Warlord(109)

I felt a pang of guilt then. For Nur was a monster of my own making; it was my failure, my inability to love her after she had been mutilated, that had turned her towards evil. And I was certain that she meant to do Goody harm, if ever she could.



‘Do not fret, Alan,’ said Tuck. ‘We have a dozen good men-at-arms at Westbury, and I have cleansed the hall and the courtyard buildings with holy water; we are safe from Nur’s evil – I only tell you so you will understand if Goody seems rather tense.’

I spoke to Goody about the threat from Nur, and she seemed to me to be quite calm: ‘I feel a kind of pity for Nur, rather than anything stronger,’ she said. ‘You loved her once but no longer, and she cannot let that go. I can understand that. It must be eating her up inside to know that, only a few miles away, I have you all to myself!’ She gave me her lovely smile, and brushed my cheek with her lips.

‘If you wish, I could raise a troop of men and we could scour those Alfreton woods, flush her out and drive her away,’ I said. ‘It would not be such a difficult task and perhaps we would be doing a kindness in expelling her from the area. If she were not close by, perhaps she would forget all about us and move ahead with her own life.’

‘No,’ said Goody, ‘let the poor woman be. She has already been exiled from her home once – in Outremer. We can survive a few dead rats every full moon – perhaps she will grow bored with this dark game and find some other way to fill the emptiness of her life.’

And so I did nothing. And, in fact, at the next full moon there were no executed animal corpses strewn around Westbury, no foul messages scrawled in blood for all to see. And the next moon after that, too. I began to think that Nur had given up her attempt to scare us, and that she had perhaps gone away, or died of some fever, or just expired of plain starvation. I allowed myself to feel a little easier.

The months passed at Westbury, and the harvest was gathered in by the villeins and franklins of the village, under the efficient rule of Baldwin, my steward: it was a bountiful year, with soft rain to make the crops grow in April and May and then strong sunshine to ripen the ears all through June and July. On the first day of August, at the feast of Lammas, when the tenants were duty bound to pay their rents, I took some pale satisfaction at seeing the grain barns being filled to the rafters with the produce of Westbury, and after Mass in the village church, in which a loaf made from that year’s harvest was consecrated by the priest, an owlish little man called Arnold, and given out with the wine at the Blessed Sacrament, I feasted my tenants with a roasted pig, two ewes, six dozen capons, innumerable puddings, and many barrels of fresh ale.

My squire Thomas spent hours by the ale barrels with the dozen or so Westbury men-at-arms, and became quite drunk, and not long after dusk, when a great bonfire was being lit, and the dancing was about to begin, Goody had to help him off to bed. The boy, I noticed, had changed in recent months: his voice had changed from the shrill treble of the year before and become deeper, though it still cracked and jumped from a high to a low register when he was excited. And he had grown too. He would never be a tall man, but he had added six inches to his stature since our time in Paris, and he undoubtedly would be a man before long.

A drum began to throb, and the wailing of a pipe pierced the twilight. When my tipsy squire had been put to bed – even in drink he was a grave and sensible youth, not given to giggling, singing, loud extravagant words or violence – Goody came and sat beside me. We shared a plate of roast pork with fresh wheat bread, and a large flagon of wine, and watched the villagers join hands in a circle and begin the intricate steps of the traditional Lammas dances. The night was warm and well lit by the bonfire that cast flickering light and shadow upon the circling dancers. It was a homely, peaceful scene, the red firelight, the wheeling dancers, a broad table, laden with good food: and yet there was something troubling my beloved, and I knew what it was. It had been a year and four months since we had become betrothed, and the celebration of our bountiful harvest had bent her thoughts towards her own fecundity.

‘Hal’s daughter Sally is with child, or so they tell me,’ my lovely girl said, as if she were merely making idle conversation. But even then I knew her better than that. I merely grunted through a mouthful of half-chewed pork and waited for her next sortie.

Sparks crackled and leapt from the bonfire, the music skirled through the darkness and the drums thumped on. We watched the ring of dancers break apart and reform as the spokes of a wheel, their left hands joined in the centre, their faces flushed and smiling.