Roselynde, page 8
Once the fact that certain expenditures were unbalanced came clear to him, he checked still again, hissing through his teeth with satisfaction. Probably it would be beyond his power to lift the hide off the clerk with a whip, but he would speak with such purpose to the abbot of his order or the bishop of his diocese that no other clerk would play games with the accounts on this estate for a long time.
He rose from the table he had dragged into the windowed antechamber, bellowed for a manservant, and sent him running to fetch the clerk who wrote the books. In a few minutes a frail, elderly friar entered. His feet were bare, his robe was decent but by no means of fine cloth. Simon was a trifle taken aback. He had experience of many rich and corrupt priests, but this did not look like one of that kind. The old eyes met his questioningly but not fearfully.
“Is it you who writes Lady Alinor’s books?” Simon asked quietly, reserving judgment.
“Yes,” the old man agreed. “It is a great pleasure to serve a lady who—”
“It is a great profit too,” Simon interrupted sharply.
“Sometimes, but, alas, I fear—”
“Sometimes!” Simon exclaimed. “You do well to fear,” he added fiercely. Was the man so sure of his place he was ready to admit his corruption?
The old man bowed his head. “Perhaps it is right I be corrected, but I have told my abbot, more than once, and he says Lady Alinor is so young—”
“Your abbot! Your abbot also profits from this?”
“My abbot is a holy man,” the friar said reprovingly. “He could not profit from my simple work.”
“Well, I am glad to hear that, although I suspect it is not true, and, I must say, your work is not so simple.”
The gross sarcasm in Simon’s voice had no effect on the friar who looked up again with a pleased smile. “It is very kind of you to say so. Indeed, I have spent long hours over it, and it is a pleasure to share—”
“Share!” Simon roared, appalled at the sly insolence that was so certain it could buy his silence.
The old man started and stepped back. “It is not hurtful, my lord,” he quavered. “I have written no word of illicit lust, only fair tales of brave knights—”
“You mean you write romances for Lady Alinor?” Simon choked.
As there were priests and brothers who were too much interested in the things of this world, so there were others too little interested. From the beginning Simon had suspected this one to be of the second sort. Now he saw he had been right at first.
“Yes, but I assure you I write many saints’ lives too,” the old man said placatingly, “and the saints’ lives I write more beautifully, with many colored pictures to draw the eye. The abbot said the tales were permissible because the young—”
“Yes, yes, of course.” Simon suppressed his urge to laugh at the ludicrous mistake. “The servingman did not understand me. I desire to speak to the clerk who keeps the books of accounts.”
“What books of accounts?”
“These here,” Simon said, the laughter gone from his voice. Was he going to be faced with another mass of evasions and pretended ignorance? He stepped aside so that his body did not block the table upon which the wood-bound sheets of parchment lay open.
“Those are Lady Alinor’s. A clerk? I do not know. Perhaps Father Francis helps with them sometimes, but—”
“God writes them with his little finger?” Simon snarled.
The old man drew himself up. “Even the mighty should not blaspheme,” he said.
“Then tell me who writes these books!” Simon bellowed at the top of his powerful lungs.
He nearly blew the frail old man out of the room. In the silence that followed his outburst, while the friar was collecting his scattered wits, Simon heard an urgent whispering among the servants and footsteps running across the Great Hall.
“My lord, my lord.” The old man trembled and shrank away. “Be not so wroth. I told you the books are Lady Alinor’s books.”
Simon closed his eyes and swallowed, gripping his hands together in front of him so that he would not be tempted to raise them against a man of God. “And I heard you tell me so,” he said with deadly quiet. “Friar, do not tempt me too far. Tell me who it is who writes the words and numbers in the books that belong to the Lady Alinor. Have I made my question clear now?”
“It was always clear, my lord. I do not know why you will not believe my answer. Lady Alinor writes the words and the numbers on the pages of the books that lie there with pens that I trim for her.”
The friar looked at Simon, frightened but hopeful. Simon looked back, swallowed again. “Lady Alinor?” he repeated weakly.
“Yes?” Alinor asked.
Simon turned toward the entryway. The light was full on her face as she stood at the opening to the antechamber, and her cheeks were red as fire so that her eyes gleamed almost black. Slowly the meaning of what the friar had said in conjunction with what he had found came to Simon. Color rose in his face too. Alinor slid her arm around the friar’s bent shoulders and hugged him briefly.
“Go now, Brother Philip. This is my affair, and I will deal with it.”
“But he is a blasphemer, and—”
“These are worldly things and not for men of God to meddle with,” Alinor said firmly. “He will do me no hurt. Go now.”
Alinor wished she was as confident as she sounded. She was not worried that Simon, on whose straining hands the knuckles and scars showed white, would hit her. A bruise or two would be a cheap price to pay for peace. Unfortunately she could not give him that outlet for his frustration because the antechamber was open to the Great Hall. Either her servingmen would rush to protect her, or they would summon Sir Andre and Sir John. Her color changed from red to white as she thought of the results that would ensue if her vassals found Simon beating her.
But Simon made no move toward her. He went back around the table and sat down in the chair again. It had occurred to him that there might be some innocent explanation for the peculiar entries.
“I have been looking over your books of accounts,” he said quite mildly.
Because she was furious with him for frightening Brother Philip and also furious with herself for getting into this situation, Alinor made a mistake. “And you have found that I have falsified certain amounts. Indeed, my lord, I do not know why you were examining those accounts at all. They are nothing to do with you.”
Simon felt his mouth drop open. He was having enough difficulty absorbing the fact that Alinor could read and write and keep accounts. He had been dumbfounded at her extravagance. But this bold assertion of forgery and a round rejection of his authority—all from a child who looked as white and pure as a churchyard lily—bereft him of speech. The sickening thought that churchyard lilies grew out of decaying corpses came to him, and to strangle that image he forced out the first words that he found in his mind.
“There is no matter to do with your lands that is beyond my knowledge or my authority.”
“What?” Alinor rejoined furiously. “You mean I am responsible to you for the trinkets my grandfather chose to buy me ten years since? Or for the straw babies I played with when I was three? Or perhaps you wish me to account for the milk from my wet nurse’s breast?”
“Do not be ridiculous,” Simon shouted, getting to his feet again so suddenly that his chair crashed backward. “What have straw babies and mother’s milk to do with anything?”
“That is what I am asking you!” Alinor spat. “If I am responsible to you for what I spent last year, why am I not to be held responsible for the pennies paid my wet nurse?”
Just as he was about to repeat in an even more full-throated roar that Alinor should stop talking like a fool, Simon choked on the words. In fact, she was not talking like a fool. She was asking—in a highly uncivil manner—a very reasonable question. The idea that she was capable of raising so subtle a question—she whose blush of innocence mantled her cheek so readily—further infuriated Simon.
“You are responsible for nothing during the lifetime of your grandfather,” he snarled, “so let us have no more idiot babbling about straw babies and wet nurses.”
“You mean that I must account to you for every Mass I paid for my grandfather’s soul that was not ordered in his will? That I must explain to you why I purchased samite for mourning rather than another cloth?” Alinor shrieked.
“Of course not,” Simon bellowed back.
He was aware again of movement in the Great Hall beyond the window embrasure, but eyes and mind fixed on Alinor did not attempt to determine what that movement was. And, even in the midst of a violent argument, Simon felt no need to guard himself against personal attack. This would have occurred to him as very strange, had he time to stop to think about it. In the course of his labors as justiciar for the king, Simon bore as many scars from attempted assassination as from pitched battles. He simply knew that could not happen here. Rage there could be in this keep, but not treachery. Simon wore no armor, and nothing but his eating knife hung at his belt.
“Then when does my accountability start?” Alinor hissed. “Name a time. Tell me when I must begin to explain why I ordered four pair of shoes instead of two.”
“It is none of my affair if you ordered four hundred pair of shoes,” Simon roared. He was aware that something was wrong, that this argument was somehow missing an essential point, but he was too angry to stop arguing and think about it. “I will see that you do not do so again, but what you did before I became king’s warden is nothing to me.”
“Then why,” Alinor asked with such acid sweetness that, had the words been liquid, they would have seared Simon’s skin, “are you examining the accounts of my expenditure over the full two years past?”
Simon’s eyes bulged as he gasped for breath. His motive had been totally innocent. He had wished to protect this—this viper, who needed protection about as much as a venomous serpent. And then, just before he burst, the termagant changed before his eyes.
“Let us cease this brangling,” Alinor said in a quite normal voice. “I have no wish to challenge your authority, my lord. It is, indeed, your right and your duty to know what the estates yield and what the costs upon them are. So long as we are agreed that I am free and clear of any guilt for what was done before the king’s writ came two weeks since and that what was mine then is still mine, to me, you may hold all else in your hand as it pleases you.”
Momentarily Simon was rendered even more speechless by this return to sweet reasonableness. Finally his mind focused on a phrase. “Yours to you? Who seeks to deprive you of what is yours?” he asked aggressively but no longer in a shout.
“No one. At least, I believe no one here,” Alinor said. “What I seek to discover is what is mine and what belongs to the king. If five pounds that were collected last Lady Day lie in my chest, will you take those five pounds?”
“Are you accusing me of intending to steal from you?” Simon gasped.
“No, of course not,” Alinor exclaimed hastily. She certainly did not want the king’s warden to expire of a stroke in her keep, and Simon, at this moment, looked as if such a death might be imminent, so purple was his countenance. “I want to know whether the rents collected before the coming of the king’s writ are mine or the king’s. Cannot you tell me that much plainly?”
“Plainly! Did you ask a plain question until this moment? Straw babies! Wet nurses!”
Restless with impotent rage, Simon came round the table and moved toward Alinor. If, instinctively, he had sought to cow her by towering over her, his instinct was at fault. The technique might work excellently with men, but Alinor was accustomed to standing up for her authority while being towered over by some male or another. True, she had never needed to face up to any man quite as large as Simon, but absolute size had little effect upon her.
The movement had another good effect, however. As if the restraint upon Simon’s muscles had also paralyzed his brain, movement freed it. The color began to fade from his complexion and his eyes, which had shone like pinpoints of white light, began to show misty gray.
“You did this apurpose,” he said softly, his voice near to trembling. This innocent flower—this venomous serpent—this woman—had been enraging him deliberately.
“Most assuredly,” Alinor returned promptly. “I had to know for what I was to be held accountable.”
“No, I do not mean your questions. You angered me apurpose. Why?”
Alinor uttered a little girl giggle. “If I did it apurpose, I should be a great fool to tell you why, should I not?” Then she sobered and lowered her head a trifle, glancing at him upward from under her long, silky black lashes. “But truly I did not begin with the purpose of enraging you. I was angry myself, because you frightened Brother Philip. He is not—truly, he is not entirely of this world.”
“I saw that too late. I am sorry I frightened him. I had my bellyful of the pretended stupidity of your headmen and bailiffs and I thought your Brother Philip was giving me more of the same. And I would like to know the reason for that pretended stupidity too.”
“For that I am somewhat ashamed, my lord,” Alinor replied. “It was in spite, because you rode out without me. I beg your pardon. I know it was your right and duty to see the lands and question the men, but I wished you to see how they loved me and obeyed me. I pray you, do not punish them for my pride. But no man lied to you. That I straitly forbade.”
“No indeed. How could there be a lie when there was no substance to lie about.” Simon shook his head. “It is a nice trail of old fish, but I am a wise dog and I do not follow false trails. Perhaps you did not begin with the intent to enrage me, but you went on to that purpose. You have not answered my question. Why?”
“You have not answered mine.”
Simon stared, again wordless. No man would dare, and this frail child— A strangled sound just outside drew his eyes from Alinor, and he suddenly realized he had a large appreciative audience. The lesser castlefolk melted away under his glare, but Sir Andre and Sir John felt obliged to stand their ground. Simon passed a hand across his face. Alinor, who had had her back to the Great Hall, swung around.
“What do you here?” she asked furiously.
Sir Andre gestured over his shoulder at the unusually industrious servants. “They feared some harm might come to you, my lady.”
“And you also felt Lady Alinor needed protection?” Simon asked in a perfectly expressionless voice.
Sir John cleared his throat awkwardly. Sir Andre shrugged helplessly. “My lord,” he said, “we know you to be a courteous knight, but having some years dealt with Lady Alinor— My Lord,” he continued in furious haste, “a saint could hardly help wishing to murder her at times. I have come within inches of it myself. I thought if she went too far, I might curb her. I am accustomed to dealing with her.”
Aware of an outraged gasp from his fair tormentor, Simon smiled grimly. “Are you?” he asked pleasantly. “Then see if you can bring her to answer a reasonable question reasonably.”
If she could have laid hands on the well-meaning dolt who had summoned her vassals, Alinor would have scratched out his eyes. She could not order Sir Andre and Sir John to leave. If they did, not only would Sir Simon be justly affronted but his authority as king’s warden would be brought into question and he might feel strong measures were necessary to enforce it. If they did not leave, Alinor’s own authority would be badly damaged. Nor could she answer for Sir Andre a question she had refused to answer for Sir Simon. And to refuse to answer at all would make her seem a spiteful, stubborn fool.
Her grandmother had always said that pride and honor were men’s insanity, and it was neither modest nor proper for a woman to ape men’s ways. Alinor laid a hand on Simon’s arm.
“I beg you not to shame me before my vassals,” she pleaded softly. “Bid them go, and I will answer whatsoever you ask.”
It was a trap. Simon knew it, and yet he was as helpless to resist her as if he had been a swaddled child. His eyes met Sir Andre’s. “I promise you,” he said, “whatever the provocation, I will not murder her. Will you trust her to me?”
Gratefully the older men retreated. “Will you hold by your word, lady?” Simon asked as soon as they were out of earshot. He never expected a reply.
“I wished you to be angry so that you would not think about what I had said,” Alinor replied docilely. Simon was so surprised that he nearly lost the power of speech again. She was faithful to her word! “Then you succeeded,” he confessed. His lips twitched. “What had you said?”
He would remember as soon as he looked at the accounts again, Alinor knew. It was useless to lie. It would be better to make a virtue of necessity and speak out. Besides, she had thought of a very good explanation and wanted to use it. “I admitted that I wrote false accounts.”
Again Simon’s impulse to laugh died aborning. “Why?” he asked, horrified.
Alinor shrugged. “Because, my lord, I did not know you would be named king’s warden.”
“What? What has that to do with your accounts?”
“My lord, what I have heard of you makes me sure you would not rob me to fill your purse—but many men are not such as you. Thus I made it seem that much money had been wasted on foolishness—fine clothes, spices from the East, any matter that would be used and discarded. I swear I did naught that would lessen the king’s right. I only changed what would appear to diminish the castle hoard. Perhaps that was not honest, but I did not expect to be treated honestly.”
Now it was Simon’s turn to shrug. He could not contest what she said. In fact, she had acted wisely if not virtuously. And, thinking back on the figures he had been studying, Simon was convinced Alinor had spoken the truth. His expression began to lighten. In fact, she had not lied at all. She had— The whole thing came flooding back on him. Poor Brother Philip’s confusion and the clever little witch with her straw babies and wet nurses. Simon began to chuckle. Alinor glanced sidelong at him; her lips curved upward tentatively.
