‘My master was strict,’ Andrew said shortly.
‘Ah, I remember you saying that you were living in France. They can be strange over there,’ William said dismissively and returned to a more interesting subject. ‘She is a graceful filly, isn’t she? I shouldn’t go near her, for I promised my father that I wouldn’t risk my match to Alice – but she’s a tempting morsel.’
‘He still wants you to wed Alice?’
‘Oh, I shall. I can marry her and use her lands, and she will be delightful to embrace on a dark and chill winter’s evening.’
‘What if she refuses to marry you?’ Andrew asked.
‘She can’t. There are pressures a guardian can bring to bear on his ward. No, I don’t fear that.’
‘Then what of this latest one?’ Andrew said, jerking a thumb at Edith’s back.
‘Ah! Well, she is the Bailiff’s daughter, and he’s annoyed me.’
‘So you’ll take her in order to get back at him?’
‘What better way? Well, other than bulling his wife and pinning the cuckold’s horns on him,’ William laughed.
‘Christ Jesus! Are you sure of this?’
‘You can’t understand,’ William said tolerantly.
Andrew bridled. ‘I may be five-and-thirty, but I can remember what it is to desire a woman.’
‘What better way to get my revenge on him than by deflowering his daughter? It will be doubly pleasurable for me, and all the more bitter for him.’
‘But she will be ruined,’ Andrew said more quietly.
‘The alternative is a vulgar fight with her father. I’d certainly rather sheath my weapon to the hilt in her than have him thrust his dagger in me.’
‘At least there is some honour in a fight.’
‘True. Standing with comrades to defeat the enemy.’
‘If you can trust your comrades,’ Andrew said.
‘That sounds bitter.’
‘It was.’
‘Yet your comrades were stout-hearted enough. They attacked many times.’
‘Horses and armour are poor protection against a small but determined band of archers protected by men-at-arms,’ Andrew agreed.
‘It was a good fight,’ William said. They had been on opposite sides during the battle and William had captured Andrew. ‘Why are you bitter about your companions?’
‘Before Boroughbridge I and a small group of foragers were ambushed and I was knocked from my horse. Several of us were killed, but one, a coward, fled the field.’
‘That’s disgusting!’ William said vehemently.
‘And he will be knighted.’
‘You’d prevent it?’ William asked doubtfully. ‘He could challenge you to combat.’
‘If he’s too scared to risk his life in a fight, I doubt he’d test his skills with me,’ Andrew said dismissively.
‘Who was it?’
‘Geoffrey.’
William gaped. ‘No! Christ’s blood! He’s the man Alice wanted instead of me!’
‘If she wants him,’ Andrew said, ‘she should be quick. He may not be around for much longer. And if he is, I’ll make sure he’s never knighted.’
‘Do so with my pleasure. But if you say he deserted you during the fight at Boroughbridge, you may have to stand in a queue to get to him!’
While Margaret rocked her young boy waiting for Baldwin to return, Hugh absently scratched his head and sucked at a piece of meat stuck in the gap of a broken tooth. It was while he was standing with no particular thought in his mind that he saw Edith talking to William.
Hugh was a lonely man. Raised as a shepherd on the moors, he was used to quiet emptiness with only dogs and lambs to talk to, and until a year before he had felt jealous of other men who had their own women, like his master and Sir Baldwin. Even Edgar, Sir Baldwin’s man, had married after many years of philandering, but Hugh had been convinced no woman could want him. Until recently.
He had left her at her home up near Iddesleigh. The child she had borne was more than nine months old now, and she was over the worst: not only must she cope with the birth of her child, her house was old and more than a little dilapidated. Once it had been a cottar’s home, with a vegetable garden at the rear and a shaw to provide all the owner’s wants in terms of wood, but the cottar had died and the place then left to rot.
When Constance arrived, she found she must renew thatching, clear weeds from the yard, hack back the overgrown shaw and prepare the soil for planting. That was outside; inside, the hearth must be renewed, furniture replaced, the walls replastered and painted. A woman already far into pregnancy could not achieve much and Hugh had taken on the work, his wiry frame bending and hauling and dragging and painting stolidly, until evening when he returned indoors, undemonstratively eating the bread and pottage she had made for him, before they both went to the only bed in the house.
His admiration for her was forged and tempered in the passionless environment of the convent, but now it grew as he created a place where she could bring up her child. Until winter and the freezing chill, he had not touched her in their bed, lying carefully away from her, but with the snow the two clung together for warmth.
When the boy was born, Hugh was there to help her settle, but he hadn’t expected her to grow to love him. The dour, uncommunicative moorman accepted his own love for her like a responsibility which must be shouldered, never anticipating that it could be returned. He was a servant and knew his position. She had been a nun, and was thus inviolate, but she had been persuaded into a man’s bed, and now bore a bastard child.
Soon after the birth, when she brought the child to Hugh and told him that it was named after him, he had felt a curious feeling of hunger, an emptiness that couldn’t be filled, and for a while he held the swaddled child, unable to speak. Her action had overwhelmed him. He stood contemplating the baby, whose eyes had opened and fixed Hugh with a serious squint before trying to suckle from his leather jack.
‘I’ll get back to work,’ Hugh had said gruffly, passing the baby back to his mother, and going out with a light step to fetch his axe. That afternoon he scarcely managed half the work he’d intended.
Constance was ever kind and appreciative. A trained infirmarer, she was used to calming the ill, soothing their pain with her soft voice, her light touch and warmth of spirit. For Hugh these qualities were all but unknown in his life. He had helped her from a desire to assist a mother whom he loved as one might love the Madonna, a woman seen from afar and admired for her qualities, but by the time the baby was born he adored her utterly. Before the end of the spring they were married.
It had been hard for him to leave her at their home, but his master owned him, and at least Simon allowed him time to travel home and see his woman whenever he wanted. It was better than most servants received.
Today, seeing William talking to Edith he felt torn. The girl was his own secret treasure: since her childhood, he had been her closest accomplice and ally, often delaying his duties in order to see her smile, giving himself as a mount when she wanted to pretend to ride, playing hide-and-seek with her or whittling sticks into fantastic shapes while she watched open-mouthed.
That was years ago. Now she was a mature young woman, and sought friends of her own age. It felt like a betrayal, the way that she curled her lip when told to remain with Hugh at the house, but Hugh phlegmatically accepted it. He knew girls of her age would lose interest in childish pursuits and would be keen to move to more mature behaviour. It was natural, even if it was hurtful. And from the look of her, she had found a lad who had a similar interest in her. Not some scruffy churl from a peasants’ vill, but a man of better birth than Hugh or even Simon himself: a squire.