Timeline - Michael Crichton [92]
“So, Christopher of Hewes. You have involved yourself with our clever beauty.”
“She hath saved mine life.” He pronounced it say-ved. And Sir Daniel seemed to understand.
“I hope it will not cause you trouble.”
“Trouble?”
Sir Daniel sighed. “She tells me, friend Chris, that you are gentle, yet not a knight. You are a squire?”
“In sooth, yes.”
“A very old squire,” Sir Daniel said. “What is your training at arms?”
“My training at arms . . .” Chris frowned. “Well, I have, uh—”
“Have you any at all? Speak plain: What is your training?”
Chris decided he had better tell the truth. “In sooth, I am—I mean, trained—in my studies—as a scholar.”
“A scholar?” The old man shook his head, incomprehending. “Escolie? Esne discipulus? Studesne sub magistro?” You study under a master?
“Ita est.” Even so.
“Ubi?” Where?
“Uh . . . at, uh, Oxford.”
“Oxford?” Sir Daniel snorted. “Then you have no business here, with such as my Lady. Believe me when I say this is no place for a scolere. Let me tell you how your circumstances now lie.”
:
“Lord Oliver needs money to pay his soldiers, and he has plundered all he can from the nearby towns. So now he presses Claire to marry, that he may gain his fee. Guy de Malegant has tendered a handsome offer, very pleasing to Lord Oliver. But Guy is not wealthy, and he cannot make good on his fee unless he mortgages part of my Lady’s holdings. To this she will not accede. Many believe that Lord Oliver and Guy have long since made a private agreement—one to sell the Lady Claire, the other to sell her lands.”
Chris said nothing.
“There is a further impediment to the match. Claire despises Malegant, whom she suspects had a hand in her husband’s death. Guy was in attendance of Geoffrey at the time of his death. Everyone was surprised by the suddenness of his departure from this world. Geoffrey was a young and vigorous knight. Although his wounds were serious, he made steady recovery. No one knows the truth of that day, yet there are rumors—many rumors—of poison.”
“I see,” Chris said.
“Do you? I doubt it. For consider: my Lady might as well be a prisoner of Lord Oliver in this castle. She may herself slip out, but she cannot secretly remove her entire retinue. If she secretly departs and returns to England—which is her wish—Lord Oliver will take his revenge against me, and others of her household. She knows this, and so she must stay.
“Lord Oliver wishes her to marry, and my Lady devises stratagems to postpone it. It is true she is clever. But Lord Oliver is not a patient man, and he will force the matter soon. Now, her only hope lies there.” Sir Daniel walked over and pointed out the window.
Chris came to the window and looked.
From this high window, he saw a view over the courtyard, and the battlements of the outer castle wall. Beyond he saw the roofs of the town, then the town wall, with guards walking the parapets. Then fields and countryside stretching off into the distance.
Chris looked at Sir Daniel questioningly.
Sir Daniel said, “There, my scolere. The fires.”
He was pointing in the far distance. Squinting, Chris could just make out faint columns of smoke disappearing into the blue haze. It was at the limit of what he could see.
“That is the company of Arnaut de Cervole,” Sir Daniel said. “They are encamped no more than fifteen miles distant. They will reach here in a day—two days at most. All know it.”
“And Sir Oliver?”
“He knows his battle with Arnaut will be fierce.”
“And yet he holds a tournament—”
“That is a matter of his honor,” Sir Daniel said. “His prickly honor. Certes, he would disband it, if he could. But he does not dare. And herein lies your hazard.”
“My hazard?”
Sir Daniel sighed. He began pacing. “Dress you now, to meet my Lord Oliver in proper fashion. I shall try to avert the coming disaster.”
The old man turned and walked out of the room. Chris looked at the boy. He had stopped scrubbing.
“What disaster?” he said.
33:12:51
It was a peculiarity of medieval scholarship in the twentieth century that there was not a single contemporary