Linnet gasped at the final word and felt as if he had struck her with his whip. Hating him, sick with fear, she stood submissively before him, knowing she had no defence. Robert, frightened by the atmosphere, by the sidlings of the huge horse and the thunderous expression on his father’s face, began to sniffle into her skirts.
‘Go home and wait for me,’ Giles snapped. He wrenched the chestnut horse around and pranced him back to his audience. She could tell from the looks on their faces and Giles’s strutting manner that her humiliation sat well with them. Summoning the tatters of her dignity, she lifted Robert in her arms and went towards her waiting horse litter on the side of the field.
Joscelin indulged Martin with a square of gilded gingerbread from the booth adjacent to Melusine the Mermaid and, with that bribe, removed the child from the dubious attractions of the fairground to the more sober business of the selection and purchase of an all-purpose riding mount from the dozens offered for sale.
Taught first by his father and then by his uncle Conan upon the battlefields of Brittany, Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine, Joscelin was an excellent judge of horseflesh. Sometimes a good mount was all that had stood between himself and death in the thick of the fray. He examined with a critical eye the various animals paraded before him, discarding several high-mettled beasts with the most perfunctory of glances despite the horse coper’s assurances of their breeding and quality.
Martin was very taken with a dainty white mare but Joscelin shook his head. ‘She’d do well enough on good roads in summertime but she hasn’t got the heart-room for hard work and her legs are too spindly. Also, she’d never ford a stream without baulking. See how nervous she is?’
Martin pursed his lips. ‘She’s still very pretty.’
Joscelin chuckled. ‘So are many women, but that’s no recommendation to buy.’
‘Lady de Montsorrel’s pretty.’
Joscelin busied himself examining the teeth of a stocky bay cob. ‘So she is,’ he agreed, half his mind on the horse, the other half dwelling upon the memory of Linnet de Montsorrel’s fine grey eyes and delicate features. His usual preference was for large-boned, buxom women - they adapted best to the vagaries of mercenary baggage trains - but occasionally he found himself drawn to more graceful fare. Breaca had been bird-boned and delicate, quick of movement, dark-eyed and quiet, but with a wild fire inside. He still thought of her sometimes on freezing winter nights when his own body heat was not enough to keep him warm. And of Juhel, too. Of him, he thought constantly.
With an abrupt gesture, he commanded the horse coper to trot the cob up and down so that he could study its gait with a critical eye.
Martin nibbled on the gingerbread and stared around the enormous field, which was bursting at the seams with colour and life. The market was held every sixth day of the week and Martin loved to visit if his family was in London. The atmosphere was exhilarating. Everyone was here - rich, poor, lord, merchant, soldier and farmer - all drawn by their common interest in livestock. Here you could buy anything from a plough-horse to a palfrey, from a child’s first pony to a fully trained war-horse costing tens of marks. You could wager on the races between swift, thin-legged coursers and see hot-blooded Arab and Barb bloodstock from the deserts of Outremer. And if you became tired of looking at the horses, there were cattle and sheep, there were pigs and fowl of every variety. There were farm implements to be purchased and craftsmen to watch at their work. And, best of all, there was the fairground.
‘A knight’s riding over from the destriers,’ he told Joscelin. ‘I think he wants you.’ The coper hastily led the cob to one side, his expression anxious. Turning, Joscelin saw Giles de Montsorrel riding towards him upon a sweating chestnut destrier that was fighting the bit and side-stepping. The saddle was ill-fitting and the stirrups far too short. Giles himself was wattle-red in the face.
‘If I see you near my wife again, I’ll garter my hose with strips of your flayed hide!’ Giles growled.
Joscelin stared up into Giles’s temper-filled eyes. ‘We but exchanged courtesies. Should I have turned the other way and slighted her?’
‘You’re a common mercenary. I know only too well what was in your mind.’
‘Not having a mind of your own above the belt that you so freely use,’ Joscelin retorted, his first astonishment rapidly turning to anger.
‘Joscelin . . .’ Martin whispered in a frightened voice.
Giles pricked his spurs into the destrier’s flanks and it plunged towards boy and man, forehooves performing a deadly dance. Martin shrieked as the horse’s shoulder struck him a sidelong blow and sent him flying. He hit the ground hard, the gingerbread flying from his fingers. Giles leaned over the saddle to strike Joscelin with his whip. The blow slashed across Joscelin’s face, narrowly missing his eye and raising an immediate welt. Giles pursued, whip raised in his right fist, his left clamped upon the reins.
Martin scrambled to his feet and dashed for safety. Joscelin, about to be ridden down by a metal-shod fury, grabbed the horse coper’s three-legged stool and swung it hard at the destrier’s head. The stool shattered across rolling eye and temple and the stallion went mad. Giles, fighting to keep his seat, snatched at the right rein and hauled hard but it was too late for that kind of control. Half-blinded, wild with terror and rage, the stallion reared, came down on all fours, and bucked. Then, before the horrified gaze of a gathering crowd, it lay down and deliberately rolled upon its rider.
Giles screamed and screamed again. There was a sickening sound of snapping bones and still he screamed. Joscelin flung aside the remnants of the stool and ran to lay hold of the stallion’s bridle. Others hurried forward to help restrain the horse and prevent it from rolling again while the coper and another merchant dragged Giles clear. Someone else brought a rope to bind the destrier.
Leaving the horse to others, Joscelin turned and dropped to his knees beside Giles. The latter was still alive but for how long was a moot point. Blood bubbled out of his mouth with each released breath, a sign that one or more of his broken ribs had punctured a lung.
‘Let me pass!’ cried a woman’s voice, imperative with fear. ‘In God’s name, let me pass. I am his wife!’
Linnet de Montsorrel fought her way through the crowd, many of whom had diverted from the fairground to view this far more interesting spectacle. Reaching her husband, she knelt at his side. ‘Giles . . .’ She touched his hair with her fingertips, a look of disbelief on her face. Then she raised her eyes to Joscelin.
He shook his head. ‘His ribs have broken inward. Someone has gone for a priest. I am sorry, my lady.’
She shuddered. ‘I saw you arguing.’
‘I had to strike the horse. He was going to ride Martin and me down.’ He looked rapidly around the crowd and breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Martin standing with Ironheart. The child was pale, more eyes than face, and his tunic was stained and torn but he looked otherwise unscathed.
‘I wished myself free of him yesterday,’ Linnet whispered. ‘But not now, not like this.’
Joscelin turned back to her. The expression on her face filled him with an uncomfortable mixture of pity and guilt. His father had warned him about Giles de Montsorrel’s jealousy and he had chosen not to heed. ‘It is not your fault, my lady,’ he said, laying his hand over hers.
She shook her head and removed her self from his touch. ‘But it is,’ she replied. ‘You do not understand.’
The crowd was being encouraged to disperse by the justiciar’s serjeants and a moment later Richard de Luci himself stooped over Giles. He grimaced at the signs of internal damage. ‘I saw that horse earlier and thought he was a rogue,’ he said. He gave Joscelin a brief piercing look but said nothing aloud about the human conflict that had played its part in the tragedy.