‘You’d not regret it. I’m one of the best archers in the Duchy.’
‘Do we need another archer, Captain?’
Otto exchanged a brief look with Warr. He had not forgotten the skirmish when Warr had saved his life. A brace of Englishmen had had him at a disadvantage, when suddenly blue and white feathers had sprouted from one assailant’s chest. Warr’s quiver was full of arrows fletched like that. ‘We can always use a good man,’ he said. He did not like to be beholden to anyone, and this, an easy thing, would set the tally straight.
‘Very well. See he’s tested at the butts. If he hits the spot, add his name to the roll.’
‘Aye, mon seigneur.’
***
Returning from the butts with rain-dampened clothes, Otto Malait and Nicholas Warr strode into a vast hall which was abuzz with talk. The fire gushed forth an acrid blue smoke which caught in the back of the throat and lay across the room like a fenland fog. Supper was on the trestles, and the rich smell of roast boar filled their nostrils. Stools creaked. Goblets clattered. Knives flashed over piled trenchers. Hounds snarled and fought over scraps in the marsh – the soiled rushes under the tables. Cats with thievery in mind streaked between dogs’ legs.
‘Come, Warr, don’t look so down at mouth.’ Otto headed for a vacant space on the soldiers’ table near the door. ‘I’ll enrol you, though I’ve seen you do better.’
‘My thanks, Captain Malait. I’m grateful,’ Warr said, eyeing what was left of the pig with apparent misgivings.
The men who had got to the roast ahead of them had taken the best cuts, and all that was left was a massacre of gristle and bone to which scarcely a strand of flesh clung. The meat had been charred almost to a cinder, so it must at one time have been hot, but it was now cold, congealed, and frankly unappetising.
‘You don’t look it,’ Otto said.
‘No, I am grateful,’ Warr assured him, and sat down.
‘What was it like at Kermaria?’ Otto asked, and hewing a gobbet from the burnt offering, thrust what was left at the archer. The hands that took the platter from him were long. Nicholas Warr had surprisingly thin bones for a military man. Broad-shouldered though, he got that from his archery, but otherwise too lanky for Otto’s taste. Now Warr had enlisted with de Roncier, he would be given the chance to prove his loyalty by telling them all he could.
The archer cut what he could from the ill-fated boar and resigned himself to a night’s indigestion. ‘It was warm at Kermaria,’ he said, dryly.
Otto’s wits were never at their sharpest when he was intent on bagging a wine jar. He frowned. ‘Warm? That damp, bog of a place?’
‘You misunderstand, Captain. It was the food I was referring to.’ Warr looked round the ring of gobbling, hard-faced men-at-arms, ‘and the people.’
Otto let his eyes wash coldly over the archer. ‘The people? You’ve gone soft, Warr, since I knew you. Wasn’t it you who once boasted that you never allowed affection to come into your working relationships?’
‘Did I say that?’
Otto laughed, and choked as some pork went down the wrong way. ‘Bones of St Olaf! You’re showing your years.’
‘We’re all showing our years, Malait,’ Warr said soberly.
‘There was someone else who lived by your old precepts, Warr, Alan le Bret.’
‘Le Bret?’ The archer nodded. ‘I knew him, briefly. He left St Clair. Must have been two years back.’
‘That fits. At least he showed sense. Thank God you can rely on some folk. Your change of heart shook my faith in human nature. Warmth, indeed,’ Otto snorted. ‘Tell me, what happened to the stripling with an unruly conscience – Ned...Fletcher, I think it was. Is he at Kermaria?’ Now there was a handsome lad. Otto had never met a better-looking boy than Ned Fletcher. Though he had found a friend at Huelgastel and was fond of him, this new lad could not touch Ned Fletcher on looks. A sturdy lad, with rosy cheeks. Otto sighed, he had always regretted not being able to get closer to young Fletcher.
‘Ned Fletcher’s still there.’
Mouth full, stained teeth grinding his meat like a mill, Otto grunted with satisfaction. ‘Aye. That fits too.’
***
‘Maman?’ Groping his way through the half-light on the landing outside the Dowager Countess’s bedchamber, François pushed the heavy door-curtain aside with a shove that set the curtain rings rattling.
‘Who’s that?’ Marie de Roncier’s voice came querulously from the bed. She had slipped on the worn flags in the bailey a month ago and damaged her hip, and had been carried up to the round tower room she’d converted to her private use. She was a truculent patient, and she had gone unwillingly, fighting every step of the way and invoking curses on anyone within range. She did not know it, but she was not likely to leave her chamber on her own feet again.
‘It’s me, Maman.’ François’ foot caught on something on the floor. A leather mug. ‘God’s Blood! Why doesn’t that maid of yours light more torches? It’s blacker than Hades in here.’ He bent for the mug, setting it on the stone ledge which ran partway round the wall.
‘Hades is the right word for it,’ came his mother’s bitter response.
‘Maman, don’t be like that.’ His mother’s tireless complaining was one of the reasons François had been avoiding her company of late. He knew it was hard for her, a vigorous woman, to be so cooped up, but if she sweetened her tongue, he might beat a path to her chamber more frequently.
‘You should come to see me more often,’ she said, unaware that her plaintive echoing of her son’s guilty conscience merely served to alienate him further. He would not be visiting her now if it were not for the tidings from Kermaria. ‘My hip aches. I’m bored. No one comes to talk to me.’
‘You’ve got Lena,’ François pointed out. His mother recited complaints as lovingly as a priest mouthed the Creed.
‘Lena! That girl’s got a skull made of wood. How would you like to be laid up in bed with only a foolish chit of a girl for company?’
A grin flickered across François’ dissolute mouth. It was quickly repressed, but not before his needle-eyed mother had spotted it. A reluctant light gleamed in her black eyes.
‘Ever the ladies’ man, eh? I should have thought getting that whey-faced Countess of yours with child was enough to keep you fully employed.’
‘Maman, please,’ her son replied, in pained tones. For all that Eleanor was barren and he must have a son, he had a fondness for his Countess, which bade him take her part. ‘You should not speak of Eleanor in so disparaging a manner.’
Marie laughed. She wanted her son to have a male heir as much as he did, but there was a perverse pleasure to be derived from his discomfiture. ‘Don’t bother to deny it, François. Do you think I don’t know why Lena never answers my calls in the long, dark hours? She never answers because she can’t hear me, not being in her own bed but warming another’s.’
A look of remorse flitted across her son’s face. ‘I’m sorry, Maman. I never thought you’d have need of her in the night.’
‘I do have need of her in the night. It’s not that I mind your copulating with my maid–’
‘Maman!’ The florid cheeks brightened with colour. François found his mother’s coarseness a constant embarrassment. It was not seemly that a dowager countess should use such language.
‘But will you at least ensure that someone else is put in Lena’s place, so my calls don’t go unheeded?’ François’ coppery head dipped in brusque agreement and, feeling that she had emerged from the exchange the victor, Marie was able to regard her son with a touch more warmth. ‘What brings you to my lonely tower today, François?’ She was unable to resist one final dig – it made her feel so much better. ‘Missing me, were you?’
‘I received word from Kermaria.’