A Blood Red Horse (2 page)

“That's not the point,” replied Will. “Of course she's good. But for tournaments, a courser like Sacramenta is just not, well, you know, well, just not …”

“Not quite strong enough?” offered Ellie.

“That's it. That's it precisely. Sacramenta is lovely, but she is just not strong enough.”

“I see what you mean,” said Ellie, and went on: “Maybe you could talk to Sir Thomas about it this evening. He is always in a good mood when we have company. If we were to catch him at the beginning of dinner before he gets talking to the guests …”

William considered. “You mean not go out on Sacramenta and instead put up with having to sit at the same table as Gavin?”

“Well,” said Ellie, “if you are polite to Gavin, your father would see how grown-up you are. And don't forget, you did make Gavin's nose bleed with your fist.”

William brightened. “So I did. Perhaps that is a good idea. Perhaps it is silly to cause trouble when I want something. Thanks, Ellie.”

Ellie nodded as William grabbed her and, in just the way she loved, spun her round and beamed. “Race you back.”

He set off with purpose. He was not going to be beaten
again today, and Ellie, picking up her skirts and shaking out her auburn hair, ran happily after him. Everything would be sunny again.

William waited for her as he approached the drawbridge, and they galloped over it together, pretending to be horses snorting for their suppers. William told himself that he only played this game for Ellie's sake, but the truth was that horses, whether real or imagined, were his passion and he thought about little else. Whenever he ran, he imagined himself on a big, bold destrier, a warhorse clattering home from the battlefield. Even while William was at his prayers, his mind was in a field or a stable filled with horses that were all his own. The boy had studied the horses in the de Granville stud from birth. He knew more about them and loved them more than any of the servants, even Old Nurse of whom, for all his cursing and swearing, William was fonder than he would ever have admitted.

But now, after the excitements of the day, hunger suddenly overtook him. All he could think about was dinner. Taking care not to even glance at the offending horse trough, he chased Ellie up the stone steps leading to the great hall, hoping against hope that they had missed the lengthy grace so favored by Sir Thomas's chaplain, that there would be roast lamb, and that Gavin had a horrible headache.

Inside the curtain wall of Hartslove Castle much building was taking place, and in the great hall the noise of hammering and sawing had provided a backdrop to meals since the spring.

The first Sir Thomas de Granville had come over to England with William the Conqueror in 1066 and, for his pains, was one of the lucky Norman nobles given a sizable estate in the north comprising wild purple moors, bristling forests, and gentle farmland. The forests were full of quarry to be hunted, and a wide, meandering river provided fish for the table. The first Sir Thomas built several strongholds, but his favorite, and the one in which he spent most of his time, overlooked the river at a spot where the deer loved to drink, hence its name—Hartslove—which he added to his own. The Conquest made the de Granvilles a more important family in England than they would ever have been in France, so it did not take the first Sir Thomas long to decide that he liked his English lands far better than the lands he had left behind. But he also, somewhat to his surprise, found that he quite genuinely liked the people. Indeed, he liked them so much that he chose a wife from among them. After she produced six
sons and three daughters, the first Sir Thomas de Granville of Hartslove was content.

In the wars that followed the death of the Conqueror, the de Granvilles kept swapping sides, supporting one ambitious royal brother, then another. They built more castles and actively, and sometimes violently, made their presence felt as they settled into the fabric of England. However, by the time the civil wars ended with the crowning of King Henry II, years of strife had worn the country down.

And the de Granvilles of Hartslove, too. They had spent too much time fighting and not enough time building. The result was that by the time Gavin and William's father (the fifth Sir Thomas) inherited the estates, although the de Granvilles rode high in the king's favor, Hartslove Castle was more a ruin than a stronghold and no longer fit to defend itself.

But all this was changing. Having buried his father and obliged a greedy younger brother to become a bishop in a suitably distant county, our Sir Thomas set about defeating his own enemies and then began the serious work of fortification, using all the latest techniques. Through his bravery in fighting for the king, he had earned a wife with a large dowry, ropes of hair the color of corn, and a soulful expression. However Sir Thomas's military successes were not matched by success in producing children. After a while, and with the king's permission, Sir Thomas, in the manner of the times, had his marriage annulled.

“Sorry, and all that,” he had said to his weeping ex-spouse as he sent her back to her father. “It's nothing personal.” Sir Thomas did not, however, return the dowry, and this was one of the reasons that the current program of castle reinforcement was so important. His first wife's relations
were threatening to attack, and Sir Thomas was keen that Hartslove should not be susceptible to marauders.

He had better luck with his second wife. She was plain but productive, and despite her bad teeth, Sir Thomas surprised himself by growing quite fond of her. This wife brought with her lands in the north and produced a baby every other year. It was dreadful when they nearly all sickened and died. But at least the two boys had survived, and then Eleanor had been sent to Hartslove to be raised when she was four. After Ellie's arrival, Sir Thomas felt his family needed no further additions, so when the second Lady de Granville's body finally gave up, Sir Thomas did not bother to replace her.

While his domestic life had sometimes been sad and occasionally troublesome, Sir Thomas had never let it interfere with his duty to his monarch or to his own best interest. He was careful not to take sides unnecessarily during King Henry's frequent squabbles with his fractious children. After the death of Henry's oldest and most rebellious son, he constantly reminded his own two boys that if the de Granvilles wished to survive, they must play a careful game with the royal heirs who were left. “Richard is a tricky soul,” he said. “Easier for us, perhaps, if he carries on living over the sea in Aquitaine and never comes here. As for that John Lackland, well, the king has sent him off to try his luck with Ireland. But the news from there is not good. I doubt it will be a success. Steer a clever course, my sons, steer a clever course.”

Then he turned his attention to his castle. Hartslove was slowly being transformed into an impregnable, new fortress with a circular keep and walls so thick that no siege engine would easily destroy them. Sir Thomas liked nothing better than to watch the masons, builders,
carpenters, and laboring peasants at work, creating something he was sure would last for a thousand years. And even when Sir Thomas was away, either fighting abroad or seeing to his lands even farther north, the work did not stop. Constable de Scabious saw to that. The creak of ropes, the shouts of carters bringing stone from the quarries, and the sound of timbers being hewn and dragged were unceasing. De Scabious was a hard taskmaster, and Sir Thomas, although listening with apparent concern to complaints, was more than happy that he should be so. It was an added bonus that the constable could be trusted to be reasonably honest, since a few years before, Thomas had caught him dressing up in women's clothes ready to escape from Hartslove after one of the de Granvilles' enemies had momentarily seized control of the castle. The memory still made Sir Thomas smile, and de Scabious himself lived in fear that Sir Thomas would reveal his secret.

It was due to de Scabious's efforts that much of the work was now complete. Only the servants' lodgings remained unfinished. Sir Thomas was particularly proud of his plumbing arrangements. Through skillful use of well, reservoir, and pipe, water was available to all three stories of the family's new living quarters.

William and Ellie were just now making use of one of these barrels of water right outside the great hall. They were the last of Sir Thomas's abundant household to arrive at supper that evening, and they were in luck. Grace was over. The visiting knights, their retinues, and Sir Thomas's own household already sat at trestles laid out across the room on which plentiful dishes of meat and fish had been placed. The fireplace was empty of logs today, since it was too
warm for a blaze. The noise was deafening, augmented by the growls and scufflings of countless dogs drooling in anticipation of the feast. Gryffed, William's deerhound, had taken up residence in the huge hearth with a stolen leg of lamb and shook his great brindled head at anybody who came near him.

On the wooden dais at the far end of the hall, Sir Thomas sat with Gavin at his left hand and nobody at his right. Since Lady de Granville had died, at first out of deference to Sir Thomas's evident grief and then just out of habit, the chair had been left empty. The servants soon busied themselves investing the empty chair with some spiritual and ghostly significance. Their storytelling had succeeded so well that now nobody would sit in it even if invited. Sir Thomas, who had no time for this kind of nonsense, had once given the order for the chair to be removed. But the fearful servants bade him politely but firmly to move it himself. Somehow, when it came to the point, Sir Thomas never quite managed it. “I'm too busy,” he said. The empty chair remained.

Gavin was relieved. Always nervous of a young stepmother producing rival sons to challenge for his father's estates, the empty chair meant security. As long as the chair was there, Gavin could sleep easy. There were women in the castle, of course. Gavin himself had recently begun to notice that some of them were quite pretty. But apart from Old Nurse—whose proper name both she and they had long forgotten—and Ellie, of course, the women were all servants. Sir Thomas welcomed visitors, but he seemed uninterested in finding a third Lady de Granville. Just for good measure, however, whenever Gavin got the opportunity, he repeated the servants' stories, ostensibly scoffing at their credulity, but always making sure to end up with
an enigmatic, “But I do just wonder.” The strategy seemed to work. Half the country now knew about Lady de Granville's chair, and women who might have set their cap at Sir Thomas shivered and set their sights elsewhere.

This evening Gavin was completely relaxed. The company at Hartslove was preparing to leave on campaign. At such times the shouting always grew wilder and wilder until on the night before departure it was insupportable. Departure was, however, a week off, so Sir Thomas could still just about hear what his older son was saying. With only a little exaggeration Gavin recounted how William had not liked being told that he looked like a flea on a dragon as he was riding Sir Percy's great descrier in at the castle gate and that he had leaped off and punched Gavin on the nose.

“I thought he needed cooling down, sir, so I put him in the horse trough; you know, the one next to the mounting block,” Gavin was saying, leaning back and enjoying his father's reaction. “But he came out hot as a roast on the spit. When he stood on the mounting block with water dripping from his ears, I swear smoke was pouring out of his nostrils.”

Sir Thomas threw back his great gray head and laughed. Then, seeing William and Eleanor making their way over the rushes, bid his younger son welcome.

“Horse trough cold, William?” he asked, and, turning to Ellie, wagged his finger in mock reproof. “Is that you, Eleanor, with a filthy face? What shall we do with you, and who on earth will ever marry you looking like that?”

William's face darkened again, but Ellie slid into her seat and joined in the fun.

Sir Thomas speared half a duck and looked at his mutinous younger son in a contemplative manner. “Where is
your sense of humor, William?” he asked. “Maybe it is time you went off to learn some manners. Perhaps your uncle the bishop would drum some discipline into you. You may make a worthy knight one day, but you will have to learn to control that temper.”

The chaplain, who was sitting nearby, felt it appropriate to join in. “You should ask God's help to conquer your bad habit,” he echoed sententiously as he wiped the grease from his chin with his sleeve and picked up a goblet full of wine.

“Yes, Father, indeed, Father, quite, Father,” said William, not making it exactly clear which “Father” he was addressing. Then, turning to the chaplain and transforming his face into a picture of innocence, he asked, “Do you yourself find that helps?”

The chaplain stopped chewing and looked at William with disapproval.

“Oh, do send him away, sir,” said Gavin, pretending to cuff William, who was now seated next to him and pulling at a leg of mutton. “We might as well discover if Will really does have it in him to be a knight.”

“If I go away, can I take a Great Horse with me?” asked William, ignoring both Gavin and the fact that his mouth was full. This was too good an opportunity to miss.

Sir Thomas was not a sentimental man. But he stopped chewing and, looking at his younger son—his mouth full of mutton, his eyes full of pleading, his head full of complaints, and his heart full of longings—was suddenly reminded of himself at William's age. Why, in all heaven, shouldn't the boy have a Great Horse? William could ride and ride well. All the grooms said so. Indeed, Keeper John was very complimentary. And the little courser he was so fond of—Sacramenta, was that her name?—anyway, she
was nice enough and had taught him a great deal, but William could probably manage something bigger and bolder. Sir Thomas made a decision.

“Hmmm. You want a Great Horse? I agree. A Great Horse it is. But”—and Sir Thomas was suddenly not sentimental at all—“Great Horses are expensive. Pick your groom carefully. A good groom makes a good horse. And you'll only have one Great Horse until you are at least sixteen. If anything happens to it, you will be back with coursers, even for tournaments. Can't be fairer than that. Now, Percy,” he dismissed William and called to his most loyal friend, the man whose horse had been the unwitting cause of the earlier fracas, “what's the news from Normandy, and any news from the East?”