He crouched on his heels, hands dangling in the space between his bent knees. ‘And you look much brighter, young man,’ he said to Robert. ‘Do you like the bear?’
Robert clutched his mother’s hand for reassurance and pressed himself against her. But he managed a silent nod of reply.
De Gael wrinkled his nose. ‘I confess I don’t, but I’ve been dragged to see it nonetheless.’ He spoke softly to the little boy but his words were directed at Linnet.
She nodded towards the older child. ‘Is this your son?’
‘My half-brother Martin. The kind of existence I lead is no recommendation for marriage and children.’ A shadow briefly crossed his face and when his smile resumed it was cynical. ‘The fortune-teller yonder informs me I am going to wed a beautiful heiress and die in my dotage a rich and fulfilled man, but I have a feeling she had more of an eye on my purse than my future. If I married an heiress, beautiful or not, I’d spend all my time defending my new-found fortune by writ and by sword.’
Linnet warmed to his rueful candour despite herself. ‘Instead, you defend other men’s fortunes.’
‘Oh yes, strongboxes full of them, for whatever purpose.’ He slanted her a knowing look.
Sensing danger, Linnet grasped Robert’s small sticky hand. ‘Come, sweetheart,’ she said, ‘it is time to leave.’ She inclined her head to de Gael in a perfunctory, formal farewell. He unfolded from his crouch and returned her salute, his gravity marred by a spark of humour that deepened the creases at the corners of his eyes
As Linnet hurried away from the danger of his proximity, she heard de Gael’s small brother asking if he could have some gingerbread and the mercenary’s good-natured response. Risking a look over her shoulder, she discovered that de Gael was staring after her in speculation. Her throat closed with fear.
‘What did he want with you?’
Linnet halted abruptly as her husband blocked her path. He sat astride a fancy red-chestnut destrier whose paces he was trying. The beast had a rolling, wicked eye and Giles was barely in control, his fists clenched on the reins. ‘Nothing,’ she croaked and had to swallow before she could speak again. ‘He was just passing the time of day.’
‘Then why are you blushing? What did he say to you?’
‘Nothing, I swear it; he was talking to Robert.’
‘To a whey-faced brat?’ The horse plunged and she had to step quickly aside to avoid being barged by its powerful shoulder. ‘You expect me to believe that?’
‘He has his own younger brother with him. Please, my lord, everyone is watching us. You will make a scandal out of nothing.’
Scowling, Giles stared around. Hubert de Beaumont and Ralf de Rocher were watching the scene with open relish. Richard de Luci, who was also inspecting the war-horses, had courteously turned the other way but William Ironheart, who was with him, had no such delicacy and his stare was direct.
‘I hope for your sake that it is nothing,’ Giles hissed, lowering his voice. ‘Is it any wonder that I am loath to bring you anywhere when you shame me thus. You are no better than a whore!’
Linnet gasped at the final word and felt as if he had struck her with his whip. Hating him, sick with fear, she stood submissively before him, knowing she had no defence. Robert, frightened by the atmosphere, by the sidlings of the huge horse and the thunderous expression on his father’s face, began to sniffle into her skirts.
‘Go home and wait for me,’ Giles snapped. He wrenched the chestnut horse around and pranced him back to his audience. She could tell from the looks on their faces and Giles’s strutting manner that her humiliation sat well with them. Summoning the tatters of her dignity, she lifted Robert in her arms and went towards her waiting horse litter on the side of the field.
Joscelin indulged Martin with a square of gilded gingerbread from the booth adjacent to Melusine the Mermaid and, with that bribe, removed the child from the dubious attractions of the fairground to the more sober business of the selection and purchase of an all-purpose riding mount from the dozens offered for sale.
Taught first by his father and then by his uncle Conan upon the battlefields of Brittany, Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine, Joscelin was an excellent judge of horseflesh. Sometimes a good mount was all that had stood between himself and death in the thick of the fray. He examined with a critical eye the various animals paraded before him, discarding several high-mettled beasts with the most perfunctory of glances despite the horse coper’s assurances of their breeding and quality.
Martin was very taken with a dainty white mare but Joscelin shook his head. ‘She’d do well enough on good roads in summertime but she hasn’t got the heart-room for hard work and her legs are too spindly. Also, she’d never ford a stream without baulking. See how nervous she is?’
Martin pursed his lips. ‘She’s still very pretty.’
Joscelin chuckled. ‘So are many women, but that’s no recommendation to buy.’
‘Lady de Montsorrel’s pretty.’
Joscelin busied himself examining the teeth of a stocky bay cob. ‘So she is,’ he agreed, half his mind on the horse, the other half dwelling upon the memory of Linnet de Montsorrel’s fine grey eyes and delicate features. His usual preference was for large-boned, buxom women - they adapted best to the vagaries of mercenary baggage trains - but occasionally he found himself drawn to more graceful fare. Breaca had been bird-boned and delicate, quick of movement, dark-eyed and quiet, but with a wild fire inside. He still thought of her sometimes on freezing winter nights when his own body heat was not enough to keep him warm. And of Juhel, too. Of him, he thought constantly.
With an abrupt gesture, he commanded the horse coper to trot the cob up and down so that he could study its gait with a critical eye.
Martin nibbled on the gingerbread and stared around the enormous field, which was bursting at the seams with colour and life. The market was held every sixth day of the week and Martin loved to visit if his family was in London. The atmosphere was exhilarating. Everyone was here - rich, poor, lord, merchant, soldier and farmer - all drawn by their common interest in livestock. Here you could buy anything from a plough-horse to a palfrey, from a child’s first pony to a fully trained war-horse costing tens of marks. You could wager on the races between swift, thin-legged coursers and see hot-blooded Arab and Barb bloodstock from the deserts of Outremer. And if you became tired of looking at the horses, there were cattle and sheep, there were pigs and fowl of every variety. There were farm implements to be purchased and craftsmen to watch at their work. And, best of all, there was the fairground.
‘A knight’s riding over from the destriers,’ he told Joscelin. ‘I think he wants you.’ The coper hastily led the cob to one side, his expression anxious. Turning, Joscelin saw Giles de Montsorrel riding towards him upon a sweating chestnut destrier that was fighting the bit and side-stepping. The saddle was ill-fitting and the stirrups far too short. Giles himself was wattle-red in the face.
‘If I see you near my wife again, I’ll garter my hose with strips of your flayed hide!’ Giles growled.
Joscelin stared up into Giles’s temper-filled eyes. ‘We but exchanged courtesies. Should I have turned the other way and slighted her?’
‘You’re a common mercenary. I know only too well what was in your mind.’
‘Not having a mind of your own above the belt that you so freely use,’ Joscelin retorted, his first astonishment rapidly turning to anger.
‘Joscelin . . .’ Martin whispered in a frightened voice.
Giles pricked his spurs into the destrier’s flanks and it plunged towards boy and man, forehooves performing a deadly dance. Martin shrieked as the horse’s shoulder struck him a sidelong blow and sent him flying. He hit the ground hard, the gingerbread flying from his fingers. Giles leaned over the saddle to strike Joscelin with his whip. The blow slashed across Joscelin’s face, narrowly missing his eye and raising an immediate welt. Giles pursued, whip raised in his right fist, his left clamped upon the reins.
Martin scrambled to his feet and dashed for safety. Joscelin, about to be ridden down by a metal-shod fury, grabbed the horse coper’s three-legged stool and swung it hard at the destrier’s head. The stool shattered across rolling eye and temple and the stallion went mad. Giles, fighting to keep his seat, snatched at the right rein and hauled hard but it was too late for that kind of control. Half-blinded, wild with terror and rage, the stallion reared, came down on all fours, and bucked. Then, before the horrified gaze of a gathering crowd, it lay down and deliberately rolled upon its rider.
