Shields of Pride Page 21

  ‘Don’t let Robert go near him,’ she told Henry as she left the peddler to Father Gregory’s spiritual care. ‘He’s plainly surrounded by evil vapours.’

  Henry bit his lip and looked away. ‘No, my lady,’ he said.

  * * *

  The peddler’s fever did not abate; his lungs continued to fill with fluid and he died at dawn the next morning. The words ‘spotted fever’ spread from mouth to mouth faster than plague itself. Women gathered herbs to burn to ward off the sickness. Rushcliffe’s village wisewoman suddenly found herself inundated with worried customers. So did Father Gregory. Confessions poured into his ears by the bucket-load, quite gluing them up. Holy relics and badges competed for space on people’s belts with nosegays and pomanders. Lurid stories of previous epidemics were related by sundry generations of survivors.

  On the day that Matthew was buried in the churchyard, the laundress and her daughter complained of feeling ill, and by the evening of that same day, were both huddled upon their pallets with high fevers and blinding headaches. A report arrived via a pack-train from Newark that the spotted fever was raging there, too, and that several villages between the town and Rushcliffe had also been struck. The only good news was that most victims appeared to be recovering from the disease and that it was only dangerous to the old, the very young, the weak and the occasional unfortunates of whom Matthew seemed to be one.

  Feeling tired and apprehensive, Linnet sent Ella away to bed and sat down on the couch in the bedchamber to finish sewing the hem of a new tunic she was making for Joscelin. He was in the antechamber talking business with Milo, Henry, Malcolm and Conan, the men who were fast becoming the nucleus of Rushcliffe’s administration. Conan was present in a military capacity, being responsible for the garrison and patrols. Milo straddled a bridge between the duties of seneschal and steward, with Malcolm as his adjutant and Henry ensuring that all ran smoothly on a practical level.

  The arrangement appeared to be working well. It was less than six months since Joscelin had taken up the reins of government but there was already a marked difference in people’s attitudes. They had a sense of purpose and knew that if they took pride in their work their new lord would take pride in them and reward them accordingly.

  The men left and Joscelin came into the bedchamber, arms stretched above his head to ease a stiff muscle. ‘My brothers have been ransomed,’ he told her. ‘Apparently they were captured in the forest not far from the battlefield and held by some enterprising villagers in the apple cellar of the local alehouse.’ Lowering his arms, he set them around her from behind and kissed her cheek.

  ‘What happens now?’

  ‘The usual,’ he said and she felt his shrug before he released her and sat down on the great bed. ‘They’ll all snarl at each other but my father will snarl the loudest and Ralf will be forced to back down - for a while, at least. As soon as he sees my father’s attention wandering, he’ll up and cause mischief again and Ivo will follow him.’

  Linnet yawned and, leaving her sewing, followed him to the bed. Her limbs felt heavy and she was a little cold, as if it were the time of her monthly flux, although that was not due for another week at least. Her mind upon the relationships between Joscelin, his father and his brothers, she asked, ‘Why did you run away to Normandy when you were fifteen?’

  He paused in the act of removing his boot. ‘Because if I hadn’t, either I would have killed Ralf or he would have killed me. Our father used to intervene - he put us in the dungeon once, in different cells, and left us there for three days. But that only made us hate him as well as each other. Running away was the only means of breaking the chain. When I came home, it was on my terms, not my father’s, and I had outgrown Ralf.’ He finished removing his boots and leaned his forearms upon his thighs. ‘Ralf ’s still trying to break his chain but his struggles just bind him all the more tightly.’

  ‘And if he breaks loose?’ Linnet asked.

  Joscelin’s lips compressed. ‘Then God help us all,’ he said, then turned his head at a sound from the curtain that partitioned Robert’s small truckle bed from theirs.

  ‘Mama, my head hurts,’ Robert whimpered, wandering into the main chamber like a little ghost. Linnet gasped and started forward, but Joscelin reached the child first and, picking him up, brought him to the bed.

  ‘He’s as hot as a furnace,’ he said to Linnet, and they looked at each other in dawning horror.

  ‘It’s all right, sweetheart,’ Linnet soothed, gathering his small body into her arms. ‘Mama will give you something to make you better.’

  Even as she spoke, Robert began to shudder with chills. ‘I saw Papa, my old papa, in a dream and I was frightened. ’

  Linnet flickered a glance at Joscelin. ‘Hush, there’s nothing to worry about, dreams cannot hurt you.’ She kissed her son’s flushed brow. ‘Sit here with Joscelin while I fetch you something to drink. It won’t taste nice but it will help your poorly head.’ Easing Robert back into Joscelin’s arms, she left the bed and went quickly to the hearth.

  Joscelin felt the rapid throb, throb of Robert’s heartbeat against the fragile ribcage and heard the swift shallow breathing and knew, as he had known in the past, how terrifying it was to be helpless.

  In the bleak darkness of the wet October dawn, Joscelin fitfully dozed in the box chair at the side of the great bed. Beneath the covers, Linnet and Robert slept, the latter tossing and moaning in the grip of high fever. The rain drummed against the shutters, but in his mind the sound became the drumming of horse hooves on the hard-baked soil of a mercenary camp in the grip of burning midsummer heat. He sat astride a bay stallion, a horse past its prime with a spavined hind leg. The harness was scuffed and shabby, so was the scabbard housing his plain battle sword. With the eyes of a dreamer he looked upon his own face, seeing the burn of summer on cheekbones, nose and brow, the hard brightness of eye and the predatory leanness that showed an edge of hunger. He was very young.

  A woman ran to his stirrup and looked up at him. She was slender and dark-eyed, her fine bones sharp with worry beneath lined, sallow skin. He tasted wine on his tongue and knew that he had been drinking, although he was not drunk.

  Dismounting, he followed her urgings to a tent of waxed linen that bore more patches than original canvas. As he stooped through the opening, the fetid stench of fever and bowel-sickness hit him like a fist. Overwhelming love and fear drove him forward, instinct pegged him back.

  The child on the pallet still breathed but he wore the face of a corpse: the dark eyes he had inherited from his mother sunken in their sockets, his mouth tinged with blue. He turned his head and looked at Joscelin. ‘Papa,’ he said through dry, blistered lips. The woman uttered a small, almost inaudible whimper and she, too, looked at Joscelin with dead eyes before slowly turning her back on him.

  ‘No!’ he roared and jerked awake to the sound of his own voice wrenching out a denial.

  Linnet raised her head from the pillow and looked at him hazily.

  ‘A bad dream,’ he said, struggling to banish the image of Juhel’s waxen face. ‘How is he?’

  Linnet leaned on one elbow to look at her child and set her palm against his neck. ‘The willow bark has held the fever but not taken it away. He’ll need another dose soon. I must try and get him to drink.’ She sat up and pushed the hair out of her eyes, then pressed her hands into the small of her back.

  ‘I’ll fetch him something - apple juice from the press?’ he suggested, knowing that the trees had been recently harvested and that cider brewing was under way.

  ‘Yes.’

  Joscelin hesitated, perturbed by the dull tone of her voice and unable to see her face behind the tangled screen of her hair. ‘Linnet?’

  She turned towards him and folded her arms across her breasts, not in modesty but in a gesture of shivering cold. ‘It will be for the best if you give the apple juice to Ella and do not come back,’ she said through chattering teeth. ‘She has had the spotted fever before.’

 
; Fear flashed through him like a sheet of fire and flared into terror. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I think you know.’

  Stubborn anger joined Joscelin’s other emotions. ‘Then you will also know that you cannot command me to something like that.’

  ‘Then I ask it.’

  ‘No!’ he said violently. ‘You ask too much. Breaca sent me away when Juhel was dying. She said that it was a woman’s domain, that I should be out earning silver to keep us in firewood. And when he died and she took sick with the bloody flux, she would not let me near her either.’ His voice became ragged as old scars were torn open and became new wounds. ‘Christ on the cross, I will not bear it again!’ Striding to the bed, he seized her in his arms and crushed his mouth down on hers in a long, hard kiss, absorbing her sweat and fever-heat.

  ‘There!’ He parted from her, gasping and darkly triumphant. ‘I’m irrevocably committed now. I’ll go and bring the apple juice and the willow-bark tisane and you won’t gainsay me again!’

  Chapter 26

  Left foot presented, Ralf leaned into his shield and hammered his sword-hilt lightly against the rawhide rim in a steady litany of challenge. The blade was fashioned of whalebone and his opponent was Hamo, one of his father’s knights, who had agreed to a practice bout in a corner of the bailey.

  All the pent-up anger and tension within Ralf came seeping to the surface. He found himself wishing that it were for real: that he could strike and see blood flow. From the perimeter of the battle circle, soldiers, knights and retainers shouted advice and encouragement. Ralf could smell their anticipation. A rapid glance upwards showed him that his mother and aunt were watching from the bower window. He would give them what they wanted, prove to them the kind of warrior he truly was. But desire for their admiration was not the spur that drove him. That particular goad was in the possession of the badger-haired man who had reined in his grey horse and, hand on hip, was watching Ralf thoughtfully.

  Ralf started to circle Hamo, seeking a weakness, an opening to exploit. He lunged. Hamo twisted and quickly parried with his shield.

  ‘Come on, Ralf, get him!’ shouted someone in the crowd. Two or three others added their voices and Ralf noted them with grim pleasure. For all that he had been in disgrace for joining Leicester’s rebellion, he was still the heir. His father had pardoned him and accepted him back into the family fold. It was believed in some quarters that William Ironheart was beginning to fail and Ralf had done nothing to disabuse that notion. Only let them look to him as Ironheart’s natural successor.

  Hamo weaved and dodged and managed to strike the occasional good blow on Ralf’s shield but the effort it cost him told in his scarlet complexion and whistling breath. Ralf remained on the balls of his feet - light, elegant and deadly.

  ‘Get yourself out of that corner, Ham, or he’ll have you!’ a knight in the crowd yelled, his own sympathies with the older, heavier man.

  Eyes blazing with exultation, Ralf sprang like a lion and made a triumphant killing blow. Hamo dropped sword and shield and knelt, conceding defeat. Ralf ’s roar of triumph rang around the bailey, raising hairs on scalps and spines. The whalebone sword lifted on high, he pivoted in a slow circle, acknowledging the adulation of the women in the window splay. Eyes hot with jubilation, he sought his father’s gaze. But Ironheart’s attention was not upon him. His father’s back was turned and he was listening to the mercenary Conan de Gael, who had just dismounted from a foam-spattered courser and was talking rapidly.

  Ralf’s pleasure turned to bitter resentment. He spat over the side of his raised shield, then stalked over to his father and the mercenary.

  ‘It is very important that you come—’ Conan was saying but broke off and turned to look Ralf up and down. ‘Learning to fight?’ he said pleasantly.

  Ralf wished that his practice sword had a true steel blade. He looked at his father but the old man’s expression was so stiff with control that it might have been carved of rock. ‘I already know how to fight - but if you want me to teach you a lesson?’ he sneered and raised the whalebone sword suggestively.

  Conan lifted his brows. He, too, glanced at Ironheart, but receiving the same stony response he shrugged his powerful shoulders. ‘Why not?’ he said. ‘I’ve to wait while a fresh horse is saddled, and a man gets rusty without regular practice. Besides, it won’t take long.’ He went to Hamo. ‘May I?’ He took the whalebone sword from the knight and tested its balance.

  Ralf quivered with rage at the mercenary’s nonchalance. The man was near his father’s age, with more scars than a raddled old tomcat. His blond hair was receding and the suggestion of a paunch bulged his quilted surcoat. It was obscene that Conan de Gael should even dare to take up the challenge.

  A larger crowd was gathering now, drawn by the scent of drama. Martin pushed and wriggled his way to the forefront of the audience. Conan saw him and winked and grinned. Martin winked back and then cheekily stuck his tongue out at Ralf.

  It was the final insult and Ralf attacked without warning, fast and hard. Conan was flung backwards by the flurry of blows but, after the first undignified leap, he kept Hamo’s shield high to absorb the violence of Ralf’s attack and played a defensive role until he had worn the edge off the younger man. Again and again Ralf came at him, full of vicious aggression, determined to make a kill. Conan parried and heard the shouts of derision from the watchers, the yells encouraging Ralf to finish him off.

  ‘Come on, you whoreson, yield!’ Ralf snarled as he pressed Conan to the edge of the circle.

  Conan was panting hard and didn’t reply - but the expression in his eyes was eloquent.

  Ralf redoubled his efforts. Although he still moved with grace, his face was pink and streaked, and his chest was heaving rapidly. Conan watched and waited for his moment, then made a deliberate, almost clumsy feint at Ralf ’s legs. Ralf immediately lowered his shield to counter the intended blow, but Conan straightened and changed direction like a sudden dazzle of lightning and the blunt sword came down across the back of Ralf’s unprotected neck.

  ‘You’re dead,’ Conan gasped, lowering his guard and standing back.

  A shocked silence descended, the onlookers not quite believing what they had seen. Ralf quivered, muscles tense to renew the attack. ‘Don’t make a fool of yourself,’ Conan said softly out of the side of his mouth. ‘Part of learning is knowing how to take defeat.’

  ‘I don’t need a lecture from vermin like you!’ Ralf spat and, tossing down his sword, shoved his way out of the circle, making sure that his shoulder barged Conan’s in passing.

  Conan returned the whalebone sword and the shield to Hamo and watched Ralf stride towards the hall with thoughtful eyes. The spectators started to disperse.

  ‘He let his hatred cloud his senses,’ Conan said to Ironheart. ‘Otherwise he’s an accomplished young man.’

  ‘You didn’t exactly encourage him to be rational,’ William answered as his courser was led out and a fresh horse was brought for the mercenary.

  Conan set his foot in the stirrup. ‘Neither would an enemy,’ he retorted. ‘He’s wound up as tight as the pulley on a siege engine. Just make sure that when he lets fly you aren’t standing in the way.’

  Ironheart grunted. ‘I don’t need your advice on how to handle my own son. Ralf doesn’t like you and I don’t blame him.’

  Conan sighed deeply. There was still a wide rift between himself and William de Rocher and he didn’t think that, despite praying together at Morwenna’s tomb, it was ever going to narrow beyond a brusque truce.

  Ironheart glowered at him. ‘Anyway,’ he said shortly, ‘why send for me? What makes you think I am going to be of any comfort to Joscelin?’

  ‘If the woman and child die, he will need you. You have known the grief. I do not want to see him ruined as you and I were ruined. I’ve always had the lad’s best interests at heart, whatever you think of me. He is my kin and the de Gaels were not always mercenaries and ne’er-do-wells. My grandfather had lands
and a proud bloodline but he was brought low by taking the wrong side in a dispute. I want Joscelin to succeed. I want him to have a better life than either you or I have had.’ Conan paused and sucked a breath through his teeth, his complexion dusky with high feeling. ‘I have said more than I should but this is not the time for holding back.’

  They rode out of the keep in silence: a normal state for William but not for Conan, who was usually as brash as a jay.

  ‘The woman and child are mortally sick, then?’ William asked after a long time.

  ‘I do not know,’ Conan said wearily. ‘As few people as possible are going near them lest they breathe in the evil vapours - Lady Linnet’s instructions. I only know that Joscelin has scarcely eaten or slept since they took ill, and this morning he sent for Father Gregory.’

  ‘Does he know you have come to fetch me?’

  Conan shook his head. ‘I do not think he knows anything but the mortal peril of his wife and stepson.’

  William compressed his lips. ‘He’s only been wed to the wench since harvest time,’ he growled. ‘You’re not telling me he’s heartsick beyond all healing?’ And, without waiting for Conan’s contradiction, he rode on ahead, making it clear to the other man that he did not wish to communicate at all.

  Joscelin eyed the congealing bowl of pottage that Stephen had brought to the bedchamber half an hour since. Small circles of fat were forming at the edges, encrusting the pieces of diced vegetables sticking out of the liquid. His stomach, normally robust enough to accept any form of sustenance without demur, clenched and recoiled. He abandoned the bowl on the hearthstones, an untouched loaf beside it, and reached for the flagon of wine that Stephen had brought with the meal. That at least he could swallow without retching.

  With dragging feet he returned to the bed and sat down in the box chair that had become his prison and his prop during two lonely nights of vigil, or was it three? Time had lost all meaning as he watched the contagion invade and consume.