Authors: Simon the Coldheart
How he grew to manhood
From page to Alan, he became page to my lord himself, and was decked out in Montlice red and gold. Very brave he looked in the short red tunic worked with gold and caught in at the waist by a leathern belt. His hose were gold, his shoon red, and red was the cap that sat a thought rakishly on his fair head. His duties were many and arduous, nor did my lord spare him any fatigue or exertion. He slept on a hard pallet across Fulk’s threshold, rose early and went late to bed. It was part of his duty to wait upon my lord and his lady at dinner, and every morning at ten Simon took his stand on the dais beside my lord’s chair, attending to his wants or standing immobile the while my lord and his guests ate and drank their fill. He was at three people’s beck and call: my lord, his lady, and young Alan, and he spent his time running from one to the other.
He grew apace in height and breadth and strength until there were few who could throw him in a wrestling match; few who could shoot an arrow farther or more precisely, be it at butt, prick or rover; and few who could stand beneath his mighty buffet. Yet for the most part he was gentle enough, if stern, and it was only when his cold anger was aroused that the caged lion within him sprang to life and swept all before it. And when that happened there came that light to his eyes which could make the hardiest evil-doer cringe and the most arrogant squire cry mercy, even before Simon’s iron hands had touched him.
Blows he received a-many, whenever my lord chanced to be in an ill-humour, which was often, but they never disturbed his cold composure, nor awakened any feeling of resentment in his breast. From Fulk he bore blows in an acquiescent mood that yet held no meekness nor humility, but woebetide the squire or serf who crossed his path belligerently inclined! When he still was page, my lord’s squire, Lancelot of the Black Isle, commanded him loftily, and when Simon paid no heed to his orders, dealt him a buffet that should have felled him to the ground. Simon staggered under it, but recovered, and gave back blow for blow with so much force behind his steel wrist that Lancelot, full five years his senior, went tumbling head over heels and was sore and bruised for days after. When Fulk heard the tale he made Simon squire in Lancelot’s place, and swore that there was more of himself in Simon than in his own son.
But it was seldom that Simon fell foul of his peers. His very calmness of temper compelled respect, and for that he was every inch a man, men liked him and were eager to call him friend. Friendship he never courted, caring nothing for man’s opinion of himself, nor seemed he to have an ounce of affection in him, save it were for Fulk of Montlice, or Alan, whom he regarded with a mixture of contempt and liking. His father he saw a-many times, but it is doubtful whether Geoffrey of Malvallet noticed him. Once indeed at Bedford in the court of law, whither Simon had gone in Fulk’s wake to settle a dispute over some land between Montlice and Malvallet, Geoffrey, glancing idly around, surprised an intent stare from his enemy’s page, who sat with his chin in his hand, calmly and keenly scrutinising him. Geoffrey looked him over haughtily, but when his eyes met Simon’s and encountered that strangely disconcerting gleam he turned his head away quickly, a tinge of colour in his cheeks. Simon continued to survey him, not from any wish to annoy, but simply because he was interested, and wished to see what manner of man was his sire. He was not ill-pleased with what he saw, but neither was he enthusiastic. Geoffrey was a tall man, and slim, fastidious in his dress and appointments, soft-spoken, and proud – so said Montlice – as Lucifer himself. His close-cropped hair was grizzled now, but his eyes were like Simon’s in colour, and as deep set. His eyebrows were too thick and straight, but his mouth was gentle and full-lipped, which Simon’s was not, and his brow was not so rugged. He had one son, Geoffrey, who was just two years older than Simon, and whom Simon had never seen.
Between Alan and Simon positions were very soon reversed. It was Alan who gave devoted love and obedience; Simon received, and could return naught but a tolerant protection. They played together often, but in every sport Simon was an easy victor save when the game was of a gentle kind. At bowls and closh Alan could beat him, but when they played at balloon ball, Alan ruefully declared that he was no match for Simon, who played with his naked hand and struck the great leather ball with such deadly accuracy and strength that Alan was fain to dodge it instead of returning it. At archery he was even less skilled, and Simon watched his efforts to bend the bow with a contemptuous, rather amused air, which incensed young Alan so that he shot his arrow still more wide of the mark than ever. Simon tried to teach him the sport of the quarter-staff, and wielded his own staff moderately enough, in deference to Alan’s tender years. But Alan, although he was not lacking in courage, disliked such rude and rough play, and would not engage with Simon. He liked to go out chasing or hawking, and he showed an aptitude for pretty and quick sword-play. Tourneys were not so much to his taste, and rather than enter into any of these pastimes would he sit at home, strumming upon his harp and weaving fanciful songs to his many lady-loves. He would paint, too, and make poesies, for all the world like some troubadour of a century ago. With the ladies he was ever a favourite, and by the time he was fifteen he was for ever paying court to some dame or another, greatly to Simon’s disgust.
‘Hast thou never loved?’ he asked Simon once, plaintively.
They were sitting together in a room high up in one of the turrets, Alan playing his harp, and Simon fashioning a new string to his great bow.
Simon did not raise his eyes from his task, but his lips curled disdainfully.
‘Oh, love, love! Art for ever prating of this love. What is it?’
Alan played a soft chord or two, bending his handsome head a little to one side. His dark eyes glowed, and he smiled.
‘Dost thou not know? Is there no maid who stirs thy heart?’
‘I know of none,’ Simon answered shortly.
Alan put his harp away and crossed his shapely legs. He was wearing a tunic of peacock-blue velvet with long sleeves, lined with gold, that touched the ground. There was a jewel in his left ear, and a ring on his finger, while the belt that drew in his tunic at the waist was of wrought gold, studded with gems. He formed a striking contrast to Simon, who was clad in a long robe of crimson, with high boots on his feet and no ornament on all his dress. He still wore his hair clubbed at neck and brow, although it was now customary to display a close-cropped head. He was sixteen at the time, and already stood six foot in height, with mighty thews and sinews, a broad back down which the muscles rolled and rippled, and a pair of arms that were bear-like in their strength. Beside Alan’s slim figure he seemed a very giant.
Alan watched him for a moment, still smiling.
‘My sisters are not so ill-looking,’ he remarked, a laugh in his eyes. ‘Elaine is perhaps more comely than Joan.’
‘Is she?’ Simon said, still intent on his task.
‘Which dost thou like the best, Simon?’ Alan asked softly.
‘I know not. I have never thought.’ He glanced up, a sudden smile flashing across his face. ‘Dost suggest that one of them should stir my heart?’
‘They do not? Ye feel not the smallest pulse-leap in their presence?’
Simon stretched his new string experimentally.
‘A pulse-leap,’ he said slowly. ‘What folly! My pulse leaps when I have sent an arrow home, or when I have thrown my man, or when a hawk has swooped upon its prey.’
Alan sighed.
‘Simon, Simon, is there no softness in thee at all? Dost love no one?’
‘I tell thee I know not what it is, this Love. It stirs me not! I think it is nothing save the sick-fancy of a maudlin youth.’
Alan laughed at that.
‘Thy tongue stings, Simon.’
‘If it might sting thee to more manly pastimes than this moaning of love, ’twere to some purpose.’
‘But it will not. Love is all. One day thou’lt find that I speak sooth.’
‘I wonder!’ Simon retorted.
Again Alan sighed.
‘Simon, what hast thou in place of a heart? Is it a block of granite that ye carry in your breast? Is no one anything to you? Am I nothing? Is my lord nothing? There is no love in you for either of us?’
Simon laid his bow down, and began to polish an arrow.
‘Art like a whining babe, Alan,’ he rebuked his friend. ‘What shouldst thou be but my lords, thou and Montlice?’
Alan stretched out his hands.
‘That is not what I would be to thee!’ he cried. ‘I give you Love, and what doest thou give me in return? Hast a single spark of affection for me, Simon?’
Simon selected another arrow, and passed his hand over its broad feather almost lovingly. He looked thoughtfully at Alan, so that the boy sprang up, flushing.
‘Thou carest more for that arrow than for me!’
‘That is folly,’ Simon answered coolly. ‘How can I tell thee what my feelings are when I do not know myself?’
‘Couldst thou leave Montlice today without one pang of regret?’ demanded Alan.
‘Nay,’ Simon said. ‘But one day I shall. For the present I bide, for I want some years to full manhood. And I am happy here, if that is what thou wouldst know. Between thee and me is friendship, and between my Lord Fulk and me is understanding. A truce to this silly woman’s talk.’
Alan sat down again, twanging his harp discordantly.
‘Thou art so strange, Simon, and so cold. I wonder why I do so love thee?’
‘Because thou art weak,’ Simon replied curtly, ‘and because thou takest delight in such fondlings.’
‘Maybe,’ Alan shrugged. ‘Thou at least art not weak.’
‘Nay,’ Simon said placidly. ‘I am not weak, neither am I strange. See if thou canst bend that bow, Alan.’
Alan glanced at it casually.
‘I know I cannot.’
‘Shouldst practise then. Thou wouldst please my lord.’
‘Certes, I do not want to please him. I was not fashioned for these irksome sports. ’Tis thou who shouldst try to please him, for ’tis thou whom he loves.’
Simon balanced a broad feathered arrow on his forefinger.
‘Good lack, what has my lord to do with love? There is little enough of that in his heart.’
‘So ye think!’ retorted Alan. ‘I know that he watches thee fondly. Perchance he will knight thee soon.’
‘I have done naught to deserve it,’ replied Simon shortly.
‘Natheless, he will do it, I think. He might even give thee one of my sisters in marriage if thou didst wish it, Simon.’
‘I am not like to. There is no place for women in my life, and no liking for women in my breast.’
‘Why, what will be thy life?’ asked Alan.
Then at last a gleam shone in Simon’s eyes, cold yet eager.
‘My life will be’ – he paused – ‘what I choose to make it.’
‘And what is that?’
‘I will tell thee one day,’ Simon said, with a rare touch of humour. Then he gathered up his arrows and went away, treading heavily yet noiselessly, like some great animal.
True it was that Fulk cared for him more than for his own son. The lion-spirit was not in Alan, and between him and his father was less and less understanding as the years passed by. Fulk’s jovial roughness, his energetic ways, his frequent lawsuits, wearied and disgusted Alan, and in the same way Alan’s fastidious temper and more cultured tastes became the subject for Fulk’s jeers and sighs. In place of his son Fulk turned to Simon and took him wherever he went, sparing him no exertion nor hardship, but watching his squire’s iron equanimity with an appreciative, almost admiring eye. Thus, bit by bit, grew up between the two an odd understanding and affection, never spoken of, but there at the root of their attitude towards each other. Fulk wanted not servility nor maudlin love, and from Simon he got neither. Strength was the straight road to his heart, and fearlessness: Simon had both. They were not always at one, and sometimes a quarrel would crop up when neither would give way an inch, when Fulk stormed and raged like a wounded buffalo, and when Simon stood rock-like, unshaken by anything Fulk might do to him, icy anger in his strange eyes, inflexible obstinacy about his mouth, and his brows forming a straight line across his hawk-nose.
‘What I have I hold!’ Fulk roared at him once, pointing to the device on his shield.
‘I have not, but still I hold,’ Simon retorted.
Fulk’s eyes showed red a moment, and a fleck of foam was on his pointing beard.
‘God’s Wounds!’ he barked. ‘Am I to be braved by you, mongrel-whelp? It will be the whip for you, or a dungeon-cell!’
‘And still I shall hold,’ Simon answered him, folding his arms across his great chest.
‘By Death, I will tame you, wild-cat!’ Fulk cried, and drew back his fist to strike. But even as he would have done so, he checked himself, and the red went out of his eyes. A grin came, and a rumbling laugh.
‘“I have not, but still I hold,”’ he repeated. ‘Ho-ho! “I have not, but –” Ho-ho!’ Chuckling, he smote Simon on the shoulder, a friendly blow which would have crumpled an ordinary stripling to the ground. He became indulgent, even coaxing. ‘Come lad! Thou’lt do as I bid thee!’
Coaxing left Simon as unmoved as the late storm. He shook his fair head stubbornly.
‘Nay, I go mine own road in this.’
The red light showed again.
‘Dare ye defy me?’ roared Fulk, and closed his huge hand on Simon’s shoulder. ‘I can snap thy puny body as a reed!’
Simon shot him that upward, rapier-glance.
‘I dare all,’ he said.
The grip on his shoulder tightened until little rivulets of pain ran down from it across his chest. He did not so much as wince, but held Fulk’s look steadily. Slowly the grip relaxed.
‘Ay, ye dare,’ Fulk said. ‘I am of a mind to break thee over my knee.’
‘That is as may be,’ Simon answered. ‘But still I shall hold.’
At that Fulk broke into a great laugh, and released him.
‘Oh, go thine own road, cub, so ye do not take it into thy hot head to hold me!’
Simon looked him over, frowning.
‘That I think I cannot do,’ he said. ‘I am not sure.’
Whereat Fulk laughed the more and liked him the better.