carry him up to his own chamber.’

  Two or three of the men hurried to bring her the rugs she wanted; and Sybilla came lumbering with the linen and knelt down, beside her, her face all puddled with tears. The fear that had stirred between them and the Wise Woman so short a time ago seemed quite forgotten now, as though maybe Sir Everard’s blood had washed it away.

  So in a little, Sir Everard was carried up to the chamber over the storeroom, his hounds padding alongside him all the way, and laid on the low sleeping bench. Randal remained beside him, partly to help Ancret, partly for the simple sake of being with his Lord, as the hounds were with him. Bevis, who had the better right, was needed elsewhere, with the search for de Coucy to be sped, and the safety and welfare of the Manor folk to be seen to.

  Randal never forgot that scene; Sir Everard lying so still on the bed, his face set and quiet as the face of a knight carved in stone, his great nose pointing to the raftered ceiling, and his shield with its painted device hanging in its usual place on the wall above his head, like the harness of a dead knight above his tomb; the dark woman kneeling beside him, her hands laid with a curious, light purposefulness over the newly dressed wound, rising and falling a little – a very little – with his shallow breathing, as though she sought to drive some life or strength through them into his spent body (and watching her, Randal thought suddenly of the way she had held her hands over his bruises on the day he stole the red amber); the hounds crouching whimpering by the fire that had been made on the hearth; the big Norway goshawk hooded on her perch, with her hooded shadow on the wall behind her.

  Presently Bevis came back. He came silently up the outer stair and through the doorway which had been left open to the summer night, and stood with his eyes on the still figure on the bed.

  Ancret looked up, never moving her hands. ‘I think he will wake soon,’ she said.

  Bevis let go a little breath like a sigh, and came to the hearth, thrusting back the wild, dark hair wearily from his eyes. ‘We’re keeping some of the outlying folk and the ones who got hurt in the Hall for tonight. Not that there’ll be any more trouble now. De Coucy will be away for the sea coast, if he can see his way for blood. I suppose he was making for his Master overseas, anyway – and the rest are damp timber without him.’

  ‘They have not caught him, then?’ Randal said, stupidly, still kneeling beside Sir Everard.

  Bevis raised his eyes slowly from the unconscious man, to look at him. ‘Oh no. They’re still searching the woods, but I haven’t much hope now.’ There was a puzzled frown between his brows. ‘I suppose because Ancret was here when he came before, and I told him she was my foster-mother, he thought she lived under this roof.’

  ‘Ancret was only the excuse.’

  ‘Oh, I know . . . How he must hate you, Randal!’

  ‘Almost as much,’ Randal said softly, through shut teeth, ‘as I hate him.’

  He had risen to his feet as he spoke, and they stood looking at each other in the firelight. Then he took a step towards the door.

  ‘Where are you away to?’ Bevis said.

  ‘To Bramber, to de Braose.’

  There was a little silence, and then Bevis demanded, ‘And what will you tell him?’

  ‘The whole truth,’ Randal said. The bargain was dead now, and surely de Braose, with all the resources of Bramber at his sword hand, might succeed with the hunt where they, it seemed, had failed.

  The older boy nodded. ‘I wish you joy of getting de Braose out of bed at this hour of the night, but any chance of getting de Coucy will be gone by morning. Off with you, Randal.’

  Some while after midnight, when the faint light shining from the window of St. Nicholas’ Church showed where the Canons were at Matins, Randal was hammering with his dagger hilt on the great gate of Bamber Castle, crying out in answer to the gruff inquiry from within, ‘Sir Everard d’Aguillon’s squire, with an urgent message for the Lord of Bramber!’

  Probably if he had been another man’s squire they would not have let him in at that hour of the night, but though d’Aguillon was only the holder of one knight’s fee, and therefore not of much importance, the whole castle knew him for a friend of the old Lord’s. There were grumbles and protests, but the gate swung open, squealing in the still summer night, and Randal on Swallow clattered through. There were more protests, more grumblings, but somehow his blazing urgency got things done. Someone took Swallow, and he was following a man-at-arms across the courtyard and up the Keep stair. The smokiness of the guardroom gave place to the smokiness of the Great Hall and the sleepy stirring of human and hound shadows on the rush-deep floor. In the Hall they bade him wait (who ‘they’ were he did not know, he was too dazed by the things that had happened since sunset). He heard a mutter of voices somewhere, and de Braose’s squire came down the snail-curled stair, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes and yawning, as though he were mere mortal instead of body squire to the Lord of Bramber.

  ‘What is it?’ he demanded. ‘Oh, it’s you; you’re d’Aguillon’s squire, aren’t you? What do you want at this hour of the night?’

  ‘Word with de Braose,’ Randal said hoarsely.

  ‘De Braose is in his bed.’

  ‘Beg him to see me, all the same. Tell him d’Aguillon lies wounded, maybe to the death, and there is that which he must know –’

  ‘Wait here,’ the squire said, and turned again to the stair.

  Randal waited for what seemed a long, long time, fretting with his feet among the rushes, the centre of curious stares from all directions. And then the squire came back and bade him follow.

  A few moments later he stood on the threshold of the Great Chamber, above the Hall. The huge box bed with its hangings of embroidered stuffs showed tumbled and empty in the light of the newly kindled and smoky torch, and de Braose himself, who had never yet received a messenger in his bed, and clearly did not mean to begin now, half sat, half lay in his great chair before the empty hearth, a cloak of some dark, glimmering eastern stuff powdered with silver flowers flung round him over his nakedness, and his great sword laid across his knees.

&nb
sp; Two great boarhounds crouched at his feet, and he had been fondling the savage, rough head of one of them; but his eyes, like the eyes of a sick hound themselves, were already fixed on the doorway when Randal appeared in it.

  ‘What is this that you have come to tell me?’ he demanded harshly.

  Randal crossed to him, limping still from de Coucy’s kick, and dropped on one knee between the hounds. ‘It is true, sir – a witch hunt –’

  ‘Ah!’ de Braose leaned forward. ‘I heard there was a garboil in the Market yesterday, and half Steyning out after a witch. There are many witches and I took no heed. Was it a Dean woman, then?’

  ‘Yes. Bevis’s foster-mother, Ancret – At least, it was meant to look like that, but in truth it was stirred up by Sir Thiebault de Coucy, in revenge for being worsted over Dean.’ Randal covered his face with his hands, and groaned. ‘It’s all my doing.’

  ‘Never mind whose doing it is, beyond de Coucy’s.’ The old Lord’s voice cut like a north wind. ‘So it was de Coucy, was it? I wondered why he forgot his designs on the Manor so suddenly. Stop talking in rags and revellings, boy, and get up and tell me the whole of this thing, from the beginning, whatever that may be.’

  Randal drew a deep breath, uncovered his face and straightened his shoulders and got drearily to his feet. And standing before the empty hearth, he told to the fat, sick old man slumped in his chair, the whole story from the beginning, from the soft voice and the scent of musk in the darkness of the Arundel water stair, as he had told it to no one save Bevis.

  De Braose’s gout-swollen hands tightened on his sword as he listened, but he spoke no word until the whole ugly story was told.

  ‘We’ve beaten the woods for him,’ Randal finished desperately. ‘They were still searching when I rode away – but it is in my mind that he has slipped through our hands.’

  ‘And so you come to me to raise the countryside against him. But can you swear that this friar-leader of the witch hunt was de Coucy? In torchlight it is easy to be mistaken.’

  ‘Even though he wore a gambeson under his habit?’ Randal said quickly. ‘At least the leader of the witch hunt did not go unmarked. Bid your men to look for a man with two fresh dagger cuts in the face, crossing each other – here,’ he touched his own left cheek, ‘and see if it be not indeed de Coucy.’

  ‘Your dagger, I take it,’ de Braose said.

  ‘My dagger, de Braose.’

  The Lord of Bramber seemed to ponder for a moment. Then with a suddenness that made the hounds leap up in bewilderment, he burst into action, hammering on the hearth stone with the chape of his sword and bellowing for his squires in a voice to rouse the whole of Bamber Castle. His body squire, from his place just outside the door, was there on the instant; others came running. He shouted orders at them, sent them hurrying for this man and that, for his chief huntsman and the captain of his men-at-arms. And through it all, Randal stood by the empty hearth, dazed by this sudden, wild explosion of activity in the midst of the sleeping castle, the hardly roused and half-dressed men hurrying in and out, while their sick old Lord sat in his great chair and issued his orders as crisply and clearly as ever he could have done at Senlac.

  Presently Randal found that the Great Chamber was quiet again, and empty save for the squire who had returned to his place across the doorway. He could hear a voice somewhere below in the bailey, and the dogs lay down again with protesting grunts. And he saw that the old Lord was looking at him out of the little sick eyes sunk in his pouchy face.

  ‘So? That is all; there is no more that we can do. The hunt is up, and within a few hours there will be a search of every ship or fishing smack that sails from this part of the coast; but – like you, I’ve a feeling we shall not net him. He must have decided to slip overseas and cast in his lot with Duke Robert, or I think he would not have risked it. He’s a coward in some things, and he’s no gambler; he’ll have had his plans laid.’ De Braose’s voice deepened suddenly to a rumbling growl that seemed to come from somewhere in his chest. ‘But if we do not get the ring-leader, we can still hang half Steyning for this night’s work.’

  Randel said quickly, though it was quite against his will, for he would have liked to do the hanging himself. ‘The man who stabbed Sir Everard is dead, and one or two others. They were all no more than tools of de Coucy’s; and I – do not think Sir Everard would want any hanging.’

  De Braose was silent a moment, one hand still clenched on his sword, the other plucking at the silver threads of a flower on his cloak.

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said at last, broodingly. ‘A gentle soul, d’Aguillon, overly gentle, maybe, but it has brought him the love of his stubborn Saxons . . . And if he dies, though I hang all Steyning high as the Keep of Bramber, it will not bring him back to fight old battles with me again.’ He seemed to be talking to himself rather than to Randal, and suddenly he noticed it, and glared at the boy as though daring him to notice it too. ‘Get back to your Lord, boy; there’s nought to keep you longer here, and the Lord of Bramber is away back to his bed.’

  It was the first silky greyness of the summer dawn when Randal rode into the Manor garth of Dean again, abandoned Swallow to old Wulf who came hobbling with the spent lantern pale as primrose in the growing daylight; and without waiting to ask news of Sir Everard – he could not ask, the words stuck in his throat, and he must see for himself – stumbled up the outside stair.

  The door at the head of it stood open as he had left it, and the solar was awash with torchlight and dawn light that mingled without mixing; the fire had sunk to frilled grey ash on the hearth, the hounds still crouching before it, the Norway goshawk on her perch, with her hooded shadow that had been so black grown thin and tenuous on the wall behind her. Ancret still knelt beside the bed, and Bevis stood beyond it; it was as though nothing, no one, had moved since he left the room. But there was a sound of harsh, quick breathing in the solar that had not been there before, and as he halted in the doorway, suddenly d’Aguillon’s voice, hoarse and rattling, said, ‘Is that you, Randal?’

  Randal was across the room in two limping strides, and dropped on his knees beside the narrow bed. ‘Yes, sir, I am here.’

  Sir Everard’s eyes, seeming darker than ever and sunk into his drained face, looked up at him, frowning a little. ‘Bevis has told me – the whole story. And – you have told de Braose?’

  Randal nodded. ‘I wish – God knows how I wish I had told it before,’ he groaned.

  ‘Nay, you judged – that the threat might serve – better than the deed; and you were right, for – has not the threat served – all this while?’

  ‘But afterwards – I should have told you.’

  ‘Na na, a bargain is a bargain, even with – such as de Coucy. Did I not – say that to you before? Never be – sorry for faith kept, Randal.’

  They did not find de Coucy; and two days later the message came down-river from Bramber that Sir Philip de Braose was carrying his father’s banner to join the King’s army at Pevensey, and Bevis in his grandfather’s stead was summoned to bring in the Dean men to follow him.

  The summons came in the evening to march next day, and before the messenger was a bowshot on his way to the next Manor, Dean was leaping into activity very different from the slow, circling rhythm of the farm that had held it before. The ten men were called in from the last of the haymaking, and Randal, coming into the Great Hall with his own leather gambeson, found the women making ready food for the march, and Reynfrey issuing arrows and spare bowstrings. He said to Bevis, who was there also, ‘It must be hard for Reynfrey.’

  Bevis looked at him quickly, with some trouble in his face, then gave a tiny backward jerk of the head into the shadows behind him; and when they had drawn aside from the rest, turned to look at him again. Bevis, very tall, very dark, very grave, suddenly not a boy any more, but a man. ‘Randal, I – don’t know how to ask this of you.’

  ‘What is it?’ Randal asked, but even as he asked there was a shock of misery i
n him, and he knew.

  ‘Randal, it isn’t only Reynfrey it will be hard for. You too.’

  ‘You mean – I’m not to go with you to join the King’s army?’

  Bevis shook his head. ‘It is for me to go. While grandfather is sick of his wound, I am d’Aguillon, and it is for me to take his levies into battle. But it is for you, who are his squire, to stay with him.’

  Randal said, mutinous for the moment, ‘What would you do if you were all the squire he had? You would have been if Herluin hadn’t won me in a game of chess and given me to d’Aguillon as though I were a hound puppy.’ That was unjust to everybody, and he knew it, but he was too miserable to care.

  ‘Then le Savage would have taken the Dean levies with his own, and I should have stayed here. That is the way it must be when a knight has only one squire, this is the way it must be when he has two.’ He flung an arm across Randal’s shoulder. ‘Don’t you think I’m heart-sore enough about it? – Oh, curse you, Randal, we’ve done everything together so many years, I never thought one of us would have to go into his first battle without the other!’

  Randal was silent a long moment. He had set so much store by this marching out to join the King’s army; he had had impossible dreams of doing great things, the kind of dreams, connected with honour and other shining matters, that you do not talk about even to a stranger, let alone to your nearest friend.

  ‘Very well,’ he said at last, hoarsely. ‘I’ll stay with Sir Everard.’

  ‘Good old Randal,’ Bevis said. ‘Good old Randal,’ and gave his shoulder the little shake that he used sometimes instead of words. ‘Try to send me news at Pevensey, if – when there’s any news to send.’

  And Randal nodded, and turned away to carry the old leather gambeson with the scales on the shoulders back into the storeroom again.

  Next morning Sir Robert le Savage came by, leading his Broadwater levies, and would have gone tramping up to see Sir Everard, who was in a high fever and quite unfit to see anybody, while his men waited below, but that Ancret refused to allow him up the solar stair. He fussed and fumed a little, his big nose reddening as it always did in times of stress, but had to accept her ruling; and Bevis, himself white with worry, soothed him with a cup of the Manor’s best cider, before they went on together. Randal, standing in the Hall doorway, watched them ride away, Bevis beside their stout neighbour, his hand on his long new sword, and Dean men and Broadwater men loping behind them, their bow-staves across their backs. Cerdic looked round once, at the turn of the track, as though wondering if he would ever see the village under the downs again. Then they disappeared, heading for the ford.