Gilded Spurs

by Grace Ingram

  Guy was done with the day, but the day was not done with him. He came into his chamber, unclasping his cloak and swinging it from his shoulders. Oswin jumped nervously as he slung it over the perch and the shadows swooped. The candlelight glanced from the whites of his eyes. The Slut growled, and Guy checked.

  The bitch was a discriminating guard, and her memory was dependable. She never growled at Oswin, nor at Agnes, who had right of entry here. She was bristling, so the alien scent was one she disliked.

  ‘Seek!’

  She nosed at the bed, and Guy ripped it apart, flinging pillows and covers to the floor. Oswin tried to sidle out, but Guy jerked his head, the bitch showed him one glint of fangs and he backed into a corner. Guy glanced thoughtfully at him, but concentrated on his search. He tossed the billowing feather-bed over the footboard, and the Slut snuffed at the loose straw, scrabbled with a paw, and grinned up at him.

  He had seen something of the sort before; a bit of bone, a hairy shrivelled fragment of some beast, tied together with a twist of blackened rag. He picked it up reluctantly, and it clung to his fingers, slimy and sticky together and stinking of filth. Twined with the rag were a few blond hairs, his own. He looked from it to his servant. Oswin knew.

  ‘Who put this here?’ The man shuddered and shook his head, cringing from the thing in abject fear. ‘Wulfrune or Rohese?’ Guy pressed him, and as he still made no answer, motioned to the Slut. She took a step nearer, and he shrank away as though he would force himself into the stone.

  ‘L—lady Rohese,’ he whispered, and crossed himself.

  ‘You did not think to warn me?’ A foolish question; no servant would dare betray Rohese. Guy looked at the bed in whose centre it had been hidden, and made a guess. ‘A charm to render me impotent?’

  Something showed fleetingly in Oswin’s face; it might have been but a flicker of the candlelight, but Guy would have sworn he glimpsed disappointment, chagrin, some hint that the spell’s success would have satisfied him. Guy considered him, still dangling the grisly tokens at finger-tips, and then turned to the doorway, lifting his hand to the curtain.

  ‘No, Master Guy!’ Oswin gasped. ‘Don’t you never show that outside! They—they’ll reckon as I told you— ’

  ‘Don’t fear, they’ll know you better than that,’ Guy answered scornfully, and strode to the fire. It had been banked with ashes for the night; he kicked a smouldering log and dropped the charm into the glowing cavern beneath it. Flame spat and smoke spurted; then the fragments blackened into the ash and the log settled upon them. The servants, spreading straw pallets or already curled up in the rushes, were gaping at him. As he turned away he heard the mutter of comment swelling at his back.

  Oswin’s head jerked back behind the curtain, and he gulped and shifted from foot to foot under his master’s scrutiny. ‘You’ve served me unwillingly from the first, though I’ve never lifted a hand to you. You may quit now. Out!’

  ‘Oh no—M-master Guy—don’t turn me off—’

  ‘You’ll do better in the stables.’

  ‘Please, Master Guy—I never meant nothing—let me stay! ’ He crumpled to his knees, scrabbling at Guy’s tunic-skirts when he recoiled. ‘M’ lord ’ll flay me—indeed I’ll serve you faithful—’

  ‘Get up!’ He stood with head hanging, for all the world like a cur whose spirit had been thrashed out of it, peering fearfully under his brows at Guy, who reflected that he had no reason to expect loyalty from an unwilling servant, and one torn between fear of witchcraft and of Lord Reynald. ‘Oh, I’ll keep you. Now get out of my sight!’

  He dived round the curtain and out. Guy scowled after him, and then set about putting his bed to rights. He made much of the Slut, grateful to her nose, and pulled out his mother’s talisman to gaze reverently upon the likeness of Mother and Child that had protected him from harm.

  He was hauling his shirt over his head when the curtain-rings rattled on the rod, and emerged from it to stare at Agnes. Never yet had she visited him openly; always she waited until the lights were extinguished and the household abed. She stood against the bedpost, huddling her cloak about her though she was fully clothed; he could see the hem of her dress beneath it.

  ‘A rare fool you made me look!’ she said waspishly.

  ‘How?’

  ‘Pretending last night I was all you wanted, and today risking your life to keep them routiers off o’ the Trevaine girl.’

  He regarded her with lifted brows. ‘You’d rather I’d let them ravish her?’

  ‘You claimed she’s nothing to you,’ she answered sullenly.

  ‘So I prove it by loosing those wolves on an honest maid?’

  ‘She’s an honest maid, is she? And I’m naught but a whore to warm your bed?’

  ‘God’s Grace, girl, are you claiming to be anything else?’

  ‘You made a fool o’ me. You pretended you was fond o’ me,’ she complained, and he perceived that, given free rein, Agnes would be a nagging shrew.

  ‘I am fond of you,’ he assured her, partly in pity and partly because she had given him pleasure.

  ‘You’ve an odd way o’ showing it. All these nights I’ve kept you merry betwixt the sheets, and you’ve never give me any token.’

  ‘Now when have I been within reach of a silversmith to procure you one?’ Guy asked, recognizing here a delicate distinction. To a harlot one paid her agreed fee and had done; on a mistress one bestowed costly gifts.

  ‘There’s the token you wear about your neck,’ she said, nodding at the silver talisman that gleamed against his bare breast.

  ‘And that you cannot have. It was my mother’s farewell gift.’

  ‘It’s your shield against witchcraft, isn’t it?’ she asked, too eagerly.

  ‘I’ll not part with it.’

  She recognized finality, and her mouth drooped. Yet she could scarcely have set her heart on a paltry trinket glimpsed once by candlelight, so he wondered at her obvious disappointment. A knife-edged draught assailed him from the shuttered window-slit, and he threw off hose and braies and slid under the covers. Agnes gazed at him resentfully. ‘Either come to bed or go back to your own,’ he suggested, moving to make room. For a moment he thought she would take him at his word and flounce out; then she mastered herself, dropped her cloak over the bedfoot and put out the candle. She slid in beside him, and he reached for her.

  Resentment remained in Agnes; taking no pleasure herself, she withheld it from him, and Guy turned from her frustrated. Yet he could not in justice reproach her; he should have the generosity to release her and sleep alone. So he said nothing, but rolled on to his back and feigned sleep to let her depart with her pride.

  She remained rigid at his side; once she caught her breath on something like a sob and instantly suppressed it. Always she had gone as he slept, and he made his breathing steady and even. Nothing he could say would help matters now, and he realized that, as its only justification had been shared pleasure, with that lost this must be the end of their association. Only let her go with dignity, and no loosing of anger that must make them both a public jest.

  It was long before she moved, and his pretence of sleep was sliding into the reality when cold air probed under the covers as she lifted on an elbow. Then her hand touched him softly, sliding over his shoulder to his neck. The silver medallion shifted on his skin, the thong tugged, and cold steel touched him. His hand lunged up to grab her wrist, and he heaved from the pillows, startling a cry of panic out of her. She strained against his grip, and he tightened his hold. Something dropped from her hand between them, and his free hand reached it first and closed on a small knife. He hurled it across the room and heard it ring on the wall. The Slut was up and growling softly, and Agnes collapsed whimpering in the bed.

  ‘So that,’ said Guy in the darkness, ‘was why you came to me tonight.’ He climbed over her out of the bed. ‘Guard! ’ he bade the Slut, and felt along the wall until he found the knife. It was sharp enough. ‘You’d have cut my throat?’<
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  ‘No—ah no! ’ She was huddled together in the disordered bedding; he could just discern her shape by the light that crept round the curtain’s edges from the hall. ‘Not that!’

  ‘You’re just a thief?’

  "Twasn’t stealing!’ she protested, recovering anger. ‘You owed it me! After all I’ve taught—’

  ‘Whatever is owed you, this I’d refused.’

  ‘Oh Master Guy, I’ve asked nothing before—’

  ‘Don’t wheedle! You were set to this by Wulfrune and Rohese, because their spells have failed.’

  She uttered an assenting whimper. ‘They knowed as you was guarded, Master Guy, when you found the charm.’

  He laughed without mirth. ‘Fools! My bitch nosed it out. And they worked on Oswin, for none but he has seen my keepsake, and then on you.’

  ‘Oh Master Guy, I dursn’t go back to ’em wi’out it!’

  ‘You’ll have to. Reckon yourself lucky I’ll not tell Lord Reynald you’re a thief.’

  ‘Oh Master Guy—’ she wailed in pure terror.

  ‘Out! Henceforward I’ll sleep alone.’

  She scrambled her garments about her in the dark, sobbing in panic so that he felt unwilling sympathy for her, trapped between two fears. Then she reached for the curtain, and turned for the last word, hissing it like any serpent.

  ‘Sleep alone and dream o’ your Trevaine wench, since none of us is good enough for you!’

  She vanished, and all sympathy with her.

  Chapter 11

  From the roof of the keep the bailey must have presented the likeness of an overset anthill. Down in the bustle and scurry, Guy found it a marvel of purposeful activity. It was no simple task to shift the entire household, but it was done half a dozen times a year, and every man knew his part. Food, clothes, bedding, tents, kitchen equipment, forage, spare weapons, plate and money had to be assembled, loaded into wagons or on to packhorses, and organized into a train. For all the scuttling, cursing and bawling of orders that made apparent chaos the work went efficiently, and before noon, after an early dinner, the cavalcade was on the road, leaving a bare garrison and a handful of servants in Warby to guard and scour the hold.

  First, and well ahead, rode a couple of archers as scouts; then Lord Reynald and Sir Gerard, with the main body. After them went the women and children, on horseback as the weather was dry, with Sir James and a handful of men-at-arms to guard them. Behind creaked and plodded the carts and sumpter-beasts. Guy had been assigned to Conan with the rearguard. He had expected the mercenary to shun his company, but it seemed he did not care what Guy knew of him, and even condescended to instruct him in the art of ambush.

  ‘Watch your horse and hound, the flight of birds for warnings. The worst danger is in mountain and forest country. Never try to ride down unmounted men in either. They can go where a horse cannot, and spring out behind you to hamstring your mount. Hold your men together and stand fast.’

  ‘Stand fast?’

  ‘Just that. There isn’t one knight in a hundred—a thousand—can fight with his wits. Daft, isn’t it? The man of highest rank is in command, whether he’s green as sour grapes, drunk or witless. So they’re trained to handle weapons and horses to perfection and leave their brains behind. Head-down at his enemy like a bull. Think, boy. What would a routier troop attack a company like this for?’

  Guy did not have to puzzle over it. ‘For loot—the treasure-chests.’

  ‘And the women. So if we are ambushed—it’s not likely with so strong a guard, but possible—Lord Reynald and his marshal will doubtless take off at full gallop into the next county in pursuit, but you and I fall back on the baggage train. Understand?’

  ‘You must have managed many an ambush.’

  ‘And never departed empty-handed.’ He pushed ahead along the line of packhorses to reach Sir James and the ladies. Guy frowned to see Lady Cecily leave her place to fuss over the children.

  Held to the pace of the sumpter-beasts and the unmounted servants, the cavalcade could cover no more than twenty miles in a good day. The weather continued cold but clear, the tracks were passable, and only twice in the first day’s journey was there delay when a cart bogged down. Every village was deserted when they entered it, the hovels empty of all worth looting, the harvested grain concealed and the beasts hidden in the woods. All the men rode mailed and helmed, sword at hip and lance in hand. Peaceful times would have allowed Lord Reynald and his knights to ride ahead with hawks and hounds for diversion, instead of being held to the convoy’s footpace.

  The first night they received reluctant hospitality in a castle near Etherby, whose lord knew Lord Reynald’s reputation too well to incur his ill-will. Only armed parties moved on the roads. During the afternoon they encountered a dozen crossbowmen in leather brigandines sewn with iron rings, tramping behind a mounted knight. They licked greedy chops over the guarded treasure-cart, and fairly slavered at sight of good-looking women, but even such wolves knew when the odds were too great. As they marched past Guy the knight’s eyes met his in a professional survey, pitiless and inhuman. The mercenary would have cut every throat among them as casually as a butcher kills pigs, had they not been too strong. Conan dropped to the tail of the line beside him, and he and Guy rode turned in their saddles, chins on shoulders, until the last glint of the knight’s helmet had dwindled from sight.

  Lucifer grinned at Guy’s expression of loathing. ‘Win your spurs, and that’s the trade you’ll descend to.’

  ‘I will not.’

  ‘Wake out of your silly dreams, boy! What will sword and spurs win you, a landless bastard? There’s no glory in them.’

  ‘There will be law in England, and no place for such as you but a gibbet.’

  Conan scowled and cantered along the line to annoy Cecily again. Guy frowned. If she had been the woman to turn aside his plaguing with a laugh, his determined pursuit might have been amusing, but it was causing her acute distress. Lady Mabel and the two girls did their best to protect her. Now, to Guy’s surprise, Rohese joined their endeavour. She had accosted Lucifer and engaged him in talk.

  Rohese had no altruism in her. At Warby she had stayed close by her grandmother, shunned by all for a witch, and he had never known her seek out a man. ‘A proper match,’ Guy told himself, and took himself up to the treasure-cart to change the guards so that they might get on with their wooing.

  He had barely arranged the relief when Conan joined him, white with wrath. He scowled at Guy so malevolently that he stared. ‘What’s amiss?’

  Conan spat. ‘A danger I’d not reckoned on. That misbegotten bitch has need of a husband to cover her shame, and by all Hell’s devils, she’s picked on me!’

  ‘She’s short of choice.’

  ‘Choice? That poisonous strumpet? I’d not stoop to fornicate with such!’

  ‘But would it not be to your advantage, to marry your lord’s daughter?’

  ‘When I marry I’ll take a wife of spotless chastity, not a loose trollop with some witch-churl’s brat in her belly!’

  Guy marvelled at the arrogance that could reckon himself acceptable to any chaste woman, but merely enquired, ‘I’ve wondered, but are you sure?’

  ‘That she’s with child? Why else should she try her wiles on me? And listen, whelp; I’ve no intention of being named her seducer and forced to wed her at sword’s point, so you’re my safeguard. Leave me alone with her again and I’ll slit your gullet!’

  ‘Never fear, I’ll not miss such rare entertainment.’

  An unwilling grin twitched Lucifer’s mouth. ‘Devil fry you,’ he said without heat, and dropped back to berate the stragglers.

  If Rohese were indeed pregnant it was too early for any physical evidence to show, and she betrayed no such shame and fear as should torment an unmarried girl in that plight. Apart from her sudden fancy for Conan’s company she bore herself as she had always done, as though some perverse demon drove her to be detestable. She cared nothing for others’ opinions; Guy be
lieved she did not care for anyone, but lived in a sterile limbo of hate and resentment for all mankind. He did wonder who had dared seduce Lord Reynald’s daughter, or found liking enough to lie with her. Then he remembered the Devil’s Ring, the wild dancing and reckless coupling, and understood.

  Lord Reynald made a wide detour beyond Wallingford, where King Stephen was bringing a new urgency to the siege of this outpost that had defied his sovereignty for thirteen years, under the command of the Empress’s most devoted adherent Brian FitzCount. The news was heartening to the King’s supporters; the defenders were cut off from supplies and reinforcements and could not hold out much longer. No help could be looked for before the spring, when King Louis of France could be expected to renew the assault on Normandy that had prevented Duke Henry from invading England the previous summer. The Lord Eustace, Stephen’s elder son, had joined Louis to harass Normandy; there was small hope that Henry would be able to succour Brian FitzCount, and the fall of Wallingford would be a portent to dishearten his supporters.

  ‘So much for your prophecies that the Angevin lad will be King,’ Lord Reynald jeered, recounting the news.

  ‘You have not met him,’ Guy replied, unshaken.

  ‘And we’re not likely to. But look at Brian FitzCount, and see how high a bastard may rise if he gains the King’s favour!’

  Guy reflected that Brian was acknowledged son of Count Alan of Brittany, bred up at the court of old King Henry and held in high esteem by that monarch, who had made him Constable of England and married him to an heiress. He intended to rise, but such heights were not for him.