Gilded Spurs

by Grace Ingram

  ‘And another witch?’

  ‘With all her family.’

  ‘Roger, will you tell me about Wulfrune?’

  ‘You know she was our father’s nurse? She married a man from Trevaine—a smith, he was—and brought him to Warby.’ His brow creased as he dredged his brain of facts. ‘They were free, not bond. I think there was a son too. She brought the girls with her when she came to suckle our father, but the boy stayed with her husband. Then her husband died, so she never went back to the village.’

  ‘And the son?’

  ‘His kinsmen in Trevaine took him.’

  ‘And Wulfrune was mistress of Warby until Lord Reynald married.’

  ‘She treats my mother horribly, she and Rohese. They daren’t do her any real harm, because my uncles have sworn to kill my father when she dies, but you’ve seen. They’ve made Warby into a den of monsters.’ He spoke vehemently, obviously quoting some adult. ‘There’s only Sir James who’s kind, and Matilda who’s too little to understand. And you now. And I don’t suppose they’ll let me ride with you again, once Wulfrune’s got at my father with her lies.’

  ‘We’ll enjoy what we have, then,’ Guy offered bleak consolation.

  After a fashion, they did enjoy the excursion along the woodland paths, where the leaves twirled down and rustled under the horses’ hooves, and stags roared challenge through the glades. Once, far off, they heard a wolf howl. The sun was low when they came to the gate and the saluting guards.

  Guy had barely swung down and handed over his mount to the groom when Lord Reynald was upon them.

  ‘Where have you been? How dared you take my son beyond my walls without my leave?’

  Guy’s eyebrows lifted; he did not care to be rated like a truant urchin before the whole household. ‘Roger was obliging enough to show me your demesne, my lord.’

  ‘You take my heir out of my reach—you’re practising mischief against him!’

  Guy held fast to his temper and to the Slut’s collar. ‘Where’s the mischief in my wishing to improve my acquaintance with my brother and future lord?’

  ‘Do you already look to my death, you unnatural whelp?’

  ‘What’s more natural than that a son in course of time should succeed his father?’

  Lord Reynald’s face darkened to a dusky purple, so that Guy wondered whether he would be smitten down by an apoplexy. ‘Yes, you’ve a talent for back-answers,’ he grated. ‘Take care it doesn’t get your throat slit! But a grown man doesn’t take pleasure in a brat’s prattle, nor a bastard seek the heir’s company except to harm him, so you’ll not go with Roger beyond the gate.’

  ‘As you command, my lord,’ Guy answered, ‘though you’re wrong on both counts, and I know where you had those lies.’

  ‘It’s not true!’ Roger burst out. ‘You don’t want us to be friends—it’s all spite because Guy was kind to me and I like him! I’ll always like him!’ Before his father, astounded as a stoat attacked by a rabbit, could make a move, he burst into tears and fled for the keep, his breath wheezing to be heard above his sobs.

  ‘By the Horns, now I know your mischief! You’ll set my heir against me!’

  Guy shook his head. ‘In that you need no help from me, my lord.’

  Almost, gazing into his face convulsed with rage and longing, he could have found pity for Lord Reynald. The only way to win love was to give it, but what use telling that to a man who did not know what love was, and who strove futilely for possession? He waited a moment for an answer, and then bent his head and turned away.

  Wulfrune and Rohese stood together on the edge of the throng, and Guy saw the satisfied smirks on their faces change to chagrin as they set eyes on the Slut pacing beside him. Then she uttered a queer whine, and he turned his head to see a scullion stumping down the keep steps, dragging by the legs the body of a grey-muzzled hound. At Guy’s gesture he halted.

  ‘Took wi’ some kind o’ fit, poor old fellow. All on a twitch, he was, and then he stands up howlin’ most woeful, like as his guts was gripin’, and drops down dead,’ he explained, and shaking his head, tramped off towards the refuse-pit that smouldered malodorously beyond the stables. Feeling more than ever like Judas, Guy watched that summary funeral, and wished he had pitched his evidence straight into the fire. He turned on the two who had intended that end for his Slut.

  ‘I only wish I could have fed it to you!’

  Alone in his own room, he flung his arms about his dear bitch and buried his face in her rough coat, the weight of their danger pressing on him for the first time. He would scarcely dare let her out of his sight. Proof against poison she might be, but not against the spear in the dark nor the arrow from ambush. She licked his cheek from ear to temple, whining sympathy, and when he lifted his head grinned and nuzzled his breast. He hugged her, and then got to his feet and opened the chest. From his belongings he extracted her guard-collar, which he had made himself of double bull’s hide set with two-inch spikes. He saw another bundle under all else. After supper tonight he must take the Danish sword under his cloak and hide it in the bailey. It had lain ninety years under one forge’s thatch; it should be at home under another’s.

  Chapter 6

  On this last day of October in the year of Our Lord 1152 it was delight to be abroad. The air was brisk with a hint of night frost, but the sky was clear blue and the sun gilded the trees; russet oaks, golden beeches, green-gold elms and crimson hawthorns. Drifts of leaves rustled in the track, the bracken had turned brown but still arched high on either hand, birds were busy in the berried thickets and squirrels scolded where the acorns clustered. Once a wildcat, crouched in the path with a pheasant’s carcase under its claws, hissed and spat, then bounded away with its meal. The Slut barked after its ringed tail, and nosed the blood-spots and drift of feathers left behind.

  ‘Don’t try it,’ Guy admonished her as she barked again. ‘You’d have your nose clawed off at best.’

  She grinned up at him and he smiled, but the smile had vanished before his mount had gone twenty yards. He was more bored and lonely and unhappy than he had ever been in all his life, even in the tedious monastery. He was used to working all his daylight hours at a craft that taxed brain and body; now knightly exercises took up perhaps half the forenoon, and aimless wandering about the countryside to practise horsemanship had already palled. The castle knights refused to admit him to their fellowship; he was an artisan unsuitably aspiring to knighthood, and even Sir James would foregather with Lucifer, an excommunicate mercenary, but not with Lord Reynald’s bastard. No one could be happy under Lord Reynald’s rule, and the strain of living with his moods was wearing out Guy’s natural cheerfulness.

  This afternoon his riding was not aimless; Lord Reynald had provided an errand. At the crossways where the track between Warby and Collingford met that to Etherby, the nearest town, Guy halted and looked about him. Then he dismounted, tethered his horse to a sapling, slipped the bit from his mouth so that he could graze comfortably, and picked himself a handful of hazelnuts. There was a fallen tree, its trunk massed with fungi shaped like great ears. He sat down and cracked his nuts with his knife-hilt. The Slut flopped at his feet and dozed. He finished his nuts and waited, listening to the tearing noises his horse made in the grass-tufts. Other sounds returned as birds and beasts forgot he was there and busied themselves again.

  A jay screeched. He knew what that meant now. The horse lifted his head, his ears signalling that something approached along the Etherby road, and the Slut sat erect, her muzzle pointing in the same direction. Guy shifted to face the same way, clearing his sword-hilt, but this was the man he was appointed to meet here. He came openly along the path, a shabby brown fellow of middle height, and halted five paces away as Guy stood up, instantly recognizing the robber captain he had last seen cutting his own follower’s throat.

  ‘You’re Wulfric, Lord Reynald’s foster-brother,’ he stated, in the English that would naturally be the man’s tongue.

  ‘Aye. And y
ou’ll be his bastard.’ He surveyed Guy up and down, spat aside, and demanded, ‘What stayed me lord from coming hisself?’

  ‘More pressing business.’

  He grinned. ‘All Hallows’ Eve. The whole brood on ’em’ll have pressing business for this night. I’d just as soon deal wi’ a reasonable man, so let’s to it.’ He perched on the fallen log.

  Guy frowned. He had already picked up something of the knight’s touchiness about precedence, and this scoundrel was presumptuous. It was the privilege of the superior in rank to be seated first and to initiate their talk. Instinctively his left hand went to his sword-scabbard to thrust the hilt forward. The outlaw grinned again, with such a likeness to Wulfrune that it set the hair bristling on his neck.

  ‘God’s Blood, if I wanted to I’d spill the guts out o’ your belly afore you’d got your sword half-drawn.’

  ‘My bitch here would have ripped your throat out first.’

  Guy laid a hand on the Slut’s head; she was up and ready, teeth gleaming.

  ‘Nay, I’m here to do business.’

  ‘I have seen you do murder.’

  ‘Gurth ? I beat him to it, and I’m in your debt for making it easy.’

  ‘For you to kill from behind.’

  ‘What sort o’ fool ’ud I be to do it from in front? He reckoned he’d be captain, and I hadn’t risked turning my back on him for a fortnight. What’s fretting you? Wasn’t he set on knocking your brains out for your tunic?’

  Guy conceded that he was not placed in judgement over an outlaw’s discipline by sitting on the log at a prudent distance. Wulfric nodded satisfaction. The Slut subsided, keeping an eye on every move he made.

  ‘What’s Lord Reynald want this time?’

  ‘Wine.’

  ‘Wi’out paying for it, o’ course?’

  ‘That’s for you to manage,’ Guy answered distastefully.

  ‘For me to get my neck stretched, you mean. Trick won’t work again.’ He caught Guy’s questioning look. ‘Lord Reynald rigged me out in good clothes and sent me into Bristol wi’ an escort, claiming I was bailiff to Trevaine. Tried four wine-merchants afore I finds one greedy enough to take the chance, so my face’ll be remembered there. Nor I won’t try Gloucester neither; they’ll ha’ heard what happened to the fool. Truth is, there isn’t no merchant nowhere as’ll venture inside a day’s ride o’ Warby.’

  ‘And that’s the word I take back?’

  ‘Tell him the only way he’ll get wine is to send a troop wi’ a cart, and to Gloucester, not Bristol, which is nearer anyhow and never mind the higher price further up river, and pay for it in silver.’

  Guy had not taken long to discover his sire’s reluctance to find cash for anything his household required. ‘He’ll not fancy that.’

  ‘He can swallow it. I’m not showing my nose in Bristol and getting strung up. Had a bellyful o’ his errands. All I got out o’ last one was the clothes.’ He indicated the brown tunic and hose that had indeed been decent attire once. ‘Grouching and grumbling acause there isn’t no profit on the roads. Who moves on ’em now but great lords wi’ escorts no band dare tackle, and soldiers as is worst thieves of all?’

  Guy realized for the first time that highway robbery as an occupation was self-destructive. Merchants, even if they survived, did not return to be robbed a second time, and peasants ten times pillaged were left with nothing but existence.

  Wulfric, started in his grievances, was enjoying a listener’s attention. ‘It was him got me outlawed in the first place. My uncle was smith at Trevaine; I was working peaceable wi’ him and my cousin when Lord Reynald, God burn him, raided Thorgastone. He got hisself took, and the ransom cleaned out his treasure-chests which is why he won’t lay down the price o’ his wine, and when folk remembered I was his foster-brother I had to run. As if that was any blame o’ mine!’

  ‘Lord Henry wouldn’t think that way.’

  ‘Lord Henry don’t think no way.’ He spat emphatically. ‘The way folks tell, it’s a fine free life in the woods. Feasting on King’s deer and pheasants. More likely hedgehogs and thrushes, and cursed little meat on either. Argh! Give me a craft in my hands and a roof over my head and food in my belly! Always summer the way they talks, not winter wi’ rain and snow and pinched guts—many’s the time I’d ha’ starved but for my kin.’

  ‘Your sisters?’

  He spat with even more emphasis. ‘Them? Pair o’ bitches wouldn’t step out o’ their doors to give me a mouldy crust, and me dying on the threshold. Nor would that old besom as bore us. Nay, it’s my Trevaine kin helps me.’

  ‘And Lord Reynald protects you for a share in your plunder.’

  ‘Mighty little plunder these days, but how’s an outlaw to live but by thieving? No choice o’ mine. D’you reckon as I enjoys skulking by a wayside wi’ trees dripping down my neck, to stop one traveller in a month?’

  ‘You could try for burgess freedom,’ Guy suggested.

  ‘In Bristol?’

  ‘Some far town where no one’s likely to know you. London, Norwich, York. A year and a day, and you’d have your freedom.’

  ‘I’m no serf!’ His head reared up in affronted pride, and the Slut cocked an ear and blinked at him. ‘And what’d I do there?’

  ‘You’re a smith, you said. There’s always work in towns.’

  ‘I’ve not so many days left me that I’ll live ’em among strangers,’ he replied, and Guy did a little belated arithmetic. As Rohese’s mother was Wulfrune’s youngest child, Wulfric must be several years older than Lord Reynald, in his middle forties, an age few peasants achieved. He did not look it; his hair had kept its colour, his body a trim spareness; he had sound teeth and a hide like leather.

  ‘You’ve not long to go in the woods,’ Guy warned him. ‘There’ll be strong law in England soon.’

  ‘The Angevin lad?’

  ‘He’ll be King. Stephen’s spent.’

  ‘Now Lord Reynald sets his hopes on a new war between the Angevin and young Eustace.’

  Guy shook his head. ‘Except for mercenaries and feuding lords, the country’s sick of war. Young Henry’s a lion like his grandfather, and he’ll make one mouthful of Eustace.’

  Wulfric grinned. ‘And another o’ Lord Reynald for backing him? God send I sees him brought down if I hangs next day! I tells you, I’ve had my bellyful. More’n sixteen years a wolf’s head—aye, you may well gawp. Most on us dies first winter. Wet lying as does it. Mark me, if you has to live in woods, stay sober and sleep dry. Bedding down drunk in a heap o’ wet leaves’ll kill you surer than cold iron. Joint fever, chest cough, bloody water—all hard dying. Shelter and fire and dry your clothes, I tells the fools, comes afore full bellies even, and them as listens lives.’

  ‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ Guy promised gravely.

  ‘I never thought to live like a wolf neither,’ growled the outlaw, regarding him sourly. ‘God’s Blood, here I’ve sat grouching to you like a nagging woman, and you pretends to be interested?’

  ‘I am. It’s to my advantage to learn all I can.’

  ‘One thing you should ha’ learned by now, you’re better out o’ Warby. Let that old witch get at your pottage and you’ll die wi’ your guts afire, and what’s knighthood worth then?’

  Guy set his arm about the Slut. ‘She’s tried poison on my dog, but—’

  Wulfric snorted and stood. ‘God’s Blood, d’you reckon she’ll stop at a dog? She poisoned my father.’

  ‘No!’ He stared appalled, and the Slut whined sympathy as his arm tightened.

  ‘Aye. When the nurse-brat were weaned, he wants his woman back, comes to castle and pesters her claiming his rights. So back she goes one night and cooks his supper, the belly-pains takes him and he’s dead by morning. I was there and seen it. But what’s a six-year brat’s word worth, and her the young lord’s nurse? So you watch your bite and sup.’

  ‘I do,’ Guy answered grimly, and got to his feet.

  ‘If you’ll heed sense, you mount
your horse and don’t stop riding till you’re back in Bristol at an honest craft again.’ He padded across the clearing and vanished. His brown clothes blended with the brown woods and he was gone, leaving Guy with an itching unease between the shoulders as he turned to his horse.

  A dozen paces, and he reined in, his face flaming. He had turned eastward for Etherby, with its bridge of stone and the Roman road running arrow-straight south-west for Gloucester and Bristol. He sat his saddle in the sunlight, his hands folded on the pommel, and fought himself. He wanted to go home. His heart failed him as he contemplated existence with his mad sire, the malevolent witches and bickering knights in that unhappy hold. He took up the reins. Then he thought of his mother’s sneers, William’s rancour, neighbours’ talk. He would have to live out the rest of his days knowing his courage unequal to his ambitions.

  ‘God help me,’ Guy said aloud, and the Slut, who had bounded ahead, came trotting back, tongue lolling and ears pricked, an eager whine in her throat. ‘I’ve wanted knighthood all my life, and here’s the only chance I’ll ever have to win it. I cannot crawl back to making mail for other men to wear, and admit I’ve not the guts to earn my spurs!’ He turned his horse about and urged him into a gallop faster than was prudent on the rough track.

  Chapter 7

  Guy was near the border of the royal forest when he at last turned back, temptation left behind him. He would have to push his mount to be in Warby before sundown, and briefly considered his knowledge of the district. The shortest way back ran through Thorgastone, a Trevaine holding, but he recklessly told himself that he would encounter no worse opposition than a few peasants through whose ranks a mounted man could easily burst.

  Plough and pasture were empty, men and beasts returned to the village, where the smoke of supper-fires spiralled up from roof-vents. An agitated cluster of folk had gathered in the street about a couple of riders, and he pushed forward his sword-hilt. As he cantered nearer, the low sun at his back, one broke away to accost him, a tall girl in a dark-green riding-dress astride a bay palfrey. In the crowd a woman was weeping noisily, and he reined in. The girl’s eyes widened as she recognized him.