by Grace Ingram
Lucifer halted the lesson when the bay was tired, and the grooms led him away to be rubbed down. Guy eased his legs, strained by the unfamiliar seat, and Sir Conan called for his own charger and demonstrated all that Guy had tried to learn with a careless grace he knew he could never master. He came to it too late. Then one of the grooms brought out a fresh horse wearing the shabby saddle allotted to his use, and Lucifer pulled up beside him.
‘We’ll try you with the lance now. Fetch one, Alan. See, you grip it under your right arm, hard to your side, and it slants across your horse’s neck to the left. Keep the point up; you aim for the shield. The helmet’s for experts, not cow-fisted smiths. In the tourney you pass your man on the near side, lance to lance, so the horse must lead with his right. You have it? Face me and show. Higher—remember I’ll have my shield up. Yes. We’ll let you try at the quintain.’
Covert grins appeared and were banished from the faces of troopers and grooms. They drifted towards the quintain, set to one side of the stable dunghill moistly shining in the sun. It was an upright post, and pivoted on top of it was a horizontal bar, a shield depending from one arm and a bag of sand from the other. Guy’s own mouth twitched. He had often watched young knights tilting in the fields outside Bristol, and he knew the trick of the quintain. It was designed to overcome a man’s instinctive checking before an impact; unless he kept up his impetus after striking the shield the sandbag, whirling round, would beat him from his saddle to squelch into the dunghill. All waited eagerly to see Lord Reynald’s son meet that disaster.
Guy set his teeth, and without waiting for Sir Conan to utter a word of instruction clamped the lance under his arm and jabbed spurs into his stallion’s flanks. Turf flew as he thundered across the sodden grass, the shield leaped to his lance-point and slammed against it a hand’s breadth off centre. He flinched involuntarily at the impact, but kept the reins slack and his legs tight, and was past the dunghill when the sandbag hurtled round. He reined in and cantered back, surveying disappointed faces, his own blank.
Over the spectators’ heads he saw Lord Reynald descend the keep steps and advance across the grass, shaking out the lash of his riding-whip. A man squalled as it cracked across his shoulders. ‘Idling wastrels! ’ he snarled, slashing indiscriminately, and they scattered like panicked fowls. One urchin slipped in the wet mud and sprawled headlong. The lash caught him twice before he could scramble shrieking out of reach. Guy frowned.
Only Sir Conan’s men stood fast, stiffened to attention. Guy, prompted by a memory of some knightly encounter, dipped his lance-point in salute and brought it upright. Lord Reynald, coiling his whip, nodded acknowledgement.
‘He knows enough to charge full-tilt at least,’ he observed, and Guy wondered how long he had been watching.
‘It seems there’s more to him than bullock-beef,’ Sir Conan conceded.
‘How does he shape?’
‘His sword-play won’t discredit you, but he rides like a ploughman.’
‘We’ll work on that. You’ll ride out after dinner each day with Sir Conan, boy.’
‘My lord, I’ll oversee his exercises here, as a favour to you, but I’ve my own troop to drill and lead abroad.’
Lord Reynald’s hands tightened on the whip. ‘You refuse?’
‘My lord, I’m a mercenary captain, not a nursemaid to take your whelp on a leading-rein.’
Guy looked at him, his resentment qualified by respect. ‘And I’m no whelp to need a nursemaid.’
Lord Reynald’s grim smile twisted his mouth. ‘No? Come with me, boy.’ He led back to the keep, and the Slut heaved up from her station by the steps as they passed and padded after.
Next to the guardroom was the armoury, with racked spears, hauberks on rods and helmets on posts, sheaves of arrows and chests for more valuable weapons. Lord Reynald flung one lid back.
‘It’s a father’s right to arm his son,’ he said, echoing Kenric, and like Kenric he laid a sheathed sword in Guy’s hands.
Already Guy had learned enough of him to make no mention of another man’s gift. ‘My lord,’ he said formally, summoning what enthusiasm he might to his voice and face, ‘I thank you, and trust to make good use of it in your service.’ He drew the blade and held it to the light so that it shimmered all its length; a blade of the kind turned out by every competent swordsmith throughout England. It did not leap to life of its own like the Danish sword that had perhaps known the days of King Alfred. He swung and thrust to feel its balance, and Lord Reynald nodded.
‘Yes, you’ve used a sword before. Now we’ll see if there’s a hauberk to cover your blacksmith’s carcase.’
Only one was large enough to fit, and it might have been left over from the Conqueror’s time, of age-blackened leather disintegrating at the edges, with sleeves that only reached his elbows, sewn over with iron rings. Guy drew breath carefully and shifted his shoulders against the weight, feeling its seams creak protest.
‘It will have to serve, you overgrown hulk,’ Lord Reynald told him, as though his size were blameworthy.
Guy wrestled out of it unassisted, and laid it across a chest. ‘If your armourer has the tools I can make one.’
‘Make one? Have you no shame? Aren’t you disgrace enough, a son who’s worked with his hands for pay, without your proposing to do it now you’re training for knighthood? You dishonour me, your father!’
Guy stood fast under the tirade, a frown gathering his brows. ‘As you will, my lord,’ he said.
‘That’s your peasant dam in you that I honoured with noble seed! Remember only that I got you, and don’t shame me again!’
He stormed out. Guy stood a moment, listening to his footsteps crossing the guardroom and diminishing down the stair, and then put away the hauberk, took the sheathed sword under his arm and trod up to lay it in his own chamber off the hall. Knightly honour to his thinking had oddities. It would be disgrace to employ the skill of his own hands to provide good mail, yet he knew that if he had proposed to ride forth and waylay some traveller on the highway for it, that would be applauded as a very proper project for a young man of spirit. The great bitch, sensing his disquiet, nudged his thigh; he fondled her head absently, swinging the sword in his other hand. Then he hung it by the belt from the perch, and checked that the Danish blade was safe. He must hide it before Lord Reynald learned that he had it. The chest had no lock to it, and he had enemies enough already who might think it profitable to pry and make mischief.
Two sucking-pigs and an array of poultry were roasting before the hall fire. A grey-muzzled hound stretched beside its warmth lifted his head and gently thumped his tail. Guy stooped to pat him and fondle his ears, and the Slut pushed her nose between them for the caress she reckoned her exclusive right. He straightened and idly watched the scullion in charge halt the spit to baste the meat, dipping up the fat from the dripping-trough with an iron ladle. He glanced nervously over his shoulder at Guy, jerked a bow and jumped back to the handle. Guy nodded acknowledgement, noting that every servant he encountered seemed to expect a boot in his backside for greeting, and estimated that the roasts had the better part of an hour to go yet.
‘I trust your pork will taste as good as it smells,’ he said, and started down to the bailey.
He strolled the length of it, curious to learn all he could. He peered into dim stables, but they were empty; the horses would be out at grass as long as it would serve them, for not even a lord could be prodigal with hay. The hawks were out in the sun, leashed to their perches, and the falconer was moving about inside the mews. The dog-boy plodded to the kennels with a couple of buckets of offal from the kitchens, and the hounds’ clamour followed Guy as he moved on, past forage-sheds, a barn where workers were threshing corn, lean-to huts under the wall where married servants made their homes, and a carpenter’s workshop echoing to active hammers. He checked outside the open-fronted forge. A hairy lout who looked as though he bedded down in his charcoal-bin was idly scraping at a rusty hinge-strap with a file.
No sensible person intruded on a kitchen so near a meal; it was a confusion of glare and scurry. Bakehouse, brewhouse, dairy and laundry, close under the keep, were deserted. Behind them a quickthorn hedge closed off a space of grass, trees and garden-beds. Guy moved towards a wicket-gate, and as he laid hand on it a child’s voice squeaked distressfully.
‘Please, Philip, give it back! Oh don’t!’
‘There it goes! ’ exulted a boy’s voice. A small white ball flew up beyond the hedge. High overhead it opened, turning into a scrap of cloth that caught on a tree’s topmost twigs, and loosing a stone that clattered through the branches. The child wailed protest.
‘Philip, get it back, please! I’ll be whipped—’
‘You got me whipped,’ the boy answered with satisfaction.
‘You know I never meant to! Roger—’
‘He daren’t try. He knows what I’d do to him if he did, don’t you, wheezy?’
‘When I’m lord—of Warby,’ Roger jerked out with venom, ‘I’ll know—what to do—with you! ’
‘God’s Death, d’you reckon when I’m a man I’ll ever serve a misery whose chest plays a tune whenever it drizzles?’
‘Sit,’ said Guy to the Slut, and opened the gate.
The three children did not notice his advance over the grass behind them. Last night’s page menaced with hands on hips and legs straddled; Warby’s heir stood whey-faced, breathing with effort, and a girl younger than either stared up at the bit of cloth fluttering high in a pear-tree, tears brimming. They spilled down her cheeks, and she gulped a sob.
‘It wasn’t my fault! Please, Philip, get it back, or I’ll be whipped!’
‘You got me whipped,’ he repeated, and she began to cry.
‘For what?’ Guy asked, and they jerked about, gaping like unfed nestlings. ‘For what?’ he repeated peremptorily, as none seemed inclined to answer, and looked to his half-brother, who gulped and obeyed, stammering a little.
‘Philip w-went ferreting with the r-rat-catcher, when his father t-told him not to, and—and Sir Gerard asked Matilda where he was.’
‘I didn’t know he had forbidden him!’ Matilda protested. Guy regarded Philip with lifted brows, and the urchin kicked at the grass and nodded sulkily. ‘Then it was for disobedience you were whipped, and rightly. Who’s to blame but yourself?’
‘If she hadn’t told—’
‘So you try to hurt a little maid? What knightly conduct is that, you nasty whelp?’
‘What do you know of knightly conduct?’ he flared. ‘You’re nothing but a craftsman, and my father says it’s an insult to true knights—’
He checked, and the colour drained from his face. For a long moment they stared with breath suspended; even the little girl understood. Guy contemplated him, stubborn and arrogant and stupid, the type of a true knight indeed, a mocking thought insisted.
‘We will repeat that neither to Lord Reynald nor to Sir Gerard, or it would be matter for more than whipping a foolish brat,’ he said flatly, and Roger and Matilda nodded scared agreement as he met their eyes in turn. ‘Go, and learn to guard your own tongue.’
He ran head-down, and they heard him stifle a sob as he clashed through the gate.
The other children gazed up at him with anxious hope, and Matilda put out a hand to catch at his tunic. ‘Oh please—’
He gazed at the fluttering rag. He was far too heavy to entrust his limbs to the pear-tree’s, but a gardener had left a rake leaning against the keep wall. With its handle he reached down the scrap of linen, smiling at the first stitches lurching across its blood-spotted breadth. Matilda squeaked with relief to find the needle still dangling, and thrust it securely into the cloth. He nodded; in his mother’s household also a beating had been mandatory for any daughter who lost so precious a possession.
‘Oh thank you, thank you!’ She dipped him an unsteady curtsey, bobbed up and flung her arms about his middle, jabbing the needle into his short ribs. ‘You are so kind—’
He knew what was required of him, and stooped for a moist kiss, his heart reaching out to this plain little maid with her smudged face and brown hair tangled over her shoulders. Roger, more wary, was still withholding judgement.
‘Run to your mother to have your face washed, demoiselle,’ Guy advised.
‘My mother died when I was a baby,’ she told him. ‘Roger’s mother washes my face for me, or Philip’s. They smack me too, if I’m very dirty.’ She grinned up. Her front teeth had fallen and their replacements were but half-grown, making her smile the more endearing. ‘Am I ?’
‘Not smacking-dirty,’ Roger assured her, a sudden smile transfiguring his face. They trotted hand in hand after Guy to the gate. The Slut heaved up and nudged her master’s thigh, her eyes reproaching him for having deserted her.
Roger and Matilda stared awe-stricken, but put out their hands when bidden. The Slut sniffed at each grimy fist and wiped a warm tongue across it, and then pushed under Guy’s hand again for his approval. She was entirely safe with children, but not enthusiastic.
‘She knows us now? She’s our friend?’ Matilda asked.
‘She knows her friends,’ Guy agreed, fondling the bitch’s head as she pressed against him, but none the less they preferred to walk on his other side until they reached the keep steps and ran ahead.
Lord Reynald stood on the dais amid the bustle of setting up the tables for dinner, and summoned Guy with a peremptory jerk of his head. His scowl, and the smiles of Wulfrune and Rohese behind him, were warning of trouble. The Slut stiffened, her hackles rising under his hand.
‘What’s this I’m told?’ he demanded without greeting. ‘You attended Mass this morning in the village church?’
‘What else should I do, my lord?’
‘You’ll not go again! ’
Guy stared at him. This was lunacy. The worst of men paid that respect to the Faith. ‘In that, my lord, I must not obey you,’ he declared.
‘Must not? You dare say that to me?’
‘You have no right to command it.’ He laid his hand on the Slut’s head as she bristled and her lips curled from her teeth.
‘By the Horns, no son of mine shall kneel to a crucified felon!’
Guy crossed himself, and had to swallow twice before his voice would answer that blasphemy. ‘My lord, I kneel to my Saviour—and yours.’
‘Have you forgotten what you are, and what you were?’
‘If the price of knighthood be my immortal soul, I’ll not pay it.’
‘You’re my son. You’ll obey me.’
‘I am a bastard, and of full age. You have no lawful hold on me. Press this, and you give me no option but to quit your household.’
‘I’ll not allow—’
‘Unless you hold me prisoner, I have but to ride out and keep riding.’
‘You’ll crawl back to Bristol and beg another man to provide for you?’
‘I’ve a craft in my hands will provide for me.’
‘If you go, you’ll leave your right hand here!’
Shock struck cold to Guy’s vitals, and he knew his face had blanched. The threat had been hurled in overmastering fury by a man who could not abide the slightest thwarting of his will, but while his rage boiled he meant it.
‘Do that!’ grated Wulfrune, grinning satisfaction. ‘Lop his hand and cast him forth. He’ll do us no good.’
Her intrusion was an error; it broke the tension like a snapped thread, and distracted Lord Reynald. ‘What’s that you say?’
‘Have his hand off and be done with him.’
‘He’s my son!’
She snorted. ‘Ha! What’s a son but proof you’ve a man’s parts? Aye, and a proper man ’ud ha’ gotten hisself a dozen, sons and to spare.’
His face turned greenish-white. ‘By the Horns, you—you forget—’
‘Whenever you’ve gone against my advice you’ve rued it. It was an unlucky day when you found this whelp, and since you never knowed you’d got him, what loss? He’ll bring you wors
e luck until you’re rid o’ him.’ She thumped her staff once for emphasis, and when he made no answer for strangling wrath, stared round the watchers. All averted their eyes rather than meet hers. Only Guy looked fairly into them, and regretted it; automatically his hand lifted to press the silver talisman over his heart. She thumped her staff again. ‘Gran’daughter!’ Rohese scurried to her side. She stalked down the long room and out. Serving-men who had stood like carved images came to life and scrambled to set up the furniture.
Lord Reynald stood scowling and breathing hard for a moment, and then turned to Guy. ‘How should you understand what you miss, ignorant whelp? And if that bitch of yours shows her teeth at me again I’ll have her knocked on the head!’
Guy patted the Slut’s head, and she subsided, still bristling. He judged this no time for further defiance, and retreated to his chamber to change his tunic. He found his heart was hammering, his shirt sticking to his shoulders. He sat on the chest, staring out of the window with eyes that saw nothing, and then thrust to his feet and fairly wrenched himself out of his old work-tunic. Wulfrune might not be alone in reckoning it an unlucky day when he entered Warby.
The more he saw of Lord Reynald the less Guy liked him, but he had not yet come to hate him, and until this encounter he had not feared him. The horn’s note urged him to haste, and he was sitting on his bed winding his cross-garters when Oswin ducked round the curtain, mumbled some apology for his lateness and knelt to finish the task. Guy’s mouth twitched. He had a body-servant of sorts to wait on him and do his bidding, and was lodged and fed as a baron’s son. He had that day engaged in knightly exercises, the first fulfilment of his ambition, and neither Lucifer’s goading nor Lord Reynald’s jeers could spoil the satisfaction he had found. Even so, he had to brace himself to lift the curtain, and hoped that Oswin did not notice.
Lord Reynald’s manner had declined from menace to mere peevishness. ‘That workman’s garb again? Wife, what start have you made on his new clothes?’
‘We have looked out what suitable cloths we have, my lord.’
‘You’ve done nothing? Did I not bid you—’