Even so, he wished she was not rich. How could he win her hand in marriage when she was rich and he was not?
Perhaps I should ask William for land in England when I win today, he thought, and grinned at that simple, fairy-tale solution.
The king, dressed in robes of state and wearing the golden crown of Edward, the old king, came down the jetty steps to meet them. He came alone, a thing Marc might have marvelled at, had he been less concerned with where Sunniva might be.
Odo was less discreet. "By the teeth of the Almighty, do you want to be a target for every disaffected archer in London?" he roared, stumbling out of the boat, yelling to his men to cover William with their shields.
Over the general hubbub, William held out his hand to Marc.
"My champion awaits in the cloister garden," he said.
Marc gave a nod of acknowledgement, gripping William's hand briefly so the man would know he was not afraid. "I am ready," he said, passing over the fact that they would be fighting on holy ground. It was an ordeal, after all, and so God's business.
William began to stride back up the steps, Marc following a respectful step behind. Looking about, he caught no sign of Sunniva, but out of the swirling mist he heard the king say, "Whoever disarms the other will be acknowledged the winner."
"As you say." Marc was very pleased that he would not have to injure his opponent. He wanted to prove his innocence, but not at the expense of another man's life or limb.
"This is the only ordeal I will accept, de Sens."
"Of course." Marc bristled. "I have said I am ready."
William merely continued walking, reaching the top of the steps and slowing a little, to catch his breath. Marc almost collided with him but as he skewed sideways to miss the king, William added softly, for his ear alone, "It is a trial by combat, but you, Marc de Sens, are not to fight. Another has begged to do so in your place."
"No!"
"You know who it is, de Sens. They are preparing her for battle even as we speak." William stopped and faced an appalled Marc. "This is my choice, de Sens. You will accept it, or your life is forfeit now, as that of a guilty man."
"Then it is forfeit," Marc snarled. "For my lady Sunniva to fight in my place is more than an ordeal, it is a monstrous thing. I will have none of it!"
Armed men, clanking up behind them to catch up, paused on the steps and looked uncertainly at the king, then Odo. William shook his head and placed both hands out, palms down, a sign for calm.
"Your proxy will not be harmed. This I swear to you."
Marc could scarcely believe what he was hearing, "It is unfair!" he burst out. "I am the one who must prove himself, I fight my own fights!" she snarled. "I have fought my own fights since I was ten years old! You must not allow this!"
"I gave my word to the Lady Sunniva that she could be your proxy." William was relentless. "My champion will fight with one hand tied behind his back. This kind of trial, a woman fighting against a man, has happened before, in Germany."
"So are we Germans now?" At his wits' end, Marc dropped to his knees before William. "My liege, I beg you, do not allow this ordeal. Let me take my punishment."
"You are guilty, then, of woman-killing?"
Marc looked William straight in the eyes. "Yes."
William walked on, leaving Marc kneeling in the snow.
Entering the cloisters, William glanced at the central garden, open to the sky. It had been cleared of whatever herbs and snow and the earth flattened down into a hard, compacted mass, crusted with frost. On one side stood his champion, warming up with a few sword parries and thrusts. His opponent was as yet unseen, hiding behind a maze of stone pillars on the shadowy side of the cloister. William walked across the bare earth to where he thought Sunniva might be.
He spotted her in the darkest part of the cloister, knelt in prayer. He strode up and interrupted — God would forgive him, as he had important news to bring.
"Marc de Sens is coming, under my brother's care and that of my guards."
Sunniva opened her eyes and allowed her hands to fall by her sides. "He has not hurt them? Fought them? Injured them?"
"No." William coughed, a rare sign of embarrassment. "I told my brother to tell him that if he made one move towards you or my champion or any one of the court, then my archers would mow both him and you down."
"That would be only the threat that would stop Marc from fighting to protect me." She sounded proud, William thought. He was confounded for an instant by her calm, but then realized that she had expected no more and no less from de Sens: a point to the Breton. Indeed, de Sens' overriding concern for this young woman was a thing William understood — he loved his own wife dearly.
"Does your champion know I am the proxy?" she went on. "I want no unfair advantage."
William glanced up and down the cloister, checking for listening ears. A monk wandered nearby on the south side of the cloister, his sandaled feet muffled in the mist, but his cowl was pulled up, shutting out the secular world. The members of the court and de Sens were yet to arrive.
"My champion knows nothing." Except that he would fight with one hand tied behind his back and that if he killed or injured his enemy then he would also quickly die. As an heiress, this girl was too valuable to lose — better she kept her lands and married where he, William, allowed, than that they fell into kinsman Bertolf's greedy maw. Bertolf, who had already sent word that he was suddenly too ill today to attend this ordeal....
Sunniva nodded. "He should think me a youth."
William took in her loose man's tunic and leggings. She had refused the offer of chain mail, but she had done what she could to disguise her femininity, hiding her hair completely under a close-fitting cap and even dusting her face with dirt, an attempt at producing male stubble. She looked wiry and trim and nothing like a lad.
"Of course," William agreed, lying though his teeth. Then he noticed the knives at her belt: long and doubtless sharp out of their serviceable, battered leather sheaths.
"Do you know how to use those?" he asked, doubt clouding his head for an instant. Perhaps he had been unwise, indulging the girl in her unusual request, but he liked to see her smile. He fully expected her to lose, and quickly. Then de Sens would be banished, Sunniva grateful he had escaped with his life and ready to obey her king when he produced another candidate for her hand in marriage.
Sunniva flicked her wrist and a tiny dagger that must have been hidden in her sleeve flew and pinned a dead leaf at William's feet. It had landed between the cracks in the stone floor — a lucky chance.
"Well done," William said approvingly, hiding his inner glee. In a few moments it would be done. Sunniva disarmed, de Sens at his mercy, the absent Bertolf confounded and then, very soon, Sunniva eager and happy to slide into his bed. She would make a spectacular mistress and later, after he had enjoyed all of her gratitude at his sparing of de Sens, he would marry her off.
He would choose well for her: he liked the girl.
Smiling at the thought of his magnanimity, William bade her farewell and crossed to the south side of the cloisters, where the monk had sped away, his own chair and banner had been brought out and Odo and his party were now arriving.
Show no fear, Sunniva chanted in her head. God is with you. Saint Freya and saint Cuthbert fight with you. We all fight for Marc, who is innocent.
Even so, she quailed twice in the cloister grounds where her ordeal would take place. Once when she saw the champion, big and threatening as William's new caste mound, test the sharpness of his sword, and once when Marc strode towards her across the bare, cleared garden. He was blocked by a score of guards before he had reached halfway but she saw his tensed shoulders and stiff, unyielding expression and a wave of anguish scorched through her. Was he angry with her? Did he consider himself unmanned, having a proxy — and a woman at that — to fight for him?
What else could I have done? I wanted to save him. I acted without thinking, I asked the king without thinking of Marc's fe
elings. My one thought was to save him.
Her thoughts and her shame seared her like nettle stings but she did not look away. Whatever his opinion, she would do this for him. She knew she could settle this ordeal quickly, without bloodshed.
He smiled at her then, straight over the heads of the guards, a kind, reassuring smile. Her spirits soared like a rising lark. Buoyed up, she grinned back, smiling more widely as the king's champion planted his standard, on a broad wooden pole, before William's chair, and tugged his surcoat over his chain mail.
This was going to be easy.
Marc raised a hand. Ignoring Odo of Bayeux, who had joined him in the middle of the cloister garden and was tugging urgently on his arm, he said clearly, "God be with you."
She bowed, deliberately mute so that William's champion would not guess her sex. She saw Marc take another step towards her, dragging the burly bishop of Bayeux after him like a piece of thread, then heard the creak of a bending bow and saw Marc stiffen, his eyes widening in disgust and horror.
Already knowing what she would find, she turned and nodded to the archer positioned directly behind her, ready to shoot her in the back.
Marc swung about, his blazing eyes seeking the king's.
While their gazes locked and wrestled, Sunniva checked herself over. Osric the tumbler had taught her to do this and she found it cleared her mind. Her daggers were at her belt or ready to hand. Her clothes were comfortable. Her hair was covered. Her hands were warm and steady. She pulled off her shoes, feeling the raw harsh ice on the bare earth; a not unpleasant sensation, nicely tingling.
"I am ready," she called.
Odo the bishop, still holding Marc's arm, began a rapid invocation in a language she did not understand—Latin or French or a mixture of both, she was not sure. As the guards fell back from the ground, buffeting Marc with them, she focused on her breathing and on the thick, raised seams of the champion's surcoat.
Around her the puffs of mist brightened and the abbey cloister and the people within it seemed at one and the same time to be more distant but clearer. She picked out details: the glint of sun on William's crown. The way the king was sitting on his chair, clutching the chair arms as if he was not entirely sure how this ordeal would go. Dear Marc's lips moving silently as he prayed. He was knocking his fists together again and again, a repetitive, nervous act that she guessed he was unaware of doing, such was his concern for her.
For an instant that love almost undid her, almost caused her to lose her own concentration, but then she remembered: this was his fight, not hers; she must do her best for his sake and put her own feelings aside. She let her eyes be drawn to the knot of courtiers standing behind William's chair. Amongst the disbelieving faces she saw no one she recognized.
Odo was still intoning. A monk hurried into the open space and sprinkled her and then the king's champion with holy water. The champion was standing very straight and proud as his squire bound his left arm behind his back.
She lowered her head and prayed to the Virgin, the mother of the king of heaven, and thought of her standing by the cross as her son died. She must now suffer in silence as Marc began his own trial of waiting.
In English, she heard Odo say, "This is an ordeal by combat. Whoever disarms the other will be said to have won. Whoever cuts the other, however slightly, will be said to have won. Begin."
Sunniva sprinted forward to a roar from Marc and an answering roar in her own head. She knew she had this one chance and she had to be quick.
Remembering all Osric had taught her she lifted her daggers. Spinning through the mist and sun, three streaked towards the champion, pinning him, through the thick shoulder-folds of his surcoat, to the back of his own standard pole. The man yanked and tore, slashing at the daggers with his mailed hand, but Sunniva had already launched her fourth, sharpest blade, aiming low. It sped at the man's groin and he yelled, flinching even though his mail deflected it, but his hesitation gave her the key.
She closed on him, slashing out with another small dagger, upwards at his chest and eyes, and as he feinted, trying to unsheathe his sword, charged him, knocking into his midriff, stabbing down with her final blade.
The champion shouted, a genuine yelp of pain, and stumbled back, trying to free the small dagger from between the armour on his calves and his knee. Sunniva followed, charging with all her might, knocking him off-balance.
"Hey!" Marc was yelling.
"God's teeth!" Odo was yelling.
"Enough!" William was on his feet, glaring at his stricken champion.
The man was sitting on the ground, clutching his leg below the knee. A small knife flexed like a bee sting in the top of his calf. He cursed and struck it away and a small trickle of blood came with it.
William switched his stare to Sunniva. He opened and his closed his mouth twice: finally words emerged. "The ordeal is over. You have won."
Sunniva sank onto the ground and began to cry in relief.
Chapter 29
Later that same day, close to sunset, after kicking his heels outside in the raw cold of the palace courtyard, Marc was finally admitted into the presence of the king.
He had been kept out for hours, not by the score of guards — he would have taken those on — but by William's very specific threat against Sunniva. From the moment that he entered the great hall he looked for her, frowning when he did not see her. Impatient and anxious — where was she? How was she? — he found himself standing beside the dais while the king, his brother Odo and several court favourites feasted on venison.
There was only one table set out in the hall. The English lords, Earl Morcar and the rest, were conspicuous by their absence.
"Sit, sit!" William waved Marc further along the single table. "Hey, Etienne, make room up there!" he yelled in French. "Take a glass of wine, de Sens. Relax! You are an innocent man, proved as such for all the world to witness."
At that, the king's champion rose from the table and stamped out of the hall, limping slightly on his right side as he passed the main fire. Defeat hung around his huge shoulders like a black cloak and the other men were careful not to catch his eye as he left.
Marc pitied the man, though not much.
"Where is my lady?" he asked. Sunniva had been surrounded by guards the instant that William had declared the result of the ordeal: he had not been able to speak to her or see her for hours.
"Resting, for the moment." William gnawed on a deer bone and then pointed the bone at Marc. "Would you have ripped my head off if I had shot her?"
"Yes." Marc was still enraged by the idea: if William had done it, no-one would have stopped him from slaughtering the man.
"Honest," William grunted in return, "and entirely what I expected you to say. Which is why I would never have done it."
Marc shrugged. "I could not be sure."
"Of course, that is the skill of kings," said Odo, leaning across the table to snatch some of the fine white bread set before his brother and put it in place of his own coarse barley-bread trencher. "Now you must sit down, Marc." He scanned Marc's face by the torch-light. "Is it my fancy, or are you still angry?"
Before Marc could answer, a herald ran into the hall.
"The Lady Sunniva is outside, my liege," he panted, dropping on one knee before William. "She begs your leave to enter."
William looked up and down the table. Silently, clearly working to some pre-arranged plan, Odo and the other courtiers pushed themselves to their feet and walked to the centre of the hall, where a great midwinter fire cracked and burned. All the men had taken their weapons. Odo had collected his cup, too, and his fine-bread trencher and was standing with the others, picking at venison.
"Sit," William ordered Marc again. "Bring a bench and put it across from me. You and she can sit together and take supper; there is plenty left."
His head ablaze with gladness that he would soon be seeing her for himself, Marc sped into the darkness of the hall. Hope and anticipation granting him speed, he effortle
ssly retrieved a bench from one of the piles stacked against the walls and carried it back to the dais. He set it down quickly, opposite William, and then stalked past the fire to meet Sunniva as she entered.
She walked rapidly, a powdering of light snow falling from her cloak. He moved to meet her. She faltered. Her face was uncertain, her hands clutching the edges of her cloak.
Marc stopped himself, feeling as if he had just swallowed a sword of ice. He had expected her to be nervous but not this fear — never fear.
"Sweetheart," he murmured in English, and he opened his arms.
She hung back for an instant and then she flew into his embrace. "I could see no other way," she was saying against his chest, gripping him so tightly that he feared her arms would be wrenched from their sockets. "I knew you were innocent, but I could see no other way to prove it, not without murder."
His heart raced to see her. It was a wonder to hold her again, to hear her, to truly know she was safe. She was dressed in that amazing Norman gown with that silly little veil: he dragged down her hood and revelled in the scent of her hair.
"Thank King Christ you are unhurt." He wrapped her more tightly in his arms. When he considered how close she might have come to being spitted he was torn between hugging her all night long and scolding her till her ears were singed.
"I am still angry at you," he growled against her cheek, kissing the top of her head.
"I know. I am sorry."
He put a warning finger to her lips. Now that he was quite certain that she was entirely without injury he found his sense of aggravation increasing.
"Do you think me useless?"
"I am sorry, Marc. Truly. I did not mean —”
He silenced her prattle with a long, fierce kiss, demanding submission. He ignored his own feelings of gratitude: his male pride demanded capitulation.
Not only pride. There was also fear, and shame. What if she thought less of him?
Love and Chivalry: Four Medieval Historical Romances Page 49