by Jean Gill
‘You were the best knight on the field,’ Maria said staunchly. ‘Everybody says so.’
‘Then it must be true, my Lady,’ Geoffroi teased her. Maria was a good influence on him, thought Estela, despite the difference in intellect and status. Some men preferred women who were not their equals, women they could impress and who would be ever grateful.
‘I must give thanks for this day, where it is due, so I don’t become a braggart,’ Geoffroi told them. ‘And confirm our marriage arrangements with the priest.’
Estela waited for the predicted screech to finish then asked, ‘When shall it be?’
‘As soon as possible,’ smiled Geoffroi. ‘You will be the first to know.’
‘Second,’ pointed out Maria, without really seeming to mind.
‘Second,’ he agreed, bowing to her and the other ladies before riding off towards the citadel.
‘That is an admirable knight,’ commented Sancha, following de Rançon with her eyes.
‘Yes,’ agreed Estela. ‘But I thought your heart was taken? Should Maria be jealous?’ Sancha’s obvious pleasure at her own knight’s acknowledgement of his lady had not gone unnoticed.
Sancha didn’t dignify the jibe with an answer.
Dragonetz tracked down de Rançon, finally catching up with him in the chapel. His sun-bleached curls glowing cherubic in the candlelight, the knight knelt in prayer, the hilt of his sword a cross held out in front of him. Just as Dragonetz himself must have looked all the times he had come here to think, to seek guidance. This was not the place for what must be said but Dragonetz steeled himself. With de Rançon there could be no excuses.
‘Dragonetz.’ The tone calm, joyous, as de Rançon responded to the clatter on the stone flags. He opened his eyes but remained on his knees.
‘You sent flowers to Estela,’ Dragonetz stated baldly, hand on his sword hilt. Even though he could never draw Talharcant in a place of sanctuary, he could make his intentions clear.
The other man’s limpid gaze did not falter or change. ‘I did,’ he owned. ‘But that was before. I have given her up.’
‘She was never yours to give up. Whatever might have happened on the journey to the Holy Land.’
‘Nothing happened,’ de Rançon swore, then, perhaps glimpsing the lie reflected in Dragonetz’ face, he amended, ‘I kissed her. I should not have but I did many things I should not have.’
He was still kneeling, which Dragonetz found disconcerting. ‘’That was before. I am going to marry Maria and she can give me everything I need in a woman. I have changed. You know I’ve changed. You know what we shared today was real. It cannot be counterfeited. Do you remember crossing Germany? The times we tried to protect the villages?’
‘And failed.’
‘Byzantium? Louis being fooled as much by his host as by our own sweet Duchesse?’
Dragonetz remembered Byzantium, the double-dealing and wasted months. He also remembered his own relationship with their sweet Duchesse Aliénor all too well. He had changed. Was it possible that de Rançon had changed too? Left behind the obsession with vengeance? ‘I was in love with her,’ he admitted.
‘We all were! I’d have followed her to the ends of the earth! Who among us wasn’t in love with the fiery queen, the amazon we called liege.’
‘Your father too?’ Dragonetz risked naming the cause of all friction between them.
De Rançon’s face tightened but he did not duck the question. ‘I expect so. My father is not somebody I understand.’
Dragonetz weakened. Fathers and their shortcomings, their effect on children. What would Musca say about him one day? Every man carried so much guilt. The brotherhood forged in battle between him and de Rançon was an invisible chain between them but Dragonetz didn’t know whether it bound them for good or ill.
He tested the tempering. He was only testing, he told himself but his voice shook. ‘We’ve been through a lot. I need to think, to sleep properly. Can you give me some poppy? Just a little. Just for tonight?’ Was he pleading? He gripped Talharcant tighter.
The same steady gaze met his, a trace of pity quickly hidden. Dragonetz felt a surge of fury before even hearing the reply, ‘No, my friend.’ Talharcant was half-unsheathed to force compliance when the flickering light caught the hilt. A cross. A sanctuary. A man kneeling. Sweating, Dragonetz sheathed his sword, nodded, joined de Rançon on his knees. Prayed hard.
So it was that Maria found them both, kneeling together, each in silent meditation.
‘You’ve been here for hours, my Lord!’ she chid Geoffroi. ‘That’s no good for your joints, kneeling on stone floors like that.’
De Rançon got to his feet. ‘And it suits you to keep my joints flexible,’ he flirted.
Dragonetz stood too, the anger and need passing, leaving him exhausted from the vigil. It had helped to have company. He tried to make polite conversation with Maria. ‘I hear you are to be married. My felicitations.’
Her face alight with the day’s contagious happiness, she babbled, ‘Thank you, yes, we’re ordering dresses and linen but we don’t need to wait for all that if the priest has chosen a day to bless us then we can go right ahead - Geoffroi, did he name a day?’ She barely paused for a shake of her knight’s head before a thought struck her.
She reached down her bodice, pulling up something on a chain as she chatted. ‘And Geoffroi’s going to have this made into a ring because it is so beautiful and he says it will wash all the blood off it that came from how he got it I suppose it was like that in the Holy Land though always bad things happening and you had to kill all those men… but you shouldn’t… feel… it… was… your… fault…’
She tailed off as she realised that something was wrong. Geoffroi’s move to stop her had come too late and he stood pale, helpless. Dragonetz was also standing, rigid, his face stone.
Maria held out the diamond towards Dragonetz, stammering, ‘It’s a diamond. Isn’t it beautiful?’
‘Go back to my chamber, Maria.’ De Rançon’s eyes never left Dragonetz, his tone leaving no room for question. She left.
The two men remained more than a sword’s distance apart and Dragonetz had not moved to draw Talharcant again. He was beyond rage. He was white fire, ice heart, diamond.
‘Muganni’s diamond,’ he stated.
De Rançon did not lack courage. He had never lacked courage. Except perhaps when he murdered a small boy. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘He’s dead. You killed him.’
‘Yes. I’m sorry.’ Dragonetz fought the urge to ask how, to ask where. He was experienced enough to know that details did not make grief easier. He knew all he needed to know and that was already too much to bear.
‘Your life is forfeit. I will not take it here in church. You will meet me alone, tomorrow, at dawn, at the far end of the plateau. Only one of us will return.’
‘Estela will never forgive you. She will never believe you, as to why.’ He too was merely stating facts.
‘But what must be done, will be done, all the same.’
‘And if I win?’
‘Then Estela will never forgive you. But you won’t win.’ Dragonetz turned to leave. ‘Make your peace with God. I’m sure that’s more grace than you gave Muganni.’ Saying the boy’s name was a knife through the heart. ‘There can be no peace with me.’
Dragonetz had no option but another night with Vertat. Estela would be disappointed but she would assume he needed to recover after the tourney. He could not be with her and hide what he knew or what he must do the next day.
There would be no sleep this night and the only love would be in his tears for the child whose rescue had been so short-lived. The child who had sung like an angel in the court of Jerusalem, thanks to Dragonetz.
And who had never reached his beloved mountain home. Who had died, thanks to Dragonetz. It was going to be a long night and the heavy air threatened a thunderstorm.
Chapter 31
If someone is regularly tormented by false dreams, h
e should have betony leaves with him when he goes to bed, and he will see and feel fewer false dreams.
Physica, Plants
Geoffroi had spent three years planning how to avenge his father and make Dragonetz pay. Three years wasted. Lives wasted. He’d relished the prospect of Dragonetz’ pain on learning what had happened to Muganni, and who was responsible. Now the moment had come, he tasted only ashes. He’d made the morrow’s duel inevitable but he no longer wanted it. He was sorry that Maria would not have her wedding but she was well provided for. Amid all that he was sorry for, Maria’s disappointment figured small.
His will had been made a year ago and lodged with a notary in Poitiers. He saw no reason to change his requirements. His request might seem strange but should pose no problems in these times when bodies were often prepared in the Eastern way, to travel long distances home, without putrefaction. The only part of his dead body that mattered would be taken where it truly belonged. If he no longer existed in his parents’ eyes, the manner of his leaving this world was of no concern to them. Or to the new little heir, the replacement Geoffroi de Rançon. Maybe this was how it was meant to be.
He took the copy of his will from its place alongside the letter from his father and sent it by messenger to a lawyer in Les Baux, along with coin to compensate for knocking him up at night to receive a scroll ‘in case of need’.
Perhaps he would win the duel. Neither he nor Dragonetz knew who was the better swordsman. The only time they’d fought in earnest, they’d been interrupted and Dragonetz hampered by the effects of the poppy. De Rançon thought he could win, knew he had different techniques and skills from his taller adversary. However, unlike that adversary, he knew his own biggest weakness, the one most like to kill him. He didn’t want to win.
He had stopped planning. He did not recognise the man he’d been since he joined his father in disgrace. He knew the man he’d been today, remembered him from the past and would never part from him again. Maybe instinct would take over in the duel and fight for him. Maybe not. He rolled a word around on his tongue and liked the sound of it. Inshallah.
‘Geoffroi? Did I do wrong? You told me not to show anybody but I thought it would be all right to show your friend, now we are to be married.’ Maria was already in his bed, anxious and pretty, like her in looks only. Yet Geoffroi had told the truth in that too. He had given her up. In the real world at least and a man’s bedchamber fantasies were his own business - and Maria’s. As she well understood.
‘You did nothing wrong, dear heart,’ he reassured her, removing his tunic.’ I am but roughly washed after combat,’ he warned. ‘The buckets had too many men wanting their use and not enough boys fetching them. Even the horse troughs were already taken. And Dragonetz is quite right - the lack of water is the castle’s weakness. It could never withstand a summer siege.’
If Maria had been an Estela, she would have noticed his naming of Dragonetz; like a man mentioning his mistress to his wife, an inflection of new love, of guilt, of betrayal. Instead, Maria licked the sweat from his arm. ‘Come to bed,’ she said, as the thunder rumbled. ‘You can wash clean in the rain afterwards, when the storm breaks.’
They were betrothed now and there could be nothing sinful in their union. Any child conceived this night would be blessed, Geoffroi was sure of it. He wanted to share his sense of peace, of rightness, of a new life, with this sweet girl who wanted only to please him.
He was especially tender with her, taking his time, giving her license to play, to invent. She was a fast learner and they were both lathered with sweat in the gathering pressure as he gave way to the storm. The pleasure-rush was more intense than any he’d known, driving him to scream, ‘Estela!’ before the second wave overtook him, pain crashing into his head without mercy, breaking him into a million pieces with no name, split open by lightning.
The storm outside broke and daggers of rain slanted through the window but the sudden cool brought no relief to Geoffroi de Rançon. Maria began to wail.
A boy’s sweet soprano opened the hymn and all hearts, his Latin accented with Arabic. Dragonetz knew he should work on this, correct his pupil but he found it endearing.
O ignee spiritus laus tibi sit
qui in timpanis et citharis operaris
Praise be to thee O spirit of flame
who speaks through lyre and tambour…
A soul opened in joy, through song, the very essence of a hymn. A moment of bliss. Then the other voices took up the lyric, at war with each other, jarring - again! Dragonetz was hoarse from shouting instructions. Didn’t they feel the music?
The harmonies? How could they sing like frogs when the music they’d been given was heavenly! They should chime in with the boy’s sweetness, cherish it, move through the lyric from love to justice. This was the verse that should be strong, ominous, some minors. The verse when the boy’s voice should fade.
Quando autem malum ad te gladium suum educit
tu illud in cor illius refringis
sicut in primo perdito angelo fecisti
ubi turrim superbie illius
in infernum deiecisti.
When evil draws its sword on you,
you turn it back into its black heart
as you did to the fallen angel
in the beginning
hurling his tower of pride
down into hell.
The boy, lost, drowned out by those who were stronger. Angry tears streamed down Dragonetz’ cheeks, unchecked, pooling in streams at his feet as he conducted the invisible, inadequate choir. Water rose into a whirling tower, whipped his naked body. Hell’s thunder crashed into the lyrics, pounding, regular.
Dragonetz woke, sweating and confused, convinced the stones moved and the castle was tumbling. There was barely a second between a deafening roar from the skies and the lightning, forking the room vivid pink. Vertat bated in the wild light, then cowered on her perch, shivering and mewing. As his eyes recovered from the blinding flash, Dragonetz saw the door open a crack, then quickly close again at the hawk’s angry reaction. The regular pounding began again. Not thunder but somebody thumping on the door.
‘Dragonetz? For the love of Allah, move that bird and let me in.’
Malik. ‘I’m awake. Give me a moment.’ Dragonetz fumbled a candle alight, sheltered it from the storm gusts behind his clothes-coffer. He threw on the tunic discarded by the bed the night before and he weighed up the distance between his gloves, an outraged hawk and her hood.
‘When I yell ‘Now’ open the door a crack to distract her and I’ll hood the hawk,’ he called to his friend. Then he waited out another blast of thunder. There was no point trying to hood the hawk while she bated, especially given the exercise required to reach gloves and hood. He cursed his efficiency in making the manoeuvre so difficult.
‘Now!’ he called. The door opened, the hawk screeched at the intrusion. Dragonetz dived, briefly aware of the parts of his body exposed to claws and beak. Gloves; hood; covered; tied. Complaining more quietly, quickly reassured by the familiar darkness, Vertat clutched the perch as Dragonetz shifted the wooden stand enough to allow Malik into the chamber.
He must have taken in the arrangement; the hawk’s stand blocking the door but he made no comment. Unlike Dragonetz, he was fully dressed, in white robe and neatly wound turban, and carrying his box of medicines. He sat down on the bed. Dragonetz sat beside him and they waited out the next burst of thunder. There was a longer pause this time and less violence in the jagged spear of light.
‘Geoffroi de Rançon is dead,’ Malik said. ‘I was called as physician. I wanted to tell you myself. I am truly sorry that you have lost your friend.’ Another friend, he meant.
‘How?’ asked Dragonetz, his mind still reeling from song and storm. This time he wanted to know how, in detail. And then to understand why.
‘Maria was there. She is too shocked to make much sense but it seems he had some kind of seizure. He had been complaining that the storm was inside his head.
’
Dragonetz had to ask. ‘Do you think he might have… by his own hand? Poison perhaps?’
Malik glanced at him, taken aback. ‘I have no reason to think so. Everybody knows how much honour he gained from today’s tourney and it’s obvious how much he cares for you, how good you are together on the field.’ He corrected himself. ‘Cared for you.’ He hesitated. They too were good together in the field. ‘Dragonetz, is there something else?’
The urge to speak, to share the terrible burden with a friend was stronger than poppy addiction but Dragonetz controlled this too. What was it Malik and Estela always told him, about the physician’s creed? First do no harm.
‘Estela,’ he said at last. ‘De Rançon and she were close. This will be hard for her. I don’t know whether it will come better from you or from me but she should be told by one of us before she hears passing gossip.’
Malik nodded. ‘You’re right. I will go to her now, and stay with her until you return. As his only friend in this court, somebody who knows his family, I think you should check his affairs, see if there’s anything personal that needs to be done, before the formalities begin. Talk to Maria.’
Not willing to explain why he was the wrong person, Dragonetz accepted the duty. As Commander of Aliénor’s guard, he had arranged a man’s effects often enough. One more letter to write, notifying family. One more tearful woman, to be given food and shelter. One more set of last wishes to make a man aware of how little we all are, how little we can truly call ours. A ring, a lock of hair, a wooden dog. By such stuff are memories kept alive.
Fully dressed in leggings, tunic and tabard, Dragonetz followed the page and flickering lantern to de Rançon’s chamber. Maria was not there, for which he was grateful. He would assure her welfare in the morning. He let the boy light and take a candle then dismissed him, closing the door on all but himself and a ghost. The lantern burned strong, throwing light on the meagre possessions of a travelling knight.