Fair Weather

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  I could hear my breath heavy and felt it swell in my lungs. There was a great suspense in the stillness. It was a cold night and a faint frost hung like smoke around my nose and mouth and I shivered. Then I realised that I was afraid. My dream of torture and pain still whispered at the back of my eyes but I stayed where I was.

  Then I heard the soft stepping of some large animal. Its pace was slow but deliberate and echoed slightly, a vibration that I felt through my toes rather than through my ears.

  I expected slanting red eyes and curved teeth. I expected wolves or the pig eyes and slashing tusks of the boar. Most of all I expected some demon, the disguise of the devil, the call of magic and witchcraft, evil and murder. I didn’t run back inside. I waited to face whatever it was. The steps came nearer and I recognised the four footed trudge of some weary thing along the path to our house. The creature that approached was high and black as the shadows and as determined as my own heartbeat. Then demons faded back into the undergrowth. Nightmares shrivelled.

  Vespasian had come back with a horse and a terrible wound in his shoulder.

  ChapterTwelve

  I thought he must fall but he rode up to where I stood and slowly dismounted. Even in the dark I could see the blood still black and wet across his chest. I could smell it. The cloak was thrown back and all the shoulder of the cotte was slashed. He leaned over, clutched the pommel of the horse’s saddle, and slid to the ground. I caught him against me for a moment before his height and weight toppled me backwards. I propped both of us upright by the wall of the house. Within minutes the boys had rushed from their dreams and their beds and were helping us indoors.

  Vespasian’s blood was across my chemise. It was very thick and sticky. I lit the tallow lamp and caught the wicks of two candle stubs from its flame. Osbert and Gerald tried to help Vespasian to his bed but he pushed them away. He slumped into the big chair by the guttering ashes of the kitchen fire. It was the only chair of the house, tall and straight backed though hard, for the cushion had long since rotted away. He leaned back his head and stretched his legs. “Come here,” he said. His voice was always low but this time I could hardly hear him.

  “I must wash and bind that wound,” I said.

  “It can wait.” I wondered how far he had ridden in that condition and how weak he must be from blood loss. The horse would not have known its way here and could not have guided him. I wondered where he got it. But I didn’t ask anything. Vespasian rarely answered questions. “Where’s Gerald?” His eyes, half closed, seemed hugely dilated. If we had been in modern times, I would have thought he was drugged.

  “It was Gerald helped you in here. Now he’s seeing to the horse.”

  “The horse can wait too.” He lifted himself up and stared at me. “Call Gerald. He must stay beside me.”

  Tilda would have obeyed immediately but now she shared her mind with me and I made her query what she was told. “Why Gerald? Hugh’s the stronger. He can protect you better.”

  “Fool.” He slumped down again and looked away from me, as if deciding I wasn’t worth attention. Instead he gazed into the scattered embers of the sinking fire. “It’s not to protect me, but to protect him. But don’t tell him that. He must share my bed. Now, call him. Hugh can tend to the horse.”

  I did as he told me. Hugh was already outside, struggling with an animal beyond his experience. None of us knew much about horses. Walter came running in and knelt at Vespasian’s feet. “We’ve tethered your horse in the barn, and we’ve taken off the saddle, but we can’t remove the bridle. It wants to bite us and the teeth are so big. I’m sorry. I’ve never liked horses.”

  “I do,” said Richard, jumping up. He had been getting dressed in the bedroom since he’d never appear naked in front of me. “My dad had a horse for years, a poor sumpter he rescued when our lord whipped it until it bled. It dropped dead at the plough the day before my mother died. But I loved that horse. I can look after yours.”

  Stephen had been cross legged, sitting beside the kitchen hearth. He sprang up too, following Richard out into the night. Gerald had come back in and sat beside me, both of us at Vespasian’s knee. “Now I’ll look after you,” I said. Vespasian looked at me, then relaxed a little and half smiled.

  “If you must be my nurse, then very well. But I doubt the wound is so serious.” He looked bitterly weary. I wished I could get him to bed. Instead, I sent Osbert and Walter out to get water. I set a cauldron full to boil and stoked up the fire. Tilda had some knowledge and I had some too and together we might do well enough.

  Vespasian released the clasp of his cloak and I began to undo the laces at his neck and the heavy leather of his belt. I struggled to get the cotte off the shoulder and I know I hurt him but he continued to smile and looked as if he was bemused that I should go to so much trouble. Then he pushed me away gently and with his right hand, removed the sleeve from his left. “I am not yet so useless,” he said. “And I shall be stronger in the morning. Bind the shoulder if you will and then I shall rest.” Tilda would be busy repairing the shirt and cotte for the next two days. Vespasian had only one other and clothes were now even harder to order. But what he wore now was new to me and grander than he had worn before. The material was badly slashed, but it was still beautiful. The fine linen of his shirt was almost transparent and its sleeves were detachable. The left side was so heavily blood stained that I had to peel it back, then carefully unpick it from the shoulder. Finally the arm was naked. Vespasian slumped now, his head against the chair back and his eyes half closed, but still watching me and everything I did.

  I used rags torn from an old threadbare sheet, and began to wash the wound. It was extremely deep and long and unpleasantly wide, hacked into the flesh with a heavy bladed sword. The muscle within lay open. I was no doctor but I knew it should be stitched. “It’ll go on bleeding,” I said softly, “and become infected. You must have lost too much blood already. That’ll make you dreadfully weak. It needs sewing.” Tilda had sharp needles in three sizes and fine thread. They had never been designed for human flesh, but they would do.

  He was watching my reaction. Vespasian had always been able to see through all of us, especially the women, and this time my expression must have been easily read. The sliced flesh was weeping, folded open like meat on a butcher’s block. I felt a squeamish revulsion. I was also absurdly nervous of touching him, half naked in the flickering candle light.

  “I am never dreadfully weak,” he said with what I suspected to be mild amusement. “I imagine the wound should be cauterized. Unfortunately, it’s too high on the shoulder for me to see. I doubt I could manage it myself as yet.”

  I gulped. “I’d sooner sew it than cauterize it,” I said. “I think I can manage that.”

  “As you wish,” said Vespasian. He still seemed faintly amused.

  “I haven’t any mead or wine,” I mumbled, “or anything else to help take away the pain.”

  The corners of his mouth twitched. “There’s not the slightest need for it,” he said. “I imagine I’ll survive the experience.”

  I washed the needle in boiling water and then held it, arm outstretched, into the little flickering flames of the fire to sterilize the point. Gerald leaned over behind me and held the injury’s gaping edges together as I sewed. Osbert stood straight at Vespasian’s back and held the candle high. I felt sick but Tilda was efficient. Vespasian never moved. The shoulder continued to bleed and I had to stop stitching several times to wipe away the bubbles. Finally Tilda seemed satisfied and put her needle down. It was stiff with little globules of flesh and torn skin. It had not been so sharp after all. Vespasian watched me, unblinking.

  I tied the bandage tight and, just as I had known about hygiene and sterilization, so Tilda knew which herbs to put in the binding to hurry the healing. She folded fresh periwinkle and wild mint within the bandage and used a washed dock leaf over the wound. “It’s done,” I said. He was still gazing at me, though he hardly moved.

  “Then I sha
ll go to my bed.”

  Gerald helped him up. “Tilda says you want me to share your palliasse. I’d be honoured.”

  I followed them from the kitchen to the tiny bedchamber Vespasian used, once an old pantry, his bed fresh tidied and ready for him and a brazier of hot cinders just out of reach of the bulky mattress. He stopped in the doorway, looking at Gerald. “Just don’t roll over in the night across this damned shoulder,” sighed Vespasian, “or Tilda will want to sew me up all over again. And I do not,” he smiled back at me suddenly, “intend becoming a tapestry.”

  Walter snored heavily and I slept very little. I drifted from past to future and dream magnets whirled me into chaos. I saw Bertie, I heard knocking at the door, pulled the coverlets over my head and listened to an owl calling across the stars. I did not know which world it called from. Dawn had touched the top of the trees when I finally crawled from a bed that was no longer comfortable, with all its scratch and itch tumbled into dissemble. I slipped outside again, my shoes in my hand, and sat on the doorstep to put them on. My stockings were already in holes. Here I had to be careful of my clothes, as replacements could no longer be stolen.

  I went first to the barn. The big grey horse rolled its eyes at me and showed me its teeth, lips raised and wide nostrils flared. I laughed. “You don’t frighten me. In fact, you’re telling lies about what a great, dangerous beast you are. You carried a sick man for many miles, when he had hardly the strength to guide you. You brought him safe on a long road and past all the mystery in the night. You must be a good horse, and I’ll try and get to know you when you let me.” As Molly, I knew little more about horses than Tilda did but there were plenty around the local farms and riders passed my cottage every day, plodded down the main street and stood patiently tethered outside the Post Office, the local shops and the hotel bar. At least I was used to them. But the horse saw me as Tilda and ignored me with contempt.

  I went down to my pool in the forest. The sun was shining its first dragonfly glisten over the water’s surface. It would be icy but I couldn’t wait until the day was high when the other children would be around and my privacy would be lost. I took off my clothes and folded them carefully on the moss of the bank. I stepped down into the water, absorbed the shock of the cold, and began to swim.

  Under the water’s surface the algae danced in shimmering threads, weed entwined and river snail studded. It was dark; fairy grotto, but the sun gleamed through in slanting gold, lighting the crystalline pebbled bed. I submerged and felt the eddies through my hair. My body warmed, accustomed now to the cold. I circled the pool underwater and opened my eyes like a mermaid, watching the little brown fish that tickled my legs. I had left the soap pot with my clothes. Ready to retrieve it, I came up for air.

  Vespasian was sitting on the bank. He still wore the shirt with one sleeve detached, and that shoulder heavily bandaged. Blood had seeped though, a red smear spreading slowly. The one naked elbow rested on his knee, the skin paler up an arm long shielded from open sunshine, but the muscles sleek and pronounced. He smiled wide at me as I looked at him in surprise, then quickly splashed down into the modesty of dark water almost to my neck.

  “Too late,” he said mildly.

  “That’s not fair,” I said, gulping water and spitting out weed. “You should have looked away.”

  “Knightly courtesy?” he smiled. “I don’t think so. I do not believe in dishonest chivalry.” He stayed where he was, comfortable on a jutting stone. “Besides, you’re a child. I see you as a child.”

  “I’m seventeen,” said Tilda, a little hurt.

  “I’m nearly old enough to be your father,” continued Vespasian, “if you stretch the facts of puberty a little. I think of you as my daughter.”

  (I’m thirty years old, you idiot, I shouted inside her head. I’m nearly as old as you must be.) Tilda sniffed. She often dreamed of Vespasian undressing her, but catching her unawares was different. “But I don’t think of you as my father,” she muttered. “So you watching me isn’t fair.”

  Vespasian got up. “But life,” he said, “is never fair.” He turned and began to walk back into the shadows of the first trees. “However,” he turned briefly and I ducked back down into the brackish water. “I did not come to spy on you. I came to make sure you were safe.” He stood for a moment as if remembering something, then shrugged it off. “There is now an increased danger, which I do not yet intend explaining to you. It would be better if you stayed with the company.”

  “I can’t bathe in company,” I said. In spite of having to crouch underwater, I wanted him to come back and tell me more.

  But he began to walk off. “Then this will be your last bath for some time,” he said over his shoulder. “Hurry and finish. Come straight back to the house. I shall be waiting for you.”

  I grabbed the scrap of hard dried soap and scrubbed, dipping back into the stream to wash the slick of pale bubbles. The soap made few suds but I felt cleaner and fresher. Vespasian’s blood had been sticky on my arms and across my chin. As I washed, I could see my reflection float at my knees. I was painfully thin and looked just like the child Vespasian had called me.

  His blood was also on my chemise but it was now too hard to budge. I let it be and ran back to the house, my body still damp and tingling in my clothes, my hair all trickling rats’ tails down my back. He was waiting for me as he had said he would, sitting at ease on the doorstep and he laughed when he saw me. I knew exactly what he was thinking. Tilda blushed and hurried indoors. She curled on the cushion of rushes by the kitchen fire and began to mend Vespasian’s cotte. First she had to clean the needle, then held it in the flames a second as she had the night before. Tilda had no idea about sterilization but I did. She was obedient, far more so than I would have liked, but in matters such as this she not only did what others told her, but more importantly, what I commanded too, and I was thankful. It had not occurred to me the night before, but now I wondered what Vespasian had thought, watching me attend to a hygiene unknown for the time. He would, I hoped, have been too feverish to notice.

  Tilda stayed there for an hour stitching neatly. The warmth dried her body and her hair until it was all silky gleaming brown curls in the shimmer and shadow of the fire. When Vespasian came in I did not look at him and continued to concentrate on my work. I hated sewing but Tilda was wondrously practical.

  It was some days that Vespasian could not use his left arm as he previously had, but he was right handed and so lived his life exactly as he had before, except for hunting with his bow. He was not a man to allow disability or discomfort to inconvenience him. The bandages twice became soaked in blood seeping from the badly stitched wound. I changed these while he sat patiently, and watched me with a half smile. Such intimate contact thrilled Tilda but made her absurdly nervous. For me, it was faintly uncomfortable. I was equally discomforted by Vespasian’s smile. It told me he fully understood Tilda’s unsteady fingers and her hidden blushes as she touched his body. He never flinched, never moved away. He just smiled.

  He gave us absolutely no explanation of where he had been or how he had been wounded but he kept Gerald, Stephen and myself especially close. I doubt he let us from his sight for more than a few moments each. I got no further chance to bathe in private and could wash only face and hands and feet. Since this was about all the others cared to do, I quickly accepted becoming the medieval slattern that I surely was.

  Vespasian initiated further improvements to the house and he went hunting with Gerald, Stephen and sometimes the others, leaving me always with one or more of the boys and strict orders to keep together and watch over each other. With Richard he had no need for orders, for Richard followed me like a new hatched gosling. Osbert and Hugh were less enthusiastic about playing big brother. “But there has to be a special reason,” Osbert scowled. “He never bothered with you before.”

  “Thanks.” Well, it was true. “Anyway, of course there’s a reason. Do you honestly think he was wounded running away from the sherif
f or something? That wouldn’t be like Vespasian, would it now?”

  “So, he got into a fight. It happens,” said Hugh.

  “Especially if he was drunk,” Richard pointed out. “He often used to get drunk. And the man has a bloody bad temper at the best of times. When he’s drunk, he’s worse.”

  “And he used to follow the king sometimes, and go to war across the sea,” said Osbert. “I never knew what he was up to, I mean, he never told us, did he? I thought he might be keen to go on the crusades, but he never did. In fact, he was always rather rude about the crusaders.”

  Richard grinned. “He’s always rude about everything.”

  “You still aren’t getting the point,” I insisted. “Vespasian said he’d be away a few days and he was gone more than a month. Then he came back half dead. So who attacked him?”

  “Robbers,” said Richard.

  “Robbers and outlaws,” said Hugh.

  “We’re robbers and outlaws ourselves,” I said.

  “Not strictly speaking,” insisted Gerald. “We’ve never been tried and we’ve never been exiled. That was Vespasian’s point, wasn’t it? To disappear before we could be arrested and judged. So in fact, no one’s looking for us at all.”

  “Oh, I bet they are,” I said. “Don’t doubt it. The law has linked us with Isabel by now. But there’s more than that. There’s whoever killed her.”

  “I don’t want to talk about that,” said Hugh, hands behind his back and sticking his belly out. “I expect Vespasian was robbed. That’s all. It happens. We ought to know.”