Miles Cameron - The Red Knight

There was something about the Abbess – the Abbess and Amicia. It was not a similarity of breeding – two more different women could not be imagined, the older woman with an elfin beauty and slim bones, the younger taller, heavier boned, with strong hands and broad shoulders.

He was still staring at Amicia when the Abbess’s staff thumped the floor.

The word hermetic rolled around the captain’s busy brain, and curled itself in the corner of Amicia’s mouth. But the staff took his attention.

‘Assuming I believe you – what does your huntsman say?’ the Abbess demanded.

The captain sighed. ‘That we got the wrong one. My lady, no one but a great Magus or a mountebank can tell us why the enemy acts as they do. Perhaps one of them is calling to others for reinforcements. Perhaps you have a nest of them. But Gelfred assures me that the signs left by Sister Hawisia’s killer are not the same as those of the beast we slew and my men – all of them – are exhausted. It will take them a day to recover. They’ve lost a gallant leader, a man they all respected, so I am sorry, but we will not be very aggressive for a few days.’ He shrugged.

She looked at him for a long time, and finally crossed her hands on the top of her staff and laid her long chin on them. ‘You think I do not understand,’ she said. She shrugged. ‘I do. I do not believe you seek to cheat me.’

He didn’t know what to make of that.

‘Let me tell you my immediate concerns,’ she said. ‘My fair opens in a week. The first week of the fair is merely local produce and prizes. Then the Harndon merchants come upriver in the second week to buy our surplus grain and our wool. But in the second and third weeks of the fair, the drovers come down from the moors. That is when the business is done, and that’s when I need my bridge and my people to be safe. You know why there is a fortress here?’ she asked.

He smiled. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘The fortress is merely to guarantee the bridge.’

‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘And I have been lax in letting my garrison drop – but if you will pardon an old woman’s honesty, soldiers and nuns are not natural friends. Yet these attacks – I hold this land by knight service and garrison service, and I do not have enough men. The king will send a knight to dispense justice at the fair and I dread his discovering how my penny-pinching ways have put these lands at risk.’

‘You need me for more than just monster-hunting,’ he said.

‘I do. I would like to purchase your contract for the summer, and I wonder if you have a dozen men-at-arms – archers, even – who could stay when you go. Perhaps men you’d otherwise pension off, or men who’ve been wounded.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t even know how to find a new garrison. Albinkirk used to be a fine town – and a place where such men could be found – but not anymore.’ She took a deep breath.

He nodded. ‘I will consider it. I will not pretend, since we are being honest with each other, that my company does not need a steady contract. I would like to recruit, too. I need men.’ He thought a moment. ‘Would you want women?’

‘Women?’ asked the Abbess.

‘I have women – archers, men-at-arms.’ He smiled at her chagrin. ‘It’s not so uncommon as it once was. It is almost accepted over the sea, on the Continent.’

She shook her head. ‘I think not. What kind of women would they be? Slatterns and whores taught to fight? Scarcely fit companions for women of religion.’

‘You have a good point, my lady. I’m sure they are far less fit as companions then the sort of men who are attracted to a mercenary company.’ He leaned back, stretching his legs to ease the pressure on his lower back.

Their eyes met, sharp as two blades crossed.

She shrugged. ‘We are not adversaries. Rest if you must. Consider my offer. Do you need a service for the dead?’

For the first time, he allowed himself to feel warmth for the lady Abbess. ‘That would be greatly appreciated.’

‘Not all your men reject God as you do?’ she said.

‘Much the opposite.’ He rose to his feet. ‘Soldiers are as inclined to nostalgic irrationality as any other group – perhaps more so.’ He winced.

‘I’m sorry my lady, that was rude, in response to your very kind offer. We have no chaplain. Ser Hugo was a gentleman of good family who died in his faith, whatever you may think of me. A service for the dead would be very kind of you, and would probably do much to keep my people in order – ahem.’ He shook his head. ‘I appreciate your offer.’

‘You are really quite sweet in your well-mannered confusion,’ she said, also rising. ‘We will get along well enough, Ser Captain. And you will, I hope, forgive me if I counter your blatant lack of respect for my religion with an attempt to convert you to it. Whatever has been done to you, it was not Jesu who did it, but the hand of man.’

He bowed. ‘That’s just where you are wrong, my lady.’ He reached for her hand, which she offered, to kiss – but the imp in him could not be stopped, and so he turned it over and kissed her palm like a lover.

‘Such a little boy,’ she said, but she was clearly both pleased and amused. ‘A rather wicked boy. Service tonight, I think, in the chapel.’

‘You will allow my company into the fortress?’ he asked.

‘Since I intend to employ you as my garrison,’ she replied, ‘I will, in time, have to trust you inside the walls.’

‘This is a sharp change of direction, my lady Abbess,’ he said.

She nodded and swept towards the inner door to the convent. ‘Yes it is,’ she said. She gave him a very straight-backed courtesy. ‘I know things, now.’

He stopped her with his hand. ‘You said the Wild is closer now. I’ve been away. Closer how?’

She released a breath. ‘We have twenty farms which we have taken from the trees. There are more families here than when I was first a novice – more families. And yet. When I was young, nobles hunted the Wild in the mountains – expeditions into the Adacrags were a knight errant’s dream. The convent used to host them in our guest house.’ She glanced out the window. ‘The border with the Wild used to be fifty leagues or more to the north and the west of us, and while the forest was deep, trustworthy men lived there.’ She met his eyes. ‘Now, my fortress is the border, as it was in my grandfather’s time.’

He shook his head. ‘The wall is two hundred leagues north of here. And as far west.’

She shrugged. ‘The Wild is not. The king was going to push the Wild back to the wall,’ she said wearily. ‘But I gather his young wife takes all his time.’

He smiled. And changed the subject. ‘Tell me what the book is?’ he asked.

She smiled. ‘You will enjoy puzzling it out for yourself,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t want to deny you that pleasure.’

‘You are a wicked old woman,’ he said.

‘Ah,’ she smiled. ‘You are beginning to know me, messire.’ She smiled, all flirtation, and then paused. ‘Captain, I have decided to tell you something,’ she said. She wasn’t hestitant. She was merely careful. ‘About Sister Hawisia.’

He didn’t move.

‘She told me that we had a traitor in our midst. And that she would unmask him. I was supposed to be at the farm that day. She insisted on going in my place.’ The Abbess looked away. ‘I’m afraid that monster was meant for me.’

‘Or your brave sister unmasked the traitor and he killed her for it. Or he already knew she intended to unmask him, and set a trap.’ The captain hadn’t shaved in days, and he scratched absently under his chin. ‘Who knows of your movements and decisions, my lady?’