Diamond is of such great hardness that no other hardness is able to overcome it. It scratches and bores through iron. Neither iron nor steel is able to cut into its hardness. It is so strong that it neither gives way nor breaks before cutting into steel. Because this stone withstands his power, the devil is hostile to diamond, and so, at night as well as during the day, the devil disdains it.
Estela wiped a strand of sweaty hair back from her eyes as she opened the door to her dispensary. Good. The girl had remembered to return the leeches, although she still held them as far from her body as possible. Strange prurience given the work the little creatures had done. Maria sighed with relief when Estela took the pot, lifted a corner of the leather cover and slipped her healing aids into the container with their fellows.
Maria perched on a stool, glowing with secrets.
‘You followed instructions and have no ill effects?’ enquired Estela with delicacy, in a doomed effort to avoid too much romantic detail.
Unfortunately Maria’s aims in conversation seemed to be the reverse of Estela’s. She glossed over the treatments and dwelled on her prospects. ‘I won’t need those things again.’ The shudder was genuine as she glanced toward the leech container and back, as was the pride with which she announced. ‘An’ I had been a maiden, I’d not be walking today, so keen was my Lord on his pleasures. Three times inside and once without. I pretended I was too sore, the better to show my skills.’
Estela winced and wondered whether Malik would be treated to such a consultation. She remained standing, hoping the girl would take a hint. ‘I’m glad all went well and that you have no further need of my skills.’
‘I just want to thank you. He loves me and he said so. And I have never been happier in my life. All those bad things, before - there must have been a reason for them. God’s given me a chance for a new life as a lady.’ The pretty face lifted to Estela’s was without guile. ‘He says he’ll marry me.’
Estela opened her mouth to say something cautionary. ‘That’s wonderful,’ she said, with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. Perhaps Maria would become a wife and a lady. Estela was both, and neither, depending which way she held her own situation up to the light. Was she actually envious of the girl?
‘He says he shall make me a diamond ring and till then I shouldn’t show it to anyone, for fear of robbers. But I shall burst if I don’t show somebody and you can be trusted with anything because you’re a doctor.’ A sudden shyness. ‘That’s right, isn’t it? You don’t tell?’
‘That’s right. But you don’t need to tell me anything you don’t want to. If it’s not medical, you can always confess to a priest if you need to unburden yourself.’ Over something like feigning virginity, say, for instance. Estela chided herself for such vinegary thoughts. She knew full well the impossible situation Maria had been in and if anybody was culpable in the eyes of the Almighty, it was she, the professional who’d enabled such deceit. Yet she did not feel guilty and had no intention of confessing to some priest her actions with any patient. She had learned in Narbonne to mistrust the representatives of the Church.
‘Oh no, it’s nothing like that, although if I need your help to bear children, I will come back. It’s too soon to say yet.’ Maria was prattling away. ‘It’s just that my Lord wants me to keep this secret for my own safety, until I am his lady in the eyes of God and the world, protected by his men. Look.’ She pulled a gold chain up from her bodice to show a locket suspended. ‘Open it,’ she commanded.
Curious, Estela prised the clasp open and gasped as light rainbowed from a gemstone, a diamond. ‘That is indeed a jewel fit for a princess,’ she said, snapping the locket shut quickly. Your Lord was right to tell you to keep such a gem quiet!’
‘I know.’ A cat with cream, bee in clover, pig in a wallow: all smug contentment. ‘He is going to have it made into a ring, when we go back to his homeland.’
‘I have only ever seen such diamonds once,’ said Estela. A dozen of them remained in a velvet pouch that Dragonetz kept hidden, but she had no intention of saying so. ‘In the Holy Land.’
‘Yes, that’s where my Lord came by this one, in the Holy Land. He told me so. And he had it polished to be a gift for his lady one day.’ She beamed as her new status surprised her again. ‘For me. I am his Lady. And it was the blood that made the difference.’
‘The blood?’ prompted Estela.
‘From losing my maidenhead. When he saw the proof on the sheet, he went all strange and said he would make everything right. So I knew he meant marriage. And he searched through his things. I didn’t know what he was doing and worried about some perversion - you hear such things, don’t you? But he was sweet as could be and brought the diamond to me. Said something about my blood cleaning it, making it sparkle again. He talks so fine, like poetry. Stands to reason he didn’t come by a diamond like that without blood on his hands, is my guess, and now he feels better, that it’s a love-gift.’
It did stand to reason that diamonds from the Holy Land had blood on them. Estela shivered.
Maria remembered the ostensible reason for her visit. ‘And I want to reward you, from my own purse. Not with the diamond.’ She laughed. ‘But my Lord has been generous and I can show you my appreciation.’ She slipped the purse-string off her wrist and drew it open.
Estela stopped her. ‘I will not take your money. You can’t tell your Lord that you paid the doctor for leeches and potions or he will want to know why. But you can make me a gift, as one lady to another.’
After a moment’s thought, Estela said, ‘As we will be spectators at the tourney and wearing the same colours, Dragonetz’ blue, perhaps you would choose a new scarf for me. Mine seems to have gone missing.’ Maria looked down at her pouch as she pulled the string closed again. ‘Yes, if you could choose a new scarf for me at market tomorrow, that would do very well as a thank you. I suspect you can find a poor family who would benefit from your coin…’ There was no need to say that she had Maria’s own family in mind.
‘You shall have three scarves, my Lady. And I know you shall like them because I have studied your taste, to help me improve and be more a lady.’
‘Thank you, Maria! That is quite a compliment.’ Estela was certain that studying Lady Sancha would further the girl’s ladylike ambitions better than imitating someone who spent her time mixing potions or plucking a lute but refrained from saying so. She noticed that Maria had copied her own way of plaiting and coiffing her long, black hair, so that from behind, they looked quite alike. A compliment indeed.
Geoffroi was sitting on the cold stone, his gaze taking in neither the view through the window nor the letter on his lap as light faded from the horizon. He didn’t need the candle-light in his chamber to know the contents of the letter. The words had him by heart and they wound themselves into his confusion. Satiated from the night before, aching to repeat the experience, he wondered what on earth or hell he was doing. For he had surrendered his chance of heaven on the long, shameful journey back from the Holy Land with his disgraced father. Instead of heaven, he had discovered a purpose in life, revenge instead of crusade.
What if he’d stayed with his brothers? If he’d died fighting the Infidel, the Pope had promised that his soul would be cleansed of all sins - so few and boyish in those days! Wasn’t that his duty, to fight in God’s army, for his Liege Aliénor, alongside men like Dragonetz? His father had been found wanting, not him!
Yet he’d accompanied that broken man into perdition. And now? The missive had been addressed to Geoffroi, hereto known as de Rançon and he’d known before he read it that his father had finally lost his mind but he would never have guessed why, nor how the circumstances would allow no appeal.
Your mother has died. Three years in a convent, refusing all contact with her son after she’d fled her husband’s violence.
In her last moments, she begged the sisters to tell me of my true heir, your younger brother, Geoffroi de Rançon, born after she went to the convent. She told me that this baby was conceived in pure thoughts and blessed by the nuns. She confessed that your conception was by an incubus in my guise and that she committed the sin of lust. This is why you brought evil on our house. Your devilish spells made me fail in my duties as Aliénor’s commander and led to my disgrace.
Once God revealed the cause of my behaviour, your mother pardoned me and bid me exorcise you from our house, so that the good name of our family be restored as if you never existed. She named the baby Geoffroi de Rançon and she did penance for her own part in bringing such an ill-begotten changeling into the world.
Now I understand the cause of all my woes, I too will do penance and protect my heir, Geoffroi de Rançon, from all evil. Do not come within one hundred miles of Rançon or I will have you tried by the Church for the sorcery you inflicted on this family. Seek employment or damnation elsewhere.
Formal repudiation of your rights to inherit has been lodged with our Liege, Aliénor, Duchesse of Aquitaine and Queen of England and with the Clerk de Rançon.
No signature, just the seal. In pity and respect for his service, Aliénor had sent Geoffroi on this mission and told him he could rejoin the company in England. If he did, it would be as a knight with no name. He heard the whispers, saw men crossing themselves behind his back.
He had vowed before God to avenge his father against the cause of their downfall, Dragonetz, and all he had left was his knighthood and that vow, plus the worldly goods he had accumulated. These were sufficient for his upkeep but no compensation for what he’d lost. Nor help in understanding what he’d gained.
He had a baby brother, growing up in the Rançon estate, its precious heir. Falling and skinning his knees on the gravel around the walled potager. Being shushed and cuddled by his nurse while he cried. Geoffroi felt the warmth of a woman’s arms soothing a little boy’s pain: his nurse - sometimes even his mother.
But this child was motherless and so was he. His mother’s last act had been to kill her elder son. Worse than killing, she had taken his life and his name, given them to another, and left him breathing still.
Perhaps he should kill the Geoffroi usurper. He tried to imagine running his sword through the toddler, even gave the babe their father’s eyes to stir up a rush of heat. After all, he’d done worse, for less reason, and enjoyed it. And yet, he couldn’t do it. He could not change who he was and he had never betrayed his family, or rather what used to be his family. All he wanted was to make good the family name, protect this new member, teach him dice games and take him to his first drink, his first woman, his first fight.
Unclenching his fist, he studied his hand, saw a small fist curled in his, heard a baby’s laughter. He would have been so good as a big brother. He could be such a good father too, he who knew the worst of parenting. What future was there now for any child his woman might bear.
Had he really pictured himself a ruddy-faced lord in Rançon, Maria and a brood of children beside him, accepting what life allowed him instead of seeking what was impossible? Hadn’t Dragonetz himself found solace in some Damascan woman, even after he’d realised she was not Estela?
Never before had Geoffroi taken a woman without feeling disgust. He could not name, even to himself, the sweetness that had swept through in bed with this girl but he had dared to imagine that the future could be re-written. That he and the bloodied diamond could both be cleansed.
‘An ill-begotten changeling’. He clenched his fist again, would have smashed it into the stone but for the knowledge that tomorrow was tourney day. Here, he was still Geoffroi de Rançon, stronger and more devious than Dragonetz los Pros and fighting beside him in the field. There was much to consider and he wanted all parts of his body at fighting strength. He remained a knight.
‘Eschew false judgement and treason; honour and aid womankind. Thou shalt never slay thy lord, lie with his lady or surrender his castle. He murmured the words spoken over his making, when he had sworn fealty to Aliénor, as had Dragonetz. And look where they were now.
A soft knock on the door announced his evening visitor and the moment she was through the door he buried his face in the girl’s long, black hair, twining it through his fingers like a safety rope. He kissed her silent, swept her to the bed, trying to be gentle. So soft, so sweet. He felt the wave of pleasure, surging too soon, tried to hold back. The pressure built like a thunderstorm, crashing up from his loins to the back of his neck and into his head, where it exploded like the wrath of God in pain such as he’d never known before.
‘My Lord? Are you all right?’
Rainbows zigzagged in front of his eyes. The girl crushed beneath him split into three concerned faces, as she wriggled to breathe more easily. His head thumped with a headache worse than the time he’d caught a mace blow on his helm.
He rolled over, controlled his breathing as if in full armour under desert sun. Gradually, the thumping reduced to bearable pain.
‘My Lord?’ Frightened this time.
He reached for her hand, heart pounding to match his head.
‘I’m all right,’ he lied. ‘Too much pleasure, too quickly. Go to sleep.’ Perhaps his mother had been right. Damned in this world as well as the next. Why had God chosen to punish him for lust, just at the moment he was ready to atone for worse? Maybe this was a warning, a reminder. As he lay there, recovering, a sleeping girl’s hand clasped in his own, he vowed that he would make it good, all of it. He would make the pilgrimage to Sant Iago de Compostela and complete it on his knees. He would marry his bedmate, bring children into the world and be a good father. His lashes were wet as his headache receded and he fell into dreams of storms and rainbows.