“Ah, peerless Rodriga, your frown clouds the sun!” he declared, backing into the doorway so that she could not pass. “Will you not permit it to shine on your miserable adorer?”
“Keep your paws from my serving-woman!”
“You deign to be jealous? But what is the moon when the sun has risen, my heartless lady? Fair Rodriga, must I sigh for ever?”
“There are strumpets enough in Acre to pleasure you! Out of my way!”
He continued to bar it. “But when I set my heart on a wench, fair flower, it is not to be denied, even though she take a mongrel renegade to her bed.”
Rodriga hit him across his sneering mouth with all the strength in her body, and felt his lips split on his teeth. Caught off balance, the man went down, sprawling in the filth and dust with bright blood running over his chin. Her palm smarted as if scorched as she stepped over his legs and out. “I would sooner bed with maggot-ridden carrion!” she declared savagely.
He picked himself up, his bloody face murderous. Marco had appeared soundlessly at her side, and his hand was on his knife-haft. One or two passers-by paused to stare. “Some day I will remind you of that, demoiselle,” he promised vindictively, and strode away.
Helga snivelled, and Rodriga dragged her clear of the doorway and knocked her spinning against the wall with an echoing slap. “I ought to take a whip to you!” she exclaimed, slapping her again as she whined and cowered. She threw up her arms to protect herself, and Rodriga jerked her away from the wall and shook her fiercely. “Pretend to be an honest wife, and permit that lecher to paw you?”
“M-my lady, I could not help it! Oh, do not beat me! He—he came to me—and how could I offend a noble knight?”
“Saints in Heaven, I was within call! Are you still a whore to accept his fondlings? What will Wulfric have to say?”
“Oh, do not tell him! Please, please, my lady, do not tell him! He will beat me—he will strangle me—”
“The only reason why I shall not is that it would break his heart! Yes, and bring him to the gallows, for he would slay that vile beast! Get up, wench!” For Helga had cast herself down and was clutching at her skirts, and the revulsion she had so far mastered broke from her control. She kicked free in disgust. “Get up, I say! You are wife to an honest man, and must learn decency!”
“I never meant any wrong!” Helga blubbered. “I am afraid of him —I dared not offend him!” She scrambled up and shrank against the wall, shaking with sobs. Tears trickled over the scarlet fingerprints on her cheeks. Even with the fading black eye she looked very pretty and very pathetic, and Diego, who had been goggling in the doorway, gazed reproachfully at his mistress. Marco watched coldly. A young man halted on his way and seemed disposed to intervene, fired by sympathy for such charming distress, but one glance from Marco sent him regretfully up the street. Rodriga’s temper grew hotter as she knew herself judged for a merciless shrew abusing her pretty maidservant, and if she had had a whip near her hand Helga’s sides would have smarted for a week.
“Back to the house! Before us, so that I can watch you! No, I will not hear another word!”
Another blow enforced the order as Helga tried again to excuse herself, and she started back sobbing and whimpering; in fact, thought Rodriga savagely, making more of three sound slaps than a reasonable woman would have made of a thrashing, and winning the pity of every man who saw her.
“Comporting herself as though she were still in Giocomo’s house!” she fumed to Marco. “Allowing—no, inviting that lecherous reptile’s caresses! She shall learn to have no dealings with our enemies, however often they have lain together and whatever fondness she may cherish for him!”
“Fondness? Not she. That one is a true whore,” he stated grimly.
“What do you mean?”
“Your true whore sells herself coldly, for gain, like my mother.”
“And in my folly I have bound Wulfric to that!” she cried in horror and disgust.
“You gave him his heart’s desire,” he corrected her. “If the girl prove unworthy, it is no blame to you, my lady.”
“Foolish charity!” she castigated herself.
“You gave it to me and to Wulfric,” he reminded her. “If she fails you, should you condemn generosity? And this is futile repining, my lady. You will continue foolishly charitable to your life’s end.”
She answered his smile with a reluctant grin, knowing that he was right, but the soreness remained. Light manners she could have tolerated better than trafficking with Lothaire de Gallenard. And Wulfric must be left his heart’s love; she could not disillusion him, who had nothing in the world but his faithless darling.
Rodriga had not foreseen how difficult it would be to account for her hand-prints on the girl’s tear-blubbered face, when the truth must be concealed. She had sworn Diego to silence already. Her statement that she had needed to school her in courtesy sounded lame in her own ears, and Helga's show of cringing obedience implied to all the household that she had been brutally severe. Wulfric, fiercely protective, regarded her with angry reproach, and the young Catalans, sorry for one so pretty and so woebegone, infuriated Rodriga by joining to comfort her. The incident breached their comradeship. She must figure before her followers as a plain mistress jealous of her pretty servant, which was exactly what the little strumpet had intended. Marco, who might have shared with her his own sublime disregard for others’ opinions, had left them at the door and gone down to the harbour, and her father was recruiting his strength in audible slumber. She took up the interminable pink, white and green lozenges and stabbed them with her needle as viciously as though they were Helga’s plump white body.
Her rages were short-lived, and she had worked most of the ill-temper out of herself, sitting in the anteroom listening to Landry’s snoring, when light feet ran up the stairs. The curtain billowed, and Marco came through the doorway like a gale of wind, his eyes blazing with excitement in his dark face. One look brought her to her feet in a cascade of coloured silken pieces, her breath catching in her throat. He had found a ship; she needed no telling when he stood before her breathing fast, his hard face suddenly breaking into eager laughter.
“A ship? Oh, tell me! Can you buy it, Marco?”
The story tumbled from him like floodwater down a mountain-stream. She would never have believed that Marco could be so overwhelmed by incredulous delight that he loosed all control, laughing and stammering like an enthusiastic boy. He had heard yesterday of this chance and made a tentative offer but had not dared to hope for such good fortune as to find his ship at the first asking. Today he had no sooner shown his face on the waterfront than he was approached. The captain and owner had died recently, and his widow, elderly and childless, wished to return to her native Pisa and pass her last years there in comfort. A purchaser was not easy to find in Acre, and her friends had quickly come to terms. The ship was a dromon, barely three years from the shipwright, tight and well-found and of the newest design, with a stern-castle and cabin and a decked hold for valuable cargo. She was named the Magdalena. Marco had been over her from masthead to keel, and she was already his heart’s delight.
“And can you buy her?” inquired Landry from the inner doorway, regarding him between amusement and surprise.
“I have done!” Marco declared jubilantly. “At least,” he amended, “I had the price of my camel, and paid that to clinch the bargain.” Landry rolled forward, simply attired in an unlaced tunic, his hair on end. “Sold the stinking brute already, eh?”
“One does not cherish tender sentiments towards a camel.”
Landry shoved Rodriga’s sewing aside and sat down with a grunt, disposed the cushions more comfortably under his hindquarters, and looked sardonically from one to the other. “Sit down, get your breath and wits, and let us discuss this matter soberly, you young addle-heads.”
They obeyed like children called to order. It was immediately obvious that, for all his unwonted display of enthusiasm, Marco was entirely clear-headed
about his venture. He came of sound merchant stock and had been a trader for years. He admitted frankly that the ship’s purchase would take every penny he possessed and more; he had not anticipated buying so fine and costly a vessel. He had some spices which he had hoped to reserve, since in Italy they would fetch twice the price they would in Acre, but they must go. He had no credit to borrow on, and would not, if he had, go into debt. The crew were willing to continue with the ship. It was the custom to pay the sailors with a share of cargo space, so he had not to contend with the burden of wages. Since he had nothing to purchase cargo and had yet to establish a reputation as a trustworthy carrier of other men’s goods, he proposed to hire his ship as a transport to King Richard, a prompt and faithful paymaster, for the remainder of the season, perhaps even for next year if the campaign lasted so long, and buy goods as he could. The whole plan sounded to Rodriga like excellent sense, and Landry, putting incisive questions and listening to his ready answers, was nodding approval.
“Yes, you are not the fool I thought you,” he admitted handsomely at last. “You have a reputation to handicap you, at least in the beginning, but you have taken that into the reckoning. I will speak for you to the King. And you must claim any other aid in my power.”
“You are very gracious,” said Marco formally, “and I thank you.” There was nothing formal about the smile he gave him.
“Father, may I go to the harbour to see the Magdalena?” Rodriga begged.
“You and your ships! Must have seal’s blood in you, like the seamaids in the Irish stories. Me, I pass the voyage hanging over the side and puking my guts out!” He considered for a moment, and then shook his head firmly. “No, you may not go until you do it in my company. It is one thing for Marco to escort you about the streets, and another for you to go aboard ship of his. I will have no scandal smearing your name, my lass.”
“Because of Piers?” she asked bluntly.
“Because of Piers, and not because I do not trust you both. You understand? You are not to endanger this match by imprudent conduct.”
“And your squire has a particular aversion to me,” Marco finished for him coolly. “Set your mind at ease; I will not endanger my lady’s name, or your plans.” He stood up, his face impassive, and started for the stair.
“Marco, I have said I trust you!” Landry declared urgently. “But I cannot let anything overset this marriage!”
He turned at the door. “Even though you know in your heart that she deserves better?”
CHAPTER XVII
Through the next four days Rodriga exercised what patience she owned, and only the dress of coloured lozenges showed the benefit. The personal freedom with which she had been so reprehensibly indulged was now circumscribed within the limits proper to a noble demoiselle, and the future offered her yet narrower bounds; she had no illusions about Piers’s opinion on the matter. Landry mended steadily. His leg was healed, and his strength returning day by day.
She saw little of Marco, who spent his days upon his ship’s business. He had stripped himself of all he possessed except his clothes and his knife, and the Magdalena was now his own. The bitter insolence had gone from his manner, replaced by a tranquil silence, and he was now so surely a member of their household that even Urraca carped at him as impersonally as she did at everyone.
Piers put no credit in the reformation of notorious sinners, and his view, for which no one asked him, was that if Marco had contrived to cheat an unfortunate widow out of a dromon he must have made even the Holy Land too unhealthy to hold him and was contemplating piracy as a lucrative change. But Piers had less patience than Rodriga and was practically at the end of it. Full of wild schemes of violence, he fretted Landry for action, and wooed Rodriga with increased importunity. She welcomed the day when he could at last limp abroad for more reasons than her chance to see the ship.
The Magdalena fired Rodriga to the same enthusiasm that filled Marco, so that she regretted over again that she had had the ill-luck to be born a girl. She ferretted through her from bows to aftercastle, from the sunny poop to the darkest depths of the hold with its exciting ship’s scents of bilge-water and pitch, cheese and wine and oil and spices, fish and fruit. Only the strongest representations on Landry’s part restrained her from tucking up her skirts and mounting into the rigging, where Marco was working with his crew, overhauling every inch of gear. Perversely, the seamen liked and were proud of their new employer; perhaps the fact that his first crime had been the murder of a brutal captain had endeared him to them.
“I can feel no more tender sentiment for a ship than you can for a camel,” pronounced Landry judicially, “but as ships go, and so long as I go not aboard them, you have done well, Marco.” He cocked his eye aloft with an assumption of knowledge that drew a chuckle from his undutiful daughter.
Marco sprang down from the rigging and grinned at him. “She is ready for sea. Do you not wish to try her?” He was stripped to his braies for ease of movement aloft, and his hard brown body shone with sweat. The joyful enthusiasm he took to the physical labour had first surprised Rodriga and then delighted her; truly he had come to his birthright.
Landry, perched at the top of the aftercastle companion, shuddered eloquently. The crew, having finished aloft and brailed up the sails, came strolling aft, and he started to heave himself out of Marco’s way. Marco shook his head and swung himself carelessly over the wooden crenellations to the deck below. The sailors asked and received leave to go ashore, and rolled away up the quayside leaving two men and a lad as anchor-watch.
“Time we moved on,” Landry observed regretfully, glancing at the lengthening shadows. This first venture abroad had greatly pleased him, but he was tired and ready for his supper.
Round the harbour the taverns and brothels were unfastening shutters and opening doors, while the forges, ships’-chandlers, warehouses, workshops and dealers’ stores were closing theirs. Some nearly naked children were playing tag up and down the mole, squealing with excitement. A grain-ship was unloading further along the quay, and wheels rumbled on the stones and hoove's clattered as a laden cart lurched away. Seamen in canvas drawers, stripped to the waist and burned brown as saddle-leather, were everywhere, and every tongue of the Levant combined in one strident babble like the noise of a starling-roost. Rodriga leaned over the bulwark to watch, and Landry reached a hand to Marco and was hauled up.
“Spare me a little longer?” suggested the Magdalena s captain, and at his nod leaped overboard. Rodriga watched him swim towards the mole, keenly envious. Her own flesh was sticky with heat and her smock clung to her, but that refreshment was denied her. A man hailed Marco from one of the ships anchored out in the harbour, and he trod water to answer. Then he dived like a seal, reappeared and forged back. He scrambled aboard by the steering-oar, thrust the wet hair from his eyes and stood dripping. The fierce sun dried him almost in an instant, leaving a faint powdering of salt over his skin, and as he ducked into the cabin under the poop his wet footprints shrank and vanished on the planking.
Landry grunted and straightened himself, peering at an eddying of the throngs made by a large body thrusting through them. Rodriga glimpsed a familiar fair head and bulky shoulders. “Piers!” she exclaimed.
Landry was already waving a greeting. The young man saw them, waved back, and headed more purposefully towards the Magdalena. “Go to meet him, lass, and we will follow,” urged Landry, adding grimly, “He will not wish to set foot aboard Marco’s ship.”
Rodriga started for the gangplank, reckoning the quayside the right compromise between eagerness and modesty. Piers grinned and charged towards her with very little regard for anyone in his path. He almost collided with a couple of cassocks, and fell back with apologies. One covered the rotund body of Father Augustine, who greeted him benignly. His companion, a long leathery man in a threadbare gown apparently held together by the dirt of years, grunted something unamiable and then stared at the lad, his shaggy brows twitching together in surprise. Rodriga, at
the head of the gangplank, had a clear sight of his face. He looked again at the squire, opened his lips as if to speak, closed them and shrugged. He stalked away along the waterfront like a camel, turning once to look back at Piers as he answered Father Augustine. Rodriga caught her breath back and ran down the gangplank in unmaidenly haste.
Piers met her at the foot, seizing her hands. She pulled free impatiently. “No, not now! Father Augustine—I must speak with him!” She left him gaping and ran after the plump departing back. “Father, please wait!”
He turned at her breathless cry, surprised but kindly. “Why child, what is amiss?”
“Father, that was the hermit from Mount Carmel?”
“Yes, my daughter. Why?”
“Do you know him? A Poitevin, is he not?”
“An old colleague of mine. I knew him well when I lived in Poitiers, years ago. He had a cure of souls at Canderoc, between Poitiers and Rionart. You are acquainted with Lord Robert of Rionart, of course. But what is wrong, child? What have I said?”
Her heart leaped so that it almost choked her, and her voice came in a gasping rush. “Was he there twenty years ago?”
“Yes. But why do you ask?” His lively, intelligent eyes narrowed. “Yes, your father has been very eager to trace old friends, has he not?”
“He seeks a witness for a lawsuit,” she explained quickly, since explanation of some sort must be given; he was by far too shrewd a guesser. “But do not tell anyone, I beg you! It is to right an injustice, and lives depend on it!”
“I will keep silence, knowing you.”
“And the holy hermit—has he gone back to Carmel?”
“He was on his way when I met him. He spent last night denouncing sin along the waterfront, so his opinion of mankind is today at its lowest. But then Hilary never entertained hope for humanity’s salvation, which must account for his withdrawal from the world.”
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