Sir Raoul jerked his head at the white silk pavilion. ‘His Grace the King is inside?’
‘Aye. And crying like a babe. The Duchess is comforting him.’
‘It’s a bad business.’
‘Aye.’ Lady Juliana had only come out for a breath of clean, untainted air. The heat and the smell of death in the tent was suffocating. When the King left, she would have to see to her Duchess.
‘All in all three men have died this day,’ Sir Raoul informed her. ‘Our Duke, Fletcher, and a knight from Gascony whom I do not know. Two more men have been sorely wounded, and are fighting for their lives. Oh, aye, and apparently there’s a dead beggar.’
‘B...beggar? What beggar?’ Lady Juliana seized on the diversion, for beggars did not count.
‘Christ knows. He only had one hand, so he was probably a convicted thief. One of the King’s guards heard a stray dog barking in the forest. When the barking didn’t let up, he investigated and found the body. The guard knew him for a beggar because he had seen the same man hanging around for scraps by the cookhouse. His throat had been cut, and he’d been mutilated. Hacked about.’
A look of distaste flickered across Lady Juliana’s features. ‘No grisly details, Raoul. I’ve had my fill for today.’
‘Sorry, my dear. But what in blazes could anyone gain by torturing a lousy beggar?’
‘Raoul, please.’
‘My apologies. Dear God, it’s been a bad day. The rest of the tournament will probably be cancelled.’
‘I should think so.’
‘A bad business,’ he muttered glumly, ‘a bad business.’
‘You will have to do something about that young man’s widow, Raoul. She’s pregnant.’
‘Oh, hell, is she?’ Raoul Martell sighed. ‘Then I suppose I will, especially as Fletcher was trying to warn me.’
‘Warn you?’ Lady Juliana looked a question.
Flushing, Sir Raoul fixed his eyes on a tent peg. ‘Aye, he was warning me. Some Frenchman took it into his head that I caused him to lose a favourite hawk.’
‘And did you?’
‘What, lose the wretched man his sparrowhawk? Jesu, no. It wasn’t my fault if his falconer had trained the bird ill. A tourney’s no place for a half-trained bird. It happened yesterday. All I did was ride past his hawk; it took a dislike to my horse, bated, snapped its leash, and was into the blue before you could bat an eye. The Frenchman took it into his head I was to blame. At any rate, he banded together with some other French knights and they chose me as their target. Fletcher ran onto the field to warn me.’
‘By now he will be dead,’ Lady Juliana whispered. The guy ropes of the ducal pavilion creaked. The tent flap was folded back, and Philip of France strode past them. His eyelids were swollen, his cheeks mottled and his lips compressed, but he was every inch a king. Lady Juliana curtsied deeply, and the knight bowed; but they were too slow, and their obeisances were directed at the King’s back.
‘I’d best go in, Raoul.’
‘Aye. You attend your Duchess, and I’ll attend Ned Fletcher’s widow. Adieu, till later, my dear.’ And bending over his fiancée’s hand, Sir Raoul pressed his lips to her fingers and turned on his heel.
***
It was past the ninth hour and the light was fading. Ned had been laid to rest under newly cut turves that afternoon, less than an hour after he had died. Alan and Gwenn had been his only mourners, Sir Raoul being too taken up with the Duke’s death. It had been a hasty, improvised burial on hallowed ground in a nearby village churchyard. For Alan it had been heart-breaking; it had been too quick and too impersonal. Alan had seen many such funerals, funerals of hired men whose masters hardly knew them. But it was no stranger Alan was bidding farewell today. This was his childhood playmate and cousin. For Gwenn it must have been hell. She seemed to have done into deep shock.
On their return from the burial, she had disappeared into the tent. She had been alone there for three hours, and Alan hadn’t heard so much as a whisper from her. It was unnatural. He had spent most of that three hours gazing sightlessly into his tent-side fire, straining his ears in case she broke down. It was the loneliest, most miserable guard duty that he had ever undertaken. He couldn’t believe Ned was dead. His cousin had been the happiest, most contented, accepting man Alan had ever known. And Ned was no more. Alan couldn’t believe Duke Geoffrey had gone either, but at least the Duke’s death could be thought of calmly, without too much emotion. Alan wondered whether the Duchess was reacting to her husband’s death.
Alan’s stomach felt empty. How could he feel hunger at a time like this? He drank a skinful of wine, but his hunger remained, a gnawing ache, deep in his guts. He had no food with him. He did not want to leave Gwenn to go to the cookhouse, not even for half an hour. And from his tent? Nothing. No sobbing, no weeping. Nothing.
Gwenn had taken the purse that a heavy-browed Sir Raoul had offered her by way of compensation for a lost husband. She had nodded when the knight said that he had arranged for Ned’s burial, and she seemed to accept, for the time being at least, Alan’s guardianship of her. But not a solitary tea had she shed. It was as if this latest tragedy had turned her to stone.
When Alan had told Sir Raoul that Ned’s last wishes had been that he should take care of Gwenn, the knight’s brow had cleared – what with the Duke of Brittany’s death, noblemen had politics on their minds, and no doubt the future of an untried squire’s widow did not loom large. No one had objected to her spending the night in Alan’s tent. Had she been a lady of high estate, matters would have been arranged very differently. Not that Alan was complaining. If anyone was indelicate enough to imply that he would lay a hand on her while she grieved for her husband, he’d split their slanderous tongues for them.
He had heard the rumours concerning Ned’s foray into the lists. He scowled an accusation at the fading glow in the western sky. ‘Ned, you were a fool, a chivalrous fool. See where your folly has left us.’ But it was no use blaming the dead. Ned could not help his nature any more than he could his. He would miss his vital young cousin.
Marshalling his emotions, Alan eyed the closed flap with misgivings. She had gone into his tent meekly as a lamb, asking if she could be left alone. Assuming she wished to grieve in private, Alan had withdrawn. But she was not grieving. What was she doing? Could he disturb her? Should he disturb her? His stomach growled, and thus prompted, he rose to his feet. There was bread and water in the tent.
She was sitting cross-legged exactly as he had left her, on the thin mattress she had shared with Ned. Sir Raoul’s drawstring purse was in front of her. It was unopened. Great eyes lifted briefly to Alan as he came in.
‘I came for water,’ he said, unhooking the flask from a knob on a tent pole.
Silence.
‘Are you thirsty?’
Silence.
‘Gwenn...’ Helplessly, Alan watched her downcast head. With a jerky movement he slung the waterskin onto his pallet and tried again. ‘Gwenn? Oh, Jesu, Gwenn, say something.’
Silence.
He knelt in front of her and reached for her hands. She shuddered, which was not the reaction that he looked for but it was a reaction of sorts, which was a beginning. ‘Gwenn, please. You can’t cut yourself off like this.’
‘Why not?’ Her voice was harsh, not her voice at all.
‘It...it’s not healthy.’
‘My sister cut herself off when life became unbearable.’
‘Katarin is sick, shocked. She had suffered much.’
‘Am I not sick and shocked? Have I not suffered much? I vow I will suffer no more. If I have to cut myself off to ensure that, then so be it.’ And, as if to illuminate her words, she jerked free of his hold and hunched away from him.
At least she was talking. Alan’s aim was to goad her into relieving her feelings. ‘Katarin’s a child, Gwenn. You cannot retreat as she did.’