Knight's Acre

by Norah Lofts

  For the rest he only noticed that the baby of the family, his chin almost level with the table, fed himself with energy and neatness, once his meat had been chopped, whereas the little girl, some bit older and larger, had to be fed, coaxed and persuaded to eat.

  The time came to leave.

  At the end he hit upon something he could do for her.

  ‘You will be making a garden, Lady Tallboys?’

  ‘I hope so—in time.’

  ‘My mother grows roses—I mean, not that roses grow for her, she propagates them. She has found a way of grafting a real rose onto a good wild briar. I’m sure that it would give her great pleasure to send you a few of her trees.’

  And so it would. If only it could be concealed from his mother that at last, at last, he had seen a woman whom he would willingly marry and could not.

  Up to a point, in falling in love with Sybilla, Sir Simon was conforming to pattern. Every young man was supposed to cherish a hopeless passion for the unattainable one; active to do her any small service to beg a favour to wear in the lists and if he had any talent make verses, make tunes in her honour. And then from the impossible he turned to the possible and married as advantageously as he could.

  Not for me, Sir Simon thought.

  The Easter Tournament at Winchester, Sybilla knew, began on Easter Monday and lasted three days. Any minute now, she thought. But he did not come and there was no message.

  She told herself that perhaps Winchester had proved unprofitable, too, and that Godfrey had accepted another invitation, another challenge.

  And then, on a beautiful, early May morning, with Layer Wood full of bluebells and cuckoos, he came home.

  As always, at the slightest unusual sound she ran to the window and saw, nearing the house, a flat cart drawn by the horse that Walter had saved and driven by an only-just-recognisable Eustace. Arcol, wearing only a halter, was attached to the back of the cart.

  Godfrey was dead! Brought home for burial.

  There was a second of two of blackness. Then dizzy, sick, supporting herself by clutching at the wall, she made her way to the door which stood open.

  ‘It is all right,’ Eustace called. ‘Only an accident…’

  Unaware that she was crying, she ran to the cart.

  What kind of accident could reduce a man in the prime of life to a skeleton, all skin and bones, with sunken, senseless eyes? And the boy looked little better—expect that he was in his right mind. Godfrey seemed not to know her. She said, ‘My dear, my darling!’ and he seemed not to hear.

  Stiffly, moving like an old man, Eustace climbed down.

  ‘He took a fall, my lady. He made light of it and we set out for home… Then the fever set in. People thought we carried the plague…’ As he said that, he attempted to laugh and produced a woeful, hooting noise. He was near breaking point but sensible enough, when she had shouted for Walter and Walter had come, to say, ‘It is his knee. Mind his knee. That is where it started.’

  Walter took charge.

  One thing about mean truckle beds, they were light and easily moved. On the one brought from Beauclaire, and never yet used here, Sir Godfrey was placed and carried into his home.

  She knew a dozen febrifuges but she had nothing to hand; not even sage or mint or lime from which to make an infusion. Walter said all that was needed was cold water. Inside, outside, and he would deal with it.

  Father Ambrose, seeing the cart, had come along and asked what was afoot and, told, plodded down to the village to Watson’s wife, a woman about whom he had, in his deepest heart, both a dislike and a suspicion; but she made good brews.

  Eustace made his last effort. ‘I must see to Arcol; nobody else…’ And that was true. Arcol, besides being an exceptionally valuable horse, was an exceptionally difficult one. Then, Arcol stabled and Sir Godfrey in good hands the boy, who had not had a sound night’s rest for a fortnight, lay down on the settle and slept for two nights and a day.

  By that time Sir Godfrey was himself, or almost himself again; allowing for the accident and the fever. Either Walter’s cold water cure or the rather sinister black brew which Father Ambrose had brought from the village had been effective. Behind those frightening, fever-blanked eyes, there was Godfrey.

  But not as he had been.

  Almost the first thing he said to her was, ‘I was unhorsed, by a beardless boy!’

  Eustace, waking from a long, restorative sleep, explained and elaborated. It was true. For the first time in his whole career, Sir Godfrey had been unhorsed and had hurt his knee—his right knee. A mere bruise, he said: and since they were now almost without funds, they had set out for home. By that evening, the knee was discoloured and swollen and very stiff and in the morning he had had the utmost difficulty in walking. Next day the fever struck.

  With any kind of open wound, or after loss of blood , fever was expected, but for a bruise…

  ‘I found a doctor, my lady, and he said dark swellings and fever were signs of plague. He held a pomander to his nose and did not even wait for payment. Sir Godfrey was in his right mind, then, and said it was not plague. And he said he wanted, above all things, to get home. So I bought the cart…’

  So Eustace had bought the cart. He did not dwell much upon the nightmare days and nights that had followed with Godfrey out of his mind; hurting his injured knee by tossing about and whimpering like a child; attempting to stand up and hurting himself more, screaming like a trapped hare, mistaking Eustace for an enemy and trying to grapple with him. People at inns and at private houses, people who passed or met them in the road all shared the doctor’s opinion, summer being the time of plague. Luckily the weather was warm and camping out no hardship.

  ‘At the worst, my lady, I was obliged to tie him down to save him from injuring himself more. And then some people thought I was taking a lunatic to Bedlam!’ This time the boy managed a proper laugh; for he had done what he set out to do—and his beloved master was home and back in his senses.

  ‘You have been wonderful, Eustace. I shall pray God to reward you. She turned upon him that look of gratitude which seldom failed to reach the mark. ‘I have always felt that whatever happened, Godfrey was safe with you.’

  Embarrassed, the boy muttered, ‘It was nothing… It was the least…’ But privately he thought he had done rather well. A few acts of larceny which he had been forced to commit did not trouble his conscience.

  Walter examined the knee. His hands were enormous but they had a delicate touch. He listened as his fingers probed round the swelling and the fading bruise. ‘Nothing much, Sir Godfrey,’ he said hearteningly.

  ‘Only enough to lame me for life.’ An invalid could be excused his peevishness.

  Privately, Walter said to Sybilla, ‘Something’s splintered there. I could hear it grate.’

  ‘Oh dear! Ought we,’ she faltered over the dreaded word, ‘a surgeon?’ An operation performed by a barber-surgeon was the last resort of the desperate.

  She was relieved when Walter said, ‘Best leave it alone. It might work out. If not, I’ll see to it.’

  Day by day, almost hour by hour, she became more aware that Godfrey ailed more than an injured knee. He was silent for long stretches and when he did speak it was always to say something either petulant or melancholy.

  He needed nourishment, so Walter killed one of the six recently acquired fowls and she made chicken broth in the way she had learned at Lamarsh.

  ‘We can’t afford fowl now,’ Godfrey said. ‘I suppose you realise that we are ruined.’

  ‘Not quite. The rents were paid on Lady Day and I have spent very little. You mustn’t worry about such things. You must just think about getting better.’

  ‘I shall never be better. In any case, I was unhorsed. By a beardless boy! Who’d want me now?’

  He always came back to that. One day she said, with feigned lightness, ‘Beardless boys have to start on somebody. You did yourself.’

  He gave her a glance of something that looked danger
ously near hatred.

  He took no joy in the children—of whom he had always been so proud and fond. He didn’t want them near his bed—they might jar him—though in fact even the boys were awed at first and simply stood and stared. He couldn’t bear their noise and when one of their fights broke out in his presence he shouted at them in a frightening way. Formerly their antics had amused him and he had called them his two young fighting cocks. Once he said a very cruel thing about his angelically pretty daughter—‘there’s something about her that reminds me of James’s Richard.’ The remark had just enough of truth in it to be shocking.

  But worst of all were the moments when, alone with her, he broke down and wept using the old endearments but in the wrong fashion. ‘Sweeting, you got a bad bargain when you married me. Darling, I wish I’d been killed. You’d be better off without me.’

  Fever, she told herself, often left an aftermath of melancholy. Perhaps company would cheer him. She suggested that Eustace should ride to Moyidan and to Bywater and tell his brothers that he was home.

  ‘They’d gloat. I used to poke fun at James and his gout… And William would talk about the will of God…’

  He’d always had a sweet, sunny nature. But then he had always been healthy, happy and successful… And that is no way to think of the man you love! No! Think rather that he always gave his whole mind, his whole self to the thing of the moment and now for him, poor darling, the moment had narrowed down to pain and a sense of failure. And to that he was devoting all his single-mindedness.

  Walter was right. One morning, through the now naturally-coloured skin of his knee, a tiny protrusion showed itself, white and sharp. It had made its way so gradually that no blood had come with it. Walter greeted the needle-like thing with enthusiasm; it proved what he knew, left alone and not messed about with, the body had a way of healing itself.

  ‘You’ll be up and about in no time.’

  ‘And lame for life.’

  ‘But, sir, that does not follow. I once knew a man…’

  ‘Spare me your memories, Walter. I have my own. And bitter they are. Unhorsed by a beardless boy.’

  The bit of bone, pointed like a needle and no thicker than a bodkin, did work its way out leaving, Sir Godfrey said, his knee weakened.

  The melancholy did not recede.

  He who had never looked far ahead now made plans for a desolate future.

  ‘We must let Eustace go. I had the best horse, the best squire; but Eustace must go and take service with some able man and get his knighthood.’

  That was just and sensible; but when Godfrey suggested giving Eustace Arcol and his armour as a parting present, she was bound to protest.

  ‘Arcol would be an embarrassment and an expense to a mere squire, dearest. And your armour would never fit him. Give him the other horse and I will write, recommending him, in the warmest terms.’

  It was perhaps too early to say that one day he would need his horse and his mail again ; but one day she must.

  So Walter drove nails in the wall and hung up the armour; and Arcol went out to pasture on the village common, tethered beside a donkey to whom he took an inordinate fancy.

  Godfrey remained sunk in gloom, a gloom which deepened at the sound of a would-be cheering word.

  James and William eventually heard of his homecoming and paid brotherly visits.

  James said, ‘You have my true sympathy. I know what it is like to be lame.’

  ‘But not ruined and done-for. Old and finished at thirty-six!’

  ‘You’ll be better. Able to ride again.’

  ‘With dotards and beardless boys!’

  William did, inevitably, mention resignation to God’s will and suggested that Godfrey should be thankful that he had not sustained worse injury. ‘After all,’ he said mildly, ‘You could have broken your neck.’

  ‘I wish I had! I wish to God I had. Then your infinite charity would extend to my widow and orphans.’

  Both brothers missed the real nub of his misery—a career ended without dignity, almost in ridicule. As for the circumstances both, for various reasons, ignored them. James did not wish to feel responsible and William saw nothing much wrong. Godfrey had a house, two fields under cultivation and a third waiting; hens clucked and pecked about in his yard; there was a stye full of pigs, a cow soon to drop a calf…

  Only Sybilla, who had loved the man he had been and still loved what he had become, saw the truth. Her mental similes were homely—let a garment go unmended and the hole would widen; let a crumb of mould stay on a cheese or a loaf and it would grow and take over; the same with rust; one speck, a patch, a collapse.

  He still limped, the injured knee weak and, from disuse, stiff; health restored, temper still uncertain. The worst things, the moods of weeping and self-reproaches, became fewer; the gloomy silences had prolonged themselves. And the situation threatened to harden. By mid-August he could climb the stairs and share her bed. To no purpose.

  She had no training in the arts of seduction and was not, in truth, a hot-blooded, passionate woman. Fourteen years in a convent had tempered her. Always, from the first moment of real marriage, she had sought rather to please than to be pleased and, during his absences, she had missed his cheerful talk, his smile, his laughter rather than… Well, what? Like Walter, she knew another language. And for its most used word … that she could do without, except that the lack of it indicated something badly wrong.

  The old Abbess had said, of apparently unassailable situations, ‘We must work around. Nobody is completely invulnerable.’ She had been speaking of some complicated rights about a mill and Sybilla had forgotten all but the general principle ‘Work around.’

  But how could one work around a man who had a weak, somewhat stiff knee and a broken spirit?

  Work around.

  SIX

  [Autumn 1452]

  Sybilla said, ‘We must make some decision about Arcol. He is growing fat on grass and becoming extremely unruly.’

  ‘And what is there to decide about that?’ This was the kind of thing he was more and more inclined to these days and had she been a crying woman she would often have hurried away to shed a few tears when he sounded so sour and so hostile. ‘I would have given him to Eustace but I have no intention of selling him.’

  Eustace, with many expressions of regret, had gone off to Lord Bowdegrave at Abhurst. His regret was genuine enough; he admired Sir Godfrey and, in the fashionable way, imagined himself to be in love with Sybilla but his over-riding emotion was excitement and the anticipation of a bright future, natural to his youth. Arcol did not like Walter and always behaved awkwardly when being tethered out in the morning and brought in at night. Walter said, ‘Let Jacky try! Arcol’s very fond of one donkey!’ Really it had come to something when, with Godfrey in the house, she could be pleased with and smile at such a simple joke.

  The suggestion was, to Jacky’s simple mind, the last straw. He had always been scared of Walter, he was terrified of the master who had even less patience with clumsiness or forgetfulness, and now the idea that he should go near that great rearing, iron-shod, tooth-flashing beast filled him with panic and he fled.

  ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish,’ Walter said and Sybilla thought—He wasn’t much good and his going has saved me eighteen pence a year.

  She had known that Godfrey would not wish to sell Arcol. She was working round.

  ‘He is in need of exercise—and grooming.’

  ‘I daresay I could groom him. I shall never ride him again.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I could never mount him.’

  ‘Then I must.’ That, at least, penetrated the surly gloom.

  ‘You! My dear, don’t talk nonsense. A woman on a war horse.’

  ‘It has been done. That French girl, Joan of Arc, rode a war horse.’

  ‘Yes. And wore hose like a man and was burned for a witch.’

  ‘I shall borrow Henry’s hose and ride Arcol round and round the fallow field. And
if that makes me a witch, then a witch I must be.’

  Sir Godfrey knew his wife. The iron core was seldom much in evidence but it was there. That afternoon he brought Arcol from the Common himself and, reverting to the days when he had been a squire, spent two hours grooming him until the amber-coloured hide shone like satin, mane and tail a shade darker, like spun silk.

  Next day he said he would harness Arcol and try to mount; if he succeeded, he would ride to Moyidan.

  ‘That would be wonderful,’ Sybilla said. ‘Those dark red apples will be ripe. Ask Emma for a bagful. And ask her, too, if her Richard has outgrown any clothes. Henry grows so fast.’

  Arcol was, as Sybilla said, growing fat and flabby on his grass diet; even when Sir Godfrey had given him the ritual punch to make him breathe out while the girth was buckled, it had to fasten three holes farther along.

  Then came the mounting. Clumsy and slow, a climbing into the saddle rather than springing—an old man’s performance. But it was accomplished.

  It was a morning in late August, sunny and warm but just touched with a hint of a change of season to come. Going out to see him off, Sybilla saw for the first time that there was a touch of silver in Godfrey’s bright fawn-coloured hair. Four months of pain and misery had aged him by five years. But at least, she thought modestly, I have got him into the saddle again and from that who knows what may result. At Baildon and at Bury St. Edmund’s and Thetford there were tournaments, not of the very first class but not to be entirely despised. She turned back to the empty house. Harvest was in full swing; Walter was scything; the two boys were gathering the severed stalks and binding them into sheaves as Walter had shown them, the competitiveness between them put to useful purpose. And behind the boys Bessie was stooking, five sheaves to a stook. She had volunteered for the job and it was obvious that she was more useful in the field than in the kitchen.