No Man's Son

by Doris Sutcliffe Adams

  “Can you not refrain from quarrelling with Marco in this house?” she asked resignedly.

  “I cannot bear to see you use him like a friend!”

  “He has proved his friendship,” she reminded him.

  “You show him more favour than you do me!” he muttered sullenly.

  She regarded his flushed face, his attitude of a child rebuked for conduct he considered justified, and in a vivid moment of revelation recognised that she did not want to marry an overgrown adolescent whose whole life was governed by his own immediate desires; that she had all along accepted the plan as her duty, and that if she must fulfil it to provide for her father she would go to the sacrifice and spend a lifetime in regret. There was nothing in him to take hold of or build on; he would grow to old age an uncontrolled boy, snatching at present gratification, quarrelling heedlessly with any man who impeded him, striking vindictively at any obstacle to his own way.

  Her cool, considering gaze pricked him. He came a stride closer, within arm’s reach, his flush darkening. “Yes, I am jealous!” he admitted angrily. “I am jealous of everyone you smile on, and when you show more favour to that mongrel than you do to me I cannot hold my fury! Oh, Rodriga, you know I hate him, and you know I love you! Why must you use him to torment me so?”

  For a moment she failed to understand, and then the insult froze her. “You believe I would be so base,” she asked icily, “as to pretend friendship with Marco on purpose to make you jealous?”

  “Why, all girls do it!” he said roughly. “And it has succeeded, so you need not tease me any more with him!”

  “Marco is my friend, and my father’s. If you believe that of me you had better go.”

  “All the girls play that game!” he declared again, “and you have done it more plainly than most!” The cold anger in her gaze suddenly reached him, for all at once he turned to pleading. “Oh, Rodriga, I love you so! You know I love you! From the first moment when I saw you! I did not mean to make you angry, but I adore you so that I am jealous of every man you speak to! Rodriga, you will forgive me, and never talk with him again?”

  “We had best go down,” said Rodriga quietly, and stepped aside to pass him.

  He seized her wrist. “Rodriga, I love you! You must not torment me any more! Such love as mine must take root in your heart, my darling, and grow there! Show me a little kindness, Rodriga!”

  “Are you mad? Let go!” she hissed furiously, trying to jerk free.

  “You have been coy long enough, Rodriga. Do not be afraid of love! My dear heart, let me love you!” He dragged her to him, clipped her in his strong arms and pressed hot greedy kisses on her mouth. She fought and twisted, her arms held to her sides, kicked at his shins and turned her head away. He shifted his grip, his face nuzzled into her throat and one hand fumbled at her breasts. She could have screamed for aid, but would not for fear of precipitating a killing. She managed to wrench an arm free, snatched at his hair and tore his mouth from her flesh with all the strength that was in her. He loosed her with a stifled yelp, and a moment later she was beyond his reach, her dagger shining in her hand, her colourless face set in savage determination.

  He fell back in confusion and dismay. “Rodriga, I—I am sorry! he faltered. “Indeed, Rodriga—I was—I was crazed for love of you, but I would not have forced you! You know I would not have ravished you!”

  “Would you not?” she asked bleakly. “Go now!”

  “Rodriga, I was mad with love of you! Forgive me!”

  “For handling me like a trollop?” She sheathed her dagger and regarded him dispassionately. He was nothing but a greedy brat, grabbing at his desires and now appalled by the possible consequences. She shrugged; one did not harbour resentment against brats, but took a belt to them. “If you fear my father’s anger, be easy,” she said caustically. “He has a fondness for you. I will not destroy his pleasure in what he has all but achieved by telling him of this. He will still help you to Rionart.”

  His face cleared, and contempt replaced her anger. “Rodriga, I am sorry. It was too soon. When I am Lord of Rionart I will claim you.”

  “My hand is in my father’s gift,” she answered, determined that he would never bestow it here.

  “I have not forgotten your father, and all that I owe him. There is a snug estate hard by Rionart that I swear to grant him, and you after him. You shall never want for anything once you are mine, Rodriga. You need not fear that I shall ever weary of you or cease to love you.” He smiled at her, cheerfully pleased with his own generosity, expecting her grateful acceptance.

  She stiffened, and contempt and bitter rage flooded her. “You are asking me to become your leman?”

  “To be my dear love, Rodriga. Listen! My lord will ask the King to knight me, and then your father and all this household may join his, or if you prefer it I will command here for you, until—”

  “Do you expect my father or me to accept less than marriage?”

  He stared at her. “Marriage? You aimed at that? But Rodriga, you must know I cannot marry you!”

  “A canonical impediment?” she asked coolly, seeking now that he should completely commit himself, finally reveal the heartless, selfish, spoiled brat that his surface good humour and charm had disguised, so that she need never feel compunction for having brought him to this disappointment he would reckon betrayal.

  “It would not be to my honour!” he blurted. “The Lord of Rionart must wed a noble heiress, not a Moorish slave-girl’s daughter bred up among the ribalds of every army’s tail in Christendom— who visits whorehouses and makes friends of renegades and kills her man! I love you, but you know it is impossible for me— Rodriga, why are you laughing?”

  Rodriga straightened from a spasm of painful, angry mirth. “For gladness that now I shall never be compelled to it!” she spluttered, and took savage delight in the incredulous, outraged vanity that suddenly whirled and fled her presence.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  Rodriga could not bring herself to tell her father, to wreck all his fair dreams in the very moment of achievement. He had centred all his hopes on the marriage, and she could not say that Piers reckoned himself generous when he offered the place of concubine. He had flung out of the house with his Turcoples, but Landry had ascribed his petulance to the earlier quarrel and thought very little of his ill humour. Odd moods were to be expected of young men in love. He had a mild grievance of his own against Marco, and voiced it as he hobbled step by step down the stairs, well within his earshot as he waited at the foot.

  “A maggot in his brain about danger. Been pestering me for the whole household to sleep aboard that ship of his, and off shore at that! A ship! Nothing I love less than heaving up and down in a patchwork shell of wormy planks, hanging over a bulwark with my belly inside-out! And as for running away from shadows, what sort of lily-livered hare does he take me for? Does he expect that crippled beetle to ram the door down and cut all our throats? Hey, wench, are you dead and stiffening? Rouse up and serve us that grandfather of donkeys!”

  If Marco sensed danger Rodriga was anxious to hear of it, but she had no chance to speak to him alone; they had barely gulped a hasty supper when he was summoned to the stable gate by a lad bearing a message, and after brief speech with him left the house. Rodriga, worried and uneasy, stayed herself with an effort from using her father’s untrammelled language and clenched her fists so that her nails bit her palms with frustration.

  She roamed over to the pool. The stars were brilliantly reflected in the black water, between the shifting shadows of the fig-tree’s branches. The moonlight was almost as bright as day, and she felt a sudden bitter aversion towards the cloudless skies of Palestine, a yearning for the North’s softer hues and duller days. She longed for rain, for the cool grey clouds and slanting silver showers and green hills at the far rim of the world, where the rivers brimmed through-out the year and the swinging tides scoured clean the beaches. A horse stamped in the stables, and a murmur of low voices came from the c
olonnade, where Landry sat among his men. She sighed and started for the stair.

  She had almost reached the roof when a slight sound below halted her, and she saw a skirt flick round the corner of the stable. Helga often prowled cat-like after dark, and Rodriga waited a moment to see what she was about. Then the girl was trotting back, her feet pattering softly on the stair, her pale face uplifted in the moonlight.

  “What is it?”

  “A boy seeking you at the gate, my lady. He says he has a message for you from Marco.”

  Rodriga hurried eagerly across the courtyard, while Helga slipped away. She had, very correctly, barred the gate before coming to find her mistress. Rodriga tugged impatiently at the bolt and pulled the heavy gate open. There was no boy to be seen, and she stepped outside into the alley to look for him. Smothering blackness descended over her head; hard arms grappled her and pinned her own arms to her sides, and heavy woollen folds tightened suffocatingly over her face, stifling her cry of alarm. She kicked and writhed, her feet beating against solid shins, but she was blind and choking, her lungs afire for air, her mouth and nostrils stopped by the thickness of cloth over them. After a brief, futile struggle the darkness before her eyes was shot with whirling light and her limbs failed her; she could only thresh feebly for air. Her legs were seized, and she knew that more than one man had hold of her. The arms shifted, cords passed round her and drew tight, and then, though the heavy stuff still covered her head and face, she was no longer smothering but could breathe through it. She was hoisted up and slung over a hard, bony shoulder like a sack of meal, and in her ears, muffled but unmistakable, sounded the soft high laugh of Lothaire de Gallenard.

  Rage filled her to the temporary exclusion of panic. She had walked like any ninny into a trap, and that vile monster had trussed her like a chicken for the spit and was now jolting her on his shoulder as he loped through the streets. She drummed with her feet against his body, and a powerful arm pinned her legs. A broad hand slapped her buttocks, and fury curdled in her. She tried to cry out, but her face was bumping upon her captor’s back and her dry mouth was full of wool. She achieved only a dismal gurgle, and won a mocking laugh that left her only the desire to drive steel into his carcase.

  Suddenly she realised that she had been carried much further than to Robert de Veragny’s house, and she could make no guess where she was being taken, though no guessing was needed for her captor’s purpose. And Helga would know nothing; unless the unbolted gate were discovered she might not even be missed before morning. She was helpless in this recreant’s power, and fear struck coldly into her and her breath caught shuddering in her throat. Again she writhed and fought, and again he laughed without even breaking his stride. Fury aided her again, and she remembered that she was not helpless.

  The hidden dagger was still inside her left sleeve.

  Sounds came dully through the thick cloth over her head, muffled by the pounding of the blood in her ears as she hung head-down. The padding steps and low voices of her abductor and his escort mingled with the din of Acre’s waterfront at carousal. Laughter, snatches of song, squeals and giggles and drunken quarrelling came in bursts as they passed the doors of wineshops and pleasure-houses, and once the screams of a beaten child. Voices challenged the knight once or twice, but he returned no answer save a breathless laugh. Then he checked briefly, went on, and light filtered dully to Rodriga’s eyes through the muffling cloth. After a brief hush noise surged up about her.

  At first the uproar was such that no individual part was distinguishable; then she heard squeals and guffaws, cries of mock reproach, and a woman’s voice in an appreciative pause demanding whether her own charms were inadequate, in such gross detail that Rodriga, rigid with fury and terror, felt her blush flame over her hidden face. A howl of mirth rewarded the jest, a man bellowed another about fresher wares that made her writhe, and bodies jostled around her as her bearer thrust forward. Someone clawed at the cloth over her head, a tipsy voice hiccoughed a wish to see the spoil, another shouted a demand to share the sport. She was pawed and slapped, and many men were crowding round, insisting that Lothaire de Gallenard should uncover his little plaything and let his pot-comrades judge his taste. Rodriga knew that she could only be in one of the dockside brothels, and prayed to the Virgin for succour.

  A vaguely familiar bellow hushed the tumult, and the press of bodies fell away. Dizzy and half-stifled, the blood hammering in her ears, she missed the few low-toned words her captor addressed to somebody nearby. They were moving briskly again, and comparative quiet and full darkness were about her. Then there was a halt, and Lothaire de Gallenard issued commands.

  “Go first with the candle, you bullock. You three, stand guard at the stair foot to see we are not disturbed. You may pass the time drawing lots for next turn with the wench.”

  He climbed a stair, grunting a little and breathing hard under her weight. Boards creaked beneath his tread, and noise burst upon her again. Then she was tossed down with a jolt upon cushions that barely mitigated some hard surface. Hands fumbled at the cords. They fell away, the cloth that had enveloped her was jerked from her head and body, and she blinked in feeble lamplight. She was sprawled upon a low bed, staring up into Lothaire de Gallenard’s triumphant face. In the corner beyond the bed Giacomo stood holding a candle, with which he had just lighted a lamp made from a large sea-shell.

  She sat up as though spurred to it, and the fair knight put out his foot and languidly thrust her back again. “And would you still sooner bed with maggot-ridden carrion, little strumpet?” he demanded softly. “Yes, I promised to remind you, did I not? Now the choice is no longer yours.”

  He was pressing her down with one foot on her breast, and she glared up at him, pale with fury and contempt, her lips drawn back from her teeth in a soundless snarl. He leaned closer to mock her.

  “Not so many words now, most eloquent vixen, when you come to your proper place?”

  Her teeth snapped shut, and her eyes narrowed. She wondered whether she was to be a hostage or the victim of personal vengeance. Her left arm pressed her ribs, and the familiar hardness of the dagger in its flat sheath under her sleeve reassured her. “Your master’s thought, or your own vileness?” she demanded, and was glad that her voice did not tremble.

  “Shall we say, both? His thought to ensure your meddlesome father’s silence, with my improvements.” He grinned down at her. “Even he, my little viper, does not know where I have chosen to bestow you.”

  “Too foul a scheme even for his hyena’s belly?” sneered Rodriga. Her wits were working fast. He was bound to offer her an opportunity, and she must be ready for it. No argument, no threat, no warning; at the first sure chance she would strike to kill, the professional’s upward thrust under the ribs to the heart which she had learned from Marco. Until that moment she would offer no resistance. Beyond the curtained doorway the heartless joviality of the pleasure-house reverberated in the rafters, a bawdy camp-song bellowed by a score of men’s voices. Giacomo had blown out the candle and was standing still and silent beyond her head, but she could scarcely expect him to intervene in the amusements of a knightly patron.

  “Before I have done you will sing another song, you cheating little bitch! Tantalise a gentleman who wastes courtesy on you with the airs of an offended virgin, will you, while any raw pup or even a Saracen’s by-blow is free to lift your skirts? Strike me before him and a giggling harlot in the open street, will you?” His wrath warmed as he dwelt on his grievances, and his face flushed darkly, his pale eyes glittering in the light of the little lamp. “Tonight you win your deserts, my fair trollop! Oh, no use to look to Giacomo! A discreet whoremonger does not interfere with a gentleman’s pleasures, or his own profits!”

  “And what accounting will you make to my father?” she asked coolly. His foot was heavy on her breastbone, so that her breath came short and fast, and her heart was thumping heavily.

  “Oh, we may restore you in the end, when he has made suitable undertakings,
and when I have done with you. A fitting humiliation, to rub his meddlesome nose in your dishonour! And will your raw pup or any other man ever shame himself by wedding a whore from the Black Girl? When your old cripple of a sire has challenged me and been buried, what will be left for you, insolent Lady Disdainful?”

  She said nothing, her face contemptuous. Giacomo stirred slightly by the knight’s right hand, and he jerked his head impatiently.

  “Out with you! When I have finished, and my men also, you may offer our leavings to the company below at the usual fee!”

  “Bene, my lord.” The song below had ceased, and there was comparative quiet in the room. The giant moved heavily towards the door, and the fair man withdrew his foot.

  “Strip, my lady!” he ordered savagely, and as she twisted up on her left elbow, her right hand going to her wrist, he reached down to rend her gown from her body. A confused clamour below checked him, his head up to listen. Giacomo, crossing behind him, winked deliberately at Rodriga, raised his great fist and struck him one smart blow under the ear. He went down across Rodriga’s legs like a sack of meal, and tumbled limply to the floor as she kicked free. She was off the bed like a cat, her dagger ready. The giant grinned reassuringly. Then the curtain billowed inward, and round it like a leopard came Marco, to halt with his back to the wall and his long knife gleaming in his hand.

  “Marco!” cried Rodriga thankfully, running to his side. He caught her arm, drew her to him, and glanced quickly from Giacomo to the twitching body on the floor.

  “Dio! Thought you would never come!” said the giant in vast relief. “The guard below?”

  “Overthrown and in the dark,” Marco answered the more urgent question briefly. “No other way out?”

  Giacomo shook his head. The muffled outcry at the stair foot betokened confusion still, but the ruffians would soon gather their wits and fall upon them. Marco snatched up the cloak and flung it over Rodriga’s shoulders, saying to the giant, “You bade me come in secret.” He was starting for the door when Lothaire de Gallenard staggered to his feet, tugging ineffectively at his sword. Marco flung him off without deigning to use steel, and he spun round and sprawled on his back, snarling at them. Marco was over him with one stride, his dark face deadly ruthless.