“Help me brush the feathers off my back, and I’ll get dressed and find something.”
“Actually, Margaret, you can’t get out of bed today. If you did, they’d think I hadn’t a heavy enough hand.”
“But I can’t stay in bed. I haven’t a nursemaid, and I promised the girls they could ride the donkey.”
“For once, they can wait. You can’t get out of bed until after everyone else, and if anyone speaks to you, moan a bit.”
“But it’s all feathery in here. I don’t want to stay in bed.”
“Too bad, that’s an order. After all, who’s master?” He raised a sardonic eyebrow.
“I’m still hungry. Are you going to starve me up here all morning?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll send somebody up—if there’s anybody to send.” And he went downstairs whistling.
Pretty soon there was a clatter of footsteps up the stairs, and a girl in wooden clogs made her way through the bodies to the bed. The noise of her footgear elicited groans, and I could hear her say, “My, what a stink!” before she appeared at the bedside with a tray. It was Cis, the laundress. The sleeves of her old gray wool gown were rolled up and tucked above the elbows. Her butter-yellow hair, damp from steam, was hanging in limp curls around her round face. I had noticed her before, apparently the only woman in a womanless house, a plump, busy little figure who never seemed to be much occupied with laundry. But now that I saw her closer, I saw she was not so much plump as big busted, and short for her age, which must have been around sixteen. She was staring so hard, you’d have thought I was a unicorn.
“Just look at all them feathers, will you? He must have really done you.”
I could barely understand her thick country accent. But since I couldn’t honestly bring myself to groan, I just said, “Is that breakfast? Can I have it?”
She looked down at the tray in surprise, as if she’d forgotten it momentarily. “Yes. He sent it up. I’m sure he’s sorry. You’re lucky. The others are never sorry.”
What a tactless girl. I wondered how she knew. I started to eat, but she didn’t go away. She just kept staring. Finally I swallowed a bite and asked: “Why are you staring?”
“Ooo. I’ve never seen a lady before, and I have to remember everything, to tell the others.” Her gaze wandered to the perch.
“Them your clothes?” she asked, fingering my shift. “Nice. That’s linen, ain’t it?” Then she saw the surcoat hung beneath. Her eyes widened, and she ran her hands over the embroidery. “My, my. That’s gold—and green velvet too. Is it from London?”
“It was made there, but the material’s from Genoa.”
“That’s far, isn’t it?”
“Very far. My former husband brought it on a ship. But tell me, is anyone up downstairs?”
“Hardly anyone. The inside grooms are still lying in the hall, but Cook’s up, though his head hurts. The outside grooms have taken the horses out, and we was boiling the tablecloths in the courtyard when Master Gilbert came out. Mam told me all about ladies: she saw Lady Bertrande almost every day. But I don’t remember her at all. She died when I was very little. Everybody says she was the greatest lady in the whole world. When she came here after her wedding, she brought chests and chests and chests from her father’s house. And falcons, and hounds, and a white mare, and a lapdog, and two grooms, and a chaplain, and three maids.” Then she looked me over. “You don’t have any maids, do you?”
“Not here.” I was beginning to be annoyed.
“But you have got all the rest, haven’t you? The chests and the lap-dog and all, somewhere else?”
“Yes, of course I do.” How horrid. Judged by my lapdog. I certainly wouldn’t want to disappoint her by telling her I wasn’t a real lady at all. Just a merchant’s widow with money. And what will happen to me when the money’s gone? I wondered. I could be trapped here forever, doing other people’s mending—the useless younger son’s useless wife.
Now if only the property claims could be settled, then Gregory could take me away, I mused. Without his relatives, everything would be better. After all, a man and a woman don’t have to love each other to live well together. Look at last night. It’s good, that part of it. And he does care for me, in his own way. And he’s clever—we’d have things to talk about. We could be happy. We could visit his family twice—oh, maybe once a year. Yes, once—that was about right. Just until the furniture started flying. That wouldn’t be many days at all. Living with relatives, that’s what makes things bad in a marriage. Not that just about everyone doesn’t do it, especially the landed gentry. But usually it’s only the older son who has to live in his father’s manor until he inherits, and often enough it drives him crazy. So if I can get Gregory to see it right, he’ll understand that we’re fortunate, we have possibilities.
By this time Cis had remembered herself enough to make a curtsey, before clattering off through the groaning and stirring bodies. I pulled the curtains and had just settled back to eating when I heard rustling outside the bed.
“Mama, can we get in?”
“Mama, I need you to tie the lace at the back of my dress.”
“Mama, have you got breakfast in there? We’re hungry too.” They had dressed themselves in the eccentric fashion that children have: Cecily had put Alison’s dress on her inside out in the bargain. They clambered up into the bed.
“Look at the feathers! Mama, you’ve spoiled the whole bed, and nobody’s here to fix it.” They were right—I hadn’t even a needle to sew up the pillow again. They’d not thought to bring away a single useful item from the London house. Men. They’d brought the carved chest with Master Kendall’s astrolabe, his books, and the Saracen scimitar, but they hadn’t brought a needle, or a distaff, or anything a woman might need. Well, surely, I thought, if they’ve got clothes here, there must be a needle and thread. I’ll wait a decent interval to satisfy Gregory, then get dressed and go hunting. Somebody has to be doing the mending. Maybe I can get that laundress to put the feathers back and tidy things up. By this time, the girls had eaten most of the breakfast and begged to go downstairs.
“Now you go straight to John in the stable, and you are to ride the donkey only in the courtyard. Be sure to share. Cecily, don’t be greedy and take all the turns. And look after Alison, because she’s little and could get hurt. Do you promise?” They looked so sweet as they promised. Cecily, tall and thin for a girl not so far from six, bobbed her unruly mass of red curls. She never could keep them properly combed; they were as troublesome as the splash of freckles across her nose that simply would come out every summer, even when I rubbed cucumber on them. Alison, eventhough she’s not yet four, so it’s a little early to tell, will probably never have a freckle problem. She’s as pink and white as a rose. The sweet little thing put two fingers in her mouth as she looked solemnly out of her great blue eyes at me.
“Iss, Mama. I pwomise,” she said. The waves of her strawberry blond hair glistened in a ray of early morning sun that fell through the narrow slit of the window. An angel, I thought. She looks just like an angel. God protect them both. But I guess I’ll never learn. There are only two times when the girls look likeangels. One is when they’re sick; the other is when they’re planning something. It is a good thing I couldn’t see the something they had in mind. It was the beginning of events that changed everything.
THE SIEUR DE VILERS had risen at dawn, heard prayers in his chapel, and was now preparing to ride out and inspect his pasture, where a number of his mares were in foal. It was not too far to walk, but a knight does not set foot on the ground when it’s possible to ride, so he was standing at the top of the stair before the low, carved arch of the door to his Great Hall, waiting for the groom to bring him the freshly saddled roan. Not a bad horse—a good fifteen and a half hands, tall enough for a man who would never shame his ancestors by being seen on a short horse—and the creature did have a pleasant amble. But he also had three white feet, and that’s a great flaw. The feet had bred true, and th
e amble hadn’t, so Sir Hubert had had him gelded. And while he wouldn’t have been seen among gentlemen on him subsequently, the animal’s gait was well suited to a man whose head was still throbbing as if Beelzebub himself had sat on it all night.
Looking at the mares would help him make his decision. It was early in the season, too early, really, and he would have liked to see even some of the foals before he made his decision, but it couldn’t wait. The Duke was leaving for France again, and he was sworn to go with him. So something had to be done to slash through, at a single stroke, the knots that those damned lawyers had tied all about him to deny him his due. After all, who’d taken the risk, and borne off the prize? Him, not them. And he was damned well going to keep every penny and every square inch. It was fair spoils, and his due. Those imps of hell and their papers and Latin gibble-gabble should all be sent back to their vile maker, the Father of Lies. The only sort of people who are worse are the judges—especially the kind who take gifts from land thieves and false claimants. People of no proper blood, who talk through lawyers’ mouths, instead of man to man, and think the backing of an earl will win their case. Well, they’d find out Sir Hubert de Vilers was not a man to be trifled with; he’d apply counterpressure.
As usual, the sight of his mares, all but one placidly and heavily in foal, soothed him. The cold wind ruffled their shaggy winter coats as they lifted their heads to stare at him. Walking gold, all of them. Yes, he’d do it. A duke outweighs an earl anytime—especially his duke, who was the greatest warlord in England. He’d take him the French stud, the famous French stud that he’d brought back from the wars, and the court cases would swing his way. A sacrifice, of course, but not as bad as it might be if enough mares weren’t in foal, or if the stud hadn’t been getting older. A great horse, still a real man’s destrier: gray, nearly seventeen hands, and as wide as he was tall. A good sire, too, even on the wretched English mares he’d started out with. Now he’d crossed the line back and got something worth looking at. Not quite deep enough in the chest, though. If he could somehow get the black’s chest and height, and the gray’s hindquarters and disposition, he’d be close—so very close. Of course, there was the black’s temperament. High, too high, but it might improve with age. There’s no reason, no reason at all, mused the old knight through his headache, that the French should breed the best destriers. Someday, if it all worked out, he’d have it: the perfect English destrier.
For a moment there, standing in the brown, ice-mottled pasture beneath the wide, brooding dark sky, he could almost see the dream stallion before him. Eighteen hands, as broad as a house, with iron shod feet as big as trenchers barely visible beneath heavy feathering. Gray, of course, the best color, with a deep black velvety muzzle, and no ugly china eye. The de Vilers breed, they’d call them, and a man wouldn’t count himself properly mounted unless he had one.
But his reverie was interrupted by the sound of shrill little voices, and the snorting, rumbling sound of a stallion that has been disturbed. Peasant brats in the stallion pens? No, by God, the widow’s brats.
“Bring the oat pan and stick it through the gate, Alison, and when he comes near the wall and puts his head down, I’ll get on. Then you open the gate. All right?” It was the bigger one speaking. How old was she? All children looked the same age: small. Hadn’t her mother said she was nearly six? She had clambered up to the top of the stone wall of the black stud’s pen like a monkey, sticking her toes in the cracks, and now he could see her curly red head emerging at the top of the wall as she got ready to drop on the stallion’s back. The little figure stood out against the morning sky, cloakless and barefooted, as she crouched like a cat getting ready to pounce. Damn her, Urgan was roused up; he might fling himself against the wall and take an injury. The little one, bundled up in a cloak with a pointed hood, stood in the mud before the gate.
“Now, Alison, open the latch and run back!” the thin little voice called. The stallion snorted, threw his head up, and rolled his eyes wildly as the tiny creature dropped on his back. He was preparing to smash her against the wall when the gate clicked open, and instead he smashed his heavy chest into it, banging it open so that it crushed Alison into the mud.
“Cecily, no-o-o-o-o!” he heard the belated cry from the distant upstairs window. For some reason the high, thin cry spooked the stallion, who changed his strategy of dealing death to one of flight.
“Head him off!” Sir Hubert shouted to the groom, and clapped spurs to the wretched gelding. The boldness of the brat was extraordinary: she hadn’t a hope of clinging to the huge barrel with her short legs. It was all balance and hands—she’d tangled them deep in the stallion’s mane and was holding on for dear life. But it couldn’t last long. At every stride, she was thrown in the air; the slightest mishap and she’d be under the slashing hooves. She looked straight ahead, her eyes glassy with determination and terror. The black was headed for the wide, stony-bottomed brook that meandered across the meadow and gave Brokesford its name. At this speed, and with the slippery snow patches still on the ground, the horse would fall and break his neck, and very likely kill the little rider into the bargain. Sir Hubert came in at a full gallop from the stallion’s left side, and for a moment pulled even with the frantic stud. The stallion’s frothy flanks were heaving; his eyes rolled crazily. Great conformation, rotten temperament, was the old knight’s thought, at the very moment when he snatched the brat off by the back of her gown and threw her across the withers of his roan. And as his prize stud ran insanely on toward the brook, the ungrateful little bundle lying in front of him squeaked,
“Put me down! I was doing fine!”
“Fine indeed, you little monster, you’ve killed my stud. And if you weren’t worth eight hundred pounds to me, I’d wring your neck right here!”
It was prophecy. The stallion careened crazily into the water, slipped and fell, and didn’t rise again. He was thrashing and squealing in the water, raising his head up frantically, his eyes terrified. Cries could be heard as people ran from the house, and when the groom pulled up, Sir Hubert was already dismounted. He was deep in the muddy brook, all mucked up with mud and blood, trying to hold the immense horse’s slippery, wet thrashing head.
“Leg’s broken,” he shouted to the groom. “Hand me your knife; I have to cut his throat.” It was something he’d done often enough on the battlefield—in fact, it was the only time anyone had ever seen him weep. But to put down a destrier at home, the best he’d ever put good money on, why, that filled him with an explosion of rage and grief. He was crazy with the loss and the stupidity of it, so crazy there was no telling just what he’d do. The groom hesitated a moment at the order. The stud was the best-looking thing Sir Hubert had ever brought onto the place. Even though he knew better, the groom said, “Are you sure, sir?”
“Goddamn it, I know a broken leg when I see one. Hand me that knife.” This morning, the best-looking horse in twenty miles. This afternoon, dog meat. Sir Hubert felt something running down his face, and that sign of weakness made him angrier than ever. The groom waded out into the water, trying to avoid slipping on the rocks beside nearly a ton of thrashing, bloody horse-flesh, and slashing hooves that could crush a man’s rib cage at a single blow. Whatever madness had possessed the old knight, that he could not wait for the great horse to exhaust himself before he dispatched him? Still, it was not his job to question. But as the groom finally managed to extend the knife, handle first, to his master, the horse threw his head and knocked it spinning irretrievably into the water.
With an oath, the old man tried to grab the slippery neck with one hand while he reached for his own knife with the other: the very move he’d tried to avoid by getting the groom’s knife ready to hand. He lost both, for when the creature felt the grip on his head slacken, he gave a heave that half lifted his whole body out of the water, and somehow threw Sir Hubert off balance so that he slid partly beneath the destrier in the icy water, where the animal’s vast, writhing bulk threatened to pin him and
drown him.
“Sir, sir!” cried the groom, and grabbed at the old knight’s shoulders, trying to pull him loose and out of danger. “Help me, help me! My lord is pinned down!” Two more grooms, who had run to the scene, splashed into the brook to retrieve their master. Dark figures could be seen in the distance, hurrying to the brook. Cecily stood silently by the bank, not moving, gazing with awestruck fascination at the catastrophe she had set in motion. Then Gregory’s voice barked over the commotion:
“Get him out on the bank! Wrap him in my cloak!”
“Wrap who? You’re not wrapping me in anything yet, you whelp!” shouted the old man through his chattering teeth.
“For God’s sake, dry off, Father, before you get sick. I’ll put the stud down.”
“You’ll put him down? YOU? I won’t give you the PLEASURE! Bookworm! I do my own dirty work. That’s a knight’s horse, and a knight will put him down!”
By this time Margaret, hastily dressed, head bare and her hair wild behind her, had run to see to her children. She reached the brook dragging a mud-caked, sobbing little girl behind her. When she had seen Alison’s face, crimson and swollen with rage, and heard her howl: “I didn’t get my turn! Cecily cheated!” she had known immediately that the child was entirely whole. Now she briefly inspected her oldest child before she assessed the chaotic scene at the edge of the brook. Well, all too well, was Margaret’s thought, as her narrowed eyes looked shrewdly at the pensive, barefooted little figure taking in the scene with wide eyes. The little girl was stiff with delight at the complex train of events she had set in motion. Gregory and his father were fighting on the bank, the grooms stood immobilized, and at the center of the brook, in two and a half feet of muddy, churning water, the bleeding, heaving flanks of the pride of Brokesford Manor were laid sidewise on the sharp stones of the brook. Margaret took in at a glance the rolling, hysterical eyes of the terrified stallion, and waded unhesitatingly into the freezing water.
In Pursuit of the Green Lion Page 4