Sweet Revenge Part 1
Adhemar walked between the tents as evening approached. Many new faces peered at him idly, insolently, others stumbled to bed drunk. Adhemar had given up jousting in favor of more serious pursuits. Now he was reliving the old days, only a few years old, but seemingly far away. He spied William's tent and found it empty. He concluded that they must be meeting elsewhere.
She had been obvious, coming to the tournaments, staying to mingle with the throng. He chose not to be infuriated. It mattered very little to him. He only didn't want his inheritance to go to the son of a thatcher's son instead of his own.
Adhemar walked on to the edge of the camp. He then walked almost all around before he saw her on the bank of the river. It must have been a lovely spot in the daylight. A copse of trees was meant to hide them from sight. But even under a half moon her finery was visible while her lover almost blended into the dark and the dirt. Adhemar watched them - their heads close. Then they rolled over and were only a rise along the shore. Jocelyn's laugh reached him and then his. But Thatcher's laugh sounded wrong. As things became more heated between them, Adhemar left.
Adhemar made his way through the camp slowly, wondering how many knew and dared to laugh behind his back. Then he nearly ran into him.
"Thatcher!?" Adhemar said in surprise.
"That's Sir... Ah bugger it, it's late. What are you doing here?"
The boy seemed perfectly casual, unhurried, not the least bit winded.
"You..." Adhemar stared at him.
"What?"
"You look the same," Adhemar said offhandedly not even thinking what he was saying, thinking about the man that was bedding his wife, who wasn't William.
"You're looking right dashing yourself," William said as if going along with Adhemar's strange behavior.
"The same. Young," Adhemar mumbled as he stared at him absently.
William looked unchanged. Not that it was that long ago. It just seemed to be since he had given up the tournaments. Since he had married Jocelyn, and she had tired him out.
"Why, thank you," William said as if a compliment was intended.
Adhemar wasn't paying attention. He was looking back in the direction he had come from.
"You drunk?" William asked him.
"I wish I were. I wish I could over-imbibe and fall into a drunken stupor like your kind," Adhemar told him, envying all those who had to be dragged to their beds by their fellows, unable to stand, unable to think, blissfully ignorant.
"My kind? You mean us young, handsome fellows," William said smiling brightly at Adhemar's misery.
"No, I mean..." Something caught Adhemar's eye - a young man coming toward them, looking in some ways as if he had just woken up. His clothes were disheveled and also his hair. But he was ruddy, flushed, his face obviously red even in the dark, and not at all sleepy. Most damning of all, he wore a stupid grin. On seeing Adhemar, the man stopped. He then looked around him, seeming as if he was going to go in all directions at once. The grin disappeared. The not in the least attractive face twisted as the happiness was gone from it.
Adhemar felt lightheaded. A common... Adhemar was about to ask who that was when William shout, "Hey, Wat!"
In response, Wat made incomprehensible sounds, his voice getting higher with each nonsensical thing he said. Even Thatcher, with his thick, peasant skull, knew something was amiss. He looked from Wat to Adhemar.
"You best go to bed, Wat. You look tired."
"Tired. Tired!" Wat yelled in his strangely high voice and disappeared zigzagging through the tents as if trying to throw off pursuit.
Adhemar looked at Thatcher with suspicion.
"Are you two sharing her then?" he hissed. The shock on the boy's face made Adhemar dismiss the idea.
"What? Where do you get these notions? What is wrong with you?" William blustered.
"I am being cuckolded, you simpleton. And not even by you. By your servant!"
"He is my..."
"Who cares!"
"You are talking nonsense."
He knew. Adhemar was sure of it. He and who knows how many more.
William chattered, but Adhemar didn't look at him or listen. But Adhemar did hear him say, "You wanted drink, didn't you? I can grant your wish," just before Thatcher took his arm very gently and pulled him into his tent.
Adhemar wondered what the boy was up to as he poured him drink after drink. Adhemar considered that the affair might have had an effect on him as well, and he needed the drink as much as Adhemar did. He also considered that Thatcher was planning to drown him in ale. Convince him that whatever he saw he didn't see, and whatever he thought was just drunken foolishness best forgotten.
As ale overtook his senses, Adhemar went from silent, sullen drunkenness to talking about Jocelyn - the troubles she had given him, the petty rebellions, and the constant war between them that wouldn't let him rest between real battles in the field and at court. He didn't expect William to have anything of value to say. And he was right.
"What'd you expect, marrying a woman who didn't love you. Men whose wives love them dearly regret ever getting themselves tied up that way," William was telling him.
"You speak from your complete lack of inexperience," Adhemar slurred looking confused for a moment but not able to figure out what he had said wrong.
"She well nearly killed me, you know. Joust after joust, with me taking it straight to the heart and her heartlessly watching."
"That was nice," Adhemar said with a sloppy smile at the memory and the nearly poetic words.
"Was not. And if she would do that to a man she loved, what would she do to you, do you think? You're lucky to still have body and soul together. 'xcept you don't got a soul you minion of the unholy Devil," William said as he flopped back on the bed.
Adhemar laughed maybe at the boy's 'wisdom' or at being called merely the Devil's minion and not the Devil himself as was the least he was due from this peasant. Or maybe just at the thought of Thatcher being pummeled.
There was more unbefitting laughter and talk between them before William was either asleep or unconscious on the bed. Adhemar looked at his placid face, open mouthed, drooling, handsome in the most common way before he lost consciousness next to him.
To be continued
