Gilded Spurs

by Grace Ingram

  Guy no longer wondered that Henry de Trevaine had chosen her for his leman; her warmth was a benediction. If a man’s golden girl ripened into this after twenty years of matrimony, he might reckon himself favoured by God. He grinned at Helvie, sucking the last sweetness from her fingers, and as she leaned to dabble them in the bowl of water he saw how creamy-smooth was the skin of her throat inside the neck of her gown, sliding into the swell of her breasts. He remembered what he should not have seen, and felt the heat of embarrassment rise to his brow as he forced his gaze from them and dipped his own hands in the water.

  He accepted a horn of ale and declined more bread and honey. Elswyth chatted about the weather, detailed some of her preparations for Christmas, and complained of a fox that menaced her poultry. The Slut worried her bone. Helvie sat silent most of the time, putting in a word now and then. Guy relaxed in the first homely ease he had known since he entered Warby, content to pass half an hour here before he must return to Lucifer and Lord Reynald.

  The Slut pricked her ears and lifted her head from her bone; then she bounded to her feet, bristling alarm. A trampling of hooves sounded nearby, and Guy laid aside his empty horn as feet trod to the door. Guy lifted to his feet, and slipped two fingers inside the Slut’s spiked collar as he faced Henry de Trevaine.

  Chapter 10

  ‘God’s Throat, here’s treachery!’ Lord Henry declaimed. ‘My woman and my daughter entertaining my enemy!’

  ‘I am not your enemy,’ Guy told him, ‘until you make me that.’

  ‘You’re Warby’s bastard, and should hang at his boundary.’

  ‘Is my begetting my fault?’ The Slut, misliking the angry voices, strained slightly at his hold, an almost soundless growl vibrating through her, but she obeyed. Trevaine men crowded about the doorway behind their lord, Sweyn grinning among them.

  ‘He is a guest in my house,’ said Elswyth serenely, ‘and you are greatly in his debt for our daughter’s sake, my lord.’

  ‘He saved me,’ Helvie declared. ‘But for him, there’d be no way to free me from dishonour but with your sword’s point, my lord.’

  Neither of the women seemed particularly perturbed by the prospect of Guy’s being hauled out and strung up. Helvie moved forward, and Guy said quickly in English, ‘Stay behind me, my lady.’

  Lord Henry understood. ‘So you can set that brute of yours on me?’ he demanded in outrage.

  ‘At need, my lord.’

  ‘Well, you don’t need. I won’t dishonour your roof, Elswyth—though at that it’s my roof. And since he saved you, my girl, I’ll have to spare his life.’

  ‘I knew you would, father dear.’ She swept past Guy to kiss her sire’s cheek.

  He scowled ferociously and slapped her bottom. ‘No blandishing, wench! I acknowledge the debt.’ He turned his scowl on Guy, who recognized what he was dealing with; an amiable man making the noises he reckoned appropriate to his rank and power. The two big men confronted each other in silence for a moment. Then Lord Henry’s scowl slipped, and his mouth twitched. He hooked a stool towards him with a foot, and looked dubiously at the Slut. ‘You’ve got that bitch under control? I’ve seen all I need of her teeth, and have no wish to count them from underneath.’

  ‘It would considerably diminish your dignity, my lord,’ Guy agreed.

  ‘Diminish—ah, just so.’ He sat down. Guy took his fingers from the Slut’s collar and touched her head. She sank to her haunches and grinned at Lord Henry. ‘What’s her breeding ?’

  ‘Half wolf, half mastiff.’

  ‘A fine bitch, and you’ve schooled her well. I’d fancy a pup from her next litter.’ He turned to his followers, scuffling in the doorway. They were a couple of knights and their squires, all in riding-dress and unmailed; apparently Sweyn had encountered his lord riding about his own demesne with no more escort than his consequence required. ‘Wait for me on the road,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll not be long.’ He waited till they had dispersed; Sweyn fingered to scowl at Guy, and retired disappointed.

  Lord Henry surveyed Guy in the unimpeded daylight, frowning like a judge considering sentence. Guy stood erect as was seemly in the presence of rank and years and waited for him to speak first.

  ‘If I didn’t owe you my girl’s honour I should have hanged you,’ he said flatly. ‘Now you’ll give me your oath never to approach her again.’

  ‘I have already made that promise to my lady,’ Guy told him.

  ‘Your folly’s to blame for all. If you’d stayed outside my boundaries none of this would have happened.’

  ‘No, my lord.’ It was truth, and stabbed more keenly for that.

  ‘You took no thought for her good name.’

  ‘My lord,’ he protested, ‘I have never touched your daughter, nor spoken a word amiss.’

  ‘The man who marries her will still question your meeting—-if I can find her a husband after she’s had her clothes ripped off her by a troop of routiers.’

  ‘The man who marries her should thank God on his knees for his good fortune!’

  Henry of Trevaine thrust to his feet, the stool clattering against the hearthstone. ‘God’s Head, are you daring to suggest—I’d see her dead at my feet before I’d bestow her on you!’

  Guy caught back the Slut, up and bristling at the threat in his voice. ‘My lord, you mistake—’

  ‘D’you imagine I’d accept grandchildren with your father’s blood in them? Or disparage my girl by giving her to a journeyman from an armourer’s forge, whoever sired him?’

  It was one matter to know himself unacceptable, another to have it flung in his face. Guy felt the blood scorch to his hair and then drain away. ‘You make yourself very plain, my lord,’ he said, bowed and turned to the door.

  ‘You have not given your oath!’

  ‘I have broken it already, when it conflicted with my duty to my lady.’ He took up his swordbelt and slung it about him. ‘Save for that, you have it.’

  Helvie started forward, bright colour in her cheeks, her arms full of his heavy cloak. ‘Master Guy, we owe you thanks, not insults! Take your own again, and my heart’s gratitude goes with you!’

  Guy’s own heart leaped as their hands met. ‘Demoiselle,’ he said with careful formality, ‘your service shall always be my pleasure.’ He bowed again to Lord Henry, swelling with speechless wrath, and walked quickly down the path to his horse. Lord Henry’s companions made way for him as he came into the track; they stared curiously but did not try to halt him.

  He had reached the ridge, with the stones of the Devil’s Ring lifting out of their thickets nearby, when he suddenly chuckled aloud. The lure of forbidden fruit was powerful enough for Lord Henry’s prohibition to ensure that whenever Guy or Helvie thought of the other it would be with marriage in mind. He felt himself redden; he remembered more than he would admit to himself of the loveliness Lucifer’s outrage had disclosed.

  The moment he entered Warby hall the storm he had anticipated broke over his head. Lord Reynald, conferring with Lucifer, turned on him.

  ‘You dare show your face under my roof again, you treacherous hound? Hell devour you, you’ve cheated me! You’ve robbed me of my revenge, my rightful revenge that I’ve planned and waited for all these years! Disloyal bastard! ’ Guy stood like a rock in rain and wind, sluiced and lashed by their fury but unmoved. He gazed into the face so like his own, loathing bitter in his belly; this had begotten him and was forever part of him, blood and bone and brain. He knew himself tainted to the core. All the colour had drained from his face, and he thought he would vomit where he stood. Then anger blazed to save him. He jerked free the clasp of his swordbelt and hurled it, sheathed blade and all, to crash at Lord Reynald’s feet. The ivory-hafted dagger spun after it.

  Lord Reynald jumped back to save his toes. ‘What’s this? What d’you—where are you going?’

  ‘Back to Bristol and the armourer’s shop.’

  Guy was half-way to his wall-chamber when a different screech halted him, and he chec
ked to look over his shoulder. ‘No! You’re mine—my son!’

  ‘I’ll not call “Father” a monster who sets routiers to rape a maid.’

  ‘But that’s my vengeance—my just and long-desired vengeance!’

  ‘I’ll not stomach it.’

  ‘But you said you didn’t want the wench—why?’

  ‘Do you think an honest man could stand by? She’s a virtuous maid—’

  ‘What’s a whore’s daughter to vaunt her virginity?’ Rohese jeered from the dais.

  ‘If we speak of whores, the foulest drab from a waterfront brothel would spit on you,’ Guy told her, and stalked towards his chamber. One of Oswin’s eyes peered fearfully round the curtain, and vanished at his approach.

  Feet scuffled the rushes, the Slut snarled, and a hand clawed at his sleeve. ‘No, no! You’re my son! I’ll not let you go!’

  ‘Then you’ll have to chain me to your wall,’ he declared, checking the Slut by the collar.

  Fingers hooked like claws dug into Guy’s muscles, and Lord Reynald stared up into his inflexible face, his own writhing with the passions that warred behind it. ‘I’ll never permit—yes, I’ll chain you first! You’re my manhood’s pride—mine!’ He checked, swallowed, and then capitulation tore itself out of him. ‘Yes, yes! I’ll promise the wench shall be safe, if that’s what you desire!’

  ‘Where’s your pride if you yield to him?’ Rohese screeched. ‘If he’s yours, prove it! Humble him!’

  ‘Don’t meddle, you squalling vixen!’ he yelled at her over his shoulder, and then tightened his grip on Guy’s arm. ‘Why, you fool, d’you think Henry of Trevaine would scruple to serve me the same?’

  Henry of Trevaine had shown almost the same readiness to avenge his wrongs on the guiltless, and Guy wondered at the poisoned passion for revenge that seemed so essential a part of knightly honour. If Lord Reynald were prepared to relinquish it, it might even be accounted the first sign of grace, and there was no sinner so far gone that he was beyond Christ’s redemption. He wavered, and his sire saw it.

  ‘And how else will you win knighthood?’

  He must give up that hope forever, Guy realized, and go back to the life of labour, the years of painful thrift before he could establish himself as a master craftsman in his own household. He was ruined for that life now. Behind his impassive face his mind raced, reckoning all the rest he must lose; achievement in arms, the fascinating intricacies of administration, his vision of advancement; a servant to wait on him and a leman to delight his nights; the bodily comforts of hot baths, good food, clothes and wine, a real bed in his private chamber. Most ignoble but most potent of all, he thought of returning to face his mother and William. He nodded.

  Lord Reynald laughed and caught him by the shoulders. ‘A bargain!’ he crowed. ‘You’re my son, and no man of mine shall molest your wench.’

  ‘A bargain,’ Guy agreed reluctantly. Rohese rushed from the hall spitting venom. Sir Conan, who had listened with a cynical smile, suddenly stooped to pick up the weapons he had hurled down in that futile defiance which now set him flushing, and held them out to oblige him to receive them from hands he despised. He jerked back. This was no part of any bargain. Oswin had ventured all of himself from behind the curtain. Guy beckoned him, and he came unwillingly, glancing from one to another of his betters with the whites of his eyes glinting like those of a balky horse. ‘Fetch me them.’

  ‘Why, you insolent whelp—’

  ‘I'll not receive my arms from the hands of a ravisher.’ Conan turned white and threw the weapons at Oswin, who ducked, yelped and gathered them up. ‘You’ll send a serving-man—’

  ‘He is worthier.’

  ‘God’s Head, if you were knighted you’d answer for that sword in hand!’

  ‘Enough!’ snapped Lord Reynald. ‘Are we to waste the evening arguing?’

  At his signal the servants emerged like ants from crevices to set up the tables. He turned away, bidding Guy wash and make ready as though he were a half-grown lout who needed his manners mending. Guy trod to his chamber trying to smother his misgivings. Uneasily he recognized that in surrendering to expediency and his own desires he had breached his integrity. He left out of his reckoning the fact that he had forced Lord Reynald to surrender likewise, and how resentment would fester in one who had never acknowledged any rule but his own will.

  As he plunged over-ears in the bowl of water Oswin held for him he did recall the exact words of Lord Reynald’s promise, ‘no man of mine’. Perhaps he had imagined a flickering glance at Lucifer, no man of his but a hireling.

  One gain was his; Rohese refused to share cup and dish with him again. He half-expected Agnes to become his partner, but instead found at his side Gertrude, an amiable girl with as much conversation as a sheep. Guy at first judged that exchange to be merely a manifestation of his half-sister’s malice. Observing her exerting her charm upon a wary Lucifer, he began to wonder at other motives, even as he appreciated the benefit of eating a meal in peace.

  For what Guy had in mind to say to Sir Conan he required privacy. He took care to remain fully sober, and when the men dispersed for the night and Lucifer quitted the hall to make his rounds of his men’s quarters and stables, his step steady for all the wine he had swallowed, Guy gave him time to perform those duties and then collected his cloak and followed.

  He had a fair idea where to seek him. Sir Conan was an unsociable animal. He was on the sentry-walk of the curtain wall, leaning in a crenel to gaze out at the night, an unrewarding pastime as the sky was heavily overcast. A few lights glimmered in the village, and down by the gatehouse the new watch was going on duty by torchlight, disembodied voices and tramping footsteps sounding through the dark and wild shadows swinging across the muddy grass.

  Lucifer heard the pad of Guy’s soft shoes and the click of the Slut’s nails upon the stone and turned instantly, his hand slipping to his dagger-haft. ‘And what d’you want with me, whelp?’ he demanded. Guy’s height and pale hair made him recognizable in the poorest light.

  ‘A word with you, Sir Conan.’

  ‘Say it and be gone.’

  ‘If Lady Helvie comes to harm by you or any man of yours, I’ll exact retribution on your body.’

  ‘You witless pup, are you planning to challenge me?’

  ‘No more than the hangman does.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘In any land where law rules, the raptor’s penalty is gelding.’

  ‘God’s Death—’

  ‘I should take you from behind or unawares without compunction, for it’s no more than your due.’

  Lucifer stiffened, and a random touch of the retreating torchlight made two sparks of hell-fire glint from his eyes. The Slut growled, and he expelled a long breath in a hiss and leaned back against the crenel, forcing a laugh. ‘The only way you’d dare try!’ he sneered. ‘So you do fancy the wench yourself! ’

  ‘She is a virtuous lady.’

  ‘You lying hypocrite, you’ve never uttered a squawk about any other I’ve had sport with, so why else—’

  ‘This lady I know and respect. For your other victims, I despise you no less.’

  ‘What in Hell’s name do you know about it, you sanctimonious pup?’

  ‘Enough, being rape-begotten.’

  ‘I’m damned, am I not? Damned from the day I first hired out my sword? Then by God’s Blood I’ll earn damnation!’ Guy recoiled half a step from the despair in the man’s voice. ‘You chose it,’ he reminded him in cold distaste.

  ‘And what choice—? Listen, you! I was the fourth son of a poor Breton knight. When I was fifteen my father died, and my eldest brother gave me an old sword and a worn-out horse and kicked me out. How else could I live—how else? And being damned—’ His voice thickened; he checked, breathing hard, and turned away to look over the valley, his hands gripping the stone. Guy remembered the wine at supper, and suppressed a twinge of sympathy; this was maudlin self-pity speaking.

  ‘No man need be damned
who truly repents and puts his sins from him,’ he declared sententiously.

  ‘Don’t blether your smug pieties at me! You’re bound for Hell as surely as I am, by another road.’

  ‘I?’

  ‘Are you not selling your soul to wear gilded spurs? This very day you’ve accepted your father’s bribe and condoned his sins. You’ve let him corrupt you little by little since you entered his household—of your own free will, mind you! And you’d a craft in your hands, an honest living! He’ll have you dancing within the Devil’s Ring before another year’s out.’

  ‘No!’ Guy rejected the thought with violence. Lucifer laughed. ‘You know—you’re one—’

  ‘When I do homage,’ Conan told him icily, ‘I’ll set my hands between my lord’s in proper form, not kiss the arse of some mummer in a beast’s mask.’ He pushed away from the battlements, pride and affront in every line of his body, and then his shoulders sagged a little; there was small chance that any lord would take a mercenary’s hands between his own. He turned on Guy so savagely that the Slut snarled and gathered herself. ‘You witless dolt, what are a knight’s spurs to you? Get back to your forge and your repentance while you have a soul to save!’

  ‘That,’ Guy said after a moment’s silence, ‘I can no longer do.’

  ‘Then go to Hell your way and leave me to go mine.’

  He went down the steps in three leaps. The bailey was deserted now; yellow light streaked it from the gatehouse windows, but all else was dark. Horses moved in the stables beneath the rampart. Guy heard a squeal and the crash of hooves on wood as one kicked out. A rat perhaps; there were too many about the forage sheds, and he must set the ratcatcher to work with his ferrets and terrier. But that was on the surface of his mind. He stood where Lucifer had stood, unease weighting his belly, and tried to refute his accusation. He had withstood Lord Reynald, refused initiation in witchcraft. As for bribery, knighthood was his by right of birth, bastard though he was, and he had gone too far towards it ever to turn back to the forge. He stared out over the village, seeing the lights go out one by one as though they were leaving him to darkness. Then raindrops spat into his face and he made for the hall, eager to be done with the day.