And when she went back to the Barbican flat after work on Monday, the Bentley was waiting at the kerb. The driver lowered his window.
‘Mr Blanchard wanted to know if you’ll be joining him tonight.’
She didn’t blink. ‘I’ll just get my things.’
It happened the same way the following night. When the car didn’t appear on Wednesday she almost panicked; she spent a lonely night replaying everything that had happened that day, wondering what she might have done to upset Blanchard. But on Thursday the car was there again. By Friday, it felt routine.
Soon after that Ellie realised she had become … what? Blanchard’s mistress? He wasn’t married, and she was barely attached herself any more. His girlfriend? That was a ludicrous word to use with Blanchard, who probably hadn’t had a girlfriend since he was twenty-five, if in fact he’d ever been that young. It was hard to imagine; he felt ageless.
Eventually Ellie decided on ‘lover’. It sounded continental and sophisticated, which she liked, and a touch old-fashioned, like Blanchard himself. It was also accurate. However many dinners and concerts she sat through, however many clients she met, there was always a sense of biding time. The heart of their relationship remained where it had begun, in the bedroom.
Or perhaps she was more than that. Otherwise, the following Monday, Blanchard might not have summoned her from her office and taken her to the sixth floor.
XX
The storm drove water into the woodshed: the fire smoulders red, and smoke fills the hall. Guy paces angrily, while Gornemant, Jocelin, and the half-dozen knights he’s managed to summon stand attendance. I lean against a tapestry, woven in with the wool figures. I know I should be concentrating on their council, but all I can think about is Ada. I know she came back safely, alone, but I’m desperate to see her. I try to remember the soft skin of her breasts, her taste on my tongue and her body enclosing me. I clench my fists with frustration.
Guy is talking about Athold du Laurrier, his neighbour. I’ve never seen him, but I know his reputation. If sheep disappear from a field, or a hayrick burns, or someone steals the blades of a plough, Guy blames Athold. It occurs to me that Athold probably says the same about Guy.
‘While we were hunting, they raided Massigny,’ says Gornemant. Massigny is a village near the edge of Guy’s fiefholding. ‘They killed three men and drove off a dozen more.’
Guy slams the palm of his hand against a pillar. He’s not grieving; he couldn’t care about the lives of a few peasants. He’s furious about the insult to his authority — and the cost. Those men will need ransoms, and if Guy doesn’t contribute the peasants will start to think about switching their allegiance.
‘If he wants a war, I’ll give him a war.’
It’s a small, vicious war. There’s a lot of suffering, though not many deaths. It’s harder to kill someone when your arm’s chilled to the bone, your tunic’s soaked through and your sword is blunt with rust. It will never make a great tale. Sometimes I wonder if I brought this calamity down on Guy — if this war is God’s punishment for my sin. It doesn’t stop me sinning more. It’s hard to have an affair in a castle in a state of war — routines are unpredictable, corridors busy, eyes sharp. But we manage. Each encounter is brusque, the physical pleasure attenuated by the terror of discovery. Sometimes Ada cries and says she can’t go on. I cradle her head to my chest and tell her I love her.
When I’m alone, I sit and list the times and places. There in the stables behind the winter fodder; there in her own bedroom while Guy was away; there in the storeroom at the back of the tower, while mice scuttled around the grain sacks. I chart the encounters compulsively, surveying the battlefields of this invisible war we’re fighting against the world. I remember the press of her body against mine. I feel the wounds.
Guy’s war ends in March.
A misty morning: the world caught between winter and spring. Leafless trees seem to float in the fog; the rising sun makes a line of gold in the sky. Three of us are riding across a hillside meadow. We’re supposed to be patrolling for Athold’s men, but in this mist they could ride past a hundred yards away and they’d be invisible.
Jocelin rides in front; I follow a few paces behind with William, one of the other squires. Jocelin and I will never be friends, but as we’ve grown up, we’ve found ways of ignoring each other. We’re all fully armed, except for the spurs which none of us has won yet. The weight of the armour feels natural now, a second skin, and I’m grateful for the quilted undercoat which keeps me warm.
Ahead, Jocelin pulls up and stares at the ground. A muddy scar cuts across the turf. Hoof prints. It rained in the night — these tracks are fresh.
‘Just one of them,’ William mutters. Jocelin shoots him a withering look.
‘Only if he was riding a ten-legged horse. Look how close the prints are. They were riding single file, to hide their numbers.’
We follow the tracks down the hill to the river. They go in as one, but emerge individually: it’s hard to keep a strict line through water, hard to scramble up a bank where it’s already been trampled down. We count five or six sets of hooves, all pressed deep into the ground. Whoever’s riding them is carrying a lot of weight.
‘We should ride back, warn Guy.’
This time it’s my turn to feel Jocelin’s scorn. ‘Warn him that someone’s left footprints on his land? He’ll want more than that.’
Down in the valley, the fog’s thicker than ever, but I know there’s a village a few hundred yards upstream, around a bend in the hillside. It was part of Ada’s lands, now Guy’s, though Athold covets it for the mill. If he can sell flour, rather than the corn his tenants give him, he can raise more money, buy more land or men to conquer it. He has four young sons and an ambitious wife: he needs to expand.
We tether our horses in a stand of willows and make our way upriver towards the village. We cross on the weir. Usually, the miller charges travellers to use it as a footbridge, but there’s no one here now. We crawl across, clinging to the boards, which are slick and slippery from the spray. White water foams beneath us.
The village straggles along a rough track, pitted and furrowed. Wood-framed houses line the road: their thatched roofs pitched so low they almost touch the ground. Creeping from house to house, we come to a small church with a roofed gallery surrounding it. Once, my mother told me, they were built to keep the graves dry: now the dead are left to soak in the churchyard, and the roof shelters the commerce of hawkers, vagrants, friars and young lovers. This morning it’s empty. All the villagers have been gathered on the triangle of grazing land in front of the church, herded there by the quartet of mounted knights who rest their swords across their horses’ shoulders. A fifth, wrapped in a red cloak and with a red shield on his shoulder, sits astride his warhorse and addresses them from on high.
Jocelin tugs my sleeve. ‘Athold,’ he mouths to me. ‘Go back to Hautfort. Fetch my father.’
I’m trembling, but there’s no way I’m going to leave. ‘Send William.’
Jocelin scowls, but it’s no place to argue. William’s two years younger, with spindly red hair and a face like a cheese. He’ll do as he’s told.