Randal turned to the steward who stood beside him, thumbs in belt, staring after them too, and said, ‘Does it get to matter less, when you’re old?’
Reynfrey laughed and cursed on the same breath, and clipped him on the shoulder and bade him get back to d’Aguillon; but he didn’t answer the question.
Randal had little time for brooding in the weeks that followed. There was work and to spare for everybody, with the Manor running ten men short and barley harvest drawing on; and when he was not helping Ancret to tend the Lord of Dean, he was working like a villein in the fields. Joyeuse followed him wherever he went, seeming to think that where he was, Bevis could not be far off; and even, as the weeks went by, brought him a flint or a piece of firewood once or twice, though always in a bothered way as though her mind was not quite on what she did. News trickled over the downs from time to time; de Bellême had come out for Duke Robert, bought by the promise of more lands in Normandy, and on the other side of them, de Warrenne, Lord of the Honour of Lewis, was out too. They heard of the King’s army mustered at Pevensey, waiting for the invasion, and then that the King’s fleet had gone over to the enemy; and they slept at nights half listening for the hoof drum of Norman cavalry sweeping across the downs. They heard that Duke Robert had landed, not at Pevensey as his father had done, as any right-minded conqueror would do, but at Portsmouth; and the King’s army was hurrying westward to give him battle. On the day that d’Aguillon, looking like his own grey ghost, first came out leaning on Randal’s shoulder to sit in the sun before the Hall doorway and listen to the voices of the reapers in Muther-Wutt Field, they heard that there was to be no fighting after all. The two armies had come together at Alton, and the two royal brothers had met between their armies and come to terms. Henry was to keep England but pay Robert two thousand pounds a year. Robert was to keep all Normandy save for Henry’s own Castle of Domfront, and each was to be heir to the other if he died without a son.
The English army was disbanded again, and soon after the last sheaves were carted, Bevis and the Dean men came marching home, Bevis bright-eyed and mocking, saying to Randal, ‘Well, you didn’t miss much, save for seeing the King’s camp like a city of tents. All we did was to sit on our rumps and scowl at each other, while Brother Henry and Brother Robert haggled.’
Somehow it all seemed a little flat.
For a while, Sir Everard continued to mend. The wound under his collar-bone was healed, thanks to Ancret’s salves and the spells she crooned over them. They had a golden autumn running late into the winter, and towards the end of it, when the perry making and winter slaughtering were over and the pigs had been driven down into the Weald to fatten on acorns, he was out and about the Manor again. But then the winter came, with its whistling winds through the Great Hall, its cold and dark and shortage. Sir Everard developed a dry cough, and when at last spring came again and the fires of May Eve flared on the Bramble Hill, it seemed to Randal that his Lord was thinner and grew tired more easily than he had done last autumn.
That summer Dean was left in peace to harvest its barley with its full tally of men, for the King did not call out de Braose, though he himself spent the campaigning season driving de Bellême from one to another of his castles; from Arundel to Bridgnorth, from Bridgnorth to Shrewsbury, and at last back to Normandy where he would inevitably make common cause with Duke Robert. Randal thought of Herluin when that news came, thought of him with a small aching sense of loss. Whenever he heard that de Bellême was at Arundel, he had always had the feeling that at any hour, at any moment, he might look down the track to the ford, and see the long, fantastic figure in monkish black with the golden sleeves come riding up it. And they would wave to each other in the distance, and when they came together, Herluin would sit his horse looking down at him, with that twisted smile of his, and say, ‘Well, Imp, was I right?’ and he would say, ‘Herluin, you were right.’ But now, that would never happen.
There was another sense of loss on Randal, too, that autumn, or rather, the shadow of a loss that was yet to come.
Sir Everard’s cough had seemed to improve through the summer, but with the autumn it returned. And on a wild evening of early December, just as he was making ready to go down into the Hall for supper, he suffered a bout of coughing deeper and more racking than any that had gone before. He pressed his hand to his mouth, half leaning over the back of his big chair for support, and when at last the attack spent itself and he took his hand away, it was stained with bright spots of blood.
The eyes of his two squires met for one shocked and sickening moment; and then Bevis, his arm round his grandfather’s shoulders, said, ‘Go and get Ancret.’
Ancret had lived up at the Hall since Sir Everard was wounded, just as she had done when Bevis was a baby. Randal found her without trouble, and she dropped her work in the strawberry plot and came hurrying, but not, it seemed to him, surprised, rather as though it were a summons that she had been waiting for. When they reached the solar, Sir Everard, looking much as usual, though somewhat spent and grey, was lying back in his great chair beside the hearth, his head turned to watch through the narrow window, the windy sunset beyond the downs that was echoing the colour of the burning apple logs. Bevis stood beside him, and old blind Matilda, who spent all her life now dreaming in the sun when there was any, or by the fire when there was not, lay at his feet. There was a great deal of silence in the room; more silence, Randal thought, than he had heard in a room before.
Ancret went to the old knight, and stooped to look into his eyes. She seemed no more shocked or upset by what had happened than he did himself, and something passed between them that was almost a smile, as though they shared some secret that nobody else knew. Then she brought water with certain herbs broken into it, and bathed his face and hands.
Bevis, watching her, said more harshly than he had ever spoken to her in his life before, ‘Can you not do more than that? More than just wipe off the stains? Something to stop it happening again?’
Ancret looked up. ‘Nay,’ she said, ‘neither man or woman of this world can do that. The blade pierced my Lord’s lung. It is finished.’
And Randal knew what the secret was; the secret that she and d’Aguillon had shared between them this year and more.
Sir Everard looked at his two squires, and his straight mouth curled up at the corners. ‘Na na, never wear such down-daunted faces for me. I am an old man, children; I have had a good life, and now the time draws near to lay it down; there is nothing for beating the breast in that.’
His gaze, the dark, straight gaze that Randal had disliked so much in the early days, had gone back to the flaming colours of the sunset that seemed spreading into the room itself. ‘I should like to see the spring come running into this valley of ours, once more . . .’
Bevis, with his hand on his grandfather’s shoulder, stood also staring into the sun. His face was suddenly thin and taut, and nothing about him moved except the muscles in his throat as he swallowed.
Randal broke down and cried like a child, with his head on d’Aguillon’s knees, the great hounds whimpering against him.
D’Aguillon looked down at his tangle of pale hair with a kind of half-amused wonder, and said, ‘Randal – do you love me, then?’
‘If you take a half-starved dung-hill whelp and bring it up to be your hunting dog and hearth companion, you’re likely to find in the end that the silly brute loves you!’ Randal wept, almost defiantly.
D’Aguillon was to see the one spring that he longed for. Christmas passed, and Candlemas, and the valley was full of the babble of lambs again, and the plovers at their mating up on Long Down; and before the night frosts were over, they made him a little wattle hut like a hunting bower among the apple trees behind the Hall, for he found it easier to breathe there than between walls.
Once or twice that winter, messages had passed to and fro between Dean and Bramber where the old Lord too was dying. The last came on an evening early in April, clerk-written on a scrap of parc
hment as the others had been.
I am away; see that you follow my banner as close as you did at Senlac.
Adam Clerk read it to Sir Everard, and the old knight smiled at the grim jest, and bade them send back word that he rode in the very shadow of de Braose’s banner. But de Braose never got that message. A few hours after, they heard that he was dead.
Two days later, Sir Everard, always a quiet man, died on the quietest of spring evenings, with the first white pear blossom unfurling on the old tree by the garth gate, and the first nightingale of the year singing in the river woods.
Matilda, who had laid beside him all that long while, died in the same night. Privately, Randal thought that was Ancret’s doing. The old hound could not have been left to grieve, and it saved Bevis, who would have had to give her the mercy-stroke, just so much more of sorrow.
So the dark Norman knight who had held his English Manor for more than half a lifetime, was laid beside his wife in the little flint church in the land that had become home to him; and his Saxon villeins grieved for him as deeply as they could have done for a Saxon Thegn. Bevis took his great sword with the damascened blade and the seal cut in the pommel, and swathed it in oiled linen and laid it away in the armour kist.
‘When I am a knight, I shall take it out again,’ he said, ‘if ever I come to my knighthood now . . .’
If. That was always the question for a squire whose knight died, for he must find another knight with whom to finish out his squirehood; and since a knight was seldom made before his twenty-first birthday, Bevis had still two years to go. No good worrying about that at the moment, though. The thing that mattered now was to see that the spring ploughing get finished and the bank of the stream properly made up again where the winter rains had torn it down.
They had been helping with the torn bank, and were returning, thigh-wet, a few days later, when the hounds pricked up their ears, and Bevis said, ‘Hallo, someone’s coming.’
Looking down-stream through the hazels by the ford, Randal caught a glimpse of russet and blue cloth and the black arch of a horse’s neck, followed by a flicker of chestnut colour where a second rider came after the first, up the steep slope of the bank. A knight, and maybe his squire behind him.
‘I believe it’s Sir Philip himself,’ Bevis said. ‘Come on.’
It was Sir Philip de Braose. A few moments later he reined in his big Percheron and stood looking down at the two muddy figures that had broken out of the hazel thicket to meet him. He held his left arm at the stiff falconer’s angle, a hooded goshawk on his fist, and Randal saw the little wind ruffle her breast feathers that were barred and splashed brown on creamy amber, like that of an enormous missel thrush. Young de Braose looked at Bevis with the cold, grey eyes that were so exactly the colour of a sword blade. ‘Ah, we are well met, Bevis d’Aguillon. I was coming up to the Hall in search of you, but now I need not ride so far.’
‘Will you not come up to the Hall in any case, de Braose, and drink a cup of wine?’ Bevis said, dripping chalky mud where he stood, but mindful of his duties.
De Braose shook his head. ‘When you are a knight, then I shall come and claim a stirrup cup at the door of Dean . . . It was on the matter of your knighthood that I came to speak with you. You have – what – two years of your squirehood left to serve?’
‘Yes, if I can find some knight to take me.’
De Braose quieted his fidgeting horse. ‘I’ll take you, Aylwin here’ – with a beck of chin over shoulder towards the young man on the chestnut behind him – ‘will be made a knight at Whitsun, and after that I shall be in need of another squire. Come up to the Castle tomorrow.’
There was a silence, broken only by the tiny silver ringing of the goshawk’s bell as she raised one foot. Then Bevis said, ‘You are most kind, my Lord –’
‘Nay, you will find that I do not do things for kindness. I remember the friendship that was between my father and your grandfather, that is all.’
‘– but there are two of us. Unless you can do with two new squires . . .’
De Braose turned his gaze from Bevis to Randal, and raked him with a long, cool stare. ‘Both or neither, eh?’
‘Don’t be a fool!’ Randal babbled under his breath, his eyes on de Braose’s face, but his urgent muttering for his foster-brother beside him. ‘Bevis, don’t be a fool – I’ll do well enough. I can fend for myself. Maybe I’ll do a voyage with Laef Thorkelson. I’ll come back to you when you’re a knight.’
But Bevis simply was not listening. ‘Both or neither,’ he said to de Braose with a curious gentleness.
De Braose looked from one to the other, frowning. Then abruptly the frown vanished and he flung up his head and laughed. ‘God forbid that I should part Roland and Oliver! Come up to the Castle tomorrow, both of you.’
13
The Red-Haired Girl
SUNSHINE THROUGH THE hinder door of the kennels splashed on the brindled and tawny coats of the hounds newly in from exercise. A fly with a dark blue, iridescent body danced and hovered above their heads, just out of reach of their snapping jaws, then zoomed out through the door into the kennel court where more of the great Talbots and Alaunts lay sprawled on the little plot of summer-dry grass. Randal watched it go, his hand still fondling the great rough head against his knee. He had come down from the Keep with word for Guthlac the chief huntsman that de Braose wished to see him about the choice of young hounds for the hart hunting. And when the huntsman had stridden off to answer the summons, he had lingered behind to make much of old Rollo, who was a favourite of his. The afternoon was his to do as he liked with, but he never knew quite what to do with off-duty time when Bevis was not off duty also. Thuna oozed towards him, jealous of the attention he was spending on Rollo, and nosed at his hand, gazing up at him with eyes of liquid amber and bee-brown. Her soft coat in the sunlight was tawny gold, like Joyeuse’s at home at Dean.
Dean. His thoughts, lazy in the afternoon heat, went off to the Manor under the downs. It would be good out at Dean now. Probably they would just have finished getting in the hay. It was more than a year since he and Bevis had come to Bramber as de Braose’s squires, and the Manor had passed into de Braose’s keeping until Bevis reached his knighthood. But Reynfrey was still the steward, and when they got the chance of a few hours at home, everything was just as it always had been, save that Sir Everard was not there. Not that the chance came very often. As far as work went, life was easier as well as gayer than it had been at Dean; there were plenty of amusements, hunting and hawking, minstrelsy in the Great Hall at nights; but the squires were always with their Lord, or at least on call, and it was seldom enough that they could count themselves free for a day or a half-day, to have out Swallow and Durandal and ride home. Maybe it was because these visits were so few and so brief, that they seemed always to shine a little in the remembering, as though they were woven of something richer than the fabric of every day.
Rollo had fallen asleep. He was wise and strong with the garnered wisdom and strength of his many years’ hunting; but he was old. Probably this would be his last season. He was hunting now in his sleep, paws and muzzle fluttering, and tiny, oddly pathetic whimpers breaking from his throat as he picked up the scent of dream hart and belled and bayed the proud and eager message to the dream pack behind him.
‘Ho moy, ho moy, hole, hole, hole!’ Randal encouraged him softly, his hand on Thuna’s head. ‘Oyez, a’Rollo, hark to Rollo! Hark to Rollo the valiant.’
Suddenly he became aware of other voices in the kennels, voices away up at the far end, from the direction of the stall where Linnet, de Braose’s favourite bitch, lay with her new litter of puppies. The stubborn growl of a boy’s voice, and a girl’s clear tones raised and angry.
‘Let me pass! Let me pass this instant!’
Better go and see what was happening. Randal gave a parting pull to Thuna’s left ear, and got up. He went through the next bay of the kennels into the far one – the long range of the building was divided in
to three so that they could shift the hounds about to clean and air the compartments – and found himself in the midst of a fine battle scene.
In the entrance to the stall where Linnet and her puppies were, Perrin the dog-boy was confronting a tall girl with hair as red as Hugh Goch’s, as red as winter bracken with the sun shining on it, that seemed just now to be all but flying out of its two thick braids with fury.
The youngest of the Lady Aanor’s maidens had only been at Bramber for a few weeks and Randal had scarcely spoken to her, but he knew vaguely that her name was Gisella, that she was fourteen, and that she came from a manor away northward into the Weald where there were too many daughters even though two of them had been given to a nunnery. Fine, warlike nuns, if they were anything like Gisella, he thought, checking just inside the doorway, and wondering what, if anything, he was to do.
‘My Lord gave orders her wasn’t to be disturbed by strangers,’ Perrin was saying doggedly, with the air of one repeating what he has said before.
‘Disturb her? Who talks of disturbing her? Do you think this is the first time I have ever been near a bitch with young puppies?’
‘I don’t know aught about that, young Mistress. De Braose gave orders –’
‘I will explain to de Braose afterwards,’ said the red-haired girl with her nose in the air.