‘Where is that infirmarer?’ he bellowed, above the steady weeping of the Prioress. He was growing incensed with the lack of speed of everyone about him and exasperated with the cowering, wailing nuns who had trailed after him like ducklings following their mother as he carried the helpless, vacant-eyed head of their order away from her devastated convent. If Alyson’s sister was in that drab company, why had she not come forward to be with her? Was she so withdrawn from the world that even the sight of her own flesh, broken and bleeding on the ground, stirred no passionate care? ’Is there no one?’
‘I am here, Guido.’ Calm as a rock in a sea of troubles, Sir Tom leaned down from his horse. ’What say I find something to use as a stretcher?’
‘Do it,’ Guillelm answered curtly, ’And tell your men to search the infirmary for potions and such.’ A late thought struck him, but he could not feel ashamed at it, not with Alyson injured beside him. ’See if any of our own men are hurt, and tend them.’
‘They will not be hurt. Men never are.’ A small, slim nun emerged from the smoke, her arms full of books and manuscripts.
‘I am Sister Ursula, who was once Matilda of Olverton Minor,’ she said, calm as glass. ‘I have been in our scriptorium, where our true treasures are stored. The mercenaries did not recognize them as such.’ Slow, careful, she laid the books on the ground and only then looked at Alyson.
‘Your infirmarer?’ Guillelm asked, as Sister Ursula’s lips moved in prayer. His hands itched to shake her out of her complacency: was this woman human? ’Your sister is still bleeding.’
‘The infirmarer is dead.’ Sister Ursula opened her eyes, fixing Guillelm with a stare of utter dislike, mingled with distaste. ’Our sister in Christ passed away eight days ago.’
‘Mother of God, have you no one who can help my wife?’
‘Do not blaspheme against the name of our blessed Lady of Heaven.’
Sister Ursula stared at a kneeling squire striking sparks off his knife to light a small, swiftly-gathered bundle of kindling until the youth shuffled out of her path. She knelt beside Alyson, facing Guillelm across her sister’s body. ‘I will pray.’
‘Please —’ Guillelm felt to be out of his depth dealing with this smooth, polished creature, he felt to be drowning in her piety. If it had been a man he would have appealed to honour, or come to blows. How did women deal with each other? He thought of his sister Juliana, but their relationship had been oddly formal, she being so much the elder and out of reach of sibling contests.
Rivalry. The answer came to him as he recalled the scrapes and scraps that he had seen and sometimes intervened in between brothers. It was a risk to employ it against women, but what other tactic could he use? Luck and recklessness were all he had left.
‘If she could speak, Alyson could tell us how to treat her,’ he remarked, adopting Sister Ursula’s calm tones while around him his squires and gathering knights held their breaths against the approaching storm. Gently: he had to do this right. ‘She is an excellent healer.’
Sister Ursula said nothing.
‘She told me you had no diligence in such matters,’ Guillelm went on, lying shamelessly and worse, feeling no guilt as he did so. ’That you love books more than people.’
‘She is wrong,’ said Sister Ursula.
‘You put your skill above hers, then? I have seen no other to match her, even in Outremer.’
With a small shake of her head remarkably like Alyson’s, Sister Ursula unclasped her palms.
‘I thought her judgment a little harsh, but I see that she was right. She said you lacked the healing touch.’
‘What nonsense.’ Sister Ursula rose to her feet. ’Build up that fire,’ she commanded. ’I must have more light.’
Chapter 16
Alyson remembered little of the return journey to Hardspen. Drifting in and out of a fevered consciousness, she was aware in snatches. Guillelm’s anxious face, leaning over her. The constant, throbbing pain in her shoulder. The hard, uncomfortable litter, made of lashed-together branches, that felt like a bed of bones. She tried several times to tell Guillelm that, on their slow ride home, but could only manage ’Bones.’
He misheard and gave her a drink, something cooling. It tasted strange, as if it was a potion but with parts missing. She could not say what it lacked.
Tilda was in her dreams, sometimes lying beside her, sometimes wiping her face and hands. Her sister never smiled and did not speak to her.
There was weeping, too, a boy or woman crying. It tore at Alyson because she could not help.
Sleep was easier and in sleep she felt nothing. She treasured sleep.
Guillelm offered the Prioress his horse Caliph and safe haven within Hardspen: a living space and refuge while messages were sent out to other convents within the order, pleading for places for herself and her homeless, beleaguered flock. Sobbing, all the nuns gathered round him to thank him, which embarrassed him greatly. On the journey, the Prioress continued to weep while her shivering, sooty-faced charges plodded along the track with their pitifully few belongings, retrieved from the ruins and bundled into rough homespun blankets. As they travelled, the nuns settled into a dull, stunned quiescence, almost as disconcerting as the Prioress‘s endless grief.
‘They are women,’ Fulk remarked dismissively. He walked with Guillelm, the crossbow he had taken from the mercenary who had shot Alyson slung over his back. He told Guillelm that he had ridden down the archer and another straggler from the mercenaries. ’They died screaming,’ he said with relish.
Guillelm clapped him on the shoulder but could find no words of thanks. Alyson was not screaming, but she might die. Her sister had washed out her wound with one potion and packed it with fresh cloths, ripped from Alyson’s own gown, remarking casually that Alyson might be given another potion to drink, ’Whenever her pain is too great.’ Otherwise, she had offered no comfort or hope. Seemingly indifferent to Alyson’s suffering, she positioned herself at one side of the litter and occasionally wiped beads of sweat from her sister’s forehead. She appeared more concerned with the well-being of the convent’s books and manuscripts, keeping them close beside her on the litter, sometimes dusting them off, running her fingers down the spine of the largest bible as a devoted wife might trace her fingers down her husband’s back—as Alyson had with him and might never do again.
Alyson had sneaked out with the squires. Alyson had saved his life, shielded him with her own fragile, slender body. Her courage appalled him. He was ashamed of his own rude health and yes—yes, he was angry at her. To put herself in danger for a sister who did not care: it was love but it was also pride and folly. To do what she had done for him—did she not think? Had she forgotten her reason? He wore Armour! The crossbolt doubtless would have pierced it, but he was the leader: it was for him to undergo such trials, not her. Did she think him feeble? Or did she not care that his own men might think him weak, or easily duped?
But she was so white, lying amidst the tatters of her torn gown. As part of the madness of this entire night he missed her silk veil, found himself wondering what she had done with it. Was it pinned under that shabby, cow-brown hood?
‘Hurry,’ he muttered, aching to take her in his arms and race back to the castle. Biting down on the order to march, he told himself that they had to be slow, or her wound would bleed more. The nuns would not be able to keep pace, either, apart from Sister Ursula, who glided along beside Alyson’s litter in the middle of the column, easy as a shadow.
Finally the tall walls and keep of Hardspen crawled over the horizon and Fulk shook his arm. ’Leave everything to me, my lord,’ he said, in a low undertone. ’I will send out riders to the castle, ensure all is made ready for our return, and for the comfort and housing of our unexpected guests.’
Grateful for his support, Guillelm nodded. ‘As you ever did in Outremer, Fulk.’
His seneschal gave a small bow. ‘I am glad you remember.’
Sister Ursula tried to keep him out of the main bed
chamber while Alyson was being tended afresh, but Guillelm insisted on staying. ‘She is my wife.’
‘And it is a pity that you did not take better care of her,’ Sister Ursula replied. ’But then I have heard that you were ever reckless, Guillelm de la Rochelle.’
The stinging rebuke made him boil with rage. Conscious of Gytha’s sympathetic look, the cowering embarrassment of the other maids, he moved again towards Alyson.
A black-robed arm stopped him. ‘I will tend her.’ Sister Ursula turned back to the parchment-pale, still figure. Alyson looked scarcely more than a sleeping child, her huddled shape lost in the great bed.
‘Please, let me help. Let me do something.’
The nun ignored Guillelm’s plea. Briskly, she stripped Alyson of her cloak, veil, gown and undershift, asking at the same time for this and that salve to be put within her reach—salves taken, with an irony that did not escape Guillelm, from Alyson’s own potion store.
‘Gytha, help me turn her,’ Sister Ursula ordered. ‘Osmoda, bring a candle closer. I need to be able to check that there is no iron left in the wound.’
With Guillelm left standing feeling anxious, frustrated and useless by the foot of the bed, Alyson was rolled onto her stomach. Even in her drugged slumber she moaned, wincing.
Sister Ursula washed the wound in Alyson’s left shoulder and sniffed it. ‘Deep, but wholesome,’ she announced. ‘Whoever removed the arrow did so cleanly enough.’ She glanced at the row of bottles and basins by her feet. ’We should pray first, before I use any of these potions or salves. It is God who heals, not us.’
‘Wait,’ said Guillelm, as Sister Ursula piously pulled the rugs away to kneel on the bare flags, ’What are those other marks on her body?’
The nun ignored him, stepping back from the bed. ‘I have changed my mind,’ she said. ‘Any of my prayers would be better offered up in the chapel, in the company of my order.’
Before Guillelm could even think of stopping her, Sister Ursula slipped through the door and was gone.
Guillelm crouched in her place. The gouge in Alyson’s back, slicing diagonally across the top of her shoulder blade and piercing through to just beneath her collar bone, was bad enough, although Guillelm had seen similar injuries inflicted on soldiers in Outremer and the men had always survived. She was less cold to touch now, and the bleeding had stopped: the dressings that her sister had earlier packed so tightly against the torn muscle, sinews and chipped bone had staunched the flow. He tried to think of the remedies the Arab doctors had used but could not remember any. The shock of seeing Alyson hurt had turned him simple, it seemed.
And there were those other marks…
Guillelm gripped the edge of the bed, disbelief and anger exploding in his mind. ‘She has been beaten, many times,’ he said. He was struggling to keep still—his body and spirit were screaming for revenge. He raked a hand across his chest, unaware that he was drawing blood.
‘Who did this?’ he demanded, his free hand hovering a palm-span above the line of one long, ragged scar, tracing its painful track from the small of her back to the middle of her thigh. ‘Was it her father?’
Osmoda whimpered and tottered for the door, intent on escape, but Gytha said and did nothing.
‘Answer me!’ Guillelm punched the bed head, hearing its timbers crack and splinter. Transfixed on the threshold, Osmoda flinched, her scrawny face showing pure terror, but the old nurse, although her complexion changed from apple red to chalk white, looked at him with eyes full of understanding.
‘She would not let me see her naked,’ she said. ‘I suspected, but did not know for certain until recently.’
Osmoda moaned and fled, the wide sleeves of her gown slapping against the stones of the corridor as she hurried away.
‘How recently? And who?’ Such was the force of Guillelm’s building rage that he could no longer contain it. He shook with it and the great bed also shuddered. ‘Mother of God, I have never willingly hurt a woman and I have no wish to start now, but if you do not tell me —’
Gytha plucked one of the salves off the floor and started to draw a sheet over her young mistress. When Guillelm reached across the edge of the bed and seized her wrist, she raised her eyes to him again.
‘It was her father,’ Guillelm stated. ’Sir Henry was ever strict.’
‘Sir Henry was not an easy man, but he loved his daughters. He would not raise a hand to either.’ Gytha’s eyes were warm with a certain sympathy that sent a stake of pure ice through Guillelm’s vitals. He shied from the idea, his eyes unwillingly drawn to Alyson’s old hurts. There were long thin lines running vertically and horizontally across her back, buttocks and legs.
‘Birch rods,’ Gytha said softly. ’Sometimes a belt. It was not her father.’
‘It was mine.’ Guillelm sat down hard on the stone flags and hid his face in his hands. The knowledge shamed and unmanned him. ’Why?’ he said. Alyson had been his father’s guest at Hardspen, had been set to be his betrothed and yet Lord Robert had done this. ’How could he?’ he whispered.
Now Gytha did cover Alyson with the sheet and began to smear a lavender-scented salve around the area of the wound, although careful not to touch the wound itself. She worked with a deftness that surprised Guillelm, although in these last few moments he had thought himself beyond shock. ‘Why?’ he asked again.
‘Your father drank and was fond of it, particularly malmsey wine.’ Gytha passed the pot of salve to Guillelm and indicated a small raw place on Alyson’s forehead. When he gently worked some of the salve across the graze, the nurse resumed her story.
‘He could not always hold his drink. He became… tetchy, quick to take offence. The pages and maids kept out of his way at such times, or Alyson would send them away, out of range of his fists. He would pull her hair. Once I saw him slap her. He demanded her obedience, said he would not commit to their betrothal until she was bent to his will.’
Moving with great care, Guillelm handed the salve back to the nurse. ‘I had wondered why my father and Alyson had not been formally betrothed, especially when Alyson and her people moved to the castle.’
‘Your father did that. He liked to keep her in doubt.’
His father had always done that filthy trick, Guillelm remembered.
‘He may have been a lord, but he had no honour.’ Gytha cleared her throat. ‘I am sorry to say this, my lord —’
‘No, ‘tis best I know.’ So much now made sense: Alyson’s reluctance to speak of his father, her sudden, inexplicable looks of fear. ‘She must truly hate me and mine,’ he said bleakly.
‘Never, my lord!’ Gytha shook her head so strongly that she loosened one of the pins from her head-rail and it flew from her head, bouncing on the flags. ’She would hear no ill word about you from anyone. There was one evening, soon after her own father had died.’ Gytha pursued her lips and was silent.
‘Tell me.’ He dreaded to hear more but could not leave it so. ‘Please.’
Gytha sighed and settled on the edge of the bed, absently rubbing her knees over and over.
‘Lord Robert had been drinking hard that night. He called you a lost son, said you were worthless, reckless, useless. My lady Alyson flared up at once. She leapt from her seat on the dais and told him to his face that you were three times the worth of any man.
‘Lord Robert stalked from the hall at that. A few moments later, a squire came to my young mistress, told her she should join your father in his great chamber.’
‘His bedroom? But they were not plighted.’
‘Indeed they were not! But what could my lady do? She was in his house. Her father was dead. She had no protectors.
‘I followed her that night.’
‘That night? There had been other occasions?’
‘When Lord Robert summoned my lady to his chamber? Yes. Too many times for my peace of mind, I can say! When I asked Alyson about them, she said Lord Robert scolded her. About her gowns, for one matter, and her learning for another. He t
hought her altogether too showy. He took her book from her and burned her dresses, all but the plainest.
‘But I was speaking of that particular night,’ Gytha went on, while Guillelm listened to Alyson’s light, fast breathing and the unearthly sound of the nuns in the chapel, singing, and wished his father into the darkest, deepest, hottest pit in hell. ’That night, I followed her.’
‘So you said.’
‘Be not so sour, my lord, for it is good I did. You were a thousand leagues off in Outremer and my bird had no one else to look out for her. None but her own wits, and sometimes these failed when her temper overcame her. Mind, I think your father provoked her, too, so he had an excuse to punish.’
‘And he did so here.’ Guillelm looked about the main bedchamber, trying to conceive of the shadows and horrors the room would forever hold for Alyson and feeling a tremendous shame and despair. ‘A pity he did not die of a surfeit in the great hall, first.’
‘It would have saved my lady much hurt.’
About to say more, Gytha paused as Alyson turned on the bed, her legs thrashing briefly beneath the linen sheet. She quietened and Gytha said quickly, ‘I am glad you removed Lord Robert’s treasure chest from this room. He bent her over it, you see, while he chastised her.’
Guillelm tried to swallow and found he could not. Tomorrow he would be burning that chest, he vowed, but tonight he had to know all, every grotesque detail. ’You are sure of this?’
Gytha nodded. ’I saw with my own eyes! The door was ajar: he was very drunk, you see. He was using his belt, laying on harshly. I stopped him that night by screaming outside the chamber that I had seen an intruder in the castle, close to Alyson’s room.’ The nurse gave a grim smile. ’He came out quickly enough from his chamber, then, you may be sure! He was ever jealous of my lady, convinced all men were spying on her.’
This was too close to what Guillelm felt himself at times and he hung his head, overwhelmed afresh with shame. ’He did this, because of me? Because she had spoken up for me?’
Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances Page 17