The Paths of the Air

by Alys Clare

  He obtained directions for the de Villières manor and found it quite easily. The house was generously sized and attractive, set in a fold of land to the west of Robertsbridge. Tree-clad slopes sheltered it from the prevailing south-westerly winds and orchards grew on south-facing hillsides. The huddles of peasant dwellings seemed in good condition and the bare earth in the fields looked fertile and rich.

  The house and courtyard were enclosed by a stone wall in which there was an arched gateway. Riding in, Josse called out and almost immediately a lad came to take his horse and an older man to ask his name and his business. He listened to Josse’s carefully prepared reply and invited him to come up into the house. Josse was ushered into an imposing hall with a wide central hearth and a raised dais on which there were a long table, two chairs and a couple of benches. A thin-faced woman of perhaps forty sat at the table, an embroidery hoop in her hand; a younger woman of about twenty sat beside her.

  They watched as he approached the table and bowed. The older one said politely, ‘My brother will be with us presently. Will you take some refreshment?’

  ‘Aye, my lady, thank you.’

  She nodded to the serving man who had brought Josse in and he bowed and went out through a doorway at the far end of the hall. Josse, beginning to feel slightly awkward beneath the two women’s scrutiny, gave a diffident smile and said, ‘Lovely bright day, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is,’ the older woman agreed. She did not venture any further remark that might have picked up the conversation and helped it along. It was a relief when the sound of footsteps came from the passage and the manservant and his master came into the hall. While the servant poured mugs of wine, the master strode up to Josse and said, ‘I am Gerome de Villières. This is my sister, the lady Maria, and this is my daughter Editha.’ The younger woman gave Josse a shy smile. ‘How can I help you?’

  Gerome was a short, stout man who had probably once been strong but whose body was running to fat. Under his remaining grey-streaked brown hair his round, ruddy face wore a smile that creased up his light hazel eyes.

  ‘I have come from Hawkenlye Abbey,’ Josse began.

  ‘Yes, so my manservant tells me,’ Gerome replied. ‘We hear great things of the Abbey, Sir Josse.’

  ‘I am sure that they are all true,’ Josse said. Then: ‘There are two wounded Knights Hospitaller lying in the infirmary, Sir Gerome. They have come to England from Outremer searching for a runaway monk of their Order. Since neither is able to leave his sickbed, I have volunteered to search for the missing monk.’

  ‘Two Hospitallers,’ Gerome said, his eyes narrowed. ‘They have already been here.’ His sister made as if to say something but with a gesture of his hand Gerome silenced her.

  ‘They came to Hawkenlye,’ Josse said, ‘and then on to the priory at Tonbridge, where a fire in the guest wing killed a third monk who had joined them on the road after they left Robertsbridge.’

  ‘How terrible!’ Gerome seemed shocked. Then, his worried eyes meeting Josse’s, he said, ‘And was this fire an accident, Sir Josse?’

  It was, Josse thought, a strange question. ‘Why do you ask?’

  Gerome eyed him candidly. ‘Because there is much more to this tale of a missing Hospitaller than you know.’ He turned to the dais and gave his sister and his daughter a bright smile. ‘We will not further disturb your sewing, my dears – our male chatter may make you misdirect your needles!’

  ‘You do not disturb us, Gerome,’ said his sister, ‘and indeed we should prefer to hear—’

  But Gerome, it seemed, had made up his mind and was not going to allow anyone, even his sister, to be a party to a conversation that he deemed unsuitable for their ears. ‘Sir Josse and I shall take a turn in the walled garden,’ he said firmly, ‘for it is sheltered there and we will not be interrupted.’

  The final five words, Josse thought with a private smile, had the force of an order. He bowed to the women and followed Gerome across the hall and down the steps into the courtyard. They went through an arch in the wall and along a path, then through an opening in a second wall, on the far side of which was an area of low hedges and beds, the latter at present just bare earth. The sun shone on the far wall and there was a bench set in a recess. Gerome strode over to it, invited Josse to be seated and then settled himself beside him.

  ‘I am sorry I had to bring you out here,’ he said.

  ‘I do not mind,’ Josse replied. ‘The sun makes it feel more like spring than winter.’

  ‘You are charitable,’ murmured Gerome. ‘My sister is a good woman but she does not have enough to do. She loves to speculate and she insists that she knows best. Oh, it isn’t that I do not love and respect her! It’s just that—’ He shrugged helplessly.

  ‘Just that you like a quiet life?’ Josse suggested.

  Gerome beamed. ‘Precisely. My beloved wife died, you see,’ he plunged straight into the revelation, leaving Josse still grinning inappropriately from the last exchange, ‘and my two elder sisters are wed, although one is ailing . . .’ He frowned. ‘Which is why my sister Maria runs my household, and very efficiently she does it. My needs and comforts are attended to in the most solicitous fashion and I can’t complain. My dear Erys succumbed to the fever, you see.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear it,’ Josse said gravely.

  ‘We were very happy.’ There was a catch in Gerome’s voice. ‘Erys bore my daughter Editha, whom you just met, and then we had Columba, and then Erys had poor little Maella, only she lived but a few hours and then she died. Two days later, her mother was also dead. Columba was but four years old and not strong, Sir Josse, and she too succumbed to the fever. So I lost three of them in a week.’ Gerome stared straight in front of him and Josse saw tears rolling down his face.

  ‘You have my deepest sympathy,’ Josse said. ‘I cannot begin to imagine what it was like.’

  Gerome wiped his eyes. ‘The Lord gives, the Lord takes away,’ he muttered.

  It seemed to Josse scant comfort. But it was not for him to comment; if Gerome derived consolation from his faith, so much the better.

  Gerome seemed to have recovered his cheerful spirits. With a smile he said, ‘You are probably wondering why I tell you these things, Sir Josse. There is a reason, believe me.’ He paused, as if weighing his words. Then: ‘I have kin in Outremer. My great-grandfather won lands in Antioch in the course of the crusade of 1096 and they were left to his elder son, with this manor –’ he waved an arm – ‘left to the second son, whose descendant I am. Godfrey – the son who inherited in Antioch – married and his wife gave birth to two daughters and one son, Raymond, who was sickly and who died young, having sired two daughters and no sons. His elder daughter, the lady Aurelie, is, however, a formidable woman and in many ways the equal of most men. She was advantageously wed to Count Hugo of Tripoli but the lack of boy children has continued even into her generation, for although she did bear her count a son after two daughters, the little boy – his name was Hugo – died of a flux of the bowels before he reached his first birthday.’

  ‘Your family been cursed with bad fortune,’ Josse said.

  ‘Cursed?’ Gerome queried the word. ‘Perhaps. Yet these things are all too common, Sir Josse, especially in Outremer, where the climate really does not suit us. Anyway,’ he said, with the air of a man picking up the thread of his tale, ‘my cousin Aurelie’s lands were threatened in the dangerous times that culminated in Hattin – you know of Saladin’s great victory there?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Well, Aurelie and her count sent word to us here in England that she was hard-pressed and needed our assistance. I have no sons of my own but I have men who owe me allegiance and, like many another with kin in Outremer, I was willing to go and help. I’ll freely admit that my motives were not entirely selfless. My cousin and her count are fabulously wealthy and I knew full well that her gratitude would be expressed in a manner that would do a great deal more than reimburse my expenses, as indeed has proved the case.’
He glanced down at his golden brown, butter-soft leather boots polished to a high shine. ‘There is little, Sir Josse, that my womenfolk and I lack these days.’

  Josse smiled but did not comment.

  ‘I arranged to take a party of twenty-five knights out to help my cousin defend what is hers,’ Gerome continued. ‘Aurelie’s desperate appeal came in the summer of’85.’ He drew a steadying breath but nevertheless his voice trembled. ‘It was four years since I had lost my wife and my two youngest daughters but still I grieved. It was selfish, I know, for poor Editha was as affected as I was, but when Aurelie’s plea came, I jumped at the chance to get right away from this place which, at that time, gave me nothing but memories of what I had lost and could never regain. The cure worked, Sir Josse.’ He met Josse’s eyes with disarming frankness. ‘When I returned, my manor and my life here were washed clean of sorrow. Or perhaps it was I that was washed; I do not know. I still remember my beloved Erys – not a day passes that I do not think of her – but now I picture her alive and laughing instead of – well, never mind.’

  He was, Josse thought, a man made for happiness. What a blessing that he had been allowed to find it again.

  ‘My sister and my daughter are now the sole recipients of my love,’ Gerome was saying, ‘and they seem to manage quite well to share out between the two of them that which once encompassed more. But enough – this isn’t what you came to hear.’

  Picking up the cue, Josse said, ‘There was in your company a young knight who, I understand, wanted to continue with the fight after you – er, after you had returned to your kin in Antioch.’

  Gerome chuckled. ‘After I decided that battle and war were not for me,’ he corrected. ‘I admit it freely, Sir Josse. I was not born for fighting. I was at Hattin, you know. King Guy was captured, as were the majority of our leaders, and worst of all the Saracens took the precious fragment of the True Cross, which was both our inspiration and our rallying point. We were demoralized at Hattin, Sir Josse, and as we were driven back towards the coast the fighting was at best half-hearted. Although I am ashamed that I could not discover a brave warrior spirit within myself, I was not alone in preferring to creep away to lick my wounds. I was in fact wounded,’ he added with a touch of pride. Unfastening the ties at the neck of his chemise, he drew back the soft, fine linen to reveal a deep, purplish oval scar.

  ‘Spear thrust?’ asked Josse.

  ‘Yes. It hurt like the very devil, but our medical men got hold of some stuff the Arabs used and managed to restrain the infection. They said I’d have died otherwise, so in a strange sort of way, I owe my survival to my enemy.’ He gazed across the frosty fields, a faraway expression on his face. ‘Funny how life goes.’

  ‘Aye,’ Josse agreed.

  ‘Then, of course, the loss of Jerusalem made our King Richard set out to win it back,’ Gerome continued, ‘and we all know how that ended up. God bless him,’ he added, although the pause was too long for it to have been anything but an afterthought.

  ‘You returned to your cousin’s house in Antioch to recover?’ Josse asked.

  ‘Hmm? Yes, yes, that’s right. Aurelie and her girls made a great fuss of me and I confess I thrived on the attention. Oh, Sir Josse, you should have seen that house! Aurelie has lived all her life in Outremer, the fourth generation to make a home there, and, typically, her house shows the Eastern influence – well, it makes sense to adopt local ways. The place has a strong outer wall that shows a formidable face to the world, but once through the gates, you enter heaven on earth. She has inner courtyards where fountains play and where jasmine and roses scent the air. To keep you cool there are silk-draped divans set in the shade to catch the breeze. Her servants pad about on bare feet and they know precisely when you want an iced sherbet or a cool cloth on your forehead. And they all seem so happy, Sir Josse! I was a stranger but they cared for me with kindness and a smile on their dark faces.’

  The great torrent of words stopped as Gerome paused for breath. Then he said sheepishly, ‘I am sorry. I loved Antioch, you see, and once I begin speaking of my time there, the images and the memories come flooding back and I can talk all day if someone doesn’t stop me. Usually it’s Maria,’ he added resignedly, ‘but then she has heard it all so many times.’

  Josse had been carried along. But now he said, ‘I am fascinated by your descriptions, Sir Gerome. But I need to know more about your young knight.’

  ‘Of course you do! Well, like you say, he wasn’t at all happy about being dragged away from the fighting. You see, Sir Josse, I made a mistake. Hattin was so frightful that I thought my men would be pleased I was pulling them out! It never occurred to me that one of them would want to go on fighting. Anyway, he came to me and told me and I said he must go with my blessing. I said he knew where I’d be if he needed me and I wished him God’s protection.’

  ‘He intended to join one of the military orders?’

  Gerome frowned. ‘It’s odd, because I’m sure I remember he said— Well, it doesn’t matter and obviously I was wrong. He was going to go straight to Crac des Chevaliers – it’s about a hundred miles from Antioch – and offer his services to the Knights Hospitaller. That would have been in the late summer of’87.’

  ‘So he joined the Order before King Richard took up the fight,’ Josse remarked.

  ‘Yes. They taught him much and turned him into a first-rate fighter with many skills.’

  ‘Could he use the crossbow?’ Josse thought he knew the answer, having already asked Thibault.

  ‘The crossbow? No, no; he was a mounted knight and he used the lance and the sword. He might have been able to use the longbow, I suppose.’

  ‘You saw him in action?’

  ‘Yes. King Richard arrived and won the great victory at Acre, and his successes alongside the French fellow’ – Josse was amused that Gerome did not even dignify King Philip with a name – ‘put new heart in us all. I marched my men south from Antioch to Acre and we joined King Richard’s great push from Acre to Jaffa. I heard word of my knight again on that long road, although they told me that he now wore the habit of a Knight Hospitaller and was known as Brother Ralf. We met up and prayed together on the eve of Arsuf. Oh, Sir Josse,’ he exclaimed, ‘what a time that was! We’d been marching through the Forest of Arsuf and we were all spooked by the rumour that the enemy was going to fire the trees and burn us all to death. Then we came out into the open and saw them there, great long rows of them, and I was frankly terrified. We set up our camp that night and they were so close that we could see the flames of their cooking fires under that vast, dark sky.’ Slowly he shook his head. ‘We all knew what would happen the next day. I was so glad to see Brother Ralf’s familiar face; he was four years older and infinitely more mature than when I’d last seen him, and his quiet confidence and firm resolve did me more good than all the prayers and exhortations of the priests.

  ‘Next day we rode into battle. It was a joyful victory, as of course you know.’

  ‘Yet you were unwell,’ Josse said.

  ‘Yes, I was. I had dysentery and I thought I would die. I do not recall much, being barely conscious during the worst of it. They said I was too weak to go on with the army and I was sent back to Acre, then on to Antioch to rest and recuperate with my kinfolk. They treated me very well, Sir Josse, in return for having been generous with them. They undertook to make sure I reached Aurelie’s home safely. To my surprise – I imagined he’d want to forge ahead with King Richard – one of my escorts was Brother Ralf.’ Gerome smiled. ‘He was not best pleased to exchange the nursemaid’s role for the warrior’s, but it was an order and he had no choice. He carried it out with a smiling face, caring for me as if I’d been his own father.’ He sighed. ‘And I who have no male children of my own loved him like a son. I always did and I always will.’

  There was a contradiction here, Josse thought, for Thibault had given a very different picture. Brother Jeremiah and I spoke to Gerome de Villières, Thibault had said. The man whom we see
k is not there and there is no likelihood that he will visit in the future . . . the runaway caused grave offence to Gerome’s kin in Antioch . . . the lady Aurelie had cause to report back in the most gravely reproachful terms to her English kinsman.

  He stared at Gerome. ‘I have been told that you and Brother Ralf had fallen out because he had offended your kinswoman Aurelie,’ he said flatly. ‘How can you love him like a son if this is true?’

  ‘One does not stop loving a son because of one rebellious act,’ Gerome said quietly. There was a long pause. Then he said, ‘I am not sure whether I should confide in you, Sir Josse, but I have been on this earth for a good many years and I flatter myself that I am a fair judge of men. I warm to you and I am inclined to tell you the truth. I hope, however, that by doing so I shall not endanger someone I care for.’

  ‘I cannot give you my word to act solely in your interests,’ Josse said quickly. ‘I am entrusted by the Abbess of Hawkenlye to take up the task of Thibault of Margat, Knight Hospitaller, and that is my prime concern.’

  ‘I understand,’ Gerome said, giving Josse a calculating look. ‘Well then, I shall say but this: Thibault of Margat has his own reasons for catching up with Brother Ralf and these reasons are not necessarily – to use your phrase – in Ralf’s best interests.’

  ‘I know that he has with him something of very great value,’ Josse said. I suspect would have been more accurate, but by assuming a certainty he did not have he was hoping to flush out information.

  But Gerome was too experienced to fall for the ruse. ‘Do you, now?’ he said with a grin. ‘Well, that’s as maybe; perhaps you do, perhaps you don’t. This Hospitaller of yours has his orders, Sir Josse. Things are not always as they seem, and there is very much more at stake here than meets the eye.’ Abruptly he stood up. ‘Now we will return inside, for the sun is sinking and we shall soon be in shadow. We will draw a jug of the best wine and presently you will eat the evening meal with us and sleep in our best guest room. My sister and my daughter receive too few visitors in this chilly weather, when folk prefer their own firesides, and they will blossom in the company of a handsome and courteous knight such as yourself. What do you say?’