Shields of Pride Read online

  Father Gregory had visited mother and child, and used the opportunity to shrive them. A precaution and a comfort, he had said, but it had been no reassurance to Joscelin. To shrive them was to acknowledge that they might not recover.

  His eyes felt raw with lack of sleep but he knew that if he closed them, if he relaxed his vigil for one moment, death would come with swift stealth and take Robert and Linnet from him as it had taken Juhel. And even if death did stay away, he knew the dreams would not.

  He stared at them both sleeping together in the great bed. Perhaps Robert was breathing more easily since the last dose of feverfew or perhaps it was just the fancy of his aching mind. Linnet tossed and moaned, her hair darkly damp, her face and throat marked with the red blotches of the fever. She pushed at the covers and began to mutter. Her body arched and bucked and she licked her dry, pale lips.

  Joscelin leaned over her, grasping her hot hand in his, stroking her forehead.

  Her glazed eyes flew open and she stared directly at him, but he knew she could not see him. ‘Raymond,’ she panted. ‘Raymond, someone will come, please don’t.’

  ‘It’s all right, Raymond’s not here,’ he soothed and turned briefly away to wring out a cloth in cold water and then lay it across her brow. ‘You are but dreaming.’

  ‘No.’ She frowned, weakly fighting him. ‘Not a dream.’ Her body moved beneath the damp linen sheet, arching sinuously as if receiving a lover. ‘No, please, it is too dangerous. I . . . ah!’ A spasm caught her, leaving him in no doubt that her imaginary lover had entered her body. Prickles of cold shivered down Joscelin’s spine. His gut churned as she twisted and cried out, for the sounds, despite the torment of fever, were of pleasure, not pain. Raymond de Montsorrel. He was being cuckolded by a phantom in his own bed.

  ‘Linnet, in God’s name, he’s dead!’ Joscelin cried, striving to hold her thrashing body. ‘Christ, wake up!’

  She fought him, her muscles rigid, her lips drawn back from her teeth in something that was part snarl, part sob, then she gasped and went limp.

  Almost weeping himself, Joscelin slowly released her. ‘Oh God,’ he said, and put his head in his hands.

  ‘It will be safer if you let me pleasure you in the other way,’ she said in a hoarse, pleading whisper, her gaze darting upon the ceiling as if she could see moving pictures there. ‘If Giles were to find out, he’d kill us both. I know you like it when I do this.’

  The urge to crush his hand over her mouth and silence her almost overpowered him. He sprang to his feet and strode into the antechamber while he still retained the control to do so. Pressing his temple against the cold stone wall, he fought his gorge. He remembered the bawdy barrack-room gossip in Nottingham. Raymond de Montsorrel’s appetite for sexual congress had been legend. The man himself had been nothing to look upon - balding, raddle-featured and with bowed legs from a life spent in the saddle - but that had never spoiled his attraction as far as women were concerned. His talents were all tucked inside his braies, so the gossip went. One of the garrison whores had boasted that Montsorrel had taken her up against the wall of St Mary’s Church on Ascension Day and that the size of his manhood would have put a bull to shame. And Linnet had let him—Joscelin ground his fist against the wall, not feeling the pain, and tried to think with his head, not his lurching gut.

  It was no different from himself and Breaca, he told his recoiling instincts. She had been twice his age, amused and experienced in the ways of lust, and he had had no sense of guilt or sin at the time. He had no right to cast stones but he was deeply chagrined to find them lying at his feet anyway. Filled with self-disgust, he turned round to go back to the bed and saw his father standing in the doorway.

  ‘Conan told me,’ Ironheart said and stepped over the threshold. ‘For once he was right to open his stupid big mouth. Stand aside and stop glowering. Where are they - through here?’

  Joscelin nodded. His head felt muzzy and he knew one of his incapacitating headaches was waiting on the periphery to attack. Damn Conan, he thought, and at the same time felt a tight swelling of relief in his throat and behind his eyes. Unsteadily he followed his father into the bedchamber.

  Ironheart stood at the bedside. Joscelin heard the low mutter of Linnet’s voice.

  ‘What is she saying?’ He hastened to his father’s side, alarmed at what she might reveal in front of him.

  Ironheart looked sidelong at Joscelin, his eyes bright with speculation. ‘That you cannot lie with her any more because she is with child.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Is it true?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know. She didn’t say anything before the fever struck.’ Joscelin sat down on the chair at the bedside and clasped his hands. ‘It is too soon, I think, and there have been very few opportunities.’ How many opportunities had there been with Raymond de Montsorrel? His eyes flickered to the little boy. The fever flush had faded from his brow and he appeared to be sleeping deeply and calmly. He resembled his mother, scarcely any Montsorrel traits to be seen lest it be in the slant of cheekbone and jaw. Did it really matter which Montsorrel? An exquisite pain was beginning to throb through his skull, making rational thought impossible. Behind his closed lids, small specks of colour performed a wayward dance and he groaned softly.

  ‘You need to sleep,’ Ironheart said, giving him a sharp look. ‘There is nothing you can do that a maidservant cannot. Go to.’

  Joscelin was horrified. The thought of what Linnet might gasp out to a maid or his father in her fever was enough to make him shake his head in vehement denial. And there was the memory of how he had lost Juhel and Breaca, one in the flesh, the other in spirit. ‘I cannot!’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘You must.’ Ironheart laid his hand on Joscelin’s shoulder and stared him in the eye. ‘I do not know how loyal your men are but, if necessary, I will give the order for you to be taken and bound. Milo and Conan for certain will not hesitate.’

  ‘You would not dare!’ Nauseous with exhaustion and pain, Joscelin returned his father’s glare. For reply, Ironheart removed his hand from Joscelin’s shoulder and headed towards the door, his breath indrawn to bellow.

  ‘For Jesu’s sake, you do not understand!’ Joscelin cried after him, his voice breaking. The effort of forcing his shout through the tightness in his throat squeezed the band of pain across his forehead until he thought his skull was going to shatter. ‘I had a woman and child once before and I lost them. I wasn’t there when it mattered!’

  Ironheart winced as if the raw anguish in Joscelin’s voice was a physical blow. Turning, he took two paces back towards his son, then stopped. His fists opened and closed and his throat worked. When the words came they were heaved out with effort as if they were enormous stones. ‘I wasn’t there to protect your mother,’ he said. ‘When I arrived from their summons she was dead but still warm enough for me to believe she was yet alive - only sleeping.’ He gave a choked laugh. ‘They said I tried to kill myself for love of her but it wasn’t true. It was for hatred of myself.’ Clamping his hands around his belt, he drew a shaken breath. ‘The woman and child you mentioned, this happened during those missing seven years?’

  Joscelin nodded, his pain too great for him to be amazed that his father had voluntarily spoken of his own hidden guilts and griefs. ‘Breaca took me under her wing and then into her bed. She bore Juhel in the winter of ’sixty-one. Your grandson would have been twelve years old by now.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Camp fever.’ Joscelin bit his lip. ‘He wasn’t strong enough to survive it. When he died, so did the fire between his mother and me - or perhaps it was already out. I don’t want to lose Linnet and Robert, too.’ He bowed his head and closed his eyes. Even the candlelight was almost too much to bear as the headache invaded and wrecked his faculties.

  ‘You won’t lose them,’ Ironheart said gruffly. ‘The child looks to be over the worst, from what I saw just now, and the woman’s got a stubborn core of steel.’

  ‘No,
I’m going to lose her, too,’ Joscelin said bleakly. ‘Everything has changed.’

  ‘Don’t talk such drivel. All that has changed is your ability to think.’ Ironheart’s harsh features suddenly softened and he gave a deep sigh. ‘Conan thought I’d dredge up some wise words from somewhere to comfort you but I fear he overestimated my ability. All I can say is that I am here. You have to trust me. Give me the care of your wife and stepson for tonight and I promise I won’t let anything happen.’

  Joscelin wanted to deny his father, tell him it was impossible, but the pain that had been toying with him like a cat with a mouse now sheathed its claws in his skull and the world became a seething agony. He was only dimly aware that the words emerging from his mouth were not the ones he desired to say.

  Ironheart went to the door and shouted for the servants.

  Linnet felt something lying on top of her. Hot and smothering, it pinned her to the mattress, making it impossible to breathe. She struggled to push it off but it responded by tightening its grip. She thought she could feel cruel fingers digging into her flesh and the bowl of her pelvis cramped as if she had been invaded. Choking for air, she opened her eyes and at first saw only the darkness of the night illuminated by the one lonely flame of the night candle beside the bed. She could make out the figure of a man sitting in the chair. He started to rise and bend towards her, and as he did the weight on her chest grew leaden.

  ‘Don’t fight me,’ whispered the voice of Raymond de Montsorrel. ‘You cannot win.’

  She tried to scream but there was no breath in her lungs. A whirling darkness engulfed her. Her eyes were blind but she could still hear voices. Raymond whispering in her ear with the darkness of lust, Giles raging, calling her a harlot. Joscelin . . . Joscelin saying, Christ, wake up, I don’t want to listen to this. Another voice, closer, harder with frustration.

  ‘Come on, woman, damn you. Fight. Or was I wrong about your spirit? Do you think I’m going to let you do this to my son? You will not die!’

  The other voices faded and the darkness ceased to whirl. Her lungs shuddered, filling with cold air. Making a tremendous effort, she forced her lids apart. The figure was leaning over her now, eyes darkly gleaming in the candlelight, cadaverous features intense but very different from Raymond’s. William de Rocher laid a calloused palm on her brow in a surprisingly gentle manner. She tried to flinch but her weakness was too great. Indeed, her eyelids were too heavy to hold open, and after a brief struggle she had to let them flicker down.

  ‘Hmph, still hot,’ she heard Ironheart say, ‘but steadying down. You, girl, see to your mistress.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Linnet heard the trickle of water in a bowl, and in a moment a blessedly cool cloth was laid across her forehead. The bedside chair creaked as Ironheart sat down again. Why was he here? she wondered vaguely, and where were Joscelin and Robert? It was too difficult to think. Sleep was claiming her in a soft, deep blanket and she welcomed its embrace.

  Ironheart watched Linnet sink into sleep as the maid lightly wiped her down. Dawn was still several hours away, late because of the encroaching winter, but he judged that the crisis had been reached and perhaps a corner turned.

  After a while, as Linnet continued to breathe deeply and evenly without impediment, he left the maid in attendance and went stiffly into the antechamber, where Joscelin was sleeping with Robert on a makeshift pallet. The child was visibly improving. Probably by the morning he would be complaining he was hungry. Thin and small though he was, sapped to pallor and shadows, he also possessed the tenacity of a clinging vine.

  Ironheart turned his attention to the man against whom Robert was curled. Even in sleep, the marks of pain were etched between Joscelin’s dark brows. He remembered his son’s earlier words. A woman and child in the mercenary camps. The thought, which had been held on the surface by other considerations, now began to seep into every level of his being. Ironheart stooped to the hearth to pick up the flagon of usquebaugh-laden wine. Seven missing years in which, unaware, he had become a grandfather and then been bereaved. Joscelin was so much like him that he wondered if his bloodline was cursed.

  Chapter 27

  Christmas, 1173

  An inflated pig’s bladder sailed through the air and struck the dais with a solid thump, dislodging a branch of evergreen and a pair of antlers pegging the foliage in place. The bladder bounced off the decorations and squelched into a dish of tripe on one of the lower tables. A diner fished it out and hurled it back the way it had come. Blazing a comet-trail of sticky lumps, the bladder curved across the dais and landed on the floor at Father Gregory’s feet. A look of intense revulsion on his fine-cut features, the priest nudged the improvised ball away with the edge of his boot.

  With considerably more enthusiasm, a gazehound surged from beneath the table to lick at the remnants of tripe still clinging to the bladder. When a servant approached with the intention of rescuing the missile, the dog wrinkled its muzzle and snarled, then secured the bladder firmly between its forepaws and bit at the knotted end. There was a bang. The remnants of the football shot into the air and landed on the dog’s back. Ears flat, the hound scooted beneath the table and knocked Father Gregory off the bench.

  Conan leaned down, flexed his forearm and hauled the unfortunate priest back on to his seat to howls of mirth and appreciation from the unruly crowd below the dais.

  ‘Church always does take a tumble on Twelfth Night!’ Conan laughed. ‘Never fear, you’ve got all year to take your revenge in tithe payments, Peter’s pence and penances. Isn’t that right, Josce?’

  ‘If you say so.’ Joscelin, resplendent in a tunic of dark-red wool trimmed with gold silk braid, toasted his uncle in mead. The garment was a Christmas gift from Linnet. Robert had one exactly the same and could not be persuaded to wear anything else.

  Conan made a rude face at Joscelin’s indifferent tone of voice. ‘God, you’re getting to be as sour as your father!’ he declared. ‘Where’s your Twelfth Night spirit?’

  ‘Wearing thin,’ Joscelin said as one of the cook’s apprentices capered past the dais wearing a woman’s gown, a wimple set askew on his yellow curls. Twelfth Night was never any different: short of murder, everyone was given licence to behave outrageously and the rules were always stretched to their limit. Usually Joscelin would have joined the merriment, if not with alacrity, then with a reasonable degree of grace, but tonight, although he knew he should be rejoicing, he did not have the will. The residue of yet another headache burned behind his eyes.

  There had been no real peace since October’s end - since Linnet had almost died of the spotted fever and shown him in her delirium what he did not wish to see. And she had no recollection of her illness beyond the first day of fever, did not know what she had said and what had changed. He had tried to behave in a normal manner while he battled his demons but, from the bewildered, almost hurt way she looked at him sometimes, he knew he was failing.

  ‘Oh, come on, Josce! Don’t be . . . don’t be so miserable! ’ Conan’s words were starting to slur under the powerful influence of the Welsh mead that Brien FitzRenard had sent to them as a Christmas gift in thanks for Joscelin’s aid earlier in the year. ‘Let’s . . . let’s have a game of hoodman-blind!’ He pushed himself to his feet, took a step backward and then steadied himself. ‘I’ll wear the blindfold first, if you want. Henry, lend me your hood!’

  Joscelin opened his mouth to say that he did not wish to play hoodman-blind, or any other boisterous, stupid game that his uncle had in mind, but the good humour surrounding him and the look of bright anticipation on Robert’s face made him close it again and yield to Conan’s jovial bullying.

  A space was cleared in the well of the hall. Conan, blindfolded by Henry’s hood, which he had donned back-to-front, was placed in the centre of the space, spun round several times to disorient him, then given a vigorous push. The object of the game was for the hoodman to try to capture someone to take his place, and for the others to poke and
prod and tease him without being caught themselves.

  Conan made several wild, bear-like swipes and embraced only thin air. He growled like a bear, too. Giggling, Robert ran in beneath the mercenary’s clutching arms and struck him on the leg. Conan lunged, Robert evaded him and, shrieking with glee, ran to the safety of Joscelin’s arms.

  ‘Papa, did you see?’

  Conan struck rapidly towards the sound of the child’s excited voice. Joscelin spun Robert out of the way. Conan’s fingertips touched the soft red wool of Joscelin’s sleeve. Joscelin twisted sideways, grabbed hold of a laughing Milo and flung him straight into Conan’s path. The mercenary’s arms closed on his prey. Now all he had to do was guess whom he had caught.

  ‘Not a wench,’ Conan muttered, spreading his hand across the bearded face. ‘Not unless she’s standing on her head.’

  ‘You’d be surprised what a wench will do on Twelfth Night, Sir Conan,’ Milo said, affecting a falsetto voice that had an appreciative audience doubled up with laughter.

  ‘Reckon I would. In fact, I’d be downright buggered!’ Conan retorted, feeling lower across shoulders and chest until his fingers happened upon the ornate silver-gilt cross that Milo wore on a cord around his neck. ‘I’d know this anywhere. It’s bigger than anything Father Gregory’s got! Has to be you, Milo de Selsey!’ He pulled off the hood and gave a hoot of triumph.

  The game progressed, becoming more boisterous. People swapped clothing to confuse the hoodman, although when Robert was captured by Henry and had to wear the hood, everyone gentled their performance and Joscelin allowed Robert to catch him, although not too quickly, for the sake of the child’s pride.

  As the hood was secured around his head, Joscelin discovered that he was actually enjoying the sport. It was like the tourney field where all thought was bent upon controlling the body in order to survive and no space was left for introversion and brooding.