Longsword

by Veronica Heley

  The guests were received by the two sisters who led them to the Lady Joan, where she sat in her black veils in the solar, being tearfully consoled by their sympathy. Beata seemed to be everywhere at once, flashing out a witty retort to an ancient, lecherous cousin; commiserating with a young damsel whose neck had come out in a rash, chivvying Crispin into taking care of a restless young knight. The tiltyard and its environs rang with the clangour of practice throughout the hours of daylight; at night relays of jugglers, minstrels and jesters entertained the company.

  Elaine seemed to have lost all her arts of pleasing. She was silent, unless directly addressed, and she disregarded the smiles of invitation addressed to her by the young gallants. Her tiring-women sewed knots of ribbon on her sleeves at the shoulders, that she might bestow them on those young knights she favoured for the tourney … reserving the biggest knot, of course, for Sir Bertrand. But now it was Beata who was asked for a favour. She swung into the bedchamber, laughing at Gerald’s folly.

  “. … So of course I told him not to be so absurd. He only asked me for a ribbon in order to make you jealous!”

  “I don’t think so,” said Elaine. “It is you who are the Queen of Beauty now.”

  “Idiot!” Beata tore off her gown, dropped it on the floor, and pulled on a dark green damask dress, threaded with gold in a trellis pattern. She tugged a comb through her hair, bent her head just long enough for her nurse to settle a wreath of fresh flowers on her curls, and was ready to go. Elaine stood among three women, all twitching and pulling at her brocade to make it fit more closely. She had been standing like that for some time, but it seemed she took little interest now in how she looked. The woman who was combing her hair, braiding this tress here, and looping that one over a fillet of gold there, was creating a work of art, but Elaine told her to desist.

  “Yes,” said Elaine to Beata. “You have become beautiful, and I have lost my looks.”

  Beata burst out laughing. “What! I, beautiful?” The tire-women and her nurse all turned to look at Beata. She met their gaze, and expecting to find merriment there, found only agreement with that Elaine had said. “I?” said Beata. She bit her lip, repressing laughter, while the doubt set in her mind grew, little by little. She picked up a hand-mirror, and gazed into it. Her hand went to her hair, tweaking a curl, settling the wreath more securely on her head.

  “Joan said that there was a radiance about you nowadays. …” Elaine signed to her women to go, and they did so. Nurse lingered in the door, but finally departed too.

  “A radiance?” said Beata, still looking into the mirror. “I see nothing new, save that my cheeks are red, and that this wreath is becoming. Fine feathers.”

  “No, it is not that.” With a patient air, Elaine began to adorn her fingers with costly rings. “You take no trouble with your appearance, and yet you have such a shining look that no man can see you without acknowledging that you are beautiful. You need no jewels to attract men’s eyes. You should have given Gerald his ribbon.”

  Beata laid down the mirror and looked at her sister. The light fell across Elaine’s face.

  “You are ill?” said Beata.

  Elaine shook her head. She wound a jewelled belt twice round her waist, and buckled it in front. There was an exhausted look about her, which contrasted with the vitality of Beata. Elaine’s features were as perfect as ever, her hair as long and plentiful, and of as fair a colour; yet there was a suggestion about her now as of one who had passed her best, like a leaf touched with the fingers of tomorrow’s decay.

  “What is it, little sister?” And now it seemed apt that Beata should call Elaine her “little sister”. Blue eyes met eyes of brown, and held. Presently Elaine half-closed her eyes, and Beata put her arm round her sister’s shoulders.

  “Dearest, if I could only see you happy. … I would go with a light heart. But you know it cannot be. Put him out of your mind. …”

  “Have you put him out of yours?” The query was made gently, without edge, and yet Beata shivered.

  “Why,” she said. “I have tried. I did try. But from the first moment … when our eyes first met … it seems so long ago, now. It was too late … though I did not know for a long time what ailed me. I thought I was immune, you see. He is too much a part of me, now. And yet there has been nothing done, nothing said … and nothing will be done, and nothing will be said. And there is an end of it.”

  Elaine touched Beata’s cheek, and smiled, more to herself than to her sister. There was suffering in that smile, and yet there was much love, also.

  “I wish,” said Beata, “that this waiting were done … and yet when it is done, I think I shall die. When I think of it, even now, I die a little. Will you come to visit me in the convent? Will you? Say you will! Swear it!”

  “I will, I swear it.”

  The girls embraced, and parted. And each was thinking it was unlikely Sir Bertrand would permit his wife to travel to the convent very often, and that they would be parted for ever in six days’ time.

  Five days. Early in the morning Jaclin summoned Gervase to the tiltyard. The sky was overcast, the ground muddy, but it was not raining at that particular moment. Lord Henry was expected the following night before supper, and everyone was on edge. Jaclin was walking up and down, slashing at imaginary opponents with his sword – with Gervase’s sword – when Gervase arrived.

  “So … you’ve deigned to come!” Jaclin sheathed his sword, eyeing Gervase sideways. “I wanted to tell you. …” He scowled, and turned his back on Gervase. “Did you know that my uncle is going to knight me the day after tomorrow?”

  “Yes, indeed. I am glad for you.”

  “He said I couldn’t take part in the tourney until I was knighted. It’s the first time he’s taken any notice of me for years. It’s due to my having this sword, you see, and what armour I like to choose from the store … and having practised a lot.”

  “I believe you may do well. I shall be watching.”

  “I want you to go over those passes again with me. I want to challenge Gerald, d’ye see. Crispin says I may.” He hunched his shoulders, and, still without looking at Gervase said, “Varons said you wouldn’t want anything to do with me, after the way I. …” His voice tailed away.

  Gervase held back a sigh. He was sorry for Jaclin – a little. He could remember how it was to be young and graceless and neglected. Yet the lad had behaved badly, and Gervase was busy. He was worried about Rocca, who had disappeared without saying where he was going. Now what was he up to? Gervase felt a pricking at the back of his neck when he thought of Rocca’s being out of sight at this time. …

  Jaclin held out both his arms to Gervase, and Gervase saw that there were tears in Jaclin’s eyes. For a moment the young man held the gesture and then, as Gervase made no move towards him, Jaclin turned away, reddening, and muttering a curse.

  “Your pardon,” said Gervase quickly. “Of course I will help, if I can.” The younger man turned such a wide grin on Gervase that for a moment there was more than a passing look of Beata about him. Gervase was shaken, not only by the resemblance, but by the depth of emotion which the lad was showing. Graceless Jaclin might be, unfeeling he was not.

  “When and where?” demanded Jaclin. “Tonight? Now? There are always people practising here … and I wanted to tell you … I told Varons that I wanted to do it, but he said I could not … but if I fall in the lists, if I am killed, then I want you to have your sword back.”

  The blood leaped in Gervase’s cheek, but he checked himself. “Now that is a generous thought, and appreciated. However, it is most unlikely that you will be so badly beaten you will have to retire from the lists for good. And if you are beaten, you must remember that your victor takes both your horse and armour. As for being killed … what! In light armour, with blunted swords and lances?”

  “There are accidental deaths sometimes, aren’t there? And some not so accidental, they say. I do not know why, but I have this recurring dream. …” He looked be
seechingly at Gervase. “Tell me it will not happen!”

  “It will not happen,” said Gervase. “And now, show me your problem.”

  It was the evening of the fifth day. Gervase, Telfer and Varons had gathered in Gervase’s room for a final conference. They were all very tired, but reasonably pleased with what they achieved. Their content was muted, however, for this might be the last time the three friends would sit together.

  “How you manage to look so fresh, Gervase, I do not know. …” Varons gave an enormous yawn. “If any of us has had more than four hours’ sleep these last few days. … By the by, we got that fellow who’s been cutting purses – clapped him in fetters in a cell below the waterline.”

  Telfer groaned, easing his aching back. “That consignment of Gascony wine is still held up twenty miles away. I doubt we’ll have enough good wine to last us through. …”

  Gervase tossed cap and coif into a corner, and ran his hands through his hair. Then he rubbed his eyes, and like Varons, yawned. “What do you say to our lighting the windows and ramparts overlooking the courtyard with torches tomorrow night to greet Lord Henry and his party? I saw it done once, in France. The effect was remarkable. …”

  Varons said, “God in heaven! That’s a marvellous idea. Gervase, what would we do without you? One thing is certain; Lord Henry will never let you go when he sees how well you’ve done.”

  Telfer added his voice to Varons’s argument. “Reconsider, Gervase! We need you here, and what will you do when you leave us? You cannot go back to Ware. Crispin is ready to eat out of your hand, now. A word with Lord Henry and you will be able to expose Rocca … then nothing stands in the way of your being appointed Steward.”

  “He must not go!” declared Varons. “Did he not save my life once, and has not fate brought him here, that I may repay him?”

  “I don’t think life’s like that,” said Gervase. “I think it’s more like a circle … or a chain … a man receives a favour, and passes it on to someone else.”

  Five days, he thought. Like Telfer and Varons, he had expended so much energy on planning for those five days that he had given little thought to what might happen to him thereafter. When thought of the future had intruded, he had found it intolerable. It seemed to him impossible he should stay in Mailing, where every room, every face, would remind him of she who was gone.

  Besides. …

  “You may have thought me ungrateful in wishing to leave you,” he said. He looked at Telfer – Telfer, who had been so wary of him at first, but who had clasped him in his arms when he had been released from the West Tower – and then at Varons, whose straightforward, honest personality had come to mean so much to him. …

  “I am not ungrateful” said Gervase. “But. …” He sighed. “I have been thinking, of late, that we have overlooked something. You say Lord Henry is a very different man from his son, that he is a man who prides himself on his reputation for justice, that he appreciates the good qualities of those who serve him, that he is not capricious. You say he even invites you to sit down with him, to discuss the affairs of Mailing as if you were all equals. This may all be true, but he could never offer me a place in his household if he knew my history, and I will not serve a man and deceive him in that matter. It was chance that brought me here, and for a while Mailing succoured me, and I have served it all these months, in order to discharge my debt. But if Lord Henry had been here all this time, you must surely have told him my story … or he would have guessed it. And knowing that, he could not have offered me sanctuary, because he is so soon to take Sir Bertrand into his family. In some sense I have abused Lord Henry’s hospitality.”

  “Why,” said Telfer, “we did not look at it like that. Surely there was nothing wrong in. …”

  “Then why did you not tell Crispin the truth? Or why did I not tell him? Perhaps we did not wish to think clearly on the subject, but the truth is that we have all betrayed our trust by not being frank.”

  The two men were silent, their eyes on the table, and not on Gervase.

  “And so I will go, as I said I would, at Christmas. I will not go before then; you need me, and I have promised. … But I will not ask you to introduce me to Lord Henry. I will keep well in the background. Thomas will take over my duties, and I will run errands for Telfer, or for you, Varons … whatever is required. Then I will go, as I came, with nothing but the clothes on my back for wages.”

  Varons swore, and shook his head, but voiced no other objection.

  Telfer said, “You may be right,” in heavy voice. “And yet … I feel it is all wrong. Crispin does not wish you to go. No-one wishes you to go. He was asking me today why you were determined to go, and I could give him no good reason. He was vexed. I said you intended to return his ring before you left, and he gave the table such a buffet I thought it would crack … then he vowed you should keep the ring, and that you must have the roan horse for your own, as well.”

  “The roan?” Gervase looked pleased, and then he frowned. “I doubt Rocca will like that … where has the man got to? Did Crispin say?”

  “He is worried about the bailiff being absent at such a time, too. One thing, Rocca has gone without Crispin’s permission.”

  “Rocca is surely up to no good,” said Gervase, turning the ring on his forefinger. “And I think Crispin suspects … I doubt he actually knows, for he is not a devious man … he does not take easily to plots and stratagems, any more than I do. But Crispin suspects that what Rocca is doing is intended to harm me. Therefore he says I must keep the ring, and gives me the roan horse. It’s his guilty conscience. …”

  “Hold hard,” said Varons. “There may be nothing in it but gratitude. Crispin is like that. You know he gave the ostler’s parents a purse of gold, swearing them to secrecy?”

  “Like Jaclin,” said Gervase, thinking how the lad had offered him his sword.

  “Well, they are half-brothers, after all,” said Telfer. “Did you not know? The lad’s mother was a washer-woman here, and a rare beauty. Jaclin knows, of course. So does everyone else. But Lord Henry has never recognised the boy as his son, and so no one else does. Of course, if Jaclin distinguishes himself in the tourney, and is allowed funds to go abroad to the war, and does well there – who knows? Lord Henry will probably find him an heiress to marry.”

  Lord Henry and his party were in sight of the castle.

  Gervase, Telfer and Varons came out onto the head of the ramp that led down into the courtyard, and looked about them with identical expressions of critical approval. Everything was as they had planned. Men holding flaming torches lined the ramp and more torches were suspended from windows overlooking the court. A small page – Flash’s special friend – knelt at Gervase’s feet to buckle a jewelled collar onto the dog, and put the leash in Gervase’s hand. Grooms were waiting to take the horses away as the company rode into the court, and a crowd of retainers – all those who could easily be spared from the kitchens at this hour of the night – had been positioned to give a rousing cheer of welcome to the lord of the castle on his return.

  Telfer settled his chain of office more comfortably over his shoulders, and smoothed back what remained of his hair. Varons tightened his sword-belt one notch, and then put it back where it had been before. Gervase watched the door of the keep.

  She came out and stood looking out over the courtyard and then up at the windows, with her head on one side. She seemed nervous, and her hand played with her curls. She did not look at Gervase. Elaine followed, leading the Lady Joan by the hand, bending to hear the bereaved mother’s whispered words of complaint. Elaine’s jewels shone more brightly than her eyes. The light of the torches set Beata’s flashing beauty aglow, but drained all colour from Elaine.

  Crispin strode out, humming, brushing a speck from the rich damask of his furred tunic. The air was chill. A few flakes of snow flickered down into the light of the torches, and sizzled there. All was quiet. Then the leading horsemen clattered into the court, Telfer lifted his hand, an
d the courtyard erupted with cheers.

  Lord Henry smiled to left and right. A groom led his horse to the mounting-block, and he dismounted, stiff from his journey. Gervase saw, with a sense of shock, that the man was below average height … almost a dwarf. One side of his neck was thicker than the other, setting his head slightly awry on a powerful pair of shoulders. Lord Henry’s eyes passed over the group of upper servants waiting to greet him at the head of the ramp, passed on to where his daughters, his son, and his son’s wife were coming down to greet him … and Gervase forgot that the man was ungainly of body, and short of stature, for this was a person of considerable presence. Lord Henry’s iron-gray hair was carefully curled under his wide-brimmed travelling hat, and the heavy face beneath was dominated by thick-lidded black eyes … eyes that saw and judged and condemned. …

  Beata, running ahead of her brother and sister, came down the slope like a great bird, with her green and gold skirt flowing behind like her wings, to sink to her knees at Lord Henry’s feet. She was lifted up with a smile that was fixed and meaningless, to be scrutinised by eyes that sharpened as they took in every detail of the change in her. Lord Henry had left her a brown girl, whose insignificance of person he had been able to overlook with ease. Now … he drew in his breath. Was this truly his daughter Beata?

  Then Crispin was leading Elaine to his father, with Joan treading on his heels. Courteously, but without Beata’s spontaneity, Crispin bent his knee before his father. Lord Henry’s smile thinned, so that all men, watching him, understood that their lord was displeased with his son and heir … and possibly also displeased with his daughter Elaine, who moved like a shadow at her brother’s side.