Knight's Fee

by Rosemary Sutcliff

  She sat and looked at him out of a sudden stillness, frowning a little. ‘Why not, Randal?’ It was the first time she had used his name.

  ‘It is no good being a knight, when you have not the wherewithal to furnish your helm. And it’s none so bad a life, being a squire.’

  ‘But that’s not fair! You’d make a better knight than some that hold a dozen manors!’ Gisella said in swift championship. ‘Look at the way you got rid of those hounds – and after I had been so horrible to you!’ She looked down at her hands folded in her blue lap, with the shadows of the bare quince branches dancing over them; then up again. ‘I am glad it was you that came, Randal.’

  ‘I am glad it was I that came, too, Gisella.’

  A gust of wind stronger than any that had gone before swooped into the narrow garden, booming like a breaking sea in the branches of the quince tree, and setting the briars streaming like green spray. The rosemary bush flung up its arms in a silvery turmoil, and as it did so, something bright among the twisted roots flicked at the corner of Randal’s eye. He stooped quickly, and picked the thing from its hiding-place. ‘Here are the Lady Aanor’s scissors that you were looking for.’

  With the finding of the scissors, remembrance of the time and the rest of the world rushed back to them. Gisella snatched them from him and sprang up. ‘Oh we’re so late – so dreadfully late for supper. We must go!’

  Randal also had come to his feet, and they stood for one moment looking at each other with a queer, unexpected wretchedness for something that they were losing before it could even be said to have begun. Then Gisella swooped down, and with the Lady Aanor’s scissors clipped a sprig from the heart of the rosemary bush – the only sprig that was yet come into flower – and held it out to him.

  ‘There, take it,’ she said incoherently. ‘You’ll be going into battle – it’s good to have something that nobody gave you, to take into battle with you.’

  Randal took it from her, and stood looking at it, seeing as clearly as though he had never seen a sprig of rosemary before, the shape and the faint, washed-out blue of the fragile petals, and the silvery green of the narrow leaves; catching the dry, aromatic scent that came up to him from between his fingers.

  When he looked up, Gisella was already gone, running as she had run that other time.

  Randal fished inside the embroidered neck of his tunic and brought out the little washleather bag in which he carried his precious lump of raw red amber, opened it, and slipped the sprig of rosemary inside. He drew up the string of the little bag again, and returned it to the breast of his tunic. Then he too ran, but remembering to close the door in the wall behind him.

  14

  Sir Bevis D’Aguillon

  ABOUT AN HOUR before noon next day, Randal and Bevis rode into the Hall garth at Dean, Bevis on the tall bay stallion that de Braose had given him, and Randal leading Durandal beside his own Swallow; the hounds as usual leapt all about them, and the squire years at Bramber were left behind. They were expected, and Reynfrey, who had been watching the track from the ford all morning in the intervals of the other things he had to do, came striding to hold Bevis’s stirrup as he dismounted.

  ‘Home again, then, d’Aguillon.’

  It was the first time he had ever called Bevis by that name, and Bevis flushed a little as he heard it. ‘Aye, home again to be made knight among my own folk, before the ships sail, Reynfrey.’ He turned to greet Adam who had come scurrying up from his little cell behind the church when he heard the horses’ hooves. ‘Come to keep my vigil in our own church, where you made Randal and me keep so many vigils with our Latin when we wanted to go fishing.’ And he took the little man’s thin, brown hands and stood smiling down at him, then turned to the silently waiting Ancret, and hugged her without a word. Others of the household and Manor had come running at the sound of hooves, and Bevis in the midst of the growing knot of them was greeting and being greeted. But the smell of mutton pottage that had been stealing out to them from the big pot over the cooking fire in the Hall turned suddenly to the smell of burning, and Sybilla fled with a squawk, followed by their laughter.

  Presently they ate in the Great Hall, Bevis sitting in d’Aguillon’s place at the High Table, with Joyeuse crouched against his knee, and when dinner was over, Adam brought the Manor roll that must be checked and gone through. Reynfrey came with matters of his stewardship to be gone into in readiness for de Braose’s coming, and Bevis must go over the equipment and stores of the ten men that he would be leading in a few days to join the King’s army. For Dean in its small way was humming the same deep war-song of preparations that they had left behind them in Bramber; all just as it had been nearly four years ago, when the witch hunt came. The witch hunt! There had been no more word of de Coucy from that day; he must have got safely out of the country to join the Duke. Randal, helping Bevis and Reynfrey to check bowstrings, wondered if perhaps he might meet de Coucy in Normandy this summer, and cherished the thought as though it were a smoothly rounded pebble in his hand, everything in him reaching forward to the coming campaign, and Gisella already forgotten altogether.

  But towards the day’s end, when all things were seen to and set in order, Bevis and Randal went up the valley to find Lewin the Shepherd, and lay on their stomachs as they had done when they were boys, watching the shadows lengthen across the downs.

  ‘If I were going to be made a knight tomorrow,’ thought Randal, his nose in the sheep-nibbled grass, ‘this is just how I should choose to spend the last few hours: up here with Lewin and the sheep. Nothing moving but the cloud shadows, and all Dean spread out below me from the Bramble Hill to the ford.’

  When they got back to the Hall, le Savage had just ridden in from Broadwater. He had sent word that he would come, and here he was, clattering into the garth, his great round face shining in the April sunlight that dappled through the branches of the old pear tree.

  Bevis ran to hold his stirrup as he dismounted, exclaiming, ‘God’s greeting to you, Sir Robert. This is kind of you, when you must have so little time to spare just now from Broadwater’s affairs!’

  Le Savage clapped a hand like a mottled ham on Bevis’s shoulder, his big nose red with emotion. ‘All things are in train at Broadwater and I’ve left Hugo in charge. Couldn’t leave you without a made knight beside you at a time like this. Na na!’

  Again they ate in the Great Hall; le Savage a good deal – especially of the wheatear pie – and Randal and Bevis rather less than usual. Randal was suffering from an odd breathlessness, a feeling of unbearable solemnity in his stomach that left little room for food. He jibed at himself for a fool; it was not he who was to spend all the long hours of this night’s darkness alone in the little church beyond the garth, kneeling before his naked sword laid on the high altar, not he who would kneel down here in the Hall still a squire, and rise up a knight, sheathing his new sword – d’Aguillon’s great sword with the seal cut in the hilt . . .

  Supper was over and the daylight fading, and Bevis had left the table and turned in the doorway at the foot of the solar steps, looking back for him. They left the Hall and climbed the outside stair together, Joyeuse at their heels. Le Savage looked after them as though wondering whether he should come too, then shook his head and settled down with his cup of home-brewed perry, beckoning with his head for Reynfrey to come and talk to him by the fire, while the churls cleared up the Hall.

  Randal set the torch he had brought in the socket beside the empty hearth, and the smoky yellow flare of it sent the grey daylight scurrying into corners where it hung like cobwebs under the rafters. The room felt extraordinarily empty; there had been no life in it for two years. But the sleeping-bench against the wall was made up, with hard, straw-filled pillows and the best sheepskin rug ready for the new Lord of Dean.

  Bevis went to the carved kist where d’Aguillon’s war gear had always lain, and flung back the lid. The smell of oiled linen and long-stored leather came up to them as he lifted out the great sword in its linen
wrappings. Randal took it from him and laid it on the bed; the worn crimson belt with its powdering of tiny golden roses swung free as he did so, a bright slash of colour across the greyish fleece of the rug.

  ‘I’ll give it a rub up before you belt it on,’ he said.

  Bevis was already arm-deep in the chest again. ‘I’m no knight that you should be my squire yet, Randal.’

  ‘I shall be your squire tomorrow,’ Randal said. ‘It is but a few hours. Let me clean your sword for you, Bevis.’

  They brought out the nut-shaped helmet in its oiled wrappings, the stained and weather-worn gambeson that Sir Everard had worn so often, the studded leather legstraps; finally, together, they lifted out the great ring-mail hauberk that chimed and rang faintly even inside its linen cloth as they moved it. Sir Everard’s shield, the bright bird-snake on it freshly painted and the straps renewed (Reynfrey had seen to all that) hung where it had always hung, on the wall over the bed.

  Everything was in perfect readiness, evidently Reynfrey had been busy; and Randal knew that it was really only for a whim that he was rubbing up d’Aguillon’s great sword, even as he unsheathed the long streak of wavering, sheeny brightness that was the blade, and began his burnishing, while Bevis, his outer tunic pulled off over his head, stood watching him.

  After a few moments he sheathed the blade again, and rose to help Bevis with his arming, and as he did so, their eyes met in the flaring torchlight, with a brightness shared between them. They had shared so many things in their time, but this was something greater even than their red amber had been. Then Randal took up the old gambeson and held it for Bevis to push his arms into the short sleeves, and when that was laced on, set to work on the legstraps. Bevis, being something of a dandy, wore close-fitting hose in the new fashion, instead of the old loose breeks, and the heavy, studded cross-gartering struck Randal suddenly as looking quite ludicrous over them. The laughter rose in this throat, as it will do sometimes when one is not in the least in the mood for it. He gave a kind of whimpering snort, and Bevis, still fiddling with the lacing of his gambeson, looked down to see the jest, saw his own legs, and caught the quick, strained laughter from him so that they rocked together like the veriest pair of urchins. And le Savage, in the Great Hall by the fire, heard them and grumbled to Reynfrey, ‘Ah, we did not laugh so, on the eve of knighthood, when I was a boy. But it is different in these days; nothing is sacred to the wild lads now.’

  In the cold solar, by the light of the flaring torch, Bevis and Randal had sobered from their laughter, and Randal was helping Bevis on with his hauberk. The thing weighed more than half as much as a man, and hung heavy with the dead, cold heaviness of its interlinking iron mesh as he heaved it up and Bevis, stooping, plunged his head and arms into it. Randal slipped round behind him and heaved it further on over his shoulders. The mail jarred and chimed as Bevis threshed with his arms, heaving also; then he stood upright, his usually pale face scarlet, and the hauberk slid down over his body, a darkly glimmering gown of mail to the knee, the torchlight jinking on his shoulders in flecks and fish-scales of light.

  ‘Phew! Somebody ought to invent a better way of getting into a hauberk!’

  Randal brought him the great sword and belted it on; lastly the war-mittens. The helmet would be left standing ready on the armour kist until tomorrow, since he must go bareheaded to his vigil; and the mail coif hung loose on Bevis’s neck. He hitched at his sword belt, making sure that all was secure, then crossed the solar to take down the gaudy shield, moving less swiftly than usual. He was well used to wearing mail, as was Randal, for it was part of the training of a squire, but however well one was used to it, there was always that slowing up, that faint ponderousness in the movements of a man in full war harness.

  He slipped the guige of the shield over his head, and stood a moment as though getting the feel of the harness, with Joyeuse snuffing in bewilderment at his feet and legs. ‘It’s a good thing grandfather and I were much of a size.’ He looked about him. ‘Is that everything?’

  ‘Everything save the helmet. You’re a credit to your squire.’ Randal cast a quick look at the window, where the spring dusk hung blue and opaque beyond the torchlight. ‘Time we were away. It is almost dark.’

  Bevis glanced once more about the room, as though wondering what strange things would have happened inside himself before he came back to it in the morning with his vigil behind him. Then he whistled to Joyeuse, and turned to the head of the short stair.

  Randal lingered just long enough to take the torch down and quench it on the hearth, then he followed.

  In the Great Hall the men round the hearth heard the weighted footsteps on the stair, and looked up, and as Bevis came into sight and checked in the stair-foot doorway, Randal, following close behind, saw their eyes widen in the firelight.

  ‘Splendour of God!’ le Savage growled. ‘It is d’Aguillon.’

  Reynfrey chuckled exultantly. ‘Aye, ’tis d’Aguillon. Did you never see before that the boy was somewhat like his grandsire?’

  ‘It is uncanny!’ le Savage said. ‘He even frets with his sword belt as Everard used to do. I mind him doing it while we waited by the horses on the morning of Senlac Fight.’ He tramped to meet Bevis, and clapped him on the mailed shoulder. ‘Well, boy, are you ready?’

  ‘Quite ready, Sir Robert.’ Bevis looked about him at the familiar faces. ‘Where’s Adam?’

  ‘Gone to light the candles,’ Reynfrey said.

  Ancret came through the rest, like a dark shadow cast by the firelight, and set her hands on his shoulders. ‘Ah, you have grown into such a tall man that I cannot reach you. Stoop down, little nursling,’ and kissed him as his mother might have done.

  They were all at the foreporch door now, spilling out into the deepening dusk, Bevis in front with le Savage, Randal following close behind, and the rest coming after him. Candlelight shone dimly gold from the high window of the church as they made their way across the garth; but it was not full dark yet, and Randal could se the familiar outline of the downs high above them, and the pale blur of blossom on the branches of the old pear tree that arched against the humpbacked darkness of the thatch.

  Adam was waiting for them in the lime-washed church, still fiddling with the wicks of the two altar candles, and the scent of the bees’ summer gathering stole out from the warm, golden wax. He came down to them by the door; a thin old man in a rusty brown habit, suddenly near to tears.

  ‘Ah, Bevis, Bevis, my old heart is very full. It is a brave day for Dean that d’Aguillon comes home to keep his vigil in our own little church and be made knight among his own people.’

  ‘For d’Aguillon also,’ Bevis said, very quietly.

  They stood in a little huddle in the doorway, watching him as he walked forward alone. He was standing at the east end now, dark and narrow against the candles. He drew the great sword from its sheath, and laid it on the Lord’s Table, and knelt down, his head bent over his joined hands. The candlelight made a rim of brightness round his dark head; above him in the shadowy saffron of the gable was the small east window was deeply and luminously blue, and behind him his shadow lay pooled across the long flagstone that marked Sir Everard’s grave.

  When Randal turned away, he found that the others had gone already. He followed them on feet that dragged a little, like the feet of someone very weary, or very sad; and there was a feeling on him of having just parted from something, a feeling that nothing would ever be quite the same again.

  Back in the Hall, they gathered round the fire against the chill of the spring night, and flung on more logs so that the sparks flew upward. Randal, sitting with Joyeuse hunched disconsolately against his knee, heard the others talking, but not what they said; saw their faces in the firelight with a piercing clearness: old brown Adam growing to look more and more like an autumn leaf these days; Reynfrey who looked, as always, to have been made of harness leather; le Savage with his big red face and bald yellow head – he was the only person Randal had ever seen wh
o had face and head of two completely different colours, and the peculiarity had always fascinated him. But all the while he wasn’t thinking of what he was seeing, at all; he was thinking of the little church just outside the garth, and Bevis kneeling with his drawn sword before him at the altar where the tall candles smelled of Ancret’s bees.

  When the time came, Randal helped as usual to make the Hall ready for sleeping. He brought rugs and straw-filled pillows and made le Savage’s bed on one of the broad benches in the warmest and most secluded corner, serving him as Hugo his own squire might have done if he had not been left at Broadwater. But he did not lie down himself in his old place among the hounds by the hearth. Instead, he slipped out through the door at the stair foot, and made his way down to the foreporch end of the Hall, from which he could see the light shining – more brightly now in the full darkness – from that small, high window under the pear branches.

  He could not sleep tonight, warm among his fellow men, while Bevis . . .

  A cold muzzle was thrust into the palm of his hand, and as he looked down, a furry shadow pressed itself against his leg, whimpering. Joyeuse too. He stooped and patted her.

  ‘Come too, then, Joyeuse; faithful old Joyeuse – come, girl.’

  He crossed the garth, the hound padding beside him, and slipping out through the gate gap, turned aside into the narrow green, tangled alleyway between the church and the hawthorn hedge. It was very quiet as he knelt down – something rustled among the grass and brambles, and then was still again; so quiet that he could make out the faint voice of the winter bourn, that he had always thought you could only hear from the Hall when it was in spate. He wondered if Bevis was hearing it too, inside the church. Joyeuse settled herself against him with a sigh, her great rough head under his hand, and their own quietness became part of the quietness of the night. Bevis need never know that his squire and his hound had kept his vigil with him