Gilded Spurs

by Grace Ingram

  ‘That’s so. You were the one who was to do the repair. But to come alive and whole out of Warby—no man’s ever done that before.’

  ‘And if you’d seen fit to warn me of that, I’d have gone round by Etherby and never set foot in Warby,’ Guy replied with a faint edge to his voice.

  ‘Warn you?’ The notion that he owed a warning to the man who must deliver his armour had obviously never occurred to him, and Guy let slip his hold on prudence.

  ‘It might have cost you your good hauberk.’

  ‘God’s Head, so it might!’

  The girl, keener-witted than her sire, felt his point’s barb and flushed with chagrin and fury. Then her gaze went past him, and her face hardened. Skirts swished in the rushes behind Guy, and another girl came to the dais foot, attended by two waiting-women; a smaller, younger girl in a fine blue gown, with the chatelaine’s keys chiming at her girdle. She swept up the steps and laid a hand on Lord Henry’s arm, smiling up at him. No glance, not even an eyelid’s flicker, acknowledged that Helvie existed. She turned her smile on Guy, oblivious of the tension between them.

  ‘The armourer from Bristol with my lord’s gear? You are well come; he has been fretting for it long enough. And what news do you bring from Bristol?’

  Guy bowed. ‘Very little, my lady, since the Duke of Normandy is still abroad.’

  ‘And new-married to King Louis’s divorced Queen,’ she said with relish. ‘Have you ever seen the Duke?’

  ‘Yes, my lady.’

  ‘Close to, I mean?’

  ‘I have spoken with him, when I repaired his mail, my lady.’

  ‘Is it true what they say, that he dresses like a woodcutter?’ she asked eagerly.

  ‘More like a huntsman, my lady, for he is always in the saddle.’

  ‘And they say he has a taste for low women, even tavern-wenches—’ She checked on a giggle.

  ‘As to that, my lady, I have no knowledge,’ Guy answered austerely, hoping that he had not betrayed his surprise and amusement that a great lady could be as silly as any gossiping housewife.

  Lord Henry scowled at her like any husband whose wife makes a fool of herself in public. ‘So you’ve encountered the Angevin cub. What do folk think of him in Bristol?’

  ‘Why, that he will be a greater King than his grandsire.’

  ‘King? They reckon he’ll take the crown, then?’

  ‘Who’s to prevent him,’ the girl asked unexpectedly, “when he has all the wealth of Aquitaine behind him?’

  ‘He’ll not need it. He is of the breed of Kings,’ Guy answered, remembering the demon’s energy that had flared in the armourer’s shop.

  ‘When Robert of Gloucester died,’ Lord Henry growled, ‘men of sense hoped the war would die also. Now this devil’s whelp from Anjou will fight it again.’ He shook his head heavily, but Guy’s pulse quickened. Warfare gave the landless knight his chance to distinguish himself.

  ‘You smile at that?’ the girl challenged. ‘Reckoning how your trade will prosper from slaughter?’

  Guy flushed, opened his mouth to refute the accusation and then realized that it had been just. His anger burned hotter.

  ‘There’s no profit in war,’ Lord Henry stated. ‘A man can ride three days through the debated land and see never a house standing nor a field tilled, and peasants’ bones picked clean in the waste. Where’s the profit to their lords? Eh, wife?’

  ‘I thank the Saints I was bred up to know that when men discuss matters of state, a woman should hold her tongue.’ Since that was Guy’s own belief he should have been gratified by this endorsement. He looked up into the tall girl’s face, and sympathy sprang perversely in him. Gratification came when Lord Henry turned on his wife; the spiteful fool had over-reached herself.

  ‘God’s Head, you should have an opinion, since the war’s cost me a good half of your dower!’

  A horn blasted outside, announcing dinner. The wife flounced to her high seat on the dais, tears of mortification glittering in her eyes, and Guy watched her thoughtfully. She was surely a fool. Difficult it might be for a new-wedded wife to be burdened with a stepdaughter older than herself, but her display of malice would not endear her to her husband. If Lady Helvie were his heiress she was crazed to antagonize her so before supplanting her with a son.

  Guy was not enlightened about Helvie’s status until the first course was being cleared. He had been placed, as a guest of less than gentle blood, at the top of one of the tables below the dais, presided over by Lord Henry’s huntsman. There had been no further word of his sojourn in Warby. A stridency in the talk at the high table, though words did not reach them, turned his neighbours’ heads.

  ‘Two women in one house,’ commented the huntsman.

  ‘He’ll have no peace in bed or at board while Mistress Helvie remains,’ said a sergeant of the garrison lower down the table.

  ‘He should have married off his daughter before ever he brought home Lady Alice,’ declared a sour cleric in a threadbare gown.

  ‘It’s none so easy to find a good husband for a bastard, and he’s fond o’ the lass,’ the huntsman objected.

  ‘It’s an insult to his wife and no kindness to his daughter,’ said the cleric primly.

  Guy looked across at the high table and inwardly agreed with him, but marvelled that Lord Henry had not enforced some semblance of amity with his belt. As for the girl, he might have known more fellow-feeling for her if he had liked her better. He caught her eye, and she scowled at him; if Lord Henry’s suspicions had been distracted hers had not. He shrugged and turned his attention to a trencher piled with boiled salt beef. Castle folk might reckon it a matter of course to eat flesh twice a day, but a townsman was lucky to taste it twice a week.

  Either Lord Henry was all bluster and no action, or as easily diverted as a weather-cock, for he still made no further mention of Warby. He tried his hauberk and commended the alterations, paid the charges without quibbling and even suggested genially that a skilled armourer might do well in private service. In normal circumstances Guy would have remained overnight, but he was in haste to be outside Lord Henry’s reach before news of his identity should fly to Trevaine. Shortly after midday he passed under the portcullis again, with an odd mingling of relief and disappointment that he did so without encountering the girl Helvie.

  His horses, well-fed but barely rested, were disinclined to travel far, and once inside the woods Guy found an open space well away from the track, unsaddled and tethered them. Rolled in his cloak on a heap of bracken, he slept uneasily, used to the stuffy loft over the forge and the snores of his half-brother and the journeyman, not to the scent of crushed fern and the sound of the horses tearing at the grass. He was on his way as soon as the waning moon gave him light enough, for he was anxious to cross the fords beyond Warby before sunrise. So he saddled up, fingers and leather equally awkward in the dawn chill, huddled his cloak about his ears against the dew spattered by the trees, and growled curses at his balky horses.

  Early as he was, others had been earlier. He heard the owl-hoots before and behind, but thought nothing of them. Mist smoked from the river and filtered between the trees, and as he slackened speed a half-dozen tattered wraiths put on substance all about him. Guy looked at two spear-heads poised to thrust him through the belly, and beyond them at three arrow-points glinting above tense knuckles. A middle-sized brown man, empty-handed, caught his bridle close to the bit as he halted.

  ‘You’re the fellow crossed before dawn yesterday,’ he stated. ‘It doesn’t work twice. Dismount!’

  ‘Don’t spoil his tunic!’ besought the larger spearman. ‘I’m claiming his clothes! Knock his head in!’

  Guy looked down sourly on the fellow at his bridle and spoke the password Lord Reynald had provided for just this contingency. ‘The Horns protect me.’

  The leader’s jaw dropped, and the horse snorted and threw up his head at the tug on his bit. ‘God’s Head, how—?’

  ‘Lord Reynald’s own word,’
Guy answered grimly. ‘Stand away!’

  The robber jerked his head, and three arrow-points stooped earthward as the bows unbent. One spear-butt grounded. The big ruffian who claimed Guy’s clothes protested.

  ‘Fattest spoil this half-year gone! Good gear, horses, an’ that’s money he’s gotten! ’ He jabbed at the bulge above Guy’s belt, where the leather bag of silver pennies nagged his ribs. ‘An’ his clothes’d do me!’ His need was extreme; a couple of untanned deerskins cobbled with thongs over filthy tatters comprised his attire.

  ‘He has Lord Reynald’s word.’

  ‘We’re letting him go on Warby madman’s say-so?’

  ‘We only live by his leave, and hang without it,’ the leader answered, his voice sharpening dangerously. He loosed Guy’s bridle and started round the horse’s head.

  ‘Hell burn you, I’m taking tunic afore frosts start!’

  The eyes glinting through tangled hair narrowed, muscles knotted in bony arms, and the spear lunged at Guy’s throat. He struck it up and over his shoulder, and as the fellow, with nothing to resist his thrust, stumbled closer, he kicked with all his force. His boot crunched into nose and mouth. The spear clattered. The robber sprawled on his back three yards away, and then lurched groaning to his knees, groping for his spear-shaft and spitting teeth.

  ‘Drop it!’ barked the leader.

  He grabbed up his weapon and lifted his broken face, his defiant snarl bubbling through blood. He heaved to one knee, and Guy tightened his thighs on the gelding’s barrel to urge him forward. The brown man moved up behind his follower. 'Who commands here?’ he demanded, jerked his head back by the hair and cut his throat.

  He dropped the dead man in the gush of blood. As it steamed in his nostrils the gelding shrieked and reared up, striking at the empty sky. Guy, half-prepared, clung with all the strength of his legs, hauled on the reins and struck him between the ears with his clubbed fist to bring him down. The instant his forehooves touched the earth he spun about and bolted back the way he had come, dragging the pack-horse after him.

  They fled the best part of a mile before Guy could check them, and then stood trembling and snorting, their hides lathered and their eyes rolling white-rimmed. He waited a while, soothing them with hands and voice, while the morning lightened and the grey woods gathered colour from the dawn. He was shivering himself, his belly churning. A robber captain, he supposed, could tolerate insubordination even less than other commanders.

  ‘Why should it surprise me that Lord Reynald is abetting outlaws for a share in their plunder?’ he asked the silent trees, and stroked Dusty’s nose. The leaf-patterned sky overhead was blue now, the mists almost swallowed by the risen sun. He swung back into the saddle. ‘I gave my word,’ he said aloud, as though refuting an accusation, ‘and how else can I reach knighthood?’ He tightened the reins and forced the beast back towards the ford.

  The body was gone. The blood was jellied black on the fallen leaves, blue flies buzzing and crawling, and a trail of drying splashes led to the ford. He grimaced, wondering to whom the river would bear it, and fought his frightened horses down to the water, on the way home to Bristol.

  Chapter 3

  'The person Guy had expected to make least turmoil about his decision made the most. When the enormity he proposed reached her wits, his mother leaned forward on her stool and demanded incredulously, ‘You’ll go to him? The devil who murdered my father and raped me—you’ll go to him?’

  ‘I gave my word.’

  ‘What’s that worth, a promise forced from you by threats? Any priest will absolve you, whatever you swore by!’

  ‘I’m not seeking absolution. He will provide for me.’

  ‘God’s Body, isn’t the craft in your hands enough to live by, that you must turn to that monster?’

  ‘I’d always expected,’ complained Guy’s half-brother William, ‘that when—when the time came you’d set up with me.’

  ‘With you as master and me as servant.’

  ‘Has the lawful son no rights before the bastard?’ Emma blazed. ‘A very proper provision—’

  ‘For the elder and the better craftsman? No.’ He regarded his half-brother without liking, now his intentions had been spoken. ‘I’d have set up among strangers first. Lord Reynald has promised to knight me.’

  His mother’s distaff and spindle clattered against the hearthstone. ‘Yes, that’s what you’ve always wanted! To prance abroad on a tall horse like the mailed thief that begot you, robbing and killing and ravishing, instead of earning an honest living by a decent craft!’

  ‘Wife,’ said Kenric temperately, ‘remember the blood that was born in him.’

  ‘The foulest blood in England. D’you think I’ve not seen it, not watched him grow liker and liker every year? Yes, it was born in him to turn from us and his honest rearing!’

  ‘Wife-’

  ‘If he’d had any sense of decency, any regard for what was right and fitting, he’d have stayed at school —all those fees you paid for nothing—and taken the cowl in atonement for the sin.’

  ‘The sin was not mine,’ Guy answered calmly, though his heart flinched inside him, ‘and God set no vocation in me.’

  ‘Obedience was your duty!’

  Kenric suspended his smoothing of the stake he was making for shaping helmets, and levelled his knife at her for emphasis. ‘Now, wife, Guy was in no way at fault.’

  Her face convulsed in the flickering firelight, and tear-tracks glimmered down her cheeks, round and comely yet. ‘He turns to the devil that spawned him and betrayed me!’ She sprang up, the stool tumbling backward on the rushes, and cried at him, ‘Have you no feeling for me who bore you, no heart to remember the love that bred you up all these years, that you would forsake your home and parents for that devil?’

  Guy got to his feet, the fire’s glow colouring his pallor. If she had started with that appeal she might have prevailed, but she did not love him. She had never loved him. In childhood she had done a mother’s duty by him, but all her devotion was for her first lawful son. Since he reached years of understanding he had not held it against her. His resemblance to the raptor who had begotten him continually fretted the old hurt, and his differences with William increased the friction. ‘Mother—’

  ‘In Mary’s name, why did you ever claim kinship with him?’

  ‘To save my life,’ he reminded her, and added, between anger and amusement, ‘And who insisted I hang that token about my neck, against that very need?’

  ‘The day will come,’ she prophesied bitterly, ‘when all of us, and you yourself, will wish you had hanged instead!’

  Guy looked at her a long moment, that plump housewife standing by her own hearth. Firelight and rising smoke wavered about her, and she was a Sibyl of ancient times fore-telling doom. He turned from her without a word, strode across the floor and into the forge, shoving the door shut behind him.

  There was no light but the dim glow of the charcoal fire, banked for the night. His nostrils filled with the faint, acrid odour, mingled with those of hot metal, oil, soot and scorched leather, familiar as the breath he drew. He needed no fight here, where he spent his working days, and moved surely between ordered obstacles to the chest in which Kenric locked completed work. He sat down, his chin propped on his hands, and stared at the forge’s red eye, contemplating the wreckage he had wrought.

  He had been a complacent fool. His mother did not love him; but he owed her a son’s grateful duty, and had turned from her to the monster who had begotten him in rape. No man could ever comprehend what that meant to a woman, but dimly he perceived that it must outrage the very source of maternal feeling. Yet, understanding, he must abide by his treachery. He could not continue in this household, subject to her carping, forever subservient to William, scratching together his journeyman’s wages until, years hence, he might have enough to set up for himself.

  The door opened on the sound of gusty sobbing, and Kenric’s stocky bulk was briefly outlined against the f
irelight before he closed it behind him and advanced as surely as Guy had done into the darkness. Guy got to his feet and waited on his word. He had no quarrel with his stepfather.

  Kenric perched his rump on the largest anvil-block. Guy could just distinguish his shape in the forge’s glow. ‘Sit, lad,’ he bade him, and Guy sank back on the chest in silence. ‘Must you go, son?’

  ‘I promised.’

  ‘His threats can’t touch you.’

  ‘He threatened all in this household.’

  ‘Worthless. He daren’t show his face in Bristol, since all men know he robbed and murdered Aymer the wine-merchant last year.’

  ‘I know he is a villain,’ said Guy slowly, ‘but he claimed a father’s right. And he will knight me.’

  ‘Which has been your heart’s desire since you were a little lad, climbing into the Alderman’s orchard to ride his palfrey rather than pilfer his apples. Aye, and persuading drunken Gamel of the gate-guard to teach you sword-play.’

  ‘You knew?’

  Kenric chuckled. ‘I’ve been a lad myself. What puzzled me was how you managed to bribe Gamel.’

  ‘No bribe. I’d noticed where he hid his wine when he was on duty.’

  ‘Conscienceless whelp! But I feared once, when you came home from the monastery, that you’d run off to be a common soldier.’

  ‘I thought of it often enough,’ Guy admitted. ‘But common soldiers are dirt beneath the knights’ feet. A good armourer commands more respect. Bristol’s been the head of the Angevin strength in this war as long as I can remember; I’ve known soldiers all my life. There’s no rising to knighthood that way. So—I shut my ears and learned my craft.’

  ‘Your mother should not complain at your lack of a vocation. No one could have squealed louder when her cousin tried to force her into a nunnery.’

  ‘She feels I have betrayed her. But—but—is it not justice to her and to you also, that the man who begot me should provide for me?’ His voice wavered for all he tried to hold it steady.