Rich and powerful men come to purchase warhorses, palfreys and coursers from our stock. Between times, we take the custom of merchants and carriers. And in times of war, rich and powerful men return to us to buy our ponies for sumpter work. They look nothing, I know, but they have an endurance beyond all believing. I would wager with confidence that one of those ponies bearing two pannier-loads of rocks could outpace a destrier in the course of a day, and still be fit on the morrow for another dawn-to-dusk trek.'
Rufus looked thoughtful. 'In times of war,' he repeated and eyed Benedict. 'Does Rolf breed ponies at Brize?'
'No, Sire, only at Ulverton.'
'Then I will buy what you have.' He nodded to himself with satisfaction, a gleam in his eye at having access to something that his brother Robert did not.
His paramour loudly cleared his throat to attract the King's attention. 'Sire, would I not look divine beside you on this one?' He pointed a lily-white finger at a horse which had been grazing among the ponies and now had come in curiosity to examine the visitors. It was a mare of a good average size, with neat, sharp ears, intelligent liquid eyes, and proud carriage. Her colouring was a glorious golden dapple, beautiful and rare.
Rufus just stared, his small eyes widening and widening in covetous greed. 'Saving the best until last?' he said, and moistened his lips. 'I should have expected such. You horse-traders are all the same, whatever your rank.'
The effeminate young man made kissing noises at the mare and she snorted gustily at him before walking directly up to Benedict with a nicker of greeting. Benedict stroked her cheeks and rubbed her soft muzzle. 'She is not for sale, Sire.'
'I want her,' Rufus said as if that was the end of the matter. 'Name your price.'
'There is no price, Sire. Even if you offered me her weight in gold, I would not sell. I purchased her as a gift for someone else.'
The King's eyes narrowed. 'You seem eager to bring hardship upon yourself. I could take my custom elsewhere.'
Benedict braced his shoulders as if to withstand a blow. 'That is your prerogative, Sire,' he said quietly.
Rufus glared. His pretty boy pouted. 'Make him give you the horse, Sire,' he challenged in a light, spiteful voice, and posed dramatically with his hand on one hip, his white, pretty fingers tapping on the decorated hilt of his eating dagger. The King's eyes flickered from Benedict to his favourite.
'Be quiet, Godfroi,' he snapped, and took a step nearer to Benedict. 'So, you deny me this horse?' If he had intended to intimidate the younger, slightly built man by the force of his presence, he was disappointed.
'With regret, Sire, I do,' Benedict answered without flinching. He could smell the wine on the King's breath, see the broken veins spidering the ruddy cheeks, and the dewdrops of sweat in the receding chestnut hair. Godfroi was looking at his fingernails, his cheeks sucked in to display his affront.
'You will do more than regret,' Rufus snarled, and barging past Benedict, called for his grooms. Benedict watched him warily. He did not believe that Rufus would order anything so crass as an armed assault upon Ulverton, but one did not stand in the path of a wild boar with impunity.
The King mounted up and thrust his feet into the stirrups. He snapped his fat fingers and two equerries fetched the steel-grey destrier. Ignoring their struggles to control the beast, he turned his own horse in a semi- circle and reined him in hard before Benedict. Rufus's eyes were narrow and bright, his nostrils flared with a mingling of choler and lust, and it was all Benedict could do to stand his ground. 'It is a fine line between honour and stupidity,' Rufus said, and slapped the leather down on his horse's neck. The horse lumbered forwards and Benedict was forced to leap aside to avoid being trampled.
The King cantered out of the keep gates. His bon ami followed at his heels, nose cocked high, chin puckered.
Benedict held himself straight until the last man had ridden from sight, and then sat down weakly on the lowest step of the mounting block, and closed his eyes.
Julitta crossed herself and rose from her knees. Before her, on the altar in the chapel of Arlette's convent, the creamy wax candles gleamed with translucence. Between them, a cross of silver-gilt, amethyst and rock crystal commanded the congregation to worship. Father Jerome, resplendent in robes of scarlet and crimson silk damask performed the blessing, his fingers eloquent and lean, contrasting with the bull-like solidity of his body.
The chapel itself was a place of contrasts, of practical, sturdy arches and intricately decorated columns, the reliefs brightly painted to war with the natural gloom of the thick stone walls. And yet everything blended with harmonious individuality. Julitta's attitude to religion was dutiful rather than devoted, but here, today, at the convent's consecration to the Magdalene, she felt uplifted.
At her side, Mauger was listening intently to Father Jerome as if he understood every word of Latin spilling from the priest's lips. She glanced at her husband sidelong. He was wearing his best blue tunic with the red braid, and his pale hair gleamed like barley in the chapel's soft light. He had been different of late, more at ease, she thought, and her own life was more bearable because of it. Mauger was still gruff and brusque, not given to conversations beyond the practical, but he permitted her a larger degree of freedom than in the early days of their marriage, and their bed was no longer a battlefield on which he sought to subjugate her to his will. Indeed, sometimes Julitta even derived pleasure from the encounters. If she could never come to love Mauger, then at least she no longer hated him. The thought of Benedict was like an aching tooth that could not be pulled, but she was disciplining herself to live with the pain.
Benedict was not here now for the consecration of the convent's chapel, and she was both disappointed and relieved. What would they say to each other after their last meeting? She had not seen him after that incident in Arlette's garden, not even to bid farewell before she returned to Fauville the following morning. He had not come seeking her again and she had avoided him. It was safer that way. Even a meeting of their eyes would have betrayed them.
The witnesses to the chapel's consecration had all been standing throughout the ceremony. Arlette, due to her frailty, sat on a bench at the front of the nave. Her condition had improved a little recently, but it was caused more by the knowledge that her convent was close to completion than by any return to health. She was painfully thin, her bones almost poking through her skin, and her eyes were feverbrilliant in their sockets.
Gisele looked ill too, her complexion pasty-white with puffy welts of exhaustion beneath her eyes. Julitta knew that it was not the nursing that was taking its toll, but the sight of her mother growing progressively worse, no matter how hard Gisele tried. Julitta felt genuine pity for her half-sister. She knew what it was like to lose a mother, to be powerless in the inexorable face of death.
Back at Brize, sitting with the women in the bower, Julitta listened as one of the consecration guests held forth upon the wonders of her recent pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella in Galicia, where the remains of the blessed apostle St James were supposedly interred. The woman's name was Matilda de Vey. She was wealthy and devout, a combination of great benefit to the Church. She was also garrulous and loud, and with the aid of a couple of goblets of Aubert's fine wine was sailing very close to being outrageous. Julitta found herself longing to giggle, something that she had not done in a long, long time.
'I tell you, my dear,' she shouted at Gisele, who actually flinched, 'you have not lived unless you have been on a proper pilgrimage — not just to Rouen, but further afield. It not only does wonders for the soul, it bestows wisdom and understanding!' She plumped herself down on the bed where Arlette was resting. The entire mass sagged to the left beneath her exuberant weight. Her face reflecting the red of the wine she had so liberally consumed, Matilda pushed at her wimple which had come askew. 'On my way to visit the blessed saint, we stayed in Toulouse, at a pilgrim hospice, and there was a priest who owned a piece of the True Cross. We were all permitted to touch it.' She waggled a forefinger at her bemused audience. 'My hands were swollen up with the dropsy, but when I laid them upon that tiny piece of wood, within moments my fingers were as thin as they were on the day that I was married. I swear it to you.'
Julitta wondered why the miracle had stopped at the fingers. If Matilda had been truly blessed, then her figure would be sylph-like too. She wondered how much the woman had paid the priest for the privilege of touching the relic. Benedict had told her that he had encountered many corrupt clergymen on his journeys, who would sell anything to the gullible. 'I have seen enough nails from the True Cross to shoe an entire conroi of cavalry!' he had laughed.
