Shields of Pride

Chapter 10

Cheapside, London’s main marketplace, simmered with activity in the afternoon heat. From the fly-plagued butcher’s shambles at the far west side through the prestigious stalls of the goldsmiths, the drapers and the spice-sellers in the centre, to the poultry, grain and fish markets leading down to Oystergate on the east side, shopkeepers stood by their booths enticing folk to buy their wares. And buy some of them certainly did, with much alacrity and no discrimination.

Clutching a casket of sugared plums, a cage containing two black coneys, a skein of scarlet wool and a box of peppercorns, Joscelin was still marvelling at the speed with which his aunt Maude had whisked him away from his essential duties to escort her and Linnet around the stalls of the Cheap.

‘Poor girl, cooped up in that house with naught to do but worry and pray!’ Maude had clucked at him as though it were his fault - which he supposed, in the most indirect of terms, it was. ‘She needs a respite. I know that I do!’

Joscelin had opened his mouth to protest, but that was as far as he got as Maude overrode him with a look that said, I knew you when you were a squalling brat in tail clouts, so don’t presume to know better.

‘There are things she needs to buy before she leaves - women’s things, needles and thread and the like. A man wouldn’t understand, not until his backside wore through his braies. And you need a freshening, too. Have you still got that megrim? Did you drink the betony tisane I sent down to you?’

Realizing it was impossible to swim against a flood tide, he had capitulated and now, for his inability to say no, was a sweltering packbeast for Maude’s various impulse purchases, though he had managed to persuade her out of buying a smelly goatskin from a tanner’s stall on the corner of the Jewry just because she liked the coloured pattern. By the time the women had reached the Soper’s Lane haberdashery booths in their quest for a bargain, his head was throbbing and so were his feet. The women’s stamina was prodigious and he wished he could take them on for garrison detail once he was back in the field.

Yawning widely, he leaned against a booth pole and watched them haggle. His aunt was as vociferous as a barnyard hen and the merchant parried her assaults with cheerful vigor. Linnet de Montsorrel, however, was a surprise. Instead of leaving Maude to do all the bargaining, she made offers herself and held firmly to them. When the merchant refused, Linnet’s eyes grew large and tragic and her lower lip drooped. When he conceded defeat, she transfixed him with a shy, radiant smile. The gentle mixture of pathos and coaxing achieved far more success than Maude’s blustering threats to take her custom elsewhere.

Linnet de Montsorrel looked soft and vulnerable, Joscelin thought, but there was a tough core, a will to survive. Breaca had been like that - quietly unremarkable until something kindled the flame and her spirit shone through.

Robert detached himself from Ella’s hand and came to Joscelin to look at the coneys. Their usual colour was a greyish brown but these were dark, almost black, and lustrous as sables.

‘Are you going to eat them?’ he asked Joscelin solemnly.

‘They’re not mine, they belong to Lady Maude,’ Joscelin replied, crouching to the child’s level. ‘I know for a fact that she doesn’t like the taste of coney, so I expect she has another purpose in mind.’

Robert touched the soft fur through the wickerwork bars. ‘I don’t like coney to eat, either. Papa showed me how to kill one once but I couldn’t copy him, so he beat me.’

Joscelin’s mouth tightened. No one could live through November without seeing animals slaughtered for salting-down during the winter months but the age of three or four was overly young to be taught to kill for food, especially using a coney. To a child’s eye, the rabbits were pretty and soft, something to cuddle. And Robert would not have the strength to make a clean death.

‘Papa’s dead now,’ Robert added. ‘That means he’s gone away and he won’t come back.’

There was a hint of a question in the statement, a need for reassurance that constricted Joscelin’s throat. ‘No, he won’t come back,’ he said gently.

After the thread-seller had been bartered down to his lowest price, Linnet and Maude assaulted another stallholder to purchase needles and then moved on to a draper’s booth to buy necessary supplies of linen and trimmings. Maude’s ankles started to swell. Robert, who had been very good all afternoon, was drooping with fatigue. Joscelin lifted him on to his shoulders and gave him custody of the sugared plums as finally they turned towards home.

Linnet returned to Joscelin the purse of silver he had given her at the outset. ‘You will need to make a record for the justiciar of how much I have spent,’ she said. ‘I obtained the best bargains that I could.’

‘So I noticed.’

She turned a delicate shade of pink but smiled.

Joscelin handed her the purse. ‘Keep the coin. I’ve already set it down in the accounts for your personal use. “One mark to the lady Montsorrel for the purchase of household items.” Not that I’ve been watching all you have bought but I reckon you’ve not spent more than ten shillings.’

Her colour deepened. ‘You are generous, messire.’

He gave her a sharp look, unsure whether to take her remark at face value or read sarcasm into it. Her lids were downcast and she had turned her head a little to one side, ensuring that their eyes would not meet. He saw not so much anger as embarrassment, and was intrigued. However, the opportunity to question her was not forthcoming for, when they arrived at the Montsorrel house, the sight of smoke and flames rising in thick gouts from the kitchen building banished all other considerations from his mind. Men were passing leather buckets furiously from the water trough in the yard to the source of the fire, while others used long hooked poles to drag the burning thatch off the roof. Joscelin’s troops were battling to prevent the fire from spreading to the stables. In the garth the grooms were trying to control the frightened horses, which had been removed there to safety.

‘Dear Holy Virgin!’ gasped Maude, a half-eaten sugarplum suspended on its way to her mouth.

Joscelin ran across the yard to the bucket chain. ‘Milo, what in God’s name’s happening?’ he demanded of his senior serjeant who was toiling hard with the other men.

‘Kitchen fire, sir!’ Milo panted, and stepped out of line for a moment. He was long of body and ungainly like a heron. His linen robe was soaked with water from the buckets he had been helping to carry. ‘Started not long after nones - a stray spark in the kindling for the bread-oven, so the cook thinks. He went to inspect the wares of an oystermonger and when he returned the kitchens were well ablaze.’ He rubbed his long jaw, leaving behind a black smear. ‘A good thing the main house is roofed with tile the way the wind’s blowing, else we’d all be sleeping in the almshouse tonight.’

Kitchen fires were a common enough way for a blaze to start but Joscelin’s scalp prickled. He looked along the row of men on the bucket chain and his unease deepened. ‘You took Gilbert off guarding the strongbox?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Milo said, confident of his decision. ‘I gave Walter the task instead. He’d have been no use on the buckets with that bad shoulder of his.’

‘Leave that, come with me.’ Joscelin stalked towards the main building.

Milo ran at his side. ‘What’s wrong, sir?’

‘Nothing, I hope.’ Joscelin mounted the external stairs to the upper chamber. The door at the top was closed, a good sign, but matters deteriorated the moment Joscelin set his hand to the latch. Although it yielded to his pressure, the door would not budge, as if there was something behind it, blocking entry.

‘Walter, open up!’ Milo bellowed. He thudded the door with his fist, receiving only the vibration of the blow in response. Together with Joscelin, he threw his weight at the door. It gave way the tiniest crack, not even enough to see through with one eye.

‘I’ll get an axe,’ Milo said and pelted away down the stairs. Joscelin hurled himself at the door again, venting his frustration and anger, then took a grip on himself, breathing hard. Milo returned at the run, brandishing a Dane axe. Joscelin grabbed the weapon from him, swung it and sank the blade into the door, close to the hinges. Splinters leaped out of the wood like white javelins. Joscelin wrenched the axe-head free and launched it again with all the strength in his upper arms. A split opened in the oak and he worked on this. A couple more strokes north and south, and wood parted from metal. Milo thrust at the door with his shoulder and it fell inward, slamming down like a drawbridge upon the corpse that had been lying behind it.

‘Christ on the cross!’ Milo leaped over the door and, together with Joscelin, heaved it off the body. Walter’s throat had been cut; the walls bore bright splashes of blood and the room reeked like a slaughterhouse. Making a mental inventory of the room, Joscelin saw that the strongbox was gone from its place beside the great bed. Other items had been taken, too - Giles’s hauberk was no longer on its pole and the fine Flemish hangings had been stripped from the walls.

‘Whoever it was can’t have gone far,’ he said, quickly assessing the span of time that had passed between now and the fire starting, and setting it against the sheer weight and bulk of the goods that had been taken.

‘No one has gone out of the front entrance on to the street; I’d swear my life on it!’ Milo’s voice was hoarse with shock but he was a mercenary, a man who lived by the sword, and his thinking processes remained sharp. ‘The only way to get such weight out in a hurry is by the river!’

‘Fetch six men, take them off the bucket chain if you have to, and meet me at the wharf,’ Joscelin ordered. ‘And post another one here; a servant will do, but tell him on no account to allow the women into the room, and especially not the child.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Joscelin ran down the stairs, sprinted across the neglected garden and down through the small orchard to the wharf bordering the rear of the property. A set of slippery, weed-covered steps descended to the gravel shoreline where several small rowing boats in varying stages of decrepitude were beached.

The tide was out and, on the shingle, two men, their tunics drawn high through their belts, were striving to push a beached Thames shallow boat into deeper water. A third man sat aft of the boat upon the missing strongbox, urging them to greater effort. Before him were heaped several waxed linen sacks, probably containing the other missing items, which were easily worth their weight in silver. The rower’s exhortations suddenly changed to a cry of warning as he noticed Joscelin’s approach. The men on the beach looked over their shoulders and then began to push harder, trying to free the boat.

Joscelin half-ran, half-slithered down the weed-green stairs, only saved from falling by the firm grip of his boot soles. He thrust with his toes on the final step, sprinted across the shingle and launched himself upon the thief to his left. So hard and swift was the impact that the man had no chance of remaining upright and tumbled into the river with Joscelin on top of him. The chill water rapidly saturated their garments and hampered every movement. They thrashed and floundered. Joscelin, having landed uppermost, used the advantage to push his opponent’s head under the water. He lost his grip and the thief broke the surface, choking, but by then Joscelin’s troops had arrived and the man was seized and dragged ashore.

The second thief had succeeded in pushing the boat free but had lost his footing as he tried to scramble into it and had been caught by Milo and another panting soldier. The rower worked frantically to scull his craft into deep water, away from the danger on the bank.

Stripping his sodden tunic and shirt, Joscelin plunged into the river and swam towards his quarry - it was quicker than trying to run, for he was armpit-deep by the time he laid his hands to the prow and hauled himself on board like a dripping merman. The small vessel yawed as the robber rose to a crouching stand and raised an oar to strike at Joscelin. Joscelin ducked and the oar missed his skull but landed a bruising blow across one shoulder. His attacker struck at him again and the boat see-sawed as if in a gale, water sloshing over the sides to form a deep puddle in the caulked bottom.

Joscelin lashed out with his feet and the oarsman staggered backward and landed hard against the side. Immediately Joscelin was upon him, using the oar between them to bear down and crush the man’s thorax. Panic-stricken, the thief kicked frantically. Joscelin grunted in pain as his body absorbed the blows but he did not yield his inexorable pressure. The resistance slackened; the thief choked. Joscelin held him within a hair’s breadth of death. One more push and the windpipe would collapse. His victim went limp as he lost consciousness. Joscelin threw the oar aside and unbuckling the belt around the man’s waist, rolled him on to his stomach and lashed his hands firmly behind his back, jerking the latch viciously on to the last hole of the leather. The thief groaned as he started to recover his senses. His head moved feebly as he tried to avoid the water pooling in the bottom of the boat.

‘Don’t give me any trouble,’ Joscelin said, lifting his victim’s head by the hair and shoving Giles’s hauberk beneath it to prevent him from drowning. ‘I’m quite likely to throw you to the fish, and in that padded jerkin you’d sink like a chest full of silver, wouldn’t you?’ Patting the strongbox, he seated himself upon it, retrieved the oars and turned the boat for shore.

It was well past compline before Joscelin was sufficiently free of his responsibilities to sit down with the women and take a cup of wine and a cold venison pasty - one of a batch fetched by Stephen from a cook shop on King Street, the Montsorrel kitchens being little more than smouldering ruins.

A door had been improvised out of planks from one of the rowing boats on the shoreline and the floor had been laid with new rushes borrowed from a neighbour. All traces of blood had either been removed or covered up. Out of sight but not out of mind, Joscelin thought as he sat down on a stool and leaned his back against the wall. The stolen hanging had been replaced and it cushioned his spine from the scrubbed, damp patch on the plaster. Once he had eaten and reassured the women, he had to go and spend at least the small hours in vigil over Walter’s body. His men were the outer ring of his family and to lose one hurt him. Walter had been a staunch companion, one of the first to join his banner the year that Juhel died.

‘I have three men below in the hall, guarding the strongbox,’ he said. ‘And more within immediate reach should the necessity arise, although I do not believe we’ll be troubled again in London. Leicester and his retinue are leaving at first light, so I gather.’

‘Have you spoken to Richard de Luci yet?’ asked Maude.

Joscelin dusted crumbs from his spare tunic. It was more threadbare than the one he had ruined in the river, and only just respectable. It was better for a mercenary to invest his coin in the best weapons and horses he could afford rather than in fine clothing. ‘No, he wasn’t at home. It can wait until morning now. His prisoners are securely confined, although I doubt he’ll get much out of them before they swing.’ He fell silent for a moment and stared into his half-empty cup. When he spoke again it was to Linnet, not his aunt.

‘Perhaps you will tell me now about Hubert de Beaumont, about this “private quarrel” of yours. I think that perhaps it is not so private after all.’

Linnet raised her hand to the spectacular necklet of bruises at her throat. A red burn mark showed livid where Beaumont had tried to tear off the leather cord upon which the strongbox key had hung. Joscelin was its custodian now. ‘If you had made an issue of it, there would have been a scandal and I would have been branded a harlot at the least. Hubert de Beaumont has a murky reputation and there have been several incidents involving other men’s wives. You ride the tourney circuits, you know the type.’

Joscelin inwardly flinched. Being a tourney champion and an itinerant mercenary he was, by association, linked to such men. He did indeed know the type. Besides, he couldn’t claim to be a lily-white innocent himself.

‘He wanted the silver. It was Giles’s wish, too, but I denied them both. I had to decide how to act in my own interests and my son’s, since the strongbox belongs to him now. I’m not sure I have done the right thing. There is no surety that King Henry will emerge from this rebellion the victor. To lean too far in either direction seems dangerous to me.’

Joscelin had been taking a drink of wine and he almost choked at hearing her deliver these less than honourable sentiments in a thoughtful, pragmatic voice. ‘Playing a double game is even more dangerous,’ he croaked.

She dipped her head and smoothed her gown over her knees. All he could see was the curve of her cheek and her lowered lashes. After a moment, she drew a deep breath and lifted her gaze to his. ‘And sometimes safer, I do believe. No, please, hear me out.’ She lifted her hand quickly to stay his protest. ‘I have a suggestion to put to you about tomorrow’s journey.’

Joscelin looked at the hand she had stretched out to him. It was a quick and capable hand with short-clipped nails. A practical hand, not that of a languid noble lady. ‘Yes?’ he said cautiously.

‘The strongbox is obviously a target. Leicester knows that if he takes his claim to court, he is likely to lose. He also knows that we are leaving for Rushcliffe tomorrow and that we will have to travel through lands where his influence is almost as powerful as the justiciar’s.’

‘Yes,’ Joscelin said again, beginning to frown.

‘What I suggest is that to protect my son’s inheritance, we take—’ She stopped speaking abruptly, her gaze darting to the makeshift door as it was heavily thumped by the fist of the guard outside.

‘Come,’ Joscelin commanded.

Malcolm the Scot poked his head around the door, his flaming hair standing up in spiky tufts. ‘The justiciar and your lord father have arrived, sir, and want a word.’

Joscelin sighed and rose to his feet. ‘All right, I’ll be there directly.’ He turned to Linnet. ‘I’ll be interested to hear what you have to say when I return,’ he said, adding ruefully, ‘If I can stay awake that long.’

Arriving in the main hall, Joscelin found his father and the justiciar waiting for him. Ironheart’s expression was smug and Joscelin was immediately put on his guard. It was a relief to have the culprits under lock and key awaiting interrogation. Against that small triumph, though, a man had died and the kitchens and stables were naught but heaps of smoking cinders - nothing to foster a smug expression.

Joscelin made a concise report that bordered on the curt. He was tired, but the sharper he became the more his father’s lips curved. De Luci, too, seemed to find it necessary to smile as he seated himself on a padded bench along the wall of the room. Beside him was a wicker cage lined with straw and inside it, curled at the back, Robert’s two black rabbits slept nose-to-tail.

‘Food for your journey?’ de Luci asked, peering inside.

‘They are a gift from my aunt to Robert de Montsorrel,’ Joscelin answered neutrally.

Ironheart made a contemptuous sound. ‘Maude’s got more wool in her head than a downland sheep has fleece.’

‘And more sense than most,’ Joscelin snapped and then, aware that both men were staring at him, shrugged. ‘I lost a good man today and got thoroughly belaboured by an oar when I went after the strongbox on the boat. Between one and the other, I’m not fit company.’

De Luci sobered. ‘It is always a grief to lose a companion. I will pay for masses to be said for him once you are gone. We won’t keep you long but I have a proposal to set before you, one that is very much to your advantage, and it has a direct bearing on the task I have set you.’ His gaze flickered briefly to Ironheart and back to Joscelin.

It was a night for proposals, Joscelin thought. He saw that his father was openly grinning now.

De Luci steepled his fingers beneath his jaw. ‘Originally I wanted you to escort Linnet de Montsorrel and her son back to Rushcliffe and take up the position of castellan while I found a suitable warden for the boy. Well, it seems that it’s my good fortune to have found one already.’

Joscelin eyed de Luci. How could that be of advantage to him unless de Luci was offering him a higher post, which he very much doubted? The qualifications for such a position were means, breeding and influence, and he possessed none of these. ‘My lord?’ he questioned, because it was required of him to play the game out.

‘I am here to offer you the wardship of Robert de Montsorrel by right of marriage to the widow.’

The words entered Joscelin’s consciousness but made little sense to his reeling mind. His eyes widened and his lips moved, silently repeating what the justiciar had said.

De Luci gave a self-satisfied smile. He enjoyed tossing surprises like snakes and then watching his victims juggle frantically. ‘There will be a fine to pay to the Crown for the right to take the lady to wife, but you’ll still have enough to live on while you set the lands to rights.’ He chuckled softly. ‘Don’t look so stunned. If I did not believe you capable of donning baronial robes, I’d not have offered you Rushcliffe to administer. Of course, it will only be yours until the lad comes of age but there is still his mother’s dower property and that’s worth a decent sum. What do you say?’

Joscelin swallowed. His mind was so full of conflicting thoughts and emotions that he was at a loss. ‘I do not know what to say, my lord.’

De Luci laughed. ‘I have thought for some time that you should settle down and breed some sons to follow you in service to the Crown.’

‘Women should be kept busy,’ Ironheart agreed, exposing his chipped teeth and cavities in a broad grin. ‘The bed, the distaff and the cradle: that’s the way to run your household.’

Having seen what the bed, distaff and cradle had done for his father’s wife, Joscelin wondered if Ironheart really believed what he was advocating or whether he spouted it blindly from force of habit. ‘I would rather not season my dinner with wormwood,’ he replied, and turned to de Luci. ‘My lord, I will be pleased to accept what you offer me, providing the lady is willing.’

‘She has no choice in the matter,’ Ironheart growled.

‘Then I am giving her one.’ Joscelin looked defiantly at his father until Ironheart dropped his gaze and spat his disapproval into the rushes.

‘Very well,’ said de Luci with a grave face but a twinkle in his eye, ‘only if the lady is willing but I expect you to persuade her on that score.’ His own wife had had no say in the matter of their marriage but he remembered wanting her to agree to the match of her own volition. First and foremost, it was pride. De Luci did not believe there was the slightest possibility of Joscelin giving up an opportunity like this for the sake of a woman’s word. He wagged an admonitory finger at Ironheart. ‘It damages a man’s esteem, William, to think he has to force his bride to marry him.’

‘It never damaged mine,’ Ironheart snapped. ‘Good Christ, if anything, Agnes was forced on me, the sulky bitch.’

‘And if you had had to force my mother?’ Joscelin asked.

A shadow crossed William’s face. ‘Then perhaps she would still be alive,’ he said bitterly. ‘I warned her to be careful while she was with child but she went her own way, as usual, and I was idiot enough to let her.’

An uncomfortable silence seized the room. Joscelin knew he had stepped upon forbidden territory but sometimes it was the only way of fighting back. The subject of his mother was seldom raised in conversation. For all that Ironheart believed in plain speaking and honesty, she was one subject that he kept locked away in his own personal hell. He blamed himself for her death and his guilt was a wound so deep that it was still bleeding.

Joscelin inhaled to speak, and thus break the stifling silence, but a draught from the door-curtain made him stop and glance round. His eyes widened in dismay for Linnet de Montsorrel was standing on the threshold. From the look on her face, it was plain she had heard every word of their discussion and was fully prepared to be as unwilling as a heifer smelling a slaughter shed.

Ironheart, a superb general, went straight into the attack. ‘Is it your habit to eavesdrop?’ he demanded with a glare that made it obvious what he thought of a woman’s interruption of a man’s domain.

Her face blanched of colour but she stood her ground. ‘No, my lord,’ she answered with dignity, a slight tremble in her voice. ‘I came to fetch the coneys. My son had a nightmare about them being killed and I wanted him to see that they are safe. I heard you talking and, since it concerned me most intimately, I had no qualms about listening.’

Ironheart spluttered.

Linnet faced Joscelin. ‘You want me to consent to be your wife?’

‘I ask of you that honour, my lady,’ he answered with a bow.

‘Honour,’ she said with weary scorn. ‘What an over-used word that is.’

Ironheart clenched one fist upon his belt buckle as if he were contemplating unlatching it to use upon her. De Luci’s face wore an expression of shock, as if a butterfly had just bitten him.

‘My son has need of me,’ she said and, taking the coney cage from the bench beside the justiciar, she raked the men with a look of utter contempt and walked out.

‘By Christ, she needs her hide lifted with a whip!’ Ironheart snarled.

‘I don’t want a wife like the lady Agnes who cowers every time you raise your voice,’ Joscelin answered, staring at the swaying door-curtain.

‘That is precisely the kind of wife you do want!’ Ironheart retorted. Striding across the room to the nearest flagon, he sloshed a measure of wine into a cup and, raising it on high, toasted his son. ‘To the lady’s willingness! ’ he mocked, eyes bright with cruelty.

‘William, enough!’ de Luci admonished.

‘I will gain her willingness.’ Joscelin clung to his temper. ‘And I won’t have to beat her to do it.’

Ironheart grimaced. ‘No, I know you. You will flay your own hide and offer it to her for a saddle blanket.’

‘Perhaps I’ll offer her yours instead,’ Joscelin snapped. ‘You don’t know me at all!’ And he stalked from the room before he committed patricide.

Reassured that no one had butchered his coneys, Robert had fallen asleep, one small hand lightly touching the cage. A lump grew in Linnet’s throat. Quietly she rose from his bedside and went to the laver. Tilting the reservoir, she poured water into the pink-and-cream marble basin beneath and splashed her hot face. De Gael’s words had been courtly, but they were dross. He was as calculating and ambitious as any other landless wolf. A castle, a comfortingly heavy strongbox, someone to mend his clothes, see to his food and pleasure his bed. Servants, herself included, to call him ‘my lord’ and fetch and carry at his whim. And she was supposed to be honoured? Say no, and the soft words would be replaced by a bludgeon. Feeling dizzy and sick she held her wrists in the cold water and tried to breathe more slowly.

‘Whatever’s the matter?’ Maude advanced on Linnet from the other end of the room where a maid had been preparing her for bed. She wore a chemise and her grey hair lay in a frizzy plait on her bosom.

Linnet laughed bitterly. ‘Giles is barely in his coffin and already I’ve been given a new “protector.”’ Her mouth twisted on the final word.

Maude’s expression grew concerned. ‘You mean de Luci has appointed a permanent ward to look after Robert’s inheritance? What about Joscelin? Is he still taking you north tomorrow?’

Linnet stared through waterlogged lashes into the older woman’s bemused, homely face. ‘Joscelin,’ she said stiffly, ‘has been given full custody of everything by right of marriage. My son, myself and our lands. All he requires is my consent and even that can be obtained by a handful of silver to the right priest.’

Maude looked astonished. ‘Richard de Luci has offered you in marriage to Joscelin?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, well, well.’ Maude folded her arms and assimilated the fact with pursed lips. ‘What did Joscelin say?’

‘That wedding me was an honour, that he desired my willingness,’ Linnet said in a scornful voice. ‘Of course, it’s an excuse for him to take what he wants without a bleat from his conscience. He was paying lip service to honour, and I told him so.’

‘You said that to Joscelin?’ Maude’s expression became guarded.

‘I said it to all three of them,’ Linnet answered, drying her hands on the rectangle of bleached linen hanging at the side of the laver. ‘Giles believed in honour, too.’ She yanked her gown and chemise to one side and showed Maude the livid mark of the bite on her neck, the yellow smudges encircling her throat, the friction graze of the leather key-cord. ‘Here’s the proof.’

Maude unfolded her arms and put them around Linnet in a warm embrace. ‘Oh my love, not all men are so tainted,’ she said in a voice tender with compassion. ‘My husband never took his fist to me, nor did he reproach me because I was barren. We were very fond of each other. I still miss him terribly.’

Linnet refused to be diverted from her course. Such paragons might exist but they were a minority. ‘And your nephew, how does he treat women?’

‘Joscelin would not abuse you, I know he would not.’

‘With his father for an example?’

Maude squeezed Linnet’s shoulder. ‘Once you know William, he’s more bark than bite. I’m not saying he’s an easy man; sometimes he can be so vile you want to murder him, but his bad temper is a shield to prevent him from being wounded. Joscelin has always had the strength of will to go his own way. That’s one of the reasons he and William sometimes quarrel fit to fly the doors off their hinges.’

‘Madam my aunt, I would be grateful for a moment alone with Lady Linnet,’ said Joscelin.

Linnet pulled away from Maude’s embrace. ‘I have nothing to say to you,’ she said curtly to him.

Maude stepped protectively in front of her. ‘I think tomorrow would be better for us all,’ she said.

‘No, now.’ The quiet determination in the words informed her that while she might badger him and win on trivial issues such as shopping trips, she would have no success on this matter. He sat down on the coffer where he had earlier eaten his pasty and leaned his back against the wall, indicating that he was not leaving.

Maude held her ground for a moment longer then capitulated with a deep shrug and an apologetic glance for Linnet. She retired to the far end of the room and would have left the partitioning curtain open but Joscelin signalled her to draw it across. After a silent battle of wills, she yielded with an exasperated twitch of her hand.

Feeling sick with apprehension, Linnet faced Joscelin.

He came straight to the point. ‘If not me,’ he said, ‘it will be someone else and soon. You cannot remain a widow, you must know that.’

His tone was reasonable but she was not deceived. He was as tense as herself and filled with anger. She had seen the signs often enough in Giles.

‘My husband has yet to be buried and you speak to me of marriage? Mother of God, you even pursue me here to my chamber to press your claim? You must be eager indeed!’

He looked wry. ‘I would have discussed it in the hall but you showed no inclination to stay.’

‘With the three of you staring at me like hucksters deliberating over a choice piece of ware?’

‘I suppose it must have appeared like that to you,’ he admitted, ‘but the justiciar has not made me this offer out of pure generosity for services rendered in the past. He sees me as a choice piece of ware, too.’

‘So he uses me and my son to buy your loyalty.’

‘In Christ’s name, woman, use your wits for a moment!’ he snapped with exasperation. Then he slumped on the coffer and rubbed his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I’m tired and sore and my temper’s frayed. I don’t mean to frighten you. Look, de Luci has offered me something that will never come within my grasp again. Most mercenaries die in the ditch. Those who don’t might rise as high as the post of seneschal in a modest keep if they are fortunate. It’s a glittering prize and I would be mad not to desire it with all my being. Surely you can see that?’

Linnet had flinched when he snapped at her but his apology gave her the courage to fight back. ‘Rushcliffe is my son’s by right. You make it sound like a choice morsel that has landed on your trencher for you to devour.’

Joscelin gave a judicious nod. ‘It is true,’ he said, ‘that being the warden of a small child who is heir to wide estates is a lucrative post. I pay de Luci for the privilege and then make good my loss and hopefully a profit out of the estate’s revenues. It would be dishonest of me to claim otherwise but unless I’m a competent steward those profits are going to be negligible, and in the end they will dry up.’

His words held the ring of common sense but Linnet was not yet ready to be mollified. And certainly she had no intention of trusting him. ‘Giles was not averse to selling his own child’s inheritance to the French,’ she said coldly. ‘Why should you as a stepfather be any more tender?’

‘Because . . .’ he began but stopped, the words unspoken. A haunted look filled his eyes. He indicated the right portion of the coffer and eased along slightly so that there was room enough for her to be seated without having to touch him. ‘Please, sit down.’

Linnet did so, not for his asking but because she no longer trusted her legs to support her. She perched right on the edge, her hands clenched together in her lap.

‘When your son comes of age and I have to yield the lands, there will still be your dower estates in Derbyshire and rights to a lead mine,’ he resumed. ‘If I serve the justiciar well, other rewards will come my way. Why jeopardize a comfortable future for the sake of a few years of extravagance?’

Yes, she thought, my lands, my rights, myself. Most surely Giles was turning in his coffin. ‘And a life on the tourney circuits qualifies you for such a post?’

‘I’ve lived on crumbs and I’ve lived on largesse, depending on my fortunes, but I have never been reduced to begging in the gutter. Early on I learned to pace my income and not live beyond it. You will find me well qualified to govern.’

The weight of his gaze was almost tangible. ‘What advantage is there to me in becoming any man’s wife when I can remain Giles’s widow?’

‘De Luci will still have to appoint a warden for your son. And your dower lands will cause men to seek you in marriage, perhaps by force.’

‘Richard de Luci would never permit that to happen!’

He shook his head. ‘Possession is nine-points of the law and money the other. If the justiciar decides you are difficult because you rejected my suit, he’ll be far less inclined to sympathy on the next occasion - he might well choose to levy a fine and turn a blind eye.’

She stared at her hands, forcing them to be still so that her agitation would not be displayed to his miss-nothing stare. She studied the walls of her trap for a means of escape. There were doors in her cage but, as she examined them, she saw that they only led into other cages, smaller and meaner, without even the room to turn and chase her own tail.

She studied Joscelin from beneath her lashes. He had been kind to Robert and he had twice the patience of Giles but that by no means made him a saint. Like Giles, he was strong-willed, determined and ambitious; she had no reason to associate those traits with her own personal good, yet what was the alternative? The thought of men such as Hubert de Beaumont made her shudder.

‘What would you have done had I not overheard you talking downstairs?’ she asked curiously.

‘Approached you in the morning.’ A self-deprecating smile lifted his features and took her completely by surprise. ‘Probably on the turf seat in the orchard after Mass with Stephen playing his lute behind the wall and me on my bended knees.’

She had to swallow a treacherous answering smile. ‘Then I would have refused you indeed.’

‘And do you refuse me now?’

Linnet glanced around the current setting - a bedchamber at night in shadowy rushlight, with a curious audience a mere curtain away, and the bed itself, the satin coverlet gleaming like horsehide, inviting the wild ride and the nightmare. How she hated it. Throughout her life it had been a symbol of betrayal, pain and death. She inhaled deeply. ‘I do not refuse you,’ she said.

A spark leaped in his eyes. ‘And you are willing?’

‘I give my consent.’ Which was not the same thing. ‘And I want to observe three months of mourning for Giles in the proper manner. I owe him that duty at least.’ She uttered the last sentence softly, more than half to herself.

She saw him stiffen as he registered the tone and content of her reply. His own gaze on the bed, he said quietly, ‘I doubt you owe him any kind of duty at all.’ Then he looked at her and shrugged. ‘It’s as close as I’m going to get for the moment and the prize is worth the compromise. ’ He rose to his feet. ‘Will you agree to plight troth in front of witnesses tomorrow before we leave the city?’

Linnet hesitated then mutely nodded assent.

‘You’ll have no cause for regret, I swear,’ he said earnestly.

Her father-by-marriage Raymond de Montsorrel, had whispered those same words to her once and he had lied. Christ on the cross, how he had lied as he destroyed her.

Joscelin waited but when she did not respond and kept her face averted, he sighed and went to the door. On the threshold he stopped and turned round. ‘You were going to suggest something about the security of the strongbox earlier, before all this cropped up?’

Linnet rose unsteadily from the coffer. She had been silently praying for him to leave but obviously she was not a good enough Christian. It would be easy to put him off by saying that it was nothing, that it could wait until the morning. She knew he would not argue, for there were tired shadows beneath his eyes and he still had his vigil to keep at the bier of the soldier who had died. But by the morning there would be too many other considerations to snatch at her time.

And so she told him and was rewarded by a look of admiration and a dark chuckle. ‘I’ll set it in motion straight away before I go to prayer,’ he promised, and when he left her his tread was buoyant, as if he saw her willingness to cooperate with him where the silver was concerned as a willingness on other levels too.