An Antic Disposition (19 page)

“
A
letter has arrived
, milord,” called Gorm softly as Fengi emerged from his quarters at dawn.

‘’Who from?” asked Fengi.

“Rolf in Paris,” said Gorm.

Above them, on the upper floor of Gorm’s quarters, Alfhild crept to the window to listen.

“What’s the gist?” asked Fengi.

“That French wine is superior to Danish ale,” said Gorm. “That education is wasted on the young, and that…”

“He says all of this?” laughed Fengi.

“No, milord, I do,” said Gorm. “When I think what I could do now when I should have done it then, I could weep.”

“Don’t weep now,” said Fengi. “What of Amleth?”

Alfhild leaned as far as she could out the window without being noticed.

“He keeps to himself, apart from this Norman friend of his,” said Gorm. But he is still disappearing every Thursday evening, returning late, yet with neither wine on his breath nor book in his hand. He does not discuss where he has been, what he has been doing, or whom he has been with.”

“What does Rolf think?” asked Fengi.

“He suspects that there is a woman,” said Gorm. “Some French courtesan whose favors may be purchased with Danish coin.”

Above them, Alfhild collapsed, clutching her hands to her mouth to keep herself from screaming.

“Very like,” commented Fengi. “If it was true, then that would be the surest sign of sanity we have seen in him. It’s about time. He’s in Paris, after all. Not having a woman there would be like walking through a bakery without nibbling the pastry.”

“Even so, milord,” said the drost.

“I suppose even you ran wild when you were there,” said Fengi. “You may suppose as you like,” said Gorm shortly. “I will not say yea or nay.”

“Have they tried following him?” asked Fengi.

“A few times, just out of curiosity,” said Gorm. “But he gave them the slip every time.”

“Now, that’s interesting,” said Fengi thoughtfully. “Men’s natures being what they are, I would think that he would want to boast of such a conquest rather than conceal it. This sounds more like something that he truly wishes to hide.”

“Perhaps the lady is married,” suggested Gorm.

Alfhild sank her teeth into her palm, tears running down her cheeks. “That’s a possibility,” said Fengi. “One I would wish to be discouraged for the sake of his mother. She dislikes any hint of a flaw in his character. A scandal would be quite upsetting.”

“We should send someone to follow him who knows how to do it properly,” said Gorm. “Someone with discretion.”

“Who do you have in mind?” asked Fengi.

“Reynaldo,” said Gorm. “He speaks langue d’oil fluently. And he knows when to be quiet.”

“I know that well,” said Fengi. “Send him.”

On a sunny Thursday afternoon a few weeks later, Amleth and Horace emerged from the house of a master.

“Canon law does not become more interesting after three years,” said Horace, yawning.

“I like it,” said Amleth. “Once one pierces the fog, one can see how the Church really behaves.”

“In the beginning was the Word,” said Horace. “Then everyone started interpreting it. That’s where the trouble began.”

“We’d be better off without words,” agreed Amleth. “No misinterpretations, no misunderstandings.”

“No insults,” added Horace.

“There are insults without words,” said Amleth. “I have seen them often in Paris. You take your arms and arrange them thusly…”

“Stop,” laughed Horace. “You’ll get us both in trouble. I don’t want to get thrown into jail just when spring is coming.”

“What will you be doing this summer?” asked Amleth.

“Going home, having endless strolls with whatever prospective brides my mother is lining up for me,” said Horace. “Dreadfully boring.”

“Come with me, then,” begged Amleth. “You’ve been promising to visit Slesvig for ages. I promise not to try to marry you to anyone.”

“Your last argument is persuasive, Master Amleth,” said Horace. “I will write my mother and tell her to bid the maidens adieu. Until tomorrow, then.”

“Good-bye,” said Amleth.

He dashed home and exchanged his books for his jesters bag, then wandered casually through the stalls at the pig market, greeting many of the vendors by name.

Behind him, Reynaldo followed, munching on a sausage. The young student seemed to him to be much more cheerful than the brooding boy of his memory. Perhaps it was the city, thought the Tuscan. Everything was better here—the food, the wine, the women. Especially the women, he mused, having already sampled enough to make the comparison.

He watched as Amleth ducked into a tavern, and took up a position across the street from where he could see inside. Amleth purchased a cup of wine and some cheese and mixed with a group of students, chatting away. Reynaldo sighed. He appreciated the faith his masters had shown in sending him here, but the assignment looked like it would be dull indeed, following a student to his mistress.

He finished the sausage and wiped his fingers on his sleeves, then looked up to see what Amleth was doing.

He wasn’t there.

Reynaldo hurried across the street and looked around the tavern. The clump of students was still chatting away, but Amleth wasn’t one of them. There was a rear door in the tavern, visible to him now that the students weren’t standing between it and his observation post. He opened it and peered out. There was an alley stretching out in both directions, with many more turning off it. Amleth could have gone anywhere.

He slammed the door shut and went back to his inn, berating himself. It was going to be a long and irritating week.

“
I
was followed again
,” said Amleth as he ducked into the shed where they trained.

“Rolf or Gudmund this time?” asked La Vache, who was leading the stretching exercises.

“Neither,” said Amleth. “My uncle must have become suspicious of me. He sent one of his spies from Slesvig. I lost him.”

“Well done,” said La Vache. “Good to know the training paid off. But I don’t like having him poking his nose into the Guild’s business.”

“Neither do I,” said Amleth.

“I’ll get word to Gerald in Roskilde,” said La Vache. “Meantime, we’ll figure out something here.”

T
he following Thursday
, Reynaldo was ready. He followed Amleth from lecture to lecture just in case he was making an early start rather than coming home first. When his quarry emerged from his room and wandered through the pig market, the sausages, no matter how tempting, did not distract his pursuer. Amleth wove his way through the stalls, then entered the same tavern he had chosen the previous week. When he slipped out the rear door, Reynaldo was already in the alley, crouching behind a rain barrel. Amleth glanced around, but did not spot the Tuscan.

Reynaldo tailed him as he turned toward the Place de Greve. Amleth passed through the warehouses of the area to a neighborhood that gave even Reynaldo pause. In front of one of the smaller bawdy houses, a young woman stood in the doorway, a thin shawl draped around her bare shoulders.

“You are late, mon cher,” she scolded him. He shrugged sheepishly, and she grabbed him by both shoulders, pulled him down, and kissed him hard as the other prostitutes and their patrons hooted from windows around them. Then the two of them vanished inside.

A gray-bearded porter standing nearby laughed.

“Every week, the same thing,” he said to no one in particular. “You’d think that boy would be beyond shame by now.”

“Excuse me,” said Reynaldo. “Do you know that young man?”

“Him?” said the porter. “Don’t know his name, but he’s a regular in these parts. If he went to church on Sundays as much as he comes here on Thursdays, then his soul might be safe, but I doubt it. Students, pah!” He spat on the ground for emphasis.

“Thank you,” said Reynaldo, tossing him a penny.

“Don’t mention it,” said La Vache, watching the Tuscan leave. “Or rather, do mention it.”

Inside the bawdy house, the jester who had played the prostitute watched through the shutters.

“He’s gone,” she said, turning to Amleth. “I think he bought the act.”

“Good,” said Amleth. “Thank you.”

“Oh, it was my pleasure,” she said teasingly. She stretched out on the bed. “Sure you don’t want to do anything else? We’ve already paid for the room. It would bring a touch of verisimilitude to your performance.”

“I enjoyed the kiss,” said Amleth sincerely. “But I wear the favor of another.”

“Oh, la,” she sniffed. “Spare me the chivalrous amateurs.”

“
R
eynaldo has returned from Paris
, milord,” said Gorm a week later.

“Yes?” said Fengi.

“It was as we suspected,” said Gorm. “A Parisian tarte for him to munch upon. Reynaldo was told that he makes weekly visits to bawdy houses in that district.”

“How discriminating was his eye?” asked Fengi.

“Reynaldo said that she was very pretty,” said Gorm.

“Good for Amleth,” said Fengi. “Paris has been well worth the expense if it has brought him down to earth again.”

“Yes, milord,” said Gorm. “One less thing to worry about with all this other business.”

“Let’s not discuss that here,” warned Fengi.

“Of course not, milord,” said Gorm.

The drost went inside his quarters. He thought he heard his daughter weeping upstairs. He sighed with exasperation. She had been doing that a lot lately. He felt completely unable to address the needs of an adolescent girl. He had kept her shut up in the upper room for most of the day so that she might avoid temptation, but it did not seem to help.

He ascended the steps to the room and unbarred the door. She sat up on the pallet, her face so like her mothers that he turned pale for a moment, imagining Signe returning to haunt him.

“Yau wanted me to enter a convent,” she blurted out suddenly. “When can I go?”

He knelt in front of her, taking her hands in his.

“Praise be to God,” he said fervendy. “I will arrange it forthwith.”

He dashed down the steps in his haste.

Alfhild clutched an old, raggedy doll to her bosom and rocked back and forth, a low moan emanating from her.

“What’s wrong?” asked Lother, poking his head through the door.

“I’ve decided to enter the convent,” she said.

“Oh, no,” he muttered. “Is that why father is looking so happy? He has finally broken you.”

“He didn’t break me,” she said. “I just want to be away from everything. It’s all too much for me.”

“But a convent? And now? Can’t you at least wait until Amleth comes back?”

She threw herself down and wailed.

“What on earth did I say?” asked Lother, rushing to comfort her.

“I never want to see him or hear his name again,” she sobbed. “Amleth?” he said, producing another wail. “But why?”

“He has been unfaithful to me,” she said.

“Impossible,” he said firmly.

“It’s true,” she said, shaking her head. “Father had him followed in Paris.”

“Then it must have been a mistake,” said Lother. “Or some kind of joke. He loves only you. You know that.”

He took out a handkerchief and gently wiped the tears from her face. “You can’t go to a convent,” he said. “I’d never get to see you there. Who would cheer you up?”

“You’ll be gone in the fall anyway,” she said. “You’ll be in Paris studying, and he’ll be in Paris whoring, and I’ll be shut in here with father watching my every move. A convent would be paradise compared to that.”

“Except that you’ll become a nun,” said Lother. “Amleth can’t marry a nun.”

“I can’t marry him knowing what I know,” she said. “Please, Lother. I’ve made up my mind.”

“Let me talk to father,” he begged her.

She smiled, and kissed his cheek, which still bore a recent bruise from his father’s ministrations.

“I would rather be walled up in a convent until I die than let any more harm come to you,” she said.

“I’m a man,” he said. “I protect you.”

“I know,” she said. “I just don’t know who will protect you.

“
A
convent
,” said Fengi when Gorm informed him of his decision. “And she actually agreed to go?”

“She is my daughter,” said Gorm haughtily. “She does as I tell her to do.”

“Of course,” said Fengi. “Still, I shall be sorry to see her go. What with Amleth away, and Lother heading to school this fall, she would have been the only young person left on the island.”

“She’s almost a woman,” said Gorm. “There are girls her age getting married.”

“And you don’t want her to marry,” said Fengi.

“I cannot say that I see much in that institution,” said Gorm. “At least I can preserve her from sin this way. There will be no temptation for her, and she will be none herself.”

“Quite so,” said Fengi.

“
I
mpressive defenses
,” said Horace, looking out the window of the carriage as they passed through the gate in the southern earthenworks. “My father built them,” said Amleth.

“They keep the Holsteiners in Holstein,” chirped Gudmund.

“Yes, the fearsome Holsteiners,” added Rolf. “All our lives, we’ve lived in fear that the Holsteiners were going to invade us. Then our parents send us to Paris, and what’s the first border we cross? Holstein!”

“We were terrified,” said Gudmund. “We crouched down in the carriage, hoping they wouldn’t see us.”

“Except for Amleth,” said Rolf. “But then, he’s mad, isn’t he?”

“Some of the time,” said Amleth.

“What did you think would happen if they saw you?” asked Horace. “Oh, something horrible,” said Gudmund. “We’d be held for ransom, or flayed alive.”

“Or eaten,” laughed Rolf.

They crossed the river and headed east. Amleth grew quiet as they approached the town. The carriage stopped by the foot of the drawbridge, and Horace and Amleth pulled their trunks from the roof and thanked the driver. It pulled away, Rolf and Gudmund waving from inside.