‘You cannot have forgotten, Lady, that I forced you on the night before I left,’ he said. ‘And much as I’m ashamed to own it, would willingly have forced another woman when we captured Acre, if she’d not submitted first.’
I had decided while I waited for him in our chamber, to beg my husband’s pardon for appearing to parade my shame by keeping Hamkin with me. But when he stood before me and confessed to understanding carnal violence, I stared at him in utter disbelief!
Of course I’d known that he was bound to lie with other women over there – absolutely bound to. That hadn’t shocked me, not at all. What shocked me was that he could dare suggest – or even think – that there could ever be in any circumstance a possible excuse for rape!
‘How can you stand there and defend a man who has abused us both?’
‘I’m not defending him, that isn’t what I said.’
‘You should be in a stamping rage and grateful for the chance to fight!’ She’s suddenly ablaze herself.
‘I’m pledged to fight, you heard me say so – have just now come from seeing that the tiltyard’s cleared and sanded.’ (She hasn’t said how glad she is to have me back, hasn’t kissed me, hasn’t touched me since our first embrace.)
I reach out to unfist her hands and take them in my own. ‘We’ve found a pair of bucklers that will suit. They’re sharpening the swords, and in a while I’m going down to practice for the bout.’ (It’s what she wants to hear.)
‘But you must know there is no anger in me. I have come home to give, not to destroy.’ (It’s what I need to tell her.)
‘I am fighting Hugh, not for revenge and not because I think one act of violence has to be matched with another. I’m fighting him to prove the justice of your case, to show the world the child is yours, not his. And if I win, I’ll win the means for us to live in peace.’
I seek her eyes and hold them steadily. ‘If you are sure that’s what you want?’
‘How can you ask? Of course I’m sure!’ She snatches back her hands.
‘But are YOU sure, Sir? That’s the question here. From all you’ve said, it’s clear to me that you have no idea of how I’ve suffered, or of how fearful I’ve been of letting Hamelin fall into that man’s power.’
She steps back impatiently with hands on hips to glare at me for all she’s worth. ‘You tell me that you have no anger in you. But HE has, he’s full of it. If you can’t match his anger you will lose, that’s all there is to it. Sir Hugh will win!’
‘Which sounds like something I’d have said four years ago.’
‘Well if you listen carefully, you’ll hear me say it twice. If you can’t find the fire, the heat, whatever you men have to feel to work yourselves into a killing rage, then you are going to lose. And that won’t do, because you may as well know that unless you finish it – unless you KILL that man – there’ll be no peace for me, or you, or Hamelin or any of us ever! We never can feel safe again until he’s dead!’
She steps toward me, holds her right hand up for me to see.
‘I mean it, Garon – if this is going to be the only way that I can strike the spark to give you what you need to fight…
Her arm swings back, right back. I see what’s coming and the force of it.
‘THERE THEN!’’ Elise’s stinging palm lands square across my mouth.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The pain surprised me. A spark of indignation flares in me and dies. The ring she wears has left an angry mark, but nothing more. The blow expressed her anger, but it cannot kindle mine.
‘I will not fight,’ I told the Bishop.
Now I must, and to the death because Elise demands it. She is the plaintiff and the choice is hers, not mine. Sir Hugh has been informed the bout is to be à la outrance. He accepts. By nightfall one of us must die.
He’s out there on the sand already, sparring with some fortress knight who is himself adept. All swordsmen worthy of the name must master early in their training the art of short-sword and buckler combat. I learned the steps, the many uses of a shield, the reflexes required. So did Hugh – and from the way he’s moving, lunging and recoiling, stepping wide, it’s clear that he’s retained the skill. I can’t tell yet if I have.
In a judicial bout, God is supposed to ‘take the right’. To guide the victor’s hand and prove the virtue of his cause. But without God, you are left with what? With skill, with strength and stamina – and with that something other,
which can determine who wins or loses. If that’s a sense of future, I may have the edge over Sir Hugh. But if it’s anger, as Elise believes, I’m at a disadvantage.
‘My lord, here is your sword.’
The tow-headed smith’s boy holds it up – the fine Toledo blade I purchased in Marseille and carried with me all the way, and never used on the croisade except in exercise with Jos. The sword that fell with me at al-Ayadiyeh!
‘’Tis very keen, Sir, if ye care to feel?’ The lad’s blackened fingers turn each edge for me to try. Both are sharp as razors.
‘Would you believe, My Lord, that when I brought it to the stone an’ drew it out, all this was over it, with more inside the sheath.’ He holds out the buckler in his other hand, to show its hollow strewn with grey sand from the lime pits outside Acre. ‘Is it from Oversea, my lord, where Our Lord Jesus lived?’
I cannot meet his shining eyes, or show the pain in mine. ‘It was from Outremer, but now like me is come to Sussex.’
I make him tip it out to join the sea-sand of the tiltyard, and turn from the poor lad’s disappointed face, to the smart fellow from the garrison, who is to help me try my paces. ‘Now, Sir Osberne, if you’re ready?’
Elise is watching from the window as we cross the yard. The solar is in shadow with the light behind it. But I can’t mistake the flax-blue of her gown. Her hands, both hands, are on the mullions, which means the child is elsewhere. I’m glad. He is too young to see a death.
The Countess had the chamber cleared of ladies, servants, men-at-arms, Hod with Hamkin – everyone but me and little Thomas, who she kept beside her chair. She’d had the shutters taken from the window, and ordered me to watch…
Watch their shadows stripe the sand when they walked out across the yard. Behind them, high above the stable roofs, the hill I’d crossed in pouring rain glowed palely in the sun. He glanced up once. I think he must have seen me.
‘You chose this course and you must see it through.’
For once without a dog upon her knee, My Lady held a holland shirt, which she was stitching with an expert hand. ‘The bout’s unsanctioned. It is not for me to judge the outcome.’
She pulled a silk thread taut, then used the needle as a pointer. ‘But what I will do, is to see you witness every pass and cut and wound those men sustain until the very last. For this is your choice, girl. Not theirs, not God’s, and certainly not mine.’
By then the rage I’d felt with him for being so damn calm, had given place to numbing guilt and every kind of fear. I’d wanted this to happen, but was now terrified it would go wrong in the worst way. Why couldn’t I have waited for the Earl to judge the case when he returned? Instead of rushing in. Instead of always rushing in, Elise, to force the issue – force poor Garon to defend us with his life!
I didn’t even have the sense My Lady had, to think of sending Hamkin back to spare the child the sight of blood.
He limped a little as he crossed the tiltyard with Sir Osberne, looking unprepared. I hadn’t thought they’d be so lightly armoured. Should have made it long swords, with helms and shields and linkmail hauberks to offer him some kind of real protection – something more than boiled leather over a padded gambeson, a coif and gauntlets, with a buckler hardly larger than a capon salver.
Oh Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, Queen of Heaven, see it in your wisdom to protect him. Sweet Mother, let him win!
This time no trembling excitement. Just a feeling like a cold, hard stone pushed up inside my ribs. Walk swiftly to conceal the limp – three, four more paces. Here I think.
The young man reminds me so much of myself before the tournament and the croisade. ‘Sir Osberne, shall we show them how it’s done?’
Swords vertical for the salute, buckler left-handed to the chest – and now ligacio position. I have not forgotten. Right foot forward, buckler in a straight line from the other shoulder to protect the sword-hand…
Something about a balanced blade to make it feel like an extension of your body, an extra limb that has no mission but to injure or to kill. Blades crossed at the erotic angle in a mutual bind, eyes on opponent.
‘The four best weapons in a soldier’s armoury are bone an’ sinew, strength of grip, sharpness of eye.’
Trust to your training, Garon – and begin!
The swish, the whisper of the steel as the blades disengage. The kind of sound Sir Hugh and his opponent are already making – a sound that triggers years of practice, something ingrained deep inside. Those who know nothing of the art of swordplay, imagine that its object is continually to crash one blade against the other with all the strength you have – a method which would soon make sawteeth of their edges. In truth the loudest sound comes from the clashing bucklers, not the swords – the greater skill that of avoiding one another’s blades whilst probing for the weakness in a guard; the skill of dancers, jugglers, acrobats – not blacksmiths!
Thrust, block, block thrust. Level balance. Feet shoulder-width apart, soles to the ground… anticipate his second lunge and your return, even as you block the first.
And now. And now. And now. He’s helping, but it’s coming back, there still. I’ve not forgotten.
But Christ, I am unfit!
I held my breath while they saluted and began, then felt relief to see he knew the strokes, could hold his own against the fortress knight. But then I saw the others circling behind them, faster! So much faster! The clatter of their bucklers louder and more frequent, their blades a blur of flashing steel.
The difference between the pairs was clear to all – and I was horribly afraid!
Arrète!
We both put up. I’m panting, sweating like a pig – must turn as if at ease to pat the lad, Sir Osberne, on the shoulder.
‘You have my thanks, Sir, ’twas exactly what I needed.’ We bow. He’s breathless too, which I suppose is something?
I found that I’d lost bulk and muscle tone when they released me from the abbey hospital at Fontenay, but must have made some up on the long walk from Winchester along the downland ridges.
Breathe slowly, deeply. Accept the squire’s towel as if you hardly need it. A quick wipe, an easy smile. Hugh mustn’t see and mustn’t guess what that first bout has cost you…
He’s coming over. Strolling, looking (wouldn’t he) as fresh as a field daisy!
‘Well, Garon?’ Wry smile, raised brows, the old familiar mocking tone.
‘So here we have the answer to all our disagreements. We end the argument as knights and gentlemen, fighting one another to the death.’
The kind of thing he would say, wouldn’t he, to cover what he really feels?
‘Believe me, it is not my choice.’
‘Ah quite. The lady snaps her fingers, and the faithful husband hastens to obey.’
‘You warned me not to leave and told me what could happen if I did.’
‘And you were not persuaded.’
‘But you were right, and I was wrong. Is that what you wish to hear?’
‘You have my full attention.’
‘I was so desperate to serve a cause that I was blind to folly.’
‘Well I confess, I’m gratified to hear you admit it. So are we to gather that you’ve exchanged a war for something, shall we say more personal?’ Again the smile, the upraised brows. Yet, strange to say, no longer so provoking.
‘And if you have, can you explain to me, as a matter of immediate interest, why the prospect of two cocks fighting in a pit is not an equal folly? Can you make sense of that, my friend? For I confess I can’t.’
‘It’s not about sense is it? Or even which of us is stronger?’ Breath steady, voice is good…
‘What it’s about is justice for a lady who has no other means of gaining it. It is about the threat she sees in you to everything that she holds dear – the child especially.’
‘But you, my brave avenging angel? What is it that you see in me?’
‘I see a smiling mask, and behind it someone who has already lost all chance of self-respect, or any kind of true contentment – even if he wins.’
‘Which would suggest that I have something still to prove.’ His mouth is straight, unsmiling now, with anger and resentment in the eyes.
‘So now we are in earnest? And shall we tell them that the fighting cocks are ready – to give no quarter and receive none? Shall we ask them to relieve us of our hoods?’
I see us suddenly, and comically, with bright red combs unfolding on our heads. I see the folly.
They’ve brought old Guillaume out to marshal us. He’s put on weight, but is in good shape still, considering his age.
I dip my leather coif at him. He’ll not acknowledge me, but blinks instead into the sun. Or – did I imagine it? Was it but half a blink – a wink?
He leads us out bow-legged to the centre of the yard, the hard tutor of my youth. Stiffer now, but no whit gentler in his speech. ‘Attend to me, boys, listen well.’ He barks out his instructions as he’s always done in the way of a pack-leader.