Shields of Pride

Chapter 13

‘For just how much is Corbette responsible in the keep and on the estate?’ Joscelin asked Linnet at table that night. The main dish was mutton. It was tough as saddle leather and in places charred black, speaking of an inattentive hand at the spit. Joscelin swallowed a final mouthful by resorting to a liberal gulp of wine and abandoned the meat in favour of a dish of steamed mussels.

‘I do not know. I haven’t dwelt at Rushcliffe since . . . since the quarrel.’ Linnet looked at him from the corner of her eye. He was acting as if nothing had happened between them a few hours ago but she could remember the taste of him too vividly to follow his lead.

He had made thorough use of the bathtub that had been found and he now exuded a scent of coarse laundry soap that stung her nostrils and made her want to sneeze. Time, she thought, and past time to set to work with the maids and manufacture something less caustic for personal use. Time would also have to be found to sew Joscelin some new tunics. The one he was wearing tonight was the brown wool from the horse fair and was beginning to look more than just hard-worn. Perhaps it would assuage her guilt about the thirty silver marks if she made him some good clothes, as befitted a dutiful wife.

He grimaced at the sourness of the sauce in which he had dipped a mussel and again reached to his cup. Then he said, ‘Corbette appears to have wide-ranging authority. It seems that he is steward of Rushcliffe as well as seneschal. Every time I have wanted a key to a coffer or asked a question, I am informed that Corbette has it or knows the answer and that worries me. He has his own little kingdom here and everyone is subject to his yeasay.’ Wiping his fingers on a napkin, he leaned back in the lord’s chair and studied the man through narrowed lids. Linnet, too, looked at Corbette. He was deep in conversation with a stout man clad in a dark-red tunic that made his corpulent torso look like a ripe plum. As Corbette spoke to him, the other’s pouchy gaze darted nervously in the direction of the high table.

‘Who’s that?’ Joscelin asked.

‘Fulbert, the senior scribe.’

‘What’s he like?’

She tilted her head and frowned as she sought to be impartial. ‘He’s pleasant and courteous and writes a fine fair hand, but he’s as soft as unfired clay.’

Joscelin nodded consideringly.

The words between Corbette and the scribe were becoming heated. Fulbert shook his head, his glance flickering towards Joscelin with fear. A woman leaned between the two arguing men and spoke sharply. Rolls of fat strained at the seams of her blue brocade gown.

Despite her annoyance, Linnet’s mouth twitched. ‘Giles bought that blue cloth she’s wearing because he wanted a new court tunic but, when we left at the time of the quarrel, it went missing. I don’t think Giles could ever have graced the stuff the way it now graces Mabel de Corbette.’

‘That is Corbette’s wife?’ Joscelin said in astonishment.

She watched him stare from Corbette’s lean, aristocratic profile to the woman’s blowsy overabundance and try without success to reconcile the two. ‘I am told that she was once as beautiful as her daughter, Helwis,’ Linnet added mischievously.

He gave an amused grunt. ‘Is that a warning?’

‘I would not presume so far, messire,’ she said sweetly. ‘Besides, I trust to your common sense.’

His lips curved with sour amusement and his regard travelled outwards again. ‘That brocade will have to last her a lifetime. She’ll find herself beggared of all but homespuns from this day forth.’

Linnet directed a servant to fill his empty cup but Joscelin swiftly set his palm over the top. ‘Would you have me so gilded that I spend the night under the trestle in a stupor?’

‘I thought that was your intent since you swallowed the last three with a swiller’s skill.’

He made a face. ‘I’d not have eaten my dinner else. We have enough tosspots in this hall already to drink an alehouse dry.’ He stared at the serjeant Halfdan who was arm-wrestling with another guard, lighted candle stubs set to either side of their straining wrists. Halfdan was using his free hand to raise a cup to his lips, egged on by his cronies.

Abruptly Joscelin rose to his feet and, leaving the dais, set out to mingle with the people gathered in the hall. It was not a conventional move and earned him glances of suspicion and hostility as well as approval. Raymond and Giles de Montsorrel would have retired to the private rooms on the floor above long since. However, for the moment, the new lord was a gardener in diligent search of weeds to uproot and plants to nurture.

Joscelin passed close to Corbette. The seneschal had ceased his vehement conversation with the scribe and bowed in deference to his new lord. His wife curtseyed and batted her lashes at Joscelin but she had run to seed and her flirting did not have quite the same effect on him as her daughter’s had done. Moving into the well of the hall, Joscelin sought the fletcher and immersed himself in a conversation about the possibility of making arrows to suit the Welsh bows he was thinking about introducing to the castle’s armoury.

The shouts of the soldiers watching the arm-wrestling contest drowned out what the fletcher was saying. Frowning, Joscelin lifted his head and stared down the long trestle to the chanting men. Halfdan was about to press his victim’s knuckles into the molten tallow of the burning candle-end. Fists pounded on the board in unison with the chanting. The wood vibrated. Cups leaped up and down. Halfdan applied a last burst of pressure and seared his opponent’s wrist into the hot wax. Then he held him there as if branding a beast. The other soldier gasped through clenched teeth. A stronger stink of tallow smoke thickened the air as a grinning Halfdan released his victim and scooped up his winnings to unanimous cheers. No one wanted to be on the wrong side of such a man. Flexing his powerful shoulders, Halfdan stared round the ring of fixed smiles and saw, beyond them, an unsmiling Joscelin.

‘Want to challenge me?’ Halfdan extended a meaty paw. ‘Or are you too frightened?’

A silence fell - as loud as the shouting that had preceded it. One by one the smiles fell away.

‘You’ve more words than wits, man,’ Joscelin said with quiet contempt. ‘It’s the drink in you talking; you’d not last a minute against me.’ Rising from the trestle, he turned his back and started to walk away.

‘Coward!’ Halfdan shouted. ‘Weakling!’

There was an audible gasp from the men at the board.

Joscelin paused, weighing up the risks. He could ignore the comment and by doing so display his scorn. That was the prudent thing to do. He was tired and sore, did not relish a confrontation tonight with a man of Halfdan’s bulk; yet if he passed it over, those words would stick. Whatever he did, there were going to be repercussions. Slowly he turned round and, with a measured walk, returned to the trestle.

Halfdan gave a triumphant grin. His companions were notably more circumspect. One of them relit the candle stubs from a rushlight and then retreated, giving the adversaries room.

Joscelin seated himself opposite Halfdan. ‘You have a death wish,’ he said in a conversational tone of voice and held out his hand.

Halfdan wiped his hand down his chausses and fortified himself with another drink of ale, adding to the gallon he had already consumed. ‘I am not the one who will die,’ he answered. Planting his elbow solidly on the scuffed oak board, he clasped Joscelin’s hand within his enormous fist.

Joscelin resisted as Halfdan started to push, and smiled into the soldier’s face. He was no stranger to this game himself, for he and his uncle Conan had played it constantly on campaign, sometimes for stones when there was no money. There was a skill to it, brute force alone was not enough, and Joscelin knew that Halfdan’s reactions must be impaired by the amount of ale in his belly.

Their forearms remained at the starting point. Halfdan’s muscles tightened and bulged with strain but he moved Joscelin scarcely an inch towards the candle. Struggling, he held his breath and pushed with all the force of a woman in the last throes of childbirth. His efforts bore no fruit and, as he expended the last of his breath on a sob and drew more air, Joscelin began to apply slow, inexorable pressure of his own, bearing down smoothly. Halfdan grimaced, then he howled, his whole arm rigid and shaking with the effort of keeping his pride out of the molten wax. Flesh and flame made tenuous contact. It was too much for Halfdan to bear and, with a bellow of rage, he tore himself free of Joscelin’s grip and towered to his feet.

‘Bastard spawn of a whoring bitch!’ he roared and, throwing himself across the trestle, seized Joscelin by the throat. Joscelin knew his death was seconds away. He jerked his knee hard into Halfdan’s groin, freed the boot knife that no self-respecting mercenary was ever without and drove it upwards and forwards with all the strength in his body. Halfdan bucked and sagged forward, following the knife as Joscelin withdrew it. His hands lost their grip. He struck the trestle and rolled off it, landing with a thud amid the filthy floor rushes.

‘My lord, are you all right?’ Sword in hand, expression grim, Milo reached Joscelin.

Between coughs, Joscelin nodded brusquely. He might just have been half-strangled, his shoulder might be screaming with pain, but he was still alive and he had made a lasting impression on the boggle-eyed witnesses. They would not dare to challenge his authority now that their champion had been sacrificed across his own profane altar.

‘Get rid of this,’ he said huskily, gesturing to Halfdan’s corpse. ‘The men can dig a grave in the morning.’ Pivoting on his heel, he returned to the dais, making sure to stalk disdainfully, although in truth he wanted to crawl. He sat down in the lord’s chair, propped his dagger-boot on the edge of the table in fine vagabond style, and stared out over his domain. Conversation started again, raggedly at first but rapidly gaining volume. Halfdan’s corpse was dragged from the hall by its heels like a carcass fit only for the hounds.

‘They’ll be searching his belongings already for what they can scrounge,’ Joscelin said with weary distaste.

‘You should not have ventured below,’ Linnet remonstrated as he coughed again. ‘You were almost killed.’

‘There was need.’ This time he did not refuse when she directed a servant to replenish his cup. ‘To know Rushcliffe, I must know its backbone and root out the rot. If I am known as a man who does not stand on ceremony, I become more approachable and my task is made simpler.’

‘You also become known as a man who carries a dagger in his boot,’ she said.

‘Indeed, and a man who plans for adversity and has the wit and will to overcome it.’ His tone was light but the words themselves carried conviction. He gave her a twisted smiled and raised a toast. ‘You’re a woman of a similar breed yourself. Here’s to our wedding bed, all hundred and fifty marks’ worth.’

Linnet blushed as she lifted her own cup.