By Sylvian Hamilton (5 page)

'What
was he in for?' Straccan asked the alehouse keeper.

'His
mates buggered off without paying their score.'

'Why
did he stay?'

'Pissed.'

Straccan
hauled him up, so light a weight that he staggered back, braced as he
was for something more substantial. He carried the body to the
alehouse, laid it on a bench, fetched water and a rag, and wiped the
blood and muck from the face. A darkening lump was swelling from the
edge of an eyebrow up into the hair. The man groaned, tried to sit up
and was violently sick. It was a couple of days before he could stand
again, and meanwhile he lay on straw in the stable-loft at Straccan's
charges.

When
Bane emerged from the nightmarish vertigo that had kept him,
kitten-weak, on his back, Straccan packed him on his led mule and
rode to Peterborough. At the abbey gate he said, 'This is as far as I
go.'

'I'm
in your debt,' Bane said.

'Forget
it.'

'I'd
like a chance to work it off.'

'I
don't need any help,' Straccan said curtly.

'Roads
aren't safe. Two's less like to be set upon than one.'

'I
can take care of myself.'

'Expect
you can, Master. So can I, when I'm sober.'

'Anyway,
I wouldn't want a piss-artist around.'

'I'm
not,' said Bane, stung. 'It was rotten bad beer!'

'That's
what they all say,' said Straccan. He took the mule's leading-rein,
rode in under the arch of the abbey gates and didn't look back.

His
business there took longer than expected, for His Reverence the
Abbot, abed with gout, would see no one until he felt better. Three
days later when Straccan rode out again, an insubstantial figure
detached itself from the mud-splashed wall and limped barefoot after
him. Near the town gate the rider stopped and let the man catch up.
The swelling over his eye had gone down but that side of his face was
all bruise, the same yellowing purple as the threatening morning sky
which promised storm.

'What
are you called?' Straccan asked.

'Hawkan
Bane.'

'Well,
Hawkan Bane, you don't owe me anything.'

'No?
Reckon you owe me, then.'

'What?'
Straccan laughed. 'How's that?'

'You
saved my life. I'd've probably died. They'd've let me lie in the mud
and drown, if I didn't freeze first. So it's up to you to look after
me now! On Tuesday I ate my coat and yesterday I ate my shoes. Now
all I've got left's this shirt, and if I sell that for food too, I'll
go bare-arsed. So I'm your responsibility!'

'I
never heard such crap in my life,' said Straccan, 'but I admire the
cheek of it, I suppose. What use could you be to me?'

'I
can do things. You'd be surprised.'

'Surprise
me.'

'I
can cook. I can mend, tend livestock. I'm skilled with wounds, fevers
and such. I can read and write a little, and reckon. I can kill your
enemies and entertain your friends.'

Straccan
snorted. 'Sounds like a reference for a wife! Can you really read and
write?'

Bane
bent and wrote in the mud with his finger: God, Kynge, Engelond.
Straccan peered at the words as the mud absorbed them into itself
again. 'Fair enough,' he said. He nudged his horse gently with his
knee and it walked on slowly, with Bane holding the stirrup and
limping beside. 'So what did you do before you were brought to such
straits?'

'I've
travelled,' said Bane. 'I was a soldier.'

'Where?'

'France.
I was with King Richard at Gisors. I was left for dead there. The
night-frost stopped me bleeding to death and a woman helped me –one
of the scavengers that loot the dead after any battle. But she took a
fancy to me. She was all right.'

'I
was there,' said Straccan. 'My horse was badly hurt: I thought he'd
die, but he didn't. I took a pike-thrust through the thigh. It's
still stiff in foul weather.'

'A
horseman?' Bane was startled. 'What were you, a sergeant?'

'No.
I am a knight. And must be on my way, so go you yours, and let go my
stirrup.'

'Let
me along of you for a week! If you still don't want me, then I'll go
my way!'

Four
years later he was still with Straccan.

Bane's
travelling kit contained the essentials: spoon in its case,
provender, cup and water bottle, fish-hooks and line, a change of
clothes, spare shoes, bandages and salves, and an inventive
collection of concealed weapons as well as the short sword worn at
his back, the dagger in his belt and the axe strapped to his saddle.
There were also some less usual items including a flute and small
bagpipes. His rangy bony cheap-looking horse would attract no
attention, and Bane himself, a small skinny figure cloaked and hooded
in drab greys and browns, would pass as nigh invisible. His
peculiarly elastic countenance could assume at will the appearance of
a man much older, with sucked-in cheeks and puckered
toothless-looking mouth. So that the old man seen in one village was
obviously not the much younger fellow met with further along the
road.

He
made first for Holystone, to learn all he could of the dead man, his
appearance and the circumstances of his end. The stableman, Martin,
fetched a sack and tipped it out.

'This
is what he was wearing. Bailiff's son Tom, he looked at it all,
before he went.'

Bane
fingered the small pile of clothes: leggings, boots--the boots
looked new, the soles dirty but with scarcely any wear--a torn and
bloodied tunic and jerkin, a knitted bonnet, a rough frieze cape with
thistle-burrs caught along its hem. 'This is all he had?'

'There's
his pack,' Martin said, taking a satchel from a hook on the wall.
'Just a spare pair of shoes and a tunic. There was some bread, and
some bacon and cheese.'

'What
happened to that?'

'We
ate it. Me, that is, and Oswyn the scullion. There's a bottle, too.
This one.' He unhooked a thonged pewter flask. 'It had ale in it.'

‘
I
take it that's empty now too.'

Martin
gave him a scornful look.

'Was
it good ale?'

'Aye,
it was.'

'And
was the bread fresh or stale?'

'No
more'n a day old.'

'Good
cheese?'

'Oh
aye.'

'Local
cheese?'

'No.
From east of here, I reckon. Like they make in Trundle. They sell it
there on fair days.' And, with pride, 'I've been there!' 'A travelled
man.' Bane picked over the coins in his purse and put a pie-wedge
silver piece in Martin's ready hand. 'Did you tell bailiff's Tom
about the food and the ale?'

'No.
He never asked.'

While
Bane rode east then north, as his enquiries led him, Straccan sent to
his agents in France and Italy concerning the relics of Saint Thomas,
and awaited replies. It was his habit to ride around his farm every
morning, and now she was at home he would set Gilla on the saddle
before him. On this mild wet morning they halted to watch men
clearing the rubble of collapsed walls where the new stables and mews
were planned. In their straw rain-capes the men looked like little
mobile haystacks with arms and feet. Straccan rested his chin a
moment on top of his daughter's head and smelt the sweet herby scent
of her soft hair.

'You've
had your hair washed,' he said, fingering a fine fluffy strand which
curled and clung to his fingers.

'Adeliza
washed it last night. She washed hers first and then mine. Her hair
is so long she can sit on it. Will mine grow like that?'

'If
you don't cut it.'

'The
nuns cut their hair, they cut it all off, short as yours.'

'They
have to. They're not supposed to be vain.'

'But
they are married to Our Saviour! Wouldn't you think he'd like them to
be pretty?' Straccan opened his mouth but she hurried on. 'And that's
another thing! How can he have so many brides? There are seventeen
nuns at Holystone, and hundreds more all over the world.'

'You'll
have to ask Mother Rohese to explain, when you go back,' said her
father, feeling the firm ground of precise earthly matters turning to
treacherous theological quick-clay beneath him. 'Mother Rohese is too
important, she's always very busy. Dame Januaria says good Christians
don't ask questions, that questions are the tools of the devil.'

Straccan
felt even more at sea. 'I suppose it depends on the questions,' he
said.

'Yes,
but if no one tells you what you want to know, how can you find out,
if you don't ask?'

Chapter
6

For
Sir Richard Straccan, Knight, at Stirrup, near Dieulacresse, into his
own hand, read the superscription, and Straccan cracked open the seal
with his thumbnail, holding the letter to the window's light. From
his Paris agent, encoded, it began without preamble and tackled all
essentials.

The
item in question is an especial treasure of the king in his Chapel
Royal. There is no possibility of it being sold. The chapel is never
unattended. The relics are locked in, under, and behind the altar.
Masses are continually sung, at least two attendants always present.
The doors are guarded.

The
letter continued with a list of relics dispatched earlier that week
in the vessel Sainte Foy, together with several orders from clients
and a short list from the pope's agent of minor relics for sale.

It
was three more weeks before the reply came from Rome. He read it and
sent for his clerk. 'His Holiness no longer has the finger of Saint
Thomas. He gave it to His Grace of Canterbury.' Peter whistled.
'Langton's got it! Is he still in Rome?'

'No.
He's in Becket's old hideaway, Pontigny. I'll have to go. We might
come to an agreement. If ever a man needed money, our exiled
archbishop must!'

'I
thought the Holy Father was his friend.'

'Since
boyhood, I believe. The pope will sprinkle archbishoprics and relics
among his cronies, but he hates to part with true coin!'

'You
be careful,' Peter said. 'The king'll take a dim view of anyone known
to visit Langton.'

'This
isn't politics,' said Straccan. 'It's only a petty piece of
business.'

Looking
across the muddy tidal river down to the town and the grey sea
beyond, Bane let his horse crop and sat with his back to a boulder
out of the wind. A huddle of heather-thatched roofs, liberally
blotched with seagulls' droppings gleaming white, spread out from the
castle which crouched threateningly over the River Tweed. The tide
was in, the river busy with boats, and two large merchant galleys lay
at anchor below the castle, with several smaller vessels by
warehouses along the waterside. The town embraced the castle closely.
While Bane watched, carts and riders and people afoot moved in and
out of the town. The offshore wind spread the chimney smoke thinly
out over the sea.

Berwick
looked busy, peaceful and squalid. Scars of its old sufferings
showed. Gangs of repairmen clustered here and there along the castle
walls, new stone patching looked raw and pale. Seagulls swarmed in
the air like bees, circling and screaming, a continual raucous din as
they swooped on rubbish and rose triumphant, small birds pursued by
larger. Everything and almost everyone below was splashed with their
droppings.

He
had watched the town since early light, seen the fishing boats go
out, the tiny distant guard on the castle walls change, the morning
rush of farmers into town with milk and produce. Travellers departed
in their various directions. Some had passed him, going south. With
Nottingham, York, Durham, Newcastle and Alnwick now behind him, Bane
had covered more than two hundred miles since leaving Holystone.

At
Nottingham, he'd found a woman who remembered the dead man for his
outlandish speech. 'A foreigner,' she said. 'Welsh, or Irish, or
something. Yes, he drank here, and I filled his bottle for him –he
tried to drive the price down! I told him, there's an Interdict on,
you know!' No, he had no horse. He had asked for a shoemaker.