The Champion by Elizabeth Chadwick Page B

bedchamber in a stupor of drink and grief. Hervi was supposed to be watching over him, but Hervi too was snoring like a bear.
    Even now, when she had been so intimately touching the body, she could not believe that her mother was dead. Only a few hours ago they had been packing their belongings in preparation for their new life. There had been no indication that it was to be Clemence’s last day on earth. The midwives said that it happened sometimes; a bloody flux from the womb would carry off the mother-to-be in the month before she was due to give birth. They were compassionate but casual, for death was something they witnessed frequently in their trade.
    Monday touched her mother’s lifeless hand. It was smaller than her own, with tiny, almost child-like fingers. Fine bones and translucent skin in cruel contrast to the gross mound of her belly, still filled with the baby that had killed her. The midwives had said there was no point in attempting Caesar’s cut, for the child in such circumstances was always dead. Tears brimmed in
    Monday’s eyes, as much of rage as of grief.
    The hanging lifted and Alexander slipped quietly into the makeshift bedchamber. He had made himself scarce while the women stripped and washed the body. Now he crouched at Monday’s side, his tawny eyes smudged with weariness. His breath in the enclosed space was clean of drink fumes, and he no longer wore the Benedictine robe, but was clothed in shirt, chausses and a green linen tunic that Clemence had made for him in the spring.
    Monday swallowed the lump in her throat, and reaching to the top of the travelling chest beside the pallet, picked up the gold and amethyst cross. ‘Yesterday morn we broke fast together and we talked about sleeping beneath a solid roof,’ she murmured desolately as she returned the jewel to him. ‘She was laughing and full of hope.’
    Alexander hung the cord around his neck and tucked the cross down inside his shirt. Then he reached out, and taking Monday’s hand from where it lay upon her mother’s, squeezed it in his warm, living one.
    ‘Why couldn’t she have had what she wanted? Why did she have to be taken? Is God so jealous?’ Her eyes flashed upon him, demanding an answer.
    He shook his head, not having one. He wanted to say that he was not a priest, but after what had befallen earlier, that would have been cruel. Nothing would ease her pain just now. And so he just sat with her while the night passed away into dawn and the first liquid notes of the morning chorus broke over the tourney camp and ushered in a new day.
    Dry-eyed, Monday removed her hand from Alexander’s. ‘This life kills and maims all who live it,’ she said bitterly, and her expression hardened into one of grim determination. ‘But it’s not going to kill me.’

C HAPTER 7
     
    Bertran de Lavoux was florid and corpulent, with thinning sandy hair and a pointed chin-end beard. His lands, recently inherited from an elderly uncle who had died without issue, lay on the river Epte, midway between Gournai and Gisors, and Bertran, with the hunger of a man long denied, was set upon expanding his boundaries. His overlord, Richard Coeur de Lion, was a captive at the German court, awaiting a ransom payment that might never arrive. Bertran had taken this heaven-sent opportunity to change his allegiance and pay homage instead to King Philip of France. This gave him the sanction and opportunity to make war on his neighbour, Hamon de Rougon, whose fertile estates and water mills Bertran coveted. Thus the need for soldiers – men of his own choosing, men in their prime who were as hungry for reward as he was for land.
    ‘We are stirring up trouble for ourselves,’ Alexander said, and removed his hands from the bridle to chaff them with his breath. A raw January dusk was settling around the raiding party. Dull light glimmered on chainmail and helmets, on harness and spear tips. The protesting bellow of driven cattle filled the air, joining the