by Angus Donald
I stood and looked past the Bishop’s shoulder and saw… a building — an enormous, very grand, beautifully constructed, three-parts-built, snow-covered building. But a just building nonetheless — and one that had indirectly caused the death of my father and my friend. I made no reply to the Bishop but sat down on the bed again, suddenly overwhelmed with a great weariness.
The Bishop turned and regarded me for a while: ‘I came,’ he said, ‘to make an apology to you. And perhaps to try to explain myself, and seek your forgiveness for what has passed between us. But I can see that you would not welcome that little speech. And so I will leave you with a gift of information. It is this: if you seek Brother Michel — and I suspect that even if you do not wish to encounter him again now, you or your hard-faced master will decide to seek him out one day — you will find him in the south, in Aquitaine. Viscount Aimar of Limoges is his cousin; they were boyhood friends — and he told me once, after he had taken too much wine, that it was in those lands, and those lands only, that he felt truly happy and at peace. When he has no other place to run to, Michel will go south, and you will find him under his cousin’s protection. And, if you do meet him again, you may give him my curse.’
I thanked the Bishop for his counsel, and once again for his hospitality, although I could not find it in my heart to utter words of forgiveness, and he blessed me and took his leave. And then I thought about the information that he had given me, and felt a heavy weight on my heart. I could not even contemplate a journey so far to the south on a mission of vengeance. Robin was right: revenge was an idiotic indulgence. Besides, the thought of another encounter with the Master chilled my stomach. I finished the wine, crawled into my blankets and, although it was not yet noon, I was asleep in an instant.
I left Paris in the spring, still weak and low in spirits, but at least able to ride the ambling horse that I had purchased for the journey — Robin had sold the courser and had arranged for Shaitan under the care of two grooms to be sent back to Westbury months ago. Before I left, I bade farewell to the noble French family in the big house on the Rue St-Denis — my family. Adele had visited me often in my cot at the Hotel-Dieu, bringing me hot soup and egg possets and fresh fruit, and fussing over me in an irritating but also deeply comforting way. Reuben had departed in February, with my heartfelt gratitude, saying that he could do no more than that which the monks at the Hotel-Dieu and my own constitution might achieve. And he had business matters to attend to in Montpellier, anyway; he could not spend the rest of his life fussing over me like a mother. Roland and the Seigneur had visited me twice at the Hotel, but they were both uncomfortable in a sick-room, as I have found many fit and active men to be, as if my wound could somehow weaken their own robust bodies. But they made an attempt at joviality, and shrugged off my thanks for saving my life as if breaking into an abbey and battling deluded would-be Templar knights was nothing out of the ordinary.
When I called on them before my departure from Paris, the Seigneur greeted me in the big dining chamber on the ground floor with a bear-hug, Roland clasped my arm warmly and beautiful Adele kissed me on both cheeks. I was pleased to see that Roland’s face had healed and the scar — a large pink shiny patch on his left cheek — was not as disfiguring as it might have been.
My cousin seemed to hold no grudge against me for marking him in such a cruel way: ‘In battle a man will do what he must to defeat an opponent,’ he told me. ‘I might have done the same to you, had our positions been reversed. But God forbid that it should ever come to that again.’ I felt a rush of affection for my newly discovered cousin and his chivalrous attitudes. He would never stoop to petty revenge, and I was certain that he would be a very good man to have beside you in the battle line.
We dined simply, as Thomas and I were to leave Paris the next morning and we had much to do before our departure, taking only a little wine and cold meat and cheese at the Seigneur’s board.
The talk turned, inevitably, to the war. While the truce between Richard and Philip had been largely observed — apart from some discreet castle-rebuilding on both sides and a few reckless raiding forays by the wilder knights in both armies — we all knew that it could not last for ever. It was March by now, a month rightly named for the Roman God of War, and the beginning of the campaigning season. The warmer spring weather would bring the bellicose spirits on both sides bubbling up to the surface. A raid would lead to a skirmish, and that might end in a battle or a siege. A truce was not a peace, after all — and as long as King Philip’s men occupied large parts of Normandy, Richard was bound by his sense of honour to fight him. It was his patrimony, after all, granted him by God and his father, Henry — it was his duty to recover the territories for himself and for his as yet unborn descendants.
‘I am pleased that you will not be arrayed among the English knights who will oppose us when war does come, Sir Alan,’ said the Seigneur, with a wry grin. And I was glad too. Reuben had told me that I must rest for a good long time, to allow my body, and particularly my lungs, to fully recover. My wind was bad, and I knew that I would not be fit for campaigning this season, and for the first time in my life I felt a strange reluctance to don mail and ride into battle ever again. I was going home to England and to Goody. And that pleased me a very great deal.
It took us two weeks, Thomas and I, to ride to Calais, for we travelled slowly, making sure that we stayed somewhere warm every night for the sake of my lungs — a safe conduct from Bishop de Sully easing our path and commanding the finest hospitality at any religious house we visited. Matthew the student accompanied us on this journey. Since the death of Master Fulk, he and his friends had found other teachers, and we had enjoyed one more evening at the sign of the Cock before my departure, a brief affair, it must be said, for I was soon exhausted by the young men’s high spirits and begged off early to go to bed. Matthew had told me he had tired of Paris and wished to travel back to England, to Oxford, where he had heard there was a renowned new teacher of Philosophy that he wanted to study under. I believe, in truth, that he owed a good deal of money to some very unpleasant people in Paris, but I was content for Matthew to come with us on our journey north. He provided some youthful company for Thomas, for I was a morose and irritable companion. Even a few hours in the saddle wearied me, and though we three rode out each morning at dawn, by noon, as often as not, I had travelled as far as I wished to for one day. We lingered at Beauvais, Amiens and St Pol-sur-Ternoise, for a full day’s rest. At Calais, it took another three days to find a ship that would take us to Dover. But, at the beginning of April, the year of Our Lord eleven hundred and ninety-five, I was once again on English soil. We travelled up to London, and I paid a visit to the Temple on the western outskirts of the city, and redeemed my silver from the knights there when I presented the letter from the Paris Temple. My silver was delivered to me in small white linen sacks no bigger than my fist but each marked with a neat red cross on the side. The clerks at the Temple seemed to take it as a matter of course that I should walk into their precincts with a piece of parchment, and walk out with more than two pounds of bright metal. It was a marvellous system, to be sure, but I was glad once again to have specie about my person and — once I had unpacked it from the linen sacks, counted it and packed it into my broad leather money belt — to feel its comforting weight on my hips.
We bade farewell to Matthew at St Albans, and while he took the road west to Aylesbury and on to Oxford, Thomas and I headed north. A week after that and Thomas and I rode through the open wooden gates of Westbury, in the county of Nottinghamshire, and I slipped out of the saddle and into the arms of my beloved.
Chapter Twenty
I had not seen Godifa, my betrothed, my fiery blonde darling, for almost a full year. And I found that she had changed a good deal in that time: I had left her a coltish girl, and returned to find her a beautiful full-grown woman. While I could still span her waist with my big hands, her hips and breasts had blossomed into soft curves. I took her into my arms and we
kissed for a long, long while, our tongues intertwining like mating snakes, with a passion that made my head whirl and nearly cost me my self-control — I had it in my mind to drag her into her chamber and allow my lust free rein. But I did not: Goody was yet a maiden, and I’d sworn that she would be one until our wedding night.
I broke our honey-sweet embrace, held her in my arms, gazed into her lovely violet eyes. ‘Welcome home, my sweet love,’ she said, and I kissed her once more, briefly, on her soft lips before releasing her.
‘The weary warrior is home from the battlefield,’ said a warm voice with just a hint of Wales in its tones. It was my old friend Father Tuck, beaming at me from a round red-weathered face beneath the iron-grey smear of his tonsure.
I embraced him too, and then the tall, chestnut-haired woman standing beside him. Marie-Anne, Countess of Locksley, had put on a little weight, though she was still a lovely woman, and the reason for that slight increase in girth lay sleeping in her arms. ‘This is Miles,’ she said, filled with pride, and I peered at the bundle at her breast and saw a pair of unmistakable silver-grey eyes staring out at me with ferocious interest from a chubby pink face.
Beyond Marie-Anne and her baby, I saw the tall figure of Baldwin, my steward, standing by the door of the hall. He nodded a respectful greeting at me, but did not move; he was resting his hands on the shoulders of a dark-haired boy, who stood immediately in front of him: it was Hugh, Robin’s eldest son. And he stared at me without recognition, but with the curious gaze of any five-year-old.
It was wonderful to be back at Westbury, and for a few days the joy at home-coming managed to lift the black gloom that had enveloped me since my encounter with the Master six months ago. I had so much to tell Goody and Tuck and Marie-Anne, that although we sat down to eat dinner at noon, we did not rise from the table till full dark.
The next day, after a sleepless night, I found myself inexplicably restless, prowling around the manor on foot and a-horse, like a dog sniffing the air, seeing what had changed and what had not. Since I had taken my wound, I had been beset with a strange malaise of the soul: I was constantly in a state of wariness, as if danger were just around the corner. It meant that I could not sleep, or if I did manage to drift off momentarily, I awoke with my heart pounding and drenched with sweat. Images of Sir Eustace striking me with his lance-dagger often flashed into my mind; and of the Master’s lean, pockmarked face, his commanding blue eyes. On waking, I was nervous, irritable, jumpy — but at the same time detached from my feelings. I had expected, now that I was back at Westbury, to be able to rest easily for a few months. But, to my deep frustration, I found I could not.
I have noticed that after battle or combat I have often felt a similar sensation — the sleeplessness, in particular, and the awful, blood-tinged dreams — but previously these feelings had gradually faded over several weeks, and I had regained my normal buoyant mood. Not this time. I was haunted by my experiences in France, by the deaths of Hanno and Owain, and by my own near escape from the yawning grave. Back at Westbury, I began to drink a little more each night, in an attempt to help me sleep, just another cup or two to begin with, and then whole flagons of good red wine — and another full one set by my bed, too.
It was to no avail.
It is true that after drinking deeply of the good wine that Baldwin purchased from the Aquitanian merchants, I would sometimes fall into a short sleep, but I would almost always awake past midnight, mouth dry as old leather, head beating and with a sour belly — unable to sleep again until dawn found me exhausted, sweaty and irritable.
I behaved badly in those months at Westbury, often snapping angrily at Tuck, Marie-Anne, Thomas, or even at my beloved Goody. I found myself bristling with rage and snarling at the slightest thing: a dropped cup or a door left open, a dog barking in the night. And I drank more and more wine to try to calm my nerves. Looking back on that time it is a wonder that my friends bore my company at all: I would not have been surprised if they had all decamped for Robin’s castle of Kirkton in Yorkshire and closed the gates in my face. When we all meet again in Heaven, as I am sure we will, I shall apologize to them and try to make amends. I could not explain it then: I did not understand it myself. I had faced danger and death many times before that episode in Paris. I was young, just turned twenty years, and my chest had healed to a thick pink scar — my wind was not good but it was slowly improving. But I could not shake the demons of memory that haunted my days and particularly my nights. And, although I knew I was playing the boor, I could not fathom why. I still do not fully understand it.
But if my rude and angry behaviour were not enough, there were other dark forces at work to sour the air at Westbury that spring and summer. On the third or fourth day after my arrival, Tuck took me aside and explained why he and Marie-Anne had decided to move in with Goody and abandon Kirkton to Robin’s army of servants.
‘It is Nur, I am afraid,’ Tuck told me as we strolled through the long apple orchard, admiring the delicate blossoms that adorned the trees. ‘She has taken up residence in the old, deep woods over towards Alfreton, and she appears to be gathering followers to her; a sad crew made up of the mad and infirm, the dispossessed and rejected — all women, young and old.’
‘Has she bothered Goody in any way?’ I asked.
‘I’m afraid Nur has been making something of a nuisance of herself in these parts recently. She sometimes visits Westbury by night, usually at full moon, and leaves dead, mutilated animals in strange contorted attitudes — baby shrews, rats, foxes, even cats, hanged or crucified — and blood-daubed messages outside the walls. The villagers are all terrified of her and whisper that she is a witch and servant of Satan — and I am certain that, while she is surely mortal, it truly is the Devil who drives her wicked actions!’
‘Has she hurt Goody?’ I repeated, a little shortly.
‘No-ooo, she has not,’ said Tuck slowly, his red face wrinkling with thought. ‘Goody says she is not frightened by that sort of nonsense — and has threatened to give Nur another thrashing if she ever encounters her again. But it must be wearing on her soul — having an enemy so close, and someone so filled with malice. Goody would not be human if she did not find that unsettling.’
I felt a pang of guilt then. For Nur was a monster of my own making; it was my failure, my inability to love her after she had been mutilated, that had turned her towards evil. And I was certain that she meant to do Goody harm, if ever she could.
‘Do not fret, Alan,’ said Tuck. ‘We have a dozen good men-at-arms at Westbury, and I have cleansed the hall and the courtyard buildings with holy water; we are safe from Nur’s evil — I only tell you so you will understand if Goody seems rather tense.’
I spoke to Goody about the threat from Nur, and she seemed to me to be quite calm: ‘I feel a kind of pity for Nur, rather than anything stronger,’ she said. ‘You loved her once but no longer, and she cannot let that go. I can understand that. It must be eating her up inside to know that, only a few miles away, I have you all to myself!’ She gave me her lovely smile, and brushed my cheek with her lips.
‘If you wish, I could raise a troop of men and we could scour those Alfreton woods, flush her out and drive her away,’ I said. ‘It would not be such a difficult task and perhaps we would be doing a kindness in expelling her from the area. If she were not close by, perhaps she would forget all about us and move ahead with her own life.’
‘No,’ said Goody, ‘let the poor woman be. She has already been exiled from her home once — in Outremer. We can survive a few dead rats every full moon — perhaps she will grow bored with this dark game and find some other way to fill the emptiness of her life.’
And so I did nothing. And, in fact, at the next full moon there were no executed animal corpses strewn around Westbury, no foul messages scrawled in blood for all to see. And the next moon after that, too. I began to think that Nur had given up her attempt to scare us, and that she had perhaps gone away, or died of some fever, or just expire
d of plain starvation. I allowed myself to feel a little easier.
The months passed at Westbury, and the harvest was gathered in by the villeins and franklins of the village, under the efficient rule of Baldwin, my steward: it was a bountiful year, with soft rain to make the crops grow in April and May and then strong sunshine to ripen the ears all through June and July. On the first day of August, at the feast of Lammas, when the tenants were duty bound to pay their rents, I took some pale satisfaction at seeing the grain barns being filled to the rafters with the produce of Westbury, and after Mass in the village church, in which a loaf made from that year’s harvest was consecrated by the priest, an owlish little man called Arnold, and given out with the wine at the Blessed Sacrament, I feasted my tenants with a roasted pig, two ewes, six dozen capons, innumerable puddings, and many barrels of fresh ale.
My squire Thomas spent hours by the ale barrels with the dozen or so Westbury men-at-arms, and became quite drunk, and not long after dusk, when a great bonfire was being lit, and the dancing was about to begin, Goody had to help him off to bed. The boy, I noticed, had changed in recent months: his voice had changed from the shrill treble of the year before and become deeper, though it still cracked and jumped from a high to a low register when he was excited. And he had grown too. He would never be a tall man, but he had added six inches to his stature since our time in Paris, and he undoubtedly would be a man before long.
A drum began to throb, and the wailing of a pipe pierced the twilight. When my tipsy squire had been put to bed — even in drink he was a grave and sensible youth, not given to giggling, singing, loud extravagant words or violence — Goody came and sat beside me. We shared a plate of roast pork with fresh wheat bread, and a large flagon of wine, and watched the villagers join hands in a circle and begin the intricate steps of the traditional Lammas dances. The night was warm and well lit by the bonfire that cast flickering light and shadow upon the circling dancers. It was a homely, peaceful scene, the red firelight, the wheeling dancers, a broad table, laden with good food: and yet there was something troubling my beloved, and I knew what it was. It had been a year and four months since we had become betrothed, and the celebration of our bountiful harvest had bent her thoughts towards her own fecundity.
