The Champion by Elizabeth Chadwick Page A

born.’ There was a note of panic in Monday’s voice.
    Her father slowly raised his head from his cupped hands, and looked at Alexander with dull eyes. The lines on his face were as deep as ravines. ‘What are you doing here, son? Where’s Father Rousseau?’ His words were slurred, and there was a jug of mead close to his right boot.
    ‘Hervi couldn’t rouse him, so he fetched me instead. I know … I know the rituals.’
    Arnaud gave him a long stare, then his eyes wavered out of focus and he flopped his hand towards the hangings. ‘Go in,’ he said. ‘It is what she wants.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’ Steeling himself, Alexander went to the hanging and drew it tentatively aside. The midwife drew breath to challenge him, saw the robe he wore and the cross glinting on his breast, and instead beckoned him forward. There was blood on her apron and her hands were shiny with oil.
    ‘See, Mistress Clemence,’ she said. ‘The priest is here.’
    The woman on the pallet opened her eyes. ‘It is too dark,’ she whispered. ‘I cannot see him.’
    Alexander squeezed past the midwife and her assistant and knelt down at Clemence’s side. The candle-lantern cast a false golden glow over her features. Her fair hair was dark with sweat and her fingers gripped the coverlet in spasm as she fought not to cry out.
    ‘I am here,’ Alexander said. He felt inadequate and frightened, but knew that he must not show it. He might not be ordained, but as far as this moment was concerned, he was God’s representative.
    Clemence seemed not to recognise him. The cords in her throat were taut with pain, with the struggle to remain lucid in the face of her mortality.
    ‘I have much to confess,’ she said weakly, ‘and very little time.’
    Alexander gestured to the midwives, and the two women made themselves scarce.
    ‘Save your strength,’ he said to Clemence, knowing that he had no right to be party to her confession. He was no more a priest than the people waiting outside the curtain. And yet, in all mercy, he could not withdraw. Her suffering blue eyes fastened upon the cross at his breast, demanding salvation. ‘There is no need to make a full confession. God sees and knows all.’ His voice choked on the words. ‘Do you repent of your sins?’
    She almost smiled, but her pain and need were too great. ‘Not all of them,’ she said.
    ‘Do you have any mortal ones on your conscience?’
    ‘No.’
    Alexander removed the cross from around his neck and gave it to her to kiss and then hold in her hand. He removed the rag stopper from the flask of weapon oil, and anointing his finger, made the sign of the cross upon her clammy brow, and murmured the appropriate Latin words.
    Clemence gave a sigh of relief. Her fingers tightened around the jewel as another spasm racked her body.
    ‘Shall I summon the midwives again?’ he asked.
    She looked at him, and suddenly her eyes focused beyond the habit and absorbed his features. ‘Alexander,’ she whispered.
    ‘Father Rousseau was … was not able to come.’
    ‘It makes no matter,’ she said. ‘At least you are sober, and you know the words.’ Clemence swallowed, her lower eyelids glittering with tears. ‘I thought it was too good to be true, the promise of a second chance.’ She bit down on her lower lip, fighting pain, the tendons taut in her throat. ‘The child is lying across my womb with the afterbirth beneath him. There is nothing more that the midwives can do. Summon my husband and my daughter. I have so little time left …’
    In the darkness before the hour of dawn, the rain ceased to fall and there was silence. In the glow of the candle-lantern, Monday knelt at her mother’s bedside and stared numbly at the body which she and the midwives had washed and composed. The women had gone now, back to their own beds to snatch what sleep they could before the camp came to life. Monday was alone, and never more aware of it than now. Her father was sprawled on the floor outside the