The Champion by Elizabeth Chadwick

upon his ruminations, his blond hair plastered to his skull and water darkening the shoulders of his cloak. A bundle of fabric was tucked beneath his arm. ‘Do you know how to shrive the dying?’ he demanded peremptorily.
    Alexander stared at him with wide eyes. ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘Christ, it’s a simple question; do you or don’t you?’
    ‘I … well, yes, I know the Latin, but I’m not ordained.’
    ‘You’re all there is, so you’ll have to do. Come on, get up.’ Hervi seized Alexander’s arm and dragged him to his feet. ‘Here, put this on.’ He shook out the bundle and presented his brother with a somewhat stained and tatty Benedictine habit. ‘It’s foul, I know, but it was the best I could do.’
    ‘Have you run mad?’ Alexander demanded, a blaze of anger and revulsion in his eyes. ‘If there is shriving to be done, then fetch Brother Rousseau.’
    ‘I tried,’ Hervi snapped, his own eyes full of fire. ‘But the toss-pot was stone drunk on his pallet and I couldn’t rouse him. So I took his spare habit and brought it to you because beggars cannot be choosers. You’re clean, you’re sober, you’ve got a conscience and you’re damned well half trained for the Church. Clemence de Cerizay is in extremis , otherwise I would not ask you.’
    The fury left Alexander’s eyes. ‘Lady Clemence?’ he said, and wondered why he had not realised it immediately. Perhaps because he didn’t want to. He swallowed and groped for the dirty robe. ‘What is wrong with her?’
    ‘How should I know, it is a woman’s thing,’ Hervi said irritably, his face puckered in lines of worry. ‘Something to do with bleeding from her womb and the child lying in a difficult position. She desires a priest. I said I would find one.’
    The robe stank of wine and sour sweat. Alexander tugged it on over his own clothes and struggled not to retch. It was not just the stench of the habit that filled him with nausea, but the thought of what it represented and the burden being laid across his own shoulders. At his core there was a cold sensation of pure dread. He fumbled down inside his shirt, withdrew the gold and amethyst cross, and laid it openly on his breast. It winked dully in the light, looking totally incongruous against its shabby back-cloth. But at least it made him feel more like a priest. He picked up the small flask of weapon oil, checked the stopper, and with an expression full of misgiving crouched out of the tent into the rainswept night.
    The de Cerizay tent was pitched about fifty yards away on a slight rise. Despite Hervi and Arnaud’s partnership on the tourney field, the two men preferred to keep their homes apart. It was less awkward, since one man was committed to a wife and family and the other was still sowing wild oats. Alexander squelched through the mud and paused outside the family’s dwelling. A horn candle-lantern flickered, illuminating the laces on the flaps. Inside he could hear an anxious female voice and a man’s broken murmur.
    He thought about running away, and his muscles tightened, preparing him for flight. At his back, Hervi gave him a push. ‘Go on,’ he hissed.
    Alexander closed his eyes, swallowed, and plucking open the tent laces, stepped inside. Arnaud de Cerizay was sitting on a camp stool, his head in his hands, and Monday was clinging to him and murmuring words of comfort. From the makeshift hangings beyond there issued a drawn-out moan, followed by a bitten-off cry. He saw Monday’s fingers tighten against her father’s shoulder. ‘She will be all right, Papa, I know she will,’ she murmured over and over again, as if trying to convince herself, and laid her cheek against the top of his head.
    In response to the draught from the unlaced flaps she glanced round, and saw Alexander. Her body began to quiver.
    ‘Hervi said … Hervi said that Lady Clemence had need of a priest,’ he stumbled out.
    ‘No, she doesn’t … except to baptise the baby when it’s