by Grace Ingram
‘I have been engaged all morning practising arms and horsemanship,’ Guy hastened to the lady’s defence, seeing the reasonless rage gather in Lord Reynald’s face again, and fearing for her.
She gave him a faint, composed smile, and he reddened, realizing that she had not needed his defence. ‘Come to the bower after dinner to choose your stuff and be measured.’
‘See to it at once; he’s an affront to my sight in that,’ Lord Reynald ordered, and moved abruptly to his high chair, exchanging scowls with Wulfrune as he went. Guy followed, more perturbed by his change of mood than he would have been by resolved wrath.
Unless expressly commanded there by the lady herself, men were forbidden a bower, and Guy looked about the upper room with an interest reciprocated by nearly a score of women. Needles suspended, they appraised him frankly, except for Agnes, whose head bent assiduously over her sewing. Matilda jumped up from beside Sir Gerard’s wife and capered to him, thrusting a familiar rag under his nose.
‘See, I’ve done it! I’ve done it right! ’ she crowed.
He was inspecting the lame stitches when the marshal’s wife retrieved her pupil, dealing her a smart slap and scolding her under her breath for forwardness all the way back to her seat. One did not interfere with another household’s discipline, so Guy kept his mouth shut and exchanged grins with Matilda behind the woman’s back.
‘You’ve won two partisans today,’ said Lady Mabel beside him. ‘I’ve been hearing of a sampler in a pear-tree.’
‘What else could I do?’
‘There’s not another man in this hold, except her father, who’d have lifted a hand. “Let the brat learn young that man is the master,” they’d have said, and let justice go hang. You’ve a softness for children.’
He chuckled. ‘The eldest of seven needs to have, my lady, for he serves a long apprenticeship in child-tending.’
She glanced up. ‘Then your mother married?’
‘A master-armourer, and the best of men.’
‘That eased the bitterness of your begetting?’
‘In some measure, my lady.’ His mouth tightened.
‘Yes, there are always oafs to cry “Bastard”—as though you chose that condition.’ While they talked she watched the women at work. Late-comers, reproved with a look, caught up their sewing. A little group about Agnes teased her, whispering and giggling as she steadfastly kept her face averted. Guy had not thought her capable of embarrassment, and felt vaguely sorry for her as she blushed. Then Lady Mabel said briskly, ‘Time we saw about clothes to match your standing.’
‘My-my lady, I-I am ashamed that you were offered such affront—’
‘Clothes you must have, and whose duty is it to provide them?’ She looked up again, and he knew the jab had been deliberate; for some purpose of her own she was trying him. She led him behind a wooden partition that screened off a corner of the bower, giving a measure of privacy to the lord and his wife. She pulled aside the curtain over the doorway and left it so. Bolts of cloth lay on the great bed. ‘Whatever you expected, there’s no purple and scarlet here,’ she informed him with gentle malice. ‘They must be bought with silver, and if my lord had coin to spend on them, the cloth fairs are closed and merchants dare not venture on the roads. We’ve nothing but country weaves.’
‘I’m no peacock,’ Guy answered agreeably, aware that he was still being tested, ‘and by the Mass, there’s too much of me to go decked in scarlet.’ He considered the sound coarse woollens of the sort he had worn all his life, dyed with berries and leaves and barks to colours pleasant and mellow but lacking the brilliance of imported dyes. ‘This, if it pleases you.’ He indicated the purplish-blue of blackberry.
‘You’ll need another.’ She opened a copper-brown end to the daylight from the window. ‘Also a winter cloak lined with fur.’
‘Fur, my lady?’ That was luxury he had not expected.
‘Have you forgotten your standing? And we’ve coney-skins to swaddle half the household.’ Whatever the test, he had passed it; she was smiling.
He grinned. ‘I put myself into your hands, Lady Mabel.’
‘And that green is too good to give a servant. There’s an end of crimson, if the moths have spared it, enough to put on a border.’
‘And make it acceptable in my lord’s sight?’
‘Only his own provision can be that.’
‘He is generous.’
‘Don’t delude yourself he has any love for you.’
‘I don’t.’
She nodded grimly, and hesitated as though reluctant to go further yet having more to say to him. She produced a length of cord, and stood for the space of half a dozen breaths drawing an end through her fingers. He watched and waited. She moved closer, and her voice dropped to a murmur. ‘I don’t believe he can love. Wulfrune’s doing; whatever he is, she made him. His father died before he was born, his mother in bearing him, and he was given over to that witch with his first breath. He sucked in hate and fear and malice from her breast, until there was no room for aught else in him.’
‘He hates her.’
‘Of course. It galls him to fury, but he cannot throw off her rule. She has made a witch of him, and they are bound together and to the Devil.’
‘Why do you tell me so much?’ Guy asked bluntly. These were not fit confidences for his father’s son; for all she knew of him he might go tattling to Lord Reynald.
‘To win you for my ally,’ she murmured with the same alarming candour. ‘I’d thought merely to use you, but you’re an honest lad with a softness for children.’
‘Roger?’
‘They are seeking to destroy my son. He’s past seven now, too old for the bower.’ She came close, signed to him to raise his arms, and passed the string about his chest. As she knotted it to mark the measurement, she went on in that desperate murmur. ‘I want to place him in my brother’s household, but my lord won’t hear of it. He’s frail, and fright and carping make his sickness worse. Time’s short. Already they work against his faith. A year or two, and they’ll make a witch of him.’
Whatever means she used to save her child’s soul and body, Guy reckoned her justified. She took the cord across his shoulders, down one arm, from shoulder to waist and waist to calf, knotting her marks in turn. ‘I hoped, with an upstanding bastard to fill his thoughts, I might get Roger beyond his reach.’
‘I’m your man for that, my lady.’
She looked up, her eyes filling, blinked fiercely and sleeved them. “Then in Mary’s name don’t defy him to his face!’
‘For my soul I must.’
‘Keep a still tongue and go your own way. What use will you be to me dead or maimed?’
‘But surely—’
‘ “Surely” nothing! With Wulfrune to goad him he’d do it in a fit of rage, and if he wished it undone a moment after, what use? Remember she rules him and hates you, and remember too that he has no love for you, only pride.’
Guy grinned wryly. ‘He’s shown none.’
‘Not in you, in himself, that he’s proved he can beget a worthy son!’
He was beginning to understand. ‘Then Wulfrune spoke the truth?’
‘It’s common knowledge,’ she said, half-defensively. ‘I’m betraying no secret of our marriage-bed. Wulfrune taunts him with it in open hall. He can only perform the man’s part when spurred by strong excitement. He finds that in cruelty.’ Guy nodded, recognizing his unease in his sire’s company as normal humanity’s shrinking from the monstrous.
‘Moreover there’s small virtue in his seed, since only thrice in his lifetime that we know of has he quickened a woman.’
‘I thought that witchcraft offered remedies for such a state?’
‘I don’t doubt he’s tried them all. Too many of Wulfrune’s brews would unman any.’ She moved to the bales of cloth on the bed. ‘Yes, and disorder his belly so that it’s always at war with his meat. Have you not noticed?’ She began to unroll the blackberry-blue stuff. ‘Mary Mother, yo
u’ll have paid a high price for knighthood if you win to it here!’
‘I’ve begun to think so too.’
‘It’s your right—’
The rushes scuffled softly in the doorway, and Rohese’s head appeared round the curtain. She seemed disappointed to see Guy near the partition, Lady Mabel spreading and folding the cloth with the string to guide her. She glanced up. ‘What is it?’
Rohese stood just before the curtain. Her very attitude, hands on hips and feet straddled, betrayed her origin; she looked like any peasant harridan initiating a brawl. ‘Someone with my father’s welfare at heart should see what you’re about, alone with a young man in your bedchamber.’
‘You see what I’m about. Out!’
‘Surely I should stay, to guard your virtue.’
Guy took one long stride that brought him to her, and she jerked back from the wrath and loathing in his face. ‘Your mind reeks like a garderobe-pit, sister viper,’ he told her, and as she glared at him, ‘Yes, and your face begins to grow as foul.’
‘When my father learns—’
‘He knows already you’re a lewd liar, so will you prove you’re a fool also ? Out, as you were bidden!’
‘You’ll learn,’ she spat, ‘to bear yourself courteously—’
‘You’ll get from me just as much courtesy as you give. What you need is a strong-armed husband to beat some decency into you, but where’s the fool who’d take you?’
‘I’ve powers, as you’ll know before the day’s out—’
‘Use them to sweeten your disposition, or you’ll die an unwedded hag with nothing else to boast of.’
Her fingers clawed as though she would tear his eyes out, and then she whirled and ran. Lady Mabel was clutching the bedpost in an agony of stifled laughter. He began to grin himself.
‘I’m sorry,’ he began.
‘Don’t be. I’ve heard nothing that gave me such pleasure since my marriage-day.’ She wiped her eyes and collected herself. ‘You’ve gone now beyond all warnings. She and Wulfrune will seek to destroy you by witchcraft or any other means. In God’s Name guard yourself.’ She joined him at the curtain. Needles were suspended, heads close and tongues clacking. At their appearance a dozen pairs of eyes swivelled towards them, and the tongues halted in mid-sentence; then all heads bent over work. Matilda, too young to appreciate the scandal, waved her bit of linen at Guy and grinned.
‘I look at Matilda, and wish I had a daughter,’ Lady Mabel observed. ‘Then I see Rohese, and thank God I have none.’
Guy made for the stair, ignoring the glances that followed him. Rohese had vanished. He reckoned that the gift of prophecy had been vouchsafed him for her future. As he ran down the spiral there came to his mind unbidden a memory of another man’s bastard daughter who would find marriage hard to achieve, the masterful girl who also needed a man to humble her.
The Slut, on guard beside his bed, thumped her tail and bounced from the wolfskin. She pranced up to him, laid something at his feet, and grinned up, lolling half a foot of broad tongue from her jaws. He stooped and picked up a chunk of raw meat.
Alarm clamoured through his brain, and a memory of Rohese’s face as she threatened to prove her powers before the day was out. He pushed aside the Slut’s muzzle, thankful that he had trained her to take food from no other hand but his. Neither eye nor nose could discern anything amiss with the meat, but it was a piece of fresh beef, good butcher’s meat, not the offal fed to dogs. Again he pushed her persistent head aside.
‘It’s not food you need but exercise,’ he admonished her, and picked up his cloak. The old hound sprawled by the hall fire lazily cocked an ear and opened an eye, and Guy tossed him the meat. A snap and a gulp, and it was gone. He lifted his grey muzzle for more, and the Slut pushed between them, bristling resentment. Feeling like Judas, Guy watched him subside and lay his muzzle on his paws, dozing his last days away in the warmth. Nothing happened. Poison might take some time to do its work; it was that or witchcraft. No one threw kitchen meat to another’s dog with honest intent. He waited a little while, and then shrugged and ran down to the bailey.
Roger was loitering disconsolately near the stables, a bruise swelling under one eye and dirty smears across his cheeks. Leaving boys to resolve their own differences in rough and tumble was very well in theory, but not when in practice the two were so unequally matched. His half-brother’s face lighted at the sight of him, hope glinting through his misery, and he checked, smiling. He had made a promise.
‘Why not have your pony saddled,’ he suggested on impulse, ‘and show me Warby?’
‘Truly? Oh yes!’
The bored gate guards saluted carelessly and passed them through, and they trotted down the track to the village. The pony was frisky, and made it plain he did not care for the Slut’s company, but Roger handled him easily, better indeed than Guy managed his equally restive stallion. No knight would bestride a common gelding like Dusty, and Guy enforced his will on the brute more by strength than skill, suspecting that he had been allotted the least amenable mount in the stables.
When he could spare attention for anything else but the horse between his thighs they were half-way down the track. A cottage sat alone on the slope a quarter-mile off, more solidly built than most on stone footings, trimly thatched and fresh with whitewash. A dense hedge of quickthorn surrounded the garden, but because of the slope Guy could see a woman at work with a hoe. Peasants huddled close in their villages for neighbourly association, and he wondered who she was that they would not have among them.
‘That’s Rohese’s mother,’ Roger confirmed his suspicion. ‘She’s my father’s milk-sister; they were born the same week. She’s a witch; she grows poisons and brews spells.’ He crossed himself, and Guy imitated him. As though she had sensed their action, the woman straightened herself and turned to watch them, leaning on her hoe. She carried herself with the same arrogance as her mother and her daughter, holding the hoe like a spear. There was no wonder the village excluded her from their fellowship; fornication with a milk-brother the peasants would reckon a kind of incest, and incest, like parricide, blackened Heaven’s face against the whole community, bringing blight on crops and murrain on beasts.
‘My mother blames Wulfrune for making my father what he is.’
‘I don’t doubt she’s right.’
‘If I succeed to Warby, and Wulfrune’s still living, I’ll see she hangs.’
Jolted, Guy stared at the implacable seven-year-old face; this was not a child’s resentment, but a judgement more resolute than Lord Reynald’s fury. ‘It will be not only your right but your duty,’ he agreed. ‘But that intention is best not uttered aloud.’ The track was empty, the waste about them unpeopled; the nearest ears were in the village below, yet he felt unease between his shoulders, and turned in the saddle to see the witch busy again in her garden. ‘And why should you not succeed to Warby?’
‘Lady Cecily—Philip’s mother—thinks I’m too sickly to be reared. I heard her say so.’
‘She’s wrong,’ Guy declared with conviction.
The small boy with the old man’s affliction looked searchingly into his face, and began to smile. ‘You’re sure?’
‘You’ve too much obstinacy to die young. And count me your man when the time comes, brother.’
‘Wulfrune says,’ Roger remarked dispassionately, ‘that the bastard always hates the true-born son and seeks to harm him.’
‘That sounds like Wulfrune. Do you believe her?’
‘No.’
‘You’ve judgement of your own.’
‘I’m glad you’ve come.’ His wary face suddenly smiled. Guy noted also that Roger’s breathing was quite normal.
They cantered along the village street. Animosity apparently exempted none of Lord Reynald’s breeding; peasants going about their affairs found them within doors, brats and beasts retreated, and the salutes they did receive mocked at courtesy. Roger looked straight before him, acknowledging them with stiff nods, and
turned from the track running between the fields to follow another way beside the osier-fringed river. In the meadows alongside sheep were grazing the aftermath in charge of a boy and a dog.
The path dived between thickets of willow, alder and thorn, water roared ahead of them, and they came out into a clear space beside the mill. An ox-cart stood with shafts upraised, the ox grazed on the verge, and a mat-headed serf was arguing with the meal-whitened miller beside the mill-race. Peasants always argued with a miller, suspecting that he took more than his lawful share of the grain as the price for grinding. The mill was owned by the lord, whose forebears had built it, and who also took his share of the profits. Miller and serf suspended their dispute to gape, ducking their heads in surly greeting.
As they passed the building a raucous bleat and a rank stink startled the stallion into plunging; a long-bearded he-goat with majestic horns backed to the end of his tether amid the bushes. A dozen goats were pegged out along the side of the mill-garden, the largest flock Guy had seen. A few folk kept goats; being browsers, they would thrive where a cow would starve, and there was a vague belief that their milk was more healthful for sickly infants, but they were too destructive to be popular. Something about this flock seemed wrong to Guy. Then another waft of rankness brought comprehension; at least half the flock comprised mature he-goats. That was ridiculous; one was enough to quicken a dozen females, and common-sense insisted that male kids should be slaughtered while young and tender enough to be acceptable at table.
The mill-race was still roaring in their ears when the Slut barked once for warning. A boy of about Roger’s age leaped whooping into the middle of the track, causing both horses to squeal and shy. He snatched up a stone, and then checked with his arm drawn back to throw, taking in Guy’s size and frown and the Slut’s menace. She bayed and bounded forward at the threat to her master. He dropped the stone and retreated to cover, lifting a wolf-whelp’s face, and then plunged back into the woods.
‘That brat needs his backside belting,’ Guy commented.
‘He’s Wulfrune’s granddaughter’s bastard,’ Roger told him. He waited until they were well past the mill and climbing through the woods before he went on, ‘The miller’s wife is Wulfrune’s other daughter.’