Roland shrugged. ‘I must ride on, father.’
‘To where?’
‘A
Father Levonne frowned. ‘You’ll join the army of the King of France?’
‘Of course.’
‘And how many enemies will you have there? Labrouillade? Marchant? The cardinal?’
‘I can explain to Father Marchant,’ Roland said hesitantly.
‘You think he’s amenable to reason?’
‘I took an oath,’ Roland said.
‘Then take it back!’
Roland shook his head. ‘I can’t do that.’ He saw the priest was about to interrupt so hurried on, ‘I know things are not black and white, father, and perhaps Bessieres is evil, and I know Labrouillade is a vile creature, but is his wife any better? She is an adulteress! A fornicator!’
‘Half Christendom is guilty of that sin, and most of the other half wish they were too.’
‘If I stay here,’ Roland said, ‘then I condone her sin.’
‘Good God,’ Father Levonne said in astonishment.
‘Is it so bad to wish for purity?’ Roland asked, almost pleadingly.
‘No, my son, but you’re not making sense. You accept that you made oaths to evil men, but now you won’t break them. How pure is that?’
‘Then maybe I break the oaths,’ Roland allowed, ‘if my conscience tells me to, but why break an oath to support a man who fights against my country and who shelters an adulteress?’
‘I thought you were a Gascon. The English rule Gascony, and no one disputes their right.’
‘Some Gascons do,’ Roland said, ‘and if I fight I will fight for what I think is right.’
Father Levonne shrugged. ‘You can do no more than that,’ he agreed, ‘but at the very least you can say farewell to Thomas.’ He glanced out of the casement and saw that dawn was greying the world’s edge. ‘Come, he’ll want to thank you.’
He led Roland downstairs into the big kitchen. Genevieve was there, a bandage across her left eye, and Hugh was sleeping in the corner while Thomas sat beside his wife with an arm about her shoulder. ‘Father,’ he greeted Levonne.
‘The Sire Roland wishes to leave,’ Father Levonne said. ‘I tried to persuade him to stay, but he insists he will go to King Jean.’ He turned and gestured for Roland to say whatever he wished, but Roland said nothing. He was staring, entranced, at the third person sitting at the table. He seemed incapable of speech or, indeed, of motion. He just stared, and through his head were running all the lines of poetry that the troubadours had sung in his mother’s castle, lines about lips that looked like crushed rose petals, about cheeks as white as doves’ wings, about eyes that could light the darkest sky, and about hair that was the colour of ravens’ wings. He tried to speak again, but nothing came, and she was gazing back at him with eyes just as wide.
‘You haven’t met the Countess of Labrouillade,’ Thomas said. ‘My lady, this is the Sire Roland de Verrec …’ He paused, then added pointedly, ‘who swore an oath to return you to your husband.’
But it seemed Bertille did not hear Thomas’s words any more than Roland heard them, because she was just gazing at Roland. They each stared at the other and for both the world had ceased to exist. Time had stopped, heaven was holding its breath, and the virgin knight was in love.
PART THREE
The two dice rolled across the table.
It was a very fine table, made from dark walnut and inlaid with a pattern of unicorns made from silver and ivory, but it was now covered with a cloth of darkest blue velvet fringed with golden tassels. The velvet muffled the sound of the dice, which were being watched by five men.
‘God’s bowels,’ the youngest one said when the dice stopped.
‘Have emptied upon you, sire,’ another man said as he stooped over the table, ‘thrice!’ He needed to stoop because the dice, though made of the finest and whitest ivory, were marked with gold, which made them hard to read, and the difficulty was compounded by the strange light inside the vast tent, which was sewn from canvas dyed in red and yellow stripes. Not that there was much light to be coloured by the canvas for, although it was mid-morning, the sky was thick with dense cloud. The man looked quizzically at the prince, seeking permission to scoop up the dice. The prince nodded. ‘A two and a one,’ the man said, grinning, ‘which I believe, sire, make three, and increases your debt to me by three hundred.’
‘Your enjoyment is unseemly,’ the prince said, though without any anger.
‘It is indeed, sire, but it is enjoyment all the same.’
‘Oh God, no.’ The prince looked up because the tent was suddenly loud with the sound of a hard rain falling. It had been pattering on the canvas all morning, but now drummed, then cascaded so fast that the men needed to raise their voices to be heard. ‘God doesn’t love me today!’
‘He adores you, sire, but loves my purse more.’
The prince was twenty-six years old, a fine-looking man with thick fair hair darkened by the tent’s peculiar light. His face was bony with deep-set eyes as dark as the jet buttons that decorated the high collar of his tunic, which was fashionably short, tight-waisted, and dyed royal blue. The skirt was stiffened with bone and tailored into points that were edged with pearls, lined with yellow silk and finished with tassels woven from cloth of gold. His sword belt was made from the same cloth, though embroidered with his badge of three feathers made from ivory- coloured silk. The scabbarded sword itself was leaning against a chair that stood at the tent’s entrance, and the prince crossed to it so he could peer up at the rain-drenched sky. ‘Good God, will it never stop?’
‘Build an ark, sire.’
‘And fill it with what? Women? Two by two? Now that is a beguiling notion! Two girls with golden hair, two with black, and a pair of redheads for variety?’
‘They’ll prove better company than animals, sire.’
‘You know that from experience?’
The men laughed. Men always laugh at the jests of princes, but this laughter was genuine enough because Edward of Woodstock, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Earl of Chester and lord of Lord knew how many other territories, was a genial, easygoing and generous young man. He was tall and would have attracted the eyes of women even if he had not been heir to the throne of England and, according to the lawyers and lords who served his father, heir to the throne of France too. King Jean II disputed that, naturally enough, but the pursuit of that claim was why the English army was in France. The prince’s coat-of-arms was the royal coat, showing the three golden lions of England quartered with the fleur-de-lys of France, above which was a silver bar with three pendant labels indicating that he was the eldest son of the king, though the prince himself preferred to carry a shield painted black on which his three feathers glowed alabaster white.
The prince looked moodily at the sky. ‘Goddamned rain,’ he said.
‘It must stop soon, sire.’
The prince made no answer to that comment, but stared between the twin oak trees that stood like sentinels at the tent’s entrance. The city of Tours was barely visible because of the heavy rain. The place did not look formidable. True, the Cite was well enough protected with towers and heavy stone walls, but the
