Nicolaa hoped Petronille would be able to stay for longer than the few days she had said was all she could afford to be absent from her husband and household in Stamford. Petronille was a balm that Nicolaa sorely needed at the moment, especially with difficult guests like Philip de Kyme, who was, at that moment, casting angry glances about him.
The object of his disgruntlement, his stepson Conal, stood laughing and drinking a cup of wine a short distance away in the company of her own son, Richard. The pair had finished eating and had strolled over to watch a trio of tumblers who were cleverly balancing on each other’s shoulders and dropping down and back in almost constant motion, all within the confines of a tiny patch of floor. One of the tumblers was female, her legs encased, for modesty’s sake, in thin woollen stockings under her skirt. But for all the covering, her shapeliness could be seen as she flew up and down between the hands of her two partners and Nicolaa saw that Richard’s eyes were fixed in an avid stare on her antics while Conal, son of de Kyme’s wife from her first marriage, watched Richard, amusement on his face.
They made a handsome pair, the two young friends, so recently dubbed into knighthood. Richard had hair that was almost as bright a red as her own had once been, with a genial manner and a strength of limb and shoulder that promised to soon equal his father’s. Beside him Conal looked slim, but his tall lanky build was deceiving, for Nicolaa had seen him best larger and more experienced men on the practice field. He was fair, like his mother, and his features were finely drawn, giving his full mouth and bright grey eyes an almost feminine look.
Nicolaa shook her head. Richard, she knew, was a lecher, just as her father had been. Somehow it was more disturbing in an offspring than a parent, but she gave thanks that his inclinations were not like Conal’s who, although it was never spoken of openly, was suspected of liking members of his own sex in preference to females. This conjecture stemmed from the fact that he seemed to show none of a young man’s usual interest in women. To be fair, neither did he seem attracted to any of the young pages or squires with whom he came into daily contact and Nicolaa was sure that Richard would not have befriended Conal if there was any suspicion of an aberration in his sexual proclivities. The hint of sodomy was ever apparent in de Kyme’s complaints of his stepson, however, and in his bewailing of no heir to carry on his line. There were de Kyme’s aplenty in Lincoln, he would moan, but not one of them his own true son. Then he would look pointedly at the long-suffering woman to whom he was married and shake his head. It was fortunate that tonight his wife, Sybil, had asked to be excused from the feast, pleading illness as an excuse to keep to her bed.
Nicolaa shrugged. It was nothing to do with her. She remembered vaguely from her own youth that there had been some ruckus at the time of de Kyme’s marriage to Sybil, who was older than he and a widow with a young son. Philip had apparently wanted to wed another, but the girl had been of low birth and dowerless and Philip’s father had threatened his son with the loss of his inheritance if he did not wed Conal’s mother. Recently, he had taken to constantly referring mysteriously to the fact that, had he been allowed his own inclinations in the matter of his marriage, he would have heirs aplenty and it was not too late to rectify the matter. So repetitive were his complaints that no one took much notice of them anymore, not even Gerard, who was closest to de Kyme in that they often shared the pleasure of the hunt or the sampling of some new wine from Poitou.
Nicolaa gave herself a mental shake. That morning the castle chaplain had spoken at Mass of the dangers of the seven deadly sins, no doubt aiming to warn his flock against indulgence while the fair, with its atmosphere of freedom and gaiety, took over the more sober routine of Lincoln for the next few days. Each of us, the priest had said, is guilty of at least one of the deadly sins at some time, and often of two or more. Nicolaa ran through them in her mind-Lust, Pride, Avarice, Envy, Sloth, Anger and Covetousness. She looked around at her companions at the high table. Yes, she thought, the priest was right-we are all guilty of at least one of those sins. Hugh of covetousness, de Kyme of anger, Gerard of sloth, Richard, her son, of lust-just in such a short space she could pick these out and, she admitted, there was her own sin of pride, which she excused to herself by naming it a strong sense of duty. We are all sinners, she thought, even if only in the secrecy of our own hearts. But the priest had also reminded his flock of the seven virtues-Faith, Hope, Charity, Justice, Prudence, Temperance and Fortitude-and told them that at least one of these also was possessed by each man or woman, and that by prayer these virtues could be strengthened to overcome the temptation of the seven deadly sins.
Judging by the raucous laughter and drunken merriment of the crowd in the hall tonight, Nicolaa thought it certainly seemed true that the virtues were harder to find than the sins. Her gaze fell on the Templar, Bascot de Marins. He was an enigma to her, seeming to be completely self-contained except in his relationship with his young servant. It had been on impulse that she had given him the task of trying to discover the identity of the murderer of the four people in the alehouse. He had proved himself a valuable addition to her retinue, but she had the feeling that he had talents beyond those required for a simple clerk and she had wanted to bring them out. The rule that the Templars who left their Order could only do so on condition they join a monastic order stricter than their own was a loose one, and Nicolaa was sure that if she brought pressure to bear on the Grand Master of the Temple in London he would agree to overlook this stipulation with regard to Bascot. Since she hoped the Templar would wish to leave the Order and accept an offer to remain in her household, she wondered if giving him additional responsibility might not defeat her own purpose. It may just drive him into making the very decision she least wanted, that of returning to the Order that he had become, at least temporarily, disenchanted with. Ah well, she thought, as her father had often said, a metal must be well tempered to ring true. And, as with metal, so it was with men. That was a lesson she had learned too well to ignore.
Ten
Bascot and Gianni left the great hall directly after Nicolaa de la Haye stood and announced that she was retiring. Her husband, Gerard, stayed in his seat, motioning for the servers to refill his wine cup and that of Philip de Kyme, who had moved to sit beside him. Most of the ladies who were staying within the precincts of the castle followed their hostess’ example, leaving the men folk to their wine and talk of old battles, while the visiting merchants and their wives, with lodgings hired in the town, also left. But the bulk of the barons and lesser lords stayed where they were, settling themselves in to enjoy the Haye largesse for as long as it was proffered. There would be sore heads aplenty in the morning but since they were there for pleasure and not for work, as the merchants were, none cared.