Fair Weather

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  He leaned over me, brushing back the curls of sweat tangled hair from my wet forehead. “My dear child,” he said patiently, “it may not be the most diplomatic moment to remind you, but I have already seen every part of you and touched every part of you and there are no secrets between us. You must now let me undress and wash you and then you can drink something, which will help, I think. After that, I believe you will sleep. These clothes will have to be burned.”

  It felt strange and not uncomfortable to lie quite naked on the big feather mattress with the cover replaced by cloths, while Vespasian washed my body very carefully, sensitive to the places where the injuries were deep and had to be avoided, and attentive to my own trembling, which I could not control. Then he dried me with equal care, removed the damp cloths beneath me, and pulled the cover up to my chin, tucking me in.

  Eventually he fed me a little spiced wine. It tasted hot and warmed me wonderfully inside. “But I think I’ll only bring it back,” I mumbled.

  “Not this one,” said Vespasian softly. “This one, I have doctored.”

  And so I slept again and did not dream at all.

  Chapter Fifty Five

  Vespasian told the inn keeper he was father to us both, Gerald and I, and that we’d been overtaken by thieves on the road. We had all put up a fight, hence our bloody injuries, but although we’d managed to keep hold of two of our three horses and Vespasian’s jewels and encrusted cotte, we’d lost all our baggage. This was also supposed to explain my unkempt and nauseas state. Feminine hysteria no doubt. “We are obviously most inept fighters,” sighed Vespasian absently. “We shall have to try harder next time.”

  Gerald was sulky about the fabrication. “You’ve just beaten fifty men or more, not to mention those - well – what were they? Demons,” he said with his impressive snort. “And I don’t think I did too badly myself. And now you let people think we’re cowards? My God, you were incredible, Vespasian. I mean, my lord. We were incredible. And now this robbery story makes me look stupid.”

  “Courage and cowardice are merely absurdities of circumstance.” Vespasian shrugged, a pewter mug of breakfast ale in one hand and a wedge of dark bread in the other. “It’s those too frightened to be cowards who practise courage for safety’s sake.” It was a little past dawn and he’d arranged food to be served in our chamber. The rain had cleared and the day looked brighter. Gerald was tucking into a large platter of goose egg pancakes with honey and I felt my stomach lurch. I was not eating.

  “That sounds mighty prim and pompous,” said Gerald, forgetting his new found filial respect, “but it’s all been so exciting and there’s not a soul I can tell.”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” said Vespasian, “and don’t wipe your mouth on your sleeve, there’s a napkin to your right. Your training for knighthood is obviously going to be a long one. Besides, once you send for Osbert and Steven and Walter, you can show off your new grandeur to your heart’s content. Only remember they’re unlikely to believe everything you tell them. In the meantime, we’ve two more day’s riding in front of us so I intend making an early start. I can give the horses strength and endurance, but all magic has its limits, and the horses must travel at a speed they recognise.”

  Gerald looked up at his step-father. “You’re not taking me with you all the way, are you?” he asked. “You mean to leave me at the Tennaton estate.”

  “You must put your own house in order, and I, mine,” Vespasian nodded. “I shall take Tilda with me to Gloucestershire but we’ll both come down to visit you once she’s fully recovered. The new manager I’ve installed is a good man. He’ll look after you.”

  I felt strong enough for the first few miles. Flax country, we passed quickly between shorn fields in silence until the sun rose up higher into a soft golden haze. Fresh washed now, everything glistened and the air smelled good. I was wearing the rough linen of a serving girl’s clothes from the inn and I thought Vespasian might have stolen them until I saw that his pearl broach was missing. Some of his own clothes were new as well, though his cotte had been steamed and cleaned with fuller’s earth and must have been brushed with sand for three hours at least, until all marks of my rebellious stomach had gone. Some of the blood remained and the material was hacked and damaged, including a great slash down the left arm. It would take many hours to mend. He wore a thin brown woollen mantle like a journeyman’s which contrasted strangely with the ornate cotte, but I was still wrapped in his own luxurious fur cloak.

  The new palfreys, though fresh, were stubborn and slow to speed. Vespasian spurred forwards once we came to open ground and the horses reluctantly pressed into a rhythmic canter, their ears back, heavy hoofed. They tired quickly and when we slowed again Gerald came up to ride abreast and began to talk. “You look better Tilda. Yesterday you were green and yellow. This morning you look almost pink. How do you feel?”

  Vespasian had not asked me how I felt. In fact, I was not feeling well at all. The nausea was churning back bile again and all across my body the pain concentrated, burning up to the top of my head where it pounded like hoof beats. “Yes, I’m all right,” I said.

  “Everything starts to fade, doesn’t it?” Gerald said. His bright hair was pretty in the winter sun and he looked remarkably healthy himself. “I mean, now I even wonder if it was all a dream.”

  “But that’s what Lilith said, isn’t it,” I told him. “It was a dream. A true one. Nothing so true could be as mundane as reality.”

  “Yes, but that’s trickery,” sniffed Gerald. “Those sorts of things don’t make sense. When I’m a great knight perhaps I’ll look back and understand it and tell stories to my grandchildren.”

  I had thought Vespasian lost in his own thoughts but now he interrupted. “Greatness is the result of transcendence,” he said, as soft as the hill’s breeze in our faces. “To transcend, it is necessary to rise beyond. And only by returning to the beginning, can one go beyond. Then, to return to the beginning, it is necessary to transcend.”

  “You see,” said Gerald to me, “that’s the sort of thing he says. I just can’t make head nor tail of it.”

  “That’s something to do with alchemy,” I said, almost as if I understood although in fact I did not. “Don’t think about all that. Tell me about your grandchildren.”

  He laughed, but it reminded him of something. “You know, in the middle of the battle, when I wasn’t nimble enough and my grandmother got hold of me and Vespasian grabbed you and there was all that talk about letting me go or he’d kill you and shut the gates, well I didn’t understand a word of that either. It was horrible.”

  “It was all horrible,” I said. “Perhaps it’s better if we don’t understand.”

  Gerald’s horse had dropped behind and he trotted up quickly beside me. “It’ll be wonderful to explore my own house, but I wish you were both coming with me,” he said rather sadly. “It’ll be dreadfully lonely being left on my own. I’ve never been alone, you know. Not ever. Vespasian’s always looked after me. Of course if I’d been a normal baron’s son, I’d have been sent away from home when I was seven and I’m glad that didn’t happen. I’d have been sent to some boring family for training, and probably swapped for their poor son. It’s a horrid idea, if you ask me.”

  “I imagine it’s supposed to teach independence,” I suggested.

  Gerald sighed. “I don’t want to be independent yet. I just wish you were both coming to stay with me.”

  “Vespasian has to start claiming back his own estates.”

  “Which may end up being mine too,” Gerald said, cheerful again. “Unless he has children of his own with you, Tilda.”

  I felt the blush rising from my ears inwards. “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Sorry. I won’t tease you.” Gerald was aware of Vespasian pretending not to listen. “But it’ll feel mighty odd having you for a step-mother.” Then he caught my glare and sniggered. “I’ll be quiet,” he said. “Besides, I suppose I ought to start thinking about tonight
. Before Vespasian brought you from London, he set me up with new staff. There’s a farm manager and an estate manager who mutters in French, and a grand steward and a secretary who seems to do nothing but talk Latin. I can’t understand any of them. Then there’s loads of new servants, including a cook, would you believe? We used to spend half the year starving and now I’m going to have my very own cook. I suppose the place will soon feel like my own, but there’s a lot to learn.”

  “So you’re officially the baron already?”

  “I suppose I always was without knowing,” said Gerald. “Now Arthur’s dead, well – it’s all just there for picking.”

  “And all organised before the fight with Arthur and Lilith? He must have been very certain we were going to win.” I looked up at the underside of Vespasian’s jaw, which was soft and indicated a smile.

  “Had we lost,” said Vespasian, “I doubt the futility of my arrangements would have concerned us within the greater scheme of heavenly priorities.”

  Gerald sniffed, “You mean we’d have all been dead.”

  “Precisely,” he said. “It was always the likeliest probability.”

  The day was warming and the sun had turned apricot. It was approaching midday and the horses were already tired. Vespasian let them slow to an amble, enjoying the warmth on our faces. We took a long lane between orchards and Gerald reached up and grabbed two little apples, left late to ripen on their stubby tree, smelling sharp and strong. The rest had been harvested long before.

  There were hives under the trees, little wooden industries waiting for the next year’s cherry and pear blossoms. Along the hedge tops sheets had been spread to dry like wild swans stretched on a green tapestry, all crisp in the sunshine. There were cottages tucked into the countryside, chimney holes gusting peat smoke through the thatch, a sudden flock of great white geese hissing at the horses from the other side of a weedy green pond. Serfs, husband and wife, were tending their own strip and planting peas against thin canes. The manor house straddled the hill behind the steady sounds of someone chopping wood. The bare tree branches were thin stitcheries of empty embroidery against the washed out sky but the lattice of holly prickles along the hedges was house to the lark and the robin, the field mouse and the wandering weasel, hiding entrances to the badger’s set and the tunnel to mole’s loamy hole.

  I heard movement and life. I felt part of the season, aware of the scuffle of little surreptitious daytime hunting and the patient snore of hibernation. I heard all things and was part of everything. I felt magic in my veins and wild mysteries rushing like streams in my head. I still felt the pain, but it was subjugated to pleasure.

  Gerald’s words tumbled me back. “Isn’t it dinner time?”

  “You still have your knife,” said Vespasian. “Catch yourself a hare.”

  “And eat it raw? Besides, I’m not nearly quick enough for that sort of hunting and you probably wouldn’t even wait for me.” Gerald lapsed again into silence. I was glad. Something was happening to me and I wanted it to go on. Then Gerald spoke to me again and all the fantasy was gone. “The people Vespasian put on my estates, he’d known them years before,” said Gerald. “He went around and found people he trusted. I suppose he had lots of staff and retainers and everything before he changed his name and went into hiding.”

  “Did you think I was born an outlaw and hermit?” Vespasian interrupted, his voice brushing the top of my hair. “I was able to trace those I previously employed.” I had flung back the hood of his cloak and the sun was increasingly sweet.

  “I suppose you had real friends once,” agreed Gerald with interest.

  “I seem to remember some.” Vespasian laughed, a peaceful chuckle half lost behind the sound of the horses blowing the lane’s dust from their nostrils. His smiles and gentleness soothed me. His wounds were untreated, the long riding must have strained every bruised muscle, but this was the first time in all the years since his wife’s murder that he knew absolute satisfaction and the joy of serenity. In unexpected abundance, he’d achieved the amazing totality of his ambition. Arthur’s evil had been utterly destroyed from the world.

  It was another hour before we rode into Gerald’s grand forecourt. I’d admired his beautiful new home before, when brought there from the burning convent. But now I could appreciate nothing. I was increasingly weak and the long journey was turning into another nightmare. The pain had become constant. Vespasian, watching me always, understood. He spent little time settling Gerald. “Tomorrow your men can send the horse back to the inn and retrieve your own,” said Vespasian. “There’s nothing more I can do for you at the moment except give you my blessing. You’re a child no longer, my son. Go and order your life as you wish, eat well and then rest. But I’ve no intention of deserting you for long. Perhaps, before they think they’re deserted themselves, you should collect the rest of the boys. I believe most still remain at the forest house.”

  “How do you know?” demanded Gerald, stamping mud from his boots and striding around his own courtyard with all the pride of the young lord he was about to become. “That night in the glade feels like a month ago and time’s part of the magic, isn’t it? I mean, we went in for Hallowe’en but now it’s December at least.”

  “Yesterday was Candlemas,” said Vespasian. “The day of my own birth. It is now symbolic of rebirth. And you must not question how I know what I know, my child. It is beyond you. Just accept that I know it.”

  We left Gerald standing at his own grand doorway, beaming at us in the sunshine. I managed to smile and wave before sinking back heavily against Vespasian’s support. I thought I might faint. He turned the horse slowly, and headed back onto the low blueing heaths. “Close your eyes, and sleep,” he told me. “I cannot ride too carefully, or we will never reach a place where I can help you properly, piccina. If the pain becomes insupportable, you must tell me.”

  I thought I heard him singing. At first I believed it was his own happiness, and then I slept, and understood.

  When I awoke again to astonishing pain, we were already under cover of dark, the trees were ghosts in the moonlight and I was cold. Vespasian felt me stir and spoke softly. “Another few minutes and we stop for the night. I’ll take you to the nearest tavern, though it isn’t respectable. No matter, I think it unwise to travel further tonight. The poison’s crawling deeper. You’ll be warm there, and I can look after you.”

  The sky was deepest black and the moon just a sliver to the east. Above me the enormity of star spangle drifted like spilled milk, one star huge above the horizon like the star on my tarot card. For a moment I wondered if reality had blurred, as Vespasian had done in the sacred glade.

  Then a small white wind flew suddenly over my head between me and the starlight, a barn owl out on the hunt, and I was back in the world I recognised. I heard another owl calling softly to his moon, and then the unexpected jolt of four golden eyes under the trees. “They’ll not harm us,” Vespasian’s voice seemed to drift like the star gleam. “The wolves are hungry and tired too but we’re surrounded by my magic and they fear us.”

  The tavern was outside the village on the turn of the highway, squat under a bare oak tree. Vespasian dismounted first and carried me down in his arms. I could not have walked and he seemed to know. The horse was led away, froth on his dull flanks. Vespasian ordered a private chamber and carried me to it. It was small with several disordered pallets and an old uncurtained bed, a lumpy mattress on a low palliasse. There was no hearth but two tallow candles were lit and a brazier of hot coals stood by the window. I expected lice but it seemed clean enough. “I shall fetch you gruel if they have it,” he said. “It is too long since you ate.”

  “You haven’t eaten either,” I mumbled. I felt dreadful and I certainly wasn’t hungry. “And I should treat your wounds too.”

  He ignored me and went to find the innkeeper. It was a far busier tavern than before, with noises of bustle and intrigue. I heard loud drunken singing, laughter and someone shouting, answered with
the sound of blows. I buried my ears in the pillows. Vespasian came back with a serving girl, food, wine, and more hot coals for the brazier. “We’ll doubtless be disturbed this night,” he said, coming to sit beside me with a bowl of pottage and a spoon. “This inn serves as a wayside brothel, as many of them do around here. But I’ve told them my lady is ill. If we aren’t left in peace, I’ve promised to cut the tavern keeper’s throat and feed him to the wolves. I think he believes me.” Personally, so would I.

  The steam from the bowl and its heady perfume were bringing back the nausea. I was sinking into blackness. There were knives in the black, and shudders of pain. Vespasian frowned, put the food back on the floor and leaned over me, both eyes and hands examining. I tried to speak but my voice wasn’t there. Vespasian put his finger to my lips and shook his head. “Hush now my quicksilver child, and let me explore,” he said, just whispers in the dark.

  There was no time to be timid, and I was in too much pain. He searched my body and I felt his warm strong hands beneath my clothes. But I abandoned consciousness and once again entered the sleep he granted me.

  Chapter Fifty Six

  I dreamed that he slept close, his body curled to mine and his arm around me. But when I woke with a narrow beam of sun in my eyes from the slit above the window shutters, he was on the far side of the bed outstretched and propped up on one elbow, looking across at me.

  I yawned and stretched and watched his slow smile. His voice was barely there. “It seems last night’s doctoring helped, little one.”

  “I don’t remember much,” I said. “But this morning feels like a good morning.”

  “Then you will break fast, with some bread and ale at least,” he said, “and afterwards we’ll take the road. There’s a fresh horse waiting and a warm sun. With nothing to delay us, we should reach my home by early afternoon.”

  The horse was placid and the sun sped our ride, fair weather for my Fairweather. We came to his hunting lodge shortly after midday and I saw it like a fairy palace, pale stone glittering in the winter sun, surrounded by trees and nestled in the tuck of two little hills. We rode down to it from the higher ground and coming nearer saw the stream flash like silvered onyx and the turn of the mill creaking between house and banks. Behind was a square of vineyard, shorn now in its tidy rows, a small orchard and a courtyard of outbuildings and stables leading to the kitchen garden. Then stretched the great sweep of ploughed farmland beyond.