The Lode Stone

by Jane Ann McLachlan

  The horse had nuzzled my hand before taking the treat, as he always did. His head swung to nuzzle my face as well, soft lips moving like a caress over my cheek.

  Bring him home to me, I thought fiercely.

  The horse blew out softly, his breath warm against my neck, as though making a promise. Then he took the carrot-top delicately between his teeth and crunched it solemnly. And I was reassured. If any horse could carry its master home from war, it was that one.

  Only it had carried the wrong master home. And why was that, I wondered, as I turned to leave the church. I felt another tug on my hand.

  “I want to light a candle for Papa,” Alys said when I looked down at her.

  I glanced over at the table of flickering lights. “All the candles are lit.”

  “Because all the other Papas have had prayers said for them.”

  I frowned.

  “I want Papa to go to heaven.” Alys’s voice trembled.

  I opened my mouth to tell her we had no money for candles but at that moment Guarin’s hand slipped out of mine. He plopped down on the floor.

  “Guarin—”

  He looked up, his thumb stuck in his mouth, tears trickling down his round little cheeks. He had not sucked his thumb in months. “Will Papa not go to heaven?” He had no idea what he was saying but he knew Alys thought it necessary and that was all he needed.

  “I am quite certain he will,” I snapped, thinking a few weeks in purgatory for abandoning me might not hurt Simon. But Alys stood looking at me and Guarin’s mouth trembled now, any moment he would start wailing. I found a coin in my purse, one of the few I had left, and handed it to Alys. She grabbed Guarin’s hand and pulled him up, and together they went to light a candle for their Papa. I followed them to make the sign of the cross properly and murmur Simon’s name so the coin would not be wasted, then took their hands firmly and led them outside.

  A table had been set up in front of the church. I peered through the crowd gathered round it. Two men in Lord Barnard’s livery stood behind the table at each side of a seated clerk. The clerk stroked off a name on his list and handed a small purse to Jeanne, a woman I knew whose son had gone with Lord Barnard. I flushed with anger and pulled the children past, walking briskly home from church.

  There was bread to make, and soup for our dinner, and clothes to wash, our own and that of the wealthy families whose laundry I took in to support us. I lay Guarin down on the bed to nap and told Alys to play quietly. Simon had built a separate room onto the back of the hut for us to sleep in, a luxury few of the townspeople in our neighborhood could afford. I returned to the main room.

  If Simon had come home he would barely have recognized it. I had had to sell the two fine chairs that stood beside the hearth this past year. In their place were several piles of dirty laundry and the huge wooden tub of a washer-woman with my washing bat leaning against it. Even though it was not washing day, the harsh scent of lye permeated the hut. I had held onto the table and the two wooden benches but they were piled with clean laundry, sprigs of dried lavender folded into the clean clothes to sweeten their smell before I returned them to the wealthy homes they came from. I had also kept one of the three oil lamps we had owned—how else would I see to mend tears in the laundry I took in, or sew new outfits for Alys and Guarin as they grew, out of the cloth of my older kirtles. But the cheap oil I used had a bitter scent unlike the olive oil we had bought when Simon was here.

  Lord Roland, Charles’ younger brother, had secured me a position washing laundry for the castle one day a week as well. He told me he had tried to get me work in the stable, which I would have liked much better, but despite my being the old blacksmith’s daughter and the young one’s wife, the stable master would not hire a woman to work with horses. He claimed my time of month would unsettle them and he could not hire someone only able to work three weeks out of four. Well, I made enough to feed us and we would not lose our home. Perhaps I could find a few more families needing laundry done.

  I had packed the clean laundry into my two large panniers and was sliding three unbaked loaves onto the brick shelf over the fire when a knock came at my door. Alys came through from the back room with Guarin trailing her, still sleepy-eyed from his nap. They opened the door to admit Marie.

  I smiled to see her. She was Lady Celeste’s maid and had been Simon’s friend since he left Saint-Gilles to work in Lord Barnard’s stables, when he was only nine and she was twelve. She was my friend now, as well. She pulled Alys into an embrace before bending to Guarin who stood clutching her legs. She lifted him into the air to his delight and shook him above her head till his chuckles filled the kitchen. I looked in the basket she’d placed on my table and saw half a meat pie, a thick wedge of cheese, and three eggs. Beside them, at the bottom of the basket, lay a small purse.

  “What is this, Marie?” I asked, lifting it out.

  She set Guarin down. “I saw you were busy with the children so I picked it up for you.”

  “Alys, take Guarin outside to play,” I said.

  “But it is dinnertime.” Alys looked hungrily at the basket with its tantalizing aromas.

  “I will call you when it is time to eat.”

  She looked at me and promptly took Guarin’s hand and led him outside.

  “The money Simon received to go with his Lord on crusade is gone, despite your careful husbandry,” Marie pointed out before I could speak.

  “I can feed my children without Lord Charles’ blood money.”

  “Children need more than food. Alys will need a dowry and Guarin will need to be apprenticed.”

  “Lady Celeste has promised—”

  “And she will keep her word. If she lives until Guarin is old enough to apprentice as a blacksmith, and until he is ready to take his father’s and grandfather’s place. But if she does not?”

  “I will never touch that money.”

  “Will you let your children pay for your pride?”

  I stared at her, not trusting myself to speak.

  “Very well. I will keep it for Alys and Guarin. They have as much right to it as any other family in town.”

  “Take it then. Get it out of my house.” I opened the door, and held tightly to it so she would not see me shaking. Alys and Guarin trooped in.

  “Where is Marie going?” Alys asked, her eyebrows arched in surprise as Marie swept out past her.

  “Marie cannot stay for dinner today,” I said, closing the door firmly.

  “Oh, look what she has brought us!”

  I had meant for Marie to take her basket with her, but when I turned I saw Alys kneeling on the bench, lifting the warm meat pie out of it. “And cheese! There is a wedge of cheese, too!”

  Guarin clapped his hands.

  “Marie is a good friend to us, is she not, Maman?” Alys asked, hopping down from the bench to fetch a knife.

  “She was your father’s friend,” I said, “and will always be yours.”

  I watched my children broodingly as we ate. Marie had accused me of making them suffer for my pride. But I would not teach them to bow and scrape and beg for handouts before the gentry. I wanted to teach them to respect themselves and stand up for what was right. Lord Charles owed them more than a little pouch of coins if their father had indeed saved his life.

  And that was Simon’s horse. Charles had no right to keep Simon’s horse. His father had given it to us! I could sell it and make enough money to provide for myself and my children. If Charles wanted it, he would have to buy it from me.

  I remembered then that Charles had offered to buy the horse just before the Crusade and Simon had turned him down. Simon must have already known he was going with Lord Barnard and would need the horse himself. Well, we needed it now. If Lord Charles would not buy it, I would sell it to someone else.

  When you make up your mind to do something it is best to do it then, before you convince yourself the deed has been done just by thinking it. How often did I say that to Simon, with his penchant for mu
lling over a decision until it was as stale as week-old bread? It was time to take my own advice. Directly after our mid-day dinner I took the children over to my mother’s house.

  “What are you doing that you need me to mind them for you?” she asked.

  “I am going to the castle,” I answered honestly, trying to smooth away ‘that look’ she claimed she could always see on my face when I was about to do something brash. “To see Marie.” I promised myself I would make this true by finding Marie later and returning her basket with my thanks. And an apology. After all, she had meant well.

  “Marie just left your house. I saw her pass by.” My mother frowned suspiciously.

  “Give Grand-mere a kiss,” I told Alys and Guarin.

  She bent to let them kiss her cheeks and straightened again. “Should I be worried?” She narrowed her eyes at me.

  “It is a mother’s job to worry,” I said, smiling. “I expect nothing less from you than a thorough job.”

  “And a child’s job to give her mother cause.” She sighed, repeating the old joke between us. She bent to address the children. “Are you listening, Alys and Guarin? Do you cause your mother to worry?”

  “We are not as good at it as she is,” Alys replied solemnly.

  “With a little more effort you could be,” my mother said.

  “I appreciate the lack of effort.” I stooped to kiss them. “Maman will be back soon.”

  Chapter Three: Simon’s War Horse

  We enjoyed a more lenient relationship with Lord Barnard’s family than existed between most lords and commoners. Lady Celeste, for all her beauty and elegance, had not forgotten that she, too, was common-born before Lord Barnard married her, and she had taught her sons a measure of courtesy to even the lowliest peasants. Still this was a lord I was going to approach, and with the intent of questioning him and demanding justice. However often I told myself as I walked to the castle that it was Simon’s horse, I nevertheless became increasingly nervous the closer I got. I had to remind myself several times that Simon had liked this side of me, had praised me when I stood up for myself and for others. He would be proud of me today for doing this, would know I was fighting for our children.

  The castle was several hour’s walk from town, up a steep hill. I was panting when I arrived and stopped under a tree to wipe my face. It would not do to look sweaty and anxious. I was in the right, after all, despite Charles being a lord and me a commoner.

  If it was Simon’s horse. The long walk had given me time to doubt myself. Many horses had been ridden to the Crusade, it was more than likely that some of them would look alike. I had to see it up close before I approached Lord Charles.

  The guard at the gate let me in without question. I had grown up playing in the stables while my father shod and cared for the horses. Lord Roland, Lord Charles’ younger brother, and I were of an age and the two of us had played together as children. And since Simon had left I’d come once a week to help with the laundry. I was well-known here.

  As I approached the stables I felt myself relaxing. I drew in a deep breath, enjoying the warm, familiar scents of horses and saddle leather, fresh sweet hay and oats, and the distant tang of manure wafting over from the behind the stables. The stable boy recognized me. I saw him begin to smile, then he remembered about Simon and a stricken look crossed his face. Before he could stutter his regret I swept in past him with a nod and a tight smile. He fortified me though, reminded me why I was here. I walked briskly along the row of stalls searching for the one I wanted. It was the same stall Lord Barnard had allowed Simon to use when his horse got too big to shelter at the side of our cottage.

  The big horse startled as I drew near the door of its stall. Simon’s horse had never startled, but I was remembering a horse that had not been to war. Several of the townsmen who had returned were also nervous now in a way they had not been before. I stood still against the planks of wood waiting for it to calm. It watched me warily, nostrils flared. I watched it back, examining every marking.

  Surely this was Simon’s horse: the white foreleg, the blaze along its nose. It took a step toward me, and then another, until it stood against the gate of the stall. It breathed in and snorted, breathed in again, as though tasting my scent and uncertain. I wished I had thought to bring a carrot-top.

  “I have an apple, Madame,” the stable boy’s voice murmured beside me. I looked down to where he held in his grubby hand a small, half-ripened apple fallen early from the tree.

  The horse leaned its long neck over the top plank and down toward me. I took the apple and held it up to the huge beast’s mouth. But my heart felt empty. Simon’s horse would know me. Simon’s horse would not need an apple to coax it closer to me. I felt my eyes watering.

  It wasn’t hungry. It was too well-fed to need an apple, I told myself, blinking to clear my eyes. Are you my husband’s horse? I thought as we stared at each other eye to eye.

  Its lips opened, but instead of taking the treat it raised them to my face. It breathed deeply of me. I drew in a breath, trembling. Again it startled, pulling back a little. I let my breath out slowly.

  Ignoring my hand with the apple, it drew close again. The soft lips extended to nuzzle my cheek, its breath warm on my face. It blew out a slow breath, as a man sighs when he steps into his home at the end of a long day in the fields. Only then did it take the apple delicately between its teeth, and begin to crunch it slowly. I patted its nose with one hand and wiped at my eyes with the other. How had I ever doubted?

  I marched from the stable to the front door rather than round the side to the servant’s entrance. I felt myself watched, eyebrows being raised, but I walked with confidence and demanded of the footman an audience with Lord Charles.

  I was the wife of Lady Celeste’s favorite. It got me inside where I was ushered over to a bench and left there, no one knowing quite what to do with me. The dining room servants had got the story of Simon’s heroic rescue round the castle in an hour and around the entire town in a day; no one was going to turn away the hero’s wife. But no one wanted to tell the new lord that a commoner had arrived demanding an audience with him, either. I might have sat there all day had not Marie heard of my request and come to see me.

  “Melisende, why are you here?” she asked quietly, pulling me aside where the servant standing at the door would not hear us.

  “I...I have a question for Lord Charles.”

  She examined me silently. When I did not elaborate she said, “Tomorrow is his day for hearing petitions.”

  “I know,” I admitted, having remembered half-way up the hill to the castle and feeling foolish.

  She smiled. It did not erase the worry in her eyes. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  “No.” I took a breath. “But I am sure that turning you away from my house was not. You have been a good friend to me and deserved better. I am sorry. Even though you should not have taken the purse on my behalf.”

  She chuckled and hugged me. “You are terrible at apologies.” I nodded against her cheek.

  “I will mention your request to Lady Celeste.”

  “You should not get involved...” I trailed off lamely. Now she would know it was not merely a question.

  “I certainly should not. But friends are involved in each other’s lives.”

  Marie had been with Lady Celeste since before her marriage. I had heard rumors of a journey they had taken together many years ago, which was likely responsible for the unusual bond between them. In a short time I was standing in a presence chamber facing Lord Charles as he sprawled on an armchair. I could see by the tightness in his face that his casual pose was an act. He looked me up and down as I curtsied and waited for him to speak first.

  How elegant this room was, the window shutters open to fill it with light and fresh air. A long, heavy table filled one side of the room where Lord Charles would sit tomorrow with his advisors to make decisions the rest of us must obey. The other half of the room was filled with wide chairs covered
in soft cushions and smaller tables where he occasionally sat with his friends to throw dice and play like children. A strange life the nobility lived.

  Lord Charles sat in one such chair, his fingers drumming on the arm rest, watching me. I thought of my small, dark hut filled with other people’s laundry and straightened my back.

  “My Lady Mother tells me you wish to speak to me,” he said stiffly. “You have heard, no doubt, of your husband’s heroic comportment on the battle field.”

  “I have, my Lord.” I bowed my head slightly. “But I would like to hear of his end from you, if I may.”

  I glanced up and caught a look in his eyes—fear?—gone as quickly as it came. I looked down, biting my lip. I should have realized how difficult it would be for him to recall the heat of battle, the moment when he expected to die. I had come to hear about Simon and I could not take my question back, nor did I want to, but I had not intended to cause him pain. I kept my face averted to avoid embarrassing him.

  “A fair request,” he said, rising from his chair, “if you can bear to hear it.”

  I nodded, afraid to speak, for suddenly I was not sure I could bear it.

  “Very well. We had been in the Holy Land a year, fighting small skirmishes, waiting for King Richard of England to join us with his men. When he arrived we still waited, sweltering in our tents, bored and annoyed at the delays while King Philip and King Richard argued over how to proceed. Our King Philip, as frustrated over the delays as we were, heard of the capture of Acre by Saladin’s Moors. He roared for his forces to break camp and follow him. Action at last!” He paused and smiled grimly to himself.

  “We raced through the night and the following days to the aid of the Christians trapped in Acre under rule of the Saracens. It was hot, so hot it hurt to breathe. The sun was merciless, the air heavy with heat and not a breeze to stir it. We steamed under our armor like fish in a pot, sweat in our eyes, our underarms, our legs, rubbing against our armor and the damp bodies of our horses. We stank and we brooded, our skin rubbed raw, our eyes heavy with exhaustion, our spirits flagging, our vows all but forgotten. Why should we not leave this godforsaken land to the infidels, some began asking.