by Grace Ingram
‘He has no right, unless you give it,’ Kenric answered gently.
‘But he owes it to me, does he not?’
‘A bastard has no claim beyond what his father chooses to give.’
‘Forgive me, Father, but what provision is there for me elsewhere?’
‘In law, my eldest son’s, since you were born in wedlock.’
‘Almighty God!’ Guy exclaimed, in appalled amusement. For a moment his misery lifted. ‘Oh, to tell William so and see his face! But it’s not possible. He is your lawful son, and I another man’s bastard. I’ll never dispute his right as your heir, but neither will I own him my master.’
‘It would be possible if he’d been born with the grace of generosity,’ growled William’s father.
‘He’s jealous.’
‘He’s a fool. You’re already as good a weapon-smith as I am, and the best hand at this finicky ring-mail I’ve known. Given three more years I could set you up for yourself, but four daughters to dower decently took what little portion your mother brought and more, and I’m still in debt for Aldith. But if you’d wait, lad—?’
‘You’re generosity’s self!’ Guy exclaimed, his love for his stepfather closing his throat so that he had to swallow twice before he could command his voice. ‘But do you think I could lay such a charge on you? A poor requital for all the years you’ve been my father.’
Kenric sighed. For a long moment the only sound in the forge was the faint purr of the banked fire. Then he asked, ‘Have you never wondered why I married your mother?’
‘Often,’ Guy admitted candidly. ‘You were barely acquainted with her father, her cousin had made off with most of her dowry, and she was pregnant with another man’s bastard.’
‘You know I’d been married before? My first wife, God rest her, was a widow who’d borne two children, but in over ten years with me she never quickened. So I reckoned, as any man must, that the fault was in my seed. I wedded Emma for the child to comfort my old age, a son to train in my craft if God granted that.’
‘And got six of your own,’ Guy murmured.
‘You have been that son. You’ve never disappointed me.’ Guy dropped to his knees and gripped Kenric’s hands. ‘You—you are my true father!’ he jerked out. ‘In love and honour—believe me—.’
‘Be easy. You shouldered one yoke and made a craftsman. Knighthood you’ll achieve, for it’s in your blood.’
‘In blood and brain and heart. I must. Not that I expect to enjoy its apprenticeship,’ he added, contemplating existence in Lord Reynald’s hold. His resolution wavered. It was on his tongue’s tip to renounce it, hold by his familiar, well-ordered life, and by diligence, thrift and prudent alliance rise to be a master armourer and maybe end as Alderman. He owed it to Kenric, who depended on his stepson more and more as age encroached on his strength; he was sixteen years older than Emma. Then he remembered William, and that he had given his word. He had as much pride as any knight. ‘Give me your blessing, Father,’ he requested steadily, ‘for I think I shall need it.’
Kenric laid his hands lightly on Guy’s hair. ‘God bless and guide and keep you safe, my son, now and always.’ He was silent for a space, and then said briskly, ‘I’ll give you Dusty.’
‘But—’
‘Who’s to ride with the deliveries when you’re gone? William sits a saddle like a sack of grain, so his backside’s blistered inside a mile, and I’m past it. So you’ll take him.’
‘Very gratefully.’
‘I’ve as much pride as Lord Reynald. No son of mine tramps into Warby afoot like a beggar. Dusty’s not much—I dare say Lord Reynald would reckon him only fit for hounds’ meat.’
‘He’ll carry me.’
‘And what will you do with the Slut?’
‘Take her.’
‘Lord Reynald will not fancy her.’
‘With two or three score hounds about that hold, he cannot complain of mine. What else can I do? She’ll take food from no other’s hand; she’d pine to death. And she’s mine.’
‘Her paw is healed now.’
‘If some fool hadn’t cast broken crockery into the mire she’d have been with me—as I’d reason to wish more than once. She’d have winded that ambush, I’d have escaped it, and never come nose to nose with Lord Reynald.’
‘All things are in God’s hands,’ said Kenric, and heaved himself up. ‘Get to bed, lad. Leave your mother to me.’
Guy obeyed, but it was long before he slept, and on the other side of the partition between loft and bedroom the two voices murmured on far into the night.
He was packing his gear next day, after spending half the forenoon making the rounds of Bristol to bid farewell to his half-sisters, their husbands and children, when Kenric climbed into the loft with a bundle under his arm. Guy glanced up, and dropped the shirt he was folding; only one article in an armourer’s shop was a yard long, narrow and rigid, even swaddled in oiled woollen cloth. His fists clenched and his breath came sharply as he looked from it to his stepfather’s face.
‘You need a sword, and it’s a father’s right to arm his son.’
‘I wish,’ said Guy, his throat thick with feeling, ‘that you were my father!’
Head bent, he unwrapped the sword. He did not need to look at the crumbling leather that covered the scabbard to see that this was very old. No swordsmith in living memory had made such a hilt, with its three-lobed pommel and short guard curving towards the blade, nor inlaid the bronze with interlaced silver lines. It answered smoothly to his hand, and he tilted the blade in the light; its razor-keen edges were worn with use and many sharpenings. It was a little longer, more finely tapered than swords were made now, and it came to life in his grip. He cut and thrust, and its reflection jumped about the loft in brilliant flashes. He turned to Kenric.
‘Whose—?’
‘An English earl left it with my grandsire’s father for repair—a broken rivet in the hilt—as he went to join King Harold for the great battle. He never returned for it.’
‘Near ninety years—’
‘It’s lain on the forge rafters,’ Kenric told him, chuckling. ‘Four generations we ha’ cleaned and polished and greased it.’
‘It was old then,’ said Guy in awe.
‘My guess is it came to England at a Dane’s belt, maybe as long ago as King Alfred. Many a sword I’ve handled in my time, but never a better blade. No man has a claim to it. Take it, and never draw it in an unjust quarrel.’
‘You have my word.’
Emma was not in the house or the garden-toft behind it. Guy waited for a time and then, troubled, set to saddling Dusty, while his bitch sat by the stable door, ears pricked and tail twitching with anticipation. Her view of Heaven was an expedition with her master, and they came rarely, tied to his work as he was from week’s end to week’s end. The Slut was half-mastiff, half-wolf, and bigger than either, a guard-dog respected by all Bristol. Guy had never dared tell even Kenric that she had once killed her man lest her execution be demanded, as it had been when he rescued her from the river as a new-born whelp. She was six years old now, a stately matron whose parentage was no longer held against her and whose pups were spoken for before she bore them.
Guy strapped his bundle behind the saddle and made the wrapped sword fast to it. The Slut uttered a faint, warning whine in her throat, and he swung round. Emma, who detested the bitch and would not permit her within doors, drew the skirts of her gown close about her as she passed.
‘Mother?’
She held out her hand. Silver glinted on the palm, a round medallion stamped with a crude image of the Virgin and Child, strung to a plaited leather cord. ‘Lord Reynald, as all men know, harbours and leads a vile brood of witches,’ she said abruptly, her high colour coming and going. “This has lain on the altar through three Masses and been blessed with special prayers, to make it a sure protection against all evil enchantments. Wear it always.’
For the first time since early childhood he embraced and ki
ssed her spontaneously. She stiffened in his hold, and then pecked him awkwardly on the brow. He put the loop over his head and dropped the trinket inside his shirt, its impact chilly against his skin. ‘Always, be sure of that,’ he said gravely. ‘And I will remember always that it was your gift.’
She followed him to the street, and waited as he made his final farewells, bridle on arm and hound at heel. As he mounted she came to his stirrup and looked up for the last word.
‘God guard you. And I trust you’ll find knighthood worth the price.’
‘What price?’
‘That we’ll not know until you’re called upon to pay it.’
Chapter 4
Rain hunted Guy through woods whose October colours were all drowned to sodden brown, so that when he first sighted Warby keep on its ridge his misgivings and apprehension were smothered by relief. His cloak was long since soaked through, and his hood clung flat to his head with the weight of water that streamed over his face. Dusty plodded dismally under the dripping trees, his head drooping, and the Slut slouched alongside, her belly-fur clogged with mud. Then they came to the woods’ fringe, and flinched from the wind that lashed their backs. The fields were empty. They squelched up the track that was running like a muddy stream, between cottages whose thatch and whitewash were blackened with wet. The street was deserted, but Guy was aware of eyes watching under eaves and behind doors as he leaned to the last climb up the ridge.
Guards saluted him at the gate and passed him through without challenge. He swung stiffly out of the saddle, stretching cramped legs with a thankful grunt, and at once two grooms came running from the stables. One seized Dusty’s bridle to lead him away. The other unstrapped his baggage from the saddle, and when Guy extended his hand for it, shook his head with an expression of horror. Guy had never in his life been waited on, but the thought that Lord Reynald’s son should carry his own bundle so plainly shocked the groom that he flushed and dropped his hand, resolving to accept all proffered service.
Lord Reynald was in the hall, playing chess with a thickchested brown man whom Guy had glimpsed in the crowd that had witnessed his first confrontation with his sire. At sight of his son he sprang up, oversetting the board and scattering the pieces. As he advanced to the dais steps his opponent grimaced in relief and stooped to collect them.
‘At last! I wondered whether you had failed me!’
Guy put back his hood and bent his knee in greeting. ‘God save you, my lord.’ The Slut, halting beside him, shook herself. The groom jumped aside. A bucket of water over his head could not have made Guy wetter. He patted her lightly as she thrust her muzzle against his thigh, and felt the hairs lift on her crest, the vibration of the almost soundless growl that filled her throat.
‘That’s your bitch?’
‘I trust you’ll grant her house-room, my lord?’
‘Who gave her to you?’
His brows lifted in surprise. ‘No one, my lord. I took her from the river as a half-drowned pup.’
‘Oh. If you ask it, I’ll keep her.’ The Slut wrinkled her nose at the scent of him and the sound of his voice, and her lips lifted from teeth that had once torn a man’s throat out. ‘She’s an ugly brute, and savage too! ’
‘Like me, she is misbegotten and half wolf.’
He took it for a compliment and laughed harshly. As Guy reached the dais and again formally went on one knee at the step, he caught him by the shoulders in a half-embrace and shook him slightly. The Slut snarled, and he let go. ‘Pah, you stink like a wet dog! A bath and dry clothes for you, at once.’ He snapped his fingers at the groom still in attendance. ‘That’s your servant. My own man has instructed him in his duties. Take a whip to him when he forgets them.’
‘Why, my lord—’
‘Make yourself fit to eat at my table, and quickly!’
Guy silently followed his servant out of the keep to a building between it and the outer wall. It was a laundry. Water simmered in a cauldron over a low fire; wooden tubs were ranged against one wall, buckets against another, and two benches were littered with dippers, ladles, bowls and paddles. The groom dragged a tub up to the fire and began dipping water from the cauldron. Guy unstrapped his baggage-roll of waxed leather and shook out his best tunic and hose, creased but dry. The groom tipped a couple of bucketfuls of cold water into the tub, tried it with a finger and ladled more from the cauldron until satisfied. The Slut watched with deep interest, and he regarded her uneasily.
Guy wrestled out of his garments and dubiously eyed the steaming tub. Since his unremembered infancy he had never immersed his whole person in hot water, and though he knew the gentry were addicted to it, the procedure to him seemed unnecessary and perilous. He was not dirty. A respectable craftsman engaged in a grimy occupation, he washed all exposed parts daily, and otherwise acted on the artisan’s excellent principle that one good sweat washes off another.
He glanced at the groom, a slight brown man of about his own age. No one should spread it through Warby that Lord Reynald’s bastard flinched from a washtub. He tested it with a toe, stepped into it, summoned his resolution and sat down. The hot water lipped against his belly, and he loosed his breath. The sensation was entirely pleasurable. The chill and stiffness soaked from his muscles. He grunted in satisfaction, and relaxed.
The groom floated a wooden dish of soft greenish soap beside him, handed him a wash-clout and with another began to scrub Guy’s back and shoulders. His ministrations stirred an obscure uneasiness in Guy, but he supposed that it was customary for a body-servant to do such service for his master and accepted it, until the fellow began to hiss between his teeth as he worked.
‘I'm not a horse,’ he protested, and the groom dropped the cloth and started back as though he expected a blow. For an instant Guy glimpsed fear and resentment in his face, before the stolid mask covered all feeling. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Oswin, Master Guy.’
‘I don’t kick or bite, either.’ He soaped his cloth and started on his feet, which after a little friction became disconcertingly white. Oswin silently took up his task. Guy, his tentative jest fallen flatter than the flagstones, wondered whether he had violated the conventions by trying it. Then he realized that to jest with a servant who could not answer back required long familiarity and complete understanding, and flushed at his thoughtlessness.
To cover his embarrassment he scooped a palmful of soap and lathered his hair and beard. Oswin poured dipperfuls of water over his head, sluicing away the forge-grime in dark rivulets and drowning out the lice. Working folk took vermin for granted, but the gentry who practised strict cleanliness were less tolerant. He lathered again, noting how the water in the tub had discoloured, and worked with particular care at the dirt engrained round his nails and in his hands. Now Oswin was proffering towels. Guy surged up, water flying abroad, shivered as the draught from unshuttered windows found his wet skin and rubbed with energy.
He fastened his belt, settled his wallet and dagger, and carefully combed his hair. There was no mirror, but he peered at his dim reflection in a bucket of water, braced his shoulders in an unconscious betrayal of unease and hurried through the rain to the keep. The sentinels brought their spears to the salute, lounging guards jerked to attention, and a servant held aside the leather curtain at the stairhead, flinching from the Slut who sniffed at him as she passed.
The tables had been set up, and servants were laying trenchers and horns at the lower tables, metal cups and dishes and thick slices of bread at the high table that stood, draped with a white cloth, on the dais. Their curious eyes followed him up the hall. A slim man with light-brown hair was supervising the work; the white wand in his hand declared him the seneschal. In the cavernous wall-hearth blazing logs challenged the draughts that swooped from unshuttered windows and curtained stairs, and Lord Reynald was warming his back before it, talking to the thickset chess-player and Lucifer. He beckoned Guy, and studied him from flax-pale hair, waving as it dried, to sturdy shoes. The Slut
’s hackles lifted, and Guy laid a hand on her head.
‘You look like a journeyman,’ Lord Reynald observed sourly. ‘Tomorrow you’ll have that beard off in knightly style.’
‘As you wish, my lord.’ An apprentice delighted in the first quilling of his beard as a token of manhood, but other fashions prevailed among gentlefolk.
‘And that tunic—you might be a peasant, with it up to your knee.’
It was an excellent tunic, of dark-green English broadcloth, and had cost him far more than he should have afforded. He had had it made by a tailor, after listening to his mother’s carping about stitching day and night for too many men. He had of course erred in that too, exposing her to neighbours’ criticism for neglecting her duty as a mother. Guy flushed slightly; he did not care to be censured before the chess-player and Lucifer.
‘That shall be amended too. Now meet my marshal, Sir Gerard FitzGilbert.’ The stocky man acknowledged him with a curt nod. ‘Sir Conan de Guinec you have already encountered.’
‘But not socially,’ Guy replied. His guess had been wrong; the mercenary was not Welsh but Breton, by his given name. Bristol was near enough to the Welsh Marches for its citizens to cherish a cordial dislike for the Welsh, and he supposed that there was nothing much to choose between one breed of Celt and another.
‘And that’s my seneschal, Sir James of Malbury,’ Lord Reynald concluded. The slim man nodded amiably, and Guy was cheered a little by the first friendly gesture he had received in that hold. No one smiled; the scuttling servants ventured neither jest nor horseplay, and even the knights were tense, warily watching their lord. Guy’s misgivings crowded thicker, and he retreated behind the mask he had used for so many years to conceal hurt or fear.
A servant jumped to pull back the curtain at the stairhead for a woman in a plain dark-blue gown, leading a small boy by the hand. She was slight and fair, so unremarkable that Guy did not realize her status until he saw that she was attended by a pretty woman wearing the kerchief of marriage, and behind her two bare-headed girls. Then, as she moved up the hall, he recognized that her dignity needed no trappings. The child, a white-headed creature with Lord Reynald’s face, looked fragile as spider silk, and clung close to her skirts.