As soon as Jacob said it, I was as sure as if he’d written it for me on parchment that Sir Hugh would seize his chance before My Lady left the fortress to state his claim a second time.
But this time I was ready for him!
A pleasant scent of woodsmoke came to meet us through the solar door. The Countess in her chair, ringed by the usual group of ladies and attendants sat but a few feet from the brazier. A shaft of sunlight from an upper casement glittered on the pikes and hauberks of her standing guards. More people, vassals, members of the household, sat in the shadows of the shuttered window seat, where… How long ago now was it? Four years? Five – when I’d sat up in the window to see Sir Hugh ride in across the bailey . Dressed like Satan, all in red!
I took a breath and held it as I curtsied to the chair, a little awkwardly, with Hamkin kicking at my knees. The torch-flames wavered when they closed the door behind us, throwing light onto the man who stood before the Countess, cap in hand. Again he was dressed in a single colour. A wolf in fox’s clothing, tawny brown this time from head to foot.
All faces turned towards us as we entered.
‘So here we have the girl and child in question.’ My Lady of Warenne surveyed us with composure.
‘My son,’ Sir Hugh said levelly, devouring Hamkin with his eyes.
‘Which is the first point that we need to clarify. Lady Elise, will you state clearly before this company whether the child you hold was sired by Sir Hugh de Bernay here, as he asserts? Or by another?’ Countess Isabel commanded.
‘The child is mine, not his. He forced me to the act illegally and therefore has no claim.’ I was holding Ham too tightly and he began to whimper, struggling to be free.
‘By claiming that he forced you, you are in other words confirming his paternity.’
‘Which prompts the offer I’ve already made to make my amends by offering the child protection,’ Sir Hugh concluded.
I turned to hand the wriggling Hamkin back to Hod, while Thomas slipped away to join the servitors behind My Lady’s chair. The two boys grinned at one another. From where he stood between the guards, the pageboy moved the fingers of one hand in a tight little wave.
‘Tommie!’ Hamkin cried out through the silence, gurgling with laughter. Hod tutted at him and the Countess frowned. But I was ready, only waiting for the moment.
‘Now that we can assume the lady to be widowed, I will repeat my offer to legitimise our union with a bond of marriage.’ A bright edge of impatience to Hugh’s voice that he could not conceal.
‘Without clear proof of Sir Garon’s death, there could be no question of a marriage. Nor would I willingly allow the child to leave our care without a judgement from My Lord.’
The Countess shifted to rest her elbows on the arms of her carved chair. ‘But Sir Hugh, I have to tell you that this visit is most opportune.’ A strange expression crossed her face which it was hard to read. ‘There is a reason why I have allowed you to repeat your claim, Sir, at this time, which is…’
‘I wish to speak and I have a right to do so!’ I simply couldn’t wait for her to finish, not another moment!
‘I call on heaven and all here to witness that this man’s impugned my honour, slighted and abused me.’ My voice shook but I had to get it out, the idea I had fixed in mind since Lady Isabel herself convinced me that there was no other way. ‘In sight of all, I challenge Sir Hugh de Bernay to combat with my champion, to prove the justice of my claim for reparation!’
My Lady’s eyebrows disappeared into her wimple.
‘And who have you in mind, ma chère, to champion your cause?’ Sir Hugh was quick to fill the silence. ‘Some young contender in the garrison who’s pining for your favour? A youthful wizard with a sword and lance who’s spoiling for a fight?’
I had my mouth already open to reply. But he’d described Sir Berenger, the young brute I’d picked to challenge him, so pretty well entirely to the life – that just to answer, ‘Yes’ seemed far too lame.
‘If the lady seeks a champion, I am that man!’
I knew the voice – but not, in that first moment of surprise, the face. The beard had gone. His jaw looked narrower with loss of weight, the big-boned frame more angular. Something in the almost casual way he stepped out from the shadows by the window made him seem older, more assured. Then he was turning back to face me, and with a sudden jolt...
Oh dear God in heaven, I KNEW HIM!
We stand like players in a mummers’ pantomime, each with our role to play. I step out into the silence to speak my lines.
‘If the lady seeks a champion, I am that man.’
She stands stock still, mouth open, fists pressed into her skirts. If she had heard the Last Trump sound, she couldn’t have looked more surprised.
But she’s smaller than I thought, and plumper in her plain grey gown, has netted her long hair into a caul low on her neck, which suits her well. The sight of her is almost more than I can bear. And how could I have ever failed to understand Elise, with everything about her so obviously expressed? From the moment she came through the door, the stubborn lift of chin, the way she grasped the squirming child, the pitiful expression in her eyes – all spoke to me directly of her pain, her fear, the strength of her determination.
Another thing Khadija said: ‘Be sure then when you meet that thou wilt bring her joy.’
But not this time at this first meeting, at another.
My part is written for this meeting and I must perform it. ‘Who better to restore her honour, than the man who risked it in the first place – the man who left her undefended?’
I jab a finger at my own hard chest. ‘I am the man who was her husband before the Kings’ Croisade; and would be again if she will have me.’
She’s closed her mouth. Her eyes are sparkling with tears. Behind her Hodierne’s smiling broadly – the child’s face the very image of his father’s, but for blond curls in place of Hugh’s dark pelt.
‘Behold the warrior returns and with his head attached.’
He almost manages to seem amused, his right hand resting on his left as if relaxed. Yet rigid – everything about him rigid, with two bright spots of colour on his cheekbones.
‘With peace broken out in Outremer, it would appear our prancing knight’s in want of a new quest,’ he’s saying. ‘The poor boy evidently needs someone else to kill.
‘We’ve missed you, Garon,’ he adds cynically, ‘if only for the entertainment.’
‘Enough!’ The Countess turns to face my wife. ‘You might ask, Lady, and with justice, why you were not informed of Sir Garon’s presence earlier. But I fear we had no time.’
For one so stately she sounds almost apologetic. ‘The one man had hardly crossed our threshold before the other was admitted at the gate.’
She drops something a page has brought her, into the mouth of the small creature on her lap. ‘I thought it only fair before his presence was revealed, to let your husband hear all that Sir Hugh had to relate, and witness your reaction.’
‘I understand, My Lady.’
She makes a second curtsey to the chair. But the question in her eyes is not for Countess Isabel, it is for me.
‘Now having heard us both, it would appear my husband’s willing to defend my cause in person?’
With all ears in the chamber flapping, all that is needed from me is a single word.
‘YES.’ I have agreed.
‘Sir Garon’s loyalty does him credit, but hardly solves the problem. These days judicial combats are outmoded and discouraged both by Church and State, and rightly so,’ the Lady Isabel continues smoothly. ‘We settle our disputes by means of evidence and judgement, not by brute force; and even if My Lord might be persuaded to consider combat as a remedy, he could not apply it to the forcing of a married woman, which is not held to be a criminal offence.’
‘Then can I ask, My Lady, what offences to a married woman may be decided by trial of arms, if such an action were to be allowed?’
‘Arson, theft or murder,’ the Countess of Warenne recites.
‘A man is a criminal, in other words, if he should steal a married woman’s necklace. But not when he throws her on her back and rapes her? In such a case she is no more entitled to redress than if she were a common whore?’
The dialogue is public, and all await My Lady’s next pronouncement. Elise and Hodierne, the tirewomen, the maids and nursemaids who attend the Countess every day – all the women have an interest.
‘I did not make the law, and I do not apply it. What’s more, in Lent I make a practice of avoiding any violent sport that sets a dog against a bull or bear, much less a man against a man.’
My Lady leaves a pause. But when she speaks again it’s in a musing tone of voice while she adjusts a ribbon round a lapdog’s scrawny neck. ‘On the other hand, what happens down there in the tiltyard can hardly be of my concern. If men decide to tilt against each other, or make a trial of skill and stamina on foot with quarterstaves and shields, as they do daily in their practice, I see no reason why I’d have to be involved.’
‘Not even if they fought in earnest,’ Elise enquires, ‘with short-swords for example?’
‘The soldiers in the outer ward choose their own weapons, make their own rules for encounters,’ the Countess tells her little dog.
‘In a judicial combat, it is the offended knight who makes the choice – and that calls to mind the choice you have yourself to make, Lady.’ She’s speaking now directly to Elise.
‘I leave for Rochester as soon as we have broken fast tomorrow, to join My Lord the Earl for the King’s progress into London. Which gives you until nightfall to decide whether you and your child will travel with my household in the morning, or leave the fortress under the protection of one or other of the gentlemen who stand before us.
‘It is your choice,’ My Lady Isabel concludes. ‘By my calculation you have approximately seven hours in which to make it.’
The Countess stonily forbade him to escort us to our chamber. But Garon came within the hour – and after I’d endured a suffocating embrace which all but crushed my bones, and he’d saluted Hod and tried to tempt out Hamkin from behind her skirts – we stood apart like wary strangers. To talk at first of everything except what mattered most.
Or rather he talked and I listened.
He didn’t fidget as he used to, or avoid my gaze, but told me frankly that the croisade had proved a huge mistake for him and everyone who’d gone. He said that Saracens are far less savages than we are – that we’d dealt monstrously with them in ways he’d not repeat. He told me how poor Joscelin had died, and Alberic and Bertram, and where he’d left John Hideman on the journey home. He claimed the years we’d been apart, the time he’d spent up in the mountains with the shepherds and their flocks, had made him question everything that he believed. He said that he’d been eager to convince me of the ways in which his life and mine could be improved, but was delayed from reaching me by sickness on his way through Burgundy – then by deep snow, and finally by storms in Normandie which hindered his sea crossing.
And he certainly HAD changed! That’s what I thought while he talked on and on about himself and his ideas. Then, after I had offered up a silent prayer for God to sharpen them a bit, and steered the conversation back to what Sir Hugh had done, and told him how I’d fled from Haddertun to the old moneylender’s house and later to the fortress – I was floored, totally, by Garon’s calm reaction!
The hasty young man I had married would have railed and shouted at the insult, paced about and knocked things over, cursed Sir Hugh and searched and failed to find the words to say how much he hated and despised him. But what did this new Garon, do when I had finished with my tale of woe? He told me that he UNDERSTOOD (as if he, or any man, could ever understand what women have to go through!). He said he’d heard the story first at Haddertun from Kempe, and again that morning from the Countess – and then went on to tell me to my face, that he believed all men to be capable of carnal violence. Even he himself!
‘You cannot have forgotten, Lady, that I forced you on the night before I left,’ he said. ‘And much as I’m ashamed to own it, would willingly have forced another woman when we captured Acre, if she’d not submitted first.’
I had decided while I waited for him in our chamber, to beg my husband’s pardon for appearing to parade my shame by keeping Hamkin with me. But when he stood before me and confessed to understanding carnal violence, I stared at him in utter disbelief!
Of course I’d known that he was bound to lie with other women over there – absolutely bound to. That hadn’t shocked me, not at all. What shocked me was that he could dare suggest – or even think – that there could ever be in any circumstance a possible excuse for rape!
‘How can you stand there and defend a man who has abused us both?’
‘I’m not defending him, that isn’t what I said.’
‘You should be in a stamping rage and grateful for the chance to fight!’ She’s suddenly ablaze herself.
‘I’m pledged to fight, you heard me say so – have just now come from seeing that the tiltyard’s cleared and sanded.’ (She hasn’t said how glad she is to have me back, hasn’t kissed me, hasn’t touched me since our first embrace.)
I reach out to unfist her hands and take them in my own. ‘We’ve found a pair of bucklers that will suit. They’re sharpening the swords, and in a while I’m going down to practice for the bout.’ (It’s what she wants to hear.)
‘But you must know there is no anger in me. I have come home to give, not to destroy.’ (It’s what I need to tell her.)
‘I am fighting Hugh, not for revenge and not because I think one act of violence has to be matched with another. I’m fighting him to prove the justice of your case, to show the world the child is yours, not his. And if I win, I’ll win the means for us to live in peace.’
I seek her eyes and hold them steadily. ‘If you are sure that’s what you want?’
‘How can you ask? Of course I’m sure!’ She snatches back her hands.
‘But are YOU sure, Sir? That’s the question here. From all you’ve said, it’s clear to me that you have no idea of how I’ve suffered, or of how fearful I’ve been of letting Hamelin fall into that man’s power.’
She steps back impatiently with hands on hips to glare at me for all she’s worth. ‘You tell me that you have no anger in you. But HE has, he’s full of it. If you can’t match his anger you will lose, that’s all there is to it. Sir Hugh will win!’
‘Which sounds like something I’d have said four years ago.’
‘Well if you listen carefully, you’ll hear me say it twice. If you can’t find the fire, the heat, whatever you men have to feel to work yourselves into a killing rage, then you are going to lose. And that won’t do, because you may as well know that unless you finish it – unless you KILL that man – there’ll be no peace for me, or you, or Hamelin or any of us ever! We never can feel safe again until he’s dead!’
She steps toward me, holds her right hand up for me to see.
‘I mean it, Garon – if this is going to be the only way that I can strike the spark to give you what you need to fight…
Her arm swings back, right back. I see what’s coming and the force of it.
‘THERE THEN!’’ Elise’s stinging palm lands square across my mouth.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The pain surprised me. A spark of indignation flares in me and dies. The ring she wears has left an angry mark, but nothing more. The blow expressed her anger, but it cannot kindle mine.
‘I will not fight,’ I told the Bishop.
Now I must, and to the death because Elise demands it. She is the plaintiff and the choice is hers, not mine. Sir Hugh has been informed the bout is to be à la outrance. He accepts. By nightfall one of us must die.
He’s out there on the sand already, sparring with some fortress knight who is himself adept. All swordsmen worthy of the name must master early in their training the art
of short-sword and buckler combat. I learned the steps, the many uses of a shield, the reflexes required. So did Hugh – and from the way he’s moving, lunging and recoiling, stepping wide, it’s clear that he’s retained the skill. I can’t tell yet if I have.
In a judicial bout, God is supposed to ‘take the right’. To guide the victor’s hand and prove the virtue of his cause. But without God, you are left with what? With skill, with strength and stamina – and with that something other, which can determine who wins or loses. If that’s a sense of future, I may have the edge over Sir Hugh. But if it’s anger, as Elise believes, I’m at a disadvantage.
‘My lord, here is your sword.’
The tow-headed smith’s boy holds it up – the fine Toledo blade I purchased in Marseille and carried with me all the way, and never used on the croisade except in exercise with Jos. The sword that fell with me at al-Ayadiyeh!
‘’Tis very keen, Sir, if ye care to feel?’ The lad’s blackened fingers turn each edge for me to try. Both are sharp as razors.
‘Would you believe, My Lord, that when I brought it to the stone an’ drew it out, all this was over it, with more inside the sheath.’ He holds out the buckler in his other hand, to show its hollow strewn with grey sand from the lime pits outside Acre. ‘Is it from Oversea, my lord, where Our Lord Jesus lived?’
I cannot meet his shining eyes, or show the pain in mine. ‘It was from Outremer, but now like me is come to Sussex.’
I make him tip it out to join the sea-sand of the tiltyard, and turn from the poor lad’s disappointed face, to the smart fellow from the garrison, who is to help me try my paces. ‘Now, Sir Osberne, if you’re ready?’
Elise is watching from the window as we cross the yard. The solar is in shadow with the light behind it. But I can’t mistake the flax-blue of her gown. Her hands, both hands, are on the mullions, which means the child is elsewhere. I’m glad. He is too young to see a death.
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