by David Gilman
Now, he thought, the wound was reopened.
And not only his.
He saw the look of alarm flash across Henry’s face. He had stabbed the boy’s heart.
‘Merciful God, Henry. You know, boy, don’t you?’ He realized that the lie he had told about the rapist’s child being his own when they had previously visited the convent might have been believed then, but the boy had grown in knowledge.
Henry’s face tightened as he held back the tears. ‘I know whose child it is,’ he said.
Father and son stood alone on the darkening hillside, the cold bite of wind ignored. It could cause no deeper chill than what they already felt.
‘I promised your mother,’ Blackstone said, his voice little more than a whisper. ‘I honour her, still.’
Henry’s chin sunk to his chest. Silent tears fell.
Blackstone took his son into his arms and they both wept for the woman they had loved.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Abbaye de l’Evry rose sheer from the ground, windows set high in its walls. The abbey had been fortified a hundred years before and blessed with stipends from the nobility and knights who sent wayward daughters and unwanted offspring behind its walls to be forgotten. Their fate was left in the hands of the nuns who inhabited the sprawling convent.
The edifice stood rock-like in the barren landscape. What had been a village of a few hundred souls who had grown food and helped sustain the convent now lay in ruins. King Edward’s orders that no church or convent be desecrated had been adhered to. The command had not included those who lived beneath its walls.
Killbere and John Jacob waited half a mile back from the convent gates as Blackstone and Henry were granted entry. Their weapons had been surrendered to Killbere who rubbed a thumb across the silver penny embedded in Wolf Sword’s pommel. The sword carried Blackstone’s history better than any scribe’s manuscript.
‘Just as well the King had no desire to scale these walls,’ said Killbere. ‘Not just for Thomas’s sake but ours. It would take a siege engine to reach over them.’
‘The men ask why we came here,’ said John Jacob.
‘There’s no need for them to know, John,’ said Killbere. Only he and John Jacob were aware of the reason.
‘I’ve told them Sir Thomas owes a debt to these nuns. That they offered prayers for his wife.’
‘A good enough explanation,’ said Killbere. He spat and then blew snot from his nose. ‘Were the bastard child mine I would leave it to its fate.’
‘The boy is well?’ asked Blackstone as he followed the abbess through the colonnade. ‘There is nothing wrong with him?’
‘We neither accept nor keep any child of deformity or idiocy. We allow only those whom we believe to have the potential to be a vassal of God,’ she said as she briskly led Blackstone and his son along the stone-floored passageway of the open cloister. The convent was built so that the open ground faced south and gathered as much sun as possible and its walls ensured protection from the northerly and easterly winds. There were gardens and a well within the walls and nuns went about their duties hoeing and working in the potagers, but there were other women dressed in more fashionable clothing than a nun’s habit who sat on benches enjoying shelter from chilling wind. They wore furs and fine cloaks and it was doubtful their hands had ever scrubbed a cooking pot.
‘And women of entitlement bereft of their husbands,’ said Blackstone, as one of the better-dressed women stared at him with open hostility.
‘Widows and those who choose to live here in safety,’ the abbess answered. And then without any sense of embarrassment: ‘They pay well. They lie on feather mattresses and have clean white sheets. They have carpets on the floor and freshly cut rushes beneath them that are changed each season so that their dress hems do not trail in the dirt. Their food is as rich as they desire. Since I took the veil forty years ago I have seen many such women come and go. It is not for me to judge,’ she said. ‘Your King protects us behind these walls as much as our lamented King Jean, but your barbarian soldiers would be happy to storm the walls if they could and dishonour us all. It is well known to God and all his angels that our innocence is like that of the sacrificial lamb.’
How innocent? he wondered. Fornication with monks or priests was not uncommon and the abbess wore two or three jewelled rings on her fingers. Protection came from many places: a pious king who would see no harm come to nuns and an abbot who would ignore misdemeanours and irregular bookkeeping in return for sexual favours. It was not only money that rich women used to pay for indulgences.
‘This is a religious house for women,’ said the abbess. ‘We are secluded from men other than the abbot and the priests of the Church. We do not usually permit men to enter into our sanctuary but we know your intentions are honourable.’
‘The boy… my son… what of him?’
‘When you were last here after your wife’s death, may God rest her soul, we had a wet-nurse from the village attend him. Now we let him stay with the older children placed in our care so that he might learn from them. He is a willing child and even tries to copy them in their chores.’ He was a pace behind her as she turned a corner. A door was slightly ajar and Blackstone saw it was the refectory. It was plain and unadorned, a place where food would be eaten in silence, perhaps with a reading being given. A far cry from the raucous scene when his own band of men ate. The abbess led him to where a narrow passage went past the chapter house. The slype led in turn to a heavy oak carved door where she stopped. ‘Your wife wished us to keep him only until she was out of danger from the Jacquerie. That she died would have caused you pain and loss. She was a good Frenchwoman who saw fit to marry… you. But you paid us to keep the child and we have honoured the bargain. Please restrain yourself from calling out your son’s name. He must not be upset by a wayward father’s desire to know his offspring,’ she said and pushed the door open.
The room was large and illuminated by cresset lamps which were barely sufficient to cast their light around the vastness of the space. The vaulted ceiling’s beams flickered with shadows and added to the eerie silence surrounding what seemed at first glance to be twenty-odd children of different ages sitting on wooden benches at long tables where they stitched cloth. They worked in silence. Boys were dressed in loose-fitting shirts and girls in shifts; all wore a knitted woollen vest for warmth. The youngest seemed to be about three years old, the oldest eight or nine. The great slabs of cut stone on the floor had no covering of reeds for warmth underfoot.
‘They sew clothes that we sell,’ said the abbess. ‘We teach practical skills as well as scripture.’
‘It’s cold in here,’ said Henry. ‘There’s a brazier – could it not be lit?’
‘We must all learn to endure,’ she answered, giving Henry and his father a disapproving look.
The children had glanced up at their arrival in the hall but a nun quickly laid a strop onto the tabletop to bring back their attention. Henry flinched at the abbess’s sharp retort. It was not difficult to imagine punishment being meted out for any slight infraction of good behaviour or convent rules. Henry knew the children’s life within these walls would be strictly controlled. Which was the better existence? This life or the harshness that beckoned outside: sent into the fields by the age of three or apprenticed into a knight’s care to be trained as a page? Harshness of one kind or another came as surely as night followed day. Every child endured whatever it must.
Like his father he searched out the child who might be his half-brother. ‘I don’t see him,’ said Henry. ‘Father?’
Blackstone shook his head and wished he had not honoured his wife’s memory. It served no purpose to be in this place, looking to identify a bastard he could never love. But he knew why he had come. He desperately wanted to see Christiana’s face in the child. That hope tempered the pain of going once again into the convent.
‘There,’ said the abbess, pointing to the middle of a bench and a dark-haired boy, his body hunche
d over the bench, his nimble fingers gathering pieces of cloth that he passed from one older child to another as if it were a game. His face was bright and round, cheeks flushed with the cold or good health – it was impossible for Blackstone to determine which. The boy was working quickly but then he raised his face to another child and his face broke into a grin. Dark eyes sparkled with mischief as he pricked the other boy quickly with his needle. The older child winced but did not cry out, and with a quick glance to see that the nun was not watching pricked him back. A child’s spitefulness expressed as play. Nothing about the boy reflected Christiana’s warmth. Her autumn-coloured hair and green eyes were absent.
Blackstone turned on his heel. ‘I’ve seen enough,’ he said.
*
The abbess escorted him to her office where a novice sat with quill and parchment. A leather-bound ledger, as tall as the table was deep, lay open. Blackstone instructed Henry to wait outside.
The abbess faced Blackstone as the door closed heavily behind him. ‘Our King forces our people to burn their own villages. Those that do not are destroyed by your soldiers. I lose rents. It might soon be impossible to keep… all the children. Their care is expensive,’ she said, trying to hide her slyness by glancing down at the neatly written columns in the ledger.
Blackstone spilled out a purse of gold moutons. A small fortune to the likes of the abbess. Enough money to cover ten years’ rents.
‘Betray me and the child and I will return and scale these walls that you think cannot be breached. And I will slaughter every living soul within them,’ said Blackstone and watched the colour drain from the abbess’s face.
She quickly regained her composure. ‘There is no need to threaten us, Sir Thomas. The boy’s welfare will be to the forefront of our minds and hearts.’
The novice counted the gold’s value and was about to enter the amount in the ledger when the abbess fingered a dozen coins from the pile.
‘The abbot would not look so kindly on such a generous donation, Sir Thomas. He would take more than usual for his priests’… wellbeing. We must have a contingency for unforeseen events. After all, there is a war being fought.’ She tapped the table with her finger, instructing the novice to enter the amount that remained.
‘How long will you keep him?’ said Blackstone.
‘Another five years – no longer; then he will be too old to live with women.’
‘And then?’ asked Blackstone.
‘A monastery, I would think.’
That would shut away the child for ever. He would be lost to the world, no doubt to become a tonsured and pious begging wretch in rough-sewn habit. Blackstone felt torn. He was about to abandon the child. It would take nothing more than those few gold coins to ensure that he never heard of the bastard again.
‘You would keep records of where he is sent?’ Blackstone asked, glancing at the novice nun.
‘Of course. We are held to account by the bishop.’
Let him go, the voice in his mind urged him. But Christiana refused to abandon her hold on him. He relented.
‘I’ve decided that for the boy’s own good he should not bear my name. I have too many enemies,’ said Blackstone. ‘He should be known by his mother’s family name. De Sainteny. Let it be recorded that he is William de Sainteny. My wife had no other living relative. No claim will be made against him and he in turn will have no cause to seek out the family.’
Such a request was not unusual. Children were disinherited; shamed girls were abandoned and bastard children forgotten. The abbess glanced at Blackstone. The scarred face was stern. It told her that her suspicions had been right all along. When Christiana had brought the baby to the convent gates seeking protection she had suspected then that the child was illegitimate. The mother was no harlot; that had been obvious. So the child was either the result of rape or an illicit affair. It mattered not.
‘It shall be as you wish,’ the abbess answered. The Englishman had paid enough to have her forget original sin, let alone that of a dishonoured woman.
He watched as the novice erased his name from the ledger and replaced it with Christiana’s family name.
The ink dried; the ledger thudded closed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Blackstone made no mention of what had happened at the convent as he led the men towards Paris where he expected the King’s army to be. The weather changed seemingly by the hour as the wind drove the rain into their faces and then veered so that the dry cold air chilled them further. Killbere and John Jacob kept their silence, but Killbere had Aelis on his mind. It would just take him some time to broach the subject of the woman with Blackstone.
‘When the King is crowned and holds France, will you return to Normandy?’
‘Why would I?’ said Blackstone.
‘It was your home with Christiana and the children.’
‘It was my home when she was alive. No longer.’
‘Where then?’
‘If we survive the war… Tuscany, I suppose. I will have Father Torellini find a tutor for Henry in Florence. It will be a good time for him to return to his education. Another year of serving as my page at John Jacob’s side will have toughened him and given him the skills he will need to become a squire one day.’
‘You trust a Florentine priest in the pay of the bankers of Florence too much. One day his grace and favour towards you will run out and on that day he’ll sell your soul to the highest bidder. Florence is a city-state that cares only about itself. Like any king or ruler. We count for nothing when deals are made, Thomas.’
‘He has been a true and trusted friend. I’ll count on that for as long as it lasts. Besides, Tuscany will suit us all. Elfred is still there with several hundred of my men. Our contract still holds with Florence.’
‘If Elfred is still alive. He was old when we invaded in France in ’46: Italian women and wine might well have planted him in the ground already.’ Killbere grimaced. What lay ahead offered little compensation once Edward became King of France. ‘Well, I suppose Tuscany is as good a place as any unless a crusade comes up, though I cannot bear the cries of the righteous when it comes to slaughtering heretics and non-believers. Best let a man face God on his own terms is what I say. Italy will at least be warmer, which is in its favour. And there’ll still be some fighting to be had. Here, it will soon be over and if I’m to die in a good fight then I would rather choose the company I die in.’
‘You complained when we were in Italy. You had had enough of the winters. They were colder than here.’
‘I changed my mind.’
‘Like an old woman.’
‘When you were a boy and I took you to war I swore to Lord Marldon that I would offer you my protection. Now that I’m an “old woman” it will soon be time I am looked after. You owe me that.’
‘I’ll find you a fat peasant woman to feed you gruel and keep you warm in your bed.’
Killbere said nothing for a moment. It seemed unlikely a better time to discuss Aelis’s fate would present itself. ‘Talking of women, Thomas, we must discuss the witch girl, and what is to be done with her. Perhaps we should have committed her to the convent,’ he said.
‘She’s no witch, Gilbert, nor was her father.’
‘She predicted you would come here. She survived the water. If she’s a witch she has the power to cheat death.’
‘She did not name this place,’ Blackstone answered.
‘And yet we ended up here. Which is where your past lies.’
‘A turn of phrase. She doesn’t know anything about me. Every man’s past lies down the road. It’s where we meet our maker when we die. I thought you would be the one who would want to keep her. Are you not grateful to her for your life? And that she bedded you?’
‘My life is in God’s hands, not those of some herbalist who is banned from practising her skills and obliged to mix herbs and potions in a cellar out of sight of the King’s officers. That she straddled me – if you are to be believed – I will cons
ider to be moments of fevered pleasure. I did not know it was her. I will not allow myself to be beholden to a woman who finds me irresistible.’
‘You have the good grace to smile. A ravening wolf might find you irresistible. I doubt many women would unless enough silver was pressed into their hand,’ said Blackstone.
‘All right, all right, I might jest but what do you intend with her? We ride into the King’s camp with a woman who could snare an army with her bewitching eyes.’
‘I don’t know what to do with her, Gilbert. I’m at a loss. If I abandon her to her fate I sense I’ll be cursed.’
‘You fear her?’ said Killbere.
‘Not fear. A voice inside urges me to keep her with us. It tells me she is important to us, but I don’t know why.’
‘God’s tears, Thomas. Has the visit to the convent and the boy addled your brain? Voices? I hear voices when I am lying drunk on rough wine and you have not been drunk since we dragged you from that piss-reeking room at the inn in London. The voices are your own. No pagan goddess, no angel on your shoulder – you!’
Blackstone tugged his cloak closer around him. It was already soaked, but it provided some warmth as he sat unmoving on horseback. ‘She can treat our wounded. I’ll keep her for a while longer.’
Killbere relented and fell silent. He turned in the saddle and looked back to where Aelis rode alone, boxed front and back by men-at-arms in the middle of the column. He shuddered. It was not from the cold rain that dribbled down his neck. Her eyes were on him and a smile played on her lips.
As if she knew he had been talking about her.
*
They were within a day’s ride of the King on the outskirts of Paris. Their misery from the rain was compounded by the food running low. The forest’s branches dripped incessantly and an acrid veil of smoke from the damp kindling stung eyes and caught men’s throats. Blackstone rode the bastard horse at walking pace beyond the forest the length of the men’s camp. The figures moving about looked like phantoms, ghost soldiers that hovered between two worlds. We are already dead. This life is the journey towards death. Strange words that came from somewhere in his thoughts. He could not remember anyone speaking them, or hearing them in any sermon spewed forth from a priest. A cloaked figure stepped out of the trees and stood waiting. Another followed her but stayed in the treeline.