Shields of Pride Read online

  Chapter 21

  Maude de Montsart shook out her crumpled riding gown of Flemish twill. ‘Has there been any news, my dear?’ she asked Linnet as a groom led away the placid bay ambler to be watered and rubbed down. The two soldiers who had escorted her from Arnsby were already on their way to the guardroom to wait out her stay before the comfort of a stoked brazier.

  Linnet sighed and shook her head. ‘Not since last Tuesday. Joscelin sent me some hides he’d bought at a bargain price from a tannery on Leenside and wrote that he was leaving Nottingham the day after, but that was all. What about you?’ She drew Maude across the bailey and up the forebuilding stairs into the great hall.

  ‘William sent a messenger to fetch his thick cloak and waxed linens. That must have been about the same time that Joscelin wrote to you. My brother never communicates well even at the best of times.’

  ‘No,’ Linnet said wryly, thinking of her wedding day.

  Maude looked at her curiously.

  Linnet told her about Ironheart’s ungracious behaviour. ‘And then he had the gall to soak in the tub until the water was nearly cold!’ she said indignantly. ‘Nor did he object when I gave him Giles’s old fur-lined bedrobe to wear afterwards while he was barbered, the hypocrite!’ Then she laughed reluctantly. Recounting it now, she could see the humour in the situation.

  Maude’s eyelids creased with amusement. ‘William has a reputation to maintain. He’s not as hard as people think. That myth grew out of the time after Morwenna died when he was mad with grief and no one could approach him without getting their head bitten off.’ She smiled at Linnet. ‘Look at it this way, my dear, rather than riding to Arnsby, he chose to stay at Rushcliffe before leaving to rendezvous with the constable’s troops.’

  Linnet nodded. It was a dubious sign of favour, she thought, and one she could easily have foregone.

  Maude lifted her eyes to the high windows. ‘I cannot blame him either. This is a beautiful room.’

  Linnet looked up too. The proportions of this, Raymond’s lair, were surprisingly elegant. The strong, pure lines picked up and carried the Romanesque curves of windows and supporting arches like embroidery on a beautifully cut but austere gown. ‘Giles’s grandsire went on Crusade and captured an emir. He put all the ransom money into this place,’ she said and led Maude up the stairs to the bower.

  Panting somewhat from the climb, Maude surveyed the large, sun-flooded bower, its whitewashed walls decorated with Flemish hangings. ‘Oh, it’s lovely! Just look at the size of this fireplace, and a stone canopy too!’

  Linnet was silent as Maude examined and enthused over the bower. At length the older woman plumped herself down on the padded settle. Something of Linnet’s mood must have communicated itself to Maude for she cocked her head inquisitively.

  ‘Do you not like living here, my dear?’

  Linnet frowned as she studied the warm, bright room. ‘It is the memories I do not like,’ she said after a hesitation. ‘My marriage to Giles and what came after.’

  Maude nodded. ‘But that is over now. You are a new wife and you have new memories to make. I trust Joscelin is treating you well?’

  Linnet blushed and sat down on the other end of the settle. ‘He has been very good to me.’

  ‘More than that, to judge from the colour in your cheeks!’ Maude smiled.

  Linnet returned the expression but without her entire heart. Yes, he had been very good to her but perhaps he would cease to be if she told him about herself and Raymond de Montsorrel. She had almost said something as they lay entwined in the afterglow of a second mating but her first tentative words had been met by the indifferent mumble of a man already three-quarters asleep and her courage had failed her. Why tell him at all? It was in the past, finished. And all the time, at the back of her mind, a small voice was crying, You would revile me if you knew what I had done. Not even to a priest had she ever confessed her sin. She would go to hell when she died and assuredly meet Raymond there.

  Maude’s humour faded and, leaning over, she gently touched Linnet’s knee. ‘You are troubled, my dear?’

  Linnet blinked moisture from her eyes and swallowed. ‘No,’ she lied. ‘It is nothing.’

  The curtain across the bower entrance billowed and then was flurried aside by a giggling Robert, who was running away from Ella.

  ‘Just you come here this instant, young man, and wash those muddy hands!’ the maid cried, and catching him, tickled him into a state of helpless submission before sweeping him across the room to the laver.

  Distracted by the intrusion, Maude craned round to watch the child complain and grimace at being scrubbed. ‘I never had infants of my own,’ she said wistfully. ‘William’s brood has been my family.’

  Linnet saw the sadness in Maude’s face. Her lap was generous and made to nurse small children. ‘Robert has no grandparents,’ she said. ‘I would be honoured if you became one to him.’

  Maude stared at Linnet as if she had just been offered a place in heaven, and her eyes filled with emotion. ‘There is nothing that would give me more pleasure,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘Martin’s leaving Arnsby after Christmas to join Richard de Luci’s household and I’ll miss having a child about the place. To know I can visit you and be special to Robert is a gift beyond price.’ She embraced Linnet in a fervent hug.

  ‘It is as much for my sake as yours!’ Linnet responded, her own voice unsteady. ‘My mother died when I was a baby. I’ve never had an older woman to talk to, except Richard de Luci’s wife sometimes and the Countess Petronilla.’

  ‘That’s the name of my horse!’ Overhearing, Robert skipped up to them, his demeanor as chirpy as a squirrel’s. ‘She’s called Petra for short. Malcolm’s been teaching me to jump her over logs.’ He leaped in the air, demonstrating. ‘Joscelin says that he’s going to show me how to tilt at the quintain when he comes home and he’s promised me some bridle bells, too. Joscelin’s my papa now.’

  ‘Yes, my love, so that makes you and me relatives,’ Maude said and produced a small box containing squares of a sticky date sweetmeat, which she gave to the child. ‘Don’t eat too many at once; you’ll make yourself sick and your mother will be cross with me.’

  Robert was more taken with the carvings on the little box than he was with the contents. Maude helped him to eat one of the glistening dark pieces and enquired after his coneys.

  ‘They’re grazing in the garth,’ Linnet said. ‘I’ve had the carpenter fashion an enclosure to keep them from harm and prevent them escaping and eating the salad leaves.’

  ‘The babies were all pink and blind at first but they’ve got black fur now,’ Robert announced somewhat stickily. ‘The messenger said he’d like a black coney-skin cloak but Malcolm told him my coneys were special pets.’

  Linnet grasped Robert’s arm. ‘What messenger, sweetheart? ’

  ‘The one who arrived when we were unsaddling Petra. He was all covered in dust and his horse was foamy. Henry’s sister gave the man a drink.’

  Linnet stood up, her mouth dry and her heart pounding. She had taken only two steps towards the chamber door when she heard voices on the stairs and Malcolm appeared on her threshold with Milo. They flanked a travel-stained, dishevelled and obviously exhausted young soldier.

  Linnet stood straight and still as she looked at the men. ‘What news?’ she demanded. ‘Tell me.’

  The messenger advanced and bent the knee. He was one of Conan’s Bretons, a stocky young man scarcely out of adolescence with a downy beard fuzzing his square jaw. ‘There is no need for fear, my lady, the news is good,’ he said as she gestured him to rise and face her. ‘Our troops met Leicester’s near to Edmundsbury at a place called Fornham. All swampy, the land was, and no fit place to fight but we forced them to a battle nevertheless and cut them to pieces. Them as we didn’t get, the peasants did with pitchforks and spears. The earl himself has been taken prisoner and his countess with him.’ Rummaging in his pouch, he withdrew a crumpled, water-stained packet. ‘A
letter from my lord. He says to expect him in three days’ time, all being well.’

  Colour flooded back into Linnet’s face as she took the packet from the mercenary’s blunt fingers. ‘And is he whole? He has taken no injury?’

  ‘No, my lady.’ The young man grinned, revealing a recently lost front tooth. ‘Mostly it was like spearing fish in a barrel. In the end we fetched up pitying the poor bastards that were left and let them run away into the marshes.’ He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Not as that’ll do ’em any good. Like as not they’ll drown or be picked off one by one by the eel fishers and fowlers round about.’ His voice dried up and he began to cough.

  Maude quickly poured him wine from the pitcher on the side table and brought it to him. ‘Do you know what happened to your lord’s half-brothers, Ralf and Ivo de Rocher?’ she asked anxiously.

  The mercenary took several gulps from his cup. ‘No, my lady. All I can tell you is that they weren’t taken with the earl and his wife. Sir William has offered a reward for their safe delivery into his custody and he’s stayed behind at Fornham to see if anyone turns them in. Lord Joscelin says Sir William ought to come home, the damp’s not good for him, but he won’t be swayed. Says he doesn’t care whether his sons are alive or corpses, they’re still coming home.’

  Linnet unfolded the vellum sheet and gazed upon her husband’s firm brown ink strokes. Joscelin wrote almost as good a hand as a professional scribe, although the flow was a little too open and generous of vellum for a true craftsman. She imagined him seated at a table, one hand thrust into his hair, the other busy with a quill. It was a satisfying image and she deliberately enlarged upon it to banish the other one of him astride Whitesocks, brandishing a dripping sword.

  ‘My heart bleeds for them,’ Maude had said to her when the messenger had gone. ‘William and my nephews both. What if Ralf and Ivo are dead? How will William live with the burden of knowing he might have killed them? They may look like grown men but really they are still jealous little boys.’ And she had dabbed at her eyes with the trailing end of her sleeve.

  Robert had taken Maude to the garth to look at his coneys, thus giving Linnet a moment alone to read her letter in peace. She sat down in the window embrasure. A puddle of late autumn sunshine warmed her feet through her soft leather shoes. The only sound was the muted conversation of two maids weaving braid by the hearth.

  As a child, Linnet had received basic tuition in reading and writing from the household priest - enough so that she could understand but she was not particularly fluent. Painstakingly she picked up each word of Joscelin’s and consigned it like a jewel from page to memory.

  Joscelin de Gael to my lady and before God mine own beloved wife, greeting. As you will know by the time you read this, I am coming home to you unscathed from our army’s meeting with the Earl of Leicester. A truce has been agreed with the rebels until spring.

  We should reach Nottingham the day after tomorrow. I will lodge there the night at my father’s town house, and ride to you as soon as I have concluded business with the constable.

  Until then, I give you keeping of my heart.

  Witness myself on the third day after the feast of Saint Luke.

  The words warmed her as much as the splash of sunlight and foolish tears blurred her vision. Not since childhood had affection been hers to command except in Robert’s eyes. Once she had made the mistake of believing that Raymond de Montsorrel was fond of her, that the gentle hands and persuasive voice were indicative of his concern, but it had all been a game to him, a bolster of his prideful boast that no woman, lady or whore, had ever refused him.

  The sunlight blazed on the vellum as she folded it tenderly, her fingertips lingering on the strokes that bore the mark of Joscelin’s hand. She went to her work basket, and taking her awl worked a hole through the folded corners. Then she threaded it onto the cord around her neck, which also held her cross. The cord lay between her breasts and the vellum lay on her skin; Joscelin’s heart over hers.

  Chapter 22

  ‘We’re lost, aren’t we?’ Ivo snivelled.

  Ralf clenched his fists on his wet reins and turned in the saddle to scowl at his brother. ‘God’s eyes, will you cease whining! You’re still alive, aren’t you?’

  The rain had been falling steadily since dawn, making of the forest a permanent green twilight. Water sluiced down Ralf’s helm and soaked through the twin layers of his cloak. His hauberk bled gritty rust and his thighs chafed against the saddle with each stride of his exhausted horse.

  In heavy drizzle, Leicester’s army had struck across the country towards the earl’s Midland strongholds and had been met by their doom on the marshy ground near the village of Fornham. Earl Robert had relied too heavily on his Flemish recruits - weedy men and boys who were mostly unemployed weavers by trade - and Hugh de Bohun’s knights had smashed them. Filled with rage and fear, Ralf had hacked his way to escape, dragging a terrified Ivo in his wake. Now the forests surrounding Edmunsbury and Thetford stretched for miles, punctuated by the occasional charcoal-burner’s dwelling or verderer’s hut. And outside of their gloomy green protection, for all Ralf knew, the Royalist army was waiting to finish anyone who had not died by the sword or drowned in the marshes.

  ‘My horse is going lame,’ Ivo complained. ‘Do you think we’ll find shelter soon?’

  Ralf closed his eyes and swallowed. In a moment he was going to offer Ivo shelter - six feet deep with a cosy counterpane of leaf mould. The idiot was about as much use as a punctured waterskin. Couldn’t fight, couldn’t think. Ralf did not answer but urged his own horse to a faster pace.

  The forest dripped around him like a giant open mouth waiting to swallow whatever was foolish enough to ride over the drawbridge of its mossy tongue. The smell of mildew and fungus was almost overpowering. Ralf ’s eyes stung and his vision became a green blur. He was a rebel, an outcast, shivering to death in a Lowland forest. The spark of rebellion that had led him in fellow sympathy to join young Henry’s cause was extinguished. The desire to wound his father, and at the same time prove his own worth, still goaded him with a vengeance. He hungered for respect and admiration, and the more they eluded him the more desperate he grew.

  ‘Ralf, wait!’ Ivo’s forlorn cry came muffled through the grey-green downpour.

  Viciously, Ralf jabbed the stallion’s flanks. The beast stumbled on a tree root then shied as a woodpecker dipped across the path. Ralf gripped the pommel to steady himself. One shoulder struck a tree branch and he cursed at the crunch of pain. He drew rein to recover and with resignation listened to the beat of approaching hooves as Ivo made up the ground between them.

  ‘Ralf . . . ,’ Ivo said miserably.

  Ralf inhaled to snarl at his brother, but his breath solidified in his chest for Ivo was being held at spearpoint by a grinning English soldier who was one of a group of half a dozen armed men.

  ‘If your hand is going to your sword, I hope it’s only to surrender it,’ said the soldier in thickly accented French. ‘Give me one small excuse, Norman, and I’ll have your guts to banner my spear.’

  Ralf shuddered, more than half-tempted to give the soldier the very excuse he needed. It would be so simple. One thrust and everything would be finished. But was there any guarantee except a priest’s prating assurance that the afterlife was any better? Slowly he grasped the hilt of his sword and drew it from its wool-lined scabbard.

  ‘Ralf, for Jesu’s sake, give it to him!’ Ivo croaked, eyes huge with alarm. ‘You’ll find us worth the ransom,’ he gabbled, eyes darting around the tightening circle of men. ‘We’re the sons of William de Rocher, known as Ironheart - his heirs, in fact.’ He licked his lips.

  Ralf sent Ivo a glare of utter scorn and threw the sword down into the thick leaf mould at his destrier’s fore-hooves as if he were tossing a coin to a beggar.

  The Englishman grinned. ‘The sons of the great Ironheart, eh?’ The relish in his tone scoured deep. ‘I wonder how much your illustrious sire is willing
to pay for the return of his two lost sheep. Better hope it’s more than your true worth or I might be tempted not to go to the bother of ransoming you.’

  ‘He’ll pay anything you want,’ Ivo assured the Englishman anxiously. ‘He will, Ralf, won’t he?’

  Ralf narrowed his light-brown eyes. ‘Oh yes,’ he muttered. ‘He’ll pay.’

  * * *

  In the wet October afternoon, a bitter wind herded a fleece of clouds northwards and blew into the face of William de Rocher as he and his men drew rein outside the village alehouse to which their English guide had brought them.

  ‘Is this the place?’ A paradox of hope and sinking despair made Ironheart’s voice harsh.

  ‘Yes, my lord.’ His guide looked at him sidelong. ‘It might not seem much but there’s a mighty stout apple-cellar under the main-room floor.’

  A muscle flickered in Ironheart’s jaw. ‘My sons are in the apple cellar?’

  ‘Safest place for ’em. If they weren’t worth good silver, they’d be feeding the ravens of Hallows Wood by now.’

  ‘Watch your mouth,’ Ironheart warned as the soldier nimbly dismounted. ‘Just because you have something I want, do not think you can take liberties with me.’

  The soldier looked him up and down. ‘I wasn’t, my lord. I thought you were known as a man of plain speaking and I have told you nothing but the truth. Many of Leicester’s troops have not lived to see their ransoms paid.’

  William glared at him and felt a goutish envy for the lively arrogance and fluid grace of youth. Slowly he swung his stiff right leg over the cantle and dismounted. The ground was soggy underfoot with a mulch of dead leaves. They twirled from the elm trees across the green, like souls fleeing into the darkness, some of them falling by the wayside at his feet. Rain spattered into his face, forcing him to squint. Noisy laughter drifted from the alehouse and a raucous voice bellowed an English ballad about a virgin and a blacksmith.