Shields of Pride Page 4

  ‘Why in the world should I take you anywhere?’ Joscelin demanded.

  Chuckling, the groom departed in search of his wily apprentice.

  ‘I’ll be good, I promise!’

  ‘I’ve heard that one before, too!’

  ‘Please,’ Martin beseeched with eyes as soulful as a hound’s so that, despite his aching head, Joscelin had to bite his lip on his amusement.

  ‘Let me settle my wits and my gut first and I’ll see,’ he said, and started towards the house. Martin skipped beside him like a spring lamb and chattered about the dubious fairground delights offered on Smithfield’s perimeter.

  ‘There’s a real mermaid!’ he enthused as they entered the hall together. ‘All bare up here but it costs a whole penny to see her.’

  Joscelin knew the ‘mermaid’ well since fairgrounds and tourneys frequently travelled sword-in-sheath. The nearest she had ever come to being a fish was servicing herring men in a Southampton brothel. Her long blonde hair was a wig and her ‘tail’ was made of cunningly stitched snake-skins. He supposed that she had good breasts if that was the only opportunity you ever got to see a pair, but hardly a full penny’s worth. ‘Gingerbread’s better value,’ he advised gravely and halted, his expression becoming blank, as Lady Agnes descended upon them, her face puckered in temper.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she snapped at Martin and grabbed his arm in a pincer grip. ‘Go and change your tunic, hurry. We’re due at the justiciar’s hall within the hour. You look like something disreputable in a mercenary’s baggage train!’ She released him with a push.

  Self-assured Martin might be, but not stupid, and he obeyed her command at a run, grimacing over his shoulder at Joscelin as he reached the end of the hall.

  Her insult had been all for Joscelin. Last night he had responded to Ralf ’s baiting with violence. Now he offered the lady Agnes a stony courtesy. She might claim that he had been bred in the gutter but she was the one who stooped to it to sling mud.

  He sat down at a trestle and took a small loaf from the bread basket in the centre of the table. Then he poured himself a mug of ale. He could have insisted on taking his place at the high table and commandeering white bread and good wine, but he could not be bothered with that sort of battle this morning.

  ‘Where’s my father?’ he asked, a glance round the hall showing him a suffering, bleary handful of his own men, the steward and servants, but few of the de Rocher retainers. For a moment he thought that she was not going to reply. Her eyes narrowed and her lips tightened. None of your business, her expression said, but the submission to male dominance was so ingrained that she did not openly defy him. ‘He’s gone to fetch Ralf from Leicester’s house,’ she said frostily and turned her back on him to chivvy the servants.

  Joscelin broke the bread and began to eat. Small joy his father would have of Ralf, he thought. At four-and-twenty, brimful of anger and resentment, his half-brother was too old and dangerous to be whipped to heel like a raw adolescent. He regarded the skinned knuckles of his own right hand, flexed them and winced.

  Agnes stalked away from the trestle with a stony face. The servants suffered. Joscelin thought about holding his ground and decided that it wasn’t worth the aggravation. Cramming a final piece of bread into his mouth, he took his cup outside to finish his ale in peace. It was a mistake. As he sauntered into the warm morning air his father arrived, Ralf riding behind and both of them obviously in filthy tempers.

  Ironheart dismounted, cuffed the groom’s apprentice across the ear for being a fraction too slow at the bridle, and stamped towards the hall. His pace checked for an instant when he saw Joscelin and a muscle ticked beneath his cheekbone. Then he came on, his body stiff with anger.

  ‘Leicester’s house!’ he snarled at Joscelin as he came level. ‘You couldn’t have chosen a more public place to brawl had you scoured all of London! You shame me and you shame your blood!’

  Joscelin looked beyond his father’s mottled fury to where Ralf still sat on his horse. ‘I had good reason,’ he said quietly. His fist tightened around the cup.

  ‘Leicester says you were drunk,’ Ironheart snapped. ‘He was only too pleased to furnish me with the details while I dragged Ralf off some strumpet he’d fallen asleep on. I’d have done better to take a vow of celibacy than beget the brood of half-wit sons collaring me now!’

  ‘I wasn’t drunk, I was angry,’ Joscelin said.

  ‘And spoiling for a fight before you left me last night. A dozen eyewitnesses say that you started it. If you can’t control that anger then you’re not fit to lead men!’

  Joscelin’s shoulders went back as if he had taken a blow, but he said nothing. Not for the world would he repeat the insult that had goaded him to strike.

  ‘Oh, get out of my way!’ Ironheart snapped. ‘Let me swallow a drink before I choke!’ Thrusting past Joscelin into the house, he bellowed at his wife like a wounded bear.

  Ralf rode over to Joscelin, deliberately fretting the horse, making it prance. ‘I thought for the good of your hide you’d be long gone by now,’ he said.

  ‘As usual, you thought wrong,’ Joscelin retorted.

  Ralf’s complexion was pale and sweaty. An ugly bruise marred his left eye socket where Joscelin’s fist had connected the night before. Reddish beard stubble framed the compressed line of his mouth. ‘One day I’ll be lord of all my father owns and you’ll be nothing,’ he said, each word edged with bitterness. The horse stamped and sidled. The swish of its tail clipped the cup in Joscelin’s hands.

  Joscelin refused to be intimidated. ‘You really don’t know the difference, Ralf, between having nothing and being nothing,’ he said and poured the dregs from his cup onto the ground. The dust lumped and glistened. ‘I might sell my sword for money but never my integrity.’

  For a moment, the prospect of another brawl hung imminent but the sound of Ironheart’s choler-choked voice barking through the open hall doors held the brothers to caution. Ralf bestowed a single, glittering look on Joscelin that spoke more eloquently than words and snatched the horse around towards the waiting groom. In the course of its turn, his mount’s glossy shoulder brushed Joscelin, forcing him to step back. A hoofprint bit into the dark stain in the dust where the drink had spilled. Joscelin stared at it and then at his brother’s back. It was long and broad and the amount of fine Flemish cloth required to make his tunic must have cost Lady Agnes’s domestic budget several shillings.

  Ralf did not know the privation of lying down at a roadside because there was nowhere better to sleep. He had never had to fight for each mouthful of food or gather firewood in freezing, sleety rain when you were so weary you wanted to give up and die, but couldn’t because people were depending on you. Ralf did not know what real hunger was.

  Ralf moved restlessly around his mother’s chamber, touching this and that without any real purpose. Agnes watched his progress with troubled eyes. She could still feel the dry imprint of his kiss on her cheek. He stank of wine, sweat and the cheap scent of whores. She was disappointed but not surprised; nor did she blame him. It was all William’s fault.

  ‘Shall I find you some salve for your eye, my love?’

  Ralf shook his head and fiddled with a piece of braid lying on top of her work basket. ‘It doesn’t hurt,’ he muttered. He dropped the braid and moved to the window.

  Agnes admired his spare, angular grace and the gleam of his sun-bright hair. She was so proud of his golden fierceness and the fact that she had given him life.

  ‘I need money,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to ask my father and, even if I did, he would not give it to me.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Enough to see me comfortable while I’m in Normandy with Leicester’s troops.’

  Her heart plummeted. ‘You are truly going?’

  He said nothing but, after a moment, turned his head and fixed her with a stare that held a world of discontent and frustration. His eyes were light brown like her own. With the sun striking them obliquely,
they held flecks of suspended gold. The swollen bruise was an affront to his beauty.

  ‘Have you told your father?’

  ‘Not in so many words, but he knows.’

  And would do nothing to help him, Agnes thought, because he thoroughly disapproved of Robert of Leicester. If she herself disapproved it was because of the danger to Ralf’s safety, but she knew she could no more hold him or persuade him to do her bidding than she could handle William’s great Norway hawk. To her mind, it thus made eminent sense to ensure that Ralf had everything he needed to survive.

  ‘How much?’ she asked again and went to her jewel casket. Every penny she spent had to be accounted for to William but she still had her jewellery which was hers to dispose of as she wished. William never noticed whether she wore trinkets or not and she seldom felt the need to deck herself in finery. If she could spare Ralf even a moment of hardship, she would give up every last piece.

  He left the window niche and crossed the room to stand at her shoulder as she raised the lid. There were rings and brooches, ornate belts, clasps and a braid girdle that her waist had outgrown in the course of numerous pregnancies. Ralf ignored all these and pounced upon a reliquary cross on a thick gold chain.

  ‘This will do,’ he said and held it up to the light. Amethyst and moonstone, sapphire and beryl flashed amid a fire of sun-caught gold. ‘Thank you, Mother, I can always count on you for an ally.’ He rewarded her with another kiss, less perfunctory this time, and, ducking the cross around his neck, headed for the door.

  On the threshold he encountered his aunt Maude, a dish of marchpane-covered dates in her hand. He kissed her, too, snatched several of the sweetmeats off the tray and, whistling loudly, pounded away down the stairs.

  Maude looked curiously at Agnes, who, pink-faced, was closing and locking her jewel casket.

  ‘Ralf ’s uncommonly cocky to say that William almost flayed him alive earlier,’ Maude remarked, setting the dish on the coffer. ‘Have you been helping him out again?’

  ‘If I have, it’s none of your business,’ Agnes sniffed. She considered her sister-in-law to be a greedy, interfering sow and a spy in the household.

  ‘Just be careful. I don’t think William would approve.’

  Agnes gave her a hostile stare. ‘Are you going to tell him?’

  Maude shrugged and reached for one of the sweetmeats. ‘It’s none of my business, is it?’ she said, returning Agnes’ look impassively.

  Chapter 6

  Linnet watched the dancing bear shamble in slow circles to the tune its owner was playing on a bone flute. A tarnished silver brooch pinned a moth-eaten bearskin at the man’s shoulder and around his throat was a necklace of bear teeth interspersed with wicked curved claws. She had no doubt that they were the remains of the showman’s former animal.

  She eyed the stout chain that attached the bear to its stake and hoped there were no weak links. The beast itself looked weary to death. Its coat was scabby with mange, its eyes listless and the stench emanating from its body caused her to draw her wimple across her face. Poor creature, she thought, for she knew what it was to be trapped and forced to dance at another’s will until nothing of self remained.

  Glancing around, she watched her husband and some knights from Leicester’s mesnie trying out the paces of the war-horses at a coper’s booth nearby. Strange how there was money for what he wanted but never sufficient for her own requests. She had almost had to beg him that morning for the coin to purchase needles and thread and linen for summer tunics. It made her feel bitter when she thought of all that silver in their strongbox going to finance a stupid war.

  Robert hid behind her skirts and peeped out at the bear, his grey eyes enormous with wonder and fear. He was clutching a honeyed fig in his little hand and Linnet was well aware that her gown would be covered in sticky fingerprints before the morning was out.

  ‘Joscelin, look, here’s the bear, I told you!’ a child’s voice shrilled.

  Turning, Linnet saw an excited boy of about eight years old pointing towards the bear with one hand and dragging a laughing, resigned man with the other. Today Joscelin de Gael had discarded his mail for a tunic of russet wool, the sleeve-ends banded with tawny braid to match the undertunic and chausses. The excellence of the cloth was only emphasized by its lack of embellishment and the slightly worn but good-quality belt slanting between waist and hip, drawn down by the weight of a serviceable dagger. He and the child bore a resemblance to each other in the shape of their faces, the way they smiled and the manner of their walk.

  Fascinated by the bear, too young to see the tarnish of its moth-eaten plight, the boy stared. De Gael shook his head and looked indulgent. Then he saw her and his expression became one of surprised pleasure.

  ‘Lady de Montsorrel!’

  Linnet’s maid moved defensively to her side, and the two soldiers whom her husband had set over her as escort and guard eyed de Gael with sour disfavour and took closer order.

  ‘Messire,’ she murmured and lowered her gaze, knowing that Giles would blame her for any familiarity. And yet de Gael was owed a courteous response. ‘I must thank you again for yesterday.’

  ‘I didn’t have much choice, did I?’ he asked with amusement.

  Linnet knew that she was blushing because her face felt hot. She dared not look up in reply to his teasing gambit. Joscelin de Gael rode the tourney circuits and she had to assume that flirting with women was just another accoutrement of his trade. His very presence at her side was a danger to her reputation, especially after yesterday.

  He crouched on his heels, hands dangling in the space between his bent knees. ‘And you look much brighter, young man,’ he said to Robert. ‘Do you like the bear?’

  Robert clutched his mother’s hand for reassurance and pressed himself against her. But he managed a silent nod of reply.

  De Gael wrinkled his nose. ‘I confess I don’t, but I’ve been dragged to see it nonetheless.’ He spoke softly to the little boy but his words were directed at Linnet.

  She nodded towards the older child. ‘Is this your son?’

  ‘My half-brother Martin. The kind of existence I lead is no recommendation for marriage and children.’ A shadow briefly crossed his face and when his smile resumed it was cynical. ‘The fortune-teller yonder informs me I am going to wed a beautiful heiress and die in my dotage a rich and fulfilled man, but I have a feeling she had more of an eye on my purse than my future. If I married an heiress, beautiful or not, I’d spend all my time defending my new-found fortune by writ and by sword.’

  Linnet warmed to his rueful candour despite herself. ‘Instead, you defend other men’s fortunes.’

  ‘Oh yes, strongboxes full of them, for whatever purpose.’ He slanted her a knowing look.

  Sensing danger, Linnet grasped Robert’s small sticky hand. ‘Come, sweetheart,’ she said, ‘it is time to leave.’ She inclined her head to de Gael in a perfunctory, formal farewell. He unfolded from his crouch and returned her salute, his gravity marred by a spark of humour that deepened the creases at the corners of his eyes

  As Linnet hurried away from the danger of his proximity, she heard de Gael’s small brother asking if he could have some gingerbread and the mercenary’s good-natured response. Risking a look over her shoulder, she discovered that de Gael was staring after her in speculation. Her throat closed with fear.

  ‘What did he want with you?’

  Linnet halted abruptly as her husband blocked her path. He sat astride a fancy red-chestnut destrier whose paces he was trying. The beast had a rolling, wicked eye and Giles was barely in control, his fists clenched on the reins. ‘Nothing,’ she croaked and had to swallow before she could speak again. ‘He was just passing the time of day.’

  ‘Then why are you blushing? What did he say to you?’

  ‘Nothing, I swear it; he was talking to Robert.’

  ‘To a whey-faced brat?’ The horse plunged and she had to step quickly aside to avoid being barged by its powerful shoulder.
‘You expect me to believe that?’

  ‘He has his own younger brother with him. Please, my lord, everyone is watching us. You will make a scandal out of nothing.’

  Scowling, Giles stared around. Hubert de Beaumont and Ralf de Rocher were watching the scene with open relish. Richard de Luci, who was also inspecting the war-horses, had courteously turned the other way but William Ironheart, who was with him, had no such delicacy and his stare was direct.

  ‘I hope for your sake that it is nothing,’ Giles hissed, lowering his voice. ‘Is it any wonder that I am loath to bring you anywhere when you shame me thus. You are no better than a whore!’

  Linnet gasped at the final word and felt as if he had struck her with his whip. Hating him, sick with fear, she stood submissively before him, knowing she had no defence. Robert, frightened by the atmosphere, by the sidlings of the huge horse and the thunderous expression on his father’s face, began to sniffle into her skirts.

  ‘Go home and wait for me,’ Giles snapped. He wrenched the chestnut horse around and pranced him back to his audience. She could tell from the looks on their faces and Giles’s strutting manner that her humiliation sat well with them. Summoning the tatters of her dignity, she lifted Robert in her arms and went towards her waiting horse litter on the side of the field.

  Joscelin indulged Martin with a square of gilded gingerbread from the booth adjacent to Melusine the Mermaid and, with that bribe, removed the child from the dubious attractions of the fairground to the more sober business of the selection and purchase of an all-purpose riding mount from the dozens offered for sale.

  Taught first by his father and then by his uncle Conan upon the battlefields of Brittany, Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine, Joscelin was an excellent judge of horseflesh. Sometimes a good mount was all that had stood between himself and death in the thick of the fray. He examined with a critical eye the various animals paraded before him, discarding several high-mettled beasts with the most perfunctory of glances despite the horse coper’s assurances of their breeding and quality.