Chapter 3
Three
Replete with spiced chicken and saffron stew served with fresh wheaten bread and washed down with a satisfying quantity of mead, William leaned back from the trestle and gazed at his surroundings.
Hamstead was small and humble when compared to Drincourt, Tancarville, and the other great Norman donjons where he had trained to knighthood.
There were no chimneys and the fire blazed in an old-fashioned stone-ringed hearth in the centre of the room, but it didn’t matter.
Hamstead, on its hill above the Kennet, was the core of the family patrimony, and it was home.
“So,” said John, his elder brother, his smile not quite reaching his eyes, “you’re a great tourney champion now.
” The beard he had cultivated since inheriting their father’s title two years ago edged his jaw in a closely barbered line.
Their father had always gone clean-shaven, saying that a man should not be ashamed to bare his face to the world, but John thought that a beard lent his youth gravitas and dignity.
William shrugged. “Hardly that.” His own smile was diffident. “But I’ve had some good fortune at the few I’ve attended.”
“More than that to judge from the horses you have brought with you.” John’s voice was envious. Against William’s courtly dazzle, he was conscious of looking like a poor relation rather than the head of the Marshal household.
“They’re recent gains. At the end of the summer I had naught but a common rouncy to my name.
” Amiably, William regaled his fellow diners with the tale of the battle for Drincourt and his subsequent impoverishment.
His tone was self-deprecatory and he was careful not to boast but even so, John looked away and fiddled with his eating knife while fourteen-year-old Ancel hung on William’s every word, his eyes as wide as goblet rims.
“A thatch gaff?” his mother said faintly.
William unpinned the neck of his tunic and dragged his shirt aside to show her the narrow pink scar. “I was lucky. My hauberk saved me. It could have been much worse.”
Her horrified expression disagreed with his statement. His sisters, Sybil and Margaret, craned to look.
“Didn’t it hurt?” asked Alais, a damsel of his mother’s chamber.
William had known her since her birth, which had caused something of a scandal at Hamstead.
She was the result of an affair between one of Sybilla’s women and a married knight in the service of the Earl of Salisbury.
Her father had died in battle before her birth, and when Alais was nine years old, her mother had succumbed to a fever.
Sybilla Marshal had taken Alais beneath her wing, raised her with her own daughters, and given her a permanent place in the chamber as a companion and attendant.
When William had left for Tancarville she had been a skinny little waif, still in wan mourning for her mother, but she had certainly blossomed in the interim.
“Not when it happened,” he said, “but after the battle when I had time to notice it burned like a hot coal. It’s still sore when my shield strap rubs on it.”
Her hazel eyes widened with admiration. “I think you were very brave.”
He chuckled. “Some of the others thought I was foolish.”
“I don’t.” Alais rested her chin on her hand and gave him a melting stare.
Amused, William thanked her and from the corner of his eye caught the brooding look that John was directing at the girl. He suspected that his older brother’s emotions were more involved than mere amusement, and that if their mother noticed, there would be trouble.
“I don’t either,” Ancel said with more than a hint of hero-worship in his cracking adolescent voice.
“Why have you come home?” John asked abruptly.
William’s survival in the Tancarville household had depended on his ability to read expressions and voices. “Aren’t you pleased to see me?”
“Of course I am.” John flushed. “You’re my brother.”
Which said everything, William thought. “And that makes you obligated.”
John shifted uncomfortably in the fine, carved lord’s chair, its arms polished from the wear of their father’s grip. “I was wondering if you were still with Guillaume de Tancarville, that is all.” He spoke as if it didn’t matter, but they both knew that it did.
William looked down at his cup. “He has chosen not to retain me in his household. It was a mutual leave-taking, but done while it could still be counted that.”
His mother made an indignant sound. “Surely he could see the advantage of keeping you as one of his mesnie?”
“Yes, but he could also see the disruption it might cause. Some of the knights believed that he showed me too much favour because of our kinship.”
“Then he should have dismissed them.”
William shook his head. “Not when I was his youngest and least experienced knight. He took a commander’s decision and, likely, in his shoes I would have done the same.
Don’t worry,” he said to John, whose taut expression bristled with hostility, “I’m not going to ask you to retain me as a hearth knight when you already have Ancel in training.
” He sent a wink towards his youngest brother and managed to keep his tone light.
“I wouldn’t have you,” John replied. “Keeping those horses in oats and stabling would beggar me in a season, and there are no tourneys in England where you could play to earn your silver. Besides,” he added defensively, “you would find life as my knight dull after Normandy. If you can stomach the advice of your older brother, you’ll go to Uncle Patrick at Salisbury. He’s hiring men to take to Poitou.”
The point was made with little finesse—there was no place for William at John’s hearth—although William had known as much ever since their father’s death.
It would not have harmed John to make some provision for him out of their father’s revenues, but he had chosen not to.
“That was indeed what I was intending to do,” he said evenly, concealing his hurt.
“And what if his knights think that he is showing you favour because of your kinship?” his mother wanted to know.
He shrugged. “At least I will come to my uncle’s household with horses and armour to my name and some experience of war. He won’t have to provide my equipment, nor have I ever served his knights as a squire and been taken for granted by them. It’s a clean slate.”
It was very late when William finally retired, for there had been many years of catching up to do on both sides. His mother and sisters retired to the women’s chamber, their way lit by Alais bearing a lantern. William marked how John’s eyes lingered on the latter’s slender form.
“Our mother will kill you if she sees you,” he said.
His tongue fumbled the words for the mead had been strong and he had been drinking it slowly but steadily for most of the night.
John was in a similar case and the candle flame inside the lantern he was holding wavered and guttered with the unsteadiness of his footsteps.
“Kill me if she sees me what?” John slurred.
“Looking at Alais the way a fox looks at a goose.”
John gave a contemptuous snort. “You’re imagining things.
Must be your debauched life at Tancarville.
” He staggered along the passage and into the lord’s bedchamber.
A string-framed bed and feather mattress had been set up for William in the corner and his gear was deposited around it: sword, shield, hauberk, helm.
“Chance would be a fine thing,” William retorted. “The lady de Tancarville guarded the women of her chamber like a dragon coiled on a hoard of gold and the household whores weren’t interested in a lowly squire.”
“The Sire de Tancarville kept whores?” Ancel asked, eyes agog.
“A few.” William licked his finger and stooped to rub at a mark on the surface of his shield which still bore the Tancarville colours. “They were hand-picked by my lord.”
“Hand-picked?” John guffawed as he set the lantern down precariously on a chest. “Are you sure he didn’t use anything else?”
William laughed. “I meant that they were either barren or knew how to avoid getting with child. That way the place wasn’t overrun with bastard brats.
” He looked hard at John. “She’s a maid of Mother’s chamber.
If you touch her there’ll be hell to pay, especially when you consider the circumstances of her birth. ”
“I don’t need a lecture from you,” John flashed, “riding in here with your fine horses after years away and telling me how to conduct my life. You’re no saint of chivalry, so don’t pretend you are.
” He threw himself down on his bed. “There’s no harm in looking and you’re a liar if you say you didn’t look too. I saw you.”
William abandoned the argument with a wave of his hand and turned to warn Ancel against leaving sweat prints on the sword the lad had just drawn from its scabbard.
“I’ve begun my training,” Ancel said indignantly. “I know how to care for a blade.”
“Never a good idea to draw one in your cups though.” William gestured to him to sheath the weapon.
“Why? Do you expect brotherly love to degenerate into a drunken brawl?” John’s tone was sardonic.
“I do not know what I expect of brotherly love, or what brotherly love expects of me,” William said with a bleak smile. He ruffled Ancel’s light brown hair. “On the morrow you can take my sword on to the practice ground and try it out full sober in the daylight. For the nonce, I’m for my bed.”
Although he was tired when he lay down, his brothers’ snores were raising the rafters before William finally relinquished his grasp on consciousness, his last waking thought being that “brotherly love” was a sword that needed to be oiled, sharpened, and treated with the utmost respect and caution if it was to be of any use at all. And it had two edges.