by Alys Clare
Furious grey eyes on his adversary, Leofgar glared up at him with murder in his face. ‘You are no Warin,’ he gasped, contempt like poison in his voice, ‘and there is no letter from my grandfather stating otherwise. You’re a bastard, just as they—’
With a howl of rage Arthur threw himself on Leofgar. But some precious instinct of preservation came to Leofgar’s aid and at the last possible instant he spun himself round, twisting out of the way, and Arthur’s momentum carried him on into the space where Leofgar had just been.
He fell heavily.
There was an instant’s silence. Then he gave a great cry and, rolling on to his side, put both hands to his chest.
The handle of his own knife was sticking out from between his ribs.
Sirida wriggled out of Josse’s arms and fell to her knees over her son, the Abbess crouching beside her. Arthur’s eyes seemed to roll up in his head and he fell quiet; Sirida unfastened his tunic and undershirt to reveal the knife and the wound.
‘It has not penetrated as deep as I feared,’ the Abbess said, ‘look, Sirida; the blade has gone in at an angle.’
Sirida had her hand on the knife handle. ‘I will pull it out,’ she said.
‘No!’ Hastily Josse dropped down beside them. ‘No, leave it where it is, for I have seen men pull out the weapons that have wounded them and thereby release the fatal flow of blood that the blade holds back.’ Meeting the Abbess’s eyes, he said, ‘My lady, we must get him to Hawkenlye. We will put him up on the mare, with your leave, for she has the gentlest gait. You may ride with me on my horse, if you will.’
She was nodding her agreement, already hurrying to get up. ‘Yes. Leofgar, are you fit to ride?’
‘I am.’ Leofgar spoke stiffly.
‘Go and collect your horses,’ the Abbess ordered. ‘Sir Josse, if you and Sirida will bear Arthur out of the hut, I will fetch Honey. But we must be swift and not waste a moment, for Arthur—’
She did not finish her sentence – in truth, there was no need to do so – but, lifting her wide skirts, ran outside and across the open space to the corral. Sirida padded Arthur’s wound as best she could – she used some green mossy stuff from a wooden box on one of the shelves in the hut, fastening it in place with lengths of thin, grubby linen – and they got him outside and on to the mare. Leofgar returned with his horse and Horace and helped the Abbess on to the big horse’s broad back, where Josse got up behind her.
Sirida stood looking up at them.
‘Will you not come with us?’ the Abbess asked her gently. ‘We will care for him to the best of our ability, you have my word. But do you not wish to be with him?’
Sirida’s eyes were on her son as slowly she shook her head. ‘No, Helewise. I do not leave my hut any more. The source of what strength remains to me is here.’ She bowed her head. ‘Were I to leave, I would not get very far.’ She lifted her chin and gave a brave smile. ‘I have not left this place for twenty years.’
Leofgar had hold of the mare’s reins but he was finding her hard to control; she sensed the burden on her back and must have been disturbed by the fact that Arthur, barely able to sit in the saddle, was clearly not in control. ‘We must go, Mother!’ Leofgar said urgently. ‘The mare smells the blood and she is uneasy. It will be better if I can get her moving.’
‘Yes, of course,’ the Abbess said. ‘Sir Josse?’ She half-turned to him. ‘Let us be on our way.’ Josse clicked his tongue to Horace and the horse set off down the track. As they left the glade, Leofgar riding ahead, the Abbess turned from her seat in front of Josse and looked back. She called, ‘Goodbye, Sirida.’
The response came softly on the breeze that had come up with the dawn. ‘Farewell, Helewise.’ And, like a whisper that might or might not have been spoken, ‘You will find that letter ...’
In silence they set off along the track that would lead them to Hawkenlye.
They took Arthur straight to the infirmary. Sister Euphemia examined the knife wound and complimented whoever had had the wits to leave the blade in place. Josse would have modestly kept quiet but the Abbess was having none of it: ‘That was Sir Josse,’ she said.
The infirmarer gave him a glance. ‘Old soldier,’ she remarked. ‘Maybe you should give me some lessons, not that we get many blade wounds here. Thank God,’ she added under her breath, for she had just extracted the knife and even as she spoke was pushing wadded lint into the wound to stop the blood.
‘Do you need us, Sister?’ the Abbess asked her.
‘No, my lady. I can manage here. The wound is long but not too deep and, provided I can stem the flow of blood, he’ll not die of it.’ Without looking up she said, ‘I’ll send word when he recovers his senses.’
‘Yes, please do. Thank you.’ Then the Abbess turned to Josse and said, ‘Sir Josse, let us go outside and find my son. There is something I must do.’
Bowing his agreement, he followed her out of the infirmary. She beckoned to Leofgar, waiting outside, and in silence led them across the cloister and along to her room. She opened the door – someone had kept the brazier stoked and the heat was like a blessing – and went round the table to sit down in her chair.
Then, looking at them both with a strange excitement in her eyes, she said, ‘I know where it is.’
‘What?’ Josse and Leofgar said together.
‘Benedict Warin’s proof.’ So eager that the words raced out of her, she said, ‘Benedict told Sirida that he would hide the document in his table and she told Arthur, who sent Walter Bell to the Old Manor. Walter looked but presumably could not find the hiding place.’
‘Neither could Arthur and neither could I,’ Josse agreed. ‘De Gifford and I searched every inch and came up with nothing.’
Now the Abbess was smiling. ‘That was because,’ she said, ‘it was the wrong table.’ Patting the wide oak surface in front of her, she said, ‘This is Benedict Warin’s table. Benedict left it for Ivo’s use when he moved from the Old Manor to his new home, shortly before Ivo and I were wed. It became Ivo’s possession permanently after Benedict died, although in truth I had more use of it than ever did Ivo.’ She looked down fondly at the table and added softly, ‘I became rather attached to it, and it was the only item from my home that I brought here to Hawkenlye with me.’
But neither Josse nor Leofgar were giving her their full attention; at her first words, both had shot forward to start examining the table, feeling over its surface, underneath it, up and down its stout legs. ‘Where’s the hiding place?’ Leofgar demanded. ‘Where is it?’
Josse, his hands flat on the table top as he ran his fingers over the smooth wood, was watching the Abbess. Frowning, she murmured, ‘I am not sure ...’ Then she knelt down and her head disappeared under the table.
Suddenly she exclaimed, ‘Yes! I do believe ...’ Grunting with effort, her voice coming from under the table and strangely muffled, she said, ‘Help me, Leofgar, the catch is stiff,’ and he too knelt down so that only his rump and legs were visible. There was a grating sound, then suddenly Leofgar shot backwards and sat down heavily.
The Abbess straightened up. In her hands was a small wooden box, dusty and dirty. ‘It was fixed to the central support of the frame,’ she panted. ‘You would never have found it unless you knew where to look.’
‘And even then it did not come away without brute force,’ Leofgar added. Getting up, he came to stand beside Josse. Then, voicing the question that Josse burned to ask, he said, ‘Is there anything in it?’
The Abbess had raised the lid, whose hinges gave a screech of protest. As Josse watched her face, she put her hand inside and extracted a piece of parchment, rolled up tightly and bound with frayed, faded ribbon.
She put the box down and, resting the parchment on the table, gently began to unroll it. There were a few lines written in brownish ink in what Josse thought was a cleric’s hand; silently the Abbess read through them, moving her lips as she digested the words.
Then slowly she raised her head and look
ed at her son. ‘Benedict Warin was not his father,’ she breathed. Then, joy spreading over her face, ‘Oh, dear God, but I am so relieved!’
Leofgar was picking up the parchment. But Josse, still watching the Abbess, said softly, ‘Why such relief, my lady? It is not that rare for a man with a barren wife to lie with another woman and beget a child on her.’
But she shook her head. ‘No, I know that. It is not the reason for my reaction.’ She paused as if weighing her words. Leofgar, Josse thought, casting a glance at the young man, was too enthralled in his inspection of the parchment to listen. Then the Abbess said, ‘Sir Josse, I loved my father-in-law. I knew him to be flawed, for he was in truth a womaniser. But had he known that Sirida had borne his child and yet done nothing to help her, that I should have found hard to forgive.’
‘Aye, and—’ Suddenly Josse caught sight of Leofgar’s face. ‘What is it, lad?’
Leofgar looked at Josse, then at his mother. ‘Before you exonerate my grandfather,’ he said slowly, ‘I think you had better look at this.’ He held out the parchment. ‘There’s more written on the reverse side. My Latin is not as good as it should be and neither is my skill in reading’ – he gave the Abbess a swift and rueful grin – ‘so perhaps you would be kind enough to read it for us, Mother.’
For all the courtesy of his words, Josse observed, there was authority in his voice; Leofgar was in truth very like his mother.
The Abbess picked up the parchment again and read what was written on the other side. Her expression altered and hardened. When she had finished there was a short pause. Then she said, ‘So that is how it was.’ Glancing at Josse, she added, ‘The first side of the parchment states simply that Benedict is not the father of the child borne by the woman Sirida. But this,’ – she lightly tapped the other side – ‘this is rather more expansive.’
Then she began to read.
‘“I, Benedict Warin, confess my sin and record it so that after my death the truth be known. Ivo, my legitimate son, is and remains the one true fruit of my loins, for the damage I suffered when I was dragged by my horse robbed me of my manhood and I was never more able to satisfy a woman. In my pride and my shame I told no man of my condition save my faithful Martin, who acted as my substitute in those actions that I could no longer perform for myself. Being full of pride at my reputation as a man who loved women, I could not bear for the shameful truth to be known and so I continued to pursue pretty girls and persuade them to come with me to my shelter in the forest. It was dark there and they did not know that it was not I but another who serviced them. It was of no great import; for Martin was a considerate and I believe a skilful lover and the girls were not heard to complain. The subterfuge was, I believed, harmless and it allowed me to retain that part of my former identity that I could not bear to give up.
‘“But then there was Sirida. She told me that she had conceived that day in the shelter and she asked for my help. The material things she requested I would gladly have given her but to do so would have acknowledged that she had a just claim on me and this would have meant that I accepted her son as a Warin. This was impossible. The Warin blood runs true and goes back far; to accept the son of my body servant, fine man though he be, as my own flesh I simply could not do.
‘“I am truly sorry for what I have done. I offer in mitigation the fact of my accident, which caused me to suffer every day for the rest of my life. Physical discomfort I endured without complaint; what I could not bear was men’s pity for a eunuch. May God have mercy on my soul.”’
The Abbess looked up. ‘It was written by his confessor,’ she said softly. ‘The date at the bottom is April 1172, a month or so before Benedict died.’
Nobody spoke for some time. Then Leofgar said, quietly but vehemently, ‘I knew Arthur was not one of us.’
The Abbess turned to him. ‘So you said in Sirida’s hut and it all but cost you your life.’
There was, Josse thought, a reprimand in her tone and Leofgar must have heard it too, for he had the grace to look ashamed. ‘Yes, I know. But the thought of him as a kinsman became too much. He has caused me and mine far too much grief, the jumped-up fool!’
Josse repeated the last three words silently to himself. Compassion flowed through him; poor Arthur, he thought, for he has been struggling all his miserable life towards one impossible end only to be dismissed in such demeaning terms. As if, all along, he had been no more of a threat than an importuning beggar or an over-eager puppy.
But the Abbess was speaking and he made himself listen.
‘I sympathise with you for your trouble,’ she was coolly saying to Leofgar, ‘and indeed I am more relieved than I can say for matters to have been concluded as they have. But, son, can you find no pity in your heart?’
‘No,’ Leofgar said. Josse could well understand the young man’s firm denial.
But the Abbess had not finished. ‘Well, I can,’ she said firmly. ‘Arthur Fitzurse had been told he had a fine, noble, wealthy man as father, yet through no fault of his own he has lived the life of the outcast.’ Flinging out her hands, she cried, ‘Are you not touched at the sight of him in his cheap clothes that he wears as if they were fur and fine linen?’
‘No, I’m not,’ Leofgar said stubbornly. ‘He acts as if he’s one of us and he isn’t.’
‘Do not,’ the Abbess said warningly, ‘fall into the sin of arrogance, Leofgar, for none of us chooses our parents and some are luckier than others. Where we are born is for God to decide.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Hear me out!’ the Abbess commanded. Turning to Josse, she said, ‘Forgive me for my insistence, for indeed I sense that perhaps you are inclined to agree with my son.’
‘I—’
But she did not allow him to speak either. ‘I confess I too am relieved that Benedict did not father Sirida’s child, yet I perceive that he committed a scarcely lesser sin in what he did do. To salve his wounded pride, he allowed another to – er, to do the deed of which he was no longer capable, and the deception was so thorough that we all believed it. All of us, without exception, thought that Benedict Warin was a womaniser until the day he died.’ Her astonished eyes went from Josse to Leofgar. ‘He did this rather than simply confess that his accident had rendered him impotent!’ Shaking her head, she added, ‘I just cannot understand it!’
‘But you, my lady,’ Josse said gently, ‘are not a man.’
‘I—’ It was her turn to be rendered silent. Again she looked at the two men standing before her, one after the other. Then in a small voice she asked, ‘Is it that important?’
Josse and Leofgar looked at each other. Then together they said, ‘Yes.’
Chapter 21
Helewise sat in her room waiting for word that Arthur Fitzurse was well enough to talk to her. Leofgar had gone: he had asked her permission to ride off and fetch Rohaise and his son back to Hawkenlye and she had gladly given it; she still did not know where they had been hiding. Too much had happened too quickly for her to think to ask him. The Bells were dead, she reasoned; Sirida would never again leave her hut, Arthur lay wounded in the infirmary; in truth, there could be no further threat to her son’s family from that quarter now, at least not until Arthur had recovered his strength ...
Josse, leaning against the door post, was staring absently across the room, a slight frown on his face. She had just announced to him that she intended to tell Arthur the truth about himself and Josse had argued that this was neither kind nor necessary, and therefore she should not do it.
‘It may not be kind but it is the truth, and every one of us must have the courage to face the truth, no matter how cruel!’ she had cried.
‘Arthur Fitzurse has built his whole identity upon a lie!’ Josse had replied, as heated as she. ‘To remove the very foundations of what he perceives to be his essence is a cruel truth indeed, my lady!’
‘It is also necessary that he be told,’ she pressed on, ignoring his protest, ‘for it is only by learning who his f
ather really was that he will drop his pursuit of my son and his family!’
‘Surely he would not risk another approach to them!’
‘How can you be so sure?’ she flashed back. ‘He set Walter Bell upon them and, but for Rohaise’s desperate action, that dreadful man might have slaughtered both her and her child! Arthur is a driven man, Sir Josse, and I would not be able to forgive myself if I held back from telling him the one thing that would stop him dead in his tracks!’
He had stared at her for a long moment, breathing heavily. Then he had said coldly, ‘You will do as you wish, my lady, as you always do.’
He is sulking, she thought now, looking at him out of the corner of her eye. He knows I’m right and he doesn’t want to admit it.
But as her anger died she was ashamed of herself. Here’s dear Josse, she thought, at my side in my time of need as he has so often been. I have always trusted him and, since first we met, he has never let me down. And he’s right: it will indeed be a terrible moment for Arthur Fitzurse when I reveal the truth to him. But do it I must, for my first allegiance is to my son and I would do anything in my power to protect him and his family.
‘I am sorry that I spoke so heatedly,’ she said quietly. ‘Please forgive me, Sir Josse.’
He turned his head and his brown eyes met hers. A grin slowly spread over his face and he said, ‘You are forgiven, my lady. I would never—’ He stopped. From the slight flush that briefly rose in his cheeks, she guessed he had been about to make some remark that was rather too intimate for a knight to say to an Abbess.
Despite the instant of keen regret, she was quite relieved that he had held back.
After a moment he straightened up from his relaxed pose and said, ‘Gervase de Gifford should be notified of your safe return to Hawkenlye, my lady. With your leave, I will ride down to Tonbridge and tell him.’
