Gilded Spurs

by Grace Ingram

  ‘Great Master, grant my desire!’ she screeched.

  The Devil put down the trident, which clanged on the stone with a noise of veritable metal, so that Guy started. His skin rose in gooseflesh, and it seemed the breath stilled in his lungs. The goat bleated. The Devil straddled it. A knife glanced in the firelight. A hand on a horn jerked back the beast’s head, and he leaned to cut its throat. As the goat collapsed under him in a gush of blood he waved the knife and uttered an exultant laugh, a laugh Guy knew. He stared, paralysed. The bloody-handed thing on the stone was not the Devil from Hell but a mortal man, Lord Reynald of Warby.

  Revulsion seized him, and he bent his head against the stone, his eyes screwed shut. His belly heaved with nausea, and only the stone held him on his feet. The Slut growled softly as the reek of blood reached her, and instinct, not reason, put out a hand to hold her. He lifted his head, accepting the fact all his human nature fought to deny. He was spawn of that thing on the altar, outraging God and receiving homage from his worshippers. His wits recognized the disguise. The head was a mask contrived from a goat’s horns and skin, the sleek body a close-fitting leather suit, the tail a cow’s, the hooves wooden shoes with stilted heels. Loathing filled him, and horror that this had sired him.

  Wulfrune and another woman busied themselves over the carcase. Guy could not see what they were about, but he could not turn away his eyes nor push from the supporting stone. Presently they stood back, and the old woman, who seemed a kind of priestess in these rites, intoned some formula while men piled more wood on the fire. As it blazed up, several seized the dead goat and cast it on the pyre. A stench of burning hair and hide drifted across the circle to Guy’s nostrils.

  A great yell followed the offering, and a pipe began to tweetle a tune. The throng strung out into a line that followed the piper, a long brisk man, round and round the fire. Faster and wilder jerked the music, faster and wilder the dance, while Wulfrune screeched encouragement and the horned man leaped down from his stone and pranced about inside the ring, capering around the fire and prodding laggards with his trident. Clothing was tossed aside, the women’s hair shook free about their shining shoulders, naked limbs glanced in and out of the firelight and smoke as the dance whirled on and on. The piper’s wind ran out, the tune died in a last wail, and the circle broke. Men and women seized each other as they reeled from the dance, sank to the grass and coupled shamelessly as dogs in daylight.

  Use came back to Guy’s limbs. Somehow he found himself shambling down the slope, the reek of burning flesh in his nostrils. The Slut led him to the horse; on his own he would never have found him. He hauled himself into the saddle and rode away, the stink following him through the night. Behind him the fire sank to red coals, but he never turned his head to see.

  Chapter 8

  ‘By the Horns,’ stormed Lord Reynald, ‘that insolent rogue would not have defied me! I should have gone myself.’ He regarded Guy sourly, and the young man bowed and stepped back, his report finished. ‘What more? ... So, you forget to mention that you dared turn aside from my errand to search for a peasant brat?’

  There must be a witch in Thorgastone to carry tales, Guy deduced. He answered evenly, ‘Your errand had already been accomplished, my lord.’

  ‘Your duty is to me, and you don’t leave it for a dozen serf-whelps!’

  ‘I don’t leave a child to the wolves.’

  ‘What’s one brat, and a Trevaine villein’s at that? The parents can get themselves another and enjoy it. You weren’t here to come with me, and I’d have given you delight your pale Church cannot conceive.’

  ‘My lord, I will not practice your Devil-worship.’

  ‘You’re mine to command.’

  ‘My soul is God’s and my own.’

  ‘What does your weak God grant you, compared with ours?’

  ‘Ask rather what the Devil grants that’s worth burning forever in Hell-fire.’

  ‘Power, you fool! Power of life and death, so all men fear and obey you! Why do you suppose Trevaine dares not move a spear against me? Why did my lady’s father grant me her hand ? You may take what you will and none dare refuse you, if you are one of us! ’ Guy’s revulsion must have shown for all the effort he made, for he demanded violently, ‘Why do you look at me as though I were a viper?’

  ‘Is power worth all men’s loathing?’

  The blow went home; his eyelids flickered and his mouth twitched before he summoned anger to his aid. ‘Are you saying that you loathe me ?’

  ‘Do you give me reason for anything else?’

  ‘Is this courtesy to your father? And you refuse me obedience yet.’

  ‘And warn you again, my lord. Press this and I leave you.’

  He stared hungrily at Guy, his face working; then he reached out a hand to grip his arm. Guy jerked back, his body flinching from this monster whose loins had begotten him. His eyes, shadowed after a sleepless night, narrowed with contempt. Lord Reynald uttered a wordless protest, turned and stalked away.

  In the days that followed it seemed that he had taken heed of Guy’s warning, for he made no more demands on his son’s conscience. Indeed, he seemed determined to try conciliation, for he spared him his normal rancour and offered gifts to placate him; a better saddle, an ivory-hilted dagger, a silver cloak-clasp enamelled with a green dragon. He organized a hunt. Guy enjoyed the wild riding and the savage excitement of a kill, but detested Edric the huntsman, a distant kinsman of Wulfrune and one of the few men in Warby who would hold his own face to face with his master. Hawking was a failure; Guy had never before handled a falcon.

  Martinmas came, and killing-time. The beasts that could not be fed through the winter were butchered, leaving only the plough teams and breeding stock to struggle through the harsh months on inadequate supplies of hay. This one time in the year everyone could gorge on fresh meat and inwards. Salt though was scarce, and by spring much of the meat in the brine casks would be rotten. No pedlar with his pack-horse had appeared that autumn to be robbed. Guy heard men grumble, and marvelled that these predators could not realize that thievery in the end deprived the robbers.

  Martinmas was also a day of reckonings. Peasants came to pay their dues of produce, and soon after dawn they began entering the bailey with measures of grain, driven beasts, hens and geese tied by the legs and protesting to the skies, and baskets of eggs, fruit and greenstuff. Guy was obliged to abandon his usual knightly exercises, and watched curiously while servants set up a table and a couple of stools near the gate. Sir James appeared, his seneschal’s wand in his hand, and behind him a servant carrying an armful of parchment rolls. He looked impatiently about him. The servant piled the rolls on the table. The village reeve accosted Sir James; he heard the man out, and then flung down his wand with a dust-raising thwack across the parchments.

  ‘Hell’s fire! Of all days to choose! What’s to do now—’

  A squealing pig dived under the table, curvetted as he staggered and rammed his legs from under him. Sir James sat up with the pig in his lap nose to nose, mingling curses with its shrieks until a peasant hauled it off him by the hind leg. Guy ran to help him up, and he scowled ungratefully at him and Sir Conan.

  ‘Aye, you may grin,’ he said. He was as finicky about his person as a cat, and contemplated the muddy prints of trotters blazoned across his breast with dismay. ‘It’s no joke. Here’s all the reckoning on us, and the priest sends word he’s sick abed and can’t see to it. Where this side of Heaven or Hell am I to find someone to make sense of his Latin scratchings?’

  ‘You need not go so far,’ Guy told him, grinning. ‘Just here.’ He unrolled the nearest parchment and ran his eye down the columns.

  Both knights gaped at him. ‘You can read Latin?’ Sir James demanded incredulously.

  ‘Yes, and write it?’

  ‘There was once a plan to make a monk of me. It miscarried, but I was near four years in a monastery school.’

  ‘You’re a gift from Heaven at this moment,’ Si
r James declared, surveying the turmoil about him. ‘Let’s make a start.’

  ‘Pens and ink?’

  A raid on the fletcher’s goosequills provided pens enough to copy a chronicle, and while Guy trimmed a handful with his dagger someone unearthed an inkhorn with a little sludge in the bottom. They took the stools, the reeve acted as sheepdog to round up the villagers and bring them forward in some sort of order, and Guy struggled to decipher the priest’s handwriting and make sense of his system for Latinizing English names. Men and women crowded to goggle as at some portent, a man who was no cleric and yet could read and write. But Lucifer gazed in a white fury of envy, turned and stalked away.

  Lord Reynald, predictably, was not pleased. ‘Is it not shame enough to bear with a craftsman for a son, without finding that he’s half a clerk as well?’

  ‘I can claim benefit of clergy if I take to crime,’ Guy answered, smiling. He had of course received the first tonsure on admission to the monastery school, but quit before he was old enough for even minor orders. He weighted down the top of a curling scroll with the inkhorn, checked that last year’s entry corresponded with his own and set it down, cursing the muddy fluid that clogged his pen. The only way to live with his sire’s notions was to agree with him and go his own way. The work must be done and no other could do it. By all reports it was unlikely that the priest, old and frail, would ever rise from his bed again.

  Guy sent out a couple of urchins for the ingredients and that evening, when the evil-tempered head cook was snoring-drunk, he borrowed a saucepan in the kitchen and boiled up oak-galls, hawthorn-bark and wine to make his own ink. Once he had mastered the primitive method of accounting there was nothing difficult about the rolls, and he was fascinated to learn the organization that fed, clothed and housed nearly four-score souls, and provided also for their horses, dogs and hawks.

  The seneschal must receive all dues, in cash and in kind, check them against the rolls, allocate them to the proper persons, and account for all disbursements. They sat for a couple of days in the bailey, wrapped in cloaks against the wind, with their feet in muddy grass and their stools sinking under them. Sir James struggled in halting English to extract what was owed to Lord Reynald from reluctant peasants, Guy interpreted, blew on numbed fingers and scrawled on the parchments, and a servant cut tally-sticks.

  Forage, iron and leather for harness involved the marshal, in charge of the garrison and all pertaining to the horses, and the more he had to do with Sir Gerard the less Guy liked him. He made it quite plain that a bastard artisan was unworthy of more notice than a knight’s boot in his backside, and that Lord Reynald had insulted his officers by introducing one among them. He was convinced that courtesy was only needful towards his equals and superiors, and an inept administrator because he reckoned finance as beneath his attention.

  Though Sir James was responsible for receiving supplies and must account for them, Lady Mabel was in charge of their preservation and stowage. They worked in close association, with the familiar ease of friends, to lay in stocks for another year. Guy helped both. She supervised butchers, cooks and scullions who scoured casks, packed them with meat and brine, and trundled them into the keep. Down in the undercroft, by the glimmer of tallow dips, Guy made jottings with charcoal on a piece of board as she and Sir James reckoned up their stores. Salt, dried and smoked provisions; ripened cheeses, crocks of butter, lard and honey; grain and malt, peas and beans in the huge wooden bins; barrelled ale, verjuice and the last wine, all were noted, and then in the hall he must set his smudges in order and transcribe them to the rolls.

  The winter corn was sown, and woodcutting teams set the forest ringing with axe and saw. The piled ox-carts trundled in, and the stacked cords filled the fuel-sheds. The servants’ brats had for days been peeling rushes; now the castle reeked with boiling tallow as candle-dipping engaged every cauldron that could be spared. Lord Reynald made peevish complaint at the stink, and went hawking with Sir Gerard. Lucifer had taken out his troop at daybreak to sweep the roads towards Etherby, seeking what he might devour.

  Pouring rain brought them all back, shivering and cursing. Guy was sitting at one end of a table with the rolls, pens and ink; Lady Mabel and Sir James sorted through bundles of tallies, and at his elbow Lady Cecily, the marshal’s wife, moved counters1 at his direction on a piece of cloth painted in chess-board squares. Guy watched her carefully; she had no head for calculation and was easily flustered. He had no more than a tepid liking for her, yet she had all the attributes of an ideal wife. She was pretty, modest and submissive, uncritically devoted to husband and son, and savourless as unsalted bread.

  ‘Seven and nine’s sixteen, and five twenty-one. No, it goes on the next row, Lady Cecily. Twenty-one and four—’

  ‘What are you whispering in my wife’s ear?’ Sir Gerard roared so fiercely that she squeaked and shrank aside, catching at the cloth. The counters bounded abroad. The Slut rose from Guy’s side, bristling threat.

  ‘Arithmetic,’ Guy answered, gathering up counters.

  ‘Sir Gerard,’ said Lady Mabel acidly, ‘are you declaring that your wife may not assist with the accounting, for fear a man may speak to her?’

  ‘My Lady—’

  ‘You insult me if you imagine I’d countenance the slightest impropriety. And I’ll remind you that you interrupt our work.’ He glared at her, but she had given her attention again to the tallies. Lady Cecily, shaking so that she could hardly speak, whispered pitifully, ‘Indeed—indeed—there was nothing—’ She picked up a counter, and dropped it in the rushes. He growled something that might or might not have been an apology and squelched away in his sodden boots, thrusting past Sir Conan who was grinning at his discomfiture. The mercenary strolled to the table, the envy he had shown before glinting from his eyes.

  ‘Contemplating adultery? I’d not credited you with so much enterprise,’ he mocked Guy. Lady Cecily retreated as from a leper, and he sighed. ‘Sweet friend, how could you set up a rival, when you know you have my heart’s devotion?’ Tears flooded down her cheeks, and she ran for the stairs.

  They heard her stumbling up to the bower, sobbing at every step. Lady Mabel dropped her tally-sticks.

  ‘Sir Conan, pestering an honest wife to provoke her husband into challenging you is a vileness beyond toleration. No one expects honour or decency from a mercenary, but remember at least that you were gently-born.’

  It was Lucifer’s turn to blanch and then redden. ‘You take too much—’

  ‘Your morals do not concern me, but Lady Cecily is under my protection. If you’re at odds with Sir Gerard, find another pretext for combat.’

  Routed, he stalked after the marshal. Guy looked at his stepmother with respect. ‘I’m weary of that routier’s insolence,’ she stated. ‘Cecily can scarcely set foot outside the bower for fear of him. She’s too soft to deal with such a man. There are strumpets enough in this hold, but he’ll not stoop to them.’

  Out of delicacy she did not add, what every member of the household knew, that Sir Conan, too fastidious to fornicate with public wenches, took his pleasure in rape. When he led out his troops twice or thrice a week on a foray along the roads, any comely woman they encountered was a prey to be enjoyed, first by their captain and then by all the soldiers in turn.

  ‘We’ll hope Sir Gerard kills him,’ said Sir James, quite seriously. ‘They’ll come to it yet.’

  ‘God grant it,’ she answered piously, and turned again to the tallies. ‘And now we have no one to place the counters.’ It was not a difficult task but it did require another pair of hands; Guy could not deal with the rolls and the checked cloth together. At his suggestion they summoned Roger. Gratified, he stood on a stool and was soon more competent at addition than Lady Cecily. Lord Reynald complained that they made his heir into a clerk, and then added that he was fit for nothing else. But two more days saw the work accomplished, and the weather cleared so that Guy could resume his training.

  He could now hold his own at swor
dplay with Sir Conan on foot; the mercenary had the advantage of experience, but Guy was younger, stronger and faster. He could hit the quintain shield in the centre every time, and tilting at the ring suspended from a bar he carried it away two out of three times. His horsemanship was no longer contemptible, and he could vault fully-armed into his saddle without touching the stirrup. Now Lucifer decreed that they should run a course so that he might experience a real encounter, and spectators gathered. They faced each other across the bailey, shields up and lances couched, and spurred headlong.

  Clods flew from the sodden turf as the destriers pounded across it. Lucifer’s shield hid all but the top of his helmet and his right eye and cheek. Guy peered round his own shield-edge, his heart thudding at his breast-bone, levelled his lance and gripped fast. A tremendous impact shocked both arms at once. The cantle slammed at the base of his spine, his horse skidded, and the sky cartwheeled over him. He crashed on the flat of his back, the wind jarred out of him, and lay gasping with the yells of Lucifer’s mercenaries ringing in his ears. He was still clutching the splintered stump of his lance. A couple of grooms ran to hoist him up, and the knights strolled across.

  ‘You broke your lance fairly,’ Sir James told him kindly.

  ‘You still ride like a churl,’ declared Lord Reynald. The marshal spat, shook his head and walked away as though no words would serve him. The show was over; destriers were too valuable to be risked wantonly.

  Guy grinned ruefully at the mud plastering his mail, and picked a wisp of grass from it. ‘I’ll never make a tourney champion,’ he admitted.

  ‘You’ll never need to. You stupid whelp, have you no notion how lucky you are?’ The despairing envy in Lord Reynald’s face astounded Guy. ‘A knight who can read and write Latin is the rarest beast in Christendom! Kings and lords will compete for your services. God’s Blood, d’you think if I knew one letter from another I’d be a damned mercenary?’