“You could have warned me not to.”
“I don’t think it works like that.” He gave a deep sigh. “Anyway, what can we do? Simon cares about you. I believe that. So let’s use it.”
“But Stephen—”
“Let’s go to Odiham, Will. It’s beautiful there. They took me there as a young child. I just ask that you don’t go off to fight, and leave me. You might want to, I don’t know.”
I smiled in the darkness. “After what I learned tonight, it will be easy for me to step back. But it won’t be easy to be around him. Ever again.”
“I don’t think we’ll have to face him very much.”
“Don’t you want revenge?” I asked suddenly.
“I would if I thought there was a way to get any. I think life itself will bring vengeance.” His voice sounded sad.
I was quiet.
“I know I haven’t ever shared this with you, but I used to be really quite fond of Lady Eleanor. When I was younger she was sweet to me. Later she got so preoccupied with her husband and her sons and their maneuvering with the King. By the time you came along, we barely spoke. But she’s someone who will help us. I’ve seen it.”
“Tell me, then, Stephen,” I pleaded. “Tell me where you see us living a year or two from now.”
Now I sounded young again, and he was the stronger.
“France,” he said.
There was a subtle tone of pleasure in his voice.
“And you are happy with that?”
“I don’t see a way around it. Let’s sleep now.”
“We could go to London,” I said, but he just chuckled quietly.
I tried to relax. It would be back to France, for him. A place I’d never been, never wanted to go. I knew little about it.
But all that would change.
Chapter 17
The month of June passed in a flash. At the beginning of July, we had an unexpected visitor. A strange man appeared on the footsteps of the house one morning, banging casually on the smeared door. He was a pale, paunchy, debauched-looking fellow with thinning brown hair.
“The friars are all gone,” I said to him.
He chuckled. “I’m not looking for the friars. I come from the castle. Where’s Wilecok?”
I gestured in the direction of the refectory, searching my mind to see if I had met the man before.
“I work for Lady Eleanor, taking messages between her manors. We never met. Name’s Gobithest. I’m here to see what happened. I can fetch a fresh horse for young Stephen, if need be.”
“He survived,” I said tersely. “He’s getting better. Slowly.”
“No rush,” Gobithest murmured. A smile broke out on his face as he saw Wilecok approaching.
The two men embraced. Wilecok clapped him on the back and they headed off to the refectory. “Some ale, friend,” I heard Wilecok murmur. “It’s a hot day.”
Some ale was an understatement, for Gobithest remained drunk all day. The two men sat at the polished oak table in the refectory conversing, breaking into bursts of raucous laughter. They were often together at Kenilworth, it turned out, but only for an evening. The next day they’d be sent off in different directions. I puzzled why I had not noticed them before. Perhaps they ate in the kitchen, and if I’d seen them around the castle, I’d have assumed they were scullery boys. Perhaps they left too early in the morning for me to have ever noticed them.
Stephen supped downstairs now, so we sat rather awkwardly across from each other as the two men boasted about a golden-haired woman they had shared in bed once, twenty years before, around the time the Montfort family got settled in the castle. That was when they had met—and become fast friends, it appeared.
Stephen ate slowly, dipping a hunk of bread in his rich stew, his eyes most often cast down. He did not glance at the men, ignoring them. A cluster of pockmarks had appeared on both of his cheeks, as they had with my mother. I wanted to tell him that they would fade with time, or that he would grow used to them. He’d stared at himself in a tin mirror I brought him, just once, with a look of horror.
“The worst thing is I can feel them,” he’d told me. “When I smile, even, I can feel them. Or touch my face...”
What he left unsaid was that anyone else who touched his face would feel them too. But everyone would see them.
***
“I look like a rogue, Will,” he said bitterly. We were lying out in the priory garden on blankets. I had pulled my shirt up so that I could get the mid-July sun on my back. It felt so delicious just to rest. I closed my eyes and could hear the sound of nesting birds in one of the trees nearby, the buzzing bees on the friars’ flowerbeds.
“No you don’t.” He had taken a wash in a tub out in the garden and his hair was bright and soft again.
“The marks make you look a little older, if anything,” I murmured, drowsily. “Not as innocent, but...”
I remembered with a pang how my mother’s innocent beauty had been marred by the illness. It had taken her half a year to recover her full strength.
“You can’t rush it, but you will get used to it. I know you don’t feel well just yet.”
“I still feel horrible,” he said plaintively. “Most days. I’m fatigued all the time. My skin is blotchy. Will I feel like this for the rest of my life?”
“No.”
He was silent for a bit. “I’m lucky to have kept my sight, I suppose. Some people lose it.”
“That’s true,” I said. “But even if you’d lost it, you’d still have the inner sight.”
He laughed faintly, sighing. “Don’t you know how tired I am of that?”
I said nothing.
“I’m sorry for being so fretful,” he said.
“You could go back up to bed. Perhaps the sun isn’t good for you.”
“It probably isn’t.” He had pulled his hood over his face. “But I want to be with you.”
He didn’t seem to be enjoying my company much, but I was moved. “All right. What should we talk about?”
“Well...” he said hesitantly. “What they were talking about in there a few days ago got me thinking. It’s going to be a while before I’m well enough to travel to Odiham. You must be restless... And you seemed to enjoy hearing about them having a woman together.”
I propped myself up on my elbows. “Because it was twenty years ago. I’m very glad they haven’t brought a woman back to the priory, I can tell you that!”
“I think they’re too old for it.” I could hear the note of disdain in his voice.
“I’m not too sure...”
“The thing is, you enjoyed hearing it. And I didn’t. So I was wondering if your inclinations had changed in the years we’ve been apart. Perhaps you need a mistress.”
My mouth dropped open. “You’ve got to be joking.”
“You thought it was arousing, didn’t you.”
“Yes, I suppose, but it was more about them than the woman...”
“But they’re revolting,” Stephen said.
“Twenty years ago, they wouldn’t have been. I don’t know why you’ve taken against them so much.” My voice had an edge. “They’re good friends, Stephen. They love each other. They’re not bad people.”
“Well, why is Gobithest still here? He’s taking advantage of the friars’ absence.” Stephen sounded querulous, and I looked at him again with shock.
“He knows you’re not well enough to go yet. I don’t begrudge him a holiday. He came all the way here to check on you. He’s going to help us get back to Odiham. I doubt you want to ride pillion behind me all the way. That’s sixty miles!”
“I wouldn’t mind,” Stephen murmured.
I turned over, my chest bared to the sun now. I saw Stephen watching me out of the corner of his eye.
“It’s awful that I can’t feel ... desire any more,” he blurted out.
I gulped. “It will come back, surely,” I said. “After all, my mother remarried.”
“Was that out of desire, though?�
��
“Well, I doubt it, considering his appearance.” I was trying to make him smile. “Perhaps just a need for companionship and financial security. Although we had enough, I would have thought.”
I had been too young to really question her about why she was remarrying.
“So because I’m no use to you that way,” Stephen continued in a numb voice, “I thought you might like to go find a woman in Oxford.”
My thoughts warred between anger and sadness.
“Here’s the truth,” I said firmly, looking at him. He bit his lip. “I have absolutely no interest in that. You’ve never even seen me flirt with a woman!”
“I don’t see everything.”
“I never flirted with Christiana. I might well have looked on her as a woman of easy virtue.”
“How is Christiana?” he asked brightly, as if eager to change the subject.
I frowned. “She’s well. She asked after you. She said she would pray for us.”
Stephen nodded. “I will be glad to see her again. I think it worked, her prayers.”
“I’m sorry, Will,” he added, as I stared moodily away from him. “I’ve offended you.”
“You have. Just because I’m eighteen doesn’t mean I’m going to rush off and bed a woman because it’s what others my age do.”
“But you’re a knight,” he said.
“Being a knight doesn’t mean I have to prove myself that way. I’ve been in battle already, such as it was. I mean, I didn’t cover myself in glory, but at least I saved Tom from getting his head hacked off. Though it was Simon who really did it.”
“You didn’t tell me that.” He was staring at me intently.
“You were too ill,” I said bluntly. “But I’ll tell you this—no one goes eagerly to battle.”
He nodded. “You won’t die in battle, Will,” he said in a small voice.
I turned on my side to face him. “I’ve been knighted, but I don’t feel I’ve achieved any glory yet, and perhaps I never will. I’d avoid battle if I could.”
“Very wise.” He smiled at me and for a moment it was the old Stephen. His face lit up.
“Stephen, if you like you can stay here till the friars come back. I will wait with you here.”
He shook his head adamantly, sorrow creeping into his face.
“No, Will. I told you, I don’t want to take holy orders. And Brother Anselm is gone. He’s what made being here worth it.”
“Perhaps you could be the next Brother Anselm, a healer,” I suggested.
“No.” His voice was steady. “That means leaving you. I have always known I’d find happiness with you.”
I reached out and took his hand. The skin was smooth now, but it was nearly as large and muscular as mine.
“Even if our happiness is a long way off,” he said quietly.
“It does seem far away now,” I agreed. “I would hate to leave you here, but I brought it up because I thought perhaps this peaceful place is where you belong.”
“Yet they left me to die,” he said, shrugging. “Not very Christian, is it?”
“They were ordered to go, they said. Should they have brought you on a litter?”
“No, but one man could have stayed with me. I know Brother Anselm would never have left me.”
I squeezed his hand. “He sounds like a good man.”
“A very good one. Thanks to him, I know how to bleed patients. I know herbs and tinctures for simple things. Yes, I think I would like to be a healer one day. But not a monk, not a friar. I don’t want to take a vow of celibacy and then break it.”
“Says the desireless one,” I murmured.
He sighed, lying on his arms, looking at me from the corner of his eye. “We are eventually bound for a convent, you know.”
“What?”
“An abbey in France called Montargis, south of Paris. It’s where Earl Simon’s sister Petronilla is the abbess. They are Dominican nuns, sadly. I can’t get away from the blackfriars.”
“What are you telling me?” I sat up, letting my shirt fall.
“That’s where we will end up,” he said cryptically.
I put my hands over my face, heart racing. “What will I possibly do there, Stephen? The nuns won’t want a man about the place.”
“A guardian is always valuable,” he replied. His eyes danced as he looked at me. “It’s not the worst of places, Will. Not at all.”
“Oh, Stephen. What are you saying? That we follow Lady Eleanor?”
“Yes. It’s that or a pardon from the King. Which would you prefer, Will?”
“Why wouldn’t I take a pardon?” I blurted out.
“You say that now.” He was being cryptic again. “It will be, of course, your choice. But I will follow Lady Eleanor into exile.”
“Exile... It’s horrible. Don’t you feel that?”
He shrugged. “Oh yes, but I’ve known it for so long. England was never my country, Will. They shouldn’t have brought me here.”
“They saved your life.” My voice was unusually stern and he winced slightly. “Wilecok saved your life. You know the story!”
“Yes, he told me,” Stephen said bitterly. “When I was too young to be anything except shocked and hurt by it. Lady Eleanor had told me a nicer story. She told me I was special. Chosen by God to live.”
“You are—and very lucky.”
“I was made to feel like an outsider by the boys,” he said. “Always. They called me a heretic. Simon was ten when I met him. He was the worst, actually. Henry was a better person, and Amaury liked me. Guy was too young to care.”
“A heretic,” I repeated softly.
“Earl Simon’s father killed my people, you know, a generation before. He tried to wipe them out. I don’t know who killed my parents and their fellows, perhaps French troops. Louis, the present king of France, is a fanatical Christian too.”
“Do you know much about your people?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Only that they believed that the world is sinful and so is the flesh. Only spirit is holy. They abstained from... well, from intercourse. Most of them.”
“It doesn’t seem particularly wicked to me,” I muttered.
“No, but anything that diverges from the Christian way is persecuted... I think they were good people. I will always think that.”
I nodded. “Stephen, if the Montforts rescued you, and yet you hold bitterness for them, why stay with them?”
He paused. “I know, Will. It’s the big question. I have some gratitude but I also feel detached from them, like I must go my own way, at least in my mind. I don’t think you are as detached.”
I shook my head.
“You fit in at the castle. They gave more to you, and the bonds are stronger. Don’t you see why it will be hard to accept the King’s pardon at the end of all this?”
I said nothing.
“The next king, the Lord Edward as he is now, will be quite brutal,” Stephen continued relentlessly. “A warrior king. He’ll expect his knights to fight for him in his wars in Scotland and Wales, subduing those countries.”
I weighed his words, thinking of the grim-faced young man racing past on the battlefield at Lewes.
“He will be personally brutal too, in his revenge,” Stephen said softly.
“But he and Earl Simon have been allies.”
“No longer. He’s a prisoner now. How do you think he feels?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. Chills went up my spine. “But he cares for his aunt...”
“Eleanor, yes. That’s why he will let her leave England. With the young Eleanor and a few of her people. Let’s be among them.”
And Simon? I wanted to ask, staring at him. But I couldn’t ask it. I felt he would hedge, would not give me a clear answer.
I looked about the peaceful English garden, then back to Stephen, his reddened, pockmarked skin, his dull eyes.
“Oh God,” I said. “It’s too hard to think about.”
He just nodded. �
��Imagine how hard it is for them.”
“But they don’t seem to see what’s coming.” My voice cracked in anguish.
“Only Amaury does, I think.”
“Amaury,” I repeated, thinking of the dark horse among the Montfort sons. “Let me guess. He’s the one who survives the longest. He even told me that!”
“Yes. In this case, fortune favors the most prudent.”
“I see.”
“And the most peaceful. Which he is.”
He put his hand on my shoulder. It was such a rare gesture now.
“Will, don’t agonize. Try and just watch it unfold, as I do.”
“I’m not like you.” I gave a deep sigh. “But I will try to follow your guidance, Stephen. I have to trust you.”
“I will reward you,” he said lightly. At that moment, two staggering figures approached us across the lawn, one carrying a large, sloshing pitcher of amber-brown liquid.
“It’s the friars’ cider. For you, Master Will,” Wilecok said, grinning.
I got up gratefully. Gobithest handed me a tankard, then one to Stephen.
“We shall all drink to Master Stephen’s good health,” he said in a pompous, formal tone.
Still standing, I clinked tankards with them, smiling. Stephen had got to his feet to join me. The cat wandered out from the house to see what was going on, curling around Wilecok’s legs.
We all quaffed, some deeper than others. The cider was delicious, crisp and sweet. I needed a drink.
“How did you know I was dying for a drink?” I asked Wilecok.
“Such a serious conversation you two were having.” His eyes were merry.
“You didn’t hear it, I hope.” I flushed slightly.
“Heard the word ‘mistress,’ which always makes me prick up my ears.”
“I told Stephen I wasn’t going to have one.”
The two older men grinned. “Just wait a few years, Master Will,” Gobithest said. “There’s nothing wrong with a good woman. You’ll eventually get the taste for it.”
I glanced at Stephen, who was looking at me intently, sipping his cider. He wavered on his feet a little.
“Here,” I said, putting my arm around him. “Lean on me.”
A Knight's Tale: Kenilworth Page 18
