No Man's Son
Page 37
They passed the side street that led to the church where they had worshipped, and Marco moved his head and said, “My lady!” She bent to hear him, and then turned to Sir Geoffrey, her heart thumping.
“He would see a priest. Father Augustine.”
Sir Geoffrey glanced compassionately at him, and beckoned one of the half-dozen escort. “Fetch Father Augustine to the harbour, Henry.”
Half the crew were already waiting on the quayside for their captain. They swarmed forward, seized the litter-poles from unreluctant hands, and carried Marco up the narrow gangplank. “I must go with him,” said Rodriga to the young knight, and he courteously drew his men aside to wait for her. The last obstacle was passed. She felt a momentary compunction for what she was doing to him. He would have to face King Richard’s fury when the outrageous truth was known, but necessity compelled her.
“Not there!” said Marco clearly, as the sailors prepared to bear him into the dark little cabin at the stern. “Up on the poop!”
It was a difficult task, hoisting the litter and its burden up the steep companion without harm, but with oaths and grunts they accomplished it, and laid him on the scrubbed planks of the after-castle in the sunlight. They stood round him grinning, and Father Augustine came puffing anxiously up the companion and plumped down on his knees beside him.
“You wish me to shrive you, my son?”
“No, Father. We wish you to marry us.”
Rodriga proudly lifted her head and gripped his hand, as the priest stared incredulously.
“A knight’s daughter and a harlot’s son! But that cannot be! I cannot perform such a marriage!”
“Then we pledge ourselves before witnesses,” Rodriga said.
“But we should prefer to be married in form by a priest.”
He looked helplessly at them. Then his mouth twitched. “You are determined, my children?”
“We are determined,” said Marco, and Rodriga echoed him.
“You constrain me, eh? If I refuse you will make your vows and be liable to penance for contracting an irregular marriage, a wrong I have a duty to prevent. You are fleeing from the fair-haired squire?”
“And Melek Ric,” said Marco, perversely honest.
The priest stared, and then chuckled. “Rebels and runaways!” Suddenly grave, he looked from Rodriga’s defiantly pleading eyes to Marco’s gaze of awed wonder. “No man living has a right to deny you,” he decided gently. The seamen stiffened respectfully around them, and amid the bustle of the heedless harbour he married them, on his knees beside Marco’s litter, and blessed them both. The crew quietly slipped away as he finished to cast off and work the Magdalena out of the harbour.
Father Augustine rose to his feet. “Cherish each other, and God grant you long years, peace and many children.” He glanced overside, and inquired briskly, “Would you have me impart this news to your fair squire?”
Rodriga leaped up in alarm. “Lord Above! It is Piers!”
Marco uttered a smothered ejaculation, lifted his head and then fell back. Rodriga leaped to the bulwark, signalling urgently to him to stay still. Piers was thrusting through the busy crowds with scant courtesy, wild alarm competing with fury in his face and a troop of men-at-arms at his heels. He sighted Sir Geoffrey and beckoned fiercely, bringing him forward at a run.
“Cast off!” Rodriga shouted.
The priest skipped ashore with unexpected nimbleness, and the gangplank whisked inboard from under his heels. The seamen ready at bows and stern had the warps free and had leaped aboard as he trod the quay. The Magdalena lurched away from her moorings, a gap of green water widening between her sides and the stone. By the time the two young men had fought their way to the edge the sweeps were out and she was twenty yards distant, and might as well have been twenty miles. Rodriga looked down into the livid vicious face of Piers de Rionart, and spoke to him for the last time across the gap.
“You need not take dishonour to your bed, my lord. The slave’s daughter is better matched with the harlot’s son, and I go with my husband.”
She sat beside Marco and joined her hand to his, kissed him on the lips and then lifted her head to watch. The crew tugged cheerfully at the sweeps, and the Magdalena, gathering way, worked out of the harbour, past the mole, past the Tower of Flies, round the point and out to sea. The lion-tawny walls of Acre, city of death, slid past them, and she pointed her prow north along the dune-crested coastline for Tyre, the first port at the world’s end.
The End
GLOSSARY
Arbalest
Across-bow.
Braies
Masculine underwear, loose drawers held up by a cord or belt.
Chape
The metal cap at the point of a scabbard
Chirurgeon
Asurgeon.
Denier
An old French silver coin of small value.
Destrier
A knight’s powerful charger.
Disparagement
Bestowing a noblewoman in marriage on a man of inferior rank, considered a heinous offence against gentle blood.
Escheat
To revert to the overlord by default of heir or forfeiture.
Fief
An estate held by right of military service to an overlord.
Greek fire
An incendiary liquid chiefly composed of pitch and naptha.
Hauberk
A tunic of mail.
Langue d’oc
The southern division of the French language during the Middle Ages.
Mantlet
A loopholed screen or siege-shield.
Mortrewe
A highly-seasoned dish of porridge-like consistency with a basis of meat pounded in a mortar.
Outremer
The Kingdomof Jerusalem;literally, beyond the sea.
Petraria
Asiege-engineforcastingstones.
Quarrel
A short square-headed crossbow arrow or bolt.
Ribald
The lowest class of camp-follower.
Routier
A mercenary soldier scarcely distinguishable from a highway robber.
Seizin
The possession of a fief granted by formal presentation of a token, often a clod of actual earth.
Stockfish
Dried and salted fish, a dietary staple of the Middle Ages.
Turcople
A lightly armed native Christian serving the Crusaders as scout and auxiliary.