Knight's Honor

by Roberta Gellis

  HEREFORD WOKE IN THE DAWN OF ANOTHER DAY WITH FIRST A FEELING of blissful relaxation and lack of responsibility and then surprise at the fact that he was still completely clad in mail. The events of the past day, swiftly returning to memory, explained his condition, and he lay quietly smiling into the dimness of the room, realizing that someone must have carried him to bed after he dropped into the rushes of the hall. Decidedly, he thought, his sense of freedom and release welling up until he believed he would burst with joy, the dream was a false temptation, as Elizabeth had suggested, or he had overridden his fate, for his uneasiness was gone.

  He remembered too, his smile going a little grim, that Eustace was trapped in Faringdon. The end was in sight, clearly and unmistakably now, because Faringdon was ringed about by castles, smaller it was true, but stuffed and garnished for war and filled with fresh fighting men loyal to Henry. His breathing deepened with the first sensation of truly unalloyed enthusiasm he had had since Gaunt had offered him this task. Henry, he knew, had issued orders already to the surrounding keeps to send out men to besiege Faringdon. After a day or two to rest—with no celebrating in between, Hereford thought wrylythey would go out and take Faringdon. That would be amusing, in a way, for they would assail Faringdon with many of the siege engines Eustace had brought to destroy Devizes. The fact that they would not need to spend time constructing these giving them a substantial additional advantage.

  He stretched outward and then clasped his hands to flex the muscles in the back of his neck. This action brought to his attention the fact that he was stained with dried blood. With a grimace of mild distaste, Hereford bellowed for his servants to order a bath. It was cold and he would freeze, but freezing was better than remaining filthy, even though the blood was largely that of his enemies and he was honorably bespattered.

  It was not so cold, after all, thought the earl, luxuriating in the hot, scented water and watching the leaping flames in the hearth. He stiffened momentarily as the door opened, for he was totally defenseless, and de Caldoet's attempt on him was still close enough in time to make him cautious. It was only Henry, however, and Hereford relaxed, stretching out a wet but welcoming hand.

  "A good morning to you, my lord, a lovely, bright, blessed morning."

  "Mayhap to you, but to the rest of the world it rains." The voice Henry replied in was strange and strained, but wrapped in his own peace, Hereford did not notice.

  "Well then," he said, irrepressibly cheerful, "it is a good, fruitful rain that will moisten the winter planting."

  Henry fidgeted about the room, picking up Roger's clothing, handling his gear and his weapons, and scuffing at the rushes on the floor. Hereford was inured to this restless behavior and paid no attention, scrubbing himself thoroughly and accepting a large, soft cloth with which to wrap and dry himself.

  "Have you news from Faringdon?"

  Hereford mildly hoped not because he wanted to linger in pleasant inactivity for a while. All sense of fear and urgency had left him, and he was slightly reluctant to bring his mind to bear upon another campaign. Only slightly, however, because, though he was in a mood for easy idleness, he was also buoyantly prepared to don his mail and fight with his old eager joy, his keenness no longer dulled by vague shadows. No more than why the fears had come did Hereford know why they were gone. He knew only that he had met his crisis in a few moments on the field before Devizes and passed through it.

  "Faringdon? No. I have no word from there. Roger …"

  That time Hereford could not miss the uneasiness in his overlord's voice. He turned quickly toward Henry with a natural concern for what he felt would be bad news, but with no foreboding of disaster.

  "Well?" he was still smiling slightly. "What unforeseen event has overtaken us now? Has Eustace escaped? Is Stephen at our gates?"

  "I am returning to France as soon as I can reach the shore and as soon as the winds favor my crossing."

  There was a dead silence in the room, broken by the faint hissing of the flames in the hearth. The smile still lingered on Hereford's lips, but now without meaning, for the blue eyes had gone dark and empty. A sharp explosion and a shower of sparks that escaped onto the rushes caused an instinctive physical reaction in Hereford who jumped back.

  "I suppose I heard you aright?" His voice was flat and careful. "Just like that—no reason. You are bored with the game we have played?"

  "Roger, in the merciful name of Christ, do not torment me. You cannot think that I have desired this—not at this time when within our very grasp is—"

  "Then do not go. Who is there who can make you do so? Do not go and we can forget you ever mentioned it."

  The eyes, gray and blue, locked and fought, but the gray did not give way. Stubborn and decisive, Henry held on. He was sad and reluctant to do this, but his conflict had raged through the night and his decision was unshakable.

  "I have had word from my father that I am to come home at once. The letter must have arrived shortly after we left for Gloucester, but there seemed no urgency in it and it was not sent on. Then the siege …"

  A faint flutter of hope fought for life in Hereford. "Ay. No doubt he heard how all things seemed to conspire against our effort. That is reasonable, to recall you from a defeated cause. But now … Now everything is different. Write and tell him how we have prospered. There is no longer need for his caution."

  The little hope died stillborn as Henry shook his head. "Would I have troubled you for such a matter, Roger? Nay, he wants me for a far different purpose. There is a rumor—well, it is more than that—that the Queen of France, she whose dower lands are greater than King Louis' inheritance, that the Lady Eleanor, wishes to shed her husband and take a new spouse. There has been trouble between them for years and my father has slyly watched this. On this last Crusadeit takes a sanctified fool like Louis to go on Crusade and let his kingdom fall into ruins around him—the king and queen seem to have come to a parting of the ways. Pope Eugenius pacified Louis, but Queen Eleanor seems to have remained secretly of the same mind. My father thinks she might have me, if she should find me to her taste."

  Hereford stared and then shook his head. "Do you mean to tell me that Louis and Eleanor are divorced? I will not believe it. We have little news here, but something of that note would not pass us."

  "Of course not. I told you Louis is reconciled with her through Eugenius' mediation, but the lady—"

  "They are still married then?" Hereford interrupted.

  "Yes, of—"

  "Then where is your haste?” Hereford said hurriedly. “Let the lady shed him. It is indecent to hang about like a vulture waiting for the last breath to be taken. Besides, she will be more like to look with favor on the King of England than upon the heir of Geoffrey of Anjou."

  Finally Henry dropped his eyes. His voice was low and sad. "Roger, this is senseless. I have spent the night going over and over this matter from every point of view. You can suggest nothing to me that I have not already brought forth and looked at. Plainly it is this. She must make her decision, and the man must be ready and waiting before she sheds Louis.”

  He looked up again and catching Roger’s expression, turned away. “How long do you think she will remain unwed?” He asked bitterly. “If she will have me, I must be ready to snatch her up the moment the decree comes to her hand. Or even before she has it in hand. Most important of all is that she see me and decide on me.”

  “Í say again that the King of England will be more attractive than plain Sir Henry of Anjou.”

  Henry sighed. “Doubtless the lady will not marry beneath her, but she has been married too long to a monk. My father believes that Iwho am plainly not in the least monkish, indeed some say I am wholly given over to the lusts of the flesh—can tempt her to take the final step by my person, not by my titles or expectations." Henry's face hardened, the brutal lower jaw thrusting forward. "I can be King of England any time, Roger, for my claim to the throne is just and must be recognized in the end. Do not mistake me, I
mean to have it all—all. But to be Eleanor of Aquitaine's husband”

  He drew a sharp breath. “Roger, if she takes me I will be master of all of western France when my father dies, all western France, a good part of the south of France, and England too, for England will fall into my hand like a ripe plum when that power is behind me." Henry's voice trembled with eagerness, his eyes were incandescent with the lust for power.

  Hereford looked down at his naked body, at the long sickle-shaped scar he had taken at Faringdon, the ugly red line of knotted flesh on his thigh He had taken that wound in Henry's cause in Normandy. He fingered the still suppurating wound de Caldoet had given him and noted with eyes which were beautiful, limpid, empty blanks the myriad cuts and bruises he had received in the last battles.

  "Do not go. Do not go now."

  Those words were instinctive, born of shock and disbelief. Hereford had not planned to say them, had not even thought them. What he wished to do was to offer a lucid plan for taking Faringdon quickly, although he knew that no matter how soon Eustace fell into their hands the negotiations would drag on for months.

  As soon as the words were out, however, he lost all desire to speak further. He recognized those words, just as he recognized the choked, strangled voice that uttered them as his own, just as he had recognized the burnt-out fields around Devizes as the place of his dream the day before. Night after weary night for eight long months he had heard those words, that voice, and he had been frozen in the same agonizing sense of futility and loss thinking that the words were addressed to him.

  Hereford had in truth found his dream, and it was false. His nightmare fear was that he had deserted the cause. Still he was wrong, too, because the dream had been an honest warning and was true. Hereford closed his eyes, which suddenly felt dry and scratchy because he had not blinked for so long. The only desertion in all that time which had not haunted him—had not, indeed, crossed his mind—that which he had made no attempt to guard against, naturally enough, and could not guard against, had destroyed in a moment the work of …

  "Three years. Three bitter years have I cast away, God help me."

  "Nay, Roger. You are dearer to my heart than almost any living man. If I gain great good, what you ask thereof, you shall have. God knows, I am not overgenerous, but what you ask of me you shall have, if it is in my power to give without harm to myself. Never say you have lost your labor. I shall not forget it, nor you."

  "I labored that England might have a king who would save her from being daily rent asunder, and all I have done is tear that bleeding body further."

  Hereford's voice was quiet, defeated. He had no intention of reproaching Henry nor, for that matter, was he blaming himself. He was merely stating the facts as he saw them, yielding without further struggle to what he recognized was ordained from the beginning.

  "England will have such a king,” Henry assured him, his voice hard. “You need not fear me. Let me but achieve this woman and I will be able to sweep all before me in one quick, clean stroke. You will lead that army also, Roger. Not one drop will be taken from your cup. Besides, there need be no waste of effort. Take Eustace and hold him for warranty of Stephen's good behavior. You can—"

  "No.” Hereford’s voice was equally hard. “I will not hold that young man in chains for who knows how many years. A fool he may be, but he is brave and courteous and, I believe, well meaning."

  "Was it well meaning to put this land to fire and the sword?"

  Hereford raised his eyes, and even empty as they were they held Henry's again. "Who drove him to it? In my memory Stephen has always been the mildest and most merciful of men, and his son follows his way. Mayhap we have driven him to madness."

  This time the Angevin's eyes dropped. He had tasted Stephen's mercy himself, and Roger knew it.

  "I will fight no more, my lord,” Hereford said, “except to guard what is mine."

  "Will you turn to Stephen now, desert me, Roger, and dishonor your oath?"

  "Nay, my lord, you desert me.” The flat tone did not even hold bitterness. “Nor will I dishonor my oath—I am still your man, for good or ill. If you return and you call me to arms, I will come and fight for you, but I will lead no more armies and strive beyond the letter of my word no more. I will lead no more lost causes."

  "Roger, I pray you, do not speak as if all is ended." Henry's genuinely affectionate heart was wrung by this dearest of vassal's pain. He embraced the resistless shoulders. "Come back to France with me. I will spare a week longer so that we can fetch your wife from Hereford in safety. Come, I pray you. Lady Elizabeth will love the court at Paris and you will have great sport watching me go secretly a-wooing."

  Dumbly Hereford shook his head.

  "I cannot help it, Roger," Henry cried at last. "Do not blame me for what I cannot help. You must see that so great a prize cannot be endangered."

  "Do not distress yourself, Harry." Henry tightened his embrace at Hereford's use of the affectionate diminutive of his name. "I do not blame you, nor myself, for all things are done by God's will and are in God's hands. I do not understand, but doubtless there is Divine reason for this. I cannot go to France. I am tired—tired beyond believing—and my lands cry out for me. I will go home."

  There was more talk, Henry urging Hereford to come to him later, at any time, promising earnestly and in good faith to give or send anything in his power to help his friend, but nothing more of note passed between them. They parted a day later, sadly and reluctantly, but fondly. Gloucester's vassals were dismissed to their master's service once more and Hereford spent a week more at Devizes making sure that their gains would not be lost again, sending instructions to abandon the siege at Faringdon and finally terminating his own vassals' service. He noted wryly that it was a year, exactly a year to the day when, in the pale sunlight of November, he turned his horse's head toward Hereford and began the lonely ride home.

  Thus Roger arrived, unheralded and unexpected, followed only by his small household guard, at the gates of Hereford Castle in the afternoon of the first day of the third week of November. He was two days earlier in time in arriving home than he had been a year before, but ages older in feeling. The town, the sloping, winding road up to the gates, the people running out to greet him, all unchanged, brought back vividly the memory of his emotion at that time. The violent conflict between his concealed fear of incapability and his wild desire and enthusiasm for the task, the shadow of the coming defeat, already forming in his mind, the soaring hopes of brilliant success, great power, and, best of all, a peaceful land, all these stirred in his memory.

  But quietly, everything was quiet now and far away. Even the shouts of the serfs and townsfolk that startled his horse into shying sounded small and distant. Hereford smiled gently, opened his purse, and tossed coins. A great peace pervaded him, a great, cold, quiet peace, like death.

  Elizabeth, informed of her husband's imminent arrival by a lookout from the gate tower, seized a cloak and ran hurriedly to the courtyard to greet him. The last she had heard had been a jubilant message by word of mouth recounting the victory over de Tracy and the taking of Bridport, but there had not been the slightest indication that Hereford intended to return home. The retainers who had crowded around their lord made way for Elizabeth, and Hereford, perceiving her, dismounted to kiss her hand and then her lips. He was smiling pleasantly and she could plainly see he was well and unhurt; nonetheless, the touch of those lips cold with a greeting that contained nothing more than courtesy turned pleasure to fear.

  "What is wrong, Roger? What has happened?"

  "A very great deal, my dear, but let me come in and shed my mail. There is no need for haste. I am home for good, Elizabeth."

  "For good!" Elizabeth was chilled through and not by the cold breeze that whipped her cloak about. She saw now that Roger's eyes, although turned in her direction and apparently seeing her, were not truly focused upon her. So she had been wrong and his spirit had been broken—but by what? Why? He offered his han
d in the court gesture with which a gentleman invited a lady of his acquaintance, but not close acquaintance, to walk.

  "Yes, for good," he replied mildly, and then, smiling, "unless of course I am forced to defend my own property against attack. I can still do that. Otherwise, I am a gentleman of leisure. It is too cold for you here, Elizabeth, you are trembling."

  She was, in truth, but not with cold. "Have you left Henry, Roger?"

  It was horrible, she thought, as she asked. Horrible that her voice should be so steady and unconcerned, horrible that she should place her hand upon Roger's and allow him to lead her formally up the stairs and into the hall of the manor house, horrible that he should smile, then laugh gaily as he replied.

  "No, indeed. He left me. Really, there is no need to discuss the matter, for it is quite final. Ah, Mother, and my darling Catherine."

  He released Elizabeth to embrace his mother and sister, and she remained where he left her, listening, stunned and unbelieving, to his proper questions about the well-being of his mother and his sister since he had seen them last. He must have broken and run, Elizabeth thought, and Henry had sent him away because he was useless, and now he was mad. He looked a little mad, as if there were a wall between him and the rest of the world and he was trying to look through it and speak through it, even though what he said and did were perfectly sane.

  He turned from his mother and sister only to fondle his daughters briefly, say how pretty they had grown, ask about what they had learned since he left them, and laugh at their innocent answers and pleasure at his inquiries. Then he retreated to the bedroom to wash, lay aside his armor and weapons, and dress in the luxurious, fur-trimmed robes of a gentleman who had no expectation of any hurried call to any duty.

  Emerging shortly, with no indication in face or manner that he wished to avoid company, Hereford devoted the intervening hours before suppertime to a discussion of Catherine's affairs. He told of the arrangements made with John FitzGilbert for Catherine's marriage to his son Patric and explained his reasons for that choice. He was perfectly good-humored, jesting lightly in his usual way as he calmed his sister's transports and seriously set himself to reason away his mother's objections.