M. Lachlan: Lord of Slaughter

‘I had hoped when we married, it might fade and be replaced by proper feelings of charity and tender unity. That’s what’s meant to happen, isn’t it, to good people?’

‘We tried our best. We drank the honey wine at our wedding.’

‘Not enough, maybe. I am in the grip of a vicious love. When you are here, the idea of us parting fills me with a dread like grief. I burn for you.’ The woman’s eyes were wet. He let go of her hair and put his hand to her cheek to comfort her.

‘And I for you. It is regrettable, but we have prayed against it and still it remains.’

‘All holy teaching tells us such desire is base and unworthy of marriage.’

They spoke French, her voice noticeably accented with the harder consonants of the Norman court. His pronunciation was softer, indicative of a more humble upbringing.

‘What would you do if you did not love me?’ he said.

‘Our marriage would be happier. I would sit here with my embroidery, content, not restless and longing for you to come back so much that I sit hating the sunlight and calling the dusk down like a country witch. Or I would have married an equal and still be sitting outside some fine hall, watching the grapes ripen in the sun and my husband work his hawks.’

‘Yet this little room holds more pleasures than all the fields of Francia.’

‘So that was my fortune, to love and to starve.’

‘We are not starving, Bea.’

‘Only while I have my bits of jewels and gold to sell. What if we are robbed again? We need a better place than this, Loys, more secure.’

‘It is secure while you’re here.’

‘Sat on three cheap rings in this wooden hutch like a hen on her eggs. They will never hatch, Loys. I want to go out to see the streets. This is the most marvellous city on earth. I can’t spend all day looking at the four walls.’

‘You’d be exhausted in half an hour.’

‘I’m not as weak as you think I am.’

He sat up on the bed and patted her belly. She was visibly pregnant.

‘You mustn’t wear yourself out. Not with him in here.’

‘Let’s hope it is a him.’

‘Do you really think it would give us the chance to return?’

‘He’d be my father’s only heir. If I can make him vow not to harm you, then, yes, he might accept you. I’m sure you could drag up a noble ancestor from somewhere. You’re of his blood, sort of. Your father came over on the same longships that he did.’

‘Not quite the same. Mine crewed the cargo ship, not a warship.’

‘He has to respect your heritage.’

‘If you have a son.’

‘If I don’t?’

‘Then, when I am established at the university we will live at the court. You’ll be able to move freely there. I’ve offered to hire a eunuch to escort you while I’m not here.’

‘We can’t afford to waste money like that. I wish there was another way for us to live but by studying.’

‘I must work for free until I am offered lodgings and a stipend. You know this — we’ve been over it.’

‘Yes. I’m sorry, I just…’ She turned her face to the wall.

He held her hand. ‘I am a scholar; I can do nothing else. I have no lands; I have no other skill. I will come home as quickly as I can and then I will take you walking by the palace.’

For the first time she smiled.

‘If my father could hear me. My life dependent on a tradesman.’

‘Is a monk a tradesman?’

‘You’re no longer a monk, Loys.’

He kissed her.

‘Whose fault is that? Your father’s people are tradesmen, though they trade as much in blood as furs. If your father could hear you I’d be worried. Do you fancy the idea of him lurking behind the door with his axe?’

He sprang off the bed and tapped the bolt home in the door.

‘A noble man disdains to show fear,’ she said.

‘A scholar checks twice if he wants to keep his head. This place is safer for you than almost anywhere else. Your father won’t look here. I know his mind. It’s impossible for him to even think of you in a place like this.’

‘So why do you check the door?’

‘I know enough of the arts of learning to beware of certainty in all its forms. Your father would not look here. What of chance, though? What if God punishes us for our loving each other rather than him?’

‘Will God punish us?’

Loys put a hand to the mouldy wooden wall of the little room.

‘Perhaps he already has.’

He pulled on a pair of linen under trousers then opened the shutters wide.

The street was filling up with traders setting out their stalls — below a man with a tray of Persian apples, the Greek name for peaches, paraded back and forth. He’d buy her one before he left for the university, he thought, and hope it would please her.

Loys gazed out towards the east, over the vast sea of Constantinople. The sky was dark, rain clouds scarring the sunrise with bands of purple. It was July but the air bore the edge of a chill.

They had two rooms, one for her, one for him, in the Greek way. The woman who rented them to them pointed out that the female chamber, though cramped, was comfortable and light. Bea hadn’t spent a second in it since they’d arrived in the early summer. When at home, they lay together in each other’s arms.

Loys hoped to secure some lodgings at the university before winter. He had no idea how cold it might get in this part of the world but, if it was anything like Normandy, these little rooms would be nowhere near warm enough. The Greeks in the university had told him the winters could be bitter. It was cold in their room that morning and it was July. Beatrice was susceptible to fevers too. In a way he was thankful for that because it was through a fever he had come to know her.

It really did seem like the will of God they were together. She had been ill, consumed with a fever, and he had gone with an ordained monk to see what they could do to help her but expecting to administer the viaticum to commend her soul to heaven.

They had found her very likely to die, terribly agitated and hot, screaming that she should be left alone, not pursued. None of the servants would attend her because they said she was possessed.

Loys was with old Father Paul, a good doctor in his day but who now drank too much wine and was fat and red in the face. He reminded Loys of a big round blood blister and he wondered that his colleague didn’t burst at any minute. They sat with the girl and Paul — whose age and holiness had made the presence of a chaperone unnecessary — actually fell asleep. Loys hated to see Beatrice so sick, not because she would die — plenty died younger — but for the torment she was suffering. He took her hand and told her God was with her and loved her. The gesture calmed her. Loys kept holding her hand, half an eye on Father Paul to see if he woke. He whispered to her: ‘I am at your side and I will not leave you. You won’t die, see, how can you die when I hold you to life so securely?’ He sat like that for an hour before she opened her eyes and asked for a drink. When he fetched her one, she sipped at it, took his hand and lay back to doze some more.

Lord Richard heard she had recovered and came to the chamber. Loys would never forget his grim presence. He was so brusque and short-tempered he seemed a breath away from punching you to the floor even in the moment of his delight. He didn’t thank the monks; just swept into the room, put his hand to Beatrice’s brow and said, ‘Glad to see you sitting up. I knew you were of tough stuff.’ Then he left them.

Even though Beatrice quickly recovered, Loys persuaded Paul they needed to check she didn’t relapse. The lady was troubled by dreams and there was a possibility she was still haunted by demons.