Shields of Pride Page 15

  Joscelin cast his uncle a warning stare and made a chopping movement with his right hand. Unperturbed, Conan continued to smile, his scar turning his expression into a leer.

  ‘Is he really your uncle?’ asked Martin, who had attached himself to the three men without being noticed. He looked upon Conan with the same bright curiosity he had given to the bear at Smithfield Fair.

  Joscelin chuckled and tousled his younger brother’s chestnut curls. ‘I’m afraid he is but don’t let his appearance deceive you.’ He looked at Conan. ‘Although he’s a liability when there’s no one to fight, there are few people I’d rather have at my back on the battlefield.’

  Conan raised a mocking eyebrow. ‘Kind of you to admit it,’ he said but Joscelin could tell he was pleased.

  ‘Why aren’t you at sword practice?’ William snapped at his youngest son.

  Martin regarded his father without fear. ‘Sir Alain sent me to get another sword. The old wooden one I was using broke.’

  ‘And you are on your way now?’

  ‘Yes, sir. But I thought it good manners to stop and greet our guests.’

  Ironheart’s lips twitched. ‘I suspect that a long, inquisitive nose is nearer to the truth. Go, hurry now, before you find yourself answering to Sir Alain for your tardiness. ’ He gave the boy’s shoulder a swift shake.

  No sooner had Martin gone than Robert appeared at a run and flung himself at Joscelin, who swung him up into his arms.

  ‘Where’s your mother? Does she know that you are here?’

  Robert nodded and burrowed his head against Joscelin’s throat, his arms tightening. Joscelin could feel the rapid pitter-patter of the child’s heartbeat beneath his fingers. ‘She sent me to stay with you,’ Robert said. ‘The lady we went to see wasn’t very nice. I didn’t like her, but she fell over and Mama stayed to help her get up.’

  Joscelin looked across Robert’s fair head at his father.

  ‘Agnes has been very difficult of late,’ Ironheart said with an impatient shrug and a look of distaste. ‘She spends all her time brooding about Ralf and Ivo and plotting ways to see them back into my favour.’

  Joscelin cuddled Robert and said nothing.

  ‘In the spring, once Martin has gone for fostering in de Luci’s household, I’m going to buy her a corody and settle her with the nuns at Southwell,’ William said.

  ‘Should have done it years ago, man,’ Conan said bluntly.

  William’s mouth twisted. ‘She is my penance. I have worn her presence like a hair shirt for more than half my life.’

  And she had worn his, too, for the sake of her sons, Joscelin thought, and was unlikely to agree to enter a nunnery while their future remained in doubt.

  ‘I saw another lady on the stairs,’ Robert piped up as his hero’s attention strayed. ‘A nice lady. She smelled like flowers.’

  ‘Did she?’ Joscelin said, not taking much notice.

  ‘Her hair was longer than Mama’s, nearly to her knees, and she was wearing a pretty green dress with dangly sleeves,’ Robert babbled.

  His words were like stones dropped in a pool. Ripples of silence expanded from them and drowned the men in shock. William’s face turned the colour of ashes.

  ‘Jesu!’ Conan muttered and, crossing himself, stared at the child.

  ‘Did she speak to you?’ Involuntarily, Joscelin looked towards the dark entrance of the tower stairs, then raised his head to study the long walk of the gallery and the double row of oak rails. Sunlight from the tall windows above the dais gilded the spear tips that impaled the family banners above the hearth. They stirred in the updraught from the flames. He could feel the erratic, hard thud of his own pulse against the pressure of the child’s body.

  Robert shook his head. ‘No, but she smiled and walked down the stairs with me so I wouldn’t be frightened of the dark. She’s gone now.’

  The men looked at one another, not daring to voice what their minds were shouting.

  ‘Probably one of the maids,’ Conan said, his heartiness too hollow for conviction. ‘Or perhaps the lad has overheard something and embroidered it with his imagination. ’ His gaze went as Joscelin’s had done to the dark tower mouth where they had found his sister unconscious, tangled in the folds of her green gown. He closed his eyes and did not open them again until he had turned to face William Ironheart. ‘You asked why I was here. I never did pay my respects at Morwenna’s tomb. You threw me out and said you would hang me like a common felon if I so much as set foot on Arnsby land. But that was a long time ago. We’re old men now. I want to make peace with the past before it is too late for all of us.’

  ‘There is no such thing as peace,’ William replied hoarsely, his own eyes riveted on the tower entrance.

  Chapter 17

  The chapel dedicated to Morwenna de Gael stood on the edge of the forest, close to the village of Arnsby but separated from it by the mill stream, which was crossed by means of a humpbacked stone bridge. In front of the chapel sheep cropped the grass, keeping it nibbled to a short turf dappled with daisies and pink clover.

  Astride her mare, Linnet studied this shrine to Joscelin’s mother. The white Caen stone wore a golden reflection of the afternoon sun. Windows eyebrowed with intricate stone patterns viewed the world from dark irises of painted glass. A solid wooden door, handsomely decorated with barrings of wrought iron, was wedged open and a path of sunlight beckoned the eye over the threshold and into the nave. Beautiful and tranquil, she thought, so unlike the restless spirit that walked Arnsby’s corridors in the minds of its occupants.

  She glanced at Robert, whom Joscelin was lowering from his saddle on to the turf. Joscelin had told her what her son had said. ‘He scared us half to death.’ He had looked wry. ‘Conan says it was probably one of the maids and we’re all clinging to that belief, but . . .’ Then he had shrugged and spread his hands. ‘It is strange all the same, very strange.’

  Linnet watched Robert kneel in the grass and cup his hands around a ladybird. The sunlight made a nimbus of his hair and his face was open and bright with pleasure. Whatever he had seen or absorbed on that stair had done him no harm. Any darkness had settled on the adults long ago and was probably of their own making. She thought of Agnes de Rocher with mixed feelings of pity and revulsion.

  Joscelin was waiting at her stirrup and he held up his arms to lift her down. ‘Why the frown?’ he queried.

  Her brow cleared and she shook her head. ‘Nothing. I was thinking of your father’s wife, and there but for the grace of God . . .’ She descended into his arms, twisting slightly to avoid hurting his wounded shoulder.

  ‘She upset you, didn’t she?’ He set her on the ground but his hands remained lightly at her waist. She felt the pressure of his palms and fingers, and her loins softened. She was aware of the rise and fall of his chest and the brightness of his stare.

  ‘More than a little,’ she admitted breathlessly and tried to concentrate on what he had said rather than the effect of his closeness on her senses. ‘She told me you had deliberately come to Arnsby to remind your father that he still had a loyal son of full age and also to show me off as a trophy of your success.’

  He smiled and tilted his head to one side. His hand drew light circles in the small of her back. ‘And is there anything wrong with either of those?’

  ‘It was the way she spoke of your motives, as if you had come to take what advantage you could.’

  ‘She doesn’t know how close to the truth she was,’ he said with obvious double meaning and lowered his head to kiss her.

  It was heady and sweet, tender and strong. Linnet clutched him for support and felt him move back on his heels to keep his balance as she swayed against him. In that moment Robert thrust between them, eager to show off his ladybird. Joscelin staggered and released her. Linnet stumbled one pace after him then steadied herself. Robert stared up at the adults out of light, shining eyes.

  ‘Look, Mama!’ he cried, holding out the ladybird on the palm of his hand. The bee
tle opened its glossy red wing-cases and whirred into the air. ‘It’s gone!’ Robert dashed across the grass in pursuit.

  Joscelin drew a slow, deep breath and clamped his hands around his belt, in unconscious imitation of his father. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘being honourable is very hard. Yes, I’ve considered laying claim to Arnsby. If it weren’t for Martin, I might even have discarded my integrity to do it.’ He smiled with more pain than humour. ‘And if it weren’t so important to you that this three months of mourning be observed, I’d have laid claim to your bed weeks ago.’

  Linnet could feel her spine dissolving in the look he was giving her. She was sorely tempted to say that the three months of mourning were far less important than they had been but she held back. He knew that Giles had not trusted her and she did not want to give Joscelin cause to wonder if Giles had been right. Let him see that she could resist temptation. And, on a level far deeper and fraught with guilt, she had to prove it to herself.

  ‘It is not that I am unwilling but I would rather make sure that I am not carrying Giles’s seed,’ she said. ‘And because it is the “honourable” thing to do by the dead. Besides, people must see that you are the justiciar’s true representative, not some adventurer who has snatched me from across my husband’s coffin and dragged me before the nearest priest.’

  Joscelin sighed. ‘People will see what they want to see,’ he said. ‘They always do,’ but stood aside to let her walk up the path to the open chapel doorway.

  She could feel his eyes burning upon her spine like a physical touch. Shivering, she forced herself neither to quicken her pace nor to look over her shoulder. She heard Robert cry to Joscelin that he had found another ladybird, and Joscelin’s distracted reply. And then the solid walls of the chapel interior cut off all sounds from outside and she was immersed in a tranquillity of pale stone arches rising in two tiers to a ceiling patterned with curves and lozenges of chiselled stone.

  Linnet’s breathing slowed as she absorbed the atmosphere of clarity and peace. She paced solemnly up the small flagged nave to the altar and, kneeling, crossed herself and honoured God before she rose and approached the tomb of Morwenna de Gael.

  Diamonds of colour from the windows painted Linnet’s shoulder and the drapes of stone clothing the plinth. She touched the smooth alabaster pleats of Morwenna’s robe. White, with a hint of translucence, Ironheart’s mistress lay in stone state above her mortal remains, her hands clasped in prayer. Tucked against her arm was the swaddled baby she had died bearing. Someone had recently crowned the folds of her veil with a chaplet of threaded marigolds and they cast an amber glow upon the smooth, white brow.

  Ironheart and Conan had come to kneel side-by-side facing the altar. Tall candles, thick as a warrior’s wrist, stood upon it like spears and between them rose a Byzantine cross of garnet and silver-gilt, a crusading legacy of a former de Rocher. There was no sign of the priest or the nuns, although they must be nearby to tend the candles and the votive lights beside the tomb. For now, the two men were left to their silence and perhaps their healing.

  Linnet quietly lit a votive candle of her own. Her lips moved in silent prayer for the soul of Morwenna de Gael. Then she said a prayer for herself, asking silently for courage and forgiveness. When she crossed herself and rose she noticed that William de Rocher’s hands bore a golden dusting of pollen, as if he had been gathering flowers.

  Chapter 18

  September 1173

  It was raining outside and pitch-dark. Joscelin cursed as he surfaced from sleep and heard the water spattering against the shutters. He pushed down the sheepskins that had been cocooning him and, shivering, sat up. The night candle had gone out. Groping, he found the coffer, and, after a moment, the tinderbox on top of it. By the time he had managed to coax a light from the two flints and the small pieces of shaved wood, a yawning Henry had appeared with a sputtering taper in his hand.

  ‘I’m sorry, my lord. You woke before I did,’ he apologized, kindling a steadier flame from the night candle. ‘My mam’s boiling up some pottage for the men to eat before you ride out.’

  Joscelin grimaced. There had been other times like this in his days as a mercenary - foul pre-dawn mornings when any sane man would bury his head beneath the covers and hibernate. Even packed in waxed linen for travelling, mail shirts, helms and weapons would be rusty within hours, and the chill of steady rainfall would seep through garments into flesh and permeate the bones. Unfortunately, with the Scots over the border in force and rapidly heading south, granted free passage by the treacherous Bishop of Durham, there was no alternative but to ride out and intercept their ravages. The command from de Luci had arrived yesterday noon with the instruction that Joscelin was to take his men and join a preliminary muster at Nottingham.

  Henry’s teeth chattered as the rain threw itself full force against the shutters. ‘Can’t say as I’m sorry to be staying here, my lord,’ he said. ‘Do you reckon they’ll get as far as Derby?’

  Joscelin donned his gambeson over his shirt and tunic. ‘If we act now, I doubt it. But the Earl of Leicester is massing troops across the Narrow Sea for an invasion. It would be inconvenient if he were to strike at the same time as the Scots. That’s why de Luci said we had to move as fast as possible.’

  ‘I’ll pray for your safekeeping and victory, my lord,’ Henry said, crossing himself.

  When Joscelin arrived in the great hall, his men and Conan’s were crowded around the fire, sipping bowls of pottage, wrapping their leggings, fastening belts, yawning and scratching. Not particularly hungry, but knowing he must eat something if he was to survive a long wet day in the saddle, Joscelin went to claim his own breakfast from Henry’s mother, Dame Winifred.

  ‘God send you good fortune, my lord,’ she said, presenting him with a steaming bowl. Her bright black eyes fixed on him until he had taken the first mouthful and assured her that it was good. The crone at the caldron Milo called her, but only because she guarded its contents jealously and would not permit him to go sampling them as and when he chose.

  Joscelin moved among the men, speaking a brief word here and there. Conan eyed him sidelong, concealing a smile in his greying beard. ‘Seems not a moment since I was giving you the orders,’ he remarked.

  ‘More than five years,’ Joscelin said sharply.

  Conan raised a defensive hand. ‘Pax, you pay my wages. As long as your head doesn’t swell so much that you can’t fit it through your tunic neck, I’ll not interfere.’

  ‘And as long as you keep your tongue behind your teeth, I’ll not be tempted to cut it out!’ Joscelin retorted. ‘When you’ve finished your pottage, you can give the order to mount up. I want to be on the road by first light.’

  Conan pursed his lips. ‘You always were a grouchy sod in the mornings,’ he said, but attended to his food with increased speed.

  Joscelin narrowed his eyes but let the comment pass. At a tug on his gambeson hem, he looked down to find Robert standing at his side. The child’s hair was still sleep-ruffled and his tunic had been put on back-to-front and inside out. Juhel had often stood thus but his hair had been black and he had had the dark eyes of a faun.

  Joscelin crouched. ‘Shouldn’t you still be in bed, young man?’

  ‘I wanted to see you - to tell you not to go.’

  Joscelin took Robert’s icy hands in his, then drew the shivering little boy into the circle of his arms and perched him on his thigh. ‘We spoke about this last night, didn’t we?’ he said gently. ‘I have to leave for a short while at least. The man who asked me to take care of you and your mother needs my help.’

  ‘But if you go to him, you won’t be here to look after us.’

  ‘Milo is staying. You know Milo; he won’t let anything happen to you. And Malcolm will be here, too. His wound’s almost better but not quite enough for a long ride. I won’t be gone long, I promise.’

  Robert was quiet for a moment, but not in acquiescence. Joscelin could almost see his mind working, seeking reasons for
Joscelin not to leave. ‘Mama doesn’t want you to go either,’ he said.

  ‘But she knows that I must.’

  ‘She was crying last night. She thought I was asleep but I wasn’t. She told Ella she did not know what she would do if you were killed.’ Robert flung his arms around Joscelin’s neck in a throttling grip. ‘I don’t want you to die.’

  Joscelin swallowed and held him close. ‘I’m not going to die. There’s too much to live for.’

  The boy trembled and shook his head. ‘I don’t want you to go,’ he repeated.

  Joscelin delved inside his various layers of clothing and pulled out a leather thong upon which was threaded a small wooden cross. ‘I’ve had this since I was sixteen. It was given to me by someone very special and I’ve not taken it off once. It protects me in battle.’ A lie, since Joscelin relied on nothing in battle except his own skill and the speed of his responses. But the child had need of magic and talismans. Breaca had given the token to him as they lay on sheepskins beneath the stars on the road to Falaise. His first time with a woman. A piece of the true cross, she had said, her mouth both scornful and tender.

  Robert touched the dark, crudely carved wood and seemed to derive some comfort from it, for Joscelin felt him relax slightly. ‘Does it really protect you?’

  ‘I swear it,’ Joscelin said solemnly. ‘But it will help its power if you pray for me, too, every day after Mass.’

  Robert nodded and wriggled, his attention wandering now that his fears were a little allayed.

  ‘And when I return, I expect you to be able to canter your pony round the tiltyard all by yourself.’

  ‘I can nearly do that now!’

  ‘I know, but I won’t be gone long. Now then, you had better go and find some warmer clothes if you’re coming out to see us on the road.’ He gave Robert a final hug and set him on his feet. Then he rose to his own as Linnet and her maid entered the hall. Ella immediately took Robert in hand, scolding him gently as she led him away to be properly dressed.