A sudden explosion of anger from Robert de Veragny overbore all other talk. “Were you mad, man? You took your daughter—your only child—into that peril?”
“Who else was to hold the horses?” inquired Landry, perversely reasonable. “I have only five men, and she casts a pretty .javelin.”
For a moment he seemed to choke on expostulations. “Your tender maiden! Among the spears! Had you no thought for her life or her maidenhead—you, her father?”
Landry grinned. “The lass has shared my risks since she could run alone, my lord, and would not thank me for safety.”
In the face of that declaration Robert de Veragny could say no more, which was precisely the effect Landry had aimed at, and he subsided into mutterings and headshakings. His views on fatherhood, which most men regarded as casually as the scattering of their seed, interested Rodriga intensely, and an odd warning thought came to her. A man who sinned wholly for his selfish profit might take more heed of the consequences than one who sinned to benefit his beloved.
Apparently Landry’s callousness was more than the cripple could stomach, for almost immediately he spoke his thanks for his entertainment and heaved himself awkwardly up. His crooked leg, immobile at the bent and twisted knee-joint, seemed practically useless, but he managed his crutch adroitly, and though clumsy and lopsided, moved almost as fast as a sound man. Rodriga noted the muscular development of his arms and shoulders in compensation, and also that no man of his retinue moved to help him. They must have their orders, and it would be intolerable to a man of that harsh temperament to depend on physical assistance for every move he made.
Lothaire de Gallenard of course contrived a word apart with her as the horses were being brought up. “How charming, demoiselle Rodriga, is the filial devotion which even takes you hunting Saracens by your father’s side! To join valour to beauty is rare indeed!”
“You flatter me grossly, sir knight.”
“Peerless demoiselle, that would be impossible. But this benighted camp would lose its light were you lost to it, and they who admire you be left inconsolable.”
“More safety in the hills with my father than without him in Acre,” she said grimly and pointedly.
“Yes, you cast a pretty javelin, do you not? Demoiselle, it desolates me to be obliged to part so soon, but my duty to my lord, of which you so sternly reminded me, demands it.” He caught her hand to his lips before she realised his intent, being unaccustomed to such courtly salutations, and followed his master to the horses, grinning over her instinctive jerk of withdrawal. The cripple mounted with the minimum of assistance from a crossbowman’s shoulder, and she watched them go with a little frown creasing her young brow, and her hand scrubbing up and down against her rough linen dress.
Life in camps and castles, the life of a poor mercenary’s daughter, had left her no illusions about the darker half of men’s hearts. She had met men like Lothaire de Gallenard before, the professional charmers who reckoned themselves irresistible to women. She distrusted charm, that false coinage so facilely substituted for integrity by many of its possessors, and suspected flattery, knowing herself to be dark and plain and thin. The new conventional posturings of courtly love she reckoned downright ridiculous. Her standards were based on her father, outspoken, hot-tempered and generous, and she judged all men beside him. She knew the fair knight was set on seducing her, and considered her lack of response a challenge. Knowing her father’s hastiness, she was unwilling to complain to him; so far the man had not trespassed even verbally, and it was no part of a daughter’s duty to match him in single combat against a younger and stronger man to defend her honour. She shrugged and turned to him.
“Juan?” she asked eagerly.
“Sick and sorry for himself, the foolhardy pup, but he will do well enough.” He sat down again, picked up a handful of dates, and munched hungrily, spitting the pips with vigour and accuracy at the smouldering fire. “My faith, but it will be a pleasure to abase that pair of adulterers’ by-blows,” he commented dispassionately. “Keep your javelin at hand whenever you converse with that itching offspring of the original serpent, lass. That kind need a yard of steel to keep them at their proper distance.”
A slight smile replaced her frown; her father’s parental eye could be trusted to miss nothing. “It was to hand,” she answered, nodding to the tent doorway. She had gained one important item of information, and passed it on to him, that the cripple was the devoted father of one son, and that by God’s punishment he was not only maimed but denied others.
“The Lord Above is not commonly so brisk about His punishments. But that is of interest.” He reached for another handful of dates.
She hesitated a moment, and then told him of the cripple’s proposal for destroying Marco. He had had too long experience of mankind to be easily shocked by unscrupulousness, but that Robert de Veragny should so insult Rodriga’s integrity and intelligence as to suppose her a fit tool for his evil purpose roused Landry’s ire. There was not a particle of choice between him and Marco for knavery, and indeed he would incline to the open villain. “We will not meddle; let them destroy each other!” he declared. “We do not lend ourselves to perjury. Acre would be sweeter without the pair of misbegotten scoundrels!”
“And the Saints know it is no nosegay,” Rodriga commented, and got out the casket of coins to show him. He insisted that the brooch must not be sold but stay her own, and would have pinned it on her old gown had she not firmly refused to go about Acre with a fortune at her breast. She preferred it to be safely buried.
After a hurried meal Landry went off with Ramiro and Esteban to sell the surplus horses, and Rodriga set off for the Hospital. She went alone, since they had no man to spare for escort; the distance was short, she ran no danger in daylight, and had small regard for the conventions enclosing, more tenderly nurtured demoiselles. She stopped at the first church she passed to give thanks for deliverance and to pray for Juan and the souls of all who had died that morning, and came out into the sunlight a little comforted. A black head moved swiftly out of sight behind a tent, and she first stiffened in alarm and then berated herself for folly. She was coming to see Marco in every shadow, like a child scared of hobgoblins.
In the market she bought fruit, bread and that rare delicacy, a cake of sticky sugar, for Juan, calmly ignoring the occasional wink or whistle and the remarks passed by those with no better occupation. She had grown up in war-camps, and all soldiers had an eye for a girl; she was inured to bawdy compliments, and proof against blushes. No one would venture to lay hands on an unwilling woman in the open street. The Provost Marshal of any camp commanded by Richard Plantagenet had a hempen cure for all disorder, as the laden gibbets at various vantage-points bore eloquent witness.
She was approaching the Hospital encampment, with the tents disposed in orderly lines about an open square, when she heard hooves behind her and a familiar voice hailed her. She halted, and Piers cantered up, swung down beside her and grinned engagingly at her forbidding face. She was not pleased, and made that evident.
“Piers, this is foolhardy conduct! You should not be seen with me!”
“I heard that one of you had been wounded, and I had to make sure you were safe,” he answered, cheerfully ignoring her reproof. “I have been to your camp—”
“You should not! Robert de Veragny and his seneschal visited us this very morning! What if you had come upon them?”
“Holy Saints, should I not have seen them? But I had to see with my own eyes that you were unhurt, Rodriga! Your old shrew would say nothing, but the brat told me you had gone to the Hospital.” Not a word of her scolding had even reached his consciousness, and she shrugged in amused exasperation. It was more than time he grew up sufficiently to control his impulses, but his concern disarmed her. She let her frown slide into a smile. “Are you satisfied? I took no part in the battle, if that is what you feared.”
“God forbid!” he exclaimed fervently. “I think it shameful you were compelled to
witness it! Rodriga, I cannot be easy about you, so scantily protected and exposed to such peril! You should not now go about Acre without escort!”
Rodriga shrugged again. “If you will have it so, come.”
He strode beside her, leading his horse. As they came to the entrance, by a long low hut guarded by two armed serving-brothers in black, they were encompassed about by a swarm of beggars and cripples demanding alms, displaying their sores and withered limbs. Piers flung a few coins into their midst. They scrabbled and struggled and cursed, snatching and shrieking like gulls on a quay-side over fish-offal, though the entrance to the Hospital was a profitable position for engaging the sympathy of the charitable, and the Knights of Saint John would let no one starve at their gate. Over the clawing, grovelling throng a pair of level blue-grey eyes considered Piers, those of the one man who had not joined in the scuffle.
He was a stocky man with a shock of sun-bleached sandy hair and a broad-boned face spattered with freckles. He pushed through the crowd and lifted his right hand in clumsy salute. “Hold your horse, young master?” he suggested, in rough Norman-French with a strong English accent. “Some o’ these bastards ’ud steal the saddle from under your backside or the shroud off of a corpse, give ’em the chance.”
The stallion had laid his ears back, but he was too well-trained to kick or rear. Piers gave the reins into the Englishman’s hand. His left wrist ended in a filthy bundle, and his broad bones showed gauntly under the weathered skin, but he had neither whined for alms nor joined in the scramble for the money. Rodriga knew his breed, stiff-necked northern English, and the fierce pride that would earn payment appealed to her. Plainly it appealed also to Piers, for he smiled at the man and said, “God keep you!” in English.
The fellow gasped at the familiar speech, and stared at Piers for a long moment before he could answer. “God save you!” he muttered automatically. “You—you English too, young master?”
Piers shook his head. “Poitevin, but I have been in England,” he said haltingly. Clearly that taxed his command of the tongue to its limit, and Rodriga took up the questioning.
“Are you from the Border?” Her own English was fluent; though most of her six years’ sojourn in that land had been spent on the Welsh Marches, with two excursions to Ireland, that hotly contested area drew fighting-men from all parts, and she was familiar with several dialects.
“Aye, lady—near Alnwick.”
Piers was fumbling again for his purse, which, like all men of sense in a town so infested with cut-purses, he wore fastened to the waist-band of his braies.
“Good to hear my own speech,” the Englishman muttered under his breath. He shook his head abruptly as Piers brought out a silver penny, and turned to French. “Nay, pay me when I have earned it! How d’ye know I’d not thieve money and horse too?”
“I do not,” Piers answered, grinning, “but I could make a guess. Have your own way.” He took Rodriga very correctly by one finger, a courtesy which had seldom come her way, and led her to the nearer sentry.
The Hospital did not encourage the visits of women, but the kinsfolk and friends of patients could hardly be excluded. After inquiry and explanation they found themselves following the black back of a serving brother across the square and into a tent, where a long dark knight with the eight-pointed white cross on the breast of his tunic and his sleeves rolled above his elbows received them. He carefully kept his eyes averted from Rodriga’s face and gave them the brisk courtesy of an overworked man.
“The lad is gravely hurt,” he stated. “The wound in his breast is no great matter, but the other went deep. By God’s Mercy it has harmed no vital part, but he is very weak. This way. Remember that it pains him greatly to talk.”
The tent was crammed with pallets, and Piers’s face showed nervous and curious together. The hospital stink assailed them, the heavy mingled stench of sweat, vomit, dysentry and festering wounds almost obliterating the odours of drugs. Rodriga glanced pitifully about her at the sick and wounded. Some lay still; some tossed and muttered; one man, delirious, raved in an unknown tongue, and in one corner a handful of half-clad convalescents were dicing on a blanket. A few greeted them and asked how the siege was going as they passed, or grinned appreciatively at the girl. A couple of serving-brothers bearing a bier made way for the knight, and all crossed themselves at sight of a shrouded shape with upturned feet and hands folded across its breast. Then they were standing over Juan.
He was still drowsy from the sleep-drink he had been given, but he smiled feebly at Rodriga as she knelt beside him and put her hand on his brow, that was dry and hot with rising fever, and moved a hand slightly towards her. She took it between her own, and his fingers closed weakly on hers.
“My folly,” he murmured ruefully, his voice seeming to come from a far distance, “running on trouble. Sorry, my lady.”
She grinned at him, her throat so thick with tears that for a moment she could not force speech from it. “You never did think when you saw a fight, Juan,” she said cheerfully. “No one else was daft enough to get hurt.”
“So my father—and yours—scolded me,” he whispered with wry humour. It had always been Juan in their childhood who led the pack into mischief and accepted the blame and the thrashing, just as it had always been Pablo who strove to extricate them. Rodriga blinked resolutely and set her jaw to hold back the tears.
“You should not talk,” she said unsteadily. “Be still.”
He smiled again and obeyed, relaxing with a little sigh. His dark young face was already haggard, his eyes over-large in shadowed sockets. Then his lashes fell, his hand slackened on hers, and he was asleep again. She looked up quickly at the tall knight, who nodded and signed to her to go. Gently she freed herself and set her gifts by his pillow. She stood up childishly wiping her eyes with her sleeve, and gulped down a sob. Piers came to her side and caught her arm. She managed to control herself and offer a prayer for her foster-brother’s recovery; then she let Piers draw her away. The knight accompanied them to the door.
“Sleep is good,” he assured her, “and he is young and strong. Trust in God’s mercy, demoiselle.”
The stocky Englishman was crooning softly to the destrier, the reins looped over his maimed arm while he fondled the arched neck and inquiring muzzle. The stallion nosed his ragged breast with a soft jingling of bit-chains, apparently in full approval of his uncouth endearments. The other beggars, squatting in the dust, recognised one who had already paid tribute and did not stir at their approach, so Piers and Rodriga were beside him before the horse whickered and the Englishman turned his head.
Flushing darkly, he handed Piers the reins and held his stirrup. Piers swung up, felt for his purse and spoke careless thanks, while Rodriga studied his appearance with eyes sharpened by the sights of the Hospital. Pallor under sunburn, bones covered only with skin, the bandaged stump protectively held to his breast and the remaining hand a fleshless frame, all told the one tale. His interest engaged by hers, the squire also regarded him narrowly. Under their combined stares the man's flush deepened and then faded to a sick white, but his grey-blue eyes did not flicker. The stallion reached round his great head and nuzzled at him again, and the man’s face hardened with desperation.
“Young master,” he burst out, “keep your silver! Have you use for a groom?” And as Piers hesitated, he came closer, so that his rags touched the young man’s leg. “A scullion—camp-tender—any honest work, young master!”
Piers gaped in plain dismay at the result of his heedless kindness, while Rodriga looked from one to the other, seeing with a sharp pang the wild hope fade from the Englishman’s gaunt face.
“But—but—indeed I would help you,” Piers said awkwardly, “but I—I am not my own master. My lord would never consent—he has no use for a groom—”
“Especially a one-handed one!” the Englishman finished harshly, and jerked away as if struck. “I was a fool!” he said thickly, and turned away, but not before Rodriga had seen h
is face. That finished her. The fellow plunged blindly from them, lurching towards his inquisitive companions in misery, and she called after him.
“Come back! Come back, I say!”
The man broke into a stumbling run, and she gestured furiously to the bewildered squire. He started after him, shouting also. One of the other ragged wretches, scenting profit, leaped up and grappled with the fugitive, and Piers caught him from behind.
“We have not done with you!” he said sharply, and sent the treacherous beggar scuttling with a threatening move to his sword-hilt. He stood with head averted and shoulders sagging. Leaning from the saddle, Piers maintained his grip on the Englishman’s ragged tunic, and as the other beggars showed a tendency to press forward, drove them beyond reach with a scowl and a menacing sweep of his arm. He pushed the man towards Rodriga.
“Your pardon,” the captive muttered without lifting his head. “Want no charity—it was the speech done it. Fit for nowt but begging.”
Rodriga glanced up at Piers, offering him the initiative, but he merely gazed unhappily at her and waited. Plainly it was left to her. The Englishman stood dumb and hopeless, and she marked again the signs of incomplete recovery and inadequate food. Inspiration came to her.
“You go too fast,” she said. “I have use for a groom, but more use for a cook. Can you cook?”
“No.”
“Neither can my foster-brother who poisons us now, so you may come with me and learn by practice.”
“P—practice?” His head came up.
“If you are willing to try.”
He stared dazedly at her. “You—you means—truly—oh, Saviour Christ!” His eyes flooded, his freckled face crumpled like a child’s, and he threw his sound arm across his eyes and broke down. Piers, hotly embarrassed, looked wildly about him. Rodriga patted the man’s shaking shoulder, feeling the sharp bones under his rags, and signed to Piers to take himself away. He remained to watch, uselessly sympathetic and aware of his own inadequacy.
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