The Champion Read Free

curves. A shining plait of bronze-brown hair, thick as a bell rope, hung down her back, and her eyes were a clear, warm grey set beneath strongly marked brows. In her hands, protected by a swathe of quilted linen, was a wooden eating bowl filled with soup.
    Hervi’s stomach growled at the savoury aroma of the rising steam. ‘By all means,’ he said with a wave of his hand, knowing that refusal was not an option.
    Monday knelt gracefully beside the pallet with the soup while Clemence fetched Hervi’s spare shield and used it as a support to prop up the invalid. Hervi hovered, feeling like an outcast in his own tent.
    ‘You might as well know that Alys has gone off with Osgar,’
    Clemence said over her shoulder. ‘But I suppose you expected nothing less.’
    Hervi shrugged and affected not to care. ‘I haven’t got a bed now, anyway,’ he said.
    Clemence gave a reproving cluck. Her daughter set about feeding pottage to the invalid, whose hands were too shaky to manage a spoon for himself.
    As Alexander consumed the hot food, his colour improved and the chills started to subside. ‘Thank you,’ he said weakly to the girl. ‘The last food I ate was three days ago, and that was no more than mouldy bread and burned gruel.’
    ‘What makes you think you’ll eat any differently here?’ Hervi snorted, and was immediately castigated by the mother, her blue eyes fierce.
    ‘God save us, Hervi de Montroi, I hope that neither of us is ever thrown on your charity. He is your own brother. Don’t you care?’
    ‘Of course I care!’ cried Hervi, and commenced tearing at his hair once more. ‘That’s why I don’t want him. He’s run away from taking the tonsure. What earthly use is he going to be following the tourneys? How in God’s name am I going to support him?’
    Clemence de Cerizay rounded on Hervi with a tongue as sharp as a war sword. ‘If you had silver to waste on a gallon of cider and a slut like that Alys, then you have enough to keep the lad at least until he is well enough to send on to something better,’ she said forcefully.
    ‘I didn’t ask for him to come seeking me like a stray pup.’
    ‘No, but he is here, and he is your responsibility.’
    On the pallet, the invalid closed his eyes. The girl pressed her palm to his forehead. ‘Mama, he’s fallen asleep,’ she said, leaning over him.
    Her words filtered to Alexander through a haze thicker than the mizzle outside. The scents of dried lavender and woodsmoke drifted wraithlike through his awareness.
    Another hand, rougher-skinned than the first, touched his brow and then the side of his neck. ‘A mite feverish,’ Clemence said. ‘Keep him covered.’
    The shield was removed from behind his back and he was eased down on to the straw pallet. Blankets were piled over him and their greasy, woollen smell filled his nostrils. Alexander kept his lids shut and they talked over him, as if he were not there. He learned nothing from their discussion that he did not already know – he had lice and he stank. The sores on his wrists were caused by the abrasion of cords; he had run away from the ordered life of Cranwell Priory, and in its place had chosen the dangers of the open road.
    Heat prickled behind his lids and leaked through his lashes. He prayed for oblivion, but not as the monks had taught him to pray.
    He dreamed that he was back at Cranwell, descending the dark dorter stairs to matins in the chapel. Cold stone beneath his feet, his breath a white mist in the midnight deep. Another cowled figure brushed against him. Fingers groped at his genitals and whispered an obscenity in his ear. In blind panic he struck out, landing a solid blow in the concealed softness of the other’s eye socket.
    There was a cry, the scuffle of feet struggling for balance, and then the bump, bump of a body tumbling down the stairs. His assailant’s descent into what would have been serious injury or death was intercepted by two other novices further down the dark