‘Very well, if you are sure,’ he said. ‘But if you feel your life is in danger, I should have thought that you would want the matter aired.’
‘Once it is aired in front of you, perhaps the danger will recede,’ she said with a faint blush rising from her breast to cover her features. ‘I fear I succumbed on the journey here. You know how some men can sprinkle compliments and blandishments into their speech?’
She looked away, feeling her face starting to redden still more alarmingly. This was harder than she had feared; yet if she was to protect herself, she must tell her story. She had a sudden flash of inspiration. ‘A man did so with me on the journey here. He wanted to talk to me about my faith, he said, and for many days he spoke with me, asking my advice on issues of the Gospels, telling me of his own deep convictions and love of Christ. How could a woman like me, devoted to His service, a Bride of Christ no less, fervent in her love of Him, not respond to a man who professed the same dedication and adoration? I listened, I laughed, I was overcome. In short, I agreed to meet with him and talk about some matters he wanted to discuss in private. Alas! Oh, that I should have put myself in any man’s hands! I should have realised my danger. I am only a weakly woman, but I had thought that my cloth would protect me. Alas! Alas!’
‘Do you mean to tell me that this man seduced you?’ Baldwin growled, glaring at Don Ruy.
‘Me? I did nothing of the sort!’ Don Ruy declared, torn between anger and confusion.
‘Not him, no,’ Doña Stefanía said, although with a trace of reluctance, for that would have made, she realised, an excellent end to her story. Yet she had already chosen the line of her tale, and it was better, she felt, to stick to the story she had already mapped out in her mind. ‘No, it was another man. A lowly pilgrim, someone of a very different class. All unaware of my danger, I agreed to speak to him in private, and my innocence was my weakness. As soon as I entered his chamber, he took hold of me in a strong embrace and began to smother me with kisses. In no time, he had me naked, and assaulted me vigorously, not once, but many times. This knight came in and saw me, he must have done, and although I implored him to aid me, he ignored my entreaties.’
‘You said nothing to me!’ Don Ruy protested.
‘How could I speak? He was … I was … in a difficult position!’ she declared with an embarrassed vehemence.
‘Why should that make him decide to harm you?’ Baldwin asked, bemused, but trying to save her from further shame. ‘Had you refused Don Ruy’s advances?’
‘I made no such advance!’ Don Ruy stated with a pained voice.
Doña Stefanía cast a cautious look about them. No one was near enough to give her cause for concern. ‘No. He made no improper advances of that nature, Sir Baldwin. Instead, he offered to ruin me!’
Don Ruy was staring at her with eyes filled with astonishment as though disbelieving his own ears, but Baldwin felt that although the lady’s story was far from the unvarnished truth, there was some element of veracity there – else why should she have recoiled so obviously from the man?
‘Sir Baldwin, he sought to improve himself at my expense. The very next day, he approached my maid and demanded money. He threatened to tell the Cathedral authorities that I had willingly submitted to the coarse and indelicate attack of the other pilgrim, and that I was therefore indecent. Unless I paid him a large sum of money, he would tell all about me. There! What else could I have done? And now I throw myself on your pity and honour!’
‘You agreed to pay him?’ Baldwin asked.
‘But this is madness!’ Don Ruy burst out. ‘I never spoke to you, I never mentioned the contents of your purse, nor did I threaten anything!’
‘You deny this?’ Baldwin said.
‘Yes. Entirely!’
‘He is telling the truth,’ Doña Stefanía sneered. ‘He is so courageous, he avoided me, but gave me the message through my maid. She told me so that night, and to escape his clutches, we fled before dawn the next morning. I never dreamed that he would follow so close upon our heels, but the day before yesterday he arrived here and met my maid, proposing a rendezvous so that I could go and pay him.’
‘I only arrived here yesterday!’ Don Ruy cried.
‘You told Joana the day before!’ she declared.
‘I did not!’
‘He told her to make me meet him at a point on the river, and to bring plenty of gold, for he had need of money for lodging. He dared to jest with me about the expense of staying in a city. I can only feel contempt for a man who could be so callous to a poor nun. And then, because some man had taken my mount, and I couldn’t go myself, my maid went in my place, and … and we all know what happened to my poor Joana!’
As she gave herself up to her grief once more, Baldwin watched the knight closely, but saw nothing other than confusion and rising anger. There was nothing to suggest that he was guilty. And yet the maid had died in carrying the money, presumably, to the man she thought was blackmailing Doña Stefanía: this knight. ‘What do you say, Don Ruy?’
‘That this is all invention. Why should I demand money? I have sufficient. I saw this lady with her paramour, but thought little of it. I didn’t even realise it was her, it was so dark. It was only the next morning when I heard her maid talking and laughing about her mistress, that I realised who it must have been lying beneath Parceval. We all know that women are tainted with original sin, and that they can use their wiles to snare men, but I didn’t even consider it. I was the loudest voice among my companions of the road arguing that we should have no women among our party, for they only sow dissension. My God! We all know that well enough! This woman has spun a tale to trap me – for what reason, I cannot imagine.’
‘Where were you last afternoon?’ Baldwin asked.
‘I was here in the city.’
‘Is there anyone who could vouch for you?’
Don Ruy looked at Baldwin with loathing. ‘I was alone in my chamber.’
‘You see, we have heard from another witness that you left the city, on a horse. You were seen following a young woman, this lady’s maid, who was murdered a short while later.’
‘I know nothing of this!’ Don Ruy spat.
‘I knew it!’ Doña Stefanía shrieked, and pointed with a shaking finger. ‘You took my money, and you killed my messenger! You’d have murdered me as well, if I’d been there, wouldn’t you? Murderer!’
Chapter Eleven
As he waited, Sir Charles stood in the shade of a great vine that had been trained over some beams. He had plenty of time, but he did wish other men would be a little more punctual.
Behind him, sitting at a table with a jug of wine, his man-at-arms Paul worked at honing his long-bladed knife with a stone. The edge had grown dull with fine rust during the downpours of the last couple of days and Paul, who was nothing if not meticulous with his weapons, had undertaken to give them all a good polish. His bow was already beeswaxed, the string carefully treated and packed in a waxed cloth to keep it dry; his arrows had been inspected individually, the line of each checked for curves, the fletchings stroked to see that they remained flexible. Now he was putting a fine edge on his knife again. ‘A man who looks after his weapons knows that they will look after him,’ he was proud of reciting. It was one of the lines he had been taught many years ago when he had been a squire in training, and he had the annoying habit of bringing up such homilies every so often as though they carried the weight of Gospel truth, rather than being the utterings of a rather boozy and impecunious country knight.
Paul had been brought up in Gloucestershire, where his father had installed him in a noble household so that he might learn the arts of war, but then his old man had made a classical and unfortunate mistake. Just at the time that the lonely, widowed old King was falling for attractive young women, Paul’s father had made a joke about one. His fall from grace was rapid and he had plummeted so far, he had to leave the country.