Elizabeth Chadwick - The Conquest

The tone was strong and controlled, bearing no particular inflection. Benedict risked a glance from beneath his lids to see if Rodrigo was angry, and was reassured to perceive a glimmer of dry humour in the dark, almost black eyes.

'It grieves me deeply not to have been here sooner, but there were grave doings that kept me from your court, my lord.' Faisal bowed even further, almost as he did when he faced the east to pray to Allah.

Rodrigo looked down and concern coloured his next words. 'Lord Pedro is well, I trust?'

'I left him in good health, my lord. His chest will always pain him somewhat, but I have given him a medicine to take every day, and if he obeys, he will yet live out a long life.'

Rodrigo's expression softened. 'Then it is well. Both of you, rise and sit by me a while.' He indicated the cushioned bench beside his carved chair. A squire was summoned. Food and drink were brought, and while Rodrigo finished his business with his officials, Faisal and Benedict ate and drank.

Benedict had not had much appetite these last few days on the road. Wrestling with his thoughts and his conscience had left very little room to be concerned for bodily sustenance. Now he realised, as he dipped his bread in a bowl of seasoned olive oil, that he was ravenous. He forced himself to chew and swallow at a measured pace and not to overeat, although that was difficult, since the food was the best he had tasted in a long time — succulent roast lamb with mountain herbs, pigeons served with a peppery sauce of wine and garlic, biblical fruits, and small, sweet fritters.

Lord Rodrigo finished his business and turned his attention to the diners, helping himself to a fig from the bowl of fruit. 'Now, then,' he said with a sharp glance at Benedict, 'to grave doings. Your name is?'

Benedict hastily swallowed his mouthful of fritter. 'Benedict de Remy, my lord, from Rouen in Normandy.'

'We came across him almost dead from exposure and arrow wounds,' Faisal explained. 'He was the only one of his pilgrim group to survive. It was an organised attack by Basque hill men. His wife was among the dead. I have been caring for him these past few weeks, and now I bring him to you.'

The Lord Rodrigo's face had turned to stone as Faisal spoke of mountain robbers. 'Such men are beneath mercy,' he said, his lips curling back from his large, white teeth. 'To rob and murder pilgrims bound upon errands of prayer is an act beyond salvation.' He looked at Benedict with anger and compassion. 'I am sorry that you should bear such a burden of grief. Rest assured, I will pursue this matter. The mountains are beyond the reach of my writ, but I will do what I can to influence those who do have jurisdiction.'

'Thank you, my lord.'

'I know it is small comfort to you. The loss of your wife must be a great sorrow.'

Benedict lowered his eyes and said nothing. He did not want to talk about Gisele. He had said enough to Faisal. Nor did he wish to speak of the attack. He remembered very little except the horror of the vultures settling to feed, and Gisele's dead weight stirring back and forth against him in the water's current.

'Do you continue on to Compostella?'

'In time, my lord.' Benedict relaxed slightly. 'It was my wife's intention to pray at the shrine, and I will do so to honour her. But I also came to your country to buy horses. My father-by-marriage is a famed breeder of destriers in Normandy and England. Iberian bloodstock would enhance his reputation even more… and mine.'

Rodrigo looked him up and down. He saw a young man, handsome and slender. The eyes were careworn, the mouth held in the tight line of recent suffering, the hands lean and clever. A horse breeder of repute, so he said, and yet he scarcely looked old enough to grow a beard. Rodrigo could imagine him dallying in the company of women with a harp and pretty love songs, but not assessing warhorses in a dusty tiltyard. Appearances could be deceptive, and Faisal certainly seemed to have taken to the pilgrim, but Rodrigo had learned from bitter experience never to take anyone by word alone.

'I can find you horses,' he said. 'When you are rested, I will show you the herds on my own estates.'

The weariness lifted slightly from the young man's expression. A spark kindled in his eyes and he thanked his host in a tone less dull than his previous exchanges.

Rodrigo shrugged his powerful shoulders. 'It will be my pleasure,' he said, and perused Benedict once more. 'Are you a fighting man? Have you ever been trained to arms?'

Benedict pinched his upper lip between forefinger and thumb and considered the reply. 'I am not sure how to answer, my lord. I know the rudiments of sword play and I can use a spear and shield as well as any footsoldier, and I am competent with both on horseback. I have to be for testing how a particular horse will respond to the weight of an armed man on his back. Not every animal of destrier stock is suitable to become a warhorse.'

Rodrigo nodded. Deceptive appearances again. Perhaps a deceptive tongue too. He reserved his judgement.

The young stallion's hide flowed like molten-bronze, rippling over powerful muscles and strong bones. His mane and tail were an attractive contrast of silver-blond, the latter sweeping to the ground.

Rodrigo smiled inside his mouth at the rapt, almost stunned expression on Benedict de Remy's face as a groom led the animal up and down. 'He is yours,' he said. 'A gift to replace the mount you lost when you were robbed.'

Benedict stared at the vision before him, and was mute with longing, delight, and awe. Cylu, beloved even though he had been, would have fetched only half the worth of this horse in trade. 'My lord, I can never repay you,' he said huskily. 'I know many a lord in Normandy who would give his teeth for a such a horse to use in the hunt.'

'Let me hear no talk of repayment,' Rodrigo said with a shrug. 'What I give, I bestow freely without obligation. Other horses on this stud you may buy, but this one is yours to do with as you wish. He comes from the south, from the Andaluz, and he has a pedigree that goes back to the bible… or so my overseer tells me.'

Benedict stepped up to the horse, approaching it from the side so that it could obtain a full view of him. The liquid eye appraised. The head swung and the nostrils drank in Benedict's scent. In preparation for a morning of examining Lord Rodrigo's horses, Benedict had filled his pouch with dates. Unerringly, the horse extended his neck and snuffled at the leather bag hanging from Benedict's belt.

Rodrigo laughed. So did Benedict as he stepped adroitly to one side and turned his back while he removed two dates and laid them across his palm. The horse followed him, tugging against the groom, until its head rested over Benedict's shoulder. An insistent muzzle quested, and the dates vanished in short order. The horse tossed his head up and down as he chewed, see-sawing the poor groom like a man stuck on a bell rope. As daintily as a nun in a refectory, the horse spat out the cleaned fruit stones, then looked round for more.

Benedict took the bridle from the groom, and setting his foot in the stirrup, swung across the saddle. The wound in his side twinged, but it was an uncomfortable rather than incapacitating pain. The stallion grunted as Benedict's weight came down in the saddle, a sound out of all proportion to the light bulk of the man, and gave a vigorous back-kick of protest. Benedict rode with the move, keeping his body supple, and began to draw in the reins. He recognised the stallion's temperament. The spectacular bronze hide and silver mane and tail were for show and these antics were merely an addition, a way of ensuring attention. Look at me, am I not fine. Benedict had met people who said that a horse was a horse. If it was sound and capable of doing the work for which it was purchased, what more was there to consider?

Benedict thought of gentle Cylu, even-tempered and with the endurance of a rock, of the sparky bay pony of his childhood, and the stubborn pied gelding which had replaced it as he grew. Sleipnir, Cylu's sire, old and whiskered, nigh on thirty years old, a veteran of the great battle on Hastings field. And Freya, Julitta's golden dappled mare. If she was mated to this stallion beneath him, the offspring would likely be beyond price. His mind flooded with the possibilities.

'Does he have a name?'

Rodrigo nodded. 'Kumbi.'

'Kumbi?' The stallion's ears flickered at the familiar sound and he bucked again, more vigorously. Benedict tightened in the reins hard, letting him know who was master, and the warning issued, slackened them slightly.

'It is a trading place, far, far from here; across the sea, across a vast desert larger than an ocean; a market for the gold that is mined in a kingdom the Moors call Gana. Horses, smaller than this, but of great endurance are to be found in the desert.'

Benedict smiled. 'My father-by-marriage would be interested to know of such lands. He has always had a wanderlust for new places and new experiences.'

'You say he is a renowned breeder of horses on his own lands. I am surprised that he has never travelled beyond the Pyrenees himself'

'It has always been on his horizon, a "one day" destination,' Benedict said. 'The last dream when all others have been broken.'

Rodrigo raised his eyebrows, but Benedict did not offer to elaborate. The golden horse, sensing the division of concentration, tried to play up again and for the next few minutes Benedict was occupied in exerting his authority. The stallion put up a struggle, but finally settled down to perform as the man commanded. Benedict asked for a lance and a shield, and when the two were handed up to him, he threaded his left arm through the leather shield straps, and couched the lance in his right. His control of the reins was now negligible, and he had to command the horse through leg pressure and tone of voice. This was where the sensitivity and intelligence of the animal was important. Kumbi possessed full measure of both, and beneath Benedict's gifted handling, performed magnificently.

Rodrigo watched man and mount. Benedict rode like a Moor, he thought, light in the saddle, supple and deadly. The young man knew his trade, of that now Rodrigo had not a single doubt. His look grew thoughtful, but when Benedict drew rein and dismounted, his face flushed with pleasure, the lord of Bivar said nothing of what was on his mind. Instead, he praised Benedict and the horse, and took his guest to meet Sancho, the overseer.

Sancho was wizened and leathery. There was no telling how old he was, but to Benedict, he looked as if he had already been embalmed so closely did his features hug the contours of his bones. Most of Sancho's teeth were missing, and those that survived were twisted yellow pegs. One eye was milky, almost blind, the outer rim of the other was encircled with white, and yet their gaze on Benedict managed to be as sharp as a blade. Looking amused, Lord Rodrigo distanced himself from the confrontation.

'You are a horse breeder in your own country, eh?' Sancho challenged in a cracked voice. 'That doesn't even set you on the first rung of the ladder in Castile.'

'I learn fast,' Benedict replied, maintaining an even tone. 'And I have always been taught well… in the past.'

The old man hawked and spat. The eyes gleamed like opaque stones. 'What makes you think I want to teach you?'

Benedict shrugged. 'What makes you think I want you to teach me?'

They stared at each other, the small, wrinkled veteran of more than sixty burning Iberian summers and the limber young man, supple as a young tree, full of rising sap.

'I know horses, I know men,' Sancho said. His tone was less hostile, as if in that last, examining stare, he had discovered something of interest.

'So do I.' Benedict's gaze flickered to the Lord Rodrigo who was supervising the encounter from the corner of his eye, a half-smile twitching his lips. Sancho glanced too, and his own seamed, thin scar of a mouth began to curve.

'And no-one knows men better than El Cid,' he said. 'He must think you worthwhile in some way to bestow on you a horse of Kumbi's value, and promise you the pick of this stud. What it is he sees in you I do not know, but perhaps I should find out.'

Benedict returned the smile. 'I was of the same opinion about you,' he retorted.