Gilded Spurs

by Grace Ingram

  He bent his head. ‘I must obey, Lady Helvie.’ He closed his hands tightly on the reins, his world bleaker, and blurted, ‘I’ve not offended you by seeking you out?’

  ‘Any woman must be gratified by such a compliment, and I’ve not had enough to weary of them,’ she answered candidly. ‘That must be why I was daft enough to invite your company.’ Again she gazed ahead in silence, and then demanded, ‘Why did you?’

  ‘Because you laughed with me.’

  ‘It’s a strong bond, isn’t it? You’re the first man I’ve met who shared it. A pity. Ride on. Master Guy, before Thorgastone sees us.’

  He gathered his reins, hesitated, and then asked, ‘Lady Helvie, is it wise for you to ride this way regularly, and so ill-guarded?’

  ‘Ill-guarded? Sweyn’s faithful to the death!’

  ‘He’s but one man. If I could intercept you, so could others. This feud—you’re Lord Henry’s only child, victim or hostage if Lord Reynald takes it into his mind.’

  ‘God’s Grace, I’ll not forgo visiting my mother!’

  ‘God guard you, Lady Helvie.’ He touched his stallion with the spurs, and fled before all sense deserted him.

  Beyond sight and earshot Guy slowed. The track required more respect than he was granting it, and to gallop through Thorgastone on a lathered horse would provoke curiosity. He uttered a malediction on fathers and feuds, and then wondered at his disappointment. Helvie de Trevaine’s only attraction was that of humour. He concluded that he missed his sisters. Four of them accustomed a man to feminine conversation.

  The Slut growled, and out of the undergrowth beside the track darted a brown man of middle height in a shabby tunic, and blocked his way. The Slut barked once; the stallion squealed and shied violently, and Guy cursed.

  ‘Of all the Hell-sent fools—’

  ‘What sort o’ fool—d’you reckon you are ?’ Wulfric’s breath jerked as though he had been running, and his scowl was as truculent as his words. ‘Waylaying Trevaine’s lass—if he catches you he’ll—string you up—by your own guts!’

  ‘God’s Head—’

  ‘Don’t you never tell me as it was chance! Seen you, I done, ride to the crossroads and look for her! If you hasn’t got no heed for yourself, can’t you take none for the lass?’

  ‘Devil take you, what d’you mean by that?’ Guy flared. The Slut snarled and gathered to spring, looking to him for the sign, and he motioned her back.

  ‘She’s a rare good lass is Helvie, and you’re setting about to ruin her. Hard enough to find a fitten husband for a bastard, and what’ll her name be worth once it gets known you’re meeting her in woods?’

  ‘What’s Lady Helvie to you?’

  ‘My blood-kin—me father’s brother’s gran’daughter.’ He backed a pace. ‘You take heed to me. If you brings harm to her, you’ll never see what skewers you till it’s through your liver! ’ He lifted a hand to touch the bow-stave thrust under the back of his belt and jutting over his shoulder. Then he leaped aside. The bushes swayed and rustled and then were still.

  Guy stared blankly after him for a long moment, so long that the horse snorted and tugged at the bit with a chime of steel. The Slut’s eyes asked reason, and she uttered a small whine of sympathy. He started back to life. ‘Come, good girl,’ he said, and gave the stallion his way. His conscience jabbed; he should not have needed an outlaw’s admonitions to take some thought for Helvie’s reputation. Better than most men he should have realized how vulnerable to slander her bastardy made her.

  He retained sense enough to present an untroubled countenance to Thorgastone, where he was accorded civil greeting by all he encountered. At the forge the blind man was sitting on a bench in the thin sunshine, smoothing down an ash shaft with a sanded rag. He lifted his face to the sound of hooves, and Guy realized with a little shock that he must be Helvie’s grandfather. The smith, her uncle, drew a bar of glowing iron from the fire and poised it as though he would have enjoyed ramming it into Guy’s face; then he thrust it back among the coals and swore at the lad with the bellows.

  The Devil’s Ring jabbed its stark stones into the sky, against clouds feathering pink along their edges. Guy crossed himself and muttered a prayer against the power of darkness. The stallion, eager for his stable, pulled at the bit, and Guy gave him his head.

  Daylight was flaring out in scarlet and purple when Guy crossed Warby bailey to the keep steps. He passed Lady Mabel and Sir James, standing in earnest talk, and exchanged greetings. On the steps he turned and glanced back. Perhaps because his own mind was occupied by a girl, their amity’s significance suddenly jolted through his wits. The most censorious could take no exception to a conversation about barley and firewood for tomorrow’s brewing, they used a formal courtesy to each other and stood a couple of paces apart, but Guy’s feelings rather than his reason recognized that they were in love.

  For a moment he stood watching them, conversing with ease untrammelled by any consciousness of guilt. No reason why they should feel any; he had never seen them so much as touch hands, nor speak to each other except in public where any might overhear them. Servants knew everything about their betters, and there had been not a whisper nor a snigger about their association. They could not have gone so far as actual adultery, which for a lady in his stepmother’s position depended on the connivance of her waiting-women, too perilous to be ventured.

  Wulfrune’s stick tapped the steps above him, and he swung round. He had seen little of her since the Eve of All Hallows; she and Rohese had been spending their days with her daughter Bertha, at some sorcery that required the combined malevolence of all three.

  ‘Ha, I’ve neglected you lately!’ she echoed his own thought, lifting her staff to prod at him. He struck it down forcefully enough to make her stumble, and her eyes gleamed venom and then shifted to the bailey, where Lady Mabel and Sir James had halted their talk to look up. ‘So that’s where the wind sits! ’ she grinned. Some reflection of the sunset struck red glints from her teeth and eyes, like Hell’s embers glowing. ‘So you’ve an eye to your father’s wife, my devout Christian?’

  ‘What?’ Guy burst out before he could check himself.

  ‘And what d’you offer me to keep my mouth shut?’ she jeered.

  His hand lifted towards his dagger-shaft, and then clenched into a fist. ‘A gentleman doesn’t stoop to answer so foul a hag,’ he declared contemptuously.

  ‘Gentleman? Lord Below, you’ll boast of breeding, bastard?’ She stiffened with sudden dignity. ‘On the day when King Edward was alive and dead,’ she declaimed, the legal formula sounding oddly on her lips, ‘my grandsire’s father was lord of all the lands from Trevaine to Etherby, and he could recite you his noble forebears for thirty generations. What was the first Norman in Warby but a low-born thief who didn’t even bring a name out of his own place—or dared not?’

  ‘I don’t doubt that,’ Guy answered. ‘And that’s your licence to work evil?’

  ‘I’m of better blood than you or your father, bastard, and anyone who gives me insolence lives to regret it.’ She tapped down the stair. He stood and watched her go, understanding with disgust the corroding bitterness that had driven her to destroy her nurseling, in revenge for a wrong over eighty years old.

  Lord Reynald was standing by the high table which the servants were setting for supper, idly casting dice, right hand against left. He looked up from the futile pastime, boredom and gloom in his expression. It lighted a little at sight of Guy. He was perhaps the most wretched person in this hold, feared and hated by all the household and ostracized by his neighbours. Guy thought how little occupation the man had. The seneschal and Lady Mabel ordered the household, while the marshal commanded the garrison and stables and with Sir Conan led the forays. Lord Reynald seldom rode abroad; he had given too many men motive for sinking an arrow between his shoulder-blades. His belly was constantly at war with his meat, so that he lived on the blandest fare, milk, eggs and boiled fowl for the most part. Since the Eve of All
Hallows Guy had hardly been able to look upon him without seeing the goat-headed fiend of the Devil’s Ring. Now he thought of Wulfrune, and knew a measure of sympathy, wondering whether, bred up in love by his natural parents, Lord Reynald might not have made a decent Christian knight.

  ‘Don’t stare like that, boy! D’you play chess?’

  ‘Not well, my lord.’

  His harsh laugh barked once. ‘Nor do I, so we’ll be matched.’ He tossed the dice once again, shrugged at their faces, and pouched them. ‘Poor sport,’ he grunted, and scowled at the sunset dying like a spent fire outside the window. ‘But what else is there to do, winter nights?’ He joined Guy before the hearth. The Slut backed from him, bristling. No custom had reconciled her to Lord Reynald’s presence; all beasts were uneasy in his company. ‘Wait for the spring. There’ll be red war again, when the Angevin lad bids for his grandfather’s crown. Sport and loot, and a bastard’s chance to make his name and fortune.’

  ‘Young Henry will be King,’ Guy declared.

  ‘That cub? Unseat a King who has kept his backside on the throne near eighteen years? Sons to succeed him too; if Stephen’s past it young Eustace will fight. War to wage, after the slack years; loot and ransoms, and vengeance for wrongs!’ His lips lifted from his teeth in a feral grin.

  ‘And defeat if you hold by Stephen,’ Guy persisted. ‘I’ve spoken with the Angevin, and there’s fire in him that will win kingdoms.’

  ‘Can you never agree with me? A son owes a duty of respect.’ Guy made no answer, and excitement gripped him again, ‘Prove yourself, boy, and when you’re blooded I’ll knight you.’

  ‘All I seek is the chance, my lord,’

  ‘Only wait until the grass2 grows in the spring, and armies will move!’ A log crumbled in a shower of sparks, and a fragment rolled across the hearth towards him. He kicked it back into the blaze. ‘Knighthood for you, boy, and then who’s to say how far you’ll rise? And there’s more, much more I’ll do for you if you’ll join me as a true son. Accept initiation into our faith, taste our pleasures and learn our powers, and you can rise to lordship, destroy your enemies, enjoy any woman—’ He caught Guy by the arms in a fierce hold, shaking him slightly. The firelight glinted on his eyes and teeth as another fire had lighted the goat’s mask, and Guy wrenched away.

  ‘Not for all the kingdoms of this world!’ he avowed recklessly, and caught back the Slut as she started forward.

  Lord Reynald’s face whitened. ‘Always, always you refuse me! You’ll not so much as let me touch you! You’re no true son of mine!’ His voice skirled to the rafters. He clawed at Guy, who dodged back, hauling the snarling Slut by her scruff to keep her from his throat. A servant, bearing a couple of stools towards the high table, stood palsied. Lord Reynald snatched one by a leg and swung a blow that would have spattered the man’s brains across the rushes, but the fellow flung himself aside. The hall emptied. Lord Reynald, spittle frothing at the corners of his mouth, crashed the stool against the fireplace until he had nothing in his hand but the splintered stump of a leg. His hand caught the stone. The pain checked him; he gazed at the blood oozing from his skinned knuckles and stared about him blank-faced, as though his wits had gone. Guy, backed to the wall with his hand fast in the Slut’s collar, dared draw breath.

  ‘Leave him to himself,’ ordered Lady Mabel’s cool voice, and Guy was glad to go. He glanced back over his shoulder, nagged by a fleeting memory, and then a grim smile twitched his mouth one-sided; Lord Reynald behaved for all the world like an unspanked two-year-old in a tantrum. The smile died almost as it appeared. A man past forty, and he lord over other men’s lives, who had no more self-command than a brat, was cause for weeping rather than laughter.

  Supper was late, and a grisly function when it came, with conversation stifled, servants scurrying like mice, and food either scorched or congealed. Lord Reynald picked at a fowl boiled to rags, and nullified any benefit his deranged digestion might have derived from that savourless fare by tipping down cup after cup of wine. He scowled at his son with darkening animosity, and clouted his lame servant when the last pouring from the jug did not half-fill his cup. The other men copied his example with the wine. Guy too had learned in the last weeks to take pleasure in its taste and to drink heavily, partly by example and partly because enough wine blurred the miseries of existence in Warby.

  Striving gallantly for normality, Lady Mabel, as the servants went round with water and towels at the end of the last course, informed Guy that she had at last finished his winter cloak lined with coney fur. ‘And I reckon you’ll be glad of it next week, when we journey to Hernforth to keep Christmas.’

  ‘What’s this, wife? You’re favouring this whelp with fine garments?’

  ‘As you bade me,’ she answered, her brows delicately lifting.

  ‘Did I bid you sew them with your own hands? What’s between the pair of you?’ He grabbed her arm viciously. ‘My nurse warned me—’

  ‘You know, I know, and she knows she lies,’ Guy declared. ‘And I marvel that the lord of Warby does not tear the tongue from that harridan’s jaws for such an insult to his honour!’

  ‘To my honour—ah! ’ He had perceived the pitfall beneath his feet and floundered to save himself.

  Lady Mabel drew her arm from his slackened grasp. ‘My women will testify that I have never spoken with your son except in company,’ she stated in a voice of crackling ice.

  ‘Whatever your hell-spawned faith allows, ours does not permit incest,’ Guy stated, loosing all hold on prudence.

  ‘No woman’s safe from that randy lecher,’ Wulfrune croaked. ‘He’s been meeting Trevaine’s bastard in the woods.’

  ‘What?’ exclaimed several voices together.

  ‘This very day!’ she crowed. ‘Your enemy’s daughter! That’s why he rides abroad alone!’ She cackled triumph as all eyes turned on him, and Guy felt the blood scorch under his skin while his hands clubbed to smite her. Rohese sniggered, and at the other end of the table Agnes let fall her knife and leaned to stare at him.

  Lord Reynald threw himself back in his chair, his wild laugh pealing. ‘Trevaine’s girl! By the Horns, that’s rare enterprise! Keep at it, boy! Make her love you, seduce her, get her big-bellied!’

  ‘My lord—’

  ‘The rarest revenge you could give me, his girl bearing my son’s bastard. Go to it and rub Henry’s nose in dishonour!’ He looked no further than that satisfaction, or was reckless of the vengeance Trevaine would exact for such a wrong. But Guy thought of the tall girl who had laughed with him, and said, ‘No!’

  Lord Reynald slammed a hand flatly on the table, and his winecup rolled in an arc, spilling purple across the linen. ‘You never obey me! Where’s your duty to your father?’

  Guy drained his own cup, and the candle-flames wavered and duplicated themselves before his eyes. Yet his wits seemed to work with preternatural clarity as he hunted words to protect Helvie de Trevaine and himself. ‘Don’t want her. Only met her twice—by chance. Who’d choose—hulking shrew—when he’s got a pretty little leman like mine?’ He heaved upright, taking all by surprise, strode round the table and caught Agnes before she could do more than utter a squeal. He swung her up in his arms, struggling and kicking, saw astonishment turn to laughter in the men’s faces, to reproach in his stepmother’s, and was off the dais in two strides and bearing her to his chamber. Hoots of applause and encouragement followed him; he shouldered round the curtain to lewd advice, and dumped her on the bed.

  She had stopped struggling; in the blackness beyond the lighted hall he heard her giggle. ‘Where’s modesty?’ she demanded, as he suddenly checked, recognizing through anger and wine-fumes the public affront he had put on her, treating her as a harlot. Yet she was not displeased. She reckoned it a compliment that he preferred her to a well-born virgin, and was shedding her usual sulkiness with her garments. He shrugged. After all, she was a whore. He fumbled at the lacing of his tunic and forgot his qualms.

  1

>   The Exchequer derives its name from this device. Before the introduction of Arabic numerals such an aid to calculation was essential.

  2

  Grass fuelled the horse-based medieval armies as oil does today’s.

  Chapter 9

  His conscience and his headache nagged Guy equally in the sober morning. He had used Agnes as though she were some trollop from the stews; whore though she was, she had not deserved public humiliation. More uneasily, he wondered how soon Helvie de Trevaine would learn that he had miscalled her a hulking ugly shrew. In the dawnlight his inspiration seemed a deal less brilliant than through last night’s wine-fogs. It was as well that next week the household would move to Hernforth in Hampshire, an estate that had come to Lord Reynald through his mother. A journey and a change of scene would take his mind from the brown girl he must not meet again.

  Lucifer, whose weapon-skill seemed unaffected by any quantity of wine, trounced Guy at sword-practice and suggested before an appreciative audience that Agnes was taking too much out of him. Sir Gerard led out half the garrison on a foray towards Etherby; fruitless as these excursions usually proved, men and horses must be exercised. After dinner Guy wandered into the bailey, wondering which well-known way would be least tedious to take, now the track to Thorgastone was denied him. Lucifer’s six men were lined up two by two at the gate, the stocky sergeant holding the bridle of his captain’s mount. Sir Conan was talking with Lord Reynald by the stables.

  To maintain an adequate guard the mercenary and Sir Gerard normally alternated their expeditions, and Guy was mildly surprised at the departure from custom. Lucifer stalked to his horse, his brows set in a frown and the lines from nostril to mouth scored more harshly than usual. He led his troop under the gateway arch. Few people found any pleasure in talk with Lord Reynald. Guy thought no more of it, and idly watched the smith at work for a little while.

  Lord Reynald strolled back from the stables. He was smiling, and as he passed Guy the smile widened into a grin of pleased malice that sent alarm clamouring along all his pulses. Guy waited only for him to enter the keep and then strode to the stable, saddled up as fast as his hands could order straps and buckles, and took the drawbridge at a run.