Michael JECKS - The Traitor of St Giles

Usually the servants would eat with their lord and his household in the hall, but tonight, with so many guests visiting the place, men-at-arms and others had to eat in parallel, taking their own food where they may. Toker had avoided the service held over a small portable altar set up in the small hall near the gatehouse, preferring to sit in the open air with an ale rather than indoors while some fool of a chaplain preached about St Giles’s saintliness.

Compared with many, Sir Peregrine was as sober as normal, but Toker was sure he had drunk plenty of wine from the way he walked so precisely and cautiously. Lord Hugh was just behind him, belching happily while he gripped his belt with both hands as if fearing that its weight might lead it to fall to the ground. As he went to the gatehouse he giggled in that high tone of his as he recalled the jokes told at his table, his wife still exclaiming at the feats performed by jugglers and acrobats.

Sir Peregrine gave Toker a good night, but as Sir Baldwin and his lady passed Sir Peregrine, Toker heard his voice change. ‘Damn you, Sir Baldwin,’ he hissed. ‘If only someone would rid me of you, my Lord would be safer.’

Toker smiled to himself. ‘Always a pleasure to oblige you, Master,’ he muttered under his breath.

Returning to her room after the feast, Matilda sniffled as she drank another pot of wine. Andrew had gone to his own room again, leaving her to cope with her desolation alone. He rarely came to her bed now.

It was chilly tonight, or was it her? It was hard to tell nowadays what she felt about anything. Since her girl had died.

In a way she was relieved that he didn’t want to be with her. It would have been too much to bear if he had demonstrated more affection when he had banished Joan to the servants’ hall. His decision to leave his wife alone had given Matilda a sense of unity with her daughter, although it was tempered by her guilt. Andrew’s rejection of Joan had made Matilda feel as if she had betrayed her daughter, her last remaining tie with her first husband, Paul.

Pulling off her clothes, she let them fall to the floor and sat on the edge of the bed.

She drew away from memories of Paul like a child regretfully pulling away from a plate of sweetmeats; she would have liked to wallow in vivid recollections of him. Her time with him had been so good, so full of pleasure and fulfilment, that to recall those years to mind was almost to commit mental treachery against Andrew. And if she were capable of committing treason in her head, where would she stop?

No, she would put all thoughts of her first husband from her. She had a duty, one which she had sworn to, towards Andrew. And Duty and Honour were important concepts to her. They had to be.

Nicholas had been a Templar at the small Preceptory in South Witham when Matilda married Paul, a local knight. Her marriage had been a delight to her, fulfilling and pleasurable. And then one morning her brother appeared, shocked and horror-struck, and blurted that his Order, the greatest, most devoted army in Christendom, had been disbanded. Templars who refused to surrender were declared outlaw and excommunicate. Paul had preferred to trust to his own King’s judgement rather than listen to the French King’s accusations. He took Nicholas in, protected, fed and clothed him.

They would all be there still, and Joan would be alive, if the second disaster hadn’t struck shortly afterwards. One day while out hunting, Paul had been thrown from his horse, and although Matilda had been worried about his head, in which there was a gash from striking a rock, a small scratch on his arm went septic. Two days later, he died.

His lord was apologetic, but with the political situation he couldn’t afford to leave a feeble widow and her daughter in the manor, and neither was he prepared to trust an excommunicate Templar: he needed another knight. He evicted Matilda, giving her a small purse of gold in memory of her husband’s service, but nothing more. She had often thought that if Joan had been a boy-child, he would have let her remain.

Nicholas had taken over; she was his responsibility. Luckily he had saved money while he was a Templar. He took her purse, not trusting a woman with money, and the three of them made the journey to the south. At first Nicholas had intended going to Bordeaux to see what opportunities existed in the English King’s lands, but when they arrived in Oxford, a wrong turning took them to the west, and Nicholas decided to see what the farthest-flung parts of the realm were like. Thus they ended up in Exeter.

It was good fortune that led to Nicholas meeting a merchant who needed a little money, or so Nicholas always said. The merchant had been glad of the purse of gold, agreed to Nicholas’s terms, and swiftly the purse had doubled in value. Then Nicholas began dealing with a ship-owner and helped fill the ships with wine, until within a few years he had a share in a ship of his own.

A frequent visitor to their house in those days was Andrew Carter. Then he had been lean and hungry-looking, still waiting for the opportunity that would make him wealthy, but before long Matilda realised that Andrew was observing her with an eye of admiration, not one of mere courtesy to a partner’s sister.

She had not at first thought much of him, but gradually his generous compliments, his overblown admiration and fervent statements of desire had persuaded her that life with a husband could be preferable to life without. Or was it that Nicholas had seemed so keen to see her handfast? Maybe that was it, she thought; maybe there had never been love on her side, but she wanted to obey and please her brother, just as before she would have done anything to satisfy her Paul.

Not that there was much possibility of satisfying her husband now. He never came to her. Hadn’t for months. He was like Nicholas; he’d looked on Matilda as an asset to be traded. Nicholas had wanted to be free of Matilda and Joan, and Andrew had wanted to be tied to the successful trader. The marriage fulfilled both their dreams. There was no reason to expect any other feelings than duty in a marriage after all.

It hadn’t mattered until Joan died, of course.

She felt the tears begin again and blinked them away. Waves of remorse washed over her. For years she had left Joan in the servants’ hall at her husband’s behest, only rarely seeing her own daughter, and when she did it was always with Andrew in the room at the same time. She had been no kind of mother. No mother at all.

Riven by sobs, she turned and threw herself down on the soft mattress and hid her face in the counterpane as the keen poignancy of her sadness caught her up once again.

While Matilda wept for the daughter she had now lost for ever, a fire burned brightly in a small cottage four miles away.

Harlewin smiled at the naked treasure before him. He had ridden here as quickly as he could in order to sample the delights of Cecily’s body, and seeing her here was enough to justify his urgency.

‘It was a work of brilliance to say that a man had fallen in a well,’ he laughed as he picked her up and carried her to the bed.

She twined her hair around a finger. ‘It seemed the best means of rescuing you from the interminable feasting. Was John there?’

‘Yes, and he looked daggers at my back when I left,’ Harlewin said and dropped her onto the bed.

She squealed with delight. ‘The fool! So long as he never knows for sure that we’ve met.’

Harlewin let his sword belt fall to the ground, his fingers pulling at the laced neck of his shirt. ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right? I hate the thought of him taking a switch to your arse or belting you.’

‘Oh, you really would mind that, wouldn’t you?’ she said, reaching up and touching his face with her soft fingers.