Gilded Spurs

by Grace Ingram

  Helvie stood a heart’s beat in the red glow, her hair streaming over her unlaced gown, her hands steady on the half-drawn bow and the arrow on the string. ‘No,’ she answered simply, tossed the weapon aside and dropped to her knees. ‘Give him to me.’ She reached out her hands. Guy sighed and sank into darkness before they touched him.

  Chapter 16

  Woodsmoke, the scent of drying linen, and a whiff of simmering pottage reached Guy first; then a murmur of women’s voices, a pot’s purring, and a thrush’s jubilant whistle. He stirred in a warmth of woollen blanket, and opened his eyes on fireglow, sunlight slanting through a roof-vent and an open door, films of blue smoke eddying up, and the backs of two women sitting on stools at the doorway, one sewing and one spinning. Dreamily he watched the needle glint in and out, the fingers tease and twirl the wool, the spindle sink to the floor as the thread lengthened and was wound up afresh.

  He looked on love and warmth and beauty as he had done all his life, the cuckoo-child with no right and no abiding-place. He had no share in this peace. He watched Helvie’s deft hands draw and twist, wind and hitch, the spindle falling over and over in the rhythm he had known all his days. Just so his mother and sisters had sat, endlessly turning fleece to yarn for the looms to work as women had done since Eve fled the garden, endlessly sewing garments to clothe husbands and children. Thought of his mother made him bite at his lips.

  Elswyth got up, crossed to the fire and bent to whisk the ashes and stir the pot. Guy let his lids fall and feigned sleep, postponing confrontation, the questioning, explaining and apology. The rushes whispered. She was approaching. Shame scorched him. He opened his eyes and looked up into her face.

  She smiled, and smoothed his hair. ‘You’re safe, lad, with friends.’

  Helvie let distaff and spindle clatter and came running, her eyes anxiously searching his face. ‘Guy—’

  ‘Helvie,’ he croaked. His throat was dry, and his voice did not seem to belong to him. He rolled on to his back.

  ‘A bowl of pottage for you,’ Elswyth suggested briskly, and Helvie went to fetch it. Guy heaved up on one elbow. Every muscle in his body twanged protest like a mis-struck lutestring. He shoved himself to a sitting position, the blankets sliding down to his waist, and Elswyth flung his cloak over his shoulders and tucked it round him as though he were an infant.

  ‘You took me in,’ he said, reaching a hand to her. ‘I—I cannot thank—’

  ‘What else should we have done? Cast you out? Sup your pottage and don’t be foolish.’

  Feeling indeed like an admonished urchin, Guy took the bowl with a word of thanks, spoke a brief grace and dipped the spoon. It was meatless for Lent, pulses and roots made savoury with herbs, hot and comforting. The first mouthful woke hunger, and nothing was said until he had finished and handed back the bowl. It was high morning by the sun; last night’s collapse of exhaustion had passed into sleep. He looked from Elswyth, sitting on the edge of the bed and smiling at him, to Helvie standing by looking troubled and doubtful. ‘You haven’t asked any questions.’

  ‘No need. Your friend told us all.’

  Some sort of spasm twisted Helvie’s mouth. Loathing and anger looked for an instant from her eyes. Guy turned to her. ‘What’s amiss, my lady?’

  ‘How could you?’ she demanded in revulsion. ‘That man—how could you make a friend of such a monster?’

  ‘I didn’t,’ he answered mildly. ‘He befriended me.’

  ‘He told me—it was he told me—that you loved me! You—you discussed me—’

  ‘No, my lady. He guessed.’ Some of the anger left her face, but not the regret. ‘I’m sorry. You should not have learned that from any lips but mine. None the less, it is true.’

  ‘I—I had dreamed—had hoped—’ He could scarcely catch her whisper, and she bowed her head to hide the flush that rose to her hair. ‘And then—to hear that foul beast—’

  ‘My lady, he has been most truly my friend. But for his help I should have fallen and died, last night on the waste.’

  ‘No doubt he saw advantage in it!’

  ‘He carried me here to you.’

  ‘That murderous raptor!’

  ‘Can you not find a little charity for him. Lady Helvie? He is even more wretched than I.’

  ‘Charity? How can you ask it? A ravisher, a child-murderer—’

  ‘No. The boy’s death was accident. I saw.’

  ‘You defend him?’

  ‘He loved the mother, and she killed herself. Now he’s in hell. I owe him too much to turn my back on his need.’

  ‘Need?’

  ‘He has no one else in all the world.’ And that, of course, was the riddle’s answer.

  ‘We’re quarrelling,’ said Helvie on a note of bewilderment, tears gemming her lashes. ‘We’re quarrelling over that monster who tried to rape me.’

  ‘He would not harm you or any woman now.’

  Elswyth, who had been sitting with the empty bowl in her hands, said unexpectedly, ‘He left you a message. He said, “Tell the lad I shall come for him at Easter.” ’

  The bond still held. Helvie, watching his face, asked bitterly, ‘You’ll go with him?’

  ‘Lady Helvie,’ he implored, ‘try to understand, if you can’t forgive—’

  ‘Do I mean nothing to you?’

  ‘You know you hold my heart. But is it proof of love to spit on friendship?’

  Helvie turned from him, gulping on a sob. He reached out his hand, but she blundered across the cottage and out of the door.

  Horrified and ashamed, Guy swung his legs round and grabbed at the covers to cast them back. Elswyth shoved him sprawling against the pillow.

  ‘Let her go.’

  ‘But Helvie—I cannot—’

  ‘Will you chase her naked?’ He subsided, his flush scorching, and she grinned. ‘You obstinate whelp, I never guessed you had that much gall in you. She slapped him lightly on the shoulder.

  ‘I’ve hurt Helvie—she’ll not forgive—’

  ‘Hold to it, and she’ll respect you for it. Too mettlesome for her own good, but she’ll see sense when she cools.’

  He looked doubtfully at her, shaken by the quarrel, and acknowledged the truth; to make his peace with Helvie at this moment he must disown Conan. ‘What can I do?’ he muttered aloud.

  ‘What’s right and not what’s soft. The husband should be master.’

  ‘Husband?’

  ‘Your aims are honest, aren’t they?’

  ‘Marriage—Lord Henry wouldn’t call that honest. But it’s impossible.’

  ‘Let be. You lie back now. Rest and eat to put some cover on them great bones.’ She went to the fire to set on more wood and stir the pot.

  Guy lay still a little while, frowning in abstraction as he fought his urgent desire to find Helvie and promise whatever she asked to comfort her. Then he sat up purposefully. ‘I’ll have my clothes.’

  ‘Still damp. They were bloody, and we washed them.’ She turned his tunic, lying on the rushes. ‘You’ll not chance your death wearing wet clothes, sick as you’ve been, so you stay where you are.’ Guy grinned reluctantly. Her admonishments and her kindness took him back to his childhood, reducing him and Helvie to a pair of squabbling brats. He subsided into the tangle of blankets, troubled to imagine his hardy Helvie weeping in the woods.

  ‘I was too hard,’ he muttered, more to himself than to Elswyth.

  ‘You stand fast. It’s for her to come to you. Give way now and she’ll rule you all your lives, and a shrew’s a misery to herself and everyone about her.’

  ‘You talk as though we were betrothed!’ Guy expostulated. ‘Her father would never permit—his enemy’s cast-off bastard, without land or prospects.’

  Elswyth came to sit again on the edge of the bed. ‘I worry over her,’ she confided. ‘Me lord’s only child, and given her way too much, but a bastard all the same. Past seventeen now. And what every woman wants for her girl is a good husband. Gentry matches for land
and gear and joining high kin, but us as has none weds for liking. You’d gentle her steady and loving, not break her like a balky horse.’

  ‘You honour me,’ Guy said wryly. ‘But her marriage is in her father’s gift.’

  ‘If you must have his consent,’ she agreed, and returned to her fire. He stared after her with mouth ajar, trying to assimilate the implications of that remark while he watched Elswyth mix barley-meal with water, pat it into flat cakes, brush the embers back from the hearth-stone and invert a large pot over her baking. She heaped the hot ashes over the pot and tidied the hearth.

  Helvie came in. Her eyelids were reddened, but she had washed her face, the tendrils of hair about her brow and cheek were dark and damp. She came to the bedfoot, and her voice was hard with the effort she made to control it. ‘I ask your pardon. I have no right to question your friendships.’

  ‘No one has a greater right, my lady.’

  ‘I d-do not question it—’

  ‘It’s a debt, the greatest of all. My life.’

  ‘I—then I suppose I should be grateful!’ She spat the last word.

  ‘Lady Helvie, my heart, is there so much kindness in this world that we can throw any in the giver’s face?’

  She gulped and turned away, dragging her stool to the fire on a pretence of tending the cookery. Guy knew that she had not reconciled herself and probably never would, and did not know how to heal her hurt. It was another problem to go over and over as he waited to recover his strength. He could not repudiate Conan. If he turned his back on the man he would, Guy was sure, kill himself in utter despair.

  In the silence a blackbird called alarm, and they heard a staff tapping along the stones of the path. Guy looked about him for his belt and dagger, knowing he had no time to reach them, but Helvie, scrambling up, shoved him flat, jerked the blankets above his head and dragged them straight. As darkness closed over him, he glimpsed Elswyth whisking up his drying clothes to bundle away. Helvie’s weight sank into the feather-bed beside him.

  "Save you, father!’ Elswyth called tranquilly. ‘Come you in and set. I’m just baking.’

  ‘God save all here,’ croaked a voice Guy had heard before. He dared draw breath; this was the blacksmith’s blind father, her father too. Straining to hear through the muffling woollen, he recognized the scrape of the staff and the scuffle of feet in the rushes. Helvie rose from his side.

  ‘Here’s your stool, grandfather. A horn of ale now?’

  ‘Aye, aye, gran’daughter . . . Ah-h, that’s a right good brewing. I’d not say nay to another, nor a bite o’ new bread neither. Still got teeth enough to chew a crust, m’girl; not down to spoon-meat yet.’ He cackled. Guy delicately drew down a corner of the bedclothes to uncover one eye. The old man’s wild hair made a flame-reddened nimbus about his head as he leaned to the fire, extending veined and knobby hands to its glow. Elswyth heaped fresh embers over the pot.

  "Twon’t be long,’ she said brightly. ‘All well at the forge?’

  ‘Aye—’ His head jerked up, turned to one side and the other, not to see but to listen. Guy held his breath, his body rigid. ‘Who’s here wi’ you?’

  ‘Father—’

  ‘There’s a man here where no man should be! ’ He grabbed his staff and creaked upright, his blind face turned to the bed. ‘A man in your house—I can feel and smell him! Ha’ you turned whore like your mother, girl?’ He towered under the smoky rafters like Elias condemning sin.

  ‘No!’

  Guy pushed back the blankets, and Elswyth frantically gestured to him to be silent. The blind man sniffed, his nostrils working; Elswyth crouched on her knees beside the fire, and Helvie stood like stone with the alehorn in her hand. The fragrance of baking bread was filling the hut.

  ‘Ha, it’s Warby’s bastard you’ve took in, when he fled from his father. Fools that you were, if you’re not whores. There’ll no good come of it.’

  ‘Father—’

  ‘What good’s Warby ever done to us and ourn?’ He reached his staff before him, feeling for obstacles, and stumped unerringly to the door. ‘Ill done to meddle. Put the devil’s get from under your roof afore he brings harm to it. No luck ever came to honest folk wi’ a Warby.’ His staff tapped away down the path.

  Guy sat up and reached for his cloak, wondering how the blind man had recognized his presence; maybe by sensing another rhythm of breathing, or smelling him as a dog would. ‘He’ll talk?’he asked.

  ‘M’brother’s wife’ll have it all over the village by nightfall.’

  ‘Then I cannot remain here.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You and Helvie—if Lord Reynald comes to take me, or Lord Henry. I must go.’

  ‘How? And where?’

  He had no answer, but looked from one to the other, remembering how Conan had had to carry him here last night. There was no other roof that might shelter him within twenty miles, and he had proved unfit to ride five. It was barely April, and the air still held the bite of frost; he knew he would scarcely survive a night in the open. ‘But if I bring harm upon you—’

  ‘No one’s likely to run tattling. They’ve goodwill towards you in the village.’

  ‘Will you tell me there’s no witch in it, owing allegiance to Lord Reynald ? And this house stands alone.’

  ‘Leave off fretting. Another day or two o’ rest and feeding’ll set you up.’ She spread his clothes again by the fire and held his tunic to its heat. Steam curled over the cloth and wisped away. ‘And don’t you trouble over Lord Henry. He’ll ha’ guessed you’re here, and he’s not on the doorstep to drag you out.’

  Helvie swept the ashes from the pot, tipped it back and took up the hot bread in a cloth with the ease of habit. She must be living here with her mother; she had made no move to return to Trevaine.

  ‘I had not expected to find you here, Lady Helvie,’ he said a little stiffly, ‘and had no intention of breaking my promise not to approach you again. Have you left your father’s hold?’

  ‘For a time. It’s his wife.’ She turned to face him, absently juggling a cake of bread in the cloth. ‘She’s past living with these last weeks. Her time’s near, and she’s carrying badly, and she finds my presence an offence. My father daren’t cross her for his heir’s sake. She quarrels with everyone, and she has sent two of her demoiselles home in disgrace—the two most useful ones of course.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘We’ve always been at odds, but I don’t trust the midwife and said so. I was a fool. If I’d praised her to heaven she’d have taken against her.’

  ‘Isn’t she competent?’

  ‘At her duties, I reckon so. But she’s moved into the castle for the last weeks, and she’s working on Alice’s suspicions and turning her against everyone, to increase her own influence and consequence I suppose. As for the wench she’s brought in for a wetnurse, she sits about idle eyeing the men, and guzzling like a sow in farrow—sly trollop.’

  ‘You’re well out of that household.’

  ‘It’s not been home to me since my father married her.’ Helvie smiled at her mother in a content that proved her happier living as a peasant in this cottage filled with warmth and love, rather than as her father’s daughter in Trevaine castle. He watched her move about her tasks, shredding cabbage for the pot, carrying the outer leaves to the pig in her sty across the garden, sweeping the hearth and turning his clothes before the fire. Watching her eased his misery.

  The bread was cool enough to eat, and the women served dinner; bread and cheese, bowls of pottage, wrinkled winter apples and ale. When they had eaten Elswyth pronounced his clothes fit to wear, and Guy thankfully left the bed. He was stiff and saddle-galled, but he threw his cloak over his shoulders and made for the door. He stood in the spring sunlight, looking about him at the garden, the winter roots almost done and sprouting green, the empty beds dug and raked, the apple-trees budding pink and the pear frothing white. Four straw hives were humming alive. A winter-gaunt cow and Helvie’s palfrey sh
ared a patch of grass beyond them. He drew a long breath.

  ‘Where’s Dusty—my horse?’

  ‘I hid him in the woods,’ Helvie told him, pointing.

  ‘I’ll see all’s well with him.’ A knight looked to his mount before himself, and if Dusty were as poor an apology for a charger as an armourer’s journeyman for a knight, Guy knew his duty.

  ‘Go gently, lad. You’re unfit—’

  ‘It’s a bare fortnight to Easter,’ Guy pointed out. ‘I must make myself fit.’ He moved away across the garden.

  Dusty was glad to see him, and Guy made much of him, shifted his tether to fresh grazing, and then tried his legs by walking down the path to the Trevaine track. He had to rest before he could return, and twice on the way back, but urgency pressed him; he must compel his strength to its limits day by day to force its return. His legs were trembling under him when he came to the cottage door, and Elswyth took one look at him and jerked her head at the bed, where he was indeed glad to stretch his length.

  ‘You’ve done too much!’ Helvie expostulated.

  ‘You’re not a hen, my girl,’ said her mother. ‘Don’t cluck.’

  Guy was surprised into laughing. Helvie looked mutinous and then grinned. ‘My chick’s a great gosling.’ She took up her spinning.

  Guy watched, and dozed. He dreamed of Warby bailey, and started awake with a cry to find Helvie stooping over him. ‘My father—’

  She put her hand on his, the first time she had touched him since their dispute, and he gripped her fingers. ‘Would he wish you to grieve so?’

  ‘No. But the grief’s no less. And my mother—how shall I tell my mother it was my fault he died?’

  ‘Won’t it console her that you live?’

  ‘I?’ His surprise betrayed him; comprehension drove the colour from her face.

  ‘Guy— no—’

  ‘It—she’s not to blame. Only to her—to her I’m the raptor’s get. To him I was his first-born son.’

  Her hand closed tighter. ‘Oh my dear—you loved him.’

  ‘And it was my fault—’

  ‘Here’s folly,’ Elswyth’s voice declared. "Twasn’t your hand used the knife. How could it be your fault?’